Starfieldmay be too far gone to fix with updates. Soon to enter its second year of life,Starfieldhas had a generational run of controversy: a buggy launch, a lackluster DLC, and now, a dearth of updates, althoughBethesda has promised more coming later this year.
A lot of Bethesda games have undergone similarly troubled launches.Fallout 76had people angrily mailing bobby pins to Bethesda HQ, but it’s come a long way in the years since, and is actually a solid RPG today. But I’m afraidStarfieldwill never have the same kind of redemption arc- its issues are too big, too central, to be resolved in patches, updates, and DLC.
Some Starfield Changes Would Need To Come In A Sequel
Starfield Is Fundamentally Broken
Starfieldran poorly and was incredibly buggyat launch. I still recall, the first time I entered a building in New Atlantis, after an hour of adjusting the settings to make the game run at 30 FPS. My character immediately fell through the floor, beneath the map, breaking both of his legs and forcing me to reload an earlier save.
To its credit,Bethesda has resolved some of these issues in updates since. It’s a lot easier to launch and playStarfieldwithout crashes or devastating bugs like this one today.
But, when I finally did getStarfieldworking on my PC and set out to explore the galaxy, I quickly discovered thatthe game was functionally empty. I think it’s partly an issue with the procedurally generated planets, which simply aren’t interesting to explore. Landmarks and points of interest are too often copied and pasted, or separated by massive swathes of barren, empty terrain.
But more so than that,I find the core gameplay loop ofStarfieldboring. The combat’s not exciting, the story is fairly basic and predictable, and sidequests don’t do much to break up the monotony. Player choices feel pointless and unimpactful.
This might ordinarily be disrupted by a more interesting base-building/survival mode, makingStarfield’s copy-paste planets interesting to navigate, and giving the game legs beyond its lackluster main story. Butit doesn’t deliver on that front, either. Base-building is no more exciting, much more time-consuming, and, besides making you lots and lots of money over time, feels just as pointless.
The only other aspect of the game with the potential to be interesting - exploring the vast reaches of space - issomething you’re actively discouraged from doing, instead being locked into fast travel from one place to the next. This usually means lots of downtime and multiple loading screens, just to spawn on another empty planet.
Some games have managed to come back from similarly disastrous launches.No Man’s Sky, also a sci-fi game with procedurally generated planets, was similarly panned when it was first released, butafter a series of expansive updates,it’s an excellent, well-liked survival game today.
But here’s the thing: in all those updates,very little has changed about the core gameplay loop ofNo Man’s Sky. Sure, there are a million new features, more immersive planets, a concrete endgame, et cetera, but at the end of the day, you’re still logging on, farming resources, upgrading your ship, selling the rest, and moving on to the next planet.
My fear, at this point, is thatStarfield’s core gameplay loop is too fundamentally flawed to be fixed. Its biggest problems seem to exist at a game engine level: combat is boring, there’s no real support for long-distance space travel, and procedural generation creates boring planets.
These aren’t things you’re able to fix with a simple update. They run too deep. SoallStarfieldcan do at this point is tack on new features, as it attempted to do in theShattered SpaceDLC and associated base game update. ButShattered Spaceplayed it far too safeto make a real difference.
Better yet,Bethesda should considerStarfielda lesson learned, and move onto developing its sequel. Starting from scratch would allow it to build a much better spacefaring RPG, with hand-crafted environments that are interesting to explore, real space travel, and an attention-grabbing story.
A Starfield Sequel Seems Like A Pipe Dream
Playing It Safe
Unfortunately,I doubt we’ll see aStarfieldsequel, at least not anytime soon. After its failure to meet expectations, Bethesda is much more likely to focus on proven IP, likethe still-missingElder Scrolls 6. It’s just good business: Bethesda needs a guaranteed hit, andStarfield’s negative perception would undoubtedly cut into a sequel’s sales.
It’s a shame, too:I really did think that there was a nugget of genius in the meshing ofNo Man’s Sky-style space exploration and Bethesda RPG. Dungeon crawling in Bethesda games has always been fun, while games likeOblivionexcel at quest concepts and sandbox gameplay.
It’s easy to see how Bethesda could’ve married that with a new, intergalactic setting to make something unique out ofStarfield. Unfortunately, the final product is neither a good RPG nor a good work of science fiction, andthat may have killed the IPbefore it even had a chance to flourish.
Starfield Can Still Improve Through Updates
Building On A Shaky Foundation
That said, I have some hope:I do thinkStarfieldcan still improve. To be clear, I don’t expect aNo Man’s Sky-style redemption arc for it. But it can get better, and it may have already found the path forward.
Recent rumors have it thatStarfieldis planning on addingsome form of interplanetary travel, potentially allowing players to pilot their ships from one planet to the next and land on them without the need for fast travel. Of course, it’ll probably still involve a loading screen, but even so, this could be massive forStarfield’s future.
If it did add some kind of meaningful space travel,I’d certainly giveStarfieldanother shot. Games likeNo Man’s Skyhave proven that these mechanics can be interesting, if they’re implemented right, and with the right amount of detail and care, I have confidence in Bethesda to pull that off.
Even so, improvements like this are only building onStarfield’s shaky foundation. Too many of its problems exist on a fundamental level for it to ever become a perfect game. That said, improvements like these stand a chance to makeStarfielda lot better, so I’m inclined to root for them.
