Highlights
- Starfield's New Atlantis falls short in its urban design, lacking a consistent approach and flow compared to Skyrim's Whiterun.
- The layout of New Atlantis draws from multiple design inspirations, making it confusing to navigate and diminishing its immersive qualities.
- Despite its flaws, the stunning art direction and retro-futurist aesthetic of New Atlantis elevate the city to a believable vision of a space city, but it still falls short of creating the same immersive experience as Whiterun did in Skyrim.
Since the release of Starfield players have no doubt marveled at the sheer size and scope of the game. With over 1000 planets across 100 star systems, Starfield presents players with much more than just "Skyrim in space" by positively dwarfing that game's 15 square kilometer map. In the lead-up to the game's release, Bethesda itself touted the scope of not just the game's world, but its hand-crafted cityscapes as well, announcing that the first city players visit would be the largest one the developer had ever designed. New Atlantis is definitely big, but its layout and planning feel a step back from that of Skyrim's Whiterun.
Prior to New Atlantis in Starfield, the city of Whiterun in the Skyrim region of Tamriel was the largest single city that had ever appeared in a Bethesda RPG. Not only was the magnitude of the city impressive back in 2011, but the amount of hustle and bustle among its residents made the city feel positively lived-in. Whiterun gave off a sense of being a real place with real history, and it was possible to imagine each of its denizens carrying on with their programmed lives whether the player was there or not. New Atlantis is beautiful and impressive, but its ability to follow in Whiterun's footsteps is hampered by a lack of flow to its design.
Starfield's New Atlantis Lacks a Consistent Approach to its Urban Design
Without getting too in-depth into the finer details of urban design and the theories that underpin it, there are essentially three prevailing design schools that have driven much of the city planning and urban sprawl of the 20th Century. In an academic journal titled "Theories of Urban Form" published in 2016, the authors categorize all urban design as falling into one of three theories—the figure-ground theory, linkage theory, and place theory. Each of these schools of thought structures the design and planning of a city based on the relationships that exist between the buildings themselves and the residents occupying the space. The city of Whiterun in Skyrim can be classified as adhering to linkage theory thanks to the characteristics of its design.
Conversely, New Atlantis seems to draw from a multitude of design inspirations in its layout, failing to maintain a cohesive sense of flow and functionality in the process. New Atlantis is not strictly built on a grid or centered around human comprehension of space (figure-ground and place theories, respectively) and the lack of any logical sense of how people navigate the city in relation to its buildings rules out linkage theory as well. Of course, there is a case to be made that New Atlantis is a "city of the future" and is charting new architectural territory, but ultimately it just makes the city confusing to navigate.
Despite its Flaws, Bethesda's Artists Elevate New Atlantis to Whiterun's Heights
Even beyond the layout of the city itself, Starfield's disappointing implementation of maps (or lack thereof) makes navigating large spaces a bit of a chore. The saving grace in all of this is that Starfield's art direction and retro-futurist, pulp sci-fi aesthetic help to ease the frustration of not knowing where to go or how to get there. It's hard to be upset about getting lost in a futuristic city when it's one that looks as stunning as New Atlantis. What it might lack in form factor when compared to Whiterun, New Atlantis more than makes up for in presenting a believable vision of a city in outer space.
That said, it is a shame that New Atlantis ends up being less immersive due to its lack of flow and efficiency in its design. Still, New Atlantis does have a highlight in The Well, with part of its charm being that it doesn't take long for players to quickly learn its layout and important landmarks. For many players, Skyrim's Whiterun became like a second home and a place that some knew as well as their own real-life cities, and New Atlantis feels like a bit of a missed opportunity in comparison.
Starfield is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.