Summary
- Starfield players have been using the game's ship-building system to create ships based on other media, including a spaceship that perfectly recreates Link from The Legend of Zelda in 8-bit form.
- The ability to stretch one's creative muscles is a recurring element in many of this year's biggest titles, and Starfield is no exception. Players can not only build their dream starships but also create custom characters and outposts.
- The community's creativity in Starfield is already impressive, and as the game grows, mods and future DLC will likely further expand the possibilities for ship-building.
A Starfield player brought a bit of The Legend of Zelda into Bethesda’s sci-fi first-person RPG with a spaceship that perfectly recreates the iconic Nintendo hero Link in his original 8-bit form. When it comes to assembling unique vessels in Starfield, the sky’s pretty much the limit, but as this one player proves, the game’s ship-builder also doubles as a rather effective means of creating retro pixel art.
Players have been busy in the roughly one month since Starfield’s release, and many have utilized the ship-building system to produce all sorts of impressive, funny, or otherwise memorable spacecrafts. Naturally, plenty of fans have recreated iconic ships from other sci-fi media to carry them across the Settled Systems, while others have gone in sillier directions with weird creations like a recent Starfield ship shaped like a hot dog.
Bizarre Starfield Mod Turns Every Ship Into Thomas the Tank Engine
The Thomas the Tank Engine mod from Skyrim makes its way to the stars, as all ships in Starfield can now become Thomas, even the Starborn vessel.
Taking things in a different direction, Digital_Utopia on Reddit built a ship that resembles Link’s 8-bit appearance from the very first Legend of Zelda released for the Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986. They pulled this off by using a large number of square ship parts like pixels, arranging and coloring them to match the pixels that make up Link’s original look. While Digital_Utopia stated that they were initially trying to make something more ambitious with dozens of colors, only to be held back by Starfield’s ship weight limits, what they ultimately settled on was nevertheless met with praise from other players.
As far as game crossovers go, it could be argued that a ship-based Starfield and Zelda crossover is one of the more fitting ones. Before Starfield, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was 2023’s go-to game for creating custom vehicles, and despite now facing competition from Starfield on that front, Tears of the Kingdom continues to see impressive new creations from its active playerbase.
The ability to stretch one’s creative muscles has been a recurring element through many of this year’s biggest titles. Starfield is just the latest example. Not only are players free to build the starship of their dreams, but custom characters and outposts as well, and though the game has only been out for only a few weeks, the amount of unique creations that have been shared is incredible.
With the sheer amount of creativity on display so far, it’ll be interesting to see what the community is able to come up with as time passes and the game grows. Already players are starting to use mods to push the boundaries of Starfield’s ship-builder, and it’s possible future DLC like the upcoming Shattered Space expansion will officially add new ships parts and building tools for those looking to make the ultimate battleship, cargo truck, or space-faring pixel art.
Starfield is available for PC and Xbox Series X/S.