Starfield players outraged over missing space exploration feature
BethesdaStarfield players are voicing their frustration over the game’s lack of manual space flight, arguing that the fast travel system severely limits the sense of exploration and freedom.
Some Starfield players are just now finding that the only way to travel between planets is by simply selecting the destination from your menu.
While the game makes it easy to fast-travel between areas, it won’t allow you to fly seamlessly from space to planet.
The discovery has become a huge letdown for space explorers hoping to fly between planets rather than simply using a fast-travel system.
Players have taken to Reddit to express their disappointment with the space travel system, or lack thereof.
“Thoroughly disappointed with the flying,” one Starfield player shared on Reddit. “I was willing to compromise on the take-off and landings, but the fact that flying to every location is literally fast travel is utterly gutting. There’s no feeling of exploring — or traveling for that matter. I would love at least the ability to manually travel to other planets and moons.”
Players were quick to compare Starfield’s travel mechanics to those in games like No Man’s Sky and even Lego Star Wars. The latter, despite being a Lego game, offers a more immersive travel experience, as pointed out by the community.
“The space part of this game is disappointing,” another player said. “It’s almost entirely menus and fast travel. The short amount of time you do spend in space is really lacklustre too, doesn’t even feel like you’re moving. I wasn’t expecting NMS, but damn.”
However, Bethesda had clarified its design philosophy well before the game’s release. In an interview with IGN in June 2022, Todd Howard stated that the feature of seamless travel between space and planets was “really just not that important to the player.”
Howard explained that Bethesda decided to focus on making the on-surface and in-space experiences as good as they could be. “If you try to really spend a lot of time engineering the in-between, like that segue, you’re just spending a lot of time [on something] that’s really just not that important to the player,” Howard explained.
Despite the disappointment, some players have found workarounds or are hopeful for future updates. One Reddit user even discovered that by powering up the ship’s gravitation drive, you can travel without a menu between systems, although the screen still goes black for a bit.
While Starfield has much to offer, the lack of seamless planet landings has proven to be frustrating for players who were hoping for a more immersive space flight experience.