Gene Roddenberry’s final frontier was videogames’ first. Since 1962 and Steve Russell’s Spacewar!, the medium has been unable to resist gazing up at the firmament, regularly situating itself amid the stars. At times when playing Bethesda’s longgestating RPG, it’s hard not to marvel at how far we’ve come in 61 years. From a single-screen shootout set within a planet’s Hill’s sphere to an entire explorable universe in which you can define your own place – whether it’s as a buccaneer or a botanist, a hunter of bounty, beasts or bugs (of which there are rather fewer than you’d expect from this particular developer).
The pitch is alluring; the potential enormous. But, as is customary for a Bethesda RPG, it begins in more humble surroundings. Working for a mining corporation named Argos – happily, you’re able to locate resources rather quicker than its present-day namesake – you spend your first moments lasering rocks for ore until you come into contact with a mysterious artefact that gives you a consciousness-expanding vision. Your experience sees you brought under the wing of Constellation, a group of explorers keen to investigate the secrets of the universe, their goals immediately aligned with the player’s own.
By which time you might already feel a mild pang of concern – the traditional Bethesda step-into-the-light moment sees you emerge from those murky caves onto a beige planet, set against a sky painted in, well, a marginally different shade of beige. Next to your emergence from Cyrodiil’s sewers or the moment you exit Vault 101 and the sun-blasted Capital Wasteland comes into view, it’s an underwhelming start. Having been generously gifted a craft, you’re
