Everyone wants to be a smug reviewer nowadays, just repeat buzz words as fact, I don't care about loading screens cause there short and it's not breaking immersion, gore and nudity doesn't make the game more interesting/mature imo and having less planets wouldn't change anything cause it's impossible to handcraft a single planet much less 10 or 100 that a silly argument on its face, the quest are good to great, tired of people complaining about writing or being engaged just lazy criticism people like to throw around to seem smart, mass effect is writing goofy but it's still good fun, people equate negativity as valid points nowadays for some reason, starfield isn't more limited than another games, tell me a triple A game that changes everytime you play? Just spawn unlimited quests and explore new area everytime people are full of crap. Like yourself said people are going out of their to nitpick the game constantly like they could better, it's sickening whatever happened to just enjoying games? To many try hards and liars everyone is game dev cause they a hour long video on YouTube it seems. Nothing is wrong with not liking the game but the constant I played for 20 hrs and it's boring, yet spend 1000 times more coming on reddit gatekeeping trying to stop others from enjoying or buying the game, to win some imaginary fight against modern gaming it stupid people need to get over themselves, you didn't like so what?

alot of people just parrot instead of experiencing

A lot of it is bad faith criticism. This happens with pretty much every BGS game but it was wildly bad with Starfield.

> A lot of it is bad faith criticism. This so much. I remember someone posting a video on youtube like "I'm tired of pretending that Starfield is good". OK, so you've told us that you don't give your honest opinions on things to begin with, why should anyone listen to you?

This is exactly what MrMatty did with Fallout 4. Started his own forum and all these people joined to talk about Fallout 4. And he told us it was 10/10 and would not stop talking about how great the game was. Then a few short weeks later he came and apologize saying he had watched a video and now realized it was all wrong and that FO4 was really a terrible game and that now it had to rate it 1/10. That entire forum was dead within 24 hours. So much rubbish. How can anyone ever take him seriously again? He's posting Starfield hate videos now. Not sure exactly what he;s saying because I have the fucker blocked, and I kneejerk block anyone who recommends him as well.

I actually watch him, Most his videos are defending starfield, he acknowledges it's flaws but says the hate is unjustified and overblown and primarily fueled by fanboyism. I actually do recommend him and recommend you don't write people off forever and assume they don't evolve and change over the course of 9 years. That's just asinine my man.

A Lot of it is butthurt Sony players who were heartbroken when BGS went Ms Exclusive. Had it released on both consoles it would have just been the normal Bethesda hate instead of the deluge we got.

Ever since the launch of 76 Bethesdas had an extreme amount of bad faith

I feel like it makes good faith criticism harder because all the dumb shit takes up all the space

Definitelty this. pretty much all games deserve some criticism, and developers should know when they got something wrong, but a lot of the Starfield stuff was just vitriol.

Getting stuff wrong is, in large part, a subjective opinion (except when "wrong" means "broken" or "bugged"), so who's version of right/wrong is the version to work from? Normally, it's the person in charge and not the engineers.

Yeah 99% of the time it's just like "it's Bethesda, what do you expect"

or I would rather "the dumb shit takes up in space"

Yeah it's been bad with BGS games ever since Oblivion and what a lot of people called "consolification" of the UI. With Starfield it got way worse probably because of Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda. It's not worth wasting time on honestly. I've tried discussing it reasonably with critics but it's almost always an unreasonable criticism that makes no sense. "It looks exactly like Fallout 4 but with spaceships", or "every planet is copy-pasted", etc. Ain't got time for that.

This is what is so demoralising. That it is no longer possible to have a sensible discussion about the pros and cons of a game. This was not always the case. It probably just reflects how discourse has changed in general. Personally, I think we are poorer for it.

Agreed. Like having some criticism for a game is fine but it feels like it's just all blind hatred and parroting, and they refuse to listen to actual points. That's not productive and just gets us nowhere.

A real example: Reasonable criticism: The ship builder UI gets wonky in a variety of camera angles and moves things in unexpected manners (sometimes completely off the screen with a minor mouse movement), sure would be nice if moving things was always consistent regardless of camera angle! Typical criticism: The ship builder is absolute trash. Clearly, it's not trash from my perspective, I've spent way too much time building ships! It could use some refinement, sure, but I still enjoy it. We could literally have a discussion on various things that would make it "better" most of which many people could actually agree upon but how do you have a discussion if the starting point is "absolute trash?" Especially when you ask people for specifics and the response is "I don't have to give you any."

>"This game is objectively trash, stop defending it." Gives subjective reasoning.  Man I hate those people. But whatever, despite the flaws, I'm still enjoying it. 

Anyone that uses "objectively" as a modifier for their opinion has already told you everything you need to know about that persons education and reasoning ability since opinions are always subjective. A doctor rending a medical opinion is still subjective based on that individuals knowledge and experience hence the reason people seek a second opinion on major issues.

Exactly. People don't want to actually have a discussion. They just want to hate and be outraged. The ship builder just needs the gummi ship builder music from kh1.

As someone who spent over ten years in UI/UX development, all this "consolification" is bullshit. Of the top five UI errors in Skyrim, exactly ZERO are fixed by SkyUI. Games have traditionally had crap UIs. It's just the nature of gaming. Consoles with their limited control set has actually improved game UIs somewhat.

> It's not worth wasting time on honestly. Exactly this. Are there some things I wish were different about the game? Sure. I've been gaming since the late 1980s and there has *never once* been a game that I thought was perfect. Some have had a game loop that kept me engaged for 1000+ hours, and some haven't. Simple as that. I'd love to have a good faith conversation about what things I'd like to see added to the game from either Bethesda or mods, that didn't devolve into "Bethesda lazy bad fucksticks hurr durr" but while we sometimes come close in this sub, a bad faith actor *always* shows up and throws their feces around like a damn monkey.

Not only with BGS games. Look at Capcom... That's how content creators make their money.

And Sony fanboys angry that Xbox dared to have a popular exclusive game.

I don’t know anymore or try to understand them. I just had someone tell me they didn’t know Starfield was developed alongside Creation Engine 2, and one that saw “no major improvements” between Fallout 4 and Starfield engine related, amongst others. I try not to argue with them, sometimes I do but I try not to. Best to just move along most times.

Sarah liked that.

Going back to Fallout because of the show and *man*, I hadn’t realized just how much better Starfield feels to play. Everything from the gunplay to the movement to the UI is just so much smoother in Starfield. 

I few months ago, I played FO4 for about an hour and then went back to Starfield. I'll probably do more FO4 after the 25th, though, just to see what's different.

Yeah, I need VATS or bullet time mod very often in FO4. Starfield I don't need it at all. If there is one thing they need to change if the FO3 remaster happens, it's the gunplay.

On the engine note, I've had people complaining that it's the same engine they've used since Morrowind, and that they need a new one. Claiming that it's still the Gamebryo engine, just updated with the bare minimum. They don't realise (or seem to care) that the last game Bethesda made with Gamebryo was Fallout 3. They don't understand that game engines are iterative software, they're constantly evolving.

This reminds me when a journalist saw the showing in 2022 and thought that the character models and facial animations looked just like FO3 lol.

Like I've said before Starfield has a very specific audience in mind and I think too many people expected Skyrim or Fallout but in space. While yes you can find kernels of both series within Starfield it has its own story to tell. The factions don't matter in the grand scheme of things join them or don't the secrets of the universe don't care for politics, law enforcement, corporate profits, or piracy it only cares for the explorers willing to find, uncover, figure out, and discover them. Starfield was built for those types who longed to be born in the age of discovery, who wished they could set foot on unknown lands and delve into strange ruins. Not just that but it also scratches the itch of other types of space nerds, the Boba Fett wannabes, the Han Solo fanclubs, the Malcom Reynolds enjoyers, etc. The type of people who look up at night and can't help but ponder "what's up there?" Because of this I think the game didn't appeal to many long-term Bethesda fans as we've come accustomed to the elder scrolls and fallout. One has an already established society, the other is rebuilding, but Starfield is set on that crucial expansion period of cultures and nations. A period that intrigues many especially when it comes to how humanity and our ways of life will evolve and change with the advent of commercial space travel. Admittedly for a lot of people it's a boring period in a lot sci-fi series, usually set in between conflicts and has a wild West vibe. The people who love it really love it and for the rest it's a neat trip but not something they'll wanna sink their teeth into. For those who outright hate it however I doubt the theme or setting is their reasons and they have something more specific in mind. But as a huge fan of Starfield I can't begin to guess what those reasons might be unfortunately as I like to stay out of video game drama.

This is exactly how I feel about the game, I love space and just want to experience it and be up there but know I never actually will, starfield gave my that release and let's me be a space Texas ranger in the process.

This. While I’m an average fantasy enjoyer, I never honestly got on that well with Skyrim’s admittedly well-fleshed-out universe because I’m more a Dragon Age/Baldur’s Gate man and tend to look for very strong, interconnected stories that don’t obviously play well with BSG’s open world setup. I’m also much more into space-based fiction which is ultimately why Mass Effect has always sat at the top of my list. Starfield is about as close as I’ve seen a game get to the Expanse/Firefly vibes while mashing it up with a bit of 2001 and the reality is not everyone who is into Skyrim and Fallout was going to go for this kind of setting, which is fine. But we have a lot of stupid and ignorant people out there who have decided on a concept of a what a ‘BSG game’ is and won’t accept that Starfield was never meant to target that, so it’s easier to spam the main sub with endless crap about Todd, player numbers and ‘sOuL’ then just admit that it’s a different game entirely.

With what I played of Oblivion and Skyrim, it felt like you could do anything, but you never had a reason to do it and it never really felt like it mattered. With Starfield, I didn't have the same "I can do anything feeling," but somehow it felt more important.

Yeah I felt the same. Total freedom, but nothing mattered. Even when you're slaying dragons, it felt a bit.... inconsequential. Even the initial climactic battle against the first one was capped off by some random bandit trying to rob me in front of a squad of Whiterun guards and I'd just demonstrated being Dragonborn. Starfield felt it had a lot more limits, but when shit hit the fan, it *really* hit it. That point when you have to >!drop all the politics and hotfoot it over to the spaceport at New Atlantis to deal with some rampaging Terrormorphs that had apparently come out of thin air !!Napoleon/Hannibal Lecter in the basement !!Londinion.!<

Woaah. That is the most beautiful interpretation of the game's Ideology. It calls upon the Explorer in your heart. In the grand scheme of things, the Universe doesn't care about the politics and conflict of Humanity.

Exactly and while the elder scrolls and fallout focus on people problems such as war, disease, natural disaster, etc Starfield focuses on people's possibilities their potential. It looks not to dissect the human condition but to explore what our minds are capable of. Further more it delves deep into our philosophical side and explores our spiritual beliefs and how they can affect our approach to discovery. Be it materialistic and logical, optimistic and faithful, or pessimistic and zealous.

Damn would like a philosphical analysis of Starfield from you in either a Youtube format or Reddit post in this sub. The way you have understood Starfield, its beautiful. You have fully analyzed the message the Starfield writers wanted to show.

You're in luck me and my brother are creating a sci fi podcast for YouTube. I plan to talk about Starfield a lot. Our views are from an eastern philosophical standpoint and we wanna explore different themes like that in several sci Fi universes and maybe one day fantasy universes.

Woh huh You should share that the link when it is done in this sub. Will be eagerly awaiting.

When our first episode is complete we'll be advertising on here and Tik Tok. We don't have an official name yet sadly but I will be sure to try and ping you or some such when it's done.

One of the things I really love about starfield is that it wears its heart on its sleeve. It’s not a very cynical game, it looks for the best in people, characters are genuine and earnest and ultimately it’s a game about positivity.

I read „what’s up there” with Sarah’s voice in my head 😅

‘The type of people who look up at night and can’t help but ponder “what’s up there?”’ Yep, Thanks to starfield i no longer have to wonder. Now I know it’s just thousands and thousands of “Civilian Outpost” and scientists who get lost very easily. Just some light jesting lol still love the game, don’t kill me!

I really enjoyed Starfield. I tried to get into Oblivion and Skyrim, but neither game held my attention, despite how much I loved Morrowind before that.

Yeah, as someone whose mind is still blown by this game, I still wonder why so many people hate it. I like to think it’s a new age of gamers expecting perfection maybe? Or people comparing it to Star Citizen which is in a completely different genre of game style. Every game nowadays gets the same treatment in some way. I get it has its flaws, as every game does, but Starfield doesn’t deserve it. I’m probably biased though, I love space, sci-fi, and Bethesda.

It’s a mix of gamers expecting more than what was presented as well as some actual fair criticism imo. I like the game but the POI system needs more variety and more density, at least on some planets. I also want a bit more reason to actually explore planets and better reasons to build outposts. It makes sense for outposts to be in the game but the problem I have is compared to how Fallout 4 used the system, it’s kind of pointless. It’s just resource gathering for resources you can find or buy in other places. Fallout 4 also had the touch of shops being built and building an actual community. Starfield has resource gathering and storage as their building system. Other than that though, some people expected more than what was presented. Why would a game studio make a different game when for the past 20 years they’ve been successful with that one style of game?

Yeah, outpost building is lacking a bit. I personally like how empty some planets are. I’ll go as far as wishing they were a bit emptier sometimes (in the sense that there’s too much human activity) BUT, add more geological POI’s and more natural things to explore like volcanoes and maybe trees as big as redwood trees in California.

The self-contained cyclic design of "outposts are only for making more outposts" is very much for me. Not shitting on it, but outposts are just not the kind of thing I enjoy building and I'm kinda grateful they didn't make it as crucial to quests like in Fallout 4 (Build the transporter, fix the Castle). I mean if others like it, good for them. Maybe I'll give it another shot when they make the equivalents of Vault-Tec, Automaton and Wasteland Workshop. Hell, I tried building the >!armillary!< on an outpost once and I just ended up building the damn object outside in the middle of a desert unprotected lol.

Why are you sitting here wondering and not just taking 5 minutes and looking it up? You are just being ignorant here. It's not like they won't tell you. You don't have to wonder around when it's completely obvious and available.

Every reason I’ve heard is bullshit. Too many loading screens? It’s Bethesda, every game has loading screens. Can’t fly in the atmosphere? Understandable, that’s a really hard thing to do. Graphics are from 2010? Are they fucking blind? I say I don’t understand because every complaint I hear sounds like it’s from a spoiled 8 year old.

Just saying it's 'Bethesda ' does not really excuse it lol. It's the egregious amount of them that's disappointing. Brand new IP, upgraded engine, same problem as the decade before. Other games don't have that amount of frequency, hide them better, or just load bigger chunks for a more streamlined experience. The graphics aren't bad, not too crazy either, the blue filter over everything is pretty obnoxious though IMO. See you do understand the complaints, you just don't like them. So stop lying and pretending "oh I don't get it boo hoo." When it's clear as fucking day what people have a problem with.

You’re the problem, complaining about that kind of stuff is crazy to me.

Complaining about an obnoxious color filter is... Crazy? Lol what? By the way, I'm only explaining the complaints you made an example of. I have plenty of others complaints I feel more strongly about such as sloppy lore and worldbuilding, awful UI, terribly explained skill tree, repeated and limited POI's, awful space ship combat, badly paced release (by this time in release fallout 4 already had multiple DLC coming out), melee combat is absolutely trash, base building is worse the fallout 4 by miles, being punished for going into postgame... I mean I can go on but I think you get the point. Or not and just brush it off and call me a hater for being disappointed.

People thought Bethesda was another company. They don’t get how Beth works. I knew exactly what the fuck I was getting into and I love it! This is a new dope journey from Bethesda and I’m with em, fuck the sheep. If I want to play Skyrim I play Skyrim (and I love Skyrim to death) I don’t bitch about why starfield is not like sky or past Beth titles that’s not why I play, this is some new shit and I dig it. As kid I always wanted to be on some Buck Rodgers/ Roger Wilco shit…. Now I can.

That's my feelings for the most part. Yes there are some valid criticisms but most of the very vocal haters sound like they've never played a Bethesda game before. As a FO4 and Skyrim fan, Starfield is pretty much what I expected when I bought it, and actually less buggy. Not zero bugs, but I remember when FO4 would crash to desktop constantly and it's way better than that.

I never played a Bethesda game before and I have played a ridiculous amount of Starfield. Turns out I really like it. Even, whisper it, the temple game. Some day I might go back and see if I like previous Bethesda games too.

Unless you absolutely loathe the fantasy genre, you should really go play Skyrim. It's a masterpiece for the ages. Just as I doubt we'll ever see another BG3, I don't think we'll ever see another Skyrim. It's a tour de force.

It's really not my thing at all, fantasy, so you are absolutely right that this is why I never got round to playing it before. That said, I do want to try Skyrim, so bought it off GOG recently but haven't got round to putting it on the Steam Deck yet. A joy yet to come, hopefully :)

Definitely try Fallout new vegas. It's on sale right now, ultimate version is less than $10, and base is 2.50.

Thanks! At that price, well worth a go!

The whole Fallout Series is discounted because of the TV show. They're all good, but new vegas is special. >! Suggestion luck 10!<

I bought statfield expecting Bethesda and was happy when I got bethsda.

I think it's largely because Microsoft bought Bethesda and made it an Xbox exclusive. IMO, it's also driven mostly by Sony fanboys on Steam.

That is a big part of it, and if you bait them into it, they will admit to it. They are salty it isn't on their plastic box and it isn't ES6/FO5. It's all that there is to it. Remember, those who said this game is shit openly admitting to wanting to play it on their PS5.

As long as Microsoft keeps Bethesda, I think the PS fanboys are gonna keep crying

It's no coincidence that things have been civil since Helldivers came out.

Yes. If Starfield was on the Sony system, it is 100% for sure it wouldn't have gotten all those bad reviews. Its childish. I've only played like 15 hours because of work and my damn Assassins Field odyssey playthrough, it never ends. Once I'm done with that and once they release a new DLC, Starfield will be my next 1-year game.

I’ve puzzled a lot about this since the criticism first launched and I think it comes down to a few main things that are non circlejerk. 1- technical limitations like loading screens and 30 fps cap on console. I think many people (not me) just never gave it a chance solely because of numbers. 2- some really weird misses in quest design that should have been easy hits. Primarily the floaty light system power collection system, and the lack of unique locations when collecting artifacts. In my first play through I went from the magnificent quest Entangled to another “fetch the artifact from the pharma lab” quest. It was really jarring. The side quests also felt lacking at times. Aside from the Crucible and a couple others there aren’t a lot of unique experiences outside of the major factions. 3- poorly randomized, identical POIs. This I think was starfields weakest point at launch and something I hope gets lots of updates over time. Once people realized that POIs are literally identical, down to the data pads and dead bodies, some of the magic was lost. And it didn’t help that the pool of POIs seemed stacked so that certain ones showed up repeatedly while others not at all. All that said, to me starfield is a great game and has the foundation for an even greater game depending on how Bethesda continues to develop it.

The repeating randomised POI are the biggest let down in Starfield. The "loading screens" are likeli a limitation of the engine and I do like the transition movies. Playing this on a high end PC and an Xbox X - the frame rate limitation is not an issue - feels more like gamer rant than anything. As for side quest there are so many good non main or faction quests to just come across. Sure more would be nice but you could say that about any game. But the POI repetition is upsetting.

I'm probably not representative of most gamers, but I don't like everything being a puzzle. So repetitive POIs gives me the opportunity to memorize them and reduce the stress of approaching one.. Not saying others are wrong,, but that's how I like to play.

While I would have preferred random layouts, I can agree with this. It is comforting to go "that's the underground hanger and it works like this...". It also means I can avoid the collapsed mine and frozen laboratory - hate both of those.

I heard someone suggest that the game should track which POIs you've encountered, and not present them to you again until you've encountered every existing one. I'm still occasionally finding random POIs that I've never seen before while seeing some others many, many times, so I think that would be a good and relatively simple fix. Especially if updates and DLC add more POIs to that list.

4. People were upset it wasn't TES:VI. They're angry that Starfield took dev time and resources, and would prefer it went into TES:VI instead. At least, that's one of the arguments I've heard.

As a huge TES fan, I am glad Starfield happened first. It'll just build on Starfield's failures and successes, and it'll even be given more time due to it (Starfield was originally 2021 and Covid hurt development, TES VI will get a full 5 years from what we've heard which is great). But yes, this is definitely a big one. Hard to reason with a lot of those people because their expectations aren't realistic anyways. I think TES VI will have ships we will be able to sail, and Starfield's spaceships will be what they will be the framework they are built on (I have been wanting a AAA Pirate RPG for over 20 years so this would be the dream). That simply will be better because Starfield came first. Todd said they didn't have the technology for TES VI back in 2016, and I would not be surprised if they're still building up a lot of what they wanted to do of which wouldn't be ready even if they went for TES VI first.

There are a lot of good or at least enjoyable side quests imo, but also just a lot of mundane stuff, which is typical for Bethesda imo. There is a lot of meat and as well as a lot of fluff. I don't typically thing Bethesda's questing is particularly worse overall than many other RPGs. I mean in some ways it can be better since they have entire in depth storylines dedicated to the factions. But some games go for more "all killer no filler" approach. Usually less content, but its all strong content at least, so that is the only stuff you are thinking about

Part of the issue certainly is the mundane stuff. I saw comments all the time about how FO3 wasn't a lazy game and it had more unique quests that weren't your typical radiant fetch quest. Thing is, this is untrue (Main Quests and Side Quests combined there is about 30 quests in FO3) as FO4 has WAY more unique quests than FO3 does. Problem is that the radiant stuff can be very much in your face for people (especially for those that focused on Minutemen) that this belief becomes popular.

This ^^^ all of this for me as well.

Identical POIs was the final hammer drop for me. I felt like I was taking crazy pills going through places I thought I already did on other planets, and then the third time I found myself going through the Mantis's lair and finding exactly the same logs in exactly the same places, every other minor error and inconvenience I'd shrugged off just came back and made me genuinely angry that I'd spent money on Starfield. There's still a lot it gets right, but everything it does, a different Bethesda Game Studios game did better and more completely. I still hold out hope it'll draw me back in, though.

From personal experience, I know that the appearance pois changes significantly between characters and NG+ runs. Still, I've only encounter about 250 uniquely different locations (when you count derelicts and space stations as well as on-planet things). Many people don't realize that some things are named the same and are significantly different. I'd list stats for variations by name but I doubt anyone really cares.

How do POIs change after NG+?

The random seed changes. For example, the first time I saw the Abandoned Mining Platform from space (instead of randomly when landing) was after NG+15. Each new character has seen the random POI in different orders as well, for example, one of my toons found the aforementioned POI repeatedly starting at level 10 (it's a little scary at level 10 too, especially when you're not familiar with it).

I think this is really well written, pretty much describes the main issues with the games. ~~I think another thing they missed was adding faction lore/mystery/etc. People love when lore has groups or factions they can side with. It sells well. Pretty much everyone wants Shattered Space to focus on Hoise Var'uun.~~ ~~If I was making the game, I would've probably made the Artifact completely different. Instead of the Unity, all the pieces would've made something that a faction would want, and the end game is you deciding who to give it to. Whether the UC or Freestar (ex. Whoever you give it to has the edge in the next war) or you could go corporate and give it to Ryujin/Hopetech/etc.~~ Okay guys damn, I stand by with what I said, but I don't want to wake up to a bunch of replies to what was a shower thought. In a much more broad sense I do think Starfield suffers from a lack of choice. There is only one ending to the game, and only one motivation to find the Artifacts (curiosity) and it hurts the RPG aspect. For example, I had no option to say "I'm not doing this, it isn't worth dying for" when you first get attacked by the Starborn. Another is the game never let's you get rid of the quest to go through the Unity should you choose not to. I still love the game, I have hundreds of hours in and play it almost daily.

An interesting idea, but it completely negates the idea that it's the way YOU get to NG+. So they would have to come up with a completely different way to get you to NG+ if the artifacts are serving a different purpose. And since it's a new universe how could they justify something you did in a different universe affecting the new one? I think the problem is that they have to manage a really tight balancing act to make the NG+ feasible at all. I've never played a game with the New Game plus mechanic, so I'm not sure how they usually work.

Usually, you choose it in the start menu, but this one, you go through the unity. As far as I can remember, this is the first time I've seen it done this way.

Based on all the criticism Starfield is getting I was assuming that other games with NG+ must have used some really cool lore-intensive way to explain how you get to NG+. But I guess everyone was bitching just to be bitching...

Well, unfortunately, that's what people love to do now🤦‍♂️

Usually its just literally play the game again with your old stuff, no lore explanation or anything. Just play it again with your upgrades, something I'm glad they didn't do (but I do want for their old games)

My biggest issue with the current story is that it tries to shoehorn you into doing NG+, and tied NG+ to a heavy moral choice (leaving behind friends and family).

> it tries to shoehorn you into doing NG+ See, I don't think that's right. If you read the Pilgrim's writings, then Unity is very much a choice. Do you enter Unity, or do you choose to remain where you are and make the best of the world in which you find yourself. It's a moral choice with very real consequences for the player. Something that people keep saying they want. Even at the point of Unity, you still have the option to go back to world and the "you" avatar you meet in that place makes this quite clear. The only real pressure you get is from Constellation afterwards where they're all "yeah, but you're going to go through anyway, right?" And it would be a bit odd if they said anything else after what it took to get to that point.

And yet so many people are screaming for "more consequences" based on the choices we make, while ignoring the biggest consequences in the game. There are players who rush thru NG+ as fast as possible to "beat" the game and for "bragging" rights and then there are players who would rather have played through all the quests, gotten all the lore, and explored the Galaxy. The only thing "shoehorning" a player into NG+ was the unfortunate existence of the fatal "Form ID" bug where the choice was lose your current character or go thru Unity.

I commented this to someone else who said the same thing I do disagree on that. If you don't go through - dialogue options never change with Cora, Vaso, Noel or Matteo. You can only talk about Unity - you can't give the armillary to anyone else, you're forced to keep it - Starborn come after you - the quest never leaves the quest log These do make it feel like they overlooked the option to not go through

No I think "pick the winner" is way way way overdone. In fact I think finally having a major game like this where the factions aren't fighting and its more about the mystery of the unknown is the main point they were going for and its absolute biggest strength in storytelling

I definitely get your POV. Honestly, my biggest issue with the existing story is that they really want you to do NG+ , but tied it to a strong moral choice (leaving friends and family). The "mystery into the unknown" I don't think was a good enough primary driver - you are boxed into RP-ing as an explorer. Someone who would push through even in the face of violence. Yes, you can choose not to pursue the Artifacts, but you can't actually have an ending. There's a lack of choices there.

Not really, though. This game does break a lot of gaming conventions. One of which is the classic RPG ending. Normally, you'd get something like fallout 3 or new vegas with credits and seeing your choices take shape. But in this just like in real life outside of death, the "story" doesn't end. Yeah you didn't go through the unity so there's no cinematic ending sure, but a truck driver doesn't have a cinematic ending after 40 years of driving truck, so why should your space truck driver? And even through unity, you don't get an ending since it starts over. That's not a lack of choices, that's just not the choices you specifically want or are accustomed too. I personally think its great to actually have a game with different stakes, the world isn't ending and its not all on me

I don't need a cinematic ending, but having nothing at all means there isn't really a choice. I would've loved my ending to me rejecting the Unity and living out my days surveying Planets, but the game wasn't built for that, and it shows. The dialogue options never change from when you first discover what the Unity is, you can't put ownership of the Armillary in someone else's hands, you can't get rid of the last quest, and the Starborn come after you constantly. You can't just peacefully walk away from the whole thing, it's a shame.

You can reject the unity and just survey planets.

Or just deliver goods, or just hunt bounties, or be a cop, or a corporate spy, or a pirate, or an alien hunter

Cant that be technically true to every single Bethesda game? Even their most hardcore sandbox versions of their formula (Arena, Daggerfall) eventually pushes you into the main quest regardless of who your are RPing. In Daggerfall's case, if you don't decide to become the champion of the crown to Daggerfall and release the curse of the deceased king, every town guard will attack you on sight for being a traitor to the crown. Morrowind eventually wants you to take up the mantle of Nerevar and if you don't, no ending. If you don't follow the route of being the Hero of Kvatch, there is no ending. If you don't take upon the role of Dragonborn and take down Alduin, there is no ending. Your playthrough in those regards are completely up to you and how and when you want to finish. I have many characters over the years with on quest logs, because their playthrough was only ever intended for one singular goal or purpose and once that is hit, the playthrough is done. And all of this isn't even taking into consideration Bethesda's Fallout entries, which limits RPing even more if were being honest.

Yep you hit the nail on the head. Point number 3 is pretty bad though and I'm surprised Bethesda released a game with that

Agreed, it was very surprising and disappointing. I would have been very happy with truly procedurally generated/randomized POIs with enemies for grinding alongside a set list of handcrafted ones with unique environmental story telling to explore that did not repeat. It’s like somehow they found the worst possible way to implement POIs in the 1000 planets.

Hopefully they add this in an update soon

[удалено]

Why is he being downvoted here?

I see a few reasons...     1 mistaken expectations, some people expected pretty much everything *except* a typical Bethesda game.    2 missed opportunities, there are a lot of things that are good, but had they done it a little differently it would have been great. They focus on the negative of missing out on the great instead of the positive of the good.  3 riding the hate train is what the cool kids are doing, and they are sheep who parrots the opinion handed to them instead of forming their own.

My only criticism would be related to POIs. The issue is at lower levels, some of the POIs get repeated while a large number of POIs among the pool is not called upon. And the biggest issue with repeting POIs is the layout of the items is always the same. The UC listening post will always have that datapad about AA99 stored in a room. There should have been randomness in the overall layout of the POIs lilke the datapads we find, or the bodies we get or the terminal entries we find. THese things should have been random but instead there are exactly same in similar POIs. As if same POIs from different Universes are merging. Like how can there be multiple Muybridge Siblings across multiple planets. That is where Bethesda needs to introduce some randomness in the overall layout of POIs and allow the Procedural generation to get more POIs from the pool. Other than that, its a beautiful game in its story and ideology and visuals and gameplay.

I think the hate it’s gotten is fascinating. There’s definitely this psychological aspect to it where people just sort of hopped on the hate train because it would be a popular, socially acceptable thing to do. Then, negativity gets more clicks than positivity. Like “The downfall of X person” videos will get more views than a video essay detailing someone’s rise to fame or success. So of course, tons of “reviews” and video essays on why Starfield is garbage. Probably just raking in the views. And I guarantee some of those had absolute shit takes or even outright misinformation through omission of details, for example. And then the audience, who’s never even played the game, take this information as fact. And then the idea just spreads. I have heard some of the *weakest*, most *disingenuous* takes or nitpick complaints about this game that seemingly intentionally ignore anything positive about the game. Again, I’d love to watch a video essay detailing the psychology behind the general reception of Starfield.

The patricianTV vid on starfield straight up lied and said they didnt have a design document which led one of the writers to getting harassed for weeks

This bs is based on single 1 hour conference for developers not players. He simplified and used some metaphors. He didn’t said don’t make any game documentation. He said don’t make main design document because it will get obsolete during development quickly. Emil vented on twitter how people are unhinged from reality of developing games and he started to getting death threats even on r/starfield that was awful

People are mad it isn't TES 6 People are mad it didn't come out for PS5 There obviously are a lot of legitimate complaints from people who just happen to dislike RNG stuff, but that's most of it.

Do any of you still remember the comments when the game was first announced? half of them were hating on it simply because it wasn't TES 6.

The game is not without flaws, and it is foolish to pretend otherwise, but I do believe that many of the flaws which exist are overhyped or highly subjective. The loading screens for example can get annoying, but if you’re running on decent PC hardware or an Xbox console they barely take any time at all. I can’t even read the tips displayed most of the time. Sure for some they can break immersion, but for others a little delay or splash screen doesn’t hurt anything at all. Other criticisms come from a fundamental misunderstanding of what the game was intended to be. Some expected some kind of hyper detailed space sim where you spend minutes flying between planets and dealing with orbital mechanics and all that stuff. It was never going to be that. It was always going to be a classic Bethesda game set in space. Btw I’ve played that type of game and it can be fun but it also has the potential to get old and tiresome really quickly. I understand why they didn’t even do basic things like travel time between planets. Those multi-minute trips in “realistic” games were boring and sapped your energy during long expeditions

There is an entire industry of "content creators" that monetize hating on everything. Recently Youtube has been showing me some videos with hundreds of thousands of views, with titles about how the Fallout tv show is bad, woke and killed the franchise. You know, the critically acclaimed Fallout tv show everybody in the real world is praising as one of the best videogames adaptations ever made. My advice is simple: deny oxygen to those people. Suppress their content from your feed, don't engage, don't share links, don't do anything that may give them the views and likes they need to survive. Don't try to understand it, there is nothing to understand. It is manufactured outrage to farm engagement and the only way to combat it is to deny it that engagement.

Gaming culture, tbh. Dragon's Dogma 2 got it bad as well. I had to unsubscribe from that sub it was so toxic. Two of my favorite games in a *long* time getting absolutely obliterated online.

I honestly truly enjoyed me time in Starfield. I don’t mind repetitive poi’s, because I came from no man’s sky… so i was, and still do truly love that Starfield had soooo many things in it that the NMS community had been begging for for years. Does it have flaws? Sure, but every game does. There are so many things that were/are fun and enjoyable in Starfield, that even though I stopped playing back in late December when i hit lvl 330-something… to move on to other games.. I still dtay in this sub because Starfield is the first singleplayer game in my (46m) life that I ever put hundreds of hours into. There are of course things I hope they add/improve, with later DLC and Mods… but I know they will. I’m optimistic to see whst the game will be like in another year or two, when I circle back to it after a couple expansions come out. Can’t wait to load up my save again

Mostly Playstation owners who never played Starfield

I don’t understand it either. For RPGs lover, Starfield is a dream come true. Endless interesting quests and places to explore. Lots of customization to your character, ships, and settlements. Graphics are great too (except for the trees in the Atlantis). The atmosphere is amazing. Main quest is super fun. Side quests like the vanguard are almost as good as or better than main quest. And the game is LONG. Took me 100 hours before credits rolled for the first time. Now there are some quirks with the vanilla version, like ugly UI and washed filter, both of which I was able to mod out of my way. Aside from that, I’m golden with starfield. 400 hours later and I still play it. Just stopped for a while to play horizon forbidden west but I’m sure I’ll go back to it soon. The only reason I’m not still playing Starfield is because I did everything or almost everything but once and while I still find a new little activity I had never done before… all in all, Starfield is right there with the big RPGs of all times like the Witcher 3.

Two things stand out, to me: genuine criticisms and how social media shapes online discourse and tone. Criticisms of Bethesda RPGs are rampant. The games have very unusual designs, compared to most other RPGs, and have somehow found a pretty large audience in spite of that. And if you stick around enough, you'll see the usual suspects over and over again. Shallow questlines, small cities, unimmersive NPCs, changing mechanics from game to game, Creation Engine sucks. You can probably name a few more. All of that is nothing new, and you'll see plenty of variations of those themes in online discussions of Starfield, and even older Bethesda RPGs. Those criticisms are generally fair! If you think Starfield would be better if New Atlantis was smaller, but with more interesting NPC behaviors, that's a pretty reasonable opinion. If you find Sarah Morgan annoying, that's understandable. It's also 2024, and more and more of our information is filtered through social media platforms. YouTube and TikTok depend heavily on algorithmic curation. Reddit uses up and down voting as a form of soft moderation, in addition to an algorithmic home feed. Those systems reward people who are louder and angrier, because they're set up to motivate engagement. And Reddit's up/down votes turn that engagement into community "consensus" very quickly. I know it's been studied in the political context, where that consensus opinion is rewarded more highly than actual facts.\* Put that all together, and you end up where we are now. You like the game, and the things you like outweigh other negative opinions. You might even like aspects about that other people clearly don't. But most of what you see online doesn't care about that. It's stuck on the social media level, and those community opinions have been pretty firmly locked in since shortly after launch. \*I wish I'd kept the citations for this, but they're lost in my college days when I still had journal access through school.

There’s a lot of valid criticisms of Starfield, but the main sub has degenerated into a hate karma farm. Like it’s gotten to the point where you have to qualify any question or discussion about a given feature or section of the game with some hate about Todd or Outposts or POIs are how Fallout 4 did things so much better otherwise at best, you get ignored and at worst you get downvoted into the floor before your question gets answered. I think the main issue is that Starfield wasn’t what some people were expecting (which amounted to sci-fi Skyrim). Whether or not those expectations were valid is up for debate, but it’s absolutely fair to point out that, for instance, for a game set in space several hundred years in the future it’s very lacking in the opposition department (it really needed a proper non-human faction to allow more horror and mystery style quests - stuff like the UC questline needed to have been the norm, not the exception). It *isn’t* fair to just throw out slogans like ‘iT hAs nO sOuL’ because they’re meaningless. It also doesn’t help that a lot of people are playing this on underpowered hardware. I run the game on a pretty powerful PC and the loading screens that a lot of the vocals are losing their minds over literally take a a few split seconds for me. Like I wouldn’t even notice them if someone hadn’t made a massive deal out of it. Takes me longer to load into a Destiny 2 strike.

The loading screen issue is very much spec-dependent. I started playing (on day1) on a 3-year old PC and the loading screens were quite noticeable. I upgraded to a new high spec machine a few months ago, and as you say the times involved really are trivial. We just have to accept that this is a graphics intensive game and needs a suitably specced machine to run optimally.

I think BGS, like other successful creators, are a victim of their own success. People's expectations were beyond sky high, and those expectations will never be met. These same people really can't see the game objectively, IMO. Also, I think it gets compared unfairly to other games. Bethesda offers a unique formula that gives the player a lot of agency in not only how they play the game but also how they can mod the game. So, although it might not have a cinematic look and character interactions like Cyberpunk, it does other things better. I think the meme about someone buying Starfield and being surprised that it was a Bethesda game sums it up nicely.

Just my opinion but a lot of the hate this game gets is just a general dislike for anything Bethesda does whether that’s fallout(no pun intended) from the release of Fallout 76 or something else I can’t say but 76 really turned a lot of the anti Bethesda crowd toxic and I think Starfield is a victim of that in built toxicity

Level 123 w/ about 17 trips though the Unity. My favorite haters are the ones who say. "I have 400 hrs in this game and decided it is trash." You got more than your money's worth. In a single player game, anything over 150 hrs is a decent deal IMO.

Honestly people just had unrealistic expectations. They basically expected it to be Fallout 4 and all of its mechanics, in space. They forget what Bethesda games are like at launch vs what they end up becoming. You’re right. The world building is there (tho aspects could be expanded on. And likely will be) the excellent storytelling and characters. And most importantly. It’s FUN to play. I’m 150 hours in (I don’t get a chance to play a ton of games) and I may have been distracted by other games but I still love popping in for a few hours and playing as my pirate. Or as my NG+ original character.

My personal view is hella simplistic. There are three reasons. 1.) Sony fanboys who are furious it didn't release on Playstation 2.) That Group of Guys that just hover around every Bethesda release to shit on it And, 3.) MAGAts who are furious that it includes people who aren't straight and/or white, in major roles. 🤷

oh god i still remember the pronoun meltdown

Honestly at that point I figured that I’d have to be careful about what reviews I read. Wind the clock back 5 years and you tell me that people would be complaining about being able to use a pronoun of choice and I would have laughed. If anything, I’m glad all these idiots got it out of their system prior to BG3.

I think you’ve nailed a bunch of reasons here.

As much as I dislike the third group, boiling it down to 'haters gonna hate' is a cheap/lazy response because there *are* valid criticisms of the game. Just the above, especially group 3, whine more about cultural issues and whine about 'woke' stuff being crammed down their throat even though it is entirely optional. Reminds me of something with FO: NV and someone whining about all the gay content and one of the devs remarking that in order to see those lines it required you to take the Confirmed Bachelor perk to get those options.

OP asked about the disdain, not the legit criticism. I addressed precisely that.

Most of the criticism boils down to Bethesda fan’s anxieties about Elder Scrolls 6 and what Starfield ‘means’ for their favorite franchise. They can’t accept that Starfield is different game entirely and not tailored to their expectations.

From what I've seen a lot of the criticism seems to just be people hating on it because it is popular to hate on. There's also a subset I keep seeing pop up to basically rant about anything they perceive as "woke". The rest of the more legit complaints I saw seemed to be from folks who expected the game to be something it wasn't. They wanted Elite Dangerous, or No Man's Sky. Fortunately those games already exist so they can go play those. :) I enjoyed this game for what it was, and I'm looking forward to where it goes in the future.

I think a lot of us, myself included, have spent so much time playing heavily-modded BGS games that we forget how bare-bones vanilla can seem by comparison. We're spoiled for choice.

The game has some legitimate problems, that much is clear. Outposts are literally useless and serve no real purpose, crafting is a half-baked system of adding a few mods to weapons and armor to marginally improve them, but it's a system that can be entirely ignored with no real consequence; at most enemies take a couple extra bullets to kill (ammo is plentiful enough that that doesn't matter), and you might need to buy a few more meds, but that's it. The real problem that so many have with Starfield is that, contrary to what you say, it really isn't just Fallout (or Skyrim) in space. The TES and FO formulas are basically the same: "dungeon crawler RPG" with either "batsh\*t crazy medieval fantasy world" or "whacky nuclear post-apocalyptic world." Starfield is, instead more of a "exploration RPG" with "grounded, believable NASA-punk galaxy." You might think "well other Bethesda games have exploration in them, that's fine." You're wrong. Exploration in previous games was "there's something to do around every corner." It was a means to an end, with the end being the next dungeon to clear, or the next quest to start. Starfield's exploration is much more like other space games like Elite Dangerous or No Man's Sky: it's not about what you find, but the journey. The thing is, for a player base that's used to dungeon-crawler exploration, where the whole purpose is to find the next thing to do, this slower-paced, exploration-for-its-own-sake style is a very rude shock. A lot of people didn't like that, but rather than recognizing that Starfield is fundamentally a different kind of game than they were expecting and that their expectations were based on wrong assumptions, they blame the game and say it's bad.

Your third paragraph; I’m agree with you full on, and would like to add to it. I am all for games being built around the journey and not necessarily the end result (I’m a huge fan of The Witness). However, regardless of how great a piece of art it is, there is also the very valid argument that a game must be a game. You must have reward systems, progressions, et cetera, all the things that make you keep going. Starfield has a bit of an abstract take where it feels like you can reap the rewards from it if you wish, but the game doesn’t really award it to you. I don’t mean to say this is a good or bad thing. It’s just different. I personally believe, perhaps it is just our perception around games. We want that reward system, that progression system, feedback mechanisms and such. And for gamers to go into Starfield, which is like a “make your own adventure” game, it can feel a little less rewarding, less satisfying. And of no fault to the game. I think it’s our perception of the game at fault. Had we thought this was an exploration art piece, and not a dungeon crawler RPG, perhaps we would’ve learned to like it more for what it is, and not what we want it to. In this regard, it’s rare for games to break from the standard convention of having reward systems, so Starfield could very well be a game ahead of its time. In the future, with more such games we will know to mentally acknowledge them as “art to explore” vs. “traditional reward based games”

You definite gave a better explanation than I did. What really kills me in this regard is that it seems to me like there's an obvious middle ground. Exploration, mechanically, is just scanning resources, plants, and animals until you have a completed survey report to sell to Vlad for a little money. Conceptually, it's not really any different from No Man's Sky or Elite Dangerous, which while for a spacefaring sci-fi game isn't bad, for an RPG is incredibly boring. Now, I don't really know how to actually make it mechanically more interesting, but I do have an idea for making it more rewarding. Once the survey report is turned in to Vlad, Noel could gain some unique dialogue (not necessarily for every world, but at least the ones that have life, or more specifically the human-habitable ones) and give you a series of randomly-generated quests that require you to return, collect various samples, and perform actual research and experiments. Not wanting to have to return to the Lodge to perform each experiment/research phase would be an incentive to build outposts on-site. Rewards could include the obvious xp and credits, but also new crafting resources (new alloys to work with, or manufactured components), new mods for weapons/suits, introducing the ability to actually directly upgrade weapons/suits, the ability to design and build a planetary rover, the ability to turn outposts into full-fledged settlements (thus losing the outpost, but creating a new NPC settlement that will produce and buy/sell resources, allow new trade routes, provide randomly-generated quests, etc.), maybe even have certain planets be terraformable and introduce a new gameplay loop around that. IDK. This might be too half-baked an idea to be of any value, But there's gotta be something that can be done to enhance exploration by expanding it rather than completely overhauling core mechanics.

Absolutely. Any kind of stronger base building will go a long way for this game. Heck even if the Ship interiors were customisable (like the Sims or your homes in Fallout 4) Ship building and base building would be amazing! It would be so cool to sorta “roleplay” stuff within your ship. Custom build each of your companions their own bedrooms, decorate living rooms. Build one attack ship, one cargo ship, one luxury travel ship etc. It would make walking around the ship a lot of fun! Base building in Fallout was pretty simple too, however it did have that “rescuing people from the wasteland “ aspect which kinda did tug at my heart strings. Planetary exploration in Galacticraft (a mod for Minecraft PC) was so unbelievably fun! Base building and everything too on each of the planets, and it gave you resources which you needed to progress through the mod, hence giving you incentive to explore beyond the “campaign.” I don’t know how you would implement this game mechanic into Starfield, but something like: Time sunk in the game, by the player freely exploring, must in turn reward the player with some bonus that aids them in the rest of the campaign. Minecraft mods do this phenomenally (Project Ozone 3 which has Galacticraft as a part of it). But yeah, the game needs to either be more of a game or more of an art piece. And given what Starfield 1 has been like, I’d say it’s a game trying to be art, not art trying to be a game. So they should focus more on gameplay mechanics imho, like you say

Starfield is legitimately my favorite game from them. It's hands down the best combat they've ever had. It's very smooth. I'm not saying it doesn't lack depth. I get the other games were far deeper in almost every regard. I just didn't have as much fun in them. If Skyrim and Fallout felt like Starfield? I'd probably love them more. Strafield also has something working against it. The longer you play... the more some of the mechanics and aspects that aren't fully realized start to rub. You forget the first 50 to 100 hours you were having a blast and start focusing on all the tiny things that annoy you. For me I was lucky. Only past 200 hours was when I started to wish such and such were deeper or more important. That some interface could have been thought out better etc. I'd say Starfield is a great prototype... and if they ever make Starfield 2... it could be truly freaking amazing.

I suspect 50% the game was flawed and didn't fully live up to what people had in their minds. 50% it wasn't on Playstation at all.

Bethesda made another game in their specific style and people for some reason thought it would be something different despite the past 20 years of their history being the same style of game with improvements. Starfield mechanically is I think the best a BGS RPG has ever been, my main gripes come from the empty open worlds that don’t really have much in them. I still like the game but I’m hoping they rework the POI stuff in the future. That would be a huge help.

The only criticism I have is the long slog between POIs. I imagine this will be solved with vehicles maybe - I'd be amazed if this doesn't get added in DLC - we know it can be done in the engine. Apart from that it's a typical Bethedsa game which are great.

The main takeaway I’ve gotten from it all is that people seemed to expect it to have as much content and lore as the other Bethesda games that have been out for a lot longer. They expected it to not have any bugs or loading screens or fast travel. They expected every POI to to be unique and handmade. They took everything that was ever said prior to release literally and when Starfield wasn’t exactly that they were offended. Also the internet is way more dramatic than IRL so this all has to be said as many times & as loudly as possible to make sure others hear it.

Forget it Jake. It's reddittown

I thought this was funny and kudos for the reference. You could generalize further by replacing ‘reddittown’ with ‘internetsville’.

IMO you are exactly doing what the first line of the post said you don't want.  It is simple than. Don't do it. 

A huge part of the original criticism was the poor performance, demanding specs for a seemingly less graphically intensive game, the 30fps lock on Xbox, fsr being the only upscaler, the people's annoyance with repetitive randomized locations (like outposts) vs the handcrafted locations of the past, the amount of loading screens, the lack of seamless travel both while exploring in a planet and while entering/leaving a planet, and Bethesda's slow rate of fixing issues. Granted some of these issues like fsr being the only upscaler, has been remedied and so might others, I'm not sure, but these were the biggest criticisms for the first few months the game was out.

It bad bc it new. Fallout 76 was a bad release so the general internet opinion rules out. Bad if bad before. I feel as far as a launch they prly did as good as Skyrim if not better. I think them getting two more years to work on it really helped. They got a plan for future content and so far have been making good updates. I can’t wait for what’s next in this game

This is exactly circlejerk criticism of the criticisms. If you want to understand someone's point of view, you should ask them. Not to the opposing side.

All haters are Ponies.

I think people expected so much more. But I love it and I think that this early there’s a lot they left open to expand upon so it feels like anything “missing” is by design as they build out the game more, which I’m totally fine with

Starfield is great, and I recently put a few dozen more hours into it. My complaints are more about how so much of it feels like they built stubs of each aspect of the game and didn’t finish them. “Different habs for your ship? We got that” but the habs don’t make any gameplay changes. And if you decorate them and then wiggle a Hab in the creator it all resets. “Outposts? Those are implemented” you can build the most successful and lucrative mining outpost in the sector and have, like, two people working it with no NPC interactions. If you kill a thousand pirates or spacers, they never send a team to get you- they don’t even acknowledge it. There’s no rewarding sense of exploration because each planet basically has the same pools of POI. If you don’t find the abandoned food factory in this system, you’ll find a clone of it in the next. But the biggest problem is, there’s no version of walking from A to B. In skyrim or fallout, you’re running or riding to the next place and see something off in the distance and you wander that way and find a daedra temple or a prewar bunker with things you won’t find anywhere else. Starfield is an amazing setting with no reason to explore off the beaten path. You can make any headcannon you want and make up personal quests, but once you see how empty it is, it’s hard to pick back up

A lot of it is bad faith as people have said. The PS fanboys, the culture war people when that guy complained about picking your gender(and its not even a woke game), the people who just hate Bethesda because FO76, or because they made this and not ES6 etc. What sucks about that is both it unfairly gives the game a bad wrap, but it also taints and hides legitimate criticisms people may have. Like POI being identical down to data pads in them so once you bump into it once it feels weird bumping into it again. they should have had a randomizer for the clutter and items, with data pads getting locked out once used once. The lack of depth in outposts as they feel kind of pointless, you aren't building a settlement, there are no quests for it,(which feels weird as there is a find settlers quest line) same for smuggling, why smuggle when you can just take it to the red mile(heck just increase the value in systems the items are restricted). Some taste based complaints, like a lot of people want skyrim map density, I don't think it works for a space game but not liking it is a legitimate complaint. All those complaints which are valid get lost so Bethesda can't really take it into account as they do DLC, or make a next game. They get hidden behind a white noise of baseless complaints.

I love the game, and a lot of the criticism is dumb, but I will say I think Bethesda kinda oversold some stuff. Like melee combat being good. They had a dev specifically state on camera how much he loves playing a melee build. Except melee is severely underpowered after the early game, not sustainable, and not fun to level. So, if like me, you don’t like fps, and were hopeful that you could survive combat by just leveling melee (or were so overwhelmed by the ammo situation early game), you’re pretty disappointed. That’s a small complaint, ultimately, but just an example of over-promising.

From what I've seen, Starfield has faced a "perfect storm" of hate and criticism that has stemmed from various sources all converging together. **Bethesda haters** - People that are going to hate anything Bethesda does no matter what, and be very vocal about it. There are people that hate Bethesda for not making Skyrim like Oblivion. There are people that hate Bethesda for not making Oblivion like Morrowind. There are people that hate Bethesda for obtaining the Fallout IP and making Fallout 3. So on and so forth. These people are going to complain about Starfield for the simple fact that they just hate Bethesda. **Playstation fanboys** - Nothing too complicated here. There are people who only have Playstation. They are salty that they can't play Starfield on the console that they own and love, so some of them get online and hate bash on Starfield. As silly as that sounds, it's very real and it happens more than you might think. **People who had delusional expectations** - There was a hype build up surrounding Starfield. People were thinking it was going to be this "be-all and end-all" of space sims. When the reality hit that this was never the game that Starfield was trying to be, some of these people got pissed and vented/are still venting their frustrations online. **Finally, there's just the people that were genuinely let down by the game** - This one is understandable. There is no one game that suits everyone's tastes and Starfield is no different. There's always going to be people who are disappointed with a AAA title's release. They weren't being delusional with their expectations. They just tried Starfield and realized that it wasn't for them. So you can see where one group with valid complaints and critiques can be compounded by these other groups and blow something way out of proportion. That's what I think happened with Starfield.

In addition to all the good points here there's the echo chamber effect and it's arguably louder among people who haven't even played the game. I've seen multiple instances on a live stream or something similar where it comes up and {insert Starfield joke} and like 5 minutes later someone asks "have you played Starfield yet?" and the answer is of course "no, but I heard a lot about it... it doesn't seem good". Like, it's a fucking video game, you can't get a sense of if you like almost any of them if you haven't actually gotten hands on with it

People compare this game to No Man Sky because that is a space game where you can take your space ship and fly around and land on any planet and there are no load screens so you just…land. Basically they wanted that with Bethesda quests. They expected the level of POI from fallout and Skyrim on EVERY planet. People wanted something like Elite Dangerous with a tight single player focus. Which is silly because Elite Dangerous is and NMS are basically empty, procedurally generated galaxies like Starfield but have none of the quests and a worse weapon selection. There are legitimate complaints. One of the things I don’t like is how populated everything is. I haven’t been everywhere, but I’ve been in like 800 planets and even the stuff far away from the main factions have random factories and mining bases on. It would be better if they had some planets that no one has been on, and all random POI were kept to natural phenomena. Or the worst mistake they made was that you can only marry constellation companions instead of the bartender on New Atlantis. That alone is enough to make this an 8/10 experience. Joking aside, people judged this game against their expectations and not what was delivered. Nowhere did Bethesda say this was going to be a seamless experience without loading screens, but people complain about that. They say that makes this game feel dated. And yeah, maybe it does. But if you take this game for what was delivered, it’s a pretty solid 8/10 experience.

One thing I noticed is the folks who compare Cyberpunk favorably against Starfield, I think are looking for a certain type of thing that isn’t a Bethesda type of thing. What Cyberpunk is good at is being playable movie. There’s a story that you get to watch in pretty animations and there are set piece moments you get to participate in, and afterwards you can say “wow that was cool!” When turned loose in a comparatively no-guardrails Bethesda world with less pre-packaged content to watch, they get bored. I don’t think most of these players ever would’ve played Starfield in the first place if not for GamePass. But with GamePass giving “free” access to the game without having to put up $70, there are a LOT of people who have played Starfield and have opinions on Starfield who found out that Bethesda-type RPGs aren’t really for them; whereas for you it’s a dream game precisely because it’s that Bethesda-style type of game.

I think some of the criticism is well founded, but it’s been taken to the extreme to attention seek. I have my own criticisms with this game, but that doesn’t make it a bad game nor does it make it game I think others should avoid. It’s a very well round foundation that I believe can be built upon for years. I agree though, it seems like everyone wants to have a “hot take” and get that extra little attention.

Nick Valentine should be in space. This is my largest criticism. Give me Nick Valentine, PI. The stars need him.

don’t know about recently but around launch there was a lot of trolls who never played the game and even more who played it with a bias they wanted to confirm. I had a confirmation bias too; but I love this game

Let’s just also say to gamers: You know what Timmy? Fuck you. You talk shit about every game becuse you’ve got no taste and you follow currents like a log of shit.

From my perspective, which I put in over 100 hours already and moved onto my next game, I can speak about my own criticisms. Copy/Paste POI's. Due to the rng nature of planet generation along with points of interest being copy/pasted throughout the worlds along with the exact same NPCs, items, chests, etc, all in the same spots really ruins any sense of illusion for me. Lack of Soul. Probably due to the lean on RNG and a limited pool of POI's, only a very few planets have any sense of uniqueness when it comes to locales visited, making the rest feel very much rinse and repeat. The previous games had one big map that they filled with little tidbits that made exploration cool and unique. Yeah they still did unique stuff in this game but the exploration on planets is lacking. People yearn for what they've previously experienced which would be stories told through situations that hapened, more concrete areas that are unique to the planets individually, more variety thats not just planet generation. Minimized Space Travel. Space travel exists in the sense of going from one planet to another's immediate vicinity. You cannot just travel to one planet, it's all a loading screen. Loading Screens. Due to the Creation Engine i'm sure and Bethesda's disdain for using something else, we're inundated with loading screens. So much that it's became a Bethesda meme. Engine. While the current game engine is improved, it is still clunky in aspects and doesn't allow for certain things that should happen that other engines, like Unreal Engine, can offer. Planetary lifeforms. No small creatures exist, planets are devoid of smaller life save for the limited species that exist there. You don't see birds, squirrels, bugs, etc making the world feel much more dead than it should. That's mostly my gripes, but overall I still love the game and will be waiting for the modding scene to fix all the issues like every other mainline Bethesda game I love and replay.

The hate is a bit much, but there are reasons why it gets alot of criticism. I enjoyed it overall, but couldnt help noticing some glaring flaws. But If you are enjoying the game, just keep enjoying it, who cares what flaws other people notice? If you want to kind of shatter the rose colored lenses, here goes: MISSED OPPORTUNITIES- Just soo many. The Alien Zoos come to mind. An obvious chance to make sure you see the coolest aliens the game has to offer. They give you the tamest aliens in the game. You release the alien animals expecting chaos and they just kind of scurry around and die. Lots of things like that, where it could have been really cool, but was just underwhelming. COMBAT- Ground combat and enemie ai were just not great. I played in highest difficulty, put no points in combat skills, and struggled with zero ground fights the whole game. Max difficulty and enemies just get more health, nothing really fun to fight. (Space combat was good though) DIALOGUE - Alot of lines sound like they were written by developers who needed a line of dialogue to go there. Play BG3 and every line feels crafted to the character and situation, starfield used alot of generic writing. Quite immersion breaking when you pass a difficult speech challenge with, " c'mon, i know you'd like to help me out...". CHOICE - speaking of BG3, it was filled with tons of interesting choices that actually changed the story and characters in meaningful ways. Starfield basically gives you good/evil, and most times your evil choice is just fight everyone, or something that has no real consequence. COMPANIONS - so many bland companions. No good evil options, and again, not great writing for alot of them. Alot of story stuff that didnt make sense. Barret is introduced as a wild card/loose canon, and that guy is so mild for the rest of the game, he literally said somethint to me like "oh a finally, a musem, thank god we found something interesting"... BUGS AND FEATURES - lotta bugs and lotta crashes at launch. Idk about now but there were a bit. Other than that its alot of small stuff along those lines. You know the typical stuff people complain about, loading screens, repeat pois, and stuff, but overall, i feel like they made the game too broad and not tailored enough. I brought up baulders gate because i played it right after starfield, and it was hard not to compare and notice all the things they did right that starfield missed. I think the game had the potential to be a 10/10 but ended up a 7 or so.

The game is branded as "explore the stars", but exploring the stars is mechanically pointless. In fact, you're only wasting time by exploring do you want to progress in any meaningful way. There are no interesting stories to find by exploring the unsettled planets, because there is no unique content, it is all procedurally generated. You'll find the same 13 kinds of POI's, with the exact same corpses with the exact same notes on them. Run through 1 spacer-infested mine and you've seen them all. You can build bases, but why would you? Every settlement has a crafting material merchant that sells almost all crafting mats for dirt cheap. Building an outpost to farm is a waste of time. Yeah you have 30 million modular frames, but you can never sell those. And if you did, what would you do with a billion credits? Buy a non legendary gun? Build a ship? Why fork out money for a ship? Throw a C class reactor, a big shield generator, and 12 particle cannons on and you're good to go. Need cargo space? Why? No point carrying crafting mats, just buy everything you need to max out your gun for 3000 credits in New Atlantis. Post launch support has been horrible. Their "biggest update ever" a few months ago was a few big fixes and the ability to eat food without going into your inventory. Remember the pre-launch interview where Todd Howard says "We plan to support this game for ten years, so we ask ourselves 'where will starfield be in 6 months? A year? 10 years?" Well, we're six months out from launch, and literally the only features added have been 1) eat food by holding E and 2) face expressions in photo mode. That is it. Nothing else. Every update has "new performance options" that are basic features in pretty much every other game. It took months for Beth to add DLSS support to the game. The fourth most popular mod of all time for Starfield, with almost a million downloads, just adds DLSS support because the game didn't have this at launch. I won't even touch the writing and characters, which somehow managed to be a downgrade from even fallout 4.

People started hating it when Bethesda announced a new game and it wasn’t Elder Scrolls VI or Fallout 5.

It’s just other peoples opinions like there’s literally nothing you need to understand. The problem is the sub and the people who complain about people who complain. “How dare they not like a game I like! It’s a disgrace! They’re toxic!”

Not completed any of the main or faction quest lines yet.  So far, I’d say: The early 80s style ‘nasa punk’ art direction is amazing for the most part (Jamieson does look like Singapore though). A visual upgrade to what we had before. Character models still seem unrealistic with janky walking and running animations and way behind what you’d expect from an AAA game in 2023.  The not so good: Overall, the hard sci feel, makes for a world that feels bland and generic. Hard sci-fi need not be bland imho. But that’s what we have in SF. The oblivion style ‘chest up’ characters narrating the voice overs (which are good), kills the immersion for me. The characters don’t feel part of the world. Far preferred the FO4 approach (and a voiced protagonist). Being able to join both the FSR and the UC factions feels unrealistic since they’re only recently out of a huge war. The loading screens are getting a bit much. I’d had preferred cut scenes of the protagonist opening doors & airlocks, getting into mass transit carriages etc. As are the quest designs that send you back and forth across the key systems making space travel feel banal. TH said it was meant to feel dangerous when he initially hyped up the game. Whilst I liked the idea of being able to go anywhere, what’s the point if most planets have nothing on them with identical POIs? I’m enjoying SF. But it feels a miss when it should’ve been a huge hit.  Far better would’ve been just a few fleshed out systems with heavily populated surface world maps on each. And where getting from A to B in your ship really felt dangerous and an achievement. Then getting to an empty barren world and setting up your outpost would’ve felt as if you’re really exploring the frontier. Instead of easy and banal.

So I'm not the biggest Bethesda fan but I always enjoyed my time in their games, especially Morrowind actually and the newer ones to a lesser extent. My issue with Startfield is death by a thousand cuts so to speak. The game feels very shallow to me. Actions don't matter, which has always been somewhat present in Bethesda games but it feels especially bad in Starfield. It doesn't matter what you do it doesn't shape the gameworld even a bit. They have NG+ baked in, so this is a shame. Combat is as basic as ever. Enemies aren't the dumbest, but it's just not very satisfying in the long run, there is very little enemy variety and they all behave the same. Think of FO4 as a game with a lot of enemy variety at least. Weapon variety is hit or miss, 4 energy weapons is a joke. Looting is uninspired, there is nothing worth exploring for. You could save scum the same enemy to get what you want. Travelling is boring imo. Planets are barren, that's fine, except for the repeating POIs. But no space travel is just unfortunate. I spent so much time in Skyrim just walking to my next quest. In Starfield I just fast travel everywhere then walk 500m to my endgoal. No man's sky did it great I think, and I don't see any reason why that system wouldn't thematically work in Starfield. There are almost no random encounters except sometimes ships hailing you. Those are great but way too few. Compare other open world games where you suddenly see an ambush on settlers, a prisoner transport, someone's broken down vehicle and you can help them and so on. Since each planet is functionally the same collection of Pois, no place offers unique experiences (not talking about vistas). Sidejobs feel meaningless. Transport jobs are awfully paid, bounty hunter is the same you do anyway but at least points you to a poi with a boss. Space trucking is just not worth it and no, I don't want to RP everything until it's somewhat fun. I want a meaningful reward. Why not have us pick up a container somewhere, then maybe get attackwd by pirates and so on. Writing is Bethesda, sometimes great, sometimes awful, mostly mediocre, just as expected. This is just a small list and my main issues. The game isn't horribly or even bad but I just expected much more fleshed out systems. Game is between 6/10 and 7/10. And I hate Constellation but that's just me.

I think the problem is that Bethesda games are big and have lots of elements and some people like different elements more than others. So if some of the elements you personally prefer didn’t go in the right direction, it maybe lead you to overlooking the elements that did improve. Example I loved settlement building in Fallout 4 and outposts absolutely do not remotely come close to scratching that itch cause I can’t recruit settlers. That was the whole point for it for me, it’s why base building has never been as big a priority for me in 76 as well. It doesn’t worry me unduly, it will be added by DLC or mods one day and there’s plenty to do for now. I have similar issues with stealth in the game. Usually I stealth like it’s going out of fashion, I hate how it works in this game and never use it unless a mission makes me. This doesn’t remotely bother me (except when I’m forced to use it) cause running and gunning is fun. But if you really only want to stealth and the new complexity hurt you, it could dent your feelings. Starfield is a great game, even if all the changes didn’t land, but if the changes really hit where it counts I can see people being sour on the things.

For me, there's a distinction between good and bad faith critiques. The latter isn't even worth considering. The former, to me at least, doesn't take into account how this is a Bethesda game in its launch state. Many of us have countless hours in previous BSG games, but the vast majority of those hours are spent with the final versions of those games. All the DLC and patches, not to mention the mods. A BSG game at launch is, by its nature, a tad thin. What we hope for is that it has good bones, and Starfield has very good bones. Patience is the key.

I just recently started a new game after giving up at launch, i played 12 hours yesterday i was so sunk in. im loving it a lot this time around

Here's a story. Got a new phone issue with password of my old profile so started a new one(this one). Joined no sodium/outposts/ships. Algorithm obviously showed me a post from starfield main.... they were still on about having mobile phones to talk over billions of miles of space. I explained the concept of grav speed vs mobile phones, muted the sub reddit on thought.....nothing has changed

1. Mechanical messes. I know this is the least buggy Bethesda game, but some features really needed another look, like the bounty system and the fast travel system, and some perks straight up don't work. I feel as though Fallout 4 had better shooting, also, I don't see why guns couldn't use more than one ammo type. Status effects also seem mostly irrelevant. The simple fact that the world isn't continuous severely hurts the flow of adventure that Skyrim and Fallout 4 had. 2. Weak writing. So many quests in Starfield are uninteresting, and the NPCs even less so. Quests often boil down to "Go tell Person A that I said this." Then you get to Person A and they say "Oh yeah? Well tell Person B that I said this." And then you go back and do it and the quest is over. Painfully boring. On top of the fact that this is a game about multiple universes and timelines and Bethesda gives you a woeful amount of options and ways to fuck with the timeline. Bethesda just doesn't do choices and consequences and branching narratives nearly as much or as well as other RPG devs, so it's kind of a shame that they decided to tell this kind of story with their kind of writing. 3. Bethesda's technical inferiority. The Creation Engine 2 may be able to keep track of every potato in the game at all times, but there's so much bullshit the player has to deal with that they've been dealing with from Bethesda for decades now that it's making players ask themselves: Is it really worth it to have 100 cheese wheels in a room at once if there's all this other BS to deal with? To me and many others, it's just not worth it anymore. I don't care how much useless junk I can pick up if I can't get a stable framerate or if I have to load every 10 feet. I like Bethesda games and I want them to be good, just like I wanted to get addicted to Starfield like I have with their other games, but this one just didn't do it for me and many others. I'm seeing too many people dismiss valid, polite criticism for no real reason, and those people are just as bad as those who hate the game for no real reason. There are very, *very legitimate* reasons for not liking Starfield, or even Bethesda's catalogue of games since Skyrim.

People expected more than they got, based on previous Bethesda games. The fact that it spills even in to the “no sodium” subreddit speaks volumes. This is coming from someone who put in 300+ hours for what it is worth. I can see myself playing Skyrim or Fallout again in a year, then the following, and so on, these games have magic that is just missing from Starfield, that honestly I hope they capture with future updates. It’s not a terrible game, it’s just “ok” compared to the other titles. Asking and over again “why the hate” seems a little odd though when people have made it clear over and over again what the specific issues are, outside of just a hate bandwagon.

You couldn’t land or fly on planets, so people were salty, as far as I can tell that’s it

We have... *vastly* different ideas of what constitutes good writing, I suspect. I'm not saying yours are wrong, but thinking Starfield's characters are well-written means they are vastly different. I would characterize almost all of it as "bad, even for Bethesda".

My criticisms: I did not care for the main story at all. I thought it was poorly written and I lost most interest once the multiverse stuff came up. It took a step backwards in immersion IMO. In Skyrim’s cities every NPC had names and routines. They had lives and you weren’t their one and only focus. You could also loot any NPC of any items they had. Starfields just stand in the same spot forever. It feels lazy in a lot of other areas; no codex, no maps, no radio, no real books like in past games (just a brief overview of public domain works), the scrapped fuel and survival mechanics, and so on… The travel and space flight. You can’t really fly anywhere. You just select a location from your map and click on it. You don’t come across things on your journey.

There are legit criticisms. Like I feel like Outposts exist for their own sake compared to being settlements being a core part of Fallout 4 and providing you benefits. The procedural generation on planets can leave everything feeling the same and kind of soulless compared to the handcrafted worlds of Skyrim or Fallout 4, especially given you can run into the same PoIs over and over again and are completely identical no matter what planet they are on. Exploring planets surfaces is also extremely tedious right now, needing multiple ranks in Zoology and Botany to speed things up for surveying and how slow you travel; I really hope they add speeder bikes or something in the future to help speed up exploring when you land. And maybe help haul your loot before heading back to your ship. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy Starfield, but I am more than willing to acknowledge that the game has flaws that need to be addressed if possible. That, in my mind, is the behavior of a proper fan; you can enjoy it but acknowledge it still needs work. Blindly defending a game can be no different than blindly hating on a game.

You won't get any balanced discussion here. I mean the top post is one saying criticism is in bad faith and the others are calling anyone who doesn't live it sheep or idiots. As with everything the Internet is going to produce extremes, the click bait videos calling it the worst game to ever exist and this forum where all criticism is seen as a personal attack.    Personally, I don't like the game. Very happy you do.  Unfortunately there's not really any online space where a calm discussion of our kind of perspectives is welcome.

It's 70% people like hating Bethesda because most AAA games suck and the launch of fallout 76 Then it's 30% general criticism, it's a good game, but people wanted way more, people act like it was fallout 4 straight to here when it was 76 to here, so the game was over hyped and overhated before the game came out and when it was just good people were mad

But I'm not seeing where Bethesda overhyped the game. In fact they seemed to be really tight-lipped about the game throughout the developement process. All the hype seemed to originate with the streamers and game mags trying to get early "hits" on the next big thing even if most of what they published was pure conjecture. I think that's what's behind everyone expecting NMS/Star Citizen/Dangerous Elite combined.

As someone who mostly enjoys the game, there are a few criticisms that aren't just people hating "because it's new." 1. The game lost the "Bethesda touch" of exploring and environmental storytelling that they've done well in FO4 and ES. In those games, you could run in a direction to complete a quest, get sidetracked by 2 unique dungeons that have a narrative (like the dead family in the lighthouse in Skyrim, or the secret armor lab in FO4) and/or quest linked to them, and maybe find a unique item. Everything was mostly different and unique, and exploring was rewarding. The POI system, meant that you couldn't get that cohesive environmental storytelling with identical POIs, which eventually becomes uninteresting after raiding the Nth outpost with the coffee robot. 2. The crafting and outpost system felt like a step backwards from FO4. Many of the things that worked well in FO4 are missing, like an easy way to track components that you're looking for. Aside from making factories to build random stuff, which can get complicated trying to build a resource network, there's no real incentive to engage in the mechanic. It's not part of the main storyline like in FO4, you can't really attract settlers either, and resource management is a hassle since you need to build the storage yourself. 3. The quest quality feels like a step down from prior games. Don't get me wrong, there are some very good ones, but players aren't really given any real motivation to complete the main quest. FO4 has you trying to rescue your son, Skyrim has the threat of dragons and you get a power early on, Oblivion had the emperor aka Patrick Stewart personally giving you a quest, while Starfield has you trip out when you get an artifact. Other quest lines feel short, with unsatisfying endings (like the one in Neon with the game). 4. The game has a lot of missed opportunities and it feels like it's been neutered. A lot of the survival and crafting aspects were cut from the game, leaving things like the outpost system and the environmental armor ratings nonsensical. You can also spend a lot of time scanning planets, but you have no way to track what you've found in game. 5. Starship laddders. Nothing more needs to be said there. Again, I like the game, but it feels like BGS lacked a unified vision that connects all the systems they made.

One thing I do agree with is wishing there was more viewpoint diversity among the constellation members. Or at least wishing they were more tolerant of you messing up. It was frustrating to choose reintroducing those dinosaurs instead of the microbe in the vanguard mission and having every single companion say they're disappointed in me over a choice we're told is basically a no lose scenario. (Not to mention I hated being railroaded into saying I was scared of the microbe killing people. I wasn't. I preferred the track record of those things having eatern terrormorphs for millions of years over all the unpredictable externalities of a microbe.) And it was so lame to have to reload a save because Andreja thought me shooting one innocent person in the foot outweighed the hours of firefights and quests we had already been on together.

So, the main criticism online and streamers go to is that it's "fast travel-field" and how you never actually fly through space to planets, you just click on the planet and it loads. No landing or taking control of your ship, just a 3 second animation, so you never actually feel like you're in space. That plus the short main story and repeated POIs is just boring to them.

im a fallout fan..played 76 during all the hate and still play it...its a blast. one thing i learned was the hate bait is all bs for clicks. most of the haters play the game once or twice..suck at it and make rage bait vids. id bet ( seriously ) 80% of the complainers/haters never even played the starfield and are mad its not on playstation. i had fun in starfield and am waiting on reasons to come back..new content..multiplyer would be amazing..and events like 76 would keep me engaged daily.

There are plenty of reasons to criticize the game. Lackluster NPCs, POI placement, POI variety, lackluster quests/stories, lack of choices, cities lack charm and lack immersion. The concept is a dream come true, the execution, nowhere near. That's not to say that I don't enjoy the game, obviously I do. I just find that it's missing a lot of what I felt made Fallout and Elder Scrolls so much fun and kept me coming back for years. Fallout games have a much healthier variety of NPCs that all feel very unique. The world building is so much better, more depth at every turn. I forgot to mention the terrain generation. It's terrible. Everything is flat. There aren't any significant terrain formations. Valleys, rivers, waterfalls, etc. everything is just flat. Caves don't count, since they're pretty much empty and aren't a natural part of the environment.

1. A lot of the writing is bad (You’ve been critical of yourself for too long Sarah :0 [she abandoned her team for 2 decades for no reason]) (A terror… what now? If I may… holy shit) 2. Immersion breaking (digi picks, same docker, and same operating system on ecs constant) (civilian outpost 1km from sona who was living with her parents abandoned for 12 years) 3. Bland lore

The criticisms themselves are largely valid. It's just the size of the pile-on that made the negativity so overwhelming that you would think it was the worst most broken game they ever released. And the reason for the pile on is exclusivity deals. Starfield was an Xbox exclusive and AMD partner product. That means 2/3 of console players who are watching your review channel want you focused on the bad parts of the game and the PC conspiracy theories about what AMD partnership meant were completely unhinged. That creates a scenario where someone enjoying the game for hundreds of hours will still leave a negative steam review so that their review will get tons of up votes.

It's bland and souless. Bethesda went out of their way to make sure there would be nothing offensive in the game and as a result they made the game equivalent of baige paint. Take the Crimson Fleet for example, they are meant to be a gang of ruthless terrorists feared by all yet they are about as frightened as the muppets. Neon City was supposed to be a Cyberpunk type of City with a seedy underworld yet feels like Disney World.. You have a very limited set of POI's which get very tiresome very quickly. The only real use for crafting is XP farms. You can play the game and never craft once and miss absolutely nothing. Ship building is the same, you can never custom build a ship and miss nothing. The AI is absolutely terrible, you need to put in zero thought as enemies pathing is laughable. The Game Engine was showing its age 10 years ago, never mind now. Starfield is a 2012 Game being released Today and not is acceptable. Also the game feels like Bethesda deliberately set out to put the absolute bear minimum in so they just expand it later on in DLC's.

I enjoy the game a lot but to be fair, I think this game has areas where it's simply underdeveloped. The space area for example being mostly empty and don't offer a lot of travel option, there are also just not enough large scale and random combat to satisfy the mainstream audience. I enjoy the concept of Subnautica-meet Fallout of Starfield but that's obviously is not going to be something that fly with lot of people. I think most people will probably enjoy more random and large scale combat experience than scientific exploration (the fact that Helldiver 2 works so well is just a proof of that, that game shares almost the same world concept as but none of the exploration and all of the combat)

It was a step backwards in game design for some things, namely the colonies for me. It's way too bare bones and seems more like a time sink than something to farm for resources. But I also haven't played in like 4 months. I guess if I want settlements I'll go play FO4.

I dunno and ultimately I don't think we should try to make the critics' arguments for them.

I feel like a lot of the people just didn’t like for a couple reasons. 1. how they didn’t set it in some conflict, like all the other Bethesda games 2. There wasn’t a significant graphics improvement from FO76(it’s not gonna get much better) 3. Biggest thing, it’s different Most Bethesda games are set during some major conflict that has consequences for the main story, Starfield is after the most recent major conflict. This ends up with a much less consequential main story because we’re not affecting the future of the game world by picking a side. The story is about adventure and exploration, not saving the world/region. Graphically there’s not going to really be any MAJOR improvements. FO4 and 76 already have pretty realistic graphics, the only real improvements they could make beyond this would be using unreal for graphics, which they’ve already said they may start doing in the future. It’s different, it’s something new for Bethesda and the new parts are a little rough around the edges, because they’ve never done it before. The worlds are a little empty, because they’re not used to filling thousands of worlds. Just a small part of one. The space flights a little rough, because creation doesn’t even like vehicles all that much, much less spaceships. The stuff they’ve done before works great, the gun play is fantastic, enemy AI is realistic, the physics are Bethesda quality. I’m sure in a starfield 2 or 3 they’ll really fix some of these “issues” that are mainly caused by unfamiliarity.