I really don’t think the empty planets are the problem. Space Engineers has empty planets. Stationeers has empty planets. But they have interesting things to do on those empty planets. Problems to solve. Systems to build and improve.
Everything in Starfield feels like more clicking through (horribly outdated) menus and inventory screens. Between those and the loading screens, the only time the game is really fun is when you’re shooting pirates. But there are games that do that part much much better.
I think that’s how I’d summarize the whole game: lots of things to do but none of it has any depth and everything has been done much better elsewhere.
When they said this would be hard sci-fi, I actually imagined myself piloting an actual space ship and doing astronaut things, not a glorified magic plane.
If someone is looking for what Starfield offers but better, here are my recommendations at a fraction of cost:
- Space combat, but better: Everspace, Everspace 2, House of the Dying Sun, Chorus, FTL
- Hard(ish) Sci-fi shooter, but better: Titanfall 2, Call of Duty Infinity Warfare, Mass Effect (technically not FPS)
- Exploration, but better: Outer wilds, No Man’s Sky, Astroneer, Deep Rock Galactic (I would say subnautica but that’s not really space).
- Privateering, but better: Star traders: Frontiers (Though not 3D).
Maybe the issue is that this game, like NMS before, tried to be everything to everyone and didn’t develop towards something meaningful.
Hopefully, like NMS will find its soul and develop into something worth playing. (IMO)
EDIT: This is a stealthy way of getting recommendations ;)
If you like these sorts of games (particularly games like Titanfall and Subnautica, or DRG), you might really like Elite Dangerous. Has a big learning curve, but it’s a “once every decade or two” game when it comes to scratching a deep deep Sci fi itch. 1:1* milky way, set thousands of years in the future, with a variety of ships and missions,with excellent HOTAS and VR support. Co-op up to five people, even more if you are in a public server. FPS game with a variety of vehicles, from small cars to aircraft carriers 4x the length of the burj Khalifa.
- the milky way is cut down slightly, as the core of our galaxy is so dense with stars, it melts computers and makes it impossible to fly between stars, which are almost as dense as sand in a sandbox.
My memory of Elite Dangerous is trying to start auto-undocking, and the flight computer putting me on hold because of another person floating around in the docking bay. Eventually, it aborted the auto-undock; and the tutorial had not taught me how to release the controls to manually undock. So, eventually the station’s security systems flagged me as flying in unpermitted space and destroyed my ship.
So that does seem to echo the “big learning curve” bit.
Elite is fantastic at being Elite, I’m actually glad starfield isn’t like elite though. Elite is all about the beautiful desolation of space, and the attempts of humanity to carve out a place in that desolation. But there’s not really any story or characters or much stuff that isn’t procedurally generated. It’s just you and the grind in a really pretty world.
When I have an itch that elite will scratch I pop on and enjoy being in the cockpit (especially in VR). Im playing starfield to scratch that BGS rpg itch. If I had to manually jump from system to system and fly my ship in to land everytime I want to do a small quest I’d be really put off of starfield.
I haven’t played Elite Dangerous since the first year it came out. At that time it was the very definition of “A mile wide and an inch deep” though.
Has it gotten any deeper?
Surprised you didn’t mention the star citizen and space engineers. They have that I’m a space mining cowboy aspect nailed down pretty well.
When they said this would be hard sci-fi, I actually imagined myself piloting an actual space ship and doing astronaut things
So, KSP 1&2 then? :)
I just see these big tentpole games from Bethesda as the latest platform for mods. The users are going to create better content, I just have to wait for the mod tools to come out.
I think for me everything doesn’t feel connected, to go anywhere it’s always a loading screen. It is very clearly a limitation of their engine, but it just makes everything feel disconnected.
I’m actually curious how it would feel if it went Half-Life 2’s route; keep the transitions in first-person view, and put up loading indicators when needed, but at least let people see/feel the transition to the next thing.
It probably would have done a lot if, after selecting a nav point to go to, you actually pushed a “Enter hyperspace” throttle on the dash, and then got a loading screen with the stars flying past.
Bethesda games are puddles of water: wide with content, but completely shallow in depth.
Everything in Starfield feels like more clicking through (horribly outdated) menus and inventory screens. Between those and the loading screens, the only time the game is really fun is when you’re shooting pirates. But there are games that do that part much much better.
This is just a summary of modern Bethesda games in a nutshell, except forgetting to mention bugs as well.
I really don’t know what people where expecting with Starfield
The game has some issues but, surprisingly, bugs really aren’t one of them.
No it really isn’t. In all prior Bethesda games you could get from any place in the world to any other just by walking and maybe some loading screens if you’re going from/to a city or dungeon. In Starfield you have to use menus and loading screens to get from most places to most other places.
Also, Starfield places more emphasis on amassing items due to having resources etc than the previous-worst Fallout 4, and all prior Bethesda games didn’t have resources to manage, just items.
So no, while Starfield is very much like previous Bethesda games, many flaws and issues are exacerbated.
I’d like to know how many of you actually WALKED everywhere in Skyrim or Fallout, I tried it once, boring as fuck and extremely irritating when a quest took me from one side of the map to the other and back. Fast traveling is good and a majority of people that play their game use it almost exclusively where possible.
Y’all are delusional if you think people want to play walking simulators all the time in their RPGs, it’s a very small group who plays them that way.
I could understand expecting improvements before they actually showed the game off; but after the very first gameplay reveal, it should have been pretty obvious to anyone familiar with BGS that it was going to be the same as Skyrim and Fallout 4, but with a different aesthetic and theme.
Everything Starfield does to blow my expectations is that it’s surprisingly stable and bug free. I’m playing it with a 1660 Super and it’s actually playable (I mean, only 30 fps when outside); the card isn’t even supported! Fallout 4 wasn’t even playable at launch (single digit fps when anywhere near Boston) and I had the recommended specs for it.