I wouldn't have thought I'd be playing Starfield again in 2025, but this Star Wars total conversion mod is a real blast(er)

I know Starfield has kind of a bad reputation these days, but I never thought it was a bad game. It's a good game, and I should know: I played over 100 hours of it when it launched.

But it's not a great game, and it simply doesn't have the staying power of other Bethesda RPGs like the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games. I can always find a reason to hop back into Skyrim or Fallout 4, but I kinda figured when I was done with Starfield, I'd stay done with it.

To my surprise, here I am in 2025 playing Starfield again, and it's all thanks to a mod. More specifically, a whole bunch of mods. There's a modlist called Star Wars Genesis that collects hundreds of Star Wars mods and rolls them up into one big total conversion, transforming Starfield into a huge hunk of the Star Wars galaxy.

I haven't played a ton of Genesis yet, but whether I'm following a quest chain or just freewheeling around the dozens of star systems, it's a delight to see just how much Star Wars is packed into this thing. One of the first things I did was visit Tatooine and land at Mos Eisley. You know the place: scum, villany, hive, wretched, yadda yadda yadda.

Just walking around and spying a Gonk Droid here, a pack of jabbering Jawas there, and maybe one of those awesome hammerhead alien dudes from the cantina scene in A New Hope—it was so enjoyable, even for a lapsed Star Wars fan like me. Within a minute or two the modded version of Mos Eisely became a better place to hang out than any city in vanilla Starfield.

In fact, before I even started playing the mod properly, it was a delight just to see a choice of aliens in the character creator. You can play as a Rodian (like Greedo), Trandoshian (like Bossk), Duros (the classic-looking blue-headed alien dudes from the cantina), Mon Calamari (it's a trap!), and a bunch more. Yes, you can even be a Gungan, if your dream has always been to inhabit Jar-Jar Binks. I suspect that isn't your dream.

It really highlights that baffling decision Bethesda made with Starfield to have a galaxy full of only human characters. This is the company that made us fall in love with Argonians and Khajiit. But going humans-only in a game with 1,000 alien planets? It's still a head-scratcher to me.

If you've got a favorite Star Wars weapon, it's probably in Genesis. Han Solo's heavy blaster, Boba Fett's carbine rifle, Chewie's Bowcaster, and dozens more. (No lightsabers, though, at least not yet: the mod is a work in progress.)

You can buy and fly classic ships like Millennium Falcon (technically it's a Corellian YT-1300 light freighter), X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and even those sleek and shiny Naboo starships. Walk through any spaceport or look through a vendor's stock and you'll immediately say: "Ooh, there's some Star Wars stuff I definitely want to own.

If you've got a copy of Starfield collecting dust in your library, and even a passing interest in Star Wars, Genesis is a great reason to fire it up again. Warning: the installation is far more than a few simple clicks. There's a set of instructions here—it's a very good set of instructions, but it is also a very long set of instructions. Carve out some time for it and follow them exactly or the mod might not launch.