Traversing Starfield’s 1,000 planets is quite the herculean task, involving lots and lots of walking. So much so that its traversal and exploration have been one of the weakest aspects of the Xbox RPG since release, with fans baffled by the lack of vehicles to speed things up. However, acclaimed developer Bethesda is hinting at the addition of Starfield vehicles in the future.
Starfield has been a huge success for Xbox, becoming one of the most-played and best RPG games of the year, with our Starfield review exploring its ins and outs. However, it’s not all been perfect, with exploration and traversal being a widely panned feature of the game to which many fans have called for vehicles to be added to spice up the gameplay. After all, it’s a feature Starfield’s competitor, No Man’s Sky, has added post-launch to great reception, leaving the Xbox exclusive in the dust.
Excitingly, in a recent developer update on Reddit, Bethesda has revealed “hard at work on many of new features [the community] asked for”, including city maps and extended mod support. However, the most notable detail is that the developer is working on “all-new ways of traveling”. Teasing new traversal and movement features, the addition of vehicles to Starfield is at the top of our minds.
Prior to release, Bethesda confirmed that there would be no vehicles in Starfield outside of your Starship. This was expanded upon by Todd Howard who noted that the “boost-pack almost feels like a vehicle”, explaining why the team decided against adding land vehicles into the game at launch. However, this developer update suggests this will be changing in the future, with the statement noting that these new traversal features, mod support, city maps, and more, will be “rolling out with a regular cadence of fixes and updates”, which it expects to release “roughly every six weeks”. This means that vehicles like buggies and cars could be on the horizon.
However, it’s possible that these “new ways of traveling” are related more to the oxygen system, fast travel, and ship traversal, though the emphasis on it being an all-new addition has caused many to get their hopes up, such as ‘JoJoisaGoGo’, who responded to the blog to express: “New ways to travel huh? Color me intrigued.”
With the potential of a Starfield vehicle update in the future, we’re hoping that exploring the diverse Starfield planets will be a much more engaging experience than sprinting minutes at a time to reach your destination. Those of you looking to set up shop in the best Starfield outpost locations or survey all the planets in Starfield will no doubt also welcome the addition of vehicles to speed up the arduous journey.
As for Bethesda’s main competition, Hello Games added Exocraft vehicles to No Man’s Sky in the Pathfinder update way back in March 2017. Since then, it has massively expanded upon the feature, with players able to whizz around the sprawling planets in style with customizable buggies, trucks, hoverbikes, mechs, and more. If you haven’t had a chance to experience it for yourself, then we recommend you do as it’s a blast and clearly shows the potential for the feature in Starfield.
We can only hope that Bethesda is indeed adding a garage full of Starfield vehicles to its Xbox-exclusive RPG and that it takes inspiration from Hello Games’ approach to the feature. Perhaps then it could truly become one of the best games of all time by resolving our – and fans’ – concerns over the lackluster exploration. In the meantime, we’ll be looking towards all the new Xbox games coming out.