Bethesda honcho says Starfield is 'the best game we've ever made' in massive bout of amnesia

At time of writing, Starfield's Steam review score is at an unenviable, beige «Mixed» rating, with only 59% of its total reviews coming in positive. Its first DLC, Shattered Space, is faring even worse: It's currently sitting at «Mostly Negative,» with just 38% positive user reviews.

But Starfield design director Emil Pagliarulo isn't letting it dissuade him. In a recent chat with GamesRadar, Pagliarulo said that—though Starfield might not be «everyone's cup of tea»—he reckons «it's also, in a lot of ways, the best game we've ever made.»

This is, of course, a slightly wild thing for the studio that made Morrowind (its actual best game) and Skyrim (its most popular game by miles) to say, and I'm not convinced Pagliarulo didn't momentarily forget every game Bethesda made after Wayne Gretzky Hockey in order to come to that conclusion. Still, he does offer some justification for the judgement.

Per Pagliarulo, Starfield is also the «hardest thing Bethesda has ever done» in many ways. «We pushed ourselves to make something totally different. To just jam into an Xbox the biggest, richest space simulation RPG anyone could imagine.» That the studio—by its own assessment, at least—succeeded in doing that makes it one of its most ambitious and best games. «I'm not saying Starfield is better or worse than any other game,» says Pagliarulo, «just different in what we offer. It's that weird Bethesda blend of immersion, action, and RPG.»

Which, sure, kinda. On some level, I do salute Bethesda for trying its hand at something outside its usual wheelhouse with Starfield, and I wouldn't want to discourage the studio from trying that again, I just don't think the experiment was ultimately a success in this case.

Morrowind was a much more narratively ambitious game, Skyrim saw Bethesda distil its rambling open worlds into something that still has people hooked 13 years later. Even Fallout 4, far from the studio's most-loved game, was more successfully experimental with its building