Todd Howard Reveals Why Starfield Doesn’t Have Ground Vehicles

Bethesda Game Studios creative lead Todd Howard has offered up an explanation as to why players don’t have access to ground vehicles in Starfield. The studio head shared his thoughts on the matter when asked about vehicles during a conversation with Bloomberg (via Kotaku). Howard acknowledges the desire for such an option for traversal and quickly attributes its absence to the developers’ desire to have control over the exploration experience.

“It’s a great question, actually. It’s something we consider,” Howard said. “We’re going to do outer space, we’re going to do planets. Once you do vehicles, it does change the gameplay. So, once you land in your ship, (and now) you’re on foot, it lets us really, for the players, make it an experience where we know how fast they’re seeing things.”

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Howard continues, suggesting that, while vehicles are not an option in Starfield, players do still have access to some additional traversal mechanics. In addition to a number of customizable spaceships, the studio head reminds us that we can use jetpacks to help us get around. Is a jetpack the same as ground vehicles? No, but it’s at least something to make long treks go by a bit faster.

Official Starfield ground vehicles may never come to the game, but that probably won’t stop unofficial support from eventually making them playable. Fans have already been hard at work when it comes to Starfield mods, with some community creations adding things like a fix for the game’s clunky UI. Another mod took aim at the Bethesda game’s performance by adding support for Nvidia DLSS. More substantial mods will surely arrive as time goes on, so it would be anything but a surprise to see ground vehicles enter the fray eventually.

Starfield is out now on PC, Xbox Series X | S, and Game Pass. Stay tuned for any and all updates from Bethesda.