Some of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design - but that’s not boring, Bethesda insists
“When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored."
To be fair, most of the cosmos in real life is literally empty. However, realism is overrated. The whole reason we play video games is because real life sucks.
I mean, some of us play sci-fi games because we want to experience the reality that's still out of reach to us.
Not Bethesda products, of course, but, you know. Games.
Unless it's a driving game. Arcade-style racers just aren't fun. You barely have to use the brakes (if at all), and the AI cheats. I much rather play a racing sim.
Otherwise I agree.
I have a sim race setup in my living room and play ACC and compete in iracing events. That being said, you're not going to tell me Burnout Paradise isn't fun. It serves a purpose. I don't go into it looking for ACC level brake temperatures or tire wear, i go into it to drive 150mph around corners and smash into other cars.
arcade style racers just aren't fun
Sad trackmania noises
And like of we were space faring, you think that shit wouldn't be capitalized on?? If there was a dollar to make on it someone would be there, and that alone opens so many possibilities for world building
This borders upon one of my favorite topics actually - there ARE resources up there, which WOULD be valuable, but the cost of getting machinery and equipment up there is literally astronomical. Little known in public circles is the additional (and also enormous) cost of getting shit back down safely.
In order to be cost effective, the stuff we put into space would need to stay there. Asteroid mining is only better than break-even in terms of resources if it DOESN'T come back to earth! For instance, if we had an orbital (or lunar) habitat for refining and manufacturing, where an asteroid capture and retrieval vehicle can be built, fueled, and launched, and then return to, ONLY THEN would it bring back more useful minerals, chemical compounds, and other materials than it would take to launch...
... because the simple fact is that it takes a shit ton of energy to leave Earth's gravity well and destroys a lot of resources in terms of making (and surviving) that journey.
And then instead of building stuff on earth that consume an order of magnitude more than their construction in just transit, we can build it ALREADY UP THERE. That brings us to the last problem, though:
It's no use to any person except someone who is already up there, too.
I'm not even talking about money cost here. Money has no point here until there are humans who want things and need a means by which to measure those wants against the context of what productive capacity is available, represent the magnitude of their want, and represent the transfer of material goods to satisfy those wants. AKA respectively a store of value, unit of account, and medium exchange--the definition of currency.
Space will only be profitable in space.
Yeah, a lot of people play video games to extend their hobbies.
I spent 20 hours exploring one solar system alone. Yea some planets are empty. Not many though. The complaints so far are really shallow.
Man you can spend so much time digging through a base to find neat shit and story
shallow isn't what I'd call these complaints, I'd call them childish. I'm having a ton of fun
Right? There's so effing much to do. I'm about to dive into building my first outpost and I've already put in 30 hours into the game in the first 3 star systems without tackling more than a couple side quests. Doing the alben quest line right now and it's so much fun.
Someone said go play NMS because it's better? Ffs no it's not.
I don't get any of the complaints yet. Except for the local map. Wtf were they thinking. I thought it was a bug. And maybe the item menus. I need to see more.
thIS gAme iS lIke a pUdDle cUz itS SHalLOw
I've heard this phrase, or iterations of it, so many times over the years, especially in regards to space games, that I'm convinced the people spewing it constantly have absolutely no idea what a deep space game actually is. I think they're just there to complain regardless of how much depth there is.
Yeah.. People are complaining about features of a game they already knew existed.
The people having fun aren't the ones writing these knee-jerk critiques. They're the ones engrossed in the game atm and their opinions will be better reflected once they're done.
There's a lot of reason for the haters to hate on this one. Bethesda game, no space travel like NMS, no PS5 release. All things which were either a given or should have otherwise been obvious, but still, clicks are clicks and so any reason to hate is reason enough.
After 30 hours, I've honestly seen no reason to upgrade my ship. It's just a speed bump to fast travel.
And the main critique I have is that there isn't any real discovery. When you go to most of the new planets, you're given one to three points of interest, you land there, and see an "abandoned [something]" overrun with enemies. You clear them out, generally get nothing of value, then move on. It's quite repetitive gameplay.
Outside of following quest lines, there's not much reason to explore.
I kinda feel like I'm just passing time, but not really having fun. Still, it's one of those games that I don't want to stop playing because I do actually want to see where the main story goes.
I really don't think the empty planets are the problem. Space Engineers has empty planets. Stationeers has empty planets. But they have interesting things to do on those empty planets. Problems to solve. Systems to build and improve.
Everything in Starfield feels like more clicking through (horribly outdated) menus and inventory screens. Between those and the loading screens, the only time the game is really fun is when you're shooting pirates. But there are games that do that part much much better.
I think that's how I'd summarize the whole game: lots of things to do but none of it has any depth and everything has been done much better elsewhere.
When they said this would be hard sci-fi, I actually imagined myself piloting an actual space ship and doing astronaut things, not a glorified magic plane.
If someone is looking for what Starfield offers but better, here are my recommendations at a fraction of cost:
Maybe the issue is that this game, like NMS before, tried to be everything to everyone and didn't develop towards something meaningful.
Hopefully, like NMS will find its soul and develop into something worth playing. (IMO)
EDIT: This is a stealthy way of getting recommendations ;)
Eve Online for the cutthroat privateer life.
If you like these sorts of games (particularly games like Titanfall and Subnautica, or DRG), you might really like Elite Dangerous. Has a big learning curve, but it's a "once every decade or two" game when it comes to scratching a deep deep Sci fi itch. 1:1* milky way, set thousands of years in the future, with a variety of ships and missions,with excellent HOTAS and VR support. Co-op up to five people, even more if you are in a public server. FPS game with a variety of vehicles, from small cars to aircraft carriers 4x the length of the burj Khalifa.
Privateering, but better: Star traders: Frontiers (Though not 3D).
Also Endless Sky, which is free
Exploration and Space combat: Endless Space 2. I have my share of problems with that game but it's effectively Civilization In Space. You can explore star systems, and you can fight space pirates.
Thanks for the recommendations! I'll look into these, and already have dipped my feet into stuff like Everspace 2 and Outer Wilds. Some of these are on Xbox Game Pass as well, which is cool.
I think for me everything doesn't feel connected, to go anywhere it's always a loading screen. It is very clearly a limitation of their engine, but it just makes everything feel disconnected.
To boldly load where no one has loaded before
I think this is my issue too. Oblivion and Skryim had loading screens sure, but everything felt connected and purposeful - the whole spaceship mechanic can be entirely skipped with fast travel and just leaves everything so disconnected.
I'm actually curious how it would feel if it went Half-Life 2's route; keep the transitions in first-person view, and put up loading indicators when needed, but at least let people see/feel the transition to the next thing.
It probably would have done a lot if, after selecting a nav point to go to, you actually pushed a "Enter hyperspace" throttle on the dash, and then got a loading screen with the stars flying past.
Bethesda games are puddles of water: wide with content, but completely shallow in depth.
They didn't used to be though, which is why it's disappointing.
I can't wait for a small studio to license their platform and make star New Vegas
Everything in Starfield feels like more clicking through (horribly outdated) menus and inventory screens. Between those and the loading screens, the only time the game is really fun is when you're shooting pirates. But there are games that do that part much much better.
This is just a summary of modern Bethesda games in a nutshell, except forgetting to mention bugs as well.
I really don't know what people where expecting with Starfield
No it really isn't. In all prior Bethesda games you could get from any place in the world to any other just by walking and maybe some loading screens if you're going from/to a city or dungeon. In Starfield you have to use menus and loading screens to get from most places to most other places.
Also, Starfield places more emphasis on amassing items due to having resources etc than the previous-worst Fallout 4, and all prior Bethesda games didn't have resources to manage, just items.
So no, while Starfield is very much like previous Bethesda games, many flaws and issues are exacerbated.
I could understand expecting improvements before they actually showed the game off; but after the very first gameplay reveal, it should have been pretty obvious to anyone familiar with BGS that it was going to be the same as Skyrim and Fallout 4, but with a different aesthetic and theme.
Everything Starfield does to blow my expectations is that it's surprisingly stable and bug free. I'm playing it with a 1660 Super and it's actually playable (I mean, only 30 fps when outside); the card isn't even supported! Fallout 4 wasn't even playable at launch (single digit fps when anywhere near Boston) and I had the recommended specs for it.
That's at least a step up from No Man's Sky, which promised unexplored universes. It then delivered every planet already having a base of at least one alien race.
At this point I would welcome literal empty planets.
That did actually get fixed later on (like in 2018) - there's now undiscovered systems that you can stumble across, along with abandoned systems. Can kinda see why it took a while to get added - undiscovered systems are kinda...boring.
The sentinels are there, but that's because they're basically semi-divine beings and seperate from everything
It doesn't fix the main problem I have with it. There's no magic to finding a new species of plant or animal because every other system has like 30 of them per planet/moon. Like whats the point of naming anything when you'll find something near identical to it in an hour?
I really can’t decide if I agree or not. Only had a chance to play 4 hours or so. My main impression so far is the menus are clunky and I hate how reliant travel is on the menu system. Doesn’t feel like I’m actually piloting anything
My argument for why landing on the moon wasn't boring is they actually got to pilot the ship, landing it safely on the surface. If the astronauts had a cut scene where they were suddenly landing safely just so they could then fast travel home, having nothing to do on the surface would've been far more of an issue.
"We choose to go to the Moon in this game and do the other things, not because they are easy, but to watch the cutscene"
I thought that fast-travel-via-menu was clunky too after 4 hours. Then I realized you don't need to use the menus to fast travel, it's just perhaps clunkier to do so from your cockpit. Aim at a planet, go into scan mode, then tap A and hold X (on controller). Here's a video demoing it.
There are several less than intuitive features in the game that I'm slowing discovering by paying more attention to the prompts at the bottom of the screen. I may have missed a tooltip but it seems this is a very common one based on negative feedback.
The person that made FallUI (a solid UI mod for Fallout 4 that fixes inventory management amd other stuff) released a mod for Starfield's inventory last night.
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/773?tab=description
Yea that’s my main problem so far, I don’t understand how NMS and space engineers both allow seamless travel from space to atmosphere but this major studio game forces me to open up the map and select land. Hopefully a mod fixes it because this is pretty atrocious for $70
It's an engine limitation. The Engine that Bethesda holds onto with an iron fist is what hampers their games.
However, the opposite side of the coin is, that it makes them super easy to modify, so people can make their own additions. Because Starfield is using the same engine as Skyrim and Fallout 4.
I haven't played NMS, but watched a lot of videos regarding simulating planets, atmosphere (and transitioning to-from space) around the time it was hyped, and assumed that's what NMS is doing. Which is (maybe? I haven't played) why you can walk around the whole planet, and take off and turn around and see that same planet from space without loading, etc.
NMS as I understand it is a simulation first, sandbox second.
Starfield sounds like Spacerim if anything, with instanced planets that are separate from space. At ground level, planets are just flat planes and you only explore a small, generated chunk at one loaded instance. It's not actually a spherical planet when on the ground.
4 hours is not enough time to get a sense of it.
I'm pretty blown away, while at the same time recognizing why the first 15 hours are disappointing a lot of people.
In Skyrim, you see on the map something interesting and then start heading there discovering things along the way.
In Fallout, maybe you see a tower of a building or a bridge.
In this game, everything is 'hidden' behind navigation screens.
It's probably the largest distribution of open world content across an open world to date, but it feels very much like you are walking around with blinders on.
But a lot of the issues I had early on were with approaching it like it was a Skyrim or a Fallout, as a map to be fully explored, looking in every crate or looting every enemy, etc.
The entire paradigm of the game is different from anything I've played before.
Space is a backdrop for the establishment of a living RPG universe. It throws in radiant system stuff for small missions to pick up credits here and there if you like, and tons of handcrafted side quest distractions.
It's a brilliant play by Bethesda particularly for Microsoft, as this is effectively a live service single player game, that subscribers to GamePass will continue to stay playing for months. The opportunities for additional content being worked into it is literally endless.
The problem is that it's very hard to communicate that scale and scope in the first few hours. So you are running around a more linear tutorial phase without the mystery and enticing that a viewable open world delivers.
It's pretty wild to see the shift from players of "this is disappointing" to "this is incredible" as the number of hours in the game increases.
I actually wonder in terms of the ratings what the actual playtime was for each review relative to the score.
It might not be a game for everyone, but it's probably more of a game for everyone than any previous Bethesda RPG. It just takes a while to find that scope for any given player.
Some of the criticisms are ridiculous though. Like I saw a new piece that actually claimed navigating the universe would be more fun if it worked like Elite: Dangerous, which it said was immersive and quick with its FSD.
I can just imagine having a quest at Hutton Orbital (takes an hour and a half real time) and watching the reviews had they needed to actually leg it to the destination.
It is its own thing.
"Everyone's concerned that empty planets are going to be boring. But when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored."
Um, yeah, because going to the moon was a novel thing in 1969. It isn't 360 years later. Reminds me of the Futurama pilot when Fry was excited to go to the moon and it was just another boring trip for everyone else.
Also, they actually went to the moon, not play a game where they went to the moon, being on an empty moon would be way more thrilling of an experience than playing a video game.
It's true, some of them ARE empty by design...but the problem is, a world with life on it in Starfield is barely more interesting than the barren rock. It is still almost ALL randomly generated, there just happens to be more wildlife to scan while you run across the boring landscape, and maybe an animal will try to kill you.
Oh, and the pointless radiant quest you get will be from a solar farm on the nice planet, instead of a mining platform on the barren one. There is very little difference.
I do not understand Bethesda's insistence on "Radiant" quests.
I don't necessarily mind them, but they seem to be out of control in this one. I ran from the UC place in Atlantis to my ship, landed on Mars, ran into the town to a quest giver, and when I opened my map next, I had dots ALL OVER IT.
I popped open my quest log, and there were 11 random quests I didn't even realize I had hoovered up just running from location to location. The thing that kind of bothers me about it is that that's more than double the amount of quests I had intentionally picked up.
It's okay if I explore and uncover some of these myself, Todd.
Ugh, they are bringing back radiant quests? Did they learn nothing from Skyrim? Bare minimum, radiant quests have to be BETTER than Deep Rock Galactic missions. But better to just not have them at all, a la Baldur's Gate 3.
Hey thanks to radiant quests I now know that there is "wildlife" on Luna. Isn't that awesome?!
It doesn't matter if you are on Jemison right next to New Atlantis, the capital of the universe, or on some random moon in nowhere, you'll get the same abandoned buildings with spacers/pirates/mercenaries in them. And literally zero of them will have any sort of story or writing attached to them. Walking around on random planets is unbelievably repetitive.
I just played two hours and called it quits as I was walking, jumping, and hovering in "mid air" on Luna. No Sun to see, but the Luna Surface was .... illuminated and the features threw somehow shadows? Where is the light coming from? Why is there no conversation of moment? This is truly Skyrim in space.
I feel like Starfield should have removed the space travel mechanics. It could instead have opted for Mass Effect style travel menu..
Also, they could have gone for a handful of highly detailed planets.
I think the most fun I've had has been the spaceship building. I've only done a bit of space combat, but the spaceship builder while not perfect (like the inability to rotate parts) I quite liked.
If it was boring, nobody would want to visit the Moon or Mars IRL, and yet... People do want to do that. 🤷🏻♂️
Of course, in the game even the "empty" planets are not actually empty. There are plenty of POIs to find from wrecked spaceships to clandestine bases to naturally forming caves. You just can't find them without landing and walking around. Sometimes for hours, because the planet is huge and you can only explore it on foot.
You understand there are scientific pursuits on mars and the moon IRL that don’t translate to Starfield in any shape or form, right?
That's what my entire second paragraph is for.
Outer Wilds had a few planets but it was still fun
The environmental storytelling was really good.
Yep. It was because Outer Wilds' planets were all hand-crafted. There are barren portions of each of them, but that just exists to showcase the parts with people, ruins and clues on them.
Insist all you want, Bethesda, it doesn't make it true
I purchased this game last week but I have not had a chance to play yet. Will Xbox/Microsoft refund my purchase? These reviews are making it pretty clear that I don’t want to play this game.
Maybe play the game yourself and draw your own opinions?
Honestly, play it for yourself. People love to hate.
I'm loving the game and am over 50 hours in.
Then why did you buy it lol
You should ask xbox/Microsoft about their refund policy.
Dude don't listen to these shmucks. I've had no expectations and this is easily one of my favorite games I've played in a long time. Everything is amazing and beautiful. It's stunning. If you liked skyrim and fallout you'll love this game.
There's going to be a few tweaks needed with mods (local maps and better menus) but other than that you can't ask for much more. This game is immaculate. People complain and then say there's more depth in no man's sky lol
Yeah, I was just able to get about 3 hours of gameplay yesterday. Here are my observations so far.
Combat is excellent for a Bethesda game. I’ve done the flight tutorial, showed a lot of promise until I found out you cannot control the ship’s approach or landing on the planet. I can only pick a predetermined spot to land on. That’s a bummer. Maybe later in the game I’ll have more control of the ship.
Everything has to load. I don’t understand why except others have mentioned it is a limitation of the engine. So be it. The constant loading screens break the immersion for me.
The ship and parts of the game feel like a rip off of NMS and Elite Dangerous. Specifically the ship system management.
The visuals are excellent.
The beginning of the story seemed kind of weak. I touch a piece of metal, blackout and then this complete stranger just hands over his ship.
However, I’ve been made aware that the first 15 hours or so of gameplay are tedious, so, I’ll keep at it in hopes that things get better.
I am also well aware that playing this game 2 hours at a time doesn’t help. Unfortunately, that’s the time I have. So I should reach the 15 hour mark in about a week or two.