Coming back to Starfield: Shattered Space after 200 hours into the game should have felt like riding a bike — a skill I’d never forget, but after fumbling around with the controls and trying to find the precise city to land on, I’ve realized that the game lacks something that’s become a lot more common among modern open-world games. Although the criticisms of Starfield remain valid, saying that there “isn’t anything to do” just isn’t true.
Sure, there might not be a lot of compelling things to do for a certain slice of gamers, but there’s not a lack of things to do when talking quantity. While this would usually be positive, it actually makes getting back into Starfield a pretty challenging endeavor and caused me a great deal of frustration when reviewing Starfield: Shattered Space.
Traveling In Starfield Is Still A Pain
The Starmap Still Stinks
I’ve played Starfield since its release, and one of the things that was always pretty terrible was the Starmap. When the game first launched, this was compounded by the fact that no star systems were labeled, often leading me to search up the specific location on Google so I could figure out which planet or moon inside of the system I was trying to get to. Even if I had been to New Atlantis 100 times, for some reason, my brain couldn’t remember it was the Alpha Centauri system — I just vaguely knew it was located somewhere on the middle left of the map.
When Starfield updated the Starmap earlier this year, many hailed the enhancement as a marked improvement from before. That said, I don’t think Bethesda Game Studios actually went far enough on this, as navigating space or finding where to go outside of just auto-selecting from the mission logs is still a pain. The excuse that it encourages exploration rings hollow to me since exploring different parts of the Settled Systems isn’t the same thing as mindlessly wandering around and having no idea how to get back.
There is a Starmap Improvements Mod that players can download on
Nexus Mods
.
Fan-made Reddit Starmaps that are better, albeit a lot more crowded, could have been the inspiration that developers needed for one that was a bit more useful, but alas, of course, we get the same bare-bones treatment per usual from BGS these days. One thing that could really improve and make things easier, however, could be a compendium or some sort of log that easily organizes information — including things found throughout the world in one easy-to-access place.
Bethesda Should Add A Better Log
A Compendium To Wade Through The Content
In Starfield, one activity I almost never did was scan planets to find plants and Starfield materials for crafting. Out of everything in the game, I personally found this aspect to be the most underwhelming and boring, especially when Credits eventually become completely pointless, and you can outright purchase almost anything you’d need.
Related
Starfield has 29 different companions to choose from, and some are certainly better than others. Here’s the full list, ranked.
That said, for those who do enjoy the activity, it’s strange there’s no place for all of that information to live. After all, Constellation is an exploratory force investigating the mysteries of the Settled Systems. The fact that people have nowhere to write down these details makes these “discoveries” feel somewhat pointless.
Clever implementation of a compendium would kill two birds with one stone — making it theoretically easier to navigate to planets just for exploration’s sake and also giving budding biologists a reason to take the time to scan that unique plant. On top of this, it could go a long way in expanding or fleshing out the lore of Starfield, especially because there are just so many computer entries, discarded notes, and other things that just have nowhere to live but in the player’s brains.
Starfield Lore Needs A Place To Live
I’ll Just Google It Instead
Another thing that occurred to me on reviewing and playing Shattered Space was the fact that there was no place in the game where I could review my journey in terms of Va’ruun story or any lore outside of the initial UC quest, where you walk through a boring lecture in a museum. Even so, that would mean beating the game again and doing another NG+ or rolling back to a previous save. I had to refer back to Wikis and Google because I had forgotten about that one awkward quest where you have to make a choice with Andreja.
Adding a compendium could be a start, but to really make me want to start a new campaign, the
Starfield: Starborn
DLC will really have to impress.
Beyond the followers of The Great Serpent, all of the other lore, like The Colony Wars, The Serpent’s Crusade, or literally any other narrative thread in the game, doesn’t have anywhere to live. With so many stories, histories, and sub-plots, keeping track of this stuff is virtually impossible, especially when it’s contained in audio logs and notes I’ve randomly picked up while doing the quests. Thank goodness for fans since that’s about the only way I’d understand the context behind the DLC.
One could argue that BGS games have never had this, so the impetus or even rationale behind not adding one must exist. Which — maybe could hold true since not all games have something that neatly organizes your findings — but I just think in this case, it would make a lot of sense and help out from both a lore and gameplay perspective.
Starfield Will Never Be Skyrim In Space
I Won’t Come Back Until The Starborn Expansion
Although it might not be apparent from my writing, I don’t actually hate Starfield. After logging hundreds of hours of time into the game, I generally found it to be a fun experience. When held up to the light against other RPGs like Cyberpunk 2077, however, cracks immediately become apparent. Starfield is good for a game, but it isn’t great, and it doesn’t have that same pull that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim had for me, where I wanted to play through the story multiple times and try out different builds and choices.
Related
Cyberpunk 2077 was a game I had always wanted to play but never got around to until this year, and I’m really glad I gave it a second shot.
The problem is, I expected Starfield to be even better than Skyrim. After all, Todd Howard and the nearly decade-long development of the game indicated that it would be. As a BGS fan, at first, I thought it was just what they had promised, but after coming back to the game a few months later, I realized I just don’t really like it that much.
The stories are uninteresting, the bugs are annoying, and the lack of depth and variety from the items to most characters makes for a pretty unmemorable experience. Adding a compendium could be a start, but to really make me want to start a new campaign, the Starfield: Starborn DLC will really have to impress.
Source: Nexus Mods, Reddit, Starfield Compendium, GameRant
Starfield: Shattered Space
Released 2024
Developer(s) Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher(s) Bethesda Softworks
Engine Creation Engine 2
ESRB Mature 17+
Expand