Starfield: frictionless game design
Starfield: frictionless game design
Starfield - the latest AAA RPG from Bethesda - takes players to space. In this guide, we'll tell you how it fails due to frictionless design.
The most boring vision of humanity’s future
The two powers in the Starfield setting are United Colonies, which is the Bureaucratic United States. Their opposite state is Freestar Collective, which is 19th century Texas.
Usually, when I describe the appeal of Imperium of Man (and 40K setting in general), it’s because it’s violently different from most sci-fi settings, where I say, derisively, space humanity is just Blue United States in Space. This description was meant to be a joke, but Todd Howard seemingly took it as a challenge . He made two competing visions of space America: the squeaky-clean and polished superpower whose main drawback is bureaucracy and the rough-and-tumble frontier nation where the highest law enforcement organ is literally a dozen guys in dusters.
Crucially, both of their capitals have a dedicated poverty district to ensure that a perfectly-balanced state of Makes You Think exists.
In the future, go-go dancers will be fully-clothed and look stupid as fuck.
My go-to examples of games that are both extremely difficult and frictionless (in a good way) are Super Meat Boy and Nuclear Throne. No downtime, no load times, no animation locks, when you die you're back in the action in under a second
Genuinely enjoy beating a level in Super Meat Boy and then seeing all of my failed attempts play out at once.
Me, a Gamer: "I demand perfect realism in my space simulation game! No ladies. Nobody darker than an Italian is allowed to be in charge. And we take all our measurements in imperial units."
Bioware Designer: "Okay, here you go. The inky void of space where it takes you six weeks to travel between large barren rocks, and you spend 90% of your day just trying to scavenge enough oxygen to keep from asphyxiating."
Me: "This game sucks! Bioware has gone WOKE!"
Was randomly googling about frictionless game design and QOL "improvements" because I was wondering if any game designers actually listened to every fan requirement for every QOL change imaginable and stumbled on this good article on how empty and frictionless Starfield is.
I used to go on frothing unhinged rants about "QoL" when people were asking for thigns that undermined core game mechanics. I'm still upset that Battlebit let's everyone self heal now. Just sticking with your medic and cooperating was too much to ask. : (
If your future go-go dancers aren't using cybernetics and holograms and gravity inversion fields to invent bold new kinds of nudity I don't want your future.
Wow, amazing review! Entertaining and informative