Starfield Review – Overwhelming Scope

Starfield is a standout in a market crowded with big and expansive games. Starfield takes the popular gameplay Bethesda created with The Elder Scrolls series and Fallout to an entire galaxy of solar system, planets, ships, and more. Starfield populates the environments of these solar systems, planets and ships with activities and missions to tap into outer space fantasies. It’s a staggering span of content to wrap one’s head around. This scope can sometimes be overwhelming, affecting the pace and focus of gameplay. Moment-to-moment play is also not always strong. The rich sci-fi environment will allow players to spend hundreds of experiments.

You begin as a miner in space who connects inexplicably with a mysterious artifact buried in the ground, giving you visions of an epic cosmic mystery. This foundational moment brings you into contact with an explorer group who are working together to unravel the mystery. This introduction will lead you on a journey across the vast human colony planets which have sprung up following an Earth-wide exodus.

The dialogue is excellent, and the story telling has a lot of variety. There are new personalities at every turn. Different factions, companies, and friends have their own storylines that are based on different sci-fi themes. You can be a lawman in frontier space or infiltrate a pirate ship. These experiences are varied, and they keep things interesting, particularly when you add in new opportunities like setting up outposts for mining, surveying worlds, purchasing and decorating homes, or even pursuing romances with your companion. 

Starfield has endless distractions. There are new missions and activities that pop up constantly. It was most enjoyable when these threads pulled at me, allowing me to create a web of interactivity that I could change between whenever I wanted. It can get repetitive to keep doing the same thing over and over again. For example, visiting alien temples or hunting down mercenaries, or cleaning out outlaw bases. The constant ping-ponging of mission senders and destination was also frustrating. There are still some memorable moments in missions, such as a shifting research lab between states of reality, or corporate espionage taking place behind closed doors of a nightclub. In its best moments, I was immersed in Starfield’s unfolding tale.

The joy of exploration is a core tenet of play, and nailing that sensation is central to Starfield’s success. Landing on a different planet was a great experience. I enjoyed seeing the unknown Megafauna on the plains, or exploring a brand new city to find the most vile dive bar. Arrive in a new system and dock with a derelict space station – who knows what’s inside? Starfield is a story about both the good and the bad of humanity’s desire to reach further and uncover what’s just out of grasp, and I love that those themes weave into the flow of how players may approach the game. This engagement is further enhanced by the excellent presentation. It is a visually stunning landscape with countless details set against the vastness of space. The music is a questing, but wistful score which always sets the mood.

I found Starfield navigation obtuse. I had to navigate around the giant star map and also its U.I. It was difficult to navigate Starfield’s U.I. I often scratched my head when trying to figure out basic things like how to sell excess inventory, modify my ship, adjust crew assignments or reach a specific star system. Constantly having to use menus and click on links to access destinations ruins the feeling of smooth travel. The dashboard started to feel like an old car, where buttons were nowhere to be found. Once I figured it out, the vehicle took me to some amazing destinations.

The game is centered around ground combat, so players will spend most of their time in the field with guns, even if, like me, they lean on persuasion or stealth to win many battles. From laser rifles, to old-fashioned shotguns that looked like they were plucked from a Western movie, I loved the variety of weapons. Jet boost packs can be worn on the back for quick mantling and leaping through terrain. Gunplay is stiff, mechanical and the enemies follow unwise paths and positions that don’t lead to any tension or challenge. The action was a bit dull. I enjoyed the excitement of pulling out my big guns to destroy hordes of enemies, but found the gunplay stale and mechanical.

The shipborne space battles are also very important, and it’s great to be able indulge in that. The battles I encountered were rarely a success. I completely wiped out the enemy forces in moments, or the ships arrayed against me were way out of my league – there was little in between.

It took me a long time to fall in love with Starfield, and even after I did, certain aspects didn’t work for me. But the things I didn’t enjoy are vastly outweighed by my enthusiasm for this new, original science fiction universe, the breadth of its adventures, and the appeal of its many interwoven stories. Go in with the expectation that it will take some time to find your footing in such a vast gameplay space, and there’s a universe well worth discovering here.