A modder has brought No Man's Sky-style seamless takeoffs to Starfield, and even in beta they look pretty great
Going up.
One of Starfield's big problems is that its core fantasy runs contrary to the tech it's built on. Bethesda's space RPG is meant to evoke the majesty and scale of the cosmos. It's about exploration, curiosity, and wonder.
And yet, it exists in an engine that necessitates a whole lot of loading screens, and so the final frontier feels like a series of small rooms. In particular, the game's takeoff and landing sequences drew criticism for shoving in loading screens where games like No Man's Sky had seamless transitions.
Well, no more! Sort of! A modder named 0xBobby is hard at work to rid Starfield's takeoff sequences of the loading screen scourge. Seamless Planet Takeoffs is a mod for Starfield that makes departing its planets an at least somewhat immersive experience. Rather than cutting to a third-person view of your ship as it jets away, you remain in the cockpit, watching the planet's atmosphere give way to the void as you ascend.
It's not perfect, which is probably why it's in beta. It's not removing the loads so much as it is masking them, which means that you can still kind of identify the point at which the game shunts you from one cell to another.
0xBobby writes that "the seamlessness of the transition will depend on the atmosphere and weather of the planet," and that they're "working on making the transition even smoother." Still, even in its current state it's much better than the default experience.
Alas, your landings aren't going to be seamless. Not now, maybe not ever.
"It probably won't ever happen, at least not from me," says 0xBobby. "Yes, I know of all of the tricks I could use, hiding the loading through clouds or entry flames etc, but even that would be way more complex than what this mod or seamless grav jumps do." I guess landings are just too heavy a load to carry.
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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.
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