Even though Bethesda’s hotly anticipated next-gen Fallout 4 update fell flat on its face, the same cannot be said about the latest Starfield update, which is genuinely great. The most exciting bit about the new update, though, is something that won’t be out for some time: driveable land vehicles.
The fact that Bethesda is finally introducing driveable rovers is tucked away in the very last few seconds of the Starfield May Update video blog. There is, of course, no mention of an actual release date, and the majority of the attention fell upon the three-dimensional new area map, ship customization updates, and a slew of other features — as is warranted. However, in the long run, vehicles are likely to be the most meaningful addition to the game’s content roster, unless Bethesda develops them as NPC hats once again.
Starfield’s upcoming vehicles could be a huge deal
Notably, land vehicles are not something that Bethesda has ever developed for one of its mainline open-world role-playing games. Trains, Vertibirds, and rideable mounts did exist in Fallout and Elder Scrolls titles, respectively, but wheeled vehicles have been a non-starter outside of some experimental and decidedly janky community mods. We only really get a snippet of driving footage in the developer vlog, of course, and it remains to be seen how, exactly, the showcased rover will be implemented, but Bethesda could now be working on a technology that could be leveraged further than ever before by the modding community.
This will depend entirely on whether Bethesda’s land vehicle tech is held together by happy thoughts and duct tape, naturally, but people are already setting up pilotable mechs even without the Creation Kit to make their jobs easier.
On that note, the vlog also finally admits that the early build of Starfield‘s Creation Kit is already in some creators’ hands, with plans for the powerful modding suite’s 2024 release apparently well underway. With the vehicle framework and the Creation Kit in tow, modders could very well bring about a renaissance for Starfield before the year is up. All thanks to the humble wheeled rover.
