Here's how the "irresponsibly large" Starfield opens

Bethesda are adding official support for Starfield mods in 2024, Bethesda Games Studios top banana Todd Howard has told Famitsu in a Japanese language interview. People are already modding Starfield, of course - the options range from "Potato Mode" functionality for lower-spec computers, through somewhat controversial Starfield DLSS mods, to the all-important Starfield script extender, which lets other modders add "scripting capabilities and functionality" to the game. But Bethesda have yet to release proper in-house tools, aka Creation Kit 2.

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.

In late 2001, the dot-com crash struck ZeniMax, and a team of thirty-some developers in the company’s basement feared for their jobs. They were late delivering their new role-playing game, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, to Microsoft; their board of directors had begun having doubts about the whole videogame enterprise. People were pulling seven-day workweeks on something none of them were sure would ever see the light of day. Morale was in the toilet.

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.

Starfield is officially out, and modders have been working hard creating helpful add-ons, from useful, quality-of-life mods such as revamping the inventory UI to unofficially adding support for DLSS. Others have added more cosmetic things like reskin in-game clothes. And then there are some people out there who keep modding Bethesda's Todd Howard into the game.

Todd Howard has made an interesting revelation about Starfield in a new interview with Esquire.

The problem with some PC games is that technology is constantly improving. As a result, there’s more room for developers to push the limits with their games. So, it can leave some players having to adjust the settings of current video games to match the capabilities of their PC. But if you’re planning on Starfield being more accessible on older hardware, you might be out of luck. Instead, the optimization for Starfield on PC was done, but it’s also meant for modern hardware. 

Play Starfield with mods and wondering why your achievements aren't popping? Then one of the game's latest mods might interest you.

Bethesda’s "Skyrim in space" rings true when you take a look at the codes, because anyone familiar with the Creation Engine and Gamebryo will recognise them from a mile away — as they have been essentially the same since The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

One of the most popular mods on Nexus Mods for Skyrim is SkyUI, a complete overhaul of the game's fumbled inventory system that, among a lot of other things, actually tells you the type, weight, and value of an item at a glance. It sits at over 860,000 endorsements and 6.5 million unique downloads (25 million total). 

Bethesda development chief Todd Howard has discussed the benefits of Starfield being Xbox exclusive, namechecking the brand association Nintendo enjoys with its first party games.

«Here's a Haunted Chocolatier screen»: That's what you say if you're ConcernedApe, aka Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, and it's apparently a slow Tuesday and you want to wind things up a little bit. And then you post the screen in question, and all your followers immediately go bananas.