Every now and then, a game comes out that is a make-or-break moment for a company, or in this case, is also trying to prove to the public that spending seven billion dollars on one company was a good investment. That’s the position Xbox found itself in with Starfield, Bethesda’s first original idea since the first Elder Scrolls back in the 90s, their first Xbox-only game after being bought by Microsoft (sorry, Redfall), and their first game after making all their fans retroactively hate them because of Fallout 76. So, saying a lot was going against and for Starfield until its release would be an understatement. That’s even before people started to leak the game after codes started to be unlocked all over the world. So, after personally spending more than 80 hours with Starfield trying to do everything it has to offer, is the game good? Yes, it is very good at times, but it is also a flawed and annoying game at the same time, held back by dated design and odd choices occasionally.
The game starts by breaking from Bethesda joke norms with you not being a prisoner but a miner being hired by a contractor to recover a rare mineral from a planet; however, if you want to look at it from a pessimistic lens, I guess being a miner is a form of prison-ship. You then come across a piece of an alien artifact that becomes entwined with you, and you are given a ship and a membership to a group of people looking for meaning in the universe. The plot as a whole is basic, but it has a stable foundation; I was able to get through and not spend the majority of the time pressing the skip button. When you are given the freedom to do what you want, the cracks start to show.
The main issue I have with the game that I was able to come to terms with is that space exploration in this sci-fi game about space is pretty pointless and just a loading lobby. You can’t take off and land from a planet without going through a loading screen; that said, they are crazy fast on the Xbox Series X, roughly 15 seconds max, from my experience. But it does make you start to question, why would I go through the process of going to space, point my ship in the direction I want to go, hold a button, and lightspeed there? When I can just go into my map and select the location and fast travel within 10 seconds. I started doing that for a while; then I decided not to for a while to see what kind of crazy adventures I can get into, and sure enough, I did.
One side-quest had me basically find the Bat-Cave and become this universe version of Batman, which was interesting because the ship I got as a reward wasn’t just a cosmetic change; it has a gameplay effect, where during a pirate raid, one of the ships noticed me and got scared and warped out of the system. That’s when everything clicked for me in terms of the role-playing nature of the game. I started building my own ship and try to recreate a famous sci-fi ship design I saw on Reddit because anything I made on my own was just a collection of cubes that somehow turned into a space 18-wheeler. I could look past the dated gameplay choices, namely having a low weight limit while having everything you pick up take up half of your storage, so I went back to my Fallout 3 process, found a nice closet, and threw everything in there. Though I think with how games have evolved, using tricks from more than ten years is a good sign that your designs are starting to lose their touch. One other thing I can say I never got used to is the local map; it’s bad, again, this may be due to in-game maps having more detail or at least telling where the shops are, so you don’t have an online map next to you.
But while I was getting into Starfield, I was wondering if I was enjoying myself or if the game had me numb to glaring issues. So, I put it down for a few days, came back, and played for another 12 hours straight. Don’t know if this is the OCD side of me that keeps coming back, but I ended up enjoying my time with the game. That is until I got to the ending and started the fabled New Game Plus; now, I will keep it spoiler-free, but I will say when I started my second playthrough, my whole outlook on the game changed, and I got more hooked on it, and the role I had in the universe that it created.
So, in the end, can I recommend Starfield with where it is now? Yes, if you are a fan of Bethesda RPG’s then you fit right at home in this universe they have created. But if you aren’t, I would back off for a while, at least until some really good mods get added to the PC version or when mod support is added to Xbox later next spring. But as for my final thoughts on Starfield, it’s complicated. I did go in with lower hype than everyone else, but I also had some hype that it did deliver on, but also at times, it did annoy me, while in difference, I was entranced with my place in the universe.
But I think that’s where Starfield is going to work; what adventures did you go on, what factions did you side with, and were you someone that you had to start having a shootout when one of the NPCs noticed the massive bounty on your head? It’s your story, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen a game do it in a player-friendly way like what Starfield has done. Sure, you have things like Baldur’s Gate 3 that have deeper ways your role impacts the narrative, but Starfield feels more mainstream, and I think that’s why many people will click with it. So, I guess to sum it up; I enjoyed my time warping around the cosmos, finding a standard ship, helping them out, getting a reward, and right before they were about to leave, shooting out their engines and robbing them for everything. It’s a more complex method than the Skyrim bucket trick.
Score: 9 out of 10
Reviewed on Xbox Series X