Can Starfield Eventually Be Fixed and Redeemed Like Cyberpunk or No Man’s Sky?

Starfields biggest problem was its huge scale took away the handcrafted feel that Bethesda excel at. It felt massive and empty.
 
GtehMVP said:
Yeah, that's why I separated NV from Bethesda. What a shock they didn't let Obsidian make another Fallout, or do an ES game, which they wanted to do along the lines of a New Vegas spinoff. Despite being so hamstrung with time constraints, it's crazy what they were able to pull off.

With Obsidian and inXile (lots of OG Fallout devs) owned by M$ as well now I hope Phil Spencer gives either of them the reigns, or forms a collaboration between them, for another Fallout.

Chris Avellone played a big role in the DLC's, think he did a few companions too, one of the goats of design/writing in games (KOTOR 2 was largely all him). I always remember this video of him explaining his philosophy, not just for his insight but because he got cancelled days after thanks to some harlots that falsely accused him of some sexual nonsense. It's all been cleared up finally, but he got blackballed hard.
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Bethesda have pushed back on Obsidian doing anything again with their IP's

Recently it came out Obsidian wanted to do a New Vegas style game with TES and Bethesda turned them down

www.pcgamer.com

Obsidian pitched doing a Fallout: New Vegas but for The Elder Scrolls, Bethesda said nah we're good thanks

"I never got the impression Bethesda was happy with Fallout: New Vegas' reception."
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com
 
Woldog said:
Starfields biggest problem was its huge scale took away the handcrafted feel that Bethesda excel at. It felt massive and empty.
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I wouldn't say "empty". You can't walk two feet in the game, without some NPC telling you their life story, or picking up 16 side missions in one room. It's all very dull, though. The game felt like if you were a kid and got to go to "Space Camp". You're all excited when you get there, and they even give you a little spacesuit to get you all amp'd up. You think you're in for the adventure of a lifetime. Then it actually begins, and you're sat down in a classroom with the most boring person on Earth giving you a two week lecture on astrophysics.
 
HereticBD said:
I wouldn't say "empty". You can't walk two feet in the game, without some NPC telling you their life story, or picking up 16 side missions in one room. It's all very dull, though. The game felt like if you were a kid and got to go to "Space Camp". You're all excited when you get there, and they even give you a little spacesuit to get you all amp'd up. You think you're in for the adventure of a lifetime. Then it actually begins, and you're sat down in a classroom with the most boring person on Earth giving you a two week lecture on astrophysics.
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Skyrim had loads of this too, but I think expectations were just lower back then. Gamers today want more than some generic NPC giving you a data dump of their background and sending you off on a fetch quest.
 
GtehMVP said:
Chris Avellone played a big role in the DLC's, think he did a few companions too, one of the goats of design/writing in games (KOTOR 2 was largely all him). I always remember this video of him explaining his philosophy, not just for his insight but because he got cancelled days after thanks to some harlots that falsely accused him of some sexual nonsense. It's all been cleared up finally, but he got blackballed hard.
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He worked on DOS 2 as well. He's a freelancer right now, Bethesda should seriously think about hiring him to work on Elder Scrolls.
 
blaseblase said:
Skyrim had loads of this too, but I think expectations were just lower back then. Gamers today want more than some generic NPC giving you a data dump of their background and sending you off on a fetch quest.
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I don't think that's accurate. Most story driven games(especially RPG's) have similar design. Go to guy, talk to guy, get mission, do mission. With "Starfield", it really is just a case of the writing and characters being bland and boring. Compare it to Skyrim or Fallout, where running into fresh quest giving NPC's is exciting, because you want to know what they're all about and what paths their little story will take you on, because the world and characters are actually interesting. There is no such feeling of anticipation or excitement in "Starfield", because everyone and everything is just so damn dull.
 
HereticBD said:
I don't think that's accurate. Most story driven games(especially RPG's) have similar design. Go to guy, talk to guy, get mission, do mission. With "Starfield", it really is just a case of the writing and characters being bland and boring. Compare it to Skyrim or Fallout, where running into fresh quest giving NPC's is exciting, because you want to know what they're all about and what paths their little story will take you on, because the world and characters are actually interesting. There is no such feeling of anticipation or excitement in "Starfield", because everyone and everything is just so damn dull.
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The Skyrim characters are boring as fuck, no one is interesting or has any character development. Same with Fallout.
 
blaseblase said:
He worked on DOS 2 as well. He's a freelancer right now, Bethesda should seriously think about hiring him to work on Elder Scrolls.
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I have tried to play DOS 2 a few times, but it never clicked with me. After BG3, I need to give it another chance. I didn't know Avellone worked on it either, even more reason!
 
blaseblase said:
The Skyrim characters are boring as fuck, no one is interesting or has any character development. Same with Fallout.
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Well, I'll just agree to disagree. "Skyrim" and "Fallout" aren't stretching their infinite gameplay out through generations, with stale dialogue and boring characters. There's a reason why "Starfield" is being looked at differently than those franchises, despite having the exact same gameplay loop. If the style of the game isn't for you, that's one thing, but no, those games had way more life and intrigue to them than "Starfield", due it's clever writing and memorable characters.
 
I'd say no because I think they'd have to fundamentally change what the game is and completely rework it. The idea of 1000 planets just doesn't work. They should have done 10 planets that were actually somewhat interesting. Even that feels like too tall an order. I dont know what they were thinking. Sure. Space is big. We get it. But it doesn't make for a good game to try and make a game as big and boring as real space.
 
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Law Talkin’ Guy said:
Well it occurred to me after making the thread that they’ve kind of invested in “fixing” Fallout 76,
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76 is a live service game. If anything i bet Bethesda will make the DLC for Starfield its best content. They need to give fans something that generates hope for their next Fallout and Elder Scrolls releases.
 
HereticBD said:
Well, I'll just agree to disagree. "Skyrim" and "Fallout" aren't stretching their infinite gameplay out through generations, with stale dialogue and boring characters. There's a reason why "Starfield" is being looked at differently than those franchises, despite having the exact same gameplay loop. If the style of the game isn't for you, that's one thing, but no, those games had way more life and intrigue to them than "Starfield", due it's clever writing and memorable characters.
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Average NPC in Skyrim that was just strolling around doing fucking nothing was more interesting and unique than the cookie cutter ones in Starfield that get around the cities.
 
blaseblase said:
Unpopular opinion, seeing as Skyrim became one of the biggest games of all time, but I dont think it was ever that good. It looked beautiful, had a massive world, lots of shit to do, but there were not very many interesting quests, pretty much no interesting characters, none of them had character development, you were just going around a big world doing basic tasks and fighting creatures, talking to characters with the same 5 voice actors repeating the same dialogue.

Bethesda has never been good at character building or storytelling, and gamers have higher expectations now given all the games that have come out since 2011. Especially with the amazing storytelling coming out of studios like CD Projekt Red. Bethesda is stuck using the same boring Creation Engine since 2011. They can claim its a new engine but it's obviously not, it's the exact same shit.
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That’s always been Bethesda games. I felt like Fallout 3 was overrated too. They build big worlds with lots of stuff to do. Unfortunately, everything there is to do is pretty shallow. Granted, they do deserve credit for making those huge open worlds with so much to do, especially when those kinds of games were a lot more rare.
 
KaNesDeath said:
76 is a live service game. If anything i bet Bethesda will make the DLC for Starfield its best content. They need to give fans something that generates hope for their next Fallout and Elder Scrolls releases.
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Far Harbor is one of their best DLC's, so it's in them to make something compelling DLC wise.

For the base game, they need to give us more reason to visit all those planets. As meh as I found No man's Sky ultimately, they made every planet's resources integral in the game's progression. There's no reason Bethesda can't make some DLC with interesting quests around the need for harvesting certain resources.

They can add further systems with new races, hostile and friendly, that require us to build a space station and planetary outpost with some kind of mass relay in the furthest system, before we can even travel to the new one. This would give purpose to harvesting resources beyond outpost building/making money.

From what I understand, Starfield was going to have the need for fueling to jump to further systems/planets. They could incorporate something like that into a survival mode, where you need to build fueling and waypoint stations. The problem is that there's no reason to go to the furthest systems, outside better XP. It's also really lame when you're supposed to be the first person to visit a temple in thousands of years, yet there's some POI with bandits, or some trading station a few hundred meters away lol. That's so fucking lazy. They need to clean that up and make visiting systems more integral.

There's a lot they can do to improve the game.
 
I had put in 100 hours into Starfield and the game itself is not broken, the mechanics, the gunplay, and mostly everything runs fine on the Xbox Series X.

The problem is that the game was way over ambitious in scale and while you "can" visit 100+ planets... most of them have absolutely nothing to do on them and the bases that you can attack in order to get loot are a rotation of about 5 different bases that play 100% the same. I was under the impression that these were procedurally generated and that they would have different rooms with different enemies and lay outs. This is not the case.

So for my experience I tried doing as many side missions as possible and then do the main quest line for the end. This took 30 hours with me sprinkling in travelling to planets and scanning as much as I can etc. At this point I nearly saw everything the game had to offer, I started travelling to planets and seeing the same outposts with the same enemies and layouts and it was comical because the same dead NPCs would be laying in the same chairs. I did the main quest and that was about 30 more hours of gameplay.

At the 60 hour mark I then found out that you can get super powers, it was hilarious because I never even knew these existed and once I collected them all I never even used them. To get these powers you travel to a planet, follow your compass to a spot on the planet. Walk into a door way and then do a bizarre mini game where you float around an empty room touching shiny energy and voila you get a new useless power. To me it feels like these things should of each been some sort of "dungeon" where you then face a boss to win a power. It felt like the game ran out of time and they just shoe horned this in.

I tried playing 40 more hours of extra game stuff and it was just boring as all mighty hell. Lots of pointless shit that I never even touched because it served no purpose such as building farms/bases on planets to generate raw materials. I tried to spend as little time as possible ship building it was clunky and it was far easier just buying a new ship. Why does the game have food, it recovers like 1% of health it's useless. I barely did any upgrading or construction of armor or medical supplies. The RPG elements just felt useless.

Long story short... they won't salvage the game because the gameplay loop is non existent and the filler they added to make this a huge game is boring and pointless. Buy this game for a 40 - 60 hour adventure and don't expect anything more at all from that. The main game is worth playing but only once.

If you want an older game that plays vastly different each time through then I recommend Deus Ex Mankind. Your decisions and options for tackling missions are far more variable in that game.
 
No because the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games don't need mods to be fun. They help but I can play them all vanilla no problem. Starfield is just plain bad. Frustrating menus. No mod can fix the core gameplay. The fun of Bethesda games is exploring which Starfield does not have. Dude check out the Bethesda/Machine Games Wolfenstein titles. Those games fukin kick major ass!
 
rikwebb said:
Recently it came out Obsidian wanted to do a New Vegas style game with TES and Bethesda turned them down

www.pcgamer.com

Obsidian pitched doing a Fallout: New Vegas but for The Elder Scrolls, Bethesda said nah we're good thanks

"I never got the impression Bethesda was happy with Fallout: New Vegas' reception."
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com
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Both Bethesda & Microsoft deserve to fail for this bullshit.

They're bitter because the best Bethesda-franchise game released wasn't developed by Bethesda.
 
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