Starfield’s bullet points are meaningless if the narrative fails to inspire

The unveiling of Starfield, the jewel in the crown of Xbox Game Studios’ 12-month release calendar, fell a bit flat during this weekend’s Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase. Many have complained that the cast looks exactly like the old-eyed creeps who shipped with it. 4: Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls. Some are not impressed with the base building or resource gathering. This is something that many other games can do better. Fallout 4. Still others have gently warned that getting spaceship combat dialed in is as much an art as it is a science, as evidenced by the Star Citizen projects’ many, many revisions thus far.

On all points, I agree with you. Bethesda might be a little too ambitious at this point. What can you expect of their first IP update in over 20 years? But more bullet points don’t always equal more quality. I wonder, too, if 1000 planets is simply 1,000 places to lose yourself and get bored. But there’s one part of Sunday’s presentation that really struck a chord with me: The narrative attached to the game’s main quest line seems bold, if not downright inspiring.

If I’m picking up what Todd Howard and company are laying down, StarfieldIt is as ambitious a one-player video game, as well as a reflection on current space exploration. The Space Shuttle has been retired and our society appears to have lost its sense of wonder. StarfieldCould be an option to help us overcome our negative outlook about life and the universe.

Trailer opens with a quote by Anatole France (a French novelist, journalist and poet). His Le Jardin d’Épicure (The Garden of Epicurus) begins with a few paragraphs that set the tone for the ponderings that follow, all of which make careful reference of what we now consider to be fairly modern scientific concepts — the speed of light, the spectral analysis of distant stars, and the scale and vastness of the universe itself. Alfred Allinson has translated the English version of this book. It feels as if it could have inspired the ending. Black Men.

Here’s a bit more of that full quote:

It is not absurd to suppose that thousands of years of intelligence and thought may pass away in the span of one minute. The Universe itself is not large or small. We speak only from our human perspective when we state that it is huge. We would not be able to see the changes if the Universe were reduced to the dimensions a hazelnut. All things will still keep their respective proportions. It would take us fifty years for the pole-star to reach our planet, even if it were included in the nut. Even though the Earth is smaller than anatom, it would still need to be nourished as much as today. It is not the vastness of the stars field that is amazing, but how man measured it.

I don’t read this as haughty or high-minded. I saw it as sarcasm. Man has only a fraction of the vastness that exists in this universe, and it is huge. It is possible to find much more than we can see, using our radiographic and telescopic instruments. France, more than anything, was a skeptical country. His quote boils down fairly simply in the language of the present day: Humanity ain’t seen shit, but we keep on acting like we know it all anyway.

This is my opinion. Starfieldto put us all on a level playing field.

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks

Examine the 5 factions you have introduced during the 15-minute period Starfield presentation. There’s the Crimson Fleet, a band of criminals that doesn’t follow the rules set down by the UCSEC, which polices the Settled Systems. Hardworking “dusties” keep at the day job, extracting resources along the fringe of civilized space. Capitalism is capitalism’s way of exploiting humanity and its resources in order to profit. Meanwhile, only Constellation — a walnut-lined league of exploratory gentlemen — remain the last true explorers.

Here are some of the most important players StarfieldAll sound a lot like today’s major players. While Elon Musk hopes to monetize near-Earth orbit and beyond, the United States Space Force and other major global powers just can’t wait to airlift the first load of guns and bombs onto the moon and plant a flag on Mars. Yet, there are still trillions of worlds waiting to be explored beyond the Milky Way’s fringes. Even worse, we only got a semi-clear view last month of the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The hazel-nut fight is a constant battle between everyone to get as much as they can, while the rest of our galaxy’s trees and forest and other unimaginable biomes remain hidden.

Image: Michael Peterson/U.S. Space Force

Here’s the rub: As far as video games go, players of all stripes have been there and back again, to the edge of our own galaxy and beyond. My time spent playing Elite Dangerous, for instance, I’ve traveled more than 150,000 light years and visited nearly 3,000 star systems, personally discovering hundreds of new worlds. I only needed three weeks’ worth of game time. For fans, the same is true No Man’s SkyAnother game that is rich in complex virtual worlds is titled “The Game of Life”. Both of these games were, in large part, random generated. It’s all just disconnected bits of background fluff. The next step for gaming-kind, therefore, isn’t about the pixels or the frame rates. It’s about whipping that fluff into something more substantial, and telling a story that can genuinely inspire wonder.

There are a few tidbits of Sunday’s trailer that have gone overlooked, I think — things that tell me that Bethesda is heading in the right direction.

My eyes were glued to the lockpicking game and I felt my stomach flip when an astronaut with a better arm started throwing grenades at an exoplanet. But then I saw that each player will have complete freedom to pick their in-game religion.

Raised Enlightened, an optional trait, is available to those who “grew up as a member of the Enlightened.” Raised Universal, on the other hand, notes that your character “grew up as a member of the Sanctum Universum.” Meanwhile, pan-galactic paganists seem to prefer the Serpent’s Embrace as they all “grew up worshipping the Great Serpent.” How these sub-factions and beliefs riff on existing religious and political views will be excellent fodder for critics and players alike, but they may also offer a foundation on which our individual human souls can get their footing in-game. You might even find players who change your perspective with the help of this RPG foundation.

Howard said you can “be who you want and go where you want.” Maybe that means traveling in a spiritual sense as well. “The biggest question of all,” said one of the characters in the trailer, is “what’s out there.” But what you think is out there has a lot to do with what you see inside yourself. “Whatever lies at the end of this road will change humanity forever,” that same character said. Maybe it’ll change some hearts and minds about the space program as well.

Or, it will be a disaster. It will end up being a sham story, with its bizarre conclusions being aired in an uncaring environment of miserable, jaded Earthlings. That’s the real risk as I see it — not the quality of the base building, and not the depth of the weapon crafting. Is the game going to stir my heart? That’s not something I’ve been able to wonder about my GameStop pre-order in a long, long time.