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Tag: Starfield

  • Starfield, One Month Later

    Starfield, One Month Later

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    Once a distant star on the horizon, Starfield arrived on Xbox and PC on September 6, with a five-day early access period for those who shelled out for the deluxe edition. It’s now been in the hands of gamers worldwide for a little over a month, with folks pouring over its vast world and searching every nook and cranny for loot, side quests, and more.

    This Stylish Noir-Punk Side-Scroller Is Like Celeste With Guns

    As expected, a game as massive as Starfield has a ton of stuff going on (there’s 1,000 planets, remember) so a month later, folks are still discovering all sorts of unique quirks, charms, and more than its fair share of weak points to point out, celebrate, and critique.

    Read More: 28 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Playing Starfield

    Whether or not Starfield will be as memorable as Skyrim or Fallout remains to be seen, but within its first month, here are some of the highlights.

    Starfield earns praise, with some caveats

    Following its announcement in 2018, the hype for Starfield was real. Promising a scale way beyond what Bethesda delivered with Skyrim and Fallout 4, Starfield would mark the first original franchise for the studio since the ‘90s and take the Bethesda RPG format to a place it’s never really been before: space.

    Read More: Starfield Isn’t The Future Of Video Games, And That’s Okay

    Since the highly anticipated game launched, the reactions have been largely positive, but there are some fair criticisms of its structure and the meat of more than a few of its premiere questlines. In Kotaku’s review of Starfield, I praised its scale, scope, and capacity for gorgeous vistas, but criticized a pervasive shallowness in the game’s settings, narratives, and woefully repetitive environments.

    In general, Starfield really hasn’t convinced us that it’s a vision for the future of games, and in fact, it seems to be little more than an iterative improvement on what Bethesda has delivered before, for decades now at this point. But whether you see that as a reliable go-to experience of the kind we know from Skyrim and Fallout or a failure to improve upon a tired formula is what makes Starfield 2023’s gaming Rorschach test.

    Read More: Starfield: The Kotaku Review

    The game currently sits at a Metacritic score of 84, sharing similar ground with well-received titles like August’s Armored Core VI, but falls quite shy of bigger blockbusters like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

    Player reviews via Steam certainly have their knives out for this Bethesda entry though, often describing the game as “disappointingly average” and “wide as an ocean – shallow as a puddle.”

    Starfield’s scale and scope finally in player hands

    It was understood early on that Starfield would be enormous. Bethesda touted the impressiveness of the game’s scale and talked at length about how the survival mechanics wouldn’t bog down the fun of Starfield’s core experience. as they do in other space games like No Man’s Sky

    Read More: A No-Fuss Guide to Starfield Space Travel

    Starfield’s reception amongst those not in the industry and casual players has also been mixed. While many of us have found a calm, contemplative beauty in the game’s endless planet simulation, others have tested just how traversable Starfield’s galaxy really is, and discovered that fast travel is technically not mandatory; you can fly across a solar system if you’ve got literal hours of real-world time on your hands to burn. And you can speed up space travel with a mod if you’re so inclined.

    The scale of each individual planetary zone you can land on, however, has brought up criticism from players concerning the jarring lack of vehicles. Bethesda explained that while it did consider vehicles, it instead wanted to prioritize the on-foot exploration experience. Besides, if you did have a space rover, you’d be in for a bumpy ride with all of the dead animals everywhere.

    Read More: Starfield’s Fast Travel Cheapens Space’s Impact

    Not everyone’s been sold on Starfield’s size and scope, or how it’s presented. That said, we have caught sight of more than a few interesting things out there in the void. From Star Trek vibes to Dead Space-esque scares, to a planet very familiar to Halo fans, to a galaxy spanning beer run, there are more than a few fun surprises to be found in Bethesda’s space sim. That’s in addition to stuff fans have created on their own, like this awesome selection of space ships from other sci-fi franchises recreated in Starfield’s ship builder. And if you don’t fancy yourself a ship mechanic, the game is more than happy to provide some pretty sweet space rides of its own, such as the Razorleaf, a reward for tackling the Mantis quest.

    And don’t forget, Starfield has some neat watering holes if you’re looking for a break from all the space-faring adventures and just want to sit in a weird space bar with a weird space bartender.

    Wacky physics, fun mods, and other shenanigans

    Starfield’s engine has a wildly impressive physics simulation. Granted, Bethesda games have always had pretty cool physics, but Starfield’s seems to be a bit more realistic and lively. This has allowed players to engage in some credit theft, but also has inspired some pseudo Rube Goldberg shenanigans. You can also just pack your ship full of junk and potatoes.

    Like almost every Bethesda game before it, modders have taken to improving the rougher edges of Starfield’s experience. We’re still collecting a list of must-install mods for the PC version, but at a minimum you should consider installing StarUI as it profoundly improves the experience of a game that’s already encouraging bad habits for the digital hoarders among us.

    Read More: Starfield PC Mod Dramatically Improves Inventory Management

    Starfield’s mod scene is still quite nascent, and we know proper mod support for Starfield is on the horizon. That said, if you’re willing to mess around with some of the less-than-helpful mods, might we interest you in the most useless modifications to toss into Starfield’s code?

    In more interesting news, one Starfield modder has taken to putting their DLSS (Nvidia’s AI-powered super-sampling tech that was excluded from Starfield’s launch due to an exclusive deal with AMD) mod behind a paywall. Now, the debate over paid mods is worth having and is not within the scope of this piece, but when you slap DRM and threaten to sneak malware onto pirated copies of a mod…that’s kinda, well shitty.

    Read More: Starfield Will Get DLSS Support, An FOV Slider, And More In Future Updates

    Hey, at least DLSS is coming to Starfield via an official update down the road.

    We’ve also seen a fair share of silliness via exploits. Yes, you can actually rob NPCs of their clothes with the right technique and, at least for a little while, the game featured a damn mud puddle that’d just make it rain credits (it’s since been patched).

    And in case you’re wondering, yes, Starfield has its share of bugs. I’ve seen a number of quest-breaking errors in my time with the game, while others are finding entire cities transported along with their ships. If my own nearly 200-hour playthrough of the game is anything to go by, save often, don’t rely on auto- and quick-saves. Starfield likes to break more often than it should.

    Starfield is just getting started: DLC and more

    Even after spending nearly 200 hours in Starfield, I’m still coming across new things. My opinion of it holds strong, but it’s nice to see such a large game continue to offer new experiences the more you play it.

    As Video Games Chronicle pointed out, director Todd Howard stated in a recent interview that experience with previous games like Skyrim and Fallout has taught the studio to design with long-term investment in mind:

    “This is a game that’s intentionally made to be played for a long time. One of the things we’ve learned from our previous games, like Skyrim, like Fallout, is that people want to play them for a very long time. […] How do we build it such that it is allowing that in a way that feels natural, and if people have played the game and finished the main quest, you can see that.”

    The new game plus function is one of the most unique, and dare I say inventive, elements of Starfield. But Bethesda has indicated that certain elements of the game might change over time. We know that proper DLSS support and request features like an FOV slider are in the cards, but in the same interview, Todd Howard said that the studio might be looking at changing up how environmental damage works. In 2022, Howard also entertained the addition of a hardcore survival mode for those who desire a more punish-me-deep-space-mommy experience.

    Read More: Starfield: Should You Rush Through The Main Quest?

    How the future of Starfield evolves beyond just repeat playthroughs remains to be seen. It’s hard to imagine the game will see the same kind of update support that No Man’s Sky has, but Howard has repeatedly stressed that this is a game that was designed to be played for a long time.

    We do know, via the details in the premium version of the game, that a story expansion titled “Shattered Space” will arrive at a later date.

    Hype and anticipation met reality when Starfield shipped universally on September 6. It’s more than capable of delivering a fun, can’t-put-it-down experience, though it has more than its fair share of problems and weaker points. The first month has seen a number of differing opinions flourish over Starfield and Bethesda-style games in general. But with promised new features, story expansions, and a growing mod community, Starfield’s story is far from over.

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    Claire Jackson

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  • Starfield Player Followed Across The Galaxy By An Entire City

    Starfield Player Followed Across The Galaxy By An Entire City

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    Although early reviews claimed Starfield was Bethesda Game Studios’ most polished game to date, the open-space RPG still suffers from some of the strange, sometimes amusing, occasionally very helpful sorts of bugs and glitches the studio’s work is often known for. Maybe the most mind-boggling bug yet, however, is one that sees players being followed across space, not just by asteroids and other such objects, but even by forests and whole-ass cities.

    Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

    Read More: Starfield Settings For A More Immersive Experience

    Out now for Windows PC and Xbox consoles, Starfield is a game about exploring the farthest reaches of the black sea above us. You’ll join a troupe of space surveyors—as well as several other major and minor factions—to scour the cosmos looking for knowledge, loot, and power. Some helpful if annoying companions can accompany you on the voyage, which is nice. Traveling space can be lonely sometimes. But depending on how busted Starfield decides to be during your playthrough, you may find yourself yearning for that loneliness.

    Stalkers are lurking in Starfield’s space

    Across the game’s subreddit are posts from folks claiming that the most random of space objects are stalking them throughout the galaxy. On September 15, for example, redditor ReverendRoo posted nine images of an asteroid that had followed them “for the past 30 hours” like a pet. Similarly, on September 20, user Ultimastar shared four images on r/Starfield of an asteroid that “randomly attended my wedding” after 100 hours of gameplay. User Royal_Schedule4209 took to Reddit on September 22 to share an image of “a whole forest” that’s somehow been trailing their spaceship. Probably the wildest example of the bug, however, was shared on September 21 by redditor Punidue, who posted an image of “the whole New Atlantis” city creeping on them in space. Yikes.

    That’s not all the things that’ve been breathing down the fuel tanks of Starfield players. One redditor claimed to have been followed by a part of a cave, while a separate commenter on user Xthekilr0y’s post about the asteroid following bug said they’re being chased by four pet rocks after mining asteroids. According to a few comments I’ve seen across multiple posts, the bug is seemingly permanent even if you reboot the game. The only way to get rid of them, at least for right now, is to either use console commands on PC or load a previous save. Regardless, this might be the most difficult dogfight you’ll ever find yourself in.

    Kotaku reached out to Bethesda Games Studios for comment.

    Read More: All Of Our Starfield Tips, Guides, News, And Reviews
    Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    The world is big, but space is bigger. It’s nice having friends to help the years spent gravjumping from system to system speed by. I’m just not sure these space objects are the besties we want hopping galaxies with us. They’re all sus.

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    Levi Winslow

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  • All Of Starfield’s Bars, Ranked

    All Of Starfield’s Bars, Ranked

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    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    Vendors are a crucial component of Starfield, as you’ll need to make use of the RPG’s merchants in order to get better gear, obtain necessary parts to fix a damaged ship, buy healing items, and sell off all your contraband to earn enough credits to eventually buy that house in Akila City. The bars and restaurants in Starfield are also vendors, as the items you can buy from there are considered “aid” in that they’ll restore a little health or give you temporary buffs.

    Read More: All Of Our Starfield Tips, Guides, and Reviews
    Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    But we don’t just go into Starfield’s bars and restaurants to make use of their functionality—we go there to hang out. Video game bars are fantastic little lore dumps, lovingly detailed spaces that really make the game world in which they’re set feel lived-in and real. There’s nothing quite like walking into Mass Effect 2’s Afterlife for the first time, or settling down for a game of Gwent in The Witcher 3’s Golden Sturgeon, to make it feel like you really are your character, and you really are jonesing for a drink.

    And like other Bethesda RPGs, Starfield has its fair share of watering holes decorated with interesting objects and frequented by colorful characters (you could even call it Barfield, there’s so many). We ranked all the ones we could find, from worst to best, based on decor, menu, and overall vibes. Which Starfield bar would we most like to drink at? Read on to find out.

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    Alyssa Mercante

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  • The Elder Scrolls VI Definitely Isn’t Coming To PlayStation

    The Elder Scrolls VI Definitely Isn’t Coming To PlayStation

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    Image: Bethesda Game Studios / Kotaku

    Elder Scrolls VI won’t be coming to PS5 whenever it finally debuts. Though you might’ve already filed this news under “well, duh,” it’s now clear as day courtesy of official documentation from Microsoft.

    This Stylish Noir-Punk Side-Scroller Is Like Celeste With Guns

    Originally announced at E3 2018 (which Bethesda’s own Todd Howard thinks was perhaps a tad too early), The Elder Scrolls VI will mark the first single-player entry in the fabled Elder Scrolls series of big-ass open-world RPG romps since the undying colossal success that was 2011’s Skyrim. News on the TES6 front has otherwise been very quiet, and Bethesda only just released its other epic, long-in-development RPG, the space-themed Starfield. New reporting from Axios’ Stephen Totilo, however, makes it clear that TES6 will be an Xbox and PC exclusive.

    The Elder Scrolls VI targets a 2026 release

    PlayStation-owning fans of Bethesda jams have been holding out hope that despite Microsoft’s purchase of Bethesda in 2020, Elder Scrolls VI might still come to a Sony machine. CEO of Microsoft gaming Phil Spencer has said as recently as September 6 that the company considers exclusives on a “case-by-case basis” and that it “wants to make sure that [its] games are available in so many different places.”

    As per a post on X (formerly Twitter) from Stephen Totilo of Axios, Microsoft’s communications during the FTC case concerning its controversial Activision merger spelled out that The Elder Scrolls VI is coming to Xbox and PC only. In a Microsoft-confidential chart that saw release due to the legal proceedings, The Elder Scrolls VI clearly has a big ol’ red X in the “Released on PlayStation?” column.

    https://x.com/stephentotilo/status/1703758480509661480

    The same chart indicates that The Elder Scrolls VI is aiming for a 2026 or later release date. Given the size and scope of Bethesda games, they do take a long time to make. After The Elder Scrolls VI, Bethesda is expected to release Fallout 5.

    So, sorry PlayStation Skyrim fans. But, hey, at least you got a head start on Baldur’s Gate 3. And given TES6’s likely release window, at least you’ll have enough time to save up for an Xbox or gaming-worthy PC? Hey, don’t look at me. I’m just the messenger.

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    Claire Jackson

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  • One Of Starfield’s Best Quests Is A Gravity-Defying Beer Run

    One Of Starfield’s Best Quests Is A Gravity-Defying Beer Run

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    A random bartender on a small back-world planet led to one of my favorite side-quests in Starfield, Bethesda’s latest and biggest open-world RPG. Just be prepared for some gravity issues.

    The Top 10 Most-Played Games On Steam Deck: August 2023 Edition

    Starfield is one of the biggest games of 2023, and has already become one of Xbox’s most successful Game Pass offerings. The Bethesda RPG, like that developer’s past games, is filled with characters to meet, creatures to kill, items to collect, and quests to finish. And this time around, you get to explore 1,000 planets (while discovering the dead animals on them). While most quests in Starfield are fine, a few are better than the rest and worth tracking down. For example, a quest involving a broken-down spaceship, some expensive booze, and fighting space pirates in zero-G.

    “Sure Bet” is a side-quest you can start at any point in the game past the opening tutorial. Once you have your own ship and can make the journey to Gagarin, a planet located in the Alpha Centauri system, you can talk to Lizzy, a bartender in the small, industrial city of Gagarin Landing. The place is being overrun by corporate execs and she wants to serve better, finer, and more expensive liquor to attract these rich sleazebags. So she asks you, of course, to track down some valuable booze lost on an abandoned cargo ship.

    I didn’t expect much when I took the quest but hopped over to the derelict ship, and within a minute realized this was going to be a different experience than most fetch quests in Starfield. That’s because the ship you board isn’t working properly, and the machinery running its artificial gravity is failing. So every 30 seconds or so the gravity in the ship turns off and you, all the objects in the vessel, and all the space pirates looting it begin floating in zero-G.

    Bethesda / Game Guides Channel

    This leads to some really fun combat, where you can use the shifts in gravity to your advantage to quickly reach higher locations or to target enemies who get knocked out of cover and float into the open air. I also had a great moment when I fired my big, dumb shotgun and went zooming backward into a wall.

    “Oh right, physics!” I thought to myself as I jetpacked back into the action with a big smile on my face. After the fighting ends, the grav shifts continue and lead to some light but enjoyable traversal puzzles. Once I got the booze I left, returned to Lizzy, passed a persuasion check, and got more money than she had initially promised.

    Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    A quest that shows off Starfield’s physics

    Starfield has received a lot of criticism for its locked 30fps framerate on console, and while I always prefer a higher framerate when possible, this quest is a reminder of why Bethesda’s RPG probably can’t hit 60. When the gravity first went out in the ship, every object, weapon, and body around me began to float into the air. Then they all landed a moment later when the ship started working again. This repeated at least 50 or so times during the quest, and each time Starfield tracked and maintained where these objects were, how they collided with other items, and their momentum.

    Meanwhile, I and some dozen other pirates were shooting each other, ramming through all of this debris, and tossing grenades too. That’s a lot of stuff to render, track, and calculate. So it’s not surprising that Starfield has to cap the framerate at 30fps to spend its resources on other things.

    Of course, there’s an argument to be made that Bethesda’s latest RPG doesn’t fully utilize all these wild simulations running under the hood. And I’d agree with that. Most quests don’t feel like they are taking advantage of the game’s impressive physics, or other novel systems for that matter.

    However, when a quest like “Sure Bet” comes along, it’s a great example of what this game can actually achieve. I just wish Starfield remembered that more often.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Don’t Skip Starfield’s Star Trek-Esque Quest

    Don’t Skip Starfield’s Star Trek-Esque Quest

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    Starfield is packed with many sights to see, secrets to uncover, factions to join, junk to pick up, and, most importantly: quests. One of the best side quests discovered thus far involves a ship full of some unlucky people stranded in a planet’s orbit. Fortunately (or unfortunately), you’ve arrived and are ready to put your negotiation (or sabotage) skills to work.

    The Week In Games: What’s Coming Out Beyond Starfield

    “First Contact” can be found by traveling to Porrima II in the Porrima star system. There you’ll meet the crew of the ECS Constant, who it seems are a little out of time and place. If you’re a Star Trek fan, this quest’s story is very similar to “The Neutral Zone” in season one of The Next Generation. So, here’s where to find “First Contact,” along with a few tips to get the most out of this maybe-somewhat disturbing sidequest.

    Starfield: How to start ‘First Contact’

    By traveling to Porrima II, you’ll get the option to start working on “First Contact.” But before you jump into the plight of the crew of the ECS Constant, I’d advise finishing the second part of the quest “Unearthed,” which sends you to Earth for a bit of a history lesson.

    “Unearthed” isn’t a prerequisite for “First Contact” and it won’t alter the quest at all, but crossing this quest off your list first will fill you in on an essential bit of Starfield’s human history. I won’t spoil the details, but I found it to frame “First Contact” in a very narratively satisfying, unnerving, way.

    Once you’re in Porrima II’s orbit, you’ll receive a message from an NPC named Jiro Sugiyama on the planet asking for a bit of help. Fly down and have a chat with him.

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    Sugiyama will explain that thus far no one’s been able to directly communicate with the orbiting ship and that he wants you to figure out what exactly is going on.

    Back up in orbit, you can dock with the ship after failing to establish communication. Remember, you can dock with a ship once you’re under 500 meters of it, so no need to get too close for comfort.

    Here’s where the fun begins: After stepping foot on the Constant, you’ll learn that it’s a colony ship sent from Earth before humanity discovered faster-than-light travel. The Constant’s trip took about 200 years, and has seen multiple generations live and die on board, all with the hope of settling on Porrima II. But that hope runs into a bit of a problem, as the fine corporate folks who’ve established the Paradiso resort planetside got there first.

    ’First Contact’: Meet with Paradiso’s board members

    Before jumping back down to the planet for a board meeting (exciting, I know), take some time to meet the various people who live on the ECS Constant. You’ll find all sorts of folks, including a classroom full of kids. Ddon’t forget that: There are children aboard this vessel.

    Children sit in a classroom aboard a spaceship.

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    After you get a chance to speak with and learn about the crew who’ve spent their entire lives living on this ship, go on down to Paradiso and head to the elevator in the resort. Take it to the executive floor and head straight for the board room.

    The receptionist will have the nerve to tell you that you can’t go in there. Unacceptable: Doesn’t she know you’re the protagonist of a Bethesda game? Unbelievable. You won’t have to work hard to convince her to let you in. Just tell her what you’re here to discuss then, as you should with any corporate board meeting, just walk in and demand attention.

    The protagonist of Starfield gets smart with a receptionist.

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    Once inside the boardroom, you’ll have an opportunity to hear the suits and ties plan their schemes, one of which includes building artificial hot springs. Capitalism never changes.

    Let them wrap their disgusting conversation and talk with the CEO, Oliver. You’ll be given three wonderful options here:

    1. Arrange for the ECS Constant crew members to live on Porrima II as indentured servants.
    2. Outfit the ECS Constant with a grav drive so the crew can find somewhere else to live.
    3. Kill the entire crew of the ECS Constant.

    Now, if the power these suits and ties wield over helpless people inspires a relatable bloodlust and you want to kill them, you can forget about it: Like vampires, they’ll just get back up every time you pump bullets into them.

    The icky choice: Sending the ECS Constant crew into indentured servitude

    If you take choice one, god help you. But you’ll need to get some materials first: 40 fiber, 80 iron, 10 lithium, 20 sealant. At least do the right thing and mine it from the planet you’re currently on, rather than going elsewhere to mine your blood materials. You can also convince the crew of the ECS Constant to contribute what little they have, but it won’t be enough. Once you’ve gathered those materials, inform the ship’s captain.

    Afterwards, I suggest taking a cold shower IRL so you can find out if you’re still capable of feeling anything.

    The better option: Fitting the ECS Constant out with a grav drive

    A ship sits on the busy landing bay of HopeTech.

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    The second choice is probably the best out of all three. As the ECS Constant was built before grav drives were invented, you’ll have to travel to HopeTech on the planet Polvo in the Valo system. Once planetside, go inside HopeTech and speak with Bennu St. James on the second floor. He’ll charge you 40,000 credits for the grav drive, but if your Persuasion is efficient enough, you can talk him down to 25,000. You can also shop for ship parts for yourself at HopeTech, and check out the halfway decent weapons shop there too.

    Head on back to the ECS Constant and chat with the engineer, Amin Kazemi. He’ll ask you to do the following to prep the Constant for its new grav drive:

    • Reroute power from the port turbopump to the auxiliary cryogenic radiator from engineering control computer alpha
    • Set the plasma run-off inhibitor to five percent on engineering control computer beta
    • Decouple the magnetic flange pipe enclosures from the auxiliary module assembly on engineering control computer gamma

    Once these options have been set in engineering, go have a talk with the ship’s captain one last time to let her know the ECS Constant is set for faster-than-light travel. The ship will depart shortly after you leave the system. And who knows? Maybe you’ll run into these folks again on your travels.

    Only monsters need apply: Killing innocent people because they’re inconvenient to rich people

    If for some reason you’re set on destroying the ECS Constant and killing everyone on board, first, get help, but second, you’ll need to grab a key from Amin Kazemi in engineering on the Constant. Violently assaulting him is sure to set off alarms, so instead you can choose to pickpocket him (note: you need to unlock the Pickpocketing skill in the perk tree to be able to do such a thing).

    Once you have the key, use it on the locked computer in Engineering and set the ship to Emergency Overload. Then go to the captain’s office to use her computer (note: this requires the Security skill in the perk tree) and confirm the overload request. Once you do this, everyone will want to kill you (I don’t blame them whatsoever). Escape the Constant and watch the ship explode. Good job. You’ll get 6,500 credits from the CEO and unlimited access to the Paradiso resort.

    Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    “First Contact” is somewhat of a cruel story no matter which choice you take. Though sending the ECS Constant out to hopefully find a new home is likely the better choice, the reality that corporations control entire planets from a single settlement and can so powerfully affect the lives of vulnerable people certainly makes the case for seeing Starfield as a dystopian work of fiction that painfully resonates with all-to-true realities here in the real world.

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    Claire Jackson

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  • Starfield Isn’t The Future Of Video Games, And That’s Okay

    Starfield Isn’t The Future Of Video Games, And That’s Okay

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    In the months (nay, years) leading up to Starfield’s September 6 release, the hype for the Bethesda RPG grew and grew until it was a heretofore unseen beast, a giant Kaiju of expectation that threatened to take down Sony, upend 2023’s GOTY race, and suck up all of gamers’ precious free time.

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    Ahead of its launch, game director Todd Howard and Xbox head Phil Spencer were a dynamic duo, showing up at Summer Game Fest together to expound on the awesome power that Starfield would showcase, the 1,000 planets you could step foot on, the bugs you almost certainly wouldn’t encounter. That same weekend, Starfield got its own 45-minute-long “Direct” presentation during the Xbox Showcase, and a physical version of the expensive Constellation Edition sat behind a glass case at the event itself.

    Head of Xbox Creator Experience Sarah Bond joined in on the fun, calling Starfield “one of the most important RPGs ever made.” Bethesda head Pete Hines said it took him well over 100 hours to properly start Starfield. All of the hype whipped Xbox fans into a frenzy, and indirectly fueled the flickering flames of the console wars. Starfield’s scope, its potential, even made the then-unreleased game a talking point in the FTC trial regarding Microsoft’s purchase of Activision-Blizzard.

    Then, after a few days in what Bethesda dubbed “early access,” available to deep-pocketed players who shelled out big bucks for one of several premium editions, Starfield launched. It is surprisingly not buggy, and jam-packed with side-quests that offer a steady drip of serotonin. But it’s woefully inaccessible, its UI is daunting, and it is, ultimately, just a new Bethesda game. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s a stark reminder that hype trains are just marketing tools in a different font. Starfield is a good game, but it is not a groundbreaking one.

    Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    Starfield and serotonin

    Before I got a chance to dive into Starfield, I wondered aloud (and on social media) if the game would occupy a similar space in my life that Skyrim has held on more than one occasion. Skyrim never floored me and never lingered after I powered off my console, unlike Marvel’s Spider-Man’s version of Manhattan, or story beats in Mass Effect 2. But every time I dropped back into Skyrim, I fell into the same satisfying loop, emerging from a lengthy play session a little dazed, uncertain of the time, blinking to reaccustom my eyes to the real world outside of its pixels.

    Every time I jumped into Skyrim I’d go off searching for some tucked-away relic or NPC in need of help and end up climbing to the top of a peak I saw in the distance, or scurrying through caves like a little gamer Gollum, furiously lining my pockets with shiny objects. I’d “just one more side-quest” myself into the wee hours of the morning, surreptitiously pulling tokes from a pre-roll resting on the table in front of me. No matter what I did, whether it was becoming a vampire or participating in a drinking competition, I was never blown away or taken aback by what Skyrim unfurled before me—I was, however, hooked.

    I’m about 20 hours into Starfield and can safely say it is exactly like Skyrim in space. The steady serotonin drip of overhearing a conversation, marking the quest associated with that conversation on my map, completing it, then going back to the list and selecting the next thing is unparalleled. It is the kind of game that completionists salivate over, the kind that I find myself longing to return to and get lost in during my workday, on the train home, while finishing off a workout.

    After progressing the main campaign a bit, I violently veered into side-quest territory, spending nearly four hours straight on the Blade Runner-esque planet Neon. I joined a gang, I helped Starfield’s version of Björk recover her music, I tried to console a grief-stricken widow in the shadow of a fish corpse. I paid for VIP lounge access at a bar, helped squash a squabble over a robot that had been vandalized, and rented a room in a hotel just to say I did. Starfield has hooked me in a way that only Bethesda games can, because it is so thoroughly a Bethesda game with a shinier coat of paint.

    Starfield concept art shows an astronaut standing next to a parked space ship.

    Image: Bethesda

    Expectation versus reality

    There is nothing wrong with Starfield feeling familiar—Bethesda’s formula works, and has for over two decades, so I’m not crucifying Todd Howard for refusing to reinvent the wheel. I am, however, noting that there’s a clear disconnect between calling a game “one of the most important RPGs ever made” and that game then reusing long-existing RPG gameplay mechanics and storytelling techniques throughout.

    As Kotaku’s Zack Zweizen points out, Starfield is “still a Bethesda RPG. You can almost feel the ancient bones of Morrowind and Fallout 3 poking through bits of the scenery and menus as you play.” Companions still linger behind NPCs chatting you up, players are still almost always overencumbered, enemies still fall over like action figures when you send a gust of gravity their way that feels almost exactly like Skyrim’s Dragon Shouts.

    There’s nothing groundbreaking about Starfield, save for maybe its scope, which is possible largely because of the technological advances that have taken place within the last several years, and are now readily available in consumer-facing products like the Xbox Series X/S and modern PCs.

    But as for Starfield bringing new ideas to the genre, or adding anything new to its well-worn formula…it doesn’t. Bethesda has been quietly moving its own role-playing goalposts closer to the more shallow end ever since The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, narrowing the scope of what the player can actually influence, placing you in a world that feels perfectly carved out for you to slot into, its problems cleanly laid out for you to solve. Cian Maher’s quote from an Oblivion piece for TheGamer comes to mind: “I also don’t reckon Skyrim ever managed to carve out a portion of its world and imbue [it] with the necessary narrative significance for a conclusion to not seem like deus ex machina.”

    Aside from extensive ship-building mechanics, there aren’t any shiny new gameplay additions in Starfield. Building an outpost is just Fallout base-building, leveling your lockpicking or melee abilities follows similar logic to Skyrim, and there are many eerie similarities to Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds. The most noted difference comes not in an updated role-playing system or deeper NPC interactions, but in gunplay—Starfield improves upon Bethesda’s infamous combat clunkiness, and it’s welcome.

    But Starfield feels the same way Fallout 4 did, which felt the same way Skyrim did, and that does not make it “one of the most important RPGs” ever made. It just makes it a good Bethesda game, a game made by a studio that Microsoft spent $7.5 billion to acquire. We’d do well to remember that, both as consumers and critics, going forward.

    Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    Update 9/9/20-23 at 10:22 a.m. EST: Removed incorrect reference to No Man’s Sky shipbuilding, added relevant link.

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    Alyssa Mercante

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  • How To Avoid Carrying Too Much Crap In Starfield

    How To Avoid Carrying Too Much Crap In Starfield

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    Starfield, Bethesda’s newest RPG, is, well…a big game. It’s filled with quests to complete and aliens to shoot. It’s also jam-packed with items to grab, sell, and manipulate. And it’s very easy to pick up too much junk and suddenly find yourself overencumbered, unable to fast-travel or sprint as much as usual. That’s no fun! But you can avoid this annoying situation.

    Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

    I’ve played about 55 hours of Starfield so far, and for most of that time, I’ve not been overencumbered. In fact, I’m usually carrying under 100kg of weight at any given time. What’s my secret? Well, after years of playing Bethesda games, I’ve gotten pretty good at managing all the weapons, health items, and junk you collect as you adventure through the studio’s massive open-world RPGs. So let me help you stop being overencumbered with these tips and tricks!

    Stop grabbing everything

    Look, okay, I know this is very obvious and all that, but…yeah, stop grabbing everything! I get it. This is a Bethesda game and one of the joys of these RPGs is how everything can be grabbed, manipulated, stored, and sold. Every plastic cup and dart and sandwich. But you don’t need to grab it all.

    You might be thinking “I’ll sell this all for credits!” Well, sure, but you won’t get that much for that junk. And there are better ways to make credits in this game, like doing quests and selling high-value items like rare suits, guns, and very lightweight objects that are worth hundreds of credits. So yeah, stop. Put that cup down. Walk away. Leave it. Leave it! I’m watching.

    Level up your carrying capacity

    Certain stats are always useful in a Bethesda open-world RPG. Having extra health and the ability to lockpick anything, for example, are as handy in Starfield as they were in Skyrim.

    Similarly, leveling up the skill that lets you carry more stuff without becoming overencumbered is very useful. I also recommend grabbing this early so you can start grinding away at its requirements to unlock higher levels. Trust me, this will save you time in the long run.

    Make a habit out of checking for heavy items

    You can sort your entire inventory by weight and you should do this regularly, as you’ll often find some random spacesuit or other item taking up a large chunk of your carrying capacity. Take care of these items and don’t let them clutter up your character. While looking at your heaviest bits of junk, you might also find one of the most likely culprits for why you are overencumbered: ship parts.

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    Don’t hold on to ship parts

    Ship parts! These items are very useful, letting you repair your ship during combat. However, they are also very heavy, weighing 10kg each. It’s very easy to collect a stack of these and not realize it until you pick up a gun and become overencumbered.

    Making matters worse, these heavy items are found not in your resources or misc. tab, but instead buried with your aid items, like food and health kits. This makes them easy to miss when dropping off resources to your ship. I’d love a future update to move these to resources by default. Until then, double-check whenever you feel too heavy to make sure you aren’t carrying around a bunch of these bulky items. And, one last thing: You can store these on your ship and still use them, no need to carry them around!

    Pick a few weapons and sell the rest

    There are a lot of weapons in Starfield, from laser rifles to old Earth shotguns and more. It’s a smorgasbord of killing options. But while I recommend you try everything at least once early on in Starfield, after the opening hours you should settle on three or four weapons and sell or store the rest.

    This has a lot of benefits. You can focus your skills more, carry less ammo, and not have to manage an armory everywhere you go. But also, it means you’ll not be bogged down by 12 weapons all using up your precious carrying capacity! And that’s—hey, I told you to put down that plastic cup! Stop! Just because we’re on a new tip doesn’t mean I stopped watching!

    Use your ship’s cargo bay to store resources/valuables

    After you’ve been out on a planet exploring, mining, or completing quests, you should take a moment to drop off excess items in your ship’s cargo hold. Thankfully, Bethesda added a hotkey that lets you send all your resources—like minerals, metals, etc.—right to your ship with one button press.

    But don’t just store resources in your ship’s cargo containers. You can store rare suits or guns you want to sell later in there too, as well as other items that are taking up space. And if your ship starts to run out of space, well, first, maybe stop grabbing everything. But also, invest in adding some more storage to your ship, which you can do at any spaceport with an NPC starship technician. Oh, and don’t forget: You can upgrade your ship’s storage capacity via the Payloads perk.

    A screenshots shows your starter ship in Starfield.

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    Look for spacesuits that have extra storage

    During my third night of playing Starfield, I stumbled upon a legendary suit that let me carry 40 extra kilograms on my character. While you might not find one as good as this, keep an eye out for spacesuits that provide extra storage.

    Spread the weight around to companions

    If you travel with a companion, don’t forget to use them like a pack mule. They can carry quite a bit, which can help out a lot in big space dungeons filled with good loot. Just talk to your companion and ask to trade, then shove all the plastic cups and crappy guns into their inventory so you can sell it all later.

    And, if all else fails, use chems or booze to temporarily boost your capacity

    Perhaps you’ve done everything above and yet still find yourself carrying too much junk. Well, that’s why I recommend keeping some whiskey or other chems on hand, as using them can increase your carrying capacity.

    Keep in mind that these are just temporary solutions and won’t last forever. But they can, in a pinch, help you stop being overencumbered just long enough to fast-travel and sell all your junk.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • All Of Our Starfield Tips, Guides, News, And Reviews

    All Of Our Starfield Tips, Guides, News, And Reviews

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    Image: Bethesda / Kotaku

    Starfield is here and it’s easily one of the biggest video games of 2023, both in terms of how large its digital galaxy is and just how much hype is surrounding Bethesda’s latest RPG. So it should come as no surprise that we here at Kotaku have spent a lot of time covering it. From tips about how to sell your loot to reports on modding controversies and our thoughts on the game itself, we’ve written a lot of cool stuff about Starfield.

    The Week In Games: What’s Coming Out Beyond Starfield

    This article is meant to be your one-stop shop for all our Starfield posts, from the serious the silly. As the game settles in and we keep reporting, we’ll update this over the coming days, weeks, and months.

    A good place to start might be our initial thoughts on the game’s first hours. And there’s a lot more below!

    Starfield Tips And Guides

    The Mantis' Razorleaf sits idle on a random planet in Starfield.

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    The Good Starfield News

    An image collage shows a thief lockpicking a door next to a spaceship.

    Image: : Bethesda / Kotaku / Melnikov Dmitriy (Shutterstock)

    The Bad Starfield News

    The Starfield Leak Saga

    A space snitch walks into a colony while a neon text box says "everyone disliked that."

    Image: Bethesda / Kotaku

    Starfield Odds & Ends

    More to come? You bet. In the meantime, jump in your spaceship and start exploring. Maybe we’ll bump into you out there.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • The 9 Least Essential Starfield Mods You Can Install Right Now

    The 9 Least Essential Starfield Mods You Can Install Right Now

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    As is all-too-often the case, Bethesda releases its games with half-baked UIs, dodgy animations, and painfully slow menus, knowing that its community will clean it all up for them via mods. So as expected, over the weekend all manner of essential mods for Starfield have appeared that will clear up the game’s most immediate problems. Also there are these ones.

    Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

    Starfield launched without DLSS support: modded. It has a clumsy, oversized inventory presentation, like all their games: modded. It doesn’t let you adjust your FOV, ffs: modded. But forget all that. We’re here to talk about what happens when you order the mods from lowest to highest popularity. These are the people who see a brand new game, and immediately learn how to modify it for the stupidest possible reasons. This is to celebrate the people who make the flashlight show Nicolas Cage’s face.

    Ryan Gosling Character Preset

    We understand the situation you’re in. You’re a busy person, and with work and family you don’t have the time to play Starfield AND sculpt your character as Ryan Gosling. But cacon5 has you covered with the Ryan Gosling Character Preset. As this video shows, this modder dedicated their time and energy into crafting someone who…is also a human being.

    NTD Modder RPG

    Celebrity Flashlights

    If that’s not enough Ryan Gosling content, then you’d better bloody believe we’ve got more for you. Because why not also have Dollar Tree Ryan Reynolds as a beaming point of light? That’s yours via the Ryan Gosling Blade Runner Flashlight from MozzyFX.

    But it doesn’t stop there. In fact, we get the feeling this is something that’s only just getting started. Because there’s also the Nicolas Cage Flashlight Mod, which presents the actor like some sort of horrendous moon-face.

    Or perhaps you’d like to show your eternal loyalty to our lord and savior, Todd Howard himself, via the Todd Howard Flashlight Replacer.

    If your affections lay with even more senior deities, then you might want to opt for the Phil Spencer Flashlight.

    Maquinaremos

    Umbreon Ground Crew Helmet

    This one perhaps doesn’t quite meet the remit of the article, because it’s honestly astonishing that Bethesda released the game without this already implemented. It’s the Umbreon Ground Crew Helmet, which replaces the ground crew helmet with one showing a picture of the Pokémon Umbreon.

    “Truly the best mod ever created,” says fellow modder jetray1000, despite the mod inexplicably sitting in second-from-last place in Nexus Mods’ Trending list. (Last place is a widescreen mod that is flagged as containing “suspicious files.”)

    A Massive Effect

    How much would you like to see a crossover between Mass Effect and Starfield? Yeah, us too! Meanwhile, the John Shepard mod promises to add a player character who kind of looks like the lead character from Mass Effect—you know, the game which also has a character creator, that lets you make him (or preferably her) look like anyone you want. Well, we say “looks like,” but modder ctxrlsec hedges their bets, adding “probably not perfect because the character creation is kinda limited but it looks close enough.”

    Hello Killy

    Right now, at this early point in Starfield’s life, it’s not yet possible to apply skins to your weapons at will. For the while, it requires entirely replacing the game’s default skin, which is perhaps more cumbersome. Although we would argue, entirely worth it when it’s the Hello Kitty Laser mod.

    Image: realadry / Nexus Mods / Kotaku

    Entirely Ruin Starfield On Purpose

    Sick of the game working properly? Frustrated by the way it won’t let you introduce narrative-breaking situations? Finally, there’s a solution for you. It’s the Kill Essential NPC mod, that prevents plot-vital characters from getting back up once you’ve knocked them down. (Yes, Starfield relies on that old Beth-gem!)

    Rather excellently, in case installing this mod weren’t already obviously a spectacularly bad idea, it seems it also allows enemies to perma-kill essential characters, meaning ruining your entire game doesn’t even have to be by your own hand.

    HowDragonborn

    There. We hope this has proved completely useless for you, and we look forward to seeing even more ridiculous and unhelpful mods once the game is officially released on September 6.

     

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    John Walker

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  • Starfield Doesn’t Require Fast Travel After All…Sort Of

    Starfield Doesn’t Require Fast Travel After All…Sort Of

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    Pluto isn’t a planet. That really shouldn’t be a controversial statement any more, but it regains new contentiousness with the release of epic space RPG, Starfield. Developer and streamer Alanah Pearce wanted to find out if Bethesda’s epic space RPG really does require fast travel for all interplanetary travel, by setting off on the seven hour trip from Earth to the dwarf planet.

    This Narrative Adventure About Doomed Teenage Dinosaurs Feels Too Real

    Starfield intends players to use fast travel to move between planets and solar systems. Disappointing many, who had hoped for a more natural ability to fly from orb to orb, it was widely speculated that the game was instead beaming players into bordered skyboxes within a solar system, with the uninhabited planets just decorations on the walls. Brave explorer, podcaster, and Santo Monica Studios writer, Alanah Pearce, decided to find out the truth.

    Screenshot: Alanah Pearce / Bethesda / Twitch / Kotaku

    Pearce’s plan was to fly within the familiar trails of the Milky Way to discover if those extra worlds could be reached under a player’s own space-steam. To do this, the plan was to point toward a location, then leave the game running while she slept. However, Pearce’s first problem was where to head. Initially trying to aim for Earth, it turned out that the game’s ultra-realistic planetary orbits would have made it unrealistic to accurately aim before heading to bed. Instead, after much deliberation, the decision was made to point the ship to the right of Pluto.

    Read More: 17 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Playing Starfield

    It turns out it’s not that simple. It’s never that simple. Every time Pearce’s Xbox controller fell asleep, the game paused, meaning there were stretches of the night where no progress was made until the streamer woke up to hit A, then went back to sleep.

    On waking seven hours later, what Pearce unequivocally proved is that the game isn’t using skyboxes. The solar systems depicted in the enormous space map are for real, and like the real thing, mostly made of terrifyingly vast stretches of absolutely nothing. And now she was 47 kilometers from the dwarf body.

    By this point, the textures were heavily blurred, suggesting Bethesda had not intended anyone to do this. Rather confirming that, on actually reaching the non-planet, Pearce flew straight through the skin of Pluto’s surface, on some level going “inside” it, whereupon the trans-Neptunian object became invisible showing the rest of space around her ship.

    Getting out the other side proved somewhat trickier. Because, even though Pluto is endlessly demeaned for its diminutive size, it still has a diameter of 2,376km. And travelling at these subspace speeds meant that would take hours itself. So, you know, Alanah Pearce went back to bed.

    After another five hours, the ship was outside of the planet again. Astonishingly, in the process, Pearce reports that she was so tired that she’d fainted on her return to bed and smacked her head. But it was for Science.

     

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    John Walker

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  • My Pacifist Starfield Run Isn’t Going Great

    My Pacifist Starfield Run Isn’t Going Great

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    Physical confrontation, financial responsibility, emotional insecurities–these are things I run away from in life. So why wouldn’t I default to role-playing as the coward that I am in Bethesda’s latest epic, Starfield? Unfortunately, space doesn’t seem all that welcoming to conflict-avoidant people, as Starfield forces me to fight more often than not.

    The Week In Games: Pocket Monsters And Simulated Goats

    Bethesda has not advertised Starfield as a potential space pacifist sim (it was made perfectly in clear back in August that a no-kill run is not possible), but I wanted to jump in and see just how much freedom I had to play the game at my own pace and with my own approach. Can I outmaneuver and outwit violent situations? Can I strive to be above aggression and explore the game holding to the ideals of pacifism? Frustratingly, no.

    Read More: I Can’t Stop Playing This Titanfall-F.E.A.R.-Killzone-Doom-Like

    Look, I love a shooty game. Probably to unhealthy degrees. And I love a shooty game in space. Especially with big explosions. But Bethesda’s first-person action is not what I come to these games for. Fallout 4’s point-and-shoot mechanics were a massive improvement, for sure, over Fallout 3’s, but it still didn’t compare to the likes of even Borderlands, let alone a dedicated shooter of the kind we’re all familiar with.

    There I go killing again

    Everything I saw in the trailers for Starfield promised me the fantasy of video games: Shoot stuff! Blow shit up! Isn’t this so freaking awesome?? But I wanted something different, quiet, contemplative, with risk of death for sure, but also an opportunity to be my own character in this world. Something more like what I’d find in an Ursula K. LeGuin novel instead of John Wick in space. I wanted to gaze into the abyss of “the blackest sea,” marvel at the celestial bodies above, and try to avoid getting riddled full of bullets as best I could without returning the aggression.

    Starfield didn’t care for my desire for peace in its early moments; and thus far that doesn’t look like it’ll change much. In drawing me into its combat, it broke a sense of freedom I was after and reminded me why I loathe gunplay in Bethesda games. Yes, Starfield has the best-feeling guns to aim and shoot in comparison to previous releases from the studio, but the RPG mechanics under the hood shatter my immersion and its confusing ammo management immediately frustrates me.

    In Starfield’s opening moments, I emerge from some space mines where my character has a little Commander Shepard-esque vision after touching a spooky space object™. A dude comes down from the sky and says “yo, you’re special, let’s go talk to people.” (I’m paraphrasing.)

    My pacifistic and somewhat skeptical gal doesn’t want to go anywhere with this stranger. She wants to stick to mining. But then pirates show up and start shooting people. Just another day in the galaxy.

    The HUD prompt reads “Hold off the pirates” and “(Optional) Grab a weapon.” Cool, I think, I’m not doing either of those things. Remember, I’m a coward and so is my character.

    I run into the ship. And it’s locked. That makes sense. Gunfire echoes off in the near distance and I figure I’ll just park myself here while people shoot each other. Maybe the pirates will win and I’ll be fucked. Could be a short end, but that’s the price of trying to play this way.

    The gunfire continues. I get bored, so I start walking around the perimeter of the firefight. Occasionally, a pirate catches sight of me and fires off a few rounds, but they rarely pursue me. I am content with parking myself on the roof of a space building, or hiding behind random objects, and just letting these people kill each other.

    That takes just over 10 minutes as the AI struggles to find each other–when they do land their shots, it matters little, as characters in this game are immersion-shattering bullet sponges.

    It took well over 10 minutes for the AI to finish this fight on its own.
    Gif: Bethesda / Kotaku

    I get it, this area is meant to be a space for you to get a sense for how the guns feel and the overall pace of Starfield’s action. But it fails to provide the opening moments I was looking for, it fails to let me roleplay my character the way I wanted to.

    After the pirates die, I once again try to insist that I don’t want to go anywhere. No one will listen to me (even in space I can’t catch a break, apparently), and so I took off in this guy’s ship, only for some pirate ships to show up and start firing at me.

    I managed to get out of the previous skirmish without firing a round, maybe I can do the same here? Nope. Absolutely not. It would seem that your first voyage into the void necessitates a dogfight.

    I try everything, flying off to another planet, flying back down to the planet I came from, trying to put space between me and my space assailant. None of it works. Unlike No Man’s Sky, you can’t just dive down to the planet’s surface and keep burning your engines until you lose someone. Starfield really wants you to engage in space fights.

    The planet just won’t get any closer!
    Gif: Bethesda / Kotaku

    That’s how my girl has to kill her first pirate. Not because a scenario emerges that sparked such violence, but because the game won’t let me past a sequence without it. Guess I’m a murderer now?

    Relentless combat, sparse resources

    The next two gun fights I get into further remind me that Starfield wants me to play a very specific way, and that’s largely by interacting with the world through violence. That can be fun, don’t get me wrong—I mean, I happily play Call of Duty regularly for god’s sake and you should hear the things that come out of my mouth when I’m caught in a frustrating game of cat and mouse with someone in DMZ—but it’s a bit disappointing that this enormous RPG that seems to promise a depth of choice is often so invested in railroading you into shootouts in corridors.

    Read More: Call of Duty’s Third-Person Mode Is So Good, I Don’t Want To Play Anything Else

    So I relent. Okay, I can work with this for my character concept: The pirate encounter forced my girl into violence, but that is never her first option. She now begrudgingly carries a pistol with the words “no gods, no masters” inscribed on it by its previous owner, a painful reminder that, yes, this galaxy is a cruel place, and hopefully she can preserve her humanity as she follows the Constellation organization to try and figure out what the hell is going on in her own mind.

    I want her to only carry pistols, choosing to stay away from aggressive military weaponry as she isn’t a soldier and doesn’t have the fortitude or skill to be using a high-powered weapon. Preferably just one (and that’s a build I’m still hoping to zero in on). But as soon as I get to a space station orbiting the moon, following what feels like a narratively urgent situation, Starfield makes it clear that it wants more violence out of me, and of varying kinds. Upon entry, I discovered two opposing groups of folks shooting at each other. And when they catch sight of me? They shoot at me, too.

    So I return fire with my pistol. Bang, bang, bang, click! I’m out of 6.5 caliber ammunition. Where do I get more? The enemies I’m fighting don’t carry it. They have Grendel SMGs with a different caliber. I decide to rely on a melee strike with an ax, but that gets me killed as I’m out-personed and outgunned. I die.

    Reluctantly, I switch to the SMG, take out a few more folks before swiftly running out of ammo again.This time I grab a shotgun. Cool. I’m now a walking arsenal (seriously, I could just be playing Halo or something if I wanted this), but at least I have powerful weaponry. Well, powerful weaponry is always kept in check by Starfield’s levels and stats, so point-blank-shots of shotgun rounds don’t result in death or debilitating injury, just a little chunk off enemies’ health bars.

    In games like The Last of Us, I love the pressure and intensity of making each shot count; but in Starfield each shot is only worth as much as a damage value, so it kinda doesn’t matter how well you place it. Starfield has smooth gunplay with none of the benefits of being skilled in aiming. It’s all in the numbers.

    One of these bullets will kill you. Eventually!
    Gif: Bethesda / Kotaku

    Right now I’m still stuck on this moon base. And no amount of firepower I’m capable of can get through this scenario. It’s feeling like I need to fall back and grind out some quests to gain better power, or find other ways of dealing with this situation.

    Either way, the inability to find non-violent solutions to problems and the burden of Bethesda’s first-person-shooter action have made for an abrasive early experience. Starfield is otherwise appealing, from the bold presentation of the environments to the inviting and intimidating sense of scale. Hopefully I find my stride, but my aspiration of being a pacifist space traveler looks to be as dead as the people the game pushes me to kill.

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    Claire Jackson

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  • 17 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Playing Starfield

    17 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Playing Starfield

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    Starfield is finally here and it is big, complex, and often overwhelming. There are tons of menus to navigate, cities to get acquainted with, and skill trees to invest in, not to mention resource mining, base building, and ship customization. Before you get into any of that, however, let’s go over some basic tips and advice to get you started.

    Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

    Currently live for fans who purchased the Deluxe Edition or Game Pass upgrade, Starfield is a sprawling sci-fi RPG where one minute you’re haggling with a bar keep for information and the next you’re shooting a bunch of space pirates and stealing all of their credits. But there’s a lot of minutia to get lost in, from confusing menus to maps that don’t tell you where anything is. What follows is a quick guide with some tricks and shortcuts for surviving Starfield’s opening hours and beginning your journey into the outer reaches of the galaxy.

    Don’t worry about how your character looks

    You can change it anytime by visiting an Enhance! shop and paying 500 credits. The nearest one at the start is in the commercial district in New Atlantis.

    Make hard saves all the time

    You never know when things might go wrong in Starfield. You might fail a persuasion roll or get jumped by giant aliens, or even accidentally crash your ship into the space station you’re trying to dock on. The game auto-saves but it’s not foll-proof. It’s a Bethesda game, after all.

    Lower music volume and raise voice volume

    Starfield comes out of the gate with very loud and intense music. And that’s fine. But after about 20 minutes, I struggled to hear what people were saying. Looking at the default settings, voice volume isn’t as high as it probably should be, so knock that up a bit and turn music down a little, too. Trust me, you’ll still be able to hear it fine.

    Loot the pirates after the first fight for an assault rifle

    The first big fight in Starfield isn’t very hard and the game quickly pushes you to leave. But first, go grab at least one assault rifle (and some other goodies) off those pirates you just wasted.

    Loot everything and give it to Vasco

    Speaking of looting stuff, feel free to grab everything and just dump it on the robot who partners up with you in the early hours of Starfield. Like in previous Bethesda games, your companions are pack mules with dialogue trees. Use ‘em! To do so, just chat with the bot (or other companions) and ask to trade items.

    Use cover like a modern shooter

    Aiming near cover will have you pop out in a way that feels unlike any previous Bethesda RPG. Sure, dynamic cover like this has been around since 2012-ish, but hey, I’m not going to complain about Starfield having good combat compared to Fallout 4 and Skyrim.

    Use the laser mining tool for killing

    The Cutter you get at the very beginning is deceptively great in battle. It works on a cooldown with unlimited ammo, and can stun-lock enemies at close range. Pull it out every now and again to save precious bullets early on.

    Set your helmet and space suit to disappear when not needed

    Early on in the game, Starfield tells you to go into your menus to put on your helmet. You might be mistaken and think you have to do that every time you want to take it off or put it on. (And you need it out in space to live.) But nope! Just leave it and your suit on, then go into the inventory section for each. You’ll find an option at the bottom of the screen letting them disappear automatically when not needed, like in towns or stations. No more running around cities looking like a giant dork!

    Pump up your persuasion trait ASAP!

    If you don’t want to waste all your resources fighting through every encounter, make sure to put some points into persuasion. It will increase the odds that you can talk people down from fights and generally make it much easier to manipulate people, which is why you’re playing this game, right?

    Careful you don’t sell your equipped gear

    The game won’t check you while you’re pawning off all your loot so spam that sell button with caution.

    Save time by fast-traveling directly through the quest menu

    You don’t always have to navigate through your cumbersome star chart to get to a new planet. If you want to go to the next location for a mission and you’ve already been there before, simply use the “select course” option from the pause menu to automatically head to the destination.

    Scan everything all the time

    Starfield basically gives you detective vision. In addition to scanning planets, your helmet sensor will also scan everything right in front of you, highlighting nearby enemies and valuable loot. This is also how you survey fauna for extra XP. Plus, you can use it to find your ship’s location on the horizon and instantly fast travel to it.

    Don’t forget to take a nap

    Sleeping will fully heal you and also give you a “well-rested” bonus that increases the rate at which you earn XP.

    Use the research station on your ship to get access to more craftable stuff

    You can upgrade guns, suits, and helmets as well as cook food in this game. But you’ll need to do some research first. You’ll need some materials, like iron and fiber, but once you have some you can unlock new mods and things to craft, letting you improve guns and make good suits even better.

    Hitting undo while lockpicking still spends a digipick

    So be careful, they’re hard to come by!

    Use your ship inventory

    You don’t just have to give all of your extra items to companions or throw them on the floor, you can also store them in the ship’s cargo hold by selecting it from the ship part of the menu (bottom left). It’s not unlimited but it has more than enough room in the beginning.

    Designate weapons and healing items as favorites to save time

    As far as I can tell, in the first few hours of the game at least, Starfield doesn’t say anything about favoriting weapons. But you should totally do that! Like in past Bethesda games, you can map guns, medkits, knives, and more to your d-pad and then quickly switch weapons during combat without needing to open the game’s (not great) menus. Simply replace an item with something else to change up your favorites.

                       

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    Ethan Gach and Zack Zwiezen

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  • Help! I’m Trapped In Starfield’s Menus And Can’t Get Out

    Help! I’m Trapped In Starfield’s Menus And Can’t Get Out

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    In the several hours I’ve played since Starfield’s September 1 Early Access kicked off, I’ve been consistently confused by the menus and user interfaces of Bethesda’s latest RPG. I remain miffed by its starmap, baffled by its inventory, and at a loss when it comes to my ship’s HUD–and don’t even get me started on the shipbuilder, which almost sent me into a tailspin.

    This Narrative Adventure About Doomed Teenage Dinosaurs Feels Too Real

    Bethesda games are infamous for their clunky UI. Modders have spent hours upon hours overhauling in-game menus so that they’re more intuitive and easier to navigate. But at least in games like The Elder Scroll V: Skryim, the initial menu is minimalist and straightforward–bring it up with a button press and then select from one of four clearly delineated options (skills, magic, items, and map), then navigate to a more involved menu that breaks down your inventory by type, or sweeps up to show your skill tree in the form of constellations.

    Read More: Starfield Chat: Our First Few Hours With Bethesda’s Space Epic
    Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    Starfield technically follows that design logic, but its NASA-punk stylings and heaps more content make for a navigational nightmare–especially for someone as impatient and clunky as myself.

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    Lost in Starfield’s menus

    In Starfield, the first thing that pops up when you press the menu button on your Xbox controller is an iteration of Bethesda’s prototypical menu setup, but it’s got so much visual noise that it immediately overwhelms. (It’s important to note that you have to hard press the menu button to get to your basic start screen that includes options to quicksave, load, and change your controller settings, which can be confusing.)

    On this screen, there’s a circle and four quadrants. In the center of a circle stands your character in whatever getup you’ve got them in at the moment; their name, level, and health displayed next to them. At the bottom of that circle is the mission you’re currently on/following, but it’s not labeled as such, all you can see is its name and next steps. If you select this, you’ll be taken to all the possible main quests, side quests, and “activities” available to you.

    Read More: Where To Sell All The Stuff You Grabbed In Starfield

    The top-left quadrant outside of that central circle shows your current location, local time, and survey data–selecting this section brings you to the starmap, which we’ll get into later. The top-right quadrant shows one of your skills and how far along you are in that skill’s certification progress–completing that will let you use skill points to advance its level. Selecting this section takes you to your skill tree, one of the more legible parts of Starfield’s menus with five clearly labeled skill sections (physical, social, combat, science, and tech) that are then mucked up by dozens of tiny icons representing each possible selection.

    The bottom-left quadrant shows your ship’s information–what class it is, how many crew are on it, the hull’s strength, etc. Selecting that brings you to a truncated version of the nightmarishly complicated ship builder (you can only customize your vessel while docked at certain shipyards), that shows your ship floating on a sort of digital blueprint with measurements displayed along it.

    A screenshot of a Starfield in-game menu that shows the player-character wearing an outfit called 'Settler Poncho Outfit.' There are stats for the outfit in the top right corner.

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    A crowded display on the left-hand side shows the levels of all six of your ship’s systems (I still don’t know what each abbreviation stands for). Here, you can navigate between each of the ship’s systems, and get a half-dozen data points for each one: from how much “power” your 10S Protector Shield Generator has to the hull damage your Atlatl 270Z Missile Launcher can cause. There are so many numbers and graphs that it triggers the same fight-or-flight response I used to get in high school math class.

    The bottom-right quadrant of Starfield’s main in-game menu shows your current weapon and its mass, and selecting it opens up your inventory. There’s no way to quickly swap between weapons during firefights (pressing down on the D-pad lets you access medicine and there appears to be a quick-select wheel here, but I can’t figure out how to assign anything else to this section), so you must return to this inventory menu when you inevitably run out of bullets for your Eon or Grendel.

    Read More: Starfield Players Are Already Filling Up Their Ships With Random Junk

    Frustratingly, though I can easily see what kind of ammo I have in my inventory menu, I can’t tell what fucking ammo goes for what fucking gun, so I’m almost always unsure what weapon to quickly swap to during combat. Hovering over each gun in your inventory brings up–you guessed it–more information, from fire rate to range to accuracy to mods, and rounds, which is tucked away in the top right corner, one of nine different data points.

    The lack of a difference in font size or color between the item you have equipped and the item categories can be a little confusing: “Deep Mining Space Helmet Helmets” becomes an oft-repeated refrain as I play. But I run up against the most friction in the starmap menu because it combines Starfield’s crowded UI with my Aries lack of patience, making for a potent cocktail of confusion.

    A screenshot of the starmap in Starfield, which shows a star system and several planets.

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    Starwoman, waiting in the sky

    After selecting the starmap from the aforementioned top-left quadrant, you’ll see a view of the planet or space station you’re currently on, with details about the planet on the left side, an option to scan below that, and several button prompts in the bottom right corner: missions, show me, set landing target, and back to system.

    Pressing B will zoom you out to a full view of the solar system that houses that planet or space station and all the icons indicating explorable places within that solar system. Press B again and you’ll zoom out to the galaxy–but you have to hold B in order to exit this map screen, a maneuver that isn’t very intuitive and often results in me rapidly zooming in and out of solar systems and galaxies like I just dropped acid.

    And the other options, “show me” and “set course” are not very straightforward. What the fuck does “show me” mean? Are you “showing me” where I need to go on this massive (and hard-to-read) map? Sometimes “show me” will snap-cut to a shot of a planet I know I haven’t seen before, but it’s not immediately clear how I’m meant to get there–at least not for me, and as I play Starfield I feel increasingly like my years of marijuana use have finally started doing what my parents always warned me about: making me stupid.

    A Starfield screenshot that shows a more zoomed-out view of its starmap, focused on a solar system at its center, with several others dotting the map around it.

    Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

    After I play the opening act and am unceremoniously made the captain of my own spaceship, I spend several minutes cursing under my breath and angrily clacking the Xbox controller’s joysticks around while trying to figure out how to fly to Starfield’s major city, New Atlantis. My partner, normally a patient backseat gamer and apparently a native Bethesda menu speaker, finally snaps after a few minutes of me flying my ship, snail-like, towards another system. “This is intuitive, hover over the spot you want to go, select A, hold X to travel. You aren’t even trying to figure this out,” he says, laughing in disbelief.

    He’s not wrong, but also, there’s a lot going on in every corner of my screen, and I’m easily confused! After his somewhat stern advice, it takes me several more trips into space to figure out how to easily select a mission location from the mission menu and view it on my map, and then fast-travel to that point on the map. I’m now at a point where I can get where I need to go, with several ham-handed maneuvers and “oopsies” along the way, but it shouldn’t be this difficult, Starfield. I know flying a spaceship and managing resources and conserving ammo and lightspeed jumping between galaxies and eating space cereal and upgrading weapons and negotiating hostage situations requires a lot of concentration, but I feel like I need a PhD to play this game efficiently.

    Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    How do you feel about Starfield’s menus so far?

     

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    Alyssa Mercante

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  • Starfield Chat: Our First Few Hours With Bethesda’s Space Epic

    Starfield Chat: Our First Few Hours With Bethesda’s Space Epic

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    Starfield is officially out in Early Access for those who got one of several special editions of Bethesda’s long-awaited sci-fi RPG. Though everyone else will have to wait until September 6, several Kotaku staffers decided to shell out for the Early Access editions and spent the first night of launch zipping around space, hoarding junk in their ships, and blowing up pirates. Here’s what we had to say about our first few hours with Starfield.

    This Narrative Adventure About Doomed Teenage Dinosaurs Feels Too Real

    Pre-order Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    Ethan Gach: Starfield has to be the weirdest big new game experience I’ve had this year. I played five hours straight. I would have kept going but a space cowboy’s gotta sleep. At the same time there were so many things that underwhelmed or confused me. How far did everyone get and what was your most memorable moment?

    Alyssa Mercante: I am currently trying to track down the VC guy with Sarah. I’m still a bumbling idiot in menus, still struggle to quickly determine how much ammo I have in my weapon, which ammo is for what, how to see the map of an interior space (can you?), and other stuff that’s almost all a mix of weird UI and my impatience.

    It’s got the exact kind of grippiness in terms of gameplay loop that I’d expect from Bethesda—I don’t really care about any of this shit yet but I’m sort of lazily plodding on, and mostly enjoying it most of the time.

    Levi Winslow: I’m maybe four hours in? I got to New Atlantis, met Sarah and the Constellation gang, then dipped off to Mars and Venus to hunt for Moara. I’m finding some of the systems quite cumbersome and unintuitive. Like, why do I have to bring up the weapon menu to select a different gun or whatever? It’s weird that in other Bethesda games, you can quick-swap between weapons on the fly, but you can’t in Starfield? Unless I missed something, which is totally possible. The game gives you so many tutorials for its menus and systems that a quick-swap could’ve been buried. Still, though, I’m having a blast living life as a space cowgirl. Currently, I’m on the hunt for some legendary ship.

    Carolyn Petit: I admit, I only got as far as the door of Constellation’s base before calling it a night, and perhaps it’ll grow on me, but it just felt very dated to me, very much like Bethesda holding on to Bethesda design concepts that, in my opinion, it really doesn’t need to hold onto anymore. For instance, when I arrived in New Atlantis, I immediately walk past this group of people who are just dispensing exposition at each other in the clumsiest way. One character says something really disparaging and messed-up about a certain group of people, and someone else calmly replies, “That’s unfair,” before proceeding to rattle off an entire story about a positive experience he had with them, all while everyone else in the group just looks on. People just don’t talk or interact this way in my opinion, and I felt less like I was in a bustling new city and more like I was in line for a ride at Disneyland where animatronic figures are stiffly filling me in on the ride’s lore.

    EG: Yea I didn’t immediately find a way to hot-swap weapons either. Between that and constantly being overloaded with enemy loot and no easy place to go to sell it all, I spent probably a third of my entire session last night just scrolling back and forth over a bunch of weapons (including to see which ones I actually still had ammo for).

    My most memorable moment was talking down the initial pirates you run into outside of that first moon and then blowing them up with the literal red barrel behind them. 2010 is soooo back. I do agree Carolyn it feels very stagey in a dated sort of way. The game is constantly reminding you it’s a game, in a way I didn’t get from say, Cyberpunk 2077. It reminds me so much of The Outer Worlds in many ways, which was a much more satirical take on the whole genre.

    LW: Just adding to your point about blowing up the first space pirates…

    Levi shares a Reddit post showing how one person blew up the barrel behind the pirates before the cutscene could even begin.

    CP: I also didn’t love that the game forces you to go do this combat mission so early on, before you even meet Constellation and really get introduced to the game’s core concept. To me, it felt a bit like Bethesda lacking faith in its own concept of this wide-open spacefaring game, as if it felt the need to reassure gamers: Don’t worry, this is still a video game-ass video game in which you get to gun down lots of dudes.

    LW: I agree. I barely even listened to those dudes. Knowing what I was getting into, I skipped their dialogue and shot them up. Really, I just wanted some quick loot to sell for even quicker cash, which leads me to one of my biggest gripes with this game: There’s so much shit to collect. I know that’s very Bethesda but wow, the sheer amount of stuff to pick up and pore over in this game is staggering.

    CP: That’s one Bethesda-ism I have no problem with. I find it comical and enjoyable. In that research base where you fight the pirates, I saw a little zen garden on someone’s desktop and immediately grabbed it for my own. It’ll be one of the millions of stolen items eventually decorating my ship or my space-house or whatever.

    EG: Has anyone tried to do persuasion?

    LW: Yeah I tried it on the dude at the bar when looking for Moara. (Jack, I think his name was. Maybe John?) I failed it, but then got Sarah to convince him to lower the price of his info, which worked.

    CP: I tried to get out of killing the initial pirate boss with persuasion. I failed, and didn’t fully grasp how it worked. There was a pop-up that said something like “you can’t fail if your previous choice succeeded.” Huh? Anyway, I’m sure I’ll make sense of it in time but it was a little befuddling at first.

    AM: I used one of my first skill points for speech, and tried persuasion with the bar guy as well. It worked, but I also did not fully comprehend what I was doing

    EG: Yea, there’s a later mission where you are trying to convince a dad alienated from his son to hand over a map and at first it’s like, okay how are we gonna navigate 30 years of emotional baggage and then instead I said something like, you know giving him the map is what so-and-so would have wanted, and bingo. It was so goofy.

    Claire Jackson and Zack Zwiezen enter the chat.

    Zack Zwiezen: I’ve used persuasion a few times and it’s been helpful. Skipped the pirate boss fight, for example. I’m still learning how it works, but its nice to see Bethesda bringing back some RPG-ish systems like that. Reminds me of the weird Oblivion persuasion minigame! With the weird circle and sliding stuff around. I don’t think I ever got good at that one. This Starfield one seems a bit simpler and I think I mostly get it.

    Claire Jackson: Good to know you can skip the pirate boss fight…my attempt at resolving that ended up with me bashing an ax into his face. And I was genuinely trying not to kill anyone. Period!

    Maybe it’s just the nature of the game’s opening needing to hold your hand to learn all its complex systems and set you up for the quest, but I was also dismayed that I couldn’t choose to stay on the mining planet. I mean, I touched a weird thing, saw a weird thing, and now some rando is like, “Here take my ship and go talk to this space secret society or whatever, though they won’t have answers for you. Sorry. By the way, you’re a captain now!”

    ZZ: It moves pretty fast and I wonder if that was a reaction to how slow Fallout 4‘s intro was and how people didn’t seem to like that.

    EG: I was so relieved. No messing around.

    ZZ: Agreed. It was nice to just get going. I was worried I’d have to spend four hours in the mine finding a sweet roll for someone.

    CJ: I wanted to mess around lol. I wanted to just hang out and mine some stuff. The game wants me to be a hero so badly, and enough games do that for me that I kinda wanted this to unravel itself a bit more slowly.

    ZZ: I will say, once you get through with that first big quest and intro stuff, the game truly goes, “Okay, do whatever you want.” At that point you can go be a space miner and never worry about the main story again.

    CJ: That’s a relief. So maybe my space gal can be someone who just had one traumatic encounter with space pirates, dropped off some weird who-the-hell-knows-what to these brainiacs, and then just went about her life where she’ll unpack that PTSD-inducing episode after years and years of therapy. That’s all I want. Space therapy.

    AM: Within moments of picking up my rock cutter laser I tried to kill someone in the mines, so the intrusive thoughts are already beating my ass.

    ZZ: Hot tip: That laser cutter is a very good weapon early on and uses no ammo! It stunlocks people and can even blow up their packs, killing others. Handy! And fun.

    EG: Starfield is definitely a resource-extraction fantasy. Mine stuff! Loot stuff! Steal stuff! Use it to do cool things. So far navigating relationships and political factions has really taken a backseat.

    ZZ: It was nice to end my time with the first companion, Sarah, and not feel like she wanted to jump my bones. A break from Baldur’s Gate 3, haha. But yeah, it’s clear that certain parts of Starfield got more attention and resources than others.

    EG: I found a mysterious map to a pirate hideout or something earlier this morning so that’s cool. The thing keeping me excited to come back at the moment is the fact that it still feels like there are a ton of possibilities lurking out there. Whether that’s actually the case or not, the early game is really good at making you at least feel like you’re barely scratching the surface.

    LW: I agree. I’m sure the novelty of Bethesda’s systems will wear thin after a few dozen hours, but the early game has me hooked. Running up to my ship, hopping into the cockpit to blast off into the cosmos, getting into a couple of dogfights with space pirates then looting their ships, landing on a planet to sell my goods before embarking on a bounty—it’s all giving Cowboy Bebop, a fantasy I’ve longed for in video games. It’s not totally there. Some mechanics are still quite unwieldy, but Starfield is letting me live out that bounty hunter lifestyle, and I simply can’t get enough of that right now.

    AM: I did get a similar feeling to one I saw Ethan mention on Twitter (X, whatever) before—I woke up excited to play this. For all the jank, for all the confusing menus, there’s enough good stuff here that I am willing to spend more time exploring, lurking, looting, and what have you. How long will this last me? I’m not sure yet. But for now, I’m not all that angry that I’m going into this long weekend with a cold—now I can just sit inside and play Starfield.

    Pre-order Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

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    Alyssa Mercante, Ethan Gach, Levi Winslow, Carolyn Petit, Claire Jackson, and Zack Zwiezen

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  • Starfield Official Live Action Trailer

    Starfield Official Live Action Trailer

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    Summary

    Related:
    Play Starfield Now with Early Access
    Starfield Starters: Customizing Your Perfect Captain
    Astronaut Training at Space Camp: Starfield Edition

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  • Pre-Order Starfield Now or Play Day One on Game Pass | Xbox

    Pre-Order Starfield Now or Play Day One on Game Pass | Xbox

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    Summary

    Related:
    Starfield Starters: An Explorer’s Guide to Planet Hopping 
    Starfield and Series S 1TB Kick Off an Incredible September
    Next Week on Xbox: New Games for September 4 to 8

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  • Bethesda Exec Writes Fake Doctor’s Note To Excuse Starfield Players From Work

    Bethesda Exec Writes Fake Doctor’s Note To Excuse Starfield Players From Work

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    Bethesda’s head of publishing Pete Hines posted a boilerplate excuse note on Twitter for any Starfield fan who, ahead of the game’s official release on September 6, is rapidly starting to feel a little bit…feverish.

    This Narrative Adventure About Doomed Teenage Dinosaurs Feels Too Real

    Your stomach is twisting into tight knots. Your hands are slick and shaking, your whole body shivers with the exciting prospect of handing a multibillion-dollar company your $70. It’s okay. You’re safe now with Hines, whose name on Twitter currently specifies that he is “(not a doctor).”

    “To Whom It May Concern: Please excuse ____ from work/school/chores for the foreseeable future,” begins his magnanimous excuse note. “They are currently undergoing treatment for an infection from [a dinosaur-like Starfield creature] Ashta bite after a recent expedition to [planet] Tau Ceti II.”

    Hines’ note isn’t the first time a developer has tried to help you get out of responsibilities in order to play their new game. Ahead of Baldur’s Gate 3’s August 3 release, developer Larian Studios posted a “request for special dispensation” form, and encouraged players to hand it to their boss so they could spend hours upon hours in an expansive RPG world. Starfield, which similarly promises a thousand explorable planets and side quests, seems like another game that might suck up all your free time.

    It’s also not the first time Hines has offered gamers a sick note to play his company’s latest game. He shared a much shorter, simpler sick note two days before Fallout 4’s November 10, 2015 release date. “I figure some of you might need a note from your doctor for your upcoming ‘sick day(s)’ this week,” he wrote then. As far as running gags go, it could be worse.

    Will this Starfield sick note work? It’s unlikely, but your boss, professor, or mom can judge for themselves if Pete Hines, described on the note as an “MD, LAN, PhD, ARS” and “Head Physician, Constellation,” wants what’s best for you.

    Read More: Here’s When You Can Actually Start Playing Starfield
    Pre-order Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    “Whether you need time off to play Starfield starting tomorrow in early access,” Hines said on Twitter, “or next week at launch, Uncle Pete has you covered.”

    “Already asked my boss earlier this week (and was approved),” said one commenter. “But, man, you should’ve sent this earlier.”

    “Literal people are going to use this,” another Twitter respondent said. “Genius.”

    Starfield launches in Early Access at 8 p.m. Eastern on August 31.

     

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    Ashley Bardhan

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  • Starfield Pushes Baldur’s Gate 3 Off Steam Top Spot, And It’s Not Even Out Yet

    Starfield Pushes Baldur’s Gate 3 Off Steam Top Spot, And It’s Not Even Out Yet

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    Though you still can’t play it, Bethesda’s massive spacefarer role-playing game Starfield recently beat out one of 2023’s biggest games, D&D RPG Baldur’s Gate 3, as a Steam top seller, GamesRadar first noticed.

    The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Baldur’s Gate 3

    Starfield, out in Early Access on August 31 and globally on September 6, has successfully dragged its 1,000 explorable planets and eager players’ mounting expectations to the number-one spot on the U.S. Top Sellers chart. It’s also the number one seller for a huge number of additional countries, including Australia, Switzerland, Norway, and Germany.

    Most other counties, though, are concerned with neither Bethesda’s big space game nor Larian Studios’ big Dungeons & Dragons game. China, Denmark, Spain, Poland, and many others are still downloading free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter Counter Strike: Global Offensive, which was initially released in 2012, more than anything else, making it the current worldwide top seller. CS:GO has been assuming different rankings on the Top Sellers chart for 577 weeks, or the full 11 years of its existence. How is there still anyone left who hasn’t picked it up already?

    We’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out if Starfield has that kind of longevity, too. Director Todd Howard certainly hopes so, telling GQ in a recent interview, “[Starfield] takes [Bethesda’s oeuvre] all to a level that we weren’t sure even that we could do. This type of game is still unique. When it clicked, and we could play it, we realized we had missed it. No one still does this.”

    “We don’t get many of these in our careers—we don’t get many shots,” he said.

    For Bethesda, the developer behind Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Starfield presents another opportunity to catch lightning in a bottle. So far, we know that it is stocked with plenty of sidequest content, a silent, customizable protagonist to augment it, and, apparently, answers about God. Whether or not they are satisfactory, only spacetime will tell.

     

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    Ashley Bardhan

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  • Starfield’s Main Character Is Silent So The World Can Be Huge

    Starfield’s Main Character Is Silent So The World Can Be Huge

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    Starfield is a big game with hundreds of planets to explore and many sandwiches to collect. But while all the NPCs you’ll meet in Starfield have voices, the game’s main character doesn’t. Bethesda already confirmed this was the case last year, but has now shared more details about why it made this choice, revealing that originally Starfield had a talking protag and that ultimately cutting the main character’s voice helped the game grow in size.

    Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

    Starfield was officially revealed back at E3 2018. Half a decade later, the game is finally close to coming out. (Depending on where you live, it might be out in August, technically.) Hype is off the charts for this open-world RPG set in a vast galaxy as it is Bethesda’s first big single-player game since 2015’s Fallout 4 and the first new IP from the studio in over two decades. And as I already mentioned, it’s a very big game. Bethesda’s own Pete Hines says it might take you over 50 hours to get through the main quest. According to Bethesda, the reason it was able to make such a big game is because it ultimately decided against having a voiced protagonist, a change from Fallout 4’s talkative main hero.

    In an August 28 interview with Polygon, Starfield lead designer Emil Pagliarulo explained that early in the space RPG’s development, the studio actually had planned on your main character having a voice. Pagliarulo said that Bethesda even hired an actor and had them start recording dialogue before the team realized it wasn’t working, adding that the voice sounded “too specific.”

    “So then what are the options? Do we have—like some RPGs do—four voices? Do we have one voice, but hire someone else who’s more convenient?” asked Pagliarulo. “But [in Starfield] you can make every different type of person. We realized that the only way to really do it and let the player be the person they want to be was to have an unvoiced protagonist.”

    Interestingly, when asked if fan reaction to Fallout 4’s informed Bethesda’s decision to go the opposite direction in Starfield, Pagliarulo admitted that it partially did, suggesting that negative reactions to Fallout 4’s talking main hero didn’t “directly” lead to Starfield’s silent main character, but that it “certainly played into it.”

    Starfield got bigger once it cut the main character’s voice

    According to Pagliarulo, there was a time in AAA game development when every main character had to be voiced.

    But he says that Bethesda has realized, over the last few years, that maybe that isn’t accurate. He suggested that fans might enjoy the game more if the protagonist doesn’t have a voice actor. The designer further added that there’s a “big argument” in RPGs about having voiced lines that mimic the text or if the text should just summarize the line.

    “So then we just arrived at, ‘What if we just go text?’ and it was just really freeing,” said Pagliarulo, explaining that this choice helped the game actually grow even bigger.

    “We have over 200,000 lines of spoken dialogue in Starfield with no voiced protagonists. And it was not having a voiced protagonist that allowed us to create such a big world.”

    .

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    Zack Zwiezen

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