Is It Impossible To Just Have an Honest Conversation About ‘Starfield’?

“Anyone who doesn’t like Starfield isn’t a real Bethesda fan.” “Starfield is a Bethesda game so that makes it good to me.” If you’ve been looking at Starfield coverage online, these comments might sound familiar! It feels impossible to have an honest conversation about Starfield online right now without some variation of these talking points coming up. The newest Bethesda Studios game has only been out for two weeks now, and the ridiculous amount of hype is overshadowing any critical opinions about it, good or bad.

Whether it’s Xbox calling the game “one of the most important RPGs ever made” or Esquire describing Todd Howard as the Christopher Nolan of video games (I respectfully disagree), Bethesda’s hype machine for Starfield is in full effect and fans are more than happy to hop on the bandwagon. Comments in Polygon’s review claim that the reviewer “doesn’t enjoy Bethesda games,” while IGN’s review features fans in the comments section criticizing reviewers for not understanding the game. And that’s on a positive review! On the Starfield subreddit, it’s hard to go a few posts without someone jumping in to counter criticism about the game to a toxic degree.

And that doesn’t even touch on the numerous issues surrounding Starfield that are important in their own right. The lack of accessible design and settings from Bethesda has disabled players frustrated, to put it mildly. Then, there’s the issue of Starfield fans pushing for Sony to fire Alanah ‘Charalanahzard’ Pearce just for playing the game on her stream. You see the irony here, right? And there’s still the unresolved issue of Zenimax, Bethesda’s parent company, firing a trans employee and holding her healthcare hostage! But even if we focus on just the game itself …

Calling Starfield a Bethesda Game Shuts Down the Conversation

In a recent video about Starfield, critic James Stephanie Sterling outlines their complaints about the game’s encumbrance mechanic and, in doing so, calls out a core problem with how we talk about Starfield. Not surprisingly, Starfield shares that encumbrance system and many other game mechanics with other games Bethesda has made like the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series. The style of gameplay is so similar that Starfield is commonly referred to as a “Bethesda game” in many conversations online, which isn’t an issue in itself. Lots of game studios are going to have their own style of development that makes them distinct. We start hitting a problem with Starfield when the idea of what a Bethesda game is overpowers any honest conversation.

And Bethesda as a company is well aware of this. A common point of conversation among critics and fans is how, despite claims to the contrary, Starfield still has plenty of glitches and bugs similar to its predecessors. But according to Bethesda’s Pete Hines in a recent interview with Gamesindustry.biz, they could fix those glitches and have chosen not to. “Bethesda Game Studios has a reputation for things that happen in their games, yes. The thing people miss far too often is that there is some amount of that which is intentional, meaning we embrace chaos. We could make a safer, less buggy, less risky game if we wanted to.”

Look, I’ve put hundreds of hours into these open-world sandboxes and there’s a lot to enjoy in these games. This isn’t an essay arguing that people can’t enjoy Starfield, of course, they can. But we also don’t have to hold the game to the unreasonable standards of its own hype machine. What we need to agree on is that:

We need to judge Starfield on its own merits

An honest conversation about Starfield needs to come from judging the game for what it is. And the game itself is … fine, I guess? A recent Kotaku article articulates in more detail how Starfield isn’t “humanity’s greatest achievement,” but it’s an enjoyable game and that’s fine. The menu system is extremely clunky and the aforementioned encumbrance issue is still there—all systems that haven’t changed in decades. Whether it’s deliveries or the fate of the galaxy, nobody else seems to do anything but you, the player. Just because these are hallmarks of past Bethesda games doesn’t mean that they get a free pass.

And herein lies the problem. Because Starfield is so similar to Bethesda’s previous offerings (for better or worse), Bethesda “fans” are pushing back against critiques of the game as a critique of all Bethesda properties. Looking at Sterling’s video about encumbrance again, the online defense of the game’s issues boils down to fans saying, “I can’t tell you why. I just do.” This is indicative of the lack of thought that Bethesda actively encourages in their games.

The last game of its kind to come from Bethesda Game Studios and their Creation Engine used to make Starfield was Fallout 76 (2018), a game that also underwent extreme amounts of crunch and worker mistreatment. Prior to that was Fallout 4 (2015), almost a decade ago. Many of the systems in Starfield go back even farther than that to Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the first game made in the Creation Engine that’s now over 12 years old. It’s hard to argue about these systems being outdated, with even new mechanics like ship travel and space exploration having some pretty notable issues.

I need to stress again: no one’s saying you can’t like Starfield. The core gameplay loop of picking up quests and getting that serotonin hit from checking them off (especially after you grab goods from the bloody messes you leave behind), reminds us why this game is still getting great reviews. The fact is, there are a lot of issues that critics and fans alike have with Starfield. And their voices are just as important as the positive ones.

If we only talk about Starfield in reference to other Bethesda games, (or whether Starfield is just for “Bethesda fans”), we’re never going to be able to have honest conversations about the quality of the game. Because those aren’t conversations: It’s just Bethesda declaring that Starfield is good while fans accept that as the undisputed truth.

(featured image: Bethesda Game Studios)