Anyway, I was disappointed but perhaps with some DLC and decent mods it'll be worth playing next year.

The only Steam Game Award Starfield was up for it won, "Most Innovative Gameplay Award" - Player voted this time winning this award has brought out the lovers and haters for another round:

Reviews

Community

Having never played a game of this sort I thought this Sci-fi was going to be a good game for me try. All the negative hype true or not has put a hold on getting it for now. I can only guess much of the negative hype comes from those who play these types of games all the time knowing what is good, bad and.....terrible. Would I even know the difference. As long as there aren't too many issues with the game running(?) I'll keep watching.

There are a few games similar to Starfield I'm looking at, EVE Online and Star Citizen. EVE Online looks and sounds very good, they both do

Whether or not I give Starfield a try I hope Bethesda gets their act together and takes care of the issues they are able to

You night like it. I just felt very disappointed after having looked forward to it. It failed to grab me after 40 hours of play. In contrast, I started a game of Skyrim just so I could learn how to use my XBox controller and thought I'd get back to my other game as soon as I felt able. I'm still playing Skyrim, and I've already put in an embarrassing number of hours into the game since it first came out. Starfield is NOT Skyrim in space. They two games have little in common.

That is a lot of hours hagatha, 40 hrs. Anything you have to say about Starfield, your opinion, I believe. You call it boring and after 40 hrs playing the game it did not grab you. That is good enough for me. Along with your opinion and watching a few video reviews/gameplays Starfield is no longer of interest to me. There are other Sci-Fi's of this type to check out

What is an embarrassing amount of Skyrim hours hagatha? I am gonna take a look at this game just out of curiosity. It sounds like Skyrim is one you are really enjoying

Thank you hagatha

I am nowhere near as proficient with RPGs as hagatha but I love the Elder Scrolls games nevertheless - and enjoy them very much. Even though I DO have to cheat a little sometimes

I don't know how many hours I have in Skyrim, but I have almost 350 hours into Witcher 3 The Wild Hunt and probably at least that many in the last couple of Metro games!

Orion, the Elder Scrolls games are marvellous.

I started with Morrowind, which is a more complicated game than the others, but wonderful.

I always think that Oblivion, the game following Morrowind, is a great way for anyone to start playing a game like these. It does a lot of hand-holding at the start and allows you to ease into the game play.

Skyrim is the Elder scrolls game that follows Oblivion.

I've easily put over 1,000 hours into Morrowind, and several thousand hours into each of Oblivion and Skyrim.

I've also put thousands of hours in to the Fallout games and still play them. They are like the Elder Scrolls games but in a science-fiction setting instead of a fantasy setting.

I imagine I might be pushing your hours in Morrowind, hagatha! In fact, it might be time to load it up yet again!

Draclvr, once I get to Solstheim in Skyrim and the Morrowind music starts I always feel such nostalgia. Feels like going home somehow.

I agree - I get such nostalgia.

Morrowind is more or less permanently installed on one of my machines so I can dip in and out at will 😑

One of my favourite games ever 👍

Just got an email from GOG saying Morrowind and Oblivion are on sale for DEEP discounts.

Now stop with the tempting, Draclvr, when I already have more than one copy of this brilliant game 😱😱😱

And I thought 40 hours was good amount of time put into a game hagatha. It's too bad you did not like it. I remember when some adventure games ran for 40 hour, every hour enjoyed

1000+ hours put into these RPG's is an INSANE amount of hours. I understand that these type of games can go on forever and are very addictive. I wish I would have taken interest in them earlier on. I did take a look at Oblivion and the others both their sites and video playthroughs and if I were to give one a try Oblivion should be that game. The Elder Scrolls look very good. I know if I had ever started playing RPG's I would no doubt have the hours racked up as well. It's just a little late for me to master these, come to know them especially when I have other games in line

I have the first three Fallouts. I did play the first one quite awhile back and finished it. I liked it but at that time adventure games were flooding my computer and I never played another RPG

I did get both Morrowind and Oblivion and will consider playing them, Oblivion at least. Thanks Drac

While I was playing text adventures the three of you were sharpening your swords

Orion, don't fear the RPG. Honestly, Oblivion really does hold your hand with a long tutorial that is also the prologue to the game. It's great fun. I would start with that one rather than Morrowind.

By the way, I was once a die-hard adventure-only gamer and was outraged when one of the King's Quest games had a combat sequence. Then I ran into Thief and Baldur's Gate.

Although I'm older than all of you, I didn't get started in gaming until Dracula The Last Sanctuary. It was all downhill from there!

Bethesda had considered adding land vehicles to Starfield but later scrapped that idea (article). Land vehicles are seldom used in Bethesda games, because they entail other design challenges that perhaps Bethesda doesn't want to get into (even though other games have done it) -- combat on vehicles, how to talk to NPCs or gather resources when you are inside a vehicle (you certainly wouldn't want to get in and out of the car just to pick a flower). Originally in Skyrim, you couldn't fight enemies while you were riding a horse; you would just take a beating while sitting on the horse. Combat on horseback was added (much) later in Skyrim.

I recently played No Man's Sky, which has much better implementation of space travel and land travel. You can fly into and out of planets without loading screens. You can build land vehicles to travel faster on land, or submersibles to travel underwater. Those vehicles are outfitted with resource-gathering devices, scanners, etc. so you can do everything inside the vehicle. However, No Man's Sky is a sandbox-type game like Minescraft with next to no story.



Bethesda is embarrassingly wrong with those remarks, because whoever wrote them failed to understand Storytelling 101. Writers (and game designers) are supposed to make EVERYTHING interesting. It's not the subject matter, but your treatment of the subject matter in your work, that determines if your work is any good. EVEN if the subjects are boredom and emptiness, you are supposed to make them interesting. There are examples like that in other media. There is a 1961 Italian film called "L'avventura" which is highly regarded for dealing with the tedium and ennui of life in a memorable and provocative way. Another example in the film world is the 1975 French film "Jeanne Dielman...", a four-hour film showing mostly a housewife doing housework all day, often in a state of tedium and discontent, until one day when she can't take it anymore. ANY subject matters can be made interesting by skillful writer or designer.

Excellent points, GamingPhreak!

Yes, I agree completely with GamingPhreak's most recent post.

Thank you hagatha. I will give Oblivion a try. Who knows, I might come to enjoy this genre




I was very interested No Man's Sky when it released, maybe for a couple of years I believe it was. The reviews on it were very bad. I don't remember what the issues were at the time but they steered me away from it

No Man's Sky was exactly what I was looking for , exploration. The reviews have gotten much better. The fact that it runs in both Standard and VR modes was another reason I wanted to get it. Watching videos on it....well like you say "You can fly into and out of planets without loading screens", just one cool feature of this game. There looks to be many

The developer, Hello Games, is very proud No Man's Sky. They have released patches and updates one after another since it's release in 2016. This is one game that was not abandoned and thanks to you GamingPhreak reminding me of it I have put it back on my wishlist. I will get it when it goes on sale

Thank you!






Well it looks like I was a little off on the sword sharpening

I've put in 200 hours so far in Starfield, so I seem to have found some enjoyment with it, although all the criticisms against its storytelling are quite valid.

The best way to enjoy this game is to see it as some kind of "life simulator" for a plausible, space-faring future. Most other space games involve implausible, fantasy-like settings, such as Mass Effect and all the Star Wars games. Starfield tries not to go too far into fantasy, and apparently tries to show you what life outside Earth would plausibly be like. I'm fascinated with seeing a plausible future world, so I've found enjoyment in this respect. But this attempted realism indirectly yields a mundane, everyday quality in a lot of things you do in the game. This quality is what many gamers find objectionable.

The storytelling, as many have noted, is pretty unremarkable, pretty much from the get go. It is as if Bethesda intentionally wanted to make it as "ordinary" as it could be, so it wouldn't be mistaken as fantasy like Elder Scrolls or Fallout. There is no exciting jailbreak as in Oblivion, memorable childhood events that begin Fallout 3, nuclear holocaust that begins Fallout 4, nor exciting "dragon rescue" in Skyrim.

I've played a considerable portion of the main storyline and a considerable number of side quests. Almost all are less about "exciting" gameplay than about depicting the world "the right way." Many activities and problems are science-related. A memorable side quest called "First Contact" shows the reverse side of Columbus' discovery, in which the explorers discover a world much more advanced than the one they came from. Several activities involve people moving to less desirable planets (with extreme climate, etc.) in order to gain independence from ruling factions that occupy more desirable planets. A major side quest involves "terrormorphs," dinosaur-like wild animals found in several planets that threaten human lives. A clinic is stationed in space to avoid spreading viruses to planets. Farming facilities are set up in low-gravity planets because plants and crops grow taller and bigger in low gravity. In a city called Neon, there is a 7-story building whose occupants are all tech companies. And on and on. After playing for 200 hours, it's apparent to me that the game's modus operandi is to present a world in which science and space travel permeate every aspect of human lives: culture, behavior, hopes, dreams, etc.

Video games are supposed to be enjoyable to everyone. But I believe Starfield is more enjoyable if you like science. If you follow Neil deGrasse Tyson, follow the Artemis Moon mission, read books by Stephen Hawking, and things of that nature, you will certainly enjoy this game more than the people who don't. But of course, if the stories were better, it should appeal to you even if you weren't a science nerd.

Interesting discussion of Starfield, GamingPhreak.

Interesting comments, helping to temper to some extent the very negative reviews I saw when wondering whether to buy the game (which so far I have not done).

Perhaps I will reconsider when it pops up in a Steam sale in a few months time...

I only bought Starfield because I had determined before the release that I would buy the game regardless. So unless you are the determined type like I was, I suggest you hold off buying it until the "situation" improves, whenever that may be. If I saw any other game that got tons of negative views, I typically would hold off the purchase too (No Man's Sky, for instance). But I liked Bethesda's "brand" of game design in past games, so I knew what I was getting. I did the same with Fallout 76 too, a game that was overwhelmingly negative even before release, but I bought it regardless and played hundreds of hours. Sometimes you have to use your "sixth sense" to guess if a game would be fun for you even if it isn't fun for others. You can typically make good guesses from playing past games from the same developers and/or from the same genres. For instance, if you like adventure games, you will likely enjoy Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes series even though some of them may not get good reviews. Reading reviews and online comments may help, but only if the writers of those comments have the same preferences of genres, gameplay style, developers' track records, etc. as you do. For instance, tons of people don't like Starfield's base-building system, but what if they don't like those things in general, but you do? You have no way to tell "where they are coming from" due to the often galvanic and context-less nature of online discussions in general. I love base-building and have spent much time with it in Starfield. I've created a cargo link system that transfers resources from several planets and moons to a "hub" location for easy access. But admittedly, you don't even want to know how complicated it is to set up such a system. That kind of thing could be a nightmare for some but fun for others, just like the game itself.

Thank you for those additional thoughts GP: I must admit to having rather a short attention span, therefore usually preferring to get into the action part of a game quite quickly, although I greatly enjoyed some of the exploration in Skyrim (for instance).