Unlikely. Bethesda has carved out a slot for itself as one of the most popular and profitable devs. Starfield sold extremely well, even though the reviews and hype have seemingly crashed down back to earth now. My point being they can get away with mediocrity, unfortunately
I initially felt strongly that the 7/10 was harsh. I’ve played every Bethesda game since Morrowind and have over 2k hours on Skyrim and FO4 (2k apiece).
I was SO exited to play and the game sucked me right in. Got a solid 80 hours in, completed all quest lines, then stopped playing and… haven’t turned it on since. I have no desire to build ships or outposts because:
Outposts have no benefit outside of RP.
If I NG+, I lose everything I spent time on and don’t have blueprints to remake stuff.
Hopefully QOL improvements, DLC and mods will suck me back in.
Yep. I’m a big fan of BGS and have played their games my whole life. Naturally I was super excited for their first new IP in however many years.
The game was around a 7/10 for me as well, which is fine , but left so much to be desired.
Overall, it’s a good game it just felt they stripped away a lot of things that I love in BGS games and expanded upon systems that I don’t particularly care for, nor do they give me a reason to care for. But I put a good 30-35 hours in, probably will give it another try down the line now that I know what to expect. Just a lot of other good/great games to play atm, and this one did not pull me in enough.
I think any time a game gets a bunch of hype, there’s no way for it to live up to the hype. Anyone who thought this wasn’t going to be space fallout with an extra focus on creating a big rich sandbox for the mod community to play, was going in with the wrong expectations.
That’s exactly what this game is and that’s a fantastic addition to the BGS line up for all of us who live to putz around in these type of games for years to come.
I think it’s funny all the reviews said it started slow but ramped up, and maybe that’s a little true but honestly the farther in the game I got the more I realized the issues
I felt like it was true to a point. Like it grew on me after like 3 hours. The problem was that it got really stale just a few hours after that. So after 20 hours I couldn't bring myself to play anymore.
what good is 1000 planets if only 20 are interesting?
Because you have the choice of whether or not to visit those other planets. Todd was pretty clear in pre-release interviews that making 1 planet is basically the same amount of work as making 1000, so they might as well include them for atmosphere rather than come up with some contrived reason as to why you’re limited to 2-3 systems.
I explored every system and only found so many unique events. Would be nice if more systems had a "this quest will always be here" event in them. Finding the crucible was interesting, but theres nothing else like it in the far corners of space
The only time you're "paralyzed by choice" is when you choose to do something random. Most of the worlds simply aren't worth visiting and once you realize that the game feels better. The vast majority of the planets I have visited are randomly selected to place the artifacts on (and, yes, several of them were bland). I have gone to a few spots in the same systems just to check it out, but there is really very little reason to branch out.
I found that fine in this game. There is plenty to do and enjoy just blazing through the larger stories and tackling some side content along the way. I never found myself particularly bored, though I did run into the same POIs a few times (which would easily be my largest complaint about the game that hopefully they are working on in some capacity).
It seems to me like a lot of people went into this game thinking they could just randomly select a planet and have an exciting adventure. As someone who was disappointed by this in multiple space games in the past decade already, I never expected that was going to work and was therefore not disappointed by the fact that it doesn't really.
I've had that experience in BGS games before, however I would hard disagree that the majority of "random locations" in Skyrim in particular but even in FO3 and 4 turned into anything cool. There are plenty of them where you fight some things and then leave.
But there's an overwhelming problem of density here. You can make as much procedural content as you want but if it takes me 5 minutes to walk from one location to another, or if each "tailored" planet has only one small city, then in reality Starfield is an extremely small game, just with an enormous skybox.
I don't know what insane expectations people had, but this was my exact expectation. And this is what I got. It's like people have no idea what kind of games BGS makes.
Eh, I don't really agree with that. The problem is that in saying that it's "essentially fallout/skyrim in space" people aren't usually talking about just wandering around, they are talking about the gameplay loops, missions, characters, etc. that make up the core game. And that's exactly what it is.
I'll agree that it's soft-RPG, but BGS has been softening the RPG elements for two decades now. Starfield is obviously a heavily market-researched game that is targeting the greatest audience, and I think the sales numbers on Steam alone (estimates put it between 2-5 million sold) speak volumes about how successful that has been.
Obviously that doesn't mean it has no problems. I just think people are a little crazy acting like this isn't a space translation of Skyrim and Fallout 4.
While none of what you said is incorrect, I don't see what that has to do with my comment. It is absolutely a step down from Fallout/Skyrim in RPG mechanics and world exploration, while still maintaining the same gameplay loop. I know Starfield was a huge financial success, but I still the game was underwhelming in all honesty
Or play a couple of rounds of 7 days to die, with their poi system and the insane amount of possible POIs I really think 7 days has one of the best procedural generations of all games, and I really enjoy it!
Hell, even NMS gets a kick out of you in the first 7-10 planets
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u/APunnyThing Nov 20 '23
Cool, hopefully it gets better over time and Bethesda takes the criticism to heart on whatever project they make next.
Starfield is a fun enough game but it could have been a lot better and a lot less tedious to navigate both in menus and in space.