For those who have pre-ordered it is already here, the rest have to wait a little longer. Starfield is finally here! Have you bought it, why or why not? If you’ve already played it, what do you think of it? We are very curious!
Discuss all things Starfield below!
I think people were expecting fallout no man’s sky…and I don’t know why.
I’d rather play nms for exploration/sandbox
And then a Bethesda space game for goofyish gunplay with a decent story.
Bethesda’s not exactly known for decent stories though. I mean yeah maybe back in the day, but nothing they’ve released in the past 10-15 years or so.
I liked Fallout 4. I mean, the dialog was annoying compared to New Vegas, but the story was fine. That was 2016 for the initial game, and the DLC later.
EDIT: 2015. 2016 for the DLC.
I liked the DLC with the creepy island and the robot man detective, that one was good! The main story was poppycock though. Like, a partner I didn’t care for died within the first few minutes, then a baby I didn’t care for got kidnapped and that was supposed to be my main motivator to get through the game?
Bethesda also kind of flops in the roleplaying department. Looking at BGIII, there’s plenty of moments where you can make decisions and not know what impact it might have, there’s lots of little interwoven story threads, and that’s what I’d expect from an RPG. Bethesda doesn’t really let you make choices.
Even No Man’s Sky has deeper thoughts hidden in that sparkly, colourful, arcade sandbox. The game touches on ideas of existence, life, and self. What themes did Skyrim touch on? Racism I guess? It feels to me like they wanted to do more with Skyrim, but blew all their budget on making a big world and didn’t have enough to put in it. The civil war storyline could in theory be a fantastic exploration on morals, but in reality it was just a slog.
Oblivion had some good quests. The expansion was really nice, but the quest that stands out most in my mind is the one where you set out to help a woman find her husband, and sleuth out that he actually managed to get trapped in the painting he was working on, after being attacked by a burglar.
Skyrim doesn’t really have anything remotely like it. Just endless copy-pasted dungeons with the same condescending puzzles and boring enemies. Sure they included Sheogorath, but somehow they managed to make even him drab and grey.
I was kind of hoping for fallout and elite; real space flight and exploration, but with an actual story and story line to follow. I’m mostly over real-life gaming that looks like a cartoon, so I’m glad it’s not nms.
Well, Outer Worlds is already almost literally “Fallout 3, in space”. We had more, but smaller, open world areas but that isn’t much different than how The Pitt and the like were treated. Hell, it has been a minute, but I want to say DC proper was already a separate set of exterior cells that you transitioned into from the capital wasteland?
Mentioned elsewhere that I think anyone who was expecting seamless transitions just do not understand game dev (or Bethesda’s engine) in the slightest.
But it IS disappointing that there is such a massive emphasis on fast travel. Because Outer Worlds showed that traversing a space wasteland to do a few quests and find some POIs is really fun. And Bethesda have a LOT more resources than Obsidian and could have made that a much more “real” world. Even if it was mostly procedurally generated landscapes with painted in POIs.
Outer Worlds really did not scratch my Fallout itch.
Yeah, superficially it’s similar in a number of ways, but:
For all practical purposes, the game is fairly linear. The world is open, but you have little reason to go back.
The Fallout perk system introduces a lot of interesting mechanics, is an important part of the game. The Outer Worlds perk system was almost entirely flat bonuses to one thing or another. Didn’t change much how one would play the game.
I rarely found myself stumbling into new and interesting situations just walking around the world.
The weapons weren’t all that interesting or customizable. That includes the uniques, other than the science weapons.
Skyrim and Oblivion definitely hooked me with exploration. It was a significant reason for playing and completing those games for me. If I want story there are a thousand better games out there. One without the other feels like a loss for me.