Starfield is practical so close to release that you can taste the horrible cobalt taste that’a Grav Drive jump to Hyperspace will leave in your mouth, and yet it’s a game that feels like what has been shown to the public has been just a tiny fraction of what’s possible in Bethesda’s latest and most ambitious RPG to date.
They’ve already done a big gameplay reveal in the summer, so with just a few more days until launch next week, Bethesda and Xbox turned up at Gamescom 2023 with something different: a theatre presentation to showcase the opening of the game. Not hands on, not a sample of gameplay that people could actively explore, but a video demonstration of what people can expect (and what they might have already seen from a shaky cam leak of the opening 40 minutes).
So, spoilers abound in the following few hundred words, but what does the Starfield opening actually show you? How do you get roped into this galaxy-wide scavenger hunt?
As in so many adventures, yours is a humble beginning. You’re not an epic adventurer, but just another of the many people who head down the mines of planets and asteroids to retrieve valuable minerals that have allowed humanity to proliferate across the galaxy.
It’s just your second day on the job, and after some banter between the mine boss and another miner on your descent, you get to see the grimy work of collecting resources in the game. It’s not long before you get your own hands on a Cutter and get to laser beam yourself some metals for the Arsos Extractors mining company.
But this isn’t just any old day and, presumably putting your life at risk instead of their own, as there’s a fresh breakthrough into a cave formation that features some mysterious anomalous signals, you’re sent in to explore, coming across a strange and manufacturer artefact. Touch it, and a thoroughly 2001: A Space Odyssey space baby-style vision gives you a glimpse into the great beyond, the galaxy as a whole, and a strange formation overlaid on top of it.
It’s when you then wake up in the med-bay that you can customise your character, picking with free-form body build sliders, plenty of faces, hair styles and colours and more to choose from. You also pick your background, whether it’s a Cyber Runner, Medic, Neon Street Rat or any other trio from a pretty lengthy list – some combinations won’t be possible, mind you, so you can’t be a street rat and from the upper class.
Finding that artefact triggers a sequence of events that will send you off on your interstellar adventure. Constellation – now a mythical joke of an explorer organisation to many – are paying good money to get a hold of it, as part oft heir ongoing mission, but when Barrett lands and greets you, they’re followed by space pirates from the Crimson Fleet.
Time to grab a pistol and get a first taste of the shooter combat, first with the Eon pistol, and then with grabbing a dropped Maelstrom SMG. It looks tight and impactful, but just a taste of what’s to come with the jet-pack assisted movement shown in previous trailers.
As the dust settles, Barrett implores you to join Constellation, the vision you saw all the credentials he needs to know of to trust you – I wonder if there’s a Far Cry-esque early game ending by turning down his offer? He trusts you so much, in fact, that he gives you his own ship, the ageing “classic” Discovery Class ship. OK, so he also sends the gangly bodied robot VASCO to help get you there.
Taking off into outer space, and it’s time for another first: space combat. Just as with the ground-combat, the space battles look to be almost exactly what you’d expect from a robust space shooter. You can play in first and third person, there’s a speed gauge controlled by the left stick with a boost on a stick click, and the ship is equipped with ballistic rounds, missiles and lasers, mapped to the triggers and Y button.
Pirates dispatched, you can loot their wreckage for supplies before engaging that Grav Drive and setting off to Constellation’s HQ in New Atlantis on Alpha Centauri.
It’s a quick and to-the-point kind of intro – though the 20 minute or so video was filled with cuts and thoroughly abridged the experience. Is it even vaguely indicative of the full game? Not really, with so, so much more promised by the wider experience, but certainly looks like it quite concisely introduces you to the various facets that the game offers.
It won’t be too long before we get to find out how it comes together for ourselves, with Starfield’s Early Access release date set for 1st September.
