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Maybe any landing you can walk away from isn’t a good one, at least not for some potential Starfield players
When the news broke that in Starfield, there will not be a seamless transition from flying your ship in space to landing your ship on the surface of a planet, there was a lot of discourse on the internet over it. The initial news was a bit of a letdown for me, as someone who has been enjoying a lot of No Man’s Sky in 2022, there is definitely something to be said about the experience of flying into a planet from space and going through that transition from a starry vacuum into an atmospheric skyscape and landing your ship. It’s a sequence that never really gets old.
After reading some of the feedback from gamers I wanted to get a gauge on how many of them were really disappointed that this feature would not be in Starfield. I posted a poll under IGN’s Twitter account which is where I read about this news in the first place.
So far there are over 4500 responses and at the time of this posting, 56% of gamers who responded to this poll picked the option “Yea that really stinks!” indicating that they are displeased about this not being a feature in the game.
I agree it’s a bit of a disappointment we don’t get to enjoy seamless space to planet ship landings, I’d opt for the option “Meh, not a big deal!” I would prefer to have this cool feature in the game but it doesn’t drastically hurt the game for me or put a damper on my excitement.
I’m actually pretty surprised at these results. I didn’t think that over half of the people answering this poll would think it was more than a minor issue. It looks like gamers were really looking forward to taking off and landing their ships on the surface of planets.
For me, it’s not really an issue because of what kind of game Starfield is. Starfield is going to be a Bethesda RPG and not a space simulation. As large and expansive as it is, I am not surprised the developers have opted to go a different route when it came to how they approach landing on planets.
If Starfield is anything like The Elder Scrolls or Fallout, that means there will be many handcrafted cities and areas, with many many unique characters, items, and weapons. This game is going to be dense and I imagine it will be difficult for the developers to let players seamlessly load up all of those assets while entering a planet from space without some loading issues.
That said, I understand the gamers who are disappointed. Like I said before, taking off and landing on planets is just really cool, there is a very immersive feeling to it and at least for me, it never really losses its luster even after doing it dozens of times in a game like No Man’s Sky.
Going by the Starfield reveal gameplay we already know that we can also choose to “land and explore anywhere on the planet”. So while we can’t manually do it, we can still go anywhere we want and explore on foot. So perhaps then Starfield will find a happy medium. Sure we can’t actually land ourselves on planets but maybe we will still get a cool scene or visual of us landing in a place of our choosing?
As shown in the scene above we know we get some kind of landing cinematic at some point but who knows if that’s just a specific story moment or something else? Personally, though I don’t think it will be much of an issue as long as the game makes exploration feel cool.
That’s what I think but what about you? Do you think not being able to land your ship directly on planets yourself is a big deal? Does this hurt your excitement for the game? Could you care less? Let’s continue the discussion in the comments below.
Not a huge fan of this take, just because you’d align with the don’t care crowd. You don’t need to diminish the legitimacy of people upset about it
I don’t think it’s not a legitimate complaint but I don’t think it’s a major deal. I understand it is for some people, even I find it disappointing to a degree but not enough to greatly impact my enjoyment of the game. I on’t blame people for being let down but I do find it bizarre and unfortunate if the lack of this feature kills your interest in a game that you would otherwise find highly enjoyable.