Starfield - A Skeptical Review

Starfield – A Skeptical Review starfield aims to be the most ambitious and complex Adventure Bethesda game studios has ever created with over a thousand planets to explore dozens and dozens of star systems and theoretically Limitless, areas to explore thanks to their new procedural Tech Starfield is no doubt. A massive game but does it actually shake the concerns that many of us Skeptics had leading up to its launch namely is it polished and bug-free does the procedural Tech avoid the pitfalls of repetitive. And reused locations can the creation engine actually provide the ambitious game a strong. Foundation and does the lack of vehicles and in-atmosphere flight harm the exploration on the planet’s surfaces well as always. The answer is kind of complicated after, finishing the main story completing the faction quest lines customizing the crap out of my ships building multiple bases buying. Apartments experimenting in New Game Plus and exploring random planets at length I’m left conflicted I think it is. The best game that Bethesda game Studios has ever made in a lot of ways but in other ways it feels painfully outdated and it also feels like they’ve bitten. Off a lot more than they could be reasonably expected to chew but before we. Get into details it’s crucial to understand what Starfield is and what it isn’t because I’ve seen online huge misrepresentations and overhyped expectations with this game again this is why skepticism for any game is, important. Because it protects you from hype which can lead to false expectations and people thinking that starfield’s going to be one, thing when it’s actually something very very different while it’s perhaps no surprise to some that Starfield fails to compete, with its contemporary space sims like no man’s Sky Star Citizen and Elite dangerous among others for some I think this will come as a shock whether that’s because of vague statements, by Todd Howard and other developers or vague marketing materials or simple over hyped expectations it’s crucial to understand that Starfield is nothing, like no man’s sky or Star Citizen other than being set in space and them. Giving you a spaceship can walk around in between fast traveling to. Different locations rather it plays like a much bigger version of the outer worlds from obsidian even. Down to little details like the change from The Cinematic camera we had with Fallout 4 to the straight on camera that we have in Starfield something which I personally find to be a, major downgrade Starfield is not about exploring space freely as a space pirate or mercenary it’s about fast traveling, to locations and having conversations with people that’s not, necessarily a bad thing but it’s important to understand what this game actually is once you go into the game with leveled expectations I think you can have a really good time after about 15 hours, I was convinced that this was the best game that bgs has ever made. Better than any Elder Scrolls or Fallout game and I mean, that the gun play is significantly improved over what we saw in the trailers the game also seems to be fairly well optimized on PC as long as you’re running with fsr2 enabled something, you have to put up with since the frames are pretty low without it, and sense there’s no dlss support for some nonsensical reason the ship customization is super. Cool as well and is probably my favorite part of the entire game stealing enemy ships is a great way to start this process and since. Reselling them turns such a tiny profit effectively prohibiting the, practice of stealing ships just for resale I often just stole a ship and then customized the crap out of them. To turn them into a massive cargo ship or a small and agile fighter or a gigantic Battleship and again. This is probably my favorite part of the game it’s really intuitive and I can only imagine how crazy the mods are going to get with. This the base building and settlement system is pretty cool too though it should be noted you can only really get into it after. 50 to 60 hours since it requires an insane number of resources and, most of those resources have to be collected on Barren planets where you’re simply running around with your scanner pulled up looking for small basketball sized, Rock deposits to extract with your mining beam if you are excited for the base building I just need you to understand that it is a very, very late game system and it requires you to really grind to get the. Materials necessary to actually engage with it the voice acting in writing is really really well done on the conversational level though I do have. Some strong feelings, about the main story and some of the broader themes but we’ll get into that later and perhaps the most obvious point. To bring up is the sheer scale of Starfield it is massive and you really have to admire. Bethesda’s commitment to ambitious game design I know Todd gets a lot of flack because he tends to over promise with his games and whether that over promising is born out of intentional deception, aiming to sell you on a game that he knows is not what he’s promising. Or if it’s just excitement and vague language I’m not really sure that’s the point right now the point is that these games are gigantic, and I have no doubt that some people are going to be playing Star field for hundreds upon hundreds of hours and will likely, still have planets and systems left unexplored after all that time the game really is that big however with. All of these solid elements you have, to wonder if Bethesda bit off a bit more than they could chew were they too ambitious well unfortunately I feel they. Were the more I played Starfield the more I saw behind the curtain and realized that much of the scope and scale, of this game is nothing more than an illusion it’s less and less magical the more you engage with it since there are many problems that. Grow tiring the more you play all of this is compounded with bugs and broken quests that are mostly. Concentrated in the late hours of the game it’s clear that they focused their polish on the first. 20 hours or so which makes sense because that’s where.