Starfield is great for 2013
A hand-crafted experience met with half-baked features
The first ten hours with the game and you will see the level of hand-craftingness. Bethesda has put a lot of work to create a new world with a lot of places, materials, people, and narratives that makes the universe feel alive.
The problem of Starfield is not the writing, the different side quests, or the locations, but rather because it’s very shallow compared to what features they have integrated into Starfield. Features that we have seen better from other studios.
Don’t get me wrong™, Starfield is a good RPG and lovers of this genre will probably praise it. Realistically, the game ranges from mediocre to good enough around its main focus. In other words, it’s the “other things” that wears the player’s interest.
On-foot shooting is very blunt, as the only help is a basic cover mechanic, something that Black Ops 4 (2018) matured. Games like F.E.A.R (2005) had a very rudimentary but effective AI that reacted to the enemy. There is also a Squad Orders mechanic missing to provide cover, something that Mass Effect (2007) had in its first game.
Space shooting is a painful experience when you have to deal with your energy subsystems constantly to get the better of the space battlefield. While it’s not expected for the player to be the best pilot in the system, it’s difficult to make a case when games like Elite: Dangerous (2014) exist.
The problem with Starfield is that it offers the same “Bethesda RPG experience” that we know, while pushing everything else into the background. New features are only by name, and can be both shallow, buggy or uninteresting.
One thing to note is that Microsoft acquired Zenimax at the end of 2020 after seeing Starfield going as a PlayStation exclusive, probably when the game was already starting its post-production cycle: like localization, marketing, Q&A, you name it. There was no Microsoft when a budget was allocated to Starfield.
It’s Fallout 4 with a fresh paint of space sim
The problem with Starfield is a two-decade old engine showing its age, Gamebryo. The folks at Bethesda Game Studios forked (made a copy) and customized it enough to change the name to “Creation Engine”.
Consider that a decade ago, the toolchain to create this kind of games was very primitive. Animations, textures and even scripted events where coded directly into the game. This meant only a few selected people could add it into the game, instead of engines like Unreal 5, Unity, CryEngine where everyone can use a nice GUI. Probably it’s what Bethesda had to create to hook into Gamebryo.
For those who don’t know about Gamebryo, is a really old game engine that powered many titles around the 2000 era. Most notably are Fallout 3, Bully, Civilization IV and Divinity II, among others. It was a good engine for its time, but it didn’t keep up with times compared to CryEngine, Unreal 4 and Unity the next decade.
It’s known that Bethesda, at the time Starfield was on the drawing board, didn’t have the manpower to create an engine from scratch, nor the budget. Even repurposing id Tech 6 and its toolchain would have taken a lot of work.
There is an interview with Todd Howard that I lost, where someone asked for the game engine. He insinuated that they weren’t going for a change on engine because what they have now allows to create much more content at fast pace — they have mastered the toolchain already.
Starfield is a victim of Bethesda success
Why change the engine, if the current one works flawlessly, and it’s not difficult to integrate new features for a new project? Starfield is a victim of Bethesda success, and with tight budgets there is not much space to risk something.
As long the studio produces something good within its realm of expertise, everyone keeps their job. Hopefully, Microsoft will see that and make changes on the foundation of RPGs on Bethesda Game Studios.
The bar on space-sim RPGs is No Man’s Sky and Mass Effect. The bar for any RPG from this year onwards has become Baldur’s Gate 3.
These are no perfect titles in any sense, but subsequent releases polished features that where absent or half-baked. Other similar titles are Outer Wilds, Elite Dangerous and The Outer Worlds.
Who knows if players will already be fed up with Gamebryo shortcomings when the The Elder Scrolls VI comes out in 2025~2026.
