Starfield

[Alex79]

Reviews are starting to drop. Seems largely positive with a few middling reviews so far. Interesting to note, IGN gave it a 7, whereas IGN France awarded it a 9 and the Japanese site a full 10! I'm certainly going to give it a try, anyway. Loved all the previous big Bethesda RPGs, and I loved Mass Effect and No Man's Sky, so this seems to sit somewhere in between.

STARFIELD REVIEW ROUND-UP (Source: VGC)

VGC (5/5) – “Starfield is undoubtedly a game that players will explore for years. It’s content-rich in a way that’s rare in modern gaming, but it’s exactly the experience that people who’ve been buying different versions of Skyrim for years wanted. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel with any of its mechanics, but almost everything it does, it does so well, that it’s a truly engrossing experience.”

The Verge (no score) – “Starfield is another huge experience with an almost overwhelming amount of things to do and see, coupled with some great character development, role-playing features, and so-so action. But it also smooths over many of the rough edges that have defined past releases from the studio while introducing a new theme and narrative that match the grand ambitions that Bethesda has always strived for. War never changes — but it’s a lot more thrilling in space.”

Game Informer (8.5) – “It took me a long time to fall in love with Starfield, and even after I did, certain aspects didn’t work for me. But the things I didn’t enjoy are vastly outweighed by my enthusiasm for this new, original science fiction universe, the breadth of its adventures, and the appeal of its many interwoven stories. Go in with the expectation that it will take some time to find your footing in such a vast gameplay space, and there’s a universe well worth discovering here.”

Destructoid (10) – “I wasn’t sure if it could be done, but Bethesda has managed to raise the bar for sandbox games even higher. In the end, Starfield is an epic sandbox open-world RPG with a beautifully immersive universe, a captivating story, and fun and compelling gameplay the whole way. I’m so happy to have experienced Starfield organically, and I really hope you get to as well.”

Videogamer (9) – “Starfield is the enchantment and wonder of space bottled and fleshed out into something grand and ambitious, thoughtful and attentive, janky at times, often funny, but always charming.”

PC Gamer (75) – “I don’t love Starfield, but I’m happy to say that I do like it. Those first 90 hours I played were far from perfect, but I’ve got plenty of reasons to play 90 more.”

GamesRadar (5/5) – “Starfield isn’t really a game you play to complete, it’s more about living whatever sort of life you want in the literal universe Bethesda has created. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, you almost certainly can do it, and the scale is almost a release in a way – you’ll probably never see or do it all, so just enjoy the moment. There’s months, if not years, of discoveries buried away in here, and even after 80 hours I can’t wait to see more.”

Polygon (no score) – “With Starfield, Bethesda has put all of its efforts into exploring the dark, vast corners of outer space. In the process, it has drained a lot of the humanity I was hoping to find in its wake. In trying to do everything, Starfield obfuscates its most compelling mysteries.”

Attack of the Fanboy (5/5) – “Starfield is the most potent value proposition for Game Pass, being the killer app for the subscription service. It is also the best, most ambitious game in the Xbox Game Studios library to date. It would not be a stretch to say this could be one of the most ambitious games ever made, and that it followed through with many of those goals with relatively low compromise. For those fearing this game was Bethesda flying too close to the sun, this is a reminder that this same ambition, mixed with lots of caution and expertise, is also what put us on the moon.”

IGN (7) – “Starfield has a lot of forces working against it, but eventually the allure of its expansive roleplaying quests and respectable combat make its gravitational pull difficult to resist.”

Wccftech (9) – “With an engaging story, well-developed characters and lore, and a huge amount of meaningful content, Starfield is one of Bethesda’s finest games and one of the best role-playing games released in the past few years. The lack of seamless exploration and real innovation of the typical gameplay formula from the studio are noteworthy, but those willing to forego these issues will find a reactive and sprawling sci-fi universe to lose themselves in for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours.”

RPG Site (9) – “This is absolutely the evolution I never knew that I wanted from the RPG subgenre probably best nebulously described as a ‘Bethesda game’. For the first time, I’m actually truly attached to my character and their life in one of these games – and that’s been transformative. That’s been achieved through a number of changes, some of them imperceptibly small – but they work. That’s the real story here. Starfield works – even though it’s so big that I doubted that it ever could.”

GameSpot (7) – “When you strip Starfield down to its essentials, it relies on a tried-and-true, but well-tread formula while missing some of the depth of the games that came before it. Starfield is a game more concerned with quantity than quality, and leaves the experience at the surface level.”

Touch Arcade (review in progress) – “If you enjoy Bethesda Game Studios’ games, and more importantly love exploration and space, I think you should prepare to experience your new obsession with Starfield. I’m looking forward to spending more time with it, and seeing how it improves over time on both Steam Deck and Xbox Series X.”

[ratsoalbion]

88% on OpenCritic after 97 reviews: https://opencritic.com/game/14907/starfield/reviews

[Alex79]

88% on OpenCritic after 97 reviews: https://opencritic.com/game/14907/starfield/reviews

Seems pretty well praised then! Even the lower scoring reviews seemed to have a lot of good things to say about it. Definitely looking forward to playing it (although my Gamepass ran out a couple of weeks ago but planning to renew for this).

[Rhaegyr]

I'm looking forward to playing this even though I've never fully gelled with a Bethesda RPG before - here's hoping this is the one that hooks me in.

[Kez86]

Very much looking forward to jumping into this on PC on the 6th.

I really hope it draws me into its world in the same way Skyrim and Fallout 3 did. Really craving an immersive experience that isn't "all-guns-blazing", something that hits at a slow burn for exploration and discovery, where you can just "be" in the world.

I have read some review stating it is a slower experience, and I think that should be celebrated where possible.

[Alex79]

Did anyone ever play Freelancer on PC, must have been almost 20 years ago now. I played that for so long, just transporting goods from one end of the galaxy to the other, loved that game so much. You could do missions or just go off on your own. And online was great too, just the same thing but the world was full of other real players. I ended up getting banned from the Jolt servers for accidentally logging on with a mod installed that turned my ship in to a Star Wars spaceship

[Rhaegyr]

Never played Freelancer but loved Starlancer on the Dreamcast.

[ratsoalbion]

Everspace 2 is also on Game Pass and well worth checking out for those who fancy a more ship-based space game.

[Alex79]

Someone has made a pretty accurate version of Arthur Morgan in the character creator. It's spot on!

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https% ... 61545ef515

[See Mi Yah]

Thank heavens for Game Pass because I dodged a bullet there. Performance is horrible on PC. Absolutely dreadful. I'd heard in advance that it was chewing through the RTX 40 series so my 3070 was guaranteed to be under serious pressure. 1080p at medium settings was the only way I could guarantee 60fps and even then it still had a choppy feel. The 3070 is roughly 3 years old and it can run Cyberpunk 2077 and (the still rather demanding) Red Dead Redemption 2 at a locked 60fps at 1440p with Very High to Ultra settings right across the board. Bethesda's minimum and recommended specs are simply ludicrously ambitious, and even then the damn thing simply isn't optimised one way or another. Shameful.

[Alex79]

Have you tried 30fps? It seems as though that was the intended frame rate they were aiming for. Maybe that's just console, though.

[See Mi Yah]

Have you tried 30fps? It seems as though that was the intended frame rate they were aiming for. Maybe that's just console, though.

I play on a monitor and 30fps is really tough on the eyes sitting up close like that. I don't know the tech lingo but TV's have something going on that seems to make 30fps on a console look much, much smoother than 30fps on a computer monitor.

[See Mi Yah]

Have you tried 30fps? It seems as though that was the intended frame rate they were aiming for. Maybe that's just console, though.

Unfortunately the performance was only the start of my problems with Starfield. I think it's a horrible game to play and it's very dated. The loading screens and the multiple steps required to travel between planets are detrimental to the immersion. I know I'm not comparing apples with apples here but we live in a world where Elite: Dangerous has been doing its thing for nearly a decade and its expansion (featuring surface exploration), although compromised, is a generation ahead of Starfield.

[ratsoalbion]

You could seamlessly take off and land on different planets in Damocles (1990) too, but the fact that isn't the case in Starfield isn't a dealbreaker for me.

[See Mi Yah]

You could seamlessly take off and land on different planets in Damocles (1990) too, but the fact that isn't the case in Starfield isn't a dealbreaker for me.

I agree. It's not a dealbreaker. This isn't a space sim. I just wish it was handled better. The loading screens don't help. Travelling already feels disjointed and the loading compounds the problem. There's an early mission where you're sent to a planet to get some info and you're immediately sent to a second planet as the next step. The amount of loading screens and menu hopping in those 6 to 8 minutes of play shatters any sense of immersion for me. It feels dreadfully old fashioned and very unsophisticated.

[Alex79]

Whilst I've not played it yet, only with regard to loading screens, it does seem like a slight step back from Elder Scrolls and Fallout, if it's really so frequent. Like I said though, not played it yet so can't really pass judgement on it.