I have major regret for buying this game. Games like this should have a 20 hour refund window instead of 2. It took me 2 hours to realize it wasn’t possible to get the game to not run like garbage.
Perhaps Steam’s policy should be 2 hours or 10% of expected playtime as set by the devs, whichever is greater, perhaps with a max of 10 hours. That seems pretty reasonable to me.
So, what have we learnt for the next big release?
Pirate before I buy
Same thing happened to me for X4 foundations. Took me a good 30-40 hours to understand what a waste of time it was.
Literally zero enjoyment and it sits on my library laughing at me.
I was incredibly tempted to pre-order Starfield. Everything about it should be right up my alley. I love Sci-fi, space and all things related. But I learned my lesson after pre-ordering Diablo 4. I decided to try out the pirated version shortly after release and was so disappointed and glad I didn’t buy it. I dropped it after a few hours and had no desire to play it after that.
Also coming into it straight after playing Baldur’s Gate 3 made it look so dated. The plastic doll looking NPC’s and animations, boring dialogue and writing. I’m not even that into fantasy/D&D type settings and BG3 drew me in for many hours.
I really hope someone makes a game as good as BG3 but set in space, similar to Mass Effect etc.
Yeah, similar for me. On one had, the idea of a space based “Skyrim” type game sounded pretty cool.
On the other hand, yet another Bethesda “skyrim/fallout” type of game has been overdone without much innovation by Bethesda. So my hopes were quite tempered.
Fingers crossed on Larian getting a licence for Traveller…
I feel exactly the same. DND and fantasy settings aren’t my thing, but I still enjoyed the heck out of BG3 for the story and characters. If Larian made a sci fi game that would be amazing.
I just started BG3, it feels like a modern Dragon Age, Mass Effect with serious focus on the RPG elements. The posing and character models aren’t a leap like the Witcher 3, but the voice acting is top notch
I mean there is Rogue Trader. Not BG3 level, but what I’ve heard it is pretty good.
Weird. Bethesday replying to reviews refusing to acknowledge their game is boring didnt help then? Who could have thought
Instead of buying this game, I started a new run in New Vegas. I am having the best time.
There are so many new games I want to experience before doing replays, but I’m super tempted to go back to New Vegas after all the incredible mods that have come out the past year and a half (when I played last).
Huh, so this is what happens when you passive-aggressively diss your customers’ reviews and tell them “no, it isn’t our fault our game feels dated and like a step down from what we had before, you guys are just playing the game wrong”…
I got Starfield free with my new graphics card and tbh I’m glad that was the case as otherwise I’d have serious buyers remorse. I put a good 50 or so hours into the game, enough to finish the main storyline and most of the factions quests, but at the end of the day it just felt like a hollow experience, and I doubt I’ll be going back to replay it.
The NPCs are shallow and robotic, and once you’ve explored their dialogue tree once you may as well never talk to them again as they’ll never say anything new.
The game worlds look quite visually impressive but aside from the handful of cities and occasional settlements and outposts there is just nothing to do. Who would have guessed simulating a lifeless grey rock would be boring?
The fast travel system is completely broken and ruins the purported objective of the game; to explore. Instead of encouraging the player to do so by landing on planets to find fuel for their ship, the player can just teleport across the galaxy with no consequences.
The only aspect of the game I found to be really fun was the space combat. The ship builder, while quite frustrating at times, was also enjoyable.
Overall, Starfield feels like a game whose ambitions exceed the technical capabilities of the engine it is based on. You can see the janky workarounds that are used to make the game fit the engine from a mile away; cutscenes of a ship taking off rather than an interactive first person view, invisible barriers in the world to prevent you from walking too far without reloading, a cut to black when transiting between interiors and exteriors, and the same dull and lifeless NPC “AI” (I use that term very generously given recent advances) as we saw in older Bethesda titles.
It’s past time that BGS put the rotting hulk that is Gamebryo/Creation Engine/whatever this latest iteration is called out to pasture (at least for new IPs like this) as clearly it is now actively hindering their creative ambitions.
cutscenes of a ship taking off rather than an interactive first person view
Docking is more egregious. It’s not even hiding a loading screen, it’s just wasting our time so things like the CF/SysDef back and forth take longer.
and the same dull and lifeless NPC “AI” (I use that term very generously given recent advances) as we saw in older Bethesda titles.
It’s worse IMO, NPCs don’t seem to have schedules anymore. Which is kind of okay, my least favorite thing in Skyrim was shops being closed because there’s no “fast travel and arrive in the morning” option, but they feel a lot less alive when they stand in one place forever.
About lack of schedules, at least for shops, there’s a very easy solution: have a second NPC for the night shift, sharing the same inventory. That way the shop stays open 24h and the npcs can still have some downtime.
Somehow it got nominated for the “most innovative gameplay” in the Steam awards. Absolute joke
IDK, it’s been awhile since someone had the audacity to make something so repetitive and pass it off as AAA gameplay.
It required true innovation to make a game this aggressively mediocre and bland. True
Yeah, the last time was FO4
It’s completely beyond me. Bethesda fanboys had to be on some hard as shit copium to nominate it.
I can’t really think of any part of it that is innovative. Just basic game systems that have all been done before slapped together.
You can hate on it all you want, even say the game was boring and bland.
But the way they did New Game + was very innovative.
Starfield fast traveled to mostly negative
It’s funny. Everyone bitches that there’s no content and the world is bland, and then says “you can fast travel everywhere so there’s nothing in-between nodes.” Maybe, just maybe if people traveled between locations by actually launching into space and walking around in towns they’d run into all the random events that made me take 2 hours to cross the street in some places. Instead everyone just jumps point to point and says “the only thing interesting is the main story.” Is Starfield a GOTY quality game? No. But people sure seem to be going out of their way to play the game in bad faith for a bad review.
Maybe, just maybe if people traveled between locations by actually launching into space
You are aware that there isn’t anywhere to go while in space, right? You can’t manually fly from Cydonia to Deimos Staryards, nor can you go “beyond” the bounds of the planet cell you’re in. You can’t go from a “Settlement” planetary POI to an “Abandoned Mine” POI that is some 200km away from it without fast travel.
That’s on the game design. If players feel the need to fast travel then they aren’t linking to the side stories to the path of the main game well enough. Spider-man had fast travel, i used it once for the trophy and never touched it again because traversal was so good in the game. Red Dead did it brilliantly too. I’m not sure if fast travel existed or not, I never looked for it. The world was rewarding everywhere.
Brown planets, boring combat, bland characters.
I keep trying to play this game and I keep quitting it.
Good. As if the game wasn’t already 100% “mostly negative” (Bethesda game but somehow even lazier), they have breached technological frontiers in being petulant little shits about the obvious feedback that that practice spawns.
Throwback to the hard cope when this game released, the fanboy dismissal of any criticism was insane.
The game is a solid 7 and still holds immense potential. The lack of updates combined with a lot of quest & progression breaking bugs and dismissal of such criticism is a 0 and why I wrote a negative review.
I think Fallout 4 was a solid 7. Starfield seems to have been aiming for F4 in space but it falls short in just about every arena. I remember the settlement feature being really cool but unfortunately not very well integrated into the game, and a little half baked. I was so hype to see Starfield would be bringing it back, but instead it was entirely pointless and a total waste of time, as well as being far more restrictive.
The main quest in F4 was at least relatable and interesting enough with some very nice side quests. Starfield has the most boring narrative of every game I’ve ever played, the mind brainless go-hum fetch quest side quests, and no interesting characters in sight. It was literally the 7/10 Fallout 4 but somehow worse.
Fallout 4 but somehow worse.
Fallout 4 was very mid compared to FO3 and Skyrim.
Solid 7 out of what? If you say out of 100, then yes I agree drinking diarrhea water out of a toilet bowl is more fun to do than playing that shit. If you say out of 10 then you are claiming it’s well above average (5) which means you have been drinking diarrhea water.
Considering how you verbalize yourself I think we both know who’s drinking diarrhea, and likely undiluted.
And if you lack so much nuance you might as well go back to Reddit btw.
I gotta stand behind that guy and say if this game is a seven, you’ve really been playing some terrible games.
I was simply joking, but it seems I don’t need to since you seem to be the life of the party. And no, I’ll stay here and continue writing with vulgarity instead of going to Reddit, go fuck yourself.
When I rate a movie 7/10, I’m saying it’s a great movie that’s DEFINITELY worth a watch. Some of my favorite movies are 6/10.
When these people rate a shit game 7/10, they mean “it needs improvement.”
If Starfield was a movie, it’d be rated as a 4-5/10. It’s okay. It’s fine, but it’s not revolutionary. It’s mediocre at best. That’s a five. It’s worse than The Outer Worlds, which is maybe a six.
Please stay here with your vulgarity, you’re the reasonable one here.
Because people can’t have different opinions?
I still think the game is fine. I still think it did some very interesting things. I got over 100 hours of playtime from it. I played on gamepass too. So I definitely got my monies worth.
Does it have problems? Sure. Quite a few, but it’s still enjoyable enough of you don’t expect the too much. It also had tons of potential of they actually release the creation kit.
I don’t think it’s the worst game ever. It’s not even their worst game.
I personally really enjoyed the trip. Far from perfect, and more a 2010 game in its core, but quite entertaining. However, I would have been disappointed if I had to pay 80€ for it (especially because this game lacks polish). I had no hesitation thanks to the gamepass, and I have no regret playing 100h to it :).
I think the backlash is a bit excessive. It feels like people expected this game to be exceptional, having huge expectations that were never met. It’s Bethesda, how can we expect a master piece from them on day one? Besides, it’s not like a success like Skyrim can be reproduced that easily. It’s not bad to have expectations, but if the game is different than what you had in mind, it’s not the game’s fault imo (and it happens too frequently those years, as if all major releases are bad games that should never be played).
I watched a bit of gameplay. If I had purchased it, I would be refunding it. I think that’s enough for a negative review.
People are too harsh for me I guess 😅.
These are just a few random quotes I found with a minute of Googling but there are many more out there. I think people were expecting exceptional and had huge expectations because Bethesda and Microsoft were very much pushing the hype train a lot. They set up the game as one thing and what was delivered was a pale shadow of it. I agree you can’t expect for the success of Skyrim, but it was 100% presented to the world like it would be. There are many parts of the game that fall short of what Skyrim did 13 years ago and what other Bethesda RPGs were doing decades ago in terms of quest design and dialogue.
“We’ve always wanted to play the game we’re making and no-one else has quite pulled it off in what we’re doing. And we feel that once we started putting some pieces in place and playing parts of it, there’s something really… I don’t want to say too much but… pretty incredible there.”
“It’s very big, yeah. People are still playing Skyrim and we have learned from that. We spent more time building [Starfield] to be played for a long time, if you so chose that you just wanted to keep playing it. It’s got some more hooks in it for that, that we added later to a game like Skyrim… while still making sure that somebody who just wants to play it, and go through the main quests and “win”, or feel they’ve accomplished something large is doable.”
“And it has large scale goals and storytelling, but that minute-to-minute feels rewarding for you. And if you just want to pass the time and go watch the sunset and pick flowers it’s rewarding in that way too. The quiet moments feel really really good.”
Yes, it seems to be it. I personally do not like this way of thinking. Marketing is always going to put up some lies in order to sell the product. It feels strange to me to judge a game from what the marketing said about it, instead of what the game truly is. Of course, it would be very disappointing if you can only rely on what the marketing said when deciding to buy or not buy the game. But with all the options available nowadays (reviews, streams, test it for 10€ thanks to the gamepass instead of paying 80€ directly), it seems strange to me to spend so much money, without informing yourself enough, and be this angry afterwards.
As I said, it’s not like the game is perfect, but it’s far to be as bad as those « user reviews » depicts.
It’s the same people who were sending death threats to CDPR over Cyberpunk. They had built up up an internal hype saying that [insert game] was going to replace their life, and they would have no reason to ever leave their computer again. When that obviously didn’t happen (and it had the some bugs on launch, although not universally game-crashing levels of bugs like Skyrim on launch, which people seem to forget) they decided that they needed to stomp the game into the ground and nobody was allowed to enjoy it ever. Unfortunately the internet is all bandwagon these days and the petulant children have managed to get a cloud of negativity to hang around the game. Talk to some adults about the game and you’ll find that it’s solid enough, with a decent amount of gameplay. Is it worth $100? No, buy it on sale for like 30 or 40, but these people saying you are garbage for not believing that the Bethesda team needs to be lynched over this really need yo take their spoiled heads out of their collective ass.
I am glad I had a free amd cpu with this game.
Funny game, but is boring af if you played anything from Bethesda
Don’t worry; free-labor modders will turn it into something better and Bethesda will be right back to making money from it.
Oh no, they abandoned that idea very quickly.
