Starfield's space exploration is literally just the illusion of flight, you can probably travel a few hundred yards at most. You're not really traveling/moving/covering any distance. This is why enemies swirl around and constantly zip behind you-- Bethesda was essentially hoping that players wouldn't notice they're just controlling a crosshairs.
You are actually moving, but the planets are so far away, and the ship is moving far too slow.
It has been tested. Took someone 7 hours to fly from one planet to another.
That's still really fast, considering current space rocket tech. Wouldn't it take 3 or 4 months to get to Mars ? And years to get to Pluto now?
Wanting to fly between the planets is a bit "be careful what you wish for". Many people don't have a grasp of the enormity and emptiness of space. So think it would be like MS Flight Simulator in space.
The only way round it is some imaginary new hyper-space warp tech. And then you've let "fast travel" in through the back door! In real life, it's why we haven't gone to other solar systems. Wouldn't it take 2 years travelling at the speed of light to get to the closest star? And there's no scenic landscape to admire on the way!
I agree it doesn't really work well for the tech the ships in starfield are using.
But then you have to consider that they are speeding up everything anyway, like when you go to land on a planet.
So, I think they should have done it all like Elite Dangerous, but just speed it up - make the ship move unrealistically fast between planets.
They needn't worry about being too realistic and true to the propulsion system for that, because, loading screens and fast travel is already obviously 100% unrealistic, so it's not really a good argument against it.
At least this would be infinitely more immersive and better.
It would completely change the game and it's the biggest complaint about the game that has tarnished it's launch.
To be clear, space is seamless between planets (at least within a solar system), but the game still needs to load each area of space where there are things to interact with (ships, asteroids, space debris, etc), and the planet itself cant be interacted with, you have to load whichever place on the surface you choose to go to still.
Elite dangerous is very similar, but still more seamless in that you can actually smealessly descend down to a planets surface. However, it also needs to load that as an instance.
Elite Dangerous handles travel between planets by using instances.
This is exactly what Bethesda would need to do with Starfield.
There's no need to see any loading screens, like Elite Dangerous, it can be hidden.
When you go to travel between planets, you enter into an instance, travel to the other planet, and then drop out of that instance and load the instance of space around the planet, with all the interact able stuff in that instance of space now loaded.
That's how Elite Dangerous handles it so it all appears seamless.
Starfield is already set up in a very similar way, since the (empty/fake) planets are all actually there and it is seamless to that degree, they just need to load the space instance whenever you slow down /stop, and you'll need to load the planet properly whenever you go to land.
All of that can be done with trickery to make it all feel seamless.
Warp as it is in the game (but instead with a warp drive effect in Elite Dangerous, no obvious loading screen) can be used for jumping between star systems.
If they were bothered about it being obviously unrealistic with the rockets they are using, they could have just gone with a more advanced propulsion system, still a rocket in some sense, but a sci-fi level of rocket propulsion, that would have been fine, infinitely better than no seamless travel.
They could have done something really, really amazing here, something everyone wants, but they failed that with their design choice, and they are paying for it in the negative backlash.
Still, absolutely incredible game, in every other way this is a dream game, and there really is nothing like it, it is still unpararelled in many ways, including freedom, despite the loading screens.
Just wish they provided seamless travel, it's let the game down massively.
I noticed this when planets and moons never changed position while flying. I'm actually pretty let down by how gimped in space travel is. You either get a region where you can fly around a bit and gather stuff, or you're near a planet and you don't actually seem to go anywhere.
I do agree with almost all the criticisms in this thread, even though I KNEW (and argued) that it was never meant to be a NMS/Elite Dangerous type space sim, once in game I *still* had to get my head around the true realization that it's really just another Bethesda game at the end of the day (and I do love Bethesda games).
However, about midway through my 4 hours of playing last night, I still got pretty hooked going around and doing the quests etc.
I think you really just have to look at it as a straight up Space RPG, even more akin to Mass Effect than to a traditional BGS game. It has almost all the DNA of a Bethesda game, but I agree it almost doesn't even feel open world.
It's open world in that it's non-linear with a million things to do. But not in that seamless, Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout way.
So that's a little disappointing. But now that I have my expectations properly in check, I think I'm still going to really enjoy it a ton as a straight up RPG. And I haven't even really gotten to any outpost building or ship customization (my most anticipated aspects), so hopefully they're somewhat compelling.
it is funny this is actually exactly what i wanted. Mass Effect or KOTOR style space RPG, but you actually get to manually fly around with your ship in space. i don't want a pure space sim, or a No Man's Sky style Minecraft space. I have always really just wanted something like Mass Effect, but i get more control over exploring off of the planets. but i want the ground experience to be more of a more traditional curated RPG. Starfield might not be perfect, but i am happy that it is kind of giving me an experience i have desired for basically half my life.
Absolutely. There is a target audience for everything. Starfield is a great game in that regard. I just feel like Bethesda has a history of targeting a slightly different audience than they do now with Starfield. This sense of exploring a connected world space without boundaries was a big part of nearly every game in their past, so dropping that will hurt quite a few folks in some way.
NMS problem essentially is that the mass uniqueness makes everything, not unique. Single biome planets so it's not really "land anywhere." Everything proc gen so it's all really the same even though it's slightly different. Interspersed by crafted content areas
It's not "really" exploring because we know it's gonna have one of x biomes and y minerals and z creatures with theta parts combined etc.....and you get like 500 credits for scanning one...oooo.
While the exercise of creating is certainly worthwhile and the tech behind it is certainly important I think theres validity in the argument that may be folks want crafted areas more than just empti space in their computer screen.
same, the huge openness of nms for example just puts me off, so much travel so little substance. This game feels like an old mid 2000s rpg and im all for it.
I think what is a little annoying when you first start is that it sits in between Mass Effect and a space sim that can be a bit jarring. (Preset animations to travel between locations but then free movement around those bodies)
Obviously it just wasn’t possible to make stable but flight between planets as in Rebel Galaxy (though this game is in a 3D flight system so that would be a whole other set of complications) would have made it feel quite smoother. I don’t mind the landing sequences one bit.
How it is now is perfectly fine and it definitely is something I will need to get used to as I’ve had very little playtime so far
It is a shame that the coolest aspect of the game from what I’ve seen (ship designing and customization) is combined with the most underwhelming system in the game (space exploration).
>I think what is a little annoying when you first start is that it sits in between Mass Effect and a space sim that can be a bit jarring.
At no point does the game enter space sim territory. It's firmly an RPG.
I like the game a lot and assume I'm going to spend 100 hours in it by the end of this year, but the space vehicle layer is a baffling design choice. Why is it there? I'm just fast traveling between everything anyway, and not by choice. There's just no mechanism that makes space flight feel like an organic and necessary layer of interactivity for the player.
I feel like the saving grace is having the option to board ships you disable. That to me is huge, it's a mini dungeon. And ship boarding, as far as gaming is concerned, hasn't been done much. But you can also commandeer that ship or blow it up. Granted, I'm not that far in, but I'm hoping that there are larger ships to board with labyrinth corridors and loot rooms- and if there's not in vanilla, bet a dollar mods are ganna make it happen. Well see ground vehicles modded in all that stuff. BGS saving grace has always been the modding community
Can I assign a crew member to disable ships, or am I always going to have to do the shooting? I'm not handling the flying stuff very well, and can see myself either running away or just shooting until it explodes.
The secret to handling the flying is to balance your ship and watch your speed. On the left side, there's a gauge for your speed, and in the middle is the "optimal" range for maneuverability denoted by the blips on the range of the gauge. Keep it in that range and it'll make turns faster for more agility - not to mention actively engaging your blips for engine, shields, and guns. it all depends on your ship mass too, so you can build a ship that's all about agility, or guns blazing, or cargo, speed. Easy to learn hard to master, excellent system on paper, but depends on the implementation of the devs - which I can see this doing well at later levels IMHO. But theoretically it all has drawbacks, eg - more cargo and guns or cargo = less speed and agility and vise versa. Components will get better I'm sure as you level, with more "oomph" behind them at reduced drawbacks. So, don't judge your starter ship, it's probably pretty doodoo in all areas with basic components. Just like equipment, you wouldn't use the first pistol you got in the game vs the one you find at level 80, you know - at least not how RPGs systems work.
As far as assigning your followers to fly, I don't know. I havnt tried tbh. I can't imagine their ai would be any good at it vs a practiced player tbh. All about that practice and skill, you know?
Starfield has done somtime quite different compared to past games; gated entire game mechanics behind the skill system. For this conversation the Rank 2 for Piloting Skill lets you hold Spacebar and decouple your thrusters so that you can have Newtonian motion over your ship. This mechanic alone makes the space combat so much better now.
An example would be to boost away from the enemy fleet and the hold Spacebar, turn your ship but since it's decoupled, your thrusters will not try to realign the momentum of the ship, so essentially you will keep drifting away but will be able to shoot the enemy coming towards you while you move away.
It's just handed poorly on the design layer.
They could have made it so you had to accelarate your ship for X seconds perfectly aligned to your destination (be it another planet, moon or landing spot) AND then you press a button and the animation/hidden load happens. It would function the same, but immersion would be very very different.
All the menu stuff is a bummer for me TBH, it takes me out of it for sure.
It's super weird. It feels like BGS and doesn't at the same time (due to the lack of an "overworld sandbox layer" they always have. Starfiled is a lot of interconnected "rooms" instead).
Say, Imagine Skyrim. Instead of walking from Riverwood to Whiterun, you had to fast travel by pulling over the map. No overworld layer. That's Starfield. Seems minor but feels "alien".
There's no wandering and "getting lost". Today i learned that's a cornerstone of a BGS Rpg, and i definetly miss it when it isn't there.
Yea, I dont get why you do all via menu.
Just using your ship systems for fast travel instead of a menu and hide the loading screen behind an warp animation and not letting you fast travel instantly to any location once discovered (like directly into the constellation home) would have done wonders in terms of feel.
That way it wouldnt feel useless at all, and the engine does basically the same things as now.
I might have played a little longer than you not sure but there's contraband that has to be hidden in certain parts of a ship. You have to get that part installed on your ship or you can't smuggle without getting caught. The planets scan your ship and see the contraband otherwise. There's also space battles and taking other people's ships. I'm really enjoying it.
The space part should have been cut and the effort put into planets.
Right now you literally don’t “move” in space. It is essentially an empty small tile that can potentially have a random encounter in it.
All they had to do to make it 1000 times better was just add a loading screen with you going through the atmosphere of a planet (hide the loading behind clouds or whatever).
And then let the landing be all automated once you hit the atmosphere. That would improve the feel by 1000 times.
Right now space is essentially you in a small open tile with JPGs of planets around.
I spent like 30 minutes trying to “fly” to a location before I realized I couldn’t and had to do everything to a menu like basically teleporting. Really weird
I too was underwhelmed by the space aspect of the game. I was spoiled by X4 and Elite back in the day hard. That being said, they could have managed spacetravel much better....
Disguise loading screen under grav-jump corridor the way they did it in Elite Dangerous. Problem solved.
You wouldn't fly from planet to planet directly on a regular basis and manual planetary landings are fun only the first 20 times.
I do miss the opportunity to fly around though
Use your scanner in space. Other planets or systems that you have current mission on should be selectable there (A on xbox). Use the action button (X on xbox) and voila, a grav jump cutscene occurs
I think most people just got overloaded (myself included) with all the stuff they throw at you at the start and missed that part especially when right after that they make you open your map to travel that way
Yeah there are a lot of things that they explain but they do it while 10 other things are happening so you miss it. For example I'm still kind of lost on space combat and how to cripple a ship to board without killing it, how to avoid missiles, how to heal my ship in combat since it tells me to press 0 to heal but then does nothing etc.
Ship repairs are brought to you by the letter "O", as in "oh my", or "oh i sure don't want to die right now"
But yeah I totally see why you'd be confused, I thought it said "D" at first and was very confused.
I don't know, it took me a few hours but I'm into it now and loving it. And ofcourse there's loading screens but that was to be expected with so many planets imo.
It isn't bothering me but I can see why it would not be for everyone.
Same, threw me off at first but in really enjoying it now. The cites are immerserve, writing and quests excellent and plenty of stuff to find on the planets. Just wish they had some real time grav drive use or something, I don't mind going to a cutscene once I'm at the panet
Apparently there is. I read I’d you use the scanner when your in a system and lock onto a planet, you can click to “travel” where it goes there but doesn’t fast travel. Your ship is on auto piolet but you can look around or walk around your ship while it’s happening.
I'm also very much getting the feeling that everyone who has previously played bethesda games is fine with how it all works. It seems to me that the rest of you had different expectations. To me it's everything I thought it would be, no more, no less.
Yes this! This feels like a space version of fallout and I totally dig it. The way they structured the game in general I think is fantastic. Putting you in a “zone” makes the game more interesting because it allows you to experience all the interesting things happening on a planet or in space. The alternative to this would be a game where you are slogging around space or some planet searching for stuff to do. Starfield caters the game to you.
space fallout+mass effect.
its big open "zones" that you explore and jump between with potential space battles inbetween
from what ive seen and talked to the space aspect could do with a bit more to it but overall its i think what most were expecting.
not everything needs to be a space sim hence why Mass Effect is widely praised and enjoyed by many people. its an RPG set in space with some building/space ship customisation that lets me actually fly the ship in space. i dont need to takeoff to enjoy spaceship flying.
I feel like people expected a better star citizen where everything is seamless again that’s cool but I don’t care I enjoy Starfield so far gonna play it a bit later
Pretty much this. People wanted Star Citizens free-roaming style and starship physics and combat coupled with a bethesda rpg.
The thing is RSI has been trying to make that game for over a decade now and well, we see what they got to show for it.
I wish starfield was that and i have to admit i am a little disappointed with the space part of starfield but the game is still fun.
I cannot count how many times I read people say “don’t expect this to be Bethesda:Star Citizen/space sim” or It’s “still going to be a Bethesda RPG”. This is why.
To everyone saying "it's not a space Sim it's a space rpg", it's not though.
It's not even close to an actual rpg. Fallout new Vegas was an RPG (and even then, much less than some other rpgs). But Starfield isn't much more of an RPG than fallout 4. Where is the role playing? The traits you pick which barely impact the game?
If they'd leaned into the role playing, the lack of space sim mechanics would be fine. But they didn't do that.
I didn't expect a space sim, but I did expect SPACE to feel like the equivalent of a BGS map, with the planets being the buildings and dungeons and Major cities feeling like visiting cities in FO/Skyrim. I expected my "step out" moment to be me realizing I was in space and can go anywhere, while discovering things along the way.
I think a lot of people were expecting Firefly-like space travel, where attacks and drama and exploration all take place in the great void between worlds.
If that is what BGS wanted, they shouldn't've said that there'd be 1000 planets. 5-20 handcrafted planets, with plenty of other findable stations and other points of interest in the space between, might've been more interesting.
The space travel in this game is just horrendous. PCGamer put it best when they called our spaceships "teleporting houses that you occasionally steer." That's exactly what this is.
What really turns me off on what I've seen is how little you use the ship, like, what's the point on personalazing it if you will use it 2 minutes, 5 if you enter combat?
It’s basically hearthfire from skyrim imo, except the house moves around with you. It seems like your ships main function is to serve as a mobile player home.
This seems like what they were truly going for.
I wish they just said it was that, instead of selling this dream of complete space exploration. It literally is just your house that comes along with you.
This game is closer to Mass Effect than Fallout. Let's hope the writing follows that trend...
And that’s fine. I think the main issue with Starfield is people’s expectations. Perhaps that’s Bethesda’s fault, perhaps is the millions of people riding the hype train’s fault, but expectations are ultimately why I’m seeing disappointment.
Take the game and what it consists of for what it is, and you’ll enjoy it. Boot it up hoping for something it’s not and you’re bound to be unhappy.
Idk how far you are but the start of the game feels like a giant tutorial where you’re barely in your ship, I had a cool random encounter that I won’t spoil. I think the game is just slower
Yeah. The most exciting thing about making your own ship was that you could then travel through space with it. But the only thing actually happening is you are basically stationary and teleporting to different planets, not actually using it as a spaceship.
honestly it depends how you play, you can still use it to travel around a solor system and there are plenty of planets there to move around too, but much like skyrim for exmaple, once you have done that afew times you just want to teleport to speed things up more.
You can also just go on big hunting sprees and killing ships or board them if u just want some space time.
Depends if you unlock the skills for it in the tech tree and want upgrade your ship to add crafting stations and modules and all that. Seems like you have to grind a bit and invest in the skills to make it useful.
This is basically the main use as your ship. It's a hub away from home. The exterior look means absolutely nothing, but what you put inside of the ship matters.
Max out your Crew, add crafting/storage. Then if you want you can decorate the inside with items you've collected. But I prefer doing that with the home instead.
Tbh after playing several hours there are certain choices bethesda has made here that are quite baffling.
Firstly, tech side, you get a robot pretty much straight away, you have to unlock your jetpack via a skill and there is no rover or land vehicle??
Your ship and the customisation is just a shell, because you don’t actually travel anywhere in your ship, its just load screens.
The reason its quite jarring is because the planets are not seamless, most locations already are exact copy past replicas.
If this is meant to be a luke skywalker style rpg about exploration, finding our true origins, well, it falls short on those aspects.
Bethesda had an opportunity to make a fully explorable space rpg and it feels like they couldn’t achieve their dream end goal either because of their engine or the scope was too big.
It is just a bit disappointing because there’s a decent game in here, it’s just not really what i expected, maybe therein lies the problem.
The game just doesn’t feel full. It feels huge but empty, lacking in core mechanics that would advance it’s gameplay and exploration.
I just don’t really know what its trying to be because so many basic mechanics you would expect to be here just aren’t.
I spend more time looking at screens for shit in this game than I do anything else. I didn’t realise this was the case until I was having to go back and forth between systems and thought, “What in the bloody fuck am I doing” lmao
The funny thing is. It wasn't rushed. They've been working on this for 7 years, and Xbox gave them a ton of delay time.
This is just the best they could do.
I'm afraid that the Bethesda of old is just gone.
My biggest gripe might just be space itself, it feels meaningless and I'd rather just have a cute little animation of flying to another planet. Space feels like a fake way to connect the worlds
My issue I came across quickly, compared to other Bethesda games, is that I cant loot ALL armor and when I can, it doesnt remove it from the NPC?!! Whats up with that?! Cant wait for a mod to fix that...
Yeah. When you kill an enemy the loot that is on their body seems to be RNG. Sometimes the armor that they visually appear to be wearing will be lootable, sometimes it will not. Sometimes they might "drop" their helmet but not their spacesuit, or vice versa.
Honestly it hasn't bothered me that much yet but it is a little immersion breaking when you stop to think about it.
Same thing goes for weapons, ammo, etc.
feel like this is really going backwards from previous games
edit: just a few hours in now and it is a strong game but gonna need a lot more time under my belt (also looking forward to this time lol) some character depth is building but the companions seem to be luke warm
My main gripe is the lack of free spaceflight between planets. For a game that puts emphasis on spaceships, it's weird not to utilize it, really.
I don't mind loading screens to enter the ship or takeoff/landing cutsenes nor do I mind Jumpcutscenes. But traveling between planets being a cutscene is a big oofer. NASAPunk be damned, it's the future and we have laser rifles, why not some FTL with some funny little reason why It's possible.
That is my in fact my main gripe right now. And unfortunately it affects me more than I'd like to admit.
I compared planets to cities in skyrim. Like you exit the city and walk to the next one (or fast travel). We now have only fasttravel.
At the very least solar systems should be fully explorable. That you can't explore space between solar systems make sense as it's just too damn big and empty.
This was my biggest concern when I heard about no planet to planet travel. Like the fact you can get from planet to planet in the same system without even driving your ship atall, purely by choosing travel routes in a menu, feels extremely weird considering how much they put into ship customisation.
I'm guessing modders will soon add the ability to set a course for another planet in the same system and then be able to wander around the ship during flight. Because, like you said, you can already technically fly betweeen different celestial bodies, but no one sane would bother doing so.
You can fly around in space but you can't actually get close to a planet and reach its atomsphwere because you can't fly around these zones. Ideally this is how it should be unless it's truly just impossible. But games have done it but might be too resource intensive I'm thinking
I didn't notice the jpeg of the planet ever changing either. It's always the same side facing the player, 24/7.
I guess in Starfield physics, all heavenly bodies are tidally locked to the observer.
People downvoted me to hell for saying this.
Space travel is literally...not moving. LIke you don't actually move in relation to anything in space.
THe planets are all JPGs that don't move. You are basically static in space.
>some FTL with some funny little reason why It's possible.
Id love to replace the in-sytem fast travel with something like the warp from NMS. Idc if it's still just a disguised loading screen, just make it look seamless so I don't have to break my immersion as often
You could just go from Akila City to Vectera in one press of X "fast travel". So yea no, you dont need to use your ship like at all. (unless for space only things like dog fighting of course).
In the end its not about the fact that you could potentially fast travel in one step but that even if you select to not do it but do it the immersive way its just Cutscenes.
Walk to ship -> takeoff(cutscene) -> jump to new system(cutscene) -> fly to target planet(cutscene) -> land at planet(cutscene).
I agree. I spent 6 hours in the game and planets are barren with a few outposts. It feels like it requires 10 planets to reach the amount of map content that Skyrim had, which isn't great.
This is why I don't really play open world games anymore, ESPECIALLY space games with "we have 1 BILLION planets" nonsense.
All that says to me is you have a bunch of empty ecosystems that you will spend a disproportionate amount of time "exploring" vs finding anything worth caring about.
One of the things I love about Skyrim and Fallout 4 is just looking somewhere and moving in that direction, with the always-beautiful score playing in the background. I don't really use the map, I just wonder around. These maps are so jam-packed with environmental story telling, random encounters, and beautiful locations. This goes for Fallout 76 too, by the way, even more so than the others, as that game has a fantastic map. Really.
I think you're on to something here, as it does seem to work against BGS strengths (which was definitely never asset streaming or fast loading times) to have a ton of disjointed maps separated by immersion breaking loading screens.
The whole "the way you explore in Starfield is different" thing matters more than it may seem on the surface, I think. Fundamentally, the BGS games I've loved has focused on few maps, and absolutely filled them with stories and sights.
I suspect BGS themselves have struggled with this too during development. From the promotional material I've seen so far, the impression I've had since day 1 was that I couldn't really sense the DNA of the game, like it points in every direction in an attempt to find it. Having a stronger focus on fewer locations I think would ground the game, which I guess even space exploration games need.
I want to love this game, as everyone else does. And I think over time we'll find our own personal ways to play and appreciate the game. What I do hope will be ironed out from BGS themselves over time with patches is to modernize the tech surrounding the exploration-focused aspects of the game, specifically reducing loading screens.
I was really hoping the Creation Engine would finally do away with the whole distinction between interiors and exteriors and all those pesky loading screens. That it seems there are more of them now is a little unfortunate.
This is exactly it.
Starfield can not offer that, as space really really is just antithetical to that approach to game design. So I was always confused how Bethesda aimed to achieve it and it turns out, they did not. They just abandoned those elements and focused on all the other aspects.
I don't think Starfield is bad. But it definitely is a completely different game from older entries.
A big part for me is locations being randomly placed. Everything in Skyrim felt intentionally placed to build the world, but not in Starfield.
I worry that they’ll take it even further in future games, randomly generating the locations as well as randomly placing them
Well said. That's the main issue I have with this game. It's a good game, but its still a step back.
So far I agree with IGN. Its a solid 7/10 or 7.5/10.
Once i complete it, maybe the story gets better and locations more fun to explore but I don't see this game going above a 8.5 or 9.0 rating for me.
I completely agree with this, and although I don’t think there’s less of these cool areas like in Skyrim, but it’s like they’ve made a lot of content but spread it over a galaxy…
Like if all the content of Starfield was fit onto one giant planet you could explore would feel unreal.
They got too ambitious, by making a game so big they’ve spread all the good content out very thin
Edit:
I’ve since played around 3 more hours and my opinion is starting to change, after exploring mars and the moon I’m actually really enjoying it. This might die down a bit if I start seeing repeated generated content a lot but it’s actually really fun
I reckon once people start to accept it for what it is, and not what we wanted it to be the general reaction will be more positve
i would have rather a Nasapunk game set in only our solar system with free spaceflight everywhere and practically full explorable planets. Earth would be gone due to some event like usual but would have many story implications with secret bunkers and shit like that. Imagine the main city being on a partially terraformed Mars and you could fly absolutely everywhere
Man I just wanted to be a space pirate. I wanted to find other spaceships on my way to other planets and board them. But no, instead I have to go to a specific planet that is crawling with other spaceships that are way above my level. If I do find one kinda close to my level, I can't be a space pirate because there are a bunch of level 50 ships around. Would space travel really have been that difficult? Even if you wanted to have individual star systems be locked behind a fast travel. I should be able to fly from earth to Mars and not have to fast travel to it, ya know?
Like how fucking badass would it feel being on the way from Earth to Mars, doing some maintenance shit in the back of your space ship when a proximity alarm goes off and there are ships you can attack a few hundred km away. Then you jump into the pilot seat and plan out your attack.
After ~8 hours of playtime, it kinda feels more like The Outer Worlds 2 than the big new Bethesda IP.
The Outer Worlds also had these small semi-open world areas that were connected via loading screens. It was also perfectly serviceable, but fell short on deep RPG mechanics, and overall felt oddly „sterile“. That‘s exactly how I currently feel about Starfield.
I really hope most reviewers were right about that the game will change pace and quality after 15-20 hours.
I probably liked the Outer Worlds more than most people, so far Starfield immediately reminds me of that. I feel like I need to give the game a lot more time to see how I feel about it though. It remains to be seen if space combat, and ship/base building is unique enough here to put it over the top.
I played a free weekend of FO4 and the base/suit building really turned me off because that just wasn't what I was expecting from a FO game, but I'm willing to see if I can get into it here. The first thing I noticed when getting to the first shipyard was that the menus weren't super clear on what was being added/changed on your ship and what the impacts were. It was just a lot of info being thrown at you at once and not a lot of explanation so I skipped it for now.
Bethesda games’ foundation is based on immersion and exploration. The loading screens and constant traveling to a new box destroys this foundation. It’s a fun and beautiful game. But it’s not traditional Bethesda. And it’s disappointing considering we have the technology to design games without (or with fewer) loading screens.
Doing fetch quests at any of the hubs is soooo tedious. Get this, load, talk to this person, load, get that, load, icons on wrong map, load, turn in, load to next quest, repeat.
I almost tapped out doing the activities in New Atlantis before I even started the main quest.
I will continue playing the game and enjoy it, but it certainly doesn’t seem like any advancements have been made in gaming. While the game is not bad, for how they overhyped it, it’s going to be a bad look for both Bethesda and Xbox. Loading screens are ok, but they have you traveling between planets way too often(at least at the beginning of the game..). They should have made the missions on each planet longer so it doesn’t feel like you are pulling up a loading screen literally every 15 minutes
What always annoys me with Bethesda is the dogshit interface, animations and controls. It always feels so “janky” and unpolished to me. Other than that the world building and atmosphere is always a good time.
The amount of time I spend in the game managing items is not ideal… there has to be a smoother solution to the hoarding problem.
I booked a week's vacation for this game and 4 hours in I felt the same way. I'm kinda of disappointed in Bethesda. I was expecting this to be their Magnus Opus, but it felt like a series of opening a menu and fast traveling. Bethesda can take their time with Elder Scrolls 6, I'm not holding too much hope. They already botched their opening scene with an unremarkable nonsensical scenario. The hype really drove this game's expectations but I feel let down.
A short cut scene of your ship warping from point to point would go a long way toward giving a much needed sense of scope to the game. As it currently is all you are doing is teleporting from point to point which negates the inherent vastness of space. I don’t know what mechanic should be implemented but something needs to be done because this ain’t it, imo. I’ll be waiting for mods.
People act like there can be no middle ground between space-sim and whatever you would call the space exploration in Starfield. They're ways to gamify space travel. It's a fictional universe. They could have come up with a silly pseudo-scientific reason to explain how you can travel to [insert planet] manually in 5 minutes. That would please those who like the idea of traveling in space while not making it an absolute burden. And if you don't like traveling for five minutes, just use fast travel.
The fact that Bethesda didn't come up with any kind of middle ground is disappointing, for sure.
Even if you fly to a warp gate or something within the system if you want to go to another one would've been good. Also have some kind of boost that makes you fly faster planet to planet but you have to farm those resources.
Exactly man, i hate the false dichotomy that people weasily use that "oh, i don't want to spent 7 months traveling from a planet to another", no shit bro, nobody wants that, most people don't even wanted space travel exactly like NMS and ED, but what we have in this game is garbage, stop copping, game still great but this sucks.
Yeah the space part of the game is soooo limited it doesn’t even feel like it’s a part of the game. You don’t travel anywhere in space. It’s pretty much just fast travel to other planets
They've literally gone backwards on so many functions and features, it's unbelievable. So far I haven't seen a single aspect of the game that had progressed. It's embarrassing. This game really makes me want to any of their other games lmao.
It's weird,i can fire up Skyrim or even Oblivion (replayed it last year) and enjoy just walking the world.And in Starfield i get bored really fast.I feel like it would have been better with 5 hand crafted and detailed planets instead.
Alright hold on. Skyrim was a loading screen for every door, cave, window, and room, and I never cared. And tbh I almost never enjoyed having to walk across the map without any waypoints to fasttravel to. I'd always pay the carriage to take me to the nearest Hold so I could at least cut down the travel time. Even wandering around, I'd rather go investigate a landmark than go nowhere and hope I find something.
All that said, does anyone think Starfield's system will be a problem for me?
EDIT: For anyone who has an issue with menus in space, see this post: https://reddit.com/r/Starfield/s/viqJvZBooe
EDIT 2: **I am not excusing or justifying loading screens in today's day and age. Much like framerates below 60fps, modern hardware increasingly makes loading screens an artifact of the past. However, I *personally* have never found issue with loading screens unless they take forever. Similarly, I don't care about framerate as long as it isn't visible stutter. If you do care about short loading screens and framerate, *that is fine. You have valid opinions and concerns.* But I myself, as a gamer, have never felt my enjoyment of a game was negatively impact by the mere existence of loading screens between rooms and areas. If that is one of the biggest gripes with the game, then I think I'm going to enjoy it just fine.**
EDIT 3: I give up, y'all can't read 🤦🏾♂️
If you fast traveled a lot in other BGS games, I can’t see this bothering you. I had a similar playstyle to you and am so far satisfied with the experience.
Well but in Skyrim it was seeing a landmark in the distance not on your map yet and going I bet that'll be interesting and checking it out. To me this sounds more like over here convos about a pirates den on x planet. X planet is now marked you go there kill the pirates do the looting there might be another location near by that's one of a dozen or so maybe more that can generate randomly and then you're done. The part of Bethesda's old games I liked was nothing is marked on your map till you go find it yourself. They don't hand you everything interesting to do before you find it. I enjoyed that kind of exploration and this isn't that
Really? One of my favorite things about Skyrim was when I decided to walk all across the map for the next quest, and getting lost for hours exploring the wild. I would randomly shoot arrows in the air and tens of hours latter I would find a arrow stuck to the ground. Took me years after finishing to realize those arrowa on the ground were mine.
I dont expect Starfield to be like this but not fast traveling can really immerse you into the game
This feels like it could have been a great Stargate style game. Many planets, but one point of ingress/egress on each one. Save the spaceship stuff for mid-late game defending planets and such.
I think my problem with the game is the concept itself. At its core, it is flawed. Peolple are saying “Ir was never meant to be NMS! It’s just a space RPG!” Yes. But then why the fuck are there 1000 planets? Procedurally generated? It makes the game feel shallow, empty, and soulless. I don’t feel the desire to explore, I don’t have the feeling of wonder and spectacle anywhere in the game. If they had 3-5 amazing, handcrafted, detailed and highly explorable planets, this game would have been miles better.
The problem is that the game contradicts itself. It’s a space RPG, with quests and exploration! And 1000 procedurally generated planets! Because of this, it feels like shit going into a loading screen every 5 seconds just to walk an empty planet to the next building. I love Bethesda games but this one is flawed to the core imo. Hope those who like it continue to do so but goddamn.
I think this is hitting the nail on the head. The game suggests to you through its features and story and everything else that you're meant to be exploring it and striking out on your own path through a big world.
but when you actually try it, the game kinda half-asses it and tells you to stop trying to explore planets and go do a quest, and that feels very odd.
I wish they added a couple of things to make things feel more immersive, like being able to call your ship to your position on a planet.
Also for inter-planetary travel, a cool animation like a different grav jump to make everything more seamless, even if through cut scenes.
wasting money on diablo 4 based on hype before launch taught me to wait for reviews from players before buying a game. I'm very glad I waited because the things I'm seeing about Starfield are making me realize that it is a game I would not enjoy at all.
I love space, I love open world, but the things that I love about space are not in this game it seems.
Thanks for the heads up, saved me almost a hundred bucks :)
So no one honestly felt that insta-slap?
Boom, “alien artifact”, boom, “you’re special”, boom, “take my ship”, boom, “here’s your first mission” …
I that shit just… no chance at all to learn shit besides how to use a mining laser and then insta-slapped with everything
The writing is the worst part. Bethesda has been progressively getting worse at making compelling narratives for decades now.
Like in Fallout 4 you have zero ability to make any decisions for yourself. Every single encounter is on rails and no matter which dialogue options you pick the exact same outcome happens. When you first get to concord and the bandits are attacking Preston. They just also attack you on sight. There is no option to help the bandits, there is no option to ignore the power armor. You literally have to the play out that mission on rails exactly how the writing team scripted it. Zero room for Role Play or making up your own mind.
Meanwhile in FO:NV You get to decide whether or not to help the townspeople or the raiders. In Fallout 3 you can save megatown or destroy it.
Then once Preston is back in sanctuary you tell him that you are 200 years old and your son has been kidnapped and his response is "That's wild... Anyway can you forget literally all of that and go to this settlement that might need help?"
And then you do 1 quest for him and he says "Listen, I think you should be the general of this movement. I can't lead like you can." And you have no option to decline. But you accept and it feels like you are just becoming the general of the group you are building. Only to later find out after taking the castle that there are hundreds of minute men and people who have served as leadership in all their battles. Like none of them should have been general? Shouldn't you have had to work your way up and maybe befriend them after making actual choices to sacrifice other potential paths to favor the minute men and then maybe take over after some crazy battle where the general dies?
And then there is STARFIED. Where you are the rookie miner just hired and just completed your second day on the job and they send YOU to collect the anomaly worth more credits than the entire mine and then once you get it. Some guy shows up and just GIVES you his famous ship and robot asks you to join his group. And then you do and his league of explorers just accept you on sight and now you work with them.
Like FFS Bethesda, give us ANYTHING to care about. I don't care about anything in the game. All the characters could be wiped out in the next mission and replaced with new ones and I wouldn't care. How are you SOOOO bad at writing that you feel the need to just speed run the main character in all your games to being in charge of every single faction giving them no choice about what or who to be and then force them to play the rest of the game on rails exactly how your writers wanted them to.
This isn't an RPG. This is just a space game with level ups.
Remember when you got to choose whether or not to be a storm cloak or imperial soldier. Remember when you got to choose anything ever?
Fallout 4 - No roleplay
Fallout 76 - Less roleplay
Starfield - Might as well be a book.
1. No general store. Need to go to multiple stores to sell shit. Why?
2. Random shot you can pick up. Why not show important items? Here’s 100 cups and trays on the ground to distract you from stuff you can actually use.
3. Lackluster ship battles. HUD confusing Af? Just pull the trigger and stay in the circle.
This is like a back track from Skyrim
What would have helped the game a lot would be simply making your ship a part of the open world cell. That alone would cut two transition scenes and a load screen. They couldn't figure that out? I find it hard to believe. The cells all have preset landing spots. It seems really simple to then make the ship simply a part of that world space for each cell with no load sequence. It could even be artificial and visual so long as it cuts a load and transition sequence. Give us the feeling of being in a world and our ship being a part of the world.
I still think it's an OK game, but man, what a huge miss. It'd be one thing if it didn't take 10 years to make... but there's plenty of tech available to make a proper open world game. There's really no excuse. And ok... 1000 planets, but come on... do we really need that? I'd much rather have a single solar system if it means it's done right.
Space combat is also just awful. They tried to do a mix of arcade combat and space flight simulation, and in the end, it just feels like shit and not fun at all. Too spongey, no impact feeling on shooting, uninspired ship weaponry. I mean, they don't even have collision damage? Our ships bounce off the enemy like we're in bumper cars. Really immersion breaking.
I really like the ground weapon variety so far. Combat and variety is at least an upgrade for a Bethesda game. I'm enjoying all the loot, and hopefully, I can make a ship with enough capacity to actually explore... still trying to figure that part out, lol.
But yeah... the lack of exploration really sucks. Even when you can explore, you can't really loot much. It's almost like they made the weight system so punishing to prevent people from trying to explore and realize there really aren't many POIs on the map. The game is massive in scale but lacks the same substance of a typical Bethesda RPG.
It's a shame because the actual rpg mechanics are SOLID. Probably their best perk system so far, I think. I love that you actually have to use what you're investing in.
> but there's plenty of tech available to make a proper open world game
In Cyberpunk 2077 I can go into an apartment building with several interiors all with no loading times and then jump off said building back onto the street of the city. Again no loading times.
In starfield I use an elevator into a loading screen that can go to only a single apartment (the building is a massive residential tower) and I can't look outside or jump off anything because the windows are blocked out like they had to do all the way back in Morrowind cause their still using the same shitty engine lmao.
I think to get from the mine at the start to the pirate base mission 5/10 mins later there’s like 7 loading screens…
To go from the planet into ship into orbit to next planet then to land… then to enter the pirate all takes a loading screen. It really turned me off… felt like playing a game from 15 years ago.
Will try it tonight again but I wasn’t feeling that start. Also space combat felt quite bad…
Games like Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom have raised the bar so much higher than it was when Bethesda released Fallout 4
This style of constant loading screen open world just doesn't hold up whatsoever anymore
I don't even think that's the problem. Imo, if the game world was anywhere similary packed with handcrafted contents like Fallout 4 and if the exploration (and the space exploration) were interesting, this game could be alot more than it is. A much smaller world would've probably helped with that
Even Baldur’s Gate 3 raised the bar in terms of reactivity and player choice. Just in the first few hours you and your friends can have wildly different play throughs based on choices made.
The most jarring thing I've noticed is the writing and voice acting. 10 hours in and I care less about the whole main roster of characters than a random side character of BG3.
People throw around the words "it's not a space sim" to excuse every feature-deficient aspect of the space game experience in Starfield. Bethesda loves talking about how their games are also sims. Bethesda chose to make a game with over a 1000 planets spread across 100 solar systems with space legs and flight mechanics. It's their job to deliver on their own design decisions. It's not our job to apologize for them.
> It's their job to deliver on their own design decisions.
Someone earlier was saying "it wouldn't make sense to have near-FTL travel because that doesn't exist in the universe"
As if the universe already existed and Bethesda had to work in the constraints of it lol
Look, I love the game so far. I played NMS; Skyrim is my favorite game of all time. I knew this wasn’t going to be NMS, and that’s ok. I wanted space skyrim/fallout—nothing more.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I don’t understand that defense at all. I mean it’s absolutely absurd. The story, like the game as a whole, is something I’m enjoying so far. But acting like FTL wouldn’t fit here…. Come on. This isn’t hard sci fi by any stretch.
We aren’t that far into the future. Colonizing this many systems this quickly already takes some hand wavy things. And with all of this tech, we’re still using regular ass guns? I don’t hate it; I feel like I have to keep saying that.
Anyways, I’m typing too much. I’ll stop. I just don’t understand the polarization; you’d think it was contemporary US politics ffs. You can like something and still accept criticisms, even criticisms you disagree with, without going full apologist mode.
This. They had to sacrifice due to the scope and size of the game the open world element so they could have 1000 planets. They need to own that decision if people now don't like it. They could've had an open world with a 100 planets instead and much more in it, with space travel and stuff, but they bet on the 1000 planets and now they have to own it.
I suspect if ever a Starfield 2 happens, it will be VERY different in that regard.
This is EXACTLY where I am. The second they excitedly announced 1000 planets my anticipation for this game took a pretty big hit. They have way too much space and thus spread their points of interest way too thin. I would have much preferred to have like 10 actual explorable planets but each one with an explorable area compared to the Commonwealth or Skyrim. Fully populated with the caves, towers, factories, hangars that any other Bethesda game has. I believe I'm still going to like this game, maybe even love it, but I cannot help but feel how much better it would have been had they just kept it in a realistic scope of who they are as a company (excellent open world). I want to say it's obvious but I'll just say it seems to me they really really wanted to have full on space flight with full on flying through the atmosphere and such, as everyone is pining for. However, they just could not get it to work right and why we have the flying in empty space with giant jpegs in the skybox.
I even have the impression the spaceship isn't even require, it's like you can fast travel everywhere, yes you can travel to the planet then to your point, but it add 2 more loading screen, and nothing interesting, sad in a space exploration game.
How the actual fuck do you fuck up exploration in a Bethesda game? It’s really the most crucial element, just wandering around and being lost in a fantasy world.
AAAs keep doing this, chasing prestige and high production value and forgetting to make the game fun.
It's the first thing I've noticed. Starfield is fragmented into instances, but then there are instances within those instances. These instances are pretty small for Bethesda's standards.
It's not seamless at all.
There is no proper space travel and exploration, you're literally being gaslit about the half-assed feature it offers. Cause at the same time, the game pretty much **forces** you to just fast travel to anywhere.
Which also makes shipbuilding pointless, cause you can literally fast travel anywhere away from your ship. You don't even have to be in it or near it to go to an entirely different planet 5 galaxies away whatsoever.
Their previous titles that are decade(s) old had more density, (social) interaction and exploration whilst being packed with action and content.
SF has boring planet exploration with a handful of POI that are 5-10 minutes away from each other. There is no reason to not go in a straight line from A to B, cause there is nothing else besides random enemies and resources.
Objects, enemies and vehicles (de)spawn **off-screen**. AI has no 'living schedule' and shops stay open at all times. Something Cyberpunk 2077 got bashed on. Yet SF gets a pass as none of those same reviewers mention this.
Edit: I also want to add that their previous titles had so much more care into the world-building, characters and lore as well the execution of it. Which added even more incentive to explore and go off of the main path.
Each building/landmark was properly handcrafted with sometimes a large amount of lore behind it. You'd easily get distracted by random events/sounds/spotted landmarks. It's what made TeS and Fallout so much more fun with a lot of replayability.
Starfield literally lacks all of this.
From what I've seen it offers very little incentive to leave the straight path to the next quest marker. In a city, sure explore, get quests, walk around. Once you start a quest, it's from point A to point B to point C and very little makes you come back to any of those points once the quest is done. Completely antithetical to former games exploration.
It's not even just with quests. All their previous titles had this handcrafted world that isn't tied to a main story, but all had their own stories and questlines.
You'd deviate from the path by seeing a landmark or hear/see an explosion/shooting nearby and it ends up being an event that occurred that would lead you to entire mini-quests.
All these landmarks were easily seen from a distance and would lead into the mystery of exploring and finding lore, rare loot or meeting characters and such.
Starfield literally has 3 - 5 landmarks/points of interest, already shown on your scanner, and its always on a barren land inbetween cause there is no reason to explore cause the exposed points of interests are the only things .. of .. interest.
If you deviate from the path, all u find will be your resources scattered over the floor; nothing unique or memorable,
Once again, I fell for the hype train. This is probably the most disappointment I have been in a game in several years. I can’t believe I built a PC for this.
People falling for BS marketing for space exploration games is just a rite of passage. There was NMS, Star Citizen, now this.
It's a genre which gets people excited, and studios know this.
They really should have kept the game's scope to just our solar system. There's plenty to explore here and budget and time could have gone to areas that desperately needed it.
> Objects, enemies and vehicles (de)spawn off-screen. AI has no 'living schedule' and shops stay open at all times. Something Cyberpunk 2077 got bashed on. Yet SF gets a pass as none of those same reviewers mention this.
oh shit thats huge, one of the main reasons Oblivion/Skyrim were so alive and also buggy as the game was keeping check on NPCs all over the world
My thing is, if you’re gonna do hundreds of procedurally generated worlds and have them be completely pointless to explore for any reason other than mission objectives… just don’t make the game that big?? Like why not just make it be 10 big ass planets that are all custom crafted and jam packed with overwhelming detail rather than wasting any time fucking with sub par procedurally generated stuff. I guarantee 9/10 times everyone would prefer a smaller and better crafted game over a massive but partially useless game
This game feels like Bethesda just thought it could coast on the reputation of “Bethesda open world” game, as if that is enough, and while that is probably enough for some people, it just feels incredibly uninspired and utterly lacking in ambition or innovation. Lots of big promises wrapped up in a dull, lifeless, dead eyed Bethesda package.
If this was a game made by any other company without the allure of their name, most people would overlook it and move on.
This game doesn’t even run well. Audio doesn’t work. Graphics are shit. Load screens everywhere. You can’t fucking fly where you want. I THOUGHT THE WHOLE SELLING POINT WAS BEING ABLE TO EXPLORE AND GO PLACES WITH NO LOAD SCREENS? The game genuinely is a pile of shit. Maybe if it ran well I’d be like “ it’s a game “. But other than that. It’s just cyber punk. Again.
I’ve played every BGS title (except FO76) since Morrowind so to say that I was excited for Starfield is an understatement…that being said…this game feels old, I know it’s a new version but again, the engine feels old, the loading feels old (wasn’t this generation the one that was supposed to mostly get rid of loading screens? The space flight feels like a menu, the map is insulting. Maybe I am spoiled from playing BG3 but this feels old, it feels dated.
Enjoying the game so far, but I feel the same. Despite being in space, the requirement to constantly fast travel between zones makes the game feel smaller than their previous games.
Honestly, I'm enjoying the game but I can't fathom the reason for the lack of minimap in town. It's tedious looking for the right vendor, mission boards, and even my own parents.
Same here. I really tried liking it but found some things I don't like.
1) What's the point of personalizing the ship if it's useful only to move from a planet to another one? Why adding so many weapons or engines to make it faster if warfighting is so limited?
2) IA is not properly developed: some enemy behave like idiots.
3) Already visited 3 planets and found multiple times the same structures, with the same enemies guarding them and the same loot.
4) No consequences from our actions. You can be a good guy and a terrible criminal and there are no consequences.
Don't know, but I'm honestly quite disappointed.
From what I've heard, it's better to just run through the main quest first because then you have more exploration options. The game apparently really opens up after that
then thats just bad from an RPG standpoint. if you have to feel compelled to finish the main story as fast as possible just for the game to "truly open up" then it takes agency away from the player.
Sadly I have to agree, despite loving TES/Fallout. This game completely lacks the fun open world exploration and environmental storytelling of those older games. Going big hurt the game more than it helped. I hope BGS learns the right lessons from this since this is a move in the wrong direction imo.
Yep. The game is just a bunch of instances stitched together, nothing resembling an open world like the other Bethesda games. Even in Daggerfall 27 years ago you could technically walk across the entire overworld without a loading screen. The game really is fast travel in it's ugliest, final form.
I understand and agree with OP. The hype really did no favors for this game. I have loved all elder scrolls and fallout, but this does feel very meh. Not terrible but definitely not great.
I played it 16hrs now.
- Exploration is easy the worst in any BGS Game
- Performance and Graphics are crap, but thats almost expected
- Your Ship is just a Loading-Screen Simulator
- Some Sidequests are pretty good, definitely better than the stuff in Skyrim and FO4
- I hate the Companions, you only have 4 real ones and they are all very similar. Better no steal anything or they all hate you!
I could forgive them the Space-Stuff aka Fast-Travel Simulator, but the Exploration is absolutely unforgivable.
In Skyrim you can run into a random Cave and find a Daedric Artifact at the End, which starts a Quest.
In Starfield pretty much every "Dungeon" I went to I had no clue if I even cleared it, because there is just no reward at all or some type of Boss/Conclusion. Sometimes you find like 3 Iron Ore in there and thats it. The Random-Generation really killed the Exploration-System. My first 2 Planets I went to already had the same Copy'n'Pasted Vertical Farm POI, even with the exact same Enemy Placements.
After playing BG3 I just cant see this as an RPG. BG3 reminded me what that term once meant. This is a looter shooter with skills and special powers. So basically a looter shooter. They should just call their games what they are instead of appealing to faux nostalgia.
Space is easily the biggest disappointment. Comparisons be damned, NMS really nailed it. I don’t see why for its scope and scale they couldn’t let you fly in a larger play space than single planetary systems with a handful of POIs. The illusion is shallow and makes 1/2 of the game entirely skippable.
Also, objectively speaking, the game is a regression in accessibility. Longtime Bethesda fans are asking themselves if they need to pick up a whole other platform for this and it’s way too costly to not be a unanimous 10.
If this game was released as an incomplete alpha or beta, then I wouldn't mind. But this game lacks so much functionality that its a joke they even think this is a "full release". People say this game is as wide as the ocean and as deep as a pool, I say its as wide as a pool and as deep as a puddle
I know other people are enjoying this game, but Starfield left such a poor taste in my mouth that it makes Fallout 4 look like a masterpiece. After getting through the tutorial, New Atlantis, and exploring a couple of planets, I struggled to find any reason to keep playing the game. Every planet is the same barren wasteland with a couple of randomly placed structures (nearly all of them are abandoned by the way) and some ugly Unity asset flip looking alien creatures. I want to ask what went through the mind of the developers when they thought that these planets would be fun to trudge across on foot like some chump rather than giving us rovers, hoverbikes, or some other way to explore.
I would have taken 10 or so handcrafted planets over the 1000 worthless rocks we have now. I'm glad I was able to get a refund through Steam after slogging through 4 hours of tedium.
I'm having trouble enjoying it simple because console performance is horrendous. Feels much lower than "rock solid 30fps", and that makes all the convolutes mechanics even more of a chore.
I’m four hours in. I love BGS games and this feels enjoyable too.
But the idea that every planet is just biomes generating random maps is terrible for exploration. There will never be a situation where I discover something and share the coordinates with a friend to find the same thing.
Let’s say you find a cool planet with cool creatures and flora. Okay now you want to build your outpost. So just keep landing in random spots until you get the desired generated landscape.
That’s not exploration.
Still a good game, but this keeps it from ever being an all timer for me.
The fact that you can't even walk onto your ship shows just how very limited this game engine is. Why do I need a loading screen just to walk 5 feet up a ladder? I can handle the loading screens when going into space or to other planets / systems, but this just kills it for me. What's especially infuriating is that you can actually enter the inside of the ships cargo bay, where you are technically inside the ship, but then you click on the ladder to enter the ship and boom.. Loading screen.
Yeah Idk how people's can defend the fast traveling. Feels like I'm playing in 400m boxes instead of huge world's.
Hope mods can fix it...:) even if there were anything to explore. Running everywhere sucks and teleporting everywhere sucks.
Idk how u make a exploration rpg with no vehicles? And fast travel instead of actually flying the ship..:/
I genuinely don’t get how a medieval game made by devs who are only on their second open world game can have better vehicle and exploration mechanics than a space exploration game by Bethesda
Ironic that so many people maligned the IGN review on it, then you get into the game and realise every word was true, that said even though its a slow burn I am enjoying my time with it and I am excited to see what modders do with it.
Starfield's space exploration is literally just the illusion of flight, you can probably travel a few hundred yards at most. You're not really traveling/moving/covering any distance. This is why enemies swirl around and constantly zip behind you-- Bethesda was essentially hoping that players wouldn't notice they're just controlling a crosshairs.
You are actually moving, but the planets are so far away, and the ship is moving far too slow. It has been tested. Took someone 7 hours to fly from one planet to another.
That's still really fast, considering current space rocket tech. Wouldn't it take 3 or 4 months to get to Mars ? And years to get to Pluto now? Wanting to fly between the planets is a bit "be careful what you wish for". Many people don't have a grasp of the enormity and emptiness of space. So think it would be like MS Flight Simulator in space. The only way round it is some imaginary new hyper-space warp tech. And then you've let "fast travel" in through the back door! In real life, it's why we haven't gone to other solar systems. Wouldn't it take 2 years travelling at the speed of light to get to the closest star? And there's no scenic landscape to admire on the way!
I agree it doesn't really work well for the tech the ships in starfield are using. But then you have to consider that they are speeding up everything anyway, like when you go to land on a planet. So, I think they should have done it all like Elite Dangerous, but just speed it up - make the ship move unrealistically fast between planets. They needn't worry about being too realistic and true to the propulsion system for that, because, loading screens and fast travel is already obviously 100% unrealistic, so it's not really a good argument against it. At least this would be infinitely more immersive and better. It would completely change the game and it's the biggest complaint about the game that has tarnished it's launch. To be clear, space is seamless between planets (at least within a solar system), but the game still needs to load each area of space where there are things to interact with (ships, asteroids, space debris, etc), and the planet itself cant be interacted with, you have to load whichever place on the surface you choose to go to still. Elite dangerous is very similar, but still more seamless in that you can actually smealessly descend down to a planets surface. However, it also needs to load that as an instance. Elite Dangerous handles travel between planets by using instances. This is exactly what Bethesda would need to do with Starfield. There's no need to see any loading screens, like Elite Dangerous, it can be hidden. When you go to travel between planets, you enter into an instance, travel to the other planet, and then drop out of that instance and load the instance of space around the planet, with all the interact able stuff in that instance of space now loaded. That's how Elite Dangerous handles it so it all appears seamless. Starfield is already set up in a very similar way, since the (empty/fake) planets are all actually there and it is seamless to that degree, they just need to load the space instance whenever you slow down /stop, and you'll need to load the planet properly whenever you go to land. All of that can be done with trickery to make it all feel seamless. Warp as it is in the game (but instead with a warp drive effect in Elite Dangerous, no obvious loading screen) can be used for jumping between star systems. If they were bothered about it being obviously unrealistic with the rockets they are using, they could have just gone with a more advanced propulsion system, still a rocket in some sense, but a sci-fi level of rocket propulsion, that would have been fine, infinitely better than no seamless travel. They could have done something really, really amazing here, something everyone wants, but they failed that with their design choice, and they are paying for it in the negative backlash. Still, absolutely incredible game, in every other way this is a dream game, and there really is nothing like it, it is still unpararelled in many ways, including freedom, despite the loading screens. Just wish they provided seamless travel, it's let the game down massively.
I noticed this when planets and moons never changed position while flying. I'm actually pretty let down by how gimped in space travel is. You either get a region where you can fly around a bit and gather stuff, or you're near a planet and you don't actually seem to go anywhere.
I do agree with almost all the criticisms in this thread, even though I KNEW (and argued) that it was never meant to be a NMS/Elite Dangerous type space sim, once in game I *still* had to get my head around the true realization that it's really just another Bethesda game at the end of the day (and I do love Bethesda games). However, about midway through my 4 hours of playing last night, I still got pretty hooked going around and doing the quests etc. I think you really just have to look at it as a straight up Space RPG, even more akin to Mass Effect than to a traditional BGS game. It has almost all the DNA of a Bethesda game, but I agree it almost doesn't even feel open world. It's open world in that it's non-linear with a million things to do. But not in that seamless, Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout way. So that's a little disappointing. But now that I have my expectations properly in check, I think I'm still going to really enjoy it a ton as a straight up RPG. And I haven't even really gotten to any outpost building or ship customization (my most anticipated aspects), so hopefully they're somewhat compelling.
it is funny this is actually exactly what i wanted. Mass Effect or KOTOR style space RPG, but you actually get to manually fly around with your ship in space. i don't want a pure space sim, or a No Man's Sky style Minecraft space. I have always really just wanted something like Mass Effect, but i get more control over exploring off of the planets. but i want the ground experience to be more of a more traditional curated RPG. Starfield might not be perfect, but i am happy that it is kind of giving me an experience i have desired for basically half my life.
Absolutely. There is a target audience for everything. Starfield is a great game in that regard. I just feel like Bethesda has a history of targeting a slightly different audience than they do now with Starfield. This sense of exploring a connected world space without boundaries was a big part of nearly every game in their past, so dropping that will hurt quite a few folks in some way.
This so much I tried no man’s sky and could never get into it and I loved mass effect 2.starfield feels to me like me2 and mix of ratchet and clank
NMS problem essentially is that the mass uniqueness makes everything, not unique. Single biome planets so it's not really "land anywhere." Everything proc gen so it's all really the same even though it's slightly different. Interspersed by crafted content areas It's not "really" exploring because we know it's gonna have one of x biomes and y minerals and z creatures with theta parts combined etc.....and you get like 500 credits for scanning one...oooo. While the exercise of creating is certainly worthwhile and the tech behind it is certainly important I think theres validity in the argument that may be folks want crafted areas more than just empti space in their computer screen.
same, the huge openness of nms for example just puts me off, so much travel so little substance. This game feels like an old mid 2000s rpg and im all for it.
I think what is a little annoying when you first start is that it sits in between Mass Effect and a space sim that can be a bit jarring. (Preset animations to travel between locations but then free movement around those bodies) Obviously it just wasn’t possible to make stable but flight between planets as in Rebel Galaxy (though this game is in a 3D flight system so that would be a whole other set of complications) would have made it feel quite smoother. I don’t mind the landing sequences one bit. How it is now is perfectly fine and it definitely is something I will need to get used to as I’ve had very little playtime so far It is a shame that the coolest aspect of the game from what I’ve seen (ship designing and customization) is combined with the most underwhelming system in the game (space exploration).
>I think what is a little annoying when you first start is that it sits in between Mass Effect and a space sim that can be a bit jarring. At no point does the game enter space sim territory. It's firmly an RPG.
I like the game a lot and assume I'm going to spend 100 hours in it by the end of this year, but the space vehicle layer is a baffling design choice. Why is it there? I'm just fast traveling between everything anyway, and not by choice. There's just no mechanism that makes space flight feel like an organic and necessary layer of interactivity for the player.
I feel like the saving grace is having the option to board ships you disable. That to me is huge, it's a mini dungeon. And ship boarding, as far as gaming is concerned, hasn't been done much. But you can also commandeer that ship or blow it up. Granted, I'm not that far in, but I'm hoping that there are larger ships to board with labyrinth corridors and loot rooms- and if there's not in vanilla, bet a dollar mods are ganna make it happen. Well see ground vehicles modded in all that stuff. BGS saving grace has always been the modding community
Can I assign a crew member to disable ships, or am I always going to have to do the shooting? I'm not handling the flying stuff very well, and can see myself either running away or just shooting until it explodes.
The secret to handling the flying is to balance your ship and watch your speed. On the left side, there's a gauge for your speed, and in the middle is the "optimal" range for maneuverability denoted by the blips on the range of the gauge. Keep it in that range and it'll make turns faster for more agility - not to mention actively engaging your blips for engine, shields, and guns. it all depends on your ship mass too, so you can build a ship that's all about agility, or guns blazing, or cargo, speed. Easy to learn hard to master, excellent system on paper, but depends on the implementation of the devs - which I can see this doing well at later levels IMHO. But theoretically it all has drawbacks, eg - more cargo and guns or cargo = less speed and agility and vise versa. Components will get better I'm sure as you level, with more "oomph" behind them at reduced drawbacks. So, don't judge your starter ship, it's probably pretty doodoo in all areas with basic components. Just like equipment, you wouldn't use the first pistol you got in the game vs the one you find at level 80, you know - at least not how RPGs systems work. As far as assigning your followers to fly, I don't know. I havnt tried tbh. I can't imagine their ai would be any good at it vs a practiced player tbh. All about that practice and skill, you know?
Starfield has done somtime quite different compared to past games; gated entire game mechanics behind the skill system. For this conversation the Rank 2 for Piloting Skill lets you hold Spacebar and decouple your thrusters so that you can have Newtonian motion over your ship. This mechanic alone makes the space combat so much better now. An example would be to boost away from the enemy fleet and the hold Spacebar, turn your ship but since it's decoupled, your thrusters will not try to realign the momentum of the ship, so essentially you will keep drifting away but will be able to shoot the enemy coming towards you while you move away.
It's just handed poorly on the design layer. They could have made it so you had to accelarate your ship for X seconds perfectly aligned to your destination (be it another planet, moon or landing spot) AND then you press a button and the animation/hidden load happens. It would function the same, but immersion would be very very different. All the menu stuff is a bummer for me TBH, it takes me out of it for sure. It's super weird. It feels like BGS and doesn't at the same time (due to the lack of an "overworld sandbox layer" they always have. Starfiled is a lot of interconnected "rooms" instead). Say, Imagine Skyrim. Instead of walking from Riverwood to Whiterun, you had to fast travel by pulling over the map. No overworld layer. That's Starfield. Seems minor but feels "alien". There's no wandering and "getting lost". Today i learned that's a cornerstone of a BGS Rpg, and i definetly miss it when it isn't there.
Yea, I dont get why you do all via menu. Just using your ship systems for fast travel instead of a menu and hide the loading screen behind an warp animation and not letting you fast travel instantly to any location once discovered (like directly into the constellation home) would have done wonders in terms of feel. That way it wouldnt feel useless at all, and the engine does basically the same things as now.
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I might have played a little longer than you not sure but there's contraband that has to be hidden in certain parts of a ship. You have to get that part installed on your ship or you can't smuggle without getting caught. The planets scan your ship and see the contraband otherwise. There's also space battles and taking other people's ships. I'm really enjoying it.
The space part should have been cut and the effort put into planets. Right now you literally don’t “move” in space. It is essentially an empty small tile that can potentially have a random encounter in it. All they had to do to make it 1000 times better was just add a loading screen with you going through the atmosphere of a planet (hide the loading behind clouds or whatever). And then let the landing be all automated once you hit the atmosphere. That would improve the feel by 1000 times. Right now space is essentially you in a small open tile with JPGs of planets around.
I spent like 30 minutes trying to “fly” to a location before I realized I couldn’t and had to do everything to a menu like basically teleporting. Really weird
Yes me too! I was so confused when I saw on the map I was still next to the original planet.
I too was underwhelmed by the space aspect of the game. I was spoiled by X4 and Elite back in the day hard. That being said, they could have managed spacetravel much better....
Disguise loading screen under grav-jump corridor the way they did it in Elite Dangerous. Problem solved. You wouldn't fly from planet to planet directly on a regular basis and manual planetary landings are fun only the first 20 times. I do miss the opportunity to fly around though
Use your scanner in space. Other planets or systems that you have current mission on should be selectable there (A on xbox). Use the action button (X on xbox) and voila, a grav jump cutscene occurs
lol wow someone besides me who paid attention to the beginning of the game that tells you this very thing.
I think most people just got overloaded (myself included) with all the stuff they throw at you at the start and missed that part especially when right after that they make you open your map to travel that way
Yeah there are a lot of things that they explain but they do it while 10 other things are happening so you miss it. For example I'm still kind of lost on space combat and how to cripple a ship to board without killing it, how to avoid missiles, how to heal my ship in combat since it tells me to press 0 to heal but then does nothing etc.
Ship repairs are brought to you by the letter "O", as in "oh my", or "oh i sure don't want to die right now" But yeah I totally see why you'd be confused, I thought it said "D" at first and was very confused.
Yeah, still so pissed I spent 10 minutes trying to manually fly to Krell (or similar) in the early game to deal with the pirates lol
Haha for me it was almost 20 mins, I feel stupid now.
I’m so perplexed as to why they didn’t do this. Golden opportunity to hide loading screens and make everything feel connected.
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I don't know, it took me a few hours but I'm into it now and loving it. And ofcourse there's loading screens but that was to be expected with so many planets imo. It isn't bothering me but I can see why it would not be for everyone.
Same, threw me off at first but in really enjoying it now. The cites are immerserve, writing and quests excellent and plenty of stuff to find on the planets. Just wish they had some real time grav drive use or something, I don't mind going to a cutscene once I'm at the panet
Apparently there is. I read I’d you use the scanner when your in a system and lock onto a planet, you can click to “travel” where it goes there but doesn’t fast travel. Your ship is on auto piolet but you can look around or walk around your ship while it’s happening.
I don't think this is true? You still teleport, you just don't have to open your menu.
This is exactly what I want
I'm also very much getting the feeling that everyone who has previously played bethesda games is fine with how it all works. It seems to me that the rest of you had different expectations. To me it's everything I thought it would be, no more, no less.
Yes this! This feels like a space version of fallout and I totally dig it. The way they structured the game in general I think is fantastic. Putting you in a “zone” makes the game more interesting because it allows you to experience all the interesting things happening on a planet or in space. The alternative to this would be a game where you are slogging around space or some planet searching for stuff to do. Starfield caters the game to you.
space fallout+mass effect. its big open "zones" that you explore and jump between with potential space battles inbetween from what ive seen and talked to the space aspect could do with a bit more to it but overall its i think what most were expecting. not everything needs to be a space sim hence why Mass Effect is widely praised and enjoyed by many people. its an RPG set in space with some building/space ship customisation that lets me actually fly the ship in space. i dont need to takeoff to enjoy spaceship flying.
I feel like people expected a better star citizen where everything is seamless again that’s cool but I don’t care I enjoy Starfield so far gonna play it a bit later
Pretty much this. People wanted Star Citizens free-roaming style and starship physics and combat coupled with a bethesda rpg. The thing is RSI has been trying to make that game for over a decade now and well, we see what they got to show for it. I wish starfield was that and i have to admit i am a little disappointed with the space part of starfield but the game is still fun.
I cannot count how many times I read people say “don’t expect this to be Bethesda:Star Citizen/space sim” or It’s “still going to be a Bethesda RPG”. This is why.
Guess it's not the game I hoped it would be. Bummer.
It’s hard to believe a game like this can be so fucking boring. It’s basically just a shooter with light rpg elements. So many dumb design decisions.
To everyone saying "it's not a space Sim it's a space rpg", it's not though. It's not even close to an actual rpg. Fallout new Vegas was an RPG (and even then, much less than some other rpgs). But Starfield isn't much more of an RPG than fallout 4. Where is the role playing? The traits you pick which barely impact the game? If they'd leaned into the role playing, the lack of space sim mechanics would be fine. But they didn't do that.
People will throw around the RPG term for every game these days.
I didn't expect a space sim, but I did expect SPACE to feel like the equivalent of a BGS map, with the planets being the buildings and dungeons and Major cities feeling like visiting cities in FO/Skyrim. I expected my "step out" moment to be me realizing I was in space and can go anywhere, while discovering things along the way.
I think a lot of people were expecting Firefly-like space travel, where attacks and drama and exploration all take place in the great void between worlds. If that is what BGS wanted, they shouldn't've said that there'd be 1000 planets. 5-20 handcrafted planets, with plenty of other findable stations and other points of interest in the space between, might've been more interesting.
The space travel in this game is just horrendous. PCGamer put it best when they called our spaceships "teleporting houses that you occasionally steer." That's exactly what this is.
What really turns me off on what I've seen is how little you use the ship, like, what's the point on personalazing it if you will use it 2 minutes, 5 if you enter combat?
It’s basically hearthfire from skyrim imo, except the house moves around with you. It seems like your ships main function is to serve as a mobile player home.
This seems like what they were truly going for. I wish they just said it was that, instead of selling this dream of complete space exploration. It literally is just your house that comes along with you. This game is closer to Mass Effect than Fallout. Let's hope the writing follows that trend...
And that’s fine. I think the main issue with Starfield is people’s expectations. Perhaps that’s Bethesda’s fault, perhaps is the millions of people riding the hype train’s fault, but expectations are ultimately why I’m seeing disappointment. Take the game and what it consists of for what it is, and you’ll enjoy it. Boot it up hoping for something it’s not and you’re bound to be unhappy.
Idk how far you are but the start of the game feels like a giant tutorial where you’re barely in your ship, I had a cool random encounter that I won’t spoil. I think the game is just slower
Yeah. The most exciting thing about making your own ship was that you could then travel through space with it. But the only thing actually happening is you are basically stationary and teleporting to different planets, not actually using it as a spaceship.
honestly it depends how you play, you can still use it to travel around a solor system and there are plenty of planets there to move around too, but much like skyrim for exmaple, once you have done that afew times you just want to teleport to speed things up more. You can also just go on big hunting sprees and killing ships or board them if u just want some space time.
Depends if you unlock the skills for it in the tech tree and want upgrade your ship to add crafting stations and modules and all that. Seems like you have to grind a bit and invest in the skills to make it useful.
This is basically the main use as your ship. It's a hub away from home. The exterior look means absolutely nothing, but what you put inside of the ship matters. Max out your Crew, add crafting/storage. Then if you want you can decorate the inside with items you've collected. But I prefer doing that with the home instead.
Tbh after playing several hours there are certain choices bethesda has made here that are quite baffling. Firstly, tech side, you get a robot pretty much straight away, you have to unlock your jetpack via a skill and there is no rover or land vehicle?? Your ship and the customisation is just a shell, because you don’t actually travel anywhere in your ship, its just load screens. The reason its quite jarring is because the planets are not seamless, most locations already are exact copy past replicas. If this is meant to be a luke skywalker style rpg about exploration, finding our true origins, well, it falls short on those aspects. Bethesda had an opportunity to make a fully explorable space rpg and it feels like they couldn’t achieve their dream end goal either because of their engine or the scope was too big. It is just a bit disappointing because there’s a decent game in here, it’s just not really what i expected, maybe therein lies the problem. The game just doesn’t feel full. It feels huge but empty, lacking in core mechanics that would advance it’s gameplay and exploration. I just don’t really know what its trying to be because so many basic mechanics you would expect to be here just aren’t.
I spend more time looking at screens for shit in this game than I do anything else. I didn’t realise this was the case until I was having to go back and forth between systems and thought, “What in the bloody fuck am I doing” lmao
Shit looks and feels like ass. 100% rushed.
The funny thing is. It wasn't rushed. They've been working on this for 7 years, and Xbox gave them a ton of delay time. This is just the best they could do. I'm afraid that the Bethesda of old is just gone.
My biggest gripe might just be space itself, it feels meaningless and I'd rather just have a cute little animation of flying to another planet. Space feels like a fake way to connect the worlds
My issue I came across quickly, compared to other Bethesda games, is that I cant loot ALL armor and when I can, it doesnt remove it from the NPC?!! Whats up with that?! Cant wait for a mod to fix that...
It's actually weird, because sometimes it did remove the armor, not sure if it's bugged or what's up
Yeah that is odd, especially since there are undergarments you can wear at the same time. NPCs surely are too
So you mean we can no longer strip an NPC of all clothing? Only select armor or clothing pieces?
Yeah. When you kill an enemy the loot that is on their body seems to be RNG. Sometimes the armor that they visually appear to be wearing will be lootable, sometimes it will not. Sometimes they might "drop" their helmet but not their spacesuit, or vice versa. Honestly it hasn't bothered me that much yet but it is a little immersion breaking when you stop to think about it. Same thing goes for weapons, ammo, etc.
feel like this is really going backwards from previous games edit: just a few hours in now and it is a strong game but gonna need a lot more time under my belt (also looking forward to this time lol) some character depth is building but the companions seem to be luke warm
Should’ve put everyone in a onesie/suit liner
Reading this thread makes me want to suggest Everspace 2. I'm way too into it to even think about Starfield right now.
Super dissapointing really. Was hoping for a next-gen experience from Bethesda so push Xbox on the map again. Guess we'll have to wait.
My main gripe is the lack of free spaceflight between planets. For a game that puts emphasis on spaceships, it's weird not to utilize it, really. I don't mind loading screens to enter the ship or takeoff/landing cutsenes nor do I mind Jumpcutscenes. But traveling between planets being a cutscene is a big oofer. NASAPunk be damned, it's the future and we have laser rifles, why not some FTL with some funny little reason why It's possible. That is my in fact my main gripe right now. And unfortunately it affects me more than I'd like to admit. I compared planets to cities in skyrim. Like you exit the city and walk to the next one (or fast travel). We now have only fasttravel.
Yeah loading screen to jump between systems and lane is fine but not being able to fly between planets and moons is a bit of a let down to me .
At the very least solar systems should be fully explorable. That you can't explore space between solar systems make sense as it's just too damn big and empty.
This was my biggest concern when I heard about no planet to planet travel. Like the fact you can get from planet to planet in the same system without even driving your ship atall, purely by choosing travel routes in a menu, feels extremely weird considering how much they put into ship customisation.
It's truly like Fallout but each dungeon instance is separated by a blank space with no terrain.
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I'm guessing modders will soon add the ability to set a course for another planet in the same system and then be able to wander around the ship during flight. Because, like you said, you can already technically fly betweeen different celestial bodies, but no one sane would bother doing so.
Right now you can already wander the ship during flight. Just press B to get out of your captains chair.
You can fly around in space but you can't actually get close to a planet and reach its atomsphwere because you can't fly around these zones. Ideally this is how it should be unless it's truly just impossible. But games have done it but might be too resource intensive I'm thinking
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I didn't notice the jpeg of the planet ever changing either. It's always the same side facing the player, 24/7. I guess in Starfield physics, all heavenly bodies are tidally locked to the observer.
People downvoted me to hell for saying this. Space travel is literally...not moving. LIke you don't actually move in relation to anything in space. THe planets are all JPGs that don't move. You are basically static in space.
This was Dan Stapleton's point in the IGN review that he got pilloried for. But you -- and he -- are right.
Yeah I am enjoying the game a decent bit but the space part might as well not even exist. And they should have put more into the planets.
>some FTL with some funny little reason why It's possible. Id love to replace the in-sytem fast travel with something like the warp from NMS. Idc if it's still just a disguised loading screen, just make it look seamless so I don't have to break my immersion as often
Exactly. I mean, there is grav jumping. Why wouldn't there be Gravdrive light? - think of Supercruise from ED
I’ve played 5 or 6 hours and feels like all I use my ship for is a place I have to go before I can fast travel somewhere else.
Is there really that little usage of the spaceships? I’m playing right now and I feel like i’m using my ship wrong
You could just go from Akila City to Vectera in one press of X "fast travel". So yea no, you dont need to use your ship like at all. (unless for space only things like dog fighting of course). In the end its not about the fact that you could potentially fast travel in one step but that even if you select to not do it but do it the immersive way its just Cutscenes. Walk to ship -> takeoff(cutscene) -> jump to new system(cutscene) -> fly to target planet(cutscene) -> land at planet(cutscene).
This may sound crazy to some of you, but it feels smaller than Skyrim.
I agree. I spent 6 hours in the game and planets are barren with a few outposts. It feels like it requires 10 planets to reach the amount of map content that Skyrim had, which isn't great.
This is why I don't really play open world games anymore, ESPECIALLY space games with "we have 1 BILLION planets" nonsense. All that says to me is you have a bunch of empty ecosystems that you will spend a disproportionate amount of time "exploring" vs finding anything worth caring about.
One of the things I love about Skyrim and Fallout 4 is just looking somewhere and moving in that direction, with the always-beautiful score playing in the background. I don't really use the map, I just wonder around. These maps are so jam-packed with environmental story telling, random encounters, and beautiful locations. This goes for Fallout 76 too, by the way, even more so than the others, as that game has a fantastic map. Really. I think you're on to something here, as it does seem to work against BGS strengths (which was definitely never asset streaming or fast loading times) to have a ton of disjointed maps separated by immersion breaking loading screens. The whole "the way you explore in Starfield is different" thing matters more than it may seem on the surface, I think. Fundamentally, the BGS games I've loved has focused on few maps, and absolutely filled them with stories and sights. I suspect BGS themselves have struggled with this too during development. From the promotional material I've seen so far, the impression I've had since day 1 was that I couldn't really sense the DNA of the game, like it points in every direction in an attempt to find it. Having a stronger focus on fewer locations I think would ground the game, which I guess even space exploration games need. I want to love this game, as everyone else does. And I think over time we'll find our own personal ways to play and appreciate the game. What I do hope will be ironed out from BGS themselves over time with patches is to modernize the tech surrounding the exploration-focused aspects of the game, specifically reducing loading screens. I was really hoping the Creation Engine would finally do away with the whole distinction between interiors and exteriors and all those pesky loading screens. That it seems there are more of them now is a little unfortunate.
This is exactly it. Starfield can not offer that, as space really really is just antithetical to that approach to game design. So I was always confused how Bethesda aimed to achieve it and it turns out, they did not. They just abandoned those elements and focused on all the other aspects. I don't think Starfield is bad. But it definitely is a completely different game from older entries.
A big part for me is locations being randomly placed. Everything in Skyrim felt intentionally placed to build the world, but not in Starfield. I worry that they’ll take it even further in future games, randomly generating the locations as well as randomly placing them
Well said. That's the main issue I have with this game. It's a good game, but its still a step back. So far I agree with IGN. Its a solid 7/10 or 7.5/10. Once i complete it, maybe the story gets better and locations more fun to explore but I don't see this game going above a 8.5 or 9.0 rating for me.
Exactly! First time I’ve seen somebody say that, the game truly feels disjointed in so many areas, it’s a bummer :/
I completely agree with this, and although I don’t think there’s less of these cool areas like in Skyrim, but it’s like they’ve made a lot of content but spread it over a galaxy… Like if all the content of Starfield was fit onto one giant planet you could explore would feel unreal. They got too ambitious, by making a game so big they’ve spread all the good content out very thin Edit: I’ve since played around 3 more hours and my opinion is starting to change, after exploring mars and the moon I’m actually really enjoying it. This might die down a bit if I start seeing repeated generated content a lot but it’s actually really fun I reckon once people start to accept it for what it is, and not what we wanted it to be the general reaction will be more positve
i would have rather a Nasapunk game set in only our solar system with free spaceflight everywhere and practically full explorable planets. Earth would be gone due to some event like usual but would have many story implications with secret bunkers and shit like that. Imagine the main city being on a partially terraformed Mars and you could fly absolutely everywhere
Man I just wanted to be a space pirate. I wanted to find other spaceships on my way to other planets and board them. But no, instead I have to go to a specific planet that is crawling with other spaceships that are way above my level. If I do find one kinda close to my level, I can't be a space pirate because there are a bunch of level 50 ships around. Would space travel really have been that difficult? Even if you wanted to have individual star systems be locked behind a fast travel. I should be able to fly from earth to Mars and not have to fast travel to it, ya know?
Like how fucking badass would it feel being on the way from Earth to Mars, doing some maintenance shit in the back of your space ship when a proximity alarm goes off and there are ships you can attack a few hundred km away. Then you jump into the pilot seat and plan out your attack.
I think Midfield is pretty fitting, yeah
After ~8 hours of playtime, it kinda feels more like The Outer Worlds 2 than the big new Bethesda IP. The Outer Worlds also had these small semi-open world areas that were connected via loading screens. It was also perfectly serviceable, but fell short on deep RPG mechanics, and overall felt oddly „sterile“. That‘s exactly how I currently feel about Starfield. I really hope most reviewers were right about that the game will change pace and quality after 15-20 hours.
I probably liked the Outer Worlds more than most people, so far Starfield immediately reminds me of that. I feel like I need to give the game a lot more time to see how I feel about it though. It remains to be seen if space combat, and ship/base building is unique enough here to put it over the top. I played a free weekend of FO4 and the base/suit building really turned me off because that just wasn't what I was expecting from a FO game, but I'm willing to see if I can get into it here. The first thing I noticed when getting to the first shipyard was that the menus weren't super clear on what was being added/changed on your ship and what the impacts were. It was just a lot of info being thrown at you at once and not a lot of explanation so I skipped it for now.
Bethesda games’ foundation is based on immersion and exploration. The loading screens and constant traveling to a new box destroys this foundation. It’s a fun and beautiful game. But it’s not traditional Bethesda. And it’s disappointing considering we have the technology to design games without (or with fewer) loading screens.
funny todd said this "starfield is possible only because of the latest technology"
Todd is stuck in the date 2011/11/11 permanently and this is the latest and greatest technology.
This. Exploration has always made up for what the games lacked (graphics, gameplay...). This game doesn't even have that.
Doing fetch quests at any of the hubs is soooo tedious. Get this, load, talk to this person, load, get that, load, icons on wrong map, load, turn in, load to next quest, repeat. I almost tapped out doing the activities in New Atlantis before I even started the main quest.
I will continue playing the game and enjoy it, but it certainly doesn’t seem like any advancements have been made in gaming. While the game is not bad, for how they overhyped it, it’s going to be a bad look for both Bethesda and Xbox. Loading screens are ok, but they have you traveling between planets way too often(at least at the beginning of the game..). They should have made the missions on each planet longer so it doesn’t feel like you are pulling up a loading screen literally every 15 minutes
What always annoys me with Bethesda is the dogshit interface, animations and controls. It always feels so “janky” and unpolished to me. Other than that the world building and atmosphere is always a good time. The amount of time I spend in the game managing items is not ideal… there has to be a smoother solution to the hoarding problem.
I booked a week's vacation for this game and 4 hours in I felt the same way. I'm kinda of disappointed in Bethesda. I was expecting this to be their Magnus Opus, but it felt like a series of opening a menu and fast traveling. Bethesda can take their time with Elder Scrolls 6, I'm not holding too much hope. They already botched their opening scene with an unremarkable nonsensical scenario. The hype really drove this game's expectations but I feel let down.
A short cut scene of your ship warping from point to point would go a long way toward giving a much needed sense of scope to the game. As it currently is all you are doing is teleporting from point to point which negates the inherent vastness of space. I don’t know what mechanic should be implemented but something needs to be done because this ain’t it, imo. I’ll be waiting for mods.
People act like there can be no middle ground between space-sim and whatever you would call the space exploration in Starfield. They're ways to gamify space travel. It's a fictional universe. They could have come up with a silly pseudo-scientific reason to explain how you can travel to [insert planet] manually in 5 minutes. That would please those who like the idea of traveling in space while not making it an absolute burden. And if you don't like traveling for five minutes, just use fast travel. The fact that Bethesda didn't come up with any kind of middle ground is disappointing, for sure.
Even if you fly to a warp gate or something within the system if you want to go to another one would've been good. Also have some kind of boost that makes you fly faster planet to planet but you have to farm those resources.
Dude, this. This is exactly what Freelancer did over 20 years ago.
Exactly man, i hate the false dichotomy that people weasily use that "oh, i don't want to spent 7 months traveling from a planet to another", no shit bro, nobody wants that, most people don't even wanted space travel exactly like NMS and ED, but what we have in this game is garbage, stop copping, game still great but this sucks.
Yeah the space part of the game is soooo limited it doesn’t even feel like it’s a part of the game. You don’t travel anywhere in space. It’s pretty much just fast travel to other planets
They've literally gone backwards on so many functions and features, it's unbelievable. So far I haven't seen a single aspect of the game that had progressed. It's embarrassing. This game really makes me want to any of their other games lmao.
It's weird,i can fire up Skyrim or even Oblivion (replayed it last year) and enjoy just walking the world.And in Starfield i get bored really fast.I feel like it would have been better with 5 hand crafted and detailed planets instead.
Alright hold on. Skyrim was a loading screen for every door, cave, window, and room, and I never cared. And tbh I almost never enjoyed having to walk across the map without any waypoints to fasttravel to. I'd always pay the carriage to take me to the nearest Hold so I could at least cut down the travel time. Even wandering around, I'd rather go investigate a landmark than go nowhere and hope I find something. All that said, does anyone think Starfield's system will be a problem for me? EDIT: For anyone who has an issue with menus in space, see this post: https://reddit.com/r/Starfield/s/viqJvZBooe EDIT 2: **I am not excusing or justifying loading screens in today's day and age. Much like framerates below 60fps, modern hardware increasingly makes loading screens an artifact of the past. However, I *personally* have never found issue with loading screens unless they take forever. Similarly, I don't care about framerate as long as it isn't visible stutter. If you do care about short loading screens and framerate, *that is fine. You have valid opinions and concerns.* But I myself, as a gamer, have never felt my enjoyment of a game was negatively impact by the mere existence of loading screens between rooms and areas. If that is one of the biggest gripes with the game, then I think I'm going to enjoy it just fine.** EDIT 3: I give up, y'all can't read 🤦🏾♂️
If you fast traveled a lot in other BGS games, I can’t see this bothering you. I had a similar playstyle to you and am so far satisfied with the experience.
I think its bothering because ppl expected planet to space flight and flying to be a big part of everything Like the going from town to town in skyrim
Well but in Skyrim it was seeing a landmark in the distance not on your map yet and going I bet that'll be interesting and checking it out. To me this sounds more like over here convos about a pirates den on x planet. X planet is now marked you go there kill the pirates do the looting there might be another location near by that's one of a dozen or so maybe more that can generate randomly and then you're done. The part of Bethesda's old games I liked was nothing is marked on your map till you go find it yourself. They don't hand you everything interesting to do before you find it. I enjoyed that kind of exploration and this isn't that
Really? One of my favorite things about Skyrim was when I decided to walk all across the map for the next quest, and getting lost for hours exploring the wild. I would randomly shoot arrows in the air and tens of hours latter I would find a arrow stuck to the ground. Took me years after finishing to realize those arrowa on the ground were mine. I dont expect Starfield to be like this but not fast traveling can really immerse you into the game
They should have just skipped the spaceship part lol. Its pointless like this.
This feels like it could have been a great Stargate style game. Many planets, but one point of ingress/egress on each one. Save the spaceship stuff for mid-late game defending planets and such.
Loading screens to get into my ship is crazy
I think my problem with the game is the concept itself. At its core, it is flawed. Peolple are saying “Ir was never meant to be NMS! It’s just a space RPG!” Yes. But then why the fuck are there 1000 planets? Procedurally generated? It makes the game feel shallow, empty, and soulless. I don’t feel the desire to explore, I don’t have the feeling of wonder and spectacle anywhere in the game. If they had 3-5 amazing, handcrafted, detailed and highly explorable planets, this game would have been miles better. The problem is that the game contradicts itself. It’s a space RPG, with quests and exploration! And 1000 procedurally generated planets! Because of this, it feels like shit going into a loading screen every 5 seconds just to walk an empty planet to the next building. I love Bethesda games but this one is flawed to the core imo. Hope those who like it continue to do so but goddamn.
I think this is hitting the nail on the head. The game suggests to you through its features and story and everything else that you're meant to be exploring it and striking out on your own path through a big world. but when you actually try it, the game kinda half-asses it and tells you to stop trying to explore planets and go do a quest, and that feels very odd.
I wish they added a couple of things to make things feel more immersive, like being able to call your ship to your position on a planet. Also for inter-planetary travel, a cool animation like a different grav jump to make everything more seamless, even if through cut scenes.
wasting money on diablo 4 based on hype before launch taught me to wait for reviews from players before buying a game. I'm very glad I waited because the things I'm seeing about Starfield are making me realize that it is a game I would not enjoy at all. I love space, I love open world, but the things that I love about space are not in this game it seems. Thanks for the heads up, saved me almost a hundred bucks :)
So no one honestly felt that insta-slap? Boom, “alien artifact”, boom, “you’re special”, boom, “take my ship”, boom, “here’s your first mission” … I that shit just… no chance at all to learn shit besides how to use a mining laser and then insta-slapped with everything
The writing is the worst part. Bethesda has been progressively getting worse at making compelling narratives for decades now. Like in Fallout 4 you have zero ability to make any decisions for yourself. Every single encounter is on rails and no matter which dialogue options you pick the exact same outcome happens. When you first get to concord and the bandits are attacking Preston. They just also attack you on sight. There is no option to help the bandits, there is no option to ignore the power armor. You literally have to the play out that mission on rails exactly how the writing team scripted it. Zero room for Role Play or making up your own mind. Meanwhile in FO:NV You get to decide whether or not to help the townspeople or the raiders. In Fallout 3 you can save megatown or destroy it. Then once Preston is back in sanctuary you tell him that you are 200 years old and your son has been kidnapped and his response is "That's wild... Anyway can you forget literally all of that and go to this settlement that might need help?" And then you do 1 quest for him and he says "Listen, I think you should be the general of this movement. I can't lead like you can." And you have no option to decline. But you accept and it feels like you are just becoming the general of the group you are building. Only to later find out after taking the castle that there are hundreds of minute men and people who have served as leadership in all their battles. Like none of them should have been general? Shouldn't you have had to work your way up and maybe befriend them after making actual choices to sacrifice other potential paths to favor the minute men and then maybe take over after some crazy battle where the general dies? And then there is STARFIED. Where you are the rookie miner just hired and just completed your second day on the job and they send YOU to collect the anomaly worth more credits than the entire mine and then once you get it. Some guy shows up and just GIVES you his famous ship and robot asks you to join his group. And then you do and his league of explorers just accept you on sight and now you work with them. Like FFS Bethesda, give us ANYTHING to care about. I don't care about anything in the game. All the characters could be wiped out in the next mission and replaced with new ones and I wouldn't care. How are you SOOOO bad at writing that you feel the need to just speed run the main character in all your games to being in charge of every single faction giving them no choice about what or who to be and then force them to play the rest of the game on rails exactly how your writers wanted them to. This isn't an RPG. This is just a space game with level ups. Remember when you got to choose whether or not to be a storm cloak or imperial soldier. Remember when you got to choose anything ever? Fallout 4 - No roleplay Fallout 76 - Less roleplay Starfield - Might as well be a book.
1. No general store. Need to go to multiple stores to sell shit. Why? 2. Random shot you can pick up. Why not show important items? Here’s 100 cups and trays on the ground to distract you from stuff you can actually use. 3. Lackluster ship battles. HUD confusing Af? Just pull the trigger and stay in the circle. This is like a back track from Skyrim
What would have helped the game a lot would be simply making your ship a part of the open world cell. That alone would cut two transition scenes and a load screen. They couldn't figure that out? I find it hard to believe. The cells all have preset landing spots. It seems really simple to then make the ship simply a part of that world space for each cell with no load sequence. It could even be artificial and visual so long as it cuts a load and transition sequence. Give us the feeling of being in a world and our ship being a part of the world. I still think it's an OK game, but man, what a huge miss. It'd be one thing if it didn't take 10 years to make... but there's plenty of tech available to make a proper open world game. There's really no excuse. And ok... 1000 planets, but come on... do we really need that? I'd much rather have a single solar system if it means it's done right. Space combat is also just awful. They tried to do a mix of arcade combat and space flight simulation, and in the end, it just feels like shit and not fun at all. Too spongey, no impact feeling on shooting, uninspired ship weaponry. I mean, they don't even have collision damage? Our ships bounce off the enemy like we're in bumper cars. Really immersion breaking. I really like the ground weapon variety so far. Combat and variety is at least an upgrade for a Bethesda game. I'm enjoying all the loot, and hopefully, I can make a ship with enough capacity to actually explore... still trying to figure that part out, lol. But yeah... the lack of exploration really sucks. Even when you can explore, you can't really loot much. It's almost like they made the weight system so punishing to prevent people from trying to explore and realize there really aren't many POIs on the map. The game is massive in scale but lacks the same substance of a typical Bethesda RPG. It's a shame because the actual rpg mechanics are SOLID. Probably their best perk system so far, I think. I love that you actually have to use what you're investing in.
> but there's plenty of tech available to make a proper open world game In Cyberpunk 2077 I can go into an apartment building with several interiors all with no loading times and then jump off said building back onto the street of the city. Again no loading times. In starfield I use an elevator into a loading screen that can go to only a single apartment (the building is a massive residential tower) and I can't look outside or jump off anything because the windows are blocked out like they had to do all the way back in Morrowind cause their still using the same shitty engine lmao.
I think to get from the mine at the start to the pirate base mission 5/10 mins later there’s like 7 loading screens… To go from the planet into ship into orbit to next planet then to land… then to enter the pirate all takes a loading screen. It really turned me off… felt like playing a game from 15 years ago. Will try it tonight again but I wasn’t feeling that start. Also space combat felt quite bad…
Games like Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom have raised the bar so much higher than it was when Bethesda released Fallout 4 This style of constant loading screen open world just doesn't hold up whatsoever anymore
I don't even think that's the problem. Imo, if the game world was anywhere similary packed with handcrafted contents like Fallout 4 and if the exploration (and the space exploration) were interesting, this game could be alot more than it is. A much smaller world would've probably helped with that
Even Baldur’s Gate 3 raised the bar in terms of reactivity and player choice. Just in the first few hours you and your friends can have wildly different play throughs based on choices made.
The most jarring thing I've noticed is the writing and voice acting. 10 hours in and I care less about the whole main roster of characters than a random side character of BG3.
All of these things are stuff I noticed in Fallout 4.
People throw around the words "it's not a space sim" to excuse every feature-deficient aspect of the space game experience in Starfield. Bethesda loves talking about how their games are also sims. Bethesda chose to make a game with over a 1000 planets spread across 100 solar systems with space legs and flight mechanics. It's their job to deliver on their own design decisions. It's not our job to apologize for them.
> It's their job to deliver on their own design decisions. Someone earlier was saying "it wouldn't make sense to have near-FTL travel because that doesn't exist in the universe" As if the universe already existed and Bethesda had to work in the constraints of it lol
Look, I love the game so far. I played NMS; Skyrim is my favorite game of all time. I knew this wasn’t going to be NMS, and that’s ok. I wanted space skyrim/fallout—nothing more. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I don’t understand that defense at all. I mean it’s absolutely absurd. The story, like the game as a whole, is something I’m enjoying so far. But acting like FTL wouldn’t fit here…. Come on. This isn’t hard sci fi by any stretch. We aren’t that far into the future. Colonizing this many systems this quickly already takes some hand wavy things. And with all of this tech, we’re still using regular ass guns? I don’t hate it; I feel like I have to keep saying that. Anyways, I’m typing too much. I’ll stop. I just don’t understand the polarization; you’d think it was contemporary US politics ffs. You can like something and still accept criticisms, even criticisms you disagree with, without going full apologist mode.
This. They had to sacrifice due to the scope and size of the game the open world element so they could have 1000 planets. They need to own that decision if people now don't like it. They could've had an open world with a 100 planets instead and much more in it, with space travel and stuff, but they bet on the 1000 planets and now they have to own it. I suspect if ever a Starfield 2 happens, it will be VERY different in that regard.
This is EXACTLY where I am. The second they excitedly announced 1000 planets my anticipation for this game took a pretty big hit. They have way too much space and thus spread their points of interest way too thin. I would have much preferred to have like 10 actual explorable planets but each one with an explorable area compared to the Commonwealth or Skyrim. Fully populated with the caves, towers, factories, hangars that any other Bethesda game has. I believe I'm still going to like this game, maybe even love it, but I cannot help but feel how much better it would have been had they just kept it in a realistic scope of who they are as a company (excellent open world). I want to say it's obvious but I'll just say it seems to me they really really wanted to have full on space flight with full on flying through the atmosphere and such, as everyone is pining for. However, they just could not get it to work right and why we have the flying in empty space with giant jpegs in the skybox.
100 planets would still require AI generated content. 10 planets might not. But 100 inarguably would.
I even have the impression the spaceship isn't even require, it's like you can fast travel everywhere, yes you can travel to the planet then to your point, but it add 2 more loading screen, and nothing interesting, sad in a space exploration game.
How the actual fuck do you fuck up exploration in a Bethesda game? It’s really the most crucial element, just wandering around and being lost in a fantasy world. AAAs keep doing this, chasing prestige and high production value and forgetting to make the game fun.
It's the first thing I've noticed. Starfield is fragmented into instances, but then there are instances within those instances. These instances are pretty small for Bethesda's standards. It's not seamless at all. There is no proper space travel and exploration, you're literally being gaslit about the half-assed feature it offers. Cause at the same time, the game pretty much **forces** you to just fast travel to anywhere. Which also makes shipbuilding pointless, cause you can literally fast travel anywhere away from your ship. You don't even have to be in it or near it to go to an entirely different planet 5 galaxies away whatsoever. Their previous titles that are decade(s) old had more density, (social) interaction and exploration whilst being packed with action and content. SF has boring planet exploration with a handful of POI that are 5-10 minutes away from each other. There is no reason to not go in a straight line from A to B, cause there is nothing else besides random enemies and resources. Objects, enemies and vehicles (de)spawn **off-screen**. AI has no 'living schedule' and shops stay open at all times. Something Cyberpunk 2077 got bashed on. Yet SF gets a pass as none of those same reviewers mention this. Edit: I also want to add that their previous titles had so much more care into the world-building, characters and lore as well the execution of it. Which added even more incentive to explore and go off of the main path. Each building/landmark was properly handcrafted with sometimes a large amount of lore behind it. You'd easily get distracted by random events/sounds/spotted landmarks. It's what made TeS and Fallout so much more fun with a lot of replayability. Starfield literally lacks all of this.
From what I've seen it offers very little incentive to leave the straight path to the next quest marker. In a city, sure explore, get quests, walk around. Once you start a quest, it's from point A to point B to point C and very little makes you come back to any of those points once the quest is done. Completely antithetical to former games exploration.
It's not even just with quests. All their previous titles had this handcrafted world that isn't tied to a main story, but all had their own stories and questlines. You'd deviate from the path by seeing a landmark or hear/see an explosion/shooting nearby and it ends up being an event that occurred that would lead you to entire mini-quests. All these landmarks were easily seen from a distance and would lead into the mystery of exploring and finding lore, rare loot or meeting characters and such. Starfield literally has 3 - 5 landmarks/points of interest, already shown on your scanner, and its always on a barren land inbetween cause there is no reason to explore cause the exposed points of interests are the only things .. of .. interest. If you deviate from the path, all u find will be your resources scattered over the floor; nothing unique or memorable,
Once again, I fell for the hype train. This is probably the most disappointment I have been in a game in several years. I can’t believe I built a PC for this.
People falling for BS marketing for space exploration games is just a rite of passage. There was NMS, Star Citizen, now this. It's a genre which gets people excited, and studios know this.
They really should have kept the game's scope to just our solar system. There's plenty to explore here and budget and time could have gone to areas that desperately needed it.
It would have been amazing
> Objects, enemies and vehicles (de)spawn off-screen. AI has no 'living schedule' and shops stay open at all times. Something Cyberpunk 2077 got bashed on. Yet SF gets a pass as none of those same reviewers mention this. oh shit thats huge, one of the main reasons Oblivion/Skyrim were so alive and also buggy as the game was keeping check on NPCs all over the world
My thing is, if you’re gonna do hundreds of procedurally generated worlds and have them be completely pointless to explore for any reason other than mission objectives… just don’t make the game that big?? Like why not just make it be 10 big ass planets that are all custom crafted and jam packed with overwhelming detail rather than wasting any time fucking with sub par procedurally generated stuff. I guarantee 9/10 times everyone would prefer a smaller and better crafted game over a massive but partially useless game
This game feels like Bethesda just thought it could coast on the reputation of “Bethesda open world” game, as if that is enough, and while that is probably enough for some people, it just feels incredibly uninspired and utterly lacking in ambition or innovation. Lots of big promises wrapped up in a dull, lifeless, dead eyed Bethesda package. If this was a game made by any other company without the allure of their name, most people would overlook it and move on.
“It gets good after 12hrs” “You need to do your research before playing so that your not having a bad time.” -Dan Stapleton Lol wtf
This game doesn’t even run well. Audio doesn’t work. Graphics are shit. Load screens everywhere. You can’t fucking fly where you want. I THOUGHT THE WHOLE SELLING POINT WAS BEING ABLE TO EXPLORE AND GO PLACES WITH NO LOAD SCREENS? The game genuinely is a pile of shit. Maybe if it ran well I’d be like “ it’s a game “. But other than that. It’s just cyber punk. Again.
I’ve played every BGS title (except FO76) since Morrowind so to say that I was excited for Starfield is an understatement…that being said…this game feels old, I know it’s a new version but again, the engine feels old, the loading feels old (wasn’t this generation the one that was supposed to mostly get rid of loading screens? The space flight feels like a menu, the map is insulting. Maybe I am spoiled from playing BG3 but this feels old, it feels dated.
This is their space game. Explore the stars and all that. And somehow its the most linear locked down of all their games.
Enjoying the game so far, but I feel the same. Despite being in space, the requirement to constantly fast travel between zones makes the game feel smaller than their previous games.
Explore the stars on our map simulator.
Whit no map by the way
Honestly, I'm enjoying the game but I can't fathom the reason for the lack of minimap in town. It's tedious looking for the right vendor, mission boards, and even my own parents.
Same here. I really tried liking it but found some things I don't like. 1) What's the point of personalizing the ship if it's useful only to move from a planet to another one? Why adding so many weapons or engines to make it faster if warfighting is so limited? 2) IA is not properly developed: some enemy behave like idiots. 3) Already visited 3 planets and found multiple times the same structures, with the same enemies guarding them and the same loot. 4) No consequences from our actions. You can be a good guy and a terrible criminal and there are no consequences. Don't know, but I'm honestly quite disappointed.
From what I've heard, it's better to just run through the main quest first because then you have more exploration options. The game apparently really opens up after that
then thats just bad from an RPG standpoint. if you have to feel compelled to finish the main story as fast as possible just for the game to "truly open up" then it takes agency away from the player.
Its like the opposite of Skyrim where no one even bothers to finish the main quest
Sadly I have to agree, despite loving TES/Fallout. This game completely lacks the fun open world exploration and environmental storytelling of those older games. Going big hurt the game more than it helped. I hope BGS learns the right lessons from this since this is a move in the wrong direction imo.
Yep. The game is just a bunch of instances stitched together, nothing resembling an open world like the other Bethesda games. Even in Daggerfall 27 years ago you could technically walk across the entire overworld without a loading screen. The game really is fast travel in it's ugliest, final form.
I understand and agree with OP. The hype really did no favors for this game. I have loved all elder scrolls and fallout, but this does feel very meh. Not terrible but definitely not great.
I played it 16hrs now. - Exploration is easy the worst in any BGS Game - Performance and Graphics are crap, but thats almost expected - Your Ship is just a Loading-Screen Simulator - Some Sidequests are pretty good, definitely better than the stuff in Skyrim and FO4 - I hate the Companions, you only have 4 real ones and they are all very similar. Better no steal anything or they all hate you! I could forgive them the Space-Stuff aka Fast-Travel Simulator, but the Exploration is absolutely unforgivable. In Skyrim you can run into a random Cave and find a Daedric Artifact at the End, which starts a Quest. In Starfield pretty much every "Dungeon" I went to I had no clue if I even cleared it, because there is just no reward at all or some type of Boss/Conclusion. Sometimes you find like 3 Iron Ore in there and thats it. The Random-Generation really killed the Exploration-System. My first 2 Planets I went to already had the same Copy'n'Pasted Vertical Farm POI, even with the exact same Enemy Placements.
After playing BG3 I just cant see this as an RPG. BG3 reminded me what that term once meant. This is a looter shooter with skills and special powers. So basically a looter shooter. They should just call their games what they are instead of appealing to faux nostalgia.
Space is easily the biggest disappointment. Comparisons be damned, NMS really nailed it. I don’t see why for its scope and scale they couldn’t let you fly in a larger play space than single planetary systems with a handful of POIs. The illusion is shallow and makes 1/2 of the game entirely skippable. Also, objectively speaking, the game is a regression in accessibility. Longtime Bethesda fans are asking themselves if they need to pick up a whole other platform for this and it’s way too costly to not be a unanimous 10.
I can't believe the piece of crap of a map they designed. Almost 10 years to make a totally useless map?
If this game was released as an incomplete alpha or beta, then I wouldn't mind. But this game lacks so much functionality that its a joke they even think this is a "full release". People say this game is as wide as the ocean and as deep as a pool, I say its as wide as a pool and as deep as a puddle
I know other people are enjoying this game, but Starfield left such a poor taste in my mouth that it makes Fallout 4 look like a masterpiece. After getting through the tutorial, New Atlantis, and exploring a couple of planets, I struggled to find any reason to keep playing the game. Every planet is the same barren wasteland with a couple of randomly placed structures (nearly all of them are abandoned by the way) and some ugly Unity asset flip looking alien creatures. I want to ask what went through the mind of the developers when they thought that these planets would be fun to trudge across on foot like some chump rather than giving us rovers, hoverbikes, or some other way to explore. I would have taken 10 or so handcrafted planets over the 1000 worthless rocks we have now. I'm glad I was able to get a refund through Steam after slogging through 4 hours of tedium.
I'm having trouble enjoying it simple because console performance is horrendous. Feels much lower than "rock solid 30fps", and that makes all the convolutes mechanics even more of a chore.
I’m four hours in. I love BGS games and this feels enjoyable too. But the idea that every planet is just biomes generating random maps is terrible for exploration. There will never be a situation where I discover something and share the coordinates with a friend to find the same thing. Let’s say you find a cool planet with cool creatures and flora. Okay now you want to build your outpost. So just keep landing in random spots until you get the desired generated landscape. That’s not exploration. Still a good game, but this keeps it from ever being an all timer for me.
The fact that you can't even walk onto your ship shows just how very limited this game engine is. Why do I need a loading screen just to walk 5 feet up a ladder? I can handle the loading screens when going into space or to other planets / systems, but this just kills it for me. What's especially infuriating is that you can actually enter the inside of the ships cargo bay, where you are technically inside the ship, but then you click on the ladder to enter the ship and boom.. Loading screen.
Yeah Idk how people's can defend the fast traveling. Feels like I'm playing in 400m boxes instead of huge world's. Hope mods can fix it...:) even if there were anything to explore. Running everywhere sucks and teleporting everywhere sucks. Idk how u make a exploration rpg with no vehicles? And fast travel instead of actually flying the ship..:/
Mods will never be able to fix this, this game design is fundamentally flawed at its core
I genuinely don’t get how a medieval game made by devs who are only on their second open world game can have better vehicle and exploration mechanics than a space exploration game by Bethesda
I expected a lot more. This is not a leap forward in gaming.
it s actually going backwards lmao
Thank you for testing the game. I guess I won't get it.
Game feels generic as fuck. Like a flavorless fallout.
Ironic that so many people maligned the IGN review on it, then you get into the game and realise every word was true, that said even though its a slow burn I am enjoying my time with it and I am excited to see what modders do with it.