Coming fresh off BG3, the quality of the writing and the amount of character expression in dialog is like night and day. Honestly there was even one moment fairly early on when I said to myself "Fallout 4 would have let me extort this guy" and then I realized how egregious it was that I felt I had less agency in this quest than in FO4.

Fuck preordering

Watched a streamer play for quite a while and my primary takeaway is that I wish Bethesda would just scrap their engine and start fresh.

It's got the same stiffness, gliding movement, butt-ugly NPC's, and just the general feel of 15 year old Bethesda RPGs. I expect I wouldn't be able to enjoy it for the same reason I struggled with fallout 4.

I've been having a ton of fun with it. I've only played 4 hours so far, but it's definitely the smoothest Bethesda game in terms of performance and animations, also in my experience not many bugs. Playing on a 1440p monitor with a 7900XT and I get pretty consistent 100fps (my monitor freaks out if I raise the hz higher than 100 so can't tell how high it'll go).

In terms of gameplay, space combat is reasonably entertaining and flying the ship is fairly well thought out. Whilst you can't fly directly between planets like in Elite Dangerous, the primary purpose of ship control is combat and it does fairly well. On my computer, loading screens are pretty much instant, so travelling between planets isn't a problem. Combat is fairly fun, and the AI behaviour has been much improved from previous Bethesda games. Still not always perfect but they do behave more naturally. Environmental storytelling also has a much larger presence again, with a lot of interactions and things to read. Also, this really fulfils my fantasy of being just a citizen in a sci-fi world. Walking around my ship, seeing the little bathroom and crew chambers, it's really cool, it feels very lived in and really makes it feel like you're an explorer on the fringes of space, living out of a ship.

There are a lot of comparisons with No Man's Sky, but honestly I feel they're completely different games, by design. Starfield is more Bethesda's take on a Mass Effect style game.

Anyway, people have a lot of mixed opinions, but I've been loving it!

I only played a few hours on my Steam Deck (because it would freeze on my PC), but what I saw was slightly disappointing. The game looks great, even on the Steam Deck with FSR blurring everything, the gun mechanics are fun, the character animations are the best I've ever seen from this studio. The performance is also very good on the Deck, with stable ~~60FPS~~ 30FPS (edit: when I wrote this initially I was just eyeballing it, but didn't bother to check that Steam capped the frame rate to 30 by default lol, so it was actually 30 and not 60...my bad) in indoor scenes and playable sub-30 in large outdoor areas.

...but the exploration. Man, Bethesda is known for their exploration, yet the spaceship is a gimmick at best. To be fair, I haven't played enough to get familiar with everything yet, but I don't expect that part to get much better. The game feels like Fallout, except instead of having a giant seamless open world to explore, you have a giant open world with tedious transitions between different areas. Maybe it'll grow on me, but it's not at all what I was expecting.

EDIT: update after playing some more.

The game definitely grew on me! The exploration is still shitty, but everything else makes up for it. I'm at ~9 hours on my Steam Deck, and even with all the FSR blurring I'm enjoying it a lot. I started doing a side quest collecting on bad debts for a bank, and during one of them I found a mission terminal on Mars offering a reward to anyone who surveys a distant planet, and on my way to the planet I picked up a distress call from a settler asking for help to fight off a bunch of pirates, and stumbled upon a drama between 3 settler families, then hijacked a pirate ship and found some "sentient AI" contraband inside and then... I went to sleep because it was late.

So in short, it definitely feels like a typical Bethesda game, but in a good way. Just side quests on top of side quests, but with less bugs.

The ship combat is still bland. I found it very easy. Idk if it's because it's early in the game, but no enemy has even gotten close to killing me, even when it's 3 on 1 and we're using the exact same unmodified ship. On the one hand, that's boring, but on the other hand I appreciate not having to spend a lot of time in ship combat. However, now that I discovered how to board and hijack a ship, the combat is slightly more interesting.

And again, I did all of this on Steam Deck, with the only performance issue being on Mars and New Atlantis, which are both big cities/hub areas. It was still playable, but a blurry FSR mess. I disabled FSR because I hate the blurring, and it dropped the FPS pretty hard. Luckily, I didn't have to spend a lot of time in those locations.

I feel like I've burned myself out a little bit on story heavy games after Baldurs Gate 3, so I cannot concentrate on the story lol

But otherwise..
Fps jumps between 30 and 90 and I feel the slowdowns (rtx3080, Ryzen 3900x here).
The graphics and animations are kind of shit. Standard Bethesda.
The menus are super fiddly.
The aesthetic is cool. I love the retro futuristic bulky style.
Music is great!
Voice acting thus far, is good.
Starship is cool but basically unnecessary. You just fast travel anyway.
Combat is pretty cool but stiff.

I haven't played super far yet so im hoping it gets a bit better soon.

I did not bite and will avoid it until 75% off GOTY edition all DLC in etc. Patient gamer through and through, burnt way too many times. So far what I read about it, it not optimized, it's shallow, lacks polish, etc etc. Basically, a standard AAA fare, something we sadly grew to expect from major studios. Will be watching it for a while to see what I'm missing.

Anybody able to talk about the steam deck experience?

Y'all I thought we agreed as a society to not preorder anymore?