Starfield: Exploration and Open Worlds (Or the Lack Thereof) || Critique
10This video offers a little critique of Starfield's overall structure. I had to adjust my expectations with Starfield as a long-time Bethesda fan who has enjoyed the studio's open world exploration-based gameplay since The Elder Scrols IV: Oblivion, and then continued with Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4. Wandering aimlessly and stumbling onto cool quests or set pieces has always been the highlight of a Bethesda game for me, more so than any particular quest-line. For this reason it is interesting to discover that Starfield has more or less abandoned the exploration-based gameplay that has dominated Bethesda's work since the 1990s. It has also abandoned the very idea of an open world game; as I argue in this video, Starfield is not an open world game, and it is not an exploration-based game.
None of this is to say that Starfield is bad. It is a well-made action RPG with plenty of freedom, a huge scope, and interesting storytelling possibilities. But it is also a game about a member of a space exploration guild, developed by a studio that is famous for their exploration-based games, that more or less abandons any role for exploration in its core gameplay loop. Or so I argue in this video; and I think it's kind of a shame.
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00:00 The Absence of Exploration
00:53 Bethesda Abandons the Open World Structure