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.
A modern game should have been able to do this all with seamless loading screens, too. I, too, hate the "There will be no cell phones/e-mail in the future". Anything that requires communication should be doable from a console in your ship unless there's a very good reason why you can't. Like if there's a nebula that does space bullshit to cellphone reception then sure, go there. But if you're just having a conversation that should be something you do from your ship or a phone booth or whatever.
Beth made a game with a space aesthetic, but they didn't drop all the crap that only makes sense in a quasi-medieval game. Why are you walking anywhere? Where's your rover or go cart or ATV or atmospheric shuttle? Why are you picking up random bullshit to sell for chump change? Why do you have to kill space rabbits for glue, why can't you just order 20 tons of glue delivered to your location? Why are you surveying for common light elements? There's no way it makes more sense financially to mine and refine your own aluminum isntead of just buying it by the ton from an established producer.
When Todd said "Skyrim in Space" he really meant it. Just tons of game elements that don't make any sense in a futuristish spaceish game.
Seemless loading should very much be possible and very necessary for this kind of game. I can only imagine its an engine limitation they're having a hard time resolving.
It doesn't even need to be seamless. We've been using the Airlock/warp space/elevator trick to hide loading screens for decades!
One of the things I found in game to be obnoxious is when you go to one settlement on mars to go into the actual part with people in it you need to cycle the airlock, so you're stuck waiting for the airlock to cycle before it opens and loads in the interior. There is no actual airlock. And then through fast traveling, you're placed right in front of that airlock meaning you're forced to wait at the airlock a bunch of times.
It's really frustrating because its such a basic narrative tool to factor in what routes of communication are available, as well as the time and space required.
I remember an early plot point in the Shadowrun SNES game is to try and get ahold of a credit card and a working phone so you can actually call people, because theres a price on your head so every time you step outside theres basically at least one assassin trying to gun you down, which makes it pretty undesirable to try and take the subway everywhere rather than making a phone call.
And then you can instead there take into account that remote communication is unsecure, so perhaps you can't call people sometimes, or you have to use more secure methods that take more time and are limited in scope, there's just a lot you can do when the default form of communication isn't just teleporting to peoples houses to personally chat with them for 1 single minute then teleporting away again.
Remember back in the 00s when everyone having a cellphone was just starting to be a thing, and movie writers had no idea what to do about it? So many plots relied on not being able to reach people at important moments, and suddenly everyone was carrying phones around and writers just had no idea.