Starfield

[Der Zeitgeist]

Service guarantees citizenship.

[Harold Jones]

I'm saving that line for a different run, I have completed the Ranger line and am pretty happy with the reward.

[Captain Hurricane]

Starfiefd has been out for a few months now and has had a couple of fairly major updates......however seems to be getting a lot of heated negativity lately.

Seems like people set a very high expectation bar for the game that has not been forfilled in some cases, dispite the updates.

Is there a good game lurking behind the criticism or should one look elsewhere?

 

[Der Zeitgeist]

6 hours ago, Captain Hurricane said:

Starfiefd has been out for a few months now and has had a couple of fairly major updates......however seems to be getting a lot of heated negativity lately.

Seems like people set a very high expectation bar for the game that has not been forfilled in some cases, dispite the updates.

Is there a good game lurking behind the criticism or should one look elsewhere?

It depends on your expectations.

It seems a lot of the people giving negative reviews see some fundamental problems with the established formula that Bethesda RPGs are made from. They see it as obsolete and riddled with limitations (also from the engine), whereas games like Cyberpunk give a fresh approach to action-RPGs.

Personally, I couldn't stand Cyberpunk 2077. To me it felt like a game designed for teenagers with heavy ADHD where everyone in the game always seemed to be shouting at me. 

I think Starfield is a great game in the same way that Skyrim is still a great game after all these years. There are a lot of games that do certain details and features in a more fleshed out way, but there's hardly any game that does it all at the same time as well as Skyrim or Starfield, in their respective genres.

In a way, Starfield really is "Skyrim in Space", and if that's your expectation, you'll probably enjoy it a great deal.

My recommendation, if you're unsure, would be to try it out via Microsoft GamePass (get a subscription for one month and then immediately cancel) or simply wait for a Steam sale.

Also, this review here sums it all up pretty well:

 

[Captain Hurricane]

Thanks for your input Zeitgeist

That review you posted is probably the most rational consideration I have seen about the game....I've played a "fair bit" of Skyrim so I might commit to Starfield but will wait for the next Steam sale.

Edited January 26 by Captain Hurricane

[Angrybk]

I was pretty obsessed with both Skryim and Fallout 4, but I can't get into Starfield, and I've tried mightily (probably put 20 or so hours into it). To me it seems "wide but shallow"; it's a huge game but everything feels kinda same-y in a way. I can't understand a lot of the UI, I've never cared all that much about the crafting aspect of the games, all the armor looks the same, etc. It just feels to me like they tried doing too much at once (starship combat, base building, etc.) without fleshing it out.

I thought Cyberpunk was great once they fixed it up, highly recommend. The DLC was superb. 

[Harold Jones]

I agree with the mile wide inch deep description.  I played the heck out of the game but decided to take a break after completing my 3rd NG+ restart.  I'll probably drift back after the expansion is released.  Whenever that is.  Not sure what effect (if any) this will have on the release date of expansion https://venturebeat.com/games/microsoft-cuts-1900-staff-at-xbox-bethesda-and-activision-blizzard/

[Mr King]

I like Bethesda games to the point I have an embarrassing amount of hours in Fallout 4 and Skyrim. I would have more hours in earlier titles, but they are famously unstable, and I hate playing while constantly worried about saving in case of an impending crash. I gave Starfield a go, and it felt to me like someone described Bethesda games to someone else over the phone, and that person then tried to make a Bethesda game. The fact the first companion you meet tells you how gay and amazing he is in what is basically your first five minutes of meeting him sets the tone for the rest of game. It didnt feel like any of the companions were endearing or well written to me, or really any other npc in the game for that matter. It was decidedly more woke than previous titles, and I was not surprised to learn Sweet Baby Inc consulted on the game. I don't mind gay characters in games, provided they are actually interesting and their sexuality is not their whole personality. Cyberpunk for instance had well written gay NPC's, and one not so much that you could tell was tacked on for pandering. I will give Bethesda credit, Starfield is the most stable and bug free Bethesda game I have played.

[PCallahan]

I gave the game a rest a while ago.  Basically, agree with other posters -- a great deal of potential, but much needs to be fleshed out.  I found this particularly true with outposts (aka settlements).  Ultimately, what is the point?  Yeah, I get resource production, but that really doesn't do a lot for your character.  You can't actually DO all that much with them, and they all end up looking roughly the same, despite the wide variability of terrain.

In addition, the individual planets had a pretty good variability with environments, but some key things were missing them left them feeling randomly generated (which, of course, they are...)  There were no roads between settlements or other locations.  There is, except on key planets with unique quests (and there aren't many of them), no water that I ever found... no rivers, no lakes, no oceans (yeah, oceans are on the global maps, but I never found one, and I did look).  

It feels like the framework is there, so I am somewhat hopeful.  I strongly suspect that Bethesda will ultimately flesh all this out (they have already done this with ship design, making it far more expansive), so I'll come back to it when the first DLC is released in October.  

Afterall, Bethesda is still rolling out substantive updates for Fallout 76 (another title that had a good framework but lacked sufficient detail), so I suspect we'll get more eventually... but this game is likely to be very different 18 months from now from the initial release.

Lastly, AFAIK, they still haven't fixed the damn "empty starship" bug (if you've played deep into the game, you'll know what I mean)