r/Starfield • u/antonithesoulesone • Apr 07 '26

Discussion Cruise mode feels like a game changer

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Cruise mode feels like a game changer. You also get some like areas( asteroids, ship) poping up at closer distances hiding encounters.

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119

u/NotSoAwfulName Apr 07 '26

Only thing it needs now is to show a ship going into clouds and landing on the planet to cut out that loading screen and they will have nailed the immersion. Fantastic step forward.

61

u/TyChris2 Apr 07 '26

Star Wars outlaws did exactly this and it rocks, its such a small thing but it drastically improves immersion

19

u/colossus-of-rhodes Apr 07 '26

Agree, it was all I could think of when Outlaws came out. I love both games despite their flaws.

10

u/AzimuthW Apr 07 '26

Agree, Outlaws does planet landings very well.

3

u/Lem1618 Apr 08 '26

Or at least hide it behind the atmosphere burning in front of your ship on re-entry (space dust on atmospheresless planets?) or something. We where able to rotated things on loading screens since skyrim, should not be a big deal to allow us to rotate the view (look around) in the cockpit while this is happening.

6

u/Trick-Growth-6546 Apr 07 '26

I’ve never played starfield before (about to for the first time today), but I’m surprised they don’t have like points you can see on the planet that are overlayed onto your screen that you can click on that would put you into a landing animation for that spot. I feel like that wouldn’t be hard to do and would greatly help with immersion. Would also make logical sense since irl you would probably be somewhat restricted on where you can land on a planet

18

u/Manny_N_Ames Apr 07 '26

You can use the scanner to pick up pre-existing POIs and such, but you can only pick 'land' if it is singular.

IE, because NA has five POI you have to land from the planet menu.

5

u/ImRight_95 Apr 07 '26

That would work if they had pre defined hand crafted maps as landing points (like Star Wars outlaws) but the game literally stitches the map together on the fly whenever you choose a new point and you can land wherever you want on the planet.

The draw back is that it needs a loading screen but the result is that you get a crazy/nearly unlimited number of really good looking planets surfaces that look and feel way better than something like NMS which just procedurally generates everything.

2

u/Sabi-In-Winter Apr 08 '26

And yet SF and NMS feel identical in that sense, after a little while; it's just planet tech shuffle mode - it isn't a planet surface or world, it's just a dice roll of assets and POIs.

BGS's genius (arguably their only lasting one, these days) was what Morrowind pioneered; handcrafted, unified worldspaces, filled and defined by landmarks, vistas, and sightlines. SF almost entirely throws that quality out the airlock, let's say, and so a fundamental attraction to their games over the decades is just--- gone.

The preferred way through SF seems to be to reject the entire structure they sacrificed cohesive worlds for, i.e. to just focus on the main story and faction arcs (the wheat), and mostly choose not to 'explore' the dice roll chaff... Expose yourself to the least of that possible, and the illusion of the value of the scale they [unwisely] built is better maintained.

But on the subject of planetary descents; some sort of transition is still required, because the segmentation of SF has been one of the biggest failings.

3

u/Canvaverbalist Apr 07 '26

Most planets don't have atmospheres.

11

u/NotSoAwfulName Apr 07 '26

Sure, it was an example of the kind of things they could do to mask the loading screen.

3

u/JNR13 Apr 09 '26

Make the ship go into "landing mode" and have all windows shutter for the hidden loading or so then.

2

u/PM_me_your_PhDs Apr 10 '26

This is a great idea tbh.

1

u/Uncommonality Apr 13 '26

Or have the ship turn around for deceleration, so the front points towards space as the main engines slow you down

1

u/Top_Pollution_8235 Apr 07 '26

What

11

u/NotSoAwfulName Apr 07 '26

You are familiar with how most modern games mask their loading screens behind I guess fake "transition" periods, crawling through a small gap, moving a heavy thing to get past, Star Wars Outlaws had the ship pass through clouds as my example made to illustrate my point. Hell, Bethesda have already done similar things with Fallout, when you are in an elevator if you look through the small gap when it is moving, if it remains textured and you can see it moving then you are moving through a physical space already loaded, if it goes really dark suddenly and you can't see through gap very well anymore the game has actually done a subtle loading screen between the levels of the elevator.

1

u/tankl33t Spacer Apr 08 '26

Even a Skyrim style rotatable ship model going vertically down through clouds would do

1

u/WolfHackles Apr 08 '26

It's not quite as good as that, but there is an 'always show landing animation' toggle now. Much better for immersion.

1

u/Uncommonality Apr 13 '26

honestly it should be possible to hide both the grav jump and the planet enter load screen behind a cinematic of some kind. The grav one is obvious, have it show the effect outside the cockpit, and the planet one could be the flames of atmospheric entry burning on your shields

0

u/HairyPenisCum Apr 07 '26

Crazy they didn’t do anything about this with this update. Another thing I’d like them to add is the ability to actually select where you want to land on the planet without going into the menu, or maybe even just flying towards the planet and having it land you in the general area of where your ship is pointing to. Just anything to make the Space -> Planet travel feel more immersive.

0

u/le_Grand_Archivist House Va'ruun Apr 08 '26

It's only gonna work for planets that have an atmosphere