Game Review: A Week with Starfield – a great Sci-Fi RPG with almost zero accessibility features (PlayStation 5 Pro)
Hello, dear readers! My name is Victor, and I am a blind gaming, technology, and entertainment journalist. I am also an ambassador for universal design and an accessibility consultant.
Now that Starfield has been released on PlayStation 5, we received access to the updated version of the game, which includes post-launch improvements such as the Free Lanes update and the Terran Armada expansion. Over the last week we spent almost 30 hours with Starfield on our PS5 Pro, revisiting the experience in its current form.
In case you don’t know already, Starfield is the first new universe in over 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series. In Starfield, a next-generation role-playing game set among the stars, players will get to create a unique character and embark on an epic journey to answer humanity’s greatest mystery. Their treks into the starfield are driven by unparalleled freedom of exploration, insane interactivity with characters, environments, and items, as well as revolutionary customization options.
Before moving forward with this article, I need to address the 100-ton elephant in the room. Although we are now looking at a more complete and updated version of the game on PlayStation 5, Starfield still has very limited accessibility features. Beyond basic text size options, there are no meaningful tools to support blind or visually impaired players, and very little consideration for other disability groups.
Even more infuriating is the fact that although disabled and impaired individuals asked for transparency on this subject, Bethesda had not as of yet provided a comprehensive accessibility statement although three years have passed since the original release. This continues to feel disappointing and leaves many players excluded from one of the most ambitious releases in recent years.
I know for a fact that Bethesda has talented developers who care about accessibility, and although I wasn’t expecting to be able to play this game on my own since I am totally blind, it came as a shock that most impaired and disabled individuals were also left out and their access to the experience in Starfield was denied.
As I said many times before, everyone should start following some guidelines when it comes to accessibility. For the blind, we need text-to-speech technology, narration, audio cues, navigation assist and audio descriptions.
For visually impaired players, we need adaptive text sizes for all elements including the user interface and subtitles, not only fonts but also colors, outlines and backgrounds.
For hearing impaired or totally deaf individuals, subtitles with haptics and directional arrows are essential to know who speaks or where the sound is coming from.
People with cognitive disabilities also need the ability to easily solve or skip a puzzle, ways to associate actions with colors and other similar features.
Last, but definitely not least, players with limited mobility should be able to play the game with minimal button input, with toggles and one-touch actions. Starfield has absolutely nothing from what I mentioned above.
Now, with all this off my chest, I can happily report that if you are not impaired or disabled, Starfield should prove to be a sprawling epic sci-fi adventure the likes of which you’ve never played before. On PlayStation 5, the experience remains the same at its core, with the addition of updates and expansions that expand the overall content and improve certain aspects of traversal and gameplay flow.
There’s absolutely no doubt that Starfield is a massive sci-fi RPG that offers a brand new universe to explore that’s larger, more complex, and more detailed than anything else we saw until now from Bethesda Game Studios.
Despite being disappointed with the lack of accessibility, Alina embarked on her adventures through the stars with her enthusiasm. She loves the Mass Effect Trilogy and she also spent a few hundred hours with the Fallout games from Bethesda, so she felt right at home after booting up Starfield on PlayStation 5.
We start our adventure as a nameless miner working in space for a corporation and after discovering and touching a mysterious artifact, we get to create our character having the option to choose from a lot of presets or even to fully customize it. After that, we are recruited by Constellation, an elusive organization that searches all around the universe for similar artifacts and by joining their ranks we get to travel a lot, do research on many planets, choose to fight or flee from space pirates, meet a lot of nice people and also some that aren’t so friendly, kill a bunch of them and maybe persuade others to get out of our way.
So as the classic Star Trek introduction goes, our mission is to discover strange new worlds, new civilizations and of course, to go where no one has gone before.
Yes, Starfield plays like Fallout in space, but it is much more than that. The game is bigger, better, more complex and has the benefit of improved systems and additional content on PlayStation 5, including the Free Lanes update which allows more seamless traversal between planets within a system, reducing loading interruptions and improving the overall flow of exploration.
Sadly, the fact that the main character does not have a recorded voice is still noticeable and can feel less immersive in certain moments. This remains unchanged across all platforms, including PS5.
In our time with the game on PlayStation 5, Alina did a lot of different missions, but as always she wanted to concentrate on the main story. Her objective to find other pieces of the artifact took her to different planets and introduced her to the multiple systems of the game such as creating ships, recruiting crews, joining different factions, creating and maintaining outposts, space exploration, weapon customization and different interactions with important companions.
Starfield has the cleanest and most polished presentation of any Bethesda title. The graphics are stunning at times, the music is immersive and the voice acting is superb. I was very impressed with the sound design as almost every interaction in the game has a specific sound effect attached, so the absence of accessible design is even more baffling.
On PlayStation 5 Pro, Starfield benefits from enhanced graphics with higher resolution modes and more stable performance that make the universe look sharper and run smoother than on the base PS5.
Time in Starfield flies quickly. Between the main Constellation mission, faction missions, crafting, customization, ship and outpost building, surveying planets and their exploration, things can easily become overwhelming. From time to time you just need to go off the beaten path and enjoy the scenery offered by wandering to distant star systems.
We know that Alina just scratched the surface with her initial time with the game but I am happy that she loves it and will return every day for the foreseeable future to continue her adventure into the starfield.
Yes, it is truly sad and disappointing that impaired and disabled players are not allowed to take to the stars in Starfield and there’s no excuse for that. But if you don’t need accessibility options in order to have a good experience, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much content and depth Starfield offers, especially now with its updated version on PlayStation 5.
I hope that Starfield will receive some accessibility updates in the future as I believe that with the regular development completed Bethesda should assign some time and resources to fix this glaring oversight. Such an ambitious project should be playable by as many gamers as possible and I think this can be achieved only by making it accessible.
As a closing FYI, latest Gaming Industry reports estimate that over 460,000,000 gamers in the world identify as impaired or disabled in one way or another. If you create games or experiences that don’t include accessibility features you exclude them from your business and lose potential customers. Disability happens when accessibility doesn’t, so make sure you do the right thing and create accessible experiences for all.
Starfield is available now on PlayStation 5, alongside Xbox Series X|S and PC, with updated content including the Free Lanes update and the Terran Armada expansion.
Review copy provided by Bethesda Nordic.
Victor Dima
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