Starfield’s bullet points are meaningless if the narrative fails to inspire

polygon.com:

The reveal of Starfield, the jewel in the crown of Xbox Game Studios’ 12-month release calendar, fell a bit flat during this weekend’s Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase. Many critics have noted that its cast of characters looks like the same dead-eyed creeps that shipped with The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Some remain unimpressed with its base building and resource gathering, things that other games have done much more capably than Fallout 4. Still others have gently warned that getting spaceship combat dialed in is as much an art as it is a science, as evidenced by the Star Citizen projects’ many, many revisions thus far.

I tend to agree on all points. Bethesda may be overreaching a bit this time. But what do you expect from their first new IP in more than 20 years? However, more bullet points rarely add up to more quality, and I too wonder if 1,000 planets simply means 1,000 places in which to get lost and bored. But there’s one part of Sunday’s presentation that really struck a chord with me: The narrative attached to the game’s main quest line seems bold, if not downright inspiring.

If I’m picking up what Todd Howard and company are laying down, Starfield is as much an ambitious single-player video game as it is a commentary on the state of modern space exploration. Our society seems to have lost a bit of its sense of wonder since the Space Shuttle was retired, and Starfield could be a kind of balm for our jaded outlook on life, the universe, and everything around us.

The trailer opens on a quote from Anatole France, a French journalist, novelist, and poet. His Le Jardin d’Épicure (The Garden of Epicurus) begins with a few paragraphs that set the tone for the ponderings that follow, all of which make careful reference