starfield hype – Trekking with Dennis

Ten more Starfield questions

Spoiler Warning: There are no major story spoilers for Starfield, but there may be spoilers for the game and its features and systems. This article also uses screenshots and promotional images.

Well it turns out that my last post about Starfield wasn’t enough, and that there are still more questions about the game! Starfield is my most-anticipated game right now, and along with my excitement for Bethesda’s upcoming open-galaxy sci-fi role-playing shooter, I have some concerns and some general questions about the game and how it will work. A few days ago I posed ten questions about Starfield – so click or tap here to check out those questions if you haven’t already – but I’ve already come up with ten more!

What I’m trying to do with these questions is not say “here’s a feature that I think must be part of the game,” because I don’t want to make the mistake of getting over-hyped nor building up an inaccurate picture of Starfield. Instead, what I want to do is fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of the game, because there are things that Bethesda hasn’t clarified. There are features that seemed to be hinted at by the Starfield showcase that haven’t been confirmed, there are questions raised by statements Bethesda and Xbox made, and then there are systems and mechanics that have been included in past Bethesda or Xbox titles that may make their way to Starfield – we just don’t know yet! That’s my mindset when I pose these questions, anyway. As I said when I wrote up my Starfield “wishlist,” I have high hopes that the game will be fun regardless of whether or not it does everything that I think I want from it at this early stage!

I have a couple of caveats that I always give when I put together a list like this one. The first is that I have no “insider information,” nor any connection with Bethesda, Xbox, or Microsoft. I’m not claiming that anything we’re going to talk about will, won’t, or must be part of Starfield – this is a list put together by someone who’s interested in the game, based on the showcase, interviews, and other marketing material. Secondly, all of this is the subjective opinion of one person – so if you hate all of my questions and ideas, that’s totally okay!

Finally, as I said last time, I haven’t seen every single interview that Starfield’s developers and producers have given. Nor have I read every single press release, comment, or social media post – so it’s possible that I’ve missed something, or that one of the questions on this list will have already been answered. My ageing brain may not have retained everything, too!

With all of that out of the way, then, let’s jump into my list of questions!

Question #1:
Is the main quest fully complete?
Or: will DLC be required to complete the main story?

*Starfield’*s premium edition includes access to the first piece of planned DLC.

As you can see from the image above, pre-ordering the “premium edition” of Starfield grants players access to the first piece of planned DLC. I’ve already expressed my scepticism about this; it seems far too early to be considering DLC when the game isn’t even out. But the subtitle of this piece of DLC is what I’m curious about today, because Shattered Space is described as the “first story expansion” for Starfield.

This raises the unpleasant spectre of an incomplete game; a “release now, fix later” title with promises of a “roadmap” to more content. This is the model often adopted by “live service” games, and it seldom works as intended. I’m all for an expansion pack, don’t get me wrong, but the way this one has been advertised has me at least a little worried.

How’s that roadmap working out for you, *Anthem*?

Bethesda has two points in its favour here, as I see it. The first is that, despite a very poor launch, the company has continued to support Fallout 76 with updates and expansions. Even if Starfield is released to poor critical reception, that gives me hope that support for the game will continue, and that at the very least that first planned expansion will still arrive. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Bethesda’s single-player titles have been well-supported by expansion packs. Morrowind got massive expansions in Tribunal and Bloodmoon, and as much as we like to mock Oblivion’s horse armour DLC, that game also received the major Shivering Isles expansion pack. So the company has a solid track record here.

That being said, I’m still a little concerned about Starfield’s story potentially not being complete at launch. Given that the base game is already priced at £60 or $70, it would be nigh-on exploitative to force players to pay an additional fee of at least £25 or $30 to buy the next chapter of the story. Even more so considering that Shattered Space has been in development alongside the base game.

Question #2:
Is Starfield capped at 30fps on PC?
Or: is it possible to push Starfield to 60fps and beyond on higher-end PCs?

A fancy-pants gaming PC.
(No, it’s not mine!)

Although it wasn’t discussed at the showcase, Starfield’s director Todd Howard subsequently confirmed in an interview that the game will be capped at 30 frames-per-second on Xbox Series S and X consoles, with the less-powerful machine also running the game at 1440p resolution. In the same interview, Howard seemed to indicate that the game can run at 60fps on PC, at least in Bethesda’s internal tests.

But what hasn’t been made clear is whether that will be an option for players on PC. Many modern PC games have frame-rate options as standard, and offer features like Vsync, where the game will match a monitor’s refresh rate. I recently upgraded to an RTX 3070 Ti – a fairly powerful GPU. I’d expect to hit at least 60fps in most titles – or at least in games that are well-optimised and have proper PC ports!

Thats being said, I’m not a stickler for frame-rate in the way some folks are. I’m not even sure I could tell much of a difference between frame-rates in a lot of cases. But 60fps isn’t even the gold standard, it’s a fairly low bar that most PC games in 2023 should be able to clear. If Starfield is so massive and so detailed that its console version needs to be frame-capped, then I guess that makes sense. But many folks have PCs with specs that far exceed the Xbox Series X.

If this isn’t an official feature, don’t despair. I wouldn’t be shocked at all to see a mod pop up in the days after Starfield’s launch that uncaps the game’s frame rate!

Question #3:
What impact (if any) do different levels of gravity have on exploration and combat?

At the showcase we saw a zero-G section of gameplay featured prominently. Whether this is a recurring feature, or whether zero-G sections are part of scripted missions only wasn’t clear – but it was still something cool to see. We also saw that planets could have different levels of gravity, which makes sense!

But what wasn’t entirely clear from the gameplay that was shown off is what impact – if any – this will have. If I land on a high-gravity planet, for instance, does that mean I move slower, or can carry fewer items? On a low-gravity world can I jump tens of metres into the air without a jetpack? And what about firing a weapon – do projectiles have less range in high gravity than in low?

Will exploring in low gravity differ from exploring in high gravity?

I’m not banking on any of those things being true, because it seems like it would be complicated and time-consuming to create features like that. But at the same time, it would be neat if gravity was a consideration. There are so many different ways in which this could manifest, potentially impacting everything from combat to resource-gathering.

Although I’m not necessarily expecting a massive and deep gravity levels system, what I will say is this: if a planet designated as a high-gravity world and a planet designated as a low-gravity world are functionally the same, with gravity not seeming to have much of an impact on exploration or gameplay, it will raise the question of why it was even mentioned or included!

Question #4:
Will DLC eventually come to Game Pass?

Game Pass is building up quite the library of titles!

As noted above, there’s already DLC planned for Starfield. But it doesn’t seem like that DLC will come to Game Pass – at least, not at first. The base game is available on Game Pass, but it’s also possible to pre-order the premium edition of Starfield, complete with the DLC. This kind of feels like a rough deal for Game Pass players – especially if the first piece of DLC won’t be ready for months or even years.

To be fair to Starfield, other games work a similar way. DLC for the likes of Age of Empires II is also something that has to be bought separately – but that doesn’t really excuse it. This is something Microsoft will have to figure out as Game Pass continues to grow, and while some optional content and DLC might still be okay to sell separately, things like Shattered Space might not be – especially if it’s vital to complete the main quest.

Game Pass players get access to one of the pre-order bonuses.

With Skyrim, the current Game Pass version includes the game’s major expansion packs. So I wonder if, at some point in the future, Starfield will be updated in a similar way. Microsoft is raking in the money from Game Pass every single month, and I’m sure that Starfield’s launch will bring an influx of new subscribers to the platform. But when Shattered Space is ready, some of those folks will be disappointed to learn that they have to pay an additional charge on top of their Game Pass subscription.

The subscription model is still new in the gaming realm, and there are questions like this that need to be sorted out! But if Game Pass is to achieve Microsoft’s aim of being “the Netflix of video games,” then it can’t get away with continuing to charge for add-ons and expansion packs, surely. Netflix doesn’t do that; you don’t get access to the first season of The Witcher then have to pay an additional fee to watch Season 2. So I’d love to see Shattered Space and any further DLC expansion packs come to Game Pass on day one.

Question #5:
How important is crafting?
And: can weapons and items break?

I’m biased here: I detest weapon and item durability in practically every game. Very few titles manage to get this feature right, and more often than not it just turns into a frustrating experience. Weapons breaking partway through combat and items needing to be replaced every ten minutes may seem “realistic” in some ways… but it’s not exactly fun.

There are better ways to deal with weapons and items, such as cosmetic wear and tear, upgrades, or simply offering an abundance of choice. Rather than forcing players to a workbench or crafting station to keep re-creating or repairing tools, it’s far better – in my opinion, of course – to figure out other ways to make gameplay interesting.

This may be an in-game crafting station.

This also speaks to a potentially much larger point: what kind of role will there be for crafting in Starfield? We know that there can be a crafting station aboard a player’s spaceship, but how often will we be required to use it? What kind of items will we need to craft or upgrade? And crucially: how necessary will crafting be?

Bethesda role-playing games have always offered customisation options, even for things like weapons. Swords could be enchanted in Morrowind, for instance, and guns could be upgraded in Fallout 4. The latter also introduced settlement building, with resources needing to be collected. I feel there’s scope for a detailed and in-depth crafting system in Starfield, but I also think it’s something that may be optional for players who want a more action-forward experience.

Question #6:
Can we give names to outposts and planets?

“Jemison Outpost 1” doesn’t feel like the most inspired name…

I’m fairly sure that re-naming spaceships is possible in Starfield; it certainly seems that way based on footage from the showcase. And of course the player character’s name can be freely chosen. But what about outposts and planets? We saw at the showcase several locations that were simply called “civilian outpost” or “industrial outpost,” so I’m not sure whether or not this will be possible.

It would be nice to be able to give a name to an outpost, though! Instead of making my home at the rather clinical and official-sounding “mining outpost,” it would be neat if I could give it a more personal name that reflects my character, their style, or even simply geographic features present at the base.

While I have some hope for outpost names being possible, I’m far less convinced that re-naming planets will be part of Starfield. But again, I’d quite like this to be included in the game. Obviously we won’t be re-naming Mars or Jemison, nor any of the other named worlds that already have settlements. But if I stumble upon an uninhabited rock called something like Kepler-295 B, and decide to build the first-ever human outpost on its surface, I’d like to be able to give that world a more personal name!

Maybe this seems like something minor, and it is in a way. But these kinds of personal touches can go a long way to making the role-playing experience feel immersive; coming home to Fort Dennis on the planet Dentopia would be a lot more fun than returning to Outpost #7 on Kepler-259 B.

Question #7:
How do factions work?
Or: does joining one faction permanently cut off another?

The Freestar Collective is one of the main factions in *Starfield*.

In past Bethesda games, choosing to associate with one faction over another could permanently cut off that second faction, making it impossible to complete every available quest in a single playthrough. The example that leaps to mind are Morrowind’s Great Houses: joining one would mean the other two would be permanently unavailable.

This adds a lot of replay value to a game, especially if those factions have well-developed characters and long, detailed questlines of their own. Indeed, one of the appeals of a Bethesda role-playing game is that some of these factions and their missions can be at least as in-depth as the main quest and just as worthwhile to play.

Joining one Great House in *Morrowind* would permanently close off the other two in that playthrough.

We’ve seen at least a hint at something similar in Starfield via the traits menu in the character creator. Choosing to have a United Colonies background means that players can’t also choose to have a Freestar Collective background, and there are three religious affiliations which are also mutually exclusive. Whether and to what extent those traits will impact gameplay is still not known, but it’s interesting, at any rate.

Starfield will contain joinable factions in addition to the Constellation organisation, and it seems logical to assume that being a member of the Freestar Rangers might permanently cut off membership in the United Colonies’ space force. That’s just one example. If these factions are as deep and well-developed as we’d hope they would be in a Bethesda game, this feature would add a ton of replayability to Starfield.

Question #8:
Are there invisible walls?
Or: are landing zones limited in size?

Will we see a message like this in *Starfield*?

This kind of ties into a point that I raised last time: how much of the surface of an individual planet can be explored? There was mention at the showcase and in subsequent interviews about selecting a “landing zone” on a planet’s surface – with players seemingly given a completely free choice of where to land. But do those zones have limits, or is it truly going to be possible to circumnavigate a planet on foot?

If there are limits to landing zones, I hope that invisible walls won’t be the way it’s handled. Something like that would absolutely break the immersion, even if landing zones are massive in size. A game that encourages exploration will surely push players to roam far away from their spaceships.

I’m not really sure how Starfield should deal with this. The best-case scenario is that exploration is completely unlimited, and players who want to will be able to go on long-distance expeditions far away from where they landed. Look at games like Minecraft, for example, and how some players will go on huge treks across vast swathes of the procedurally-generated map.

That being said, there are ways in sci-fi to generate a technobabble explanation or reason for just about anything! If it were explained at an early stage that, for example, communicators had a limited range, then maybe that could be an excuse for why roaming too far beyond where a spaceship landed isn’t possible. I think running into a random invisible wall with no explanation won’t cut it, but some kind of “turn back” message, perhaps with multiple warnings preceding it, could work.

Question #9:
Are gas giants among the promised 1,000 explorable planets?
Or: what role will gas giants play in Starfield?

This appears to be a moon orbiting a gas giant.

Plenty of images and clips of Starfield prominently feature gas giants – massive planets like Saturn and Jupiter that are mostly comprised of hydrogen, helium, and other gaseous material. Because of the nature of gas giants, there isn’t a “surface” to speak of that can be visited; gas giants are comprised of various layers of gases and liquids, with the “boundaries” between different densities often being very gradual.

So it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll be able to land on gas giants – but can we fly near them? Can we fly into their cloudy atmospheres at all? What about gathering resources? In real life, gas giants are known to harbour vast quantities of helium – and helium-3 is confirmed to be the material used for spaceship fuel in Starfield. So gas giants could conceivably have resources to collect… somehow.

Jupiter and its moon Io, as photographed by NASA’s Cassini probe.

But how would this work? You can’t build an outpost on a gas giant like you would on the surface of a planet, and unless spaceships can be outfitted with equipment to harvest resources – something we also haven’t seen – then I’m just not sure how we’d go about extracting anything from a gas giant in the game.

Finally, Starfield’s marketing has promised 1,000 planets to explore. In real life, the majority of planets that have been discovered so far are gas giants or ice giants; will that be true of the majority of Starfield’s 1,000 planets, too? If so, it could cut down the number of planets we can actually land on by a considerable margin.

Question #10:
Are there procedurally-generated quests and missions?

Will some NPCs be randomly generated or dish out random quests?

We know that Starfield will use procedural generation for some of its planets and environments. There’s still a degree of confusion over how exactly this will function, but today I’m asking a different question! Are all of Starfield’s missions and quests hand-crafted? Or will there be procedurally-generated quests and missions?

Some games have random encounters and/or missions with set parameters but where the specific details are procedurally-generated. This could include, for example, a quest involving killing a monster – but where the quest-giver is a procedurally-generated NPC, the monster type is chosen at random, and so on.

Discovering a hand-crafted location in a random place!

Another example would be the patented “nemesis” system used in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel. Random NPCs in the enemy army would be promoted, depending on the actions of the player, and defeating these levelled-up enemies was an integral part of both titles. I’m not expecting anything like this in Starfield, it’s just an example of how this kind of randomness can work!

So will Starfield have anything comparable? Or have all of the game’s missions and quests been constructed by human developers from the ground up? The way Bethesda has talked about the game seems to suggest that at least some quests may take place in randomly-assigned locations.

So that’s it!

I managed to find another ten questions that I’d love Bethesda and Xbox to answer before Starfield’s release.

As I’ve said before, the point here is not to pre-emptively criticise the game, nor to deliberately seek out things to pick on. Instead, I’m concerned that Bethesda and Microsoft ought to do more to rein in speculation when it gets out-of-hand. If a feature isn’t going to be included in the game, or won’t behave in the way players are expecting, it’s infinitely better to say so now, months before release. The alternative is that the hype train ends up going down the wrong track – before ultimately derailing when players finally get their hands on Starfield.

A good marketing team knows how to say “no” in a way that isn’t offputting, and how to redirect the conversation in a positive direction. If the interiors of spaceships can’t be customised, for example, then tell us and be up-front about that – but also shine a light on outpost building or the variety of costumes and cosmetic options elsewhere in the game. That’s just one example. But covering things up or saying “pass” when asked a basic question about an in-game system or feature that would in no way be a spoiler… well, it isn’t always a good look.

There are reasons why Starfield should sit in the “wait for the reviews” category. But at the same time, it’s absolutely my most-anticipated game and I can feel the hype train leaving the station. I really can’t wait to get my hands on Starfield, and even if the game doesn’t do absolutely everything that I think I want it to right now, I still think we’re in for a fun time.

There are quests in practically all of Bethesda’s older games that I still haven’t played – or even started! These games tend to be overstuffed with things to do, such that even years later I still haven’t seen or done it all. But I greatly enjoyed all of them in different ways, and the chance to take to the stars in a sci-fi role-playing game like this… it has the potential to be incredible. I haven’t felt this much excitement for a new game since Bethesda’s own Morrowind more than two decades ago!

Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 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.

Starfield: Ten Questions

Sun 02.07.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Although there are no major story spoilers, minor spoilers may be present for Starfield and its in-game systems. This article also uses screenshots and images from the showcase and trailers.

The Starfield showcase has told us a lot about the upcoming sci-fi role-playing game and what we can expect from it. Bethesda has followed this up by putting out game director Todd Howard to participate in a number of interviews, including one in which he was strangely asked about fishing. But there are still some question-marks hanging over Starfield, at least from my perspective.

I’m not in a position to interview anyone or put these questions to Bethesda and Xbox directly. So instead I thought it could be fun to write them out here – as well as share my thoughts on what the answer may be, and what I’d want the answer to be! As I said when I wrote my Starfield wishlist, I have high hopes that the game will be enjoyable to play regardless of whether or not it does everything that I think I want right now. It’s also possible that updates and DLC will add certain features and mechanics in the months and years after the game launches – so if something seems to be “missing” that a lot of players would like to see, don’t bet against Bethesda adding it somewhere down the line.

As always, I have a couple of caveats! Firstly, I have no “insider information,” and I’m not trying to claim that anything we’re going to talk about today definitely will or won’t be part of Starfield. These are questions I have about the game based on pre-release footage, the showcase, and interviews I’ve seen with Bethesda and Xbox folks. Secondly, all of this is the subjective opinion of one person; if you hate all of my questions or if I don’t ask something that seems blindingly obvious to you, that’s okay! There should be enough room in the gaming community and the Starfield fandom for different perspectives and points of view.

Finally, I haven’t seen every interview, nor read every single comment by Bethesda and Microsoft. It’s possible that I’ve missed something, or that something I’m uncertain about has been clarified already. My ageing brain may not have retained everything, too!

With all of that out of the way, let’s jump into my list of questions!

Question #1:
Do planets rotate?
Or: do planets have a day-night cycle?

We’ve seen some clips that seem to take place in the full light of day, and others that take place in darkness. So it’s obvious that night and day plays a role in Starfield, at least to an extent. But what I haven’t been able to gauge so far is whether there are day-night cycles on every planet – and if there are, would every planet behave the same way?

Past Bethesda games have had day-night cycles, with different monsters appearing at night, for example. In some games, sleeping is only permitted between certain hours, and some quests might even be time-specific in some cases. But if we’re heading out into space, planetary rotation can mean a lot more than just whether the sun is in the sky or not!

Some planets that lack atmospheres have extremes of temperature depending on whether they’re facing their star or not. Mercury, for instance, varies wildly between -170°C at “night” to over 400°C during its “daytime.” If we’re exploring planets comparable to Mercury in Starfield, when and where we land could determine what kind of environmental protection we’d need, for example.

The Starfield showcase seemed to suggest that planetary temperature was one factor that could affect the player character, with the HUD keeping track of temperature. But whether that changes, or whether each planet or landing site has a fixed, unchanging temperature is unclear. I’d love to know whether planets rotate, whether there are varying day-night cycles for the main cities and locations, and whether or to what extent these things could impact exploration.

Question #2:
Is the entire surface of a planet explorable?

If I disembark from my spaceship and head in one direction in a straight line, will I be able to keep walking, walking, and walking all the way around the circumference of a procedurally-generated planet? If I stay in that straight line without deviating, will I eventually walk all the way back to my spaceship?

There was a lot of talk at the showcase about “if you can see it, you can go there,” with a moon in the sky of a planet being pointed out. But there was also talk of players choosing a “landing zone” on each planet or moon that we’ll visit – and the implication of that could be that each “zone” has limits.

I’m not sure how many people would want to walk all the way around a planet. Exploring the entire surface of even the smallest planet or moon in the solar system would be an arduous task… but gamers love to take on challenges! Walking hundreds or thousands of miles to fully circumnavigate a planet might be something that some folks will want to do.

Regardless, if there are limits to how far players can explore, or how much of the surface of a planetary body is explorable at one time, those limits will have to be handled carefully. Invisible walls might not cut it here… and could certainly impact the sense of immersion. But at the same time, it’s hard to see how this could be avoided, even given the game’s size and ambitious scope.

Question #3:
Will there be microtransactions, an in-game shop, purchasable currencies, and the like?

The game is launching with pre-order bonus items.

If the answer to this question is anything but a solid, definitive “no” then I will be deeply concerned and very disappointed. Already we’ve seen that not all Starfields are created equal: there are pre-order bonus outfits and deluxe edition-exclusive outfits already. Pre-order bonuses are nothing new, of course, but I’d still rather that every Starfield player could have access to all in-game cosmetic items.

But the existence of these in-game skins has me worried. Are Bethesda and Microsoft planning an in-game microtransaction marketplace? If so, will there be some kind of “premium currency” to go along with it? Some titles can feel downright exploitative with their in-app purchases, with cosmetic items in Diablo IV retailing for £20/$25 in some cases.

In some ways, we can blame Bethesda for being one of the pioneers of monetisation in single-player games. Oblivion’s horse armour DLC became infamous in 2006 as an exemplar of this kind of cheap cash-grab – and Bethesda has even tried to monetise mods with its “Creation Club” in Skyrim and Fallout 4.

In free-to-play games, in-game purchases can be fine – though they must still be reasonably priced and not unfair. But in a single-player, fully-priced title like Starfield, in-game purchases will be hard to justify – if not outright impossible. Bethesda needs to be honest about this, too – and not send out one version of the game to reviewers, then sneakily add in an in-app storefront after launch. We’ve seen similar things happen with other games. It’s a concern at this point that no one at Microsoft or Bethesda has ruled out in-game monetisation.

Question #4:
Will custom backgrounds be available?
(A background with a customisable name and a free choice of skills.)

The Starfield showcase showed off about sixteen different potential character backgrounds, with a handful of sci-fi staples like “bounty hunter” being joined by less common ones such as “chef!” These look like fun – but their inclusion raises a question: can we make our own custom background?

In Morrowind and Oblivion, it was possible to create a custom class. If players didn’t want to pick one of the pre-made options it was possible to become… well, anything. These custom classes also came with a free choice of starting skills. The pre-made backgrounds in Starfield each seem to come with three starter skills, so that raises the question of whether custom backgrounds exist, and if they do, whether it would be possible to have a free choice of skills to include.

At the showcase, it was clear that the choice of background could lead to some unique dialogue options and possibly even unique quests within Starfield. If that’s the case, Bethesda may not want players creating their own custom backgrounds. But it was a lot of fun in Morrowind and Oblivion to become a “dark knight” or “chocolatier,” and to choose which skills to give a boost to at the beginning of the game. This might not be something everyone wants to try – and I think in my first playthrough I’ll probably pick one of the pre-made options to see how much unique content is on offer. But it could be a ton of fun!

This is something that feels like it could be relatively easy to mod, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see a “custom background” mod created fairly soon after the game’s launch if it isn’t an official feature.

Question #5:
How abundant will resources be?

This cargo ship looks like it could carry a lot of resources.

We know that there will be resources to collect in Starfield, with some of these being able to be sold for cash and others perhaps being used to craft items or even in the construction of outposts and bases. But how abundant will these resources be? If you think about it, every single item ever used in the entire history of humankind has come from a single planet. All the lead, all the iron, all the uranium we’ve ever used across all of human history came from Earth. With that in mind, it might feel strange to visit a planet and find, say, 40kg of iron, half a brick of lead… and nothing else.

One of my concerns with Starfield is that a deliberate policy of forced scarcity might be used to push players to keep exploring and to keep visiting new planets and locations – or even to pay real-world money to “skip the grind.” Depending on what resources are needed for crafting, and how necessary in-game crafting will be to Starfield, this could become frustrating.

Not all planets and moons will have every available resource – nor should they. But there has to be a balance found that makes collecting resources feel fun and not like a chore. I would also hope that resources will be purchasable, at least in limited quantities. If I need, for example, 100kg of iron to craft something and I only have 98kg, there are going to be times where I’d rather spend a few credits than have to hop in my spaceship and seek out a planet to collect a paltry amount of a single resource!

So again, this is about balance. Exploring has to feel natural, resource collecting and crafting have to feel fun. If I want to become a miner or if I want to use resources to generate the majority of my income, that’s a different story. But for basic gameplay, it’s imperative that Starfield strikes the right balance between scarcity and abundance.

Question #6:
Can spaceship interiors be customised?

Exterior spaceship customisation is part of the game.

At the showcase, a Bethesda developer was prominently shown dropping a pilfered sandwich onto a pile aboard her ship. So we can infer from that that it’s possible to place individual items aboard a spaceship and have them remain there. But is that as far as we can go when it comes to personalising the inside of our flying homes?

I’d like to think it would be possible to do things like change colours, for instance. Changing the colours of the floors, walls, consoles, or furniture would be a step in the right direction, and would go some way to making a spaceship feel personal. There’s a danger, I fear, that no matter how great a ship might look on the outside, the inside might end up feeling like little more than a collection of snapped-together pieces.

Is this a bridge or a large cockpit module?

I’d love to think that we’d have choices over things like furniture. Do we want to pick this style of chair or that one? Do we want to put extra seats in the living area? How about a bigger kitchen? These are the kinds of decisions that I’d love to be making about my spaceship!

Bethesda has suggested that outposts may have a degree of customisation, with furniture and the like able to be positioned. Again, we don’t know how much customisation is available, how many items are available, and to what extent it will be possible to rearrange a room – but that sounds positive, at least. Even though I’d have expected to have heard something about this by now if it was possible for spaceships, I’m still crossing my fingers.

Question #7:
Do tiles and points of interest repeat?

At the showcase, Bethesda developers talked about how procedurally-generated planets will work. Todd Howard confirmed that there are hand-crafted “points of interest” to visit, and these will be randomly allocated to planets through this procedural generation system. While we don’t know how many of these pre-made locations there might be, if you think about how many individual tombs, ruins, and settlements there were in a game like Morrowind, it seems fair to think that there could be at least 100 – and possibly a lot more than that.

But here’s an interesting question: if Starfield’s procedural generation allocates these at random, does that mean we could encounter the same location twice? Will two “abandoned mine” locations be identical on different planets – or different parts of the same planet, come to that? And what about the tiles that make up a planet’s surface? Will they repeat, too?

How much of a planet’s surface will be made up of repeated tiles?

If a player visits a dozen or more planets in the same category – say frozen, icy worlds like Pluto – will we eventually see the same hills, the same mountains, the same lakes, and so on? After all, there can only be a fixed number of pre-made “puzzle pieces” for each type of planet or each biome, surely. There could be hundreds and hundreds of each – but in a game that encourages long-term play, it doesn’t seem impossible that we’d eventually run out of these tiles. What happens then?

If there are hundreds, thousands, or even more of these tiles and locales, the chances of encountering two identical ones in quick succession are going to be slim. But it could be immersion-breaking to land on a planet and encounter the exact same mountain or ruin as we’d already seen and explored somewhere else.

Question #8:
Are there civilian outposts, colonies, and small settlements beyond the main cities?

A spaceship at a spaceport in the Freestar Collective.

One thing that makes Bethesda’s worlds feel lived-in are the smaller towns and off-the-beaten-track settlements. Look at places like Hla Oad in Morrowind or Breakheart Banks in Fallout 4. These are small settlements with no connection to the main quests of their respective games. The player has no reason to visit them except for exploration and “to see what’s there.”

Starfield needs places like this, in my opinion. It’s great that New Atlantis will be Bethesda’s biggest-ever city, or that Neon will feel like a cyberpunk dystopia – but if there aren’t smaller places to randomly encounter in between those few big locations, Starfield’s galaxy will feel small. The population relative to the size of the map will feel unbalanced.

New Atlantis, capital of the United Colonies.

In other Bethesda games – and other open-world games by other developers, too – smaller settlements can have quests of their own. They often have unique NPCs, shops, taverns, and more. Some may be connected to a faction questline, too. So there should still be things to do in at least some of these smaller settlements!

It will feel strange, I fear, if the so-called “United Colonies” only has two cities under its banner, or if the Freestar Collective is a “collective” of no more than two settlements on two planets. Partly this is for that sense of immersion, to ensure that Starfield’s galaxy truly feels like a living, breathing, perpetual world that will exist whether or not the player character is part of it. But also it’s a question of balancing the game, and ensuring that its open world doesn’t feel too empty outside of a handful of cities.

Question #9:
Is it possible to build more than one outpost on a single planet?
And: is it possible to build an outpost on Earth?

Todd Howard has suggested that it may not be possible to build an outpost on every single one of Starfield’s planets – and that makes sense. Building an outpost right next to a major city might not be a good idea, for instance. Or planets owned by certain factions could be off-limits. But with Earth confirmed to be present in the game – and perhaps in a devastated or otherwise uninhabited state – I can’t be the only one who’s considering building an outpost there… can I?

If it’s truly possible to pick any location on a planet to land and construct an outpost, maybe some folks will want to find their home town and build an Earth outpost! I think that could be fun – even though it seems silly, in a way, to build on Earth in a game all about exploring space!

Is this structure the St. Louis Gateway Arch on Earth, as some have suggested?
*Insert: The St. Louis Gateway Arch as it appears today.*

Then there’s the idea of building multiple outposts on a single planet. If I come across a great planet with abundant resources, I might want to set up a mining camp there to generate resources and/or income. But would I want to build my dream home on top of a busy mine? Probably not!

So it would be neat if it would be possible to build different outposts on a single planet, perhaps with different functions for each one. An automated mining outpost could be chugging away in the background while my house is hundreds of miles away. That’s just one example – but there could be other reasons for wanting to do this, such as different resources being present in different locations.

Question #10:
Has Bethesda over-promised?
Or: is Starfield being over-hyped?

Todd Howard, Bethesda Game Studios executive producer and *Starfield’*s director.

Too much hype can be toxic to any game, especially if players are allowed to build up an inaccurate picture of what the game could be before it’s launched. This happened in different ways to games like No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk 2077, as players came to believe that they were going to get a once-in-a-lifetime, genre-busting experience. Sound familiar?

A good marketing campaign knows how to set appropriate limits and how to say “no” in a way that isn’t offputting. So far, I don’t think we’ve seen enough of this from Bethesda and Xbox, and there’s a danger that some players are getting the wrong idea about the scope of Starfield or about what may be possible in the game. This is something that has to be addressed as quickly as possible!

Phil Spencer and Matt Booty of Xbox Game Studios.

It’s totally understandable that Microsoft and Bethesda want to paint Starfield in the best possible light, showing the game at its best and making the most of key features. But that kind of positive approach has to be both truthful and balanced; it mustn’t oversell in-game systems nor promise features that won’t be present. It’s also important to quash speculation if it gets out-of-hand.

There are going to be limits to Starfield. There will be places that we can’t go, things we can’t do when building spaceships and outposts, and limits to both exploration and customisation. It’s also distinctly possible that the game will launch with some bugs and glitches, or even missing features that may be promised to be coming as part of an update. At the end of the day, Starfield is still a video game – one that is naturally limited by the technology available to its developers.

So that’s it.

Those are ten questions that I have about Starfield.

As I’ve said on other occasions, I’m trying to rein in the excitement and hype that I have for this game! There are solid reasons to put Starfield in the “wait for the reviews” category – such as Bethesda’s reputation, the shocking state of many recent PC releases, the Fallout 76 mess, and more. And I will be checking out reviews before I commit to Starfield in September – especially if the game appears to be poorly-optimised or not running well on PC. I don’t need another Jedi: Survivor debacle!

I’d love to see Bethesda address all of these questions head-on, and to provide answers before Starfield is released. I’ve done my part on my small corner of the internet – but it will be up to bigger publications who have the access and the opportunity to hold Bethesda and Xbox leaders to account.

Some of the questions that have been asked of Bethesda and Microsoft have been missed opportunities, in my opinion. The question about fishing leaps to mind as the stupidest example of a nonsense question, but there have been plenty of others. If I were able, these ten questions would be the ones I’d pose to the senior folks at Bethesda and Xbox.

So that’s all for today! I know we’ve talked about Starfield a lot on the website over the past couple of weeks – but that’s because it’s my most-anticipated game at the moment. And every time I think I’ve said enough, something else comes to mind, or I read another article or watch another interview! There may be even more to say in the days and weeks ahead… so stay tuned! When Starfield is released I’ll also do my best to share my first impressions of the game, as well as talk about some of its systems and features.

Until next time!

Starfield: the things I’m most excited about

Wed 21.06.23Wed 21.06.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Although there are no major story spoilers for Starfield, minor spoilers may be present. This article also uses screenshots and promotional artwork of the game.

A few days ago I shared my thoughts on the recent Starfield showcase, which was a standalone presentation that followed Xbox’s summer event. I’m beyond excited for the game’s release, as this kind of open-galaxy, retro-sci-fi adventure almost feels like it was tailor-made for me! Today, as a follow-up to that article, I want to go into a bit more detail about a few of the things that I’m most excited about in Starfield.

This article also serves as the counterpoint to a piece that I wrote a couple of days ago in which I went into detail about some of my worries and concerns about Starfield. These points of concern haven’t wiped away the excitement – but the excitement and hype that I feel for this game is, to an extent anyway, balanced out by some fears that I have. If you want to read about my points of concern, you can find that article by clicking or tapping here.

The player character looks on as a ship blasts off.

First of all, let’s talk about Starfield’s aesthetic, its visual style, and some of the design choices that we’ve seen so far. This retro-futuristic style has been described by Bethesda as “NASA-punk;” a blend of classic NASA-inspired designs with elements of the dystopian cyberpunk genre. I absolutely adore this choice, and some of the NASA-inspired spacesuits, spaceship interiors, and other pieces of technology look fantastic. Visual styles are very much subject to personal taste – but for someone who was inspired by NASA’s space shuttle missions as a young kid in the ’80s, and who read as many books about spaceships and astronauts as I could find, these designs couldn’t be more perfect.

The “NASA-punk” designs feel like a natural evolution of some of NASA’s recent and contemporary designs. The robotic companion Vasco, for example, is clearly inspired by the likes of the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers. The interior of the Frontier spaceship, particularly its cockpit and airlock, feels very close in design to the space shuttle, the International Space Station, and contemporary rockets like SpaceX’s Dragon II.

A first-person view of a spaceship’s cockpit.

Starfield’s designs also incorporate elements from other sci-fi settings. There are elements of “NASA-punk” that remind me of the likes of Firefly, Farscape, and even the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises. There’s also a Disney feel to some of these designs – and if you’ve been to Disney World and ridden rides like Spaceship Earth or Space Mountain, perhaps you’ll pick up on some of that, as I did. Although Starfield is brand-new, some of these visual and aesthetic choices feel quite nostalgic in that sense!

Starfield is standing on its own two feet with this “NASA-punk” style, though. There are influences and inspirations from both the real world and other sci-fi properties, but Bethesda has blended them together and put its own distinctive stamp on them.

Walking on the surface of a planet or moon.

But there’s more to Starfield than one visual style. Beyond the Constellation organisation and the United Colonies we saw the Freestar Collective and the city of Neon, both of which appear to have their own distinct styles of dress and architecture. For me, this harkens back to the likes of Morrowind, where different parts of the game’s world were populated by a diverse array of factions and races, each of which had their own styles. This was still present to a degree in Oblivion, but was much less obvious in the likes of Skyrim and Bethesda’s Fallout duology.

The Freestar Collective looks to have a distinct western inspiration, with cowboy hats and even an old-fashioned pistol duel being shown during the Starfield showcase. This could lead to some incredibly fun moments on the “frontier” of space, and I’m just in love with the “rough and ready cowboy” look of some of these characters and locales. Again, this is something that reminds me of my childhood, of playing “cowboys” with a toy six-shooter and dressing up in Davy Crockett’s coonskin cap! Yes, I really did own a replica coonskin cap as a kid.

The Freestar Collective is giving me wild west vibes!

The city of Neon feels like a ton of fun, too. A kind of “space Vegas,” where anything goes and all forms of pleasure are available – for a price, of course! Neon reminded me of places like Mass Effect’s Omega, Star Trek: Picard’s Freecloud, and other such “outside the rule of law” settlements that are a common enough trope in sci-fi stories. Its unique origin as a former fishing platform-turned-drug haven helps it to stand out, though.

Beyond the major settlements that we’ve seen there are bound to be smaller places to visit, either colonies on planets or spaceships and stations out in space. We caught a brief glimpse of a couple of these in the showcase, and I’m absolutely eager to see more! Bethesda’s past games have often had multiple settlements to visit, so I’m sure there will be several hitherto-unseen places to go.

One feature I cannot wait to get stuck into is spaceship customisation. The idea of being able to create and customise my very own spaceship already sounded like something special – but knowing that I can also recruit a crew and then head out into a Bethesda-created open galaxy… it’s beyond exciting, and again this feels like a feature that was created from the ground up with me and my tastes in mind!

There are multiple methods for… shall we say, “acquiring” a spaceship, too. It sounds like the player character will get access to their own spaceship fairly early on in the game – and this ship can then be modified at will. But there are other options: purchasing a spaceship is possible, but so is stealing one! I don’t know whether it will be possible to land on a random planet or go to a spaceport and simply fly away in someone else’s ship – but after defeating an opponent in ship-to-ship combat, it’s possible to board their vessel, kill the crew, and claim it.

I’m absolutely in love with the idea of becoming a space pirate! And even if piracy isn’t going to be the focus of a playthrough, I can definitely see how hijacking and then selling a spaceship (or at least parts of a spaceship) could be an incredibly lucrative way of making a ton of money in-game. High-risk, sure… but with a potentially massive payday at the end!

In the showcase, Bethesda employees had designed some wonderfully creative spaceships of their own. And this was an easily-missed feature that Bethesda didn’t draw attention to, but it seems almost certain that it’s possible to re-name spaceships, too. I’m already thinking of names for my own vessel! I wonder if “Enterprise-D” is taken…

A customised ship that looks like it could carry a lot of cargo!

Within days of Starfield’s release we’re sure to see the community’s most creative players sharing their designs. Some will opt to recreate the likes of Firefly’s Serenity, the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, or any of the hero ships from the Star Trek franchise. There are bound to be some incredibly wacky designs in the mix, too. I love the way that Bethesda described this; spaceship design will err on the side of fun, not of realism. What that means in practise should be that players can get really creative without having to worry about the likes of aerodynamics or mass.

There will be limitations to this spaceship creator, and I’m trying not to go overboard with my hype! We haven’t seen, for example, the extent to which interiors of ships can be customised, and whether things like colours can be changed, furniture can be repositioned, and so on. I hope there will be at least some of that, so that we can truly make our spaceships feel like ours instead of like a collection of pre-made pieces.

But what I love about the spaceship creator is that the interior is fully-explorable. If you place a cargo hold next to a crew cabin, you can visit them – and the design of the ship will be reflected in-game. If you chose to make a really large ship, for example, with a long corridor connecting different rooms, you can actually walk down that corridor and see each of those rooms in the places you put them. In first-person or third-person!

When I was playing Star Trek: Starship Creator in the late 1990s, I’d have loved nothing more than to explore my weird Federation ship in first-person! This spaceship customisation feature is absolutely something that could be a fun game all by itself – and if it lives up to the hype and meets the expectations that Bethesda has set, I can see myself spending hours and hours customising every last detail of my spaceship before I actually get any questing done!

You can give your ship a paint job, too.

But maybe we should say “spaceships,” plural! Because in the showcase, Bethesda confirmed that it’s possible for players to have their very own fleet. We saw that at least nine ships can be owned at any one time, and all of them can be fully-customised. Only one ship can be the “home” ship, but I imagine which ship is the primary one is something that can be changed at will.

The showcase appeared to show a range of different spaceship parts, with different manufacturers having different styles and designs to choose from. We didn’t get a particularly long or in-depth look at all of these options, but we saw enough to at least know that there’s a decent range of potential pieces. The number of possible combinations of parts must be positively astronomical! It will almost certainly be possible to create spaceships with a huge range of believable and fantastical designs, and to fit very different aesthetic styles.

And we haven’t even talked about functionality yet! Some spaceships that were shown off at the showcase were small, designed perhaps for combat. Others were far larger, with massive cargo holds that can presumably carry a lot of resources – or smuggled goods. It’s possible to add or upgrade every component – such as engines, shields, and weapons. And these things are sure to have a noticeable impact on gameplay, with larger, heavier ships controlling differently from smaller, lighter craft.

I will be tinkering with all of these – adding different kinds of weapons in different combinations is something I’m particularly keen to experiment with. There were three types of spaceship weapon highlighted during the showcase: ballistic, laser, and missile. Again, what the limitations may be on how many weapons a single spaceship can have weren’t mentioned, but it looks like there will be appropriate options for different sizes of vessels.

Sticking with weapons, one area of gameplay that looked great in the Starfield showcase was first-person shooting. Past Bethesda titles – the Fallout games most notably – haven’t always excelled in this area. In Fallout, the VATS system (which paused gameplay to allow for targeting) covered up at least some of those games’ sub-par gunplay, but that won’t be the case in Starfield. Some rumours and reports had suggested that Doom developer (and fellow ZeniMax studio) id Software had been brought on board to help out.

Todd Howard, in a post-showcase interview, confirmed that Bethesda had worked with id Software, but seemed to suggest that they’d been helping more on the technical side with things like lighting and graphical fidelity. Either way, the influence of recent titles like Doom and Doom Eternal looked to be present in Starfield – at least looking in from the outside. It isn’t always possible to get a fair impression of something like gunplay from compressed video footage on YouTube, but from what we could see, gunplay in Starfield looks to be a vast improvement over past Bethesda titles.

That’s good news, because shooting and blasting your way across space is going to be a big part of the game! Whether you’re wrangling with pirates, getting into a shootout with western-inspired outlaws, or being pursued by aggressive fauna on an unexplored planet, guns are sure to come in handy! What we’ve seen of Starfield’s gunplay looked good – solid, I’d say. It’s probably never going to rise to the level of something you’d see in the likes of a Halo or Call of Duty game, because it’s only one part of a much broader experience. But solid, enjoyable gunplay is a must – and the signs are positive in that regard.

I was also pleased to see that Bethesda hasn’t abandoned the idea of melee weapons in Starfield. Bethesda’s melee combat has usually been pretty solid, at least by role-playing game standards, and it’s a hallmark of their games going all the way back to the first Elder Scrolls titles in the 1990s. Even though melee combat is sure to play a smaller role in Starfield – as the game promises lasers, electro-magnetic weapons, and a range of different guns – it’s not something I’d want to miss out on as it feels like it’s a core part of the Bethesda role-playing experience.

One criticism that I made of 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077 was that the player character’s backstory ultimately mattered very little in-game. Developer CD Projekt Red made a big deal in pre-release marketing material of the three different “life paths” available to players, but these amounted to little more than a short prologue and a single event midway through the game that we might generously call a “mission.” That was a disappointment and hampered Cyberpunk’s replayability.

In Starfield, there appear to be multiple character backgrounds, from action game staples like “bounty hunter” to less common ones like “chef!” The extent to which these will have an impact on gameplay, and the amount of content that may have been created for each possible background isn’t clear, but even if there are just a couple of missions and a few places where different dialogue options are available, it’ll still be fun – and better than Cyberpunk 2077.

One of the character traits will make you an introvert… just like me!

Then there are “traits” – of which players can choose up to three. These are additional pieces of character creation that can be mixed and matched, with each giving an advantage and prospective disadvantage, too. Some look certain to unlock dialogue options and will have an impact on the way the player will engage with different factions and groups, and some even unlock entire characters. Again, this feels like something that has a tangible impact on gameplay, and could be a lot of fun to experiment with.

Past Bethesda titles offered players the opportunity to create a custom character class – rather than just being able to pick from staples like mage or warrior. Starfield’s complex system of backgrounds, traits, and skills looks like it could be something very similar, allowing players to either customise their character in detail or to go with a standard build suited to the likes of combat or stealth. I’m very much someone who likes to tinker and customise, and in my first playthrough in particular I expect I’ll spend ages agonising over which background to pick, then which traits to select, and so on!

There are a lot of things to tinker with!

Starfield also looks like it will offer a fair amount of diversity in its character creator. There were different skin tones, naturally, but also different hair types and hair styles, as well as tattoos, and Bethesda noted in the Starfield showcase that they worked with people from a range of different ethnic groups to ensure that there are a range of characters both as NPCs and as options for the character creator. That’s fantastic! Being able to represent oneself in a game like this is important – and I know a lot of folks like to spend a long time in the character creator recreating their own appearance.

There were also options for body type – including larger bodies that can sometimes be excluded in games like this. That’s also great! Most of the options in the character creator looked like they could be applied to any character – a male-bodied character could use a feminine walk style, for example. I didn’t see makeup options, but there were things like piercings, jewellery, scars, and the like. The player character isn’t fully-voiced, as far as I’m aware, so again I think there are options here for making a male, a female, a trans character, or even someone non-binary. I’m non-binary myself, so I appreciate feeling included!

Body type and walk style options in the character creator.

Starfield has officially been delayed twice: from an initial November 2022 release to a nebulous “the first half of 2023,” and then again to September. Given Bethesda’s reputation for buggy games, and the difficult launch of Fallout 76 in particular, I absolutely see that as a positive thing. There’s a lot riding on Starfield for both Bethesda and Xbox, with the game being Bethesda’s first exclusive title since the Microsoft takeover. Getting it right – and ensuring the game is truly ready for launch – is incredibly important, and in an industry that seems all too happy to adopt a “release now, fix later” approach, I think it’s worth complimenting the approach that Microsoft and Bethesda claim to be taking.

In a recent interview, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty suggested that the reports he’d been receiving about Starfield were looking great – even making the audacious claim that the game would “already have the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game ever shipped” if it was released today. All of this is marketing speak, of course, but given the serious risk to the reputation of both Xbox and Bethesda if it turns out to be untrue… I think it’s positive, at least. Microsoft clearly recognises the issues that have been present, and on the surface at least it seems that they’ve given Bethesda more time to get Starfield ready. We’ll have to judge that for ourselves when the game arrives – and Starfield is, for me anyway, still in the “wait for the reviews” column – but these are positive noises nevertheless.

Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty (centre) was interviewed about *Starfield* shortly after the showcase.

Characters are the heart of any good story, and Bethesda has created some fantastic and memorable characters for their games over the years. Off the top of my head I could pick out Fallout 3′s Three Dog, Yagrum Bagarn from Morrowind, and Alduin the dragon from Skyrim – and there are many, many more. After the disappointment of Fallout 76 with its empty world devoid of characters, it was wonderful to see so many different NPCs in the Starfield showcase.

The three major cities that we know of in Starfield look set to be large, dense, and full of people to engage with. And the diverse environments and factions should make many of these people feel unique. We’ve barely scratched the surface here, and there are bound to be hundreds or perhaps even thousands of individual characters to meet in Starfield.

Who’s this fella, and what might his story be?

One thing we know for certain is that Starfield is Bethesda’s biggest-ever game. And that includes recorded lines of dialogue: Starfield will have more than double the amount of dialogue that was recorded for Fallout 4. That game had approximately 700 NPCs, but also had a fully-voiced protagonist, something Starfield appears not to have. With so much dialogue having been recorded for the game, there’s bound to be a huge number of people to meet and engage with.

Some of these people can be recruited, joining the crew of your spaceship, being assigned to another spaceship, or being assigned to an outpost. Bethesda didn’t confirm how many recruitable NPCs there are in Starfield, but one thing I absolutely love is the idea of encountering some of these people at spaceports or just out in the wild. Bringing them on board, figuring out what skills and talents they have… it all adds to the immersion and the sense of truly being the captain of a spaceship in this open galaxy.

A potential companion and the skills they offer.

More than two decades ago, Morrowind was the game that I was looking forward to. I was incredibly hyped up for what was my first real open-world role-playing game. I’ve said a couple of times already that I don’t think any game since then has grabbed my attention in quite the same way, nor generated such a high level of interest and excitement – not until Starfield, that is. Ever since I first played Morrowind, I’ve ranked that game as one of my absolute favourite titles of all-time, and if Starfield is as good as Bethesda and Microsoft are promising, I can see it potentially joining Morrowind on that list.

Are there worries and points of concern? Absolutely. As I said, I wrote up all of my biggest fears for Starfield in an article here on the website just the other day. But at the same time, I still feel that sense of hope. This game, if it lives up to the hype, has the potential to be incredible. A friend of mine recently suggested to me that Starfield might end up being “the best video game that either of us will ever play,” and that assessment is hard to challenge. This game feels tailor-made for me.

So we’ve talked about some of the things I’m most excited about when it comes to Starfield! Stay tuned, because if we get any big updates about the game – or if I find that I have more to say – I’ll be sure to write about it here on the website. And when the game launches in September, I’ll do my best to share my first impressions and more!

Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 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 and IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Ten games to play while you wait for Starfield

Fri 16.06.23Fri 16.06.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There may be minor spoilers ahead for some of the titles on this list.

Are you as excited for Starfield as I am? Bethesda’s upcoming sci-fi role-playing game had been on my radar, of course, but the recent showcase has absolutely got me hyped up! Although I’m trying to restrain myself and not get overexcited, especially with Bethesda’s track record and 2023 having already seen some truly awful game launches, I just can’t help myself! I want to play the game now now NOW!

So what’s a wannabe Starfield-er to do? With three months to wait until the game’s launch – assuming it won’t be delayed again – what should we play? Today I thought it could be a bit of fun to pick ten games that might scratch part of that Starfield itch!

I can’t wait to build and pilot my very own spaceship!

I’ve picked games for this list that are either in the sci-fi realm, the space-sim or space-adventure genre, the role-playing genre, or that have expansive open worlds. Those are the key traits that Starfield has, so it seems logical to look for games that exist in a similar space – even if they won’t be on the same scale!

As always, a few caveats. Hype can be a dangerous thing, and as I said in my recent look at Starfield, it’s a game that has firmly earned its place in the “wait for the reviews” category! I shan’t be pre-ordering it, and while I’d never want to tell anyone else what to do, I think it’s sensible in most cases to avoid pre-ordering games in order to see what state they’re in when they arrive. Such is the nature of the video games industry in 2023!

Ship customisation in *Starfield*. I cannot wait to get stuck into this!

Everything we’re going to talk about today is the subjective opinion of one person. If you don’t care about Starfield, if you hate all of the games on this list, or if I don’t include a title that seems blindingly obvious to you… that’s okay! There are myriad opinions on Starfield and video games in general, and all I’m trying to do is offer my personal suggestions for games to play while we wait.

I have no “insider information,” and I’m basing my list on information that has been publicly revealed about Starfield.

With all of that out of the way, let’s get started!

Game #1:
X4: Foundations

I have to confess that I’m not terribly familiar with either X4: Foundations or the X series as a whole. But looking in from the outside, X4: Foundations seems to have many of the space-based elements that players might be looking for in Starfield. It’s possible to become the captain of a ship, to trade with a variety of factions, and to participate in combat, piracy, and more. There are dozens of ships to control with different specialities, from small mining craft to large freighters.

X4: Foundations is the kind of game that looks quite complex, but could be a blast to really get stuck into. The X series has a dedicated community, and X4: Foundations has received four DLC expansions since its initial 2018 release, with more supposedly in the pipeline.

Game #2:
The Outer Worlds

The Outer Worlds is smaller in scale than Starfield will be, but it brings many of the same elements to the table. Players have their own ship, can recruit companions for their quest, and can create a custom character. The game’s developers Obsidian once worked alongside Bethesda to develop Fallout: New Vegas, and some commentators hailed The Outer Worlds as Obsidian’s “spiritual successor” to that game.

Though The Outer Worlds is much more linear than Starfield aims to be, it’s still a ton of fun. Gunplay and combat are exciting, there’s an engaging main storyline, and some memorable characters to meet and interact with. A sequel is also in the works – but with Obsidian currently working on Avowed, it might not be coming any time soon!

Game #3:
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

If you have a PC and can play with mods, Morrowind can almost feel like a brand-new experience even more than twenty years on from its release. It’s a fantastic role-playing game, one that actually has a lot more to do than either of its sequels. There are some fantastically diverse locations to visit across its open world, a multitude of factions to join, and more side-quests than you can shake a stick at!

I played and adored Morrowind when it was first released in 2002, but to this day there are still quests I haven’t completed and skills I’ve yet to master – that’s how overstuffed with content this game is! Whether you want to be a sneaky assassin, a powerful wizard, a brawling brute, or anyone else you can imagine, you can do it in Morrowind’s fantasy world.

Game #4:
Fallout 4

Fallout 4 may not be Bethesda’s best-ever game, but it’s plenty of fun for what it is! Many of the in-game mechanics and systems that Starfield will employ are present in some form in Fallout 4, such as settlement-building. The game has an engaging main questline, and its post-apocalyptic setting has a unique Americana charm thanks to its ’50s inspiration.

There are several pieces of DLC for Fallout 4, too, two of which are major expansions that add new areas to the game world. For PC players there are also a ton of mods to get stuck into – including some absolutely massive ones that completely change the game and add new features. For my money, Fallout 3 is probably superior… but Fallout 4 is still fun to get stuck into.

Game #5:
No Man’s Sky

Starships, a space station, and a suspiciously red sky!

I’ve seen a lot of commentators and analysts comparing Starfield with No Man’s Sky, and there are some superficial similarities. Both are space-adventures, both use procedural generation to create planets, and both have exploration, mining, resource collecting, and crafting elements. No Man’s Sky is a different kind of game, though, with a focus on exploration rather than factions, questing, and storylines.

This may be a bit of a “hot take,” but I felt that No Man’s Sky was decent when it launched. It wasn’t buggy or broken in the way some titles are, and the problem really was that expectations weren’t appropriately managed due to some poor marketing decisions. There’s definitely an element of dishonesty in the way the game was sold, too. But to the credit of Hello Games, No Man’s Sky has received a lot of ongoing support and free updates – and it’s now much closer to that original vision.

Game #6:
Cyberpunk 2077

Another game that suffered a rough launch was Cyberpunk 2077. Though I’d absolutely argue that its core gameplay is nothing special, Cyberpunk 2077 has a visually beautiful open world set in a sprawling dystopian city, and an engaging main story to follow. Non-player characters can be fantastic, brought to life with some great voice acting and motion-capture, and there’s fun to be had here.

By the time I got around to fully playing through Cyberpunk 2077, most of the worst bugs and glitches had been patched out. The game is in a much more stable and playable state today than it was when it launched, and it’s well worth a second look for anyone who hasn’t picked it up since then. An expansion pack, titled Phantom Liberty, is due for release the same month as Starfield.

Game #7:
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
(and Jedi: Survivor if it ever gets fixed)

I cannot in good conscience recommend Jedi: Survivor right now. At least on PC the game is in poor shape, with serious performance issues even on higher-end machines, and one questline that’s so utterly broken that it literally cannot even be played at time of writing. EA has been slow to respond to these issues, too. Once Jedi: Survivor is eventually fixed, however, I daresay I’ll get stuck into it! I just hope that the fix comes before September!

In the meantime, though, Jedi: Fallen Order is an exciting adventure game. Set in a galaxy far, far away, players get to take on the role of Cal Kestis, a former Jedi padawan, and join the crew of the Stinger Mantis on an adventure that spans several planets. It’s a great game with an incredibly fun story.

Game #8:
The Mass Effect trilogy

The Mass Effect games are a blast – though the first entry in the series is beginning to show its age gameplay-wise. If only there’d been some kind of remaster that could have addressed those concerns… oh well! The original Mass Effect trilogy tells a phenomenal and engaging sci-fi story, and if you haven’t experienced it for yourself – or if it’s been a while since you last played – it’s definitely a great way to get ready for Starfield.

Some commentators have noted what they perceived to be similarities with Mass Effect in some parts of Starfield’s design. I confess that I don’t really see that, at least not in terms of the game’s visual style. But as another role-playing game in the sci-fi space, it’s not hard to see how Mass Effect may have been an influence on Bethesda.

Game #9:
Star Trek Online

Promo art featuring Seven of Nine and Michael Burnham.

Oh, how I wish I could find a way to enjoy Star Trek Online! As a huge Star Trek fan, I really wanted to like this game and I gave it my best shot… but I just can’t get on with massively-multiplayer games for the most part. But if you can, or if the MMO scene is your jam, Star Trek Online could be worth a look. It has plenty of story missions to play, starships to buy and customise, and crew members that can be recruited. Quests can take place both in space and on the ground – and so can combat.

Bethesda once held the license to make Star Trek games, and I can’t help but feel that in another world we might be about to play Starfield Trek… or Star Trekfield! At the very least, I think it wouldn’t be totally unfair to say that there’s been some kind of Star Trek influence on Starfield, particularly with the exploration-focused Constellation organisation.

Game #10:
Red Dead Redemption II

Bethesda executive producer (and Starfield’s director) Todd Howard compared Starfield to Red Dead Redemption II in a recent interview, suggesting that the depth of the game’s open world is comparable to Rockstar’s wild west masterpiece. If that’s even close to being true, we’re in for a whale of a time – because Red Dead Redemption II is one of the best games I’ve ever played.

Red Dead Redemption II has an incredible open world, packed with characters and locations that truly succeed at capturing the look and feel of the United States at the end of the 19th Century. It has some fun customisation, too, with weapons and outfits befitting the time period. The game’s story also packs an emotional punch!

So that’s it!

I hope I’ve given you some ideas or inspiration for games to play over the next three months while we wait for Starfield with bated breath!

As I said at the beginning, this is a title that has rocketed up my list of most-anticipated games… and try as I might to slam on the brakes, the hype train has already left the station! Bethesda has a reputation for rough launches, and we’ve seen some recent disappointments from Xbox, too. There are reasons for scepticism – and I will certainly be checking out reviews and technical breakdowns before I commit to Starfield in September.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to once again encourage Bethesda and Microsoft to consider delaying the game if it needs more time in the oven. Sure, it will be disappointing in some ways if Starfield can’t be ready for September… but I’d rather play it six months later in a better state than struggle to enjoy it because it was released prematurely.

So there really isn’t much more to say! I’m really excited to play Starfield, and I’ve been considering my options for games to play in the meantime while I wait. Though I included one title each from Bethesda’s Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, I tried to avoid making this list too lop-sided and too heavily-dominated by one company and one genre.

I had fun, anyway, and if even one person comes away from this list thinking to themselves “oh, I’d never have thought of that!” or “yeah, that seems like a good game to try,” then I’ll have done my job!

All titles discussed above are the copyright of their respective developer, studio, and/or publisher. Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Some screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda and/or IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.