Starfield would be better as a TV series than a game

The knockout Fallout TV series encapsulates everything fans love about Bethesda’s Fallout series: dark humor, cartoonish violence, and great world exploration. What the Fallout TV show does great is something that Starfield desperately needs: reinvigorating interest in the franchise.

Starfield’s launch was a mixed bag, receiving considerable praise from critics, but a less than stellar response from fans. The result of this has been a hugely decreased Starfield player count that doesn’t look like it’s going to recover anytime soon. Starfield as a game has many fundamental flaws, including excessive loading screens, underbaked romance elements, and a rushed story to name a few.

So, if Starfield doesn’t work as a game, could it work as a TV series? And could that TV series rescue Starfield?

As Bethesda’s newest IP in years, there are a ton of themes and storylines that a Starfield TV show could explore in their rich universe of unexplored ideas:

• The collapse of Earth
• The formation of Constellation
• The Colony War
• The Serpent’s Crusade
• The hunt for the Artifacts

Any one of these, or several of these, could easily work as an anthology series, particularly when you throw in the complexity of Starfield’s multiverse. Starfield’s story already includes a moment where a future/multiverse version of a character directly and deliberately causes the destruction of the Earth, but the reason as to why is never explored.

A TV series could easily take place on Earth, the Moon, and Mars just as the first Artifact is discovered, contact is made with the Starborn, and a character grapples with the morality of destroying the Earth for the perceived “benefit” of humanity.

Bethesda has long posed the big question of “why are we all here?” Sadly, Starfield didn’t do much to answer that question, but an anthology that focuses on a street urchin growing up in Neon, a United Colonies soldier and a Freestar Collective Ranger coming to terms with their differing ideals, and a Crimson Fleet pirate battling with morality in a galaxy that is hostile towards them could easily fill a season or two.

Perhaps the Starborn and the Unity could form a foundation of the story, with one character meeting several different versions of the same person. If nothing else, it would be great to know what the point of being Starborn truly is, and what greater purpose those who transcend to another universe ought to be working towards, rather than trying to control the universe as The Hunter and The Emissary aim to do.

The Settled Systems offers a diverse range of characters, planets, and locations that could easily explore the question Bethesda originally posed with their question during an Into the Starfield video. 

And the thing is, a Starfield TV series could emulate what is fundamentally brilliant about Bethesda games: side quests, for, as The Ghoul put it in the Fallout TV series, “Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time.”

But there’s a far more important question to be answered: would Starfield ever get a TV adaptation?

Prior to Starfield’s launch, a live action trailer for Starfield showed what a TV series could look like. The short trailer featured an explorer in full Constellation-garb exploring a desert planet, whereupon they discover an Artifact after a brief confrontation with pirates in space. 

Unfortunately, it seems that the live action trailer is as far as a Starfield TV series may get. 

According to an IGN interview with Todd Howard, Starfield won’t get a TV show, for now at least. When asked if other Bethesda properties would get an adaptation similar to Fallout, Howard responded:

“I don’t know. There’s nothing in the works. Everybody asks, like, about Elder Scrolls, and I keep saying no also.’

So, while a Starfield TV show could be made in theory, it doesn’t look like anything is coming, which is a shame. A great Starfield TV show could reignite interest in the base game even if the first Starfield DLC doesn’t.

The Fallout TV series is proof of how a great TV adaptation can generate interest, with Fallout 76 reaching an all-time player high of 39,000 players on April 8, 2024 in the wake of the TV series, nearly 7000 more than the game’s original peak in May 2020. 

If you’re a fan of the Fallout TV show and want to dive into the game, see if you can meet the Fallout 4 PC requirements, and the Fallout 76 system requirements. 

Otherwise, make sure to follow Starfield Db on Google News for all the latest Starfield updates. Let us know what you think about a Starfield TV series over in the Starfield forum.