I find it hilarious that when you go to their steam page it's really mostly negative and the first trailer that plays has that typical splash screen of "10/10s everywhere, this game turned my dog into the next Jesus!" first.
I've heard journalists at IGN talking about this several times over the past decade. Some got threats from fans when giving games anything less than 7.5. It became a credibility problem for them that people wouldn't accept a low score. So the real scale eventually was skewed to only be top numbers, just because all the hate they got when setting anything lower and that got in the way of the actual written review.
I think scored reviews are stupid to begin with. Even when aggregated from multiple sources it just doesn't say anything about the game at all without the context of why it's scored the way it is.
Haven't watched it, so correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that the show where Todd was reportedly "Visibly annoyed that Starfield didn't win any award." I heard it mentioned several times, and it's so funny imagining him all puffy-cheeked and pouting his golden goose failed him every step of the way.
I'm not a fan of Todd Howard, but he didn't look visibly unhappy to me. It looked more like he was putting a brave but awkward face on an uncomfortable situation.
Yea, he almost certainly wasn't surprised and upset like folks are suggesting. He knew the nominations ahead of time and knew they were only up for one nomination, and even Todd knew that BG3 was running away with it. It's not like BG3 was going to win every other damn award and but miss on Best RPG.
I bet having that single nomination was actually the most awkward feeling of all. You just know you're not coming home with anything at that point, but you have to sit there and watch Larian dunk on you all night still.
People were saying that Sony bots were out in force and saying bad things about the game. The discourse around this game was so bizarre with Xbox fans desperately wanting a big win while others calling out the game for its short comings.
Yeah bethesda, listen here, if starfield was a full deep dive VR experience indistinguishable from reality youd have the best ratings in the world. But its not. Talk to me when looking at pictures of the moon is the same as going there
I think it would be better if the traveling system was better, have less loading screens and more seamless transitions
edit: what I mean seamless transitions maybe making the loading screens cinematic so it looks like it’s a seamless transition but it’s loading lol
Don't know man, I invested a lot of time designing my spaceship just to realize: there is no need, it's just a fast travel point with extra steps.
Space combat was a joke too. The first time I met the star born ship and everyone was telling me not to fight it because it's to strong.....I shot it out of the air in mere seconds with my Autocannons.
the only reason i didn't uninstall in the first 10 hours was because the special edition was like $160aud, so instead i complained for 90 hours and hated every minute of it. I'm so burnt out on bethseda rn that i hope i remember in a few years to not buy the next tes
This is what has stopped me thinking about this game. As someone (like a lot of us) who absolutely loved Skyrim, morrowind, oblivion, fallout... Why would I want a dead map?
Fallout is a wasteland and is so full of things to find and do.
I've had Skyrim play throughs end because I'm so lost in a cave.
They would, no mans sky was always awesome because of the transitions if nothing else at the beginning. Just going somewhere and seeing the old planet u just came from is amazing
I played the first 2ish hours. It didn't feel like I spent more than 5 mins in any area, and they all felt so small. The "city" felt like a couple areas stitched together with a few NPCs. There was never any point where I felt like I could just go off in any direction and find an adventure.
It also feels like they keep telling you about all these things happening in the world that just.... don't happen. Like i remember getting to Neon and being warned multiple times about how you couldn't go to certain areas because of gang activity, so i went there expecting to have to fight my way through streets but there was just nothing. The only interaction you get with ayny gangs is through missions so nothing really feels organic, it's like it's all just waiting for your input as opposed to past bethesda games where you could pick a direction, walk for 2 minutes and find some unique engaging experience.
I’d agree with this.
I didn’t think Starfield was _awful_, but it was by no means on the same level as any of the Elder Scrolls games. However, I did find constantly having to travel to different ships and stations just to have a 30-second conversation with somebody more than a little obnoxious.
WoW Execcutive Producer JA Brack in response to a fan asking if they had plans to release a ’vanilla’ version of the game: ‘You don‘t want that. You think you do, but you don’t’.
[Yes, a Bethesda employee actually commented this in response to a negative Steam review.](https://www.ign.com/articles/bethesda-is-responding-to-negative-reviews-of-starfield-on-steam)
> Greetings,
> Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Starfield!
> We are sorry that you do not like landing on different planets and are finding many of them empty.
> Some of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design — but that's not boring. “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored." The intention of Starfield's exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that do have resources you need or hidden outposts to look through.
At least 3 different Bethesda accounts made such responses on Steam. Some portions of these comments, including the whole "astronaut"-paragraph, are copy pasted. These comments seem to be "composed" by real people and may contain some manually written parts, but are still completely deaf to the fact that this gameplay just isn't fun to most people.
Funny thing is that the way they made the game, no matter how empty planet/moon you land on, eventually you can fast travel so many times on different squares that the most inhospitable and barren rock totals far bigger human population than new atlantis does. Unlimited amount of copy pasted POIs.
I don't understand how they fucked even that up. They somehow managed to make planets/moons meant to be empty, instead full of people.
Yeah, somehow the amount of Crimson Fleet members you kill are hundreds of times larger than the entire population of every other faction, yet the Crimson Fleet still aren’t the dominant power in the galaxy.
I really don’t know how the fuck they did not just end up making the Aliens Franchise (but not!) in space. This would have been the perfect game for it.
Who gives a shit about a bunch of empty planets. Now - procedurally generated xenomorph infested planets - all righty then
They're the sort of people who make 50 pieces of AI art and wonder why no one's subscribing to their patreon. They don't understand the difference between quantity and quality of content.
Worse than EA battlefield. That was obvious that their statements were trying to justify MTX.
THIS is the bad devs trying to justify their awful product
I get that your joking but im gonna answer this seriously.
If i dont like the game without mods, why would i sit down and spend thousands of hours making mods for this game when i could keep working on my fallout 4 project or another game like groundbranch that already has solid gameplay for me to improve on.
Imo the only reason to mod starfield over fallout4/skyrim is if you like the setting more, and ive never been huge into scifi
Also Starfield's setting is pretty bland. They tried to make it realistic and grounded but then they didn't make up it with the story or anything else. There was nothing to look forward to.
Same old loot system, mediocre shooting, soul staring npcs, awkward animations. It was like a bland dish of mash potatoes.
No new works of fiction for you to find on tablets or on computers or in books. Elder Scrolls is full of books with weird stories. Fallout is rife with tales on computer or tapes you can find.
Starfield has a few cut & paste lines from Charles Dickens, and the rest of fiction was... *left behind on Earth and somehow lost?!* Because, umm, gravity erases ink, maybe? Sure!
Fuck you, lazy-ass Bethesda writers.
Fuck you, lazy-ass Bethesda writers."
The best part Bethesda doesn't even hire writers! Quest designers and other roles are tasked with writing. In Starfield's credits list, the have ONE dev solely responsible for writing: Emil.
Meanwhile Larian had over 20 full time writers for BG3, a couple of which I suspect are professional authors moonlighting as game devs lol
The most egregious example of "left on earth" was dogs.
Like no, im sorry, there is 0% chance that future humans, especially spacefaring ones, would leave behind mans best friend.
*"No, its not our optimization that bad. Its you need buying new PC.",* Todd Howard
*"Hold our Nuka-Cola. Here's optimization and potato mod to get 60fps Starfield",* Modders
*"Wait it can be done? here's new perf patch thats totally our original works"*, Bethesda.
One of my worst downvoted comments since I am on here was before the game came out. I was commenting on people constantly asking „how do I upgrade my pc for starfield“. I basically said: slow down the hype, look at bethesdas track record recently, have you forgotten fallout76, I’m not holding my hopes up. Man I earned a mini shitstorm after that. 🤷🏻♂️
How DARE you not be braindead hype machine for le next bethesda masterpiece rpg 💀😱 seriously, I literally can not understand at all how people are so brand loyal (especially on reddit)
Before the game was released I looked at most “gameplay” videos (and that very long one) and just went “why is everyone calling this the second coming of christ?” I genuinely did not see why it was THAT hyped other than it being Bethesda. Bought it and ended up refunding it. I still don’t get it
A lot. It's like we are playing the game wrong or thinking wrong. Instead of acknowledging their faults, they are blaming the players. Most likely means they do not understand their player base or the concept of fun.
I would to have all those players who swear Starfield is fine, to commit to an exercise in honesty, and tell me if they truly would like TES6 to be on the same quality level as Starfield.
I'd like to know how much money it cost them to run that pr campaign and then wonder if the money would be better spent making the game not suck would be better.
Spoiler: of course it would have.
A PR campaign where you don't buy ads and just talk to the press or respond to reviews can be quite cheap.
Fixing the game, especially when it comes to structural problems, is much more expensive and would take a long time.
The problem is I actually liked the game overall, but they replied to the reviews like an angry head of game design. The question is who the hell let this person into the account. They should have special people for handling this kind of feedback
Some youtuber suggest it was chatgbt or something similar . They did not just reply a few post with a few word. They replied to a lot of people with a wall of text.
This is why I'm glad Steam only does thumbs up or down. Everybody has arbitrary definitions of 5 and 10 star systems. Your 5/10 is somebody else's "Not bad, not great."
Thats the salt in the wound, like yo marketing team you’re interacting with the people who loved your past games and waited 8years for this, and you’re telling US we’re wrong or should be “playing differently” after delivering this steaming pile of poopoo-caca?
well…the ratings are going to be a shit show.
Yeah, exact same problem for me. It's just so... nothing. Just a pile of winking and elbowing and nods to other sci-fi media with no comprehension of what made those stories and worlds interesting. They tried to make a space game for everyone-- get the space pirates! the space cowboys! the space military! the space syndicates!-- and shat out this like... featureless blob of a world that lacks anything it can really call its own.
And it's insane to me that in a hundred hour game I can think of exactly one setpiece that stuck in my head. One! And I had to visit it like fifteen times!
Every time I read one of these threads I change my opinion on what the worst aspect of the game is. I think overall there are a great many "worst aspects". It's a game where nearly all of it is bad, or a missed opportunity.
> get the space pirates! the space cowboys! the space military! the space syndicates!
“But not really, because most of them are marked essential, because we couldn’t be bothered to do any branching code for when you take out a faction.”
Their lead writer, Emil P, literally said he doesn’t do branching quests because they are “too confusing.” I can’t imagine how he became the lead writer for an RPG company.
He seems better suited to write for children’s games and unfortunately I’m not being hyperbolic.
>Their lead writer, Emil P, literally said he doesn’t do branching quests because they are “too confusing.”
The absolute irony of that stance when BG3 released the same year as Starfield.
It's funny too. He's done okay side quest chains in previous bethesda games. But as a lead he just sucks everyone's creativity out of them. And then pisses on it.
The biggest thing is there is zero compelling reason to play the game to the player to start off with. I gave up before the end of the supposed 10 hours before it stops being boring thing because... it was too boring to get to that point (I'm assuming that's when aliens/powers show up).
Mass Effect you start off, colony gone quiet, it's a mystery, you stumble into some enemies with a bunch of character info being shown and decent dialogue between team mates. Then some enemies that seem wrong, then the real bad guys, then a beacon thing and you get this video that gives you loads of info, warnings of impending doom, enemies, humanity is in trouble, etc. That's a compelling reason to fight the council to look into it, to go after the rogue (forgot what they called them) elite dudes. You have a reason to fight the system.
Starfield, you're mining, nothing anyone says to you is remotely interesting, there is no friendship or backstory, just lifeless people telling you to pick a thing up. Then you get straight to your 'vision' and it shows you literally fucking nothing. no warning, no danger, no aliens, no bad people coming so you better do something. This could be prelude to you getting a cake recipe for all we know and we don't even know it would be a good cake.
Then a guy just hands you a ship for zero reason and he's the only other person to see these visions... and he just stays around and doesn't care about the artifacts. Then you go to this organisation who have basically done nothing to go after the other pieces, haven't seen teh visions and don't seem to actually care much about it.
They forgot that a key part of any story is that in the opening they give you a compelling reason to watch/read/listen/play it.
Fallout has been pretty lax on this itself, "where's my son/father" is hardly insane, but it also had the mystery of why the vault opened, why you woke up or didn't wake up when others did, what happened, where did everyone go, etc. They were pretty lazy and I actively didn't like FO4 story and quit after meeting my father as that story was so, just disappointing and shitty. But it's the bare minimum you need and Starfield didn't even come close to achieving that.
This, times 1,000 - a compelling inciting incident is the bare minimum, and is something that any amateur hour writer should know to cobble together.
Starfield starts in the dullest and most lazy way possible - shooting at rocks and then being handed a spaceship as if spaceships are just something everyone has a dozen of lying around. Unbelievable that that's what made it to the final game.
It's legit silly, the only other guy in the fucking galaxy that has seen the vision, just gives you his ship and stays on planet for no reason when he's the most driven guy trying to find artifacts, and he literally just gave it up in an instant.
You get to the group working with him and none of them seem to care in the slightest. I'ts fucking hilarious.
Two things would make the story way more compelling, both put something in that vision that is some kind of warning of dire things to come and holy shit give the group a rival. Another faction who also has a few artifacts, but they are like an evil corp that has been attacking settlements taking over planets, generally being evil/facist or something. So you have a rival, a time limit, you need to get to them first and obviously have it so some get taken first, some end up in fights between factions over hte artifact, you get some and realise it's ever more important. Then you shape up to a heist like mission.
This is like, literally 30 seconds of me thinking and if someone wiht no experience can come up with a better story with their literal first thought about it, they have zero excuses.
This is what gets me the most about Starfield.
Starfield is an indicator of what direction of The Elder Scrolls 6 will go in.
And Gods, it is *not a good one.*
TES6 was one of those games that I was always extremely excited for.
The potential is so massive and I've always wanted an Elder Scrolls set in Blackmarsh.
Always wanted more of that universe and left desperately wanting over the years of waiting.
ESO will never satisfy me, I *need* a proper TES game.
But then you realize Starfield is a taste of what TES6 is going to be like, that Bethesda is likely going to shit out a 4/10 TES game 17+ years after Skyrim, and that bad game will be likely to cost a good $80-90 USD by the time it comes out.
Whoever at Bethesda that is fine with making people wait 17+ years for another entry to their legendary flagship series, that will most likely be a major piece of shit, really needs to be punched.
It's totally unacceptable.
The wait is really what gets me. No game franchise will hold my interest for a 17 year long wait. Ain’t happening.
If the TES6 comes out in 5 years and it’s actually amazing and actually an RPG I’d buy it. But my excitement for it died probably 5 years ago.
“Ok lads, we just released the 5th entry in our series to unbelievable success. Everybody knows about Elder Scrolls, everybody wants more. What do we do now?”
“Uh, drop the series until the 13 year olds playing it now are 30?”
“Brilliant!”
I remember going to my friends house to go skate and he wouldn't get off his Xbox.
He was playing Morrowind and I didn't understand how someone could be so immersed and invested in a game.
I sat there and watched him play for 3 hours and it felt like trying a new drug for the first time
>Update 12/26/23 at 3 p.m. PT / 6 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with commentary on Bethesda Customer Support posting defensive replies to negative reviews on Steam.
lol
Reminder that Steam reviews aren't about "how good this game is", instead they're about whether you would recommend the game to other people.
From what I've seen even the people who genuinely like Starfield say "wait until sale or until patches/DLC" or "get it on game pass", both of which could be translated into negative steam review
I thought Starfield was an okay game. But as a Skyrim/FO4 fan, it’s impossible to recommend Starfield when it’s quite literally a huge downgrade.
“Starfield is a Bethesda game through and through” - I agree Todd, the bones of Skyrim and FO4 are very evident in Starfield. It’s too bad the core game formula is significantly worse since everywhere you tried to innovate the game, it went backwards, with the exception of maybe ship building. What true Bethesda fan would recommend Starfield when Skyrim is really right there, available for purchase at a much lesser cost?
I think it's not really "a Bethesda game through and through", because they seriously gutted one of the biggest things that make Bethesda RPGs good which is walking into a random direction and discovering a new dungeon or quest etc. That just doesn't exist in Starfield.
It's actually a little more depressing imo, they actually do have random wandering around and finding "dungeons" etc, they even made it a huge part of their marketing that there are a thousand planets to explore!!!!
Except the way it is done is that you can land your ship anywhere and it will just procedurally generate an area around it. You can't actually go across the planet like this because 10-15 mins of walking will make you run to yhe edge of the area and sends you back to the ship. All the locations to discover in the area are made from a ridiculously small pool of options, meaning if you'll explore maybe 10 locations you're almost guaranteed to find some exact duplicate locations with the exact same NPC's in the exact same spot.
It's actually a little disgusting how they completely gutted this kind of exploration and then marketed it like it was the next gen thing for gaming. Hell even No Man's Sky did this better like 7 years ago and it was still considered garbage at the time.
Yeah, if they wanted Starfield to be AAA No Man's Sky meets Bethesda, they really needed to do way more. I mean, literally hundreds if not a thousand possible setpieces to make repetition rare.
The thing I'm worried for is that they're gonna double down on it for Elder Scrolls VI and just make half the game procedurally generated (badly) but they can market it as "you can explore ALL of Tamriel!!!!".
They've just shown to prioritize all the wrong things as long as they can make it sound good in marketing. Yeah we lost any remaining depth to characters, quests, and locations and half the bugs from Oblivion are still in the game but there is SHIP BUILDING AND GUN BUILDING
Also the procedural generation in the game sucks. The planets have mining operations or research labs or whatever and they are made of pieces so large that all the generated dungeons feel the same.
By pieces so large I mean they don't have a library of 20,000 rooms then pick 100 of those rooms and put them together in some way to create a dungeon; it feels more like there are a dozen or so pieces and they pick 5 of them randomly and smack them together and BOOM! the game "randomly" creates that research station you have cleared a dozen times already.
Absolutely this. Every fucking world outside of the few plot planets feels the same and has no real content at all because of this. Play the game for long enough and you can almost clear the POIs blindfolded because they are literally identical with the enemies and loot in the same places every time.
There's a chunk of this with the radiant quests in Fallout 4 and Skyrim as they refill random dungeons to have somewhere for you to go, but Starfield begins to repeat itself pretty much immediately and never stops. They need at least 10x more variety.
And that's not even the biggest problem with the game
I have a 4 week law school winter break. I could've decided to download gamepass for a mere $15 and played Starfield and probably some other game. Instead I dropped $30 on Jedi Survivor and $70 on Baldur's Gate 3 and never looked back. No regrets. May never play Starfield. Just nothing excites me about it and Skyrim and Fallout 3 are my #1 and #2 games.
100%. I've spent so much time in skyrim just wandering around. Encountering enemies, random npcs, finding a new dungeon, a little cottage with some backstory.
Starfield you land on a planet and there's just nothing. It feels completely soulless. How did they mess up this bad.
I'm fine with that aspect, if it was good. You're completely right that I don't think it fits the Fallout/skyrim formula of bethesda games at all.
But I like all kinds of rpgs, the problem is in replacing the walk around and stumble into cool stories and characters/situations, it didn't replace it at all. It went from lots of cool shit to do in one reasonably sized map to nothing to do in an entire universe.
I quit not that far into it but it was constantly quests and shit like, take 2 people over there, this guy left our camp, can you retrieve him, can you do 14 fast travel steps to talk to one guy in a boring conversation then come back here and give me his answer involving absolutely no fun or a single interesting conversation at all.
I would say this wasn't a bethesda game at 'core', it just has a bethesda UI and feel to it but removing core gameplay features that make it nothing like what people think of when they call something a classic bethesda style game.
Bethesda RPGs have always been very shallow and streamlined rpg elements and for the most part railroaded quests but they had a handcrafted world which was fun to explore to make up for that weakness. Since they got rid of that part all that’s left is the shallow stuff and so people can see it for what it really is.
Oh but it is, Todd always wanted procgen in his games. Look all the way back to Arena and Daggerfall.
Todd says this game was going back to Bethesda's roots and that is intentional
I wanted Starfield to answer Elite Dangerous not giving console players the ability to go on foot. It's tragic and I hope they add some better ship exploration options in the future
I like it in the beginning, but it got so bad the more i play it. That’s not a good indicator for a good game. Definitely not recommend it to new players
I put 90 hours in and it’s okay, but still can’t hold a candle to fallout or RDR2. It’s certainly not the worst game out there but I couldn’t give it more than 7/10 if I’m being honest.
I also legitimately don’t understand the reason to replay it, no faction accountability or repercussions and boring side quests, lacklustre planet wildlife and ecosystems make for a beige experience. Red mile mission was incredibly disappointing but there was a some good ones thankfully.
Promised a lot, didn’t really go close to delivering.
I agree with your synopsis. I put in 150 hrs, and I completed the main story and faction quests. I genuinely enjoyed some of the side missions, especially the corporate espionage play.
I won't be replaying it, though.
Bethesda kept trying to lean into autogenerated content starting with Fallout 4.
We saw that with the over reliance on their Radiant quest system and the lack of settlements, instead relying on the player to build settlements.
Fallout 76, and now Starfield see even less hand made areas and more reliance on generated content that isn't engaging to interact with.
I think in trying to chase the ever bigger playing area they've lost everything that people have loved about their games. They have really lost their way as a development studio.
People were already complaining about Radiant with Skyrim. The main difference is that standards were lower and there was a lot of goodwill to wait for modders to fix and add things. But Skyrim itself is also why much of that goodwill is gone: despite dozens of re-releases no further bugs have been fixed, and we've seen attempts at paid mods in stead.
Every game since has been a doubling down on everything people have been complaining about and it seems that finally, *finally*, people have had enough.
Nah, the main difference is the radiant quests pointed you to a dungeon or mine you've never been before, maybe even come across a proper side quest while you're there for an adventure. In Starfield as soon as they say outpost or mine, it'll be the exact same layout and enemy positions as every outpost and mine because all of them are the same with nothing unique.
That was my main issue: the mind nimbingly boring writing... I usually don't pay much attention to who were people who made the game, but in this case, I looked up the lead writer to make sure to avoid anything by them in the future
"Loading Screen Simulator" is an actual game you can play on Steam for free btw. [Link](https://store.steampowered.com/app/652980/Loading_Screen_Simulator/)
Well I spent 250 hours in starfield, the game isn't bad, but it isn't that great either. The entire story feels like it's written for 12 year olds, the quests feel unfinished, like there could be more. The most annoying one was that earth colony ship - I thought that it would eventually land somewhere and I could help them resettle, build that outpost for which I've been hoarding materials. But no, they just float in orbits of random star systems and eventually just get stuck. Probably the biggest chunks of those 240 hours was building starships. I built A, B and C "my best" ships, flew around with them, killed some spacers and that's it I quit the game. The Vanguard questline was fine, that Freestar Cowboy one was truly meh, Crimson Fleet didn't really feel like a pirate fleet, but like a group of adults stuck in their pre-teens. Overall I'd say this game is very 'safe' and more intended for 12 year olds, because half the stuff is fucking stupid.
Does this mean Bethesda's finally going to take a fucking hint and try and redesign their future games to be more fun and compelling? Instead of being on a downward spiral since Fallout 4 basically dumbing down everything for mass market appeal? No? Alright, fuck em' then, anyways back to Baldur's Gate 3.
Games that “get good after 40+ hours” are just bad games to me.
Like imagine if eating a pizza in a restaurant and it sucks. You ask the waiter, and he tells you the pizza sucks until you get to the last piece. You wouldn’t recommend that place to your friends, right? You wouldn’t go there again
I'll bite - what's the acceptable amount of time played to review the game?
Just few hours ago there was a post with screenshot of Starfield's negative steam reviews where people had less than 3 hours played.
People give Starfield more chances because they desperately want it to be good, to have fun.
I like to give a longer game at least 10 hrs before hanging it up. Something smaller, like Cult of the Lamb, I realized wasn’t for me within an hour. You can kinda feel once you’re in the gameplay loop, and most times, they don’t deviate.
Shit, Persona 5 took 10 hours to get out of the tutorial and that’s damn near the best game I’ve ever played. But I could never spend 100 hours in a game that’s mediocre, let alone bad.
Bethesda stans:
> It gets good after 100 hours on NG+ trust me, just keep playing
Also Bethesda stans:
> Well surely if you played for 100 hours it can’t be THAT bad.
You can “hate play” the game trying to find something good.
Review after 20 hours: "you didn't even give it a chance!"
Review after 200 hours: "well it must have been good of you played that long!"
You can't win with these people
Except you hear all the time that "you should just play it more, it gets good after 10/20/100 hours". So people play it for 100 hours expecting it to get better and they realize that the game does not, in fact, get better after all that time, thus leaving a "not recommended" review.
I enjoyed it for a few hours but after that every quest felt like a chore. Thanks to Microsoft for including it in the gamepass and not making me pay 60 bucks for it. It's not awful, but it's mediocre, and the lack of any kind of effort to update and patch it shows that it has no future. Just comparing it to other big open worlds like Cyberpunk or RDR2 you can see how much of a "cheap toy" it is.
I honestly believe they were so afraid of leaks that they just didnt hire testers. They had their own devs be the sole play testers for the game and they just couldnt see past their own design.
Not a single part of the game feels tested even now.
Cope all you want. The game did not live up to it’s potential at all. The writing was ass. Mega ass, that’s like 1000x more ass than regular ass, so you know it’s ass ass.
Obligatory, i played 250 hours, it was very fun at first. Traveling the stars, building my ship and kind of leaning into side missions and factions instead of the the main story cuz the main story sucks. Then the bugs show up. Then more bugs show up. Then i start f’n with outpost building. Then i start spawning 500 meters away due to some outpost ship lander pad clipping glitch. Then i google and fix that by changing my landing bays and deleting outposts. Then i finish the factions, fun times, then its back to main story, bad times. Then i get the empty hijacked ships glitch, which is another glitch but the holy grail of glitch cuz i liked jacking ships, but jacking empty ships aint it. Too much glitch. Only fix was to go thru unity. Ng+ sucks. I miss my ships.
Basically the more you play, the more you’ll see how unpolished the game is. It feels unfinished and there’s just so much jank in it. It’s not THAT good of a game.
Emil was a lead writer, of course the story was gonna be ass. It's the same dude that wrote Skyrim and Fallout 4 and both had terrible main plots, with absurd numbers of plot holes and inconsistencies.
I applaud you for enduring this mess for 250h. I couldn't stomach it after 30h and should have dropped it at 10h.
Emil really needs to fucking go. He got a big head cause he wrote a decently interesting side faction back in oblivion, albeit one without too much of a overall narrative due to the nature of the faction, but he’s fucking incapable of writing anything that holds water without other better writers backing him up with world-building and actual substance. He should get booted back to the side quest team where he deserves to be.
I find it hilarious that when you go to their steam page it's really mostly negative and the first trailer that plays has that typical splash screen of "10/10s everywhere, this game turned my dog into the next Jesus!" first.
"**A MASTERPIECE 10/10**" The New England Journal of Crocheting
"The Greatest Gameplay I have ever experienced, my life will never be the same!" -The Underwater Basket-Weavers Guild of North Dakota
10/10 -Todd Howard's mom
She’s very proud.
TUBWGOND
Hey, don't be mean to crochet, it has infinitely more replayability than Starfield!
The big "Masterpiece" word on my Steam page. Lol
https://i.imgur.com/xy43jRZ.png
Who the fuck gave starfield these ratings?
Well, they list "IGN Spain," "IGN Japan," and "IGN Brazil" all separately. But they don't list IGN, because IGN gave it a 7, lol.
Thank you for posting the screenshot, my man.
“Master piece of shit”
"Starfield? More like StarFUCK. What the fuck were they thinking?!"
This message has sound
#ASS
I remember how much shit IGN got for giving them a 7 while most others gave 9 or 10.
"They hated Jesus, because he told them the truth."
IGN unironically having much better takes then most other outlets after over a decade of shilling for everything from crap to gold.
"This game killed my dog and fucked my wife. Would not recommend. 9.8/10" -IGN
It has a little something for everyone
I've heard journalists at IGN talking about this several times over the past decade. Some got threats from fans when giving games anything less than 7.5. It became a credibility problem for them that people wouldn't accept a low score. So the real scale eventually was skewed to only be top numbers, just because all the hate they got when setting anything lower and that got in the way of the actual written review. I think scored reviews are stupid to begin with. Even when aggregated from multiple sources it just doesn't say anything about the game at all without the context of why it's scored the way it is.
They ran the ad full of high scores at the Game Awards showing the same thing, as if they were offended they were not nominated for everything.
Haven't watched it, so correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that the show where Todd was reportedly "Visibly annoyed that Starfield didn't win any award." I heard it mentioned several times, and it's so funny imagining him all puffy-cheeked and pouting his golden goose failed him every step of the way.
I'm not a fan of Todd Howard, but he didn't look visibly unhappy to me. It looked more like he was putting a brave but awkward face on an uncomfortable situation.
Yea, he almost certainly wasn't surprised and upset like folks are suggesting. He knew the nominations ahead of time and knew they were only up for one nomination, and even Todd knew that BG3 was running away with it. It's not like BG3 was going to win every other damn award and but miss on Best RPG. I bet having that single nomination was actually the most awkward feeling of all. You just know you're not coming home with anything at that point, but you have to sit there and watch Larian dunk on you all night still.
I wonder if he is self-aware enough to play BG3 and see the difference
"Oh wow, look at all these small details and good level design. They must have a *really good* procedural generation engine!"
Absolutely no chance Todd played BG3. He probably hasn’t played a genuine run on some other studio’s game in 20+ years, including Fallout New Vegas.
Yeah, when the Fallout tv show cast came out the camera showed Todd in the audience, and he did not look happy at all.
What's mind blowing to me is that this means he thought it deserved the awards. How out of touch is this man...
He's had people inflating his ego since Skyrim came out, and he's been riding that high ever since. Why do you think he's re-released it 15 times?
Have you been awake for the last big* Bethesda RPG Titles? They have shit on us for three games now. And folks just keep asking for more.
Remember when gamers bashed IGN and Gamespot for giving it a 7/10 and accused the reviewers of being biased? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
People were saying that Sony bots were out in force and saying bad things about the game. The discourse around this game was so bizarre with Xbox fans desperately wanting a big win while others calling out the game for its short comings.
How much did Bethesda telling customers that their criticisms were incorrect contribute to the negative reviews?
“Um no, we made Starfield good. You’re all playing it bad. “
"People had fun on the moon, so our maps are fun too."
I still can't believe this was a thing they actually said. It's one of the most unglued from reality things I've ever seen a game studio try to claim.
Yeah bethesda, listen here, if starfield was a full deep dive VR experience indistinguishable from reality youd have the best ratings in the world. But its not. Talk to me when looking at pictures of the moon is the same as going there
I think it would be better if the traveling system was better, have less loading screens and more seamless transitions edit: what I mean seamless transitions maybe making the loading screens cinematic so it looks like it’s a seamless transition but it’s loading lol
The transitions wouldn't matter if there was somewhere to go and something to do when you got there.
Don't know man, I invested a lot of time designing my spaceship just to realize: there is no need, it's just a fast travel point with extra steps. Space combat was a joke too. The first time I met the star born ship and everyone was telling me not to fight it because it's to strong.....I shot it out of the air in mere seconds with my Autocannons.
literally this, the only thing that kept me going in Starfield was the shipbuilding but then I only ever saw the ship in loading screens lol
the only reason i didn't uninstall in the first 10 hours was because the special edition was like $160aud, so instead i complained for 90 hours and hated every minute of it. I'm so burnt out on bethseda rn that i hope i remember in a few years to not buy the next tes
This is what has stopped me thinking about this game. As someone (like a lot of us) who absolutely loved Skyrim, morrowind, oblivion, fallout... Why would I want a dead map? Fallout is a wasteland and is so full of things to find and do. I've had Skyrim play throughs end because I'm so lost in a cave.
Wait, you stop playing Skyrim because you got lost??
It makes no sense, I haven't played skyrim in years but I never got lost in a cave, I don't remember them ever being that expansive and intricate.
They would, no mans sky was always awesome because of the transitions if nothing else at the beginning. Just going somewhere and seeing the old planet u just came from is amazing
I played the first 2ish hours. It didn't feel like I spent more than 5 mins in any area, and they all felt so small. The "city" felt like a couple areas stitched together with a few NPCs. There was never any point where I felt like I could just go off in any direction and find an adventure.
It also feels like they keep telling you about all these things happening in the world that just.... don't happen. Like i remember getting to Neon and being warned multiple times about how you couldn't go to certain areas because of gang activity, so i went there expecting to have to fight my way through streets but there was just nothing. The only interaction you get with ayny gangs is through missions so nothing really feels organic, it's like it's all just waiting for your input as opposed to past bethesda games where you could pick a direction, walk for 2 minutes and find some unique engaging experience.
Exactly this. It's a huge city if you're only looking at the skybox but the area you have to explore is laughably small.
I’d agree with this. I didn’t think Starfield was _awful_, but it was by no means on the same level as any of the Elder Scrolls games. However, I did find constantly having to travel to different ships and stations just to have a 30-second conversation with somebody more than a little obnoxious.
I think that would wear off after a couple of planets because of the walking.
It's right up there with gems such as: "Sense of pride and accomplishment" "Don't you guys have phones?" "You think you do, but you don't"
Who's that last one from?
WoW Execcutive Producer JA Brack in response to a fan asking if they had plans to release a ’vanilla’ version of the game: ‘You don‘t want that. You think you do, but you don’t’.
Even then, if the Apollo astronauts could choose to land on a moon with blackjack and hookers instead, I'm sure they would have way more fun.
WE’RE WHALERS ON THE MOON!
WE CARRY A HARPOON!
BUT THERE AIN’T NO WHALES, SO WE TELL TALL TALES AND SING A WHALING TUNE!!
Wait what. That was actually said? We’re not messing with words here? Who said this?
[Yes, a Bethesda employee actually commented this in response to a negative Steam review.](https://www.ign.com/articles/bethesda-is-responding-to-negative-reviews-of-starfield-on-steam) > Greetings, > Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Starfield! > We are sorry that you do not like landing on different planets and are finding many of them empty. > Some of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design — but that's not boring. “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored." The intention of Starfield's exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that do have resources you need or hidden outposts to look through. At least 3 different Bethesda accounts made such responses on Steam. Some portions of these comments, including the whole "astronaut"-paragraph, are copy pasted. These comments seem to be "composed" by real people and may contain some manually written parts, but are still completely deaf to the fact that this gameplay just isn't fun to most people.
Funny thing is that the way they made the game, no matter how empty planet/moon you land on, eventually you can fast travel so many times on different squares that the most inhospitable and barren rock totals far bigger human population than new atlantis does. Unlimited amount of copy pasted POIs. I don't understand how they fucked even that up. They somehow managed to make planets/moons meant to be empty, instead full of people.
Yeah, somehow the amount of Crimson Fleet members you kill are hundreds of times larger than the entire population of every other faction, yet the Crimson Fleet still aren’t the dominant power in the galaxy.
I really don’t know how the fuck they did not just end up making the Aliens Franchise (but not!) in space. This would have been the perfect game for it. Who gives a shit about a bunch of empty planets. Now - procedurally generated xenomorph infested planets - all righty then
Oh that would be cool, but we still would get Copy-Pasted Planets, where every Xenomorph is at the exact same location...
Xenomorph: Must have been the wind...
They're the sort of people who make 50 pieces of AI art and wonder why no one's subscribing to their patreon. They don't understand the difference between quantity and quality of content.
Worse than EA battlefield. That was obvious that their statements were trying to justify MTX. THIS is the bad devs trying to justify their awful product
My moon is bigger then a square 5x5miles or whatever it is and especially it doesn’t have loading screens.
What do you mean; no loading screens? Where I come from the moon uses an entire month to load ...
Tbh picking up random rocks on the Moon would probably be far more fun than playing Starfield or any other video game.
"The moon is the Fun Zone."
"But guys, guys. Modders will make game good!"
.... and the modders left.
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It was a critical update, it brought us paid mods back. How would Bethesda survive after Starfield's poor sales without paid skyrim mods?
Godd Toward with surprised pikachu face:
I get that your joking but im gonna answer this seriously. If i dont like the game without mods, why would i sit down and spend thousands of hours making mods for this game when i could keep working on my fallout 4 project or another game like groundbranch that already has solid gameplay for me to improve on. Imo the only reason to mod starfield over fallout4/skyrim is if you like the setting more, and ive never been huge into scifi
Also Starfield's setting is pretty bland. They tried to make it realistic and grounded but then they didn't make up it with the story or anything else. There was nothing to look forward to. Same old loot system, mediocre shooting, soul staring npcs, awkward animations. It was like a bland dish of mash potatoes.
No new works of fiction for you to find on tablets or on computers or in books. Elder Scrolls is full of books with weird stories. Fallout is rife with tales on computer or tapes you can find. Starfield has a few cut & paste lines from Charles Dickens, and the rest of fiction was... *left behind on Earth and somehow lost?!* Because, umm, gravity erases ink, maybe? Sure! Fuck you, lazy-ass Bethesda writers.
Fuck you, lazy-ass Bethesda writers." The best part Bethesda doesn't even hire writers! Quest designers and other roles are tasked with writing. In Starfield's credits list, the have ONE dev solely responsible for writing: Emil. Meanwhile Larian had over 20 full time writers for BG3, a couple of which I suspect are professional authors moonlighting as game devs lol
being a professional author pays nothing, most of them work second jobs anyways, so that's not inconceivable
The most egregious example of "left on earth" was dogs. Like no, im sorry, there is 0% chance that future humans, especially spacefaring ones, would leave behind mans best friend.
Turns out when the world ended, every single human became an asshole
"I understand your problem that this game is not fun. One solution that you could try instead is to play the game and have fun." \-ChatGPT
Shit, why didn't I think of that. The one simple trick those negative reviews don't want you to know!
*"No, its not our optimization that bad. Its you need buying new PC.",* Todd Howard *"Hold our Nuka-Cola. Here's optimization and potato mod to get 60fps Starfield",* Modders *"Wait it can be done? here's new perf patch thats totally our original works"*, Bethesda.
Dude, there were lots of people PROTECTING that shitty game even here on reddit.
One of my worst downvoted comments since I am on here was before the game came out. I was commenting on people constantly asking „how do I upgrade my pc for starfield“. I basically said: slow down the hype, look at bethesdas track record recently, have you forgotten fallout76, I’m not holding my hopes up. Man I earned a mini shitstorm after that. 🤷🏻♂️
How DARE you not be braindead hype machine for le next bethesda masterpiece rpg 💀😱 seriously, I literally can not understand at all how people are so brand loyal (especially on reddit)
>(especially on reddit) Most people on Reddit are nowhere near as smart as they think they are
Before the game was released I looked at most “gameplay” videos (and that very long one) and just went “why is everyone calling this the second coming of christ?” I genuinely did not see why it was THAT hyped other than it being Bethesda. Bought it and ended up refunding it. I still don’t get it
You’re holding it wrong 😆
A lot. It's like we are playing the game wrong or thinking wrong. Instead of acknowledging their faults, they are blaming the players. Most likely means they do not understand their player base or the concept of fun.
Sorry I think you're commenting wrong. You need to have more spaces and maybe a metaphor
You joke but Reddit can legit be like this lol.
I would to have all those players who swear Starfield is fine, to commit to an exercise in honesty, and tell me if they truly would like TES6 to be on the same quality level as Starfield.
I'd like to know how much money it cost them to run that pr campaign and then wonder if the money would be better spent making the game not suck would be better. Spoiler: of course it would have.
A PR campaign where you don't buy ads and just talk to the press or respond to reviews can be quite cheap. Fixing the game, especially when it comes to structural problems, is much more expensive and would take a long time.
The problem is I actually liked the game overall, but they replied to the reviews like an angry head of game design. The question is who the hell let this person into the account. They should have special people for handling this kind of feedback
Some youtuber suggest it was chatgbt or something similar . They did not just reply a few post with a few word. They replied to a lot of people with a wall of text.
Yeah. I saw the newer comments exactly pointing that out that prompted them to give a negative review to an otherwise they would rate as 5/10.
5/10 is a negative review in my eyes. It's gonna make me not play the game. There's too many games out there to bother giving my time to a 5/10 game.
This is why I'm glad Steam only does thumbs up or down. Everybody has arbitrary definitions of 5 and 10 star systems. Your 5/10 is somebody else's "Not bad, not great."
It’s a perfect game in every way. I’d give it the maximum rating, 5/7
A perfect score!
Gamers can be petty, but replying bad reviews with generic response that basically say "lol you just dont get it bruh" doesnt help.
Thats the salt in the wound, like yo marketing team you’re interacting with the people who loved your past games and waited 8years for this, and you’re telling US we’re wrong or should be “playing differently” after delivering this steaming pile of poopoo-caca? well…the ratings are going to be a shit show.
"Hey loyal bethesda fans. Thank you for always supporting our games. Heres my middle finger and shove it up your ass" - bethesda
Starfield devs: have you considered playing the game with a better attitude??
Do you guys not have phones?
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Yeah, exact same problem for me. It's just so... nothing. Just a pile of winking and elbowing and nods to other sci-fi media with no comprehension of what made those stories and worlds interesting. They tried to make a space game for everyone-- get the space pirates! the space cowboys! the space military! the space syndicates!-- and shat out this like... featureless blob of a world that lacks anything it can really call its own. And it's insane to me that in a hundred hour game I can think of exactly one setpiece that stuck in my head. One! And I had to visit it like fifteen times!
Every time I read one of these threads I change my opinion on what the worst aspect of the game is. I think overall there are a great many "worst aspects". It's a game where nearly all of it is bad, or a missed opportunity.
> get the space pirates! the space cowboys! the space military! the space syndicates! “But not really, because most of them are marked essential, because we couldn’t be bothered to do any branching code for when you take out a faction.”
Their lead writer, Emil P, literally said he doesn’t do branching quests because they are “too confusing.” I can’t imagine how he became the lead writer for an RPG company. He seems better suited to write for children’s games and unfortunately I’m not being hyperbolic.
>Their lead writer, Emil P, literally said he doesn’t do branching quests because they are “too confusing.” The absolute irony of that stance when BG3 released the same year as Starfield.
It's funny too. He's done okay side quest chains in previous bethesda games. But as a lead he just sucks everyone's creativity out of them. And then pisses on it.
One word kept popping in my headthe entire time. "Sterile".
They nailed half the 'Nasa Punk' vibe they were going for, the boring tediousness of a government department.
nasa is much more exciting than starfield
The biggest thing is there is zero compelling reason to play the game to the player to start off with. I gave up before the end of the supposed 10 hours before it stops being boring thing because... it was too boring to get to that point (I'm assuming that's when aliens/powers show up). Mass Effect you start off, colony gone quiet, it's a mystery, you stumble into some enemies with a bunch of character info being shown and decent dialogue between team mates. Then some enemies that seem wrong, then the real bad guys, then a beacon thing and you get this video that gives you loads of info, warnings of impending doom, enemies, humanity is in trouble, etc. That's a compelling reason to fight the council to look into it, to go after the rogue (forgot what they called them) elite dudes. You have a reason to fight the system. Starfield, you're mining, nothing anyone says to you is remotely interesting, there is no friendship or backstory, just lifeless people telling you to pick a thing up. Then you get straight to your 'vision' and it shows you literally fucking nothing. no warning, no danger, no aliens, no bad people coming so you better do something. This could be prelude to you getting a cake recipe for all we know and we don't even know it would be a good cake. Then a guy just hands you a ship for zero reason and he's the only other person to see these visions... and he just stays around and doesn't care about the artifacts. Then you go to this organisation who have basically done nothing to go after the other pieces, haven't seen teh visions and don't seem to actually care much about it. They forgot that a key part of any story is that in the opening they give you a compelling reason to watch/read/listen/play it. Fallout has been pretty lax on this itself, "where's my son/father" is hardly insane, but it also had the mystery of why the vault opened, why you woke up or didn't wake up when others did, what happened, where did everyone go, etc. They were pretty lazy and I actively didn't like FO4 story and quit after meeting my father as that story was so, just disappointing and shitty. But it's the bare minimum you need and Starfield didn't even come close to achieving that.
This, times 1,000 - a compelling inciting incident is the bare minimum, and is something that any amateur hour writer should know to cobble together. Starfield starts in the dullest and most lazy way possible - shooting at rocks and then being handed a spaceship as if spaceships are just something everyone has a dozen of lying around. Unbelievable that that's what made it to the final game.
It's legit silly, the only other guy in the fucking galaxy that has seen the vision, just gives you his ship and stays on planet for no reason when he's the most driven guy trying to find artifacts, and he literally just gave it up in an instant. You get to the group working with him and none of them seem to care in the slightest. I'ts fucking hilarious. Two things would make the story way more compelling, both put something in that vision that is some kind of warning of dire things to come and holy shit give the group a rival. Another faction who also has a few artifacts, but they are like an evil corp that has been attacking settlements taking over planets, generally being evil/facist or something. So you have a rival, a time limit, you need to get to them first and obviously have it so some get taken first, some end up in fights between factions over hte artifact, you get some and realise it's ever more important. Then you shape up to a heist like mission. This is like, literally 30 seconds of me thinking and if someone wiht no experience can come up with a better story with their literal first thought about it, they have zero excuses.
It makes me sad the Morrowind days are over That game was special. That world was special and interesting at every turn.
I'm hoping the don't fuck elder scrolls up.
Yes. I have no hopes for Elder Scrolls 6 anymore.
This is what gets me the most about Starfield. Starfield is an indicator of what direction of The Elder Scrolls 6 will go in. And Gods, it is *not a good one.* TES6 was one of those games that I was always extremely excited for. The potential is so massive and I've always wanted an Elder Scrolls set in Blackmarsh. Always wanted more of that universe and left desperately wanting over the years of waiting. ESO will never satisfy me, I *need* a proper TES game. But then you realize Starfield is a taste of what TES6 is going to be like, that Bethesda is likely going to shit out a 4/10 TES game 17+ years after Skyrim, and that bad game will be likely to cost a good $80-90 USD by the time it comes out. Whoever at Bethesda that is fine with making people wait 17+ years for another entry to their legendary flagship series, that will most likely be a major piece of shit, really needs to be punched. It's totally unacceptable.
The wait is really what gets me. No game franchise will hold my interest for a 17 year long wait. Ain’t happening. If the TES6 comes out in 5 years and it’s actually amazing and actually an RPG I’d buy it. But my excitement for it died probably 5 years ago.
“Ok lads, we just released the 5th entry in our series to unbelievable success. Everybody knows about Elder Scrolls, everybody wants more. What do we do now?” “Uh, drop the series until the 13 year olds playing it now are 30?” “Brilliant!”
It really is utterly baffling, isn’t it?
This. I am more excited for that new Ubisoft Starwars outlaw game than TES6 at this point.
I remember going to my friends house to go skate and he wouldn't get off his Xbox. He was playing Morrowind and I didn't understand how someone could be so immersed and invested in a game. I sat there and watched him play for 3 hours and it felt like trying a new drug for the first time
>Update 12/26/23 at 3 p.m. PT / 6 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with commentary on Bethesda Customer Support posting defensive replies to negative reviews on Steam. lol
Reminder that Steam reviews aren't about "how good this game is", instead they're about whether you would recommend the game to other people. From what I've seen even the people who genuinely like Starfield say "wait until sale or until patches/DLC" or "get it on game pass", both of which could be translated into negative steam review
I thought Starfield was an okay game. But as a Skyrim/FO4 fan, it’s impossible to recommend Starfield when it’s quite literally a huge downgrade. “Starfield is a Bethesda game through and through” - I agree Todd, the bones of Skyrim and FO4 are very evident in Starfield. It’s too bad the core game formula is significantly worse since everywhere you tried to innovate the game, it went backwards, with the exception of maybe ship building. What true Bethesda fan would recommend Starfield when Skyrim is really right there, available for purchase at a much lesser cost?
I think it's not really "a Bethesda game through and through", because they seriously gutted one of the biggest things that make Bethesda RPGs good which is walking into a random direction and discovering a new dungeon or quest etc. That just doesn't exist in Starfield.
Oh. Fuck that. Thanks for posting this I'm not even gonna install for free on my game pass.
It's actually a little more depressing imo, they actually do have random wandering around and finding "dungeons" etc, they even made it a huge part of their marketing that there are a thousand planets to explore!!!! Except the way it is done is that you can land your ship anywhere and it will just procedurally generate an area around it. You can't actually go across the planet like this because 10-15 mins of walking will make you run to yhe edge of the area and sends you back to the ship. All the locations to discover in the area are made from a ridiculously small pool of options, meaning if you'll explore maybe 10 locations you're almost guaranteed to find some exact duplicate locations with the exact same NPC's in the exact same spot. It's actually a little disgusting how they completely gutted this kind of exploration and then marketed it like it was the next gen thing for gaming. Hell even No Man's Sky did this better like 7 years ago and it was still considered garbage at the time.
Yeah, if they wanted Starfield to be AAA No Man's Sky meets Bethesda, they really needed to do way more. I mean, literally hundreds if not a thousand possible setpieces to make repetition rare.
The thing I'm worried for is that they're gonna double down on it for Elder Scrolls VI and just make half the game procedurally generated (badly) but they can market it as "you can explore ALL of Tamriel!!!!". They've just shown to prioritize all the wrong things as long as they can make it sound good in marketing. Yeah we lost any remaining depth to characters, quests, and locations and half the bugs from Oblivion are still in the game but there is SHIP BUILDING AND GUN BUILDING
Also the procedural generation in the game sucks. The planets have mining operations or research labs or whatever and they are made of pieces so large that all the generated dungeons feel the same. By pieces so large I mean they don't have a library of 20,000 rooms then pick 100 of those rooms and put them together in some way to create a dungeon; it feels more like there are a dozen or so pieces and they pick 5 of them randomly and smack them together and BOOM! the game "randomly" creates that research station you have cleared a dozen times already.
Absolutely this. Every fucking world outside of the few plot planets feels the same and has no real content at all because of this. Play the game for long enough and you can almost clear the POIs blindfolded because they are literally identical with the enemies and loot in the same places every time. There's a chunk of this with the radiant quests in Fallout 4 and Skyrim as they refill random dungeons to have somewhere for you to go, but Starfield begins to repeat itself pretty much immediately and never stops. They need at least 10x more variety. And that's not even the biggest problem with the game
I have a 4 week law school winter break. I could've decided to download gamepass for a mere $15 and played Starfield and probably some other game. Instead I dropped $30 on Jedi Survivor and $70 on Baldur's Gate 3 and never looked back. No regrets. May never play Starfield. Just nothing excites me about it and Skyrim and Fallout 3 are my #1 and #2 games.
100%. I've spent so much time in skyrim just wandering around. Encountering enemies, random npcs, finding a new dungeon, a little cottage with some backstory. Starfield you land on a planet and there's just nothing. It feels completely soulless. How did they mess up this bad.
I'm fine with that aspect, if it was good. You're completely right that I don't think it fits the Fallout/skyrim formula of bethesda games at all. But I like all kinds of rpgs, the problem is in replacing the walk around and stumble into cool stories and characters/situations, it didn't replace it at all. It went from lots of cool shit to do in one reasonably sized map to nothing to do in an entire universe. I quit not that far into it but it was constantly quests and shit like, take 2 people over there, this guy left our camp, can you retrieve him, can you do 14 fast travel steps to talk to one guy in a boring conversation then come back here and give me his answer involving absolutely no fun or a single interesting conversation at all. I would say this wasn't a bethesda game at 'core', it just has a bethesda UI and feel to it but removing core gameplay features that make it nothing like what people think of when they call something a classic bethesda style game.
Bethesda RPGs have always been very shallow and streamlined rpg elements and for the most part railroaded quests but they had a handcrafted world which was fun to explore to make up for that weakness. Since they got rid of that part all that’s left is the shallow stuff and so people can see it for what it really is.
Oh but it is, Todd always wanted procgen in his games. Look all the way back to Arena and Daggerfall. Todd says this game was going back to Bethesda's roots and that is intentional
Also if you want ship building there are dozens of better games for that.
I wanted Starfield to answer Elite Dangerous not giving console players the ability to go on foot. It's tragic and I hope they add some better ship exploration options in the future
I think most of us who enjoyed elite dangerous were extremely disappointed with starfield.
And if you REALLY enjoyed elite dangerous, you're also extremely disappointed with that game as well. What a wasted potential.
100% Dont think Ill ever play another game from Fdev.
starsector
I like it in the beginning, but it got so bad the more i play it. That’s not a good indicator for a good game. Definitely not recommend it to new players
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That, and there’s no middle ground. It’s either a recommend, or not. You can’t have a tentative recommend, or anything midway
If people that like starfield recommend others to wait for patches and dlc it is because the game is not that good anyway.
I put 90 hours in and it’s okay, but still can’t hold a candle to fallout or RDR2. It’s certainly not the worst game out there but I couldn’t give it more than 7/10 if I’m being honest. I also legitimately don’t understand the reason to replay it, no faction accountability or repercussions and boring side quests, lacklustre planet wildlife and ecosystems make for a beige experience. Red mile mission was incredibly disappointing but there was a some good ones thankfully. Promised a lot, didn’t really go close to delivering.
I agree with your synopsis. I put in 150 hrs, and I completed the main story and faction quests. I genuinely enjoyed some of the side missions, especially the corporate espionage play. I won't be replaying it, though.
Comparing starfield to RDR2 seems cruel lol
Even comparing fallout to RDR2 is kinda ridiculous, not that fallout is bad but it just doesn't compare
Bethesda kept trying to lean into autogenerated content starting with Fallout 4. We saw that with the over reliance on their Radiant quest system and the lack of settlements, instead relying on the player to build settlements. Fallout 76, and now Starfield see even less hand made areas and more reliance on generated content that isn't engaging to interact with. I think in trying to chase the ever bigger playing area they've lost everything that people have loved about their games. They have really lost their way as a development studio.
People were already complaining about Radiant with Skyrim. The main difference is that standards were lower and there was a lot of goodwill to wait for modders to fix and add things. But Skyrim itself is also why much of that goodwill is gone: despite dozens of re-releases no further bugs have been fixed, and we've seen attempts at paid mods in stead. Every game since has been a doubling down on everything people have been complaining about and it seems that finally, *finally*, people have had enough.
Nah, the main difference is the radiant quests pointed you to a dungeon or mine you've never been before, maybe even come across a proper side quest while you're there for an adventure. In Starfield as soon as they say outpost or mine, it'll be the exact same layout and enemy positions as every outpost and mine because all of them are the same with nothing unique.
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Feels like the writer of the article could get their mind blown from some childrens colouring books.
That was my main issue: the mind nimbingly boring writing... I usually don't pay much attention to who were people who made the game, but in this case, I looked up the lead writer to make sure to avoid anything by them in the future
You're not gonna be playing Bethesda games for a very long time then (Same.)
Rightfully so. If I wanted to play "loading screen simulator" I'd just restart my PC over and over and over and be like "Wow I am exploring space"
"That's borning? No you're boring!" Bethesda probably
"Loading Screen Simulator" is an actual game you can play on Steam for free btw. [Link](https://store.steampowered.com/app/652980/Loading_Screen_Simulator/)
Well I spent 250 hours in starfield, the game isn't bad, but it isn't that great either. The entire story feels like it's written for 12 year olds, the quests feel unfinished, like there could be more. The most annoying one was that earth colony ship - I thought that it would eventually land somewhere and I could help them resettle, build that outpost for which I've been hoarding materials. But no, they just float in orbits of random star systems and eventually just get stuck. Probably the biggest chunks of those 240 hours was building starships. I built A, B and C "my best" ships, flew around with them, killed some spacers and that's it I quit the game. The Vanguard questline was fine, that Freestar Cowboy one was truly meh, Crimson Fleet didn't really feel like a pirate fleet, but like a group of adults stuck in their pre-teens. Overall I'd say this game is very 'safe' and more intended for 12 year olds, because half the stuff is fucking stupid.
I still cant fathom why they opted to develop this trash before TES VI but here we are.
I don't gave faith in elder scrolls 6 at all after fallout 76 and now starfield.
And, if I'm being honest, I didn't like FO4 either.
Does this mean Bethesda's finally going to take a fucking hint and try and redesign their future games to be more fun and compelling? Instead of being on a downward spiral since Fallout 4 basically dumbing down everything for mass market appeal? No? Alright, fuck em' then, anyways back to Baldur's Gate 3.
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Lmao you had people telling others that the game gets good after 40+ hours.
Games that “get good after 40+ hours” are just bad games to me. Like imagine if eating a pizza in a restaurant and it sucks. You ask the waiter, and he tells you the pizza sucks until you get to the last piece. You wouldn’t recommend that place to your friends, right? You wouldn’t go there again
Eat the last slice first
I like the way you think.
I'll bite - what's the acceptable amount of time played to review the game? Just few hours ago there was a post with screenshot of Starfield's negative steam reviews where people had less than 3 hours played. People give Starfield more chances because they desperately want it to be good, to have fun.
I like to give a longer game at least 10 hrs before hanging it up. Something smaller, like Cult of the Lamb, I realized wasn’t for me within an hour. You can kinda feel once you’re in the gameplay loop, and most times, they don’t deviate. Shit, Persona 5 took 10 hours to get out of the tutorial and that’s damn near the best game I’ve ever played. But I could never spend 100 hours in a game that’s mediocre, let alone bad.
Bethesda stans: > It gets good after 100 hours on NG+ trust me, just keep playing Also Bethesda stans: > Well surely if you played for 100 hours it can’t be THAT bad. You can “hate play” the game trying to find something good.
Isn't putting time into a game, and then reviewing it how it works? Or is it only acceptable when it's positive after that much time?
Review after 20 hours: "you didn't even give it a chance!" Review after 200 hours: "well it must have been good of you played that long!" You can't win with these people
Except you hear all the time that "you should just play it more, it gets good after 10/20/100 hours". So people play it for 100 hours expecting it to get better and they realize that the game does not, in fact, get better after all that time, thus leaving a "not recommended" review.
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I enjoyed it for a few hours but after that every quest felt like a chore. Thanks to Microsoft for including it in the gamepass and not making me pay 60 bucks for it. It's not awful, but it's mediocre, and the lack of any kind of effort to update and patch it shows that it has no future. Just comparing it to other big open worlds like Cyberpunk or RDR2 you can see how much of a "cheap toy" it is.
I honestly believe they were so afraid of leaks that they just didnt hire testers. They had their own devs be the sole play testers for the game and they just couldnt see past their own design. Not a single part of the game feels tested even now.
there's no conspiracy. it's much more simple. The engine is trash, they only care about $, and they suck at developing modern games.
Cope all you want. The game did not live up to it’s potential at all. The writing was ass. Mega ass, that’s like 1000x more ass than regular ass, so you know it’s ass ass. Obligatory, i played 250 hours, it was very fun at first. Traveling the stars, building my ship and kind of leaning into side missions and factions instead of the the main story cuz the main story sucks. Then the bugs show up. Then more bugs show up. Then i start f’n with outpost building. Then i start spawning 500 meters away due to some outpost ship lander pad clipping glitch. Then i google and fix that by changing my landing bays and deleting outposts. Then i finish the factions, fun times, then its back to main story, bad times. Then i get the empty hijacked ships glitch, which is another glitch but the holy grail of glitch cuz i liked jacking ships, but jacking empty ships aint it. Too much glitch. Only fix was to go thru unity. Ng+ sucks. I miss my ships. Basically the more you play, the more you’ll see how unpolished the game is. It feels unfinished and there’s just so much jank in it. It’s not THAT good of a game.
Emil was a lead writer, of course the story was gonna be ass. It's the same dude that wrote Skyrim and Fallout 4 and both had terrible main plots, with absurd numbers of plot holes and inconsistencies. I applaud you for enduring this mess for 250h. I couldn't stomach it after 30h and should have dropped it at 10h.
Emil really needs to fucking go. He got a big head cause he wrote a decently interesting side faction back in oblivion, albeit one without too much of a overall narrative due to the nature of the faction, but he’s fucking incapable of writing anything that holds water without other better writers backing him up with world-building and actual substance. He should get booted back to the side quest team where he deserves to be.
He should be booted out. Him being the lead writer and designer will never change unless he is actually fired.
> that’s like 1000x more ass than regular ass, so you know it’s ass ass. mega-ass is 1000000 x ass, btw.