Starfield has always been great but Free Lanes makes it even better

As Bethesda’s first new IP in over 20 years, Starfield was almost set up to fail. The promise of a vast universe to explore and infinite ways to live out your spacefaring dreams were always doomed by the unstoppable runaway hype train.

Was it frustrating every time the game cut to a landing and takeoff animation every time you arrived or left a planet? Sure. Was it tedious traversing the many planets you encountered? Absolutely. Was the map you used to find your way around said planets borderline useless? 100%. Was there enough out there on these thousands of new worlds for you to explore? No, no there wasn’t.

Despite this, playing Starfield when it first launched was a magical experience. From the mythic strangeness of the main story to some truly incredible quests (see the Mantis mission for an example of the latter), the game drew me in further and further with each hour I played. After those initial frustrations wore off, I was locked in and with every new piece of loot I acquired or new place I visited, I found myself constantly remembering why I bought an Xbox Series X specifically to play the game when it was announced.

That being said, those issues were enough to put a lot of players off the game shortly after it launched. Reviews were tepid and it famously didn’t pick up any major nominations at The Game Awards. But, three years on from launch, Bethesda hasn’t given up on its space game.

With the launch of the huge new Free Lanes update and Terran Armada DLC promising quality of life updates, new quests, weapons and places to explore, Bethesda has issued the perfect reminder that Starfield has always been a great, if flawed, game. For longtime players who loved the game from day one, this update makes an already great game even better, but for players unimpressed with Bethesda’s long-awaited new world, Terran Armada and Free Lanes act as a new on ramp into the world of Starfield.

Like Shattered Space back in 2024, Terran Armada is a new story DLC that expands on the world of Starfield. As per Bethesda, "The Terran Armada has risen, marching an army of advanced robots across the Settled Systems to "unite" humanity by force."

Your mission is to fight back the invasion and uncover new secrets long hidden. It adds new enemies, weapons, tech and, crucially, a new travelling companion to add to your crew. It’s a fun and important update that adds new content and works to fill out the vast Starfield universe. It’s also, not the best part.

An infinite frontier

The real gem that makes Starfield the game players were promised back in 2023 is Free Lanes. My biggest complaint about the game as someone who loved it was space travel. From the constant loading screens to tedious journey’s between planets. Free Lanes fixes that by adding a Cruise Mode that lets you travel freely within star systems.

You can walk around your ship, make upgrades and modifications inside and fend off incoming attacks, all while travelling between planets.

They’ve also added something called X-Tech (not Hextech, sorry Arcane fans). It’s a new resource that allows you to further modify your equipment. "Re-roll legendary modifiers, unlock a new Tier 4 Legendary rank, push weapons and gear into Superior and Exceptional quality tiers, and install new modules to upgrade gear attributes," Bethesda notes.

Perhaps the biggest quality of life upgrade that players have been begging for since launch is a better way to manage your inventory. Now, you can use shared containers that allow you to access your inventory anywhere. It also adds a new database that keeps recipients, resources and locations organised. As someone who took literal physical notes when I first played the game, this aspect of Free Lanes is particularly exciting.

And that’s just scratching the surface. Free Lanes adds new collectibles, including vintage action figures that make my Star Trek-loving heart sing, a new space station called Anchorpoint, a new land vehicle that promises to literally take off on low gravity planets and, most importantly, a pet Milliwhale for your outpost.

No Man’s Starfield

There will always be an argument that many of these features should have been baked into the original game at launch. In some cases, I agree.

The map, for example, was never really user friendly and there should always have been a vehicle for travelling on planet. In other cases, I think that discovering what players want and iterating with free updates is a welcome solution. Bethesda already has a playbook from which to crib in No Man’s Sky, whose famously disastrous launch has long since been forgotten, buried by an avalanche of free updates that have repaired the game's, and its developer's, image.

Starfield wasn’t in the same state as No Man’s Sky when it launched, for one it was surprisingly polished and bug free, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t issues. Hence why Bethesda has gone the No Man’s Sky route, listening to players, making quality of life improvements to the UI and adding content where it was missing. Crucially, they’ve held back on talking about the game until they had something to talk about. This means players are rewarded for their faith in the game with big updates like Free Lanes.

New DLC is exciting, sure, but Free Lanes is what really makes now the perfect time to revisit Starfield, especially if you gave up on the game early on.

There was always a magic to Starfield beneath its imperfect facade. The music, the NASA-punk aesthetics and the spiritual story of exploration hooked me in the same way that the best of Star Trek or Star Wars can. And now that the facade has been given a glow up with Free Lanes, and Terran Armada has filled out the vast universe even more, there has never been a better time to dive into the world of Starfield.

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