Starfield has gone Gold
We got news from Bethesda that their newest RPG is ready to be preloaded on PC and Xbox.
From what I found out, it looks like Starfield has gone gold, which means that they have officially completed development on the game. Basically the game has been certified by all the publishers and folks responsible for letting a game get sold to consumers.
It’s really just a fancy way of saying that the game is going to launch soon!
And so with that news, Bethesda announced that the game can now be pre-loaded ahead of the launch. Xbox users can preload the game on August 17, while PC players will have to wait just a little bit longer, August 30, before they can download Starfield before its September 6 launch.
What’s the deal with pre-loading?
Do you remember those days when you had to call up GameStop and ask them to put a physical game on hold for you in time for launch.
You probably might not, unless you’ve been gaming since the days of Atari and the NES. But then again, it was roughly 10 years ago when I walked into my nearest video game store to pick up my copy of Skyrim, so the practice might not be too long gone.
But these days, a lot of video games are now played digitally without the use of any physical disks or cartridges. As long as you have an internet connection, you can pretty much download a video game whenever you feel like it.
The problem with digital downloads is that when a game launches, a lot of hyped up people are going to jump online and buy the game on day one. Usually ends up happening. Is that servers get congested with all the users trying to download, and the end result is waiting in a very long span of time before you get to play your game.
In a way, it’s very much like having to wait in line to buy something at GameStop on launch day.
Preloading a game gives you the convenience of installing the game in advance before it’s launch date, thus, saving you the long wait of letting a game download take forever on launch day. I guess you could say skips the line.
Is is worth pre-ordering Starfield?
If you were to ask 20-year old me that question, I would have responded with an immediate yes. When Skyrim was coming out back in 2011, I was on a huge hype train with that game, going so far as to pre-order the collector’s edition of the game; that is, the one that came in a big box, sported an artbook, a behind the scenes DVD, and a plastic figurine of Alduin, the World-Eater.
Looking back at this decision, I realized that I let myself be blinded by my love for the series so much, that I was willing to pay $150 for a Collectors Edition that:
- Shipped with no DLC/Season Pass
- Has an artbook whose concept art is free to everyone who Googles for it
- Sports a DVD whose content is now on YouTube in some form
- Has a stylish map that can be found in Google Images
- Has a cool dragon statue that now collects dust in storage.
Now that I’m older, and perhaps a little bit wiser, I’ve begun to place a lot more value in what I spend money on, and more importantly, I’ve tried my best to keep my hype under control. The last thing I want to do is to be disappointed the way many players were when they played Fallout 76 or Cyberpunk 2077 on launch day.
As excited as I am about playing a new game from Bethesda, I’m currently on the fence right now about it. Let’s not forget that Fallout 76 had a rough launch and while Fallout 4 was a lot of fun, it wasn’t quite the role playing game that people thought it was going to be.
With all of that said, should you play Starfield on launch day? That choice is yours to make. Don’t let me tell you how you should act, but also don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
From what I gathered from the official news from Starfield the game seems as though it will be like “Skyrim in space”.
The game has supposedly over 1,000 planets that could be explored, so if the game is truly as good as people make it out to be, it sounds like we’re going to have a very long game on our hands.
Ironically enough, I am currently in the middle of playing once again a modded Skyrim. I’ve been spending a couple of weeks installing new mods to try out and there’s a good chance that when Starfield launches I might just play through some Skyrim before I decide to take to the stars myself.
What about you? Are you excited for Starfield? Or are you cautiously optimistic about the game? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
Until next time, thanks for reading, have fun, and happy gaming!
~ Ken