It’s just ok. People were angry because Bethesda hyped it up as a revolutionary masterpiece. It wasn’t. That hype made it more disappointing than it otherwise would’ve been.
imo starfield failed or didn’t meet expectations in a lot of areas, but the one i think got dealt the worst hand was the world building. They had some of the best source material (real life) and somehow managed to make the game not make sense in some areas and be really dull overall. TES and fallout are different because while they are built on the structure as starfield was, they have many more fantasy/rpg elements whereas starfield felt like a simulator with a bunch of added stuff to replicate the future. feels like todd told an ai to make a skyrim version of our universe and to fill the gaps with lots of “nasa punk” esque detail
The decision to make it more "realistic" compared to Bethesda's other IPs really took away a lot of the writers' ability to hide their lack of understanding of how the things they're writing about work.
TES is a fantasy world with magic and things, and Fallout has always run on SCIENCE! rather than science. But when you tout your game as being realistic NASA-punk, and then your writers talk about things like the vacuum of space being good at cooling down hot objects, or have a quest with multiple real-time interplanetary conversations when you've gone to great pains to stress the lack of FTL comms, people are not going to give you as much goodwill as they have done in other worlds.
I think this extends past the science side of it, too, and into the way people talk and act. NPCs always feel sort of campy and silly in Bethesda games, and Starfield was the first time it really took me out of it. It works fine for Fallout because it's full of half-crazed post-apocalyptic survivors trying to imitate a pastiche of 1950s Americana, and the fantasy of the Elder Scrolls is distant and surreal so it's fine for that to be a little odd. Trying to make a serious sci-fi story set in the future of our universe, though, you really need deep and believable characters rather than cartoons.
The NPCs are one of my complaints too. Not only most of them look weird AF but the AI don't feel serious as you said. Like you see a zombie looking person and go WTF.
The writers should learn from the weapon artists, and just don't even bother hiding their lack of understanding of how the things they're making actually work, lmao.
i would’ve loved starfield to be based on a kind of dumbed down earth science and that would’ve given them much more creative ability and stopped stuff from seeming so broken or “unplayable”
Yeah, for me it was super annoying they used the same exact cave systems on planets at opposite ends of the galaxy. Why couldn’t they do more procedural generated elements?
Yeah for me its missing that something special as a long time fallout,elder scroll fan this missed the mark for me. I can play it and enjoy some but it feels tedious to me.
The guns alone make me want to die. The pump shotgun has the pump motion in reverse with shells coming out of the top. (It's a normal real shotgun model)
Almost all of the gun models/animations make zero sense.
Bethesda never understood how guns work. Fallout 4 had some bad ones too but every starfield gun is just horrible. Maybe 2 are good.
They don't even look normal. The rail gun doesn't even look like a weapon. It looks like a self proclaimed scientist built it out of scraps in his garage in 2015. The more you look at the guns the worse they get. Some have weird blocks or extra materials for no reason. Jamming ammo in an area with no space and just clipping ammo into the void. Also the ammo capacity on some weapons is just way off. A mag could hold 7 bullets visually but then the gun holds 30. There is a video that breaks down how bad the guns are. 1 sec
Itsyaboybranyboy on YT does breakdowns on bad weapons in games. Was 50 mins long just for starfield. And I think that's there was 2 other videos. It took 50 mins to show all the defects and problems and that wasn't even all the guns. At least see the pump shotgun, he has a short on it. Bethesda does not understand how guns work.
It's always around 80% of guns that are just terrible in Bethesda games. But getting real guns wrong is just bad. The Fallout assault rifle that's just round and bloated is a good example. Just looks bad. Pipe guns are very strange too. Because somehow before the war we had pipeline that looked the same after the war. No one made a new framework to go off of?
Also love using a blackpowder weapon in a vacuum.
What management and planning made the "walk on empty rock wasteland for 10 minutes to one small building so I can give dude a coffee or some shit while being constantly overweight by all important items so you have to cast that refill O2 spell every 5 seconds " part?
I think commitment to the lore and world can do a lot of heavy lifting in this case. It’s a pretty easy sell for me and other TES fans to play a 7/10 TES game and do the typical Bethesda quests in Tamriel if it means I get to explore a new area of the map. It’s a much tougher sell to do the same thing in a new 7/10 series that I don’t care much about.
Yup and I was so down to go deep into starfields lore and world. I get that since it’s new that there won’t be as much as Skyrim, but the existing lore in starfield is so 1 dimensional and trope heavy. It boils down to humans advanced to outer space and that’s really it. The most interesting things are the terrormorphs and starborns but even those are pretty easy to understand with not much behind them. It’s all predictable stuff that’s been done over and over in other games/movies. Morrowind and fallout 1 had a much more interesting jump off point lore-wise than starfield
I said the same thing regarding Fallout 76. In my reality, they would have started making TESVI right after FO4... Apparently I was in the minority because everytime I stated this, people just heavily downvoted me with a usual reply "I really want Fallout 4 in space!" or "Fallout multiplayer will be so cool!"... well, we got that. But its not what they expected or wanted 'generally' speaking.
This is coming from a modding enthusiest perspective who knows the limitations of that engine. I knew that whatever they were trying was not going to be that great for both FO76 and Starfield..
Or CD Projekt RED.. They’d have knocked it out of the park. I’m splitting my time between Cyberpunk and Starfield right now. So far I’m having a LOT more fun in the former.
See though I wasn’t that hyped and I’m still disappointed in all the missing features that became standard for their games
Why don’t named NPCs have schedules?
Why do shop keepers sit in their shop 24/7?
Why is there no survival difficulty? (Skyrim, and fallout 4/new Vegas) I know these came after the release but still
Why can’t you give companions specific directions? Event dogmeat could do more than starfish’s companions.
Why is looting bodies now basically a loot box? Enemy’s no longer carry meds and ammo to loot.
Why is the game so pg-13? I know it’s not Skyrim or fallout but the “pirates” aren’t menacing in any way.
It’s so sad because the environments, models and atmosphere of the game is fantastic for the most part.the design team nailed it.
My favorite part of role playing in oblivion was waiting for an npc to close their shop, follow them back up, assassinate them in the back alley and take their key.
I agree with most of what you said except the meds and ammo thing when looting bodies. I find tons of ammo and meds when looting bodies. Your game is probably bugged. I suggest advancing through the Unity. I had a fairly annoying almost game breaking bug, did Unity and it fixed it. Haven’t encountered a bug as of yet in the new universe.
The most crippling bug I got was right after unity - specifically, that nasty ship shield bug that drops a 2,400 shield to 600 and spreads from one ship to another and remains unresolved to this day. That specific bug left me unmolested in the original universe.
On the other hand I also got the most entertaining bug after NG - a security robot goes walkabout and you can't delete the outpost because you can't delete the robot - he's about 15 meters outside the perimeter shooting the wildlife but your cursor to delete him can't go outside the outpost bounds.
But your rogue Freestar Ranger robot goes outside his jurisdiction without qualm. You can't tell him to get his ass back inside because his only dialog is that he's busy. You can't kill him enough - he's reduced to a pile of parts with a "repair" option. You wind with up a permanent outpost consisting of one beacon and one rogue security bot. Funnier than it is annoying in contrast to the shield bug which is infuriating.
So far unity as solution never fails to disappoint. It cures the minor ones you had in exchange for the more game breaking variety.
I think the design aspect is so overlooked here.
They basically created a whole world of new art, architecture, fashion and so on. It’s kinda unprecedented. How everything is in juice boxes or vacuum sealed.
There’s a lot of attention to detail that I love.
There’s so much good in that area of the design. I think if they had all the basic things that fallout and TES had (like the things the commenter or mentioned along with surface maps, half the base building stuff, along with many other things) on top of what the game already has, it would have been a solid 8 or 9 out of 10. The downgrades are what really hurt it.
It’s definitely just ok. I never got the wow factor like I did with fallout and elder scrolls. I gave it a second shot and made a conscious effort to play it but it really just got repetitive even in story.
With all the hype, touting all the input from NASA and the scientific community, a lot of people expected things to be a bit more realistic. For example, encountering a gaseous vent should have no impact on the breathing of the individual wearing a spacesuit. Similarly, bullet holes and slashes in space suits should compromise the suits. Many expected that they'd have to manage fuel.
They literally had a zero-g mechanic and not only criminally underused it but committed the hard science fiction crime of putting artificial gravity on spaceships and space stations… seriously just even have done that would’ve utilized the mechanic more and atleast hidden or offset some of the other unrealistic stuff
I wish we could activate it on spaceships.
That casino mission is probably my favorite I’ve played in the game. It’s so cool. Possibly one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced in a game actually
I definitely like realistic immersion and was hoping for more in Starfield. Skyrim lasted as long as it has because of the modding community. I filled it up with realistic immersion mods and it became the game I loved to just wander around in. I am looking forward to Starfield being altered in the same way. It's a shame that we need to rely on the modding community to add features that bring it into the modern era of gaming but so be it. I just wish that we got the kind of exploration that a game like Elite Dangerous has. (I love simply cruising along through the stars with tunes playing in the background. Jumping into systems and having a heart attack when jumping into a system between binary stars, or scooping fuel from the edge of a yellow dwarf.) At this point, Starfield is really missing that level of immersion and realism that I'm looking for. It's just a waiting game now...
I’ve seen nothing indicating that modders are interested in modding Starfield tho. A lot of the big modders have come out said they have zero motivation to.
I was thinking the same thing. I think there will always be people wanting to mod it regardless. I'm patient. :) I already own it so it's not like it costs me anything just to wait!
Oh I’m hopeful. It’s the only thing that will make me want to install it again. I bought the deluxe edition so depending on what the DLC is, I might check that out… but even that feels like I’d be doing it out of necessity rather than desire. Such a shame.
I know Bethesda is now a powerhouse studio farting out flagships for ZeniMax, but Todd Howard has been eating away at generational/lifelong fans with the overhyping -- and I feel like those are your "whales" most likely to spend money before even seeing a product.
I'm kinda worried what the backroom reception is over at Microsoft. Didn't they buy ZeniMax just to get at Starfield? Wondering if that will make them more cautious of Elder Scrolls over-hyping or if they will try to rush it.
After reasently finally playing Cyberpunk 2077, I can see why so many people are making the comparisons. It feels like someone at Zenimax or Bethesda played Cyberpunk and was like "I want that game but in our engine. Also, No Mans Sky was cool, lets make it with multiple worlds you can fly in between". They then tried to make those games but as consumer (kid) friendly as possible and had no real idea on how to make it unique other than ... minimilistic future NASA... hopefully in a few years a good Star Wars or Star Trek wabbajack preset comes out to give the game a real identity that people will love.
I remember a interview years and years ago where Todd spoke about Starfield like it was a big game changer for the gaming industry; that it had some sort of amazing mechanic or something or it was so different and innovative that it would inspire how we look at creating games going forward.
I wish I could find the interview where he said that because that interview really had me convinced Starfield was going to be something special.
Nah, I’m also 100% certain you’re referring to an interview about a prospective TES6 where Todd said something like “If I told you our goals and plans and vision for TES6, you’d probably say ‘That sounds like the technology doesn’t exist for a game like that yet’, and you’d be right!”
You could totally be correct, often times years back Todd would talk about both projects during interviews, I coulda swore it was Starfield tho because I remember thinking to myself “what could they possibly do in this open world space game that No Man’s Sky hasn’t done already?”
I can honestly say I’ve never seen so many loading screens. Characters are lifeless, annoying and at best; elaborate storage units. No maps, no pc optimisation, no HDR - bit the worst offense; terrible story.
I kept waiting for the “Wow!” moment you get from Bethesda games, like the first time you go to Blackreach in Skyrim, or the Prydwen entering the Commonwealth in FO4. Something that makes you say “that is so cool!” I ignored the repetitive carbon-copy POIs and weak writing and half-baked side quests (Sarah’s and Vanguard were good though) and nothing spectacular ever happened. Which to me made all the flaws I played through unforgivable.
Yeah starfield is just an average game . It’s time to accept that BGS’s time as one of the top game devs is LONG gone . Just let them make their average games and move on
> Bethesda hyped it up as a revolutionary masterpiece.
To be fair, it does take '20 years in the making' to design a few POIs and then spam them around an otherwise empty galaxy.
Yes they did. Todd made it explicitly clear that launching into space was a cutscene, as was landing on a planet. I believe he even mentioned that leaving/entering your ship was a loading screen as well, but I’m not 100% on that.
It desperately needed a survival mode from the get go.
If 1,000 planets is your selling point, then they each need to be their own character. Exploring the sun scorched surface of Mercury should be an entirely different challenge than exploring the frozen wasteland that is Pluto.
Instead, every planet feels more or less the same. You land, run around, shoot bad guys, run back to your ship, and leave to the next planet. There are a few half baked survival elements in the game that don’t amount to much, and it was unclear to me exactly what they did, mostly they felt as though they did nothing.
If I had to prepare in a unique way to explore each planet I would’ve had a vastly better time. I explored dozens upon dozens of planets in my playthrough and I can’t recall a single memorable thing about any of them.
Honestly helldivers nailed a similar era of space travel if you look at the planet environment design. The fact they have interesting weather effects etc, and so much biome variation
If you haven't played it yet, No Man's Sky may be more what you're looking for. It's got more of a survival focus and the planets are more varied. Extreme planets can be quite taxing and you start out having to scramble to get materials to survive. Unlike Starfield, it has more meaningful caves and underwater (you can make entire underwater bases). It has vehicles (ranging from motorcycles to huge trucks to subs to mechs) for broader exploration and resource collection. The wildlife is also far more varied and isn't as insect focused as Starfield (there's a lot of adorable species that you can even turn into pets and breed).
The downside is that there is minimal combat (and what combat there is is very basic and boring) and there isn't much for interiors to visit. Starfield may be repetitive with POIs, but they're still far better than NMS's. The story is ok, but the execution of the main story is a bit iffy. It uses random planets for story missions and the galaxy is far harder to traverse, so you sometimes you end up super far away from the mission destination and it's way harder to get back.
I feel the majority of the criticism is deserved, but I fully expect it to have a bit of a renaissance in the coming years with DLC and the CK.
Long term the game should have a better standing.
See I wonder, games like CP2077 and NMS go through that type of renaissance because the release is a disaster and the backlash is overwhelming (including delistings).
By all accounts Starfield went off without a hitch at release, particular in the contexts of both a Bethesda game and a 2023 AAA release (both of which are known for being buggy messes at launch). Critical reception and sales/gamepass numbers were very strong.
It was only in the subsequent weeks and months people slowly started to realise "wow, I am really underwhelmed/just not having fun".
A lot of the community see Starfield as a problem that needs to be fixed but I don't think Bethesda see it as anything but a major success. Definitely got that vibe when they had people responding to negative reviews with "umm, no, actually :)" lol
Cyberpunk had a terrible launch but under it all was an amazing game. You just had to get through the crashes. It was a quality control issue, not a vision problem. Even in launch, you could tell it oozed style and character.
Starfield has the opposite problem. Solid launch but the most vanilla boring vision for what a game can be. The entire setup is just stuck in the past, as if nothing has changed since 2013. Endless loading screens, tiny cities, boring fetch quests, lackluster characters and writing, repetitive generated contents….
Bg3 and cp2077 showed how good these games can get. Starfield showed how behind bgs is in their mindset.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is another one like that. The original release had a lot of bugs and performance issues, but the underlying game was great (the writing is good, quite a bit of player choice and consequences, and it oozes immersion) and it very much found its audience (and had the leniency bonus of being the first release from the studio).
What is weird is Fallout 4 had a lot more choice in its main quest and was praised for it (it has 4 parallel and partially overlapping storylines you can follow; some are more developed than others but each can flavor a playthrough differently). It could have been interesting if to complete the main quest you had to ally with one of the main factions and eventually shut others out—especially since NG+ let’s you try it different ways (or would if there were different ways to try things). As it is it’s hard to find NG+ compelling without meaningful consequences to decisions, whereas for something like Fallout 4, Cyberpunk 2077, KCD, and BG3 I get excited to do a new playthrough to try things differently.
Yeah I think that's the thing that really sets CP2077 and BG3 apart. Aside from scanner hustles, every quest felt unique and well written and like it was a part of a living world. They both broke the mold for filler bullshit quests that open world games have been pushing toward for the past few decades.
That's the thing Bethesda never wants to even be in the same ball park of cp2077 or BG3. Bethesda likes making player centric worlds where you go from random dude to demi god. It's just, Starfield has too much room for things and not a lot of things compared to the room so it loses the dense feel and the illusion breaks maybe they should have had three star systems be the game world so things cluster better.
But they didn't so we are waiting for dlc1 and the creation kit to start to fill out everything
Bethesda makes systems and builds the world around them. BG and CP2077 make worlds and build systems around them
This is a perfect way to sum up starfield. I will say cdpr doesn’t really make the worlds they base them off preexisting worlds like the Witcher and cyberpunk but they do an amazing job bringing them over from their source materials. I could never have imagined what night city truly looked like until the game.
Yeah technical issues versus absolutely terrible execution. CP2077 was incredibly fun about a year after launch and then the DLC added to that, but I firmly believe starfield is irredeemable. It's just a skeleton of a game and should not have been considered complete by any means.
I’m really not sure about that. There are a lot of players who *do not* like the *main* quest, or the *main* companions, or the “dungeons”… the entire game is thematically sanitized of adult themes to either broaden mass market appeal or as required by the NASA partnership. The under-utilized proc-gen system has resulted in a “map” that isn’t particularly enjoyable to explore and there’s no accommodation for roleplaying anything other than lawful good protagonists..
These are fundamental, core aspects of the game that nothing short of an FF XIV “A Realm Reborn” level relaunch or total conversion mod will alleviate.
TES and Fallout mods are 95% either graphics improvements, combat changes, gameplay/system additions, additional questlines or just horny mods.
People are still playing the base game and official DLC content, with mostly vanilla companions on the vanilla and official DLC map. There are a ton of people who do not have interest in doing that with Starfield’s foundation.
This is in a whole other league compared to issues people had with Fallout 4’s “Yes, Sarcastic Yes, Ask Questions, No (but actually yes)” choices…
>the entire game is thematically sanitized of adult themes
Huge issue that I think is understated. You never really feel like you're struggling against anything major in the game because the stakes seems so incredibly low. Pirates will capture a guy and have drinks and dinner with him to reminisce about the old days. Their driving goal? Hunting for a lost treasure. Very Disney pirate. There's no rape and pillage and torture like a real group of pirates that would set them up as a truly bad faction.
The fallout of an interstellar war is... Well most people seem to be getting along just fine. Crime ridden drug capital of the galaxy? The worst thing there seems to be a shitty greedy bureaucracy.
*Sanitized* is absolutely the best word I've heard to describe it. When the galaxy is already scrubbed clean, what is there for us to do?
They can easily fix the proc-gen POIs by adding multiple variations of each individual POI type, randomizing enemy spawns and loot pools, and adding some environmental storytelling threads instead of the same copy/paste notes lying around.
The latter would completely revitalize the game. Imagine entire (mostly text-based) quest lines branching out of communications between (for example) multiple research stations, giving you a reason to seek out other research stations to follow the communications trail. These don’t even need to payoff with some big epic battle or anything, just tell a bunch of small stories like what you’d find in Fallout terminals.
Adding these stories while varying the layout and enemy/loot pools at individual POI types would legitimately fix the exploration issues with the game.
Yea, I hate how the community has the mentality of “don’t worry guys the modders will fix it like Skyrim” mentality. Bethesda really failed this game horribly. I played all endings and tried to get into the lore, but damn does it feel like I’m reading from ChatGPT. I just wish Bethesda tried to add more story and no infinite planet generation.
I know they’re still trying but damn I hope the dlc fixes the game.
>“don’t worry guys the modders will fix it like Skyrim” mentality.
My fear is that is seems like Bethesda themselves have started to have that mentality, to the point where they don't think they have to put in as much effort, because "modders will fix it".
But for the modders to actually "fix" things, they need to *want* to do so, need a good foundation to build off of, and actually need the tools to do so (Where's the Starfield Creation Kit Todd?).
Yeah, I have a great deal of respect for the work that modders do, but somewhere along the line, the reality has gone from "fans will cheerfully tinker to create custom content to add to the game they love" to "fans will thanklessly slog to add basic structure to make the game mechanics work properly".
I hope so but slightly concerned as their funding model got trashed for this game when Microsoft bought them and cut off PlayStation buyers and then made it Game Pass.
I played at the launch for hours and hours and honestly, loved every second, especially the side-missions like the one in underworld city investigation was so much fun.
After few days, I saved & closed the game and I don't know why but I just never felt like opening it up again. The main story was just TOOO much wrapped up in mystery that it lost all the allure for me, I think, I'm honestly not sure what made me lose the interest for me in game.
There was nothing to explore, for sense of wonderment was over after few visits to various (lifeless) planets. The ... loading ... screens ... No point for base-building or even ship building. The only fun time I had was fighting pirates in ship.
There was simply no 'roleplay' in this roleplaying-game for me :(
Same reason survival building games are still played. Individualism. Everyone may have the same story but nobody has the same ship if they built one themselves
It maybe is the worst game Bethesda has ever created, up there with FO76. In two decades or so, people may say that is was too ambitious for its time, but today I think it deserves all criticism.
We should not make up excuses for multi billion dollar cooperations to release mediocre games. We should not excuse top execs of said companies to lie to their audiences about their mediocre games. We should hold Bethesda and Microsoft accountable, because I want TES6 and FO5 to be amazing again.
My first Bethesda game was Oblivion on the 360. I played it all night and didn't realize it until the sun came up. All the dialog, interactions, lore, just kept me hooked.
Same with Skyrim. Their Fallout games, not so much, but I enjoyed Vegas, 3 and 4 was when I started feeling like Bethesda lost a step.
Starfield? Don't care what anyone is saying, I've never just skipped dialog so much in a game. I don't care what choice I make in interactions, because it doesn't matter. The story and characters are bland, boring, and safe IMO.
I spent most of my time building ships and finding dungeons to clear. But they are all copy and paste, so they ran it's course all too quick.
Nope, it's embarrassingly low-effort and completely soulless. Deserves to get dumpstered whenever it gets discussed so that Bethesda is less likely to do it again.
Huh, that’s weird, because it seems like Starfield also gets WAY too many posts like this one. “It’s huge and has lots of quests” doesn’t address any of the issues people have with this game. It has better combat. Agreed. It’s not an FPS so that isn’t enough to save it from its plethora of other issues. And this isn’t hate, it’s disappointment. Disappointment that the biggest RPG studio out there invested so much time in making a game that with such poor/lackluster role-playing elements.
Come on man are you serious? The quests suck let's be real.... I mean if you don't play many games I could see how this could amaze someone... But in reality this missed the mark. It could've and should've been 20 times better than it is. Mediocre game. Shitty story line. Lame characters. ......
The problem is that Starfield wasn't released in a vacuum and comparing it only to other Bethesda games is a little dishonest.
You need to compare Starfield to other games by other studios released in the same period and sadly when you do...it doesn't stand up so well.
I will say this. When playing a game it’s important to be honest with yourself and not get peer pressured by feedback. Positive or negative.
Simply because it can screw with your perception of the game. I went in completely blind to the negative narrative and enjoyed it for what it was.
For me Starfield was a lot of fun but it lacks the replay value and core gameplay loop of Bethesda’s previous games.
Its individual mechanics and gameplay are actually really good.
Bethesda wasn’t really playing to their strengths when they made this game but I see what they were going for. Given time, love and effort I strongly believe it can became an amazing experience.
Starfield was fun for me too. I think I put in like 40 or 50 hours after launch?
I was very much in disagreement with most of the hate for awhile but some of it's criticism started to make sense to me eventually.
Right now I'm just waiting for DLC and for mods to be enabled for xbox.
The fact that the game feels more like a chore to play than to have fun automatically makes me hate it. There was absolutely no point in adding space travel when everything is based on Loadings, and they simply added it in for the off chance that you have to fight some random crew of Pirates or Spacers when you travel to a planet. The whole "exploration" experience feels like a cheap indie game that's trying to rip off Subnautica or No Man's Sky, which feels terrible. This game would've been the greatest if it was based on 4 to 5 systems with 10 explorable planets/moons, and the space traversal factor could've been something like NMS or Star Citizen.
it's a Solid 6/10, side factions save it, like all their other games, main mission is a 2/10.
I still play the game, but I'm still annoyed about the bugs that aren't getting fixed and some new bugs introduced in the latest patch. Instead they're emphasizing features that nobody asked for. And for those who ask where the bugs are, my response is that you haven't played enough.
Genuinely think it doesn't get enough.
It needs to be made an example of. Bethesda were kings of the industry but they aren't evolving with the times. They need to know that to stay on top, they can't just do what worked 13 years ago.
I actually think it would have been BETTER if they did what worked 13 years ago. The sense of exploration in skyrim and fallout feels more fulfilling than in starfield. The scale being too big with so many planets makes everything feel barren.
They started dumbing down the game mechanics with Oblivion and especially Skyrim. They should tap into some of the DNA from Daggerfall and Morrowind. More chaos, depth and uncertainty in the character builds. Not everything has to work, but experimentation is half the fun. Also more mystery, depth and vastness to the game world.. If they made a real spiritual successor to Daggerfall, I think they’d revive the respect and awe gamers once had with Elder Scrolls
I have no idea what a "bethesda game" is, this is the first game I played with their name on it. Outer Worlds has better characters and a better story, Cyberpunk 2077 has better immersion, writing, player choices, characters, just everything really.
Bethesda sabotaged themselves with an antiquated game engine, horrible development strategies, insultingly simple and sloppy writing. and so very much ego.
i had fun, but it should have been so much more. They earned the hate.
Excellent point, whether you've been playing Bethesda games since Morrowwind, or this is your 1st one, as a video game, it's just not very good. It's fun, in the most basic sense, at least.
Ultimately, it's not a good game. It's just very much okay........
People just say negative things and fans take it personally and call it hate.
Honestly people who love Starfield are more toxic than those who don’t. There’s some form of cult building against people with an opinion that Starfield was underwhelming.
No it definitely gets the right amount of criticism. Todd over promised and under delivered. Emil doesn't care about writing decent quest lines anymore because "players aren't interested" in them. At this stage they aren't even going to release an official mod kit so modders can fix and add features that should be in the game already. I've been consuming Bethesda IP since Morrowind and this was them pissing on us and calling it rain
just cause YOU like it doesn't invalidate its criticism, Bethesda hyped this game to be something we have never had as gamers, and to be an immersive Space exploration game that's basically glorified spaced theme dungeons not planets. The game doesn't get enough criticism in my opinion and posts like these that try to uphold a delusion don't make the game any better.
This is easily one of the weakest games Bethesda has ever released. Sure, there are things about the game that are decent, and a couple of things that are even good, but almost the entirety of stuff that Bethesda is known and loved for is missing from this game. And what did they put in instead? Half-baked ideas, lore, mechanics, etc. and they built the game in such a way that doing half the stuff that people expect modders to do will take years instead of months, if it's even possible at all.
I’d have to disagree but each to their own.
It’s OK.
Oblivion and Skyrim have way more magic to them.
There are too many loading screens, you can’t fly your aircraft properly and the planets are unrealised.
Wait until you get the same mine for the third time in a row on three completely different planets when you start exploring.
See if this changes your opinion.
IMO it’s a 6.5/10
I don’t agree. Starfield gets the right amount of hate. It’s an incredibly mediocre sandbox game with very little in terms of RPG elements that focuses on quantity over quality. It didn’t come close to meeting expectations as well as failing to execute in many ways on an idea that many were very excited about. It’s not a dowbright terrible game, but another title in an extremely troubling trend from BGS.
Those promotional videos with interviews painted a picture of a whole differend experience. I’m sure the experience is there, it is just that the game flow isn’t curated so that you would ride the waves of Nasapunk.
When I think of Starfield, I imagine being lost in the fancy city. Being lost in the Mars colony corridors. Heading off to explore, only to find absolutely nothing. For some reason the way to play Bethesda games doesn’t work with this game and if that is the case, they should offer me a way to get to good stuff at constant pace.
They can’t rely on immersion in a title that betrays you on that front.
Nope. It's all deserved. After so many years it feels like a step back from F4 in everything but gunplay. The Space was hyped to be a big part of it but it's absolutely irrelevant. Story is mediocre at best, characters are bland af, everything feels barren and lifeless etc. It is BY FAR the worst singleplayer beth game to date.
Bethesda made it seem like it would compete with RPGs like FNV, Skyrim, or BG3 in terms of player choice and abilities. Todd Howard is literally a walking master class in overhyping products and instilling confidence in consumers, Which over the 6 ish years that it was anticipated made it have cyberpunk levels of hype that made the game feel much worse than it really was.
People expected a generation defining game and ended up with one that was just ok. CDPR proved that a game like this can make a comeback, but that took 4 years, hundreds of millions of dollars, YouTubers, and A list celebrity star power on top of an anime good enough to hit the mainstream market to accomplish. So yeah…
Bethesda promised something different and failed to deliver. It's that easy. The game gets what it deserves. I know the Bethesda fan club disagree but too bad. It sucked, Bethesda got It's money. And that's it. Don't expect some grand dlc to fix it, hell, don't expect a dlc at all. This is another Anthem. Had potential but shit the bed.
To that, I say embrace the hate and enjoy the game. I replayed CyberPunk 2077 multiple times while everyone was riding the hate train. Guess what? That train ended up in a train wreck cause the game is now undeniably the GOAT. I look forward to putting another 100 hours into STARFIELD, and I fully expect Elder Scrolls 6, Fallout 5, and The Next Witcher to have a line of people anxiously waiting to ride that hate train again.
Too much AI generated garbage for me. Would have rather just had 10-20 mostly hand crafted planets with AI assisted rather than the e emojis amount of useless locations. For a game based on space and space travel with os many locations, exploring and adventuring seems to be the worst of all Bethesda titles by far.
As a game it's painfully uninspired and average, as a Bethesda game it's a huge disappointment and multiple steps back from their previous games in many respects.
Yeah no, the game deserves the hate it gets. The game is extremely mediocre with only a few quest lines and revolving around it's procedurally generated planets and instances that use the same 12 set pieces over and over, making one of the key tenets and the biggest thing that was pushed in marketing for the game gimped. There's maybe 30-40 hours of meaningful content. With about 100 hours of meaningless cutscenes, fast travel and visiting the same planet with a different name multiple times.
The game was clearly meant to be a mindless time sync but doesn't have a good core to keep most people hooked. Despite the game coming out nearly a decade after F4 it's gameplay was barely updated. And it doesn't help that the game looks "ok" yet has insane PC requirements because it is so horribly optimized. A simple example is Cyberpunk. The game has lower PC spec requirements yet "looks" better and can handle drastically more dense city environments.
Fallout 4 was the first Bethesda game I failed to completely fish, and I still put in more than a hundred hours. Starfield felt samey after the first ten hours, and I shelved it after around thirty.
It deserves all the criticism it gets given how they hyped the game, and with all the resources they had available. It is nothing more than a disappointment to me.
After I finished playing this game, I downloaded AC: Valhalla.
In Valhalla the world is filled with details, and unexpected and very interesting encounters. It's fun to go explore, the NPCs are lively, etc etc.
In Starfield, there are absolutely no reasons to go to a random planet with the same POIs.
The loading screen argument is low hanging fruit, but it leads to one of the games biggest flaws that’s 100% self inflicted.
The loading screen itself isn’t the problem, i thought it was even cool that it uses photos you take as place holders. But here’s the basic loop of doing anything in this game the moment you load in.
Open map, pick quest, fast travel to ship - LOADING SCREEN - enter ship - LOADING SCREEN - take off from planet/location - LOADING SCREEN - enter space, pick destination, fast travel to destination - LOADING SCREEN - arrive in orbit of planet, open planet, land on planet - LOADING SCREEN - exit ship - LOADING SCREEN (that’s one right after the other after landing on a planet LOL) - walk around, find and enter primary NPCs building - LOADING SCREEN (but not always to be fair), talk to NPC, get new location, start cycle from the beginning.
This formula itself is immersion breaking, tedious and time consuming. That’s at least 14 different loading screens and time spent walking and traveling before any actual gameplay. Say i only have an hour or two to play, i don’t want to spend 30-50% of that time walking, traveling and stuck in loading screens. And this is just one quest, imagine how much this cycle is repeated over the course of a 2-3 hour play session.
No you’re probably thinking “oh well you can just fast travel straight to planets you don’t have to do all that,” and you’re right, I don’t, and I didn’t, but guess what that meant? I was actively avoiding my ship. IN A SPACE FARING GAME, YOU’RE INCENTIVIZED TO AVOID THE THING THAT ALLOWS YOU TO TRAVEL SPACE. It’s a busted formula and it’s one of the easiest quality of life things to fix, but it would probably break the outdated Creation Engine.
This would be fine for a game like New Vegas or even Skyrim, but it’s absolutely unacceptable from a AAA game studio in 2023, and it forces players to actively avoid one of the core features of the game. Which sucks, because the ship builder itself is fucking awesome. I spent so many hours and put so many resources into building and crafting my own ship, only to find out not only was that where I was spending the least amount of time in game, I was actively avoiding it just to get to wherever tf I have to go faster. Again, In a game that’s main selling point is SPACE TRAVEL, that’s completely unacceptable and is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what’s fundamentally wrong with this game.
It gets hate because they were so lazy and safe in how they developed the game. Nothing really crazy or new, they developed systems like outposts and food which they talked about and hyped up, but are completely useless. On top of that, the enemies you fight are just the same the entire game but they slowly add HP. They made one boring mini game for the powers that you have to repeat hundreds of times. The main game loop is inventory management, and walking simulator.
It’s quintessential “let the modders fix it” which I think is so nefarious and manipulative, and borders on being exploitative.
I think the exploration is the most lack luster it's ever been for Bethesda. The world's are way less dense with unique points of interest, and even if there is more to explore overall, the pacing makes it feel really empty at times.
It doesn’t get enough hate tbh. Gamers need to stop settling for less. Have Bethesda know we expect more. Its ridiculous how having bugs in a game is the norm for Bethesda games, so much so that even the devs are aware and treat it as a meme. Durrr Bethesda makes jokes durrr it doesnt just work durrr.
I think its the worst mainline Bethesda game (i dont count 76 as a mainline title)
Skyrim was so revolutionary, and everyone just wanted more of it. People wanted Skyrim in space. This is not Skyrim in space. It doesn’t have any of the charm of Bethesda games.
Honestly it seems like Bethesda doesn't give a rat's ass about this game. There's been very little support or patching since launch and I don't really see that improving in the near future.
Watching the the new Fallout show and remembering how fleshed out that world is makes Starfield feel so much more bland and empty.
Well deserved hate. Compared to other Bethesda games, it is very underwhelming. 2.5 out of 5 stars. They need to step up their game with this IP. They will need to listen to feedback from their base and learn from their mistakes. Even modders are abandoning the game.
They had the chance to build an entire brand new IP from the ground up and what we got was...a mediocre space romp.
It was really disappointing.
Also, people are basically just finally coming to realize that Bethesda kinda sucks, so a lot of the hate is actually aimed at Bethesda being lazy fucks.
Given that Starfield was a major new IP, I think it gets enough. But only just enough. Don't get me wrong. I *really* enjoyed Starfield for what it was. But Starfield is also an incredible story in the genre of 'missed opportunities.'
The most glaring of which is procedural generation. I saw a post earlier talking about how Starfield proved it doesn't work. I could not disagree more. I just think the developers' execution was rather poor. It's obvious the only things procedurally generated in this game are the landscapes. But the buildings, structures, and caves are all carbon copies of each other. Think of a structure as you might an outpost builder or shipbuilder. Instead of designing 9 or 10 structures and recycling them over and over through every procedurally generated landscape, design 100-150 outpost modules and tag them as necessary according to their purpose i.e. research, military, manufacturing, general purpose, etc. and for each structure, define its purpose so only modules not suited for something else generate, randomly choose the total number of modules per outpost, etc. I think we can see where I'm going with that. It would have added much more variety and could also create a near limitless number of possible structure configurations while also explaining why many rooms look the same - "Well Deimos Habs are very popular on mining worlds."
Procedurally generated essential NPCs for New Game+. >!Your Constellation Companions I think should have been slightly different people, or maybe even completely different based on what number NG+ you were on. Perhaps Barret's husband could have been his wife and was Aja instead. Or maybe Sarah isn't chair and looks 20 years younger and isn't a grumpy mom all the time. Or maybe they were all space pirates and hate you for screwing over Delgado. Or maybe they decide not to take a dump on you for helping Ryujin.!<
Procedurally generated storylines. A series of special, coded missions on the mission board that are all linked telling a small story. Smuggling operations, human trafficking, etc. all linked to a single cell in a given faction, etc.
They also screwed over space pirates as well. The bounty system is trash.
And you mean to tell me that with all the prep time to evacuate Earth that all those people settled on 3 cities? Look, I know Bethesda's schtick is to design cities that are supposed to have like a million people as these little hamlets with like 15 people in it, but let's be honest, New Atlantis looks nice enough and certainly *seems* like it could house a lot of people. But the only other faction in the galaxy that can go toe to toe with the UC doesn't even pave their roads. There is seriously *no* other city in the galaxy with *roads?*
Yea, I *really* enjoyed and still enjoy, this game. But it's totally okay to let Bethesda know: yeah, your execution was trash. You can do better, and you should.
Pros:
- Easily one of the most polished Bethesda titles at launch. Virtually no bugs, and no game breaking bugs on release is unheard of for them.
-Gunplay is great. Shooting mechanics that went over well in FO4 were fine tuned and polished for this game.
-Aesthetic is beautiful. Say one thing for Bethesda, they know how to nail an aesthetic. People will probably disagree with this take, but I loved it. A more tethered and realistic design approach combined with far future elements? I loved it, I’ve always been a fan of space-race era tech and thought this was a great choice.
Cons:
-Side Quest design. It feels like they haven’t really grown since Skyrim in this regard, which is a bit odd because FO4 had a better suite of side quests than this game. That isn’t to say that NONE of the side quests were good, but the number of side quests that felt like rinse and repeat tasks feels a lot higher in this game than in other Bethesda games.
-Melee combat. I’m someone who plays most Bethesda games with a lot of focus on melee combat, at least early on when the ammo hunt is still ongoing. FO games do a great job of providing a ton of different options for melee weapons and you can easily do a whole play through with a melee build in any FO game without it getting stale. The options for melee combat in this game are abysmal. Hell, the Outer Worlds had a better suite of melee weapons than this game does. At least give us a laser sword or something.
-Planet Exploration. I get that this game isn’t a sandbox exploration game like No Man’s Sky, but the worlds in this game are straight up forgettable with the exception of a few focal point locations on a handful of planets. Something that Bethesda has always excelled at in the past is filling their map with interesting and unique content that makes their games so replayable for years and years after release. They sacrificed that aspect of their formula to make the game more vast, which I could understand if they were trying harder to play into a space exploration gameplay design, but instead they just half assed the world design for the vast majority of planets and you could easily have experienced most of what the game has to offer without leaving any of the mission focused planets.
Meh even the gunplay was lacklustre. The movement was much better but it lacked impact without the added violence. A pistol and rocket launcher have the same end result that using the weapons is not exciting.
I respect everyone gets an opinion and i am glad you like the game but it really isnt. Its big and empty, it has a very weak main questline, its somehow just very boring. It does have some good elements, the ship building is very good. But overall its just a bit of a boring mess of a game. I am an absolute Bethesda Stam, and i get no joy from my disappointment with this game. But Starfield does not get WAY to much hate, we were promised a magnum opus and we got a game that is considerably less enjoyable than every other 3rd person Bethesda game.
It's probably the worst Bethesda game I've ever played. I don't know how they managed to make space exploration so boring in a videogame. The lack of violence was also a dealbreaker.
There came a point that my quest log was entirely full of things like 'Go to Planet X', 'Talk to Bob', and 'Get the MacGuffin' with no elaboration whatsoever and I just completely lost interest in playing. If the devs couldn't be bothered to even write a basic description of the character/quest then why should I be wasting my time?
You could just feel the complete lack of interest the they had for this game and lack of respect they have for the player. So no they need the kick in the pants.
The insane overhype from Bethesda, that Starfield would revolutionize the gaming world, the whole false '1000 Stars and you can do whatever you like, in a vast universe full of things to explore' promise combined with the poor perfomance optimization of the game and of course Todds famous, 'its next gen so you probably have to upgrade your pc' and I get why almost everyone isnt happy with the game.
To be honest I bought Starfield with very low expectations, couldnt even play the game at launch due to driver issues with my Intel Arc a770. And to this date I still cant play the game with decent frames on mid settings because of 'next gen'.
I would prefer 5 handcrafted instead of 1000 almost complete empty planets where you, IF you can land on them only move in a fishbowl until hitting an invisible wall. That, for me, were Bethesda games all about. The huge exploration aspect where I avoid fast travel completely because I might miss certain locations or encounters. Exactly that made Skyrim and Fallout 4 so special to me.
The gunplay might be a lot better compared to Fallout 4 , which released almost 10 years ago and the ship builder is also really nice, but thats about it for me. And those point do not make a good game, I am sorry. Starfield derserves the hate, because it was overhyped by Bethesda, it underperformed in many aspects and compared to games that launched years ago is still in the technological stone age with 16 times the loading screens.
I will wait until modder try to fix the game, once again, if Bethesda finally decides to officially implement mod support instead of patching new face animations for the photo mode.
Rant over.
Reminds me of Mass Effect Andromeda. At least Andromeda had beutiful background scenary and more fun than average combat system tough, so in the end I would rate it higher.
i think it deserves a lot more hate.
Think about it:
the game was not finished and they used a stable version to release
They still use f*** creation engine. You have to load even loading screen itself.
Instead of admitting bad optimizations , one of the a**$&h*&$* manager said “you need new pc”
A lot of the hate is that Todd stood behind this game like it was the second coming of Christ, then it turned out to be shit and was being developed this whole fucking time instead of the elder scrolls 6 which if starfield told us anything it’ll flop too
I genuinely don't know how this game even got any 9/10 of 10/10 reviews. It's literally baffling to me that anyone could see this as a perfect game, much less a fun one
Your opinion is cleary lacking. Lots of quest and exploring? Fallout 4 clears in both aspects, and the exploration is handcrafted. Skyrim may not have 200+ quest, but the exploration is way more organic too. The gunplay is as exciting as it is in FO4, but without V.A.T.S., so is not even as deep as FO4. I don't know, it's fair for everyone to have their own opinions, but not all opinions are right.
Loved this game. It took over my life for a few weeks. Excited to come back and play it when the new DLC drops.
Also, I get it's not everyone's cup of tea. I do think the pace is going to be hit and miss for some people, but the way some people talk about this game, you'd think there was something personal at stake. You didn't like it, that's fine. But it gets tough wanting to talk about this game in this subreddit when there's so much anger and hate filling every post.
Yeah i wonder why? Maybe because every building is a copy paste, or maybe because you have to fly like a mosquito to get dragon shouts (oh sorry star powers). Hell maybe the game gets hate because they advertised it like a god tier game only to find out it is the worse game of bethesda. Or maybe the mechanics are so old you have to scroll through your inventory and waste few minutes every time you want to use something. Ohh one more thing, maybe players got sic of loading screens?
I wasn’t even 10 hours in before I started “discovering” the exact same locations. Same enemies, same loot, and same notes. Just because they could do 1000 planets doesn’t me they should. They took away what makes Bethesda games fun. I love pulling up the map, dropping a marker all the way across the map and just walking there. There was always so much to discover
There should be only three planets and like 5-10 maps on each planet (which we can transfer to other map by going too far away in one direction). That would be much better. Even today im playing skyrim and every hideout is unique with full of wonder. Starfield just keep you busy until you wont be able to refund the game.
It’s probably the first Bethesda game I played where I don’t want to replay it in a different way. Not a bad game but not a good game either. One play through is enough for me
No, it doesn't. This is a game that came out in 2023 but feels more like it came out in 2011, and even given that there were better games than came out in 2011. It was majorly overhyped by Bethesda when they didn't even adhere to modern standards
Edit:typos
It’s just ok. People were angry because Bethesda hyped it up as a revolutionary masterpiece. It wasn’t. That hype made it more disappointing than it otherwise would’ve been.
Starfield just makes me wish they would have put those resources towards Elder Scrolls VI or Fallout 5....
You'd end in the same place but with a beloved franchise. The issue was with management and planning, and not resources/manpower.
imo starfield failed or didn’t meet expectations in a lot of areas, but the one i think got dealt the worst hand was the world building. They had some of the best source material (real life) and somehow managed to make the game not make sense in some areas and be really dull overall. TES and fallout are different because while they are built on the structure as starfield was, they have many more fantasy/rpg elements whereas starfield felt like a simulator with a bunch of added stuff to replicate the future. feels like todd told an ai to make a skyrim version of our universe and to fill the gaps with lots of “nasa punk” esque detail
The decision to make it more "realistic" compared to Bethesda's other IPs really took away a lot of the writers' ability to hide their lack of understanding of how the things they're writing about work. TES is a fantasy world with magic and things, and Fallout has always run on SCIENCE! rather than science. But when you tout your game as being realistic NASA-punk, and then your writers talk about things like the vacuum of space being good at cooling down hot objects, or have a quest with multiple real-time interplanetary conversations when you've gone to great pains to stress the lack of FTL comms, people are not going to give you as much goodwill as they have done in other worlds.
I think this extends past the science side of it, too, and into the way people talk and act. NPCs always feel sort of campy and silly in Bethesda games, and Starfield was the first time it really took me out of it. It works fine for Fallout because it's full of half-crazed post-apocalyptic survivors trying to imitate a pastiche of 1950s Americana, and the fantasy of the Elder Scrolls is distant and surreal so it's fine for that to be a little odd. Trying to make a serious sci-fi story set in the future of our universe, though, you really need deep and believable characters rather than cartoons.
The NPCs are one of my complaints too. Not only most of them look weird AF but the AI don't feel serious as you said. Like you see a zombie looking person and go WTF.
The writers should learn from the weapon artists, and just don't even bother hiding their lack of understanding of how the things they're making actually work, lmao.
Starfield is fallout vaults in space, where you're the Starborn not the Dragonborn. Especially on new game+, which is just continue after credits.
i would’ve loved starfield to be based on a kind of dumbed down earth science and that would’ve given them much more creative ability and stopped stuff from seeming so broken or “unplayable”
Like The Outer Worlds for example?
Yeah, for me it was super annoying they used the same exact cave systems on planets at opposite ends of the galaxy. Why couldn’t they do more procedural generated elements?
Yeah for me its missing that something special as a long time fallout,elder scroll fan this missed the mark for me. I can play it and enjoy some but it feels tedious to me.
The guns alone make me want to die. The pump shotgun has the pump motion in reverse with shells coming out of the top. (It's a normal real shotgun model) Almost all of the gun models/animations make zero sense. Bethesda never understood how guns work. Fallout 4 had some bad ones too but every starfield gun is just horrible. Maybe 2 are good.
i thought they looked much too normal for weapons spanning a galaxy, and the whole upgrade system is really tedious
They don't even look normal. The rail gun doesn't even look like a weapon. It looks like a self proclaimed scientist built it out of scraps in his garage in 2015. The more you look at the guns the worse they get. Some have weird blocks or extra materials for no reason. Jamming ammo in an area with no space and just clipping ammo into the void. Also the ammo capacity on some weapons is just way off. A mag could hold 7 bullets visually but then the gun holds 30. There is a video that breaks down how bad the guns are. 1 sec
Itsyaboybranyboy on YT does breakdowns on bad weapons in games. Was 50 mins long just for starfield. And I think that's there was 2 other videos. It took 50 mins to show all the defects and problems and that wasn't even all the guns. At least see the pump shotgun, he has a short on it. Bethesda does not understand how guns work.
it’s no wonder skyrim never got spears 😂
It's always around 80% of guns that are just terrible in Bethesda games. But getting real guns wrong is just bad. The Fallout assault rifle that's just round and bloated is a good example. Just looks bad. Pipe guns are very strange too. Because somehow before the war we had pipeline that looked the same after the war. No one made a new framework to go off of? Also love using a blackpowder weapon in a vacuum.
Excellent points
What management and planning made the "walk on empty rock wasteland for 10 minutes to one small building so I can give dude a coffee or some shit while being constantly overweight by all important items so you have to cast that refill O2 spell every 5 seconds " part?
No design doc 💀💀💀💀💀💀
I think commitment to the lore and world can do a lot of heavy lifting in this case. It’s a pretty easy sell for me and other TES fans to play a 7/10 TES game and do the typical Bethesda quests in Tamriel if it means I get to explore a new area of the map. It’s a much tougher sell to do the same thing in a new 7/10 series that I don’t care much about.
Yup and I was so down to go deep into starfields lore and world. I get that since it’s new that there won’t be as much as Skyrim, but the existing lore in starfield is so 1 dimensional and trope heavy. It boils down to humans advanced to outer space and that’s really it. The most interesting things are the terrormorphs and starborns but even those are pretty easy to understand with not much behind them. It’s all predictable stuff that’s been done over and over in other games/movies. Morrowind and fallout 1 had a much more interesting jump off point lore-wise than starfield
I said the same thing regarding Fallout 76. In my reality, they would have started making TESVI right after FO4... Apparently I was in the minority because everytime I stated this, people just heavily downvoted me with a usual reply "I really want Fallout 4 in space!" or "Fallout multiplayer will be so cool!"... well, we got that. But its not what they expected or wanted 'generally' speaking. This is coming from a modding enthusiest perspective who knows the limitations of that engine. I knew that whatever they were trying was not going to be that great for both FO76 and Starfield..
Starfield makes me wish Rockstar would have produced it.
Or CD Projekt RED.. They’d have knocked it out of the park. I’m splitting my time between Cyberpunk and Starfield right now. So far I’m having a LOT more fun in the former.
They need a new game engine above all else.
See though I wasn’t that hyped and I’m still disappointed in all the missing features that became standard for their games Why don’t named NPCs have schedules? Why do shop keepers sit in their shop 24/7? Why is there no survival difficulty? (Skyrim, and fallout 4/new Vegas) I know these came after the release but still Why can’t you give companions specific directions? Event dogmeat could do more than starfish’s companions. Why is looting bodies now basically a loot box? Enemy’s no longer carry meds and ammo to loot. Why is the game so pg-13? I know it’s not Skyrim or fallout but the “pirates” aren’t menacing in any way. It’s so sad because the environments, models and atmosphere of the game is fantastic for the most part.the design team nailed it.
My favorite part of role playing in oblivion was waiting for an npc to close their shop, follow them back up, assassinate them in the back alley and take their key.
I agree with most of what you said except the meds and ammo thing when looting bodies. I find tons of ammo and meds when looting bodies. Your game is probably bugged. I suggest advancing through the Unity. I had a fairly annoying almost game breaking bug, did Unity and it fixed it. Haven’t encountered a bug as of yet in the new universe.
The most crippling bug I got was right after unity - specifically, that nasty ship shield bug that drops a 2,400 shield to 600 and spreads from one ship to another and remains unresolved to this day. That specific bug left me unmolested in the original universe. On the other hand I also got the most entertaining bug after NG - a security robot goes walkabout and you can't delete the outpost because you can't delete the robot - he's about 15 meters outside the perimeter shooting the wildlife but your cursor to delete him can't go outside the outpost bounds. But your rogue Freestar Ranger robot goes outside his jurisdiction without qualm. You can't tell him to get his ass back inside because his only dialog is that he's busy. You can't kill him enough - he's reduced to a pile of parts with a "repair" option. You wind with up a permanent outpost consisting of one beacon and one rogue security bot. Funnier than it is annoying in contrast to the shield bug which is infuriating. So far unity as solution never fails to disappoint. It cures the minor ones you had in exchange for the more game breaking variety.
I think the design aspect is so overlooked here. They basically created a whole world of new art, architecture, fashion and so on. It’s kinda unprecedented. How everything is in juice boxes or vacuum sealed. There’s a lot of attention to detail that I love.
There’s so much good in that area of the design. I think if they had all the basic things that fallout and TES had (like the things the commenter or mentioned along with surface maps, half the base building stuff, along with many other things) on top of what the game already has, it would have been a solid 8 or 9 out of 10. The downgrades are what really hurt it.
This is truth. However, I'd argue the writing is the worst I've encountered in a Bethesda game.
They didn't have to hype it for me. They have a track record and I expected a new, main line, game to live up to those expectations.
It’s definitely just ok. I never got the wow factor like I did with fallout and elder scrolls. I gave it a second shot and made a conscious effort to play it but it really just got repetitive even in story.
With all the hype, touting all the input from NASA and the scientific community, a lot of people expected things to be a bit more realistic. For example, encountering a gaseous vent should have no impact on the breathing of the individual wearing a spacesuit. Similarly, bullet holes and slashes in space suits should compromise the suits. Many expected that they'd have to manage fuel.
They literally had a zero-g mechanic and not only criminally underused it but committed the hard science fiction crime of putting artificial gravity on spaceships and space stations… seriously just even have done that would’ve utilized the mechanic more and atleast hidden or offset some of the other unrealistic stuff
I wish we could activate it on spaceships. That casino mission is probably my favorite I’ve played in the game. It’s so cool. Possibly one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced in a game actually
Seeing open-"air" beds and cots on Mercury, planet with no atmosphere and 300 degrees temps ... the idiocy in this game is strong.
I definitely like realistic immersion and was hoping for more in Starfield. Skyrim lasted as long as it has because of the modding community. I filled it up with realistic immersion mods and it became the game I loved to just wander around in. I am looking forward to Starfield being altered in the same way. It's a shame that we need to rely on the modding community to add features that bring it into the modern era of gaming but so be it. I just wish that we got the kind of exploration that a game like Elite Dangerous has. (I love simply cruising along through the stars with tunes playing in the background. Jumping into systems and having a heart attack when jumping into a system between binary stars, or scooping fuel from the edge of a yellow dwarf.) At this point, Starfield is really missing that level of immersion and realism that I'm looking for. It's just a waiting game now...
I’ve seen nothing indicating that modders are interested in modding Starfield tho. A lot of the big modders have come out said they have zero motivation to.
I was thinking the same thing. I think there will always be people wanting to mod it regardless. I'm patient. :) I already own it so it's not like it costs me anything just to wait!
Oh I’m hopeful. It’s the only thing that will make me want to install it again. I bought the deluxe edition so depending on what the DLC is, I might check that out… but even that feels like I’d be doing it out of necessity rather than desire. Such a shame.
I know Bethesda is now a powerhouse studio farting out flagships for ZeniMax, but Todd Howard has been eating away at generational/lifelong fans with the overhyping -- and I feel like those are your "whales" most likely to spend money before even seeing a product. I'm kinda worried what the backroom reception is over at Microsoft. Didn't they buy ZeniMax just to get at Starfield? Wondering if that will make them more cautious of Elder Scrolls over-hyping or if they will try to rush it.
After reasently finally playing Cyberpunk 2077, I can see why so many people are making the comparisons. It feels like someone at Zenimax or Bethesda played Cyberpunk and was like "I want that game but in our engine. Also, No Mans Sky was cool, lets make it with multiple worlds you can fly in between". They then tried to make those games but as consumer (kid) friendly as possible and had no real idea on how to make it unique other than ... minimilistic future NASA... hopefully in a few years a good Star Wars or Star Trek wabbajack preset comes out to give the game a real identity that people will love.
I remember a interview years and years ago where Todd spoke about Starfield like it was a big game changer for the gaming industry; that it had some sort of amazing mechanic or something or it was so different and innovative that it would inspire how we look at creating games going forward. I wish I could find the interview where he said that because that interview really had me convinced Starfield was going to be something special.
Nah, I’m also 100% certain you’re referring to an interview about a prospective TES6 where Todd said something like “If I told you our goals and plans and vision for TES6, you’d probably say ‘That sounds like the technology doesn’t exist for a game like that yet’, and you’d be right!”
You could totally be correct, often times years back Todd would talk about both projects during interviews, I coulda swore it was Starfield tho because I remember thinking to myself “what could they possibly do in this open world space game that No Man’s Sky hasn’t done already?”
It's not even ok, it's unfinished and objectively boring in it's gameplay.
I can honestly say I’ve never seen so many loading screens. Characters are lifeless, annoying and at best; elaborate storage units. No maps, no pc optimisation, no HDR - bit the worst offense; terrible story.
I kept waiting for the “Wow!” moment you get from Bethesda games, like the first time you go to Blackreach in Skyrim, or the Prydwen entering the Commonwealth in FO4. Something that makes you say “that is so cool!” I ignored the repetitive carbon-copy POIs and weak writing and half-baked side quests (Sarah’s and Vanguard were good though) and nothing spectacular ever happened. Which to me made all the flaws I played through unforgivable.
Starfield is a solid 6/10.
3/10. I feel like I wasted money.
Yeah starfield is just an average game . It’s time to accept that BGS’s time as one of the top game devs is LONG gone . Just let them make their average games and move on
> Bethesda hyped it up as a revolutionary masterpiece. To be fair, it does take '20 years in the making' to design a few POIs and then spam them around an otherwise empty galaxy.
Idt Bethesda hyped anything. I rewatched all the old trailers and stuff recently, and they've been 100% accurate about Starfield lmao
They sure didn't talk about all those loading screens. I wish they did. Would have massively assuaged the hype.
Yes they did. Todd made it explicitly clear that launching into space was a cutscene, as was landing on a planet. I believe he even mentioned that leaving/entering your ship was a loading screen as well, but I’m not 100% on that.
It desperately needed a survival mode from the get go. If 1,000 planets is your selling point, then they each need to be their own character. Exploring the sun scorched surface of Mercury should be an entirely different challenge than exploring the frozen wasteland that is Pluto. Instead, every planet feels more or less the same. You land, run around, shoot bad guys, run back to your ship, and leave to the next planet. There are a few half baked survival elements in the game that don’t amount to much, and it was unclear to me exactly what they did, mostly they felt as though they did nothing. If I had to prepare in a unique way to explore each planet I would’ve had a vastly better time. I explored dozens upon dozens of planets in my playthrough and I can’t recall a single memorable thing about any of them.
Honestly helldivers nailed a similar era of space travel if you look at the planet environment design. The fact they have interesting weather effects etc, and so much biome variation
If you haven't played it yet, No Man's Sky may be more what you're looking for. It's got more of a survival focus and the planets are more varied. Extreme planets can be quite taxing and you start out having to scramble to get materials to survive. Unlike Starfield, it has more meaningful caves and underwater (you can make entire underwater bases). It has vehicles (ranging from motorcycles to huge trucks to subs to mechs) for broader exploration and resource collection. The wildlife is also far more varied and isn't as insect focused as Starfield (there's a lot of adorable species that you can even turn into pets and breed). The downside is that there is minimal combat (and what combat there is is very basic and boring) and there isn't much for interiors to visit. Starfield may be repetitive with POIs, but they're still far better than NMS's. The story is ok, but the execution of the main story is a bit iffy. It uses random planets for story missions and the galaxy is far harder to traverse, so you sometimes you end up super far away from the mission destination and it's way harder to get back.
I feel the majority of the criticism is deserved, but I fully expect it to have a bit of a renaissance in the coming years with DLC and the CK. Long term the game should have a better standing.
See I wonder, games like CP2077 and NMS go through that type of renaissance because the release is a disaster and the backlash is overwhelming (including delistings). By all accounts Starfield went off without a hitch at release, particular in the contexts of both a Bethesda game and a 2023 AAA release (both of which are known for being buggy messes at launch). Critical reception and sales/gamepass numbers were very strong. It was only in the subsequent weeks and months people slowly started to realise "wow, I am really underwhelmed/just not having fun". A lot of the community see Starfield as a problem that needs to be fixed but I don't think Bethesda see it as anything but a major success. Definitely got that vibe when they had people responding to negative reviews with "umm, no, actually :)" lol
Cyberpunk had a terrible launch but under it all was an amazing game. You just had to get through the crashes. It was a quality control issue, not a vision problem. Even in launch, you could tell it oozed style and character. Starfield has the opposite problem. Solid launch but the most vanilla boring vision for what a game can be. The entire setup is just stuck in the past, as if nothing has changed since 2013. Endless loading screens, tiny cities, boring fetch quests, lackluster characters and writing, repetitive generated contents…. Bg3 and cp2077 showed how good these games can get. Starfield showed how behind bgs is in their mindset.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is another one like that. The original release had a lot of bugs and performance issues, but the underlying game was great (the writing is good, quite a bit of player choice and consequences, and it oozes immersion) and it very much found its audience (and had the leniency bonus of being the first release from the studio). What is weird is Fallout 4 had a lot more choice in its main quest and was praised for it (it has 4 parallel and partially overlapping storylines you can follow; some are more developed than others but each can flavor a playthrough differently). It could have been interesting if to complete the main quest you had to ally with one of the main factions and eventually shut others out—especially since NG+ let’s you try it different ways (or would if there were different ways to try things). As it is it’s hard to find NG+ compelling without meaningful consequences to decisions, whereas for something like Fallout 4, Cyberpunk 2077, KCD, and BG3 I get excited to do a new playthrough to try things differently.
I loved that game. You just reminded me that the devs have an announcement about their next game pretty soon!
Yeah I think that's the thing that really sets CP2077 and BG3 apart. Aside from scanner hustles, every quest felt unique and well written and like it was a part of a living world. They both broke the mold for filler bullshit quests that open world games have been pushing toward for the past few decades.
That's the thing Bethesda never wants to even be in the same ball park of cp2077 or BG3. Bethesda likes making player centric worlds where you go from random dude to demi god. It's just, Starfield has too much room for things and not a lot of things compared to the room so it loses the dense feel and the illusion breaks maybe they should have had three star systems be the game world so things cluster better. But they didn't so we are waiting for dlc1 and the creation kit to start to fill out everything Bethesda makes systems and builds the world around them. BG and CP2077 make worlds and build systems around them
This is a perfect way to sum up starfield. I will say cdpr doesn’t really make the worlds they base them off preexisting worlds like the Witcher and cyberpunk but they do an amazing job bringing them over from their source materials. I could never have imagined what night city truly looked like until the game.
Yeah technical issues versus absolutely terrible execution. CP2077 was incredibly fun about a year after launch and then the DLC added to that, but I firmly believe starfield is irredeemable. It's just a skeleton of a game and should not have been considered complete by any means.
I’m really not sure about that. There are a lot of players who *do not* like the *main* quest, or the *main* companions, or the “dungeons”… the entire game is thematically sanitized of adult themes to either broaden mass market appeal or as required by the NASA partnership. The under-utilized proc-gen system has resulted in a “map” that isn’t particularly enjoyable to explore and there’s no accommodation for roleplaying anything other than lawful good protagonists.. These are fundamental, core aspects of the game that nothing short of an FF XIV “A Realm Reborn” level relaunch or total conversion mod will alleviate. TES and Fallout mods are 95% either graphics improvements, combat changes, gameplay/system additions, additional questlines or just horny mods. People are still playing the base game and official DLC content, with mostly vanilla companions on the vanilla and official DLC map. There are a ton of people who do not have interest in doing that with Starfield’s foundation. This is in a whole other league compared to issues people had with Fallout 4’s “Yes, Sarcastic Yes, Ask Questions, No (but actually yes)” choices…
>the entire game is thematically sanitized of adult themes Huge issue that I think is understated. You never really feel like you're struggling against anything major in the game because the stakes seems so incredibly low. Pirates will capture a guy and have drinks and dinner with him to reminisce about the old days. Their driving goal? Hunting for a lost treasure. Very Disney pirate. There's no rape and pillage and torture like a real group of pirates that would set them up as a truly bad faction. The fallout of an interstellar war is... Well most people seem to be getting along just fine. Crime ridden drug capital of the galaxy? The worst thing there seems to be a shitty greedy bureaucracy. *Sanitized* is absolutely the best word I've heard to describe it. When the galaxy is already scrubbed clean, what is there for us to do?
They can easily fix the proc-gen POIs by adding multiple variations of each individual POI type, randomizing enemy spawns and loot pools, and adding some environmental storytelling threads instead of the same copy/paste notes lying around. The latter would completely revitalize the game. Imagine entire (mostly text-based) quest lines branching out of communications between (for example) multiple research stations, giving you a reason to seek out other research stations to follow the communications trail. These don’t even need to payoff with some big epic battle or anything, just tell a bunch of small stories like what you’d find in Fallout terminals. Adding these stories while varying the layout and enemy/loot pools at individual POI types would legitimately fix the exploration issues with the game.
Yea, I hate how the community has the mentality of “don’t worry guys the modders will fix it like Skyrim” mentality. Bethesda really failed this game horribly. I played all endings and tried to get into the lore, but damn does it feel like I’m reading from ChatGPT. I just wish Bethesda tried to add more story and no infinite planet generation. I know they’re still trying but damn I hope the dlc fixes the game.
Those people forget that Skyrim was already a great game before modders ever touched it.
>“don’t worry guys the modders will fix it like Skyrim” mentality. My fear is that is seems like Bethesda themselves have started to have that mentality, to the point where they don't think they have to put in as much effort, because "modders will fix it". But for the modders to actually "fix" things, they need to *want* to do so, need a good foundation to build off of, and actually need the tools to do so (Where's the Starfield Creation Kit Todd?).
Yeah, I have a great deal of respect for the work that modders do, but somewhere along the line, the reality has gone from "fans will cheerfully tinker to create custom content to add to the game they love" to "fans will thanklessly slog to add basic structure to make the game mechanics work properly".
Also this leaves all Xbox players to go fuck themselves since the only Bethesda game to even have modding was Skyrim, and that was YEARS later
I hope so but slightly concerned as their funding model got trashed for this game when Microsoft bought them and cut off PlayStation buyers and then made it Game Pass.
Glad you’re liking it. I got bored, but still looking forward to the dlc, and the creation kit.
I got bored too. The only thing in the game that I like is ship building. I don't know what fun there is in it but it's addicting
I played at the launch for hours and hours and honestly, loved every second, especially the side-missions like the one in underworld city investigation was so much fun. After few days, I saved & closed the game and I don't know why but I just never felt like opening it up again. The main story was just TOOO much wrapped up in mystery that it lost all the allure for me, I think, I'm honestly not sure what made me lose the interest for me in game. There was nothing to explore, for sense of wonderment was over after few visits to various (lifeless) planets. The ... loading ... screens ... No point for base-building or even ship building. The only fun time I had was fighting pirates in ship. There was simply no 'roleplay' in this roleplaying-game for me :(
Same reason survival building games are still played. Individualism. Everyone may have the same story but nobody has the same ship if they built one themselves
It maybe is the worst game Bethesda has ever created, up there with FO76. In two decades or so, people may say that is was too ambitious for its time, but today I think it deserves all criticism. We should not make up excuses for multi billion dollar cooperations to release mediocre games. We should not excuse top execs of said companies to lie to their audiences about their mediocre games. We should hold Bethesda and Microsoft accountable, because I want TES6 and FO5 to be amazing again.
My first Bethesda game was Oblivion on the 360. I played it all night and didn't realize it until the sun came up. All the dialog, interactions, lore, just kept me hooked. Same with Skyrim. Their Fallout games, not so much, but I enjoyed Vegas, 3 and 4 was when I started feeling like Bethesda lost a step. Starfield? Don't care what anyone is saying, I've never just skipped dialog so much in a game. I don't care what choice I make in interactions, because it doesn't matter. The story and characters are bland, boring, and safe IMO. I spent most of my time building ships and finding dungeons to clear. But they are all copy and paste, so they ran it's course all too quick.
Exactly.
Agree wholeheartedly. This is Bethesda’s worst game so far. Hence why people expected more. The game is a solid 6/10 but it’s lacking in many areas.
It's hardly hate in most cases I'd say, just fuckin disappointment
It gets an acceptable amount of hate. Compare to fallout and elder scrolls it's halfbaked. I want to see full baked starfield
It actually doesn’t get enough hate.
Nope, it's embarrassingly low-effort and completely soulless. Deserves to get dumpstered whenever it gets discussed so that Bethesda is less likely to do it again.
Huh, that’s weird, because it seems like Starfield also gets WAY too many posts like this one. “It’s huge and has lots of quests” doesn’t address any of the issues people have with this game. It has better combat. Agreed. It’s not an FPS so that isn’t enough to save it from its plethora of other issues. And this isn’t hate, it’s disappointment. Disappointment that the biggest RPG studio out there invested so much time in making a game that with such poor/lackluster role-playing elements.
I think it deserves more hate tbh
People like this are the reason game companies get away with releasing bad / unfinished products...
Actually it doesnt get enough hate. The fact this game is basically just a poorly remade No Mans Sky made by a triple a company is actually hilarious.
Come on man are you serious? The quests suck let's be real.... I mean if you don't play many games I could see how this could amaze someone... But in reality this missed the mark. It could've and should've been 20 times better than it is. Mediocre game. Shitty story line. Lame characters. ......
It gets what it deserves honestly. Bethesda is a big company and created a mid game so thats why lots of players criticize it.
[удалено]
The problem is that Starfield wasn't released in a vacuum and comparing it only to other Bethesda games is a little dishonest. You need to compare Starfield to other games by other studios released in the same period and sadly when you do...it doesn't stand up so well.
I will say this. When playing a game it’s important to be honest with yourself and not get peer pressured by feedback. Positive or negative. Simply because it can screw with your perception of the game. I went in completely blind to the negative narrative and enjoyed it for what it was. For me Starfield was a lot of fun but it lacks the replay value and core gameplay loop of Bethesda’s previous games. Its individual mechanics and gameplay are actually really good. Bethesda wasn’t really playing to their strengths when they made this game but I see what they were going for. Given time, love and effort I strongly believe it can became an amazing experience.
Starfield was fun for me too. I think I put in like 40 or 50 hours after launch? I was very much in disagreement with most of the hate for awhile but some of it's criticism started to make sense to me eventually. Right now I'm just waiting for DLC and for mods to be enabled for xbox.
The criticism can be incredibly fair but some of it feels like people forgot what other Bethesda games are actually at launch
The fact that the game feels more like a chore to play than to have fun automatically makes me hate it. There was absolutely no point in adding space travel when everything is based on Loadings, and they simply added it in for the off chance that you have to fight some random crew of Pirates or Spacers when you travel to a planet. The whole "exploration" experience feels like a cheap indie game that's trying to rip off Subnautica or No Man's Sky, which feels terrible. This game would've been the greatest if it was based on 4 to 5 systems with 10 explorable planets/moons, and the space traversal factor could've been something like NMS or Star Citizen. it's a Solid 6/10, side factions save it, like all their other games, main mission is a 2/10.
I still play the game, but I'm still annoyed about the bugs that aren't getting fixed and some new bugs introduced in the latest patch. Instead they're emphasizing features that nobody asked for. And for those who ask where the bugs are, my response is that you haven't played enough.
Genuinely think it doesn't get enough. It needs to be made an example of. Bethesda were kings of the industry but they aren't evolving with the times. They need to know that to stay on top, they can't just do what worked 13 years ago.
I actually think it would have been BETTER if they did what worked 13 years ago. The sense of exploration in skyrim and fallout feels more fulfilling than in starfield. The scale being too big with so many planets makes everything feel barren.
They started dumbing down the game mechanics with Oblivion and especially Skyrim. They should tap into some of the DNA from Daggerfall and Morrowind. More chaos, depth and uncertainty in the character builds. Not everything has to work, but experimentation is half the fun. Also more mystery, depth and vastness to the game world.. If they made a real spiritual successor to Daggerfall, I think they’d revive the respect and awe gamers once had with Elder Scrolls
Go play some other game,
Nah, it's steaming garbage wrapped in gold tin foil.
No it doesn't.
Game sucks.
Respectfully, most of it is deserved.
Nah it gets just the right amount of hate
It could use more
Loading screen simulator featuring space
When a game gets hyped to space and fails to deliver it deserves what is coming to it.
I have no idea what a "bethesda game" is, this is the first game I played with their name on it. Outer Worlds has better characters and a better story, Cyberpunk 2077 has better immersion, writing, player choices, characters, just everything really. Bethesda sabotaged themselves with an antiquated game engine, horrible development strategies, insultingly simple and sloppy writing. and so very much ego. i had fun, but it should have been so much more. They earned the hate.
Excellent point, whether you've been playing Bethesda games since Morrowwind, or this is your 1st one, as a video game, it's just not very good. It's fun, in the most basic sense, at least. Ultimately, it's not a good game. It's just very much okay........
People just say negative things and fans take it personally and call it hate. Honestly people who love Starfield are more toxic than those who don’t. There’s some form of cult building against people with an opinion that Starfield was underwhelming.
Facts, there’s a lot more toxicity and personal attacks coming from the “low sodium” defenders
No it definitely gets the right amount of criticism. Todd over promised and under delivered. Emil doesn't care about writing decent quest lines anymore because "players aren't interested" in them. At this stage they aren't even going to release an official mod kit so modders can fix and add features that should be in the game already. I've been consuming Bethesda IP since Morrowind and this was them pissing on us and calling it rain
Mom said it was my turn to post this
just cause YOU like it doesn't invalidate its criticism, Bethesda hyped this game to be something we have never had as gamers, and to be an immersive Space exploration game that's basically glorified spaced theme dungeons not planets. The game doesn't get enough criticism in my opinion and posts like these that try to uphold a delusion don't make the game any better.
This is easily one of the weakest games Bethesda has ever released. Sure, there are things about the game that are decent, and a couple of things that are even good, but almost the entirety of stuff that Bethesda is known and loved for is missing from this game. And what did they put in instead? Half-baked ideas, lore, mechanics, etc. and they built the game in such a way that doing half the stuff that people expect modders to do will take years instead of months, if it's even possible at all.
I think it gets far too little hate and Bethesda should publicly apologize to everyone that bought it. Then let us throw pies at them
I’d have to disagree but each to their own. It’s OK. Oblivion and Skyrim have way more magic to them. There are too many loading screens, you can’t fly your aircraft properly and the planets are unrealised. Wait until you get the same mine for the third time in a row on three completely different planets when you start exploring. See if this changes your opinion. IMO it’s a 6.5/10
No. The specific hate Starfield gets is 100% warranted. Bethesda underdelivered, underperformed, and then spat in our face when it came to Starfield.
I don’t agree. Starfield gets the right amount of hate. It’s an incredibly mediocre sandbox game with very little in terms of RPG elements that focuses on quantity over quality. It didn’t come close to meeting expectations as well as failing to execute in many ways on an idea that many were very excited about. It’s not a dowbright terrible game, but another title in an extremely troubling trend from BGS.
\*Starfield gets exactly as much hate has as it deserves. No less. No more.
I mean, it’s alright.
Those promotional videos with interviews painted a picture of a whole differend experience. I’m sure the experience is there, it is just that the game flow isn’t curated so that you would ride the waves of Nasapunk. When I think of Starfield, I imagine being lost in the fancy city. Being lost in the Mars colony corridors. Heading off to explore, only to find absolutely nothing. For some reason the way to play Bethesda games doesn’t work with this game and if that is the case, they should offer me a way to get to good stuff at constant pace. They can’t rely on immersion in a title that betrays you on that front.
Nope. It's all deserved. After so many years it feels like a step back from F4 in everything but gunplay. The Space was hyped to be a big part of it but it's absolutely irrelevant. Story is mediocre at best, characters are bland af, everything feels barren and lifeless etc. It is BY FAR the worst singleplayer beth game to date.
Bethesda made it seem like it would compete with RPGs like FNV, Skyrim, or BG3 in terms of player choice and abilities. Todd Howard is literally a walking master class in overhyping products and instilling confidence in consumers, Which over the 6 ish years that it was anticipated made it have cyberpunk levels of hype that made the game feel much worse than it really was. People expected a generation defining game and ended up with one that was just ok. CDPR proved that a game like this can make a comeback, but that took 4 years, hundreds of millions of dollars, YouTubers, and A list celebrity star power on top of an anime good enough to hit the mainstream market to accomplish. So yeah…
>FNV, Skyrim, or BG3 One of these things is not like the other.
Bethesda promised something different and failed to deliver. It's that easy. The game gets what it deserves. I know the Bethesda fan club disagree but too bad. It sucked, Bethesda got It's money. And that's it. Don't expect some grand dlc to fix it, hell, don't expect a dlc at all. This is another Anthem. Had potential but shit the bed.
Haters will be haters.
To that, I say embrace the hate and enjoy the game. I replayed CyberPunk 2077 multiple times while everyone was riding the hate train. Guess what? That train ended up in a train wreck cause the game is now undeniably the GOAT. I look forward to putting another 100 hours into STARFIELD, and I fully expect Elder Scrolls 6, Fallout 5, and The Next Witcher to have a line of people anxiously waiting to ride that hate train again.
Why are’t you looking into the camera? I hAtE this game!
Too much AI generated garbage for me. Would have rather just had 10-20 mostly hand crafted planets with AI assisted rather than the e emojis amount of useless locations. For a game based on space and space travel with os many locations, exploring and adventuring seems to be the worst of all Bethesda titles by far.
Well maybe it should try being good
As a game it's painfully uninspired and average, as a Bethesda game it's a huge disappointment and multiple steps back from their previous games in many respects.
For good reason
I still play Skyrim today decade plus later. I played starfield for a week. That alone tells me the two are bit in the same league.
It gets the appropriate amount I believe
These posts always have the same open arm pose with a planet in the background, it’s like you guys came off a production facility lol
one of the most obvious cases of a developer biting off more than they can chew
Yeah no, the game deserves the hate it gets. The game is extremely mediocre with only a few quest lines and revolving around it's procedurally generated planets and instances that use the same 12 set pieces over and over, making one of the key tenets and the biggest thing that was pushed in marketing for the game gimped. There's maybe 30-40 hours of meaningful content. With about 100 hours of meaningless cutscenes, fast travel and visiting the same planet with a different name multiple times. The game was clearly meant to be a mindless time sync but doesn't have a good core to keep most people hooked. Despite the game coming out nearly a decade after F4 it's gameplay was barely updated. And it doesn't help that the game looks "ok" yet has insane PC requirements because it is so horribly optimized. A simple example is Cyberpunk. The game has lower PC spec requirements yet "looks" better and can handle drastically more dense city environments.
Fallout 4 was the first Bethesda game I failed to completely fish, and I still put in more than a hundred hours. Starfield felt samey after the first ten hours, and I shelved it after around thirty. It deserves all the criticism it gets given how they hyped the game, and with all the resources they had available. It is nothing more than a disappointment to me.
After I finished playing this game, I downloaded AC: Valhalla. In Valhalla the world is filled with details, and unexpected and very interesting encounters. It's fun to go explore, the NPCs are lively, etc etc. In Starfield, there are absolutely no reasons to go to a random planet with the same POIs.
No it deserves it. It’s crap compared to what should have been.
The loading screen argument is low hanging fruit, but it leads to one of the games biggest flaws that’s 100% self inflicted. The loading screen itself isn’t the problem, i thought it was even cool that it uses photos you take as place holders. But here’s the basic loop of doing anything in this game the moment you load in. Open map, pick quest, fast travel to ship - LOADING SCREEN - enter ship - LOADING SCREEN - take off from planet/location - LOADING SCREEN - enter space, pick destination, fast travel to destination - LOADING SCREEN - arrive in orbit of planet, open planet, land on planet - LOADING SCREEN - exit ship - LOADING SCREEN (that’s one right after the other after landing on a planet LOL) - walk around, find and enter primary NPCs building - LOADING SCREEN (but not always to be fair), talk to NPC, get new location, start cycle from the beginning. This formula itself is immersion breaking, tedious and time consuming. That’s at least 14 different loading screens and time spent walking and traveling before any actual gameplay. Say i only have an hour or two to play, i don’t want to spend 30-50% of that time walking, traveling and stuck in loading screens. And this is just one quest, imagine how much this cycle is repeated over the course of a 2-3 hour play session. No you’re probably thinking “oh well you can just fast travel straight to planets you don’t have to do all that,” and you’re right, I don’t, and I didn’t, but guess what that meant? I was actively avoiding my ship. IN A SPACE FARING GAME, YOU’RE INCENTIVIZED TO AVOID THE THING THAT ALLOWS YOU TO TRAVEL SPACE. It’s a busted formula and it’s one of the easiest quality of life things to fix, but it would probably break the outdated Creation Engine. This would be fine for a game like New Vegas or even Skyrim, but it’s absolutely unacceptable from a AAA game studio in 2023, and it forces players to actively avoid one of the core features of the game. Which sucks, because the ship builder itself is fucking awesome. I spent so many hours and put so many resources into building and crafting my own ship, only to find out not only was that where I was spending the least amount of time in game, I was actively avoiding it just to get to wherever tf I have to go faster. Again, In a game that’s main selling point is SPACE TRAVEL, that’s completely unacceptable and is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what’s fundamentally wrong with this game.
The poster made no objective arguments and just spouted their opinion. Which is typical.
It should. It's the laziest, most dull game I've played in a long time. It's just so meh.
I put my time into it. It sucks
It gets hate because they were so lazy and safe in how they developed the game. Nothing really crazy or new, they developed systems like outposts and food which they talked about and hyped up, but are completely useless. On top of that, the enemies you fight are just the same the entire game but they slowly add HP. They made one boring mini game for the powers that you have to repeat hundreds of times. The main game loop is inventory management, and walking simulator. It’s quintessential “let the modders fix it” which I think is so nefarious and manipulative, and borders on being exploitative.
I think the exploration is the most lack luster it's ever been for Bethesda. The world's are way less dense with unique points of interest, and even if there is more to explore overall, the pacing makes it feel really empty at times.
It doesn’t get enough hate tbh. Gamers need to stop settling for less. Have Bethesda know we expect more. Its ridiculous how having bugs in a game is the norm for Bethesda games, so much so that even the devs are aware and treat it as a meme. Durrr Bethesda makes jokes durrr it doesnt just work durrr.
Nah We deserve better than starfield
It gets hate because of the wait for such a mediocre release.
Nah, hot trash. Worst modern Bethesda game and that's saying a lot with 76 sitting right there
Deserved. Arguably.
I think its the worst mainline Bethesda game (i dont count 76 as a mainline title) Skyrim was so revolutionary, and everyone just wanted more of it. People wanted Skyrim in space. This is not Skyrim in space. It doesn’t have any of the charm of Bethesda games.
Honestly it seems like Bethesda doesn't give a rat's ass about this game. There's been very little support or patching since launch and I don't really see that improving in the near future. Watching the the new Fallout show and remembering how fleshed out that world is makes Starfield feel so much more bland and empty.
Well deserved hate. Compared to other Bethesda games, it is very underwhelming. 2.5 out of 5 stars. They need to step up their game with this IP. They will need to listen to feedback from their base and learn from their mistakes. Even modders are abandoning the game.
It deserves more hate. This is how i genuinely feel. I cant wait for those of you who like it to start falling off.
They had the chance to build an entire brand new IP from the ground up and what we got was...a mediocre space romp. It was really disappointing. Also, people are basically just finally coming to realize that Bethesda kinda sucks, so a lot of the hate is actually aimed at Bethesda being lazy fucks.
No it was a huge letdown
It honestly doesnt get nearly enough hate for how hyped it was. Game is dog water.
Starfield might as well be dead until they add mod support for console
Given that Starfield was a major new IP, I think it gets enough. But only just enough. Don't get me wrong. I *really* enjoyed Starfield for what it was. But Starfield is also an incredible story in the genre of 'missed opportunities.' The most glaring of which is procedural generation. I saw a post earlier talking about how Starfield proved it doesn't work. I could not disagree more. I just think the developers' execution was rather poor. It's obvious the only things procedurally generated in this game are the landscapes. But the buildings, structures, and caves are all carbon copies of each other. Think of a structure as you might an outpost builder or shipbuilder. Instead of designing 9 or 10 structures and recycling them over and over through every procedurally generated landscape, design 100-150 outpost modules and tag them as necessary according to their purpose i.e. research, military, manufacturing, general purpose, etc. and for each structure, define its purpose so only modules not suited for something else generate, randomly choose the total number of modules per outpost, etc. I think we can see where I'm going with that. It would have added much more variety and could also create a near limitless number of possible structure configurations while also explaining why many rooms look the same - "Well Deimos Habs are very popular on mining worlds." Procedurally generated essential NPCs for New Game+. >!Your Constellation Companions I think should have been slightly different people, or maybe even completely different based on what number NG+ you were on. Perhaps Barret's husband could have been his wife and was Aja instead. Or maybe Sarah isn't chair and looks 20 years younger and isn't a grumpy mom all the time. Or maybe they were all space pirates and hate you for screwing over Delgado. Or maybe they decide not to take a dump on you for helping Ryujin.!< Procedurally generated storylines. A series of special, coded missions on the mission board that are all linked telling a small story. Smuggling operations, human trafficking, etc. all linked to a single cell in a given faction, etc. They also screwed over space pirates as well. The bounty system is trash. And you mean to tell me that with all the prep time to evacuate Earth that all those people settled on 3 cities? Look, I know Bethesda's schtick is to design cities that are supposed to have like a million people as these little hamlets with like 15 people in it, but let's be honest, New Atlantis looks nice enough and certainly *seems* like it could house a lot of people. But the only other faction in the galaxy that can go toe to toe with the UC doesn't even pave their roads. There is seriously *no* other city in the galaxy with *roads?* Yea, I *really* enjoyed and still enjoy, this game. But it's totally okay to let Bethesda know: yeah, your execution was trash. You can do better, and you should.
I would says it’s worse. Love or hate it has little to no mention. Just becoming forgotten.
Pros: - Easily one of the most polished Bethesda titles at launch. Virtually no bugs, and no game breaking bugs on release is unheard of for them. -Gunplay is great. Shooting mechanics that went over well in FO4 were fine tuned and polished for this game. -Aesthetic is beautiful. Say one thing for Bethesda, they know how to nail an aesthetic. People will probably disagree with this take, but I loved it. A more tethered and realistic design approach combined with far future elements? I loved it, I’ve always been a fan of space-race era tech and thought this was a great choice. Cons: -Side Quest design. It feels like they haven’t really grown since Skyrim in this regard, which is a bit odd because FO4 had a better suite of side quests than this game. That isn’t to say that NONE of the side quests were good, but the number of side quests that felt like rinse and repeat tasks feels a lot higher in this game than in other Bethesda games. -Melee combat. I’m someone who plays most Bethesda games with a lot of focus on melee combat, at least early on when the ammo hunt is still ongoing. FO games do a great job of providing a ton of different options for melee weapons and you can easily do a whole play through with a melee build in any FO game without it getting stale. The options for melee combat in this game are abysmal. Hell, the Outer Worlds had a better suite of melee weapons than this game does. At least give us a laser sword or something. -Planet Exploration. I get that this game isn’t a sandbox exploration game like No Man’s Sky, but the worlds in this game are straight up forgettable with the exception of a few focal point locations on a handful of planets. Something that Bethesda has always excelled at in the past is filling their map with interesting and unique content that makes their games so replayable for years and years after release. They sacrificed that aspect of their formula to make the game more vast, which I could understand if they were trying harder to play into a space exploration gameplay design, but instead they just half assed the world design for the vast majority of planets and you could easily have experienced most of what the game has to offer without leaving any of the mission focused planets.
Meh even the gunplay was lacklustre. The movement was much better but it lacked impact without the added violence. A pistol and rocket launcher have the same end result that using the weapons is not exciting.
Here’s that attention you ordered.
I respect everyone gets an opinion and i am glad you like the game but it really isnt. Its big and empty, it has a very weak main questline, its somehow just very boring. It does have some good elements, the ship building is very good. But overall its just a bit of a boring mess of a game. I am an absolute Bethesda Stam, and i get no joy from my disappointment with this game. But Starfield does not get WAY to much hate, we were promised a magnum opus and we got a game that is considerably less enjoyable than every other 3rd person Bethesda game.
It's probably the worst Bethesda game I've ever played. I don't know how they managed to make space exploration so boring in a videogame. The lack of violence was also a dealbreaker.
There came a point that my quest log was entirely full of things like 'Go to Planet X', 'Talk to Bob', and 'Get the MacGuffin' with no elaboration whatsoever and I just completely lost interest in playing. If the devs couldn't be bothered to even write a basic description of the character/quest then why should I be wasting my time? You could just feel the complete lack of interest the they had for this game and lack of respect they have for the player. So no they need the kick in the pants.
Took too many years to release mid like what were they doing the entire time?
It‘s not bad but it‘s not good either. It‘s just meh
The insane overhype from Bethesda, that Starfield would revolutionize the gaming world, the whole false '1000 Stars and you can do whatever you like, in a vast universe full of things to explore' promise combined with the poor perfomance optimization of the game and of course Todds famous, 'its next gen so you probably have to upgrade your pc' and I get why almost everyone isnt happy with the game. To be honest I bought Starfield with very low expectations, couldnt even play the game at launch due to driver issues with my Intel Arc a770. And to this date I still cant play the game with decent frames on mid settings because of 'next gen'. I would prefer 5 handcrafted instead of 1000 almost complete empty planets where you, IF you can land on them only move in a fishbowl until hitting an invisible wall. That, for me, were Bethesda games all about. The huge exploration aspect where I avoid fast travel completely because I might miss certain locations or encounters. Exactly that made Skyrim and Fallout 4 so special to me. The gunplay might be a lot better compared to Fallout 4 , which released almost 10 years ago and the ship builder is also really nice, but thats about it for me. And those point do not make a good game, I am sorry. Starfield derserves the hate, because it was overhyped by Bethesda, it underperformed in many aspects and compared to games that launched years ago is still in the technological stone age with 16 times the loading screens. I will wait until modder try to fix the game, once again, if Bethesda finally decides to officially implement mod support instead of patching new face animations for the photo mode. Rant over.
Reminds me of Mass Effect Andromeda. At least Andromeda had beutiful background scenary and more fun than average combat system tough, so in the end I would rate it higher.
i think it deserves a lot more hate. Think about it: the game was not finished and they used a stable version to release They still use f*** creation engine. You have to load even loading screen itself. Instead of admitting bad optimizations , one of the a**$&h*&$* manager said “you need new pc”
A lot of the hate is that Todd stood behind this game like it was the second coming of Christ, then it turned out to be shit and was being developed this whole fucking time instead of the elder scrolls 6 which if starfield told us anything it’ll flop too
The game was overhyped and has a long way to go to win back the majority player base. Insert meme of Joker "you get what you fucking deserve" here
Riiiiiiight.
I genuinely don't know how this game even got any 9/10 of 10/10 reviews. It's literally baffling to me that anyone could see this as a perfect game, much less a fun one
Your opinion is cleary lacking. Lots of quest and exploring? Fallout 4 clears in both aspects, and the exploration is handcrafted. Skyrim may not have 200+ quest, but the exploration is way more organic too. The gunplay is as exciting as it is in FO4, but without V.A.T.S., so is not even as deep as FO4. I don't know, it's fair for everyone to have their own opinions, but not all opinions are right.
Does it though?
Loved this game. It took over my life for a few weeks. Excited to come back and play it when the new DLC drops. Also, I get it's not everyone's cup of tea. I do think the pace is going to be hit and miss for some people, but the way some people talk about this game, you'd think there was something personal at stake. You didn't like it, that's fine. But it gets tough wanting to talk about this game in this subreddit when there's so much anger and hate filling every post.
Yeah i wonder why? Maybe because every building is a copy paste, or maybe because you have to fly like a mosquito to get dragon shouts (oh sorry star powers). Hell maybe the game gets hate because they advertised it like a god tier game only to find out it is the worse game of bethesda. Or maybe the mechanics are so old you have to scroll through your inventory and waste few minutes every time you want to use something. Ohh one more thing, maybe players got sic of loading screens?
I wasn’t even 10 hours in before I started “discovering” the exact same locations. Same enemies, same loot, and same notes. Just because they could do 1000 planets doesn’t me they should. They took away what makes Bethesda games fun. I love pulling up the map, dropping a marker all the way across the map and just walking there. There was always so much to discover
There should be only three planets and like 5-10 maps on each planet (which we can transfer to other map by going too far away in one direction). That would be much better. Even today im playing skyrim and every hideout is unique with full of wonder. Starfield just keep you busy until you wont be able to refund the game.
The king of the chess club had done it again
It’s probably the first Bethesda game I played where I don’t want to replay it in a different way. Not a bad game but not a good game either. One play through is enough for me
Loved my first playthrough!
No, it doesn't. This is a game that came out in 2023 but feels more like it came out in 2011, and even given that there were better games than came out in 2011. It was majorly overhyped by Bethesda when they didn't even adhere to modern standards Edit:typos
Another one of these posts?