Starfield: Bethesda's Space Odyssey Falls Short of the Stars

Reaching for the Stars

Starfield is perhaps the most divisive Bethesda game ever made. After 25 years of development ambition and years of sky-high expectations, Todd Howard's space RPG launched to a reception that was neither the triumph fans hoped for nor the disaster critics feared. It's a game of remarkable highs and frustrating lows — a fascinating contradiction that rewards patience while testing it in equal measure.

The scope of Starfield is genuinely impressive. Over 1,000 planets across 100 star systems create a galaxy that is technically vast beyond comprehension. You can build outposts, customize ships with a surprisingly deep ship-builder, join multiple factions, and pursue a main quest about humanity's first contact with a mysterious alien artifact. The character creator is the best Bethesda has ever made, and the trait system adds meaningful role-playing choices from the very start.

The problem is that scope often comes at the expense of depth. The vast majority of those 1,000 planets are procedurally generated wastelands with repetitive points of interest. Landing on a new world rarely produces the thrill of discovery — more often, you find the same abandoned mining facility or research station you've already cleared a dozen times. The promise of infinite exploration rings hollow when the content repeats so visibly.

Where Starfield Shines

When Starfield focuses on handcrafted content, it shines brightly. The faction questlines — particularly the Crimson Fleet space pirate arc and the UC Vanguard military campaign — are among Bethesda's finest, featuring compelling characters, meaningful choices, and satisfying conclusions. The main quest, while slow to start, builds to a genuinely mind-bending conclusion that recontextualizes the entire game in fascinating ways.

New Atlantis, Neon, and Akila City are well-designed hub cities with distinct personalities and plenty of quests to discover. The companions are improved over previous Bethesda games, with Sarah Morgan, Barrett, and Sam Coe providing engaging personal storylines. Ship combat, while not reaching dedicated space-sim depths, is satisfying and visually spectacular, with large-scale fleet battles providing thrilling moments.

Bethesda's Most Polarizing Design

The most controversial design decision is the constant loading screens. Unlike the seamless open worlds of Skyrim and Fallout, Starfield segments its experience behind frequent loading transitions — entering your ship, taking off, landing, entering a city, and entering buildings all trigger separate loads. On current hardware these loads are brief, but the cumulative effect breaks immersion in ways that feel at odds with the game's aspirations of space exploration.

The absence of ground vehicles means planetary exploration is done entirely on foot, making the already-sparse planet surfaces feel even more tedious to traverse. Combat on the ground is competent but unremarkable — a step up from Fallout 4's gunplay but lacking the identity of dedicated shooters. The AI is inconsistent, with enemies occasionally displaying clever flanking behavior and other times standing still in the open.

Performance on PC is generally solid on modern hardware, though CPU utilization remains high. The Creation Engine 2, while technically improved, still shows its age in animation quality and NPC behavior. The modding community is already producing impressive content, which may ultimately be Starfield's greatest long-term asset.

The Verdict

Starfield is a game at war with itself — ambitious yet constrained, vast yet frequently empty, innovative yet dated. It's simultaneously Bethesda's most technically ambitious game and their most inconsistent. Worth playing for its highs, but temper expectations accordingly.

"Starfield reaches for the stars and grasps several, but the empty space between them is harder to ignore than Bethesda hoped."