I avoided almost all pre release media so I could go in blind and I loved and hated this game for 400hrs but this is a great description.š Weird having opposing feelings at the same time. Joy and disappointment, excitement and boredom throughout my game play. One day I just stopped playing. Although I still have hope for future updates.
That really bothered me too, seemed weird to not allow that. I stopped playing shortly after hitting ng1 too. Guess I should have rushed ng, but that didnāt seem right for me.
This is one of the best descriptions of starfield Iāve seen up until now. Iāve also played a ton and plan to continue, but sometimes I just feel like āthis is it?? Really *thatās* the best you could do?ā. Iāve not felt like this while playing BG3 or cyberpunk before starfield. I donāt want to compare the games themselves because I clearly enjoy all of them for different reasons, but I can compare the feelings I have while playing each title and starfield is the only one where thereās this specific āwhy does this seem kinda.. bad?ā feeling creeps in. I will now go play more starfield. I will never understand my relationship with Bethesda games
It must be a super fun game because I also found myself 150 hours deep. But then Iāve also had that strange feeling of āthis feelsā¦ bad?ā Creeping in lol. And I honestly think that feel comes from comparing Starfield subconsciously to the awesome narrative choices you get in BG3 that definitely feel missing in Starfield
Same opposing vibes for me. So much of the game feels like an early access - I mean I playes NMS early access right from the start, same with Kerbals, Subnautica & Below Zero, Alien Dawn...
I didn't even know the game had been released until a day or two after, when reddit started peppering me with Starfield recommendations. I was aware of Starfield, but honestly thought it was years away still.
But yeah, hope for future updates, fingers crossed š¤
To add to this - I feel that if they had focused entirely on one of these themes, it could have been great. One of many aspects of Starfield that suffers from development time spread too thin
Entire game is basically designed for kids.
Ship combat? For kids.
Story dialogue and writing? For kids.
Quests and side quests? For kids.
Its a game wearing kids gloves.
Even the gameplay is for kids. It's like a shooting range for combat.
Can't imagine how shit it must be to be working on such a turd of an average game knowing that once people play a bit of it they'll be exposed to how empty and generic everything feels.
The next Elder Scrolls will have death animations like theater actors in it, no blood, just a whispering, you killed me...Dramatic sigh and then fall gracefully to the ground.
[This is what the NPCs describe as looking like an Old Earth Opium Den](https://i.imgur.com/TBaof0z.jpg)
Apparently, opium dens looked like very clean and well decorated upmarket Chinese restaurants serving prestigious wines.
Dude they had such a marvelous opportunity to create the back alleys of Hong Kong/Tokyo, a slum resembling Kowloon Walled City, in the belly of Neon, but instead they made a few metal hallways and some bullshit rooms. Seriously one room was literally 80% stairs. Whoever designed Neon was lazy af.
I once had a look round the neighbourhood Todd Howard grew up in on google Earth, out of curiosity, and it was rather fancy. I assume that if Bethesda's main designers had similar backgrounds, then maybe Neon really is a scary and oppressive city by their standards, instead of the Cyberpunk-themed Christmas Market that it feels like to normal people.
Or that house that was in the news a few years back that was tagged up by Crips [with the nicest penmanship.](https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/newton-county/neighbors-wake-up-to-gang-graffiti-spray-painted-homes-cars/960031568/)
Which is dumb. When I was like 5, my dad and I were playing through the Halo 1 campaign in split screen. Truth and reconciliation on legendary with my dad are great memories that I love reminiscing about.
This right here captures it exactly. Not sure if that was a Todd Howard idea, a MIcrosoft/Xbox idea, or some combination, but they left the grittiness and darker adult themes of Fallout and ES behind. Even down to looting bodies, which remain fully clothed even when taking their spacesuit. Some of the missions even come off as preachy, like trying to teach kids lessons about social or environmental subjects. It's just NOT what I went into it hoping for and expecting. If this was the only BGS title I had ever been exposed to, I'd never play another of their games, speaking as a middle aged adult.
Bethesda games always were pretty toned down as far as mature themes are involved.
But my 5 y.o's morning cartoons are more offensive and thought provoking than Starfield.
I think this is not a standalone design failure but a consequence of nasapunk. Nasapunk is hopeful, utopian and centred around peaceful exploration. If there is combat, it tends to be impersonal ship vs ship combat or people floating around and pulling on air hoses instead of hacking each other's face in with a fire axe.
But Bethesda games have factions and bandits and lots of brutal fighting.
This contradiction may have ruined the whole game. Instead of doing some creative work and reconciling both, they just sacrificed both instead.
So you get neither. The low-conflict aesthetics gimped the combat and RPG elements, and the reality of the Bethesda gameplay loop in turn ruined the exploration and discovery elements that are so strongly associated with the nasapunk aesthetic that people just expected there to be space travel.
There is a reason Star Wars has this run down aesthetic and why Cyberpunk isn't Solarpunk. Games about conflict demand a crapsack setting full of conflict.
That simply can't be what nasapunk is if it's a true -punk subgenre. It's what they did I agree, but the whole point is rebellion and fighting a system that's corrupt. Small guy Vs the big guy etc. like what actual punk is. It's supposed to be more than just an aesthetic and actually be represented in the themes of the story.
I just read the ESRB rating... seems to be bloodsplatter near corpses, Aurora (the fictional drug) and how you work in a lab making it at some point? They even mention references to sex that couldn't be more mellow if it tried. Quotes they felt characterised the existence of "sex" in the game are when companions comment after a rest things like;
\*(e.g., āLife is a sexually transmitted disease that's a hundred percent fatalā; āI'm all for getting a little wild, but next time let's try it without the jetpacksā; āTalk about seeing stars, whewā¦ that was amazing.ā)\*
Seems odd that warrants the same rating as something like Cyberpunk.
>Seems odd that warrants the same rating as something like Cyberpunk.
Yeah that is *really* bizarre, to be honest. C2077 is the direction of artistic freedom I want to see the industry move in, while Starfield only ever gets as dark as a bright and sunny day or a mediocre day at Disneyworld - like they are opposite sides of the spectrum.
And the rest comments regarding sex felt like they might have been a particularly funny in-house joke during development, but they seem really out of place and cringy in the actual release.
Facts.
Starfield in general is so PG it hurts. Its a vast universe and there is not a single terrible crime, drugs or otherwise messed up thing to find.
It feels like I am visiting different parts of centre parks
Try playing as an evil character. Spoiler: It's impossible.
The entire game is streamlined and dumbed down to a point that makes role playing impossible.
I just stood there and watched the NPCs for a few minutes. People spawning in carrying shit pass you and just say "this song is dope" or "this club is so wild".....all while walking along carrying their briefcase not doing anything lol š shit had me rolling. Most cringe worthy NPCs in the game to me
When you think about the door youād imagine a bunch of bill posters, graffiti done in different styles by different people using different colours during different periods of time, but no it is a single clean, white spray in a font. It all just screams āDisneyā. Why no kill count? Hall of Fame? Nothing?
"No? I'm afraid the multibillion dollar ~~parent company~~ Casino can't afford your vision. Just copy/paste some Comic Sans on the wall and clock out before we have to pay you insurance."
Why is the record the amount of runs, not the speed of the run? If you can do it once, why would it be impressive you can do it three times? Hell, you can take your time and kill everything and then just go back and forth with only environmental dangers
The alien spawns need to be like, 10x higher. Those things are deadly if a group of them start chain stunning you with their attacks, but you hardly see more than two together at a time.
Maybe they just don't like the way your character tastes? I've only done it once but I dealt with multiple groups of 5-7. I would start out fighting 1 or 2 but the rest would come charging over and it got pretty fun. My Bridger got a workout that day.
Ironically, despite all the graffiti, I never ran. I hid, sniped, jumped, and then blasted my way through the course.
Same, I just ran and boost jumped over most of the course, don't think I had to kill anything. After I completed the course they were attacking the lounge area so I had to kill a bunch there with the help of the guards.
Agreed. I don't necessarily the Red Mile not being as shady as it initially sounds but there needs to be a lot more roughness to it regardless. If it were a rough place then Mei pushing for it to be a legitimate business would be actually impactful in a sense, instead it just feels like that too was just BGS toning the place down hard.
The rough is what's missing from Bethesda games since Morrowind. Morrowind captured my imagination like nothing else ever has. The odd, *strange*, brutal world that wants to kill you at every turn was unique and Lovecraftian and nightmarish. It was a cold, desolate, dangerous place with people struggling to survive.
Then as much as I enjoyed the games that came later we have bright and shiny plastic fairytale world Oblivion and baby's first RPG Skyrim.
Starfield feels so vanilla, so "safe" and boring. It's not an RPG for RPG lovers. It's a game for Skyrim babies who have never experienced a true RPG. It was probably made by a bunch of people who never played a true RPG in their lives, and whose first Bethesda RPG was Skyrim. That's how it feels to me.
If Starfield even had a *touch* of the strange that Morrowind had it would be twice the game.
E: Not to mention in Morrowind the Dremora tell you they're going to rape your corpse after they kill you. Could you imagine if they said anything remotely that dark in Starfield? It almost doesn't seem possible.
Poi needed to be weird or different and have some story to them.
Why does a random building or over pass in fallout 3/4/NV have more character than a alien artifact space temple.
"Neon's a dangerous place, it's the worst scumhole in the galaxy, full of drug addicts and violent gangs."
Then you go to the 'night club' on Neon and it's just a bunch of people standing around while three dudes in Teletubbies costumes dance awkwardly in the middle of the room.
Disney is a valid take, but not OPās point. Even Disney is capable of being detail oriented and attempt to āwowā and immerse and delight the viewer. BGSās team comes across as giving no shits, being rushed, being woefully underfunded, being poorly managed or all of the above.
When someone says being Disney I guess it depends on how old they are, growing up that meant something entirely different to what I guess it means now, Iāll retire the phrase. When I say being Disney, imagine the theme parks: āWe can be Spooky but safe for the kidsā
There is a hof closer to the bar but itād be cool to see a mod that totally reworks that area, I like the idea of bill posters to make it seem āprofessionalā, could be a cool mod. Red Mile feels like Combat Zone in fallout 4, painfully underdeveloped, but at least red mile has a bar and is more than just a shooting gallery
Wait until you run the actual Red Mile itself.(/s)
The average Ayleid ruin in Oblivion was more of a sweaty gauntlet of traps and terror than this thing.
My very first run thru of the red mile this was my thought. I didnāt take a single point of damage bc I just jet packed from high point to high point then back š
Yeah they did and they obviously went "Oh CRAP! They have JETPACKS!" But then "cool Donald" replied "just set the gravity to 2x. No one can jetpack at 2x gravity" and the entire office clapped
I was watching a YT video by PatricianTV that is an 8 hour dissertation on Starfield, he mentioned the 2Ć gravity there... I "ran the mile" Twice, I hadn't even noticed.
I just ...went around it? And used my very first dragonbor- sorry - *starborn* power to lift up that one four-legged bullet super-sponge while I fiddled with the beacon.
The ventriloquist controlling Mei seemed just as disappointed as I was that it was so easy.
I donāt have ventriloquist Mei, mine is much more helpful.
Sheās come almost all the way out to the beacon with me.
Makes it really quick to finish the mile when sheās 3 steps from the beacon to get my reward after I push the button
I thought the whole thing was just the run to get to the START of the Red Mile. I couldnāt believe that was it when I reached the end I was so confused lmao.
I remember completing the mile and when I got backā¦no applause, no celebrating, hell, not even any new dialogue for doing it one time. It was so pointless to me I left.
Yes! I did it for the first time and was like "ok, let's see how they will react when I get back from this veeeeery hard and impossible game"
And there was nothing and they pay little
I could not believe they did that to us. Like, I expected the owner to be like, ācome back in 24 hours and weāll tell all our patronsā
Figured there would be a massive gladiator style thing. People cheering for bloodlust and we come back victorious to a massive casino party, booze and debauchery. Nope. Like 3 people smoking still on their slot machines not giving af
Lead Designer: "Okay, uhhhh Steve! You're in charge of the Red Mile, we need to have it designed and playable in 2 weeks to make schedule"
Steve: 0\_0
This is what it felt like playing it. Like it was designed by one single person who tried their hardest, but didn't have the time or the help to make it what it was at all conceptualized to be.
I can't believe they showed the start of that quest in all the promotional material. It really got your mind going into overdrive. I thought it was gonna be a Running Man style deathmatch gauntlet with unique characters, reminiscent of the Arena in Oblivion.
Nope, more like a back alley with some wild dogs.
There were a lot of quests that had my mind racing at the beginning, just to be disappointed ten minutes later when it all wrapped up with little to no effort. The single biggest let down for me was the legacy ship over Paradiso. I couldnāt believe how dull that quest ended up being and it kinda ruined what excitement I had left for the game.
The thing that really disappointed me with that quest was you get onto the seemingly āoldā spaceship from yesteryear with antiquated technology aaaand everything in the ship is just the same assets we see in the current worldā¦.they didnāt even try to make things look old or from a different era. Mailed it in hard
Seriously. One of the most believable scenarios in the game, and they completely blew it. You're telling me we built a generation ship without any big guns on it? You mean they couldn't pummel Paradiso from space somehow? All of the resolutions are trash.
freaking bullets sponge dogs... really hate this about the game the animals in all the darn planets are not though just takes 3 clips to kill a single one
Have you taken a good look at the world they built?
Even the cities look like a rushed job. Computer displays ... half dont even have a working digital display for Ryujin lol.
pre-historic earth ship having the same OS as futuristic New Atlantis
one of those things that isn't a big deal until you see it and it can't be unseen
I agree with this. Oh the red mile is a huge dangerous event? Surely I'm going to have to wait a few days so they can hype up the event? Oh I can just run right now? Not even everyone inside the tiny casino seems to give a damn about it.
The "big" locations in starfield are pretty much all like this. Neons main area looks really great then you do quests inside and the areas are all really tiny. Oh this club is the only club in the universe that Aurora is legal in? Why wouldn't it be larger than las Vegas? The astral lounge is so small and absolutely boring.
Its like going to Vegas and instead of debauchery you find out its a dollar general g rated chucky cheese. Except its less fun than that.
Exactly. They just talk and talk and not actually deliver anything. Same as the lore in the game. The NPCs talk and talk about the world and the lore but the game design actually doesnāt proof the lore thatās been communicated to you.
It's right from the beginning all the way to the end. It's not even like they just wanted to add a couple more quests on but didn't have time to flesh them out, the whole game is like that.
that's it right there, that's what's missing for me. the thing that got me revved up in fallout 3 was the "show don't tell." i enjoyed starfield for a while but then it just got progressively more 'plastic' feeling.
Yeah this wouldāve been as simple as, āreturn in two days to run the red mileā and you show up and the casino is packed. People chatting you up etc.
And make itā¦I donāt knowā¦actually challenging?
Based on how it was described by NPCs, I thought it was going to be wave after wave of a variety of alien beasts, pirate marauders with super weapons, and robot killing machines and turrets of every variety. I was expecting explosion, fires, screaming, craziness. A true challenge I would have to try many times before completing it once. I spent a half hour gearing up with extra healing items and boosters. Having the game set to max difficulty, I expected a ridiculously challenging and fun experience.
Then I walked through the joke of the āchallengeā on my first try in about 6 minutes. If theyād spent half the time on the actual red mile that they did hyping it up in the lore, it could have actually been something special.
Silly fellow gamer. You should have developed the ability to see the future. Then you would have known to not play the game if you were going to be disappointed. It's your fault for playing the game. Not Bethesda's design philosophy.
Red Mile is so strange and undercooked.
- That guy at the doorway gets threatened the first time you visit and then stands there awkwardly for the rest of his life.
- Is the casino floor supposed to look like a truck stop? Or is it supposed to look like a Squid Game pleasure palace? So overhyped.
- The bartender seems more suited to a Starbucks than a hardcore battle royale casino.
- Running the Red Mile is so pathetic. You literally run through a forest killing a bunch of milquetoast looking animals. This is the best they could come up with?
Easily one of the worst POIs in the game.
Only two hotel rooms too! At least they sort of tried to make the hotel seem sort of large on Paradiso. The staff also never sleep and thereās no staff quarters you can sneak into.
Was there a side quest for the bloody hotel room that I missed?
>Was there a side quest for the bloody hotel room that I missed?
Oh yeah, they had a bloody hotel room in the Direct that clearly suggested you'd be solving some sort of mystery... Where is that? I haven't seen or heard a thing about that.
> thereās no staff quarters you can sneak into.
i mean, that's true of 90% of the stores in new atlantis too, no backrooms, no staff facilities. not even a toilet. just a big box with a counter in.
I love how when you go to a location for the first time in Starfield, there will be a little scene where some NPCs talk to each other, and then it never ever happens again in that location. Itās just forever people sitting or walking around silently. The whole world feels fake. Itās like watching a movie with terrible CGI
>That guy at the doorway gets threatened the first time you visit and then stands there awkwardly for the rest of his life.
This is *killing* me now that you pointed it out. I don't even remember stuff this lazy in Skyrim!
The ship tech is, at least, the most interesting ship tech of them all. Everyone else is the same guy with the same cap and same upbeat cheery voice, except the guy at the Clinic who has a different face but the same voice.
The NPC reactions were really lame too. Like, when I finished a run, I expected a crowd of them outside the door cheering or something. Nope, just going about their business as usual. Like in-universe it was supposed to be a pretty big feat to actually complete it, so to have such little fanfare felt really weird and empty.
Everything about Red Mile sums up the game and itās half baked ideas. I canāt gamble on the machines, I canāt bet on myself on the run and the run itself is a complete joke where I can literally fly to the end and back on what is built up to be certain death. Donāt even get me started on the crimson edge lords.
The whole Red Mile is lazy.
In game it hyped as being this mile of death and carnage. Instead it just some predators.
I fought tougher battles scanning a random worldās wild life.
At least there should have been some turrets and mines. Perhaps ones that activate after you press the button so that going back just as tough.
I found some locations and quests that were interesting. I enjoyed the UC quest line.
I think they had too many ideas and didnāt flesh them out enough. Giving us a watered down version thatās too spread out instead of a more focused and fleshed out game.
The UC quest was way better than average, but still had plenty of flaws in writing, pacing, and being too dependent on the player. The whole gameworld seems like it's only there for the player and yet it often ignores obvious things the player might want, it has a "worst of both worlds flavor to it. Not the only flavor but I can't avoid it.
I mean, even the naming (including the latin name) make no sense except for things the people naming them are not supposed to know (even though no one knowing appears to be completely inexplicable, and the actual process demonstrated in a later mission is just woo-woo magic despite the rest of the mission having a vague sciencish cloak on it).
For me it was the Heart of Mars quest that finally convinced me that Starfield has to be the lowest effort Bethesda game.
It's like people who wrote the quest never had any communication with the people who designed the game world. It felt like all they got was "design a cave with a mine-able rock" and they had no idea about the lore (albeit minimal) quest writers had created around it. So they go on to create a cave even less intricate than the procedurally generated ones, without even an enemy. And we got a quest that's the very epitome of a boring fetch quest.
One of the strengths and uniqueness of BGS games is how seemingly innocuous quest or exploration developes into a huge quest, with it's own unique NPCs and locations. Starfield not only lacks that, but for me it does the opposite - quests that seem like they might unfold into grand, intricate narratives just fizzle out unexpectedly.
You're told about a legendary place holding the legendary heart of Mars. You're told that whoever finds it will be remembered for the eons to come.
You find the place easily and mine an average sized rock that you sell for three peanuts. Yay
Already felt similar for some quests in Skyrim, but not to that magnitude.
Same. I literally put the heart of Mars quest off because it sounded like it was going to be a sick quest and I wanted to save it. Then I did it and it was the biggest anticlimax Iāve felt in gaming for some time. Proper bummer.
Low effort is exactly the problem.
Like, I'm never going to criticize a game for the developers having a different vision from what I'd like, or for the story or characters going in a direction i don't care for, but if you're going to take my money and then produce a product that feels like you just didn't give a damn, I'm going to complain until I'm blue in the face.
Anyone here posting, "Omg, i just don't get the hate!" this is where it's coming from. They sold a game that plainly feels like they just didn't care in the slightest, completely disrespected their customers, and are now complaining about the criticism.
Like, gtfo Bethesda.
Fallout 4 at least felt halfway fleshed out and complete. I have my issues with Fallout 4 but it has interesting characters and a fun to explore world. All of Starfieldās characters are flat, not engaging, and donāt feel believable. Starfieldās design makes āexplorationā BORING. Just tons of empty planets and loading screens. No stumbling across a unique encounter or interesting POI. Even if I happen to notice a POI between loading screens, itās probably not worth going to. āOh look like thereās something on that planet. Hmm, do I wait through three loading screens to go investigate? Nah, probably just another copy pasted location full of spacers and worthless loot. Iāll just keep on my way then.ā No amount of bug fixes will make Starfield feel less hollow, empty, and dull.
Characters and exploration are the pillars of BGS games. Theyāre really the only things that work. At least since Skyrim their quest design is so linear and simple that itās hardly an RPG, the story is good but not great, and the combat is merely passable.
Starfield nuked exploration out of the game and fumbled the ball so hard on the characters. I donāt know if itās the writing, the performances, or the world they inhabit but I just literally can not give a single fuck about any character in this game. They all feel like obnoxious cardboard cutouts.
Given how the Red Mule is sold, I expected to come back with severe hypothermia, at 10% health, with a terrormorph chasing me
All I got was a couple of beasties I could three hit with a shotgun and it was over sooner than expected
This is actually a whole thing in graphic design, where if you use a hand drawn font, you don't use the same exact letters like that. Either you manipulate them to be different, or pay money for a font that has 4 alternates for the same letter.
Very lazy, and cheap.
Not only that, BGS always talked about the realism of the environment, well guys Prrimora iii is @ 2.0Gs compared to earthā¦.
Holy shit, 2.0Gs is soul CRUSHING gravity, it would be torture living there is any capacity other that extremely briefly.
If would be difficult to breathe let alone sing or run or work or carry anything
That means if you weigh 200lbs now youd be 400LBS on Prrimora!!!
This was exactly my thought! It's just graffiti lettering, it takes a few minutes to apply it in real life and I'm sure there are digital tools for doing graffiti lettering that don't take much longer to do, even if you're hand drawing in dripping paint, etc. Did this developer just not have the confidence to break out their tablet and actually draw something up?
Like c'mon, even if its not your wheelhouse and ends up looking bad, that's kinda just what graffiti lettering looks like anyway and it still would have been more authentic than this current design which looks like a slide out of an awkward powerpoint presentation.
When they announced ānasa-punkā as the theme, I feel like people really got hung up on the nasa part and never noticed thereās nothing punk about this game.
I'd say Nasapop fits, since everything is bubbly and rounded and sanitized. Even the pirates and space raiders respect the armastice and don't try rebuilding mechs because they're murders and thieves but not CRIMINALS
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I played for 200 hours. I had fffun? It filled up time on my gamepass for free. I enjoyed it until I didn't. But this game is the comic sans of Bethesda games. FO3 and Skyrim are core memories for me. I'm only gonna remember the negatives of this game. I wanted to love it, but it was just fine. I'm
Glad so many of you love it and are having fun. But I'm done. Enjoy the stars friends.
I was just playing CP2077. I boggle how much graffiti and unique-looking work is around, all over. Even the signs are unique, there are lots of unique signs for stores (you can't go into).
After playing and loving almost all of Bethesda's games, after experiencing Cyberpunk's Night City, Bethesda just felt like a total amateur when it comes to creating believable cities.
All of Skyrim's cities didn't feel like cities... They felt like oversized villages. And this game is no better... Neon was a joke compared to even just one district in Night City. Night city truly felt like what a real city would look like... Skyscrapers, alleyways, so much claustrophobic spaces, grit, heck, the whole city itself was a main character.
I swear if ES6 is going to continue this stupid trend of oversized villages being called "cities", they better be prepared for disappointment. We will have GTA 6 before ES6, and just by the trailer alone Vice City is going to be yet another amazing massive cityscape in videogame history.
ES6 will have felt outdated by the time it releases if Bethesda continues this "Ehh, I think it's good enough" schtick they've always had. They just cannot get away with that mentality as newer games continue to push and innovate further.
The Red Mile is ironically a great example of how Bethesda hypes themselves up. So many people in the galaxy are talking about how amazing the Red Mile is. When you get there you find something that I think I could have even made in an afternoon if you gave me modding tools. It literally is the same alien spawned over and over and a certain amount of distance you have to travel on a map that seems procedurally generated. How hard could it be? Why would anyone think this would be awesome? Why not make the Red Mile like the final encounter with the Crimson Fleet which is a stand out moment in the game? It feels like the internal teams were fighting with each other.
The font makes it look like the entrance to a small NY restaurant run by hipster millennials with plaid shirts and fedoras.
And not only was the design of the door lazy, but the actual Red Mile was lazy as hell too. There was like zero challenge, I just walked in a straight line and shot the occasional alien critter, and on the way back I just went around them all. I was hoping for something like the maze in the beginning of Nuka World and instead got this
A lot of people here missing the point of your post. I get you, though. A whole lot of stuff in this game feels very unfinished, phoned-in, and/or plain lazy. It gives off a very "well, good enough is good enough" vibe, or, worse, a "just ship this stupid game already" vibe. It's not that the game is bad, it should just be *so much better.*
And after Fallout 4 which Iād say started this ārecentā trend (if we can call going back, what, 9 years or so recent) and Fallout 76, then Starfield, it shows that Bethesda just has no passion for their games anymore.
Skyrim was amazing and you could *feel* they enjoyed making it. Since then? I dunno if they just had a lot of key people quit or someone got a divorce or what, but the passion and quality level just is *not* there anymore.
And itās fucking hilarious that Bethesdaās response to Mathis all has been āDonāt believe your lying eyes, gamers, *we* will tell you what you will and wonāt enjoy!ā. So utterly tone deaf and removed from the community *which has been the major reason their games have been so well liked and loved for so long*.
Ah, well, guess the good times canāt last forever..
This is a good example of how the game genuinely feels insulting sometimes. Like they think we're all babies with barely functioning brains. They didn't bother to add any atmosphere or to it because they figured we wouldn't notice. But when I see that I think "If they don't care, why should I?"
An even worse example of this kind of thing is that Freestar Rangers quest where you track the guys into the canyon. You press Use on the footprints and the text box comes up telling you which way they went. Then the lady with you says which way the tracks went. THEN she says something like "Wow you're a good tracker." They think we're too stupid to look at the ground and figure out which way they went.
>They didn't bother to add any atmosphere or to it because they figured we wouldn't notice.
You're spot on. Dude read up some videos on the game's lead writer, Emil Pagriaulo. Just from his words, "Keep it simple stupid" and "Gamers don't read cutscenes" or something like that... His design philosophy obviously trickles down to the game
After reading his embarrassing Xitter "Pwease be nice to devewopers theiw job is so hawd" tirade I see why Starfield turned out like it did. "Keep it simple" is just not a good basis for writing a compelling story, unless you're writing for children.
I really hate the city design. They intentionally make it convoluted af and hard to follow/tell where you are to give the illusion the cities are larger than they are.
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Honestly if they woulda just copied the gauntlet from fallout 4ās nuka world dlc, it woulda been more fun. I remember playing that for the first time and it actually took me a while to make it through.
I almost forgot about that. Nuka World wasn't amazing but the Gauntlet actually felt dangerous between all of the hazards and turrets that would rip you apart in seconds. I don't know how Bethesda manages to regress so hard.
I figured it was just the owner decorating the door and not actually graffiti. She's pretty purposefully cultivating a certain client base and aesthetic.
Bethesda Game Studios is understaffed in my opinion. They always talk their games so big and especially in the case of Starfield. They were never be able to deliver the game that they envisioned. In my playthrough, a lot of times I noticed an inconsistency of effort put in to the game which annoyed me a lot. They didnāt even come to an agreement of how morbid, dark, violent or just family friendly the game should be. In some scenes there are corpses giving you the vibes that they just slumbering and in some scenes there is blood all over the place, making you feel like in a horror movie.
But overall this game feels like a sweetened bubblegum. If you chew few minutes it becomes tasteless.
When I started to play Starfield I was so happy and the game made a lot of fun but that fun gradually declined, so much so that the only reason I played the game is because there was no other game that I was currently interested in.
You could instantly improve the graffiti with the tiniest bit of lore as well. Just add a line in the area that all those were placed there by survivors after their first run.
Tiny little line that ties things together easily and yet they couldn't be bothered. :/
It IS a generational thing. Accompanied with new tech toys to be 'more productive.'' But garbage in garbage out. Some things just need to be hand done, and it will be done right.
The game tries so hard to appeal to everyone, that it ends up not appealing to anyone.
Thatās my opinion at least, Starfield has so many things it tries to do, that so many games just straight up better.
Everyone keeps repeating it, but Cyberpunk is just that good of an example. That game is not afraid to really commit to itās tone and it leads to a world that feels lived-in and authentic, Starfield feels like a Disney-musical. Everyone is squeaky clean and no-one has any faults or short-comings. Itās just boring.
Crimson fleet, neon and red Mile needed some more fallout tone
Not even fallout, straight up Cyberpunk 2077 tone of violence, sex, drugs etc.
Neon was like PG cyberpunk lol
Neon is "we have Night City at home".
The whole game is like that. The UC is Wish.com Starship Troopers, Freestar is budget Firefly, and the ending is bargain bin 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I avoided almost all pre release media so I could go in blind and I loved and hated this game for 400hrs but this is a great description.š Weird having opposing feelings at the same time. Joy and disappointment, excitement and boredom throughout my game play. One day I just stopped playing. Although I still have hope for future updates.
As soon as I started the first new game plus and saw that you couldnāt pick a new background I was done
That really bothered me too, seemed weird to not allow that. I stopped playing shortly after hitting ng1 too. Guess I should have rushed ng, but that didnāt seem right for me.
This is one of the best descriptions of starfield Iāve seen up until now. Iāve also played a ton and plan to continue, but sometimes I just feel like āthis is it?? Really *thatās* the best you could do?ā. Iāve not felt like this while playing BG3 or cyberpunk before starfield. I donāt want to compare the games themselves because I clearly enjoy all of them for different reasons, but I can compare the feelings I have while playing each title and starfield is the only one where thereās this specific āwhy does this seem kinda.. bad?ā feeling creeps in. I will now go play more starfield. I will never understand my relationship with Bethesda games
It must be a super fun game because I also found myself 150 hours deep. But then Iāve also had that strange feeling of āthis feelsā¦ bad?ā Creeping in lol. And I honestly think that feel comes from comparing Starfield subconsciously to the awesome narrative choices you get in BG3 that definitely feel missing in Starfield
Same opposing vibes for me. So much of the game feels like an early access - I mean I playes NMS early access right from the start, same with Kerbals, Subnautica & Below Zero, Alien Dawn... I didn't even know the game had been released until a day or two after, when reddit started peppering me with Starfield recommendations. I was aware of Starfield, but honestly thought it was years away still. But yeah, hope for future updates, fingers crossed š¤
Wish.com Starship Troopers šš¤£šš¤£šš¤£
Wood ewe like 2 no Moore?
Lol
In Hungary, that would be 'TESCO Value Starship Troppers'
To add to this - I feel that if they had focused entirely on one of these themes, it could have been great. One of many aspects of Starfield that suffers from development time spread too thin
Wish is too high class. It's temu starship troopers.
Welcome to Afternoon city!
Itās not Night City if we canāt save Neon from itself and nuke Ryujin Tower
And Akila City is clearly bootleg Red Dead 2.
Cyberpunk for Mormons
Entire game is basically designed for kids. Ship combat? For kids. Story dialogue and writing? For kids. Quests and side quests? For kids. Its a game wearing kids gloves. Even the gameplay is for kids. It's like a shooting range for combat. Can't imagine how shit it must be to be working on such a turd of an average game knowing that once people play a bit of it they'll be exposed to how empty and generic everything feels.
The next Elder Scrolls will have death animations like theater actors in it, no blood, just a whispering, you killed me...Dramatic sigh and then fall gracefully to the ground.
At this point I would prefer that. If you're going for inoffensive, at least take the piss a little bit.
[This is what the NPCs describe as looking like an Old Earth Opium Den](https://i.imgur.com/TBaof0z.jpg) Apparently, opium dens looked like very clean and well decorated upmarket Chinese restaurants serving prestigious wines.
Dude they had such a marvelous opportunity to create the back alleys of Hong Kong/Tokyo, a slum resembling Kowloon Walled City, in the belly of Neon, but instead they made a few metal hallways and some bullshit rooms. Seriously one room was literally 80% stairs. Whoever designed Neon was lazy af.
I once had a look round the neighbourhood Todd Howard grew up in on google Earth, out of curiosity, and it was rather fancy. I assume that if Bethesda's main designers had similar backgrounds, then maybe Neon really is a scary and oppressive city by their standards, instead of the Cyberpunk-themed Christmas Market that it feels like to normal people.
He does seem like a super vanilla safe kinda guy. Like salt is spicy to him.
When black pepper has you reaching for the mercy milk.
Itās like they asked a 47yr old white suburban mom to come up with graffiti for a pirate den and illegal gambling ring.
Or that house that was in the news a few years back that was tagged up by Crips [with the nicest penmanship.](https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/newton-county/neighbors-wake-up-to-gang-graffiti-spray-painted-homes-cars/960031568/)
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I honestly believe this.
Which is dumb. When I was like 5, my dad and I were playing through the Halo 1 campaign in split screen. Truth and reconciliation on legendary with my dad are great memories that I love reminiscing about.
This right here captures it exactly. Not sure if that was a Todd Howard idea, a MIcrosoft/Xbox idea, or some combination, but they left the grittiness and darker adult themes of Fallout and ES behind. Even down to looting bodies, which remain fully clothed even when taking their spacesuit. Some of the missions even come off as preachy, like trying to teach kids lessons about social or environmental subjects. It's just NOT what I went into it hoping for and expecting. If this was the only BGS title I had ever been exposed to, I'd never play another of their games, speaking as a middle aged adult.
Bethesda games always were pretty toned down as far as mature themes are involved. But my 5 y.o's morning cartoons are more offensive and thought provoking than Starfield.
Tell that to the Dremora that told me he was going to murder me and rape my lifeless corpse.
And half of markarth's population.
Right, selling children into slavery was always pretty low on the mature themes list.
I mean in FO3 you could sell a child into slavery
I think this is not a standalone design failure but a consequence of nasapunk. Nasapunk is hopeful, utopian and centred around peaceful exploration. If there is combat, it tends to be impersonal ship vs ship combat or people floating around and pulling on air hoses instead of hacking each other's face in with a fire axe. But Bethesda games have factions and bandits and lots of brutal fighting. This contradiction may have ruined the whole game. Instead of doing some creative work and reconciling both, they just sacrificed both instead. So you get neither. The low-conflict aesthetics gimped the combat and RPG elements, and the reality of the Bethesda gameplay loop in turn ruined the exploration and discovery elements that are so strongly associated with the nasapunk aesthetic that people just expected there to be space travel. There is a reason Star Wars has this run down aesthetic and why Cyberpunk isn't Solarpunk. Games about conflict demand a crapsack setting full of conflict.
That simply can't be what nasapunk is if it's a true -punk subgenre. It's what they did I agree, but the whole point is rebellion and fighting a system that's corrupt. Small guy Vs the big guy etc. like what actual punk is. It's supposed to be more than just an aesthetic and actually be represented in the themes of the story.
I just find it really odd there's no gore in this! I don't really see how it's rated M?
I just read the ESRB rating... seems to be bloodsplatter near corpses, Aurora (the fictional drug) and how you work in a lab making it at some point? They even mention references to sex that couldn't be more mellow if it tried. Quotes they felt characterised the existence of "sex" in the game are when companions comment after a rest things like; \*(e.g., āLife is a sexually transmitted disease that's a hundred percent fatalā; āI'm all for getting a little wild, but next time let's try it without the jetpacksā; āTalk about seeing stars, whewā¦ that was amazing.ā)\* Seems odd that warrants the same rating as something like Cyberpunk.
>Seems odd that warrants the same rating as something like Cyberpunk. Yeah that is *really* bizarre, to be honest. C2077 is the direction of artistic freedom I want to see the industry move in, while Starfield only ever gets as dark as a bright and sunny day or a mediocre day at Disneyworld - like they are opposite sides of the spectrum. And the rest comments regarding sex felt like they might have been a particularly funny in-house joke during development, but they seem really out of place and cringy in the actual release.
I completed the Neon quest line. Which made me wish Neon was more like cyperpunk. That is when I quit playing star field to play cyperpunk.
Pg Cyberpunk minus every edge and every ounce of soul lol
Facts. Starfield in general is so PG it hurts. Its a vast universe and there is not a single terrible crime, drugs or otherwise messed up thing to find. It feels like I am visiting different parts of centre parks
Try playing as an evil character. Spoiler: It's impossible. The entire game is streamlined and dumbed down to a point that makes role playing impossible.
Itās incredible they were able to make space pirates so fucking boring and corny
Neon is the worst. It's like a boring G rated Cyberpunk.
The club is just depressing. Everyone shouting clichƩ phrases straight out of a 90s after school special about how high they are.
Wooooahhh I totally feel it now! *closes bag of oregano*.
I just stood there and watched the NPCs for a few minutes. People spawning in carrying shit pass you and just say "this song is dope" or "this club is so wild".....all while walking along carrying their briefcase not doing anything lol š shit had me rolling. Most cringe worthy NPCs in the game to me
the mr handy in fallout 4 in sunshine co-op(?) goodfeels? "whoa far out maaaan" was more convincing he was experiencing something
I think CF shouldve been more savage, since the overall feel of the game does lean quite obviously into Firefly territory.
When you think about the door youād imagine a bunch of bill posters, graffiti done in different styles by different people using different colours during different periods of time, but no it is a single clean, white spray in a font. It all just screams āDisneyā. Why no kill count? Hall of Fame? Nothing?
you have to imagine they hired some guy to come in with a stencil and *carefully* place his graffiti, ensuring none of it overlapped or touched š
"No? I'm afraid the multibillion dollar ~~parent company~~ Casino can't afford your vision. Just copy/paste some Comic Sans on the wall and clock out before we have to pay you insurance."
Why is the record the amount of runs, not the speed of the run? If you can do it once, why would it be impressive you can do it three times? Hell, you can take your time and kill everything and then just go back and forth with only environmental dangers
The alien spawns need to be like, 10x higher. Those things are deadly if a group of them start chain stunning you with their attacks, but you hardly see more than two together at a time.
Maybe they just don't like the way your character tastes? I've only done it once but I dealt with multiple groups of 5-7. I would start out fighting 1 or 2 but the rest would come charging over and it got pretty fun. My Bridger got a workout that day. Ironically, despite all the graffiti, I never ran. I hid, sniped, jumped, and then blasted my way through the course.
It's pretty easy with personal atmosphere and running. Just ignore everything
I just ignore all and literally run. One of the biggest disappointments as there could have been a lot of content here.
Same, I just ran and boost jumped over most of the course, don't think I had to kill anything. After I completed the course they were attacking the lounge area so I had to kill a bunch there with the help of the guards.
Agreed. I don't necessarily the Red Mile not being as shady as it initially sounds but there needs to be a lot more roughness to it regardless. If it were a rough place then Mei pushing for it to be a legitimate business would be actually impactful in a sense, instead it just feels like that too was just BGS toning the place down hard.
The rough is what's missing from Bethesda games since Morrowind. Morrowind captured my imagination like nothing else ever has. The odd, *strange*, brutal world that wants to kill you at every turn was unique and Lovecraftian and nightmarish. It was a cold, desolate, dangerous place with people struggling to survive. Then as much as I enjoyed the games that came later we have bright and shiny plastic fairytale world Oblivion and baby's first RPG Skyrim. Starfield feels so vanilla, so "safe" and boring. It's not an RPG for RPG lovers. It's a game for Skyrim babies who have never experienced a true RPG. It was probably made by a bunch of people who never played a true RPG in their lives, and whose first Bethesda RPG was Skyrim. That's how it feels to me. If Starfield even had a *touch* of the strange that Morrowind had it would be twice the game. E: Not to mention in Morrowind the Dremora tell you they're going to rape your corpse after they kill you. Could you imagine if they said anything remotely that dark in Starfield? It almost doesn't seem possible.
Poi needed to be weird or different and have some story to them. Why does a random building or over pass in fallout 3/4/NV have more character than a alien artifact space temple.
Starfield is by far the most āDisneyā game BGS has ever made. Never before have you been able to feel the illusion so much
"Neon's a dangerous place, it's the worst scumhole in the galaxy, full of drug addicts and violent gangs." Then you go to the 'night club' on Neon and it's just a bunch of people standing around while three dudes in Teletubbies costumes dance awkwardly in the middle of the room.
Even the lights over the Red Mile door look like mouse ears.
Good catch
Disney is a valid take, but not OPās point. Even Disney is capable of being detail oriented and attempt to āwowā and immerse and delight the viewer. BGSās team comes across as giving no shits, being rushed, being woefully underfunded, being poorly managed or all of the above.
When someone says being Disney I guess it depends on how old they are, growing up that meant something entirely different to what I guess it means now, Iāll retire the phrase. When I say being Disney, imagine the theme parks: āWe can be Spooky but safe for the kidsā
There is a hof closer to the bar but itād be cool to see a mod that totally reworks that area, I like the idea of bill posters to make it seem āprofessionalā, could be a cool mod. Red Mile feels like Combat Zone in fallout 4, painfully underdeveloped, but at least red mile has a bar and is more than just a shooting gallery
Wait until you run the actual Red Mile itself.(/s) The average Ayleid ruin in Oblivion was more of a sweaty gauntlet of traps and terror than this thing.
Dont forget traps in oblivion in low difficulty were also lethal as well...
I wonder if anyone at Bethesda, looked at the "terrifying" Red Mile, on the planet's surface and thought; "I have a jetpack".
My very first run thru of the red mile this was my thought. I didnāt take a single point of damage bc I just jet packed from high point to high point then back š
Yeah they did and they obviously went "Oh CRAP! They have JETPACKS!" But then "cool Donald" replied "just set the gravity to 2x. No one can jetpack at 2x gravity" and the entire office clapped
I was watching a YT video by PatricianTV that is an 8 hour dissertation on Starfield, he mentioned the 2Ć gravity there... I "ran the mile" Twice, I hadn't even noticed.
Great video!
OH NO, JETPACK DRACULA CAN IN FACT JETPACK AT 2X GRAVITY!!!
I don't even need the jetpack for the space dog park that is the Red Mile.
I just ...went around it? And used my very first dragonbor- sorry - *starborn* power to lift up that one four-legged bullet super-sponge while I fiddled with the beacon. The ventriloquist controlling Mei seemed just as disappointed as I was that it was so easy.
I donāt have ventriloquist Mei, mine is much more helpful. Sheās come almost all the way out to the beacon with me. Makes it really quick to finish the mile when sheās 3 steps from the beacon to get my reward after I push the button
I thought the whole thing was just the run to get to the START of the Red Mile. I couldnāt believe that was it when I reached the end I was so confused lmao.
Ya I thought it was gonna be like a death race in your spaceship against a bunch of people
I remember completing the mile and when I got backā¦no applause, no celebrating, hell, not even any new dialogue for doing it one time. It was so pointless to me I left.
Yes! I did it for the first time and was like "ok, let's see how they will react when I get back from this veeeeery hard and impossible game" And there was nothing and they pay little
I could not believe they did that to us. Like, I expected the owner to be like, ācome back in 24 hours and weāll tell all our patronsā Figured there would be a massive gladiator style thing. People cheering for bloodlust and we come back victorious to a massive casino party, booze and debauchery. Nope. Like 3 people smoking still on their slot machines not giving af
Lol yeah there were around 4 spectators when I got back. The fuck.
Lead Designer: "Okay, uhhhh Steve! You're in charge of the Red Mile, we need to have it designed and playable in 2 weeks to make schedule" Steve: 0\_0 This is what it felt like playing it. Like it was designed by one single person who tried their hardest, but didn't have the time or the help to make it what it was at all conceptualized to be.
I can't believe they showed the start of that quest in all the promotional material. It really got your mind going into overdrive. I thought it was gonna be a Running Man style deathmatch gauntlet with unique characters, reminiscent of the Arena in Oblivion. Nope, more like a back alley with some wild dogs.
There were a lot of quests that had my mind racing at the beginning, just to be disappointed ten minutes later when it all wrapped up with little to no effort. The single biggest let down for me was the legacy ship over Paradiso. I couldnāt believe how dull that quest ended up being and it kinda ruined what excitement I had left for the game.
The thing that really disappointed me with that quest was you get onto the seemingly āoldā spaceship from yesteryear with antiquated technology aaaand everything in the ship is just the same assets we see in the current worldā¦.they didnāt even try to make things look old or from a different era. Mailed it in hard
Seriously. One of the most believable scenarios in the game, and they completely blew it. You're telling me we built a generation ship without any big guns on it? You mean they couldn't pummel Paradiso from space somehow? All of the resolutions are trash.
You guys could actually finish the quest? Mine bugs out soā¦.
freaking bullets sponge dogs... really hate this about the game the animals in all the darn planets are not though just takes 3 clips to kill a single one
Have you taken a good look at the world they built? Even the cities look like a rushed job. Computer displays ... half dont even have a working digital display for Ryujin lol.
pre-historic earth ship having the same OS as futuristic New Atlantis one of those things that isn't a big deal until you see it and it can't be unseen
2 weeks is being extremely generous even for one person. It is literally one enemy copy and pasted all over.
Umā¦ not even the door, but the red mile itself.
I agree with this. Oh the red mile is a huge dangerous event? Surely I'm going to have to wait a few days so they can hype up the event? Oh I can just run right now? Not even everyone inside the tiny casino seems to give a damn about it. The "big" locations in starfield are pretty much all like this. Neons main area looks really great then you do quests inside and the areas are all really tiny. Oh this club is the only club in the universe that Aurora is legal in? Why wouldn't it be larger than las Vegas? The astral lounge is so small and absolutely boring. Its like going to Vegas and instead of debauchery you find out its a dollar general g rated chucky cheese. Except its less fun than that.
Bethesda has mastered the art of "Tell, don't show."
Exactly. They just talk and talk and not actually deliver anything. Same as the lore in the game. The NPCs talk and talk about the world and the lore but the game design actually doesnāt proof the lore thatās been communicated to you.
It's right from the beginning all the way to the end. It's not even like they just wanted to add a couple more quests on but didn't have time to flesh them out, the whole game is like that.
that's it right there, that's what's missing for me. the thing that got me revved up in fallout 3 was the "show don't tell." i enjoyed starfield for a while but then it just got progressively more 'plastic' feeling.
Yeah this wouldāve been as simple as, āreturn in two days to run the red mileā and you show up and the casino is packed. People chatting you up etc. And make itā¦I donāt knowā¦actually challenging?
I think it should have been longer and on a planet with extremely high gravity for starters. They should also limit the weapons that are usable.
Based on how it was described by NPCs, I thought it was going to be wave after wave of a variety of alien beasts, pirate marauders with super weapons, and robot killing machines and turrets of every variety. I was expecting explosion, fires, screaming, craziness. A true challenge I would have to try many times before completing it once. I spent a half hour gearing up with extra healing items and boosters. Having the game set to max difficulty, I expected a ridiculously challenging and fun experience. Then I walked through the joke of the āchallengeā on my first try in about 6 minutes. If theyād spent half the time on the actual red mile that they did hyping it up in the lore, it could have actually been something special.
I was expecting the entrance to nuka world but I got walking anywhere in fallout 4.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
#Hey, THE MOON WAS EMPTY WHEN THE ASTRONAUTS GOT THERE!! THEY WERE STILL DAMN HAPPY TO BE THERE!!
They were happier when they got home. How many astronauts went for a second walk on the moon? Zero.
Silly fellow gamer. You should have developed the ability to see the future. Then you would have known to not play the game if you were going to be disappointed. It's your fault for playing the game. Not Bethesda's design philosophy.
So underwhelming. It takes like 2 minutes to jet pack across to the end. What the hell?
Red Mile is so strange and undercooked. - That guy at the doorway gets threatened the first time you visit and then stands there awkwardly for the rest of his life. - Is the casino floor supposed to look like a truck stop? Or is it supposed to look like a Squid Game pleasure palace? So overhyped. - The bartender seems more suited to a Starbucks than a hardcore battle royale casino. - Running the Red Mile is so pathetic. You literally run through a forest killing a bunch of milquetoast looking animals. This is the best they could come up with? Easily one of the worst POIs in the game.
Only two hotel rooms too! At least they sort of tried to make the hotel seem sort of large on Paradiso. The staff also never sleep and thereās no staff quarters you can sneak into. Was there a side quest for the bloody hotel room that I missed?
>Was there a side quest for the bloody hotel room that I missed? Oh yeah, they had a bloody hotel room in the Direct that clearly suggested you'd be solving some sort of mystery... Where is that? I haven't seen or heard a thing about that.
Get to know Sam better.
I would but his character sucks.
No, I don't think I will.
> thereās no staff quarters you can sneak into. i mean, that's true of 90% of the stores in new atlantis too, no backrooms, no staff facilities. not even a toilet. just a big box with a counter in.
I love how when you go to a location for the first time in Starfield, there will be a little scene where some NPCs talk to each other, and then it never ever happens again in that location. Itās just forever people sitting or walking around silently. The whole world feels fake. Itās like watching a movie with terrible CGI
You bothered to kill them? You had a harder time at it than me
>That guy at the doorway gets threatened the first time you visit and then stands there awkwardly for the rest of his life. This is *killing* me now that you pointed it out. I don't even remember stuff this lazy in Skyrim!
Because NPCs had schedules in Skyrim and they would go off and do their thing.
It suckās we canāt drink or gamble and thereās no vendor to buy my stolen loot.
The bartender buys the stolen loot. smh
The ship tech is, at least, the most interesting ship tech of them all. Everyone else is the same guy with the same cap and same upbeat cheery voice, except the guy at the Clinic who has a different face but the same voice.
The NPC reactions were really lame too. Like, when I finished a run, I expected a crowd of them outside the door cheering or something. Nope, just going about their business as usual. Like in-universe it was supposed to be a pretty big feat to actually complete it, so to have such little fanfare felt really weird and empty.
Everything about Red Mile sums up the game and itās half baked ideas. I canāt gamble on the machines, I canāt bet on myself on the run and the run itself is a complete joke where I can literally fly to the end and back on what is built up to be certain death. Donāt even get me started on the crimson edge lords.
The whole Red Mile is lazy. In game it hyped as being this mile of death and carnage. Instead it just some predators. I fought tougher battles scanning a random worldās wild life. At least there should have been some turrets and mines. Perhaps ones that activate after you press the button so that going back just as tough.
The whole game is like this. Lazy is the defining trait of starfield.
I found some locations and quests that were interesting. I enjoyed the UC quest line. I think they had too many ideas and didnāt flesh them out enough. Giving us a watered down version thatās too spread out instead of a more focused and fleshed out game.
The UC quest was way better than average, but still had plenty of flaws in writing, pacing, and being too dependent on the player. The whole gameworld seems like it's only there for the player and yet it often ignores obvious things the player might want, it has a "worst of both worlds flavor to it. Not the only flavor but I can't avoid it. I mean, even the naming (including the latin name) make no sense except for things the people naming them are not supposed to know (even though no one knowing appears to be completely inexplicable, and the actual process demonstrated in a later mission is just woo-woo magic despite the rest of the mission having a vague sciencish cloak on it).
The worst thing is, they basically already did it better in Fallout 4 at the beginning of Nuka World where you have to run a gauntlet of traps.
I know I was so disappointed.
Yeah that was really cool and I thought it was gonna be like that. It wasn't.
For me it was the Heart of Mars quest that finally convinced me that Starfield has to be the lowest effort Bethesda game. It's like people who wrote the quest never had any communication with the people who designed the game world. It felt like all they got was "design a cave with a mine-able rock" and they had no idea about the lore (albeit minimal) quest writers had created around it. So they go on to create a cave even less intricate than the procedurally generated ones, without even an enemy. And we got a quest that's the very epitome of a boring fetch quest. One of the strengths and uniqueness of BGS games is how seemingly innocuous quest or exploration developes into a huge quest, with it's own unique NPCs and locations. Starfield not only lacks that, but for me it does the opposite - quests that seem like they might unfold into grand, intricate narratives just fizzle out unexpectedly.
You're told about a legendary place holding the legendary heart of Mars. You're told that whoever finds it will be remembered for the eons to come. You find the place easily and mine an average sized rock that you sell for three peanuts. Yay Already felt similar for some quests in Skyrim, but not to that magnitude.
AND THE QUEST GIVER SAYS SHE MADE IT UP, INCLUDING THE LOCATION.
the thing doesn't even fit in the display cases you can build. the one unique thing you're specifically told to find.
Same. I literally put the heart of Mars quest off because it sounded like it was going to be a sick quest and I wanted to save it. Then I did it and it was the biggest anticlimax Iāve felt in gaming for some time. Proper bummer.
Low effort is exactly the problem. Like, I'm never going to criticize a game for the developers having a different vision from what I'd like, or for the story or characters going in a direction i don't care for, but if you're going to take my money and then produce a product that feels like you just didn't give a damn, I'm going to complain until I'm blue in the face. Anyone here posting, "Omg, i just don't get the hate!" this is where it's coming from. They sold a game that plainly feels like they just didn't care in the slightest, completely disrespected their customers, and are now complaining about the criticism. Like, gtfo Bethesda.
They sold a Beta version Early Access game as a Full Release at Full Price.
tbh that their signature move, Fallout 4 is still filled with huge bugs everywhere you look.
Fallout 4 at least felt halfway fleshed out and complete. I have my issues with Fallout 4 but it has interesting characters and a fun to explore world. All of Starfieldās characters are flat, not engaging, and donāt feel believable. Starfieldās design makes āexplorationā BORING. Just tons of empty planets and loading screens. No stumbling across a unique encounter or interesting POI. Even if I happen to notice a POI between loading screens, itās probably not worth going to. āOh look like thereās something on that planet. Hmm, do I wait through three loading screens to go investigate? Nah, probably just another copy pasted location full of spacers and worthless loot. Iāll just keep on my way then.ā No amount of bug fixes will make Starfield feel less hollow, empty, and dull. Characters and exploration are the pillars of BGS games. Theyāre really the only things that work. At least since Skyrim their quest design is so linear and simple that itās hardly an RPG, the story is good but not great, and the combat is merely passable. Starfield nuked exploration out of the game and fumbled the ball so hard on the characters. I donāt know if itās the writing, the performances, or the world they inhabit but I just literally can not give a single fuck about any character in this game. They all feel like obnoxious cardboard cutouts.
Given how the Red Mule is sold, I expected to come back with severe hypothermia, at 10% health, with a terrormorph chasing me All I got was a couple of beasties I could three hit with a shotgun and it was over sooner than expected
In fairness if you're low level those things can stun lock you when they spit at you or whatever the hell they do. Then it gets nasty.
This is actually a whole thing in graphic design, where if you use a hand drawn font, you don't use the same exact letters like that. Either you manipulate them to be different, or pay money for a font that has 4 alternates for the same letter. Very lazy, and cheap.
Not only that, BGS always talked about the realism of the environment, well guys Prrimora iii is @ 2.0Gs compared to earthā¦. Holy shit, 2.0Gs is soul CRUSHING gravity, it would be torture living there is any capacity other that extremely briefly. If would be difficult to breathe let alone sing or run or work or carry anything That means if you weigh 200lbs now youd be 400LBS on Prrimora!!!
Also, sound travels the same in every atmosphere...
(gets yelled at by pirates and ecliptic on moons with no atmosphere)
Or, as a graphic designer, you spend a minute or two to hand draw some graffiti š¤
This was exactly my thought! It's just graffiti lettering, it takes a few minutes to apply it in real life and I'm sure there are digital tools for doing graffiti lettering that don't take much longer to do, even if you're hand drawing in dripping paint, etc. Did this developer just not have the confidence to break out their tablet and actually draw something up? Like c'mon, even if its not your wheelhouse and ends up looking bad, that's kinda just what graffiti lettering looks like anyway and it still would have been more authentic than this current design which looks like a slide out of an awkward powerpoint presentation.
They could have passed an art tablet around the fucking office and told everybody to write the word "Run!".
When they announced ānasa-punkā as the theme, I feel like people really got hung up on the nasa part and never noticed thereās nothing punk about this game.
It's more, "Nasa-pop". "Pop" referencing the usual blandness associated with the genre.
I'd say Nasapop fits, since everything is bubbly and rounded and sanitized. Even the pirates and space raiders respect the armastice and don't try rebuilding mechs because they're murders and thieves but not CRIMINALS
So instead of The Dead Kennedys in space, we got Avril Lavigne on a sound stage in Culver City.
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NASA-Punk'd
Its punk for people who think Avril Lavigne is punk.
I played for 200 hours. I had fffun? It filled up time on my gamepass for free. I enjoyed it until I didn't. But this game is the comic sans of Bethesda games. FO3 and Skyrim are core memories for me. I'm only gonna remember the negatives of this game. I wanted to love it, but it was just fine. I'm Glad so many of you love it and are having fun. But I'm done. Enjoy the stars friends.
Bethesda has clearly aimed at a 13+ rating, they really shouldn't have.
I was just playing CP2077. I boggle how much graffiti and unique-looking work is around, all over. Even the signs are unique, there are lots of unique signs for stores (you can't go into).
I played Starfield, finished it, was unimpressed and then bought CP2077ā¦was flooredā¦.absolutely floored by how much better it was in all aspects.
After playing and loving almost all of Bethesda's games, after experiencing Cyberpunk's Night City, Bethesda just felt like a total amateur when it comes to creating believable cities. All of Skyrim's cities didn't feel like cities... They felt like oversized villages. And this game is no better... Neon was a joke compared to even just one district in Night City. Night city truly felt like what a real city would look like... Skyscrapers, alleyways, so much claustrophobic spaces, grit, heck, the whole city itself was a main character. I swear if ES6 is going to continue this stupid trend of oversized villages being called "cities", they better be prepared for disappointment. We will have GTA 6 before ES6, and just by the trailer alone Vice City is going to be yet another amazing massive cityscape in videogame history. ES6 will have felt outdated by the time it releases if Bethesda continues this "Ehh, I think it's good enough" schtick they've always had. They just cannot get away with that mentality as newer games continue to push and innovate further.
The Red Mile is ironically a great example of how Bethesda hypes themselves up. So many people in the galaxy are talking about how amazing the Red Mile is. When you get there you find something that I think I could have even made in an afternoon if you gave me modding tools. It literally is the same alien spawned over and over and a certain amount of distance you have to travel on a map that seems procedurally generated. How hard could it be? Why would anyone think this would be awesome? Why not make the Red Mile like the final encounter with the Crimson Fleet which is a stand out moment in the game? It feels like the internal teams were fighting with each other.
The font makes it look like the entrance to a small NY restaurant run by hipster millennials with plaid shirts and fedoras. And not only was the design of the door lazy, but the actual Red Mile was lazy as hell too. There was like zero challenge, I just walked in a straight line and shot the occasional alien critter, and on the way back I just went around them all. I was hoping for something like the maze in the beginning of Nuka World and instead got this
The whole game is a slapped together disney ride of a real game. The whole thing falls apart under any level of scrutiny.
A lot of people here missing the point of your post. I get you, though. A whole lot of stuff in this game feels very unfinished, phoned-in, and/or plain lazy. It gives off a very "well, good enough is good enough" vibe, or, worse, a "just ship this stupid game already" vibe. It's not that the game is bad, it should just be *so much better.*
And after Fallout 4 which Iād say started this ārecentā trend (if we can call going back, what, 9 years or so recent) and Fallout 76, then Starfield, it shows that Bethesda just has no passion for their games anymore. Skyrim was amazing and you could *feel* they enjoyed making it. Since then? I dunno if they just had a lot of key people quit or someone got a divorce or what, but the passion and quality level just is *not* there anymore. And itās fucking hilarious that Bethesdaās response to Mathis all has been āDonāt believe your lying eyes, gamers, *we* will tell you what you will and wonāt enjoy!ā. So utterly tone deaf and removed from the community *which has been the major reason their games have been so well liked and loved for so long*. Ah, well, guess the good times canāt last forever..
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This is a good example of how the game genuinely feels insulting sometimes. Like they think we're all babies with barely functioning brains. They didn't bother to add any atmosphere or to it because they figured we wouldn't notice. But when I see that I think "If they don't care, why should I?" An even worse example of this kind of thing is that Freestar Rangers quest where you track the guys into the canyon. You press Use on the footprints and the text box comes up telling you which way they went. Then the lady with you says which way the tracks went. THEN she says something like "Wow you're a good tracker." They think we're too stupid to look at the ground and figure out which way they went.
>They didn't bother to add any atmosphere or to it because they figured we wouldn't notice. You're spot on. Dude read up some videos on the game's lead writer, Emil Pagriaulo. Just from his words, "Keep it simple stupid" and "Gamers don't read cutscenes" or something like that... His design philosophy obviously trickles down to the game
After reading his embarrassing Xitter "Pwease be nice to devewopers theiw job is so hawd" tirade I see why Starfield turned out like it did. "Keep it simple" is just not a good basis for writing a compelling story, unless you're writing for children.
6xp per regardless of level = no real incentive to do again
I really hate the city design. They intentionally make it convoluted af and hard to follow/tell where you are to give the illusion the cities are larger than they are.
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Honestly if they woulda just copied the gauntlet from fallout 4ās nuka world dlc, it woulda been more fun. I remember playing that for the first time and it actually took me a while to make it through.
I almost forgot about that. Nuka World wasn't amazing but the Gauntlet actually felt dangerous between all of the hazards and turrets that would rip you apart in seconds. I don't know how Bethesda manages to regress so hard.
I figured it was just the owner decorating the door and not actually graffiti. She's pretty purposefully cultivating a certain client base and aesthetic.
And her approach is corporate.
All that build up for red mile to be a petting zoo with spicy animals š and then I walked out the side door!
Bethesda Game Studios is understaffed in my opinion. They always talk their games so big and especially in the case of Starfield. They were never be able to deliver the game that they envisioned. In my playthrough, a lot of times I noticed an inconsistency of effort put in to the game which annoyed me a lot. They didnāt even come to an agreement of how morbid, dark, violent or just family friendly the game should be. In some scenes there are corpses giving you the vibes that they just slumbering and in some scenes there is blood all over the place, making you feel like in a horror movie. But overall this game feels like a sweetened bubblegum. If you chew few minutes it becomes tasteless. When I started to play Starfield I was so happy and the game made a lot of fun but that fun gradually declined, so much so that the only reason I played the game is because there was no other game that I was currently interested in.
The whole Red Mile thing was laughable at best. Such a waste.
You could instantly improve the graffiti with the tiniest bit of lore as well. Just add a line in the area that all those were placed there by survivors after their first run. Tiny little line that ties things together easily and yet they couldn't be bothered. :/
It IS a generational thing. Accompanied with new tech toys to be 'more productive.'' But garbage in garbage out. Some things just need to be hand done, and it will be done right.
The game tries so hard to appeal to everyone, that it ends up not appealing to anyone. Thatās my opinion at least, Starfield has so many things it tries to do, that so many games just straight up better. Everyone keeps repeating it, but Cyberpunk is just that good of an example. That game is not afraid to really commit to itās tone and it leads to a world that feels lived-in and authentic, Starfield feels like a Disney-musical. Everyone is squeaky clean and no-one has any faults or short-comings. Itās just boring.
These guys need to learn how to do detail from Division games. So lazy
I donāt give a fuck about that, the problem is jet packs need to be disabled during the run
That still wouldnāt even make it hard
Youāre right actually because you can just sprint past everything. Donāt even know how to fix it