Tag: video-games

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. 

A response to the common complaint about Starfield: The Intro

There have been some near 40,000 reviews for the Starfield video game and one of the most common complaints that I have seen about the game is that the intro of the game is not of the quality that we saw in Skyrim and Oblivion. 

This criticism is understandable. People have gotten used to overblown, epic plots that involve having to save the world from some incredible danger. In Oblivion, this danger was the Daedric Gates that had been opened by cultists; these same gates had to be closed one by one by an incredible hero. In Skyrim, the player is saved from an execution to become one of the greatest heros to fight back the reemergence of the Dragons that are ravaging the province of Skyrim. These stories follow the traditional hero’s journey that was explained by Joseph Campbell. This is easy to understand and universal in many cultures around the globe. However, it may not be the most unique or thought-provoking story out there. 

This is where Starfield differs from its predecessors. You start the game in a mine, simply just another tool in Argos Extractors toolbox. However, when you touch a mysterious rock, your entire life has changed and become something completely altered than from when you entered the mines. The game doesn’t start off with having a great responsibility that requires to slay some dragon or close some demonic gates. There is a more nuanced tale here that requires some degree of actual buildup. 

That is what truly makes Starfield different from all the other games. 

It’s a slow burn of a game. This isn’t meant to be some game where you rush through it and you are done with it. It is meant to bring you in and make you appreciate it. The game’s main quest line is all about mystery and discovery. This is a more realistic plot and players should try to appreciate it rather than complaining about it. 

Starfield’s intro isn’t prefect but its still an great introduction to a new universe which is not familiar to the players. I believe that anyone who is complaining about this game should give it another chance and realize that this is a slow burn of a game.