Synva Yngsbiug Ollandre, Wizard of the Arc and Priest of the Lamp

@synva-yngsbiug-ollandre

she/her

Recently appeared on this plane. Last seen: Posting (in a serif font) and/or casting spells. my icon and header image are turned around on purpose actually its not like i dont know how to fix it or anything. my age is private information but if you feel the need to know it presume i'm somewhere between 18 and the age you are and treat me accordingly

Synva Yngsbiug Ollandre, Wizard of the Arc and Priest of the Lamp @synva-yngsbiug-ollandre1/22/2024, 6:16 AM

dante, personally @dante

dante, personally @dante9/12/2023, 7:03 PM

Starfield

is a video game. I played about three hours of it last night and I don't think I have much positive to say about it.

I wanted to like this game. I genuinely do like the "Bethesda Model" of open-world AAA games, it's the one I have the most affection for. I really liked Outer Worlds! I wanted this to be a game that was able to marry that Bethesda design model with a new sci-fi setting and what it is is more like... a Bethesda Game, with some very very shallow sci-fi trappings on top.

which is just so disappointing. The game is so committed to single-button, frictionless player interactions that there is no space for creating ritual. Why do I have a spaceship whose (genuinely gorgeous and fascinating) interior is both mostly uninteractive and also completely skippable?

As a player, I should know the walk from my landing ramp to my cockpit!! it should become a ritual for me! I should know all the little steps that get me there, I should know which rooms I pass, I should know that somewhere in my brain I am always relaxing when I get onboard. I should have memories of that spaceship interior.

BUT I WON'T! BECAUSE I CAN HIT A SINGLE BUTTON AND IMMEDIATELY START FAST-TRAVELING.

when i was like 12 i had a mod for morrowind that gave me an outlander yurt and i could pop it up wherever i was and disappear in there. and that felt like such this amazing thing, and added a weird amount of realism, since the tent was super heavy but i could set it up and inside it i could customize it, and it would Be wherever i last left it. I could drop it outside of Gnisis and go in there and sell things and then come back and arrange those things. it was comforting! it felt like i was really adventuring!

Starfield doesn't even give me a tenth of that! Why is my ship frictionless? Why is space travel instantaneous? Why don't my crewmates want to hang out in the ship? Why is the ship such nothing? What is this? Who is this for? How is this getting incredible review scores everywhere?

#starfield #video games

You must log in to comment.

in reply to @dante's post:

Smoke and Honey @smokeandhoney9/12/2023, 7:14 PM

What's kind of infuriating is seeing a real defensive attitude on reddit about this game. Their posts occasionally bubble up to the top of /r/popular and it's like "How could people hate this game?" and "As it turns out, the majority of the player base know what they want from a Bethesda game" with a screenshot of the very positive Steam reviews marker.

It reeks of astroturfing to me.

dante, personally @dante9/12/2023, 7:21 PM

it might be! But also, I think most players have been conditioned by a lot of modern releases to prefer frictionless interaction in games like this, which is just very sad to me

Smoke and Honey @smokeandhoney9/12/2023, 7:27 PM

Yeah, I mean, compare with Tears of the Kingdom which has a lot of friction built in by design, but it's the downtime between encounters and letting you explore!

@deafhobbit9/12/2023, 7:14 PM

this is probably the main thing that's made me hold off on the game. there's so much else i want to play right now, and starfield's commitment to fast travel makes just spending time bumbling around and seeing what i find unappealing. it also feels like a surprising change, given how much skyrim cut back fast travel compared to oblivion.

i'm sure mods will "fix" this by placing restrictions of fast travel, but then you're left to troddle through empty space the game never expected you to spend meaningful time in.

i'll still probably play it eventually, but i'll do it with guides that cut through the drugery and point me towards the cool stuff. although, i said the same thing about cyberpunk 2077, and i still haven't played that either

dante, personally @dante9/12/2023, 7:20 PM

it's just such a disappointing play experience overall. and yeah i'm also thinking... well... SOME of my gripes could be fixed with mods, yes. But even if they were, then what? Huge amounts of "not-meant-to-be-explored" time? Not really sure what to do there.

I just feel like the game's core design is rotten. Not sure how you fix that.

@deafhobbit9/12/2023, 7:30 PM

at the same time, i'm sure there are some gems in there, because there always are in bethesda games. a few really interesting spaces to explore, or a couple great quests. but I'm not interested in spending the time to find those gems myself right now when the baseline gameplay doesn't really interest me. hence, why i might come back later when there are guides and mods that help me cut through the cruft and get to those parts.

sam @positivestress9/12/2023, 7:43 PM

this is what I find so depressing about starfield. I've got my issues with fallout 3 and 4 and skyrim but I can still have a great time playing those games. starfield feels so desperate to be inoffensive and broadly appealing that it's just like... nothing. there is nothing here

sam @positivestress9/12/2023, 7:31 PM

it's completely mystifying to me how anyone enjoys that game. it felt like absolutely every design choice they made was anti-fun, anti-interest, anti-video game. I have friends who are loving it and I'll trust that they have good reasons (as opposed to weirdo bethesda fanboy redditor types who NEED to like the game or they'll die) so there's gotta be something in there that is genuinely enjoyable for some people. but I didn't see a single shred of it for me

Amy Dentata @amydentata9/12/2023, 10:21 PM

The decisions made for this game are baffling to me. It's like they wanted characters to feel empty, wanted dialog to be boring, wanted the experience to be as flat as possible. I don't get it

austin @austinmwav9/13/2023, 2:10 AM

I am a unabashed Elder Scrolls lover and I’m not gonna lie, how much I deeply did not enjoy the 4 hours I put into Starfield has anxiety piling in my chest for the next ES installment.

dante, personally @dante9/13/2023, 2:23 AM

yep!! not loving it!!!

Dornath @Dornath9/13/2023, 4:05 AM

I will say it again, watching streams of Starfield convinced me to buy No Mans Sky for a third time.

I'm extremely nervous that they will see this game as a success and change TES in some really unpleasant ways.

Derek @derek9/13/2023, 2:31 AM

Accounts like this are helpful and I’ve seen a number of them and are why I haven’t really bothered playing the game (though i do have gamepass). It just doesn’t sound like it has any of what endears me to BGS’s games (es more than their fallouts but there were thing in those to like too). One thing i really liked about morrowind was that fast travel was limited and also diagetic - paying to ride the stilt strider, the magicians guild sending you to another location with magic, propylon chambers, etc, so you had to explore and engage with the world to get around. Oblivion and skyrim moved away from that with fast travel after finding a place, this sounds like it’s even farther, with even less of a world outside of zones you fast travel to

nic tringali @nic1/22/2024, 3:19 AM

I have thoughts and theories on the review score point but they are best saved for a private venue lmao

Aerginous @Aerginous1/22/2024, 10:32 AM

Interestingly, I found a lot to fault the game for too, but being frictionless gameplay wise wasnt the foremost of them. Thematically it is completely frictionless, the blandest kind of 'Wow, SPace! Amazing.' The game just doesn't want to be anything in particular except big and you heard about this /space thing/ before right, wink.

You might like playing Outward if you want something that really dials up the RPG friction. I do wish there was a scifi game like that. Something that uses a deep mix of sciency environmental hazards you have to account for in a way that makes the world interesting to explore.