Okay I've changed my mind on Starfield and these are my thoughts.
The moment to moment gameplay is fun and engaging. I have enjoyed a lot of my time raiding outposts, exploring planets and flying through space. The game is at its best when you are just being you and dicking around.
However. The writing is infuriatingly bad. At first I could forgive it. It felt as bad as every other Bethesda game out there. Skyrim does not have anything close to a compelling story and its characters are, at best, set dressing. Characters exist as nodes for quests and that's fine. Even Fallout is a lot like this.
What makes me mad is how badly so many REALLY interesting ideas are executed. Like, so much wasted potential in so many interesting areas. Every quest pulls me out of the game because all I COULD HAVE DONE THIS BETTER WHAT????
Characters have no life, no motivations. Like Skyrim, they arent even trying to be people. They are furniture in a room. But they keep trying to put them in interesting problems, then fails to deliver.
For example, early you're recruited to join a gang of bounty hunters. You go in expecting Dark Brotherhood but cowboys. Except there isn't anything cowboy about them. Or dark brotherhood. The writing teeters on edgey, but with nothing backing it up. The building they live in could house anyone were it not for the giant bounty board in the middle. There is no tension between characters. No opinions.
So you try to join and they give you a bounty. You try to do it, and fail. The guy gets away. It sets up his eventual return. I'm 40 hours in and the guy hasn't shown up again. But the crew loves you despite failing and ask you to join. You get to choose your edgey nickname. Then. Nothing.
Turns out the game doesnt have any more quests with them. Its all paid DLC through the creation club. No one tells you this. It is just hard breaks. Build up to nothing.
Another quest has you stumble onto a generation ship, finally reaching its destination some 200 years after it set off. Unfortunately, in that time, faster than light travel had been invented and the galaxy around them leapfrogged ahead. Now, this ship, finally reaches its destination, finds it has already been colonised by humans who left later but arrived earlier. Their claim is defended by the larger systemic infrastructure.
What I expected from this quest was a story of conflict between the naive but hardworking members of this generational ship, and the groundedbut greedy executives. You could do much with this premise. These people spent 3 generations on this ship. They dont know what life was like before, only the mission. They coild have a single minded obsession with their destination. The destination would mean more psychologically than practically. Its not just their new home, but paradise. That's so cool!
But no. You are asked to be a diplomat, you speak to the people who own the planet and you get three options: 1. ENSLAVE the generation ship on behalf of the capitalists, 2. DESTROY the generation ship, or 3. Help them go somewhere else. Which means you gotta pay to make it happen.
If you ask them to leave, they're cool woth it. And there is no actual conflict. No negotiation. Just do 1, 2 or 3. If you do 3, they just leave. Quest done.
I hate this so much. I tried so hard Bethsda. I tried so hard. What's going on???
