Starfield early impressions

my thoughts after about a week of playing:

• It's definitely one of the least buggy Bethesda games I've played at launch, but it's still a Bethesda game so you'll see the usual "npc vibrating into a wall" type bugs. An amusing one I just encountered was my companion getting stuck talking with that spacesuit filter on her voice, so even though she's standing right next to me and we're not wearing spacesuits her voice she still sounded like she was talking over a radio lol.
• I've seen a lot of complaints about performance, and I don't know if I just got really lucky with my PC config but the game runs really well for me (max settings, 1440p with FSR2 enabled and it never goes below 60fps).
• Loading screens galore. I'm playing on an SSD so they only take like 1-3 seconds max but it's still annoying to see so many. I feel like Bethesda needs to just bite the bullet and create a brand new engine from scratch (which would take a ton of time and resources so it will probably never happen).
• The "fast travel everywhere" system is strange. I agree that it's a little immersion breaking to fast travel light years away with a short loading screen. I don't really know how you'd get around it though because manually traveling everywhere in a space game would get boring very quickly.
• I like the ship builder. They make it pretty easy to snap parts together and it's really satisfying to design a cool looking ship that actually has useful features on the inside (like the workshop for the crafting stations or the armory for showing off rare weapons). I just wish the ship builder controls were a bit better. It's also pretty neat to put windows on your ship and then go out in space and look through them at a huge planet or other ships flying around you, or come back to your ship and see members of your crew hanging out in the living area or engineering bay.
• I like customizing guns too but it's really easy to make guns that are super overpowered, especially if you start with one that has really good effects. That's kinda expected in a Bethesda game though.
• I'm not sure how I feel about the procedural generation on planets. On one hand, a lot of the "random" structures you can walk to are actually pretty detailed and some are WAY bigger than they look from the outside. In fact some of my best pieces of gear came from exploring them. On the other hand, the longer I've played the more I find reused set pieces. It's also strange that even on severely inhospitable planets there are still NPCs living there or ships landing and taking off.
• After I did a specific side mission, I now see a random encounter related to it all the damn time and they have the exact same dialogue every single time. I don't know if it's a bug but if not it's a really strange design choice.
• Visually the NPCs don't look that great, and the environments are okay, but the items like guns and miscellaneous objects are very detailed. The ships also look (and sound) incredible. At one point I climbed on top of my ship and noticed there are a ton of small details all over it that most players won't even see
• I haven't played a ton of the main story, but the side quests are usually pretty interesting. IMO they're the best story-related parts of the game. However I agree with another comment here that Akila city is weird because it's like the 24th century and they still have dirt roads.
• The companions are okay. I like Andreja and Vasco.
• I think people will make some really cool mods for this game. Once the creation kit is released I plan on making a few myself (I really want to add an infinite-volume storage container near the crafting stations on my ship).

Overall I don't think this game is GOTY material or anything, but I usually have a good time with Bethesda games (with the exception of Fallout 76) so just like Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout I'll probably come back to it every once in a while and have fun, especially once more mods start rolling out.

It seems like Fallout 3 merged with No Man's Sky.

Starfield demonstrates a complete lack of any cohesive vision in story, themes, and gameplay.

The artstyle has that generic "hard" space sci-fi look. I could just as well be looking at Star Citizen, Interstellar, or The Expanse. The locations might sound interesting in theory but are executed in the most bland way possible. It's kind of hilarious to think that these tiny settlements are supposed to be interplanetary capital cities. I do understand that unrestricted player movement means that they can't really place a massive city in the background like in the Mass Effect Trilogy but explicitly calling the places you visit capitals is absurd.

Bethesda tries hard to ape Serenity-esque space westerns with Akila. An interplanetary capital without paved roads in its main thoroughfare. It really clashes with the rest of the game's attempts at being seen as a believable "hard" sci-fi. A vision of a car free future brought to you by the limitations of the Creation Engine. The game engine is no excuse for not having a space horse though. Traversing procedurally generated terrain on foot is a waste of time.

The vaguely utopian corporate solarpunk of New Atlantis is soulless and not in the satirical good way. Which is ironic because it seems to be inspired by Starship Troopers.

Neon, the cyberpunk offworld oilrig tries and fails to be a hip seedy dystopia. It looks more like the Outer World's Groundbreaker Promenade than Mass Effect 2's Omega. It doesn't illicit feelings of despair from the callous disregard of humanity as a consequence of greed without limits. It's just a shopping mall with boring corporate suits who try to sound edgy.

The same goes for the music. It doesn't convey any emotion and isn't uniquely identifiable. Inon Zur's work for the Bethesda Fallouts weren't this forgettable so it's probably down to Bethesda's lack of direction. The music doesn't build into the atmosphere of any location or any story moment. I don't think Jeremy Soule would've made a difference, and it's good that Bethesda doesn't associate with an accused rapist. That said I'd still say his work with Oblivion was one the best soundtracks of any game.

Ship combat has controls like Freelancer except it plays terrible. The ships feel heavy and are unresponsive to control so it doesn't really work as an arcade space combat game. The mouse first controls with no flight stick support, fast travel, and the inability to actually dock/land manually make it an automatic fail as a spaceflight sim. The ability to fast travel instantly to any previously visited location is good though. With its quest design, it would be painful to play Starfield if they went the sim route.

The gun play is identical to Fallout 4 but plays worse due to procedurally placed enemies and levels. It has to rely on the AI, weapons and enemy design. None of those elements are able to make the fights interesting. It's still a lot better than any of the other spaceflight games with ground combat though.

The bar is being dropped so hard that Mass Effect Andromeda is retroactively becoming a great game. In the universe that Starfield is an 87, Andromeda is at least a 97.

I'll still play Starfield over Elite Dangerous, or No Man Sky since it has actual content. It isn't all procedurally generated and has an actual story with characters. I'll finish the main quest at least, the game isn't aggressively bad in anyway. It's just all around sterile and uninspiring. I still have the hope that somewhere out there I might find a branching side quest that is remotely as good as those in Oblivion, or New Vegas.

I've never been interested in Starfield in the first place, but I like how you guys have genuine criticism of it.

The only other criticism I've heard of it is "wOkE pRoNoUnS!1!1!1!"

I dont have the means to play it myself right now, but I have watched some videos from people and that seems to be the same kind of impression I get. I could absolutely love actually play it myself, because watching somebody play a game is obviously not the same, but I get the same kind of lifeless feeling.

Maybe part of that are the two games I have been playing lately are Baldur's Gate 3 and No Man's Sky, which are both REALLY good at what they do. Starfield almost feels like the two combined but not quite as good? NMS gives me that endless universe exploration feeling, and BG3 gives me what I am looking for with a living world full of interesting characters/roleplaying.

Nothing about Starfield seems bad persay, but maybe not for me in the end. Let us know if your opinion on that changes though.

JERRY STARFELD

YOU HAVE TO PRESS A??? Bruhhhh I flew for like ages, and then couldn't figure it out so I left the chair and went to the table thing and had to use that. This helps so much.

I found just travelling system to system planet by planet is great because you run into all sorts of encounters. Ditched the main quest line and joined the vanguard so now I go around the galaxy murdering spacers, bugs and pirates. I am playing on hard so I spend quite a bit on remote worlds trying to scavenge enough credits to pay for ship repair kits and meds.

Honestly you can choose to skip the monotonous getting out of your cockpit/going to the airlock and being able to teleport when your 2km away from your ship is nice if you don't have the patience.

It reminds me of season 1 Star Trek.

Why is everyone shitting on NMS here instead of the Bethesda Cookie Cutter?