As someone who has played hundreds of hours of Starfield, I can say that Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG has always been a mixed bag, but it has never been the disaster that many online have claimed it to be. For all of its faults, Starfield has always been a game with no equal, mixing Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls pedigree with a stupendously huge universe that is impossible to fully explore.
With the release of Starfield Free Lanes, I’ve jumped between a brand-new save on PS5 and my existing Xbox save after a few runs through the Unity. (You’ll get there, newcomers.) For starters, the PlayStation 5 version of the game is incredible with fantastic support for the DualSense controller that adds to the immersion with great rumble, trigger support, and a cool use of the controller’s speaker for radio transmissions. Secondly, the game’s latest update isn’t as game-changing as some have said, but it is a marked improvement on Bethesda’s RPG.
Obviously, the biggest addition to Starfield is the introduction of Free Lanes, a system that allows you to freely travel through space at a rapid speed to travel in real-time between planets. While you can still play the map and fast travel wherever you need to go, this new form of travel makes your ship feel like an actual spaceship, and not just a player home in the stars with a few guns bolted on.
Free Lanes actually extends the gameplay of Starfield by giving you the freedom to move where you please. While the original version of the game was the most Daggerfall-like Bethesda RPG of the modern era, the introduction of real-space between its solar systems makes the game feel even more vast, even more incomprehensibly big, and also more enticing to explore.
It helps that Bethesda has reformatted a lot of the content within its sci-fi game to fit the new Free Lanes mode of travel, allowing you to discover new and existing missions and anomalies while you’re trawling through space at supersonic speed. Really, it should be boring to travel through space with nothing but the stars around you, but seeing stars rush past your ship as you get up from your cockpit to craft some food or redecorate is thrilling.
Nevertheless, there is still some friction with this new system, and it does appear quite clear that it is bolted onto Starfield’s existing mode of travel. Arriving at your destination does result in a quite immersion-breaking stop and load sequence where planets, space debris, and entire asteroid fields pop into view, but it’s infinitesimally better than just activating the grav drive and jumping to your mission.
Additionally, Free Lanes has expanded the number of POIs you can discover on planet with more variation between existing POIs as well. You can still see a number of the same bases with the same enemies and very similar layouts, but the addition of variety (especially with the new Terran Armada DLC active) makes the universe feel more varied—if not entirely varied—than it did before.
With all that said, there are still parts of Starfield that are quite annoying, and it’s clear why Bethesda didn’t want to label this as a huge 2.0 rebrand. Even with the real-time space travel, the new land vehicle, pets, and a brand-new story to explore, it’s still the same Starfield. The cats and dogs are still dead, Matteo is still annoying, and NPCs in New Atlantis still look at you with their weird beady eyes.
As Bethesda commits to years of additional support to the game, there are still things I’d love to see added. For example, spaceship docking and undocking should be a seamless animation instead of cutting to the same screen every time, and an overhaul to Starborn temples to turn them into actual dungeons with puzzles to complete would make collecting powers way less boring. With that said, Free Lanes may not be game-changing, but it is effortlessly cool.
If you didn’t like Starfield before, Free Lanes isn’t going to change your mind about it. (Well, unless the only thing you didn’t like about it was the lack of space travel.) However, if you already enjoyed Starfield and could take its issues on the chin, this update serves to make your experience in Bethesda’s world better, more engaging, and much cooler.
There is no game like Starfield. There are other space games, sure, but there’s nothing truly like it. For all its ups and downs, it is a game that is truly alone in a universe of games, and I wouldn’t judge anyone for bouncing off it’s rough edges. However, as someone who has always enjoyed Starfield, Free Lanes has made this a better game for me. As someone who enjoyed the lore of its dystopian universe and wanted to learn more, this gives me the space to feel like I’m actually exploring.
No, Free Lanes isn’t completely game-changing, but it’s still game-enhancing. While flying across the stars, you now feel like the explorer the game hypes you up to be, and it makes you wonder why Starfield ever launched without it.
