After a promising showcase in the aftermath of the Xbox Games Showcase, fans will be hoping to see an increased level of attention to detail in terms of Starfield's combat will operate. While Bethesda was sure to dive deep into each aspect of what the upcoming title will have to offer, there are still quite a few mechanics and features that fans will be hoping to see clarified in the lead-up to its release.
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Given the high levels of polish and detail within other regions such as traversal within ships, character creation with personality traits, and exploration, it is highly likely that developers at Bethesda have done the same with Starfield's combat.
As featured during the Starfield Direct showcase, players will be able to get up close and personal with enemies through melee via fists, or with weapons such as knives. The character can be seen sprinting through barrages of gunfire closing the distance to quickly finish them off. Despite this being pleasing to see as it confirms the presence of melee combat, this sequence was very brief and did not show anything more to suggest there is more to this other than one quick attack.
Considering the fact that developers have implemented both the first and third-person camera perspectives, it may be difficult to completely implement high levels of realistic combat animations for both, but this is especially important for third-person. If Starfield can manage to ensure that combat between players and enemies is realistic in the sense of a back-and-forth motion rather than a simple one-hit melee kill, it will leave room for some amazing encounters during gameplay.
When taking Starfield's supposed length and vastness into account, especially as an open-world RPG, many fans will expect the title's content such as exploration, loot, skills, and much more to coincide with these factors. With Capcom's Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen, players have many options to choose from, as each vocation both basic and advanced maintains its own unique abilities and also basic and advanced skills to unlock, promoting replayability and introducing variety.
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If Starfield can achieve anything close to what Capcom provided within this region, then it will serve best on this occasion considering the anticipated large scale and scope of the game. Developers acknowledging elements as such will only help to keep players engaged, giving them new and unique ways to play. Whilst it is evident that there will be ways to progress base skills to their maximum level in Starfield, this implementation would work best by introducing different stats or different skills entirely depending on which character background or traits players decide to choose.
One of the most important aspects of any game regardless of its genre, is the manner in the way the AI functions. This element is crucial to factors such as players' immersion and ensuring that there is a challenge to their experience. Given the nature of RPG titles and the aspects of leveling up characters to become far more formidable, enemies must be able to match up with these levels not only by number but by intelligence.
This stands as a big complaint for many games and is much more egregious whenever it comes down to an RPG, which is evident in CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077. While the gameplay showcased did not reveal any red flags within this aspect, it is important that Bethesda adheres to keeping players challenged and left strategizing around smarter foes.
In the aforementioned Cyberpunk 2077 or other famous open-world experiences such as Red Dead Redemption 2, contain a major gameplay pacing issue after encounters with enemies or stumbling upon items during exploration. Rather than automatically collect items, players will have to go to each of the slain enemies to loot them for any useful items they may need. While Cyberpunk 2077 is somewhat manageable, Red Dead Redemption 2 forces players to sit through the animation of Arthur Morgan or John Marston looting bodies on the ground.
Using titles such as Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series as a template, Starfield will most certainly benefit from speeding up the looting process, by allowing players to quickly loot items just by walking over them or giving them a prompt to pick up all items at once. This may not be a prominent concern and is unlikely to be implemented given the showcase of how loot operates during the showcase, but developers should consider this specifically for quality-of-life elements and items such as ammunition or cash from enemies as it can be an instrumental factor in maintaining the pace of gameplay.
While the two titles will be vastly different in their experiences narratively and their elements in the aspect of genres, Starfield could take inspiration from The Last of Us series with one specific detail within combat. Depending on how many enemies players will have defeated with it often coming down to there being one left, they will beg either Joel or Ellie for survival, but players will have no choice but to finish them off or be thrust right back into combat.
In Starfield, with the presence of raiding and boarding enemy ships, the addition of enemies surrendering would be a perfect addition in the aspect of realism and immersion. Bethesda would have the opportunity to take this a step further than any other title and notably The Last of Us has ever done, giving players the choice to let them live or execute them.
Starfield releases on 6th September on Xbox Series X/S and PC.
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