Starfield's lead quest designer had 'absolutely no time' and had to hit the 'panic button' so the game would have a satisfying final quest

Starfield may have over 1,000 planets, but the ending of the game's main quest (mild spoilers incoming) involves just a single one: Masada 3. First there's a big space battle while orbiting the planet, then you have to fight your way through dozens of enemies on the surface and underground, culminating in a final battle that sees you bouncing around different dimensions to locations you visited earlier in the game. 

The creation of this lengthy final quest was all very last minute, according to former Starfield lead quest designer Will Shen, and only came together out of «necessity and urgency.»

At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Shen and former Fallout 76 lead level designer Daryl Brigner gave a joint talk about the importance of collaboration when it comes to level and quest design. The two developers worked together for nearly 15 years on Bethesda RPGs like Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76. Both have since left the company: Shen is now lead content designer for Something Wicked Games, and Brigner is world director for Soft Rains—both new studios created by industry veterans.

During the talk, Shen and Brigner discussed the design of a couple of memorable quests from Skyrim and Fallout 4, like House of Horrors, where the player investigates a haunted house, and Last Voyage of the U.S.S. Constitution, where robots enlist the player to return an 18th century naval frigate to the sea. Near the end of the talk, Shen spoke about the final quest of Starfield—specifically, what it was lacking.

«We were finally at a state in the project where we could play through the whole [game]. And it became very clear that we were missing the large final location that was going to tie the story together and have a satisfying action-filled payoff,» Shen said. «I was both implementing the main quest and leading the quest design team, so I had absolutely no time. The entire quest design team was already overbooked.»

Part of the issue, Shen said, was the sheer