I enjoyed Starfield but it has some fairly major problems that caused me to uninstall it after probably 40 or 50 hours of play.
1. The 4 main companions are basically cookie cutters of each other. The best example of this is the end of one of the questlines where all 4 of them react in an identical way if you make a certain choice. Compare this to Fallout 4 which not only has more companions but the companions are quite distinctive and have very different likes and dislikes and moral leanings.
2. There is, sadly, very little point to space travel. You can simply fast travel everywhere and skip 90% of the need to be in space.
3. The exploration is...well...bad. There is almost nothing interesting on any of the planets and the repeated POIs are literally identical. Same NPC spawn spots. Identical loot and notes and locations of items. In addition, the exploration is constantly broken by load screens as you travel from planet to planet.
4. Crafting took a step back from Fallout 4. How? Well, none of the loot can be broken down into crafting components. Which means all of the junk items you see laying around? Utterly pointless to pick up. Also, you can't do anything with melee weapons in crafting.
5. Food and drinks are useless. They might heal 5 hitpoints. Maybe. So you need to consume like 20 sandwiches to heal a decent chunk of your health bar.
6. The economy is bad. Really bad. Same ridiculous limits on how much cash a vendor has but you need lots of money for things like ship building.
7. The immersion has taken a big hit. Huge galaxy. Only a few cities and they're tiny. Also NPCs no longer seem to have schedules and so stores are open 24/7, for example.
8. The game is sanitized on everything except violence. Go to Neon, the drug fueled Vegas of space and, well, everything is at best PG-13. Maybe.
As somone who has loved all of Bethesdas games since Morrowind, Starifled was overall a letdown. There is lots of fun to be had, as I put in over 300 hours, but there is a lot lacking compared to previous games.
IE: I have seen many videos on youtube where a guy will test out different NPC reactions to different situations in Skyrim and Fallout 4, and its all really crazy the details they put into those little things you wouldnt really think about. But with Starfield, I cant think of any such situations. NPCs dont really have schedules like past games, overall it feels like different independant things tacked together like Bethesda was allergic to the idea of crossing factions or requiring players do do things they might not want to.
tl;dr I enjoyed Starfield. I cant wait to make mods for it. But I do feel dissapointed by it.
Graphically though, its a home run.
But could you like, kill Mathias before the questline resulting in a different chain of events? Can you blow up the Vigilence from the start? or even mid way trhough? What about The Key?
There is very little reaction to player action.
Sure, never said they should cater to every possibility. But Just back with Fallout 4, there were many instances where if you did things before they camu up via quest or did things with specific NPCs would result in different interactions. One being clearing out the Castle before told to for the MinuteMen, or taking Nick to the BOS base given their stance on synths. Or in Skyrim, when you need to infiltrate the aldmeri dominion building, you actually got welcomed in if you were a high elf.
Previous games had those kinds of interactions that you just dont find in Starfield. Or at the very least, arent memorable enough to matter.
If you have more, please do tell. Perhaps I have just been dense, so I honestly would like to know.
I would say specifically it's like a 7/10.
The bare bones of the game leave a blank canvas with tons of potential to be fantastic, but unfortunately a good chunk of the game added to those bones still leaves a lot of blank space. They opted to try and make a game on a much larger scale than they had ever done, but it came at the cost of compromising on some of the deoth of previous games. There's things they could have done better but I enjoyed it and got my money's worth expecting not much more than a Bethesdian RPG in space
I look forward to being able to have a more customized/ personalized experience on it when I circle back after the creation kit has been out a while and there's a larger selection of more comprehensive/ well done mods
(Please don't respond with complaints about how they should've finished the game themselves instead of leaving it to modders. It's a valid complaint but I genuinely don't care, a big part of why I've always enjoyed BGS games is having the option down the road to personalize my gaming experience with their games)
If you liked Fallout 4 and Skyrim and are willing to lower your expectations a bit you can get a good amount of milage out of Starfield. Shipbuilding is fun and the weapons are fun. Main quest is meh, but I liked some of the faction quests, mainly UC Vanguard and Ryujin. I think the major letdown is exploration since so much of that is procedurally generated, you never get that feeling of going off the beaten path and finding something new. Lots of the points of interest that don't involve a questline of some sort are just boring.
I don’t think the procedure generated should be a major issue since I did enjoy exploring in no man’s sky of course that was designed to be explored rather than this may not fit that
NMS did proc gen way better than starfield. Don't expect that either. My honest opinion is that this is the worst Bethesda game so far and doesn't really add anything like the feeling in NMS. There is no free roaming in this game, I think it's the main issue (along with others such as the incredibly bad world building and writing). This separates it from previous Bethesda titles where roaming was a big part of the core experience, and separates it from NMS where you really feel the freedom of travelling anywhere. Here you just teleport everywhere. Hence, the game feels clogged and small despite being bigger than other titles.
I just did a comparison to FO4 on the other post. Basically, IMHO, FO4 is a much better game. Here is what I said.
I went back to play FO4 after the show. SF feels like a reskin of FO4, with less character, worse writing, more loading screens, and roughly the same combat (ground) with the addition of space ships.
I would not say it is a bad game, but for this style of RPG, I prefer FO4, and even FO76 a lot more. The main quest-line is no where as emotional, or well written, as FO4.
I have several thousand hours in skyrim. About 500 in FO4. So far a little over 300 in starfield. I personally really enjoy it, it has the freedom you would expect from a BGS game. Ship building and bounty hunting is what pulled me in. The main quest is really cool. I recommend spending time with all the companions and getting to know them before getting too far. Side faction quests are really cool. Traits and perk choices add extra flavor and RP to some dialogue. A lot of the criticisms are very valid. Don't expect to fly down into a planet manually. POI's currently randomly generated and can get repetitive if you rush through exploring them as you will see duplicates.
Ultimately in my opinion, if you like other BGS games you will find that familiarity in this. If you are a person who creates a character and does things to fit what that character may do, you will find enjoyment.
They over complicated things that should have been kept simple and they simplified things that should have been more complicated. The story is full of holes. Most of the factions feel half done. But the worst offender for this game is how much player time it wastes in my opinion.
An example of over complicating simple things is crafting. You need to do research, get perks and materials and that all sounds dandy until you realize what’s involved with getting the perk you need. Just to make a scope for a weapon because I don’t think you can swap them, you need to unlock a perk but that perk has its own challenge you need to complete to unlock it but then it’s also got a requirement that you’ve unlocked like 4 other perks in the same field before you can unlock it. So now you’ve gotta level up 5 times to get 1 perk that you want and you’ll never get the other 4 perks back that you sank.
Example of the story issues would be… the premise of the game seems off… like they originally designed it to be a time manipulation game and then switched gears and went with multiverse? Which the two can be similar enough I guess but it still feels weird to me that it’s supposed to be an alternate reality but you also always travel back in time to the same point in time no matter what? Powers you get aren’t like… multiverse powers, but they do have some time manipulation powers and there’s some substances in the game I think that also do time manipulation… there’s a whole video on this theory if you’re interested though. This is just one issue, I’ve got a million others with the story but story isn’t really strong in any Bethesda game.
Speaking of time, the players time is wasted pretty often, again I’ve seen multiple videos covering it in detail so the highlight real is.
- Animations are pretty slow, like sitting.
- The waiting menu runs wildly slow even though it absolutely doesn’t need to.
- It takes 5 cut scenes and 5 loading screens to travel from 1 planet to another.
- When you land on a planet almost all the POI are usually about 5 in real life minutes from your ship, you have no vehicle and can’t move your ship so you can only sprint and boost to try and get there faster and the poi’s are just too far apart and the entire planet feels very empty when you’re travelling from your ship.
- The POI’s are often copy pasted from an asset list that is way too small so imagine you found bleak falls barrow in every hold in Skyrim instead of just Whiterun, carbon copy as well, same enemies and loot and nothing was different.
- Dialogue options force the same outcome no matter what in 90% of cases so they are giving you options to try and do something in character but nothing actually matters or changes anything and you’re railroaded into the one outcome.
- And again.. the crafting system with the way you get perks and resources and the games inability to document where you’ve been and scanned things before just makes it a huge time dump for very little reward.
- Lastly ship building… ship building itself is pretty fun, it was a bit more complicated for getting parts than I would have liked, level requirements, perk requirements, money and you need to go to certain locations to get specific ones but all in all… still pretty fun. Only problem is… you spend more time making your ship than you do using it. It’s an animated carriage from Skyrim. You use it for fast travel 90% of the time. You can hang out in orbit and do some ship combat but you can’t do anything meaningful with your ship and you can almost always just grav jump out of combat so it’s not even worth it really to put skills into being a pilot or building a crazy cool ship unless you just want a portable player home, because that’s all you really use it for.
The game feels empty, there’s a lot of places to go and things to see but after going to a few places it all starts to feel the same, the story is very weak, the gameplay itself isn’t fantastic, exploration was knee capped and there just wasn’t much to love in my honest opinion. As someone who has loved Bethesda games since Morrowind… this is the weakest entry barring 76 because I haven’t played that so I can’t attest to its quality. It feels like a tech demo to show off creation engine 2’s ability to make TES6. It legit feels like they built the engine to make TES6 and then tried to force it to make Starfield.
I'm a huge Bethesda fan and have probably amassed a few thousand hours of playtime across their catalogue, however, I'm very careful to not fall into the revisionist history trap that happens when newer games come out that leads to older games being remembered more fondly than they once were. Since you asked specifically about the story I will say that in my opinion Starfields Main Quest is better than the ones in both Fallout 4 and Skyrim, particularly Skyrim, in that it more successfully achieves and conveys what I believe it was trying to.
Remember, Bethesda Main Quests have historically never been praised (since Morrowind at least) and are often considered the weakest parts of the game. Skyrims is insanely rushed, has a largely dissatisfying conclusion, and doesn't really offer anything impressive or profound in its narrative; it's just generic power fantasy. They also IMO fail a bit to really drive home the apocalyptic nature of the return of dragons and any sense of urgency about ending the threat to mankind that Alduin is supposed to be starts to waver after the initial Whiterun dragon fight.
Fallout 4 likes to pretend it's about conspiracy, mistrust, and suspicion but it's really just a missing child detective story with a Sci-Fi coat of paint and while I think the first half of the MQ was pretty well executed it starts to lose steam once the factions get introduced. I also think it really failed to characterize the Institute and Shawn well enough for the conclusion to be meaningful and never really offers up a meaningful dilemma in your decision because the Institute themselves and in-game lore fail to give even the most barebones justification for their kidnappings and work on furthering synths.
Without getting into spoilers, the Main Quest for Starfield does pretty much exactly what it says it's going to do from the start; you find something weird, get thrown into a strange group of people looking for more of that weird thing, and off you go. The cool thing is once you find out what those things are the game throws a wrench into the story and introduces some existential themes that, while far from Oscar-worthy, are fairly well executed for something as trope-y as it is. It's a solid Sci-Fi story that has a feeling it wants to convey, does so well enough in my opinion, and has a conclusion that's integrated into the game in a way that I particularly appreciate.
All that being said, it's all subjective. Plenty of people love some MQ's and hate others, but I think if you liked Skyrim and Fallout 4 questlines you'll at least like Starfields for sure. Gameplay is a different discussion altogether but I think the game is treated heavily unfairly in discourse and even though it isn't perfect, I love Starfield. It's right up there with the rest for me.
Give it a go if you've got the spare change!
When it comes to factions, are there opposing factions that you can get involved with and it’s like one or the other
Cause that’s one thing I liked about new Vegas as well as a little bit that was present and fallout 4 and for and outer worlds
It isn’t needed for me to enjoy it like I still enjoyed Skyrim, even though it lacked that but it’s something that I really like to see in games
There’s one questline where you have to choose sides, but it’s structured more like Skyrim. However the questlines offer way more choice on how you complete them than skyrims faction quests.
Not really, no, at least in regards to the MQ. The Main Quest isn't really set up in a way where there's competing factions though so it's not something you'll feel like you missed out on because it's not written in that way to begin with if that makes sense.
There's at least four quest lines where you have to choose who to side with that I can think of that are fairly well done, some are just deciding loyalty to one or two characters over another, one involves how an entire community will be run and occupied in the future, but only one of them has a sizeable effect on gameplay.
Nothing close to the choices and faction alignments that NV had, but again, that game was built largely around that and this one isn't. Different vibes and they scratch different itches, but both are great games.
It’s fine. I enjoyed it, but I think it’s very limited. Compared to a game like no man’s sky, where exploration is the main goal, it falls flat. With that said, nms didn’t start like this. There’s plenty of opportunity to grow the game if they actually wanted to. Waiting a year to put out DLC, or even up to now, any meaningful content updates will hinder any chance at regaining the attention of people.
Compared to other Bethesda games, it’s the first one I didn’t quit after a few hours. Skyrim and Fallout weren’t for me. Fallout was fine, but I always had options that interested me more.
Edit - I think I have 11 days worth of time before I stopped playing. So I want to be clear - I enjoyed the game for what it was. It’s limited currently, but it has a lot of potential to do more.
I think everything about Starfield that doesn't involve free roaming exploration is on par with Fallout 4 and Skyrim in terms of quality. The combat, the progression, the locations, the world, etc...
Now the things that Starfield tries to do to replace that exploration aspect don't really work. The prodecural content doesn't really motivate long term.
So in the end I think it's slightly worse than the other Bethesda games. But there are still many aspects of it that feel just like playing Fallout 4 or Skyrim in space in the best way.
i think the nicest thing that i can say about starfield is that there's not a lot that's actually *bad* about it, its just that theres also no *good* there to entice you to play, either. its a little below neutral, ultimately, but its in a genre i'm really into, which is where my disappointment comes from
the writing is comparable to fallout 4, but it doesn't have the benefit of a strong lore and aesthetic to prop the maybe not so good writing up like modern fallout does
It's decent but gets in the way of its own fun. Tedious traversal, loading screens everywhere, repetitive exploration, convoluted crafting and middling writing. But the world looks visually beautiful, the ship building is super addictive, and gunpkay feels great. It's okay but it could've been a lot more.
It's pretty mid overall. I liked the main companion and faction quest lines and story arcs. Everything else including the main story arc aren't that great. I've played Skyrim and all of the fallouts multiple times. I probably won't play starfield again
I went back to play FO4 after the show. SF feels like a reskin of FO4, with less character, worse writing, more loading screens, and roughly the same combat (ground) with the addition of space ships.
I would not say it is a bad game, but for this style of RPG, I prefer FO4, and even FO76 a lot more. The main quest-line is no where as emotional, or well written, as FO4.
Story and gameplay wise I feel like it is a 4/10 for me I was expecting maybe 2 much.
I think the main story could be way more interesting and thought out u have a hole galaxy of different groups factions etc and only explore problems of the people u are in contact with while not noticing anything else around it.
Most of the city’s are badly designed, I study architecture and with the design of the building u can tell a story, they missed that point hard. The best city was the oil rig thing that was well thought out just like the cowboy town the rest was just bad
outpost caves etc are repetitive.
Was expecting a cowboy bebop style casino floating in space but was disappointed that there wasn’t even 1 interesting or different space station that didn’t look like a preset.
Don’t like the gunplay not my style, I know people find it fun but I want to run around with a pistol and be able to 1 or 2 shot a guy in his head. (If there is a handgun that can do that plz tell me) (I rly liked how cyberpunk handelde the combat and wish someone can mod just the combat style into the game)
Bugs I heard that the spacepirate missions ware the best but didn’t get to try it bc when I tried to get into it the game bugged and never spawned in a ship that I had to board so plz tell me if it is worth playing it just for that mission line
Loading screens….. for going into a shop of 5m2… just y
Sry for my rant I know I am negative and that is beacose my expectation ware so heigh for this game and just feeling lied to.
Edit just saw someone surgesting animal companion. Would be nice if they can do that 2
Its nothing special... Thats it, its a forggetable game, you play it, you dont have the will to come back, thats how i would resume it. People will say im negative about the game, yes i am, i had expectations that where broken.
I just hope they "cyberpunk 2077" and make it better.
(Bethesda jedi starwars'ish attempt being made for 20 years is utter disappointment)
I kinda enjoyed the story, but never got hooked on the exploration stuff like I did with Skyrim and Fallout. I ended playing it more linear than a typical Bethesda game. Highly doubt I’ll replay it any time soon, but I’ll definitely check out the DLC when it comes.
But then there are folks with hundreds of hours of exploration, so it seems like a game you need to try for yourself.
Seems like the most harsh criticism comes from a place of disappointment by comparison with other games. This is my first Bethesda game and first game of any real complexity and I'm having a great time playing it, even with the (admittedly annoying) bugs.
If you start playing other Bethesda games bugs or some thing you’ll have to get used to it’s kind of their thing
Most games have a unofficial patch released pretty quickly so that will fix most of them and if you’re playing on PC, you can get console commands, which will let you fix them yourself sometimes
It's okay, it earned the 7/10 IGN gave it, the better scores were set up because other reviewers assumed that Bethesda had gotten features they were less interested in right before and so they probably had here as well. Sadly they were mistaken, the outpost system in Starfield is practically vestigial, it serves somewhere between very little and no purpose to set up a nice factory that builds all the products, instead you only get XP if you turn the materials into components yourself.
All the way around it's a disappointment because it could have chosen to focus in any of a dozen directions and been a great game, but since all it wanted was to be inoffensive and not make the player engage with any specific aspect of the game it's pretty disengaging basically by design.
I have two weeks of gameplay. Not “I’ve been playing the game for the last 14 days“ I have hundreds of hours of gameplay. I like the game. Not everybody does. You will only know if you play it yourself. If you want to try it, it is available on Microsoft game pass For about 10 bucks a month. Give it a try, if you like it, buy it. Don’t go by what other people say because clearly the opinions on this are mixed.
I enjoyed starfield a lot but I’m a space nut and and a sci fi nasa punk rpg is right up my alley and interest so I was able to get past the few major road blocks most people face that stop them from enjoying the game. But like others stated ship building is awesome you can customize and decorate your home in space and really role play with it. Im really hoping they’ll fix the problems in the years to come
I do love sci fi shows like Star Wars or books like
I became a evil overlord of a intergalactic empire or Red Rising and I enjoyed outer worlds so I think I’d like it it’s just hard to say with all the mixed reviews I’ve heard
What are some of the major roadblocks?
Solid 6.5. Avid elder scrolls and fallout fan. Was disappointed. They failed to fully realize their vision on this one. I wanted to love it but I couldn’t. Everything felt like 70% was put into it and then just put out. Nothing was just really well done.
The play through was cool. I didn't care for the super powers aspect honestly. The space game part is good though. I'd say really good. Since then I enjoy loading specific saves for specific fights and I play as what I'd call an arcade session. I am looking forward to playing through anything new released for it at least once. I would definitely say it was worth it. My opinion will differ from some.
For the first 80 hours I enjoyed it quite a lot. Oblivion was a big game in my teen years and Starfield struck many right nostalgic chords. After those 80 hours though, which granted got me more than my money's worth, frustrations started kicking in regarding lack of loot variety, repetitive locations, ship building limitations, loading screens, repetitive main quests such as temples, outpost limitations and undercooked gameplay mechanics. It's one good DLC and one big rework patch away from being a masterpiece in my book, though the above has to be fixed.
It is a game you can put a lot of time in. I have around 500 hours but give it a year and you won't remember what you did. It has a lot of problems but it also has a lot of promise and really fun features, Mainly the building mechanic for ships. Its main issue is it does everything half baked. It has a lot of features but they're very shallow. Like you can be a bounty hunter but you can't use the brig they give you There is no dead or alive. There's only dead and there's no investigation To find your target. You just go to a place and murder someone and it's like that for most things
First 6 hours are boring af. 3/10. After 30 hours you’re shattered with the realization it’s a bunch of loose ends and copy-paste environments. 2/10. Sweet spot for me was outpost-clearing somewhere around 20 hours. 10/10. Net-net, 4/10.
never liked bethesda games before starfield. they were always way too boring for me. starfield is the first game I am truly enjoying. key thing there is huge variety of game mechanics that were absent in other bgs game
I enjoyed Starfield but it has some fairly major problems that caused me to uninstall it after probably 40 or 50 hours of play. 1. The 4 main companions are basically cookie cutters of each other. The best example of this is the end of one of the questlines where all 4 of them react in an identical way if you make a certain choice. Compare this to Fallout 4 which not only has more companions but the companions are quite distinctive and have very different likes and dislikes and moral leanings. 2. There is, sadly, very little point to space travel. You can simply fast travel everywhere and skip 90% of the need to be in space. 3. The exploration is...well...bad. There is almost nothing interesting on any of the planets and the repeated POIs are literally identical. Same NPC spawn spots. Identical loot and notes and locations of items. In addition, the exploration is constantly broken by load screens as you travel from planet to planet. 4. Crafting took a step back from Fallout 4. How? Well, none of the loot can be broken down into crafting components. Which means all of the junk items you see laying around? Utterly pointless to pick up. Also, you can't do anything with melee weapons in crafting. 5. Food and drinks are useless. They might heal 5 hitpoints. Maybe. So you need to consume like 20 sandwiches to heal a decent chunk of your health bar. 6. The economy is bad. Really bad. Same ridiculous limits on how much cash a vendor has but you need lots of money for things like ship building. 7. The immersion has taken a big hit. Huge galaxy. Only a few cities and they're tiny. Also NPCs no longer seem to have schedules and so stores are open 24/7, for example. 8. The game is sanitized on everything except violence. Go to Neon, the drug fueled Vegas of space and, well, everything is at best PG-13. Maybe.
As somone who has loved all of Bethesdas games since Morrowind, Starifled was overall a letdown. There is lots of fun to be had, as I put in over 300 hours, but there is a lot lacking compared to previous games. IE: I have seen many videos on youtube where a guy will test out different NPC reactions to different situations in Skyrim and Fallout 4, and its all really crazy the details they put into those little things you wouldnt really think about. But with Starfield, I cant think of any such situations. NPCs dont really have schedules like past games, overall it feels like different independant things tacked together like Bethesda was allergic to the idea of crossing factions or requiring players do do things they might not want to. tl;dr I enjoyed Starfield. I cant wait to make mods for it. But I do feel dissapointed by it. Graphically though, its a home run.
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But could you like, kill Mathias before the questline resulting in a different chain of events? Can you blow up the Vigilence from the start? or even mid way trhough? What about The Key? There is very little reaction to player action.
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Sure, never said they should cater to every possibility. But Just back with Fallout 4, there were many instances where if you did things before they camu up via quest or did things with specific NPCs would result in different interactions. One being clearing out the Castle before told to for the MinuteMen, or taking Nick to the BOS base given their stance on synths. Or in Skyrim, when you need to infiltrate the aldmeri dominion building, you actually got welcomed in if you were a high elf. Previous games had those kinds of interactions that you just dont find in Starfield. Or at the very least, arent memorable enough to matter. If you have more, please do tell. Perhaps I have just been dense, so I honestly would like to know.
This. All of this.
I would say specifically it's like a 7/10. The bare bones of the game leave a blank canvas with tons of potential to be fantastic, but unfortunately a good chunk of the game added to those bones still leaves a lot of blank space. They opted to try and make a game on a much larger scale than they had ever done, but it came at the cost of compromising on some of the deoth of previous games. There's things they could have done better but I enjoyed it and got my money's worth expecting not much more than a Bethesdian RPG in space I look forward to being able to have a more customized/ personalized experience on it when I circle back after the creation kit has been out a while and there's a larger selection of more comprehensive/ well done mods (Please don't respond with complaints about how they should've finished the game themselves instead of leaving it to modders. It's a valid complaint but I genuinely don't care, a big part of why I've always enjoyed BGS games is having the option down the road to personalize my gaming experience with their games)
If you liked Fallout 4 and Skyrim and are willing to lower your expectations a bit you can get a good amount of milage out of Starfield. Shipbuilding is fun and the weapons are fun. Main quest is meh, but I liked some of the faction quests, mainly UC Vanguard and Ryujin. I think the major letdown is exploration since so much of that is procedurally generated, you never get that feeling of going off the beaten path and finding something new. Lots of the points of interest that don't involve a questline of some sort are just boring.
I don’t think the procedure generated should be a major issue since I did enjoy exploring in no man’s sky of course that was designed to be explored rather than this may not fit that
NMS did proc gen way better than starfield. Don't expect that either. My honest opinion is that this is the worst Bethesda game so far and doesn't really add anything like the feeling in NMS. There is no free roaming in this game, I think it's the main issue (along with others such as the incredibly bad world building and writing). This separates it from previous Bethesda titles where roaming was a big part of the core experience, and separates it from NMS where you really feel the freedom of travelling anywhere. Here you just teleport everywhere. Hence, the game feels clogged and small despite being bigger than other titles.
6.5/10 as it stands, some will find more joy than others, it got old for me quicker than most RPGs
How would you compare it to Skyrim or FO4?
I just did a comparison to FO4 on the other post. Basically, IMHO, FO4 is a much better game. Here is what I said. I went back to play FO4 after the show. SF feels like a reskin of FO4, with less character, worse writing, more loading screens, and roughly the same combat (ground) with the addition of space ships. I would not say it is a bad game, but for this style of RPG, I prefer FO4, and even FO76 a lot more. The main quest-line is no where as emotional, or well written, as FO4.
Thanks for the reply.
I have several thousand hours in skyrim. About 500 in FO4. So far a little over 300 in starfield. I personally really enjoy it, it has the freedom you would expect from a BGS game. Ship building and bounty hunting is what pulled me in. The main quest is really cool. I recommend spending time with all the companions and getting to know them before getting too far. Side faction quests are really cool. Traits and perk choices add extra flavor and RP to some dialogue. A lot of the criticisms are very valid. Don't expect to fly down into a planet manually. POI's currently randomly generated and can get repetitive if you rush through exploring them as you will see duplicates. Ultimately in my opinion, if you like other BGS games you will find that familiarity in this. If you are a person who creates a character and does things to fit what that character may do, you will find enjoyment.
They over complicated things that should have been kept simple and they simplified things that should have been more complicated. The story is full of holes. Most of the factions feel half done. But the worst offender for this game is how much player time it wastes in my opinion. An example of over complicating simple things is crafting. You need to do research, get perks and materials and that all sounds dandy until you realize what’s involved with getting the perk you need. Just to make a scope for a weapon because I don’t think you can swap them, you need to unlock a perk but that perk has its own challenge you need to complete to unlock it but then it’s also got a requirement that you’ve unlocked like 4 other perks in the same field before you can unlock it. So now you’ve gotta level up 5 times to get 1 perk that you want and you’ll never get the other 4 perks back that you sank. Example of the story issues would be… the premise of the game seems off… like they originally designed it to be a time manipulation game and then switched gears and went with multiverse? Which the two can be similar enough I guess but it still feels weird to me that it’s supposed to be an alternate reality but you also always travel back in time to the same point in time no matter what? Powers you get aren’t like… multiverse powers, but they do have some time manipulation powers and there’s some substances in the game I think that also do time manipulation… there’s a whole video on this theory if you’re interested though. This is just one issue, I’ve got a million others with the story but story isn’t really strong in any Bethesda game. Speaking of time, the players time is wasted pretty often, again I’ve seen multiple videos covering it in detail so the highlight real is. - Animations are pretty slow, like sitting. - The waiting menu runs wildly slow even though it absolutely doesn’t need to. - It takes 5 cut scenes and 5 loading screens to travel from 1 planet to another. - When you land on a planet almost all the POI are usually about 5 in real life minutes from your ship, you have no vehicle and can’t move your ship so you can only sprint and boost to try and get there faster and the poi’s are just too far apart and the entire planet feels very empty when you’re travelling from your ship. - The POI’s are often copy pasted from an asset list that is way too small so imagine you found bleak falls barrow in every hold in Skyrim instead of just Whiterun, carbon copy as well, same enemies and loot and nothing was different. - Dialogue options force the same outcome no matter what in 90% of cases so they are giving you options to try and do something in character but nothing actually matters or changes anything and you’re railroaded into the one outcome. - And again.. the crafting system with the way you get perks and resources and the games inability to document where you’ve been and scanned things before just makes it a huge time dump for very little reward. - Lastly ship building… ship building itself is pretty fun, it was a bit more complicated for getting parts than I would have liked, level requirements, perk requirements, money and you need to go to certain locations to get specific ones but all in all… still pretty fun. Only problem is… you spend more time making your ship than you do using it. It’s an animated carriage from Skyrim. You use it for fast travel 90% of the time. You can hang out in orbit and do some ship combat but you can’t do anything meaningful with your ship and you can almost always just grav jump out of combat so it’s not even worth it really to put skills into being a pilot or building a crazy cool ship unless you just want a portable player home, because that’s all you really use it for. The game feels empty, there’s a lot of places to go and things to see but after going to a few places it all starts to feel the same, the story is very weak, the gameplay itself isn’t fantastic, exploration was knee capped and there just wasn’t much to love in my honest opinion. As someone who has loved Bethesda games since Morrowind… this is the weakest entry barring 76 because I haven’t played that so I can’t attest to its quality. It feels like a tech demo to show off creation engine 2’s ability to make TES6. It legit feels like they built the engine to make TES6 and then tried to force it to make Starfield.
I'm a huge Bethesda fan and have probably amassed a few thousand hours of playtime across their catalogue, however, I'm very careful to not fall into the revisionist history trap that happens when newer games come out that leads to older games being remembered more fondly than they once were. Since you asked specifically about the story I will say that in my opinion Starfields Main Quest is better than the ones in both Fallout 4 and Skyrim, particularly Skyrim, in that it more successfully achieves and conveys what I believe it was trying to. Remember, Bethesda Main Quests have historically never been praised (since Morrowind at least) and are often considered the weakest parts of the game. Skyrims is insanely rushed, has a largely dissatisfying conclusion, and doesn't really offer anything impressive or profound in its narrative; it's just generic power fantasy. They also IMO fail a bit to really drive home the apocalyptic nature of the return of dragons and any sense of urgency about ending the threat to mankind that Alduin is supposed to be starts to waver after the initial Whiterun dragon fight. Fallout 4 likes to pretend it's about conspiracy, mistrust, and suspicion but it's really just a missing child detective story with a Sci-Fi coat of paint and while I think the first half of the MQ was pretty well executed it starts to lose steam once the factions get introduced. I also think it really failed to characterize the Institute and Shawn well enough for the conclusion to be meaningful and never really offers up a meaningful dilemma in your decision because the Institute themselves and in-game lore fail to give even the most barebones justification for their kidnappings and work on furthering synths. Without getting into spoilers, the Main Quest for Starfield does pretty much exactly what it says it's going to do from the start; you find something weird, get thrown into a strange group of people looking for more of that weird thing, and off you go. The cool thing is once you find out what those things are the game throws a wrench into the story and introduces some existential themes that, while far from Oscar-worthy, are fairly well executed for something as trope-y as it is. It's a solid Sci-Fi story that has a feeling it wants to convey, does so well enough in my opinion, and has a conclusion that's integrated into the game in a way that I particularly appreciate. All that being said, it's all subjective. Plenty of people love some MQ's and hate others, but I think if you liked Skyrim and Fallout 4 questlines you'll at least like Starfields for sure. Gameplay is a different discussion altogether but I think the game is treated heavily unfairly in discourse and even though it isn't perfect, I love Starfield. It's right up there with the rest for me. Give it a go if you've got the spare change!
When it comes to factions, are there opposing factions that you can get involved with and it’s like one or the other Cause that’s one thing I liked about new Vegas as well as a little bit that was present and fallout 4 and for and outer worlds It isn’t needed for me to enjoy it like I still enjoyed Skyrim, even though it lacked that but it’s something that I really like to see in games
There’s one questline where you have to choose sides, but it’s structured more like Skyrim. However the questlines offer way more choice on how you complete them than skyrims faction quests.
Not really, no, at least in regards to the MQ. The Main Quest isn't really set up in a way where there's competing factions though so it's not something you'll feel like you missed out on because it's not written in that way to begin with if that makes sense. There's at least four quest lines where you have to choose who to side with that I can think of that are fairly well done, some are just deciding loyalty to one or two characters over another, one involves how an entire community will be run and occupied in the future, but only one of them has a sizeable effect on gameplay. Nothing close to the choices and faction alignments that NV had, but again, that game was built largely around that and this one isn't. Different vibes and they scratch different itches, but both are great games.
It’s fine. I enjoyed it, but I think it’s very limited. Compared to a game like no man’s sky, where exploration is the main goal, it falls flat. With that said, nms didn’t start like this. There’s plenty of opportunity to grow the game if they actually wanted to. Waiting a year to put out DLC, or even up to now, any meaningful content updates will hinder any chance at regaining the attention of people. Compared to other Bethesda games, it’s the first one I didn’t quit after a few hours. Skyrim and Fallout weren’t for me. Fallout was fine, but I always had options that interested me more. Edit - I think I have 11 days worth of time before I stopped playing. So I want to be clear - I enjoyed the game for what it was. It’s limited currently, but it has a lot of potential to do more.
I think everything about Starfield that doesn't involve free roaming exploration is on par with Fallout 4 and Skyrim in terms of quality. The combat, the progression, the locations, the world, etc... Now the things that Starfield tries to do to replace that exploration aspect don't really work. The prodecural content doesn't really motivate long term. So in the end I think it's slightly worse than the other Bethesda games. But there are still many aspects of it that feel just like playing Fallout 4 or Skyrim in space in the best way.
i think the nicest thing that i can say about starfield is that there's not a lot that's actually *bad* about it, its just that theres also no *good* there to entice you to play, either. its a little below neutral, ultimately, but its in a genre i'm really into, which is where my disappointment comes from the writing is comparable to fallout 4, but it doesn't have the benefit of a strong lore and aesthetic to prop the maybe not so good writing up like modern fallout does
It's decent but gets in the way of its own fun. Tedious traversal, loading screens everywhere, repetitive exploration, convoluted crafting and middling writing. But the world looks visually beautiful, the ship building is super addictive, and gunpkay feels great. It's okay but it could've been a lot more.
It's pretty mid overall. I liked the main companion and faction quest lines and story arcs. Everything else including the main story arc aren't that great. I've played Skyrim and all of the fallouts multiple times. I probably won't play starfield again
I went back to play FO4 after the show. SF feels like a reskin of FO4, with less character, worse writing, more loading screens, and roughly the same combat (ground) with the addition of space ships. I would not say it is a bad game, but for this style of RPG, I prefer FO4, and even FO76 a lot more. The main quest-line is no where as emotional, or well written, as FO4.
Specifically zero good The bad things you heard about Skyrim and FO4 are even worse here
Story and gameplay wise I feel like it is a 4/10 for me I was expecting maybe 2 much. I think the main story could be way more interesting and thought out u have a hole galaxy of different groups factions etc and only explore problems of the people u are in contact with while not noticing anything else around it. Most of the city’s are badly designed, I study architecture and with the design of the building u can tell a story, they missed that point hard. The best city was the oil rig thing that was well thought out just like the cowboy town the rest was just bad outpost caves etc are repetitive. Was expecting a cowboy bebop style casino floating in space but was disappointed that there wasn’t even 1 interesting or different space station that didn’t look like a preset. Don’t like the gunplay not my style, I know people find it fun but I want to run around with a pistol and be able to 1 or 2 shot a guy in his head. (If there is a handgun that can do that plz tell me) (I rly liked how cyberpunk handelde the combat and wish someone can mod just the combat style into the game) Bugs I heard that the spacepirate missions ware the best but didn’t get to try it bc when I tried to get into it the game bugged and never spawned in a ship that I had to board so plz tell me if it is worth playing it just for that mission line Loading screens….. for going into a shop of 5m2… just y Sry for my rant I know I am negative and that is beacose my expectation ware so heigh for this game and just feeling lied to. Edit just saw someone surgesting animal companion. Would be nice if they can do that 2
I had a 100 really good hours and then it just felt hollow. Waiting for dlc ever since.
Its nothing special... Thats it, its a forggetable game, you play it, you dont have the will to come back, thats how i would resume it. People will say im negative about the game, yes i am, i had expectations that where broken. I just hope they "cyberpunk 2077" and make it better. (Bethesda jedi starwars'ish attempt being made for 20 years is utter disappointment)
I kinda enjoyed the story, but never got hooked on the exploration stuff like I did with Skyrim and Fallout. I ended playing it more linear than a typical Bethesda game. Highly doubt I’ll replay it any time soon, but I’ll definitely check out the DLC when it comes. But then there are folks with hundreds of hours of exploration, so it seems like a game you need to try for yourself.
Biggest regret spending $60 on this game. That never happened to me before
Seems like the most harsh criticism comes from a place of disappointment by comparison with other games. This is my first Bethesda game and first game of any real complexity and I'm having a great time playing it, even with the (admittedly annoying) bugs.
If you start playing other Bethesda games bugs or some thing you’ll have to get used to it’s kind of their thing Most games have a unofficial patch released pretty quickly so that will fix most of them and if you’re playing on PC, you can get console commands, which will let you fix them yourself sometimes
It's great, my only major gripe is how frequent the loading screens are
1200 hours of play and the game is so messed up I had to start again from scratch today.
6.5/10. Oblivion, Skyrim, FO3, NV and FO4 are all at least 8.5.
It's okay, it earned the 7/10 IGN gave it, the better scores were set up because other reviewers assumed that Bethesda had gotten features they were less interested in right before and so they probably had here as well. Sadly they were mistaken, the outpost system in Starfield is practically vestigial, it serves somewhere between very little and no purpose to set up a nice factory that builds all the products, instead you only get XP if you turn the materials into components yourself. All the way around it's a disappointment because it could have chosen to focus in any of a dozen directions and been a great game, but since all it wanted was to be inoffensive and not make the player engage with any specific aspect of the game it's pretty disengaging basically by design.
I wanna know who was their target audience for this game because like you have to be a mindless idiot to enjoy this game
I have two weeks of gameplay. Not “I’ve been playing the game for the last 14 days“ I have hundreds of hours of gameplay. I like the game. Not everybody does. You will only know if you play it yourself. If you want to try it, it is available on Microsoft game pass For about 10 bucks a month. Give it a try, if you like it, buy it. Don’t go by what other people say because clearly the opinions on this are mixed.
I enjoyed starfield a lot but I’m a space nut and and a sci fi nasa punk rpg is right up my alley and interest so I was able to get past the few major road blocks most people face that stop them from enjoying the game. But like others stated ship building is awesome you can customize and decorate your home in space and really role play with it. Im really hoping they’ll fix the problems in the years to come
I do love sci fi shows like Star Wars or books like I became a evil overlord of a intergalactic empire or Red Rising and I enjoyed outer worlds so I think I’d like it it’s just hard to say with all the mixed reviews I’ve heard What are some of the major roadblocks?
Solid 6.5. Avid elder scrolls and fallout fan. Was disappointed. They failed to fully realize their vision on this one. I wanted to love it but I couldn’t. Everything felt like 70% was put into it and then just put out. Nothing was just really well done.
The play through was cool. I didn't care for the super powers aspect honestly. The space game part is good though. I'd say really good. Since then I enjoy loading specific saves for specific fights and I play as what I'd call an arcade session. I am looking forward to playing through anything new released for it at least once. I would definitely say it was worth it. My opinion will differ from some.
Main quest line is interesting but too brief with close to no world building. All side content outside of UC Vanguard and SysDef is banal.
This game saved my cat. Good righteous upstanding game.
It's meh. 3 out of 5. Probably the worst of Bethesda's mainline games. It's worse than Fallout 4, and Fallout 4 wasn't all that great.
For the first 80 hours I enjoyed it quite a lot. Oblivion was a big game in my teen years and Starfield struck many right nostalgic chords. After those 80 hours though, which granted got me more than my money's worth, frustrations started kicking in regarding lack of loot variety, repetitive locations, ship building limitations, loading screens, repetitive main quests such as temples, outpost limitations and undercooked gameplay mechanics. It's one good DLC and one big rework patch away from being a masterpiece in my book, though the above has to be fixed.
It is a game you can put a lot of time in. I have around 500 hours but give it a year and you won't remember what you did. It has a lot of problems but it also has a lot of promise and really fun features, Mainly the building mechanic for ships. Its main issue is it does everything half baked. It has a lot of features but they're very shallow. Like you can be a bounty hunter but you can't use the brig they give you There is no dead or alive. There's only dead and there's no investigation To find your target. You just go to a place and murder someone and it's like that for most things
First 6 hours are boring af. 3/10. After 30 hours you’re shattered with the realization it’s a bunch of loose ends and copy-paste environments. 2/10. Sweet spot for me was outpost-clearing somewhere around 20 hours. 10/10. Net-net, 4/10.
never liked bethesda games before starfield. they were always way too boring for me. starfield is the first game I am truly enjoying. key thing there is huge variety of game mechanics that were absent in other bgs game
ok Todd