Given that they have you meet a cowboy at the end of that mission, it is kinda understandable. I wonder who thought that having a cowboy as a main character would be a good idea for people outside of the US.
Cowboys could easily appeal to people from Canada, Mexico, and Argentina as well. I’ve come across a disturbing number of British men who harbor secret fantasies of being wild west cowboys, so probably them too.
They were absolutely trying to appeal to Americans by making a cowboy character. Americans go nuts for cowboys. Everyone is downright obsessed with them. You can’t find a single home in the country without seeing cowboy memorabilia and they watch cowboy movies on the weekends, it’s crazy
I live in CA, literally entrenched in the history of “the old west” and I can honestly say not a single person I know has any cowboy memorabilia in their homes lol.
My dad had a little cast iron statue of a cowboy wrangling a bull on his desk at work growing up (a gift from a client) , but that is literally the only instance I can think of lol
And I also don’t know a single person who regularly watches cowboy movies, I can’t even remember the last time a cowboy movie was made in the US… I think that remake with Chris Pratt?
It’s a classic figure in western culture… and a fitting character given his story and the planet he’s from. We’ve had plenty cowboys in movies, comic strips and I’m from europe… Not my favourite setting but it works…
Whats wrong with a space cowboy? His faction is often referred to as lawless and wild. They believe in a wild sort of freedom. Astronauts are kinda space cowboys anyway. Also space cowboys are not a new concept in media. What about a cowboy would make people not get the tutorial?
It certainly put me off. Personally, I hate it when sci-fi writers use worn-out stereotypes in futuristic settings. Like the ‘Irish, but not Irish’ episode of StarTrek TNG.
I’d already seen a couple of streamers play random side quests, and this intro just made me definitively realise that this was not the game for me.
I think that 25% would be comprised of people that bought the game and haven’t had much time to play, or use console command right away and disable achievements. Speedrunners, modmakers, and general hackers would use console commands liberally as they should be the same as Fallout/Elder Scrolls games.
Yeah, for a Bethesda game, 25% of people using mods right out of the gate is frankly totally believable.
And while starfield isn’t perfect, people not finishing the first mission would hardly be an indictment against the game itself, who judges if a game is worth playing in the first mission? Usually - and especially in games like this - the first mission has practically nothing to do with the standard gameplay
I wouldn't be surprised if it's higher; there are people who mod who will also go out of their way to get achievements and people who don't care about achievements at all.
I personally love the game for what it is. There's no one else out there making anything all that similar to a Bethesda RPG. I do think that some portion saw the performance and set it aside for that reason, though. Especially gamepass people.
I definetely fall under that umbrella, I’ve got mods downloaded, but didn’t bother with the achievement mod. I downloaded my mods after the first mission though.
I’m enjoying starfield for sure, but I think it does have a fair few faults, though I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of them are subjective. For instance I can’t stand bullet sponge enemies and the bullet sponge is strong with starfield. Drives me crazy when I can literally empty an entire magazine of an auto shotgun pointblank into an enemies face, and have it only take them down to like 40% health lol. I grabbed a mod that helps with it, but its still pretty bad, even with that mod, and it breaks the balance a bit. Hoping that once proper mod support is in we get something better.
I also think the whole “spaceship” part of the game is pretty half-baked, I wasn’t expecting E:D levels of piloting immersion, but I’d have hoped for more than basically a series of menus and loading screens for interstellar travel. Additionally ship combat balancing is pretty rough, all the encounters I’ve done so far have felt comically easy, or ridiculously hard (The final mission of a certain UC Vanguard mission comes to mind…)
Overall though I’m definetely having a lot of fun though, and while there are bugs, it’s definetely one the least buggy Bethesda titles we’ve seen so far, and definetely less buggy (in my experience) than BG3
So the way I play, I bought a silenced rifle early and spent my perks on stealth and ballistics. Most humans a few levels above me are single headshots from stealth or 2-3 shots once they know where I am. To me, that TTK feels pretty good, and I tend to be able to use space to attack at range and the boost pack for position.
I could see other approaches feeling less good, but that specific style feels pretty comparable to the later Deus Ex games I liked or Cyberpunk, but with better mobility.
I don't love the spaceship combat, at least that I've played so far (though it's been kind of minimal through 20 hours), but I don't like many. The only exception I can think of that really clicked for me was star citizen with a full stick and throttle, and I don't love most others, so I can't really evaluate that super well. I definitely don't think it's the focus, but it's weird that people expected stuff that only a very small handful of pretty pure space sims do and they never promised (flying down to planets). I don't love the number of loading screens, but on steam deck the length isn't awful, so I live with them.
That would probably help, but I find stealth builds to be really dull in Bethesda games. I do agree though that the mobility is great, I just wish there was zero-g combat (if there is, and I haven’t gotten there yet, no spoilers plz)
And yeah star citizen has the best flight model and ship combat mechanics imo - it’s a shame about the rest of the game… And to be fair there, there’s only so much you can do that with a flight model when it’s primarily going to be played on KBM or a game pad, but some games manage to do pretty damn well (Everspace comes to mind as a game with really excellent gamepad controls for spaceflight)
to be fair regarding what was promised, the vast majority of gamers arent out here reading every interview about the game ahead of time, so you can’t blame them for seeing a game that takes place in space, with stuff like ship building being one of its big selling points, and then blame them for expecting it to have features on par with the other big name space games from the last decade. Just because it’s not promised, doesn’t mean it’s not missed 🤷🏼♂️ like I said though, it’s really not a deal breaker, it just would have been a big selling point for me personally.
There’s some zero G combat areas you can come across. Like other Bethesda games, the main quest isn’t where you have the best interactions.
Level up the ship building skills and turrets will kill in space battles sometimes too fast. I rarely get the chance to board and steal the ships unless I scale back and turn off weapons.
If you want to stay in the game, you can target planets and moons from the cockpit to travel without opening up the Star map. Only scanning has to bring up the map. Random space encounters can be more enjoyable than some of the Fallout 4 ones.
the main quest isn’t where you have the best interactions.
No worries there, I’ve been focusing on faction quests and stuff like that for the most part, only occasionally dipping into the main quest for a few missions. One thing I feel like Bethesda did well with the writing of Starfield is that they finally made the main quest not world-saving urgent (at least not from the get-go). In practically every other bethesda game I can think of, the player starts off pretty much right from the start with a “Hurry! We need to do [Quest] before [Bad Thing] happens!”, which inevitably kills the immersion a bit when you go fuck around for a solid month just exploring and doing side-quests. But in Starfield it makes perfect sense that you’re not necessarily out there every single day chasing down artifacts, at the beginning of the game, they’re just a curiosity
It's not something that's close to regular for space games, either. I can name one game off the top of my head that has it (No Man's Sky), and there's very little else going for it. That one feature combined with endless planets less interesting than Starfield's is close to the whole game.
I’m sure there are others, but it’s really not as uncommon as you’re making it sound, especially for AAA titles. I’d also argue it’s disingenuous to say that No Man’s Sky has “very little else going for it”. It was shit at launch, but they’ve built a really solid game now.
Again (and I feel like I need to keep re-iterating this, because people on this site are so sensitive about any criticism to their favorite games) Starfield is fun. That just doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have been better, and there’s nothing wrong with pointing out the areas we feel it fell short. Really, I think what Yahtzee Croshaw said about Tears of the Kingdom applies here - “If the game had these things, you wouldn’t be saying they didn’t matter”
This article has a pretty negative slant, but is anyone actually sad they’re going? I’ve been playing on and off since 2014, and I never have enough shards. My friends that have played almost nonstop since launch constantly have more than they could ever spend, even if they masterworked every piece of gear in their collection. Seems like a good change, honestly.
It’s definitely a good change. I have so many legendary shards that the currency might as well not exist, but my newer friends are constantly running out. It’s a good change for everyone.
I have over 50k shards that I will never use so it’ll be sad to see the high number go away but other than that, I couldn’t imagine a soul being bothered by the legendary shard change. It’s honestly a great thing to help simplify parts of the games economy for new and returning players
I have way more than I could possibly need, and really don’t mind their idea to remove them. What I am a bit “salty” over is the lack of currency exchange for their removal.
I would love to trade in a bunch to get prisms, ascendant alloys or the one to get the enhanced perks (I forget the name). But Bungie still has their arbitrary limits in place. Again, I support the removal, but I did still grind to accumulate them, so not being able to turn them into something useful feels like a waste.
Why do we need to keep pitting these games against each other, aside from being set in space they’re not even remotely similar gameplay wise. One is a survival game framework, the other is a RPG/Lifesim. There’s plenty of room for both in the market.
Starfield held my interest for a week. It’s okay, but it’s my least favorite polygon-based Bethesda game besides F76. The aging engine just wasn’t made for a game of this scope. I tried No Man’s Sky and didn’t like it, just not my thing.
I’ve played to 150 on fo76, the funniest thing to me is that npcs were an after thought for 76 and still feel more real than starfields citizens… So odd
It’s like Cyberpunk again, people gave themselves grand ideas about what a game would be regardless of what the Devs were saying, then got upset it isn’t the game they imagined but the one they were told they were getting.
I get what you’re saying, this happens with almost every major release but cyberpunk promised far for than it delivered. The version 2.0 that released soon should have been what we got in the initial release. We were promised multiplayer, that got cancelled. We were promised multiple dlc, phantom liberty is the only dlc they’re going to release. I’m still excited nonetheless.
They would be very similar. if Bethesda was competent both games have lots of similar elements from, yes having ships to scanning resources on a planet to having a jetpack. So it is fair and understandtable to compare these games pretty much the biggest difference is that Bethesda not having seamless apace travel and I ain’t letting them off the hook for “well they are just different games 🤓” bullshit.
Depends, of you’re jumping to a system you have enough range/fuel for it is, it don’t need to be scanned to enter the sector, sometimes your forced to go though other places you may want to avoid.
I don’t think it’s unfair to point out that many of the people who were interested in Starfield leading up to launch thought they were getting more of a space sim than they did, proceeded to look for alternatives, and NMS was there being pretty good at what it does now. The OP article demonstrates this and is not a comparison between the games. In my case, Starfield just reminded me that NMS exists and I decided I’d rather be playing it. Fundamentally comparing the games is ridiculous, but it’s no surprise that NMS ended up in the conversation.
I recently started playing NMS again right before Echoes, although I didn’t know Echoes was coming up. While I never made a conscious link between seeing all of the news about Starfield and me choosing that game when I was last looking through the plethora for something to inspire me, I think it may have had a subconscious effect on my choice.
Maybe they should have paid attention to what was actually being said by the Devs then. They clarified that it wasn’t going to be like NMS/Elite/etc at least a year out from release.
They’re defintely way different games. NMS is more sandbox and procedural focused, whereas Starfield is a story focused game. Both are buggy space games lol.
I played Starfield on the Game Pass and was bored to tears after four hours. It made me want to explore space, but everything is so half-baked in Starfield that it drove me to reinstall and start playing more No Man’s Sky.
NMS at least has planets without buildings or signs of life, but they're certain types of planets (eg. lifeless/airless) There are definitely some that have far fewer ships going around too.
NMS is more expansive in some ways, but also fairly shallow in terms of some of the core mechanics. There's a lot of things to do like having a settlement or building a fleet and sending the fleet on missions, but again, it's a bit shallow. At the beginning you're largely focused on resource collecting to build a base, and unlock upgrades. Over time you can automate a lot of this and focus on other things. However, if you don't like the resource collecting to unlock things, you're probably not going to enjoy it.
I think the space flight and combat in NMS feels better. For whatever reason, in Starfield space flight and combat feels very slow to me. It doesn't help that the UI in the starship does this weird laggy update. The seamlessness of flying into a planet can be fun in space combat and the ships will follow you.
NMS has way more copy-paste assets. Starfield at least has grand cities and some unique set pieces or a few different options ,but every crashed freighter in NMS is identical. The buildings in NMS have a tiny bit of variance but they're all like 1-2 room buildings. All space stations and space ports are identical (just the core race changes). There are pirate space stations, but they're the same basic one but darker and they've moved the vendors inward a bit into tents instead of stalls. A little bit of this is baked into the story of NMS to some extent, but that doesn't exactly help it.
My only quibble with this response is that in my mind ground combat is unbelievably orders of magnitude better in Starfield (you actually have access to different guns and enemy types!), and while I can understand preferring the speed of NMS space combat, I ultimately find the mechanics of it pretty shallow and enjoy the system shuffelling of Starfield, I feel like an ideal system would combine them both.
Great points! Yeah there's definitely a lot more variety and skill involved in Starfield. Most of the NMS ground combat is in the open and is easy to cheese, but it is satisfying to hop in your ship and start shooting things (though now they have it trigger incoming aircraft).
I enjoyed the planetary exploration in No Man’s Sky. Some planets have an outpost, but most don’t. In No Man’s Sky there are several alien races and artifacts they left behind you can learn their language from.
There are a huge number of planets, and some have strange reality altering properties. They have different weather and conditions. There is a ginormous amount of alien life that you can catalogue and interact with and even tame. The planets themselves show a huge variety of differences. There is even underground and underwater environments with unique life suited to those environments.
The base building is fun. You can do a lot and you can even travel to galactic hubs and worlds that other players have worked on.
Even travelling through space is more fun. You are able to fly to planets and land on them seamlessly. You can own several different space ships and even giant freighters that can contain your ships and frigates you can send to other star systems.
I do enjoy the zen of NMS (nothing like piloting alone on the surface of a planet with the sound of the rain falling on the cockpit), but even after all those years and cool upgrades, it still feels so empty… If you enjoy tabletop RPGs and have an opportunity to play one with like-minded friends, I recommend you try Traveller. It’s all those things you mentioned, in a way, way bigger and denser scope. :) Also with actual civilizations, empires, politics, commerce, wars, fleets, etc.
Lol tell this to people who are upset that every planet doesn't have a thriving colony in it. The "empty planets" are frustrating to them.
Not that you or they are wrong, it just highlights that matters of opinion on things like this are a spectrum, and sometimes you end up on the far end. I like that I can land on a planet and have something besides just rocks, but also that's it's procedurally generated so that it isn't the same every time. It's false replayability, sure, but if I like playing the game, it doesn't matter to me that the layouts are the same.
I thought this way back when i first played it. But I’ve been spending the lasts days playing and it got so much better.
The environments are no longer the same everywhere, sure you will find matching planets but they don’t all look like asteroids with hair anymore. Minerals dont stick out of the ground anymore. And underground caves exists.
The multiplayer aspect got better too (or so i hear, didn’t get to try it yet).
The stories are more engaging with specific npc’s interacting with you.
Never thought space combat sucked? It’s not to the level of Elite Dangerous, but it’s somewhat entertaining, and accomplishes what need to be done imo.
It’s an MMORPG so of course you have grinding, and for my current playthrough it isn’t boring yet. I’ve got a minecraft vibe, where you upgrade gear and ammass items for future uses.
love that you can get pets now and use them for more than simply have around, I got some kind of panther yesterday, was able to mount some guns to it and now it helps me in combat (kinda tedious to use idk if i fully figured it out yet, but sometimes the companion won’t attack).
All that and i only started playing, there’s the whole frigate thing, and also settlements to protect. I’m told you can have some kind of fleet to send on missions, and i’m certain there’s other huge content i’m missing that i dont know of yet.
I played it like 3 months ago before the Echoes update, so this isn’t based on the launch version or anything.
The environments are no longer the same everywhere, sure you will find matching planets but they don’t all look like asteroids with hair anymore. Minerals dont stick out of the ground anymore. And underground caves exists.
I mean yeah, but they don’t look any better or more varied than Starfield’s planets, that’s for sure. It’s neat that they added caves but the caves are also pretty boring. There’s not much in them beyond some more resources. You don’t have the expansiveness or endlessness of minecraft caves nor the buried mines and mob spawners and lava and more interesting underground stuff.
Never thought space combat sucked? It’s not to the level of Elite Dangerous, but it’s somewhat entertaining, and accomplishes what need to be done imo.
It’s serviceable, but I wouldn’t describe it as fun, as in I don’t actively enjoy the space combat. I find Starfield’s juggling of systems and targeting on top of standard dog fighting maneuvering at least a little more engaging, but a serviceable system that’s not that much fun kind of describes most of No Man’s Sky to me.
It’s an MMORPG so of course you have grinding, and for my current playthrough it isn’t boring yet. I’ve got a minecraft vibe, where you upgrade gear and ammass items for future uses.
I find it’s crafting to be far less satisfying than Minecraft’s or say Subnautica’s, and a lot more grindy, but that could just be me.
Again, I know they have all these different systems, but it really feels like each system is just barely enough of a system to entertain you for a couple hours, but doesn’t have the depth / polish / interweaving complexity to truly hold you.
I played it not that long ago. The comment above is still pretty much spot on. There’s base building now I guess. There’s still nothing to keep it interesting.
I literally played it like 3 months ago, before the most echoes update, but from the looks of the update notes I think my description still likely stands.
Really? You can’t fathom how someone would consider NMS a better game? Both games are barely comparable other than using space as a backdrop. Judging by the reaction online, it seems like many people were lead to believe that Starfield would be a space sim and came up wanting when it was more of a sci-fi Fallout, with mostly optional engagement with the space elements. For those people, I can see merit in recommending they check out No Man’s Sky, which has a shallow, bit widely-spread space simulation to engage with.
I don’t think it’s useful to try and argue which game is better, but I would much rather play No Man’s Sky any day of the week. Bethesda RPGs have long lost their luster for me since the Oblivion days, and now just stand as a testament of disappointing writing, stagnant technology and under-baked systems. Starfield does not show any meaningful signs of breaking the norm.
Really? You can’t fathom how someone would consider NMS a better game?
Correct.
Both games are barely comparable other than using space as a backdrop.
People who say X things aren’t comparable usually seem to grossly misunderstand how comparisons work. They’re very similar games and even if they weren’t they would still be comparable, the end result of the comparison is just that they would be different.
I don’t think it’s useful to try and argue which game is better, but I would much rather play No Man’s Sky any day of the week.
That’s fine but I still can’t fathom why. The only part of it that’s better than Starfield is flying to and from space.
Title is a bit click-baity, but the core message is the game has seen a boost in users since it's recent update that was just before the starfield launch.
I don’t think it’s surprising that a sci fi game with exploration elements from a major AAA studio renewed interest in a sci fi survival/exploration game from a smaller studio. If you want more of the exploration part of Starfield, No Man’s Sky is the natural option.
Sad that the article focused on this particular mod. It’s aimed at textures for low-end systems, yes, but there are 2-3 others that are aimed at systems across the board and use stock textures with simple config file changes. They’re all tweaks with options that are in the game but unavailable on the menu, and they do vastly improve performance without a drop in quality.
A better headline could have been “Modders fix in days what Bethesda didn’t do with years”.
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