Saturday Morning Gaming: The Dad Rock of Starfield
Starfield has been out for a couple of weeks now and it has taken over my gaming hours. When I’m not playing, I’m wondering what techniques would work when playing. Should I put points in *THIS* or should I put points in *THAT*? There are a handful of techniques that your character can learn that are adjacent to the main story… which makes me wonder should I go for those or should I, instead, farm aluminum? Do I want to do the Space Police storylines or the Space Pirate storylines?
And then I go online and read about what other folks are experiencing and… well, I am playing an entirely different game.
The first real complaint that I saw was about how all space games lean heavy into the whole “frontier” thing and that means that there’s an Old West theme. While it’s true that there’s an Old West planet, it’s one of dozens and dozens and dozens of planets. Like, there’s also an organized crime planet. There’s a virtual utopia planet. There’s a mining planet. There’s an ancient ruins planet.
Like, the written-by-humans planets have an amazing amount of diversity.
There is the complaint about procedurally generated planets that I sort of get… I mean, you visit a world and it wasn’t there before you decided to look and so once you visit three or four procedurally generated planets, you’ve got the gist of what planets are going to be like. There’s going to be an abandoned factory populated by hostiles. There’s going to be six kinds of plants and seven kinds of animals (or, if it’s a procedurally generated dead world, merely seven kinds of minerals).
There are the “It’s a Bethesda Game!” complaints that, well, are fairly grounded in reality. I visited a museum and, as soon as I walked in the door, exhibits that were too big to fit on the shelves that they were on immediately pushed themselves off the shelves and they fell to the ground.
Which, you know, happens *EVERY* Bethesda game. I mean, I appreciate that it’s worth complaining about but this happened with Fallout 4 and Skyrim and Fallout 3 and Oblivion and…
There is the complaint about “choice paralysis” that makes sense to me because there’s so much to do and every single thing you’re doing means that you’re not doing a hundred other things.
I suppose the biggest complaint that I have with the game is that it doesn’t have an edge. You will recognize every storyline, you will recognize every planet you visit, and you will recognize every mission (more or less). It’s not really breaking a whole lot of ground (yet). It’s like listening to the classic rock station. You will be intimately familiar with this game the first time you load it up. It’s not going to surprise you, really.
But that’s fine. I’m getting older and sometimes it’s nice to listen to the classic rock station.
So… what are you playing?
I am spending a LOT of time with the game. Obviously, I really enjoy it or wouldn’t be spending the time, but it’s far from a perfect game and has a lot of the usual Bethesda Jank and weird design decisions.
I also agree with you about the lack of an edge. A lot of the storytelling is quite good but, as you say, it doesn’t break much new ground and is very familiar in a lot of ways. I like your comparison to classic rock radio.
The main story has, so far, been a mixed bag. It’s got some interesting moments – and one brutal one (again, so far), but much of it is drudgery with too much of doing the same thing over and over.
So far, I’ve done a bit of everything – or at least tried.
Where to spend my skill points is a constant issue but in a good way. Unlike a lot of RPG’s, you can’t do it all – at least without pouring probably a thousand hours into the game. I keep wondering where I should focus my efforts – it’s frustrating in good way.
I will probably take a break when the Cyberpunk changes and expansion come out, which look great. It seems like they’ve fixed a lot of core issues with that game, and the expansion looks very promising. And that is a game that definitely has an edge.Report
One of the things I like about the game is that if I somehow got 20 skill points right now, I’d immediately start thinking about what I’d do with the next 20 skill points.Report
Really? People have finished Baldur’s Gate 3? Or are they not replaying it?
As someone who likes Bethesda games, and in fact one of my top five played games was FO4 (And probably the most that required me to be actually doing things instead of leaving it on the background.), I’m…I hate to say it, but I’m almost done with them, they’re…very predictable and that’s not really what I want.
And if I wanted one set in outer space, well, we had the Outer Worlds a while back, which was straight up pretending to be a Bethesda game mixed with better things from other RPGs. And, as an added bonus, it wasn’t using their incredibly janky engine that has objects fall off shelves and float in midair.Report
I have a buddy who beat it *TWICE*.
WHICH IS NUTS.
(I actually have an essay percolating about Baldur’s Gate 3 but I don’t have a conclusion to it yet.)
I loved the first 80% of The Outer Worlds and hated the last 20%. I went from “Holy cow, I’m going to replay it like *THIS* and then like *THIS* and then like *THIS*” to “eh, I don’t need the DLC” in the space of the last 5 hours.Report
BG3 is basically the only game I’ve ever played where choices _really_ matter, and not just in the Mass Effect way we thought they were going until ME3 crapped the bed at the very end.
They did it the ‘true’ way, instead of the Mass Effect way: There are huge sections of content that are simply missed if you do other things. You actually can’t do all the content in one playthrough.
Heck, there are unique choices you get playing _as_ origin companion that resolve their story in very interesting ways.
Hell, if you do certain things in the game that your companions can leave you, but, you may ask yourself, ‘What if you’re playing that companion and do something that they would find morally reprehensible, but, as they are you, they don’t?’. The game not only expects this but make it very interesting, playing origin characters with ‘noncanon’ alignments…I’m already planning on playing ‘Evil Wyll’ to see some of it. Although a Shadowheart that immediately rejects her teachings sounds interesting.
There are huge sections of content for ‘the Dark Urge’ which don’t exist at all for anyone else. You can romance people you can’t romance normally (assuming you don’t decide to kill them), you can do all sorts of crazy stuff.
And that’s just the starting character stuff.
BG3 is a D&D campaign that was built to an astonishingly level of detail, with the DM fully expecting that at least a third of the stuff they planned wouldn’t be done…but the thing about it is, you can play it more than once.
—
Meanwhile, the Outer Worlds was something that felt like it was building to something epic, especially with the eventual reveal that the situation is actually not quite what it seems, and then…it falls flat. I literally can’t even remember the last fight.
The problem is, I don’t really trust Bethesda to do it better. They will, at least, have a good fight, I guess. (OTOH, Fallout 3.)Report
I’ve learned to embrace fast travel, more so than in other Bethesda games. Travelling from point A to point B isn’t the same as Fallout or Elder Scrolls, where there is a good chance of stumbling across something interesting. Being able to fast travel from the quest log cuts down on a lot of the monotony. And the fact that you don’t even have to be back on your ship to use it is great.Report
Yeah, that is a non-obvious thing that increases the QOL substantially.Report
My biggest complaint about Starfield is that they haven’t totally fixed the crashing issues on the xbox. It’s much better after their fix last Tuesday or Wednesday–but it still happens, only the “restart your console” fix seems to work.
Even with that I’m having fun–I have piloting fully leveled–so when I gather the credits I’ll be able to buy the C class ships. My Freestar ship will serve me well until then, though. I also have ballistics fully leveled; I dig how the fully leveled skills turn into little patches. My first mining outpost is set up, and I had to repel a pirate attack (ugh). Lots to do and I’m not tired of Bethesda games yet. (except the effing crashes)Report
I’m on PC but using the Microsoft/XBox version of the game. Kinda wish I had just gotten the Steam version, but wanted to give my kids the chance to play.
I’ve had a few crashes, but the most annoying are a few (three so far) bugged quests. Fortunately, these have been relatively minor side quests (AFAIK), but I’m hoping Bethesda will have a patch out to fix them at some point.Report
Doing the mission that involves going to the Astral Lounge.
Mom and Dad showed up.
At the Astral Lounge.Report
Ugh, there’s probably two or three essays in here now that both BG3 and Starfield are out:
This was on the list of top IPs in the world. They made a video game for it two years after the #2 top grossing movie OF ALL TIME came out.
And support ends on September 30th. They won’t sell in digital storefronts either.
Ugh.Report
I saw that, but if my memory serves me, the game was widely panned. In which case, $4 might not be much, but my time is valuable, so I’m not interested.Report