Starfield has a release date

[DjchunKfunK]

On a planet I saw a ship landing in the distance, so decided to go and see if there was anything there. Firstly, I agree with the comment someone made about the game needing vehicles for planetary travel, as it's exceedingly dull to run and jet for entire kilometres. I passed a few points of interest along the way, mostly just little houses with absolutely nothing inside except the same clutter you get everywhere else. When I did eventually get to the place I thought I'd saw the ship land, there was just nothing. I was expecting an illicit meeting place or something, but I scoured the area and there was nothing but survey stuff.

I know others have differing opinions on procedurally-generated content, but this is just reinforcing my belief that it simply isn't worth the development time. Use it to decorate spaces with clutter (I'm largely assuming this is how they've done it anyway, else I can't really explain the weird number of toilet roll tubes I found in a server farm), or maybe to build structures that a developer then goes and populates, but I just don't think how they're doing things adds anything to the game's entertainment value, and in reality probably detracts from it. I could have been doing a mission in the time I spent running to the non-existent landing spot, but instead I ended up bored. I'll just not bother going off the beaten track again in this I don't think, I'll stick to my quest log.

I feel the opposite, I want it to be the case that sometimes there is just nothing of interest out there. If everything that was generated was worth exploring then I would need to explore everything. I'd much rather it be the case that only occasionally will I come across something worthwhile or a quest line to follow as that makes it more special when you find that stuff. On top of that space is meant to be pretty barren and empty so the emptiness of some of the generation is not an issue for me as it adds to the overall feel of the world.

[Wrathbone]

Oh, hah. I just stumbled upon the place by accident heading to the system where I became Space Batman. I guess that's another perception issue with a game with scope as large as this - I had no indication this was part of a trail a developer had presumably written. Even so, that they wrote a little story for an in-universe idea that is so blatantly stupid speaks volumes about the people populating this universe - it's like the devs couldn't make their mind up about the level of realism they wanted.

I don't know, in the real world I see stuff on a daily basis that is catastrophically dumb and ill-considered. How else would the Helihome have been a thing?

Spoiler

[Mantis]

On a planet I saw a ship landing in the distance, so decided to go and see if there was anything there. Firstly, I agree with the comment someone made about the game needing vehicles for planetary travel, as it's exceedingly dull to run and jet for entire kilometres. I passed a few points of interest along the way, mostly just little houses with absolutely nothing inside except the same clutter you get everywhere else. When I did eventually get to the place I thought I'd saw the ship land, there was just nothing. I was expecting an illicit meeting place or something, but I scoured the area and there was nothing but survey stuff.

I know others have differing opinions on procedurally-generated content, but this is just reinforcing my belief that it simply isn't worth the development time. Use it to decorate spaces with clutter (I'm largely assuming this is how they've done it anyway, else I can't really explain the weird number of toilet roll tubes I found in a server farm), or maybe to build structures that a developer then goes and populates, but I just don't think how they're doing things adds anything to the game's entertainment value, and in reality probably detracts from it. I could have been doing a mission in the time I spent running to the non-existent landing spot, but instead I ended up bored. I'll just not bother going off the beaten track again in this I don't think, I'll stick to my quest log.

I feel the opposite, I want it to be the case that sometimes there is just nothing of interest out there. If everything that was generated was worth exploring then I would need to explore everything. I'd much rather it be the case that only occasionally will I come across something worthwhile or a quest line to follow as that makes it more special when you find that stuff. On top of that space is meant to be pretty barren and empty so the emptiness of some of the generation is not an issue for me as it adds to the overall feel of the world.

You really want to play a game where you spend a significant amount of time walking across barren, bland, procedural generated terrain with absolutely nothing of value to discover on a big chunk of it? There's not even any interesting empty terrain to explore from what I've seen, it's all just expanses of slightly different coloured rocks. What they've effectively done with Starfield is give you the planetary exploration from Mass Effect 1 but taken your means of transportation away so you can't even have fun bombing around in a rocket boosted car.

Even if you look at it from a realism perspective in that space is pretty damn empty, any real sense of exploration is totally neutered by the fact that you're just clicking through loading screens between maps and can't even fly between planets or out of the atmosphere yourself. It's like No Man's Sky but without any sense of scale or wonder whatsoever.

I absolutely loathe this kind of content, absolute time wasting rubbish. But each to their own I guess. I have heard that some of the content they actually curated properly is fairly good. There's way too much mediocrity in the way for me to bother spending the time to find it though.

[Sly Boots]

Oh, hah. I just stumbled upon the place by accident heading to the system where I became Space Batman. I guess that's another perception issue with a game with scope as large as this - I had no indication this was part of a trail a developer had presumably written. Even so, that they wrote a little story for an in-universe idea that is so blatantly stupid speaks volumes about the people populating this universe - it's like the devs couldn't make their mind up about the level of realism they wanted.

I don't know, in the real world I see stuff on a daily basis that is catastrophically dumb and ill-considered. How else would the Helihome have been a thing?

Spoiler

I want one!

[Wrathbone]

You really want to play a game where you spend a significant amount of time walking across barren, bland, procedural generated terrain with absolutely nothing of value to discover on a big chunk of it? There's not even any interesting empty terrain to explore from what I've seen, it's all just expanses of slightly different coloured rocks. What they've effectively done with Starfield is give you the planetary exploration from Mass Effect 1 but taken your means of transportation away so you can't even have fun bombing around in a rocket boosted car.

I want one!

So did I until I realised 1) I can't fly a helicopter and 2) anything not bolted down would fly across the interior with every turn.

[pappaduck]

I know others have differing opinions on procedurally-generated content, but this is just reinforcing my belief that it simply isn't worth the development time. Use it to decorate spaces with clutter (I'm largely assuming this is how they've done it anyway, else I can't really explain the weird number of toilet roll tubes I found in a server farm), or maybe to build structures that a developer then goes and populates, but I just don't think how they're doing things adds anything to the game's entertainment value, and in reality probably detracts from it. I could have been doing a mission in the time I spent running to the non-existent landing spot, but instead I ended up bored. I'll just not bother going off the beaten track again in this I don't think, I'll stick to my quest log.

I'm with you here, it almost always just feels like padding. I suspect one of the reasons I'm enjoying Starfield is I'm just mainlining quests and haven't engaged too much in the exploration that seems to be pissing so many people off. I'm sure there's ways to do it well, Randomly Generated maps for RTS skirmishes spring to mind but open world games can suffer from a feeling of emptyness at the best of times and the best ones I've played are where the developers have crammed loads of interesting content everywhere... kind of like Skyrim.

[Animalmother]

It's mostly empty padding in the vanilla game alright but it's a massive canvas for the modders. That's how I'm personally justifying it

Bethesda, the game studio that relys on it's audience to produce the good dlc. For free as well.

[DjchunKfunK]

with absolutely nothing of value to discover on a big chunk of it?

I mean that's space basically and is the issue at the core of any space exploration game, but I don't plan to spend a lot of time walking across planets no. Most the time I will visit the point on the planet I have set out to go to and if I feel like it I might check out some of the other points of interest but I expect most the time I wont, I'll just head off to do something else.

I do agree about your point regarding vehicles.

[Animalmother]

The game was updated yesterday and it's now frozen and crashed twice on me. Was remarkablely stable for a Bethesda game before that.

[Sly Boots]

I think... I think I might be starting to get a bit bored of it :/

[Raid]

For me it was always going to be the case that I'd play until getting bored, and I feel like I'm getting to that point with fewer than ten hours playtime. I don't think there's any chance of me finishing the main story.

The game just feels like it was designed in the 90s. The gameplay is utterly plain, and I can't get past the fact that the space sections of the game are just an elaborate set of menus. I forget the last time I played a game with this many loading screens, even if they only take a second or two each time. All of the limitations of the game engine just mean it's impossible for me to get absorbed. I never feel like I'm a cool space captain because all I'm doing is going into the quest log and fast travelling. This game needed the ability to pilot your ship from the ground, into orbit, and then land it manually anywhere you wanted. Without it, all of the ships and the space combat just feel like elaborate window dressing.

It is, once again, a casualty of the Creation Engine.

[Sly Boots]

I never feel like I'm a cool space captain because all I'm doing is going into the quest log and fast travelling.

I feel like this is increasingly one of the main issues for me. I'd also add that while some quests have been highlights, the bulk so far have been 'go to X and speak to person Y, then go to location Z and bring thing back to person Y', or running around an urban space with an absolutely unfit-for-purpose map finding a bunch of quest markers and then pressing 'E' when I find them.

Perhaps the biggest issue is the lack of any sense of wonder... much of it just feels... mundane, I guess.

I don't think it's a Bethesda thing, either. I keep mentally thinking of things like the Dark Brotherhood questlines in Oblivion and Skyrim, for example, or when you'd stumble on a random dude in a bar, have a few drinks and then wake up in the high-fantasy equivalent of Dude, Where's My Car?

I'll give a couple of examples of what I mean, I don't think they're huge spoilers but I'll cover them anyway:

Early Crimson Fleet mission:

Spoiler

So you respond to a hail and find yourself being recruited to infiltrate the Crimson Fleet pirate organisation and gather evidence to help the authorities bring them down. This is a really cool premise, and I immediately thought of it playing out like The Departed, or something like that. This is how I gained access to them:

- Go to quest marker
- Speak to high-ranking pirate, who asks me to kill some dude
- Go to second quest marker, board ship
- Meet the dude. Basically say I don't want to kill him, and is he cool with that. He lets me know he is indeed cool with that.
- Back to my ship, proceed back to the first quest marker.
- Inform high-ranking pirate that I definitely, pinky-swear killed that dude.
- I'm in, and within a few moments am being introduced to the pirate leader, who accepts my membership without question.

Being asked to deal with a strange ship that's suddenly appeared in orbit around a planet, and responds to hails with confusing and unsettling sounds:

Spoiler

Again, a really cool premise, and the scenario of a 200-year old generation ship that's been overtaken by both interstellar technology and dozens of other human colonies, is interesting. Early discussion with the major players reveals an intriguing potential dilemma about who owns the rights to the planets and what the resolution should be. But this is how it actually played out:

- Ship captain asks me to speak to colony on their behalf
- Proceed to quest marker, talk to colony leader
- After a few lines of dialogue, completely accepting my role in making this momentous decision affecting hundreds of people, he offers me three choices
- These are: kill them, enslave them or spend a bunch of my own money to get rid of them
- Not being a psychopath, I do the latter
- Go to quest marker, talk to shipyard dude
- Go to quest marker, talk to colony ship engineer dude
- Walk around the room we're currently in, pressing three buttons
- Colonists happily shoot off into space with nary a backward glance

Two very promising and interesting scenarios, that played out as dull as ditchwater... and I've not even mentioned having to repeatedly... follow... extremely... slow... NPCs... as... they... escort... you... to... a... different... room... to deliver another handful of lines before giving you a new quest marker. It wouldn't even be so bad if you could sync your character's walking speed to the NPCs, but no, you either walk and they very slowly accelerate away from you like a pair of HGVs on the motorway overtaking one another over the space of a dozen miles, or you have to keep jogging up to them then stopping to let them get a bit further away, then jog back up to them and rinse and repeat. I can't believe this is still a thing in 2023

For the most part, and as I've said there are some exceptions I've encountered, it alls feels a bit lacklustre and beige.

Even the exploration, which should be the bread and butter of a Beth open-world RPG, just doesn't feel enticing because 97% of the time there's nothing out there worth finding to stumble across.

Maybe we've been spoiled by the likes of Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3 offering so much interesting, involving content and being all killer, no filler, but actually it does feel like Bethesda's approach to game design feels a bit old hat now and doesn't cut the mustard any more given the quality of the competition.

[Animalmother]

Hmmm, you've raised some fair points there and I might have been trying to convince myself that I'm not losing interest as well. That second example you made there was so disappointing, I was like "Is that it!?!"

Spoiler

That was an opportunity to have a Fallout vault in space, the crew could have turned into cannibals, got infected with alien parasites or decided to ram the resort on the planet surface obliterating all life

So many missed chances of something unique there.

I'll keep plugging away until I've had my fill as I'm not done yet. Maybe the game needs to mature for a while, come back in 6 months and see if it's improved.

[Solitaire]

For me it was always going to be the case that I'd play until getting bored, and I feel like I'm getting to that point with fewer than ten hours playtime. I don't think there's any chance of me finishing the main story.

The game just feels like it was designed in the 90s. The gameplay is utterly plain, and I can't get past the fact that the space sections of the game are just an elaborate set of menus. I forget the last time I played a game with this many loading screens, even if they only take a second or two each time. All of the limitations of the game engine just mean it's impossible for me to get absorbed. I never feel like I'm a cool space captain because all I'm doing is going into the quest log and fast travelling. This game needed the ability to pilot your ship from the ground, into orbit, and then land it manually anywhere you wanted. Without it, all of the ships and the space combat just feel like elaborate window dressing.

It is, once again, a casualty of the Creation Engine.

Good write-up. I'm both sorely disappointed and glad I didn't spend money on this yet. I've got probably a good two or three years of single-player fun to go with Skyrim. I can wait for this to have lots of mods and a price reduction in the coming years. Sad, as I was immensely excited about this when I first heard of it last year. I agree that it desperately needed the functionalities that you mentioned wrt landing, flight, etc.

with absolutely nothing of value to discover on a big chunk of it?

I mean that's space basically and is the issue at the core of any space exploration game, but I don't plan to spend a lot of time walking across planets no. Most the time I will visit the point on the planet I have set out to go to and if I feel like it I might check out some of the other points of interest but I expect most the time I wont, I'll just head off to do something else.

I do agree about your point regarding vehicles.

The thing is, Freespace made a cracking space game that wasn't the least bit boring, full of stuff to do, and honestly needs a line-by-line reboot into a next-gen gaming engine. I know it wasn't a galaxy full of stars, and no "planetary exploration," but still Bethesda could have taken a few tips from one of the best space trader/shooters ever.

[Animalmother]

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2023/09/s ... box-and-pc
Wasn't this exact same glitch in Fallout 76? I haven't tried it yet but I'm tempted to get the cash to build a better ship.

And it works, the only problem is you suddenly have several hundred kilos of stuff that is very difficult to sell or even store on your ship.