Saying its for the Moddershall while not having modding support is stupid. I know they’re adding it but you don’t get to use that excuse when plenty of games (Bethesda included) are still fun and fulfilling without mods. Baldur’s Gate 3 was released a month prior to this.
With how hard redditors are pushing this, it makes me almost certain that it’s exaggerated, a result of the internet journalism telephone game, or completely made up.
Here’s one of their responses in response to someone saying that the empty planets were boring:
Greetings,
Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Starfield!
We are sorry that you do not like landing on different planets and are finding many of them empty.
Some of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design — but that’s not boring. “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren’t bored." The intention of Starfield’s exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that do have resources you need or hidden outposts to look through.Im also pretty sure alot of this is just parroting streamers to jump on the hate train.
Not that uncommon.
I knew from the start that the vastness of this game would be a bit of a turn off. I’d rather have a smaller map with lots of special areas and places to visit
I liked outer world’s planets
I’m several hundred hours into my first playthrough and having fun. But I’m currently taking a break and playing something else because starfield is getting repetitive. Maybe I need to move on more with the main storyline or something.
I get what they were trying to achieve. Thinking about it seeing pictures from mars that have earth pointed out, same goes from Saturn, Neptune and so forth just really capturing the expanse and vast emptiness / distant in space and what could, could, just maybe, these places hold really gets the mind tinkering, wondering, and (to me) brings on a vast feeling of loneliness perhaps fear of what is, isnt, and the what could be out there just drifting or myself just drifting. Seeing the distance between earth and a plant that is gas or has no life just rock feels unimaginable, BUT trying to capture the feeling, the thought, the uncertainty is impossible since 1) they already said what’s on these plants so zero need to explore 2) trying to capture that unimaginable feeling in a game is just impossible because it’s just a game where you can text, call, FaceTime, go see, visit anywhere and anybody after you put it down rather than you’re on earth I’m on mars (For All Mankind anyone?) the only way to communicate is with those right next to you or wait a week via phone mail? Then you’re on a planet that can kill you at any second, I mean same to earth, but just a smidge less forgiving. Yet playing Starfield it never made me feel like anything I do on like 80-90% of these planets had any impact , any importance, even the views just felt mild as thought they saw the wonder and the mysticism but couldn’t capture to real feel.
Keep telling me it’s boring and I just might believe you. Hard to convince my over 200+ hours game time though.
Like anything else, procedural generation has to be implemented well. Bethesda can reply to as many negative reviews as they want, but the simple fact of the matter is they’ve never really used procedural generation in interesting ways in any of their RPGs. I mean, they are literally infamous for characters like Preston Garvey, “another settlement needs your help” - possibly the gold standard example of procedural generation done badly in a game. Starfield is just the latest example.
I’m a big fan of procedural generation in games and when it’s done thoughtfully it can be fantastic (think Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, Noita, Deep Rock Galactic, Don’t Starve, Rogue Legacy, Binding of Isaac, Spelunky, FTL, Nethack, L4D, Vermin/Darktide, Terraria, Valheim, Minecraft, etc.). It can give a game hundreds more hours of entertainment, in some cases.
But when it’s lazily or poorly implemented (think No Man’s Sky, Elite Dangerous, Skyrim’s radiant quests, etc.) it quickly becomes a huge bore and actually becomes more repetitive instead.
Procedural generation isn’t a game mechanic on its own, it’s a tool to help a game be less repetitive and encourage players to explore different solutions. If it’s implemented poorly, like in Starfield, it might as well just not be there. I would much rather have had 5 more fleshed out settlements/planets/space stations in the game, with quests and NPCs and their own ambience and vibe; than the 1000 bland, barren, procedurally generated planets they gave us.
The only thing wrong with Starfield is that they didn’t launch comprehensive modding tools from the start. Modders will add content to this game- new factions, new planets, new everything… endless DLC forever.
Staggering the launch of the mod tools is really working against them.
I remember them starting to do this with fallout 76 a few months back, it’s just bizarre.
Can we just admit Bethesda is washed at this point? What are the chances of TES 6 actually being good lol?
I’m not telling you guys what to like but I think we already got the idea from all the 100s of other starfield related posts
we don’t need you guys telling us the same thing over and over again
You’re out of the loop. Bethesda has only just started responding to negative reviews on Steam, and their responses are what this post is satirizing
The saddest thing about Starfield is it made me realize I need to give up looking forward to Elder Scrolls 6.
Don’t worry, someone will make ES6 once it bombs
The more I read about “todd’s baby,” the more I think the guy who asked if the game was optimized didn’t mean it in a technical way, but in a story, gameplay, variety, replayability, fun way. Which is clearly not optimized for that as it was never meant to be good or even decent in those areas.
Elite: Dangerous has been out for a while now… and Bethesda still can’t make “empty” planets fun.