STAR GAZER

STARFIELD is Bethesda's biggest ever game and, right here, PC Gamer explores the vast scope of the cosmic new CRPG

- Robert Jones

It's sure been a long time coming but Starfield is finally here. Following in the footsteps of Bethesda's previous expansive CRPGs in both The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, Starfield is a game that has taken the best part of a decade to make but, unlike adventures like Skyrim, Starfield sees the developer enter a completely new world.

Or, maybe, worlds would be a more apt description, as unlike Bethesda's previous CRPGs, Starfield isn't just set on one world, but across more than a thousand different ones. Worlds that, as a new member of the Constellation space exploration organisation, it is your job to travel to in your own spaceship, discover, explore and adventure in.

Yes, Starfield sounds truly out of this world. Here, PC Gamer breaks down its astonishing scope.

STARFIELD & CONSTELLATION

All systems are go

Starfield was officially announced by Bethesda back in 2018, with it being the game studio's follow-up project to online CRPG, Fallout 76. As a triple-A single-player role-playing game, though, the game would be the successor to 2015's Fallout 4, meaning that today in 2023 Starfield has been in the works, in some form, for over eight years.

That's a long wait. Not Duke Nukem Forever long, sure, but when you're going on half a generation in terms of elapsed time, you're talking about an incredibly large project. And that complexity and scale of the Starfield project is absolutely evidenced by what we now know it offers gamers. Not just an open world to explore, but an open universe.