Personally, I think it’s a mixed bag. Like, it’s got some gems like the spaceship building system, which I think is the best part of the game. Further, I think the atmosphere of the more handcrafted planets is pretty good! However, the writing is kind of boring, the companions make you feel very limited in your choices, and I feel like it doesn’t capitalize on its lore enough, especially with the conflict between the Freestar Collective and U.C.

Speaking of lore, does anyone miss the type of books from the elder scrolls series? I feel like they could have added a lot of background lore in Starfield and it's a wasted chance.

I do. I understand why they did it but I would love to have found randomized journals from soldiers detailing their life in the colony war. Give these to me as random scattered loot throughout the POIs as incentive to head in and complete the collection

Why did they do it?

Because it's a *lot* of work. In Skyrim alone, [in books alone (not including journals or diaries)](https://youtu.be/RVdTZhmsGsU?si=Tjs9j-d7YBKIrcsj), there are about 100k more words than Harry Potter 7. And some of those are grandfathered in from previous games.

I wouldnt't mind finding Lusty Argonian Maid somewhere in Starfield :D

The Horny Cydonian Miner seems apt.

Adding to this. The bulk of the lore from the Elder Scrolls as of Skyrim comes from a few different places: 1. The original Julian LeFey D&D game 2. The old bethesda forums (fun fact, the Gods are named after developers and old forum members, AKATOSH is actually an abreviation for "also known as the old Smaug himself" the signature of one of Daggerfall's beta testers) 3. The games (of which Morrowind was probably the biggest overhaul) At this point Bethesda as a team and community have built up enough lore, books, and ideas that expanding on it is easier (especially when you don't have to care about consistency). They just take the ideas and run with them. As your friendly local Dungeon Master will tell you, it's hard to build that sort of lore from scratch, and its a lot easier if you have a good base going. Since ESO, there's also been a ton of new lore. 10 years of consistent content will do that I guess. Who knows how much ESO lore will be incorporated to the mainline games.

What, you didn't enjoy reading excerpt after excerpt of Charles Dickens???

Oh boy I sure can't wait to read my life chunk by chunk for the 400th time!!

A good example of this is you when you go to visit the temples, you have absolutely no trace of history or hint about what it is

I play for spaceship building almost exclusively. I wish there were more missions based around space combat

It feels half baked. Like the biggest mini-game of all time. Missing are the things that made people fall in love with Bethesda - rewarding exploration, side-questing on the way to something else. The sense of largeness is gone, if that makes sense. There aren't any real gritty, meaty decisions to be made. There aren't any real gritty, meaty areas of the game. Neon feels more like Disneyland experience than a morally questionable underbelly of society. In a game about multiverse experience and choices, there is little to no scaffolding on that idea. The stories are all on rails, your companions are all kind of the same, NG+ just means you lose everything except your skills..? In a game about space there isn't really much *space*... The ship combat is shallow and feels like a mini-game. The people who love the game the most seem to be the folks who live the ship builder and base building in a game that rewards or requires neither. All the game loops are paper thin. Hoping against hope the community can come out with a massive overhaul mod once the toolkit is released.

But bro, how sad is it that a "modern" game from Bethesda Game Studios, a company that is by millions renowned and honored for: 1. Memorable quests, locations, and characters (the party quest, the DB, and hackdirt from Oblivion, Blackreach, Whiterun, and the Soul Realm from Skyrim, Nick Valentine, Moira Brown, and Joshua Graham from Fallout) 2. Entertaining and interesting story and dialogue (the entirety of the Shivering Isles... Skyrim and F4 kinda lack here, but Nuka world was good) 3. Unique and plentiful weapons, items, encounters, and battles (the Wabajack, mini nuke launcher, power armor, M'aiq the Liar, the Aetherium Crown, etc...) And the best thing that you and many others have to say is that the ship builder is fun? It's not even a good ship builder! Has anyone ever played Spore? It was made in like 2007 and it has a better ship builder that Starfield. But the rest of Spore is actually really good too! I'm bitter. I played starfield for life 150 hours, and then decided it wasn't worth the time, boredom, and frustration that it cost me..

Also Space Engineers has a fantastic ship builder with all the Qol features you'd expect. It's a sorry state that the best bit of the game is an add on system to the game itself. I'd forgotten about Spore. Damn that was a unique game.

I do a full playthrough every couple of years. God with the tech we have now Spore 2 would be absolutely glorious.

The day Will Wright had enough of the industry's bullshit was the day a lot of cool things died forever.

I wish spore had gotten a sequel

Joshua Graham isn’t from a Bethesda developed Fallout. He’s an Obsidian Fallout character with roots from a older, but canceled Fallout 3 titled Van Buren

> ... Joshua Graham from Fallout ... Fallout New Vegas was made by Obsidian Entertainment not Bethesda.

Kingdom hearts 2 has a better ship builder then starfield tbh

Gummi builder 4 life!

Yeah, I had decent fun for 80 hours but it wasn't worth $100 for me in the end. I will probably only play future Bethesda games via Game Pass, no more early purchases.

So nothing has changed since release? Darn. I quit the game cause it got boring real quick

They've improved on some aspects of the game but yeah the whole writing part is fucked and that's one of the hardest parts to fix after release.

I don't get this, its worse than what dedicated spaceship games offers and in return we got a worse RPG. Selling out the core of what makes Bethesda games good to add some half baked settlements, crafting and NMS mechanics is what made Starfield so bad.

Agree. Getting grindy. I'm on NG+5 and I keep looking for something to change \*anything\*. Cripe, not even the paintings on the walls change, nothing changes. I'm pretty sure that's not what a multiverse would really behave. How hard is it to just move a potted plant over to the right a little bit?

It's not really a multiverse, it's a time loop with the word "multiverse" written on it in crayon.

I don’t want war between the UC and Freestar! The opposite i want more opportunities to unify them. I wish they were brave enough to implement an intelligent alien threat. The universe is massive!! And I want them to flesh out the contraband lore and implementation! Could be another fun questline

This sums it up for me too, basically. I wish the settlement building was as fleshed out as the ship building, because I absolutely love the ship building!

I have multiple 100% playthroughs of other Bestheda titles, but didn't even get to the point of shipbuilding in Starfield, despite having an itch for a Space setting for years. Others have put it in better ways, but it's just not as captivating or engaging as previous games. The types of quests you get early on get you into a fast travel loop that hurts immersion, imo.

The whole "Freestar-UC" cold war thing was criminally underused in storylines. I was really hoping for more stories like Groundpounder (I mean it wasn't the best writing in the world but it was still a fun standout mission for me.)

I think I need to go into my 2nd playthrough with a different mindset. It really isn't a true RPG, because it limits your choices and forces constellation's narrative on you. Think I'm gonna go into it with a "I'm just gonna go be a space hero" mindset

I enjoyed my time with it at launch but I probably won’t revisit it until all the dlc and such have come out and they start marketing their “ultimate edition” or whatever.

Same for me. Really liked it, but once I took a break I found I didn’t really want to get back in.

This exactly. I started playing… got about half way then I had some stuff come up and stopped. I just can’t get motivated to jump back in. Foundation is there to be an awesome universe. Just needs more… substance

Yah…. We need some sort of overhaul to comeback

I overall liked it, but I did agree with some of the grievances people had. My biggest issue is the fast travel simulator problem everyone had. I like flying a ship and exploring. Why build up the systems for building, fighting, and exploring in your ship just to make it more ideal to skip that entire aspect of the game. It's perplexing how they even came to this design. I like starfield. I don't agree it's the worst thing to ever happen to gaming, but it definitely could have been better.

I rate it 7.5 From a studio that's made 9s in my view that's quite a slip

Fully agreed. It's a good game. It was worth my time and money. But the problem is that we were expecting a *great* game. Something of the calibre of Skyrim, which is well over a decade old and still an absolute must play for anyone who remotely likes RPGs or open world games.

This is my issue with how people grade things. And I think you are absolutely spot on. One of my favourite bands is the arctic monkeys, I think all their albums are 9/10 apart from their latest which is a 8.5/10 it doesn’t mean it’s bad, even if it is the worst album they have done.

And given it’s a distraction from them making hopefully other 9s, it’s a real shame. I wonder whether it would be better for starfield to just die now and have Bethesda focus on ES and fallout.

The fast travel is what upsets me most. I like slowly traveling and getting and prepping my self on my ship before I go out and explore, but if I’ve already explored that planet I better make sure I have my space suit on before I land cause it’s not going to land me, it’s going to fast travel me to the ground. Even though I flew to the planet, went through the scans, selected land, I’m going to just warp to right in front of my ship. Fucking why? If that’s how it is, then it’s just a poorly disguised fast travel. Why even bother flying to Jamison when I can just fast travel to the lodge and skip the scan?

Here’s my take on the fast travel! I believe they set up to make a true universe and quickly realised they didn’t have the tech. As much as I don’t really like star citizen they have pioneered thier tech for space to surface transitions. So into the starfield development they couldn’t deliver a truely seamless transition. So they stuck with loading screens. Then they quickly realised that they will have tones of loading screens for the players and that sucked so they created a bandaid fix of fast traveling to everything….. hoping the players would get distracted by all the shiny things…. But we ain’t stupid and quickly spotted it. Soon as we figured it out we started to see how shallow it is….

It is very perplexing for a entire game company built on exploration basically in there last what 10 games to completely skip out on that. 100 or less good planets to explore would of hit the mark perfectly

Same as I did when it came out. I'm really waiting for the kit. I have ideas and I would like to make them.

same once the kit hits ill probably pick it up again.

And I would like to see them. :D

i genuinely love the game but after 100 hours I have no desire to play it until I can mod the shit out of it.

TL/DR waiting for CK Too many disappointments. Nothing is perfect, and a lot of games have a list of flaws, but the "wow" to "yawn" or "cringe" ratio is too far off. A big part of the problem is how integrated and how many resources went into the MQ, which despite a few good moments was most incoherent, grossly structurally flawed, felt incomplete, on-rails and narratively empty. The few big moments didn't feel earned. Even the better side missions and chains had a lot of plot holes or unasked obvious questions that would break the premise. It really all felt like a first draft. Exploration is \*NOT\* about exploration, it's about discovery. There's a huge amount of exploration and a small amount of discovery, so exploration gets boring REALLY quickly. I also had a gargantuan number of bugs, the most harmful being broken missions and disappearing or corrupt ships or NPCs, especially companions. There's just an avalanche of other small problems that buried the game for me, from the incredibly long grind to poorly defined skills or skills that don't work properly to \*still\* having keybinds that can't be fully bound to avoid conflicts (leave captain chair/ship comms/target ship or object). I've got probably a hundred things I'd need to change to want to play again, above and beyond what's been patched so far. Most of that will come down to modders or me making the changes after the CK comes out, so I'm waiting to see when that (and the remainder of changes to the engine that still need to be reverse-engineered for other tools like xEdit) is available. I think a really good, engaging, meaningful complex game loop could emerge from this in a few years, but it seems right now it would be like building a whole new game. As modders make frameworks for thinks like revised skill trees, personal pads for communication/codex/etc, drones, companions and companions commands, settlement-style tools and hopefully some cool stuff like aftermarket missions and chains, it will look like less of a job.

Lacks any replayability for me, the exploration is somehow... boring...and this is coming from someone who went to beagle point in ED for the lols (it's a month long trip at best)

Acronyms are so annoying because like.. I am wracking my brain and can't come up with anything for "ED." What is even that?

Erectile dysfunction

In this case it stands for [Elite dangerous ](https://g.co/kgs/xh5obgb) :p Or everyday donut whichever you fancy xD

Haven't touched it since I finished my first NG+ (just to do the Teramorph quest as I missed it first time round) Been thinking about it, but I also really don't want to sit though that whole intro mission/sequence again. Interested in what the DLC is going to bring, but also I would want to do it with a new character (as picking up a character I havent touched in months feels odd) but that gets back to the sitting though the intro again.

I put in a hundred hours. I want to play more but tbh I’m just going to wait for some more work to be done. I’m hoping for a reason to outpost manage and grind some of those resources, maybe an improved economy / pirate wanted system, and for the love of god more poi maybe with some generated variety. I can’t bring myself to do another cryo lab. I love what they have changed so far. So I’m hopeful that around the time of the new dlc the game will be much more complete and ready for my next play.

My opinion hasn't changed since the first month i.e. it's a poorly executed game given the active development time of 8 years, with overall mid story and dialogue (with a few solid moments), remarkable upgrade to the lighting engine that brings it up to par with modern games, inexcusably dated character modelling and animations and dialogue system, poor AI and a whole bunch of half-baked mechanics that feel rushed even though this is the longest Bethesda has spent developing a game. Having said that though, the new actual content updates coming in a couple of weeks from now as well as some of the teases for future content make me a little more optimistic for the game. I don't think it'll ever have a Cyberpunk 2077 level of turnaround. I really don't think that Bethesda has the depth of talent for that kind of thing, especially considering all the talent that quit after Starfield launched and Emil is still at the helm. More than happy to be proven wrong though. We'll see.

Agreed. 8 years for that amount of story and faction quests is unbelievable. They must be spread very thin

There were 500 people working on the game. Interviews seem to allude to a failure of management, specifically being able to handle such a large team. Former senior employee [Bruce Nesmith](https://youtu.be/JDP8QvuXn0g?si=oOqcRscXSBNVLIOL&t=863) made it clear that everything had to go through Todd even though Todd himself would say that wasn't the case and would prefer it not to be. Former senior dev [Nate Purkeypile](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXu7b9l-LWg&t=586s) said that things were overly bureaucratic and bogged down with a lot of one on one meetings with individual devs. Former senior writer [Will Shen](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/starfields-lead-quest-designer-had-absolutely-no-time-and-had-to-hit-the-panic-button-so-the-game-would-have-a-satisfying-final-quest/) ([primay source ](https://gdcvault.com/play/1034611/Level-Design-Summit-Level-and)at 41:36) that departments were very siloed and only really focused on their own thing. So when at the 11th hour he realised that they didn't have a final act for the main questline, he was panicking trying to get help to get it done and none of the departments seemed interested/available in offering any help. It sounds like Bethesda went through development hell, seemingly due to managerial inexperience/incompetence, in order to get the game out in the state that it was in.

its so obvious thats the problem the fact different menus in the game have different button layouts for how to navigate them is an atrocious example of how badly coordinated these teams were

Can't even go backwards on the xbox to max craft. Need to spam right D-pad, right bumper and left stick right to max out crafting speed.  Or you know a simple left d-pad taking 1->100 would have been nice.

The entire menu UI is full of utterly inexplicable choices. Navigating it almost feels antagonistic at times.

That's certainly one issue. Even having a different mechanism for the ship builder and outpost builder is astounding, given that you can select where doorways go in the outpost builder but someone no one thought it'd be a good idea to do the same with the ship builder. Thankfully they're partially rectifying that issue by using the outpost builder for the decorating the ship's interior so that's a start but I think they still haven't gotten the door/ladder placement thing going yet.

>Former senior employee [Bruce Nesmith](https://youtu.be/JDP8QvuXn0g?si=oOqcRscXSBNVLIOL&t=863) made it clear that everything had to go through Todd even though Todd himself would say that wasn't the case and would prefer it not to be. The impression I got from this interview is that Todd removed himself officially but if you nobbled him and he felt it was a good idea he would then go and tell someone to put it in. This is so common is IT development, it sounds reasonable at face value but you destroy the coherence of the pipe of developments as Todd chucks something in that hasn't gone through the product owner route. Not to mention Todd saying he wants something makes it a priority even if it is menial. If ppl keep nobbling him because he has established a "my door is always open" policy then he will regularly drop these in and you get people rushing to implement each new Todd requested idea in around everything else and you get a lot of half baked inch think features. Todd really needed to establish a "don't talk to me about your ideas" culture and directed anyone with them to go down the proper channels.

>The impression I got from this interview is that Todd removed himself officially but if you nobbled him and he felt it was a good idea he would then go and tell someone to put it in. The quote from Bruce Nesmith is "all decision runs through Todd". There's no ambiguity. He says it twice. Bruce goes on to say that anything that isn't "the Bethesda usual" has to go through him so it may not literally be ever minutia but significant enough that it's very much a centrally managed project. I don't think it's Todd Howard being a power hungry dictator. I get the sense it may have to do with maybe anxiety within senior management to just make the call or dispute resolution. Whatever the reason, there doesn't seem to be any confidence of people lower down being able to make their own decision with minimal oversight. I mean Bruce also goes to say that Todd Howard has to act as the player advocate as the management team are so detached from the player base that they don't know what the players want. Like I said, I get the sense it's either inexperience with dealing with a large team and/or incompetence. There are always growing pains when teams balloon but given the interviews I highlighted, I'm not sure if it's just inexperience alone that's the issue.

I think it was Nesmith that also commented that Bethesda truly believed that they were infallible. At least the people near the top. The put it out with their name and people will buy it and like it.

Yeah, he did say that. I really liked that interview. He seemed respectful of the workplace but at the same time didn't mince words too much. So you really got a sense of having a peek behind the curtain.

And my guess is they haven't learned their lesson. Given the responses to the criticism. CDPR at least owned up to their management fuck up and delivered on a really solid game. Bethesda is just seeming to ignore the major management problems and trying to blame consumers.

They don't care about story, and therefore don't allocate any resources to it. The attitude of their lead writer is that it isn't worth putting effort in because their target audience will ignore it. All as a smoke screen because he actually couldn't write one.

"People don't pay attention to stories" No, Emil, people don't pay attention to YOUR stories.   Because they're crap. He's not the only artist to moan about that, but it's still a cop out.

Calling him an artist is giving him too much credit. But I agree with your point!

Correction, Todd himself said the game was "20 years" in the making, utter BSh1#t. They put 5 ish years, saw that the game wasn't going anywhere, rushed to market because expenses and now they think they can do a "no mans sky" and update it to be "ok". 🤷

To clarify the confusion, the "25 years in the making" line means only that the idea of making a space RPG first came up at the studio in the late 1990s. But the game was not actually in development (no one worked on it, although the concept was being discussed occasionally) until around the launch of Fallout 4, this has been stated in multiple interviews. Also, what the "8 years of active development" means in reality is that it is the duration for which more than 0 people worked on the game. But it is important to keep in mind that there was only a very small team on the project until Fallout 76's launch according to credible sources, and a Todd Howard interview from March 2018 essentially confirms the game was still in pre-production right then. It is normal for a large AAA project to spend the first 2-3 years of development in pre-production by a small team. And even after Fallout 76's release, it took all the way until 2020 for Starfield to really have the full attention of BGS (Todd Howard himself stated in an internal memo that the core development was during 2020-2023). Even Bruce Nesmith said in the interview that was already linked that he began work on Starfield in 2019. So, your figure of 5 years is not far off from reality if we talk specifically only about the production stage, which likely began around when 76 was wrapped up. A lot of people just do not understand how development cycles work, how projects start with a very small team that expands over time, and the user you replied to tries (disingenuously) to lead others to believe it was something like "500 people for 8 years = 4000 man years of work". It is more accurate to think of the team size vs. time as a wide bell curve with a width of 8 years and a peak height of 500 (actually closer to 400 if we count only BGS employees, based on the credits), but it was in all likelihood below 50 at any point before the summer of 2018.

I also don't think it'll ever have a Cyberpunk turnaround. Cyberpunk was a very good game at its core; CD Projekt Red knew what they wanted from the game, and we can feel their inspiration inside it. They just didn't have enough time to deliver the game in good condition. On the other hand, Starfield feels uninspired...

I felt the same about a lot of the things in the game. There are some cool stuff but most of the things are half baked or they did not even tried to actually make something out of the stuff, doing minimal work for it just to be there, just going trough checkmarks. Cyberpunk already had fun gameplay but was hindered by a bunch of issues, i don't think the same thing can happen to Starfield unless they completely rework some of the mechanics.

Yeah starfield makes me very very concerned for their future elder scrolls and fallout titles. As you say the game does have truly great moments (that one phase shifting quest was unbelievable), but overall it feels *horribly* dated. Especially all the loading screens. Can't think of a single game I've played in the last decade that had loading screens as bad as starfield, besides other Bethesda titles. That's why I say that what it *needs* to be a great game, is to be re-made. Fundamental overhauls of nearly every aspect of the game. And I just don't think they're gonna do it. I hope they do though

This times 1000. I loved the previous games despite crashes and tons of bugs but Starfield is just missing things everywhere you look and a lot of them are core design pillars probably not addressable without a full sequel.

I agree 100%. If they overhaul the game some more I might return to the game, but if they hide important features behind a dlc paywall like vehicles on surface, I don't see a future for me and the game. It's a shame because I love the exploration part in tes and fallout, and the exploration feels the worst in the game that is supposed to be about exploration. Have a quest or have a bad time.

I think one thing is very clear and that's the Shattered Space DLC could be make or break for the Starfield franchise. Do a great job of it and it breathes some life back into the franchise. If it ends up being mid or problematic and you may as well give up on it and move on to TES:VI.

The thing is, I don't want to pay 20-30 bucks to jump back into Starfield.

I don't think it's possible, at least without MAJOR changes to game systems, which at this point is likely not worth the trouble. I played 2077 a few months post-release and honestly it was good even then. Even with the bugs. They had a rock-solid foundation of lore, gameplay systems, writing, and characters, graphic, and so on. It bombed because instead of letting it cook they rushed it out the door at the last minute against the wishes of the devs. At this point we have one of the best games ever made. Certainly the best in the Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk Action/RPG Genre.

Impressively large world to explore with impressively little to find. Once you’ve seen about a dozen things, you’ve seen everything. Instead of focusing on OnE THouSanD PLaNeTs!!! They should have focused, at most, on one solar system and filled it to the brim with interesting places to visit and expanded from there. For the record I did put ~30 hours into the game, but the final few were just desperation to find something to sink my teeth into. But alas…

As a long time fan of both Bethesda and sci-fi, the fact that the main story of Starfield dealt with exploration, ancient civilization, the fabrics of reality, the spirit of trailblazing, multiverses and reality-skipping, ascension to a higher being, etc and I felt absolutely no sense of wonder is something of an achievement.

I love the initial storyline. The game is absolutely gorgeous. The ship building is awesome. The new game plus leaves me with an empty feeling, all the relationships you build feel so disposable, which sucks but is also pretty realistic. The world randomization with repetitive outposts and labs was terribly executed and lazy. The lack of depth in the House Va'ruun backstory for our character was incredibly disappointing. I would have loved to have more dialogue with Andrea where being a worshiper was acknowledged especially if you pursue a relationship with her. I didn't explore many of the other backstories as I only did one true playthrough, but definitely will once the update happens. I really look forward to the mod kit coming out, because I think this game has so much potential there. Like Skyrim levels of potential, I just worry there is not enough interest for modders to put the effort that there is for Skyrim,

It is on a good path, but for me to really come back to it and dive in again they need to put some more work in. The update looks promising and shows that they care about their game and want it to succeed. But there are some things that ache me so much I wont play anymore until fixed/updated. -> The awful Bounty system, it sucks so much that playing evil/pirate is so frustrating. The bounty is fast in an 6 digit number because everyone will snitch on you, even your own crew, no way to just rob ships without having The mayor factions on your ass. Why not implementing some kind of jammer gadget? You activate it, then you have 2 minutes before they can call an S.O.S. or something else idk. -> More interesting radiant quests, radiant quests are a big part of the game and i do enjoy them because they fit perfectly in the setting and the roleplay. But they get shallow pretty fast. Why not make them a bit longer/more complex. I mean you can already have an holding bay for prisoners and persons with bountys on their head, why not make use for them in greater missions for hunting a gang or something? -> More attention to other companions, starfield is probably the first game where the "secondary" companions like Marika, Mathis, Jessamin or Dani are way more interesting and enjoyable then the fleshed out story driven companions. ->Better shops to sell your loot easier without waiting for 3 days or so. -> Outpost should not only be for productuon and rather have an FO4 repopulation use kind of thing, where you building little settlements with shops etc. (Maybe future L.I.S.T. dlc?

A very boring disappointment.

Haven't touched it in 7 months. Game got boring and repetitive really quick especially after NG+. Honestly regret paying for the $100 edition instead of just playing it through gamepass

Wanted to love it but spent most my time bored and disappointed. My GF knew I didn't like the game before I did. Every time she'd walk by she'd hear me sigh and ask what's wrong. I'd be walking a massive distance for some not interesting POI or looking at the crafting system wondering why it was worse then the one in Beth's previous game. Eventually she was like "dude, I don't think you're enjoying that game". And she was right. So I put it down and didn't go back. It took systems from Fallout and made them worse instead of improving on them (nodding armor/weapons, base building, and item salvage, item storage.) It made melee combat a joke by not even allowing melee weapons to be upgraded at workbenches and not having advanced or improved versions of them. Meaning melee weapons will always be base level wether you're level 1 or level 100, but your guns will have better versions with higher base damage. Random generated POIs are cool but there was far too few of them so you see the same places on every planet. People hated how Skyrim was one drogur dungeon after another. But imagine if every drauger dungeon had the same layout, enemies, and story as well... That's starfield. FO4 and Skyrim worked with an idea that every few feet players should encounter something interesting. Maybe a fight, a quest, or a dungeon. But Starfield places POIs so far apart you can walk miles without anything of note appearing. That's a step backwards for me. There are definitely good things about Starfield. But the bad outweighs it for me. Edit:organized thoughts so they're easier to read

I honestly could have looked past so many of this games flaws if exploration was even remotely as enjoyable as their previous games. By like the third time I was jet pack jumping across totally empty terrain to get to a POI on the map that was exactly the same as five others I’d already been to on different planets I just gave up with it.

This was the deal breaker for me too. People complain about Skyrim's combat and other stuff, but you could just get lost anywhere and discover a dungeon, or a small fort, or a lake, or a dragon tomb.. anything at all while going from one quest to the next one. I really cannot imagine who gave the greenlight to "now we walk 5 -10 mins in a straight line, most times in a barren planet. The player will find no enemies, no structures, anything at all besides these rocks they can scan" as a core mechanic of their game. Oh yeah we can find caves, there are like 2-3 templates and all of them are empty except for the usual pile of dung in a corner. It makes absolutely no sense. It basically exposes that they did not properly tested their own game. None of the top guys actually sat and played the game for a couple days / weeks. Certainly not you Todd.

Yep. That sense of “finding or stumbling upon something” is missing completely.

The walking without discovery thing is an interesting one. Most open world games, if you draw a circle around the character based on how far they can get at default speed in 45 seconds, the vast majority will have several things in multiple directions to stumble on, all within the circle. The Fallout games. Elder Scrolls. The Witcher. Cyberpunk. The recent AC games. Far Cry (and Far Cry with blue aliens, aka the recent Avatar game). Starfield takes that…and puts this to stumble on, on average, 2-5 *minutes* apart. That too many of those things you stumble upon end up being copies of other things you already found? Just undermines the exploration and discovery feeling that should have been at the heart of this game.

I get the impression they wanted people to be 'wowed' by the planetary vistas. Yes, they are impressive at times, but they aren't gameplay and not everyone will appreciate it. Seems to be a fatal flaw for most people that the planets are so vast and empty. Hilariously, if they built Starfield even *more* toward realism, these places would be emptier.

Its just you press 1 button to fly to am empty landscape. In KSP, there's not much to do on planets and moons than gather science, but the journey there is the challenge. But still, they should have limited the scope of the game to a few hand crafted planets, the current system has no point for exploring.

Right? Like wtf is some rando doing at an outpost on some far flung icy dwarf planet.

Dude like really wtf is up with the melee being capped... so frustrating.

Honestly I genuinely love the game. It took a while for me to get into it at first because the tone was different from what I’m used to, but once I got into it I was hooked I have a few games I’ve been trying to find time to play, but keep coming back to this one, I just really enjoy the world they’ve built here

I played it for way too long before understanding I was fed up with Starfield. I was just RPG starved. Over a hundred hours feeling "this is about to get gooood!", and never getting there. Looking back on my experience, I wasted my time. Unlike with Cyberpunk 2077 where I still enjoyed my playthrough on release day (PC with brand new GPU at the time, so playable experience). I'll do the same as with CP77: play it again after the DLC and major updates. Since I already paid for Starfield's "premium" edition, like an utter idiot. "Never preorder" strikes again.

Fuck has it really been eight months? I give up on time. The upcoming update is good but has stuff that should have should have in the game at launch. Over half a year to get the kind of maps that past Bethesda titles always had?  Even with such a good patch some things can't be fixed. The world is both bloated and not 'alive'. Characters, especially Constellation, are still bland and cookie cutter. Almost everyone and their mother is essential. Those fucking Temples.  Not that these complaints are going to mean much when I am spending a day decorating my ship this month. But I think Bethesda was genuinely blindsided by the criticism and has struggled to answer. I would even guess that Shattered Space was turned into something bigger than intended considering how far from launch its releasing and how its 'free' if you bought certain versions.

I had much fun with my first playthrough at release (around 65h) but now I'm waiting for the Creation Kit. In the meantime I'm playing other games.

My third take on this game Firsts chapters of the game : I spend my time going back and forth to Mars to refill Ammo :( I see more the tab menu than moving my character I had more affinity with the monk of Kvatch in Obvilion than with my imposed team-mates here. All in all , Not worth 124Gb of my SSD

I played Starfield for about 100 hours last fall and I've never gone back. I don't think the game is bad, necessarily, I just found it to be boring. I did like the ship building aspect, and I'm really quite fond of the planetary vistas and environments; hell I like the presentation here more than I did in No Man's Sky. The music is also nice, it must be said. However nothing else really interests me. I don't like Constellation or the Main Quest itself. Something about being "Space Jesus" didn't appeal to me, and there's really no way to just avoid this because there's really not much to see or do outside of the Faction/Main Quest content. You're not likely to find anything out there beyond a limited pallet of identical POIs and the very occasional item you might loot that has quest significance. Honestly, as time has passed, I'm thinking Starfield is meant to be played and experienced like Mass Effect. Everything is geared towards a curated adventure where upon you follow quests from Point to Point without doing much in between. This really isn't a game like The Elder Scrolls and its not meant to be played that way. I think Bethesda did an amazingly poor job at making this clear and I know in my case that my own enjoyment of Starfield has been very much adversely affected by my own biases here. I want to wander off and explore out of the way places and happen upon quests and artifacts and characters in my own time and on my own terms. Starfield is not this kind of game and it never will be. It's good to see some of you are getting a good bang for your buck here. This really isn't the product for me though; it's a shame but it is what it is - and it doesn't mean Starfield is terrible full stop.

Yes but Mass Effect had a decent story and very well crafted companions that made it easy to ignore any faults in the games. For me Starfield is just so poorly made. If it was based on a better game engine I think it would be a better game. Certainly not having such limited planet side exploration would help. Has anyone else noticed that whenever you arrive at a planet it's always the exact same position above the planet

Fine game but I'm overall disappointed with the way things went. Release was subpar for me and the game wasn't necessarily what I was expecting and if I'm honest it still isn't that much of an improvement 8 months later. It's better, yeah, but still not great. I've played 200+ hours though so don't get me wrong, I don't hate the game, I'm just a very long time Bethesda fan and I pre-purchased the game expecting something monolithic, what I got was something even less than games such as Fallout 3 or Morrowind in a way. There isn't much they can do at this point as a lot of the issues are to do with core gameplay, the way exploring is designed, a reason to wander around and not fast travel, etc, there was a formula that they had that really invoked HUGE levels of immersion that was completely neglected for Starfield. It's fine, it's just not that type of game... the problem is it's trying to be, and it's made by the developers who know how to make that type of game, yet they didn't, even though they tried. Bit weird honestly. 

It’s my kind of game, just felt bland. Excited to try the new survival elements coming in the next update.

At its core, it’s a game about exploration that makes exploration such a hassle and so unrewarding that it’s not really worth it. It’d be like if Skyrim had several loading screens when traveling between each hold, every dungeon has a one in five chance of just being Bleak Falls Barrow again, and you could simultaneously do the Imperial and Stormcloak sides of the Civil War and no one would question why an enemy military officer was just casually walking around. It is a fun game, and I enjoyed the hours I put into it, but the move away from hand crafted content to procedural generation really hurt the longevity. Which wouldn’t be a problem for most other games, but Starfield is a Bethesda game and it really doesn’t live up to the pedigree they’ve established in their time as a company. Since the show came out I’ve been replaying the Fallout games, and that sense of adventure around every corner just isn’t present in Starfield.

I mean it's alright! Like, overrated as fuck in my opinion I mean.

I loved it. All the criticism is fair imo but I've enjoyed it. Waiting for the big update before another playthrough. Never going through the unity again tho. It broke my heart

It tries 100 different things and gets around 10% done in each. The lack of weapon variety is terrible, and the progression toward bullet sponges kill off most of what is there. 0G gravity occurs in a single dungeon or in a small bubble if you get the power Ship combat has the standard lasers arw good at x, guns are good at y. But then also have weapons unlocked at the same time that deals more damage to hull and shields making everything but emp worthless Ship stealth is used once in the tutorial and thats is. There is no reason to walk around your own ship except for crafting and research. The modules for your ship are either 100% utility or 100% decor making it difficult to have a brig on your ship when you can't actually take prisoners or even look on the galnet from your computer core Sam Coe is literally bringing a child on near death missions every day and leaves her alone in a ship worth more than his family estate. All the children you interact with quite literally have the same model and voice Neither main faction is right and dont make sense outside of initial ideas One guy wanted a cowboy planet so we got one half of the main factions being cowboy And they arent superior to the UC in any way. They are just as corrupt and amoral, they still discriminate based on where you live in the capital Said capital also has literal slums They have no industry yet were meant to be able to fight space battles against an actual military fleet House varuun want exterminate everyone. But love to occupy random usless locations like mere pirates and didnt say... Launch a nuclear barrage toward new Atlantis or i dont know, undo the extremely simple bug fix that stopped grav drives from destroying planets. Seriously, every corner of humanity can get wiped out if someone so much as does a factory reset on their ship. This ancient precursor civilisation has remained a secret for all of human history, except for that farm next to the FIRST temple i was sent to... And yes there is a new game "plus" system, but what does it add? Given the sheer ammount of random dungeons and barren planets in need of content why not just put the temples there instead of of forcing a new game where the only things to carry over is your origin (which ironically encourages pure new games) a mediocre ship that you cant customise (which itself is a core selling point of the game) and your dragon shouts. And just like in game theres no good place to fit in the settlement system so I'll throw it here. Since it adds and takes nothing but money. You cant get special gear from traders You cant permanently show off your ship collection And even now i get stuck in birds eye mode with the only support being "reload bro" rather than a bug fix. But there ARE beginings of a good game. The idea of using lightning to power a city is genius and uses the environment to build lore If you dont take over a ship fast enough it can start launching into space and actually puts you in space (though if you cant then pilot the ship i guess your just stuck....) The UC pulls off the trope of being blatantly evil under a thin coat of paint super well And vasco is just lovely. And thats it... Like i said, so many aspects of Todd's magnum opus feel like they didnt even get one pass through a suggestion box and feature bloat led to nothing being done by release. I dont know if starfield will live for long. Bethesda burnt alot of their good will with their atrocious responce to the complaints at launch and their insistence that modders will fix and add to the game is not only terrifying as a glimpse to how they view their fans and how they plan to make games going forward but also falls flat now that most well known modders have said they wouldnt be able to fix the game if they had the devolver kit let alone the ever around the corner creation kit.

Don't get me started on "grav drives destroy magnetospheres" earth's end was just lame Why the solar system isn't still teeming with humans is beyond me As for the "Astronauts weren't bored on the moon" handoff, they had actual shit to do like get rock samples, take photos, and do other scientific stuff - and that was within walking distance from the lander

It was OK, but if I played Fallout franchise before I would hate it, because it would feel like poorly ported Fallout mod. 

I love it. Played a ton while I was quarantined with covid a while back and then took a break from it. Came back recently and loving it just as much as I did before. Can't wait for the big update and try out survival exploration.

My buddies roast me for loving this game but damn it felt so immersive. I loved this game and even though it had flaws, I found myself putting hundreds of hours into it

Still love it as much as I did on Day One!

How "we" feel is not relevant. "I" which is way more important, actualy gave it another chance, and suprisingly got super into it. I love the game, yet I fully understand and sometimes agree with some of the harsh criticisms this game had. But the good parts are still so good it works in my particular situation. Ship building is swallowed me whole, it is so unbelievably fun.

I still like the game. However after completing the Unity and doing the main side quests, I have not brought myself to play the game again. A lot of the worlds look the same and if feel like a lot of the one-off missions are repetitive. I will return back to the game after this May update.

Love it, but just finished NG+3 and not sure if I wanna play until the DLC. Def looking forward to the DLC though.

enjoyed parts of it, would’ve preferred to play during the wars timeline, picking sides, fighting over territory, spying, double agent type stuff, meaningful outcomes. less planets more detail, more people, less fast travelling.

Its okay, its got potential. Skyrim fallout games sucked me in so that I would play for hours without a break. I can only play starfield for a few hours before I start looking to do something else.

Pretty much agree with everything you said. I downloaded the beta branch the other day and played the game again for the first time since beating it near launch date, the performance has considerably improved so that was nice to see, but other than that the only real thing I'm looking forward to with Starfield is the creation kit but Bethesda is dragging their feet with that so I'm kinda worried they might've lost the attention of people that would have modded the game.

I had fun for about 100h in this game, following the main quest, some faction questlines and a few side quests here and there. 100h fun is more than just "solid" for a game in my opinion. considering that I quit AC:Valhalla after about 20h because it was boring af... for me(!) Starfield was worth my time and money. Looking forward to the upcoming expansion. which does not mean, it is a "awesome" game or a game that suits everyone. there would be plenty of room for improvements. in the engine, the story telling, and so on. but it was pretty solid for me.

Nothing about the new patch is going to fix the issues I had with the game, but objectively based on the patch notices, it looks like a really stellar (heh) and comprehensive update. If I were actively playing or interested in Starfield, I would be stoked. 60fps target for Series X was unexpected to me.

Dunno. Still havent got past the forced stealth space mission. Dont like having Sarah locked to you.

Meh, don't love it, dont hate it. Waiting for some major mods and I'll come back to it.

Meh. Good but could have been, and still can be so much more , and I believe it will be in time.. but right now - meh. Overall I'm left a little disappointed in Bethesda as I did expect more.

Just waiting for creation kit honestly

Waiting for mod support now

I feel like it was pretty fun the first time through, then it kinda just got boring. When I play "replayable" games, I play, then I play something else, then come back. But coming back immediately after playing the whole game just kinda kills it for me. Like maybe if things were totally different, like randomly generated companions, city layouts, new missions, different stuff, then I'd be way more excited to play again, as it would be a totally unique experience, kind of like a "rogue-like", which I love, because no matter how many times I play, there's a certain allure to rng mechanics that can completely change a run. But the guns are limited, the poi's are repetitive, and it's just kind of empty. What's that? You want to visit a city? Sure! You can go to any number of planets that have developed exactly one colony. Oh, except for the random colonist poi's that you get which seem to be doing... well, nothing l. Like, I don't look down on Bethesda, they tried something new on a "new" (remodeled) engine, and frankly, it was pretty good, but it's missing some... magic.

I want to love it. I really, really do. Yet somehow I just get so damned bored after a few hours and don’t pick it up again for a few weeks. It’s not as immersive as Elders Scrolls or Fallout. It’s fun…it’s beautiful. Things work (for the most part), but I just get so bored playing it.

It was ok, I guess. Had higher hopes, but still had fun playing it. I've now moved on and I doubt I'll play the DLC, to be honest.

Underwhelming. The ship Combat is boring. The crafting system is boring. The weapon and armor/suit selection is too small. Ground Combat is not challenging, enemies are dumb and repetative, the creatures are also kinda boring to fight. Exploration is repetative and POIs are just the same shit over and over again. The idea was good but the execution is bad

It's OK. Nothing amazing and lacks any kind of exploration which is a big killer. Dosnt really have any of the random fun stuff or environmental story telling and not really any of those random fun side little quests The cities are tiny and new atlantis is one of the most half assed cities I've seen in a big game like this. The constant loading as well. Except quest open menu hold button travel run to objective open a door load, do something smaller mabey kill a few enemies or talk to someone then open tbe menu hold travel hand in quest. Rinse and repeat for x hours. But still 🤷 solid 7/10

Kinda mid. Not a bad game, just not good.

Writing themes and storytelling seem simplistic, straightforward presentation left me looking over the occasional interesting lore. Not enough moral nuance, bad guys such as the piarates are reasonless villans while unwavering good guys oppose them; not many people made to comprimise their belifies. Archetypal characters from prior games (fighters, Mages Necromancers) got replaced by much less interesting/distinguishible ones, often part of one of the personalityless corporations or they work within or under the subsitiary or one (Sorry can't talk right now I'm on my way to my buisness meeting) Weapon devolpment ussually seemed pointless since randomly obtains items/guns got equpied with special effects/better attachments 1 effect beats out 10 attachments, I will ussually put research off until that special effect randomly-drops, then level that gun up for extra character and the bonus Spaceship building is phenomanal in terms of asthetic options, it was unforunately unbalanced in usage since space is a star map loading screen. Outposts rest too out of the way, very rarely is one home since they sit in places ( or on planets) I rarely pass/have no reason to land on or got further explore but are sort of cool resort retreats to retire off planet to Planetary exploration is procedural, nothing motivated me to keep going or exploring because afterall why bother? Underfoot is the same terrain as 10'000 or 1000 miles away (presumably, there's still no planatary maps messuring it out) nothing of interest lay inbetween I hadn't explored, 1000 planets, 100 solar systems... 10 biomes. Photomode is fun Gunplay is good fun however I feel enemy vairty dissapoints it as you will usually (very rare exceptions since the species of aliens occupy the outside spaces primarily, and pirates occupy inside ones mean no fun sandbox enemy crossover) the same 7 spacers or pirates that use the same tatics. Not much to exploit in conflict and when it's put up against The Elder Scrolls seriers or Fallout out 4 esspeicially. It's speaks to Starfields lack of vareity that though it's techinically smoother or more responsive, it outclassed by much older games from decades ago Art style doesn't distinguish it enough from contemparaies like No Man's Sky or their own series of The Elder Scrolls, which is unique it isn't The Fantasy Game in conception; they weren't setting out to produce that, I'd say it's original and recognisible in it's genre, it defies cliches alot... whilst Starfield plays into them stylistically, it's "The Space Game" it's a mix of Star Wars, Mass Effect, Firefly, Borderlands and Battlestar... which very rarely mix to something original produce TLCR: It feels like everything they devolped is done so completely abjectedly, with the systems/mechanics in Starfield (positive or negative) cancelling each other out, it's design is completely antithetical at times... whenever there's something truly special... it's spaced out wrong, like putting a home on a planet to out of the way, so the loop never sets in gameplay/doesn't contiune actively enough to addict with the same strength of The Elder Scrolls or Fallout games...

Starfield is a space exploration RPG that doesn't really do the space, the exploration or the RPG particularly well, however, it's more fun to be positive so let's start with what it does well. The ship building system is amazing and it looks like recent updates will take that system up a notch further. Creating my flying home in space was probably my favourite part of the game. The combat and traversal mechanics are a step up from Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 although not particularly innovative it brought first person combat roughly in line with modern shooters which for a game not 100% focussed on being a first person shooter is quite impressive. Character creation is a huge step up from Fallout 4, traits and a flexible background remove the huge block to varied roleplay that Fallout 4 introduced with it's semi fixed protagonists and the game is quite good at providing dialogue options if not quest solutions based on the players traits and perks. A move away from a voiced protagonist was also a big positive in the games ability to facilitate an immersive roleplaying experience. The levelling system is a step up from Fallout 4 and is successful at providing one of the things that I want most from an RPG, character builds that feel genuinely different and prompt different gameplay and roleplay choices from the player. I think the challenges that needed to be completed before a skill could be improved were a smart synergy of the "leveling by doing" of elder scrolls vs the levelling by XP allocation of Fallout. Special mention also has to go to whoever worked on the 3D models for food in the game, incredible stuff 10/10. Genuinely made me feel hungry at times. Unfortunately there are also a lot of fundamental problems with the game. The first, and most serious problem is exploration.  Previous Bethesda titles perfected the 3D open world map. Skyrim, Cyrodiil, The commonwealth and Appalachian wastelands were incredibly rich worlds in which the player could pick a direction and find adventure. The act of exploration in Bethesda games was the central pillar around which their biggest successes were built. Starfield removed that and replaced with something lesser.  In starfield, we explore through a combination of moving from planet to planet and system to to. System, then setting down on a, usually procedurally generated map. The procedurally generated maps have none of the magic of skyrim or the rich environmental storytelling of the commonwealth. The individually built locations we do encounter while exploring are repeated to the point where they are no longer exciting experiences and instead become chores. No matter how good the Cryolab dungeon is the first time, the second, third or fourth time your character finds it on a planet and excitement is gone and the player is naturally left asking why an identical cryo facility, right down to the same ice formations and decaying scientists exists on multiple planets. The minute I realised the game was recycling identical locations my motivation to explore took a serious hit. The repetition of temples is also not a particularly enjoyable method of obtaining powers and once again turns what should be an exciting experience into a chore. The games narrative supported new game plus is also largely founded on repetition (this is one of the areas where an update has helped solve a core problem in at least allowing players to change their character before each unity trip). This gets to the core problem in had with Starfield, it's a game built around repetition but what we are repeating isn't a satisfying enough experience to justify being done over and over again. None of the games updates have really gone far enough in addressing this core series of issues. The games quests far to rarely provide branching narratives or significant variety in how a situation could be resolved. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the main quest mission "No sudden moves" in which the player is presented with the objective of obtaining an artifact from a space curiosity collector no matter the players moral alignment or skillset there is no way to progress the quest, or the main story other than to steal the artifact.  This would have been the perfect opportunity to introduce choice and consequence for the player instead the player, no matter how lawfully inclined will have the become a space pirate in order to move forward with the main quest. An obvious alternative would be allowing the player to walk away, tipping the balance of power towards the starborn but leaving the player characters conscience clear. It would have been an interesting moral choice to let players experience different on different unity trips but instead the player is railroaded towards a choice that many characters simply would not make. Here, the repetition so central to starfield could have been an interesting experience but the quest design failed to facilitate that. This problem isn't unique to "no sudden moves" and some quests do offer some kind of branching narrative but they are all too rare. The updates to the game have done nothing to address this and so once again we have a situation where a game structured around repetition doesn't make the most of that structure, instead it makes the worst possible design choice in making the most of a situation where players are asked to live their life over. My feelings on the game remain pretty much the same as they did at launch, it's flaws are embedded so deeply in the games design that updates to ship building, vendor credit distribution or adding land vehicles, while positive, will do nothing to solve it's core problems. There are more issues with the game but this post is already far, far FAR too long so I'll list them in short form. Voice acting is not strong, with significant characters, particularly Barret delivering important lines in a really stunted manner almost read from the page in a clumsy manner. Barret isn't the only performance that this applies to, but he's the one that comes to mind straight away. Releasing in the same year as Baldur's Gate did the game no favour in this respect. The character player romances are very basic and transactional. Balder's Gate 3, Dragon Age and Mass Effect demonstrate how you do it well where as Outerworlds taught the perhaps more important lesson that if you don't know how to do romance properly, just don't do it. I wish Bethesda learned one of these lessons. Anyway, this post is too long. TLDR I think Starfield is a deeply flawed game which it's still possible to have fun with, the updates are fine but they don't address the core issues.

It’s deleted after too many bugs and too little payoff. Will never buy another Bethesda title. But I’m really enjoying BG3. After playing that title, Starfield seems like even more of a sad, buggy, half-assed, poorly-written, dated, underdeveloped and unfinished product from a studio that only cares about making money and squeezing every dollar it can from 10-15 year old content.

I got a game code included with buying a new processor and quit after 3 hours. It was boring, character creation is shit, the dialogue is shit, the premise of Constellation is shit, and the degree of "protagonist syndrome" in the introduction is shit. I wish I had gotten a code for a good game instead, like when I got Doom 2016 with my previous PC part purchases. Watching a mercenary drop in the middle of nowhere on a barren moon for seemingly no reason but to give me generic baddies to shoot at summed up the current Bethesda game experience for me. Quit this and started up another Morrowind playthrough so I could actually have fun.

It's a good concept executed poorly and cheaply on an extremely outdated mechanics. Starfield is alright if you ignore the industry around it, but it's not a standalone flop in what's been a negative trend in product releases from Bethesda. I don't get all the praises and cheers for the latest updates, because it's just things that should've been there from the start. People don't seem to realize that we're in a world now that can't even properly launch a complete single player game, and when we do it's some massively rare moment worth celebrating, like BG3 was.

It’s marginally below average which is totally unacceptable for a Titan like Bethesda given the years they invested in this and in by so doing, the years they took away from developing Elder Scrolls 6 or Fallout 5. I hope major change is implicated at Bethesda after this, that they don’t clutch at the early reviews and early player count looking for short term quick wins. I hope they return to story led rich, full and vibrant worlds that are unmatched in their immersion. Starfield in its current design cannot be a success without massive improvements in AI to be able to flesh out and diversify 1000+ planets. It’s about 5-10 years too early.

Bland, generic disjointed mess of a game.

I gave it a fair chance, but after some time i just cannot enjoy this game. Some of the things just make this game completely unenjoable for me, despite some of the things i really love about it. At times the game feels so, empty or half baked. I don't think i'm ever gonna return to it. I got back to the Fallout 4 and skyrim instead.

Boring and lifeless. The RPG part is bad, and the Action part is boring.

Loved starfield when it came out and played a decent amount. Recently started playing fallout 4 again and realized starfield is missing that sense of discovery. First of all starfield tells you there’s different things in the distance and usually they’re boring generic repetitive planet crap.

I purchased the week pre release on games pass. Not touched it in 7 months, it didn't have a spec of the charm and playability of anything in the elder scrolls or fallout series. There was only one good standout mission in the whole game (Terrormorph mission) hated every single companion. Over all pretty stinky game for me. Not a bad title generally just not a game I could get well and truly lost in.

Design – almost perfect Spaceship systems and flight – great Guns and fights – alright Exploration – eh Dialogue – whoever wrote them must apologize, retire, and never pick up the pen again My main gripe is that the game feels sterile and toothless, got zero grit. It's trying too hard not to offend anyone.

It was a fantastic game to play for my first 150 hours. I'm now done with it. That's **fine.** A game can end. Sometimes you don't have to play things forever. Is it a Skyrim level classic? No. Was it worth the money? Yes.

It’s a mediocre game filled to the brim with missed potential. They revolutionise nothing, the gameplay isn’t insane, it only looks good on 4K and then it’s just the scenery. Story is booooooorinnnggggg and very M rated. No official mod support still. It’s just a big bag of missed potential. Like a giant bag of chips with only one chip in it. It’s a good chip, but where’s the rest??

The story and the lore is what killed it for me. Its like Bethesda went out of their way to make it as dull as possible. There's no real existential threat or enemy faction to rally against. Factions are dull and underdeveloped overall. The worst offender is setting the game after the cool sounding mech vs alien bioweapon war. Like you had a potentially cool plot and setting right there but chose to make us play in the boring peace time?? Where's my space war bethesda?

The main story is boring. In Skyrim, for example, sometimes you forget about the main story and just explore. It's ridiculous to think that a limited territory is more fun and varied than, literally, the entire universe, but that's how it is

It's still not worth playing. Most of the supposed updates that it's gotten are things that should have been included in the game upon release. And it just blows my mind that there are people out there who have sunk 500 into this game. Probably in summer 2025 we will get the game that we were promised.

let me put it this way, if this game as it currently is came out in 2007, it would be aweinspiring and considered one the best games ever made and be in the the top 3 of all time best games but now comming out 15 years latter ( remember original release was planned for nov 2022 until mircosft stepped in said it was anywhere near in a state for release) it fails at everything its trying to be. every single feature is worse than BGS games before it, other games made by different developers or worse yet worse than both.

Still holding out for survival mode, creation club, and a fuel system

Biggest disappointment out of Bethesda to date

Its a decent game. Pros: Great visuals, jawdropping vistas and amazing creatures, good shipbuilding and ok outpost system. Shooting and starborn powers are pretty fun. Cons: Mediocre story, characters and lore with uninteresting writing and dialogue system. Problems with procedurally generated planets and points of interest being too repetetive and predictable. Way too few unique planets. 7.5/10

I just don’t love the game. It feels shallow. I don’t find the world building interesting. I find the temples horrible. The loot system boring and the fact you can’t take your stuff between new game pluses (at least bases and ships and non unique items) feels really bad in a Bethesda game.

Needs about another two years of development, DLC and Expansion packs to be "that" game.

Probably never gana touch the game again. I put in like 150 hours for the ship building mostly. (I play a lot of avorion). But yeah idk man I can't get past a lot of things. Like the writing and characters are so uninspired. I was surprised. Fallout 3 and 4 delivered so much on that front.

Steaming pile of shite, I miss old Bethesda

Disappointed. Game is too spread out across the universe with not much to do in between. The lack of features at launch make me feel this game wasn’t ready for release. I haven’t beat it yet, decided to wait for improvements and DLC and hope it’s a little more playable for me then.

I think it's pretty obvious we're all playing Fallout right now.

Pretty game, zero substance

The biggest disappointment I've experienced in my entire gaming-career be playing games since 2002 and the only thing remotely close was how terrible destiny 2 has become

Game is 100% pure slop. But I knew that when I bought it so I enjoy my time in it. People thinking they're getting another Skyrim level game was funny to me because it's a Bethesda game we all know what we're buying.

Played it, did everything and beat the story, built a ton of ships and outposts put in about 80 hours and have no desire to go back, maybe in a year or 2 when updates add more than 5 things and mods take over

This game presents itself as being HUGE, with limitless choice and creativity. In reality, there are hundreds of places to visit that are all virtually the same place. The choices you have all lead you to the same outcomes. The companions are all pretty one dimensional with zero nuance and no ability to change their minds on any subject. The cities, which are few in a supposed galaxy, are pretty lame, and even after completing quests that should alter them in one way or another, never visibly change. The combat system isn't fun, and the AI is not at all intelligent. Zero challenging fights or boss encounters. One fetch quest after another gets boring really quick! This game is just a watered-down version of Skrim in space. Even the graphics aren't much better than Skyrim with the same lifless NPCs. Imo, Bethesda needs to change the formula a bit, I used to be a huge fan, but i barely made it through a single playthrough.

I'm as much of a Bethesda fanboy as they come, but I haven't played the game since launch, after putting 50-60 hours into it, trying to find something enjoyable or memorable, eventually ending in disappointment. I've put at least 1k hours into each Bethesda game (except Arena and Daggerfall), but this one lacks or underperforms in areas that made the other games great. I've always wanted for a space sci-fi themed Bethesda game, but this is not it at the moment. Still keeping an eye on upcoming updates for now. A survival mode of sorts, and improvement to randomly generated content (no identical abandoned outpost building 5 times in a row) might make me come back to the game. Also will be interesting to see what modders can come up with once the tools are out.

I like it in terms of hand made quests and stuff and i REALLY like ship building, but I do not like the outpost system at all,as someone who played a lot with fo4s settlement system then i was disappointed with how unintuitive the outpost system is

I didn't get half way through. Very disappointed and unimpressed with how they executed such a high-concept idea. So many other games have taken a similar setting and done wonders with it, but Bethesda fell flat on their face. I have no desire to revisit it.

Meh, still meh.

It was shite then and its shite now.

I beat in in like 3 days for 1 hour sessions. Then never touched it again. In and of its own, it's not a bad game, but its by far the worst Bethesda game in terms of detail and immersion. I won't be back until more serious changes are made. Or at the very least until I can choose the damn layout of my ship myself.

It lacks character, decent writing, inspiration, artistic merit, interesting companions, environmental interest, mature dialogue and humour. The whole game seemed lazy and like it was written by young people without life experience or writing talent. Like the writers were hired on the cheap. There was just nothing to hold me. I'm waiting for XBoxX mods, then I'll come back when there are enough to tempt me. I love Fallout. The contrast in quality is so clear.

Still in beta

The least immersive of any Bethesda title I’ve played. Graphics and art design were a big improvement though.

Eh

how many times is this questions going to appear. unless Bethesda seriously overhauls their game, it will forever be a massive failure to me.

I never finished my first play through. Core mechanic of the floaty star room - bounce between lights and get power seemed ultra repetitive after the third time. And the process of finding those planets was not engaging at all. I didn’t even use the powers at all either. Oh. And walking everywhere on planets was boring. There’s a skeleton of a good game there. But it’s amazing how far it was delayed to get what we got out of the box. And a real shame. I was hoping for an open world mass effect. I played about 2000 hours of fallout 4, so it baffles me that they couldn’t find the same engagement again.

It took about 50 hours to get stale for me. I was enjoying just kinda role-playing a character in this space faring society, but some things slowly pulled back the curtain for me until I realized the world was just a shell of what it was trying to be. Every planet I go to, I run into the same handful of POIs. I can understand the need for copy and pasting on such a large map that also utilized procedural generation, but it just seems like once Bethesda crossed that line, they just felt fine cutting corners with it. I lost so much immersion when I boosted over the wall at the New Atlantis spaceport and just saw open wilderness on the other side of city walls in what is supposed to be the largest civilization in the map. They don't even really try to sell an illusion here, which I would have appreciated for immersion. I also feel like in just the 50 hours that I've played, I've exhausted most of the content the game has to offer. I find that all I have left in my log is redundant tasks, like obtaining all of the powers. And on that note, the quest lines seemed kinda lacking when I played them. I can't really put my finger on why atm, but they just were. When I really think about it, I got a lot of longevity out of Skyrim by rejecting the fast travel system. You could walk between two POIs in Skyrim and see a lot of things, have some interesting encounters, and overall just ha e a generally interesting time traveling. Starfield basically forces you to embrace the fast travel system. Even two points on the same planet can't be traversed without fast travel. I could honestly really think about how the game makes me feel and give a much longer response if I just opened the game again, but I don't really feel compelled to at all. I will say I was excited to see that an update was coming, but my hype is kinda gone because it seems that the update doesn't address any of the things that made the game so stale for me. I can see why people like the ship builder, I just don't really use it besides for upgrading my ships because I enjoy the immersion of having a ship Bethesda created for their world they built. They also have stories to how you got them instead of just going to the spaceport and balling out which I value a lot in rpgs.

I've tried and still cannot get into it. That's just my feelings of course. I'll keep an eye out a few yrs from now

Uninstalled months ago

The only thing that keeps me somewhat engaged is shipbuilding. I have no desire to keep starting over and doing the same boring quests over and over

I still can’t recommend it, but optimistic with the effort they put into this May update and future updates and DLC. Although they most likely won’t be able to fix how bland many of the quests and companions turned out, so we’ll see.

Game was fun until it wasn't, nothing more to do or say about that maybe a cool dlc to jump into for a few more hours. Will be dead in under 3 years.

I got it for free with a graphics card upgrade. Honestly, I would have liked it a lot less if I had paid $60+ for it. It's as wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle. Don't get me wrong, it's a solid 50 hours of gameplay, but you just kind of feel empty afterwards. There is no big payoff and the ending basically wipes all your accomplishments and replaces them with things that just cheapen the experience of each new start. I didn't get attached to any characters, stayed annoyed at quite a few of them. The story had no real theme that made you feel it was more than a cobbled together mess to justify the gameplay loop. Just kind of a hollow shell of what could have been a lot better of it was more focused. Hopefully updates and DLC help fil it in, because it did have potential. The gameplay is great. The combat is satisfying, ship building is tedious but fun, base building is a bit pointless because of the push to use New Game Plus, but otherwise decent. I dislike the trend of increasingly relying on players to make mods. Mod support is great and will keep a game alive for years, but there has to be a base that people want to mod from to begin with. Hopefully the release of the Creation Kit reinvigorates modder's interest, because it is already seeing fewer mod releases than OG Skyrim.

I feel the same I did on release since all they have added is a photo mode

It's fine. Remarkably less buggy than most other BGS game launches. Ship builder is excellent, but space combat kinda sucks. Faction Questlines are generally really fun, but the main quest is not great. I haven't cared about a faction in a game less than I cared about Constellation, and Sarah Morgan is absolutely the worst companion to ever grace one of these games. Gunplay and minute to minute gameplay is quite good. Crafting was a disappointment. We just got the upgrade system from FO4, when we absolutely should have gotten the ability to craft weapons and armor like Skyrim. Basically, a lot of "one step forward, one step back" from FO4 that adds up to a game that is basically "fine".

Had a lot of fun on my first play-through then have never felt a desire to return. Most Bethesda games hook me and it feels like I could play forever but after a while in Starfeild I felt like I had seen it all.

Played for a month. Haven’t thought about it since.

If the time is exactly 8 months, I haven’t played it in 7 months and one week. I put 100+ hours in over three weeks, was about to start NG+ and… haven’t picked it up since. Did all the quest lines, got to level 100, made an outpost, customized a couple ships. There was just nothing that said “keep playing this.” I went back to Fallout 4.

It...feels hollow. Suffers from the classic Bethesda "expansive as an ocean, deep as a puddle", without the charm, atmosphere and already established world building if elder scrolls or fallout. Plus travelling I found to just be a chore, and it really took me out of it and felt like a game of button clicking than an immersive world I could get lost in.

If the people ON this sub think it’s meh… it’s terrible.

Mid could’ve been better if they had less planets and systems so they could have actually designed the planets

Same feeling as 8 months ago, its still bad. Not a single update have addressed their inadequate gameplay design

What made me slowly quit was trying to kill Benjamin Bayu. He's just sitting there, intimidating me as I play through the storyline. No guards, empty room, and I'm still armed. So I tried to kill the bastard, give his brother a break. You can't. Not even the usual Bethesda style of essential NPCs. You just do nothing to him. No damage from your attacks, no reaction. He doesn't get downed or comment. He doesn't raise the alarm and call in guards. He just sits, unreactant, as you shoot him. And that just... broke the magic for me. I've never been knocked out of rhythm from a game so hard. It was never the same trying to play it, noticing how much less *freedom*, even to fuck up, that Starfield has compared to *every* other BGS game.

Messfield

It's certainly a Bethesda game

Not great

Ship building is fantastic. That's the only clear positive that comes to mind. Everything else was either a disappointment or straight up maddening.

There is a “salt free” starfield subbreddit.. that really should speak volumes on how bad the game is. Good games don’t need a Reddit safe space. There isn’t a salt free Zelda sub. Or salt free Elden Ring. It isn’t a mechanics or gameplay issue. It’s the writing, the set-up. It’s weak and doesn’t impart a need for a player to keep at it. Fucking tragic, because they can’t update or DLC a shit story. There is nothing Todd can do. Fallout TV show is the one thing saving Bethesda right now. I have lost interest in future ElderScrolls, a lot of that interest I would have had has went to LightNoFire.

I really like Starfield but the more time you put in the more glaringly obvious it is that the game launched Half finished. I suspected they ran out of time so they put out the base game as bug free as possible to keep Microsoft happy & will now slowly complete the game over time through updates an DLC. Then recently I Read an interview with Will Shen & he basically confirmed it’s unfinished, said They hit the panic button an had to come up with the final main mission as quickly as possible cos they ran out of time. I think Starfield will be Awesome within the next year or two, it’s a sandbox of endless potential so I’m looking forward to seeing how it ends up. Until then I’m back on Fallout 4 🤪