#starfield critical

[silent-moons-camp]

Do I have to say it. Do I have to post about Tumblr etiquette again

If all you want to say about Starfield is that it's garbage, leave it in the Starfield Critical tag, or don't tag it as Starfield at all. It's really fucking bothersome to keep seeing all that shit.

I am more than aware of this game's flaws, and if you aren't going to have an actual conversation about it, then take your negativity elsewhere. I'd be more than happy to talk about its issues from a constructive criticism standpoint, but if the only thing you have to say is "this is the worst thing I've ever played" or something along those lines, then you can skidaddle out of the main Starfield tag.

Also, bigots can fuck off also. Starfield has a decent amount of queer representation (we can argue about whether or not it's good rep but that's not the point of this post) and has no space for trump supporters or the like. (don't know why anyone like that is on this hellsite in the first place)

Leave us fans of Starfield in peace, okay? Thanks

[aro-pancake]

My dearest, Bethesda,

We need to talk

Now.

I'm watching my boyfriend play Starfield, and his ship is a bloody maze.

We can't walk around in there. We know "where" everything is, but we can't find it while walking around inside.

Let us choose where our doors will be! Let us choose where the ladders will be without having to add 1x1 parts. Let us make the doors all match. Let us edit and decorate our ships because I spend more time on that rust bucket than I do in the penthouse the UC gave me because it's worthless to try and decorate it only for us to loose everything the second we reload the map!

Give me a way to add a bounty board on my ship so I don't have to risk going through the cities and getting shot at, or worse: arrested!

Also, GIVE US RADIOS! Planet exploration will become so much better if we can listen to our Broadway tunes in game (that I won't have to pause manually for a dialogue), like, yk... FALLOUT! Come on! Gimme a radio called "Old Earth Radio" and put on some music! Put one SSNN radio so we can listen to the news and get some more activities! Give me original music from the artists we see posters of all over the Starfield!

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

STARFIELD WON MOST INNOVATIVE GAMEPLAY ON STEAM AWARDS I'M FUCKING DONE.

[troythecatfish]

Personally, I find Starfields idea of a future earth ( a lifeless barren wasteland ) highly unlikely. To quote Dr. Ian Malcolm: “ Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way. “

[anothergameofwickedgrace]

The fact that Starfield doesn't have area maps is downright hateful lol.

I mean, I don't like the game in general, but omg. Just running in circles so fucking lost because I have no sense of direction.

It makes the game unplayable to me.

[barzombi-shitpost]

So many people defending Bethesda's Starfield as if the game needed that...

Meanwhile, I'm over there, shooting capitalists in Outer Worlds.

See ya, space cowboys 😁

[dandylion-virtual-adventurer]

I genuinely tried to get into Shattered Space but I unfortunately find it so incredibly boring and uninteresting. I tried to force myself through the main story for achievements, but I just couldn’t. Mods made it fun for a little bit, but the game is just too far gone for me.

I still have some screenshots in the queue but I don’t think I’ll be picking up Starfield again any time soon.

[csphire]

Interesting points

[noneoutofnone]

Getting whiplash going back to Armored Core VI after playing Starfield

Starfield trips over itself letting you know all of the quests are chill and good actually. The choices in dialogue range from doing a good deed to doing a good deed… for money😈. The only way to join the Space Pirates is to be offered the chance to go undercover first, making sure you see the Pirate but you’re a good guy option. If a persuasion check with someone fails, leaving you only with the prompt [Attack], your companion will say something to the effect of “woof, that was rough. But you did what you had to do.”

The most recent mission I finished in Starfield was for the United Colonies. You stand in front of a council of bureaucrats trying to convince them to hand over banned archival weapon data. This could help stop a small but growing danger to the galaxy. The council argues that it could also lead to that weapon falling into the wrong hands - It was locked away for a reason. It’s a great moment because it was the first time a character in starfield stood up and said to me No, you are in the wrong here, your research could lead to the weapon data leaking, civilians will be put it danger. ALERT. oh no. ALERT. Just as this conversation is happening an entirely contained but also extremely dire attack occurs. ALERT. You rush out and save the day. The threat is proven to be real and the data is necessary. No more questions about is it the right thing to do. Forget about all that other stuff we brought up, you were right. The whole council apologizes to you profusely. Here, take the nuclear launch codes, and here’s a thousand credits as an apology for insinuating that you weren’t the galaxy’s goodest bestest boy.

Mission 1 of Armored Core 6 is called “Illegal Entry”.

In mission 4 “Destroy the transport helicopters” the helicopters are just that. No weapons. Trying to run from you. The rubiconians who stand between you and the helicopters are defending their families. During the fight the enemies bark about you being the bad guy. After the mission your Dad calls you and says “It’s just a Job 621. All of it.” Throughout the entire game you are flooded with voicemails, calls, voices in your head, that all have an opinion on whether what you’re doing is good or bad or just a job.

Starfield is telling you not to think about it too hard. Armored Core is telling you to think about it. A lot. Screaming at you to think about it. What are you doing. It’s not just a job. The game is talking about your actions through all sorts of different lenses.

It’s stepping out of a lazy river and then immediately riding down Niagara Falls in a barrel. Sometimes literally. You see the same safe boring landing cutscene a million times in Starfield. Twice 621 has packed themselves into a barrel and yeeted it into danger.

[silent-moons-camp]

I will never get over how BEAUTIFUL the visions you receive in Starfield are.

There's a conversation you have with Sarah about your visions at some point in the game, and she asks for a more in depth explanation of what you felt, rather than saw and heard. And you have the option to tell her that it felt like you were being pulled across the galaxy. And I think, visually, that is the best way to describe it. It is so enamoring. It is so fucking beautiful. With every artifact, every power my character gets, I am left astonished at the visuals Bethesda provides.

The glyphs, the stars, the bending of light, it's all so breathtaking to me as someone who is captured by the stars and the spaces between them and everything to do with astronomy. And it makes me yearn to learn more about the origin of the artifacts and temples.

It just sucks that it's attached to such a bland mechanic, you know? I won't go into the powers (I think Starfield could have been fine without them, they're more interesting in a narrative sense, and I hope to God Bethesda doesn't throw in sword-singing into TES6 just for the sake of having Dragon Shouts 3.0) but I think we can all agree that the temple puzzle is lackluster, boring, and repetitive.

If we had gotten similar whimsical visuals back in 2011 with Skyrim, whenever we learned a new word of a Dragon Shout from a Word Wall, it would have been praised to Hell and back. And I think Starfield's visuals for the powers and artifacts is absolutely deserving of praise. But because it's Starfield and not TES and the path to getting to those visuals is objectively lackluster, it won't get the love it deserves.

I just think watching space bend as you learn unknown cosmic knowledge that you were never meant to understand is really fucking cool and I wish Bethesda made the temple puzzles better to reflect that.

[aro-pancake]

Bethesda, darling. Hi there. I'm back.

Why can't we find Andreja in the ship? We've been all over the ship, ten times or more, and still haven't found her.

We need a way to track our companions inside our ships, thank you.

[neverending-shenanigans]

I agree 100%. I played it with the intention of liking it and all, and I cam barely make it through anything without getting fanfic ideas and this sparked nothing.

Which is WILD because it has built in Alternative Universes and warring factions.

I maintain that the reason that this happened is because the writing is the worst one yet of any bethesda franchise. It is so hollow. It's empty on so many levels.

starfield is such an interesting game to me bc, ignoring whether or not it was financially a success, it’s essentially a fandom failure in a way i haven’t seen in awhile relative to how hyped it was. it’s extremely rare for any piece of media to have virtually no fandom space dedicated to it and to see virtually no art/fics/headcanons/overall fan discussion about anything these days and while i’m sure there’s a small section somewhere that talks about it, it’s kinda crazy to see such a high profile game be completely ignored in a space that’s incapable of ignoring anything aka the internet

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

Side note I know this is definitely old news by now but damn, every single hit piece about Starfield I've read or seen mentions First Contact, the side quest where you help a greedy ceo deal with a colony ship by either committing genocide, sell them into slavery, or go out of your way to buy them a new engine so they can go be essentially refugees elsewhere.

Specifically they mention how you can't kill the CEO or the rest of the board by any means, or can't even point out how the planet they own is LITERALLY a SINGLE luxury resort surrounded by untouched planet.

99% of the planet is, again, completely uninhabited! But the corporation won't let them move in as anything but DEBT SLAVES, and that's treated like a GOOD ENDING, and you can't even KILL THE RICH FUCKS.

Like, again, it shows this has left such a impact on anyone criticising the game's writing.

[ashleyinwondrland]

Did Matt Mercer sleep this year?

Between Critical Role, Candela Obscura, Ravening War, the new ttrpg systems, 2 animated shows, being in (at least) 3 big video games this year…like has he slept?

[shitfic]

if you like

pina coladas

d&d

critical role (esp c2)

stardew valley

sun haven

dragon age

mass effect

baldur’s gate

or are hopefully optimistic about Starfield despite no fuckable aliens

give this post a like so i can follow youu pls

[gollumpanties]

I agree with pretty much everything here, to be honest. I also have a harder time typing my thoughts on this than I do speaking them, but I'm going to make an attempt at least.

It's very very true that it's a Bethesda game, for better or worse, at its core and I think it also suffers quite a bit from the Came Out Right After Baldur's Gate 3 Curse because honestly, trying to compete with that game is brutal.

I understand a lot of the criticisms concerning loading screens and fast travel and I agree with them, but it's not a deal-breaker for me. It does hamper my preferred Bethesda playstyle of "start walking towards a quest objective and get distracted for the next 4 hours by things I find along the way", but whatever. I play The Sims 4. I can steel myself to loading screens and adapt. Is it ideal? No. But, like I said, not a deal-breaker for me.

My personal beef with the game so far (and, to be clear, I am continuing to play it despite this) is that to me it feels completely incoherent when it comes to any sort of narrative theme. There's nothing for my English Lit nerd brain to latch onto. Maybe it's because I haven't finished the main plot yet (though I've thoroughly spoiled myself about it), but I just can't articulate what concepts the game is asking me to think about at all.

Fallout in its very premise has the "destructive consequences of unchecked consumption and xenophobia" built in. I know Fallout 4 gets criticized (rightfully so in many ways - though I seem to be one of the few who actually prefers a voiced protagonist for my roleplaying) but it also tosses around one of my very favorite tropes, the concept of how far someone has to get from humanity before they're no longer considered a person, as well as the entire vibe of being one of the only people who remembers an entirely different world. (Nick Valentine romance WHEN, Todd???) Elder Scrolls leans into Fantasy Politics for its themes, which just happens to be another personal fave of mine lol, as well as Fucking Insane Mythology. Starfield has yet to give my brain anything like that to rotate at length.

MAIN PLOT SPOILERS (obvs)

The whole Hunter/Emissary conflict seems like a pretty obvious "grab whatever power you're strong enough to claim" vs "power should be guarded against whoever would use it irresponsibly" but I didn't feel like either of them said much to make their positions seem compelling.

Unity as a concept was very interesting when it was first introduced -- I liked the little sidequest to talk to people from various philosophies and learn little bits of mythology -- but it feels like (at least so far) the entire deeper question of "what is Unity?" has been completely dropped. It's a place, it's a mechanism to hop between realities, it's something all Starborn are drawn to(?). The entire mythology-seeking mission framed it as an intense existential question, and the reality so far feels so. Flat. The entire main plot tbh is set up to be this deep almost philosophical question about reality/realities and existence and yet I'm still struggling to make out what it's trying to say about it.

Considering that all the Starborn seem almost compelled to seek out the artifacts and try and reach Unity, and that the main plot's end is pushing the player to become Starborn themselves, there's just none of that magnetic pull that the Hunter and Emissary assure me they all feel. The game has given me no really compelling reason to find Unity so far other than "to finish the questline" and left the overall thematic meaning of Unity completely hollow.

It's a huge problem for me, roleplay-wise, because it's really hard to come up with reasons my character would be invested in any of this.

Another problem that I'm butting up against is perhaps more a problem for me personally than it might be for others... I just. Am struggling to get invested in the lore. It feels like we have Generic Space Humans, Generic Space Humans 2 (Yeehaw Flavor), and then Various Raiders, without any meaningful disinction between them other than the metaphorical paint color. Maybe when I get deeper into faction quests the differences will become clearer, but it sure would help "muh immersion" if I were treated at all differently from area to area. Even just notable differences between what things count as contraband between UC and Freestar scans would help. (To be fair, you could argue that there's about as much distinction between the Crimson Fleet and random spacers as there is between the Gunners and random raiders in Fallout 4. That's completely fair.)

I respect the decision to not include sapient alien species in this universe, but one of the really big things they do, lore and aesthetic-wise, in games like Mass Effect is that by their very alien-ness they make it less jarring that the humans are functionally a monolith. If they're not going to have alien cultures in a space exploration game then ideally the human cultures should be making up the difference. In the Elder Scrolls universe even amongst the humans they feel different. There feels like there's a clear distinction between Bretons and Nords, for example. Hell, between Bretons and Imperials even.

It's been 180 years since they announced that Earth would soon become uninhabitable and only 131 since the last fleet left the planet, but people treat Earth like no one's cared about it in a thousand years. Like. It wasn't that long ago??? The huge varieties of governments have been boiled down to two and society as a whole has been upended, and yet we've still painstakingly recreated exploitative corporate capitalism for some reason. If there's an actual reason, then that would be fine! It would be cool! Were corporations like Space Amazon the ones who bankrolled and controlled the ships leaving Earth and used their weight to ensure their continued chokehold on the economy? Maybe! But we don't really talk about it at all, in a genre that traditionally is built around Saying Things About Societal Structures.

In fairness to them, because I am also a loud defender of Mass Effect Andromeda on the grounds that we can't judge its depth by comparing it to the entire Trilogy's worth of development... this is the first game in this universe, ever. Maybe the lore will build on itself and become more complex. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout have both had years and years to develop their universes. ... It still leaves me struggling with where Starfield stands right now.

I could rant longer (don't ask me about the First Contact questline I'll explode, and also I believe another video essay already laid out the reasons why I hate that quest) but I think this at least broadly covers my issues with the game.

Also! I am still playing the game! I might not stream it regularly for much longer, but there is enough here to keep me coming back! I want to get a lot deeper into base-building in the future and I want to sink my teeth into all the faction quests and sidequests I can get my hands on. I loved the "explore the ruins of NASA" quest and the storyline and discoveries there had me actually both horrified and enthralled. 😂 I thought the (spoilers) attack on Constellation mission was intense and had me stressed in the best possible way. I made split-second decisions based on character impulses! It was great!

I appreciate the more detailed companion questlines and romances, though I would prefer a greater spread in uhhhhh moralities? But still.

Fighting and clearing out areas is still the ultimate Bethesda-style fun. As always, I play speechcraft/stealth archer all the time, so that means Fuck Yeah Sniper Rifles. Genuinely having a blast modding guns and sniping raiders from a thousand miles away. Also I love scanning things. Love to check shit off a list. Extremely satisfying. Would like to garden more tbh. Todd plz give me an extensive farming system please and thank you.

I do wish the clutter acted more like it does in Fallout 4 and I could recycle it into materials because the sheer disappointment I felt when I saw duct tape, had an ecstatic Pavlovian response and picked it up, and then only later discovered that it was utterly useless. Defnitely something I'm planning to tweak with mods lol.

Also! I'm really excited to see where the modding scene goes! I'm the kind of person who runs Bethesda games with 100+ mods at all times, so my experience might be somewhat hampered by the fact that we're still in early days when it comes to mods. The ultimate strength of these games has always been their insane modding scenes, so I'm real stoked about that.

Anyway, that was a lot. I want to be as fair as I can, so I know a lot of my issues personally come from a storytelling and worldbuilding perspective. I am a [Plumbella voice] whore for lore, so it rustles my jimmies in particular when I encounter frustrating or unsatisfying worldbuilding.

Uhhhhh hope this is even marginally useful lol. I'm def willing to expand on/explain any part of it too. 👍

hey besties on tumblr! what are your thoughts on starfield?

tell me your praises and criticisms of it, whether you’ve just seen gameplay or it or have actually played it yourself!

(this is for a video essay, so your response may be featured in it)