Summary
I’ve never been the biggest fan ofBethesda’s RPGs. Though I love the vibe ofFallout 3, I never finished it, and I foundFallout 4a bit of a slog. I’ve bounced off Skyrim several times, and haven’t bothered to go back to the earlierElder Scrollsgames (though people ride so hard for Morrowind that I’m seriously considering it).
Though I had hoped the space opera setting would be enough to keep me going, my experience withStarfieldwas the same. After half a dozen hours, I decided I only had time for either Starfield orBaldur’s Gate 3, and Baldur’s Gate 3 was better. Starfield also ran terribly on my aging gaming laptop, which is on me, not Bethesda, but still contributed to my decision. More than any of those factors, though, I’m just not that compelled by Bethesda’s approach to RPG design. Its games often have cool worlds, but I’m just not that interested in the mechanics it uses to bring those worlds to life.
Obsidian Does What Bethesdon’t
On the other hand, I loveObsidianbecause it zigs in all the places Bethesda zags. Bethesda’s games prioritize systemic interactions over character-driven roleplay, which makes clips from them interesting, but not very interesting to play. It’s extremely fun to see someone place a bunch of oranges or hunks of cheese on their spaceship and watch as they bounce off each other in realistically simulated ways. That isn’t something I’ll ever actually do in my own playthrough though, and in my experience, Bethesda’s games don’t actually do much to motivate players to seek out that kind of play. Games likeHitmanandTears of the Kingdomuse challenging objectives or shrines to force you to engage with the game’s potential. That’s less common in Bethesda’s games — which may be a big part of the reason they leave me bored.
Still, I would be happy to see another RPG studio pick a corner of Starfield’s world and use it as the setting for a smaller, more character-driven RPG. Take Neon or Akila City or New Atlantis or Cydonia and set an RPG in it and the surrounding area. Build meaty quest lines, with a high degree of narrative flexibility and character choice.
Systems Vs. Characters
Bethesda builds interesting worlds with cool systemic interaction, but actual roleplay tends to be pushed to the fringes. That’s partially because its worlds are so big that they end up being shallow. I was a big fan of Obsidian’sThe Outer Worldsbecause the studio decided to keep its galaxy modest in size. Baldur’s Gate 3 was similar. That game seems huge because it’s so stuffed with quests, characters, and choices, but the area the map occupies is fairly small compared to even a smaller open-world game.
This is what I would love to see from Bethesda. It shouldn’t abandon Starfield because it wasn’t as big of a hit as most of us expected. Instead, it should let another RPG studio play with the world it’s created and see how a smaller team uses the world to do interesting things at a smaller scale. This is what Obsidian did with Fallout New Vegas, and the result was one of the most beloved games in the series. Right now, the Starfield brand needs rehabilitation and another studio making a modestly-sized, but great, RPG in that world might just do it.
