Starfield allows players to fly to any planet they want, only it’ll take hours upon hours, and you can’t manually land on them.
Those playing Starfield in early access will know that when they first reach space, you can set courses to other systems and Grav-jump. After entering a system, you’ll be faced with a planet on the horizon, but after boosting those ship thrusters to the max, it’s unclear whether you can actually reach the atmosphere.
It’s brought up some confusion as to whether you can actually move between planets like a spaceship would, and, although the distance between will gradually lower, the game gives the illusion you’re moving forward all while keeping you in the same spot.
However, Sony Santa Monica developer Alanah Pearce recently conducted an experiment on her Twitch stream to see if space travel in Starfield does in fact allow you to fly between planets. It turns out, you can, but not in the way you think (via GamesRadar).
Pearce first set a manual course to the planet Pluto and let her ship’s engines run at a steady pace for seven hours while she slept until it eventually came into contact with the planet. Unfortunately, the ship didn’t enter the atmosphere and instead clipped through it, meaning it would take a long while to exit the other side.
Although you can’t actually manually land on these planets, Pearce confirmed during her test run that planets are in actual orbit and will change positions around their sun. This means that you can actually travel between planets without loading screens and live out your spacefaring dreams, but you won’t be able to land without accessing the built-in constellation menu.
Starfield launched in early access last week for those who preordered the Premium Edition or Constellation Edition of the game but will officially be released on September 6 for Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Check out our essential guide to the best Xbox Series X games, as well as our best PC games of 2023.
