Almost 50 hours in and having long since drifted away from the main quest after hitting the mid-point, Starfield is a game I both can’t stop playing, yet desperately want to stop playing. One half of my brain is enraptured with the prospect of what I might discover next in its sprawling digital galaxy; the other half is exhausted by its unmanageable scale and an increasing sense of repetition. One part is desperate to offload a thousand thoughts into this review; the other half is worried I’ll never see enough of Starfield to pass fair judgement.



Despite all the “Skyrim in Space” jokes, Starfield is more of an ungainly hybrid of Fallout 4 and the original Mass Effect. There are some Elder Scrolls-ish sci-fantasy concepts introduced a third of the way into the main story, but these felt like a cop-out to me after the grounded “NASA-punk” marketing suggested a hard sci-fi setting. Starfield certainly lives up to Bethesda’s old marketing line about “living another life in another world” more so than any of their prior games, providing an expansive, reactive, persistent, and often wondrous galaxy to inhabit in a way few other games can.

The problem with its ambitious scope is that Starfield gradually begins to feel like an overdeveloped, underutilised time-sink the longer you play. There’s simply too much content for the mechanics and procedural-generation to sustain, while many impressive simulation elements have minimal gameplay implications.



Your protagonist – a down-on-their-luck contract miner – stumbles upon a curious alien artefact, hallucinates a wild trip through the galaxy to the sound of epic music, wakes up in the med-bay for the obligatory “what do you remember” character creation step, before meeting the “Constellation” agent who funded the dig. After walking out onto the moon’s surface through a very Fallout-esque airlock, the meeting is interrupted by pirates, you’re gifted a spaceship like it was a common horse, and sent off to deal with a local pirate leader irrespective of your background.

It’s a rushed, contrived, and tutorial-heavy start, but thankfully not representative of future questlines.

Once off the leash, you can finally “grav jump” to the “Constellation Lodge” in the Alpha Centauri system – seat of the “United Colonies” faction – to meet the motley team you’ll need to work alongside if you want to see the main story to completion. It’s a rushed, contrived, and tutorial-heavy start, but thankfully not representative of future questlines.



What you do from that point onwards is entirely up to you and Starfield has more content than sense. Most story, companion, and faction quests are multi–stage, planet-hopping journeys with multiple solutions, outcomes, or minor variations. The same holds true for dozens of once-off miscellaneous quests. As a Constellation member or loosely affiliated freelancer, there’s easily 100+ hours of hand-crafted quests that you’re never locked out of. If you have more time than sense, there are infinite procedural activities like helping independent settlers on remote worlds, delivering cargo between settlements, bringing in bounties dead or alive, taking out pirate fleets and bases, or just quirky random encounters.

To Starfield’s credit, I've not been so content to drift from the critical path since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and it helps no end that this is their first new IP in ages. Every aspect of Starfield’s universe – the people, the politics, the technology – feels fresh and exciting. It was no surprise when the main story arc sent me between each major faction hub, and back to the Sol System more than once to delve into humanities early space-faring endeavours.

To Starfield’s credit, I've not been so content to drift from the critical path since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

There are so many questions that need answering. What is the true nature of artefacts? What secrets from the devastating “Colony Wars” are hidden within the “Armistice Archives”? Is there a force behind the “terrormorph” attacks that affect only settled worlds? Where did the Va’ruun faction retreat to and are their heretical elements truly acting independently? Will my digital mom and dad ever become financially independent and stop offloading family heirlooms on me?



Admittedly, the quest structure and gameplay mechanics don't deviate much from Fallout 4. There are dialogue choices that might force you to pick a side or attempt to persuade all parties; there are plentiful skill- and faction-checks that can turn situations for or against you; and bringing the right companion – who hail from all corners of the Settled Systems – can also influence interactions for better and worse. Most impressively, Starfield has a ridiculous amount of fully voiced writing to account for the choices you made, the order you took them in, and any significant story beats that might affect key hub areas permanently.

When dialogue is not an option, most interior locations are designed to allow you to stealth past enemies, hack defence systems and open alternate routes, or simply gun down everyone in your path while sticking to corners. Gunplay is refined and firefights feel closer to that of a dedicated FPS – think snappy ADS, automatic cover lean, hit-markers, locational damage, and a dedicated grenade button.

The new ship-to-ship combat is equally competent and fun, with a focus on avoiding incoming fire and missile locks before manoeuvring behind enemy ships to strip their shields and breach their hull. If you leave them disabled instead of finishing them off, you can even board vessels and take out the crew in intense close-quarters battles – sometimes in zero-G and bleeding atmosphere.



The lack of any VATS-style system – outside of a slow-time ability you can unlock further into the game – feels like a blow for accessibility, but Starfield is still an RPG. That means constant experience gains rewards points to invest in sprawling skills trees, while there is no shortage of quality- and rarity-tiered gear that you can loot, purchase, steal, or craft to give you a higher damage output or more resilience.

Gunplay is refined and firefights feel closer to that of a dedicated FPS – think snappy ADS, automatic cover lean, hit-markers, locational damage, and a dedicated grenade button.

Similarly, ships can be bought, their components upgraded, or even constructed from scratch if you have the money and patience to navigate the ship builder menu. If you need materials for all these projects, there’s an outpost system (much like Fallout 4’s settlements) with the potential for automated resource harvesting and refining to save you from mundane laser mining.



You don’t have to tackle the galaxy alone, as you’ll accumulate a (mostly) useful group of companions that – in addition to their primary purpose as walking storage – offer unique situational dialogue; friendship or romance quests; skills that can boost ship or outposts efficiency; and they can make good use of powerful weapons. Well, when the AI is capable of following you through doors and bothers to engage enemies.

There is an undeniable layer of jank given its scale, but some of which I could appreciate. On the first moon you visit, I led an enraged level-10 terrormorph into a group of level-10 spacers gaining a rare stealth suit from one of the fallen spacers. I then got the beast wedged in lava beneath a gantry and spent the next 10 minutes whittling it down with a recharging mining laser – instantly gaining my first level and perk point. It was like playing Morrowind as a teenager all over again.



So far, so good, and there’s no denying just how incredible Starfield’s many worlds and major settlements can look – often with their own distinct atmosphere or culture. It’s true that animations are stiff and some areas – typically those in shadow with only indirect lighting – look no better than Fallout 4, but they’re the exception.

Character models are impressively textured; environments are detailed and packed with props that react to gunfire and explosions; and any region bathed in the glow of a nearby star or artificial light source looks phenomenal. The voice acting is varied and more consistent – with hundreds of logical, situational conversations between NPCs. The soundtrack from Inon Zur is as diverse and atmospheric as the worlds you visit. It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to use a photo mode so frequently and the images you save to an in-game gallery are used for loading screens... so many damn loading screens.

It’s true that animations are stiff and some areas – typically those in shadow with only indirect lighting – look no better than Fallout 4, but they’re the exception.

You see, where things begin to fall apart is in how the galaxy is structured, how that disjointed design makes most traversal menu-driven, and how the procedural elements result in an increasingly repetitive gameplay loop and make exploration off the critical mission path unrewarding. Designs that feel completely at odds with everything that has come before.



If you can unlearn old habits, stick to following quest markers, and give up on the idea of ever fully exploring a map, Starfield provides some truly impressive backdrops and functions a lot like the Mass Effect Trilogy – think a focus on planet-hopping and experiencing little bits of new worlds, rather than exploring a continuous and cohesive landmass. Unlike its predecessors, there are few significant landmarks, each map area is a single biome, and you’ll never get that sensation of emerging from a winding mountain path or dark cave to discover a new settlement sprawled out ahead of you.

It’s a system that might hold up if you focused on the main story arc, as while some missions are simple artefact hunts with randomly assigned planets and locations, there’s enough visual variety coupled with varying simulated elements: think gravity, star-type, day-night cycles, extreme weather, and the possible presence of alien flora and fauna – all of which I wish had more gameplay significance beyond warning symbols on your spacesuit and how high you jumped.

Unfortunately, the longer you spend questing across the 100 or so star systems available, the more it feels like Mass Effect: Andromeda instead of the Mass Effect Trilogy.



Bethesda Games Studios RPGs have always used dozens of small dungeons to pad out the world between plot-critical locations. However, going back as far as Morrowind, they’ve tried to ensure each location tells some sort of mini-story, features a unique encounter, or just offered some sort of puzzle-type gimmick. Starfield has all those elements, but not for their abundant, procedurally generated padding.

As a result, environments and distant facilities can look great, but there’s no sense of dynamic exploration or emergent storytelling if you go off the beaten path – just more loot chests and maybe skill magazines. Where interesting notes, weird encounters, and environmental storytelling were once your reward for exploring off the beaten path, they now feel like an incentive to stay on it.

By the 20-hour mark, it felt like a bad joke as Starfield’s universe makes no sense when these never-ending mobs outnumber the population of Settled Systems by 10-to-1.

I was initially confused as to why so many lines of dialogue in Starfield exist to remind you the aftermath of the Colony Wars left hundreds of abandoned facilities across the Settled Systems, with Pirates, Spacers, and Eclipse mercenaries all vying to control them. By the 20-hour mark, it felt like a bad joke as Starfield’s universe makes no sense when these never-ending mobs outnumber the population of Settled Systems by 10-to-1, and settlers are building tiny prefab outposts instead of simply claiming thousands of unused facilities.



By the 30-hour mark, even “random” encounters had started repeating and major quests could occasionally send me between similar-looking worlds and into facilities that had the exact same layout – to the point I immediately knew where to look for keys, high-level enemies, and loot chests. Starfield has hundreds of bespoke locations and settlements – it’s just that the overall experience becomes increasingly diluted by masses of procedurally-generated content.

Immersion goes out the window when its preferably to use menu-driven fast-travel to avoid the tedious treks across bland planet surfaces. Traversing the stars should feel incredible yet it boils down to clicking on a marker, watching a short cutscene, then staring at a loading screen until you arrive – a design that also affects major settlements. Entire cities, exterior facilities, and several interiors are accessible on many maps, but you’ll still need to load into larger buildings or mines with no attempt to use canned animations, elevator rides, or companion banter to hide the loading. It’s an incredibly dated and unpolished distraction.



So Starfield is a game that somehow enthralls me and irritates me in equal measure.

On one hand, you’ve got a compelling galaxy-sized rabbit hole you can lose yourself in for hours on end, with complex questlines, refined role-playing mechanics, and that “new IP” freshness that makes it easy to ignore the flaws for a while. The problem is the more time you invest, the more procedurally generated content you experience, and the less rewarding the experience becomes. On top of that, the basic gameplay inevitably becomes repetitive and the segmented world structure makes exploring the galaxy feel like navigating an unwieldy GPS app instead of an epic adventure.

Bethesda's Pete Hines was quoted as claiming Starfield is an “irresponsibly large game” and I’m inclined to agree. Why would you invest so much time making a game so big that it eventually undermines everything it does so well?