“Dull on Purpose” is a hell of a box quote. Do you think that will be on the Game of the Year edition?
So just wait for mods, then. Got it.
(I really do want to play this game, I like Bethesda games. But there are always inevitable shortcomings, which modders will fix.) Also by then perhaps it will be cheaper.
I want to like Bethesda games. I liked fallout 3 a lot and their doom games, which is different i guess. But man, i’m not a trash collector that collects trinkets. It’s not enjoyable to me. It doesn’t matter where the setting is. And the fact that the characters still look like the game is made in 2010, with the same shitty zoomed in dialogue and awkward ass eye contact is just driving me away. This isn’t some indie company that want to make thir dream game, this is Bethesda that wants to make a 80 dollar game with as little effort as humanly possible.
Bethesda was only the publisher for Doom, Id software were the developers.
Yeah, I’m rather bored with the wide-but-shallow approach Bethesda games take. Tons of geography with maybe 20% filled with things of consequence. I am uninterested in collecting 42,000 wheels of cheese or finding some random space hobo on a planet.
I haven’t played Starfield yet. That being said, I think I will enjoy most planets being rather dull (as long as you still occasionally have reason to go there). I very much love the stance of “When everything/everyone is remarkable, nothing/noone is.” One of the bigger reasons (aside the gameplay usually not being quite to my liking) why I don’t play MMOs anymore is, because about every MMO culminates in 80% of the people wearing “the armor of fabled legends” and being “Slayer of Demonlord and Demigod Sckholzhlak”.
I very much love the stance of “When everything/everyone is remarkable, nothing/noone is.”
Counterpoint: it doesn’t make everything/everyone unremarkable, it just raises the standard and the bar for what remarkable is. Imagine using that argument for modern graphics, game design, etc, and that you want things to be lackluster because it really highlights the occasional times that they aren’t.
Fair point. I would agree to say there should be a healthy middle ground. I think coming across theme park-like spectacle around every corner would remove a lot of immersion and most authenticity (specifically trying not to default to “realism” because then we’d specifically want 99,999% of areas to be lifeless rock) not only from Starfield but many many games. Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Red Dead Redemption and the Metal Gear series would be incredibly different games, if it was just from one action sequence to another and then a beautiful story cutscene immediately and with only loading screens separating them from each other.
I guess I’m trying to say that immersion into and attachment to a game is increased if you give opportunity for (or sometimes force) the player to calm down. Red Dead 2, for example, does this masterfully by its generally slow and deliberate pace for most actions (cooking steak by actually making you hold the meat over fire for a couple seconds, making you walk/ride for long passages to get somewhere even during missions, etc.) and by sprinkling in quite a number of relaxing quests, like watching a movie with your girlfriend, in a game that’s mainly known for shooty tooty cowboy action.
To wrap up that wall of text, I guess I’ll see if the ratio of interesting tidbit for every dull landscape is too low for me in Starfield once I get my hands on it c:
Update: Game’s good, if your expectation was “Space game made by Bethesda”. I like it and am very happy with the amount of barren planets for every lush world. Sure, they lack the “discover flora and fauna” activities but there’s still plenty fun stuff to do.
there are definitely dull planets, but there are also planets i have explored just for the hell of it and found a lot of cool stuff, like a facility run entirely by robots and the robots tell me not to interfere with their work or i will die
Mhmm, I played a couple dozen hours now and I like the game a lot!
When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren’t bored.
Because it wasn’t just a rock, but the first time entering another natural body of mass in the universe, apart from our earth. Something that never happened before. In contrast, over a million players have discovered planets in Starfield by now, including all customly made content by Bethesda for the planets.
The astronauts where excited and happy as they achieved a huge step for humanity - somewhere I heard that before - while one could literally only achieve one small step for a human in Starfield.OK, then why fucking make them? Aren’t games supposed to be fun?
This whole genre really bugs me, and I’m someone who LOVES space games. The best game in the genre IMO is elite dangerous, because their ship to ship combat is so damn fun to play that I can hop in for a bit and have a blast without having to engage with the other systems that are often painfully boring.
The problem here is that people what the feeling of being explorers and finding new things, but video games inherently can’t provide that. There aren’t computers strong enough to produce thousands or millions of planets that all have genuinely interesting features on them that are worth exploring for. “Exploration” in current space Sims is basically “stick your name on something someone else hasn’t already stuck their name on, maybe grab some resources from it, and leave.” That gets dull very fast.
Developers COULD choose instead to make a couple of good, big planets that are interesting and full of actually good content. They could give you a reason to explore beyond “look other planets cool.”
If you made 1000 planets and only 10 of them are at all interesting, and your game is centered on exploring other planets and not really focussed on much else, you’ve made a boring game.
The game isn’t centered on exploring other planets, though. Have you played the game?
The article quotes Todd Howard as saying a design goal was providing the player with a feeling of being an explorer.
Elite dangerous space combat is literally the most lackluster and boring space combat I have ever engaged in. It’s such a slog.
I find combat where you have less control (weak strafing) and more maneuvering to be more interesting. That said, I think Microsoft allegiance probably did 6dof in space combat the best.
/Sidenote
There aren’t computers strong enough to produce thousands or millions of planets that all have genuinely interesting features on them that are worth exploring for.
I don’t think there is an infinite amount of “genuinely interesting features” so it’s hard to imagine we’ll ever get a game with this.
It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
What’s that quote from originally? I’ve always assumed it was Todd but now that I think about it I’ve never seen anything that would prove it, I supposed I’ve always just associated it with bethesda games lol.
It’s a running joke in programming
It’s just a general software development joke. Eventually your customers will rely on that bug, because thats how it works right? So you can´t fix it later as it would break workflows thus that bug becomes a feature.
It’s probably from the 60’s or 70’s
Remember when Sean Murray said prior to NMS launch that it was part of their vision for you to be alone in a vast uncharted universe with nowhere to call a home? That was code for, “we don’t have multiplayer or basebuilding, and there’s not really anything interesting enough for you to stay there long term”.
Give Starfield a few years, they’ll figure out what to do with those planets.
The modders will, if nothing else
If it’s "dull on purpose, " Modders are the only way anything is gonna happen.
Good to know. I’m hoping to hear more about the game from players before deciding to dive into this.
Granted, I’m only like five of the twelve hours in I’m supposed to be before the game starts getting good, but my god they made some baffling design choices here. Possibly the most egregious is the fact that every skill comes with leveling requirements - for example, the worst offender I’ve seen is the oxygen (stamina) skill requiring you to completely exhaust your meter 20 times before you can put a second point in. (Worth noting, ‘completely exhaust’ in this context means deplete both the regular O2 meter and max out the CO2 meter, which depletes more slowly than the O2 refills) The only way to reliably and safely do this, considering you only really need stamina in short bursts when playing normally, is to literally just run fucking laps. Bad and boring, to the point that I will say, without a hint of sarcasm, that the person responsible for making it this way should be moved off the team. I cannot fathom how that person arrived at the conclusion that doing chores was somehow the most exciting and innovative way to spice up FO4’s perk system, because that’s all it is underneath, and it is an aggressive waste of time.
It’s a Bethesda game, albeit on a larger sci-fi setting. If you enjoyed Elder Scrolls of their Fallouts you’ll be right at home.
That’s mean the entire game is also dull and boring combined with Beth’s mediocre story writing it’s should not cost more than a sack of potatoes
