Starfield is a game that many have been anticipating since its announcement four years ago at E3 2018. It's the latest open-world project from industry titan Bethesda, and promises sprawling environments, endless customizability, and a story worth investing time into. At the recent Xbox and Bethesda showcase more information was revealed, as the game showed a hint of what it would later become when it releases in 2023. Like Fallout before it, the title will focus on exploration and combat from the first-person perspective, which allows many benefits and some evident drawbacks.
In that first-person view, players will be able to take to the skies and explore a plethora of planets. With so many unexplored areas, there will likely be hostility from a wide variety of sources, so players need to be well armed. Guns seem to be the weapon of choice in Starfield, but with other Bethesda-developed and published games pushing the FPS genre forward hugely, the upcoming project should take a more unorthodox approach to battles if it wants to feel truly unique in comparison to what has come before.
Starfield Shouldn't Be Fallout in Space
Fallout is beloved by fans for good reason, as its brilliant visual art style and atmospheric soundtrack did well to immerse players through the journey of each of its offerings, but one vital flaw shared by Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 was the combat mechanics. Shooting felt inconsistent and many struggled to find their footing with the gameplay. First impressions indicate that Starfield is going to be similar to its predecessors in many ways, and while this is a positive in terms of level design and presentation, the gunplay simply has to be better than anything the Fallout series has ever offered.
Starfield has to prove that it has more to give. Fallout 4 showed signs of age despite being a well-crafted game, but much has changed in the industry since 2015. To keep up with developers like Ubisoft, CD Projekt Red, Rockstar, and Guerilla in the open-world space, Bethesda has to bring something new to the table instead of relying on what made it beloved to begin with. The combat has been a byproduct of the Fallout franchise's age, so Starfield's weapons need to be unique to make the otherwise familiar gameplay stand out.
Starfield's Space Setting Grants Many Opportunities
Being set so far from the shores of planet Earth means that Starfield can get creative with the weapons that players can use. From plasma beam guns to non-lethal approaches to combat, Starfield should do more. Experiences like Halo, Destiny, and Mass Effect have a litany of weapons that are radically different from those presented in more grounded and realistic games like Battlefield and Call of Duty, and they're all the better for it.
The space setting allows more creative freedom thanks to fewer restrictions due to its setting. Starfield looks unrealistic by nature, and much of the surrounding anticipation has been specifically because it's not set on Earth. In the open world that Starfield presents, the weapons could be used not only to dispatch of enemies but also a useful tool for traversal, too. Grappling hooks, portal guns and the like would all serve to heighten the gameplay and add variety to combat encounters, and that creativity couldn't be effortlessly integrated into the story without the sci-fi setting that Starfield presents.
Starfield's legacy is entirely dependent on the developer's willingness to make it feel truly unique from Skyrim and Fallout. Starfield's choice-driven role-playing elements may be eerily similar to previous Bethesda ventures, but the space setting allows for more creative freedom than ever before. The weapons and combat should be the first thing to benefit from the freedom it brings, if only to further separate it from the games that Bethesda has previously worked on. Space is endless, so if Starfield presents weapons that are too familiar to Fallout, that could be the first nail in its coffin.
Starfield launches on PC and Xbox Series X/S in 2023.