Current Events > So what's the verdict on Starfield?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I haven't played it yet.

Isn't sounding great from chatter I've seen.*

* or awful. Just doesn't seem to be living up to hype.

i'm about 15 hours in and having a good time. it's not groundbreakingly amazing, but it's not bad either.

Its okay. I played a few hours on it and it does feel very Elder Scrolls/Fallout but feels like its not as expansive as it was made out to be.

A great game from 2013.

I love AAA open world games and so far I'm having a blast playing it.

Of all the fields it has the most stars.

Everything Im seeing indicates its a solid Bethesda installment but not really anything groundbreaking. Granted I havent played it thats just the consensus Im seeing over the internet.

I saw they released an update so it plays smoothly on the steam deck so maybe Ill get it eventually.

too early too judge and people were actually expecting a Skyrim, but on multiple planets with over 1000 hours of gameplay. game is fine. if it were released 23 years ago it would have been GOTY and re-released dozens of times.

I look forward to playing it. Based on the reviews I know its not a space sim, which Im fine with.

If I had to guess this will likely be a game I get bored of early on and never finish. Good thing its on game pass. But Im sure it will be fun if only for a bit.

Makes a poor first impression, but the more i play it, i think it has the potential to be the best bethesda game ever made.

is there a planet similar to skyrim in it

From what I've heard is standard Bethesda fare but polished and in space this time. Which I've wanted since Morrowind but it'll depend on what you want from a game.

ragnarokius posted...

Isn't sounding great from chatter I've seen.*

* or awful. Just doesn't seem to be living up to hype.

Games never do live up to the hype when you go in expecting it to be the best thing ever or even to be as good as another game you loved.

Tsukasa1891 posted...

Games never do live up to the hype when you go in expecting it to be the best thing ever or even to be as good as another game you loved.

wasn't expecting the best game ever, but I suppose I was expecting more of a simulation when it came to many of the aspects like exploration or space battles.

Some of it still confuses me. Not a lot of 'tutorial' to work on. Like space building still puzzles me but I hardly messed with it. Probably cannot afford to either.

I did laugh whenever I took a debt collecting job for a bank and I ended up having to find this CEO who needed to be 'saved' and I literally just circled around, went through a door and saved her life, not realizing that there were dozens of enemies outside that I was supposed to fight. Then I turn and they're all over the place and I just...leave.

Hope that's patched up because I'm preeettty sure I wasn't supposed to just walk in. Took some of the fun out of it.

dameon_reaper posted...

wasn't expecting the best game ever, but I suppose I was expecting more of a simulation when it came to many of the aspects like exploration or space battles.

Some of it still confuses me. Not a lot of 'tutorial' to work on. Like space building still puzzles me but I hardly messed with it. Probably cannot afford to either.

I did laugh whenever I took a debt collecting job for a bank and I ended up having to find this CEO who needed to be 'saved' and I literally just circled around, went through a door and saved her life, not realizing that there were dozens of enemies outside that I was supposed to fight. Then I turn and they're all over the place and I just...leave.

Hope that's patched up because I'm preeettty sure I wasn't supposed to just walk in. Took some of the fun out of it.

I dunno.
I like the idea of taking the money and leaving the ceo to the sharks.

The comments I saw mostly fell into 2 groups:
- Those who assumed it to be an ARPG x No Man's Sky, whose expectations were shattered by reality
- Those who expected it to be buggy and/or Fallout-like, whose expectations were met

7/10

It feels like a Bethesda game except with even more pointless items to pick up. I have played a few hours now, so far I really only got into one serious combat situation in the "tutorial" area (if you can call it that), rest of the time has been just doing busy work for random ass hats with like no payoff.

On the flip side you level up individual skills by completing "challenges" for them. For the Stealth skill you have to get more and more stealth hits with silenced weapons, so I'm just going around tagging random civilians on the first planet so I can level it up (each skill has like four ranks).

We will see tommorow night

Awesome immersive space sim with Bethesda hallmarks

Looks like one of those 'wait for modders to fix' kinda games.

its great, but like most AAA games, it has a large share of haters who do nothing but hate on it

A very great game with a lot of toxic discourse surrounding it

Requiem posted...

I dunno.
I like the idea of taking the money and leaving the ceo to the sharks.

That's not what happened. She gave the money and she was 'saved' and basically walked out.

The consensus seems to be that if you are already a fan of post-Oblivion Bethesda Starfield is going to be your jam, especially with more work put into the roleplaying this time around. Otherwise, there's nothing here that will change your mind about Bethesda at all.

does it have waifus

dameon_reaper posted...

That's not what happened. She gave the money and she was 'saved' and basically walked out.

...into a den of bloodthirsty gang / bandits, right?

SSJGrimReaper posted...

does it have waifus

No space kaijits

Requiem posted...

...into a den of bloodthirsty gang / bandits, right?

Out of the den...I watched her leave lol

It feels like Fallout 4 in space.

I feel like it is a good game, but the challenge is really underbaked. Like, there are "Stealth" missions where the NPCs don't care if I'm in places I shouldn't be, and hiding is really wonky.

It does feel more Fallout than Elder Scrolls, but there is a little bit of that early Morrowind magic when it comes to the freedom to explore and stuff.

Also, as far as an RPG goes, I just feel like the writing is just kind of there? There are some really cool setpieces, so the setting is great, but the characters are very blah. It tries to be a lot of things and doesn't end up mastering anything.

SSJGrimReaper posted...

does it have waifus

Here's your modern day western video game waifu.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/5/0/AADbJNAAEz8m.jpg

"Is your future hostile?"

MedeaLysistrata posted...

@codey

?

Calling it a "great" game is kind of an exaggeration imo. It's just like the issue I had with Skyrim and Fallout 4 - it's a *unique* game that fills a niche virtually no other game can fill, but it also doesn't do anything spectacularly.

The most blatant and annoying thing to me is the non-existent writing. Some examples of missions follow. But like when you make your character you have the ability to choose up to 3 starting traits. Some of these align you with a certain religious faction, some with certain political factions, some are more self-explanatory (start with a huge mansion but have to pay off a mortgage to maintain access, start with your parents alive and you paying them 2% of your credits each week but you get to visit them). But I have ZERO IDEA who the eff all these factions are. The game does nothing to explain what their ideology or history is, just that if I choose the Hungry Hungry Hippos then I'll get some sort of reward from them later on but then I can't get a reward from the Crouching Tigers or the Hidden Dragons. Or, maybe I *can* get a reward, I just have to work for it? There's ZERO explanation.

The world building is very crap. So far everything feels like generic space opera nonsense. For instance, a very early mission has you investigating an electrical "brownout" in the slums of a city. You end up working with a city employee who guides you to electrical boxes where you just flip a switch. The electricity overload is traced back to an organization called "the Trade Authority". Then you investigate further and find out that basically someone was using a lot of electricity to hack a bank's transactions to get money. You can either sell this information to the Trade Authority or give it to the person that you've been working for. And that's it. A couple other missions in this part of the city have you doing very basic stuff like listening to a conversation and then telling the mission giver you listened to the conversation, or talking to a doctor about a very generic health concern and getting medical notes from a colleague that will help the doctor working in the slums.

It's all a lot of just... *busy work*, except it doesn't really do anything to build the world up like at all. After doing all these missions I don't really feel like I understand anything about this universe any more than I did going into the game. And the mission log doesn't tell you *shit*, so heaven forbid you miss some dialogue or take on several missions and then want context for each one later on.

Also the lockpicking is dumb beyond belief. Every hack or lockpick *attempt*, successful or not, consumes one "digipick". And the minigame is just time consuming. It stopped being fun after the first few times I did it.

ALSO the AI sucks trash - I found a VERY great "sniping" spot for my silenced pistol, killed 7 completely innocent people in rapid succession (trying to upgrade my stealth perk and that's the fastest way and there's zero repercussion since no one saw me). Went to loot the bodies afterwards, realized there were several guards just hanging out, didn't respond a single time to people dying in front of them or to me looting dead bodies.

Space flight... I haven't done too much of it, but it really seems like mostly just getting in your ship, leaving the planet, loading up the map of where you want to go, and then fast traveling there. Maybe you can fly between planets in a single system but I haven't attempted this yet.

Maybe outpost building will be fun and worth it, I definitely am not that far yet.

The pre-release marketing made the space exploration look way more involved than what it is. They pretty much painted it as No Man's Sky adjacent and from what I've seen of gameplay it is no where close to that. The fact that the planets are essentially just JPEGs you can fly through is such a bad choice.

Smashingpmkns posted...

The pre-release marketing made the space exploration look way more involved than what it is. They pretty much painted it as No Man's Sky adjacent and from what I've seen of gameplay it is no where close to that. The fact that the planets are essentially just JPEGs you can fly through is such a bad choice.

They didn't. Not sure where people are getting this from outside of a surface level understanding and just making assumptions.

You're not intended to fly all the way to the planets manually. It's a background detail. It takes hours to get there.

What it's doing is simulating the appearance of the solar systems orbits in the background when you're flying in space or on a planet.

Punished_Blinx posted...

They didn't. Not sure where people are getting this from outside of a surface level understanding and just making assumptions.

You're not intended to fly all the way to the planets manually. It's a background detail. It takes hours to get there.

What it's doing is simulating the appearance of the solar systems orbits in the background when you're flying in space or on a planet.

That is not how they advertised the space exploration in their 40+ minute Xbox showcase.

https://youtu.be/389Ce7Nr4x0

25ish minutes in. "You can pretty much do anything" uh not really.

32 min: "it's not a Bethesda game studios world, its a Bethesda game studios galaxy."

Neither of those quotes say anything about being able to fly towards and manually land on a planet like No Man's Sky.

Like that entire segment is focused specifically on space combat and what you can do with ships. What you're implying they said doesn't come up once.

You can even see right here it's a Mass Effect style menu

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/5/AACT2jAAEz-P.jpg

They imply that space exploration is an integral part of the game. It demonstrably is not. They have multiple shots of the space craft approaching gigantic planets.

Saying that it's a "Bethesda Galaxy" implies that there's some god damn space exploration.

Smashingpmkns posted...

They imply that space exploration is an integral part of the game.

They state that you can explore planets and fly around in space. You can do both of those things.

You're assuming how those mechanics work.

Smashingpmkns posted...

They have multiple shots of the space craft approaching gigantic planets.

Because you can fly in the orbit of a planet like they showed.

If you could fly towards and land on the planet by flying through the atmosphere and landing manually why wouldn't they show that? That's a major feature.

Smashingpmkns posted...

Saying that it's a "Bethesda Galaxy" implies that there's some god damn space exploration.

It implies there are hundreds of planets to explore and land on which there are.

You're making the conclusion all of this is done manually despite it never being said once in the entire 40 minute presentation.

You can explore the galaxy in Mass Effect yes?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/5/AACT2jAAEz-Z.jpg

Because they say the same thing. Did you assume it then too?

I can't even play it, it keeps saying I am too early even though it is past midnight.

The game has generally been rated way higher than it deserves. It's not a bad game but it's also not particularly great. IGN likely was pretty spot on with the 7/10 they gave it.

Am I being harsher than I would if Starfield hadn't come out after Baldur's Gate 3? I don't know, maybe? If I am well that just shows how lax I'd gotten with how I rate games but Baldur's Gate 3 has shown me what's possible again and a studio like Bethesda has no excuse, they have the budget and had the time to craft an incredible game, instead they put out a Bethesda game which just isn't enough any more.

Monolith1676 posted...

I can't even play it, it keeps saying I am too early even though it is past midnight.

Standard edition unlocks in 15 and a half hours.

I don't understand the BG3 comparisons. They're entirely different games with different goals.

Since planets and exploration were mentioned... are quests connected between planets?
I imagine that main quest must be, but the side quests?
Or are side quests mostly confined to the planet it originated in?

Like, if the quest was "go find / rescue / kill A", will A always be on the planet that you got the quest?
Or will you have to fly and explore several planets?

I'm having fun, but yeah it's nothing groundbreaking or anything.

Requiem posted...

Like, if the quest was "go find / rescue / kill A", will A always be on the planet that you got the quest?
Or will you have to fly and explore several planets?

Side quests can sprawl to other planets, but usually don't.