Like several million other video game players, I spent many hours last week travelling the galaxy in Starfield, the latest adventure from Bethesda, the creator of Fallout and the Elder Scrolls. But as with a number of my colleagues in the games press, I have spent much of this time wondering what it is about the game that’s not quite right, that’s lacking somehow.
The consensus – summed up neatly in Eurogamer’s review and this PCGamesN op-ed – is that the game adheres too closely to the well-worn structure of modern open-world games, where an inescapable main narrative is bulked up with optional side challenges that give the illusion of freedom, without any of the substance or unpredictability, or indeed actual freedom. Starfield represents a highly commodified form of exploration in which player adventures are channeled into endless fetch quests and box-ticking busywork. You’re free, but you’re unable to create any meaning or narrative of your own. You are there to shop, to consume; it is the wonder of the cosmos repackaged into a tract about capitalist realism.
A lot of people have nicknamed the game “No Man’s Skyrim”, a portmanteau of the established space adventure No Man’s Sky, and Bethesda’s 2011 fantasy role-playing classic. And sure, there are definitely elements of that game in Starfield – but honestly these are very different games, and that difference gets to the heart of what is wrong with Starfield.
I’m one of the minority of gamers who absolutely loved No Man’s Sky when it first came out, even when it lacked the promised multiplayer element and the visuals weren’t as astonishing as we’d expected. It seemed to me, however, a true game of cosmic exploration, a bizarre, gigantically hostile universe of dangerous beautiful worlds, and an opaque narrative about the origins of existence. Now vastly updated and enhanced, it has become a warranted success but it still holds on to its roots as an open space for player experiment and imagination.
In a lot of ways, No Man’s Sky and Starfield represent two highly contrasting forms of space game, each influenced by a different period of science fiction entertainment. With its emphasis on naturalistic, human-centered drama and high-tech shootouts, Starfield belongs to the post-Star Wars era. It is approachable and fast-paced and its ever-so-slightly mystical plot is kept in check with lots of warring factions and roguish space pirates. You don’t actually have to fly your spaceship much as you can fast travel everywhere; you insta-dock, you insta-land, you insta-take-off. Your tactile relationship with the ship is similar to the Star Wars viewer’s relationship with the Millennium Falcon or Imperial star destroyer: it’s nothing more than a cool object with nice aesthetic features and some laser guns.
No Man’s Sky, however, has its roots in the weirder, wilder sci-fi of the 1960s and early 1970s – the era of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, Dark Star and Solaris, and the paperback cover art of Chris Foss and Richard Powers. The game’s trippy soundtrack, its use of lurid almost hallucinogenic colours, its strange flora and fauna, and its stark, lonely worlds, capture the feel of movies and novels written during the psychedelic era; its interest in the workings of spacecraft and the science of space, inspired by the Apollo and Sputnik missions. The result is a sense of almost surreal wonder mixed with constant danger and ontological dread.
In video game terms, this approach to space has its origins in the 1984 classic Elite and its later sequel Elite Dangerous: freedom, grace, style, silence, peril. When I asked on Twitter for people’s favourite space exploration games, it was experiences like this that came up. Lots of responders mentioned the wonderful time-loop headtrip, Outer Wilds – others went for the cruelly authentic Kerbal Space Program, the indie space voyager Noctis, the procedurally generated Earth Analog, the surreal Everything. Very few of these games feature fetch quests or cyberpunk gangs or customisable laser blasters. They are lonely and sparse and discombobulating.
There are beautiful scenes in Starfield. The planets are lovely, the architecture of the many space ports and abandoned research centres is rife with detail. But they feel like stage sets or theme park experiences. You pass through, one eye on the quest list, scoping the environment for loot as the stars loom above, unreachable. No place here for cosmic horror, for existential longing.
Ten years ago, the Guardian interviewed astronaut Chris Hadfield about the experience of being trapped on the exterior of the International Space Station after an explosion. There was one thing he said that reminded me of what makes a true space exploration game – the combination of spectacle, solitude and susceptibility: “I just sat there floating, trying to soak up the experience. Alone in the universe, with that view.”
What to play
One of the things that’s still really nice about Twitter/X (and there are fewer every day) is the chance to catch game recommendations from designers, academics, writers and analysts from around the industry. I discovered the strange, stylish steampunk western platformer Gunbrella thanks to a tweet from AI researcher and game designer Mike Cook, and I’m so glad I did.
It’s a slick, fast-paced experience, with the eponymous gadget doubling as a shotgun and an umbrella that can deflect incoming bullets as well as hang on to ziplines. It reminds me of the crisp, irreverent platformers of the Commodore Amiga era, and as a contained and highly propulsive blast, it provides a nice palate cleanser between gluttenous Starfield sessions.
Available on: PC, Nintendo Switch
Estimated playtime: 6-10 hours
What to read
More leaks from Microsoft’s court battle with the Federal Trade Commission over its proposed $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard: with documents suggesting refreshed versions of its Xbox Series S and Series X consoles in September and November 2024 respectively, and a new next-generation console in 2028. But perhaps most intriguing are the emails in which Microsoft gaming CEO, Phil Spencer, says he is desperate to purchase Nintendo, calling it a “career moment”.
The week’s industry news has been dominated by middleware company Unity, which announced a new “runtime” fee for developers using its popular graphics engine. It did not go down well. Gamesindustry.biz has just published a very thorough timeline. I also recommend Brandon Sheffield’s piece, The Death of Unity, on Insert Credit.
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has announced a forthcoming collaboration with Pokémon. There are no details yet, just a lovely YouTube trailer which shows Pikachu and Eevee frolicking through a sunflower field as the sky takes on the visual style of the renowned Dutch master. We’re looking forward to an exhibition of crossover paintings. The Starly Night, maybe? The Potato Heatmors? Vase With Red Popplios? Please don’t unsubscribe.
I like to slip in the occasional print recommendation here, and this week I have two. Forgotten Worlds is a stylish new publication about the history of video game magazines, and issue one is available now. There are interviews with legendary games writers (and me), and I love the enthusiastic knowledgeable tone and clean design.
Also, the latest video game book from MIT Press is The Beauty of Games by Frank Lantz, a game designer who also teaches at the renowned NYU Game Center. It’s a rigorous, fascinating analysis of how games create meaning through aesthetics, rules and systems, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
What to click
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 preview: hands-on with the web-slinging duo
Plans for next-gen Xbox revealed in leaked Microsoft court documents
Lies of P review – inventive Pinocchio RPG has a fiendish heart
The Isle Tide Hotel: like Wes Anderson directing a playable episode of Doctor Who
Unity seeks to clarify new game engine charges amid outrage from developers
Question Block
This week’s question comes from Matt Francis, who asks:
“Starfield is the latest game that ‘gets good after X hours’. When did this trend begin? Why can’t games be good from the opening?”
This is a very modern question. In the first 20 years of the games industry, the arcade-dominated design trends, and back then it was vital that players were hooked immediately. Titles such as Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Frogger are based around instantly accessible concepts, with gameplay that loops quickly and simply. When the industry started to move toward home gaming, which allowed for more complex game design, even titles such as Final Fantasy, Super Mario Bros, and later Tomb Raider and Resident Evil were largely linear, and designers would usually front-load the most visually impressive levels because these would be the one’s most gamers saw. It’s really in the open-world era, where progression is attained through the lengthy attainment of skills, weapons and quest items, that the slowburn has become common.
A lot of games have tried to offset the lengthy on-ramp of these design conventions with a narrative trick in which players begin the game with lots of weapons and abilities (so they get an exciting hit of power), which are then taken away due to some cataclysmic event. Players have got bored of this too though. Nintendo’s approach is probably the best. In the last two Legend of Zelda titles, the player starts in an enclosed environment where they get to try interesting mini-quests while protected from unbeatable monsters. Alternatively, From Software, the creator of Dark Souls and Elden Ring, makes games that are good from the beginning by simply throwing you into a maelstrom of death and violence and telling you to just get on with it.
If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com
