I am cursed. But it’s a very strange curse. You see, any game I eagerly look forward to tends to be pretty bad, at least at launch. This tends to happen every year (at least as far as I started noticing it). Let’s run through my most eagerly anticipated games since 2016:
- 2016 – No Man’s Sky
- 2017 – Star Wars: Battlefront II
- 2018 – Fallout 76
- 2019 – Anthem
- 2020 – Cyberpunk 2077
- 2021 – Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition
By the end of 2021, I had learned my lesson. No more falling for the hype and not letting nostalgia cloud my judgment. Then Bethesda went ahead and teased Starfield, an open-world sci-fi RPG set in space. Now, I’m a sucker for a good Bethesda RPG. It all started with Elder Scrolls: Morrowind and has continued since. Which is why I could feel a sense of anticipation mixed with foreboding. Will Starfield finally break the curse? Let’s find out!
Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly about Starfield
The Good
The Story
If you’ve played any Bethesda games, you should know the story already. You start out in the middle of nowhere and through sheer coincidence/luck, you find yourself in the middle of a world-changing event. This time around, it’s the future where humanity is exploring and setting planets well beyond our solar system.
The game starts with you discovering a strange new artefact with mysterious physical properties that give you strange visions. You are then recruited by an organisation called Constellation which is dedicated towards exploring the unknown. Then you can choose to follow the main quest line or complete any one of the many side missions.
While the primary quest line is extremely generic at the beginning, it piques your interest towards the mid-point. However, the best is saved for last, namely the New Game+ mode. Bethesda has a unique approach to this. Not going to spoil it for you, but you might end up completing the game multiple times to soak it all in.
The Missions
Bethesda’s games tend to have some of the best side quests and Starfield is no different. At one moment you could be infiltrating the most feared pirate fleet in the galaxy, the next you could be contemplating freeing an AI that has gained sentience. If that’s not weird enough, You’ll also meet notable historical figures such as Genghis Khan and Amelia Earhart.
The World
Bethesda is no stranger to massive game worlds and even they seem to have outdone themselves with the scale of Starfield. The planets feel massive and the main hub areas designed by the developers (such as cities) have several things to discover and find. Planets and moons feel desolate and the varying gravity makes things feel unique.
I only wish they would have done more with this one.
The Bad
Missing Exploration
Ironically, for a game that is all about exploring the final frontier, there is very little exploration that you do. Sure, there are some locations that you can visit when you land on a location, but these are pretty much taken from the same template. Most of the time, you are just using your ship to jump from one location to another.
With old Bethesda games, you were given a location to travel to and as you made your way to the location, you could find anything from a new NPC, missions, locations and more. This gave those games a sense of exploration and wonder. Fast travelling to locations saps Starfield of this wonder and makes travel and exploration seem dull and boring.
Greater mission structure
While the missions in the game offer fun setups, the missions themselves are pretty straightforward. It usually boils down to going to a location — Kill, convince or steal — and coming back to complete the mission. Even then the missions can feel tight because of your companions as they disapprove of anything that has a tinge of evil in it. So you feel compelled to do things the “right” way.
Even with a spaceship, you land at designated locations. So missions feel even more linear than usual. The option to land at different locations would have opened up the mission structure a bit more. I have a spaceship. Let me bomb locations to soften the enemies up before landing!
Speaking of spaceships, you can engage in combat with other craft, but that’s limited to destroying or boarding them. More options such as the recreation of the ‘trench run’ scene from Star Wars, or even strafing runs on the ground would have enhanced missions so much.
Dated Graphics
While Bethesda did use an updated version of its Creation Engine for the Starfield, it does not look as great as some other titles. Don’t get me wrong, I would not call the game ugly. But it could look much better with a bit more polish, especially with the power offered by modern consoles. Lighting seems flat and objects can look jagged upon close inspection.
Then there are the bugs. Bethesda games are notorious for their bugs and Starfield is no different. From NPCs randomly popping in during dialogue scenes to objects being launched into space, the game is riddled with bugs. My favourite is not exactly a bug, but an exploit that lets you access one of the game’s best space suits very early on in the game. Bethesda needs to get its act together and make its games less buggy. Especially considering that it is already working on Elder Scrolls VI.
Bad AI
The AI in Starfield also makes the game quite frustrating. Your companions can randomly forget to follow you and then sprint back to your location at full speed once they ‘remember’. They also have the same few lines of dialogue, which can be very annoying after a while. A stealth mission with a companion is almost impossible as they tend to alert enemies around them and go full gun blazing. A specific mission that requires a lot of stealth suggests that you leave your companion behind. Sadly, these companions are little more than pack mules and bullet baits.
Enemies aren’t too smart either. They have little in the way of life preservation and will routinely engage you without taking cover. They also have a severe case of amnesia and will quickly forget about the player and go about their patrols.
The Ugly
Clumsy UI
The UI system in Starfield seems ancient. There was a lot of chatter about Starfied’s overtly simple main menu just before launch, but that would have been a godsend. On the Xbox, you press the Menu Button to open up the characters setup screen. This has the inventory management screen, the Starmap, the Starship menu, Skills and more. But what if you want to save or load a game? Well, in that case, you will have to press and hold the Menu button to bring that up.
Inventory management is another clunky mess. Aside from the useless clutter that you can pick up, you also have to keep tabs on weapons, ammo, suits, resources, aid, and more. This seems pretty much par for the course. But then you add the 15+ ammo types that are in the game. I don’t know whose idea it was to have different weapons of the same category use different ammo. So you can have one shotgun that uses completely different ammo as compared to another one.
One section I never really got into was customisation. This includes weapons, space suits or even spaceships. This isn’t because I didn’t want to. But because it seemed needlessly complicated. You either have to spend the right amount of points in the respective skill tree and have researched the same at a research station and are on the right planet with the resources and parts. Not only that but the free spaceships that the game offers are usually fine for most players.
Space combat is another aspect where Bethesda dropped the ball. When it was first showcased, I loved the idea of diverting limited engine power to specific sections of the ship. It gave me Star Trek vibes of diverting all power to lasers when I want to bring the hammer down. But like with everything else, the implementation is extremely clunky. You have to use the D-Pad to remove points from one section and reallocate it to the one you want. Doing this in the middle of a heated battle is about as annoying as you think it is.
Overall, the UI in Starfield is like climbing a flight of stairs with no handrail while you have a broken ankle and only a pair of crutches to rely on. Is possible? Yes. Are there better ways? Absolutely!
Final take
To be honest, Starfield isn’t a terrible game. But it isn’t a great game either. Its positives and negatives sort mix to create this blob of average. If you like older Bethesda games, then there is plenty that you may like here. However, if you were expecting a grand space opera with tight space exploration and combat, then you would be disappointed. If space combat and exploration is more your jam, then you may be better off checking out No Man’s Sky or Everspace 2. If you want a great story with a space backdrop, you can also check out The Outer Worlds.
Oh, and as for my curse. Well, I guess that’s a real thing and I should try and get that exorcised. Now… I wonder what game I should look forward to next…
