As a pretty passionate fan of western RPG games and a certainly die-hard fan of Bethesda games, I can safely say, after spending at least 80-ish hours playing the game, exploring planets, finishing the main quest, playing a couple of side quests, faction quests, and searching a lot of stuff I won't spoil you about, I can say Starfield is a pretty divisive game for me. I'll try to keep it brief, but I'll try to summarize the stuff that, for me, are key to understand that divisive feeling.
The Good Old Bethesda Fashion
Starfield certainly is a Bethesda game, it has all its flavors condensed in one, massive game. You could say they took every aspect that made their games stand out individualy, procedural generation to create even more gigantic chunks of maps in every planet, decent and engaging factions to take part of, amazing soundtrack, loot mechanics that help you craft items and upgrade them, and fairly immersive roleplaying. Sounds about good, right?
Well, yes... If you truly love Bethesda Games.
A lot of gameplay mechanics and game design decisions can feel rusty and outdated by today standards, there's a lot of stuff that fit in that description. Lots of loading screens, janky animations, awful AI, questionable UI design, there's a lot to digest here. All though those problems don't mess with the game in a Cyberpunk-2077-Release type of fashion, but it certainly holds back every potential the game has to be great and stand out from other ARPGS and WRPGS.
The Wasted Wonders Of Exploration
It is pretty well known, and I also mentioned it previously, that Starfield uses procedural generation for the planet surfaces and maps, but the "handcrafted" content is put randomly on those generated areas.
All though the planet designs are pretty nice, with a notable study behind every one of them, since Bethesda stressed how much they did research to make the game as accurate as possible when it comes to planets, the exploration doesn't feel as great as I imagined. As a fan of Bethesda Games, I c an say, even if the game is not that good (Ex. Fallout 3) and feels empty, when you cross over a point of interest, you usually get a pretty big reward for going there, you find a new quest, a unique weapon, or at least, a great chunk of environmental storytelling, here in Starfield, things have changed a bit.
In my experience with the game, I felt that the point of interest get way too repetitive, even the handcrafted content gets repeated pretty often, all though there's some twists to it in some ocations, they feel sparse, few and far between.
The tale of Constellation and others: The questlines of Starfield
I think this is the part where Starfield shines the most. The settings and stories told in this game are, maybe for me, the most interesting stories Bethesda has told since Morrowind.
The main quest, this one being the search for the Artifacts and their meaning with Constellation, is pretty solid. All though it starts pretty slow, mostly because it's a tutorial to the vast systems that are present on this game, but as soon as picks everything up, it truly shines as one of the most cool, unique and well written Bethesda main stories to date. Unfortunately the potential of Constellation is held back mostly for the cast of characters, those being barely interesting excluding a couple of companions you meet throught the main story (Barret, Vasco and Andreja, love y'all!), the ending of the quest is also one of Bethesda's best, if not the best ending of any storyline they ever made.
Starfield also offers a wide variety of factions, storylines and side quests to take part of. For my first experience I focused mostly on the Crimson Fleet (which was truly a great questline), all though I quested a bit with the Freestar Collective and Ryujin Industries. I can safely say, the combination of the new persuation systems, backgrounds and traitrs make the experience more personalized and fun.
The random events are also great, but unfortunately they're really easy to miss, specially the random questlines that you can find in space, mostly because most of the people will skip being in space and setting course to all the planet orbits because the fast travel in this game can feel even invasive.
The Gameplay and the Dillema of Bethesda
This game is big, and not only for its scale. Starfield is a game that introduces new mechanics and a fully new gameplay section, this one being the Starships.
As expected of any Bethesda game, the customization is off the roof, there's a lot of stuff you can upgrade, customize and make it as yours as it can be, and even a great number of perks to back it up, but that can be easily missed for the lack of guidance and tutorials around it, this being the same mistake that Fallout 4 did with its weapon, armor and settlement customization systems. But even taking that in mind, the system feels more refined, intuitive and easy to use once you get the hang of it, which for me makes it a bit problematic for its lack of introduction.
The shooting in this game is the biggest stale of everything gameplay-wise. Even though is good, just as Fallout 4 shooting and gameplay, the fact that the AI lacks of any sense of... anything really, makes the game extremely easy, not as easy as Fallout 4, but still easy non the less, AI is really easy to cheap off. When it comes to melee weapons, though, this game is dissappointing, i'd say is the most lacking melee combat Bethesda has done, barely detailed with a really significant lack of animations and variety in weapons and weapons movesets, I can't say anything about the unarmed build since I wasn't able to play it.
There's also a pretty familiar power system, remanecent from Skyrim. All though this is introduced a little bit late to the game, the powers, excluding a couple of them, are not that good. Unlike Skyrim where you could make strategies of your own using the Shouts or simply spamming Fus Ro Dah in front of a cliff for a secure instant death, in Starfield you have pretty unispiring powers that feel like Mass Effect augmentations, but downgraded.
The starship system is the brand new gameplay introduced in this game, and I gotta say, it's amazing and full of detail and love, but it comes with a really bad catch that makes me a bit sad. The combat system is great and feels great, the fact that takes a bit of that FTL-esque approach to the starships combat makes it even more fun and exciting, perks around this are also a great way to enhance the experience of fighting in the starships.
Flying them is pretty nice too, but this is where the catch comes in play. You barely fly in your starship outside of combat, you can only fly around a planet orbit and occasionally destroy some asteroids here and there for resources, but thats it for that part since the game doesnt have a real time landing system for the planets, and lacks of starship flying on-orbit too, which makes this the most limited system in the game despite being the most detailed and polished of all.
The problem of having a shit ton of gameplay variants without having a particular focus on one, and managing to make it as good as it can be, is a problem persistent in Bethesda's design, making it a "jack of all trades, master of none" situation very similar to Fallout 4 that makes me feel pretty dissappointed.
NASAPUNK and the Space Opera: The Design and Music of Starfield
Since Bethesda is a company that loves detail and making every single thing in the world stand out, I wanted to take a brief section to talk about this since I always liked the work Bethesda does to make their games feel alive, unique and immersive when it comes to designing the world and making you feel part of it using its different artistic methods.
The design in Starfield is something that for me, stands out as one of the most unique designs around a space/adventure themed piece of media. Approaching a pretty familiar visual style with their clothers and star suits, looking pretty much alike to what we see today, but with different variants in designs that make all of them a joy to see and detail. But even with that in mind, I feel that the design can fall off behind some Bethesda titles, those being a couple of Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind and Skyrim) and Fallout: New Vegas, but still, it has enough uniqueness and love to stand out.
The music is once again, directed and composed by Inon Zur, which is now the Bethesda mainline compositor since their departure with Jeremy Soule. Sadly the music is not as great as I thought it would be, but it has enough substance to help you feel invested in the universe you're exploring and taking part of.
Starfield and the Test of Time: My Final Thoguths
Todd Howard said in several interviews that he wanted Starfield to last as long as Skyrim has done it for the past 12 years. Not only with upgrades and expansions coming from Bethesda themselves (that I want to see soon, personally), but also coming from their dedicated modding community.
In that aspect, Starfield seems like an endless playground where modders can create almost everything, the potential behind this game foundation is probably one of the biggest and most interesting out there right now, but as usual, is something that takes time to develop.
The foundation of this game is something that has a lot of solid and amazing aspects, but the fact that some design choices and directions that Bethesda took making this game limited them to a point that they're foreshadowed by all the outdated and broken mechanics that surround them.
The fact that all of those problems can make players that are pretty unfamiliar with Bethesda games, or are straight up picking this as their first Bethesda game annoyed, bored and frustrated is sad, since the game takes a lot of time to pick up its pieces and take off in comparison to other Bethesda titles.
With all that said, Starfield is a game that makes a lot of stuff right, and if it was only that stuff, it would surely be one of the classic Bethesda's masterpieces they were once known for, but the direction they took with this game limited a lot of its potential, all though the game is a really good experience, it was extremely close to be a gamechanger in the industry that would set up a new standard not only for open world games, but for action-adventure RPGs as well, but it was held back in that important final strench which involves a better user experience and a more polished game overall.
The Good Old Bethesda Fashion
Starfield certainly is a Bethesda game, it has all its flavors condensed in one, massive game. You could say they took every aspect that made their games stand out individualy, procedural generation to create even more gigantic chunks of maps in every planet, decent and engaging factions to take part of, amazing soundtrack, loot mechanics that help you craft items and upgrade them, and fairly immersive roleplaying. Sounds about good, right?
Well, yes... If you truly love Bethesda Games.
A lot of gameplay mechanics and game design decisions can feel rusty and outdated by today standards, there's a lot of stuff that fit in that description. Lots of loading screens, janky animations, awful AI, questionable UI design, there's a lot to digest here. All though those problems don't mess with the game in a Cyberpunk-2077-Release type of fashion, but it certainly holds back every potential the game has to be great and stand out from other ARPGS and WRPGS.
The Wasted Wonders Of Exploration
It is pretty well known, and I also mentioned it previously, that Starfield uses procedural generation for the planet surfaces and maps, but the "handcrafted" content is put randomly on those generated areas.
All though the planet designs are pretty nice, with a notable study behind every one of them, since Bethesda stressed how much they did research to make the game as accurate as possible when it comes to planets, the exploration doesn't feel as great as I imagined. As a fan of Bethesda Games, I c an say, even if the game is not that good (Ex. Fallout 3) and feels empty, when you cross over a point of interest, you usually get a pretty big reward for going there, you find a new quest, a unique weapon, or at least, a great chunk of environmental storytelling, here in Starfield, things have changed a bit.
In my experience with the game, I felt that the point of interest get way too repetitive, even the handcrafted content gets repeated pretty often, all though there's some twists to it in some ocations, they feel sparse, few and far between.
The tale of Constellation and others: The questlines of Starfield
I think this is the part where Starfield shines the most. The settings and stories told in this game are, maybe for me, the most interesting stories Bethesda has told since Morrowind.
The main quest, this one being the search for the Artifacts and their meaning with Constellation, is pretty solid. All though it starts pretty slow, mostly because it's a tutorial to the vast systems that are present on this game, but as soon as picks everything up, it truly shines as one of the most cool, unique and well written Bethesda main stories to date. Unfortunately the potential of Constellation is held back mostly for the cast of characters, those being barely interesting excluding a couple of companions you meet throught the main story (Barret, Vasco and Andreja, love y'all!), the ending of the quest is also one of Bethesda's best, if not the best ending of any storyline they ever made.
Starfield also offers a wide variety of factions, storylines and side quests to take part of. For my first experience I focused mostly on the Crimson Fleet (which was truly a great questline), all though I quested a bit with the Freestar Collective and Ryujin Industries. I can safely say, the combination of the new persuation systems, backgrounds and traitrs make the experience more personalized and fun.
The random events are also great, but unfortunately they're really easy to miss, specially the random questlines that you can find in space, mostly because most of the people will skip being in space and setting course to all the planet orbits because the fast travel in this game can feel even invasive.
The Gameplay and the Dillema of Bethesda
This game is big, and not only for its scale. Starfield is a game that introduces new mechanics and a fully new gameplay section, this one being the Starships.
As expected of any Bethesda game, the customization is off the roof, there's a lot of stuff you can upgrade, customize and make it as yours as it can be, and even a great number of perks to back it up, but that can be easily missed for the lack of guidance and tutorials around it, this being the same mistake that Fallout 4 did with its weapon, armor and settlement customization systems. But even taking that in mind, the system feels more refined, intuitive and easy to use once you get the hang of it, which for me makes it a bit problematic for its lack of introduction.
The shooting in this game is the biggest stale of everything gameplay-wise. Even though is good, just as Fallout 4 shooting and gameplay, the fact that the AI lacks of any sense of... anything really, makes the game extremely easy, not as easy as Fallout 4, but still easy non the less, AI is really easy to cheap off. When it comes to melee weapons, though, this game is dissappointing, i'd say is the most lacking melee combat Bethesda has done, barely detailed with a really significant lack of animations and variety in weapons and weapons movesets, I can't say anything about the unarmed build since I wasn't able to play it.
There's also a pretty familiar power system, remanecent from Skyrim. All though this is introduced a little bit late to the game, the powers, excluding a couple of them, are not that good. Unlike Skyrim where you could make strategies of your own using the Shouts or simply spamming Fus Ro Dah in front of a cliff for a secure instant death, in Starfield you have pretty unispiring powers that feel like Mass Effect augmentations, but downgraded.
The starship system is the brand new gameplay introduced in this game, and I gotta say, it's amazing and full of detail and love, but it comes with a really bad catch that makes me a bit sad. The combat system is great and feels great, the fact that takes a bit of that FTL-esque approach to the starships combat makes it even more fun and exciting, perks around this are also a great way to enhance the experience of fighting in the starships.
Flying them is pretty nice too, but this is where the catch comes in play. You barely fly in your starship outside of combat, you can only fly around a planet orbit and occasionally destroy some asteroids here and there for resources, but thats it for that part since the game doesnt have a real time landing system for the planets, and lacks of starship flying on-orbit too, which makes this the most limited system in the game despite being the most detailed and polished of all.
The problem of having a shit ton of gameplay variants without having a particular focus on one, and managing to make it as good as it can be, is a problem persistent in Bethesda's design, making it a "jack of all trades, master of none" situation very similar to Fallout 4 that makes me feel pretty dissappointed.
NASAPUNK and the Space Opera: The Design and Music of Starfield
Since Bethesda is a company that loves detail and making every single thing in the world stand out, I wanted to take a brief section to talk about this since I always liked the work Bethesda does to make their games feel alive, unique and immersive when it comes to designing the world and making you feel part of it using its different artistic methods.
The design in Starfield is something that for me, stands out as one of the most unique designs around a space/adventure themed piece of media. Approaching a pretty familiar visual style with their clothers and star suits, looking pretty much alike to what we see today, but with different variants in designs that make all of them a joy to see and detail. But even with that in mind, I feel that the design can fall off behind some Bethesda titles, those being a couple of Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind and Skyrim) and Fallout: New Vegas, but still, it has enough uniqueness and love to stand out.
The music is once again, directed and composed by Inon Zur, which is now the Bethesda mainline compositor since their departure with Jeremy Soule. Sadly the music is not as great as I thought it would be, but it has enough substance to help you feel invested in the universe you're exploring and taking part of.
Starfield and the Test of Time: My Final Thoguths
Todd Howard said in several interviews that he wanted Starfield to last as long as Skyrim has done it for the past 12 years. Not only with upgrades and expansions coming from Bethesda themselves (that I want to see soon, personally), but also coming from their dedicated modding community.
In that aspect, Starfield seems like an endless playground where modders can create almost everything, the potential behind this game foundation is probably one of the biggest and most interesting out there right now, but as usual, is something that takes time to develop.
The foundation of this game is something that has a lot of solid and amazing aspects, but the fact that some design choices and directions that Bethesda took making this game limited them to a point that they're foreshadowed by all the outdated and broken mechanics that surround them.
The fact that all of those problems can make players that are pretty unfamiliar with Bethesda games, or are straight up picking this as their first Bethesda game annoyed, bored and frustrated is sad, since the game takes a lot of time to pick up its pieces and take off in comparison to other Bethesda titles.
With all that said, Starfield is a game that makes a lot of stuff right, and if it was only that stuff, it would surely be one of the classic Bethesda's masterpieces they were once known for, but the direction they took with this game limited a lot of its potential, all though the game is a really good experience, it was extremely close to be a gamechanger in the industry that would set up a new standard not only for open world games, but for action-adventure RPGs as well, but it was held back in that important final strench which involves a better user experience and a more polished game overall.