A full-on Star Wars RPG in the style of a Bethesda open-world game would be an absolute dream game for many – myself included – and a total conversion project for Starfield aims to make that dream come true. Star Wars Genesis is a massive collection of both existing mods and fresh creations that aims to recreate the galaxy far, far away while fixing many of Starfield's underlying issues.
"The goal is an immersive RPG with a unique story and expansive endgame, rather than a re-skin of Starfield with the same flaws," developer DeityVengy explains on the Star Wars Genesis website. "It strives to improve the base game by implementing bug fixes, new and enhanced gameplay features, upgraded visuals, and more."
Star Wars Genesis is not yet finished, but in its current state it revamps Starfield's core locations into Star Wars planets – New Atlantis becomes Coruscant, for example – and replaces the original game's ships, weapons, NPCs, and much more into Star Wars variants. It's tough to overstate how impressive the effect is, as you'd easily mistake this for a proper, full-on Star Wars game from a quick look at some gameplay footage.
Genesis takes place at the halfway point between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, but the timeline has been altered to help build more faction variety. Here, Emperor Palpatine came to power as a brainwashed agent of the Yuuzhan Vong – a very fun callback for fans of the old Star Wars EU – and the resulting timeline split has left Palpatine's Empire, a resurgent Sith Empire, the underworld Shadow Collective, and the Rebellion all vying for their piece of the galaxy.
A lot of Starfield's existing story has been rewritten to match this new Star Wars lore, complete with new voice lines – though be aware that much of the revamped voice work has been implemented through AI. Eventually, the goal is to have all the major quests converted to match the lore, but the project isn't there yet.
DeityVengy also wants to use this mod to correct the original game's fundamental issues. "Vanilla Starfield is best described as a bland exploration game with simply nothing out there for you to explore," the modder argues. "Thousands of planets filled with the same repetitive locations, biomes, and enemies. Genesis addresses that by adding new, unique experiences across the galaxy."
"Starfield has many, many, many fundamental issues that make it a bad game, and we've been addressing those one by one," DeityVengy adds in a video running down recent updates to the project. "Just hear me out for a second. The bullet sponges? They're gone. The loading screens? They're reduced. No reason to explore? Well, now there is. The main story is boring? Completely rewrote it and added additional bosses to it. Faction variety? Tripled it. Ship combat too slow? I made it faster. Weapon variety? Doubled it. Armor variety? Fucking quadrupled it. Not enough cities? Okay, here's two more. Outdated graphics? No worries, we've got an optional 4K texture overhaul you can download instead. The possibilities are fucking endless."
It's ambitious, to say the least, but so far the results have been extremely impressive. If Star Wars Genesis can deliver on half of that ambition, I think I've got more than enough reason to return to Starfield after my Bethesda-loving heart bounced off of it at launch.
Our list of the best Star Wars games could have some competition.
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