Summary
Starfieldhas taken everything people love about Bethesda RPGs and brought it to the sci-fi genre for the very first time. This has created a fantastic adventure filled with countless hours of things to explore, which is great to see. While some aspects of it may be rough around the edges, it is impressive what the studio has been able to pull off. However,Starfieldalso makes one drastic change from classic Bethesda RPGs that seems to come out of nowhere.
Just like with every single Bethesda RPG before it,Starfieldis filled to the brim with things to collect. Players will be grabbing anything that is not tied down and will likely be looting every single corpse they see. And while that can be a lot of fun, for some reason Bethesda changed things a bit. Not only doplayers get encumbered a lot faster, but items taken from NPCs do not actually disappear. Instead, it almost feels like players are just making copies of the items rather than actually taking them off of the bodies.
RELATED:Bethesda Needs to Move Away From One Annoying Starfield Feature For The Elder Scrolls 6
Starfield’s Looting System Feels Different
In past Bethesda games, players could loot all sorts of things off of NPCs' bodies. This was the best way to get some of the coolest armor or weapons and was also the perfect way to gather things to sell. It was a core part of the gameplay loop, which was made even better by the fact players could actually tell who they looted. Which is why it is strange thatStarfieldhas chosen not to include something similar.
As players looted corpses ingames likeSkyrimorFallout 4, that corpse would actually have less on. If they took the armor, then the body would simply be in their underwear. If they took a weapon, then that weapon would vanish into thin air. This made players feel like they were actually looting and could also result in some pretty funny scenarios. While it was not a game-changing feature, it did at least make the world feel more real.
For some reason,Starfielddoes not include this mechanic. While players can still loot the many corpses they create, they would never know that they looted them. If they take off their spacesuit, the corpse will still have a spacesuit on. No matter what they take from the corpse, it will still look exactly the same. That may not break the game much, but it does hurt the immersion a bit. And after multiple RPGs did it differently, it feels strange that the studio would suddenly decide to change its approach here.
Instead of making players feel like they arelooting their way throughStarfield’s universe, it kind of feels like they are just carrying a fancy 3D printer in their pocket. Since the spacesuits do not disappear when they are taken, the player must be replicating it somehow. Either that or these NPCs are wearing multiple versions of the same suit, which sounds extremely uncomfortable. Maybe they are just trying to start a new fashion trend, but that is hard to believe.
Starfieldmay be Bethesda’s biggest RPG to date, yet it seems to have lost some of that Bethesda RPG charm along the way. While there may be some technical reason for why it could not visually represent looting, it does not make much sense after years of doing it in other games. MaybeThe Elder Scrolls 6will bring it back, but even if it does not, its omission is not necessarily game breaking. However, that does not mean the small mechanic is not sorely missed by many.
Starfieldis available now for PC and Xbox Series X/S
