Aww man it’s actually a bummer to hear so many people are disliking the game. This has been the first game in a while where I’ve gotten hooked. I love the RPG elements in the game and the story has been brilliant. I’ve enjoyed games recently like Ragnarok and Control but this is the first one where I’m excited to just get back and sucked into the world. The last Bethesda game I played was actually Fallout 3 over a decade ago. It makes sense as Mass Effect is my favorite franchise and this feels like an evolution of that. My perfect game would probably be Starfield with ME: Andromeda combat.
I totally agree. I’m having a blast with this game. Imo, the best thing Beth has ever made (yeah, suck it Morrowind stans)
I think the problem is that this game has a bit of a slow burn. It took a bit for it to open up and make sense for me, more than most Beth games. I think over time the hate cycle will die down and people will get it on a steam sale and finally sink their teeth into it and after a couple of years it’s going to be as beloved as Skyrim is today.
I think a big part of the problem is just hype cycles. People had expectations that were through the roof. They didn't tell you they had seamless transitions to space, and they didn't tell you they had BG3 caliber branching conversation trees (which we're a long way from being able to realistically do outside of a CRPG). But people seemingly expected that.
I watched the direct and we got basically what I expected (though the gunplay feels better than I expected. I definitely felt like VATS was needed in FO4.) It's Bethesda's game design philosophy of a massive world with a bunch of different play styles and a bunch of different quest lines (and smaller single quests) and locations that don't have to be done in any order. You can easily get sidetracked and go down rabbit holes. They iterated on most of their core features and adapted them to the new setting in a really well done way.
I also love the way the skill system brought back the "get better by doing" philosophy of Skyrim with challenges to unlock higher levels, and the story telling is sci fi in more than just skin.
Out of curiosity, have you played BG3 ? It seems that most people who don’t like the game are coming to starfield right from BG3 and those who do have not played it. BG3 is now just the bar that AAA story telling is held to and anyone who has experienced it is having a hard time with the story of other games.
I’m playing Baldurs Gate 3 with friends and Starfield singleplayer. And I am enjoying both.
They aren’t the same game, even though they both rely on story and some aspects of the game are the same (like coming up with your own character and wanting to see how the story affects them)
The game seems good and mostly well made, with the best hand-crafted environments I’ve ever seen from Bethesda.
But when it comes to the core gameplay loop, I feel like I’ve played this game already and I got bored very, very quickly.
It truly plays like Fallout 4 but with more menus and loading screens in order to fast travel somewhere. There is space combat, but it doesn’t feel compelling to me. Click on bad ship until kaboom.
You want to fast travel? Drop some things, you can’t fast travel while encumbered. Please undock first, we have some quest events tied to undocking and we don’t want you to miss those. Please fast travel to the planet before landing at a location, we have some quest events tied to the space around planets and we don’t want you to miss those.
Again though, the game is generally well made and I can see a lot of people truly enjoying it and the many gameplay systems you can dive into like settlement, ship, crew building, and side questing.
The slower-paced looter shooter gameplay loop just really isn’t for me right now. I’d rather play Fallout or Borderlands.
Note that I haven’t commented on the story. I don’t feel like I’ve experienced enough of it to really give a good opinion on it. I’ve played 4 hours.
It isn’t really a slower paced looter shooter, hell I barely loot anything and talk my way out of most situations.
It is more of a story based RPG, where you carve your own story out of the game. You decide what kind of character you want to play, and which quests you follow and which you ditch, anything is permitted.
If the only thing you do is go inside a random dungeon, shoot anything that moves, loot anything that isn’t nailed down and then go sell it, you won’t have a great time.
If you want to enjoy the game more, I’d suggest to choose a trope for your character: diplomatic Federation Captain, cunning Bounty Hunter, vicious Space Pirate, hardened Space Trucker, curious Scientific Explorer, …
Then find a quest line that synergies with your trope and follow it all the way through. Making decisions based upon how your character would react, not just what option will give you the most loot or is the easiest to accomplish.
Starfield has all the scifi tropes imaginable, kind of like what Skyrim had with Fantasy.
Currently I am enjoying my interpretation of the backstory of Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek. Being as helpful as I can, making philosophical statements and trying to find a diplomatic solution to anything. I change the UC to be the Federation and the Vanguard to be Starfleet. And recreated the USS Enterprise to the best of my abilities.
The funny thing is that “Publisher Bethesda was not permitted to pay additional royalties for the RPG because it scored 84 on Metacritic, according to Fallout New Vegas developer Chris Avellone. It appears that Obsidian’s publishing contract included a deal that meant the studio would be issued bonuses if the game hit a Metacritic of 85.” scores matter to Bethesda a lot even enough to ruin relationships and screw developers.
Oh nooooooo, a random nobody on the internet doesnt like how I write in my second language, whatever shall I do? Is that good enough for you sire? May I get your highly esteemed stamp of approval now?
This is great. Amidst all the comparisons and issues with Starfield, I am learning about so many other good space exploration games in these discussions haha
I’ve only seen one truly uncomfortable close up and it was when a dialogue initiated right in a doorway so the camera got pushed right up the dude’s nose and I could see the empty space in his head lol
I prefer to play 1st person and I’ve always been quite okay with the camera angle for talking to someone, personally. It’s kinda how I would see people I’m talking to face to face IRL, except I don’t have to look down. I only dislike when multiple characters are involved and it does that jump cut to zoom in on a dude across the room. That’s not natural at all.
Aw. I was hoping to see him seamlessly fly to the Volii system, seamlessly fly to Volii Alpha, seamlessly land on the Neon landing pad, seamlessly enter the Bayu Plaza and, seamlessly interact with dozens of NPCs, many of whom have branching dialogue trees, and seamlessly loot the ever-loving crap out of hundreds of interactable objects.
I would be impressed if they did it in Gamebryo/Creation Engine and solve the “everything is a cell” problem. I mean, No man’s Sky and Elite Dangerous exist and have shown seem less space travel. One guy with DarkBasic did it in the Evochron games for decades.
This comes off as a hey look look at me I can do it in a cave with a box of scraps but BUGTHESDA can’t in 7 years?!
I think the problem is also that Bethesda doesn’t really “do” vehicles, probably due to engine limitations.
Usually, it’s just horses or “passenger” travel (like when you man the guns in FO4 birds). I guess one could maybe consider power armor in FO4 to be kind of like a “vehicle”, but it works more or less the same as just walking around.
Oh, there is dragon riding in Skyrim, but it’s a mess and you don’t have that much control.
I’m surprised the engine can even handle space combat, honestly. And 360° movement as well, which would have been great for dragon riding in Skyrim. But most of the dragons in TES are dead, so we probably won’t get proper dragon riding in whatever TES: VI is.
(Sidenote about dragon riding/combat: Before Larian delved further into CRPGs, they made a regular third person RPG where you could play as a dragon. It was actually pretty fun. Still didn’t have full control, and it was only in certain sections, but it was entertaining. Divinity II: Director’s Cut, in case anyone’s interested. Don’t know how well it’s aged, but I enjoyed it a few years ago.)
There have been a couple of mods for Fallout 4 and New Vegas to add vehicles. IIRC the only one that wasn’t just an object floating across the ground was in that big expansion mod made by sex perverts, I forget what it’s called. New something?
Yeah, was so ambitious, but progress is so painfully slow. If they delivered on what they have said though, the game will be incredible, but I highly doubt that is ever going to happen, I gave up hope almost a decade ago.
Elite Dangerous too. I was really disappointed when I lauched Starfield and learned there wasn't any seamless landing for exploring planets. It was a huge bummer to me.
Elite Dangerous is by far the most fun I've ever had landing and taking off in a space ship. No other game comes even close. It genuinely never got old. The entire docking process was so damn fun with a HOTAS.
Oh wow, I haven’t played since before you could land on planets. My issue with Elite was always feeling like there was exactly nothing to do at all beside mine and be bad at dog fights lol.
I mean, that’s still pretty much the case, it’s just emulated very well, with lots of polish. It’s a lot like Minecraft in that you have to make your own fun, but once you find it it’s a very nice flow. It’s definitely better with friends, and fights with real players especially are fun, and make you realize just how bad you are.
What's fun about getting ganked by overengineered griefers hunting newbies at the first engineering station that the game points you to? I jumped to solo after that. Fuck that.
Likewise, I haven't played any of the expansions. I didn't say it was a perfect game, just that landing and taking off has not been better in any other game. I loved the space stations.
You mean you can now land on planets in Elite Dangerous? A game I own and haven’t played in years? This is the second game I’ve been shown I need to go back to by these conversations. ‘Satisfactory’ popped up yesterday. At this rate I’ll never play Starfield.
You can land on moons in elite dangerous and if you have the expansion you can land on planets and moons with a light atmosphere and walk on foot.
If anyone complained about barren moons everywhere in starfield, just be warned elite has exactly zero interesting planets/moons in the literal billions of star systems it has. Everything is identical minus terrain colors and planetary rings. I loved elite for a while, but as far as exploration goes you really need to like scanning for the sake of scanning.
Starfield has a lot of stuff to explore, even if some of it is repetitive, but elite has maybe 10-15 interesting locations in the entire galaxy…
I’ve been thinking about picking it up. Do you need one or two HOTAS? I already have a pretty expensive racing sim so I’m not trying to go down that rabbit hole (again)
I always marvel at how Grim Dawn isn’t in the conversation. It’s easily top tier, has no microtransactions, is single player offline, but also supports co-op multiplayer. It features a full cosmetic system that is entirely in-game with no cash shop nonsense. There are so many skills and builds with an outstanding itemization system. Robust crafting system. Repeatable end game challenge content.
Also, it is just recieving another huge free patch, and another full expansion has just been announced.
It took me forever to actually try it, I thought it was going to be janky indie stuff etc. I’m closing on 3000 hours and still dropping back in with new build themes and ideas. I paid $35 for that 3000 hours in a Steam sale.
But yea, Last Epoch is ok I guess.
Edit: a word
Edit 2: just to add since I saw a comment about multiplayer, there is a community run seasonal ladder League as well. Grim League, for those interested.
Yeah so many people have missed out on Grim Dawn. It’s a bit sad it doesn’t have multiplayer but in the grand scale of things its what a lot of people wanted with D4. Let me play Singleplayer offline! This game does it. And boy does it do it well.
I played all current dlcs and the base game on separate occasions alone and with my friends and the game never really clicks for me. I don’t know what it is but it never got as fun as many other arpgs for me. Doubt that I will look at this new expansion as it feels I could have more fun spending my time with another game instead. Kind of weird as I have over a hundred hours and like the game genre but… Yeah.
It’s just old. People talked about it back when it came out. POE I think gets recognized because it’s free to play (with DLC/MTX). I’ve played every ARPG under the sun and Last Epoch is one of the best I’ve ever played. It feels like the real successor to Diablo II
The biggest difference is that PoE gets huge expansions every 3-4 months with new content while Grim Dawn only mostly gets numeric patches. Yeah there’s a new expansion on the horizon, but it’s been a good while…
I think this is an accurate way to put it. I happen to like that game but if it's not what you were expecting or you're tired of it you're not going to like the game.
I have to say the best change from FO4 is ditching the voiced protagonist. That was a big mistake at the time.
What a wierd take, given that people STILL play Skyrim, Morrowind, and Fallout games in droves to this day. And that there are a ton of YouTubers that have made careers exclusively off of Beth lore and build videos and such.
Also given the post is about the game shifting to “mostly positive” on Steam. Which means the vast majority of reviews on steam are actually positive. And a lot of the negative reviews have to do with performance and technical issues, not the gameplay itself.
Also the fact that other “open world story-based shooters with rpg and crafting mechanics” are actually really popular - you know like Cyberpunk, or Mass Effect, or RDR2, or arguably, Jedi Survivor.
If you don’t like Beth games, that’s fine. They’re not for everyone. But it doesn’t mean your opinion is universal.
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Aktywne