Like many, I have been anticipating the release of Bethesda Game Studios’ next open-world RPG Starfield. Over the years we have seen Bethesda create rich fantasy medieval worlds that turned heads with The Elder Scrolls Series, and revive more grounded experiences set in a1950’s inspired post-apocalyptic setting, with the Fallout games. Even with these series’ successes and the fans that followed after each each release, we had yet to see Bethesda take to the stars.
I too have spent countless hours exploring Tamriel and the Wasteland but was curious if a space setting would glue my eyes to the screen or if I was better off waiting until The Elder Scrolls VI. Below are my initial impressions of playing Starfield on the Xbox Series X after my first twenty hours with the game. I will be walking through what choices I made, what planets I visited, what activities I chose to do and which ones I ignored. I will also be pointing out any short comings I find concerning but will have a more thorough discussion in my full review once I have completed the game.
The Setup of Starfield
Starfield kicks off your grand space adventure with your character being the newest member of a mining crew where your goal is to to mine space rocks for resources. During your introduction to your new job you come across find a strange metal artifact lodged into some ore and upon touching it you see what feels like the beginning of the universe. A wonderous spread of lights and colors that leave you in awe. An awe that is so strong it causes your character to pass out. You wake up to your supervisor and another fellow space miner asking you questions about what caused you to pass out before you’re taken to the character creation screen where you can customize the appearance of your character along with your background and three traits. Character creation is something I always look forward to in Bethesda games because I honestly love seeing the options evolve throughout each game. You can choose a premade background or create a custom one yourself.
Personally I really enjoyed the character creator and think this is Bethesda’s best one yet. I’m curious to see how other players in the community flesh it out with mods.
Once my character was created I made my way to my assigned objective and looted as many interested items as I could in hopes of giving myself a little bit of a head start with some extra items. In the process of looting everything I could pick up, I stole another miner’s sandwich and was curious to see how he and others would react. I knew this was the opening of the game so past Bethesda experiences had taught me that nothing I did really mattered in the grand scheme of things and unfortunately I was correct. All that happened was a brief moment where the miner yelled but did nothing else to confront me any further. This felt like a missed opportunity especially when stealing even the most insignificant thing can get land you in space jail, more on that later.
After I made my way to the current objective I quickly ended up in a shootout with pirates. I saw this coming a mile away as the mission objective led me to a wide open area full of boxes for cover along with the first actual weapon I was able to pickup. After dispatching the space pirates and talking to a few NPCs I was given a ship and a robot combat named Vasco that tasked me with visiting the city of New Atlantis to meet with a group called Constellation.
Combat so far felt very similar to that of a modern Fallout game minus the V.A.T.S. system. Gunplay is all in real time but even if your aim isn’t great, twitchy gun skills are not required, they just help you take down your enemy a lot faster.
At this point, I was highly interested in what Starfield would have in store for me. I had been given a taste of combat but was ready to make choices that impacted gameplay and my exploration of the Universe.
Preparing to Grav Jump
Instead of making my way straight to New Atlantis, I decided to make a detour and land on a neighboring planet called Kreet. It was during this detour that I was able to experience space combat for the first time after I ran into a few pirate starships patrolling nearby. The game informed me that battles may require me to route power to various systems such as engines and weapon systems, in case I need to do more damage or quickly jump to a neighboring system to escape a fight. While I found the combat fun both in third and first-person mode, I was left wondering how ship combat would evolve at later levels. Would I need to strategically route power accordingly to avoid damage, should I invest in certain weapon system to optimize damage, or was it just a matter of saving up enough credits to upgrade my ship/buy a better one?
A taste of
space combat
in Starfield
The Exploration of the Universe Continues
When I landed on Kreet I learned that I could scan my environment for various plants, animals, and raw resources. I was initially excited about the discovery of new flora and fauna that had my head whirring with ideas of the strange things I might encounter, only to find out that Kreet was mostly a barren planet.
After spending an hour gathering resources that I hoped would yield good returns later I made my way toward some map markers that had appeared on my scanner. It was during this moment that I learned that the scanner provided a lot more functionality than just studying a planet. It allowed me to fast travel to my ship, see a surface map with points of interest like the map markers I had just noticed, enter photo mode, and identify objects that I could interact with. I really liked that the scanner provided a lot information about what I was looking at especially when I was inside buildings as sometimes it was hard to tell right away which items can be picked up and which ones are just there for decoration. While Starfield doesn’t require you to stop harvesting resources I felt it would be a disservice to the game to not look for excitement elsewhere. I learned that the map marker in the distance was a research station as I made my way closer and began to wonder what secrets I might uncover.
Once I entered the building I began looting as many of the items as I could carry, thanks to the help of the scanner, while killing space pirates that appeared to have taken over the research station. It was here that encountered a mystery in Starfield that I hope I see a conclusion for when I eventually complete the game. I learned via notes and data entries that this research base had been conducting experiments to create bio-weapons. After killing off most of the space pirates I came across several dead scientist bodies and more notes about the experimentation in this facility indicating that there had been an accident. I eventually found the corpse of the head researcher who’s final note informed me that one of the bio-weapons, a creature called a terramorph, had killed most of the scientists and had escaped. Kreet was no longer a barren planet. I now knew that somewhere on the planet was a very violent and powerful creature waiting to catch me off guard.
Not only was did the research facility put me on higher alert, it also introduced me to the latest iteration of Bethesda’s famous lockpicking mini game that has become a gameplay staple in their RPGs. The way the minigame works in Starfield is when a player has both a digipick and a high enough lockpicking skill, they must line up different shape configurations to fill in notches within a circle. While it sounds simple enough I have to admit that I was perplexed due to a lack of tutorial. It was only when I realized that that I could switch between different shape configurations and choose the order I wanted to input the configurations that I facepalmed myself. Once I figured out how to actually play the lockpicking mini game it was a breeze but to be fair there were no buttons listed that indicated I could switch between different configurations. I couldn’t help but wonder if others experience this issue because it seemed strange that no tutorial for brand new mechanic was provided.
Soon after I became acquainted with digipicking, I came upon an exit that led me to the leader of the space pirates who had been inhabiting the research facility. He confronted me immediately not because of the fact that I had killed off his crew, they shot at me first, but because he recognized my ship and claimed I was carrying treasure despite Vasco, my robot companion, and myself claiming otherwise. I was give the option to persuade the pirate leader and was then introduced to the new persuasion mechanic in Starfield that was much more straight forward then its digipicking counterpart. The way the new persuasion mini game works it that the player is given a set of dialogue choices with a number and color assigned to it. Green is easy, yellow is challenging, and red is impossible. The number indicates the number of points you will get if you succeed the persuasion check with the goal being to accumulate enough points to convince the other person.
While I do like the new persuasion minigame, I was unsuccessful in my attempts to win the pirates over and had to shoot my way out.
Instead of moving on from Kreet, I decided to explore more of the planet hoping that different areas might lead to interesting discoveries and headed to Kreet’s north pole where I was met with a tundra like landscape full of snow and ice. No surprise there.
While the north pole of a planet being surrounded by snow was to be expected, what caught me off guard was running into a bounty hunter who asked me to meet up with him at specific time and place to help him take down a group of space pirates. My main concern at this moment was not if I was properly equipped to take on the pirates but if I was too properly equipped as I was holding onto to a bunch of items and had quickly become over encumbered. I was able to offload some of my items to Vasco but didn’t want this to be a permanent solution incase something happened to him. Either way, this was a clear sign had I done a little too much looting and needed find a merchant. In the process of doing so, I later learned that because I chose to find a merchant instead of helping the bounty hunter, he would fail and presumedly die. I found this out because the quest had been marked as complete in my journal even though I had yet to meet up with the bounty hunter. This was both fascinating and frustrating that timeliness was important for certain quests if I wanted to ensure that I got to see the ending. To be clear I honestly liked that quests had a bit of a time limit as it added stakes to even the smaller activities Starfield offered.
As I made my way back to my ship I came across an enemy that was way outside my level and as I got closer I read the enemies name, terramorph. Everything I had learned at the research facility was correct, I barely survived the battle but was luckily able to make it to my ship without any additional threats.
Once I boarded my ship I spent some time crafting using the Research Station and the Galley to see if I could create any useful items or upgrades for later use. This was an area of the game that I really want to spend a lot of time on because I love unlocking new crafting recipes in video games. It was also super helpful that if you have too much of a certain resource that it will “overflow” and take the place of other resources you may not have enough of. Even though I would have loved to scour the Universe for the ultimate crafting recipes I feel that doing so could be takin time way from experiencing the core essence of Starfield. I was also happy to learn that the ship’s inventory was filled with a bunch of items that I could use for crafting that I had not discovered on my own. Despite having access to more resources than I was originally aware of, I quickly learned that crafting would be gated based on skills that I would need to chose when leveling up. This was something that had occurred in past Bethesda RPGs, so even though I was disappointing that my crafting progress was halted it was to be expected.
Crafting had reduced some of the items in my inventory but it also created new ones which means my mission to find a merchant was still my main focus. I figured it was time to head to the planet Jemison where New Atlantis was located as it was much more likely I would find a merchant on a planet connected to the main quest. However, instead of going straight to New Atlantis I chose to land at a civilian outpost on Jemison as I personally wanted to enter the city with an less congested inventory. When I entered the outpost I quickly learned my mission to find a merchant was cut short by a giant bird called an Apex Parrothawk that was attacking the outpost and ended up killing their provisioner. This was not a scripted event but occurred because the giant bird just happened to be the area and was programmed to be hostile to the player and NPCS. As annoying as this was, I loved that this happened because Bethesda had crafted systems that once again made the Universe of Starfield feel more alive.
After the giant bird attack I realized this outpost must have been cursed after a pack of new enemies called Coralbugs also decided to raise hell at the outpost. Once everything had calmed down I explored the outpost to see if there was anything of use since the merchant was long gone. I found two consoles side by side that I was able to interact with, the mission board and the bounty board. While this was my first encounter with the two consoles, I would quickly find out that these two were found in almost every settlement.
The way that each board functions is that the mission board lets players choose missions to take on for extra experience or credits, while the bounty board allows players to clear a bounty if they had committed a crime. A really cool function about the bounty board is that you’re able to pay off bounties from other planets. I learned this from personal experience after exploring a city called Neon but more on that later.
I decided it was time to find check out New Atlantis.
New Atlantis Adventures
After taking an eventful detour I finally landed in New Atlantis. The first person I talked to was a ship technician who offered to repair my ship, upgrade my current one, or even purchase a new one. I wasn’t exactly rolling in credits yet so I knew buying a brand new ship was out of the question but thought I might be able to mess around with customization and buy some upgrades. Unfortunately I was immediately overwhelmed by the ship customization. There were a ton of options to choose from but at the end of the day none of it matter if you ship was unable to take off properly. This was another area I really feel could have used some more guidance in-game. I’m confident that How-to guides on everything you need to know about ship building exist on the Internet but once again I would have loved an optional tutorial here. I think the amount of customization is amazing but for some players like myself it can feel like a formidable task to make even a simple change to a starship.
Despite being overwhelmed by the ship building options I did discover a solution to my over encumbrance situation. I was reminded that my ship had a cargo bay. This made perfect sense though as I was able to access materials from my ship that were not in my direct inventory and the pirates from the research facility on Kreet referenced it when attempting to rob my ship.
The cargo bay is in fact standard on every ship but it’s not accessible in the most obvious way. While your current ship’s inventory is accessible in shops to sell from, the only way to transfer items back and forth between your inventory and the ship’s inventory is to access the cargo bay via a panel that is extremely missable if you’re not paying attention or using your scanner. This had been an issue I’ve encountered in the past with Bethesda games, specifically for for crafting tables as they can appear to be just part of the environment. Starfield does offer you a Research Station and Galley for crafting and cooking and I do think improvements have been made in the art direction to make these stand out, but I can still easily see some players mistake these as part of the ship environment. The panel to access the cargo bay does not stand out one bit. I’m thankful that I eventually found it thanks to the scanner but if Bethesda wants to nudge players to slow down and explore yet also provide tutorials maybe a solution is to give players a manual/book item on their ship that explains some of these systems in a format that feels organic. This would ensure players still learn what they need to know to get the most out of the game but would also create immersion for the player as well.
After figuring out my cargo bay access issues I explored the city further via a directory that listed which listed which stores and services resided in different parts of the city. Even though the directory was helpful it would have been great to have a city map to navigate as the surface map provided by the scanner is only helpful when there’s nothing else around. The variety of shops I found allowed me to buy some ammo and new clothes and along the way I was able to pick up some quests. I also decided I would hack and rob an ATM.
It was in my exploration of New Atlantis that I became much more interested in Starfield. While I was excited about exploring planets to see what wonders awaited me in the universe, I was also worried that I would run into repeats of Kreet with little to do and see. New Atlantis was quite the opposite, there were tons of opportunities to find all kinds of activities even the ones that would land you in a jail cell.
As I explored more and more of New Atlantis I was presented with more and more ATMs. I knew I had to be careful as there was a ton of people walking around at all times and all it would take it was one stray eye before security came after me. I knew the odds and still risked it all and of course I was eventually caught and arrested by the UC Vanguard, the security force that exists in Starfield. I was immediately taken to jail except it wasn’t in New Atlantis or even on Jemison. I was instead transported to nearby the nearby solar system of Sol where I was in a jail cell on space station orbiting Mars, that’s right I was in our solar system.>Once I was able to talk to someone in the UC Vanguard I attempted to talk myself out of the arrest but was told my freedom would have to be earned. Another quest was kicked off as I was “convinced” that I would earn my freedom by helping the security force out as an undercover agent tasked with infiltrating and taking down some space pirates. As of this time I have yet to explore this quest line but the promise of exploring space pirate territory and potentially siding with them if they provide a great offer is truly exciting. I really loved that I discovered this quest on accident and I would love to see the stats on how many people committed crimes in New Atlantis and wound up in the same situation.
I had just presented with what sounded like a really awesome quest line but remembered that I was orbiting Mars and made a beeline to my ship to check out the blue planet we call home. I was curious to see what areas of Earth could be explored and how detailed Bethesda had gotten. Even though I knew Earth was not the focal point of Starfield I couldn’t help but imagine all the amazing possibilities.
When I arrived at Earth there wasn’t even a single speck of blue. I could still make out the shapes of all the continents but they were the color of sand. Much to my dismay, I learned that the Earth was devoid of all life when I landed. This planet was no longer home to humanity and all that was left as an empty desert with a few mining resources scattered across the planet’s surface. I’m not sure if this will become a story component later but it struck a cord to see our home become a shell of where humanity began.
I returned to New Atlantis to find out what tasks I could take on to make some quick credits. Most required me to either hunt down a space pirate or transport some cargo, activities that I wasn’t sure I was equipped to take on so I chose instead to survey a planet. All that was required of me was to analyze the mining resources, the plants, and animals. It seemed simple enough and a quick way to make some extra credits. I am here to inform you that I was very wrong about it being quick at least without building an Outpost. When I landed on the planet I needed to survey I decided it was a great time to explore the base building mechanics to see if I could speed up my survey time. Base building was something that I loved in Fallout 4 as it provided me a constant stream of resources and money. When I learned that I did not have the resources to speed up my survey capabilities I shifted my focus to mining after I had come across elemental resources like Argon, Lead, and Titanium. My goal was to harvest as much as I could store in my ships inventory and sell off any of the excess for credits. This would also prove to be a fruitless endeavor. I’m sure some players may see the base building and the plant survey as a snore fest, but these activities did allow me to come across another discovery.
During my planetary analysis I saw an unknown ship land and immediately went to investigate. I wasn’t sure if I should be expecting miners looking for resources, a friendly explorer, or enemies looking for a fight. Unfortunately for the ship owners it was the latter as I was instantly attacked which resulted in the enemies losing their lives and their ship. I’m pretty sure this encounter wasn’t scripted as I would later come across other situations that resulted in the same results. It was still a great feeling to take out a crew of enemies, loot their gear, and end up with a brand new star ship that I could either swap out as my main ship or sell it off for a good chunk of credits.
After I spent way longer than I should have on the planet survey I went looking for some more excitement and did some more planet hoping to test out how far I could grav jump and to see if I could find any interesting locations. I eventually ended up at new city called Neon that I heard some NPCs talk about and I was instantly drawn to the city. The bright neon lights of the city stand out almost instantaneously against the infinite ocean that makes up the rest of the planet. Neon lights were literally everywhere. As I walked up and down the main street I could hear all kinds of advertisements along with the shouting of business owners and shop keepers all competing for your attention. It felt like Bethesda has created a mini version of Night City from Cyberpunk 2077.
While I fell in love with the aesthetic of Neon I didn’t spend a lot of time here. That being said I did manage to get involved with a gang warfare storyline where I allied with a gang called the Strikers who were being pushed out of their turf by another gang called the Disciples who has recently come into power. The Strikers had two goals they wanted me to help them accomplish; one was to regain their standing in Neon, two was to clean up the streets. I learned that despite the Strikers and the Disciples both being gangs that caused trouble in Neon, the Disciples were much more violent and lacked a code of ethics. It was classic tale of the lesser of two evils.
I did see this quest line all the way through but ran into some issues that I wanted to call out. At the end of the quest I needed to talk to a specific NPC who had an entourage of security with him for protection. Under normal circumstances the NPC should allow the player to interact with them and finish out the quest line. What I experienced was the NPC cowering in fear and there was no way to interact with him because his guards were too busy shooting at me. The reason they were attacking was due to the fact that innocent bystanders had gotten caught in the crossfire of early missions. While I made sure to only shoot at enemy gang members, the violence raised the alarm of the security team on Neon and a bounty was placed on my head. I was unable to clear my bounty via the bounty board console on Neon and instead had to visit another planet to do so. Once the bounty was clear I was able to complete the quest.
Concerns
At this point I knew I was still very early on into Starfield but already had some concerns that were brewing. Some other notable ones that I wanted to point out were “Bethesda Bugs” and the lack of hardcore mode. If you’re not familiar with “Bethesda Bugs” these are inconsistent glitches that usually occur in Bethesda RPGs that can often be fixed by reloading a save. Some the examples I encountered were plants clipping through buildings, enemies dying in inaccessible places meaning they were unlootable, my robot companion Vasco getting stuck in the same pose for far too long, jarring jump cuts when walking past an NPC and getting transitioned into a conversation that led to a side quest, and of course animals floating in the air. It’s unfortunate these issues are to be expected when other areas of the game can appear to be very well polished. No one is perfect but after several years of seeing the same issues in games it does make you wonder how these issues continue to persist.
On the topic of hardcore mode this was another disappointment as I quickly discovered that it was not available in the current game. Bethesda did update Fallout 4 after its release to add this difficulty in but I was hopeful they would learn from this and launch Starfield with the optional hardcore mode that many like myself love. Hardcore mode usually consists of a few different difficulty modifiers that can make the game feel more realistic by requiring the player to rest, eat, and drink, but may also provide weight to ammo making inventory management more challenging, or may affect the rate at which the player heals when using a healing items. This was a mode that launched in Falllout: New Vegas and also with the Bethesda like RPG The Outer Worlds. It is worth nothing that both New Vegas and the Outer Worlds were developed by Obsidian Entertainment but I really feel that Bethesda missed out by not having hardcore mode in the game right away.
Even though I may have only tinkered with base building, I still feel that Outposts would have been much more essential in hardcore mode due to the need to manage resources.
My Thoughts for Now
My impressions of Starfield overall are based on what could be. What I mean by that is I don’t feel super drawn to the game based on what I’ve done so far but based on the promised of what I have yet to experience. I hope that I come across quests where I’ll think to “this is awesome!”, or “I can’t believe that did that!”, as the quests I’ve come across up until this point have mostly been lackluster and amounted to very anti climatic endings. An example of this anti climatic ending occurred in New Atlantis when I was tasked by an NPC to pick up a “piece of art”. I quickly retrieved the “art” and returned to the NPC which resulted in dialogue options that made it sound like I had to fight tooth and nail for the item whereas in reality all I did was walk from one part of New Atlantis to another. I was unsure of what danger I was supposed to have encountered.
I am also hopeful that starship combat and base building evolves into something deeper as starship combat has just been running through one weapon type until it’s depleted. I’ve seen a ton of cool starship builds on social media but I hope the gameplay is just more than aesthetics. In regards to base building I hope that I am able to create some resource farms that will make my life easier as I travel the stars.
I have a lot hopes and wishes for what I want Starfield to be as I have a lot of great memories with past Bethesda titles. I’m curious to see where the stars take me and if I end up going on an adventure that I will never forget. Until then stay tuned for my full review where I will make a final verdict on the full game and not just the first 20 hours.
