Starfield Won't Let Players Fly Seamlessly From Space to Planets

Todd Howard said the feature is "really just not that important to the player".

Todd Howard revealed that Starfield won't allow players to fly seamlessly from space to its planets. Howard said the feature is "really just not that important to the player" to justify the engineering work involved.

In an interview with IGN, Howard discussed his philosophy of 'saying yes to the player', and whether the team had to implement every single idea it had. Howard said the philosophy was key to some things, including procedurally generating 100 solar systems, but didn't work in some cases. 

"People have asked, ‘Can you fly the ship straight down to the planet?’ No. We decided early in the project that the on-surface is one reality, and then when you’re in space it’s another reality."

Howard and the team believe that some features are not that important to players and to the whole experience so dev teams should balance ambitions. 

"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 reasoned. "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."

What's your take? Should they spend more time adding that feature or should they rather focus on other aspects? Share your thoughts in the comments and don't forget to join our new Reddit pageour new Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.

Published 15 June 2022
Arti Sergeev
Business Head