this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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Your point is fair and works really well on its own, but in the context of the entire game, its systems, mechanics, and the entire experience they come together to create, I just can't help but feel genuinely bored and disappointed regardless. The writing feels uninspired and generic; contrary to what some people have been saying, the writing isn't a product of playing safe by the outsourced writers Bethesda used - it's just bad, like a bad paint job on your car or poorly written software.
Even trying to side with the supposedly lowlife immoral inhabitants of the game's world, you constantly hear either that they're all family and friends (despite seeing one murder another because they got ripped off), or that they didn't have a choice and still try to be "good".
This isn't what people expect from a Bethesda game in general, and from a game with ESRB rating of Mature (17+).
Again, ignoring my expectations that the game's marketing specifically built to be centered around me being able to tell my story and stuff, it's just poorly written and executed in the vast majority of aspects that matter in a game like the one Starfield is trying to be - the motifs aren't clear, the storytelling is the most basic straight-up lecture in every quest that never tries to adhere to the "show, don't tell" principles, the tasks you have to do are just boring and generic, too; it's 2023, Bethesda has published and made tons of games of various genres st this point, many of a larger caliber, yet they still purposefully choose to go with the cookie-cutter quests that involve no unique one-time mechanics or animations, rely on mostly generated animations that feel out of place most of the time, and have you feel like you're playing a game from pre-2010 that you should be able to play on a toaster, but are somehow told to upgrade to the latest hardware because the company couldn't be bothered to develop and optimize a proper experience.
The pain scratches off at way more places than just exploration in Starfield.
Two things I really like are the artstyle and building my own ships with actual interiors, but the latter actually falls short due to massive restrictions in terms of said interior designs and the fact that space is basically a big mostly empty room to teleport to and from, akin to many other places in the game; no wonder an SSD is required to play, and for the worst reasons possible in a modern AAA title of that ambition.
I loved the game at first, but a lot of that was due to my huge interest in the niche it could cover, space, and science fiction, and white unfortunately, I've discovered way too many prominent flaws while simply trying to have fun like I always managed in similar games, even from Bethesda.
I hope that mods and DLCs may save the game, but none of that is ever going to fix the game's broken carcass of poor writing and uninspired practices.
Overall pretty valid criticisms, I am able to enjoy the game pretty well because my expectations were very tempered, and I still find it to be enjoyable in most of the Bethesda ways I've come to expect, which is really a culmination of too many small touches for me to exert the effort of writing down and cataloging.
The only thing I'll say to all of that is that when you said that the writing quality wasn't what we expect of Bethesda or a mature game, that's a bit silly. I'm a Bethesda fanboy, basically, and even so I've only ever expected serviceable to middlingly poor writing out of any of their games, and that's about what I feel the internet expects as well, not that that makes the criticism invalid, the writing is... well, serviceable at best or middlingly poor at worst, and I don't really come in with any expectations for good writing out of a game rated mature, either.
All a mature rating means is whatever specific traits are listed on the rating, leisure suit Larry box office bust is rated mature, and that game's writing is not emotionally mature by any means.
You are correct about most of these issues, though. Somehow, by sheer amount of story content and stuff to acquire and build, I'll probably still spend about a hundred hours in it before modding, and modding will probably take it to unknown lengths. I do believe when Todd Howard says the game was made to be played for a long time that he's indirectly talking about the mod support and the game's premise and interplanetary setup being the most ripe for user generated content, and I believe that that'll add much beyond the game's natural life, in an even larger ratio than older Bethesda games, which is its own possible criticism.
Even still, I'd have to say that the game lets down on enough critical fronts that it'll be my least favorite Bethesda game, with the top two spots going to Oblivion and Fallout 4, for me, personally. I do also have to admit, when I look at the big picture, getting more than a hundred hours of enjoyment out of a game, even for the full $70, is good value for time spent, to me, and I do enjoy the game. I don't enjoy it massively, but I can spend time in the world and accomplish tasks and feel satisfied, or enjoy the gunplay or conversations enough that I can't complain.
I've bought other games of higher critical opinion that I spent far, far less time in, and didn't get the same amount of cumulative enjoyment out of, because they just don't tap into my brain in whatever primal way that Bethesda games fit in, even Starfield, puzzlingly enough.