Darth Slaughter
Arcane
Sure, or he can start from U5 Lazarus and U6 Project. Or whatever. Gotta start from somewhere.
I think the problem may be that he's exploring exhaustively, like you would in a Black Isle-style RPG. In games like this, you're not expected to explore literally every inch of the world. It's more like an Elder Scrolls game (and indeed Todd Howard was heavily inspired by U7)
He said that, but he couldn't translate that inspiration into a game... since he did it all wrong...