When the review embargo first dropped, Starfield was sitting at something like an 88 on Xbox and an 89 on PC. Not 90+ the way I think Bethesda may have been hoping, and yet still extremely good.
I’ve played Starfield (PC) a good bit by now and I’d say that mid 80s is probably fair.
The gameplay is great fun - the combat, gear, etc. is really quite similar to Fallout 4 (though without the VATS), with a Skyrim style talent tree.
The base building and ship building is quite like Fallout 4, though much improved (thankfully!) but still a bit janky.
The worldbuilding is immersive but the world itself is just okay - it’s really predictable, they play it a bit too safe, every faction is nothing we haven’t seen a dozen times before, and society hasn’t advanced at all ~400 years in the future apparently.
Characters are exactly what you expect from a Bethesda game - a bit two dimensional, but nice enough.
Graphics are good, sound design is good, music is nice but a bit too similar to Skyrim IMO.
The story is also really quite safe and derivative, reminds me simultaneously of Mass Effect and Skyrim.
The exploration is cool, but does get a bit repetitive after a while. I think more interesting “random” locations would be really good - after a few abandoned, flavourless civilian bases, you’ve seen them all.
I’m a sucker for customisable bases/houses/etc. especially for space ships, giving me all those building blocks and letting me loose in the sandbox (starbox?) is honestly hours of entertainment.
Space combat is fun, but IMO the space part of the game would be way more immersive if I did all of the ship piloting stuff in-character rather than in the UI menues, seems like a big oversight - why not have something like the galaxy map from mass effect, or have everything on displays in the cockpit? It would be much more immersive, but I guess it would have delayed the game quite a bit.
A lot of the game is juggling menues and interfaces which aren’t the best designed. very similar to Skyrim - I imagine UI redesign mods will really shine once they start coming out. It’s pretty tricky trying to figure out what stuff in your inventory is junk you accidentally picked up (looking at you, Fire Extinguisher!) and which items have a surprisingly good value-to-weight ratio (like some - but not all - of the books, or the deck of cards, surprisingly)
There are occasionally little bugs and glitches, but it’s not too bad for 2023 - nothing that makes the game unplayable or breaks major things, it’s just been stuff like glitchy animations, containers placed in the wrong place/orientation, weird physics behaviour, and I’ve noticed a couple missing textures here and there.
If you’re looking for more of a story/RPG game, I’d suggest something more like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic.
For exploration and space combat, I think No Man’s Sky is better, but with much less customisation.
For more customisation and sandbox style gameplay - but less action-oriented - Space Engineers is probably a better choice.
All in all, Starfield is a fun game - Skyrim in space is a good starting point for describing it, but it’s a lot closer to “Fallout 4, but the bombs didn’t drop”, though the game has a lot of cool extra systems beyond that. I’d be happy to recommend it to someone who would enjoy a single player sci-fi themed looter-shooter sandbox game with some mild RPG elements and player-constructed ships and bases, and I’m sure there are hundreds of hours of enjoyment there, and, as with the Elder Scrolls or Fallout games, it’s likely a game that I will return to for many, many years to come
One of the hidden elements of travel is the scanner; if you travel within a system and can “target” the location via quest marker or the like, you can just travel to it from the pilot seat and land at the location, no menu needed.
I think there are other caveats, but the number of “different” ways travel can occur makes it hard for me to keep the details straight. It may just be within system, you may be able to grav jump. You may need to have a quest marker there so it “displays” the planet surface location, or you may be able to select from a few “local” options. I just can’t remember what the restrictions are to that method off the top of my head lol
If you have a quest marker, you can jump straight there using the quest log, no fiddling around with the map required!
I thought so! There are a lot of little quirks with travel. Usually I get scanned by the Feds landing at New Atlantis, other times I don’t. Sometimes I can jump straight to surface other times I need to go from orbit. Just little things I haven’t paid attention to so I can’t say definitively what the criteria is. But, jumping from the scanner is a way nicer way to do it. I just got in the ha it of traveling from the quest menu because I can go from planet surface -> new system -> planet surface with one action (usually).
How i see it is al alternative falllout timeline aet in the future. A lot of the basic game mechanics are straight upgrades from Fallout 4, with slightly better faction writing than 4, and slightly more rpg checks to make an experience feels better than 4. IMO i dont think its better than New Vegas, but its a direct upgrade from FO4
I’m loving starfield and I’ll agree with this. It’s a mid eighties score kind of game. If it’s what you want it’s amazing, but the people calling it game of the century and whatnot are buying their own hype.
On the other hand, it’s likely to have serious staying power as an all time classic game, Bethesda is great at that and there’s a ton of room for people to use it as an incredible mod canvas. I don’t think that should affect launch reviews though.
