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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 .

jm89

Member
I dont know why hes getting this hate. hes not the only one. gamespot and PC gamer also gave it a 7 and lets face it, eurogamer is giving it a 3 star out of 5 which will show up as a 60 on metacritic.
Probably because ign gets alot more traffic and has a wider reach.
 

Zuzu

Member
I dont know why hes getting this hate. hes not the only one. gamespot and PC gamer also gave it a 7 and lets face it, eurogamer is giving it a 3 star out of 5 which will show up as a 60 on metacritic.

There's a lot of crazy, immature people. No one should feel bad about a review they've given as long as they've provided good, logical reasons for their conclusions and wherever possible they've provided objective data that backs up their opinion.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
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.
Do you seriously want to travel the solar system in realtime? How long do you think it would take to say go from earth to saturn? how would you fill that area between the two planets? what purpose would that serve? how big would the game be if we are creating entire worlds and solar systems? how fun would the game be if its taking us hours to get from one planet to the other? or even minutes? this is game design 101. you get gamers to go do fun shit instead of waste their time with tedious crap. If anything, the real criticisms should be aimed at them creating thousands of empty planets with nothing but walking. not lame shit like taking off in realtime and going to the moon turning an RPG into a long glorified walking simulator.

Whats next? Star Wars Outlaws is trash because they only let you land in specific zones and dont let you control your spacecraft as you leave the planet? do you not see that getting old when you're trying to do quests and a 30-1 minute long cutscene plays just to get you out to orbit then another 30 second loading screen as you FTL to a different system then another 1 minute cutscene as you slowly descend to a new planet? who wants to do that all the time?

No mans sky launched with that crap and it literally turned into the most refunded game in history. no one wants that trash. i just looked at the reviews and everyone hated it. 61 on PC metacritic with 3.9 user score. no one likes this trash you are asking them to put in.
 

Red5

Member
Seeing Dan Stapleton reciting his review history reminds me he gave Duke Nukem Forever an 8. I'm all for opinions being subjective but if you're going to be a professional critic you're going to have some standards, in no way is Starfield a worse game than DNF, a complete mess of a meme game stuck in development hell for over a decade.

This is why aggregate scores are a good thing, some reviews have taste the exact opposite of yours,
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
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.
Eh, I don't have any problems with the empty planets. Bethesda had already confirmed that 90% of the total planets will be barren.

My problems lie elsewhere: loading screens, the fake illusion of space flight and exploration, archaic game design, no maps, poor and dated visuals, bugs, no seamless planetary exploration, procedurally generated tiles that do not connect, etc.

I can't wrap my head around the fact that you think Horizon, FF16, Mass Effect, Star Wars, etc. are bad, but this is completely fine.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Eh, I don't have any problems with the empty planets. Bethesda had already confirmed that 90% of the total planets will be barren.

My problems lie elsewhere: loading screens, the fake illusion of space flight and exploration, archaic game design, no maps, poor and dated visuals, bugs, no seamless planetary exploration, procedurally generated tiles that do not connect, etc.

I can't wrap my head around the fact that you think Horizon, FF16, Mass Effect, Star Wars, etc. are bad, but this is completely fine.
I dont think Horizon FW, FF16, ME:A and Star Wars are bad. They are all 7s (GOOD) except for star wars which is a solid 8-8.5 but i havent beaten it yet. Horizon was my GOTY in 2017 over zelda and i have stanned for mass effect andomeda many times on this board. But there is no doubt that when it comes to role playing elements, these games are fake RPGs compared to skyrim, fallout, mass effect 1-3 and witcher 3. thats why i have no issue with them saying this was skyrim in space because skyrim has still not been topped.

I am with you on the loading screens. I literally just finished bitching about it in the next gen thread. Its inexcusable for them to not implement streaming when entering interiors and your own fucking ship. I just draw the line at people expecting lift offs into space because that was never promised and it would be awful in practice.

And lastly, i have continuously said that this is not all fine. the game has flaws. it has issues. im still only an hour in and have repeatedly conceded that i might not end up liking it. I just think its ridiculous for people to expect no mans sky when bethesda themselves said this was skyrim in space. go back and read the quote from stuart360 i replied to. the game was sold as skyrim in space and its bizarre to see complaining when its exactly that.
 
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Zuzu

Member
Do you seriously want to travel the solar system in realtime? How long do you think it would take to say go from earth to saturn? how would you fill that area between the two planets? what purpose would that serve? how big would the game be if we are creating entire worlds and solar systems? how fun would the game be if its taking us hours to get from one planet to the other? or even minutes? this is game design 101. you get gamers to go do fun shit instead of waste their time with tedious crap. If anything, the real criticisms should be aimed at them creating thousands of empty planets with nothing but walking. not lame shit like taking off in realtime and going to the moon turning an RPG into a long glorified walking simulator.

Whats next? Star Wars Outlaws is trash because they only let you land in specific zones and dont let you control your spacecraft as you leave the planet? do you not see that getting old when you're trying to do quests and a 30-1 minute long cutscene plays just to get you out to orbit then another 30 second loading screen as you FTL to a different system then another 1 minute cutscene as you slowly descend to a new planet? who wants to do that all the time?

No mans sky launched with that crap and it literally turned into the most refunded game in history. no one wants that trash. i just looked at the reviews and everyone hated it. 61 on PC metacritic with 3.9 user score. no one likes this trash you are asking them to put in.

I'm primarily saying that I understand to a degree why people are surprised and disappointed. The restrictions to exploration and travel are quite significant. I personally wouldn't want to travel in realtime within a solar system. But some people really like the immersion and traversal mechanic of flying between worlds and across the surface of planets. That's a big appeal in 'space odyssey' type games. Imo it's not much different in principle with travelling on a horse within a single map like Skyrim looking for places to explore. A middle-ground can be achieved where there is in-game interplanetary travel that can be achieved in short amounts of time which appeals to people who like that thing but doesn't come at the cost of tedious gameplay. This type of gameplay mechanic is already present in numerous space games.

I don't know much about No Man's Sky's launch but many people like it now and it seems to me that one of the reasons for that is due to its exploration & traversal mechanics so your assertion that no one wants that trash doesn't ring true to me. I'm not personally bothered that much that you can't land and launch in real-time onto planets and moons. I perhaps wouldn't have minded if we could fly between worlds within a solar system while keeping the fast travel system an option. Of course like you say they would then have to build out the space in between the planets & moons which of course would expand the scope of the game and probably not be possible.

I've also said that it's impossible to combine a Fallout 4/Skyrim-type RPG and world depth with the scope of exploration and travel of a game like No Man's Sky. People who had these expectations should have showed more critical thinking and realised that this was impossible to achieve. With that said I also understand why the level of restrictions in place in Starfield are surprising for some people. A precedent has been set by other space games such as No Man's Sky for how exploration and traversal should be in space games with lots of exploration. Now people expect that in these types of games. Should people have had these expectations for this game? Well it was made clear that there was no real time launch and entering from/to planets before the game's release so people shouldn't have had those expectations. I'm not sure if it was made clear that there would be no interplanetary travel however. I believe there's statements made by the developers about expansive exploration in Starfield so perhaps those expectations were reasonable. And since you have a space ship and there is space flight in the game I don't think it's terribly unreasonable that people thought they could travel across space and go from world to world in their ship. Also there was an expectation that players would be able to seamlessly traverse a world on foot so the fact that that doesn't exist is fair ground for criticism I think.
 
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GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
my gifted golds harve expired Im sorry my friends

giphy.gif
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
I dont think Horizon FW, FF16, ME:A and Star Wars are bad. They are all 7s (GOOD) except for star wars which is a solid 8-8.5 but i havent beaten it yet. Horizon was my GOTY in 2017 over zelda and i have stanned for mass effect andomeda many times on this board. But there is no doubt that when it comes to role playing elements, these games are fake RPGs compared to skyrim, fallout, mass effect 1-3 and witcher 3. thats why i have no issue with them saying this was skyrim in space because skyrim has still not been topped.

I am with you on the loading screens. I literally just finished bitching about it in the next gen thread. Its inexcusable for them to not implement streaming when entering interiors and your own fucking ship. I just draw the line at people expecting lift offs into space because that was never promised and it would be awful in practice.

And lastly, i have continuously said that this is not all fine. the game has flaws. it has issues. im still only an hour in and have repeatedly conceded that i might not end up liking it. I just think its ridiculous for people to expect no mans sky when bethesda themselves said this was skyrim in space. go back and read the quote from stuart360 i replied to. the game was sold as skyrim in space and its bizarre to see complaining when its exactly that.
That's where you are wrong then. Those are action adventure games; and that's exactly how Sony/SquareEnix advertised them. Why are you comparing them with and as RPGs?

It's like saying Outer Wilds, Hollow Knight, Hades, or Portal is a poor game because it's not an RPG like Skyrim or Witcher. Those are different genres. And if you're comparing games across genres, the only way to do it is to ignore the genre (obviously) and look at individual elements objectively. For example:
  • How do visuals and graphical fidelity compare in these 2 games?
  • How does animation compare in these 2 games?
  • How is the voice acting?
  • How is the gameplay?
  • How is the exploration, level design, and quest design?
Then adjust the comparisons based on how ambitious one game is over another.

Comparing games across genres head-to-head will never yield a fair result.
 
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Codeblew

Member
I was kind of skeptical of this game because of all of the hype but after watching some streamers play, I will
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

Lol, I love it when Summit gets triggered.

Fast travel, fast travel, fast travel, talk to NPC, fast travel, fast travel, fast travel, kill 4 dudes, fast travel, fast travel, fast travel, talk to NPC, fast travel, fast travel, fast travel......
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
That's where you are wrong then. Those are action adventure games; and that's exactly how Sony/SquareEnix advertised them. Why are you comparing them with and as RPGs?

It's like saying Outer Wilds, Hollow Knight, Hades, or Portal is a poor game because it's not an RPG like Skyrim or Witcher. Those are different genres. And if you're comparing games across genres, the only way to do it is to ignore the genre (obviously) and look at individual elements objectively. For example:
  • How do visuals and graphical fidelity compare in these 2 games?
  • How does animation compare in these 2 games?
  • How is the voice acting?
  • How is the gameplay?
  • How is the exploration, level design, and quest design?
Then adjust the comparisons based on how ambitious one game is over another.

Comparing games across genres head-to-head will never yield a fair result.
I think you misunderstood my post. I made the same argument to james just a post above. You can’t compare those games to starfield because they are practically action adventure games.

The only reason why i mentioned them was because you said it consider them bad which i don’t since i have rated 7/10 in my reviews here on gaf.
 

GHG

Gold Member
No mans sky launched with that crap and it literally turned into the most refunded game in history. no one wants that trash. i just looked at the reviews and everyone hated it. 61 on PC metacritic with 3.9 user score. no one likes this trash you are asking them to put in.

That wasn't the reason NMS got the reception it did at launch my dude (the lies and the missing features were). In fact, the inter-planetory traversal and exploration was pretty much the only thing it had going for it at launch, which then served as the foundation upon which they were then able to deliver the tremendous updates they have since.

That said, I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on all of this once you're 10-20 hours through Starfield.
 
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Elysium44

Banned
I dont know why hes getting this hate. hes not the only one. gamespot and PC gamer also gave it a 7 and lets face it, eurogamer is giving it a 3 star out of 5 which will show up as a 60 on metacritic.

No way Eurogamer would dare give it a 3. 4 is my guess. They really should change to scoring out of 10 rather than 5 to allow sevens and nines. (I don't think their system allows them to award halves, like 3.5.)
 
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skit_data

Gold Member
No way Eurogamer would dare give it a 3. 4 is my guess. They really should change to scoring out of 10 rather than 5 to allow sevens and nines. (I don't think their system allows them to award halves, like 3.5).
I wouldn't count it out, they seem to rather round down than give games too high of a score.
I agree that they should probably implement a 10 point scale, because it simply becomes too blunt IMO.
 

timothet

Member
Do you seriously want to travel the solar system in realtime? How long do you think it would take to say go from earth to saturn? how would you fill that area between the two planets? what purpose would that serve? how big would the game be if we are creating entire worlds and solar systems? how fun would the game be if its taking us hours to get from one planet to the other? or even minutes? this is game design 101. you get gamers to go do fun shit instead of waste their time with tedious crap.
Travel inside system is is easily doable/explainable with introduction of FTL drives. Look at supercruise from ED where travel from center of the system to any planet in it lasts couple minutes, not hours or years as some people suggested. Starfield is not a sim, so you could shorten travel time from couple minutes to like 1 or 2 minutes at most. Add some asteroids for mining resources, pirates trying to intercept you, some space stations to explore and it already looks way better and helps strengthen the illusion that everything is connected, and is not just a bunch of maps that you teleport in and from.

Also, it wouldn't necessarily baloon game size if they used scale, similar to how Warframe rescales player to very small size to make environment seem bigger in archwing mode. So, in Starfield's case, player's ship would be the size of NPC, planets would be building sized, etc. Each system would be just another map.
 

Zheph

Member
No way Eurogamer would dare give it a 3. 4 is my guess. They really should change to scoring out of 10 rather than 5 to allow sevens and nines. (I don't think their system allows them to award halves, like 3.5.)
any reason why? They have been pretty picky with all the big releases so far
They just changed the system to 5 so I wouldn't expect them to walk back
 

Elysium44

Banned
any reason why? They have been pretty picky with all the big releases so far
They just changed the system to 5 so I wouldn't expect them to walk back

The reason I think 3/5 would be unlikely is because of the controversy over codes beforehand, with DF getting one and being told explicitly not to let their EG colleagues play it. Would they be brave enough to upset Microsoft again? Imagine the meltdown from some of the game's fans. I know none of this should affect scoring but in the real world it has to be something they consider. I'm sure DF know which side their bread is buttered which is why they gloss over flaws or pull their punches when talking about Microsoft published games or products.
 
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The dialogue choices are again so shit. You can't RP with these. Should have just stuck with the voiced protagonist if it's going to be like this anyway

The positive of the game as expected is the side content. I've found some amazing quest lines
 
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timothet

Member
The reason I think 3/5 would be unlikely is because of the controversy over codes beforehand, with DF getting one and being told explicitly not to let their EG colleagues play it. Would they be brave enough to upset Microsoft again? Imagine the meltdown from some of the game's fans. I know none of this should affect scoring but in the real world it has to be something they consider. I'm sure DF know which side their bread is buttered which is why they gloss over flaws or pull their punches when talking about Microsoft published games or products.
It feels like anything other than 5/5 will upset a lot of people, considering that 4/5 is 80 on MC and even current 88 is too low for them.
 

Hudo

Member
You joke, but let's not pretend that this game we received was the game we all expected, that this wasn't hyped to the moon to be the generation defining space sim RPG to blow all those other space exploration games away last gen. Those threads still exist on here.

We all know damned well we did not receive what was overhyped prior. Todd the Han Solo Simulator and Explore The Entire Planet Hines which prompted people to shove in the face that you can walk around a whole planet when people said "no way." You can't even explore what boxed in space is given to you. Those skeptics were right in the end.

All we heard repeated from hypesters on here was, "scope scope scope" and we actually got "load load load."

Time to retire this engine.
I agree with you. I just wanted to say that I didn't joke with Squadron 42... (even if it never comes out)
 

Zuzu

Member
The reason I think 3/5 would be unlikely is because of the controversy over codes beforehand, with DF getting one and being told explicitly not to let their EG colleagues play it. Would they be brave enough to upset Microsoft again? Imagine the meltdown from some of the game's fans. I know none of this should affect scoring but in the real world it has to be something they consider. I'm sure DF know which side their bread is buttered which is why they gloss over flaws or pull their punches when talking about Microsoft published games or products.

It’s sad that reviewers might be incentivised into giving games higher scores over fear of not getting game codes for review in the future. Wish there was a way to stop this.
 

Xtib81

Member
Do you seriously want to travel the solar system in realtime? How long do you think it would take to say go from earth to saturn? how would you fill that area between the two planets? what purpose would that serve? how big would the game be if we are creating entire worlds and solar systems? how fun would the game be if its taking us hours to get from one planet to the other? or even minutes? this is game design 101. you get gamers to go do fun shit instead of waste their time with tedious crap. If anything, the real criticisms should be aimed at them creating thousands of empty planets with nothing but walking. not lame shit like taking off in realtime and going to the moon turning an RPG into a long glorified walking simulator.

Ffs, give us a break. Other games are doing space travel very well. The amount of damage control with Starfield is out of control lmao.
 
I think this game would have been better if they just handcrafted one planet, called it Nirn and renamed the game to Elder Scrolls 6
And they probably could have made it in less than 8 years. That length of time Bethesda took is crazy to me. Starfield is missing so many features that eliminate the notion of grandeur the game aims for, and yet, it had all the time in the world to make it work
 
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Bernoulli

M2 slut
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

what was the clip?
 

Bernoulli

M2 slut
You joke, but let's not pretend that this game we received was the game we all expected, that this wasn't hyped to the moon to be the generation defining space sim RPG to blow all those other space exploration games away last gen. Those threads still exist on here.

We all know damned well we did not receive what was overhyped prior. Todd the Han Solo Simulator and Explore The Entire Planet Hines which prompted people to shove in the face that you can walk around a whole planet when people said "no way." You can't even explore what boxed in space is given to you. Those skeptics were right in the end.

All we heard repeated from hypesters on here was, "scope scope scope" and we actually got "load load load."

Time to retire this engine.
with cyberpunk and now this it seems engines are very limited, or they are too old and still drag old dna
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
8:40+ two npcs figthing each other through locked door... and dealing damage. glorious


BTW, Sarah character really looks terrible. She almost looks as bad as the railroad lady from fallout 4 :p
 
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Freeman76

Member
Couldnt give a fuck about who reviewed this and how, you know what you are getting with Bethesda and this is most in depth amalgamation of all their ideas with some new ones sprinkled in top in a very well designed space setting. As far as I'm concerned it's their Magnum Opus.

That said, any reviewer who scored this lower than their reviews of FO4 or Skyrim must have some other reason to dock points from it.

The drama surrounding this game just brings it more attention, its like the Andrew Tate of games. You never know if someone has legit issues with it or it's some spotty little twat throwing a tantrum and looking for reasons to hate it because he doesnt have a system to play it on
 
I've no lifed 16 hours already and 80s seems fair for the average. For me it's 10/10 despite the issues but for some I can understand a 6/10 as it's not what they expected at all. I felt the same about FF16 - some people thought that was 10/10 and I couldn't give it over 6/10 as it felt like such a hollow and lacklustre experience.

In many ways this is the game I've been waiting for for decades but it's clearly held back by the ancient engine.

The combat is great now and feels like a proper game. The graphics are sometimes breathtakingly beautiful and sometimes astonishingly bad and I would have preferred more consistent graphics across the board.

Lots of stuff is half cooked and they are relying on free chefs to mod things up to a proper standard.

People are not happy about the procedural stuff but it's kind of like the random encounters in the old Fallout games - once you get there the stuff I've encountered has been handcrafted with the same Bethesda environmental story telling as before.

Maybe Bethesda should be held to a higher standard as they have huge budgets these days but the fact is no-one else makes games like this and until someone does they are really sitting in their own genre.
 
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