Summary

• Land vehicles are coming to Starfield, allowing players to explore planets faster.
• Bethesda would need to work on improving the previous limitations that tethered players to their ship to avoid reaching boundaries faster in a land vehicle.
• The addition of more points of interest on planets is crucial to making the larger boundaries worthwhile for players exploring with land vehicles.

Bethesda's given players a look at some of the updates coming to its 2023 space-RPG Starfield, and one could be fixing a major complaint that players have had about the game since its launch. Starfield's scale was a major selling point prior to its launch, offering players the opportunity to explore over 1000 planets across 100 Star Systems, with many hoping this would give them nearly unlimited freedom to explore the Settled Systems.

In practice, however, this involved a lot of fast travel and loading screens, and landing on a planet was anything but limitless. Players could select a landing spot on a planet from space but were limited to a set radius in which they could explore when on the ground, tethering them to their ship. If players ventured too far, the message "Boundary Reached: Open the map to explore another region, or return to your ship" would appear, and a trip into orbit would be required before landing in a new location, even if it's on the same planet, as the game would need to load a completely new, procedurally generated zone.

Bethesda Is Adding Land Vehicles To Starfield

Players Will Be Able To Get Around Planets Faster Than Before

An official update from procedurally generated planets felt extremely empty and repetitive - even more so when combined with character stamina that would deplete extremely quickly to prevent faster movement for too long - so they wanted to get to the points of interest faster without relying on fast travel and the appearance of yet another loading screen.

However, one issue that could arise is that players could simply get to the aforementioned boundaries much faster via a land vehicle, causing even more frustration than before. Therefore, many are theorizing that the introduction of land vehicles could come with far greater changes to the game and that this is why more work is required to implement them than simply adding new assets, even though Bethesda's previous titles, which were developed on its older Creation Engine, have been able to handle mounts and vehicles for decades.

Could Bethesda Extend Starfield's Boundaries

Offering Larger Areas To Explore With Land Vehicles

As pointed out by Redditor Baggetto, when checking the new Starfield beta following the announcement of land vehicles, the boundaries seem to have greatly improved. In a previous post by Baggetto, they tested removing the map boundaries to see when the game would crash after crossing a certain tile limit and determined this was approximately 140-150 kilometers away. In this new update, they found they could keep going, reaching 190 kilometers before "getting bored" and suggesting that there is no longer a hard limit on how far players could go. They also pointed out that the world and physics were less glitchy, and vegetation and flora were still visible and scannable for longer in the new beta.

This has led to some fellow Redditors speculating that Bethesda is making each planet a single cell, which would be a huge leap. Cell-loading is common practice in open-world titles, loading a specific area on a grid to help conserve memory, rather than entire cities or worlds at once, with streaming loading in the next areas before players reach them for a more seamless experience. While players have already complained about Starfield's many load screens, making an entire planet a cell could potentially make these load times far greater with so many assets to have ready at any given time so it seems more likely that Bethesda is improving the rate at which new areas can be loaded while exploring on land in a vehicle to make for a smoother gameplay experience overall.

Hopefully, Starfield Will Get More Points Of Interest On Its Planets

Being Able To Explore A Larger Boundary Doesn't Matter Much If There's Nothing Of Value There

Of course, the boundary size doesn't mean a lot if there's nothing to do within it, so if Bethesda is looking into ways to increase an explorable area to make the most of its new land vehicles, there need to be far more points of interest generated on each planet. Recently, a player found Toliman II-a, moon of Toliman II, home to the abandoned city of Londinion, which has an incredible number of Points of Interest, and far more than most planets people will come across in the rest of the game.

This included several caves, abandoned labs, outposts, an unexplored geographical feature, and even a forgotten mech graveyard, indicating that there would be plenty to plunder and very little bare land to explore between them. This was undoubtedly more of the kind of experience players were expecting to get when they first picked up Starfield, and hopefully, the introduction of land vehicles will encourage the population of planets with more of these features, giving players a reason to travel on land, rather than just flying to another planet after picking a point of interest clean.

While Baggetto's test does indicate that there could be some greater changes afoot, for now, Bethesda hasn't even said when to expect land vehicles in Starfield, and has only informed players that it's working on them. Therefore, it could be quite some time if the studio does look to rework the game's infrastructure to accommodate them better, but hopefully, this will be implemented before the Shattered Space DLC, which is confirmed to launch sometime in Fall 2024, a year after the base game's release.

Sources: Bethesda Softworks/YouTube, Baggetto/Reddit (1, 2)