Starfield on Steam
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Starfield is the first new universe in 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4.

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.

  • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.mlEnglish
    414·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • aesopjah@lemm.eeEnglish
      112·
      1 year ago

      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).

      • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.mlEnglish
        61·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • GenesisJones@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      This is exactly the frustration I’m experiencing. You have put this to words so perfectly. Every single menu or ux decision makes me just wanna pull my hair out.

      It’s so close to being a gem but there’s so much friction trying to do the stuff in the game thanks to the UI