Big is necessary for change in the Video Industry, Starfield leads the way in that change.
It has been a very common complaint amongst Starfield players that the game is too big. This is one of the points against Starfield that I just cannot understand. The game was always meant to be large in scope and I find the complaints to be rather petty and lacking in substance. Starfield is a game that was made in the spirit of space trading games of the 1980s such as Elite Dangerous and Space Control but on much grander scale and with 3d visualizations of the planets. People who have played those games would understand what Starfield was doing in comparison with other games such as Skyrim. Unfortunately, because Skyrim sold so many copies, Starfield is literally in the shadow of that great game.
This shadow on Starfield is to its deteriment. There are too many people who just seperate Skyrim from Starfield and instead conflate the concepts of such games together.
Those two games were particularly very popular in the 1980s and 1990s but have since been submerged by titles such as the GTA series and the later Elder Scrolls games. Because of their obscurity, people do not really seem to understand what Starfield is really about. They just think that is a continuation of Skyrim even though that is not entirely the case.
Starfield harkens back to the Space Race
Starfield has an appearance that looks similar to Skyrim but it is really harkening back to those older space trading games. The second generation of video games often had many space games, generally made by the Japanese, such as Space Invaders and many others. Space in video games would be an incredibly important topic because video games grew up in the glow of the Apollo Moon landings and the construction of space stations by America and the Soviet Union. Many of those in the nascent industry were big fans of space even if they did not spend any time working in the actual machine that made the moon landings actually happen. Starfield is really more of a game for Gen X’s than the millennials. It harkens back to the afterglow of the years after Apollo missions.
Starfield isn’t a game that wallows in cynicism.
Starfield has often been compared to Mass Effect and how they differ in the content. I think that people’s reaction to Mass Effect being better than Starfield have to remember that Mass Effect was never particularly a very consistent story. Many players who are criticizing Starfield for being outdated and being too big should understand that Starfield was meant to be an ambitious game. It was not meant to be reliant on old ways of showing space exploration.
Starfield is about compromise and innovation in games
There are not many games that do what Starfield does. While players can complain about Starfield and say that its realism is what messed up the game, I think that it adds to the game’s character. It makes it different from other games. While it may not be the most innovative game ever made, it is getting difficult to truly make an innovative game these days anyway. Bethesda’s structure with its game is reaching an apex with Starfield. However, I believe that Bethesda still has much that it can improve upon this model that it has. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games have been in state of change since Bethesda has been making them. Starfield is essentially an attempt to combine Elder Scrolls and Fallout together into one package.
The size of Starfield is to be expected from a developer such as Bethesda. They have been making such huge games for many years and they won’t be stopping making those games. The planets in the game are all varied and have a variety of biomes. They could have easily made the game into what we saw with Star Wars, where most of the planets have only one biome. However, the game provides a variety of environments that will help to help to keep the game fresh and interesting.
The main issue with Starfield at the moment is that the planets are either too big or do not have enough content. I think that because this game is so big that players often lose a sense of perspective with such games. I think that Bethesda was aware that this would be case but I think that they understand that criticism is going to happen with these games. They made Arena and Daggerfall so many years ago and Starfield is simply a new version of such a game.
Daggerfall in particular is a very similar game to Starfield in many ways. While the graphics in Starfield are immensely more complex in Starfield, there is a significant connection between these two games. It is the scale. I believe that the scale in Daggerfall was pushing the limits of computer technology in 1996. Starfield is doing the same thing as Daggerfall was in 1996 and I think that over time that the game will gain more respect as time goes on.
I am confident that Bethesda will continue to improve the game and keep the haters at bay and give us something incredible and interesting to play on our computers. I hope that the developers are able to achieve this.
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