Starfield design director says it's Bethesda's "best game" in a "lot of ways"

Love it or hate it, Starfield is an ambitious project for Bethesda, and its game director feels that Starfield is Bethesda's "best game" in "a lot of ways."

Starfield design director says it's Bethesda's best game in a lot of ways
Tom West

Tom West

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It's been over a year since we first began collecting the Starfield achievements, and despite it making it onto our list of the best Game Pass games and earning an 83 Metacritic score, many players didn't enjoy Bethesda's latest game. However, for design director Emil Pagliarulo, Starfield is Bethesda's "best game" in "a lot of ways."

Starfield's Shattered Space expansion has just launched to middling reviews

There was a huge amount of hype for Starfield during the lead-up to its launch last year, with many of us eagerly waiting to see what Bethesda would offer with its first new IP in over 25 years. While it has earned the title of Bethesda's "biggest" game launch of all time, and critic reviews were generally positive — we said it "seems to have delivered what it promised" in our Starfield review — the reception from players was mixed. For the game's director Emil Pagliarulo (via GamesRadar), however, it's Bethesda's "best game" in many ways.

"I think in a lot of ways, Starfield is the hardest thing Bethesda has ever done," Pagliarulo said. "We pushed ourselves to make something totally different. To just jam into an Xbox the biggest, richest space simulation RPG anyone could imagine. That we pulled it off makes Starfield something of a technical marvel. It's also, in a lot of ways, the best game we've ever made. But for us, most importantly, Starfield has its own unique personality, and now sits right next to Fallout and Elder Scrolls."

Similar to the base game's launch last year, Starfield's Shattered Space expansion has been met with a lackluster response from players. It's the game's first expansion, launching on Xbox Series X|S and PC earlier this week and taking us to House Va'ruun's homeworld of Va'ruun'kai to face a new cosmic threat, which doesn't seem to have gone over well with players.

Over on Steam, Shattered Space currently sits with a "Mostly Negative" player rating from over 1,900 player reviews, with many calling it "boring" and disliking the lack of content included with it. Even the more positive reviews are middling, or go on to call the expansion "Neither good nor bad."

As it stands, it looks like many players feel that Shattered Space is more of the same. If you enjoyed the base game you'll likely have a reasonable time with the expansion, but players who didn't take to Starfield initially might not find a reason to return to the Xbox RPG.
Written by Tom West
Tom has been playing video games since he was old enough to hold a controller, experimenting with a number of systems until he eventually fell in love with Xbox. With a passion for the platform, he decided to make a career out of it, and now happily spends his days writing about that which he loves. If he’s not hunting for Xbox achievements, you’ll likely find him somewhere in The Elder Scrolls Online or fighting for survival in Battlefield.
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