Bethesda’s open-world RPGs are a modder’s paradise. Across The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, the games’ modding communities have contributed massively to their replay value, allowing players to tailor their experiences to their own tastes while keeping Bethesda’s older titles more graphically and mechanically up to date. Bethesda’s Creation Kits even leaned into this strength, actively encouraging modding by make the game's assets easily accessible. Fans of the studio have high hopes for Starfield’s mods, and for good reason.

There’s a unique element of Starfield that could be particularly fruitful for the game’s modding community, though it's a feature that faces Starfield’s base game with some interesting challenges. While Bethesda is known for its seamless open worlds, Starfield’s map seems very likely to be divided among distinct planets. For modders, however, this opens up a world of possibilities.

RELATED: Starfield Could Be Handling One Skyrim Mechanic Very Differently

The Problems With Planets

starfield sunset concept art

The fact that Starfield’s map will be divided among multiple planets implies a significant departure from Bethesda's previous titles, despite Todd Howard assuring fans that Starfield is, in some ways, "Skyrim in space." While players could journey across almost all of Skyrim without facing a loading screen – with the exception of cities and interiors – this seems very unlikely to be the case with Starfield.

Starfield has been described as open-world, but in the context of a space-set RPG, this more likely means that players will be given access to most of the explorable map very early on in the game rather than exploring its universe as a single seamless experience from takeoff to landing. This pivot comes with some big risks.

It’s possible that dividing the in-game map up among too many of Starfield's planets will make the explorable area on each planet feel small. There’s already evidence that players might only have access to a small area of each planet. Towards the end of last month, Bethesda released a series of videos on the studio’s YouTube channel that spotlight some of the cities in the game.

Neon is described as a “pleasure city” built on an old fishing platform on a largely “nondescript aquatic” world. This seems to suggest that Neon will be the only area players will access on that planet, which could indicate that Starfield’s other planets will also limit players to a small area relative to Skyrim or the Bethesda-produced Fallout games. While Bethesda will need to be careful that its universe doesn’t feel small due to its segmentation, dividing the map among many different planets could prove to be very beneficial for the game’s modders.

Modding In Bethesda Games

Beyond Skyrim Bruma Mod For Skyrim

There are many different kinds of mods that players can download for Bethesda games. Some are graphical updates, or fix common Bethesda bugs, while others add survival mechanics, change combat, edit dialogue, restore cut content, and more.

Some of the most successful Skyrim mods have been what are known as New Lands mods. These mods allow players to venture beyond the province’s borders to areas created from scratch by the mod’s creators. In some cases, these areas are completely distinct from the Skyrim canon, adding areas from franchises like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. In many cases, however, modders try to fit these new areas into the existing world so that players can roleplay the same character from the base game while exploring the new areas.

The popular Falkskaar mod, for example, adds a largely lore-friendly island of the same name off Skyrim’s northern coast with its own storyline. The Forgotten City, a mod which would go on to win its writer Nick Pearce a national Writers Guild award and has now been adapted into a standalone game, took place in a hidden Dwemer city beneath the province. The Beyond Skyrim – Bruma mod allowed players to travel back over the southern border to the setting of Oblivion, exploring Cyrodiil’s most northern county two-hundred years after the defeat of Mehrunes Dagon.

These are some of the most ambitious mods the Skyrim modding community has to offer, often coming with a huge number of quests, unique armor and weapons, and fully-voiced dialogue. One of the limitations when creating New Lands mods that fit into The Elder Scrolls’ world, however, is that the series’ setting is already largely set in stone. The same can be said of mods which extend the world of the Fallout games which, like Fallout: New Vegas’ Beyond Boulder Dome mod, are still limited to real-life locations.

RELATED: How Traditional Is Starfield’s Hard Sci-Fi?

Starfield's Advantage

starfield neon fish drugs

The fact that Starfield appears to be divided among so many planets could allow immersive lore-friendly New Lands mods to flourish in a way they never have before. Modders could build their own planets from the ground up, with their own problems, questlines, and unique relationships with Starfield’s many factions.

After the player has completed almost everything Starfield’s base game has to offer, they could keep adding more and more planet mods, expanding the explorable universe beyond what could be accomplished with Bethesda’s other RPGs. Not only that, but the freedom to build individual planets from the ground up has the potential to lead to some extremely creative storylines. These narratives could be less tethered to prexisting areas in the lore than the New Lands mods found for Fallout and The Elder Scrolls.

Although dividing Starfield’s map among so many planets comes with some risks, it could also be Bethesda’s smartest move. It could even see the game enjoy the same longevity as Skyrim, which still has one of gaming’s most active modding communities nearly ten years since its release.

If Bethesda releases a Starfield Creation Kit – which seems very likely – and players are given access to the same procedural generation used to build planets that Todd Howard described at Brighton Digital 2020, creating brand new settings specifically designed to tell the modders’ stories could become more accessible than ever. The planet system may be a departure from Bethesda’s past, but it might also be a key way for the studio to ensure its new game’s longevity, and its own future.

Starfield is set to release on November 11, 2022, for PC and Xbox Series X/S.

MORE: Xbox GM Shuts Door on Starfield PlayStation Release