beautiful, wondorous, shallow, and futile.
Todd Howard's newest foray into vast planet-spanning stories evidently forgets that planets and stars are not the focal point of any story. They aren't living entities. They breathe life...yet it is the life itself that must be emphasized.
Starfield focuses too much on the stars, and too little on the people that inhabit them. The sidequests are vapid, the characters are generic and monotonous, the environments are sterile. Of course, as No Man's Sky shows, you don't need to have a conventional story to make a game imbuned with the richness of life and meaning, especially in a genre that exploits our idealized version of discovery and the unknown as much as space and science fiction. That being said, the ability to eschew conventionality only works with due intention, and Starfield indeed seems to attempt to embrace the paradigms of space operas that have come before at every corner. It isn't hollow because that's the point, it's hollow because (presumably) Microsoft wanted the game out the door as soon as possible.
And looking back at the concept of Starfield and its lofty ambitions, one wonders if it could have ever been even remotely good in the first place. The promises of Starfield were in its immense scale, not in the artistic ambition of the experiences that lie within. Perhaps, from that perspective, Starfield is a crowning achievement.
Unfortunately, for the thousands of planets and hundreds of unique storylines, there is not one worth exploring. Perhaps I was expecting too much from a Bethesda game. Silly me! How could I ever have thought a Bethesda game would push the medium in any substantial way? But what I was at least expecting was for Starfield to at least have a purpose. Anything more meaningful, more human, than pixels flashing on a screen while you kill unnamed evil pirate #4721 in a game with a morality system reminiscent of Bioshock's black-and-white little sisters.
Starfield does not even attempt to achieve that.
Todd Howard's newest foray into vast planet-spanning stories evidently forgets that planets and stars are not the focal point of any story. They aren't living entities. They breathe life...yet it is the life itself that must be emphasized.
Starfield focuses too much on the stars, and too little on the people that inhabit them. The sidequests are vapid, the characters are generic and monotonous, the environments are sterile. Of course, as No Man's Sky shows, you don't need to have a conventional story to make a game imbuned with the richness of life and meaning, especially in a genre that exploits our idealized version of discovery and the unknown as much as space and science fiction. That being said, the ability to eschew conventionality only works with due intention, and Starfield indeed seems to attempt to embrace the paradigms of space operas that have come before at every corner. It isn't hollow because that's the point, it's hollow because (presumably) Microsoft wanted the game out the door as soon as possible.
And looking back at the concept of Starfield and its lofty ambitions, one wonders if it could have ever been even remotely good in the first place. The promises of Starfield were in its immense scale, not in the artistic ambition of the experiences that lie within. Perhaps, from that perspective, Starfield is a crowning achievement.
Unfortunately, for the thousands of planets and hundreds of unique storylines, there is not one worth exploring. Perhaps I was expecting too much from a Bethesda game. Silly me! How could I ever have thought a Bethesda game would push the medium in any substantial way? But what I was at least expecting was for Starfield to at least have a purpose. Anything more meaningful, more human, than pixels flashing on a screen while you kill unnamed evil pirate #4721 in a game with a morality system reminiscent of Bioshock's black-and-white little sisters.
Starfield does not even attempt to achieve that.
jjoao
7 months ago