Warning: this post may contain spoilers
I wrote a blog post for basically my first time ever. It's a first draft, but whatever. I never share my thoughts because I lack confidence, but I want to work on that. I welcome criticism of the way I've presented my thoughts, but my main priority is just discussing Starfield here! I want to hear what y'all think, mainly about the world of Starfield.
I was starry eyed when I first launched Starfield, but it ultimately left me feeling spaced out. After spending around 25 hours with the game I've realized that I wanted something different from Starfield, and that the game just doesn't keep my mind engaged and imagination running. I feel some guilt saying that. It took a buttload of human working hours to bring Starfield to fruition after all, and I don't want to dismiss that work. It's a very pretty game, with a lot of mechanics, characters, and stories. On paper, it's an ideal game for me. It's a first person adventure through the stars meeting strangers and ogling at alien planets packed in with loot and rpg elements. That's my kind of treadmill to be running on. The type of game loop I enjoy. Ultimately though, it did not fill the space in my head that I wanted it to.
Starting with the core game play, it's what I had the least expectations for. I am no Bethesda mega fan, but I've dabbled in their games. Their combat, stealth, traversal and so on have always registered as just serviceable to me. That's not really even a criticism as I've never gotten the impression that Bethesda's intention was to draw fans on those elements. They want to provide a simple set of tools to interact with their worlds. The tools they've provided here in Starfield feel fine. They all work. Gun play feels fine, traversal feels fine, stealth feels fine. It's the way those tools interact with their environments, characters, and narration that typically attract me, but don't here. Even their newest game play addition in space ship combat echoes their standard approach. It feels simple but solid. No extravagance like a Star Fox 64 barrel roll, but there's enough going on to feel good. Like the rest of the tool set, it's serviceable enough to let the player interact with their world. The world is what has left me cold.
Bethesda introduces us to Starfield's world in a baffling place, a place almost opposite to space, a mine. Sure, they planet isn't Earth, but it might as well be Earth. It's dark, dirty, rocky and far from a feast for the eyes. It's no surprise that mines are in the game as Bethesda has always included similar spaces in their games. Such environments are perfect for stuffing loot and combat encounters into, but imagine if Skyrim had began in a cave instead of out in its beautiful landscape. Starfield could've opened in space on a ship or on a number of visually alien worlds, and I think it's a misstep to begin the player in the most unappealing of its environments. Unfortunately, I think it's telling of a large part of the way you will be seeing Starfield's world. From a lot of interior spaces. It's often easy to forget that I'm playing a sci-fi game set in an open world space setting.
Starfield's world looks like what I imagine it would look like if human space colonization were to actually happen. In that regard, I think they were incredibly successful. It's the realization of this image that I think held Starfield back. Just like a lot of our own real universe, it is often empty and dull. Many landscapes of the planets and moons of Starfield, while sometimes pretty, are more often unremarkable. Procedural generation is an incredible tool that can easily lead to unimaginative results. I'm never able to escape the thought that what I'm looking at was probably computer generated. After visiting around 15 planets, I began to feel as though I'd seen it all before, just in different colors. Often fauna and foliage looked strange but lacked a certain spark of hand crafted creativity. I was never struck by their beauty nor their horror but only their only seemingly random assortment of attributes. On planets with human inhabitants their lacked personality in their work and living spaces with exceptions being the hand crafted major settlements. Buildings and structures felt modular and mass produced by the same manufacturer. All of this is probably an accurate depiction of a real future where we branched out into space, but it doesn't make for a fun video game to see and soak in. Major cities like New Atlantis and Akira City lent much more life to Starfield's world with obvious heart put into their creation. You can see their influences from the sci-fi genre in their construction. Instead of aiming for a large and marketable open world, it's a smaller handcrafted galaxy I wish we would have gotten. Somewhere with its own politics and drama taking place on landscapes with intent and personality. A larger existing universe could be hinted at with follow ups in sequels. Bethesda is bursting at the seems with creative talent, but there was simply too much space to make aesthetically daring from every angle. Instead that talent was stretched an inch thin and a mile wild.
The inhabitants of Starfield are offensively inoffensive and so dry they'll leave you parched. They're boring, full stop. They lack nuance and detail in their personalities. They begin and end at their core archetypes. The meaning of their existence is only to facilitate the player and be impressed by you. In my 25 hours of play, I didn't find my self endeared to any character except for a sweet old grandma exploring space, but I only liked her because I like that trope. Characters are very formal and professional which I believe was Bethesda's intent. After all, the context of most every interaction has you acting in an official capacity for one of the factions. You're a representative for the professional work these factions are doing, like being a volunteer cop for the United Colonies or Freestar Collective's Rangers or an explorer-researcher for the stuffy Constellation. It makes sense that conversations would be formal, professional, and often to the point. Ultimately that just doesn't make for compelling conversation. I engage with fiction, especially genre fiction, for its strong sense of personality. The characters I found in Starfield feel like they're just going through the motions of their 9 to 5 job. Their framing as a talking head when having conversations with them only highlights their stiffness.
I believe Starfield is a well-done realization of Bethesda's intent. It's a very corporate and made by committee vision, but it's well executed. It seems they wanted to create a world that resembles a legitimate future where humans leave Earth and colonize the stars. The result is barren unremarkable planets, sterile labs, boring mining and manufacturing facilities, mass produce modular homes, and plenty of empty space. I think they're right, this is what a settled galaxy looks like, but it just doesn't make for a satisfying video game.
edit: fixed spelling from "feel" to "fill"