Starfield is the latest open-world RPG that released on September 6th, 2023 and was developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. You might be familiar with past Bethesda open-world RPGs such as Fallout or Skyrim where exploration and choice are heavily focused on during gameplay. If the element of choice is something that excites you when it comes to gameplay then you’re in luck to as choice is the basis Starfield is built on. I wrote up in my initial impressions that I was unsure where Starfield would take me, and was hopeful that my discoveries across the stars would leave me with a lasting memory. Read my review below to find out if if Starfield is a must play or not.
Your Next Adventure is Just a Grav Jump Away...
Like previous Bethesda titles your story begins wake up after being in the right time, at the right place, in this case a mining facility where you encounter a strange artifact that gives you visions. From there on after you’re mission is to work with a group of cosmic explorers known as Constellation who want to study the mysteries of the universe with a big focus on the artifact you encounter at the start of the game. The main story has you hopping to multiple planets and cities via your ship’s grav jump ability as you hunt down additional artifacts with unique companions by your side.
As exciting as this may sound on paper, I have to admit I was a little bored with the main story. I think it does a decent job of introducing some of the newer Bethesda systems, such as ship piloting or companion interactions, but when it comes down to it the first third of the main story is just a string of fetch quests. Each scenario does provide a unique location with a bunch of other quest opportunities to explore but the content of the each main quest felt somewhat half baked. I think the intent was to get to know the cast of Constellation so you could decide who should come with you on your travels based on their skill set and personality but I never found myself really connecting with any of the characters in a meaningful way. I think there are some decent back stories such as Sam Cole’s family history but more often then I not any conflict that appeared was quickly resolved as if it never existed in the first place. It was breakneck pacing that not only appeared in the main story but during some of the side content too.
Choice is the Answer
Players how have experience with past Bethesda titles or the western open world RPG genre won’t be surprised to hear that customizing your experience is still very much the game play thesis behind Starfield. There are obvious expectations such as character appearance choices, dialogue options, skill tree point allocations, and of course what starship you want to pilot but choice affects everything you do in the game.
At first glance, experienced Bethesda fans may be frustrated by missing gameplay elements such as a stealth meter or food being a useful heal item, while also being confused about new systems like ship combat. Even though I did appreciate the ship flight tutorials that I had previously missed, I was still thrown off by the no stealth indicator and felt ship combat was very lackluster. I learned that both of these gameplay elements and more are unlocked through your skill tree. If you choose to ignore certain skills you may never experience features that felt like basic parts of gameplay like better space combat or traversing on the ground using your boost pack. It’s a system that will receive mixed criticism as some may love that primary gameplay mechanics being unlocked are a choice while others will feel they should be part of the core experience. I will admit I was frustrated early on in the game but I think I overall I liked the system. I do think that there’s room for compromise by tying some essential abilities to level caps as this could be helpful due to players seeing clear milestones to progress towards but I know that’s never been Bethesda’s mission.
What is Bethesda’s mission you may ask? Instead of handholding you through your space adventure in Starfield, Bethesda tries to invent new ways to give the player agency and create their own fun. That is their mission has always been. Even though I enjoyed the story more than I thought I would, it’s Bethesda’s execution on other elements that weight heavy on my final opinions of Starfield.
Falling out of Love
I was hopeful going into Starfield that Bethesda would create an experience that would blow my mind but as I ventured further into the game I kept asking myself if there was anything that was keeping me coming back other than this review. I thought to myself that maybe I just needed spend more time with Starfield or tryout different activities but the game never clicked for me. I eventually came to the realization of what kept me from falling in love with Starfield. It was the lack of community within the game.
What I mean by lack of community is everything felt very disconnected from each other and none of actions really felt like they were making any kind of lasting impact. When exploring and following the main story path, I often found myself landing on a barren planet with only a few points of interest, and anything else was just cave or a facility to shoot and loot through. Very rarely did I ever feel like I had an incentive to explore in a traditional way. I would have loved to spend hours roaming around a planet stumbling onto something interesting was more often than not a waste of time. Instead Starfield asks you to jump to a galaxy, scan some of the planets, and check out the points of interests with the hope that the planet you land on has something engaging to offer. It’s a very tedious process that feels outdated and makes each world you land on feel boring with very little to do. Early on in my impressions I talked about wanting to be pushed to explore but all I got that was worth while were murmurs from citizens about the bigger cities but nothing more than that.
One of the main appeals of Starfield is to be able to explore the entire universe, but my question is if players are consistently finding nothing of note during their exploration then what’s the point? Even though I did enjoy the content of some of the side quest lines they never really seemed to have an impact on the greater universe and that made the universe feel more lonely. I would have loved to see something like Megaton from Fallout 3 where the universe felt like it changed because of my actions.
Another feature that I found odd to be missing from the game was no radio as it was such a beloved feature in Fallout and many fans of Skyrim still sing songs like Ragnar the Red. While a radio would not make sense for an Elder Scrolls game it would definitely fit in something like Starfield. I would have loved different stations only reaching certain corners of the galaxy making finding a new radio station feel like a big deal due to potential different music, radio personalities, and even perspectives on events that occurred across the galaxy. Maybe a pirate radio that rants on the fact that you’re ruining their ability to loot as much as you want, or a group of scientists that run a podcast about discoveries on different planets. These are just some ideas and I know creating a slew of radio stations can be timely and challenging but did people stop listening to music when they took to the stars? The lack of radio felt like a huge missed opportunity to breath some life into the game. There is a newspaper side quest where you can submit stories after completing significant side quests but I never saw this paper appear anywhere during my travels.
Cosmic Pain Points
In my initial impressions, I talked about how I originally planned to try to spend more time base building as it was something I greatly enjoyed in Fallout 4, but I quickly began to ask myself what I would get out of base building? In Starfield you gain access to the home base called the Lodge very early on with your own room and access to every crafting table you would need. The best part? You can fast travel straight to it. As I made more and more trips back to the Lodge I began to ask myself why do I need to build an outpost when I have everything I need at the lodge? The only benefits I could come up with was looking at your outpost with pride relishing in the feeling of “I made this” or because it’s an easy way to make extra credits which I not even sure if that second assumption is correct.
I called out Fallout 4’s base building experience and used it as a reference point because it felt meaningful. Even though it was optional it still felt like it had context in the apocalyptic wasteland. Resources are scarce when the world has blown itself up with nuclear bombs, so that means your best chance for survival is to build a home or a base that would make resource creation and storage easy. I never felt that resources of any kind were hard to come by in Starfield. I was able to sell tons of loot, ships, and resources, to amass several hundred thousand credits pretty quickly in my playthrough so I could buy whatever I needed to make my character stronger in combat. I also want to call out the story context behind being able to reclaim your character’s original neighborhood in Fallout 4 as I truly think and it was this story connection that made building a base in that first location more impactful.
While base building did not amount to something that kept my attention I did encounter a rather frustrating bug that did keep my focus. I’ve mentioned that many of the quests both main and side, have you traveling to various planets to complete objectives. After getting to about halfway through the main story I would go through the motions of landing on a planet near my next objective and would be given these three options:
- Exit my ship, which would put me right outside my ship and next to the objective,
- Take off, which would send me back to space if I needed to leave
- Get up, which allowed me to leave my pilot seat and move around my ship
Both the first and third options should be choices I would make depending if I needed to access someone or something on my ship before heading to my next objective. The only choice I could make without any issues was the third one. Every time I exited my ship directly, I would experience one of two scenarios:
- My game would essentially freeze as all button inputs were nulled out did nothing. The only button with a function was the Xbox center button to go to the home menu so I could force close the game.
- All my inputs would be fine but I would be teleported 3000 to 5000 meters away from both my ship and objective unable to fast travel back to my ship. I would then have to walk back to my ship.
The second scenario was obviously the better choice as I could at least play the game and return to the location where I was supposed to have loaded into.
I understand that not every bug and glitch can be caught and fixed before a game as massive as Starfield is released and I also understand that people working on this game are human. They will make mistakes and I know they put a lot of time and effort into cleaning up bigger issues, but I have to admit I found it pretty odd and almost embarrassing that this was happening on planets that were part of the main story. There were areas that a good chunk of players are very likely to experience and since the issue happened multiple times throughout my playthrough it feels like ship landing transitions did not get the quality assurance they needed. Once I learned not to exit my ship directly anymore I did not run into any other consistent glitches or bugs but it still feels like a huge oversight especially since I experienced something similar in Fallout: New Vegas over a decade ago.
For those that are curious I ran into a bug in New Vegas where after leaving a building I could no longer turn my camera. My last manual save was 10 hours prior and my auto save was my building exit. I could have retraced my 10 hours of steps but decided to drop the game after learning the bug was unfixable on my Xbox 360 version of the game. The issue I encountered in Starfield is not one-to-one but it feels very similar when none of the buttons worked and my game was essentially frozen. Starfield’s issue was not permanent luckily and was fixed by an alternate path or by resetting the game but I have to admit that reliving a glitch from the same developer is very infuriating. I’ve been a big fan of Bethesda games since Oblivion but seeing a ten year old bug get the remake treatment left an awful taste in my mouth.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately I think Starfield tries to improve the the open choice philosophy of past Bethesda games and pushes you to try and make your own fun. Unfortunately the execution falls short due to many of the choices feeling hollow and only exist for the sake of choice with no real impact on anything. While the main story does present you with an ultimate choice on what it means to exist it needs to be said that too much choice is never a good thing.
I’m sure there will be people who will fall in love with Starfield and find that addictive quality I was searching for but never found. While I think Starfield is a decent addition to the Xbox Game Pass library but I was honestly left disappointed by it. If you feel like you’re someone who won’t be disappointed then you’ll be happy to know that Starfield is available for Xbox (For purchase and via Game Pass) and PC via the Microsoft Store and Steam.
