lynxwinters

LXW-68K TV Game System

The distant present of virtual entertainment.


lynxwinters
@lynxwinters

so I got starfield this weekend and I want to make a series of chosts about my thoughts as I go, because man I've had some thoughts about this software. I'm not streaming the game for many reasons, but I do want to have ideas publicly about it when I have time

but man this thing is like a B- game at best, just a very shiny and toothless B- instead of the usual "tried something but didn't stick the landing" B- like I normally play


lynxwinters
@lynxwinters

Some of my memories of this are a little vague because I didn't do the questline all at once. Please bear with me.


lynxwinters
@lynxwinters

I uninstalled the ol' Starf tonight. I've tried to make myself fire up the game for the past few days so I could see what else sucked about it, but I just couldn't. The idea of locking myself into a few hours of the blandest software I've used in a long time filled me with, not really dread exactly, but more like my natural executive dysfunction kicking in like a defense mechanism. So here's my final thoughts on a game I'll never finish:


Space Sucks

I knew this wasn't going to be a Space Game in the sense that Elite Dangerous or No Man's Sky or Everspace 2 are Space Games. The spaceship stuff is there, and for all the people I saw complaining that you could just fast travel anywhere you've been, I have to say that's a blessing. Todd Howard said in some interview that they redid the space flight and battle mechanics a lot during the game's development, and if that's the best they got then they never should have started in the first place.

I think a big part of it is that they have to balance it around people who put a ton of points into spaceship skills (not me) and people who put almost no points into spaceship skills (extremely me). As a result, every mandatory space fight has to be winnable by someone using the starting ship, or at least one of the weak ships you can fly without the Piloting skill. I did put one point into the skill that lets me target specific subsystems, because I wanted to try to make money by selling ships. More on that later, but the main thrust is it didn't work out. I got the ship you get from the Space Batman sidequest, which is a nice upgrade from the starter, but probably incredibly weak compared to what you could buy or build with more points in spaceship skills. Space fights were very easy unless I was straight up numberwanged. So yeah, not much point in getting into space fights, especially because

There's No Good Rewards for Touching the Fun Mechanics

You can be a bounty hunter! You can be an explorer! You can be a space pirate! You can do all these things any time you want! You will get paid dogshit for it. Todd Howard and his crack team of fun inhibitors looked at all the different activities you can do, and they seem to have said "playing the game is its own reward" because lord knows they don't want your space boy making any money off of it.

Money is weird in Starfield because typical side job reward money will get you plenty of ammo and healing items, but probably not a decent gun. But that's fine, because most guns you can buy are shit. Now if you want to build a new ship? That's gonna be five or six figures. Bounty hunting requires you to pick a job, track the target, go to them, and kill them. You get somewhere between 2000-4000 spacebucks for it. Exploration will get you money for exploring planets, finding all its features, then selling data. This can get you a lot more money, but it takes a lot longer so it's probably less money per hour. Space piracy can involve stealing ships or smuggling contraband, but you can't sell a ship without registering it first, which costs 90% of the ship's value, so you still don't make much.

The real way to make money is the outpost system. You find a planet, you plant your flag, you start extracting minerals and metals. Look up "starfield power level guide" on youtube and it's just five dozen videos all telling you to set up an outpost that gets iron and aluminum, make a billion of the basic construction item, then go sell it. Get a million spacebucks and gain 40 levels, and all it took was clicking "Build 99" for a few hours.

Almost Every Combat Option is Worse than Gun

Over the course of the game, you'll unlock different combat moves and powers through the skills you pick and the magic space temples you find. A lot of these combat options are perfectly fine ideas until you actually try to use them. For example, the social skills don't just give you more dialogue options, they also let you do things in combat like convince an enemy to stop fighting for a little bit, or even switch to your side for a little while. Gymnastics gives you a combat slide, Boxing eventually lets you build up a stun meter on things you punch, one of the jetpack skills lets you set enemies on fire with your boost jump. None of these is as effective at winning a fight faster and safer than shooting your enemies in the face.

Using the social combat options requires you to put your gun away and open the scanner, point at your moving target, and pick the social move you want to use. You're still being shot at while you're doing this. The combat slide is the worst I've ever seen, and doesn't get you into cover much better than just running and crouching. The unarmed stun lets you stunlock most enemies one at a time, so you're still being shot to pieces by his friends. The jetpack flame sets things on fire, but so does the laser weapon skill, and that lets you turn the mining laser into the deadliest close-range weapon in the universe.

Most of the powers are similarly underwhelming. There's a skyrim knockdown power with really pathetic range, there's a fireball you can throw that doesn't do as much damage as a gun, there's like 24 of these damn things. But then, there's Gravity Field that just puts enemies into a slow-mo ragdoll where you get to go hog wild on them, there's a wallhack power that actually helps speed up fights by helping you hunt enemies down easier, and there's Personal Atmosphere that just gives you infinite stamina meter for a few seconds. So it's not all terrible, but a handful of useful powers isn't worth all the time it takes to get one and hope it's a good one. You can make your powers stronger, but only by finishing the game and finding the same power again in new game+. Maxing out your powers needs ten playthroughs!

Todd can go to hell, I don't even want to finish this thing once.


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