Going by the review round up over on https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/166f36h/starfield_review_thread/

Seems like pretty much universal praise and Bethesda have largely pulled off one of the most ambitious games ever made.

Decide for yourself obviously, I know I wont be watching any actual coverage until I have dug into it myself for a few days.

I still expect the most “It’s Okay!” game in recent memory but I’ll give it a try once I figure out how to clear enough space to actually download it.

You beat me to it. I guess my thread can be closed then. Like I said in the thread, it justifies the Game Pass subscription if nothing else. So maybe Xbox achieved what they wanted. But I'm sure they would've like a 9/10 or a 10/10 across the board, like Tears of the Kingdom, which after these review rankings is probably a lock for GOTY now.

@av_gamer: Are the reviews OUT like this thread says or IN like your thread said? MAKE UP YOUR MIND!

Very excited to pay $10 for a month of game pass and go "yeah this sure does seem like they took eight years to make another one of these"

Not totally surprised by the takes from Polygon, Nextlander, Gamespot (did Higham get re-hired or is he freelancing in his old job?) and IGN, nor am I totally surprised that most of the less prestigious outlets seem less concerned with how much the game seems to have turned out being Bethesda through and through with a fresh coat of paint.

I will say it's a bummer since it would've been awesome for this game to be awesome, but I've never been particularly seduced by their formula. I rented Fallout 3 from Blockbuster (memorably, I think, my last game rental ever) and enjoyed the heck out of it but never bought it. Recently, via PS+, finally got into Skyrim after giving it a few shakes and absolutely hating the combat previously...or more accurately, had a bunch of time to kill and figured I might as well use the Starfield hype to finally give Skyrim a fair shake.

Having put about 30 hours into that game, really all I can think about is how much I prefer having an authored character like a Geralt or Aloy to wander these worlds in, how much games have taken Skyrim's format and ran with it to the point I can't believe fans of that game are still playing it a decade later, everything about it feels like a brave first pass that was dramatically improved upon later.

...So if Starfield feels familiar to that old formula to people who are far more familiar with it than I am, only because it's so hooked into fast traveling via menus that the vastness of space somehow feels like the smallest Bethesda game yet...that's weird, and I don't think I like it. Alex raised the salient point during the Nextlander pod today that it feels like Starfield had a real opportunity to emulate the ways Red Dead Redemption II makes loneliness and community feel so dramatic and real in a way no other game really has, but the structure of this game seems to often indirectly reject its very premise by shuttling you from point to point instantly.

A complete skyrimjob

@nodima: Yeah, I have similar feelings about Skyrim (and other ES games too.) Exploring is fun but the world always felt a bit... stodgy. It seems to take itself too seriously and there's not enough humor or edge to it. I was a little worried Starfield would also suffer from these problems and it seems like it might.

Time has not been kind to Fallout 4 and Starfield doesn't seem to improve any of it's shortcomings, I'm looking forward to playing tonight but its disappointing though not surprising its gonna be more of the same.

I played hundreds of hours of Skyrim and loved it, regardless of its issues. I like space-y stuff. I found Fallout 4's shooting actually satisfying and its weapon crafting really cool, though I think its world is incredibly boring and its writing execrable in a way that none of their previous games were. Building a base on a remote planet I discovered sounds and then building and customizing my own spaceships on that planet sounds like my fucking jam. I am pumped to play Starfield...

...as soon as I finish Baldur's Gate 3.

There's something about Skyrim's atmosphere and world that will always draw me to it. No, its writing isn't great. Its combat is bad, though playing that game on a higher difficulty did give me a new appreciation for it a few years ago. But exploring that world, out in the middle of nowhere, in the cold and loneliness, while Jeremy Soule's soundtrack plays in the background, is one of my fondest gaming memories. It eventually did get old, after years and years and hundreds of hours across my original Xbox 360 version, the PC version, and the Switch version I bought and played here and there.

None of that is particularly relevant to the discussion at hand, but I think it's pretty relevant to why I feel pretty excited to play Starfield, and I feel like putting it out there because otherwise this thread seems like it will be chock full of people with a rather dim view of Skyrim.

It seems like the main complaints are 1) inventory management is kinda bad 2) you don't get the cool stuff fast enough 3) no maps 4) the fast travel makes space travel unexciting. 1-3 seem could be fixed by patches, mods, or walkthroughs, so that they will become non-issues.

(4) on the other hand is a core issue. How can you have both (a) a huge galaxy with awe-inspiring vast expanses of space to explore and (b) the convenience of hopping quickly between planets to solve quest lines? Maybe a good fix would be to eliminate fast travel and make you buy and set portals to hop back to places you've been but not to new locations. But that would mean forcing an awful lot of space travel, so you better load up space with all sorts of interesting things to do along the way. Maybe they could at least force you to make your way back to your ship before hopping away.

And of course, it would be way better to have a seamless transition from space to the planet's surface like in No Man's Sky or Outer Wilds. But this doesn't quite make sense in a realistic world like Starfield with actually planet-sized planets including earth's solar system. It's maybe too much to expect them to implement all of Microsoft Flight Simulator. I think it would be better to just bite the bullet and have teeny tiny planets that you can fly over seamlessly. Don't even explain why there're small, we get it. It's a video game. But that would take something away from the grandiosity.

In general, there is a very fundamental problem in trying to make vast worlds fun to explore. As it gets bigger, you need more content. So it's going to have to be procedural, and procedural worlds just aren't that interesting to explore. I'm not sure how to fix this, except maybe with very clever AI. Another approach would be to use take advantage of that lack of content with "needle in the haystack" type sleuthing gameplay where things are mostly barren *but* you discover subtle clues that lead you to a very particular location. You could also take advantage of player-created content in an MMO. But if you want a completely random area to be fun to look around in a single-player adventure, that's much more difficult.

Anyway, I still really want to try this on GamePass. I'm fifteen or so hours into BG3 though, so that's going to keep me occupied for a long time.

Sounds like if you don't like bethesda games, you won't like this

I'm really getting the sense that this game isn't for me.

I played the hell out of ES3, ES4, and FO3. By the time ES5 and FO4 rolled around, I had zero fucks left to give. I was simply tired of the formula and it really hadn't substantially changed. I realize I'm unusual in that ES5 seemed to be the one that most people latched onto the most strongly, but I guess for me it was really just a timing thing.

And so now, seeing the more tepid response from critics at bigger outlets, and watching Nextlander stream it today, my sense is that Bethesda sure has put out another one of those, and I am filled with ennui. Also, I'm appalled but not surprised that item burden is still a thing and that the inventory management apparently still sucks. I'm sure there will immediately be PC mods that allow you to carry infinite weight, but c'mon guys. No one actually enjoys needing to constantly drop or transfer stuff.

Yes. He's back at Gamespot. If I remember right, something happened (he was caught in a round of layoffs at his new job I think?) so they re-hired him.

On topic, the streams this morning and the reviews I read, Higham's included, have reinforced my decision not to buy this game and to just give it a go whenever I happen to have a Game Pass subscription. I never finished the main story of Skyrim despite starting it like three times and I fell off Fallout 4 hard. This game gives me strong Fallout 4 vibes where there's a lot of systems but none of them seem all that interesting to me. For the people who like these games (especially the people who like the base building in these games), this one seems great. I prefer the older Bethesda games that were smaller in scope and size like Oblivion and Fallout 3 so it doesn't seem like this one's for me.

As someone who enjoyed Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim, and yes even Fallout 4 had its moments (and I think the complaints against having the protagonist voiced was just stupid), Starfield seems to be right up my alley. I will certainly put a lot of time in to see how good it is and if it connects with me like those past Bethesda games. I'm not bothered that the main campaign might not be good, because this seems to be the case with all of these type of games. The real enjoyment comes from doing the side quest and realizing how much better they are. Based on some of the reviews, this seems to be case with Starfield as well.

This is probably the most lukewarm reaction from a Big Bethesda RPG that I've ever seen (not counting Fallout 76). 7 from Gamespot, 7 from IGN, 75 from PC Gamer, 80 from VG247. If the fatigue started with Fallout 4, it hasn't subsided.

It'll still sell very well. Can't deny that. But can Bethesda keep doing this forever without diminishing returns?

I’ve played it a bit now and all I can really say is yup this is a Bethesda game through and through. I liked Fallout 4 and so far I’m really enjoying this but if you are not into Bethesda rpgs already this game will not change your mind at all.

The space travel sucked at the beginning but now that I’ve got a few hours played I don’t care that it’s just a glorified menu.

I’m having fun and to me that is the most important thing.

@lab392: Honestly, I think the reception is more about Starfield just kinda being a whiff and not so much Bethesda fatigue. The game seems very uninspired beyond the "but in space" concept, and the transition to the space setting seem to have neutralized a lot of what makes their games tick. Maybe it gets better later, I dunno, but from what I've seen so far it's just not bringing any fresh spice to the formula.

On a positive note, just wanted to share that this game has an 87 on metacritic and Jeff Gerstmann says that he has been enjoying it so far.

I haven't put very many hours in yet, but I think reviewers are considerably off the mark when they reflexively compare this to Fallout or Skyrim.

I mean, I get why that comparison would be made. It very much looks like those games. In some respects in also plays like them. But where those games were gradually shifting out the RPG mechanics in favor of more action-y gameplay, Starfield swings that pendulum back in the other direction pretty aggressively. This is much more of an RPG than a lot of outlets are giving it credit for.

If I had to make a comparison, I'd actually say the Bethesda game it has most in common with is Daggerfall. That game had a gigantic world and a ton of skills - I think you could learn something like 5 or 6 separate languages. None of these were particularly useful in gameplay terms, but they were cool from a role-play perspective.

It's kind of the same thing in Starfield. The map is also huge, but just like Daggerfall, there isn't a huge reason to explore most of it. Instead, it's much more of a tone thing - it's meant to be as much to be part of the set-dressing as it is to provide meaningful gameplay content. Similarly, there are a ton of skills that look like you'd have no reason to actually use (Gastronomy? Really?), but I could absolutely see picking if you wanted to build a very specific character to role play.

This doesn't mean I'm saying any of this is good, mind you. There's a reason why the Elder Scrolls series has reduced the number of skills over time, and there are tons of mechanics in Starfield that are either badly tutorialized or feel kind of half-baked. But if you're going in with the expectation that this is "Skyrim in space" I think you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

So is this Fallout 4 in space with some No Man's Sky sprinkled in basically? I did like Fallout 4 and I did like No Man's Sky, but I'm just trying to justify whether buying an Xbox is worth it for this...and unfortunately, no I do not have a high end gaming PC either.

Any word on GB reviewing or Quick Looking Starfield? I think they mentioned a Quick Look on the Bombcast, but it doesn’t look like it’s on the site.

Giant Bomb haven't been a review site for a decade

There is already a Quick Look on their Youtube channel. They haven't posted the link to this website yet it seems. In fact, I just checked and the QL has been up for over 10 hours on YT.

Ive been playing a lot of it so far and I agree there hasnt been anything thats blown me away but whats there is also incredibly strong and competent and if it ticks your interests it delivers a strong hand with a few glaring shortcomings.

Namely for a game about exploration the star-map menus for doing so are HORRIBLE. Like absolutely horrible. Worse then even No Man's Sky. It really feels bad navigating the stars and that should have been an absolute joy. It must be really hard to build UI in a 3D plane but damn I'd rather have Mass Effect 2 level exploration then this.

The writing is also surprisingly milquetoast. I get that they want to allow for a broad range or roleplay and players but their solution to doing that is just to give you no personality at all. Really disappointing. The NPCs are more interesting and less bloated then Outer Worlds thankfully, but you definitely feel the lack of the player voice that Outer World's (And obsidian protagonists in general) excelled at.

Other then that though the game is incredible and you're not going to find that level of attention to detail and on this scale anywhere else. If you liked any of Bethesda's last games, namely Fallout and wanted one in a wonderful Sci-Fi setting this game will hit.

Their environmental storytelling is top notch. Entering a derlicit facility lit only by your head lamp as you start seeing claw marks and broken glass - it really feels like you've authored your own Alienesque discovery. Mining and exploration on the ground also feel really good, the minining laser feels really satisfying and space trucker and blasting chunks feels quicker and more satisfying then endlessly hoovering the landscape like No Man's Sky.

I also just really like being able to get up and walk around my space ship. Decorate it. You have a kitchen and different rooms you can install. Its not as dope as the Cyclops is in Subnautica but Subnautica is truly in a class of its own.

Anyway I'm rambling. Very good game if you like building, mining, exploring, reading notes and listening to audiologs.

*Also special mention to the gunplay. Its bonifide good. Lots of people said Fallout 4 had improved gunplay but I still felt it was subpar. No complaints for this one though other then your RPG health bar just not feeling quite as grounded and kinetic as a proper shield or health system as you'd find in a classic shooter like Wolfenstein or Halo.

If Dan plays it, we're possibly getting one.

Yeah, I was gonna say, Dan has very much decided it is a review site again. But aside from Dan, I'm still sad that GB staff (OG crew and new crew) have basically abandoned reviews once Covid started.

This RPG looks fun to play!

Been about a decade or so since Ive no-lifed a game. Outposts arent as fun as the Fo4 settlements so far, but I havent unlocked any of the higher tier tech so I can see it getting a lot more complicated and nuanced given I've logged a horrid amount of time on just the starter system.

I started playing around with the starship creator though and holy heck... that is LOADS of fun. The options and customization is insane. Its kind of like a space sim version of Spore. Really cool.

My advice to anyone picking it up is DONT loot things. You dont use everything for components like you did in fallout. You cant deconstruct anything. Items are only good for coin and the dollar value per weight is better off with weapons and armor off pirates. Save the space for NPC loot, loot from discovered locations and for collecting resources.

Also only collect what you need, I started hoarding things right away before I knew what I would be hoarding it for, and while it did come in handy it would have been a lot more fun and easy to just wait until I new what I needed before I started collecting it. The resources are heavy but also get consumed quickly so its not like you're turning one or two 0.1kg rocks into a massive building, you're turning 50-300kg into a massive building.

Space has never felt smaller.

You know this game really is just hella Bethesda RPG but it's a pretty damn good one of those. I've been nothing but cynical about this game for years but damned if I'm able to put it down for long.

@junkerman: I want to spend more time in the ship builder but I think I'm too early to be able to afford what I need in it.

But I tried to just add some cargo space to the starter ship and it was kinda daunting on controller to take apart and try and find somewhere for the cargo to attach. Are you building ships from scratch on the builder or buying ships & editing them?

@noboners: Yeah I've spent... ALOT of time in it. Too much. But I'm also a huge nerd for space and especially spaceships. Being able to add and tweak all the living modules is really cool.

My initial hour was really frustrating. Its not very intuitive and I butted heads with it not working the way I envisioned. Once I learned how THEY wanted me to build and got over how I EXPECTED to build it all began to click. Navigating in the 3D space while its anchored on wherever your invisible cursor is is super awkward but eventually I got pretty fluent with it.

There are also WAY more pieces then are originally available in New Atlantis so it becomes easier to find the right piece later on in the game. I dont quite understand how they are unlocked, some of it seems to be by level, some of it seems to be by encountering new vendors but I dont fully understand. Level 17 currently.

I would say the best way to learn is to just start taking a part the Frontier and examining how its components interact. There are some really easy modifications you can add to the Frontier that cost maybe 10-15k and double your storage space and give you more power and weapons.

What I did to start was just pull off every component and spread them out in an organized manner. If you press the start button (Xbox) it gives you whats called the Flight Check which is a little checklist of things you need to do to get the ship ready to exit the builder.

Some components fit better then others, for example I really wanted the cowling to extend over the cockpit so I could fit another module behind it on the Frontier, but it wouldnt work with the existing cockpit so I originally gave up. Then I learned that one of the smaller Magellan Cockpits are more square and you can mount the cowling over the roof on that one. It also has ladder entry point at its base, which means I could move the landing bay forward one section and move one of the reactor components underneath the ship, making more room for another module on the roof where it used to be or slotting another engine. Its worth checking out what other people are doing, sometimes it helps to see other peoples ideas to get started.

Gotta love when you go to work in the morning and leave Starfield downloading only to come home and launch it and its reinstalling the whole game for the update. Just marvelous.

@spacemanspiff00: If you think that is bad, trying uninstalling games from Game Pass PC to make room for Starfield, only to discover there is a bug where you don't get the SSD/HDD space back from the game you uninstalled. And that one of the only solutions is to reinstall windows 10/11 fresh as the other so called solutions can possibly break the Xbox app and store. Then you go online looking for help and discover this has been a problem for years and Microsoft has done nothing to fix it or even admit its a problem.

Because of this, I'm going to have to stream Starfield to play it for now, which means an Xbox Series X, locked at 30fps version of the game, instead of using my PC settings from a download. If I can't find a solution to this uninstall problem, I'm probably going to drop Game Pass. Shame, I was really enjoying it.

@av_gamer: Wow I didn't know that was a thing. That is most certainly a huge problem. Only one I ever had over years of using it was the one where it would only let you install games on your C: drive, which they fixed. Hope things work out for you in the end. It would be a shame to cancel the service all together even though you enjoy it and MS can't be bothered to sort that issue out. Man, total reinstall, what a pain in the ass. Though, a nice reminder that I haven't done that in a long time and could use a fresh start.

I'm stuck playing it at 30fps because I only have a PC, PS5 and Switch and my PC is almost 9 years old(GTX 970).

EDIT: Well, its not totally unplayable but I think its gonna have to get shelved for the foreseeable future until I build a whole new rig. that first fight with the pirates was pretty damn hitchy. Plus it looks pretty rough on all low settings. Ah well, I suppose I'll fire up Sea of Stars instead.

So, I've been playing this on my S and it has been fine. 30 frames but it has been stable and running just fine so far.

Now if only I liked the game or the story or anything. I'm thinking of the poster...@nodima I think? They talked about the characters looking like action figures in BG3 and well...I've got bad news about Starfield. Some of the most jilted ass, herky jerky NPCs and wooden ass dialogue. It is definitely a Bethesda game, I'm just kind of surprised that they are still making them EXACTLY the same way, flaws and all.

@sethmode: Have you noticed the eyebrows yet ? =D

@ares42: ....no.

And now I'm afraid to look when I play next.

@sethmode: sorry =(

I've spent some time playing Starfield and I have a mostly positive opinion of the game. Like many have already said, its not the huge ground breaking next chapter for Bethesda in terms of presentation and pushing the limits of graphics, even though the requirements to run the game on PC are quite hefty. Besides the current gen lighting, shadows, and other effects, the character models are straight from the PS3/360 era. But then again, given how big this game is, maybe that is for the best. I don't think many people want a "but can it run Starfield?" situation like the Crysis meme that lasted for a decade.

The shooting combat is decent, similar to the shooting gameplay in Cyberpunk 2077. But one of the things I like is the ease of travel. You can fast travel to almost everything, and you don't have to unlock anything first before doing so like in most vast open world games. I like the overall space presentation as it has an epic feel to it. However, its not as epic as the Mass Effect trilogy. The main storyline is okay so far, but cliche. I haven't done any of the side quest stories yet, but I suspect they will be a lot more intriguing, like in past Bethesda games.

Since I have Ultimate Game Pass on PC, I both installed it and cloud streamed it. Don't install this game on an HDD. When they say an SSD is recommended, believe them. I made that mistake and encountered lot of hitching and freezing, the music cutting out, glitchy load times, you get the point. Cloud streaming is pretty decent. You'll experience how the game runs on a Series X. And while its 30fps, it's smooth and there aren't any frame pacing problems. However, the game can only stream at 1080p and that's when its going well and not having any feed issues. One way around this is to download the game, and then use GeForce cloud streaming to get a premium gaming PC experience, but that is extra money.

Overall, Starfield is not going to win GOTY, but its a solid game you can lose yourself in for a long time based on what I've played of it so far. My opinion might change.

Having finally finished the game, I think I actually hate this game. A lot of people have talked about how it gets good 10+ hours in, but my journey was far more complicated than that.

It took me about 40 hours of playing it before I became "comfortable" with the game. During that time I approached the game sorta the way it was handed to me. It showed me outposts, I played around with outposts. It took me to a new city, I looked around and followed whatever fell into my lap. It took me to a spaceport, I played around with the ship building. I was inching my way through every system of the game, trying to find what I enjoyed the most, and none of it stuck.

So I finally decided to just not engage with the distractions anymore and focus on exploring the cities and doing the quests. And for the next 40-ish hours or so the game was ok. My plan was to explore every city, doing all the side-quests and save the faction and main quests for the big end. The cities look amazing and exploring them was cool, but once you wrap your head around them (thanks to the terrible map) they sure are small. Most of the sidequests aren't anything to write home about, but they're fine, with a few exceptions being pretty good.

Then I started doing the faction quests, and this is where the game took a nose-dive for me. I started off with the Freestar quest-line, and it was alright to begin with, however the ending is so dumb. It was the moment where I started to actively dislike the game. Next up was UC and it was kind of redeeming my experience. This is easily the best structured narrative in the game while also being fairly compelling, and honestly I think if this was the main story of the game the game would've been FAR better. My only criticism of it is that there is a "correct" choice at the end, although that goes for all of the faction quests.

Then came Ryujin, and oh god... The first half of this chain is annoyingly boring. At one point I was thinking to myself "this is the game version of the start of Office Space". And I get it, it's supposed to recreate the corporate experience, but it still just sucks. Thankfully the second half picks up, however the second half also leans heavily into stealth gameplay, which is... not very functional. You can still complete the goals by cheesing the system (because Bethesda) but from a narrative perspective it becomes pretty ridiculous.

At this point I had planned to do most of the main quests and then go do the pirate stuff before finishing, but I was so done with the game I decided to ditch the pirate stuff and wrap things up. I had already gotten to the point of meeting the "villains", so it was basically only the final act left. However this still didn't fail to disappoint. I have never been a fan of the Space Odyssey/Interstellar "infinite and beyond" take on space sci-fi, and this game takes a confident stride into that territory. There's also a moment that's so dumb I was literally face-palming.

I dunno, maybe I'm being too harsh, but for the first 40 hours if I were to give the game a subjective review I would've given it a 2/10. The game is obviously more of a 7-8/10 from an objective/technical standpoint, and there was definitely parts of my experience where I enjoyed it more. But then the rapid decline in enjoyment I had finishing up the game really soured the whole experience.

I enjoy the game more and more as I go but I do wish I could respec cause I built early for stealth without realizing that it kind of doesn’t work? I realize maybe they had to pull back from Skyrim Sneak 100 but these guys can spot my helmet leaving cover from across a pitch black room.

@efesell: Yea, I never really invested in it myself, but from what I read even people going hard into stealth is finding it very challenging to remain stealthy.

After about 40 hours, I'm enjoying it, but I see it being more of a guilty pleasure game than something that's truly, objectively, "good." I mean, the game's got systems for days, and none of them are what I would call "bad." But every one of them feels like it's a rough draft of something much better. Just about every system could have been substantially better if they'd invested a little more time into a more elegant implementation.

The end result is that I feels like the game has a "who is this for?" problem. On the one hand, the game has enough systems and complexity that people who just want to LT/RT things to death with space lasers are unlikely to enjoy it. On the other hand, those systems are simultaneously too finicky and also not deep enough to appeal to folks who really want an in-depth space sim.

On the plus side, I do think the game nails the vibe it was going for. They definitely hit the nail on the head with the 70s/80s sci-fi fantasy aesthetic, and the music sounds like it could have been an unreleased track for The Wrath of Khan. I just wish the game around that stuff was a little better.