Starfield players desperate for improvements to "half-baked" bounty system

For many, Starfield was the Xbox console exclusive that fans have been waiting for. While not a perfect game, it delivers a unique sense of immersion and exploration that Bethesda fans know and love.

Released in September this year, Starfield was over 20 years in the making (according to Bethesda) and it allowed fans to live an intergalactic fantasy life exploring the stars and discovering what weird and wonderful secrets there are to be found.

Check out the emotional Starfield trailer below!

As with the typical RPG from Bethesda, you can spend countless hours in Starfield and according to ‘How Long to Beat’, you could easily take 150+ hours seeing the sci-fi RPG to completion. No doubt a large chunk of your time playing Starfield will be down to its main missions which will provide some of the most memorable moments, however, some could argue that its side activities stand out more than anything else.

Prior to its release, the idea of being a bounty hunter was very appealing, hunting down bad guys, earning some credits and gaining a feared reputation in the process letting the NPCs know that you’re not to be trifled with. Yet, it seems that some Starfield fans are not happy with its “half-baked” bounty system.

“How did Bethesda f**k up something as simple as bounty hunting?” asked Redditor StranglePants kicking off the discussion on the thread, garnering over 1.6K upvotes. This Redditor was hoping that the bounty system would be something similar to Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption series, but that appears not to be the case. The post does go into spoiler territory, as do the comments in the thread, so consider this to be a spoiler warning.

Players are basically annoyed that it's a simple hunt and shoot affair. You can't transport criminals back to where they belong. "The fact that your ship can even have a brig in it to house prisoners and can't be used at all shows how lazy they are," wrote one user, while another added, "I agree the bounty hunting on this game is lame. Why give us brigs on our ships if we can’t use them. It really feels like just another one of those things that got rushed to get the game out."

Hopefully, this is something devs will address further down the line. In our review of Starfield, we said: “The journey you embark on will dazzle you, and I have no doubt that players will be gripped for months, perhaps even years to come. Here is a playground where you can be whoever you want to be. I simply cannot stop thinking about Starfield and the wondrous secrets it still holds.”

Starfield is out now on PC and Xbox Series X|S. It’s also available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers at no extra cost.