Starfield Review — The Sci-Fi Adventure You’ve Been Waiting For?

It’s fair to say that anything Bethesda does is always going to garner attention. The famed developer has delivered some of the most beloved games in history, with the likes of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4 setting the standards for open-world action-RPGs. The focus, however, now shifts to Starfield, which takes the formula seen in the developer’s other games and launches it into orbit — and it’s satisfying to report that the long-in-development release hits all the right marks, despite some minor hiccups.

Players who have played any previous Bethesda game will feel immediately at home with Starfield; and while it is a departure from the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Fallout and the dark fantasy world of The Elder Scrolls, Starfield‘s interplanetary adventure is still grounded in the hallmarks of what make these types of games so engrossing. Exploration, interesting missions, bizarre characters, a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, and solid gameplay are still the name of the game here, but there are some switch-ups that bring a new flavour to the experience.

One of the most appealing things about any sci-fi space-travel game is the potential of limitless exploration, right? Of course, there are boundaries to how far you can go and what you can see (this isn’t a never-ending procedurally generated world, after all), but Starfield really does make you feel like you’re launching into the grand expanse of space, with no real guard-rails to keep you on a set path. So, how exactly does Starfield work?

After creating your character, you’re able to travel to a number of different planets at your own will. There are set missions and a primary thread that you can follow throughout the experience, but, much like other Bethesda games, you’ll likely stumble onto a side mission and it’ll end up soaking up a handful of hours before you detour back to your main objective.

To allow these moments to happen, Bethesda has curated a dense and captivating set of worlds to uncover, all full of characters and locations begging to be explored. Of course, you can just plough through the main mission of the game, which will take you around most of the key locations, but it’s finding these weird and bizarre things, such as abandoned stations or bizarre aliens, that make it so unpredictable.

With most of these objectives that are built into the main (or side) missions, you are most commonly tasked with jetting off to a distant planet, where you’ll most likely retrieve, kill, or save something, which usually ends up in you shooting things in the face, anyway.

The shooting mechanics are surprisingly solid for such a large game with so many facets. Guns are punchy, bullet impact is present and results in enemies flailing backwards, and you have a wide variety of weapons that all feel and act differently, allowing you to become a more laser-focused alien-destroying surgeon or death, or a machine-gun-toting space cowboy. The variety as to how you can switch up your playstyle is great.

This ‘customised’ playstyle approach also extends to the ship-building mechanic, which is surprisingly more robust and deeper than expected. As the game progresses, you’ll get access to more ship parts (thrusters, hulls, and weapons) that you can snap together like a space-aged Lego set. This drag-and-drop ship-builder is almost a game unto itself, and swapping out parts in order to balance your ship’s power and weight makes you feel like you’re partially responsible for travelling the stars, giving yourself a pat on the back when you finally whip together a worthy starship.

There is a whole lot more to the game, such as solving some environmental puzzles and base-building, which are enjoyable in their own right, but the bulk of meat of the game is the moment-to-moment gameplay of exploring, indulging in some on-foot, zero-G, or spaceship combat, and meeting interesting characters, which is all incredibly fun and gels together seamlessly. It’s clear that the approach was making you feel like a space explorer, and throwing in some fun gun combat, and in that regard, Starfield is a massive success that fans of the genre simply have to play.

Starfield is on Xbox Series X/S and PC now. It is also available to play on GamePass.