Starfield Review: An Unforgettable Space Epic

Jun 09, 2023

A destiny born in the stars.

Starfield is an epic space adventure role-playing game set 300 years in the future. It tells an unforgettable story that continues to surprise you every step of the way. The personal choices you make will significantly impact the plot and your closest companions. The combat system is addicting, adapts to your unique character build, and constantly keeps you on your toes with varying gravity and environmental hazards. Although there are some shortcomings with the space travel mechanics, your curiosity as a space explorer is never diminished due to the over 1000 beautiful planets you can visit and the endless mysteries to be discovered throughout the galaxy. Starfield is truly something special that delivers a new standard for space RPGs sure to be talked about for the next decade.

Across the millennia, humanity has been bonded by the experience of staring up at the night sky, hypnotized by the infinite sea of stars and the endless discoveries that can be found just beyond our reach. Although our current technology limits how far we can explore the great unknown, we freely play out our dreams in our art, with video games quite possibly being the most effective medium for experiencing that sense of wonderment.

Plenty of games have captured fractions of this universal desire before, but Starfield is the first I’ve played to deliver it en masse.

Starfield takes place 300 years in the future, when humanity has harnessed gravity to outpace the speed of light and enable exploration to the farthest reaches of our galaxy. Outside the two governing bodies that have tried to bring order to the collective systems, the United Colonies and Freestar Collective, the galaxy is a lawless place, akin to the Wild West of 18th century US. Explorers are free to stake their claim on any vacant planet they find, and notorious gangs and pirates, like the Spacers and Crimson Fleet, face very little consequence for terrorizing those living on the fringes just outside the government’s reach.

Related: Baldur's Gate 3: How To Check Companion Approval

You start out as a newly recruited miner going through orientation. Shortly after you pick up your first mining laser, you discover a mysterious artifact that, when touched, floods your mind with visions of light and music. When you come to, some time has passed and your new employers remind you of who you are, triggering the familiar Bethesda character creation sequence.

After spending an hour finessing my character's facial details with the seemingly endless possibilities available, it was time to choose my background. I went with Cyber Runner, which came with a history of using my wits and hacking skills to work both for and against the megacorps. I was pleased to find that my background regularly came up in dialogue moments, especially when participating in corporate espionage for Ryujin Industries, granting me another means to relate to or sway the person I was speaking to.

Once you establish your identity, Barrett, a member of the Constellation group, shows up and sends you on a journey. With a newly gifted ship at your command and the mysterious artifact in hand, you set off to New Atlantis where you will meet the rest of Constellation and learn more about their mission to gather the artifacts. Since you are effectively a Chosen One, uniquely experiencing visions when interacting with the artifacts, it falls on you to be the one to track them down. Each artifact you find explains a small piece of the mystery surrounding them, bringing you closer to the core of Starfield’s story.

Without spoiling any of it, Starfield’s main storyline is possibly the strongest part of the entire game. Bethesda has delivered something truly special here, and I felt it with every twist, turn, and gut-wrenching decision made along the way. Just like Constellation, I was compelled to unravel the mystery behind the artifacts; hungry for the promise of answers that were to come.

This same caliber of storytelling extends to the unique quests while working for each of the available factions, as well as through the random missions I picked up while exploring each system. The first faction I joined was Ryujin Industries on Neon, effectively the Starfield equivalent to my beloved Thieves' Guild from The Elder Scrolls series. I felt right at home sneaking through the halls of their corporate competitors, stealing secrets, and planting damning evidence.

Every story, every mission, every conversation is valuable, and you feel the passion the hundreds of writers, engineers, and artists put into weaving the complex fabric of this galaxy.

When I needed a break from corporate espionage, I'd be hopping between random star systems, at one point stumbling upon a strange craft piloted by a rogue AI that had initially been created during the early days of space exploration. Onboard, I run into some Ryujin agents tasked with shutting down the AI and bringing it back to HQ to be studied. At this moment, I had to choose whether to side with my fellow agents or the now sentient AI that wanted to live freely on its own terms. Using my Persuasion skill, I was able to call off the agents, allowing the AI to grav-jump away to pursue its newfound goal of exploring the universe.

Every mission and character interaction feels so well-thought-out that even the most mundane tasks—from collecting debts for a Crimson Fleet thug to interrogating the locals for information on a target—feel compelling, with the promise of some interesting tidbit or backstory around every corner.

Your story will to some extent be crafted by your own play style, and Starfield comes equipped with a comprehensive skill tree system broken out into five unique categories: Physical, Social, Combat, Science, and Tech. In total, there are 82 skills you can invest in across these categories. There is no level cap, so you can technically become a master of all trades, but it will take you a loooong time.

At first, I went all-in on Tech, which gave me significant improvements to my Boost Pack capacity, allowed me to hack higher-level locks, and improved the functionality and caliber of my starship systems. Later on, I focused on my Social skills, and after 30 or so levels, my character was a hardened spy, capable of sneaking in and out of enemy bases and manipulating even the most confident of individuals to do my bidding.

Related: Baldur's Gate 3: How To Respec Your Character

From the micro of character customization to the macro of space exploration, let's talk about the latter. You're equipped with a ship capable of jumping to any system within reach, so it’s important that this feels as compelling as the story itself. And on this front, Bethesda delivers (mostly). Each time I hop into the cockpit and fire up the engines, I am captivated by the beautifully rendered animations of pressing the console buttons and flipping the various switches to initiate the grav drive for my next jump. It’s a little pleasure that, even 100 hours into my playthrough, never seems to grow old.

Out in space itself, the thrill of dogfighting space pirates is a tad underwhelming. The mechanics of exchanging blows with enemy ships as they fly past me then flipping my ship around to chase them down and turn them into space dust is fun, it just isn't anything special. The joy here really comes from the operation of the ship itself; redirecting the ship’s power into the defense and weapon systems or targeting an enemy ship’s engines to immobilize them, making them an easy target for boarding or complete obliteration.

The biggest letdown was that I couldn’t seamlessly fly my ship from one planet in the system to the next. Navigating between systems and planets, and landing on a planet are all locked behind cutscenes. While sacrificing the latter for performance benefits was something I was OK with heading into Starfield, not being able to really fly my ship anywhere outside the bubble of fixed space orbiting each planet sucked some life out of the experience, making the space travel element of the game feel a little restrictive.

The focus is more on what you do on each planet—exploring, scanning, battling, and looting—rather than the experience of traveling between them. Visually, Starfield is absolutely gorgeous, and as disappointed as some may be by the locked 30fps on Xbox Series X, it never really bothered me or took away from the breathtaking scenery I encountered when exploring the dozens of planets I got to see in my playthrough. Whether I was hiking up a jagged cliff face to capture a photo of the neighboring planet on the horizon, or quickly dashing from my ship to the abandoned research base in order to survive the hazardously low temperatures of some ice moon, each heavenly body had its own flavor and compelled me not to ignore the dangers and beauty it offered.

When I grew tired of the environmental hazards a particular system offered, I’d jump to another; I'd wander the jungle-like wilds of some undiscovered planet, analyzing the flora and peaceful herbivorous dinosaurs, only to be interrupted by hostile giant mantises defending their territory. Every new planet I visited offered unique discoveries that helped me better understand the nature of the galaxy itself.

Sure, there are limits to how far you can walk in one direction before having to hop back in your ship and select a new landing point somewhere else on the planet, but honestly, I’d prefer that to the constant procedural generation that yields regurgitated landscapes and biologically impossible alien physiology simply in the name of being 'boundless.' Having some limitations in this regard makes the explorable parts feel more substantial than anything infinite procedural generation could provide.

Additionally, the major cities you visit are each beautiful in their own ways, exuding a distinct personality that you understand a little more with each visit. You can feel the stark difference between the carefully manicured streets of the United Colonies’ flagship city New Atlantis, and the dangerous slums and back alleys of Neon City’s drug-infested society.

Again, there are more impressively designed cities in other AAA titles that are built to a scale you could easily get lost in, but what Starfield lacks in this area it more than makes up for in the personality conveyed by the characters and story that inhabit the cities themselves. Working for Ryujin Industries helped me have a finger on the pulse of the secret machinations of the corporate elites running Neon City, while serving as a deputy for the Freestar Rangers in Akila City provided a more grounded experience of protecting the dusty town’s inhabitants and the poor farmers living in the systems governed by the Freestar Collective.

It looks like Bethesda's finally nailed its combat bugbear too. Each weapon feels unique to operate, has a range of rarity, and is capable of being customized with a slew of mods which noticeably changes how the weapon performs. Combine this with unlockable skills that allow you to combat-slide or inflict more damage with particular weapon types, and you have a really flexible combat system.

Battling space pirates and gangs never got old for me, especially with the varying degrees of gravity and environmental hazards changing the arena each time you land on a new planet. On some tiny moon in the Lunara system, I used the almost non-existent gravity to my advantage to blast some unsuspecting pirate into the air with my shotgun and then proceeded to fire shot after shot into him as he flipped and floated across the room, only stopping when his corpse collided with the wall.

You can also approach situations stealthily by sneaking around and using silencers or melee weapons to dispose of enemies. One of my favorite moments was sneaking around a Spacer-occupied base, turning their defensive robots and turrets against them via hacking, then watching the chaos unfold from afar as I sniped any unfortunate souls hoping to escape their fate.

After looting too much and painfully discovering the limits of my personal inventory and ship cargo capacity, I spent a fair bit of time getting to know the ship customization feature. Initially, there are so many options that it can be overwhelming. You can effectively build a ship from the ground up by selecting the engines, weapons, internal layout, landing gear, cockpit, cargo hold, and even cosmetic add-ons to the hull of your ship. If you can think it, you can build it, so long as you have plenty of time and enough credits. After sinking a few hours into the experience, I felt like a pro and was able to increase my previous cargo capacity fivefold.

Related: Baldur's Gate 3: How To Build The Best Party

Beyond that, you can further improve the effectiveness of your ship by assigning crew members with desirable skills. At one point, my ship was not capable of making the 28-lightyear jump from one system to the next, so I assigned Sarah Morgan, who happens to be a master in Astrodynamics, to one of the seats in the cockpit, which ultimately allowed me to jump a couple more light years without making any additional modifications to the ship itself.

The sister system to shipbuilding is outposts. It is similarly vast in scope, and demands even more time investment due to the material requirements to build each structure. Building an outpost that can house crew members while harvesting energy and resources from the planet is not a casual undertaking, but the time you do invest into it will feel rewarding in the long run as it will not only expedite the future process of gathering resources, but serve as an additional home base for you as you grav-jump your way across the galaxy.

There are some minor shortcomings in regard to the individual character models, especially the facial animations, which seem like they’re only the best of what last-gen technology can offer. But whatever mild disappointment I felt toward them initially, not unlike the space travel mechanics, quickly faded into irrelevance in face of the excellence the game accomplishes in other areas.

Sure, there are some areas Bethesda could have polished a bit more, but what they did accomplish is nothing less than extraordinary. The longer I played, the more surprises I encountered; like a random solicitor hailing me to remind me about my ship’s extended warranty or being kidnapped by the UC Navy and forced to go undercover in the Crimson Fleet. Every story, every mission, every conversation is valuable, and you feel the passion the hundreds of writers, engineers, and artists put into weaving the complex fabric of this galaxy.

Having played several Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, I can confidently say that Starfield is Bethesda's biggest achievement yet. It's a triumph for Bethesda, but even more so for every human who ever dreamt of a destiny born in the stars.

Next: Baldur’s Gate 3: Tips & Tricks For Beginners

Emma (she/her) is an Evergreen Editor and writer at DualShockers. She has been playing videogames since she could hold a controller, with a particular proclivity for RPGs, roguelike, and life-sim games. When she isn't gaming on her Playstation 5 or Switch you can find her bingeing anime or in the studio working on her latest song.