Starfield Thread - now with Shattered Space horror expansion

[Just Locus]

Starfield >>> Skyrim

"Yes, eating paste is way better than eating crayons."

 

[Lemming42]

Thinking about it, I wonder if Bethesda felt pressured to make another open world game when really they wanted to make something a bit more constrained this time around. The open world in Starfield is the procgen planets, which are utterly worthless. All the effort seems to have gone onto the faction quests. Even the sidequests in the cities are very low effort; quite literally all their care seems to have gone into the faction quests which, accordingly, are the only part people have enjoyed.

They could have made a somewhat more traditional, linear FPS game, maybe with Deus Ex style open-ish city hubs to shake things up. Start the player in Akila as a ranger recruit, then at the end of that questline, have them for some manufactured bullshit reason go to join the United Colonies (as a "representative" or some crap like that). Sprinkle the Crimson Fleet quests in during the regular United Colonies quests. A couple of the more interesting sidequests (like the colony ship) could feature too. You could still have your choice of companion for each mission, so Sarah and Sam and whoever could still feature. Have a workshop on the player's ship (which they return to between missions) so weapon upgrades and such can still be part of the game.

The game has some good shootouts and setpieces (the battle at the end of the rangers questline is very good for example, as is the escape from the exploding treasure ship in the CF quests) and would have worked fine as an FPS game like this. It feels like that's essentially what the game is, it's just been awkwardly shoved inside the hollowed-out shell of a "Bethesda game" and so the content is arbitrarily and annoyingly hidden from the player until they walk around some soulless empty open-world areas first.

We might be coming at it from the wrong angle when we ask "how can mods enhance the procgen shit?". Instead, maybe we should be asking "how can we mod out all the fluff and filler and make it easier for players to access the good parts?". I don't want to replay the game right now as it is but I'd probably happily give it another run-through if it was a tight, 10 - 12 hour FPS game that only featured the faction questlines and none of the chaff.

 

[NecroLord]

Say what you will about Skyrim, but it had a rather beautiful nordic theme and aesthetic. Mountains, snow, tundras, ice.
Morrowind had swamps, a friggin volcano, ash storms, and even the Solstheim island (Bloodmoon expansion).
Each game in the series had a distinct culture. Arena was the experiment (and had pretty much the whole of Tamriel). Daggerfall had the Bretons and their constant court intrigue and politicking. Morrowind is arguably one of the most unique and distinct games in the series. Oblivion had rather bland typical fantasy locations. Skyrim was norse/nordic.

 

[vitellus]

Starfield >>> Skyrim

"Yes, eating paste is way better than eating crayons."

if it was a tight, 10 - 12 hour FPS game that only featured the faction questlines and none of the chaff.

"this shit stew has great pieces of corn, and would be good, if it weren't for all this shit."

 

[Lemming42]

"this shit stew has great pieces of corn, and would be good, if it weren't for all this shit."

New to videogames?

 

[vitellus]

"this shit stew has great pieces of corn, and would be good, if it weren't for all this shit."

New to videogames?

unfortunately not, i've been sifting for nuggets for so long even the nuggets are nothing more than clever turds half the time, i'm just bored enough nowadays to gripe about it.

i don't participate in much of the aaa shit until it's a few years old but it's been fun to watch the starfield drama though. it's about what should have, in hindsight, been expected. an apparent disjointed mess of fast travel and a cast of npcs consisting of an uncanny valley of dolls. all flash, no substance.

 

[darkpatriot]

After I finally completed a playthrough I feel comfortable saying there is as much or more content than any previous Bethesda games.

How so? There is the main Constelation questline, 4 faction questlines, a couple of questlines in cities (like the Akila one about predators or New Atlantis about a tree) and a number of minor missions, which aren't really well developed, mostly fetch quests. Oh, and some random encounters. Outside of that it's mostly board missions, which are radiant quests.

i'm nearing 76 hours and the final mission of the game and feel like I've done 95% of the handcrafted content (while lacking the patience/willpower to continue searching for the remaining 5%) of which only UFC and Crimson Fleet quests were actually good. Oh, and this one mission in the main questline where you explore a reseach station jumping between its two versions in parallel realities. That was cool too.

I remember Morrowind and Skyrim having much more content. And at least Morrowind had quests and story of higher quality too.

And it is all handcrafted (unfortunately, a lost opportunity to really lean into procgen).

The problem with procgen is it is very soulless and unrewarding. Each time I found some quest dispenser starting to give me randomized radiant quests in procgen locations I always bid him farewell.

Spoilers as it gives information on locations, but there are a lot. As I skimmed through the list I even saw some I never had encountered during my first playthrough.

https://starfieldwiki.net/wiki/Starfield:Places

And there is also a significant number of random or fixed space encounters which aren't listed as places on that list. Some of which are quests or miniquests in their own right.

A main quest, about 4 faction quest lines, a small number of significant side quests, companion quests, and then more random fetch quests describes every Bethesda game, including Skyrim. Which is my point, the type of content and quantity of such content is about the same for Starfield as every other Bethesda game. But people are acting as if Starfield somehow has much less content than other Bethesda games.

All the radiant type random quests are on top of that, they don't replace the hand crafted content.

And for Starfield, I would also give the edge in game systems to interact with over Skyrim and previous bethesda games. I was able to spend at least 10 hours of my playthrough (maybe more) tinkering with different ship options. Equipment customization was also more in depth than Skyrm and previous games, but basically the same as Fallout 4. And I didn't do much with settlement building my first playthrough, but I am still interested in trying it out and may well have another 10 to 20 hours of content there as it seems to be more meaty/significant than FO4 settlement building.


The difference with Starfield and other Bethesda games seems to be that they added in more random quests as well as randomly placed generic dungeons and those are more prominently placed in the gameplay experience (although still entirely optional). So a lot of people seem to think that Starfield replaced the more crafted content with the random quests even though it was actually just added on top of it.

 

[Lemming42]

The difference with Starfield and other Bethesda games seems to be that they added in more random quests as well as randomly placed generic dungeons and those are more prominently placed in the gameplay experience (although still entirely optional). So a lot of people seem to think that Starfield replaced the more crafted content with the random quests even though it was actually just added on top of it.

This is true but perhaps the issue is that when the radiant/procgen stuff was added on top, it didn't merely sit alongside the worthwhile content, but actually buried and obscured it. There's so much radiant shit and it's so empty (as was their design goal, apparently) that it's actively challenging to sift through to find things that the game actually wants you to do.

The worst part is that the number of "Civilian Outpost" locations with nameless NPCs who offer radiant quests is so high that you're never actually sure whether you've found something worthwhile or not. The Eleos Retreat is a cool location with a couple likeable characters and a solid quest, but I very nearly flew past it after mistaking it for the 800th radiant outpost. The fragmented nature of everything also doesn't help - when you find a memorable location in MW/OB/Fo3/Skyrim, you have a sense of where you are and how you got there and the journey you took, but in Starfield, you basically just teleport to random planets until you find some heavily-isolated content, which makes it less memorable and harder to conceptualise as part of a continuous adventure.

Maybe one of the best mods for the game in its current state would be a quest tracker that tells you exactly where to go to find things worth doing (eg this useful one for Oblivion).

 

[Just Locus]

[...] it didn't merely sit alongside the worthwhile content, but actually buried and obscured it. There's so much radiant shit and it's so empty (as was their design goal, apparently) that it's actively challenging to sift through to find things that the game actually wants you to do. [...]

This can apply to the radiant quests present in Skyrim and Fallout 4 - where faction questlines will come to an abrupt stop with faction members telling you to go do some mundane fetch quest that easily tricks you into thinking it's a handmade quest, not only because it's thrusted in the middle of a questline that is made up of hand-made quests but because the average side quest in most of these games follows a similar structure to the radiant ones.
It's so prevalent that there's an influx of Skyrim quests that many players inaccurately label as radiant quests due to how homogeneous the quest design is.

 

[Lemming42]

Looking over that list of places on the Starfield wiki, holy shit:

This is a place called Crucible. How the fuck did I miss this? This is fucking wicked, it's a settlement with clones of historical figures, I never had a clue it was in the game.

On another note, I really wish they'd let you recruit any NPC in the game to your ship (a task already accomplished by Oblivion modders long ago). This'd be a good feature for Starfield as it'd make even the most boring locations worth checking out just to see if there's anyone you want to bring aboard. Queen Amanirenas as the ship's navigator, yessss.

 

[Vic]

that sounds like a "I've been playing Starfield for 500 hours and I'm still discovering new things" moment to me

 

[Lemming42]

"I've played Starfield for 40 hours and a list of every single location in the game has tipped me off a small one I missed" - would work brilliant as a back-of-the-box quote.

 

[PlayerEmers]

jesus fucking christ
the game is already on a 30% deal
reminder that last week on the autumn/black friday sale, the game was already 20% off

​

 

[Cryomancer]

30% off still to expensive. I would't play the game even for free. Someone would have to pay me to play this shit.

 

[Yoomazir]

Give me a 70% off, with all dlcs included and mods enabled and I MIGHT consider giving it a try, and that's only if the game gets NMS/Cyberpunk positive feedback from updates.

 

[jackofshadows]

30% off already is an embarassment but then again - this is an embarassment of a game after all.

 

[Butter]

Like all modern bloatware titles, it's not worth the time it takes to download.

 

[purupuru]

For reference, Fallout 4 went on a 17% off sale 6 months post-release and 30% off another 2 months later.
https://steamdb.info/app/377160/

 

[Harthwain]

30% off already is an embarassment but then again - this is an embarassment of a game after all.

Could be a marketing strategy. "Let's overprice our game so that when we give it 30% off people will think it's a great deal!".

 

[Vic]

It’s 30% off as part of the Steam VR sale, still 50 bucks

 

[Caim]

30% off still to expensive. I would't play the game even for free. Someone would have to pay me to play this shit.

Here comes Todd, giving you Starfield with a complimentary copy of Skyrim.

 

[taxalot]

For reference, Fallout 4 went on a 17% off sale 6 months post-release and 30% off another 2 months later.
https://steamdb.info/app/377160/

For reference, Fallout 4 wasn't released initially on Game Pass.

 

[Zlaja]

They could have made a somewhat more traditional, linear FPS game, maybe with Deus Ex style open-ish city hubs to shake things up

Sounds like something Bioware did once. Hint: 2007

Say what you will about Skyrim, but it had a rather beautiful nordic theme and aesthetic

Really? I thought Skyrim looked pretty generic and boring.

 

[BruceVC]

They could have made a somewhat more traditional, linear FPS game, maybe with Deus Ex style open-ish city hubs to shake things up

Sounds like something Bioware did once. Hint: 2007

Say what you will about Skyrim, but it had a rather beautiful nordic theme and aesthetic

Really? I thought Skyrim looked pretty generic and boring.

Im waiting for LoversLab alien mods to be released before I play, then the game wont be boring

 

[Vic]