Starfield: 20 Hours Later

First: my intention is to get some progress made on PACE dev this weekend. I've been buried under Starfield for the last week, so please just be patient with me. Being immersed in vanilla Bethesda AI again has been a bit of cold water shock, and I'll need some PANPC/PACE therapy to deal with it.

I'm now at about the 20 hour mark of Starfield. 

When I did the first impressions video, I'd only played the first hour: the introduction scene, the first couple of fights, a little bit of the space game. Now that I'm much further along, I still stand by my overall impressions, but I want to clarify some things with a bit of context and perspective.

It's a slow start and Starfield's not great at explaining itself. Bethesda isn't kidding when they say it takes about 12 hours to really get the hang of the game. Space travel isn't entirely intuitive. there are a lot of new mechanics to learn, and you're going to need to learn those mechanics before you truly start to enjoy the game. Expect to occasionally check Reddit to find out how to do things. The groove for me literally kicked in at about 12-13 hours.

Once you DO get there, it's a pretty fun game. Starfield to me feels a bit like Eve Online, a bit like No Man's Sky, a lot like Fallout 3. If you can get past the initial learning curve - and assuming that this particular balance of RPG, exploration, and combat is your jam - you're going to be hard pressed to run out of stuff to do. Bethesda's right, there's probably hundreds of hours of novel gameplay under the hood of Starfield.

Starfield ISN'T Fallout 4. I've been telling people that if you thought Fallout 4 had too much combat and not enough exploration, Starfield may be your game. However, if hearing everyone's backstories drives you nuts and you just want to get on with shooting people, you will likely hate this game. Fallout 4 was a shooter with RPG elements; Starfield is an RPG with shooter elements. If you don't want the RPG stuff, stay on Fallout 4 (or go play Prey again).

The combat AI isn't great. For obvious reasons I can't ignore this. With the exception of cover use (which is exceptional), the Starfield combat AI feels like a regression to at least Fallout 3's AI. Enemies are threats because they're bullet sponges and engage at distances and in numbers. They're terrible at close range, can't melee worth crap, and often stand in the middle of the room staring at the walls like they'd just had a stroke. 

Companion AI is worse. I don't even know what to say here. If anything, companion AI is worse than Fallout 3, and that's saying something. Vanilla Cait was more reliable on her worst day.

Level design is superb. While Bethesda is bad at AI, they're really good at level design, and that shows in the combat interiors. That's what makes the combat segments fun and engaging: the AI's are idiots but the terrain gives them lots of cover, choke points, triangulation opportunities and multiple attack angles in three dimensions. This game is full of Corvegas.

Things start to get a little repetitious once you get off quests. Planet-based POIs repeat a bit more often than they should, and once you know the floor plans, you know exactly where the secret passages are and where the contraband stash is and where the boss enemies are and that makes the entire map just a way to stock up on cheap ammo. 

Enemy classes are mostly the same. The mercenaries and the religious zealots fight the same, only with different armor and guns. Again, mostly just ammo stock up runs.

Ships and outposts are the new settlements. I've never really been a builder, so this hasn't been the side of the game I've really dug into, but people are telling me that this has been a lot of fun for them. Personally I've been stealing ships and slowly gravitating to a criminal lifestyle.

There's always something to do. This is where I keep thinking of my time playing Eve Online: if you want to fight today, fight, Or spend the day mining. Or exploring. Or trading. Or collecting bounties. Or doing courier runs. Or whatever. Like Eve, Starfield is a sprawling, massive activity sandbox that has something for whatever you're in the mood for today. There's far more everyday activities available than there ever was in Fallout 4.

I love the music. This game has nearly SIX HOURS of Zur soundtrack, and it's really, really good. I never really cared for the Fallout 4 score; it was okay, but just always felt flat and a bit phoned-in to me. I'm recognizing old Zur exploration themes from Fallout 3 in Starfield and loving them. Exploring the score is as much of the game as exploring the abandoned research stations.

I'm sure I'll feel differently about some things after another ten or twenty hours in. My overall impression of Starfield changes a bit with each game session.

The only thing I can say wholeheartedly and with full confidence here is that no one should dive into Starfield expecting a new and improved Skyrim or Fallout 4. Starfield is its own beast, with its own personality, and it will attract its own player base. To enjoy this game, you MUST be willing and able to accept it for what it is, and not for what you thought you wanted it to be. 

I stand by my 8/10 rating from the video: very good, not flawless, but will likely grow into greatness with time (and mods). And I'm still very glad that I preordered. 

- G.