I am going to try and say something I haven’t yet seen in this thread.
- The ship builder gets a big like for me because I always wanted to wander around big spaceships. I really like the fact that I can walk around the interiors and build my own designs, even if I’m bad at it.
- The POIs are identical, and that’s horrible. As much emphasis was put on exploration, this is even a bigger disappointment, because once you’ve seen one X, you’seen every X, down to every single entity placement. This really kills the joy of the entire game for me and I feel angry thinking back to Howard’s words about how the game could be played for hours, months, years - like, doing what, exactly?
Aside from that, yeah, pretty much what everybody said: dialogue is boring and censored (like, advertiser/stakeholder friendly), the game is very “take it safe” in important regards, but there’s enough story and quests to have fun with the mechanics that actually work.
Overall, it’s flawed, but a definite 6/10 - it’s just not the game Bethesda made us think it is, again.
I like the idea of the ship builder, but it falls short just enough to be irritating to me.
Why cant I rotate habs to have hallways run perpendicular to the ship? Why don’t decorative structure pieces give better hull health/armor/whatever? Why cant the description of the the non engine/reactor/shield/gravdrive modules give me more, critical need-to-know information? Like what work benches this module have, how much tonnage does this landing gear support (so you can easily resolve irritatingly vague build error messages), Why cant I control where doors and ladders go, so I dont have to basically navigate an MC Esher painting to get from the cockpit to my captains quarters?!
Same. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one thinking about these things - I’ve seen many people complaining about then in other places as well.
If only that convinced Bethesda to patch the ship builder and make it a true masterpiece…
To busy removing vendor chests so people cant play their single player games wrong, lol.
That’s unironically much simpler, easier, and quicker compared to what you and I want. I the development world, stuff that’s quick and easy to fix often gets a higher priority so people just over it and focus on something that takes much more attention and resources for a longer period of time.
But I’m basically coping here because I really do hope they come around to enhancing the ship builder to be even more customizable and robust. At least lemme choose my door and ladders placement.
60 hours playtime here. It’s alright. A typical Bethesda game, nothing more, nothing less. It has some fun stories and side quests, but the main quest line and the associated companions are just bland. Random outposts are the same old standard abandoned buildings as in FO4 with a few different textures. Outpost building and ship flying feel like unnecessary bolted on additions. Base building in FO4 was better. Ship building is a fun gimmick, but doesn’t add anything of meaning to the game. And there’s the myriad of small and big bugs, some of which date back to Skyrim or even Oblivion (like looting things off a table which causes nearby stacked non-lootable items to fall over or launch at the ceiling). Not sure if I’ll finish it. I’d give it a 6/10.
The fact that loose shit on a table still explodes when anything touches it just blows my mind. Nearly 20 years and they can’t figure out how to stop every single object being under enough tension to send it to the moon. I remember when Skyrim came out and actually thought stuff like that would be ironed out for the next game.
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It’s okay. There’s a lot to do and I do like the world but the gameplay is really disconnected and there’s no exploration to be had, just teleporting from quest objective to quest objective.
I might not finish it, the entire time I was low-key wishing I was playing Fallout. Even Fallout 4 felt much more fun.
The dialogue quality is also pretty boring even by Bethesda standards. Everything’s just really predictable and nobody has anything interesting to say. I feel like I can write dialogue as good in 5 minutes at times.
Pirate boss: We need to find the treasure. I need you to go get clues for me in planet X and meet Guy.
teleport to planet X
Guy: Ah, so the boss sent you? I have the key, but this is a really risky job. What’s in it for me?
[Persuade]
Guy: Fine, here’s the key. Just put in a good word for me, yeah?
Use the key to get an item, teleport back
Pirate Boss: Well? Show me what you’ve got!
Pirate Boss: Interesting… This means that the treasure might be in planet Z… This is a very important step for us pirates. I need you to go to planet Z-
I’m just getting really bored most of the time. The game has its moments but more than half of the gameplay really is teleporting from A to B, walking from B to C, and talking for a long time about things that aren’t interesting.
People are calling it a typical Bethesda game but I highly disagree. I played Skyrim not too long ago and that was so much more exciting. Fallout 3 also left a much bigger impression on me.
It’s typical with the gameplay; it’s lacking in their world building. To be fair, Elder Scrolls came from some of the big wigs’ actual D&D games, and Fallout was originally created by an entirely different studio, so they kind of had some established stuff to work on for those series.
This is the first thing I think they’ve ever done entirely new and on their own and it’s really showing that whatever talent they used to have in the writing department has long since gone away.
They never had it. Look at the writing of Fallout 3 vs New Vegas. The main character had so much more to say in the latter, and with better lines. Fallout 3’s best line is “Fuck you”. It just got carried by performances like Three Dog.
New Vegas wasn’t even made by them. New Vegas was also written by the same dude who wrote Fallout 1 and 2 and I think you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who agrees it is poorly written.
That’s why I said look at New Vegas vs Fallout 3. Because it wasn’t made by them and it is in another league. It shows.
OIC. You weren’t lumping it in there with the “they never had it” line. That makes more sense.
I would agree they never had it if not for Morrowind being really good. They’re never going to have another Morrowind. Seems like it was a fluke in the first place
Definitely agree about the dialog and writing in general. There were 2 or 3 questlines I got invested in, but the number of times I came back to a convo, eyes glazed over, and just figured it out from the context of my replies… WAAAAY too high.
People are calling it a typical Bethesda game but I highly disagree. I played Skyrim not too long ago and that was so much more exciting. Fallout 3 also left a much bigger impression on me.
100% agree.
Its the weakest Bethesda game we’ve seen in 20 years, imho… because its missing the heart that made Oblivion/F3/Skyrim/F4 fun and engaging.
Overall it was a very good game. Just finished my 150 hour character and I see this game as another Bethesda classic that will be replayed over and over for years just like fallout/elder scrolls.
It obviously had its flaws, but they weren’t a deal breaker for me, and for many besides a very loud minority.
The good:
- Massive amount of quests, questlines, companion quests, and places to explore. I doubt fully completing this game is feasible unless you just grind, which will turn dull. I didn’t do any freestar, red mile, and many other quests/companions. On a future playthrough I will go back to it.
- Multiple ways to approach quests. Not everything is gun your way through. Items from other quests, your perks, your traits, and your companions offer unique dialogue options.
- This is more subjective, but thank god outpost/ship building isn’t shoved down your throat. I hate that part of FO4 where settlements are constantly a chore. You can do those at your own pace like I did without being nagged to do it.
- The NG+ mechanic gives the story a new spin and brings a few plot points to life. I also enhances the replay value. Can’t say much more without heavy spoilers.
The bad:
- Planet exploration is lacking. I can’t see a reason as to why we need to land and point X and walk a mostly barren place when we have a ship. It takes most usefulness away from the ship
- Lack of local maps
- Neon was disappointing. We were promised a cyberpunk-like town where anything goes and full of shocking stuff, but all we got was a dirty shopping mall. The main thing causing this was this games’s total avoidance of any sexual theme.
Overall a 8/10 for me. I’m sure modders will in time improve whatever is lacking.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it bad, but I really couldn’t get into it. It feels… old already. Like if it came out 5 years ago, it would have been great. But now, it just feels tired. Old graphics, recycled mechanics I’ve played 100 times before, and all done worse than in other games… the poster child for wide but shallow.
I dunno. It’s not bad, but not very good either. I’ll check back in a year or two after they’ve crowdsourced improvements from the community.
I won’t presume to know what you’re thinking but why not just call it bad? You already explained your positioning, seems mostly negative. I see a lot of people holding this opinion like they are afraid to call it bad so as not to be labeled a “hater”. I say fuck any idiots who think that, call a spade a spade. Games can be bad while still being playable and having some merits.
I guess for a few reasons. One, just because I don’t enjoy a game doesn’t make it bad. Two, because I know a lot of people put a lot of work into it, work I’d never be able to do myself, and I respect their efforts. Three, I’ve played bad games before and I don’t think this is objectively bad. Enough people in this thread have good things to say about the game to prove, in my eyes, that it’s good enough to not be called bad.
But I agree with your point overall. I don’t want to feel like I can’t criticize a game without be dismissed as a hater or whatever. And I’ve criticized this game plenty. lol
It’s alright. My biggest complaint is that it’s a regression from Fallout with the level of violence and no gore.
For a rated M game it feels really….”safe.”
I’m really enjoying it for what it is, but nothing about Starfield makes me believe there will be a Starfield 2.
I don’t think there will be another Bethesda game after the next Elder Scrolls. The Microsoft acquisition probably has all the executives making retirement plans to spend all that cash.
I’ve got credit roll. I know there’s a lot of replayability in a few aspects, but I doubt I’ll play more til there’s more baked-in mod support.
For a space game, the world… universe felt small, and I think that’s mostly down to the fact that travel is almost entirely a menu affair. There’s nothing between the quest start and the quest zone but a menu and a load screen. Or 3. The major faction quest lines were fun enough but not super varied or long. I didn’t do the UC questline to be fair, seemed like it was gonna be a lot of space fighting and I had enough by that time.
Bethesda design choices abound. Annoying inventory management, bad UI. Companions calling out random crap incessantly, I bloody know I’m carrying a lot Sarah, you told me 14 items ago. And 13. And 12. Loot seemed pretty lack luster, too, particularly for not-weapons. I found some legendary armor pretty early that I had no incentive to change until near the end. That made looting anything that wasn’t a weapon feel uneventful, and weapons were only marginally better, just due to larger functional variety.
Good things… Definitely the ship building. I wish the ships were more than a glorified chest and some weapons, but the designing itself was fun, if a bit clunky on controller. Gunplay was fun. Generally playing the game itself was enjoyable enough.
Overall, it’s a Bethesda game. It’s a space opera. It’s not a space exploration and flight sim. If that checks your boxes, it’s pretty aight.
wow you didnt play probably the best questline 😆 the UC quest is amazing
Damn, I was too fatigued of the game by then. Guess I’ll hit it in, like, 2 years when I replay it finally
Absolutely agree with all of this. The thing I really can’t get my head around is why they even bothered to have starships in the game.
It’s like at some point, they had this vision of a space exploration game where you could fly about, explore the galaxy, land on planets and walk around etc and you’d have this super cool, fully customisable ship.
Then as they went along, they decided all of that was unachievable but the instead of completely ditching the idea of spaceflight and, I dunno, replacing it with stargates or portals between worlds - something that would lend itself better to picking a destination from a list and fast travelling - they just scrubbed away all the fun stuff about spaceflight and left in a system where the player can almost completely bypass the ship. They can fast travel to the cockpit from anywhere, open a menu, fast travel to a location, open the menu again, then fast travel to a landing point.
Having a ship is just a disappointing reminder of all the fun stuff you can’t do.
You described exactly how I played the game, when the UI wasn’t actively trying to prevent me from navigating it.
I can accept the style they went for overall but yeah the disjointed nature and having to root through menus to fast travel to your next destination in a questline is beyond cumbersome.
Truly wish you could just get in your cockpit and confirm “travel to the next mission destination” was an option and then just have the ship take off, get into orbit and hit hyperspace then land at your destination…all pretty quick, handling the destination loading during the hyperspace jump animation.
It feels pretty poorly thought out for 2023, would be acceptable in the 2000’s with limited tech but nowadays we can do better I think…and industry leaders like Bethesda should strive to.
You only really need to open the Star Map when landing/scanning a planet.
If you are in the cockpit screen just open up the scanner and select Star systems from there and hold the travel key to start your warp.
Like previous BGS games, you can navigate in menu’s or in the world.
The Mass effect games handled this just fine. I honestly don’t know how they biffed this because so much of the game is also like Mass effect (space adventure with the chosen one who sees visions sound familiar?)
Star Wars Fallen Order did it very well too, definitely can be done right.
Game has no soul.
Seems to be their identity nowadays. Fallout 4 had what middling amount they had left but since then they just like making sandboxes, not worlds. Hopefully Elder Scrolls picks it back up.
It’s pretty average to me. (Positive leaning)
The low performance of the game relative to other large, good-looking games definitely makes me less eager to play it.
Also I’m irked at Todd for his comments about people needing to upgrade their PC for the game. JayzTwoCents even showed that his 4090 didn’t get great frames. (comparatively that is. Like he was getting ~90fps @ 1080p which would be a pretty smooth experience, but I’d expect much more given how powerful that card is)
Honestly I’m not super far into the game. (A couple hours at most?) But it hasn’t really grabbed my attention like other games have - which probably means I’ll have to start the game a couple times before I legitimately play it through and then I could probably give a better score.
At the moment I wouldn’t recommend paying $70+ for the game - but to use game pass if possible.
Not that anyone cares, but if I feel different about it after playing some more I’ll update my comment haha
Everyone should be irked at Todd for his comments.
We shouldnt have to build super computers to get stable, playable FPS, because hes too stupid to give up this game engine they’ve been absolutely obsessed with for over 20 years, cause Creation engine is nothing more but Gambryo, and Gamebryo is nothing more than NetImmerse… They’ve just slapped a lot of ducttape and bullshit on it to make it look better, at the cost of bad optimization and performance.
Cyberpunk is a far more visually impressive game, and I get 50% more frame rate in that, than Starfield…and I’m on AMD, Which isnt facing the same issues nvidia cards are in starfield.
Amazing in 1000 ways, flawed in 100 ways.
I’m having a great time. Don’t really have much time to play, but I played for about 30h since early release. I really appreciate that I can fast travel everywhere, because if I don’t have much time, I can just instantly be wherever. If I want to take my time, I can just travel by ship. On the other hand, exploration on foot sucks, and I would really love to see some kind of vehicle to travel faster between points of interest.
But 9/10 from me as space game enthusiast.
Its a standard Bethesda RPG, but without the quality lore. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great. It just is. And unlike every other game they have put out until now and absolutely loving the genre, I just can’t seem to get into it. It’s so dull and uninteresting. I’ve been going around just learning about the world the game is set in and there are some things that sound cool at first, but then you get details and the most detailed info is a history lesson, told just as dryly as a real one would be in a class room, maybe some sci-fi sounding jargon to wave away the fact they didn’t really think of anything about why some of the technology in the world actually exists.
I uninstalled it last week, which I did not see coming when I picked up the game. I knew it wasn’t going to meet all my expectations/hopes, but I was assuming the floor was a gameplay loop at least as interesting as Fallout 4. I never got to that point.
I think the travel to new areas is the biggest problem. When you’re going to a new system or planet, it’s a tap on a map. So much of the magic in these games is preparing for the long hike to a new area, looking at that spot on your map, heading out, and then before you know it you’ve spent an hour doing something totally different because of surprise encounters along the way. Starfield has hails and some hostile ships, but for the most part, the surprises have been offloaded to the cities/stations (and you rarely get outright stopped by those). The planet/moon surfaces are where that same walking around vibe is, and there are zero encounters on them unless you’re going out of your way to a structure (or you poke an alien bear).
I really think this game needed in-sector–or even just in-system–live player transit. Having those encounters while you’re hauling around your whole stash and multiple party members opens up a lot of new ideas and also raises the stakes. It’s also pretty easy from that point to cater to the “space trucker” player crowd that’s out there. If the proc gen is why they couldn’t do this, then I think the proc gen was a mistake.
It also really didn’t help that the game didn’t look great and I couldn’t hold a steady framerate on top of all that. I still thought it was at least passable for a while, until I had my first “oh no” moment when I got to Neon. Putting up something directly comparable to Cyberpunk 2077’s visuals is so bad for this game.
That said, I thought the main story was brilliant and that this is the best character writing I’ve seen out of the Beth RPGs I’ve played. I also loved the soundtrack and would definitely love to see it played live if I ever had the opportunity. But I don’t think I’m coming back to this until a DLC is released.
