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Coming out this November, Starfield will be Bethesda's biggest in-house project in decades.
Essentially, Starfield is Bethesda's first attempt at a new franchise that focuses on space. In its sci-fi NASA-punk rendition of the Settled Systems, set in the year 2330, Bethesda's primary focus seems to be bringing the best of both worlds together.
Starfield purports to combine an ambitiously vast open world with engaging, meaningful content scattered throughout, all in the foil of a roleplay-centric game design.
The Starfield developers have been very conservative about sharing direct gameplay content thus far. Given how tight and short Bethesda ad campaigns tend to be, it might at least take another month for us to see any glimpse of gameplay. At any rate, the game is still over half a year away.
Space exploration games to play in anticipation of Starfield
1) Outer Wilds
Developer/Publisher: Andrew Prahlow
Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch
Genre: Puzzle/Exploration
At the very outset, Outer Wilds is a far cry from the mainstream trendy sweeping open worlds of overwhelming proportions. Against a AAA industry race to cram open-world games chock-full of vapid grind and generic content, Outer Wilds is the perfect indie antidote.
This is also its main point of departure from Starfield. Outer Wilds reins its scale into a small hand-crafted star system with tiny but intriguing planets. The best way to describe it is as a puzzle box that players unlock piece by piece, adrift in its deceptively deep atmosphere. Another odyssey to the beating heart of humane fraternity in the lonely expanse of space, this one is truly 'made for wanderers.'
2) The Outer Worlds
Developer/Publisher: Obsidian Entertainment, Virtuos/ Take-Two Interactive
Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch
Genre: RPG
Not to be confused with the previous entry, The Outer Worlds is Obsidian Studio's first-ever in-house IP and the game that arguably cemented their foothold as one of the top Xbox studios.
The elevator pitch for this game would be Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas but in space. In truth, the game shares a lot of DNA with Fallout, having been made by the same people who invented the classic Fallout formula in its Interplay era. Its tighter scope gives it a shorter span than the average AAA RPG, but in turn, its deep character-building system adds greatly to its replayability, something we hope to see in Starfield.
3) No Man's Sky
Developer/Publisher: Hello Games
Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch
Genre: Survival/Simulation
No Man's Sky is primarily known as a cautionary tale about likely the most disastrous video game launch. Simply put, the game's developers hyped up customers with essentially false advertisements about fundamental features. The day one version of the game severely strayed from the promised space sandbox and no traceable place for online gameplay.
However, the game has come far in the past decade. Hello Games have made good on their first promises with drip-fed updates over the years. Today, it stands to be an engrossing open-world procedurally generated pocket universe that can give you potentially endless hours of content.
4) Endless Space 2
Developer/Publisher: Amplitude Studios/SEGA
Platform: PC
Genre: 4X/Turn-based Strategy
Endless Space 2 is an improvement over the first game in all four core pillars of its gameplay: exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination. The easiest way to introduce this game is Sid Meyer's Civilization but in space.
Players start off with a race of their choosing in a random star system to settle on a home planet and then eventually work towards one of several win conditions, be it victory by influence, tech advancement, or good-old-fashioned conquest.
Where it really grazes close to Starfield's general cone of vision is through its focus on representing various races with their indigenous cultures and ideologies. The game is rich in its depth. Like specific civs in Civilization, certain races and ideologies grant some bonuses and detriments that can radically shape playstyles.
5) Warframe
Developer/Publisher: Digital Extremes
Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch
Genre: MMO/Action
Warframe is often heralded as the vessel of one of the fairest free-to-play games out there. Unlike many of its direct competitors in the grind-focused niche, all Warframe content can be experienced to completion without shelling out a single dime.
However, the real reason this might interest Starfield enthusiasts is the surprisingly intricate lore at the backdrop of this looter-shooter, those of the Grineers, Sentients, Orokin, Corpus, or the indigenous tribes and offshoots scattered across its star system.
Like we expect of Starfield, Warframe's core determinant of progress is exploring the solar system, or at least the game's sci-fi version of it, where the moon has been terraformed and hidden away completely until a critical plot point. With the introduction of Railjack, outer space combat has also been well-integrated into the game.
Note: This article is subjective and solely reflects the writer's opinions.
