They never said “star trek in space” because, first of all, that’s redundant, and second of all, would invite lawsuits. I’m not even necessarily saying that they’re copying star trek in any way.
I’m using Star Trek as an illustration of the positive sci-fi genre and the tone they were putting out in their marketing. No, its not literally star trek - but unlike their other titles that are either distopian sci-fi or a semi-dark epic fantasy, this one has a more positive tone - there’s a sense of hope and compassion that even persists in more distopian areas like the well, cydonia, ryujin, and ebbside. And furthermore, the main story’s focus on the excitement and wonder of exploration, and traversing the unknown, is a love note for Star Trek and all the sci-fi novels strewn about the environment.
And though this clarification is quite separated from it’s context now, I only brought this up to say that this game is far more hopeful and optimistic than their previous games and I feel like their marketing illustrated it quite well. And the reason it matters is beacuse the lack of the “darkness” and “grittiness” you are looking for can be explained by this difference in tone.
Wait, so first you were complaining it’s not dark enough and now you’re complaining it’s too dark and not utopian enough? Bro…
Also, I said they were trying to capture the tone of a positive sci-fi story like Star Trek, not create star trek fan fiction. The game world shows significant progress towards solving various social, equality, and health issues, but we haven’t quite gotten rid of money, and as such, greed. For this reason, we still have economic disparity, corporate evil, pirates that do evil things for money, and a monopoly banking system that uses it’s power to use an abuse it’s opponents.
Furthermore, there’s plenty of people who have a problem with an overbearing singular government and want to do things their way - thus why the freestar collective and crimson fleet exist.
Its earth + 1, better, but still flawed. Which is honestly, a lot more realistic than star trek ever seemed to be. Perhaps they wanted to show a “missing link” between current humanity and star trek humanity. There’s progress, but there’s still work to do. Which, given the lack of aliens, its probably a good move to make sure humanity still manufactures drama.
Regardless, the theme and tone of the game can be best described as “hopeful and wide-eyed optimism”, which is very different from the distopian unease of Fallout and sweeping fantasy epic of Skyrim and, starfield was very clearly marketed as such from day one.
The blood looks way better than vanilla Skyrim did…
Also you’ve gone from calling the game “corporate” to “tame/sterile” which seems to be an admission that you now understand this was a purposeful and consistent creative choice towards building a “positive sci-fi” world ala Star Trek. A choice they were pretty clear to market and a choice you disagree with. That’s fine. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad game, it just means you weren’t paying attention and bamboozled yourself into thinking this game was ever designed for your sensibilities. Not every game made by a studio will be the same - especially when it’s a new IP. Hell, Tango made Evil Within and Ghostwire then turned around and built Hi-FI Rush.
Oh well. But since it’s a Beth game, you can be rest assured that there will be a ton of mods to help your realize your dream of watching people die and decompose in the most realistic way possible. Heck, there are probably already a bunch that do.
Okay, but just because they’re not titillating the desires of teenage boys doesn’t mean they “sold out” or “got more corporate”. They’ve been pretty consistent about presenting their creative vision for the game since the beginning.
Also, you’re premise is wrong. I just shot the hell out of someone iin the game and there were absolutely blood splatters all over the wall and floor. Have you played the game, or are you meming influencers?
That said, I would never consider Beth games to be particularly risque. They’ve always faded out sex scenes. Oblivion and Skyrim aren’t particularly bloody games. Fallout’s bloodiness is more in line with the IP and considerably tame compared to Obsidian’s games.
Right, because the people who are paid to review the full game over hundreds of hours and have spent, in many cases, years, analyzing their biases and determining the right way to construct objective criticsm and have peer review editors to check their work…
Nah. Randos on the internet who have tendancy to form circlejerks for fake internet points and for minor doses of dopamine and who may or may not have even completed even a tiny portion of the game - that’s what I need to make an informed decision.
EDIT Lol at the coward downvotes with no replies. You know I’m right, you just don’t want to admit it.
I don’t think anybody is shitting on anyone It’s a public forum and we’re all allowed to say what we think How shallow would the discourse be if we were limited to only talking about things positively?
It doesn’t matter what you think. Try posting something positive about starfield - even in the Starfield community. You will get shat on. A lot.
The problem isn’t that negativity doesn’t have a space, its that positivity doesn’t have a space. If someone posts something positive and gets shit on, they’re going to be less likely to post positive things in the future. Or react to negativity with their own positivity. That’s how psychology works. We do a thing and get a shock, we’ll be less likely to do it again.
But more importantly, a lot of negative nancies on the internet love to defend yukking on other’s yums with lofty goals around “discourse” and “free speech”. But they seem to forget that’s not how the real world or human psychology works. This post isn’t looking for “discourse”. OP is just saying " wow this game has cool vistas" maybe hoping for some stories or reinforcement or fun conversations with other fans and you all are responding with “game sucks”. What is this “discourse” supposed to accomplish other than, at best piss off OP, and at worst tear down his enjoyment of the game.
I mean think about it. What if someone were showing off a coat they brought and like with some randos, and you waltz in and are like “that coat’s fucking ugly and you should feel bad about buying it.” What kind of discourse would you expect other than “the hell? Who asked you? Fuck off”.
Sure, we’re all entitled to post and reply what we want, but it won’t stop us from calling you an asshole. You want to shit on a game? Go for it, there’s plenty of hate circlejerks you can join in on.
The only thing I said about NMS was that it bores me. The story is thin and nonsensical, characters are nonexistent. It’s a great sandbox with impressive technical merit, but that’s not enough to keep me engaged.
Outer Worlds is pretty good but it’s an Obsidian title, for better or worse. The game world is bleak and terrible and it’s not any better at the end. Their writing is good and their characters are fantastic, and I enjoyed my time with the game but once I was done with the story, I couldn’t find much reason to keep playing.
Starfield, on the other hand, is really big and really deep. There is a crap ton of hand-built content - seriously, hundreds of hours in and I’m still struggling to see it all. The four faction quests feel like separate games in themselves. Starship building is awesome. Outpost building is overwhelming and little pointless, but still fun if you like that kind of thing. Yes, there’s a bunch of planets with generated content, but it’s surprisingly varied. There’s a ton of variation in flora and fauna and even the generated dungeons. There’s a few times i went to an abandoned something or other expecting just some pirates or something and ended up with a huge cinematic fight and loads of what seems to be hand-built content. Best of all, you can play the game how you want.
Don’t like planet scanning? You don’t have to. Hate the UC or Freestar Collective, fine you don’t need to do theor quests. Hate the ship builder? There’s plenty you can buy. Hate outpost building? Great, you can ignore it. Want to ignore the main quest and go be a pirate for a while? Go for it. The Crimson Fleet even gives you a couple of companions you can use if you hate how goody goody the Constallation folks are. This game rewards roleplaying choices more than any other beth title I’ve ever played.
Also, no spoilers but the New Game + mode is legitimately innovative. The story actually continues through it in wierd and wonderful ways. This is a game I’ll easily still be playing for years.
But my only advice is that you have to give it some time. It has a slow start and it’ll take a few hours to really start to click. So if you don’t want a game you have to spend a lot of time on, Outer Worlds will be a quick romp.
I’m enjoying the absolute fuck out of this game - hundreds of hours already and no regrets. This game is a lot deeper than anyone gives it credit for, it’s fantastic, and I’m looking forward to more of it.
No Man’s Sky bores the hell out of me and yet I’m having so much fun exploring planets and raiding pirate bases and being surprised by handbuilt content in what I thought would be a procedurally generated dungeon. Not to mention the surprisingly deep side and faction quests. Oh and so many hours playing with the shipbuilder.
I’m sorry you’re not having fun guys. But maybe you should focus on things that are fun for you?
And here we finally have the primary motivation for this comment.
Well we won’t know for sure on those for a few years. All we have are old FTC docs and no public statements. Regardless, existing games aren’t going anywhere. But even if it happens for future games, well, Sony’s been sowing this harvest for some time.
Um…Sony was in talks to pay for Starfield to be a PS exclusive - which would have taken it from PC for a year and from xbox permenantly - until MS bought Beth.
Also, Starfield is a new IP, not an “already existing and widely popular” one…
I’ll also mention that Phil Spencer publically admonished and fought against exclusivity agreements for years. He has said in interviews both private and public that he prefers a world where there are no exclusives. Until the market spoke and declared “exclusives” to be the measuring stick of a platform’s health, thus forcing his hand. And now here we are.
Well there’s the fact that you omitted Sony and Nintendo from your criticism entirly, despite the fact that both companies have bought numerous studios and paid other studios to make games exclusively for their respective platforms for decades, thereby reducing their potential revenue for some benefit that’s clearly obvious to those companies.
And yet, when Microsoft does it…they are just limiting their potential market for no reason and it’s obviously a stupid business move. Sure. Seems a little sus, is all.
Either the entire fucking industry is guilty of this “bad business practice” or maybe there’s a calculated reason for it. Pick one.