Starfield Does Technically Let You Manually Fly To Planets, You Just Won't Want To

Much of Starfield's space exploration revolves around the ability to fast travel, both to different solar systems and to the surface of the galaxy's various planets. However, it is technically possible to manually fly to planets, just with some pretty major caveats.

The biggest hurdle is it takes a very, very long time. As highlighted in a video by content creator and Sony Santa Monica writer Alanah Pearce, it took around 7 hours to manually fly to Pluto after fast traveling to the planet's orbit using Starfield's starter ship. Pearce actually picked Pluto to test the ability to manually fly to planets because it was technically the closest distance after arriving in orbit, and it still took that long. Pearce also had to grapple with the planet moving as it orbited around the Sun, which forced Pearce to periodically adjust course.

Slowly but surely, Pearce did eventually make it to Pluto's surface. Kind of. It turns out that the "planets" players see out in the vastness of Starfield's space are mostly just illusions that are never meant to be manually traveled to. That's because once Pearce was up close, it became clear that Starfield's planets (when they aren't landed on using the game's fast travel system) are just hollow, spherical images meant to be seen from far away. Up close, Pluto's resolution became extremely blurry, proof that Starfield's planets were not designed with players being able manually fly up to them in mind.

Pearce eventually flew into Pluto, phased inside it, and later came out the other side unscathed. Even if flying to planets manually is technically possible in Starfield, there's no real reason to do so. As Pearce mentioned in the video, it's still unclear if players, with enough time, could manually travel from one solar system to another, or even from the orbit of one planet to another planet. Rest assured, however, that some intrepid space adventurer will probably find out soon enough.

Starfield has already seen some impressive player numbers, even before its official launch. Those who purchase the game's deluxe edition have been able to play a few days early, resulting in Starfield having already reached nearly 250,000 concurrent players on Steam. In GameSpot's Starfield review, we called Bethesda's latest RPG "a mile wide but an inch deep," while still praising the game's side quests and combat.