It’s hard to say whether one of Starfield‘s greatest missed opportunities is an oversight or an intentional exclusion. The game does its best to ease players into its lore. They can learn all the basics of the wider galaxy, right up to the nature of the ancient mysteries only solved at the ending of Starfield, from the first time they set foot in New Atlantis. However, since most are likely to revisit this major city multiple times across the course of the campaign, players can decide to pace exposition more slowly if they so choose.
But still, there are tons of secrets to be discovered in Starfield, many of which expand on the game’s base lore in meaningful ways. Most of it makes perfect sense by the end, even if some of it, like the aliens’ near-total lack of personality, isn’t totally satisfuing. But there’s one lore detail that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny at all. The reasoning for it is flimsy at best. Was this game-changing idea simply left out of the final product because it meshed with the story Starfield was trying to tell, or is there something deeper going on here?
Why Doesn’t Starfield Let You Use Mechs?
Mechs are everywhere in Starfield, but they’re never seen in action. When they do appear, Starfield‘s mechs are little more than gradually rusting scrap piles or untouchable museum antiques. There’s never a chance to pilot a mech, or even to fight against one on foot. Per the in-game lore, there’s a reason for that: the construction and use of mechs has been banned since a decade prior to Starfield‘s events. During the Colony War between rival settler factions, both sides employed mechanized armor in battle, but the United Colonies combined mechanized infantry with bioengineered aliens in a strategy they called xenowarfare.
These strategies were very effective for both factions – a bit too effective, as they determined in hindsight. The widespread death and destruction caused by the clash between mechs and bioengineered aliens led to an eventual ban on both types of weaponry. For these reasons, there are no actively functioning mechs to be seen. This is likely based on the real-life Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, a post-World War I armistice signed by many of the war’s major players to decrease the destructive power of their navies.
Players first learn all this during one of Starfield‘s earliest side quests. In order to join UC, a would-be recruit must first complete a brief training program in which they walk through a series of educational dioramas. One of these explains the events of the Colony War and the mech ban in brief, and lo and behold, right next to it is the first mech most players will see. Thus Starfield begins to tease the player, in a tantalizing dance that continues throughout the entire game. They’ll repeatedly come across an incredible, powerful-looking giant mech, only to walk up to it and realize it can’t be interacted with.
Going to such lengths to design mechs, give them sensible reasons to exist, and include them in a game, only to announce that players can’t touch them, is downright cruel. So there’s probably something else going on here, some non-lore reason that interactive mechs weren’t included in Starfield. But what exactly that reason is remains to be seen.
Starfield’s Lack Of Functioning Mechs Could Be A Game Design Choice
Starfield‘s mechs being out of order could be an intentional bit of game design, or a natural limitation of its engine. Mechs can be difficult to program. They have complicated designs, with many moving parts, and rapid-firing weapons that could easily overload a game that hasn’t been designed ground-up for mechanized combat. That goes double for Starfield‘s finicky engine, which sometimes feels like it’s fit to fall apart at the seams. Plus, with Starfield‘s uniquely complicated physical systems, including variable gravity on different planets, mechs could pose even more of a problem.
Mechs may also have been excluded from the final game in order to solve a potential balance issue. A previous Bethesda RPG, Fallout 4, had the exact opposite problem: players are given nigh-impenetrable suits of Power Armor within the first hour of the game. Of course, Fallout 4 does curtail how often players are actually able to use their Power Armor, since the suits require constant power from a scarcely found external source. But still, once the player has enough Fusion Cores, the Power Armor is their ticket around any roadblock the game might put in front of them, be it hellish enemies or high radiation.
A balance issue like this would only get worse with Starfield‘s lack of level scaling. The game is designed to vary in difficulty from area to area – players might happen upon a planet that’s too tough, and resolve to come back later at a higher level. Having an overpowered mech from the beginning would allow them to steamroll these challenges without a second thought. That would entirely deflate the exciting challenge of space exploration, making Starfield downright boring.
Bethesda Could Be Saving Mechs For Starfield DLC
There’s always a possibility that Starfield will include piloted mechs in a future expansion. Starfield‘s first DLC, Shattered Space, has already been confirmed, although there’s no information about how it might look. Of course, a mech revival would also mean breaking the UC-Freestar Collective treaty, but that could be the whole point.
DLC might portray a reignited war between the rival factions, and require the player to choose a side. The title of the DLC already seems to point to that, implying a schism in peaceful space. Players would have to determine which of these weapons they’d rather fight alongside, and which they’d rather fight against: heavily armored, perfectly designed mechs, or irrepressibly violent, bioengineered aliens? This would create fascinating asymmetric battles, which should require more strategy than the typical Starfield gunfight.
But at the end of the day, all of this is just speculation. There’s really no way to know why mechs didn’t make it into the finished game, and that’ll remain the case unless mech-centric DLC is confirmed. For now, players can only marvel at Starfield‘s imposing but inoperative mechs, and hope for that to change in the near future.
