Review of Starfield

Note: I played from early access day one via the Premium Edition on Xbox Series X.

This game is a masterpiece. I have been with Bethesda since Skyrim, gone back and played their oldies, and I have to say this is their best game ever. Let me give you the positives.

• Best Bethesda main story. The story had me, I cried at one point even. It is full of mystery, intrigue, great characters, and many fun twists and turns. It wears classic sci-fi inspiration on its sleeve which I love. It has elements of Bladerunner, Alien, 2001 A Space Odyssey and more. The ending is incredible and honestly heady.

• Amazing combat. ID (Doom Eternal) and Machine games (Wolfenstein helped with the combat and you can tell it is polished and feels good. The reload animations are awesome, the weapons feel weighty and unique. Hundreds of customization options are available. You can customize and mod each part of a weapon. Also the way that enemies react to being shot is very realistic. They stumble, blood sprays, and the way they fall and slump over after dying shows off the game's impressive physics system.

• Amazing faction quests. There are a lot of factions in this game. There are the big main factions like the Vanguard and the Crimson Fleet but you can also find smaller one's with shorter quest lines. For instance I joined a gang! The main faction quest lines are long, well written, and packed with good content.

• Deep side quests with lot's of choice and consequence and great writing. Every side quest I have done has been a blast.

• RPG mechanics: Bethesda returns to form here, this is the deepest their RPG systems have been since Oblivion. My character perks and background traits have come up in nearly every mission side and main. I have yet to stumble into even a side quest that didn't give me a dialogue option that let's me flex my background.

• The persuasion and lockpicking mini games are amazing. Most quests have multiple persuasion checks for those who like to talk their way through a mission.

• Performance is great. Stable 30FPS. Obviously I wish it were 60 but after seeing just how ambitious this game is and all the systems it has, it makes sense why that decision was made.

• Writing: this is the best written BGS game ever. Clever, funny, emotional, and at times philosophical.

• Characters: Great characters especially the constellation members. All memorable, they have fun personal questlines that flesh them out really well.

• Locations: Talking specifically about the cities, I beat the game after 35 hours and I am still discovering new entire cities on different planets that I did not know existed. My favorite city is Neon. Each feels lived in and unique. They are massive and packed with content!

• Ships: The ship combat is hard but very fun and very rewarding. Nothing beats disabling a ship's engine, boarding it, killing the grew in zero gravity then stealing the ship and selling it. The ship building is DEEP. I have spent hours just in that menu building new ships, making room for more crew that I can hire, and upping my weapon systems. The space combat is also very deep as you have to in real time divert power to various systems such as shields, engine, or weapons to maintain smart movement, defense, or offense. Really well done.

• NG+ is brilliant. That is all I will say.

• Procedural content. Completely optional but a ton of fun. I have yet to see the same thing twice. Each planet has so much to offer and the procedural dungeons so far have all been cool and unique. There is so much handcrafted content however, you will be 70+ hours in before you even would need to think about touching the procedural world's if they are not your thing.

• Base building: Far better than fallout 4, I actually love it in this game (did not in fallout). It is easier and helps you with resources and storage, also gives you a place to put companions you find and recruit.

• Impressive systems: Here is an example, each planet and each system in real time moves like real planets. If you sit on a moon for 5 hours and watch the sky you will be able to watch in real time your moon rotate around a planet and that planet rotate around the it's sun. This means that each of the 1,000 planets have their own day night cycle and own planetary time. You can see that planet's unique time/day night cycle when you go to wait or sleep on a planet. As it is contrasted against a Universal or standard time that is galaxy wide. I remember when I was blown away by Forza having a seasonal cycle, but this game literally has full unique day night cycles for each individual planet and moon. Another system that blew me away are the physics and object permanence. I have collected so many stuffed animals and laid them all over my ship. They just stay. I saw someone stored 2,000 potatoes on their ship and they move and stack like real potatoes. If you kill someone on a planet, leave and come back their body will be there. It is insane, I do not understand on a gameplay design level how Bethesda did this. It is SO immersive. This game is for real groundbreaking.

This game is a masterpiece. There is nothing like it. Nothing as deep, and nothing that offers this much rich content. Do not miss this game!