In 2023, I reviewed the Xbox-published game “Starfield” and gave it 4/4 stars. It somehow became my most controversial review, in part because its critics deemed the game “outdated” and dull.
More than two years later, I’m here to double down on my love for this game. I think it’s a misunderstood experience. But I’m not going to blame players for that misunderstanding.
The game drew an audience of 15 million by 2024, but it hasn’t approached the cultural footprint of Bethesda Game Studios’ past work, including the blockbuster The Elder Scrolls, and the Fallout franchise, which it acquired in 2004. Now “Starfield” is preparing for its largest update yet, bringing new story content, expanded space travel systems and an April 7 release on PlayStation 5.
Bethesda’s developers are celebrated as masters of the role-playing space, so it was reasonable to expect that “Starfield” would hit those same highs. The game was marketed that way, promising opposing factions and political tension that never materialized. It also touted a cast of dynamic companions, the type of characters who develop complex relationships in other Bethesda games but here rarely reached the same depth.
Many players were aghast that a space game would feature no talking alien civilizations, overlooking that one of the most advanced space simulators on the market, “Elite Dangerous,” also has no alien races to interact with. But “Starfield” was made by a blockbuster studio, and gaming’s most famous blockbuster space saga remains Mass Effect — a series with little interest in simulating space travel but enormous focus on character relationships and dramatic arcs.
But I’ve played “Starfield” for hundreds of hours by enjoying it the same way I did in 2023, as the world’s most expensive, biggest-budget “cozy” game. My Stardew Valley is in the starfield. I’ve ignored much of its story to create several of my own as a moon farmer, a collector of rare books and an expert builder of spaceships. The game has robust mechanics for creating “outposts,” which are just space homes.
Cozy games are usually defined as games with low stakes and routine activities like farming, decorating and collecting with no “endgame” mission, just an overall imperative to live well in a game’s world. “Animal Crossing” and “Stardew Valley” are the two most prominent games in this genre. For me “Starfield” was “Animal Crossing” in orbit as I hunted various galaxies for out-of-print books to line the shelves in my recreation room on a planet called Leviathan IV. I installed user-generated modifications to create space stations complete with guest suites and a hydroponic indoor garden.
The new updates, which I had the chance to preview, lean into what I’ve enjoyed, offering more ways to “live” in the game. The game will now have its own, official space station home with a “Bond villain chic” aesthetic, including an indoor swimming pool. Outposts will have more decor options, including alien pets and robot buddies.
The biggest, most exciting update for all kinds of players is the “Free Lanes” feature, which will finally allow full space travel between planets. One of the loudest criticisms of the game, which I share, was how space travel left a bit too much to the imagination, relegated to loading screens. With “Free Lanes,” spaceships can now cruise at light speed between planets. Players can even set a destination, turn on autopilot and roam their ship. It means more time to just walk around and admire the decor.
The game is also finally updating and adding more “places of interest.” Because the game is admittedly “irresponsibly large,” as lead creative producer Tim Lamb put it while presenting these features to the press, planets will randomly generate “places of interest” to create the illusion of world-building.
The “Terran Armada” update features more of what people want: a dramatic and dangerous plot featuring a new faction, this time with what appears to be a legion of sentient robots. Bethesda is mum about the details of this, and all the better. The developers promised a lot with the 2024 “Shattered Space” story, but, like many others, I found it shallow and unfinished, with bugs that persist today. At the very least, “Terran” will offer more shipbuilding potential, a huge plus for me, as someone obsessed with the game’s ability to link machines and rooms to create operable, livable spaceships.
Lamb acknowledged in an interview that “Starfield” fans enjoy it as a cozy game. He describes it as a “player-directed” experience. I asked him about what he believes is the most misunderstood aspect of the game. He said some players “get it,” when they tell themselves, “This is just a place for me to have a version of a cozy game.”
“In order for the areas that have population to be meaningful, you have to have this large tapestry in the background,” Lamb said, describing how the game is different from the busywork adventures of their previous titles. “If you tripped over something every five steps, it wouldn’t feel like this discovery.”
And there it is. I get that if you expected a space opera like Star Wars, my love of “Starfield” will seem alien. It still tries to do too much, not being as good of a simulation as “Elite Dangerous,” while having a story less exciting than Mass Effect. I started to yawn when Lamb detailed the expansive “weapon modification” system for the new updates.
But you can bet I perked right back up when he talked about having a billiards room by the indoor space pool in the asteroid mansion. He pushed his friend into a pool before making his player sit in a lounge chair. For “Starfield” players like me, it felt right at home.
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