Over the Labor Day weekend here in the States I played a LOT of Starfield, at least for me. I’ve got about 16 hours on my ‘main’ game and 4-5 on my “wander aimlessly” game, plus another couple hours in false starts that I abandoned. This is more gaming hours in a single weekend than I’ve spent in probably years. Suffice to say I am LOVING Starfield.
But soon the floodgates will open, while at the same time I’m going back to work and I’ll be back to maybe being able to sneak in an hour/day and I’m going to fall way behind the crowds in terms of progress. I’ve so far mostly avoided spoilers and I’d like to keep doing that as much as possible.
It has been a long time since I played a high-profile game this early. I don’t sign up for betas, generally don’t purchase Early Access games and tend to wait until a game has aged a bit before playing. So in this way Starfield has been unusual for me in terms of my current gaming habits.
Now back in the day I was ALWAYS there Day 1, sharing tips and opinions and really enjoying the dialogue around a new game.
What Starfield is teaching me is that I don’t really enjoy that dialogue anymore. I have, just a few times, gone in search of some info when I couldn’t figure something out (like the ship-building UI on console kind of breaks my brain) and what I’m seeing when I search for Starfield is a lot of fanboyism from both sides. Starfield is either the biggest piece of shit game ever made, or it is a game that will bring about world peace and cure all disease on earth. There is very little middle ground.
I find no value and no joy in that. I am tempted to correct the egregious mistakes but what a waste of me time, right? No one wants to be corrected on-line. Half the bad info is probably intentional. And don’t get me wrong, Starfield has some super clunky aspects and some really disappointing design decisions. But in spite of those I’m having a blast. Reading about everything that is wrong with the game isn’t going to increase my enjoyment, I don’t think.
So yeah, as of today I’m just going to go quiet and enjoy playing the game over here in my single player ‘gaming is my escapism’ cocoon. I guess I could keep writing about it, but that will take time away from playing — I wish I was playing right now as I watch the clock tick toward bedtime! And it isn’t like I’m going to change anyone’s mind or draw any revelatory conclusions that no one else has. Though I wish people would figure out you can fast travel from one planet to another so they’d stop bitching about “all the cut scenes” you have to sit through to travel. (Of course just as many complain that moving around the galaxy is much too easy and there is too much fast travel.)
If you decide to play I very much hope you get as much enjoyment from it as I have been getting! If I do run anything that really feels like a fun-killer, I will come back and post about it, but otherwise take my silence as a sign that I’m enjoying myself!
Is the game even out of early access yet? The googles say it’s released… tomorrow.
I know that YouTube wants me to know how best to get 100% completion, how to restart with New Game+, and the best mods to use.
It feels to me like the game has been worked over, digested and spit out again as yesterday’s news before it has even been officially released. That’s the internet culture in which we find ourselves.
I was thinking of starting Baldur’s Gate 3, but it already seems like it’s too late to get started. People have already hacked in new races, plots and such.
The whole thing is tiring. I’m finding retro games to be a lot more relaxing, tbh.
Yup I find it tiring too. I think that’s why generally I’ve been so enjoying older (though not retro) games. It doesn’t take long for the Internet to move on to the next big thing and then the “algorithm” stops shoving them in your face so much.
You’re correct in that the game isn’t officially out until tomorrow. By the way, another controversy was around which outlets got early review copies and which didn’t, because big games like this generate a lot of revenue when they first come out and outlets that didn’t get early review copies are missing out on that revenue. Eurogamer was one mentioned that didn’t get early copies.
And it kind of boggles my mind that, here is Bethesda’s first new IP in 20 years or something like that, and first new Bethesda Game Studios title since Fallout 4 came out in 2015, and there’s all this content out there aimed at getting you through it as quickly and as easily as possible. It’s almost like “having played the game” is more important than the enjoyment of playing it (assuming this content is actually getting consumed). [And PS, on Normal difficulty the game is none too hard anyway.]
That’s how I felt about Saints Row. The hate was waaaay more vocal and didn’t jive at all with my personal experience. I really got a kick out of it and don’t understand the hate. To each his own, that’s the healthy way to approach it, right? Criticism has a place, but the vitriol just relects bad on the poster, imo.
I feel like that’s another example of where people wanted the game to be one thing but that’s not what the developers built, or intended to build. So instead of shrugging and saying “OK well that’s not for me” people would just go nuts about how terrible it was.
One of the new things about Starfield is people ranting because it allows you to choose your pronouns. Can you imagine getting upset about that?