Starfield Doesn’t Let You Fly Seamlessly from Space to Planet: ‘That’s Really Just Not that Important’ - IGN

[Success]

https://www.ign.com/articles/starfield-seamless-fly-space-to-planet-not-important-todd-howard

Something I believe deserves its own thread.

People have often made the comparison with No Mans Sky, Elite Dangerous and even Star Citizen. No we know that flying from space to planet will be completely on rails instead of dynamic like No Mans Sky.

The game has a much smaller scope than I originally thought.

 

[Deleted member 68874]

Doesn't bother me at all.

Much smaller scope? Lol cmon.
Discourse around this game already sucks. 🤣
Expectations on BGS aren't placed on any other studio.

 

[Raigor]

The game has a much smaller scope than I originally thought.

Click to shrink...

Oh dear lord

 

[ASleepingMonkey]

I didn't really expect it to, even though I'd like it. It makes sense, that's probably super difficult to do on a technical level.

 

[Kuro]

I could tell with the way they kept cutting to the landing cutscenes. I was massively disappointed when it was like this with Destiny and it sucks its a thing here too. There's just something so cool about taking off and seeing the atmosphere change as you reach space or vice versa with re-entry.

 

[Azerth]

doesnt sound like an issue to me

 

[Milennia]

Didn't realize that seamless planet transition is what made NMS good, the more you know

 

[adj_noun]

pre-order canceled

>:( <-- me canceling my pre-order

 

[Tappin Brews]

I didn't really expect it to, even though I'd like it. It makes sense, that's probably super difficult to do on a technical level.

Click to shrink...

.

 

[MouldyK]

planet to planet

Click to shrink...

You mean Space to Planet.

 

[TeraDax]

Well, I can understand why, but it is one of my favorite features of No Man Sky.

And of Starlink actually.

 

[Jedi2016]

I mean, those of us paying attention were pretty sure it wasn't going to work that way anyway, so yeah.. it doesn't really change anything.

I have Elite Dangerous if I really need that fix.

 

[rrc1594]

Smaller scoop? Lol

 

[Welfare]

So you can't fly around the planet, so? This is a non issue.

 

[RPGam3r]

Seamless transition makes sense not being included as it would greatly change the game. It not being there is completely ok with me and has zero impact on my interest.

 

[Windu]

Yeah disappointing. Love landing etc.. In Elite Dangerous. I just hope the flying is more Sim than Arcade. But I suspect it will be more arcade which will be a shame.

 

[Butch]

Scope isn't determined by this mechanic.

 

[bounchfx]

it really isn't *that* important but sure it's going to have animpact on immersion and feel and for some folks it's gonna be a huge disappointment for sure. my question is how long will it take to load in? these next gen systems are supposed to have super fast loads so im imagining itll be fine

 

[poklane]

Unless the loading screens between flying in space and landing on the planet or long as hell I don't mind this.

 

[Fiddle]

Yeah this definitely sucks. It's a space game, it's important to me.

 

[Jarmel]

Well that sucks. I was 100% hoping you could manually fly and land on any particular spot. Would have really helped with immersion.

 

[Toriko]

Making a space game emphasizing exploration and not giving you the ability to explore sucks. I would rather look at a planet while flying and then manually go to it. The feeling of discovery in space games is lost without that aspect.

Absolutely huge shocker and a bummer.

 

[Jasonofindy]

How on earth does a cinematic masking loading transition from on planet gameplay to space flight reflect on the "scope" of the game in any way?

 

[vixolus]

Oh dear lord

Click to shrink...

The discourse around this game is insanity lmao

 

[ThisIsBlitz21]

That is fine with me.

 

[Deleted member 5865]

I dont expect seamless large-scale loading from any game

 

[Dega]

I'm alright with that.

 

[Shoot]

The game has a much smaller scope than I originally thought

Click to shrink...

Troll thread?

 

[BringBackSonics]

I never felt that Starfield was going to be a space sim or anything like that. I'm okay without that.

Flying Seamlessley to a Main Quest area/zone, seems like it would have been a massive undertaking.

 

[Babu93]

Jesus christ, people need to bring themselves back down to reality about this game. Reading some of the takes over the last couple of days has been wild. There has to be limitations somewhere. Not everything can be vast and infinite, yet completely handcrafted and without boundaries.

 

[Fowler]

I don't have a problem with the way it works; I just think it's a bit of a bad quote? It's important to me!

I mean, I'm still playing this, and I'd buy it if it wasn't free on Game Pass. It's just weird to tell me that this isn't important to me.

 

[bmdubya]

Doesn't really change anything for me; I'm still excited to check the game out.

 

[Arcoril]

I'm fine with this. Development time is finite and it was probably better spent elsewhere.

 

[Yerffej]

It really isn't important.

 

[TheRed]

I'm not too disappointed but I am if that means you can't fly your ship in atmosphere. But I guess it might mean that.

 

[Eamon]

Why does this matter other than there being a load screen?

"If you try to really spend a lot of time engineering the in-between, like that segue, you're just spending a lot of time [on something] that's really just not that important to the player," Howard reasoned. "So let's make sure it's awesome when you're on the surface and awesome when you're in space, and those realities look and play as good as they can be."

Click to shrink...

This is a perfectly reasonable explanation. The transition between space and the surface in No Man's Sky was cool the first couple of times but I pretty much forgot about it almost immediately afterwards

 

[Lobster Roll]

The game has a much smaller scope than I originally thought.

Click to shrink...

The takes on Starfield get worse and worse.

 

[Dolce]

Yeah, it's not something that absolutely needed to be done. Warframe has been struggling with adding this for years. It's nice if it's there, but that transition is absolutely not needed.

 

[Papatulus]

no, please, i need my pointless busywork between zones

 

[Perzeval]

That was apparent. Also, not an issue.

 

[Remeran]

Wait I think people are confused? From my understanding you can fly from one planet to another but you can't seamlessly fly from space and land on a planet.

Can someone confirm?

 

[Success]

You mean Space to Planet.

Click to shrink...

Has now been fixed.

Thank you for letting me know!

 

[Beanbeany]

If anything it gives me hope that the planets might be more interesting that some of the boring, 1 biome style planets in Nomansky.

 

[Lotus]

My initial response was "Who cares tbh", but thinking more on it, I guess I get it for those that care. Big budget game and all

But yea, not remotely a dealbreaker

 

[arimanius]

I'm in the disappointed camp since I find it really amazing being able to fly around the entire planet when I do it in Star Citizen. I was hoping for kind of the same thing and being able to explore but I'm still really looking forward to the game.

 

[ragolliangatan]

The game has a much smaller scope than I originally thought.

Click to shrink...

How does seamless planet to space travel make the game smaller in scope? Maybe less immersive, but doesn't shrink the scope

 

[vixolus]

Some people really want Bethesda to make a functioning Star Citizen on top of Starfield

 

[Aska]

Honestly, I never assumed we would.

 

[adj_noun]

I just hope the puddles are decent.

 

[wafflebrain]

Well, I can understand why, but it is one of my favorite features of No Man Sky.

And of Starlink actually.

Click to shrink...

Where I'm at. I get it, its probably a nightmare to do the seamless travel thing on the level of Starfield's assets without a lot of performance and lod issues (which NMS has) when touching down on a planet.

I don't really need it, but one of the things I love the most in NMS is being able to fly around while on the planet. The takeoff and landing is great but its that ability to scout across a whole planet in the air that's the big draw for me. I hope Starfield at least lets you do that but I get it'd probably break progression for certain areas WRT quests. Maybe a middle ground aerial vehicle that flies only at a certain altitude limit, NMS has a few of those.