Starfield’s first 30 minutes really reminds me of the first Mass Effect

It’s all mysterious artefacts, hallucinations, and the intrigue of ancient space history out here.

Image credit:Bioware/Bethesda

Starfield has been quite quiet on the narrative front – we’ve seen a lot of information about the game’s skills, planets, setting, and general aesthetic, but from the narrative side of things, Bethesda has been fairly tight-lipped.

In a dedicated theatre tucked into the corner of Gamescom, though, Bethesda and Microsoft have started showing off more about the game. And rightly so, because we’re getting pretty close to launch. Here, Todd Howard took to the stage to thank the gathered media and influencer crowd for their support, before showing off about 30 minutes of footage from the start of the game.

This cityscape would not look out of place in BioWare’s opus. |Image credit:Bethesda

So, Starfield starts with you in a special space mine. A veteran miner, constantly referring to you as ‘Dusty’, tasks you with extracting raw minerals with a nice, heavy-duty space laser. So far, so sci-fi. But a ping from deeper in the moon’s mine shaft sets alarm bells ringing for the mining corp., and you tag along to investigate.

Though Starfield is a brand new universe and setting from Bethesda, its NASA-infused space fantasy harkens back to the studio’s roots.Watch on YouTube

It turns out, this little moon is housing something quite special. It’s some sort of alien artefact, and because you’re the first one to put your hands on it (rookie error) you’re the one blessed with the visions it contains. Fast-forward a bit, and you need to ferry this rock – and yourself, now that you’re a chosen one – to the HQ of Constellation… the only people in the system that might, one day, be able to figure out what’s going on with you. It’s not just me, right? That really is very Mass Effect? Remember the start of the first game, where (pre-Specter status) you go to Eden Prime to recover an unearthed Prothean beacon. But, upon touching said beacon, you’re beset with visions of war, and death, and the end of the universe and everything within it.

The moment where Shepard touches the Prothean beacon is the defining event of the Mass Effect saga. |Image credit:BioWare

Both games use this as a space macguffin, basically – giving you special status and a reason to be ferried from planet to planet and see the world. Where Mass Effect has the framework of making you a space fascist, though, Starfield is more open-ended. I only saw the first 30 minutes of the RPG at Gamescom (and I am not currently reviewing it) so I can’t speak to how much of a ‘set up and leave the main quest’ vibe this will be. You can’t do that in Mass Effect, and your relationship with the Protheans and antagonist Saren Arterius come to define the first 60-or-so hours of the experience.

Starfield propels the player character into their grand space adventure via similar means: a weird space artefact that makes you float for a bit.

As it goes, I like this narrative framework. It’s suitably cooky and sci-fi, and not – honestly – what I was expecting from the more NASA-punk, grounded fantasy that Starfield wanted to endow. But it’s full of intrigue, and it has genuinely primed my curiosity for the full launch of the game – just a few weeks away in general access, now.

It’s a good time to be a fan of space RPGs, it feels.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition

PS4 , Xbox One , PC

Starfield

Xbox Series X/S , PC

Sign in and unlock a world of features