Starfield | Review & Discussion Thread

[Vertigo]

Play the game on newgame+ to enjoy it

The new sales pitch from the conmen

I looked into this just to see what it’s all about… honestly that should act as more of a warning. Do as much as you can before new game plus cuz I think it immediately throws you into it and resets everything mostly… or make a duplicate save or never beat campaign


Oh man can’t believe they botched it like this. This game should’ve been competing with the with newest open world giants like Elden Ring and Zelda.

They’ve should’ve just iterated on Fallout instead. At least expectations would’ve been in check.

 

[Crow]

Why not a 5? I don't agree with the game industry's trend to make 8 practically a baseline score and anything below that is crap. This game is reviewing around where Returnal landed, and that game was a legit GotY and was an incredibly great game. The scales are completely out of whack at times.

This game is bad.

And as it stands right now, if Starfield were deleted from gaming existence no one should rightfully care. So maybe it shouldn't exist.

nah hard disagree. I like Starfield so far. Only real issue i have is space travel. Chacter creation is the best one they made. You just aren't good at sculpting and their are good presets to work with. You edit pretty much everything. huge plus. Combat feels good to me. Improved version of fallout 4. im only 10 hours in.

 

[Jim Ryan]

 

[Dr Bass]

nah hard disagree. I like Starfield so far. Only real issue i have is space travel. Chacter creation is the best one they made. You just aren't good at sculpting and their are good presets to work with. You edit pretty much everything. huge plus. Combat feels good to me. Improved version of fallout 4. im only 10 hours in.

Hard disagree to your hard disagree.

Show me a good looking Starfield character with a decent haircut lol.

Combat feels good compared to what? It feels worse than any shooter I've played in 25 years. Space combat is ancient feeling. You're not even in space. You're just sitting in a skybox and have debris flying around you to make it feel like you're moving. Do you realize this was the same technique used to make you feel like you were flying in Atari games?

 

[Dr Bass]

I think it is more like how store data in chunks, then execute the data.

I have no idea what this even means.

 

[Sircaw]

So I am a few hours in. I got to new Atlantis. At least it feels like a few hours. Could have been one in all honesty.

Again, my impressions have nothing to do with the game being on Xbox. I am not interested in platform wars. I am interested in quality though, and platforms actually having fun games to play.

Getting up to New Atlantis .... these are my thoughts. Maybe some mild spoilers. I have gone into this game cold so I could go into it without knowing really anything about it.

The intro section is quite dry. It's literally you just using that mining tool we've seen inside of a mine shaft where you are doing some work with a crew. Then you find some rock that makes you see "visions", and this is what gets you started on the journey. It is nearly identical to Mass Effect and how Shepard touches the beacon and has visions he doesn't understand. Which I am sure is also used in a lot of other mediums, so absolutely nothing original there.

Then you meet up with Barrett (this scene has also been seen many times, and what's with them basically stealing the FF7 character and putting him in a space suit here? lol).

And thi sis where the first firefight happens and holy cow .... it is bad. I have not played such a poor feeling "shooter" in I don't know how long. The mechanics and feel are horrific, and the "melee" ... I wasn't even sure it was a melee the first few times I saw it, until I confirmed I was hitting people. But there is no feeling of weight or that you're actually doing anything when you fight. On top of that, it just doesn't control well. Goldeneye was a groundbreaking game in its time but going back to It, the shooting feels really clunky and old fashioned. This feels like that IMO. It's horrific.

Then you get into space and you get to "fly". Space combat, is again, horrific. You're not actually flying. The background is a like a static skybox that is around you, and the only way you can tell you're moving is with debris that is floating by, or other ships. Combat reminded me of Wing Commander on the SNES/PC from the 90s. Now I really liked those games back in the day, but I think these games have come a decent way since then. I was honestly shocked when I discovered what "flying" entailed.

The music is average. It seems to heavily rely on what you might call typical "space exploration" compositions, but it sounds like an imitation to me. Not something trying to be itself, for better or worse. "Be awed," the music might be telling me, while a giant moon floats in front of my ship that neither grows nor shrinks no matter how I move. Unfortunately I'm not buying it. The music is clearly not as good as Skyrim as the compositions feel less "authentic" and also lack the sophisticated melodic and harmonic content that Jeremy Soule seemed to always bring to the table.

The robot sidekick ... Vosco or something like that? Feels like a cross between TARS from Interstellar and ED-209 from Robocop. And as sophisticated as the robot is, it has that old 50s sci fi robot voice that gets insufferable to listen to over long stretches. Apparently in their universe they can travel via warp drive, but haven't mastered making a decent sounding synthetic voice, which is something that already exists in our world today.

The character creation is an abomination. I know this is par for the course for a lot of these games, but good luck putting together someone with a decent haircut. I'm not sure why there was no good option for a simple "buzz cut" (how I look) but there is an AWESOME option if you have a combover that is two feet long in length. Who is making these choices over there?

I think the graphics are fine. Maybe even "good" at parts, but certainly not great. Part of that is the theme is cool IMO, and it's easy to have a sci fi aesthetic that is fun. And I think rendering hard surfaces is pretty easy to make look good these days (rock outcroppings, metal ships, etc). So yeah, I don't really have complaints. And the frame rate actually seemed fine aside from a few places where it briefly seemed to freeze. But again, that stuff doesn't tend to bug me if the rest of the game is good. I care more about the overall experience. But it's nowhere close to an anything that's in the top tier PS5 league. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Another quick note. I was playing the game thinking "this feel like someone loved Interstellar and thought it would be cool to copy." Then I had a friend text later saying "Starfield really reminds me of Interstellar." It's pretty blatant IMO.

Again, I'm only at New Atlantis. It could change, but I feel like I've already kind of experienced the core of the game. And that's not changing. It's one of the biggest let downs I've ever seen so far. I'll put more time into it this weekend to see if it starts feeling interesting. I haven't even been sent on my quest yet, but what I've experienced so far indicates to me it is not worth the time it would require to complete.

I can't imagine what would have happened if this game launched a year ago.

Edit: I forgot to mention all the traveling seems to be done in menus. It doesn't even feel like a game world. It feels like a bunch of small areas glued together with loading screens.

Very interesting read and thanks for the feedback, will you be continuing with it, i read from a few sites that the start is by far the worst part of the game and does get better,

 

[Dr Bass]

If anyone can explain to me how Starfield space stuff is fundamentally different from Star Raiders in 1979, I'm all ears.

Seriously, look at what is happening in this game and compare it to how Starfield works.

 

[Yobo]

The funniest thing is how it was Sony's interest in securing time exclusivity that roped MS into spending $7 billion on trash

 

[historia]

The funniest thing is how it was Sony's interest in securing time exclusivity that roped MS into spending $7 billion on trash

Jimbo like eating turds.

 

[Jim Ryan]

 

[Gods&Monsters]

VfxVeteran says Starfield looks amazing. This is the same person that criticized every Sony game.

Game is good. Like a Bethsoft game is. I get ME vibes too. I'm not trying to intentionally break the game. I am just following the story right now. Shooting mechanics are good. I'm not sure I like the ship combat yet. I like how the ship moves but I need more time with it. Story is starting to heat up. Graphics are amazing tbh. I can tell they did a LOT of work on the graphics engine. Mods for this game will be INSANE!

 

[flaccidsnake]

Visually id say it has a similar quality as Atomic Heart. There might be better reflexions and atmospheric effectics in Starfield.

 

[Umar]

 

[Umar]

 

[Crow]

Hard disagree to your hard disagree.

Show me a good looking Starfield character with a decent haircut lol.

Combat feels good compared to what? It feels worse than any shooter I've played in 25 years. Space combat is ancient feeling. You're not even in space. You're just sitting in a skybox and have debris flying around you to make it feel like you're moving. Do you realize this was the same technique used to make you feel like you were flying in Atari games?

Their are plenty of good looking characters. and decent looking characters. Only characters that look strange are the randomly generated npcs. Thats probably what you're talking about. I play plenty of fps games. SF shooting is fine. Most reviews like the combat btw. Thats not even the issue. I agreed that i dont like space exploration.

 

[AshHunter216]

Lol, Xbox fanboys are waging all out war on IGN and Dan Stapleton for giving Starfield a 7. They argue that Dan is too biased towards Playstation and use his quote criticizing MS buying up publishers as evidence, all while ignoring Destin Legarie, also part of IGN, and all of his pro-MS antics and blatant fanboyism.

 

[Gamernyc78]

A gaf review...

My five cents, with 12.5 hours of playtime I think it's fair to give some impressions. Might be a bit of a rant because I have a lot of feelings right now.

The more I play this the more its fundamentally flawed structure becomes apparent. It is both overwhelming and deeply unsatisfying. There are just so many mindbogglingly weird or straight up bad design decisions there's a chance this game will go down the MGSV route of incredible potential completely squandered by baffling design.

This game is the anti-immersive sim.

Some things that are just insane to me:

- There is no exploration. No adventure, no sense of wonder. You go in a menu, you press a button and you fast travel via a loading screen. Flying around in space is unrewarding and useless. You don't descend on a planet, you cannot fly around on a planet. Or otherwise move around on a planet. The tile based procedurally generated areas are terrible. I landed on the moon facing Earth because I wanted to see the sights and it just rendered some random area. Earth wasn't even in view. There was a mission where I had to save a dude from a crashed ship. I was on another planet in another system, I went into the menu, selected his location, clicked to go there, I got a loading screen and it literally spawned me right next to the guy with my ship 500 meters away. No travel cinematic, no landing sequence, it instantly warped me to a completely different system next to the objective. Just dreadfully bland design.
- The game knows there is no exploration or adventure because it tries to remove travel every way it can. You can fast-travel 500 meters from your ship and be in a completely different system one loading screen later. There's no feeling of being a part of the universe, everything feels extremely videogame-y. You can literally fast-travel to the front door of the Lodge from another system.
- New Atlantis' techno utopia seems impressive at first but after the initial "ooh" and "aah" wears off it is an incredibly badly designed area. It is immense, cumbersome to navigate (no map, lmao. How do you have this huge hub area and no map), has zero redeeming qualities other than nice vistas and on a meta level has terrible technical performance with framerates going from 50 to 20.
- The dialogue system is terrible and feels like I'm playing Skyrim, only not in a good way. The way the camera is positioned, the hard cuts to people talking, the bizarre way companions look straight at you even when talking to someone else. It's a system from two generations ago with almost zero improvements. When you're in space and another ship hails you, it zooms in on the ship as if the ship is talking, lmao. Would it really kill you to add a screen to the cockpit where you see someone else talking to you? This game was in development for like 8 years, for fucks sake. Where's the immersion? I just don't understand how this happens.
- Literally every mission is a fetch quest. You go somewhere, flip a switch or shoot the place up, get some info or talk to someone to get a new location, rinse and repeat. Aggressively mediocre game design.

The way it dunks sidequests on you is hilarious. Literally every quest in New Atlantis is some random asshole walking up to me saying "hey man I heard this lady from the bar say some dumb shit but I don't care, you know how it is" and then you get a prompt to go talk to the lady. I mean, what? I just landed on this planet, I don't know any of you. What the fuck are you talking about? Every time it's "random npc conveniently says something about a situation completely unrelated to you or anything that's happening" -> "go check out this situation". Again, archaic design.

The "NASA-punk" aesthetics are amazing. The style of the game is incredibly well done. It feels futuristic yet contemporary. The music is good but forgettable. The voice acting is solid, albeit a bit over the top at times. Combat is decent.

There are a lot of mechanics in place that give an illusion of depth, but there really isn't any. You fast-travel from location to location, one destination to another. The travel in between is completely removed.

It feels like I'm playing a game that should've been released 8 years ago. This doesn't feel good, man. Imagine playing Skyrim and your only option was to fast travel from objective to objective. If you remove the journey, how much of the game is actually left, truly

 

[John Elden Ring]

So I am a few hours in. I got to new Atlantis. At least it feels like a few hours. Could have been one in all honesty.

Again, my impressions have nothing to do with the game being on Xbox. I am not interested in platform wars. I am interested in quality though, and platforms actually having fun games to play.

Getting up to New Atlantis .... these are my thoughts. Maybe some mild spoilers. I have gone into this game cold so I could go into it without knowing really anything about it.

The intro section is quite dry. It's literally you just using that mining tool we've seen inside of a mine shaft where you are doing some work with a crew. Then you find some rock that makes you see "visions", and this is what gets you started on the journey. It is nearly identical to Mass Effect and how Shepard touches the beacon and has visions he doesn't understand. Which I am sure is also used in a lot of other mediums, so absolutely nothing original there.

Then you meet up with Barrett (this scene has also been seen many times, and what's with them basically stealing the FF7 character and putting him in a space suit here? lol).

And thi sis where the first firefight happens and holy cow .... it is bad. I have not played such a poor feeling "shooter" in I don't know how long. The mechanics and feel are horrific, and the "melee" ... I wasn't even sure it was a melee the first few times I saw it, until I confirmed I was hitting people. But there is no feeling of weight or that you're actually doing anything when you fight. On top of that, it just doesn't control well. Goldeneye was a groundbreaking game in its time but going back to It, the shooting feels really clunky and old fashioned. This feels like that IMO. It's horrific.

Then you get into space and you get to "fly". Space combat, is again, horrific. You're not actually flying. The background is a like a static skybox that is around you, and the only way you can tell you're moving is with debris that is floating by, or other ships. Combat reminded me of Wing Commander on the SNES/PC from the 90s. Now I really liked those games back in the day, but I think these games have come a decent way since then. I was honestly shocked when I discovered what "flying" entailed.

The music is average. It seems to heavily rely on what you might call typical "space exploration" compositions, but it sounds like an imitation to me. Not something trying to be itself, for better or worse. "Be awed," the music might be telling me, while a giant moon floats in front of my ship that neither grows nor shrinks no matter how I move. Unfortunately I'm not buying it. The music is clearly not as good as Skyrim as the compositions feel less "authentic" and also lack the sophisticated melodic and harmonic content that Jeremy Soule seemed to always bring to the table.

The robot sidekick ... Vosco or something like that? Feels like a cross between TARS from Interstellar and ED-209 from Robocop. And as sophisticated as the robot is, it has that old 50s sci fi robot voice that gets insufferable to listen to over long stretches. Apparently in their universe they can travel via warp drive, but haven't mastered making a decent sounding synthetic voice, which is something that already exists in our world today.

The character creation is an abomination. I know this is par for the course for a lot of these games, but good luck putting together someone with a decent haircut. I'm not sure why there was no good option for a simple "buzz cut" (how I look) but there is an AWESOME option if you have a combover that is two feet long in length. Who is making these choices over there?

I think the graphics are fine. Maybe even "good" at parts, but certainly not great. Part of that is the theme is cool IMO, and it's easy to have a sci fi aesthetic that is fun. And I think rendering hard surfaces is pretty easy to make look good these days (rock outcroppings, metal ships, etc). So yeah, I don't really have complaints. And the frame rate actually seemed fine aside from a few places where it briefly seemed to freeze. But again, that stuff doesn't tend to bug me if the rest of the game is good. I care more about the overall experience. But it's nowhere close to an anything that's in the top tier PS5 league. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Another quick note. I was playing the game thinking "this feel like someone loved Interstellar and thought it would be cool to copy." Then I had a friend text later saying "Starfield really reminds me of Interstellar." It's pretty blatant IMO.

Again, I'm only at New Atlantis. It could change, but I feel like I've already kind of experienced the core of the game. And that's not changing. It's one of the biggest let downs I've ever seen so far. I'll put more time into it this weekend to see if it starts feeling interesting. I haven't even been sent on my quest yet, but what I've experienced so far indicates to me it is not worth the time it would require to complete.

I can't imagine what would have happened if this game launched a year ago.

Edit: I forgot to mention all the traveling seems to be done in menus. It doesn't even feel like a game world. It feels like a bunch of small areas glued together with loading screens.

Pretty much this.

Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, they all had a lot of lot screens,

But Starfield nails the cake, there are so many loading screens it starts to become frustrating.

I can see why they forced the SSD, can you imagine playing this on an HDD?

 

[Bodycount611]

Metacritic and Xbox are gaming the metacritic system.

Please retweet to spread awareness.



Xbox is suppressing negative reviews from being added.

IGN and GS are worth much more than the average site on MC, so when added, IGN and GS's 7's will dip Starflop's score by 2 points thereabouts.

Evil bastards...

 

[anonpuffs]

A gaf review...

My five cents, with 12.5 hours of playtime I think it's fair to give some impressions. Might be a bit of a rant because I have a lot of feelings right now.

The more I play this the more its fundamentally flawed structure becomes apparent. It is both overwhelming and deeply unsatisfying. There are just so many mindbogglingly weird or straight up bad design decisions there's a chance this game will go down the MGSV route of incredible potential completely squandered by baffling design.

This game is the anti-immersive sim.

Some things that are just insane to me:

- There is no exploration. No adventure, no sense of wonder. You go in a menu, you press a button and you fast travel via a loading screen. Flying around in space is unrewarding and useless. You don't descend on a planet, you cannot fly around on a planet. Or otherwise move around on a planet. The tile based procedurally generated areas are terrible. I landed on the moon facing Earth because I wanted to see the sights and it just rendered some random area. Earth wasn't even in view. There was a mission where I had to save a dude from a crashed ship. I was on another planet in another system, I went into the menu, selected his location, clicked to go there, I got a loading screen and it literally spawned me right next to the guy with my ship 500 meters away. No travel cinematic, no landing sequence, it instantly warped me to a completely different system next to the objective. Just dreadfully bland design.
- The game knows there is no exploration or adventure because it tries to remove travel every way it can. You can fast-travel 500 meters from your ship and be in a completely different system one loading screen later. There's no feeling of being a part of the universe, everything feels extremely videogame-y. You can literally fast-travel to the front door of the Lodge from another system.
- New Atlantis' techno utopia seems impressive at first but after the initial "ooh" and "aah" wears off it is an incredibly badly designed area. It is immense, cumbersome to navigate (no map, lmao. How do you have this huge hub area and no map), has zero redeeming qualities other than nice vistas and on a meta level has terrible technical performance with framerates going from 50 to 20.
- The dialogue system is terrible and feels like I'm playing Skyrim, only not in a good way. The way the camera is positioned, the hard cuts to people talking, the bizarre way companions look straight at you even when talking to someone else. It's a system from two generations ago with almost zero improvements. When you're in space and another ship hails you, it zooms in on the ship as if the ship is talking, lmao. Would it really kill you to add a screen to the cockpit where you see someone else talking to you? This game was in development for like 8 years, for fucks sake. Where's the immersion? I just don't understand how this happens.
- Literally every mission is a fetch quest. You go somewhere, flip a switch or shoot the place up, get some info or talk to someone to get a new location, rinse and repeat. Aggressively mediocre game design.

The way it dunks sidequests on you is hilarious. Literally every quest in New Atlantis is some random asshole walking up to me saying "hey man I heard this lady from the bar say some dumb shit but I don't care, you know how it is" and then you get a prompt to go talk to the lady. I mean, what? I just landed on this planet, I don't know any of you. What the fuck are you talking about? Every time it's "random npc conveniently says something about a situation completely unrelated to you or anything that's happening" -> "go check out this situation". Again, archaic design.

The "NASA-punk" aesthetics are amazing. The style of the game is incredibly well done. It feels futuristic yet contemporary. The music is good but forgettable. The voice acting is solid, albeit a bit over the top at times. Combat is decent.

There are a lot of mechanics in place that give an illusion of depth, but there really isn't any. You fast-travel from location to location, one destination to another. The travel in between is completely removed.

It feels like I'm playing a game that should've been released 8 years ago. This doesn't feel good, man. Imagine playing Skyrim and your only option was to fast travel from objective to objective. If you remove the journey, how much of the game is actually left, truly

Wait, so it can track where all the sandwiches are but can't track the fucking location of the planet (earth) when you go to the moon?

Fucking LOL