Starfield fans are already turning to the game's modding community to address the lack of 'romantic' content in the upcoming RPG.
Last week, the Australian rating board revealed its 'Restricted' rating for Starfield, basing its judgement on the game's "interactive drug use." That rating also revealed a 'None' listing under the 'Sex' category, suggesting that Starfield is an entirely chaste experience.
That's not a huge surprise - Skyrim is a pretty sexless game, and when you do bump uglies in Fallout, it tends to be more of a 'fade to black' experience. Bethesda certainly isn't following the likes of BioWare or CD Projekt Red into their cinematic adult scenes, but that doesn't seem to have halted expectations around the game's inevitable modding community.
The top comment on a Reddit post bemoaning the lack of sex in Starfield reads "well I'm sure that one particular website will fix that issue," likely referring to a website called Loverslab that features minimal content moderation around its mods. Others point to Nexusmods, which offers its own wealth of content, with a significant portion of it leaning towards the more adult end of the modding spectrum.
The main debate right now seems to be around how long it will take for those more 'adult' mods to arrive - one comment suggesting players should "give it a week or two" was countered with the idea that one seriously-caffeinated modder would knock the changes out on day one. Others are already creating their modding checklists, with nude mods right up there with the Shrek and Thomas the Tank Engine add-ons that find their way into almost every new release right around launch.
Starfield mods have already been confirmed by Todd Howard, who says that mod support will be available, just like in Skyrim and Fallout. That's meant that some modders are already gearing up to make sure they're ready at launch - the Starfield Community Patch project has one group ready to help smooth out the almost-inevitable rough edges that come with a Bethesda release.
With Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 now a week apart, some RPG fans are going to have to make an important choice this Fall.
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I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.