This game was originally going to release two years ago without Microsoft making sure it got more QA than Bethesda is known for. Microsoft or not, the game design and feature completeness likely wouldn't have moved an inch.
Hi-Fi Rush, for a counter example, was one of the best games of the year.
I would disagree with your 50 hour Starfield assessment, only on the basis of Todd Howards own comment that the game was made to be played for a long time.
50 hours for a game meant to be played for a long time just isn't very long at all. Heck, I enjoyed my time in Starfield and I had more than 50 hours. However I could not continue with NG+, it was just godawful.
For a game meant to be played extensively it failed in most regards.
Despite Bethesda being kinda weird and shitty, I remain excited about the game myself. It still blows me away they decided to release without modding tools. But I’m looking forward to that quite a bit
To be honest, I really enjoyed my run (100 hours in). If you omit the bugs, it’s a nice alternative to Skyrim with a very different setting (space) and some quality of life improvements (eg: having your ship to store shit anywhere you go, instead of traveling back and forth to your house if you have any).
But I admit the game feels very old in general (especially because of those loading screens, which should be a thing from the past in 2023), and is not original at all on its FPS mechanics. There is also this odd feeling that the game does not want to block you access to anything (while the new game plus, which is a very good idea and introduced in a clever way, should have been enough to be more « punishing » with the player).
As an « old » gamer, it was not a big issue (especially because I play ton of retrogaming games, along with recent releases), but I totally understand what a player expecting a modern SF RPG game might feel.
I enjoyed the first playthrough too but I just got so tired of everything the second go around. Not much had changed so I was just redoing quests I’d done but now I “knew” things and made it go by faster. Yay?
It’s so dull, I did everything the first time around so now I just get to watch it again, but it’s “fun” cause there’s one changed dialogue option? Meh. The game has an incredible philosophy, a terrible philosophy for its relationship to the gameplay.
In regards to gameplay, it was fine. I liked the flying, ship building was fun, gunplay felt okay. Walking around areas is mostly pretty. But like everyone else my issue was all the menu diving, and I found a few ways to mitigate how often I used it but man was it frustrating to have to menu dive so much, sometimes in situations where it doesn’t even make sense, like arriving and landing on a planet.
And then again, to lose everything about your character that makes the game interesting (built ship, weapons, etc) during NG+ is just disheartening. I understand why, that doesn’t make it easier lol.
Yeah, I didn’t bother with a second playthrough because of this. It’s strange because the idea is great, so why not encourage the player to do a second playthrough by not allowing him/her to see everything on a single run ?
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