Bethesda Defends Missing Starfield Feature

Starfield doesn't just sound more ambitious than Bethesda Game Studios' previous releases -- Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim -- but it sounds and looks more ambitious than just about every game before it, bar perhaps a few titles. When it launches, players will be able to explore over 1000 planets and fly and fight in space. The combination of these two makes the game sound massive -- and it is -- but it won't be coupled with seamless space-to-planet flight, something in No Man's Sky, the game Starfield is currently being compared to the most.

Speaking about this feature, director Todd Howard defended its absence, noting it would require a lot of work to add, which is fine, but not worth it because it's "not that important to the player."

"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," said Howard to IGN. "So let's make sure it's awesome when you're on the surface and awesome when you're in space, and those realities look and play as good as they can be."

As you would expect, there's been some pushback from fans about not only the feature's absence, but the explanation Howard provided. That said, while this is expected, it's not been substantial, which means it's very unlikely this will be reversed.

Starfield is scheduled to release sometime in 2023 via Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PC. The current expectation is that it will release in the first half of the year, possibly in the first quarter, which is to say, sometime between January 1 and April 1.

"Starfield is the first new universe in 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. In this next-generation role-playing game set amongst the stars, create any character you want and explore with unparalleled freedom as you embark on an epic journey to answer humanity's greatest mystery."