The new release from Bethesda Game Studios, Starfield is what happens when a rough draft is published. It works to a certain degree but is clearly unfinished, parts don't fit together well and it could be so much better. Unfortunately, some of those things that need work are critical progress and stability bugs that should not exist in a $70 full release AAA game. I played this on Xbox Life; I would be annoyed if I had paid for it standalone.
Starfield is a soft sci-fi shooter game set three centuries in the future. Earth has been abandoned for the stars following the development of instantaneous faster-than-light flight called the grav drive. The main quest is centered on the player discovering a physics-defying, definitely not human artifact and joining an explorer's guild named Constellation to search for more across dozens of star systems surrounding Earth's Sol. This is Starfield's main quest where you ostensibly learn about the game world and get your NPC companion characters. All four of the major companions are Constellation members.
This is a new original IP and mystery is a dicey way to introduce a world people are not familiar with. Worldbuilding is hard and good fantasy and sci-fi works in any medium are usually longer to lay out the rules. This is especially difficult in open-world games where the "author" does not have control over where the "reader" goes. Bethesda games are infamous for players opting out of the main quest early and that could certainly happen here. The Constellation quest is generic and boring over its first several missions, which will eat up several hours of gameplay between travel, fighting and housekeeping. Your adversaries through the first six missions are exclusively the same pirates and raiders you would fight in sandbox exploration. There's no antagonist, and even after one is introduced, it's shadowy for potentially a lot longer.
The game doesn't put its best foot forward. The more unique, dramatic narrative is all in the back one-quarter of the main quest.
The faction, companion and side quests are of widely varying quality. The United Colonies quest chain has solid writing and many unique assets. It generally feels like it was considered for the main quest at some point; it certainly explains more about the game universe most people experience. Players will usually encounter this first as Constellation is housed in the UC's capital of New Atlantis in Alpha Centauri. The rival Freestar Collective questline is much weaker, with sudden illogical jumps and goofy Space Western worldbuilding down to specific dying American subcultures. Some sidequests have extensive unique art and scripting while others are sorely lacking. At one point you can board a generation ship that was built without any of the space technology currently in use including artificial gravity – and it is laid out like other large ships and stations.
The game's writing and design has many issues like that where the worldbuilding is inadequate to explain what we're seeing, or what we are seeing means the world should be different. For a new sci-fi property this isn't good. Sci-fi is all about rules changing modern reality and how humans act with those rules. Unfortunately, the narrative, hand crafted content is the stronger part of Starfield.
The combat is serviceable with entertaining weapons and good graphics offset by dumb AI, an unfriendly economy that gets in the way of converting loot to money, and several intuitive skills like headshots locked behind talents. There also isn't that much combat in the Constellation quest and little is any challenge. A player is intended to do this on their own as they explore the open galaxy.
Starfield's sandbox exploration features four general ideas – outpost building, starship building, procedural generation of planets to survey and "points of interest" or POI on those planets. This is supposed to be the meat of the game that will keep people playing. None of these features work as intended.
Outpost building lacks any explanation inside the game and overall mostly serves as an XP grind exploit if you read a 3rd party guide. In the game as released they serve no apparent other purpose. Starship building again lacks a guide, has a clunky interface that does not highlight where your errors are, and has a bewildering array of unlocks based on building talent, piloting talent, level, and shipyard owner. You can't readily control how the interior comes out in terms of ladders and hatchways and the game dropped with a bug that strips and duplicates the decorations on your ship if you so much as paint a fender. This can carpetbomb your inventory space with hundreds of miscellaneous decorations. Your inventory will also switch between your "home" ships, which also blows up your inventory because ships have widely differing amounts of cargo hold capacity.
Then there are the planets. In theory, a given game has more than 1000 to explore with a limitless permutation of POIs and resources. In practice the system doesn't generate cohesive worlds. I've seen human structures occupied by pirates on Venus – which you can land on – and shipwrecks with castaway survival housing on airless moons with a temperature of -200c. I've encountered animals on airless moons. I've found abandoned military bases with arsenals and 20 pirates on the capital world of the UC, who do not like pirates and do like military. I've been rained on with H2O in temperatures well below 0 Celsius and somehow contracted frostbite through a spacesuit. I've contracted lung damage from inert argon through my vacuum sealed helmet.
I've also gone through the same abandoned mine and robot lab several times. Down to the body placement, locked doors and the clutter on the desks. The procedural points of interest will repeat; some players have reported seeing the same one within a kilometer. Why is this even possible? It's a few lines of code to exclude. I suspect the POI instances (where you go through a loading screen) all point to the same place because they have uniform gravity.
Some of this is wryly amusing. Other major technical faults are not and encourage use of the autosave function. Crashes, lost saves and NPC triggers breaking quest lines are common; most players will experience at least one of these in a playthrough. One nasty progress wipe isn't even a bug, but a consequence of doing quests in a specific common order. It annihilates all the worldly possessions you have decorated your New Atlantis penthouse with, including unique armor, valuable illegal items and player-modded weapons, and marital gifts. This will happen if you complete Quest A (UC), decorate, then complete Quest B (Constellation). Again, these quests are scripted to share a major city.
This game is being sold as a full release for $70. It should be free of obvious game breaking bugs. Future patches or 3rd party modders fixing this is not okay.
All and all, the recurring theme is that Starfield could be a great game but at every turn from writing to QA Bethesda hasn't finished the job. The parts don't fit together and no one aspect is strong enough to carry the game.
7/10 as a game, 5/10 as a complete product.
