As per tradition: yes, Russia's inept invasion of Ukraine continues, with Ukraine continuing to push back, but winter is approaching, which will doubtless make things bog down there. But no worries, Hamas decided it was time to taunt the dynamite monkey that is Israel, so things going generally astray will continue for the foreseeable future. All the more reason to write about games, I suppose.
So, eighty-odd hours of playtime later, I've finished my first pass through Starfield. I enjoyed it well enough, but there are plenty of critic reviews, never mind user reviews, YouTube videos, and the like, calling it garbage, godlike, and everything in between. It makes me stop and wonder, why might that be?
Oh, quick note for the spoiler-averse, I'm not planning on outing any major plot points here or anything, but I'm not proclaiming this article as spoiler-free either. Proceed at your own peril.
One theory I've seen, that has some weight, is that Starfield suffers, as an artistic piece, from a cognitive split between the "realism" the game world presents, and the "idealism" of playing the role of effectively-superhuman protagonist in that world. Here's a nice YouTube video to watch, if you want to explore that aspect of things more thoroughly (and if you like games dissection in general, any of Adam Millard's videos are good stuff to watch, from what I've seen). To my mind, that helps explain things, but it only goes so far. I mean, maybe it's just my play-style, but, outside of a certain abandoned pharmaceuticals research facility cropping up on multiple planets, complete with the same founder's corpse in the same cave on each iteration, I didn't have a lot of problems "going with the flow" of the world as presented.
Another possibility that comes to mind is that Starfield suffers from comparisons (fair and unfair) to other games with similar subject matter. No Man's Sky definitely has prettier planets with a wider visual variety of biomes, plus sentient aliens and the ability to freely fly from one point to the next (whether that's actually better or more efficient than various loading screens being open to debate). Any number of space-combat games have better ship-to-ship combat (if you exclude the ability to disable and board ships, at least). Person-to-person combat, well, any of the later Mass Effect games has Starfield beat, never mind dedicated shooters like Destiny 2. If people are comparing these sorts of features this way, it's not surprising that they're coming up with the answer that Starfield "looks old", is "old tech", or any variant thereof.
However, that concept of the game being "old" brushes up against something else that I haven't seen explored at all. Just like books are written with a target audience in mind, so are games made, and the people that make games, consciously or unconsciously, tend to make games they want to play. While I doubt that there are many people on Bethesda's team that date back to the Elder Scrolls: Arena era of the 1990s, I fully expect that most of the people in charge have been around for quite a while. Planning a space RPG that veers away from the standard "saving the world/galaxy from the big-bad" plot is only likely to happen if there's sufficient experience on the team pushing back against the business take of "we know this makes money" with a solid "but that's been done to death" defense. Further, if you look at the actual plot delivered, outside of the random "go kill these guys" or "go fetch/deliver this thing" events that crop up, the stories involved tend to revolve around not only making choices (which any RPG worthy of the name should be doing anyways), but reflecting on, and even regretting, those choices. That's not a super-popular theme to begin with, and on average it trends worse the younger the player targeted is. Combine that with the fairly low-key combat mechanics in the game, and I can't help but think that Starfield was targeted at an older demographic than their other games to date.
So, maybe it's just lucky on my part that I'm able to enjoy the world Starfield presents, without constantly comparing it to other games, as an experience that hits squarely in my demographic group, and within the comfort zone of my physical capabilities. I'll be looking forward to seeing what the first DLC brings to the table (having already bought it as part of the premium edition), as well as whatever oddities the modders come up with (once official mod support has launched). In the meantime, I'll keep puttering about the Starfield - plenty of faction work and one-off quests to keep me occupied, for the time being. Who knows, maybe Baldur's Gate 3 will be ready for XBox by the time I'm ready to move on for a while.
