Starfield | Critical Consensus

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Starfield officially releases later this week, but many players have already taken to the skies and experienced Bethesda's latest adventure thanks to early access.

Expectations have been high for Starfield. Not only is it Bethesda's first single-player RPG since Fallout 4, but it's also the studio's first original IP in 25 years. As of writing, the game has a Metacritic score of 87 out of 54 reviews. There is still a wave of reviews to come, as several press outlets — including our sister site Eurogamer, The Guardian, Edge, Metro, and more — were not sent review codes.

While most critics were impressed with Starfield's scope and Bethesda's detailed approach to the wonders of space exploration, many were left wanting more.

In his 7/10 review for Gamespot, Michael Higham advised players to set aside their fascination with space in Starfield, as the game "follows a very familiar formula without meaningfully engaging with its setting or the gameplay systems therein."

Higham doesn't doubt the impressive scale of Starfield, noting the game's seemingly infinite cosmos and the freedom that players have within it. "But once you start to see how all these big ideas are interconnected from a narrative perspective and technical standpoint, the illusion of a grand cosmic voyage shatters, and the veneer starts to wear thin," he said. "I [soon] dropped the notion of finding that wondrous space adventure and accepted Starfield for what it is: a shooter-focused RPG in the traditional Bethesda framework that has its wild and fun moments but one that's ultimately a mile wide and an inch deep."

Polygon's Nicole Carpenter had similar sentiments, highlighting in