The most-requestedStarfieldfeature might actually be a huge mistake. Since launch, many players have complained thatStarfieldisn’t quite as fully-featured as they had hoped based on its trailers. While updates have taken steps towards fixing that, like by adding more detailed maps andplanet rovers toStarfield, there’s one major feature that’s still missing, and doesn’t look likely to be coming anytime soon.
However, as some fans argue,this much malignedStarfieldomission might have actually been intentional, because the alternative would’ve made for a miserable gameplay experience. Other players, however, hold that there are potential ways of integrating it without causing too much strife.
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Free-Roam Space Travel Would’ve Made Starfield Much Worse
A “Chair-Sitting Simulator”
As much as the player base seems to want it,free-roam space travel inStarfieldwould be incredibly boring, points outHella-Shoton Reddit. The vast majority of space, even in a fantastical science fiction universe likeStarfield’s, is well and truly empty. It would take much longer to get from point A to point B than with the current fast travel system, and the majority of that time would be spent staring at absolutely nothing as the player drifts from planet to planet, praying for a pirate raid or a sudden hail to break up the monotony.
While some players would subject themselves to this ordeal once or twice, just to experience the increased immersion of a truly open-world form of space travel, most would find it too bothersome to keep up in the long run. They’d end up returning to fast traveling everywhere before long, completely invalidating the existence of free-roam space travel inStarfieldin the first place.
Starfield’s Space Travel Could’ve Taken Inspiration From No Man’s Sky
Hiding Loading Screens Behind Animations
But as other players likemaxx1993point out, it’s not so much the lack of fully real-time, open-world space travel that players object to -it’s the fact that the entire process is usually relegated to a loading screen. They point out that other games have addressed the monotony of space travel inother open-world space RPGs- namely, inNo Man’s Sky. This title has a similar concept toStarfield, albeit with a larger scope, allowing players to explore quintillions of possible planets in a procedurally-generated universe. However, it requires them to fly between them manually, albeit while using a faster-than-light travel technology called a Hyperdrive.
When the player wants to leave a planet and head for the next one inNo Man’s Sky, they chart a course, take off from the current planet manually, and, once they’re in space, point their ship in the right direction and punch the Hyperdrive. As they watch the stars streak by, what’s really happening is thatthe game is generating a new area-the Hyperdrive animation only hides the loading screen. This keeps the player immersed in the idea that they’re actually traveling through space without forcing them to stare at light-years of barren asteroid belts on the way to their next destination. It also gives them more flexibility with landing spots, which causes huge planets to seem a lot less barren.
Compare that toStarfield’s space travel process, where the player simply selects a planet, watches an animation of their ship taking off, and then stares at a blank loading screen until they pop up right in front of their destination, ready to land in a predetermined spot. This is every bit as time-consuming asNo Man’s Sky’s approach, if not more so, yet far less immersive.
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Unfortunately, as maxx1993 points out, this would never mesh withStarfield’s existing lore. Since its ships use grav drives, which fold space to make travel as instantaneous as teleportation, spacefaring just doesn’t take enough time to be worth portraying in gameplay. So, absent some kind of incredibly ambitious, lore-unfriendlyStarfieldmod, players are left to wonder whether free-roam space travel was better left untouched.
Sources:Hella-Shot/Reddit,maxx1993/Reddit
Starfield
Bethesda Game Studios presents Starfield - the first original IP from the studio in twenty-five-plus years. Set in the year 2310, the United Colonies and Freestar Collective are observing a shaky truce after a war set 20 years prior. The player will customize their character as a member of a space exploration team called Constellation while navigating The Settled Systems and the conflicts between the warring factions. According to Bethesda, players can explore over 100 systems and 1000 planets to find resources and build their ships, living out their own sci-fi journeys.
