if you played under X hours, you didn’t play enough to criticize the game yet. if you played over X hours, you clearly enjoyed it, and you can’t criticize the game now.
Dunkey said it the best, " smaller maps are more exciting to explore because all the interesting things are more concentrated". The game isn't better because it takes 10 times longer to get to areas that contain things worth exploring.
@@anonecki As much as I love Elden Ring, I agree. I've recently been craving that old, relatively small but incredibly twisted, thought out and interconnected world design of DS1 and Bloodborne. It shows in ER too, with the best areas of the game being the Legacy Dungeons, or simply put old style level design
@@Rigel_6 I kind of agree, but I'm still *very* happy and extremely pleased with how they handled the open world portions of the game. The legacy dungeons were also probably my favorite parts of the game, but I think they were still enhanced dramatically by the open world aspects. You could sometimes find alternate ways of entering a place, or see it from a different angle. The tight, winding passages of a legacy environment were a great gameplay contrast for me, too. I also just kind of love the open world concept when it is done right... and imo, FromSoft implemented it in the best possible way for a soulsborne type. Plenty of points of interest. Many interesting environments. The fact that they *still* kept the legacy dungeon feel going was the icing on the cake to me. I got that classic soulsborne experience, ***on top*** of an open world game. As far as gameplay intent, design and execution goes, this is one of, if not the best game I've ever played.
My mate was watching me play starfield and asked what the orange water droplet icon on the compass meant. We checked and found it meant cold weather. Thats right, an orange water droplet. Not a blue snowflake or a little blue thermometer symbol. Then i told him the class rating system in starfield goes A to C, with A being the worst. He laughed, shook his head and said they tried to reinvent the wheel but came up with a square
You right! Hahahaha when you put it like this why didn't I though about this at all like class A ship is the worst class instead of C or the low Temperature Icon is orange instead of blue 😆
Imagine if Skyrim was made with no overworld like Starfield. Imagine if you had to go from a city to a nearby village for some quest. You go out the main gate and are stuck in a square box in front of said city. There may be a couple bandits waiting to rob you, a khajiit trader or some other random event. You deal with that and can see the village clear as day, but what's that? You can't get to it, "you've reached the boundary, fast travel directly to village or back to city gates". Just imagine how fast Skyrim would've been forgotten if there was no physical walkable connection between POIs, just loading screens...
They kinda already did sth similar before with Daggerfall, which had such an unbelievably ginormous, procedurally generated (and hence incredibly boring) world that fast-travelling everywhere, even to dungeons you had never been to before, was the only sane option. You could argue that Starfield is basically Daggerfall in space in a lot of ways
I once landed on a planet walked to the 'unknown' location. It was an abandoned mine. I entered. 1 Loading screen later I discovered in the tiny 1 room cave that there was a cave in. No new items, no audio logs, and no adventure, just a tiny room dense with disappointment. Never has a Bethesda RPG blatantly told me "your wasting your time"
@@misanthropicattackhelicopt4148I think that's done intentionally so people have to keep renewing Game Pass to finish playing it. It's a money scam Bethesda and Microsoft planned together.
It's realistic bro. The empty room is there to provoke you to think about what you are doing playing video games when you could be solving world hunger.
@@snoozeyoulose9416 it's not possible to solve world hunger without invading and taking over the starving countries, and nobody is willing to do that. The technology to mass produce food has existed for a hundred years now.
AAA game design these days often reminds me of the capable student who leaves assignments to the last minute and then cobbles something together just to pass.
I think AAA is more like: take minigame systems that you had 20 years ago, and slap a slightly better graphics on it, and figure out how can you waste the player time more?
i bounce back and fourth between old shit and new shit and fuck man its like hard to play either for long because one is old sure its reliable but its old and slow and the new shit is just the same thing going in a wheel until eventually a game with a new idea comes out (it will be put in every game now regardless of genre)
@marcusmalone, considering how 2023 has been a good year for gaming, and you get next gen looking stuff like Street Fighter 6 and Spiderman 2, only to get something like Starfield that looks like it came out in 2010, this is a Bethesda problem, not an "AAA sucks" problem.
My favorite part was joining the Crimson Fleet and going on an ice planet to discover a old prison where the diaries and teaching of the first member would be, then only to realize there was a single enemy type from beginning to end (small scorpion like alien) and then at the very end escaping I got a boss that was the exact same enemy just upscaled by 10. Killed every kind of fun I was having after 8+ hours
The biggest thing that pisses me off is how starfield sends all items on your ship to your cargo hold each time you customize the ship. One of the most enjoyable parts of Skyrim for me was collecting loot and decorating my home with it. I probably spent several hours doing the same to my ship and then it just all went away as soon as I added some storage to the ship. Great way to kill any and all motivation to decorate the ship.
Yea. I gave up decorating my ship the first time I noticed this happning. The fact that you lose all your items on NG+ killed any excitement for that as well. Decorating your home, building a great and nice looking ship, collecting named gear, setting up the ultimate outpost, the fact that you loose all of that on NG+ despite the game's msq pushing you towards it killed any motivation beyond doing the minimum for them.
@@lunatixsoyuz9595For me NG+ may also be something I’d avoid for story reasons. Depending on the character I play, the way you actually trigger this mechanic would completely break my character.
Funny thing is, they advertised how you can put stuff in your ship as a fun feature only to fuck you over as soon as you slap a weapon on. It's just Bethesda and their lying asses again. Also, it's not hard to program the check "what changed on a ship" and based on that to update the different interiors(if at all!). They are already pre-made and separated, so the WHY?! stands big and ugly and spits in your face.
@@protozoa7014 Then you are not reading a novel, you are reading a calculus textbook. Which is not worth reading, you will have horrific nightmares about numbers for the rest of your days.
Yeah the Exploration aspect is what killed it immediately for me. The initial hype of being in space on its own wore off extremely fast and I started focusing on what I was actually doing and I realized that this menu-based exploration just wasn't fun, and it entirely killed all of my motivation to want to keep playing the game.
I was very disappointed when i realized, i can't take off by myself. When i arrived in space i was disappointed, that i couldn't fly anywhere. The illusion fell apart so fast, like in the first 20 minutes.
Agreed with your last point. This would have been one of my favorite games of the past decade if: They had crafted 4 fleshed out planets, each one around the same size as New Vegas. Each in its own galaxy, and each densely packed with tons of UNIQUE, interesting locations to visit. Get rid of the 1000 procedural planets with the same few boring locations of them, and trim that down to, say, 50 procedural planets to fill out the galaxy. We may get this in 5 years with mods, but I wish it was Bethesda’s vision from the start.
To be honest, if they had actually designed 4 handcrafted planets I wouldn't care how many procedural planets there were. They would just be extra to 4 traditional Bethesda maps. The problem is that the procedural planets are basically all there is.
@@amysteriousviewer3772 Yeah I wouldn’t really be excited by the extra procedural planets either, but I was thinking that they could help to fill out the galaxies. I still think the game would be a bit cooler keeping the idea of multiple galaxy systems, instead of just 4 single planets and that’s it. That said, I’d still take 4 NV-sized, fleshed out planets over what we have now.
@@CompleteProducer84 Yes, absolutely. I do agree that the procedural planets do add something to the atmosphere and I'm also fine with the fact that a lot of them are rather barren because that's just how space is but there really should have been more traditional open world areas around the main cities at the very least.
12:25 Yeah, I was expecting like huge abandoned cities with stories, abandoned mines and factories (which are there, but terribly done) old battlefields from the war with craters and bombed out tanks, tiny settlements that didn't all use the same habs and fabs with actual stories, beautiful forests with alien creatures, primitive alien cultures etc. Being able to land on a planet and seeing the humans SPREADING out across the planet. A railroad/hyperloop track you can follow for miles and miles etc. Just SO much missed opportunity and how they didn't see they had literally taken out the ONLY thing their games truly do well, exploration, just blows my mind.
One of the best parts of Skyrim was just leaving and heading west after that first dragon fight, or not paying close enough attention to your map and finding yourself in Riften. the fact that that's basically gone is a large part of what's keeping me from really diving deep into Starfield at the moment despite liking what I have played so far
Exploration was always the best part of BSG games. There is no point to starfield's exploration at all. In a game that has explorers as the central faction and exploration the motif.
starfield is the same experience... if you put a loading screen between every little enemy spawn, encounter, npc, and everything else you can think of. tedious as f
Your section on exploration is absolutely 100% correct. Bethesda has built their reputation on the back of their fully explorable, handcrafted, open worlds. It's literally the main reason I play Bethesda games; To explore the new world they have created. Starfield completely removes that, and replaces it with procedural generation and loading screens. What were they thinking?
Disagree. They just changed the formula for exploration, to implement starship and galaxies to give a feeling of large scale. Starfield is fun to float around and go to a random place look for good stuff then leave. Each planet is like a dungeon. With an occasional more detailed story.
@@monalisa-bs4zs And replaced it with map UI? That's not exploration. That's a loading screen. They didn't 'change the formula'. They removed it. Starfield doesn't have an open world. It has a thousand tiny rooms and empty planets, stitched together with fancy animations and loading screens.
Its not an open world. Nor can it be. Its trying to depict the universe without sacrificing details like interactable objects kilometres underground or buildable fully customizable outposts/ships. Im a fan of exploration games like ubisoft open worlds, cdpr and all else, but they all sacrifice one thing for another to gain whatever effect they are trying to achieve, only hitman games go to lengths with details like bethesda and they're not even maps, more like rooms. Starfield is a vast universe with player options in a customizable world. More investment into how to meld worlds to hide loading screens so players could feel ships crossing space and landing as part of gameplay obviously wasn't priority in Starfield and i see and appreciate the details which were placed elsewhere. @@OsaculnenolajO
@@OsaculnenolajO The loading screens aren't even fancy. It couldn't be *that* difficult to make the ship a "fast travel box" that you could walk around in *during* transit/loading. I would much rather be able to tell an NPC pilot to "go there" and then sit back and relax for a while as the world loads, things process, and I wait to traverse the vastness of space. If I'm not mistaken, there aren't even different travel speeds, higher level FTL drives just let you go further per loading screen.
I haven’t played Starfield, but the whole section on the lackluster planet exploration made my brain immediately jump to the original Mass Effect Mako sections. Barren, empty worlds. One or two points of interest, copy-pasted from a limited list. Random irrelevant minerals to tag. “I WILL DESTROY YOU!” The Mako was at least fun to drive and bounce around in. And BioWare fixed planets in the sequels with the exact kind of specific, tailor-made areas that you describe. Now I’m jonesing for ME2 again.
Mass Effect came out so long ago. Theres so many space-themed games that have seamless planet-space transitions nowadays. e.g elite dangerous, no mans sky, star citizen. Even Space Engineers has actual planets.
@@peterschmidt4212yeah, but none of those have the INCREDIBLE story and setting of mass effect. It may feel a bit clunky now, but it still holds up very well. If you think games are bad just cus they're not new, man are you missing out. Comparing star citizen to mass effect LOL. They're nothing alike except for "space"
I love Starfield but ot does have some tjose issues i am playing mass effect 1 along With Kotor Mass effect one is way worse terrible exploration but it is much older then starfield so there is that.
i definitely think the exploration is what hit me the hardest. Bethesda titles at their core have always been almost entirely about exploration, discovery, and finding interesting environmental storytelling. I'll always remember the early hours of skyrim, exploring a bandit cave, and finding that the guard is just some old blind guy. Or the little old lady in the cabin that happened to be a malicious mage and you could only discover that if you snooped a little too much. Its organic exploration, stumbling across that content is part of the charm in bethesda titles. they've reduced that to a series of fast travel points and set pieces in Starfield, and it sucks all the fun from it. Theyve lobotomised the core part of the bethesda experience. And because exploration is no longer the focus, it brings interactions with NPC's to the forefront. A very large portion of your time is spent interacting with NPC's, and that is not at all a strong suit of bethesda. On average they're not very well voice acted, the writing is poor, the animations are janky and stiff etc etc. Thats forgivable in a standard bethesda game because all they act as is a small nudge to get you exploring in new directions. Of course theres a few gems in the pile, serana to keep up with the skyrim example, but in general theyre just that nudge. In a game like starfield where a major part of the game is interacting with these NPC's, its a major detracor from the experience. So starfield removes the best part of bethesda RPGs, and gives one of their worst parts the starring role. A lot of arguments for this game seem to try and counter the procedural generated content rage, saying people should have expected the typical bethesda experience. I dont even think this IS a typical bethesda experience, its so much worse. I'd say even fallout 4 was better.
the thing is that i think starfield is a step up in many aspects (writing, quest design, etc) from past titles that would be nice bonuses if this were a typical bethesda game, but like you said since they took exploration out essentially those things are largely the focus, and while they're better they aren't great either. Bethesda's incredibly well crafted worlds that you get lost in allowed them to be mediocre in most aspects of their games and still sell like crazy. It's very strange for them to just decide to do away with what made them a powerhouse in this game
@@joejoe5156I don't see any step up in quest design, I've only done the first few Constellation missions and they all involve killing pirates, nothing else. The Vanguard missions are basically the same too. I'm about to try Freestar next but I'm already expecting more of the same.
@@joejoe5156 Its definitely a step up, but thats not saying much considering it cant match up to games made decades ago. The shining example i always use is mass effect. Mass effect is simply better in every single aspect compared to starfield. Its primarily a third person shooter with RPG elements, but i think those elements are done way better compared to anything we find in starfield, which is a dedicated RPG I think primarily Bethesdas design philosophy is a little flawed in 2023, they need to keep that open world aspect thats so important to that type of design, but drastically upgrade the writing, character designs, voice acting etc. I get they might not have had the funds when oblivion was made, and skyrim was a massive step up, but how can a bethesda title in 2023 not compete with a game made in 2008, only one year after oblivion was made. They have the studio size, they re released skyrim around what feels like 100 times with minimal changes so they have the funds, the only thing it CAN be is their design philosophy being stuck back in the morrowind days. Or they just dont have talented devs there anymore. I think their engine is pretty damn outdated too, they need to get rid of the creation kit and build something new. I think one of the main reasons people are starting to wake up to this is BG3 tbh. its shown the modern player just how GOOD a game can be. a true RPG experience.
At least in Fallout 4 the factions have an effect on the main plot and respond (if only marginally) to each other. And of course the base building in this game feels like an inexplicably massive step backwards. I mean, all these planets and we can't actually build a colony on any of them.. why?
I was so bored I started skipping dialogue, which meant that a huge chunk of the missions dissolved into nothing. Fast travel. Skip dialogue. Fast travel. Skip dialogue. Quest complete. Not a single obstacle thrown my way.
20 landable planets with lots of custom content. I would have preferred that. Crazy thing is I thought there would be many more cities like New Atlantis, Cydonia, Akila, and Neon. I was like "Wow. If I project how many main hubs I've seen in this amount of play time against what I expect to be the duration of the game, this is astonishing." Turns out, I'd pretty much seen all the really cool places. Now, there are cool ships and outposts to explore (I did really like the location on Earth), but I feel like the main areas should have maybe been presented to us at a slower pace. Of course, the actual quests would need to be more interesting as well. Idk. Idk what would have made it better. I just feel like having everything presented to us at once and then just hopping back and forth for everything made the wonder of the cooler places wear off quickly.
20 planets is still too many, the only difference between 20 and 200 is the amount of systems, nkt the quality of the planets. it's too many planets to do only handcrafted, meaning they would rely on the same garbage procedural generation tech they made. Instead I'd want 3 planets all in one system that are all in the goldilocks zone but once is warmer and tropical, one is similar to earth and one is more icy, and each have different biomes + they are all handcrafted. That could have saved the game
I think they were pulled in two directions at the same time: they were trying to make a typical Bethesda game set in space, while ALSO going for something similar to No Man’s Sky. They should have realised early in development that those two goals, those two visions for the game, are mutually antagonistic. For me, they should have dropped the open-ended procedural stuff altogether and focused all their energy on crafting one solar system.
It's why they're still making early Xbox 360 games. Whatever people's opinion on Cyberpunk, you can't deny they've done a lot to fix it to the point I genuinely can't see them making that mistake again and that only happened because they were called out about it. Even Ubisoft of all people fixed Breakpoint after the backlash and seem to be completely sorting out the Prince of Persia remake but because Bethesda always gets a free pass because Oblivion was a great game they'll never learn or see the need to learn. I can't even comprehend just how dated TES6 will feel when it comes out in 15 years
It's really weird to me too. I watched a bunch of reviews before downloading it on GamePass and I was so excited. I am enjoying it, but it's so much less than what I was expecting. Clunky, buggy, lots of systems that feel incomplete, awkward UI decisions, and so on. It's still overall good, but it's not great, not fantastic. I'd call it a great first effort by a new studio with a lot to learn. Solid 6/10, or 7/10 if building ships and outposts is really appealing to you. Just this year, I've gotten to play games like Baldur's Gate 3, Armored Core VI, heck, even Hogwarts Legacy managed to have more engaging characters, a much more immersive world, and superior combat. When I see reviews giving Starfield a 9/10 or 10/10... HOW? I don't even dislike Starfield, but I have a soft spot for the outposts and ships, so I'll put up with the negatives somewhat. But it's definitely far from as good as many of the reviews make it out to be.
100% agree with you on exploring. Starfield removed it and for what? Procedural generated planets? Shipbuilding? A worse settlement builder? I never expected a Bethesda game would have terrible exploration and given Starfield is the fastest launch seller Bethesda will continue to go in this direction.
On the topic of the world size. I think it is generally true that "smaller but denser is better", *but* a weird complaint I had with Fallout 4 was that it's map was waaaaay too dense with crafted "content"; so much so that it would broke my suspension of disbelief. The "fantasy" of Fallout was wandering a wasteland, but in fo4 locations were so densely packed that it felt like wandering an abandoned theme park. Supposedly "long abandoned" locations were less than a 5 minute walk from bustling cities, and enemy groups would have their base across the street from each other.
Yeah definitely, like i dont agree with the notion that an open world game has to be super dense. As long as there is a lot of content and that content is good. And that the spaces in between points of interest are interesting to look at or atmospheric in some way.
One of the best smaller is better experiences I have had was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The main hub was smaller but it made use of verticality and was just full of stuff. It does make sense to have a "there is not enough here" and a "there is too much here" complaint, balance is important. The open areas of this game are too empty and the more enclosed areas have too much going on.
i didnt mind the denseness of fallout 4, its more that despite how dense it was it was still somehow empty. a lot of the side quests boiled down to mmo fetch quests, and a lot of the "content" as you put it was simply bland. There were some amazing areas in fallout 4 dont get me wrong, but the large majority of locations reminded me more of starfield than fallout 3 or new vegas. Big empty set pieces that are void of any good storytelling.
I found a cool collapsed mine full of bioluminescent plants and alien monsters... and then I found it again on another planet. Same plants, same layout, same dead miners, same spawn locations. Then I noticed that everything repeats. The planetary features both don't do anything and repeat all the time, there are loads of palette swapped aliens which all have the same AI, etc. They could have cut it down to a hundred or even just ten planets and lost basically nothing.
Spot on as per usual. I felt the exact same things regarding exploration. One thing you didn't pick on was the god awful loot system. I am so sick of every game slapping random modifiers on weapons and coloring them white, green, blue, purple, orange and calling it a day...
"In all Bethesda RPGs, the worst version of the game is the version you buy at release" This has been a problem for a while, and I don't regret giving these games a year or two to get things polished up with DLC or fan patches/mods.
@@JD-xz1mx 100% true. All those devs should be panhandling on the streets as they refuse to *actually do their jobs and finish a product before taking money for it*.
@@JD-xz1mx thats your opinion. There are plenty of games I enjoy that work better because of mods. Devs do not have unlimited budget or time to fix things, and games are complicated things. It certainly factors into my decision on how much I will pay or how interested I am in the game, as I stated in my original comment, but if I am still enjoying the game I don't feel its a waste of my time or money.
I think my first real “wtf” moment with dialogue stuff, was when i was supposed to find a criminal on a medical station. I talked to one lady and questioned her identity (because the target is under a fake name) and she challenged me and told me to verify her identity with the guy that told me to talk to her. So i went back to him just wanting a conversation where he verified her ID, like she told me to do. But no such dialogue option existed. The guy just gave me default “small chat” options. So, why did she tell me to check if i didn’t believe her, only for there to be no way to check? The obvious answer is that the target is already off the ship and i was wasting my time. But that feels like a railroading DM trying to hint to me to stay on task in the most lazy way possible…
Oh well said! It totally is a whole DM who couldn't be arsed with your roleplaying vibe. That suddenly makes the 'romance' in the game make a whole lot of sense 😬
As I sunk hours into starfield I have had a realization... Nothing anyone could say would convince me that a single BGS employee ever spent even a second play testing this game
Tried to build an outpost with a keyboard and mouse.... Three hours trying to move a wire.... .. why can't I just click it with my mouse?? Why do you hate PC players Bethesda? This can't be an accident, it's to terrible to be a mistake.
I wanted to like it but there's nothing exciting about the game and there's no strategy to it. It's just run in, shoot, and run out. I was briefly excited about getting the Freestar ship but you can't bring it with you to NG+, and I was a bit excited about colony building but again same problem and all your hard work gets deleted in NG+. Starfield leaves me leaving like nothing you do matters, the game doesn't change based on how you play it, and there's nothing to get excited about playing. Listening to endless NPC dialog does not excite me especially when it's ultimately meaningless.
102 hours in and it doesn't feel like it. Seems more like 40 or so. I love the game, it's incredible and yet so so janky, broken and imperfect at the same time. It can only be expected from a game of this size and with so many moving parts. Looking forward to many years of mods and patches.
@@minbari73 Happy for you but I just don't see what this game brings to the table that Skyrim or Fallout 4 doesn't. Especially since Skyrim has SE which brings the engine up to the same level, essentially. I'm sure the engine tweaks for Starfield were more than just what Skyrim Special Edition did but it doesn't show. I guess if you're a GFX whore then you'd like SF more but even then Skyrim will look 10x better with one single ENB mod. =/ SF has no unique identity as a game or character/charm as a piece of art. Because it isn't a piece of art, it's "content" to be sold and bought by consumers and that's all.
Agreed 100%. The more I play it, the more I see everything that is missing from previous games. The companions are TERRIBLE. (btw Sarah and Andreja basically have the same personal quest "I've lost some people, I want to find out what happened to them" ..I mean..what) The game gives you tons of funny lines, but it takes itself so seriously you almost always get criticized / lashed at when using them. So there's an incredible lack of "roleplaying" because starfield is tailored for you to be a run & gun good character. Ship fighting is basically a simple stats check. No more kill moves/animations/takedowns. No more command system for followers.. Etc etc etc.
And then there's the issue of endless piles of useless junk that can't be used for anything other than decoration. It's like playing the sims but every item is in the misc art category and the only interaction characters have with the environment are their idle animations.
You also can’t even kill people in most quests. Literally most people involved in the main quests are immortal. They were too lazy to figure out a way for the quest to diverge if you play as a no nonsense maniac. I can at least shoot anyone’s face off in fo4 if I want. This game is so f-cking lazy in so many ways.
Also, Bethesda's relilance on traditional animation vs modern mocap makes all the characters seem stiff and robotic. They move like cardboard cutouts. When they sit down "Here is the sitting animation" and it's identical for every NPC. The same hand gestures and all of it. Compared to something like Phantom Liberty it just feels really outdated.
Bethesda shills be like "oh you played the game for 50 hours only and you think it sucks? clearly you didnt play long enough" *played 100+ hours" "see? you managed to play longer that means you actually enjoyed the game"
I think a good thing to point out about Starfield's open world is too look at Luke Stephens rule to making an engaging world where points of interest or engaging situations were placed within 30 or 40 seconds travel time of each other and have them be visible to the player(which was apparently used by the Witcher 3 devs). Starfield has none of that. It's all just menus and randomly generated tiles that are filled with equally repetitive, bland, outposts and locations.
I remember when they did the showcase my immediate thought was, "so the 1000 planets are just 1000 buttons that you can press to generate a randomized patch of land and nothing more". then I'd look at the other comments and they were full of people unironically asserting that Bethesda were going to simulate real time weather and organic life forms interacting with each other and creating/destroying ecosystems and real-time economies in a galaxy-wide simulation and I just gave up.
@@joshuatealeaves YUP! I was in the part where he was talking about the randomly generated planets, and my smooth brain typed that in instead xD. My bad, fixed it!
Morrowind was amazing . The setting was so alien but absolutely kept you enthralled and in suspense. I didn't have much access to any kind of guide or outside information and it was my first Bethesda game. That and KOTR are my favorites of their genres.
I straight up had an easier time navigating Morrowind than I did Starfield which is actually insane considering Morrowind didn't have a compass, quest markers, custom map markers, looks like playdough, and is 20 years old. Like... how did Bethesda drop the ball so hard?
But the gunplay in Starfield is sooo good, right guys? 5:03 Morrowind still stands as their best title, imo. I know a lot of people prefer Daggerfall, which is good in its own right, but my vote would go to Vvardenfell every time.
Big problem in this game you mentioned is that the pleasure is usually in the journey, not the destination, and in starfield there is basically no journey
THANK YOU for mentioning that there are no evil companions! It's so annoying! Why even make an entire evil path available for the players if they are going to be judged and constantly pestered about it the entire time??
It’s not even just the evil route they pester you for. You even remotely be snarky in a reply to an NPC and you can almost guarantee that someone ‘disliked that’. They’re such goody fucking two shoes that it’s cringe as hell.
My biggest disappoint is the randomized points of interest. There's like 20 of em total. A few caves, a few bases with enemies, the same outpost with UC marines fighting the same robots, the same mining platform overrun by swarmlings with the EXACT same layout, Like, they didn't actually procedurally generate any of these areas, they just manually made like 20 and had the game paste them in an otherwise empty planet. Yes, that is still technically procedurally generated, but the "pieces" are the entire point of interest instead of parts that make up a single point of interest. I just don't understand why they didn't make some code to slap together different hallways and rooms. I'm a crazy person, I enjoy exploring in this game. I've explored most of the level 75 star systems to survey completion and gotten to around level 50 and I've done only the first 2 main quests and no side quests. I DO like finding a cave with rare mining resources but by god did they skimp on the actual content so hard it hurts. Same for the space encounters. The first time I encountered grandma I thought that was awesome. Just an old woman drifting through space willing to give me some homecooked food when everything else is trying to shoot me was cool. But then I found grandma again, and again, and again, and again. I also found the singing guy again and again and again and the LIST settlers that need 20 iron and the survey lady with the shitty warp drive that forces the convo to go on 30 seconds longer than she wanted. Those are mostly great encounters but theres so incredibly few of them that it just blows my mind. They are using the same ship models and the character models are made in the editor so why the fuck would they not pay a few interns to just make like 200 unique random encounters? 90% of this game feels like a proof of concept that they were planning to do after finishing the main and faction quests but then as soon as the main quests were done they accidentally shipped it or something because they could make the rest of the content. Also the skill system is ass but console commands to make upgrading a skill free once you complete the challenge (by just giving yourself an extra skillpoint), more carry weight, and more money for vendors makes it a lot more playable IMO. You get into that good bethesda loop where you are working on skill challenges and to do that you explore an area but then the survey is close to done so you explore the next area which ends up giving you xp which lets you get a new skill and start working on a new set of challenges which makes you use new weapons and do new things and it's nice. Even with all the lacking content I still enjoy that loop but man it feels like it would be really easy for them to do a lot better.
I was saying this exact same thing, it's feels like a proof of concept. They got the main quests and faction quests done and everything else feels like it has a "To finish later" tag on it.
Repeating random encounters were prevalent in Skyrim too - oh look, it's some vampires disguised as Vigilants, yet again. At least in Fallout 3 random encounters were varied and only occurred once.
I encountered the same randomized encounter three times across three planets, and came to assume that there were far fewer than twenty. Your negative experience is an improvement on my experience, so thank you! Still gonna give it a few years to brew before I pick it up again, though
I've put it in the 'check out in 10 years when mods have added things worth seeing' category. As it stands, it's a great meta example of how alienated, atomized, and inhuman the potemkin society that produced it has become.
@@Isosceles8818 I'm saying this country pretends to have a society so as not to appear monstrous, but it doesn't actually have one. Nobody talks to their neighbors, community organizing is just trying to find more marks for MLM schemes, every house is covered in surveillance equipment that people comb through just hoping they get the chance to get a legally sanctioned murder, and they're constantly streaming 'true crime' paranoid fantasies to hype them up. Nobody cares for each other, no help is available without usury, thousands die of exposure, or disease, or murdered by 'law enforcement', so many varieties of social murder on offer for the ever expanding reserve army of labor.
I've only ever seen that word in writing on real estate. Nice things you build to hide slums. Or like... Empty houses with pretty facades, dotted amongst homes sheltering actual families, with nobody living in them... to create the illusion of a larger, nicer community. Very appropos for the work done by a studio like Bethesda, I must say. So much of what they say their games are, what the games want you to think they are, is a veneer that they hope will hide a lack of substantial story writing or gameplay design.
The game might get better overtime, but I don't think it's possible to make planetary exploration fun with over 1000 planets. Or at least Bethesda's team is not up to the task.
@@TechnoMinarchist I dont doubt they done the best they could, because Starfield is just as bad as I was expecting after seeing the slow decline since Oblivion. Them not reaching for ambitious heights, securing additional funding, expanding their studio... those are intentional choices, just like designing a game under the oversight of a diversity officer.
People said the same about cyberpunk. While its less buggy now it's still a mediocre game. Both cyberpunk and starfield share the same core philosophy and game design
@@pramitpratimdas8198 Uhhhh, buddy. That's an incredibly wrong parallel and you should please think about your life (memeing). The games aren't similar in anyway shape or form, from gameplay, to weapon types, quest format, theme, tone, setting, or pretty much anything other than a rough launch with a mix of people irrationally protecting, and shitting on the game XD With bugs fixed (and a flying car mod) I had a great fucking time in Cyberpunk, through most all of the game. And I think the fact that they're continuing to update, and actually coming out with DLC is indicative that people ended up enjoying the game, and CDPR is confident it will sell. Jury is still out on Starfield.
I got the early access edition and was hyped for the game. It was my most anticipated game of the year. These are my negative thoughts for someone who played 100 hours and on the hardest difficulty with no restarts: I went with these perks: Parents (Surprisingly one of the best parts of the game. I genuinely loved my rents in starfield so no complaints there.) Poverty stricken home owner: My house was on a shit ton of rare resources and COULD NOT BUILD MINERAL EXTRACTORS ON THEM. You also cannot decorate the outside of your home AT ALL. Nor can you modify your own damn home. It sucks. Last one was the perk where people are 50% more expensive but heal your systems better. This was a solid pick. I just used the constellation companions and never bought anyone but I'm pretty sure the effect worked for them so would recommend. Anyway, here we go. 1. Can't strip mods off guns to put on your other guns. 2. Space combat is boring. On the hardest difficult it's either too easy or too hard depending on your ship. (if you want any cargo space whatsoever you'll suffer in space combat on this difficulty.) 3. I can squat more than starting ship cargo capacity. A flatbed can carry more cargo than your freighter starship. And if yours can carry more, it can barely move or function. 4. You can join EVERY faction and they do not give a damn if you're part of other factions. They only care if you shoot their members. Totally breaks the immersion. Especially given I went into this game totally buying into the lore that the UC and Freestar hated each other (which they do) and expected to have to eventually choose between them, with both sides offering different bonuses like access to faction ships and whatever. As it turns out... You can just go to deimos and buy whatever military ships you want from them. What a letdown. 5. The AI does NOT care that you are attacking their facility. Like you'd think they'd notice a giant starship landing at their landing pad and blowing everyone outside to hell. Yet when you go inside they act like you're not there. Additionally, even at low levels of sneak, you can crouch and they'll forget all about you EVEN THOUGH YOUR SHIP IS RIGHT THERE FOR THEM TO WITNESS. Stupid. 6. Outposts are TERRIBLE. I remember streaming for my buddy trying to show off the game and found a kickass 5 resource spot. I put up my extractors and loaded the game since I misplaced one of them (perfectionist in me). When I loaded 2 of my resources were gone and my friend started grilling the game as I realized my resources had literally despawned on load.... Like what the fuck. He told me that all the reviewers made the game seem so good but watching me play made him realize he never wanted to play it... So yeah. Oh and the building is terrible. Like why can't they just implement a clean "snap" feature to every item that we can toggle on and off so we can snap items to be flush against the wall? Such a simple ask yet the build system honestly feels worse than FO4's, which wasn't strong to begin with.... 7. Ship customization is awful. You can't place your boxes or workbenches in the format that you want. You get these lame pre-made habs that you place, and they auto create doors and auto create annoying workbench spots where they protrude into the walkway making the whole ship feel annoying. I can't choose where the ladders go and I can't choose where the doors go. I can't move a bed, I can't move anything. Like the interior designing just doesn't exist and I've strangely not heard anyone bitching about it but I think it's the most damning part of the game since my whole identity is my ship and yet I can't even customize her the way I want... 8. Ship systems and power. The whole game relies on power and I guess they were going for the whole FTL vibe where you need to shift power to engines and stuff, but the system is done POORLY.... Like the whole thing doesn't work much the way they wanted, I don't think. It's clunky and shifting power just isn't worth it. You're better off pushing your ship weight as low as possible and just stocking up on Shields and weapons. Like the only penalty that you wind up sacrificing is cargo capacity... And the problem is the game really incentivizes being a lootaholic so you just wind up suffering in ship combat for the sake of being able to carry a reasonable amount of weight around. Like honestly this could just be translated to: INCREASE BASE CAPACITY OF ALL CARGO MODULES. Or just drop all your loot into a side closet and the ship will run just fine. 4head. The game doesn't register the weight IN your ship just in your container. Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. I shouldn't make my ship a mess just to carry a few thousand pounds. 10. The companion dialogue got repetitive after 30 hours. Like they bragged about how much dialogue they had in the game. I think they were just bullshitting or something because I've heard the same 10 lines over 1000 times now and I hate every second of it. 11. Too many perks are "essential." Want to press sneak? Perk. Want to pickpocket? Perk. Want to unlock chests? Perk. Want to buy advanced modules? Perk. Want to build advanced modules? Perk. Want to fly that ship you hijacked? Perk. Want to build a weapon mod because for some reason you can't just buy them from a store? Perk. And then you have to do challenges to get perks. What the fuck some of these are stupid. Like I get a perk so I can build better modules on my ship right? But I can't get the perk until I build 30 modules on my ship??? The whole reason I want the perk is so I don't have to build shit modules and can just get the good ones! But instead I have to do that first which makes it a GIANT money grind and at that point I might as well just buy an advanced spaceship and just use the piloting skill instead. The whole thing is silly. 12. There's no smuggling. All I wanted to do in this game was be a space smuggler. But there is no smuggling. You just go to the wolf system that has no scans and sell it like normal goods. No thought in it. No specific smuggling missions. No contacts or building trust. No suppliers and evading cops. No bribing officials. Nope just teleport to wolf and sell until he's out of money then sleep for 48 hours and do it again. Bullshit. 13. There's no space trucking..... This is the most iconic thing in space games. Being a space trucker. Taking a bunch of goods and figuring out a safe route to your destination. Managing fuel and provisions as you travel across the galaxy. Hoping pirates don't come and get you. Not a thing in this game. Why? 14. Because there is no journey. There is no traveling. You just teleport to your destination instantly. In a fucking space simulator. I mean really? This is absolutely the worst element of the game. You just menu hop everywhere you go. That's it. There's no running low on fuel, there's no attrition to your starship, there's no food and supplies your food need and consume over time. None of it exists. 15. The looting system is SLOW. Why can't I just have my crew loot a POI after I've cleared it out? They could put it all into a box and and I could sort through it much more quickly. Instead I have to "loot and shoot" to speed up the process and it just made me realize how much I am sick of looting like this. Ever since fallout 4 it's been like this and starfield could easily have streamlined this system. I need a shrink after this game. Fortunately I have BG3 to play instead. Starfield is a very very average game at best and it's not polished at all. It's the first bethesda game where my "itch" to play has completely disappeared. I have very little interest in it at this point. It's sad to say, given how much I wanted this game to be good. Bethesda has lost their magic.
For me honestly what suddenly killed fun in Starfield was actual combat, ironically it's what a reviewer starts his review from. Except half of guns feel totally equal and I couldn't get what's the reason to even change them apart there are different types of ammo, there was another issue. After getting really engaged in social part of the game, ship building and exploration, I wanted some active gameplay and met.. 1 literal enemy - a space pirate. Well, there are also those terrormorphers which you meet once 10 hours and robot dogs/walking robots like Vasco. I just can't get what hit into Todd's head that he made a literal 2 enemy types everything you encounter in 200 to 300 hours of full playthrough. It's like game is only those handcrafted story and side quests and explortaion to do once and no challenge except that on micro level, which for me means a game basically devoid of gameplay fun.
I was enjoying it up until tonight when I realized that the story is a railroad, forcing me to do things I don't want to do and ignoring my choices. It also has confusing world design and constant fast travel disguised as space travel. There are great parts, but its starting to feel very shallow 20 hours in.
My character was a street rat from Neon who became a bounty hunter but apparently I ended up working in a mine and I'm supposed to be excited about going on a series of fetch quests for some alien McGuffin. Could be worse, though. When I got to Ryjujin Industries b**** sent me to get coffee. Me, one of the very few Rangers in the Freestar collective... 🙄
@tommasoprevedello7593 and it has one ending which you can't effect. No matter what you do, the game will end end the same and you will be exactly where you started. No progress. Just a loop your trapped in.
I can't exactly put my finger on it, but i can say that i played oblivion for the past 15 or so years, and Skyrim for the past 10 or so years. I've replayed both of them over and over again, and think back fondly on those times in my life. Always wishing that i could put that genie back in the bottle and explore them again for the first time. I'll fall asleep at night listening to the soundtracks from those games, especially oblivion. After two weeks of playing Starfield, i have no interest in playing any longer. Here's what i can put my finger on. 1) the score is completely unforgettable. Jeremy Soule is sorely missed. 2) one of the greatest late game pleasures of oblivion and skyrim was creating an armory to showcase all of the weapons and armors, and all of the other goodies and specialty items in the game. I can't even imagine taking the time to do that in Starfield. I just have no interest in looking at mannequins wearing different spacesuits. I remember my first encounter with a bandit wearing full glass armor in Oblivion...15 years later i remember that. And how cool it looked. Or building my first set of Dragon Bone armor and thinking...i have to display this. 3) When i finished the factions in Obvilion and Skyrim, i still felt like i had a ton of game to play. After completing the 5 factions in Starfield, the game was over. Everything else felt like a chore for a reward that i'm not interested in. I just keep running around hoping that eventually one of these side quests will be fun, and get me back into the game. But i've stopped trying. For me, the only questline that i enjoyed was the Crimson Fleet. 4) i have no interest in exploring in Starfield whereas my goal in Oblivion and Skyrim was to go in every single point on the map. 5) I feel like this game would be impossible to play without being able to refer to youtube videos for help. Building outposts, weapon mfg, ship building...everything is a secret handshake that you won't know unless you're a member of a secret club. It's too complicated for its own good, IMO. That's about all if can relay about my experience. Suffice it to say it was incredibly disappointing. I thought this was my next 5-10 years of fund game, and it's over in a couple of weeks. :(
agree 100% with all you said. There are probably a couple of tracks that sound nice, but the music is not noticeable at all. And the looting clutter, the over-complicated crafting systems with various perks and research requirements just blocks you from doing things. It is tedious and a lot of work to enjoy the game. The glimpses of enjoyment are there, but you have to work for it. Also, the lack of storage is frustrating. The ships should really have a lot more storage for the sake of crafting and outpost building.
I also 100% agree with you. Heres a fun experiment I tried with my wife. She never plays any games. I had her play oblivion as her first RPG. The first 5 hours she hated it. Said it look ugly and old. And the characters look really bad. After 5 hours she now do every side quest she has encountered and finished every guild. I couldn’t believe it. My wife completing oblivion for the first time in 2023 many many years after it’s release. Next I had her try Skyrim. It was simpler for her but YOU KNOW WHAT, every quest felt like it didn’t have purpose and she stopped playing after 10 hours. I knew I couldn’t have been the only one that felt this way. Then we were both hyped for starfield. We played it for a week, stopped and haven’t looked back. I actually have more time on Lies of P and more fun then Starfield. Me and my wife are now playing dragons dogma, go figure. We are using each others pawns and having a blast and a great laugh. How did Bethesda forget what makes their games special. How can Bethesda’s game be less enjoyable for example than Fallout new Vegas. I still play FNV to this day. And that game has better dialogue and quests than starfield. FNV is also years old. I’m depressed and sicken by Bethesdas games. I’m honestly hoping their team retires and Todd Howard retires too. Maybe someone will bring back what makes Bethesda games special. Good riddance.
Agreed. As for your point about the armor... what I *think* might be the issue is that in games like Skyrim as you mentioned there are different obvious *tiers* of Armor. You know where iron, steel, orcish, dragonbone, daedric etc. And getting the new tiers is exciting. Starfield has "tiers" of a sort as well. But they are not visually distinct. It's more like "Adventurers spacesuit X, Hero's spacesuit x, etc" where the stats go up but they are visually very similar.
My main problem with this game is that the number of immersion-breaking weird gameplay decisions is just too high with this game. In Skyrim it was bearable, but in Starfield it’s just too much.
@@fergin4979 The most glaring thing is the amount of loading screens involved with space travel I'd say. I wish there were less. It can be pretty excessive at times. You take off, loading screen. You fly in space for like 5 seconds before opening the map. You pick a star system to jump to, loading screen. You travel to the planet you need, loading screen. You land on that planet, loading screen. It's just excessive and breaks immersion. Also confusingly you can just instantly fast travel across the universe to places you've visited so it makes space feel not as real.
There's an unskippable cutscene to sit in your pilot seat or to stand up from it. They made it look cool, but at the end of the day it's another moment to not play but to sit and watch. The fact that sitting/getting up cutscene is preceded by a loading screen to enter your ship and followed by a cutscene to take off into space quickly becomes the opposite of engaging gameplay. Does that make the game wholly bad? Not in my mind, I enjoyed it greatly. However be aware that the game is littered with things like this.
@@fergin4979 My number one of immersion-breaking thing is when you complete UC vanguard questline you become class one citizen and captain. But people still talk you like you are peasant. Sarah's story quest is to talk with fleet admiral, first thing he ask is who are you peasant. :D
@@hannes0000 It's not even hard for them to implement dialogue flags that que other speech lines, so they were just lazy. I'm playing through Cyberpunk and I beat most of the content now I'm playing through side quests and people are saying "didn't you wipe out that group of our guys?" and "I've heard of this guy, he's to dangerous to work with" etc etc.. you actually feel like you have a repuation
That's what it was. I kept wondering what was off while playing Starfield vs skyrim/fallout and that's it: the exploration. There isn't any. It makes me kinda sad realizing that. That was what I enjoyed most in the other games Bethesda made.
facts. if you think about it, Bethesda in not known for their quest writing, choice and consequence decisions, or fun combat. What is amazing about Bethesda games, is having a blank slate protagonist in which you create their background, and then exploring magical world with interesting locations. Skyrim is my favorite game of all time because of the world, the blank slate protagonist, and lore, but it is bad at pretty much everything else compare to many other rpgs. Starfield is an expansion of all the elements that Bethesda is weak at, compared to other developers, and it is lacking in Bethesda's major strength of hand crafted exploration.
What's worse is they failed at it in a game set in, not just the future, but in space. I'm about 20 hours in and there are no aliens aside from braindead monsters, the only significantly different cultures are 3 brands of space pirates. Even Fallout beats that. Right now I'm just hoping to find at least one core part of the game that clearly had some vision behind it aside from the art direction. Pretty glad I got the game through game pass.
they managed to do the impossible, they made space feel small. i posted a whole rant about that in this comment section lol. I think fallout 4 is actually better than this game, and i wasnt a fan of that game at all.
There's no magic either. Just shooting. And picking the top item from a list of text options. Science fiction could be full of amazing things. They didn't bother though. It's just a casual shooter on a level of indie shooters 20 years ago.
I don't think they should have repeatable "dungeons." Once you land in some random spot of a planet, there should be a chance for at the most one or two locations to pop up, and other than planet features like special vents or whatever, those procedurally chosen locations should become a map feature permanently, and never be chosen from the procedural bag in any other planet.
Lots of good points. I think the point about exploration is most damning. By getting rid of the spatially contiguous open world, with physical exploration as a core component of gameplay, I think Bethesda destroyed the glue that holds the experience of their old open world games together.
Good point. I'll add that in a setting like Fallout you reasonably expect there to be few shops, NPCs, functional weapons and so on. But in Starfield you have an ostensibly thriving interstellar civilization whose capital city has like.. three shops? It's very jarring
I had a feeling this was coming after you posted about laser weapons being a trap. Good games can have rough patches, but that seems like such an oversight that it's a canary-in-the-coal-mine kind of warning.
I thought the canary was the green color LUT from Fallout that they didn't even bother to change. It's not even different in general, much less per planet. If I could describe the overwhelming ethos of the game in one word it would be, 'lazy'.
My biggest issue is the time and skill investments to do anything you want to do. You have to level up 4 times and do challenges like killing 100 enemies to fully upgrade a skill. If you don't grind like I didn't on my first playthrough then by the time you've gotten high enough level and invested in the skills you want you're already done with the thing you wanted them for. Ships are one of the worst parts of this as you need to level up piloting and ship design which is an even bigger investment because you need to unlock more stuff in the tree. Then you still can't use all the stuff for ships because some of it is locked behind level, which it doesn't even show you so a lot of people don't even know half this stuff exists because they made their ship early and haven't dived back in because it's been like 40 levels since. I've seen some pretty interesting character builds online and almost all of them need you to be like level 50+ and you're done with more than half the game by then what are you using your cool new build for? I remember then talking about spending points to unlock a skill and then upgrading it by using it and with challenges, what happened to that? We still have the challenges but we also still have to spent points for each level.
The funniest part about all of this is that according to the internet, if you have any criticism of this game, no matter how valid, you are just a ps fanboy that can't cope.
Even if I disagree from time to time listening to these rants are some of the most enjoyable criticism videos I have ever watched. The points are always pretty valid and help to keep an open mind and having a great voice also helps to keep me watching no matter what you complain about.
lmao so you like boring, repetitive, generic, safe, corporate boardroom-designed, lazy games? with garbage AI, horrendous character design, bland story, copy-pasted shooting from Destiny, copy-pasted abilities from skyrim.. seriously, wtf do you even enjoy? I have to remind myself there are so many simpletons with objectively bad tastes.
Starfield should have been contained to a solar system or a galaxy. Planets could been fleshed out and ships could actually fly between the stars or planets.
It is constrained to a galaxy. I agree, though, there are so many worthless planets and even solar systems that just waste time and make the menu more confusing. One solar system (or two, if you want the Freestar vs UC thing)
ME combat is dogshit, sorry. Replayed the trilogy this year and combat is basically a long corridor, hide, shoot, hide. You def. feel the 2010s in ME combat.
Agree 100% with this. To me the same is like Fallout 4, but with many of the features being significantly worse than Fallout 4. Characters were (generally) uninteresting, the storyline was far worse, the factions were uninteresting and I did not care about any of them, and the exploration was FAR worse. The only area where it is better is the gun fighting.
I dare respectfully disagree that Starfield is better than fallout 4. Fo4 has better base building (and actually gives you a comprehensible reason to build a base), which is my favorite part of the game. Fo4 also has way better crafting (for one, you can scrap useless weapons and junk items) and (arguably) better quests, voice acting and main story. I thought I imagined it at first, so I downloaded and started a fo4 playthrough right after finishing starfield and... nope. Not imagining. Fallout is just better in every way. While I'm definitely disagreeing with you on this one, I enjoy your content very much, keep up the good work!
If they make space travel and give you dynamic triggers of side content while you are traveling through space, instead of a loading screen simulator, this game would have been so comfy.
The statement that "the best version is never the release" although very true for Bethesda is a culture that we've been going through in the past 10 years with the patch culture, the first day patch culture, dlc culture etc. Even Nintendo that always went with the "better to delay than to release a broken or unfinished game" is succumbing to this culture for monetary reasons. Unfortunately this is a world we chose to be when we accepted the patch culture (giant hard drives in consoles, always online policies, etc).
I just got this game from buying a new video card recently. It is like an unholy abomination of both Mass Effect and Skyrim, but taking the worst part of each game instead. This game needs a LOT of DLC to even be worth putting time into: laser/melee weapons, land vehicles, non-bestial aliens, fixing the procedural generation so "long lost temples" aren't 500m away from an outpost, more companions, QoL stuff... the list goes on and on. Damage sponge is out of control. And don't forget pirates/etc *constantly* landing around you as you explore a planet, almost like you have a conga line of ships following behind you that you can't see.
Having complaints about something and still being able to articulate in detail ehat you do and don't like, means that you have at least thought critically about your experience. I have 0 skin in this game, because I haven't played it. I don't have an Xbox nor a pc. But I like the comparative discourse around this one.
@@dxcSOULforced pronoun californian bs is max level cringe, but the biggest problem with starfield is that it has no style. BG3 is very liberal in the same forced, cringey way, but ppl still like it because it has style and is fun to play
@@jaykelley103Right, if starfield was a better game people wouldn't care as much, but because the game itself is very disappointing and they did take time to add woke stuff but not to make a good game it just adds insult to injury. Forza Horizon 5 also has pronoun options, but because it's a fun and polished game I don't care for it as much
-Zero on-foot exploration -Zero on-foot handcrafted random encounters outside of a city -Choices mean nothing -Quests mean nothing -Mediocre music and visual-audio ambience -Awful character animations -No Creation Kit on launch despite year delay Todd’s biggest mistake. Should’ve just worked on ES6.
I would be lying if I said I haven't been enjoying the game. But I agree the problems it has are massive. The point about the worlds being boring and having nothing to explore is a great one. I think the potential is there as it stands to be really fun. They just fell dramatically short. Imagine if there where dozen of worlds that each have there own unique points of interest that generate, and not just like the 6 in the whole game, but like 20 different POIs that are unique to a single world. And they all tie into each other some how, like maybe there is a planet that is controlled by a crazy fanatic cult that worships light. They only use their own unique brand of laser weapons and have crazy glowing armor. All the POIs would have tons of neon lights and crazy hologram light show alters. And maybe if you explore enough of the POIs, you could find a bunch of slates that all together unlock the coordinates to their big main Base on the planet, that is way large than all the other POIs. Maybe even with a boss battle and unique glowing cultist armor. Like the potential for the systems they have is there, they just didn't use it. Same thing with the weapons, as evidenced by there only being 3 laser weapons. Hell I don't even think there is enough ballistic weapons. Certainly isn't enough meaningful unique weapons. In fallout getting a unique gun felt awesome, like you just got your hands on a treasure. Remember the Lincoln repeater in fallout 3? I have found nothing like that in starfield. Same deal for the outpost system, they already have tons upon tons of cool assets in the game they could have let us plop down, but they just didn't. As someone who has honestly enjoyed my time playing. I think its fair to say that starfield isn't really a game at this point. As it stands, its a potential modding platform.
This is one of the best observations of the game thus far. All the systems are there, but they just didn't do anything with them. All the stuff you came up with in 5 minutes is more compelling than 400 people and 8 years. When I heard 1000 planets I knew it would be procedural. But I thought it would be better procedural than say No Man's Sky. 1 quintillion random things shouldn't feel the same as 1000 random things. It should have more detail. Interesting terrain, WAY more biomes and flora/fauna. And they totally could have made more than like 5 pois for the whole game and added story into them, any kind of game design effort at all.
@@philipajfryI think this was a stepping stone for the Elder Scrolls because even the beginning map is MASSIVE and there are tons of different universes and planets. I think this was just to test out the map sizes and physics engine for greater things. Because Starfield is an incredible template
@@philipajfryI understand why Bethesda couldn't do that with the physics engine but at least flesh out the city a little. Like where are the good window views or houses like that. Not even containers on the ship
I'm having a blast playing the game, but I'm focusing on the parts I find enjoyable and completely ignoring the parts I think are dull or unfinished. Planetary exploration is one part of the game that I am just NOT participating in. I think the city hubs have more than enough going on with interwoven quest lines and interesting NPCs and stories and environments that I don't feel the need to land on a random part of the planet to explore random ass POI number 37. It sucks that I'm basically ignoring half of the freaking game because it's so badly done but the other half that I am playing is loads of fun.
@@philllllllll the 'Bethesda game' part of Starfield with story, characters, quests is way more than half the game so you're good. Either the planet stuff will be better in a dlc, or they left it up to modders.
A lot of what you described Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2 had as their core game mechanics. I love those games to this day. Its a testament to well thought out gameplay and story.
Yeah, I was ready to like this game even if it was completely mediocre, just under the assumption that the underlying Bethesda formula would carry it. But nahhh, this game actually sucks. The exploration is uncompelling. The loot is uninteresting. Levelling is a complete chore. Most of the fun stuff is gated behind perks. This game tried to do a lot of things- But it did all of them poorly. Maybe modders can come to the rescue, but I don't think this is even comparable to FO4 or Skyrim; at least with those games it was still a good base for modders to build on. I think this is one time Bethesda has given us a total write off.
I really appreciate your honesty and the approach you take to producing videos like this. Hopefully someone at BGS is listening too. I want Starfield to be a great game. Not just an OK game.
The way the game is designed ...it will never be a good game. There's 500 loading screens per quest if you don't quick travel. You can't fix that with mods.
"why does everything seem underbaked?" because bugthesda does the absolute bare minimum knowing that sycophants will defend it and modders will pick up the slack...
11:09 this is so true and my biggest problem too, all prior bethesda games had so many "handcrafted"places with carefully placed messages, objects and little stories. you could really feel the love the devs had for this little details. in starfield nothing of this is left, it's just empty, boring and soulless.
Starfield has more handcrafted content than Skyrim. I have seen a lot of small details and Easter eggs around the handcrafted location. It is bigger and also has a more generated locations, which is why you think it feels empty. Think like this: which has more empty space? A kg of steel or 2 kg of feather? Feather looks bigger, has more empty space, and is heavier than steel, but you would still feel like steel is heavier.
The player can listen to random NPC stories. There are a lot of voicelines hidden in random NPCs around the world. Sometimes I just stand next to two random NPCs to listen to their conversation. Named NPCs actually have things to say and small hidden quests to build their characters. I love talking to all the named NPCs because it makes the game feel alive. It's not on the same level of option as BG3, but it still has a lot as a sandbox RPG.
@@tfk884 I didn't know that the voice actor and developer spent their time to do all the Easter eggs without payment. Wow! It is the way to know if the game has soul or not. Stop making excuses for negative viewpoints.
Spot on review man. I was shocked when people complained about planet tiles. I kept asking...why would you want to explore more of this barren nothingness when there's nothing to explore? It's amazing how hard this game tries to be a space exploration game when it's anything but.
Because as it stands it’s the worst of both worlds. If you at least could seamless travel around the planet it would be cool to an extent. Now you still have invisible walls and limits on top of boring repetitive tiles. If you could travel there would be hope for mods and maybe dlc to fix the emptiness.
RU-vidrs are becoming the worst source to go to for unbiased reviews. They used to be the best, because they didn't have incentives to lie. Now they have more incentives than large companies like IGN. I don't know if publishers used to, or still do, pay off companies like IGN for favorable coverage. But I DO know they give RU-vidrs tons of perks like free collectors editions of games and merchandise, early access, invitations to travel across the country and attend closed door events surrounding their games with included free lodging, meals etc. There is no shortage of RU-vid reviewers. When you speak out against a popular IP by a publisher, you'll see those perks dry up real quick. Not only that but I would imagine it's much cheaper and easier to also pocket a RU-vidrs opinion than a massive corporation.
IGN still gave it a 7/10 which was extremely generous. It deserved a 6 at most, and a more realistic 5. 5 is just "mediocre" and thats exactly what this game was.
@@AdoreYouInAshXI IDK if you watch dunkey, but he made a recent video about video game reviews. Basically the point of the video is that the general audience only finds a review good if its complimentary towards the game, especially if its a beloved dev like bethesda. So my thinking is that reviwers, whether they be companies or youtubers, are basically forced to give positive reviews if they want a good reception on their take. This is even more apparent for youtubers who rely on good reception on their videos for money. Objectively bad games like the gollum game dont get that treatment ofc, but everything with a dedicated fan base does.
Yea your right about the youtubers ACG and Gmanlives were shilling this game hard convinced me to buy it and boy do I regret that. Have unsubscribed from both of them now.
Man this channel should be much bigger. I know you since the Elden Ring days and you always keep it real. This video is literally everything I felt playing Starfield. Thanks for putting it into words.
I don’t think they have a point when they say 10-20 hours is not enough time to decide if you like it. Fallout 3, oblivion, Skyrim, all of them were engaging and interesting enough to keep me playing after the first 2-3 hours. Saying 10 hours isn’t enough is people coping hard.
I didn't buy it either. Kids used to put down the game controllers when they turned 12. After that they focused on girls. Today, you have grown men playing these games. Disturbing.
Yesterday i did rage quit from the game and just killed it from the taskmanager after visiting 2 planets and close to the landing area was the same abandoned reaearch station or whatever with the same layout and the same enemy placement in the first room. When i saw the same enemy trying to lockpick the same door i had enough. I didn't expect the handcrafted variety like in skyrim or fallout 4 cause that is basically impossible with this 1000 planets stuff. I think the places now in the game are crafted very well but thats the problem. Because they are done so well (layout and details - other stuff is missing but i get to that) it is clear as daylight that they repeat with the exact same layout and locked doors and enemy placement (or almost the same - just not enough difference to not become boring after the second time).Would it really be that hard to implement a random generator that mirrors an outpost or part of the building now an then or lets say you handcraft 4 sections of a base and they get put together randomly - something like that. Of course after a while the same combination would show up but not everytime you visit the same location. i don' t get it. I can't imagine how this really got through testing and got its ok. I really get sick when i see a crane in the distance ... are shit another unfinished hangar ... Another point is that apart from the main and some sidequest locations there is basically no environmental storytelling. I haven't found any interesting notes or really interesting details that tell a nice story at those random places. Even the mars launchpad was as boring as any of those places and this seems to be a "special" PoI ... or so i thought. I just loved all the stories at those places in fallout 4. If those places would exist in starfield i wouldn't mind the boring scanning and wasting time on planets. But right now it feels as if you get kicked by Bethesda although you are already down ^^. It just feels like work not fun. And this continues on in other aspects ... like the inventory ... i made jokes about such an inventory ... i would have never ever thought thy would dare to implement such an atrocity. The first mods did not just improve the inventory they completely humiliate Bethesda for that thing. And they did fallout 4 ... which had the pip boy ... now you get a watch and still they implement a menu for everything that is immersive as shit ... why no holo view presented by the watch - could even be linked with the ship systems so they could have used the same view even in cockpit view (if they don't want to do ship screens and stuff). I have 80h and i learned to play the game in a specific way to enjoy what was done ok and what i like. This a big IMHO but even as a Bethesda fan i think they completely ignored any gameplay developement of the last years and even ignored things that where corrected by mods in skyrim and fallout 4 twice. This game has its moments but could have been so much more and ridiculously it only would take a few turns of a knob to correct a specific thing ... problem ist there are SO damn many knobs ...
the problem with the procedural generation is no matter how well it was implemented i doubt i would want to explore it. part of what makes past games interesting to explore isnt just that each place is hand crafted but that you never know what you're going to run into. In skyrim if you run up to a dungeon there could be an npc there with a quest to give you, there could be a word wall at the end of the dungeon, you can find a unique weapon with lore tied to it, there could be a note in the dungeon for a quest for a daedric artifact or something, etc. Even if there's nothing really of note in the location that's fine because that's the exception, so you dont mind exploring a location that doesnt really have some lead to an adventure or reward. With starfield no matter how great a location is designed why would i want to explore it? I already know what im gonna get. Somewhere in the facility at the end is probably one of those oddly shaped chests that will have randomized loot in it, will probably have a purple gun or something and some credits. Why am i bothering to shoot a bunch of spacers again for that. I explored the first planet or two for locations but got worn out from it almost immediately even before seeing any repeats because without the mystery of what your exploration could lead you to it's not interesting. Even some hand crafted locations i've seen on planets that arent part of the procedural thing havent been that interesting because while they have been visually unique and have a unique layout, there wasnt anything else interesting - no unique loot, not even a quest within the location, etc. Fallout 3 if you stumbled across a unique place with no quest there would be maybe an interesting story and a bobblehead (like the dunwich building for example). It's just very odd that a studio who was so damn good at incentivizing exploration basically threw their own great design in the trash for this game
You are right. But at least if you mix the "boring" but still with randomised layout locations in between really handcrafted like they did in previous games this could spice things up. And even those randomised locations could have been linked with various interesting quests. And if you build everything in your skill tree around achievements before you are allowed to unlock the next tier (who though this is the next great idea - UGH!!) why not copy another thing from NMS and have a catalogue so that your scanner results somehow matter - achievments that do make sense. But i guess they had to stop at some point or this would get them into some trouble. But an example for the PoI problem: in previous games there where what 150 to 200 interesting locations - handcrafted and everything. That means if you got 1000 planets 100 systems roughly 1 or 2 interesting locations per system. So give me exploration quests (if only there would be a fraction in the game that is about exploration hmmm ^^). I have to gather information in these randomized locations (there you have your reason to visit a few of them), the game can spread these clues to 2 to 5 of those locations until you got all the info for the final one. Of course this should not be the exact same copy and paste fetch quest but you get my idea. I think this would not have been that difficult. I mean if i think about stuff in the game i come up with at least 20 quest categories for those quests. But i agree at some point there is repetition ... no matter how good you build a quest - just because you have to fill so much space ^^. At least there would be some reason to go out and explore. Even the dunwich experience could be spread out across several systems at interesting but still randomized locations. It would not be the same tight experience like we had in previous games but i think by implementing a clever distribution system for stories etc it could come close. Unfortunately they forgot about that and thought having people scan boring stuff and run loooooong distances to exact same locations would be enough. *sigh* Your last sentence sums it pretty much up!!
"you don't play a game for a hundred hours and don't enjoy yourself" Sunken cost fallacy is a thing and I must say, Bethesda are extremely consistent a making worthless boring games
A lot of revisionist history going on lately after Fallout 76 and Starfield. Oblivion and Morrowind were fantastic games and were a big reason why myself and a lot of people even got into RPGs when we were younger. Just cause they’re recent games have been mediocre doesn’t erase the fact that they once made some great games.
@@nickguarino7592 I agree with you on that one. Bethesda used to make some of the most immersive worlds in their games in the past but if they haven't managed to make a good game in the past 10+ years (Skyrim) despite their many attempts I don't think they ever will unfortunately. Morrowind came out in 2002 and none of their games post-Skyrim have reached that level. I just don't think they have it in them.
@@bibliophile5000 I agree. Hopefully they actually take the feedback from Starfield for ES6. The fact that it isn’t a procedurally generated game should help.
@@nickguarino7592that’s not revisionism, that’s time. Morrowind came out TWENTY ONE years ago. most of the people who made that game are not working at that company anymore. it’s like when people say “oh, both Bethesda and Obsidian are own by the same people, they should make New Vegas 2!” if they did, it would be nothing like the original game, cuz the people who made that thing you love just aren’t a part of those companies anymore. the point being, a lot changes in 20 years. it happens to every company. there’s a reason Bethesda has rereleased Skyrim a zillion times now- that was their peak. the best mix of their old systems, and the new simplified “for modern audiences” stream lining of any deep mechanics in order to make something commercial. Nowadays, bethesda might as well just be Ubisoft: making the same thing over and over again with less quality each time.
Well, I find that doing a mix of different things helps, eg: do quests, then do a bit of exploring, then do some outpost building/ship building. Of course, if you just straight up don't enjoy the gameplay at all then I don't think that will help you.@@kaydens6964
@@kaydens6964 it comes down to what you really care about. If landing on a planet and scanning all the resources, plants and wildlife are relaxing to you, you'll like that part of it. If you get annoyed at the same science Station being on both sides of the planet,you will not like the game. If you can deal with the loading screens and just let the dog real quick or take a sip of what you are drinking, you'll be fine. If loading screens are like nails on a blackboard to you, you'll hate it. For me its just a fun, relaxing sand box. I think some of the missions are really we done and focus on those. I think cohh carnage said it best in his video on it. If you can get passed the things the game doesn't do well, you'll have a blast. If you can't, you'll hate the game. He really likesthegame and I'm in the same Camp. Of the friends who have played it, most enjoy it on different levels. One of those friends played 10 hours, deleted it from his hard drive and said never again. It just comes down to if you are finding things you enjoy in the game and can look past the things you don't.
Weird, every single complaint I have heard of Starfield are things The Outer Worlds did right. Melee variety, melee enemies, exploration, non-essential NPCs, nuanced companions, an original story, more player options.
I've been suspicious about this game from the start. Specfically because I was worried this would just be a bunch of fast travel points which basically removes a big part of what makes Bethesda games great. Not saying you can create an interesting interconnected living breathe world set in space across multiple planets. I've just never seen anyone succesfully do it. Honestly I am more excited to try some of the ambitious Unity Daggerfall mods that replaces the open world with more interesting handcrated terrain then I am about trying starfield. I've been trying to have sincere conversations with my friends about starfield. Specifically if it had solved and moved on from the issues that I felt Fallout 4 had. I've heard a lot of spiels about how starfield is awesome but I've never gotten a straight answer to this question. I'm lucky Baldurs Gate 3 is out now. Because now I explain the question in a way people immediately understand. "I want dialogue options like baldurs gate 3. Does Starfield have that?" I felt this video was informative. I think I understood enough to feel comfortable in my decision to stay away fromt this game a while longer.
@@shr6931 if starfield was marketed as as fallout in space people wouldn't be so up in arms about it. However starfield was supposed to set the new standard for space exploration rpg so yea it makes sense why people are so pissed about the game
If a game has depth then yes. But if a person does not vibe with general gameplay, simple things like moving, there is no point going beyond 20 or so hours. When playing a new genre it can take 10-20 hours just to get used to that genres perspective.@@shr6931
@@pramitpratimdas8198 people would still be pissed but the focus would be on the lack of exploration as mentioned. They've removed the essential part of the bethesda experience, the exploration, and put the focus on interacting with NPC's, which is possibly the weakest part of bethesda titles. Theyve removed the best and put the focus on the worst, its not even a proper bethesda game at this point.
As someone that is enjoying the game I very much appreciate videos like this that present the "why" on the negative review. Everything you highlighted I would like to see addressed and that doesn't happen with just sunshine. Thank you again for a great video and commentary.
The criticism of not being able to explore an entire planet is reasonable, if for no other reason than because Todd Howard specifically stated you would be able to do that. Saying you don't understand that criticism because "it wouldn't be fun or interesting to do that anyway" is ignoring the fact that above all else we need to hold game developers to their word. Also, if you *could* explore the entire planet just by walking around it I am sure some people would find enjoyment in that. A larger issue as you pointed out is that there is not much new or interesting out there to explore. But that is a separate issue with the game being repetitive and boring. Todd said we could explore a whole planet if we wanted, he lied. Simple.
Outer Worlds aims lower and still doesn't hit the landing, but at least it had much more charm I'll agree to that. Comparing how likeable the companions in both games are is not even close.
I don't take to negative review's like some guilty pleasure like most would, but your constructive dismantling and unique point of view is always worth listening to.
Game time argument is always a trap with Bethdrones. You cant ever get it right, its always either " you played too little, it gets better after X hours" or "you played for X hours? game must be good then bro". Its always a strawman to dismiss any criticism you have of their product.
It surprised me that even on Jemison, as soon as you're outside New Atlantis the game doesn't care that it isn't just another random planet. It's the first planet where the game encourages you to do what you want and it's supposedly a safe planet that has been settled by a high-tech civilization for more than a century, one of the most important in Starfield's setting, but really it's just the same filler junk you might find elsewhere. You've got more chance of seeing a facility overrun by Va'ruun zealots than anything that makes sense.
But it would take effort to fill out the world. Procgen is so much easier and cheaper, especially if you only have to design and copy-paste 20 encounter types or so.
@@rclaws3230I would have expected them to at least design the procgen so there's things it can place that would make sense for what type of planet it is. When I visited Jemison and chose to land at a place marked as "Civilian Outpost" I found a vendor where the conversation with him was about how he's living in "independent space", specifically as though this was a LIST colony, not on the main UC planet.
Hey, hi. Bethesda fan boy here. I, uh, well, uh, I totally agree on the points you made. I wanted so badly to be a Laser-Blastin’ Space Trucker with a Heart of Gold. But it was hard to, and the delivery quests are just “land on planet, magically cargo is gone”. I really hope that there are more guns - fairly easy fix in the long term, right? I need more tailored adventures too. I’d love to have more options in fighting Spacers, or maybe leading a Crimson Fleet faction of my own and building pirate bases. I love the Bethesda formula because it’s familiar and I know my story parameters. But I would love more freedom. And though I’d like to say “you know, you don’t have to use the fast travel” - yeah, you kinda do. I’m gonna keep playing. A lot. But I really appreciate the review and what you’ve pointed out. Thanks.
Great video. Personally I think we were baited into this game based on hype and nostalgia. While I think there is some good about it, ultimately I think it is fairly mediocre. I hate the whole it’ll be good eventually argument. This isn’t a live service game this is suppose to be a complete product on release. I think the fact that’s it’s doing well is a problem on us as consumers as well as we allow them to get away with this constantly. I can only imagine how lazy elder scrolls 6 will be.
This game is so aggressively "mid" . I'm trying to get myself to finish the main story and major quests to judge it fairly as I assume these stories do the heavy lifting for the game. However, everything from the combat, to the exploration, to the characters, to the the graphics/art style, to the leveling/progression system, to the core gameplay loot is so aggressively "mid". It does every aspect of its game completely average. Surprisingly, all these average features combined make an alright space game, but just that. Alright.
@@jonesygrets6029 ? Flavor of the month? It's been a term for many years at this point so idk what you're talking about. I hope you know that because you just heard the term a month ago, it doesn't mean it just started existing when you heard of it. Your brain must be mid 😂
If I paid 70$ plus I'd be lying to myself saying it was Great to save face, luckily for me I play on gamepass. I really wanted to like the game but it's so incredibly average, mods may eventually make it better.
In regards to melee weapons, it would have been an awesome first-ever mechanic where the gravity and atmospheric density can affect the speed and damage of your melee weapons. Where heavy melee weapons have less damage on a planet with less gravity and specialized melee weapons have a density value where more dense weapons can do more damage than less dense weapons in low gravity environments. So many interesting mechanics involving just gravity and atmospheric density from allowing higher weight capacity in lower gravity and less capacity on heavier gravity planets.
First Bethesda game that I played was Morrowind, and it's absolutely their peak. I've actually never cared that much for any of their games that came after it, though especially Skyrim and Fallout 4 I was never really very into. And I feel absolutely vindicated now, because a lot of the common critiques of Starfield are things I've felt about Bethesda's past several games. I definitely agree that the biggest issue with Starfield is the total lack of exploration, since that's always been Bethesda's strong suit -- creating a world that's interesting to walk around and look at, if nothing else. But Starfield basically takes all that away so you totally lack the pacing device of walking between towns or caves or whatever. Seems like a major miscalculation on their part. It's like, removing that really lays bare the sterility and blandness of a Bethesda RPG because there's nothing inbetween to distract your gaze. Also, for anyone curious to try it, I'd highly recommend getting Game Pass and playing it through that. Even if you only get a month of Game Pass just to audit Starfield, that's only 10 bucks, which is a lot better than the full 70.
Yeah... it's weird, on paper I would normally be pretty excited about this game. Thank you for helping me justify my non-interest. Think i'm gonna try to finally play through morrowind to the end.
I would rather explore one large open cell thats packed with hand crafted points of interest than 100 small cells with 3-4 points of interest placed 5 minute runs apart. I think starfields biggest problem is that it tries to make an entire planet explorable, but without the ability to run across the whole planet that kind of defeats the purpose of even making it explorable in the first place. Just give me 1 open world cell per planet with all the points of interest in that single cell. If I can't run across the entire planet, don't make me fast travel to every single cell just to explore it all.
@@charlieb308 nah it still sucks, you're right. I uninstalled it after I realized that it's just grinding to be able to grind more. Shit is goyslop trash. Playing elden ring now
