‘Something is missing’ in Starfield and it’s driving players away

The emptiness of space makes Starfield players feel like something is missing, and they claim they have finally discovered the feature distinguishing Starfield from other Bethesda games.

In a Reddit thread on Oct. 11, players agreed the missing bits between missions make Starfield feel lacking.

When you play Bethesda games, especially releases from the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, you feel like the world around you is full of missions, life, locations, and things to discover.

You start with a quest that tells you to go to a specific location. On your way there, you encounter numerous NPCs that have side missions of their own. You can choose different roads toward your quest and never know whom or what you will discover. And by the time you arrive at your location, you have collected new equipment, weapons, and more experience.

This sense of natural discovery made Bethesda releases so popular, but players feel it’s missing from Starfield. In this game, routes are less scenic. If you finish some side quests while on your way, they feel repetitive, with the same layout and loot, without any addition to the game’s story or worldbuilding.

Players say their experience between quests and traveling is nonexistent, and it only aims to lead them to the next point in their story. Loading screens and events that you complete without any connection to each other makes that feeling of disconnection even worse.

After you depart from a planet, you don’t feel like you are going into the vast universe, but it’s more like “where to next.” This is not how an adventure is supposed to feel.

Elder Scrolls and Fallout setting such high standards not only for Bethesda but for the whole gaming industry may be the reason behind player dissatisfaction. Either way, you would expect more from a space adventure than uneventfully plodding from one quest marker to the next.