Starfield: Why I May No Longer Exist

This is going to be a bit of a weird one. Apologies in advance. But I have to talk about this. It might be the only thing I ever talk about again. Lots of spoilers for Starfield. Lots.

I’m going to talk a little about my background and then move into the build up to Starfield’s release. Then hopefully I’ll be able to return at some point during playing the game to finish this off and then disappear back into the ether, possibly forever. So, background information. I’ve never really enjoyed life too much. I suspect that like a lot of people, I just simply found myself alive as a tiny human in a vast and extreme world where a ton of bigger humans told me to do this, then that, and to make sure to avoid something else. I went along, wanting to avoid conflict, make people happy, and assuming that all the bigger humans were helping me get through this bizarre period where I didn’t really know what the fuck was going on and why any of this was happening. But as I grew up, I came to the common realisation that no one knows what they’re doing and everyone is simply muddling on as to not think too much or worry about what happens after your body breaks down. Some may take solace in the unknown of it all, like I do. Some may go to religion, and although I still find the idea of religion to be odd, I do understand the need from some people and simply wish to let them carry on with what makes them happy. And that’s one thing I really latched to. Happiness. Looking back, I have definitely been depressed longer than I initially thought. And most certainly had a nihilistic period from early teens till about eighteen or nineteen when someone, who I won’t reveal, said something incredibly bland and generic. It was something I had heard plenty of times before and noted it as simple and obvious but never really took it to heart until that age — be as happy as you possibly can. As I said, it’s generic. It’s simple. And I’m pretty sure that the tiny amount of you that get through this rambling to this point will have heard it numerous times. But something about that particular person saying it at that particular time really caught me off guard and I went away thinking about it for a good few days. Although I won’t say who said it to me, they are someone who later developed symptoms of Dementia and it really saddens me that I never got to really talk to this individual more before they started to lose themselves. But I am eternally grateful for that moment in my life, at a point that I was likely at my lowest.

But then, what is happiness? No, this won’t be some horrid self-help article (if you haven’t already guessed by the title), don’t worry. But this was a question, like other dumb philosophical questions, that I pondered for a while and have slowly refined my own life around during the eight-ish years since I heard the words. I stopped putting up with things that made me angry, sad, annoyed, any other small negative emotion. I wasn’t always perfect at this, and at times I regressed. But I have slowly been doing this over the years where my media consumption has diminished to the real projects and franchises that I actually like and I simply simplified my life. However, depression still persisted. Negative thoughts still entered my brain and with all the tools cognitive behavioural therapy gave me, I still failed to be able to deal with them. I turned to looking at what made me happy, rather than trying to fix the negative thoughts. My thinking was that if I overwhelmed my life with things that made me happy, I could keep the negative thoughts at bay. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But within this process I have slowly refined my life, not just through media but also other interests and approaches to dealing with strangers and friends alike. One of those interests that I have most certainly not visited as often as I should is space. Essentially anything away from the depressing planet we call Earth. Away from the bureaucrats, the bizarre constructions of society and government and nations and buildings, and towards nature on a cosmic scale. Other planets not too dissimilar to our own, gas giants, barren wastelands, stars far away that we can only see their light from millions of years ago, weird space nebulas, alongside all manner of bizarre physics properties and unknowns. Space is truly the new world for generations that already have a full map of the Earth.

This interest was piqued and solidified at a fairly young age. I was introduced to the original Star Wars trilogy around five or six as these films my family had taped off the BBC onto blank video tapes. As many kids who see Star Wars for the first time in their life, I was absolutely blown away. Other worlds, vast adventures and a belief in hope that persevered through all despair and sorrow. It gave me a lot to think about when it came to other worlds and adventures a long, long time ago but the real thing that solidified my love for the universe around us was a book I was given a year or two later about our own solar system. It wasn’t too expansive and very much was produced for children around my age at the time, but it gave a good amount of details about the planets in our solar system and additional notes on the sun and a few phenomena within space. I poured over it again and again until a number of the pages were starting to pull away from the spine. I can’t for the life of me remember any of those odd facts, nor even recall the name of the book but the increase in the love of space carried itself forward for a number of years.

But then I got to school, obviously I was already in school, but soon after the book was when school started to get serious. Teachers were taking tests much more seriously; homework could be difficult or time consuming; people were starting to ask me what I wanted to do when I was older. Life became less of a fascinating experience, and more of a chore and a set of tasks I had to complete within the day or week. The pursuit of my interests took a break as the things I was expected to do consumed my life. It wasn’t until these last few years where I have given up on trying to please people and trying to place myself along the path people expect me to follow. I wish not to do those things; I hate what life forces upon each individual with no consent and no resistance expected. So now I’m done. I’ve probably been done for a while now and likely stated that I was done other times but this one feels a lot more real and focused considering the length of this post already — and I haven’t even gotten round to talking about the video game this piece is meant to be about. So,

; Bethesda’s new playground and a new experience of Bethesda’s game design in space. To say I was excited from day one is an understatement. Even when there was a rumour that there would be a ‘Skyrim in space’ by Bethesda, I was in. No matter their problems with Fallout 76, or the fact that the best Fallout games were made by other companies, they still have a great track record with the Elder Scrolls series, including the aforementioned Skyrim which I played a great deal on launch and still occasionally come back to every so often. The hype increased and increased as the months went on with a logo, and then a small gameplay trailer, ultimately culminating with a full presentation tagged on to the end of the Xbox Games Showcase 2023 back in June. The direct was nearly everything I could ask for. A Bethesda RPG in space with Elite Dangerous style space sim, planet surveying and resource collecting, in-depth ship customisation, a great backgrounds and perks system, and all the small but simple things that have been missing from space sims, RPGs, and various other sci-fi games for a good number of years. It took me from hyped, to certain of what my future would encompass.

Expectations are high, so I thought I’d go through some of my own and then compare them after playing some similar to another article I wrote. First off, given a good GPU, the lighting and general environments are going to be some of the most beautiful and stunning we’ll ever see in a video game. Mass amounts of data are being used from NASA to fully and realistically simulate the lightning and atmospheres of the planets and moons as best as they can. I just hope it doesn’t fry GPUs. The planets themselves look like they’re going to be great to explore. My fascination with real life planets is really going to get me to explore certain planets, moons and systems in order to find certain places I would love to explore in real life. To be able to visit Titan would be a blessing, able to see the landscapes that we named after places on Arrakeen in Frank Herbet’s Dune or to visit various stars that we are able to see in the night’s sky. Small stories was a thing that was emphasised in the direct and something I am absolutely looking forward to. Not just in the cities, but out in the wilds as you uncover a variety of planets, places and people to interact with. The story itself I expect will be up to Bethesda’s usual standard, but with the added belief that sentient aliens will most likely be an addition at the end of the main quest, although I highly expect that they will not be able to be played until a DLC, or maybe even a Starfield 2. Then there’s everything to do with your starships. Everything looks greatly customisable and fluid so much that it really will likely surpass anything people have done before and will likely be the new benchmark for future space games. The combat is another point where it initially looked basic in previous videos, but the direct has really enhanced our look at it and it really gives me Destiny vibes with all the boosting around and fluid, fast combat. If it can even vaguely get near Destiny’s fluidity of combat and movement, then the game will feel great to run around and take out a base of enemies. One of the big critiques from the people talking the game down is that the worlds will be empty. This seems odd if you actually listen to how Bethesda have made the worlds in this game. Yes, there are going to be over a thousand planets, but all aren’t simply procedurally generated. They start with that process and then stitch together various sections along with a plethora of points of interest on the planet. If this goes to plan, all planets will have multiple places to explore and missions to complete alongside the usual exploration and surveying. And lastly, space magic. Only hinted at, but it looks like space magic will be introduced into this game. Now it could also be a thing they only hinted at here and will eventually add in a DLC, but I believe it will more likely be an endgame addition with either an additional skill tree or involve perks on the combat tree that we have not been shown yet. How much this gets evolved past the endgame and into DLC/future games is up to interpretation but it will likely be a factor to primarily the main storyline.

But with all the praise I’ve said, there could still be a number of faults with the game. It is, after all, a modern video game released by a AAA studio. And on top of that, a Bethesda one. It’s no lie that a number of their games are buggy on launch and some, particularly Fallout 76, never recovered from the failed launch. This is likely the only real potential stopping power from making Starfield one of the best games ever made. A number of bugs or performance issues could kill the game dead, or at the best give it a rocky start and a dip in numbers it does not deserve once the issues get flattened out like the Star Wars Jedi games from Respawn Entertainment. Day one, after the five days early access, needs to really go off without a hitch. People are so ready to dismiss the game before it’s even out that any small issue could really harm the game’s success and potential rise to glory. The only other potential issue I really see, links back to something I said earlier. People were complaining about the worlds sounding like they would be empty. As I said, I completely disagree with that due to how the planets are constructed, however, that construction could actually backfire in this little way. If the points of interest they stitch alongside the biomes are too repetitive or don’t have that much content in them, the worlds will feel draining and not particularly enticing to visit. But as long as the points of interest vary, and the side missions/faction quests take up enough of the player’s time, I really don’t see this being too much of an issue. I now need to just shut up and actually play the game. It’s almost here. And I really have been incredibly impatient to get around to it. I guess I’ll see you on the other side.

5

4

3

2

1…

And we’re on the other side. And there’s a lot to talk about. And I’m not sure if I’m going to get through all of it. Starfield is great. In some ways, it’s a massive push forward in RPG projects. But also, the game has some issues that may turn off people who either expect the game to be something it isn’t or who purposely pick at things to exaggerate and emphasise their point because they have a personal vendetta against the game. In fact, there’s a particular outlet I can think of that has a proper hard-on for shitting on the game for some unknown reason. There’s a bunch of details that I can, and will, go into here, but even with around forty hours in the game, I have not quite fully beaten the main quest and only done the basics of a bunch of other aspects of the game. It’s huge.

So about that main quest. Again, I have not completed it but from what I have done the story is up to Bethesda’s excellent usual storytelling and is easily the best main quest that they have ever done in one of their games. Other games’ storylines end up subsiding in favour of the side missions or faction missions. But in Starfield every story within the game only informs the main quest and fully allows the worldbuilding to support the story as it flourishes to its highest extent. The main quest has already given me intrigue, surprise — in more ways than one — and a heapful of fun and I have not even finished it yet. Side quests and even miscellaneous quests are fleshed out enough that it might be an insult to name the latter miscellaneous. The characters on average aren’t anything too special but help support the story enough that it’s not too bad. Individually, they have their own great motivations and storylines but only work well for the main quest as a collective.

The various systems of the game are vast and excellent. To start off with, space flight acts really nicely. I had played around twentyish hours of Elite: Dangerous and the flight felt just as good. Now, I’m no expert, so some may disagree if they have thousands of hours in Elite but I have no complaints with space combat and the flight controls of your craft. There was a few complaints that link into a whole topic of ‘seamlessness’ in the game being missing but, without going into that till a bit later, in a game that is primarily focused on RPG story and elements that come with that, the travelling in between systems and planets through load screens and grav jumping work well and don’t ‘break my immersion’. In fact, one of this game’s great strengths is that Bethesda level of immersion in a wonderfully detailed and thought out world. Across the systems, you also go about surveying and scanning planets as you explore and see the various worlds that Bethesda has created. This system definitely hits that collector/completionist aspect that goes hand in hand with the explorer aspects of the game (coincidently I chose the Explorer background for my character). It can be a little bit of a chore, but then what completionist system isn’t. Plus, as you upgrade the corresponding skills, surveying and scanning can be made a little easier to progress through. The cities within these planets are a little sparse, but it makes perfect sense considering the setting this game takes place in. At my current playtime, I’ve come across a total of five places that could be considered cities/towns but I do suspect there are more that I have not yet come across. The bigger ones are largely populated and detailed enough to be contained in a few sections. Resources work pretty well. They have a nice distribution between planets, and rarities are nicely distributed as well. It becomes second nature to be seeking a particular resource and knowing what kind of planet to look for in order to find that wanted resource. This is similar to how flora and fauna are distributed and handled on the various planets. These last couple of systems would be superfluous if not for the outpost system and its interlockings with research and crafting. You scan, land on the planet/moon, survey the biomes, set up resource harvesting, set up crafting and researching, and get an end result of products to either use or sell on for credits.

Companions are one of the best companion systems in a video game. All the companions essentially act like a player-created character walking around by control of the AI systems. Specifically, all characters are created using the same character creation system you use when first starting a new game and also using the same skills that you can acquire whilst levelling up. As with most Bethesda games, you take one of these companions with you as you travel around the settled systems but for those not coming with you, they still can be assigned to the outposts we talked about early to help improve the running of those outposts and assigned to your ship for similar benefits. These companions, as I mentioned earlier with characters, do have some good storylines but I do feel a few more minor characters could be fleshed out some more and a few more romanceable options to be available. Out of the main characters involved in the main quest, only four of them are romanceable. As what ends up being a common thread I’ve found whilst playing Starfield, the game is an almost perfect entity but lacks — in a number of small things across the game — a few aspects that could either be improved through mods or even a sequel. (Give me that Captain Myeong storyline.)

Combat feels much more fluid than any Bethesda game I’ve played. I do keep hearing that Fallout 4 had much better combat than previous games but I found it to be the same as Fallout 3 or New Vegas (even if NV was developed by Obsidian instead of Bethesda). But, then again, I never played a ton of Fallout 4 as it is a piss-poor excuse for a video game. Either way, I really enjoyed the gunplay and the gun variety is enough to keep it interesting (although I end up using the basic laser cutter as a weapon and it is surprisingly effective). The addition of the boostpack gets it almost to that fluidity that I was looking for in line with Destiny and Destiny 2. I haven’t acquired many other bootpacks but apparently there is a variety of them rather than just stats, but that is yet to be seen. The stealth component works fairly nicely with more of a notification of how close you are to breaking your cover and percentage shown for pickpocketing once you’ve ranked up the pickpocket skill. The new lockpicking system is also on par with the usual Skyrim/Fallout 3 quality. It’s quite different to those examples, but easily as simple to learn with an increase in difficulty with the harder locks. It’s a little more involved than the clockwork style system but not as painful as the Oblivion system. The weight carrying in Starfield is one of the few things that aggravated me during my time playing. I don’t think the solution, as some people suggest, should be to simply increase the weight limit by a large amount. First of all there are systems in place to alleviate this a little with the normal companion storage system of allowing to transfer inventory to them. But secondly, and more importantly, the solution should be to increase the weight limit by a small amount (which combined with the skill would make sense) and reduce the range of weights in objects. Some, like weapons, are far too heavy whilst other objects have barely any weight even if you carry a large quantity of them. Starship customisation is a fairly in depth and solid system. Some designs can be a little boxy as people had worried but with the variety of ship manufacturer designs and cowling available, you are still able to create a variety of good looking ships. Even if you don’t put much focus on it, there’s a few good opportunities to acquire ships as rewards for missions or other means.

There’s also the space magic. This is fairly spoiler filled more than the other paragraphs in this thing but we were shown the hint at space magic in the Starfield Direct a few months ago. Space magic, and acquiring them through the temples are some of the most wonderful and grandiose moments of the game as it really throws itself into the fiction of science-fiction. I’ve unlocked a few of the powers and they range through different utility powers that appear fairly useful though I’ve been enjoying finding the temples and unlocking the powers rather than actually using them. I won’t go too much more into the story around the powers and the temples as I’d rather you go out and play the game for yourself but I think it’s a great addition to the lore and a nice direction for the main questline.

The final system I have notes for (’cause my god the game is so big I wouldn’t be surprised if I had completely forgotten about a major system) is the persuasion system. I was a little caught off-guard the first time I saw the quick look we got in the Starfield Direct but it’s actually a fantastic system that needs to replace all other persuasion systems in other Bethesda games and other RPGs that used similar. Instead of a number to reach or a single roll of a die, you have three turns to pick a variety of persuasion options which each give a different number of points, hoping to reach a total number of points by the end of the three turns. The options that give the most points are less likely to work and it appears — though I can’t confirm this — that some options work better if you’ve been paying attention to the conversation prior and pick the options that match the person you’re talking to. It fleshes out a usually mundane system that I have a lot of interest in as I normally like to talk my way out of situations in RPGs. The best thing about the system is that information learned in other conversations or through notes and recordings in the environment can sometimes be used as options within the system and it appears you can’t fail with them. Though I’ve only seen them a couple of times, so this may be proven otherwise.

The game looks absolutely stunning. But as I get into this topic of visuals, I must explain my pain on the launch of the early access. I had recently bought a new GPU for the game’s launch as my old 1060 was a little below the recommended and a new GPU had been on the list to buy for a year or two. In the end I was convinced to get an Intel ARC A750 as it was fairly cost effective and had seen great results with newer games. Unfortunately, as some of you may already know, Starfield had massive issues on day one with Intel GPUs. My copy wouldn’t even launch, and some people even if the game launched after twenty minutes had huge issues. Sadly, proper drivers won’t be released until after official launch tomorrow (even though there are some temporary ones released recently that allow the game to be launched but still have a number of issues). Luckily, even though it was below the recommended, my 1060 managed to run the game and on medium quality settings runs fairly good around 35–45 fps which was much better than I had expected. What also exceeded my expectations was how good the game looked even on medium settings running on a 1060. Hopefully once the proper driver updates are released I can experience the game with even more grandeur.

Some of the problems with the game are in my experience fairly minor. In the runtime so far I have only come across two bugs. One which a companion has rank 3 Concealment skill and can turn invisible still had an invisible head after it should have disappeared entirely and a second one when I was testing the Intel new drivers where textures had completely swapped around or were missing. Though the second one could have easily been an issue with the Intel GPU itself. The AI, although not buggy, has a few new additions from previous Bethesda titles with head turning during conversations acting a little odd. The animations work well and are smooth but occasionally take a little too long and sometimes simply don’t turn their head until half way through the conversation.

So did Starfield make me happy? Was that the point of this piece? Was that the point of the journey of getting hyped from a jpeg, to a trailer, to the Starfield Direct, to the release? Of course, and, of course not. The game was great, I have and will likely continue to have an enormous amount of fun within this new world that will outlast some of the contention around it. I need to push forward and, although I’m interested in seeing the steam reviews once the game launches properly tomorrow, push aside the other things surrounding the game and simply continue my love for this new world. There’s still a lot to talk about once I put in a grand more amount of hours and either get my fill, or get to the end. There’s even parts of the game that I have not reached and have no idea how they work. So more fun for the future; more fun to look forward to.

What’s out there?

-Boad