Starfield Player Builds Cowboy Bebop Ship in the Game

A clever Starfield player has brought a touch of classic interplanetary anime Cowboy Bebop to the Settled Systems by importing the design of the Swordfish, one of the series’ most iconic spaceships. To create the craft, the player used the highly versatile ship design system built into Starfield by developer Bethesda.

One of the best things about Starfield is the space it makes for player creativity. Bethesda took some of the best aspects of previous open world games, like Fallout 4‘s settlement building, and incorporated it into its original vision for humanity’s spacefaring future. In the Settled Systems, players can build any number of things to suit their preferences, ranging from modifying weapons and gear to crafting their own starships. While many of the best Starfield ships can be bought or earned, fans of the game have made a point of using the ship design system to design their dream vessels, whether they be original designs or ones referencing iconic sci-fi vehicles.

For Reddit user L4westby, their choice of legendary ship design was the Swordfish, the agile fighter craft from Cowboy Bebop. The Swordfish is seen in the hands of Cowboy Bebop protagonist Spike Spiegel, who uses it to accomplish various bounty hunting missions throughout the Solar System. As part of Starfield‘s ship system, L4westby’s version of the Swordfish gets an upgrade to be able to jump all over the galaxy using the game’s Grav Jump technology.

Starfield Fan Recreates the Swordfish from Cowboy Bebop in the Game

In their post, L4westby shared comparison screenshots between the Swordfish as seen in Cowboy Bebop and the created ship. Their Starfield ship expertly recreates the silhouette and bold red paint job of the Swordfish using a variety of in-game parts. They even recreated the Swordfish’s telltale “sword,” a massive beam cannon mounted on the ship’s ventral hull. Meanwhile, the Swordfish’s distinctive ball cockpit seemed to be recreated using pieces of an in-game docker with an appropriately rounded shape. Players praised L4westby’s tribute to one of the greatest sci-fi anime of all time. The only real diversion from the original design was in size. Whereas the “real” Swordfish was a single-seater ship about the size of a small real-life airplane, the Starfield Swordfish is massive, almost the size of the Bepop, the ship the Swordfish launches from.

One other wrinkle is the likelihood that L4westby may have used modded parts or glitches to get the exact shape they were looking for. Though L4westby didn’t indicate whether the design uses mods or glitches, some of the parts appear to be non-standard or use glitched techniques to achieve their shape. Unlike another Cowboy Bebop Swordfish design from closer to Starfield‘s launch, the use of mods or glitches potentially puts this more accurate ship out of reach for players who want to stick to the “rules” of the in-game tool.