Starfield Players Done With the Game: “I Can’t Bring Myself to Play Anymore”

Starfield has been out on Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PC for roughly a month, giving RPG fans plenty of time with the game and plenty of time to develop comprehensive thoughts on the Bethesda release. To this end, one of the most popular posts over on the Starfield Reddit page this week, with roughly 10,000 votes up, is a post titled,”It’s sad, but I can’t bring myself to play anymore.” Of course, if this was a random post with 48 votes up, it wouldn’t be that noteworthy, but apparently this is a fairly common sentiment about the game. Not only is this conveyed by number of votes up, but the many comments that echo the sentiment. Not all of the roughly 4,400 comments agree, but many do. 

“It’s sad, but I can’t bring myself to play anymore,” reads the Reddit post. “I thought I would be playing this game for years to come, like I did with Skyrim and every Fallout game from Bethesda Game Studios. But I’m around 50 hours in and the game just doesn’t click for me. There’s something missing in Starfield, a kind of feeling that I did get with every other Bethesda game but that for the life of me I can’t seem to find here. Everything feels so… disconnected, I guess? I don’t know how to explain it any better than that.”

The post continues: “And I just can’t land on one more planet to do the same loop I’ve been doing for all these hours. I mean, does someone really find fun in running across absolutely empty terrain for 2km to get to a POI that we have already seen a dozen times? It even has the exact same loot and enemy locations! Even the same notes, corpses… Environmental storytelling is supposed to be Bethesda’s thing, but this game’s world building could have been made by Ubisoft and I wouldn’t have noticed a difference. Am I wrong here? Or does anyone else feel the same?”

To the last point, apparently many agree as illustrated above. The top comment notes the game “needs some more interesting and unique locations.” The second most popular comment adds, “they fell into the same trap most space games seem to in my opinion, which is that it’s just too big to fill with meaningful content.”

Again, this is not reflective of every Starfield player. It’s likely this is a minority opinion, but if this is the case, it’s a growing minority. Each week that passes there are and more posts like this on the Starfield Reddit page, which begs the question of whether it will have the same longevity previous Bethesda Game Studios’ games have had. Right now, it’s too early to make this call, but the game does appear to be losing steam quicker than recent BGS releases, which is amplified by the fact it’s start out the gate has also been slower. 

That said, and as always, feel free to leave a comment letting us know what you think or, alternatively, hit me up on Twitter @Tyler_Fischer_ and let me know over there. Do you agree with this take? Is Starfield going to come and go or will it having a lasting impact like some other BGS games?