Starfield on Steam
store.steampowered.com
Starfield is the first new universe in 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4.

I must say it is not the best RPG out there, but I feel like it would have earned more. I personally have a lot of fun playing.

While it was not a Cyberpunk-grade overhype, I think it must still have been overhyped. Because if you see it as Skyrim with better graphics, it is pretty much what you’d expect.

Some of the common criticism seems to be intrinsic to the sci-fi genre. In Skyrim, you walk 100 meters and then you find some cave or camp or something that a game designer has placed there manually with some story or meaning behind it. And as a player, you notice that, because most locations in Skyrim feel somehow unique. Even though for example the dungeons have rooms that repeat a lot. Having a designer place them manually with some thought gives them something unique.

In interstellar sci-fi, a dense world like this is simply impossible. Planets are extremely large so filling them manually with content is simply not possible. And using procedural generation makes things feel meaningless. Players notice that fast. So instead, Starfield opted for having a few manually constructed locations that are placed randomly on planets, unfortunately with a lot of repetition. But that is a sound compromise, given the constraints of today’s game development technology. The dense worlds that we are used to from other genres simply don’t scale up to planetary scale, and as players, we have to get used to that.

  • Sacha@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    1 year ago

    Creation engine is a double edge sword, on one had, it is super moddable. The mods you can put in for skyrim are insane. You can turn it into a completely different game.

    I would say that the game isn’t unpolished because of the engine though. Not in the ways I’m talking about anyway. The quests, dialog, locations, animations are all just a bit off, unpolished, and stiff. None of these really have anything to do with the engine aside maybe animations and locations. And given the eldersouls mods that give very animated combat animations, the combat mods that add wound systems and combos, etc, I don’t think that’s what’s holding them back.

    Yes creation engine is old, but I dont think it’s what makes the game feel unpolished for me.

    • hoodatninja@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Oh I hear you then. When I think of polish in the context of video games, I’m usually thinking about visual and mechanical polish. How creatures and objects move, how things look and feel. By that standard, I think Bethesda has really upped their game to a noticeable degree, even if there is still a lot more to do. But by your definition I can see what you mean! I just don’t usually refer to “polish“ in terms of story, and such when talking about video games