One Highly Anticipated Starfield Update Will Totally Change The Game, & It's Not The DLC

Summary Starfield updates have been slowly releasing in the past few months, with the latest update only a few weeks ago.

The Creation Kit update for Starfield is an exciting prospect for 2024, but Shattered Space DLC may release first.

The Creation Kit update will add official modding support to Starfield and increase the game's longevity.

The future of Starfield might end up making the game a lot more exciting, and the update that could change everything isn't the Shattered Space DLC release. Although Starfield has plenty of fans, its reception so far has been a largely mixed one, especially when compared to the success of Bethesda Game Studios titles like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. Its expansive world can also feel empty, and the gameplay loop hasn't proven as universally compelling as the best RPGs to come out of the studio.

A disappointing launch isn't always a reason to write off a game, however, and there's always been a lingering possibility that Starfield could embrace more of its strengths in the future. One obvious point of comparison is No Man's Sky, a similarly huge space-faring game that also faced significant criticism when it first released. Over the years, free updates have vastly expanded the possibilities of No Man's Sky, and the strength of Bethesda's prior games provides a model for how Starfield could also add to its platform in an ultimately compelling way.

Related There's One Very Good Reason To Pay Attention To No Man's Sky Devs' New Game A wildly ambitious title from the studio behind No Man's Sky might sound like a recipe for disaster, but there's a good reason to be optimistic.

The Creation Kit Will Make Starfield Way Better

Official Modding Support Can Give Starfield A Lasting Legacy

The planned feature that has the potential to completely transform Starfield is the Creation Kit, an official set of modding tools that will open up Starfield to community-driven projects in a significantly more expansive way. Starfield already has an active modding scene on PC, following a long tradition of extensive fan support for Bethesda games that can make them endlessly replayable in all the best ways. That's all being done without any direct assistance from Bethesda, however, which can make the process of mod development complicated and particularly intimidating for newcomers.

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The Creation Kit isn't a new idea from Bethesda, as similar editors were released for Skyrim and Fallout 4, which in turn build on a legacy established by The Elder Scrolls Construction Set for Morrowind and Oblivion and the Garden of Eden Creation Kit for Fallout 3. All of these cases prove just how useful releasing tools to the public has been, as even Morrowind is still getting plenty of new mods over two decades after its release. The greatest strength of Bethesda games is arguably their status as huge sandboxes, and this makes them the perfect playground for creation.

The advantages of Creation Kit on PC are obvious enough, but it should be even more welcome on Xbox. There's not yet any platform for using Starfield mods on the Xbox Series X/S, leaving console players adrift while PC users can take advantage of a vast array of overhauls. Although console releases can never quite rival PC ports in mod support, getting the Creation Kit will open up a significant world of possibilities on Xbox that could bring people who set the game down shortly after launch back into the fold.

Related Upcoming Xbox Update May Be The Key To Running Starfield At 60 FPS Starfield's 30 FPS cap on Xbox has been one sore point among many for Bethesda's 2023 release, but there's a chance that improvements could be made.

The Starfield Modding Scene Is Interesting But Limited

A Variety Of Good Mods Doesn't Hide The Lack Of Major Overhauls

Starfield's PC modding scene has already addressed plenty of possible hang-ups with the game, from changing aesthetic elements like the game's often bland, low-contrast color grade to shaping up the UI in ways that users can tweak to their individual preferences. Some tweaks are just fun, like adding Mandalorian armor to Starfield to invoke the feel of Star Wars in a game that's a lot less interested in the Flash Gordon side of sci-fi. Anything potentially infringing on licensed territory like this won't pop up on Xbox even after the Creation Kit, but many of the other mods made so far could reappear there.

Where Starfield modding is somewhat lacking so far is in huge overhauls and content additions, with most community-made content focusing on smaller changes and tweaks that are relatively simple to implement. The Creation Kit could incentivize bigger projects, which can be a lot of what give a game enduring popularity. Skyrim and Fallout games all have plenty of mods that essentially act as unofficial DLC or change the setting and story altogether, and some have even made it to the market as standalone games in later incarnations.

Related 10 Best Mods For Fallout: New Vegas Fallout: New Vegas is great even in its vanilla state, but allowing mods lets the best qualities of the game shine while fixing up its shortcomings.

As exciting as it is, the Creation Kit might still not be the perfect fix to Starfield's currently anemic library of major mods. Skyrim doesn't have one of the largest modding scenes ever simply because it's easy to work on. Another key element is passion, as developing any huge mod project tends to require the team to really care about the material. This is where Starfield has been struggling to attract as much traction, and the cancelation of a major multiplayer mod by developers disillusioned with the game (as reported by VG247) was one particularly damning example of this problem.

Another possible concern about the Starfield Creation Kit is a focus on paid mods, which has proven to be a contentious subject in the past with console releases for Besthesda modding tools.

An Early 2024 Window Seems To Be Slipping Away

Close

There's still no official news on when exactly Starfield's Creation Kit will be releasing, although it should be relatively soon if something hasn't gone horribly wrong. The End of the Year Update from the game's official Bethesda news page referred to an early 2024 window for the new exporter and Creation Kit, a description that's starting to look increasingly loose. In February, Reddit user TERAB1T shared a SteamDB changelist image that seemingly indicated a closed beta of the Creation Kit being set up for verified creators, but no significant update has occurred since this milestone.

Starfield's Shattered Space DLC has also failed to receive a release date confirmation yet, so it remains unclear when fans can expect to get anything new out of the game. When these updates do arrive, however, the Creation Kit may very well prove to be the more significant of them, especially if mods can start to pick up more Steam once official tools are available. Starfield definitely isn't a perfect game, but enough help from the community could get it closer than ever before.

Sources: VG247, Bethesda, TERAB1T/Reddit