The problem with Starfield is that most of the problems aren’t fixable. Sure, they can incrementally fix it, but no amount of patches will fix a loading screen inbetween every door, the lack of exploration, the awfully mediocre dialogue and boring roleplaying…
I say this as a general fan of the game by the way, but I just don’t see it being relevant for more than a year.
The thing I hate about this game, one of the biggest fundamental differences between it and any other BGS title is that it isn’t compelling to go explore a planet that has copies of the content on all the other planets, and astoundingly little at that, the same way it is to just pick a direction in Skyrim or Fallout and walk, and end up stumbling on some shit going down in a cave or abandoned building just off the beaten path. Even if you remove the loading screens and add vehicles on planets to minimize the amount of time between engaging set pieces, it’s still the same abandoned factory populated with the same pirates guarding the same generic fetch quest objective. It is such an aggressive, unrewarding waste of time with so few redeeming qualities that I’m a little shocked anyone at Bethesda thought this should merit any amount of hard-earned money, let alone seventy fucking dollars. Didn’t they know? Didn’t they know?
It really feels like Bethesda forgot that what made up for their chit story writing with later titles is that at least they had unique little set pieces one could explore in Elder Scrolls or Fallout games. Starfield however turns that into bland repeats of endless bland outposts with very little uniqueness about them with an extremely mid scifi design asthetic.
Agree. Normally I take BGS games slow, opening every door and talking to every person. I couldn’t even bring myself to hit the level cap before losing interest. The story is interesting enough but the gameplay and exploration are not at all intriguing enough to bring myself to finish.
For the first two days of exploring planets to get all the locations, I hit all the points of interest I ran into. After the third or fourth identical underground hangar mission I started speed running locations. And don’t get me started on how fucking gnarly finding sea fauna is.
I think mods could fix the interior issues, add some variety instead of using the same science outpost interior for every science outpost. They did a great job with those interiors, but ya… after I’ve explored one or two I know where most things are and its… not very fun.
Finding all the flora/fauna is really terrible right now. I’d expect ~30 mins tops per planet to find everything, but it seems like it takes multiple landings sometimes and nobody has time for that; nor is it “fun”.
Skyrim is great because of the exploration. I’ve not played Star field because the system requirements are too high anyway.
Skyrim is great because of a robust modding scene. I believe it would’ve long faded into irrelevancy otherwise.
Nah, even as a vanilla game, exploration is still a blast. I remember the path to Whiterun as a top 10 gaming moment. Starfield has none of that.
I have it running “mostly” stable on my i5, I had to use the 512k low res “Starfield Performance Texture Pack” (https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/510?tab=description) but still get the occasional crash but often hours of play before that.
12 years!? Pure fantasy.
I played Cyberpunk for the first time properly recently, having waited for enough patches to make it worthwhile and what hit me the most after playing Starfield is the quality of conversation. NPCs you talk to emulate real people - they walk around, show emotion, interact with the environment etc. In Starfield, every conversation is a fixed camera POV of you staring directly at the character’s face. It’s so awkward, not at all realistic, unbelievably dated, and I can’t understand why Bethesda continue to make that design choice when there have been countless better implementations over the years.
Haven’t played cyberpunk, but the dialog animations in Witcher 3 were down right cinematic, there were wide shots, people pacing back and forth, unique animations.
Mostly for the main quests, but it wasn’t camera reverse camera for NPCs as well
Even Baldur’s Gate 3 - a CRPG - has more realistic and varies animation of characters across its million lines of dialogue.
I’ve said it before. The real problem with Starfield - compared to TES or Fallout - is it’s bland SF.
TES is not just vanilla fantasy world, it has its own lore and most importantly its own character, its own feel. Fallout is the daddy of post-apocalyptic worlds and has personality in spades.
But Starfield, so far, is just… a bit meh, it has no beating heart, no joie de vivre no unique identity.
I personally think it’ll pick up once the dlc is released then we’ll know more about the (spoilers ahead, i dunno how to mark)
Temples, who built them, and why the starborn are the way they are. Then, I hope the universe will feel a bit more interesting
I hope you’re right, but explaining mysterious cosmic things seems to have a history of ruining scifi.
Also just like, starfield never gave me a reason to care about any of that besides it simply being the main quest line.
Depends on how much you explain them, really. In TES the Dwemer ruins first appeared in Redguard (if I remember right) but Morrowind massively expanded their lore, but managed to do so without diminishing their central mystery.
I’m hoping for some similar treatment for the Temple creators. Or at least an explanation that raises more questions than it answers.
I guess they could potentially do a huge DLC with alien contact. Alien races could bring significant personality to the game, I’d argue they’re the main thing that brings flavour to Mass Effect which is otherwise somewhat bland in terms of its background and world-building.
It’s nice to want things.
Looks like its gonna be about 12 years short of that goal
