After one week I said fuck it. Yes there is a ton of exploration, yes there are spaceships, but the whole thing is just slow, confusing and boring. Hell, if I want to play "Life", I can just go outside.
The tons of exploration you're talking about are copy-pasted identical POIs, too, with the same enemies and objects in the same locations.
I honestly don't understand what they expected us to be doing for the hundreds of hours and years they they hoped we'd be playing the game for. It's certainly the most "ocean wide, inch deep" game for what it was marketed to be.
I think they expected a Skyrim style modding community to spring up over the next few years. To be fair, I think they might be right, since there are already Starfield mods and I'm still playing Skyrim 10 years after it came out.
It was incredibly disappointing when I was exploring a world and landed near a factory, killed everything then I pick a random spot and I land once more near a factory, to my surprise EVERY SINGLE THING was completely the same the same Vaa Run loot hidden in the vents, the exact same food in the living quarters, the same locked weapon rack and the same enemies at the same positions. This is the laziest fucking game I've seen in a while.
That'd be if you're crazy enough to not do any of the major quest chains or general side quests, those almost entirely take you to unique areas with their own exploration outside of the random exploration ones that you find just by exploring the galaxy.
I think it points to a larger issue with the game, which is being able to to distinguish and access the kinds of content that you want. You could easily randomly explore and end up seeing the same installation three times, or you could also randomly find other quests and go explore three unique locations and dungeons in a row instead. There is absolutely a large amount of unique content to play, though, it's disingenuous to say otherwise.
This is the most crybaby thing to complain about. Reminds me of the reviews on Steam that are “I do not recommend” (this player has 3,432 hours logged)
The state of video games is wild to see. People will play a hundred hours of a game and say it's lacking. Players expect endless content and it's honestly unhealthy for gaming at large.
While I enjoyed my time I really struggling to find what I feel like I would different on a new playthrough making me worried about longevity of this game.
It really feels like unless bethesda (unlikely) or moders could do something drastic I would not return. Just pick the game back up and do the new thing.
Feels not enough to do by only stick to space. Not enough ammo to not use a variety of weapon. Nor that much other ways to deal with combat that it would warrant a new play through.
I only played like 15hrs of vanilla Skyrim. But played like 1000+ hrs of modded Skyrim. I've now played about 30hrs of starfield. If the modding scene gets as big as Skyrim, I think it would have merit in longevity.
So, what, bethesda games are now just fancy Little Big Planet sandboxes? Where the main game is just something to keep you busy until the real content creators arive?
Oh definitely the modding is going to carry. But what point I tried to make is I will need something big for me to consider a new playthrough. Not just adding in bunch of mods to existed save file.
Unlike Skyrim where I felt start over for mods I could actually feel like I had choice and it kinda made a difference in play style to be a mage or a knight.
I'd love an open world game where you start as a Star Trek ship and just explore for hundreds of hours, stumbling upon adventures/civilizations taken directly from the massive repo of lore that exists from all the shows.
Have you tried Bridge Commander or the not actually star trek, but still totally star trek game Artemis?
They're basically that. Randomly generated scenarios where you, and a few friends, command a Starfleet vessel to solve dilemmas or just exist in the world. The fun is mostly in the MP aspect (though Bridge Commander can be played solo), and the missions are pretty samey and mostly explained through text briefings. But it really feels like being on the bridge of the Enterprise.
This game feels more like a chore with a million fetch quests. I never made it out of new Atlantis in my play through. Bg3 is so much more nuance and a way better game.
Yeah I don't know why they can't make space travel to work similar to NMS. That would have been so much better. I don't really feel like I'm exploring anything jumping from system to system. Hell even planets to planets.
I'm content with my ~120 hours played so far even if I don't play again. But I probably will, especially with mods or future content. It doesn't quite have the build flexibility of an elder scrolls game though. Hopefully they'll add more variants to the bases etc. Generally happy if a game has 40 hours of gameplay and there's easily 40 hours of content in Starfield.
The NG+ stuff is interesting but after playing it a bunch it's both a plus and a minus, like it's neat to have the options there, but also might've been better to start actual new characters.
Yeah I have been pretty addicted since release -- getting a month's enjoyment out of a game (in my case, 50hrs, but I'm still going back), is good value for money.
There are too many great games, especially this year, to spend all my time only playing one.
They went downhill since Morrowind... it was their last game that managed to capture players on its own merits, with zero mods.
People forget that Bethesda used to be a sports and arcade game developer back in the day and that Elder Scrolls was very much uncharacteristic for them. They tried and made some interesting things for a while but once they hit mainstream they never went back to the interesting stuff. It also means I don't think we'll see an ES6 game worth talking about.
I actually started with Skyrim:SE, had a super silent heavy armor mage and loved it, then I made something and destroyed my save file;
[overexaggeration ahead]:
A week later I was riding on a unicorn as Waluigi through a HelloKitty cave, throwing spells of NSWF towards everything. Fun times.
Morrowind was excellent, but I don't think knocking oblivion out is totally fair. Especially when you add the expansions sans horse armor dlc. Martin Septum frowns upon you.