We Need To Talk About Starfield’s New Game+ Choice, Spoiler Free

Alright, I’ve had enough. In all our reviews we had to dance around what Starfield does with New Game+, even though it is really really important. The problem is that this has led to a lot of conflicting advice from reviewers and creators who have already done it about whether or not to rush the main quest and get there ASAP, which is what a lot of people are saying. But I’d do the opposite, and “max out” your first playthrough before considering it.

Why? What’s going on here? We have to talk about it, but I am going to do so in a way that avoids any story spoilers, despite how tied into the story NG+ is. All I will say is that NG+ is explained by a part of the storyline, but the logistics of what that means is more complicated. And I have to say, despite my general love for Starfield, I do not like how this was handled. If you truly want to know nothing about NG+, even conceptually, don’t read this, but I will not be spoiling the actual ending of the game.

So, the first order of business is what you keep and what you lose.

You keep:

• Your level
• Your skills
• Your abilities

You lose:

• All weapons and armor
• All materials and credits
• All bases and ships, custom or otherwise
• All your exploration % on planets
• All questlines reset

That’s a huge sacrifice, so why would you do it at all? As content creators are hinting at, there are some bonuses you get on NG+. Without getting into specifics, you get two “items.” I will not say what these items are, but they are cool, admittedly. They won’t be useful for all that long, though. You also get some new dialogue options that will sometimes help skip checks or occasionally quest steps. Most of the time they do nothing. There’s also one more somewhat minor thing, but it’s a little too spoilery to list here.

However, as neat as the above might be, I do not believe it is worth rushing your first playthrough to get there. Why? A few reasons.

First, if you rush only the main quest to reach the end, you will not experience any of the outcomes of the faction or side quests in the game, of which there are many. So if you start NG+, a place where, like a new save file, you can make different choices, you will have no frame of reference for what a different choice even is for anything except the main quest itself.

Second, skipping all side content and exploration and barreling through the main quest only is…a very crappy way to play Starfield. It sucks to hamstring yourself by resisting the urge to explore or do loads of quests you’ll find in the world based on the advice of “trust me bro, NG+ is worth it.” In my estimation, no, it is not. Not if it involves bum rushing the campaign.

My advice is to “max” the game as much as you can, then once you start running dry, then maybe you run it back with NG+. This is what I did after hour 80 or so, as back at around hour 50, I did do NG+, and did not enjoy the fact that all my stuff was wiped, in addition to a huge list of quests I was going to get to later. So while I “saw” the first few hours of NG+ and the changes it brings, I eventually reverted back to an old, pre-NG+…