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Starfield Desperately Needs More Unique Locations
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this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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I’m glad we’ve reached the point where most people accept the game’s lacking in so many ways and overall a disappointment.
There was some hard cope when the game first released, with the fanboys telling everyone who criticised it that they were wrong or being unreasonable.
Any reviewer who gave this game 10/10 was smoking crack. Enjoyment of a game is subjective, but if you try to be remotely objective (their job) then there’s no way you can give it 10/10.
I dunno - it's sort of what's wrong with reviews these days.
Starfield's first few hours are really slow and suck.
Then there's this point at around 20-40 hours where it just clicks and you feel like you are in this massive open universe with so much to do.
And I think most reviewers were writing their reviews having rushed through to around that point.
And then you keep playing.
And you realize that in fact there isn't a huge universe with so much to do, there's a huge effective map with literally copy and paste repetition of everything you've already done. And it even doubled down (or rather went twelvefold down) on this repetition.
And that sense you got earlier on of a universe of untapped potential that had you looking past the flaws in an outdated engine and poor design choices now suddenly come up short, you are left with a game that has little redeeming value at the 60+ hour mark even though you might have thought it was potentially amazing at the 40 hour mark.
I can see why it reviewed well, as if I was under deadline to write a review for it and rushed a few faction quests and the main quest line and looked at the map of so much more to see having barely dipped a toe into certain other quests and exploration, I'd have rated it quite well. Even though after around 80 hours I was so over it that it's nearly forgettable with the last 20 of those 80 hours being a miserable slog where I kept hoping to rediscover some magic. And I say that as someone who typically plays around 200+ hours in Bethesda games.
It sucks, but it takes too much time to realize it sucks for fans of the genre if you already forced yourself to play past the opening 15 hours hump as all reviewers have to.
I think it'd be really healthy for the industry if review scores regularly got updated by reviewers who continued to play past the point of writing the first stab at it.
I still don’t really see how you could give the game 10/10, but I think you’re right about that sweet spot.
Would be interesting to see how many 10/10 reviewers would still stand by that rating though.
They would because they get paid for it. These people aren't journalists, their job is just to write the favorable articles for the people who paid their boss for it. Whoever gives 10/10 to anything should not be taken seriously.
Everyone going, it's not a space SIM it's an RPG in space. As if Skyrim wasn't handcrafted. Such a bizarre defence of the game. It would have been better if they had just gone with one system, and had no FTL, it's all fast traveling anyway so it wouldn't have make a gameplay difference, but then they won't have felt the need to have loads of randomly generated planets.
It's also hardly an RPG. The only choice accepted by the game is being the good guy and almost every character will be exactly the same. You can't even reasonably have a choice in weapon type because melee sucks and there all of three or so laser weapons. Dialogue choice is also as bad as FO4 despite then saying they'd learned from that mistake. You still only have "yes, no, sarcastic yes, more information" options, but now they're in a traditional selection menu instead of a wheel. Why even change the display if they aren't going to take advantage of why that system is better?