Game Review Starfield

I only played one Bethesda game before Starfield, Skyrim. It became my top 5 best games I have ever played as an average gamer. In Skyrim from one city to another, you will always find something intriguing, a cave in front of which a woman fighting a bunch of thugs. A giant doom-shape structure with yetis, A statue of deadra who assignes you a task, a nest with dragon lying inside. All of the satisfaction of discover and hand crafted prompt for your curiosity was completely removed from Starfield.

Exploration. That’s what Starfield is about. I don’t really dive into the development of a game or the history of their studio. What I care is if a game is a good game or not. And it should be the only thing matters when you play a game.

Starfield has unsatisfying performance. I don’t have great gaming hardware, but my gaming laptop is a decent one which I bought 3 years ago. Yet, with graphic like it’s from 2018, my computer still has trouble of keeping up with the frame rate in “large” cities like New Atlantis or Akila City. By “large”, I mean the cities are much smaller than they should be, the size is pretty much half of a district in Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) or 1/3 of a town in The Sims 3 (2009). However, when I enter a small space like a bar or a shop the frame rate is at about twice as much. But optimization isn’t the core of the problem of Starfield. You gotta actually play it, right?

Loading screens. Tons of tons of loading screens. As I mentioned, cities and towns in starfield are not big at all. there is only so much you can go. Still, most of the doors you encounter require a loading screen to get behind. Sometimes, even a tiny shop needs a loading screen to get into. What is that about? And every time when you land on a planet with your spaceship, there will always a cutscene and a loading screen.

The stories in Starfield aren’t as interesting as in Skyrim, The faction quest line or even the main quest line is essentially just one quest. In the main story, you touch an unknown artifact and have vision and hear sound, contacted by a mysterious group called Constellation. They assign you mission of collecting other artifact to study. On the halfway, you encounter an unusual shaped spaceship, who told you that you should stay away from those artifacts because you are playing something you don’t know anything about. Then you meet some being called Starborn. Turns out they are humans who came from other universes through the Unity which is some entity you can reach after you collect all the artifacts. You collect them all, siding with or not siding with one of the two Starborn who have different ideas of how to utilize the Unity, then you reach the Unity and get a little of explanation of what Unity is about, you go through the Unity, then the story ends. You reach another universe, AKA, the new game plus.

From the beginning to the end, the game never tells you who made the artifact, the members of the Constellation never make any progress of knowing more about the artifact. You also gain powers from visiting temples, but you never know who built those temples, why is there the Unity in the first place. Who made the Unity? Or who was the first person that discovered the Unity? None of the questions you have in your mind during the entire game got answered. Even at the end the other version of you standing next to the Unity doesn’t give you any relevant information. “You” tell you that after you go through the Unity entering another universe, who you are is left behind and the essence of you makes impact other people in the previous universe. Does it even matter? If I made changes to this universe, but I don’t get to see the changes, what is the point? Does it even matter if I was being good or bad during my play through?

The lack of thoughtfulness of plots doesn’t just exist in the main storyline. It’s everywhere. the only interesting quest line is the Vanguard quest line. but even the twists and plots are mostly delivered through conversations in the locked camera scenes.

It is not interesting. For the main story, only after you play for about 10 hours exclusively doing the main quest line, it gets interesting when you meet Starborn and go to the moon to discover how the interstellar travel was invented, and why the earth is a lifeless dust ball. Then you are back to collect more artifacts again.

Move on to exploration. Isn’t this game about? Isn’t this what they marketing about? The exploration, over a thousand planets and moons to explore. Yet, I feel there is nothing to explore. They have various landscape on different planet but they are not much different, rocks here and there, dirt having different colors, even tress aren’t really different from those on earth. There is no giant flesh eating plants, no tress that are as high as giant towers. They do have tall mushrooms and on one planet you can find glowing grass; on one planet the floor glows during the night; on some planets there are glowing mushrooms on rocks. But that’s pretty much about it. Nothing really unique. Including myself, I have heard several people saying planets are the same. They ARE the same, nothing really different. You have procedural generated facilities and landmark. On those facilities you will always have enemies to shoot and loot. Despite the landmark looks impressive with giant rock spikes or a cluster of glowing mushrooms but there isn’t anything about it anymore. A few times you might find some lost survivor who asks you to escort them to the ship and that’s it. No unique outfits, no special weapons, no intriguing quests, nothing is as reward for your exploration.

Ship building. It was fun to build my own monstrosity, and this is probably the only good thing this game has. There are so many options for you to choose. You can paint your ship parts individually, or paint them as a whole. People have been creative on the internet and I love to see their funny ships.

The combat, Starfield has decent combat, I won’t even say it’s good but it’s decent, it’s basic. Nothing really special. You have powers but they don’t really make the combat more enjoyable. The enemies are all the same, humans using guns or alien creatures that throw rocks at you or punch you directly. One thing I want to mention is that Starfield is set in the year AC 2330, yet people still use guns like “old earth rifle” or “old earth shotgun”. 300 years before we were using muskets. They do have a weapon type, laser weapons which shoot lasers, but in Cyberpunk, which is set in the year 2077, they have smart guns which auto lock enemies and shoot self-guided bullets.

Starfield is a game I want to enjoy but there is just so much I can do. It feels so big, yet it feels so small. It’s a basic game and mediocre is probably the best word I would think of to describe it.