Starfield, the title that Bethesda Game Studios has been working on for the last seven years, has finally come out. But are its graphics, space exploration, and gunplay worth the wait? Read our review to find out.
Starfield Review and Score Explanation
Starfield Score Explanation
| Overall | Despite the score, Starfield is not a terrible game. It improves a lot of looter shooter mechanics Bethesda established in Fallout 4. The fact that they were able to make a space game with the Gamebryo engine, which they’ve used since The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, is nothing short of astounding. It’s also one of the least buggiest launches Bethesda has had in years. That said, Starfield could’ve been something better, were it not hobbled by its dry and generic art style, a flawed and non-immersive exploration system, and an unsatisfying main story. |
|---|---|
| Story | The beginning hook of Starfield’s main story is very weak and can make the first three or so hours a bit of a slog. After a certain point, it picks up a bit, but it never really piques your interest outside of a mission or two near the end of the main quest. It was a story. That’s all I can really say about it. In contrast, many of Starfield’s side quests were very creative and engaging to the point that, if not for this review, I wouldn’t have bothered finishing the main story and finished more of those instead. |
| Gameplay | Starfield’s looter shooter gameplay is a natural evolution to Fallout 4’s, with status ailments, deeper weapon customization, and an added sense of verticality with the introduction of booster packs,which let you jump high in the air and outflank enemies. Bethesda still can’t figure out how to make enemies tougher without just making them bullet sponges, though. Meanwhile, dogfighting in space can be really fun, as well as customizing your spaceship. The problem is it feels pointless, since you can’t use it to fly to other star systems, which is done via menus instead. |
| Visuals | From a technical standpoint, Starfield’s visuals are the best I’ve seen in a Bethesda game so far. The lighting on the surface of different planets is great, character models are detailed, and both the environments and outer space look amazing. The problem is that these otherwise great visuals are guided by an art direction that is bland and generic, and it only got worse the more I played the game. Bethesda may have been following a "NASA-punk" aesthetic, but that didn’t mean that they needed to make it look so boring and sterile. It was like I was being shown a human spacefaring civilization bought from Wish.com than anything that had character. |
| Audio | The soundtrack composed by Inon Zur is so depressingly generic sci-fi that it might as well not be there. There are points where I had to mute the music and simply play my own (including the radio from Fallouts 3, New Vegas, and 4). The soundtrack waso bland and forgettable that, from beginning to end, not even one track stuck with me. The voice acting, on the other hand, is very good. Kudos to the actors who played the members of Constellation; their performances were all pretty believable. |
| Value for Money | I’ll say it right now: if you haven’t bought this game yet, don’t. Not for full price, at least. Get it on Game Pass if you can. BUT if you already did, that’s also fine - because the modding community for this game is already growing, even before official mod support has come out. There are so many things I can see modders wanting to fix and, given time, they might just make Starfield one of the best space exploration games of the decade. It’s just funny that we have to rely on modders to make the game better rather than the game developers themselves. |
Starfield Review: Fallout in Space
Games by Bethesda Games Studios have always struck me as an enigma. On one hand, they gave me some of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had. But on the other hand, their games often fall so short of the potential that they would have if not for controllable factors. They’ve had to deal with things like the aging Gamebryo engine, the focus on making games more accessible to casual players, and the direction they have taken under the guidance of the studio’s premier game director, Todd Howard.
Starfield is yet another one of those games. While playing it, I saw the potential for something great, perhaps one of the greatest games of this decade. If you’re familiar with BethSoft games, and their game engine in particular, the fact that they were able to make a game set in outer space complete with spaceflight and procedural generation is somewhat of a miracle. It’s also one of the least buggiest game launches Bethesda has ever had, or at least the smoothest I’ve ever had from them.And I played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on launch day, so I know just how bad Bethesda game bugs can get.
For a game hyped by many as the studio’s "magnum opus," Bethesda really should have used a new game engine. One that would’ve allowed for seamless interplanetary and inter-system space flight, like in other space games such as No Man’s Sky and (the unfinished) Star Citizen. Had Bethesda come out with Starfield before those games came out, then maybe the game’s menu-based "space exploration" would’ve been acceptable. But the fact is they did not.
As for the creative direction, the art and music are just so… bland and safe. Todd Howard himself has come out and said that they were angling for a "NASA-punk" aesthetic with Starfield, which would’ve been reminiscent of the Space Race. But in practice, or, rather, with how Bethesda implemented it, the aesthetic comes off as very generic. The best way to describe it is the "We have ‘X’ at home" meme. Do you want a NASA-punk spacefaring civilization? Well, Bethesda says you have it at home, and it’s in Starfield.
I can only hope that the bland art direction, bland art style, and non-immersive space exploration (if you could even call it that) is all a deliberate move to create a plain base by Bethesda to encourage modders to "fix" their game and ensure profitability for years to come. Better this possibility than the other, which is that Bethesda is simply now incompetent at making very good games, fumbling even its supposed magnum opus.
However, the modding community can't coddle Bethesda forever. If a major game dev can get away with coasting by making barely good games that would be "fixed" by modders (for free, no less), then what would that spell for the future of the open-world sandbox genre in general? Let’s just pray that other game developers who want to break into this field will not draw from Bethesda’s example and that Bethesda itself cleans up its act by the time The Elder Scrolls 6 comes out. The latter is just wishful thinking, but a man can dream, right?
Starfield Full Game Review
Pros of Starfield
| Things Starfield Got Right |
|---|
 Solid Looter Shooter Gameplay Interesting Side Quests Good Shipbuilding and Dogfighting Mechanics Blank Slate for Modding in the Future |
Solid Looter Shooter Gameplay
If you liked the way Fallout 4 plays, then you’ll like Starfield. Starfield’s own looter shooter mechanics are an evolution of the gunplay FO4 established, with decent gun movement, somewhat intelligent AI that can try to outflank you, and jump boosters that let you take to the air and get behind your foes. The best gunfights I had in the game took place on low-gravity planets, where I could hop high into the air and land guns blazing next to a space pirate. It’s cool.
If you’re a real kleptomaniac- er, collector of random objects, then you’ll be happy to know that Starfield is full of all sorts of books, decorations, picture frames, toilet paper, and folders that you can acquire and bring back to your spaceship. The game also provides you with shelves and racks on which you can display your guns, space helmets, space suits, booster packs, and all sorts of other things. No sense in collecting loot if you can’t show it all off, right?
On-foot exploration, in both the handcrafted and procedurally-generated environments on planets, is pretty okay. The landscape is sprinkled with both your main objective and several mysterious places you can explore for goodies and loot. Some of the most beautiful moments I’ve had in this game came from when I was exploring some dark moon, jumping toward what looked like an abandoned moon base in the distance, only to see the sun glow right behind it and completely illuminate the once-dark landscape. Absolutely perfect.
Interesting Side Quests
Starfield’s side quests contained some of the best moments I had in the game. In fact, I had a better time playing them than the main quest.
A lot of them can start out from very random circumstances. For example, if you get arrested in any territory of the United Colonies, one of the major factions in the game, you’ll be asked by the UC to go undercover and infiltrate the ranks of the Crimson Fleet, which are the space pirates in this game. You can either accept their offer or refuse. Refusing makes the UC SysDef (a special branch of the UC Navy) hate you, but leaves you open to an invitation by the Crimson Fleet to join them. This then leads to one of the best questlines in the game, and it all happened because I mistakenly picked up a vase inside a UC general goods store.
Other times, you can pick up quests while you’re exploring outer space. Someone will hail your ship, and you can choose to either help them out or kill them yourself. While walking around a city or some other human settlement in outer space, you might hear a conversation pertaining to a particular side quest you can do. I find that acquiring side quests in this way is very immersive.
Part of the reason why the side quests in this game are generally better than the main story is because you’ll see how much thinking went into them. It felt as if Bethesda had single project managers oversee the major side quest lines, so the sidequests actually ended up with a more unified vision and felt more "finished" compared to the main questline. A victim of too many chefs, perhaps. To be fair, the main quest line had one or two missions that made great use of Starfield’s strengths, but otherwise it was largely unremarkable, something I’ll talk about later in this review).
Good Shipbuilding and Dogfighting Mechanics
It’s amazing how much Bethesda’s staple game engine, Creation Kit 2, had evolved to meet the needs of Starfield, considering that it’s an offshoot of the older Gamebryo Engine which BGS has been using since The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. That’s because the space flight and dogfighting in Starfield are pretty decent, with satisfying flight mechanics, weapons, and ship customization.
Flying in space is easy. It’s definitely one of the better experiences I’ve had with video game space flight in general. The weapons feel dangerous, ranging from autocannons to lasers to particle beams, to missiles. There’s even a little gimmick where you have to reroute power to different subsystems on your ship, such as weapons, shielding, your engine, and your Grav Drive. Its travel system is akin to the indie game, Faster-Than-Light.
Ship customization is also quite nice, with many parts made by different manufacturers, each with its own design philosophy. Nova Galactic has a more traditional "Space Shuttle" feel to their parts, while Deimos is more utilitarian. Straud-Eklund’s ship designs are more of an evolution of Nova Galactic’s in a way that’s reminiscent of the Hiigaran ships from Homeworld 1, a real-time strategy game set in outer space. There are many decisions to be made while designing a ship, such as whether your ship should be slow and bulky or fast and light, what kind of amenities should you put in your ship, and whether or not you’ll get the normal cargo bays or the more expensive but shielded cargo bays that can hide contraband from orbital scanners.
Blank Slate for Modding in the Future
Todd Howard has gone on record saying that Starfield will be a "modder’s paradise," and I see that statement in both a positive and negative light. On the positive side, this means we may soon have all the features Starfield currently does not have, many of which I’ll talk about later in this review. We may see better-looking planets, better-looking NPCs, more guns, and seamless flight, from orbit down to a planet and vice versa. As long as the modding community stays dedicated, Starfield has the potential to become one of the best space RPGs of the decade.
But whether or not the modding community for this game will reach the same level as that of the community for Skyrim remains to be seen.
Cons of Starfield
| Things That Starfield Can Improve |
|---|
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Dry and Generic Art Style That Lacks Personality Space Exploration? More Like Menu Exploration Bethesda Still Can’t Do Game Difficulty Correctly Game Leaves Much to be Desired Without Mods |
Dry and Generic Art Style That Lacks Personality
There isn’t anything "punk" about Starfield’s purported "NASA-punk" aesthetic. I was first impressed by the designs of places like New Atlantis and Akila City, the major settlements in Starfield. But the more I played the game, the more disillusioned I grew. This isn’t NASA-punk; this is an aesthetic for a spacefaring civilization bought from Wish.
Part of the reason why I loved Bethesda’s TES and Fallout titles was because the art directions of both games had character to them. Oblivion, while it looked like somewhat of a generic Western Fantasy, still felt uniquely Elder Scrolls, as did Skyrim. Fallout 3 really sold the look and feel of an American capital ruined by nuclear war, while Fallout 4 had its own 50s retro-futuristic vibe that, even though it was too colorful at times, had a great vibe of its own within the ruins of Boston.
Starfield’s art direction had none of that. The interiors and buttons and other decorations looked like they were there just for the sake of being there. Outside of the major settlements, there was no way to tell the difference between one space settlement from the other. Of course, people can argue that they use standardized buildings in the future, but there’s a right and wrong way to go about this. Settlements should still have some sort of personality despite being standardized. But instead, we have copy-pasted environments.
It’s hard to describe this feeling, but in almost all the missions I played, even the ones I liked, it felt as though Starfield was a game that used a common library of 3D assets to build its levels, regardless of whether or not that level was supposed to be set in a shiny new starship or an abandoned lunar base from the 2100s. The game is set in the 2300s, so surely technology would've evolved, right?
The only explanation I can accept is that technology may have stagnated in Starfield’s universe, and that’s why everything looks so dull and soulless. But even still, nothing really catches the eye, yet you’ll notice assets being reused, or if not reused, then painfully similar . This art direction ends up being so boring that it breaks your suspension of disbelief almost completely.
The best way I can describe this is with the "We have X at home" meme, because that’s exactly how Starfield’s art direction feels. Let’s take the pleasure city of Neon, for example, which is supposed to be a cyberpunk corporate hellhole on a kind of oil rig. When you get in, the design doesn’t feel cyberpunk at all though. It’s a "safe" kind of cyberpunk that falls short of cyberpunk aesthetics in other games, like Cyberpunk 2077. Say what you will about that game, but a single street block in Night City has more personality than the entire city of Neon in Starfield.
Heck, even Star Citizen, a game that’s had $500 million in funding and is still unfinished to this day, has an aesthetic that blows Starfield’s out of the water. Had Starfield come out earlier in the last decade, maybe it would’ve gotten away with its current art style. But this game’s been in development since 2015 and this is the best BGS can do? It’s just so painfully safe and average.
Space Exploration? More Like Menu Exploration
Another thing on the list of “It Would’ve Been OK Ten Years Ago” is the space exploration.. You hop on your ship, open the menu, select a plane to travel to, and then go into a loading screen. But we live in a post-No Man’s Sky world now, where seamlessly flying from a planet’s orbit to the ground and vice versa is now expected with space games. Sadly, this means Starfield’s ships are nothing more than glorified fast travel hubs, only useful during the odd encounter or two with a space pirate.
Using menus to explore not only star systems, but planets in the same system, kills the immersion and also any incentive to customize your ships and visit planets beyond a certain point. Why customize your ship if it won’t get you faster to the planet you want to go? Why land on a planet when you won’t see the landscape emerge underneath you? Why even bother getting on the ship when you can just open up the menu and initiate a jump immediately from where you are?
Some aspects of RPGs should be either left alone or deliberately made more difficult, and fast travel is one of them. Eliminate fast travel planetside, let the player fly between planets within the same star system, whatever. Just don’t implement a system that kills immersion.
Bethesda Still Can’t Do Game Difficulty Correctly
The way damage from firearms is handled by Starfield is ridiculous. Weapons and enemies you find are scaled relative to your level, so early in the game, you will find space P90s and rifles and shotguns that deal very poor damage to enemies. Later on, you’ll find weapons that do decent damage. But this still begs the question: How is a gun handled by a rookie less dangerous than one handled by a vet? Certainly, a gun would kill someone if it hit them in the head regardless of who fired it. Maybe Starfield should’ve scaled weapon accuracy rather than damage - it would’ve been at least more realistic.
Meanwhile, if you change the difficulty of your game, your enemies wouldn’t actually be tougher to fight. It’s not as if they suddenly turn smarter. No, instead they become bullet sponges you’ll run out of ammo firing at, turning the game into a tedious exercise more than anything resembling a difficult, but rewarding game.
Game Leaves Much to be Desired Without Mods
Everything in Starfield from the art direction, to the audio, to the difficulty, and the space exploration all seem to be designed in a way that practically begs modders to fix them for Bethesda. For free, mind you. But how flawed do you have to make your game for it to motivate modders enough to "fix" it without making most players reject it outright? Part of the reason why Skyrim was modded so heavily was because the game itself was beloved by its fans. Those fans wanted to see Skyrim turn into a better game than it already was.
I don’t know if Starfield has that same quality. While playing it, there was a point where I just didn’t care for it anymore. Nothing really got to me except the sidequests and maybe one or two quests from the main story. I did have a lingering hope that modders will fix the game in time, but how long can Bethesda keep getting away with doing this? I tend to be very forgiving of the games I review, so I was fairly forgiving of Starfield despite how uninspired it felt while playing it. What about other gamers who aren’t as forgiving and will refund the game out of hand, never to look at it again?
What’s even worse is that there are so many missed opportunities that Bethesda could’ve taken advantage of, with the tools they have on hand. For example, did you know that this game actually has combat in zero-g environments where you have to fight enemies while floating around in space? Yeah, sounds cool right? So why can’t we have Extravehicular Activity (EVA) spacewalks outside the spaceship? Or maybe a shootout between astronauts outside a space station? Or some other similarly epic sequence? Now it falls to modders or maybe a Bethesda DLC to give us that kind of experience.
It’s been a trend with major video games to come out, full of flaws, only to be made better over the years like No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk 2077. This may happen with Starfield as well, but that may also encourage game devs in general to release mediocre but moddable titles and hope that the communities around them will fix these games for free, instead of just releasing them in a finished and polished state. We’ve had so many polished and complete games in 2023 alone, so I’m left wondering what exactly happened to Starfield, especially when it was given an extra year of development.
Starfield Story Plot
Starfield is set in the year 2330 in a fictional area of space called the Settled Systems, a region far out in the cosmos that has supported many thriving colonies. There, the player assumes the role of a worker from Argus Extractors, an interstellar mining company. After a routine mission, he comes upon a mysterious Artifact which gives him a vision of a region outside of known space.
This brings the character in contact with members of the explorer group "Constellation," who study the Artifacts and the secrets that they hold. You will have to work with Constellation and uncover the story behind the Artifacts, because they may hold the secrets of a frontier no human from your universe has ever reached before...
Who Should Play Starfield?
Starfield is Recommended if You Enjoy:
• Fallout 4
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
If you’re a big fan of Bethesda’s games, then Starfield is an expansion of the mechanics that they’ve already polished over the last decade or so, but with the addition of space travel (of sorts). Also, it’s the game to get if you’re looking for a new game to mod into oblivion (no pun intended). Just give the modding community time to mature.
It’s hard to recommend this game to people who are looking for a space epic or like playing space simulators, because this is not exactly a space simulator game. It doesn’t simulate space at all, actually. The spaceship is a glorified fast-travel hub.
Is Starfield Worth It?
Buy It on Sale or Get It Through Game Pass
For anybody who isn’t a Bethesda fan, don’t buy Starfield at full price. It would be more cost-effective to get it through Game Pass or wait until it’s out on sale and has already been patched with modding tools released. If you already bought it, though, it’s okay - it’s not too terrible of a game. Just know that you’ll have to wait for a bit before the content gets good and/or it gets any DLCs.
How Starfield Matches Up to Recently-Released Games
| Games That Came Out Recently | Why Get Starfield? | Why Get the Other Game? |
|---|---|---|
 Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon |
Starfield has space combat and is an open-world RPG where you can explore the environment. It’s great if you’re not really a fan of robots and just want a fun and easy shooter to fool around with. | AC6’s story and overall vision are much more interesting than Starfield’s. The game mechanics, while hard to master, can be learned easily enough as long as you’re willing to put in the effort. |
 Baldur’s Gate 3 |
If you’re not a fan of fantasy titles or point and click games, then perhaps get Starfield on sale. | Baldur’s Gate 3 is a purer RPG experience than Starfield, with a more interesting story and characters. If you want one of the most unique CRPGs of this decade, then get BG3. |
 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre |
If you’re not a fan of horror and just want a nice little looter shooter to explore around by yourself with occasional space flight, then get Starfield. | TCSM however is a more immersive and engaging experience that puts you in the shoes of a killer or victim. The progression mechanics are decent, and you’ll have a much more fun experience playing this game if you like competition. |
How Starfield Matches Up to Similar Games
| Games Similar to Starfield | Why Get Starfield? | Why Get the Other Game? |
|---|---|---|
 Fallout 4 |
Starfield has the "space" aspect going for it, on top of the more developed gunplay and booster mechanics. Objectively speaking, it’s a better shooter than FO4. | FO4 has more personality and character compared to Starfield. Boston really feels like a ruined city, and the Commonwealth feels more alive than any of the 1000 planets Starfield has. |
 No Man’s Sky |
If you want games with both space flight and cohesive gunplay, then maybe get Starfield during a sale. | No Man’s Sky, meanwhile, is everything that Starfield could and should’ve been: Better exploration, tons of settlements to see, seamless flight between planets; the whole package. Admittedly, it launched in about as good of a state as Starfield did, but it’s had so much content developed for it over the years, while Starfield will still have to catch up. |
 Star Citizen |
Starfield is a finished game, first of all. It also has a lot of the stuff Star Citizen promises. Did I already mention that Starfield is, despite its flaws, still a finished game? | Star Citizen’s art direction blows Starfield’s direction right out of the water. The future in Star Citizen looks alive and feels alive, with sprawling city planets, seamless planetary flight, amazing ships, and fleshed-out FPS combat. It might not be coming out within the next decade or so, but whatever Star Citizen has right nowdefinitely looks and feels better than whatever is in Starfield. |
Starfield Trailer
Starfield Product Information
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| Title | STARFIELD |
|---|---|
| Release Date | September 6, 2023 |
| Developer | Bethesda Game Studios |
| Publisher | Bethesda Softworks |
| Supported Platforms | PC, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Action, RPG |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | Mature |
| Official Website | Starfield Website |
