5 best Bethesda RPGs to play after Starfield

Starfield is Bethesda Game Studios' most ambitious project to date, setting a record development time among all their products. It makes several strides in tech aspects, from its procedural generation in some 1,000 planets to its photogrammetry textures with unprecedented detail. Ultimately, though, Starfield is a true-blue Bethesda role-playing game experience.

The game does not feature the best writing or combat in the industry, but it still nails the exploration loop that we know and love from the Skyrim days. With a world of content to explore and chew through, Starfield should take one many hours to beat all of its quests and manifolds more to fully experience it.

However, not even the longest single-player experience will last forever. If you have beaten all the Starfield quests or burned out from playing it for weeks and want a palette cleanser, there are several Bethesda Softworks products to keep you busy.

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Five Bethesda RPGs you should play after Starfield

1) Prey (2017)

Prey is one of the most underrated immersive sims of its era (Image via Bethesda Softworks)

Developed by Arkane Austin, Prey bears the clear impressions of Dishonored, arguably the studio's flagship product. Like the latter, it is an immersive sim with open, reactive levels that reward innovative approaches to solving the game's obstacles and puzzles.

Starfield does not have the design intentions of an immersive sim. It is, however, front-loaded with the signature Bethesda Game Studios role-playing game bits and bobs that you can pick up - from milk cartons to space rocks. Prey, however, takes similar miscellanea to form a cohesive gameplay where everything clicks.

While it is much smaller in scope than Starfield, the alt-history setting in Prey's rogue space station offers some well-written story beats and an alternative view into humanity's future in space.

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2) Fallout 4 (2015)

Fallout 4 features highly improved gunplay over its predecessors (Image via Bethesda Game Studios)

Set in the post-apocalyptic detritus of Boston in Massachusetts, Fallout 4 is Bethesda Game Studios' second and most ambitious Fallout game. It is also the last strictly single-player role-playing game they made before Starfield. If you like the latter's gameplay loop, Fallout 4 is easily the best game to cure the same itch.

Despite the decade-long gap between the two releases, one can still easily find the Starfield gameplay DNA in Fallout 4. With Fallout 3's attempt to bring the Fallout turn-based RPG combat into a modern three-dimensional space, its gunplay was clunky at best and unserviceable at worst.

With some help from id Sofware's Doom pedigree, Fallout 4 addresses this with good gunplay for its time. Thanks to the magic of modding, the game can be elevated further into areas of your preference. You can rectify some of the more controversial design choices Bethesda made with its roleplaying elements - including the gimped dialog prompts and voiced protagonist.

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3) Fallout New Vegas (2010)

Fallout New Vegas features a questline that involves sending a cult into space (Image via Nexusmods)

If you want the Bethesda experience with a greater focus on a well-written story, Fallout New Vegas is a must-play for all RPG fans. Made on the Fallout 3 engine, this game takes place in the Fallout version of the Nevada badlands, a still thriving Vegas strip, and the Hoover Dam.

Obsidian Studio built this game in a staggeringly low development time of 18 months. The natural result is a lack of polish that shows in its familiar Bethesda bugfest and its ham-fisted implementation of an iron sights mechanic. Fortunately, most, if not all, of its downsides can be addressed through mods today.

If you can get past the clunkiness, you will find some unparalleled world-building and quest-writing that revokes the spirit of the original InXile Fallout titles. The roleplaying opportunities, innovative perks, memorable characters, and a working Hardcore Mode make it the premium Fallout experience, especially with the JSawyer mod.

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4) Rage 2 (2019)

Rage 2 is an improvement over the original in many ways (Image via Bethesda Softworks)

Those who felt the combat improvements in Starfield fell short of their expectations should give Rage 2 a try. It is a far cry from the NASA-punk retrofuturism of Starfield, and its tone resonates more with the Borderlands series.

This similarity to Borderlands also stretches to its dogged focus on its fluid combat system. Rage 2 has a huge open world and attempts to fill its gaps with bits of bite-sized story beats and lore snacks, but the action-packed gunplay takes center stage.

It is no surprise that the gunplay is meaty and satisfying coming from id Software, and the game acknowledges this pillar by tying its RPG progression system exclusively into the combat.

The exploration around its run-and-gun action is populated with a basic crafting system and picking up feltrite. While not the familiar Bethesda gameplay loop, the exploration still feels serviceable thanks to robust vehicle combat mechanics.

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5) The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996)

Daggerfall can now be enjoyed on the Unity Engine's niceties (Image via Daggerfall Unity GitHub)

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is a very dated game by today's standards. It will run counter to a number of standard expectations you have out of a role-playing game in the current year. In fact, it is quite unlike the modern Elder Scrolls games either.

Predating Todd Howard's directorial influence on the series, Daggerfall lacks the distinct artistic identity of Morrowind or the accessibility of Skyrim. What it does have, however, is scale beyond imagination.

Just a reminder of how big Daggerfall’s map is. byu/TerribleGreatness inElderScrolls

If you liked the promise that the procedural generation aspects of Starfield represent from a technological standpoint, the absurd vastness of Daggerfall will tickle your fancy. By today's standards, a lot of Daggerfall's instance-based unique generated landscapes will feel boring, and its cities barren.

However, if you get through this dated exoskeleton, there is a world of entertainment to be had in this Ultima-inspired time capsule of arguably the 90's most ambitious open-world role-playing game.

It was also recently remade completely in the Unity engine, modernizing a lot of its rough patches and old-school kinks.