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657. 1Upsmanship: Starfield (Patreon)

Published:
2023-12-04 14:00:11
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Adam and Michael discuss Bethesda's Starfield, a game that arguably had as much hype as No Man Sky in the year leading up to its release. Did it make its mark or did it die a cold death in space? Only you can decide. And I guess Michael and Adam have their takes. You know, it’s a podcast.

Michael Swaim: https://twitter.com/SWAIM_CORP

Adam Ganser: https://twitter.com/therealganz

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Comments

jubjub64

This may be a fools errand but I just wanted to share my experience with space games and why I liked this game. My love of space games, in part, came from places like Metroid, Starfox, Star Wars and the like. But, there is one game that really sparked my love of exploring space, Star Raiders on my Atari 800XL. Star Raiders is one of the first semi-complex space simulator games. I'm pretty sure neither Mike nor Adam have a great love of the sim ecosystem but the feeling of really being in space, not just fantasy space, is deeply ingrained in my heart. The next big game that I had the privilege to play in this genre was Elite: Dangerous. It is certainly a space sim first while story and extra features like character development are a far second. This brought back the love I had for Star Raiders and more, since playing it in VR made the simulation all the more palpable. I have put thousands of hours into Elite Dangerous, even though, the roles you can play in that universe amount to: space trucker, deep space explorer, space miner, and bounty hunter. And none of these jobs are actually demarcated as such, this game is a sandbox in the truest original definition. Your imagination is needed to fill in the blanks. There is an overarching narrative that sometimes affects your gameplay, but you are just another blip in the universe in this game. With he exception of mining, all the roles you can fill in this game are not very lucrative and this game is designed with grinding in mind. I played this game because it was the closest I've found to actually being a captain of my own spaceship where i can do whatever I want (within the boundaries of the game of course). Games like No Man's Sky kinda grazed this feeling but it was a little too fantasy styled for my tastes. So when they announced Starfield and showed off things like exploring, fighting, ship building, and base building ON TOP of having an actual story, more realistic art style (I freaking love NASApunk), and being the protagonist I was hooked. I agree that they should have done a more 1 : 1 exploration system where you can travel from space to the surface without a noticeable loading screen. And I agree that the instanced planet exploration is disappointing. Also, the space dogfights are terrible. But, this game has so many things that I wished that Elite: Dangerous had that it scratched a very deep itch for me. Many of the gameplay elements that E:D is missing I could finally experience in this game. And since I already had the 1 : 1 exploration under my belt from E:D, Starfield's lack didn't bother me as it would someone who has little to no experience in space sims vs space games. Starfield was more like a missing puzzle piece that fits perfectly to fulfill my space exploration dreams. Also, there are a ton of little side story quests that aren't fetching a tablet. But, you have to do a lot of exploration to find many of them. And exploration for exploration's sake was already my bread and butter.

Oliver Allen

I like how they still have ad breaks

Adam Ganser
>>123737573

Fool! Nah I loved this comment honestly. I think you are the target for this game and I’m super glad you like it. I want other people to enjoy it and you listed good reasons to do so. If this podcast was 8 hours, three of them could be spent loving things. Thanks for listening.

Magnanimous

My friend described Starfield as "Dude, they just remade Daggerfall but in space" (as an insult), but my opinion was more like "Dude, they just remade Daggerfall but in space" (as a compliment, sort of). Starfield has an old-school RPG feeling like Wizardry or Ultima: there's not very much going on in the world, but it's fun to hang out there and you fill in the gaps with your imagination. Daggerfall was fine in 1996 but hasn't aged that well, and I'm not surprised that modern gamers didn't vibe with Starfield.

Bryan Hartney

I think one of the other things lost since Fallout is handcrafted unique locations you can *share* With nearly all of the poi randomly generated you lose so many shared experiences

John Ford

I don't know, y'all have a wildly bubbled experience of what "gamers have already forgotten," it's still wildly popular and has retained a large player base and there hasn't even been a major update to come back for yet. https://playtracker.net/insight/game/87348

John Ford
>>123784965

Almost all of the randomly generated content is ignorable, and if you do ignore all of it, the handcrafted open world content is larger than any of their previous games.

Ryan Bowdish

I heavily defended and believed in Bethesda until Fallout 76. I called Starfield being a glorified Fallout/NMS ripoff since about a year before release. I'm glad to see that other people who used to have just as much love for this company and even this game style feel exactly the way i do about this dumpster fire. <3 you guys, im gonna be sharing this like crazy. All my fellow gaming friends really need to hear this, especially considering i see people still vehemently try to defend this POS.

Ryan (Kanserus Bone Saw) Bowdish
>>123805710

I subscribe to quite a few different groups and forums for gaming and this is pretty accurate. Most of the people I've talked to are highly underwhelmed by the game and have played it max 2 or 3 times.

John Ford
>>123805710

I don't know how many times you expect a person to play through a game...

LoveTriscuit

Man, I really felt this episode. I was also so excited and I kept trying to give the game chances it didn’t deserve. I stopped playing since the patch broke all the mods I used, and I just haven’t played it since. I’ll check back after the DLC is on discount and the modders worked their magic. Maybe it will have its own forgotten city or Enderal. Also, I was also an Escape Velocity kid. I still play it sometimes as a total conversion of EV:Nova. I keep looking for the game that will capture the feeling child me felt when I first played EV, but starfield isn’t it.

Tyler Mason

I was waiting the entire time for you to mention the varuun. They were the only faction I thought was interesting AND THEY'RE NOT EVEN IN THE GAME.

William Ranney

I've put an easy 4000 hours in across fallout 1-4, elder scrolls 3-5, majority of my time is split between New Vegas, Morrowind and Skyrim. I can't get into starfield. and it runs really poorly on my relatively brand new gaming pc. uninstalled starfield already, maybe put 25 hours in and I don't even know if the modding community is going to waste their time on it based on a developers recent post (Skyrim together dev). Incredibly disappointed, like at least fallout 76 got me a little bit hooked before I got sick of it.

Anonymous

Bit late to the party with this one but I felt the need to say I wholeheartedly agree with basically every point both of you make here (which is a first!) I was obviously skeptical going in but I really did want to enjoy Starfield - I put decent hours in … really gave it a chance. Alas, never have I felt a game lacking respect for my time like this. I uninstalled the second time they made me float after the glitter blobs. Hey, at least I got to enjoy the catharsis of this review! Keep up the good work folks.

Locke Hassett

Man. I had the same experience. Thought it was super cool at first, and haven't touched it in months. Would've much preferred if they just kept it to our solar system, and left in all the survival stuff. Give me 20 different smaller actual open worlds instead of a shitload of mechanically identical worlds with different skins and parameters. (or hell, stick with the proc gen stuff but make it believable and not just copy/paste structures and events). The modding community is going to likely breath fresh life into the game, which is when I'll come back. My hope is that they learn a lot from this release and iterate on the IP. There's a lot of potential, but this was all scope and no soul.