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With the launch of Starfield only around the corner now, you might be curious to find out if you can fly on planets in Starfield.
Bethesda’s latest game is a new IP, in fact it’s their first in nearly quarter of a century, and th is has meant there’s plenty of questions raised around the game. The latest of which, perhaps inspired by recent leaks suggesting that the game is going to feature planet boundaries and invisible walls, has meant that some gamers aren’t sure if you’re going to be able to fly your space ships around on the different planets in-game.
Let’s go over everything we know based on the latest gameplay reveals and trailers.
Can you fly on planets in Starfield?
The reality is that nobody really knows if you can fly ships on planets in Starfield. If this is a playable feature, it seems to have narrowly missed out on any screen-time in the gameplay deep dive – which is where you would expect it to show at first.
We know that you’re not going to be able to fly directly from space and into the atmosphere of a planet. This was confirmed in gameplay reveals which alluded to menus being used to navigate the player between orbit and atmosphere. Once you’ve found a planet you can choose to dock at one of its space sports, but it looks as though you’re probably not going to be able to fly your ship down to the atmosphere and explore via ship.
This is also supported by the fact that the game won’t be featuring any land vehicles – meaning you’re not going to be able to ride a dune buggy or space rover through any of the planets. While Skyrim featured a horse that yielded some hilarious physics and bugs, it seems as though Starfield is not going to attempt a similar mechanic. Instead, all land exploration will take place on foot, much like in the Fallout series.
On-planet transport in Starfield isn’t exactly going to be boring. Despite having a procedurally generated map, there’s going to be plenty of NPCs and quests intermingled into the planet’s surfaces. Like in Bethesda’s other games, these locations are going to be packed full of enemies and conflict too. In fact, much of the games meat happens in these places. Here, encounters with random enemy and ally NPCs take place, while you’re also going to be discovering dungeons, merchants and hidden items. Realistically, creating a world as believable as this that could also be discovered via vehicle might be slightly difficult.
