Starfield Review: A Remarkable Achievement
It’s hard to know where to start talking about Starfield. Even after completing the story, journeying through New Game+, and spending dozens of hours exploring planets and checking out side quests, I still have a mile-long list of side quests that I want to check out. This is a massive game with so many options that, at times, it can feel overwhelming. Yet somehow, I rarely felt without direction while exploring it. Bethesda has created an incredibly realized universe filled with fascinating characters, interesting factions, and choices that will actually make players consider both sides. It’s a remarkable achievement, and while not every element is perfect, it may be the most compelling game of 2023.
More Than Just A Rookie
After creating your character and choosing your class using an incredibly deep customization tool, you’ll find yourself starting out as a trainee on a mining job. Your new bosses have found something interesting, and they don’t seem to want to get too close to it. Why not send the rookie? After approaching the strange artifact and freeing it from its rocky prison, a single touch sends you on a psychedelic journey through the cosmos. The sights and sounds may not be familiar, but you immediately know that this strange metal hunk is important.
You’re not the only one who thinks so. Soon, you’ll meet your first member of Constellation, a group of galactic explorers. Humanity has lived among the stars long enough at this point that it no longer seems novel or interesting to them. Most people are just going about their lives, and gravity-jumping through space is just part of their day-to-day routine. That’s not the case for Constellation, though. These explorers still think there are fascinating mysteries in the universe, and they’re determined to find them. Your artifact and the impact it has on you is just another one of those mysteries. Soon, you’ll be recruited into the organization and sent to uncover more of these strange artifacts and uncover the secrets they hold.
A Journey All Your Own
Or you can pretty much ignore that quest entirely. Like in most Bethesda games, the main story is more of a suggestion than a requirement. I found it compelling, and the team at Constellation includes several characters I absolutely adore, so on my first time through the game, I focused on it, but that’s really up to you. You’ll quickly start finding new paths you can explore. Join one of several military groups and help them prevent threats to the galaxy. Become a galactic bounty hunter, searching out the wanted or doing work for hire. Go undercover with a group of space pirates and work to take them down from the inside. Or genuinely join the space pirates and help them be the best pirates they can be.
Many of those quests are pointed out overtly, but others are only suggested with a more subtle touch. You see a man getting arrested, and the game points out that perhaps you could go talk to him in prison. Or you find a strange note on the body of a random enemy you kill during a story mission, which points to a perhaps ultimate score waiting for you on a planet in the far reaches of space. Many of these side missions are far more involved than you might expect, with dozens of parts where you need to jump all over the universe. There are some of these quest lines that are as involved as full games I’ve played. Yet many players will never see them. It’s a remarkable level of detail that left me feeling like my journey was my own.
You don’t even really need to spend your time on actual missions. Become a space explorer and journey to some of Starfield’s absurd number of planets, occupying your time by cataloging all the fascinating plant and animal life, resources, and interesting locations. Each planet is filled with its own mix, or lack thereof, of life. Or build up a fleet of ships and hire a crew to man them. Create outposts on various planets and set them to operate autonomously.
Moments Of Spontaneous Awe
Some of my favorite moments in Starfield are when something happened seemingly out of nowhere. I’d jump into a system only to find a space battle already underway with no real way to know who started it or which side I should be on. Should I help one side or the other? Perhaps destroy both? Or just jump out of the system again, leaving them to fight to the death? Moments like these come out of nowhere and left me in awe. Other moments, even within the story, felt like they left me with many options to explore things in my own way. I’m left thinking of when I had to retrieve an important item from a ship. I could have gone in guns blazing, but instead, I talked my way in using my upgraded persuasion skills and was able to, in the end, take what I needed with minimal fighting. In the end, the ship surrendered to me and let me leave, but as I left, many crew members grumbled that I’d regret this. Upon returning to my ship, the thought occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t leave these guys behind. I was free to just continue my journey and forget they existed, but I couldn’t help wondering whether I should leave them alive. I won’t tell you what I chose, but I genuinely agonized over what the right move was.
All of this sounds like a lot to manage, but in truth, I found it shockingly simple to do so. Starfield’s menus are intuitive and well laid out, allowing you to jump between different missions and targets quickly. Its UI does a great job of providing a lot of information in a clean manner. Even moving between objectives is shockingly easy with one of the best fast travel systems I’ve ever seen in a game. Returning to Constellation headquarters after I’d been there didn’t just put me at the Spaceport nearby. It put me right at the front door. I could easily jump into any system I’d been to or been to the next closest system. It only takes a couple of button presses to get moving toward the next objective on your current quest, and it soon felt incredibly intuitive.
A Joy To Play
From a mechanical standpoint, Starfield is by far the most compelling game Bethesda has ever made. Which isn’t to say it isn’t still a Bethesda game. You’re still dealing with different factions, following quest lines, exploring rooms filled with random boxes and items to possibly pick up. It took less than an hour for me to remember how time-consuming these games can be as I scoured every room for any resources that might help me moving forward. If this sort of thing simply doesn’t work for you, Starfield isn’t likely to change your mind.
If the mechanics of past games didn’t work for you, though, you may find that Starfield is the game that finally hooks you. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this invested in a Bethesda game before, and I beat Fallout 3 in three days, where I slept a combined six hours and couldn’t put the controller down. Combat in many past Bethesda games felt like a means to an end. Here, it’s genuinely exciting and fun. The gunplay here would feel at home in any good shooter. There are tons of exciting weapons to find and outfit yourself with. Even after going through the game multiple times, I still find new cool weapons I haven’t gotten to mess with yet. The feedback feels good, and it strikes a great balance between feeling like a shooter while still incorporating your skills and RPG stats. After an upgrade that made me a bit more accurate, I felt just a slight bit of help on lining up future shots. It was subtle, but the upgrade system is filled with these nuanced options that will help your journey in interesting ways while not feeling like they take over and play the game for you. I’ve unlocked a massive chunk of it, but there are still skills I want to explore.
Gunplay isn’t the only combat here, either. Space combat is relatively simple, but it’s genuinely fun and exciting. The ships maneuver well, and the upgrades you can make to your ship over time are valuable. You really feel the difference between different engines or weapons. Ships are heavily customizable in a shockingly intuitive system, as the game will quickly tell you if what you’ve designed is space-worthy. I had no problem putting together exciting designs using a controller. That said, if going deep on ship design isn’t your thing, that’s fine, too. There are plenty of ships you can find or purchase that are well-built and fun to fly.
Bugs In The System
Is every element of Starfield perfect? No, there are parts I found less compelling. Even many of those eventually improve, though. In the early going, I found documenting the mechanics for scanning life on various planets unsatisfying, even if I still enjoyed searching the planets to see the interesting creature designs. After a couple of upgrades to my scanner, though, this got a lot better, and I genuinely enjoyed spending hours just searching planets for the last resource I hadn’t found. Base building didn’t particularly grab me either, but Starfield never pushed me to do much more than try it out. Once the game made sure I knew it was there, it was just another option, something I could engage with and benefit from if I ever chose to do so.
With this being a Bethesda game, I know many of you are also wondering about bugs, and I’m not talking about some of the weird creatures I found exploring this universe. There’s been a lot of talk about this being Bethesda’s most polished game ever, and while that’s likely true, I did run into minor bugs semi-frequently during my time with Starfield. What sort of bugs? There were occasional visual bugs, like when the entire crew of my ship suddenly didn’t have any hair. During one mission where I was in a club, a random character suddenly got stuck in the air and started zooming around in circles. I ran into several instances where a prompt that was needed to either grab something, dock with something, or open a door simply didn’t appear. These bugs could be mildly annoying, but they rarely presented more than a few moments of frustration. Starfield frequently autosaves, so when I ran into a moment like this, it only ever took a quick reload to overcome it. It’s worth noting also that many of even the minor issues I had are explicitly mentioned as being fixed by the game’s final pre-release patch. I can’t say for certain they were fully resolved. The patch came out close enough to this review that the large majority of my playtime was prior to its release, and most of these issues were infrequent enough that there’s no real way to be certain they won’t pop up for others. That said, the only minor issue I’ve seen since the patch was a small visual glitch that lasted only a few moments. Even before the patch, these issues didn’t even begin to diminish my love for Starfield and if it fixed even most of what it claims to, so much the better.
Conclusion
Starfield isn’t a perfect game. No game is. That said, for a game to have this much ambition and actually pull off almost everything it set out to accomplish is a remarkable achievement. I haven’t even talked about some of the game’s most interesting elements, such as how it approaches New Game+, which I can’t wait for more players to see. Starfield is a triumph that I’m confident players will be exploring for years to come, not only because it will remain incredibly compelling but because it will take that long to see anywhere near everything it has to offer.
Final Verdict: 5/5
Available on: Xbox Series X (reviewed), Xbox Series S, PC; Publisher: Bethesda Softworks; Developer: Bethesda Game Studios; Players: 1; Released: September 6th, 2023; ESRB: M for Mature; MSRP: $69.99
Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of Starfield provided by the publisher.
