Starfield and the problem in general
Intro
Hello fellow gamers out there in the galaxy. This will be my first ever review I done in the first blog I ever created so dont expect much there, but there is just so much fustration piled up in me about the gaming industry, that I have to write it out of me.
Disclaimer
First thing first, there are far worse games out there than Starfield, but this game was the trigger point that made me do a blog, so I will make a honest review from the game. I will only focus the problems here, as official platforms are not highlight them out enough, and since I did not played the game I cant say much about the story either. My review is based on what I seen from Youtube and other streaming platforms so if you want to hear an in depth version, you might look somewhere else.
But hey, you did not play the game, how can you do a review about it, you might ask the fair question. Well my answer to that, you dont taste poop either to know its gonna be bad. I will belive to my fellow gamers that this game has some potential and has good moments, but generally it is another product that was not created with a soul, with the desire to be good.
Technical issues
First of all lets state the obvious, this game was in development for 5-7 years. In 5-7 years they came out with a core game that can be done in about 30 hours, if you focus on the main story quests only. They used the same engine as they are using since eternity and was out of date already at the time of Fallout 4, so it shows its mark on bugs, glitches and on performance as well. While the game runs on a steady 30fps on consols, the PC version suffers a lot. With an upper mid range setup like an I5-10400F+RX6700XT and 32GB ram + an SSD the game barely runs at 40 fps on ultra at 1080p during city walk and gunfights. This is just ridiculus to say the least, while better looking games like CP77 and BG3 or RDR2 runs way above 60 fps all the time. You might think that it may be my system that is weirdly not compatible with the game, but even better rigs suffer from this.
What is more funny in a bad way, that Todd Howard said in an interview, that they put a lot of effort into optimalization and that you may need a better PC to experience this game to the fullest. I dont know about this guys, for me its just feels as a big fat lie onto my face, as said before, better looking games runs better than this. Its not ugly or anything but more like a buffed up Fallout 4 in space theme. Here is some examples:
While you may find better looking areas, your major part in the game will live with this.
Lazy work
Another point I would like to highlight is the use of AI. It was a bad idea back then at No Man's Sky and it was certanly a bad idea here as well. They put 1000+ planets into the game that was generated by the AI depending on where you land on the planet, and most of the time its barren, empty, lifeless. It feels like they gave out the order to the AI, to use these assets on planets and create 1000+ of them. What you can find on them are most of the time rocks, some creatures put into the area randomly and without any real purpose. And yes I admit, if you would travel to 100 planet you would probably find rocks and barren lifeless areas, but as a gamer its boring. It may be fun and interesting for the first couple of times, but it gets boring to the eye very fast. What I would love to see is more planets with life on it, more vegetation, more creatures, better and meaningfull stuff on the surface or marks of a fallen civilization. And we might see this later like 7 years or so just as in No Man's Sky was very bad at the start and they hammered it until it became a good space exploration game. As of right now however this game is without a soul. Also the harsh reality why they do not changing the engine they use, because they know they can create a base game, with a lot of empty suff, and then rely on modders whom will do the hard work and fill up the empty or missing elements for free. They say its a gamer/modder friendly attitude, but its just about saving money and resources which is unacceptable in my book. Create a good game then let the modders live out their hobby, but do not rely on them to make your garbage playable while only you profit on it.
Marketing vs Reality:
This game was marketinged as a very good space exploration + RPG game where you can freely explore hundreds of systems and planets and find interesting stuff on most of them. While on reality this game restricts you from exploring, since you cant land manually on a planet just everywhere (like in No Man's Sky for example), but you have to choose your landing location from a planet view, then loading screen, and you are there in your 4x4km barren field that you can explore with some point of interest you can visit on foot (Because if they would give you wehicle, then you would realise easier that how small the area they let you "explore") These point of interests varies between "kill some pirates, or creatures", "explore this cave with 3 loot nodes inside" or "scan this or that" "Explore the lab" type of activity. Again maybe the first 10 will be interesting, then why would I want to do stuff like this for hours? Where are the crypt like systems that Skyrim offered with full of interesting puzzles? Where are the npcs that did something in previous games around you? Where are the secrets you can discover? Where is the wilderness? Where is life? Its a game its not a space simulator that offers you the same kind of experience you would do in real life. It should be full of fantasy to sell itself. Again it was marketinged like this and not as "Empty planet viewer simulator 2023"
And after all of this, we arrived to the real problem that is not Starfield's only fault. Its the era where we live and what we get for our money. Im sure some of you have much better gaming rig than me and you dont even have to care what you spend on your 70-100 bucks, but there are people, whom like to do gaming and has to think twice where they put their hard earned money. And this game with many others in my eyes are not worth the full price. The general problem is that developers are probably forced to make the games to deadlines that are way too short. I accept that creating an AAA game is not 1-2 years now, especially if you want to make it uniq in some way. Developers are pushed to their limits, they dont have enough time to create something that has a soul nor they have the time to test the games properly looking for bugs and glitches, and they rely on technologies like FSR and DLSS to avoid the need of optimizing. All because the publishers are not gamers, they only looking for money, they dont care about you people. They put a lot of investment to marketing/false marketing to generate hype, and when they got their paycheck they are happy and get the conclusion, they can sell games this way too, why bother with all the details and polishment? Fanbase will always buy it, defend it, as I encountered this with Starfield too. I asked people, what makes Starfield better than even Fallout 4 if it has so many flaws and missing elements? They could not give me a correct answer. All they said it has a good story and ship and base building is very fun, and modders will make this game better anyways, so I will belive them that story may be better, but again its not up to the modders to polish a game or make it playable, interesting, especially not for free even if this was the general case with Skyrim, Fallout series in the past (except that those games had more content by default than Starfield). In other cases I was immediately banned from some forums for said reason "I was trying to generate flame" Well if asking the hard questions is flame generation then yes I was doing that. Is this what we will get from now on? That companies will sell their leftover soul for more money and the gaming industry will only have 2-3 games per 10 years that are really outstanding and was created with passion? What are your toughts about this? Tell me in the comments below.