Game Review: A Weekend with Starfield – A Great Sci-Fi RPG with Zero Accessibility features
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.
Last Wednesday, shortly after the embargo lifted for Bethesda’s highly anticipated sci-fi RPG Starfield, we received a review code for the game on Xbox Series X from the nice people at Bethesda Nordic. As a result, we spent almost 20 hours with Starfield in the last four days and this morning I picked up my trusty iPad Mini to prepare this spoiler-free article for you.
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 it is 2023 and most modern gaming experiences come with accessibility features that are at least trying to cater to the needs of impaired and disabled gamers, Starfield only has larger fonts, but not for subtitles or other UI elements. This is one of the most anticipated games of the year, an Xbox console exclusive and developed by a studio that pledged to bring accessible titles to the market.
Even more infuriating is the fact that although disabled and impaired individuals asked for transparency on this subject before the game’s availability, Bethesda ignored all questions and outright refused to put up an accessibility statement on Starfield. This is sad, disheartening and makes our community feel like we don’t matter for one of the most renowned studios in the gaming industry.
I know for a fact that Bethesda has in their ranks talented developers that really 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 epic adventures in Starfield was brutally and unceremoniously 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. Over the weekend we were encouraged to submit accessibility feedback for Starfield through the official channels on the Bethesda website and that’s exactly what I’m going to do and I also encourage everyone in our community to do the same. I hope to live the day when a game is delayed not only because the developers need to tinker with graphics, sound and fix bugs, but also because it does not meet the accessibility standards players are entitled to. Accessibility needs to be taken into consideration right from the incipient stage of a project, not added in after launch.
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.
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 trademark enthusiasm. She recently played 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. 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 mechanics and a polished presentation. The Xbox Series X version of Starfield runs OK, but it is limited to 30 FPS, it has a few bugs, frame drops, HDR seems to be nonexistent and the long loading times are absolutely unbearable.
Luckily, the gameplay is fun and rewarding, very similar to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. Sadly, the fact that the main character does not have a recorded voice is super disappointing and annoying because it distracts from the immersive storytelling. In this regard, Starfield feels dated. I understand this is a design decision, just like the inclusion of accessibility was, but with all due respect to the game director or whomever chose to have a main character without a voice, this is wrong.
In our almost 20 hours with the game, 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. During our adventure, we heard some instantly recognizable voices, especially for companions and other important characters. The sound effects for wildlife, weapons, ships and environments are also very realistic and detailed.
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 better Starfield is than any other Bethesda title before it. I hope that Starfield will receive some accessibility updates in the future as I believe that with the regular development completed Bethesda can 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 almost 450,000,000 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. Reach out to disabled accessibility consultants and ensure that you create a better tomorrow for everyone!
Starfield officially launches on Xbox Series X|S and PC on September 6 and will be available day one with Game Pass.
Review copy provided by Bethesda Nordic
Victor Dima
