This year’s long-awaited Bethesda RPG, Starfield, was easily one of the most hyped games of the year, with many predicting that it  would not only live up to the hype but blow through expectations. In the end of it all it seems that the hype itself was the game’s own cause for its demise as it has seen a very weird reception since release. The best word to use is mixed, genuinely one of the most mixed titles ever released in terms of player reaction. Many regard it as one of the best RPGs ever made with a bright future ahead of it, while the other half of players are deeming it outdated and one of the biggest disappointments of the year. Starfield was meant to be and marketed as the game that would usher in a new era of Xbox, and if this title is really meant to be the flagship title, it’s understandable for Xbox owners to be more than concerned. Recently on Steam, the title received mostly negative reviews (7,249). The overall reviews on Steam have it placed at a previously mentioned mixed reviews with over 80,000 users chiming in their opinion. 

While Starfield has a lot of fair criticisms regarding repetitive exploration, long and multiple loading screens among others things, it doesn’t seem logical for the game to have such a negative reputation. Reading some of the reviews you would assume it’s just trolls that have little to no playtime just review bombing the game but it’s actually quite the opposite. Most of the recent negative reviews are from people with a large number of users having hundreds of hours logged in. It seems to be mainly from hardcore Bethesda fans who feel disappointed in comparison to Bethesda’s past vast RPGs. There’s a lot of discourse at the moment on whether or not the term “Xbox Tax” is even real but it gets to a point where maybe Bethesda really did just make a mediocre game that is not up to their standard and their fans aren’t trolling but being genuine. 

With the concept of Starfield being 20 years in the making it really makes you wonder why the game released how it did. It almost feels as if had the game been released 10, even 5 years earlier it would be regarded as an amazing title in Bethesda’s incredible time in game development. There is a lot of promised post-launch content coming to Starfield with additional content said to be added every six weeks from the past release so players who are fond of the title can look forward to that, and for the players that were displeased, they can maybe look forward to a lot of post-launch content fixing the problems they had in mind.