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I've finally gotten around to playing Starfield and after fixing the terrible lighting (and not fixing the terrible UI, I think I've missed something when installing SkyUI) I think it's peak Bethesda at its worst. The only thing that keeps me going is "player sees number go up: neuron activation".
The main quest is surprisingly anemic even for Bethesda. The planets are realistically barren and I really want a land vehicle to get around on. Fast travel is essential, but it's such a kludge. Lore and exposition? Ah, you'll glean enough if you play enough. But I want to put more mods on my gun and for this I need to level up this and level up that, to gather this and to gather that and so on.
I really like it, I think it’s their most interesting setting. I imagine it as a kind of world where semiconductor processes below like 500nm or whatever they had in 1990 were somehow technically impossible, and so technology progressed but computing specifically never advanced exponentially the way it did in our timeline over the last 30 years (and beyond). Obviously there are a few times the setting contradicts this but as a broad rule I very much enjoy it, an interesting alternate history.
I really like the quests! They’re breezy, they take you all over the galaxy. I think the Zero-G combat is great, the space combat has fun arcade vibes, I like that quests have lots of opportunities for persuasion, and while the main story is amateurish I respect that unlike Mass Effect it’s an attempt at actual science fiction and not Star Wars, and follows through with actual science fiction. The cities are great, and Bethesda’s best. I’m still finding interesting things after a few weeks.
I need to go back to Baldur’s Gate 3 and I just don’t want to. Back to Larian’s awful British-writers-writing-Marvel-movies dialogue, the horniness, the Wacky and Zany Events™️ and the boring story and FR setting I don’t care about.
The cities are great, but the rest of the environments aren't, especially after Skyrim and Fallout 4. The road to Markarth is simply spectacular, as is the road to Riften, Boston sneaks up on you in an amazing way, you never notice how you end up among its skyscrapers.
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I’ve spent (perhaps too much) time this last week playing Path of the Dovahkiin, a Skyrim modpack.
It replaces the loot, xp, and spawning systems to make something much more like Path of Exile or Borderlands: blitz through packs of enemies, sift their corpses for cool gear, portal back to town to sell it and level up, repeat. Most of the existing mechanics of Skyrim are adjusted to suit this character-improving feedback loop.
The end result is a game that sacrifices verisimilitude in favor of a very different part of the Elder Scrolls experience. Bethesda always tapped into that sort of number-go-up power fantasy; it was just trading off with all the other design goals of their fantasy worlds. Can’t let your merchants buy anything without breaking the economy in half. Can’t keep the full space of spells and skills without taking dev time from quests and environments. And, of course, can’t limit you from being a murderhobo or a paragon.
That’s what I’m thinking about when you say “neuron activation.” Bethesda games have always done it, but they are forced into compromises by the rest of their game. Skyrim is 12 years in to a fanatical modding scene, determined to take the game in each of these conflicting directions. Give Starfield a few years, and I expect its community to home in on its stronger points. Until then…have you considered reinstalling Skyrim?
Every time I consider reinstalling Skyrim I:
God, I wasted so much time installing this pack. I didn’t realize, when I started, that the launcher only automated the installations and not downloads. It pops up a window for the right versions, but you have to click “download” manually unless you have some sort of nexus subscription.
It was far too long and involved far too many bullshit graphics mods. I wish there was middle ground to get all the gameplay mods without downloading 100GB of 4K rugs. I set up an autoclicker and chatted with my gf while I tended it. The upside is that I learned a lot about new music genres!
In the end, I’ve made an illusion mage who frenzies entire rooms, then goes invisible while they lose their damn minds. Anyone who survives is paralyzed and hacked to tiny pieces. It’s good fun, and cheerfully breaks the normal gameplay in half. But that’s kind of the idea!
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To expand on the questline anemia, the start of the game at the same time resembles Mass Effect and doesn't. Before Shepard interacts with the beacon, we already get a lot of information from the starting mission:
What do we learn in Starfield before we interact with the beacon?
What do we learn in the tutorial mission?
Yes, the former is a space opera and the latter is a sandbox, but when the training wheels come off in Starfield you end up knowing practically nothing about the game world or the key plot hooks. At least in Skyrim you get to see the big bad dragon and the two civil war factions.
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