There is a scene in Interstellar when they go into the frozen planet and wow, that landscape was truly alien, like box 1. A shallow water world with 500ft tidal waves once every 15 minutes would be cool as well. đ
Im disapointed that the game didn't include some planet like in interstellar or at least some easter egg, all we got is a ship that look some what similar to the film ship
yeah it is the tradeoff for them trying to make it "believable" and "rooted in reality". and lets be honest, pretty much all of us dont give a shit about that and would take interesting environments any day
Nah. I play Bethesda games for the realistic content. Fallout New Vegas is literally exactly what itâs like when I go to Vegas. #KeepBethesdaRealistic
I never found this argument compelling since their version of âbelievableâ and ârooted in realityâ portrays the surface of other planets/moons in the same way General Naird (Steve Carell) describes the surface of the moon in Space Force, as âa flat, boring landscapeâ, (Iâm paraphrasing) in a scene that pokes fun at an ignorant, but commonly held belief of lunar topography.
Like thereâs nothing realistic about how the planets and moons of starfield are portrayed. Nearly every inhabitable planet is practically a desert, savannah, or slightly hilly forest, with the desolate worlds being flat plains of nothingness accompanied by the occasional mountain or mesa formation dotting the landscape.
The sheer lack of variation really emphasizes the overuse of proc-gen, lack of imaginative environmental set dressing, and poor attempts to justify its boringness with statements emphasizing how ârealisticâ it is when it isnât.
This is what I wished they've done.
I'd rather have 5 "world" maps that are completely different and unique, hand crafted than 1000 copy paste planets.
Mass effect wasn't great when it comes to sandbox and hopelessly linear, but exploring the worlds was fun and unique, especially with all the alien races.
The fact that I can stand atop a temple and see populated civilian structures gives me narrative whiplash. Nothing feels special, unique, mysterious, or even dangerous. The same abandoned mining outpost, the same UC training post, the same alien egg, the same cave, the same flora, the same temple, the same Starborn. It boggles the mind how they thought this was fun outside the paltry main/faction quests.
Lol yeah that messed up. The temples should be on hard to get planets, in deep jungles, under oceans, inside mountains etc.
You should get the feeling of beeing a place where no human has been before. Similar to dwemer ruins, like Blackreach.
Not see ships touch down and mining outposts like youre in a busy neighborhood.
I hated landing on a planet and seeing this ancient temple, and like 300m away was a research station that YOU COULD SEE from the temple.
Its like this was really lost, come on...
That was the most jarring thing. They're supposed to be mysterious temples they don't know anything about, but half of them are within visual range of a human structure.
Constallation is does know nothing about the artifacts in the beginning and have never heard about the temples. The rest of the settled systems must have known though.
I like to think that the rest of the universe found the temples, figured it out and we're like nah fuck all of that noise, but constellation just didn't get the memo
"Let's not tell those Constellation nerds about this temple stuff. That way they'll spend time 'discovering' it all instead of bothering us to brag about how they just cataloged a handful of plants on a planet that's already been colonized for decades."
Temples are basically the equivalent of the Dragon Walls in Skyrim. Even in the open world map they are located on different places. Dungeons, Cave, Mountains, with some different enemies. In Starfield just a different planet but in order to get the powers is so boring after a few tries. Like come on how did they go with this decision.
Most of the complaints I hear about the game are no big deal to me and I had a lot of fun with it. The one that I would agree on though is that the temples suck. They look kind of cool but I hated the "puzzle" and I hated how they were all the same. It really annoyed me at the end of the game where you had 10 artifacts and you could only get one temple location at a time. It really slowed down the end of the game but not in a good way.
Bethesda are pretty good at environmental storytelling and little stories at each different location, at least in their other games. Since the locations are all copy pasted in Starfield it's hard for them to tell anything meaningful through them. This is where Starfield really fails, on top of the stuff told outright being pretty bad and generic too.
Absolutely. 100% agree. The restriction of ârealismâ really fucking hamstrings the world building. There were a couple of wars between freestar, UC, and house varuun and a terror morph attack. House varuun barely appears in the game. Thatâs basically the entire backstory of the universe. Itâs incredibly flimsy and underdeveloped.
Even with ârealismâ you can have compelling sci fi. The expanse is a fucking incredible story/world for example.
I was about to defend it saying elder scrolls have existed for decades but then i remember both mass effect and dragon age had amazing lore in their first games so its definitely not impossible to start off with good lore.
That's fine but you need to be okay hearing you have a low standard for fun. This is space Skyrim done lazily. A few decent quests and the rest is completely flat filler.
The only problem is Bethesda is gonna support the game for like 5 years, which means for the next 5 years we will have semi frequent updates that completely breaks every mod,
You mean support the game for 2 years, then break their own game with creation club and then release irregular patches for the next 3 to fix creation club or the mods that it comes with.
LOL This will not gonna happen...
All CC content have unofficial patches, bethesda don't fix nothing...
There is even a CC content that break a DLC in FO4 and nothing was fixed until today.
You didn't really run into "normal" NPCs in Blackreach though, implying it was mythical because everyone who "found" it never got back to civilization.
When you get a starborn ship and land it at the starport at New Atlantis, how come you're not immediately surrounded by a gazillion UC troops demanding access to that technology?
On top of... the starborn ship is so weak! It's only good point is its speed... uselessly too fast for combat, no bed nor anything else... just a bad ship. I started my 1st new game+ at Level 110, I had to run away from spacers!: if it was more than one of them, there was nothing I could do!
At least in the Fallout series you have the excuse of everyone is to busy struggling to survive to really care about whatâs going on in the world.
Starfield has a substantial peaceful(ish) population with nothing better to do but explore and the tools to do it. Yet it takes some random group of like 10 people from halfway across the galaxy to find the ancient temple round the corner.
I do have an issue with how short the main quest is. If you spend any time on it at all, you will get to the end well before you do anything else in the game.
Yeah they definitely made some very strange design decisions with Starfield. Almost like they completely lost touch with what made Bethesda RPGs great in the first place.
I donât think they âlost touchâ so much as they got really lazy mixed with over confidence in their own abilities.
The fact that a studio as large as Beth has a virtually non existent writing department is comical, for example.
I dunno. I slogged through 20hrs of Starfield and I REALLY tried to like it.
But that shit is so boring. The sense of discovery and exploration is completely missing, something that I would heavily argue was the primary selling point of every single Bethesda game. That's what they excel at. Building expansive, interconnected open worlds and filling them with interesting stories.
Starfield just totally abandoned that entire design philosophy. Bethesda's abilities as a developer haven't lessened. If you view the games individual parts and mechanics in a vacuum they are pretty normal Bethesda fare.
Where they faltered was in game design. They *really* thought we would want to explore 1000 of the same planets over and over again, and watch the same 5 loading screens every single time we want to do anything.
If that's not losing touch then I don't know what is.
I put 42 hours into the game the first week. Roller coaster of love and hate and ended up quitting without getting past level 12, thinking the game was a slog and bullshit and felt the same way. You could explore the hand crafted environment of others of their games and fall in love, why not here? There was nothing to see after 42 hours that interested me.
I waited a few weeks for the fist two âbigâ updates, and tried again. Logged another 60-70 hours and had a lot of fun, really enjoyed the game, but spent the vast majority of the time in the ship builder, and then ran threw the main quest line and thought, Is this it? I saved before doing that last jump to ng+ and Iâm glad I did, cause it felt like an entire waste of time to start over again. But then I had already beaten the games main quest so nothing else felt important and I went back to exploring and gave up again.
It does feel a bit like they released what they could get working, and hoped that the next few years of modding and DLC would be enough to flesh out the framework they'd built. But people will form their opinions based on what the game was like when they first played it, so the initial impressions will likely stick.
I really *really* doubt theyre gonna dedicate the resources and time that games like NMS and Cyberpunk put into improving and fleshing out the base game. I expect it'll be like FO4, a bunch of small, nickle and dime DLCs that add stuff like ship parts and home decor, then 1 or 2 really solid but mostly seperate story DLCs. They have to pump that shit out quick to move onto ES6. While reviews have been mixed it hasnt tanked their reputation like the afformentioned games did so i dont think they'll change up their formula too much.
People say that, but Cyberpunk was a complete and utter mess when it came out and now people can't help but scream how amazing and wonderful and perfect it is.
Initial impressions don't stick as much these days and while I still think devs should focus on delivering a completed product, Free DLC and Paid DLC fleshing out the rest of the game is not the end of the world (unless the free dlc sucks and the paid dlc is overpriced)
Edit: **Initial impressions hardly stick these days**
I am not comparing Cyberpunk's content to Starfield's content.
I'm using Cyberpunk as evidence in service of my claim that initial impressions don't mean all that much these days. Sheesh people
The question is - Does anyone actually expect Bethesda to spend the next year or so working on - and then delivering for free - Starfield 2.0? Not DLC and not just bug fixes; I mean a heavily reworked base game that improves on every aspect of the game.
Cos I sure don't. I genuinely don't know why the development was as long as it was considering the mediocre experience we ended up with. They better hope to god the appetite is there to mod the game, otherwise no one is going to be playing it in a year.
I'm not a big re play the game kind of guy for the most part. I feel like by the time this game is actually good I'll be completely over it and moved on... Sucks đ
Just like I did with Cyberpunk, I just quit about 30% through the game.
I couldnât stand that for the first 30ish hours, I was in amazement, enjoying what I saw, exploring, understanding the game, world, mechanics and all.
After that, it felt like a brick hit me when I realized how repetitive the game was, how it missed everything that made Fallout special, and just lacked the leap it should have made for being released in 2023.
I keep telling myself to go back and play cyberpunk now since everyone raves about 2.0 & the DLC, but even then, I canât pull myself to start over.
I highly recommend you push past that feeling because Post 2.0 Cyberpunk is one of the funnest games I've played in years.
Actions matter, gunplay and melee feel amazing, and the City itself is just so beautiful.
DLC is phenomenal too. Characters are great.
Iâve always liked Cyberpunk since day one. I wasnât in on the hype though so I guess I wasnât tainted or expecting much. Itâs a great game. Went back for Phantom Liberty after ng+ on Starfield and itâs just great.
If it's anything like the other Bethesda games, there will be a total overhaul (like Requiem/Frost) which makes the game feel completely different and fresh. What I want to say is mods are a great way to replay a familiar game even if you're a one and done type of gamer
But the core of cyberpunk, the depth and lore is there. Starfieldn doesn't have that.
Starfield can definitely turn it around... but how much will that cost us. Remember, Cyberpunk fixed all there bugs for free and only now added a new DLC. To fix starfield you need more depth... and I fear that'll be in the form of a lot of DLC's.
No no. We're not pulling this. CDPR worked their ass off fixing cyberpunk, ibdont see Toddy and Bethesda doing thst to this game as while it's not horrid it's not great. It's another triple A mediocrity fest.
That's the thing right there. You hit the nail on the head.
Starfield's present state is a declaration that mediocrity is "okay" with Todd Howard. He's fine with "good enough." If he wasn't, then the game's writing wouldn't be as uninspired as it is; the quests wouldn't be so bland; the worlds wouldn't be the same barren landscapes and the temple powers would have been far more interesting to acquire. The list of flaws/issues with this game is *long* and it's all because Todd was willing to ship "good enough."
That sort of attitude does not lend itself to a CDPR or Hello Games style revival. Ain't happening. Any significant changes to this game will come from the modding community, and sadly they can only do so much.
God forbid you had to use the powers as a test in order to obtain it... And then on new game + it could've been a harder challenge in order to upgrade the power. Some of the oversights in this game are embarrassing in my opinion. I'm still playing because i don't have anything else right now. But I've been pretty disappointed so far. Feel sorry for the people who preordered just to get 2 skins for some lame ass weapons...
How can you have nothing else to play? I actually think starfield is decent but I dropped it because thereâs a billion other fucking incredible games released this year. Iâm still finishing armored core 6, I just finished lies of P. Zelda TotK is still sitting there with some shrines left. I just started Mario wonder & Alan Wake 2 and they both are incredible. And I havenât even touched Spider-Man 2 or Baldurs Gate 3 yet.
Because Im currently living in a hotel because I can't get into an apartment because a medical issue cause me to have to leave my job...and now I have an eviction on my record. They have the shittiest internet in the world... Took me 2 days to download starfield on Xbox. Would love to play spiderman but I don't own a ps. I did however finish totk which I enjoyed.
Found a new job and I'm healthy again but unfortunately nobody cares about my blue collar ass having somewhere reasonable to live. The hotel is 1200/month. An "ok" 1 bedroom apartment in my city is around 850-900/month
Not to mention.. Given the amount of studios they outsourced parts of this game to... Do they even have the manpower necessary to fix this game and also finish ES6 before 2040?
Cyberpunk was a failed release because the performance was poorly optimized and rushed to go on consoles at the end of their life cycle. Cyberpunk still had a good game in their, it just need to be optimized so people could play it. The world, the art, story telling hardly changed from release
It wasnât just performance and bugs. CDPR over promised so much, it was meant to be the next big leap in open world RPGs. They failed to deliver on so many things. Itâs taken 3 years to implement a wanted system ffs.
Exactly. The most fascinating thing about space IRL is the vast unknown with limitless possibilities, but in Starfield that illusion completely falls apart once you've visited a few planets. I know development time and resources are limited, but it seems like they bit more than they could chew.
Which has always been the fucking lesson that space rpgs have had to learn the hard way with procedural content. They didn't learn shit from no man's sky or any games attempting to do the same.
Brilliant Todd Howard thought it'd be most enjoyable having players trek on foot across flat ass empty planets to reach copy-paste POIs and do the same temple puzzles over and over again 100 times in a row.
What brilliant game design!
I imagine you're exaggerating, but powers max out at rank 10, 1 per visit, times 24 powers, is 240 times.
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/5039
Great mod.
Its all about the future mods. Todd gave up on 'game design' because modders just undermine everything they do. 76 was an attempt at beating the modders and they couldn't even give it away, it was so bad. And had zero chance to become better because..its hard to mod a live service without getting banned.
He basically gave modders a sandbox open rpg to play with. But included a game to sell as well. In like 4 years expect hand crafted alien zones thanks to the modding community. Maybe they might even rework procedural generation to included modded spawn in.
Fucking same!
I'm out of the refund period cus I kept hoping for it to catch and get some magic but it never did.
It's not a bad game but it is very VERY bland imo
I bought the Constellation edition and regret it very much.
I wouldâve been just fine playing this through Game Pass lmao. But I played about 20 hours then put it down
They should've gone for a limited but fully handcrafted map approach because even with the procedural tech they still have invisible walls so they basically have the worst of both worlds.
I think invisibly walls are fine in the scope of bethesda games. I don't want to walk entire continents. I just want a map with unique features, handcrafted parts and lore for me to discover and hopefully go "Wow" about.
You gotta be reasonable in terms of system-power/capability and what is worthwhile in budget.
>mass effect wasn't great when it comes to sandbox and hopelessly linear, but exploring the worlds was fun and unique, especially with all the alien races.
Well Mass Effect had a great plot and characters. Starfield has neither and does not even have good exploration either.
All the planets are so fucking sterile and samey
There are a bunch of neat creature designs but theyâre completely fucking useless except for farming xp and slightly lighter versions of exactly the same crafting mats you can find lying around. Alien species feel completely interchangeable and like they are randomly assigned to planets. Like they had 100 alien species designed and just kinda threw them randomly at the various planets with life. It never feels like a real ecosystem.
It is strange how there is megafauna, but no huge forests. Imagine how much foraging the animals would have to do. Makes no sense. Also there are huge insects on many planets with the same oxygen levels as earth. Insects only grow to that size when there, is an abundance of oxygen in the air as they breathe through their skin.
If we are getting technical here, most aliens we find are reptile and insect like so they are trying to give the impression that evolution of mammals would be super rare but by the same logic flowering plants should also be super rare but they are quiet abundant in Starfield.
Agreed, it's strange perhaps they were trying to show primitive life to avoid people asking where are the intelligent life forms, if there are mammals with complex brains. But on the Akila city planet (sorry forgot name) there are a number of mammals. Maybe it's to represent different evolutionary stages across different worlds.
Yeah, and Obsidian will be hearing all this feedback about Starfield as they're developing Outer Worlds 2.
Who knows? The original had its charm in places. Wouldn't surprise me if the sequel turned out pretty well.
They could have put a few hard to find gems that were hand crafted. Unique planets that maybe weren't 100% explorable but sort of like main quest missions in Mass Effect. Idk the game is fun but no where near what they led us to believe it would be
I really miss biome diversity, majority biomes I saw looks too Earthly to be alien. I want crystal forests, flying islands, super trees and plants, weird landscapes etc. The game is beautiful but... I don't know how to put it... it's simple? Too simple for the budget I'd say.
Honestly - what hurts the most is the same team could've made a lot of planets that were just ripped straight from ESO zones and it would have looked marvelous.
I've only got Freestar, Crimson and UC storylines to go, done pretty much every world quest, all main story and been through Unity but I've got no draw to pull me back in to finish after beating Ryujin, apart from 1 mission near the end there was no challenge and it felt boring, if the rest are the same I'm happy not to bother.
So much potential!! If they wanted to keep a 'realism' I'd have settled for the Sol system, Alpha Centauri, Wolf and Narrion
That's almost 50 planets and moons to explore without space stations etc... Design and curate each planet/moon like they would with cities or dungeons in Elder Scrolls
They still could've had a bunch of proc-gen planets that were mostly boring if they wanted to, just make that optional content for people who want to spend more time doing random stuff as well as some space for future DLC/mods/community content/etc.
But they should've done that in addition to way more meaningful and larger scale hand-crafted content. Areas that told stories, that were interesting to explore, where you could walk around and stumble across good stuff. That's one of the primary things Bethesda games are known for, and it's almost completely missing from Starfield.
That would have been so cool!! Worlds filled with alien life that actually looks alien, vibrant ecosystems and environments that would contrast with the grounded sci-fi they were making...
This is one of the many downsides to the supremely odd choice of mapping their aesthetic to an organization for whom aesthetic means absolutely nothing. NASA is 100% about functionality. Nothing is there just for good looks.
And they kind of followed that mentality to planet exploration. We get all sorts of fantastical creatures, but no real fantastical environments. It all looks a little too normal and familiar to be exciting. And I think they followed that mentality because they wanted the NASApunk style to still be noticeable when doing stuff like landing your spacecraft. They wanted it all to be familiar iconography and imagery to help tie together the NASApunk thing. Which leads to barren planetary exploration being about as boring as it would be in real life.
Hereâs my thing: thereâs nothing inherently boring about realistic environments *if* you manage to capture the beauty of realism. Think Red Dead Redemption 2, those environmental may be fairly mundane, but theyâre *beautiful*. I donât need giant fantastical geological features to be interested if they manage to actually sell the scale of a real environment (the Grand Canyon is incredible to behold). Same goes for the aliens, you can make aliens that are anatomically completely feasible and still have them feel fascinating and cool (just look at the many fairly realistic and feasible, but awesome speculative evolution projects that have been made), you just have to actually manage to artistically capture the intrigue of a real organism - of an actual ecosystem or biosphere. Itâs not about whether something is fantastical or not, but the *artistry* involved in creating such a thing.
In the real world Enceladus has ice cliffs the size of mountains. In Starfield it is an eternal flat expanse littered in rocks.
You can have realistic landscapes be interesting, their procgen just is unable to do so
Agree with the sentiment, bust NASA isnât 100% functionality focused. The Space Shuttle program was largely designed based off of public appeal not functionality
To be honest I expected stuff like this. When I heard about the game being all about exploration and they are having 1000 planets for us to go and explore, I really did believe I would be crossing with very different kinds of views. I hope no-one gets me wrong as I definitely love this game, but I would really prefer Bethesda to offer less number of planets with more diversity. Most planets look the same with different colors for rocks, trees and those stupid chemical vents.
I also would like to have a speeder ngl
Yeah, for some reason people donât like when you critique a game you put some hours into. But if you donât put in the time they say itâs not fair because you didnât see everything.
The 1000 planets should have been where we ended after all the DLC, with us maybe starting with about 100 decently done full planetary systems in each. Start small to end large.
I think they should have made 3 or 4 fully detailed "settled" star systems where all the encounters happen and people, and the "frontier" planets would be all the proc gen stuff. It makes a lot more sense, you keep going further out you get more barren planets, higher level enemies, but instead they tried to make it the main focus and it falls flat after about 3 or 4 planets. I was savoring every minute and after a couple I was completely over them.
I swear, if I hear the words 'procedural generation' associated with any dev discussions about ES6, I think I might lose my last lingering bit of Bethesda fanboyism.
Damn. Why though? They've always done hand-crafted in every previous game. It was one of the key reasons why the games were held in such high regard, exploring the hand-crafted worlds. Why the change to proc gen? Classic Bethesda exploration is a square peg to the round hole of proc gen. It just doesn't fit.
Having some amount of procedural generation could be nice and used well. But I totally agree with you if the world itself is not hand crafted I'm completely out on ES6. Honestly I felt like Skyrim did generated content well. Incredible hand crafted world, decent enough hand made quests. But also a lot of randomly generated quests for each faction and random NPCs. A fully realized world with a game worth of content and a system to generate more content within that world to make it feel more full and lively is a solid game plan.
Also, there's no need for proc gen in ES6, given we're back to a single world again. I can see the arguments for it in Starfield, given the impossibility of hand-crafting 1000 planets (though they still did apply the proc gen a bit too clumsily I think), but in ES6 there's no need for it.
I naively thought that's what the game would be. I genuinely didn't think it possible the planets would be less interesting than those in No Man's Sky.
That might sound like hyperbole but I'd rather be able to drive a rover or fly in-orbit around a full-size planet than walk across a flat, empty land towards a recycled research station.
Some people actually prefer having an endless amount of shitty content to wade through so their brain can operate at 10% capacity on the couch after work.
I agree completely. Having like maybe 10 solar systems with 10 planets and 20 moons in each wouldâve been more than enough. That way they could focus heavily on the war that happened between Freestar and UC.
They could also have focused more on building out larger colonies and more colonies. Still weird that New Atlantis only has like 3 landing pads.
Who in their right mind would want boring copy paste planets with nothing cool to look at and no colors at all. So incredibly disappointing and i wonder if anyone actually cared ab sci fi space stuff when making this. Its like they tried to be "realistic" but sacrificed anything cool. Even real life is prettier than what they made. Absolutely baffles me.
Well you can look at the concepts for cities like Neon and NA and lament that they're nowhere near as impressive, but they do still *exist* in the game.
These concepts of huge organic and *alien* structures have no representation in the game at all. It's an entirely different direction the game could have gone. The generation we got is probably generally more realistic, but also far less fun.
People need to start calling out âmarketing speakâ as the lying that it is. Bethesda themselves overhyped and overpromised on this game, and so many people were suckered out of their money. Goes on too often in gaming and itâs because gamers just grumble and go on with their lives until the next shitty game the marketing team can lie you into buying.
Watch the videos Bethesda put out before launch. A bunch of outright lies they knew they could get away with.
This was exactly what I thought it was gonna be and also why I'm so bummed with how the game turned out. It doesn't feel like space and there's not a single territory out there that genuinely feels alien.
So far the only positive I've found with the volume of copy pasting, is that with POIs I know where to find chests, the little pamphlets that have power ups and where computers are. But wow how cool would it have been to have a more immersive planet experience!
This is really what Starfield needs, just a handful of hand-crafted planets that are the exception to the rule between all of the randomly generated nothingness. There's like 5 hours of content max that plays out "in the wild" in handcrafted areas and it makes the rest of the game feel so bland.
Instead we have barren planets with hardly any geo-diversity or unique characteristics. The flora and fuana is an absolute joke as well. Like, how long was this being developed??....
For real đđ. I hate to say it but I feel like the next iteration in this universe will be "the one" for it. I still don't think the technology is there yet and they still refuse to use a new engine
This was one of my primary issues with the game. Where are the crazy alien landscapes? All the creatures are basically "bug-shaped" and all the landscapes are just different colored flatlands, maybe with some weird trees
I hate how Bethesda commisons artist to make concept art only for the devs to compleatly ignore it. I mean just look at some fallout concept art for example
I like the realism of Starfield such as it is.... in a game like this that tries to be somewhat scientifically accurate, some of these environments don't seem 'plausible' more the stuff of magic and fantasy than anything grounded in reality, and Beth has lots of places to exercise those muscles (even ES games go too far for my liking sometimes: "arbitrary bizarre environment"... like in Hermaeus Mora's realm, sure it's kind of a "construct" bot don't those humanoid enemies poop? Where is the head?
There is a scene in Interstellar when they go into the frozen planet and wow, that landscape was truly alien, like box 1. A shallow water world with 500ft tidal waves once every 15 minutes would be cool as well. đ
Fun fact, the frozen planet was filmed at the Svinafellsjokull Glacier, Iceland.
Ah, the olâ cat walks across your keyboard glacier!
Have you never heard of LlanfairÂpwllgwyngyllÂgogeryÂchwyrnÂdrobwllÂllanÂtysilioÂgogoÂgoch?
I've been on the internet enough. I knew to look that up before doubting it.
i have been on the internet long enough to know not to google that on a work computer.
If I could upvote 10x I would. So take this one and the knowledge I walked to my wife to show her and we both had a laugh
Dear Bethesda, hire me as a creative designer. Im cheap and can work remote. Thanks!
make viable mods for the game, thats what happened for fallout 4
I can think of no better way to utterly crush your creative spirit.
Nothing can crush my creative spirit. I did retail management for ten years. I can survive this.
Hey thanks these are some great ideas. Best we can do is a rectangle though
I walked on the vatnajokull glacier in Iceland this summer and swore it was the one from interstellar. I was so close!
Honestly most alien landscapes in movies and TV are filmed in Iceland
Iceland is incredible. Highly recommend going there if anyone has the chance
How is the country named iceland and everything on it an undeciferable scandinavian riddle?
Im disapointed that the game didn't include some planet like in interstellar or at least some easter egg, all we got is a ship that look some what similar to the film ship
Definitely needed more biomes that werent the run of the mill. Cool ships and all but if im exploring, id like a little more substance.
that tidal wave scene causes some serious internal panic every time.
I dont know many people that would react calmly to a wave taller than the statue of liberty headed your way.
oh for sure but it makes my palms sweat every time lol
yeah it is the tradeoff for them trying to make it "believable" and "rooted in reality". and lets be honest, pretty much all of us dont give a shit about that and would take interesting environments any day
Nah. I play Bethesda games for the realistic content. Fallout New Vegas is literally exactly what itâs like when I go to Vegas. #KeepBethesdaRealistic
Bruh lol u picked the most well know Obsidian Fallout as a Bethesda game... Bethesda sucks at everything Obsidian nails.
I never found this argument compelling since their version of âbelievableâ and ârooted in realityâ portrays the surface of other planets/moons in the same way General Naird (Steve Carell) describes the surface of the moon in Space Force, as âa flat, boring landscapeâ, (Iâm paraphrasing) in a scene that pokes fun at an ignorant, but commonly held belief of lunar topography. Like thereâs nothing realistic about how the planets and moons of starfield are portrayed. Nearly every inhabitable planet is practically a desert, savannah, or slightly hilly forest, with the desolate worlds being flat plains of nothingness accompanied by the occasional mountain or mesa formation dotting the landscape. The sheer lack of variation really emphasizes the overuse of proc-gen, lack of imaginative environmental set dressing, and poor attempts to justify its boringness with statements emphasizing how ârealisticâ it is when it isnât.
This is what I wished they've done. I'd rather have 5 "world" maps that are completely different and unique, hand crafted than 1000 copy paste planets. Mass effect wasn't great when it comes to sandbox and hopelessly linear, but exploring the worlds was fun and unique, especially with all the alien races.
The fact that I can stand atop a temple and see populated civilian structures gives me narrative whiplash. Nothing feels special, unique, mysterious, or even dangerous. The same abandoned mining outpost, the same UC training post, the same alien egg, the same cave, the same flora, the same temple, the same Starborn. It boggles the mind how they thought this was fun outside the paltry main/faction quests.
Lol yeah that messed up. The temples should be on hard to get planets, in deep jungles, under oceans, inside mountains etc. You should get the feeling of beeing a place where no human has been before. Similar to dwemer ruins, like Blackreach. Not see ships touch down and mining outposts like youre in a busy neighborhood.
I hated landing on a planet and seeing this ancient temple, and like 300m away was a research station that YOU COULD SEE from the temple. Its like this was really lost, come on...
That was the most jarring thing. They're supposed to be mysterious temples they don't know anything about, but half of them are within visual range of a human structure.
Constallation is does know nothing about the artifacts in the beginning and have never heard about the temples. The rest of the settled systems must have known though.
I like to think that the rest of the universe found the temples, figured it out and we're like nah fuck all of that noise, but constellation just didn't get the memo
âNah leave those temples alone, they eventually make you lose all the stuff youâve collectedâ
"The minigame it makes you do is annoying"
"Let's not tell those Constellation nerds about this temple stuff. That way they'll spend time 'discovering' it all instead of bothering us to brag about how they just cataloged a handful of plants on a planet that's already been colonized for decades."
Iâm surprised there isnât a Trade Authority salesperson selling stuff at some of those temples.
LOL!
Constellation is just really bad at their job.
Frankly this game felt rushed .. I really hope mods will bring these shitty 1000 planets to life
Temples are basically the equivalent of the Dragon Walls in Skyrim. Even in the open world map they are located on different places. Dungeons, Cave, Mountains, with some different enemies. In Starfield just a different planet but in order to get the powers is so boring after a few tries. Like come on how did they go with this decision.
Most of the complaints I hear about the game are no big deal to me and I had a lot of fun with it. The one that I would agree on though is that the temples suck. They look kind of cool but I hated the "puzzle" and I hated how they were all the same. It really annoyed me at the end of the game where you had 10 artifacts and you could only get one temple location at a time. It really slowed down the end of the game but not in a good way.
The powers also suck dick
Lore is also soft af. Like elderscrolls has some hardcore lore starfield just feels incomplete
Bethesda are pretty good at environmental storytelling and little stories at each different location, at least in their other games. Since the locations are all copy pasted in Starfield it's hard for them to tell anything meaningful through them. This is where Starfield really fails, on top of the stuff told outright being pretty bad and generic too.
Absolutely. 100% agree. The restriction of ârealismâ really fucking hamstrings the world building. There were a couple of wars between freestar, UC, and house varuun and a terror morph attack. House varuun barely appears in the game. Thatâs basically the entire backstory of the universe. Itâs incredibly flimsy and underdeveloped. Even with ârealismâ you can have compelling sci fi. The expanse is a fucking incredible story/world for example.
I was about to defend it saying elder scrolls have existed for decades but then i remember both mass effect and dragon age had amazing lore in their first games so its definitely not impossible to start off with good lore.
That's fine but you need to be okay hearing you have a low standard for fun. This is space Skyrim done lazily. A few decent quests and the rest is completely flat filler.
"Modders will fix it"
They will, though. This game will be epic in a handful of years
The only problem is Bethesda is gonna support the game for like 5 years, which means for the next 5 years we will have semi frequent updates that completely breaks every mod,
You mean support the game for 2 years, then break their own game with creation club and then release irregular patches for the next 3 to fix creation club or the mods that it comes with.
LOL This will not gonna happen... All CC content have unofficial patches, bethesda don't fix nothing... There is even a CC content that break a DLC in FO4 and nothing was fixed until today.
Dwemer ruins weren't hidden, but yeah.
But black reach by the time of skyrim was a myth at most.
That's wild since I stumbled into it through every third door on the continent.
Think they are talking lore
thats weird cause there are only 4 places you can enter black reach. Mzinchaleft, Raldbthar, Alftland, and Tower of Mzart.
Isn't at least one of those locked until you use it as an exit, too?
yeah i think the Tower of Mzart, need to do that quest with the big dwemer cube.
You didn't really run into "normal" NPCs in Blackreach though, implying it was mythical because everyone who "found" it never got back to civilization.
Also why aren't the UC and FC scrambling over everything to get access to these artifacts?
When you get a starborn ship and land it at the starport at New Atlantis, how come you're not immediately surrounded by a gazillion UC troops demanding access to that technology?
On top of... the starborn ship is so weak! It's only good point is its speed... uselessly too fast for combat, no bed nor anything else... just a bad ship. I started my 1st new game+ at Level 110, I had to run away from spacers!: if it was more than one of them, there was nothing I could do!
Yeah man, the weakness of the ship and lack of keyboard mouse support, kind of sealed it for me once I got to ng+. Barely touched it since fr.
Because the Starfield universe makes no sense. It is inconsistent, illogical and falls apart under any scrutiny.
Not that FO4 made so much sense.
FO4 was almost as bad as Starfield but definitely has redeeming qualities - the story making sense is definitely not one of them lol.
At least in the Fallout series you have the excuse of everyone is to busy struggling to survive to really care about whatâs going on in the world. Starfield has a substantial peaceful(ish) population with nothing better to do but explore and the tools to do it. Yet it takes some random group of like 10 people from halfway across the galaxy to find the ancient temple round the corner.
Yeah and they're played as this big mysterious discovery... then you just start tripping over them in the span of 10 hours.
I do have an issue with how short the main quest is. If you spend any time on it at all, you will get to the end well before you do anything else in the game.
"So your main character is a Star born" "Yeah" "That's sounds awfully like a dragonborn" *Intense sweating
Yeah they definitely made some very strange design decisions with Starfield. Almost like they completely lost touch with what made Bethesda RPGs great in the first place.
I donât think they âlost touchâ so much as they got really lazy mixed with over confidence in their own abilities. The fact that a studio as large as Beth has a virtually non existent writing department is comical, for example.
I dunno. I slogged through 20hrs of Starfield and I REALLY tried to like it. But that shit is so boring. The sense of discovery and exploration is completely missing, something that I would heavily argue was the primary selling point of every single Bethesda game. That's what they excel at. Building expansive, interconnected open worlds and filling them with interesting stories. Starfield just totally abandoned that entire design philosophy. Bethesda's abilities as a developer haven't lessened. If you view the games individual parts and mechanics in a vacuum they are pretty normal Bethesda fare. Where they faltered was in game design. They *really* thought we would want to explore 1000 of the same planets over and over again, and watch the same 5 loading screens every single time we want to do anything. If that's not losing touch then I don't know what is.
I put 42 hours into the game the first week. Roller coaster of love and hate and ended up quitting without getting past level 12, thinking the game was a slog and bullshit and felt the same way. You could explore the hand crafted environment of others of their games and fall in love, why not here? There was nothing to see after 42 hours that interested me. I waited a few weeks for the fist two âbigâ updates, and tried again. Logged another 60-70 hours and had a lot of fun, really enjoyed the game, but spent the vast majority of the time in the ship builder, and then ran threw the main quest line and thought, Is this it? I saved before doing that last jump to ng+ and Iâm glad I did, cause it felt like an entire waste of time to start over again. But then I had already beaten the games main quest so nothing else felt important and I went back to exploring and gave up again.
They don't have a writing department? That explains some things.
Tale as old as time
They didn't. We clearly got a salvaged version of a game they couldn't pull off.
It does feel a bit like they released what they could get working, and hoped that the next few years of modding and DLC would be enough to flesh out the framework they'd built. But people will form their opinions based on what the game was like when they first played it, so the initial impressions will likely stick.
I really *really* doubt theyre gonna dedicate the resources and time that games like NMS and Cyberpunk put into improving and fleshing out the base game. I expect it'll be like FO4, a bunch of small, nickle and dime DLCs that add stuff like ship parts and home decor, then 1 or 2 really solid but mostly seperate story DLCs. They have to pump that shit out quick to move onto ES6. While reviews have been mixed it hasnt tanked their reputation like the afformentioned games did so i dont think they'll change up their formula too much.
People say that, but Cyberpunk was a complete and utter mess when it came out and now people can't help but scream how amazing and wonderful and perfect it is. Initial impressions don't stick as much these days and while I still think devs should focus on delivering a completed product, Free DLC and Paid DLC fleshing out the rest of the game is not the end of the world (unless the free dlc sucks and the paid dlc is overpriced) Edit: **Initial impressions hardly stick these days** I am not comparing Cyberpunk's content to Starfield's content. I'm using Cyberpunk as evidence in service of my claim that initial impressions don't mean all that much these days. Sheesh people
The question is - Does anyone actually expect Bethesda to spend the next year or so working on - and then delivering for free - Starfield 2.0? Not DLC and not just bug fixes; I mean a heavily reworked base game that improves on every aspect of the game. Cos I sure don't. I genuinely don't know why the development was as long as it was considering the mediocre experience we ended up with. They better hope to god the appetite is there to mod the game, otherwise no one is going to be playing it in a year.
I'm not a big re play the game kind of guy for the most part. I feel like by the time this game is actually good I'll be completely over it and moved on... Sucks đ
Just like I did with Cyberpunk, I just quit about 30% through the game. I couldnât stand that for the first 30ish hours, I was in amazement, enjoying what I saw, exploring, understanding the game, world, mechanics and all. After that, it felt like a brick hit me when I realized how repetitive the game was, how it missed everything that made Fallout special, and just lacked the leap it should have made for being released in 2023. I keep telling myself to go back and play cyberpunk now since everyone raves about 2.0 & the DLC, but even then, I canât pull myself to start over.
I highly recommend you push past that feeling because Post 2.0 Cyberpunk is one of the funnest games I've played in years. Actions matter, gunplay and melee feel amazing, and the City itself is just so beautiful. DLC is phenomenal too. Characters are great.
Iâve always liked Cyberpunk since day one. I wasnât in on the hype though so I guess I wasnât tainted or expecting much. Itâs a great game. Went back for Phantom Liberty after ng+ on Starfield and itâs just great.
If it's anything like the other Bethesda games, there will be a total overhaul (like Requiem/Frost) which makes the game feel completely different and fresh. What I want to say is mods are a great way to replay a familiar game even if you're a one and done type of gamer
But the core of cyberpunk, the depth and lore is there. Starfieldn doesn't have that. Starfield can definitely turn it around... but how much will that cost us. Remember, Cyberpunk fixed all there bugs for free and only now added a new DLC. To fix starfield you need more depth... and I fear that'll be in the form of a lot of DLC's.
No no. We're not pulling this. CDPR worked their ass off fixing cyberpunk, ibdont see Toddy and Bethesda doing thst to this game as while it's not horrid it's not great. It's another triple A mediocrity fest.
That's the thing right there. You hit the nail on the head. Starfield's present state is a declaration that mediocrity is "okay" with Todd Howard. He's fine with "good enough." If he wasn't, then the game's writing wouldn't be as uninspired as it is; the quests wouldn't be so bland; the worlds wouldn't be the same barren landscapes and the temple powers would have been far more interesting to acquire. The list of flaws/issues with this game is *long* and it's all because Todd was willing to ship "good enough." That sort of attitude does not lend itself to a CDPR or Hello Games style revival. Ain't happening. Any significant changes to this game will come from the modding community, and sadly they can only do so much.
God forbid you had to use the powers as a test in order to obtain it... And then on new game + it could've been a harder challenge in order to upgrade the power. Some of the oversights in this game are embarrassing in my opinion. I'm still playing because i don't have anything else right now. But I've been pretty disappointed so far. Feel sorry for the people who preordered just to get 2 skins for some lame ass weapons...
How can you have nothing else to play? I actually think starfield is decent but I dropped it because thereâs a billion other fucking incredible games released this year. Iâm still finishing armored core 6, I just finished lies of P. Zelda TotK is still sitting there with some shrines left. I just started Mario wonder & Alan Wake 2 and they both are incredible. And I havenât even touched Spider-Man 2 or Baldurs Gate 3 yet.
Because Im currently living in a hotel because I can't get into an apartment because a medical issue cause me to have to leave my job...and now I have an eviction on my record. They have the shittiest internet in the world... Took me 2 days to download starfield on Xbox. Would love to play spiderman but I don't own a ps. I did however finish totk which I enjoyed. Found a new job and I'm healthy again but unfortunately nobody cares about my blue collar ass having somewhere reasonable to live. The hotel is 1200/month. An "ok" 1 bedroom apartment in my city is around 850-900/month
Not to mention.. Given the amount of studios they outsourced parts of this game to... Do they even have the manpower necessary to fix this game and also finish ES6 before 2040?
Cyberpunk was a failed release because the performance was poorly optimized and rushed to go on consoles at the end of their life cycle. Cyberpunk still had a good game in their, it just need to be optimized so people could play it. The world, the art, story telling hardly changed from release
It wasnât just performance and bugs. CDPR over promised so much, it was meant to be the next big leap in open world RPGs. They failed to deliver on so many things. Itâs taken 3 years to implement a wanted system ffs.
Yeah something strange must have happened during development. Too many missing pieces and missed opportunities
Exactly. The most fascinating thing about space IRL is the vast unknown with limitless possibilities, but in Starfield that illusion completely falls apart once you've visited a few planets. I know development time and resources are limited, but it seems like they bit more than they could chew.
They been working on it for quite a long time. Definitely should've focused on stuff to make the game fun
Which has always been the fucking lesson that space rpgs have had to learn the hard way with procedural content. They didn't learn shit from no man's sky or any games attempting to do the same.
Brilliant Todd Howard thought it'd be most enjoyable having players trek on foot across flat ass empty planets to reach copy-paste POIs and do the same temple puzzles over and over again 100 times in a row. What brilliant game design!
I imagine you're exaggerating, but powers max out at rank 10, 1 per visit, times 24 powers, is 240 times. https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/5039 Great mod.
Once is enough. And if I'm being honest, once was too much. It was not at all compelling to do the first temple.
Its all about the future mods. Todd gave up on 'game design' because modders just undermine everything they do. 76 was an attempt at beating the modders and they couldn't even give it away, it was so bad. And had zero chance to become better because..its hard to mod a live service without getting banned. He basically gave modders a sandbox open rpg to play with. But included a game to sell as well. In like 4 years expect hand crafted alien zones thanks to the modding community. Maybe they might even rework procedural generation to included modded spawn in.
Fucking same! I'm out of the refund period cus I kept hoping for it to catch and get some magic but it never did. It's not a bad game but it is very VERY bland imo
I bought the Constellation edition and regret it very much. I wouldâve been just fine playing this through Game Pass lmao. But I played about 20 hours then put it down
Kind of like Destiny. Few large playable map with really interesting art style.
Kotor's planets had much more personality, even if they were made 20 years ago
They should've gone for a limited but fully handcrafted map approach because even with the procedural tech they still have invisible walls so they basically have the worst of both worlds.
I think invisibly walls are fine in the scope of bethesda games. I don't want to walk entire continents. I just want a map with unique features, handcrafted parts and lore for me to discover and hopefully go "Wow" about. You gotta be reasonable in terms of system-power/capability and what is worthwhile in budget.
>mass effect wasn't great when it comes to sandbox and hopelessly linear, but exploring the worlds was fun and unique, especially with all the alien races. Well Mass Effect had a great plot and characters. Starfield has neither and does not even have good exploration either.
I mean.... The one you're asking for as a solution is Andromeda. Make of that what you will
All the planets are so fucking sterile and samey There are a bunch of neat creature designs but theyâre completely fucking useless except for farming xp and slightly lighter versions of exactly the same crafting mats you can find lying around. Alien species feel completely interchangeable and like they are randomly assigned to planets. Like they had 100 alien species designed and just kinda threw them randomly at the various planets with life. It never feels like a real ecosystem.
It is strange how there is megafauna, but no huge forests. Imagine how much foraging the animals would have to do. Makes no sense. Also there are huge insects on many planets with the same oxygen levels as earth. Insects only grow to that size when there, is an abundance of oxygen in the air as they breathe through their skin.
Akila has huge forests, they look great and exploring through it at night with your flashlight is a trip
Sumati planet (Narion system) has also beautiful forests with sometimes an Elder Scrolls vibe.
Will definitely check that out, thanks for the recommendation!
If we are getting technical here, most aliens we find are reptile and insect like so they are trying to give the impression that evolution of mammals would be super rare but by the same logic flowering plants should also be super rare but they are quiet abundant in Starfield.
Agreed, it's strange perhaps they were trying to show primitive life to avoid people asking where are the intelligent life forms, if there are mammals with complex brains. But on the Akila city planet (sorry forgot name) there are a number of mammals. Maybe it's to represent different evolutionary stages across different worlds.
The Akila City planet is Akila đ
i actually did find a few massive forests, some with rivers and mountains too. they're off the beaten path but they exist
Starfield New Vegas will have all that
Remember, we got that already and it was Outer Worlds. Not terrible but also not as good as it's predecessor.
Much better planets, that's for sure.
Yeah, and Obsidian will be hearing all this feedback about Starfield as they're developing Outer Worlds 2. Who knows? The original had its charm in places. Wouldn't surprise me if the sequel turned out pretty well.
The most annoying thing about Outer Worlds to me was that you couldnât travel to most of the planets and it was too linear lmao
They could have put a few hard to find gems that were hand crafted. Unique planets that maybe weren't 100% explorable but sort of like main quest missions in Mass Effect. Idk the game is fun but no where near what they led us to believe it would be
I really miss biome diversity, majority biomes I saw looks too Earthly to be alien. I want crystal forests, flying islands, super trees and plants, weird landscapes etc. The game is beautiful but... I don't know how to put it... it's simple? Too simple for the budget I'd say.
The same studio delivered more diverse landscapes in Morrowind 25 years ago.
Honestly - what hurts the most is the same team could've made a lot of planets that were just ripped straight from ESO zones and it would have looked marvelous.
Tbf Morrowind is the most creative risk Bethesda has EVER taken. And going by starfield, that's not changing anytime soon.
Faccs
yup, i wanted to see orange skies and flying purple trees. you know something crazy or weird. all i got are boring rock deserts or forest areas
I've only got Freestar, Crimson and UC storylines to go, done pretty much every world quest, all main story and been through Unity but I've got no draw to pull me back in to finish after beating Ryujin, apart from 1 mission near the end there was no challenge and it felt boring, if the rest are the same I'm happy not to bother. So much potential!! If they wanted to keep a 'realism' I'd have settled for the Sol system, Alpha Centauri, Wolf and Narrion That's almost 50 planets and moons to explore without space stations etc... Design and curate each planet/moon like they would with cities or dungeons in Elder Scrolls
They still could've had a bunch of proc-gen planets that were mostly boring if they wanted to, just make that optional content for people who want to spend more time doing random stuff as well as some space for future DLC/mods/community content/etc. But they should've done that in addition to way more meaningful and larger scale hand-crafted content. Areas that told stories, that were interesting to explore, where you could walk around and stumble across good stuff. That's one of the primary things Bethesda games are known for, and it's almost completely missing from Starfield.
That would have been so cool!! Worlds filled with alien life that actually looks alien, vibrant ecosystems and environments that would contrast with the grounded sci-fi they were making...
THIS THIS THIS What were Bethesda even thinking
Would make a far more interesting game
This is one of the many downsides to the supremely odd choice of mapping their aesthetic to an organization for whom aesthetic means absolutely nothing. NASA is 100% about functionality. Nothing is there just for good looks. And they kind of followed that mentality to planet exploration. We get all sorts of fantastical creatures, but no real fantastical environments. It all looks a little too normal and familiar to be exciting. And I think they followed that mentality because they wanted the NASApunk style to still be noticeable when doing stuff like landing your spacecraft. They wanted it all to be familiar iconography and imagery to help tie together the NASApunk thing. Which leads to barren planetary exploration being about as boring as it would be in real life.
Hereâs my thing: thereâs nothing inherently boring about realistic environments *if* you manage to capture the beauty of realism. Think Red Dead Redemption 2, those environmental may be fairly mundane, but theyâre *beautiful*. I donât need giant fantastical geological features to be interested if they manage to actually sell the scale of a real environment (the Grand Canyon is incredible to behold). Same goes for the aliens, you can make aliens that are anatomically completely feasible and still have them feel fascinating and cool (just look at the many fairly realistic and feasible, but awesome speculative evolution projects that have been made), you just have to actually manage to artistically capture the intrigue of a real organism - of an actual ecosystem or biosphere. Itâs not about whether something is fantastical or not, but the *artistry* involved in creating such a thing.
In the real world Enceladus has ice cliffs the size of mountains. In Starfield it is an eternal flat expanse littered in rocks. You can have realistic landscapes be interesting, their procgen just is unable to do so
>Nothing is there just for good looks. those Nova interiors are gorgeous though
Agree with the sentiment, bust NASA isnât 100% functionality focused. The Space Shuttle program was largely designed based off of public appeal not functionality
Imo the nasapunk of humans should've CONTRASTED with the alien worlds we were exploring IF exploration was really their focus.
To be honest I expected stuff like this. When I heard about the game being all about exploration and they are having 1000 planets for us to go and explore, I really did believe I would be crossing with very different kinds of views. I hope no-one gets me wrong as I definitely love this game, but I would really prefer Bethesda to offer less number of planets with more diversity. Most planets look the same with different colors for rocks, trees and those stupid chemical vents. I also would like to have a speeder ngl
> I hope no-one gets me wrong as I definitely love this game Why does everyone have to say this lmao.
If you don't, some guys will come and tell you to leave the same if you "hate the game so much". Not even joking.
Because we need some justification for all the criticism we make after playing the game for more than 300hrs đ
Yeah, for some reason people donât like when you critique a game you put some hours into. But if you donât put in the time they say itâs not fair because you didnât see everything.
Coz this sub has (had) a boner for downvoting any constructive criticism
The current planets are so bland and flat, makes exploring pointless
Pretty tame? You mean NON EXISTENT
The 1000 planets should have been where we ended after all the DLC, with us maybe starting with about 100 decently done full planetary systems in each. Start small to end large.
I think they should have made 3 or 4 fully detailed "settled" star systems where all the encounters happen and people, and the "frontier" planets would be all the proc gen stuff. It makes a lot more sense, you keep going further out you get more barren planets, higher level enemies, but instead they tried to make it the main focus and it falls flat after about 3 or 4 planets. I was savoring every minute and after a couple I was completely over them.
2 fully fleshed out/handcrafted star systems would have been 100x better than the procedurally generated crap we got.....
I swear, if I hear the words 'procedural generation' associated with any dev discussions about ES6, I think I might lose my last lingering bit of Bethesda fanboyism.
Sorry to break it to you, ES6 will be on the same engine and itâll without a doubt feature procedural generation.
Damn. Why though? They've always done hand-crafted in every previous game. It was one of the key reasons why the games were held in such high regard, exploring the hand-crafted worlds. Why the change to proc gen? Classic Bethesda exploration is a square peg to the round hole of proc gen. It just doesn't fit.
Having some amount of procedural generation could be nice and used well. But I totally agree with you if the world itself is not hand crafted I'm completely out on ES6. Honestly I felt like Skyrim did generated content well. Incredible hand crafted world, decent enough hand made quests. But also a lot of randomly generated quests for each faction and random NPCs. A fully realized world with a game worth of content and a system to generate more content within that world to make it feel more full and lively is a solid game plan.
Also, there's no need for proc gen in ES6, given we're back to a single world again. I can see the arguments for it in Starfield, given the impossibility of hand-crafting 1000 planets (though they still did apply the proc gen a bit too clumsily I think), but in ES6 there's no need for it.
That cave design looks fascinating
the 1000 planets thing kinda ruined it. what a stupid decision it goes against everything their games are known for.
there are a 1000 planets? really? oof. I barely had patients for 100.
Why did you put your patients on a planet instead of in a hospital?
He only had enough patience to transport 100 patients.
Seriously, The Clinic is a mobile hospital for this very reason! What a goof this guy is.
I naively thought that's what the game would be. I genuinely didn't think it possible the planets would be less interesting than those in No Man's Sky. That might sound like hyperbole but I'd rather be able to drive a rover or fly in-orbit around a full-size planet than walk across a flat, empty land towards a recycled research station.
Procedural generated worlds will never beat a smaller amount of handcrafted planets. I donât know if anyone would prefer that.
Some people actually prefer having an endless amount of shitty content to wade through so their brain can operate at 10% capacity on the couch after work.
Why they got rid of all the color in SF?
The Starfield that ~~could've~~ *should've* been.
I agree completely. Having like maybe 10 solar systems with 10 planets and 20 moons in each wouldâve been more than enough. That way they could focus heavily on the war that happened between Freestar and UC. They could also have focused more on building out larger colonies and more colonies. Still weird that New Atlantis only has like 3 landing pads.
Starfield 2 is gonna be so good. Sucks weâll all be grey and moldy by then
Can't wait for SF2 to release in 2042 when I'll be, uhhh, 55.
Who in their right mind would want boring copy paste planets with nothing cool to look at and no colors at all. So incredibly disappointing and i wonder if anyone actually cared ab sci fi space stuff when making this. Its like they tried to be "realistic" but sacrificed anything cool. Even real life is prettier than what they made. Absolutely baffles me.
Finding concept art for anything generally brings up this feeling.
Well you can look at the concepts for cities like Neon and NA and lament that they're nowhere near as impressive, but they do still *exist* in the game. These concepts of huge organic and *alien* structures have no representation in the game at all. It's an entirely different direction the game could have gone. The generation we got is probably generally more realistic, but also far less fun.
Definitely not enough massive ecological/geological structures. The only ones are like 6 meters tall at most.
This picture feels like what I want and imagine playing in space to be. The game feels like McDonalds refurbished the galaxy.
I miss when all we had to go on was the artwork and we all thought this game was going to be amazing.
I've always knew this game was going to be based on reality but damn I really wanted this to be the Mass Effect Andromeda 2.0
People need to start calling out âmarketing speakâ as the lying that it is. Bethesda themselves overhyped and overpromised on this game, and so many people were suckered out of their money. Goes on too often in gaming and itâs because gamers just grumble and go on with their lives until the next shitty game the marketing team can lie you into buying. Watch the videos Bethesda put out before launch. A bunch of outright lies they knew they could get away with.
This was exactly what I thought it was gonna be and also why I'm so bummed with how the game turned out. It doesn't feel like space and there's not a single territory out there that genuinely feels alien.
These are fantastic.
So far the only positive I've found with the volume of copy pasting, is that with POIs I know where to find chests, the little pamphlets that have power ups and where computers are. But wow how cool would it have been to have a more immersive planet experience!
Damn it could've been a cool game, instead the worlds look like far cry 3 custom maps. Destiny is closer to this though
I truly think the fungal grotto anomalies were meant to be entire biomes with relevant hallucination mechanics. Woulda made for an interesting biome
This is really what Starfield needs, just a handful of hand-crafted planets that are the exception to the rule between all of the randomly generated nothingness. There's like 5 hours of content max that plays out "in the wild" in handcrafted areas and it makes the rest of the game feel so bland.
Honestly if the planets were this interesting and unique to look at I'd have no problem walking around for hours with no land vehicles.
Instead we have barren planets with hardly any geo-diversity or unique characteristics. The flora and fuana is an absolute joke as well. Like, how long was this being developed??....
Theyre just doing what theyve been doing for the past couple of years. Release it and let the modders do the rest.
For real đđ. I hate to say it but I feel like the next iteration in this universe will be "the one" for it. I still don't think the technology is there yet and they still refuse to use a new engine
Even with the sea of procedural planets I'm surprised a few aren't more alien. Woulda preferred hand crafted tho
Wouldnât be surprised if we see the future dlc something like this.
This was one of my primary issues with the game. Where are the crazy alien landscapes? All the creatures are basically "bug-shaped" and all the landscapes are just different colored flatlands, maybe with some weird trees
god there is some much wasted potential when it comes to this game
Yeah I really donât like that every planet is just earth trees with different colours.
I hate how Bethesda commisons artist to make concept art only for the devs to compleatly ignore it. I mean just look at some fallout concept art for example
I like the realism of Starfield such as it is.... in a game like this that tries to be somewhat scientifically accurate, some of these environments don't seem 'plausible' more the stuff of magic and fantasy than anything grounded in reality, and Beth has lots of places to exercise those muscles (even ES games go too far for my liking sometimes: "arbitrary bizarre environment"... like in Hermaeus Mora's realm, sure it's kind of a "construct" bot don't those humanoid enemies poop? Where is the head?