Prefacing this by saying that I'm really enjoying my time with Starfield. Like, a lot. But after 20-some hours it's starting to become despite Bethesda's best efforts. They just don't seem interested in making games that fulfill fantasies in a way beyond its explicit context. I can explore the Stellar Systems in the blink of an eye but I can't carry more than a couple guns in a game rife with combat. The year is 23XX and I can pay $500 to reconstruct my entire face at will but my scanner, by default, can't scan anything further than a couple metres.
This is, like, the age-old Bethesda whining about encumbrance to some degree because check it out: Starfield has the same system but it like immediately started butting up against my experience in this in a way it really didn't with Skyrim or Fallout. I am just constantly near capacity because I have one gun per ammo type (which doesn't even cover most use-cases still) and two suits I can switch out if I need to prioritize radiation or freezing climates. The game has a bunch of systems in place that put me in a "you need to consider this" situation but doesn't give me the wiggle-room to consider it unless I sacrifice a bunch of other stuff like carrying resources or loot to sell. It's a bunch of really small things that add up to feeling like I'm being punished constantly because I didn't consider something 100 steps ago, every step.
The fastest one of these I realized was at the start where the game asks you to pick some traits to build your character's origin and one of the ones I picked was Spacer. It means that my character grew up in zero-g and because of that, gravity similar to Earth's is really difficult to manage and I can sprint for way less time before running out of breath. A conceptually neat trait! That makes a lot of sense to have a thing that defines you in this universe! But the problem I very quickly realized is that your starting stamnia (O2) meter sucks to begin with and because the opening hours of the game all take place in cities and settlements I couldn't sprint for more than 3 seconds without immediately getting winded. It's what the trait said! I shouldn't be mad! But I am, because the reality of it wasn't "I can sprint so much longer in low-gravity!" it's "I've fucked myself for navigating any 1.0G area in the game forever." An opportunity for something interesting was turned into something frustrating because.... ???
Thankfully it's not actually forever, you can go to a doctor and say get this shit outta me for 10k creds and he will. But now one of my defining traits is gone because it added nothing to my experience and instead took a ton out of it.
And that's just been... a lot of stuff that's, like, re: gameplay. Your skill tree is full of interesting things but being able to rank up is locked behind completing a challenge at that rank first. If you wanna go from Speech 1 to Speech 2, you need to first Persuade 10 NPCs. Makes sense! Sort of. I hope I sure meet 10 NPCs that I can persuade between then and my next skill point. But why the fuck do I need to destroy 15 ships so I can learn to pilot B-class ships? Why is that locked behind combat, it has nothing to do with that? Why do I need to boost jump 25 times in combat when I am upgrading a traversal ability? Why does it have to be in combat can't it just be just boost jump 25 times because that's what the ability is??
It reminded me a lot about the discourse a while back re: DnD 5e (I think?) and how one of the designers at WoC said something about how if their DnD sessions were combat focused then they were playing the game wrong and that commment got widespread criticism because people correctly pointed out that overwhelmingly the game's rulebook is about combat scenarios. If you make your rules mostly about combat, your games will be mostly about combat. Starfield is that where combat seems to define so much of the ancillary systems in a way that makes little sense to me other than I think that's just how they expect everyone to play.
But then, every so often, the game gives me an experience like this where I disembark and see Saturn looming over the horizon because the game is not programmed to constantly show you these picturesque landscapes. Space is flat, it's empty, and it's boring. But it's massive, mysterious, and enchantingly beautiful when the conditions are just right. Starfield lets you experience a very specific fantasy that is completely tailored to things that enamor me. I just wish it wasn't so fucking insistent on beating me down any time I try to make my own.
ROT13 for additional spoilers about early story stuff.
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