Starfield has a release date

[Rusty]

Resubbed to GamePass purely to try this out. I'm a pretty staunch Bethesda lover but I'm really not hyped for this one. Maybe I'll be proved wrong and I'll buy it outright in case I stop GamePass again.

[Drarok]

Not worried about game save files compatibility? I've no idea if there are any issues, but I'd definitely look into it first rather than have a nasty surprise later.

Some games will only let you play online with people on the same distribution platform as you, so GamePass and Steam are completely incompatible. That's fucked up a couple of gaming nights in my circles.

[Sly Boots]

Reviews starting to appear:

https://www.pcgamer.com/starfield-review/ - 75%

[Sly Boots]

[Mantis]

That PC Gamer review reads far worse than a 75% in my opinion. An RPG that isn't particularly enjoyable for the first dozen hours with a boring main quest, some generic locations and NPCs that have no personality. Plus a grand space exploration game that feels like you're never going anywhere and never offers any real sense of wonder or awe.

To quote the author, the overarching quality of the game seems to be that it's 'fine'.

[DjchunKfunK]

Reading through some of the reviews has only strengthened my belief that they should all do away with scores. The 7/10 ones read a lot more positive than the score suggests, 7/10 is still a good score mind.

I think what appears to be a pinch point for people is the general exploration. Some people have this idea that every inhabited planet they land on should be like a mini-Skyrim with lots of things to distract you but if you extrapolate that out to however many planets they are doing that have people on them then you are talking about a huge amount of content. To fill that you would either need to copy and paste a load of stuff, which would annoy the player, or spend years more developing the game.

I am a bit disappointed with how the travelling works but when they said you wouldn't be able to take off and land anywhere on planets my expectations on this had been tempered. There is a lot that I like the sound of in the game though and I'm still looking forward to getting stuck in.

[Sly Boots]

As I learned from ME: Andromeda, I'm prepared to put up with a lot of jank if there's good combat and a jetpack

Having to slog through the first dozen hours isn't great, but I'm sure I'll have a good time with this once it opens up. I'm also not bothered about the companions being bland as IMHO Bethesda RPGs ALWAYS have bland companions, and in Skyrim, Fallout etc I generally just go it alone in any case. I don't play these games for memorable NPCs...

[Alan]

Yep, seems to be confirming my fears of it. Its why I've had about zero enthusiasm for it. Shame, I'd rather be wrong.

[Maturin]

One of the great things about Skyrim and Fallout 4 was the familiarity and sense of place in the world. You could climb up that distant mountain you see from a village, then eventually look back across the land from the mountain and see that village in the distance. Or that skyscraper in the cityscape, then see the distant landmarks from your earlier adventures. Etc.

I can understand how for a Bethesda game in space it could negate one of their biggest strengths and leave a colder experience. There's something very comfy and involving about exploring their game worlds that's hard to describe.

[DjchunKfunK]

As I learned from ME: Andromeda, I'm prepared to put up with a lot of jank if there's good combat and a jetpack

Having to slog through the first dozen hours isn't great, but I'm sure I'll have a good time with this once it opens up. I'm also not bothered about the companions being bland as IMHO Bethesda RPGs ALWAYS have bland companions, and in Skyrim, Fallout etc I generally just go it alone in any case. I don't play these games for memorable NPCs...

Some of the stuff I have read has said they are among some of the best companions Bethesda has done.

[Mantis]

That's a pretty low bar though.

[Wrathbone]

Played a couple of hours so far and yeah... it's exactly what I hoped it would be. I was saying to the D&D guys last night that my opinion of it will undoubtedly be somewhat blinkered given how much I love Bethesda RPGs, but this is by far the most polished out-of-the-box experience they've ever done, and most of it is intuitive given how much there is to take in. To quote Todd Howard with no small amount of irony, it just works.

Random musings:

- Ship combat is fun. Only had one fight so far and it felt good. I can imagine when bigger challenges are thrown at me it's going to get interesting with swapping all the ship system power levels.

- Lockpicking is interesting, a new minigame that involves lining up several keys so that all lock gaps are filled. Hard to explain but it makes sense when you do it and it requires a bit of thought.

- Performance is fantastic on my new PC (12700k, 4080), getting a stable 100+ FPS with everything on max. It looks surprisingly nice, with lighting being the biggest improvement since Fallout 4.

- Inventory management... it's better than Fallout/Skyrim because everything's categorised (crucially with a category for new stuff you've just picked up, which is very useful), but I'm surprised they didn't overhaul it more with a grid system or similar. Definitely an area with mod potential, which to be honest has been the case for every one of their RPGs.

[Sly Boots]

Interesting, thanks for the thoughts!

[DjchunKfunK]

I've seen a few people say that you need to play on hard to get the best out of the ship combat as it is a bit too easy at lower difficulties.

Steam DB had concurrent players for Starfield tracked at over 200k yesterday which is pretty good going for a game only available in early access as it were.

[Animalmother]

My mate stayed up until 1am this morning to start playing. Neither the PC or Xbox version was working, he had to re-download on the PC which took 3 hours before he could play. It apparently happened to others including streamers which isn't a great start.