Starfield review – Constellation prize

In an age of popular live-service games, iterative sports titles, and ingenious indie games, Starfield feels like a throwback to another time. The first new IP in 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, Starfield scratches an itch for old-school single-player action that’s hard to come by in the current climate of gaming. It’s undoubtedly a Bethesda game in its design, but it’s undeniably confident in the direction that it takes.

It’s also the kind of game that asks you to suspend your disbelief to a massive degree. This is in order to dive headfirst into a galaxy of stories, while ignoring some of its shallower elements behind the cosmic smoke and mirrors that it uses to hide a very familiar formula. If you can do that, though, then you’ll find that Starfield is a polished and romantic trek across the stars.

Starfield takes place in an age where good ol’ terra firma has been reduced to an inhospitable sphere of chlorine oceans and radioactive wastelands, but fortunately, humanity has ventured forth across the stars and has found new planets to colonize. With several centuries of established lore, factions, space-cults, and persons of interest roaming the spaceways several centuries from now, you enter the picture as a humble miner who has the potential to become humanity’s next great pioneer.

Thanks to a galactic MacGuffin that you find, it’s not long before you’re connected to a group of explorers looking to usher in the next golden age of enlightenment  – a journey that puts you in the front seat for a jaunt across hundreds of planets as you seek answers to some of the oldest mysteries in the cosmos. That’s a turning point that takes hours to reach, but once you’re clear of that clunky introduction to the basics, Starfield finally finds its footing in zero-gravity environments and far-off planets across the final frontier.

That freedom to carve your own path across dozens of solar systems, to establish your own legend as a starborn Samaritan or a heliosphere hooligan, is pure Bethesda magic. It’s an approach that has worked to great effect across its other main event franchises, like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. Starfield is Bethesda revelling in its passion to escape the bonds of gravity – a love letter to the space races of the Cold War, and the game is crammed full of minute details in every facet of its design.

Fueled by an art direction that is pretty much NASA-punk and a romantic view of the cosmos, Starfield is a surprisingly optimistic look at tomorrow, even when you’re burning your thrusters to escape a barrage of particle beams being fired at you by a pirates. More action-focused than some of Bethesda’s previous games, Starfield aims to keep you on the edge of your seat when you’re engaged in a firefight or verbal jousting. Rock-solid, tangible gunplay and unlockable powers that’ll make you feel like a Jedi show off a side of Bethesda that’s surprisingly well-versed in the art of ballistic diplomacy, with moment-to-moment action that feels satisfying to execute.

Likewise, space is also a pleasure to navigate through, especially after you ditch your starter starship and start investing in better craft, weapons, and customizable designs that define your personal direction as you hop from planet to planet. There are, of course, limitations to the size and scope of the galaxy, because while Bethesda’s claim of a thousand planets to explore isn’t just a case of slick marketing, these celestial orbs aren’t exactly the most fascinating locales to land your ship on.

There is a scientific reason for why some planets are more barren than a Flat-Earth Theory TED talk, but the sheer magnitude of how empty the galaxy is detracts from the stellar side quests of Starfield. Given that the main campaign can best be summed up with an apathetic shoulder shrug at best – sterile storytelling and a cast of designed-by-committee characters will do that – Starfield’s dozens and dozens of side quests are where the real meat of the experience lies.

This is where the game shines thanks to its scientific philosophies, existential crises, and general jerks looking to make a quick buck by raiding your spaceship, providing much needed thrust to this action-RPG experience. Going off the golden path is highly recommended, as Starfield’s combination of fascinating side stories, more fleshed-out characters, and incredible power plays between major factions in the settled systems is where the game finds its charm.

When you’re off the sign-posted track, you can overlook some of the more archaic and watered-down aspects of the game – clunky menus, over-encumbered characters, and miserly merchants are so 2011 – in favour of not just an adventure, but a lifestyle. After more than 40 hours with the title for this review, I still find myself coming back for just one more grav-jump to an unexplored system; just one more encounter with pirates in asteroid fields as I test out some fancy lasers that I just equipped to my ship.

It is staggering to see just how much content Bethesda has managed to shove into the frame of its game. There’s an astounding amount of quantity and quality if you know where to look.

Usually, I’m the kind of person who’ll scoff at the idea of having to spend several hours on a game for it to find its footing. However, Starfield is one of those rare exceptions. Sure, it contains multiple forces working against it, but persevering and learning to accept those flaws leads to a title that is rich with sci-fi experiences across a galaxy where you define your own path across it.

Starfield is out now for Xbox Series consoles and PC.