starfield game – Trekking with Dennis

So you’re burned out on Starfield… what next?

Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for some of the entries on this list.

Although I was generous to Starfield when it launched back in September, I quickly ran out of patience with the game. In summary… Starfield just wasn’t what I’d been expecting, and I couldn’t find a way to lose myself in either its world or its narrative. I like to think I gave it a fair shake after thirty-plus hours of playtime, but I just wasn’t enjoying myself. While the game is ambitious in scope and a technological achievement in some respects, it’s also limited in its designs, held back by an outdated engine and mid-tier graphics, and just… boring. Starfield never quite “clicked” for me… and I’m okay with that!

But it does leave me with a dilemma. I’d hoped Starfield would be my “game of the autumn,” giving me hours of fun as the nights are drawing in and Christmas time is approaching! Having stepped away from the game, I found myself unsure of what to do next. What game should I play to fill the void left by Starfield?

What should we play instead of *Starfield*?

This could also be a good list if you’ve played Starfield to death and you’ve done everything you can with the game. If you (somehow) managed to dedicate several hundred hours to it, and you’ve beaten all of the faction questlines, the side-missions, and gone through a dozen New Game Plus playthroughs… maybe you’re also looking to play something else for a while! Even the best games can wear out their welcomes after a while.

So that’s what I thought we could consider today: a few different games (and a TV show, too) that might replace Starfield for those of us who didn’t stick with it… or for folks who just need a break from it.

Boxman, my favourite *Starfield* character…

As I always say: everything on this list is entirely subjective! If you hate all of my picks or I miss something that seems obvious, that’s totally okay! We’re all entitled to our opinions, and there should be more than enough room in the gaming community for discussions and disagreements.

I’ve picked a few different categories of games based on some of my expectations for Starfield, and I’ve tried to include a few different and perhaps unexpected titles, too.

So let’s jump into the list!

Bethesda Game:
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Starfield is a Bethesda game… which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your point of view! I could certainly entertain the notion that Bethesda could do with modernising the way it creates its missions in particular, but that may be beside the point. If you’re craving this specific kind of game, there really is no substitute for what Bethesda brings to the table.

With that in mind, I’d like to suggest Morrowind as the first candidate for a game to play instead of Starfield. A lot of folks have played Skyrim to death already – with that game having been released and re-released more times than I can count over the past few years – but Morrowind may have slipped through the cracks for some players. If you missed Morrowind when it was new, now could be a great time to revisit it.

Morrowind may have been released in 2002, but it doesn’t have to look like a two-decade-old game if visuals are a concern. There are some fantastic graphics and visual mods out there that can genuinely transform the way Morrowind looks. It might be a stretch to say that it can look “brand-new,” but it can certainly give other Bethesda games a run for their money!

Morrowind was my first Bethesda game, and I played it to death in the early and mid-2000s. But even with the countless hours I spent playing the game, there are quests I haven’t completed and achievements I haven’t gotten. It’s overstuffed with content, having more NPCs, weapon types, and factions than Skyrim. If you haven’t tried it yet – or if it’s been twenty years since you last picked it up – it could be a great replacement for Starfield.

Spaceship Builder:
Star Trek: Starship Creator – Warp 2

I don’t know what element or component of Starfield may have appealed to you the most – but for me, building and piloting my very own spaceship was at the top of the list! Relatively few games had offered anything quite like Starfield’s shipbuilder, but this offering from the Star Trek franchise just after the turn of the millennium was one of them.

This game was a niche product even in the year 2000, and I fully appreciate that! Trekkies will get a lot more out of Starship Creator than a general audience, and there are arguably other games that we could’ve picked for the spaceship builder category. If you’re looking for a more modern title, the likes of Space Engineers or Kerbal Space Program are definitely interesting options!

But for folks who enjoy the Star Trek franchise, Starship Creator is a unique experience that few other video games from the franchise have really offered. In 2000, it was a blast to import your own photo (or a photo of a friend or even a celebrity) to add to your virtual crew, and while the ship-building options are limited by the technology of the time, it’s still a ton of fun to remake classic Federation starships in new ways.

When I looked ahead to Starfield, the shipbuilder reminded me of Starship Creator. I said in the run-up to Starfield’s launch that one of the things I really wanted from the game was the ability to build and customise my own ship and take it on adventures! Unfortunately, Starfield’s lack of real spaceflight and overreliance on fast-travel meant that the custom ship I worked so hard on never really got much of an outing.

First-Person Role-Playing/Shooter:
Cyberpunk 2077 + Phantom Liberty DLC

At time of writing, some digital shops on PC still have their Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals available, and I’ve seen the base version of Cyberpunk 2077 at a fair discount on both Steam and Epic Games. If you missed the deals this time, I expect we’ll have winter/holiday sales to enjoy within a month or so, so you might not have to wait too long!

If you’d told me a year or so ago that I’d be recommending Cyberpunk 2077 to anyone I’d have been sceptical! I didn’t hate the game, but I felt it was overhyped, surprisingly linear, and with gameplay elements that I’d seen before in other (better) titles. For what it was, though, Cyberpunk 2077 was decent enough, and I had some fun with its corporate dystopia, fully-realised cityscape, and Keanu Reeves’ character of Johnny Silverhand!

After waiting to ensure that Phantom Liberty was well-received and not bedevilled by the bugs and glitches that will forever define Cyberpunk 2077, I recently picked it up. A review will come when I’ve fully played through the new content, but suffice to say that the overhaul to Cyberpunk 2077 has been impressive, with changes made to the game’s levelling up system, skill tree, and one that was desperately needed: armour! The version of Cyberpunk 2077 that you’ll play in 2023 is significantly better than it was even just last year, and when the game has an entertaining story, I think it’s well worth playing for any fan of first-person role-playing shooters.

Starfield has also put Cyberpunk 2077′s gameplay and world-building into perspective for me. The open world of Night City in particular is miles ahead of anything in Starfield, feeling like a genuinely lived-in city populated by real people. The main story is much stronger than Starfield’s, too, and I think there are other favourable comparisons.

Spaceflight:
Star Wars Squadrons

As indicated above, one of the disappointing things about Starfield for me was the lack of functional spaceflight. After working hard on my custom spaceship, I genuinely expected that I’d be able to launch it into space and actually pilot it to my destination. Instead, travelling from planet to planet is all done by fast-travel menus, which really rips me out of the immersion. Relatively early in the game, I picked a mission from the “mission board” in New Atlantis, only for the so-called mission to basically play itself with practically no interaction required.

But we’re off-topic already! Star Wars Squadrons is the starfighter game of your dreams; the game that we all thought we were playing in the ’90s when we booted up the likes of Tie Fighter or Rogue Squadron. The visuals are absolutely gorgeous, and sitting at my desk I genuinely got the sense that I was in the pilot’s seat of an X-Wing.

Sitting in the pilot’s seat of an X-Wing has never felt more real!

I’m not sure if Squadrons still has an active multiplayer scene, but there’s a fun campaign to play through and it’s also possible to take on the AI, so there should still be plenty to get stuck into. I think the game is an absolute blast, and it’s one I really should get back into! In terms of spaceflight, which is the category I’ve assigned to it, I definitely felt there was a lot more to get stuck into here than there was in Starfield.

Because Squadrons puts you in the seat of a starfighter, you aren’t going to be hauling cargo across vast expanses of space. There are other games that offer that kind of experience, though, if you really want it. But if you’re looking to pilot small ships, get into fun dogfights, and try out some of the iconic vehicles from the Star Wars franchise, there’s really nothing quite like it!

Role-Playing Game:
Baldur’s Gate 3

A combat encounter in *Baldur’s Gate 3*.

With only a month of 2023 left to go, I can’t see another game coming along to dethrone Baldur’s Gate 3. It will almost certainly be crowned “game of the year” at my annual end-of-year awards! It’s one of the best games I’ve played in years, offering branching storylines, a massive variety of play styles, character classes, and so much more.

I’d missed out on the first Baldur’s Gate in the late 1990s, and this game ended up being my first foray into the world of Faerûn. It was overwhelming at first, because the game hits you with a ton of options right off the bat – but I ended up having a whale of a time. I chose to play as a drow (or dark elf) druid, but there are a huge variety of character options and play styles, with different weapon types, magical spells, and more. I’m going to start a second run through the game sometime soon so I can try something different and have a completely different experience!

Starfield offers players different backgrounds and skills to level up, but in the time I spent with the game I didn’t really find much by way of unique content to match either the character I’d made or the way I hoped to play the game. Baldur’s Gate 3 does a much better job in this regard, with character classes that have a massive impact on the way the game plays.

There are some absolutely incredible characters to meet in Baldur’s Gate 3, all of whom are voiced beautifully and feel like real, well-rounded people with their own motivations. Keeping them all happy and working together is part of the experience, too. Just thinking about the game again has got me salivating; I can’t wait to jump back in for that second playthrough!

Sci-Fi Adventure:
The Mass Effect Trilogy

Commander Shepard’s crew in *Mass Effect 2*.

You can pick up the complete Mass Effect trilogy in one bundle called the Legendary Edition, which includes all three games plus their DLC. This could be another title to look for when it’s on sale, as I’ve seen Legendary Edition at a fairly steep discount in some recent Steam sales. If you’re new to the trilogy, or returning to it for the first time in a long time, it’s the easiest way to get the complete experience.

When I think about a sci-fi adventure set in a unique world, Mass Effect and its two sequels leap to mind. The trilogy isn’t an open-world experience; it’s much more linear than a game like Starfield in that respect. The games build up a main story focusing on a galaxy-ending threat, but also smaller character-focused stories featuring a diverse (and occasionally wacky) cast. Again, the voice acting to bring these characters to life is incredible, and all of the folks who join the crew of the Normandy are fun, fascinating, and frightening to various degrees!

The Mass Effect trilogy was criticised for its ending back in 2012, and I think it’s worth stating that some of that criticism was absolutely fair. There should have been a way for the third entry in the series to pay off more decisions and choices that had been made. But even with that weakness, I still feel that the trilogy is worth playing for any fan of sci-fi. The characters and world-building in particular are incredible.

And in terms of gameplay, there’s a lot to love with Mass Effect. A third-person cover-based shooter is already a blast, but Mass Effect adds both tech and magical powers into the mix, shaking things up. Different character builds play quite differently from one another, making it worth going back to replay all three games to get a new experience.

Open World Game:
Red Dead Redemption II

Red Dead Redemption II is a masterpiece; one of the finest video games ever made. And director Todd Howard had the audacity to suggest, in a pre-launch interview, that Starfield was drawing inspiration from the way in which its open world was designed and built. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that, because the comparison it invited is… well, let’s just say it’s an unfavourable one for Starfield and leave it at that.

I’ve had a fascination with the American “Wild West” since my schoolfriends and I used to play “Cowboys and Indians” on the playground. Red Dead Redemption II transported me to that time and place in a way I truly did not believe was possible, and I found myself having dreams about the game during my playthrough. I absolutely adored the time I got to spend in that world – over 100 hours on a single playthrough.

Promo image of protagonist Arthur Morgan.

The story of Red Dead Redemption II is dense, adult, and deeply emotional, packing a real punch as it reaches its crescendo. When people say that “video games can be artistic” or “video games can be just as good as films and TV shows,” it’s stories like Red Dead Redemption II that we can point to.

But more than that, the world in which the game was set was beautiful and jam-packed with things to do. It’s possible to wander on foot or on horseback through the wilderness, into the mountains, across the grassy plains, and beyond… just taking it all in. I’d heard great things about Red Dead Redemption II and knew I was in for something special, but even with the hype and high expectations, the game absolutely blew me away. It’s one of the best games I’ve ever played in my life.

Narrative Experience:
Shenmue I & II

I never miss an opportunity to talk about Shenmue! This was one of the first games I played that felt truly “cinematic;” as if its story would be right at home on the big screen. I absolutely adored that experience, and while some aspects of the first Shenmue in particular can feel dated by today’s standards… at the time it was genuinely groundbreaking.

Unfortunately, Shenmue I & II has to come with the caveat that its story is incomplete. Beautifully written, gripping, and populated with a fantastic cast of characters… but nevertheless without an ending. I was deeply disappointed in 2019 when I learned that Shenmue III – a game that fans donated their own money to help create – would not be finishing the story, as I felt that was its only objective.

Protagonist Ryo Hazuki meets Santa Claus.

But we’re drifting off-topic once more! The first two Shenmue games – which can be picked up in one package, at least on PC – were fantastic during the Dreamcast era. They’re well worth playing in their own right to follow a genuinely enjoyable story, but twenty-plus years later, I also feel that Shenmue is a piece of gaming history. This was one of the first titles to come close to offering an open world, one of the first games to pioneer systems like dynamic weather and NPCs with routines, and one of the first to allow players to step away from the main quest to pursue mini-games and other activities. Shenmue pioneered ideas that many modern games now take for granted.

It also created the quick-time event… which may be a mark against it, depending on your point of view! For me, Shenmue feels like a game that was ahead of its time, pushing the boundaries and taking gaming in a new direction. Maybe some folks weren’t ready for that in 1999/2000. But Shenmue I & II are well worth revisiting, if for no other reason than to take part in an engaging and somewhat mysterious story.

Base-Building:
Banished

A town in *Banished* with a forest, houses, a chapel, and pastures.

Another game I never miss a chance to discuss is Banished! Maybe it’s stretching the name to call this a “base-builder,” as it’s more of a town-building game akin to a stripped-down Sim City, but for players who were interested in building settlements and bases in Starfield, I think there are enough similarities to warrant its inclusion on a list like this one!

Banished is fantastic. Its charm lies in its relative simplicity, as there aren’t so many buildings and jobs for citizens to be overwhelming. But that simplicity blankets a surprisingly challenging game, and getting the right balance of resources to keep the town going is far trickier than it seems! Banished is a balancing act, requiring farms, orchards, blacksmiths, and other buildings and professions to keep the citizens of a small town fed, healthy, and happy.

A hospital and a field of wheat in *Banished*.

I’ve sunk countless hours into Banished, and every few months or so I find myself drifting back to the game, ready to start a new save file. It always boggles my mind that the entire game was created by a single developer – I’d still have found it to be a fun and impressive game if it had been worked on by an entire studio!

If part of the appeal of Starfield was striking out for a new land, creating a settlement, and harvesting resources, maybe a game like Banished will scratch that itch. Even if not, it’s well worth playing in its own right, because building, maintaining, and managing a town successfully is a fun challenge. I have a longer piece about Banished, and if you’d like to read it you can find it by clicking or tapping here.

TV Series:
The Expanse

The Expanse is one of the best sci-fi shows of the past few years without a doubt. In a similar way to Starfield, it shows a near-future level of technology and a solar system populated entirely by humans – without any aliens to be seen. Humanity has splintered into different factions, each of which has its own agenda, but at its core, The Expanse follows a few compelling characters rather than taking a birds-eye view of the political landscape of the solar system.

It’s hard to say too much about The Expanse without spoiling it, but aesthetically there are some similarities to Starfield. The way spaceships are designed in The Expanse feels similar, at least in some respects, to the way they’re presented in Starfield – so if that kind of NASA-inspired look is part of what drew you to Starfield, you’ll see at least some of that in The Expanse.

The spacecraft Rocinante in *The Expanse*.

Obviously a TV series is completely different from a video game, and I don’t think The Expanse can ever be a like-for-like replacement. But if you haven’t seen it and you’re not sure what to do with yourself after burning out on Starfield, I’d absolutely encourage you to check it out. It’s well worth a watch, and it has at least some points of comparison with Starfield.

I had a great time with the show, and I was pleased to see Amazon pick it up after it was dropped by its original network. The Expanse has now completed its six-season run, and you can binge-watch the entire thing on Amazon Prime Video at time of writing.

So that’s it!

We’ve found a few things to play instead of Starfield. If, like me, you didn’t get on with Starfield, or if you’ve just spent so much time with it that you need a break, I hope this list has given you some inspiration! Some of the titles discussed above can be found at a discount when sales roll around, so it might be worth adding some or all of them to your wishlist ahead of the holiday season.

I really wanted Starfield to be my “game of the season,” carrying me through to Christmas and into the new year. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to the hype or the expectations I had for it, and after about thirty hours of trying to push through and waiting for it to “get good,” I gave up. Starfield is still installed on my PC at time of writing, but I have no plans to return to the game any time soon.

I hope this has been a bit of fun, and if I gave you an idea or two then I’ve done my job!

All titles discussed above are the copyright of their respective developer, publisher, and/or studio. Some screenshots and promotional artwork used above courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Starfield: Further Thoughts

Tue 10.10.23Tue 10.10.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Starfield’s main quest, including its ending.

I have to confess that I haven’t played a lot more of Starfield since I last shared my thoughts on the game, its flaws, and how Bethesda might want to respond to some of the biggest points of criticism. But as I’ve sat with the game in the month since it released, I’ve found a few more things to say that I didn’t get to mention in either of my two big post-launch pieces about Starfield. It’s these points that we’re going to talk about today – and if you ignored the spoiler warning above, please know that we’re going to discuss the ending of the main quest and Starfield’s New Game Plus mode.

I feel that Skyrim’s unprecedented success changed something at Bethesda. The company ceased viewing its games as individual stories to be created, completed, and published, and instead began seeing all of its projects as ongoing, long-running experiences. Because Skyrim remained popular for years after its release, Bethesda seems to have internalised that and expected it to become the “new normal,” deliberately taking steps to build all future games with that goal in mind. We saw that most obviously with Fallout 76, but I’d argue very strongly that it happened with Starfield as well.

In a recent interview with Insomniac Games (creators of Marvel’s Spider-Man, among other successful projects), Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard said that Starfield was “a good base of a game to build upon,” referencing the company’s plans for future DLC and additional development for years to come. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of talk of years-long plans for Starfield. In fact, it seems that building a kind of single-player live-service title was one of Bethesda’s main objectives when developing the game.

My question is this: was Starfield screwed over by this idea?

Find me a recent game that billed itself as having a “ten-year plan” or a “five-year roadmap” that actually went the distance. Whether we’re talking about the likes of Anthem, Marvel’s Avengers, or Halo Infinite, many titles have come along promising something like this – only to fail to deliver. Games that genuinely last a decade or more are seldom planned that way; titles like Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto V, or Skyrim are lightning in a bottle. These one-off games succeed for almost unquantifiable reasons – and a massive amount of luck. Corporate planning to replicate that kind of once-in-a-generation level of success has almost never worked. Massive developers like Rockstar have faltered, and even some of the biggest brands and properties on the planet, like Marvel, have been unable to make a “five-year experience” work.

*Anthem’*s “roadmap” of content that was supposed to be added to the game.

And I can’t help but feel echoes of the likes of Anthem in Starfield. Parts of the game feel barebones and incomplete, as if waiting for future “content drops” and updates to round things out. There are plenty of missions and quests to get stuck into in Starfield, for example, but where are the cosmetics and skins? Why are there so few weapon styles, outfits, skins, and the like? I said when I wrote up my first impressions of Starfield that I was pleased to see the game wasn’t being excessively monetised… but looking at the lack of cosmetic variety and skins, it seems pretty clear that Bethesda plans to add these as paid-for DLC.

The corporation is no stranger to this. In fact, I’d argue that Bethesda is actually one of the guiltiest parties in the entire games industry when it comes to microtransactions – especially in the single-player space. Oblivion’s infamous horse armour DLC in 2006 was one of the most notorious examples of bad value cosmetic DLC in a single-player game, and one of the first to attract mainstream attention. Other companies saw Bethesda essentially getting away with it, and a truly unfortunate trend accelerated.

*Oblivion’*s horse armour DLC was released in 2006.

At time of writing in October 2023, the only skins available in the game come from expensive pre-order or premium editions of Starfield. That’s already a red flag, in my opinion, and it seems all but certain that future skins will also only be available as paid add-ons.

Starfield could look very different in six months or a year from now, with in-game purchases that could easily push the cost of the complete game closer to £200. Remember that in order to get the currently available skins, and pre-order Shattered Space, players are already having to fork over £100 to Bethesda for Starfield’s premium edition, so £200 when additional skins and cosmetics have been released doesn’t even seem like a stretch. By the time Bethesda finally stops working on Starfield altogether in the years ahead, the full price of the game plus all of its DLC and additional content could run to far more than that.

Skins are currently available as pre-order and special edition bonuses only.

So I’m rescinding my “doesn’t feel excessively monetised” statement from my earlier piece. Starfield feels like a game that’s being primed for additional monetisation – and rumours of paid mods have not escaped my notice, either. Paid mods will have to be the subject of a longer piece one day – but suffice to say for now that I’m not a supporter of them in any way, shape, or form.

Bethesda took a risk by turning Starfield into a single-player live-service title, and while I will say that the “base” version of the game still has a lot on offer – for people who are still interested in Bethesda games and the way they design their quests – I’m not sure it was the right decision. Building a good game with fun gameplay and an engaging story should have been priority number one – but it feels like both of these things took a back seat. Planning for a decade’s worth of add-ons and extra content became Bethesda’s main ambition. I’m not convinced all of these planned pieces of DLC will see the light of day.

This is where skins will appear – when Bethesda is ready to begin selling them.

When I really dig down, Starfield’s biggest issue for me personally isn’t actually that its gameplay feels outdated and uninspired. It’s that the game’s story just didn’t grab me and the worldbuilding was so bland and uninteresting that I didn’t care to spend any more time in it. The world of Starfield feels small, flat, and boring – and when the gameplay backing it up was lacklustre too, I couldn’t find a way to make progress. I’m someone who’ll happily play through some absolutely bog-standard gameplay if I’m enjoying a story or getting lost in a fictional world, but with Starfield offering neither an entertaining story nor an engaging world… sticking with the game lost its appeal.

I looked up spoilers online to see what happens further along Starfield’s main quest. I was bored to tears playing it, but if it picked up later on I thought I might be able to push through to get to the promised moment where the game would finally “get good.” But what I read actually surprised me – and I ended up feeling glad that I didn’t waste any more hours of my life playing through the story.

One of the artefacts at the heart of the game’s story.

What is one of the most basic pillars of storytelling? Any narrative needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. If a story revolves around a big mystery, solving that mystery is absolutely key to making it feel complete. Starfield’s writers chose to ignore this absolutely fundamental rule of narrative construction, and the result is that the game’s main story seems like it comes to a deeply unsatisfying “end.”

Starfield began by setting up a mystery: what is this artefact? What does it do? And who made it? Then the game introduces us to a team of people dedicated to figuring it all out. There are major structural weaknesses on this side of the story – like what anyone involved in Constellation actually does or has been doing for the past thirty years prior to the player character showing up – but that’s somewhat beside the point. After a series of glorified fetch quests that see us chasing different artefacts across the galaxy, Starfield introduces two antagonists and magical powers that we can learn… but then the story ends without explaining anything about what the artefacts were or who created them.

*Starfield’*s main story has a deeply unsatisfying ending – and the journey to get there isn’t much fun either.

Failing to solve the key mystery at the heart of the narrative, and refusing to even answer the most basic of questions about that mystery, ignores one of the fundamental tenets of storytelling. It makes the whole story – which then begins again in a weird kind of cyclical manner – feel incomplete and frustrating.

It seems to me that this aspect of the game – starting over by “travelling to an alternate reality” – is nothing more than a narrative gimmick to allow Bethesda to put a New Game Plus mode into Starfield.

And why would Bethesda want to add such a feature? None of the company’s previous titles included New Game Plus, after all. Oh, that’s right: because Starfield was built to be a “ten-year experience” rather than a complete game, and New Game Plus feels like an easy way to keep players engaged for longer.

I couldn’t even get through the game *once*…

So we come full-circle, and I think we can reasonably make the case that Starfield has been harmed in more ways than one by Bethesda’s insistence on planning for the long-term at the expense of the short-term. Maybe Shattered Space, or some additional piece of DLC in the future, will resolve Starfield’s big mystery. And maybe, if that happens, the main story of the game will feel complete and worth experiencing. But if the best possible spin I can put on Starfield is that it’s an incomplete experience that needs additional content to actually feel like its story has a proper ending… that’s not great. It makes it feel no different from dozens of other incomplete live-service games.

I usually avoid live-service titles, and I do so for one basic reason: I don’t like to play an incomplete game. If a film or season of TV ends on a cliffhanger, with promises of a resolution to come next time, that’s one thing. But Starfield isn’t a film or a TV show, it’s a single-player game that shouldn’t depend on future DLC or updates to actually complete its main story.

The longer I’ve sat with Starfield, the further the game has slipped down in my estimation. There are unfavourable comparisons with other recent releases that can’t be avoided, but at its core we’re stuck with a game that feels fundamentally incomplete. As Todd Howard himself admitted, Bethesda made a “base experience” that they intend to build on over the next few years – and that they also expect modders to help with. That might’ve been okay were it not for the outdated and buggy gameplay combined with an uninteresting and bland setting.

So like with other live-service titles, maybe Starfield will be worth revisiting after those promised updates, content drops, and DLC packs have been created. Maybe the “ultra deluxe anniversary edition” will be worth playing in 2030 – so if I live that long, maybe I’ll check it out. But I’ve been wasting my time on a game that, for all of its lofty promises, just isn’t what I’d been expecting. As I said last time: part of that is on me for internalising too much of the hype and excitement that built up in the months before Starfield’s launch. But a lot of the blame lies with Bethesda for creating an uninspiring setting, a bland, incomplete story, and for building a game that feels a decade out of date.

Forget about Starfield becoming a “ten-year experience.” Bethesda needed to catch up on at least ten years worth of improvements and changes in game design and development. Those are the ten years that Bethesda should have been focused on. The company should have been looking at what comparable games in the open-world, action-adventure, and role-playing spaces have been doing since Skyrim launched and worked to incorporate some of those elements into Starfield. Instead, Bethesda took the Skyrim formula, cut out content to introduce later by way of paid DLC and add-ons, and planned for a decade’s worth of content for a game that already feels at least ten years out of date.

I wanted to love Starfield. The game’s overall aesthetic and many of its creative choices looked to create exactly the kind of sci-fi setting that appeals most to me. Blending real-world design elements with some of the sci-fi properties that I remember fondly from years past should have been exactly what I was looking for. I was worried that I was too harsh on Starfield and that I’d been treating the game unfairly or unkindly… but the longer I’ve sat with it the more I’ve seen its “ten-year plan” laid bare. I don’t care for live-services, for incomplete experiences, or for badly-written stories with cheap endings. I think I’m done with Starfield for now – though I will give the caveat that the game could be worth picking up again once its planned add-ons have been released.

Starfield is out now for PC and Xbox Series S & X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.