One of the big blockbuster AAA games of 2023, here we have Starfield. It’s the first new intellectual property from Bethesda in 25 years.

There was enormous hype for Starfield on a scale beyond any other game this year, really, but the end result is very disappointing and verging on a bit of a disaster (at least in our opinion). Ho hum. Let’s check this one out.

Starfield’s Ambitious Reach Leads to Many Loading Screens

This one is available on PC (Steam) and Xbox One and Series X/S.

We’re huge fans of the developer’s 2011 classic The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which was enormously influential on the gaming industry.

So we can understand why this game was so hyped.

However, there is a pattern we’ve noticed with upcoming AAA games where the marketing hype seems to send gamers into a frenzy of expectation. The big blockbuster games these days look incredible, graphics wise, so that’s natural.

But they have a habit of launching, being kind of all right (7/10 sort of stuff), and then gamers move on and get hyped up for the next AAA with amazing graphics.

This is why we got bored with these titles and shifted over to primarily playing indie games.

But Bethesda has an exceptional reputation, so it’s a bit different here. That’s why a lot of people online were convinced Starfield was going to easily win Game of the Year 2023 and change the industry forever.

It hasn’t. But we’ll get into that later.

In Starfield, plot wise, you star as an asteroid miner. After encountering a strange artifact, you’re sent off with an organisation called Constellation to explore deep space, uncover more artifacts, and reveal the secrets of all that shizz.

Gameplay wise, this leads to Bethesda’s trademark first-person and third-person perspectives, alongside an open world elements and space travel where you explore the Milky Way.

It’s the usual AAA game stuff, with a big old intro, a character creation screen, and then you’re left to get to grips with a multitude of gaming mechanics. Here’s how it all plays out.

On paper this all sounds great. Exploring planets, shooting stuff FPS style, and then flying through space engaging in space battles.

But to our disappointment, we found Starfield dull and severely flawed.

We see a parallel to Hello Games’ indie title No Man’s Sky (2018). It promised the Universe, but delivered Blackpool Pleasure Beach on a rainy day.

Starfield is, fundamentally, much better. It’s not buggy or broken as No Man’s Sky was on launch, but the reality is the central element of exploring the universe is just a bit crap.

There’s no immersion with planet hopping, which we think (if done the way we’d envisioned prior to playing) would have made the game positively thrilling.

We nod here to the magnificent Outer Wilds (2019) by Mobius Digital and the absolute thrill we had the first time we, controlled by us, left the planet and flew into space.

To note with the above, you can also do that in No Man’s Sky (a game from another indie studio). In Starfield, you can’t do that. The system Bethesda use is:

• An FMV cut sequence where your ship leaves a planet.
• Then there’s a loading screen.
• Then you’re in orbit around the planet.
• You can’t then fly down into the planet to explore, you instead have to use the fiddly menu system to open up the star map, pick the location you want to go to, then initiate lightspeed.
• That then leads to another loading screen.
• Once you arrive at your planet of choice, you then just hover there a bit. Then you have to land on the planet, which means another loading screen and FMV landing sequences.

We’ll point out Bethesda had a $200 million budget for Starfield and has delivered something far less engaging than what a tiny indie studio managed.

That budget went to ensuring there are 1,000 planets to visit.

Sounds impressive, but each one has a procedurally generated landscape. Unfortunately, almost every single planet seems to be a total desolate wasteland. You visit for one reason or another (say for a side quest) and walk in a straight line for three minutes. Then raid an abandoned base (one of about 500+ abandoned bases).

This is very realistic in the sense your average planet is, indeed, a desolate wasteland. The problem there is it makes for a very boring time of it in a game.

Cripes. Okay, so we sound like a negative Norman here. Is there anything we like about Skyrim? Sorry, Starfield!

Yes. One of the bits we enjoyed the most were the first-person shooter sections. But this is in the sense they’re adequate. Compare it to something like id Software’s jaw-dropping DOOM Eternal (2020) and it’s pretty by the numbers.

Now, we do love the mechanics for flying the spaceships.

It’s well thought out (but not overly complicated). This means engaging in shooty space battles can be good fun. And you can spend many hours developing out your ship and getting it looking as cool as a cucumber.

Plus, the soundtrack by Israeli-American composer Inon Zur has some excellent moments. It depicts the enormity of space rather well indeed.

https://youtu.be/evXn3uhN6Rc?si=zbkvW99Kw4dk_Zov

It may sound odd to non-gamers, but with open world games like this you often have to put in 10 to 20 hours in the opening phase before a game can start really appealing to you.

After that initial run, there was very little enjoyment that emerged for us. So we’ve had to lump ourselves into the “we don’t like it” camp. Our main issues:

• It’s dull.
• It’s repetitive.
• The endless reams of dialogue (a pet peeve of ours with AAA games) are awful. And there’s a tonne of it to wade through.
• It feels like a regression on Skyrim, a game from 12 years ago.

Again, we appreciate plenty of people are enjoying it. Which is fabulous.

And we encourage anyone who fancies giving Starfield a go to do so, as you may well get a better experience than us.

But we were not at all impressed by this. Nor are we going to pretend we were happy with it to fend off a harsh reality check—we think Starfield is a mediocre game.

With that in mind, we’re now going to sob ourselves to sleep in disappointment.

The Critical Reaction to Starfield

The critical reaction to this one is enormously divisive.

What with Baldur’s Gate 3 out recently, and Nintendo’s Tears of the Kingdom from earlier in 2023, the arrival of Starfield won’t trouble those two big hitters for Game of the Year glory.

We’ll also state if Starfield gets nominated for, or wins, Game of the Year there’s something seriously wrong.

One Steam review summarised its issues perfectly:

“The best way I’ve ever seen Starfield’s universe described is that it’s akin to hopping from fishbowl to fishbowl, and never once like swimming in the ocean. Which is painfully accurate.”

That’s it right there. Hopping from one planet (i.e. loading screen) to the next, with the seeming hint this offers grandeur. When it doesn’t.

To balance out our stance, we’ll point out numerous gaming publications we respect love Starfield. For example, Destructoid gave it 10/10. Reviewer Steven Mills wrote:

“I’ll be honest, even as I wrap this up, I still feel like I’ve forgotten to include some of the incredible features Starfield has to offer. I know I left out a lot of memorable moments I experienced throughout my play. Realistically, this review could be triple the length it already is. But I don’t want that; I don’t want to spoil anything. Starfield is a truly incredible experience that will be special for everyone. Explore the piece of the galaxy Bethesda has created how you want to, and create your own stories. It’s where Starfield really excels.”

This is not a full marks game (although we’re noting a lot of critics providing it with such a score). As objectively as possible, removing our complaints about it, this is just quite a generic and plodding experience.

It feels like these maxed out scores are from journalists playing a completely different version of Starfield to the one we experienced.

But elsewhere IGN provided the game with 7/10 and the renowned Edge Magazine gave it 6/10. We think the latter is being generous.

Starfield is like a $200 million walking simulator. One with endless loading screens. It isn’t a 10/10 masterpiece. Not even close.

We know the developer will be launching patches and DLC to support Starfield in the years ahead, so hopefully that’ll transform the game into something more worthwhile.