Starfield

[eldaec]

Reviews are up, they say 'this is a Bethesda RPG, but space'.

[Tale]

Rave reviews except at IGN, Gamespot and PC Gamer!

Clever headlines everywhere.

[Falconeer]

Reviews are up, they say 'this is a Bethesda RPG, but space'.

Strange.

[Reg]

I've been playing it for the last 4 hours. It's not bad. So far I haven't encountered any bugs - which is better than my first 4 hours of Skyrim.
Sadly, the character faces and animations are still Bethesda quality, but the voice acting is alright. BG3 is in no danger of being knocked out of its position for the next Game of the Year, though I wouldn't be surprised to see Starfield being far more long-lasting once the modders are set loose on it.

Of course, this is only 4 hours in. They may wow me yet.

[01101010]

You do get caught on the environment in places where you probably shouldn't. Getting a few spots where the step up is minor but you are stuck unless you jump up on it or move down a little. Other than that, pretty smooth. Ship exterior and interior are pretty nice. Interiors feel like it should, tight but not cramped.

[Riggswolfe]

I've put a ton of time into this. I think the biggest issue is that it has surprising depth in some of its systems but they're poorly explained. It has a ton more exploration than people give it credit for both in space and on land. The outpost and ship building have a lot of fun stuff in them. The ship building in particular is surprisingly easy to do once you experiment but again, tons of hidden stuff.  

Some examples:

Each ship maker has their own space station which has more parts than you find at starports. You can fast travel straight to mission locations even from the ground. If you're on a planet and put your target over those unexplored marks while in scan mode you can click on them or hit A on Xbox and it tells you what type of thing it is. It'll go from "unknown" to "structure" for example. There are tons of other things you can only find by experimenting and playing around. A TON.

This game is actually much, much, much bigger than BG3 and the main story is actually pretty good. Not as good as BG3s but good. Easily the best Bethesda has ever done. And it may be worth ignoring side content and doing the story alone because of how New Game+ works. Major spoilers...

[Falconeer]

Much much much bigger than BG3 sounds impossible. But to be clear, do you mean that it has "much much much" more handcrafted content than BG3? Or much much much procedural content?

[Khaldun]

I cannot imagine it is 'bigger' than BG3 in the depth of semi-scripted interactions with NPCs (not even just the origin characters). I can imagine it's bigger in terms of places to go and things to do.

[eldaec]

I can imagine it's bigger. Not the same quality, but it seems bigger, and with much more strategic freedom (though know where near bg3's tactical depth).

But what is putting me off this is just... how... slow.....

Its the most Bethesda thing that ever Bethed or Thesdered.

It is very pretty. Especially on a high contrast monitor this going to look amazing.

But the gameplay loop is just very long Bethesda conversations. Conversations and walking. And so much exposition through serious face dialog that I start to want the ithilids to take over. Also I've had enough of standard Bethesda mug shot pose for conversations. If this is going to be the whole game, surely we can get past that.

Combat and space flight is pretty bad. Especially at the start, it's less awful as you level up, but that isn't an excuse. In the end I'll want to come back to this when I have fewer other things I want to play. Right now, I just can't maintain interest.

[eldaec]

Much much much bigger than BG3 sounds impossible. But to be clear, do you mean that it has "much much much" more handcrafted content than BG3? Or much much much procedural content?

Much more handcrafted content. But what starfield doesn't is have six hidden ways to experience it as bg3 does.

Procedural is another layer on top of that.

On a straightforward blind play through I think you would bypass far more starfield content that you can revisit later, than you would bg3 content.

[Riggswolfe]

Much much much bigger than BG3 sounds impossible. But to be clear, do you mean that it has "much much much" more handcrafted content than BG3? Or much much much procedural content?

BG3 is a great game with a ton to do. But it is also far more linear than it appears and doesn't have the depth of content it tricks you into thinking it does. What it does have is a great story and great companion interactions.

Starfield is bigger because outside of the main story which is probably roughly the same length as BG3's (I think) it has just a metric shit ton of side content. Not just quests but things like playing in the ship builder in an attempt to make the ship of your dreams.  It also has endlessly repeating radiant quests which, to be fair, are fairly simplistic and repetitive.

That is to say nothing of sheer size in a more literal sense. I haven't hit an invisible wall on a planet yet and lots of times I will just pick a direction and just explore until I need a break or have to go back to sell stuff or something. BG3 environments are beautiful but are much smaller than the ones in Starfield.

[lamaros]

BG3 is a super linear game regarding plot and fights etc. Most of the variation is in dialogue reactions etc, but it doesn't lead to a different narrative experience. You might have 20+ dialogue reactions coded for a moment, but you will see that same moment every time you play.

Starfield is much more of a sandbox experience, for better or worse, and is a lot slower and more involved. I would expect for those who enjoy it Starfield will give them more game long term.

BG3, current state anyhow, you can pretty much see all the stuff in the game in one go if you take your time. Replaying for different choices will primarily lead to hearing a little bit of dialogue differences, you won't get different content.

I wouldn't really compare them as they're very different experiences.

[Khaldun]

For a game of the design structure of BG3, there's some pretty notable variability. I had a completely different experience with the end of Act 2 because I went to Shar's Temple before Moonrise Towers, so I had none of the infiltration experiences, I killed Balthazar without having any idea who he was, and the prisoners all died. The point is, the game was ready for that to happen, just as it is ready for Isobel to be captured (even though everybody's gonna save-scum to prevent it because it's very bad).

[lamaros]

I mean sure, there's lots of deletion of content if you do stuff. It's not really branching and giving you in depth alternatives though. You generally just get to the same point quicker.

There's some variation but I don't find it substantive.

[Khaldun]

You know, at some point, I'm not sure stories can meaningfully be branching in an infinite sense.

I mean, even in the most open of open world games, stuff stays on its own track. The Imperial-Nord shit in Skyrim recognizes that I'm the Dragonborn but the factions don't know that I'm also the head of the Thieves Guild and the most powerful wizard around and an assassin and so on. The variations are not cumulative and they don't lead to one of fifty different imagined end states that are fully cognizant of all the things I've done and choices I've made.

It's really not anything I expect. Not that it would matter if I did, since nothing has ever satisfied that standard at that level.

[Falconeer]

Lamaros you are basically calling a branch "deletion of content" and that sounds convenient. Isn't that always by definition the case with a branch, in anything? You are always "deleting" the branch you are not choosing even in real life.
BG3 has plenty of points, minor and major, where you can really approach something in different ways and get to not only a different line from the same character, but more lines OR CONTENT from characters that you'd never get to talk to in the first place. Khaldun's example is the first that came to my mind too as it's a pretty meningful branch and it can lead to recruit an NPC which in most normal plays is just another enemy that seems intended to be killed.

BG3 is 100% handcrafted and tied to a heroic narrative so obviously you can't flip it on its head entirely, but the game does the best job to memory in remembering your actions and choices. It's not perfect nor powered by an chatty AI, but what game does a better job at that, and does Starfield? I am fine with not comparing the two very different games and two very different approaches to "freedom in cRPGs", but the comparison was brought up even if only about sheer size while for what it's worth it spaces and maps are obviously larger in Starfield I am still not convinced that Starfield has more handcrafted content (procedural absolutely does not count) than BG3, or that it can in any way make the player feel more satisfyingly in control of choices or the narrative.

[lamaros]

I've played over 300 hours of BG3 between EA and release and I really like the game. I think the illusion of choice is done really well.

But the plot is much more linear than many many RPGs. There aren't many thing that aren't either directly connected to the main plot, or are pretty shallow.

This is quite noticeable on replays of the game and doesn't seem as much first up.

Starfield has a much more diverse set of content. So you can play through the game without touching a bunch of it more easily than in BG3.

They're not drastically different, but BG3 is a much more linear experience in my view. It might have the same amount of content, but the way you interact with that content is more closely directed.

[Khaldun]

I feel like there's a bit of goalpost moving going on here.

If you mean "there aren't a lot of empty FedEx quests that you take just to keep levelling up", well, ok then. I don't think those make a game "non-linear", because you're never under any illusion that they're anything *but* side quests meant to stretch out the gameplay time. I don't know that there's any RPG I can think of that made the sidequests compelling storytelling experiences except The Witcher 3, really. Some of Skyrim and Fallout 4/New Vegas' sidequests are somewhat compelling in their own right, and it's true that you can do those in any order, almost. (I mean, you can't just jump to north of New Vegas and do some of that content as soon as the Doc checks you out--the spatial layout of any RPG is in some sense a 'gate' that forces you to do some content in order while going from here to there). There are a few meaningful side adventures in BG3, though--the hag thing has its own arc and it's not at all tied into the central questline; you can skip the Zhentarim and the artist (and honestly the continuation of the artist in the city is such an annoyance that you ought to). But nobody's yammering at you to get back to the main quest if you take time out to do those things. You can do a lot of the content in all sorts of ways that create meaningful branches. I never even talked to Minthara, I just snuck up and murdered her and had no idea until much later that she's a potential companion. Now if you want to point out that a Minthara-inclusive run is less fun because so many branches shut down, well, yes, but it's sure as shit different.

Give me a sketch here of your spectrum of linearity in RPGs. What's the least linear? What's the most linear? What's BG3 closest to when you say "it's much more linear than many many"?

[eldaec]

Well, all Bethesda games are less linear than BG3.

And someone is yammering at you to get back to the main quest if you do all those things. Your god damn cleric.

There is definitely more stuff in starfield. Average quality level of that stuff is definitely higher in bg3.

[Khaldun]

Well, let me get deeper into Starfield and I'll have a better sense of the comparison.

The only person in BG3 who seems inclined to yammer at me is the person inside the Astral Prism and that's really storytelling rather than the devs trying to keep you off the branch points. (E.g., that person has a reason to try and control what you do and don't do).

[Tebonas]

What are we doing here? Comparing a sandbox game to a classical CRPG and trying to prove one is more linear than the other? What are we proving next, that water is more wet than dirt?

The main quest in all Bethesda games is just as linear. Its just that they use their main quests to open up more and more quest hubs and you have the illusion of choice.

In Skyrim your main quest is to kill the big bad Dragon in 17 easy quest steps. Sure, you can play civil war in between, but the game doesn't care. Also, no variance, that Dragon ought to be killed.

In Fallout 4 you either kill or join your son. Only variances are the end slides and a few faction specific sidequest.

Don't get me wrong, I love all Bethesda games and played each of them well beyond 200 hours (except Fallout 3, but when I played it that game killed the protagonist at the end of the main quest). But they are not games with complex narratives and seldom give you more than binary choices. Provide a few dungeons with randomly generated quests (like Curse of the Azure Bonds did) and you are 90% there with Baldurs Gate 3.

[schild]

obligatory we're talking about it in discord comment

I think I'm 40 hours in. Gonna play NG+1 slow as hell. Might never go to NG+2.

It's a very good game.

[01101010]

obligatory we're talking about it in discord comment

I think I'm 40 hours in. Gonna play NG+1 slow as hell. Might never go to NG+2.

It's a very good game.

Shockingly for me. Fallout was bleh for me, but this game resonates with me.

[schild]

obligatory we're talking about it in discord comment

I think I'm 40 hours in. Gonna play NG+1 slow as hell. Might never go to NG+2.

It's a very good game.

Shockingly for me. Fallout was bleh for me, but this game resonates with me.

The bad & mid areas are over 500x faster in Starfield. Don't like something? You'll be done in 5 minutes.

[Khaldun]

The hook in Skyrim is technically you can go anywhere, but mostly on the first playthrough you say "oh wow, look at that ruin across the river, cool." You go there and yes, it's cool and dangerous.  Then you go to the town, you pick up a few quests, and you're off to Whiterun. You get a feel for the world and then there's the dragon attack. There's a big gameplay loop in that, and it takes a long time before you really fully grasp the following: most places are the same inside; most NPCs have a few lines of dialogue; the vastness is a bit of an illusion. But there is a fair amount of hand-crafting and there are 5-6 different layouts/looks for undergrounds/adventure sites; there are a lot of quirky fun mini-quests.

So far Starfield is 'technically' vaster but feels smaller; it's a universe that feels like one location. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places, but the whole thing feels empty and hollow.

[Riggswolfe]

The hook in Skyrim is technically you can go anywhere, but mostly on the first playthrough you say "oh wow, look at that ruin across the river, cool." You go there and yes, it's cool and dangerous.  Then you go to the town, you pick up a few quests, and you're off to Whiterun. You get a feel for the world and then there's the dragon attack. There's a big gameplay loop in that, and it takes a long time before you really fully grasp the following: most places are the same inside; most NPCs have a few lines of dialogue; the vastness is a bit of an illusion. But there is a fair amount of hand-crafting and there are 5-6 different layouts/looks for undergrounds/adventure sites; there are a lot of quirky fun mini-quests.

So far Starfield is 'technically' vaster but feels smaller; it's a universe that feels like one location. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places, but the whole thing feels empty and hollow.

Starfield is odd in that it is easy to miss tons of content. For example, if you simply fast travel all the time you will miss a ton of random encounters in space and things to see and do in space. This is largely true of all Bethesda games, fast traveling makes you miss content but I think it might be even more true in Starfield.

The planets, even the barren ones have varied areas in them which is easy to overlook. These areas are also tied to resources. Iron, for example, is usually in mountains and aluminum is in craters. On non-barren worlds the variation goes further as there are different biomes. Land in a forested area and you'll see different stuff than if you land in an artic or desert area.

When I mentioned how Starfield is much larger than BG3 I was thinking both in terms of sheer scale (duh right?) but also in hand crafted content.

I'm pretty sure the two main stories are roughly similar lengths. BG3s might be slightly longer.

BG3 has more "core" companions and thus more companion stories. Shadowheart's story in particular is pretty in-depth. Starfield's Constellation companions have a decent amount of depth to them though they sometimes get annoying when they keep bugging you about wanting to talk. "Sarah, we're being shot at by pirates, can it wait?"

Starfield has at least 5 faction quest lines which are all probably three fourths of the size of the main quest in either game.

Sidequests, it's hard to be sure. I'm not counting the mission boards or the other generic quests. But I have a metric ton of stuff I haven't followed up on and some of those side quests end up branching off into their own in-depth mini-stories. Like the miner foreman on Mars. If help him you get a small quest chain that is kind of neat.

I love BG3. It's a hell of a game but I don't know if it has much replayability for me personally as it is a very linear game. I feel like other than minor variations I saw the vast majority of BG3's content in one playthrough. To be fair I damn near did a grid search in every map and explored everything.

Starfield, I'm over 100 hours into and I haven't even done 4 of the faction questlines yet and haven't finished the one I started. I've just gotten utterly absorbed in other stuff. I'm finally doing the UC Vanguard questline and plan to hit the other factions after that.