The game is aggressively Bethesda but I'm enjoying the visuals and sniffing the 3d model of every insignificant bit of detritis in the world. I saw a very nice looking bowl, maybe THE bowl of all videogames. Other than that the narrative and main story has already lost my interest after about 10 minutes and I'll be off being a space menace if the game will let me.
Once i found out I can travel using the ship in scanner mode it doesn't feel like a map simulator anymore.
Also the chef having a perk for dueling tickles me.
Game also runs like shit on PC but digital foundry showed most settings being on medium yields good performance with no noticable quality loss.
I played for about 14 hours and got stuck in a quest and my game was fucked and luckily Steam refunded me because at that point I just wasn't having fun anyways.
There is so much about the game that is antiquated as fuck. Like the dialogues, for instance. Maybe it's because I've played some games in the last few years that have some really cinematic and impactful dialogue scenes, like Ghost of Tsushima, or FF16, or even recently Baldur's Gate 3. It's like Bethesda just doesn't care about how dialogue is presented in their role-playing game. That deadpan stare into the camera is so off-putting. It was outdated 12 years ago for Skyrim but we were just starting to get some real bangers in that area then so it was permissible. Now it's just embarrassing. A friend and I agreed that the androids in Detroit: Become Human are more human that the NPCs in a Bethesda game and it's not even close.
Then there is all the little shit. Why no map for the custom-built areas, especially ones involving the main story? Why does nobody react to me accidentally discharging my weapon in New Atlantis? Why is the Fallout 4 color LUT on everything? It doesn't even change per planet. Why does the inventory UI feel like a downgrade where I need a mod to make it somewhat functional? This was a problem in Skyrim and they learned nothing. The inability to kill big story NPCs even when it seems like a completely logical and appropriate time to kill them if that was the playthrough you were going for.
It's so many little things that just feel so lazy on their part, too. For example, I did a quest on Mars to put up pictures of a frog for a boy around the station. When you put up the posters he gives you on the walls it's just a jpg image pasted there. Like, pixel perfect edges like a CSGO clan spray. Except, at least half the clans in CSGO take some time to make the edges of their spray look like its paper peeling off the wall or spray paint overspray or something. The thing is, once you start noticing the complete lack of polish in this game in one or two places you start noticing it EVERYWHERE.
I laughed when the Starfield reddit freaked that IGN America gave it a 7/10. I felt that was generous, if anything. I can't believe this game got 10/10 from people. It's not a bad game by any stretch. Many people will enjoy it. It does some things right. The guns feel good for once in a Bethesda game. The ship-building is cool and innovative. Hell, I'm not even against their loading screens in principle. 10/10, though? Like, perfect score, no flaws? Fuck. Off.