The faction quests were fantastic, and the lockpicking system was the best of any system I've ever seen in a game. Gunplay was decent.
Outside of that, they missed hard. Traveling was just loading screens. Planets were meh. Outpost building SUCKED and you basically had to choose whether to settle down into a run and farm upgrades or ng+ and chase powers.
But, I’ve played Skyrim through probably a dozen times. Fallout 4, 3, NV likewise. I might play the Starfield DLC but I struggle to imagine I’ll play through the whole game start to finish ever again.
The most infuriating thing about Starfield is its potential. Another year to flesh out the system with a few interesting spots and work out the NPC quirks and that alone would bump it up from high C tier to B. Fundamentally the game just could have been amazing and that is perhaps the biggest reason why I'm, at least, so disappointed by Bethesda. Lots of honestly rather little issues that culminate into a mediocre experience that can and does often get boring quickly.
Kinda with you on this. I'm stilling playing Starfield, and I still think it's fun. But it isn't "great" and it could've been with a bit more attention to detail.
but I doubt bethesda, with another year.. with another 5 years, could have made anything better than what they have now. So I dont think that potential will ever be realized.
I mean, the NG+ mechanic is handled incredibly well.
The rest of the game is decent, but it's definitely geared towards kids. Probably the "cleanest" modern rpg, there's still some drugs/booze, but that's pretty much it. And while you can be evil, there's not a single evil companion. It's like a PG fallout in space.
But considering all the bad things I heard about it. I was really surprised with how good of a game it was.
I wonder how many people regret their purchase like I do. I played 30 hours, dropped out and haven't looked back. It wasn't a terrible game, just not something that clicked with me in any way. If it weren't for the steep price I would not have forced myself to keep playing even that long, I was bored very soon.
I thought I could try the expansion on Game Pass, but turns out they only sell it and do not give it to Game Pass users for free, so I am not resubbing Game Pass and definitely not buying the DLC for another 30€. What a weird decision of them, could have given the game a new push of players.
Even when I look at the mods available I am just not drawn to it.
This is only the second game that I regret buying on release (not the pre-release, I was at least not that hyped) or at all since Watchdogs 1, but that I enjoyed in the end, it was just not what I had hoped for but still carried me to the end credits. I don't think I will see them for Starfield ever.
Glad that it has a fan base, just sad that it isn't for me.
Same boat. 24 hours before I realized there is nothing worthwhile about the game and haven't looked back other than to see the steam review score every now and then.
Funny thing though I have a friend who has put in dozens of hours since the expansion dropped.
I got the game for free with a video card, and it being bundled played no part in the decision making process to get the card.
So that gave me some leeway to play it and laugh at the absolute dogpile of it without being burdened with the crushing reality of having paid $60+ dollars for it.
Big agree. I bought it day one because initial reviews were good. Remember people saying Bethesda cooked? Played it till 6AM that day. A week later I booted it up again, and... After a few hours, I stopped and never opened it again. I don't know exactly why. It's exactly what we expected - Skyrim in space. But I think the realistic space-explorer fantasy and not very gripping story or characters just didn't appeal to me as much as i thought it would, and made me want to play TES instead.
I wonder how much overlap said fanbase has with the generic "Bethesda Softworks" fanbase, and how much of said fanbase has played other open-world RPGs released in the last decade.
The greater sin for me was that Starfield laid bare all the flaws with every other Bethesda game.
The pseudo-choice that doesn't really make any difference to the story. You can do every faction's quest line. Making a choice doesn't preclude you making a different one once that quest line is done, nor does it have any effect on those other questlines going forward. Choosing the Freestar Rangers should, if not preclude you from joining the commonwealth, then at least have come up in the conversation when you're trying to convince the Freestar Ambassador to open the archive (for example).
The inevitable stat building in the same direction because it's simply the easiest way to play the game. You always end up a stealth archer. You always end up a sneak sniper, etc... You can try your best to spec for something else early on, and then quickly realize that it's not really all that much fun.
The impermanence of being a bad guy. Pay your bounty and suddenly everyone forgets.
In other Bethesda games, the storylines and atmosphere and sidequests were generally enough to forgive this kind of thing. But Starfield was so humdrum that you couldn't help but be annoyed by the same quirks that you forgave in other games.
Honestly the game falls apart at the end of the tutorial with how hamfisted and forced the "but thou must!" was to get you on the ship regardless of your opinion. That could have been written so much less forcefully. Its just an indicator of the lack of give-a-damn the entire game has.
also I just started playing it again, first time since launch, just to see how Shattered Space was..and what the fuck have they done with the game? It runs worse now than it did at launch! on the same hardware!
at launch i was able to play on a mix of medium with some select highs and have a stable, playable frame rate.
Now I have to play on mostly low with some medium to get the same rough FPS. and i'm using lower resolution textures.
and literally nothing else can happen on my PC while playing.
I so much as get a discord audio que for a message and the game immediately loses 30fps.
God forbid I have a video open on my second monitor. Which I was able to do at launch, but now? Tanks my frame rate into the single digits from 120 (to be fair, its a very unstable 120, and again, due to being mostly low/some medium settings).
Fallout 4 doesnt hit my system this hard on ultra settings with graphic enhancing mods. I get better performance in games with raytracing enabled than I do with starfield. and Dynamic resolution/scaling doesnt help. just makes the screen blurry. How can starfield look not significantly or substantially different from fallout 4 and require so much goddamn more horsepower to run?
and they have the audacity to defend this as their best game ever?