In my opinion, no it isn’t worth it. It isn’t even worth it for free. Maybe if you have unlimited free time, but no one does. It isn’t fallout in space. A big part of Fallout is the world, and scavenging for stuff. Starfield doesn’t have that. It has guns, and that’s as far as it goes. It also has the (lack of) dialogue options from FO4 (which they’ve said was an error they’ve learned from, but it’s still there just not on a wheel now). Besides that, no.
I love sci-fi, so I was willing to forgive a lot. It just wasn’t enjoyable to play. It constantly reminds you you’re playing a game by how often you have to navigate menus, while FO typically kept you in the world as much as it could, even going so far as to make the menus diegetic. None of that exists for Starfield. Every menu is a very generic video game menu and to go anywhere you have to go through the menu to tavel at least once, if not two or more times. Scanning planets is done through the menu. Traveling between planets is all in the menu. You’ll also likely constantly be dealing with weight, which means you’ll be fiddling with more menus. It’s not great.
I’m sure once mod tools are out we’ll see a lot of this be fixed, but currently it’s just not enjoyable. Give it a year or so. It’ll still be around, and maybe cheaper.
The gameplay I watched raised some of the same concerns. Looting without purpose beyond selling it, and so many menus to do anything. Another is the planets. Is it really just land, go to place far as fuck away, loot, then return? I get that it’s a galaxy and people are going to be spread out, but it’s jarring how…empty it feels? In Skyrim and Fallout the journey is the fun, you can walk around and something bizarre or interesting will happen. I’m not expecting space to be filled to the brim, but the planets are empty feeling too? My expectation was you could detect things in space or on planets and they would be like the dungeons or vaults, with unique little stories that tie together if you explore enough.
That last but of your comment is true. There are points of interest you can land at and you’ll likely land right next to it, if not on a landing pad for it. These will also sometimes be handcrafted and have story elements attached.
Beyond that, yeah it’s pretty empty. Honestly though, I think the planets are too full for nothing to be happening on them. There’s so many facilities and outposts on planets you can find while exploring that it feels like there should be other things happening. We should be able to land at outposts from orbit, or choose to land somewhere isolated where it’s mostly just empty, besides natural things.
The fact that there’s no almost no activity in space despite all these outposts kills it for me. The space aspect is totally seperate from the rest of the game. Almost nothing ever happens in space and it never effects anything in the universe. There are pirates, but there should be shipping lines and cargo ships, as well as colony ships and things like that to steal from. There is the occasional handcrafted encounter like this, but it’s never related to things going on around you, just randomly selected. They also never effect anything else outside that encounter.
The world just doesn’t feel alive. Skyrim and Fallout tried to make the world feel real and lived in. It made sense how goods and people traveled around. Starfield doesn’t even attempt this even in the main cities really. Everything is so static and boring.
In my opinion, no it isn’t worth it. It isn’t even worth it for free. Maybe if you have unlimited free time, but no one does. It isn’t fallout in space. A big part of Fallout is the world, and scavenging for stuff. Starfield doesn’t have that. It has guns, and that’s as far as it goes. It also has the (lack of) dialogue options from FO4 (which they’ve said was an error they’ve learned from, but it’s still there just not on a wheel now). Besides that, no.
I love sci-fi, so I was willing to forgive a lot. It just wasn’t enjoyable to play. It constantly reminds you you’re playing a game by how often you have to navigate menus, while FO typically kept you in the world as much as it could, even going so far as to make the menus diegetic. None of that exists for Starfield. Every menu is a very generic video game menu and to go anywhere you have to go through the menu to tavel at least once, if not two or more times. Scanning planets is done through the menu. Traveling between planets is all in the menu. You’ll also likely constantly be dealing with weight, which means you’ll be fiddling with more menus. It’s not great.
I’m sure once mod tools are out we’ll see a lot of this be fixed, but currently it’s just not enjoyable. Give it a year or so. It’ll still be around, and maybe cheaper.
The gameplay I watched raised some of the same concerns. Looting without purpose beyond selling it, and so many menus to do anything. Another is the planets. Is it really just land, go to place far as fuck away, loot, then return? I get that it’s a galaxy and people are going to be spread out, but it’s jarring how…empty it feels? In Skyrim and Fallout the journey is the fun, you can walk around and something bizarre or interesting will happen. I’m not expecting space to be filled to the brim, but the planets are empty feeling too? My expectation was you could detect things in space or on planets and they would be like the dungeons or vaults, with unique little stories that tie together if you explore enough.
That last but of your comment is true. There are points of interest you can land at and you’ll likely land right next to it, if not on a landing pad for it. These will also sometimes be handcrafted and have story elements attached.
Beyond that, yeah it’s pretty empty. Honestly though, I think the planets are too full for nothing to be happening on them. There’s so many facilities and outposts on planets you can find while exploring that it feels like there should be other things happening. We should be able to land at outposts from orbit, or choose to land somewhere isolated where it’s mostly just empty, besides natural things.
The fact that there’s no almost no activity in space despite all these outposts kills it for me. The space aspect is totally seperate from the rest of the game. Almost nothing ever happens in space and it never effects anything in the universe. There are pirates, but there should be shipping lines and cargo ships, as well as colony ships and things like that to steal from. There is the occasional handcrafted encounter like this, but it’s never related to things going on around you, just randomly selected. They also never effect anything else outside that encounter.
The world just doesn’t feel alive. Skyrim and Fallout tried to make the world feel real and lived in. It made sense how goods and people traveled around. Starfield doesn’t even attempt this even in the main cities really. Everything is so static and boring.