(Starfield) (2023) (PC) (Bethesda)
0Bethesda has just unleashed their latest sprawling open world adventure, and I of course had to check it out. Even though the game is pretty fun and impressive in some respects, my initial impression is that this is not an exceptional RPG experience overall - especially not in the year Baldur's Gate 3 was released.
While the two products couldn't be more different in many ways, any title that features lots of exploration, dialogue, customization and character development cannot escape being compared with Larian's triumphant resurrection of the RPG formula (as well as actual franchise) once associated with Bioware. While it's understandable that a game of Starfield's dizzying size can't deliver the depth and sophistication of BG3's comparatively mid-sized campaign, there's simply no excuse in 2023 for the static character interactions and dull expository dialogue which Bethesda has churned out ever since the days of Oblivion and Fallout 3 almost two decades ago.
The general tone and art design of Bethesda's new IP borrows heavily from Mass Effect, and the vintage 1970s sci-fi atmosphere is greatly facilitated by excellent texture and material work which really does a lot to bring the universe alive. Without the aforementioned series' fascinating NPCs and heightened melodrama, however, Starfield's attention to detail falls rather flat in the end. Indeed, this supposedly grand sci-fi space opera frequently struggles to rise above the level of a forgettable mid-season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I often find myself comparing the game unfavourably to The Outer Worlds; that Fallout-esque Obsidian RPG I didn't much care for at the time but which nonetheless had significantly more engaging story content and character interactions. Moreover, while Starfield sees incremental improvements in the shooter gameplay departement, the leap forward is much less pronounced than it was in Fallout 4 and the action sequences end up feeling merely adequate rather than particularly exciting.
I'm only a few hours into the game so far, but seeing as I'm neither a fan of scanning sparsely populated alien planets (Starfield gives off strong No Man's Sky vibes, and not in a good way) nor crafting stuff merely for the sake of crafting stuff, there doesn't appear to be a whole lot else that might keep me invested in the long run.