Starfield Review
Amazing or overhyped?
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Title: Starfield
Platform: Xbox X|S PC
Reviewed on: PC
Developer: Bethesda Game Stuidos
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Release: Sep 6, 2023
Time Played: 30 Hours
Genre: FPS RPG
ESRB: M
I’m sure by now you have heard about this fancy big game known as Starfield. Created by Bethesda, the great minds behind The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series. Now I only put about thirty hours into the game, you can check out my playthrough in the description, but I only managed to get through the main story in that time, I can imagine exploring everything Starfield has to offer could take over five times as much time. Even so I’m confidant I have seen enough to let you know whether you might enjoy the game or not, so stay a while, and listen, then I’ll give you my rating and place this game on a shelf.
Where it begins:
You’ll start the game as a humble miner, working with a crew about to make an amazing discovery. While digging deeper into a planet you come across this unique metal thing, giving the detectors a fit. So, naturally you decide to grab it, throwing your mind into the farthest reaches of the galaxy and back, knocking you out cold. Shortly after you come to your greeted by a stranger and immediately start the adventure of a lifetime to try and answer why this strange metal thing did that to you.
Can the kids watch?:
The language and graphics are low key when it comes to the kids watching. A lot of gun fights and such, but body parts are flying everywhere on deaths so I don’t feel like its that big of a deal. Flying through space is a lot of fun and entertaining to watch. But there are some tedious spots when it comes to figuring some things out or working toward a major goal, the only thing I’d worry about there is boring the kids, it isn’t non stop action the entire way through the game.
Gameplay:
Character creation
Starfield starts out with a minor tutorial and goes right into a very in depth character creation. Allowing you to customize the face to your every want and need, well most of them anyway. Can’t make a completely alien looking character, it’s all very human. After adjusting your physical appearance you get to select a starting class so to speak with a few pre selected skills already known, and some traits. The traits have many effects including special rewards or conversation choices and even some that make traversing on a planet easier. There are a lot to choose from but you can only pick three, a lot of reading to decide what’s best for you.
Exploration
With character creation done you are ready to take on the galaxy, with over 1000 planets you can explore for a very, very long time, but exploring a single planet shouldn’t take as long as you’d think. After choosing to land at a known landmark or a random spot, you’ll be surrounded by a city, or a very open wasteland. Full of different resources and sometimes critters to play with. In the distance you’ll find a few points of interest that you can explore, but there is a limit to how far you can walk away from your ship. A lot of times it just felt like a walking simulator when I didn’t have a quest related goal.
Space travel
Moving from planet to planet wasn’t very complicated, pick a spot and grav jump directly there. It was in orbit around planets that things could get a little complicated. From the cockpit of the ship you are in control of everything, like moving the ship around to shoot enemies or talk to friendly ships. The hardest part I had with commanding a ship was the diversion of power to necessary parts of the ship during firefights. Only so much power is on a ship and it has to be divvied between weapons, shields, and thrusters. I got used to it eventually but starting out was quite stressful.
Your ship
One of the most important aspects of the game will be your home ship, the ship you like to spend most of your time on. You can collect a few and keep them in the shed until you want them. Obtaining a ship is quite simple, you either buy, find, or steal. I preferred hijacking ships but that involves a little bit of murder, if you have the credits you could just buy one, but that can get quite costly. Ships aren’t set in their form, you have the power to change out parts, mods, and even change the color to better suit your unique style, or just come up with something completely bonkers
The Crew
As you play through the game you will make plenty of friends, some of which you can even assign to the ship, an outpost, and to follow you around. They will have different skills when they join that will benefit wherever they are placed, for instance if you have a crewmate with a shield skill, your ship gains the rewards. It’s worth double checking all their skills before assigning them a position in your roster.
Outposts
Life in space would get kind of cramped inside of a ship the entire time, that’s where outposts come in. You can build up to seven outposts almost anywhere you want on any planet. On the outpost you can build any number a things from drills for resources to chairs just to relax on. If you have enough of the right materials, and a high enough skill level, you can create your very own personal paradise on some planet far away, or a giant factory that manufactures materials for you to sell.
NPC reactions
As you progress the game you will constantly be interacting with people throughout the galaxy with your weapons or words. When talking almost every response option includes a nice comment or a rude one, sometimes even a special response connected to a trait or a specific skill you have. Depending on what was said the NPC will react accordingly, and if you have a follower they may agree with what you’ve said or dislike you a little more and want to talk about it. I once had a crewmember that absolutely hated me for a minute, but I really didn’t know why, maybe I accidentally shot someone. We had to have a lengthy conversation to hash it out.
Skill tree
The skill tree is built up in five sections, each with their own tree to work down. You’ll have access to everything on the first line but have to input points in order to unlock skills farther down. Every skill had various levels to them with the only way to unlock the next level would be to actually use the skill, like picking so many locks would increase the security skill. At first, I thought leveling up the skill would just give me the next level, but sadly another point has to be earned through leveling and put back into the skill level, making for a lot of points needed to max out everything.
Crafting
There is so much you can build in Starfield that it can get a little overwhelming. From your ships and outposts to food and medicine, all of which require specific skill levels and research, it’s tough to remember everything you have access too. Crafting anything past level one was blocked behind two walls, first you needed to level up the skill, after that you need to find a research lab and research everything you want to create now, involving specific materials thrown into the lab. I thought that was kind of annoying, especially when I couldn’t find the special resources I needed for research, let alone to actually make the thing.
Bugs & Glitches
Thankfully I didn’t run into a whole lot of issues with the game, but it’s kind of expected to find a few oddities due to the sheer size of everything. I feel like they just add to your very own unique experience. There was only one glitch I ran into that would force me to restart my game, multiple times. I had one friend on my ship in a conversation with someone not on my ship, story related I think, but she would force me into a conversation and when the other guy was supposed to talk my game would just sit there waiting. I ended up having to kick her off my ship and find where they were supposed to be talking and go through with the conversation, it got very frustrating.
Outro:
I enjoyed playing Starfield, I did get a lot of Fallout 4 vibes with the outpost building and weapon modifications. I didn’t allow myself to get to caught up in the hype, I’m pretty sure there were a few disappointed partys out there, but the funny thing about the game is you can focus on any number of things and decide if you hate or love the game, I guess it would depend on whether you go in with a negative or positive mindset. It was good, but I think the biggest problem was everything was spread thin across the galaxy. Some places felt amazing and fleshed out, but others left me wanting. So, let’s get it rated and find out what shelf it belongs on.
The visuals for the environments were very good, but the characters didn’t look as good as they should, in my opinion considering some of the other games that have come out recently. Of course they look better than previous Bethesda titles, but not by much. It’s getting a three.
The main story was great, but I haven’t even experienced a lot of the other stories the game has to offer. A ton of work has gone into growing the galaxy and Bethesda always delivers, even on the smallest stories in a couple books you can find. It’s getting a five.
For gameplay I felt like everything worked as it should. Except sneaking, I had a heck of a time sneaking around, maybe Starfield isn’t meant to be a stealth game but that sucked. Piloting ships was fascinated, but traveling around planets was bland. All in all I’m feeling it deserves a three for the back and forth I feel.
Replayability is definitely a big thing in starfield. All the options with creating a character alone is enough to go through multiple times. There is a lot to discover and so many different ways to go through the game it’s getting a five.
Besides the one point I was getting frustrated at a conversation bug, I was having fun nearly the entire time. Walking around was really the only boring parts of the game. So not quite the best, but worthy of a four.
Giving Starfield a solid four out of five, earning it a spot up there halfway through the Top Shelf.
I did play the game through my Gamepass subscription, but I imagine I’ll be buying it, I may stop playing at one point but there will definitely be a time in the future when I have to get back into it and mess around for a while, and I would be willing to bet there will be some amazing mods created for the game on PC worth checking out.