Starfield’s massive May update – the biggest to hit the game since its September 2023 launch – arrived last week, bringing a slew of new quality-of-life features (like improved scanner functionality and surface maps) and long-awaited bug fixes. some of the most important tasks in the game. The May update seemingly has everything from options to combat difficulty tweaks to an increased inventory and even improved ship decoration mechanics.
As a fan of Bethesda’s previous games (and a huge space nerd), I was excited to get my hands on the update and explore it. Disappointed with the state of the game at launch, I awaited this update with bated breath, hoping that Starfield would finally get the Cyberpunk 2077 treatment and rise like a phoenix from its bugged, unrelenting ashes. Unfortunately, after launching the game, I discovered something incredibly disheartening: Rather than drastically improving Starfield’s gameplay, the May update instead makes the game’s flaws even more visible and introduces new bugs. Later, I stumbled upon an even more painful truth: Although the update itself is available for free, some of the update’s best quality-of-life improvements come with a surprising price—one that players may not be willing to pay.
I fired up an old save while playing on Xbox and immediately proceeded to test out the new surface maps and scanner features. Functionally, the new 3D surface maps do a fantastic job of helping players orient themselves and allowing them to explore the planet’s topography without having to physically run around to see if there’s anything worth finding on it. New maps don’t exactly scream, “Hey, there’s a really cool point of interest over there!” but the 3D detail that now appears on the planet’s surface map means that players can spot buildings, unusual rock formations, and other details that may indicate the presence of an interesting location they might want to explore.
There are also 3D maps for large buildings, making getting from point A to point B much easier when exploring large, multi-story, enclosed areas. Before the update, players could only rely on the trail of arrows that appeared on the ground when using the scanner to point them towards their current target. Those guide arrows are still there and still tend to disappear randomly, but players now have more options than simply putting the scanner down and taking it out again to make them reappear. The new update’s 3D building maps make it much easier to find out what floor certain destinations are on, but they only seem to be available for large or unique buildings like the fully enclosed city of Cydonia on Mars. If the player finds themselves having difficulty navigating frequently used structures such as the Robotic Science Facility on Volia Chi, they will still have to rely on the wizard’s arrows.
The new 3D surface maps work well, but also show exactly how empty many of the game’s 1,000+ planets really are. POI is still extremely rare on most planets (even those with large settlements like Mars), and players will still find themselves running for several minutes straight – with nothing to look at but rocks along the way – to get out of their landing zones to undiscovered POIs on their maps. Even with a fully tricked-out Boost Pack and Amp dose (which temporarily increases movement speed by 35%), moving around the Starfield remains an exercise in frustration. It still takes too long to travel from one POI to another on foot, but on the other hand, Bethesda has announced that ground vehicles are finally in development. Meanwhile, the Starfield scanner has been updated with a useful new feature: POIs now appear on the scanner when activated, allowing players to select them and travel quickly without having to waste time scrolling through multiple menus.
Unfortunately, there is a downside. Naturally, players cannot fast travel to undiscovered POIs until the player unlocks them by walking to the location first. But returning players will likely be displeased to find they even have a BZ already Discoveries must be unlocked again if they want to fast travel there using the new scanner feature. For example, I’ve already explored every inch of New Atlantis, and while I can still fast travel to The Lodge and various other locations via the star map menus, those locations don’t unlock for me on the scanner. This also means that returning players will repeatedly be bombarded with “New location detected” notices when they arrive at interesting locations they haven’t visited since before the May update, and apparently won’t get any XP for rediscovering those locations.
Speaking of XP, one incredibly important detail that Bethesda left out of their marketing for the May update is the fact that using certain new features can affect how much XP a player earns. One of the best features of the update is the ability for players to tweak things like the difficulty of ground combat vs. space combat, from the game settings menu. Players can even increase the amount of credits that vendors carry (making repeated trips to sell stolen goods a thing of the past) and tune how much weight their character can carry. But it comes at a price: Increasing a character’s carrying capacity will decrease the amount of XP earned. Increasing the distance from which you can access items in your ship’s hold will have the same effect. Changing a character’s load capacity from Normal to Increased will reduce the amount of XP gained by 6%. Increasing your carrying capacity to Greatly Enhanced will cost you 8% of your earned XP. Allowing yourself to access your ship’s cargo bay from anywhere reduces this by an additional 6%. Increasing your Vendor Credits from Normal to Very Increased will reduce your earned XP by an additional 4%.
With my character’s carrying capacity set to Increased, supply credits set to Very Increased, and my ship’s cargo accessible from anywhere, I was earning a total of 16% less experience per activity than I would have otherwise. But even more strangely, tuning combat damage (in space or on the ground) has zero effect on XP gained. It seems strange that Bethesda is set on punishing players who want to avoid repeatedly fast traveling back and forth to get into their ship’s hold, making multiple trips to multiple Trade Office locations to sell their wares, or listening to their companions repeatedly complain loudly. that they’re transferring too much because the game’s woefully inadequate default transfer capacity means they’re constantly overloaded. Why give players the option to play the game their way and then punish them for it?
However, players looking for a challenge will be rewarded as decreasing vendor credits, ship cargo availability, and payload will increase the amount of experience players earn. But that makes the fact that there’s absolutely zero XP penalty for increasing the damage one takes in combat (or reducing the damage enemies can take) even weirder. I tested this by running the “Eyewitness” quest with max player damage and minimal enemy damage – so severely reducing the difficulty didn’t result in any XP penalty, but it did make the battle easier when one of the most threatening monsters in the game turned roughly into a creature. dangerous as a radio receiver. One wonders what Bethesda’s goal is with regard to XP penalties and bonuses.
As for the Radroaches, replaying the Terrormorph quest line also revealed that there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of fixing the many bugs in the game. On Cydonia, I encountered naked miners, saw my companions walking around without a space suit on atmosphereless planets and wielding invisible weapons, and had an entire conversation with the back of an NPC’s head (seems to be an issue with the game camera failing during the dialogue sequence is still alive). After disposing of the comically weak Terrormorphs that attacked New Atlantis, I turned around to find a vital companion NPC shot down or killed in combat. The option to talk to her kept coming up, but her choice didn’t wake her up, so I went back to the UC Vanguard soldiers I’d left holding the line behind me.
After striking up a conversation with the soldier who was supposed to interrogate me, the game went into dialogue, but didn’t offer me any dialogue options to choose from. I couldn’t exit the dialog or enter the game menu, I was forced to restart, and when I did, I found that the autosave created when I exited the game was corrupted, renaming my character “Dude Mack” and changing her level from 31 to “##.” I went back to my previous save, made moments after I put away my last Terrormorph, and loaded up to find that all of New Atlantis had turned a ground breaking shade of yellow that made it almost impossible to see anything. After restarting the game again, the save finally loaded properly and the mysteriously downed NPC was alive and well.
Starfield’s May update is certainly a step in the right direction, and features like being able to decorate your ship to match the player’s base or home are fantastic. Updates to the photo mode now allow players to choose from a variety of facial expressions for their character, and can also change the pose and expression of any NPC the player accompanies them, making photo ops more attractive. The 3D maps of surfaces and buildings are extremely useful, as is the new ability to quickly move from the scanner. But in the end, Starfield still suffers from the same problems that plagued it at launch, from frustrating bugs to empty planets with little interest in exploring. By far the biggest issue with the new update is that some of its most useful features – like the ability to access cargo more easily, transport more items, and make fewer trips to Trade Bureau vendors – come with a built-in penalty for players who dare to take advantage of them.
Although Bethesda hasn’t said when players can expect to gain access to ground vehicles for planetary exploration, their addition will hopefully improve the core gameplay experience, and hopefully the Shattered Space expansion coming this fall will also add a bit more depth. to a game that is currently a mile wide and an inch deep. I still have hope for the future of Starfield and look forward to the new expansion. But after experiencing the game’s biggest update to date, I’m worried that Bethesda’s decision to penalize players for using much-needed quality-of-life upgrades and persistent bugs in some of Starfield’s biggest quests will continue to negatively impact the game, and I find that I wonder if could additional features planned for the game come with a hidden price. Vehicles are all well and good, but not if I have to synthesize my own gasoline to use them, or suffer an XP penalty for daring to stuff too many space sandwiches in my trunk when I venture interstellar picnic.