Bethesda Game Studios has been honest about the fact that many of Starfield’s thousands of planets will be relatively devoid of life. Larger cities and civilian settlements will be found on specific planets likely pertaining to the main quest and major side missions, while every explorable planet off the beaten path will be down to you to discover. Certain players have expressed dismay about the potential of most planets not being worth a visit, but for me, it’s the opposite. I cannot wait to stand upon daunting plains of extraterrestrial terrain with little idea of what awaits me. To bask in the solitude of an alien world that doesn’t belong to me.
Perhaps I’m being watched from afar, or find myself instilled with a sense of paranoia that I’m not alone, but in reality there is nothing on the surface of this sprawling rock but hostile gusts of wind and wildlife expressing fear at a mysterious stranger invading its habitat.
You can make your own stories in virtual places where there are none, encouraged by nothing but the environment itself and what little crumbs of a picture you can paint from gorgeous fauna and fading ruins etched into the world itself. This is how discovery in video games is best achieved, without the constant interruption of obnoxious map markers and quest icons.
It reminds me most of No Man’s Sky, in which melancholic discovery was its entire deal. It launched as a barebones product, but I still found hours of joy in how it threw you into the endless universe with an abstract goal and no specific manner in which to reach it.
Build a ship, gather resources, and jet off into the endless abyss in search of purpose. Whether it became a realistic goal was up to you, and in my case I became a curious explorer of the cosmos with a love for planets occupied by little more than hostile atmospheres and ghosts wrought across their surface.
The occasional space station and marketing outpost saw the introduction of fellow travellers willing to teach you nuggets of their language, but that aside you were alone, left to your own devices in an endless expanse of nebulous possibility. Future updates sadly diminished this feeling with the addition of multiplayer and several new features, turning each new galaxy into a playground rather than a lonesome obstacle to overcome. It just wasn't the same anymore.
Skyrim never came close to this level of loneliness in its discovery. The majority of caves and dungeons you came across were packed with evil bandits or giant spiders, while the quests you embarked upon were always acting on the bedrock of human emotion.
Parts within Fallout 3 came close, with the Capital Wasteland suitably large in scope and packed with the remnants of an apocalypse you are still piecing together as a humble resident of Vault 101. I still get goosebumps thinking about an SOS radio signal I stumbled across, which I decided to follow in the foolish hope I could help whoever awaited on the other side.
What greeted me after an hour of searching was a family of skeletons huddling together for warmth in a nearby sewer. Who knows what brought them here, or what they were hiding from as their supplies ran out and all that awaited them was death in one another’s arms? I turned off the radio and walked away, but I could still hear the haunting ticks of their distress signal, knowing I was too late to save them and likely never had a chance in the first place. This is a small piece of world building, but so valuable in how it expresses the hopelessness of a world which has long abandoned its grasp on humanity.
Starfield is likely to be more optimistic in its outlook, but nothing is stopping it from telling its own stories we can piece together with little more than the feet that carry us forward. Bethesda games are strongest when they dole out procedural narrative instances that aren’t dictated by dialogue or cutscenes, but allow our curiosity to do the heavy lifting. Starfield could perfect this approach and so much more.
A laundry list of planets with nothing concrete to show for themselves will sound exhausting to some, but to me it’s a springboard for my imagination. I’ll likely spend a maximum of 30 minutes on each one, which will be more than enough to gather valuable resources or comb its surface for hidden stories either taking place now or centuries in the past.
I want to feel equal parts afraid and enthralled by the celestial bodies that await me out in the galaxy as one of the first human beings to brave them all on their lonesome. It feels like I’m pushing things forward even by performing the most mundane of actions, relishing in the lonesome atmosphere of planets never meant to sustain life, but are still brimming with it regardless.