Starfield Turns A Year Old Today, Echoing A Tale Of Dull Ambition

Starfield, Bethesda’s 25-years-in-the-making space RPG, launched to extreme hype on September 6, 2024, though those who bought any of the premium versions of the game were granted access at the beginning of the month. However, it wasn’t long until players started exploring the ins and outs of the title, quickly coming to the bitter realization that this game wasn’t what we all expected it to be. 

A whole year has flown by at this point with Starfield out, so now, how does the game fare up? Is it a massive improvement over its launch state? Does it meet those grand expectations it implied on delivering prior to release? Let’s find out. 

Disappointing By Design Or Desperation? 

One of the biggest draws of Starfield that hasn’t been able to grow on me is the clear lack of in-depth effort, which is something that Bethesda games have always stood out for. Coming from a developer of this level, Starfield was supposed to be a “forever” game, but that’s not even close to how things actually turned out. 

Now one could argue that the lack of creativity making Starfield boring, per se, is on purpose, so Bethesda could finally make an RPG that’s practically modders’ paradise. There are no eyebrows raised toward this particular facet of the title—mods do get wild in there—but that’s really no excuse for the final product’s inadequacies. Incredibly tedious load times, copy-paste planets, and lackluster AI are a few of the latter.

Starfield’s ‘missed opportunity’ debate rages on, where the game continues to feel like a misstep in at least the quest line direction.”

I decided to choose the word “desperation” for this section’s subtitle because of a news story I remember my colleague writing in March this year. Will Shen, Starfield’s former Lead Quest Designer said he had to hit the “panic” button when it came to putting the final piece of the space RPG’s mainline quest. No wonder the entirety of it feels like a slogfest. 

We were finally at a state in the project where we could play through the whole [game]. And it became very clear that we were missing the large final location that was going to tie the story together and have a satisfying action-filled payoff.

I was both implementing the main quest and leading the quest design team, so I had absolutely no time. The entire quest design team was already overbooked.” 

Untapped Potential That Does Not Follow Through

Bethesda frontman Todd Howard said Starfield aspired to deliver content that “different” from what people typically expect from the developer. Let’s spare a moment to talk about that. 

From hand-crafted environments and organic exploration to actual secrets to be dug up and explored, Bethesda’s charm has substantially dwindled for when it mattered the most. In Starfield, relying on fast travel is imperative, and that’s putting it mildly, meaning that you can kiss the thought of making discoveries on your own goodbye. 

Despite aiming to shoot for the stars, Starfield has nowhere near the same staying power as The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim or Fallout 3, which are Bethesda’s fairly older works.” 

The worst part is, I’ve just come to accept the fact that despite so many updates, patches, and other improvements, it’s Starfield’s core that’s weak from the inside, and no amount of tweaks can sort that out. Credit to Bethesda still for rolling out some genuinely meaningful updates over the year, especially the gameplay settings update that attempts to offer a survival-like experience. 

But what’s done is done, and there is no changing that. 

I thought Starfield was good until I played Mass Effect
byu/Sprites4Ever ingaming

Shattered Space—Redemption Or More Isolation? 

Starfield’s players have plummeted dramatically following its release, despite being Bethesda’s biggest launch in history, so what does that translate to for the title’s future? From all that I can see, a lot of it depends on the upcoming Shattered Space DLC expansion of the RPG, touted as yet another ambitious venture of the developer that may as well end up saving Starfield.

I mean, the story here could play out similarly to Cyberpunk 2077 and its Phantom Liberty expansion, but here’s the kicker: Cyberpunk 2077 was always a fantastic game, but it didn’t have much to show at the start. It was only after Update 2.0 and the subsequent release of said expansion that CD Projekt Red breathed new life into the first-person shooter. 

Anyhow, Todd has also claimed that Shattered Space is built in a way that resembles one of the best DLCs Bethesda ever made. Speaking in an interview, he said,

It allows us to build a landscape like we would traditionally do, and have the city and the quest, and so, that story takes place there, and the landscape’s kind of … Content-wise we’re looking at, kind of like, what we did with Far Harbor on Fallout 4, where, like, okay, ‘this is a scope that works for our development’ in doing this kind of annual story expansion type of thing.”

In case you missed it, Shattered Space is set in a singular city on the planet of Va’Ruun Kai. All that complaint about the RPG being too ambitious for its own good and not having enough fleshed out systems or characters? Yeah, looks like Bethesda might be making amends already.

I’ll definitely stay tuned to see how the DLC turns out when it makes landfall on September 30, 2024, but after having my initial expectations let down hard, I do know not to anticipate anything going in. Hopefully, Shattered Space ends up delivering on all those fronts where the base game took a considerable nosedive.