Highlights
- Starfield is Bethesda's most ambitious game yet, with over a thousand planets and potentially hundreds of hours of handcrafted content.
- Early reactions to Starfield have been overwhelmingly positive.
- Bethesda's Pete Hines claims that he has played for about 160 hours and hasn't come close to seeing everything it has to offer.
There's little doubt that Starfield is a massive game, as even Bethesda's executive Pete Hines has struggled to complete his playthrough after 160 hours of gameplay. Featuring over a thousand planets, Starfield is Bethesda's most ambitious undertaking yet, promising potentially hundreds of hours of handcrafted content for players to immerse themselves in. The expectations are high, especially after the impressive deep dive footage that Starfield debuted earlier in 2023.
Drawing inspiration from past titles, Starfield is the culmination of a Bethesda sandbox. It will feature a comprehensive Factions system, new ways of providing procedural content, and fully-modular ship customization that will let players design the space-faring vehicle of their dreams. Though it remains to be seen if Starfield will avoid bugs that have traditionally marked every modern Bethesda release, early reactions seem to be overwhelmingly positive.
In a recent Gamescom interview shared on Twitter, Pete Hines went on record to say that despite putting about 160 hours into Starfield, he did not even come close to seeing all the game had to offer. Its sheer size and complexity has often been a major selling point, as Todd Howard once described Starfield as being five or six games in one. Bethesda has remained confident about delivering a massive single-player experience, though skeptics from the larger Starfield community are worried that quantity does not always translate into quality.
With games such as Hogwarts Legacy, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield is releasing in a year defined by successful single-player titles. Despite the fierce competition, Bethesda has managed to generate immense hype for Starfield, and provided its launch isn't marred by the game-breaking bugs that Fallout 76 had to deal with, Starfield has the potential to become Bethesda's biggest game yet.
Phil Spencer and Microsoft arguably took a big gamble by putting Starfield on the Xbox Game Pass at day one, as players will be able to enjoy all the game has to offer at a fraction of its $70 price tag. However, the success of Starfield may see an unprecedented growth to the platform, as it's meant to kickstart a string of major first-party releases coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024 and 2025. Despite the recent start screen controversy for Starfield, the game has enjoyed a steady marketing campaign, and Bethesda fans across the globe eagerly await their chance to take to the stars.
Starfield releases September 6 on PC and Xbox Series X/S.