Starfield’s cluttered environments were designed by a Skyrim and Fallout modder

Emmi "Elianora" Junkkari, a well-known Skyrim and Fallout 4 modder has revealed that Bethesda hired her to work on the clutter found in Starfield's environments without her revealing anything to fans until the game's release.

The details:

• Elianora confirmed that she had been working on the game as a "Lighting and Clutter Artist" for some time, with Bethesda hiring her after many of her mod creations became fan favorites, with some even landing in the Fallout and Skyrim Creation Club. She has also provided proof for anyone skeptical, as she is listed as an "Additional Lighting Artist" in the game's credits.
• Everyone appears to be shocked by the news, as Elianora had pretended to be surprised by many of the game's features and announcements over the years, including the addition of ladders, space gameplay, and even the cluttered environments that she had created herself. "I have been deceiving you. I have been lying. I have been faking. I've kept secrets and pretended,” the artist said in a Twitter post. “I was merely pretending whatever I said I hadn't a clue what Starfield would be like and what Bethesda could be up to. I faked my surprise at ladders, the space flight, the awesome level of details of the environments and acted like I was in total unexpected awe of all the cool clutter… actually, I placed some of that clutter myself.”
• Random clutter has always been a feature of Bethesda's RPGs, with various miscellaneous (and usually useless) items carefully placed to make the world appear more "lived in." Despite the studio's best efforts, it occasionally feels odd or empty, but it appears that Elianora's work has been immediately noticed as a major improvement over previous titles, with fans noticing that there are hundreds of unique items in many of the game's locations rather than a handful being repeated throughout.

More Starfield news:

• Starfield peaked at 234,502 concurrent players on Steam just hours after its early access launch, with all of them owning either the deluxe or constellation edition of the game. This record has since been broken, with a new high of 245,183 players on September 3.
• A leaker who shared gameplay of Starfield before its early access release was arrested for theft after allegedly stealing copies of the game in its various editions from their workplace and reselling them via an online marketplace at an increased price.