2023’s release of Starfield was, in a way, Bethesda Game Studios’ long-awaited return to single-player RPGs following 2015’s Fallout 4. Starfield is certainly more ambitious than its predecessor – it’s immense scale is almost unrivaled – but it’s not uniformly iterative, even if Starfield‘s May 2024 update makes significant strides. Starfield makes some welcome reversions, like abandoning the much maligned voiced protagonist that tanks Fallout 4‘s roleplaying potential, but despite the long wait for Starfield, it still feels like a step backward regarding certain features.
Starfield‘s latest update is by far the game’s most significant. Surface maps have been reworked to show a player’s surroundings and mark more locations within cities, addressing one of the most common criticisms the game’s interface received. A variety of new settings let players fine-tune difficulty, select frame rate targets on Xbox Series X, and more. New interior decoration tools for the ship builder will go a long way in personalizing the experience. Some of the improvements, however, ultimately feel like a half-measure compared to their Fallout 4 counterparts.
While Fallout‘s post-nuclear wastelands are especially suited for an extra-difficult survival mode, Bethesda’s games in general have always felt only a step or two away from bona fide survival games. Looting is always prevalent, with a variety of in-universe foods and drinks, and the emergent exploration meshes well with the typical survival loop. For Fallout 4 specifically, its Survival mode also helps add significance to its otherwise unnecessary settlement building mechanics.
Starfield‘s May update added a Sustenance option to the settings menu, but it hardly qualifies as a full-fledged survival mode, even when coupled with the new Extreme difficulty. When positive and negative Sustenance effects are turned on, all it does is provide buffs when food and drink are consumed, and debuffs when they wear off. It’s a step in the right direction, but isn’t really robust enough to give Starfield the same appeal as Fallout 4‘s Survival mode, much to the dismay of players like Reddit user Dejected_Cyberpsycho and other commenters who hoped for the update to bring a survival mode.
Aside from the increased damage and hunger/thirst management, a key component to Fallout 4‘s Survival mode makes saving the game from the pause menu impossible; Survival mode players must find and sleep in a bed to save their game. Combined with no fast travel, this completely transforms Fallout 4‘s gameplay loop, often turning a single quest into a series of high-risk encounters as players work their way from one safe zone to the next. Starfield may eventually implement something similar, and it could have great effect, but the framework for something even deeper already exists.
Even among Bethesda’s catalog, Starfield feels especially well-suited for robust survival game elements. It paints a convincing picture with its NASA-punk aesthetic, and the varying gravities and environmental hazards throughout the Settled Systems hint at the inherent danger of space travel. That realism doesn’t necessarily follow all the way through, however; aside from hostile alien creatures, mercenaries, space pirates, and the like, it’s incredibly easy to survive, even if the O2 meter and carry weight need some management.
Although the introduction of hunger and thirst is a good start, the fuel consumption mechanics cut from Starfield prior to its release are what the game really needs to reach its survival mode potential. In its current form, fuel consumption is effectively meaningless – every ship can only grav jump so far, but fuel never actually depletes, so it only forces players to sit through multiple loading screens.
With depleting Helium-3 (the resource needed for Grav Drives to operate), players could become marooned light years from civilization. A whole new gameplay loop emerges, which elevates the player’s ship into an important safe haven, and leverages the game’s exploratory ethos into something actually felt in its mechanics. Going to find one of Starfield‘s Artifacts in the main questline wouldn’t just be fast traveling to the right planet and completing the quest, it would be a legitimate journey there and back.
Much like Fallout 4‘s Survival difficulty, a similar mode in Starfield would give the game’s outposts actual importance. To explore the game’s furthest reaches, a daisy chain of outposts would need to be constructed, doubling as forward operating bases and depots for refining Helium-3. Much like scavenging for food, parts, and a place to sleep leans into Fallout 4‘s nuclear wasteland setting, a survival mode that emphasizes exploration would help Starfield‘s game world feel like the final frontier.
Although there’s a grueling nature to survival games and like difficulties, there’s a realism to them that has significant appeal. Disbelief has to be suspended quite far in Fallout 4 to account for both enemies and the Sole Survivor being bullet sponges, but the danger of the Commonwealth is a bit more believable in Survival mode. Despite all the usual video game trappings, Starfield similarly has an inhospitable game world, one that its normal difficulty modes turn away from being believable.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with Starfield‘s normal difficulty – many enjoy Bethesda’s games for their narrative depth – but a more involved gameplay loop could remedy many of the common criticisms lobbied at the title. However, there’s also the possibility that a survival difficulty could prove tedious in Starfield. The game is massive, and a large part of it is procedurally generated emptiness. Ultimately, it seems Bethesda felt fuel consumption was best left on the cutting room floor, perhaps a recognition that the game’s sparseness can’t sustain an interesting, complete odyssey through the stars.
The idea is sound; slowly charting a path through the Settled Systems, where only a few bullets through a spacesuit may be fatal, sounds like the exciting journey into the starfield that the game’s marketing promised. A survival mode akin to Fallout 4‘s may very well be exactly what certain Starfield players are looking for, especially dedicated fans intimately familiar with the game. Starfield is luckily still a work in progress, with the upcoming Shattered Space DLC set to inject a wealth of new content, so hopefully a dedicated survival mode is on the horizon as well.
Source: Dejected_Cyberpsycho/Reddit