If you're tired of Starfield encumbrance, guess what: it's your own fault. Even director Todd Howard will tell you that you should stop picking everything up.
08.09.2023 - 00:55 / pcgamer.com / Todd Howard / Howard
Opinions on Starfield are all over the place, but two criticisms are pretty widely shared: One, the maps aren't very good, and two, it's a bit disappointing that there aren't any ground vehicles to explore planets with.
In an interview with Bloomberg this week, Todd Howard responded to a question about that absence of ground vehicles, saying that the idea was considered, but that the dev team preferred knowing «how fast [players] are seeing things» on planets through on-foot exploration. He also pointed out that, hey: you can fly.
«In one sense, you do have a vehicle, which is you obviously have your spaceship, you can go around in space,» added Howard. «But then on the surface you do have a jetpack which you can upgrade, which is super fun, new experience for us. And obviously planets have different levels of gravity which make that unique for many planets.»
Jetpacks do have a storied and important history in videogames. Tribes, Titanfall, Star Wars Battlefront. 1991's classic Super Nintendo game, the Rocketeer. Destroy all Humans. Giants: Citizen Kabuto, you get the point. And some folks have turned the Starfield jetpack into an unparalleled implement of war, using it to turn themselves into invisible flying ghost snipers.
Buggies aren't always a delight, either. Every time I've played through Mass Effect I've gnashed my teeth at having to spend any more time driving the godsforsaken Mako around, and there's something to be said for hitting a planet and being stuck on your own two dusty feet. But it's hard to see wide open terrain and not want to do at least a little ATVing. It is telling that one of the first things we humans actually did when we finally hit another celestial body was try to figure out how to drive a car on it.
I could see vehicles being expansion content. Maybe they'll have a sequence with a monster truck rally on a low-grav planet, with Truckasaurus flying around and breathing cosmic fire on everyone. Or they could lean into the Western motif and have a roving band of space cowboys with cyber horses. Whatever Starfield has in store for the future, one thing is for certain: The mod community for Bethesda games is unparalleled, and the clarion call for space cars has been sounded.
Nothing that complex has shown up on mod sites yet, of course, but here are the best Starfield mods so far.
If you're tired of Starfield encumbrance, guess what: it's your own fault. Even director Todd Howard will tell you that you should stop picking everything up.
Starfield was extensively playtested by Bethesda devs often working from home, and Todd Howard says this approach worked so well that the studio's going to apply the method to its future games, with the studio's next confirmed, albeit far-off project obviously being The Elder Scrolls 6.
I've walked on nearly 200 different planets in Starfield in environments ranging from frozen tundra to baking infernos to toxic atmospheres. And in all that time I've only suffered one affliction that I felt a need to rush to a doctor to fix: I contracted a lung condition that eventually got so bad it made sprinting consume my oxygen supply in a matter of seconds, and I didn't have the meds to cure it myself.
Bethesda is known for making big, blockbuster RPGs—but Starfield's space combat was a totally new frontier for the team. I've personally found a decent bit of fun in zipping around and knocking pirates out of the sky, even if it's clearly not the game's main focus. I don't envy the devs saddled with the task of balancing dogfights in space.
Starfield's planets were originally supposed to be much more punishing for players, that is until Bethesda "nerfed the hell out of it," reveals Todd Howard.
For reasons I won't get into here because it may constitute a little bit of a spoiler, the planet Earth in Starfield is a bit of a wasteland. But what if it was The Wasteland—that is, the post-nuclear hellscape of Bethesda's other big sci-fi-ish game series, Fallout? In an interview with The Washington Post, creative director Todd Howard said developers actually gave thought to the idea.
You may have heard about a little space game called Starfield, the gravitational pull from which risks swallowing all games discourse for months and possibly years to come. Perhaps that's no surprise for a game that's been in development and hyped for as long as any title that I can remember (well, ones that have shipped anyway) but it's easy to forget now the thing's in our hands that it was subject to multiple delays along the way.
Starfield director Todd Howard has spoken about plans for the game that didn’t make the final cut, including the idea for a very neat Fallout reference.
In an interview with Famitsu, Starfield lead and Bethesda frontman Todd Howard stated that the game's mod support «will be available next year» (obtained via machine translation), which likely refers to Starfield's equivalent to the Creation Kit modding tools for Skyrim and Fallout 4.
Starfield director Todd Howard has addressed the space RPG’s lack of ground vehicles and explained that the decision was made so that the developers could focus on on-foot exploration.
Bethesda has discussed its decision not to include ground vehicles in Starfield — at least, not at the game's launch.
After finding out that Starfield completely omits any ground-based vehicles for your avatar to ride on, many players have wondered exactly why Bethesda made this design decision. Fortunately for those players, Bethesda executive producer and Starfield director Todd Howard recently addressed the matter in an interview with Bloomberg. You can find the interview posted further down this article, where you can skip to 3:00 to hear Howard’s response.