Starfield revels in Bethesda’s legacy of item hoarding
If there’s one thing you can expect from people who play Bethesda games, it’s hoarding. I’m the kind of player who will pick up any resource I come across, regardless of need. Fortunately, ammunition has no weight value. In The Elder Scrolls 5: SkyrimIt was potions, armor, and all kinds of food. In StarfieldI’ve had a tendency to steal pens and other writing utensils from desks and scientific research stations, in addition to the usual suspects like food and health items.
It’s a problem at the beginning of these games, when players don’t have storage space for all this junk. And so it ends up on the floor of the spaceship, creating the kind of mess that has become iconic in Bethesda games. Some players focus purely on collecting one item or another; cheese wheels and cabbage are both popular items for hoarding Skyrim. Sometimes they are in one big pile, like the junk in mine Starfield ship – or in a dark, aesthetic cellar where wheels of cheese are artfully stacked or spread out across the floor. In Fallout 76Tying in with the start of the coronavirus pandemic, players hoarded toilet paper to stack neatly on shelves.
What makes Bethesda games so ripe for this kind of collecting is the sheer number of items players can pick up. It feels like there are thousands of different item models being used to fill the games’ worlds. Starfield seems to have more than ever, and largely just because of the atmosphere they create; other than in Fallout 4you can’t split items into Starfield for resources. There are so many things – beautiful, beautiful things – that are just there for the atmosphere. And to pick up. It creates a distinctly Bethesda feel, where you absolutely loot a room for no reason other than to have things, and then go back to your ship or house to dump everything on the floor.
What’s even more impressive is that all this mess is so lovingly rendered; the unique designs, lighting, and physics of them all basically require you to collect and hoard things. Then there’s the way the piles move as you trudge through them, both succulents and potatoes. I think a ship like this might stress some players out, but for me – and probably others too – this is exactly what I can expect when playing a Bethesda role-playing game.
Junk is basically a calling card for Bethesda games, and that’s great.