This is such a hard game to review, because parts of it are fantastic. As someone whose whole love of RPGs came from dicking around in BGS games as a kid, sections of this really did hype up my inner Bethesda fanboy and release the up-till-5-am goblin mode form I've been trying to seal away for so many years. It has these real hints of Fallout 3's attention to storytelling and choices mixed with the better shooting of Fallout 4 and the more open-ended roleplaying format of Elder Scrolls. But to get that stuff, you have to wade through modern Bethesda's biggest pitfall: quantity over quality.
Don't get me wrong, the core of Starfield is a return to form for Bethesda. It has some of their best quests, moments and systems in years. Building a ship from the ground up is among the most satisfying mechanics I've used in any of their games, and you'll often take on a routine story or faction mission and be stealth attacked by a surprisingly deep story with morally probing choices (the Crimson Fleet stuff is a huge highlight). Meanwhile, the New Game Plus mode is maybe the best I've seen implemented in a game... like, ever. It's this huge moment that completely restructures everything you know about the world and how you interact with it. When you stumble into the curated content, Starfield is like playing Fallout 3 but with giant spaceships and a metric ton of new lore to uncover.
But the infinitely larger shell around this bountiful basket of Bethesda goodness is just mindless filler and tedium. Most quests are just personality-devoid NPCs sending you to annihilate corridors of the same enemy. 95% of the Planets are lifeless stretches of barren land with nothing to do or see. And many of the central mechanics are so frustratingly limited (aka, tiny stamina bars and minimal carry capacity) that the game sometimes forgets to be fun wish fulfilment. It's at war with itself, and the fact so much of it leans on fast travel and loading screens makes it feel tiny despite the fact it's obsessed with reminding you it's this huge intergalactic adventure. It's hard to really feel like a rootin' tootin' space cowboy traversing the stars when I have to flip through a labyrinth of cumbersome menu screens just to talk to Gabe Blinkey, some random NPC who told me to find insert item here from insert evil faction here because of insert personal problem here.
I hate being the guy to say "I would've done it this way", because you shouldn't judge any media based on what you wanted it to be. But I think a version of Starfield where its endless, 1000 planets worth of filler was trimmed, slimmed and consolidated into ten lively, fully-realised planets probably rips ass. With that, you can focus on making the world into a seamless, quality-rich solar system filled with cool shit to see and do. All that stuff is here, but it's like finding a rose among thorns rather than merrily strolling through a field of roses. And yes, there are other issues outside of the quality of the world. Bethesda jank is one of the company's core staples after all, and when you can't move because Vasco has parked his fat robot ass in the doorway, you realise that ain't going nowhere. But they've more or less said this is a work in progress, and most of these issues are probably subject to tweaks and changes over the next few years.
I just wanted a seamless galaxy where I could fly around and get embroiled in an interesting world, and it often feels like Starfield's commitment to being vast, endless and unconquerable actively bars it from becoming the great game it could've been with a little less scope.
Don't get me wrong, the core of Starfield is a return to form for Bethesda. It has some of their best quests, moments and systems in years. Building a ship from the ground up is among the most satisfying mechanics I've used in any of their games, and you'll often take on a routine story or faction mission and be stealth attacked by a surprisingly deep story with morally probing choices (the Crimson Fleet stuff is a huge highlight). Meanwhile, the New Game Plus mode is maybe the best I've seen implemented in a game... like, ever. It's this huge moment that completely restructures everything you know about the world and how you interact with it. When you stumble into the curated content, Starfield is like playing Fallout 3 but with giant spaceships and a metric ton of new lore to uncover.
But the infinitely larger shell around this bountiful basket of Bethesda goodness is just mindless filler and tedium. Most quests are just personality-devoid NPCs sending you to annihilate corridors of the same enemy. 95% of the Planets are lifeless stretches of barren land with nothing to do or see. And many of the central mechanics are so frustratingly limited (aka, tiny stamina bars and minimal carry capacity) that the game sometimes forgets to be fun wish fulfilment. It's at war with itself, and the fact so much of it leans on fast travel and loading screens makes it feel tiny despite the fact it's obsessed with reminding you it's this huge intergalactic adventure. It's hard to really feel like a rootin' tootin' space cowboy traversing the stars when I have to flip through a labyrinth of cumbersome menu screens just to talk to Gabe Blinkey, some random NPC who told me to find insert item here from insert evil faction here because of insert personal problem here.
I hate being the guy to say "I would've done it this way", because you shouldn't judge any media based on what you wanted it to be. But I think a version of Starfield where its endless, 1000 planets worth of filler was trimmed, slimmed and consolidated into ten lively, fully-realised planets probably rips ass. With that, you can focus on making the world into a seamless, quality-rich solar system filled with cool shit to see and do. All that stuff is here, but it's like finding a rose among thorns rather than merrily strolling through a field of roses. And yes, there are other issues outside of the quality of the world. Bethesda jank is one of the company's core staples after all, and when you can't move because Vasco has parked his fat robot ass in the doorway, you realise that ain't going nowhere. But they've more or less said this is a work in progress, and most of these issues are probably subject to tweaks and changes over the next few years.
I just wanted a seamless galaxy where I could fly around and get embroiled in an interesting world, and it often feels like Starfield's commitment to being vast, endless and unconquerable actively bars it from becoming the great game it could've been with a little less scope.