 and No Man's Sky, Bethesda leading the development of a AAA space game seemed like a match made in heaven. Over 1000 planets to explore, ship building, tons of side quests, a mysterious main story and interesting factions to join? Yes, please! Now that I've completed Starfield – and when I say completed, I mean that I've finished the main quest – and sunk 60 hours into it, I feel conflicted. It's taken a while for my feelings about the game to truly cement in my mind. And now that they have, I really do think Starfield is a great game, but it's not the game that you think it is, and it's not quite the game that was promised. And herein lies the problem. Do I review this game for what it actually is? Or, do I review this game against the idea of what people think it is? Because the truth is, Starfield was heavily marketed as a space exploration game, and it's just not. Yes, there are elements of exploration and things to discover, but the only exploring that actually matters happens in the game's handcrafted side quests and the main story. You can explore as much as you want, landing on as many of the game's 1000 planets as you like, but once you've visited one abandoned facility or mine shaft, you've pretty much visited them all. That's because when you land on a planet in Starfield, the area in which you land is a procedurally generated bubble, with a few pre-defined locations chucked in for good measure, but these locations are basically the same wherever you go. And to make matters worse, because the environment is pr){kind=link}
Starfield is Bethesda’s AAA space-faring RPG, with the Xbox-exclusive title being its first new IP in 25 years.
The pressure was on Starfield to deliver after a barren period of Xbox-exclusive games, and with Bethesda certainly not being shy about hyping up the AAA title prior to release, the game promised much.
So, did it deliver? Well, it’s complicated. I was very excited about Starfield, as someone who loved the Fallout series (notably Fallout 4) and No Man’s Sky, Bethesda leading the development of a AAA space game seemed like a match made in heaven. Over 1000 planets to explore, ship building, tons of side quests, a mysterious main story and interesting factions to join? Yes, please!
Now that I’ve completed Starfield â and when I say completed, I mean that I’ve finished the main quest â and sunk 60 hours into it, I feel conflicted. It’s taken a while for my feelings about the game to truly cement in my mind. And now that they have, I really do think Starfield is a great game, but it’s not the game that you think it is, and it’s not quite the game that was promised.
And herein lies the problem. Do I review this game for what it actually is? Or, do I review this game against the idea of what people think it is?