I must say it is not the best RPG out there, but I feel like it would have earned more. I personally have a lot of fun playing.
While it was not a Cyberpunk-grade overhype, I think it must still have been overhyped. Because if you see it as Skyrim with better graphics, it is pretty much what you’d expect.
Some of the common criticism seems to be intrinsic to the sci-fi genre. In Skyrim, you walk 100 meters and then you find some cave or camp or something that a game designer has placed there manually with some story or meaning behind it. And as a player, you notice that, because most locations in Skyrim feel somehow unique. Even though for example the dungeons have rooms that repeat a lot. Having a designer place them manually with some thought gives them something unique.
In interstellar sci-fi, a dense world like this is simply impossible. Planets are extremely large so filling them manually with content is simply not possible. And using procedural generation makes things feel meaningless. Players notice that fast. So instead, Starfield opted for having a few manually constructed locations that are placed randomly on planets, unfortunately with a lot of repetition. But that is a sound compromise, given the constraints of today’s game development technology. The dense worlds that we are used to from other genres simply don’t scale up to planetary scale, and as players, we have to get used to that.
7/10 really seems to be an appropriate rating for this game. It’s not bad, it’s just a Bethesda RPG and nothing more.
I’d agree with you, its a solid 7/10, if reviewed it after only playing the game for a couple hours.
but from the 10 hour mark and beyon, to where I am now, I’d say its a 5/10.
Theres just to many small things that make the game frustrating to hell once you get out of that initial starter window.
Like, Ship parts. You get great details on engines, shields, reactors, etc. But no detail on landing gear, which would be great to have when your error message is screaming at you for more landing gears, and you dont know how much each one supports, or what the difference is, and you have no numbers to tell you how many more you need… And Hab components. Just tell me what work benches each one has, at least, and if things like the infirmary are just cosmetic or provide some boon to having it.
And surveying planets. You know why exploring was fun in skyrim/fallout4? Cause you were going from point A to point B, and were discovering things on the way, and getting distracted. on Starfield, land in the middle of a map, and have to wander around hoping you can find enough to scan to complete the survey for the planet, or at least the biome, before fast traveling back to the ship. This can take hours, even with amp… and amp’s buff time is so little that if you plan on using it you have to stockpile a lot of it, and micromanage it.
Speaking of buffs like Amp… theres no HUD display that I can find that indicates how much time you have left on your buffs. I barely use any buffs cause of this alone.
And speaking of the HUD… Why are the things we get given tucked up in a corner where we cant see, at a time when our eyes are in the bottom middle reading text? I have no idea what I’ve gotten from quest rewards, because I never see the notification.
Also, the artificial delay and slowness built into the interface. Why? Theres mods that easily remove them… but why are mods necessary? Why make the menu system artificially worse?
While individually, any one of these things (both the mentioned examples, and the unmentioned ones) could just be ignored with a sigh and moved on from, the fact that pretty much every system in the game missed its mark by an infuriatingly tiny step, that would take almost no effort to polish in to a gem, I cant help but just be utterly frustrated with the absolute potential the game had, thats left on the vine to wither, because they decided to stop right before getting things right on seemingly every. single. mechanic and interface.
And not to mention the bigger issues, like improperly handled DirectX calls that can cause bad performance and crashes, that was discoverd yesterday, or the fact that to much basic outpost shit is locked behind perks.
It really feels like the creators didn’t do much playing of the game itself. So many things that are just lacking for a game like this.
- inventory being single pane instead of person/vendor/companion
- no descriptions for ship parts. Like the workshop doesn’t even say that it has the workbenches in it. Or the landing gear stuff you mentioned. Also, what’s with the cockpit variations that have no difference? Like the C1 vs C1X (or whatever) seem to have zero different except cost.
- clunky inventory, even with the starUI mod. It was basically unusable without it.
- animals just killing each other willy nilly for no reason. So many dead animals…
- the cockpit animation being like 6 seconds. And mapped to the same button as lock-on so that you wind up getting out of the chair mid combat. And the lock-on just being terribly imprecise.
- the perk system just either unlocking a core function of the game or just being so uninspired, like do x% more damage. Com’on guys!
Just so many things. Yes modders will fix it probably, but they shouldn’t have to and there will likely not be as much interest in doing so since the game isn’t as majestic and awe inspiring as skyrim (IMO).
Yes modders will fix it probably, but they shouldn’t have to and there will likely not be as much interest in doing so since the game isn’t as majestic and awe inspiring as skyrim (IMO).
I agree.
Game isnt a big expansive game like TES, or Fallout.
Its a series of tiny rooms, Most of which are just randomly generated, separated by half a dozen menus and loading loading screens. Theres no place to really stretch your legs, because more than likely you are going to be spending most of your game time running around on a randomly generated map looking for some PoI your quest requires, or the last flora/fauna/mineral your survey requires, so you can leave and never come back to this particular and specific tiny room again.
and even that wouldnt have been so bad, if there was some variety to the PoIs. But outside of the presumably handmade maps, like New Atlantis, It just feels like you are running into the same handful of PoI’s over and over again, with the exact same layout, the exact same loot (just leveled and with a fancy new descriptor infront of its name) in the exact same places, and encountering the exact same miniquests on these randomly generated maps, like “Oh no, I’m sick, I hope you have the med.icine skill to fix me without cost” and “Oh no, there are pirates in the same PoI you’ve cleared out 37 times previously, go clear them out”
I have no problem with randomly generated segments, but Whats the point in randomly generating maps if its just gonna have the same handful of PoIs in it with absolutely zero change in them? I’d rather have a handful of map types and randomly generated PoI’s, at least that would provide some compelling and playable variety… and if not completely randomly genned, at least randomly change some things in the PoI so I know not to enter, take the first right, pick the blue door just to get a freaking AA rifle, like the 37 other previous times I did this PoI.
Yeah, they already covered all of your complaints when they said “It’s a Bethesda RPG” lol.
But agreed, not terrible but there’s a lot holding it back from being great.
The “Its a Bethesda RPG” excuse doesnt cut it this time. at least with their previous games, they managed some kind of improvement over the previous games.
Starfield is a straight regression.
it is actively, mechanically worse than previous games. The perk system and the settlement building is actively worse than Fallout 4. The exploration and inventory management of Skyrim and Fallout 4 are actively worse in Starfield. The Menus are actively worse. The faces and facial animation are actively worse.
and I don’t say this to heap mindless hate on the popular thing. I say this because I want it to be better. It had so much potential to be better. But they got within like 5 feet of the finish line and just… stopped, and said good enough, for some bizarre frustrating reason.
Yeah I might even go 8. A lot of the game is very high quality from the quests to the level design and details. Dogfighting is good, the rest of space stuff is meh. Ship designer is good overall.
I really wish they could have let us fly more freely, or at least give that illusion. There is also a lot more room for polish and quality of life improvements. Like let us walk through ships before we buy them, and maybe fly it in a simulator without spending money. That tech should be easily available. Ground vehicles would be a no-brainer, that could certainly lead to more gameplay opportunities.
Oh man of I could customise a buggy as well, and have that buggy drove out of my customised ship, I’d be so bloody happy about that
If I recall correctly wasn’t the lack of this in fallout due to engine limitations? I hope they fixed those. I hope we don’t have train headed npcs in starfield
Space Engineers and Empyrion let you do that and it’s very fun. Empyrion is more of a game, Space Engineers is more about engineering. In Empyrion we have a big capital ship as our base, it has a landing platform on the back with 2 fighter ships, and a vehicle bay and ramp in the belly with mining hovercraft. Everything is block based and there is a ton of freedom, we could stack 6 fighters on the back if we can get the landing gear to latch. Or make the landing platform bigger.
@dan1101 agree totally, I didn’t see how good the dogfighting was until I had an actually difficult fight (for the Key ifykyk) where I was completely out of ship parts and direct confrontation would lead to instant destruction. Before I would just fly at the enemies, face tank and repair, killing them pretty quick. That shit didn’t fly for this fight. I had to get super creative in using objects (and even other hostile ships) as cover while my shields came back up, using hit and run tactics.
I have to believe some of this functionality will be added in patches and DLC.
I cannot possibly disagree more with your assessment that the interstellar setting is necessarily boring and that’s something we should accept.
But, if so, then why would we need to “just get used to it”? I’ve certainly never felt compelled to force myself to play a boring game
I don’t think OP made the point clear, but I agree with the spirit.
Fundamentally it is this:
Sense of scale
Meaningful content at every turn
CHOOSE ONE
Examples
Daggerfall - infinite scale, but quests, dungeons, meaningful content have to be specifically targeted or else be lost in the gigantic procedurally generated world.
Elite Dangerous - spending 20 minutes supercrusing across a binary star system really makes you feel the size, but also that’s 20 minutes of not doing anything.
No Man’s Sky - The universe is effectively infinite, and there is something useful almost everywhere! But (almost) none of it is handcrafted, so the random content gets stale in the scale.
Star Citizen - Basically no content, but absolutely unmatched as an immersive space experience, as it doesn’t compromise on scale for QoL or filler content in the slightest. Worth noting that most people hate this.
Meanwhile Skyrim is impressive because the world is pretty big, but there’s also something interesting to do every 5 steps. Starfield tries to maintain this while also tossing in some NMS-style randomized infinite content, but ends up suffering the same feeling of staleness once you spend any time exploring it.
Starfield has the advantage of 100+ hours of hand-crafted, voice-acted quest content, of course. What they need to do about the procedural content is the same thing Hello Games did, just add more procedural pieces that can get put together in novel ways, so the planets and outposts aren’t so obviously exactly the same. I’m hoping the system that inserts buildings on planets will just take new content, because modders could really blow that wide open.
Yeah, this is the big issue. The facilities and stuff should have been procedural as well. They should be a ton of handcrafted components, but they procedurally pick pieces and put them together.
Preferably they’d also take into account where they are to make things more interesting. If there’s Helium 3 around, make it generate a helium 3 facility with plenty of explosives and stuff sitting around. Things like that.
As it is, it’s the same few facilities that have the exact same layout at all locations. They even have the same loot in the same positions most of the time, and things like the heat leaches are always at the exact same spot.
They went halfway with procedural generation and it doesn’t really work to make the game feel full.
Empyrion is such a different game, but so many times on that my buddies and I would just land somewhere to get fuel and spend hours exploring and building on some random planet with plenty to find, explore, and fight. And that is entirely procedurally generated with randomly placed points of interest.
I know, gameplay is more important than tech, but for an AAA game it’s kinda disappointing techwise. No 32:9 support, HDR is mediocre, no FOV settings, language cannot be properly changed,…
Hey look, elden ring doesn’t have even 21:9 support, hdr was broken for a while at launch, and no fov setting
It’s just a number. Play the games you like and don’t care what others think.
Starfield is the classic Bethesda experience but the hype around it implied it wouldn’t be. The classic Bethesda experience is fine, it’s a good base of a nice, free-form game that lacks polish. They are also games that need at least a few mods to actually be good. Vanilla Skyrim, etc sucks after you start modding it. Even if all you download is an end, a weather, the unofficial patch, and the better dialog and message box controls mods. Playing starfield I was immediately like “where is better dialog and message box controls?”
The game has potential but a thing that bothers me is landing on a planet and it says I explored 90% of it before I even exited the ship. I went to earth and there was no evidence of there ever being life and major cities. No ruined homes, no cities, no like… Mt Rushmore head that broke off and found where it isn’t supposed to be, no statue of liberty torch. Nothing. They could have crafted a really cool ruined earth and instead it was just… sand and rocks. What do you think is behind that rock? Another rock. And when it comes to Earth, you don’t need to have everything be where it needs to. The tip of a pyramid in Egypt makes sense but I see nothing wrong with finding the broken Washington monument in the middle of what was the Atlantic ocean. Or the broken big Ben in the middle of what was Japan. If any planet should have gotten randomly generated assets of ruins or even just manually crafted, it should have been Earth.
Most planets are empty and give you almost no reason to explore them. The game is about exploring planets, but playing this game makes me want to play Starbound instead.
I also don’t know why everyone compares it to Skyrim when I feel like I’m playing Fallout 4 instead of Skyrim. Skyrim would have been an improvement, I wasn’t a fan of FO4.
classic Bethesda experience
I messaged my friend a couple hours into the game and said “…I dunno dude. This feels like Fallout 4 but in space.” I’ve never finished an FO game, despite trying many times, because they just feel boring and overwhelming at the same time (for me anyway). I was late to the Skyrim party, first played it on Switch and loved it - loosely because the story drove me forward and kept me engaged.
Witcher 3 and CP2077 had me hooked the entire time. Even though they’re entirely different games, I also miss the little nuances in NMS - like actually flying into a planets atmosphere and landing, being able to zoom around the planet in my ship, engaging “warp.” All without a whole lot fewer loading screens or opening menus. To be fair, I got tired of NMS super quickly because resource mining and grinding aren’t my thing.
All that to say that I’m enjoying it though I’m not sure how long it’ll stick with me. It’ll hold me over until Phantom Liberty comes out.
I played a few hours but after a quest frustrated me I haven’t picked it up since.
I did go through an abandoned science facility but it was just like going through a facility in fallout for me.
I tried playing fo4 many times but could never really get far into it. The west time i tried a completely different playthrough where you are just cranked up on drugs and go in running with melee weapons, but that build takes a while to get going. I also tried actually building a settlement with that build and I couldn’t even make a square room and gave up lol. (There was always a gap no matter how I placed the walls…)
I see you can build crazy ships and maybe that might be fun.
But I don’t know, the game doesn’t quite do it for me.
@Sacha So far the ship building is my favorite part about the game, but the credits and skills you need to unlock to really get into it take awhile (unless you hyperfocus on getting them). Oh and I can definitely see how they redid the gunplay and I’m absolutely loving it.
Yup. Same here…the building stuff was never for me either. I’d love to be the person who thoughtfully builds pretty settlements but normally I’m just plopping things down so I can move along.
Different strokes for different folks, as they say. I’m def not knocking on those who enjoy it and get the most out of it.
that lacks polish
I’d say creation engine is showing its age more than it lacks polish. The game looks pretty good and I’ve encountered virtually no bugs so far. People’s faces are a bit off though, as many have pointed out.
Creation engine is a double edge sword, on one had, it is super moddable. The mods you can put in for skyrim are insane. You can turn it into a completely different game.
I would say that the game isn’t unpolished because of the engine though. Not in the ways I’m talking about anyway. The quests, dialog, locations, animations are all just a bit off, unpolished, and stiff. None of these really have anything to do with the engine aside maybe animations and locations. And given the eldersouls mods that give very animated combat animations, the combat mods that add wound systems and combos, etc, I don’t think that’s what’s holding them back.
Yes creation engine is old, but I dont think it’s what makes the game feel unpolished for me.
