Starfield | A Critical Review 

They didn't fix it...Please consider liking commenting and subscribing 🥺 Correction: There is a setting to remove suits in settlements.

One thing I have learned from BG3 is that smaller but more dense semi open worlds>>>> 1000 planets that are mostly empty and full of meaningless radiant quests.

Yeah, I spent fifty or so hours on Starfield. I wanted to love it. At times, I did, as it certainly has its moments. All the industrial design and so on is *top* notch. I love the food, the weapons, the doors, everything looks awesome. But that's also where this ends. It feels like one step forward, five steps back, here. The primary thing you do, is talk to NPC's. Which is super awkward, with the camera centered on the speaker like it was in Morrowind and Oblivion. Even when two characters are next to each other, the camera will cut between them, whenever one says a line. I know a lot of people didn't care for Nora and Nate's voice, but this is a pure downgrade. Mind you that the focus never shifts, either. It's an RPG, where your character is at the center of things. Your character is also the only one you encounter that will never be in a close up. The other thing you do, is shoot at things. Another downgrade. The violence in Fallout was, well, violent. Take entire heads off, blow arms off of the monsters, turn them into goo - laods of options, between power armor, see eyeballs fly around in glorious bullet-time. Nothing like that, here. It's just guns. Quick guns, shotguns, laser guns. They all do the same thing. 99% of the time, the enemy is just another dude in a space suit, with the same guns you have. And a shit ton of hitpoints as you progress. You see, they get a flat bonus per level, but your damage output will remain the same at a certain point, god forbid you spec into something other than guns for once. . So you end up just pouring bullets in the Lieutenants for five minutes straight. REload behind the door, pop out, shoot in the face, and do it again. There's exploration! Well, the game does reward you for going to the far reaches of space and talk to bartenders. Occiasionally, you'll end up with a suprisingly fun quest, like steal some stuff from a derelict ship where the gravity-machine is bugged and goes on and off. That was fun. But other than that? In previous Bethesda titles that ship would have notes and computers scattered to tell the story about how it came to be in that situation. And a story of two lovers who heald each other hiding in the closet as their air runned out, and you could find these two. That sort of thing. Not here, not ever, after the very first pirate infested abandoned facility you come across. The planetary surveys are jsut garbage, flat out. What, scan each plant on the planet EIGHT times? No. Get out of here with your nonsense. Especially since that same plant grows on every planet. There's base building! Yeah, what for? Look, in Fallout that was fun, because you could your settlers to work and rest there safely on your survival runs. You'd come across them naturally. IN Starfield, your obligatory main faction gives you a box with unlimited storage in a hall with all the crafting stations at level one. That, in this game, is god tier. Just, go there, drop off whatever you found or bought - because every component is for sale on every inhabited world. Why would I go around lasering rocks so I can build a container that's full up in seconds? So I can fast travel there and grab some extra iron? No thanks. Nobody does that for fun, sheesh. You can build a ship! Now that *IS* fun to do. Except that you don't use your ship for anything other than screenshots and blasting the occasional pirate. Yay. Also, you don't need to explore for that either, you jsut buy the stuff you want from ship vendors. And then there is the story. Yeah. Well. There's McGuffins and only you can find them. So, go and do that. Oh, and you can do dragon shouts if you find the other mcGuffins, but that's not required for the main story. But you can. They're not locked away in some ancient, guearded temple or somesuch. You fast travel there, walk a bit, open the door, do a minigame for ten seconds and Fus Ro Dah. YOu found 1 / 20. Have fun. And when you finish it, there's the great revelation. Suddenly you understand it. All the fun stuff in the skill tree was locked off for the highest levels, so you would be enticed to do it all over again in New Game Plus. Fuck off, game.

A lot of my concerns turned out to be true through this review. When these game companies make a big deal about numbers and not actual content there's a lot to be worried about. Hope you feel better!

It's incredible to me how a Bethesda 2023 title can't reach an acceptable level of facial expression, I mean this looks like Oblivion (not against TESIV but it feels odd). There are games like TW3 (almost a decade old btw) with life in characters faces during basically every dialogue scene

IGN gave Starfield a 7... they gave Hitler a 8/10 and the Hiroshima bombing a 9/10 so you know it's bad 💀

my favorite part of this game is when the player character is piloting their ship through space, looks out towards all the planets in sight and goes, "woah, we're really in a Starfield..."

Love the video so far ! Thought you should know at 18:05 you mentioned wanting to have been able to turn off space suit visibility in settlements; well you actually can if you go to the suit inventory. look on the bottom ,there is a prompt for space suit visibility in settlements.

This is about what I expected the game to be so it's good that I set my expectations way more realistic than some.

hearing that side quest are better in this game then skyrim & fallout 4 is really nice.

I really doubt anybody legitimately wants any games to be bad. Bethesda are just adamant about doing it to themselves at this point. But hey, if you think procedural generation is the peak of level design in open worlds, more power to you.

The fact the dialogue of the characters is so lackluster to me is the most inexcusable thing. You don't need a fancy new engine or great mechanics to write good dialogue for your characters and NPCs that isn't generic. New Vegas's dialogue clears and seems like it always will.

Im actually surprised it's even playable after the last few years of absolutely broken AAA games, even redfall under ms. Your reviews are really great and super appreciated.

Hope you're getting better and thanks for the insightful review. Keep rocking the Septum

I feel a bit sad that all this time, money, and effort has been spent on a game that has such potential within its systems, such as the ship/crew building and the impressive visuals for such an expansive game. But I feel no urge to play it because the story and world just seem so generic and boring (imo). I'm a huge sci-fi fan and I'm familiar with a lot of sci-fi settings so it's definitley something I should be into, but I feel like Bethesda just can't write worlds as well as they could around the time of Morrowind. Perhaps that's the price of getting so big. Also a shame to see so much promise in the game's mechanics only for them to be skin-deep (e.g. shipbuilding but no reason to fly ships). It trikes me as an issue of not wanting to make players feel forced into anything, so they've made it so you don't have to do anything.

Just to give some positive feedback I don’t think I would have been able to tell you were sick and the audio sounds great in this video!

I actually think Starfield has one of the longer intros for any Bethesda game. You start off in the mine blasting rocks, then deal with the space stone, the Berrett and the pirates, then going to the pirate base, then going to New Atlantis and joining Constellation. Easily at least an hour if not more, depending on play style and looting/exploration.

Negative reviews for this game are surprisingly hard to come by and this is the first one that cogently explained good reasons for disliking it, good on you.

I did the Sysdef quest and sided with the Crimson Fleet and the only way it came up in the Vanguard questline is that they'll mention the fact you were there and ended up making it out, but that they didn't care because the Terrormorph thing was more pressing. However, siding with the Fleet will break things such as one quest where you need to find an NPC in their ship in orbit, which is scripted for you to shoot down Fleet pirates and dock on her ship, but because I sided with Fleet that quest completely broke and instance never spawned. In addition, siding with the Fleet and doing a radiant quest, like the ones from Vix after the Vanguard questline, if you are sent to hunt Fleet, they won't be aggressive when you get there but you can't finish the quest without trigging that you've betrayed the Fleet.

Great review. Feels like this game falls right in the mid. Brings up cool coneprts and mechanics but ultimately falls short of being a great game dude to miss opportunities or design choices.

Wait, people give you a hard time about your septum piercing? Wow that's lame. Rock that shit dude! It looks great.

Just listened to 12 hours of retrospectives and got this on my recommended so I guess by law I must subscribe now

The eyes are so dead. From this footage I can't see a single time that they didn't just "lock on" to you and stare... Very uncanny.

its amazing the NPCs, dialogue, AI, combat and skilltrees are all still this bad, it feels like ten steps back from an Oblivion let alone almost 20 years later Its okay to expect more from one of the biggest companies in the business who have been making this same game for 20 years now

Great review, super interesting to hear your take. And the audio of the vid sounded good to me!

I think the game does have level scaling; enemies gain something like 20% more health per level, so they become spungier with each level.

42:18 this short clip is proof that this is still a bethesda game at heart. a character awkwardly shimmying sideways through a doorway while another character just randomly jumps into frame. never change bethesda

A lot here is actually reassuirng to hear. I wasn't originally planning on getting it, but now I might if it goes on sale

SPOILERS: One of the biggest issues I had with this game was the lack of consequences or punishment in almost everything you do. Over the course of the UC SysDef/Crimson Fleet questline, you have a choice to pledge your allegiance to one of the two factions. I decided to go with the Crimson Fleet cuz I loved pirating and I hated the bald dude that forced me to take that job for my freedom. After completely taking over one of the most important UC SysDef ships and supplying the Crimson Fleet with a supposedly huge sum of money I was expecting there to be a much bigger fallout to this decision. I was expecting to have like a $1M bounty to every other faction in the game, be hunted and on the run for the rest of my days, have all the members of my crew hate me so much that they would try to mutiny against me, but uhh... instead all I got was a stern talking to by each of my companions (which then went back to them liking me instantly), and... that's it? I didn't even get a bounty on me from that. Now the random pirate outposts I encounter on planets have friendly pirates instead of the ones who want to shoot me, but that also limited the amount of loot I could get while exploring now unless I decided to go rogue and kill one of em which costs about 15k credits every time I do that. I don't know, that just doesn't feel... natural. I love the quests, but there's too many of them that have you make a decision that ultimately results in the same consequence for both, or no consequence at all.

What to expect from a typical AAA game. Larian and BG3 need a new term, like, *professional*.

Bethesda isn't the same anymore. This was solidified during the Skyrim age. I first discovered them in 2003 with Morrowind. Me and my friends found this game and were blown away by the exploration and character building aspect of that game and Oblivion. Ever since then? It's been RPG water-down. From a guy that used to carry around a picture of Sir Patrick Stewart in his wallet,nerd' with visions of greatness. To a wannabe Tom Cruise leather jacket wearing cunt, dying for your wallet without providing a great story driven by the player. It's a thing of the past

42:20 super hero landing 🥲

Now I shall become the Star Field

Im not sure if you knew but theres a toggle option to hide spacesuits and helmets in breathable planets and cities

An “rpg” with awful dialogue and lifeless characters is not an RPG worth paying for.

Only over 8 minutes into the video, and I have to say that I cannot wait to see what cursed looking characters people make in Starfield.

Some parts of the game look very aesthetically pleasing and others very creatively bankrupt Might give it a try in the future but as a New Vegas type of person I'm not sure if this game appeals to me

I'm saving this to watch in a couple weeks when I feel like I've put enough time into the game. Love your vids man, been watching them for a while but for some reason I wasn't subbed yet so I went ahead and did that lol.

FYI: the suit can be equipped/unequipped automatically, select your equipped space suit in the inventory and there will be an option to switch that feature on

Cheers RAD, won't be getting this for a while but was nice to hear your thoughts :D

good review as always bud

honestly hearing about bugs like these is better than I expected it just confirms its a Bethesda game and with the day 1 patch we probably won't see them as often hopefully the tracker and quest npc ones get fixed though hate getting locked out of quests like that.

Great review and details. Concerning the multiple mission points on Neon- there are several missions that require the player to find/attack multiple targets, which creates multiple mission points.

Oh no reading the description and seeing the first word be "bugthesda" and oh nooooooo

so glad i got to hear your opinion on it before release i trust u with my gaming purchases

You can keep the spacesuit on and hide it visually. You press T in the menu where you equip the suit. You can also grav jump to objectives while piloting your ship so long as you have the objective marker up. if you want to maintain that immersion in the ship. I honestly just fast forwarded through the review. I’m finding that people have wildly different experiences based on how you engage with/play the game. One dude on Reddit was constantly running out of ammo on normal and I’m overloaded with it. You were flush with resources and I’m scraping by to get every piece of metal. I’m also trying to modify my weapons, though, and those mods ain’t cheap. The side quests are amazing. I’m going through some cool quest right now for the UC and it really feels like my character is in over their head. It’s really on you as the player to just let go of all the constant scrutiny and negativity and just enjoy the game. I’ve had great conversations with characters like Lin about their past and done small things like getting coffee for a janitor that make me feel good. The Bethesda charm is there, I think people are just having to come to terms with what they thought was the charm and what it actually is. I played stalker gamma, came back to starfield, and it’s clear that crunchy mechanical depth is not what BGS is about. They tried it in fallout 3 and people hated it. They do stories far better and I feel like they’ve done it well in starfield. My recommendation to everybody, just find the stuff you enjoy doing. The game is abrasive at the beginning because you have to adjust to not being in one static map, but you can settle in to it if you give yourself the chance. You can see plenty of people on Reddit talking about how their first 20 hours were of disappointment but now they’re starting to come around and love the game. It just needs time for adaptation because we’ve all probably been playing Skyrim/fallout back to back for the past decade and have stringent expectations on what the experience should be like. It’s not that. It’s something different. It’s something new.

I was excited to hear this review, glad they're respecting your content and sending codes 💪

Thank you for the review my G

Not frustration with Bethesda or the industry, Starfield just doesn't look like a deep RPG. Skyrim was their first game that cut a huge chunk of the statblock down and was good, but what followed -- FO4, F76, were not good RPGs. They were open world shooters that weren't AWFUL, but weren't really RPGs. Starfield looks even less RPG focused than that. The skill tree and stats are more akin to Farcry, a COD loadout, etc, than an RPG. The traits look interesting and I don't think Starfield is going to be terrible, just not what we liked from Bethesda. I could be wrong. I even hope i'm wrong. But I won't be surprised if Starfield fails to outlive Skyrim.

Great job as usual Rad

was pleasantly surprised to see you'd been given review code. your stuff is always worth a listen :)

This game makes you feel like you're in a Starfield..

Well looks like my money was well spent on Armored Core VI instead of this. Will definitely check it out on gamepass after the usual round of stability patches. The mods are gonna be wild for this one I feel. Great review and get well soon!

My game hard locked after a boarding sequence where I left the empty ship in orbit because I needed a smidge of XP to level up and get the skill point for B class ships. When I returned to orbit, it was still there, but when boarded, the ship spawned new enemies to defeat and then they flopped dead on the floor. EXCEPT FOR THE TURRETS. They spawned noclip inside the ship geometry and were undefeatable. I was able to leave the ship and go back to my original ship, but then hours later, the boarded ship was in my shipyard and selectable. I registered it with the shipmaster but once I customized the ship and returned to it HOURS LATER, I could not fast travel because “enemies are nearby” prompt. Had to reload a save before the boarding process and lose a lot of progress.

Starfield is a step backwards from other Bethesda games in many ways. For this amount of dev time we should have had the seamless travelling of No Man's Sky, the story and characters of Mass Effect and the freedom of Skyrim. Bethesda has released a game which isn't even as good as their own, much older, games.

it leaves a lot to be desired agreed. thanks for the video duder.

A really well spoken and concise review, and I've watched them all at this point. Thanks.

Very cool that they send you a review copy of the game. I trust your when your critic a game.

oh god the space issue for me is pretty big, I mean the fast travel, I hoped I would have to visit the planets at least before being able to fast travel to them..., also I hoped to NEED to use the ship to open the fast travel option at least, but oh welp, I do hope that mods solve these things for me because I dont want to have to force myself to make the game better

"i want to see them iron it out and succeed." And by them you mean the modders who always make Bathesda games playable.

The Ship Building stuff looks really cool, but the rest of the game seems kind of meh Great Review Mr Rad!!

I must say, this looks better than expected. I won't get this in the first year but maybe later when it is on sale and there are some mods that fix some gameplay problems like the trivialized fast travel making space flight useless etc.

I'm happy to find another critical review taking in consideration what was supposed to be the game at first. You can say Bethesda was honest about exploration at some point, but not from the start. The whole marketing around this game reminds me that the devs behind Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3, imo far superior games, kept quiet until release and didn't bs the audiance with fake promises.

On your point about not having a reason to go in space, there ARE actually a ton of encounters you'll get if you you don't just fast travel from planet to planet. And there are a bunch of abandoned ships and stations in orbit that serve as some of the coolest "dungeons" I've seen in the game. You can see points of interest on the system map orbiting around some planets; you just click on them and travel and go see what they are. They're great.

25-30 hours is very short for a Bethesda game

This made me wanna replay The Outer Worlds. I'm gonna do that now. xD

bro got the oink oink energy with that handlebar

My 1060ti in my laptop is trembling with fear as the clock slowly fowards to 5 PM

When you said plenty of very bad I audibly said oh no

Hell yeah let's gooooo

Regarding spacesuits being on in settlements: You can select the option to hide them in the armor menu with a key. Check the bottom of the screen.

I always liked the lengthy introductions, on my first play through, I’d just use the alternate start mods on any afterwards.

You CAN toggle your gear in safe zones. go to your helmet / suit section and (on pc) hit T. at rhe bottom it shows the toggle. kinda hard to find but, it's there.

Great review! Out of curiosity what is your PC build?

I think septum piercings are rad…one might even say super rad.

I'm excited for it but...I'm kinda afraid with the quest glitch.. Good review

Embargo lifted let’s go

Gettong locked out of a questline reminds me of when I got locked out of the Skyrim Fighters Guild quest after the original release on Xbox 360 😭 I cleared a dungeon before accepting the quest, and that dungeon didn't reset after I accepted the quest, so I was just permanently locked out from finishing questline 😭

This game has made me painfully aware of how many people don't know the difference between a solar system and a galaxy

You can toggle your space suit and helmet to be off when in settlements in the menu

Honestly the fact that it has ng+ is a big plus. No pun intended but im glad i didnt get on hype train. Im def hoping they keep weapon and armor mods going in es6 cause i love weapon crafting (also bring back spell crafting for es6)

So one little thing you brought up, there is a choice to visually disable your spacesuit in cities and settlements and such, I know because I hate the look for 90 percent of the suits so I immediately went looking for a way to not see them lol. However, it also just doesn't work sometimes, I had to go and toggle the setting on and off for it to start working again pretty often. So I guess it might as well not be in the game really 🤷‍♂️

1000 planets where you can buy DLC to make the game better! Genius!

Just a heads up, the reason you got flooded with quest markers at one point even without a quest selected is probably because there is an option in the quest menu to show all quest markers or just the selected quest marker and you might have accidentally pressed the option to show all quest markers.

Any chance we might see the Fable video soon? Really looking forward to that one.

the star field would of been a dream

Darn I guess I'll be watching this in few months when I'm ready for spoilers

Crafting was always fine in Bethesda games, you could dismantle stuff for resources or use even magic to create more! Starfield on the other hand goes 10 steps in the wrong direction and even doesn’t allow to remove modification without destroying them because they knew that nobody would engage with the boring and blunt exploration and resource gathering systems otherwise…. I buy all my resources so I don’t have to bore the living crap out of myself by walking on those empty planets! And btw you have no clue what you missed in DMG because you doesn’t upgrade weapons… specially the particle weapons are so op if you mod them!

Yeah... bethesda faces still have that playdoughy feel🤣 and thank you for the review, I wasnt even interested in the game cause Baldur's Gate was taking up all my time, but i didn't want to miss your thoughts on it. Still, it feels like your validating exactly what I thought the game would be. Not too great dialogue but not as bad as fallout 4, fast travel becoming a problem, spaceships becoming a moot point etc etc Edit: Companion seems to be an improvement on the other fallout 3 and 4 games, but honestly the romance being a let down is... not surprising

Yeahhh!!

Very good review. Gotta say; wow. Pretty much what I expected. Nice to see side quests improved, but the biggest flaw I can see in the game from this review is the dialogue. I joked that dialogue in all Bethesda games after F4 would just be “hello, would you like to quest?” >Yes, but nice >Yes, but mean >Yes, but so randum xDDDD >No (yes but not now) Sad to say, but the only way Bethesda will genuinely improve is if they lose. Todd has forgotten failure, and the legions of fans grasping for mediocrity will ensure things never improve.

Nice review, I agree with basically all the criticisms. Ultimately with the exploration being so dull and boring its painfully obvious how behind the curve Bethesda is when it comes to narrative, dialogue and characters without that to latch on to and no joy in exploration what is there? Add to that the game design feels dated and still heavily reeks of ocean wide puddle deep. I expected more from a new IP that Todd described as the dream game he's wanted to make for the last 20+ years. I feel the same about Starfield as I did about The Outer Worlds on release. Maybe patches, DLC and mods will bring me back in the future but for now I'll content myself with Bethesda's past games and other games.

Honestly anyone that buys a Bethesda game not expecting game breaking bugs kinda deserves to get hit with the game breaking bugs. At some point you have to develop the ability to detect patterns lol

So cyberpunk 2077 with a lil space travel lol looks aight

I'm genuinely surprised that you had so many glitches, with a similar amount of time in the game (25-30 hrs) I've seen like 2 glitches and both were in dialogue

Definitely one of the games of all time

You can hide your spacesuit when you enter a settlement its as simple as hitting RB on a xbox controller or whatever that key is for you on pc😮‍💨

Looking good for AC to be goty now

18:00 There is an option to HIDE your Spacesuit in places where it is not needed, automatically.

Gonna wait until it’s been out at least 6 months before I decide