In my first 90 hours of Starfield I walked on over 100 planets, docked with two dozen space stations, blew up more than 50 ships, and smuggled contraband human organs and illegal religious texts. Then immediately got arrested for smuggling contraband human organs and illegal religious texts. Whoops.
The more I’ve played Starfield, the more I’ve liked it, and for the same reasons I enjoy Bethesda’s other RPG sandboxes. It’s got the fun collision between structured quests and unpredictable systems which create moments that feel more personal and memorable than many other games.
It took me a while to get there. Starfield’s introduction is unusually straightforward for a Bethesda RPG, and the first handful of places you visit, including the game’s capital city of New Atlantis, are pretty dull. It took about a dozen hours before I started having real fun, and after rolling credits on the main quest with one character and ignoring that quest to become an aspiring drug kingpin with another, I can finally say that, in the end, I do like Starfield.
But I don’t love Starfield. And that’s genuinely disappointing because I’ve loved each of Bethesda’s RPGs since 2006’s Oblivion. Starfield is Bethesda’s biggest RPG ever, and it shares even more DNA with Skyrim and Fallout 4 than I expected—but it ultimately falls short of the greatness of both of those games.
SLOW LIFTOFF
Bethesda RPGs have a history of awesome opening sequences: the assassination plot and escape through the sewers in , living through your entire childhood in, and of course the iconic wagon trip to your execution in . So it’s almost startling how straightforward ’s opener is.
