The fact that this game was actually nominated as “best RPG” with the likes of baldurs gate 3 and final fantasy XVI is ludicrous enough.
to be fair, ffxvi is not really an rpg either.
It’s just so bland and formulaic. Against deep RPGs like BG3, it just pales in comparison.
The funny thing is, I think the fact that the RPG mechanics are finally better than the last game developed by Bethesda, instead of worse, highlights just how mediocre Bethesda games are.
I still think once mods and DLCs come out in full force it will be remembered more positively.
Agreed. Twas the only thing I thought while playing. This would be better with mods. Which is a sad state because I spent real money on a mod sandbox without the mods.
Yep, I had below Fallout 4 expectations and actually ended up enjoying it more, as I highly value the RPG aspects. It’s still a completely mediocre RPG, but it has a huge sandbox and a ton of potential.
If Bethesda games are so mediocre, why are they so popular among players who love to put hundreds of hours into them? I can’t imagine them all playing total conversion mods.
It’s become such a custom to poop on Bethesda for making “shallow”, “uninteresting” games that still everybody talks about. As if there weren’t enough real flaws in their games to give them heat for.
Because mediocrity and popularity go hand in hand, it’s the profit motive at work. Being largely inoffensive and generally palatable is profitable.
That’s not the definition of mediocrity. Trying to appeal to a bigger audience doesn’t make a game mediocre in the same way not every niche game has the potential of being a masterpiece just by not being that much likeable.
Some games are popular and good.
What’s good and what’s popular do not necessarily align. Removing “complicated” features for the sake of mass appeal makes the game worse, but more profitable, much of the time.
Also not true. Complexity alone doesn’t make a good game / movie / book / piece of art. And lack thereof doesn’t make anything worse.
Why is it that when many people like a thing because that thing appeals to masses, it’s automatically categorised as lower quality?
Nobody seriously claimed Starfield to be the game of all games. It’s good. It’s fine. It’s not perfect. So what?
The Best RPG list is basically Baldur’s Gate 3, and four more games to make it look like it has competition. It doesn’t.
I still think TotK is a better game overall than BG3.
For me it came pretty close between the two but eventually BG3 came out on top. Totk was great but after 200+ hours I was done with Totk. I currently have almost 200 hours in BG3 and I feel like there’s still so much more to play. I also feel like most of my issues with BG3 (like the poor performance in act 3 and some questlines breaking) are things Larian will fix while the issues with Totk (no rebinds, not being able to infuse weapons from inventory, menus in general, almost everything related to the sage powers) are unlikely to get fixed.
Completely agree, TotK could really use some serious QoL improvements.
And maybe a less brutally aged console to play it on.
Yuzu is all you need!
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I played 25hrs of Starfield out of which 20 felt the exact same
I will admit to carrying most Koroks for several minutes rather than trying to make another vehicle out of bits that aren’t all there.
I can’t help but think they wanted me to be a bit more elaborate than just gluing the poor little guy to a horse harness.
BG3 certainly needed a few extra months to bake. There’s still a bit where you can get trapped in a conversation with Mol in Act 1 because as soon as you come out of the cutscene, you’re instantly in range of her to start the dialogue again.
Apparently they released early to beat Starfield, which is hilarious because I’ve seen few games so shat on this year.
Just an FYI in case you’re still playing. There is a feature of you keep playing that lets you build things without the source objects being there, and spending a bit of the ore you get. This trivialises all the korok things by just sticking them to a hoverbike haha
Yeah, I discovered that quite late on.
I do think ability unlock quests should be highlighted in this sort of game. I didn’t even go and get the master sword for ages, because I thought that quest was the end of the game (and indeed when I went to the quest I thought was the end, went deep down into the actual end game area by mistake, and only got deterred by a giant enemy I couldn’t kill).
Depends entirely on how much you care about story and characters.
I guess, but that’s not the kind of game that TotK is. The star of BG3 is the characters, where the star of TotK is the world.
Right, and whether one game is “better” than the other depends on which thing a person likes more.
Yes, which is why I started my comment with “I still think”…
You think BG3 is better. This is fine.
They’re both 10/10.
I actually didn’t say whether I liked one or the other better. I’d probably pick TotK overall because it has more replayability (without having to start everything over), but if I’m in the mood for a story game, BG3 is the obvious choice.
I have not played it. I love scifi and open world games, but the trailers never spoke to me.
The universe looked so generic. I know Bethesda tried to force the label of “NASApunk” (whatever that means) but it just ended up with the same aesthetic of all those DeviantArt pages where people draw angular, scalloped metal scifi greeble over modern pictures. I didn’t feel any kind of vision coming out and grabbing me.
That’s aside from all the optimization and technical issues that I hear are bad even by Bethesda standards.
I watched part one of a play through. The moment I heard United colonies and Freestar Collective. I knew it was going to be the most generic space setting possible.
I’m a huge Bethesda fan and I absolutely love everything bethesda.
I can unfortunately say that many people will not be impressed with this showing. Outside of a few key characters, most NPCs are forgettable. Most quest designs are basic, and some are outright stupid - like some stranger just giving you the keys to unlock everything.
Skyrim has so much storytelling and “oh wow” moments.
You might find 5-6 of them in the 100+ hours you play. Not to say that won’t change in the future.
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I’m curious what the design, and reaction to, of Starfield might say about what we’ll expect from ES6. For three games now (Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield), have been marked by Settlement building and Radiant quests.
While radiant quests were there in Skyrim, in these later games it felt a lot like Bethesda were making it a core part of the mission design structure. There are a lot of blurred lines in Starfield that make it difficult to tell them apart. (That’s more a comment on main missions being so generic than the radiant quests being so good, unfortunately).
Settlement building seems to be a core part of Bethesda’s DNA now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the narrative follows a Kingmaker style where you build up a settlement of rebels over time or similar. I imagine the other ES staples will be tied to this too, Thieves Guild = establishing a branch within your new settlement to attack Big Bad Evil Vs joining an established one etc.
I really wonder how much of this poor reaction to Starfield makes its way through to actual change, but my feeling is ES6 will have a lot of hype, but similar feelings of disappointment. I hope I’m proved wrong.
I don’t see settlement building as a core part of Starfield, I am 160h in (NG+3) and have not touched settlement building at all. It is a feature of the game, but it is completely optional.
I can’t imagine Beth cares about game awards as long as their sales are good.
It would get them some more downloads, but it might just be too difficult for them to achieve since their games are all the embodiment of “Jack of all trades, master of none.”
The thing is that a lot of players like it that way, but it won’t ever win any awards.
Bethesda did not over promise anything, didn’t over hype. They said they wanted to create Skyrim in space, and that is exactly what Starfield is. For better or for worse.
Starfield being a disappointment to some is only because those players over hyped themselves.
Don’t worry Bethesda, you can try again at next year’s game awards after you’ve fixed the bugs and modders have added the features!
after
you’vethe modders have fixed the bugsLet’s not give developers the habit of relying on modders to finish their games. I’m tired of studios releasing half ass games
From what I understand they even fucked with the engine so much that they made modding even harder now and for whatever reason they’re not releasing the mod tools any time soon so the big names aren’t even trying to mod the game…
It’s like they looked at what made all their previous titles popular, looked at the community, and said “nah, fuck that. What the people really want is no mod support, 6 distinct POIs, and TONS of loading screens.”
Sorry to be unclear, I was being sarcastic and agree with you. The awards are rightfully based on what is actually released, which discourages this habit.
Gotcha, sadly, these are some people’s sentiment regarding AAA studios. Modders are a blessing but then these companies find ways to exploit the passion of their community and fans.
And year after that, and the year after that, and so on for the next 15 years as they re-release it.
They don’t need to rerelease it.
Skyrim Special edition released in 2016 and is still one of the most played games on Steam. (place 69, nice)
I really regret thinking the extra time to polish would result in a game where we don’t need modders to make things decent. The mod tools aren’t even out and people have rebalanced multiple systems to be way better than Bethesda came up with.
Painfully average is how I’d describe it. There’s games with better graphics, better RPG elements, better open world, better space sim, better procedural generation use, better writing, better any one thing (except maybe ship building?). For a game that promised it all it’s turned out to be your average jack of all trades, master of none.
It still strikes all the checks I was looking for, whereas the alternatives might be better in some ways but flunk or are completely absent in others. I’m never gonna let GOTY tags determine what I enjoy.
So, The Outer Worlds of 2023?
Played both, and I’d argue that Outer World’s is significantly stronger if only for its companions. Starfield I sunk a good few hours into and I struggle to remember one name. Starfield made me the Main Character and there wasn’t much room for anyone else. Outer Worlds has some pretty fun companion side-quests.
Starfield wins at the sheer quantity of ideas it threw at the wall, Outer Worlds for the decent to good quality of the ideas it threw at the wall. Neither was brilliant, but on my personal preference Outer Worlds has way stronger bones leading into the sequel.
Nah, Outer Worlds was pretty good. Writing and freedom of choice were stellar, RPG aspects were also really well done, the game was just short and felt small. Starfield doesn’t have any aspects that were actually good, everything is average at best.
What’s the point in making a game “as stable as possible”,
when it’s not even fun?
Aren’t you just polishing shit at that point?It is more stable than their other releases, but that’s a very low bar.
I’d never call it stable without that very important context.
Plus, it doesn’t pass that bar by more than a few inches.
I love Starfield, not as much as I love Skyrim or even Morrowind, but I really love it.
I am at 160ish hours and have seen only a small amount of the quests and barely touched the base or ship building part. There is so much in the game and with the innovative spin on new game plus I am able to build my own narrative again and again. I can play the perfect angle in one NG+ and a devil in another, I can be the freedom loving Ranger in the next, a mad loner who only interacts with others as much as needed to finish his perfect planetary base, or a starship fanatic who wants to collect and/or build the best ships.
You don’t have those kinds of freedom with Baldurs Gate 3 or other RPGs, you can’t really leave or mostly ignore the narratives of those games to create your own, not on the scale as it is possible with Starfield.
Starfields quests are fun, yes they are all separate from each other but that is in my eyes a good thing in this case as it allows to play the game as you like.
All the quests are like basic Lego blocks, you can connect them together in any way you want but they don’t change each other but that’s not needed as I have my own narrative and stories in my mind for this run or character.
Sure, games like Baldurs Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2.0 have better storytelling, better NPCs, but they are at the same time extremely limited and narrow experiences, sure you have side quests and all but once played the game that’s mostly it.
Starfields freedoms come with limits like the loading screens sure, but that is a price I am willing to pay for having a sandbox like universe to explore and roleplay in.
As a pure entertainment product, that can be consumed without any own creativity, is Baldurs Gate better, without doubt. But as a expansion tool for your imagination, that’s where Starfield (or any other Bethesda RPG) shines.
But as a end note: What have the Starfield developers consumed when they created the utterly bad and boring temple “puzzles”. In Todd’s name WHY???
You clearly haven’t played baldur’s gate and shouldn’t make comparisons based on your limited experience with it.
I have played and completed it, very recently, and I stand to my words. BG3 has a great story and it was fun to play once. But it is not a game I will play again, at least not for years. BG3 is like a good movie, impressive and great story telling but after I seen it once it is done and will go on the shelf.
That’s where Starfield differs, in BG3 I command great written characters through adventures, in Starfield I play more or less an avatar of myself but on a Spaceship. And that is something I come back to again and again, just like I go back to Skyrim, Morrowind or Fallout for years now.
Maybe you have Not realized just how much your choices affect the “linear Story” and how much permutation there is in follow up quests or alternate pathways through the same quest. I guess thats the beauty of it. Most of the quests an Narrative fit into each other so neat One might suspect this way was the only possible way, just because of how good it is presented.
Yes, but that still is like reading the same book but with a few pages changed. I am still only moving characters through a stage play, not roleplaying.
I can’t have a completely changed or different way to play the game or be myself/anything in the world of the game.
Both games are great but they can’t really be compared, not much more as you could compare a high budget musical with a high budget improv theatre play. Sure both are plays on a theatre stage (or RPG in case of the games) but beside that they don’t have really much in common.
But maybe it is just to complicated for me to fully express or explain what I mean as I am not a native speaker and I am therefore limited in my words and formulations.
As a pure entertainment product, that can be consumed without any own creativity, is Baldurs Gate better, without doubt. But as a expansion tool for your imagination, that’s where Starfield (or any other Bethesda RPG) shines.
You should seriously, seriously go play BG3.
You don’t have those kinds of freedom with Baldurs Gate 3 or other RPGs, you can’t really leave or mostly ignore the narratives of those games to create your own, not on the scale as it is possible with Starfield.
Seriously, BG3. (Between Dark Urge, custom character choices, etc, go.)
I have played it and I liked it. But after completing it with one character I have no intention of doing another play through anytime soon.
Yes you have different character choices but in the end it is always the same linear story. Yes, you could say the same about Starfield but it is not. In Starfield if I want I can ignore the main quest more or less completely and play a bounty hunter who only builds his base to have a place for his collection of coffee cups he takes from every place he goes.
In BG3 they give you predefined experience (now in Dark Urge flavour) which is great for telling a story but not so great for creating a world to really roleplay in.
Both games are fun for what they are, they are just not fun in the same way for everyone.
I think i See your point now with the example of the bounty hunter. The point that most People are making is thta starfield is a really blank canvas where you can Insert your own Narrative into a lot of Actions but the game does Not react towards that Narrative, while BG3 does react to some of your RP reasons and all the other reasons for your RP that the game cannot predict, it cannot react to and therefore feel unsupported.
That is a valid Take that Bethesda games have Solid setting in which People can choose internal Roleplay but this does Not meant other games where the game also gives you external Stimulation to Roleplay certain aspects Limit your creativity. For my playtrough there were several decisions which where reflected in the World but also other principles that i made up, that only influenced my decisions passivly without beeing spelled out in the Texts. For example i choose a knowdledge hungry Wizard which made me Do queationable choice s with devils even tho 2 People of my Party already suffered under devils. No choice spelled out “Gimme All knowledge of the Planes what ever the Cost” but thats where my own internal RP made the choice more fitting than other.
Man its really Hard to express my thoughts on this using a foreign languages. I hope my point comes across
Yes, I can grasp what you mean.
It is a role-playing on a different level, and with that it has its own merits and shortcomings.
Baldurs Gate 3 is a role play on a lower, more character centric, level which limits the freedom of the player but allows for the game to have a tighter, more interconnected storytelling.
Starfield is a role play on a higher, more player centric, level which allows for way more personal freedom of the player at the costs of having a story with pieces flying loose through the air, so to speak.
The venn diagram of people who like both of those types will most likely don’t have a huge overlap.
Neither of those games are bad, they are just fundamentally different.
Your love for the game is valid but criticisms of the game are also valid. The biggest flaw starfield has is the massive amount of gameworld it provides. In skyrim, CP2077, BG3, Morrowind, Zelda, and whatever else you want to think of, you can pick a direction and go.
In nearly every case, the game is designed to take you somewhere, give you something, reward you for straying off the main path. In Starfield, both space and planet side, youre likely to run into a whole lot of nothing. Which is realistically fine, the universe is already a vast amount of nothing, but in game design that makes for a boring and lackluster RPG and that is the biggest problem SF has. That doesnt take away from the players like you who want this experience though, but thats kind of why Space Sim games are a niche experience.
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I am at 160ish hours and have seen only a small amount of the quests
So you’ve just been having fun with the most basic of systems that are not much different from all previous games, while barely having touched the things most people are complaining about? The mechanics and stability are pretty good. It’s the bland stories within the uninspired quests that are a major source of disappointment.
And to say only a Bethesda RPG does while BG3 doesn’t have the kinds of roleplaying you’re describing tells me you haven’t actually played BG3. Or any actually good RPG for that matter.
What you are trying to say is that Starfield is a sandbox RPG, while BG3 is a Linear Story RPG.
Both are fun in their own ways. You just vibe more with the sandbox aspect.
I bet you also enjoy Minecraft for the same reasons.
Yeah, I like Minecraft 🤣
It got a best audio nominee at the golden joysticks and a best rpg at the game awards. Taking up air that could have been used for actual worthy contenders but big money’s get the auto nomination
It definitely doesn’t deserve best RPG.
It might win the most “it’s alright I guess”, game of the year award.
Yeah, it isn’t the best game, so it doesn’t belong between the nominations.
Also because so many amazing games came out this year.
But that doesn’t make it a bad game though. Had plenty of fun with it.
I enjoyed it for about 70h, then i got sick of all the loading.
I just need properly updated skyrim. Better graphics, similar amount of loading screens, better npc’s, better mechanics but the same old fantasy setting.
Oh and all the mods, something about sculpting my own vuloptuous barbie doll character to turn into the ultimate killing machine.
What I don’t understand is why it even has loading screens. Surely it would be possible for them to level stream that stuff, after all the actual handcrafted environments are not that big, The rest of the planet is procedurally generated.
Consoles. I blame most of starfields issues on Microsoft and the need to have it work on garbage Xbox. I just wish we could get a game like this without having to cripple the shit out of it so it will work on some shit hardware console… But I get it, most people don’t have a PC that can play most games if they even have a PC at all…
I’m not bitter, you’re bitter! :P
Given the cost of GPUs nowadays I don’t blame them. It used to be reasonable…
Partly the engine.
Bloody hell. I don’t even think i have that many hours in most of the games i consider my favourites
I finished the story and did some sight seeing and tried to build an outpost to make fat stacks but somehow i couldn’t find the right location after 4 hours of searching and that’s when i ditched the game.
I enjoyed it for 3-5 minutes and then it crashed before hitting a save point.
Yeah. It’s a good game. That’s all. Pretty formulaic and not Bethesda’s finest work. Good, but nothing award worthy.
I played it for 30 min and did not enjoy it past the first 10.
Same with me. As soon as I realized that there is no sane way to travel from planet to planet even within the same system without fast travel, I stopped playing the game. Starfield literally made space boring.
Fast travel is the only sane way, without changing the lore and setting of the world, to travel from planet to planet inside of a system. Space is gigantic and even the distance between planets in a system are huge. Travel between planets, without having to wait real time hours or days to arrive, would need some kind of faster than light propulsion, but the only way to travel faster then light in the lore and world setting is with gravjumps.
The only thing I would change with the current space travel is using micro gravjumps animation between planets instead of the normal fly sequence shown when travelling inside of a system.
The designers chose this setting and lore, and could have chosen otherwise for the sake of game experience.
Additionally, there’s no reason for the fast travel to have to be distinct, separate from gameplay, as loading screens.
Elite Dangerous keeps you in your cockpit, replaces the outside view with an animation while it loads the system you’re jumping to. When landing on a planet, there are various “entering the atmosphere” effects on suitable planets to mask swapping from space to the landable planet.
For ED, in-system FTL is time consuming and you can shave off around 25% of the travel time by doing it manually (risking overshooting and having to loop back around), or you can have the ship’s computer do it. ED is multiplayer and you can be yanked from this “supercruise” by players and NPC pirates, so it works mechanically to make the player waste time with it. In Starfield they could show you the ETA and give you the option to skip it or to wander around your ship during it while the ship does its thing.
If you’re in a menu on your ship when FTL would end with autopilot, stop the clock before leaving FTL, pop up a message in the corner saying the ship is ready to drop from FTL, and let the player exit it manually from the cockpit so you can’t get ambushed while you’re on the other side of your ship.
No changes to setting or lore needed, except that there’s a basic autopilot now.
As far as programming that goes, the engine already uses loading during gameplay when you’re on the overworld, and they have done that since Oblivion. Overworld is set up in chunks, they keep a certain number in each direction around you loaded, and load/unload while you move around.
I won’t say it would be easy to expand that background loading functionality, but I will say that they’ve had many many years to attempt it.
Thats sounds amazing, too bad i dont enjoy Sci-Fi
Kinda seems like they used the lore to justify the load screens, and not the other way around to me. But that’s just a theory… A Game Theory!
So? The writers weren’t forced to make there only be grav drives
And Tolkien was not forced to hinder the Hobbits from inventing full automatic guns, but the Lord of the Rings would be completely different if he hadn’t.
And the same is true for Starfield and other options of FTL. It would be a completely different game, with a completely different story.
Starfield is hard sci-fi at it’s core, with the exception of the grav drive and the powers/unity, a near future setting that is in most parts plausible and possible, a realistic game set in a realistic universe.
I am just bummed about it that’s all. I feel like it would have served the game better if it had mass effect style fast travel menu because realistic space travel doesn’t add a lot to the game if you can only fight in space but not travel from place to place.
They could implement a timewarp mechanic like Kerbal Space program does and just speed up time.
But that’s more or less what they have done with the flyby animation shown when travelling inside of a system. You could interpret that as watching a rapidly speed up version of the, boring because space is a huge and empty void, travel.
Can’t really form an opinion about an RPG in 30 minutes playtime. Hell, I doubt you even know Starfield has magic powers.
It was influenced by the internet calling it bad, you are allowed to admit it.
Just don’t call it your opinion.
When a game like Hardspace has better writing than your game, you fucked up.
Which is not a knock on Hardspace by-the-by. It’s just that writing isn’t the focus of that game, and even Blackbird said, “let’s take a big swing at this anyways”.
And the early access people hated the plot too.
Yeah, I played it back to back with cyberpunk TPL and it felt pretty sterile and soulless by comparison.
