Dear Bethesda: Why are Starfield’s books so short?

Bethesda Game Studio’s creative director, Todd Howard, wasn’t expecting our Starfield ships to be so damn cool.

It's not easy to balance space combat without seriously dumbing down the enemies, Todd Howard says.

Starfield is easily one of the biggest video game releases of 2023. The title was highly anticipated for years, and it was the first new RPG from the Bethesda team in quite some time. So, a lot of interest was built around the gameplay experience, and with so much pressure, it’s likely that there were several changes made along the way. This game is now available, and players can go through the various quests and explore planets while we wait for some post-launch content to come out. However, looking back, the game director behind Starfield offered an example of a feature that got dialed back during development.

Starfield is the biggest Bethesda RPG to date, so of course features, mechanics, and ideas either got cut, reduced, or changed during development. This natural part of the development has been highlighted by Starfield director Todd Howard, who’s explained why a more in-depth planetary affliction system was cut down in favor of other mechanics.

It's no secret that Starfield — out now on PC and Xbox Series S/X — is hands down one of the most monumental game launches of the year. For Bethesda, it's a gamble in uncharted territory as they undertake their first new universe in 25 years, set across the stars in a futuristic civilised corner of the Milky Way galaxy. For publisher Xbox, it's an opportunity to bounce back from a lacklustre 2022 slate and dominate the gaming conversation for a long time — probably years, given the staying power director Todd Howard's RPGs are notorious for. With over a thousand planets to explore, dashing factions to align with, and cosmic mysteries bubbling with political intrigue, Starfield aims to be the most complex spacefaring adventure of our generation. As such, it soars gracefully, but not without some turbulence.

It’s no secret that Starfield requires a powerful gaming PC. Even if you have the latest generation hardware and the best graphics settings, the game will still crush your framerate. PC optimizations are on the way at last though for Nvidia users, because the latest game drivers improve Starfield performance by a small margin on systems that support Resizable BAR.

Starfield's jogging speed can appear to be a little fast but thankfully if you're finding it to be an issue a few players have already created some mods to help. 

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 players have already made some incredibly useful mods, like a fix for the frustrating inventory system or the addition of DLSS support, but they've also added some very silly things like hairy chests, colourful juice boxes, and the lasagne loving cat Garfield.

Modders have already begun creating Thomas the Tank Engine mods for Starfield. 

If you've been exploring planets in the future, as told by Starfield, you might have noticed a distinct lack of land vehicles. It seems cars, trucks and SUVs are a thing of the past in Starfield's vision for the stars, but game director Todd Howard says adding vehicles would «change the gameplay.»

Starfield players are a creative bunch, and when they're not filling spaceships full of potatoes or building New Atlantis in Lego, they're using the robust character creator to recreate a bunch of famous faces.