I mean, I wouldn't put Starfield in the same family as Diablo IV, with most of the game behind a microtransaction wall. Bethesda promised Skyrim in Space. We got Skyrim in Space. Skyrim is a polarizing game (much like Witcher 3 is, often for opposite people/reasons).
I don't think Starfield is "not so bad", I'm having the best gaming experience I've had in a year or two. I think all the critiques are valid, but I don't really care about most of them.
So why should I play a game I don't enjoy to punish the makers of the game I do enjoy? I have a very limited amount of gaming time. It gets the game I'm having the most fun with.
I feel like I'm in some sort of fugue state with everyone comparing this to Skyrim. In what way is this like Skyrim? Skyrim, for all its flaws, at least had hand crafted worlds with interesting things to see and do in them. From what I've seen of Starfield, that has been completely replaced by procedurally generated barren worlds. Like yeah, you can 'explore' them, but for what? What is there even to find?
Skyrim, for all its flaws, at least had hand crafted worlds with interesting things to see and do in them
Virtually 100% of main and faction story arcs are hand-generated content. I would go further and say Starfield used more distinct model-sets than Skyrim did.
For context, Skyrim's map was ALSO procedurally generated, but most (or all) of the content was built on top of it by hand. We have comparable amount of manually generated content in Starfield, and then tons of procedural content allowing for a larger overall world.
Starfield is approximately 100,000x larger than Skyrim. So yeah, a lot of it is going to be procedurally generated. But you follow a general path, and everything along that path is NOT.
So... no fugue there. Both have similar amounts of handmade content, but Skyrim has a lot of filler content, and that filler content is largely barrel worlds, something that works because planets tend to be barren.
Granny
Valentine's singing in orbit
Mrs. Kurtz school field trip
Space pilgrims
Just a few random orbital encounters that I've found.
Planet side there are plenty of structures to explore but no real reason to do it; the random loot system ensures you're as likely to find something exploring on your own as you are fulfilling a bounty contract. There is no special reward or motivation to exploring vs finding these structures via a mission.
What part of Diablo 4 is behind a microtransaction wall? Some skins?
The problem with both games is they disrespect the player's time by turning everything into a slog.
That's way more of an issue with modern game design trying to maximize hours played while minimizing actual content than paid skins. Those may suck, but to be fair it was Bethesda who introduced the damn thing in the first place. I'd rather pretend the premium skins don't exist but have a fun game than have no microtransactions and a boring 150+ hours of empty world with a total of 35 hours of interesting beats.
What part of Diablo 4 is behind a microtransaction wall? Some skins?
I think it's "Most of the skins".
The problem with both games is they disrespect the player’s time by turning everything into a slog.
I can't speak for Diablo 4 on this, but that's not Starfield. Just like other Bethesda games, Starfield clearly gives feedback when you're leaving major storylines and running procedural content. Radiant Quests have mixed reception, but the number of radiant quests you actually need to complete any Bethesda game is in the single-digits.
If you stick to main-story and faction-mainline quests, you touch virtually nothing that wasn't hand-crafted for your pleasure. No slog. No grind. No nothing. And I find it pretty easy to differentiate between the handcrafted side-quests and the procedural side-quests. If you don't, just ignore the more obscure-seeming side quests anyway.
a boring 150+ hours of empty world with a total of 35 hours of interesting beats
Is this a personal self-discipline problem of yours? A game with 35 hours of great content is worth the price of a game like Starfield, and you can just NOT go out and play the "150+ hours of empty world" if you don't like it. While I haven't beaten Starfield yet (I like procedural content and spend a lot of time in it), that mainline content isn't gated behind doing procedural stuff. That stuff was added on top of the content you directly pay for.
For me, I love going system to system finding ships to pirate. I haven't really gotten into planetary exploration yet. Maybe I won't enjoy that as much, or maybe I will. If I don't enjoy it, I just won't do it and it won't detract from the game.
Exactly what parts of Starfield struck you as great?
I'll agree that around the 30 hours mark of my playthrough I was thinking the game felt big and expensive and was excited to spend more time in that universe.
But it wasn't long after that even the faction quests ended up just so repetitive in scope and even level design that I was over it.
The number of loading screens just to go from point A to B for a fetch quest is probably the worst of any open world game...ever.
It's like they finally had SSD tech so they just decided to throw any concern over loading out the window in game design.
The story is mediocre, the voice acting is meh, the gameplay loops are extremely repetitive.
The thing you like is the one thing I also enjoyed of ship combat with boarding enemy ships. That was done well, outside of the fact you can't physically go outside your ship.
And "you can play 35 hours without hating it" as the barometer of whether a game is satisfactory sells yourself and your time short. You as a consumer deserve more, and making excuses for outdated and poor game design doesn't do yourself any favors. Legitimate complaints about games getting their fair amount of attention leads to better games, as happened with games like No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk. The only way Bethesda's game devs are going to get the appropriate resources from management to focus on making a game that doesn't waste your time with repetition on the next one is if there're enough complaints about the repetition in this one that management is concerned about repeating bad press which might impact sales.
You do yourself and the devs disservice minimizing or dismissing complaints and only do the execs a favor.
That's great if you don't feel that way. I'm guessing that as you put more hours in the title you'll feel different, but hope that's not the case and your enthusiasm remains. But for many players that were quite excited for the game, it ended up being rather disappointing.
Exactly what parts of Starfield struck you as great?
The major city locations. The major factions/plots. But specifically, I was referring to the approximate amount of hand-made content from previous research. If you don't think handmade Bethesda content is great, well obviously don't buy it like I wouldn't buy another Witcher title.
The number of loading screens just to go from point A to B for a fetch quest is probably the worst of any open world game…ever.
Not my experience. It's worse than any seamless game, but I found the loading screens and loading times to be pretty reasonable compared to other games. Specifically, I noted that loading times were shorter. And as much as people bitched about the "sequence" loading screens, they're a whole lot nicer than the black-screen-with-image I was used to in the past.
The story is mediocre, the voice acting is meh, the gameplay loops are extremely repetitive.
Now you're going full-subjective. As my college English professor used to remind us, "I didn't like it" is not a real metric for quality. I don't agree the story is mediocre. I don't agree the voice acting is meh. And I don't agree the "gameplay loops" are repetitive. Unless you choose to stick with the intentionally repetitive content.
And “you can play 35 hours without hating it” as the barometer of whether a game is satisfactory sells yourself and your time short
Actually, my metric was "35 hours of GREAT non-procedural content". YOUR metric is 35 hours without hating it. It may help to remind you that I also enjoy the procedural content. But a lot of people are whining that the whole game is procedural, despite having comparable hand-made content to any other Bethesda game.
If you don't like Bethesda games, you shouldn't be complaining about Starfield, the same way I don't complain about some fancy wine sucking (I don't enjoy wine). If you DO like Bethesda games, your critiques above probably apply to them more than Starfield. Same issue. This is a good "wine" for people who like "wine".
You do yourself and the devs disservice minimizing or dismissing complaints and only do the execs a favor.
I'm doing myself and devs a disservice by loving a game because it's the game I was looking for and the game I was promised? Do you even hear yourself? When I have a hankering for Whiskey, if someone puts a glass of Macallan 25 in front of me, I'm not going to bitch. I'm going to enjoy it. No matter who I'm doing a disservice because it's not a Budweiser
I dunno why you're getting downvoted, cause you're completely right. The microtransaction hell in Diablo is all for shit like horse armor. The game plays exactly the same whether or not you've spent an extra dime. With that being said, it is 100% bullshit to have any extra transactions, micro or not, in a $90 game.
He's getting downvoted because despite everything you said, the valid complaints about Diablo 4 are not similar to complaints about Starfield.
It's not the "Diablo 4 microtransactions for skins is OK" (which I disagree with) that got him downvoted, it's "both games disrespect the player's time".
Why can't we have both and the people who want to play each type of game enjoy what they like.
I personally haven't found SF or D4 to be a slog. D4 remained fun for me though the story and clearing the map which took me up to lv60 and then I put it down to pick up again later, SF is a long game but I haven't felt like I've had to grind or repeat content to keep up, everything I've done is a bespoke quest and that's given me enough experience and cash to level up what I want and buy a top level ship, etc
If you don't like long games you may well find those games a slog but then you have games like the new Assassin Creed focused at people who want shorter games.
Why can’t we have both and the people who want to play each type of game enjoy what they like.
We can. But they're different. I have a problem with microtransaction-driven games, even if it's skins. I won't fault you if you like D4, but D4 is the first (second if you count the mobile shit) Diablo game that I haven't put 100 hours into, or even played. The complaint about microtransactions is valid and objective however, and there have been criticisms on cosmetic-microtransactions for almost a decade now. It's not a feature by any stretch of the imagination, and nobody who plays the game seriously prefers "$25 armor set" to "customizable armor set"
Nobody "has to enjoy" Starfield. But the topic of the hour is whether Starfield was overhyped or (imo) whether Starfield is a valid target for the kind of criticism that came up when BG3 came out and other game studies complained it was too well-polished.
There are objective complaints and subjective ones. I don't care about the subjective ones. You don't want base-builders, so be it. You don't want procedural quests, whatever. Sometimes I play games with a playtime of 30 minutes because I don't want a long game. But Starfield was not misleadingly advertised or a bug-riddled mess. We got Skyrim in Space, and that's what we were promised.
That's a breath of fresh air. I'd appreciate that even if I didn't want to play Skyrim in Space. If someone comes out with a game and says "It's just like Witcher 3", I'll thank them and never touch it. I won't fault the game for being like another popular game I happen to hate.
I only brought up D4 here because people are saying Starfield is "just like D4"
the case that it was overhyped and made people buy it before anyone knew they were being taken for a ride
I'm still waiting. I'm not the only one. We keep asking for a list of things that were hyped about Starfield that we're missing, and so far that list is exactly zero items long. Most of the things people are bitching about, I would have told them 2+ years ago Starfield wasn't going to have, and nobody ever promised.
Further, how are we "taken for a ride"? I've spent $20 on Starfield so far (Xbox game pass) and have had nothing but a fucking blast. Are they secretly screwing me by making me enjoy it?
I'm going to reiterate what I said elsewhere. To my understanding, Bethesda promised me Skyrim in Space. When Starfield came out, Bethesda delivered Skyrim in Space. What exactly is fraudulent or misleading about any of that? I'm sorry if you expected Minecraft in Space or No Man's Sky 2. But nobody ever said this would be that.
Oh maybe those who didn't like it far whatever reason accept that things are subjective and their experience is not universal. Plenty of people have enjoyed this game and found things to like even if it's not perfect. You don't like it, that's also a valid point of view, but you can't dictate to other people that they also shouldn't enjoy it.
Because a lot of gamers don't feel fooled. They expected a Bethesda game and got a Bethesda game for all the good and ill that entails.
You're entitled to dislike the game, but complaining that it's not something else is silly. It's like the people who complain about a lack of easy mode in Dark Souls. Sometimes a game isn't for you and it's ok to move on and play something else, but trying to convince other people they're wrong for enjoying it is a fools errand.
They expected a Bethesda game and got a Bethesda game for all the good and I’ll that entails.
That's also all we were promised. No false advertising here. Bethesda knows what Bethesda fans want, and they make the game Bethesda fans want. It's literally the only gaming experience left where I don't feel like I have to over-research and pirate-demo to figure out if I should buy a game.
Yeah, I was willing to concede with Cyberpunk that although it was a good game on PC/Next Gen from day one, it had a lot of issues on the formats most people own, and CDPR had overpromised the level of detail and systems in the city.
However I can't recall anywhere where Todd, Bethesda or MS promised stuff more than "Bethesda RPG, but in space".
Yeah. But I love that about CP. I got it dirt cheap when everyone was bitching, and just waited for them to fix it before I started playing. Best $17 I ever spent for a new AAA game! I can be patient.
I always find it funny that Hello Games over promised and the backlash was such that GOG extended its refund policy, but Bethesda does the same thing every time they release a game and gamers just call it a Bethesda game and that's the end of it or "modders will fix it"...
This is what I don't get, Bethesda were very clear about what the game was and wasn't in the lead up to release, yet some people seem to have convinced themselves it was going to be something entirely different and are now angry about that.
It's driving me crazy how many people are claiming Bethesda overpromised. I could have written an accurate review (critiques and all) of the game based upon what I saw/heard before its release.
Bethesda promised Skyrim in space and that's what we got, a game exactly like the one they released 12 years ago but in space. They should have just called it Skyrim: Space Edition.
i don't entirely agree with that statement about it being identical to a 12-year-old Skyrim. But if it were true, what's the problem? This whole "bleeding edge stupidity" thing was the first reason we all started to hate AAA games 20 years ago.
Maybe you're too young, but "can it handle Farcry" was an insult to AAA. Now if it doesn't use every graphics acronym under the sun at once, and have multi-phased smell reflection when you walk into the bathrooms, then it's shit.
Also, for the record, a 2014 Engine (UE4) remained the top engine for basically anyone to make games in until last April. Improvements in graphics have slowed down because we're getting closer and closer to the limit.
Right, but the problem with your logic is in thinking your viewpoint is concrete and everyone else's is wrong. Fun is subjective, you can't tell people they didn't have fun with the game
You can throw as many buzzwords at it as you like, but that doesn't diminish the lived experience of people who had fun with the game. Why are you so insistent on convincing people they didn't enjoy it? There must be a buzzword for that mindset too.
I get it for "free" because I sub to xbox service. I'd have paid $70 for it, though. As for time, I could have spent it in other games, but it's the first really fun gaming experience I've had in quite a while.
It's easy to make accusations against Bethesda fans like this, but they're unfalsifiable. You could make the same accusations of people enjoying any other game and there's nothing they could do to prove they actually enjoy the game. Except that they DO actually enjoy the game.
I've played about 20 games this year. If I had to pick only 1 to play (which isn't far from the truth anymore with my second job), it would be Starfield. And you might be surprised at the names of games that rank below it on the list. Like Elden Ring (which I will never touch again after my cheat-easy-mode run), Hitman WoA, etc. Maybe I won't be playing it in a year, or two years. Maybe I will.
I think it's interesting you brought up Souls Games. Quite literally your first paragraph, I feel about them. I have 100% buyer's remorse about Bloodborne, and lesser buyer's remorse about Elden Ring. Neither will I ever touch again. To some extent, I kept trying to convince myself the story is worth their unwillingness to give gamers the controls that would actually make the game fun... and I gave up trying to have fun playing it.
I agree with all your points but cannot disagree more on the inclusion of a difficulty slider for Souls games. I have been very adamant about a difficulty slider "cheapening the experience" or "jeopardising the artistic intent", but it really doesn't make a difference - at all.
If your enjoyment of the game stems from the fact that the game is difficult and the inclusion of a difficulty slider cheapens your "sense of accomplishment", then you might have to reevaluate your priorities.
Consider people with disabilities, for example, who are interested in the lore of Souls games and want to experience them themselves but can't because the games present themselves to be too difficult (for example in the way some bosses in Elden Ring have seemingly endless attack chains that give you no breathing room at all, requiring very precise input on the player's side), thus gatekeeping the experience from a potentially enthusiastic and interested player.
Or consider people who are just not interested in a hyper tense and difficult time and just want to experience the story and atmosphere of the game. What's wrong with that? How does that impact your enjoyment of the game if their experience is completely separate from yours?
For reference, I have platinumed numerous FromSoft Souls games and would not feel any less "proud" of that if the games had difficulty settings.
Nailed Souls on the head. I'm an older gamer and my reflexes are dead. I never really liked hard games. I like the story. I bought Bloodborne for the lore, and fully regret it. Hours of fighting the same area with zero progress is NOT why I wanted to play it. I bought Elden Ring after I found out there were cheat mods, tried to play it without them and enjoyed nothing, so added the Easy mod knowing I risked screwing up my Elden Ring account (whatever that means to me), having to play offline the whole time.
I regret buying Elden Ring because I don't want to have to almost pirate the game I bought just to play it because they want to make it hard.
Thing is you're trying to compare two different things, one is the (lack of) quality of the product in general compared to what was promised, the other is a design choice.
I meant to discuss Souls games' exclusion of difficulty sliders in a vacuum, separate from the Garfield discussion.
As prefaced in my comment, I agree with your points about Garfield: the developers should definitely be held accountable for their shortcomings and for hyping up a product that falls flat of its promised contend.
But I don't agree with difficulty sliders being shunned by the "hardcore" community. I feel like this nurtures an elitist environment that doesn't do its fanbase any good other than gatekeeping and separating fans.
Again, just a separate discussion altogether, not related to the Garfield discussion.
Huh? Starfield is the best RPG Bethesda has made since Morrowind, because it's an actual RPG. It has the best quest design since Oblivion, with almost none of the quests boiling down to "Go there, kill guys", but actually needing to talk to people, pay attention to the environment, interact with the world and make choices (and your Background, Traits, Skills and faction membership all add new ways for you to go about a quest.) The weapon design is an incredible improvement over Fallout 4. Almost everything in Starfield is either a massive step up or a return to form compared to their previous work and you don't actually know what you're talking about.
And that's not even to mention things like the ship building system, which is genuinely extremely impressive.
We must be playing different games. Every storyline quest I've done has been:
Go to this random place
Gun down everyone in sight because my mandatory companion can't stealth.
Talk to the named bad guy.
See if I win a coin flip.
4a. Walk out with a McGuffin.
4b. Gun everyone down again, then walk out with the McGuffin.
It's nothing but, "Go there, kill guys," as you call it. Everything is a fetch quest with faceless mooks between me and whatever fifth turn I need to take to get to the end of the corridors in the space dungeon.
And comparing the game to Morrowind is laughable. Morrowind was an amazing feat of world building based on actual player choice. Starfield is a bunch of boxes to tick to see the next space cliche.
Half the damn quests don't even require me to leave the city they started in. Maybe you just had bad luck picking all of the quests that are like that and none of the others and I had the opposite. Or maybe you did 3 quests and are talking out of your ass. I don't know, I wasn't there when you played the game. I mean, did you even do anything other than main story? Join a faction, do sidequests, anything? Because I could point you to half a dozen quests just in early game New Atlantis that are entirely reliant on dialogue, choices etc. without any killing and that do not give you a mandatory companion. Like, do the UC Security quests, investigate the brownouts in the well, talk to the preacher guy, the art guy in Jemison Mercantile, the collector guys in Terrabrew, the bartender at Viewport, the scientist by the tree. The game will literally put half of these quests in the quest log from ambient dialogue, and the other half you get from just engaging with the world and talking to NPCs in the first city you visit. It's not like these are incredibly hidden quests you have to go out of your way to find. Hell, when you go to Akila the game just plops a hostage negotiation right in your face. I mean, come on, you're either being wilfully disingenuous or you played that game blind as a bat.
And if you don't believe me and don't want to bother playing the game yourself again, just look at the playthrough of somebody like Many A True Nerd. He did a lot of the quests I just mentioned.
I'm curious, you mentioned the hostage scenario at Akila. Does talking down the Shaw gang give you a peaceful method of obtain the artifact near the end of that quest? I try not to save scum so when that whole ordeal went south I had to gun my way through everyone outside of the cavern, then of course only after half her people were dead did Shaw bother striking up a conversation. Not trying to be an ass here, I'm genuinely curious as to whether or not that would've actually changed with prior gameplay.
I tried a few side quests and none of them were at all compelling, though I'll admit I didn't bother going too deep with most of the factions. I don't know, each one I tried consisted of walking back and forth and listening to people talk about trees being too loud or some shit I couldn't care about. Maybe if I'd gone to Space Tokyo or signed up with the space pirates that would've been different. But following the main storyline and tooling around the first few planets was repetitive and just more Bethesda-style gun in, then take the shortcut out after getting the thing. I gave up on the game after around 20 hours of not enjoying the experience.
If you're liking the game then good for you but my experience was that none of the choices I made actually mattered and the world Bethesda built was bland and cliche. And the game mechanics themselves were nothing ground breaking at all, except maybe ship building but that took way too much effort to grok. I tried to like the game but couldn't.
I don't know. I didn't manage to talk them down on my first playthrough, so who knows, but I don't think so. But I also don't think every game or even every RPG needs to be designed with a complete pacifist route in mind. The Shaw Gang mission is also about the only one I can think of that actually fits completely with the "formula" you described, outside of maybe the tutorial.
Also, yeah, Space Pirates might actually be a quest for you, or rather being an undercover agent in the space pirates. You just get straight up thrown out of UC SysDef and have them as your enemy if you run and gun those missions, so you have to sneaky, use your persuasion and actually look around your environments if you want to stay with the good guy faction. The part on the cruise ship is especially good for this. Your choices there definitely matter in that regard.
Maybe it's just a game for people that are really into space in a specific way. Like, sometimes I'll just look at pictures of the surface of Venus or Mars and think about the fact that there's billions of these worlds just existing with no observer. Just rocks, dust, storms, rain, volcanoes, all types of things being there and happening, even though no one can see it.
To me this reads like you havent done the Ryujin plotline which has a lot of stealth involved, and the UC/Crimson Fleet one that has some detective work/stealth
So tell your mandatory companion to "wait here" when you plan to Stealth Archer. Or give her a chameleon suit. Ironically, the "stealth archer" meme is the most valid critique of Bethesda games, and you're complaining because it isn't working well for you.
Plenty of people have enjoyed this game and found things to like even if it's not perfect.
"People enjoy the slop so the slop must not be that bad."
but you can't dictate to other people that they also shouldn't enjoy it.
Yes but we can absolutely point out they're enjoying slop and are probably the biggest contribution to mainstream games becoming more and more soulless slop.
"I'm Mr High and Mighty, upon my golden gaming chair. I only sample the finest 10/10 works of art and have no time for lowly 7/10 slop that the peasents enjoy. If only they'd accept that I know better what they should be allowed to enjoy"
No? I'll admit that something like Enderal: Forgetten Stories, while very fun and better than Skyrim in a lot of ways, is still like an 8/10 even though I like it a lot. If we're going on the game alone and not how great and generous the developers are to the community, Deep Rock Galactic is a 9/10.
have no time for lowly 7/10 slop that the peasents enjoy.
7/10 for Starfield is incredibly generous. It's a 5/10 if we're all being honest and not circlejerking about Bethesda.
If only they'd accept that I know better what they should be allowed to enjoy
You can like and play whatever you want.
But if you share the opinion that overall quality of games, especially triple A titles, has gone down in the past 10-15 years, and you can sit here and give Starfield: Yet Another Wide as an Ocean but Deep as a Puddle + Boring Experience from Bethesda ™️ is a 7/10; I don't think you really have the right to complain about the declining quality of video games when you're essentially contributing to it by claiming incredibly mediocre games are above average.
If you feel good that you paid $70-100 for what's really feels like a $40 barely out of early-access game, hey, I can't change your mind.
what I find more wild is as usual the toxic gaming community can't handle opinions. I like the game, I don't care if others don't, but acting like I don't have "standards" cause you don't like it is rediculous. Likewise, I got bored so fast of baulders gate 3 but apparently it's the second coming of christ and I must be wrong. No, I get why people love it, it just wasn't my jam. Starfield is
This entire thread is hilarious. I've been paying for therapy like a sucker, I didn't know you could get infinite amounts of free psychoanalysis just by suggesting that Starfield is somewhat underwhelming.
Yeah, it's pretty underhwelming. There's a lot of people who claim Starfield is a "great Bethesda game" but "people hyped it up too much." In my opinion, it's a terrible Bethesda game. The best thing those games do right is you can set off in a direction and along the way, find a world full of little things. Landmarks, unique little stories, side quests, and even just interesting items to grab. Starfield dropped all of this in favor of incredibly generic proc gen planets that have the same couple of outposts you'll see on every planet. Like THE SAME. The interiors are THE SAME. Every safe, dead body, message log is THE SAME.
It lacks the one thing that brought me back to Bethesda games despite all their flaws.
Same. The interface looks kinda cool, but the UX is awful, and the story is boring. The biggest reason it doesn’t capture you IMO is you just jump around from place to place instantaneously right from the start and there’s no obvious reason to just go exploring somewhere. In Skyrim you’re literally on foot and the world slowly expands around you and you become interested in it.
In Skyrim you’re literally on foot and the world slowly expands around you and you become interested in it.
Yeah, and exploration wisey I prefer Oblivion even more. Skyrim feels smaller and less varied, and horses and other fast-travel options are cheaper and easier available.
I got to hear a talk from a level designer who worked on Skyrim at Bethesda who had since left the company, and we needled them with some questions about Starfield and it was interesting at the time but even more interesting in the hindsight of now playing the game.
We kind of intuited through some of their answers that it sounded like they felt that with Skyrim, individual level designers and programmers and people had way more freedom to put stuff into the game; many of the more memorable side quests and interactions were never remotely planned to be in there but were just threwn together by a couple people who stayed overnight recording voices and programming in these quests and interactions and stuff, and it sounded like they did not think that was was the case with Starfield and it was a much more rigid and controlled dev environment, which would explain why so much of the stuff feels like it's randomly generated stuff you've already seen instead of coming across these weird handcrafted things.
They also talked a lot about open world level design in general and talked about how good open world level design is often inspired by Disney world, where they pay super close attention to sightlines where ever you are to make sure there's always (ideally multiple) interesting things to see and explore. You shouldn't need a waypoint or hud marker ideally, you should just walk out of one thing, look around and go "hey that looks neat let me go see what's over there", discover something magical, walk out and repeat. That kind of feeling made sense and resonated with me at the time and made me think of the new Zelda games and some of the better open world games I've played, but now in the context of Starfield, it feels like the loading screens between planets pretty fundamentally broke that cycle, and disrupted that feeling of exploration that Skyrim gave you.
I was at a talk by Bruce Nesmith for a game development club I was in in college shortly after FO4 released (and also shortly after they filed the trademark for Starfield but before we knew anything).
One thing I remember well is him saying how they messed up with the FO4 dialogue options. Every one was "yes, no (for now), sarcastic yes, and more information." I had a reasonable amount of faith at least that would be fixed in Starfield. It isn't, though it's like they thought it being presented on a wheel was the part people were upset with, not the complete lack of choice. In Starfield the choices are identical but they're now presented in the classic box at the bottom of the screen.
The "Disney effect" is exactly what's missing from Starfield that makes it so boring. Because of the format of the planets and star systems, you can't just see something to go to. Discovery is done through a menu, which is incredibly boring.
And on top of that, when you do land on a planet, there's literally nothing to do and see. It feels like there are no more than 10 unique buildings that get swapped in and out... once you've seen them, there's nothing left to discover.
It would have been infinitely better had it been 1 star system with like 4 planets and 20 moons. Each one with multiple locations on the surface. Instead of this thousands of planets but basically all randomly generated none of them really interesting.
They kept saying that's realistic because most plants are boring but it's a RPG not a SIM so that logic doesn't track.
The best space game is still The Outer Wilds and that game has only about 5 planets with the largest one only been about half a mile across. Scale isn't everything.
As an old-schooler, I think this is all funny. A lot of the Daggerfall fans were disappointed in Morrowind because it moved away from procedurally generated "everything else". The world felt so tiny.
Starfield adds some procedural outside of its core paths to give us that unlimited replayability, and people just complain about it.
I’ve played TES games since Daggerfall came out. That was my first giant open world game, and despite all of the horrible game breaking bugs I played it so much I risked my college degree.
Based on all of the descriptions and the fact that I’m right now only playing games that run well on the steam deck, I’m skipping this one for now. I couldn’t imagine the thousands of hours I’ve spent playing and replaying TES and Fallout games. But every release gets more dumbed down, it seems.
Honestly, the only thing keeping me from even checking it out is that it sounds boring. I’m still totally overplaying BG3, I love playing Stray, and Depth is great when I have limited time or attention. If everyone was raving about it, I might check it out, but as it is, I can wait.
Not since Daggerfall, but been a big TES fan since falling in love with Morrowind. Each subsequent entry to the series has been more disappointing then the last, but Skyrim was decent enough that I still put a good chunk of hours into it. Now though, TES is basically a dead series to me. I'm not remotely interested in seeing where the series goes in modern Bethesda's hands. It will take overwhelming evidence that Bethesda has somehow changed for me to pick up TES 6.
Largely the same story from me. One of the things I always pointed to for TES is just the movement. Morrowind, everything is open you can levitate, acrobatics significantly alters how you get around, mark+recall, teleport spells to the shrines, several in-universe fast travel systems, and don't get me started on the scrolls of icarian flight. Oblivion comes around and you see more instanced cities, less verticality in your movement, to my recollection no teleport spells, fast travel is a menu. I don't even think there was a system like skyrims wagons that kiiiiinda function like the silt striders. Not to say Skyrim is any better. In fact,it's even worse! You're pretty much able to move like a normal person. Mountains? Actually kinda a problem, I'll get over it (literally) but gone are the days of chugging a levitate potion, or fortifying my acrobatics and GETTING OVER IT.
I'm in the same historical boat as you. Arena was one of my first games on my 486. Here's my take.
Starfield is Skyrim in Space with Daggerfall's procedural generation. It may not be the perfect game (or for some people, even a good game), but it is the close-to-ideal Elder Scrolls experience in space.
Honestly, the only thing keeping me from even checking it out is that it sounds boring
I tried a Daggerfall playthrough where I went town to town looking for loot and doing nothing else. It got boring because the towns all started to look alike. So I stopped and just played it how it was meant to be played.
There's no "boring" take if you ignore the procedural filler content and outpost system (which Bored me in my last FO4 playthrough) and focus on the storyline and main areas. The other stuff is all there for those of us who enjoy mission-fun. I LIKE pirating ships again and again, but maybe you don't. Literally the boring complaints come from the fact that they gave us Daggerfall-level places to explore, with Daggerfall-level repetition.
This is the first one that’s made me want to check out the game. I actually weirdly enjoyed the randomly generated dungeons that were basically all the same, probably because I had never played such a completely open world game before. At least some of it had to be the novelty compared to games like Ultima or the D&D games out at the time.
I’ve always played a lot of the RP part in my head - like in Morrowind I’d usually play as an escaped Argonian slave who became a thief-assassin after winning his freedom with a hatred for the Dunmer.
I’d this one is leaning back in that direction, I’ll check it out sooner rather than later.
The thing I like most is that the procedural stuff is never forced on you. Go pirating a bunch of random ships with random people. Or stick around to the Mars colony. Go exploring random military and science bases, or only go to the ones that were handcrafted. It's really not hard to avoid the procedural content that bores you if any does. Nothing has bored me so far.
I learn the games I like from "what's wrong with it". Here's what's "wrong" with Starfield
It's not a physics simulator. Ragdoll is about the best you're getting. The ship-building is unprecedented for an RPG, but not Space Engineers.
It's not an action shooter. People ridiculed that guards won't aggro on you if you happen to shoot near them. There's a video of someone drawing a minigun outline around a chill guard
It's not a seamless space simulator. You get load screens and the bases you're building are cooler than FO4 but no minecraft. The FPS portion is much more polished than ship-flying.
It's not a NY Times bestselling storybook . There's a few tropey factions and a few obvious plot points. There's one specific mission where you'll want to take the "sneak an atomic bomb into the building and reenact Fallout3's Megaton bad version" strategy whether you play good or evil, but you won't have that option (you'll know the one I'm talking about if you see it). In that one case, I'd appreciate a "something good happens if you find a way to slaughter everyone in that boardroom", but again... not what the game is about.
...all of the above, of course, sums up to "Skyrim in Space".
That all sounds reasonable. I mean, Skyrim has the classic feature where you stealth shoot an arrow into somebody and they say “Who’s there?” followed by “I guess it was just the wind.” or whatever - with an arrow sticking out of their chest. At some point it just becomes a classic Bethesda aspect of the game. The base building was my least favorite part - but that was more about having to run back to defend stuff rather than just pushing through on side quests.
My funniest moment is realizing that grenades are better stealth weapons than a pistol. Someone sees you shoot a silenced pistol, you're screwed. If someone watches you throw a grenade, but you get into hiding fast enough, they don't put 2 and 2 together between the thing you threw and that random explosion.
I was in a certain important location and accidentally hit the grenade button... So without thinking I ran. Everyone but one died, and nobody was mad at me. So I looted all the corpses, and walked on whistling.
God that reminds me of almost EVERY bad day I had in Fallout games.
I've thoroughly enjoyed Starfield so far, put about 80 hours in and haven't finished any of the questlines yet (largely intentionally, partially because I'll get sucked into another questline and get distracted). I like the outpost building, the ground combat is fun, the space combat is ok, not on the level of Elite or Star Citizen, but still entertaining.
Solid game to me. Maybe it didn't live up to people's wildest expectations, but I went in expecting an enjoyable experience and got it. I don't really get the hate for it.
Make your own opinion, don't base expectations off of the unwashed masses. Or do, or don't play it. You do you
I went in with fairly low expectations. I've seen Bethesda's trajectory so mostly knew what to expect. It thoroughly dissapointed me still.
How did you deal with the outpost building? There's no way to sort items coming into an outpost so eventually the links all get clogged. For me I built a massive stack of containers that it all flows into, but I still have to go through and pull out junk that's being used less. It sucks to use. I was really looking forward to that part of the game and it's like they didn't even consider the user experience with it. That's not even mentioning decorations not snapping.
From another of my comments:
I was at a talk by Bruce Nesmith for a game development club I was in in college shortly after FO4 released (and also shortly after they filed the trademark for Starfield but before we knew anything).
One thing I remember well is him saying how they messed up with the FO4 dialogue options. Every one was "yes, no (for now), sarcastic yes, and more information." I had a reasonable amount of faith at least that would be fixed in Starfield. It isn't, though it's like they thought it being presented on a wheel was the part people were upset with, not the complete lack of choice. In Starfield the choices are identical but they're now presented in the classic box at the bottom of the screen.
The lack of sorting is really my only gripe with outposts. Right now, I have everything funneling into one main outpost and accumulating in a massive wall of containers, haven't really jumped into automated crafting yet. Building aspects have always appealed to me in games, so I've enjoyed just optimizing resource collection and setting up a supply chain.
I'm not installing any mods until I finish my first playthrough, but a sorting mod will be my first download.
I didn't play much Fallout outside of a scratched copy of FO3, so can't speak to any issues with the dialogue from that perspective. I don't have any major issues with it
That’s fair. I’ve been initially disappointed on a lot of their games due to the slide from doing basically anything in Daggerfall (but you might get stuck in a wall if you turn a corner too close) to Skyrim’s as-linear-as-open-world-gets approach. And I had about 4-5 false starts in FO4 despite playing all the other releases to the ending. Maybe it’s something that will click.
I do have to say that I am finding the Deck implementation of Cyberpunk unplayable without an external monitor and keyboard, so that sets an additional bar.
I'm pretty sure you won't like it, at least not until lots of mods fix things. I haven't gotten around to Daggerfall yet (but with Daggerfall Unity I want to eventually), but I have played everything since Morrowind. I had the same experience as you with FO4, despite actually enjoying the world and game at large. I still haven't finished the main quest. Starfield is so dumbed down and streamlined. You have almost no agency in the stories. Every single thing is told directly to you even when you're "uncovering a mystery" and it's super boring.
I'm gonna keep playing it, I just have better things to do at the moment. I have about 35 hours sunk into it. It will get better in time with updates and mods.
It's not Bethesda's greatest game but it's not a terrible game in general. I definitely think companies need to stop over hyping their games as some groundbreaking game of the decade only to release a generic RPG.
But capitalism demands that games are overhyped. That hype will inevitably lead to more sales, and to that end it genuinely doesn't matter if the game itself lives up to it.
Can we really be honest with ourselves for a second. It's not the greatest game ever and it's not the worst game ever. It can just be a game that some people like and others don't.
I personally like it, but I can %100 see why others might not. It doesn't need to be deeper than that really.
I find the hype of something is inversely proportional to the quality of the end product. If some game company put 7 years into a game and their marketing was, "could be alright, see how you like it". I'd be all over that shit like white on rice.
Cyberpunk is a great open world RPG once you get past the 2-3 hours of mandatory railroaded story missions. Seriously I don't know how they fucked that part up so badly. It's like they saw the platinum chip storyline from New Vegas and said "You know that's cool, but what if instead of letting the player choose we make them watch a feature length movie about this plot?"
They really need a "start me after Konpeki Plaza" mode with a few thousand €$ and a handful of perk points thrown in.
The story is genuinely good but really drags on after you've seen it once or twice. I have the "skip dialogue" button setup to a macro that spams it like 50 times and a quick button on my mouse to trigger it.
It's all pretty baffling when you realize there are multiple genuinely good and well thought out builds in the game that are effectively mutually exclusive without a way to reset your perks, so you really need to restart the game to see them, but this is my third run through and I can't imagine doing this again any time soon.
I'm sure there will be a mod for it eventually. Right now there are save files for each background that have already done Act 1, which is probably what I'll use for future playthroughs.
Okay, I just want to clear up that bugs were not the only reason people were upset. They literally were hyping things up prerelease that weren't even in the game. That's why they spent so much time being sued in the EU for it.
The writing is also amateurish, and there's a lot of 'cyber' but not a lot of 'punk'. People were right to be upset, and personally I think they still should be. The only reason their PR got turned around was because of an anime that released based in the world, and now suddenly the game's being handed 'labor of love' awards—they hadn't even done much to fix up the game at that point!
So yeah. Not just bugs. I'm sure I'm even missing things.
Okay, but this was more than prerelease hype. This was showing footage to players things they can do, with the explicit intention of driving up pre-orders and day one sales (I think pre-ordering is extremely silly, I don't participate, but that's neither here nor there). Lying about your product to get people to pay $60 for it is extremely unethical, and some EU governments found it to be enough to take them to court over. So this is beyond your personal 'judgments'. Sorry.
Limiting this arbitrary contest to just AAA games is pretty silly, seeing as they have the budget to hire amazing writers, and some of them get blown out of the water by indie titles. That's not the argument you think it is. Gaming is just wider than that, and I would argue the boundaries should be expanded to include all entertainment seeing as all forms of entertainment are making a bid for your limited time/attention, but that's just me. If you must have ONLY AAA games, then Red Dead games, GTA, and Mass Effect games are some from off the top of my head. Granted I don't play that many.
Your bar for labor-of-love must be really really low if a game just working is enough for you. That same year, No Man's Sky was much more deserving of the award as it isn't being made by a corporation with endless resources, and yet it managed to improve itself at least twice as much.
Tbh, you writing out several paragraphs defending yourself for enjoying Cyberpunk kinda smells like fanboy behavior to me. You try to be reductionist and dismissive a lot in what you wrote, which is pretty lame and anti-intellectual. We're here to discuss the facts, not what you enjoy spending your money on. More power to you, spend your money however, but I'm not here to discuss that with you.
There’s also some choices in the relationships V can take, but they don’t change everything much. That said, I think I makes sense that what V does wouldn’t really have much of an effect on Night City.
The choices in relationships basically unlock endings. The game a distinct lack of alternative methods to complete missions via statcheck, which is very bethesda to me.
There are some, but its very few. For instance i went almost full cyberrunner but my cyberrunner abilities didnt give me alternative skips to many missions
That seems to be more choices than any other Bethesda RP game. They got ahold of TES and Fallout and completely stripped out the idea of RPG "choices." Gone are the days in TES and Fallout that one could role play as someone other than "the chosen one." I'll never defend Arena or Daggerfall for their graphics, but no game studio has put out a game since those two that literally allows the player to totally ignore the main quest line, with in game consequences for that. Nope. Time doesn't matter, you're the chosen one, and will "get around to it." As far as I can tell, there is basically only one ending to any of these Bethesda "RPGs," and no matter what choices you make, you'll find that ending if you slog through enough "quests."
Admittedly, I've never played fallout 1 or 2, though I own them, so I don't actually know if the world building was as detailed as it was in Arena and Daggerfall.
Bethesda has always relied on modders to fix their platforms for them. They don't make games. They make platforms that other people can mod to make the games that they wanted to make.
Starfield itself was a step up from FO4, which almost lacked those entirely. Persuation was heavily used, and some of thr character traits you picked at the start led for unique chat dialogues, some just being extra chatter. But others allowing you to bypass an event because you had x trait.
Imo, Starfield isnt goty by any means, but it was virtually a step up from FO4 in almost all fronts except for exploration. Gunplay was better, rpgness was better, factions are better, customization was better. Skill tree imo was better.
Try BG3, literally everything matters, almost everything is a choice with consequences and i don't even know what the main plot is anymore since I am overwhelmed with possible choices
I'm only watching someone play through but it's just poorly written too. Every single person you meet knows you're the main character and begs for your help.
At first, I thought the quality seemed "meh" because it was released so close after the masterpiece that was Baldur's Gate 3. Everyone had high expectations and that's a hard game to follow, I believed.
After removing myself from Baldur's Gate 3, I discovered that I was wrong. Starfield still a "meh" game when taken on its own.
My personal biggest disappointment is the repeating point of interest. Yesterday I was on two planets and both had, even on the same planet itself, three times the same mine shaft, twice the same outpost, twice the same hole in the ground, with even mobs and ore placed on the same spots.
Seriously, this should never happen under any circumstances. It was the first time in the game I kind of felt the negative grow. While I still enjoy the rest.
That said, it's also true that the game is average in many aspects, which is enough to be enjoyable for me but not others.
240 times. It took me two minutes to finish the "minigame" last time I did it. That's 8 hours of grinding to max out every skill. Not 8 hours of fun gameplay and visually interesting dragon fights and dungeon crawls, 8 hours (that's eight hours) of flying from one shiny spot to the next. Eight. 8. Hours. Of slow-ass zero G floating.
Last time I booted the game up, I fast traveled to my ship, took off, and heard Sarah say she has something for me. Something about that same line played for the millionth time absolutely killed my motivation to play, and I haven't started the game up in like a week. The romance system is too much too fast. I went from "flirting" with Sarah to married in like 4 hours. We've known each other for all of one in-game month. Maybe I'm just a broken person, but the way we talk sounds so disingenuously infatuated.
I think about the concept of playing, and it sounds fun in theory, but realistically what am I gonna get done in the next 8 hours? I'll talk to people that I don't care about to move through a story that I'm fundamentally disinterested in because I know that >!in order to max out the dragon shou–I mean, Starborn powers, I'll need to jump through and abandon alternate universes like Rick Sanchez but not as an ironic critique of internet nihilism. Hours and hours and hours wasted on >!timelines I don't care about just to get to the end game where I... have strong powers and a good ship, and can't connect with any of the characters because they'll be the tenth iteration of the same ones that I could never convince myself to care about before.!<
Maybe in a year or two after the game has been updated, I'll check it out again. Maybe I can shut my brain off for a minute and pretend I'm not >!grinding through universes!< if it doesn't take me eight hours to max out all the powers. Or maybe I'll just play BG3 when it comes to Xbox and forget that Starfield ever existed in the first place
The fact BG3 came out just before Starfield made me dislike the game even more than I probably would have I think. I went from playing probably the best RPG ever to Starfield, which doesn't even try to make you think you're playing any role except the chosen one. The fact that you join Constellation and almost instantly become not just a full member, but the person who everyone else takes orders from is rediculous.
The story sucks, the gameplay is bland, and there are so many friction points that constantly make you think about the fact you're playing a game. It's honestly sad. I love sci-fi so I was reasonably excited for the game, even knowing it'd be a modern Bethesda game, and it still let me down. The sci-fi concepts in the game aren't even done well.
It really does show that Bethesda are running about 10 years behind everyone else.
It cost them twice as much to make as BG3 did. How? Just compare any BG3 character and how animated they are thanks to full motion capture, to the same Bethesda animatronics they've used since forever.
It is not unfortunate, it is a strategic win by Larian. BG3 was actually supposed to come very late, but Larian released it early after learning about Starfield's release date.
The feeling I got playing BG3 or even skyrim was one of "I can't wait to try this again with X group/build/decision". With starfield I don't know if I'll ever even get to the point of fucking off on a random adventure, let alone finish the story.
Part of my problem with Starfield is that the builds are basically pointless. Your background only gives you perk points in a few skills, and the only background worth using is Bounty Hunter since those three skills are absolute necessities for playing the game. Your traits matter more, but you can get absolute duds. I thought I had some strong role playing potential with a Freestar Enlightened whose parents are still alive... but those traits suck and don't work together in the slightest. As an Enlightened Atheist, I have access to a chest with some hot garbage in a location on Jemeson that I had no reason to visit until past level 30. As a Freestar, I have some "unique" dialogue options that boil down to "I'm also from Akila! There are Ashtas!" My parents were really cool to have around... until I found out that giving me an ass garbage ship is the last thing they ever do. They're also UC, so I have no idea how my character is from Akila. My grandma was a UC marine in the war, and I'm wearing her Freestar-killing duds now. I couldn't even invite them to my wedding. My wife's big character quest has to do with her Freestar-killing ship crashing on a planet, and I don't recall there even being a dialogue option about those being my people she was killing back then.
Why are my parents UC if I'm Freestar? Why can't I invite them to my wedding? Why aren't they enlightened? Surely Bethesda could have spent some of the last decade making 16 sets of parents to account for the 4x4 possible combinations of religion and background. Nah, they spent all that time making an absolute assload of crewmates you can and never will hire.
The fact that you join Constellation and almost instantly become not just a full member, but the person who everyone else takes orders from is rediculous.
Uhh have you played any other Bethesda title. If anything, the most common seniment is that game starts off very slow because its reletively speaking, the least ridiculous start conpared to most of the 3d bethesda games.
The opening sequence is slow, but no other game do you become essentially the faction leader so quickly. I guess maybe the blades in Skyrim, except you aren't really the leader, just the person it's supposed to protect, it's one person, and it's much further into the game.
Sure. That doesn't explain why I can tell constellation members to go work for me in my outpost. Them being companions is fine. Then being crew mates is alright (though don't they have other things they need to do?). Them being sweatshop workers is dumb. You're not technically the leader, but you are more than anyone else is. Sarah is in name only, but she takes orders from you. Everything that happens revolves around you, despite the other Starborn seeming to have had their own agency in other loops. Maybe we're only successful this loop because they decided to stop doing anything on their own?
I really don't understand how they green lit that design choice.
It was like Ubisoft towers on crack.
"Let's take the least interesting gameplay mechanic possible, and then gate one of the only interesting mechanics behind it. And then let's also make it take a few minutes of jetpacking around a barren planet to get there beforehand, to really jazz it up."
Todd: "Yes, exactly! See that temple over there? Your can go there. And go there. And go there again. And again. And again. And again. Again. Again. Again."
Devs look at each other...
"Is Toddbot broken or is this good gameplay design? Kenny, are you writing this shit down?"
I can believe that one of them played the little temple minigame once and thought it was cool, but unless they're literal space aliens, I cannot imagine the thought of doing that for eight hours even crossed their mind.
this is why I never buy Bethesda at release. Let the modders come, and perhaps Bethy will fix some shit themselves, you never know... give it six months or a year and you'll always have a better experience, and often cheaper and with more dlcs.
it's hard to get game devs to move to fucking maryland. to baltimore of all places. these jerks could live damn near anywhere and the studio wants to be in baltimore? so they're left with the folks willing to do that, and anything they can't accomplish - that's what mods (and dreams) are for.
I derived plenty of enjoyment with Fallout 4, Skyrim, FNV (not exactly a bethesda title but one that also shipped with tons of bugs).... at around $40 each, with all their DLC stuff, I think they're great values. Just not worth the new release jazz.
Fallout 4 is the Fallout game I enjoyed most even tho it's clearly not even top 3 of the series. Reason? So many mods that make the game better. I'm essentially not playing FO4, I'm playing Sim Settlements and, oh yeah, my son is missing or some shit.
Just don't bide your time too long, if you're too late they'll start re-releasing it for the next 15 years on every platform imagineable and for full price each time. There was a sweet spot with Skyrim on PC where you got upgraded to the ultimate edition (or whatever tf) for free if you bought the game before the transition.
The thing about word walls is it's simple and it just works. You suck the ancient text, behold the epic fanfare and leave. Temples, on the other hand, make for a great spectacle the first time you experience it. Then you realize you have to do the same ritual again and again.
Feel like they should've shortened them after the first one or two times you do it, so you only have to collect two of the things. Explain it as your connection to the temples growing as you gain their power or something, or even just don't explain it at all.
Very different design philosophies. Bethesda try to create dynamic worlds to explore where every npc has a schedule they follow over the course of the day and you find new things organically, but end up not having the resources to create much depth in their quests.
Larian put a lot of work into their quests, but have a very static world where there is no day/night cycle and npcs repeat the same path and barks every few minutes.
Is the gameplay the appeal of New Vegas? It’s my favourite of the Fallout franchise because I like the writing, and also I can kill almost anyone but somehow the story will find a way to go forward.
God I would kill (every NPC) for an Obsidian-made Skyrim.
Depends what you mean by gameplay, I love the storytelling, the role-playing, the rich tapestry of New Vegas. You can get engaged, feel like you have a real impact. It's very well done.
Very true, I was referring to more the actual running-and-gunning combat aspects, which are…well it’s Fallout 3, more or less. And I have gripes with Fallout 3’s combat.
I also love the RPG in New Vegas, and you’re absolutely correct that you feel the world change around to reflect your choices more so than any other Fallout game. In my mind that’s categorized under “storytelling”, but really it should be under “gameplay” because it’s responding to player input. I don’t know why my brain didn’t consider that.
God I would kill (every NPC) for an Obsidian-made Skyrim.
Tbh Outer Worlds is kinda a kill-every-NPC Starfield.
Also there's not really a gameplay appeal of FO:NV (or FO3). 2008 is really where games got shooting mechanics down and Bethesda's engine didn't really get there until 2015. That's why VATS exists.
FO was a very TTRPG-like (CRPG) game for a long time so the focus wasnt on gameplay.
60 hours in, either I'm playing it or thinking about it. Hell, I'm taking a break from just wiping out the Crimson Fleet to post this.
Yeah yeah puddle deep and all but I like Bethesda RPGs, there isn't anyone else making sandbox RPGs to compare to and it runs good enough on Xbox. My PC was never gonna play it well.
No matter how much you hate it tho you have to admit the dialog system is the best of the atudios' games by far. There are so many Persuade options and the mini game for it is done well enough. So many skills and traits get brought up in dialog like stealth, security, wanted, faction, etc. It's like an upgrade on New Vegas's system. Combat is great too and impactful . Hell I shot a guy in the shoulder and he grabbed it and yelled "OW HE HIT ME IN THE SHOULDER!" which surprised me. Space combat is fun too.
Wish UI and inventory management was better. Wish I could fly off the beaten path and find shit outside the "space box" you warp into. But whatever, once I realized it's Fallout, not Freelancer I adjusted accordingly. Games better than the haters make it out to be, and that's without any mods.
A lot of people forget that there's different kinds of RPGs. Or just games in general. To them, every RPG has to be Baldurs Gate 3 now. Just like previously, every open world now had to be Elden Ring or else it sucks. Sandbox RPG? Never heard of it. Like, can you fuck off to the wilderness and start producing drugs in BG3? Can you build a spaceship that looks like a massive cock? That's the sort of freedom you get in a Bethesda RPG, where doing random shit in the world is a viable way to play. Are you gonna finish the main story by making drugs? No, but you're gonna level up and make money.
I think Bethesda games are like the remnants of a genre that has become rarer and rarer. I mean, how many games released these days are actual sandboxes, and not just regular open world games pretending to be sandboxes? Zelda is one that comes to mind, but not really many more outside of Bethesda. Sandbox games are a dying breed in the AAA space, and for some reason some people really just want to deliver the killing blow to it.
Totally. People are too busy noticing the bigger issues and completely skip over the good aspects. They are there, else I'd not keep playing it for so many hours. It's sad that we can't talk positive about the game without getting hated at.
It's the same as it was with Cyberpunk2077, I could play it really well on my then new PC with little bugs. Even when you named the positive things, no one was listening.
It was an amazing game then, I wonder how it's with DLC and 2.0 update, which I've yet to play.
That said. There are a ton of bugs in Starfield and if that's what values most to you, then it's justified to not like the game.
Yep about Cyberpunk as well. I played on XSX where it was already 60fps and I played it like a Immersive Sim instead of a GTA RPG and enjoyed the hell outta it.
It’s a shame you’re being so heavily downvoted for simply having your own opinion. I actually agree with you. It’s certainly not GOTY material but it’s also not a bad game.
Especially given the modding tools that will be coming. It seems quite a few people don’t wish to give credit to Bethesda for this feature yet there are single digit AAA developers that release tools. And I can’t think of any other developers, perhaps bar Valve, that offer such a great modding experience.
It’s not about “fixing the game” (although that has proven to be one benefit over the years); it’s about enabling players to add to the world, make their mark, and share it with anyone. And Starfield feels like a marvellous playground with a firm foundation that will afford countless developers and gamers to build upon it. Heck, the mods that are already out are awesome. I’m thankful that Bethesda still puts in the effort for PC gamers to have that opportunity.
What I’ve enjoyed most about the game so far was actually messing around and restarting a few times with different builds and a seeing how things change.
There’s a lot of stuff hidden from the player if you don’t have the skill or the right level or whatever but, oh man have I been enjoying the dialogue. I went all in on all the social stuff and it’s honestly been a really great ride for someone like me that loves space and loves getting to know characters.
This is certainly the first Bethesda game (ignoring New Vegas since they didn’t make that masterpiece) where characters are interesting, have back stories, and feel fleshed out / developed (especially over time).
Morrowind, while with deeper conversation options, felt like everyone was basically the same person and the reuse of dialogue between NPCs was a bit of a let down. Oblivion and Skyrim felt like there were only 5 people in the entire game (the same voice actors everywhere didn’t help). The Fallouts were better but still shallow or too brief.
The Constellation NPCs l, for instance, have been really interesting to get to know over the game; there’s so much dialogue for every quest, I kind of wish I could take more of them on a mission than just one, especially how you can often let them talk in a conversation with another NPC rather than just sit around while you do everything. I’m not doing “romance” as that’s not something I’m into role playing but it certainly feels like I’ve some interesting friends coming along for the ride.
Alas, Bethesda can’t win when their audience is basically “all gamers” and there will always be a lot of people who aren’t satisfied - and that’s totally fine. Thankfully there’s plenty of amazing games out right now that there’s no need to waste energy complaining about Starfield.
As I pitched to my patient gamer friends: Starfield isn’t Elite, Star Citizen, or No Man’s Sky. It’s a Bethesda game that launches with jank, has plenty of good moments and bad, but (given a few years) will be one of the richest gaming playgrounds like all of the Bethesda games before it (and I’m guessing it’ll be possibly the richest of them all).
I wonder if someone will make Starwind where you can land on planet Nirn? Haha.
I'm playing a social character too and it's so damn viable for a Bethesda game I'm impressed. I've talked my way out of so many situations and if you get the Ryujin chip you can Jedi Mind Trick others too.
There are so many Persuade options and the mini game for it is done well enough
...what?
There's flavor text options I guess but NPCs don't even acknowledge what you say. They always respond with a canned "I didn't think about it that way", or "oh, interesting"
The "minigame" is just rolling three dice instead of one dice roll like in the past.
I completely no life’d Starfield on PC until Phantom Liberty came out…now my modded Cyberpunk new play through…I haven’t touched Starfield since.
Likely I’ll pick it up again when creation kit comes out in ‘24 and significant mods make the game what we were expecting (dismemberment, more mature themes, potential enhanced space travel etc)
I would rather shoot anything in Cyberpunk. The gunplay is way better. I can slide around and I can hack people on top of shooting them in the head which operates realistically. Starfield? Enjoy your Orion and sponge bullet enemies with zero dismemberment.
space shouts ? I've played about 25hrs (it's become very, very repetitive in the last 5) but I don't know what this is about. Is it a new mechanic that reveals itself at some point during the game ?
That honestly makes me happy that it isn't a must play. My PC is getting too long in the tooth for a game like Starfield and I don't have an Xbox. But I'm a big Bethesda fan and felt like I was missing out.
I wanted NMS with a more compelling narrative and RPG components and it doesn't look like Starfield is that.
american capitalism turns anything good into shit.
have a good game? let EA ruin it.
wait until you find out how shit coca cola is.
go use corn to make sugar. die young or subscription pay for health until you die fat and unhappy.
...there is really nothing left to like about the american dream.
2024 will be eyeopening. what is it if you want two old fucks fight for presidency? necrophelia?
EA will ruin ten more game studios, netflix/amazon will show ads ads ads in every subscribtion and house costs will make sleeping under a bridge a 5 star airbnb experience...
starfield ia just one result of a fucked up culture
After Fallout 4 I kind of figured this is the direction starfield was going. I love Skyrim, but I just haven't been able to enjoy a Bethesda game since then. They don't have the magic, and the mechanics are even more half assed than Skyrim.
Idk, this shit just isn't acceptable after Witcher 3 came out.
Its modable on gamepass. One of the things bethesda did with starfield is allow loading of mods through the default save location (my games folder) instead of having to directly install mods in the game folder. This applies to mods that dont affect the game executable.
If you mean Xbox, Bethesda already said Xbox will support mods like how Fallout and Skyrim did. So you'll be limited to the "store" but it'll have mods
I think Star feels a good game, but you have to approach it like a bethesda game, they've lately been doing pretty good looter shooters with some RPG story elements. But they're not RPGs, but they market themselves as the next greatest RPG, and I think that's disillusioning a lot of people.
If you approach it as a looter shooter, take a breezy, it's pretty fun
this guy is acting like you cant just tell constellation to fuck off and never return there and go back to being a miner 😂 albeit freelance miner on your own but still
I gave up on it after an hour. Oh woooooooow being foreshadowed I'm gonna fight this giant thing that just ruined the whole thing, super suspenseful anyway byyyyye. Frankly I just can't get into it - the environments, graphics, gunplay, enemies etc. are terribly dull. I need something to be different than in Skyrim almost 12 years ago.
This is so polarizing. I had no doubts it would be shit, it's Bethesda. But it's actually not that bad. But some just say the exact opposite. The game mechanics are all completely schizophrenic at best, but it's not a surprise, at any point does it deviate from classic Bethesda logic. Staring dudes and badly scaled rpg systems. It's just par for course but more modern. And why people think quick travel is a bad thing, when it's been a staple since like 97 or something, is just completely beyond me.
That “Chosen one” part makes me feel confused. If you’re a gamer most likely you have been a loser your entire life, so being the “chosen one” for once should make you feel great… no?
If you just want to be a loser in games just go play Sims 4
You don't even have to do the main story, you can literally fuck off after Barret gives you his ship.
You don't need to be the chosen one, just a fucker who started hallucinating after touching a weird metal that they now keep in storage as a memento trinket.
I have about 70 hours in the game and haven't touched the main quest besides the first few. There's so many quest lines and side content that if I never did the main quest I'd be satisfied with my purchase.
I think it's the inherent tension between a game that promises an immersive, open, and explorable world with a powerful character creator, and AAA studio's overwhelming compulsion to create a cinematic main quest line.
The two goals are directly at odds. And it leads to a situation where no matter what kind of character you create, you are still the same predefined character. Because the developers need a common touchpoint to write a story around.
It's an issue with a lot of games. In Skyrim, no matter what character you make, you are still the Dragonborn, you can roll a Khajiit and still be able to waltz into every city, even as the other Khajiit are restricted to outside the walls. Similarly in Mass Effect, you will always be Shepard. My excitement for Cyberpunk evaporated when I saw that it was leaning into a cinematic experience rather than a cyberpunk one.
It's actually not an issue in Starfield, people just don't have a clue about the game. Everyone that touches one of the artifacts for the first time gets the vision and can get the temple power. There's an entire quest where you go to a temple with Barrett and get him a power as well. When you talk to the Emissary and the Hunter, it's revealed that you die in quite a lot of the other universes. You're not the chosen one in any capacity, you're just a random person, there's nothing special about you.
The main quest also gives you literally zero urgency to complete it. The fate of the universe isn't at stake, no great threat is looming that requires you to collect them (at least not until way later and even then not really), they're just a mystery that a group of scientists and explorers is investigating.
No, multiple of the core skill trees are flat out broken.
You can invest skill points in outpost building, only to eventually realize that they give you no way of even building flat ground.
You can invest skill points in stealth, only to eventually realize that the stealth mechanics are either utterly bugged out and broken, or if working as intended, were designed by a sadist who hates stealth games.
You can invest skill points in unarmed combat, only to very quickly realize that there is flat out no quick way of going unarmed.
And through these and several other broken skill tree paths, you can learn that there is never any way to respec and you're stuck having wasted skill points in cool sounding stuff that is actually useless. There are aspects of this game that are fundamentally broken.
Ah, sorry master reader, I'm trying to read your words but my skills are clearly not enough for this high level text. All I see on my screen is "someone disagreed with my opinion so I'm throwing personal attacks on them because I feel invalidated".
Starfield isn't even mid, it's abyssmal. The sheer embarrassment of the fact that they spent hundreds of millions of dollars making it should make them reconsider their career and life choice.
No. No it isn't. It has worse space exploration than a game from 2016(NMS), worse inventory management than Minecraft, and an unnecessary amount of loading screens that haven't been seen since Borderlands 1.
I hate defering to review scores, but most reviews agree despite some issues it is a pretty good game. Everyone I know who's played it in real life is enjoying it despite the issues. I'm not saying you enjoyed it as you clearly didn't, but your experience clearly isn't universal.
I gave it about 55 minutes before I realized I wasn't having fun, and had no desire to continue hoping it would get better(Then I hopped on the real GOTY, Battlebit Remastered). I also went in blind and had no expectations other than "fallout set in space".
I also hate referring to review scores but if we're going off of that metric then my Friend Pepa Pig is truly a great work of art, right next to God of War.
I'll write a thesis and put in hundreds of hours next time I decide to try and play a bad game just to appease some random internet people, sure.
I didn't enjoy the gun fights, the space fights, the fast traveling, or any of the characters so why would I continue to play something I find unenjoyable and bland.
I'm not going to spend my limited gaming time hoping something gets better just so I can shitpost on the internet.
I didn't buy it, I have a couple months left on my Game pass Ult sub so it was "free". I also like those themes but didn't enjoy the implementation in this game.
I didn't say it had a good story, I said it had better space exploration. Being able to actually land on a moon or planet in the system you are in VS fast travel and loading screens is vastly different.
I didn't listen to the hype either, and was sucked in for like 70 hours, but knowing that >!the universe I'm in is gonna cease to exist as part of the main storyline!< makes it impossible for me to care about any of it. Why would I >!try to finish a side mission or make an outpost or build a ship if it's all gonna be wiped away in a few hours? Why would I finish the game if it means wiping all of that away?!< Why would I play the game if I want to not finish it? There's a fundamental disconnect there that kills my motivation to play
I noticed that while I was playing, before discovering how the game "ends," that I was at least keeping myself occupied, if I wasn't even really having all that much fun. Mostly, I was idly ticking boxes.
Once I learned about the end game, all motivation to play disappeared. Why waste my time ship building, outpost building, doing anything at all if I'm just going to have to start over? But I can't even change my skill points, so I'm stuck with ever-increasing amounts of XP just to get new skills.
It could have been made so much better if instead of >!wiping universes, it just added them, and you could jump between them at will.!< It would probably make the game much larger to account for >!potentially ten sets of ten custom ships, ten sets of 27 outposts, and 10 sets of NPC interactions to keep track of,!< but at least it wouldn't piss off anyone who's spent more than a few hours building the perfect ship or finding that mythical 7 resource outpost
No, and I see your point. You've given me a better understanding of my own position. It's not that it isn't worth doing things in a temporary universe (that's what we're doing right now, actually), it's that I'm actually just not having fun with the journey. I've built essentially the same outpost a dozen times in FO4 because it's fun. I've landed on the Mün in KSP a thousand times with essentially the same ship because it's fun. I've played through the thieves guild and Dark Brotherhood questlines in Oblivion on every character I've played because they're fun, regardless of the fact that I know that eventually I'm going to drop this character and play as a new one. The difference is that I'm having fun with the process in those other games, and I'm not having fun with the process in Starfield.
Edit: but also, it is the temporary aspect of the universe that's the problem. Part of the core gameplay loop is to destroy your progress. That's fundamentally disconnected from the gameplay aspects of completing side quests and building things. We're talking about a video game, not real life.
I mean, I wouldn't put Starfield in the same family as Diablo IV, with most of the game behind a microtransaction wall. Bethesda promised Skyrim in Space. We got Skyrim in Space. Skyrim is a polarizing game (much like Witcher 3 is, often for opposite people/reasons).
I don't think Starfield is "not so bad", I'm having the best gaming experience I've had in a year or two. I think all the critiques are valid, but I don't really care about most of them.
So why should I play a game I don't enjoy to punish the makers of the game I do enjoy? I have a very limited amount of gaming time. It gets the game I'm having the most fun with.
I feel like I'm in some sort of fugue state with everyone comparing this to Skyrim. In what way is this like Skyrim? Skyrim, for all its flaws, at least had hand crafted worlds with interesting things to see and do in them. From what I've seen of Starfield, that has been completely replaced by procedurally generated barren worlds. Like yeah, you can 'explore' them, but for what? What is there even to find?
Virtually 100% of main and faction story arcs are hand-generated content. I would go further and say Starfield used more distinct model-sets than Skyrim did.
For context, Skyrim's map was ALSO procedurally generated, but most (or all) of the content was built on top of it by hand. We have comparable amount of manually generated content in Starfield, and then tons of procedural content allowing for a larger overall world.
Starfield is approximately 100,000x larger than Skyrim. So yeah, a lot of it is going to be procedurally generated. But you follow a general path, and everything along that path is NOT.
So... no fugue there. Both have similar amounts of handmade content, but Skyrim has a lot of filler content, and that filler content is largely barrel worlds, something that works because planets tend to be barren.
Granny Valentine's singing in orbit Mrs. Kurtz school field trip Space pilgrims
Just a few random orbital encounters that I've found. Planet side there are plenty of structures to explore but no real reason to do it; the random loot system ensures you're as likely to find something exploring on your own as you are fulfilling a bounty contract. There is no special reward or motivation to exploring vs finding these structures via a mission.
What part of Diablo 4 is behind a microtransaction wall? Some skins?
The problem with both games is they disrespect the player's time by turning everything into a slog.
That's way more of an issue with modern game design trying to maximize hours played while minimizing actual content than paid skins. Those may suck, but to be fair it was Bethesda who introduced the damn thing in the first place. I'd rather pretend the premium skins don't exist but have a fun game than have no microtransactions and a boring 150+ hours of empty world with a total of 35 hours of interesting beats.
I think it's "Most of the skins".
I can't speak for Diablo 4 on this, but that's not Starfield. Just like other Bethesda games, Starfield clearly gives feedback when you're leaving major storylines and running procedural content. Radiant Quests have mixed reception, but the number of radiant quests you actually need to complete any Bethesda game is in the single-digits.
If you stick to main-story and faction-mainline quests, you touch virtually nothing that wasn't hand-crafted for your pleasure. No slog. No grind. No nothing. And I find it pretty easy to differentiate between the handcrafted side-quests and the procedural side-quests. If you don't, just ignore the more obscure-seeming side quests anyway.
Is this a personal self-discipline problem of yours? A game with 35 hours of great content is worth the price of a game like Starfield, and you can just NOT go out and play the "150+ hours of empty world" if you don't like it. While I haven't beaten Starfield yet (I like procedural content and spend a lot of time in it), that mainline content isn't gated behind doing procedural stuff. That stuff was added on top of the content you directly pay for.
For me, I love going system to system finding ships to pirate. I haven't really gotten into planetary exploration yet. Maybe I won't enjoy that as much, or maybe I will. If I don't enjoy it, I just won't do it and it won't detract from the game.
Really? 35 hours of great content?
Exactly what parts of Starfield struck you as great?
I'll agree that around the 30 hours mark of my playthrough I was thinking the game felt big and expensive and was excited to spend more time in that universe.
But it wasn't long after that even the faction quests ended up just so repetitive in scope and even level design that I was over it.
The number of loading screens just to go from point A to B for a fetch quest is probably the worst of any open world game...ever.
It's like they finally had SSD tech so they just decided to throw any concern over loading out the window in game design.
The story is mediocre, the voice acting is meh, the gameplay loops are extremely repetitive.
The thing you like is the one thing I also enjoyed of ship combat with boarding enemy ships. That was done well, outside of the fact you can't physically go outside your ship.
And "you can play 35 hours without hating it" as the barometer of whether a game is satisfactory sells yourself and your time short. You as a consumer deserve more, and making excuses for outdated and poor game design doesn't do yourself any favors. Legitimate complaints about games getting their fair amount of attention leads to better games, as happened with games like No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk. The only way Bethesda's game devs are going to get the appropriate resources from management to focus on making a game that doesn't waste your time with repetition on the next one is if there're enough complaints about the repetition in this one that management is concerned about repeating bad press which might impact sales.
You do yourself and the devs disservice minimizing or dismissing complaints and only do the execs a favor.
That's great if you don't feel that way. I'm guessing that as you put more hours in the title you'll feel different, but hope that's not the case and your enthusiasm remains. But for many players that were quite excited for the game, it ended up being rather disappointing.
The major city locations. The major factions/plots. But specifically, I was referring to the approximate amount of hand-made content from previous research. If you don't think handmade Bethesda content is great, well obviously don't buy it like I wouldn't buy another Witcher title.
Not my experience. It's worse than any seamless game, but I found the loading screens and loading times to be pretty reasonable compared to other games. Specifically, I noted that loading times were shorter. And as much as people bitched about the "sequence" loading screens, they're a whole lot nicer than the black-screen-with-image I was used to in the past.
Now you're going full-subjective. As my college English professor used to remind us, "I didn't like it" is not a real metric for quality. I don't agree the story is mediocre. I don't agree the voice acting is meh. And I don't agree the "gameplay loops" are repetitive. Unless you choose to stick with the intentionally repetitive content.
Actually, my metric was "35 hours of GREAT non-procedural content". YOUR metric is 35 hours without hating it. It may help to remind you that I also enjoy the procedural content. But a lot of people are whining that the whole game is procedural, despite having comparable hand-made content to any other Bethesda game.
If you don't like Bethesda games, you shouldn't be complaining about Starfield, the same way I don't complain about some fancy wine sucking (I don't enjoy wine). If you DO like Bethesda games, your critiques above probably apply to them more than Starfield. Same issue. This is a good "wine" for people who like "wine".
I'm doing myself and devs a disservice by loving a game because it's the game I was looking for and the game I was promised? Do you even hear yourself? When I have a hankering for Whiskey, if someone puts a glass of Macallan 25 in front of me, I'm not going to bitch. I'm going to enjoy it. No matter who I'm doing a disservice because it's not a Budweiser
I dunno why you're getting downvoted, cause you're completely right. The microtransaction hell in Diablo is all for shit like horse armor. The game plays exactly the same whether or not you've spent an extra dime. With that being said, it is 100% bullshit to have any extra transactions, micro or not, in a $90 game.
He's getting downvoted because despite everything you said, the valid complaints about Diablo 4 are not similar to complaints about Starfield.
It's not the "Diablo 4 microtransactions for skins is OK" (which I disagree with) that got him downvoted, it's "both games disrespect the player's time".
Why can't we have both and the people who want to play each type of game enjoy what they like.
I personally haven't found SF or D4 to be a slog. D4 remained fun for me though the story and clearing the map which took me up to lv60 and then I put it down to pick up again later, SF is a long game but I haven't felt like I've had to grind or repeat content to keep up, everything I've done is a bespoke quest and that's given me enough experience and cash to level up what I want and buy a top level ship, etc
If you don't like long games you may well find those games a slog but then you have games like the new Assassin Creed focused at people who want shorter games.
We can. But they're different. I have a problem with microtransaction-driven games, even if it's skins. I won't fault you if you like D4, but D4 is the first (second if you count the mobile shit) Diablo game that I haven't put 100 hours into, or even played. The complaint about microtransactions is valid and objective however, and there have been criticisms on cosmetic-microtransactions for almost a decade now. It's not a feature by any stretch of the imagination, and nobody who plays the game seriously prefers "$25 armor set" to "customizable armor set"
Nobody "has to enjoy" Starfield. But the topic of the hour is whether Starfield was overhyped or (imo) whether Starfield is a valid target for the kind of criticism that came up when BG3 came out and other game studies complained it was too well-polished.
There are objective complaints and subjective ones. I don't care about the subjective ones. You don't want base-builders, so be it. You don't want procedural quests, whatever. Sometimes I play games with a playtime of 30 minutes because I don't want a long game. But Starfield was not misleadingly advertised or a bug-riddled mess. We got Skyrim in Space, and that's what we were promised.
That's a breath of fresh air. I'd appreciate that even if I didn't want to play Skyrim in Space. If someone comes out with a game and says "It's just like Witcher 3", I'll thank them and never touch it. I won't fault the game for being like another popular game I happen to hate.
I only brought up D4 here because people are saying Starfield is "just like D4"
Ok, I make you right on the MTX in Diablo and I'll never engage with the season passes or paid skins myself.
I'm still waiting. I'm not the only one. We keep asking for a list of things that were hyped about Starfield that we're missing, and so far that list is exactly zero items long. Most of the things people are bitching about, I would have told them 2+ years ago Starfield wasn't going to have, and nobody ever promised.
Further, how are we "taken for a ride"? I've spent $20 on Starfield so far (Xbox game pass) and have had nothing but a fucking blast. Are they secretly screwing me by making me enjoy it?
I'm going to reiterate what I said elsewhere. To my understanding, Bethesda promised me Skyrim in Space. When Starfield came out, Bethesda delivered Skyrim in Space. What exactly is fraudulent or misleading about any of that? I'm sorry if you expected Minecraft in Space or No Man's Sky 2. But nobody ever said this would be that.
Oh maybe those who didn't like it far whatever reason accept that things are subjective and their experience is not universal. Plenty of people have enjoyed this game and found things to like even if it's not perfect. You don't like it, that's also a valid point of view, but you can't dictate to other people that they also shouldn't enjoy it.
Because a lot of gamers don't feel fooled. They expected a Bethesda game and got a Bethesda game for all the good and ill that entails.
You're entitled to dislike the game, but complaining that it's not something else is silly. It's like the people who complain about a lack of easy mode in Dark Souls. Sometimes a game isn't for you and it's ok to move on and play something else, but trying to convince other people they're wrong for enjoying it is a fools errand.
That's also all we were promised. No false advertising here. Bethesda knows what Bethesda fans want, and they make the game Bethesda fans want. It's literally the only gaming experience left where I don't feel like I have to over-research and pirate-demo to figure out if I should buy a game.
Yeah, I was willing to concede with Cyberpunk that although it was a good game on PC/Next Gen from day one, it had a lot of issues on the formats most people own, and CDPR had overpromised the level of detail and systems in the city.
However I can't recall anywhere where Todd, Bethesda or MS promised stuff more than "Bethesda RPG, but in space".
Yeah. But I love that about CP. I got it dirt cheap when everyone was bitching, and just waited for them to fix it before I started playing. Best $17 I ever spent for a new AAA game! I can be patient.
thousands of planets to explore would imply exploration is going to be exciting I'd personally assume
They also said that most of them would be desolate and procedurely generated. They never promised a thousend hand crafted planets.
I always find it funny that Hello Games over promised and the backlash was such that GOG extended its refund policy, but Bethesda does the same thing every time they release a game and gamers just call it a Bethesda game and that's the end of it or "modders will fix it"...
No Mans Sky was nothing like what Hello Games promised.
Starfield is exactly what Bethesda promised.
I don't see the discrepancy.
This is what I don't get, Bethesda were very clear about what the game was and wasn't in the lead up to release, yet some people seem to have convinced themselves it was going to be something entirely different and are now angry about that.
It's driving me crazy how many people are claiming Bethesda overpromised. I could have written an accurate review (critiques and all) of the game based upon what I saw/heard before its release.
What did Starfield overpromise that we didn't get? As far as I can tell, we got exactly what we expected - Skyrim in Space.
Take my money, Bethesda, and give me more Skyrim in Space please.
Bethesda promised Skyrim in space and that's what we got, a game exactly like the one they released 12 years ago but in space. They should have just called it Skyrim: Space Edition.
i don't entirely agree with that statement about it being identical to a 12-year-old Skyrim. But if it were true, what's the problem? This whole "bleeding edge stupidity" thing was the first reason we all started to hate AAA games 20 years ago.
Maybe you're too young, but "can it handle Farcry" was an insult to AAA. Now if it doesn't use every graphics acronym under the sun at once, and have multi-phased smell reflection when you walk into the bathrooms, then it's shit.
Also, for the record, a 2014 Engine (UE4) remained the top engine for basically anyone to make games in until last April. Improvements in graphics have slowed down because we're getting closer and closer to the limit.
You're sensing a bit of bias? Because they're telling you that they like the game?
I'm sensing a bit of bias from you, being completely unable to understand someone else's point of view once you've made your mind up
Right, but the problem with your logic is in thinking your viewpoint is concrete and everyone else's is wrong. Fun is subjective, you can't tell people they didn't have fun with the game
I didn't buy the game, and I am enjoying it immensely.
You can throw as many buzzwords at it as you like, but that doesn't diminish the lived experience of people who had fun with the game. Why are you so insistent on convincing people they didn't enjoy it? There must be a buzzword for that mindset too.
What about the people who played it on Game Pass and still enjoyed it.
I'm just happy you got to use the new term you learned! Color me impressed!
I get it for "free" because I sub to xbox service. I'd have paid $70 for it, though. As for time, I could have spent it in other games, but it's the first really fun gaming experience I've had in quite a while.
It's easy to make accusations against Bethesda fans like this, but they're unfalsifiable. You could make the same accusations of people enjoying any other game and there's nothing they could do to prove they actually enjoy the game. Except that they DO actually enjoy the game.
I've played about 20 games this year. If I had to pick only 1 to play (which isn't far from the truth anymore with my second job), it would be Starfield. And you might be surprised at the names of games that rank below it on the list. Like Elden Ring (which I will never touch again after my cheat-easy-mode run), Hitman WoA, etc. Maybe I won't be playing it in a year, or two years. Maybe I will.
I think it's interesting you brought up Souls Games. Quite literally your first paragraph, I feel about them. I have 100% buyer's remorse about Bloodborne, and lesser buyer's remorse about Elden Ring. Neither will I ever touch again. To some extent, I kept trying to convince myself the story is worth their unwillingness to give gamers the controls that would actually make the game fun... and I gave up trying to have fun playing it.
I agree with all your points but cannot disagree more on the inclusion of a difficulty slider for Souls games. I have been very adamant about a difficulty slider "cheapening the experience" or "jeopardising the artistic intent", but it really doesn't make a difference - at all.
If your enjoyment of the game stems from the fact that the game is difficult and the inclusion of a difficulty slider cheapens your "sense of accomplishment", then you might have to reevaluate your priorities.
Consider people with disabilities, for example, who are interested in the lore of Souls games and want to experience them themselves but can't because the games present themselves to be too difficult (for example in the way some bosses in Elden Ring have seemingly endless attack chains that give you no breathing room at all, requiring very precise input on the player's side), thus gatekeeping the experience from a potentially enthusiastic and interested player.
Or consider people who are just not interested in a hyper tense and difficult time and just want to experience the story and atmosphere of the game. What's wrong with that? How does that impact your enjoyment of the game if their experience is completely separate from yours?
For reference, I have platinumed numerous FromSoft Souls games and would not feel any less "proud" of that if the games had difficulty settings.
Nailed Souls on the head. I'm an older gamer and my reflexes are dead. I never really liked hard games. I like the story. I bought Bloodborne for the lore, and fully regret it. Hours of fighting the same area with zero progress is NOT why I wanted to play it. I bought Elden Ring after I found out there were cheat mods, tried to play it without them and enjoyed nothing, so added the Easy mod knowing I risked screwing up my Elden Ring account (whatever that means to me), having to play offline the whole time.
I regret buying Elden Ring because I don't want to have to almost pirate the game I bought just to play it because they want to make it hard.
Thing is you're trying to compare two different things, one is the (lack of) quality of the product in general compared to what was promised, the other is a design choice.
The irony is, I feel that sentence is more applicable if "lack of quality" is assigned to Soulslike games and "Design Choice" to Bethesda games.
I meant to discuss Souls games' exclusion of difficulty sliders in a vacuum, separate from the Garfield discussion.
As prefaced in my comment, I agree with your points about Garfield: the developers should definitely be held accountable for their shortcomings and for hyping up a product that falls flat of its promised contend.
But I don't agree with difficulty sliders being shunned by the "hardcore" community. I feel like this nurtures an elitist environment that doesn't do its fanbase any good other than gatekeeping and separating fans.
Again, just a separate discussion altogether, not related to the Garfield discussion.
Huh? Starfield is the best RPG Bethesda has made since Morrowind, because it's an actual RPG. It has the best quest design since Oblivion, with almost none of the quests boiling down to "Go there, kill guys", but actually needing to talk to people, pay attention to the environment, interact with the world and make choices (and your Background, Traits, Skills and faction membership all add new ways for you to go about a quest.) The weapon design is an incredible improvement over Fallout 4. Almost everything in Starfield is either a massive step up or a return to form compared to their previous work and you don't actually know what you're talking about.
And that's not even to mention things like the ship building system, which is genuinely extremely impressive.
We must be playing different games. Every storyline quest I've done has been:
It's nothing but, "Go there, kill guys," as you call it. Everything is a fetch quest with faceless mooks between me and whatever fifth turn I need to take to get to the end of the corridors in the space dungeon.
And comparing the game to Morrowind is laughable. Morrowind was an amazing feat of world building based on actual player choice. Starfield is a bunch of boxes to tick to see the next space cliche.
Half the damn quests don't even require me to leave the city they started in. Maybe you just had bad luck picking all of the quests that are like that and none of the others and I had the opposite. Or maybe you did 3 quests and are talking out of your ass. I don't know, I wasn't there when you played the game. I mean, did you even do anything other than main story? Join a faction, do sidequests, anything? Because I could point you to half a dozen quests just in early game New Atlantis that are entirely reliant on dialogue, choices etc. without any killing and that do not give you a mandatory companion. Like, do the UC Security quests, investigate the brownouts in the well, talk to the preacher guy, the art guy in Jemison Mercantile, the collector guys in Terrabrew, the bartender at Viewport, the scientist by the tree. The game will literally put half of these quests in the quest log from ambient dialogue, and the other half you get from just engaging with the world and talking to NPCs in the first city you visit. It's not like these are incredibly hidden quests you have to go out of your way to find. Hell, when you go to Akila the game just plops a hostage negotiation right in your face. I mean, come on, you're either being wilfully disingenuous or you played that game blind as a bat.
And if you don't believe me and don't want to bother playing the game yourself again, just look at the playthrough of somebody like Many A True Nerd. He did a lot of the quests I just mentioned.
I'm curious, you mentioned the hostage scenario at Akila. Does talking down the Shaw gang give you a peaceful method of obtain the artifact near the end of that quest? I try not to save scum so when that whole ordeal went south I had to gun my way through everyone outside of the cavern, then of course only after half her people were dead did Shaw bother striking up a conversation. Not trying to be an ass here, I'm genuinely curious as to whether or not that would've actually changed with prior gameplay.
I tried a few side quests and none of them were at all compelling, though I'll admit I didn't bother going too deep with most of the factions. I don't know, each one I tried consisted of walking back and forth and listening to people talk about trees being too loud or some shit I couldn't care about. Maybe if I'd gone to Space Tokyo or signed up with the space pirates that would've been different. But following the main storyline and tooling around the first few planets was repetitive and just more Bethesda-style gun in, then take the shortcut out after getting the thing. I gave up on the game after around 20 hours of not enjoying the experience.
If you're liking the game then good for you but my experience was that none of the choices I made actually mattered and the world Bethesda built was bland and cliche. And the game mechanics themselves were nothing ground breaking at all, except maybe ship building but that took way too much effort to grok. I tried to like the game but couldn't.
I don't know. I didn't manage to talk them down on my first playthrough, so who knows, but I don't think so. But I also don't think every game or even every RPG needs to be designed with a complete pacifist route in mind. The Shaw Gang mission is also about the only one I can think of that actually fits completely with the "formula" you described, outside of maybe the tutorial.
Also, yeah, Space Pirates might actually be a quest for you, or rather being an undercover agent in the space pirates. You just get straight up thrown out of UC SysDef and have them as your enemy if you run and gun those missions, so you have to sneaky, use your persuasion and actually look around your environments if you want to stay with the good guy faction. The part on the cruise ship is especially good for this. Your choices there definitely matter in that regard.
Maybe it's just a game for people that are really into space in a specific way. Like, sometimes I'll just look at pictures of the surface of Venus or Mars and think about the fact that there's billions of these worlds just existing with no observer. Just rocks, dust, storms, rain, volcanoes, all types of things being there and happening, even though no one can see it.
I’m not them, but yes you can talk you way through that encounter not firing a single shot and still get the artifact. Many quests are like that.
To me this reads like you havent done the Ryujin plotline which has a lot of stealth involved, and the UC/Crimson Fleet one that has some detective work/stealth
The Ryujin quest line could be done by running straight through it.
Stealth in the game is an absolute joke.
You're absolutely right and if I can muster up the energy to start the game back up then Ryujin is probably going to be my first stop.
You're expected not to kill anyone during the entire Ryujin storyline as it's "bad for business". It's all social and sneaky stealth.
Yeah, that happens when you just skip dialogue
I haven't skipped any dialogue and I agree with them completely.
Have you actually read the dialogue? Have you even played Morrowind?
Morrowind treats NPCs like theyre hyperlinks in a Wiki. Click on Balmora on any NPC and get the exact same blurb.
There's like 10 characters that are actually unique and most of em still pull from the wiki when you click on a generic talk option.
So tell your mandatory companion to "wait here" when you plan to Stealth Archer. Or give her a chameleon suit. Ironically, the "stealth archer" meme is the most valid critique of Bethesda games, and you're complaining because it isn't working well for you.
"People enjoy the slop so the slop must not be that bad."
Yes but we can absolutely point out they're enjoying slop and are probably the biggest contribution to mainstream games becoming more and more soulless slop.
"I'm Mr High and Mighty, upon my golden gaming chair. I only sample the finest 10/10 works of art and have no time for lowly 7/10 slop that the peasents enjoy. If only they'd accept that I know better what they should be allowed to enjoy"
That's you that is.
No? I'll admit that something like Enderal: Forgetten Stories, while very fun and better than Skyrim in a lot of ways, is still like an 8/10 even though I like it a lot. If we're going on the game alone and not how great and generous the developers are to the community, Deep Rock Galactic is a 9/10.
7/10 for Starfield is incredibly generous. It's a 5/10 if we're all being honest and not circlejerking about Bethesda.
You can like and play whatever you want.
But if you share the opinion that overall quality of games, especially triple A titles, has gone down in the past 10-15 years, and you can sit here and give Starfield: Yet Another Wide as an Ocean but Deep as a Puddle + Boring Experience from Bethesda ™️ is a 7/10; I don't think you really have the right to complain about the declining quality of video games when you're essentially contributing to it by claiming incredibly mediocre games are above average.
If you feel good that you paid $70-100 for what's really feels like a $40 barely out of early-access game, hey, I can't change your mind.
My opinion is fact and everyone else is wrong. I also watch a million essays over the decline of gaming on YouTube so I am very informed.
what I find more wild is as usual the toxic gaming community can't handle opinions. I like the game, I don't care if others don't, but acting like I don't have "standards" cause you don't like it is rediculous. Likewise, I got bored so fast of baulders gate 3 but apparently it's the second coming of christ and I must be wrong. No, I get why people love it, it just wasn't my jam. Starfield is
its so depressing that people still seethe this much over others liking a game they didnt
This entire thread is hilarious. I've been paying for therapy like a sucker, I didn't know you could get infinite amounts of free psychoanalysis just by suggesting that Starfield is somewhat underwhelming.
Yeah, it's pretty underhwelming. There's a lot of people who claim Starfield is a "great Bethesda game" but "people hyped it up too much." In my opinion, it's a terrible Bethesda game. The best thing those games do right is you can set off in a direction and along the way, find a world full of little things. Landmarks, unique little stories, side quests, and even just interesting items to grab. Starfield dropped all of this in favor of incredibly generic proc gen planets that have the same couple of outposts you'll see on every planet. Like THE SAME. The interiors are THE SAME. Every safe, dead body, message log is THE SAME.
It lacks the one thing that brought me back to Bethesda games despite all their flaws.
Lost interest in a few hours I was sad.
Great potential, horrible interface, wonky mechanics
Same. The interface looks kinda cool, but the UX is awful, and the story is boring. The biggest reason it doesn’t capture you IMO is you just jump around from place to place instantaneously right from the start and there’s no obvious reason to just go exploring somewhere. In Skyrim you’re literally on foot and the world slowly expands around you and you become interested in it.
Yeah, and exploration wisey I prefer Oblivion even more. Skyrim feels smaller and less varied, and horses and other fast-travel options are cheaper and easier available.
I got to hear a talk from a level designer who worked on Skyrim at Bethesda who had since left the company, and we needled them with some questions about Starfield and it was interesting at the time but even more interesting in the hindsight of now playing the game.
We kind of intuited through some of their answers that it sounded like they felt that with Skyrim, individual level designers and programmers and people had way more freedom to put stuff into the game; many of the more memorable side quests and interactions were never remotely planned to be in there but were just threwn together by a couple people who stayed overnight recording voices and programming in these quests and interactions and stuff, and it sounded like they did not think that was was the case with Starfield and it was a much more rigid and controlled dev environment, which would explain why so much of the stuff feels like it's randomly generated stuff you've already seen instead of coming across these weird handcrafted things.
They also talked a lot about open world level design in general and talked about how good open world level design is often inspired by Disney world, where they pay super close attention to sightlines where ever you are to make sure there's always (ideally multiple) interesting things to see and explore. You shouldn't need a waypoint or hud marker ideally, you should just walk out of one thing, look around and go "hey that looks neat let me go see what's over there", discover something magical, walk out and repeat. That kind of feeling made sense and resonated with me at the time and made me think of the new Zelda games and some of the better open world games I've played, but now in the context of Starfield, it feels like the loading screens between planets pretty fundamentally broke that cycle, and disrupted that feeling of exploration that Skyrim gave you.
I was at a talk by Bruce Nesmith for a game development club I was in in college shortly after FO4 released (and also shortly after they filed the trademark for Starfield but before we knew anything).
One thing I remember well is him saying how they messed up with the FO4 dialogue options. Every one was "yes, no (for now), sarcastic yes, and more information." I had a reasonable amount of faith at least that would be fixed in Starfield. It isn't, though it's like they thought it being presented on a wheel was the part people were upset with, not the complete lack of choice. In Starfield the choices are identical but they're now presented in the classic box at the bottom of the screen.
The "Disney effect" is exactly what's missing from Starfield that makes it so boring. Because of the format of the planets and star systems, you can't just see something to go to. Discovery is done through a menu, which is incredibly boring.
And on top of that, when you do land on a planet, there's literally nothing to do and see. It feels like there are no more than 10 unique buildings that get swapped in and out... once you've seen them, there's nothing left to discover.
It would have been infinitely better had it been 1 star system with like 4 planets and 20 moons. Each one with multiple locations on the surface. Instead of this thousands of planets but basically all randomly generated none of them really interesting.
They kept saying that's realistic because most plants are boring but it's a RPG not a SIM so that logic doesn't track.
The best space game is still The Outer Wilds and that game has only about 5 planets with the largest one only been about half a mile across. Scale isn't everything.
Can we organize and create an AAA game on Lemmy that is worth playing?
I would start with one A first
I'll make the logo
(deleted content)
Maybe don't just go to random bases? Follow a quest and you will encounter incredible environments/dungeons.
Those random bases are for end-game stuff when you have literally nothing else to do but you still want to play your save file.
As an old-schooler, I think this is all funny. A lot of the Daggerfall fans were disappointed in Morrowind because it moved away from procedurally generated "everything else". The world felt so tiny.
Starfield adds some procedural outside of its core paths to give us that unlimited replayability, and people just complain about it.
I’ve played TES games since Daggerfall came out. That was my first giant open world game, and despite all of the horrible game breaking bugs I played it so much I risked my college degree.
Based on all of the descriptions and the fact that I’m right now only playing games that run well on the steam deck, I’m skipping this one for now. I couldn’t imagine the thousands of hours I’ve spent playing and replaying TES and Fallout games. But every release gets more dumbed down, it seems.
Honestly, the only thing keeping me from even checking it out is that it sounds boring. I’m still totally overplaying BG3, I love playing Stray, and Depth is great when I have limited time or attention. If everyone was raving about it, I might check it out, but as it is, I can wait.
Not since Daggerfall, but been a big TES fan since falling in love with Morrowind. Each subsequent entry to the series has been more disappointing then the last, but Skyrim was decent enough that I still put a good chunk of hours into it. Now though, TES is basically a dead series to me. I'm not remotely interested in seeing where the series goes in modern Bethesda's hands. It will take overwhelming evidence that Bethesda has somehow changed for me to pick up TES 6.
Largely the same story from me. One of the things I always pointed to for TES is just the movement. Morrowind, everything is open you can levitate, acrobatics significantly alters how you get around, mark+recall, teleport spells to the shrines, several in-universe fast travel systems, and don't get me started on the scrolls of icarian flight. Oblivion comes around and you see more instanced cities, less verticality in your movement, to my recollection no teleport spells, fast travel is a menu. I don't even think there was a system like skyrims wagons that kiiiiinda function like the silt striders. Not to say Skyrim is any better. In fact,it's even worse! You're pretty much able to move like a normal person. Mountains? Actually kinda a problem, I'll get over it (literally) but gone are the days of chugging a levitate potion, or fortifying my acrobatics and GETTING OVER IT.
I'm in the same historical boat as you. Arena was one of my first games on my 486. Here's my take.
Starfield is Skyrim in Space with Daggerfall's procedural generation. It may not be the perfect game (or for some people, even a good game), but it is the close-to-ideal Elder Scrolls experience in space.
I tried a Daggerfall playthrough where I went town to town looking for loot and doing nothing else. It got boring because the towns all started to look alike. So I stopped and just played it how it was meant to be played.
There's no "boring" take if you ignore the procedural filler content and outpost system (which Bored me in my last FO4 playthrough) and focus on the storyline and main areas. The other stuff is all there for those of us who enjoy mission-fun. I LIKE pirating ships again and again, but maybe you don't. Literally the boring complaints come from the fact that they gave us Daggerfall-level places to explore, with Daggerfall-level repetition.
That’s a great description! Thanks!
This is the first one that’s made me want to check out the game. I actually weirdly enjoyed the randomly generated dungeons that were basically all the same, probably because I had never played such a completely open world game before. At least some of it had to be the novelty compared to games like Ultima or the D&D games out at the time.
I’ve always played a lot of the RP part in my head - like in Morrowind I’d usually play as an escaped Argonian slave who became a thief-assassin after winning his freedom with a hatred for the Dunmer.
I’d this one is leaning back in that direction, I’ll check it out sooner rather than later.
The thing I like most is that the procedural stuff is never forced on you. Go pirating a bunch of random ships with random people. Or stick around to the Mars colony. Go exploring random military and science bases, or only go to the ones that were handcrafted. It's really not hard to avoid the procedural content that bores you if any does. Nothing has bored me so far.
I learn the games I like from "what's wrong with it". Here's what's "wrong" with Starfield
...all of the above, of course, sums up to "Skyrim in Space".
That all sounds reasonable. I mean, Skyrim has the classic feature where you stealth shoot an arrow into somebody and they say “Who’s there?” followed by “I guess it was just the wind.” or whatever - with an arrow sticking out of their chest. At some point it just becomes a classic Bethesda aspect of the game. The base building was my least favorite part - but that was more about having to run back to defend stuff rather than just pushing through on side quests.
You nailed it.
My funniest moment is realizing that grenades are better stealth weapons than a pistol. Someone sees you shoot a silenced pistol, you're screwed. If someone watches you throw a grenade, but you get into hiding fast enough, they don't put 2 and 2 together between the thing you threw and that random explosion.
I was in a certain important location and accidentally hit the grenade button... So without thinking I ran. Everyone but one died, and nobody was mad at me. So I looted all the corpses, and walked on whistling.
God that reminds me of almost EVERY bad day I had in Fallout games.
What a grand and intoxicating innocence. How amusing. The Nerevar; an Argonian. The gods must be spiting me.
I've thoroughly enjoyed Starfield so far, put about 80 hours in and haven't finished any of the questlines yet (largely intentionally, partially because I'll get sucked into another questline and get distracted). I like the outpost building, the ground combat is fun, the space combat is ok, not on the level of Elite or Star Citizen, but still entertaining.
Solid game to me. Maybe it didn't live up to people's wildest expectations, but I went in expecting an enjoyable experience and got it. I don't really get the hate for it.
Make your own opinion, don't base expectations off of the unwashed masses. Or do, or don't play it. You do you
I went in with fairly low expectations. I've seen Bethesda's trajectory so mostly knew what to expect. It thoroughly dissapointed me still.
How did you deal with the outpost building? There's no way to sort items coming into an outpost so eventually the links all get clogged. For me I built a massive stack of containers that it all flows into, but I still have to go through and pull out junk that's being used less. It sucks to use. I was really looking forward to that part of the game and it's like they didn't even consider the user experience with it. That's not even mentioning decorations not snapping.
From another of my comments:
The lack of sorting is really my only gripe with outposts. Right now, I have everything funneling into one main outpost and accumulating in a massive wall of containers, haven't really jumped into automated crafting yet. Building aspects have always appealed to me in games, so I've enjoyed just optimizing resource collection and setting up a supply chain.
I'm not installing any mods until I finish my first playthrough, but a sorting mod will be my first download.
I didn't play much Fallout outside of a scratched copy of FO3, so can't speak to any issues with the dialogue from that perspective. I don't have any major issues with it
That’s fair. I’ve been initially disappointed on a lot of their games due to the slide from doing basically anything in Daggerfall (but you might get stuck in a wall if you turn a corner too close) to Skyrim’s as-linear-as-open-world-gets approach. And I had about 4-5 false starts in FO4 despite playing all the other releases to the ending. Maybe it’s something that will click.
I do have to say that I am finding the Deck implementation of Cyberpunk unplayable without an external monitor and keyboard, so that sets an additional bar.
I'm pretty sure you won't like it, at least not until lots of mods fix things. I haven't gotten around to Daggerfall yet (but with Daggerfall Unity I want to eventually), but I have played everything since Morrowind. I had the same experience as you with FO4, despite actually enjoying the world and game at large. I still haven't finished the main quest. Starfield is so dumbed down and streamlined. You have almost no agency in the stories. Every single thing is told directly to you even when you're "uncovering a mystery" and it's super boring.
I'm gonna keep playing it, I just have better things to do at the moment. I have about 35 hours sunk into it. It will get better in time with updates and mods.
Same, I actually refunded it after 2 hours because I was already bored.
And I like space games.
It's not Bethesda's greatest game but it's not a terrible game in general. I definitely think companies need to stop over hyping their games as some groundbreaking game of the decade only to release a generic RPG.
Not really possible when your average gamer will overhype literally anything even without any marketing available. People are just stupid.
Hayao Miyazaki's latest work have no promotional marketing, hyped up by the fans, made $55million lol.
It's impossible to not overhype for Bethesda because all the hype they create will get uncontrollably inflated.
Don't forget the other Miyazaki, they literally posted a single image for an Elden Ring DLC and people have been going crazy about it for half a year.
But capitalism demands that games are overhyped. That hype will inevitably lead to more sales, and to that end it genuinely doesn't matter if the game itself lives up to it.
Can we really be honest with ourselves for a second. It's not the greatest game ever and it's not the worst game ever. It can just be a game that some people like and others don't.
I personally like it, but I can %100 see why others might not. It doesn't need to be deeper than that really.
I find the hype of something is inversely proportional to the quality of the end product. If some game company put 7 years into a game and their marketing was, "could be alright, see how you like it". I'd be all over that shit like white on rice.
You mean $10 for GOTY edition with all the bonus DLC so they can go ahead and rerelease the same thing but with "HD" graphics and another $70 pricetag
Don't forget, the HD version will:
But fear not! They'll just remove the original version from the store.
looks at Dark Souls 1 on Steam
I'm actually considering signing up for Xbox game pass, $3 for a month to play starfield. Feels like a fair trade
This is how I thought everyone felt about Cyberpunk 2077, but even on launch it was a pretty sweet Bethesda-game by CDPR.
The entire time I was playing Starfield I was thinking "man, Cyberpunk 2077 was a really good open world RPG after all."
Nothing quite like juxtaposition to make something shine.
Cyberpunk is a great open world RPG once you get past the 2-3 hours of mandatory railroaded story missions. Seriously I don't know how they fucked that part up so badly. It's like they saw the platinum chip storyline from New Vegas and said "You know that's cool, but what if instead of letting the player choose we make them watch a feature length movie about this plot?"
They really need a "start me after Konpeki Plaza" mode with a few thousand €$ and a handful of perk points thrown in.
The story is genuinely good but really drags on after you've seen it once or twice. I have the "skip dialogue" button setup to a macro that spams it like 50 times and a quick button on my mouse to trigger it.
It's all pretty baffling when you realize there are multiple genuinely good and well thought out builds in the game that are effectively mutually exclusive without a way to reset your perks, so you really need to restart the game to see them, but this is my third run through and I can't imagine doing this again any time soon.
I'm sure there will be a mod for it eventually. Right now there are save files for each background that have already done Act 1, which is probably what I'll use for future playthroughs.
CDPR releasing Phantom Liberty after Starfield is a genius move. I immediately bought Phantom Liberty after finishing a Starfield run.
Okay, I just want to clear up that bugs were not the only reason people were upset. They literally were hyping things up prerelease that weren't even in the game. That's why they spent so much time being sued in the EU for it.
The writing is also amateurish, and there's a lot of 'cyber' but not a lot of 'punk'. People were right to be upset, and personally I think they still should be. The only reason their PR got turned around was because of an anime that released based in the world, and now suddenly the game's being handed 'labor of love' awards—they hadn't even done much to fix up the game at that point!
So yeah. Not just bugs. I'm sure I'm even missing things.
Okay, but this was more than prerelease hype. This was showing footage to players things they can do, with the explicit intention of driving up pre-orders and day one sales (I think pre-ordering is extremely silly, I don't participate, but that's neither here nor there). Lying about your product to get people to pay $60 for it is extremely unethical, and some EU governments found it to be enough to take them to court over. So this is beyond your personal 'judgments'. Sorry.
Limiting this arbitrary contest to just AAA games is pretty silly, seeing as they have the budget to hire amazing writers, and some of them get blown out of the water by indie titles. That's not the argument you think it is. Gaming is just wider than that, and I would argue the boundaries should be expanded to include all entertainment seeing as all forms of entertainment are making a bid for your limited time/attention, but that's just me. If you must have ONLY AAA games, then Red Dead games, GTA, and Mass Effect games are some from off the top of my head. Granted I don't play that many.
Your bar for labor-of-love must be really really low if a game just working is enough for you. That same year, No Man's Sky was much more deserving of the award as it isn't being made by a corporation with endless resources, and yet it managed to improve itself at least twice as much.
Tbh, you writing out several paragraphs defending yourself for enjoying Cyberpunk kinda smells like fanboy behavior to me. You try to be reductionist and dismissive a lot in what you wrote, which is pretty lame and anti-intellectual. We're here to discuss the facts, not what you enjoy spending your money on. More power to you, spend your money however, but I'm not here to discuss that with you.
The lack of rpg choices makes it less bethesda to me.
The only hoices that mattered were the ones that affected the silverhand percentages, and which ending you ulimately chose.
There’s also some choices in the relationships V can take, but they don’t change everything much. That said, I think I makes sense that what V does wouldn’t really have much of an effect on Night City.
The choices in relationships basically unlock endings. The game a distinct lack of alternative methods to complete missions via statcheck, which is very bethesda to me.
There are some, but its very few. For instance i went almost full cyberrunner but my cyberrunner abilities didnt give me alternative skips to many missions
You mean the games where the dialogue choices are:
That seems to be more choices than any other Bethesda RP game. They got ahold of TES and Fallout and completely stripped out the idea of RPG "choices." Gone are the days in TES and Fallout that one could role play as someone other than "the chosen one." I'll never defend Arena or Daggerfall for their graphics, but no game studio has put out a game since those two that literally allows the player to totally ignore the main quest line, with in game consequences for that. Nope. Time doesn't matter, you're the chosen one, and will "get around to it." As far as I can tell, there is basically only one ending to any of these Bethesda "RPGs," and no matter what choices you make, you'll find that ending if you slog through enough "quests."
Admittedly, I've never played fallout 1 or 2, though I own them, so I don't actually know if the world building was as detailed as it was in Arena and Daggerfall.
Bethesda has always relied on modders to fix their platforms for them. They don't make games. They make platforms that other people can mod to make the games that they wanted to make.
Starfield itself was a step up from FO4, which almost lacked those entirely. Persuation was heavily used, and some of thr character traits you picked at the start led for unique chat dialogues, some just being extra chatter. But others allowing you to bypass an event because you had x trait.
Imo, Starfield isnt goty by any means, but it was virtually a step up from FO4 in almost all fronts except for exploration. Gunplay was better, rpgness was better, factions are better, customization was better. Skill tree imo was better.
Try BG3, literally everything matters, almost everything is a choice with consequences and i don't even know what the main plot is anymore since I am overwhelmed with possible choices
Oh I will. My current game that I'm waiting on is Cities Skylines 2, but I'll probably pick up BG3 around the New Year.
I'm only watching someone play through but it's just poorly written too. Every single person you meet knows you're the main character and begs for your help.
Not really, many many of them are surprised when you offer to help
Accurate. But props to Bethesda for not including Denuvo so I didn't have to feel cheated by paying for it.
Just like i said when it was announced
Bethesda is a shitty game dev studio.. lol
At first, I thought the quality seemed "meh" because it was released so close after the masterpiece that was Baldur's Gate 3. Everyone had high expectations and that's a hard game to follow, I believed.
After removing myself from Baldur's Gate 3, I discovered that I was wrong. Starfield still a "meh" game when taken on its own.
My personal biggest disappointment is the repeating point of interest. Yesterday I was on two planets and both had, even on the same planet itself, three times the same mine shaft, twice the same outpost, twice the same hole in the ground, with even mobs and ore placed on the same spots.
Seriously, this should never happen under any circumstances. It was the first time in the game I kind of felt the negative grow. While I still enjoy the rest.
That said, it's also true that the game is average in many aspects, which is enough to be enjoyable for me but not others.
I didn have this once, 2 planets with identical mines, even had the same dead bodies in the same spots
Will Skyrim remain as Bethesda's greatest triumph? Find out in the next episode of Elder Ball Z: "Skyrim is the greatest after all"
240 times. It took me two minutes to finish the "minigame" last time I did it. That's 8 hours of grinding to max out every skill. Not 8 hours of fun gameplay and visually interesting dragon fights and dungeon crawls, 8 hours (that's eight hours) of flying from one shiny spot to the next. Eight. 8. Hours. Of slow-ass zero G floating.
Last time I booted the game up, I fast traveled to my ship, took off, and heard Sarah say she has something for me. Something about that same line played for the millionth time absolutely killed my motivation to play, and I haven't started the game up in like a week. The romance system is too much too fast. I went from "flirting" with Sarah to married in like 4 hours. We've known each other for all of one in-game month. Maybe I'm just a broken person, but the way we talk sounds so disingenuously infatuated.
I think about the concept of playing, and it sounds fun in theory, but realistically what am I gonna get done in the next 8 hours? I'll talk to people that I don't care about to move through a story that I'm fundamentally disinterested in because I know that >!in order to max out the dragon shou–I mean, Starborn powers, I'll need to jump through and abandon alternate universes like Rick Sanchez but not as an ironic critique of internet nihilism. Hours and hours and hours wasted on >!timelines I don't care about just to get to the end game where I... have strong powers and a good ship, and can't connect with any of the characters because they'll be the tenth iteration of the same ones that I could never convince myself to care about before.!<
Maybe in a year or two after the game has been updated, I'll check it out again. Maybe I can shut my brain off for a minute and pretend I'm not >!grinding through universes!< if it doesn't take me eight hours to max out all the powers. Or maybe I'll just play BG3 when it comes to Xbox and forget that Starfield ever existed in the first place
The fact BG3 came out just before Starfield made me dislike the game even more than I probably would have I think. I went from playing probably the best RPG ever to Starfield, which doesn't even try to make you think you're playing any role except the chosen one. The fact that you join Constellation and almost instantly become not just a full member, but the person who everyone else takes orders from is rediculous.
The story sucks, the gameplay is bland, and there are so many friction points that constantly make you think about the fact you're playing a game. It's honestly sad. I love sci-fi so I was reasonably excited for the game, even knowing it'd be a modern Bethesda game, and it still let me down. The sci-fi concepts in the game aren't even done well.
The release timing is unfortunate.
It really does show that Bethesda are running about 10 years behind everyone else.
It cost them twice as much to make as BG3 did. How? Just compare any BG3 character and how animated they are thanks to full motion capture, to the same Bethesda animatronics they've used since forever.
It is not unfortunate, it is a strategic win by Larian. BG3 was actually supposed to come very late, but Larian released it early after learning about Starfield's release date.
They needn't have worried. At all.
People are even talking about Cyberpunk 2077 favourably again. That's how much shit Starfield is getting.
Cyberpunk 2077 was good (on PC) when It came out, and now it's great. It has earned that favourable talk.
The feeling I got playing BG3 or even skyrim was one of "I can't wait to try this again with X group/build/decision". With starfield I don't know if I'll ever even get to the point of fucking off on a random adventure, let alone finish the story.
Part of my problem with Starfield is that the builds are basically pointless. Your background only gives you perk points in a few skills, and the only background worth using is Bounty Hunter since those three skills are absolute necessities for playing the game. Your traits matter more, but you can get absolute duds. I thought I had some strong role playing potential with a Freestar Enlightened whose parents are still alive... but those traits suck and don't work together in the slightest. As an Enlightened Atheist, I have access to a chest with some hot garbage in a location on Jemeson that I had no reason to visit until past level 30. As a Freestar, I have some "unique" dialogue options that boil down to "I'm also from Akila! There are Ashtas!" My parents were really cool to have around... until I found out that giving me an ass garbage ship is the last thing they ever do. They're also UC, so I have no idea how my character is from Akila. My grandma was a UC marine in the war, and I'm wearing her Freestar-killing duds now. I couldn't even invite them to my wedding. My wife's big character quest has to do with her Freestar-killing ship crashing on a planet, and I don't recall there even being a dialogue option about those being my people she was killing back then.
Why are my parents UC if I'm Freestar? Why can't I invite them to my wedding? Why aren't they enlightened? Surely Bethesda could have spent some of the last decade making 16 sets of parents to account for the 4x4 possible combinations of religion and background. Nah, they spent all that time making an absolute assload of crewmates you can and never will hire.
Uhh have you played any other Bethesda title. If anything, the most common seniment is that game starts off very slow because its reletively speaking, the least ridiculous start conpared to most of the 3d bethesda games.
The opening sequence is slow, but no other game do you become essentially the faction leader so quickly. I guess maybe the blades in Skyrim, except you aren't really the leader, just the person it's supposed to protect, it's one person, and it's much further into the game.
Sarah is considered the leader of constellation, ad the game talks about how she got into her position and previous leaders of constellation.
Sure. That doesn't explain why I can tell constellation members to go work for me in my outpost. Them being companions is fine. Then being crew mates is alright (though don't they have other things they need to do?). Them being sweatshop workers is dumb. You're not technically the leader, but you are more than anyone else is. Sarah is in name only, but she takes orders from you. Everything that happens revolves around you, despite the other Starborn seeming to have had their own agency in other loops. Maybe we're only successful this loop because they decided to stop doing anything on their own?
Disco Elysium would like a word.
I love both. A lot.
Minish Cap master race 😞
There are dozens of us.
I really don't understand how they green lit that design choice.
It was like Ubisoft towers on crack.
"Let's take the least interesting gameplay mechanic possible, and then gate one of the only interesting mechanics behind it. And then let's also make it take a few minutes of jetpacking around a barren planet to get there beforehand, to really jazz it up."
Todd: "Yes, exactly! See that temple over there? Your can go there. And go there. And go there again. And again. And again. And again. Again. Again. Again."
Devs look at each other...
"Is Toddbot broken or is this good gameplay design? Kenny, are you writing this shit down?"
I can believe that one of them played the little temple minigame once and thought it was cool, but unless they're literal space aliens, I cannot imagine the thought of doing that for eight hours even crossed their mind.
Those temples are so weak. Getting the dragon powers felt somewhat primal. But floating through a bit of space dust, not so much
If you are trying to grind an RPG, you are playing it wrong.
This isn't Dark Souls. Nor would I want it to be.
Anon is not wrong.
this is why I never buy Bethesda at release. Let the modders come, and perhaps Bethy will fix some shit themselves, you never know... give it six months or a year and you'll always have a better experience, and often cheaper and with more dlcs.
This is why I never buy Bethesda games, if they can't be bothered to release an enjoyable game I won't bother rewarding them my money.
It's not 2002 anymore, there are too many quality games coming out every year to play them all, why do people keep that company alive?
Someone fixed their shitty UI for free on day one. I'm not surprised at all why they don't even bother to fix their shit.
Todd Howard has even said his favorite mods for Skyrim were UI ones, lol.
Is he like not allowed to fire people or something?
I have a theory about this:
it's hard to get game devs to move to fucking maryland. to baltimore of all places. these jerks could live damn near anywhere and the studio wants to be in baltimore? so they're left with the folks willing to do that, and anything they can't accomplish - that's what mods (and dreams) are for.
I derived plenty of enjoyment with Fallout 4, Skyrim, FNV (not exactly a bethesda title but one that also shipped with tons of bugs).... at around $40 each, with all their DLC stuff, I think they're great values. Just not worth the new release jazz.
Read that as more dics. Probably those too.
there's so many mods for that.
Fallout 4 is the Fallout game I enjoyed most even tho it's clearly not even top 3 of the series. Reason? So many mods that make the game better. I'm essentially not playing FO4, I'm playing Sim Settlements and, oh yeah, my son is missing or some shit.
Just don't bide your time too long, if you're too late they'll start re-releasing it for the next 15 years on every platform imagineable and for full price each time. There was a sweet spot with Skyrim on PC where you got upgraded to the ultimate edition (or whatever tf) for free if you bought the game before the transition.
I suppose the money you're spending on marketing is money you're not spending on the game
The thing about word walls is it's simple and it just works. You suck the ancient text, behold the epic fanfare and leave. Temples, on the other hand, make for a great spectacle the first time you experience it. Then you realize you have to do the same ritual again and again.
Feel like they should've shortened them after the first one or two times you do it, so you only have to collect two of the things. Explain it as your connection to the temples growing as you gain their power or something, or even just don't explain it at all.
They should have just left out the minigame, would have been more interesting to walk into a room with this giant ring hovering there.
Or just hit the one trigger (that's always directly between you and the ring) and it stops spinning.
That works too
Very different design philosophies. Bethesda try to create dynamic worlds to explore where every npc has a schedule they follow over the course of the day and you find new things organically, but end up not having the resources to create much depth in their quests.
Larian put a lot of work into their quests, but have a very static world where there is no day/night cycle and npcs repeat the same path and barks every few minutes.
except they don't in Starfield
I mean maybe you can argue you can still do this but it's less "stumble on ancient tomb" and more "click on a interesting looking marker on the map"
Man you really haven't played a Bethesda game since Skyrim
I have played them all. Although I only played the first 10 hours of starfield.
Stand in one place in the middle of Baldur's Gate and listen to the same barks repeat every minute.
Larian do not have the tools and experience to build a Skyrim game. Bethesda do not have the tools or experience to build a Baldur's Gate game.
A cyberpunk developer made the exact same point when people were comparing them to Starfield, two games with far more in common than Baldur's gate.
https://www.gamingbible.com/news/cyberpunk-2077-developer-defends-starfield-against-fan-criticism-664007-20231005
It is fine to criticise starfield for it's faults. It's rediculous to imply they should have built a Larian game instead. They can't
I really hate essential NPCs
Especially in Skyrim when half the side quest characters are also unkillable 😒
New Vegas was basically a fan mod, Bethesda only provided the engine. Just like a mod
Is the gameplay the appeal of New Vegas? It’s my favourite of the Fallout franchise because I like the writing, and also I can kill almost anyone but somehow the story will find a way to go forward.
God I would kill (every NPC) for an Obsidian-made Skyrim.
Depends what you mean by gameplay, I love the storytelling, the role-playing, the rich tapestry of New Vegas. You can get engaged, feel like you have a real impact. It's very well done.
Very true, I was referring to more the actual running-and-gunning combat aspects, which are…well it’s Fallout 3, more or less. And I have gripes with Fallout 3’s combat.
I also love the RPG in New Vegas, and you’re absolutely correct that you feel the world change around to reflect your choices more so than any other Fallout game. In my mind that’s categorized under “storytelling”, but really it should be under “gameplay” because it’s responding to player input. I don’t know why my brain didn’t consider that.
Tbh Outer Worlds is kinda a kill-every-NPC Starfield.
Also there's not really a gameplay appeal of FO:NV (or FO3). 2008 is really where games got shooting mechanics down and Bethesda's engine didn't really get there until 2015. That's why VATS exists.
FO was a very TTRPG-like (CRPG) game for a long time so the focus wasnt on gameplay.
Uniroically would be more interesting. Just a giant field, with some holes in it. Let the old folks loose. HOURS of entertainment.
STARRING: “Sarah Morgan Disliked That.”
Featuring "sort through all that stuff, only take the important things!"
I like the game. Shipbuilding, base building, and exploring settlements is pretty fun.
60 hours in, either I'm playing it or thinking about it. Hell, I'm taking a break from just wiping out the Crimson Fleet to post this.
Yeah yeah puddle deep and all but I like Bethesda RPGs, there isn't anyone else making sandbox RPGs to compare to and it runs good enough on Xbox. My PC was never gonna play it well.
No matter how much you hate it tho you have to admit the dialog system is the best of the atudios' games by far. There are so many Persuade options and the mini game for it is done well enough. So many skills and traits get brought up in dialog like stealth, security, wanted, faction, etc. It's like an upgrade on New Vegas's system. Combat is great too and impactful . Hell I shot a guy in the shoulder and he grabbed it and yelled "OW HE HIT ME IN THE SHOULDER!" which surprised me. Space combat is fun too.
Wish UI and inventory management was better. Wish I could fly off the beaten path and find shit outside the "space box" you warp into. But whatever, once I realized it's Fallout, not Freelancer I adjusted accordingly. Games better than the haters make it out to be, and that's without any mods.
A lot of people forget that there's different kinds of RPGs. Or just games in general. To them, every RPG has to be Baldurs Gate 3 now. Just like previously, every open world now had to be Elden Ring or else it sucks. Sandbox RPG? Never heard of it. Like, can you fuck off to the wilderness and start producing drugs in BG3? Can you build a spaceship that looks like a massive cock? That's the sort of freedom you get in a Bethesda RPG, where doing random shit in the world is a viable way to play. Are you gonna finish the main story by making drugs? No, but you're gonna level up and make money.
I think Bethesda games are like the remnants of a genre that has become rarer and rarer. I mean, how many games released these days are actual sandboxes, and not just regular open world games pretending to be sandboxes? Zelda is one that comes to mind, but not really many more outside of Bethesda. Sandbox games are a dying breed in the AAA space, and for some reason some people really just want to deliver the killing blow to it.
Totally. People are too busy noticing the bigger issues and completely skip over the good aspects. They are there, else I'd not keep playing it for so many hours. It's sad that we can't talk positive about the game without getting hated at.
It's the same as it was with Cyberpunk2077, I could play it really well on my then new PC with little bugs. Even when you named the positive things, no one was listening. It was an amazing game then, I wonder how it's with DLC and 2.0 update, which I've yet to play.
That said. There are a ton of bugs in Starfield and if that's what values most to you, then it's justified to not like the game.
Yep about Cyberpunk as well. I played on XSX where it was already 60fps and I played it like a Immersive Sim instead of a GTA RPG and enjoyed the hell outta it.
It’s a shame you’re being so heavily downvoted for simply having your own opinion. I actually agree with you. It’s certainly not GOTY material but it’s also not a bad game.
Especially given the modding tools that will be coming. It seems quite a few people don’t wish to give credit to Bethesda for this feature yet there are single digit AAA developers that release tools. And I can’t think of any other developers, perhaps bar Valve, that offer such a great modding experience.
It’s not about “fixing the game” (although that has proven to be one benefit over the years); it’s about enabling players to add to the world, make their mark, and share it with anyone. And Starfield feels like a marvellous playground with a firm foundation that will afford countless developers and gamers to build upon it. Heck, the mods that are already out are awesome. I’m thankful that Bethesda still puts in the effort for PC gamers to have that opportunity.
What I’ve enjoyed most about the game so far was actually messing around and restarting a few times with different builds and a seeing how things change.
There’s a lot of stuff hidden from the player if you don’t have the skill or the right level or whatever but, oh man have I been enjoying the dialogue. I went all in on all the social stuff and it’s honestly been a really great ride for someone like me that loves space and loves getting to know characters.
This is certainly the first Bethesda game (ignoring New Vegas since they didn’t make that masterpiece) where characters are interesting, have back stories, and feel fleshed out / developed (especially over time).
Morrowind, while with deeper conversation options, felt like everyone was basically the same person and the reuse of dialogue between NPCs was a bit of a let down. Oblivion and Skyrim felt like there were only 5 people in the entire game (the same voice actors everywhere didn’t help). The Fallouts were better but still shallow or too brief.
The Constellation NPCs l, for instance, have been really interesting to get to know over the game; there’s so much dialogue for every quest, I kind of wish I could take more of them on a mission than just one, especially how you can often let them talk in a conversation with another NPC rather than just sit around while you do everything. I’m not doing “romance” as that’s not something I’m into role playing but it certainly feels like I’ve some interesting friends coming along for the ride.
Alas, Bethesda can’t win when their audience is basically “all gamers” and there will always be a lot of people who aren’t satisfied - and that’s totally fine. Thankfully there’s plenty of amazing games out right now that there’s no need to waste energy complaining about Starfield.
As I pitched to my patient gamer friends: Starfield isn’t Elite, Star Citizen, or No Man’s Sky. It’s a Bethesda game that launches with jank, has plenty of good moments and bad, but (given a few years) will be one of the richest gaming playgrounds like all of the Bethesda games before it (and I’m guessing it’ll be possibly the richest of them all).
I wonder if someone will make Starwind where you can land on planet Nirn? Haha.
I'm playing a social character too and it's so damn viable for a Bethesda game I'm impressed. I've talked my way out of so many situations and if you get the Ryujin chip you can Jedi Mind Trick others too.
...what?
There's flavor text options I guess but NPCs don't even acknowledge what you say. They always respond with a canned "I didn't think about it that way", or "oh, interesting"
The "minigame" is just rolling three dice instead of one dice roll like in the past.
Which is an improvement over Fallout 4 and Skyrim.
Name a better way without invoking ChatGPT Go:
Games that NPCs actually respond appropriately something you say to persuade them?
Off the top of my head:
Persuation in Mass Effect was literally a karma check. What are you talking about?
its dumb shit
I completely no life’d Starfield on PC until Phantom Liberty came out…now my modded Cyberpunk new play through…I haven’t touched Starfield since.
Likely I’ll pick it up again when creation kit comes out in ‘24 and significant mods make the game what we were expecting (dismemberment, more mature themes, potential enhanced space travel etc)
The combat's fun, shooting spacers hasn't gotten old yet, but otherwise, yup, very average.
I would rather shoot anything in Cyberpunk. The gunplay is way better. I can slide around and I can hack people on top of shooting them in the head which operates realistically. Starfield? Enjoy your Orion and sponge bullet enemies with zero dismemberment.
space shouts ? I've played about 25hrs (it's become very, very repetitive in the last 5) but I don't know what this is about. Is it a new mechanic that reveals itself at some point during the game ?
What does that even mean?
This post tracks with the reviews I saw
Anon plays star citizen
That honestly makes me happy that it isn't a must play. My PC is getting too long in the tooth for a game like Starfield and I don't have an Xbox. But I'm a big Bethesda fan and felt like I was missing out.
I wanted NMS with a more compelling narrative and RPG components and it doesn't look like Starfield is that.
american capitalism turns anything good into shit.
have a good game? let EA ruin it.
wait until you find out how shit coca cola is. go use corn to make sugar. die young or subscription pay for health until you die fat and unhappy.
...there is really nothing left to like about the american dream.
2024 will be eyeopening. what is it if you want two old fucks fight for presidency? necrophelia? EA will ruin ten more game studios, netflix/amazon will show ads ads ads in every subscribtion and house costs will make sleeping under a bridge a 5 star airbnb experience...
starfield ia just one result of a fucked up culture
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/382/534/298.gif
It just slops.
Someone should make a mod called "Todd's slop"
They did: it's the base game.
After Fallout 4 I kind of figured this is the direction starfield was going. I love Skyrim, but I just haven't been able to enjoy a Bethesda game since then. They don't have the magic, and the mechanics are even more half assed than Skyrim.
Idk, this shit just isn't acceptable after Witcher 3 came out.
It's not moddable on gamepass, so I doubt I'll ever care.
Its modable on gamepass. One of the things bethesda did with starfield is allow loading of mods through the default save location (my games folder) instead of having to directly install mods in the game folder. This applies to mods that dont affect the game executable.
Had no idea. I just assumed it was Xbox's weird format. Thanks for the information.
If you mean Xbox, Bethesda already said Xbox will support mods like how Fallout and Skyrim did. So you'll be limited to the "store" but it'll have mods
the store mods are usually pretty shit with a far more glitchy application
What are you talking about? I'm playing the gamepass version with several mods installed
Stop buying Bethesda products! Skyrim was their swan song!
I think Star feels a good game, but you have to approach it like a bethesda game, they've lately been doing pretty good looter shooters with some RPG story elements. But they're not RPGs, but they market themselves as the next greatest RPG, and I think that's disillusioning a lot of people.
If you approach it as a looter shooter, take a breezy, it's pretty fun
this guy is acting like you cant just tell constellation to fuck off and never return there and go back to being a miner 😂 albeit freelance miner on your own but still
I can't stop laughing at these dopamine addicted coke rats who can't keep their grubby paws off the latest bibeo gaem.
Just have one oz (29.6mL) of self control and don't preorder it. Wait for the reviews to drop. Do some market research and be an informed consumer.
I gave up on it after an hour. Oh woooooooow being foreshadowed I'm gonna fight this giant thing that just ruined the whole thing, super suspenseful anyway byyyyye. Frankly I just can't get into it - the environments, graphics, gunplay, enemies etc. are terribly dull. I need something to be different than in Skyrim almost 12 years ago.
This is so polarizing. I had no doubts it would be shit, it's Bethesda. But it's actually not that bad. But some just say the exact opposite. The game mechanics are all completely schizophrenic at best, but it's not a surprise, at any point does it deviate from classic Bethesda logic. Staring dudes and badly scaled rpg systems. It's just par for course but more modern. And why people think quick travel is a bad thing, when it's been a staple since like 97 or something, is just completely beyond me.
That “Chosen one” part makes me feel confused. If you’re a gamer most likely you have been a loser your entire life, so being the “chosen one” for once should make you feel great… no?
If you just want to be a loser in games just go play Sims 4
They sell their games like: do whatever you want, be whoever you wanna be.
As long as you want to be the chosen one who collects trinkets.
You don't even have to do the main story, you can literally fuck off after Barret gives you his ship.
You don't need to be the chosen one, just a fucker who started hallucinating after touching a weird metal that they now keep in storage as a memento trinket.
I have about 70 hours in the game and haven't touched the main quest besides the first few. There's so many quest lines and side content that if I never did the main quest I'd be satisfied with my purchase.
I think it's the inherent tension between a game that promises an immersive, open, and explorable world with a powerful character creator, and AAA studio's overwhelming compulsion to create a cinematic main quest line.
The two goals are directly at odds. And it leads to a situation where no matter what kind of character you create, you are still the same predefined character. Because the developers need a common touchpoint to write a story around.
It's an issue with a lot of games. In Skyrim, no matter what character you make, you are still the Dragonborn, you can roll a Khajiit and still be able to waltz into every city, even as the other Khajiit are restricted to outside the walls. Similarly in Mass Effect, you will always be Shepard. My excitement for Cyberpunk evaporated when I saw that it was leaning into a cinematic experience rather than a cyberpunk one.
It's actually not an issue in Starfield, people just don't have a clue about the game. Everyone that touches one of the artifacts for the first time gets the vision and can get the temple power. There's an entire quest where you go to a temple with Barrett and get him a power as well. When you talk to the Emissary and the Hunter, it's revealed that you die in quite a lot of the other universes. You're not the chosen one in any capacity, you're just a random person, there's nothing special about you.
The main quest also gives you literally zero urgency to complete it. The fate of the universe isn't at stake, no great threat is looming that requires you to collect them (at least not until way later and even then not really), they're just a mystery that a group of scientists and explorers is investigating.
Ehh, pretty sure the Hunter tells you that they've never seen "you" take up the power and make it that far.
No, multiple of the core skill trees are flat out broken.
You can invest skill points in outpost building, only to eventually realize that they give you no way of even building flat ground.
You can invest skill points in stealth, only to eventually realize that the stealth mechanics are either utterly bugged out and broken, or if working as intended, were designed by a sadist who hates stealth games.
You can invest skill points in unarmed combat, only to very quickly realize that there is flat out no quick way of going unarmed.
And through these and several other broken skill tree paths, you can learn that there is never any way to respec and you're stuck having wasted skill points in cool sounding stuff that is actually useless. There are aspects of this game that are fundamentally broken.
"I think Starfield is a good game" is an opinion.
Is a statement of claimed fact followed by spraying in the dark character attacks against anyone criticizing the game for any reason.
People can disagree with long texts, why is that a surprise?
"Consider that maybe you are just a spoiled brat, or terminally miserable."
Ah, sorry master reader, I'm trying to read your words but my skills are clearly not enough for this high level text. All I see on my screen is "someone disagreed with my opinion so I'm throwing personal attacks on them because I feel invalidated".
Being closed-minded isn't the gigachad moment you think it is. How about talking to a mirror instead
Starfield isn't even mid, it's abyssmal. The sheer embarrassment of the fact that they spent hundreds of millions of dollars making it should make them reconsider their career and life choice.
If it was actually abysmal, then it wouldn't be enjoyed by so many people.
Stop pretending like your opinion is universal, because it clearly isn't.
Lots of people enjoy abyssmal things all the time. It's sad, but what can you do?
No ones opinion is universal, stop reaching, and stop coping. Find a better game to support.
Damn, gamers are fucking children. It's a video game, dude. Go read a book, or take a nap, or eat a snickers or something.
Sure, I'll go do all of those things, your mother, and then I'll go play some better games.
Maybe you should consider doing some of those things instead of making pointless comments supporting your favorite garbage purveyors.
Yeah no shit. Redfall was abysmal. Nobody is out here defending that game.
"Starfield is a good game"
No. No it isn't. It has worse space exploration than a game from 2016(NMS), worse inventory management than Minecraft, and an unnecessary amount of loading screens that haven't been seen since Borderlands 1.
I hate defering to review scores, but most reviews agree despite some issues it is a pretty good game. Everyone I know who's played it in real life is enjoying it despite the issues. I'm not saying you enjoyed it as you clearly didn't, but your experience clearly isn't universal.
I gave it about 55 minutes before I realized I wasn't having fun, and had no desire to continue hoping it would get better(Then I hopped on the real GOTY, Battlebit Remastered). I also went in blind and had no expectations other than "fallout set in space".
I also hate referring to review scores but if we're going off of that metric then my Friend Pepa Pig is truly a great work of art, right next to God of War.
If you believe you can form an informed opinion after only 55 minutes of playing, then you are flat out wrong.
You haven't even seen half the mechanics available, let alone explored the many different factions and scifi genres the game has to offer.
You opinion is about as valuable as a random cow's opinion about the British Royal Family.
I'll write a thesis and put in hundreds of hours next time I decide to try and play a bad game just to appease some random internet people, sure.
I didn't enjoy the gun fights, the space fights, the fast traveling, or any of the characters so why would I continue to play something I find unenjoyable and bland.
I'm not going to spend my limited gaming time hoping something gets better just so I can shitpost on the internet.
Why did you buy it? That's like, the entire game.
I didn't buy it, I have a couple months left on my Game pass Ult sub so it was "free". I also like those themes but didn't enjoy the implementation in this game.
I have 500 hours in that game and I'm just going to go ahead and ask it. What?
I didn't say it had a good story, I said it had better space exploration. Being able to actually land on a moon or planet in the system you are in VS fast travel and loading screens is vastly different.
If you made it 30 hours in NMS and still couldn't find the story then I can't help you bud. Just get back on Starfield and suck on that copium.
Played NMS for many hours.
Did some fun things in it like repairing crashed ships and reselling them, exploring strange worlds, did space battles, ...
The story was not one of em. It was so bland and uninteresting.
Not once did I say it had a good story, but it does have a story. It has better space exploration by a longshot which was my point.
"Hey guys look at me look at how little I care hey guys"
Lol, triggered.
I didn't listen to the hype either, and was sucked in for like 70 hours, but knowing that >!the universe I'm in is gonna cease to exist as part of the main storyline!< makes it impossible for me to care about any of it. Why would I >!try to finish a side mission or make an outpost or build a ship if it's all gonna be wiped away in a few hours? Why would I finish the game if it means wiping all of that away?!< Why would I play the game if I want to not finish it? There's a fundamental disconnect there that kills my motivation to play
I noticed that while I was playing, before discovering how the game "ends," that I was at least keeping myself occupied, if I wasn't even really having all that much fun. Mostly, I was idly ticking boxes.
Once I learned about the end game, all motivation to play disappeared. Why waste my time ship building, outpost building, doing anything at all if I'm just going to have to start over? But I can't even change my skill points, so I'm stuck with ever-increasing amounts of XP just to get new skills.
Bad game design, overall it's at best a 6/10.
It could have been made so much better if instead of >!wiping universes, it just added them, and you could jump between them at will.!< It would probably make the game much larger to account for >!potentially ten sets of ten custom ships, ten sets of 27 outposts, and 10 sets of NPC interactions to keep track of,!< but at least it wouldn't piss off anyone who's spent more than a few hours building the perfect ship or finding that mythical 7 resource outpost
Sorry, I wasn't even thinking about it. Gonna spoiler tag all my comments now. I'm sorry I spoiled it for you
So you mean to say why should you enjoy the journey if you don't like the supposed end?
No, and I see your point. You've given me a better understanding of my own position. It's not that it isn't worth doing things in a temporary universe (that's what we're doing right now, actually), it's that I'm actually just not having fun with the journey. I've built essentially the same outpost a dozen times in FO4 because it's fun. I've landed on the Mün in KSP a thousand times with essentially the same ship because it's fun. I've played through the thieves guild and Dark Brotherhood questlines in Oblivion on every character I've played because they're fun, regardless of the fact that I know that eventually I'm going to drop this character and play as a new one. The difference is that I'm having fun with the process in those other games, and I'm not having fun with the process in Starfield.
Edit: but also, it is the temporary aspect of the universe that's the problem. Part of the core gameplay loop is to destroy your progress. That's fundamentally disconnected from the gameplay aspects of completing side quests and building things. We're talking about a video game, not real life.
Breaking news: rando on the internet plays a game for the first time in his life.