Of all the complaints I see online about Starfield’s most disappointing quests, running The Red Mile has got to be near the top of the list, if not at its very apex. What the game advertises as the deadliest sport in the galaxy is actually embarrassingly easy, as a lot of players have found a way to just upgrade their boost pack skills and fly directly to their target destination and back, nullifying any challenge presented by what could have been a really engrossing and sadistic game. We’re talking Candy Land vs. Squid Game-level stuff here.

But for all its flaws, I’ve always admired Starfield for its massive scope, even if the depth of the story and gameplay don’t live up to that scope. The team at Bethesda gave me an absolutely massive sandbox to roll around in — not just an open world, but an open galaxy — and I’m gonna roll around in it just like I did as an unruly toddler at bath time: naked and screaming.

Drawing Inspiration From Schlock

I have to give credit to a former roommate for this idea, since he introduced me to the direct-to-DVD classic American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile. Well, introduced is an exaggeration. He just kept it in his sock drawer. Please ignore the implications of what it was doing hiding in there or how I knew about it.

I’ve never actually seen this movie, but a quick look at Rotten Tomatoes (where it sits with a stellar 0% on the Tomatometer) involves college coeds stripping down to nothing and running a mile. But Jim’s dad and another Stiffler cousin are also there, presumably doing Jim’s dad and Stiffler things, so there you go.

I can’t promise any sort of sexy shenanigans in this playthrough, though, and not only because Bethesda won’t let me take my underwear off, so that’s another leg up for what made Baldur’s Gate 3 the best RPG of 2023. No, this is serious business. We’re gonna make The Naked Red Mile the new standard for challenging gameplay in Starfield. I’m loading up my Level 5 character save from when I first got the ability to roam the galaxy solo, I’ve got no physical skills and no combat skills outside of Level 1 in pistol, which I started with, and I’ve ditched all my equipment on The Frontier. So let’s hop off the ship and get started.

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This Is Why You Read The Travel Brochure

Okaythatwasabadidea!

So, the first time I ran The Red Mile was very early in my original playthough, and, well, I guess I didn’t really remember that Toliman III, the planet where The Red Mile is located, doesn’t have an atmosphere. Running around in underwear is funny and all, but getting frostbite in your nethers is kind of a second-tier concern once you realize that you’re suffocating the moment you step out of the airlock.

But hey! I made it to the front door alive! And I’ve still got all my credits! And the challenge hasn’t started yet, so Imma just buy three medpacks from the bar, pop them all before I go in, and start the journey fresh. What’s the worst that could happen?

Madam, I’m standing in my underwear in the middle of your club about to run a deadly obstacle course on a planet with no oxygen. Of course I’m of sound mind.

, dying immediately, for one. Once our Red Mile host and proprietor,, fishes her grand announcement, I rush down the corridor to the back door airlock, passing a cheerful “GOOD LUCK” graffitied on the walkway towards my doom. The second problem with going outside without a suit is that my vision gets really blurry when there’s no air, apparently. I was able to find my way down some steps and to a little storage room with automatic doors, but my milky eyes couldn’t recognize it as a freight elevator, and I died gasping for air and wandering up and down the steps like an idiot. Hopefully that was entertaining for the patrons.

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Fine, I’ll Put My Clothes On (But As Little As Possible)

Before anyone gets too upset at me for what I do next, don’t worry — I will try this naked again befire the end of the article. But first, I’m going to have to don a spacesuit, helmet, and pack if I want to even stand a chance at surviving, so I’ll just pick the ones that provide me the least protection, which I looted off a pirate in the game’s opening fight. Still no weapons, though, and I’m naked under my spacesuit, so that’s something. Also, I can’t exploit the jump pack because, well, I haven’t unlocked the skill that lets me use it in the first place.

Now, back on my original Red Mile run when the game first came out in September ’23, I realized my puny starting pistol wasn’t going to make a dent in the acid-spitting rhino lizards that dot the landscape between me and the marker at the end of the course, so I spent the entire time slowly creeping along in crouch mode and hoping nothing saw me. A repeat of that would be boring, so intending to start on Easy difficulty and progress from there, I plan to keep running or sprinting the entire time while just trying not to run right into a big chompy beast that wants to turn me into acid poo.

The first run was actually pretty easy. Every time a Red Mile Mauler actually locked onto me, I just clicked the run stick and took off until it lost interest. I made it to the marker and halfway back before those acid bullets did me in. But the second time around, I made it back with only a sliver of health bar missing. So far, so good.

After an hour of rest back on the frontier, I headed back into the lounge to start my second run, this one on Medium difficulty. Standing at the gate and waiting for Mei to finish her speil, I opened the menu and … huh. Looks like I already completed the Meduim runthrough, since I forgot to change the difficulty setting on the first run. I’d like to tell you that hard mode left me with some epic escape stories, but it was pretty much the same as the last run, and I didn’t die once.

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These Things Are Smarter Than I Thought

All right, maybe The Red Mile really is too easy, even when you’re not trying to make it that way. Cranking up the difficulty to Very Hard, the highest available setting, left me a little nervous, but when the elevator doors opened, I was a little confused. The big chonky bois that I usually had to dodge right out of the gate weren’t there, and I didn’t really have to correct my path much to avoid the ones along the way to the platform and the big red button either.

It was only when I got right up to the stairway to hell that I realized why. Seems like the Maulers had gotten wise to my ways and were waiting for me at the top, right next to the quest marker. Suffice to say that you take a lot more damage on Very Hard mode and, well, let’s just say that this effort still took more than one attempt. By the fourth time through, though, I’d perfected my escape route down the back stairs and managed to kite the suckers back to the starting point with about two-thirds of my health bar still intact.

Still too easy, but that’s not what this challenge was supposed to be about, was it? I was letting Jim’s Dad down, and no one puts Eugene Levy in the corner. No, my level 5 (well 6 once I got to Toliman III, since you get experience just for finding new systems) noby couldn’t survive long naked and afraid, by what about my Level 49 hero of the cosmos, crusher of The Crimson Fleet, and guy with literal superpowers?

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Behold My Glorious Tighty Whities!

Loading up a more recent save, this was the version of my character who’d already snuck his way through the obstacle course so many months ago, but now, he was stronger. Better. Ready to bare it all against the harshest of elements.

Well, sort of. I kind of put all my upgrade points into things like spaceship design, sneaking, lockpicking, and piloting. Still no physical upgrades that could help me, other than a heartier health bar. What this version of my character did have, though, was a Starborn power that lets him generate his own breathable atmospheric field for a little while.

Long enough to get to the marker and back? Ha! No. The recharge rate was unkind, and I still had my health bar filling up with yellow environmental damage that couldn’t be cured until I was back in a breathable atmosphere, but the ability to sprint endlessly while this power was activated was a nice boon, and on my best attempt, I was still able to make it more than halfway to the marker before falling down and presumably going all purple and bloated and gross. Maybe they’d just leave my body there as a monument, like those folks in The Death Zone of Mt. Everest, a testament to human willpower and overconfidence in one’s own abilities.

In the end, I really would have liked to reach a happy medium with The Red Mile. It’s too easy when you play by the rules and pretty much impossible when you try to do an homage to a crappy college sex comedy. Oh, well. Maybe my character will run across some of those coeds in Sovengarde.

Starfield

Released

September 6, 2023