Image credit: Bethesda
Science fiction has always been a genre that I gravitate towards. And this is to be said for all the variations within the genre. Whether it's cyberpunk like Blade Runner, fantasy elements like Star Wars, or good ol' fashioned bug hunts like Aliens, I am almost always on board.
Starfield takes all that and puts their own Bethesda spin on it.
In Bethesda's newest IP, we start as a miner working for a corporation that doesn't know it's about to get hit. A small fleet of pirates swoops in to put their hands on the latest find, an artifact with the ability to send our main character into a tizzy made of orchestral music and brightly colored lights. There were no drugs involved, I swear. Regardless, the artifact is worth a whole lot to a small few, and one of those little groups is none other than Constellation.
Constellation functions essentially as a pathfinding group meant to explore the limits of space around the milky way. They utilize the grav drives that were invented nearly 200 years earlier to zip from one end of the galaxy to the other in the blink of an eye, and they survey different planets and moons while they do it. Lucky for us, they have an eye on our main character as being their next recruit to help pave the way to the find of the millenium.
The Good
While the narrative packs a relatively decent punch in its little package, it really doesn't hold much weight when it's put up against the storylines of the factions. UC Vanguard, Crimson Fleet, Freestar Rangers, and hell even Ryujin Industries are where the game really shines. Each one of these factions also give those full on shining star moments for Starfield where Bethesda gets to flex their knowledge about so many various sci-fi subgenres.
Vanguard gives us our first taste of those bug hunts I was talking about. It's as Starship Troopers as it can get, here, with a hivemind bug (called a terrormorph in game) even pulling the strings of some puppet creatures. Crimson Fleet takes us down an espionage rabbithole where the goal is to infiltrate and either dismantle, or boost, the enemy from within. It's up to you whether or not you're willing to go full John Silver in this rated M for Mature Treasure Planet. Things take a bit of a detour with the Freestar Rangers where we kind of get that old western feel similar to how Star Wars handles some of its scifi. Meanwhile, Ryujin was where I finished off my faction surfing. With most of the quests taking place in the aptly named city, Neon, I felt the pulse of that corporate cyberpunk life on every rained-out foggy corner.
The factions each have their own stories that we get to explore, but sometimes Starfield has some hidden gems that you only really stumble across that make it so great. From the sick girl on Mars to the hand-me-down crew orbiting the planet their ancestors staked out generations ago, Bethesda's writers earned their paychecks tenfold. It's the lore where Bethesda has always shined, and they really fleshed it out for Starfield in ways that most people could only dream of.
The visuals were also something to write home about. Everything looks great, and in my opinion is some of the best renderings and designs that Bethesda has ever produced. On top of the design choices the company made, there is also so much freedom of choice in our own personal designs as we break ships down into their base components and build them up from there. Having some skill points invested in starship design helps, of course, but even without them you can make your mobile home completely unique as it caters to your every whim.
Sound is another plus. I wish Apple Music would cut a deal with Bethesda so I could get the score on my list, but I suppose I'll have to just boot up Spotify whenever I feel like hearing the epic and ominous tones of the space adventure. Voice acting is also up to snuff, with every single character line well-crafted and produced. I was impressed.
The Bad
Now not everything is sunshine and rainbows here. There are plenty of times across the 120 hours I poured into Starfield that I was left feeling a little empty.
Most of those moments really came from the glitchiness. Bethesda has been around for too long and made way too much money for these kinds of mistakes to happen, but here we are. Conversations with characters break down as they continue to simply walk away from you for no reason. NPCs will walk into walls and drift along them. Our main character will get stuck in environments from time to time. Crashes are frequent, certainly a lot more frequent than virtually any other game I've played in the past year. Stuff like that can be more than a little frustrating when coupled with an extended time between saves.
Glitches aside, the other aspect of Starfield that I found lacking was really in the DLC. I paid for the season pass so I could really experience all that the game had to offer, but both the Terran Armada and the Shattered Space DLCs didn't add much at all to the experience. As a matter of fact, there wasn't even a connection that could be seen in the ending scene. No cohesion between the DLC and the main game's ultimate events is disappointing. It's also fairly surprising given the fact that they still had additional information and dialogue from every single companion character that shares the voyage with you. How much more effort would it have been to just add a little bit more connective tissue between the extras and the vanilla?
The Glory
Overall, the game still hits more high notes than low. You can tell within the first few minutes that it was a massive expenditure by Bethesda, and I would venture to say it is easily their most expensive AAA venture yet. Will we end up seeing anything else in the starfield? Hard to say, as I'm not quite sure that the game hit the numbers the studio was looking for. But if we did... I would surely venture forth to that not-so-final frontier once more.
8/10
Glorious
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