Starfield is the surprise of the year. The trajectory of titles developed by Bethesda Game Studios has consistently declined since the launch of Morrowind. This decline has been characterized by a noticeable simplification of game systems to cater to a broader, more mainstream audience.
Starfield is not quite the return to deep, engaging RPG systems, but it seems like the closest thing we could get from the studio now. After an admittedly terrible introductory few hours that feel like an afterthought, the game opens up and lets the player off the leash.
While many have understandably bemoaned the disconnected, fast-travel-oriented nature of the game's structure, when you're in the game's main cities, it's hard to care because it's effortless to get sucked into one of these locations. My first time landing on Neon, the game's cyberpunk-themed city, I got sidetracked from a main quest and wrapped up into the branching feed of side content that mostly felt well crafted before stumbling upon the planet's faction quest, which was shockingly excellent.
The world is much more reactive to the player than BGS's modern output. Characters involved in intersecting quests acknowledge your previous deeds, and occasionally, your choices can significantly impact quest progression, even allowing you to bypass certain parts. Admittedly, there are occasional awkward moments, such as companions who should be aware of specific events acting surprised by related revelations. However, the frequency of these dynamic world reactions is a notable departure from the typical approach found in both Bethesda Game Studios titles and contemporary AAA games.
Here, not only do your choices carry weight, but your character's background plays a pivotal role, too. This manifests in dialogue options that ground your character within the game world and in choices that profoundly impact progression and interactions with the world.
For instance, I opted for the "Neon Street Rat" background and assumed the role of a Cyberunner, and the consequences reverberated through my experiences in Neon and the Ryujin questline.
These effects ranged from characters recognizing my character's prior knowledge of local gangs and politics to dialogue choices that provided alternatives to persuasion when dealing with quest characters. Essentially, it felt like my character was more than just an apparatus for me to navigate the world; they were an actual individual.
It's also a beautiful game, and not just by BGS standards. This is easily the most robust art direction of any title made by the studio, and I found myself taken aback by how gorgeous environments or vistas were, whether I was in space or on one of the game's procedurally generated planets.
The procedural nature of these planets is a hangup, as the game always has a different sense of exploration than one would expect from a BGS game. However, this is offset by the quality of the individual cities, which are incredibly dense.
Even then, it often feels more like an elaboration on Mass Effect than it does Fallout or Elder Scrolls in space. But even within this segmented nature lie small nuggets of discovery that lead to some of the best moments in the game. For example, while fast traveling to a system for a faction quest, I came upon a ship hailing for immediate assistance. I found myself face-to-face with an AI developed from NASA's Juno probe that had been aimlessly wandering through the galaxy for centuries.
The quality of the writing is all over the place, with some incredibly rote dialogue that is easily skipped through and some legitimately gripping sequences such as this.
Other than the segmented nature of "Loadingfield," another issue is how long it can take for builds to activate and many of the game's most interesting systems (such as shipbuilding) being locked behind skills. I understand that this was done because the developers intended players to play through multiple NG+ runs, but it often feels at odds with the type of game that BGS wants to make, one that allows players to see nearly everything. This game has substantially benefitted from cutting players off from certain factions or questlines due to their allegiances since it focuses on NG+ runs and alternate realities.
My most significant problem was grappling with the game's confusing politics and vision of a future society that seemingly never evolved beyond contemporary neoliberalism. Jemison and the UC are emblematic of this, as they have classes for their citizenship. The Freestar Rangers, billed as the antithetical faction, are just a different flavor of capitalists in that they are raging libertarians. Overall, it tries to present a hopeful vision of the future.
Still, I was disappointed by such a myopic view of the future held back by contemporary capitalist ideology. That could be an unrealistic expectation since this game was made under said ideology. And Jesus does this game like cops. Almost every faction is a different flavor of space cop. Thankfully, some of these end with the player getting to choose to kill CEOs and political war criminals, which makes this an easier pill to swallow, even if the game presents these people as isolated evils instead of symptoms of a more immense superstructure.
All in all, Starfield is a thoroughly enjoyable, if low-stakes, adventure. The end of the game offers a rather poignant and genius play on the concept of the Bethesda protagonist that makes at least the main quest worth playing for anyone who enjoyed even one of BGS's previous titles.
If there are multiple realities, as Starfield posits, there's definitely a better version of this game in one of those. But in this one, Starfield would never be able to live up to the expectations placed upon it by Bethesda, Microsoft, and fans. But in a world where development times have reached 5-6 years, that's ok because sometimes a flawed but enjoyable experience is enough.
Starfield is not quite the return to deep, engaging RPG systems, but it seems like the closest thing we could get from the studio now. After an admittedly terrible introductory few hours that feel like an afterthought, the game opens up and lets the player off the leash.
While many have understandably bemoaned the disconnected, fast-travel-oriented nature of the game's structure, when you're in the game's main cities, it's hard to care because it's effortless to get sucked into one of these locations. My first time landing on Neon, the game's cyberpunk-themed city, I got sidetracked from a main quest and wrapped up into the branching feed of side content that mostly felt well crafted before stumbling upon the planet's faction quest, which was shockingly excellent.
The world is much more reactive to the player than BGS's modern output. Characters involved in intersecting quests acknowledge your previous deeds, and occasionally, your choices can significantly impact quest progression, even allowing you to bypass certain parts. Admittedly, there are occasional awkward moments, such as companions who should be aware of specific events acting surprised by related revelations. However, the frequency of these dynamic world reactions is a notable departure from the typical approach found in both Bethesda Game Studios titles and contemporary AAA games.
Here, not only do your choices carry weight, but your character's background plays a pivotal role, too. This manifests in dialogue options that ground your character within the game world and in choices that profoundly impact progression and interactions with the world.
For instance, I opted for the "Neon Street Rat" background and assumed the role of a Cyberunner, and the consequences reverberated through my experiences in Neon and the Ryujin questline.
These effects ranged from characters recognizing my character's prior knowledge of local gangs and politics to dialogue choices that provided alternatives to persuasion when dealing with quest characters. Essentially, it felt like my character was more than just an apparatus for me to navigate the world; they were an actual individual.
It's also a beautiful game, and not just by BGS standards. This is easily the most robust art direction of any title made by the studio, and I found myself taken aback by how gorgeous environments or vistas were, whether I was in space or on one of the game's procedurally generated planets.
The procedural nature of these planets is a hangup, as the game always has a different sense of exploration than one would expect from a BGS game. However, this is offset by the quality of the individual cities, which are incredibly dense.
Even then, it often feels more like an elaboration on Mass Effect than it does Fallout or Elder Scrolls in space. But even within this segmented nature lie small nuggets of discovery that lead to some of the best moments in the game. For example, while fast traveling to a system for a faction quest, I came upon a ship hailing for immediate assistance. I found myself face-to-face with an AI developed from NASA's Juno probe that had been aimlessly wandering through the galaxy for centuries.
The quality of the writing is all over the place, with some incredibly rote dialogue that is easily skipped through and some legitimately gripping sequences such as this.
Other than the segmented nature of "Loadingfield," another issue is how long it can take for builds to activate and many of the game's most interesting systems (such as shipbuilding) being locked behind skills. I understand that this was done because the developers intended players to play through multiple NG+ runs, but it often feels at odds with the type of game that BGS wants to make, one that allows players to see nearly everything. This game has substantially benefitted from cutting players off from certain factions or questlines due to their allegiances since it focuses on NG+ runs and alternate realities.
My most significant problem was grappling with the game's confusing politics and vision of a future society that seemingly never evolved beyond contemporary neoliberalism. Jemison and the UC are emblematic of this, as they have classes for their citizenship. The Freestar Rangers, billed as the antithetical faction, are just a different flavor of capitalists in that they are raging libertarians. Overall, it tries to present a hopeful vision of the future.
Still, I was disappointed by such a myopic view of the future held back by contemporary capitalist ideology. That could be an unrealistic expectation since this game was made under said ideology. And Jesus does this game like cops. Almost every faction is a different flavor of space cop. Thankfully, some of these end with the player getting to choose to kill CEOs and political war criminals, which makes this an easier pill to swallow, even if the game presents these people as isolated evils instead of symptoms of a more immense superstructure.
All in all, Starfield is a thoroughly enjoyable, if low-stakes, adventure. The end of the game offers a rather poignant and genius play on the concept of the Bethesda protagonist that makes at least the main quest worth playing for anyone who enjoyed even one of BGS's previous titles.
If there are multiple realities, as Starfield posits, there's definitely a better version of this game in one of those. But in this one, Starfield would never be able to live up to the expectations placed upon it by Bethesda, Microsoft, and fans. But in a world where development times have reached 5-6 years, that's ok because sometimes a flawed but enjoyable experience is enough.
brockreiher
8 months ago