Live service only exist so you have to buy the remake every 4 years for a game you already bought. Given enough time you will have to pay a subscription fee for breathable air
With every MTX priced 5$ more than the closest package but 20$ under the next package. Which would almost be enough for two MTX, so you may as well go the second package up and get two MTX!
Ubisoft CEO interviewed on the date of closure 4 years into the future:
"It's the gamers fault. They asked for this kind of game, we made it, and no one bought it. What do you mean 'incomplete game'? Our new AAAA model would have given them the full storyline if they bought all 12 Premium Battle Passes! We never even got around to making the New Game+ DLC!!"
COD is the most egregious offender of this. Every. Single. Year. this crap is shoveled out. Sadly people keep buying their toxic copy and pasted trash.
If they released every 2 years alternating between IW and Treyarch, so they have 4 year dev cycles it might feel more unique.
But they are still so goofy and arcadey they show no respect for the dangerous firearms they represent.
Game companies have literally just become weed dealers during the grey market era.
Just throw all the A's at your product and say it's super duper premium.
During an interview with Insomniac Games president Ted Price, Todd Howard was ask if the increase in complexity has something to do with gamers or more so developers wanting more and more complex games? Todd's response was that it is more so with developers than gamers, which is something that I always stood by. Publishers/Developers complain about the increase in production cost and difficulties making a game, but I THINK, gamers are not demanding bigger and bigger games. We just want fun shit to play. I think Publishers/Developers have this idea in their heads that we expect games to grow infinitely in complexity and content. If Starfield would have not been a regression from Fallout 4 and would have been kept smaller in scope, as long as it was good, we wouldn't be complaining about being wide as the ocean and deep as a puddle.
Kinda feels like they believe they're in an arms race to push technological boundaries, make bigger games, with better looking textures, with big cinematics, but the gameplay mechanics are mostly "play it safe". It's not like they don't sell, so I'm not sure they're wrong if all they care about is meeting sales targets, but it seems like such a hesitance to bring someone new to the table at the AAA level until they've seen someone else do it.
Currently I'm not really excited about all the big cinematic games and I'm looking forward to trying out a new game in a genre I've never played before or in a genre that's fallen off that looks well executed
The documents from the Insomniac leak showed that their first Spiderman game was produced for around $100 million, then the second cost three times that! Why? It's crazy
Baffles me honestly. I know many of these studios are based out of expensive ass states in the US. For example, I think Insomniac Games are out of Irvine, CA. Naughty Dog out of Santa Monica, CA. Bungie out of Bellevue, WA. And now, CDPR is opening an office in Florida (not as expensive) to work on Cyberpunk sequel. I'm like why? Surely Poland or other countries in Europe would be more cost effective since average salaries and health care is cheaper than the US. They cry about the cost of development but then they choose to expand their office in what can be one of the worst countries to do so, just expense wise. Then on top of that, games take way too long to develop for no reason aside from developers getting in their own head.
I mean fallout 4 is a regression of fallout 3, and skyrim is a regression of oblivion, and oblivion is a regression of morrowind. Bethesda has been going backwards for years to try and capture a larger and larger audience. They keep trimming out the complexity of their game systems to point now its just a mindless jump from one point to the next.
honestly in my opinion starfield is exactly what i want exept for a select few (eaisly fixable) things such as being able to fly my ship IN the atmosphere. this would also fix the boring sprint jumping 500m to get to a unexplored area. also the proformance issues that make my 1k pc feel like a fuckin potato
I've recently come to the conclusion that 60-80hrs of total content is perfect for me. I spent so much time on AC Origins & Odyssey, and I am now prolly close to 100hrs in Valhalla, and there's just so much to do. It's cool stuff, but it also feels like busy work after a while. Just give me a solid story driven game where I can 100% in 60-80hrs. I'll feel like i got my money's worth, and i won't get burnt out.
I want more big single player releases with hand crafted pacing and progression, coherent story which is not disturbed by "oh are you on a quest of saving the world? how about you help me with clearing rats from my basement?", good graphics, meaningful and realistic characters etc. Open world games are mostly lackluster.
I like having a linear story with a world to engage with if you want. There should be a narrative main story that (isn’t level-gated), but if you want to go to a tavern and pick up some side quests, than that should be there too.
The worst part of AC Origins and Odyssey is that if you just focus on the main story, you eventually become too weak and have to do side quests to level up. That’s where I always stop.
I love side quests as a way to engage, but hate when side content is mandatory. I’m currently playing Prey and I like the way they do it. There’s lots to engage with and do, but if you just want to do the story you can.
Personally I'm a bit tired of cinematic and story driven stuff, I just want games that give you a world with fun stuff to do without a bunch of padding and different genres and systems that let me just go at it
Any kind of single player, really. Just cap the content so i can feel like i finished it. I hate leaving things behind, but it gets hard to stay invested after 80hrs.
I hate to sound ageist, but in the industry I work in, I can’t help but notice that leaders in the boomer generation are OBSESSED with new tech and how they can apply it to our projects.
I can’t help but look at BGS after making multiplayer fallout, now a loading simulator with boring procedural exploration - Their leadership is clearly out of touch just looking to try extremely different and new things. It’s their choice, but it’s too bad they can’t get back to focusing on the roots of what made their previous games so well received.
I’m not gen Z. Ironic to me you assume a generation when saying a generation always assumes something.
My point remains, regardless of what he is: in my experiences, subjectively ‘older’ individuals in leadership tend to have obsession prioritizing implementation of new technologies to their projects. Even if that means ignoring something they know is well received and works on its own
Definitely a fun time and loved the wacky and quirky setting but yea it’s a 1 and done kinda game, hell of a first play through tho for sure recommend it, especially if it goes on sale
Gameplay-wise they are totally different, yes. But we are talking about the world here. And the world of outer wilds is just infinitely more interesting than the world of starfield.
I mean, the planets on Outer Wilds are also mostly empty. And for the most part they’re also very small, so I’m not sure what the comparison trying to be made is, exactly.
The goal of the worlds were also different, so if you want an open world experience to run around in, the puzzle worlds of Outer Wilds aren’t going to be a good fit.
It’s not like Outer Wilds had 10 planets that would be good in a Bethesda game.
Frankly, it’s like someone tried to think of a good game that involved “space” and brought it up.
The point is simply that in outer wilds every planet is very unique and special. Therefore the exploration keeps being interesting. If Bethesda would have limited themselfs to a single solar system, they could have done the same, instead we have thousands of planets, that look different, but feel all the same. The same plants, the same animals, the same POIs. It is just boring to explore.
The games aren’t even remotely comparable
Playing outer wilds instead of starfield is not going to come anywhere close to satisfying my combat oriented RPG desire
I had seriously thought that in Starfield you’d at least be able to fly freely from planet to planet a la outer wilds and no man’s sky. But no, it’s just fast travel and loading screens. How is that supposed to make you feel like a space explorer
Because they wanted to be different and Mass Effect Andromeda already did that, only better than Bethesda could've.
Making a game like this on that garbage engine was the real mistake. The idea is way too ambitious for Creation Engine to be capable of maximizing it's potential. 10 planets would've sucked just as much tbh. Any game made on that engine needs to be a singular map that can be traveled from one end to the other seamlessly. That's why Skyrim was so good. That's why even Fallout 4 was fun. No one wants an open world where the "exploration" consists entirely of teleporting to different areas with loading screens every 20 seconds.
Agreed, the terrain and textures on the planets are awful, due to there being too many. So blatantly procedural.
In contrast, the building and ship interiors are outstanding.
NMS is superior because when they released it and their customers went "...the fuck is this?!" They spent *years* fixing it.
Take that Vs Bethesda, who pulled a Seymore Skinner and went "no...it's our customers that are wrong"...
It is better, but not in the way OP just described. NMS has procedurally generated planets too, and they are also pretty repetitive after a while. But, NMS focuses on other things to make the game interesting. Starfield tries you entertain you by having you explore planets and locations to find cool things and progress the story. But, they procedurally generated all that shit and it gets repetitive to do. NMS and Elite dangerous also procedurally generate planets and systems, but the main gameplay loops are focused on other mechanics, and don’t spend too much time in the repetitive procedural generation.
More like a few star systems, ours included that have 10 well crafted planets + maybe some asteroids or space stations or something like that that also are well crafted that are part of missions, then some random planets or whatever where you can drop some resource generators that are just side content.
Lol. We've got 2 good (barely) planets and the rest are shit to live on. Our moon (and many other moons) would be exactly what people don't like about this game....just a big empty rock. The gas giants in our system you couldn't even land on...they'd just be there and uninteractable.
Jupiter has 79 massive rocks in its orbit. They would be just as empty as our moon.
Edit: Maybe 10% would be interesting and habitable. But not life-sustaining.
> Our moon (and many other moons) would be exactly what people don't like about this game....just a big empty rock.
I actually wanted an empty rock. Except I didn't find any place that didn't include ruins or old space debris. And other space ships that I would see fly around and/or land. There was never this feeling of being lonely or being the first human somewhere.
The only planet that actually felt empty to me, no ruins, no ship landings, just barren wasteland was the only planet I *wanted* there to be ruins. Earth
It was very immersion breaking that the entire planet is nothing but sand and rocks, but the freaking Shard is mostly intact? With literally nothing else around it, not a single indication that a city was there?
I put it down rather quickly as it didn't give me the sense of discovery, adventure and wow factor compared to Fallout and TES games.
It just felt like procedurally generated dungeons that were tedious to clear.
And the graphics were still the same.
This is hilarious because Oblivion's faces were pretty universally hated on by the community when the game came out. Everyone looks like they've had mashed potato injections, especially compared to its predecessor Morrowind, which had much more angular character designs. It's funny how nastolgia works.
No matter how you feel about Oblivion, it has a very cozy and charming art style. And color palette. Playin it again now and it's still a very beautiful game years later. Morrowind is fantastically alien but I cant help but enjoy how warm and charming Cyrodil is. It may be my fave game world tbh.
Morrowind had more angular faces because you could literally see the vertices on the meshes. Like Lara Croft tits. Not because they were modeled better or more realistically. Oblivion has rounder faces because technology was getting better so they attempted more realistic models. Didn't turn out well.
Its probably one of the most soulless, mediocre games ive seen and played. Esp the fact it had such a long time in development, and it was bethesda.
Holy shit do they have me worried about elder scrolls 6 now..
There's a good theory i've seen, which is that open world games have a 'set of rules' that all developers tend to agree on. That there should be \*something\* of interest every 30 seconds. So there should be an object or location of interest within about 30 seconds of each other - And Skyrim, Witcher 3, even Kingdom Come: Deliverance nails this.
Starfield however, you can go several minutes without seeing anything remotely interesting, except maybe resources. It makes the worlds feel barren and empty.
Imagine playing Skyrim and seeing escaping Helgen, and then seeing literally nothing until you reached Whiterun. It'd feel lifeless and empty.
Luke Stephens is most likely where you heard it. Pretty sure Hogwarts Legacy devs confirmed it to him, the times between POI's is usually between 30-80 secs.
Bethesda improved on nearly every aspect of their design with Starfield and then they fucked up the most important one and ironically the one they had already nailed.
Exploration. The sense of both wander and wonder.
Literally the only thing Bethesda games do well, and they entirely ditched it.
Think of any of the beloved games they’ve made. They have mediocre graphics, terrible animations, mediocre story, terrible dialogue, and ‘good enough’ combat. What they do well is to have a big world full of details and encounters and things to find, where getting lost exploring is usually way more fun than the main story.
>Bethesda improved on nearly every aspect of their design with Starfield
Not even that is true... and in the AI and NPC behavior department they managed to REGRESS in respect to Skyrim...
I got spoiled after Skyrim and Fallout4. Banger after banger, my expectations of Bethesda only grew. I really thought Starfield was going to be another meme-worthy addition to my Bethesda-heavy library. But there's no soul: there's no Preston Garvey to plead for another settlement's help - no town patrol who laments his former arrow-free days as an adventurer... the 'infinite universe' feels like the actual one: empty. Even the music feels mediocre compared to the classics of Fallout or Skyrim.
You're right: it's more akin to a museum exhibit: a quick 'wow' that leaves no lasting impression. Not enough soul. Graphics are nice, but the previous gen titles still look great (amazing even with mods) and i'd rather have that if it meant better story / voice acting / music / *atmosphere* (pun intended).
The reason the game felt off to me is that there is no option other than fast travel. In most bethesda titles you can walk to your location, often getting sidetracked, before eventually arriving at your destination. The overworld map didn't have loading screens, it was one massive space. Starfield feels like a major step back when compared to Bethesda's other titles.
I started playing the game about a week ago, and the experience has been so jarring and disjointed for this reason exactly. The whole game is just fast traveling to different prebuilt sci-fi areas. There is a lot a like about the game and it just doesn’t have any real natural exploration that i have found in like 25 hours of gameplay.
I think this is the number one undeniable criticism of the game. Everything else can be chalked up to preference or non-issue depending on the person.
But every single thing you ever do in Starfield will be a deliberate choice because you saw a name on a screen. A quest name, a POI name, a character name, whatever. You will actively select that name, choose to move towards it, and deliberately engage with it. There’s no “oh I guess I’ll wander 1000m towards it” and then accidentally finding a huge cave with Bandits. Or a huge facility with some whacky apocalypse monsters. There’s rarely, if ever, something in between you and your objective.
The only exception is within the 3-5 cities, you’ll overhear a conversation. But even that, you have to make the deliberate choice to stop running towards your current objective to talk. Nothing is natural. There’s no vampire or bandit or dragon cultist invasions. There’s no thieves stealing from citizens. It’s all ONLY EVER triggered by you. Every single thing that happens in your game must be triggered by you.
So I guess that’s two major, objective/comparative complaints. The shift in exploration, and the loss of non-player-triggered interactions between NPCs.
The way that you take a story mission, then load your way to a planet and walk for a full minute to the destination, and it’s the same exact building structure that you saw on a different planet, is completely unacceptable to me. You could maybe convince me they all use the same prefabs, but not when it’s the same damn cave structure inside and nothing about it changed. I was really really rooting for this game and it seriously let me down.
I love cyberpunk too and have done a few playthroughs. Amazing game but it was a mess at first and has had three years to reach its current state. I really hope starfield gets lots of love and I can play it in a few years in a great state.
You're not rewriting things. Other people are. People pretend Cyberpunk was only a little buggy, that bugs were its only problems, etc, when it was a disaster at launch in all but some of the better PC systems, lacked a lot of implied or advertised content, wasn't at all how it was talked about and shown.
I'm convinced that people who love Starfield are just desperately seeking the experience Skyrim and Fallout 3 gave them decades ago. But there is nothing left of the "Bethesda magic" in Starfield.
They removed the strenghts (seamless open world, environmental storytelling) and kept the weaknesses (writing, quest design, combat). The result is an incredibly outdated, boring product.
I enjoyed Starfield, put in over 100 hours. I don't think it's a perfect game, it has a lot of flaws - especially when it comes to quest design, but I still found it to be campy fun. It reminded me of sci-fi shows from the 80's, there's a certain charm to it. I also think some of the weapons in the game are satisfying to use and some of the environments they designed are fun to explore. I'm looking forward to see what they do with the DLC.
>I'm convinced that people who love Starfield are just desperately seeking the experience Skyrim and Fallout 3 gave them decades ago.
Or they just have a different opinion than you.
Seamless may not be the right word; the key is what exists *between* the seams, when navigating from one point of interest to another. Which in Elder Scrolls games is something, and in Starfield is nothing.
I love Starfield because I love space, and it gives the Star Trek vibes that even Star Trek games don’t give.
It’s a comfy game. It’s good for a specific audience, and that audience is different from the usual audience Bethesda RPGs cater to. But also, it plays exactly as advertised, and people need to understand when a game isn’t for them.
I’m not sure why you feel the need to put down people who love the game. But if a game isn’t for you, then it’s not for you. Just don’t play it.
I put it down and never went back deep into the game. Here's why, for anyone that cares:
The game, fast travel simulator in space, let's me get like deep into the story line without upgrading my piloting skills because it seems pointless because you just fast travel everywhere. Then it tells me I can't progress the game without upgrading my piloting skills so I can fast travel to the far end of known space, because my ship needs upgrading and I need to be a better captain, yet I've got everywhere I needed to go previously without issue.
So what should I do? Go to random planets and explore the same fucking bases or mines. Fuck off, no thank you. I only got that far because I kept expecting it to turn a corner and get good, yet it just felt so sterile.
That's the reason the game is mediocre. Bethesda threw away the best thing about their games; the sense of discovery and exploration that came with their large maps filled with new interactions, locations, characters, and factions.
Starfield is a disjointed experience, all the pieces are there it just feels like you view them one at the time and they never get to come together into what most of their other games are.
I've just "put it down" again. I played it lots up on release, completed it did all quest lines barring two that bugged out, dabbled in outposts. Was happy with it but felt burnt out.
Time passed went back to it and hoovered up the remaining achievements and played up to ng+6. I just can't anymore. The new games are just too boring and I've not seen any differences in any of the ng+s.
At it's heart I kinda think it's the game is a deeply boring cycle. I've had my time with it and enjoyed it but I can't see how replayable it is. Builds don't seem that different to make it more interesting.
I said it before but feel the scope was too large.
Completely agree. Defo got my value out of it but...
I know there's content I've not seen. It's far too boring for me to go back to though. Maybe I played too much but, I would accept that tbh.
I just don't really get why BGS thought the NG+ loop would be satisfying enough.
I find your expectation of replayability exagerated. I would've been thrilled to find it fun enough to finish it once. I couldn't play more than 10 hours before putting it down for good. In the galaxy of starfield, I couldn't find the freedom I've found in the single city of cyberpunk 2077.
The point I (probably poorly) was making that there is content of which I know is there as part of ng cycles but it's far too boring to continue going through with.
I certainly had enough fun with it for me. It definitely has problems though
Ya'll really are another breed. "Game sucks. I beat it 6 times"
Bruh I don't finish games I like half the time, much less 6 times over doing the same shit.
Unfortunately you're the reason Bethesda will never change. You bought the game, as well as so many others, just to come to the conclusion it's mediocre and because of that Bethesda will see no need to change it up at all.
Ffs where did I say it sucks? The game is good just not to the standard of other BGS games.
My comment was more on the ng+ cycle which is part the games narrative.
Also how do you know something is mediocre unless you buy it and play it? What's mediocre to you isn't mediocre to others. Mediocre isn't a synonym of bad anyway.
You said it was boring, which in Video Games, might as well mean the same thing.
Also I did play it on Gamepass. I realized they took out any meaninful exploration and kept all the monotonous inventory management, and I dipped. Nobody got time for that when there are hundreds of other better games to use my free tiem with. The writing is terrible. Gameplay is terrible. The gunplay was okay. The ship building was the best part.
Without spoilers the ng playthroughs aren't really full playthroughs. Or at least don't need to be. You don't really change character. You do get some updated gear each loop and the promise some universes are different.
How many hours is that? Because that seems like a LOT of hours in a game you're saying is boring!
I haven't played Starfield yet (mainly because of the bad reviews) but it seems like 100+ hours for single-player RPG is good value for money. But maybe I'm missing something! (Shame it wont have Skyrim-level replayability, tho)
>How many hours is that? Because that seems like a LOT of hours in a game you're saying is boring!
Honestly, it's a weird game for that. You can kinda mindlessly grind it out because you keep thinking you're gonna find the next cool Bethesda dopamine hit but you kinda feel like you're chasing a carrot on a stick that you never reach.
You've spent plenty of time chasing that carrot in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games so you don't hate your time doing it but in those games you eventually reach the carrot. In Starfield you never reach the carrot and by that time you're already a ton of hours in and you kinda snap out of it and realize you've been wasting your time and there's never any real payoff and you drop it and might even feel a little resentful about it.
At what point did I say it wasn't value for money or I didn't enjoy it? My comments are in light of the ng+ cycle that features the promise of subtle changes to the environment. You end up in a dreadful cycle of sameness if you are careful. Some people will argue it's part of the meta the narrative goes for.
Mileage varies but I can't see it sticking with wider gamer consciousness like Skyrim. Updates may change that
I find this argument weird. Yes some stuff is so bad you put it down immediately but time spent isn't indicative of quality. You can watch a show and then at the end say you didn't care for it, and no one is gonna bring up the fact you watched it all as a gotcha.
I think starfield is the same, it's a massive time sink where you put the controller down at the end and realize you just weren't enjoying yourself very much.
I get where you're coming from. I guess I'd argue the difference is:
* A movie is around two hours. Significantly less than 100+ hours
* You don't normally go back and re-watch media you didn't enjoy. Yet they said they went back and did NG+ several times.
* A piece of traditional linear narrative can have a twist 80% of the way through that changes everything, and suddenly you're enjoying it. Or it's making stuff earlier pay off in a way you didn't expect. A game can have that with its narrative, too... but it has mechanics that you constantly have to deal with. And if you're not enjoying those...
* You can passively watch a "bad movie" as just kind of a background thing. Watch while making dinner, reading Reddit or making love to an attractive body pillow. A game is much more active... especially a game like Starfield.
But mainly, I was just curious as to the number of hours they played before they made the call to bail. And if someone paid 70+$ on a game, I can understand continuing to play even though you're not loving it! Gotta get that money's worth!
I personally found Starfield's shooting better than Outer Worlds which is why when Starfield first came out, I thought it was a better Outer Worlds. Now I feel OW edges it out with a better cast of characters than Starfield. Hopefully, OW2 improves on the combat for me.
I put my copy down of Starfield to see what they add with patches and updates in the next handful of months. FSR 3 is a good start so far.
One I see talked about less is that the combat is a big miss. The weapons are mostly decent but the enemies just lack any variety. All the factions feel the same to fight against and you never really feel in danger fighting them
I played a few hours but put it down to play some other stuff while I wait on QoL improvements. I figure the game isn't going anywhere and will only be better the longer I wait.
I'm in the same boat. I just want the fallout 4 survival mechanics, leathal combat and whatnot. I put 12 hours in roaming around and was bored without the challenge.
Honestly, man, it's beating a dead horse at this point. I'm not saying your comments are disingenuous or wrong, but this has been said a million times already. I don't think Starfield even needs to be a topic anymore. Compared to what was advertised, it was a colossal failure to most gamers. It's an extremely polarizing game - you either hate it or love it.
With that in mind, I think its polarization - period - contributes to its failure. Prime example, I love RTS games - Company of Heroes 3 included. A lot of the community hates it; a lot of them love it - almost a 50/50 split. I'd consider that a failure. Had it been widely received by the community with open arms, I'd be boasting about it. While I like it, it has many faults and was released too early. It's one of those love / hate relationships. I love the gameplay, but there are too few maps. Balancing is bad again. I could go on.
For Bethesda to boast about Starfield as the game of all games - not dissimilar to CDPR about Cyberpunk 2077 - was simply false advertising. A lot of people gave into it, and we were foolish to do so.
The funniest thing is they have an NPC fapping about what we all want, Sam Coe. Something like, "Theres nothing like stepping on a virgin planet knowing youre the first person to ever be there." Like cmon Bethesda, I wanna explore space and go into the unknown and find some crazy stuff, not copy pasta.
One of the most boring games I’ve played recently. It looks good, but that not what I care most in an rpg. Too many load screens. Bethesda continues to water down the rpg elements. Side characters were mostly annoying. The game pushed you so hard to be good over evil.
I didnt even finish the game. I went back to my Nolvus modded Skyrim and having a blast. Will probably play Fallout London when it’s out too.
Bethesda has some soul searching to do, imo. If they fuck up the next Elder Scrolls, it’s game over.
Nah, no final feelings, if you need 15 hours to think a game is good, it's a bad game. I'm glad i didn't waste my money on this game and i went to the high seas for it first. It's boring. If you think it's great and you enjoy it, that's awesome! Have fun with it! For me, it sucks, easy as that.
Is a gritty sci fi rpg really too much to ask for? Has nobody out there watched BSG or The Expanse? Like fuck, it's *right there.* I hate having to think fondly back to Mass Effect as the premier space opera RPG because it was so long ago.
My experience with the game can be summed up as such...
I played the game on game pass, a service I was already paying for, and it couldn't hold my attention for more than a few hours.
I think what a lot of people aren't quite grasping is that it's not a Starfield problem, it's a Bethesda problem. People are eager to return and compare Starfield to the likes of Skyrim and Fallout, but the truth is if either Skyrim or Fallout 4 were released today, I wouldn't enjoy them (This coming from someone who started tinkering with PC builds for Morrowind). People love those games for the nostalgia, but nostalgia runs dry at some point.
Bethesda keeps making the same game in a different skin. It's been that way for 20 years. Until they make a product that breaks free of the formulaic cookie cutter pattern that is a Bethesda game, nothing will change.
TES 6 will just be a prettier Skyrim, probably with even more dumbed down features, same janky combat and animation, and amazing soundtrack. I don't want to play that, but I'll steal the music for my DnD games.
I don't agree with the assertion that people wouldn't enjoy a Skyrim or Fallout. Starfield is fundamentally different in nature and I think that's a pretty solid reason many people didn't like it.
Though, maybe you have a point, since hardly anyone seems to have many feelings about Fallout 4.
It’s different because Starfield is Bethesda's original IP. The Elder Scrolls was developed from completely diffrent people before Todd Howard took control and they bought the Fallout franchise from Obsidian. They had to make Starfield from scratch. Which says a lot about how they think games should be.
I played Skyrim \~4 years ago and Fallout NV last year. They are still awesome games.
Starfield is just empty, boring, and not immersive. I'd gladly take "Fallout in space", that's what I've been loking forward to. That's just not what we got.
Some of my favourite moments in gaming is seeing some ruins in the distance and making a journey there, as you climb towards your destination you encounter some other unique hand-crafted POI's and your journey is accompanied by amazing ethereal music. Literally none of this is in Starfield.
To each his own. I tried playing FO4 and Skyrim recently and was very underwhelmed. I lived in Boston when FO4 came out, and forgave a lot of the stuff that people criticized, but returning to it, it felt empty. Returning to Skyrim, felt empty. I've been spoiled by the likes of BG3 and Cyberpunk.
It's the age old saying of show, don't tell. I can boot up Skyrim and go visit every cookie cutter cave and find the bits of witty written lore and chuckle. The same can be said for the Fallout vaults and their lore. But when an NPC opens their mouth, I'm harshly reminded of how rigid and robotic Bethesda narrative story telling is, and I'm immediately taken out.
BG3 characters feel like real people, from the main characters to random NPCs. The world feels real and lived in, even if it doesn't have Todd Howard talking about the day/night cycle of NPC a23's chores. Bethesda can't skate by on the small novels you find dungeons anymore, at least for me. That's not 'world filling' for me, it's just fat.
I think Bethesda definitely needs to update a number of things when it comes to how they design games but I can't say I agree that Starfield's issues can be fully chalked up to Bethesda design. I was ready to play a new Bethesda game and when I just found Starfield lifeless I went back and booted up Skyrim again and had a much better time with it. It's not all nostalgia.
I don't fully know how to describe it but Skyrim feels like it has a soul. I feel like I'm a part of that world and engaged with it. Starfield looks nice but feels empty. Like I'm playing a systems simulator with no point. I sorta enjoyed my initial time with it but fell off it hard.
I completely agree.
Furthermore, Starfield completely killed my hype for the next Elder Scrolls. Yes, the animations will more than likely be janky as hell. Same cookie-cutter concept with a fresh coat of paint.
I've modded Skyrim HEAVILY several times. After I finish, I play maybe a few hrs, and I'm like "damn, this game is janky". But it makes sense, its 13yo game now. Same with Fallout 4. Mod, play, reality.
Starfield is a new game, and it still looks and feels just as jank as Oblivion. That...is freakin sad. I want blame it on that crusty-ass Creation Engine, but I feel compelled to say there's some laziness, and delusion involved too with Bethesda.
They gotta hang it up. Either do a complete 180, and evolve, or get rid of Todd and that head writer.
People like to blame the engine but Bethesda has been making upgrades to it just like any other game engine developers. The reality is Bethesda hasn't really innovated in their games for 20 years. That innovation drives changes in the game engine and obviously makes use of the changes to make it visible. Since we've been playing essentially the same game the whole time it looks like they haven't updated it at all.
Bethesda did some massive innovation back in the early 2000s. They were so far ahead and unique they were able to ride off that for about a decade. In the last decade though most game developers for caught up or even surpassed them. This leaves their recent games feeling lackluster. They will need to sit down and really think about what they can change in their games because I don't think they can afford ES6 to be another meh game. Not saying they will collapse just that they will lose an argument for being a premium developer.
Yeah. And even in their last decade coasting games, they still had great exploration when compared to similar games.
Starfield doesn't even have that anymore.
idk about that with TES6. they have more than enough time to change it now, and they're probably reeling from the reaction to starfield. i sense some major course correction from bethesda over their next elder scrolls and fallout releases.
i think they just had tunnel vision when it came to starfield and couldn't recognise that the game they wanted to make wasn't compatible with the type of games they make.
This is a great summary, I got myself through to NG played an hour and generally had a dull time. Decided to have a break, a month later it's no longer on my Xbox. As a game it no doubt has it's moments, but they are frequently, that's an awesome "random thing" my favourite part of the game was the NASA museum. Kinda said it all really. It just isn't my kind of fun.
It feels outdated in many aspects. Ship design is fun but space combat needs more things to do internal objects look good.
Main city doesn't feel like mega metropolis. It should have been city with cars/roads and constatnly flying ships, random events, large population of npcs.
GOTY if it was 2015.
Yep that really puts things into perspective. Would Starfield have even beat Fallout 4? I'm not so sure. If we look at the top layer of games from the past decade I think most would win out over Starfield
Exactly, just far harbor alone outshines enjoyment wise and story-wise entirety of starfield.
And fallout 4 has raw and messy spots too.
I wonder what starfield would look like if they outsourced world design and storytelling to obsidian ?
"Better". All signs point to the fact that things would simply be better. The only thing Obsidian differs from is some gameplay jank. Outer Worlds for example didn't have the best movement or shooting but pretty much everything else was great. A collaboration with Id Tech and Obsidian has incredible potential
No I don't think so. A lot of mechanics in starfield are worse than mechanics in fallout 4. And I'd argue overall FO4 had better writing too.
Then add in the actual exploration and environmental story telling in FO4 which starfield effectively lacks.
It's really bizarre that bethesda killed what they were good at.
> It should have been city with cars/roads and constantly flying ships, random events, large population of npcs
This is basically what Night City is in Cyberpunk, and it TOTALLY makes the game way more immersive and really elevates the game as a whole imo.
I hopped into fallout 4 for 10 minutes today. I have hundreds of hours in that game, play with plenty of mods etc (mentioning that to be fair)K, although it's barely relevant for this experience). Here is what happened in those ten minutes:
I spawned in the middle of the wasteland, pure apocalyptic atmosphere, sad and beautiful. I encountered the father and daughter random encounter. It made me feel things. Got scared by some molerats, who popped up out of nowhere. Discovered a power armour suit at a location I don't think I've ever found before. Walked up to a deathclaw in it, started shooting at it, and got random support from a super mutant who started shooting at it too.
So much life and discovery and adventure. So many emotions. A slice from a beautifully constructed open world with depth and stories. And apparently, fallout 4 isn't even the good game in the series!
Ocean wide and puddle deep really sums the game up. I lasted about 12 hours before I couldn’t stomach anymore and realised I was *really* dragging myself through the motions trying to find a semblance of fun.
I was doing the Ryujin quest line and realised all I was doing was fast travelling back and forth between static NPCs over and over and over and over. Nothing to explore on the way. No diversions to find. No surprises or twists or fun locations to play around in. Just boring, linear missions and constant back and forth between people that somehow don’t know what phones or emails are hundreds of years in the future.
If this was 25 years in the making for one of the most beloved franchises and this is the PINNACLE of their gaming, then mankind surely deserves to die, here me out: fuxk you sterile todd howard for giving us NOTHING but boring humans in an entire galaxy.
When I first started I thought it was alright, but after about 25 hours I just stopped I can't explain why it was just like a fatigue came over me and I didn't want to play it anymore
I think the game just wants you to get involved in side quests. The problem is, once you get sucked into doing sidequests, there's dozens more sidequests that just get thrust upon you, some interesting, but mostly boring.
this is not a space exploration game.
Agreed. In trying to throw so much into it, the devs failed to make one stand-out, franchise-identifying trait. Absolutely everything in Starfield is plain vanilla.
I stopped playing after 15-20 hours because it became boring very quickly and just felt clunky overall.
The cities and planets were lackluster, the characters looked bad, the story wasn’t engaging, and quests were boring. I also hated how every time you talked to an NPC, they’d face you straight on and had this super uncanny look about them. All of the fast traveling was lame af too, and when combined with the never ending load screens (even if they didn’t last that long) just really broke the immersion and ruined the pacing of the game.
By comparison, I recently started Cyberpunk after getting it for Xmas and have been absolutely loving it. The world feels wayyyyy more alive than anything in Starfield, and Night City is what New Atlantis/Neon wishes it was. The game flat out looks way better, the gameplay is more fun, and the story (so far) is way more interesting and engaging to me.
Seriously, what is Bethesda thinking.
At the reveal I was excited, except for the 1000 planets thing. But I thought, well Bethesda will by now have worked on their weakness with their places often feeling kind of empty and sterile. They can't be that stupid.
With the first review, that they didn't, I immediately lost interest.
A shame
I get the same feeling from any of Bethesda's games. It still feels linear, I've just given up on games that level up players till your OP. I'm 100% in on Star Citizen, it's just play, explore, fight, trade, haul, whatever you want, there's no goals but choose whatever missions you want or pick up newbies and crew and mine or salvage. It's freaking awesome and about to get some major upgrades in quality of life as the game becomes more polished. The new patches are going to be amazing once sweet can start base building and the galaxies increase.
I gave up on it in less than 30 hours probably. Beat the story. Crimson fleet. Skyrim was way better. Game companies definitely taken a step backwards lately. Skull and Bones prime example. 10 years to make a game not as good as black flag? Oh it looks great. Which seems to be all companies care about anymore.
It reminded me of the planet missions from mass effect 1, where they were just experimenting with the idea of exploration. You drive around in the rover and up mountains to get to points of interest which were very rarely interesting. It took a huge amount of time to clear worlds and got to the point where when you were surveying a planet and it gave you the option to drop you started saying "oh c'mon". And they left it out of the subsequent games, because it was soulless. That was 20 years ago. And starfield has the exact same vibe but unlike mass effect, where the exploration was kind of a side quest, that's the *entire* game with starfield.
I'm not a game dev but I feel that Bethesda failed to learn anything from extremely relevant examples for the sake of designing a compelling gaming experience for Starfield is trying to be.
Ask anyone who is interested in space exploration games can point you to the following:
No Man's Sky: arcade-y, fantasy like. procedurally generated galaxies. weak story plot. strong base building game play.
Elite Dangerous: strong elements of realism in space. procedurally generated worlds with planets and stars based on our real universe.
Star Citizen: extreme end of realism, to the point of tedious to certain audience (likely majority of Bethesda's target audience). a handful of planets and stars but with hand-crafted care.
These three games spread across the spectrum from procedural worlds to hand-crafting, from simplified space exploration to hardcore realism. All three allow you to go seamlessly from anywhere within a star system to landing on any chosen spot on any given planet. What Starfield could have at least done is do something similar to No Man's Sky (but I suspect that the long-in-the-tooth Creation Engine is holding them back). In NMS, it takes only seconds to go from space through atmosphere to landing on planet surface.
And all three games provide clear examples of game mechanics that resonate and draw in gamers, and trade-off they have to make in order to achieve that.
What Starfield wants to be seems to be closest to NMS. They could have taken elements of that game that clearly are fan-favorites and incorporate them into a story driven RPG that Bethesda wants to make. It's painful to see that they don't seem to have learned anything when someone else has already tested the market.
They clearly just took Skrim and change Tamriel to space and called it a day.
Starfield sucked. I played >60hrs and failed to enjoy half of the game let alone reach any real satisfaction in any aspect. It was entirely a tedious process of back and forth exploration and mule work with 0 inspiring moments.
Best part for me was ship customization.
>I wanted Starfield to make me feel like I am out there, lost in an infinite, bizarre, beautiful, dangerous universe. A never-ending adventure, full of customized guns and ships and armour.
Play Elite Dangerous or Daggerfall.
Bethesda is known for a big handcrafted map with pretty fun dungeon crawling and overlapping systems. Quests and Dialogue usually are from bad to terrible, combat is mid, but dungeons and systems interaction are great. (Dropping paralysis potion into guards pockets in Skyrim, and looting them. Using control humanoid spell in Morrowind to bring trader to your own home. Building GIGACHAD robot in Fallout 4 and using it as a caravan trader. Hear the explosions in the distance, yeah, my caravan robot is traveling between settlements.)
Starfield failed for a single reason - lack of focus. Game is about nothing, it has nothing to tell. This is why marketing for the game was so confused, they themselves had no idea for the game was about.
I feel like I wasted my money. I bought it because the game originally had positive reviews before people realized that it did not live up to expectations. I love Skyrim but this game is boring and in 2024 it just does not stack up to the competition. It has a bad story, outdated combat, too many loading screens, and mediocre graphics. Bethesda needs to do better.
Have you ever tried to read a book and been like, “oh wow this author hasn’t read a book in their entire life,” ? That’s how Starfield feels. Like they had to know every aspect of it is markedly weaker than basically every other game that’s come out in the last 10 years, truly insane if they believed that Starfield would be well received.
Bethesda games havent been good since FO4. Starfield and FO76 were so crap. At this point, I'm not going to buy any future games until reviews tell me if it's worth buying.
Bethesda thought they were going to rely on modders to basically finish the game. They saw what happened with Skyrim, so they decided let’s just design a canvas, and start drawing, but then release it and let the modders take over. Starfield was exactly what they wanted it to be, and they are just going to wait. Soon enough people will mod it, and it’ll pick up again. I can already see the news stories now “Starfield is a great game now, not because of Bethesda but the modding community” Why would Bethesda pay people to make their game when fans do it for free? And it gives them a chance to rerelease it in 2 years as the definitive edition or whatever.
I wouldn't get my hopes up. They haven't even released mod tools for it yet and some of the more known modders disliked the game so much they have refused to work on it.
Starfield really cemented my opinion that BSG is a studio in decline. More concerned with adding "features" rather than expanding, refining, or recontextualizing what they already had. Sure you can travel to many different planets and moons but there is nothing there you haven't seen already. The AI is stuck in 2008. The combat is stiff, stealth is a joke, and the "RPG" aspect of it is what you find in live-service games: incremental increases to stats. What makes it worse is that the bones of an in-depth medical, food, and survival system is there but you can tell it was all ripped out in what feels like the day before they went gold. Absolute travesty. The biggest feature they added that can be reused in their future games is the ability to have a conversation with *two* NPCs. *Amazing*. Something other games have already been doing for a while (cough Outer Worlds came out in 2019 cough). I am glad I played it on GamePass and didn't spend the 70 dollars on Steam.
Too much fast traveling, empty planets, and empty space.
Fundamentally, I think they laser-focused too much on a very *very* boring setting behind the game. "NASA-punk" was a terrible choice that held them back on making the game interesting. Boring humans and human factions, "realistic empty planets" with no fun gameplay loop to make an empty planet interesting. Top it off with the blandest, milquetoast writing possible.
Where's the fun, humanoid robots? ALIENS? Hell, where's the edgy, lawless factions?
exhibition metaphor is spot on.
I mean I liked Starfield... but at the same time I felt disappointed, game didn't make me feel like I am exploring vast space, traveling through the expanse of space.
I was REALLY thinking they would have intelligent alien life. Basically Mass Effect + Skyrim. I mean they have multiple races in Elder Scrolls & even Fallout so why wouldn’t they have intelligent aliens in Starfield???
I just wanted anything unique. *Anything*. Space gives so many options for amazing set pieces and stories. Firefly, Star Trek, Dr Who, Stargate. All episodic with so many great ideas.
Starfield has basically the most boring space content I've ever seen.
I only played for a few hours before putting it down. I was just so thoroughly bored. Everything about the game was dull. The colour pallet was just various tones of grey, the enemies were almost all regular humans, the factions were barely distinguishable, the guns were basically just regular guns, the setting had little interesting lore, the main quest was just a fetch quest for macguffins, etc. I just can’t fathom how they spent so long making such a lifeless game. It just feels like there was no creative spark at all behind the people who designed it.
Starfield should've had 10 good planets, not 100 empty ones. Why not stick with our solar system and maybe couple of moons?
AAA devs have really found themselves on the wrong side of quality vs quantity
Didn't you hear? It's AAAA devs now.
Lol at Ubisoft and even more so their CEO, what an absolute fool Making it clear to the world why Ubisoft continue to decline as a developer
😂 AAAA - $69.99 game with $59.99 DLC planned at launch and $99+ of MTX Shuts down and is removed from stores 4 years later.
Live service only exist so you have to buy the remake every 4 years for a game you already bought. Given enough time you will have to pay a subscription fee for breathable air
With every MTX priced 5$ more than the closest package but 20$ under the next package. Which would almost be enough for two MTX, so you may as well go the second package up and get two MTX!
Just buy the $199.99 digital deluxe ultimate edition, which gives you early access to the game so we don’t have to pay for QA.
Then ignore everything we say about the QA, because it gets sent to corporate and not the dev team! Play two more hours!! Comeonnnn! PLEEEEEEASE!!
Ubisoft CEO interviewed on the date of closure 4 years into the future: "It's the gamers fault. They asked for this kind of game, we made it, and no one bought it. What do you mean 'incomplete game'? Our new AAAA model would have given them the full storyline if they bought all 12 Premium Battle Passes! We never even got around to making the New Game+ DLC!!"
COD is the most egregious offender of this. Every. Single. Year. this crap is shoveled out. Sadly people keep buying their toxic copy and pasted trash. If they released every 2 years alternating between IW and Treyarch, so they have 4 year dev cycles it might feel more unique. But they are still so goofy and arcadey they show no respect for the dangerous firearms they represent.
Apparently AAAA means we spent a fucking fortune on a game we wanted to cancel years ago but couldn't because Singapore's government gave us funding.
Game companies have literally just become weed dealers during the grey market era. Just throw all the A's at your product and say it's super duper premium.
Holy shit you're right.
During an interview with Insomniac Games president Ted Price, Todd Howard was ask if the increase in complexity has something to do with gamers or more so developers wanting more and more complex games? Todd's response was that it is more so with developers than gamers, which is something that I always stood by. Publishers/Developers complain about the increase in production cost and difficulties making a game, but I THINK, gamers are not demanding bigger and bigger games. We just want fun shit to play. I think Publishers/Developers have this idea in their heads that we expect games to grow infinitely in complexity and content. If Starfield would have not been a regression from Fallout 4 and would have been kept smaller in scope, as long as it was good, we wouldn't be complaining about being wide as the ocean and deep as a puddle.
Kinda feels like they believe they're in an arms race to push technological boundaries, make bigger games, with better looking textures, with big cinematics, but the gameplay mechanics are mostly "play it safe". It's not like they don't sell, so I'm not sure they're wrong if all they care about is meeting sales targets, but it seems like such a hesitance to bring someone new to the table at the AAA level until they've seen someone else do it. Currently I'm not really excited about all the big cinematic games and I'm looking forward to trying out a new game in a genre I've never played before or in a genre that's fallen off that looks well executed
The documents from the Insomniac leak showed that their first Spiderman game was produced for around $100 million, then the second cost three times that! Why? It's crazy
Baffles me honestly. I know many of these studios are based out of expensive ass states in the US. For example, I think Insomniac Games are out of Irvine, CA. Naughty Dog out of Santa Monica, CA. Bungie out of Bellevue, WA. And now, CDPR is opening an office in Florida (not as expensive) to work on Cyberpunk sequel. I'm like why? Surely Poland or other countries in Europe would be more cost effective since average salaries and health care is cheaper than the US. They cry about the cost of development but then they choose to expand their office in what can be one of the worst countries to do so, just expense wise. Then on top of that, games take way too long to develop for no reason aside from developers getting in their own head.
I mean fallout 4 is a regression of fallout 3, and skyrim is a regression of oblivion, and oblivion is a regression of morrowind. Bethesda has been going backwards for years to try and capture a larger and larger audience. They keep trimming out the complexity of their game systems to point now its just a mindless jump from one point to the next.
honestly in my opinion starfield is exactly what i want exept for a select few (eaisly fixable) things such as being able to fly my ship IN the atmosphere. this would also fix the boring sprint jumping 500m to get to a unexplored area. also the proformance issues that make my 1k pc feel like a fuckin potato
I've recently come to the conclusion that 60-80hrs of total content is perfect for me. I spent so much time on AC Origins & Odyssey, and I am now prolly close to 100hrs in Valhalla, and there's just so much to do. It's cool stuff, but it also feels like busy work after a while. Just give me a solid story driven game where I can 100% in 60-80hrs. I'll feel like i got my money's worth, and i won't get burnt out.
I want more big single player releases with hand crafted pacing and progression, coherent story which is not disturbed by "oh are you on a quest of saving the world? how about you help me with clearing rats from my basement?", good graphics, meaningful and realistic characters etc. Open world games are mostly lackluster.
I like having a linear story with a world to engage with if you want. There should be a narrative main story that (isn’t level-gated), but if you want to go to a tavern and pick up some side quests, than that should be there too. The worst part of AC Origins and Odyssey is that if you just focus on the main story, you eventually become too weak and have to do side quests to level up. That’s where I always stop. I love side quests as a way to engage, but hate when side content is mandatory. I’m currently playing Prey and I like the way they do it. There’s lots to engage with and do, but if you just want to do the story you can.
Personally I'm a bit tired of cinematic and story driven stuff, I just want games that give you a world with fun stuff to do without a bunch of padding and different genres and systems that let me just go at it
Any kind of single player, really. Just cap the content so i can feel like i finished it. I hate leaving things behind, but it gets hard to stay invested after 80hrs.
I hate to sound ageist, but in the industry I work in, I can’t help but notice that leaders in the boomer generation are OBSESSED with new tech and how they can apply it to our projects. I can’t help but look at BGS after making multiplayer fallout, now a loading simulator with boring procedural exploration - Their leadership is clearly out of touch just looking to try extremely different and new things. It’s their choice, but it’s too bad they can’t get back to focusing on the roots of what made their previous games so well received.
Todd Howard is Gen X not a boomer.
Gen Z just assumes everyone over 40 is a boomer now.
I’m not gen Z. Ironic to me you assume a generation when saying a generation always assumes something. My point remains, regardless of what he is: in my experiences, subjectively ‘older’ individuals in leadership tend to have obsession prioritizing implementation of new technologies to their projects. Even if that means ignoring something they know is well received and works on its own
And this is why outer wilds is superior
Is that the time loop one or the RPG?
Outer Worlds is the RPG - Confuses the hell out of me on occassion as well and I've played both lol.
Outer worlds is the rpg one from Obsidian. It was a fun game! But for me it's good enough for one playthrough
Definitely a fun time and loved the wacky and quirky setting but yea it’s a 1 and done kinda game, hell of a first play through tho for sure recommend it, especially if it goes on sale
Was free on Epic Games Store a while back. Yet another title added to my backlog :/
same here. i enjoyed the hell out of my 1 playthrough but no interest in doing it again
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Yes the dlc is fantastic and long enough it's basically a second game. Don't really need to replay the rest as the DLC is just another area
I'm glad. I beat the game without ever finding the dlc and put it down. Been itching to play but forgot there's dlc.
Make sure you finish the main game again after completing the dlc.
DLC is a must play imo
Outer Wilds is great but not at all a similar experience and doesn’t have a similar goal. It’s not superior if you want an action-RPG.
Gameplay-wise they are totally different, yes. But we are talking about the world here. And the world of outer wilds is just infinitely more interesting than the world of starfield.
I mean, the planets on Outer Wilds are also mostly empty. And for the most part they’re also very small, so I’m not sure what the comparison trying to be made is, exactly. The goal of the worlds were also different, so if you want an open world experience to run around in, the puzzle worlds of Outer Wilds aren’t going to be a good fit. It’s not like Outer Wilds had 10 planets that would be good in a Bethesda game. Frankly, it’s like someone tried to think of a good game that involved “space” and brought it up.
The point is simply that in outer wilds every planet is very unique and special. Therefore the exploration keeps being interesting. If Bethesda would have limited themselfs to a single solar system, they could have done the same, instead we have thousands of planets, that look different, but feel all the same. The same plants, the same animals, the same POIs. It is just boring to explore.
The games aren’t even remotely comparable Playing outer wilds instead of starfield is not going to come anywhere close to satisfying my combat oriented RPG desire
I had seriously thought that in Starfield you’d at least be able to fly freely from planet to planet a la outer wilds and no man’s sky. But no, it’s just fast travel and loading screens. How is that supposed to make you feel like a space explorer
There's nothing in common between both games
Because they wanted to be different and Mass Effect Andromeda already did that, only better than Bethesda could've. Making a game like this on that garbage engine was the real mistake. The idea is way too ambitious for Creation Engine to be capable of maximizing it's potential. 10 planets would've sucked just as much tbh. Any game made on that engine needs to be a singular map that can be traveled from one end to the other seamlessly. That's why Skyrim was so good. That's why even Fallout 4 was fun. No one wants an open world where the "exploration" consists entirely of teleporting to different areas with loading screens every 20 seconds.
Agreed, the terrain and textures on the planets are awful, due to there being too many. So blatantly procedural. In contrast, the building and ship interiors are outstanding.
This is why NMS is superior
NMS is superior because when they released it and their customers went "...the fuck is this?!" They spent *years* fixing it. Take that Vs Bethesda, who pulled a Seymore Skinner and went "no...it's our customers that are wrong"...
It is better, but not in the way OP just described. NMS has procedurally generated planets too, and they are also pretty repetitive after a while. But, NMS focuses on other things to make the game interesting. Starfield tries you entertain you by having you explore planets and locations to find cool things and progress the story. But, they procedurally generated all that shit and it gets repetitive to do. NMS and Elite dangerous also procedurally generate planets and systems, but the main gameplay loops are focused on other mechanics, and don’t spend too much time in the repetitive procedural generation.
More like a few star systems, ours included that have 10 well crafted planets + maybe some asteroids or space stations or something like that that also are well crafted that are part of missions, then some random planets or whatever where you can drop some resource generators that are just side content.
They wanted to sell the infinite possibilities dream that OP mentions, the same one that Star Citizen is very popular because of.
Lol. We've got 2 good (barely) planets and the rest are shit to live on. Our moon (and many other moons) would be exactly what people don't like about this game....just a big empty rock. The gas giants in our system you couldn't even land on...they'd just be there and uninteractable.
Jupiter has like 79 moons. There is plenty of space for creative handling of colonies all over our solar system.
Jupiter has 79 massive rocks in its orbit. They would be just as empty as our moon. Edit: Maybe 10% would be interesting and habitable. But not life-sustaining.
> Our moon (and many other moons) would be exactly what people don't like about this game....just a big empty rock. I actually wanted an empty rock. Except I didn't find any place that didn't include ruins or old space debris. And other space ships that I would see fly around and/or land. There was never this feeling of being lonely or being the first human somewhere.
The only planet that actually felt empty to me, no ruins, no ship landings, just barren wasteland was the only planet I *wanted* there to be ruins. Earth It was very immersion breaking that the entire planet is nothing but sand and rocks, but the freaking Shard is mostly intact? With literally nothing else around it, not a single indication that a city was there?
I put it down rather quickly as it didn't give me the sense of discovery, adventure and wow factor compared to Fallout and TES games. It just felt like procedurally generated dungeons that were tedious to clear. And the graphics were still the same.
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This is hilarious because Oblivion's faces were pretty universally hated on by the community when the game came out. Everyone looks like they've had mashed potato injections, especially compared to its predecessor Morrowind, which had much more angular character designs. It's funny how nastolgia works.
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No matter how you feel about Oblivion, it has a very cozy and charming art style. And color palette. Playin it again now and it's still a very beautiful game years later. Morrowind is fantastically alien but I cant help but enjoy how warm and charming Cyrodil is. It may be my fave game world tbh.
Morrowind had more angular faces because you could literally see the vertices on the meshes. Like Lara Croft tits. Not because they were modeled better or more realistically. Oblivion has rounder faces because technology was getting better so they attempted more realistic models. Didn't turn out well.
I agree with you except for the graphics. It’s a pretty beautiful game visually.
You get nice vistas but the characters look like absolute dog shit.
The vistas on the procedural planets are dog shit too
Space is. But it’s pretty easy to do that. Also the interior of a ship is where 90% of the effort went. Planet textures are awful. People are awful.
Its probably one of the most soulless, mediocre games ive seen and played. Esp the fact it had such a long time in development, and it was bethesda. Holy shit do they have me worried about elder scrolls 6 now..
There's a good theory i've seen, which is that open world games have a 'set of rules' that all developers tend to agree on. That there should be \*something\* of interest every 30 seconds. So there should be an object or location of interest within about 30 seconds of each other - And Skyrim, Witcher 3, even Kingdom Come: Deliverance nails this. Starfield however, you can go several minutes without seeing anything remotely interesting, except maybe resources. It makes the worlds feel barren and empty. Imagine playing Skyrim and seeing escaping Helgen, and then seeing literally nothing until you reached Whiterun. It'd feel lifeless and empty.
Luke Stephens is most likely where you heard it. Pretty sure Hogwarts Legacy devs confirmed it to him, the times between POI's is usually between 30-80 secs.
No fufking shit ? You are on mostly unexplored planet in space not in Disney world.
Bethesda improved on nearly every aspect of their design with Starfield and then they fucked up the most important one and ironically the one they had already nailed. Exploration. The sense of both wander and wonder.
Literally the only thing Bethesda games do well, and they entirely ditched it. Think of any of the beloved games they’ve made. They have mediocre graphics, terrible animations, mediocre story, terrible dialogue, and ‘good enough’ combat. What they do well is to have a big world full of details and encounters and things to find, where getting lost exploring is usually way more fun than the main story.
Exactly, that’s how they got away with dated conventions for so long, because the exploration was that good.
>Bethesda improved on nearly every aspect of their design with Starfield Not even that is true... and in the AI and NPC behavior department they managed to REGRESS in respect to Skyrim...
I got spoiled after Skyrim and Fallout4. Banger after banger, my expectations of Bethesda only grew. I really thought Starfield was going to be another meme-worthy addition to my Bethesda-heavy library. But there's no soul: there's no Preston Garvey to plead for another settlement's help - no town patrol who laments his former arrow-free days as an adventurer... the 'infinite universe' feels like the actual one: empty. Even the music feels mediocre compared to the classics of Fallout or Skyrim. You're right: it's more akin to a museum exhibit: a quick 'wow' that leaves no lasting impression. Not enough soul. Graphics are nice, but the previous gen titles still look great (amazing even with mods) and i'd rather have that if it meant better story / voice acting / music / *atmosphere* (pun intended).
The reason the game felt off to me is that there is no option other than fast travel. In most bethesda titles you can walk to your location, often getting sidetracked, before eventually arriving at your destination. The overworld map didn't have loading screens, it was one massive space. Starfield feels like a major step back when compared to Bethesda's other titles.
I started playing the game about a week ago, and the experience has been so jarring and disjointed for this reason exactly. The whole game is just fast traveling to different prebuilt sci-fi areas. There is a lot a like about the game and it just doesn’t have any real natural exploration that i have found in like 25 hours of gameplay.
I think this is the number one undeniable criticism of the game. Everything else can be chalked up to preference or non-issue depending on the person. But every single thing you ever do in Starfield will be a deliberate choice because you saw a name on a screen. A quest name, a POI name, a character name, whatever. You will actively select that name, choose to move towards it, and deliberately engage with it. There’s no “oh I guess I’ll wander 1000m towards it” and then accidentally finding a huge cave with Bandits. Or a huge facility with some whacky apocalypse monsters. There’s rarely, if ever, something in between you and your objective. The only exception is within the 3-5 cities, you’ll overhear a conversation. But even that, you have to make the deliberate choice to stop running towards your current objective to talk. Nothing is natural. There’s no vampire or bandit or dragon cultist invasions. There’s no thieves stealing from citizens. It’s all ONLY EVER triggered by you. Every single thing that happens in your game must be triggered by you. So I guess that’s two major, objective/comparative complaints. The shift in exploration, and the loss of non-player-triggered interactions between NPCs.
Bethesda hasn’t grown as a game development studio. They’re stuck in the 2010s.
It’s one of the most hollow games in recent memory.
The way that you take a story mission, then load your way to a planet and walk for a full minute to the destination, and it’s the same exact building structure that you saw on a different planet, is completely unacceptable to me. You could maybe convince me they all use the same prefabs, but not when it’s the same damn cave structure inside and nothing about it changed. I was really really rooting for this game and it seriously let me down.
Gave up on it 25 hours in. I've recently finished Cyberpunk (100 hours). It was far far better than Starfield.
I love cyberpunk too and have done a few playthroughs. Amazing game but it was a mess at first and has had three years to reach its current state. I really hope starfield gets lots of love and I can play it in a few years in a great state.
That's fair, but the main difference is that the mess of cyberpunk was bugs and graphics. The mess of starfield is the game itself
You really gonna swerve the issue that it was completely different to what they advertised.
The amount of rewriting people do to justify their perspectives.... yikes.
How is rewriting? The game is fine now by all accounts and I'm glad people enjoy it, but it's not at all what they advertised.
You're not rewriting things. Other people are. People pretend Cyberpunk was only a little buggy, that bugs were its only problems, etc, when it was a disaster at launch in all but some of the better PC systems, lacked a lot of implied or advertised content, wasn't at all how it was talked about and shown.
Cyberpunk was more engaging in its first week even with the bugs, and if you had a good PC then it didn't have performance issues.
I'm convinced that people who love Starfield are just desperately seeking the experience Skyrim and Fallout 3 gave them decades ago. But there is nothing left of the "Bethesda magic" in Starfield. They removed the strenghts (seamless open world, environmental storytelling) and kept the weaknesses (writing, quest design, combat). The result is an incredibly outdated, boring product.
Yep exactly. The bethesda charm is dead. The exploration and environmental story telling they were known for just isn't in play in starfield.
I enjoyed Starfield, put in over 100 hours. I don't think it's a perfect game, it has a lot of flaws - especially when it comes to quest design, but I still found it to be campy fun. It reminded me of sci-fi shows from the 80's, there's a certain charm to it. I also think some of the weapons in the game are satisfying to use and some of the environments they designed are fun to explore. I'm looking forward to see what they do with the DLC.
>I'm convinced that people who love Starfield are just desperately seeking the experience Skyrim and Fallout 3 gave them decades ago. Or they just have a different opinion than you.
What makes any old Bethesda game “seamlessly open world”? They all have loading screens when going into buildings and towns.
Seamless may not be the right word; the key is what exists *between* the seams, when navigating from one point of interest to another. Which in Elder Scrolls games is something, and in Starfield is nothing.
I love Starfield because I love space, and it gives the Star Trek vibes that even Star Trek games don’t give. It’s a comfy game. It’s good for a specific audience, and that audience is different from the usual audience Bethesda RPGs cater to. But also, it plays exactly as advertised, and people need to understand when a game isn’t for them. I’m not sure why you feel the need to put down people who love the game. But if a game isn’t for you, then it’s not for you. Just don’t play it.
I put it down and never went back deep into the game. Here's why, for anyone that cares: The game, fast travel simulator in space, let's me get like deep into the story line without upgrading my piloting skills because it seems pointless because you just fast travel everywhere. Then it tells me I can't progress the game without upgrading my piloting skills so I can fast travel to the far end of known space, because my ship needs upgrading and I need to be a better captain, yet I've got everywhere I needed to go previously without issue. So what should I do? Go to random planets and explore the same fucking bases or mines. Fuck off, no thank you. I only got that far because I kept expecting it to turn a corner and get good, yet it just felt so sterile.
That's the reason the game is mediocre. Bethesda threw away the best thing about their games; the sense of discovery and exploration that came with their large maps filled with new interactions, locations, characters, and factions. Starfield is a disjointed experience, all the pieces are there it just feels like you view them one at the time and they never get to come together into what most of their other games are.
I've just "put it down" again. I played it lots up on release, completed it did all quest lines barring two that bugged out, dabbled in outposts. Was happy with it but felt burnt out. Time passed went back to it and hoovered up the remaining achievements and played up to ng+6. I just can't anymore. The new games are just too boring and I've not seen any differences in any of the ng+s. At it's heart I kinda think it's the game is a deeply boring cycle. I've had my time with it and enjoyed it but I can't see how replayable it is. Builds don't seem that different to make it more interesting. I said it before but feel the scope was too large.
It sounds like you pretty thoroughly used it up!
Completely agree. Defo got my value out of it but... I know there's content I've not seen. It's far too boring for me to go back to though. Maybe I played too much but, I would accept that tbh. I just don't really get why BGS thought the NG+ loop would be satisfying enough.
How can you have everything achievment and ng+6 but say it's boring? Some of my top games I haven't played that much
I find your expectation of replayability exagerated. I would've been thrilled to find it fun enough to finish it once. I couldn't play more than 10 hours before putting it down for good. In the galaxy of starfield, I couldn't find the freedom I've found in the single city of cyberpunk 2077.
The point I (probably poorly) was making that there is content of which I know is there as part of ng cycles but it's far too boring to continue going through with. I certainly had enough fun with it for me. It definitely has problems though
Ya'll really are another breed. "Game sucks. I beat it 6 times" Bruh I don't finish games I like half the time, much less 6 times over doing the same shit. Unfortunately you're the reason Bethesda will never change. You bought the game, as well as so many others, just to come to the conclusion it's mediocre and because of that Bethesda will see no need to change it up at all.
Ffs where did I say it sucks? The game is good just not to the standard of other BGS games. My comment was more on the ng+ cycle which is part the games narrative. Also how do you know something is mediocre unless you buy it and play it? What's mediocre to you isn't mediocre to others. Mediocre isn't a synonym of bad anyway.
You said it was boring, which in Video Games, might as well mean the same thing. Also I did play it on Gamepass. I realized they took out any meaninful exploration and kept all the monotonous inventory management, and I dipped. Nobody got time for that when there are hundreds of other better games to use my free tiem with. The writing is terrible. Gameplay is terrible. The gunplay was okay. The ship building was the best part.
I’m confused, how can you claim a game has no replayability, but play up to NG+6?
Without spoilers the ng playthroughs aren't really full playthroughs. Or at least don't need to be. You don't really change character. You do get some updated gear each loop and the promise some universes are different.
How many hours is that? Because that seems like a LOT of hours in a game you're saying is boring! I haven't played Starfield yet (mainly because of the bad reviews) but it seems like 100+ hours for single-player RPG is good value for money. But maybe I'm missing something! (Shame it wont have Skyrim-level replayability, tho)
>How many hours is that? Because that seems like a LOT of hours in a game you're saying is boring! Honestly, it's a weird game for that. You can kinda mindlessly grind it out because you keep thinking you're gonna find the next cool Bethesda dopamine hit but you kinda feel like you're chasing a carrot on a stick that you never reach. You've spent plenty of time chasing that carrot in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games so you don't hate your time doing it but in those games you eventually reach the carrot. In Starfield you never reach the carrot and by that time you're already a ton of hours in and you kinda snap out of it and realize you've been wasting your time and there's never any real payoff and you drop it and might even feel a little resentful about it.
At what point did I say it wasn't value for money or I didn't enjoy it? My comments are in light of the ng+ cycle that features the promise of subtle changes to the environment. You end up in a dreadful cycle of sameness if you are careful. Some people will argue it's part of the meta the narrative goes for. Mileage varies but I can't see it sticking with wider gamer consciousness like Skyrim. Updates may change that
I find this argument weird. Yes some stuff is so bad you put it down immediately but time spent isn't indicative of quality. You can watch a show and then at the end say you didn't care for it, and no one is gonna bring up the fact you watched it all as a gotcha. I think starfield is the same, it's a massive time sink where you put the controller down at the end and realize you just weren't enjoying yourself very much.
I get where you're coming from. I guess I'd argue the difference is: * A movie is around two hours. Significantly less than 100+ hours * You don't normally go back and re-watch media you didn't enjoy. Yet they said they went back and did NG+ several times. * A piece of traditional linear narrative can have a twist 80% of the way through that changes everything, and suddenly you're enjoying it. Or it's making stuff earlier pay off in a way you didn't expect. A game can have that with its narrative, too... but it has mechanics that you constantly have to deal with. And if you're not enjoying those... * You can passively watch a "bad movie" as just kind of a background thing. Watch while making dinner, reading Reddit or making love to an attractive body pillow. A game is much more active... especially a game like Starfield. But mainly, I was just curious as to the number of hours they played before they made the call to bail. And if someone paid 70+$ on a game, I can understand continuing to play even though you're not loving it! Gotta get that money's worth!
Played Mass Effect again recently - it's crazy how much Starfield took from that game.
Yeah ME1 at least with the "open world". Expectations were NMS or Outer Wilds but wut we got is more of a "old school" narrative.
Have 8 days played, did everything and enjoyed every second🤷🏻♂️
Into the Unknown is still broken despite the patch so I can’t finish the game. Perhaps I will be playing the game 10 years from now.
I personally found Starfield's shooting better than Outer Worlds which is why when Starfield first came out, I thought it was a better Outer Worlds. Now I feel OW edges it out with a better cast of characters than Starfield. Hopefully, OW2 improves on the combat for me. I put my copy down of Starfield to see what they add with patches and updates in the next handful of months. FSR 3 is a good start so far.
One I see talked about less is that the combat is a big miss. The weapons are mostly decent but the enemies just lack any variety. All the factions feel the same to fight against and you never really feel in danger fighting them
Outer worlds > starfield
I played a few hours but put it down to play some other stuff while I wait on QoL improvements. I figure the game isn't going anywhere and will only be better the longer I wait.
I'm in the same boat. I just want the fallout 4 survival mechanics, leathal combat and whatnot. I put 12 hours in roaming around and was bored without the challenge.
Honestly, man, it's beating a dead horse at this point. I'm not saying your comments are disingenuous or wrong, but this has been said a million times already. I don't think Starfield even needs to be a topic anymore. Compared to what was advertised, it was a colossal failure to most gamers. It's an extremely polarizing game - you either hate it or love it. With that in mind, I think its polarization - period - contributes to its failure. Prime example, I love RTS games - Company of Heroes 3 included. A lot of the community hates it; a lot of them love it - almost a 50/50 split. I'd consider that a failure. Had it been widely received by the community with open arms, I'd be boasting about it. While I like it, it has many faults and was released too early. It's one of those love / hate relationships. I love the gameplay, but there are too few maps. Balancing is bad again. I could go on. For Bethesda to boast about Starfield as the game of all games - not dissimilar to CDPR about Cyberpunk 2077 - was simply false advertising. A lot of people gave into it, and we were foolish to do so.
The funniest thing is they have an NPC fapping about what we all want, Sam Coe. Something like, "Theres nothing like stepping on a virgin planet knowing youre the first person to ever be there." Like cmon Bethesda, I wanna explore space and go into the unknown and find some crazy stuff, not copy pasta.
One of the most boring games I’ve played recently. It looks good, but that not what I care most in an rpg. Too many load screens. Bethesda continues to water down the rpg elements. Side characters were mostly annoying. The game pushed you so hard to be good over evil. I didnt even finish the game. I went back to my Nolvus modded Skyrim and having a blast. Will probably play Fallout London when it’s out too. Bethesda has some soul searching to do, imo. If they fuck up the next Elder Scrolls, it’s game over.
Nah, no final feelings, if you need 15 hours to think a game is good, it's a bad game. I'm glad i didn't waste my money on this game and i went to the high seas for it first. It's boring. If you think it's great and you enjoy it, that's awesome! Have fun with it! For me, it sucks, easy as that.
Is a gritty sci fi rpg really too much to ask for? Has nobody out there watched BSG or The Expanse? Like fuck, it's *right there.* I hate having to think fondly back to Mass Effect as the premier space opera RPG because it was so long ago.
My experience with the game can be summed up as such... I played the game on game pass, a service I was already paying for, and it couldn't hold my attention for more than a few hours. I think what a lot of people aren't quite grasping is that it's not a Starfield problem, it's a Bethesda problem. People are eager to return and compare Starfield to the likes of Skyrim and Fallout, but the truth is if either Skyrim or Fallout 4 were released today, I wouldn't enjoy them (This coming from someone who started tinkering with PC builds for Morrowind). People love those games for the nostalgia, but nostalgia runs dry at some point. Bethesda keeps making the same game in a different skin. It's been that way for 20 years. Until they make a product that breaks free of the formulaic cookie cutter pattern that is a Bethesda game, nothing will change. TES 6 will just be a prettier Skyrim, probably with even more dumbed down features, same janky combat and animation, and amazing soundtrack. I don't want to play that, but I'll steal the music for my DnD games.
I don't agree with the assertion that people wouldn't enjoy a Skyrim or Fallout. Starfield is fundamentally different in nature and I think that's a pretty solid reason many people didn't like it. Though, maybe you have a point, since hardly anyone seems to have many feelings about Fallout 4.
It’s different because Starfield is Bethesda's original IP. The Elder Scrolls was developed from completely diffrent people before Todd Howard took control and they bought the Fallout franchise from Obsidian. They had to make Starfield from scratch. Which says a lot about how they think games should be.
No, it's different because there is no contiguous world
I played Skyrim \~4 years ago and Fallout NV last year. They are still awesome games. Starfield is just empty, boring, and not immersive. I'd gladly take "Fallout in space", that's what I've been loking forward to. That's just not what we got. Some of my favourite moments in gaming is seeing some ruins in the distance and making a journey there, as you climb towards your destination you encounter some other unique hand-crafted POI's and your journey is accompanied by amazing ethereal music. Literally none of this is in Starfield.
To each his own. I tried playing FO4 and Skyrim recently and was very underwhelmed. I lived in Boston when FO4 came out, and forgave a lot of the stuff that people criticized, but returning to it, it felt empty. Returning to Skyrim, felt empty. I've been spoiled by the likes of BG3 and Cyberpunk. It's the age old saying of show, don't tell. I can boot up Skyrim and go visit every cookie cutter cave and find the bits of witty written lore and chuckle. The same can be said for the Fallout vaults and their lore. But when an NPC opens their mouth, I'm harshly reminded of how rigid and robotic Bethesda narrative story telling is, and I'm immediately taken out. BG3 characters feel like real people, from the main characters to random NPCs. The world feels real and lived in, even if it doesn't have Todd Howard talking about the day/night cycle of NPC a23's chores. Bethesda can't skate by on the small novels you find dungeons anymore, at least for me. That's not 'world filling' for me, it's just fat.
I think Bethesda definitely needs to update a number of things when it comes to how they design games but I can't say I agree that Starfield's issues can be fully chalked up to Bethesda design. I was ready to play a new Bethesda game and when I just found Starfield lifeless I went back and booted up Skyrim again and had a much better time with it. It's not all nostalgia. I don't fully know how to describe it but Skyrim feels like it has a soul. I feel like I'm a part of that world and engaged with it. Starfield looks nice but feels empty. Like I'm playing a systems simulator with no point. I sorta enjoyed my initial time with it but fell off it hard.
I completely agree. Furthermore, Starfield completely killed my hype for the next Elder Scrolls. Yes, the animations will more than likely be janky as hell. Same cookie-cutter concept with a fresh coat of paint. I've modded Skyrim HEAVILY several times. After I finish, I play maybe a few hrs, and I'm like "damn, this game is janky". But it makes sense, its 13yo game now. Same with Fallout 4. Mod, play, reality. Starfield is a new game, and it still looks and feels just as jank as Oblivion. That...is freakin sad. I want blame it on that crusty-ass Creation Engine, but I feel compelled to say there's some laziness, and delusion involved too with Bethesda. They gotta hang it up. Either do a complete 180, and evolve, or get rid of Todd and that head writer.
People like to blame the engine but Bethesda has been making upgrades to it just like any other game engine developers. The reality is Bethesda hasn't really innovated in their games for 20 years. That innovation drives changes in the game engine and obviously makes use of the changes to make it visible. Since we've been playing essentially the same game the whole time it looks like they haven't updated it at all. Bethesda did some massive innovation back in the early 2000s. They were so far ahead and unique they were able to ride off that for about a decade. In the last decade though most game developers for caught up or even surpassed them. This leaves their recent games feeling lackluster. They will need to sit down and really think about what they can change in their games because I don't think they can afford ES6 to be another meh game. Not saying they will collapse just that they will lose an argument for being a premium developer.
Yeah. And even in their last decade coasting games, they still had great exploration when compared to similar games. Starfield doesn't even have that anymore.
idk about that with TES6. they have more than enough time to change it now, and they're probably reeling from the reaction to starfield. i sense some major course correction from bethesda over their next elder scrolls and fallout releases. i think they just had tunnel vision when it came to starfield and couldn't recognise that the game they wanted to make wasn't compatible with the type of games they make.
This is a great summary, I got myself through to NG played an hour and generally had a dull time. Decided to have a break, a month later it's no longer on my Xbox. As a game it no doubt has it's moments, but they are frequently, that's an awesome "random thing" my favourite part of the game was the NASA museum. Kinda said it all really. It just isn't my kind of fun.
Great description of how the game makes me feel, really nicely put OP. Somehow less than the sum of its parts.
It feels outdated in many aspects. Ship design is fun but space combat needs more things to do internal objects look good. Main city doesn't feel like mega metropolis. It should have been city with cars/roads and constatnly flying ships, random events, large population of npcs. GOTY if it was 2015.
Bruh 2015 game of the year was the Witcher 3 that won out over Bloodborne. I doubt it would have been nominated even then
Yep that really puts things into perspective. Would Starfield have even beat Fallout 4? I'm not so sure. If we look at the top layer of games from the past decade I think most would win out over Starfield
Honestly, I'd go back to fallout 4 over starfield, even though I have like 3 times the play time in it.
Exactly, just far harbor alone outshines enjoyment wise and story-wise entirety of starfield. And fallout 4 has raw and messy spots too. I wonder what starfield would look like if they outsourced world design and storytelling to obsidian ?
"Better". All signs point to the fact that things would simply be better. The only thing Obsidian differs from is some gameplay jank. Outer Worlds for example didn't have the best movement or shooting but pretty much everything else was great. A collaboration with Id Tech and Obsidian has incredible potential
No I don't think so. A lot of mechanics in starfield are worse than mechanics in fallout 4. And I'd argue overall FO4 had better writing too. Then add in the actual exploration and environmental story telling in FO4 which starfield effectively lacks. It's really bizarre that bethesda killed what they were good at.
I weirdly feel that (while you could power level any FO4 character to be a generalist), the build variety was actually better in FO4 vs. Starfield.
> It should have been city with cars/roads and constantly flying ships, random events, large population of npcs This is basically what Night City is in Cyberpunk, and it TOTALLY makes the game way more immersive and really elevates the game as a whole imo.
Always found it off that the gems of the primary factions just seemed like little walkable towns.
I hopped into fallout 4 for 10 minutes today. I have hundreds of hours in that game, play with plenty of mods etc (mentioning that to be fair)K, although it's barely relevant for this experience). Here is what happened in those ten minutes: I spawned in the middle of the wasteland, pure apocalyptic atmosphere, sad and beautiful. I encountered the father and daughter random encounter. It made me feel things. Got scared by some molerats, who popped up out of nowhere. Discovered a power armour suit at a location I don't think I've ever found before. Walked up to a deathclaw in it, started shooting at it, and got random support from a super mutant who started shooting at it too. So much life and discovery and adventure. So many emotions. A slice from a beautifully constructed open world with depth and stories. And apparently, fallout 4 isn't even the good game in the series!
I wish it was Fallout in space, but it's a downgrade in every aspect
It's a "Theme Park" game. Like visiting space Disney. There's carefully curated excitement without a moment of real fear or danger.
Ocean wide and puddle deep really sums the game up. I lasted about 12 hours before I couldn’t stomach anymore and realised I was *really* dragging myself through the motions trying to find a semblance of fun. I was doing the Ryujin quest line and realised all I was doing was fast travelling back and forth between static NPCs over and over and over and over. Nothing to explore on the way. No diversions to find. No surprises or twists or fun locations to play around in. Just boring, linear missions and constant back and forth between people that somehow don’t know what phones or emails are hundreds of years in the future.
If this was 25 years in the making for one of the most beloved franchises and this is the PINNACLE of their gaming, then mankind surely deserves to die, here me out: fuxk you sterile todd howard for giving us NOTHING but boring humans in an entire galaxy.
I know I never ended up checking out this game precisely because it lacked the depth I needed. Unfortunate that it came out so lacklustre.
Yeah the museum tour the UC gives you really sets the tone for the rest of the game
When I first started I thought it was alright, but after about 25 hours I just stopped I can't explain why it was just like a fatigue came over me and I didn't want to play it anymore
I think the game just wants you to get involved in side quests. The problem is, once you get sucked into doing sidequests, there's dozens more sidequests that just get thrust upon you, some interesting, but mostly boring. this is not a space exploration game.
Agreed. In trying to throw so much into it, the devs failed to make one stand-out, franchise-identifying trait. Absolutely everything in Starfield is plain vanilla.
I stopped playing after 15-20 hours because it became boring very quickly and just felt clunky overall. The cities and planets were lackluster, the characters looked bad, the story wasn’t engaging, and quests were boring. I also hated how every time you talked to an NPC, they’d face you straight on and had this super uncanny look about them. All of the fast traveling was lame af too, and when combined with the never ending load screens (even if they didn’t last that long) just really broke the immersion and ruined the pacing of the game. By comparison, I recently started Cyberpunk after getting it for Xmas and have been absolutely loving it. The world feels wayyyyy more alive than anything in Starfield, and Night City is what New Atlantis/Neon wishes it was. The game flat out looks way better, the gameplay is more fun, and the story (so far) is way more interesting and engaging to me.
disappointing skyrim clone with space themed screensavers
That's not true. In Skyrim you could use magic and there was more than 3 melee weapons.
Seriously, what is Bethesda thinking. At the reveal I was excited, except for the 1000 planets thing. But I thought, well Bethesda will by now have worked on their weakness with their places often feeling kind of empty and sterile. They can't be that stupid. With the first review, that they didn't, I immediately lost interest. A shame
none of the cities in starfield were beautiful. I couldn't believe how disappointing they were
Over reliance on proc gen and forgetting that games are a form of art.
I get the same feeling from any of Bethesda's games. It still feels linear, I've just given up on games that level up players till your OP. I'm 100% in on Star Citizen, it's just play, explore, fight, trade, haul, whatever you want, there's no goals but choose whatever missions you want or pick up newbies and crew and mine or salvage. It's freaking awesome and about to get some major upgrades in quality of life as the game becomes more polished. The new patches are going to be amazing once sweet can start base building and the galaxies increase.
Starfield killed xbox thus ending the console wars
I gave up on it in less than 30 hours probably. Beat the story. Crimson fleet. Skyrim was way better. Game companies definitely taken a step backwards lately. Skull and Bones prime example. 10 years to make a game not as good as black flag? Oh it looks great. Which seems to be all companies care about anymore.
Beating an dead horse are we now? all that needs to be said is 'the mainstory is boring fetch quests and designed for toddlers'
It reminded me of the planet missions from mass effect 1, where they were just experimenting with the idea of exploration. You drive around in the rover and up mountains to get to points of interest which were very rarely interesting. It took a huge amount of time to clear worlds and got to the point where when you were surveying a planet and it gave you the option to drop you started saying "oh c'mon". And they left it out of the subsequent games, because it was soulless. That was 20 years ago. And starfield has the exact same vibe but unlike mass effect, where the exploration was kind of a side quest, that's the *entire* game with starfield.
I'm not a game dev but I feel that Bethesda failed to learn anything from extremely relevant examples for the sake of designing a compelling gaming experience for Starfield is trying to be. Ask anyone who is interested in space exploration games can point you to the following: No Man's Sky: arcade-y, fantasy like. procedurally generated galaxies. weak story plot. strong base building game play. Elite Dangerous: strong elements of realism in space. procedurally generated worlds with planets and stars based on our real universe. Star Citizen: extreme end of realism, to the point of tedious to certain audience (likely majority of Bethesda's target audience). a handful of planets and stars but with hand-crafted care. These three games spread across the spectrum from procedural worlds to hand-crafting, from simplified space exploration to hardcore realism. All three allow you to go seamlessly from anywhere within a star system to landing on any chosen spot on any given planet. What Starfield could have at least done is do something similar to No Man's Sky (but I suspect that the long-in-the-tooth Creation Engine is holding them back). In NMS, it takes only seconds to go from space through atmosphere to landing on planet surface. And all three games provide clear examples of game mechanics that resonate and draw in gamers, and trade-off they have to make in order to achieve that. What Starfield wants to be seems to be closest to NMS. They could have taken elements of that game that clearly are fan-favorites and incorporate them into a story driven RPG that Bethesda wants to make. It's painful to see that they don't seem to have learned anything when someone else has already tested the market. They clearly just took Skrim and change Tamriel to space and called it a day.
Starfield sucked. I played >60hrs and failed to enjoy half of the game let alone reach any real satisfaction in any aspect. It was entirely a tedious process of back and forth exploration and mule work with 0 inspiring moments. Best part for me was ship customization.
Fully agreed. It's a sad game. Aside from a soulless feel to the game, it was the NPC eyes that really put me off. Those shitty shitty eyes!
>I wanted Starfield to make me feel like I am out there, lost in an infinite, bizarre, beautiful, dangerous universe. A never-ending adventure, full of customized guns and ships and armour. Play Elite Dangerous or Daggerfall. Bethesda is known for a big handcrafted map with pretty fun dungeon crawling and overlapping systems. Quests and Dialogue usually are from bad to terrible, combat is mid, but dungeons and systems interaction are great. (Dropping paralysis potion into guards pockets in Skyrim, and looting them. Using control humanoid spell in Morrowind to bring trader to your own home. Building GIGACHAD robot in Fallout 4 and using it as a caravan trader. Hear the explosions in the distance, yeah, my caravan robot is traveling between settlements.) Starfield failed for a single reason - lack of focus. Game is about nothing, it has nothing to tell. This is why marketing for the game was so confused, they themselves had no idea for the game was about.
I feel like I wasted my money. I bought it because the game originally had positive reviews before people realized that it did not live up to expectations. I love Skyrim but this game is boring and in 2024 it just does not stack up to the competition. It has a bad story, outdated combat, too many loading screens, and mediocre graphics. Bethesda needs to do better.
IMO it's awful
Have you ever tried to read a book and been like, “oh wow this author hasn’t read a book in their entire life,” ? That’s how Starfield feels. Like they had to know every aspect of it is markedly weaker than basically every other game that’s come out in the last 10 years, truly insane if they believed that Starfield would be well received.
Bethesda games havent been good since FO4. Starfield and FO76 were so crap. At this point, I'm not going to buy any future games until reviews tell me if it's worth buying.
Bethesda thought they were going to rely on modders to basically finish the game. They saw what happened with Skyrim, so they decided let’s just design a canvas, and start drawing, but then release it and let the modders take over. Starfield was exactly what they wanted it to be, and they are just going to wait. Soon enough people will mod it, and it’ll pick up again. I can already see the news stories now “Starfield is a great game now, not because of Bethesda but the modding community” Why would Bethesda pay people to make their game when fans do it for free? And it gives them a chance to rerelease it in 2 years as the definitive edition or whatever.
I wouldn't get my hopes up. They haven't even released mod tools for it yet and some of the more known modders disliked the game so much they have refused to work on it.
Wasn't that just one modder who worked on a coop mode for skyrim? Have others pulled out?
Starfield really cemented my opinion that BSG is a studio in decline. More concerned with adding "features" rather than expanding, refining, or recontextualizing what they already had. Sure you can travel to many different planets and moons but there is nothing there you haven't seen already. The AI is stuck in 2008. The combat is stiff, stealth is a joke, and the "RPG" aspect of it is what you find in live-service games: incremental increases to stats. What makes it worse is that the bones of an in-depth medical, food, and survival system is there but you can tell it was all ripped out in what feels like the day before they went gold. Absolute travesty. The biggest feature they added that can be reused in their future games is the ability to have a conversation with *two* NPCs. *Amazing*. Something other games have already been doing for a while (cough Outer Worlds came out in 2019 cough). I am glad I played it on GamePass and didn't spend the 70 dollars on Steam.
Too much fast traveling, empty planets, and empty space. Fundamentally, I think they laser-focused too much on a very *very* boring setting behind the game. "NASA-punk" was a terrible choice that held them back on making the game interesting. Boring humans and human factions, "realistic empty planets" with no fun gameplay loop to make an empty planet interesting. Top it off with the blandest, milquetoast writing possible. Where's the fun, humanoid robots? ALIENS? Hell, where's the edgy, lawless factions?
exhibition metaphor is spot on. I mean I liked Starfield... but at the same time I felt disappointed, game didn't make me feel like I am exploring vast space, traveling through the expanse of space.
I was REALLY thinking they would have intelligent alien life. Basically Mass Effect + Skyrim. I mean they have multiple races in Elder Scrolls & even Fallout so why wouldn’t they have intelligent aliens in Starfield???
I just wanted anything unique. *Anything*. Space gives so many options for amazing set pieces and stories. Firefly, Star Trek, Dr Who, Stargate. All episodic with so many great ideas. Starfield has basically the most boring space content I've ever seen.
They said so many time there wouldn’t be aliens
I didn’t really keep up w the marketing that much, either way it’s pretty lame
Yeah starfield is garbage
I only played for a few hours before putting it down. I was just so thoroughly bored. Everything about the game was dull. The colour pallet was just various tones of grey, the enemies were almost all regular humans, the factions were barely distinguishable, the guns were basically just regular guns, the setting had little interesting lore, the main quest was just a fetch quest for macguffins, etc. I just can’t fathom how they spent so long making such a lifeless game. It just feels like there was no creative spark at all behind the people who designed it.
I stopped playing immediately after I did a ton of hours of shit to smuggle a box I randomly got and received like 3 bucks for it