As is the case with many of us, my first real exposure to the fantastical world of geek culture was through space exploration and journeying through galaxies far, far away.
Thanks to pop culture phenomenons like Star Trek, Firefly and Star Wars while I was growing up, space and all its frontiers has always felt like home away from home for me – for better, as with the Jedi games, or worse, as with Starfield.
How do you speak about a game that’s been talked about more than there are galaxies to explore? How do you find something new to say about a game that’s been on so many people’s lips?
You don’t. But you can look back at what it is about space that has captivated you through your life and then see how Starfield measures up to that – and that’s precisely what I’m about to do in this review.
There are four core things that every good space-themed movie, book, TV show or game should have.
First, they need to have a sense of authenticity. Seeing the technological marvels of an advanced future world is one of the most thrilling parts of the medium. Still, for it to hit home and make you feel welcome, it must reflect a believable trajectory of our present.
Authenticity is something that Starfield has in spades. The game is stunning and also believable. Even many of the shortfalls in the story help highlight its authenticity.
For example, many of the game’s quests and side content don’t focus on building toward this singular grand tale but instead highlight man’s petty complaints. While it doesn’t do much to draw me into the narrative – it is believable.
The game is filled with awe-inspiring metropolises like New Atlantis and grungy cities like Neon. However, finding these places never really felt like an adventure.
Starfield never tries to capture players’ interests or evoke their curiosity about new places. Instead, it uses menus to funnel you to those locations. While the destination is everything you could want and more, the journey and the excitement of stumbling upon places like this for yourself are just non-existent.
Secondly, they need a certain level of complexity. A good space story should completely transport you to another world, and to do that, it needs to create a sweeping narrative that comes to life in your mind as you dive into the multi-layered stories that weave the character’s experience into the world and plot.
I don’t know if Starfield actually has much complexity above and beyond a premise that is never truly delved into or explored.
The game is undeniably impressive when it comes to scale; however, as you play and you start to see the sloppy way that these big ideas are connected, the illusion of a massive cosmic voyage starts to wear thin.
And instead of a grand adventure through space, you’re left with nothing more than a shooter-focused Bethesda game.
Throughout your playthrough, the game gives you all these little bits of intrigue. Still, those never really feel integrated into the core game and experience.
The game doesn’t have much to say about humanity leaving Earth behind, and even though it touches on some lore, it never really explores how its governments and religions changed and evolved.
Third, there must be a nuance that runs through everything. Over the years, the space genre has created some of the most well-established tropes and character types in media.
Still, a significant difference exists between making something that feels like an inherent part of the genre and creating a world filled with tired storylines and shallow characters.
This is, unfortunately, something that Starfield never quite manages to get right. Even though the game is set a good 300 years in the future, its storytelling and character-building never really dives into that. Instead, we are just met with the same cookie-cutter archetypes we can find in any space-themed media.
The characters all have rather sterile outlooks and stories. Starfield decided to play it safe by only using tried-and-tested stories but, in doing so, ended up losing a lot of the depth that the genre demands.
And finally, there needs to be meaning because meaning lets it linger in the minds and hearts of everyone who journeys into the unknown.
This is where the game failed to make an impact for me. Because the game struggles to embody the other three points, meaning was almost an impossible goal to achieve.
While I would never be as bold as to say Starfield has no meaning at all, it does feel like that game banked so heavily on the intrigue and excitement of getting to explore and experience the vastness of space that it never really forged any identity outside of that.
Throughout the game, very little weight is given to things that the characters describe as monumental discoveries or events that change the course of history.
And while it’s fun to run around and see the sights, I never felt like the experience was anything more than a Bethesda shooter with a space theme pasted on.
After measuring Starfield up to everything that makes the genre unique, I’m just as conflicted about the game as I was before.
Sure, it has these moments of brilliance where the game shines just as brightly as the visuals it delivers, but at the same time, it lacks a lot of the actual depth that the genre needs.
And without that depth, most of the experience is just surface level with no real substance to make me fall in love with its world, however much I would like to or how beautiful it may be.
You should never have to preface a game recommendation by saying that the game becomes better after the first five hours, but that’s just the type of game that Starfield is.
The game improves the longer you play – and I just wish it started that way instead of burying your first few hours under piles of monotony and tedium.
