Warning:
Poorly written near four thousand word novel incoming. Big Bethesda fan so I’m probably biased too. Just read the conclusion if you want a TL;DR I guess. Or don’t.
Preamble:
After putting around 20 hours into Starfield I wrote a near 1000 word review. It was a review going into detail about how Starfield isn't the next No Man's Sky or the replacement to Star Citizen. About how comparing it to other critically acclaimed RPG series like The Witcher or the recently released Baldur's Gate 3 was like comparing apples and oranges. About how it wasn't a matter of one being better than the other but rather a matter of taste and direction. About Bethesda RPGs not truly belonging to the same categories as the aforementioned games, and the need to establish different expectations because of this. About how Starfield offered an entirely different experience from other RPGs. About how this experience wasn’t necessarily worse or better, just different -for other people with different tastes. To put it simply, I was defending Starfield.
Then I played for another 30 hours and I realised something: why should I need to justify my enjoyment? Why am I spending more time talking about games not called Starfield in my Starfield review? I realised that it didn't matter. So no more of that. Fair warning: lots of praise incoming and plenty of complaints too. So let's go.
Intro:
Starfield is the accumulation of everything Bethesda has learnt over the years. Through their Masterpieces, their flawed gems, and their failures. Starfield is a love letter to Bethesda fans who have been entrenched in the worlds of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. A love letter to those who get sucked into those worlds, who spend years playing these games that seemingly never end. Starfield, though by no means perfect, is Bethesda's Magnum Opus.
Praises:
So let's get into what I love about Starfield. As it's a Bethesda game it would be wrong to start with anything else but the game world. Starfield takes place in the aptly named ‘Settled Systems’, a catch-all term for a collective area of chartered systems within the Milky Way Galaxy. Naturally Starfield is in no short supply of places to go and see. It’s not just the wide vistas and deep blacks of outer space that grab your attention, but also the handful of cities neatly hand-crafted and packed full of detail. The hand-crafted portions of Starfield are what I’d call masterfully done, and it definitely shows in game. Delicately placed bits and pieces of detailed clutter breathe life into the game's areas. This clutter adds to the immersion of the settled worlds, alongside the delicately placed bars, restaurants, shops, and other key locations littered throughout. Each of the large cities have their own unique aesthetics not just in architecture: but also in lighting, atmosphere, and of course the characters and quests that populate these places.
Quests are something I always enjoy in Bethesda games, and Starfield is no different. Starfield features a genuinely insane amount of quests and content -perhaps to the point of becoming overwhelming. I haven’t gotten very far myself, but so far the main quest has been pretty interesting, and is definitely a level above Bethesda’s prior efforts. There are also plenty of side quests, faction quests, and a bunch of random encounters out in the far reaches of space that I’ve enjoyed sinking my teeth into. We also can’t forget about the procedural/radiant content that while lacking the depth and quality of the handcrafted content; help fill out the world to create a truly immersive universe to play in. I can’t speak on the quality of all of it as after 50 hours I feel I’ve barely even scratched the surface. Of the quests that I have played I can say they have been great.
When thinking about standout quests there are many quests that come to mind, but one that I always find myself thinking about is actually a very minor delivery quest. Without going into the details, I had to deliver a letter across systems. It was a simple quest that would get filed under ‘misc’; the kind you forget about after 10 minutes. I was given some credits and EXP after finishing it, and I figured that would be that. Flash forward an hour or so and I'm back where I got given the quest and would you look at that: the person I delivered the letter to had actually travelled across systems specifically because of the letter I had delivered. They were having a conversation because of that letter, and I was able to talk to them about it and get some deeper info. What's more the next day they were hanging out somewhere else; chatting about something entirely different! Something that I thought was just some stupid little side quest to fill out the game actually ended up having more depth than I had expected which was very cool.
Bugs, or lack thereof, are surprisingly a major positive for Starfield. It goes without saying that this is entirely anecdotal. After all, everyone's systems react differently; so my experience isn’t necessarily the same as everyone else's. Now I’ve had a few small bugs here or there, but I’ve never had anything more than an odd ragdoll or physics clutter. For a game of this size with everything it’s trying to do, it’s truly remarkable how polished it has been so far. I can thankfully say I’ve never once had to reload a save because of a bug. Time will tell whether or not this experience persists, but for now Starfield has been a very polished game in the bug department -which is a far cry from Bethesda’s prior titles.
Combat is the best it’s ever been in a Bethesda game. Gunplay is smooth, responsive, and most importantly fun. Animations are fluid and add to the general feel of combat. The jetpack provides a level of verticality to the already fast paced combat, and weapon variety helps it from feeling samey. There is however a big flaw in the combat, and a couple of smaller ones, but I will get to them later. Overall combat is very fun. It’s a massive improvement over Fallout which I already thought did a great job for a single player RPG shooter.
Another thing I love are the traits. Now, I haven't seen much action from my background (I chose Bounty Hunter) so I won't comment on that, but the traits I chose were: 'Neon Street Rat', 'Hero Worshipped', and 'Kid Stuff', and I have to say... wow. Obviously I can't comment on the other traits as I haven't used them (maybe I just chose the best traits), but man I was not expecting these traits to have so much content to them. I don't want to go into it too much, but I will simply say that these traits are more than little additions to your dialogue. They define who you are and ground you to the world. 'Neon Street Rat' has unsurprisingly seen a lot of action on Neon and comes up regularly in quests there. Hero Worshipped is probably a must have for Oblivion fans simply for the nostalgia factor. Kid Stuff... man that trait is genuinely just amazing. I won't say any more but yeah these traits are very cool.
The main companions/crew in this game are definitely some of the best Bethesda have ever made (sans Serana) and I’m certainly enjoying my time with them. They each have interesting backstories that have me looking forward to the next time they’ll ‘ask me for a chat’, so I can hear more about their lives. It’s fun seeing them mention what I said in our previous chats too, which makes me feel like I’m truly impacting them rather than just clicking whatever option progresses the dialogue. It truly feels like my talks with them actually affect who they are and how their problems will unfold. Time will tell how much of an impact my choices actually have on them as I’m so early into the game, but so far it’s very promising. Their voice acting is also superb as are their visual designs. Special shoutout to my best friend Adam Jense- err I mean Sam Coe. He’s my favourite by far.
Music. My god Inon Zur absolutely cooked with this soundtrack. I honestly have nothing to say, I’m not a music critic. Unfortunately I don’t know anything technical about music. All I know is those soundtracks play, and I’m taken away into another world. Truly magical stuff... well done.
Choice and consequence is actually surprisingly good for a Bethesda game. There are a variety of different choices you can make throughout all sorts of quests through Starfield that support proper role playing and gives the player agency in how they want their own story to play out. I haven’t played any of the faction quest lines yet, same with most of the main questline, so I’m unaware of how well they handle this. However given the choices I’ve been given in the many side quests I’ve done, I imagine it’s likely just as good.
Random encounters out in space have also been a highlight in my playthrough and gives incentive to interact with the areas outside of the planets rather than just fast travelling straight into a location. From geologists asking me to contribute to their fancy rock collection, to having a Q&A session with a group of overly excited customers on a tour ship, to helping random faction ships fight off some spacers; I’ve had plenty of fun encounters on my journeys in space.
Apparel is also a fun aspect of Starfield. Each of the locations in Starfield present a different motif and because of that there are a wide variety of different styled outfits available. I love getting new clothes not just for myself, but also to kit out my companions and crew. I don’t like that we can’t mix and match clothes anymore, but the outfits available are great. I also appreciate that hair changes dynamically depending on the hats you put on rather than just making you bald like in prior games. Spacesuits and Helmets also look very nice and have a great amount of attention to detail.
Now this is a much smaller thing than the others but I wanted to mention it. I love the detail in planet simulation. Different gravity between planets gets my heart absolutely racing and I always end up having a blast (literally) on low-grav planets. It’s also super cool to watch light scatter differently based on how the planet is orbiting its star, whether another planet is in the way, and even what type of star it's orbiting. I also love that sleeping on different planets has a different effect on universal time versus local time due to space-time dilation.
Ship Combat is pretty fun. It’s a lot more stat-check based than normal combat but the solution there is to just not go into high levelled systems or to grav-jump away. I originally thought it was just a hold your triggers and keep aim kind of thing but there’s a surprising depth to it. There’s definitely some skill required in piloting to make sure you are keeping target, keeping within range, and also moving enough to not be a sitting target dummy. There’s also a bit of tactic in shooting. Shields are up? Probably best to lay off the ballistics and send all your power into lasers. Shields are down? Divert everything to ballistics and missiles and let those spacer scum feel it! It’s actually pretty fun. I just wish there were a power profile button switcher or something since that time wasted manually diverting power can actually end up in taking a lot of damage. On a side note it would be really cool if there was a mod that could use our voices to change the power allocation... “Adoring Fan, divert all power to the grav drives! We’re making a run for it!”
Lastly I want to speak on Ship Building because it's seriously awesome and might just be one of my favourite parts of the game. There’s just something so special about creating your very own ship, hand picking all its systems and its look, and then flying into space and getting into a dogfight with it. I’ve seen people create the Millenium Falcon, and I’ve even seen someone make the Starship Enterprise. The builder system is actually much deeper than I expected from watching the direct and I have to say, I can’t wait to build up enough credits to make myself a whole new Ebon Hawk or even a Normandy SR-1. It would also be really cool if we could have our extra crew follow us as a fleet in our other ships or something too since ally NPC ships do actually assist in fights.
Criticisms:
Now that I've fellated Starfield long enough to be called the biggest fanboy alive, let's get to some of my gripes. Some will be minor nitpicks while others will be genuine issues, so let’s begin.
First and foremost has to be PC performance. Now granted the performance is not by any means outrageous, but it's still an issue. I've thankfully never had to deal with any stutters or issues unlike in [Insert UE4/5 Game Here] however those games also look much better as a tradeoff for the performance. For a game that doesn't even have Ray Tracing to need upscaling tech to keep a steady 60fps on a [3090 5800X3D] PC is very stupid, even if I'm at 3440x1440. Again, I haven't run into any issues with stuttering or any frame drops so it's not the end of the world; but given the fidelity of this game it really should not be so graphically demanding. Lack of official DLSS support is also very disappointing but I’m not sure who is at fault for this.
Next absolutely has to be the AI. While lots of aspects have improved over their prior games, AI is certainly not one of them. Both the enemy and companion AI are absolutely atrocious and I see no improvements over their past games. Now I can mostly ignore the enemy AI since on very hard I tend to just get completely ripped apart by their guns anyway, but companion AI is seriously terrible. Here are a few things I absolutely hate about companion AI:
Sitting in cover doing absolutely nothing but peeking through the corner for the entire fight.
Suddenly deciding that running out into the open is a great idea and getting completely shredded within seconds.
Not adjusting their tactics based on the gun they’re using -- why are you shooting a shotgun from a long range Barrett?
Not even arriving to the fight in time because they follow from 30 miles back for some reason.
Having the absolute worst aim I've ever seen with my own two eyes.
Saying the AI needs work would be a major understatement. Note I am specifically talking about on-foot AI since the space AI is actually pretty good. Anyway, I would rank this as my number one issue with the game but unfortunately I don't see a fix coming any time soon.
On the combat side, melee combat is seriously disappointing. There are a couple of cool melee weapons, but they are never any better than just using a gun. The lack of any level of modding for them really sucks too. This is unfortunately a regression from Fallout’s melee system (even if the animations are much better) and there is next to no reason to play melee in this game.
Continuing on from combat, enemy sponginess is something I'm of two ways about. On one hand, I think it's a necessary evil that comes from meshing a shooter into an RPG. On the other hand, having to empty 2 full mags into someone's unprotected skull to kill them is immersion breaking to say the least. I'm not too torn up about this since mods can just change it anyway, and it's realistically a drawback of shooter RPGs rather than a problem particular to Starfield; but I figured I should mention it anyway.
As much as I like the companions, I feel like they don’t really interact with each other enough outside of main story quests. Maybe this is an expectation I have due to playing so many party-based RPGs and I shouldn’t have them since Starfield only lets you bring one crew member, but I think it’s a shame nonetheless. Crew banter is one of the best things about companions/parties in RPGs and it’s a shame the banter is so lacking in Starfield. This is especially true given that while they may not be out together on foot, they are together literally any time I’m on my ship.
Following on from the companions I don’t like that they’re pretty much all goodie two shoes. Now I play a good guy typically with a bit of grey morality here or there so it’s not the biggest issue in the world, but it’s weird that we have no evil or at least grey companions in Constellation -I would’ve liked a little more variety there. Oh well, at least my Adoring Fan doesn’t question me when I accidentally throw a live grenade into a crowd of innocents.
Now this is a small one and honestly it's less to do with Starfield and more to do with RPGs in general, and that's the Persuasion system. Gamifying and tying dialogue to game skills will forever be something I absolutely hate in RPGs. Reward me for understanding the characters and paying attention to the quests and the conversation. Don't just let me use a 'skill' I spent a point on to magically get my way with one liners that wouldn't convince a child. Yes I know there are certain 'blue checks' in the persuasion system and they are great but they are also few and far between. Trait/Power based persuasion is okay with me because that is at least immersive, but the chance based xyz persuasion will always be bad. It is boring and it tends to make quest design lazy. Admittedly it is a better persuasion system than Fallout and Skyrim, but I still don't like it. I will stand by the fact that Deus Ex has, to this day, the best persuasion system in gaming; and will continue to hopelessly wish that other games will pick up on it.
I also don't like that enemies aren't fully lootable like in TES or Fallout. I don't think this is an economic choice since credits aren't exactly hard to come by and you'd be limited by encumbrance anyway. It was a key staple in Bethesda games that I feel added a depth to the immersion that other games simply didn't have. I genuinely think Starfield suffers with its loss. I also miss seeing the NPCs get stripped when we took their gear and I think it blows that it doesn't happen anymore. I’m sure it’ll get modded in eventually, but this isn’t something that we should need to be modded in the first place.
I'm not a huge fan of the perk system either. I like the idea behind challenges but I stand by Oblivion having the best levelling system in a Bethesda game. The perks that unlock systems or new functions are fine, but perks that just add an extra 10 percent damage or 20 percent chance are boring and lazy. It’s a shame that the vast majority of perks are like this and it takes away all of the fun of class building and levelling up when a level essentially constitutes to: “here’s an extra 10 percent damage”. Nothing else to really say except this is a very boring and uninspired part of the game. Thankfully there’s a system that I won’t mention for spoilers that does add some cool stuff, but that doesn’t negate how boring the perks are.
Now I’m not too sure how accurate this criticism will be since I haven’t maxed out the weapon modding skill, but I feel like modding guns is actually a step down from Fallout. In Fallout 4 you could change a gun's characteristics so much that you could turn say a Pipe Pistol into a Pipe Sniper Rifle or a Pipe Machine Gun. In Starfield you can still modify the guns to a good amount, but it just doesn’t feel as deep as the system in Fallout 4. I may just not have enough levels in the skill or I’m just misremembering Fallout 4, but right now it definitely feels like a regression.
The regional map is the worst map I've ever seen in any game too by the way. I have no idea who thought this completely unreadable dot amalgamation was a good idea, but it’s terrible. I honestly thought my game was bugged when I first saw it, only to find out it was intended. It would be one thing for the procedural planets to use that type of map (I still think it’s lazy) but the handcrafted cities too? The local maps needed a major revamp last week. Get on it.
Miscellaneous loot is also something I have a problem with. In Fallout 4 all miscellaneous items had a use -in that their components could be used as resources for crafting. Unfortunately Starfield does not follow this trend and goes back to having all that miscellaneous junk be useless. Not a fan of this at all. I understand that the majority of resources will be gathered from actual minerals and animals, but at least allow us to burn all the miscellaneous loot for a percentage of the resources. My loot goblin heart burns seeing all that clutter be completely useless and this feels like needless regression.
The lack of a transmog feature is something I find a little baffling. For a game with so many different armors with a diverse set of effects and resistances (a lot of which is also random) to not have a transmog system is so weird. It's 2023. We should not have to choose between the strongest armour in our inventory and the look that we like. Get with the program Bethesda, this is an outdated issue.
Another flaw is one that I imagine I share with many people here and that's the lack of seamlessness. This game is littered with loading screens and while I can ignore it for the most part on my M.2 (never takes more than a few seconds to load) it's still a shame. I don’t mind the existence of all different fast travels (it’s very convenient when you need to jump between 4 different outposts all in different systems) but I still think keeping in some sort of way to manually travel between planets and systems outside of these menus would’ve been nice. It’s not by any means a big deal to me, but it certainly hurts the flow of the game and general immersion.
The final flaw I think is worth mentioning has to be the tile system. I never had any intention of walking across an entire planet anyway, but I still think it would’ve been cool to have as an option. Even if it couldn’t be seamless, why not just prompt the player to generate a new tile as they’re walking? Why do they need to return to their ship? Just have a loading screen right there when they’re walking and make them go through a loading screen at each boundary, no ship necessary. In the end the tiles aren’t a huge problem to me since the only times I interact with the procedural planets is when it’s related to a quest or I’m making an outpost. Even then it’s still something that I consider a negative, if only in terms of immersion. Oh by the way I hate that there are no ground vehicles. It’s almost certainly because of the tile system (reaching boundaries would be way quicker) but it still sucks.
Conclusion:
Starfield is Bethesda’s first new IP in over 25 years and their first single player experience since the release of Fallout 4 back in 2015. How does it match up against their previous games? Does it beat out gaming behemoths like Skyrim and Fallout 4? How does it fare against their crowd favourites in Oblivion and Fallout 3? What about their original masterpiece that quite literally saved the company in Morrowind?
In my humble opinion: Starfield absolutely blows those games out of the water. Starfield is the accumulation of everything Bethesda has learnt and achieved since the beginning of their company. It is the embodiment of the Bethesda DNA that we’ve come to expect from their releases. It is the ultimate refinement of a Bethesda game; a Bethesda RPG. Starfield is their Magnum Opus.
For some this game will be a letdown, for others it will be just okay. It will really come down to whether you like Bethesda RPGs or you don’t, because that’s exactly what Starfield is. For me this game is what I’ve been waiting for the past 8 years when I had first heard of the trademark ‘Starfield’. It is the fulfilment of the dream I’ve had since I was a child. To explore the vastness of space and be set free in a near endlessly wide and fun open world, or better yet, open universe. That is what Starfield has given to me.
Starfield is not perfect, not even close; but I don’t care. In my eyes, this is a masterpiece. To me, this is what gaming is meant to be. An escape into a dream world where I can do anything I want, and be whoever I want. That is what Starfield truly is.
So to close out this far too long ramble that no one has even read, I’ll say this. Bethesda has created something truly special with Starfield; and I’ve barely even started my journey with it. As Marthe Troly-Curtin once wrote: ‘time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time’. Well, I suppose I’ll be spending a lot of time, ‘not wasted’, with Starfield.
5/5
Poorly written near four thousand word novel incoming. Big Bethesda fan so I’m probably biased too. Just read the conclusion if you want a TL;DR I guess. Or don’t.
Preamble:
After putting around 20 hours into Starfield I wrote a near 1000 word review. It was a review going into detail about how Starfield isn't the next No Man's Sky or the replacement to Star Citizen. About how comparing it to other critically acclaimed RPG series like The Witcher or the recently released Baldur's Gate 3 was like comparing apples and oranges. About how it wasn't a matter of one being better than the other but rather a matter of taste and direction. About Bethesda RPGs not truly belonging to the same categories as the aforementioned games, and the need to establish different expectations because of this. About how Starfield offered an entirely different experience from other RPGs. About how this experience wasn’t necessarily worse or better, just different -for other people with different tastes. To put it simply, I was defending Starfield.
Then I played for another 30 hours and I realised something: why should I need to justify my enjoyment? Why am I spending more time talking about games not called Starfield in my Starfield review? I realised that it didn't matter. So no more of that. Fair warning: lots of praise incoming and plenty of complaints too. So let's go.
Intro:
Starfield is the accumulation of everything Bethesda has learnt over the years. Through their Masterpieces, their flawed gems, and their failures. Starfield is a love letter to Bethesda fans who have been entrenched in the worlds of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. A love letter to those who get sucked into those worlds, who spend years playing these games that seemingly never end. Starfield, though by no means perfect, is Bethesda's Magnum Opus.
Praises:
So let's get into what I love about Starfield. As it's a Bethesda game it would be wrong to start with anything else but the game world. Starfield takes place in the aptly named ‘Settled Systems’, a catch-all term for a collective area of chartered systems within the Milky Way Galaxy. Naturally Starfield is in no short supply of places to go and see. It’s not just the wide vistas and deep blacks of outer space that grab your attention, but also the handful of cities neatly hand-crafted and packed full of detail. The hand-crafted portions of Starfield are what I’d call masterfully done, and it definitely shows in game. Delicately placed bits and pieces of detailed clutter breathe life into the game's areas. This clutter adds to the immersion of the settled worlds, alongside the delicately placed bars, restaurants, shops, and other key locations littered throughout. Each of the large cities have their own unique aesthetics not just in architecture: but also in lighting, atmosphere, and of course the characters and quests that populate these places.
Quests are something I always enjoy in Bethesda games, and Starfield is no different. Starfield features a genuinely insane amount of quests and content -perhaps to the point of becoming overwhelming. I haven’t gotten very far myself, but so far the main quest has been pretty interesting, and is definitely a level above Bethesda’s prior efforts. There are also plenty of side quests, faction quests, and a bunch of random encounters out in the far reaches of space that I’ve enjoyed sinking my teeth into. We also can’t forget about the procedural/radiant content that while lacking the depth and quality of the handcrafted content; help fill out the world to create a truly immersive universe to play in. I can’t speak on the quality of all of it as after 50 hours I feel I’ve barely even scratched the surface. Of the quests that I have played I can say they have been great.
When thinking about standout quests there are many quests that come to mind, but one that I always find myself thinking about is actually a very minor delivery quest. Without going into the details, I had to deliver a letter across systems. It was a simple quest that would get filed under ‘misc’; the kind you forget about after 10 minutes. I was given some credits and EXP after finishing it, and I figured that would be that. Flash forward an hour or so and I'm back where I got given the quest and would you look at that: the person I delivered the letter to had actually travelled across systems specifically because of the letter I had delivered. They were having a conversation because of that letter, and I was able to talk to them about it and get some deeper info. What's more the next day they were hanging out somewhere else; chatting about something entirely different! Something that I thought was just some stupid little side quest to fill out the game actually ended up having more depth than I had expected which was very cool.
Bugs, or lack thereof, are surprisingly a major positive for Starfield. It goes without saying that this is entirely anecdotal. After all, everyone's systems react differently; so my experience isn’t necessarily the same as everyone else's. Now I’ve had a few small bugs here or there, but I’ve never had anything more than an odd ragdoll or physics clutter. For a game of this size with everything it’s trying to do, it’s truly remarkable how polished it has been so far. I can thankfully say I’ve never once had to reload a save because of a bug. Time will tell whether or not this experience persists, but for now Starfield has been a very polished game in the bug department -which is a far cry from Bethesda’s prior titles.
Combat is the best it’s ever been in a Bethesda game. Gunplay is smooth, responsive, and most importantly fun. Animations are fluid and add to the general feel of combat. The jetpack provides a level of verticality to the already fast paced combat, and weapon variety helps it from feeling samey. There is however a big flaw in the combat, and a couple of smaller ones, but I will get to them later. Overall combat is very fun. It’s a massive improvement over Fallout which I already thought did a great job for a single player RPG shooter.
Another thing I love are the traits. Now, I haven't seen much action from my background (I chose Bounty Hunter) so I won't comment on that, but the traits I chose were: 'Neon Street Rat', 'Hero Worshipped', and 'Kid Stuff', and I have to say... wow. Obviously I can't comment on the other traits as I haven't used them (maybe I just chose the best traits), but man I was not expecting these traits to have so much content to them. I don't want to go into it too much, but I will simply say that these traits are more than little additions to your dialogue. They define who you are and ground you to the world. 'Neon Street Rat' has unsurprisingly seen a lot of action on Neon and comes up regularly in quests there. Hero Worshipped is probably a must have for Oblivion fans simply for the nostalgia factor. Kid Stuff... man that trait is genuinely just amazing. I won't say any more but yeah these traits are very cool.
The main companions/crew in this game are definitely some of the best Bethesda have ever made (sans Serana) and I’m certainly enjoying my time with them. They each have interesting backstories that have me looking forward to the next time they’ll ‘ask me for a chat’, so I can hear more about their lives. It’s fun seeing them mention what I said in our previous chats too, which makes me feel like I’m truly impacting them rather than just clicking whatever option progresses the dialogue. It truly feels like my talks with them actually affect who they are and how their problems will unfold. Time will tell how much of an impact my choices actually have on them as I’m so early into the game, but so far it’s very promising. Their voice acting is also superb as are their visual designs. Special shoutout to my best friend Adam Jense- err I mean Sam Coe. He’s my favourite by far.
Music. My god Inon Zur absolutely cooked with this soundtrack. I honestly have nothing to say, I’m not a music critic. Unfortunately I don’t know anything technical about music. All I know is those soundtracks play, and I’m taken away into another world. Truly magical stuff... well done.
Choice and consequence is actually surprisingly good for a Bethesda game. There are a variety of different choices you can make throughout all sorts of quests through Starfield that support proper role playing and gives the player agency in how they want their own story to play out. I haven’t played any of the faction quest lines yet, same with most of the main questline, so I’m unaware of how well they handle this. However given the choices I’ve been given in the many side quests I’ve done, I imagine it’s likely just as good.
Random encounters out in space have also been a highlight in my playthrough and gives incentive to interact with the areas outside of the planets rather than just fast travelling straight into a location. From geologists asking me to contribute to their fancy rock collection, to having a Q&A session with a group of overly excited customers on a tour ship, to helping random faction ships fight off some spacers; I’ve had plenty of fun encounters on my journeys in space.
Apparel is also a fun aspect of Starfield. Each of the locations in Starfield present a different motif and because of that there are a wide variety of different styled outfits available. I love getting new clothes not just for myself, but also to kit out my companions and crew. I don’t like that we can’t mix and match clothes anymore, but the outfits available are great. I also appreciate that hair changes dynamically depending on the hats you put on rather than just making you bald like in prior games. Spacesuits and Helmets also look very nice and have a great amount of attention to detail.
Now this is a much smaller thing than the others but I wanted to mention it. I love the detail in planet simulation. Different gravity between planets gets my heart absolutely racing and I always end up having a blast (literally) on low-grav planets. It’s also super cool to watch light scatter differently based on how the planet is orbiting its star, whether another planet is in the way, and even what type of star it's orbiting. I also love that sleeping on different planets has a different effect on universal time versus local time due to space-time dilation.
Ship Combat is pretty fun. It’s a lot more stat-check based than normal combat but the solution there is to just not go into high levelled systems or to grav-jump away. I originally thought it was just a hold your triggers and keep aim kind of thing but there’s a surprising depth to it. There’s definitely some skill required in piloting to make sure you are keeping target, keeping within range, and also moving enough to not be a sitting target dummy. There’s also a bit of tactic in shooting. Shields are up? Probably best to lay off the ballistics and send all your power into lasers. Shields are down? Divert everything to ballistics and missiles and let those spacer scum feel it! It’s actually pretty fun. I just wish there were a power profile button switcher or something since that time wasted manually diverting power can actually end up in taking a lot of damage. On a side note it would be really cool if there was a mod that could use our voices to change the power allocation... “Adoring Fan, divert all power to the grav drives! We’re making a run for it!”
Lastly I want to speak on Ship Building because it's seriously awesome and might just be one of my favourite parts of the game. There’s just something so special about creating your very own ship, hand picking all its systems and its look, and then flying into space and getting into a dogfight with it. I’ve seen people create the Millenium Falcon, and I’ve even seen someone make the Starship Enterprise. The builder system is actually much deeper than I expected from watching the direct and I have to say, I can’t wait to build up enough credits to make myself a whole new Ebon Hawk or even a Normandy SR-1. It would also be really cool if we could have our extra crew follow us as a fleet in our other ships or something too since ally NPC ships do actually assist in fights.
Criticisms:
Now that I've fellated Starfield long enough to be called the biggest fanboy alive, let's get to some of my gripes. Some will be minor nitpicks while others will be genuine issues, so let’s begin.
First and foremost has to be PC performance. Now granted the performance is not by any means outrageous, but it's still an issue. I've thankfully never had to deal with any stutters or issues unlike in [Insert UE4/5 Game Here] however those games also look much better as a tradeoff for the performance. For a game that doesn't even have Ray Tracing to need upscaling tech to keep a steady 60fps on a [3090 5800X3D] PC is very stupid, even if I'm at 3440x1440. Again, I haven't run into any issues with stuttering or any frame drops so it's not the end of the world; but given the fidelity of this game it really should not be so graphically demanding. Lack of official DLSS support is also very disappointing but I’m not sure who is at fault for this.
Next absolutely has to be the AI. While lots of aspects have improved over their prior games, AI is certainly not one of them. Both the enemy and companion AI are absolutely atrocious and I see no improvements over their past games. Now I can mostly ignore the enemy AI since on very hard I tend to just get completely ripped apart by their guns anyway, but companion AI is seriously terrible. Here are a few things I absolutely hate about companion AI:
Sitting in cover doing absolutely nothing but peeking through the corner for the entire fight.
Suddenly deciding that running out into the open is a great idea and getting completely shredded within seconds.
Not adjusting their tactics based on the gun they’re using -- why are you shooting a shotgun from a long range Barrett?
Not even arriving to the fight in time because they follow from 30 miles back for some reason.
Having the absolute worst aim I've ever seen with my own two eyes.
Saying the AI needs work would be a major understatement. Note I am specifically talking about on-foot AI since the space AI is actually pretty good. Anyway, I would rank this as my number one issue with the game but unfortunately I don't see a fix coming any time soon.
On the combat side, melee combat is seriously disappointing. There are a couple of cool melee weapons, but they are never any better than just using a gun. The lack of any level of modding for them really sucks too. This is unfortunately a regression from Fallout’s melee system (even if the animations are much better) and there is next to no reason to play melee in this game.
Continuing on from combat, enemy sponginess is something I'm of two ways about. On one hand, I think it's a necessary evil that comes from meshing a shooter into an RPG. On the other hand, having to empty 2 full mags into someone's unprotected skull to kill them is immersion breaking to say the least. I'm not too torn up about this since mods can just change it anyway, and it's realistically a drawback of shooter RPGs rather than a problem particular to Starfield; but I figured I should mention it anyway.
As much as I like the companions, I feel like they don’t really interact with each other enough outside of main story quests. Maybe this is an expectation I have due to playing so many party-based RPGs and I shouldn’t have them since Starfield only lets you bring one crew member, but I think it’s a shame nonetheless. Crew banter is one of the best things about companions/parties in RPGs and it’s a shame the banter is so lacking in Starfield. This is especially true given that while they may not be out together on foot, they are together literally any time I’m on my ship.
Following on from the companions I don’t like that they’re pretty much all goodie two shoes. Now I play a good guy typically with a bit of grey morality here or there so it’s not the biggest issue in the world, but it’s weird that we have no evil or at least grey companions in Constellation -I would’ve liked a little more variety there. Oh well, at least my Adoring Fan doesn’t question me when I accidentally throw a live grenade into a crowd of innocents.
Now this is a small one and honestly it's less to do with Starfield and more to do with RPGs in general, and that's the Persuasion system. Gamifying and tying dialogue to game skills will forever be something I absolutely hate in RPGs. Reward me for understanding the characters and paying attention to the quests and the conversation. Don't just let me use a 'skill' I spent a point on to magically get my way with one liners that wouldn't convince a child. Yes I know there are certain 'blue checks' in the persuasion system and they are great but they are also few and far between. Trait/Power based persuasion is okay with me because that is at least immersive, but the chance based xyz persuasion will always be bad. It is boring and it tends to make quest design lazy. Admittedly it is a better persuasion system than Fallout and Skyrim, but I still don't like it. I will stand by the fact that Deus Ex has, to this day, the best persuasion system in gaming; and will continue to hopelessly wish that other games will pick up on it.
I also don't like that enemies aren't fully lootable like in TES or Fallout. I don't think this is an economic choice since credits aren't exactly hard to come by and you'd be limited by encumbrance anyway. It was a key staple in Bethesda games that I feel added a depth to the immersion that other games simply didn't have. I genuinely think Starfield suffers with its loss. I also miss seeing the NPCs get stripped when we took their gear and I think it blows that it doesn't happen anymore. I’m sure it’ll get modded in eventually, but this isn’t something that we should need to be modded in the first place.
I'm not a huge fan of the perk system either. I like the idea behind challenges but I stand by Oblivion having the best levelling system in a Bethesda game. The perks that unlock systems or new functions are fine, but perks that just add an extra 10 percent damage or 20 percent chance are boring and lazy. It’s a shame that the vast majority of perks are like this and it takes away all of the fun of class building and levelling up when a level essentially constitutes to: “here’s an extra 10 percent damage”. Nothing else to really say except this is a very boring and uninspired part of the game. Thankfully there’s a system that I won’t mention for spoilers that does add some cool stuff, but that doesn’t negate how boring the perks are.
Now I’m not too sure how accurate this criticism will be since I haven’t maxed out the weapon modding skill, but I feel like modding guns is actually a step down from Fallout. In Fallout 4 you could change a gun's characteristics so much that you could turn say a Pipe Pistol into a Pipe Sniper Rifle or a Pipe Machine Gun. In Starfield you can still modify the guns to a good amount, but it just doesn’t feel as deep as the system in Fallout 4. I may just not have enough levels in the skill or I’m just misremembering Fallout 4, but right now it definitely feels like a regression.
The regional map is the worst map I've ever seen in any game too by the way. I have no idea who thought this completely unreadable dot amalgamation was a good idea, but it’s terrible. I honestly thought my game was bugged when I first saw it, only to find out it was intended. It would be one thing for the procedural planets to use that type of map (I still think it’s lazy) but the handcrafted cities too? The local maps needed a major revamp last week. Get on it.
Miscellaneous loot is also something I have a problem with. In Fallout 4 all miscellaneous items had a use -in that their components could be used as resources for crafting. Unfortunately Starfield does not follow this trend and goes back to having all that miscellaneous junk be useless. Not a fan of this at all. I understand that the majority of resources will be gathered from actual minerals and animals, but at least allow us to burn all the miscellaneous loot for a percentage of the resources. My loot goblin heart burns seeing all that clutter be completely useless and this feels like needless regression.
The lack of a transmog feature is something I find a little baffling. For a game with so many different armors with a diverse set of effects and resistances (a lot of which is also random) to not have a transmog system is so weird. It's 2023. We should not have to choose between the strongest armour in our inventory and the look that we like. Get with the program Bethesda, this is an outdated issue.
Another flaw is one that I imagine I share with many people here and that's the lack of seamlessness. This game is littered with loading screens and while I can ignore it for the most part on my M.2 (never takes more than a few seconds to load) it's still a shame. I don’t mind the existence of all different fast travels (it’s very convenient when you need to jump between 4 different outposts all in different systems) but I still think keeping in some sort of way to manually travel between planets and systems outside of these menus would’ve been nice. It’s not by any means a big deal to me, but it certainly hurts the flow of the game and general immersion.
The final flaw I think is worth mentioning has to be the tile system. I never had any intention of walking across an entire planet anyway, but I still think it would’ve been cool to have as an option. Even if it couldn’t be seamless, why not just prompt the player to generate a new tile as they’re walking? Why do they need to return to their ship? Just have a loading screen right there when they’re walking and make them go through a loading screen at each boundary, no ship necessary. In the end the tiles aren’t a huge problem to me since the only times I interact with the procedural planets is when it’s related to a quest or I’m making an outpost. Even then it’s still something that I consider a negative, if only in terms of immersion. Oh by the way I hate that there are no ground vehicles. It’s almost certainly because of the tile system (reaching boundaries would be way quicker) but it still sucks.
Conclusion:
Starfield is Bethesda’s first new IP in over 25 years and their first single player experience since the release of Fallout 4 back in 2015. How does it match up against their previous games? Does it beat out gaming behemoths like Skyrim and Fallout 4? How does it fare against their crowd favourites in Oblivion and Fallout 3? What about their original masterpiece that quite literally saved the company in Morrowind?
In my humble opinion: Starfield absolutely blows those games out of the water. Starfield is the accumulation of everything Bethesda has learnt and achieved since the beginning of their company. It is the embodiment of the Bethesda DNA that we’ve come to expect from their releases. It is the ultimate refinement of a Bethesda game; a Bethesda RPG. Starfield is their Magnum Opus.
For some this game will be a letdown, for others it will be just okay. It will really come down to whether you like Bethesda RPGs or you don’t, because that’s exactly what Starfield is. For me this game is what I’ve been waiting for the past 8 years when I had first heard of the trademark ‘Starfield’. It is the fulfilment of the dream I’ve had since I was a child. To explore the vastness of space and be set free in a near endlessly wide and fun open world, or better yet, open universe. That is what Starfield has given to me.
Starfield is not perfect, not even close; but I don’t care. In my eyes, this is a masterpiece. To me, this is what gaming is meant to be. An escape into a dream world where I can do anything I want, and be whoever I want. That is what Starfield truly is.
So to close out this far too long ramble that no one has even read, I’ll say this. Bethesda has created something truly special with Starfield; and I’ve barely even started my journey with it. As Marthe Troly-Curtin once wrote: ‘time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time’. Well, I suppose I’ll be spending a lot of time, ‘not wasted’, with Starfield.
5/5