Starfield's down to mixed reviews on Steam, while the community laments 'the magic is just missing from [the game]'

20.11.2023 - 13:34 / pcgamer.com

Bethesda has a reputation for these big, deep, open-world RPG you can get lost in for years. They have a legacy of large, technically impressive worlds filled with detail and places to explore. To this day, Skyrim endures as a world people want to return to—which 12 years after launch is genuinely impressive.

Starfield, which was meant to be our 'Skyrim in space', was meant to carry on that tradition. All of Bethesda's pedigree, expanded to over 1,000 planets: a near-infinite universe you could explore for years. 

And yet, less than half a year since its launch, the exhaustion's set in. Starfield now, at the time of writing, has mixed reviews on Steam, both All Time (69% positive) and Recent (48% positive).

As I pointed out when I wrote about the game's singular nomination in this years' The Game Awards, Starfield isn't a bad game. It is, however, a big game. A game with a massive amount of promise stacked behind it—and yet it fell short of the eternal blockbuster Bethesda, and its fans, were expecting. 

Any other year, with any other game, a fanbase cooling off post-release wouldn't even be noteworthy. But this was meant to be the game we'd all be hearing too much about for the next 15 years. What happened?

Before I throw my two credits into the pot, let's look at those Steam reviews. Even the recent positive ones aren't particularly raving—one user with 147 hours at the time of writing calls it a «warm drink of water when you're really thirsty.» Another player with a similar amount of hours reflects: «Do I regret buying it? No, but I'm not playing it as much as I thought I would».

One review really sticks out to me, though. It's written by player Square Zer0, catching enough traction to cause a developer response. In it, Square_Zer0 writes: «That [Bethesda] feeling of 'go anywhere, be anyone, do whatever you want, choose any side you desire' is…gone.» 

The whole review is an impassioned speech by a long-time Bethesda player, summarising the weirdness of entering the studio's biggest game, but feeling like there's nothing to explore. In particular, they lament the inability to really roleplay in Starfield, calling out the Constellation as being insufferable goody two-shoes, limiting your ability to play morally ambiguous (or even outright evil) characters. They're not entirely wrong. The only real 'evil' companion is Vasco, because he's pretty much a toaster with legs, incapable of passing moral judgement on your actions.

As our own Morgan Park pointed out—Starfield lets you flip-flop between factions, which led him to asking «What does it mean to be a Freestar Ranger if a few hours later I'm prancing across the galaxy in UC blue?» That's not exactly a new thing for Bethesda RPGs. In both Skyrim and