Starfield

Eurogamer's review of Starfield, written by Deputy Editorial Director Chris Tapsell, presents a deeply conflicted assessment of Bethesda's space RPG. The review acknowledges Starfield's near-impossible breadth and classic Bethesda strengths — systemic physics, magnetic sidequests, and weird vignettes — but argues that the game sacrifices direct exploration for sheer scale, leaving nothing to bind it all together. The review opens by critiquing Starfield's lack of a compelling "walkout moment," ...

Bethesda's spacefaring adventure has its moments with impressive scale, satisfying combat, and some worthwhile side quests, but its shallow RPG systems and uninspired vision of the cosmos make for a journey that's a mile wide, but an inch deep. Starfield follows a very familiar formula without meaningfully engaging with its setting. Impressive in scale, from the sheer number of star systems to the multitude of gameplay mechanics, but once you see how these big ideas are interconnected, the illu...

Starfield has a lot of forces working against it, but eventually the allure of its expansive roleplaying quests and respectable combat make its gravitational pull difficult to resist. Bethesda has built out a sprawling universe with detailed lore in which humanity has left Earth behind and colonized the galaxy. It's chock-full of backstory about wars between its three major factions, run-ins with terrormorphs, pirates, and more. The setting is reminiscent of The Expanse, Firefly, and Starship T...

Starfield shares plenty of DNA with Skyrim and Fallout 4, but ultimately falls short of both. Bethesda's biggest RPG ever, but it never feels as instantly engrossing and transporting as Oblivion or Skyrim or as wild and weird as the Fallout games. The introduction is unusually straightforward for a Bethesda RPG, and the first handful of places including New Atlantis are pretty dull. It took about a dozen hours before things became enjoyable. The fun collision between structured quests and unpre...