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Bethesda On Starfield's Big, Empty Planets: Not Every Location "Is Supposed To Be Disney World"

Tripolygon

Banned
1) The planetary exploration itself is selecting planets on the menu screen.



2) When you're flying, it gives you an illusion that you're exploring space, but you are in a box that you can't go outside of. The planets you're seeing in front of you don't even come closer to you, no matter how much you fly.


This is the game people want to say is bigger and better than NMS? It doesn't even do half of the things you could do in NMS at launch and people railed against NMS.
 
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GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
These vids have broked my heart Master Chief was my role model

simpsons-ralph-wiggum.gif
 

iHaunter

Member
C’mon, don’t be contrarian for no reason. You know very well it was not mentioned as “1000 planets, including 900 mines for resources only”. The goal was always to hype the game and make it seem all of these are unique, carefully crafted experiences.
They should've just had like 30-50 planets and made them actually interesting. 1,000 pointless planets in a sea of 10 developed ones is boring. No Man's Sky implementation currently is better.
 
But imagine that “1000 planets” bullet point.

Even 1 fully fleshed out planet would be better than 10,000 planets with fuck all to do on them except walk around collecting resources. Bethesda went for the marketing splendour and forgot about actual quality. Oh look! You can walk around in a limited space on a 1000 empty planets! This is going to be the most adventurous, packed game of all time!
 
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Romulus

Member
They should've just had like 30-50 planets and made them actually interesting. 1,000 pointless planets in a sea of 10 developed ones is boring. No Man's Sky implementation currently is better.


I honestly think 50 is way too much to ask from Bethesda. Maybe 10-15.

100 is insanely stupid and 1000 has turned into a meme.
 

TheMan

Member
In Skyrim, yes there was some copy paste here and there, but not on the level that you have the same enemies standing at the same locations everytime. This is just way lazier. And I love Skyrim to death but Starfield is on another level of literally dropping the same location on your randomly generated seed of a landing spot.

I think the scale they aimed at, got in the way sadly. And said scale is now loading screens. Their ambition was there for sure.
My sincere hope is that there is a bug in the random generation and after a patch it will be fixed and things will stop being so copy paste.
 

Yerd

Member
I have no played the game yet but this seems like a deja vu. Mass Effect got the same flak but I loved the empty planets.

Hope I’ll like it in Starfield too. I don’t mind If I have nothing to do. I just like to see and visit different planets, so my hope is just that they are no too samey.
I came to make the same comment about Mass Effect. It does have a similar feel. The music gives me Mass Effect vibes. The environments too.

I haven't tried to break the exploration boundaries like apparently all the complainers are doing. Everywhere I have gone has been accessible. I'm just following the story so far and only a couple of side quests. The main quest sent me to Mars and I went off exploring there and keep coming into places that are higher than my level, but I'm pushing in anyway.
 

R6Rider

Gold Member
I'm basically sticking to main quests and side "activity" quests only. I see no reason to explore beyond that when there isn't much in the way of unique loot.
 

simpatico

Member
Starfield is a tactical sim. But in the sense that it tactically becomes a sim when arguing a point in a vacuum. It will stop being a sim when someone asks about all the loading screen, Then it becomes an RPG. We could have had TES VI or Fallout 5 right now.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Starfield isn’t no man’s sky and that’s a good thing. there is way more to do. People are not wrong saying it’s elder scrolls in space. But what they don’t get is it’s also cyber punk, wing commander, and fall out as well.

One moment you are stopping a bank robbery on a Wild West type world and the next you are taking out space pirates while randomly exploring a moon.

I went to earth and watched as the space pirates and spacers fight it out while I snuck onto a space station.

There is so much that can or cannot be going on at any given time. It keeps the FACTIONS aspect of other Bethesda games so how you interact with say space pirates will make them hate you more or turn a blind eye as you progress. So many quests can go a multitude of different ways. You can talk your way out of a lot of fights if you want or just go through guns blazing. I got in deep with the Shaw gang on the one planet for totally destroying one of their grouos during a bank robbery instead of negotiating lol.

Then I had a little cyber punk adventure with the rich guy in constellation. Went to buy an artifact piece at a night club. Bought the security and hacked the meeting room. Lol I had all the cards in that one.

It’s just funny to read the comments here and know how far off they are from reality.

Except for the scores. I still think upper to mid 80s is a good score for this game. It just isn’t polished enough for a perfect score.
 

EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
I'm exploring in space. There is an overwhelming amount of places to explore...in space. Is that "true" enough for you, or is this just what your "social life" comprises of?

Took a break to get some tacos, too busy playing a game I'm enjoying to be bothered with sad little warriors like you.

lol nahhh.

Look, I'm not saying you are wrong, you are merely doing a bad job selling this to anyone and explaining your point based on how we know the term "exploration" is used. Like, you fight a space ship, disable it, board the ship, kill everyone and steal the shit...consider you can search this ship, one can define this as "exploration" as something that was odd, unusual and out of no where happened and now you are on a ship searching around.

You can find loot, you can steal the ship, you can start a whole ass quest where you find some kid on board that doesn't know you wrecked his whole family and now you must lie to the kid and hold on to this dark secret lol I fucking joke, but there is point I'm making here...look at how that just opened up a whole ass narrative to support a random side quest all cause you explored a ship.

Though I'm not sure if any such mission exist or even if any mission starts after you board a ship (it fucking should btw or they fucked up MASSIVELY), such things can support this idea of exploring space, even if you go thru some loading screens or something lol

So you are not wrong Coffin, but neither is Heisenberg007 Heisenberg007 . There is a level of expectation that exploration would exist in space to offer some gameplay element, narrative etc.

The game is after all called "STAR"field
 

sankt-Antonio

:^)--?-<
I feel like that's the biggest risk these lofty, ambitious space themed games run into. Scaling. Of course not every planet will be an alien Palace world of wonder, but like...

I know it's not a perfect example, because these two games are completely different, but bare with me: Metroid Prime 3 had you go to several different planets, but each "planet," was scaled just like a different "area," in previous Metroid/Prime games. This meant that Retro was telling us to suspend our disbelief when the entirety of the explorable portion of Bryyo is the same size as the Chozo Ruins, a region of Tallon IV.

In the end, this optical illusion doesn't work, and it feels like a stage select at worst, and a game following the Assassin's Creed model of "25 hours of fantastic content spaced horribly apart in a 120 hour game," at best.

Actually it should be like Star Wars, a lot of known Planets with known coordinates (resources to travel to them, ship with warp drive etc. are managing progress) full of life and civilizations.
Then a billion NMS like randomly generated planets sprinkled about the universe without live on them. With asteroids and black holes around etc.
 

Elog

Member
I understand why people are upset about the marketing. Also annoying that MS simply cannot stop themselves spewing exaggerated BS.

However, game is great (although with some pacing problems) and I have a total of zero problems with there being empty planets. As a matter of fact, I would have been annoyed if it was not like that.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I understand why people are upset about the marketing. Also annoying that MS simply cannot stop themselves spewing exaggerated BS.

However, game is great (although with some pacing problems) and I have a total of zero problems with there being empty planets. As a matter of fact, I would have been annoyed if it was not like that.
Do you remember how much negativity there was around NMS’s “broken” promises at launch when it was a small indie dev who had their offices flooded, was held together by the leads remortgaging their house, etc… and was developed in a considerably tighter development window? Considering the length of the development cycle, Bethesda’s size and MS financing for the last two years to close the game… it shows how light the wrist of big companies, especially first parties, is slapped…

Having a decent amount of differently barren planets is kind of a must, I agree. This is not what I am talking about in terms of “promises” though.
 
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Gp1

Member
I've been playing for a few hours now and was expecting at least an Elite Dangerous level on the "ship play".
The exploration is just like if you open the world map of any other Bethesda game and fast travel to any location without actually going there the first time.

It's beyond unjustifiable for a game with this kind of budget.
 

Tams

Gold Member
No Man's Sky has the same issue (only pretty much every planet is a copy paste there).

The problem is, they are selling this as a game, not a sim. Games are supposed to be fun. Empty planets, other than a few, just simply aren't fun.

Auto-generation is still nowhere near being able to do stuff anywhere near 'handcrafted' stuff, and I'm, well, not surprised people fell for their claims over it.

That said, Bethesda did say most of the game would be auto-generated...

Cheng said. "Everyone's concerned that empty planets are going to be boring. But when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored."

This moron thinks too highly of himself. You made a piece of software that is nowhere near 'real' life. The astronauts on The Moon went there in real life. Big fucking difference.
 
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FunkMiller

Gold Member
Maybe next time just make 5-10 planets fully explorable instead of 1000 shitplace with reusable asset and nothing to do

Setting it just in our solar system would have given them enough planets and moons to play with. Easily enough space as well to have all of your battles and discoveries. Could have been the biggest and best open world ever. But I guess they wanted a much bigger scale, which is of course impossible to implement seamlessly.
 

March Climber

Gold Member
ie: stick to quests
Fixed, for me.

It sounds like I should play this game more like Mass Effect: Talk to people in town/find quest organically, Select quest, select destination, fast travel to destination, play current quest/mission with very little deviation, complete quest.

The spaceship stuff, the quests, and the land stuff seem disjointed enough from each other in a way that it’s probably the better idea. The ones here who are getting the most upset are the ones randomly exploring planets and treating the game like Space Skyrim or NMS.

In order to not frustrate myself like others on launch day, I will have new quests lead me to new planets rather than the other way around.
 

KXVXII9X

Member
do at least the bare minimum, play the game, watch videos, do some research before commenting something stupid, even some of the worst reviews out there do this.

the game is on gamepass if u wanna give it a try


It is amazing how a good art direction can smoke some of the most graphically intensive games. This looks a lot less bland than Starfield. It may not look accurate but it is eye-catching.
 

FlyyGOD

Member
The ones that have dragged it down to 87 from the sycophantic/paid for 10/10 reviews.

This game is not 10 out of 10, solid 8, 9 when the community fixes and improves it.
What proof do you have to show that some reviews were "paid" for? You're an insider I suppose seeing that you have inside knowledge of these payments.
 

Freeman76

Member
I'm exploring in space. There is an overwhelming amount of places to explore...in space. Is that "true" enough for you, or is this just what your "social life" comprises of?

Took a break to get some tacos, too busy playing a game I'm enjoying to be bothered with sad little warriors like you.
Half these mongs are just upset cos they dont have a system to play it on.

The game is overwhelmingly massive, and ive spent loads of time exploring and finding cool shit, plenty of little placea hidden away.
 

DJ12

Member
What proof do you have to show that some reviews were "paid" for? You're an insider I suppose seeing that you have inside knowledge of these payments.
Not an insider, but not an idiot, its Well known certain companies pay for reviews.

For example:

 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
It's a fast travel menu with the occasional dogfight minigame thrown in.

It's irrelevent

there’s more to it than that. But let’s say there wasn’t. What exactly is the difference from setting a marker on a planet to land than flying down?

There isn’t going to be anymore planets. Anymore secret bases, space stations , moons ect… what is exactly the difference?

The difference is there is a ton more to do that any of the games you can list and it’s all a cohesive choice that affects your game unlike anything other game.
 

damidu

Member
What exactly is the difference from setting a marker on a planet to land than flying down?
There isn’t going to be anymore planets. Anymore secret bases, space stations , moons ect… what is exactly the difference?

lol thats like saying
whats the difference between actually shooting, conversing your way through the quests instead of clicking a menu button and watching them as a cutscene

you can’t just butcher space part of your “space game" to a fake, bare minimum and act like everything is dandy.
 
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Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
there’s more to it than that. But let’s say there wasn’t. What exactly is the difference from setting a marker on a planet to land than flying down?

There isn’t going to be anymore planets. Anymore secret bases, space stations , moons ect… what is exactly the difference?

The difference is there is a ton more to do that any of the games you can list and it’s all a cohesive choice that affects your game unlike anything other game.
Because then it shifts from a "space exploration game" to a "space teleportation game."
 
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Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
For me the first 10-12 hours like IGN said, were abysmal.

I’m now over 30 hours in and having an absolute blast.

The trick was to just stay on main story mission or do a main faction mission. This clearly where all the development time was sunk into and it shows.

What’s the better space game ? No man’s sky.

What’s the better space rpg ? Toss up between this and mass effect probably.

What’s the most polished Bethesda rpg on launch ? Starfield.

What’s the best rpg of 2023? Baldurs gate 3.

I’ve had some epic and hilarious moments in the game. Epic fights. Wonderful dialogue. Enjoyed some gorgeous vistas I took screenshots of.

There’s some core design things I would’ve changed like maybe have the first planet you visit a town in be Akila or Cydonia instead of Atlantis because Atlantis is a LOT from the get go. If you engage with the city too much like I did you’ll be bored to death.

Currently the game went from like a 6/10 to a 8.5/10 right now.
 
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