You've probably heard of Bethesda or at least played at least one of their titles if you know anything about video games. Because of its enormous RPGs, Bethesda has become a household brand among gamers. The Elder Scrolls and video games like Oblivion and Skyrim have covered fantasy. They've discussed post-apocalyptic games with Fallout. They now turn to the stars for Starfield sci-fi coverage.
For more than seven years, Starfield has been in development at Bethesda. Due to the overwhelming positive reviews received by almost every Bethesda game ever released, Bethesda is under a lot of pressure to make Starfield a huge hit. The wait is finally over for Starfield, but it seems like I've lived four lifetimes in the meantime.At last, we have control over Starfield, and for better or worse, it plays a lot like space Skyrim.
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My coworker's quote, "It's Bethesda, for better and worse," became my motto for Starfield's advantages, disadvantages, and quirks in our constant debate about all things Starfield. Bethesda's Starfield is like watching a Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, or Christopher Nolan film in that you know exactly how it will look and feel if you're familiar with their work. And that's basically how I feel about Starfield: I adore it because it is a space version of Skyrim, but I also wish it was a little less of a nostalgic safety net. Science fiction was swallowed dry by that and Bethesda.
While Starfield is an ambitious science fiction adventure that is immensely enjoyable, gorgeously nostalgic, and has the potential to age like a great wine, Bethesda has adhered to a few key choices that, for better or worse, make Starfield seem like it's trapped in 2011. Although my assessment of Starfield is good due to my sincere belief that it is excellent, there are several aspects that prevent it from being really remarkable.
What is Starfield (Starfield)?
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Bethesda's gigantic single-player space RPG, Starfield, is so good that, after a few minutes, you'll wish it was multiplayer. You can play as any character you choose, finish the main plot, which has you traveling through space with a group called Constellation, build and pilot your own spacecraft, interact with various factions, go on an endless number of side missions, and visit thousands of planets that were created through procedural means. Build an outpost, engage in lockpicking, engage in firefights in zero gravity, make important choices, romance with partners, and much more.
Upon choosing "New Game," you immediately enter Starfield, akin to Skyrim with its "hey you, you're finally awake" moment. After seeing a preview of the speech, plot, and gameplay, you may customize your character using Bethesda's renowned, overly intricate process, which involves choosing a Background and three Traits. After that, the plot continues, you get the big Bethesda open-world revelation, you grab a ship, and you're off and running. After then, the options are endless: you may pursue the main plot, locate engaging side quests, and basically do anything you want. The stars are your oyster.
Houston, let's play! The battle
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Perhaps you've heard of "Bethesda jank," but if not, it's a term that aptly describes the sluggish, unsatisfactorily satisfying fighting in Bethesda games. Ineffably adorable, on the other hand, NPC memes are essentially parodies of the notorious “Bethesda jank” if you've seen any on the internet. Since there isn't a V.A.T.S. automated targeting system (thank the stars), it seems more like Skyrim in space than Fallout. However, the fighting in Starfield never quite reaches the thrilling or tactical heights of, say, Destiny 2 or Mass Effect. Bethesda is the battleground throughout.
Playing using a mouse and keyboard is strongly recommended if you want to mostly avoid the "Bethesda jank." I tried playing Starfield using a controller since I adore playing video games on controllers, but I found that using a mouse and keyboard is preferable for any combat-related games. You can really aim and strike your bullets with confidence, switch weapons rapidly with a single button press rather than pausing battle to bring up your quick-select menu, and search rooms for treasures considerably more swiftly. Even though I've spent endless hours playing Skyrim with a controller, Starfield never feels quite right since Starfield combat mostly involves precision aiming, while Skyrim depends more on melee weapons with occasional one-shot precision moments.The armaments
AnyBet365 screenshotIn relation to weapons,
Starfield has some very amazing weaponry. For instance, there are twelve spots in your quick-select menu. I filled nine of the twelve slots with various firearms since I discovered so many that I like using.
Starfield has electromagnetic, laser, and ballistic weaponry, all of which have amazing sounds, visuals, and tactile qualities. I really like the jetpack that you can utilize to go about the battlefield if you choose to employ
the greatest initial skills. This, along with the fact that each planet and moon has a unique gravity, makes it a lot of fun to leap about while battling.The competenciesIn contrast to
Skyrim,
Starfield lacks classes. Rather, it divides the 82 talents into five distinct skill trees, which are classified as Physical, Social, Combat, Science, and Tech. There are five levels in each skill tree, and the only way to advance through the upper tiers is to use skill points inside that particular skill tree. It will take you hundreds of hours to unlock all 82 abilities since you only earn one skill point every level up. (I was level 30 when I finished the game after around 40 hours.) And that's assuming you don't rank up your previously obtained skills. By investing an additional skill point and accomplishing a unique skill challenge, such as lockpick five times or boost while in battle thirty times, each talent may be rated up four times. Although the abilities in
Starfield are sufficient, I really hope that you could rank up your unlocked talents without using another skill point. While I wish it were more like
Oblivion, where leveling it up with frequent use, this is one of those few instances in
Starfield that sets it apart from previous Bethesda games, so at least they tried something different.All things considered, tarfield 's battle is just enough addictive to make you want to play it again and again. Much-needed fighting pauses are provided by the story, customisation, and exploration, which eventually result in rewarding gameplay loops that keep battle feeling new.The campaign: Where the conclusion is only the beginningAnyBet365 screenshot
Oblivion is my favorite Bethesda narrative, while
Starfield is probably the weakest, despite being a good story. It seems like Bethesda played it safe and dialed in a passable tale that is predictable and basic rather than striving for the stars, while it does have some intriguing choices and objectives. The campaign tasks that essentially consist of fetch quests are the worst portion. However, some of the campaign missions itself rank among the most thrilling, visually stunning, and enjoyable missions I've ever encountered in a Bethesda game. T
The twist on New Game Plus is among the better approaches to managing the feature that I have ever seen. The excitement about Todd Howard is warranted.Telling stories
Starfield tells its narrative like
Skyrim. It's in Bethesda. It's a bit jumbled, and the major events don't get the attention or resolution they deserve, but since that's how it's always been done, I suppose it's okay. Although I have serious issues with the cutscenes in
Starfield (more on that later),
Starfield would benefit from having a few more in the key moments and less in the less crucial ones. Moments like the first time you're going to engage in space combat with space pirates or when you join the major spacefaring organization, for instance, would seem more significant and the overall experience more epic. For better or worse, Bethesda is still in 2011; why would they want to tweak their winning formula that has served them well for decades? The epitome of the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is Bethesda.The choices made
The
AnyBet365 screenshotAlthough
Starfield has more choices than previous Bethesda games, I thought most of them were a little lackluster. The storyline and decision-making weight are handled better in that game than in
Starfield, which is comparable to
Mass Effect. Having said that,
Starfield has above-average storyline and decision-making, which contribute to a good degree of replayability. Specifically, there are a few choices in the primary campaign that yield very different results, but that's where it stops. Any choices you make in side quests are typical RPG options, something Bethesda excels at. Once again, you will like
Starfield if you enjoy the storyline in
Skyrim and
Fallout 4.
The auxiliary tasks
You are free to disregard any and all of the choices, storyline, and campaign of
Starfield if you so want. With 70 hours on
Starfield, my colleague at Attack of the Fanboy has hardly scratched the main campaign. Fortunately, there are amazing factions and side tasks in
Starfield. I became a member of the Freestar Collective's space cowboy police force, the Rangers, and my duties included finding adversaries and solving a fascinating mystery that made me think of something from
Andor. A single string of
Starfield side missions might fill an entire game, but
Starfield offers us a wealth of excellent side missions and tales that are often superior than the campaign.
The Spaceship and cutscenes: Launch failure
AnyBet365 screenshotTo put it plainly, I find it unsatisfactory that you can only utilize your spacecraft while it is in orbit around a moon or planet. Flying to and from planets and solar systems, as well as into and out of planets, is not possible manually. Cutscenes are used for everything, and they are boring, repetitive, and uninspired. Space is my main gripe with
Starfield. There are eight hands-off cutscenes to enter and exit your cockpit, a five-second loading screen to enter and exit your spacecraft, and a several-second cinematic to enter and exit another planet or solar system. The tactile, seamless, and boundless freedom of exploration that I so much wanted in
Starfield —and that we get in other vehicle open-world games like
Outer Wilds and
Subnautica—is killed by these cutscenes. The sensation you get when you smoothly enter and exit your spacecraft and literally fly into and out of a planet's atmosphere without a cutscene is maybe the one thing that
No Man's Sky got right. Not only is it impossible to personalize the inside of your ship, but you can't even depart or spacewalk while in space. The starmap quick travel system is also a huge source of frustration, but that's quite standard for Bethesda games.Games that create a unique link between you and your car and your need on one another to effectively go on adventures are my favorite niche genre.
Subnautica,
Outer Wilds, and
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker are among games that excel at this. Among these,
Outer Wilds established a benchmark for space exploration games. No cutscenes to enter the cockpit or exit your spacecraft. There are no cutscenes to move between star systems, moons, and planets. No cutscenes involving planet-hopping.
Outer Wilds offers the flexibility to roleplay as a master pilot, something that
Starfield completely lacks. I would love to have
Starfield have the ability to enter a planet's orbit, do a spacewalk, fix your ship, and return. I would accept no cutscenes, or at least sequences that are passed off as hands-on gameplay, as a starting point, but that may be asking for too much.
The rapid journey and star map
AnyBet365 screenshotWalking to my task and being distracted by an abandoned home steeped in mystery or a stronghold full of elemental atronachs are two of my favorite memories of
Skyrim. You cannot go lost in
Starfield. Allow me to clarify. One is that there's nothing fascinating to do other from the odd skirmish, and you only have manual control over your spacecraft when in orbit. You can't locate a comet and investigate it, or you can't find a space bar on an asteroid and apply the brakes to find out what's going on, if you can't go anyplace. The starmap remains your sole option for exploration in
Starfield. Your map of the solar systems, planets, moons, and galaxies is called the starmap. The starmap works well, however the instantaneous rapid travel crushes any spirit of exploration. Aside from the fact that you have infinite fuel, which is unquestionably a plus, you can only move throughout the game via fast travel; in
Skyrim, on the other hand, using your own two feet enabled me to slay the Khajiit.AnyBet365 screenshotThe fact that your spacecraft in
Starfield is almost entirely optional is a real letdown. Yes, you will need your ship to fight a few times in space and to fast travel (though not really since you can be almost anywhere on land, pull up your mission log, select “set course,” click a button to fast travel, and presto—you just traveled several light years without setting foot on your ship). However, apart from the awesomeness of manually controlling system power, space battles are an anticlimax. I detest the statement, "Well, modders will eventually fix all of this," for three reasons: first, I believe Bethesda should make the best decisions possible to produce the best game possible; second, it is unfair to depend on unpaid Bethesda employees—which is what they are now—to make
Starfield the full experience it should have been at launch; and third, there are a lot of people who don't like or are unable to access mods and are permanently stuck with Bethesda's final word. The lack of space in
Starfield makes the game seem like a series of geographical maps nailed together with required quick transit. Although it detracts from the overall immersive sci-fi experience,
Starfield is so massive that quick travel and sucky space don't make it a poor game, astonishingly.
The worldbuilding: A galaxy not too far away
AnyBet365 screenshotWorldbuilding is something that Bethesda games, including
Starfield, excel at. Actually, the post-NASA science fiction future of
Starfield is my favorite aspect of the game. Science fiction with a magical element may be found in works such as
Destiny 2 and
Star Wars, while extraterrestrial sci-fi can be found in works such as
extraterrestrial and
Star Trek. But
Starfield is a pleasure to visit because of its grounded science fiction approach, which is evident in the spacecraft models, settlement architecture, and believable mythology.The tremendous quantity of information in
Starfield is one of its most perplexing features. No game has ever captured my attention like
Starfield. Large cities like New Atlantis and Neon have a lively vibe to them due to the abundance of people strolling about and the conversations that float in and out of them as you pass. Even if space flight is horrible, the cockpits have a ton of switches, knobs, and buttons, and the pop-up screens for takeoffs and grav leaps are just visually appealing and add a lot of flair. The fact that there is so much junk in all of the abandoned outposts and space stations adds to the realism of the setting. The amount of trash in
Starfield is just astounding; it's very Bethesda, but this is a whole other level.
The planets created procedurally
AnyBet365 screenshotBut the planets that were created via a procedural process are what really concerned us all. The planets and moons in
Starfield are lovely and have a very wide range of variations, in my opinion. Sadly, they are mostly desolate. You land a few hundred meters from your goal every time you arrive anywhere in
Starfield for whatever reason. Walking is your only choice since
Starfield has no land vehicles, which is a significant L. Fantastic, strolling! This is where you could assume
Starfield plays similarly to
Skyrim, letting you lose yourself in fantastic, mind-numbing adventures. False. There is nothing to encounter while walking to your goal in
Starfield, therefore it's not entertaining. The only thing you can do while you move toward your goal is scan for minerals, plants, and animals; this is kind of like filler, unless you're looking for a particular resource. Near your landing location, there are usually three or four points of interest (POIs), but they are as far, if not more, away than your primary goal and may be abandoned hovels that are not worth investigating. You begin to doubt the game's ability to provide engaging procedurally generated points of interest (POIs) among its hundreds of planets and moons after encountering one dull POI.But this is how it works. There's always something to do since whenever you arrive somewhere on a planet or moon, there are three or four procedurally created points of interest. While there are a few undeveloped, random points of interest that might be frustrating, visiting these places is enjoyable since it offers a different take on the looter shooter gameplay cycle. I've traveled to a lot of POIs that were shockingly diverse in layout and teeming with opponents. I make my way through, murder everything, take everything, and go. The procedurally created points of interest are essentially useful for that purpose, providing a light diversion that may be completely disregarded like anything else.
The visuals, acting, and soundtrack are ready for takeoff.
AnyBet365 screenshotThe fact that there were almost no issues or malfunctions with
Starfield was the most pleasant surprise. Though most Bethesda games are notoriously unfinished and unplayable at release,
Starfield is an exception. Since
Starfield is a massive game, there will undoubtedly be some Bethesda jank, but the only glitch I saw was a few sporadic game crashes. In addition, Bethesda released a day one patch that addressed several flaws, so additional updates should be forthcoming. I must also mention how amazing the visuals are. The
Starfield universe is amazing; I couldn't stop capturing screenshots of the planets and landscapes because they were so beautiful. Though they do have that lovely Bethesda jank sauce that gives them peculiar gaits and attitudes, the character designs are equally gorgeous. Reminds me of the day, when we were in high school and
Skyrim first came out, that I raced over to my closest friend's home. I still clearly recall exclaiming, "Wow, these visuals are amazing!And now, whenever I look at vanilla
Skyrim images, I have to fight back nausea. In ten years, I think that will undoubtedly be the case for
Starfield, but that's the expected development of almost any realistic video game.AnyBet365 screenshotThe original music of
Starfield has a certain type of charm. I wait a few seconds before playing
Starfield merely to take in the score every time the title screen appears. Everything you do in
Starfield is infused with that enchantment, which unites the whole experience. The soundtracks for the video games Oblivion and Skyrim were created by Jeremy Soule, and Inon Zur's work on Starfield will do the same.I used my PC with a 3060 Ti GPU to play
Starfield , and I was able to run the full game with all of the visual settings set to "ultra." With the exception of the crowded area just outside the Lodge, I also consistently saw frame rates of 60 or more the whole time, so even that wasn't a reason for alarm. Although it doesn't operate well, the most recent patch states that
Starfield does run on Steam Deck. The hardware is not up to the minimal requirements for
Starfield, which is the claimed issue. That's a huge disappointment, and maybe Bethesda will keep improving Steam Deck performance.
Why is Starfield a nice place to be?
AnyBet365 screenshotEven though
Starfield has been criticized in almost every department,
Starfield is still an excellent game. One-in-a-decade gaming experiences are guaranteed in
Starfield, a Bethesda title that offers experiences you won't find anywhere else. Is there any game that you can think of where you can predict, even before it's released, that it would be one that people will play and love for years to come? The charm, ambition, and masterfully designed worlds of Bethesda games ensure that they always turn out well in the end. Starfield is another great Bethesda game.Taking everything into account, I believe
Starfield is an excellent game. If you like Bethesda, you will enjoy
Starfield as well. Everything is done really well and in typical Bethesda fashion, including the dialogue, combat, worldbuilding, factions, menu navigation, storyline, outpost and ship construction and customization, and the many side quests. Fast travel and space travel are the main drawbacks of this game; almost everything else is fascinating and intriguing. For better or worse, it is genuinely space
Skyrim.The Conclusion
Picture of BethesdaCurrently,
Starfield seems like home, and Bethesda is like a great friend that I only get to visit every few years. Even though
Starfield promises to be an epic space role-playing game, it falls short because to spaceflight's lack of life and an unwillingness to innovate in more than one manner. All in all, however,
Starfield is unquestionably a fun, immersive experience that immerses you in its unique universe and offers you complete control over the cockpit. Not total control, exactly, but you get the idea.
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