The Stars Went too Far
Waited for this game since it's announcement back in 2018. It's not the worst thing created by the human race, nor is the best game ever created in my opinion, GOTY or whatever, no. But I'm mostly postive towards it.
This game is not a space simulation, so anyone that wanted that may end up dissapointed. It's an RPG with space exploration elements. A Bethesda RPG to be exact.
The universe Bethesda tried to built for almost 25 years as they clearly said it's well, nothing that other sci-fi universes have done before really. It just doesn't stand up very tall even compared to even the likes of Fallout. Though I get it's the first game in probably what would be a long running series. But even with that it doesn't stand out very much.
I did like the main quest, just not totally love it. It involves you and your friends at Constellation, a group that dedicates themselves to space traversal and discoveries. Main goal of this group is to investigate what they called "Artifacts", a type of metal object. Most of the cast and companions are ok, nothing to write home about. Though I feel that they are very annoying on the field. "Hey dude, I want to tell you something", "Oh, you will want to hear this", and such. It gets annoying after sometime. Wish some members of the cast would stand out more of the rest, like morally grey character or a companion with evil intentions that could lead to a different view from Constellation, for example. Then I remember it's a Bethesda RPG, I seriously want them to evolve in some aspects.
Even though the main quest is there for you to complete I don't consider it the main objective of this game. The beefy side comes on the side content. Random encounters, Faction missions, you name it. Found the main quest to be monotonous, with some interesting moments here in there. The final strech was really interesting.
This game is really huge. Though, being huge is not always a positive. Most planets are barren, empty looking and don't lead much to interesting outcomes. Being this just fiction and a different universe from ours, I would have like some creativity put in there. I'm mostly mixed about this, for one I don't expect 100+ planets to be handcrafted with detail, it's unrealistic. But on the other hand, was it really necessary? Open World games seem to have huge insecurities when it comes to size and the only way they think it would solve it is: "Who has the biggest dick?", "Who can piss further?", Who was the bigger explorable map. It wasn't necessary but on the other hand, it is a very ambitious idea that I dig just probably now isn't the time to try it at the scale Starfield did.
Combat is engaging and fluid, better than it's ever been before, mix that with the cool jetpack that can also be customizable at your liking. Gravity also takes a huge role into combat, not only your jump height is higher but your jetpack goes further as well.
Choice and consequences. Bethesda finally did a good work on it. Answers lead to other answers to lead to more answers ending in a very unique set of dialogues at the end of the day. Tried to be the least harmful being in this universe and it worked good enough with some Social perks and Persuade options.
Space combat. Great, you mannage your ships control depending on the situation. Either make your ship center the energy on going faster to escape a tricky combat, or put everything into weapons. You can also upgrade your ship or create one altogether. I seriously got into Ship Creation for a couple of hours. Though, you mostly will using your ship to fast travel to other locations, and isn't much used beyond that. If you want to be practical of course, because you can also explore the universe with your ship for random encounters.
As for my experience, tried to role as Walter White. Not Heisenberg, but Walter White from Season 1. And it worked for the most part, combat didn't deliver. Stealth is broken and melee combat wasn't the most useful tool at hand so I had to resort to guns. Science and Social perks were the ones that I tried to level up the most with the Teacher backstory added in top of it. It was fun.
Now, did I find any bugs? Yeah, some. But weren't as terrible as I though they would be. After playing it for 10 hours straight the game started to act strange. A whole planet turned into a white void, my ship dissapeared in the middle of space and some more. But nothing that I would consider game breaking by any means. I don't know if it was my Xbox or the Creation Engine 2 crumbling before my eyes, a quick restart was enough to fix those problems.
Talking about technical problems, there are a lot of loading screens. Land on a planet? Loading screen. Enter a building? Loading screen. Exit the building? Loading screen. They are not long, but it's noticeable that there is a lot of dead time, doing nothing as you are playing. 30fps were stable on planets and basically anything that wasn't a big city, like some zones in specific on New Atlantis were the framerate dips so hard it's not even funny. 60fps should be the target for all FPS games in my opinion, otherwise it just gets harder to play. Specially on console.
The menu is another thing that bugs me. I know they wanted to go for a simplistic, clean look. But oversimplification can work against you in practice. Menus to access other menus within other ones, an easy way to change weapons on the fly should've been priority for the team. Cyberpunk already had that one figured it out with one single button, outdated. It's not a pleseant experience. Talking about menus, where the hell is the map? No local map like in Fallout. Towns and specially New Atlantis can be very confusing to navigate because of it.
Hope most of these issues get iron out or flat out changed with a patch. It's those little things that make the overall experience less enjoyable.
So in short, it's a Bethesda game. A really fun at that, so if you are into it you will enjoy it. I do feel it feels fractured in a way I can't put into words. Regardless, I had my fair share of fun moments with this one once I came to the realisation space exploration wasn't a thing, but the inventory system, menus are very cluncky to navigate through. The ship creation is inmense and the combat is fun.
I'll be going back to this game, maybe after a few updates for 100% completion.
Waited for this game since it's announcement back in 2018. It's not the worst thing created by the human race, nor is the best game ever created in my opinion, GOTY or whatever, no. But I'm mostly postive towards it.
This game is not a space simulation, so anyone that wanted that may end up dissapointed. It's an RPG with space exploration elements. A Bethesda RPG to be exact.
The universe Bethesda tried to built for almost 25 years as they clearly said it's well, nothing that other sci-fi universes have done before really. It just doesn't stand up very tall even compared to even the likes of Fallout. Though I get it's the first game in probably what would be a long running series. But even with that it doesn't stand out very much.
I did like the main quest, just not totally love it. It involves you and your friends at Constellation, a group that dedicates themselves to space traversal and discoveries. Main goal of this group is to investigate what they called "Artifacts", a type of metal object. Most of the cast and companions are ok, nothing to write home about. Though I feel that they are very annoying on the field. "Hey dude, I want to tell you something", "Oh, you will want to hear this", and such. It gets annoying after sometime. Wish some members of the cast would stand out more of the rest, like morally grey character or a companion with evil intentions that could lead to a different view from Constellation, for example. Then I remember it's a Bethesda RPG, I seriously want them to evolve in some aspects.
Even though the main quest is there for you to complete I don't consider it the main objective of this game. The beefy side comes on the side content. Random encounters, Faction missions, you name it. Found the main quest to be monotonous, with some interesting moments here in there. The final strech was really interesting.
This game is really huge. Though, being huge is not always a positive. Most planets are barren, empty looking and don't lead much to interesting outcomes. Being this just fiction and a different universe from ours, I would have like some creativity put in there. I'm mostly mixed about this, for one I don't expect 100+ planets to be handcrafted with detail, it's unrealistic. But on the other hand, was it really necessary? Open World games seem to have huge insecurities when it comes to size and the only way they think it would solve it is: "Who has the biggest dick?", "Who can piss further?", Who was the bigger explorable map. It wasn't necessary but on the other hand, it is a very ambitious idea that I dig just probably now isn't the time to try it at the scale Starfield did.
Combat is engaging and fluid, better than it's ever been before, mix that with the cool jetpack that can also be customizable at your liking. Gravity also takes a huge role into combat, not only your jump height is higher but your jetpack goes further as well.
Choice and consequences. Bethesda finally did a good work on it. Answers lead to other answers to lead to more answers ending in a very unique set of dialogues at the end of the day. Tried to be the least harmful being in this universe and it worked good enough with some Social perks and Persuade options.
Space combat. Great, you mannage your ships control depending on the situation. Either make your ship center the energy on going faster to escape a tricky combat, or put everything into weapons. You can also upgrade your ship or create one altogether. I seriously got into Ship Creation for a couple of hours. Though, you mostly will using your ship to fast travel to other locations, and isn't much used beyond that. If you want to be practical of course, because you can also explore the universe with your ship for random encounters.
As for my experience, tried to role as Walter White. Not Heisenberg, but Walter White from Season 1. And it worked for the most part, combat didn't deliver. Stealth is broken and melee combat wasn't the most useful tool at hand so I had to resort to guns. Science and Social perks were the ones that I tried to level up the most with the Teacher backstory added in top of it. It was fun.
Now, did I find any bugs? Yeah, some. But weren't as terrible as I though they would be. After playing it for 10 hours straight the game started to act strange. A whole planet turned into a white void, my ship dissapeared in the middle of space and some more. But nothing that I would consider game breaking by any means. I don't know if it was my Xbox or the Creation Engine 2 crumbling before my eyes, a quick restart was enough to fix those problems.
Talking about technical problems, there are a lot of loading screens. Land on a planet? Loading screen. Enter a building? Loading screen. Exit the building? Loading screen. They are not long, but it's noticeable that there is a lot of dead time, doing nothing as you are playing. 30fps were stable on planets and basically anything that wasn't a big city, like some zones in specific on New Atlantis were the framerate dips so hard it's not even funny. 60fps should be the target for all FPS games in my opinion, otherwise it just gets harder to play. Specially on console.
The menu is another thing that bugs me. I know they wanted to go for a simplistic, clean look. But oversimplification can work against you in practice. Menus to access other menus within other ones, an easy way to change weapons on the fly should've been priority for the team. Cyberpunk already had that one figured it out with one single button, outdated. It's not a pleseant experience. Talking about menus, where the hell is the map? No local map like in Fallout. Towns and specially New Atlantis can be very confusing to navigate because of it.
Hope most of these issues get iron out or flat out changed with a patch. It's those little things that make the overall experience less enjoyable.
So in short, it's a Bethesda game. A really fun at that, so if you are into it you will enjoy it. I do feel it feels fractured in a way I can't put into words. Regardless, I had my fair share of fun moments with this one once I came to the realisation space exploration wasn't a thing, but the inventory system, menus are very cluncky to navigate through. The ship creation is inmense and the combat is fun.
I'll be going back to this game, maybe after a few updates for 100% completion.
RedBackLoggd
5 months ago