The original post: /r/gaming by /u/TheJasonaut on 2024-10-13 15:38:29.
I recently started Starfield, yes in 2024, no, I don't hate myself lol. I went into the gaming knowing there were shortcomings, things like the lack of truly free ship travel, lots of loading, scarce planets, all kinds of stuff. But somehow, I was not prepared for one of the most stunning moments I've ever had in gaming over 30 years and playing 100s of games.
After seeing what I thought were just similarities in the same type of location 3 different times, I realized there are exact copies of buildings on different planets. They don't just have the same layout, honestly that I could look past, with the excuse that these outposts and factories are build cookie cutter on purpose for efficiency or whatever. However, these aren't the just the same 'model' of a building, everything is the same, EVERYTHING. Every book, every wrench, every gun placement, every enemy placement, the same exact, specific to the location, note found.
Maybe this is old news, but by god I just had to post about it. I cannot believe they didn't build in some randomization to the item or enemy placement in these structures. I was having a pretty good time with the game up until I realized this happens (some aren't carbon copies, but you will absolutely run into them without trying).
Randomized areas have been around for decades at this point, clearly this is a huge scale and more complex than an 16 bit dungeon, but this is one of the most mind bogglingly bad design decisions in a AAA game I've ever seen. I'm not saying it's easy to make unique places in an entire galaxy, or that I even expect that, but having countless full building clones is not acceptable and absolutely breaks the immersion completely. I'm only expecting the bare minimum here, not some miracle of computation.
TLDR: There are exact copy/paste buildings with the same item and enemy placement, in such a high budget game made by professionals, seriously, I'm stunned. Most everything else about the game has been palatable, this is ridiculous.