Starfield has come early for me

 As per tradition, Russia's invasion of Ukraine... Ukraine's making some progress in pushing the Russians back, but it's slow going all around.  Same old, same old, basically, if you're not in the region dealing with it directly.

So, on to happier things... Starfield is out now (for owners of the Premium edition at least, the masses get it in a few days).  I tried to apply my cheap-bastard tactics, but, in the end, I only held out a day before I succumbed and bit hard.  I blame the rare 10/10 review Destructoid gave it for pushing me over the edge.  My first impression, after a couple of days of play, is that yes, it's a very Bethesda game, and the roughly year's-worth of delay for polish looks to have been time well spent.  I'll probably be playing this game near-exclusively for a while.

So, what makes this game stand out from earlier titles from Bethesda?  Well, the scale of the thing is vastly bigger, naturally, and all of the starship-adjacent systems are an entirely new batch of toys to play with.  Personal combat is more in line with first-person shooters like Destiny, but enemy AI doesn't live up to that standard, so it's still fairly chill to play.  Skills are probably the biggest change (and for the better, in my opinion), where you get the standard "one skill point per level" to spend, but, to focus on any one skill, you have to actually use the skill to some degree before you will be allowed to advance it... and there are skill groups and tiers to keep you from just going for the best thing first.

In fact, if there is any one thing I had to point out as being questionable-to-bad, it's the new "backgrounds" system of character creation.  Don't get me wrong, I don't mind getting a few starting skills and some in-game tweaks based on "what I did before", but... well, the game starts you out as a new hire on a mining crew.  In contrast, the background I went with this time was Cyberneticist.  Frankly, I can't see the life-path somebody would take, outside of some drug-addiction fueled spiral, that would make somebody with that skill-set go "mining, yeah, that's what I should do with my life next."  Of course, I guess that kind of applies to taking up a life of exploring and scavenging on a not-necessarily-legally-yours spaceship, either, so there's that.

All in all, is it a perfect game?  No, of course not.  Is it a game that I'll be playing near-exclusively for months?  Yeah, probably.