I’m not surprised about this. The game was developed entirely around what it would have rather than around what the player would do and you can tell.
I can imagine the initial pitch meetings, with everyone going “whoaaa it will have hundreds of solar systems and biomes whoaaah” and no one going “ok, but what does the player do in them”. A few other guys enthusiastically saying “There will be spaceship building and you will get a crew and explore with it” and not a soul in the room thinking of “ok, but how will we make space travel work within our current systems and technology? Can we make it substantial?”. And this way of thinking probably permeated every second of development for the first few years.
The game is chockful of vestigial systems that they had obviously intended to be more significant and in depth, but ultimately decided not to develop further, yet still maintained in the game in a manner that only harms the game. The fuel “system”, the contraband “system”… So many examples of stuff that doesn’t add anything to the game, yet was still maintained because man-hours and money went into it I guess, and because the “and it will have that and that” mentality tool a priority over player experience, player agency, and actual game design.
If I can circlejerk for a bit, this is one of the reasons why Baldurs Gate 3’s release and success is so timely. How many areas, how many biomes, how many systems, how many quests and how many square kilometers does that game have versus Starfield? 30 times less? 50 times less? Yet it had an overwhelmingly positive reception where Starfield didn’t because its elements put player experience first. Yes it has less quests, but most are super modular and super reactive and not afraid to let you solve them in janky or silly ways that go out of the suggested solutions; yes it has fewer areas smaller in size, but you are constantly coming across stuff to do. Etc etc etc.
I’m really hoping that that contrast changes design philosophies just a tad in the future. Start with how a normal hour for your player looks like. Confirm that your technology can deliver your vision before committing to it, experience be damned. Don’t reach for the stars, because contrary to what they say, it won’t at least get you the moon, it will just leave you stranded in the middle of bumfucknowhere in space.
And, as we saw in Starfield, that means you get yet another annoying load cutscene.
You got the analogy backwards, it’s “Aim for the moon. If you miss, you’ll end up among the stars.” The thing is, they didn’t aim for the moon, they aimed for the stars and somehow missed.
As you rightly pointed out, the game lacks focus. It’s not a procedurally generated exploration game like No Man’s Sky, it’s partially procedurally generated, and they didn’t commit enough to make it compelling. It’s not a space shooter, but it has occasional space battles, but they didn’t commit enough to make that compelling. And so on. It’s a game with a lot of ideas, but no direction. It’s like they threw in the kitchen sink thinking that it would be fun, but all the dishes are chipped and mismatched.
You got the analogy backwards, it’s “Aim for the moon. If you miss, you’ll end up among the stars.”
waitwaitwait I swear to you on the grave of my budgies that I have always seen it the other way around
I’m worried now. What other things do I have a warped understanding of? Has my life been a lie until now?! Is Starfield actually secretly a great game?!
I don’t even think they aimed for the stars, they built a building and then “aimed for the planetarium” that they shoved in that building that wasn’t built to hold a planetarium.
There are some people that think cloud imperium games (star citizen) is aiming to sell their game engine (see: starengine video) and personally I really hope they do. Then all these so-called “AAA” publishers can be as money hungry and lazy as they want and we’ll still have an amazing platform for devs that actually give a shit to work off of.