Starfield won’t let players fly seamlessly from the surface of planets to space.

Todd Howard, the game’s director, spoke to IGN and offered further details on the game – including the length of its main quest.

However, when asked whether players can fly seamlessly to space, Howard said the feature is “really just not that important to the player” to justify the extra engineering work required.

“People have asked, ‘Can you fly the ship straight down to the planet?’ No. We decided early in the project that the on-surface is one reality, and then when you’re in space it’s another reality,” he said.

The comments are interesting with so many comparisons made between Starfield and that other space game No Man’s Sky, in which players can seamlessly explore the universe.

Howard also described the ship combat in Starfield as influenced by FTL and MechWarrior.

“There’s been a lot of space sims that we’re fans of, and space shooters from the ’90s,” he said, but the Starfield team wanted it “to feel [like] something unique”.

Starfield had its big gameplay reveal at the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase – catch up here on everything that was shown.