Released today 9/1/23. Just bought it and since the company gave us off after lunch due to 3 day weekend, I'm playing until Tech plays tonight.
Starfield
- Thread starter rfjeff9
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Pretty good so far. No bugs to speak of on console.
This world is immense. So many systems with so many planets per system with so many outposts per planet or orbital stations etc. Gameplay is good, and so many different things to do. A little overwhelming.
This world is immense. So many systems with so many planets per system with so many outposts per planet or orbital stations etc. Gameplay is good, and so many different things to do. A little overwhelming.
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I was really looking forward to the game, but all the reviews I've seen make it seem just kind of...overwhelming yet boring. I love the new open world games that they're coming out with but they all seem to be missing a bit of something to make them truly great. Elden Ring was the only one that really hit the mark lately and that somewhat came out of nowhere. Starfield has been talked about for like 4 years now and in the last few months the developers seemed to talk down the expectations.
If I was an XBox or PC gamer, I would've had the game pre-ordered and would've taken the whole launch day off to play Starfield. I'm on Playstation, though, and have very little intention of buying an XBox or gaming PC just to play one game. And pre-ordering the game would've been one of two exceptions to my 'never buy games on launch' rule (the other being GTA).
I've kept a reasonably close eye on reviews for the game and have also seen a lot of rather negative 'boring' reviews. That's very close to what I expected people to say about the game on launch. The environment is so massive, that it would take decades for Bethesda themselves to build the game into what they truly wanted to do with it, but they did the smart thing by releasing a reasonably polished foundation for a great game and then gave it to the rest of the world to mod the hell out of and help them do it.
I will most likely eventually play Starfield sometime. My slim hope was that the game would kinda flop sales expectations without Playstation gamers and Bethesda/Microsoft would relent and publish the game to PS, too. These negative reviews are probably helping that concept, but I strongly doubt it will actually happen. And to this point, I'm content waiting for Starfield to mature with some game updates + add-ons from Bethesda and some strong mod support.
I was interested in Fallout 76 on launch, but didn't pull the trigger out of the gate because of the poor initial reviews. I waited until the game was on a mega sale more than a year after launch and said 'screw it, I'll give it a try - if it's garbage it costed me about the same as a fast food meal that also ends up in the toilet'. I ended up really liking playing the much-more-polished-than-at-launch game with my wife and we still play it together regularly.
I expect Starfield to be pretty good now, but much much better in a couple years.
It has tremendous amounts of potential for the Mod Community.
That said, I soon came to realize that the vast majority of locations on a planet are recycled and randomly regenerated from a short list of location designs. So land on a planet and clean out and loot the "Abandoned Cryo Research Lab". Go to any other planet and land. You are within walking distance of some generated locations. There is a chance one is another "Abandoned Cryo Research Lab". And if it is, it is the same map, layout, loot, special items, etc. Rinse and Repeat.
The game is too big for these to all be unique, but a lot more locations to put in the generator pool would be good.
It's still fun but it's not Skyrim. But maybe nearly as good as Skyrim when it launched.
It's going to take some time, DLCs, Mods, etc.
And I hope it comes up for Playstation. IDK ifnits worth buying a new console for it but you might be able to find a good value on a Series S. Runs just fine on mine.
That said, I soon came to realize that the vast majority of locations on a planet are recycled and randomly regenerated from a short list of location designs. So land on a planet and clean out and loot the "Abandoned Cryo Research Lab". Go to any other planet and land. You are within walking distance of some generated locations. There is a chance one is another "Abandoned Cryo Research Lab". And if it is, it is the same map, layout, loot, special items, etc. Rinse and Repeat.
The game is too big for these to all be unique, but a lot more locations to put in the generator pool would be good.
It's still fun but it's not Skyrim. But maybe nearly as good as Skyrim when it launched.
It's going to take some time, DLCs, Mods, etc.
And I hope it comes up for Playstation. IDK ifnits worth buying a new console for it but you might be able to find a good value on a Series S. Runs just fine on mine.
Lots of rumors recently about Starfield coming to Playstation 5. No official word about it yet from Microsoft or Bethesda, but "anonymous sources" state that Microsoft/XBox execs are actively engaging in hot debates over it. Apparently, Microsoft is acknowledging that they're leaving 10's of millions of dollars on the table by keeping Playstation gamers' hands off the game.
It's looking a lot like Microsoft was hoping the Starfield exclusive would trigger gamers to buy XBox hardware to play it, but it didn't happen (at least, anywhere close to their ideal projections). Kinda looking like these hopes & perceptions from October had some substance.
There's still a steady stream of teasers for a PS5 port, but no official word yet. I won't play it until it's a PS5 game. By then, I'd assume enough tweaks & enhancements to the game have been published to make it worth diving into (months after launch on PS5 to ensure port bugs are cleansed).
Bethesda has repeatedly proven that they are no longer a buy-at-launch developer. For me, only Nintendo (i.e. Mario, Zelda) and Rockstar (GTA) produce a quality complete game worthy of purchase at launch. Expectations are severely tempered with Rockstar, too, because they make a good single-player offline game but their "online" quality at launch is bad/incomplete.
Yeah, sad how BGS has fallen. "Skyrim in space" should have been a home run, but it seems like they forgot what makes their games charming.
I'm sure it is playable, and you can have fun with it, but nothing screams I must play this game. And apparently the new DLC was a dud too.
The red flags started with Fallout 4 with some of the changes they made and then F76 was a complete disaster. F76 has recovered somewhat, but nowhere near the standard of Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim or even Fallout 3&4. The next Elder Scrolls has taken so long to make hopes are low that they deliver on that one too. They could really benefit from a new, made from the ground up game engine.
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Seinfeld? 4?
A big part of Bethesda's problem was that their aspirations for what they wanted to Starfield to be was simply unattainable. Todd Howard admitted that. They had gotten so far into development they couldn't scrap it, so they just hollowed it out and published it - after many release delays.
I'm a software developer by trade. I completely understand and have lived having large development aspirations getting scaled down and I've lived through many projects having release delays because the project scope was simply too large to accomplish by the targeted date. While I sympathize with Bethesda's developmental plights and shortcomings, bottom line is - you need to polish your product before you release it to the public and Bethesda is repeatedly failing in that regard. They're not alone, though; almost every game developer is doing that now because game development is about making corporate money now and the bigger any corporation gets the less they care about producing quality products (profit trumps quality) - especially when founding ownership is altered as Bethesda's has (Microsoft).
Yeah it became about pure profit for a lot of the AAA studios (not the devs faults, it's the suits) and now a lot of the best games are made by smaller studios. It shows in the game of the year nominees. I root for the Ubisofts, Electronic Arts, Activision/Blizzards to fail because they release unfinished slop and want to you pay 70 bucks for it plus microtransactions.
Just like Hollywood, these gigantic - bloated budgets are not translating to better product for consumers.