I feel like I can commend them on the launch being significantly less buggy than other titles in prior years (big yikes to FO76). Other than that, the game was pretty bland. I got bored of it rather than annoyed with it. Usually a Bethesda game will annoy me about 10-15 hours in with some weird game-breaking bug, but I played probably about 50 hours of Starfield before just getting bored of the same spacers in the same tunnels strung together by quick travel menus.
The big thing that was missing for me was culture. And it made me appreciate Cyberpunk 2077 that much more. There are people everywhere in Starfield, but the only real differences between them are that they’re generic American with cowboy hat versus generic American with business-casual clothes versus generic American with streetpunk clothes stood under neon lights. There’s no difference in how people talk. Even the people who’d never interacted with anyone outside of their own community before - who thought they were the last remaining humans - felt the same. There are people everywhere but no real personality.
Versus Cyberpunk 2077, where CDPR created so much culture. There are hours and hours’ worth of original songs for the game. There are adverts everywhere that really capture the feeling of the world. People from different parts of the city and different groups have their own dialects. There’s so much slang invented for the game. Even the architecture and design of the city tells stories. Sure, the average NPC has no real personality or routine on an individual level, but the world and culture are so well fleshed out. Starfield has none of that.
I also did seem to get hit with quite a few game-breaking bugs in Starfield. I couldn’t progress the temple questline - they gave no no powers and the quest didn’t advance properly. I had some terrible bugs regarding ship ownership that resulted in me having to load a save from 20 hours previous. It was just a disaster for me, and really killed any enjoyment I may have been getting from the game.
To be completely fair, a lot of the world already existed with the cyberpunk ttrpg, but this is an incredible point.
I’m starting to become disturbed by how amazingly well starfield makes everyone think about what exactly makes other games feel amazing. I wouldn’t have even considered the culture present in cyberpunk, because it feels so real and natural.
Starfield is like, the hazy silhouette of a real civilisation. There are buildings and people in them, and sometimes the people go to different buildings. That’s a perfect description of the real world right? 100% immersion
