Starfieldwas supposed to be the defining space game of our generation, one that combined the freedom and exploration ofNo Man’s Skywith the RPG elements of previousBethesdagames. Against their better instincts, players bought into the hype and dreamed of having a thousand planets to explore, all with their own unique aspects and secrets to discover. They dreamed of flying around in their spaceships, encountering strange vessels in space, exploring every planet in sight, and meeting new potential friends or foes. They dreamed of a true open world, free of loading screens, a game that was just one connected universe. Then they booted up the game, and found themselves disappointed.
What went wrong? Well, for one, the hype train got out of control. People overanalysed every comment from Bethesda about the game, and fan theories were rampant. People posted assumptions online as if they were facts, and rumours were propagated time and time again ahead of release. It happens, especially with games as huge and anticipated as this one. That’s not really Bethesda’s fault. But what wecanblame on Bethesda is that it wanted Starfield to be, to some extent, realistic, and it’s boring the hell out of players who had already over-inflated expectations.
Related:Starfield Is Too Focused On Fighting
The reality of space is that it’s mostly empty, it takes an eternity to travel between things, and most things that are in space are rocks. In aninterview with New York Timeslast week, Bethesda executives said there was an explicit focus on realism to ground the project, and balancing realism against enjoyment was another big focus. Survival in space had to be challenging, but not too hard.
Some planets had to feel empty, because that’s what space is like. Bethesda’s managing director, Ashley Cheng, said, “The point of the vastness of space is you should feel small. It should feel overwhelming.” That’s a very valid point, and an important thing to strive for when creating a game that emphasises feelings of awe and loneliness, but I’m not sure Bethesda has quite gotten it right.
Of course, there’s also the space travel issue, whichI don’t really think is that much of an issue. Many players are upset about not being able to fly from planet to planet, partly because it takes too goddamn long –seven real-time hours to get to Pluto, why would you do this to yourself? Starfield’s dedication to realism meant that they made it appropriately difficult to fly to faraway planets, making a trip a long, multi-hour expedition. In the real world, travelling to these planets with the technology we have now would take years, decades, or even centuries. Adjusting this for player enjoyment means it takes a lot less than that, but still, a damn long time. That’s what fast travel is for, so we don’t all have to slug our way around galaxies, but for people who want to zoom their way around space, that’s a big disappointment. (Hot tip, use your scanner in your ship to avoid using menus.)
I don’t think that Bethesda necessarily did the wrong thing here, but there’s definitely a wide gap between the experience players wanted and what they got. A realistic space game is fine, really, and if you want to spend hours trudging around in the emptiness of space, that’s your business. It’s player expectations that cooked the goose for Starfield, but maybe a higher flying speed when starting out in Starfield would’ve allayed many of those initial disappointments. Well, too late now! It’s Bethesda’s universe, and we’re all just playing in it.
