Why not just play Skyrim again? Well, the last time I tried, I got about a week into modding with no end in sight, and gave up. I'm not some scrub either, I was hand sorting load orders in the Oblivion days before anything like BOSS/LOOT ever existed. Heavily modded Skyrim in The Year of Our Lord 2026 takes longer than the actual run, and I just can't justify to myself these days. Starfield took me an evening. Now, granted, Skyrim does much kinkier stuff with its DLL based mods than anything in Starfield, but still.
I've done the main quest and most of the faction quests, and the Terran DLC. I have not done Shattered Space or Freestar Rangers and I don't think I'll get around to it.
As I've played Starfield and tried to concisely articulate the core problem with the game, there's one word that keeps coming up again and again: Lifeless.
I don't even care so much about the weirdness of the diverse non-descript space future which still has the occasonal Frenchie (black, of course) and gay Jew. I could live with that. What I do care about is that this is Starfield's idea of exciting.
It's a brand new setting. A blank canvas. No debt to legacy material. It could have been insane. Why the fuck shouldn't there be space wizards? Psionics? Nanotech? Gene modding? Technology bordering on magic? Skyrim, despite (mostly) taking place on a single planet, has infinitely more variety in the world in terms of cultures, of scenery, of characters, of pretty much everything. Even if you kept the setting fully human, the cultures could have been so much more interesting than points on the Law/Chaos alignment axis. Never mind that those would have made an infinitely more interesting setting, all that would have made a better game.
Instead we got... this.
Admittedly, I prefer my sci-fi on the shiny, outlandish side. At first glance, it looks like Starfield was an attempt to make something more grounded. I don't agree with this decision, but fine... except they throw it all away and break all their own rules with the big tweest in the main quest. So what was the point?
As much as I love the wacky specieses in games like Star Control or Stellaris, if you did want to limit most or all sentient races to humanoid body plans for technical reasons, it's actually not that hard to justify. Pick from one of the following:
1. Convergent evolution is real and much stronger than anyone thought. Sentient races that achieve space travel are humanoid because that's just what happens: The kind of species that can master technnology to that level has to be, by definition, an intelligent, land dwelling tool user.
2. Take the Star Trek route and say that this region of space was life seeded by precursors, resulting in sentient life physically resembling them.
3. We don't know why and it's a mystery looking to be solved.
Instead just... "No aliens, except there are, sort of, if you don't get it we won't explain it."
The faction quests are the best content. US Vanguard is legitimtely good, aside from one stupid thing at the end which I will come back to later. Ryuijn is solid. One complain about the Crimson Fleet is that if you're on the good guy side, there are several sections that REQUIRE stealth, and you may not have the build for it. Otherwise it's good.
Terran Armada is tedious, but you HAVE to play it to get the new X-Tech resource in reasonable amounts. The story is so barebones and nonsensical, and the quests just keep taking you through the same environments. The luxuy liner at the beginning is kind of neat though. The choice at the end is stupid and carries no weight, because it's really the choice of whether you need to kee farming X-Tech or not.
Combat is... okay, but repetitive. Guns feel pretty good, but all you ever really fight is humans shooting back. Or robots shooting back, who are just humans with way more HP. Regardless of faction, weapons, etc, there's just not much variety in fights.
Weapon selection is boring. Melee combat doesn't exist, don't both trying. At least it's equally useless for enemies.
I actually like have more classical kinetic weapons in sci-fi, but in the non-descript space future, energy weapons should not be second class citizens to this degree. You know how many lead based rifles there are? 14, for every occasion. You know how many energy rifles there are? TWO. One is a shit tier goon fodder weapon, and the other is a special purpose close range double barrel. And there's really no point in using anything other than semi-automatic rifles. Automatics get a massive damage nerf. Pistols are viable, but still a straight downgrade compared to rifles. Heavy weapons and explosives are too expensive. Shotguns are... alright actually? But that brings me to another point.
Why didn't Starfield and Fallout 4 crib the concept of different ammo types from New Vegas? I'm not a New Vegas fanboy, but this was a genuinely great feature. I would love to play a shotgun build and be able to switch between bucksot, explosive shot, and slugs depending on the situation. Instead ammo type is just a weapon mod. You install it once and it magically transforms all the ammo that goes through the gun. Boring.
The crafting is... mixed. I like what they did with weapons and armor and making the crafting more sophisticaed that Number Go Up. Oh, you can do that too now in the new update. You can upgrade the quality of weapons and also add/reroll legendary properties, but it is EXPENSIVE, costs both a lot of credits and a new resource call X-Tech. I think it's good though, because you're not relying on a one in a million roll to get the weapon you actually want.
I hate what they did with chems. Half the fun of Alchemy in Skyrim was coming up with busted-ass potions and poisons. Now it's just... well, here are the ones you're allowed to make. The range of effects is much more limited, no custom combos, and poisons just don't exist. Some of them are decent, but it's just not that interesting.
Food is a sick joke. They have an opportunity to do something cool here, and they blew it. If that isn't Starfield in one sentence...
I have no idea why the research bench even exists. It just seems like extra padding to be allowed to craft things.
Stealth is super weird and inconsistent. Yes, I am aware of suit weight affecting stealth. Even accounting for that. I've had times where I'm halfway across the map, 125% stealth rating, stationary, Chameleon on, enemy facing away, and they just turn around and start shooting. I've had times when I can go up and give them a hug and nothing happens. I still can't figure out the exact conditions for sneak attacks, because they're definitely not what you'd except. Enemies won't ignore their buddy next to them being shot in the head like they do in Skyrim, which is fair enough, but they often start shooting toward you and yet you can still pop off sneak attacks. Other times I am in asbolute, total stealth and a sneak attack won't register. It's all very strange. It feels like the intent was to correct the opposite jank from Skyrim, but it overcorrects, and not very well.
Space combat... I hate it. Semi-casual space combat has been a solved problem for 20 years, and I don't know why more games don't just copy Freelancer. It was literally perfect. Instead, space combat in Starfield just feels... shitty. If the number of ships you're fighting is greater than one, it's not actually a fight, it's a just stat check. If you're fighting one powerful ship, skill matters. If you're fighting multiple small to medium ships, it all comes down to having bigger guns and thicker shields. And if it's 3 Starborn? Enjoy never being able to move your ship again with their magic engine hunting space torpedos.
If there's a system that embodies the wasted potential from Starfield more than any other, it's smuggling. The idea of being a space smuggler sounds cool as hell, until you break down how it works in practice. Pound for pound, contraband is worth a lot. However.
First, what's your best source of contraband? Well, mostly boarding pirate ships. If you're a good guy bounty hunter type, you may not want to sell contraband. If you're an evil pirate, you're probably not pirating other pirates, you're probably raiding legit merchant ships. This is not strictly a mechanical issue, but still. Even if you go that route, you can only find contraband in small quantities as a small bonus to whatever else you were doing.
What about making your own? Yes, you can craft the hot new drug Aurora just like Johnny Breakingbad himself! 3 of the 4 ingredients can be harvested, I suppose, if you're into that sort of thing, but they're pretty cheap to buy. The final ingredient can't be harvest in any real quantity, but it can be bought on Neon. However, it's the most expensive, and you won't break even without several ranks in Commerce. Even then, the money isn't that good.
So how do you sell it? Well, every major settlement and a few minor ones have a Trade Authory store or kiosk, which will buy stolen and.or contraband goods. When you fly to a planet with a major settlement on it, your cargo will be scanned. In order to even have a CHANCE of passing, it has to be in a shielded hold. How do you get these? Crimson Fleet (makes sense) or the Red Mile (how the fuck are you supposed to guess that?). More capacious shielded cargo is expensive and requires the Starship Design skill, and since your odds of being caught are partially based on how much of your shielded cargo space is full, this matters. Pass chance caps out at 90% no matter what, and it ONLY works if it's in the cargo hold. Forgot to take it off your person? Tough toenails, you've been made.
... except you don't need to do any of that, because the Den and Clinic have Trade Authority and don't check you for contraband. For Aurora, you can just sell it right on Neon instead of having to do annoying jetpack tricks to get it past the city gate scanners. It's all the same price everywhere. You never need to make a contraband check unless you want to, and selling on guarded planets gains you NOTHING.
But you don't really need to do THAT, either. What happens if you get caught with contraband? You pay a token fine and get dropped off at the local police station right next to the chest where they stashed your confiscated items, which you can just immediately steal back. No consequences aside from a small cost of doing business. You can RP this in your head as a bribe, I guess, but come on.
The final thing to do with smuggling is taking Trade Authority smuggling jobs. They load your cargo and you take it from point A to point B. It's fine, I guess, but it's just a cargo hauling mission with extra steps.
Mods add Rimworld style organ harvesting to corpses, but it's still pretty small scale.
No matter which of these you do, the money just isn't worth it.
New skill system. I really prefer the more freefrom skill system from Skyrim. It was most interesting and more easily extensible for modders. The skill challenge idea of needs to do mini-cheevoes to level up specific skill is... almost interesting? About a third of them are things you accomplish naturally if the skill fits your playstyle, a third won't happen naturally but are easy to grind, and a third of them are pure sadism. like having to do over 100(!?) melee sneak attacks to max out Concealment.
Exploration is better in No Man's Sky. Despite being fully procedural with no unique things to discover, it still impressed me more than Starfield to land on a colorful new planet full of wacky creatures, or look up at a night sky full of stars. I'm not a HUGE fan of NMS, but one of my clearest fun memories of it was my first money grind, driving my space car around a planet full of valuable crystals that would only bloom in storms. Starfield's jetpack car is... okay, I guess.
I don't have an inherent problem with the greater emphasis on radiont quests. What I do have a problem with is seeing the same 5 boring ass dungeons over and over. I'm not inherently against the use of procedural generation or AI in games, but it should be MANY hours before I see the same dungeon twice. I remember the moment in No Man's Sky where I had played enough to start seeing repeats of planets, and it was quite a ways in. If No Man's Sky can do it, why can't Starfield?
There's a point in the main quest where you can do a side quest for a free, really good ship. There are two versions and one is considerably better than the other, aside from having slightly steeper requirements to fly. Now what what this actually is, is a way to quickly get NG+ players into a versatile ship without the grind, but that's not important. Here's how the quest works.
You're supposed to help a group of starship designers who all have different ideas on what to build. One wants a combat ship, the other wants a cargo hauler, etc. Actually not a bad setup for a quest.
There's a design problem with the quest here, because there actually is no "fighter version" or "cargo version" of the ship, just the good one and the bad one. The bad on is still decent, but the real problem, as mentioned, is the writing.
There are several requirements to get the better ship. First, secure extra funding and do some missions to provide real world data. Fair enough. Then, you have to talk to the team. The game seems to be steering you toward getting everyone to compromise, which would also be fair enough, except... To get the better ship you have to completely ignore all common sense and in-game guidance, glaze every member of the committee about how brilliant their ideas are, then lead them in a group meditation session.
I don't know whose public therapy session this was, but tt's every bit as gay as it sounds.
Companions... hoo boy, companions.
I'll rehash Constellation very briefly. These are the companions from the main quest. They're the only one who interact with each other, the only romancable ones (which I don't really care about), the only ones with friendship meters, and they all have blatantly better stats than any other companions. I used a mod to correct that and beef up the other named companions stat-wise, but.
Aside from Vasco the robot, there are four companions in Constellation. They are all the same person with only the barest superficial differences. They all have the same very correct political opinions, the same reactions to your choice on major quests, the same tendency to turn a gun on you if you start cracking innocent skulls. All of them hate it, for example, if you side with the Crimson Fleet. You'd think Andreja, given her past, might be a bit more morally flexible, and she is... in the sense that she ends up cunting you out EITHER WAY. There's also an infamous choice at the end of the UC Vanguard questline where you have to get some nasty wildlife under control, and your choices are reintroducing their natural predator which is harmless to humans, or tampering with microbes. ALL Constellation sides with the microbe option. They even tell you, and this is not a paraphrase, to "trust the science".
Also, in order to get all the Space Shouts, you MUST befriend Barrett, the token black guy, and then do his companion quest to clear the falsely slandered name of his gay lover. This is not a joke. Barret is somehow the LEAST annoying Constellation companion. (Walter is the best member overall though.)
Oh, and the black Russian. I literally cannot remember his name because that's how boring he is. He's black and speaks in a Russian accent with weird metaphors. That's it. The ultimate diversity hire. More than any of the other shoehorned DIE, this one was just rubbing demographic replacement in your face. At least black French people actually exist.
Funny thing is? I actually like some of the non-Constellation companions. There are various named ones you care hire or find. They come with a small backstory, mannerisms, some commentary on places you visit, but no friendship meter or morality. They often even have a small update to their story once you travel with them long enough. Mod their stats to be equal to Constellation and it's an infinitely more tolerable experience.
I ended up spending most of the game with Sophia Grace, who is surprisingly not a tranny. There IS a tranny companion, because of course there is, but it's not her. Sophia does have a stupid fucking blue mohawk though. Anyway, I picked her because I felt like it fit thematically. And it was fine. In her backstory, she mentions she wants to visit the moon. I was in the area and stopped by, and she actually thanked me for taking her there. That's pretty decent attention to detail. The B team writers did a better job than whoever the fuck did Constellation.
Some mods are fine I guess? Valiant is a good light touch skill overhaul that aims for balance and less annoying skill challenges. It won't blow you away like Ordinator did for Skyrim. Real Fuel is... eh. Made more sense before Freelanes. It was supposed to give you something to spend your money on, but now with X-Tech upgrades you have that. Astrolabe is indispensable for navigation. But it's not like Skyrim, where I could name TONS of cool stuff on Nexus or whatever.
I'm not going to go into a sub rant about my feels on the concept of paid mods. We'd be here all day. The actual paid mods themselves are a mixed bag. Fuck no I didn't actually pay for them. I'll highlight a few of the more interesting ones.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK Watchtower. This is supposed to be the Starfield equivalent of Legacy of the Dragonborn in terms of defining a run. Which it does... but not in a good way. Space travel becomes an absolute slog. The second you install it, you will be CONSTANTLY swarmed by Watchtower ships every time you jump. The 3 pack they normally send after you is annoying, but manageable if you've been investing in ship combat. However, there is a fairly high random chance that a much larger fleet will jump in on your position, consisting of 10+ ships in a game where 3 is the most you'd ever normally face at once. You WILL lose, and you're not allowed to run. It's not fun, it's not challenging, it's not interesting, it's just an RNG based death sentence. The idea is you're supposed to build a fleet, would would be fine if these encounters started later by making a certain amount of progress in the mod, but they just drown you in enemies immediately. Apparently the Super Secret Squirrel Watchtower organization can afford to just throw hundreds of ships and thousands of bodies at you. I know, gameplay doesn't always match story, but still.
There's a combination of mods (mostly paid) that makes full time piracy actually pretty fun and profitable. And yes, I appreciate the irony that I pirated those mods. I can't remember all the names, but there's stuff that reduces bounty for piracy actions, gives ships a chance to surrender if you kill their captain, allows you to to board peacefully if you pass a piracy check, adds cash-rich vault modules to high level merchant ships, and more. Running around hassling Galbank ships and emptying their credtanks is probably the most fun I've had in Starfield.
Shout out to Shopping List for being quite possibly the best mod for anything ever. You can create an object to interact with all local merchants from a single interface instead of having to tear ass around New Atlantis. Also, if you put an item on the shopping list, it automatically buys it from local vendors when you enter a port. Highly configurable. A little jank at times, but WAY better than not having it.
A couple small compliments for Starfield.
The game is WAY more stable that anything Beth has put out before. Even heavily modded, I rarely experience crashes. Again, I know that heavily modded Skyrim under the hood is attempting much more schizophernic things than Starfield, by necessity, but still.
The inventory management is lightyears beyond anything in Skyrim. I cannot overstate the quality of life improvement that came from Starfield getting this right the first time. Doing the inventory shuffle for crafting in Skyrim was like filing taxes. Just having a few clicks to add/remove items from container by category in Starfield is an absolute godsend. There was only one Skyrim mod that fixed this properly, Assigned Storage. It died when the tranny responsible flounced from the Nexus during the paid collections debacle.
It's cool that they found better way to utilize social skills. I enjoyed playing through Ryujin as a diplomancer rather than a ninja. The persuade minigame isn't much, but it's more than Beth has given us in the past. And the ability to use social skill to manipulate enemies in combat is nice.
I... actually kind of like the lockpicking minigame? Or at least don't hate it. Oblivion's was too tedious and Skyrim was too annoyingly simple. The Starfield one provides a minor diversion without getting in the way too much.
So yeah. I don't HATE STarfield. I've had some fun with it. But it could've been an order of magnitude better in even slightly more competent hands.
