People really have got to stop letting the hate brigade decide how they feel about a game lol comparing Starfield to launch Cyberpunk is insane.
And with regards to “immersion”
Having your parents in Starfield travel for their retirement where you can encounter them is what I call immersion.
Having county hunters track you down from planet to planet (and in space) is what I call immersion.
Most of the haters don’t know about any of these awesome moments in the game.
I understand where you are coming from, but it’s not as easy to just “improve” the rpg elements of a Bethesda game without compromise. Having more consequences and dialogue is great but they have to sacrifice scale for that in order to make it viable. Some people might like that, but long time Bethesda fans likely won’t, despite some complaining about Starfield right now.
Yup, AI is the game changer here that could elevate Bethesda games to a new level of immersion and world simulation.
Yeah, it’s a very interesting spot to be in, but I think in their older games they had some consequences where you can be locked out of quests or ruin a questline if an NPC dies. I think little stuff like that can go a long way, but I honestly, don’t have the answer because I am not heavy into Bethesda games, but I enjoy them.
It’s difficult to know what to do. There’s people like me who love the idea that there may be significant quest and gameplay consequences to behaving like a psychopath and shooting randos in the face, but there’s also people who need waymarkers or yellow bricks everywhere in order to progress. And that contingent would likely be outraged at being unable to finish a quest just cause they murdered someone 25 in-game hours ago.
“The game is poorly designed if just by playing it I can break a quest.”
No dude, it’s called consequences of your actions.
Morrowind had some of that, but like I said before, that was more focused on a smaller area in Morrowind called Vvardenfell. Bethesda has move on from that because of their ambition. In fact, the best Bethesda stories came from smaller expansions/dlc such as Far Harbour (Fallout 4), Shivering isles( Oblivion) or Faction quest such as the Dark Brotherhood , and even some Starfield questline such as the UC and Crimson Fleet. However, in a full released game, they focus more on the world and how it interacts with you( instead of how you interact with the world).
Agreed. We’ll see what Bethesda Game Studios has planned for 2024 in regards to any changes/additions they make.
To see this narrative that the 1000+ planets have the same generated content is quite ridiculous and far from the truth. Is there any repetition? Yes. but not to the extent that is parrotted online like the gospel truth.
It’s not far from the truth as it’s one of the most said complaints about the game. I had the same outpost three times. Twice just exploring and third time was for a side quest. Same layout, same enemies, same everything. What makes this worse is the fact that after the first 40 hours I played, I decided to eliminate the following -
Reason being is that all of the above is generated, repeats as stated above and isn’t something that’s worth my time. Also, the “mission board” is also the same thing and setup like AC Odyssey’s notice board in towns and on the ship where it’s just generated quests that repeat and for Starfield, when you do a set amount of these quests from the mission board, they get removed from your quest log and resets until you complete the next batch.
I’m personally not a fan of the massive scale of Starfield because the vast majority of the content simply isn’t worth doing. How many times can you go to a generated outpost and be like, “okay, I had enough of this” because it repeats or just offers nothing of substance or value.
When I go back to Starfield in January, it’s main quests, faction quests and side quests. That’s it. I’m not wasting hours doing all this generated content for no reason. This is also why the exploration is weak because it’s the same stuff.
Too many people here want to get offended or mad because not everyone loves the game or has negatives or critiques. I have my negatives and unless BGS actually changes things to eliminate those negatives, my opinion isn’t going to change just like yours and others won’t change which is why I always say “to each their own”.
The side quests are part of the exploration though. The generated content is busy work that isn’t entirely different than the stuff that existed in Fallout (don’t remember if Skyrim has stuff like it) because when you’ve done everything there still needs to be stuff to do.
It existed, I remember that generally we talk to a tavern keeper and ask them about about work and they generated a random quest to kill a bandit/wizard/other stuff in a cave or fort somewhere.
The several side quests I did were all from exploring the city HUB areas which is fine because it’s one set area as opposed to wandering around the surface of a planet looking for something to see or find.
Outside of a few hours in Fallout 4, I never truly played any BGS game until Starfield so I can’t comment on the other two series. All I can go by is what my experience has been in Starfield. I get that the generated content is needed but at the same time, for me personally, I would much rather have a single open world with nearly everything being scripted and setup as opposed to generated. I’m just not into the generated content because it’s not worth doing.
I find the open world planets in Starfield interesting. I think the game is genuinely better for having them, the overall experience feels all the more immersive knowing that at any time I can jump over the fence and just run out into a planets vast expanse. That when I look out across that vast horizon or up at the planets in the sky i can just go there. The overall structure of the game reminds me a lot more of Mass Effect, and in those games it always felt restrictive that a planet would boil down to just an interesting text blurb or a linear level with a pretty skybox. Starfield doesn’t have that problem.
That said, while all that is true I did not find actually exploring these planets all that interesting. I don’t think it ruins the overall game, as I think it’s pretty clear the content focus is simply elsewhere so there is still plenty of exciting content to experience, but I did find myself exploring the planets less and less.
I did not say there is no repetition, but my experience has wildly differed from yours and I have played more than 120 hours. I have barely touched the main quest as well. Plus these locations you have pointed out has an established lore for it lol.
In my experience, a lot of the ‘abandoned’ stuff has been pretty varied as well. In real life, any mining/science/industrial outpost would look very similar to each other. Considering the game being somewhat grounded in realism with its NASA-punk style, I think it adds to the overall experience IMO.
I believe you can run into a number of different side quests just exploring the solar system. I think Starfield’s exploration is more there than it is roaming around planets aimlessly and that’s one thing that throws people.
You should consider the generated content the equivalent of grinding in an RPG. It’s there so you can go kill some stuff when ur bored, to gain XP, etc. It isn’t really worth doing and I don’t typically do any of that as a result. It existing isn’t a bad thing though, just don’t do it.
Exactly. Don’t explore on foot, explore by spaceship. You’ll find more interesting stuff then. I still land on planets just to experience them and do wander about a bit to take it all in. But I only do that for sightseeing, not exploration. Although once in a while I do stumble upon something unexpected on planet surfaces too.
Yup. Whenever I want to grind a combat skill I go to an abandoned something. I also think of the many planets and the generated surfaces as flavour. Similar to the spacesuits and their various environmental protections. Or even the various bits and bobs strewn about everywhere. The intent isn’t necessarily for you to do anything with them. You can if you want, but you can also ignore them. The world is simply richer because all that stuff is there in the background.
Sorry, probably a stupid question but what do you mean with explore by spaceship?
All I can say is that for me personally, I didn’t find the outposts interesting after the first few times because once you see human enemies or robots at each one repeatedly, it loses it’s luster.
I played 150+ hours but started over at least twice and the side quests all happened exactly the same as the previous times. Groundpounder and the quest where you search the base where the Son went there at the request of his mother who passed but forgot the name or the few others you get when going into New Atlantis or Akilia City, etc. Even the Crimson Fleet faction quest line started the same because I had contraband on my ship which sets it up.
Point is that this stuff regardless of how you come across it is really good to great because it’s written and scripted as opposed to being generated.
I agree with the second part. I know why it’s there but the more I play open world games, the more I look at each one and think to myself “less is more”. But again, to each their own.
Still love the game and can’t wait to get back to it in January when my vacation starts!!
Stuff like when you go to a system and see a ship floating there, interact with it and it leads to something. Or a random one comes and interacts with you. I still haven’t run into the grandma lol.
Yeah they’ve moved a lot of the random events that populated previous Bethesda games away from the open worlds and into the space exploration, so while exploring space is more limited it does take some of the role that the open world previously held.