While Starfieldmight not have lived up to the legendary expectations of Bethesda’s legacy for some, it still offers more than enough unique experiences to warrant revisiting after its ongoing updates. Even though Bethesda had to reinvent the formula of its open-world experiences to create Starfield‘s expansive frontier, it’s still missing more than a few features that helped its predecessors shine. And with Bethesda promising more Starfield updates in the coming months, some features could come sooner than expected.
Making up for the lack of dense landscapes and dungeons of Fallout and Skyrim alike, Starfield offers a more dream-like experience that comes with exploring each of its immersive planetscapes. Although there are plenty of mods that can add even more immersive elements or elevate Starfield‘s experience far beyond the base game offerings, one exciting potential update would be a more than worthwhile investment for the spacefaring RPG.
Starfield Deserves An Official VR Version
Taking Immersive Exploration To A Whole New Level
With how short most fully dedicated Virtual Reality games can often be, official support for massively open-world games like Bethesda’s own Skyrim, Fallout 4, and hopefully Starfield can offer a completely new way to experience each game. Compared to the kind of fantasy worlds both its predecessors offered, the more grounded sci-fi world of Starfield would shine even brighter with an even more immersive VR edition.
While Starfield may struggle to match the high-quality gameplay of competitors or even past Bethesda games in the open-world RPG genre, Starfield‘sgameplay foundations give it the chance to become one of the best VR space games on the market. Even the more repetitive aspects of Starfield, like scanning planets or walking between objectives, would be much more bearable from the true first-person perspective offered by VR.
Aside from elevating its weaker aspects, Starfield‘s strengths could greatly benefit from official VR implementation, with zero-gravity shootouts and flying through space in your own customized ship both massively benefiting from the added functionality. Although Bethesda’s VR ports themselves aren’t the highest quality options out there, they pair excellently with the already dedicated single-player experiences, especially with the right mods.
Bethesda’s VR Support Was Industry-Leading
Setting A New Standard For Triple-A VR Support
From the massive open-world exploration, beautiful environments, and plethora of deadly weapons to wield, it’s easy to see why Skyrim VR still stands as one of the best virtual reality offerings to date, with Starfield easily having the potential to stand next to the gaming giant thanks to its own merits.
Even if they struggled to hold up on their own compared to more recent and revolutionary games like Half Life: Alyx, both Skyrim VR and Fallout 4 VR were some of the most ambitious VR ports at the time of their release. Rather than simply letting you experience basic minigames with an Elder Scrolls aesthetic, games like Skyrim VR allow you to experience the full game from start to finish from a fully immersive VR perspective.
More than just being great offerings on their own, Skyrim and Fallout 4‘s VR ports set a new precedent for porting Triple-A games to the world of virtual reality. Resident Evil, No Man’s Sky, and Hitman 3 are others that have become notable for their post-launch inclusions. The limited market for VR players makes developing solely for the medium an incredibly risky task for most Triple-A studios, but official VR ports can offer an excellent middle ground that gives modding enthusiasts a platform to build upon.
Even if the trend of incorporating VR modes into triple-A experiences seems to have slowed down in recent years, a new push by Bethesda could be just the thing the industry needs to start adapting more complex gaming experiences to the medium.
Mods Are Great, But It’s Not The Same
Starfield’s VR Support Would Open The Floodgates For Modded Content
Even though Starfield already has some Virtual Reality capabilities thanks to the efforts of its dedicated modding community, the lack of an official foundation to build upon is the only thing holding back Starfield‘s full VR potential. Aside from the inability to combine the efforts of multiple modding creators, Starfield‘s existing VR mods can cause frequent compatibility issues after large updates to the game.
You can play Starfield in VR right now thanks to community mods like Patreon user NoMoreFlat‘s paid ‘Startfield VR mod’, although these early access offerings lack many of the features you would expect from an official release.
Even if Bethesda’s official offerings like Skyrim VR are fun enough on their own, combining them with a plethora of fantastic user-created mods takes the experience to an entirely different level. Out of all the possible updates that could make Starfield worth playing in 2025, official Virtual Reality support is easily at the top of the list for its sheer gameplay potential.
While plenty of spacefaring games already have their own VR functionality, few competitors offer a blend of sci-fi gameplay and classic Bethesda RPG mechanics, even if the base experience isn’t as finely tuned in either regard. From immersion-enhancing mods that integrate HUD elements into your gameplay to overhauls that introduce new VR-related combat mechanics or world interaction, Starfieldcould benefit just as much, if not more, from official VR support and the fan-made mods that come with it.
Source: Patreon/NoMoreFlat
Starfield
- Released
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September 6, 2023
- ESRB
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M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs, Strong Language, Violence
- Engine
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proprietary engine
