Bethesda's long-awaited Space RPG
Starfield is a game of two halves, and that is where all the divide among the discourse of this game stems from, This review will be split across these two halves.
The First Half:
STARFIELD as an Open Space Exploration game:
This is the half that all the marketing focused on, the half that Todd wanted to sells so badly and I think there's no beating around the bush with this:
As a space exploration game Starfield completely falls flat and is years behind its peers.
There is no sense of intricacy between it's systems to allow for exploration to work properly, it's hampered by too many loadings and relies so heavily on menus that any actual "wandering" is frankly non-existent, this is not No Man's Sky nor does it even seem to be trying to be, In my 94 hours I probably spent a combined time of 1 hour actually flying my spaceship
Which is a huge shame because Space combat is genuinely an aspect I love of this game, It's stupidly fun once you get a great ship going and this is from someone who rarely enjoys space flight in games!
Meanwhile actual Space Travel outside of menus falls apart due to the Creation Engine's limitation that for some reason seems to be entirely incapable of hiding loading screens, even if they are only 1/2 secs long for grav jumping to other systems, It's enough to break immersion.
Procedural Content outside of being occasionally insanely pretty and great eye candy, frankly fucking sucks, lack of vehicles makes traversing these planets insanely tedious, POIs are too far apart and rarely offer anything interesting, if you do enough of them they'll start to repeat, while it took me 30+ hours for them to start repeating, I never engaged too much with it and I know for others it took way less to find repeats.
and I really wouldn't be as harsh on this as I am if the marketing didn't so badly want to sell this aspect of the game, If you're looking to play Starfield for a space exploration game like No Man's Sky, Just go play NMS, This half of the experience is just... not good, Creation Engine clearly is incapable of handling the scale that BGS wanted to go for with this and it really is a shame.
The Second Half:
STARFIELD as a Semi Open World experience:
This is the way that Starfield pushes you to play, the way the entire game is set up to be played, Starfield is meant to be played far more like Mass Effect than what the marketing told you, Mainly Mass Effect 1 is what it holds the most in common with, Each city area is a sort of "hub" that gives you questlines to follow, each leading to handmade content in what feels like enclosed linear spaces on other planets/other POIs that are so worth experiencing & exploring, usually with interesting characters and stories to find!
Questlines in Starfield are some of Bethesda's Best Ever, UC Vanguard, Crimson Fleet, Ryujin, and more that I haven't played, the game has so much SOUL.
Each push you to frankly fantastic questlines with intriguing characters and each pose their own moral dilemmas and character dramas, Without spoiling I'd definitely say Kryx's tale and the threat in the UC Vanguard are both frankly 10/10 on the storytelling department, they also both have fantastic set pieces that I straight up did not think were possible on the Creation Engine.
In questlines and set pieces, the Creation Engine has clearly come really far from the days of clunky story telling in Fallout 4, and this is the part of the game that I really think every player should experience, Whether that's having to listen to a beeping sound as a monsterous creature hunts you, or boarding a ship stuck inside a gas giant, the questlines are experiences you should NOT miss.
Companions are fantastic, I'd say it's pretty much mandatory to have at least one of them along you for the ride as they each add unique dialogue to almost every conversation, Sam, Barrett, Andreja and my personal fave Sarah Morgan, I really think the game would not have been the same without Sarah giving her commentary on almost every event and location I encountered, It gave the game so much soul and trying the game with different companions will definitely drive my personal replay value.
I also found the main quest to be really profound, the reveals were not really anything I expected and I really don't think I've ever seen a game do anything like this before & especially the NG+, it feels very innovative. I personally chose to stick to my save though and continue on, Maybe I'll do NG+ later, not ready to restart. do NOT rush this game.
However I will say this: the first hour is really strange, I ignored New Atlantis due to how overwhelming it was and went to Cydonia as soon as I could and spent my first 9+ hours there, I learned all the mechanics and how this game is meant to be played there, the tutorial and how this game is introduced is just... not good. I recommend doing something similar and then going into the UC Vanguard questline!
Gameplay wise: Starfield is a blast to play as long as you're playing that second half, Gunplay feels great, looting is always satisfying, I like digipicks (yes hot take), I spent like 2 hours making my ship's interior and decorating it, so I don't really have any complaints aside from the AWFUL inventory system that I modded out the day StarUI released
But overall gameplay is far better than Fallout 4, and I think it works in every department as raw gameplay goes, It feels really immersive pretty much always, loading screens in some areas can be excessive but they are never too many that im straight up immersion broken. I'll list some of my other minor gripes:
- I don't like the dialogue camera, I think body language is important in dialogue and they kinda removed that, Skyrim did it way better.
- Sitting/Standing up animations are too slow
- I wish weapon mods weren't all locked behind perks.
Performance wise: My PC is running a 3060Ti/Ryzen 5 3600, Using Digital Foundary's settings & the DLSS mod my performance was pretty great aside from about 50FPS in major cities.
FINAL VERDICT
I frankly had a blast playing this game as a "semi open world" game but unfortunately the limits in exploration do feel like a step down from previous Bethesda titles and I truly wish this wasn't the case.
Starfield - 8/10 - BUY