Review: Starfield Is Really a Video Game About Government

Bureaucracy vs. freedom in outer space

Starfield, the latest role-playing game from Bethesda Softworks, is set in a far future when humanity has moved to the stars. Two rival states dominate. The United Colonies are centralized and bureaucratic but safe and rich. The Freestar Collective is more loosely governed and prone to lawlessness, but merchants and entrepreneurs have more freedom to go about their business.

Other forms of governance are always hovering at the fringes, like LIST (the League of Independent Settlers), a ragtag group of settlers who find even Freestar's political structure too overbearing. They've struck out on their own, but they've found themselves beset by attacks from lawless rogues. As a LIST farmer explains, "The promise is freedom. True freedom. If you can fend off all the spacers and pirates the settled systems can throw at you."

At heart, Starfield is a game about the fragility and contingency of state power, competition between forms of government, and the unexpected ways that private, nongovernmental power steps in to fill the gaps and voids left by states.

Comments

[Chumby]

Starfield is a game about zapping whatever little T its male players had remaining while they are catatonically connected to pixelated euphoria. It may have in-game purchases where zapping whatever little money they have too.
But it is from Bethesda, is bug-free, and has a great story.

[HiramLynwood]

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[Agammamon]

'Bug free' is a relative term.

Its bug free *for a Bethesda Softworks title*. There's still tons of bugs and general jankiness.

The thing that has slapped BGS in the face - there isn't *any fun* in the game so no one's willing to put up with their shit this time around.

[Chumby]

Was being sarcastic. My understanding is that gamers refer to them as Bugthesda.

[Brandybuck]

People said the same thing about Fallout 4. The hate is intensely magnified due to the internet gaming bubble and outrage culture. Thousands of players find it enjoyable, the first few weeks it was riding high, then the haters latched onto it with a campaign of review bombs.

People are literally saying NMS and CP77 were better games AT LAUNCH! But one of those games outright lied about features and the other was actually sued by players it was so buggy. And people who literally have hundreds of hours of playtime are saying it's bad. Why put hundreds of hours of play into a game you think is bad? Are they masochists, or just riding the hate train. It's the latter.

[Randy Sax]

Oh yeah, I'm really thinking about the fight between centralized power and loosely governed merchants when I'm doing that stupid shrine thing where I float around collecting stupid shiny sparkles for badly designed bioshock powers.

JK, I didn't buy this stupid game.

[Agammamon]

Emil Pagliarulo's brilliant writing chops are on display here.

Let's do a game where you find your father.

Now let's turn it around and *you're the father!* Mindblowing.

Now let's do dragon shouts in space! People liked Skyrim, let's remake it, but shitty this time around.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

'Two rival states dominate. The United Colonies are centralized and bureaucratic but safe and rich. The Freestar Collective is more loosely governed and prone to lawlessness, but merchants and entrepreneurs have more freedom to go about their business.'

Neither one sounds like California or MAGA-topia.

[Brandybuck]

As one meme puts it, the United Colonies are one step away from fascism, the Freestar Collective only one step away from authoritarianism. Both have dark underbellies.

The FC is not "libertarian" or even "conservative". It's a loose confederation of colonies, some good some bad. Neon is the crime colony, wholly owned by a drug dealer. Hopetown is a fuedal manor run by an aristocratic lord, deeply concerned about his serfs, and willing to kill those on other planets to keep them employed. But then you get genuinely good governors and top leaders in the mix as well. Akila City is has a decent mayor, the local businessmen are working to set up rehab centers and expand free housing for the poor, etc.

Meanwhile you have the UC that has a quite checkered past, which they are still whitewashing over, but the new generation is trying to move past it. They're the Shining City on the Hill, but with a squalid basement. They're not evil but blindered, rather much like modern United States. A giant gated community where everyone is washed and clean and all got A+ grades in civics, in shining towers were you can see the crumbling infrastructure and endless homeless encampments.

[mad.casual]

I know half a dozen people who've played Starfield to their conception of completion/satisfaction. All of them have read the LOTR end-to-end. They could give similar expositions about the Elder Scrolls or Fallout universes. I don't think any of them played enough, or cared enough, to wade through the gameplay and/or plot of Starfield, in order to generate the narrative you've given.

[mad.casual]

So did Bethesda pay twice as much to get two reviews of Starfield out of Reason or is Reason hocking the next also-ran iteration of Behtesda's game engine because they really like the terrible gamecrafted narrative/story and the hype that it didn't live up to?

[Brandybuck]

You guys just don't give up, do you? It's like your entire world view centers around everyone being Todd's paid shill.

If you don't like the game, don't play it. Simple. It's just a game. It's not meant to appeal to everyone. But to spend huge amounts of time going around telling everyone you don't like a game is pathological. Talk to your therapist and take your meds.

[Agammamon]

Someone's never played the game I see.

Starfield isn't about *anything*. Its a low-effort cash-grab from a studio that's mostly given up.

[KiwiLib]

Starfield is definitely one of the games of 2023.

Made by a studio that has taken its fans for granted and hasn't changed their technology or game making philosophy for over a decade.

Boring loading screen simulator.

[Nigel Kearney]

You know it's a fantasy game when people give up their freedom and get wealth and safety in return.

[smithraaj]

Starfield, Bethesda Softworks' latest RPG, unfolds in a distant future with two dominant states: the United Colonies, stable but bureaucratic, and the Freestar Collective, less regulated but more prone to lawlessness. Additional factions like the LIST (League of Independent Settlers) highlight the game's focus on the fragility of state power, the competition between governance forms, and the role of private entities in filling gaps left by states.

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