The first thing I’ll say is Starfield feels big. Sure the main questline is said to only be around 20 or so hours. But there’s a lot of content that will likely draw you away from it pretty quickly. Or, like me, you just want to explore this vast galaxy. That was my main reason for wanting Starfield in the first place. And as a galactic exploration game, Bethesda have made sure Starfield offers up a lot of it.
For this experiences article, I’m focusing on that exploration. But it wouldn’t do to miss off the start of that main questline, considering it helps set things into gear. Working as a miner, things get out of hand when a mysterious artifact is found. Experiencing a vision of some kind that renders you unconscious, you wake in the medical facility of the mining operation. It is here where character customisation happens.
It’s an in-depth one, first starting you off by choosing a preset character before allowing customisation of them. The body section allows you to choose skin tone, body shape, body type and walk style. A lot more customisation happens with the face, with a lot of options to change even small details such as the cheeks and jaw. It’s a nice thing to be able to do, even if for most of the game you won’t be seeing your face. Unless you really like to take photos in places where there’s breathable atmosphere.
Along with that are the background and trait options. The background you give a character will determine their starting skills. For me, the Cyberneticist gave me the ability to heal faster with med packs, a greater advantage when it comes to hacking locks, and stronger laser weaponry. Traits offer advantages but also bring disadvantages, and so are optional to set. I felt it would be better not to choose any, as I felt the advantages weren’t going to offer me much.
While you were out cold, the supervisor of the mining operation had called in a friend to help identify what had been found. The man arrives, but was followed by pirates. Once they have been dealt with, you get tasked with taking the Frontier – the man’s ship – to the main city of the Alpha Sentauri system. Not alone, as his robot accompanies you. There, you will talk to those of the exploration guild Constellation, who are working to solve the mystery of these artifacts.
There is a detour you have to make before being allowed to head for that city, but it teaches about space combat and exploration much the same as the fight on the ground showed off the ground combat. That detour also explains about the scanner, which will become an essential tool for an explorer. The combat feels good. Movement is fluid, as is the aiming and shooting. There has never been a time where I’ve wanted to blame the game for its combat mechanics.
At the base of Constellation, you meet the crew who are present, and team up with the leader to track down another of the artifacts having filled them in on your experience and seen what they have found out so far. This part of the quest takes you to our system, where the Earth… has seen better days. With the mission complete, more quests are given, but this is the point for me where it felt fine to go off and do my own thing.
So off I went, keeping the leader of Constellation with me as a companion as I darted from system to system, getting into scraps while surveying the planets and marvelling at how isolated this galaxy can make you feel. Frozen hills, desert flats, rocky craters… there’s a lot of natural things to find on these planets and moons. The scanner is an explorer’s friend, showing resources that are within the ground or forming on the terrain. Fauna and flora will also be shown, with these needing multiple scans to be complete.
The scanner also highlights other things within the area, allowing the locations of caves, geological features, and man-made structures to be present. If a ship comes down to land, the locations of those ships are also highlighted, with your own ship also marked for easily locating it. Visiting ships is always a surprise, as it means there’s some life on these planets that you can have a chat with. Maybe.
Some people will be friendly, allowing you to stay on board. Others might only tolerate your presence. Sometimes, you’ll meet raiders who will attack on sight. Others will be friendly until they realise you’re not meant to be there. You might also come across ships that are locked, which means the person who owns it is wandering close by. The same risks as to their friendliness apply.
As for the unknown structures, these take the form of abandoned facilities that are usually filled with pirates raiding them. Whether it’s worth it to clear them out depends on whether you also want to pillage the place for potential rare loot. Some facilities are small while others are larger, with an even larger underground area attached to them. Most of what I’m currently using has been found through ridding these facilities of pirates, with epic or even legendary rarity items to be uncovered.
Clearing out these pirates can be a drain on ammo, but are a great way to gain XP and level yourself up. Especially if you’re taking the explorer route and not touching missions. Except any you might randomly come across from facilities that aren’t abandoned. A lab in trouble if the generator doesn’t get fixed. A civilian outpost missing a member after a raid. Even some large-scale ones such as helping defend a facility from being overrun.
Speaking of outposts, you can create your own. Resources are needed to build the various parts to them, such as power generators and extractors. So exploring the galaxy finding them is worthwhile if you want to go big with one. My small attempts are innocuous, barely worth noticing, but I do want to eventually expand the one on Earth. It might only be extracting small portions of water at present, but there is a lot of water to be found.
XP helps you grow stronger, not only with various stats, but also through the skills. Your background chosen on character creation gives you a head start on three of them, but there’s a lot of them. And four tiers to each one. Each level up gives you a skill point to apply, which can be put on any unlocked skill. When you unlock a skill, the next tier of it won’t be available straight away, meaning you can’t just power up your pistol or hacking skill. Instead, there is a challenge to complete before that next tier unlocks.
It is through these skills that new opportunities for the outposts present themselves, as well. And weapon and ship upgrades. All of which help to explore further from your starting point in the galaxy. Research will need to be completed to gain access to those upgrades, which feeds into the explorer’s path of extracting various resources from the planets and moons you find yourself at.
There is a whole lot more to this game that I’m yet to discover. Whole sectors of the galaxy yet to be touched. The act of travelling between systems might only be able to be done through a menu and fast travel systems, but it doesn’t feel wrong to do so. It gives the best of both worlds. Those who want to travel quickly can instantly get to another system despite being far away from the ship while those who want to immerse themselves in the act of travel can also do that.
Starfield is very much a Bethesda RPG. There’s no getting away from that. But if a galactic adventure in that formula is something you’ve wanted, this will make you feel right at home. Even then, I can say this is worth a purchase. The combat is great, with a wide variety of weapons to use. The exploration is brilliant, even if it can get repetitive seeing the same landscapes and facilities between systems. The content that Starfield has will keep you occupied with how much there is to find and do.
While I can’t comment on where that main questline is heading, it does feel like it will direct you to various gameplay mechanics and important places that you might otherwise discover just through experimentation. I’ve seen that just focusing on that main questline only takes around 20 hours to see it through to the end, but is that all you want to be doing? A huge world with limitless possibilities demands to be explored, after all.
Images Taken From:
Starfield | Xbox Series S
