Starfield’s New Game+, Should You Rush Story?

Starfield’s New Game+ feature is something I fully expected to cause a lot of friction among reviewers and content creators who got early access review copies. Players are just now getting to the point where this topic is coming up and bubbling over. To avoid end game story spoilers, we were unable to explain New Game+ fully on launch. Due to this, you’ll see many reviews that recommend rushing through the main quest as quickly as possible, to get to New Game+, and then worry about side quests, faction quests, etc. I don’t necessarily think you should rush through the story, but if you plan to play New Game+ and are a completionist, like me, there are a few things you should know.

Of course, learning about the end game, you will inevitably run in to story spoilers, which is why most are avoiding the topic. I’m going to try and explain what’s going on, why you should be aware of New Game+ and why so many people are advocating to rush the main campaign. I’ll try to do this with as little story spoilers as possible, but because of how New Game+ is tied to the story, it will potentially expose some abstract concepts.

So if you’d rather go completely blind, avoid this article. However, you probably wouldn’t be here if you weren’t curious or worried about your first time experience in Starfield.

What Happens in New Game+?

In New Game+, you will keep your level, skills, and any powers. However, and here’s the part that stings, you lose all your weapons, armor, apparel outfits, resources, credits, ships, companion progress, planet exploration progress, research progress and all your quests will reset. *whew* That’s A LOT. As someone who likes to complete everything, this was a huge hit. In fact, I was collecting apparel outfits to make a video and those were stripped away from me.

The good news is that the decision to start New Game+ is very clear at the end of the story. You’ll be given a choice to continue your main playthrough or start again. Either decision you make, I would recommend keeping a save of your original playthrough on your ship, so you can return back if you want to. Make sure you create a NEW SAVE instead of Auto-save or Quicksave. That way it will be a separate line when you go to load it up again and won’t be overwritten by your current progress.

There’s a huge down side to how Bethesda has set up New Game+ in Starfield. As a space exploration RPG where you are encouraged to gather resources and data about the world, removing that progress feels bad. Especially in a game where you can spend days building huge outposts and custom spaceships.

We now know that there is even New Game+2, +3, etc… So, would you lose everything again to chase potential outcomes? If I was in charge, I would have at least set up the saves so you could easily switch between them to work on different story lines, custom builds, etc.

However, if you aren’t interested in different outcomes or seeing other faction quest lines, there is no need to rush into or even start New Game+. NG+ is not harder nor presents a new challenge that you haven’t seen. So if you enjoy collecting, ship building, and outpost building, just stay in one playthrough and don’t even worry about it!

Fortunately, this doesn’t discourage me from playing, but I will probably stay in New Game+ for a while.