It’s no secret that Starfield – out now on PC and Xbox Series S/X – is hands down one of the most monumental game launches of the year. For Bethesda, the publisher of long-running series like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, it’s a gamble in uncharted territory as they undertake their first new universe in 25 years, set across the stars in a futuristic civilized corner of the Milky Way galaxy. For publisher Xbox, it’s an opportunity to bounce back from a lackluster 2022 slate and dominate the gaming conversation for a very long time – probably years – and finally show that Microsoft can do more than make games.
The story in Starfield starts with your character, a miner on a dusty planet, accidentally digging up a strange artifact that speaks to you on a metaphysical level and takes you to the Constellation group of space explorers who have no idea what the thing is or why it’s essential. The main plot begins from here, and it’s all underwhelming for a while. The characters could be more concise and generic, and the exploration feels like a checklist of objectives to blaze through rather than something more profound than that.
What saves Starfield is the sprawling side content and its variety of enticing sub-plots. They don’t all work, of course. Still, even if they’re not the most gripping or emotionally rewarding, they provide plenty of distractions from the main story and often bring the experience back to life as you realize that this is a Bethesda game through and through.
The main plot also needs a few design problems that tend to break immersion. For instance, the scanner that enables you to warp around the galaxy is only sometimes intuitively placed. It can often be challenging to see on the map, forcing you to memorize places or tediously backtrack whenever you want to visit them. The surface map only sometimes conveys much information and can be a real pain when navigating cities where you need to know which direction to go to get where you want to go.
These niggles are minor, but they add up to make Starfield feel less than the awe-inspiring sci-fi experience it could have been. For all its ambition and scope, it’s still a game requiring the player to mold the narrative around their desires. Whether that’s a heroic odyssey, a chance to scout new worlds and build an empire, or simply a gun-toting space rogue, it all hinges on the narrative you create and your choices. For that reason alone, it’s worth a playthrough. Expect something other than the greats Bethesda has made before unless you’re willing to go down the rabbit hole of its many side quests.
