This is the one good thing Starfield did for me. After it made me angry enough to get over the activation potential to actually leave a review, it also made me resolve that I will make the time to praise the ones that have delighted me rather than just sit there in contentment.
Also, a general reminder that if you like indie games, wishlisting them before release and leaving a thumbs up review after you play them can have an outsize impact on a small dev!
I was so sure there must be a good game buried in there somewhere. I played so many hours looking for it. If I could just level up a few more skills or build out a slightly better ship or find the marginally better weapon. Chasing mirages for hours and hours.
I, sadly, gave them more hours than that searching for it. Hoping that the story would improve, that I would find some plot that would stitch things together in a pleasing way.
Nope. No mechanics improvement, which were trash, will fix bad story.
I took Steam offline on my "gaming" laptop ~01 December to pin the particular then-current version of Starfield.
About to take that laptop on a 2-week family "vacation" (remote working half-days, but also NMS) and I just realized that with 120+ hours in the game I can't see ever playing it again.
There is no mechanic improvement that can be done to fix the stories and main plot. Fixing that effectively is a new game, which is a situation of great, super, I don’t trust you with that many hours of my life again, Todd.
I was so excited for Starfield. I watched many hours of my SO's playthrough. I am grateful I didn't spend the money on it.
It feels like they have this immense toolbox of compelling mechanics and, what, decades of player data to build from, and yet. :/
I am particularly annoyed as someone who didn't pre-order Starfield but *did* pre-order ME:Andromeda.
A way-too-similarly-flawed game.
At release (don't know if they fixed it since, and you're likely aware) there was a unique face for PeeBee but *every* other Asari was functionally identical...WTH?
There were _stories_ I liked but they were almost all bottle side missions. The value of Amelia Earhart saying “What’s buzzin’ cousin?” on your bridge isn’t worth that grind a second or third or fourth time, so even the delightful moments washed away in the endless stream of drudgery.
I've enjoyed it for what it is. Fallout with better gunplay and a mediocre narrative.
It's not a terrible game. It's just mediocre on every level except the soundtrack, which was good.
Which is what makes it so bad. Just warm dishwater of a game.
