The best review, as always, is to watch the first 20 minutes of gameplay to gauge whether you like it. I’m optimistic, and more than a little surprised at only a singular mention of glitches from a game developed by Bugthesda.
Seems like roughly Skyrim/Fallout in space. Even though I’d have wanted something different, I can’t say I’m not a sucker for their formula so I’ll just wait for a sale and have a blast with mods.
I wouldn’t call it scary. One of the creatures is a mimic and turns into the props that surround it, like a cup or a plate, or radio or cone (for example) and when you get near it, it lashes out at you. So there’s some startling moments, but it’s not a horror game by any means. There is tension, due to the subject matter and setting, but the intent isn’t to be scary.
Ok thank you, that’s what I’m not into. :p Also, I have enough stuff in my backlog to wait for Starfield to have 1K mods and be at 50% off with all DLC :p
I’ll just be playing it on Game Pass and then probably buy it when it goes on sale on Steam in a few months. Probably Winter Holiday sale or whatever.
By that time, maybe the Creation Kit will be released (though, that’s more likely to be next year) as well, which makes for much more in-depth mods. Also any script extenders (which will very likely only work on the Steam version) and unofficial patches should be a bit more stable early next year.
Until then, I don’t really need it on Steam.
I keep forgetting to preload, though, which I should do when I get a chance, just to get the initial ~120 GB out of the way.
I’ve downloaded it on two devices already. It’s on the Starfield - Standard Edition page, not the premium edition one. The usual play button will say “Pre-load install”.
exploration in the game is unfortunately weak in many aspects; This is due to the large reliance on procedural generation of environments. Also, the role-playing elements do not have a strong presence or impact.
I was really hoping proc-gen would be just for the terrain and surrounding areas and the interesting setpieces would be as handcrafted (or as close as possible) to a regular TES/Fallout experience. I guess they had to trade in a lot of these to make the big universe happen though...
That’s how they described it, too. Oh Todd you done it again!
Looks like there’s not much to do on the planets. One review even said the classic “get lost on the way and end up doing ten other things” just doesn’t happen in this game anywhere. It can happen in a city, but then they also said the cities are pretty meh.
I really hope I’m wrong about this in five years, but it looks like No Man’s Sky did even more damage to the space sim genre than we thought. We’re in a year with great handcrafted experiences that still feel vast: Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur’s Gate 3, even Everspace 2 in a similar setting (and Everspace 2 wouldn’t have had the same, fatal loading screen issue if it was a AAA game). Starfield went the other direction.
By chasing the procedural generation dream, from everything I’ve seen, Bethesda really hamstrung the space exploration to get there. Fortunately I really like the old Bethesda formula, so hopefully the Skyrim/Fallout experience that’s still there will be enough for me to want to put hundreds of hours into it. I’m just hoping developers don’t keep trying to do this for games in space settings.
It sounds like No Man’s Sky. You’re supposed to be able to explore the whole galaxy and see many creatures, environments, etc but they all end up being the same so exploration is boring, at least to me it was
I felt similarly. Exploring is just another thing to "do" to get credits/nanites. It was cool to see genuinely new things like the huge Dune-styled worms but once you see one you've seen them all.
That extends to base building too. I have no reason to build a base anywhere else in the galaxy once I have a capital ship that does all my crafting for me. Except resource collecting, I guess. But meh, different strokes for different folks. I don't think there's been a non-MMO continually-updated game that I've come back to as often as NMS but coming back is usually pretty short-lived.
This is the core issue with all procgen games, IMO.
You are promised "infinite exploration", but in truth there are countable variants of the procgen algorithm. Once you see all those variants, you've effectively seen everything. Sure, you'll see small variations, or new ways to combine the existing variants... but when you see all the "tricks" the veil falls.
variants of the procgen algorithm. Once you see all those variants, you’ve effectively seen everything. Sure, you’ll see small variations, or new ways to combine the existing variants… but when you see all the “tricks” the veil falls.
That’s what makes this even more of an issue. The game isn’t procedural. They used procedural tooling but everything is set in stone now. They could’ve gone through and cleaned up and tweaked everything so it didn’t feel bland. Doesn’t sound like they did.
I knew the writing/rpg aspect was going to be shallow like all of Bethesda games but, they always had fun exploration so this is unfortunate to me. It sounds like they reuse assets a lot, even in the main quest line. Like same buildings with the same enemy placement just on a different planet.
It's definitely a Bethesda game. Their dialogue choices and roleplaying has always been shit. People like Bethesda games primarily because they're given a large open world to explore. But they made most of this one procedurally generated so they've lost their main good quality. I really hope the players are pushed by the stories and side quests to the hand-crafted worlds and the procedurally generated are mostly in the background for players that want to go off the beaten path.
Edit: I just read one that played 70+ hours and even two characters. I was afraid these people were rushing through the game to get reviews out but glad to see that isn’t the case.
I’m curious of they have managed to make the camera feel better in this game versus Fallout or Skyrim when using a controller.
I realize that’s somewhat a vague statement, but I’m not sure how to describe it other than to say the that moving the camera up/down/left/right always felt very linear and it was hard to do precise movements. Like if you try to barely adjust your aim you might overshoot your target. As a comparison, Destiny feels really great to move and jump and aim. And many other games have figured this out. But Bethesda games have always felt very jerky. And, yes, it’s more RPG focused, but that doesn’t mean they also can’t feel good.
Edit: Also, as an aside I want to say I appreciate these big review posts that show up here. I enjoyed those on Reddit so keep it up!
Edit 2: at least in this Digital Foundry video, it’s very briefly mentioned that the combat “feels great” so perhaps they fixed it.
I focused a lot on my social skills because, much like Fallout before it, Starfield isn’t the most adept shooter. It may look like one, with a huge range of weapons to collect and the ability to play from a first-person perspective, but this is not Destiny. Aiming feels wonky, and oftentimes, shots that seem to hit an enemy point blank will fail to register. It’d be nice if Starfield had the equivalent of the VATS system from Fallout, giving it pseudo-turn-based combat, but instead, it’s just a passable shooter attached to a very ambitious RPG. That might be the reason I spent so many skill points on my persuasion abilities.
Pretty excited to get my hands on this game 5 days later! Reviews are surprisingly more split than I expected, with some calling it an easy 10/10 while others call it shallow. The general impressions are: If you like Fallout, you’ll love this game. I like Fallout, so I’m in.
By the way, IGN gave this game a 7/10, which is a new one for them because they hand out 9/10s like candy.
Pretty excited to get my hands on this game 5 days later! Reviews are surprisingly more split than I expected, with some calling it an easy 10/10 while others call it shallow. The general impressions are: If you like Fallout, you’ll love this game. I like Fallout, so I’m in.
By the way, IGN gave this game a 7/10, which is a new one for them because they hand out 9/10s like candy.
This game is on my to buy list, but probably in a few years when they have ironed out all the issues and dropped the DLC in a GOTY or whatever edition they make later.
Console is downscaled and 30fps and one guy on pc had 45-70fps 1440p high settings using a 3600x/2080ti. But yeah, more performance info should pop up soon :)
I'm thinking Steam Deck. Or wait for the Switch 2 and expect a port to that (Microsoft seems to have no problem putting exclusives on Nintendo platforms, c.f. Ori)
I kind of enjoyed fallout but it did feel very shallow for an RPG. I’m hoping this one does a bit better in that regard but I’m trying to temper my expectations.
Fallout had a lot of clever environmental storytelling, vignettes in random buildings, drama happening via terminal logs throughout abandoned factories, etc.
I hope that Starfield hasn’t gotten rid of that aspect of their world building.
I think many ambitious games recently get divisive ratings. I remember many cyberpunk 2077 reviews rated it highly praising the (imo excellent) highs while minimizing the lows before many reviewers bashed it for the bugs and incomplete scope. When these reviews come out it almost feels like the reviewers are scared to be the first to open the “hey it’s bad” floodgates
The easiest way to figure out where a game is writing its saves is to load it up in Sandboxie and save your game, then check sandboxie’s box content to see what got updated or saved and where.
Also, Cyberpunk is on GOG (because it’s made by the people who run GOG), there’s no need to get it through DODI unless you have a severely restricted internet connection and therefore desperately need the smaller size of a repack - you can get the clean gog installer from gog-games. You should just be able to install the latest GOG version over the old version with no difficulty.
Yes, I was planning to download the new version from gog games. But when I installed the game I didn’t think about gog games at all, when searching for games I often go directly to DODI.
Could you explain this Sandboxie method? I don’t understand, what do I have to upload?
Sandboxie is a sandboxing app. It’s main purpose is to isolate an app from your PC, mainly used to run suspicious apps. It can track what the isolated app does.
It’s rather complicated, so it’s easier to find the game here, or as what I do, use Everything and sort by recently modified files so I can check what files are just written.
I can also recommend Everything (1.5a) as it’s the only tool I know of where I can search not only for file names, but also for the contents of pdfs, docx, etc on every drive, including network drives.
You can also check out Process Monitor which is a freeware tool from Microsoft. So basically what you would do is: open process monitor, make a new game save and then process monitor will show you where this save file is located.
This actually worked, thank you. I’ve located the save files now. Now what, I copy it and (in case the reinstallation of the game deletes those files) just paste it?
Yes, backup save and config files, and restore them in case of the reinstallation, but generally games rarely delete them when you uninstall them. This approach works almost with every game.
This post will be updated to add reviews as they are released.
Review & Release Megathread - This post will house all reviews and initial reactions, and serve as a place to ask frequent questions and topics around the game around launch.
That sounds pretty convenient, although I’m a bit worried about the privacy side, it would seem that making a guest account is a good enough compromise at least
if you login as a Guest User, no personal data is collected whatsoever.
I’ve mostly been playing Hogwarts Legacy, a not very well known game called Reshaping Mars that I really enjoy, and I am aching to go back to Satisfactory but haven’t had the time.
I game on Linux using Steam. If those three other people who do this and are trying to play Hogwarts Legacy: go back to proton 7, something broke with HL’s latest update and proton 8.
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