Starfield sterilizes the final frontier

polygon.com:

With Starfield, Bethesda’s ambition has exceeded its craft.

It’s difficult to speak definitively when discussing a game like this, a role-playing epic about exploring an infinite expanse. One player might choose to join a gang of pirates, make as much money as possible, then set off on a shiny new ship to test the boundaries of space. Another might fill out a job application to join the corporate faction Ryujin Industries, which exerts influence over all settled colonies, and rise through the ranks. Meanwhile, I enjoy Starfield most when I’m able to piddle around for hours delivering coffee orders, taxiing people around the solar system, and assisting in scientific research.

All this is to say that Starfield is vast. Though I’ve played nearly 50 hours of the game during the pre-release review period, I’ve reached a tiny fraction of its supposed 1,000 planets. I’ve collected every artifact, infiltrated a pirate crew as an undercover narc (against my will), fancied up my spaceship, run errands for random people, and searched for resources on barren planets. There is so much to do and so many people to meet across the cosmos, on new worlds to which humans have escaped after fleeing a blighted Earth. For all of this vastness, though, Starfield often feels sterile, and it buries its best moments beneath so much tedium.

Starfield has been in development for eight years, according to game director Todd Howard, and it shows. You’ll find atmospheric places and compelling stories amid the bespoke planets and procedurally generated environments, but too many of Bethesda’s vistas feel like a homogenized version of space. Sure, there are moments in Starfield that celebrate the strangeness, glory, and power of life across the cosmos —