Starfield Review After 100 Hours: The Most Polished Bethesda Game I Have Ever Played

After years of waiting and more than 100 hours logged, I can say without a doubt that Starfield is the real deal. It is the most polished Bethesda game I have ever played, and I believe it redeems the studio as one of the best RPG developers in the world.

I wrote this once the review embargo had lifted and ahead of the game's launch. I was a huge fan of Bethesda's previous work on The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, and the thought of the studio making a brand new IP had once seemed unlikely. Having now played it, I think the extra development time really shows.

Starfield ran solidly on PC with only three to four bugs in 100 hours

Starfield went through a year long delay for QA testing, and it paid off. In my 100 hours I experienced three to four bugs, which might seem like a foreign concept given that this is a Bethesda game we are talking about. I will get to each of them as they come up in this piece.

For review purposes I played Starfield on PC via Steam. Performance was solid, and I did not see any of the jittery issues that showed up in the Direct or the trailers. Overall the experience was smooth. In some areas, like Akila City, I did have some noticeable frame drops, but those might have been due to the GPU encoded capture software I was using. The day zero patch improved those drops and the overall stability of Akila.

I am leaving the detailed performance analysis to Digital Foundry, which I recommend for extensive testing. With those slight issues out of the way, I want to gush about Starfield for a bit.

Starfield's faction quests are some of the best side content I have played

The scale of Starfield is just as it was marketed. When Todd said it was irresponsibly large, he was spot on. Even with 100 hours in the game, I am still nowhere near completing it. I beat the main questline, which is one of my favourite main questlines in Bethesda's history, but the part that shone most for me was the faction quests.

If you play Starfield and only do the main story, you will miss out on some of the best side content I have experienced in all of gaming. For example, I spent 20 hours just in Neon doing side quests. It genuinely felt like I was not even playing Starfield anymore. At one point "it felt like an entire cyberpunk game just on one planet."

Outposts in Starfield are optional, unlike Fallout 4's settlements

I still have a ton of side quests and activities left, like ship customisation and outpost building, both of which cost quite a bit of credits. Those are totally optional, unlike Fallout 4, where the game kind of throws its settlements in your face. Outposts will not come asking for your help here, because that is all entirely optional. They are just another aspect the game offers if you choose to take it up.

Be sure not to spend all of your skill points early on, though, because there are a few skills you will want if you plan on building your own base. I believe there are some quests that have you build outposts on various planets, but no part of the main quest forced me to do it.

Shipbuilding is where Starfield truly shines

You can essentially make any ship you want. Your only limitations are, first, whether you have enough credits to buy the parts, and second, whether the build passes the flight checks. If it does, you can build it.

This aspect, like the PC controls, is a bit hard to understand, but it works relatively well on controller. Parts snap to each other if they are meant to, the customisation is deep, and the colour palettes you can choose from are insane. That said, you probably will not be doing much shipbuilding or outpost work until the very end of the game. After 100 hours, I still do not have a fully upgraded and customised ship or outpost.

Player choice in Starfield can turn a companion like Barrett against you

Moving on to the story and characters, this game is really all about choice. You can start a quest and complete it your own way, going in guns blazing or taking things with stealth, and there is much more I cannot mention that you will discover in due time.

Here is an example. Say you are tasked with killing someone to retrieve an item for another character. You find the target and, instead of killing them, try a persuasion attempt to convince them to hand over the item and get lost. If you win, that is exactly what happens. If you lose, you can attack them, pay them credits for the item, or do a favour for them.

In my case I won the persuasion, and they gave me the item. But instead of letting them walk away, I shot them in the head. My companion Barrett got extremely mad at me. We ran back to the ship and he told me off the entire time. When I finally spoke with him, he said things like "I didn't think you were this type of person maybe I was wrong about you." A dialogue option then let me persuade him to stop being angry, I succeeded, and he was no longer upset with me.

My first Starfield build was a Bounty Hunter with Hero Worshipped and Wanted

The amount of customisation and the player builds you can create are going to be insane to see. For my first character I went with the Bounty Hunter background, which granted me Piloting, Targeting Control Systems and Boost Pack Training. The boost pack is extremely helpful for traversal, so I would try to get it early.

For traits I chose Hero Worshipped, and yes, the Adoring Fan is as annoying as you think he is. I also selected Wanted and Neon Street Rat. It is definitely not the greatest starting build, but I had to try out Wanted and the Adoring Fan. My next character will be a full stealth build with a certain other element I will not mention, and I cannot wait to dive into it.

One cool feature that was totally unexpected was New Game Plus being available at launch. Not many games even support New Game Plus after launch, and having it at launch shows the amount of time the developers were given.

Constellation companions are memorable, while NPCs are just okay

Starfield's Constellation companions are super memorable, each with a ton of dialogue options. They can be your extended inventory or your helper. Vasco is insane, and I love Vasco. There are romance options too, and you can flirt with different companions. Unfortunately, just like in real life, my charm does not carry over into the game.

In terms of NPC and companion AI, they are pretty helpful, but this is where I hit my first bug. Sarah Morgan was my companion at the time and was helping me take down some enemies when she started bugging out quite a bit. It was a super random occurrence, and it has not happened again, which bodes well.

NPCs are okay design wise. Every NPC kind of felt like they fit the setting, but they were not too impressive in terms of reactions and scheduling. Some have basic dialogue and others extended dialogue, and you pretty much know when a character can be interacted with heavily.

Speaking of dialogue, I love the dialogue cameras. The game swaps to different characters as they start speaking, which creates a super immersive experience, so massive props to the team. I did have one issue with dialogue not starting: at the Red Mile, a character I needed to hear an introduction from did nothing when I walked up and clicked speak. This might be an issue with the quest, or I may have forgotten to complete a previous objective, so I cannot definitively mark it as a bug. "I'll just chalk it up to a skill issue."

Asteroid mining is a fast way to stack up resources in Starfield

In system exploration, planet exploration, resource collecting and surveying were aspects I was super excited about. I have not really tested flying from one planet to another within a system manually. If it is possible, it would take a really long time, but it is super quick to hop between planets with the grav drive.

When you are in orbit around a planet with a bunch of rocks nearby, I recommend destroying them with your weapon systems, because you will get solid resources that stack up quickly. I found a bunch of rocks with iron on them and just started exploding every rock in my way. Asteroid mining is really fun and I recommend it.

Planet boundaries in Starfield have never been an issue for me

Planet exploration is the procedural content, and it is not super crazy good. Visually it looks fine, but I still prefer the handcrafted content. As procedural sandbox content, though, I still think it is pretty fun. Most planets you land on have points of interest like mining outposts and other settlements, and there are caves to explore, some of them super deep.

To address the concerns about the planet tile situation that had been in the news: yes, there are boundaries on planets. But in a game with over a thousand planets, a 10 to 20 minute walk from end to end on one planet is still pretty massive when you consider all the other planets to explore. I personally do not really get the concern. It has never been an issue for me, because you have to walk out pretty far to hit the boundary.

The overall terrain looks similar no matter where you look, but that is not really shocking. The modding potential of planets is what I am most excited about, and either way it is still fun to explore.

Surveying is easy, and fast travel back to your ship is your friend

Some planets have only a few resource types, so you will likely build outposts with cargo links to mine resources at scale. If you are a completionist or just like to vibe with exploration, surveying is fairly easy.

My most important tip for surviving on an unknown planet is not to feel stuck there. Grabbing what you need and fast travelling back to your ship is a regular occurrence. Starfield is a massive game, so you will be exploring many different planets. Higher level planets have resources like silver or uranium, but they sit in extreme environments, so setting up outposts there requires the Outpost Engineering skill unlocked and upgraded.

One rare issue I had was poor performance during a landing sequence, with some pretty bad frame drops. It only happened once and was likely due to running my capture software for around six hours, or my rig. After I restarted the game, it did not happen again.

Starfield's combat does not feel like a Creation Engine game

Like every other Bethesda game, Starfield's gameplay is addictive. The amount of loot is insane. In a building, on a starship or at a random location, you can pull up your scanner and it highlights every lootable object in your direction. The attention to detail is crazy, so grab the essentials like ammo, cred sticks, Digipicks, and health and trauma kits, along with things like fire extinguishers, lamps, mugs and all of the sandwiches. If you want to steal something, do it discreetly, because you will be punished if you are detected.

The animations and sound effects are super crisp. Buttons, switches and knobs all sound super satisfying. The combat is incredibly addicting and really does not feel like a Creation Engine game. It almost feels like a mix of Cyberpunk with a bit of Fallout DNA. Enemies are not super spongy and are satisfying to kill, but watch out for one particular enemy type, because they will kill you pretty easily.

Some Starfield missions will make you question whether it is a Bethesda game

You will come across some super unique missions. One has a puzzle that is unexpectedly difficult, on the same level as a Call of Duty Zombies Easter egg. Another, closer to the end of the main quest, is so crazy that you will question whether you are still playing a Bethesda game.

I was not able to test how many story endings there are, but there are some tough choices throughout the story, some of which you will not even realise you made until after the fact. I cannot wait to start another playthrough and pick different options to see if I get a different outcome.

Starfield is a game that makes you question your own reality and existence by sending you on an epic adventure to answer humanity's biggest question: what really is out there? It is the result of a passionate development team that set out to build the ultimate sci-fi epic. So did Bethesda pull off Starfield and redeem themselves as one of the best RPG developers in the world? The answer is yes. "Starfield not only nails the landing but they absolutely crushed expectations." I strongly recommended the game at the time, noting that it was an easy download through Game Pass and that the Premium Edition offered the chance to play a day early.

Do you think the planet boundaries were a fair concern, or were they as much of a non issue as I found them?