After one week I said fuck it. Yes there is a ton of exploration, yes there are spaceships, but the whole thing is just slow, confusing and boring. Hell, if I want to play “Life”, I can just go outside.
The tons of exploration you’re talking about are copy-pasted identical POIs, too, with the same enemies and objects in the same locations.
I honestly don’t understand what they expected us to be doing for the hundreds of hours and years they they hoped we’d be playing the game for. It’s certainly the most “ocean wide, inch deep” game for what it was marketed to be.
whoa now, don’t take away Elite:Dangerous one claim to fame. They have an entire milky way of procedurally generated planets with no POIs!
I think they expected a Skyrim style modding community to spring up over the next few years. To be fair, I think they might be right, since there are already Starfield mods and I’m still playing Skyrim 10 years after it came out.
That’s what I hate about it. They made such an empty soulless game and now expect modders to make it interesting while they reap the rewards.
It was incredibly disappointing when I was exploring a world and landed near a factory, killed everything then I pick a random spot and I land once more near a factory, to my surprise EVERY SINGLE THING was completely the same the same Vaa Run loot hidden in the vents, the exact same food in the living quarters, the same locked weapon rack and the same enemies at the same positions. This is the laziest fucking game I’ve seen in a while.
That’d be if you’re crazy enough to not do any of the major quest chains or general side quests, those almost entirely take you to unique areas with their own exploration outside of the random exploration ones that you find just by exploring the galaxy.
I think it points to a larger issue with the game, which is being able to to distinguish and access the kinds of content that you want. You could easily randomly explore and end up seeing the same installation three times, or you could also randomly find other quests and go explore three unique locations and dungeons in a row instead. There is absolutely a large amount of unique content to play, though, it’s disingenuous to say otherwise.
Your point is fair and works really well on its own, but in the context of the entire game, its systems, mechanics, and the entire experience they come together to create, I just can’t help but feel genuinely bored and disappointed regardless. The writing feels uninspired and generic; contrary to what some people have been saying, the writing isn’t a product of playing safe by the outsourced writers Bethesda used - it’s just bad, like a bad paint job on your car or poorly written software.
Even trying to side with the supposedly lowlife immoral inhabitants of the game’s world, you constantly hear either that they’re all family and friends (despite seeing one murder another because they got ripped off), or that they didn’t have a choice and still try to be “good”.
This isn’t what people expect from a Bethesda game in general, and from a game with ESRB rating of Mature (17+).
Again, ignoring my expectations that the game’s marketing specifically built to be centered around me being able to tell my story and stuff, it’s just poorly written and executed in the vast majority of aspects that matter in a game like the one Starfield is trying to be - the motifs aren’t clear, the storytelling is the most basic straight-up lecture in every quest that never tries to adhere to the “show, don’t tell” principles, the tasks you have to do are just boring and generic, too; it’s 2023, Bethesda has published and made tons of games of various genres st this point, many of a larger caliber, yet they still purposefully choose to go with the cookie-cutter quests that involve no unique one-time mechanics or animations, rely on mostly generated animations that feel out of place most of the time, and have you feel like you’re playing a game from pre-2010 that you should be able to play on a toaster, but are somehow told to upgrade to the latest hardware because the company couldn’t be bothered to develop and optimize a proper experience.
The pain scratches off at way more places than just exploration in Starfield.
Two things I really like are the artstyle and building my own ships with actual interiors, but the latter actually falls short due to massive restrictions in terms of said interior designs and the fact that space is basically a big mostly empty room to teleport to and from, akin to many other places in the game; no wonder an SSD is required to play, and for the worst reasons possible in a modern AAA title of that ambition.
I loved the game at first, but a lot of that was due to my huge interest in the niche it could cover, space, and science fiction, and white unfortunately, I’ve discovered way too many prominent flaws while simply trying to have fun like I always managed in similar games, even from Bethesda.
I hope that mods and DLCs may save the game, but none of that is ever going to fix the game’s broken carcass of poor writing and uninspired practices.
How about we stop posting every clickbait article we find? This literally says nothing.
I had a feeling this would be a very overhyped game…
This is the most crybaby thing to complain about. Reminds me of the reviews on Steam that are “I do not recommend” (this player has 3,432 hours logged)
The state of video games is wild to see. People will play a hundred hours of a game and say it’s lacking. Players expect endless content and it’s honestly unhealthy for gaming at large.
It’s completely unnecessary as well. We are absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes to video games, I pick up more for free than I have time to play, and with services like gamepass, offers like humble bundle, and the ever-present steam sales, there’s no reason to ever have to fork out big money for a game you feel you need to play a hundred hours in just to feel you’ve got your money’s worth. If you don’t like it after a few hours then just move on to one of the myriad games in your backlog and you’ll soon forget the boring one.
While I enjoyed my time I really struggling to find what I feel like I would different on a new playthrough making me worried about longevity of this game.
It really feels like unless bethesda (unlikely) or moders could do something drastic I would not return. Just pick the game back up and do the new thing.
Feels not enough to do by only stick to space. Not enough ammo to not use a variety of weapon. Nor that much other ways to deal with combat that it would warrant a new play through.
I only played like 15hrs of vanilla Skyrim. But played like 1000+ hrs of modded Skyrim. I’ve now played about 30hrs of starfield. If the modding scene gets as big as Skyrim, I think it would have merit in longevity.
So, what, bethesda games are now just fancy Little Big Planet sandboxes? Where the main game is just something to keep you busy until the real content creators arive?
Honestly feels like that.
They given many things in the base game fells like that they where more showcase.
Here is background it exists we barely doing anything with it but maybe you find it useful.
Here is new game plus it erases the whole world so if you want to reset world.
Here is enormous skybox. We have no reason why you can fly across the star system but tons of space for you.
Oh definitely the modding is going to carry. But what point I tried to make is I will need something big for me to consider a new playthrough. Not just adding in bunch of mods to existed save file.
Unlike Skyrim where I felt start over for mods I could actually feel like I had choice and it kinda made a difference in play style to be a mage or a knight.
I’d love an open world game where you start as a Star Trek ship and just explore for hundreds of hours, stumbling upon adventures/civilizations taken directly from the massive repo of lore that exists from all the shows.
I feel like to do it properly would take a decade
Have you tried Bridge Commander or the not actually star trek, but still totally star trek game Artemis?
They’re basically that. Randomly generated scenarios where you, and a few friends, command a Starfleet vessel to solve dilemmas or just exist in the world. The fun is mostly in the MP aspect (though Bridge Commander can be played solo), and the missions are pretty samey and mostly explained through text briefings. But it really feels like being on the bridge of the Enterprise.