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Starfield's planets aren't all interesting, but they're not all "supposed to be Disney World" (www.vg247.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/gaming@beehaw.org
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You'll probably find that a lot of planets in Starfield are pretty boring, but Bethesda says that's kind of the point.

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[–] 10 points 3 years ago (15 children)

"all these planet are boring"

Yeah, as if Mars and Pluto is interesting. People want this game to fail because it isn't a better game than the darling Baldur's Gate 3. And gamer has been like this for a while: either the game is 10/10 or it's shit/10, there's no between.

I remember the time when zelda botw came out and jim sterling gave it a 7/10,people went banana over that lol. Starfield and Witcher 3 may very well be a 6 or 7/10 game, and that's okay.

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  • [+] 11 points 3 years ago (4 children)
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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    I think the big issue with a personal preference of realism vs. Fantasy is that Starfield has no commitment to realism in its execution (I say this with 12 hours played before I gave up). It is very much made to cater to lowest common denominator in other space travel things. The ship movement is very primitive and simplified. Travelling to new solar systems, landing on a planet, etc. Is done through fast travelling on the map to connect the different cells. It does not feel immersive in the slightest to me, and I have really enjoyed the "realism" of games like Elite Dangerous in the past.

    Most damning is the lack of environmental planet differences. The only affect of a planets negative traits is suit protection reduction. There is no life support, your oxygen is just a stamina system. There is no vehicles. You are just running across barren, boring, procedural planets with none of the pomp and circumstance of games that have done effective space exploration.

    Maybe in 2 years of mods you might have a more realistic experience out of starfield.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago*

    Any Bethesda game is essentially a mod vehicle with an RPG tacked on anyway. I think it's entirely on brand that they didn't go all in on hard sci fi for vanilla. I don't think that's incompatible with having a lot of planets that are mostly barren filler; I'm never going to explore 1000 detailed planets, and rescuing someone from a crash on a barren moon or finding a smuggler base on a frozen rock helps to keep the more interesting places feeling cool. There are still more interesting planets than I'm likely to ever get through.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago*

    I can’t remember much of how Starfield was marketed but I remember the “1000 planets” thing being parroted a lot. Was the fact that these planets were going to be realistically portrayed and mostly empty wastelands something that was made clear during marketing?

    They said that about 10% of planets would have life, and that one of the things they wanted to portray was an IRL astronaut's quote of being in space as "magnificent desolation."

    https://www.pcgamer.com/about-10-of-starfields-1000-planets-have-life-on-them-as-the-game-tries-to-capture-the-magnificent-desolation-of-space-says-todd-howard/

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (9 children)

    The point of a game is to be fun in some sense of the word, not to depict Mars as scientificly accurate as possible, unless it's Scientificly Accurate Mars Simulator.
    If the planneta are boring, then the game about exploring those planets are probably failed at being fun, and that's kind of irregardless of what people want.
    Personally I would like all the games to be good, for example.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I dunno, I don’t think the point of all art is to be “fun”. There’s plenty of examples of games that aren’t necessarily fun but do something interesting in some sense or inspire other emotions. Exploring a bunch of dead and boring planets may not be fun and maybe it’s not compelling or worth doing in Starfield, but I think it can be interesting to have something more “boring” most of the time to have other moments stand out… and sometimes something being boring or painful is part of the experience and it wouldn’t be as worthwhile without, like for example particularly difficult games can be pretty painful to play through, but sometimes having gone through the painful thing is a huge part of why you care about the experience.

    Of course not everything is for everybody, and more “boring” experiences in general are probably not what the average person playing video games is into… but there’s plenty of us who like a good boring or tedious or painful slog every once in a while :). Maybe it’s rewarding, maybe it sets the atmosphere, maybe it’s meaningful in some other way… I get it, but I think it’s a little sad to reduce games to “just supposed to be fun!” It’s an awesome art form and I love seeing other creative things done with it.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    It's a space exploration game with thousands of planet, they can depict planet being a barren rock and can be fun.

    Personally i don't think all games are good, arguing with people parroting that is a waste of time. Personally Witcher 3 is mediocre, but i'm allowing people to love it and see it as 10/10. Game is personal taste, if you don't like that sort of thing then it isn't for you, no such thing as "all game is good".

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    can depict planet being a barren rock and can be fun.

    And that will be good then. My point was, that games should sacrifice realism in favour of fun and criticism of "yeah it's boring, but it's realistic" is fundamentally wrong.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    I think in Starfield case it's less of sacrifice fun for realism and more of having these realism for a reason. From the review alone, the location is boring, and that's by design, because you can either ignore it or interact with it, like gather resource or build a base. There's thousands of planet, it's not realistic to all be handcrafted and interesting, because what's interesting for the first 10 times will get boring when you do it 50 times.

    There's a reason why they design it that way, and i think it's rather fair for this sort of game.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    That depends what you're going in expecting. Bethesda have been very clear that this isn't a Space Opera but more hard-sci-fi. I don't expect cities on every planet and alien political intrigue. I expect a cold, barren and uncaring universe that humans are trying to tame.

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