Category: Critiques

Starfield is about the journey not the destination

There have been many complaints made about Starfield and how it takes too long to play or truly to get going. Some have criticized the game’s beginning as not making sense. 

These are valid criticisms. Some reviewers on YouTube and the gaming press have tended to be somewhat divergent in their criticisms, however. The reviewers on the gaming websites have tended to criticize the game for being too big with no character to it. Reviewers on YouTube tend to be more vulgar in their criticisms and tend to focus on the idea that bigger isn’t necessarily the thing that we want in our games.

It is important to remember that Bethesda wanted to push boundaries and make the biggest game possible. This was what was promised by the developers of No Man Sky and was ultimately a disappointment for many gamers. Bethesda was working hard to make the best game possible but also a game that could actually release unlike games like Star Citizen that are literally being made to milk the pockets of gamers. People have to remember that Starfield was made with no microtransactions. It is important to emphasize that point. Bethesda could have hidden content such as the ship building section of the game behind microtransactions. They decided not to and this should be applauded. However, what’s more important is that people seem to miss the point that this game is not meant to be something that one picks up and then just forgets about it. The ship building aspect of this game is one of those things that will give the game a longevity that will be comparable to Skyrim.

However, that is not main thing that people have to try to understand about this game.

What’s important to remember is that Starfield is a slow burn game. It is not simply a video game but an experience. It allows you go to other planets and be able to experience what is on those realms. That is why it is special as a game.

People can dismiss the planets as not being important but you have to remember that Bethesda did not simply follow the Star Wars approach and make every planet the same. There are multiple biomes that add character to every planet in the game. This is one of the unique aspects of this great experience. 

All the planets have their own unique characteristics to them and are worth to explore. It is a game that takes its time and asks that the player enjoy the journey more than the destination. 

Starfield is all about the journey and that’s what makes it a standout game. 

Starfield is a single-player MMO

I was thinking about the criticisms of Starfield which boil down to these main points.

  • It is a boring game
  • The game doesn’t have interesting characters
  • Starfield has a boring story that does not pull in the player. 
  • The planets are not handcrafted and are boring
  • There is no character to the factions
  • Space travel is clunky and not as interesting as in other space games
  • Combat is not very interesting
  • The skills are not deep enough
  • You don’t feel the grandeur of space.

Why Starfield is like EverQuest

All these concerns are valid, but they are missing something very important. Starfield is essentially a single-player MMO game. It is not a traditional RPG game. It is not a Dragon Age or Mass Effect style game. To be honest, I would rather Starfield stick to what makes it great and not become another clone of those games.

Try to be honest here. Starfield is more like EverQuest in 1999 than Mass Effect in 2007. It may sound strange that a single-player game has more in common with a late 90s MMO but one has to consider the many features in Starfield that make it more of a MMO than a regular RPG.

Role-playing is an option in Starfield, but some players complain that your choices do not matter in the game. However, what I think players are missing about Starfield is that the game has some really deep mechanics that go beyond interacting with characters. 

Starfield’s strength is not necessarily in its characters but in its ability of the player to build things. That is as simple as it is. Building something over interacting passively is what really distinguishes Starfield from other games out there. It is not a game that is all about the building of a character but of extending the reaches of human society beyond the reaches of the Settled Systems. 

Everquest, similarly had a story but was focused on the construction of a virtual community on the planet that it was set on.  

This is what the developers focused on in the game. Construction and exploration is the name of the game. While all the traditional RPG elements are there, it is really this sense you have incredibly large galaxy out there for you to discover and tame is an incredibly interesting prospect. 

I have barely even started building outposts in Starfield. The idea of building a home on another planet is a highly tantalizing idea that is truly unique to Starfield. It was the same alluring idea that made so many players stay with EverQuest, even when WOW surpassed it in subscribers in 2004. 

EverQuest when it was released in 1999, was all about building new worlds rather being a theme park like many later games. EverQuest was all about building community. While Starfield may not have an online aspect, Starfield’s deep crafting systems are really the highlight of this game. Older games like Everquest rewarded players who stuck with the game rather than expecting it to be done in a couple of days. This is one of the reasons that I compare these two games. 

Starfield would translate well into the MMO genre. Let’s see what Bethesda has up their sleeves. 

Is Starfield essentially too big?

There have been many complaints that have been lobbied against Starfield in the days leading up to the release of the game and also after the release. One of these criticisms is that the game is simply too big for players to have any attachment to the setting or the characters. I disagree with this.

Starfield is a very challenging game to make. It is a game that took thousands of hours to complete and in spite of this, people are still attacking this game. It is easy to criticize but it is much harder to create anything. Todd Howard had always stated that Starfield was a dream project for him and they managed to accomplish it. Unlike Cyberpunk 2077, which was a buggy mess upon launch, Starfield was largely free from any truly memable moments except for some of the NPCS on New Atlantis and other cities in the game. Todd Howard successfully managed his team to create this incredible game, but no game is without its warts.

Starfield size is an important part of the narrative that surrounds the main story of Starfield. You are going out into the cosmos to discover the mysteries of the artifacts in the game. This is really a story of discovery. Of course, players are fully able to choose their own adventure outside of the main quest, but the size of the game is featuring not a misguided attempt to stuff as much content into the game. 

There are limits to having developers work on every aspect of the game. Some of the handcrafted content can be great but it is also limiting the developers in being able to create an environment that is truly epic in scale. Sometimes you have to use the power of the computer to realize these worlds.

Starfield’s great size is what attracts me to the game. Handcrafted content can only go so far in getting a game done on time. Unless you are Rockstar Games, it is clear that you are going to need some procedural generation in order to get the job done.  People have a tendency to think that all that needs to get done is that the developers have handcraft content, and everything will just be ready for launch. However, it just doesn’t work in that way. Bethesda has always been known for the procedural generated content, even in 1994 when it released the first Elder Scrolls game. People should be used to this style at this point. However, even at this point in time, people are still complaining about procedural generation.

There are valid criticisms that can be levied against the creation of environments by AI. We have seen with ChatGPT that there are limitations to what AI is capable of accomplishing. We still do not have a HAL-like intelligence like that was seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The AI that we have today is literally just scraping the internet. AI in video game development is more specific than that of generative AI tools like ChatGPT. Procedural generation was used in the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and people did not complain back then.

However, procedural generation has it limitations when it comes up to scale. It is clear that Bethesda tried very hard to make the planets as interesting as possible. However, with the case with procedural generation, the software still has flaws. Many players have expectations that the game will provide worlds that are on the same level as something done by a human. There is also the issue of repetition in the buildings and landmarks that appear in the game. 

These concerns are valid but one has to consider the great accomplishment that Bethesda has achieved with this game. We are able to land on any planet in the game that is not a gas giant and start exploring. When gamers first started hearing about this game, many were skeptical about the planets. Some thought they would be barren wastelands with nothing on them. Instead, what we got were full-realized worlds that ran the gamut from barren moons to planets teeming with animals and flora. 

Making this game as big as it is was a necessary step towards making the technology better. I wish people would remember that Bethesda has always been about pushing technology. Starfield succeeds at its mission at making wonder about the beauty of the cosmos.