Welcome to my review of Starfield, a game that literally promised the world and the entire outer space as well, how does it play and was it well worth the wait?
Starfield is the first new universe in over 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. In this next-generation role-playing game set amongst the stars, create any character you want and explore with unparalleled freedom as you embark on an epic journey to answer humanity’s greatest mystery.
In the year 2330, humanity has ventured beyond our solar system, settling new planets, and living as a spacefaring people. You will join Constellation – the last group of space explorers seeking rare artifacts throughout the galaxy – and navigate the vast expanse of space in Bethesda Game Studios’ biggest and most ambitious game.
In Starfield the most important story is the one you tell with your character. Start your journey by customizing your appearance and deciding your Background and Traits. Will you be an experienced explorer, a charming diplomat, a stealthy cyber runner, or something else entirely? The choice is yours. Decide who you will be and what you will become.
Explore Outer Space and venture through the stars and explore more than 1,000 planets. Navigate bustling cities, explore dangerous bases, and traverse wild landscapes. Meet and recruit a memorable cast of characters, join in the adventures of various factions, and embark on quests across the Settled Systems. A new story or experience is always waiting to be discovered.
Captain the Ship Of Your Dreams. Pilot and command the ship of your dreams. Personalize the look of your ship, modify critical systems including weapons and shields, and assign crew members to provide unique bonuses. In deep space, you will engage in high-stakes dogfights, encounter random missions, dock at star stations, and even board and commandeer enemy ships to add to your collection.
Explore planets and discover the fauna, flora, and resources needed to craft everything from medicine and food to equipment and weapons. Build outposts and hire a crew to passively extract materials and establish cargo links to transfer resources between them. Invest these raw materials into research projects to unlock unique crafting recipes.
Space can be a dangerous place. A refined combat system gives you the tools to deal with any situation. Whether you prefer long-range rifles, laser weapons, or demolitions, each weapon type can be modified to complement your playstyle. Zero-G environments add a chaotic spectacle to combat, while boost packs give players freedom to maneuver like never before.
Originally I had planned to finish Starfield before writing my review, but even right now, around 35 hours into the game, I feel like I barely scratched the top of what Starfield represents. Starting out as a lowly miner to become part of the constellation, the band of outcasts that are looking to gather artifacts and perform research on them.
Your initial contribution is basically touching one and activating it. Not that it does a lot, it just shows you a slight visual show with some music, but only having been one of the first to actually encounter this, you get suckered into going towards the constellation and thus, the start of your adventures. Slowly but surely, you get bombarded with hundreds of things to do, to explore, and even worse, to learn.
The learning part is my worst enemy in this game, not one of the raiders or one of many other factions out there, but the steep curve. The learning curve on some of the mechanics is harsh. Take for example the travel between planets and star systems. The star map is pure horror at first and if you do not figure out from the start that you can fast travel, prepare to waste a lot of hours for no apparent reason (just start your scanner when you are in the pilot’s seat, trust me on this one).
Once you do figure out the pinpoint landings and such, the majority of frustrations are gone when it comes to the traveling part of the game. I just wish it was explained better, like spend a few more lines of information towards this and it would be solved, but I guess this is typical for Bethesda to bring a higher learning curve to the table, with freedom of exploration comes a more difficult learning process. I remember Skyrim at first being quite a handful as well.
While there are many similarities between Skyrim and Starfield, the fact that you have thousands of worlds does solve an age-old problem when it comes to these realistic sim/RPG games, which I consider Starfield to be. You can become a farmer or a hitman, it all just comes down to your own desire and ability to make it happen. This is something that was greatly advertised beforehand, that almost everything was possible.
My personal desire was to see if it was possible to destroy a planet, so far, I have been unable to confirm this, but all mechanics right now point towards it being impossible, well, until someone makes a mod for it, I am sure. But I’m getting sidetracked which is actually not that unusual in a game like this.
Starfield will distract you the entire time, from boring side missions to get some contraband to a smuggler to fun missions where your obvious best choice is to make friends, but you decide to shoot up the place anyway. Why? Because it is possible, there are usually several options, like the time you were dealing with a thief trying to sell you an artifact, eventually, you get to decide if he lives or not, well, at least in the fashion I played, because the guy wanting him death, he could have been in a gunfight with me as well.
The deepness of the story is sure as hell refreshing to see, from the past few years the majority of open-world games or big projects like this, pretty much all fell short for me, and not once was I saying to myself, that I could see myself play this game for many more hours after finishing the game. In all fairness, I have no clue how far into the game I am right now, I am expecting it to be around 20ish percent, based on how the story has progressed.
Right now, I truly appreciate the game for a rather unusual advantage, I can drop in and out whenever I want. If I want to watch some of that horrible One Piece live-action, I can take full advantage of the quick save/quick resume. Though I have had a few occasions where I had to manually go back to a previous auto-save because of some bugs; nothing is more fun than having the auto-save point mere seconds before a lethal slash from an alien life form on a distant planet or standing next to a canister filled with explosives and you are getting shot at.
But when all is said and done these are minor annoyances that can easily be lived with. I guess you can nitpick and even say the opening of doors is a major annoyance. Allow me to explain, the game teaches you to use the scanner and well, I use it probably more than I should, unless I am in a gunfight, I am walking or running around with the darn thing on. The A-button which is normally for opening doors then becomes the scan options. Needless to say, I have tried scanning at least a few hundred doors. I know, it is silly to mention this, but in my humble opinion, this is one of those things that should be changed. It just doesn’t make sense and is an easy fix, to be honest.
What does make a lot more sense though, is the storyline. Despite being a massive space opus, it all just makes sense. From gathering all those artifacts to traveling to worlds, finding and buying new items, getting new ships, getting your ships upgraded, finding a kiosk to sell your stuff so you can walk around again at a normal speed, it all has a natural flow to it.
There are so many more mechanics I really should be mentioning. I feel like I am forgetting so many things because the game is just so big. Can it be too much? Yes, I am sure many new players especially those new to the genre will be flabbergasted by the sheer size of everything happening around them. I would also say this is setting the standard for all future games in this genre.
While it may be high praise, I do stand by these words despite having written down several irks and quirks that I would want to see changed. But that is exactly where I have the deepest trust in Bethesda, Bethesda doing Bethesda things in a way only Bethesda can, including years-long worth of content/support. They know the game and they play it like no other.
Now, what is my personal impression of the game really all about?
Honestly, I like it so far, the game has thrown me a few curve balls, thinking I was aware of the storyline to basically get a unicorn thrown at me. I also like the possibility of storing your items in the ship at hand, because your carry weight gets exceeded quickly when you are a hoarder like me.
What I disliked, the doors part, it ticks me off more than it should, I know. I also disliked how the game fell short at times to explain what you are supposed to be doing. It could be done differently, but maybe I am one of the few that feel this way?
Now, what score do you give a game like this? An all-out 10 because it delivered pretty much the ultimate space opus or do you take into account everything as you are supposed to? Well, I want to be clear here, I was doubting between an 8.5 and an 8 in the end, which was up from 7 and 7.5 after about 10 hours into the game. Yes, the longer I played, the more I liked things, but that is mostly because I figured out to ignore flaws like the traveling issue and so much more. In the end, I am opting to give the game an 8,.Some more quality of life changes and maybe getting rid of a few bugs here and there and I end up raising the score to 8.5, but as it stands now, I am sticking to an 8/10
In conclusion, great storyline and, very steep learning curve that wrecks the initial experience but I can’t wait to play another 100 hours and by that time, hopefully complete the game.
