Despite astronomical levels of hype, Bethesda's Starfield — perhaps the game the phrase "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" was invented for — roundly failed to impress, and the much-touted "ten-year support plan" seems to have been quietly shelved. There seem to be no plans for future DLC or even ports, and most Starfield-related news coming out of Bethesda seems to be announcing some paid mod or other as the game creeps closer to just becoming a platform for microtransactions.
In the past, "let the modders fix it" has been a viable approach for Bethesda, but their previous games only managed this because they were vast, enjoyable experiences even without mods. In the nearly two years since Starfield's release, no community modding projects that even begin to approach the scale of something like Fallout: London have been started… save for one. Star Wars: Genesis is a one-man modding project that aims to transform Starfield into the Star Wars RPG of everyone's dreams. To call the project "ambitious" is like saying being set on fire is "not particularly pleasant."
The prospect of a proper open-world RPG in the Star Wars universe is exciting, and the bones of Starfield are solid enough to support it. The sheer amount of work it'd take to transform the bland Settled Systems into a galaxy far, far away while truly making it feel authentic is absolutely ludicrous, however, and represents literal years of concerted, free effort for a single person — possibly decades; some larger Morrowind mods have been in development since the early 2000s.
The current state of Star Wars: Genesis seems to be a pretty in-depth asset swap, but it's still Starfield under there, from the gameplay to the story to literally everything that's not an armor set or a weapon. The solo dev has promised major story and mechanics overhauls in the future to make it feel less like Starfield wearing a Lucasfilm skin, however. Though stranger things have certainly happened, I just can't shake the feeling that Genesis is likely going to stay almost literally a fresh coat of paint more than anything else. Still, at least someone cares about Starfield now that Bethesda has stopped.
