It’s been over 900 days since Starfield launched, and back in 2023 the conversation around it was… let’s call it a screeching inferno of ass stank. I put about 90 hours into it at launch mostly doing the better side missions and faction questlines, because the main quest never really grabbed me, and the procedural exploration got repetitive fast. Add in the “loading screen simulator” travel, the menu spelunking, and the god-awful inventory/storage stuff, and yeah—Starfield spent a lot of time shooting its own kneecaps off. But now in March 2026, with the PS5 port landing April 7 and Bethesda dropping the free “Free Lanes” update plus the $10 Terran Armada expansion, I’m actually… hopeful. Free Lanes is aiming straight at immersion: cruise mode interplanetary travel, less map/menu nonsense, more ship gameplay, random encounters, and a big pass on gear progression with Xtech legendary re-rolling (including a pity system, thank god). There’s also shared storage across outposts, better outpost tracking, more POI variety, new vehicles, and a bunch of quality-of-life snowballing. Terran Armada looks like the “scale and lore” injection the base game needed—new faction, incursions, Earth history, new ships/parts, and more reasons to explore carefully. I don’t know if it’ll ever be the Fallout-in-space dream, but it’s finally moving in that direction—and I genuinely want it to stick the landing.