Starfield

The moment that made me REALLY realize how soulless this game is was Sarah's companion quest. It was all about her leaving behind her crew on an empty planet and you finding out they actually survived all alone on that planet for decades. Then 5 minutes later plops up a map marker in 800 m distance of a generic copy paste settlement like on any other planet. Soulless slop. Don't buy. Play Cyberpunk or No Man's Sky instead.

Todd Howard should face fraud charges

I don't think anyone is reading my 3-year old review for a game as widely criticized as this so I'm not going to bother making this too comprehensive, so I'll try to keep this just to aspects or points that I haven't seen overly discussed by dozens of YouTube video essays. Starfield will always have its detractors and it will always have its defenders, but after 180 hours I still find myself somewhat in the middle. Ultimately, I'm recommending it because I think that it deserves a closer look, even if it is still not going to be the game for many people. Let's start first with the positive. I am someone who greatly appreciates Starfield's aesthetic and setting because I think soft sci-fi is much more prevalent in this medium than hard(ish) sci-fi and particularly the close association with NASA both visually and in the lore just hits me right. I'm an aerospace engineer myself and my most recent playthrough was right after Artemis II. I like that Starfield present a universe in a liminal space: expelled from the Earth we know and love, but not having reached the future peak of a sprawling galactic civilization. Second, the fact that we get so few open-world sandbox RPGs where you can create your own character means that I will always have a particular affinity for Bethesda games. Look more closely at that description and think about it and think about what types of games we usually get. The Witcher III - open world? check. RPG? double check. sandbox? nope. create your own character? nope RDR2 - open world? check. RPG? nope. sandbox? yep! create your own character? nope. KCD2 - open world? check. RPG? definitely. sandbox? of course! create your own character? no again. BG3 - open world? nope. RPG? one of the best. sandbox? not really. create your own character? yes, finally! I love all those games above, but this particular formula just hits for me. I love having a premade character like Henry, Geralt, or Arthur because you can get a create narrative, but I really enjoy making my own backstory and roleplaying my own character as well. I get very few games that let me do that. The third positive thing I want to say: the mod scene is pretty decent. I was able to turn the game into something more akin to what I wanted with mods. Personally, I wanted a more hardcore space survival game where planets were truly hostile environments that required preparation to explore. I was able to achieve a pretty decent experience using mods like Deadly Hazards and TN's Realistic Oxygen meter. But let's talk about some negatives before I abruptly wrap this up. First, I haven't heard anyone criticize the class fantasy in this game and it's actually one of my biggest gripes. When I look at the skill tree in this game, I just struggle to see or imagine different compelling characters to make out of it. In Skyrim you had such distinct class opportunities: mage is different from thief is different from warrior and everything in between. They look different, play different, and feel different. I just felt like everything in Starfield boiled down to "astronaut with a gun". For example, you can spec into the tech skill tree but the game never lets you become some master engineer building robot armies and decking himself out with advanced exoskeletons (things that are feasible in the lore!). The biggest class fantasies they tried to make this game are space pirate, space cowboy, space soldier, and space explorer and none of them really play or feel too different honestly. My other criticism related to that is that the game seems absolutely terrified of actually requiring you to invest in any particular skill. This has been an issue with all modern Bethesda games (it's the "I became the Archmage of the College of Winterhold without knowing any magic" thing), but here it's even more egregious because they actually have skill-based dialogue options! The best example of this is that there's a quest where you have to help design a spaceship for a company, but the game doesn't actually have you use the entire shipbuilding system to do that! So you literally just "design" a spaceship with a few dialogue options instead of using this incredibly fun system they built. It's similar with other major systems in the game. For example the game never really asks you to use outpost building to solve a problem with a quest or use your chef skill to make somebody a meal or anything like that. It just makes the RPG experience feel very flat compared to other games like Baldur's Gate III, where your character's stats and skills actually factor into how you solve quests. The most they could muster here is that sometimes you can talk your way out of problems. Of course I could write about how the procedurally generated planets killed exploration and how quests lean way too heavily into fast traveling between NPCs, who for some reason don't have text or email in this universe, but those have all been discussed to death. At the end of the day I recommend buying this game if you like the aesthetic and worldbuilding, if you like sandbox RPGs and are willing to try to create your own adventure, and if you're willing to mess around with mods to fix some of the biggest gameplay issues.

Its just really f***ing boring

All the criticisms that you've heard are correct. But I think the issue goes deeper. After 8 years in development, this was the result. Why was it even released? And this is what is happening to games. Get them out the door, wait thru the criticism, and then make half hearted attempts to "finish" the game, or provide mods for money. So you have to pay more than the original (high) price. Everyone forgets that No Man;s Sky did the same thing but since they provided all of the additional content free, they were forgiven. Is anyone else tired of being quality control? The sad thing is there is a great concept in this game - the multiple universe. Each playthrough could have been an entirely different experience since you have knowledge you didnt have. It wouldnt ruin the quests because you would still need to fetch evidence. AS it is, you have to pick from the dialog tree pretending like you have no idea what is going on. It is self-defeating. You think this new universe is going to be exciting, but it is just replaying the game. And the mods. If you like buying your game over and over and ruining your saves because the mod you chose (like most of them) doesnt work unless you want to spend hours troubleshooting, changing settings, praying. I tried 3 of them. One worked , another didnt do anything, and one made my character invisible. Now these were free mods so maybe you have to pay before they are any good. But I have trouble paying for things that look like they are not going to work anyway. I have played multiple playthroughs, several NG+ games. I have been able to enjoy some of it by not following the main stories. Like as soon as I left Vectera I went to Jaffa where there is a huge Va'ruun outpost. With all the starborn powers i was able to defeat the entire base alone. Plus I got another ship, the Dagger. So you can make your own fun but it is time to move on.

The game has the usual Bethesda bugs. It is heavily woke.. 90% of all righteous leaders are female. Most of the remaining 10% male are POC. The declared relationships in this game are 70% homosexual. The "STEM" positions in the game are around 80% Female. The females in this game are almost androgenous. And they were so against any male gaze that you can't even buy the swimsuit. The shipbuilding is kind of fun, and the crafting and outpost options are good. But if I hadn't had mods, this would have been a skip for sure.

All I can say is my own experience and I am obsessed with Starfield. I believe people view this as a shallow game because initially it seems that way I guess? But the more you play it the more intricate you realise it is. The skill system in this game is by far my biggest recommendation, never have I used so many or been so continously obsessed with what I'm getting next and why. I just think they're all so interesting and add to the experience. I have NEVER been so invested in all areas of a skill tree. If you like to make different builds then this is even better for you. First 50 hours I didn't think I'd bother with ship builds but now I do, I didn't think I'd do more than the bare minimum for an outpost but now I have plans for many. Everything just grows on you or maybe that's the wrong phrase, your eyes open to all the possibilities the more you play. I loved the Shattered Space DLC, I got lost in that for about 20 - 30 hours, I haven't even started Terran Armada and there's two factions I haven't finished yet and I'm 130 hours in. I find the gameplay just really addictive which is actually unusual for me, I like to play the story and move on whereas on Starfield I just want to play it, I don't care if I'm doing the story or surveying a planet or building a ship I'm just enjoying playing it and I don't care about finishing it and moving on, like Skyrim I think I could play it for years. I can't address the hate the game gets because I really don't understand it. I haven't had any bugs or issues either. I think it's like Nickelback, it's cool to hate it now and no one is going to admit they're wrong, the Internet has decided this game sucks and that is such a massive shame. P.s. I also do love Nickelback.

Bethesda has absolutely no idea anymore what people want or what made their games so great. The game has the worst sci-fi lore I have ever seen. The people who wrote the story and quests should be utterly ashamed of themselves. Furthermore, Bethesda seems immune to feedback, as they simply fail to improve the very things that have been criticized for years.