Starfield is Space Exploration Summarised

Starfield - A very concise version of space

2024/11/04 - Whilst this review is, for the most part, still pretty accurate, I replayed Starfield recently following a few updates. The addition of FSR means that the graphics can now be maxxed out more easily and the vehicle for travelling on planets makes exploring much more fun. Starfield remains a good game, however not the great game that I was expecting. Definitely worth playing, even more so being basically free on Xbox Game Pass, with many hours of gameplay, though it could have been a lot better.

Having played games for many years, the past little while (at the time of writing) I had (have) been patiently waiting for Starfield, the latest RPG from Bethesda. I enjoyed Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, Prey, Rage II, Oblivion and Skyrim and had high hopes for Starfield. Best of all, it is (at time of writing) available on Game Pass which makes it excellent value for money in terms of number of hours spent playing versus cost of the game.

Starfield is good

This is not a negative review, hence this paragraph is near the top of the post, so you understand my perspective. Starfield is a good game, if you are a fan of space and/or RPGs, and/or FPS/shooting and/or collecting loot and/or customisation and/or going on endless quests and/or flying spaceships then there is probably something in Starfield that you will like. If you have played and enjoyed previous Bethesda games then the familiarity is there from the start, apart from the character menu / UI (user inteface) which is different to previous Bethesda titles. Whilst I did find the menu changes a bit confusing to begin with, once you get the hang of them they are fine and do the job. Create your character, start your journey and enter the stars to begin what, for many people, will turn into 50-100+ hours (and more) of gaming. It is good value for money and doesn’t stray too far from the well-known (and liked) Bethesda RPG template. Many people will immediately say the graphics looks dated (and they do), however if you want amazing graphics plus RPG value then buy Cyberpunk 2077 instead which is definitely worth playing after many updates and graphics don’t get much better than that. Starfield, in a nutshell, is a good game that many people will play and enjoy.

Starfield is not so good

Which brings me to my problem with Starfield, it is a good game, it is not a great game. Bethesda have a lot of money, even prior to being acquired by Microsoft they sold a lot of games, a lot, a really huge amount of games. They have a experienced staff, very deep pockets (big budget), lots of experience, market research, historical data (and whatever else big gaming companies use to develop games) and spent a lot of time developing Starfield. When taking all of that into account (and many other things I have missed) Starfield is disappointing. I enjoyed the first few hours before I started to think, ‘Where is everything?’ when exploring a planet. You can walk between locations on planets (sometimes many minutes) without seeing a single point of interest, just rocks. Well, ‘go onto the next planet, maybe the procedural generation generated a dud’ you might say and unfortunately it is not an isolated experience. The planets are dull and lifeless with very little going on that kept me interested. This was my first major problem, the second, and the complaint of just about every review I read, are the loading screens. I have a fast PC and a fast SSD and the loading screens still interrupted the experience. It is 2023 and seems (to me) to be almost inexcusable in a game of this budget to have so many loading screens. I do, however, concede that this was possibly unavoidable due to the game engine used to create the game, though maybe it is time to look into a better game engine. The biggest improvement was the guns, which I thought were great and a lot of fun, though Fallout 4 has pretty decent guns as well.

Starfield is bad

Starfield is an above-average, ‘good game’, nothing special and could have been better though definitely not bad - these are all fair and valid points. That is, until you compare it to No Man’s Sky, which is when things start to get more complicated. No Man’s Sky (also on Game Pass) was released a long time before Starfield, in computer gaming terms 7 years means a long, long, long, long time before Starfield (though it continues to receive updates). Just to also note here that No Man’s Sky was made by Hello Games and (though I don’t know) one would assume their budget is maybe like 1% (or less) of what was used to make Starfield. You would therefore expect No Man’s Sky to look worse graphically, have a much more dated play-feel and be an inferior game. No Man’s Sky is also in space and there are a lot of similarities between the two (hence the comparison) though 7 years remains a long time (despite the frequent updates in this time) and one would expect, given how fast-paced the video gaming industry is, that Starfield would be leaps and bounds ahead of No Man’s Sky in all respects. In this case, the opposite is true, from the perspective of a space exploration game No Man’s Sky makes Starfield look like a (very, very large) pile of rubbish. Arrive at a planet in No Man’s Sky (directly - no loading screen) and you don’t have to land, you can fly around, bump into things, shoot things on the ground and explore before deciding to land. In comparison, Starfield lets you click randomly on a planet map and (after a loading scren) you will arrive there and that’s it, there is no magic, the entire experience has been summarised into concise bits. Whilst all these ’little bits of space’ can be fun, the continuity is not there and whenever you get to a good part you have to stop, look at a map, click somewhere, wait to load and then get back to the action. Compare this to No Man’s Sky where you can land at an outpost, trade resources, dig a big tunnel to anywhere, harvest a bunch of resources, summon your ship to your side and then take off and fly to the nearest space station without a single loading screen along the way.

Should I play it?

That is a difficult one, it is on Game Pass so you can signup for a month or two and give it a try, pretty cheap. I didn’t manage to really get into it, eventually I realised it is like Fallout 4 with a new skin and a lot of planets with not that much to do on them. I am hoping that in a year or two, after many updates, the game will have improved, there is a good foundation. However, there are a lot of fundamental problems that make it not nearly as good as it could have been. When I started playing Starfield I had very high expectations and it really didn’t get anywhere near what I was expecting it to be. I think a lot of people will really enjoy it so, if a space RPG with guns sounds like fun then yes, play it.

Videos

Starfield

No Man’s Sky