Starfield (Bethesda Game Studios)

[Margot Robbed Me]

I'm curious what rating out of 10 people here would give Starfield. A breakdown for your rating would be interesting to read as well.

[Jason]

Starfield has been getting panned on Youtube since day 1, it's been pretty much one of the best examples of the problem with modern YouTube gaming content there has ever been. In the late 2000's and early 2010's YouTube was a fantastic place for indie gaming content (reviews, impressions, critique) and that was largely led by people like the late TotalBiscuit. Since his passing we saw a lot of copy cats try and pop up and sadly very few of them had the talent he had, so they're just loud and obnoxious and their critiquing abilities basically boil down to being able to wank over a game or sh*t all over it, a trend possibly made worse by the need for hyperbolic soundbites to use for their TikTok and YouTube short clips. End result of all that is YouTube went from emerging as the best place for game impressions and reviews to one of the worst, all within the span of a few years. There's still some good people out there, I like CohhCarnage's takes on games, though he typically plays RPG's. He's one of the few who is able to fairly critique a game, point out what it does well, what it does bad, while also acknowledging that not every game needs to do things in the same way, etc.

 

I also think it would be fair to say that Starfield's reception wasn't helped by it immediately following Baldur's Gate 3, possibly the greatest RPG ever made, and Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty and 2.0, which was 3 years of work fixing the problems the community told them to fix. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, but I do think it would have changed how Starfield was received at launch for sure.

 

1 minute ago, Misumi said:

I'm curious what rating out of 10 people here would give Starfield. A breakdown for your rating would be interesting to read as well.

 

8/10

 

Story quality is a very mixed bag, some good, some bad, a lot of average, very little great. There's a lot of genuinely really good ideas for stories and while I found most of them enjoyable overall I think a lot of them could have done with a little more fleshing out. Some just weren't handled well at all, like the colony ship. Main story is IMO at it's best when it's looking back, not forward. Some of the way consequences play out in the main story is very handed and not done well at all.

 

Major main story spoilers:

 

Spoiler

The worlds backstory is fantastic, the role of the artifacts and how they influenced humanity is great and I loved learning about that. The "forward" part of the main story however basically ends with it saying to you "well, now go do it all again" which is ???. They've spoken publicly about making a game that is playable for 10 years and I think the whole NG+ idea they had plays into that and I think that was a poor way to look at it. It's nice that NG+ exists, I don't even mind it being part of the lore, but finishing the main story and still feeling like it's not "done" until you intentionally lose all your progression is very not-Bethesda and very non-RPG and I don't think they pulled it off very well. Also grinding powers is garbage, they should've made it so powers are picked up from various quests and locations, like Skyrim. Or just... not done powers.

 

Also, consequence. "High Price to Pay" is Bethesda's first real attempt (in my experience with BGS titles) to add some big consequence to the main quest. They handled it really, really poorly. Out of no where your presented with a choice to save the character closest to you, or stick with the group. The outcomes aren't telegraphed and the time window to make a decision is really short. End result is that it's very easy to lose the companion you're closet with, or have even romanced/married, before you have any idea what the f*ck is going on. I've read other comments on it from others and I know I'm not alone in saying it's really awkward, it's like a weird gut punch that doesn't feel earned by the game. It's shock and awe story telling done really horribly. That type of story telling can be done well, RDR2 did that type of stuff well - Sean's out of no where death, Hosier, etc, but it has to fit the game, fit the tone and story and here it just didn't feel great at all. I suspect a mod will come out in future where you can get the NG+ option where you can save them all in a new playthrough. I'll be downloading that.

 

Gameplay is pretty damn solid, especially once you get your required skills (boost pack in particular). It's not perfect mind you, there's minor things like reload speeds which are too slow and also stuff like using grenades is too slow and clunky. Overall I do enjoy clearing out outposts and looting, I've said it before but the game is a lowkey pretty damn fun looter shooter. Also special shoutout to zero G combat which is hella fun, there's just not enough of it lol.

 

Exploration was a decent 1st attempt for a space game. Space is always gonna be a tricky setting for exploration despite it on the surface being a natural fit, as it is gonna involve proc gen and a lot of fast travel. I think their messaging pre-release focused too much on the planets which led to twisted or unrealistic expectations on the proc gen planets, even though they were pretty honest about a lot of them being barren. That being said the proc gen outposts and bases need far more randomisation. They've often used tilesets for their games like an ARPG does, Skyrim for example has a ton of tomb and dungeons with repetitive mechanics (those doors with the 3 symbols anyone?) but they essentially randomise the layouts and loot spawns so they feel different enough, but in Starfield every "Deserted Mining Outpost" is identical, with only minor loot differences (chests, loot from enemies). The handcrafted exploration is often good or even very good though, stuff like the derelict ships, spacestations, the bespoke PoI's. All really good.

 

UI is pretty terrible overall, mods are improving this rapidly on PC but will likely need the CK to really fix some of the big issues, from smaller issues like ship cargo being only accessible in it's own section of the UI down to the overuse of the menu for travelling. I suspect modders will be looking at ways to allow you to travel and explore w/o touching the starmap once the CK comes out.

 

Outposts are rubbish. No ifs or buts, I tried using them again the other day and it's just not good as is. The whole storage system they went with is horrible to use, it should be like FO4 with a infinite bin to put your resources and stuff in. Cargo links then should work like FO4 where once you link an outpost to your cargo network then it has access to your infinite storage. Realistic? No. More fun and enjoyable? 100x yes. That's only the tip of the iceberg with outposts as well - they need to bring back the Sims side of it. Lemme build a town that attracts people, has vendors, ships coming and going, etc.

 

Visually it's okay, the art design is great and the lighting while mixed can also look fantastic. The main issue I think is the filters they use, I'm running a custom LUT mod and honestly I'm pretty shocked at just how much better the game looks with it, to the point I'm wondering what the hell they were doing with the vanilla LUTs/filters. The audio in the game is also great, the soundtrack, all the little ambient noises, menu clicks, weapons, etc.

 

I think my main area of criticism, today, is how the world feels. I don't think it's much different to any prior BGS game, in fact I think that's sort of the issue, they didn't evolve this area of their game at all. The problem I'm talking about is that the world feels like a theme park. You walk through a city and the amount of NPC chatter is very small, outside of quest starts, you walk into a bar and it's just quiet, you walk into the slums and it's just quiet. People standing around, sitting, but not doing much. If you go up to someone and talk to them they give you a line about something like they've been waiting their whole life for you to turn up so they can deliver it to you. The world and everything in it feels like it is set up for the player to turn up get what they need from it, it doesn't feel alive for lack of a better term.

 

Now I don't think every open world game needs to have the same type of open world, I don't even think how BGS does it is necessarily bad. But to put it in anothe very simple way - Starfield is not immersive. Skyrim and Fallout 4 may have been at the time of their releases, but neither are now. I think the standard of immersive open worlds has simply been raised and the way BGS constructs an open world just isn't immersive anymore. Again, I think you can do an open world like BGS do in 2023, I don't think it's bad, but I do think that today I personally appreciate immersive experiences more.

 

That being said, on the flipside I find Starfield to be a very... cosy game. I can pick it up and f*ck about for a few hours far more than I can a more immersive open world game like Cyberpunk, RDR2, or other RPG's like Baldur's Gate 3. I've got near 30 hours into my second save already and I've done nothing more than exploration, mission board stuff and ship building, there's no other RPG out there beyond FO4/Skyrim where I can get that same type of experience for 20-30 hours and still have fun. But I do wonder if there's a middle ground to be found here for Elder Scrolls VI, a world that feels alive and more immersive while also retaining that very player first sandbox experience.

 

So yea, 8/10. It's a lot of fun with plenty to see and do but it's not a great game. With time, though, and through official patches, DLC and mods, I do genuinely think that it could be a really great game, the foundations are all there.

[lndex]

I had a little look at the game last night with some visual mods loaded, specifically the NaturaLUT's and neutral LUT's mods + ReShade, messing around with those two and also increasing gamma in the ini file. It can look gorgeous in certain lighting, but sometimes it's just flat.

 

What I'll do, though, before I commit to a return is wait for the Creation Kit and do a proper modded run. I really want stuff like the ability to share ships and stuff without being restricted to a save or going off of a preset.

 

Or be it whenever the Shatterd Space DLC releases, which I think is early next year.

[Jason]

One thing I am excited about w/ mods is the AI voice mods. There's already a guy working on it, he has a mod that puts the camera on the player character in dialogue already and will use it as the foundation for an AI voice mod.

 

I'm fine with the lack of voice and understand it's limitations but I do like seeing and hearing my character actually talk in games. People moaned about the Fallout 4 dialogue system and used that to write off a voice protag but, and I don't know why this hasn't been done by a game, I don't get why they just don't have the classic dialogue choices, all written out to say exactly what you're saying, and then have your character say it. The big issue with FO4's system, and Mass Effect's before it, was that you were never actually 100% sure what any given dialogue option would say because they paraphrased every option so they could do their up/down/left/right thing wheel menu.

[Margot Robbed Me]

I just want better haircuts. Starfield carries the Bethesda tradition of having some of the worst haircuts in gaming.

 

Warhammer Darktide is a challenger though.

 

[Jason]

Yea it's a bit early for new hairs and clothes due to the lack of CK sadly. There are some but they replace assets already in the game. The current hair mods, and there's only a handful, all replace some style already in the game (usually hair 2, due to it having multiple meshes or something). They're basically all edits and tweaks of hairs right now, or merges of hairstyles. I have this one installed right now, the left image is the hair it mods, the right image is the "new" hair.

 

 

But yea, hopefully the CK is released early next year so we can go full send into this stuff.

[Tacymist]

 

Suck it, Donovan

[Jason]

I really wanna use the huge Ares cockpit cause from the outside it looks amazing but it's just too big and a bit lifeless for me I think, if you could have a like a 20 man crew and people would be manning the various stations etc it'd be great but as is I just can't get into it. I did get a design w/ it that I kinda liked from the outside though:

 

 

But yea, I've swapped that out went for the HopeTech bridge, it's interior fits the grungey look I've gone for and the Deimos habs go quite well with it too, the 2x2 living quarter from Deimos is pretty nice. This ship will probably be my ship for this save now, I just need to upgrade it's reactor, shields, engines etc as I go.

 

[Failed Again]

3 hours ago, Tacymist said:

 

Suck it, Donovan

Thats our boy!

 

 

 

Yeah, Yeah.

Wait until your 76..

Edited October 15, 2023 by Failed Again

[sivispacem]

Been very much enjoying my Class B "frigate". Does everything I need of it and then some, with a bit of flair.

 

 

[Margot Robbed Me]

[lndex]

Waiting for official mod support until I do a return.

[Tacymist]

Not having ground vehicles was such a missed opportunity. Imagine how fun it would have been driving over dunes on a low gravity world. 

[Jason]

My Steam playtime is 167 hours, so it's fair to say I've played it a lot. I'll play my 2nd save on/off when I wanna shoot some stuff but for the most part I'm waiting for patches now before I start questing in tha save. I doubt I'll commit fully again to any save until DLC / mod tools though. I really want FO4 type settlements in the game and more ship builder stuff especially, plus new clothing mods would be nice.

 

Not sure what I'll do when Shattered Space drops, either revisit my 1st save (I kept pre-NG copies) or what, guess it depends on what the DLC is and what it's about.

[Mister Pink]

11 hours ago, Tacymist said:

Not having ground vehicles was such a missed opportunity. Imagine how fun it would have been driving over dunes on a low gravity world. 

Yeah, even a little dune-buggy would have been perfect or a little two-man rocket buggy-type thing to zip around. Something mildly innovative could have been; setting a waypoint, getting your companion to drive and while you use your scanner to discover  - helping you cover more ground. 

 

Imagine what state Starfield would have released if they didn't get that extra year. There is so much room for improvement as it is. And, another point I don't hear people talk about is that there's also a slight hump to get over with Starfield because it's a new IP. For most BGS fans, this is the first time we've got a new IP from BGS. Although it has its signature all over it, I think many people can get comfortable in playing Elder Scrolls or Fallout. They kind of know what to expect. But Starfield being a new IP, it might be just a bit different to warm to. And...it's the first of a series (assuming they'll make another). I can just think of many other series where the first  new IP game just doesn't get it completely right and the 2nd one does. 

[Jason]

Yea the 1st game in a new IP is always a bit raw. It's always the second game where they're able to fulfill what their initial ambition was, which is why the 2nd game in a franchise (especially trilogies) is often the best.

 

There's a lot of ways Starfield could be improved, be it DLC, mods or in a sequel. Hell, playing it again the other week I really do get the impression that there's a bunch of systems in the game they added with the idea that while they may be barebones now, it will lay the groundwork for future DLC / mods.

 

I've said it before, but the game really does have the potential to be a 10/10 in a few years. The foundations are all there.

[Punkd]

i didnt play the game yet (first i want to finish forza)

but my impression from online socials is that many people are simply overwhelmed by the amount of freedom bethesda gave us with all these planets

just because there are 1000+ planets it doesnt mean you have to explore most of them, stick to the big settings, do some exploration on some planets, and the game experience should be well-balanced

[Jason]

Bethesda marketed the planets as entirely optional, with nothing to do on many of them. Todd specifically talked about this. They did them because they could and it fit the space fantasy.

 

So gamers did what gamers do and judge an entire game - an RPG - on one part of the games optional side content.

 

Don't get me wrong the proc gen isn't amazing, I could criticise it in a few areas from terrain (too flat) to the outposts (literal copy and paste) but there's also well over 100 hours of handcrafted content in the game.

[Original Light]

I find it odd how quiet Bethesda has been about the game since its launch - we haven't seen any significant patch yet.

 

I recall them saying they wanted to add an "Eat" button when you pick up food in the game, which I thought would be a really quick thing to add, and they haven't done it yet. 

[Jason]

Yea the rate of patches and the amount of changes within the patches so far has been underwhelming to say the least. Hopefully it's a case of them bundling up all the changes/fixes/additions into one big patch for sometime this year.

[lndex]

There's only been, like, two patches released so far? And then, when you look at a studio like Larian, who pumped out patches and hotfixes left and right, it makes you wonder what they're doing, I suppose. Official DLSS is still absent. Imagine them advertising that with the Shattered Space DLC early next year, lol.

[Jason]

Larian's support in the first month of BG3 was very impressive but BG3's first month was PC only, with no platform parity to worry about or console cert process. The patches have since slowed down since the PS5 release.

[Original Light]

It's safe to assume they're only keeping a small team to work on patches and DLC content for Starfield at this point. Everyone else has likely transitioned to Elder Scrolls VI development.

 

I wonder how large of a team is required to continue developing substantial DLC for Starfield, even years after its release (unlike previous titles), which Todd Howard expressed interest in during an interview. 

[Jason]

Yea they've openly discussed supporting Starfield for years so they'll have a decent size team on it, I'm not sure how they've done it in the past but it's probably not the bulk of the BGS team long term but definitely some of their sister/support studios.

 

I doubt they're all in on TES VI yet, I know Pete Hines said the game is out of pre-production but the jump from pre-prod to full development isn't black and white. I'd guess that TES VI will enter full development, ie the bulk of BGS working on it, sometime in 2024. AFAIK that's how it typically goes after new big releases at this time of year, a few months are reserved for patches before the next project enters full development.

[Margot Robbed Me]

All it took was a tumbleweed to bring this thread back to life

 

[Dick Justice]

After actively avoiding factions and the main story for a while as I explored and did side-content in the main cities, I finally (purposefully) had my smuggling character caught trying to bring mech parts into Cydonia so that I could dive into the UC Sysdef / Crimson Fleet storyline. It has completely recaptured my love for this game. I'm going to roll this in to doing the Vanguard storyline afterwards, then finally do the main quest. I will save Ryujin and Freestar for my second / third characters because it doesn't make sense for my current character to do them.

[Jason]

I've heard you can start the CF questline without going undercover at all, which is something I wanna do on my 2nd save. You have to refuse to work for the UC after you've been arrested I think, and you'll get contacted one way or another after a while.

[Dick Justice]

On 10/24/2023 at 11:34 AM, Jason said:

I've heard you can start the CF questline without going undercover at all, which is something I wanna do on my 2nd save. You have to refuse to work for the UC after you've been arrested I think, and you'll get contacted one way or another after a while.

If you decline Commander Ikande's offer you get a quest to seek out the Crimson Fleet on your own. I don't know how the intro differs after that because I reloaded my save to accept the offer.

 

I think the UC Sysdef undercover storyline was a stroke of genius on Bethesda's part, because it gives the player a chance to do the pirate faction with a morally good character. I can't seem to complete the Burden of Proof quest though, not sure what is going on there. 

[Jason]

Yea the undercover aspect was a good idea for sure, one issue with BGS RPG's (and Starfield still suffers from it too) is that it's very easy to break immersion by joining all the factions, even ones that contradict each other.

 

There was an interview out a few days ago with a recently retired BGS guy who was the lead designer on Skyrim and senior designer on Starfield and he talked a little about this. He praised Baldur's Gate 3 for locking people out of content for choices they made but said it's just something they could never bring themselve to do for a BGS title for various reasons, one of which being is that they make games people can play for 100s of hours and they like that.

[Krooked_]

5 hours ago, Jason said:

Yea the undercover aspect was a good idea for sure, one issue with BGS RPG's (and Starfield still suffers from it too) is that it's very easy to break immersion by joining all the factions, even ones that contradict each other.

 

There was an interview out a few days ago with a recently retired BGS guy who was the lead designer on Skyrim and senior designer on Starfield and he talked a little about this. He praised Baldur's Gate 3 for locking people out of content for choices they made but said it's just something they could never bring themselve to do for a BGS title for various reasons, one of which being is that they make games people can play for 100s of hours and they like that.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Morrowind restricted you from being able to join all factions with a single character, even the Great Houses. It's been a while since I played it but I'm pretty sure that was the case.

 

But yeah, personally I've never been a fan of that and it kind of defeats the point of creating a specific build for that one faction/guild and actually roleplay.

Edited October 25, 2023 by Krooked_