Software Engineering. Game Reviews. Guides. Musings.
My ignorant Starfield review on Steam, and how the game tricked me into it.
Skyrim
Skyrim is my favourite game of all time.
The stories, the soundtrack, the many varied characters, the lore, the beauty of the world, the incredible attention to detail, the small side-quests with enormous depth, everything in that game is exactly what I love.
So when Starfield was announced, another big game from Bethesda, touted as being “Skyrim in space”, I was very excited.
Hype
Then came the Bethesda Starfield showcase, which did an incredible job of selling the game to people. It showcased a vast, detailed world with hundreds of planets, deep gameplay, and a promise to invoke the same sense of wonder and desire for exploration that Skyrim gave me.
It drove up the hype even more.
Pre-orders for Starfield opened around my birthday, and my friends, knowing just how much I love Skyrim, purchased the Digital Premium Edition for me, which came with a week of early access to the game.
Engine
I will admit, in the weeks leading up to the release of the game, I did feel a fair bit of trepidation.
Starfield's advertising showcased truly innovative gameplay, but it is still largely built on Bethesda's Creation Engine, an old and at this point, very outdated engine, which has been doing duty since the 80s (as Gamebryo). Skyrim was also built on this engine, and during my time working on mods for Skyrim Special Edition, I remember feeling its weaknesses and limitations.
The idea that such an engine would be able to support a modern space exploration game was not something that was readily believable, but my optimistic side was very hopeful that Bethesda would be able to pull off a miracle, and would be able to enhance the engine enough to make it work.
It seemed impossible to me, but I did not give up hope.
Release!
Starfield released to early access on the first of September.
I started the game and was greeted by a menu that was classic Bethesda. Epic music playing in the background, a sense of promise to the weight of clicking the New Game button.
The character creator immediately impressed me. My character looked substantially better than he did in Skyrim, and I was able to make him look exactly how I wanted.
The large number of Traits and Perks promised a lot of replayability, and even at this early stage, I was already looking forward to creating more characters with different playing styles and re-playing the game.
Gameplay
The gameplay was classic Bethesda. From the dreary (almost endearing) loading screens, to the slightly janky controls, everything was the same as how I remembered Skyrim being. I had absolutely no problem with that, that is what I had signed up for.
When I landed in the main city, New Atlantis, I came across a character, Donna, who was happily sweeping the station, and talking about how she really wants to explore the universe, and absolutely definitely fully intends to, as soon as she is done with cleaning up this station. I felt like she was a reflection of the player, as she had the same eagerness to explore that I was feeling. These are exactly the human touches that I expect from Bethesda games. I will not go too much into the main story, expect for the fact that it was pretty boilerplate Bethesda: go here and do this.
My review on Steam
At around the 20 hour mark, I posted a review of the game on Steam.
This is what the review said:
Starfield is a game for people who are already Bethesda fans. People who walked the wintry roads of Windhelm and Dawnstar in Skyrim and thought what a much larger world would look like. People who braved the dusty badlands of Fallout and wondered how the tech would look like if it was not ravaged by nuclear war.
This game exists for one purpose: to evoke a sense of wonder and grandeur. Thousands of planets and moons that are all very very different. Hundreds of characters, all of whom have their own charm and personality. When you load up the menu and see all the stars, moons, planets you can explore, it evokes that very sense of wonder that every really good game should evoke. And yet, it has that human touch. When I first landed in New Atlantis, in front of the train, there was a young lady called Donna happily sweeping the station, talking about how she really wants to explore the universe, but hasn't yet. She echoes the same sense of wonder a player would have.
The main story is good, yes, parts of it can be a bit of a chore, but it is the task of every science fiction story to ask the right questions about the existence of humanity, and the last few missions, especially the ending, do that very very well.
I have seen discourse about this game around things like "the enemy AI being not very clever" etc. In my honest opinion all this is very petty. This game is not about that. It is not the core aspect of this game. This is not a game around combat. If you want combat in an open world, there are some very good games around that offer that. Dark Souls. Bloodborne. Elden Ring. This game is not for the combat junkie. It is for the explorer. The wanderer. The curious individual.
An enormous amount of effort has gone into this game. And it shows. It is, in my opinion, a ground-breaking game, and sets new standards in the game industry. The negative online discourse is by people who enjoy drama and negativity around games, and not the games themselves. The curious toddler in me, unaffected by years of cynicism, does not agree with the opinions of such people, and neither should you. There are small flaws in this game, but if it were perfect, would it not be boring as well?
The problem with the review
I wrote the review the first time I played the game, right after finishing the main story. After that, I played all the faction questlines. I really liked the faction questlines, they had a lot of variety and were more action-packed than the main story.
But that is where the problems started.
Generally, in Bethesda games, as soon as you finish the main story and the faction quests, that is where the game starts, as you level up, scour dungeons and caves, and turn your character into a powerful, almost godlike entity. That is the point where you feel compelled to explore. In Skyrim, I took two approaches, taking my main character to the level cap, while also creating other side characters to explore different playstyles.
In Starfield, however, there was a problem.
There was nothing to do.
As soon as you finish the game by doing something called "finding unity" (no spoilers on what this is), the game rewards you with the best gear in the game, from armour to ship. That seemed insane to me. A large portion of the fun of previous Bethesda titles was finding gear to make your character stronger. Grinding daedra hearts to make daedric armor was some of the most fun I had in Skyrim. So the game just actively took away that fun from me. Even if I pretended that the gear I was given did not exist, and went to hunt for gear, that gear would still be the second best gear I had in my inventory, and I would have a small voice at the back of my head reminding me of this fact.
Europa
Then came the planets and moons. The topographies of the planets are largely the same, which is absurd to me. When I was little, the idea of humanity exploring the moon of Jupiter, Europa, enthralled me. A moon with a vast mantle of liquid water, where potential life can exist? As soon as I finished the main quest, I went looking for Europa, and landed on it, excited about what the developers would have done.
And..
Nothing.
Just another barren wasteland, with nothing on it.
What the hell?
I hit the ground a few times, hoping that maybe the ground would crack and a fish would climb out of the water, but of course, nothing.
This was very sad.
The disappointment
My issues with Starfield are not really the same as everyone else's. I don't care that the gunplay is not as good as a Call of Duty. I do not care that there are some loading screens. My issue is around replayability. The game does not have anywhere near the replayability factor of previous titles. In Skyrim, I had one sword-and-shield character. That one was my main, and the one whose level I maxed out. Then I created a character who was a vampire with frost magic. There was another character with a flaming sword and fire magic. There was a character who used fury magic to make opponents turn on each other. There was one who used blood magic to convert health into mana, and use that to cast spells. There were hundreds of ways to play the game.
In Starfield, the perks and traits do not mean enough. I would go so far as to say they mean absolutely nothing. There is a trait where you spawn as a character whose parents are still present in the world. But there are no interesting questlines or events around that. It does nothing for you as a character and does not in any way change your experience of the world. Everything is a slight stat modifier, and not an actual mechanic change. The skill tree is very weak, with only slight modifications that occasionally bring back quality of life features that older Bethesda titles had.
The biggest issue is traversal. Other people I know have a problem with the fact that there are no land vehicles in this game, so you spend a lot of time walking. I would have welcomed that, as I like traversal and exploration. But in this game, there is nothing to see while you are exploring. Nothing to sidetrack you, no distractions, just dreary barren land. As a result, traversal is boring. Coming from Skyrim, which had something new to gawk at around every corner, that is a huge problem.
The shattering of the facade
The biggest problem with Starfield is that it sets up expectations for enormous replayability when you start the game. Then you finish the main story and the faction quests, and are struck by the fact that there is absolutely nothing else to do, and no reason to do anything. You have already experienced everything the game has to offer. There are no new mechanics, no new gameplay styles, no further variety in the planets to explore, and nothing new to discover. This feeling hits you like a truck, as you realise that the hundreds of hours of enjoyment that Bethesda titles generally offer, are promised by this game, but not delivered. You have reached the end of the rainbow, and are greeted by a brick wall rather than a pot of gold. If you want to play Starfield only once, it is a very good game. But if you want a Bethesda title with replayability, it is a huge disappointment.