I must say it is not the best RPG out there, but I feel like it would have earned more. I personally have a lot of fun playing.

While it was not a Cyberpunk-grade overhype, I think it must still have been overhyped. Because if you see it as Skyrim with better graphics, it is pretty much what you’d expect.

Some of the common criticism seems to be intrinsic to the sci-fi genre. In Skyrim, you walk 100 meters and then you find some cave or camp or something that a game designer has placed there manually with some story or meaning behind it. And as a player, you notice that, because most locations in Skyrim feel somehow unique. Even though for example the dungeons have rooms that repeat a lot. Having a designer place them manually with some thought gives them something unique.

In interstellar sci-fi, a dense world like this is simply impossible. Planets are extremely large so filling them manually with content is simply not possible. And using procedural generation makes things feel meaningless. Players notice that fast. So instead, Starfield opted for having a few manually constructed locations that are placed randomly on planets, unfortunately with a lot of repetition. But that is a sound compromise, given the constraints of today’s game development technology. The dense worlds that we are used to from other genres simply don’t scale up to planetary scale, and as players, we have to get used to that.

  • charred@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Honestly I haven’t been looking at the public reception at all because I’ve been playing it since it released. I didn’t even know people weren’t loving it, it’s exactly what I want from a Bethesda game and more (136 hours so far)

    • Pohl@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Honestly I assumed that the critical reception would be middling, the zeitgeist is done with this studio and it’s games. Which is completely fair they are janky and weird and frankly often break in un-fun ways.

      It’s a BGS game warts and all and I had a great time with it. I love these big, ambitious, broken games and this is a better than average one of them.

      • charred@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Haha don’t worry I can take care of myself. The game has launched while I’m in a gap between finishing an industrial work placement and beginning my final year at uni so I’ve been making the most of it. Thank you for your concern!