Based on its approach to advertising the game in 2021, Bethesda seems determined to sell Starfield on the merit of its planets. That's not a surprising approach; from the moment it was first announced, the notion of a Bethesda game about traveling through outer space sounded appealing. So far, lots of Starfield concept art focuses on teasing the environments that players might be able to explore. Starfield looks like it will house highly diverse biospheres that rival even Star Wars' myriad of planets, and there will be some compelling cities worth visiting too.
While it's great to see Starfield put such an emphasis on exploration, travel means something different compared to most Bethesda games. Whereas traveling across the wasteland in Fallout 4 or between cities in Skyrim is a matter of walking, either manually or with fast travel, Starfield's network of planets will require space travel, which means both manual and fast travel could be more arduous. Ideally, Bethesda will go out of its way to streamline both forms of travel as much as possible in Starfield, or else players may not be excited about roaming the galaxy.
Starfield's Travel Must Be Efficient
Encouraging players to wander Starfield's map by filling its planets with unique flora, fauna, NPCs, and locations to discover is important. Bethesda's concept art, as well as some clips explaining important Starfield locations, suggest it already has plenty of ideas. However, travel between these landmarks needs to be snappy. If going from one planet to another means sitting through a long loading screen or watching cutscenes of spaceships going to-and-fro, players will get annoyed with interplanetary travel quickly, no matter how engaging each planet is.
That means Bethesda needs to make Starfield's travel convenient and fun. For moments when players have to manually fly to another planet, Starfield might take some notes from No Man's Sky's transportation system. In No Man's Sky, players can quickly take off into space and get to a neighboring planet, potentially finding resources or other landmarks along the way. It also has some engaging distractions in outer space, like dogfights or asteroids laden with resources. Starfield needs to borrow both No Man's Sky's snappy travel and its outer space gameplay features, keeping the slow approach to travel rewarding.
Fast travel is always the easiest way to get around, but Starfield could still run into issues. Bethesda might be tempted to introduce cutscenes for fast travel that show off each planet, for instance, but it's for the best that fast travel simply gets players to their location quickly. Repeated cutscenes do less to explore a location than letting the player roam it on foot. Optimization will be crucial for Starfield because of interplanetary fast travel, too. Loading a huge slice of a planet at a moment's notice is no easy feat, but Bethesda still needs to keep loading times as low as possible, or else players won't want to visit multiple planets during one Starfield sitting, which could slow gameplay overall.
Traveling is Crucial to Starfield
There's no getting around the need for rewarding, practical travel systems in Starfield. Because it's a game that takes place across multiple planets, Bethesda has to work diligently on its travel systems, as vehicles and transportation will bind the game together. Optimization shouldn't be too much trouble with the help of modern gaming PCs and the powerful Xbox Series X, but making travel convenient and fun is on Bethesda. Hopefully the studio has a few tricks up its sleeve.
Starfield releases November 11, 2022 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.