Our first look at Starfield didn’t blow Samantha's mind. Sure, the Bethesda showcase looked gorgeous and caught her attention, but it didn’t demand her undivided attention the way The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim did when it launched back in 2011. Maybe it’s because, in comparison, Fallout 4 was rough around the edges, unpolished, and needed work.
After Samantha sunk well over one hundred hours into Skyrim, she wanted more of what it offered. She wanted direction, more beautiful scenery, more awe in her life. What she definitely does not want more of is zombies. Samantha regrets to say this, but she bounced off Fallout 4 almost immediately.
The series has never really clicked with her, and her reasons for that are pretty embarrassing. Samantha was confused by its VATS system, which was entirely foreign to her and seemed to change everything about combat. She also didn’t realise how tough combat would be without it – from what she remembers, Skyrim’s regular combat was more of a hindrance, but for some reason, it was easier for her to wrap her head around.
She also felt overwhelmed with the number of things to do, and in usual form for her, she was terrified of having to fight zombies, which is kind of the whole point of Fallout. After her friend explained the VATS system, she dove back in, starting a new game. It still didn’t draw her in as much as she hoped it would, though. Samantha felt far too underpowered to venture out into the world without getting killed a thousand times along the way, likely on her first encounter with a Radstag.
A lot of her problems with open-world games is that she’s encouraged to explore, but she might not have the capabilities to actually survive in the places she ends up. That was a big part of why she bounced off Breath of the Wild as well. If she’s not strong enough to fight the enemies in a certain place, she’d rather not have to find that out the hard way.
From the looks of things, that problem exists for her in Fallout as well. The plethora of things to do aren’t as exciting when she feels like she won’t be able to get through them because she hasn’t found the right perks, and she doesn’t want to spend a lot of time wandering and getting killed by pesky radscorpions. She’s sure she’d get invested if she played it, and she’s always looked up top Fallout 4 mods – but she just hasn’t gotten around to it.
The good news is, she’s found a new love in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Her impressions of Cyberpunk 2077 are largely positive, but it hasn’t taken over her life quite like Skyrim, and she doesn’t see any other single-player games on the horizon taking its place either.
So far, Starfield looks like an amalgamation of what Bethesda does best. The VATS-esque slow motion mechanics from Fallout, the brutal combat from Daggerfall, the immersive worlds of Skyrim and the sci-fi elements of Fallout, perhaps even the sandbox nature of Morrowind and Fallout 2. These are all things that, if done right and in the right amounts, can certainly win her over. If she likes what she sees at E3 2020, she just might dive in and test out the Starfield release date.
You can follow Samantha Roberts on Twitter.
