Prior to the game's release, a picture of the game's main menu was leaked online. The simplicity of the menu led to Mark Kern (the former lead developer of World of Warcraft) accusing the team behind Starfield of not caring for their work, merely rushing through to hit deadlines. This was met with backlash from fans, with many pointing out that the menu design was standard for Bethesda titles. Bethesda employee Pete Hines later criticized Kern for being unprofessional, and further reiterated that the menu design was a standard for the studio.

All of the celestial bodies of the Alpha Centauri system (the star and star system that both in real life and the game is the closest to The Sun and the Solar System) are named after real-life humans who had or have a hand in space travel and cosmic studies. This includes the following:

• Gagarin - Yuri Gagarin - A Soviet Cosmonaut who is known the world over to be the first man and human in space.

• Bondar - Roberta Bondar - First female Astronaut from Canada.

• Jemison - Mae C. Jemison - The first African-American woman to visit outer space.

• Olivas - John D. Olivas - NASA Astronaut and Engineer who helped out with the STS-117 and STS-128

• Curbeam - Robert Curbeam - The NASA Astronaut who holds the record for most Space Walks in a single space flight.

• Grissom - Gus Grissom - an esteemed NASA astronaut that became one of the first Americans in space.

• Kurtz - Michael J. Kurtz - a Harvard University astrophysicist known for his work on NASA's Astrophysics Data System, and for studying the distribution of different galaxies throughout space.

• Chawla - Kalpana Chawla - First woman of Indian descent to go on a space flight and also sadly one of the victims of the 2003 space shuttle Columbia explosion.

• Hawley - Steven Hawley - American Astronaut who flew on five US space shuttle flights.

• Lovell - Jim Lovell - The man who piloted the command module of the Apollo 8 vessel that was successful in orbiting the Moon.

• Voss - James Voss - An Astronaut who has visited the International Space Station 5 times.

• Zamka - George David Zamka - Pilot of the space shuttle Discovery and visitor to the ISS.

Upon release, many streamers criticized the game for giving the option for the player to choose their pronouns in the creation menu. Similarly, a player on Twitter criticized the game for allowing a male NPC, Sam Coe, to flirt with a male player character. In response, Elias Toufexis, the voice actor for Coe, clarified that the character was played as bisexual.