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Starfield | Review Thread

What scores do you think StarfieId will get?

  • 40-45%

    Votes: 3 0.5%
  • 45-50%

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 50-55%

    Votes: 1 0.2%
  • 55-60%

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 60-65%

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 65-70%

    Votes: 2 0.3%
  • 70-75%

    Votes: 5 0.8%
  • 75-80%

    Votes: 15 2.3%
  • 80-85%

    Votes: 81 12.5%
  • 85-90%

    Votes: 241 37.3%
  • 90-95%

    Votes: 243 37.6%
  • 95-100%

    Votes: 55 8.5%

  • Total voters
    646
  • Poll closed .

RayHell

Member
9LxHHr9.png


My five cents, with 12.5 hours of playtime I think it's fair to give some impressions. Might be a bit of a rant because I have a lot of feelings right now.

The more I play this the more its fundamentally flawed structure becomes apparent. It is both overwhelming and deeply unsatisfying. There are just so many mindbogglingly weird or straight up bad design decisions there's a chance this game will go down the MGSV route of incredible potential completely squandered by baffling design.

This game is the anti-immersive sim.

Some things that are just insane to me:

- There is no exploration. No adventure, no sense of wonder. You go in a menu, you press a button and you fast travel via a loading screen. Flying around in space is unrewarding and useless. You don't descend on a planet, you cannot fly around on a planet. Or otherwise move around on a planet. The tile based procedurally generated areas are terrible. I landed on the moon facing Earth because I wanted to see the sights and it just rendered some random area. Earth wasn't even in view. There was a mission where I had to save a dude from a crashed ship. I was on another planet in another system, I went into the menu, selected his location, clicked to go there, I got a loading screen and it literally spawned me right next to the guy with my ship 500 meters away. No travel cinematic, no landing sequence, it instantly warped me to a completely different system next to the objective. Just dreadfully bland design.
- The game knows there is no exploration or adventure because it tries to remove travel every way it can. You can fast-travel 500 meters from your ship and be in a completely different system one loading screen later. There's no feeling of being a part of the universe, everything feels extremely videogame-y. You can literally fast-travel to the front door of the Lodge from another system.
- New Atlantis' techno utopia seems impressive at first but after the initial "ooh" and "aah" wears off it is an incredibly badly designed area. It is immense, cumbersome to navigate (no map, lmao. How do you have this huge hub area and no map), has zero redeeming qualities other than nice vistas and on a meta level has terrible technical performance with framerates going from 50 to 20.
- The dialogue system is terrible and feels like I'm playing Skyrim, only not in a good way. The way the camera is positioned, the hard cuts to people talking, the bizarre way companions look straight at you even when talking to someone else. It's a system from two generations ago with almost zero improvements. When you're in space and another ship hails you, it zooms in on the ship as if the ship is talking, lmao. Would it really kill you to add a screen to the cockpit where you see someone else talking to you? This game was in development for like 8 years, for fucks sake. Where's the immersion? I just don't understand how this happens.
- Literally every mission is a fetch quest. You go somewhere, flip a switch or shoot the place up, get some info or talk to someone to get a new location, rinse and repeat. Aggressively mediocre game design.
- The way it dunks sidequests on you is hilarious. Literally every quest in New Atlantis is some random asshole walking up to me saying "hey man I heard this lady from the bar say some dumb shit but I don't care, you know how it is" and then you get a prompt to go talk to the lady. I mean, what? I just landed on this planet, I don't know any of you. What the fuck are you talking about? Every time it's "random npc conveniently says something about a situation completely unrelated to you or anything that's happening" -> "go check out this situation". Again, archaic design.

The "NASA-punk" aesthetics are amazing. The style of the game is incredibly well done. It feels futuristic yet contemporary. The music is good but forgettable. The voice acting is solid, albeit a bit over the top at times. Combat is decent.

There are a lot of mechanics in place that give an illusion of depth, but there really isn't any. You fast-travel from location to location, one destination to another. The travel in between is completely removed.

It feels like I'm playing a game that should've been released 8 years ago. This doesn't feel good, man. Imagine playing Skyrim and your only option was to fast travel from objective to objective. If you remove the journey, how much of the game is actually left, truly?
Thanks you for this very relevant impression of the game. I'm a big Fallout 3 and Skyrim fan but I was on the fence about the game because I found Fallout 4 to be a big let down. I still preordered the game but after I read that I decided to cancel it.
Todd probably see himself like a visionary, but if you thinks about it, he's doing the same thing again and again for so many years now and really have difficulty to innovate.
The only thing he's good at now is finding new ways to build hype.
 

GloveSlap

Member
The reviews are a little disappointing, but it looks like a good game to play when stoned or in bed. Most of the games i'm playing now are kind of stressful, so that's a niche I need filled right now.
 

Darkmakaimura

Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
The ending is already been posted up on YouTube so just a heads up, be really careful of spoilers.
 
My five cents, with 12.5 hours of playtime I think it's fair to give some impressions. Might be a bit of a rant because I have a lot of feelings right now.

The more I play this the more its fundamentally flawed structure becomes apparent. It is both overwhelming and deeply unsatisfying. There are just so many mindbogglingly weird or straight up bad design decisions there's a chance this game will go down the MGSV route of incredible potential completely squandered by baffling design.

...

It feels like I'm playing a game that should've been released 8 years ago. This doesn't feel good, man. Imagine playing Skyrim and your only option was to fast travel from objective to objective. If you remove the journey, how much of the game is actually left, truly?
thanks for taking the time. can't really say i'm shocked/surprised. bethesda's gonna bethesda, & that means no innovation & no taking chances. hopefully there's still enough dumb fun in there to keep me amused for at least a couple weeks - i'll be finding out wednesday...
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Go back to when? Since the inception of assigning scores to video games it has been a 4 point scale from 7 - 10.
Maybe one of us is on some imported PCP or Krokodil.

I'm going on the 1-10 scale. When you see a 10 you should automatically rise an eye brow, period.

Even some of my favorite games are 7's. People just need to accept that or look for validation in a selection of reviews which are soft today as it is.

Peace be with you.
 

Topher

Gold Member
I'm starting to understand some of the reviews that scored the game lower than others. My gripes list is growing.

I just spent 10 minutes trying to find my way out of this maze of a facility after I cleared a bunch of mercs out of it. I just wandered around until I finally found the right path out of the place. Not having any sort of map is really annoying.

Combat is just ok. It is a garden variety shooter. But I have a feeling this is part of the game that some have said gets much better later on. I hope so, at least.

Ship combat and movement is extremely basic. Bethesda put little effort into this and that is extremely disappointing. Your ship and the enemy ship just circle around each other blasting away until one blows up. There is no strafing. No reverse throttle. No Z axis. Not even roll. Literally point the ship in a direction and go forward. That's it. More like a naval ship than a space ship. Everspace 2 is better space ship game than Starfield. Not even close.

On the positive side, the story is good so far. The characters are interesting. I don't think the animation is as bad as some have said. It is a good looking game. I've listed more negatives than positives, but I'm not suggesting this is a bad game at all. Just think these things I've complained about could have been much better.
 
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BlackTron

Member
Forget the story in the game, the spoilers I care about are whether people are going to pay attention to everything Todd says about their next game again
 

reinking

Gold Member
I'm starting to understand some of the reviews that scored the game lower than others. My gripes list is growing.

I just spent 10 minutes trying to find my way out of this maze of a facility after I cleared a bunch of mercs out of it. I just wandered around until I finally found the right path out of the place. Not having any sort of map is really annoying.

Combat is just ok. It is a garden variety shooter. But I have a feeling this is part of the game that some have said gets much better later on. I hope so, at least.

Ship combat and movement is extremely basic. Bethesda put little effort into this and that is extremely disappointing. Your ship and the enemy ship just circle around each other blasting away until one blows up. There is no strafing. No reverse throttle. No Z axis. Not even roll. Literally point the ship in a direction and go forward. That's it. More like a naval ship than a space ship. Everspace 2 is better space ship game than Starfield. Not even close.

On the positive side, the story is good so far. The characters are interesting. I don't think the animation is as bad as some have said. It is a good looking game. I've listed more negatives than positives, but I'm not suggesting this is a bad game at all. Just think it could have been much better.
My impression so far is the game is really good but it could have been much better. I am satisfied with my overall concern about exploring. I am glad there is some additional exploring to be done when landing in marked areas of interest. I have had one crash where the game froze up and my character got stuck on a rock early on, those are the only two major bugs I have encountered. I will be disappointed if I do not fall through at least one planet. :messenger_grinning:

I am way too early to give a score but early impressions are the high 80's are looking about right.

*This is on PC. I could never get the controller to feel right on the XBSX.
 
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Topher

Gold Member
My impression so far is the game is really good but it could have been much better. I am satisfied with my overall concern about exploring. I am glad there is some additional exploring to be done when landing in marked areas of interest. I have had one crash where the game froze up and my character got stuck on a rock early on, those are the only two major bugs I have encountered. I will be disappointed if I do not fall through at least one planet. :messenger_grinning:

I am way too early to give a score but early impressions are the high 80's are looking about right.

*This is on PC. I could never get the controller to feel right on the XBSX.

I crashed once while quitting the game. Seen a few glitches. One time in that facility I was lost in, a merc came charging into the room I fought it and took it out. That Sarah lady just looked at me the whole time and did nothing while this guy tried to kill me. lol....thought I was playing Morrowind again for a second. I'm not to fuss too much about bugs and glitches in early access. I knew what I was getting into. :messenger_beaming:

I'm also on PC. I may try the space combat with controller again rather than with my flight stick and see if that is more fun. The way they neutered space flight makes flight sticks a bit pointless I'm afraid.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
I crashed once while quitting the game. Seen a few glitches. One time in that facility I was lost in, a merc came charging into the room I fought it and took it out. That Sarah lady just looked at me the whole time and did nothing while this guy tried to kill me. lol....thought I was playing Morrowind again for a second. I'm not to fuss too much about bugs and glitches in early access. I knew what I was getting into. :messenger_beaming:

I'm also on PC. I may try the space combat with controller again rather than with my flight stick and see if that is more fun. The way they neutered space flight makes flight sticks a bit pointless I'm afraid.
Keep your scanner on and it puts arrows on the floor to help you out on navigation.
 

DeepSpace5D

Member
God of War Ragnarok was reviewed only on the PS5, no one reviewed the PS4 version. Even the 3~ reviews you see on the MC page for Ragnarok PS4 are not labeled as which hardware they were done on, on their review pages.
Not that it’s a big deal, but out of curiosity I checked out those 3 reviews on the PS4 page for Ragnarok. In their reviews, they do appear to either directly state they played the PS4 version, or heavily imply it.
iwJ6vo7.jpg
OZC75Al.jpg
B3VNrde.jpg
 

Zuzu

Member
Honestly, this is all i ever wanted. I have no idea what people were expecting.

It seems people were expecting a Fallout 4/Skyrim level RPG & the world depth of those games combined with the planet exploration and space travelling system of No Man's Sky and the space combat of games like Everspace 2 & Chorus. Along with a base-building and ship building gameplay loop.

Pretty much impossible to do all that in one game imo. And so something had to give. Seems like it was the No Man's Sky level exploration. I don't know how the space combat fares. I'm guessing it's simpler than games such as Chorus but it looks decent from the bits I've seen.
 
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lol where's that guy from the hype thread that said Summit1G was hyped for the game? Dude literally rage quit and decided to play Cyberpunk instead. "I can't tell you how fucking over this I am"


The embed doesn't seem to work for me, so the link to the clip is below:
Code:
https://www.twitch.tv/summit1g/clip/ExcitedAltruisticJalapenoOpieOP-iYWwdpF-ylIFTcb3


Edit: Oh he was banned because he was an alt of a pathetic MS shill. jfc
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Not that it’s a big deal, but out of curiosity I checked out those 3 reviews on the PS4 page for Ragnarok. In their reviews, they do appear to either directly state they played the PS4 version, or heavily imply it.
iwJ6vo7.jpg
OZC75Al.jpg
B3VNrde.jpg





Thank you for the correction.

The split still shows practically 99% of reviews were done on PS5, but thank you for looking them up.

For Starfield, the split is pretty much 50 / 50 across PC and Xbox, with there not being a separate distinction for Series S, so it's a somewhat different case here.


Honestly, this is all i ever wanted. I have no idea what people were expecting.

Well, at least Todd wasn't lying when he said Starfield is like Skyrim in space. 🤷‍♂️

I haven't gotten far enough to live out the Han Solo in space part yet, but won't be surprised if I'm just barely scratching the surface.
 
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GHG

Gold Member
lol where's that guy from the hype thread that said Summit1G was hyped for the game? Dude literally rage quit and decided to play Cyberpunk instead. "I can't tell you how fucking over this I am"


The embed doesn't seem to work for me, so the link to the clip is below:
Code:
https://www.twitch.tv/summit1g/clip/ExcitedAltruisticJalapenoOpieOP-iYWwdpF-ylIFTcb3


Edit: Oh he was banned because he was an alt of a pathetic MS shill. jfc


He said its worse than 76? Christ.
 

Ginzeen

Banned
I'm gonna try the game but damn if it's definitely not an 87 Metacritic.

Reviews are soft these days and we need to go back to where a 7 is good, an 8 is great, and a 9 is exceptional.

This doesn't even read or look like a 6.

The truth hurts.
those are random generated npcs. Some of them look like shit. Doesn't really matter. im 16 hours in the game and its cool. Nothing special.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
An improvement over those ancient and outdated games?

It’s amazing how critical you are of most titles but give this a complete pass
Whats not improved? Massive visual upgrade. The gunplay is a HUGE improvement over fallout 4. Third person animations are fantastic. No longer the robotic barely acceptable TPS gameplay from skyrim and fallout 4.

the game has issues, but no i am not going to pretend that it doesnt have massive improvements over their previous titles. And I am definitely not going to pretend that they ever sold this game as anything but skyrim in space. You can go back and read my posts from 2 years ago. This is what this game was billed as. Everyone knew it. they said that you wont be able to fly in and out of planets. They said planets had specific landing zones. They never pretended that this was going to be anything more.

It's not my fault that people heard all of that and imagined a completely different game in their head. thats delusion.
 
Whats not improved? Massive visual upgrade. The gunplay is a HUGE improvement over fallout 4. Third person animations are fantastic. No longer the robotic barely acceptable TPS gameplay from skyrim and fallout 4.

Game structure, NPCs, voice acting, quest design, UI, etc. mile wide and an inch deep seems a common critique

I don’t know if the gunplay is improved, some say it’s fallout without VATS and has hardly any good feedback, sway, etc.

Who cares about playing in third person? Lol. Visually, it’s cross gen too
 
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Game structure, NPCs, voice acting, quest design, UI, etc. mile wide and an inch deep seems a common critique

I don’t know if the gunplay is improved, some say it’s fallout without VATS and has hardly any good feedback, sway, etc.

Who cares about playing in third person? Lol. Visually, it’s cross gen too
What cross gen? Series S and X and PC is NOT cross gen. This game would never be able to run on the Xbox One, What are you talking about?
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Slimy earned the title "The Contrarian" because he always demands more.

Here, he is like, "I'm totally fine. This is exactly what I wanted." 😂
I always demand more. I am super unhappy with the downgrade here. But it's delusional to expect stuff that they didnt promise. Everyone knew from last year's E3 that the game was not No Mans Sky. If you are going in there expecting No Mans Sky then thats on you.

We are all adults here. We have been gaming for decades. Everyone knew that they would not be able to fill up thousands of planets with shit to do. Everyone knew that a game with a thousand real planets would likely take 2-3 terabytes so the scope was always going to be limited. Everyone knew this was skyrim in space.

It's fine to have issues with the game. I have only played an hour and I am under no obligation to give a 9 so if it turns out to be disappointing like Horizon or FF16 then I would have no problems giving it a low score. But i draw the line at people just making shit up about a game that got not one but two huge 20-45 minute reveals at E3.
 
What cross gen? Series S and X and PC is NOT cross gen. This game would never be able to run on the Xbox One, What are you talking about?

It looks decidedly worse than many cross gen games. The fact that it’s series exclusive is irrelevant

It looks fine, and thankfully much more modern than Bethesda games of the past, but some areas look extremely bland and the NPCs really do take you out of the experience and haven’t been improved at all
 

Red5

Member
The fact Starfield only has 50 reviews is shocking. Ragnarok had 120 reviews the day of embargo.

Proves Bethesda really cherry-picked

This will end up less than 85


100 reviews with 88 score.
 

Ammogeddon

Member
I’m a few hours in and enjoying the game a lot but by god there are a few things that frustrate, disappoint and annoy me. Typical BGS game really.

I think Starfield is going to be like a family member that really pisses you off at times, but ultimately you love them and glad they’re around.

I can understand how it ended up with such a mixed bag of review scores.
 

Topher

Gold Member
It seems people were expecting a Fallout 4/Skyrim level RPG & the world depth of those games combined with the planet exploration and space travelling system of No Man's Sky and the space combat of games like Everspace 2 & Chorus. Along with a base-building and ship building gameplay loop.

Pretty much impossible to do all that in one game imo. And so something had to give. Seems like it was the No Man's Sky level exploration. I don't know how the space combat fares. I'm guessing it's simpler than games such as Chorus but it looks decent from the bits I've seen.

Perhaps, but Bethesda didn't do enough to prepare folks for how truly watered down the space exploration aspect of the game is. I think a lot of expectations would have been evened out had Bethesda allowed some hands on gameplay prior to early access. Now it seems a bit obvious why Bethesda didn't want that.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Game structure, NPCs, voice acting, quest design, UI, etc. mile wide and an inch deep seems a common critique

Game structure and quest design have literally been the same for every game since 2005. It's why i bitch about being stuck in the PS360 era even when we got to the PS4 and PS5 gens. thats hardly a complaint unique to starfield. FF16 just came out and you couldnt tell me that the game structure and quest design is any different from shit we got in the PS3 era open world games.

But bethesda games have always had great RPG elements and exploration that is way better than their contemporaries. im still early on and if it fails to live up to skyrim's exploration then fine. If its RPG elements fail to top modern RPGs then fine. But i highly doubt that would be case because no one has out-Bethesda'd Bethesda since Witcher 3 in 2015.

And visually its a massive upgrade over fallout 4. this despite the downgrade. Honestly i dont know if you guys even play these games.
 
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Alex Scott

Member
I’m a few hours in and enjoying the game a lot but by god there are a few things that frustrate, disappoint and annoy me. Typical BGS game really.

I think Starfield is going to be like a family member that really pisses you off at times, but ultimately you love them and glad they’re around.

I can understand how it ended up with such a mixed bag of review scores.
88 is considered mixed bag now.
 
It looks decidedly worse than many cross gen games. The fact that it’s series exclusive is irrelevant

It looks fine, and thankfully much more modern than Bethesda games of the past, but some areas look extremely bland and the NPCs really do take you out of the experience and haven’t been improved at all
NPC's haven't improved at all? You're kidding right? When was the last time you've played a Bethesda game? The NPC's are much better now, both in visual fidelity and animations. They are not Naughty Dog levels obviously, but they are very much improved over previous Bethesda titles. You must be looking at the shitty screenshots with low settings lol from console version.
 
NPC's haven't improved at all? You're kidding right? When was the last time you've played a Bethesda game? The NPC's are much better now, both in visual fidelity and animations. They are not Naughty Dog levels obviously, but they are very much improved over previous Bethesda titles. You must be looking at the shitty screenshots with low settings lol from console version.

Dude they are comically bad compared to any modern game out there

They may look marginally better than Bethesda’s past titles, that ain’t saying much
 

damidu

Member
Whats not improved? Massive visual upgrade. The gunplay is a HUGE improvement over fallout 4. Third person animations are fantastic. No longer the robotic barely acceptable TPS gameplay from skyrim and fallout 4.

the game has issues, but no i am not going to pretend that it doesnt have massive improvements over their previous titles. And I am definitely not going to pretend that they ever sold this game as anything but skyrim in space. You can go back and read my posts from 2 years ago. This is what this game was billed as. Everyone knew it. they said that you wont be able to fly in and out of planets. They said planets had specific landing zones. They never pretended that this was going to be anything more.

It's not my fault that people heard all of that and imagined a completely different game in their head. thats delusion.
massive, huge improvements lol.
maybe only if you compare to bethesda jank from last decade

visually there is absolutely nothing special about the game,
npcs look like nightmare fuel, combat is shit with braindead ai.
on top they managed to fuck up one unique element of their games. basically no sense of freedom and exploration.
you are menu/fast traveling from fetch quest to fetch quest.
 
Dude they are comically bad compared to any modern game out there

They may look marginally better than Bethesda’s past titles, that ain’t saying much
You are moving goal posts now "NPCs really do take you out of the experience and haven’t been improved at all" is what you said and now you are saying they are marginally better than previous Bethesda titles and that it's not saying much .And instead you are comparing it to other games lol, but previously you compared it to the Bethesda games. Interesting. I see that the conversation here is not very genuine. Best wishes.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Plenty of games do better.

I don’t need game structure and design to be novel; I want it to be GOOD
Every single RPG since Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 has failed to top it. Mass Effect Andromeda, Outer Wilds, Cyberpunk, FF15, FF16, FF7, all pale in comparison to Bethesda games and Witcher 3. Then you have open world games like Horizon, Ass creed, and other sony first party games that simply dont have the role playing elements that make these RPGs so different and unique.

Only top down CRPGs like Divinity Sin and Baldurs Gate 3 come close but they are turn based and not really comparable to AAA games we all play. JRPGs like FF have essentially turned into action adventure games. Bioware has gone MIA. Cyberpunk was practically an action adventure game and Obsidian's outer worlds was not even in the same league.

I have no idea what game we are using to judge the quest design and mission structure. TLOU2? GOW? linear action games? Should I trash TLOU2 for not having branching dialogue and RPG elements?
 

Zuzu

Member
Perhaps, but Bethesda didn't do enough to prepare folks for how truly watered down the space exploration aspect of the game is. I think a lot of expectations would have been evened out had Bethesda allowed some hands on gameplay prior to early access. Now it seems a bit obvious why Bethesda didn't want that.
You're right. It's definitely on Bethesda to set the expectations and from the bits and pieces I've seen from the pre-release statements by the developers (like being able to travel around an entire planet seamlessly) they did the opposite of that; or at least they didn't appear to downplay the common impression that it would be No Man's Sky-like in exploration & travel.

I can see why the level of restrictions for exploration and travel is surprising to many people. The space segments are very restricted without the ability to even travel in your ship between planets & moons within a given solar system.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
massive, huge improvements lol.
maybe only if you compare to bethesda jank from last decade
Yes, thats literally what I am doing. Because thats what was asked.

An improvement over those ancient and outdated games?

Whats not improved? Massive visual upgrade. The gunplay is a HUGE improvement over fallout 4. Third person animations are fantastic. No longer the robotic barely acceptable TPS gameplay from skyrim and fallout 4.
 
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