8.0 Score
Starfield Review
To many gamers, Bethesda is synonymous with creating expansive virtual worlds that are rich in lore and packed to the brim with things to explore, discover and unearth. The main appeal of Bethesda games though, is perhaps that players could become whomever they wanted to be in these games, from heroic knight to horrific tyrant, and anything in between.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the perfect example – it has been 12 years since its launch and yet today, it is still a game that is relevant. Yes, this is mainly due to a bustling mod community, but the fact remains that people just keep coming back for more of Skyrim.
A trip to Nexus Mods will reveal over 70,000 mods for Skyrim, a testament to the popularity of this game.
Thanks to this exemplary track record, the gaming world waited with bated breath when Bethesda announced a brand-new intellectual property (IP) in 25 years in 2018, which came in the form of Starfield.
Note: yes, Bethesda is also known for many other great games such as the Doom and Dishonored franchises, but for the sake of simplicity, we narrowed down Bethesda’s masterpieces to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series.
Starfield Review
An Ode to the Sci-Fi Genre?
At its core, we’d describe Starfield as a glorified NASA advertisement, sprinkled with action with a side of romance, topped off with a dash of science fiction. It is a game that rewards you for straying off the beaten path with maybe a new weapon, a shiny new ship, or a tiny bit of lore. In a way, exploration is a reward in and of itself in this game.

It’s a good idea to do a little exploration and complete side quests in Starfield, rather than heading straight for the main storyline.
Put simply, it’s better to put the main storyline aside and explore the hundreds of side quests given to you at almost every turn in the game. Unfortunately, the journey to finding some of the more interesting quests is an arduous one. You see, a large majority of planets that you can land on are void of interesting stuff to do.
Exploration is encouraged, but most planets are barren and offer little adventure.
Exploring planets can be tedious, as there are no mounts in Starfield
Most planets are barren and hold little to no life. Exploration is done by running and jetpacking across a planet; there are no mounts of vehicles, but thankfully there’s a fast travel system in place that lets you quickly travel to your ship or areas of interest that you’ve explored. After doing this on two separate planets, you’ve seen what the rest of the planets and moons have to offer.
So yes, the game rewards exploration, but it’s not something that many people would want to do for extended periods in this game, lest the sandman comes calling.
In all fairness, the main storyline is somewhat palatable. Without spoiling too much, it sees you getting involved with a bunch of hardcore explorers and their hunt for pieces of an artefact scattered across the galaxy. As you would expect, finding these artefacts will unlock powers for you, open up some romance options and more interestingly, tie into the new game plus mechanics. If you played NieR: Automata, you’ll know exactly what this means. For those who didn’t let’s just say the full picture will only be revealed after multiple playthroughs.
Alongside the main and side quests found in this game, multiple faction quests serve as the primary means to earn in-game credits and free ships.
Tools of the Trade
Okay, let’s simplify things a little. Helping you travel across the stars are several things:
- Your companions
- Get in your line-of-sight 70% of the time during a firefight
- Additional cargo space
- Only selected companions have their standalone stories and quests
- You can marry some companions
- Andreja is bae.
- Numerous weapons
- Mostly divided into ballistic and lasers, but more “exotic” weapons use railgun tech
- Limited pool of core weapons; stronger weapons consist of better versions of weapons from this pool
- It can be modded, but mods have to be crafted, individually, for every weapon
- The weight of recoil and overall weapon handling can be better
- Outposts
- You can craft outposts on almost any planet you land on
- Superb means to generate in-game credits and obtain crafting ingredients
- You can build ships at outposts
- Many, many ships
- You can build, earn, or capture ships in this game
- Towards endgame content, building the perfect ship will likely become an obsession
- There should be more content involving ships!
- The Force?
- You have access to powers that allow you to manipulate gravity, become invisible, shoot fireballs, and more.
- Skills
- The usual options for you to build an assassin, tank, smooth talker, genius hacker or anything in between
- You’ll need to unlock certain skills to be able to build better ships, jetpack around, and build better outposts
Weapon variety could have been better. Stronger weapons are essentially more powerful versions of a handful of base weapons
Some companions can be romanced and have their side quests.
You can build your ship, but sadly, you won’t be able to do much with it.
The skill trees are pretty extensive and unlock many more gameplay elements.
Combat is generally solid, but it would be nice if the weapons packed a bit more punch.
In Space, No One Can Hear You Fus Ro Dah!
Starfield sort of lives up to its promises. There’s a huge amount of freedom in this game, and there are plenty of things to explore. However, exploration is mostly dull and repetitive. Ship combat is fun and the ability to build your ship is greatly wasted – there’s nothing you can do in ships apart from shooting random enemies during random encounters. We want races, obstacle courses, or even an arena for ships!
Frankly, in its current state, Starfield isn’t something to shout about. It’s a fun game that has a decent storyline and generally good gameplay mechanics. However, there’s still a lot of potential waiting to be unlocked (most likely via the modding community), so give it a few more months before jumping into this game (that’s likely when the game officially supports DLSS as well).
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