Highlights
- While Starfield's massive universe is visually impressive, many of its planets lack content and are empty landscapes, creating a sense of loneliness for players.
- Fallout 4's radio station feature adds fun and immersion to exploration, and Starfield could have benefited from including similar radio stations in its galaxy.
- The gameplay loop in Starfield can become tedious as players repeatedly engage in similar tasks on different planets, and the inclusion of radio stations could have made exploration more exciting and enjoyable.
It is very impressive what Bethesda has been able to pull off with Starfield, yet something seems off. While the massive universe it constructed is a remarkable sight, many of its planets are rather barren. Some planets have massive cities or outposts, but the majority of the planets are nothing more than empty landscapes. This helps create a sense of discovery for the player, which is partly what the entire game is built off. However, Starfield's emptiness can be pretty lonely, and a simple feature from Fallout may have been able to fix that.
As players explore Starfield, they are often left to their own thoughts or the orchestral music that sometimes fills the dead air. In contrast, Fallout 4 lets players flick on a radio station and dance to the music as they fight their way through the post-apocalypse. While that feature is not necessarily a game-changer, it does help make exploration a bit more fun. It is something that Starfield really should have considered including, especially since numerous radio stations already seem to exist within its vast galaxy.
Starfield's Exploration Could Be Improved with Some Music
Once players start exploring the massive universe of Starfield, they may quickly discover just how lonely it is. Bethesda built the story around an exploration group and wanted players to make their mark on its many planets, which the game definitely accomplishes. It can be fun exploring it all at first, but it can also get a little boring after a while. Eventually, players may find themselves just doing the same thing repeatedly. They will land on an empty planet, scan some things, maybe clear a small base, and then proceed to the next to do it all over again.
While the stories and characters of Starfield are interesting, the gameplay loop can often feel tedious. Players do not really have to engage with the exploration if they do not want to, but they will be missing a substantial portion of the game if they skip it. The entire outpost feature, numerous quests, and most of the game's mechanics seem to be focused on exploration. That is not exclusive to Starfield either as some of the best parts of Skyrim and Fallout are the random things players can discover on their journey. This means that most players will likely want to explore every inch of the game, which may not be as fun as it sounds.
It may be too late to make some of that gameplay loop more exciting, but Bethesda could include Fallout's radio stations to make it at least a bit more fun. In Fallout, players can turn on various radio stations via their Pip-Boy that they can listen to as they wander the game's world. It can often make the duller aspects fly by as players are jamming out to some classic song or listening to some funny in-game advertisement. It also helps make Fallout's world a bit more immersive since each radio station actually sounds like it could exist in real life.
While Skyrim may not be able to benefit from a radio station, it seems strange that Bethesda would leave it out of Starfield. Galactic civilizations would likely have their own unique radio stations to spread the news, advertise to people, and show off the latest sci-fi hits. The game even has broadcasts from different radio stations, as well as a questline devoted to a popular Neon DJ.
That said, players have no way to actually access any of that on their travels, and instead they are forced to just wander alongside some orchestral music and its fanfare theme on a loop. There is nothing wrong with the game's music, but injecting a few unique songs through different radio stations could have gone a long way in making exploration much more exciting.
Starfield is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.