Starfield Reveals First Look at New Land Vehicle

Starfield players tired of hoofing it across planets on foot will eventually be able to expedite explorations with a new land vehicle, Bethesda confirmed this week. In a preview of the May update for Starfield and what lies beyond, Bethesda Game Studios showed players their very first look at a rover traversing the rocky terrain of a planet. No release date for when that vehicle will be added was given, so don’t expect it to be dropping anytime soon given that the massive May update is just on the horizon, but we at least know now that vehicles are coming.

Tim Lamb, the lead creative producer working on Starfield, confirmed to community director Jess Finster in the Starfield video below that the first vehicle is in the works. The conversation happens at the 4:40 mark after an overview of what’s coming in the May update amid a sneak peek at what’s next. A Starfield developer is shown working on a rover that looks pretty standard as far as planetary exploration goes, but getting these in the game is much more about function as opposed to fashion at this point.

Play video

“The team is working on our first land vehicle so you can drive around on planets,” Lamb confirmed.

Starfield Finally Gets Vehicles

Given that that’s all we know about vehicles, there are many questions to be answered. Can players customize their appearance, and more importantly, their functionality? Starfield ships are quite modular so that players can customize them to their liking both in terms of style and the purposes different ships serve, so it’s not a stretch to assume that some version of that customization would be extended to the ground vehicles, too. Offensive capabilities, defensive measures, and how much (if any) storage space vehicles have for your loot found on planets are all parts of the vehicle system that’ll likely be tweakable if customization is on the table.

Like other features missing from Starfield at launch, vehicles are something many players felt should’ve been in the game in the first place, but Bethesda has at least acknowledged the absence of vehicles in the past and attributed it to a design choice rather than an omission.

“It’s something we consider, we’re going to do outer space, we’re gonna do planets, once you do vehicles, it does change the gameplay,” said Bethesda’s Todd Howard in a Bloomberg interview. “By focusing on once you land your ship, you’re on foot, it lets us make it an experience where we know how fast they’re seeing things. In one sense you do have a vehicle, you have your space ship, you can go around in space.”

Lamb also suggested that the Starfield team continues work on the Shattered Space DLC and that Creation Club elements were cooking, too. Often dubbed “paid mods” by players, Bethesda’s community has been vocal against Creation Club content in many cases, so those will perhaps be received with less excitement compared to vehicles and DLC.