Mephisto40
Member
Are some of you guys wearing a shock collar that is going to activate if the game falls below a certain metacritic score or something? 
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
I agree with the CP2077 thing you said. And I think that's partly the reason why the game was criticized so much.It depends what it means "freedom" for you as a player, because in my case it's the game with more freedom I played in a lot time. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 (a game I played twice) feels like a linear game in comparison. I think what you are referring is that freedom of choice doesn't have an impact in the game world, and I must agree on that, it doesn't have real impact. But I think that's something it happens in all the games. It would be incredibly difficult and demanding to do it properly. I still remember the final choices of Mass Effect 3
I remember them sharing the 'hitman on a killing contract stopping to eat a burger' example, and that was never a part of their game. They also said the game offers so much freedom that there is no fail state. All those were bullshit claims that never materialized, and the game was docked in review points because of the lack of freedom -- and rightly so.
And I think Baldur's Gate 3, being a role-playing game, has truly nailed the "unparalleled freedom" aspect. So we have a precedence now.
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Of course, certain things are scripted. That's how most questlines work. In sandbox RPGs, there is always a mix of scripted and simulated stuff. Otherwise, you'd never progress through the story in Starfield or unlock new skills at certain points.
Your argument is that the simulation of firing that person isn't built into the game. That's the exact complaint -- why isn't it built into the game?
The end result of exposing a corruption scandal is not because of a random activity. It is only after completing a baked questline. The devs could not build a simple If-this-then-that clause in the game?
ProtoByte
Weeb Underling
If there's any truth to that, it's simply due to score inflation. That's the argument to make here; Starfield does not even sound like an 8/10 game when reading or watching reviews with higher score than that.
A mid-high 80s game should be counted as great, borderline fantastic. There are some PlayStation exclusives I love that have 90-score quality in some areas, but not in others that I would knock out of the 90s range.
Hero of Spielberg
Member
I think it might be the inverseAre some of you guys wearing a shock collar that is going to activate if the game falls below a certain metacritic score or something?
Slothbeing1209
Member
Comandr
Member
Just finished my first playthrough. 44 hours. Spent a huge amount of time dicking around and exploring all over the place before deciding that many things I wanted to do had to be unlocked via story. I'd give the game a solid 7/10. A great game, and truly an amazing first game in a whole new IP universe. The bethesda pedigree is on full display here, love it or hate it. I see the potential for sequels and additional properties in this franchise.
With that said...
Story focused:
The game feels different than previous Bethesda games in the sense that this game seems to strongly want to push you into completing the main story. I put 200 hours into Oblivion before I even started the first story quest. Similar for Skyrim and the Fallout games. I think if you focused on the story it would take about 20 or so hours. Felt fairly short; and, dare I say, maybe a little rushed in the second half. You can blast through it pretty damn fast, there was only one really stand out story dungeon towards the end that stuck out to me as being especially well thought out/designed.
Graphics/Sound:
Excellent geometry and textures. Everything looks finely crafted and detailed. The game can be very pretty at times, such as when characters' features stretch and crease as they emote. I was particularly impressed by the facial animation which strongly reminded me of LA Noire. Voice acting was consistently good, didn't feel taken out of it by weird lines or deliveries. Music and sound effects were also very good and enjoyable. I did find constantly hearing the starfield theme stinger every time you gravjump to be particularly annoying though.
The illusion of exploration:
Because of the heavily segmented nature of Starfield, there isn't a sense of exploration like with previous titles. A huge amount of my time exploring was just going to different planets and systems on the map and seeing if I could get into space fights so I could steal enemy ships. Most of that time was just picking things randomly on a map and jumping to those locations only to often find a whole lot of nothing. Lock picking was fun at first but towards the end it got old. I'd like to see a perk that auto-picks low level locks for you. If I'm level 4 in lockpicking, let me skip level 1 and 2 locks entirely. Very few truly unique items. With the ability to mod almost all of your equippable gear, you can turn a lame generic item into a real beast easily enough, though I never really found the need to spend a lot of time on it.
Combat:
It feels like Fallout but not as good. VATS added a huge amount of depth, being able to shoot certain parts. Ironically, a very similar system is available for ship combat, but on foot the best you can do is point and shoot ten thousand rounds into the very spongey enemies.
Ship building:
Building ships is fun, frustrating, and expensive. High end parts can easily go for over 50,000 credits a pop. One major complaint I had is: if your ship has multiple levels, you can only go up and down with a ladder. There are no stair modules at all. To add insult to injury, you have no control over where the ladder is placed. So you put the whole thing together, only to find out the game decided to put one of the ladders in the infirmary. Great. To further add insult to injury, you have no means of previewing what habs or rooms look like on the inside as you're building the ship. The only way for you to see it is to pay whatever it costs, make sure the ship is complete and flyable or else you can't save and exit the builder, then enter the ship and physically look around. Didn't like it? Well hope you saved before you made the changes or you're going to be eating the costs to sell and rebuy new parts, because once you save it, those parts are yours so prepare to sell them back at a huge loss.
Ship fighting:
Maxed out my piloting and ship building skills and finally built the 400,000 credit ship of my dreams. Then I had a lot of difficulty finding people to fight with it. You can easily find dozens and dozens of enemies on foot, but there is very rarely a steady stream of enemy ships to tussle with.
Stealing ships and why it sucks:
I love the idea that hijacking a ship is sort of a mini-dungeon. You get in, and have to defeat all of the remaining crew members and your reward is...the dungeon itself! You can keep the ship! Cool! Space pirate! The problem is the ship layouts are often incredibly confusing. Confined spaces that often look very samey, with many repeating segments or characteristics. The only way up and down is via ladders- Now that bethesda has ladder power, they are abusing the hell out of it. I can't tell you how often I got lost in a big ship looking for the last fuckin enemy to kill so I could wander around lost for another 5 minutes looking for the cockpit... only to find out that my pilot level wasn't high enough to actually capture the ship and I wasted all that time.
So your pilot level is high enough that you can actually steal the damn thing. Hell yeah. You decouple from your old ship and take off. This will move everything from your old ship's hold into the new one and you fully step into the new set of shoes. But let's say you just wanted to do this for profit and luls? Well in order to sell your new stolen ship, you have to take it to a space port and get a merchant to buy it. If you stole a pirate ship, there's a good chance there's contraband on board. Contraband is very valuable and often sells for thousands of credits each. You don't dare get rid of it because it's so valuable, but if you get caught with it, you're arrested and its confiscated. Furthermore, contraband can be anywhere on the ship. Physically sitting around somewhere. In the cargo hold, on a corpse, or even on your person if you picked it up somehow while you are hoovering up everyone's notepads and coffee cups. If you don't deal with it, it will be found, guaranteed. So start looking.
Okay fine, you either yeeted that shit out into space or put it in a special shielded cargo hold that makes it difficult to detect. You landed at the port and you're ready to hock this bad boy. But first you have to register the ship before you can sell or alter it. A ship that sells for 35,000 might have a registration fee of 19,000 or more. So for all of your laboring, you brought home 16,000 credits. The contraband you jettisoned from the airlock to safely land was worth more than that. The equipment you got off the bodies was worth more than that. Suffice to say, right now, stealing ships is a cool idea, but unless you're doing it to build your own fleet out - for some reason - it is an absolute waste of time. If the ships sold for significantly more or didn't have such a harsh markdown, it might be a worthwhile way to make money.
Relationships that don't matter:
I love the idea of having companions. I had one with me at all times from the start of my adventure to the very last minute. I attempted to romance a couple, and the closest I got was a single [Flirt] interaction dialog with two of them. Romance never came up again, I didn't have options to talk about new topics over time, couldn't give anyone any gifts. As it stands, companions feel like a fun idea, but the execution is very flat.
Final thoughts: While a lot of this write up appears to point out the negative, I did truly enjoy the game from beginning to end. The sense of exploration and discovery is real. There's a million jillion quests to do and characters to meet. The story is interesting and engaging, if not always rewarding. I did find myself making the effort to do a number of side quests because I was drawn in by their individual stories enough to want to do something about their circumstance. I think this game will live and die with the modding community, and if other Bethesda titles are any indication, there will be plenty. As of this writing, there are nearly 600 mods on Nexus Mods, the first official launch day.
TL;DR: 7/10. Needs more depth and mod support to really shine, but definitely a great start for a new IP.
With that said...
Story focused:
The game feels different than previous Bethesda games in the sense that this game seems to strongly want to push you into completing the main story. I put 200 hours into Oblivion before I even started the first story quest. Similar for Skyrim and the Fallout games. I think if you focused on the story it would take about 20 or so hours. Felt fairly short; and, dare I say, maybe a little rushed in the second half. You can blast through it pretty damn fast, there was only one really stand out story dungeon towards the end that stuck out to me as being especially well thought out/designed.
Graphics/Sound:
Excellent geometry and textures. Everything looks finely crafted and detailed. The game can be very pretty at times, such as when characters' features stretch and crease as they emote. I was particularly impressed by the facial animation which strongly reminded me of LA Noire. Voice acting was consistently good, didn't feel taken out of it by weird lines or deliveries. Music and sound effects were also very good and enjoyable. I did find constantly hearing the starfield theme stinger every time you gravjump to be particularly annoying though.
The illusion of exploration:
Because of the heavily segmented nature of Starfield, there isn't a sense of exploration like with previous titles. A huge amount of my time exploring was just going to different planets and systems on the map and seeing if I could get into space fights so I could steal enemy ships. Most of that time was just picking things randomly on a map and jumping to those locations only to often find a whole lot of nothing. Lock picking was fun at first but towards the end it got old. I'd like to see a perk that auto-picks low level locks for you. If I'm level 4 in lockpicking, let me skip level 1 and 2 locks entirely. Very few truly unique items. With the ability to mod almost all of your equippable gear, you can turn a lame generic item into a real beast easily enough, though I never really found the need to spend a lot of time on it.
Combat:
It feels like Fallout but not as good. VATS added a huge amount of depth, being able to shoot certain parts. Ironically, a very similar system is available for ship combat, but on foot the best you can do is point and shoot ten thousand rounds into the very spongey enemies.
Ship building:
Building ships is fun, frustrating, and expensive. High end parts can easily go for over 50,000 credits a pop. One major complaint I had is: if your ship has multiple levels, you can only go up and down with a ladder. There are no stair modules at all. To add insult to injury, you have no control over where the ladder is placed. So you put the whole thing together, only to find out the game decided to put one of the ladders in the infirmary. Great. To further add insult to injury, you have no means of previewing what habs or rooms look like on the inside as you're building the ship. The only way for you to see it is to pay whatever it costs, make sure the ship is complete and flyable or else you can't save and exit the builder, then enter the ship and physically look around. Didn't like it? Well hope you saved before you made the changes or you're going to be eating the costs to sell and rebuy new parts, because once you save it, those parts are yours so prepare to sell them back at a huge loss.
Ship fighting:
Maxed out my piloting and ship building skills and finally built the 400,000 credit ship of my dreams. Then I had a lot of difficulty finding people to fight with it. You can easily find dozens and dozens of enemies on foot, but there is very rarely a steady stream of enemy ships to tussle with.
Stealing ships and why it sucks:
I love the idea that hijacking a ship is sort of a mini-dungeon. You get in, and have to defeat all of the remaining crew members and your reward is...the dungeon itself! You can keep the ship! Cool! Space pirate! The problem is the ship layouts are often incredibly confusing. Confined spaces that often look very samey, with many repeating segments or characteristics. The only way up and down is via ladders- Now that bethesda has ladder power, they are abusing the hell out of it. I can't tell you how often I got lost in a big ship looking for the last fuckin enemy to kill so I could wander around lost for another 5 minutes looking for the cockpit... only to find out that my pilot level wasn't high enough to actually capture the ship and I wasted all that time.
So your pilot level is high enough that you can actually steal the damn thing. Hell yeah. You decouple from your old ship and take off. This will move everything from your old ship's hold into the new one and you fully step into the new set of shoes. But let's say you just wanted to do this for profit and luls? Well in order to sell your new stolen ship, you have to take it to a space port and get a merchant to buy it. If you stole a pirate ship, there's a good chance there's contraband on board. Contraband is very valuable and often sells for thousands of credits each. You don't dare get rid of it because it's so valuable, but if you get caught with it, you're arrested and its confiscated. Furthermore, contraband can be anywhere on the ship. Physically sitting around somewhere. In the cargo hold, on a corpse, or even on your person if you picked it up somehow while you are hoovering up everyone's notepads and coffee cups. If you don't deal with it, it will be found, guaranteed. So start looking.
Okay fine, you either yeeted that shit out into space or put it in a special shielded cargo hold that makes it difficult to detect. You landed at the port and you're ready to hock this bad boy. But first you have to register the ship before you can sell or alter it. A ship that sells for 35,000 might have a registration fee of 19,000 or more. So for all of your laboring, you brought home 16,000 credits. The contraband you jettisoned from the airlock to safely land was worth more than that. The equipment you got off the bodies was worth more than that. Suffice to say, right now, stealing ships is a cool idea, but unless you're doing it to build your own fleet out - for some reason - it is an absolute waste of time. If the ships sold for significantly more or didn't have such a harsh markdown, it might be a worthwhile way to make money.
Relationships that don't matter:
I love the idea of having companions. I had one with me at all times from the start of my adventure to the very last minute. I attempted to romance a couple, and the closest I got was a single [Flirt] interaction dialog with two of them. Romance never came up again, I didn't have options to talk about new topics over time, couldn't give anyone any gifts. As it stands, companions feel like a fun idea, but the execution is very flat.
Final thoughts: While a lot of this write up appears to point out the negative, I did truly enjoy the game from beginning to end. The sense of exploration and discovery is real. There's a million jillion quests to do and characters to meet. The story is interesting and engaging, if not always rewarding. I did find myself making the effort to do a number of side quests because I was drawn in by their individual stories enough to want to do something about their circumstance. I think this game will live and die with the modding community, and if other Bethesda titles are any indication, there will be plenty. As of this writing, there are nearly 600 mods on Nexus Mods, the first official launch day.
TL;DR: 7/10. Needs more depth and mod support to really shine, but definitely a great start for a new IP.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Eurogamer Germany, 8/10.
www.eurogamer.de
Starfield im Test: Fallout im Weltraum. Nicht weniger, vielleicht sogar ein bisschen mehr
Was kann Bethesdas erste neue Marke seit einem Vierteljahrhundert? Alex hat sich lange durchs all geschossen und erstattet nun bericht.
www.eurogamer.de
vaibhavpisal
Member
You do realise adding another script to simulation level AI, how expensive that would be?
In cities in Skyrim, AI is always checking for dragon attacks, political upheaval, mischief by player, apart from doing their own daily chores. Adding another check to see what action player has taken is very heavy on the system.
Dialogue/story based rpg games are a different beast altogether. You cannot compare them to Bethesda style games. Once you understand how a Bethesda game works you can break the game very easily.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
They didn't need to script the simulation level AI for this -- that's my point. Because it's not a consequence of a random activity. It's the consequence of completing a questline.
They could easily add a quick cutscene of the new guy talking, promising big changes, and a couple of lines of dialogue from a few NPCs about the change and how the corruption scandal got exposed.
And replace the previous guy's character model with the new character model in case players interact with him again. That's it.
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
Down to 86 MC with just 55 reviews. Might hit 83-84 average with 75+ reviews.
Jemm
Member
There are questlines with consequences. That could be a bug or oversight that will be fixed.
For example, in a side-quest (I'm being vague to not to spoil too much) I joined some bad guys and helped them to fight ever badder guys.
At some point, security stepped in and the first bad guys ended up joining them to fight legally against the badder guys.
Kinda wholesome ending for the quest where your choices affected the outcome.
It could have ended differently, too, but I liked doing diplomatic choices.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
I've noticed that the newer ones that are coming in now, not from the pre-launch curated outlets, are relatively harsher. They are bringing down the score, albeit slowly.
- Eurogamer Germany = 8/10
- Easy Allies = 8/10
- The Guardian = 8/10
- Metro = 6/10
- Eurogamer Portugal = 6/10
vaibhavpisal
Member
When was the last time you saw a cutscene in a Bethesda game?
This is im-sim through and through.
Even during critical story sections you will have full control and if you look away, you will miss important story elements.
You have a choice if you want to skip story in these games and just engage with the systems.
WhamBamThankYouMaam
Member
I honestly consider this to be the best Mass Effect game I have ever played.
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
I hope this is not a new deceptive strategy from any of the platform holders - give early access review code to fanboy/positive platform review sites to control the first impression/consensus.
What looked like a 9/10 game initially is becoming in reality much closer to 8/10 at best.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
I hope so too. It's gross to select outlets that can review games without any solid reason.
Bethesda chose to give review codes to Twitter warriors, such as Colt Eastwood, Jez Cordon, KidSmoove, etc. but did not give review codes to Eurogamer, Metro, Guardian, Rock Paper Shotgun, etc.
NikuNashi
Member
I'm afraid you're mistaken there.
Sony accidentally reveals PlayStation’s Call of Duty data
Sony fears that Activision and Microsoft will make Call of Duty an exclusive, cutting its revenue significantly.hitmarker.net
1 million players exclusively play Call Of Duty. Out of 117.2 million PS4's sold.
Thats not moving the needle.
Jemm
Member
For some reason, UK was treated differently, when it came to handing out review codes:
Starfield review code withheld from major UK sites including The Guardian and Rock Paper Shotgun | whynow Gaming
Media outlets including Edge, Eurogamer and The Guardian say they have received Starfield review code late, or not at all.
whynowgaming.com
For the REAL Starfield fans there is a now ‘Constellation’ range available from Bad Dragon.
Presumably all the guys at XboxEra etc are gonna buy one.
Can YOU handle 12 inches of Starfield?
Presumably all the guys at XboxEra etc are gonna buy one.
Can YOU handle 12 inches of Starfield?
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There are those who said this would be the game of the generation. What are they to say now?
King Dazzar
Member
Just spent some time with this on the XSX. There seems to be the basis of a good game in here. But gameplay wise on the XSX just feels janky to me. The 30fps is OKish, but latency feels off and the washed out HDR spoils the otherwise superb level of detail. After an hour I just had to stop. I cant do it in its current state. There is no way imo that in its current form, that this is a top tier AAA experience. Its got potential, so who knows what it'll turn into further down the road. But for now, this is a pass for me. Glad I never spent any money beyond GP on it.
Thirty7ven
Banned
Watching it and just have to mention how tone deaf it is for so many people to assume that saying it’s a Bethesda game somehow means only great things when Skyrim was over a decade ago and Fallout 4 happened, and we live in a world that has moved on. In 2015 Fallout 4 looked like four day old bread, meanwhile Witcher 3 was changing the game.
And then we have people saying judge the game by what it’s trying to do and not on what you wanted it to do, and then they say yeah well the writing isn’t good, the combat is not exactly best in class, the visuals are Jekyll and Hide, the exploration isn’t nearly as good as Skyrim, but forget all that! Loading galore, menu based exploration? In 2023? Forget all that! Just dream about the stars!
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Edmund
Member
I hope Microsoft gets called out for this sneaky/dishonest behaviour.
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feynoob
Banned
Stupid people from all side.
Games are hobbies. Pronouns are nonsense shit. There is no reason for them to make you mad. Politics is shit has hell.
I think people need to seek nature instead of social media.
SRTtoZ
Member
Yes!! It's a really good game. If you like Fallout 4 and Skyrim, then you'll also love this. Just don't go in expecting for it to be that HUGE jump in quality from other Bethesda RPGs. It's pretty much Fallout 4 in space. If you can deal with that then you'll love it. If you expected it to be some huge leap in technology from previous Bethesda studios games, then you'll probably be a bit disappointed.
SRTtoZ
Member
There's a ton of hyperbole in that list Asmon is reading but what I will say is I thought the optimization and bugs would be LESS of an issue with this game (lol) because they did not have to spend time on a Sony version. I mean this is a first party game now so there really aren't any excuses for all the bugs and optimization issues the game still has. It made SOME sense before MS purchased them because they had to optimize the game for a million different consoles and different architecture like the Cell processor, super low amounts of ram, amd in one system, nvidia in the other etc. That's not an excuse anymore.
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ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
It's not like it's even emphasized anywhere in the game lol. In a matter of fact, despite some LGBTQ+ representation here and there, Starfiled is comically asexual, there's not even strippers or whores on Neon. The opposite of BG3 'bugged' horniness.
Flutta
Banned
The hyperbole is strong with this one…
Sheesh you guys say anything at this point.
Todd for president when?
Nah, that’s not how any of this works. This expectation is baseless and unfair.
DaleinCalgary
Member
That's pretty usual. They first ones are usually highest and then it comes down slowly for those places that take their time to do it.
foamdino
Member
The boy has been playing now for 4 hours - it seems to have it's hooks in him. He's not really settled on a "build" as yet but enjoying discovering the systems. As soon as he got to crafting he just looked at me and said "it's fallout4".
It's exactly what I expected - BGS game (janky/glitchy) in space. Solid 7-8/10.
It's exactly what I expected - BGS game (janky/glitchy) in space. Solid 7-8/10.
Gudji
Member
Just in time for the special edition.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
This case is more interesting though.
These are very pouplar outlets that were not provided review codes. Bethesda only sent review codes to select outlets. Most of which provided 9/10 and 10/10 scores. The outlets that purchased their own copies are giving more 6/10, 7/10, and 8/10.
ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
On PS5 ¬‿¬
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Draugoth
Gold Member
It's the Gamebryo Engine fault.
It's basically the AAA version of RPG Maker, very versatile, very modable and easy to learn but extremely outdated by modern standards and limited on what you can achieve. It hasn't had a major updated ever since the release of Starfield.
The engine is so archaic the way it works is by subtracting a value from the player coordinates to determine how an object moves, this is why npcs tend to become confused further you are away from them.
All the vehicles you see in Fallout 4 like vertibirds and the trains in Fallout 3 are actually NPCs wearing them as thats, and that's probably why we wont be seeing vehicles or space flight outside of invisible boxes for a while in the game.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
"Most of which" ...IGN and Gamespot were not provided review codes ?
Out of 55 critics reviews that Bethesda sent review codes to, only 6 gave it a "mixed" review of less than 8 -- which included IGN and Gamestop.
Sakura
Member
Bethesda's games have kind of always been like that. They make open world sandbox RPGs, but the worlds they create are static and lifeless.
Their games require the player to use their imagination to be immersed in the world, rather than through actually interacting with the game.
It is what it is. I got tired of their formula back with Skyrim, but some people still like it.
It would be nice to see them actually really improve some day though.
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
DaleinCalgary
Member
Maybe, I don't know the list of the who's in vs who's out. But in general first day reviews of all games are for hits as they are a business but not always the case.
killatopak
Gold Member
Ackshuallly, you end up in different planes of existence outside of Mundus or that planet as you call it. You go to different Daedric realms or planets if you dumb it down. Most prominent are Shor’s Sovngard, Sanguin’s Misty Grove, the realm of Hermaus Mora Apocrypha, Sheogorath‘s Shivering Isles and the Ideal Master’s Soul Cairn.
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