Highlights
- Starfield's base building takes inspiration from Fallout 4, but with significant improvements. Players have more freedom to construct bases anywhere and with a wider range of items.
- Starfield focuses on exploration rather than rebuilding society, resulting in empty landscapes for base construction. While it allows for freeform building, it lacks the unique charm of Fallout 4's ruined world.
- Starfield and Fallout 4 offer different experiences with distinct characters, stories, and open worlds. However, both games share the expanded settlement feature, offering players limitless customization and the ability to build multiple outposts on different planets.
After dabbling with base building in Fallout 4, Bethesda has taken the concept to new heights in Starfield. The building menu works like Fallout's version, but everything else seems to have been improved immensely. There is a whole new viewpoint, they were given so many more items to play with, they have the freedom to construct them almost anywhere they want, and they seem to offer way more functionality. They feel like a great addition to Starfield, yet something seems to be missing.
While Fallout 4 tasked players with rebuilding society, Starfield is more about exploring the unknown. As such, most of the planets that players will explore are barren outside of a few abandoned buildings or mysterious constructs. This means that players will be constructing their bases in empty landscapes, which allows for more freeform building, but limits the appeal of the feature a bit. In Bethesda's mission to make this feature as advanced as possible, it seems to have left Fallout 4's unique charm behind.
Starfield's Outposts Lack Fallout 4's Character
Players should not expect Fallout 4 and Starfield to deliver the same type of experience as they are very different games. One is about a world ravaged by nuclear war while the other one is about humanity spreading itself out across the stars. This means that the characters are different, the stories are unique, and the open worlds have almost nothing in common. While the games may play extremely similarly, almost everything else about these two titles could not be more different.
And yet, Starfield and Fallout 4 also have one major feature in common, as Bethesda has taken Fallout 4's settlement feature and expanded it to fit this new hard sci-fi setting. It has improved upon practically every aspect of the feature, which has given players virtually limitless control to build the base of their dreams. The studio even took it a step further by letting players build 24 different outposts wherever they want across the game's 1,000 planets. This leads to a fantastic approach to customization that many players will likely spend hours on.
Starfield's outpost building can be a lot of fun, yet it is lacking what made Fallout 4's settlements special. Fallout 4 tasked players with building homes out of the ruins of humanity. This forced them to build around ravaged buildings, utilize the remains of society, and try to bring life back to what was destroyed. As players built out these settlements, they would feel a sense of accomplishment because they were beating back the apocalypse, but they do not get that in Starfield.
The way Starfield uses its outposts is extremely different. These function more as resource bases and ways for the player to leave their mark on unexplored planets. They are not trying to bring the world back from the brink, but rather trying to expand humanity's presence among the stars. This means that they must start from scratch, which gives them the freedom to build what they want, but it also makes them feel alone on Starfield's planets.
Bethesda has really taken the base-building features to the next level with Starfield, but that does not mean that it is perfect. Since there is a lack of life on many of these planets, these outposts often feel empty and lonely, which gives some players little reason to build them out. While the extra resources are always nice, there just is not that same sense of accomplishment, community, or world-building. Hopefully, if The Elder Scrolls 6 includes it, it will bring that same feeling back to the feature in some way.
Starfield is available now for PC and Xbox Series X/S.