My time with Starfield is about to end, likely for a good long while, if not permanently. After 160 hours, I have reached what I believe is the “true ending” of the game, which is not a narrative device, but simply where you almost have to arrive after playing that long.
I am level 98 right now. I’ll grind out those last two levels to hit 100, but the point is, getting to this place means that there is absolutely nothing in the game that poses a challenge to me anymore, even on Very Hard. There is nothing above that, so all the points I have sunk into combat and starships are tearing through every pirate base, every Ecliptic fleet, with little effort.
I have a host of legendary guns but I can even clean house with white and green ones. My fleet of ships simply flies around with autocannons melting things I can’t even see. The hardest the game gets now is maybe, occasionally, I’ll have to use a health pack.
The game’s proposed solution to this, New Game Plus, does not change this situation. Given that you keep all your skill points, you are just as strong as before as soon as you get your hands on a new weapon or two. And given that this is my third NG+ run, I have little desire to repeat all the quests for a fourth time now. I’ve found almost all of them at this point, maybe missing a handful I need to Google. I’ve seen the “goofy” NG+ starts, I don’t need to run the loop thirty times to see them all in person.
To be clear, I’m not complaining, simply describing what I believe is actually the end of the game based on the fact that there is no further way to increase difficulty. There’s not even a way to really start over outside of a brand new save file, given that you retain all that strength in each NG+ run.
There are really two alternate endgames I see, if you just accept the fact that combat is just not really a thing anymore once you’ve become an immortal space god.
Building Cool Stuff – This is playing around with the ship builder to make wild sci-fi creations, or building an elaborate base for…reasons. Again, whatever your base is going to produce is probably pretty pointless, if you’re trying to boost your already OP character (you can print a million XP this way), but you may just want to make something that looks neat, the way people have in the Fallout games with their settlement system.
Exploring – Again, while there’s little point raiding pirate bases at a certain stage, the game can shift into a sort of No Man’s Sky mode where you catalogue planets just for completionism’s sake, or you simply try to find some cool worlds with wacky creatures and pretty landscapes. I’ve done this myself, but at a certain point, it may not hold your interest for the long term.
In the future, we have Starfield’s Shattered Space expansion coming, but more importantly, this is going to be a game that has a ton of mods made for it like Skyrim before it. That’s already starting, but official mod support will arrive next year from Bethesda.
As for me, I may explore a bit more and trying to build a cool ship or two, but in terms of powering up my character and farming good loot, I’m just…done? There’s nothing left to do there? That part of the game probably ended about 25 levels ago, honestly.
I loved Starfield, as my 9.5/10 review indicated. I just wasn’t sure exactly how it would end with this NG+ loop in place, but I think I’ve found my own ending just the same.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
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