Remember Starfield? Launched to huge fanfare in 2023, Bethesda’s big sci-fi hope landed to a mixed reception from players — who have since gone on to complain about the game’s disappointing first expansion and lack of substantial ongoing support.
However, one bright spot on the horizon appears to be signs of Bethesda finally adding the highly-requested ability to travel in your spaceship from one planet to another — rather than what happens now, as you load up a loading screen to enter orbit, and from there load up another loading screen to get to where you’re going.
Fragments of code uncovered by Starfield fans now suggest Bethesda has a more streamlined experience in the works, though potentially still with some caveats. While you may be able to travel between planets within the same system, fans say it looks like you won’t be able to fly all the way between systems. Oh, and you also won’t be able to fly directly from a planet’s surface into orbit, like No Man’s Sky. Oh, well.
References to the new offering, referred to in the game’s code as “Cruise Mode,” were detected by players this week and shared on reddit, though Bethesda has reportedly now issued another small patch to scrub them from view.
After another no-show at June’s Xbox Games Showcase, it remains to be seen when Bethesda will get around to mentioning the game again. Last month, Bethesda said it had “exciting things” coming to the game soon — presumably referring to this. Perhaps we’ll hear more in a couple of weeks around Gamescom, ahead of the game’s two-year anniversary?
Earlier this month, it was reported that Starfield’s second expansion and much-anticipated PlayStation 5 port will now arrive in 2026, following the poor reception to 2024 add-on Shattered Space. Bethesda boss Todd Howard had previously talked of expansions arriving annually, but perhaps Bethesda sees the addition of some form of spaceflight as something to keep players occupied until then.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
