Starfield New Game Plus mods give you full control over the game's weirdest elements

One of the lantern fish lures dangled in the face of anybody losing momentum in Starfield is "mate, you would not believe the weird stuff that happens in New Game Plus". I won't say too much - not in this opening paragraph, anyway - but there's a playfulness to the post-completion options that you don't really find in the rest of Bethesda's much-ballyhooed RPG. It's the kind of thing you expect from modders, not the developers themselves.

The endgame offerings could be more convenient, however. There's an element of randomisation involved which means that Starfield players must complete and replay the game several times over to experience every last possibility. The New Game Plus settings do give you the option of skipping forward, but it's still another few hours of legwork - an unwelcome prospect if you consider Starfield to be "so big, it feels small, cold and unlived in". Well, now there are Starfield mods that can help with that.

Nexusmod user Avalonica's self-explanatory "Genuine New Game or New Game Plus within minutes" is a 6KB download that lets you skip to the end and fire up whichever NG+ scenario you please using the magic of Starfield console commands. The mod also allows you to launch a NG+ scenario with a brand new character, making progressing through Starfield all over again a bit more of an adventure.

"In my humble opinion Bethesda dropped the ball major-time with the New Game Plus mode!" Avalonica notes in the description. "Why would a player want to redo everything as the 'same' character? With no 'legit' game option to respec the background or traits nothing new is added to the mix from a role-play perspective. And the worst sin must be how the player gets no 'option' whatsoever asking if they want to keep or remove all their 'Status' data."

Certainly sounds like good material for an official Starfield update. If you're having trouble with Avalonica's mod, there's also "Choose Your Own Adventure - A New Game Plus Mod" from the honorable and upstanding Buttflapper. This does require you to reach the end of the game at least once, however.

While I'm not sure I can face chewing through dozens more hours of Starfield to plunder all of its secrets, I do find Bethesda's approach to New Game Plus intriguing. Are you still chugging away at this thousand-hour astroramble? I started fooling around with console commands myself over the weekend, and am currently standing on a small square of onions off the shoulder of Remus, looking a bit sad. Not sure where to go now. Here, see for yourself.

Update: Still here, and curious to hear more? Great news, I've just remembered that our CMS has a spoiler tag, which means I can be specific about Starfield's New Game Plus options without ruining things for those engrossed in the story. Here we go. Click to reveal!

Complete the game and you're given the chance to reset the whole universe and experience a randomly chosen (assuming you're not using one of the above mods) variation of it, while keeping your character level, powers, skill points and special endgame kit. This also resets all the missions you've undertaken and relationships you've formed.

These alternate universes share a lot of material, but there are some conspicuous differences, especially when it comes to the Constellation group at the story's heart. In one universe, they've all been murdered before you even arrive at the Lodge on New Atlantis. In another universe, you'll face an evil version of yourself. In a third, Constellation's members are all children.

Not having finished the game myself, I'm not sure how dramatic the alterations are beyond that, but I like the whimsy of all this. Comparisons have been made with Nier Automata, and they're not entirely unfair, though Automata's narrative design is far more ambitious.