Starfield review: One giant leap

Starfield is Bethesda Game Studios’ first new IP in 25 years, and its first single-player RPG since Fallout 4. Since it’s also the studio’s first release under the ownership of Microsoft, it’s safe to say that there is a lot riding on this one. Fortunately, Bethesda has delivered an expansive RPG that seemingly never stops unfolding, with some of my favorite characters and story moments they’ve created.

The endless pursuit of answers

Set in the 24th century, Starfield envisions a time in which the Earth could no longer sustain human life, leading humanity to evacuate the planet and find refuge among the stars. The story is set a few hundred years into the future, meaning humanity is quite scattered throughout the various star systems, but many questions about the universe remain unanswered. It parallels our own reality, as the existence of humanity is just a small blip in the Earth’s billions of years of history, and there is still so much about the universe that we simply don’t know.

Bethesda does a superb job at coloring the world in and making it feel as authentic as possible. I spent hours learning about the war between the United Colonies and the Freestar Collective, the various leaders that have already come and gone in the Space Age, and how human culture has been forced to evolve after leaving the Earth. Starfield feels like a period piece, but for an era that just hasn’t happened yet.

Before finishing the Main Quest, I dove deep into Starfield’s host of side stories. It felt like it was impossible to walk from one end of a town to the other without overhearing something that would add a new quest to my list. I would frequently lose focus on the main objective due to how fascinating most of the side stories were. I infiltrated a pirate faction on behalf of the United Colonies, explored a secret base on a remote planet, and visited the site of a historic battle in the Colony War.

Constellation is among the many groups and factions you’ll meet in Starfield. Crossing paths early on, this exploration group is dedicated to exploring outer space and finding answers to some of the universe’s greatest mysteries. Alongside them, you’ll go on a planet-hopping journey filled with thrills and excitement, with a few existential crises thrown in here and there. I can easily say that Starfield made me think and feel harder than any Bethesda game before it.

What really drives Starfield’s story is its cast of main characters. The members of Constellation share a common goal, but their diverse backgrounds and personalities make for refreshing dynamics, and I always had a smile on my face when I returned to our HQ and one of them had something new to share. Barrett, a jovial explorer who is clever and curious, stood out as one of my favorites. I also enjoyed peeling back the layers on characters like Sarah Morgan, a stoic woman with a military background and a haunted past. She ended up having one of the game’s best arcs.

While I found Constellation’s home of New Atlantis to be a rather unremarkable city, I quite enjoyed most of the other major locations that I visited during the Starfield campaign. Akila City and Neon in particular were two cities that were brimming with interesting stories to uncover and fascinating characters to meet.

A star is born

Of course, your character is at the center of this journey. Creating my character, I was almost overwhelmed with the sheer amount of options. Bethesda boasted that Starfield’s character creator is their most in-depth yet, and I’d agree with that statement. Not only can you fine tune and manipulate most of your physical features, but the game’s Backgrounds and Traits offer ways to make your character narratively and mechanically unique.

For example, I chose the Bounty Hunter background, which gave me three starting Skills: Piloting, Targeting Control Systems, and Boost Pack Training. This Background also gave me a clear grasp on some of the freelance work in the Settled Systems, providing exclusive dialogue options every now and then.

Traits also factor heavily into the narrative. Thanks to the Kid Stuff trait, I was able to periodically visit my parents, and would occasionally bump into them during my adventures. I also made my character a UC (United Colonies) native, which meant I had a better understanding of the faction’s operations.

From here, you build your character out by acquiring skill points (you get one per level-up) and spending them in the skill tree. It’s broken into five categories: Physical, Social, Combat, Science, and Tech. Once you’ve unlocked a Skill, you’ll also gain access to a challenge that must be completed in order to upgrade it. For example, the Speech skill required me to succeed in five Speech challenges before I could upgrade it to the second level. It’s neat that the game tasks you with actually engaging in a skill in order to improve at it, instead of just letting you aimlessly dump points into whatever.

It’s worth noting that the skill tree also reworks a lot of core features in Bethesda games. You need to unlock the Pickpocketing skill just to be able to pickpocket someone. You don’t even receive a stealth bar until you take the first level in Stealth. It’s clear that Bethesda wants the character-building process to be a long journey, but be aware that it’ll be slower than what you’re used to in The Elder Scrolls or Fallout.

Spacefaring stranger

As someone who was pretty lukewarm on the shooting in Fallout, I went into Starfield a bit cautious about how central firearms were to combat. I’m happy to report that Bethesda has shown some excellent growth in this department, as the shooting felt impactful and sharp. The Ballistic family of weapons includes Rifles, Pistols, Shotguns, and Heavies. There are also weapons that utilize Energy and non-lethal blasts. They all feel unique to use, and I frequently found myself swapping between them like a madman. I realized that while in low-gravity areas, weapons with a powerful blast will actually send your character flying backward.

During your journey, you’ll come across weapons with varying rarities, which hold special traits of their own, as well as modifications that alter their damage output, range, magazine size, and accuracy. You can make further modifications yourself at a designated workstation, but you’ll need the proper skills unlocked to make the good stuff.

One of Starfield’s more ambitious new features is space flight. You’ll spend a lot of time on your ship, whether it’s traveling between star systems or playing the careful game that is inventory management. You can dump items into your ship’s cargo hold, which is a solid way to get heavy resources off your person. Of course, cargo holds have a capacity limit too, and I spent far more time than I care to admit fumbling around in the menus trying to un-encumber myself without losing my valuables.

Moving between star systems, your ship feels like more of a fast travel machine than anything else. You don’t manually fly to a planet, land on it, or take off. Instead, you map out your plans and watch most of it play out in brief cinematics. The same is true for interplanetary travel, as you’re constantly loading in and out of different star systems. The loading was quite quick playing on a PC with an SSD, and all of the flight cinematics were pretty stellar, but it certainly feels like something is lost here.

Most notably, your ship will be a valuable weapon as you venture into some of the more dangerous reaches of space. Ship combat feels like an entirely different game, in the best of ways. While flying and shooting, you also have to manage your ships' different systems, which includes the shields, engine, and various weapon modules. Constantly flipping switches and moving power between them while also in an active dogfight made me feel like an actual pilot, and I took a lot of Tech skills early on so that I could be more formidable in space combat. Nothing in Starfield feels more badass than taking out an entire fleet of enemy ships, or destroying someone’s engine and boarding their ship.

Starfield allows you to customize your ship, a deep rabbit hole best suited for players far into their playthroughs. You need to unlock some of the Starship Design skills to take full advantage of what’s available here, but it’s incredibly satisfying to manually design the body of a ship, install weapon modules, create cargo holds, make it all look cool, and then step into it.

Outposts are another core feature of Starfield that can be a bit frustrating and barebones early on, but really blossoms once you invest more credits (currency) and resources into it. You can set up an outpost on just about any planet, placing extractors to harvest resources and workstations to craft and upgrade gear. Resources are the key, and each planet has its own unique set of minerals and other natural resources to gather and use as crafting components. You can assign crew members to work at your outposts, providing bonuses to crafting and harvesting.

I found a lot of fun in simply visiting unexplored planets, seeing what resources they had, and discovering random structures on them. Even on the more barren planets, it always felt like there was something on the horizon for me to check out, whether it be a ship that I just watched land, an abandoned outpost, or some other miscellaneous structure.

Talk through it

As is common in RPGs, Starfield frequently allows you to choose how you respond to NPCs in a conversation. There are friendly options, aggressive options, and neutral approaches. I’d argue that this aspect of Starfield feels the least evolved from previous Bethesda games. The decisions all feel incredibly binary, as I often felt like I was choosing between being a boy scout or a mustache-twirling villain.

The game also does this thing where it’ll give you four or five dialogue options, but only one of them actually pushes the conversation or mission forward. I’ll take a response that seems most appropriate for my character, only to eventually have to take the option that the game wants me to pick in the end. It undercuts the role-playing element and sort of shatters the illusion occasionally. Bethesda RPGs have always been like this, but it was a little disappointing to see little evolution in this area, especially given how far similar games have come in recent years.

The beauty of it all

Bethesda has a bit of a reputation for releasing games marred by bugs and visual glitches, which is why I was so impressed by the sheer presentation of Starfield. The Maryland studio has shown tremendous improvement in graphics and fidelity, as Starfield is easily the best-looking game Bethesda has made. I experienced very few bugs during my time playing, and the ones I did experience were relegated to small cosmetic errors. It adds to the immersion of an already detailed world, and left me excited about what the studio can do with the new Creation Engine 2 moving forward.

Starfield also ran pretty smoothly for a busy RPG that’s juggling a lot at once. I caught some performance hitches while moving quickly through some of the more populated cities, but never had to deal with frustrating framerate drops or frequent crashes. In fact, my game crashed one time while playing on the review build.

It’s clear that Bethesda put a lot of love into the fine details, and that’s on full display with Starfield’s sound design. The roar of a ship engine lifting off, the difference in character dialogue when speaking with a helmet on vs without one, or the many different sounds a gun can make all contributed to making the experience feel authentic. The muted blast of my silenced shotgun was music to my ears during my playthrough.

The same can be said about Starfield’s actual music. The score is phenomenal, swelling at the perfect moments to create some of the game’s most epic sequences. There were times I’d find myself sitting idle, just soaking in the environment and enjoying the original score. Bethesda has delivered some of the most iconic video game music of the modern era, and Starfield doesn’t disappoint.

For all, into the Starfield

Starfield is more than a welcome addition to Bethesda’s family of RPG franchises, it feels like the start of a new era for the studio. Not only is it the developer’s most technically impressive game, but it also delivers a worthwhile narrative that takes some major swings and establishes a sprawling mythos. It has some blemishes here and there, but Starfield proves to be an awesome sci-fi adventure.

This review is based on a Steam code provided by the publisher. Starfield launches on September 6, 2023, for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_