Starfield – September 6, 2023: Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows

[fear]

I am wandering how do you spend most of the time playing this game? Exploring? Doing missions and side quests?

Aside of FIFA16, that's the only game I play these days. I am tempted to do a lot of exploration but the repetitiveness of the abandoned labs, collapsed mines ect... is really putting me of particularly because of the absolute lack of randomization of the number and type of enemies you find. Once you have done it once, it really feels like a basic repetition. Doing the Krix legacy mission when at galbank archives, I noticed they were a second lost ship somewhere around Saturn. I started trying to locate it, visiting the various saturn moons. But once on the floor, I keep seeing the same buildings and enemies I have seen elsewhere and it just makes me want to avoid those locations (I always end cleaning the place though).
On the other hand when it comes to missions, I find the actor playing part with cinematic to be rather dull.

May be it is just because I am still at the beginning of the game...

The problem is that the game was released almost at the same time as Cyberpunk 2077 ver2.0 and BG3. Inevitably everyone will compare at least the production values to these 2 games and unfortunately Starfield is 100x times worse in every department.
For example you walk in a club in CP2077, there are dozens of NPCs dancing etc and some brilliant techno plays on the background. You do the same in Starfield and you have 2 NPCs dancing to some horrible quality music.
It's all about devs talent and commitment to produce a good game with creative ideas. Bethesda has a stubborn CEO who will never hire this kind of developers. Larian has a CEO full of passion. They both have the same goal: Make profit. But Larian cares about the customers and product quality, CDPR the same as they managed to turn a disastrous launch to a 9/10 game especially with Phantom Liberty.

 

[Emroth]

Why are we trying to find excuses for a huge studio who released an absolute monsters of games in the past?
Now they also had Microsoft support on top of that.
Yet they basically released a game that's on more or less the same level of quality as Skyrim with few mods, just much more shallow due to repetitive procedural generation.

 

[papinho81]

The problem is that the game was released almost at the same time as Cyberpunk 2077 ver2.0 and BG3. Inevitably everyone will compare at least the production values to these 2 games and unfortunately Starfield is 100x times worse in every department.
For example you walk in a club in CP2077, there are dozens of NPCs dancing etc and some brilliant techno plays on the background. You do the same in Starfield and you have 2 NPCs dancing to some horrible quality music.
It's all about devs talent and commitment to produce a good game with creative ideas. Bethesda has a stubborn CEO who will never hire this kind of developers. Larian has a CEO full of passion. They both have the same goal: Make profit. But Larian cares about the customers and product quality, CDPR the same as they managed to turn a disastrous launch to a 9/10 game especially with Phantom Liberty.

Don't get me wrong, I still like playing this game. The gunfights are really good in my opinion. I also get that considering the size of the galaxy they have to clone elements from one planet to another. But I wish they at least randomized the enemy and the loots inside those cloned building. The first time you enter one of those things, it can be impressive how huge and detailed they can be. Yesterday I did found a lost mine in the hands of the fleat on Titan and it was massive.

 

[fear]

Don't get me wrong, I still like playing this game. The gunfights are really good in my opinion. I also get that considering the size of the galaxy they have to clone elements from one planet to another. But I wish they at least randomized the enemy and the loots inside those cloned building. The first time you enter one of those things, it can be impressive how huge and detailed they can be. Yesterday I did found a lost mine in the hands of the fleat on Titan and it was massive.

Yes, it's not a bad game, I had some fun for around 18h. The issue is that all of us can see the potential but Bethesda by choice don't want to provide this experience you're talking about even though they have the resources to do it. Larian did it and this is why as a consumer/customer they have my respect. Both companies have my money but I'll be very sceptical regarding the next Elder Scrolls game.

 

[papinho81]

Something really weird happened to me yesterday. I am currently doing the crimson fleet main story missions, but had a bit of time on saturn moons to see if I could find a lost ship full of credits (the supremacy). Of course I didn't find the ship, but had some fun finding among things a mine at the hands of the crimson fleet. When I approached the site they attacked me like if I had no affiliations to them. So I did my usual routine and cleared the place.
Once I abandoned this lost quest (finding the ship) I returned to the key to continue the crimson fleet missions. The problem is once on the key, the first pirate I met ask me to pay a crazy amount of money or to pay with my blood. I went for the blood and somehow managed to clear the key. Story characters looked paralyzed once "dead" and of course I could not continue the missions despite the mission icon still pointing toward the "dead" Delgado. Once I entered a room that required a loading screen, all those paralyzed characters resurrected and attacked me again (and so on).
I was somehow forced to load an earlier save point and to pay the bill to be able to continue those missions.
I get the logic behind, but the price of the bill (75k of my 120k) compared to the prejudice (killing 10-15 pirates and looting) felt really disproportionate. Also, why did they attack me in first place if we are friends? Why a pirate organization can legally claim for a prejudice?

 

[fear]

Something really weird happened to me yesterday. I am currently doing the crimson fleet main story missions, but had a bit of time on saturn moons to see if I could find a lost ship full of credits (the supremacy). Of course I didn't find the ship, but had some fun finding among things a mine at the hands of the crimson fleet. When I approached the site they attacked me like if I had no affiliations to them. So I did my usual routine and cleared the place.
Once I abandoned this lost quest (finding the ship) I returned to the key to continue the crimson fleet missions. The problem is once on the key, the first pirate I met ask me to pay a crazy amount of money or to pay with my blood. I went for the blood and somehow managed to clear the key. Story characters looked paralyzed once "dead" and of course I could not continue the missions despite the mission icon still pointing toward the "dead" Delgado. Once I entered a room that required a loading screen, all those paralyzed characters resurrected and attacked me again (and so on).
I was somehow forced to load an earlier save point and to pay the bill to be able to continue those missions.
I get the logic behind, but the price of the bill (75k of my 120k) compared to the prejudice (killing 10-15 pirates and looting) felt really disproportionate. Also, why did they attack me in first place if we are friends? Why a pirate organization can legally claim for a prejudice?

This game is a side project for Bethesda, a low budget Elder Scrolls in space so don't expect any clear answers to these things you experience. The game will be completely abandoned in 2024 because they're already working on the flagship which is TES. They'll leave a couple of devs providing updates for Starfield and rely on modders to fix it. They'll probably provide more tools to modders to do the work.

 

[Emroth]

So I finally decided to try it since mod support was added to Xbox version.
100Gb of space! In compare to Skyrims 5Gb allowance - this is insane!

Also - a lot of mods were ported to Xbox version within days, so at this point you can basically have most of what PC has.

So I added around 50 mods which increased immersion, added some survival mechanics and general new mechanics to the game and I started playing.

In general - gameplay is not bad at all. Gunplay is meaty and modded survival mechanics are nice and immersive.
I'm sure soon enough there will be a mod that will allow manual space travel, although even now it doesn't feel as bad as it was at the release where you were just jumping from loading screen to loading screen.

Even story, although not very original - is good enough to push you to progress.

But my fucking god - the characters and dialogues are just peak of cringe!
I don't know if I'm getting old and grumpy and modern games are just not made for me anymore, or what, but at some stage, at around 20 hours - I just had to uninstall it, coz I couldn't take it anymore.

Every dialogue was so immature, stupid, unfunny and cringe that it was making me sick.

I actually installed mod that allowed me to shoot essential character in the head and I killed two, coz they were just too much.

And even that didn't help..

The only hope I have in regards to this game is that 100Gb mod allowance will also be added to Skyrim. That would be one good thing that came out of Starfield.

 

[fear]

So I finally decided to try it since mod support was added to Xbox version.
100Gb of space! In compare to Skyrims 5Gb allowance - this is insane!

Also - a lot of mods were ported to Xbox version within days, so at this point you can basically have most of what PC has.

So I added around 50 mods which increased immersion, added some survival mechanics and general new mechanics to the game and I started playing.

In general - gameplay is not bad at all. Gunplay is meaty and modded survival mechanics are nice and immersive.
I'm sure soon enough there will be a mod that will allow manual space travel, although even now it doesn't feel as bad as it was at the release where you were just jumping from loading screen to loading screen.

Even story, although not very original - is good enough to push you to progress.

But my fucking god - the characters and dialogues are just peak of cringe!
I don't know if I'm getting old and grumpy and modern games are just not made for me anymore, or what, but at some stage, at around 20 hours - I just had to uninstall it, coz I couldn't take it anymore.

Every dialogue was so immature, stupid, unfunny and cringe that it was making me sick.

I actually installed mod that allowed me to shoot essential character in the head and I killed two, coz they were just too much.

And even that didn't help..

The only hope I have in regards to this game is that 100Gb mod allowance will also be added to Skyrim. That would be one good thing that came out of Starfield.

The truth is that there is no way you can tolerate the dialogue in Starfield after playing Cyberpunk 2077. I'm also quite old and I can't stand this cringe fest. I'm not an idiot.

 

[Emroth]

The truth is that there is no way you can tolerate the dialogue in Starfield after playing Cyberpunk 2077. I'm also quite old and I can't stand this cringe fest. I'm not an idiot.

I haven't played Cyberpunk.
But I did stay away from the likes of Forspoken and Forza Horizon, coz I knew they were full of "cool" teen stuff..

But these are not cool teens here.. these are supposed to be top scientists and explorers! Instead they feel like kids club.

I also know that Bethesda is not master of written dialogue, coz Skyrim wasn't great either and dialogue mods were one of the must have mods in there.

But they just felt artificial. They weren't such horrible, gut wrenching cringe fest..

Honestly - for characters and dialogues to push me to uninstall a game that I otherwise enjoyed is just crazy.

 

[fear]

I haven't played Cyberpunk.
But I did stay away from the likes of Forspoken and Forza Horizon, coz I knew they were full of "cool" teen stuff..

But these are not cool teens here.. these are supposed to be top scientists and explorers! Instead they feel like kids club.

I also know that Bethesda is not master of written dialogue, coz Skyrim wasn't great either and dialogue mods were one of the must have mods in there.

But they just felt artificial. They weren't such horrible, gut wrenching cringe fest..

Honestly - for characters and dialogues to push me to uninstall a game that I otherwise enjoyed is just crazy.

I don't mind Forza Horizon because the core game isn't based on dialogue. RPGs need to have at least decent dialogue.
Why haven't you played CP2077? 😗

 

[bsmaff]

I don't mind Forza Horizon because the core game isn't based on dialogue. RPGs need to have at least decent dialogue.
Why haven't you played CP2077? 😗

I take it they fixed Cyberpunk then?
Personally not tried it since the absolute massive shit show the game was at launch.

 

[Emroth]

Same reason as above. It was a shitshow at launch and I was waiting for it to be fixed. I know they did fix it and I know it's very good now, but my list of all the games to play is huge and depends really on my mood. It's on the list tho.