I’ve seen some pretty absurd complaints, like the not being able to land on gas planets, or people complaining due to ridiculously high but present area limitations.
Absurd complaints always seem to surround the media people whom people blame of being “woke”, which is why I usually give the media being criticized the extra benefit of a doubt since people will make or criticize shit for reasons they don’t say out-loud. I usually find out it’s not really that bad, but it’s just amplified because they create an environment of criticism that other people that have no underlying agenda still follow.
Then there’s the real complaints about performance, which I personally haven’t experienced because of a top tier PC (although I’m curious what people on the Xbox have to say, as Microsoft would hang them if it wasn’t playable on it as one of their new hallmark exclusives for it), and people not liking the Bethsoft sort of gameplay loop, which this is and has definitely improved upon IMO. Not only will this game be played for years on end like Skyrim, but I suspect it will also spark a much needed MMO off-shoot in the space genre just like their Fallout and The Elder Scrolls games did.
Just tried starting it this morning on a Series X. It crashed 5 times on less than two hours. The last time, I was barely into the “learn how to pilot a ship” part of the tutorial, and I’m already over this. I’m so disappointed. I was really looking forward to getting sucked into a new game.
I’ve played about 40 hours so far on a Series X. It froze on loading twice in that time, but otherwise I’ve had no performance problems. I even tried remote play streaming from my Series X to my PC and it worked well also.
That said, Starfield is fine. It’s not great- I don’t think it would be considered GotY even if BG3 and TotK hadn’t come out this year- but it’s otherwise solid. If you like the Bethesda formula, Starfield plays it absolutely straight (for better or worse). The usual critiques of Bethesda games in general apply- it has that look of a Bethesda game, the NPCs have the facial animation range of a post-botox Barbie, Radiant quests abound, the exploration gameplay loop is pretty shallow, etc.
Don’t get me wrong- there’s a lot it could do better, much of which other games already do. It’s a sci-fi fi version of Skyrim, and that’s good enough for me, but it probably won’t live on in the gaming zeitgeist.
I would agree with you in that if Starfield has any longevity, it would be because it would serve as the foundation for mods rather than on its own merits. But I disagree that it could stand on its own as-is.
I can’t play it because I own neither.a gaming PC nor an Xbox, but the impression I’m getting from all the reviews and reactions I’ve seen is that it’s basically a good game, if it had been released in 2008.
It looks like they did the best they could, but they did it using an outdated engine that simply cannot be used to make a modern game.
I’ve been seeing similar, with people saying they would have liked Starfield more if they hadn’t played Baldur’s Gate 3 first. That’s where I feel like a fair number of the “meh” scores are coming from. It’s like people are saying it’s really good, but not mind-blowing.
I played BG3 first. Near the end of it now. What could Bethesda have done to measure up to BG3?
Be less buggy? SF is a more complicated game than BG3. More stuff than can go wrong. Also BG3 has a lot more bugs later in game, in the part that hasn’t been out for early access for years now.
Have more story branches? If ME didn’t convince Bethesdas earlier games to put in more choices, why should BG3? Most people know what they get from these games.
Better writing? Thats a very subjective thing. And BG3 have a lot of already existing lore to build on top of.
Some times the quality of a game comes down to luck, timing, and what skill you got available. And trying to figure out which of two good games is objectively the “best” is a waste of time. We should be happy we got two good new games. In two different genres. And measure them against their prequels instead. Has the game evolved since the last game? BG3 has two parent games, BG2 and D:OS. It has improved on them both in combining them. Starfield was born from Fallout. Definitely an upgrade too, while staying true to what we expect in that line of games.
Thats my take on it. If a new XCom came out tomorrow, I wouldn’t be disappointed it wasnt BG3, I’d be happy and hope it had improved on XCom 2.
It’s not about “trying to figure out which of two good games is objectively the “best”,” but more like Horizon Zero Dawn coming out right after Breath of the Wild. Horizon is a truly great game, but it suffered from coming out right after what turned out to be a definitive open-world game. It’s not about better, it’s about timing. People would have had different expectations of Starfield had it come out before BG3, just because BG3 changed some people’s expectations of things like quests and ways to do them.
And again, I’m just going by what I’ve seen in reviews and something I’ve noticed in them. I’m never going to play Starfield (nothing against it, but I physically can’t play first person games), so I can’t say one way or the other about what the quests and worlds are like.
I would take the whole “old crappy bethesda engine” meme with a grain of salt.
IMO it is a good engine, it is getting updated by them on every new game like any other engine. And there are a lot of changes all over. For that reason modders have to develop new tools to create meshes, reverse egnineer the changed data formats, etc. Saying that it is the same engine as Skyrim or Fallout 4/76 is just not true.
It is also one of the most mod friendly engine. The content creation tools from Bethesda and modders make it really easy to work with, even for people not able to code themselvs.
And personally the game looks and works fine. Of course you can critique the game itself, but attacking the whole engine is exagerated. Sure it has bugs, and you can attack bethesda about not fixing them, but suggesting that they throw away the whole engine because of a couple of bugs or subjective “looks bad” opinions is ridiculus.
Also, I don’t think just using Unity or UE4 (where bethesda devs first need to learn them first) magically fixes every complaint and bug. But it might make the game not as easily moddable.
Is it just an exaggeration, though? It is old. It is... kinda crappy. I've played and loved a bunch of Bethesda games, but they do tend to fuck up in some pretty characteristic ways. So characteristic that they happened in Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallouts 3, NV and 4, and now apparently Starfield. In my hour or so of gameplay I already encountered the "corpses somersaulting around" thing, a tradition since at least Skyrim.
True, it doesn’t have raytracing, like most big game engines now. And the first city you come to is VERY plain and clean and oversized and underdetailed. It would probably be better if one started out in Akila or Neon or The Well somewhere with more details. But not every game, particularly one as open and customizable as this, can have EA level models or Cyberpunk level details. Nor is it the engines fault. Seen the Unreal Engine? How old is that one, 1998 i think? Nobody complains about that.
It is the fault of what they want to create. They want an engine that can do big open worlds, with interactable and persistent junk of all kinds, but that they can also very quickly create new content for. And is easily moddable with as little risk of mod conflicts as possible. And a very simulated AI, one that doesn’t need handhelding through pre-placed paths, but can navigate freely even through user-created buildings and chaotic situations. They end up looking dumber than other games AIs, but thats only because other games rely more on the illusion of a smart AI.
I agree! The content of the game is the issue, not the engine. Bashing Bethesdas engine is just a meme, at this point.
Linux is 32 years old, people wanting to throw everything away and start new, just because they don’t like certain aspects of it, are crazy.
Personally, I don’t really care about raytracing, or even improving the graphics that much, IMO they should reuse assets and code if that will make them invest more of their time to improve their writing, quests and let people go their own paths through the quests instead of just having 2 or 3 options (do the quest, don’t do the quest and sometimes rat the people out to the authorities). So that we have BG3 level of writing and quests, in different kind of game.
And for god sakes, do simple things like let companions whisper when sneaking.
Also, New Atlantis doesn’t look build for Humans but for giants, too much scaled up.
Is whispering while sneaking so easy though? It would double the voice acting budget, time, and the audio asset size. Theres no magic audio filter for making believable whispering out of regular voices.
Well, maybe there will be once game studios start using AI voice actors.
At the very least just lower the voice volume of companions in sneak even if it’s lazy fix. I don’t need breathy whispers in my ear for funny or throw away dialogue. But that’s just my thoughts maybe other people are different.
I told my wife I’d have been thrilled to get this game in 2016. In 2023 it does feel dated though, If they don’t update the engine significantly before their next game it may actually hurt sales.
I can echo that sentiment. The MQL starts really slow and has a lot of exposition overlord as is normal for Bethesda games. Once I started doing side missions for the UC Vanguard and “pimped my ride” xzibit style I got hooked.
Exactly what I experience in every Bethesda game. Boring ass main quest line where a bunch of British people telling me about starsigns or some shit and then I joined the vanguard and never touched the main plot again because exploding pirates and space hobos while exploring planets is where it’s at.
People like to claim any big ticket game that doesn’t get like 8/10 or higher is being review bombed. Seems as if people have legit criticisms of the game and it’s pretty fairly reviewed.
Metacritic’s user rating system is just shit. You see the game rated higher than deserved and you can either
give it an honest rating resulting in the total score dropping by 0.01
give it a zero rating and have the score drop by 0.1
Of course most people chose to rate it in a way that has more impact on the total score, so it’s no wonder we see 0/10 and 10/10 more than anything else.
This phenomenon will be even more exaggerated if critics ratings are undeservedly high, as is the case with Starfield.
The reason it’s lower on metacritic is mainly due to the fact that the critics rating is too high, imo. This leads to disappointed players leaving extra bad scores (i.e. 0/10) to offset the total score. In a way that’s review bombing, but only as a reaction to the inflated critics’ reviews (which I often suspect to be bought or bribed).
Usually the Steam reviews are a lot more reliable. As I said, metacritic’s system is shit and encourages rating manipulation.
Because my initial comment was about metacritic and my argument is that metacritic is a bad indicator of review bombing because it actually encourages it
So my question repeats: why mention it as if I’m defending it when I merely correctly stated its a review bomb. Like why are you trying to make that a discussion when it’s not…
I’m not even making it a discussion. You mentioned metacritic in your (now edited) comment and I explained why metacritic’s system actively encourages review bombing. So it’s no wonder you’ll see a decent amount of review bombing there.
To me it was a disaster because I expected it to be way more next gen after all these years. And it was very expensive compared to the quality I got.
Meanwhile my friend was all like “Eh, it’s fine. Pretty much what I expected.”
So I think people had very different expectations.
What I absolutely cannot comprehend is those who say “10/10, game of the century!”
Come on… No way. If you really think that, you have really low standards or haven’t played a new game in 8 years.
I’m normally very anti-grinding in games. Except with Warframe, because the regular gameplay is so fun. Definitely try and find someone more experienced to start playing with though, it throws way too much at new players way too quickly
I can't tell if I don't like Starfield, or playing games anymore. I got it on September 1st, and played it for a few hours that night. I played it for a couple hours the night after that, and then I played it for like 30 minutes yesterday. I haven't really been hardcore about any game since before the pandemic. It's not the same now that my gaming machine lives at the desk that is also my home office. I've typically wanted to just get out of this room when work is done, so a game has to be really good to keep me sitting here.
Huh. I was just watching a review for No Man's Sky that made virtually the same point about that game, down to the 50 hours. The review said that the first couple hours were very boring, but once the intro and early game was out of the way, it got way more interesting. His pinned comment reads "I have now sunk in 50+ hours into this game. It keeps showing new stuff. Please help me. My family hasn't seen me in days. "
Maybe open-world game developers need to see if they can streamline the intros somehow. Even if the intro isn't a large percentage of the time you play the game, it does make the first impression.
I made a post like this sentiment elsewhere in this thread but I agree 100%. I was kinda forcing my way through some parts because I was just barely interested enough to continue. Then I had a few ohhh shit moments like taking over my first varuhn great serpent fanatic pirate ship and some of the UC Vanguard missions. I don’t know how they could improve/streamline it but they should work on it for sure.
Not that buying more stuff is ever the answer but... As someone who also spends way too much time at the same desk, getting a Steam Deck has totally revamped my love for gaming. Most of the time I'm not bringing it out with me (although I have traveled with it), but just being able to play PC games from bed, on the couch, or even outside in the back yard has been a ton of fun for me.
That’s how mine are these days. I just noticed that my prescription expires after a year (the paper one), so if I’m tempted to get an updated pair of frames, it’s going to mean an eye exam for me.
I can’t tell if I don’t like Starfield, or playing games anymore.
I don’t know your tastes, but it’s probably the latter if you only stick to the AAA realm of games. I sure as hell have burned on them - the indie and mid-budget space is where you’ll find games focused on simply being fun. Hi-Fi Rush, Pizza Tower, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to name a few that came out this year.
Screwed over? What promised stuff didn’t 76 deliver on?
For me it seemed like Bethesda wasn’t entirely sure what they wanted from 76, except that they wanted to create a multiplayer version of Fallout, and make money on micro-transactions. Todd tried to drag it in the PvP direction, which was ridiculous when its their first multiplayer and fallout haven’t exactly been known for being balanced. Someone internally dragged it in the coop PvE direction, someone else towards roleplaying and building. And after a backlash, they reacted by focusing on getting NPCs in and on PvE coop. And house building because that sold.
I liked the initial story personally. The changed story with NPCs became too disjointed from the world already built. And had no driving force in it. No reason to care except seeing one faction win.
I would guess that any platform-exclusive game is going to have some level of that, just because you've got fans of Platform A and fans of Platform B. And Starfield was purchased by Microsoft specifically to have an X-Box (well, and PC) exclusive, so...
Go back to the 1980s, and it was "Mario sucks" or "Sonic sucks".
I play games almost entirely on the PC, so the Starfield acquisition (as well as the other recent acquisitions by Microsoft or Sony or whoever that have been driving the antitrust concerns) haven't really been on my radar, but if I had a popular game coming out on my platform and then someone paid to ensure that I didn't get it, I'd be kind of irked.
I did use a Mac, many years back, and I remember being annoyed when Bungie -- then a major game developer for the Macintosh, in an era when the Mac wasn't getting a lot of games -- was purchased by Microsoft in 2000. Halo did come out for the Mac, but Halo 2 didn't, and I imagine that a lot of people who were on the Mac then were probably pretty unhappy about that.
It's apparently coming out shortly (like, this month or next). But, more to the point, the delay apparently wasn't because a platform vendor purchased it to be an exclusive, but because the dev team hit some kind of technical problems with the port. That is, it's not in the group of "Mario and Sonic" exclusives used to sell a platform, and Microsoft's acquisition was to make Starfield one of these.
EDIT: Split-screen on the XBox Series S is apparently where the problem is:
Larian has been struggling to get Baldur's Gate 3's split-screen co-op feature running smoothly on the Xbox Series S. Despite the feature working as intended on Xbox Series X, Microsoft policy demands that Xbox Series X versions of their games cannot have any features that Xbox Series S editions lack. This means that canning the feature on Series S simply isn't an option for Larian.
Metacritic user ratings have literally never mattered and never been an indicator for anything. I’m pretty sure every relatively popular game on it gets “review bombed”, because anyone who actually wanted to review it wouldn’t review it there. This is non-news.
Doesn’t metacritic aggregate reviews from other sources on their review scores as well? I havent really considered any of the big name review places a reasonable source for a long time anyway…
Everyone expects the next big game every game. How often can a studio really live up to the hype people create?
I don’t like it, so many loading screens, the faction bounties are copy/paste, the space combat is awkward, neon was a huge disappointment to me being just one long corridor with neon signs, the main quest railroads you like no other Bethesda game before it and it’s just not fun to me. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s just not for me and moved back over to baldurs gate 3 and recently started another new run in the outer worlds.
I mean, my opinion is anecdotal I suppose. I have friends that like it and some that think it’s just okay. For me, I just wasn’t having fun and that’s the point of games, to have fun. I also don’t really think their whole “NASApunk” style is very good. It doesn’t feel like it has any unique style or identity. It’s honestly baffling to me how it’s gotten some 9’s and 10’s for scores. It’s easily a 7 out of 10 for me, maybe even a 6. It’s definitely not the game Bethesda sold everyone on with marketing IMO.
The loading screens are atrocious even for a Bethesda game. Walk up a ladder, loading screen, open a door, loading screen, dock with another ship, loading screen, travel to another planet in the same system, loading screen, land on a planet that’s already loaded, loading screen, exit the ship, loading screen. Maybe it’s different on PC, but I’m playing on a series S that has pretty fast read/write speeds and that’s just absurd. Pretty sure if my character could use the toilet there would be a loading screen for the bathroom.
It’s still open world in the sense that there are plenty of places you can go to and in any order without being gated through a linear story line.
Even if you were to ignore my advice, it wouldn’t be any more open world because travelling between these areas is always gated by loading screens.
My suggestion is merely to reduce the amount of loading screens between zones.
Instead of leaving constellation, loading Jameisom, getting on the train, loading the shipyard, entering your ship, loading the ship interior, taking off, loading space, going to your map, selecting warp to sol, loading sol, selecting a landing site on Cydonia, loading your ship interior on cydonia, leaving your ship, and loading cydonia.
I’m suggesting you fast travel straight from the lodge to cydonia. Cutting 7 loading screens down to 1.
Of course, I also recommend that you take time to explore the areas you’re in.
You’re right that the loading screens can be minimized with fast travel, but also, some of the best parts of a game like this is the immersion, which doesn’t really work well with loading directly from point to point on your to-do list. I think Starfield is fine, tbh, but I do agree that the amount of loading screens is excessive. Games like NMS and Elite Dangerous have been doing seamless space travel for a long time now. There’s really no excuse.
Yeah, that tracks. I get that as a company, they’re gonna wring every resource dry before ponying up the money to redevelop, but that engine’s been showing its age for a while now, and Starfield is a great concept that deserved better.
I get what you’re saying, but eliminating loading screens in a game like this just isn’t feasible.
NMS or Elite Dangerous style space travel might be, but then it would have a similarly cartoonist reduced scale. I wouldn’t mind that personally, but I get why they didn’t do it.
My primary complaint is that the cities themselves are split up into multiple zones. If Skyrim can be entirely open, so to should Jameison.
I’m not saying they need to eliminate them entirely, just agreeing that there are way too many, and “fast travel to the plot” isn’t a reasonable solution in a game like this. I do think (mostly) seamless space travel would go a very long way to helping the overall experience.
It would seem so to me. When there’s a big disparity across the ratings - positive and negative are similar on metacritic with little in between - it raises a lot of red flags to me.
Not sure if it’s evidence of organized review bombing. but yeah, it seems like most people are just being as extreme as possible because they know it’s a scale of averages.
For PC, game optimization is very inconsitent. When I’m in a smaller space like a dungeon or the Constellation Lodge, it’s actually pretty great and runs smoothly. When I go into the city though, the framerate is terrible. The graphics also become significantly worse. So yeah, wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of those negative reviews are from PC players having to deal with Bethesda jank again.
It's reasonable to expect high framerates in 2023. If people want the game to run smooth there's nothing wrong with that. Hell, doom eternal was a Bethesda game and it looked gorgeous and ran like butter, so we know they can pull it off.
A lot of people also seem to not know that you can’t just spend 80% of your budget on a graphics card and buy whatever CPU you can afford with whatever is left.
I have a 3080 and the game runs noticeably worse in the cities than it does in small rooms. And that's with everything at low-medium and 75% rendering resolution which seems ridiculous. And the game doesn't even look that good.
I dunno, TLoU2 definitely got it harder but there’s still that massive gap in middle range reviews (see image) that made me question it with Starfield.
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