Todd Howard: Having no Starfield vehicles is a better space experience
Bethesda producer Todd Howard says the team decided against giving you Starfield vehicles to make the space game more fun. Howard made the comment in a recent interview with Bloomberg, where he said the team wanted to keep the focus on space travel and making interesting planets with different levels of gravity.
“It’s something we considered,” Howard said. “We’re gonna do outer space and planets. Once you add vehicles, it changes the gameplay.”
“Once you land in your ship and you’re on foot, it lets us make an experience where we know how fast [the players] are seeing things.”
You could say that sounds a bit more like Bethesda needed to keep players from moving too fast and causing loading problems, where they reached areas before assets loaded in, rather than considering what makes a fun experience. However, Howard also said that the enjoyable part about space travel in Starfield is using your ship and upgrading your jetpack, the latter of which lets you take advantage of each planet’s unique gravity and ground conditions.
Two Starfield expansions are planned for launch at some point in the future, so it’s possible we may see additional ways to get around then. If you’re looking for more Bethesda adventures to hold you over until then, check out our list of the best Bethesda games.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF