The upcoming Starfield will allow players to investigate a vast universe loaded up with diverse alien worlds, but they won't be able to land seamlessly onto planets from space. Bethesda disclosed a greater amount of its profoundly anticipated sci-fi RPG during last Sunday's Xbox Games Showcase livestream, with new footage showing off how players will actually want to customize their characters, spacecraft, and even headquarters as they travel a large system of planets known as The Settled Systems.

The Settled Systems will be quite large indeed, as Bethesda has promised that Starfield will contain approximately 1,000 different procedurally-generated planets for players to travel to. Many of these worlds will lack major cities or settlements, with the gameplay footage shown off at the recent Xbox Games Showcase depicting players fending off the hostile alien lifeforms that live on them, harvesting metal and other valuable resources, and building their base of operations just like they could in Fallout 4. Be that as it may, while Starfield promises no shortage of strange new worlds for players to investigate, landing on them might not be as seamless as it is in other space-travel sims.

In a recent interview with IGN, Bethesda Game Studios executive maker Todd Howard revealed that Starfield won't have seamless transitions from space to planet surfaces. He explained that while his studio prides itself on its philosophy of "saying yes to the player" and giving them features that it thinks they want in games like Starfield, they concluded early on in development that having players land directly on planets from space wasn't necessary or worth the time and resources expected to implement it. Thus, Howard stated that the on-surface planet landscapes in Starfield are one reality and the space above is another, with Bethesda Game Studios' goal being to "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 great as they can be."

The upcoming Starfield has drawn comparisons to No Man's Sky, another free-roaming space-exploration title that features procedurally-generated worlds for players to land on and search for valuable resources. In any case, No Man's Sky featured the seamless space-to-planet transitions that Todd Howard confirmed wouldn't be a part of Starfield, and this was a major part of the game's marketing in the lead-up to its controversial launch in 2016. Meanwhile, fans have speculated that Starfield could set itself apart from No Man's Sky by featuring more realistic space travel and ship designs.

While some fans might be disappointed in Starfield not allowing them to fly directly into a new planet from space, Bethesda Game Studios has concluded that this feature isn't a necessary encounter. Whether the transition between outer space and the surface of a uninhabited is as seamless as it is in No Man's Sky or not, players will actually want to travel to a large number of interesting worlds when Starfield launches on PC and Xbox Series X/S consoles next year.