A scrapped Starfield feature might make a return if Bethesda decides to expand on certain aspects of the RPG.
Starfield is a popular RPG developed by Bethesda Games Studio, which has players adventuring through the confines of space for mysterious artifacts. The original version of the Starfield fuel system could be making a return if Bethesda were ever to add a survival mode to the hit game, while this possibly by no means new information, its confirmation was seemingly lost in all the Starfield chatter over the past several years.
Having entered pre-production around 2015, Starfield had marked by far the longest development cycle for any Bethesda Games Studio games to date. While it’s unclear exactly when it entered active production, the studio itself confirmed that many of its features have changed significantly throughout development over the years.
While other ideas were scrapped, the game’s fuel system falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum; between still being present in the current version of the RPG that went gold, but one of its major mechanics was cut. By October 2022, Bethesda had decided that Starfield’s spaceships would not run out of fuel mid-flight. What mechanics of the fuel system remain is merely a temporary impediment to one’s ability to perform Starfield Grav Jumps.
Some players had criticized that the feature was under-backed and could use some more time in the oven, while others pondered why Bethesda hasn’t at least made a more realistic fuel system an added optional feature instead of scrapping the idea altogether.
The answer came to some of those questions that were dug up by Reddit user “picabo123”, who came across an old episode of the Lex Friedman podcast in which the Executive Producer for Bethesda, Todd Howard, directly reflected on the company’s original train of thought concerning the Starfield fuel systems.
Howard went on to recall how an early version of the game made it possible for the player to run out of fuel and get stranded on a planet, mining for resources would have been one way to get out of such a situation while sending a distress beacon and hoping people have a friendly response would have been another.
While the idea sounds great “on paper”, the teams concluded it was going to end up a “fun killer” in practice. The developers ultimately decided a revamp of Starfield ship fuel tanks was needed only to affect a spacecraft’s Grav jump distance, essentially making them much less consequential. With this decision having been made, Howard did note that a realistic fuel system would fit into a “hardcore survival made.” The Bethesda official has also left open the possibility of the studio revisiting that idea at some point in the future, hopefully bringing Starfield a realistic feel and improving the game.
