For the last 1,5 months or so I’ve been playing Starfield, and for the longest time, the jury was still out on wether I liked it or not. I felt like sharing some of my thoughts on the game in this article.
Generally, It’s a bit of a mixed experience. Once I was actually doing main or faction quests, I was usually having fun and getting some connection with the companion characters, but outside of that, the game unfortunately feels quite flat.
When you’re not following one of the main paths (which statistically most of the time you will be doing), interactions with your companions are basically nonexistent and a lot of the gameplay becomes tedious (sometimes deliberately so, it feels).
But even at its high points, Starfield just can’t match the richness and nuance of characters and settings that other games (like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Cyberpunk 2077, and Baldur’s Gate 3) have achieved the last few years.
When I don’t have extended stretches of time, playing Starfield is like bit of a gamble, because there’s no guarantee that I’ll actually have fun playing.
I got used to those flaws after a while, and there are quite some nice moments and side quests in the game, but the tedium is frustrating, and as someone who likes to get excited about RPGs a lot, the missed opportunities almost hurt.
Still, though… it’s a nice way to spend your time, and in a lot of places the environment art and set dressing is nice, plenty of nice sights in this game, and there is always something special about standing in a desolate landscape with just the sounds of the wind, dust, and the occasional fauna in your ears.
It’s a shame that Bethesda had the opportunity to make The Elder Scrolls in space, and the end result is more like Fallout in space. I personally never really resonated with the games in the Fallout Franchise, though.
I have a lot more opinions about this stuff, but for now, I’ll leave it at this.