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To be fair, most of the cosmos in real life is literally empty. However, realism is overrated. The whole reason we play video games is because real life sucks.
I mean, some of us play sci-fi games because we want to experience the reality that's still out of reach to us.
Not Bethesda products, of course, but, you know. Games.
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Everything in Starfield feels like more clicking through (horribly outdated) menus and inventory screens.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.
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.
Privateering, but better: Star traders: Frontiers (Though not 3D).
Also Endless Sky, which is free
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.
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.
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.
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 spent 20 hours exploring one solar system alone. Yea some planets are empty. Not many though. The complaints so far are really shallow.
Man you can spend so much time digging through a base to find neat shit and story
shallow isn't what I'd call these complaints, I'd call them childish. I'm having a ton of fun
Right? There's so effing much to do. I'm about to dive into building my first outpost and I've already put in 30 hours into the game in the first 3 star systems without tackling more than a couple side quests. Doing the alben quest line right now and it's so much fun.
Someone said go play NMS because it's better? Ffs no it's not.
I don't get any of the complaints yet. Except for the local map. Wtf were they thinking. I thought it was a bug. And maybe the item menus. I need to see more.
thIS gAme iS lIke a pUdDle cUz itS SHalLOw
I've heard this phrase, or iterations of it, so many times over the years, especially in regards to space games, that I'm convinced the people spewing it constantly have absolutely no idea what a deep space game actually is. I think they're just there to complain regardless of how much depth there is.
That's at least a step up from No Man's Sky, which promised unexplored universes. It then delivered every planet already having a base of at least one alien race.
At this point I would welcome literal empty planets.
I really can’t decide if I agree or not. Only had a chance to play 4 hours or so. My main impression so far is the menus are clunky and I hate how reliant travel is on the menu system. Doesn’t feel like I’m actually piloting anything
My argument for why landing on the moon wasn't boring is they actually got to pilot the ship, landing it safely on the surface. If the astronauts had a cut scene where they were suddenly landing safely just so they could then fast travel home, having nothing to do on the surface would've been far more of an issue.
"We choose to go to the Moon in this game and do the other things, not because they are easy, but to watch the cutscene"
The person that made FallUI (a solid UI mod for Fallout 4 that fixes inventory management amd other stuff) released a mod for Starfield's inventory last night.
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/773?tab=description
200 million dollar budget, as large as a summer blockbuster film, yet a dude with his free time fixed an issue that was the devs responsibility. Remind me why this game is $70?
UI elements are usually designed to work on the lowest common denominator. Small screens, struggling cpus, etc. Modders don't care about any of that.
The people who're emotionally invested in something will almost always make something better than the developers themselves.
Part of that is the ability to focus on improving on all of the work that already exists and the other part is being able to unilaterally make decisions while being emotionally invested.
Developers are often spending the majority of the time making sure whatever gameplay exists passes testing without breaking the overall compromise vision that is limited by time and money for deadlines. Companies don't allow enough time for polish and frequently have decisions made based on the added cost of labor and testing tha mods don't have since mods having bugs is an acceptable situation for people while a company putting out bugs is generally met with hostility. Different levels of standards and costs have a huge impact on why many mods vastly improve the game in ways that don't fit into the game development process.
Plus a lot of mods are focused on a specific part and don't appeal to the playerbase as a whole.
I thought that fast-travel-via-menu was clunky too after 4 hours. Then I realized you don't need to use the menus to fast travel, it's just perhaps clunkier to do so from your cockpit. Aim at a planet, go into scan mode, then tap A and hold X (on controller). Here's a video demoing it.
There are several less than intuitive features in the game that I'm slowing discovering by paying more attention to the prompts at the bottom of the screen. I may have missed a tooltip but it seems this is a very common one based on negative feedback.
"Everyone's concerned that empty planets are going to be boring. But when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored."
Um, yeah, because going to the moon was a novel thing in 1969. It isn't 360 years later. Reminds me of the Futurama pilot when Fry was excited to go to the moon and it was just another boring trip for everyone else.
Also, they actually went to the moon, not play a game where they went to the moon, being on an empty moon would be way more thrilling of an experience than playing a video game.
It's true, some of them ARE empty by design...but the problem is, a world with life on it in Starfield is barely more interesting than the barren rock. It is still almost ALL randomly generated, there just happens to be more wildlife to scan while you run across the boring landscape, and maybe an animal will try to kill you.
Oh, and the pointless radiant quest you get will be from a solar farm on the nice planet, instead of a mining platform on the barren one. There is very little difference.
Outer Wilds had a few planets but it was still fun
The environmental storytelling was really good.
I just played two hours and called it quits as I was walking, jumping, and hovering in "mid air" on Luna. No Sun to see, but the Luna Surface was .... illuminated and the features threw somehow shadows? Where is the light coming from? Why is there no conversation of moment? This is truly Skyrim in space.
I feel like Starfield should have removed the space travel mechanics. It could instead have opted for Mass Effect style travel menu..
Also, they could have gone for a handful of highly detailed planets.
I think the most fun I've had has been the spaceship building. I've only done a bit of space combat, but the spaceship builder while not perfect (like the inability to rotate parts) I quite liked.
If it was boring, nobody would want to visit the Moon or Mars IRL, and yet... People do want to do that. 🤷🏻♂️
Of course, in the game even the "empty" planets are not actually empty. There are plenty of POIs to find from wrecked spaceships to clandestine bases to naturally forming caves. You just can't find them without landing and walking around. Sometimes for hours, because the planet is huge and you can only explore it on foot.