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Bethesda Game Studios & Xbox's latest exclusive offering, Starfield, hits all the right notes for fans of similar titles. Much of the game's narrative entails making difficult choices, solving mysteries, flying spaceships, and building settlements; but its primary strength is capturing a grandiose feel with many charismatic characters and impactful tales, all of which makes Starfield a spectacular RPG and Bethesda's pièce de résistance.
Spoiler Alert: This review contains minor early-game spoilers for Starfield.
Starfield is set in a fictional future, where Earth has become inhospitable and humanity has been forced to settle in far-off star systems in the Milky Way. Their history, full of war and crime, has left different factions divided on how the Galaxy should be governed. The protagonist starts off as a miner on a barren planet and comes across an unknown artifact embedded in a mineral deposit. As soon as they mine and touch this mysterious artifact, they are propelled into a science fiction adventure unlike any other.
Story & Choices
Soon after the character creation screen, your character will be introduced to Starfield’s Constellation faction, a group of explorers dedicated to deciphering mysterious artifacts found across the Galaxy. The player s the faction in the hopes of finding answers about these artifacts and who left them behind. The initial few hours of the game feel relatively slow - probably because the game wants to introduce some of the new mechanics first. However, once acquainted with these nuances, the main Starfield narrative and side stories turn the dial up to 11, culminating with an epic and unsettling conclusion.
There’s no set time to complete the main story, as one can complete quests in any order. It took about 55 hours to conclude the main narrative, but it is possible to extend that further depending on the playstyle. For perspective, I went 36 hours without doing any substantial primary quests and instead focused on Faction missions.
While the overarching story might be about deciding the Galaxy’s fate and learning humanity's mysterious past, the intricate tales associated with different factions and charismatic characters deserve special attention. A big chunk of Starfield’s lore is deeply embedded in Faction missions, and they are instrumental in setting up many stakes. These secondary Faction quests may not seem much initially, but eventually, they will force players to make tough choices that leave one wanting more. Most of these missions are excellent storytelling and usually crescendo into epic space battles, twists, or tense confrontations.
Some of these decisions may result in deciding humanity’s destiny, uncovering corruption, or going undercover to spy on a wicked pirate faction. In typical Bethesda fashion, these choices will never be straightforward and have repercussions one would think about even after stepping away from the game. Faction-related quests in Starfield are some of the most action-packed stories with incredible payoffs that take you on a wonderful journey across the galaxy.
Perks & Skills
In almost every facet, Bethesda Game Studios has reworked the RPG mechanics relating to character/inventory management and sandbox features. At first glance, these RPG systems might feel familiar to Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and Fallout veterans, but they have far more substance, creating a familiar yet different game.
The Perks system has also been refined to a great extent, where each Skill Point can be spent in Social, Physical, Science, Combat, and Technology attributes. Each attribute has different abilities that directly impact gameplay and some of the more intricate RPG mechanics. Some Perks will make your character efficient at Persuading NPCs, while others can influence weapon proficiency or flying skills.
Interestingly, the Perks system in Starfield goes beyond any other Bethesda game and implements new meaningful features. Each Skill has a Rank system that can further enhance a particular attribute and give additional boosts. Some Ranks have associated challenges, which must be completed to unlock additional benefits. Starfield’s Perks system may not be a total overhaul, but there are enough impactful changes to keep it interesting for everyone. Even initial choices made while creating a character play a significant role until the very end.
Exploring & Building Ships
In Starfield, countless hours can be lost while building the perfect spaceship or an outpost on a barren planet. Shipbuilding feels like making a LEGO set where every part can be upgraded and modified piece by piece. Some upgrades might be helpful in space battles, providing better firepower or shields, while others help conceal contraband. It’s perhaps the most addicting and comprehensive sandbox feature in Starfield that encourages creativity and imagination.
Outpost building works slightly differently and is more akin to Fallout 4’s base-building feature, albeit more exhaustive and intuitive. Once a planet has been settled with crew , resources can be extracted to create ive income and can play a significant role in the tail-end of the story.
Starfield's Thriving Galaxy & Map Size
As one of the biggest open-world adventures Bethesda has ever crafted, there’s no denying Starfield is massive in scope and size. Instead of one large map, settlements and cities are scattered over a Galaxy. Each star system consists of multiple planets which can be explored on foot. Some planets can sometimes have thriving cities, mysterious structures, and deep caves, while others can be quite barren and a perfect playground for creating custom outposts.
Cities such as New Atlantis, Akila, and Neon are a sight to behold, each being heavily populated with NPCs going about their day amongst all the hustle and bustle. Bigger cities like New Atlantis have public transport, multiple districts, shiny buildings, and derelict slums. Many areas also have unique vendors, bars, and cafés that breathe life into each city - Bethesda Game Studios has crafted Starfield’s massive world with meticulous detail that is bound to captivate many RPG fans. But the vastness of Starfield is not only limited to planets and cities, as one can board any ship or space station as well. These ships & space stations often have multiple levels and feel like floating cities with numerous rooms containing loot, vendors, and other surprises.
Predictably, having such a large-scale open-world can also be detrimental to the overall experience. A lot of time is spent navigating menus and looking at loading screens when trying to go to a destination on the Skymap. Starfield isn’t a seamless open-world game, and suffering multiple loading screens can often hamper immersion. There’s a menu screen for just about everything, which may cause fatigue, and it feels as though there should be a more streamlined way to do some of the more mundane tasks.
How Starfield Performs (Does It Have Bugs?)
Starfield is perhaps the most polished title made by Bethesda in recent memory, even taking into consideration that the bulk of this review playthrough was completed before the deployment of the Day One patch. Unlike its predecessors, Starfield is not riddled with game-breaking bugs or glitches that break immersion. Major bugs associated with Bethesda games, such as Companions or Quests glitching, have been ironed out or nearly nonexistent. Other issues, such as items getting stuck in walls, odd facial animations, and invisible companions during conversations still exist, but they aren’t as dismal as Fallout 4’s infamous glitches and are pretty rare.
Starfield’s overall performance on the Xbox Series X delivers what it promises but can be improved in certain aspects. As promised, the game runs smoothly at 30FPS most of the time, but suffers from occasional frame rate drops in packed areas. However, when it comes to the actual combat gameplay, Starfield’s gunplay and ship mechanics feel intuitive.
The same cannot be said about Starfield’s graphics on Xbox Series X, because it isn’t as consistent as some modern titles. For what it’s worth, the open-world environments, cities, and ships look vibrant and immersive. But Starfield lacks finesse regarding character model designs, detailed textures, and facial animations.
While they look better than in Starfield’s initial reveal, they still need improvement. When considering the larger picture, minor visual shortcomings aren’t really detrimental to the experience as a whole. It is possible that the modding community could improve both the performance and visuals in the near future, but that could take a while.
Should You Play Starfield?
Starfield is perhaps the most ambitious game from Bethesda, and is almost certainly the game every Skyrim and Fallout fan has been waiting for. It introduces new concepts, mechanics, and addicting sandbox elements expected from an epic science fiction RPG at the cutting edge of innovation.
Even though Starfield is slightly rough around the edges, it never detracts from all the fun and adventure. With engaging storytelling, charismatic characters, and an enthralling world, Starfield is an instant classic and a triumphant homecoming to blockbuster gaming for Bethesda Game Studios.
Source: Xbox/YouTube
Starfield releases for Xbox Series X/S and PC on September 6, 2023, and September 1, 2023, for Edition purchasers. An Xbox Series X/S code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review.
