Starfield - Concept Art

[Dafela]

You have to see what is more important for you, the open-world feature or the story. Any of those features is costly, so it seems we don't see many games with a big open-world, good story, and complete character choice. Also, terms like open-world or even RPG are not defined and vary widely in interpretation.

The D:OS games, especially D:OS2, are probably the closest I can think of, and BG3 if you don't mind Early Access or waiting for a long time. The remakes of Gothic and System Shock are good candidates too, but they're not new games.

Hitman is not what I call open-world and the character can change even less than The Witcher 3, so you can forget about it in that context. Same for Deus Ex, you're stick with a guy and his personality too. Same for Watch Dogs, which even lacks a proper story.

Skyrim and Fallout 3 were far from excellent from a quest and story points of view, but they had a big open world (I still had a lot of fun with it, despite those shortcomings). So for my part, I'd rather have a good story and interesting quests than that, even at the expense of an open-world.

I think open-world is overrated. It attracted many gamers as 3D games did when they were first released, because it was the next big achievement, but it has a cost.

I guess you have the same thinking as I do - only I cannot focus for longer time, so for me the interactivity is more important than a story. Which is personal.
Truth is you can have a lot of roles, not only fantasy roles - that is where all the discussions always end. What maybe Bethesda did was that they took combat roles of thieves/mages and warriors and gave them background and story. But for a lot of players the roles in strategic combat are enough. Maybe I give those roles too much of space. Truth is what else you would like to RP than class and personality - civil occupations? They can be quite boring, so it has to be fun civil occupation.
But maybe the main focus of good RP is to solve a problem in a way of your class or if there is no class then it is personality. Or class and personality connected - calm mage, agile thief and rude warrior - like it was in DAII.
So in Witcher world I could rp dwarven witcher or typical thief dwarf, which is gameplay usually chosen for a different game, a sequel. But that is boring for me- if you can be thief only. But if you can start as a thief, then discover you are a chosen witcher (main plot), who happens to have a few magic skills, then you just finished "Skyrim like gameplay". Is it better or not?
Another aspect is that for a singleplayer game with no microtransactions, it is better investment if it is short. For MMO I would go for multiple roles/classes, and for some reason they say it is waste of resources. The world is upside down for me - I don't understand MMO devs.

I didn't play Kingdom come deliverance, but I would say it is similar to Witcher 3

 

[crpgnut]

KCD isn't open world really. Skyrim absolutely allows you to ignore everything and make up your own story. It is truly open world. I hope and pray that they have improved the formula because each game has been a step backwards in actual game mechanics while making improvements in open-world-ness. I'd like to reach a balance. Deeper mechanics of Daggerfall/Morrowind while keeping the go and do your own thing of Skyrim/Fallout 4.

It would really help if they can actually write a compelling main quest. Hopefully it isn't yet another "find your parent" game. I also hope they stop taking decades between games. I'm not getting any younger and nobody else has so successfully done open world.

 

[Couchpotato]

Ah the old Bethesda debates. Really by now almost every member should know the formula. You'll get a huge open world with quests, more simplifying, and a boring story.

There you go the Bethesda game formula in a nutshell.

 

[Dafela]

That can still happen - but I have a feeling they will really try to copy mass effect with their starfield.
I liked Skyrim because of the dnd RPG roots and the rest of changes just made it easier to enjoy it for me, those roots are still there and the amount of freedom was made even bigger with 2 factions choices - but still good enough for me. And for all the cut off things you could download mods. I had so many mods enhancing RPG mechanics, spells, guilds.
Maybe Kenshi took the most out of Skyrim, but there is no story at all.

And it is not just about Bethesda - atm I just wish there would be some other studio using that formula from Daggerfall/Morrowind, but in that polished Skyrim form. Or it could be even old Morrowind graphics if it would be smooth.
But I was wrong about good RPGs - they are there, just not with that freedom.

 

[Silver]

I have some guesses about what Starfield will be like.

Custom character creation and some set premade characters. I'm thinking they will have premade heads rather than sliders and all that jazz but maybe they will allow you to tweak things like nose and mouth. Conversations will have dispositions like cunning etc and show what the character will say. There will be exploration of various worlds available ie. ice planet, desert planet - most of which will be procedurally generated with some custom content on it. Some types of missions will be ai generated. The spaceship will be upgradeable and I guess there will be combat but who knows how that will play out. First and third person I suppose.

The biggest question is how many planets there are to visit, content density, and what the story will be like. It'll be interesting to see.