Starfield

A role-playing action game in a pseudo-open world set in deep space, with a focus on detailed, immersive quests that offer high replayability on every playthrough. The game tells the story of humanity beyond the Solar System, on new planets across nearby space, and reflects on the loss of its destroyed homeworld. The protagonist is a space miner who, by chance, joins Constellation, a group of explorers investigating the secrets of space. Together, they must uncover the mystery of rare artifacts and shed light on humanity’s origins.

Starfield takes place in a new game universe created by Bethesda Game Studios. It is not connected to The Elder Scrolls or Fallout. The Starfield universe is one possible version of our own future, with a similar set of systems, planets, and characters, as well as the same laws of physics, technologies, languages, and other aspects of life.

In 2050, humanity founded its first colony on Mars, where it discovered an artifact that affects gravity. Realizing that engines based on this technology could let them claim the entire galaxy, people began rapidly exploring nearby and deep space. But in the process of spreading out, they weakened Earth’s magnetosphere. By 2200, solar radiation is scorching Earth, but humanity is thriving in the United Colonies.

By 2330, when the events of Starfield begin, humans have settled a region of space extending 50 light-years around their former homeworld, though far from all of the 1,000 claimed planets are inhabited. Civilization is also unevenly distributed. There are highly developed megacities, industrial centers, and megacorporation bases, as well as backward frontier worlds and provincial planets with a “Wild West” atmosphere, where pioneers sometimes struggle just to survive.

The protagonist is an unemployed young man with no backstory or personality who takes a job as a miner on a distant planet, where he drills out a mysterious artifact. It soon becomes clear that he is the Chosen One—the only person capable of finding these objects and gaining their unexplained powers. The hero joins Constellation, a secret society of explorers trying to uncover the mystery of the artifacts, and faces fierce opposition from the Starborn.

The setup sounds generic even by Bethesda’s standards, but Starfield does have an unusual and compelling story that unfolds later on. The protagonist soon gets caught up in colonial wars, NPCs’ personal problems, and factional infighting. There’s plenty of dialogue, and companions chatter endlessly and try to start relationships. There’s an overarching story and a chance to leave your mark on the galaxy, some choices that affect the story, and an open ending that leads to New Game+. The ending can be surprising.

Starfield lacks the storytelling direction needed to keep players engaged, with cinematic in-engine sequences, staged firefights, and explosive action. It is only near the end that the main quest offers a variety of missions—with complex dialogue, drama, and moral dilemmas.

Bethesda wouldn’t be Bethesda if it didn’t let players modify the game inside and out. The studio’s editor and modding tools are set to arrive in early 2024.

But that didn’t stop enthusiasts from creating dozens of mods as soon as the game launched. We’ve picked out some for you to download from our database. Mods change the rules of the game, add the Russian language, new quests, weapons, and characters, improve the graphics, turn an ordinary adventure into an incredible journey, and much more.

What sets Starfield apart is that it doesn’t follow the approach to travel and exploration found in Bethesda’s other sandbox games. Instead, players should focus on choosing a role, leveling up their character, and completing as many quests as possible in a limited time. Don’t get distracted by searching for anything unusual nearby.

The single-player gameplay loop goes like this: travel to a system, land on a planet, reach your destination, kill the enemies, grab what you need, and move on. Procedural generation creates beautiful scenery, some points of interest, and a sense of life, but it’s all just large-scale set dressing.

The game has many quests (not part of the main story) that you can complete in different ways depending on the role you choose. A good-hearted ranger will have one set of options, a smuggler another, and a bounty hunter yet another. After that, you’ll receive the next task: some options will close off, while new ways to complete it will become available. Every faction has its own set of quests, even individual NPCs.

The world of Starfield is stitched together from many locations, from tiny rooms inside buildings to huge 2-by-2-kilometer areas of planets. These locations are nested inside one another like matryoshka dolls and connected by loading screens. There seems to be plenty of space, but flying or walking around doing repetitive exploration or collecting loot for crafting would be a mistake. Still, visiting story locations like New Atlantis and Neon City—with their stunning architecture and atmosphere, side quests, and NPCs—will leave a lasting impression.

In designing the world, Bethesda used a “NASA-punk” style. Everything in the game looks as if it could exist today, while still feeling futuristic. This approach can be seen in cities and settlements, buildings and streets, offices, labs, and nightclubs, as well as in individual items such as decorations, clothing, medkits, armor, and weapons. Whether you look at the planets or the rest of the game’s content, the world of Starfield never goes beyond what you could see on Earth or at least imagine.

Spaceships are Starfield’s main innovation. The game offers dozens of options for both creating your own designs and upgrading existing ships. There’s a buying and selling market. Players choose the modules themselves (weapons, engines, power systems, defense, and ship controls), as well as the overall configuration. The ship is also a hub location where your companions hang out.

Space battles with pirates and hostile factions are inevitable. The mechanics are simple and arcade-like, reminiscent of airplane games. The player flies around inside an invisible three-dimensional cube, defeating enemies by performing aerobatic maneuvers and taking cover behind asteroid fields and space debris. During combat, you distribute power between your ship’s shields, weapons, and engines, and choose which part of your opponent’s ship to target. If you destroy its engines, you can board the enemy ship, take out the crew, and claim its cargo or the ship itself.

The engine’s limitations got in the way of creating a space simulation: there are no hyperspace jumps across the galaxy, no flying around star systems, and not even any exploration of the space around planets. Everything requires a loading screen, and you can only “fly up” to a space station or asteroids, since distant stars and nearby large objects are just static backgrounds.

The combat system is a copy of Fallout 4. Weapons are divided by damage type (ballistic, laser, and electromagnetic) and category (pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons, rifles, and machine guns). They can be modified at a workbench in the usual way by replacing individual parts—the muzzle, barrel, magazine, scope, and so on. Starfield makes this system a little more complex: first, you need to research or find the plans for an upgrade. The same applies to equipment.

The perk system offers five skill trees: physical, social, combat, science, and technology. First, you need to unlock a basic perk by performing certain actions, such as reloading a weapon 150 times. Then you can buy the perk with skill points, which you earn through experience gained in combat, crafting, quests, and other activities.

Special abilities add variety to the shooter gameplay: pushing enemies away, crushing them, an energy shield, health-draining attacks, an energy blast, invisibility, mind control, a “spider-sense,” and more. The variety of enemies is limited, with no sub-bosses or truly huge enemies.

Starfield also brings back familiar elements from previous Bethesda games, both individual features like picking locks and hacking computers, and entire gameplay systems. If you steal an item in front of an NPC, a guard will appear right away, and you can either surrender or try to take them out. Building outposts with structures and settling different NPCs there is also now one of the pillars of the single-player game.