If you landed in an in-game fake moon it would be a wonderfully interesting plot thread.

It also bugs me that Bethesda keeps saying that the game is about exploration and finding new planets, but so far every planet I've visited has some kind of building upon it. Its clear that people have been on this planet before, so why the hell should I explore this planet? At least give me some incentive or a better reward for finding a true empty planet.

Customer: Hey there, customer outreach person; how does it feel to repeat yourself over and over again?

Management response: As a large-language model, I am unable to experience feelings the way humans do. Moreover…

You're enjoying the cake wrong, it's supposed to taste like shit

The cake is a lie

Bethesda games make hoarding painful though.

I can’t believe how ignorant you are of the worldwide canvas shortage of 2018. Canvas became a global strategic resource. Lack of canvas destabilized numerous nation states.

The idea of frivolously wasting that precious canvas on a video game trinket is frankly offensive.

-Bethesda, probably.

Starfield, the epitome of scientifically correcty simulations. Why would I expcet my Starship Travel Simulator 2000 to be a fun-focused game after all, durr.

It really evoked a feeling of smallness in me. Namely how small and devoid of content the universe feels.

This is made worse because every inhabited planet I go to has some elaborate situation just waiting for me to solve it. For example: I land on the landing pad, walk 30 meters through a gate and am greeted by a hostage situation in a bank where the hostage negotiator is going to let me, some random, go do his job instead of him, trusting me with the lives of everyone involved without even blinking.

100%. The best part of Bethesda open world games is exploring the open space between towns, quests, objectives, etc. Fast travel is an option, but rarely necessary. If you rely on it you will miss lots of cool stuff.

Not so in Starfield, the space between objectives is literally empty space.

Yeah it's quite an accomplishment to make the vastness of space feel claustrophobic and small.

Some of the response to the reviews is bizarre - one seems to try to claim that the planets are not boring because they're realistic and the real world is boring, and that the player is probably just overwhelmed by the awesomeness of it all.

It almost feels like the game Devs have convinced themselves that they've been working on the greatest game ever made and when told "no you haven't" they're responding by saying "you just don't get our vision".

It's an ok game. I'm actually less bothered by the loading screens and more by the old fashioned story telling. This game would have been amazing if released closer after Skyrim. But it's been 12 years and we've had Witcher 3, Cyberpunk and Baldurs Gate 3 that have changed expectations. All of them are better at evoking a sense of emotional engagement with the game, and actions having meaningful consequences in the plot. Subplots like the bloody baron in Witcher 3, or Judy in cyberpunk have stuck with me in a way characters and events in Skyrim and now Starfield just never have.

Problem is I suspect Bethesda will focus on all the loading screen / sense of scale complaints and not register the more important (imo) issues with the stories, characters and gameplay. Less but better is the real lesson I think.

If a significant amount of people "misunderstood" you, it's not their fault, but yours for not clearly communicating or not tailoring your communication for the target audience.

I find this ironic, because even the tutorials in the game only communicate half of the information you need. A lot of them just outright expect you to have played one of their games before. I could imagine if this was someone's first Bethesda RPG, they'd be confused as hell. Plus there are a few things unique to Starfield that are confusing even if you've played every one of their games before.

"Engines" are not static things. What we call "Unreal Engine" goes back to the 90s.

These comments always bug me as a programmer because it's like someone calling a 2023 Camero old because it doesn't have the acceleration of a 2023 Mustang... The "age" almost certainly isn't the problem, it's where the effort has or hasn't been put in to the engine and more importantly the game itself (e.g., carrying on the metaphor, the Camero might be slower getting up to speed because all the R&D for the last 3 years was on a smooth ride).

Honestly, this behavior of responding to player feedback and arguing about how "it's just because you didn't play the game right!" is kinda unhinged.

It also, to me, really takes Bethesda's mask off and reveals what their culture must be as a company. Based on these responses, they seem so convinced that they shit gold that they've stopped entertaining feedback or trying to innovate much in their games much at all. Kinda confirms some of the criticism I've seen of them since Fallout 4 and 76 came out.

Hot take: Alan Wake 2 would have a lot of explaining to do if EPIC had a review system. My disappointment with that game was immeasurable and my weekend was ruined.

Pirated it but it wasnt worth the disk space. Tried it for a couple hours but it was so boring. I have done a quest for a bank where I was supposed to collect money. It went like this: Fast travel to the ship. Fast travel to the planet the person is on Talk with them. Fast travel back to ship Fast travel to bank planet Fast travel to bank. Talk to bank guy to get money. Next bank quest. Rinse and repeat

Corporate speak incentivizes bland language. Standing up for as little as possible brings as few enemies as possible, after all. Unfortunately, an empty, bland proposal can only result in empty, bland art.

I think everything you said here is spot on except the idea Starfield will improve pike Cyberpunk at this point because Bethesda's attitude really doesn't indicate that they seem to admit anything needs fixing.

With that said I doubt many people expected Cyberpunk to do as well later on so you are probably right and I hope you are for the game and genre. I really like the aesthetic of Starfield and want it to succeed.

I'm just so tired of getting such half baked stuff at release.

One annoying thing about the "make your own stories" concept is that content us going to be recycled. My followers don't say anything new or have new things to do etc because it's all baked in but also on this supposedly open RPG landscape.