Our Starfield review is going to be a little late

You may have heard a little game called Starfield is coming out soon, and that its review embargo is due to lift later this week. Alas, RPS' review won't be among them, as we haven't received code yet.

I'm not gonna lie. This isn't the first time RPS have been in this situation regarding review code. After all, no game developer or publisher is obliged to provide us with a copy of their game ahead of release, and there have been a couple of times even since I took over editorship of the Treehouse two years ago where we've found ourselves similarly short of code while other outlets received them yonks ago. But given the high profile nature of Starfield's release, it's important that we're upfront with you, our readers, about what this means for our coverage of it.

Like our friends at Eurogamer, RPS weren't included in the initial round of review codes that went out to other UK outlets. This batch went out around two weeks ago, and we've spent the better part of that time trying to rectify things with Bethesda.

Unfortunately at time of writing, we've still yet to receive code from them. I've been told by Bethesda we can expect it "soon", which I hope means in the next day or so. But given that, by their own admission, Starfield is both "irresponsibly large" and "doesn't even really get going" until after the main quest 130 hours in, there's simply no possible way we'd be able to bring you our usual in-depth critique of the game in time for the embargo.

As a result, our review will be arriving a little later than everyone else's. The plan is still to publish it as soon as we're able to do so, but we're also going to take our time with it and give it the attention it deserves. In the meantime, the rest of the team will (hopefully) be writing about Starfield in much the same way as we did for Baldur's Gate 3, bringing you shorter and more observational posts about the things we've encountered during our playthroughs while our reviewer gets on with the business of playing the damn thing.

(And if the thought of reading yet more Starfield posts has just made you groan inwardly with cries of "Spam!" and "Hype!" on the tip of your tongue, please try to allay those fears with the thought of this instead: another thing I'd like to do this month is create a space on the site to celebrate other great space games we've enjoyed over the years as well - just to remind you that, yes, Starfield isn't the be all and end all when it comes to epic, galactic space operas, so please do keep your eyes peeled for that over the coming weeks).

The same applies to our guides coverage. You'll still see some guides from us on launch day, as we've been working with a couple of US-based freelancers who have had much more readily available access to the game than we've had here in the UK, but the bulk of our usual expert advice will also be arriving later than planned, once we've had a chance to properly put it through its paces.

I wish things had turned out differently for what's arguably one of the biggest PC games of the year, but there you have it. Hopefully you'll join us for the journey ahead, even if we're a little slow to get off the ground.