Starfield's selection of weapons found in teasers and trailers is looking pretty airtight, featuring ballistic and laser weapons alike. Considering the game's setting, one might expect the game to go all out on its laser weapons. This would be help avoid the laser weapon that plagued many of the modern Fallout games.
Despite their large presence in the Fallout universe, laser weapons' gameplay usage and variety often fell short compared to their ballistic counterparts. Starfield could amend this issue, which would be especially fitting for its setting. Laser weapons have the potential to go a lot further in Starfield than they did Fallout.
Starfield's Laser Weapons Have A lot of Potential
Part of the issue with Fallout's later installments is that laser and plasma weapons had much less to offer in terms of variety compared to ballistic weapons. In Fallout 4, there were about twice as many ballistic weapons as there were energy weapons. Laser weapons felt much more like an afterthought than a fully-fledged and thought out part of the game. This ultimately hurt the build variety in the game, as there was much more potential to be found in ballistic weapons than laser and plasma ones. Starfield needs to avoid this mistake and lean more into its futuristic weapons.
Starfield seems to be taking its setting into consideration when it comes to its weapons, as lasers seem to be more common than in Fallout. In various promotional materials, players can see groups such as the United Colonies and Crimson Fleet wielding a laser weapon called the Equinox. These groups all have access to this high-tech weaponry, making Starfield look much more futuristic as a result. This creates the idea that this technology could both effective and cheap enough to be mass-produced over ballistic weapons. It also brings into question what group is producing these weapons for these different factions. Despite this abundance of world-building done through laser weapons, there's much more that can be done with this feature of Starfield.
In terms of gameplay, laser weapons should function differently from ballistic weapons. For example, there could be a perk or upgrade that allows the player's lasers to pass through multiple targets more easily, or the shots could be much more muffled than their ballistic counterparts. It's not enough that there are more laser weapons; they should function and feel like their own unique weapon class. Starfield's iteration needs more juice to accomplish this, diversifying the possible applications these two groups of weapons can do. This idea lends itself to more specialized builds, being more conducive to variety.
An interesting aspect of Starfield's laser weapons is their color. Unlike Fallout's red and green lasers, Starfield opts into having white lasers. While this change may seem inconsequential at first, it has the potential to separate them from other laser weapons found in gaming. Starfield is aiming to be a sci-fi adventure, so normally one would think that the lasers would be red or green, considering that those are the classic colors for weaponized lasers. Starfield's white lasers have the potential to set themselves apart scientifically and lore-wise, giving Starfield its own special DNA to work off of.
As Starfield's release date looms closer, more information about its mechanics and features will be provided. Hopefully more details will be released on any special functionalities Starfield's laser weapons may have. With any luck, they could be much more than the afterthought presented by Fallout's selection of energy weapons.
Starfield is scheduled to release September 6, 2023, on PC and Xbox Series X/S.