This grand sci-fi game limits the AI, thankfully

Name a revolutionary technology, and you’ll quickly find the game maker who sighs: yes, we’ve been doing something like this for years. Programs that can automatically create text and images, for example. In games, terrain, enemies or objects are often created by the computer, based on existing parts and complex algorithms. You can do a lot with it, even build an infinite number of planets to visit. But there are downsides, the space game creator discovered No Man’s Sky (2016): The end result doesn’t feel infinitely captivating, but like a series of bland cut-and-paste actions. Now game giant Bethesda wants to Starfield doing the same trick, with an astronomical budget, financed by new owner Microsoft.

Can you manage that?

No. Because Bethesda Starfield does not leave it at all to generative software, but above all does its best to give the illusion of infinity with that technology, while serving up enough artisanal, human-made work to keep the universe alive. Yes, you can go to any planet – provided your ship has enough fuel – and land anywhere on that planet. But there the game creates a restricted area, dotted with landmarks that are clearly designed by hand. The number varies: some planets are extinct, others are busy, sometimes even with capitals full of human-written characters who prowl man-made shops and offer (lots!) human-designed quests.

It may not be the limitless vision of space from No Man’s Skybut for every border you get something in return. Starfield is best played investigatively, moving continuously from galaxy to city to space station. Along the way you tumble through surprises, with at least one storyline or oddity at every destination that fascinates, even if only for a moment. Bethesda has always been good at building large game areas that you want to explore. Now they do that effectively Milky Way wide. And visually, the aging software that Bethesda has been using for years has had an imposing update. Bugs are there, of course, but sporadic.

Dear idealists

Weaker is the company as usual in the main storyline. You play a miner – whose background, face and personality are highly customizable – who accidentally hits a special piece of metal with gravity-bending properties. On the spot you will be enthusiastically recruited by the scout collective Constellation. They want to find as much of this metal as possible, purely out of curiosity. It is of course a good recipe for adventure and disaster. But the story itself remains flat, only in the last hours does it become bizarre enough to also make the player curious. What doesn’t help is that all members of Constellation are sweet idealists – the voice actors are stronger than ever in a Bethesda game, but depth is lacking. You can go with four of them. Of course there are two men and two women, so that the romantic gamer also has something to choose from.

Happy offers Starfield so many other distractions, mini-storylines and deep systems that you don’t dwell on the story for too long. You choose a goal: for example, a new floor on your base. You need more aluminum for that, so you have to quickly look for a planet where there is a lot of that in the soil. Once there you will meet a farmer who is being harassed by pirates. Whether you can help him to settle a years-long neighbor dispute so that they can all fight the pirates together? With some effort you manage to convince his angry neighbor, and the reward follows: now your pockets are full. First stop by a nearby space station to have an extra cargo hold put on your ship so that you can throw all the aluminum into it later. At the spaceship salesman you accidentally end up in a job interview that leads to…

That’s how the hours fly over in a moment. Yes: there is some nitpicking about the story, the lack of variety in enemies, the fairly standard way the guns work. But if, as a gamer, you only stop to think about these problems after fifty hours of flying from hot to her, then you have to admit: secretly this game is wonderfully successful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfYEiTdsyas