Highlights
- Some bugs have been discovered in Starfield, including a glitch that causes a player's ship to launch only its cockpit into orbit during takeoff, rendering it unusable.
- Reloading the game or switching to another home spacecraft may not fix the issue, but some players have resolved similar problems by doing so.
- Players with custom ships should save before attempting takeoffs, or they can fast-travel to a destination to skip the potentially buggy launch sequence. No reports of this glitch affecting pre-built spaceships have been made so far.
One Starfield player encountered a peculiar bug that saw their ship launch go hilariously wrong. The footage of the puzzling event made the rounds on social media just as Starfield released for PC and Xbox consoles.
The ambitious scope of a typical open-world RPG from Bethesda historically led to the company's games having fairly buggy launches. The studio was looking to break with that precedent this time around, as indicated by the pledge that Starfield will have the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game ever, which Xbox Game Studio Head Matt Booty gave back in June.
Although the game's initial reviews suggest that Starfield managed to deliver on that promise, some bugs still made their way to the day-one version of the space-faring RPG. One such problem was uncovered by Reddit user Denubtheredditor, who stumbled upon a bizarre issue causing their ship to only launch its cockpit into orbit during takeoff. While their video demonstration of one such incident on Akila was met with great amusement from the fandom, the player insisted that the problem was no laughing matter, not least because it's not merely a visual glitch, but one that actively prevents them from keeping their ship in one piece.
Reloading the game didn't fix the issue, and neither did switching to another home spacecraft before reselecting the buggy one, according the player, who concluded that the problem "hard-locked" their custom-built Starfield ship into a state of unusability. A handful of fans chiming in on this newly surfaced bug said they have experienced similar issues with their vessel designs, although all of them reportedly managed to resolve them by reloading a save, sometimes after restarting the game itself. Until there's more information on what exactly could be causing the problem, all players with custom ships would do well to save before attempting takeoffs.
Alternatively, most of the spaceship launch sequences in Starfield can be skipped by simply fast-traveling to a desired destination from the planet map screen. Doing so comes at the expense of losing out on some immersiveness, but should conceivably circumvent this particular issue by virtue of not initiating the seemingly buggy takeoff cutscene.
There have so far been no reports of this glitch affecting pre-built spaceships that can be bought or received as quest rewards. The problem itself isn't the first know bug detrimental to the overall gameplay experience that the fandom discovered to date, as underlined by some recent player complaints about severe sound issues in Starfield.
Starfield is available now for PC and Xbox Series X/S.