In hindsight, Starfield wasn’t all that great. Even though we loved it at launch, as did a lot of outlets, it ultimately lacked staying power. Its core gameplay was fantastic, as were a couple of its narratives and their overarching themes. However, Starfield’s universe was filled with empty planets and its side content was almost all busywork. The game was as wide as a proverbial ocean, but as deep as a puddle. It tried to appeal to everyone, and was consequently forgotten about by most. Even though it had the potential to be something truly fantastic, Bethesda never capitalised on that. The developers never filled its worlds, expanded on its RPG elements, or added meaningful things to do when you weren’t engaging with its narrative. Star Wars Genesis, a free fan-created overhaul, does all three. It takes what was good about Starfield, gets rid of everything that wasn’t, and puts a Star Wars skin on it. The result is an experience that’s still Starfield at its core, but better in every conceivable way.
Star Wars Genesis isn’t simply a reskin of Starfield’s assets. It also just isn’t fan service for Disney’s floundering IP. Instead, the overhaul is effectively its own separate game. It uses Starfield as a base, and then expands on it. The mod collection still has the game’s fantastic core gameplay, which focuses heavily on shooting and flying around a giant universe. However, it nixes the unnecessary elements, and adds a couple of new ones. Obviously, the bulk of the mods in Star Wars Genesis transform Starfield into a Star Wars game. They rename all the title’s planets into one from the classic film series, re-model its weapons, ships and armour, and replace the OST. Most of the background text in Star Wars Genesis is written in Galactic Basic, and you’ll encounter bi-pedal alien NPCs (and can even play as one). There aren’t lightsabers in the mod collection yet, but you can fly the Millenium Falcon and shoot Mandalorians with a DL-44 blaster.
All of that is obviously impressive. So are Star Wars Genesis’ rebel and main questlines, which are Starfield’s rewritten to make sense in-galaxy, and the new cities you can explore. But the reskins and rewrites are all what you’d expect from any good Star Wars-themed mod. So they aren’t what makes Star Wars Genesis worth writing about. Instead, it’s how the overhaul fundamentally changes Starfield’s gameplay that makes it worth experiencing. The mod collection balances the game’s economy, makes every killable creature have a health pool that can be drained in a couple of blaster shots, knocks your health bar down to almost nothing, and nixes the defacto level locking of certain systems. Star Wars Genesis also ditches Starfield’s over-emphasis on crafting and base building, and ship customisation. These changes may seem minor, but they turn Starfield into an actual roleplaying game. As in a title where you pick a role for your character, and stick with it instead of min\maxxing your stats and trying to complete a handful of conflicting questlines. The blaster and armour you start Star Wars Genesis with are more-or-less as effective as ones you’ll find dozens of hours in. So you don’t have to worry about collecting loot, or finishing up storylines. You can play as an explorer, a drug smuggler, a bounty hunter, or even a cargo hauler. And you won’t be punished in game for your choice.
In hindsight, that was Starfield’s biggest problem. You couldn’t actually roleplay because you had to do narrative busywork to earn the resources needed for its fun content. That’s not the case in Star Wars Genesis, though. If you want to take down bandits on Tatooine, you can hop in your starter ship and do it with a basic blaster. If you want to live a peaceful life as a farmer, you don’t have to spend 10 hours as a soldier to scrape up the credits needed for a homestead. And if you’re an explorer, the overhaul adds things worth seeing on planets. It increases the number of randomly generated points of interest, and makes them a bit more detailed than they were in base Starfield. Regardless of your in-game profession, you’re still going to spend a lot of time hopping around the galaxy. But it’s actually fun to do that in Star Wars Genesis. You’ll have both an implied narrative reason to, and you’ll find actually interesting sites.
Star Wars Genesis isn’t perfect. It’s fan-made content, so you can expect to run into an occasional bug or area with poor technical performance. And at its core, it’s still Starfield, so you’re going to spend a lot of time running around on desolate planets. You’ll have an in-galaxy reason to, though, because the overhaul turns Bethesda’s title into an actual roleplaying game that takes more than two weeks to get bored of. So regardless of if you’re a fan of Star Wars, games with great combat, or good RPGs, it’s worth installing the mod collection. Star Wars Genesis lets you pick a role, explore the galaxy, and not worry about min\maxxing your gear. That all should’ve been possible in base Starfield, but at least fans finally implemented those features.
Star Wars Genesis is a free collection of mods for PC that requires the use of a third party installer, and you need to own both Starfield and Starfield: Shattered Space to play it. You can download it, and view install instructions, here.
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