• Bri Guy @sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    The fact that this game was actually nominated as “best RPG” with the likes of baldurs gate 3 and final fantasy XVI is ludicrous enough.

  • norske@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    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

    • r_thndr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            The reason for that is because, yet again, for the three hundred thousandth fucking time, Bethesda is using, still, a modified creation engine.

            • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              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.

          • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Much better after the bug fixes, but still far from perfect. Agreed.

            I stuck to bikes which were fun to drive around.

            • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              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.

      • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • HolyDuckTurtle@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I didn’t think the lack of space exploration would bother me so much.

      But after playing the Pirate quest and just fast traveling over and over, my immersion broke and realized how little I’m really traveling.

      • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • Fluid@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    It’s just so bland and formulaic. Against deep RPGs like BG3, it just pales in comparison.

    • Cowbee@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      The funny thing is, I think the fact that the RPG mechanics are finally better than the last game developed by Bethesda, instead of worse, highlights just how mediocre Bethesda games are.

      I still think once mods and DLCs come out in full force it will be remembered more positively.

      • Metatronz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Agreed. Twas the only thing I thought while playing. This would be better with mods. Which is a sad state because I spent real money on a mod sandbox without the mods.

        • Cowbee@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yep, I had below Fallout 4 expectations and actually ended up enjoying it more, as I highly value the RPG aspects. It’s still a completely mediocre RPG, but it has a huge sandbox and a ton of potential.

        • Cowbee@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Sure. I think big budget gaming needs to die, and games need more dev time for less work and higher pay, with worse graphical fidelity and better art styles.

      • coffinwood@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        If Bethesda games are so mediocre, why are they so popular among players who love to put hundreds of hours into them? I can’t imagine them all playing total conversion mods.

        It’s become such a custom to poop on Bethesda for making “shallow”, “uninteresting” games that still everybody talks about. As if there weren’t enough real flaws in their games to give them heat for.

        • Cowbee@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Because mediocrity and popularity go hand in hand, it’s the profit motive at work. Being largely inoffensive and generally palatable is profitable.

          • coffinwood@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            That’s not the definition of mediocrity. Trying to appeal to a bigger audience doesn’t make a game mediocre in the same way not every niche game has the potential of being a masterpiece just by not being that much likeable.

            Some games are popular and good.

            • Cowbee@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              What’s good and what’s popular do not necessarily align. Removing “complicated” features for the sake of mass appeal makes the game worse, but more profitable, much of the time.

              • coffinwood@feddit.de
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                1 year ago

                Also not true. Complexity alone doesn’t make a good game / movie / book / piece of art. And lack thereof doesn’t make anything worse.

                Why is it that when many people like a thing because that thing appeals to masses, it’s automatically categorised as lower quality?

                Nobody seriously claimed Starfield to be the game of all games. It’s good. It’s fine. It’s not perfect. So what?

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    The Best RPG list is basically Baldur’s Gate 3, and four more games to make it look like it has competition. It doesn’t.

    I still think TotK is a better game overall than BG3.

    • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      For me it came pretty close between the two but eventually BG3 came out on top. Totk was great but after 200+ hours I was done with Totk. I currently have almost 200 hours in BG3 and I feel like there’s still so much more to play. I also feel like most of my issues with BG3 (like the poor performance in act 3 and some questlines breaking) are things Larian will fix while the issues with Totk (no rebinds, not being able to infuse weapons from inventory, menus in general, almost everything related to the sage powers) are unlikely to get fixed.

      • VCTRN@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Completely agree, TotK could really use some serious QoL improvements.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        I will admit to carrying most Koroks for several minutes rather than trying to make another vehicle out of bits that aren’t all there.

        I can’t help but think they wanted me to be a bit more elaborate than just gluing the poor little guy to a horse harness.

        BG3 certainly needed a few extra months to bake. There’s still a bit where you can get trapped in a conversation with Mol in Act 1 because as soon as you come out of the cutscene, you’re instantly in range of her to start the dialogue again.

        Apparently they released early to beat Starfield, which is hilarious because I’ve seen few games so shat on this year.

        • Khaelas@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Just an FYI in case you’re still playing. There is a feature of you keep playing that lets you build things without the source objects being there, and spending a bit of the ore you get. This trivialises all the korok things by just sticking them to a hoverbike haha

          • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, I discovered that quite late on.

            I do think ability unlock quests should be highlighted in this sort of game. I didn’t even go and get the master sword for ages, because I thought that quest was the end of the game (and indeed when I went to the quest I thought was the end, went deep down into the actual end game area by mistake, and only got deterred by a giant enemy I couldn’t kill).

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        I guess, but that’s not the kind of game that TotK is. The star of BG3 is the characters, where the star of TotK is the world.

        • samus12345@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Right, and whether one game is “better” than the other depends on which thing a person likes more.

          • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            Yes, which is why I started my comment with “I still think”…

            You think BG3 is better. This is fine.

            They’re both 10/10.

            • samus12345@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I actually didn’t say whether I liked one or the other better. I’d probably pick TotK overall because it has more replayability (without having to start everything over), but if I’m in the mood for a story game, BG3 is the obvious choice.

  • SSTF@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Skyrim also had immediate recognition, spun off memes, and people were riffing on it from day 1.

        Who is Starfield’s best girl? Everybody basically crushed on Aella and Lydia.

        What’s the most gimmicky saying? Arrow to the knee, you’re finally awake, etc

        Starfield just has no life, no joie de vivre - wide as a lake but shallow as a puddle.

  • kux@kbin.social
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    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 )

    • Syntha@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      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?

      • kux@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        this is fair but then why hold a public vote at all when it has next to no chance of affecting the outcome anyway?

      • chepox@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Nicely said! I had the same feeling but just didn’t know how to put it into words.

      • Kyoyeou (Ki jəʊ juː)@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        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

    • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • Bluefold@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I’m curious what the design, and reaction to, of Starfield might say about what we’ll expect from ES6. For three games now (Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield), have been marked by Settlement building and Radiant quests.

    While radiant quests were there in Skyrim, in these later games it felt a lot like Bethesda were making it a core part of the mission design structure. There are a lot of blurred lines in Starfield that make it difficult to tell them apart. (That’s more a comment on main missions being so generic than the radiant quests being so good, unfortunately).

    Settlement building seems to be a core part of Bethesda’s DNA now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the narrative follows a Kingmaker style where you build up a settlement of rebels over time or similar. I imagine the other ES staples will be tied to this too, Thieves Guild = establishing a branch within your new settlement to attack Big Bad Evil Vs joining an established one etc.

    I really wonder how much of this poor reaction to Starfield makes its way through to actual change, but my feeling is ES6 will have a lot of hype, but similar feelings of disappointment. I hope I’m proved wrong.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Ultimately, unless they deviate from the formulaic structure (follow arrow on compass to have awkward uncanny conversation with a mannequin who tells you to go to copy and paste dungeon where you have asynchronous combat against copy and pasted enemies) eventually, people will have the same gripes with ES6 that they didn’t know they had with Skyrim. At this point, Creation Engine games are nostalgic, but Bethesda thinks they’re still the future.

      • Piemanding@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        It would get them some more downloads, but it might just be too difficult for them to achieve since their games are all the embodiment of “Jack of all trades, master of none.”

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          The thing is that a lot of players like it that way, but it won’t ever win any awards.

    • DarkMetatron@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I don’t see settlement building as a core part of Starfield, I am 160h in (NG+3) and have not touched settlement building at all. It is a feature of the game, but it is completely optional.

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      Bethesda did not over promise anything, didn’t over hype. They said they wanted to create Skyrim in space, and that is exactly what Starfield is. For better or for worse.

      Starfield being a disappointment to some is only because those players over hyped themselves.

  • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Played my full version demo before purchasing. Was bored on day one. None of this surprises me.

  • explodicle@local106.com
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    1 year ago

    Don’t worry Bethesda, you can try again at next year’s game awards after you’ve fixed the bugs and modders have added the features!

    • CryptidBestiary@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Let’s not give developers the habit of relying on modders to finish their games. I’m tired of studios releasing half ass games

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        From what I understand they even fucked with the engine so much that they made modding even harder now and for whatever reason they’re not releasing the mod tools any time soon so the big names aren’t even trying to mod the game…

        It’s like they looked at what made all their previous titles popular, looked at the community, and said “nah, fuck that. What the people really want is no mod support, 6 distinct POIs, and TONS of loading screens.”

      • explodicle@local106.com
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        Sorry to be unclear, I was being sarcastic and agree with you. The awards are rightfully based on what is actually released, which discourages this habit.

        • CryptidBestiary@lemmy.world
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          Gotcha, sadly, these are some people’s sentiment regarding AAA studios. Modders are a blessing but then these companies find ways to exploit the passion of their community and fans.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        They don’t need to rerelease it.

        Skyrim Special edition released in 2016 and is still one of the most played games on Steam. (place 69, nice)

    • neokabuto@sh.itjust.works
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      I really regret thinking the extra time to polish would result in a game where we don’t need modders to make things decent. The mod tools aren’t even out and people have rebalanced multiple systems to be way better than Bethesda came up with.

  • qwertyWarlord@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • AMillionNames@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Bluefold@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • Metal Zealot@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    What’s the point in making a game “as stable as possible”,
    when it’s not even fun?
    Aren’t you just polishing shit at that point?

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      It is more stable than their other releases, but that’s a very low bar.

      I’d never call it stable without that very important context.

      Plus, it doesn’t pass that bar by more than a few inches.

  • DarkMetatron@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    I love Starfield, not as much as I love Skyrim or even Morrowind, but I really love it.

    I am at 160ish hours and have seen only a small amount of the quests and barely touched the base or ship building part. There is so much in the game and with the innovative spin on new game plus I am able to build my own narrative again and again. I can play the perfect angle in one NG+ and a devil in another, I can be the freedom loving Ranger in the next, a mad loner who only interacts with others as much as needed to finish his perfect planetary base, or a starship fanatic who wants to collect and/or build the best ships.

    You don’t have those kinds of freedom with Baldurs Gate 3 or other RPGs, you can’t really leave or mostly ignore the narratives of those games to create your own, not on the scale as it is possible with Starfield.

    Starfields quests are fun, yes they are all separate from each other but that is in my eyes a good thing in this case as it allows to play the game as you like.

    All the quests are like basic Lego blocks, you can connect them together in any way you want but they don’t change each other but that’s not needed as I have my own narrative and stories in my mind for this run or character.

    Sure, games like Baldurs Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2.0 have better storytelling, better NPCs, but they are at the same time extremely limited and narrow experiences, sure you have side quests and all but once played the game that’s mostly it.

    Starfields freedoms come with limits like the loading screens sure, but that is a price I am willing to pay for having a sandbox like universe to explore and roleplay in.

    As a pure entertainment product, that can be consumed without any own creativity, is Baldurs Gate better, without doubt. But as a expansion tool for your imagination, that’s where Starfield (or any other Bethesda RPG) shines.

    But as a end note: What have the Starfield developers consumed when they created the utterly bad and boring temple “puzzles”. In Todd’s name WHY???

    • WeebLife@lemmy.world
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      You clearly haven’t played baldur’s gate and shouldn’t make comparisons based on your limited experience with it.

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        1 year ago

        I have played and completed it, very recently, and I stand to my words. BG3 has a great story and it was fun to play once. But it is not a game I will play again, at least not for years. BG3 is like a good movie, impressive and great story telling but after I seen it once it is done and will go on the shelf.

        That’s where Starfield differs, in BG3 I command great written characters through adventures, in Starfield I play more or less an avatar of myself but on a Spaceship. And that is something I come back to again and again, just like I go back to Skyrim, Morrowind or Fallout for years now.

        • MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Maybe you have Not realized just how much your choices affect the “linear Story” and how much permutation there is in follow up quests or alternate pathways through the same quest. I guess thats the beauty of it. Most of the quests an Narrative fit into each other so neat One might suspect this way was the only possible way, just because of how good it is presented.

          • DarkMetatron@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            Yes, but that still is like reading the same book but with a few pages changed. I am still only moving characters through a stage play, not roleplaying.

            I can’t have a completely changed or different way to play the game or be myself/anything in the world of the game.

            Both games are great but they can’t really be compared, not much more as you could compare a high budget musical with a high budget improv theatre play. Sure both are plays on a theatre stage (or RPG in case of the games) but beside that they don’t have really much in common.

            But maybe it is just to complicated for me to fully express or explain what I mean as I am not a native speaker and I am therefore limited in my words and formulations.

    • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      As a pure entertainment product, that can be consumed without any own creativity, is Baldurs Gate better, without doubt. But as a expansion tool for your imagination, that’s where Starfield (or any other Bethesda RPG) shines.

      You should seriously, seriously go play BG3.

      You don’t have those kinds of freedom with Baldurs Gate 3 or other RPGs, you can’t really leave or mostly ignore the narratives of those games to create your own, not on the scale as it is possible with Starfield.

      Seriously, BG3. (Between Dark Urge, custom character choices, etc, go.)

      • DarkMetatron@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        I have played it and I liked it. But after completing it with one character I have no intention of doing another play through anytime soon.

        Yes you have different character choices but in the end it is always the same linear story. Yes, you could say the same about Starfield but it is not. In Starfield if I want I can ignore the main quest more or less completely and play a bounty hunter who only builds his base to have a place for his collection of coffee cups he takes from every place he goes.

        In BG3 they give you predefined experience (now in Dark Urge flavour) which is great for telling a story but not so great for creating a world to really roleplay in.

        Both games are fun for what they are, they are just not fun in the same way for everyone.

        • MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I think i See your point now with the example of the bounty hunter. The point that most People are making is thta starfield is a really blank canvas where you can Insert your own Narrative into a lot of Actions but the game does Not react towards that Narrative, while BG3 does react to some of your RP reasons and all the other reasons for your RP that the game cannot predict, it cannot react to and therefore feel unsupported.

          That is a valid Take that Bethesda games have Solid setting in which People can choose internal Roleplay but this does Not meant other games where the game also gives you external Stimulation to Roleplay certain aspects Limit your creativity. For my playtrough there were several decisions which where reflected in the World but also other principles that i made up, that only influenced my decisions passivly without beeing spelled out in the Texts. For example i choose a knowdledge hungry Wizard which made me Do queationable choice s with devils even tho 2 People of my Party already suffered under devils. No choice spelled out “Gimme All knowledge of the Planes what ever the Cost” but thats where my own internal RP made the choice more fitting than other.

          Man its really Hard to express my thoughts on this using a foreign languages. I hope my point comes across

          • DarkMetatron@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            Yes, I can grasp what you mean.

            It is a role-playing on a different level, and with that it has its own merits and shortcomings.

            Baldurs Gate 3 is a role play on a lower, more character centric, level which limits the freedom of the player but allows for the game to have a tighter, more interconnected storytelling.

            Starfield is a role play on a higher, more player centric, level which allows for way more personal freedom of the player at the costs of having a story with pieces flying loose through the air, so to speak.

            The venn diagram of people who like both of those types will most likely don’t have a huge overlap.

            Neither of those games are bad, they are just fundamentally different.

    • bbbbbbbbbbb@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Your love for the game is valid but criticisms of the game are also valid. The biggest flaw starfield has is the massive amount of gameworld it provides. In skyrim, CP2077, BG3, Morrowind, Zelda, and whatever else you want to think of, you can pick a direction and go.

      In nearly every case, the game is designed to take you somewhere, give you something, reward you for straying off the main path. In Starfield, both space and planet side, youre likely to run into a whole lot of nothing. Which is realistically fine, the universe is already a vast amount of nothing, but in game design that makes for a boring and lackluster RPG and that is the biggest problem SF has. That doesnt take away from the players like you who want this experience though, but thats kind of why Space Sim games are a niche experience.

    • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      The problem is how disjointed everything is. Skyrim and Fallout, I can literally walk across the entire map. I can run into a random plot, some fun environmental storytelling, anything really - there’s no sense of discovery for a game so vast as Starfield. Everything is a known quantity which is why you can fast travel to and from basically every area.

      All these other functions built into the game are superficial and/or incomplete at best. Ship building is basically pointless, as you can carry a massive crew in a tiny freighter, regardless of crew capacity or passenger capacity of your vessel. Modding weapons is more or less the same as it was in Fallout 4. The environments that are available to explore are all dead with fuck all, and all the tunnels and mines are filled with the same bullet-sponge spacer enemies. You would think with smaller, chunked zones we’d have some very detailed environments that make use of the fact that they are relatively small spaces, but instead everything is truncated with a loading screen and entirely lacking in depth.

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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      I am at 160ish hours and have seen only a small amount of the quests

      So you’ve just been having fun with the most basic of systems that are not much different from all previous games, while barely having touched the things most people are complaining about? The mechanics and stability are pretty good. It’s the bland stories within the uninspired quests that are a major source of disappointment.

      And to say only a Bethesda RPG does while BG3 doesn’t have the kinds of roleplaying you’re describing tells me you haven’t actually played BG3. Or any actually good RPG for that matter.

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      What you are trying to say is that Starfield is a sandbox RPG, while BG3 is a Linear Story RPG.

      Both are fun in their own ways. You just vibe more with the sandbox aspect.

      I bet you also enjoy Minecraft for the same reasons.

  • Destide@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    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

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      It definitely doesn’t deserve best RPG.

      It might win the most “it’s alright I guess”, game of the year award.

  • angelsomething
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    1 year ago

    I played it for 30 min and did not enjoy it past the first 10.

    • fckreddit@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Same with me. As soon as I realized that there is no sane way to travel from planet to planet even within the same system without fast travel, I stopped playing the game. Starfield literally made space boring.

      • DarkMetatron@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Fast travel is the only sane way, without changing the lore and setting of the world, to travel from planet to planet inside of a system. Space is gigantic and even the distance between planets in a system are huge. Travel between planets, without having to wait real time hours or days to arrive, would need some kind of faster than light propulsion, but the only way to travel faster then light in the lore and world setting is with gravjumps.

        The only thing I would change with the current space travel is using micro gravjumps animation between planets instead of the normal fly sequence shown when travelling inside of a system.

        • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          The designers chose this setting and lore, and could have chosen otherwise for the sake of game experience.

          Additionally, there’s no reason for the fast travel to have to be distinct, separate from gameplay, as loading screens.

          Elite Dangerous keeps you in your cockpit, replaces the outside view with an animation while it loads the system you’re jumping to. When landing on a planet, there are various “entering the atmosphere” effects on suitable planets to mask swapping from space to the landable planet.

          For ED, in-system FTL is time consuming and you can shave off around 25% of the travel time by doing it manually (risking overshooting and having to loop back around), or you can have the ship’s computer do it. ED is multiplayer and you can be yanked from this “supercruise” by players and NPC pirates, so it works mechanically to make the player waste time with it. In Starfield they could show you the ETA and give you the option to skip it or to wander around your ship during it while the ship does its thing.

          If you’re in a menu on your ship when FTL would end with autopilot, stop the clock before leaving FTL, pop up a message in the corner saying the ship is ready to drop from FTL, and let the player exit it manually from the cockpit so you can’t get ambushed while you’re on the other side of your ship.

          No changes to setting or lore needed, except that there’s a basic autopilot now.


          As far as programming that goes, the engine already uses loading during gameplay when you’re on the overworld, and they have done that since Oblivion. Overworld is set up in chunks, they keep a certain number in each direction around you loaded, and load/unload while you move around.

          I won’t say it would be easy to expand that background loading functionality, but I will say that they’ve had many many years to attempt it.

        • SquirtleHermit@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Kinda seems like they used the lore to justify the load screens, and not the other way around to me. But that’s just a theory… A Game Theory!

          • DarkMetatron@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            And Tolkien was not forced to hinder the Hobbits from inventing full automatic guns, but the Lord of the Rings would be completely different if he hadn’t.

            And the same is true for Starfield and other options of FTL. It would be a completely different game, with a completely different story.

            Starfield is hard sci-fi at it’s core, with the exception of the grav drive and the powers/unity, a near future setting that is in most parts plausible and possible, a realistic game set in a realistic universe.

        • fckreddit@lemmy.ml
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          I am just bummed about it that’s all. I feel like it would have served the game better if it had mass effect style fast travel menu because realistic space travel doesn’t add a lot to the game if you can only fight in space but not travel from place to place.

        • smackjack@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          They could implement a timewarp mechanic like Kerbal Space program does and just speed up time.

          • DarkMetatron@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            But that’s more or less what they have done with the flyby animation shown when travelling inside of a system. You could interpret that as watching a rapidly speed up version of the, boring because space is a huge and empty void, travel.

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Can’t really form an opinion about an RPG in 30 minutes playtime. Hell, I doubt you even know Starfield has magic powers.

      It was influenced by the internet calling it bad, you are allowed to admit it.

      Just don’t call it your opinion.

  • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, it isn’t the best game, so it doesn’t belong between the nominations.

    Also because so many amazing games came out this year.

    But that doesn’t make it a bad game though. Had plenty of fun with it.