Starfield is pretty much 80% about exploration, and when it comes to exploring the far regions of space, the game does a pretty suitable job of guiding players from one point to another and getting them from planet to planet in a hurry. Exploring a planet itself is where the onus is much more on the player since they have to hoof it towards points of interest on their own, but now that Starfield is in early access, players are finding one area of exploration that’s not supported nearly as well: exploring major cities. That’s because there’s no such thing as a city map in the game to show buildings, businesses, and other key areas worth visiting, and players are wondering how it was possible that such an important feature was left out.
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If you visit a major hub in Starfield such as Neon or Akila City, you can pull up your normal map and press the button that shows you which will pinpoint your location inside of the city. It’ll also show you a few key fast-travel locations around you so that you can quickly move from one spot to another such as from your ship to the center of town, but the map is about as basic as it can get. No roads, turns, or anything else is shown to show you how to navigate an area, and small businesses that players might want to visit aren’t marked on the map.
Starfield’s City Map Problem
Even in past games, Bethesda’s city maps have never been super helpful when it came to finding out exactly where something was, but they could at least point you in the right direction of a particular point of interest you were looking for. The comparison between Starfield’s map and Skyrim’s that’s seen below, however, shows how this one is even worse than what’s come before it.
“Started playing early access and I’m already annoyed at the fact of having no map! New Atlantis is huge and I absolutely hate having to follow a blue marker to get around,” reads a Reddit post about that very topic that’s attracted acknowledgements from many other players. “When I don’t have a mission active, I just feel lost.”
“Can’t believe they left this out!” a commentor said about Starfield’s map situation. “So frustrating trying to find your way around.”
How to Get Around Starfield Cities Without a Map
Even though it’s not the most efficient answer for getting around cities quickly, hubs in Starfield typically group most of the commercial points of interest all in one area, so if you’re looking to offload your gear in a hurry, you should be able to make a few quick trips all within a few feet of each other. Directions are also marked on posts and walls to indicate what areas of a city are in which direction, a helpful feature even if its prehistoric compared to some of the other features Starfield offers.
If you’re not worried about immersion, you can pull up your scanner that you’d normally use to look for resources to instead locate points of interest in a city. It’s helpful for finding city loot that you might’ve missed, too, but until modders come to the rescue, those are about the only options players have short of learning the layout themselves or consulting a third-party map for a city that someone else has created.
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Image Courtesy of Prime Video.
