With less than three weeks left of Starfields release, I thought I'd give my own personal take on what might come of it.
I'm a huge space nerd. Love Space games, and love it in real life. KSP is one of my favorite games. No Mans Sky was what I dreamed of, and then on release...it was a mess. Tried to get into it now, and I WANT to like it. It's clearly had effort put into it. But the core problems are still there. The main one being: Procedural generation.
No Mans Sky feels like a mile wide and an inch deep even now. The planets lack variety. It's pretty much a single biome across the entire system. The outposts look almost the same. Landmarks are the same. Creatures are the same. It makes no sense. Of course, that's due to the procedural generation. And it shows. I could go on about how the story and side quests are uninteresting and frankly, lazy. But that's besides the point. Even if it's a core issue. I would rather have two or three massive, full scale solar systems with a couple of planets that are hand crafted and have a TON of work done to them. With, you know, actual biomes and some dead ones sprinkled in.
Thing is, Bethesda has been experimenting with radial quests and procedural generation for over a decade now. They have shown they care about detail and substance. They know what players look for. They're not gonna implement a half baked system and do what NMS did. Because we all know how that turned out. And to me, it sounds like they clearly believe this system is ready now. After all, while the radial quests in Skyrim were not perfect, (Dark Brotherhood Forever), they were pretty good in moderation. And that was on 7th gen hardware. In any case, we're still getting a full scale solar system (or at least a couple?) that are in fact, hand crafted. It's exciting to say the least.
So while I don't think Starfield is going to change the industry, and I fully expect bugs, I do think this is going to be the best example of procedural generation going forward and what it CAN do for future titles. Whether from Bethesda, or other developers. The main thing here I'd like to point out is that Bethesda isn't looking at procedural generation as a core mechanic. They see it as a TOOL. And that's what it should be across the board. I fully expect players to not go full on exploring towards other star systems until late in the game which will take a bit. Hand crafted is still the most important aspect as it should be. But if done right, I believe it could serve well for replayability for years to come.
People give a lot of shit to BGS for Fallout 76. But remember this. The game was fixed. And every game before it has been acclaimed. Fallout 4 was a bit disappointing for most and I agree, but I do think the mods made up for it and the combat was a big step up versus Fallout 3. It was the weakest title, for a BGS game. Sure. But even then, it was VERY good compared to what was out at the time. They obviously still know what they're doing unlike other developers now.
I'm sorry to be a downer, but the specific things you are hyped for are exactly the things I have absolutely 0 hope for.
For example:
Really? Bethesda? The people who, via Skyrim, created the now-often-used phrase "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle"? I could see this from Obsidian maybe. But not Bethesda
No. Sorry. No. Doing things half-baked is the thing Bethesda does, every single time. And players then fix it. Are you maybe thinking about modded Bethesda games? Because yes, those can be near-perfect. And modding their games to perfection is itself often a fun endeavour, it's important to also keep in mind - and keep Bethesda accountable for - the need for players providing:
And players do. To an absolutely amazing degree. But Bethesda doesn't.
Kinda? The game was fixed from a technical perspective, yeah. And that was a first for Bethesda, instead of fully letting the players do it via modding. But hey, Multiplayer game, they kinda had to I suppose. 😅 But from a gameplay perspective the game retains all of its problems, the extreme shallowness even for Bethesda games, the lack of feeling like a Fallout game, the clear feeling of copy/past or generation.
Now, for all my negative things, I do expect Starfield to be Elder Scrolls: Space Edition. And I loved playing Skyrim, utterly shallow as virtually all of it was. The breadth still made it a load of fun. And Starfield - because if Bethesda has shown one thing it's consistency - will naturally share both the good and the bad parts of previous games, again being incredibly wide, incredibly free, superbly pretty, but also laughably buggy and shallow.
I don't get that "shallow" part.
In Bethesda's worlds there's always something going on, something new to discover, something new to learn... Providing you put an effort to pursue that. These games don't force themselves upon the player, they leave helluva room for breathing, caring about whatever small goals you may set upon yourself, but that's not "bad", isn't it?
That's not depth though, that's more the width. Bethesda worlds are full of things in a vast open space, yes. The space isn't empty. It's shallow.
All these interactions are tiny. They're copy-paste (or clearly autogenerated) NPCs, linex, fetch quests. Everything is just the same content repeated ad-nauseum, like an Assassin's Creed game.
Of course, the flipside of this is that this shallow content allows them specifically to make their worlds this wide and open. It's a trade-off, as always.
I honestly don't get it.
What we're seeing in Bethesda's design are more and more vibrant worlds - modern NPCs walk around, sit on whatever benches they see, react to day/night cycles, use the objects around them, comment on how you're looking, what you're wearing (or not), hear about your exploits. Not every NPC is ready to break to you his sad story worth a doctorate in psychology, but which one does?
Even in games one may consider deep you will still find shopkeepers with same lines, or NPCs standing there, in the same spot, no matter whether it rains or not, ready to give you what is essentially a FedEx quest, no matter how many sentences they are going to express it with. You can break a fight in many deep games, and nobody around will mind it - attack a villager in Skyrim and guards and other denizens won't take this shit kindly.
Heck, the lore is vast, even since Daggerfall or Morrowind you had in-game books to find and read, stories to pursue, myths and legends to learn.
The style, the tone, the predictability are things that definitely might use more attention, but I definitely wouldn't call it a shallow design.