Today's screenshot is from Starfield. I know it wasn't very well received, but i looked into it and wanted to give it a try myself. I got it on Discount a while ago (around 35$ if i remember correctly), and was originally going to play a while ago but Oblivion Remastered stopped that. I decided to give it a go though.
My Character is decently Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy inspired. I even took his naming scheme from the book and named him after a car. I'd like to introduce... Hudson Commodore (the man in the main screenshot). I wanted to focus on him being an explorer and talker, so i've been putting points into Social skills and Tech skills, with one going into Weapons damage to make life a little easier for me. I took the Hero worshiped trait which gives you the Adoring Fan. I like to believe it's the same one from my Oblivion save all this years later. Little buddy has returned to me. I'm so happy. First task up for me is to take to the stars and find him.
The game walks a gorgeous line between Futuristic Sci-Fi and what i can only describe as NASA-Punk. Growing up i had always wanted to be an Astronaut, but with it going private and my discovered fear of heights, i quickly ditched that. Still though, i love the Modern-esque space aesthetic, sometimes i feel like Sci-fi stuff tries too hard to make it feel futuristic.
Literally one of the first things the game has you do is fight off some pirates in a satellite station that feels very Fallout Raiders. This brings me to the gunplay, which feels really smooth in my opinion. It feels like a natural linear evolution of Fallout 4's gunplay, and at the very least gives me hope for Elder Scrolls 6's gameplay.
The game then has you go to a a city after you get the Pirates off your ass, and i love the Spaceport. It has an airport feel too it that i love. I feel like it would have been easy for them to just go "Yep, Sci-fi, landing pad, end of story" but there's this whole Airport vibe of going through Customs and Space Security to get to a Rail System.
The story setup (without too much spoilers) is that you join a Freemason-esque group that explores space, called Constellation. You found this relic thing that they want to put with 3 others. That's about where i stopped on the main story though because i was promised a room for joining the group.
Before being taken to my room i was given a tour of The Lodge (Constellation's headquarters). They have this lovely garden and a bar i was told that i could just help myself too. I saw some skill about food crafting, and i'm really hoping that extends too Drinks too. If it does and they don't have a recipe for a pan galactic gargle blaster (or some equivalent) i'm going to be severely disappointed.
Finally, i was taken to my room after the bar. It feels very Hotel Room-ish, which is to be expected. It fits the vibe of the plot well in my opinion with it being basically a Dorm/Loan room. I saw they had ship building and outpost building so i was kind of hoping to be able to do my own furniture, but i do still like the decoration.
Wait until you realize that there’s like 5 dungeons and they are literally copy pasted all over the galaxy. Not like Oblivion were the rooms were copy pasted but had different mobs in it etc. These are literally the same dungeons, some of them even have a little narrative told through terminals, and not even that changes.
I used to be a Bethesda fan and a huge Todd apologist, but he’s literally out of touch with what made his games good for the core audience and instead panders to the audience who buys games based on the laundry list of features they never get to see because they don’t finish or play games after the hype is dead one week later.
It’s a shame because they actually got a lot of things right like going back to the TES conversation style, and having actual builds and the ship building which is pretty cool.
My last hope is that they actually learn the lesson with this game and stop this bullshit they’ve been trying to pull of since Arena of having endless content.
I think the thing that got me to finally give up on Bethesda was an interview regarding the DLC of Fallout 3.
TL;DR for those who haven't played, the game ends in a very contrived choice that decides one of two endings, and you can't play further because you sacrifice yourself in the "good" ending.
People hated this as it felt jarring and wanted to see the consequences of their choices more. So Bethesda made the Broken Steel DLC that allowed you to circumvent that game ending choice and added more endgame content, allowing you to roam the wasteland forever.
In the interview, they said what they learned is that people wanted to play the same game forever, as so radient quests were born.
Apparently that's their new user base based on ESO and Fallout 76, but the reason I got into Fallout and Elder Scrolls was the well written stories and lore. I like replaying games with different builds to try new playthroughs.
Now they just want to maximize play time at all costs, so they just add content in the most corporate meaning of the word.
I mean my problem is that they didn’t learn from Fallout 4 and furthermore they went and doubled down on it in the worst ways possible. Radiant quests on FO4 were kinda lame, but at least I can say that they sent you into unique dungeons. In Starfield no only are the quests repeated but also the locations. It’s a huge step back.
On the positive end though I do have to say that the Faction quest for the Federation (I don’t remember the name) is one of the best quests lines Bethesda has written hands down. It felt like it could have been the main quest all by itself.
Exactly, Starfield is like everything I didn't like about Fallout 4, with almost everything I did like removed.
And I did like some stuff in Fallout 4 (despite me being a New Vegas fanboy), but I always felt that I would have liked it more if it fully broke away from Fallout and established its own lore, so I could stop comparing it to the previous games in the series. Starfield felt like the perfect opportunity for that.
Honestly I played through Starfield at launch once and have no plans to ever come back, so I don't remember the Federation quest line. I might not have even done it, none of the factions really appealed to me, but I'll take your word for it.