Genuinely Awkward

On September 6, 2023, Bethesda released Starfield on PC and probably some other things that aren’t PC that I don’t own and therefore don’t care about. I was excited for Skyrim in space and therefore bought it. What followed was a lot of loading screens, awkwardly-staring NPCs, and a vast universe where entire planets have maybe three natural resources each for some reason.

Now here’s a plot twist: I did enjoy Starfield. It’s boring, but that means it’s a perfect podcast game. Just slap something on in the background while you go through the motions of being a space pirate or scanning the local megafauna on a planet that has as much biological diversity as natural resource diversity (so, like, three types of animal.) But as I played through, I realized there are some glaring issues with the game that could be easily fixed without really compromising the experience.

***Massive spoilers below.***

1- Branching Paths to Nowhere

In the game you eventually discover that there are entities called Starborn that basically hop between universes using some kind of central consciousness. It’s designed to be a New Game Plus (NG+) feature so you can start fresh in a new universe and replay the different missions to try out different outcomes.

The problem is most major missions with noticeable epilogues have two outcomes, neither of which really changes how the galaxy develops. It’s some minor dialogue changes. You’ve given me a safety net to hit the reset button if I screw things up but don’t really let me screw up. There’s a whole mission set about a potential killer-alien outbreak and the options at the end are kill the killer-aliens with bacteria or two story tall alien goat-things. Make those options have drastic effects. Better yet, give me the option to say, “The killer-aliens have the right to exist,” and shut down both options and let the entire galaxy get swarmed to the point of total destruction. Or let me decide which faction gets access to the killer-aliens to use in conflicts and see the ensuing war-crimes. There’s just no purpose to replay most of the quests because there is no real difference in the outcome.

2- Starborn Again

You have the option to leave your universe behind and become Starborn at the end. Your rewards are a kind of underwhelming ship (that was earlier hyped up as being insanely powerful, but isn’t really,) a new space suit (which is kind of weaker than everything else,) and the ability to get stronger powers by getting them again (by playing the same stupid mini-game where you fly into shifting lights three times). All of your weapons, supplies, colonies, and relationships are erased.

Make the Starborn Ship better, or give me the ability to improve it. Put a high cost on the improvements. Make me craft them. Put rare items required to upgrade the ship at the end of certain quest lines. Let the improvements carry over to NG+. Give me something to continuously build and improve through every timeline until I have a completely overpowered ship.

Either let the player carry their inventory over to NG+ or place a container on the ship that can preserve its contents. Make it expensive to upgrade. It’s frustrating to work hard customizing a character build around a weapon and then hoping to get a similar weapon ASAP. I have a character that specializes in using the mining laser because it’s the only thing that’s given to you for free at the start of every play through. Even better, make it so you can fuse story-relevant legendary weapons into better versions with every run.

Make a type of colony that comes with you to new universes. Again, make its hub expensive and limited at first and require a lot to upgrade it.

The main gripe here is that it makes no sense to make the process of building ships, weapons, and colonies so arduous and then include a core gameplay component around erasing all progress except player level. I don’t want to go to my sandbox, spend ten hours building a castle, then kick it over as soon as it’s done.

The NG+ concept can work if it’s easier to build settlements, get new weapons, and upgrade them. But resources are so scarce and spread out that it becomes a major hassle. So either make it easier to reestablish myself after hitting the reset button or give me something permanent to work on with every subsequent run.

I love the NG+ feature in theory, but everything about the game is designed around spending a lot of time building things.

3- Parallel Dimension Populated by Sentient Crabs

NG+ also introduces slight changes to the main organization, Constellation, with some of the different universes. There’s a universe where they can be children. There’s a universe where one of them is after you for revenge. It’s part of why NG+ is a solid concept: I’m all for seeing some differences in playthroughs based on unique setups in different universes.

I want them to crank up the dimensional differences to eleven. Have a universe where all humans are replaced by crabs, or at least Constellation members. Have a universe where all planets are underdeveloped because humanity never advanced. Have one with an intact Earth with an optional mission to either make Earth progress and be destroyed or halt its progression and save it in the short-term.

In summary, I don’t want to just walk in to one building and see some minor differences in a handful of characters. That’s kind of fun, but it makes it so I’m speedrunning through universes because they don’t really matter. Put me in universes with unique setups, faction-balances, and developments that I want to explore/resolve before moving on.

Most of my points in today’s write up are centered around NG+. I’ll probably come back to talk about some other issues with Starfield, but when it comes to a giant, glaring issue with the core game, the NG+ is so massively underutilized. It has enough bits to be a core mechanic of Starfield, but the rest of the game isn’t really designed around it. Make it central. Make it worthwhile. One of my characters is based entirely around dimension hopping and it’s really fun, but it’s kind of frustrating because I don’t see a reason to build anything or customize ships or weapons because it’ll vanish within a few hours.

Hopefully the Fractured Space DLC fixes some of the issues I listed above. I’m probably going to get it because, again, I did enjoy Starfield. I love a good grind while I listen to a podcast. I just want my grind to lead towards something.