Ouch. That’s terrible. 5.6 user review score, and I skimmed them: it’s not just a bunch of 0 scores, it’s a lot of people giving 4-6, saying that the more they played, the less they enjoyed. The most common criticism was a fundamental lack of risk taking from Bethesda. They promised an experience like none other, but just delivered yet another iteration on the same game they’ve been making since Oblivion. That was very much the impression I got from the game based on the trailers, and why I was never enthusiastic about this one.
I’ll amend my initial statement. Instead of waiting for this game to hit $35, I’ll check it out for $10 in a few years. It’s not like I don’t have an abundance of amazing games to play right now. Between BG3 and AC6, I’m very happy.
Well it’s a Bethesda game. People should really expect it to have a fair bit in common with previous titles. Given the outrageous success of Skyrim in particular, you’d think there must be something in their way of doing things.
Getting massively hyped about upcoming games usually ends in tears. People build up an idea of what the game will be like based on limited information (mostly PR) and feel let down when it doesn’t meet their expectations.
Personally I paid almost no attention to this one until it released. But then I watched a YouTube stream by Outside Xbox called “being a space jerk in starfield” or something, which basically them just messing around and finding everything very funny. And I decided to give it a shot.
Still right at the beginning, but here’s some very first thoughts:
1. The opening sequence is quite poor. You touch a thing, have a vision, then a guy immediately shows up telling you to take the thing to his organization, but just stays behind himself and gives you his spaceship. WTF? There’s a whole bunch of ways of putting you in charge of the ship that could actually make sense. The classic is he goes with you, but is fatally wounded on route “must… take… MacGuffin to…constell… urrrggghh”. OK that’s been done a thousand times, but the reason it has is because it actually works narratively. Oh well.
2. Wandering around the main settlements talking to various people feels a lot like the Outer Worlds but so far without everything feeling quite so small (my main complaint with that game). Interesting to see they’ve reverted to voiceless protagonist and showing exactly what you say. It seems that what you say matters more than in FO4 with the persuasion mechanic being both important and quite an interesting take on it.
3. There seem to be a bunch of factions, businesses and organizations to get work from. I’m led to believe that the faction quests get quite involved after a bit, but so far I’ve only only accepted one survey job and one shakedown and haven’t started either yet.
4. Had a couple of gun fights. Seemed fine. Much like FO4 or Cyberpunk for all I could tell.
5. First space fight felt a bit like Elite Dangerous in terms of ship handling, allocating power etc, but probably a bit simpler. Might get more interesting with better ships? I think they missed a trick here though. Since the game doesn’t really try to be a space flight sim in any other way, they could have done something a bit different with space combat than world war 2 style dogfighting in space, which never made much sense.
6. Ship navigation very much not like Elite Dangerous. That game really nailed exploring a procedural galaxy full of real scale planets (unfortunately they spectacularly failed to do anything interesting with it IMO). Starfield on the other hand have made the awesomeness of space flight basically into fast travel. I think I can live with that. KOTOR and Mass Effect were still great while doing the same thing, and they didn’t even have the ship combat thing.
7. Haven’t looked into the procedurally generated stuff yet. I’ll check it out, but not that interested in just going to places for no reason other than to shoot and loot. I think the fun will probably be in faction missions, companion quests, and generally living my space life. Maybe even the main story (I’ve heard it’s worth advancing that to a certain point before getting too distracted). As the argument between procedural generation and hand crafted, I think it depends a lot on what you do with it. Honestly a lot of Skyrim and FO4’s handcrafted locations might as well have been procedural anyway.
The big question is the same as it’s been for every space game I’ve played since original Elite in 1984. Can I basically be Han Solo as we first saw him? A space rouge taking on dodgy deals to earn some scratch, trying to talk my way out of trouble and pulling a blaster when things go south. I need a cool ship, a best mate and maximum points in sexterity (sadly not a real stat).
Starfield looks like it might just let me do that. I’ll keep you posted.
