We’re at T-minus two-and-a-half-weeks fromStarfield. Some people have been counting the days all month, or even since the release date was revealed in Spring, so it feels like we’re extremely close now. Inevitably, some corners of the internet have seen this unfiltered excitement and anticipation, and have taken it upon themselves to ruin it.Leaks, both in the form of the narrative beats and the Achievements, are out there. But don’t worry: Starfield is impossible to spoil.
Here’s the thing: I don’t really care about spoilers, or even Starfield. I think both our hype culture, which leads to fans becoming deathly defensive of games they haven’t played and absorbing them into their personalities, and our spoiler culture, where Easter Eggs and references are elevated to the status of kings and to mention any feature in the game is to ruin the experience, make every major release exhausting.
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So I suppose in a way I understand the urge to look at people with Starfield face tattoos yelling at trailers for revealing what colour the sand is on planet #752 and tell them ‘hey, Michael dies’. Also if Michael really dies, please don’t be mad at me,BethesdaPR. I had my fingers crossed so this doesn’t count as breaking any embargo or NDA.
But at the same time, Starfield is not a game that works this way. It’s not likePlayStation’sbig guns that you hit in a distinct order. It’s far easier to spoil a game likeGod of War,The Last of Us, orGhost of Tsushima. Starfield is going to be ‘Skyrimin space’ (sorry for the spoiler) and do any of you really care about Skyrim’s story? You’re the Dragonborn and you defeat the big dragon. Truly groundbreaking stuff.
But the reason Skyrim keeps getting ported, and the reason we all play it every time, is because of the stories along the way. The side quests we discover and the tales we write ourselves byplaying the game the wrong wayare what has kept Skyrim at the tips of our thumbs for all these years.You can’t force a ten-year game like Skyrim, becauseSkyrim was not designed that way on purpose. It was supposed to have branching quests, sure, but it has endured this long because the community has helped it grow into something special. Through tireless mods and memes,Skyrim swelled into something greater than itself.
I don’t know if Starfield will do the same thing. I don’t know if it will be as good, or if, in a year so stacked and with an audience more fickle these days, as many will stick with it for as long as they did with Skyrim. A side effect of our rampant hype culture is that everyone is searching for the next high. Players are far more protective of games from criticism at or just before launch, declaring anything and everything a tireless masterpiece, and then within a week they move on, bored.
I don’t know if Starfield will follow or break this trend. But I do know that whether it sticks in the zeitgeist or not, players will be discussing the weird encounters off the beaten paths and making up their own stories in the game far more than they’ll be talking about how you’re the Rocketborn and you have to fight a big rocket.
We know there will be 20 companions to recruit, all of whom likely have significant arcs that won’t impact the main story much (or even at all), but that will be a major part of your experience and memories of the game. Those 1,000 planets, even if they’re not all inhabited, will be bursting with adventures that don’t really matter, but that we’ll do anyway because that’s the point of playing the game. Adventure is out there - as always in these sorts of games, the main plot is probably pretty short, but the play time is beefed up close to triple figures by all the extra stuff. And usually, no one resents it because that extra stuff is what we came for.
Starfield spoilers might be swarming the internet for the next couple of weeks, but remember it’s not a linear game and even knowing what might sound like a major beat probably won’t disrupt your experience too much. Starfield is literally giving you a blank space to write your own story. But I really am sorry if Michael dies.
