Starfield doesn’t have ground vehicles because they would have changed the game, director says
No moon buggies allowed
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Starfielddirector Todd Howard has addressed the space RPG’s lack of ground vehicles and explained that the decision was made so that the developers could focus on on-foot exploration.
As PC Gamerreports, in an interview with Bloomberg Technology, Howard was asked the audience question: “Why are there no vehicles on planets?” To this, he responded: “Once you do vehicles, it does change the gameplay.
“By focusing [on the fact that] once you land in your ship, that you’re on foot, it lets us really, for the players, make it an experience where we know how fast they’re seeing things,” he continued. “In one sense, you do have a vehicle – obviously you have your spaceship, you can go around in space. But then on the surface, you do have a jetpack, which you can upgrade, which is super fun, [and a] new experience for us. And obviously, planets have different levels of gravity which make that unique for many planets.”
In this same interview, Howard was also asked why Bethesda did “not optimize this game for PC”. The director affirmed that, “We did”, and reminded fans thatStarfieldis “a next-gen PC game”. He continued: “We really do push the technology, soyou may need to upgrade your PC for this game, but it’s got a lot of great stuff going on in it, and the fans are responding awesomely.”
Starfieldhas had a successful start, havingaccumulated over six million players already, with overone million of those playing simultaneously across all platforms on launchday (Wednesday, September 6). This enormous player count had also cemented it as Bethesda’s biggest game launch of all time.
If you’re looking to upgrade your gaming setup for Starfield, be sure to check out our recommendations for thebest Xbox controllerson the market right now. You can also read our list of thebest Xbox Series X headsetsto improve your gaming experience.
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Catherine is a News Writer for TechRadar Gaming. Armed with a journalism degree from The University of Sheffield, she was sucked into the games media industry after spending far too much time on her university newspaper writing about Pokémon and cool indie games, and realising that was a very cool job, actually. She previously spent 19 months working at GAMINGbible as a full-time journalist. She loves all things Nintendo, and will never stop talking about Xenoblade Chronicles.
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