Starfield may be revamping its interplanetary ship travel in a way that eliminates loading screens, according to some newly surfaced evidence. The purported addition, which some Starfield fans have been requesting for years, has yet to be acknowledged by Bethesda in any capacity.
Calls for Starfield to offer maximally streamlined interplanetary travel have been circulating online long before the space-faring RPG was released in September 2023. The game ultimately delivered a more traditional system, requiring players to go through a loading screen whenever they travel between different star systems or planets.
New Starfield Update Hints at Revamped Ship Travel
Bethesda may now be in the process of rethinking this mechanic, according to some new evidence uncovered by modder Xtcrefugee. While inspecting the underlying contents of Starfield's newly released August 2025 update, the modder uncovered multiple references to a "cruise mode" functionality that appears to handle things like quest scripting and triggers for some utility functions during interplanetary travel. As the current version of the game handles such travel via loading screens, these references suggest the developer could be preparing to introduce real-time interplanetary navigation that could feasibly take advantage of this expanded cruise mode functionality.
All the uncovered references to the new cruise mode features were pulled from Papyrus Script Source (.psc) files, which store various game logic in Bethesda's proprietary and human-readable scripting language. Back in September 2023, one persistent fan demonstrated that traveling between two Starfield planets within the same star system was possible without loading screens, though the process took dozens of hours due to vast interplanetary distances. One possible interpretation of the new functions is that Bethesda may introduce a system to accelerate in-game time, enabling faster interplanetary travel in these situations.
Starfield PC Players Can Already Skip Some Ship Travel Loading Screens with a Mod
In May 2024, a Starfield mod titled Astrogate introduced similar functionality, enabling immersive interplanetary travel without loading screens. The add-on was downloaded over 37,000 times from Nexus Mods and is still receiving regular updates, with its latest patch arriving in early August 2025.
While the newly uncovered scripting code suggests Bethesda is exploring changes to Starfield’s interplanetary travel, the absence of an official announcement indicates that such plans are far from set in stone. The developer may currently be testing the technical feasibility of the feature before deciding whether to implement it, and to what extent. In the meantime, fans continue to await news on the game’s second major expansion, which has been rumored for over a year now but has not yet been officially confirmed.
