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Some of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design - but that’s not boring, Bethesda insists
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Starfield
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I really don't think the empty planets are the problem. Space Engineers has empty planets. Stationeers has empty planets. But they have interesting things to do on those empty planets. Problems to solve. Systems to build and improve.
Everything in Starfield feels like more clicking through (horribly outdated) menus and inventory screens. Between those and the loading screens, the only time the game is really fun is when you're shooting pirates. But there are games that do that part much much better.
I think that's how I'd summarize the whole game: lots of things to do but none of it has any depth and everything has been done much better elsewhere.
When they said this would be hard sci-fi, I actually imagined myself piloting an actual space ship and doing astronaut things, not a glorified magic plane.
If someone is looking for what Starfield offers but better, here are my recommendations at a fraction of cost:
Maybe the issue is that this game, like NMS before, tried to be everything to everyone and didn't develop towards something meaningful.
Hopefully, like NMS will find its soul and develop into something worth playing. (IMO)
EDIT: This is a stealthy way of getting recommendations ;)
Eve Online for the cutthroat privateer life.
If you like these sorts of games (particularly games like Titanfall and Subnautica, or DRG), you might really like Elite Dangerous. Has a big learning curve, but it's a "once every decade or two" game when it comes to scratching a deep deep Sci fi itch. 1:1* milky way, set thousands of years in the future, with a variety of ships and missions,with excellent HOTAS and VR support. Co-op up to five people, even more if you are in a public server. FPS game with a variety of vehicles, from small cars to aircraft carriers 4x the length of the burj Khalifa.
While I own it and have tested it, like Eve, it's a multiplayer game for people who enjoy and have the skills (and time) for it...
My memory of Elite Dangerous is trying to start auto-undocking, and the flight computer putting me on hold because of another person floating around in the docking bay. Eventually, it aborted the auto-undock; and the tutorial had not taught me how to release the controls to manually undock. So, eventually the station's security systems flagged me as flying in unpermitted space and destroyed my ship.
So that does seem to echo the "big learning curve" bit.
The tutorials are a bit rough, haha. I found the actual game easier. There's some great YouTube guides that help with the basics, how to make money easily, how to get certain ships, etc. Makes the game a lot easier. :)
Elite is fantastic at being Elite, I'm actually glad starfield isn't like elite though. Elite is all about the beautiful desolation of space, and the attempts of humanity to carve out a place in that desolation. But there's not really any story or characters or much stuff that isn't procedurally generated. It's just you and the grind in a really pretty world.
When I have an itch that elite will scratch I pop on and enjoy being in the cockpit (especially in VR). Im playing starfield to scratch that BGS rpg itch. If I had to manually jump from system to system and fly my ship in to land everytime I want to do a small quest I'd be really put off of starfield.
I think my biggest pet peeve with Starfield is the whole looter aproach all Bethesda games have, which means during the first mission, I spent more time rumaging through stuff and figuring out how to break into rooms to get more loot than actually playing the mission.
Not because I like looting, but because I think that if I miss an important item, at some point in the game I'll be locked out of it and require grinding which is my kryptonite.
Oh yeah I definitely feel the inventory management pain issue lol. Some people have been complaining that you can't open every draw in every room, there's so so much loot already that I'm glad tbh that it's usually only yellow crates and bodies that are worth looting. Having a ship with a large inventory helps massively for me. I can dump all my resources in there, and dump all the armour and loot me and my companions haul back from missing a there, them just go on a selling spree in between a few missions. Almost hit a million in income and 90% of that is from loot from killed enemies.
At level 25 now so starting to hit a real limit on how much money shopkeepers have. Would be nice to unlock richer traders, or do missions for them which gives them more capital or something. It'll probably mean that I only bother looting things worth 5k or something going forward as otherwise it's more mass than worth the effort looting and selling. Maybe that's an intentional game design? Force people to not spend all day looting and managing inventory space?
I haven't played Elite Dangerous since the first year it came out. At that time it was the very definition of "A mile wide and an inch deep" though.
Has it gotten any deeper?
If you haven't played since 2014, it has gotten a lot deeper, haha. Hell, there's even a whole human civilization around Sag A* these days.
i remember doing the run to Sag A* in a single day a few years ago. In full VR with HOTAS. Experiencing that black hole like that is still one of my best gaming memories of all time.
The fact that there’s now a full human civilisation out there blows my mind.
Hah oh yeah? I had been part of some organized effort in the early days to flip a system ownership, and after a large amount of people working hard on missions for a couple months, they finally admitted that it wasn't functional yet.
Surprised you didn't mention the star citizen and space engineers. They have that I'm a space mining cowboy aspect nailed down pretty well.
Star citizen is more of an overpriced ship-store than an actual game.
Mostly true, but it is playable and amazing. I'm in love with the fact I can go from waking up in a bunk, to a space station, to mining a airless moon, all without loading screens seamlessly. Super immersive.
Buggy as all get out, lol
And a development pace slower than anything else
I would never recommend that scam to anyone hahaha
Also Endless Sky, which is free
I love mods, but often they come with the trade-off of balancing issues.
A big chunk in gameplay design and development is balancing and while I agree some mods are great, they tend to mess with balance heavily, making it either easier or a whole spiky mess.
Exploration and Space combat: Endless Space 2. I have my share of problems with that game but it's effectively Civilization In Space. You can explore star systems, and you can fight space pirates.
So, KSP 1&2 then? :)
or Elite Dangerous
No orbital mechanics in E:D, no in-space EVA. It does have a slightly more realistic flight model with dampening off, but it’s not true to life.
Thanks for the recommendations! I'll look into these, and already have dipped my feet into stuff like Everspace 2 and Outer Wilds. Some of these are on Xbox Game Pass as well, which is cool.
I think for me everything doesn't feel connected, to go anywhere it's always a loading screen. It is very clearly a limitation of their engine, but it just makes everything feel disconnected.
To boldly load where no one has loaded before
I think this is my issue too. Oblivion and Skryim had loading screens sure, but everything felt connected and purposeful - the whole spaceship mechanic can be entirely skipped with fast travel and just leaves everything so disconnected.
I'm actually curious how it would feel if it went Half-Life 2's route; keep the transitions in first-person view, and put up loading indicators when needed, but at least let people see/feel the transition to the next thing.
It probably would have done a lot if, after selecting a nav point to go to, you actually pushed a "Enter hyperspace" throttle on the dash, and then got a loading screen with the stars flying past.
This is just a summary of modern Bethesda games in a nutshell, except forgetting to mention bugs as well.
I really don't know what people where expecting with Starfield
No it really isn't. In all prior Bethesda games you could get from any place in the world to any other just by walking and maybe some loading screens if you're going from/to a city or dungeon. In Starfield you have to use menus and loading screens to get from most places to most other places.
Also, Starfield places more emphasis on amassing items due to having resources etc than the previous-worst Fallout 4, and all prior Bethesda games didn't have resources to manage, just items.
So no, while Starfield is very much like previous Bethesda games, many flaws and issues are exacerbated.
I'd like to know how many of you actually WALKED everywhere in Skyrim or Fallout, I tried it once, boring as fuck and extremely irritating when a quest took me from one side of the map to the other and back. Fast traveling is good and a majority of people that play their game use it almost exclusively where possible.
Y'all are delusional if you think people want to play walking simulators all the time in their RPGs, it's a very small group who plays them that way.
Because walking from one side of skyrims map to the other and back is TOTALLY the same as just being able to walk from Riften to Whiterun. The equivalent of which you wouldn't be able to do in Starfield.
Riften to Whiterun is like half the distance from solitude to Riften, walking between either is a chore and 99% of players wouldn't or don't do it.
Tho comparing it to Starfield is sorta hilarious because Starfield is absolutely massive and even games like NMS require going into menus to jump between systems.
Do I wish Starfield was more like NMS in that you can relatively seamless take off, fly to another planet, land, do it all over again? Yeah that'd be pretty sweet. Do I also know that the world's in NMS are way way less interesting and detailed overall and the storyline/NPC interactions are very basic? Yes I do.
Different strengths and different end goals for the games
The game has some issues but, surprisingly, bugs really aren't one of them.
I think Microsoft can be thanked for that. They buckled down and lent their support to make sure Starfield didn't have constant crashes and backwards flying spaceships and whatnot.
I could understand expecting improvements before they actually showed the game off; but after the very first gameplay reveal, it should have been pretty obvious to anyone familiar with BGS that it was going to be the same as Skyrim and Fallout 4, but with a different aesthetic and theme.
Everything Starfield does to blow my expectations is that it's surprisingly stable and bug free. I'm playing it with a 1660 Super and it's actually playable (I mean, only 30 fps when outside); the card isn't even supported! Fallout 4 wasn't even playable at launch (single digit fps when anywhere near Boston) and I had the recommended specs for it.
I just wish there was an option to lower the resolution. I've got a 2080 and also got 30fps, because 4k.
Bethesda games are puddles of water: wide with content, but completely shallow in depth.
They didn't used to be though, which is why it's disappointing.
I can't wait for a small studio to license their platform and make star New Vegas