Starfield - Gameplay - My Honest Opinion @ MrMattyPlays

Just curious: Is this person somehow important? Everyone has an opinion about Starfield, just not sure what it takes to be newsworthy ;-)
 
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Well, he has almost 500k subscribers on YT and the video so far has nearly 100k viewers. So I guess there are quite a lot of people who think that at least his videos are important and newsworthy enough to watch.
 
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Oh, this guy. I wonder if saying Starfield is bad will also be "disrespectful".
 
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Nobody's opinion on Starfield is worthwhile. None of us know enough to form one.

Not even mine?! I think I know enough to form a pretty solid opinion.

It's a Bethesda game. I've played all those. I know the game engine, how the FPS part will feel. You can see in the trailer the trails from the bullets appear to be delayed. I'm pretty sure it will be the same as Fallout 3, 4, 76. Very standard, basic FPS action. No fancy movement stuff. I bet you can't even pull yourself up to head height walls.

So, if you consider what Bethsoft can do with the amount of time they've had, the size of the planets, etc. You're going to have an amount of hand-made content similar, at best, to F76 but spread out over 100 mostly empty planets. It would probably be in their interest to point the locations of interest out via quests or scanning from orbit. Maybe a treasure map or two.

We've seen the base building in Fallout4.

The single ship type first announced has become a modular ship which is an improvement but its still sub-par for a space game. If you compare to, say, Eve Online, Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous, X, or even No Mans Sky, which has lots of ships that are also modular.

I think the comparisons to NMS are the most valid because it would appear that Starfield has gone for the same casual control scheme for their ship combat where you turn to face the mouse cursor and can speed up or slow down. There were some nice damage effects but it looks like very simple combat compared to Elite Dangerous with its very detailed physics.

We can see the player walking around, zapping some iron ore from a wall, scanning some flora. You can do all of this in NMS, but NMS you can dig tunnels through the earth which has much more potential as you can find buried treasures, reveal underground cave systems, etc. (Though I haven't played enough NMS to see the digging live up to its full potential.)

The Starfield trailer was well made, though. I suspect they showed most of the quality locations in it.

As for the space exploration aspect, we know that you can't freely fly between planets. You can jump to a planet "instance" which is essentially a room with a planet in it. Then you can land on the planet.

I think, really, there's nothing ground breaking, genre defining, etc, going on here. It looks like there will be a decent story told by some voice acted NPCs with very bethesda looking faces with improved facial expressions in major discussions. Then you get some sub-par FPS gameplay, sub-par space sim.

Not to say the complete package wont be enjoyable, but it really doesn't look like anything special. I've been giving Star Citizen shit for a decade yet I'd happily submit to SC being a better looking game.

So, an opinion can be easily formed. They may be able to surprise me with the amount of interesting locations, whether they're generated or crafted, but I think it's very clear what the game is like. Pretty much looks like No Mans Sky only 10 free expansions behind in content.

I'm still looking forward to playing it, though. :)

edit: Oh, and I suppose I should mention how probable it is that people mod the shit out of it and improve the game a lot. As a Bethsoft title that could go without saying. :)
 
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Perhaps a non-validated opionion but there is merit on an opinion before something is released. There wouldn't be much discussion if we always waited till we had played everything! SirJames does also seem to have the prerequisite experience to have a more formed opinion than most and his opinion is not worthless for me personally.

I also agree with the "still looking forward to play it" bit. Skyrim, despite all of it's deficencies, is still a game I love. I just know it could be so much better. FO4 I am much less enamored with due to all the bugs I experienced and the poor writing/quest design.
 
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We haven't seen anything really special so far, that's true. Since the release is still months away, they probably wouldn't reveal it just yet if they had a surprise, but even if they don't have one, it's still fine for me too.

I didn't really understand the complaints about ground combat, I thought it was fine for an early fight in the game. I think the guy discusses that a bit in the video but he quickly got under my skin so I haven't watched it for long.

And the space combats looked basic but it's hard to judge without knowing the controls and the effects, I just noticed we hear a lot of sounds for something that's supposed to happen in space. ;) But they do the same in other games after all - even in Star Citizen but I think this one is not finished yet. For my part, I won't play this for the ship combat which I'll find too boring in comparison to flight sim combats with realistic aircraft flight models. It's not Bethesda's specialty so it would be strange to expect that from them in an RPG.
 
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It's a game from Bethesda in Space, with starships and exploration, on their usual engine.

That is what matters because whatever the vanilla game is, it will be modded massively. And with the elements listed above, I am happy.
 
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I have zero faith in Bethesda producing something I want to play or presenting it in a way I want to play it. They seem to have lost touch in terms of content AND presentation.

The chances of them making a moddable single player game that doesn't require an internet connection is slim. These days the internet connection thing is goofy to quibble about but the main point is that one should be able to play without having to login/connect to/or otherwise be required to check in to play single player. And with Bethesda games, if you can't mod them as has been done in the past, they are going to going to be popular for months instead of years/decades.

The crazy thing to me with Bethesda is that they exist because of moddable single player games with the modding extending the lives of those games WAY beyond what any typical game would ever enjoy. And Bethesda just doesn't get it, changes the formula, tries to make money off of every atom instead of being content drowning in Skyrim's 20th rebundled edition and such, and ruins their own style of gaming, while also pissing off most of their fans by not producing what fans really want.

And somehow the CEO is still employed. It's mind boggling to me.
 
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So much over-analyzing to this. Occam’s Razor suggests that the reason for millions of people still buying Bethesda games is a simple answer to the following question:

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Just curious: Is this person somehow important? Everyone has an opinion about Starfield, just not sure what it takes to be newsworthy ;-)

You have to be trendy and a super PS fan with a grudge to be taken seriously with a take on starfield.
 
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I have zero faith in Bethesda producing something I want to play or presenting it in a way I want to play it. They seem to have lost touch in terms of content AND presentation.

The chances of them making a moddable single player game that doesn't require an internet connection is slim. These days the internet connection thing is goofy to quibble about but the main point is that one should be able to play without having to login/connect to/or otherwise be required to check in to play single player. And with Bethesda games, if you can't mod them as has been done in the past, they are going to going to be popular for months instead of years/decades.

The crazy thing to me with Bethesda is that they exist because of moddable single player games with the modding extending the lives of those games WAY beyond what any typical game would ever enjoy. And Bethesda just doesn't get it, changes the formula, tries to make money off of every atom instead of being content drowning in Skyrim's 20th rebundled edition and such, and ruins their own style of gaming, while also pissing off most of their fans by not producing what fans really want.

And somehow the CEO is still employed. It's mind boggling to me.

Honestly...this gets tiring....the fact they make their games so moddable should be looked at as a virtue instead of a negative. No games come close to the modability that these games have save maybe the sims....it's no small feat.

Not related to your post, but do any of you realize you don't actually change your outfits armor etc in no mans sky? Like it literally allows you to mod your guns and scanners but no clothing etc.
 
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My impression of Starfield, for what its worth, is that its a bit bland. In terms of art style they have aimed to make everything look like technology so things are very grey and square and colours are muted. If anyone has seen Battlestar Galactica 2004 they will understand that the tech in that show was de-emphasised as society wants graceful and beautiful things not rough edged metal everywhere. The characters seemed boring althrough too early to tell, the robots very square shaped etc. I liked the starship builder and the crafting mechanics shown and the starships althrough cool do suffer from a certain boxyness. Certainly lots of ground to cover exploration wise but I doubt much of it will be very interesting given there are 1000 planets. I'm waiting for release and then I'll see if any of these doubts are justified or not.
 
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My main criticism of Starfield is that it's so short. I was really expected more than a four minute game after all these years of development. Maybe it was delayed so they can get that up to five or six minutes. That will help a lot. I'll probably skip it and wait for Starfield 2, though. Or at least until the first trailer so I can decide not to get that either.
 
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Speaking of length. Todd said 20-30 hours or similar? Syrim and Fallout 4 felt a lot longer than that despite having a shorter main quest line so I'm guessing a realistic playthrough could end up being 60-90 hours assuming a few side quests done along the way? I played Fallout 4 for 86 hours and that is also completing the 2 main story DLC. I did maybe 50% of side quests (at least the ones with a decent story).
 
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Speaking of length. Todd said 20-30 hours or similar? Syrim and Fallout 4 felt a lot longer than that despite having a shorter main quest line so I'm guessing a realistic playthrough could end up being 60-90 hours assuming a few side quests done along the way? I played Fallout 4 for 86 hours and that is also completing the 2 main story DLC. I did maybe 50% of side quests (at least the ones with a decent story).

Avantre reported that he said this:

Main quest (only, not side quests) will likely be longer than their other games, although it's still being worked on. "If our other game's main quests took 25 hours, this will take around 30 or maybe 40 hours")

So it should not be short, but the overall quality will depend a lot on how good the side quests are. I'm sure there'll be enough filler content and DLCs to stretch that to hundreds of hours.
 
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So it should not be short, but the overall quality will depend a lot on how good the side quests are. I'm sure there'll be enough filler content and DLCs to stretch that to hundreds of hours.

That sounds about right. 100-120 hours is the sweet spot for me.
 
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