Content!
Turns out Skyrim in space doesn’t work
Outer space excludes it tho. That’s like calling “Playing indoors” outdoors
The real issue is that it’s not Skyrim in space. Skyrim in space would’ve been better. What we got was a hollow husk of a game. There’s no substance or charm, because it’s all procedurally generated hills and cliffs.
procedurally generated ain’t all bad, but for this game it was not the move. As soon as I heard about “100+ planets” i kinda lost hope in the game. What they should’ve done instead was make A Solar System. 8 or so planets to land in, explore, and do quests in, and go absolutely ham on those 8 planets to make them as intesting and diverse from each other as possible. The rest would be moons or space stations you’d find exploring space. IDK, this could just be me, but i feel doing this alone would have improved the game significantly
Yeah that sounds fun af. Procedural generation has a place, but devs need to stop assuming every game should have it. Quality over quantity.
Or to steal an argument about AI writing “if you couldn’t be bothered to make the levels, why do you think it can hold my attention in an exploration game”
It’s a completely different game and genre, but that’s exactly what made the space exploration Outer Wilds so great: One seamless solar system, fully handcrafted with literally zero filler content. Not even a single location. No matter what you find, it’s always meaningful and connected to other things in the game.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s the only way, but it really highlights the limits of procedural generation.
It’s not the procedural generation that’s the problem.
It’s that they are building on top of a shit engine and so they only procedurally generated the landscapes and don’t procedurally generate the actual content.
So you will go to 25 different generated planets and then do the exact same output 25 different times. The exact same outpost. With the same crap in each room. The same exact layout.
The most extreme example of this ridiculousness is the temples with the exact same minigame hundreds of times on hundreds of plants in different playthroughs.
It’s not that it has procedural generation.
It’s that it doesn’t have enough of it to execute on the concept of a full and varied universe.
They need to pick a direction, and they didn’t. Either commit to procedural generation and make it good, or don’t bother and make a really good Skyrim-type experience.
I don’t think Starfield devs knew which they wanted so they kinda did both… poorly.
I was punished for exploring. I ended up finding something that is not useful until the scripted event allows you to make it relevant. It’s the opposite of Skyrim where you can explore so much you can end up in Blackreach.
With Starfield you should stick to the script and never explore on your own. Only explore planets the main storylines have asked you to visit and never before.
Huh, so this is what happens when you passive-aggressively diss your customers’ reviews and tell them “no, it isn’t our fault our game feels dated and like a step down from what we had before, you guys are just playing the game wrong”…
It isn’t an ad. I just linked to the store page itself and I don’t post affiliate ads and those aren’t possible on steam anyway. It’s just resolving the link and there just happens to be a sale for that garbage shaped game.
It’s bad