The game is aggressively Bethesda but I'm enjoying the visuals and sniffing the 3d model of every insignificant bit of detritis in the world. I saw a very nice looking bowl, maybe THE bowl of all videogames. Other than that the narrative and main story has already lost my interest after about 10 minutes and I'll be off being a space menace if the game will let me.
Once i found out I can travel using the ship in scanner mode it doesn't feel like a map simulator anymore.
Also the chef having a perk for dueling tickles me.
Game also runs like shit on PC but digital foundry showed most settings being on medium yields good performance with no noticable quality loss.
I didn't realize it was gonna be on game pass lol so I did end up downloading it even though I swore up and down I'd wait on buying until they fixed all the crap they were gonna inevitably do.
The amount of loading screens is kinda profligate, there's more than one quest where you go to a planet (loading screen) talk to a guy then to the next planet (loading screen) and talk to a guy, and just repeat. The combat is pretty bad, I can't say I was expecting super smart AI or whatever but there's been more than a few times where enemies just kinda stood somewhere far away and couldn't figure out how to path to the fight? The main storyline didn't capture my interest. There's still a lot of bugs, nothing that'll bluescreen or whatever but I've had VASCO twirling his head talking to me, the Charlie 3 guy rotating really fast, theres one quest marker that doesnt get removed during a quest in the Well which made me rely on the actual given instructions (which was a nice change of pace), just a bunch of stuff like that. Stealth needs an overhaul, it's hard to get the sneak attacks to rank up and it starts getting really useful at rank 3. Also, unarmed is very very underwhelming and hard to do - which I guess is fair but whatever.
I love the setting and aesthetic, I do like the NASApunk look. I actually gasped at New Atlantis topside and Neon city. Also, there's just so much stuff to find. The sidequests are usually pretty goos. The Well was cool. Getting UC citizenship seems to be a thing Bethesda expected people to do because it has a lot of strong writing, I didn't love UC as a faction but whatever they're obviously very lib. It feels like a lot of people are discounting gastronomy, which is understandable because it takes a lot of work to rank it up to where the buffs are really good. Oh yeah and seeing Earth all fucked up actually made me feel quite sad, I landed on it and just felt... upset I guess, which is a plus for me if a videogame can make me feel an emotion like that.
I didn't know how to feel about the religions... it was interesting to think of organized charitable Atheism as a religion or the like syncretic dialectic synthesis of ALL monotheistic religions? I didn't get to try out the Great Serpent stuff but they're interesting guess to just consider. For some reason the religious struggle in skyrim was cool for me but future humans with made-up religions aren't as cool? I'm not sure why I struggled with it. Also, a lot of the spacesuits are kinda ugly, hard to play fashion field.
I don't think I'd pay separately for this and I don't know if I'll finish it, but so long as it's on gamepass and so long as I keep having that I guess I'll keep it installed. I'm still eagerly anticipating a GOTY edition with unofficial bug fix mod at some point to actually enjoy starfield.
Man this is really terminal fast travel game design brain, this is the kind of shit business guys did before cellphones and the internet were considered good enough, just hopping around the world on concordes to have one business meeting and then go back. Don't they have interplanetary communication in this world?
A modern game should have been able to do this all with seamless loading screens, too. I, too, hate the "There will be no cell phones/e-mail in the future". Anything that requires communication should be doable from a console in your ship unless there's a very good reason why you can't. Like if there's a nebula that does space bullshit to cellphone reception then sure, go there. But if you're just having a conversation that should be something you do from your ship or a phone booth or whatever.
Beth made a game with a space aesthetic, but they didn't drop all the crap that only makes sense in a quasi-medieval game. Why are you walking anywhere? Where's your rover or go cart or ATV or atmospheric shuttle? Why are you picking up random bullshit to sell for chump change? Why do you have to kill space rabbits for glue, why can't you just order 20 tons of glue delivered to your location? Why are you surveying for common light elements? There's no way it makes more sense financially to mine and refine your own aluminum isntead of just buying it by the ton from an established producer.
When Todd said "Skyrim in Space" he really meant it. Just tons of game elements that don't make any sense in a futuristish spaceish game.
It's really frustrating because its such a basic narrative tool to factor in what routes of communication are available, as well as the time and space required.
I remember an early plot point in the Shadowrun SNES game is to try and get ahold of a credit card and a working phone so you can actually call people, because theres a price on your head so every time you step outside theres basically at least one assassin trying to gun you down, which makes it pretty undesirable to try and take the subway everywhere rather than making a phone call.
And then you can instead there take into account that remote communication is unsecure, so perhaps you can't call people sometimes, or you have to use more secure methods that take more time and are limited in scope, there's just a lot you can do when the default form of communication isn't just teleporting to peoples houses to personally chat with them for 1 single minute then teleporting away again.
Remember back in the 00s when everyone having a cellphone was just starting to be a thing, and movie writers had no idea what to do about it? So many plots relied on not being able to reach people at important moments, and suddenly everyone was carrying phones around and writers just had no idea.