So, Starfield Opinion:
My Starfield opinion after 17-18 Hours of Gameplay since early access release:
-Graphics and bugs: Of course its the best looking Bethesda game ever. It what’s important to note , is that I don’t mean that as in “Starfield looks better than FOâ€
I mean that as how did FO4 or Skyrim graphics looked in comparison to their current era game releases (much worse and outdated )
And how Starfield fares agains current gen titles (very respectable effort)
Neither I or anyone was expecting a Bethesda game to be a graphical showcase , and it’s not in the fight for being one of the best looking triple A games from 2023 , but it’s definitely not in the discussion for being one of the bad looking ones.
It’s a good looking game , period, and I’ll even dare to call it a really good looking game , if it wasn’t for a bit ir inconsistency; most of the game looks really impressive, but there’s quite a few caves and planet parts , where terrain and rocks have low enough quality too look like fallout 4 for a moment. But I’d say that’s still a minority of the content , most of the time , the game looks beautiful.
Same story with bugs , it’s not better than Skyrim and rollout in the sense that it has less bugs than those , it’s better in the sense that it has less bugs than all of the triple A titles I have played in 2023 so far , and I think I have pretty much played them all , since I’m into triple A games (unluckily for me)
I’m only 17-18 hours in , this might change , but so far I give you my word I haven’t seen a single bug.
World building , npc interactions , main quest and side quests:
It’s not only a Bethesda game through and through , is very probably Bethesda being better than ever at what they where already the best at.
I saw a couple reviews talking about how a bit of the magic of wandering around and stumbling upon interesting stuff was lost.
What are they on about , they must have been so laser focused on putting a 100 hours in , while recording and having the review ready on time , that they forgot about enjoying the game , I can’t get myself to do the main quest , because I keep stumbling into interesting NPCs that give me side quests I feel so intrigued about , I keep choosing to do them. And the main quest looks super intriguing , but it’s that they nailed the Skyrim and oblivion thing again , you just want to immerse yourself into the world they created.
It’s truly one of Bethesda’s best works ever.
Music and sound design:This game’s soundtrack is a masterpiece , absolutely wonderful, worth making a Spotify playlist , but that is no news.
It’s the sound desing of the game that has me in love.
Not only the sound of the ships and the rattling and rumbling inside the cabin , and how good the weapons sound , and environmental sounds that are so immersive you fell like you are there . But all the little details , the sound effects from the menus , when scrolling or selecting things ,the sound effects when looting stuff , the sound effects when lock picking , when finishing missions , when gaining skill points etc every sound is sooo satisfying , I can’t ever praise enough how good the sound design is! And I’m a profesional music producer & audio engender im quite picky with this stuff.
-gameplay and combat: I’ll keep it short and simple:
It’s very very good , combat feels good and well polished , enemies no longer have the bullet sponge feeling fo4 had and AI has been greatly improved , exploring also feels great thanks to ledge grabbing now , and although I like to play in first person , third person movement feels great now , it doesn’t feels janky like in older titles.
Exploration: I was worried about this , after watching the reviews heavily critiquing the loading screens….
Be not , it’s the first time in almost a decade since I felt so attracted to explore a game world. The sheer size and scale of things is mesmerizing… would it have been nice to be able to manually land and take off from planets? Yes. Is it worth it as a price for having so many planets contain Interesting hand crafted stuff ? Yes
I truly thought having the game divided in loading screens was going ti be a deal breaker , it truly isnt .
Turns out that with a game this big , after the awe of a a couple initial take offs , we would all have been fast traveling anyway , I repeat , it would have been a nice feature , but is truly much less important that it looks like in the grand scheme of things.
Exploring feels great, and I think 100 h can be considered a low playtime for this game. People is going to play this for hundreds of hours.
Mods!
Day 1 and I already have: dlss 3.5 ( only the upscaler no FG or RR)
A fog slider set to 100
And reshade effect for HDR support.
Mods are going ti be crazy ……
This game deserves nothing below a 9.5/10
