Starfield Fans are Obsessed With Putting Todd Howard in the Game

Larian Studios is aware of a Baldur's Gate 3 shared stash bug that's left players crumbling under the weight of their backpacks after dismissing a companion, implying a fix in due course. 

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.

It looks like The Elder Scrolls 6 won't be releasing until 2026 at the very earliest, and our PlayStation pals are likely going to be missing out entirely.

Starfield is a pretty realistic depiction of what the world would look like should humanity ever venture out into space and leave Earth behind. It chooses to ignore some of the wackier elements of the sci-fi genre in favor of a NASA Punk aesthetic that has served it well. However, there's one part of Starfield that fans find a little bit unrealistic, and that the complete lack of cats and dogs across the entire Settled Systems.

If you've been a fan of Bethesda games for a while, you'll more than likely be well aware of the Invisible Dawnstar Chest glitch from Skyrim. Over a decade ago, one lucky Skyrim player found a seemingly invisible chest packed to the brim with powerful and expensive items, tucked away inside of a random cliff in Dawnstar. This was actually a chest filled with a nearby merchant's inventory, but was accidentally placed too close to the surface, letting fans pilfer the contents of an entire shop without punishment.

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.

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.

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.

Starfield is a critical and commercial success, with millions of players now searching the Settled Systems for adventure and mischief. That doesn't mean it's perfect though, as every game has its irritating flaws that can build up and slightly tar an otherwise perfect time. Starfield is no exception, as even the players that love the game the most have been sharing their biggest gripes that they hope Bethesda or modders will fix in the future.

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.