this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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Fair enough but it does sound very repetitive and grindy. Would you disagree?
Maybe it is not bad but it definitely didn't deliver what was promised. I know, I know, how could I expect that from Todd?
How experienced are you with Bethesda games post-1995 or so? They all have the same grind-factor. The game is tuned so you can play and win with zero grind, but it has these "treadmill" mechanics that you can either embrace or skip.
If you want to max out your perks at level 328, it's absurdly grindy. But you can beat the game around level 30 or so. If for some reason you want to max out a skill/perk you don't really use, it's a bit grindy. But if you use the skills as you get them and get the skills you'll use, you unlock their levelups asically for free.
I hear this again, and again, and again, and again. But nobody has yet to cite one promise Bethesda objective broke with Starfield. You say "how could I expect that from Todd"? That means you know what kind of games Bethesda releases. And they promised a Bethesda game in space. And they delivered a Bethesda game in space.
I underestand people who hate Bethesda games. You can toss a pebble and hit one of them. But I really don't understand the level of toxicity this time around. I actually almost didn't buy Starfield, and boy am I pissed because it was a lot better than I expected.
Keep in mind that I haven't played Starfield despite getting excited by the hype, and then tempering my expectations after remembering getting burned by the hype and purchase of the Collector's Edition of Fallout 76. My opinions are more of a collective skepticism bolstered by post-hype reactions. The unfortunate reality of the game is that it is a "Bethesda game" with a lot of the magic stripped out.
The promise of 1000 planets rings pretty hollow when a vast majority of them are desolate chucks of rock, and procedural generation is just an exceedingly lazy way to achieve a bullet point on the hype sheet. The only reason I know it's 1000 planets is because Todd would not shut up about it like it was some type of huge achievement.
The fun of "discovery by exploration" -- going to continue on a quest and getting stopped by a dozen different interesting things along the way -- is completely broken by "fast travel". A "Bethesda game" that requires you to skip a lot of the in-between and not lose focus on a singular objective does not feel like a "Bethesda game" to me.
Some of the Bethesda charm comes from the jank of the 20-year-old Frankenstein "not Gamebryo" engine their games are built on. We give them a pass on a lot of this because it can add to the fun. Unfortunately, they spent a lot of time hyping their pride on being their "least buggy" game on release. For a game that cooked as long as Starfield did, they should've spent that time rebuilding something modern from the ground up instead of cramming their ambition into their aging platform. Given the time it took, this may be my biggest disappointment.
Interesting. I don't find "Bethesda game" to be unfortunate, and I don't agree that a lot of the magic is stripped out. No, we do not get the Iconic fallout Vault Boy attitude, but tES never managed to brand itself like that anyway. What "magic" should I be seeing missing from Starfield? It seems pretty magical to me. I'm REALLY holding my breath for a Ve'ruun expansion, maybe some "Legacy of the Starborn" style expansion that leans into the Artifacts and the cycle. And I KNOW space stations are coming (data leaks confirmed there's code for them), and I'm so excited for when they finally do.
But isn't that what you'd expect? What do people expect from this? 1000 full-size planets all lovingly hand-crafted on a $1T budget? Micro-planets like some other games did? Taking a step back, remember that Starfield has more hand-crafted content than Skyrim... THEN adds 1000 planets to explore so you have a Daggerfall-like procedural exploration game on top of it. Because a lot of us missed procedural exploration.
Are you that guy who does no-fast-travel runs in Skyrim? Quite literally, Starfield feels like the exact same amount of fast-travel as any tES game to me. FT to this city, kill this person. FT back, report what you did. FT to this area, and go find a dungeon.
For the record, that's true. Starfield was largely downright stable from day 1.
"Should" is a hard point. They're clearly trying to stay Iconic Bethesda. As far as I've heard, Creation Engine 2 is largely a from-scratch engine. The thing is, the goal was for it to still work like a Bethesda game. Largely that goal succeeded. Many of us were craving Exactly Skyrim in Space for 10-15 years now. It's weird how many people are complaining after they gave us what we asked for.
I'm IT. I get it. Sometimes you asks for things you don't really want and it's my job to say "no" to you. But I actually really wanted Skyrim in space!!!