This is some of the most honest feedback about Starfield. It’s not bad. It’s just horribly dated.
It’s a standard Bethesda game, and it’s great for a Bethesda game. But Bethesda hasn’t updated anything in years, over a decade even. Characters are flat, storylines are fun but not engaging, it’s just… fine.
If this had come out in 2014-2016 as a successor to Skyrim it’d be one of the best games, I firmly believe that. But it didn’t, they took their time building it, which is good, but now we have games like the Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, RDR2, even ME3 came out after Skyrim. The format for story propelled RPGs has changed, and the bar has been raised.
Again I don’t want to be one of the “Oh bethesda bad boooo” people because honestly, I’m still having a ton of fun in Starfield. It’s just that for a brand new game… it’s really showing it’s age.
Honestly Baldurs Gate 3 is what really makes it look bad. Playing Starfield after playing that highlights all of the shallowness in Starfield.
Exactly. Compared to games from the early 2010s? It’d hold up. Compared to games in the early 2020s? It just can’t even be compared.
Yup, this. I’ve played two runs by myself and on my fourth with some buddies and I’m still finding out meaningful stuff I didn’t do on my solo runs. Starfield is an upgrade in tons of aspects over previous beth titles (big exception is planetside exploration), they fixed tons of issues both Skyrim and F4 had. Skill checks, while not as present as they should be, pop up once in a while. Skill tree isn’t as boring as F4 but build variety suffers, same as in Skyrim. Character background pops up in convos sometimes (but isn’t as deep as it could be).
That’s starfield. It has the makings of a good game, and it is, but it plays it very safe. And because of that, NPCs are boring, as is the story, as is combat, as is pretty much everything else in the game. The only thing that impressed me was that one mission in the main quest but even that one was limp dicked on the finish. And ship costumization, but if I wanted in-depth ship mechanics I’d play KSP.
Like the game was too ambitious and too chicken shit at the same time.
I really like this, honest feedback to them. The game is obviously made by committee. That’s exactly what my wife and I have been saying, that they did a lot of cool ideas - and then dropped them half way through. None of the ideas are fully thought out or finished, it all screams “Some suit said ‘no this is great, move on’”. Some quick examples
- Base building, awesome concept, I want to build a base on a foreign planet.
- But what do I do there?
- Automated crafting. Awesome, I love Satisfactory! I can do this.
- Wait, I can’t limit items in transit, so I can really only transport one item over a link? So it can’t really be automated.
- Oh sweet, I can build my own spaceship?!
- But you are rarely actually in space and really when you are it’s just a mini game between planets.
- and you get companions to hang out with you on your ship?
- But they don’t interact with each other or do anything like help you fight other ships.
- Oh and we get to have a fleet of ships?!
- but they aren’t actually a fleet. You never get to assign someone as captain of another ship to help you fight pirates. You just… pick which of your ships you want to fly right now.
And that’s just some. Like so so so many cool awesome fun ideas that were just… “I don’t want to play with this anymore.” The fleet one especially stings. I was really hoping I could assign someone as captain of another ship, and when we jumped/spawned in space there it would be on my left, and it could help me fight pirates. I mean, how hard would it be to program that? They already have the ship, they have AI for dogfighting other AI, it would just follow behind you until you entered combat.
- Base building, awesome concept, I want to build a base on a foreign planet.
don’t worry, the gap gets a lot smaller when you reach act 3 in BG3 lol
ive heard it gets insanely buggy and forgets previous choices once you reach act 3. havent played any baldurs gate game though, so i have no clue on specifics
Idk I find starfeild could even be a downgrade in some way, no ai habits like shop keepers must be on a meth bindge as they never leave they’re stores, the openish world is gone, in one lengthy mission I’d see 5/6 loading screens, usually when going from planet to planet then into the city then to do the objective then repeat in reverse.
i don’t understand how they could ship the game with more than 1 featureless gray rock planet, the interesting environments is the bread and butter of bethesda games and the one thing you’ve been able to rely on enjoying even if you find everything else to be garbage!
While the subsystem of 5e isn’t my favorite, Baldur’s Gate 3 has an insanely good RPG system and every sidequest feels pretty unique. No radiant quests like 2077 or Bethesda games Sure, the sex scenes could be a bit better, and I’d like more dialog once you become the best of friends with people, but it’s still amazingly deep with great voice acting and tidbits of stories in various places and situations.
I recommend it if you haven’t played it yet! It’s definitely my game of the year.
I don’t play Bethesda RPGs for the set pieces.
I don’t care that Cyberpunk’s NPCs are programmed to walk to a specific place, stand in a specific way and say a specific thing at a specific time.
Cyberpunk’s main quest claims you have a few weeks to live just when the game really opens up to you, so thematically you are discouraged from pursuing side content, but it doesn’t really matter since except for a few quests most are very generic and most of their “story” is delivered through a call anyway. Great storytelling right there.
The NPCs in Cyberpunk are braindead, and when the game came out the set pieces didn’t work half the time.
I really rather Bethesda spend their time improving the parts of the games people who like their games want them to improve, instead of focusing on stuff their competitors are doing.
In other words, you’ve got maybe a couple hours in Cyberpunk.
36 according to Steam. Sorry I don’t have more than a full day and a half to give a game before I give up on it to play something I enjoy.
What? Dude the best part of the game is the opening 5hrs. It’s all downhill after that.
It’s too bad you didn’t like the narrative structure with the calls in CP2077. That one ending uses them (or I guess you could call them voicemails, considering) to devastating effect. One of the most harrowing sequences I’ve seen in a game. It might have even saved a couple of lives.
I’ve played the game and looked up all the endings but I only personally did the >!Nomad/Panam!< ending. What calls are you referring to?
It’s the
ending spoiler
suicide ending.
All of them have calls during the credits, this one just hits very different.
Ahh gotcha! I’ve never played or watched that ending so I didn’t know that happened. Makes sense though
I really don’t understand your reasoning. They use mocap and actors and spend so much time recording these scenes, then you don’t play them and then say you prefer Bethesda npcs? Mocap scenes and npc AI is so wildly different things. Ai That doesn’t even react when you shoot them? That can’t stealth? That clip into environment while looking at you like you are a ghost? I really try hard to understand your take here
They can spend an eternity on them and I still wouldn’t care about those scenes, it’s just not what I look for in a game.
for me, Horizon Zero Dawn was the real “wow, open-world storytelling can be that good and not classic Bethesda nonsense” moment
Idk, maybe it’s just that I’m comparing too much of the Witcher 3, but the story and importantly sidequests in Horizon Zero Dawn are mediocore at best for where I’m at atm. I’d concur it’s better than Bethesda though.
The Witcher 3, to me, made Bethesda games feel dated. The structure of the game is nearly identical, but when you arrive at your quest, it never plays out entirely straight forward, much like the Witcher source material. Cyberpunk does follow along those same lines, even if it never quite hit the highs that Witcher 3 did.
HZD is very Ubisofty, but done right, as in it’s not littered to the brink with pointless collectibles and can actually be completed. It’s way more action than role-play or story focussed but that’s not a bad thing in itself. I think of it more like Tomb Raider, and for that kind of game HZD has plenty and very good storytelling.
I couldn’t really get into Witcher 3. It was more the combat than the story but the story didn’t interest me much either…
Yeah, I fell off it after about two hours.
Unless things change drastically for their RPG division, I’ll repeat what I’ve said since oblivion. Bethesda makes great modding platforms, the content within the game is a loose theme that modders can play with.
Yes the new Fallouts are just TES in the Apocalypse.
Yes starfield is little more than TES in space.
I buy Bethesda games for mod potential.
If they said no mods to all future games I wouldn’t buy another one. I don’t play ESO and I have never touched fallout 76 for this reason.
I mean ESO isn’t a bethesda game, it’s made by zenimax.
And from what i remember it’s actually pretty decent for what it is, it definitely looks nice and iirc while it has microtransactions to catch the whales, it isn’t an absolute twat about it and there at least was a membership system that was/is quite reasonable.
I would be satisfied if Bethesda did stick to their “ancient ways”. Focusing more on environments and immersion rather than character-driven storytelling like any other RPG. Of course they did neither for Starfield unfortunately.
I don’t remember who said it, but in some youtube video they said something along the lines that fallout 76 could have been the ultimate bethesda game if it was actually finished on release and didn’t have that stupid “no human NPCs” gimmick, as it REALLY embraced that environmental design that they’re actually good at.
They can clearly make fun games, look at skyrim and fallout 4 which tons of people love to just run around doing quests and fighting stuff in, but then they always bollocks it up by forcing in a story that barely makes sense upon closer scrutiny and they never capitalize of the potential of really truly interacting with the world.
I think bethesda could actually make the best VR game so far, the format plays perfectly into what they’re good at since as valve realized people just want to rummage around drawers for hours on end and explore the environments.
Hell even as is skyrim VR seems pretty sweet, imagine if they actually designed the game for VR from scratch!Fallout 4 VR was a cool experience. I don’t know about a good game though. It doesn’t help they didn’t even seem to test if it worked. For example, red dot sights don’t really work by default (though there’s a mod to fix it). By default it’s just a texture on the center of the sight, which isn’t how that works. The mod just makes the dot display (near) infinity forward. That’s just one minor issue that’s obvious. I don’t think any of the DLC works with it and most mods don’t either, so it’s pretty limited.
Well a lot of people had very fun with fallout 4, which is my definition of a good game.
It’s not a great game, nor a competent one aside from the environments and functional gunplay, and it’s a fucking terrible fallout game, but it is pretty fun if you just run around shooting things and looking at the environments and laughing at the environmental storytelling.
I mean Fallout 4 VR I don’t know if I’d say is good. It’s got a lot of comicatioms that the regular game doesn’t have.
Skyrim VR modded to hell is nuts and incredibly fun.
It’s the most “mid” game I’ve ever played.
Also, it is not an RPG.
There isn’t such a thing as modern RPGs, not mainstream anyway
Even with an extremely narrow definition, that’s a bold thing to say in the wake of Baldur’s Gate 3.
I wouldn’t say baldurs gate is mainstream, at least not in the same way as cyberpunk or Bethesdas games
It’s in the top ten most played games on Steam and had sold at least 5 million; even that number is two months old and doesn’t include PlayStation. If I were to wager a guess, which you can often extrapolate from the number of reviews on Steam, it’s much closer to 10 million, which is how many copies a typical Assassin’s Creed or FIFA game will sell. Baldur’s Gate 3 is mainstream.
Agreed. It is though an example of a game breaking out into the mainstream from a normally more niche genre (this particular type of dense, top-down, turn-based RPG). I’m curious to see if its subgenre will grow more popular in its wake, too, and by how much.
I find it particularly interesting that it became such a hit because its systems can be rather overwhelming for people who aren’t already familiar with 5e/tabletop rules. The sheer amount of rules to learn, the volume of specific items and text bubbles to read, the fact that some aspects of the interface aren’t really tutorialized well, etc.
I had no understanding of 5e, and there were a couple of things I didn’t understand, but so much of that game, especially at the beginning, is choosing an option with a high chance of success and shoving or throwing things that most games wouldn’t let you shove or throw. The way the game lets you verb any feasible noun, coupled with higher production value, is probably why this one hit. It’s going to continue to make other RPGs with even higher budgets stand out as dinosaurs; not just Starfield but especially BioWare’s next couple of efforts, given their Baldur’s Gate lineage.
It’s because people aren’t idiots like developers have thought for years. People don’t mind a game where you need to read and learn as long as there is a payoff for reading and learning. We have been paying the price for devs thinking everyone is braindead for over a decade now as more and more mechanics and features are removed to please people who were never going to give the genre a chance anyway. By way of example, Dragon Age II didn’t get the Call of Duty audience to play Dragon Age, it just convinced most who liked Dragon Age that EA only accidentally published one of the best RPGs of its decade.
I can agree, cyberpunk has a much gritter mature and well thought out world were as Bethesda titles demand cognitive dissonance
The only thing I don’t like about Cyberpunk’s writing is that everyone seems to be deathly allergic to pronouns, even when it would clearly make the dialogue flow better.
That’s to help you remember the names.
Never realized that but you’re probably right! It never irked me, I just assumed it was a stylistic decision. I actually like it tbh
Yea! It always seems to help me remember them.
I’m talking more about the dialogue between V and other characters where they just adamantly refuse to begin sentences with the words I/me/my/etc. It begins to wear after a while.
Well, the player can choose which gender V is, plus there’s a lot of catering to gender fluidity.
It’s definitely a conscious choice, but I can’t say if it’s to not have to record more variations of dialogue, and maybe NPC’s use it less so not to draw attention to them not knowing V’s gender.
That said, nothing that really bothered me, although I still haven’t gone through the entire game.
But maybe it’s just how they picture 2077? Just look at recent history and draw an exponential curve and assume pronouns just went out of fashion?
I mean, it really doesn’t have anything to do with V’s gender, it’s literally just that they start every sentence like, for example, “…Thought” or “…Look like” instead of “I thought” or “You look like,” even when the VO is enunciating in a way that sounds much more emphatic than the dropped pronouns would imply? It makes the dialogue feel kind of disjointed at times.
Granted, I’m using the female V voice, I have no idea if the male VO runs into the same problems, but I imagine they’re reading off of the same script, so it seems likely.
I think it is just a new modern game so therefore hyperbole demands it much be either the best thing ever or trash. A lot of people said RDR2 was “dated” design as well. I think they both have strengths, same with Cyberpunk. I think only BG3 is a step forward for RPG storytelling, Cyberpunk, Starfield, Red Dead all have issues, but they allow the player to get immersived in their worlds and at the end of the day that’s all that matters.
Oh man this discourse has been absolutely typical Gamer garbage on the various subreddits. Every day a new thread with thousands of posts not reading the article but rushing in to say the same thing. It’s weird because they are very different games and it also feels like Im taking crazy pills because while I have not played cyberpunk(Im waiting for it go get super cheap on sale before I bother with it) I remember the launch being an absolute shitshow and the general consensus on the story being “meh”.
Suddenly starfireld comes out and now Cyberpunk is heralded as the greatest at everything. Like you dont have to pick a team you can just like what you like. I get bethesda sold out to microsoft and is now under scrutiny, and I get that the same vocal posters let themselves get wrapped up in hype, but this is excessive.
It seems weird that you are judging Cyberpunk without ever having played it. Saying that the general consensus is “meh” is not accurate at all. The game had bugs and it had some technical and gameplay issues that made its much more mature brethren seem better or more well thought through. That’s true.
There’s a huge BUT here though. The storytelling and main questlike through Cyberpunk, at launch, was pretty freaking spectacular. I say this as someone who readily acknowledges the issues with the game at launch. Yes, they have addressed most of those issues, and the game feels better now, but the same story from launch-day is still there and is a rather compelling and great experience. I’m on my second playthrough of it now with the PL expansion and so far it’s been so much better.
And this is all to say nothing of the truly jaw-dropping level design and aesthetics, AT launch, that the game is still sporting. I remember saying when I first played this at launch that I really hope they release some more expansions for this game because the environment is so richly detailed, it feels like I’m running around in a dystopian nightmare.
Like I said I’m basing my assessment on both games by the response the community gave and reviews Ive read and seen. I tend to do the patient gamer thing and wait for big steam sales before buying a game(unless its something I really want and sometimes I know indy games are already cheap and grab it at a lesser sale). Cyberpunk had a similarly criticized launch with the multiple daily 1001 posts on reddit and much like starfield has people who defend it you had people defending cyberpunk as well.
But from the outside looking in it was literally the same. You had the people who let themselves get spunup by the hypemachine absolutely let down when the game didnt live up to the hype.
You had the people who were chastising the bugs and “dated mechanics” how the game “didnt feel alive” and the “driving physics suck”
You had the hardcore CRPG fans for whom the only true RPG is: Baldurs gate 2, Morowind, Fallout 2, and special mentions to fallout new vegas. They’d come in and criticize lack of options and choice and blablabla.
You had the youtubers clowning on the game like Dunky showcasing a bug-fest.
And among people who actually reviewed the game the community consensus I saw was polarizing. Some did love it but a lot of people expressed it not living up to potential.
Again I cant say for sure(maybe next winter sale will be my time to shine) but it’s feels like this outrage cycle was targeting cyberpunk for a while and then one day it just stopped. And now that its time for the community to throw their poo at something again cyberpunk is the hero of the story.
So sorry for the rambling but in short my post is less a personal judgment of cyberpunk and more a “the community hated this game and had little good to say about it, and now it’s their precious baby and starfield is the bad one”. I know its not happening here but I figure rather than spitting into the wind on reddit I’d complain about this weird online discourse here.
I think the reason you saw the response you saw is that a lot of the players who bought Cyberpunk on the PC early on were too busy PLAYING the game to talk about it online. If you were a console user though you had little choice though, the console versions of Cyberpunk were awful at launch and deserved much of the scorn they received, I am not certain on stats, but I’m positive that most of the game-breaking bugs were on the console. Yes, I noticed some bugs on my first playthrough on the PC, but it wasn’t as dramatic as what I saw people posting regarding console Cyberpunk.
Beat the game within the first week of release (on PC). There were no serious gamebreaking bugs, and you are correct, the story is essentially unchanged between release and now. The story was always great.
Yeah I don’t get it. Cyberpunk is getting serious rose-tinted glasses. I hear PL has greatly enhanced it but it just dropped and CDPR has been fixing the game for what? 3 years? That was a rough initial 18mo in particular.
Part of me almost wonders if it’s been elevated because it’s frequently featured on those benchmark videos that have gotten so popular lately. Heavy use of ray tracing, frequently updated to get new features, very tweakable, and thousands of videos using Cyberpunk as the standard for hardware to be measured by just puts a bug in your head.
That’s an interesting theory for sure!
Yeah it’s definitely not because the tech is cutting edge and no other game has come close to using these features correctly
Look make no mistake, the game visual is a feast. But that’s not enough to make up for all the other shortcomings. At least not for me. After the initial heist mission, which was unbelievable by the way, I just got so bored. 
That being said, I’ve heard enough praise for phantom liberty that I am considering jumping back in. I’m not quite sure I’m ready to pay for DLC though after what was delivered initially.

PL brought a trait system overhaul, cyberware overhaul, and combat overhaul that dramatically changed up the gameplay loop even in the core game.
The story was always amazingly crafted, but the game never warranted a second play through. Now it does.
CP was shit and unplayable on consoles at release and more-or-less buggy depending on hardware but fully playable on PC. It did not live up to the grandiose marketing promises but it is a wonderful game for what it is. Interesting world, varied quests/gigs/jobs with interesting decisions to make, super fun weapons, and now a fun skill build mechanics.
Phantom Liberty is peak Cyberpunk, but the game itself is great - at release and now even more. Does not excuse the pathetic release though and deceiving marketing. At least they did something with it.
The criticism of Red Dead had little to do with the impressive systems that they built for the world and a whole lot to do with how they took that freedom away from you in missions. There was very much a way they could have kept the linear story that plays out the same way every time without cutting to a hard fail state for using your brain. That’s the part that felt dated, especially contrasted against the actual cool, innovative stuff that exists in the same video game.
i feel red dead is amazing to look at but playing it is so boring id rather watch paint dry. the last time i played red dead was to just do the drunk saloon mission again, which is also where i stopped playing the first time
Starfield is the first and only Bethesda game I haven’t really liked. It’s got all the same gameplay elements, but it’s lacking the world building and interesting stories. The lore is bland as fuck, barely scratches the surface of what you’d want to know, and none of the stories really lean into actually telling you about the world in a fun way, opting instead to give big blocks of dialogue that are nothing but history and exposition. Where is the environmental story-telling they’ve always had? Is the blandness of the world simply a matter of it being new and young and not having nearly as much history as Elder Scrolls and Fallout to build on? Have they simply lost their touch? Believe me, I have tried to like this game. I am a huge fan of space stuff and Bethesda games, but it just doesn’t have that certain something that makes their games actually fun.
Hint: the previous games weren’t exactly amazing at this either. Worse, in many areas. It’s quite rose tinted from nostalgia
Regardless of the quality of the writing, they certainly had more interesting ideas in their lore and settings that added something to the experience. That’s what Starfield is lacking.
It’s really strange. The area under the main NC city was pretty good. It had character. Locations felt like they belonged and not just stuck there because they needed something there. It tells you a story about the people who live there. It’s literally the only place in the game that does this that I’ve seen. I don’t understand how so much went wrong with Starfield.
Starfield made Starfield feel ancient by being entirely unoptimised.
No, it’s Bethesda that makes Starfield seem ancient.
