Real Goblin

The Unprecedented Times –

October 23 / 2023

Starfield: One Month Later

Starfield is a game at odds with itself.

It begins with an unassuming mining operation. It’s a promising enough start. You trudge through an uncharted section of space cave, picking up strange gravitational readings on an odd device. One thing leads to another and the player is whisked through a cryptic vision. Suddenly, you’re the “chosen one”. The player is greeted with a “you’re finally awake” type scenario where you can finally choose your character attributes and thus the game has begun.

I have fussed over Starfield’s design many of times since its release. I have dedicated a great deal of time playing, thinking about, and researching this title. And credit where credit is due, it’s a big deal. Bethesda is a legendary company at this point in the history of the video game medium. When they announce not only a new title, but a new universe, it’s something to pay attention to.

When it came time to design my character, I was curious to see the approach they would take. Would it be the Fallout approach? The classic RPG ability scores? Or perhaps something a little less direct, like Skyrim? While I found the actual, physical character customization pretty underwhelming and limiting, the background system intrigued me. As I scrolled through the choices, I was struck by how unusual some of them were. You can choose to give your character parents, but you have to send them money. You can choose to have a house, but you have a mortgage to pay down. These were certainly odd. But I was eager to see how these would play out in-game. Of course, I was delayed in my quest by one major setback. I attempted to run the game on my HDD. This was the last major upgrade to my PC that I had yet to make since delving into the world of PC gaming a few years ago. But when the game nearly completely failed on me, I looked into my performance issues. There I discovered that my HDD wouldn’t cut it. Starfield is the first game I’ve ever seen that actually stated that an SSD was necessary as a minimum requirement. So, after begrudgingly upgrading my PC two days later, it was just a hop skip and a grav jump to exploring the stars.

I have since poured many hours into Starfield. So, one month (or so) after its release, here are my thoughts.

The Main Quest 

Starfield places a lot of emphasis on the main questline. And why shouldn’t it? That is what a game is, after all. But something about Starfield feels different in its approach.

Consider Bethesda’s other RPGs. Skyrim and Fallout 3, 4, and New Vegas all go about their setup, but quickly turn you loose into the world. Starfield does this too, through a convoluted and unconvincing opening sequence. It isn’t but 30 seconds after meeting Barrett that you are gifted a ship and a robot companion. A running theme in Starfield is that when NPCs behave in strange ways, such as divulging too much information to a stranger they just met or entrusting their livelihood to the player character, a dialogue option will appear that reads “You just met me, why are you doing all this?” I suppose Bethesda thought this absolves them of these completely bizarre habits NPCs have. By acknowledging it, they wipe their hands of the issue. This is not new to Bethesda RPGs, but it does feel dated in 2023. And for those who played it, it feels dated in a post Baldur’s Gate 3 world.

Regardless, the player boards the Frontier and heads for the stars. For this first hour of absolute freedom, I was elated. Starfield’s general aesthetic is pleasing to the eye. The game’s score does a lot of the heavy lifting, instilling a general sense of awe and wonder. The sound design is generally quite strong as well. When I was learning the ropes of space combat and traversal, I was fully immersed. That is, for a while.

From here, the player heads to the planet Jemison and the capital of New Atlantis, which will be a central location for the remainder of the game. It doesn’t take much time to realize that New Atlantis is…shallow. You walk around and realize how many areas are locked behind immersion-breaking loading screens. The city does not feel lived in. Once you realize that the volume of crowds is controlled by a slider in the settings, it all starts to make sense (I understand that it’s a performance feature, but my issues remain the same). New Atlantis, and every city in Starfield is like the set of an old western. Step behind the scenes of anything and realize that it’s a painted storefront on wooden stilts. Every location feels hollow because every location is hollow. But more on that later.

The main quest forces you to join Constellation, an “exclusive” group of goody-two-shoes explorers. Exclusive appears in quotes because of how willingly they recruit you. If you ask Vasco about the guild before you arrive at the Lodge, he’ll tell you how small and secretive they are. Why are they willing to let you in so soon? It’s unclear. You might say that it’s due to the vision you received when you touched the first artifact. But Barrett also saw that vision. And later down the line, you learn that a random explorer stumbled upon another artifact and also had the vision (which drove him mad). That character is not named or seen, but mentioned in passing. So the vision isn’t exactly a chosen one type situation. But it’s enough for Bethesda’s purposes.

All of your main companions will come from Constellation. They all have the same moral compass, so which one you choose to take along with you is sort of irrelevant. I didn’t dislike any of the companions, but I also wasn’t partial to any. But again, more on the NPCs later.

To avoid going into unnecessary detail about how the main quest line plays out at every turn, I’ll just jump right to the crux of the game: the multiverse.

Perhaps the developers had this idea on paper a decade ago and got unlucky with the meteoric rise of multiverse-based storytelling in the media. Either way, it is an unfortunate choice. The multiverse was entertaining when we got to see multiple versions of Spider-man. It was explored effectively in Everything Everywhere All At Once. And then it was subsequently driven into the dirt by later Marvel and DC properties. But, if we assume for a moment that the audience had not been subjected to those stories, is it a compelling narrative? Sort of. I can only speak to my personal experience, which is this: I don’t care about the main questline even slightly. I struggled to play the majority of story missions in the latter half of the game. After you discover the truth behind “the Unity”, your character will be asked time and time again about their thoughts on it. It becomes the player’s role to convince the NPC companions of the Unity’s importance through a dozen or so conversations. None of the dialogue options read anything like “to be honest, you’re right. We shouldn’t enter the Unity.” Your companions will express discomfort with Constellation’s mission. And your response can be boiled down to two options. You can tell them that you don’t know what the outcome will be, but that you know it’s important. Or you can tell them to suck it up and get with it. 

Me personally? I’d have loved an outcome that didn’t force you into the Unity at all. Perhaps instead, the player could dedicate their time to destroying or hiding the artifacts after they learn the true power they hold. Unfortunately, you are forced to choose to side with the Hunter, the Emissary, or to go solo. Choosing to side with neither of the two villains will yield a positive response from your companion. This is what I opted for. As a result, I had both villains tell me they’d be forced to kill me. They assured me I’d be swiftly dealt with, but that they’d let me collect the last artifacts first just for the hell of it. 

And so I gathered the last of the artifacts, which is always a thrilling experience. These types of quests usually (but not always) mean entering a pirate controlled mining operation, clearing out faceless enemies with no real motivation to protect the artifact, and eventually blasting a rock with your gun until the artifact comes loose. In the late game, these artifacts are protected by a single Starborn. And don’t get me started on the temples. Bethesda designed one “minigame” and then used it about 20 more times.

Anyway, with all of the pieces in hand, I headed for the final battle. Despite all their intimidation, the Emissary and the Hunter were easily defeated in space combat. Then they retreated to the surface to wait some more. I fought through some more Starborn which, to their credit, exhibited some new mechanics that made them a little more interesting to fight than past enemies. When I finally found the pair of Starborn waiting for me, I was offered three options. Two of the dialogue choices would lead to combat. But one read “Speech”. I chose this one out of curiosity, as it didn’t read “Persuade” but “Speech”. Ultimately, it did just place me in a persuasion minigame. Slightly irritated, I clicked the two most unlikely/highest level options for persuasion checks and succeeded both despite never having upgraded my persuasion skill. And that was that. Both the Hunter and Emissary gave me their artifacts and walked away. For more than 50 hours of gameplay, these men had been following me and assuring me that they could kill me anytime they wanted to. They said that they’d killed across countless timelines and were essentially multiversal gods. But they were able to be convinced to give up their convictions with two sentences. And so, seeing as the whole game had led to this point, I entered the Unity. There I found my own character model, who told me I could now proceed into the next universe. OR I could live out my life in the previous one. There is nothing to indicate that this is an option before this moment. I’d already come this far, so I entered the Unity and found…New Game Plus. Yes, that’s right. New Game Plus is given an in-universe explanation. The developers likely assumed this was a clever way to introduce it, but it actually just creates a variety of bizarre situations. You wake up on a Starborn ship, in Starborn armor, and are told by the mission log to head to the Lodge to start fresh. I didn’t play NG+ for very long. But the only real difference I was able to find between this and the main game is a handful of dialogue options. I was perplexed by this design choice. But the list of bizarre design choices goes on and on.

The game is set at perhaps the most boring possible point in the Starfield timeline. It is post-human expansion, post-war, but pre-discovery of intelligent alien life. Some members of Constellation consider the possibility that sentient aliens are behind the construction of the temples in which you find your artifacts. Every companion who lays eyes on a temple will remark about how humans could never have constructed something like it. This seems like a bit of a stretch, but I’ll accept it for now. I was personally hoping for the reveal to be aliens. I love the movie Arrival. And if Starfield could have captured even a fraction of the suspense, intrigue, and philosophy that the film generates, I would’ve been a thousand times happier. Instead, you’re railroaded into a questline with universe changing consequences. All I really wanted was to fly a cool ship around. Bethesda’s smaller stories are the ones I prefer. Fallout and The Elder Scrolls limit you to one region, and as a result you can tell more focused stories. You can get to know characters on a deeper level. You can stroll through detailed, hand-crafted environments. In Starfield, you can watch a loading screen as you grav jump between star systems.

Starfield has 4 cities

Each city feels like it was born from a one sentence description and the worldbuilding ended there.

While I named 5 examples, the game actually only has 4 main cities by their own definition. Each of the Elder Scrolls games, which are set in a medieval world and in a much smaller physical area than 1000 separate planets, has a greater number of actual cities. Even Morrowind, a game released in 2002, had 6 cities. Now, I know Starfield has a lot more locations than just the 4 main cities. If we count out the random-gen outposts, there are still some “cities” that have very specific story purposes. Hopetown, for example, plays a role in the Freestar Rangers questline. Outside of that, however, it’s somewhat pointless.

New Atlantis, the game’s “main” city, was my least favorite. It’s sections are broken up and separated, making them most convenient to travel via public transit. This could have been a neat opportunity for some immersive world building, where the loading screen is hidden behind your rail ride from one section to another. But instead, it cuts to black. The city itself is unremarkable beyond just being “big”.

Akila City is a western themed town. It’s founder was from Wyoming or something. The Key is the home of the Crimson Fleet and is actually just a large space station.

But Neon…my god. Neon is Cyberpunk lite. Neon is Night City for the 13 and under market. I don’t feel very strongly about the other places. They serve their purposes. Some are better than others. But Neon? Neon is a disaster. Not only is Neon a needlessly confusing maze of loading screen segmented areas, but it’s also a pathetic attempt at a neo-noir city. I genuinely don’t understand how the developers didn’t look at Cyberpunk 2077 and then look at Neon with embarrassment. Everything you hear about Neon is about how hardcore it is. It’s lawless. Anything morally questionable that a person might want to do can be found in abundance in Neon. But what is Neon really? It’s got drugs. Well, one drug. Bethesda titles, Fallout: New Vegas especially, have dipped into this concept before. New Vegas is Las Vegas. So it has about what you’d expect it to. Neon is tame. But it’s in line with the rest of Starfield’s aversion to mature themes. One more than one occasion, a character described a grisly scene that I was about to walk into. Bodies torn apart, blood everywhere, the works. But then I arrive to find the body intact. On rare occasion, a pool of blood was beside it. It’s a departure from the Fallout saga, which even has a perk that allows you to turn up the already explosive gore. I’m not a freak. I don’t need gore and violence. But if you say there’s gore and violence, there better be gore and violence.

That was a bit of a tangent I suppose. Anyway, on to side quests.

Side Quests

Perhaps the lackluster location design is why every quest plays out the same way. Most of the game’s side quests can be boiled down to a simple formula: the NPC quest-giver tells you to kill or talk to someone. That objective is rarely in the same city or even planet. Generally, they send you to an arbitrarily selected planet or space station. Once they send you off, you get the great pleasure of walking or fast traveling back to your ship. For the most authentic experience, you can enter the loading screen to get into your ship, climb the ladder to your cockpit and sit in your chair (which takes about 15 seconds a piece for some reason), then enter the loading screen for taking off from the planet. Once in space, you can enter the loading screen to open your navigation terminal, then select your destination and – get this – you can fast travel there. I say “can”, but I really mean “must”. No Man’s Sky is known for its immersive space travel. Are there loading screens in No Man’s Sky? Yes. But they’re well hidden so nobody really complains about them.

When I watched trailers for Starfield, I sort of imagined that jumping between star systems would be sort of like Star Wars. When they jump to hyperspace, it takes real time. Sometimes it takes hours or days. In this time, they can get up and perform ship maintenance, socialize, etc. Luke Skywalker learns about the force mid space travel in the first Star Wars film. This seems like a perfect chance for Starfield to strengthen character bonds or dump exposition. Baldur’s Gate 3 uses long rests for this purpose. It doubles as a necessary game feature and a chance for interesting character interactions. In Starfield, the player enters a loading screen or three and this entire opportunity is missed. For this reason, companion NPCs often use the absolute worst possible time to say: “Hey, when you get the chance, can we talk?”

Anyway, once the player reaches their destination, a handful of things can occur. Most quests end in one of two ways: a persuasion minigame or a shootout. The persuasion minigame is genuinely awful. I sincerely think it will go down as one of the biggest faults of Starfield. The dialogue that plays out when the character attempts to persuade someone is awkward to say the least. These conversations usually don’t make any real sense. Characters can go from “giving you the keys to the vault will cost me my job. I’ll never do it.” to “Ok, well, just bring them RIGHT BACK.” in a matter of seconds. And that’s without any intimidation.

While enjoyable quests were less common than the bland or even outright bad, I did enjoy a handful of them. The Freestar Rangers quest line entertained me until the end and the rewards made me feel like it was worthwhile. The Mantis quest was cool. I’m probably forgetting something else. Surely there’s another one in there somewhere. I tended to enjoy the weirder random encounters more than the main questlines. Give me an AI controlled ship that I have to talk down over “can you deliver this package?” any day of the week. And please never ask me to engage in stealth, which is some of the worst I have ever played.

Once you start to analyze the quest design, it comes apart like bounty hunter ships after the player hits level 10. Take the Freestar quest for example. The Marshal of Akila City sends the player on this wild chase through space that leads you to Hopetown. There, you’ll find the town’s savior, Ron Hope, at the center of a twisted web of lies. It’s pretty fun. But if you attempt to speak with Ron Hope removed from the questline, you’re treated to one of three generic, rotating voice lines. Despite the fact that everyone in Hope Town won’t shut up about the man, he exists exclusively for one quest line. Dig deeper and you’ll find this sort of thing everywhere. For whatever reason, many of the game’s quests require the player to choose between two comically bad options. Usually the game’s idea of problem solving means killing people or paying someone off.

Companions and NPCs

The game has four main companions. These characters are all met through Constellation.

While there are others, these NPCs have the most depth of the recruitable allies. I don’t have any particular problems with the main four. Beyond the one time he was forcibly locked in as my ally for a story mission, I never cared about Sam Coe. He comes paired with his daughter, who despite being a main character shares a face with hundreds of other children in the galaxy. For whatever reason the game is short on child face models. I quickly got rid of Sam, but his daughter remained on my ship for the rest of the game no matter what I did.

Sarah Morgan is likable enough. She was the companion I kept around for the longest consistent amount of time. Once I met Andreja, the only NPC without dead eyes, it was back to the Lodge for Ms Morgan. 

Pretty much every NPC seems uncomfortable with the “Flirt” options. They appear only on rare occasions, so if you don’t take your chance when it comes then you may lose it. Sometimes, these chances come at weird times. Like when Barrett is telling you about his dead husband, something he does at every opportunity. Usually, the general response the NPC will give is something like: “

Look, I know you have feelings for me. But we really need to focus on the tasks ahead of us for now.” Your companions can also be asked three questions outside of conversations prompted by gameplay. Once you ask those questions, you’ve apparently learned all you can.

The game does have other companions in the likes of Lin, Heller, Vasco, Amelia Earhart, and a wide variety of bar patrons that will join you for the low price of 20,000 credits. While these companions claim to have specialized skills that would be invaluable to your crew, I never found any of them to make a noticeable difference. 

In fact, that goes for every aspect of the NPC companions. It doesn’t really matter which one you bring with you because they all share the same moral compass. Andreja might let you get away with stealing every now and then, but accidentally hit a guard with a stray bullet and everyone abandons you instantly. This was especially annoying in the space combat. But I digress. Speaking of spaceships…

Spaceship Customization

I actually really enjoy building and designing my ship. It fulfills a long time video game fantasy of mine. It feels like I’m building with LEGO. In fact, it’s very true to that experience, because it’s really only the exterior that matters. If you want a ship that doesn’t look hideous, you have to sacrifice interior design. For as much customization as there is, there is virtually none for your ship’s interior. Habs are mostly pointless aside from about 2 potential statistics that affect crew and passengers. God forbid your ship contain multiple levels, because Bethesda has yet to figure out how to make ladders work. 

I would love the ability to include, say, stairs. I’ve seen stairs on other people’s ships. You know, the ones you can’t steal. One of my biggest pet peeves with this game is how frequently it sets you loose on someone’s ship, only to find that you can’t even access the cockpit to steal it for yourself. Two occasions come to mind. One is part of the Ranger questline. A reasonably sized ship is sitting on the surface of a remote planet. Your job is to get inside and ask some questions. When I saw the beautifully modeled interior, I wanted this ship for myself. After I cleared it out, I searched for the cockpit. But as it turns out, it’s not accessible.

The second is part of the main questline, where you and a companion are sent to The Scow. An eccentric collector owns and operates this huge vessel, complete with an alien zoo. I have tried this quest several times, but it seems that you are essentially forced to shoot your way out. I don’t mind, because the shooting generally feels pretty good. However, after the Collector gives you a tour of his expansive ship, you might be left wanting it for yourself. Well, you can’t have it. Starfield does this quite often. And it isn’t limited to ships. In Fallout 4, if you see someone with a cool hat, you can have it. You can kill them for it if you want. Or you can pickpocket their clothes right off their body, a famous Bethesda feature missing from Starfield entirely. 

It seems reasonable that the player might want to have their own starstation. But that’s not an option. For me personally, I fantasized about having a ship large enough to hold a smaller, starfighter type ship inside it (Cowboy Bebop style). But unfortunately, ship size is extremely limited. You can’t make a ship that large and you can’t make a ship that small. 

I spent a lot of time in the ship customizer. But if you spend more than an hour trying to achieve a certain look, you’ll begin to notice the limitations of the design system. I received a ship for free as part of a quest from Walter Stroud. It was the Kepler R. I spent an obscene amount of time trying to make it less hideous. While it fits into the NASA aesthetic fairly well, I wanted something more sleek.

For one thing, many ship parts are locked behind research and skills. In addition to that, not all of the parts are locked behind the same skill. This would all be less of an issue if Starfield had any tutorials at all. This game seems reluctant to tell the player anything. Maybe they didn’t want to bog the game down with tutorial messages. But as a result of this, the player often is left fumbling around. I would occasionally stumble into solutions for problems, but it was almost always 

Combat

Starfield’s combat is, at first glance, flashy and engaging. This applies to both traditional and space combat. I was impressed by the detail of the debris that flew off of exploding spacecraft.

And initially, I was impressed by the weapon variety. I selected melee as part of my character build, only to find that the game only has 9 total melee weapons (4 of which are just knives). The melee combat was dull and unrewarding, so I quickly abandoned that.

The game rarely puts you up against interesting alien life forms. For the most part, you’ll just fight through a dozen pirates every now and then. I decided to seek out cool aliens to fight. There is no intelligent alien life in Starfield. Most aliens you come across are actually just large insects. There are spiders, ants, big flies, etc. The aliens don’t really put up much of a fight.

The Red Mile was one of my final straws for Starfield. Everyone you speak to talks of the dangers of the trial before you. They all bet against your survival, speaking only in vague terms about what the Red Mile actually is. I saved my game and braced myself. I needed to do it. This quest was for the Freestar Rangers, and I wanted to become a Marshal. So I descended into the massive crater and prepared myself. To complete the test, I needed to run to the center of the arena, press a button, and return alive. I reached the bottom of the long, winding staircase and began my trek within. For awhile, everything seemed quiet. Then, to my right, an explosion took me by surprise. I looked around for the source and saw only strange aliens. They were everywhere. Still, I was confused as to what the trial actually was. Based on the shape of the arena, I pictured some Hunger Games type scenario. But as I dodged explosions, I realized that the aliens themselves were launching them. It was a confusing design choice. I unloaded a few rounds into one, but found them to be bullet sponges more than anything else. So I decided it wasn’t worth stopping for and sprinted to the button and back. If you run through the Red Mile, the entire ordeal is over quickly.

And that’s pretty much how Starfield plays. The enemies are uninteresting and those that don’t die in a few shots take about 2 minutes of firing and reloading to kill. When you fight a dragon in Skyrim, it’s not surprising that you have to swing your sword a few times to take it out. But when you fight a human man in a puffy spacesuit and 5 shots to the head doesn’t kill him, that’s where immersion is broken. Starfield combat is like fast food. Moment to moment, the battles are satisfactory. But when the dust settles, I’m left feeling unsatisfied and unhappy. With Fallout‘s VATS system, fights could end in cool, fun, explosive ways. It was, at the very least, funny to shoot a railroad spike into a super mutant’s head and watch it fly off its body and into a wall. Starfield‘s combat offers no such fun.

Exploration

Starfield railroads the player into Constellation, an explorer’s guild. Your first mission teaches you how to use the scanner and before you know it, you’re off on your own in the infinite cosmos. 

Fallout does not have any vehicles available for player use. Despite that, I rarely feel like I need them. Because the process of walking from point A to point B feels like an adventure in itself. Exploration and gameplay are intertwined. In Starfield, exploration and gameplay are like a medieval arranged wedding. The developers clearly realized that they needed to include the kinds of fun and interesting locations that you might find in Skyrim or Fallout, but couldn’t balance it with the idea of a desolate and unexplored galaxy. This game, which frequently places the player on desolate landscapes, could certainly benefit from some land vehicles.

As part of the marketing for Starfield, it was said that when you landed on a planet, you might be the first person to ever step foot there. That sense of awe and discovery would be a prominent part of the experience. I don’t know what planet those people were referring to because every time I land somewhere there are a dozen randomly generated research facilities and mining operations in every direction. And about 1 in 3 times, a ship lands 100 yards from me. It often feels as though Starfield can’t quite decide how vacant its solar systems should be.

As for the outposts, once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. The shelves are cluttered with a variety of items that are just that: clutter. In my first 5 or so hours, it was very difficult to differentiate between what was useful and what was garbage. The guns all have particular names, some of which aren’t clearly weapons. It took me a while before I realized that a Grendel and a Maelstrom were in a separate category from the Supernova or the Frostwolf.

In Bethesda games, I often find myself gathering unique, one of a kind type items. I typically find a house somewhere to dump all of my trinkets. When I crept through the hallways of my first outpost, I was impressed by how many individually modeled items there were. I found a board game, a digital tablet, a blue notebook. And then an hour later I found the same board game, the same tablet, and a red notebook. And mixed in with all of the junk is non-player junk. This is my way of describing stuff that looks like you can take, but can’t. Some things are just stapled to the shelves they’re on. It’s not really clear why. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it.

Take these two photos for example. These two shelves are found next to one another. Some of these items are lootable and some are not.

In the case of this first photo, the only lootable item is the frame.

In the second photo, the same logic does not apply.

Nearly all the items are lootable on this shelving unit.

This is a minor gripe. But it is indicative of Starfield‘s confusing and inconsistent logic and design. When Starfield stopped showing me new, interesting things, I stopped looking for them. This is a dangerous rut to get into as a player. There are interesting things in the game. The problem is that they are few and far between.

Missed Opportunities

I was fascinated with space when I was a kid. I had stacks of books with big glossy photos of nebulas and swirling, colorful galaxies. For a time, my dream “when-I-grow-up” job was astronaut. When I think of a game with a primary focus on space exploration, a few things come to mind. I thought I’d get to drift through the nebulas from my picture books. I thought I’d have to force power into my ship’s engines to escape the pull of a black hole. I thought there would be dying stars and solar flares and a wide variety of the kinds of space features that make the universe such a fascinating and interesting place. But there is nothing like that in Starfield. In fact, Starfield is missing a great many things. The game feels almost like a placeholder for something larger. To the game’s credit, I’ve had a mostly bug free experience. But even still, it feels like a first draft. The quests feel half baked. The NPCs feel shallow. The cities feel one-note.

The biggest missed mark for me is the lack of interesting things to do in space. There is no spacewalking. There is no possibility of drifting off into into the void Gravity style. You never really feels small in comparison to the massive galaxy. A lot of space stories use the vast emptiness as a thematic tool. The movie High Life comes to mind. The film follows a lone survivor on a suicide mission to some impossibly distant point. There is an overwhelming sense of hopelessness that sticks with you. Players never finds themselves afloat in the vacuum of space. There’s no manual, long haul travel from one star system to another, just fast travel teleportation dots on a map. Space suits have a variety of stats relating to environmental protection, but ultimately none of it actually does anything. All of these are failures of Bethesda to capitalize on the universe they chose to set their game in.

But perhaps Bethesda wanted to approach Starfield from a different angle. Maybe they wanted something less dreary. Starfield could have gone the opposite direction, embracing a hopeful tone about human ingenuity and resilience in the face of challenges. It could have been closer to The Martian, for example. But it doesn’t do that either. The quests vary wildly in tone. One minute, Andreja is telling you about her hesitancy to enter a multiversal time loop that would forever alter everything she’s ever known and loved. Next, you’re speaking to the clone of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Conclusion

I am not writing this to climb aboard some kind of Starfield hate train. I actually love Bethesda games. And were I to make a top 50 list, nearly every one of their main titles would have a spot among them. Bethesda has revolutionized the video game industry and then some. Skyrim has endured for a reason. They are not a company without talented writers and game designers and they deserve all of the recognition they receive. So know that I don’t write this with hate in my heart. I write this because Bethesda has not kept up with their own standards. 

The game has no identity. Starfield is not next gen. It is not groundbreaking in any capacity. Is the universe empty and unexplored? Or does every planet have a dozen mining camps on it? Is the game violent or not? What is the point of it all?

Starfield gets compared to Cyberpunk 2077 a lot. This isn’t a fair comparison. Until the most recent update, I Cyberpunk 2077 was a broken, buggy mess of a game. Starfield is actually relatively bug free. But for all of Cyberpunk‘s flaws, most people didn’t really have any complaints about the game’s story, characters, combat, or setting. Starfield, for me, fails on all of those fronts. I wonder what it was like a year ago when they delayed its release.

I want to like this game. I really, really do. But I just can’t help but think that Starfield is not up to Bethesda’s standards, or even industry standards. It does not push boundaries or reimagine what video games can do or be. After completing this game, I really don’t know if I have any interest in replaying it. Maybe the space simulator genre is impossible at this scale. If Bethesda can’t pull off something of this magnitude, who can?

I’d like to conclude on a hopeful note. I will return to this game someday. It will probably be years from now. While I hope Bethesda themselves continue to address concerns and add to this game, I feel that they will more likely rely on the work of their modding community to expand upon this empty universe. It’s sort of lazy, yes. But I’ll take what I can get.

Back to Baldur’s Gate 3 for me.