Starfield - September 6th 2023 - XBox Series X/S

[Erick Estrada]

I find it odd that film grain is enabled by default. I get that some people believe Sci-Fi is associated with film grain but I didn't like it with Mass Effect or this game as IMO it looks so much cleaner with it and motion blur off.

[Engine09]

Picked up Starfield a couple days ago but I'm only 10 mins in so far. The negative reviews are bumming me out but still looking forward to getting into it.

Is it similar to Red Dead Redemption where is beautiful as hell but the minutia is just too much and it's overwhelming to get into?

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by Engine09

Picked up Starfield a couple days ago but I'm only 10 mins in so far. The negative reviews are bumming me out but still looking forward to getting into it.

Is it similar to Red Dead Redemption where is beautiful as hell but the minutia is just too much and it's overwhelming to get into?

The opening definitely didn't grab me. I had to get through the first hour or two before getting sucked in

[Ozy_Flame]

Red Dead Redemption minutia is the very reason why that game is so incredibly perfect.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Engine09

Picked up Starfield a couple days ago but I'm only 10 mins in so far. The negative reviews are bumming me out but still looking forward to getting into it.

Is it similar to Red Dead Redemption where is beautiful as hell but the minutia is just too much and it's overwhelming to get into?

I tend to agree with this guide. Lair Of The Mantis I found incredibly important as the game got a little easier after that because of the equipment you get.

https://www.thegamer.com/starfield-b...to-the-unknown

BTW what negative reviews? The metascores are 86/84 on metacritic which is pretty solid. It's a great game if you love sci-fi and Bethesda games.

[FormerPresJamesTaylor]

Originally Posted by combustiblefuel

You've lost the discussion if you have to call someone an Idiot.

Not if the person is acting like one

[OutOfTheCube]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

I find it odd that film grain is enabled by default. I get that some people believe Sci-Fi is associated with film grain but I didn't like it with Mass Effect or this game as IMO it looks so much cleaner with it and motion blur off.

I think this is just a gaming problem in general -- developers ruining how their games look with excessive film grain, motion blur, chromatic aberration, etc. Not sure why they think it looks good. I've seen it in lots of non-sci-fi as well.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Red Dead Redemption minutia is the very reason why that game is so incredibly perfect.

I am sorry buy I couldn't stand that game. Too many chores man. It was a god damn chore simulator.

[Engine09]

When I said negative reviews I was referring to the story headlines popping up in my Google News feed. I've actually been ignoring them and waiting until I have time to actually get into the game.

For the record, I love Red Dead Redemption but just haven't played it much. It's discouraging because it's too involved, just he menus are alone are tough to learn and remember when you don't play it often. Which causes me to not go back to it, etc.

[rubecube]

Bethesda doing Bethesda ####. I have Intel GPU and have been dealing with a lot of crashes. Turns out Bethesda never sent the game to Intel and is now claiming the Intel GPUs don't meet the minimum requirements.

[DownInFlames]

Unfortunately, Intel Arc cards aren't taken seriously for gaming. They don't even show up on the Steam hardware survey. You can play games using one but you can't expect great performance yet. Hopefully Intel continues to improve so they become contenders.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Engine09

Picked up Starfield a couple days ago but I'm only 10 mins in so far. The negative reviews are bumming me out but still looking forward to getting into it.

Is it similar to Red Dead Redemption where is beautiful as hell but the minutia is just too much and it's overwhelming to get into?

I try not to read reviews anymore. There are a lot of games I have played and enjoyed, only to read reviews after the fact that probably would have stopped me from playing or pointing out things that I didn't notice that much. There are also games I have probably not played that I would have liked if the reviews didn't bum me out.

Having said that, the reviews for Starfield seem to range from good to really good.

[bax]

Originally Posted by Engine09

Picked up Starfield a couple days ago but I'm only 10 mins in so far. The negative reviews are bumming me out but still looking forward to getting into it.

Is it similar to Red Dead Redemption where is beautiful as hell but the minutia is just too much and it's overwhelming to get into?

Originally Posted by Engine09

Picked up Starfield a couple days ago but I'm only 10 mins in so far. The negative reviews are bumming me out but still looking forward to getting into it.

Is it similar to Red Dead Redemption where is beautiful as hell but the minutia is just too much and it's overwhelming to get into?

Not at all like Red Dead in that sense.

At times, Starfield can be beautiful, at other times it can be downright ugly.

It’s very video gamey. It’s a Bethesda game to its core, so if you like fallout or Skyrim chances are you will like this.

I found it’s more enjoyable when you just go from quest to quest and experience it that way. Exploration in this game is just far too tedious to be enjoyable for me.

Nothing in this world is connected. It’s a loading screen every time you take off, every time you land, every time you enter a building, every time you dock to a ship, every time you enter/leave a ship. It just makes for a very dated feeling experience when you compare it to other modern games.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by bax

Not at all like Red Dead in that sense.

At times, Starfield can be beautiful, at other times it can be downright ugly.

It’s very video gamey. It’s a Bethesda game to its core, so if you like fallout or Skyrim chances are you will like this.

I found it’s more enjoyable when you just go from quest to quest and experience it that way. Exploration in this game is just far too tedious to be enjoyable for me.

Nothing in this world is connected. It’s a loading screen every time you take off, every time you land, every time you enter a building, every time you dock to a ship, every time you enter/leave a ship. It just makes for a very dated feeling experience when you compare it to other modern games.

Yeah but there's no loading times when you are exploring on a planet as so I'm not exactly sure what you are complaining about. We all know about the loading screens but I find that's more a distraction when doing missions. When exploring you can spend hours covering a planet and never see a loading screen. So is no loading screen tedious or tedious? You keep posting about your opinion about loading screens and we get it. I feel GOW is overrated because it's essentially a point to point game on rails with no freedom but I don't post it over and over and over when it's clear a lot of people like the game.

[calumniate]

I added some mods on PC and I can't even load starfield anymore, lol. Re-installed and still no luck.. the best recommendation out there is to re-install windows :/

[bax]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

Yeah but there's no loading times when you are exploring on a planet as so I'm not exactly sure what you are complaining about. We all know about the loading screens but I find that's more a distraction when doing missions. When exploring you can spend hours covering a planet and never see a loading screen. So is no loading screen tedious or tedious? You keep posting about your opinion about loading screens and we get it. I feel GOW is overrated because it's essentially a point to point game on rails with no freedom but I don't post it over and over and over when it's clear a lot of people like the game.

I’m not sure what GOW is an acronym for so you’ve lost me there.

I’m not hating on Starfield! I like it quite a bit and have logged about 50 hours on it! I find the the fun in the game comes from doing the quests and not the exploration though.

Look at other modern open world games like Cyberpunk, Assassins Creed, etc. The exploration is fun because you can see something off in the distance, make your way to it and get sidetracked by 100 things along the way. That’s where the fun is for me.

By comparison Starfield just feels dated in this regard. Sure, there are no loading screens when you land on an empty planet, but there’s also nothing to do. Almost all of them are empty landscapes with copy and pasted mining outposts.

Look at Neon for example. There’s no reason that city needs to be broken up by loading screens to get around. It really dampens the exploration experience.

[btimbit]

It's definitely a legitimate complaint. I'm really enjoying the game, but the fact that you can't jump or land on a planet via gameplay and have to go through a menu then a loading screen takes away from the experience. Basically makes piloting a ship feel empty and useless since it feels like you just fast travel everywhere

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

I tend to agree with this guide. Lair Of The Mantis I found incredibly important as the game got a little easier after that because of the equipment you get.

https://www.thegamer.com/starfield-b...to-the-unknown

BTW what negative reviews? The metascores are 86/84 on metacritic which is pretty solid. It's a great game if you love sci-fi and Bethesda games.

I just did the Lair of Mantis quest out of total fluke (I was looking for a way to get back to the Wolf system to sell contraband, stumbled upon the moon that happened to have the lair, don't even think i had the quest for it prior).

Boy oh boy, needless to say it was a gamechanger.

I've loved Bethesda games and started on Morrowind (ironically the only one I beat despite playing tons on Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Oblivion).

It's a Bethesda game, they are truly best played blind to get the full experience. I love details about how you can disable a ship, dock on it (while it's still able to fire on you), kill off remaining fighters inside it, sometimes without gravity functioning due to damage. Finding these little gems like a floating derelict ship with 2 people dead, with both having notes one of which called the other guy an idiot for frying himself trying to merge with the ship and locking out the cockpit, the other saying YOLO. Brings me back to the Vaults.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by bax

I’m not sure what GOW is an acronym for so you’ve lost me there.

I’m not hating on Starfield! I like it quite a bit and have logged about 50 hours on it! I find the the fun in the game comes from doing the quests and not the exploration though.

Look at other modern open world games like Cyberpunk, Assassins Creed, etc. The exploration is fun because you can see something off in the distance, make your way to it and get sidetracked by 100 things along the way. That’s where the fun is for me.

By comparison Starfield just feels dated in this regard. Sure, there are no loading screens when you land on an empty planet, but there’s also nothing to do. Almost all of them are empty landscapes with copy and pasted mining outposts.

Look at Neon for example. There’s no reason that city needs to be broken up by loading screens to get around. It really dampens the exploration experience.

As I've posted before, the broken up sections appear to be for boxing off areas for memory management, I still think the game is nerfed to maintain the feature parity options with the Xbox Series S. Modding away the black loading screens and baked in loading delays on a fast computer makes it seamless in some parts if your computer is fast enough. The biggest problem is its not designed to do this so there is crazy pop in when you load areas instantly sometimes. In other games, when you walk toward a door, the game would know to start pre-caching the next area or an area within a radius of the player.

[Max Cow Disease]

I've come to forgive some of the quirks like loading screens (which are always pretty brief), repetitious layouts within instances on planets, and the lack of full navigation in the space ship, as Starfield's pretty wide in scope so there were always going to be bottlenecks somewhere. For me the game presents a lot of opportunity to get lost in little things like simply running around planet's surface and taking it all in, or fiddling with ship design.

People keep flapping about how No Man's Sky did stuff like seamless space travel better 5 years ago, but in my eyes Starfield does a way better job of procedurally generating its planets, life forms, and environments. Most planets you landed on in NMS were very evidently procedurally generated, with oddly formed environments and ridiculous alien life, whereas Starfield does a decent job with its flora/fauna and has the added element of various biomes on a single planet. Even after a lot of playtime I still find myself landing in some locations and going "whoa, this looks super cool". They also did a great job with lighting and the modelling of proper day/night/orbital cycles. I was standing on some beach earlier today and saw the water become a brilliant green/turquoise as the sun came up over the course of a 5-10 minute period - it was neat.