Starfield enters 2024 with 'Mostly Negative' recent reviews on Steam

GamesRPGStarfieldStarfield enters 2024 with ‘Mostly Negative’ recent reviews on SteamWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Bethesda)

An astronaut floats in space

Starfieldisn’t having the happiest of new years. Bethesda’s landmark RPG (one designed to beplayed for a long time) has “Mostly Negative” recent Steam reviews at the time of writing, with only 29% of reviews scored positive in the last 30 days. Its overall rating is still “Mixed”, with 64% positive reviews.

There’s a few things to keep in mind before we continue. First off, Steam reviews come from the community—and while they’re helpful, they’re also more a sign of sentiment over quality. Secondly, they’re binary. You either approve of a game or disapprove of it—meaning middling games suffer in the long-term. ‘Mostly Negative’ is far more dramatic than ‘75%’, which is the score we gave it in ourStarfield review.

Converting thumbs down to thumbs up is so important that a recent industry trend has emerged—with developers trying to flip reviews via direct responses. Starfield is no exception, even catching flak due to how copy-pasted itsdeveloper responseswere.

Still, this is Bethesda we’re talking about—Fallout 76 had a similarly rough entry, but that could be brushed off as an experiment. This is a mainline Bethesda RPG. Games like Skyrim and Fallout 3 left a significant mark on the gaming landscape. In contrast, Starfield just hasn’t captured the public’s imagination in the same way. Why is that?

While writing about the game’sbiggest flawslast month my fellow staff writerChristopher Livingston(who also wrote the review) said that in games like Skyrim, any quest is bound to run you into an “some sort of interesting encounter along the way. It may be simple combat, but it could be meeting an NPC, finding an inhabited cave, stumbling on a weird shack, or blundering into a new quest.” Meanwhile, Starfield has you “running from one randomly placed box to another. It’s not miserable. But it’s never memorable.”

This lack of emergent interest means its story elements—which have always been a touch thin in Bethesda games—are even more noticeably dry. My opinions onVascoback in September track with the rest of the experience. Starfield isn’t interested in really saying anything, its themes are surface level, and it sort of just gestures vaguely at works of science fiction without actually really discussing them. As far as worldbuilding goes, there’s this feeling that all the interesting stuff has alreadyhappened.

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The way its story is presented also suffers. The uncanny Bethesda zoom-in is outdated, especially when Baldur’s Gate 3 has emotive motion-captured performances for its companions. That’s not to say you need fancy graphics to capture people’s imagination. CRPGs have done plenty with text boxes for years, but those games put evocative fantasy fiction there. I have a solid idea of how Durance from Pillars of Eternity moves, talks, and evensmellswithout any high-budget bells and whistles.

Ultimately, Bethesda has some really important lessons to learn from Starfield. The studio’s planning on a whole cargo hold full of new year’s resolutions, a six week update cadence with “all new ways of travelling”, city maps, but I’m not sure it’ll pull the game out of this fire.

Starfield guide: Our hub of adviceStarfield traits: The full list, with our top picksStarfield companions: All your recruitable crewStarfield romance options: Space datingStarfield console commands: Every cheat you needStarfield mods: Space is your sandbox

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