Starfield’s character creator looks incredible, with sprinkles of Fallout: New Vegas and Oblivion, making it far more in-depth than Skyrim’s and Fallout 4’s options. That means we can make some truly unique builds to explore the galaxy with, rather than defaulting to safe, tried and tested formulas. But let’s be honest - we’re all gonna make a stealth archer again.
At first, maybe we’ll try something like a diplomatic bruiser or a thick-skulled travelling bounty hunter, taking on bandits with high-tech laser rifles using nothing but a club. But as fun as those builds might be, the nagging urge to put a silencer on a sniper and hide in the grass will overwhelm us.
There are so many reasons that the stealth archer meta prevails in Bethesda games, but the big one is that it lets you see everything on offer. If you try to be a hardened Dragonborn warrior in Skyrim, using heavy armour, shields, and spiked maces to cut through your enemies faster than Sheogorath goes through a cheese platter, you’ll excel in the Companions. But try bruising your way through stealth missions in the Thieves Guild or pulling off elaborate assassinations in the Dark Brotherhood when your toolkit consists of hammers and loud foghorns—you’ll end up in massive debt from all the bounties on your head, and you won’t even enjoy it.
A stealth archer, meanwhile, can just as easily capture forts during the civil war and slaughter werewolf hunters for the Companions, essentially giving you the ability to try every guild in one playthrough. It’s convenient, so of course we all do it. And what’s doubly convenient is that the best stealth archer builds can one-shot nearly every enemy, so why would you ever want to run up and mash the attack button with a blunt weapon?
Starfield is only going to exacerbate this since it’s so big. With 1,000 planets to explore, settlements to build, countless side quests, and all the factions to join, starting over is going to be even more difficult than it was in past Bethesda games. You can run a loud-mouthed fumbling merc that doesn’t know a thing about subtlety, but the second you sign up with a guild that requires a touch of stealth, you’re going to struggle. The solution is typically to avoid a jack-of-all-trades playthrough and leave it for your next character, but after god knows how many hours of charting the stars and leaving your mark, that next character is gonna take a while to get to. And that’s if you’re even remotely comfortable abandoning your progress which, let’s face it, most of us won’t be.
So, we make a stealth archer. We pump our levels into sneak, speech, lockpicking, pickpocketing, archery, alchemy, enchantment, and all the other useful skills needed to create a character that can take on the world, literally. But now we’re taking on 1,000 worlds, and I don’t know about you, but I’d like to stick to one gargantuan playthrough for the time being.