Starfield – it needs something

Back in September Starfield released to much fanfare and serious sales numbers. Since I have a PC Game Pass subscription I grabbed it on there and looked forward to playing it. For me there is a lot to love:

• The game is single player
• It has a major Narrative focus
• Set in space!
• Very free form

These are all massive plus points for me as games such as No Man’s Sky, Elite Dangerous or Everspace have taken countless hours of my time as I get engrossed in their stories and mechanics. Extra shout out to Elite Dangerous as VR is the best way to experience that game. Never tried the X4 and that series of games (another for the backlog).

I have had positive experiences with Bethesda before, everyone has played a version of Skyrim but I am a particular fan of the Fallout series. I still remember the amazing sequence in Fallout 4. So again, more reasons to look forward to the game. In case you hadn’t realized by now my experience was lukewarm at best. I want to outline my thoughts and try and get to grips on my feelings for the title.

I can hear the gears of the engine grinding

Lets get something hard and fast out of the way, the game does not look as good as the resource demands suggest it should. Graphics options are missing (why do I not have a full screen mode?) and the community are trying to figure out how to make the game run as well as it should. It was the first game in a while where my PC felt slow. The only other game to do that was Cities Skylines 2 and I think both games need more development time to get their pipelines down.

This would be a real problem in combat situations where a lot is going on and it was obvious that my framerate was dropping. At time of writing there is no DLSS support (it is on the post release roadmap) but then again given how much the game is already asking of my computer I am not sure that would help.

Also I had a non-game breaking bug where I found myself unable to use trade kiosks in the first city and there being holes in the floor. This all seemingly came about because I had the audacity to switch to a different ship I owned. How that made it past Q&A beats the hell out of me!

Could I load some immersion please?

Then you have the loading screens. I was trying to enjoy the game on my terms and treat it a lot more like Elite or No Man’s Sky where there are hardly any loading screens. Everything I did I was presented with loading screens and it just took the wind out of my sails. I don’t know if Elite loads the planet in the background or something but while I am descending down to the ground and working my stick to ensure I don’t pancake on impact, I am engaged at all times. Starfield is the exact opposite, walking up to my ship and entering the bridge, going to the system, landing on the planet all generate a loading screen. You can fast travel to your final destination but that just takes some of the fun out of it!

Then there is the bizarre decision (or lack of time maybe?) to not have some kind of city map for the major hub areas. The cities are complex and vertical so getting from A to B can require trips on public transport, going down un marked elevators or going to certain floors. I would prefer to go to the nearest city and do my trade but I kept going back to the first one because I knew it the best.

Moments of greatness

The main story of the game really didn’t grab me and the characters were not inspiring. The story is about exploring the galaxy in search of some weird space tech you dug up on an asteroid. I feel very little reason for my guy to care other than if they don’t the game doesn’t happen!

As for the characters, maybe in time they would grow on me but off the bat they didn’t compel me to learn more about them. I will say they are a danger to everyone around them in combat. Give one of them some grenades and a decent gun and they will let rip!

Some of the side quests were great though (the whole quest to get the Mantis ship was awesome) and at times the games combat shone. But this is akin to the odd chocolate chip in a bowl of otherwise serviceable porridge. A friend of mine suggested upping the difficulty and that made a significant improvement.

Do your own thing

A colleague is having an unadulterated blast with the game but said that he needed to stick to the quests in order to do so. Both of us had tried going the free-form route; land on a planet do some exploring and find cool buildings and dungeons. This can be done but you can quickly see the seams as buildings are repeated and I believe are part of a tile-set for procedural generation.

I had wanted to go in on the output building and start my own manufacturing empire but they had copied way too much from Fallout 4’s output mechanic where you are expected to place every little thing in the world and I just don’t have the time or interest for that. I wish they had taken much more of page out of their ship building system (which is great BTW) with prebuilt and decorated sections you plug together. Although that has its own issues with how the doors are laid out inside the ship which is outside of your explicit control (I have seen YouTube discussions about this but it always boils down to trying to game the game).

The $64,000,000 question; would I recommend it?

That is one tough question. I put the game down a while ago in favour of other things that had come out and I haven’t had the urge to go back into the Frontier and fly about. But I will not deny that there is something calling to me. There is something here and I think that with some time this game could be good. But as it stands right now with the technical issues, and areas in need of polish I cannot give a whole-hearted thumbs up. I think this one is for the backlog, it is definitely worth a play but not right now. Come back in 6 months or so.