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

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.

A bit of exposition, a whistlestop tour of the character creator, and a skirmish with some gnarly space pirates later, and you’re off on your first proper journey – all from the cockpit of your classic space-fairing ship. But as the stakes started to ramp up and everything started to take on that ‘first steps into a new world’ feeling, there’s one other game I couldn’t get out of my head: Mass Effect.

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.

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.

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.

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.