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Been having a blast with Starfield
2 years ago
General
I've been having a fun time with it and going around and building outposts and scanning. I'm surprised how much there is to do that isn't combat related. Anybody else pick it up?
Haven't done any outposts yet though. Should get on that
I repeatedly see comparisons of Starfield to games like No Man's Sky and Star Citizen. It would be much better to compare Starfield to the original Mass Effect, though the combat and exploration are miles better in Starfield. Starfield also has a more humble story about discovery instead of learning that there's an eldritch race of sapient dreadnoughts waiting in the fringes of space to genocide everyone.
In the first Mass Effect, each planet that you were allowed to land on, had only one per star system (if even that), and each landing site would only be about one square kilometer. Not very big. There wouldn't be much to do in these landing sites either, save for picking up a few collectibles and doing one mission location. Mass Effect 2 eschewed this in favor of a scanning minigame that is almost universally agreed by fans to be tedious and boring.
Starfield's exploration mechanic works similarly to Mass Effect, but the biggest differences are Starfield allows you to land at any spot of your choosing on any planet (as long as it has a solid surface, unlike gas giants) and moon. Upon landing, you'll find yourself in a large explorable area in which various forms of hand-crafted content will be procedurally generated. These can range from natural anomalies to caves, landed ships, enemy bases, and so on. Eventually, you'll reach an area border and will be asked to return to your ship to choose a new landing site.
Also unlike Mass Effect, Starfield lets you not only fly your own ship, but you can choose to buy another ship or build your own from scratch using the Ship Builder. Several very creative minds have used this to create ships from pop culture like the Millenium Falcon or Starship Enterprise, and some have even used it to recreate other vehicles such as the Magic School Bus. Much like No Man's Sky or Fallout 4's settlement system, when exploring planets you can also build an outpost to serve as a base of operations and a way to mine resources. Both of these are quite expensive and resource-heavy, respectfully, so they should be considered late-game content.
I'm still on my first playthrough, about 30-40 hours in, and I'm still only about 2% into the main story. I opted to create a Doug Dimmadome-esque space cowboy by the name of Roth.
Most recently, Roth has joined a faction of what are essentially Space Sheriffs called the Freestar Rangers, who operate mostly out on the settled frontier. Wild West, outlaws, saloons, that sort of setting. Fans of Firefly will really enjoy this faction. The companion you get from this faction who also happens to be part of Constellation is Sam Coe, voiced by Adam Jensen himself, Elias Toufexis. In addition to that, I've been picking up side quests left and right, and I've been bumping into random encounters.
One such encounter saw me escorting an injured man to his ship. Another had me come across a ship that was serving as a classroom and had broken down, leaving the teacher and her class stranded. Another encounter featured an Indian-accented telemarketer flagging my ship down to discuss my expired ship warranty and try to sell me another for 100,000 credits. In New Atlantis, I decided to do something nice for an overworked janitor with a sunny disposition by running to buy her a cappuccino.
The world feels incredibly alive, and it's moments like those that make it so, I've had fights in low and zero gravity, which were incredibly fun. And, sprinting then boost packing on low-g world basically turns you into Michael Jordan. Low-G is a feature I wish more space games implemented, and having put hundreds of hours into No Man's Sky I can't say it was something I remember encountering.
Though, that isn't to say the game doesn't have problems. For a game that requires resource gathering the encumbrance threshold is very unforgiving. The local maps for cities are hilariously underdetailed and useless. I have experienced about 3 crashes. All of the companions I've met so far are Lawful Good aligned and judge you for the mildest sin. A lot of the game's most interesting features are reserved for the mid-late game. And I found a super cool ship I took from pirates, only to learn I didn't have the skill to fly it.
Still, for all its faults, it's a very fun game.
Like, a skill point to unlock a skill and the challenges to level it up would be fine, but the skill point to unlock a skill *and* having to complete the challenge *and* still having to spend another skill point just seems like a really wierd choice to deliberately make things slower.
I have been enjoying the game thoroughly just getting lost in every little side adventure. I’m 47 hours in and just now getting into outpost building.
It is just wild to see all the stuff you can do and explore.