No, Starfield will not have space fishing

Depends on your definition of “fishing”

If you were hoping to be able to whip out your rod and catch some alien fish in Starfield, there’s bad news on that front. Todd Howard himself has confirmed that fishing won’t be a feature in Bethesda’s upcoming RPG.

In the latest episode of the Kinda Funny Xcast, Howard is asked a bunch of questions regarding the game. About 14 minutes in, he’s asked whether there’s going to be any “space fishing” in Starfield. Howard begins his answer by saying that it “depends on your definition of ‘fishing’,” curious as to whether it refers to the collecting or killing of fish.

Co-host Gary then gets more specific by asking whether he’ll be able to have “some kind of rod” that can be put into a lake in order to retrieve a fish. Howard then crushes Gary’s (and probably other people’s) hopes by confirming that the game does not have that feature. However, this does open up the possibility of it being including in an update, expansion, or even something modders could implement.

As we know, Skyrim was given a fishing feature for the Anniversary Edition that dropped in November 2021. Given this, it’s not too far-fetched to consider that Bethesda may add this peaceful hobby to Starfield at some point in the future. But that’s just speculation on our part.

When it comes to open world games, players like to take a step back from the action for a bit. The chance to do a spot of fishing while exploring an alien world sounds appealing, so it’s a bit of a shame that Starfield won’t have it on release.