168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield is like some of the best science fiction writing I’ve ever seen stripped back to its barest fundamentals. The potential in the world that Bethesda has built is enormous, but its guide-rail experience is not the best way to play the game. To avoid spoilers, because it’s still early doors, I’ll just say: you&r🏅squo;ve seen this all before.
Ultimately, the best stories you’ll make in Starfield are the ones you make on your own. And that’s fine. Bethesda worlds are ripe for exploitation and silliness, but damn, does it make me miss a classic, brilliant quest. Will I remember any of the quests from Starfield the way I remember Brendan the sentient vending machine from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Cyberpunk 2077? I doubt it.
At points in Starfield’s winding main quest, the story skips along like The Expanse, and at other times, the repetitive nature of the tasks s𝔉uddenly beco🅷mes obvious: quite a lot of Starfield’s missions are elaborate fetch quests, set in a variety of vaguely similar locations, defeating a host of vaguely similar enemies.
I don’t want to be too disparaging, because there were also missions along the main storyline that were cinematic, and in terms of visual and audio design, probably some of the best I’ve ever seen in a video game. The issue is that these were still not very original. A lot of that comes down to the poor, forgettable 🥂characters throughout.
A lot of the unique character building of previous Bethesda games is weirdly missing from Starfield. Your robot, Vasco, might say a sort of funny quip occasionally, and Sarah Morgan might posh-ly chuckle at some stinky fisherman, but where are my M’aiq the Liars and Nick Valentines? Even Preston Garvey, a character I despise, had more nuance than the strangely vanilla stereotypes that make up the backbone of Constellation, the team you’ll spend the bulk of your time with. Even in the vastness of space, I met very few memorable characters. I can’t evenᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ think of one to mention here, even though I’ve played the game non-stop for tw🏅o days.
The vast majority of them are sci-fi tropes I’ve seen a dozen times before - the ship ⛦captain guilty about their past, the wealthy industrialist and philanthropist, the bright-eyed youngster talking about magic, religion, and feelings. At moments, you get brief glimpses of what has cemented Bethesda as the studio with one of the broadest, deepest selections of iconic characters in their work, but most of the time, Starfield feels vanilla. Sanitized.
The pleasant side of the future, full of smiles, and handshakes. Sort of pale in texture, like the washed out moonscapes you’ll find yourself wandering over. This extends to your dialogue choices: play it nice and sweetly, persuade people, attack everyone you see, or yap on like a sweaty, angry teenager. There’s hardly any nuance to what you can say or do on ☂these quests. The freedom of space feels pretty constricting, in the end.
Because of this sanitization, a lot of the quests are anti-climatic. Everyone is so damn nice in Starfield. A cutthroat world of pirates and snake worshippers and all you need to do is say a couple of sweet words and even the gnarliest general or gang leader flops over on their side like a puppy. Even on the romance path with Sarah Morgan - one of the better quests in the game I’ve seen so far - the eventual cꦆonfession of affection is delivered from those glassy eyes, that twitching mouth.
It&rཧsquo;s underwhelming. Where Starfield excels is those other moments, where you stumble across a floating wrecked ship, or a blown-out space casino, or a sick colonist huddled in a dark cave. Stories that appear organically, and let you play them out as you want, unconfined to either being the nice guy with sickly sweet platitudes or snapping at someone like a fourteen year old edgelord.
All of this has made me unexpectedly excited for Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, not only to relive some of those vivid moments (Brendan, the Delamain storyline, or the romance arc with Judy), but to experience some new ones, too. The game was understandably slammed when it first released, bu♕t over the month🐷s that followed I fell in love with its world and story-telling. Its depth of characters and original ideas makes Starfield look like baby’s first sci-fi.
To compare the two isn’t exactly fair - Starfield allows a lot more organic story-telling than Cyberpunk,𒀰 but I just can’t wait to get shocked and jabbed and stung in Phantom Liberty, rather than stroked gently, without feeling, by good old Todd.