Todd Howard thanks the Starfield Reddit community ahead of launch and says he's "a long-time lurker"

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.

Starfield director Todd Howard has spoken about plans for the game that didn’t make the final cut, including the idea for a very neat Fallout reference. 

Starfield game director Todd Howard has confirmed that the game's official mod tools will be released next year. 

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.

While it’s certainly true that Starfield already has more mods than most games ever receive during their entire lifetime, including the hotly anticipated Script Extender thingamajig, it doesn’t take an eagle’s eye to notice that the vast majority of them are still relatively limited in scope. That’s for good reason, too, as Starfield is currently missing a crucial feature that all Bethesda Game Studios RPGS eventually receive: Creation Kit support. Until Creation Kit 2 – built specifically for Starfield‘s Creation Engine 2 – comes out, modders won’t be able to easily add new weapons, customizations, and other assorted goodies into the game, but the good news is that it’s bound to happen relatively soon!

Bethesda’s officially released yesterday after about a week of early access availability. Director Todd Howard and Xbox CEO Phil Spencer recently answered a few questions about the new game in a recent interview. .

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 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.

Bethesda’s Todd Howard has responded to a question asking why Starfield isn’t optimized for PC, clarifying that it is – it’s just a “next-gen PC game” you may need to upgrade your PC for. 

Bethesda’s Todd Howard has discussed the benefits of Starfield being an Xbox console exclusive.

«When you're making something exclusive then the more you can focus.»