The pressure of expectation adds a sour note to Starfield’s launch | Opinion

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When is a game launch not just a game launch? When it’s a matter of identity, of course; when some segment of the gaming population has managed to tightly wind some aspect of their sense of self around the perceived success or failure of this commercial product.

People behaving badly online is nothing worthy of a raised eyebrow anymore, of course, but when we hit launches like this it’s time for everyone to batten down the digital hatches, because things will get nasty and bystanders will get caught in the crossfire.

Perhaps the last major outbreak of truly terrible online behaviour around a game launch was when the first reviews of CyberPunk 2077 started to appear – pointing out (entirely correctly) that the game was unfinished and in a shocking state technically was greeted with a truly insane reaction from self-styled hardcore fans who had not, of course, played the game yet themselves.

Without the need to be a standard-bearer for Xbox, Starfield would be a far less contentious game

It's been a minute since then, and while there’s still plenty of console war idiocy to go around – imagine me here waving a vague hand at pretty much everything that’s been said about Final Fantasy XVI’s commercial performance since launch, for example – most game launches have been spared the worst of the online vitriol.

Until last week, of course; until Starfield.

Reviews for Starfield started to appear at the same time that people who had paid for early access to the game were able to begin playing, and even before the reviews appeared there was some heated discourse around the critical response, since it was clear that Bethesda had cherry picked outlets