Earlier this week, Bethesda officially announced the next major free content update for “Starfield” (“Free Lanes”), as well as the next story DLC, “Terran Armada”. Both will be launching on April 7th, 2026 (which we already kinda knew, but whatever), and – as a bonus – “Starfield” will be launching on Playstation 5 on the same day.
So anyway, yada yada yada… Every gaming website has already talked about this in depth already. I get it. But among this announcement Bethesda made, something occurred to me and many other content creators:
Did Bethesda crib notes from many different mod creators, to form a bunch of what we will get with “Free Lanes” and “Terran Armada”? I’m not going to say they did for sure, but you be the judge.
Let’s start with “Free Lanes”, the free content update. Something players have been asking for in “Starfield” for years is to have more intractability while traveling through space, rather than just constant fast travel jumps. They wanted to be able to set a course and then walk around the ship, interact with their crew, do some decorating, and so forth. Ideas that mods like “Astrogate” and “Slower Than Light” already provide.
Bethesda is also providing new companions, something that has been done by so many different mods that it just isn’t funny. Especially companions that aren’t as ‘squeaky clean, goody-two-shoes’ as the Constellation companions are. So now we’re getting new companions, including a couple of robots (much like in the mod “D.E.R.E.K”, among others), and an alien that is exactly the same as that in the mod “Sammy and the Lab of Nightmares”.
Then there’s the next DLC, “Terran Armada”. If you looked at the video trailer Bethesda released earlier this week for it and thought “Gee, that reminds me of the awesome paid mod, ‘Watchtower'”, then you aren’t alone. Sure, there’s more to TA than just seeming ridiculously close to “Watchtower”, but it seems to have clearly been influenced by WT. I could be wrong about that, but I’m just calling it like I see it.
Then there is the ridiculous amount of changes coming for crafting with FL/TA, and how a lot of it is surprisingly close to the “DarkStar” crafting systems. While it appears how they make the changes is different, the result is basically the same. Some might call it a mixture of “DarkStar” and “McClarence Outfitters”, but still…
The end result is that a lot of these coming content changes seems to be either inspired by, or outright ‘borrowed’ from multiple mods. The thing is, I can’t say I’m unhappy about that. These mods have been so important for “Starfield” that it is frankly unplayable in many ways without them. So while this sucks for the mod authors whose mods are potentially made irrelevant here, having those popular changes baked straight into the game just makes it better for everyone.
But let’s be fair here: This new content is not just borrowed mod ideas. New weapons, new suits, new ship parts, new game features, and a whole lot more! I am extremely excited for April 7th, and can’t wait to buy the new DLC and give it a playthrough! Especially since I have this awesome new laptop to play the game on, and eventually stream it on Twitch with…
… Oh, yeah. I got a new computer. It kinda rocks.
