Almost half of Starfield Xbox players haven't joined the main story faction

The data for Starfield's achievement for joining Constellation shows us that almost half of Starfield's Xbox players haven't joined the main story faction.

Rich Stone

Published 01 May 2024

With news of its Shattered Space DLC on the way, we thought it a good time to dive into the Starfield achievements to see how things stand so far, and one thing that stood out is how many players unlocked one of the main story achievements. 52.51% of Xbox players (81% here on TrueAchievements) unlocked the “One Small Step” Starfield achievement for joining Constellation. That means almost half of the global Xbox players who picked up Starfield have yet to join up with the artifact-obsessed space explorers who make up one of the game’s main factions, and drive much of its story. Let’s dive into it below…

The One Small Step achievement in Starfield worth 11 pointsJoin Constellation

Constellation was the driving story element that Bethesda pushed before Starfield’s launch. The official description says that “From humble beginnings as a space miner, you will join Constellation — the last group of space explorers seeking rare artifacts throughout the galaxy — and navigate the vast expanse of the Settled Systems in Bethesda Game Studios’ biggest and most ambitious game.” Constellation and its members were discussed in dev diaries all the way up to launch, the organisation makes up a main part of the background lore on the Starfield site, and even now, the site describes signing up to Starfield news as “joining Constellation”.

There are several factions you can join (some of which have some great questlines) but following Constellation’s quests is how you unlock a number of important gameplay elements as well as some key companions, and most of the main story is based around the organisation, so it's interesting to see that almost half of the Starfield Xbox players haven't joined up. It’s interesting, too, since it’s a relatively early achievement to get, and unlocks after you travel to New Atlantis as part of one of the first main missions, chat a little to Constellation’s leading lady, and agree to join up. Sure, there’s a formidable wave of side quests and activities lying in wait on the way to Constellation’s headquarters, but if you’re after just this achievement, you can choose to ignore a lot of the in-between stuff.

To be fair, Starfield is huge. It’s a massive game. This is to be expected, since it’s an RPG about exploring space, and whether or not you agree with one Starfield dev’s claim that the game’s empty planets are "not boring", just "empty by design", it’s nevertheless true that the tiniest wrong turn can send you spinning off down a maze of distractions. Once you’re released into the starfield and left to your own devices, you can follow any quest or path of exploration you like. It’s possible to ignore the main questline to get fully sidetracked in gravity-bouncing around planets or coming across random encounters in the depths of space. Indeed, one player even managed to survey every possible planet (all 1,694 of them) a little over a month after launch. But that full freedom comes later — to start with, the game nags you (via robot companion Vasco) to go to New Atlantis and join Constellation, and your freedom of exploration isn’t really granted to you until after you do that. It's conversely much easier to ignore the main quest after you've done a few of its key early missions, as joining up with Constellation gives you free run of that nice ship you're borrowing and the freedom to do anything else without Vasco being quite as pushy about returning to Constellation.

Like many major games recently, Starfield had its fair share of bugs, so it’s possible this achievement just refused to unlock for some players. It’s also possible, though, that this achievement stat reflects the somewhat mixed reception Starfield met with, as some players found the hype didn’t live up to their expectations. Shortly after launch we talked about how 25% of Starfield Xbox players haven't made it to space (which unlocks a very early and otherwise unmissable story achievement) and this stat hasn’t really changed much since. It seems that of those who did make it to space, many still didn’t fancy the game enough to continue on with the main story, even to the point of joining Constellation. When we looked at Xbox achievement stats to reveal which Bethesda RPG saw the most players complete its story, Starfield was in last place, with only 10% of global Xbox players beating the main storyline. Sure, it hasn’t been out as long as Bethesda’s other RPGs and once you’ve joined Constellation you’re free to forget the main story and do whatever you please. Just from the achievement stats, though, it seems Starfield (or at least its main story) might not yet have quite the sticking power Bethesda hoped for.

Much of that might be because of Starfield’s uneven reception. The game has a rating of 4.21/5 here on TrueAchievements, and has kept many players happily entertained for hundreds of hours, and we enjoyed our time with it too. On the other hand, there are those who were disappointed with its exploration options (among other things) and even with the fact that you’re sort of pushed into joining Constellation at all, since RPGs tend to let you choose what you do. Before being sent to New Atlantis to join Constellation, you need to fight some pirates, fight some pirate ships, fly to a new planet, and fight some more pirates. It's a lengthy bit which introduces you to some key gameplay elements, and it might have been that this more limited intro bit wasn't enough to keep attention. We saw something similar with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, where the achievements showed us that over 40% of Xbox players didn't reach England. Since the game didn't really open up until you left Norway for England, it seemed as though Valhalla didn't help itself too much here, with a long snowy slog before you're free to do some of the game's best bits.

To be fair, it's a different story over on Steam, where 79.3% of players have unlocked One Small Step. Bringing a game to Game Pass gives it a wider audience, with a chance for players to try out new things without committing with a big purchase. Steam players might be more invested from having to purchase the game, whereas Game Pass players can drop it after an hour or so if they're not interested without losing out.

We know that Starfield's big Shattered Space DLC is coming to Xbox this fall as the game's first story expansion, and it'll be interesting to see whether this gives players more of a temptation to follow Starfield's story.

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Written by Rich Stone

Yo! Rich here - I was the one that created TrueAchievements back in 2008 as I felt the Xbox Gamerscore system could be improved. The site has evolved massively since then and it's now the biggest and best Xbox community on the planet! Racing games and open world shooters are my thing, but I'll give most genres a go. Except RPGs - those things are evil.