I was only caught up with the news to its release date and didnt bother to check on it since then. I don’t plan to play it, but rather to check on the headlines and reviews surrounding it since I’ve heard some negative comments about the game. I know about the recent trends of the gaming industry but I was kinda hoping for Starfield to be better since I really dig the concept of open world and space exploration games.
Are you familiar with Bethesda games? The best way to describe it is that it’s a Bethesda game that sacrifices what makes Bethesda games great (the handcrafted open world) in exchange for an illusion of scale and scope by way of procedural generation.
What you’re left with is mediocre writing, boring characters and uninteresting exploration of copy-pasted points of interest.
The problem is that it flat out isn’t a space exploration game. Space is more or less a glorified loading zone. You can do some dogfighting if you want, but you’re mostly just going to fast travel from planet to planet while completing modern, bland Bethesda quests.
If you really just love Bethesda games, and have enjoyed your time in Fallout 4 or 76, there’s not anything wrong with it structurally. The gunplay is about as good as the Creation Engine allows, and there’s some actually cool new game+ additions to encourage a replay. The problem is that if you’re someone who saw both of those games as signs of Bethesda faltering, Starfield is your proof that their open-world design is outdated, and their writing can’t compete in the same arena as someone like Larian.
IIRC it was unfortunately pretty empty, discovery was very limited, and people were mighty upset that it was effectively a load zone simulator. Most things could be fast traveled to but also had load zones 10 feet from where you loaded in.
I’m sure there is more but that’s the jist of what I know
What’s a load zone simulator?
Loading zones are regions in a game space where you have to sit through a loading screen. People call Starfield a loading zone simulator because of the lengthy amounts of time spent just loading and not playing the game.
Like my modded FO4 lol