Starfield: Did Freelanes Change It Enough?

Starfield has had mixed reviews since its release back in September 2023 on Xbox, PC and PlayStation 5 on April 7th 2026. Bethesda are known for creating timeless classics that people play year after year, but Starfield, for many, didn’t meet the standard. Why is this?

Spoiler Warning: Do not scroll ahead if you haven’t completed the game. If you’re interested, you can read my original review from 2023 HERE.

Let’s talk about the things I did enjoy. I liked Starfield for the most part, despite it not truly living up to Bethesda’s other titles. In Starfield, you are given the task of discovering who the Starborn are and what their goal is. To achieve this, you are given a ship, a crew and
more. I found that the combat was quite satisfying and I never got bored of it. Overall, as a space game, it has some positives going for it, but that is where the positives for me personally end.

The story and choices you make along the way, Bethesda games usually create very immersive titles, but that feeling is absent this time. For example, the side mission in which you are tasked to settle a dispute over a paradise holiday planet. This is a mission that would have been incredible if you were given the choice to either get rid of the corporation on the planet or get rid of the settlers. There is no option; you must play it as it is scripted, which just ruins it. This is the same problem in many of the story missions – you’re given the illusion of choice that isn’t present here. New Game Plus is a huge opportunity to change how the game world works each time. It allows you to transcend into an alternate reality, which you can keep stacking as many times as you like. Nothing much changes here! NOTHING! It is such a unique concept, you could have had realities that the Starborn wiped everyone from existence, or that Earth didn’t manage to get the grav drives going for future ship travel. There are so many possibilities I could think of, but it changes NOTHING! All you get is new armour, a cool ship, and the option to skip a few things to make it go faster. It is so disappointing, and it’s what ultimately tanks Starfield.

The gameplay and design also lack in many areas because of a few factors. Procedural generation of the planets that you can explore holds it back. Once you’ve seen a few, you’ve seen them all. The POIs are quite interesting during the first few hours, but then the illusion drops, and you’ll come across the same POI 3 times with the same enemies, same story and the same loot placement. A lot of the game sadly comes across as lazy. I believe Bethesda could easily have handcrafted the Starfield world much better than it has because Bethesda was the master of world creation. You take it, Fallout 3, New Vegas, 4 and Skyrim – the POIs are so memorable, the world is diverse and full of things to see and do. Starfield could have achieved this if it had perhaps handcrafted 12 planets that had Fallout-sized maps or something similar. I still find things to do in those games, yet I’ll jump on Starfield again, and I am simply coming across nothing new anymore.

The ultimate question, however, is whether the Free Lane Update and Terran Armada DLC fix any of this? Is this like the No Man’s Sky Redemption arc this game needed? No…

Hello Games is a small team that went through utter hell to get their game, No Man’s Sky, out, then faced more hell from the public (completely blown out of proportion; flinging abuse at people is unforgivable). It wasn’t deserved, but that team got back to work, updated it, and now we are reaching the ten-year mark for that game. That small team that has expanded a little bit keeps adding constant free updates that have turned it all into a behemoth of a game, to the point people are begging Sean Murray to let us pay him money towards this. It’s incredible. I am going to get more flak for comparing the two, but Bethesda is a multi-million-dollar company under Microsoft, which is a multi-billion-dollar company. They have a ton of hard-working developers, but the leaders won’t utilise their staff’s talents to give Starfield the redemption it needs. Starfield could become an instant classic. I love it for what it is, but it lags so far behind and giving us better space travel and a few extras just isn’t enough to let Starfield become the phoenix that rises from the ashes. Sure, there are a lot of improvements, but these are things that could have been done a long time ago. Space feels a lot more immersive and interactive, flying your ship feels meaningful, and there are a lot fewer loading screens. However, it all still feels empty, and I never truly lose myself like I have in other Bethesda titles.

I truly believe Starfield has good structure; it can become so much more, but I just don’t think Bethesda or Microsoft want to invest further in this franchise. I have a bad feeling the rumoured Starfield 2.0 will never happen, and if Free Lanes was supposed to be the big return, it wasn’t, it. I know I sound completely negative, I enjoy Starfield, I do go back to it, I enjoy the missions, I enjoy flying around, collecting the powers, and just having a fun time, but I always fall off it after around 10 hours because it is rinse and repeat. Many are loving the update and the DLC, and I love seeing the community adore the game. Many may feel that this update was worth it, but to me, it’s not enough, especially when No Man’s Sky keeps knocking it out of the park. What if I am the problem here, though? Am I entitled and selfish to keep expecting games to receive updates to become better? Years ago, this wasn’t a thing; games shipped as is, and if they were bad, there was nothing we could do. Am I thankful that companies do try to make games better when the launch hasn’t been what they expected? Absolutely! However, it’s become almost a trend in the Triple A gaming industry that we can rush release, content might be disappointing, but we might sort it out later if we make enough money, and I think this trend is killing the big titles. I feel Starfield falls under this bracket. I do hope they can turn it around, but from a profit standpoint that the shareholders will no doubt be observing, I can’t see a redemption arc here. I think Starfield is Starfield, and we should enjoy it for what it is and if we don’t? We move on and hope Fallout 5 and the ever-elusive Elder Scrolls 6 learn from it.