If a no-name created Starfield, it would be panned and forgotten in a day. The AI is beyond trash, it trivializes combat. Story is beyond lame. Writing is boring and the facial animations are below-par. Combat is bare-bones, both on ground and in space. Exploration is copy-pasted. The loading screens are pathetically bad.
For a game about having your own space ship and exploring the galaxy, you really don't get to do much of that. It's just a bunch of set pieces with a skybox that says you're either on a planet or in space. Tons of indie games have done space better and Starfield should be compared to that regardless of who made it.
dan1101@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I’m not even sure what you’re talking about. I’m a space game junkie and if there are other games like Starfield out there I’d like to know about them. Closest one I can think of is Spacebourne 2, which is very ambitious and has more freedom in some ways, but is nowhere near as huge and detailed.
TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
I’m also a space game junkie and I feel Starfield feels… off in that regard.
The aesthetics are spot on, the vistas gorgeous and the ships have a practicality to the designs I enjoy. The little details down to the food being styled after modern astronaut food is clever and the diversity of planets keeps things interesting.
But it doesn’t really feel like a space game. It feels like a fantasy game with a sci-fi filter over it. I understand there can be a lot of overlap between the genres and I also struggle to articulate exactly what doesn’t hit the mark for sci-fi vs fantasy, but there’s something missing.
I think Starfield has a lot more human character than, say, Elite: Dangerous, but Elite hit the sci-fi feel better and, despite it being much older, creates more of that awe-inspiring space exploration feeling.
Xiaz@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The biggest pain point there is the real lack of meaningful space interaction. Your ship, while being entirely personalizable, is largely useless. My play thrus saw a fight every 7-10 jumps, at best. Theres a lot of emulation of E:D and SC in power management but because of the flight dynamics, that entire sidebar is largely binary. Either you engage and win or you jump out. The flight dynamics are rough enough that theres no room in the conversation for being a skilled pilot. Then the interior loses a significant amount of meaning in auto-gen’d doors. you shouldnt be forced to put blank squares in just to get a layout that is traversable.
the veneer of a space game is there but it really lacks the extra thought into how a cornerstone mechanic should work and that causes the largest part of the downfall in my eyes.
TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. The ship is often a character, and an important one at that, in sci-fi. I think of EVE Online, Star Trek, Elite: Dangerous, etc.
The ship didn’t feel like a very big deal in Starfield. I really enjoy personalizing mine, but it doesn’t feel like it has a big impact on the gameplay.
squiblet@kbin.social 9 months ago
It was always going to be Skyrim in space, and I think some people are fine/great with that.
svtdragon@kbin.social 9 months ago
No Man's Skyrim.
TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
Yeah, I don’t think that’s inherently an issue, but there’s some dichotomy in the marketing about that. Maybe that’s a projection, though, I’ll admit it.
dan1101@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I think Starfield aesthetic is somewhere between the desolation of Elite Dangerous and the cartoonish abundance of No Man’s Sky. Elite Dangerous is probably a lot more realistic but Starfield has more to do and interesting places and storylines. I really wish we had the flight and travel model from Elite. I am impressed at the celestial mechanics of Starfield though.
DarkThoughts@kbin.social 8 months ago
More so the flight model imo. Not being able to use lateral thrusters without switching modes is really bad and just confusing for me. I don't even know why they did that, even on consoles / gamepads you should have the spare second thumbstick for that.
Better space travel would be nice but honestly it's something I didn't really expect from the game anyway so it isn't as big of a deal.
TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
Yeah, that all sounds fairly right to me!
What do you find impressive about the celestial mechanics in Starfield? That’s not something I picked up on in my play, and I’d enjoy learning a new lens to appreciate it through.
Neato@kbin.social 9 months ago
For games most similar to this? Outer Worlds. For games about space exploration, has actual good space flight: Outer Wilds (yeah they have similar names). For games about space exploration, resource gathering and space flight: No Man's Sky. For games about planet exploration, resource gathering, and building: Astroneer.