I read a reviewer that said “It’s a beautiful game about space exploration that has no space exploration” and they were completely right. It’s just fallout in space. Who thought Quick Travel the game would be compelling space exploration
But it’s not Fallout in Space. I can travel from one edge of the map to the other in Fallout or Skyrim and stumble upon a pitched battle or a cultist ritual or a lost dog or a juicy plot hook. In Starfield I can travel from one interstitial area to the next interstitial area to listen to a bland NPC tell me to go to the next interstitial area.
It’s okay. I look forward to mods. Right now it’s like somebody reskinned Super Mario Bros from the NES with a generative image AI trained on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day and Mass Effect 1 stills.
That's what I found really interesting about Cyberpunk 2077.
It took me a long time before I even started using fast travel in that game. I actually enjoyed walking through the city. Even on later replays and when I'd finished almost all the side quests.
Far from perfect game even after all the bug fixes, and kinda empty after the end game, but I can't help thinking it illustrates how Bethesda's been left behind in many ways. It'll be interesting to see what the next GTA's like. If they manage to make a more immersive world to explore.
I gave up on Starfield to try Cyberpunk again with the new fixes and I’m now probably 150 hours in and I think I’ve only fast travelled once? Maybe three or four times if you count the mid mission moments where you’re riding in a car with someone.
It’s kind of wild that Neon had to be split in half by a loading screen, but you can go from one end of Night City to the other with none, and Night City is way more detailed, and quite frankly probably has more unique geometry to load and render than Neon + entire surrounding planet.
There is an argument to be made that Half-Life: Alyx runs on a “modified Quake engine”. At no point was the engine completely rewritten, though it went through several major evolutions and presumably none of Carmack’s original Quake code still survives… probably.
What matters is that Valve made several major overhauls over the years and is well aware of both the strengths and weaknesses of its engine and taylors its games to them. I mean, you couldn’t run Elite Dangerous on Source 2, but nobody asked. Seemingly, nobody at Bethesda corporate asked if CE was capable of multiplayer (hence Fallout 76), and nobody at Bethesda corporate asked if CE was capable of half the shit that Starfield would have to provide for exploration to be compelling in the way that it is in Skyrim.
Absolutely. I stopped playing it because it just wasn’t fun, 2.0 is much better. Bikes are way more usable, but I’d love to be able to hoon the cars like a GTA game.
Edit: Ok, I figured it out. You can’t hammer the gas all the time. The driving works more like an actual car than a GTA game. So if you drive more like Forza, you can actually hoon the cars. Bikes are more tolerant to full throttle. Controllers having a variable input for the throttle allow you to control throttle like a gas pedal. So higher acceleration cars become drivable with less throttle and hammering gas produces a “realistic” ice rink feel, as desired. I still prefer Jackie’s bike despite this understanding.
Everything is way better and more detailed in Cyberpunk.
It feels like everybody is so generic in Starfield. They don’t feel like they have personalities.
You travel 10KM in any direction in Cyberpunk and you’ll be dealing with an entirely new set of gangs with their own slang and their own backgrounds and their own heritage.
You travel 10KM in any direction in Starfield and you’ll either find nothing or an entrance to another procgen cave with the same spacers as everywhere else.
A lot of those physics-y space games like Empyrion and Space Engineers are a way more fun way of interacting with custom ships and space than Starfield is, for sure.
For me it's not so much the travel; the main story tries to sell this idea of exploring the unknown, but literally everything you find is a known quantity in some form or another.
It got a best audio nominee at the golden joysticks and a best rpg at the game awards. Taking up air that could have been used for actual worthy contenders but big money’s get the auto nomination
Starfield was 60 pretty ok hours on game pass, I personally have nothing against it, don't care about it much. But those who actually give a shit about The Game Awards: why? Slim list of nominees, several categories total bollocks anyway, judges vote worth 90% against 10% crumbs to the public vote ( see 'how are winners selected' https://thegameawards.com/faq )
Why would you want extensive public participation in an award ceremony? If you want a popularity contest just look at sales numbers. What purpose do awards even serve if they aren’t curated beyond validating your own preferences?
I mean Blades Gate 3 has all rights to be GOTY of the year, everyone has been calling it since it got out, but I’m 100% certain that less than 20% of the voters will have players all GOTY nomeene’s. Hell Alan Wake got out two weeks ago. What I care a bit more is for things me coach’s. I’m a CS2 player and I’m sincerely hoping Christine “Potter” Chi will win it, she was so dedicated, and gave her true best, I’m truly happy her team win and J don’t even follow Valorant
It’s an excuse for me and some buddies to get drunk and yell at Geoff keighly for a couple hours.
I put very little stock in them as a true reflection of quality in the industry, though it’s occasionally nice to see Indies and smaller devs get some recognition.
Both spider man 2, re4, and tears of the kingdom are just as formulaic if not more, yet there they are. And SM Wonders is somehow super innovative, just because it is not the exact same formula of all marios but the exact same formula “a little bit harder”
Painfully average is how I’d describe it. There’s games with better graphics, better RPG elements, better open world, better space sim, better procedural generation use, better writing, better any one thing (except maybe ship building?). For a game that promised it all it’s turned out to be your average jack of all trades, master of none.
Played both, and I’d argue that Outer World’s is significantly stronger if only for its companions. Starfield I sunk a good few hours into and I struggle to remember one name. Starfield made me the Main Character and there wasn’t much room for anyone else. Outer Worlds has some pretty fun companion side-quests.
Starfield wins at the sheer quantity of ideas it threw at the wall, Outer Worlds for the decent to good quality of the ideas it threw at the wall. Neither was brilliant, but on my personal preference Outer Worlds has way stronger bones leading into the sequel.
Nah, Outer Worlds was pretty good. Writing and freedom of choice were stellar, RPG aspects were also really well done, the game was just short and felt small. Starfield doesn’t have any aspects that were actually good, everything is average at best.
It still strikes all the checks I was looking for, whereas the alternatives might be better in some ways but flunk or are completely absent in others. I’m never gonna let GOTY tags determine what I enjoy.
I don’t care about the Bethesda bad circlejerk, once Elder Scrolls VI comes out I’ll buy two copies, shove one up my ass, and play for an entire week non stop eating nothing but frozen pizza with a few stops to praise the game online
I have not played it. I love scifi and open world games, but the trailers never spoke to me.
The universe looked so generic. I know Bethesda tried to force the label of “NASApunk” (whatever that means) but it just ended up with the same aesthetic of all those DeviantArt pages where people draw angular, scalloped metal scifi greeble over modern pictures. I didn’t feel any kind of vision coming out and grabbing me.
That’s aside from all the optimization and technical issues that I hear are bad even by Bethesda standards.
I watched part one of a play through. The moment I heard United colonies and Freestar Collective. I knew it was going to be the most generic space setting possible.
I’m a huge Bethesda fan and I absolutely love everything bethesda.
I can unfortunately say that many people will not be impressed with this showing. Outside of a few key characters, most NPCs are forgettable. Most quest designs are basic, and some are outright stupid - like some stranger just giving you the keys to unlock everything.
Skyrim has so much storytelling and “oh wow” moments.
You might find 5-6 of them in the 100+ hours you play. Not to say that won’t change in the future.
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