Starfield Sounds A Little Too Good To Be True…Even Though It Looks It

Maybe I’m being too pessimistic, but I just don’t see how this massive concepts works in all aspects. Starfield has gotten its most in-depth, detailed trailer and gameplay discussion yet at the 2023 Xbox Showcase, and the game looks unbelievably good…underline unbelievably.

Every party has a pooper, and I guess I’m going to be this Starfield party pooper.

Bethesda have finally given us a detailed trailer, gameplay reveal, and general core game elements discussion regarding Starfield to date, and the game looks a little deceptively good as what Bethesda is advertising is just not possible to fully encompass on consoles or computers yet. Right?

I don’t want to sound like some Bethesda hater or someone hoping this game fails as that’s the last thing I want.

Not only am I super excited to get my hands on this game given my love for Bethesda and nearly all of its titles (its probably my favorite gaming developer of all-time), but the success of Starfield can only mean Elder Scrolls VI, which is set to be the next major Bethesda release, is on the right track.

Simply put, I want Starfield to be the greatest game we’ve ever seen…yet I just don’t know how everything advertised by the god Todd Howard and Bethesda is possible with the current generation of consoles and PCs.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the graphics, combat, attention to detail, designs, etc. all looked 20X better than they did a year ago (and I’m not exaggerating), while the new revelations, such as the in-depth character creation, new skill trees (which are a little dumbed down), ship customization, the ability to use your ship for smuggling, space battles, boarding, bounty hunting, exploration, etc., where all really cool.

I’m not worried about those aspects of the game…though the companions seemed slightly dull at first glance, but I’m sure they’ll be great mods to solve that issue in time.

No, I’m more worried about the story, specs, and the worldbuilding…well, more like space-building itself.

Not only is this game going to be “hard-capped” (or so Bethesda says) at 30 FPS and 4k resolution for Xbox consoles (and even higher on PC), but the game will also feature 1,000 open-world, fully explorable, fully customized, and fully detailed planets, moons, asteroids, etc. that the player can explore at their whim.

That’s a HUGE NUMBER of places to explore and traverse with high-quality processing requirements.

And, even though Bethesda keeps saying that this game has been “25 years in the making”, I don’t know how you can create 1,000 different, vibrant, unique, and full planets in a single video game in 50 years, let alone 25 (that’s a slight overexaggerating, but you get the idea) without a plethora of bugs, glitches, and low frame rate sections.

Perhaps Bethesda will prove me wrong, but I don’t see how 90-95% of these planets are just hollow, lifeless husks that have the same enemy types with different skins, the same caves, terrains, outpost designs, etc., a similar atmosphere, and a general landscape deign if only human coders/developers worked on this product.

If Bethesda used A.I. technology to generate these places, somewhat similar to how The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall was procedurally generated, then I can see how the landscape, environmental, and atmospheric designs would be unique across 1,000 different planets.

But you can’t use A.I. to create memorable, noteworthy places, such as New Vegas, Skyrim, Morrowind, Oblivion, Wolfenstein’s Europe, Doom’s Mars, etc., in place of human creativity and ingenuity and expect similar results.

The creative and imperfect nature of human artists, coders, and developers is simply impossible to replicate.

I’m afraid the emphasis on so many planets will turn this game into a boring, lifeless adventure aside from the main 20-30 worlds the vast majority of civilization and the questlines will revolve around, while the other 970-980 or so planets will be boring pitstops and buggy messes.

As for the story, the only concrete details I’ve gathered so far is that it has something to do with shards and a great mystery. That’s it.

There’s been a lot of broad, vague quotes like “human civilization will be at risk”, “we want to know what is out there”, “humanity will be forever changed”, and “we are committed to the biggest question of all”, yet there hasn’t been a hint of what we are supposed to be facing.

I don’t expect Bethesda to outright tell us the story of Starfield in these trailers, but I also didn’t expect to literally know nothing about the general story beat a few months away from its release date.

Bethesda made it clear we were the Dragonborn fighting the return of Alduin and the dragons in Skyrim’s trailers, we were fighting the demonic hordes of Oblivion in Oblivion’s trailers, and we were forced to choose between the competing factions of the Commonwealth, the Institute and their synths, the Minutemen, and the Railroad in Fallout 4’s trailers.

Starfield hasn’t given us any clarity on the actual dangers, rivalries, or threats in this universe.

Lastly, the specs for Starfield are…massive, to say the least.

To play Starfield in the way Bethesda recommends, you will need an updated Windows 10/11 OP, AMD Ryzen 5 3600X or Intel i5-10600K processor, 16 GB RAM of memory, a AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, DirectX: Version 12,  broadband internet connection, 125 GB available space of storage, and SSD is REQUIRED.

You don’t need me to tell you that a powerful gaming computer is needed to run Starfield, though that really should not be a surprise given the scale of this game. I only hope everyone will be able to afford PCs with these requirements at a reasonable price to play this game, and that this game doesn’t force them to delete 2-4 other games in their storage.

Nevertheless, I can’t wait to see how Starfield is and if it either makes me look like a genius (I hope it doesn’t) or an utter fool (I hope it does) when it comes out September 6th, 2023.

Images Source: Featured Image: (Microsoft/Bethesda) (Starfield Official Gameplay Trailer-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfYEiTdsyas)

In Text Image 1: (Microsoft/Bethesda) (Starfield Official Gameplay Trailer-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfYEiTdsyas)

In Text Image 2: (Microsoft/Bethesda) (Starfield Official Gameplay Trailer-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfYEiTdsyas)