Gonna riff on #Starfield a bit here, after being able to squeeze out about 8 hours on it, I'm going to give my take: ๐งต
I went in with kind of low expectations. Bethesda games at launch are usually a sort of boring base game experience built on a framework that the community can really polish with mods. In Starfields case, that's going to present some big challenges.
Visually, the game is hit or miss. The game doesn't have a rich color palette. While it makes sense for Mars to be dusty and red/brown, even fertile worlds feel flat and lifeless. Especially compared to the base release of Skyrim, which came out 12 years ago.
The combat isn't bad, and the AI is actually pretty good. Enemies will charge you, try to flank you, use cover, and work together in relatively complex ways to try and take you out. Visually the ships and suits and guns are cool.
Fast Travel really kind of kills the game though. While not dissimilar to an Elder Scrolls game where once a surface location is discovered you can fast travel to it, this doesn't work well for a game in space. It means spending very little time actually in space.
This could be helped at least a little bit with random encounters during fast travel that either stop you at phenomena, points of interest, ambushes, or other things. But there is no actual exploring space. There's no open sectors with secrets to fly around and find.
And it's not much better on foot. You can't explore entire worlds, and they are so empty you wouldn't want to if you could. Every world basically gets 4-5 "Points of Interest" which have invisible walls you run into if you go too far away from them after landing.
Now a lot of these problems could be fixed by mods, expansions, and for those unfortunate console plebs, solid mods being incorporated through the Creator program so the best PC mods are available to console players.
But the worst problem in Starfield won't be fixed by Bethsoft.
But the worst problem in Starfield won't be fixed by Bethsoft.
Whoever did character design and writing for Starfield, and I am absolutely going to look them up in the credits to prove what I already intuitively know, they need to be fired and pilloried.
The characters are way uglier than they have any right to be contrasted by other games
The characters are way uglier than they have any right to be contrasted by other games
In the course of development they seem to have even been downgraded. I have a high end PC, and even on high settings it becomes apparent that this isn't a tech problem. The character creator *can* make good avatars, the problem is whoever had that job liked making ugly people.
And what is hard about this aspect of the story writing and character design is that it isn't something that will be fixed short of PC mods, the kind which would never be greenlit for console gamers. There is an ideological bent to the aesthetic. I will attempt to put it in words
Starfield is probably the most forcefully and nonsensically diverse sci-fi game I have ever played. In a game with thousands of named characters, it feels as if there was a budget of 10 white guys allowed.
It's also immersion breaking in a way Cyberpunk 2077 is.
It's also immersion breaking in a way Cyberpunk 2077 is.
I'm sorry but there aren't going to be any gangs of space pirates where half of them are mohawked women and interracial lesbians. Women that can or want to fight are exceptions to the rule in every society that has ever mattered.
It also feels like they excluded white people and favored black or brown people at every possible narrative turn. I'll give an example of who all the main NPC's with speaking roles have been so far, having done the first part of the main quest and UC Vanguard quests:
So that's 3 black scientists in a row, and I'm not omitting any white scientists I've seen. There haven't been any so far. The first two characters you meet are your chinese mine supervisor (labor supervision comes naturally I guess) and the most chad character I've seen so far.
Heller is the wisecracking assistant to Supervisor Lin, and he is recruitable later but more as Crew, not a Companion. The difference being Companions have fully fleshed out voice acting and quests while Crew are more boilerplate and simple. Not actual "characters" really.
Simeon is my homeboy thus far though, a sniper and probably one of the best combat partners. He is also Crew though, so he's not really a character. He's Boone from FNV but with no backstory to speak of.
The only white dude who is a fleshed out companion of the 4 is Sam Coe. Sam also happens to be bisexual and has a daughter that he constantly berates for being too smart in some kind of cowboy stereotype about anti-intellectualism. Go figure.
Of course the president of the UC is a ethnically ambiguous girlboss
The commander of the UC Vanguard who gives you all the military themed missions is a black guy, and the UC Vanguard soldier that the first main story mission revolves around is a little mexican dude.
The only white characters that have had any relevance in the story so far have been your blonde white woman conscience companion, Sarah Morgan, and the rich white guy who owns a starship construction business that is basically Constellations wallet, Walter.
The 4 "Companions" are the ones that are romanceable, and Sarah is kind of considered a main protagonist as your first companion and in all the promotional material. You would think the primary love interest wouldn't be a post wall 38 year old.
Contrast with her competition.
Contrast with her competition.
I almost forgot to mention the other members of Constellation, Noel, a young black girl scientist, it's dead founder, an old black guy scientist, and, uh, "Vladimir"
Funny how the only straight white dude in Constellation is the old white guy paying its bills.
Funny how the only straight white dude in Constellation is the old white guy paying its bills.
Science fiction has always been a pretty white-coded genre. It feels jarring and counter-immersive when the people that ask why whypipo climb mountains or go hiking today make up 100% of the scientists of tomorrow. Maybe @AmericanKrogan can fix it like he fixed Fallout 4's Boston
At the end of the day, the gameplay isn't bad and those problems are fixable. "The bones are good" as they say, but the ugly wallpaper needs to be torn down. A lot of it can be fixed though. There are already "Make Sarah Morgan pretty" mods all over Nexus mods.
The real potential for Starfield, I think, will be total conversion mods. Warhammer 40k, Babylon 5, Freespace, there's a lot that can be done in addition to "fixing" the base game. Also keep in mind that with AI voice tools, you can reinvent dialogue using the original actors.
Bethesda usually relies on a pretty limited number of voice actors to voice everyone in their games. So there is a wealth of sample audio from all sorts of moods and inflections that can be fed into AI tools like ElevenLabs. That will be a huge force multiplier for modders.
I should also give honorable mention to the fact that the generator for the random NPC Citizens walking around doesn't seem to have any regard for aesthetics and the character creation presets are all ugly af
TLDR: It's kinda fun, but it needs a lot of work. What we all *wanted* was Skyrim in Space.
What we *got* was Fallout 4 in Space, and imo Fallout 4 fucking sucks compared to FNV or Skyrim
What we *got* was Fallout 4 in Space, and imo Fallout 4 fucking sucks compared to FNV or Skyrim
I found the culprit
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