Jack Wagner, Staff

After years of anticipation, beginning back in 2018 with its announcement at E3, Bethesda Game Studios grand space Role Playing Game Starfield has launched to an auspicious start.

The game was released on Sept. 6, though players who pre-ordered the standard edition or the X-box game pass got to experience early access starting on Sept. 1. The game rocketed to over 6 million players worldwide within the first two days of release, according to an announcement made by Bethesda on X.

This is a successful start, but it does not reveal how many players bought the game and how many are simply trying it out using their game pass. For context, Skyrim, one of Bethesda’s biggest hits, sold 3.4 million copies within 2 days, and another major title, Fallout 4, sold 1.2 million copies on the platform steam the day after it was released. If even half of Starfield’s players bought their own copy, it is sitting among lofty company.

Reception among critics has been largely positive, with the game landing a solid 7/10 from IGN, an 87% from metacritic, many claiming that while the game isn’t as groundbreaking as the hype set it up to be, it is still a very good game with solid gameplay and impressive graphics. Audience reactions, however, have been much more varied.

Shortly after its release, the game experienced negative reviews on the public side of Metacritic, with a large number of 0 and 1 out of 10 reviews by angry players. Some users are expressing anger at the game for being an Xbox exclusive, while others refer to it as a “joke,” “outdated,” and a “loading-menu simulator”. The game dipped incredibly low early on, but after a counter-bomb movement by fans, it currently sits at a 5.6 average score.

Some players grew angry for gameplay-unrelated reasons. In the large character creation menu, one field allows a player to choose their pronouns, including “they/them” as an option. One streamer, HeelvsBabyface, who has 350 thousand subscribers on YouTube, went viral after an explicit rant when he came across the pronoun menu. Others, such as Dr. Disrespect, complained about developers making the game “political” by including the option, and many who agree with them have mentioned almost refunding their game when they saw it.

On the other hand, many streamers and gamers have been mocking these sorts of extreme reactions. The streamer The Act Man called the issue “superfluous” since pronouns hadn’t even been brought up in his 8 hours of playtime, and another streamer, Hutch, said that the reactions were “wildly unhinged”, especially as it is a very small option on the menu.

Whatever their opinions, the game is still remarkably popular, experiencing 1 million players online concurrently on the day of release, so one way or another, it seems Bethesda has made an impression with their new title.