Today’s screenshot is from Starfield. I know it wasn’t very well received, but i looked into it and wanted to give it a try myself. I got it on Discount a while ago (around 35$ if i remember correctly), and was originally going to play a while ago but Oblivion Remastered stopped that. I decided to give it a go though.
My Character is decently Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy inspired. I even took his naming scheme from the book and named him after a car. I’d like to introduce… Hudson Commodore (the man in the main screenshot). I wanted to focus on him being an explorer and talker, so i’ve been putting points into Social skills and Tech skills, with one going into Weapons damage to make life a little easier for me. I took the Hero worshiped trait which gives you the Adoring Fan. I like to believe it’s the same one from my Oblivion save all this years later. Little buddy has returned to me. I’m so happy. First task up for me is to take to the stars and find him.
The game walks a gorgeous line between Futuristic Sci-Fi and what i can only describe as NASA-Punk. Growing up i had always wanted to be an Astronaut, but with it going private and my discovered fear of heights, i quickly ditched that. Still though, i love the Modern-esque space aesthetic, sometimes i feel like Sci-fi stuff tries too hard to make it feel futuristic.
Literally one of the first things the game has you do is fight off some pirates in a satellite station that feels very Fallout Raiders. This brings me to the gunplay, which feels really smooth in my opinion. It feels like a natural linear evolution of Fallout 4’s gunplay, and at the very least gives me hope for Elder Scrolls 6’s gameplay.
The game then has you go to a a city after you get the Pirates off your ass, and i love the Spaceport. It has an airport feel too it that i love. I feel like it would have been easy for them to just go “Yep, Sci-fi, landing pad, end of story” but there’s this whole Airport vibe of going through Customs and Space Security to get to a Rail System.
The story setup (without too much spoilers) is that you join a Freemason-esque group that explores space, called Constellation. You found this relic thing that they want to put with 3 others. That’s about where i stopped on the main story though because i was promised a room for joining the group.
Before being taken to my room i was given a tour of The Lodge (Constellation’s headquarters). They have this lovely garden and a bar i was told that i could just help myself too. I saw some skill about food crafting, and i’m really hoping that extends too Drinks too. If it does and they don’t have a recipe for a pan galactic gargle blaster (or some equivalent) i’m going to be severely disappointed.
Finally, i was taken to my room after the bar. It feels very Hotel Room-ish, which is to be expected. It fits the vibe of the plot well in my opinion with it being basically a Dorm/Loan room. I saw they had ship building and outpost building so i was kind of hoping to be able to do my own furniture, but i do still like the decoration.
Wait until you realize that there’s like 5 dungeons and they are literally copy pasted all over the galaxy. Not like Oblivion were the rooms were copy pasted but had different mobs in it etc. These are literally the same dungeons, some of them even have a little narrative told through terminals, and not even that changes.
I used to be a Bethesda fan and a huge Todd apologist, but he’s literally out of touch with what made his games good for the core audience and instead panders to the audience who buys games based on the laundry list of features they never get to see because they don’t finish or play games after the hype is dead one week later.
It’s a shame because they actually got a lot of things right like going back to the TES conversation style, and having actual builds and the ship building which is pretty cool.
My last hope is that they actually learn the lesson with this game and stop this bullshit they’ve been trying to pull of since Arena of having endless content.
I think the thing that got me to finally give up on Bethesda was an interview regarding the DLC of Fallout 3.
TL;DR for those who haven’t played, the game ends in a very contrived choice that decides one of two endings, and you can’t play further because you sacrifice yourself in the “good” ending.
People hated this as it felt jarring and wanted to see the consequences of their choices more. So Bethesda made the Broken Steel DLC that allowed you to circumvent that game ending choice and added more endgame content, allowing you to roam the wasteland forever.
In the interview, they said what they learned is that people wanted to play the same game forever, as so radient quests were born.
Apparently that’s their new user base based on ESO and Fallout 76, but the reason I got into Fallout and Elder Scrolls was the well written stories and lore. I like replaying games with different builds to try new playthroughs.
Now they just want to maximize play time at all costs, so they just add content in the most corporate meaning of the word.
The fluff text in the terminals is what really got me about the repetition. Like you couldn’t write a few more similar paragraphs and shuffle them?
It’s nice to see a fresh take on the game, hope you fully enjoy it. I love these daily updates
I’ve been excited to give it a try since launch, so much so I’ve avoided spoilers. I’ve heard the dungeons are all kind of iffy, but to be honest (and I know this is heresy) Bethesda dungeons aren’t usually my favorite part of the game anyways
I’ll say this. Don’t get too invested in the outpost building.
It’s not as fiddly as fallouts settlements. But all you really want it to be is a dumping ground for resources you collected and crafting stations.
Setting up supply chains and auto factories is a pain and a waste of time. As is putting crew in it.
A dumping ground is really all my Fallout settlements turned out to be anyways lol. Every once and a while I’ll see an idea I want to recreate but usually I just end up slapping some chests down and walking away
Starfield is a great game. For about 10 hours, then you get bored.
It’s a shame, because it had so much potential.
Enjoy while you can.
Don’t chase weapon upgrades and crafting research too hard. The minor stat upgrades don’t really effect much for the stupid amount of grinding required to get the exact right materials needed.
I found that the novelty of the game wore off pretty quick after I started finding what initially felt like handcrafted points of interest repeating for the third time. Apparently there’s a mod that tweaks the RNG to significantly reduce how often things repeat, because it’s really rough out of the box.
I might look into that mod. I heard the repetition of the dungeons is particularly rough, but I was planning to leave it because I honestly don’t really care for Bethesda Dungeons anyways. After the second dungeon my brain just defaults too “okay. When will this be over”. But It sounds like RNG extends outside of the dungeons too, so I might look into the mod
I legitimately love starfield. I thought the main story was amazing, but I’m a huge sci Fi nut.
Ive avoided spoilers of the main story but i am excited! Sci-fi is a genre i really love (even though i really should explore more of it) so I’m really excited to see more of it
I’m on my third playthrough, and there’s just so much to do and see. I loved the main plot on my first playthrough because I was focused on it, but now I’m exploring so many other things.
Not to mention I got it on launch, and there have been so many QoL changes since then.
The post launch QOL updates are giving me major No Man’s Sky vibes. Maybe it’s just because they’re both Sci-Fi though
I really enjoyed it.
Like fallout 4 and other games, I pointedly ignored building the outposts et al. I didn’t even mod the ships that much because that was a ball ache as well.
It’s just an unnecessary element to the game IMO.
Fallout 4 with the settlers of the wasteland (I think that’s the name) mod becomes a cool base management game alongside the normal fo4 stuff. It makes the whole system feel worth interacting with, in my opinion. Give it a try if you haven’t and are interested.
Rick lives. Somebody tell Maggie.
trying not to have too much of a spoiler
The game has a new game + type mechanic that allows you to grow stronger in a specific way that I won’t ruin. Unfortunately that means focusing on an outpost or series of outposts becomes somewhat pointless.
Depending on whether you care about the extra strength or not, you could either play through a few times to build up that strength, or just stick to your single game and build your outposts there.
Aside from what I wrote in the spoiler (which I hope really didn’t spoil anything) if you’re on PC I really suggest giving the Star Wars Genesis mod a try when you’re done! It’s a complete overhaul and it’s pretty damn cool!
I won’t spoil it either, but I ended up doing ng 5+ before I wanted to start over and just enjoy it from scratch.
I’ll have to give it a try if I end up enjoying it. I’m not much of a Star Wars fan outside of the prequels but it would be cool to see it with the engine
I have discovered a new love for it after previously abandoning it.
I want to enjoy the outpost building but they made it stupidly complicated.
How is it compared to Fallout 4’s settlement building? I was assuming they’d use a similar system to that
Mods couldn’t even save this game
