Starfield: One Year Later (2024)

Last year when I was writing why Starfield was my favorite game of 2023, I called the game “a flawed masterpiece”. A game I loved dearly but fully understood its shortcomings and could see why some players had a hard time accepting it for what it was.

A year later, the core of the game is still mostly the same. If you couldn’t find the fun the first time around, you probably won’t like what the game is today. What has changed though is the addition of significant quality of life improvements, the addition of a land vehicle, and “creations” which add significant amounts of content to the game. These changes mean that for me, Starfield has firmly planted itself as my favorite Bethesda Game Studios game, my favorite game of the generation, and in my opinion one of the greatest games of all time.

With the upcoming Shattered Space expansion coming on September 30th, as well as a commitment from Bethesda for more updates and DLCs in the future, I think now is the perfect time to return to the game if you dropped off. If you’ve never played the game before but are interested, there’s a truly great game here that’s waiting to be explored.

What’s changed since launch?

There have been a lot of quality of life updates since the game launched last September. Improved local maps and performance modes are two of the biggest additions as well as gameplay modifiers.

By far the updates that have changed the game for the better are “Creations” and the recent Rev-8 land vehicle that allows you to quickly traverse planets instead of simply running and boost packing across them. Starting with creations, these are essentially mods that range anywhere from simple quality of life improvements to complete game overhauls. These are mostly fan made content, and Bethesda’s creation engine is so easy to work with that modders are able to make dev-quality content and upload it for anyone to use.

For my current play through I have about 40 or so creations that range from subtle changes like improving icons and adding new weapons and apparel to substantial mods like one that completely changes the planet Mars to look like it’s being terraformed (a hypothetical process in which the planets atmosphere and topography are altered to resemble Earth).

It is really difficult to express just how crucial these creations are for the future of the game. These are mostly free pieces of content that make it feel like Starfield is more akin to an ever evolving game rather than a static RPG. I’ve only scratched the surface of what is currently available to download, and more content is being released and planned every week. I could easily see myself investing hundreds more hours just based on the content available in the creation store alone.

On the side of developer made content, a recent Bethesda made addition has been the Rev-8 land vehicle that allows players to traverse any planet much more quickly than previously when everything was on foot. This is a welcome addition and makes exploration much more quick and natural. It doesn’t fundamentally change the design of the game but is a massive quality of life improvement.

What hasn’t changed?

If you had issues with Starfield’s core design and technical limitations at launch, I’m afraid to say nothing has really changed here. You still interact with the map a lot to get from planet to planet. There still isn’t inter planetary flight, and you’ll still have to wait a few seconds as you load in and load out of areas. The exploration is mostly the same if not sped up due to the Rev-8. If you didn’t like playing a game that required patience to find the interesting content it held, you probably won’t find anything different this time around.

I’ve never had much of an issue with Starfield’s design as I’m willing to look past some of the limitations because of how much I enjoy the rest of the game but understand some are not as patient as I am. I do believe there is a way to play Starfield “incorrectly” though and would encourage anyone returning to optimize their experience by hopping from solar system to solar system instead of spending too much time in one zone. It can get boring if you land on a barren planet and just wander aimlessly.

After playing for dozens of hours I began to learn that the best way to play the game was to quickly move throughout the world and look for points of interests that were unique or find ships or NPCs who may provide me an interesting quest or memorable interaction. I believe Starfield hosts some of Bethesda’s best story moments and random encounters, but you will have to be willing to look for it.

One Year Later

Starfield launched to great reviews and great player numbers back in 2023 but faced a lot of pushback in the subsequent weeks and months. There’s a variety of reasons this happened and to the extremes that it did, including genuine criticism and feedback from fans as well as disdain for Bethesda, Microsoft and a perfect combination of toxic negativity that surrounds many big game releases. The fact that the game was seen as Bethesda’s first big Xbox exclusive post acquisition didn’t help either, and that left the game feeling completely torn apart months after release.

Fortunately, the game is good enough that a solid player base has persisted across both PC and Xbox. The game is currently amongst the 25 most played games on console, the best performing BGS title on Xbox. The game averages around 10-15k concurrent daily on Steam, a very respectable mark for a single player release that also has to contend with the fact that it is “free” on PC Game Pass which potentially has a substantial amount of players as well.

There was a sentiment at the lowest point of the games warped online perception that the game would never “recover”. That’s clearly not the case as the game has slowly but surely climbed the most played charts this year as updates are released and that is before the first major story DLC drops.

The Future of Starfield

The future of Starfield is looking incredibly bright as Todd Howard has confirmed future DLCs after Shattered Space and has vowed to support the game for a long time after regretting not doing the same with Fallout 4. It’s safe to say that Bethesda has realized the value of supporting games for a long time after the success they’ve seen with games like Skyrim and Fallout 76, but they clearly want to have more meaningful post launch support going forward. The combination of developer made DLC as well as community made creations should ensure that Starfield has plenty of content for years to come.

It seems obvious that the game will also expand its user base by heading over to PS5. There are currently no announced plans to do so, but with Xbox continuing to release their own first party games on PlayStation combined with our own reporting on the subject, it’s probably a when not if at this point. It’s not entirely clear when this will happen, but I would guess sometime next year in between Shattered Space and the next big DLC drop.

I think history will be much kinder to Starfield than its initial few months where it was unfairly heralded as the most important release in Xbox history and was forced to be something that it wasn’t. It’s a game I truly love and a game I want to play daily, but I know it isn’t perfect, and that’s okay. The game in my humble opinion near is near perfect for the types of experience I like. A title full of customization and the ability to set your own path. No two play sessions are the same, and some of the best moments I’ve ever had in gaming have happened while playing Starfield.

With the amount of content being released for the game and consistent feedback from the community, the possibilities feel endless for what Starfield could be 5, 10 years from now and I’m excited to see where the game ends up.

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