“I got lost in that all the time”: Former Bethesda Dev Claims Main Starfield Location Is Confusing and an Antithesis of Fallout’s Diamond City

When it comes to Bethesda games, Starfield‘s New Atlantis is the largest city ever included. However, the city was still heavily criticized for being hard to navigate and never feeling as large as it appeared when the game was released last year. Though its odd design decisions caused players to spend a lot of time at loading screens, its visuals were still breathtaking.

It is unclear whether this was a technical requirement to ensure that New Atlantis was as large as it could be. Even an ex-Bethesda developer has gone lost many times in this in-game city and compares it to the Diamond City of another popular Bethesda RPG.

Even Nate Purkeypile was lost in Starfield‘s New Atlantis

New Atlantis is the main city of Starfield, which is the capital of the United Colonies, located on the planet Jamison in the Alpha Centauri system. However, the main problem with this city is that it is huge. The city is bustling with NPCs desperate to hand out quests to players who happen to walk past, but this extremely large space is difficult to navigate, despite having a functional minimap.

Also, there is no means of any fast travel or transportation process, so it makes players’ lives miserable playing in here. Ex-Bethesda developer Nate Purkeypile also belongs to those fans. This is what he said about New Atlantis in an episode of the VideoGamer Podcast:

I got lost in that all the time when I tried to play the game.

Before leaving for Axis Unseen, in his days at Bethesda, Purkeypile himself has been a key factor in designing popular in-game locations like Akila City and Neon in Starfield and Diamond City in Fallout 4. So, an experienced dev like him found the structure of New Atlantis very poor. Although, he acknowledged that he was not that involved in developing New Atlantis as he was for Akila City and Neon.

New Atlantis from Starfield and Diamond City from Fallout 4 are “antithesis” of each other

Like New Atlantis in Starfield, Diamond City in Fallout 4 was the large central hub of the game, which accommodated vendors, hairdressers, and many more.

However, Purkeypile made sure everything was identifiable and was not like a maze, unlike New Atlantis, where you can even get lost in the city. The ex-Bethesda developers even inferred Diamond City to be “kind of like the antithesis of that sprawling city thing,” which means New Atlantis. There are also some similarities between Akila City and Diamond City, but New Atlantis is totally different from Diamond City.

The perplexing layout of New Atlantis, the most significant city in Starfield, seriously hinders the initial experience of the game. Even though the game now includes a feature that allows you to highlight key locations in your HUD and an actual map feature for cities, the main location design is still a little obnoxious.

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