Space is a loading screen in Starfield, a very Bethesda first-person adventure about exploring the surfaces of so many stars. You are one of many versions of You, who travel these stars, in a long and paralleled timeline of space travelers and the game puts You right into that situation — it’s very funny but it takes like five minutes from being Some Space Miner until You become The Most Important Person in the Universe.
It has a lot to do with Obvlivion and Skyrim structure-wise and if you enjoy both of these games, you will enjoy this one, too, because it is deterministically, always going to be a Bethesda game, no matter it’s outsized ambitions, which you begin to understand as actually quite practical when you get into the rhythms of the game.
The rhythms of the game, for better or worse, go like this: you move between planets and loading screens, land somewhere and progress the story, side story, or resource gather, then go to another planet and do something else with that story or those resources. Eventually, you will unlock all the right tools so that the game opens up mechanically and the full expression is more clear, but that may be a dozen hours or more in, depending on which thing you are doing, and where you spend your upgrade points after doing it.
The thing is that once you do reach this point, although the game is standard Bethesda fare until then, the new things it’s doing do begin to open up. First you play something like what you have played, and then eventually, the game comes into its own — Starfield becomes Starfield here.
The developers have put so much in the game. You will not see everything. No chance. They have designed enough to keep someone here for a long time. The long game just isn’t that interesting.
Where the game peaks is late into the story and in the faction missions — here you have already come to define the new mechanics, have unlocked enough to have agency over your own story, and probably have a sufficient build and character attributes that do what you want them to do.
At its best, it’s a fairly advanced model of what Bethesda games have always done. If you do not like those games, do not bother. If you do, you’ll find the same things to like here.
There are some great times in Starfield. Moments of awe when you land on planets and just look around at what modern games can do. It’s astounding-looking and richly aesthetic. There are limitations, in that way that certain RPGs only give back what you put into them. If you put in the effort, Starfield inevitably does reward the player with a space in the stars that is all their own.
It has a lot to do with Obvlivion and Skyrim structure-wise and if you enjoy both of these games, you will enjoy this one, too, because it is deterministically, always going to be a Bethesda game, no matter it’s outsized ambitions, which you begin to understand as actually quite practical when you get into the rhythms of the game.
The rhythms of the game, for better or worse, go like this: you move between planets and loading screens, land somewhere and progress the story, side story, or resource gather, then go to another planet and do something else with that story or those resources. Eventually, you will unlock all the right tools so that the game opens up mechanically and the full expression is more clear, but that may be a dozen hours or more in, depending on which thing you are doing, and where you spend your upgrade points after doing it.
The thing is that once you do reach this point, although the game is standard Bethesda fare until then, the new things it’s doing do begin to open up. First you play something like what you have played, and then eventually, the game comes into its own — Starfield becomes Starfield here.
The developers have put so much in the game. You will not see everything. No chance. They have designed enough to keep someone here for a long time. The long game just isn’t that interesting.
Where the game peaks is late into the story and in the faction missions — here you have already come to define the new mechanics, have unlocked enough to have agency over your own story, and probably have a sufficient build and character attributes that do what you want them to do.
At its best, it’s a fairly advanced model of what Bethesda games have always done. If you do not like those games, do not bother. If you do, you’ll find the same things to like here.
There are some great times in Starfield. Moments of awe when you land on planets and just look around at what modern games can do. It’s astounding-looking and richly aesthetic. There are limitations, in that way that certain RPGs only give back what you put into them. If you put in the effort, Starfield inevitably does reward the player with a space in the stars that is all their own.