Seth Blanco

A lackluster, unimaginative Bethesda-brand shooter. When I first learned that Starfield had 100+ "procedurally generated" worlds, I groaned. When I learned that you'd be exploring these world on foot? I rolled my eyes and by the 6-7th cookie cutter "land on a planet and find a very obvious temple" quest, I had tired of this games formula entirely. Skyrim, Oblivion, and even Morrowind all had an intermediate travel speed available to the player to cut down on the monotony of on-foot travel The shipbuilding is nice, and the ship combat itself is serviceable but aside from that everything here is something we've seen before. From moderately enjoyable Fallout-esq shooting to the Skyrim dungeon dives (complete with backtracking route for the perfect streamlined dungeon), to even the bland settings you find yourself in. I was genuinely taken aback at some points at the blunt simplicity this setting has to offer form the ground breaking "Great Serpent" worshipped by a genocidal space-house (Really? We're still doing giant homicidal snake cults?) to the diet brand Starfleet that are the United Colonies. Even the Freestar Collective wasn't free of tropes with the city Cyberpunk city of Neon and the frontier-esq Akila City reminding me of better games I could be burning hours away with. Everything in this game is serviceable, and there were moments of talented writing hiding within the Marvel-grade schlock. The padding in this game as well is quite dense, with every skill requiring steep time investments (and oftentimes numerous NG+ runs which also strip your character of all their resources and ships which I find ridiculous) . The NG+ experience is either a speedrun to the end of the main quest or a long arduous treks from one loading screen to the next. TL;DR If you like loading screens, walking, half-baked plots and looking for gold nuggets in turds, this is the game for you. Bonus points if you have Bethesda Stockholm syndrome.