Finally! After YEARS of waiting Starfield is here! The game came out on Thursday at 8 PM EST, and here I sit on Monday morning with a little over 26 hours in the game, and I have some thoughts. Does Starfield live up to the hype or its pedigree coming out of the legendary Bethesda Softworks? The answer is a resounding YES! Read on to find out why…..
Bethesda last released a single player game way back in 2015 with Fallout 4, and boy has the wait for a new single player RPG from the studio been tough. However the wait appears to have been supremely worth it to my eyes. Starfield is a Bethesda RPG through and through, and a damn good one at that!
Here’s some quick highlights of my adventures over the past 26 hours.
Picked a starting perk that gives me a customizable home. I had to pay 500 credits each week or pay it off in one 125,000 chunk. Paid it off on day 2, and already back up to 80k credits.
Built an outpost on a strange world, and staffed with a few of the extra companions kicking around the ship.
Customized and upgraded the starting ship, and bought a new one with a large cargo space for hauling materials which I then customized to fit my needs by adding workshops and other stuff to the main design.
Killed a lot of bad people , and sold all their gear and weapons while also getting myself well equipped.
Changed my character’s looks several times. Which you can do in most cities around Enhance! Shops. There is nothing that keeps you locked into the character you make at the beginning looks wise at all, and I’ve read that some of the Enhance! Shops even age location specific things you can add to your character’s looks so even if you’re happy with who you are check these out you may just find something new.
Started romancing two of my crew.
As a huge Oblivion fan I also picked the starting perk that gives you the adoring fan as a companion, and I am very happy to say the voice actor is the same, and boy does he do a GREAT job!
The story of Starfield has to do with recovering some (possibly alien…NO SPOILERS) artifacts for a group of explorers, but let’s be real here. Most people just want to get out into the galaxy ,and start making their own stories, and Bethesda has delivered a fantastic playground to do so in. According to the big B there are over 1000 planets to discover and explore. Now unlike a game like No Man’s Sky this is not a game about surviving and wandering. Much has been made online about these planets, and whether you can walk across the whole thing. Well you can’t, and let me tell you why I think that’s good.
What Bethesda has done with these planets is in my mind the absolute best way to handle it. Instead of one big ball or sameness with little to do they have given us different “zones”. So you pick your planet, and land down on the surface. You’re loaded into a chunk of the world, and trust…it’s a BIG chunk. Yes there are barriers, but in the many planets I’ve visited I have yet to come across these barriers. So instead of a whole world you’re left with an area big enough to explore, but also packed with POI and events. Structures reach for the sky in the distance just begging to be explored, and there are all kinds of radiant style events popping up. You may find a crashed ship with people needing your help. Or maybe you see a ship land over the next ridge, and when you go to investigate it’s full of pirates gunning for you. After killing them you can take their ship as your own. The beauty here is beyond manageable areas to explore and tons of things just calling out for you to explore them. It also allows for one planet to have multiple different biomes filled with different flora and fauna (to be scanned and cataloged for XP of course) for a curious adventurer to come across. So instead of just endlessly wandering Bethesda has made it easy, and attractive to explore these planets in Starfield
You’ll need these planets to get the many different resources used in constructing outposts. Outpost building requires a lot of different resources so you will need to be gathering quite a few of them if you want to be building. Thankfully even the barren dust ball planets are beautiful. Building is a modified and severely cleaned up version of what we saw in Fallout 76, and in fact the photo mode interface is almost exactly the same as 76 which is great for a photo junkie like myself.
In fact I see a lot of 76 in this game in the best possible way. Bethesda has clearly spent a lot of time cleaning up the various parts of their repertoire. The graphics are amazing, and the character models and animations are leagues ahead of previous Bethesda games. Starfield sure is a beautiful game, and having just so much content sure helps. This game also moves FAST, much faster than previous Bethesda games, and while there are no vehicles the Xbox of being pretty fast to begin with, and your boostpack makes traversal a joy. In my 26 hours I have done a little bit of everything from quests, building, wandering, ship to ship dogfights in space, and it’s all well crafted and super fun.
A lot has been made of the controversial decision to lock the game at 30fps on consoles, and while I’m not someone who really cares about that particular hill most gamers choose to die on it does seem like the game runs smooth as butter, and is easily the least buggy Bethesda games we have ever been given. In my 26 hours I came across very few bugs or glitches. Here’s a list of everything I’ve come across.
1 crash in a heavily populated city.
1 restart due to an audio glitch.
1 instance of a companion somehow having their head turned invisible.
Lost unique armor set by modifying my ship while armor was on mannequin inside ship
Occasional minor stuttering going into and out of takeoff/landing cutscenes.
Bugs and glitches will happen to any game, but for a game this massive, with so many different systems in place to have so few is an impressive feat from any dev, but especially Bethesda. The game already had several updates pre early access, and I expect at least one more before the game officially launches on Sept 6th for those who didn’t pre-order the special edition.
As a huge and near lifelong Bethesda fan this game is an easy 10/10, but even from an objective standpoint I really don’t see how this game could be any less than 8/10 with such an ambitious, and well executed concept. If you go into expecting a deep Bethesda RPG you will not be let down, but if you’re expecting something other than that 8 suggest you educate yourself on what this game is, and don’t listen to people online trying to make it something it is not.
Here are a few tips and tricks to help you out.
You can hold A (on Xbox) on most items (even ones you can’t pick up) to move them around at will. This includes dead bodies.
I know this is a Bethesda game, but definitely do start the main quest at least until you get to the point where you’re unlocking the “powers” these will def help you along the way.
To use the boostpack (unless you choose it at the start) you need to “purchase” the skill to do so by leveling up. Make this a priority early game.
You can fast travel direct from the quest menu. Save yourself some time clicking through menus by just hitting X from the quest itself.
It’s a big galaxy. When you find a planet that has the rarer resources make some kind of note of it as you WILl be returning to that planet.
I can’t stress this enough when making changes to your ship take anything displayed back into your inventory before making changes.
There is a TON more to say, but right now I just wanna get back out into space so I’ll cut this short. Starfield is a big win for me, and a much needed notch on Microsoft’s belt as an exclusive. Come September 6th do yourself a favor,and check it out via gamepass or by purchasing the game. Finally word? Another serious triumph from Bethesda Softworks. See y’all out in space!
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