Today I am using one of the Blaugust prompts to not only plan ahead for my blog writing, but to talk about an upcoming game. The prompt is “What are you looking forward to the most over the course of the next year?” I have a hard time coming up with “the most” for any topic, so this will be about the next thing I’m most looking forward to, a slight distinction.

I’ve pre-loaded Starfield on my computer, and now I feel like one of those “open open” ad memes while I anxiously await the launch day. I know quite a few people will be playing it today 5 days early, having paid the extra $30 for the version with early access. While I’ve been looking forward to this game for a while now, I decided to be frugal and patient. If the other digital goodies had been attractive enough I might have gone for the deluxe version, but they weren’t a must-have for me. 

I have a lot of hope riding on what the developers have shared about Starfield. I’ve put hours and hours into games like No Man’s Sky and Empyrion because I love the space exploration, base building, ship customization aspects of those games. What they lack is purpose. I can only do the Robinson Protocol so many times… My hopes are pinned on Starfield having some goals, quests, purpose behind just scanning the universe for perfect beaches and sunsets. I spend a lot of time looking for the paradise planets in Empyrion, only to lose them when the servers get wiped because that game can’t/won’t do backward compatibility. 

It is hard not to fall into the hype cycle with a game that has this much potential. I know a lot of other gamers who are really hyped to play Starfield too, and yet we’re all bracing ourselves for potential disappointment. Be excited, but don’t be TOO excited… that’s hard to pull off. My biggest “wait-and-see” fear for the game is how the space combat will work. There are too many space fighting games that frustrate the heck out of me for many reasons. I hope this is one of the fun ones.

Moving on to future plans for my blogging. I haven’t delved deeply into a game in quite a while, so I’ve decided to focus on taking screen shots while I play through Starfield to build up a library of feature images for writing about the game. I plan to talk about each major aspect of the gameplay, quests, ships, exploration, bases, combat and crafting. That’s at least 6 posts, more than enough to cover a monthly posting cadence for the rest of the year. What I really hope I won’t be talking about is disappointment. Here’s to looking forward with hope and anticipation of some amazing gameplay and writing about it with the same enthusiasm I used to have writing about games in the early days of my blog. Full speed ahead!