Starfield's been left out to dry at The Game Awards—and even dedicated fans are 'not terribly surprised'
Shooting short of the stars.
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I love Starfield, not as much as I love Skyrim or even Morrowind, but I really love it.
I am at 160ish hours and have seen only a small amount of the quests and barely touched the base or ship building part. There is so much in the game and with the innovative spin on new game plus I am able to build my own narrative again and again. I can play the perfect angle in one NG+ and a devil in another, I can be the freedom loving Ranger in the next, a mad loner who only interacts with others as much as needed to finish his perfect planetary base, or a starship fanatic who wants to collect and/or build the best ships.
You don't have those kinds of freedom with Baldurs Gate 3 or other RPGs, you can't really leave or mostly ignore the narratives of those games to create your own, not on the scale as it is possible with Starfield.
Starfields quests are fun, yes they are all separate from each other but that is in my eyes a good thing in this case as it allows to play the game as you like.
All the quests are like basic Lego blocks, you can connect them together in any way you want but they don't change each other but that's not needed as I have my own narrative and stories in my mind for this run or character.
Sure, games like Baldurs Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2.0 have better storytelling, better NPCs, but they are at the same time extremely limited and narrow experiences, sure you have side quests and all but once played the game that's mostly it.
Starfields freedoms come with limits like the loading screens sure, but that is a price I am willing to pay for having a sandbox like universe to explore and roleplay in.
As a pure entertainment product, that can be consumed without any own creativity, is Baldurs Gate better, without doubt. But as a expansion tool for your imagination, that's where Starfield (or any other Bethesda RPG) shines.
But as a end note: What have the Starfield developers consumed when they created the utterly bad and boring temple "puzzles". In Todd's name WHY????
You clearly haven't played baldur's gate and shouldn't make comparisons based on your limited experience with it.
I have played and completed it, very recently, and I stand to my words. BG3 has a great story and it was fun to play once. But it is not a game I will play again, at least not for years. BG3 is like a good movie, impressive and great story telling but after I seen it once it is done and will go on the shelf.
That's where Starfield differs, in BG3 I command great written characters through adventures, in Starfield I play more or less an avatar of myself but on a Spaceship. And that is something I come back to again and again, just like I go back to Skyrim, Morrowind or Fallout for years now.
Maybe you have Not realized just how much your choices affect the "linear Story" and how much permutation there is in follow up quests or alternate pathways through the same quest. I guess thats the beauty of it. Most of the quests an Narrative fit into each other so neat One might suspect this way was the only possible way, just because of how good it is presented.
Yes, but that still is like reading the same book but with a few pages changed. I am still only moving characters through a stage play, not roleplaying.
I can't have a completely changed or different way to play the game or be myself/anything in the world of the game.
Both games are great but they can't really be compared, not much more as you could compare a high budget musical with a high budget improv theatre play. Sure both are plays on a theatre stage (or RPG in case of the games) but beside that they don't have really much in common.
But maybe it is just to complicated for me to fully express or explain what I mean as I am not a native speaker and I am therefore limited in my words and formulations.
Your love for the game is valid but criticisms of the game are also valid. The biggest flaw starfield has is the massive amount of gameworld it provides. In skyrim, CP2077, BG3, Morrowind, Zelda, and whatever else you want to think of, you can pick a direction and go.
In nearly every case, the game is designed to take you somewhere, give you something, reward you for straying off the main path. In Starfield, both space and planet side, youre likely to run into a whole lot of nothing. Which is realistically fine, the universe is already a vast amount of nothing, but in game design that makes for a boring and lackluster RPG and that is the biggest problem SF has. That doesnt take away from the players like you who want this experience though, but thats kind of why Space Sim games are a niche experience.
As a pure entertainment product, that can be consumed without any own creativity, is Baldurs Gate better, without doubt. But as a expansion tool for your imagination, that’s where Starfield (or any other Bethesda RPG) shines.
You should seriously, seriously go play BG3.
You don’t have those kinds of freedom with Baldurs Gate 3 or other RPGs, you can’t really leave or mostly ignore the narratives of those games to create your own, not on the scale as it is possible with Starfield.
Seriously, BG3. (Between Dark Urge, custom character choices, etc, go.)
I have played it and I liked it. But after completing it with one character I have no intention of doing another play through anytime soon.
Yes you have different character choices but in the end it is always the same linear story. Yes, you could say the same about Starfield but it is not. In Starfield if I want I can ignore the main quest more or less completely and play a bounty hunter who only builds his base to have a place for his collection of coffee cups he takes from every place he goes.
In BG3 they give you predefined experience (now in Dark Urge flavour) which is great for telling a story but not so great for creating a world to really roleplay in.
Both games are fun for what they are, they are just not fun in the same way for everyone.
I think i See your point now with the example of the bounty hunter. The point that most People are making is thta starfield is a really blank canvas where you can Insert your own Narrative into a lot of Actions but the game does Not react towards that Narrative, while BG3 does react to some of your RP reasons and all the other reasons for your RP that the game cannot predict, it cannot react to and therefore feel unsupported.
That is a valid Take that Bethesda games have Solid setting in which People can choose internal Roleplay but this does Not meant other games where the game also gives you external Stimulation to Roleplay certain aspects Limit your creativity. For my playtrough there were several decisions which where reflected in the World but also other principles that i made up, that only influenced my decisions passivly without beeing spelled out in the Texts. For example i choose a knowdledge hungry Wizard which made me Do queationable choice s with devils even tho 2 People of my Party already suffered under devils. No choice spelled out "Gimme All knowledge of the Planes what ever the Cost" but thats where my own internal RP made the choice more fitting than other.
Man its really Hard to express my thoughts on this using a foreign languages. I hope my point comes across
Yes, I can grasp what you mean.
It is a role-playing on a different level, and with that it has its own merits and shortcomings.
Baldurs Gate 3 is a role play on a lower, more character centric, level which limits the freedom of the player but allows for the game to have a tighter, more interconnected storytelling.
Starfield is a role play on a higher, more player centric, level which allows for way more personal freedom of the player at the costs of having a story with pieces flying loose through the air, so to speak.
The venn diagram of people who like both of those types will most likely don't have a huge overlap.
Neither of those games are bad, they are just fundamentally different.
The problem is how disjointed everything is. Skyrim and Fallout, I can literally walk across the entire map. I can run into a random plot, some fun environmental storytelling, anything really - there's no sense of discovery for a game so vast as Starfield. Everything is a known quantity which is why you can fast travel to and from basically every area.
All these other functions built into the game are superficial and/or incomplete at best. Ship building is basically pointless, as you can carry a massive crew in a tiny freighter, regardless of crew capacity or passenger capacity of your vessel. Modding weapons is more or less the same as it was in Fallout 4. The environments that are available to explore are all dead with fuck all, and all the tunnels and mines are filled with the same bullet-sponge spacer enemies. You would think with smaller, chunked zones we'd have some very detailed environments that make use of the fact that they are relatively small spaces, but instead everything is truncated with a loading screen and entirely lacking in depth.
I am at 160ish hours and have seen only a small amount of the quests
So you've just been having fun with the most basic of systems that are not much different from all previous games, while barely having touched the things most people are complaining about? The mechanics and stability are pretty good. It's the bland stories within the uninspired quests that are a major source of disappointment.
And to say only a Bethesda RPG does while BG3 doesn't have the kinds of roleplaying you're describing tells me you haven't actually played BG3. Or any actually good RPG for that matter.
What you are trying to say is that Starfield is a sandbox RPG, while BG3 is a Linear Story RPG.
Both are fun in their own ways. You just vibe more with the sandbox aspect.
I bet you also enjoy Minecraft for the same reasons.
Yeah, I like Minecraft 🤣