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When a game developer promises the world, or in this case, the universe, such a pledge is difficult to live up to. If expectations aren’t met, sometimes the game will be considered a failure. With Starfield, that is far from the case here. There is tons of content that makes your voyage through space a fantastic ride, even with the game’s shortcomings. Starfield‘s promises have been vast, and for the most part, they actually lived up to them. However, it’s hard to satisfy Bethesda fans after mishaps like Fallout 76 and the recent disaster of Redfall. While Starfield is an incredible experience in many ways, some of the promises Bethesda has made didn’t exactly come to fruition in the final product. Here are five promises that Starfield failed to deliver.
5. Space Travel
While Starfield never specifically promised a seamless form of space travel, the existence of No Man’s Sky and Elite Dangerous convinced us there would be. The space travel here is a series of individual instances connected by loading screens. Yes, some people have managed to fly the entire distance to separate planets. However, such long treks are not eventful, making them neither satisfying nor worthwhile. Furthermore, not being able to land on planets from space is a big letdown. With other space RPGs that have such a feature, it’s baffling that this isn’t available in Starfield.
4. Planet Exploration
Exploration is everything when it comes to Bethesda games. When Starfield was announced, dreams of an intergalactic version of Skyrim filled the heads of gamers everywhere. Now that we have the final product before us, that exploration is slightly lacking. There are tons of planets filled with quests and activities to do, but the problem is how soon those objectives start becoming repetitive.
For example, many planets will have a collapsed mining crater to explore. The first time you do this, it’s an incredible experience. But on the 30th time, the appeal is gone. After all, most of them are just copied and pasted to different planets. This is not only lazy design but also makes no sense since these planets are in completely different solar systems. The same goes for caves, which are so repetitive to the point that they aren’t even worth exploring after the first handful you encounter. We were given promises of never-before-seen exploration in Starfield, and while there is that sometimes, the repetitive nature of the other content stands out in a bad way.
3. Next-Gen Graphics
Starfield can look incredible at times, but at other times, especially in the facial animations, it feels like we are looking at a last-gen game. Compare the facial animations here to some recently released games like Final Fantasy 16, Baldur’s Gate 3, or God of War: Ragnarok, and it’s not even in the same league. That may sound harsh, but some of the faces and animations by characters feel like they were ripped right out of 2012. The eyes, the expressions, and the overall uncanny feeling that NPCs radiate pervades throughout every conversation you have. The straight-on perspective in dialogue that was the go-to for Bethesda games from 2006 to 2011 is back for some puzzling reason.
Graphics have reached new heights in today’s gaming age, and these things just don’t go unnoticed. Add to that lackluster fire effects, visual jankiness with the melee combat, and some weirdly bland textures in alien foliage, and you have a mixed bag for graphics and design.
2. Less Buggy Experience Than Previous RPGs
Starfield has bugs, and it has them aplenty. Now, rarely are they game-breaking, but seeing as Xbox promised this would be the least buggy Bethesda game yet, the results leave us wanting. You will experience things like textures not loading on maps or enemies spawning without weapons and getting stuck in small spaces. These are just a few of the multiple issues that can hamper the playing experience. It is definitely an improvement over the absurd bugs you’ll find in previous Bethesda games. Still, it’s already been well-documented that bugs are aplenty in Starfield, with some even jeopardizing one’s gameplay experience.
Some players consider Bethesda games’ bugginess as part of their charm. Others prefer a bug-free experience that lets the game itself do the talking. None of the bugs encountered will ruin your playthrough, but the fact that there were promises that Starfield would have very few of them is a blatant lie.
2. Build Variety
Much like any other Bethesda game, build variety is usually plentiful. With Starfield, that’s not the case. With it being primarily a first and third-person shooter, the main build you’ll be using is likely that of a gun user. Melee combat is present but incredibly bare-bones. You can wield a solid variety of knives and swords, but the system barely functions better than Fallout 4. The result is mediocrity that makes the game feel stuck in the past. Running a melee build is possible but both wildly inconvenient and unwieldy.
Gun-wise, you get a lot more variety, with long and short-range weapons changing up your strategies extensively. We expected the melee combat to be improved considerably by Bethesda in the years since Skyrim. Instead, it’s somehow gotten worse.
1. An Authentic RPG Experience
Anything can be an RPG these days, but when you think of authentic roleplaying experiences, the feeling of choosing a path is something that stands out. Making choices should have consequences, and that’s especially true when it comes to factions in Starfield. There are a handful of them, and many have opposing philosophies. Despite that, you have complete freedom to join whichever one you’d like and bounce between the questlines at your leisure. This doesn’t cause certain factions to reject you, except for when you try to be in the Crimson Fleet and the Vanguard at the same time. For the most part, outside of a couple of lines of dialogue, your past with other factions is barely registered with the game.
The same goes for the Companions you travel with. They will voice disapproval of your choices at times, but they usually happily fall back in line. The freedom to play how you want is there, but that freedom is far more limited than something like Baldur’s Gate 3, which challenges your imagination for every single scenario. Here, you are limited to Bethesda’s imagination. While it’s perfectly fine most of the time, hardcore RPG fans might find the freedom not all that free.
That’s a sizable amount of complaining about a game packed with hundreds of hours of gameplay. You could call it all nitpicking. When a company like Bethesda makes promises about a game as high profile as Starfield, fans expect them to deliver; this is no different. Despite these complaints, Starfield is a special experience. Just like Skyrim and Fallout 4 before it, it might eventually become a legendary name within the gaming lexicon. A gaming experience can wow you in many ways while disappointing you in others. We know Bethesda is a company that excels in both those areas. These mishaps will likely get updated somewhere down the line, and those that don’t will get a healthy bit of fixing from the talented modding community.
Starfield is available on Xbox Series X/S and PC.
