Todd Howard Explains Why Starfield Doesn't Have Land Vehicles In New Interview

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.

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 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.

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.

Vampire Survivors' developer has been so preoccupied with its hit roguelike that it's not given much thought to what its next project will be. 

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 players have discovered that the game doesn't render the sun if you have a Radeon AMD graphics card. 

If you're playing Starfield on an AMD graphics card, there's a good chance you've missed one of the most glaring bugs in the game, because you just won't have seen anything. The AMD-sponsored Bethesda game simply doesn't render a local star from any planet without an atmosphere on an AMD card.

Playing Starfield and wondering why the NPCs look like they’re dead inside? One developer reckons they’ve worked out why.

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.