The hype surrounding the space exploration video game Starfield is real. Players worldwide are tingling with excitement at the prospect of getting their hands on Bethedsa’s first new intellectual property for almost three decades and doing so for free. That is correct; Starfield, the current favorite for the Game of the Year award with the best betting sites, is coming to Xbox for free via Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service. This article will explain why you must fire up your Xbox or PC on September 6 and become the latest Starfield explorer.
Bethesda Game Studios has a rich history of developing epic role-playing games (RPGs). The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was one of the biggest hits in 2002 and sparked a flurry of equally impressive sequels, including the all-time classic Skyrim. Then there was the fantastic Fallout series, which, the disastrous Fallout 76 aside, is considered some of the greatest video games ever made. RPG fans were sent into a frenzy when Bethesda director Todd Howard described Starfield as “Skyrim in space.”
A Game Almost Ten Years in the Making
Although Bethesda’s Fallout series is set in a post-apocalyptic future, Starfield is the developer’s first out-and-out space game. It developed and published Delta V in 1994, but that was set in virtual space, not an actual living, breathing universe like Starfield.
According to Howard, Bethesda has toyed with the idea of a straight-up space game since the early 1990s and almost began creating a Star Trek title in the 2000s, but the project never got off the ground. Bethesda trademarked the Starfield name in 2013, and development of the title got underway around the time Fallout 4 was released in November 2015. Eight years later, Starfield is ready to set pulses racing.
The Starfield Setting
Starfield is set around the year 2310 when humans have developed the technology to travel deep into space. Indeed, the game’s main area is some 50 light-years away from our Solar System, in a location Starfield calls the Settled Systems. There are several factions within the game, although the main story arc features the Freestar Collective and United Colonies, the two largest were embroiled in the Colony War. Starfield takes place 20 years after the war, with those two main factions enjoying an uneasy peace.
Players take control of a fully customizable character who is part of an organization of space explorers known as the Constellation. Switching from first-person to third-person at any time in the game when traversing vast areas on foot or in one of the highly customizable spacecraft at the player’s disposal is possible.
Starfield’s main lure is its vast universe. Bethesda claims that its open world contains more than 1,000 planets and an unspecified number of moons and space stations in both fictional and non-fictional planetary systems. Although it is not possible to land on all of the planets, you can set your spaceship’s thrusters and fly towards any of them, and you eventually arrive at them; those planets have their own orbit and change positions around the sun.
The planets, moons, and space stations that players can land upon are mostly procedurally generated, with the game creating the terrain, fauna, and flora based on a complex algorithm within Bethesda’s Creation Engine 2. Players can scan planets for natural resources, which are harvested or extracted to fulfill crafting recipes.
Players can also construct outposts on the planets and moons they visit, recruit non-playable characters (NPCs) to their crew, and even form romances with some NPCs. Best of all, while there is a story arc to follow, players can approach the game however they wish. They can take on the role of a traveling space merchant, become a deadly pirate, or anything in between. The endless possibilities will increase as Bethesda launches fresh content in the coming months and years.
Greatness Takes Time to Achieve
Players who pre-ordered Starfield have been able to play the game on early release since September 1, five days before the worldwide release on September 6. Over 230,000 players accessed the game in the first two hours of early release on Steam, which indicates Starfield could be one of the most-played video games in history when it lands on Game Pass.
Although most of Starfield’s early reviews shine a positive light on the space exploration title, some game components have frustrated critics and players.
For example, Howard gave an interview approximately one month before Starfield’s release, in which he revealed the game’s framerate is capped at 30 frames per second (FPS) in the Xbox Series X and the Series S. Howard revealed that capping the Series X framerate was necessary so that the game ran smoothly at all times, even during intense battles. Early reviews suggest the framerate is constant, which is excellent considering the Series X version runs in 4K definition – the Series S uses 1080p – but it is frustrating when other modern titles strive for the holy grail of 120 fps.
Furthermore, players have voiced their concerns at the clumsy inventory management system, something that has plagued Bethesda titles since the year dot. Players spend up to a third of the time juggling and shuffling their inventory as they pick up new weapons and resources, leading to frustration. Unfortunately, inventory management is a necessary evil in RPGs, but it appears the Starfield system is clunky at best; perhaps Bethesda will patch this in a later release.
Some review sites have stated that Starfield fails to live up to its space exploration format because it heavily relies on fast travel and loading screens between planets. Again, this is likely something Bethesda will change in future releases because players are crying out for the space section of the game to be a completely open world.
Conclusion
Starfield is a good game in its current state, one that Bethesda claims takes around 50 hours to complete the main story, but also one where early-release players have spent more than 100 hours exploring every nook and cranny of the universe.
Patches, updates, and downloadable content (DLC) are already in development, which should further improve Starfield. One only needs to look at Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky to see what continued growth can do for a video game. No Man’s Sky was a complete mess when it launched in July 2018 but has since developed into one of the best space exploration games ever. Starfield has started on a much firmer footing than its rival, so the sky is the limit for Bethesda’s potentially epic title.