With a long development time, it’s only natural that there will be versions of Starfield that Todd Howard’s team had scrapped in favor of what has been dropped at the release date. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see everything, but some hidden content does find its way to the surface this early into the game’s shelf life.
Take, for instance, this old star map that some Redditor had unearthed that showed details in the map and HUD that didn’t make it to the final version of Bethesda’s open-galaxy space exploration RPG. The screenshot is lower quality than most, but you can see those details on the right side.
You could see details like fuel consumption, solar radiation, and micrometeoroids. According to the uploader, this seems to be a map for an iteration in which Starfield included more hazards and obstacles than we saw in the final product.
Fuel consumption, for instance, confirms what Todd Howard revealed in a video interview in 2022. He had previously revealed that they designed Starfield’s space travel to be at the whim of fuel supply and consumption. This means you could run out of fuel and ground to a halt in the middle of a flight.
This map further reveals that environmental hazards could also damage your ship and hamper your journey in this particular version of Starfield.
However, there’s still hope for players who would like to experience this version. In the same interview, Todd Howard speculated that there might be a mod in the future that will bring back that mechanic to the base game.
Even the base game has some content that appears in the code but remains locked. These include space stations and the inaccessible M-class ships that can only be commandeered now through a mod.
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