Summary
Starfielddoesn’t have the same sense of wonder asFallout 3orSkyrim. A strange omission, given it provides us with an entire universe to explore with near endless possibilities. The reality is far more truncated, and drowned in piles of new systems and scientific realism that remove spectacle in favour of practicality.
You’ll need to take into account the fragility of your spacesuit and capabilities of your ship, always dancing awkwardly to the tune of a mechanical production you want no part in. But that’s what Starfield is, a grand space opera consolidated down to many moving parts, most of which aren’t worth the effort required to experience them. Beneath the tedium of scanning planets and jumping between star systems awaits a wonderful story and tight quest design, but this would have been possible even with more restrained ambition, and I wishBethesdahad realised that.
Related:Rushing Starfield To Reach New Game Plus Feels Like Missing The Point
Whenever I’m exploring a new planet devoid of meaningful settlements and quests my mind constantly jumps back to The Outer Worlds. While a more outlandish and significantly less expensive RPG set in space, Obsidian Entertainment did a better job in establishing a sense of place even outside the flagship towns and cities. You would stumble across bespoke buildings and outposts populated by fierce enemies and additional mysteries, or pieces of the environment that reflected the corporate hell amongst the stars. Starfield is without these places, lacking environmental storytelling for the most part amongst mining outposts and abandoned science stations all copied and pasted with similar loot and pirates. It all began to feel superfluous after only a few short hours.
Unless you plan to build extravagant outposts or sell all of your survey data for a paltry amount of credits, the motivation to explore in Starfield rarely extends beyond how well the scenery of each planet complements the excellent Photo Mode. That aside, Bethesda has managed to create a universe that feels convincing in its scale and aesthetic, but that it fails to capitalise on the melancholic loneliness I was excited for nor the promise of compelling loot and storytelling that otherwise makes an open world like this worth the trouble. When much of this is compounded through loading screens and a lack of satisfaction, I came to a point where the universe and its allegedly endless possibilities just didn’t interest me anymore. So I changed it up.
Gone was my pursuit of becoming a lonely space explorer, replaced by an obsessive need to prowl the cities of New Atlantis, Akila, and Neon that would give this unusual game a meaning that will stick with me. The characters who call these places home are covered in scars of their own history, all ready to tell stories or offer quests lined with fantastic world building that you’ll struggle to ever glimpse while scouring through space or aboard yet another random pirate vessel with nothing to offer but repetition.
The class divide between New Atlantis and The Well is continually built upon as you work with journalists, doctors, and shopkeepers to understand each new perspective, or random attacks by Terramorphs help showcase the fragility of what many consider a utopia. Akita is just as brilliant as it presents a ragtag rendition of life in this universe away from traditional authority or archaic systems drawn from our time on Planet Earth. I want a game filled with this stuff, but Starfield feels like it has four limbs all being pulled in different directions.
I wish this game was more singular in its identity or recognised what it was good at and stuck to it. Bethesda always excels at creating sprawling, curated places filled with characters, politics, and quests. When it comes to the world that surrounds it, locations and discoveries are just compelling enough to keep you invested. By introducing loading screens, procedural generation, and a greater focus on compartmentalizing, Starfield takes that appeal away and its replacement for it isn’t nearly as interesting. It’s an open world, but not in the way we are used to, nor does it reinvent the Bethesda formula enough to justify its omissions.
I know it goes against the creative vision Todd Howard initially offered up, but I can’t help feeling that Starfield should have been smaller. Reaching beyond the stars is a fool’s errand when you’re barely capable of creating something worthwhile within the systems we call home, and now players are underwhelmed by what was promised to be the biggest game they’ve ever played. It just might be, but when less than half of it is worth discovering, it only serves to make Starfield feel smaller than everything that came before.
