I'm going to establish some context before I start writing this review.

I am autistic, and one of my special interests is space. It's maybe my longest-lasting one, and it invades almost everything I do. I tend to include space or space travel in almost every story I write, even if it shouldn't really involve space at all. Because of this, there's something that I refer to as the Spaceship Bias: if a game lets me pilot a cool spaceship and travel through space, I am immediately going to be more generous to it than I otherwise should. I can’t help it. Generally, the more realistic the depiction of space, the better. My favourite video game, Outer Wilds, is my favourite in part because of its realistic orbital physics and incredible spaceship piloting (you have to account for acceleration and deceleration burns because it doesn't pretend like there's friction or air resistance!!! You pilot your ship with pitch, yaw, and roll and if you jump from your ship's artificial gravity, you'll be pushed to the back of the ship because of the G-forces!!!). So with that established, I'll get on to my actual review.

Starfield takes place in 2330, a few centuries after humanity was forced to leave Earth. The setting is a small pocket of space called the Settled Systems, radiating out about fifty lightyears from Earth. These star systems are a fairly accurate map of space within this distance, though many have been renamed (understandable given that most near-Earth stars are just "Stellar Classification - Number").

I love the design. The world feels very lived-in and I love the spacesuits! They feel futuristic but in a way where they actually feel like advanced versions of suits we already have, and I think that the starships are really cool. I love the blocky, sixties-NASA look to them and how lived in each part of a ship is. Each of the major settlements all have their own unique aesthetics. Also I love love love the robots! They look like humanoid NASA rovers, like if Opportunity (RIP) had arms and legs, it’s a really creative design and I haven’t seen anything similar to it before.

To give some nitpicks that are only problems to a space obsessed autistic girlie like myself, I wish that more planets had names. The overwhelming majority of them are just named “System-Numeral”, even a lot of inhabited ones, which is a shame because I love the naming scheme of Alpha Centauri. It’s frustrating how procedural generation can affect planets in the solar system. The model of Mars from orbit is pretty accurate, you can make out actual Martian geographic features like the Valles Marineris, Olympus Mons, or Hellas Planitia, but when I clicked on Valles Marineris because I actually wanted to take a look it was just Generic Mars, no valley to be seen. And maybe I do wish that the air pressure crushed me and instantly killed me when I was on Venus. Maybe I do wish that happened. And maybe I also wish that they went with more realistic space flight, with you having to consider things like acceleration and deceleration burns, but I also know that I’m the only person on the planet who would enjoy that, especially in a fight.

The factions are okay, but the game seems unwilling to criticise them or look beneath the surface, and a lot of the most interesting things about them aren't really explored very much.

The United Colonies is an authoritarian state, with armoured soldiers patrolling the street brandishing assault rifles and the whole Starship Troopers “service guarantees citizenship” thing going on, but this is never really commented on. It’s always “the old administration was bad, but the new one is pretty cool!”. The UC’s government, the Military, Administrative, and Scientific Triumvirate, isn’t explained in that much detail but I don’t think anyone says the word “election” once, so for all I know it could be an outright dictatorship. The UC’s dystopia is best exemplified by the Well, a district of New Atlantis. It’s a rundown underground slum, covered with graffiti calling the UC out for being hypocrites and tyrants. It’s a place for the people unable to earn their citizenship and the United Colonies has cast them aside, their only presence a single technician and dozens of armed security. I did want to also mention how much I love the UC cities in the Sol System, especially New Homestead. Titan is my favourite body in the solar system and it really felt like the writers did their research as the history of the town ties into Titan’s many cool properties and why it would likely be colonised.

The Freestar Collective are also dystopian. They wanted to escape from the authoritarianism of the United Colonies, but their idea of freedom was just less regulations, allowing for corporations like HopeTech, Xenofresh, and Ryujin Industries to dominate the Collective’s society and government. At least three members of the Council of Governors are unelected and two of those are CEOs of a major corporation. Akila City arguably holds the truest to the ideals of the Freestar Collective, but it’s a city with streets paved in mud. People in Akila City are obsessed with their legacy, to the point that families like the Coes and the Cartwrights almost form a local aristocracy. Akila City feels like the writers tried to recreate Firefly from memory. In Firefly, the Independents tried to rebel from the Alliance but failed, and they’re stuck at an almost Old West level of technology because the Alliance is intentionally depriving them of it. But the Freestar Collective won its war for independence, so its whole “Space Cowboy” aesthetic and the run-down Akila City don’t really make sense. Neon is a very sanitised version of a cyberpunk dystopia, it reminds me of the sort of thing I would’ve tried to write when I was thirteen and had only just learnt that the cyberpunk genre was a thing. It mimics the aesthetics; a corrupt, neon-lit city that’s either dominated by corporations or by street gangs, but it feels toothless. The best cyberpunk media lives up to the “-punk” suffix in its name. It’s angry. It has something to say about the world we live in, about the systems of class and capitalism that dominate society, about our relationship with technology and with ourselves. Starfield is too kind to its corporations, and because of that it ultimately ends up feeling like there’s nothing to say. I could write about it a lot more given that cyberpunk is my favourite sci-fi subgenre, but I won’t because this review is long enough as it is.

There’s this very deep sense of tragedy to Starfield, always lingering in the background, and I don’t think it was intentional. The human population is probably only a few thousand people across the galaxy. Cities like New Atlantis, Neon, and Akila City are described as colossal metropolises but only house a few hundred people at most. Land on a random planet, even a habitable one, and you’ll frequently find it to be full of mostly abandoned mining outposts or research stations. It creates the implication that what the United Colonies tell you in their museum is false; they didn’t save humanity, but only a handful of people could jump ship to Jemison or Mars and everyone else was left on Earth to die, or that the Colony War was more devastating and brutal than either the UC or the Freestar Collective are willing to admit.

The main questline is the least interesting part about the game. I think that Constellation has the potential to be a pretty interesting faction, and I think that the Constellation members are fun and compelling characters to follow. But the main questline feels familiar. The plot is about strange alien artefacts across the galaxy that give you powers, and you need to search for the artefacts and uncover the truth about them. In all honesty, I didn’t even finish the main quest during my first playthrough because I didn’t really find it engaging. I finished it this time around and while I won’t spoil it, I found the later plot developments and eventual conclusion to be pretty lacklustre.

I’ve been ragging on Starfield quite a bit, so here are some positives. Combat is fun, and zero-G combat is incredible. Dealing with enemies in three dimensions, the force from your gunshots pushing you backwards with each shot, seeing each enemy drift away from you after they die creates a really tense and engaging fight experience. The side questlines are pretty fun, with the Crimson Fleet being a particular standout. Working as an undercover agent for UC SysDef is really exciting, with the questline itself having really great missions and setpieces like a prison on a desolate ice world or a fancy party on a luxury starship. The visuals are pretty nice, at least for the environments. The roleplaying mechanics are also a massive step-up from Fallout 4, I think the character creation system is pretty fun and I liked how your traits can pop up again in the game, though it only happens rarely. I’d highly recommend picking either Neon Street Rat, UC Native, or Freestar Settler because those three have some of the best RP potential in the game. The score is really good too.

Ultimately, Starfield is a strange little game. It’s clear that it was made with love and passion from the developers. They very clearly admire the science fiction genre in all its forms and the game wears its influences proudly on its sleeve. But I don’t know if they really understand what made their influences so beloved in the first place. It’s not as bad as most people say, and despite all of my criticisms I ultimately still had fun with it. I’ll probably end up buying the DLC if I see it on sale. I think I’d recommend it if you bought it the same way I bought Fallout 4 - on sale with all the DLC a few years from now, when the price is less than £10. Starfield tries to be the definitive space game - it tries to be an action RPG, a space exploration game, an outpost building survival game, but in trying to do everything, it fails to stand out with anything. If you want a space exploration game, Outer Wilds is my favourite video game and is available for a fraction of the price. If you want a sci-fi action RPG, Cyberpunk 2077, another of my favourite games, has better writing and visuals, a more interesting setting, more compelling characters and better gameplay while also being cheaper (I literally spent a good chunk of my Starfield playthrough thinking about how much I’d rather have been playing Cyberpunk). And if you want a sci-fi survival game, Subnautica is one of a handful of games where I actually enjoyed the gameplay loop of hunting for resources to upgrade tools and build a base (and sick submarines), and it’s also cheaper than Starfield.

Sorry that this is my third critical review in a row. I prefer it when my backloggd is a more positive place but I had a lot of thoughts about Starfield and wanted to write them down. I don’t know what I’m gonna play next but I hope it’ll be something that I can wholeheartedly gush about in my review, like I did with Unsighted.

It’s strange. I’ve tried to play Fallout: New Vegas twice now, and both times I had to stop my playthrough when I inevitably get softlocked out of the game. Even when I could actually play it, it was still plagued with constant crashes and bugs. But for some reason, the only thing I could think of while playing Fallout 4 was how much I’d rather be playing New Vegas.

Very strange decision for the latest entry in your roleplaying game franchise to strip away most of the roleplaying aspects. It ends up feeling more like an action-survival game than an RPG. The simplified roleplaying systems seemingly come in exchange for more in-depth survival mechanics, like weapon and armour customisation, settlement building, and so on but I never actually engaged with these unless I was forced to. The main gameplay loop is based around exploring the map and completing quests, so these overcomplicated systems just kind of exist for the sake of existing, and hunting down resources just to build a guard tower or whatever is just tedious. The moments when I was forced to build a settlement or whatever to complete a quest were some of my least favourite parts of the game, and I hated repairing and upgrading power armour so much that I just sold all of my power armour parts and abandoned it in Diamond City.

I personally like it when an RPG gives you a voiced character with preset details about their backstory, core personality, and motivation. I think it works really well in games like Cyberpunk 2077, the Witcher, or Mass Effect. But the thing about those games is that their missions and narratives are constructed around those characters. In Cyberpunk, V is a mercenary, which justifies why they're taking all of the sidequests in the game even when they don't directly contribute to the main questline. But in Fallout 4, the Sole Survivor doesn't really feel like they belong in this game. Their mission is to save their son, which creates a dissonance when you're taking sidequests or doing anything that doesn't directly contribute to that goal. Their personality is simultaneously blank enough that they aren't interesting to follow but defined enough that they can't really be played as a self-insert or roleplayed in any different ways.

I probably would’ve finished the main quest, but then I was forced to build up the defences at the Minutemen castle and I just don’t want to spend the time scrounging for the resources to do that, taking me away from everything I’ve enjoyed about it. Combat is fun, the soundtrack is pretty good (though New Vegas has a better one IMO), and some of the characters are enjoyable, but the world is kinda disinteresting. It feels like they put so much effort into the settlement building and survival mechanics that they didn’t work on any towns except for Goodneighbour and Diamond City. I could see myself returning to it someday, and maybe I'll like it more if I finish the story, but I don't think I will for a little while.