Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for several main story missions in Starfield.
I was excited about Starfield last year. By the time the game’s big showcase had wrapped up in June, Starfield had rocket-boosted its way to the very top of my most-anticipated games list, and it held onto that position even as Baldur’s Gate 3 diverted my attention. But despite doing my best to give the title a fair shake, sinking more than twenty-five hours into it, and really wanting to love it… I didn’t. Starfield just didn’t have that “Bethesda magic;” the “je ne sais quoi” that has made some of the studio’s previous games into all-time classics.
And I’m far from the only person who feels that way. Despite launching to generally positive reviews from both players and professional critics, the longer folks have spent with Starfield, the further the game’s ratings have slipped. Although there are multiple areas of criticism from writing and dialogue through to the game’s outdated underlying technology, the general consensus is that Starfield is disappointing, shallow, and lacking in the replayability that Bethesda desperately tried to build into it.
But it’s 2024, and if there’s one thing the games industry knows it’s this: you can launch half a game today and promise to patch out all of its issues later! The dreaded business model that I’ve dubbed “release now, fix later” has firmly embedded itself in the games industry – and Bethesda is no stranger to utilising it. The company’s most recent title before Starfield – Fallout 76 – has received years’ worth of patches and updates, and even though it endured an appalling launch, it’s in a much better state today than it was five years ago. In fact, Fallout 76 is now sitting just ahead of Starfield in terms of average reviews on Steam.
There are some areas of Starfield that patches, updates, and DLC have the potential to improve or fix. In a game all about exploration, being forced to re-play the same handful of copy-and-paste structures filled with nameless, mindless enemies got old fast – so how about quadrupling the number of these structures, creating some unique ones that only appear once per playthrough, and adding new and different types of enemies and loot to fill them. Or how about making at least some of the game’s 1,000 planets genuinely empty, with no pre-built structures at all. That sense of exploration, of being the first person to set foot in a “strange, new world” is what I wanted from a game like Starfield… and it seems like something that could be implemented into the game without too much effort.
Then there’s the game’s main story. It was left deliberately open-ended to push players into New Game Plus – and I firmly believe this was one of the first and most important ideas conceived for Starfield during its creation – but it’s led to a fundamentally unsatisfying end to the game’s main quest. So Bethesda could write a better ending – and a more conclusive one. Who created the artefacts? What was their intention? Could the player character interact with these “Creators” somehow? Again, that seems like something that should be achievable.
Adding in new and varied paths through certain quests is also something that should be doable. A notorious mission in the main quest sees the player character travel to the “pleasure city” of Neon to acquire another artefact, but this quest is about as on-rails as it’s possible to be. No matter what choices the player makes, there’s only one way to get the artefact and complete the mission. It should be possible to tackle a quest like this in more than one way – and adding that in wouldn’t break the rest of the story or other parts of the game. For example, being able to kill the character who has the artefact, or finding another way to escape Neon after the deal goes down are things that would only impact that one quest – and being forced to play it in one specific way isn’t what a lot of folks wanted or expected from a game like Starfield.
There are, of course, some things that can’t be fixed in Starfield, no matter how much of an annoyance they seem to be! I wasn’t personally all that bothered by the game’s loading screens when opening an airlock or entering a building – but I know that the loading screens have been an area of complaint for a lot of folks. Starfield is built on the creaking, zombified remains of a twenty-five-year-old game engine, though… so I don’t see a way to remove them. Nor could the game’s fundamental spaceflight problem be fixed; Starfield is built on the player and their ship fast-travelling between locations, so any opportunity for actual piloting or flying is basically gone at this point.
So we need to be realistic about what we could reasonably see from updates and future DLC; Starfield won’t change fundamentally in terms of either gameplay mechanics or narrative. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be significant improvements that could mean the game will be worth re-installing and giving a second chance. And yes, in case you were wondering: I’ve already uninstalled Starfield.
But here’s the thing: Bethesda basically has one chance to do this.
Many players who tried out Starfield are already moving on. Games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077′s Phantom Liberty DLC emerged around the same time and have, by comparison, highlighted many of the fundamental weaknesses in Starfield – as well as how far behind Bethesda has fallen in terms of game design and development. Bringing back players like myself who tried and gave up on Starfield – or convincing sceptics to try it for the first time in light of mediocre reviews – is not an easy task.
Phantom Liberty has done the impossible for Cyberpunk 2077, completely changing the way whole mechanics work, adding a massive new area of the map, new missions, and much more. Starfield needs its first piece of DLC to be at least as substantial and as transformative as Phantom Liberty given its shortcomings, and it needs this DLC to be well-received. If not… a lot of those players we’ve been talking about will be forever lost, with Starfield being brushed aside in favour of newer, better gaming experiences.
Starfield is basically a “single-player live service” game. That’s the model Bethesda and Xbox chose to adopt, and we can see inside Starfield just where the paid skins and cosmetic items will appear when they’re ready to be pushed out. But like any live service, Starfield has to be basically good enough to build up a playerbase before anyone should be thinking about microtransactions, cosmetic loot, or paid mods. If Starfield’s first big expansion isn’t good enough, I don’t see the game retaining enough players to make that kind of “ten-year experience” anywhere close to viable.
Look at other games in the live-service space. Whether it’s Anthem, Marvel’s Avengers, or Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, it’s incredibly easy for even massive publishers with huge brands to fail. And there are relatively few titles that launch to such a mixed reception that go on to make a recovery. The jury’s still out on the likes of Halo Infinite and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, but to say they’re limping along wouldn’t be unfair. Asking for a single patch or update to transform the fortunes of titles like that seems like a big ask… but it’s where they’re at. Just like Starfield, they’re in the last chance saloon.
Gaming is a marketplace – and a very competitive one at that. New titles are being released all the time, and while once-in-a-generation masterpieces like Red Dead Redemption II or Baldur’s Gate 3 are comparatively rare, there are enough good games out there – even in the single-player and role-playing spaces – for players to very quickly move on from a disappointing or underwhelming experience. Most games don’t even get a second chance; by the time developers have been able to address issues and roll out updates, the damage has been done and players have left, never to return.
Starfield is lucky in that Bethesda’s pedigree and Xbox’s sky-high marketing budget will almost certainly grant it a second chance and a second look from a decent number of players. But that second look had better be substantially different and a massive improvement – with changes and fixes across the board. Because there damn well won’t be a third.
Xbox won’t willingly burn money on Starfield if things don’t improve, just like Electronic Arts didn’t with Anthem or Square Enix didn’t with Marvel’s Avengers. Publishers pretty quickly hit their limit when it comes to supporting a failing game – so Starfield’s life-support can’t last forever. The game sold a decent number of copies at launch, and drove at least some new subscribers to Game Pass, so it’s probably bought Bethesda some time. But that time is finite, and if, at the end of it, the DLC or update isn’t good enough… I can see that being the end of the road for Starfield.
One interesting example here is No Man’s Sky. After that game was poorly-received by a lot of players upon release, Hello Games knuckled down and got back to work. Over the span of years, No Man’s Sky received dozens of updates that brought it much closer to its original vision. But those updates were all free, and players who stuck with the game were rewarded for their support and patience. Hello Games didn’t have the audacity to charge extra for completing the work that should have been done ahead of release… so perhaps there’s a lesson there for Bethesda and Xbox, too.
At the end of the day, despite whatever positive spin the PR departments at Microsoft and Bethesda might try to put on it, Starfield is in trouble. I gave up on the game after giving it more than enough time to impress me, but what should be even more concerning for Bethesda are the reports from folks who stuck with the game to the end – only to say it isn’t worth re-playing. The game’s launch did not go to plan, and the purported “ten-year experience” seems to be disintegrating before our very eyes.
We can discuss how all of this happened, where Bethesda went wrong, or what the worst aspects of the game are. There are already plenty of articles and essays about all of those subjects – and many different answers to those questions. But there is still a glimmer of hope for Starfield, that updates and improvements could bring it closer to the game we were all hoping for. But time’s a-ticking, and there’s one last chance to get it right.
Let’s cross our fingers and hope that Xbox and Bethesda seize the opportunity.
Starfield is out now for Xbox Series S and X consoles and PC, and is also available on Game Pass. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, Xbox Game Studios, and Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 