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Bethesda are individually rebutting Starfield Steam reviewers, defending the loading breaks and "empty" worlds
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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I have quite a few hours into the game, and honestly not that many complaints. The comments about vast empty worlds are spot-on, though. When I finished my initial playthrough, I did most of the quest lines, but I still hadn't visited the majority of the solar system.
There are something like 100 planets, but the game doesn't give you any reason to go to most of them.
That was the atmosphere they wanted in the game. It’s space, it’s large and empty, they wanted you to feel that.
Unfortunately, they didn’t do a good job, or it just doesn’t work with the play style people want.
I can definitely understand that. I think my complaint in more about the fact that all these big empty planets exist in the game, but there's no reason to go there. How about adding another dozen artifacts and making the player search around the planet for them (land vehicles would be nice here). Or have a few crashed ships where you can scavenge epic weapons or ship upgrades, if you find them.
There's so much they could have done while still keeping the "empty" atmosphere. It kind of feels like the added so many planets just to make the map bigger.
It wouldn’t feel as empty or as “realistic” if there was remnants of civilization everywhere. I don’t entirely agree with it either, but that’s their vision. Some people will enjoy the ambiance while others want little cookies everywhere.
That's fair. I also just realized that the game is set just a few hundred years after the invention of interstellar travel. It wouldn't exactly be realistic to have stuff everywhere. Even real human civilizations on Earth still have areas of untouched land.
I’m sure they could have figured out something lore wise to make it more interesting, but than they would be going against their vision unfortunately.
I was hoping this game would have better space battles myself.
Sucks that making the game fun and engaging was contrary to the vision, but I dont find that defense overly compelling.
If it was a quick 1-6 hour max art game? Maybe. But for a bethesda game billed as having thousands of hours of content and "the last game you will ever need" style marketing? Probably not a good idea for that to have been the products vision.
I completely agree. I’m not attempting defending them or anything, merely providing their perspective.
I could excuse the lack of exploration if getting there was a journey myself, but yes for the scope and what they peddled the game to be. Empty isn’t conducive to other parts of their vision. Almost seems like the choose the lesser of two evils in a sense.
I mean every planet has something interesting or unique about it.
Could look for signs of water, of extinct life, try to find the cause of weird rock formations. Prospect for rare materials.
Like we do with every planet atm irl.
I finished my time with the game after 150 hours. Enjoyed the hell out of it, but it has flaws.
It's not as bad as many will have you believe.
I’m taking a break because it takes up a ton of space and I had other games I wanted to focus on, but it isn’t a bad game at all and I’ve had fun with it. It just isn’t the worlds perfect “live life in space” so everything game.
The two games with the most play time in my library are Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077, both of which received some serious negative reviews. I think that for AAA titles that are significantly hyped up before release, people will shit on the game no matter how good it is.
To be honest, it makes me angry at times. I write software; not games, mostly utilitarian programs for a specific business-related task or for my own use at home. I know how much time and effort goes into developing and testing a program so that it doesn't explode when users of varying technical skill levels use it. The fact that people are so critical is really disrespectful to the countless programmers, visual artists, audio engineers, etc that go into making a full-scale game. Just enjoy the fact that you have a visually stunning and fun experience.
I'm also a swe and I think this is a dishonest take. I agree there is so much work that goes into game making, more so than I could ever imagine at my job, but at the end of the day they are making a promise and putting out a product. If the product is unfun, buyers have the right to be upset (within reason of course). I put about 40 hours into starfield and not a single one of them I would consider fun. I even googled "when does starfield start being fun" because I've played plenty of games that get fun after hour 10 or whatever. Just as an aside I put collectively over multiple consoles and pcs 1000+ hours into skyrim so I'm no stranger to Bethesda
I agree completely with you. I'm also a software developer.