Starfield will get official mod support in 2024, Bethesda confirms

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

If you land and go exploring on one of Starfield's many planets, you might become afflicted with a status effect. It won't bother you too much, though, and you can cure the effect with an item or a quick trip to a doctor.

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

Starfield director Todd Howard has revealed that exploring planets was originally a lot harder before Bethesda «nerfed the hell out of it.»

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.

Starfield is getting support for Nvidia DLSS in a future update. In a blog post, Bethesda claimed that it will address some of the highly-requested features and make quality-of-life improvements through a series of regular updates. These include an in-game FOV slider, which so far, players have been adjusting by editing a .ini text file, alongside brightness and contrast controls, and an HDR calibration menu. But before that, the developer has dropped a small hotfix today, to help iron out any ‘top blocker bugs' that are interfering with the general experience in the beloved space RPG. Dubbed version 1.7.29, the hotfix brings improvements to Starfield's performance on the Xbox Series S/X by reducing crashes. It also fixes some quest-ending bugs.

Do you think Starfield takes place in the same Earth as Fallout? Do you think it should have been officially so? As it turns out, this was a key decision in Starfield’s development.

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. 

Starfield is getting official mod support in 2024, game director Todd Howard confirmed in an interview. Since the expansive space RPG's debut in early access, thousands of unofficial mods have been made available online, ranging from ones that enable Nvidia's DLSS upscaling system to making the inventory more compact and user-friendly. However, official modding tools make it easy to add fresh, custom content such as new planets and story quests, essentially opening the playing field for more experimentation. This has been the custom for Bethesda games at launch, where the modding community has been deeply involved with eliminating bugs or enhancing the experience, thanks to a deep understanding of the engine.

There are a ton of mods available for Starfield already, adding everything from stormtroopers to support for Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling system. By the standards of most games, this number of mods would be considered a deluge. But Starfield is a Bethesda Game Studios game, which means it’s more like the calm before the storm.

Starfield was quickly one of the biggest and most anticipated video game titles launching this year. Fans eagerly counted down the days until Bethesda was ready to release their brand new RPG into the marketplace. However, now that the game is finally here, some of you might wonder when that official mod support will make its way out. Mods have been one of the reasons some games continue to see plenty of active players today. Likewise, Bethesda is no stranger to allowing mods and embracing community creations.