Starfield drops biggest update so far, includes city maps

How’re you holding up, my fellow Starfield fans? We’ve been in somewhat of a content drought as of late, but this new update is here to remedy our thirst.

Bethesda has just announced Starfield’s biggest update to date. Not only does it include the usual line-up of gameplay and display fixes, the update is packed with new features including one that we’ve been longing for since release.

That’s right, folks. City maps are finally coming. Anyone who’s played Starfield will know that navigation, once you reach the surface of a planet, is pretty difficult. If you’re doing a mission, you can follow your scanner’s directional arrows to your destination but there was previously no way to find other key locales you may want to visit outside of your mission, like vendors.

That’s now an issue of the past. Update 1.11.33 introduces “improved surface maps,” with the patch notes reading, “We’ve heard your feedback, and we’ve made some big improvements to surface maps, so you’ll always know just where to go and no longer ‘get lost’ on the way to your parents’ place (and they weren’t buying that excuse anyway, you should really go visit them).”

The update will also introduce several new gameplay options that allow players to customise combat: “For those of you who like a bit of an extra challenge or want to make some aspects of the game easier, you can customise your experience with brand new options in the Settings menu. Want to make ground combat harder but ship combat easier? You can do just that.”

Take a look at some of our favourite Starfield wins and fails below.

Next up, we have added interior ship decoration - “now you can decorate your ships just like you can with Outposts” - along with added tabs to container menus to improve inventory management.

Players will also be able to change traits and appearance after entering the Unity, a new dialogue camera toggle has been added in settings, and Xbox Series X users can now benefit from added display settings.

The main headline of those visual improvements is that Starfield is no longer capped at 30fps for Series X users. The game will now default to a frame rate target of 40fps.

Of course, there are also a ton of bug fixes which you can read up on in the patch notes. You can also view a video version below.

Interestingly, that video features a glimpse of drivable vehicles which I’m presuming will be included in a future update,

For now, this update is in Steam beta testing from today with a full Xbox and PC launch due on 15 May.