Review of the long-awaited Starfield. Game of the year or not

The first players have already received access to the long-awaited large-scale RPG from Bethesda – Starfield.

This is the real long-term construction that has survived 7 years of development and finally got to the release. Several transfers, improvements, announcements and teasers – all this warmed up the attention of the public and made us wait further.

The first foreign reviews, which praised the optimization and said that the company released the project for the first time without bugs on release, only increased the level of interest.

We have already played the novelty and share our impressions. Did the gazebo create that little game of the year or another Fallout/Skyrim in space? Rather, the second. About everything in order.

Welcome to deep space

Important: This is a preview of Starfield. Experiences may change in the future. At the time of writing, we have played a little over 20 hours.

According to the LORU of the game, in 2050 the first landing of people on Mars will take place. In space, humanity will settle down by 2100, and in 2156 it will arrive in the Alpha Centauri system.

By 2189, the United Colonies (UC) and the Commonwealth of Free Stars (CVS) are being built, and after another seven years, the 20-year Narion War begins between them. In 2221, the law enforcement agency “Rangers of the Free Stars” is created.

And so we were given the role of a miner, she was not lucky to become one of the rangers. He found a mysterious alien artifact that showed the protagonist a series of strange gaskets and colorful fragments from other worlds.

Apparently, this is not the first accessory. And that’s what everyone in the gaming world is looking for. What the wreckage reveals is what we have to find out.

Immediately note those who are not in the know. There is no official Russian language in Starfield. All texts are only available in English and a few other languages.

For those who want to communicate in Starfield in English, machine translation is currently available for clients, one of which used the Yandex model. Of course, they are far from perfect, but in general they are playable, and with their help you can understand the meaning of what you are saying.

For convenience, I decided to publish screenshots immediately with localization so that you can evaluate the machine translation.

So big, but at the same time such an empty game

No, I don’t mean to say that there is no activity in the game. This is absolutely not true.

simple star field oversaturated with various quests. But many do not have normal eyeliners, they seem unfinished if you go a little further than the standard route.

Here and the quest chains, some of which lead to a very different story, require serious interaction with your initial task. But they do not cause any emotions and most often lead to the form of give-bring. Really interesting stories at a young stage (and 20 hours is really not much, if you don’t just run along the plot) are catastrophically few.

Something really curious meets the player in the first 4 hours. Like the big branches about the local rangers on Aquila, where you become a deputy sheriff, and then gradually grow and learn new secrets.

There are also little funny side effects that can be found on the street, just passing by. They are completely optional, but improve your limitations with factions and companion characters.

Everybody is here standard for Bethesda games. More activities, half of nothing, some of it is addicting, the game follows the same lines as in other games of the company.

Then why do I say that the game is empty? Sam the world is empty, there is often nothing to do in it. But how is it, I talked about tons of activities above – they are placed manually where the developers needed it.

There are more than 1000 planets here, and most of them are generated and not manually configured. There is not so much landscape diversity, many planets are literally deserted. On the whole planet you will find 4-5 buildings, and then just restrictions or mountains. You will not find any interesting moments.

Yes, even No Man’s Sky has more variety, Bethesda. What’s wrong?

And from the cosmos itself there is one name. Yes, you can fly between planets, rob caravans, draw with space pirates, and so on. But! Space looks like a layer between the planets, in which there is almost nothing to do.

And if you were expecting the same movement here as in NMS, you will be very disappointed. Any movement between changes and planets occurs through loading screens! And it’s a AAA game released in 2023!

Almost the third time you will spend on downloading. Even the building is not always free to enter for study. In 2 hours you will learn all the tips from the developers by heart.

Now it’s clear why Bethesda didn’t order stages with landing on the same moon in their trailers. Because there is no process itself, only 2-3 seconds of loading. Thank you, at least I didn’t have to wait thousands of years each time.

7 years Ctrl+C – Ctrl+V

Personally, I got the feeling that truly developed games were engaged in the early stages. And then they simply copied all their developments on other planets, in other biomes and galaxies.

You will not let go of the feeling that you have already been here.. Just a little changed interior. Procedural generation makes itself felt too often, and this negatively affects the overall acceptance.

Leveling – redesigned SPECIAL, you will quickly remember the groups too

Here, too, there are no revelations. The interface of the pumping system in Starfield is simply copied from Fallout.

We still open skills by poking at cartoon icons. You can only slightly increase the percentage of these skills by revealing additional sub-blocks – everything is different from them.

Weapons and everything connected with them are controlled in the same way. shooting is the same nice, like in Fallout 4. Perhaps even a little better. You feel tactilely each gun and understand the difference between one machine gun and another.

Close combat is strange, and it is in it that the flaws of the combat system have been preserved. In particular, I’m talking about almost zero effect. You don’t see how you hit your opponents. You can only judge by the declining health bar. There is no blood or any effects from the operation, and it’s a shame for that.

There are six factions:

• Constellation
• FreeStar team
• Crimson Fleet
• United colonies
• Corporation Xenofresh
• Dust Ryujin Inriz

All of them are deeply integrated into the game world, and each has its own role to play in this world. For example, FreeStar is a kind of police that keeps order in a confidential manner. Somewhere they were banned, and somewhere they are the Law.

The last two are mega-corporations engaged in legal and illegal trade. For them, you can carry dangerous goods, and the game even has a smuggling system. Your ship can scan the Freestars and fine, imprison or destroy you if you can’t negotiate with them.

You can also try an alternative. For this, merchants provide special cargo compartments and plugs. Not in all cases, but in most cases, you can avoid the “fawn” and quickly escape from space so as not to get caught.

By the way, you can get such spare parts not only from merchants. They can also steal from foreign ships.

Everything you need to know about spaceships and outposts

Starfield has a highly developed spaceship system. Here you can not only buy and sell them, but also pump or take other people’s for yourself.

Almost every ship can be docked and boarded. Of course, in order to capture a ship or resources with it, you need not destroy them, but simply kill or take hostage the entire crew.

The ship itself can be pumped and customized. brought here and Building from Fallout 4 concerns not only outposts, but also ships.

A lot of resources are required, especially for your bases. And their consequences are mined either independently or with the help of an automatic miner. But it will help you only partially.

And so everything works according to the previous scheme. There is electricity that needs to be controlled manually, various systems and technologies that need to be studied and discovered in order to then build at home, and so on.

Outposts must always be defended. They can be attacked by both pirates and simple animals from the local biome.

Returning to the ship, its also possible build from scratch. Additional modules are attached to it, due to which it is possible to promote not only technologies, but also outer space.

A couple of examples that have collected other players:

Here you can even customize the color of each cabin to your liking.

However, it is imperative to monitor the energy state of the vessel. Let’s say you combine 20 new bays, but they don’t have enough engines. Your transport, thank you, I will not say. Or maybe it won’t go anywhere at all.

Armament, like other elements, can also be customized.

The ship’s handling is very specific. You need to get used to it. Motion control changes with a mouse or sticker with a slight delay. Shooting – with auto-guidance. It’s almost impossible to miss.

All elements of the equipment also require energy optimization in the control process. For example, you need to fly faster, but your energy supply is exhausted. In this case, you can “borrow” some of the weapons, shields or hyperdrive to speed up.

In some contraptions, in order to fly by unnoticed, it is possible to remove all weapons with weapons and shields. Then it will be more difficult for you to describe to the scanners of enemy ships.

Briefly about optimization. Are there no bugs?

This is where editorial opinions differ.

I tested the game on a GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (officially the minimum allowed graphics card) and Nikita Goryainov on a Radeon 5700XT. I promise 12 and 16 GB, both tests at 1440p.

In my case, I was able to achieve a stable plus or minus 30 FPS on average with an FSR score. And Nikita’s video card was able to produce such an indicator only at the minimum with 70% FSR.

I also looked at the tests on the RTX 3070, and with this video card at the same resolution, the game gave out most of the time 60 FPS at a high-ultra level. But drawdowns were unavoidable, especially in large cities with large crowds of people.

The jubilant reviews of foreign observers about the absence of bugs are also strong exaggerated. Yes, there are noticeably fewer of them here than in the standard release of the Bethesda game, but they are there, and there are still a lot of them.

Most often, the AI ​​of opponents and partners is stupid (by the way, they can now participate in dialogues and disputes). Enemies can simply run right through, being initially the first. And I can get stuck on the table or in other places. Just because it can, and that’s it.

The game definitely still needs polishing. However, this release is really better than the last ones.

Never played a year, but just a good game

Starfield has something to hook on. This game can entertain, but it clearly lacks creativity.

It is unlikely that she will be able to claim the main game of 2023. And I very much doubt that she will even be able to overtake the role-playing effect of the recent Baldur’s Gate III.

However, it’s still a good studio project. This game has hundreds of hours to do. But far from everyone it will go not only with its theme.

Starfield is available on PC and Xbox Series S/X. Can be downloaded on Game Pass.