I loved my time with this game. Everything about the characters and side quests was so damn good. It reminded me once again that Bethesda understands its audience when given the backing and resources to do so. When the acquisition was announced I was skeptical about the future of BGS, but it’s clear to me now that this was the best-case scenario from all ends.
The storytelling was tremendous. Starting as a know-nothing miner on the verge of greatness was a unique perspective to begin from. The stakes built nice and slowly but when the pieces were finally linked together, it all made perfect sense. I don’t want to spoil the game in any way but the story was well done and very enjoyable. Being able to participate in questlines involving every single available faction was a blessing. Having the option to side with multiple groups throughout the Settled Systems was a blast because you would hear NPCs in all corners discussing your choices and spreading their opinion, and it gave much more freedom than being forced to choose one group over the others. Even in the final moments, the choices made during those quests were expanded on sufficiently. Each faction wraps up in the finale and I was glad to see that they were not forgotten.
Constellation is full of unique characters and I would have loved to journey with each and every member, but Sarah was the only companion that I utilized from start to finish. There have been very good things said about Sam and Andreja, but maybe I will hear their stories in future playthroughs.
Despite my enjoyment, there are some issues with the game. Space in general is such an expansive space but the traversal is abysmal. You spend very little time exploring space and are essentially spending time shuffling through menus rather than exploring. The concept is there and the mindset is there, but it seems they skipped a step in making the space-exploration aspect worthwhile. Most of the time outside of planetary ventures is spent boosting through the sky and fast traveling to the next destination. There is no real purpose for having an amazing vessel because it is utilized very infrequently. If not for choosing the bounty hunter perk, I feel as though there would be little to do in space once you’ve seen the views a couple of times. Yes, the storytelling, choices, and factions take centerstage, but it would’ve been much more interesting if there was more to do out there. Personally, this did not take away from my experience too much because I wasn’t expecting this to be a Star Wars adventure, however, if they can take this weakness and turn it around in the DLC for a future game, it would be the perfect package.
From a technical standpoint, the game ran atrociously on my Xbox Series S. Things looked beautiful and I never ran into as many bugs as I did playing Fallout 4, but the lack of overall optimization for this version was very noticeable. My game crashed way too often which forced me to restart segments on multiple occasions. At one point my save file would not load at all which forced me to load an older save file just to return to the game. Surprisingly there haven’t been any updates since launch which would have been greatly appreciated.
Here’s hoping the game is ironed out by the time the DLC expansions arrive because I would hate for anyone to experience the number of crashes that plagued my first run with the game.
The storytelling was tremendous. Starting as a know-nothing miner on the verge of greatness was a unique perspective to begin from. The stakes built nice and slowly but when the pieces were finally linked together, it all made perfect sense. I don’t want to spoil the game in any way but the story was well done and very enjoyable. Being able to participate in questlines involving every single available faction was a blessing. Having the option to side with multiple groups throughout the Settled Systems was a blast because you would hear NPCs in all corners discussing your choices and spreading their opinion, and it gave much more freedom than being forced to choose one group over the others. Even in the final moments, the choices made during those quests were expanded on sufficiently. Each faction wraps up in the finale and I was glad to see that they were not forgotten.
Constellation is full of unique characters and I would have loved to journey with each and every member, but Sarah was the only companion that I utilized from start to finish. There have been very good things said about Sam and Andreja, but maybe I will hear their stories in future playthroughs.
Despite my enjoyment, there are some issues with the game. Space in general is such an expansive space but the traversal is abysmal. You spend very little time exploring space and are essentially spending time shuffling through menus rather than exploring. The concept is there and the mindset is there, but it seems they skipped a step in making the space-exploration aspect worthwhile. Most of the time outside of planetary ventures is spent boosting through the sky and fast traveling to the next destination. There is no real purpose for having an amazing vessel because it is utilized very infrequently. If not for choosing the bounty hunter perk, I feel as though there would be little to do in space once you’ve seen the views a couple of times. Yes, the storytelling, choices, and factions take centerstage, but it would’ve been much more interesting if there was more to do out there. Personally, this did not take away from my experience too much because I wasn’t expecting this to be a Star Wars adventure, however, if they can take this weakness and turn it around in the DLC for a future game, it would be the perfect package.
From a technical standpoint, the game ran atrociously on my Xbox Series S. Things looked beautiful and I never ran into as many bugs as I did playing Fallout 4, but the lack of overall optimization for this version was very noticeable. My game crashed way too often which forced me to restart segments on multiple occasions. At one point my save file would not load at all which forced me to load an older save file just to return to the game. Surprisingly there haven’t been any updates since launch which would have been greatly appreciated.
Here’s hoping the game is ironed out by the time the DLC expansions arrive because I would hate for anyone to experience the number of crashes that plagued my first run with the game.
2 Comments
this is as real as it gets
mehdigeek
8 months ago