If you’ve got performed a Bethesda RPG prior to now decade you’ve got seen loads of Nate Purkeypile’s work. The developer labored as a world/lighting artist on Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Skyrim, was lead artist on Fallout 76, and designed a number of iconic places like Diamond City, Little Lamplight, and Paradise Falls.
Purkeypile additionally labored on Starfield as lead lighting artist and senior world artist, however left Bethesda within the midst of the area RPG’s growth to discovered his personal studio, Just Purkey Games—as a result of he is now primarily a solo dev. His first recreation, The Axis Unseen, is trying nice up to now, a heavy metallic bowhunting horror recreation that performs like for those who made a complete recreation out of Skyrim’s stealth archer playstyle.
Today Purkeypile posted a trailer for The Axis Unseen on Reddit (embedded under), and opened up somewhat about not simply why he left Bethesda, however why he left throughout the growth of Starfield particularly.
“I do know lots of people have ideas on Starfield and the way it’s most likely too large, ought to have been smaller,” Purkeypile mentioned. “I agree with plenty of that and whereas I loved working at Bethesda lots after we have been about 65-110 individuals on Fallout 3 and Skyrim, I loved it lots much less because it grew and grew.”
Purkeypile mentioned the variety of builders at Bethesda throughout Starfield’s growth had exploded since its Skyrim and Fallout days. “Starfield was about 500 individuals or so and with 4 totally different corporations concerned (BGS, BGS Austin, BGS Dallas, BGS Montreal), and that is not together with outsourcing.
“This simply wasn’t my fashion,” he mentioned. “There have been so many conferences and it wasn’t the way in which I favored to construct video games.”
This is not the primary time we have heard about how Bethesda’s progress through the years has brought on points for a few of its staff members. As we discovered earlier this yr from former Bethesda builders Will Shen (Starfield’s lead quest designer) and Daryl Brigner (Fallout 76 lead degree designer), Bethesda’s measurement might make it robust to coordinate with different builders, and even know who your boss was.
“It’s tougher than ever to know who does what, who you are speculated to report back to,” Brigner mentioned at GDC in March of 2024. Shen agreed, saying “each division is scrambling for sources and saying ‘no’ to collaboration requests,” and even minor requests have been difficult: “Asking for one thing so simple as a chair wasn’t so easy. Do you want animations for it? Do you want sound results for it? How a lot does that add to the schedule, can it not match as a result of a kind of groups doesn’t have the time?”
Purkeypile give up Bethesda in 2021 within the midst of Starfield’s growth. “I at all times liked indie video games and I figured, if I did not do it now, I perhaps by no means would,” he mentioned. Using Unreal 5, he created The Axis Unseen, a world that’s “not procedural, however 100% hand-built. The map is about 5x the dimensions of Skyrim, however I attempted one thing smaller and it did not work very properly.”
Ted lately acquired his fingers on a demo and is fairly stoked for the total recreation. “Everything seems like heavy metallic album artwork in The Axis Unseen, a world of cryptic sandstone statues and large skeletons lurching out of the bottom,” he mentioned. You can attempt the demo for your self on Steam, and take a look at the trailer under.
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