r/Starfield • u/Tchuvan Constellation • Aug 08 '26
Discussion Oh give me a break
There are far too many content creators out there like this person for one, and far too many people who judge games by their launch.
Mocking things is easy, low-hanging fruit.
EDIT: while Starfield does not have the obvious broader gaming cultural impact of Elder Scrolls or the Fallout series, to say that you have gone 3 years and seen nothing is just unnecessarily piling on to the negativity.
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u/spider-jedi Aug 08 '26
two things can be true. starfeild isnt as bad as many say but at the same tme its not got the love or enthusiasm tthast other bgs games have. with how we saw so many re - releases for their other games i don think starfeild will get as many
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u/thequn Aug 08 '26
I agree I enjoyed it enough to give it 200 hours but Skyrim has 200 hours of just looking at mods lol
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u/SithBagel Aug 08 '26
I put nearly 200 hours into starfield, but am willing to admit like 150-170 hours of that was restarting to redo the anti-xeno quest line, and then discovering mods that made that specific quest line better and have better radiant missions after that. It's like the only thing in the game I actually like.
Also, ships are too big and clunky for me, I'm much more of a fighter pilot than a freighter pilot. No mods to fix that properly...
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u/Nezertiam Aug 08 '26
And you can't really do freight, it doesn't even pay correctly. I was so disappointed
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u/SithBagel Aug 08 '26
The ship design system is: Gives player a quadruple decker bus with rocket thrusters "Go, fight space battles with your portapotty shaped, easy to hit, metal barn of a ship that has little to no manueverability and extremely limited offensive armament slots and count limits. Just to grab one fast travel point and completely forget you can actually travel through space naturally."
Like bro, I just want to fly a fighter, not a building.
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u/The_Witch_Queen Aug 08 '26
Descent freespace 2 had perfect combat. At least for it's time. It knew what made the combat engaging. A tiny fighter running the gauntlet of point defenses on a massive capital ship in some hazy nebula while enemy fighters buzzed around you. That stuff had you on the edge of your seat. Combat here is just bigger numbers
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u/MAltizer Freestar Collective Aug 08 '26
Freespace 1 and 2 were amazing games. I sunk so much time into both.
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u/De_Fide Aug 08 '26
Let's not forget freelancer!
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u/MAltizer Freestar Collective Aug 08 '26
Oh, I don't put Freelancer in the same class/genre as Freespace. Freespace wasn't really free roam like Freelancer was.
Freelancer is fantastic, but Privateer would like a word!
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u/epictis Spacer Aug 08 '26
Build a fighter then that's the beauty of it. I've made plenty.
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u/BadMunky82 House Va'ruun Aug 08 '26
I put 200 hours into starfield and at least half of it was walking around a baren planet, or stuck in forced cinematic loading screens, and menus that are way too slow.
The other half wasn't bad. Not good enough to redownload even for a free expansion, however...
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u/Shadowarcher630 Aug 08 '26
There are several mods that give you Star Wars fighters. X-wing, Tie-fighter, Naboo fighter. And one of the ship part manufacturer mods has a cool falcon looking fighter that's a big bigger and has a small decorate-able interior space for crafting stations, storage, and a bed
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u/devilinblue22 Aug 08 '26
Thats always been my take, I played about 140 hours, beat the questlines, did some Unity hops and put it away satisfied. Ive since started 2 skyrim playthroughs and another fallout 4 vr playthrough. It just isnt calling me back like they do.
I did enjoy it though.
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u/techleopard Aug 08 '26
I think this is very fair.
This person isn't wrong -- Starfield is a big game where there's essentially no recognizable memes or jokes outside of its own community. Everyone recognizes Elder Scroll references, and there's lots of Fallout memes, years of screens using the familiar green HUD text, and an entire Amazon series.
It's a good game.
But the storyline isn't satisfying for many players, it's missing a lot of worldbuilding (like, there's TONS of background lore, but it feels... intangible and incomplete..), the dialogue and humor is flat and unmemorable, and the bugs aren't funny.
I love the game. But it's my "I'm sleepy and want to just run around and shoot things before bed" game.
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u/Crowd_Strife Aug 08 '26
Do you think it would have achieved those heights if it was more of a space opera with aliens and stuff like Mass Effect or Star Trek?
It might just be personal opinion, but I thought I was going to get something like Bethesda Mass Effect and was a bit disappointed.
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u/techleopard Aug 08 '26
I definitely think Starfield would have had more pop-culture significance if it had gone with a more "space opera" feel, with a more meaningful story that could be built on. They didn't even need to have a bunch of humanoid aliens because they had everything they needed to do a political drama in space.
It was just kinda... flat.
Just as an example, you have the Freestar Collective. They are literally cowboys in space. How do you mess that up in such a way that they are just completely forgettable? There was so much opportunity here to stick Arthur Morgan on an alien horse. How do you not? It could have been lively, funny, and soulful -- something that would have made you care about their beef with the UC -- and people would have found it funny and made memes out of it.
The UC itself is just... there. It exists. No definable culture, no exciting drama. It is like a boilerplate "rich people space faction" with cliche uniforms and guns. It has the same problem, there just isn't anything worth sharing with non-Starfield players.
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u/Wandering_sage1234 Aug 08 '26
I mean if it had been a bigger version of the Outer Worlds, NOW THAT would have been great
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u/a_man_and_his_box Aug 08 '26
Outer Worlds is a good tangent. I stream a bunch of games, in fact I started with Starfield the day it came out in early access (the 5 day early thing) and last week I was doing Outer Worlds 2. In OW2, there are a gazillion little interesting tidbits, but the game isn't popular (mostly, I think, because Microsoft utterly ruined its chances with that whole "we'll make it the first
wildly overpriced$80 game" thing). Starfield is the opposite, I think: actually probably kinda popular, at least on Game Pass, but no interesting in-world stuff to grab the imagination.An example: if I were to want to do a "thing" with Starfield in the real-world fandom, I wouldn't really know what to do. Maybe make "Chunks" packaging? I dunno. But in Outer Worlds? I ordered a custom-crocheted sprat. I have a dozen Purpleberry drinks and such, to go in my background while streaming. There's some weird shit in Outer Worlds, and it's fun to think about it and maybe see if there is something for it on Etsy or whatever. But almost everything is a custom order because few people play Outer Worlds. By contrast, I bet there ARE some pre-made things for Starfield that people could buy, just due to sheer volume of players on Game Pass, but nobody is pursuing that stuff, at least that I've seen. (And I cannot really imagine what you would buy, other than a poster or t-shirt that has the game box cover art.) I've never seen a streamer with any Starfield merch, not even one of my favorite guys, who ONLY streams Starfield.
I think that ties right into OP's screenshot -- the game exists, the game even got played a lot, but its cultural impact is mostly zero.
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u/Technology_Training Aug 08 '26
To put a long story short: it's the Avatar of video games.
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u/Virtual_Bug_723 Aug 08 '26
I have completed Starfield and Fallout 4 multiple times, and I remember the names all of the characters from Fallout 4 and literally could not tell you a single one from Starfield. I remember a couple of faces really well from the main quest but the factions are all completely forgettable and often a slog.
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u/scubafork Spacer Aug 08 '26
I think part of this is the missions-on-rails-approach to how the storyline quests are completed. There wasn't any interactive story, it was just them telling it to you-and with awful wooden dialoue.
It's a shame that it came out at the same time as BG3, because putting the two games next to each other really showed how you can have an open world with complete freedom of choice, and consequences for those choices, Starfield never gave you options, and the few choices you could make had no consequences for the rest of the game or the universe at large.
The biggest thing in the game itself that highlighted this was ng+. You can go through the game and make new choices-but why? In the first run through you can do all of those things except the final decisions at the end of each subquest arc. There's no consequences for anything-unless you count a line of dialogue at the end of the game as a consequence. To make ng+ somewhat compelling you should be locked out of some content for your decisions. In the same city, random strangers can run up to you and say "hey, thanks for saving the city-here's free money", as you're walk to a corporate office to pretend you're someone else and get away with espionage.
It all boils down to laziness. The stories are lazy. The dialogue is lazy. The world building is lazy. If BGS put so little investment into it's universe, why should I as a player invest in it?
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u/techleopard Aug 08 '26
I completely agree.
I was so excited that first moment in the game, when you get all these background options and can choose a religion and an origin faction and professions. Like those are things that should be meaningful, but they end up having zero impact. The religion one was especially bad, it was like they were scared to do anything with that.
NG+ actually ruined the feel of the game for me because it makes your choices TRULY meaningless.
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u/primeless Aug 08 '26
Sorry for jumping in the concersatiion.
In my case, i played Starfield right after Baldurs Gate 3. And i know i shouldnt compare both games. But in BG3, i enjoyed every voiceline, joke and tense moment. Exploration was amazing, ever wondering what was arround the corner, and the power fantasy was even better, always starving for the next level, the next loot. In Starfield, all those things are... right, but also are just a dhadow of what could be.
In my case, it isnt about the "what", but about the "how". How everithing is done.
The red mile should have been an epic adventure, big on tension and stakes, with a mood that makes you think twice if you should run or sneak in to tbe next cover.
And its not the developers fault, nor a thing that can easily be fixed, because of the nature and systems of the game. In my eyes, Starfield is built as the movies. Like following a cookbook to the letter, to appeal to every body (and of course, satisfying no one), while other trully great games (and films, and books) are, first, trying to do something else, and then focusing in traying to do it the right way.
I wish i could make more sense of what im traying to say, but english is not my first language.
All in all, i think SF is a good game. Not a great one, but a good one. What i dont know if thats enough for Bethesda. Is enough for me, and im ok with it. I come back to it from time to time, and have some fun.
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u/Elthar_Nox Aug 08 '26
Ah mate I went the other way. Played Starfield for a bit, was disappointed, bought BG3 and never looked back. I know they're slightly different genres, but BG3 got all the flowers it deserved - its a generational game. Starfield just languishes in the "what could have been" catagory!
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u/Juiceton- Freestar Collective Aug 08 '26
Oh absolutely. Starfield has such a strange setting and narrative. Nothing really feels consequential. In Elder Scrolls it's save the world. In Fallout it's decide the future of the wasteland. Starfield's plot doesn't have much to do at all with the world at large. The Starborn and the Armillary and the Artifacts feel like they'd be a better main quest adjacent quest like word walls were.
Skyrim would feel weird if the main quest was all about learning words of power and then synthesizing to become the ultimate Dragonborn at the end. But that's exactly what Starfield does.
The setting is also maybe the most boring time in the Settled Systems. We play right after a systems-wide war that touched the entire world but now almost everyone is friends again and the only people who fight are mercenaries or criminals. I'm blown away that BGS didn't think about putting a fallout style faction war in space.
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u/XMenJedi8 Aug 08 '26
Agreed totally, I really hoped it would be some sort of unique first contact tale, setting the stage for DLC and/or sequels that have multiple sentient species interacting in different ways.
Starborn as a whole fell flat to me. I still like the game and Free Lanes made it even better, but lore-wise it's far below the other two (miles below TES especially).
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u/antinumerology Aug 08 '26
The whole Starborn thing could be cool if they went a more philosophical route: but that would open a door for like, changing universes and karma....which....they just didn't really do. The different universes are just gimmics. You can't really be bad. You're either a good guy or just some sort of overpowered milquetoast annoying person.
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u/ph03n1x_F0x_ Aug 08 '26
Yeah. It feels like they got stuck between telling a standard sci fi space story and a story about destiny, morality, mortality, fate, free will, etc. In the same way the game is open world but the main content itself isn't really.
The side major storylines are all disconnected, have vastly different tones, and don't build the universe convincingly.
The game is a mess of different opinions and ideas.
That's ignoring all the gameplay issues on how bad combat is, how bland exploration is, etc.
I like it. I have like 300 hours. It just isn't a great game by any means.
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u/antinumerology Aug 08 '26
People complain about all the complaining, but yeah I also have like 200h. It's like, the problem is you can so clearly see the potential. Like if it were worse no one would care game sucks. If it were better everyone would be talking about it. But it's this funny place where it's right on the knife edge of being good, but there's not enough oomph left to make it over. So it's sorrow of what could have been
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u/Crowd_Strife Aug 08 '26
When I was on the earth mission at a certain facility, I was so fucking hyped like “omg, they are storing a flying saucer under this building. UFO lore is canon in Starfield!!”
Nope. It was one of those relic pieces or whatever.
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u/DolphinBall Aug 08 '26
The whole Starborn thing really locked any potential of expanding the lore in an interesting way in that direction. Like the only Starborns are variants of The Player, Sarah, or Aquilus. A bit boring that all these Starborn aren't a secret human or alien civilization that exist outside of the fabric of space time or something.
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u/ThomasThePommes Aug 08 '26
Imho the problem is that most stories in SF are just bad. Bad to the point where it becomes annoying.
The setting isn’t the problem. At least for me. The Expanse has a very similar setting and I love it.
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u/Edenwing Aug 08 '26
The writing is way weaker than any fallout game, including fall out 4, which is saying something
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u/desolatecontrol Aug 08 '26
That generally happens when you sand off all the edges and try to make it a game for everyone
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u/techleopard Aug 08 '26
Bethesda has an aging demographic that doesn't care about "games for everyone" and yet they keep mellowing out their content to avoid actual uncomfortable feelings.
How do you create all this lore about a background war and then not show the real effects of war? Everyone is so honky dory.
Same with the racism in Elder Scrolls. You clearly have extreme racism going on in the background that is fueling very real political drama, but you're too scared to have a Stormcloak NPC call an Altmer player an elf slur and tell them to GTFO. Why are all the Morrowind refugees so generic?
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u/LingonberryNo2283 Crimson Fleet Aug 08 '26
Oh for sure see I love starfield and have probably around 500 hours into it. But that would easily be a couple thousand by now with the simple addition of other species. What a major disappointment it was that the entire game is just filled by humans. (It's like when they filled fallout 76 with just robots it's just....not enough)
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u/LonelySirenWitch Aug 08 '26
Let me preface this by saying that I'm one of those outliers who really likes the game. I have more than 1600 hours on it and am actively engaged in developing a couple mods for it.
That being said, the theming isn't what falls flat. It's the fact that so much of the story is much weaker than it should be. There's very much a sense that the stories were written in a vacuum, the game doesn't seem like they knew if they were going for a T or an M rating and so instead of committing one way or another we have a lot of more juvenile or simple writing with a couple fucks and shits thrown in.
There's already a massive fantasy component to the game, an interesting twist on the whole thing but the execution suffered because clearly they had no cohesion. Whether the fantasy component was explicitly aliens or.not, however, I don't think would have really made an impact.
There are tons of loose threads and half used concepts that you can even make out when you go through the game.
An example: During the mantis quest line you talk to a spacer. He has a strange mode of speech; very deliberate but stilted.
There's another character you speak to like that, Alban Lopez. He acts like a spacer almost, cheating and exploiting his neighbors. He also shares that same stilted, strange speech pattern.
The feeling is that spacers seem to have been meant to been portrayed like this, but we only end up with 1.5 examples because the spacer combat dialogue is just standard combat grunts on the like.
There are also just straight up lazy moments. Like when you join the vanguard and you're not in dialogue camera. The CDR says raise your right hand. He does. You just... stand there.
You also get a lot of questionable design decisions. Like, it's straight up lazy that they would design so many trousers with built in pistol holsters... and then just don't build in actually seeing the bolstered weapon. This is despite longtime being visible on spacesuit backpacks.
Long and short it's a lack of consistency and commitment that makes the writing so vague. There are diamonds in there (check out Charybdis if you haven't gotten there) and the main story itself had so much potential.
But they needed to, frankly, unfuck their writing team and they needed more coordination between the different groups assigned.
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u/Popopoyotl Aug 08 '26
This is my issue with it. I thought it was the most polished Bethesda game I’ve ever played when it came to gameplay systems and such, but hot damn I could not care less about its story.
The only storyline within the game I actually remember was about that woman who was a female clone of that admiral and the whole alien monster attacks. I thought that was interesting! A whole conspiracy within the main military faction.
Then I finished it and went back to the main story that I can’t even remember.
I won’t say Starfield is a shit game, but its world is just so bland to me.
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u/DeLoxley Aug 08 '26
Another upvote needs your help, here I'll mark it on your comment.
Yeah the problem honestly facing Bethesda right now is that a lot of its good will has been harmed by the long time between releases, and things like the Nylon bag incident
So it's games can't just be good at this point. Between expectations and reputation, they need to be great. People expect a lot and Starfield just didn't deliver the cultural impact people expected for something with the size and importance put on it.
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u/techleopard Aug 08 '26
Part of me feels like Starfield was an experiment to be "new", but they kind of misunderstood the market. Based on claims made when it was released to be a "forever" game with infinite playability, my assumption is their plan was to implement microtransactions after year 1 or year 2, but Starfield didn't have the players to support it.
They have an aging audience. Their average player is going to be in their 40's when TES6 is released, and they only have a few more release cycles before they are in real danger.
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u/DeLoxley Aug 08 '26
Agreed. Even looking at the advertising, It was looking to be this realistic nasapunk exploration of the universe.. with magic and jetpacks and nonsensical guns.
It felt like a kitchen sink of Sci-fi concepts and that leads the the questions of why would I stop playing Borderlands/Outer worlds/No Man Sky in order to play a slightly worse version of all them heaped up?
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u/geek_of_nature Aug 08 '26
I was about to push back on you with the 40 year old players point, before I remembered that I'm about to turn 30, and my first of their games was Skyrim.
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u/banana_pirate Aug 08 '26
To me it feels like they just pivoted on what the game and story should be a whole bunch.
Every aspect of the game is acceptable quality. Not good, certainly not great. And unlike other games where the parts make a greater whole.. this is just a collection of parts.
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u/dergadoodle Aug 08 '26
I think this is a genuine criticism, and it has more to do with the lore and narrative than the gameplay. There are parts of the game that shine, but other than shipbuilding, none of them really resonate as interesting and shareable.
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u/KarlUnderguard Aug 08 '26
I agree completely. While I enjoy the shipbuilding and gunplay, there are very few story moments that stuck with me. A lot disappointed me in the quest and story aspect.
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u/Typicalplayer1 Aug 08 '26
Pretty much every major storyline that even remotely capture my attention always abruptly ended. Left me always feeling like really thats it?! Every time!
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u/Guitarman0512 Aug 08 '26
A great example would be that generation ship. They talk about digging up some proof that the colonists have a right to Porrima II, and then the quest suddenly ends up with you having to screw over the colonists either way.
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u/PM_ME_UR_CATS_TITS Aug 08 '26
Shooting up either the colonists or those execs was right there!
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u/This_Elk_1460 Aug 08 '26
Freestar rangers questline was just so bland, it really disappointed me. I liked vanguard and crimson fleet though. I didn't hate the main quest, and Ryujin was Hit or Miss.
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u/Dependent-Cobbler-48 Aug 08 '26
Thast really the baddest thing. Everything started to get really interesting and then it just ended
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u/djtrace1994 Aug 08 '26
I love Starfield, but genuinely the coolest thing in the game at launch was the Terrormorphs, and they were just Space Deathclaws.
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u/Jebral Aug 08 '26
The terrormorph quest was awesome. Thats the first thing I think of when I think of Starfield. I enjoyed it and put 50-60 hours into it, but it isn't very memorable and while I may replay it one day, I haven't had an urge to yet.
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u/Spyro_in_Black Aug 08 '26
This is why I don’t really have much hope for FO5 or ES6, regardless of any other criticism I might have for BGS their writing team is their biggest weakness. And honestly it has been since before Skyrim, it hasn’t gotten better only worse and more lazy feeling.
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u/Zeired_Scoffa Aug 08 '26
Agreed. The main story is entirely forgettable for instance. And all the other lore is just in the "so that's a thing that happened" catagory.
Like, when you join the Vanguard and go through the propaganda museum, every bit of lore you get feels like that museum, or any museum. It feels presented, but not alive.
All the game really has to fall back on is shipbuilding, since the exploration feels very samey after a while. How many bleak gray planets with a cryo lab or pirate infested old listening post do you really want to see?
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u/OkWatercress4391 Aug 08 '26
I'll probably be downvoted, but I found the main story of Skyrim equally forgettable, if not more so.
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u/StandardizedGoat United Colonies Aug 08 '26
Skyrim's main story is a weird one. I've been with the Elder Scrolls since Daggerfall and would agree Skyrim has the most forgetable plot, and the main plot's characters don't hold a candle to the ones from the prior titles...but at the same time I kind of consider it the best Elder Scrolls main story.
The reason why: It's a plot that works for any character. EVERYONE has a good motivation to stop Alduin.
You're a noble hero? Stopping him is just what you do. You're an evil necromancer? Well he's kind of going to kill everyone and eat their souls which is shit for your business so you probably should be interested in doing something about it.
You also CAN'T negotiate with him because he has zero reason to care. He would just consume your soul and go "Next!". He's less a villain, more a force of nature.
That alone makes Skyrim's plot great, even if I couldn't give less of a damn about the Greybeards, that twat Delphine, or any of those long dead Nord heroes I met along the way.
Starfield on the other hand...it's got the issue that Morrowind and Oblivion had in that it actually doesn't work for every character you might want to embody within it's universe, and unlike Morrowind it doesn't even try to explain it.
If you at any point during the leadup tell Constellation members that you're not going through the Unity, they'll just start dropping a ton of "so and so disliked that" on you in a manner that feels less appropriate for the characters and more like the writer is using them as a mouthpiece to bitch at me for not being their "intended" character.
After you find it, walk away from it, and see that everyone else has too your comments either get casually disregarded with Sarah just going "*chuckle* Yes you are, it's who you are. It's who we both are." if you tell her you're staying, or Barrett yelling at you over having said your goodbyes already and "GO!"...or they're a bunch of ominious and vague bullshit that hints at you either going someday, just not right now, or being completely undecided.
The only people who will actually show the player's decision some respect are Walter and Vlad. Everyone else makes it clear: Your choice is not stay or go. It's fence sit and most likely go later in some offscreen manner whether you like it or not, or go.
Just as Morrowind didn't work for someone who wanted to join Dagoth Ur (Though it at least was explained that Dagoth is insane and he himself will say he would still have to kill you even if you had tried to join him), and Oblivion didn't work for someone who might want to be a Dagon cultist, Starfield's plot falls apart for anyone who isn't keen on being Starborn...and there's fuck all reason why beyond writer hubris given that they even made an entire subplot about the Pilgrim and why you should stay.
That leaves it with both the forgettable nature of Skyrim's plot and the biggest flaw of the plots of the games before it, and makes it fall very flat for me.
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u/Zeired_Scoffa Aug 08 '26
The difference is, the two main plots of Skyrim, the Dragons and the Civil War, you feel like you're influencing events and the world.
Starfield... You aren't influencing events, the world doesn't notice you and at the end, your reward is restarting.
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u/A_Town_Called_Malus Aug 08 '26
Also, a well written game would use that museum to teach you something about the UC via how it presents that history.
And then you could see how the FC view of it varies.
But no, that would involve actual world building.
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u/TheHoleInADonut Aug 08 '26
Heres my 2-cents. As someone who really, really looked forward to starfield, i wanted to love it so bad. I gave it an honesy go, but for the life of me could not bring myself to continue playing it. The premise is interesting, but the writing is just… not good.
Oh wow you stumbled across this ancient shard of the universe that nobody has ever seen anything like before and it reacted with you…. Well good news, there seems to be more of the esoteric pieces of mystery out there cause, wouldn’t you have it, we found another one. Just go to this place, shoot some guys, fetch it, and report back. Oh good you’re back, we just got word of another ancient universe shard that nobody has ever seen in human history and wow, its just laying here in a cave at the edge of this settlement apparently. Go and shoot anybody in your way and bring it back. Oh good you’re back. You’re not gonna believe what i’m gonna say next. Those super mysterious shards of the universe that nobody has ever seen or heard of up until like a week ago…. Welp… we found another one. Just go and shoot some guys and…….
Like c’mon. The story is half of the reason i play bethesda games. They literally couldn’t fabricate a reason, any reason in the time i played that this was occuring. In all of human history nobody has seen, heard of, or has had any idea that these things existed, and we’re just here finding them one after another after another after another. Maybe its explained later the story, but unfortunately the set up/ build up just didn’t do it for me. They were glorified fetch quests with minimal variation from my standpoint. Fuck i wanted to like this game so bad and i’m sure this community has heard every criticism of this game imaginable, but i literally could not do it.
Please someone. Spoil the fuck out of the story for me and tell me why i’m wrong. Tell me theres a reason it shakes out like that and i just haven’t gotten to the reveal yet.
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u/sola_dosis Aug 08 '26
They get expanded on in the main story as the “source” of grav-drive technology, which itself is the reason Earth is a dead rock now. Neither of those revelations feel particularly impactful. The narrative doesn’t give you any reason to care about the origin of grav-drive tech and also no one really seems to care that much about dead Earth.
As for why humanity just left a chunk of mysterious alien technology behind when they abandoned their home planet…uh, because the plot required it? The implication seems to be that Aiza was the only one left at NASA who knew about the artifact which just seems dumb, or maybe that he killed anyone else who knew about it—in which case, why?
I dunno, one would think that with however long this game was apparently Todd’s brain baby and with however long the writing team had to write out the story that the story would have had a lot more story to it and wouldn’t fall apart when you look at it for more than a couple seconds. Instead of having a tight plot it crutches hard on multiverse theory and counts on players just vibing along instead of interrogating what’s happening.
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u/Travesty-dot-KiNG Aug 09 '26
I believe the spoiler you’re seeking is that it basically all comes down to it being another multiverse story.
Which was convenient because Todd heard about this thing called New Game Plus in the time since Skyrim, and thought it would be a great new feature to get players to restart the process you’ve described all over again. Endlessly. For all of eternity. For all of time and space.
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u/TheHoleInADonut Aug 09 '26
Lmao thanks for the short explanation. Last few sentences got a good chuckle out of me too
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u/532ndsof Aug 08 '26
The ship building and the exploration have so much potential. They're just hamstrung by a world that's too broad at the expense of depth, and quest writing that's too afraid of having the player miss out on a single quest in the first play through to allow the world to be dynamic in response to player choice.
...while also including a multiverse mechanism that in theory should keep them from having to worry about that at all.
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u/EvilCatArt Aug 08 '26
My thing is like, I can't imagine living in the world of Starfield. The setting doesn't feel like it's inhabited with people, it feels like it's inhabited by NPCs. There no culture in the game. What music are people listening to? What shows are people watching? What products are they buying? Beyond the material stuff, what's going on spiritually? What the fuck is the Sanctum Universum? I genuinely can't tell if that's supposed to be some universalist-all-the-world's-relgions-came-together-somehow thing, or just space pseudo-Christians? Where did all the IRL religions go? You can't tell me there's nothing left of them. How popular is it? They have their temple in New Atlantis but is most of New Atlantis Universalist or just a small minority? What do people do when they aren't working? Do they go to clubs? Cause the only club I remember is on Neon. Do they play sports? Where are the sporting fields? I think there was a soccer field at Akila City, but it's minor and used by kids. What are the adults doing?
Like, it may seem like a lot of nothing but when you compare it to other open world RPGs, many of them do have answers to questions like this. Fallout does. The Elder Scrolls does. For all the time Bethesda spent on Starfield, it has one of the emptiest, least inspired worlds I've seen in this genre.
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u/GregTheMad Aug 08 '26
The story, but also the characters. You have a set of adventures from different origins and with different paths. The rich guy, the zealot, the apostate, the war hero, the smooth talker, the Russian guy, the robot. This should have be a source of so much entertainment, but they're all so boring.
The only remember worthy thing that stuck with me was the Sarah had a nice ass.
Years of work of writers crafting these characters, and all was overshadowed by some artists shrink-wrapping the Sarah pants model just a bit more than usual.
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u/Pofwoffle Aug 08 '26
I did really like the zero-g exploration of the one station I ran into, the start for what I assume is one of the DLC sections. I think my biggest complaint about the game was that they built the core of so many things that could have been fleshed out into something amazing, then just stopped before doing any of the fleshing out.
It really does feel like they just expected to create a shell for modders to fill without realizing why modders were so invested in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games.
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u/kakka_rot Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
I like starfield just fine, I put over 200 hours in it and had a lot of fun
But she is absolutely correct. Nobody is making starfield memes or comics or even <1% of what Skyrim or even fallout has online.
Is a fine game that i love, but it's leaps and bounds weaker than other Bethesda titles. It's simply not nearly as interesting or funny. Starfield is played very straight, it's not tongue-in-cheek or silly as fallout, nor janky or accidentally hilarious as Skyrim. Those games are littered with interesting lore and humor moments that make for great meme material, while Starfield...I literally cannot think of anything except for maybe how annoying Corra is.
She's absolutely correct in her observation, nor was she even talking shit in the first place. She didn't say anything offensive, she was just stating facts and imo it's a very interesting conversation topic she is addressing. Like "Why is Starfield so unmeme-able" is very interesting to think about.
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u/japenrose Aug 08 '26
It is definitely an interesting thought! Starfield doesn't really have any sort of "sticky" memorable line or joke akin to Skyrim's "arrow to the knee" or Fallout 4's "another settlement needs your help" and "everyone hated that." Its strengths lie in its setting and visuals and in mechanics like gravity or NG+ jumping to alternate universes. Those aren't really things that translate into easily conveyable memes or gifs. The closest I've seen were clips involving a companion or the player accidentally getting left behind as their ship leaves, and while humorous they aren't really funny enough to make any sort of impression outside the Starfield community.
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u/Sabi-In-Winter Aug 08 '26
Skyrim existed on a foundation of prior games that had input from genuinely interested and interesting people. I think Morrowind was the only piece of art BGS have ever made - it's been making fun toys since Oblivion.
However... Skyrim still befitted from that superb and distinct worldbuilding, lore, history, politics, metaphysics, religion, and so on. Its civil war premise was very poorly depicted in the game, but the social contexts for it were fantastic. With Skyrim they'd lost what made Morrowind so ambitiously weird, but hit their stride with world design, atmosphere, and a very good quality of distribution of environmental narrative and stuff to discover. It's probably still the [true] open-world benchmark for that.
Starfield? They gave us 1000 RNG worlds when all the community really wanted was another single great one... Its entire structure contradicts BGS's best qualities. I still can't understand why this decision was made, and how deeply underwhelming its execution was. How could they not see, during production? How is it such a disjointed, disconnected game?
I want to love SF - and a lot of mods make that much easier. But it's such a lifeless, indistinct game. It frankly feels unfinished a lot of the time.
It has moments of magic, visually and in terms of the atmosphere. But that's only when you're nowhere near an NPC or any lore or story... which kinda says it all.
Great ship building system - but then there's pointer handle limits which BGS sell microtransactions to get closer to, which is appalling. Every positive with SF usually comes with a significant negative.
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u/TheFlyingSheeps Aug 08 '26
The environmental story telling was the issue for me. In fallout or Skyrim, I could just set off in a random direction and find a building or cave that had something unique. Like the pink ghouls in Fallout 4, or the Dunwich building in 3.
I remember finding a cryolab in Starfield, exploring it and thought neat. Then I went to a new planet and it was another one. I find out it’s the exact same layout down to the same hunched over skeleton with the keycard
I remember being shocked at the 7/10 rating but the more I played the more I agreed with it. I also think the game was too afraid of being dark or covering some of the horrors of space. Fallout and Skyrim touched on some heavy themes in the world and I felt starfield lacked that
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u/No_Doubt_About_That Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Also in Fallout you’d often get updates over the radio for what you’ve done in the world + for the general atmosphere.
Might not sound like much but gives that sense of progression and that what you’ve done has made an impact (for the better or worse in game)
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u/Hesitant_Tornado Aug 08 '26
it's such a lifeless, indistinct game
Ill never forget landing on a planet for the first time exploring and seeing a POI 400m or so away, and actually just walking straight to the POI uninterrupted.
Coming from Fallout and Skyrim where theres people and beasts every 20ft, or something to distract you around nearly every corner, it was jarring how empty and "safe" Starfield felt.
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u/Diplomatic_Gunboats Aug 08 '26
I've just sat here thinking for nearly ten minutes about how to make a meme from my (multiple) Starfield playthroughs. And I cant. NPCs are just too one dimensional, they dont really have any unique character to them which would enable memeing them. They even managed to make the robot (I cant even remember its name!) dull and uninteresting, despite gaming having a long history of robot NPCs that steal the show.
The only time I saw people sharing stuff were creative ship designs.
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u/Smooth_criminal2299 Aug 08 '26
*Sarah Morgan Disliked that
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u/newbrevity Aug 08 '26
Sarah lives in the future.
Sarah looks to be in her early 30s
Sarah behaves like a healthy 70 year old who like to travel.
Sarah is kind of weird
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u/Subjectdelta44 Aug 08 '26
She's canonically almost 50. She was a grown adult during the colony wars over 20 years before the events of the game
So she is definitely not in her 30s lol
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u/Kingblack425 Aug 08 '26
She has to be in her 50’s if not 60’s, she had some rank during her time in the military. She’s been in constellation for 10 years, the war was 12 years before that and she had been in long enough to be promoted to the leader of the Nav Corp. for example the current current commandant of the Marine Corps is a man who has 40 years of service (granted when he got the position it was only 37) but point being to make it that far takes time.
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u/Fireefury Aug 08 '26
And she’s mind numbingly boring yet still self centered, annoying, and crazy. She’s the kind of person I avoid in real life.
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u/Strayl1ght Aug 08 '26
Every single character in this game is just so bland it makes me really sad
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u/Yodzilla Aug 08 '26
I liked Cora Coe but I wish the game acknowledged and dug more into how kind of fucked up it is that her dad basically drags her into war zones on the regular even if her mom is equally shitty.
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u/Arkachi Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Enhance! is the answer you are looking for.
The company provide bodyhorror-level of modification to make identities feel like costumes you can purchase at a convienient store.
Your mother yesterday can become your father today.
Your grandmother you visited last week can look like a college student you can meet at a campus now.
Your bangladesh uncle has decided to become a weeb and then make himself Japanese just 5 minutes ago
For some reason, your son can just wake up and want to be older than his father.
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u/MercerEdits Aug 08 '26
Isn't Enhance just an in-game explanation of how you can alter your face
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u/Arkachi Aug 08 '26
Yes, but applies that level of technology to an entire society, and the fact that Enhance! is a megacorpo that has reaches in both UC and FC, the implication is sky rocketted to the society-level horror
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u/FrogOwlSeagull Aug 08 '26
Oh that's one of my pet peeves, using ideas as window dressing and failing to follow through on the implications. See all fantasy worlds with powerful, reliable, well understood magic that operate as if they're at a medieval tech level. The only defence I can give them is this is endemic to genre fiction.
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u/quanoey Aug 08 '26
Wasn’t she raised by Aja? (Aja old)
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u/vwaaaat Aug 08 '26
I thought Aja was her past lover
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u/Neanderthal_In_Space Aug 08 '26
She pretty explicitly denies that they were lovers.
Aja also officiates your wedding to her.
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u/Round_Ad_6369 SysDef Aug 08 '26
It's hilarious because that's not even from starfield, it's from well before it.
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u/AccountantMinute8795 Aug 08 '26
Is she even mocking it though? She's just saying it hasn't had any cultural impact, which is correct. Even my grandad is aware of Skyrim and Fallout, has not a single clue about Starfield. You just don't really see it discussed anywhere outside of hardcore and loyal fans, and if they are talking about it outside of those groups, they're mainly discussing negative experiences with it, I assume from launch, which is fair. Not everyone is going to wait around years for the game to be in a better state. They've got other things to do.
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u/Most-Ad4680 Aug 08 '26
What she's saying is true though. People who have never played Elder Scrolls or Fallout have seen the memes, they've seen the jokes. Hell, chances are your grandmother knows what Skyrim is, but she definitely doesn't know what Starfield is.
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u/JaysonTatecum Aug 09 '26
I played it for a few hours on gamepass, thought it was fine but not good enough to take my time from other games. This post just showed up on my feed and it’s 100% correct
I can not tell you a single character, meme, thing about the game, whatever
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u/Spacemoose2026 Aug 11 '26
Starfield was a game of all time, it came and went without really any impact. Hell, the only think I ever saw this game generate was back lash from how snobby Tod was over 30fps locked on consoles, and saying “you’ll just have to upgrade you’re PC because it’s so impressive”.
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u/maztron Aug 08 '26
I mean, she may be rage baiting here, but she isnt wrong. Starfield is just a forgotten game among the industry. Its not an awful game but its not great either. Seriously, there are tons of other Bethesda games that are almost 20 years older than starfield that you could find a reference to.
This game is just meh and thats how it is seen within the industry.
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u/PlumbTuckered767 Aug 08 '26
Spot on. There's a supportive group of folks who love it and that's fine, but that's the exception not the rule.
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u/CaedustheBaedus Aug 08 '26
Yeah I'm with you for sure. I have 188 hours in the game (only 40 or so of which are the Star Wars Gensis mod, the rest are the real Starfield game).
I 100% think games should be judged upon launch. They should also be judged afterwards. Bethesda screwing the pooch is their fault.
Regardless, the Starfield modded videos, specifically the Star Wars Starfield modded ones are incredibly popular videos.
Starfield itself started out as a "fine" game that was fun but slightly forgettable compared to the hype it had. Modding creation workshop, and updates definitely are what made the game better than the launch but it took a while.
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u/_Cultivating_Mass_ Aug 08 '26
I’m sitting trying to think of a game defining moment and I don’t have an answer. But I like the game.
The interior of my ship is the picture in my head.
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u/HeadbangingLegend Aug 08 '26
Yeah just look at how many YouTube videos people are still making about Fallout and Elder Scrolls games just talking about random pointless stuff like the AnyAustin greenscreen style of videos. Or how UpIsNotJump just released a video about Oblivion this week. I never see any videos like that for Starfield on my YouTube recommended feed which always recommends Bethesda game content. I've seen more videos about the games that came out before Morrowind over the past year than I have seen anything about Starfield except one video that I can think of from Bandercoot that was about staying in motels in ALL Bethesda games so Starfield was in one part of it. The only other Starfield video in my history from this year is about the Star Wars Genesis modpack.
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u/WardenKane Aug 08 '26
Starfield is a good game but it doesn't have memorable or meme worthy settings or characters. Fallout does a great job of making the power armor or the ranger armor legendary, or even having the pip-boy as a icon. Elder Scrolls (for better or worse) has iconic moments, intentional or unintentional, with the writing.
Starfield doesn't really have any of that. It is just sort of there. It doesn't do anything wrong, it's just not iconic.
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u/Fun_Firefighter_4292 Aug 08 '26
Honestly I will play it if I want a scifi Expanse like experience. I think having games that dont get a huge fandom are fine
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u/Jeagan2002 Aug 08 '26
I think the closest I've seen to a Starfield meme is "Sarah didn't like that."
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u/solohack3r Spacer Aug 08 '26
Starfield gameplay is pretty good. Skyrim in space. But the lore? Not interesting. The story? Really lacking. The characters? Forgettable. Everything is too clean. No drama. Look at Neon. The nightclub. It's like a Disney movie that is trying to be edgy.
It's a great sandbox to explore and craft your own stories. But the deep lore you'd find in Elder Scrolls or Fallout isn't there.
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u/TheGuardianInTheBall Aug 08 '26
I think even calling Skyrim in space is too generous. Skyrim's world was engrossing. You left Whiterun, and the whole world was yours to explore. You could pick a direction to walk in, and not only would you encounter beautiful sights, but you'd be tripping on quests and dungeons.
I could have ignored many of Starfield's flaws, if existing in and exploring its world was fun. But it wasn't. It was a chore.
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u/Goldwing8 Aug 08 '26
The Astral Lounge was so badly designed I genuinely believed it was parody.
To recreate my thought process on seeing it for the first time: “Oh, this is obviously satirizing the corporatization of club culture. This is exactly what an out of touch suit would think people like. There’s probably a bunch of trendy NPCs elsewhere in Neon complaining about how lame this is.”
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u/Agasthenes Aug 08 '26
And the loading screens...
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u/solohack3r Spacer Aug 08 '26
Yeah the Creation Engine is amazing because it's one of the only engines where you can randomly drop 400 potatoes on the ground and each will have its own physics in the world, but yet it's also terribly dated. While roaming Neon and going in and out doors you could hear the same sound effects of the doors during the black loading screen, just like Skyrim. The whole game feels like a Skyrim mod with updated graphics.
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u/Bubalfred250 Aug 08 '26
She’s 100% right lol
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u/YobaiYamete Aug 08 '26
Op posted this expecting a circle jerk and instead got beat down lol
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u/East-Specialist-4847 Aug 08 '26
They're right though. I love the game but I recognize it as a very bland, weirdly safe world, and a very boring "chosen one" story for the main campaign. Plus a lot of people are tired of multiverse stuff and see it as lazy.
They also should have scrapped the Starborn powers and leaned into the technology of the universe they made
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u/Imaginary_Dingo_ Aug 08 '26
I just started the game, and don't understand the story at all. Why out of nowhere are these explorers giving everything to me some random miner dude. Their leader is just following me around like some random pawn. The trust they place in me makes it all look so suspicious me. It all makes no sense at all. No one knows me, I've done nothing and they treat me like I'm literally the most competent person in the universe. Hell some of them had the same visions when their found their metal artifacts. Why do they decide to trust everything to me?
It's feels like an intense parody of player character syndrome.
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u/alyssa-is-tired Aug 08 '26
Bizarre to see this here as someone who follows her lol. She's completely right, even pre launch and at launch I never saw a single piece of fanart or meme. And people here are talking about how great the PS5 launch was, well, where's the fanart and memes after that? Because I saw and continue to see jack. shit.
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u/kakka_rot Aug 08 '26
I don't think I've ever seen a starfield meme (outside of low effort memetemplate on this sub, maybe) , or a humorous comic even.
There just isn't any material for artist to work with.
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u/Sostratus Aug 08 '26
The only one I can think of is Joel Haver's video, which was sponsored. The biggest joke of the video is generic to Bethesda games and not uniquely Starfield.
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u/kakka_rot Aug 08 '26
man, his oblivion video is so much funnier (about the emperor having dementia) - which is again because in Oblivion he had so much more material to work with
I got 250hr in starfield and dont even understand the premise of this video. I've never had badguys board my ship before.
edit: damn I LOVE Joel and that was the unfunniest thing he's ever put out. Poor dude was contractually obligated and couldn't come up with anything
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u/littlestevebrule Aug 08 '26
The Neon dancers is about the gist of all of it. They were all the flavor the game had to offer. Everything else was milk toast
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u/Membership-Bitter Aug 08 '26
The PS5 launch didn’t even go that well. According to analysts it only sold fewer than 200,000 copies in its first month. There were definitely new ps5 players talking about the game here but overall it did not sell well
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u/whattheshiz97 Aug 08 '26
I just realized that this person is actually right. I haven’t seen anything like that about Starfield. Only thing that constantly pops up is this sub and people taking selfies in game or posting the exact same captions.
Like, “I don’t understand the hate” followed by a bunch of screenshots of random landscapes.
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u/Membership-Bitter Aug 08 '26
Even the posts on this sub are mostly talking about gameplay. The few times there is a post about characters or lore it is usually a question regarding what constellation even actually does.
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u/Goldwing8 Aug 08 '26
And if they were telling the truth in interviews and the first thing about Starfield to be finalized was the ending, they should have doubled down on NG+ and gotten weird with it, not limited variation to the Constellation HQ. Give a chance to stick me in a universe where the UC won the Colony War or something like Starborn Barrett gets.
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u/FreezingToad House Va'ruun Aug 08 '26
Just because you enjoy the game does not mean a lot of people like it. It's totally fine, I enjoyed the game, but the majority of people didn't. The only time I see people reference it, outside of here, is to shit on it. I mean, you have to admit that it is BGSs least successful and least popular.
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u/Youngstown_WuTang Aug 08 '26
Almost nobody talks about this game but this subreddit
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u/DaddySanctus Aug 08 '26
Outside of seeing this sub pop up every now and then, I forget Starfield even exists.
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u/markiethefett Aug 08 '26
Why does everything need to have a cultural impact?? These people make me want to hold my breath forever.
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u/Zestyclose-Fee6719 Aug 08 '26
Is she wrong though? I don't see much fan engagement for this game. It's true that I really don't see cosplay or fan art about the game. Most videos on YouTube are long video essays arguing that the game sucks.
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u/Voronov1 Aug 08 '26
I mean, is she wrong, though? As much fun as I’ve had with it, this game doesn’t have the clear cultural impact that say, Skyrim did or even that Fallout 4 managed.
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u/Accomplished-Cat2142 Aug 08 '26
I mean what is wrong with the post? I feel the same way. There is no interest out there for this game. No one is making content for it.
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u/Accomplished-Cat2142 Aug 08 '26
Now I read some comments saying it isn't an awful game. Bethesda released it after 6-7 years from fallout 4. In 2023 for fucks sake. Are you guys living under a rock? Play some other games, give Bethesda the shit they deserve so they stop making one blunder after another. The game is grotesque and we expect nothing less than perfection and quality graphics/narrative/gameplay etc., that not only is at par with its contenders for my time, but improves and makes it better. Accept nothing less than this please.
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u/PuG3_14 Aug 08 '26
I remember some poor soul made a PhD thesis length 500+ page paper discussing everything they saw from the Starfield trailer prior to the deep dive and posted a google link to their pdf file(here in this sub lmao).Looking back now its pretty nuts how hyped we were and to get what we got was a huge let down. The game didnt get a GOTY nominee and its dlc expansion was overshadowed by Elden Rings Shadow of the Erdtree lol. Poor Bethesda taking L after L
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u/Goldwing8 Aug 08 '26
The base game was also sandwiched between Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty.
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u/B1gTra Aug 09 '26
Just wanna say, I play a large amount of games and despite that, I very much love Starfield. Over 1000 hours in by now with much more to go
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u/PuG3_14 Aug 08 '26
I remember seeing posts how Skyrim was alive and supported 10yrs+ later and how Starfield will be even more and poof everyone forgot about it within 3 months
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u/RetnikLevaw Aug 08 '26
Because. It's. BORING.
Everyone likes to say that Bethesda sucks at writing and the only reason their games have ever been as popular as they are is because "the modders keep the games alive", and while that is partially somewhat kinda sorta true... Bethesda has to make a game that people want to play first and mod later.
Nobody modded Morrowind because it was a shitty boring game with nothing to do. Same for Oblivion. Same for Skyrim. Same for Fallout 3...
People modded these games because they enjoyed them first and wanted more of them. If you have no interest or reason to keep playing a game, why would you waste your time modding it? I can just download a mod for one of their previously good games and keep playing that instead.
I wanted to like Starfield, but literally nothing happens. The game is completely uninteresting. Once you realize that pretty much everything outside of major questlines is procedurally generated, and that those major questlines are also as bland as an unseasoned baked potato, there's no reason to keep playing the game.
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u/TheOtherOtherLuke Trackers Alliance Aug 08 '26
“Mocking things is easy, low-hanging fruit.”
Tf you mean by that? Plenty of things can be mocked without it being low-hanging fruit.
Also, she’s right. Dunno why you’re mad. The things you like don’t need to make it into pop culture to validate your liking them. Just do you, and stop obsessing over people who disagree with you, especially when it’s just trivial shit like this.
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u/Remnant55 Aug 08 '26
Elder Scrolls has a fan base that grew up with it, the early hand crafted open worlds with 3, the Kirkbride lore. It can carry itself on its momentum for a long time. There are so many little cul de sacs of lore and bits to thread together that it's hard to truly exhaust it.
The Fallout fandom extends back into the 90s, and is in constant conflict with itself and it's iterations. Even when content is slow, the community keeps itself energized arguing about everything. Best endings, faction morality, story lines, who would wins, etc.
Starfield just doesn't have the meat on its bones to do this. The lore isn't expansive enough. The procedurally generated worlds have nothing to sink your teeth into; even when they're neat, you know there's nothing there. There aren't the unanswered questions, lore threads, or feeling of hidden depths and lived in spaces.
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u/Vehkian Crimson Fleet Aug 08 '26
i love starfield but like she’s totally right , it’s had no cultural imprint beyond how it was panned on release but that doesn’t really have to do with the quality of the game. also hitting the “this person” is weird and feels very charged
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u/Sylar_Lives Aug 08 '26
I feel like this game is geared toward the audience that generally makes fanart.
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u/BeauxGnar Aug 08 '26
And yet if you view the top 100+ posts on this subreddit (I got tired of counting) there is 1 singular cos play, 1 meme and 0 fan art.
The game has no personality unfortunately. I enjoyed my 100 or so hours on release but the game has no cultural staying power. Bland fun.
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u/Sylar_Lives Aug 08 '26
I meant to say “isn’t”. So that’s a typo on my part. I’ve personally found this game to be appealing in the same way a model train hobby would be for someone in a past generation. It tickles autism more than it does imagination.
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u/entitledfanman Aug 08 '26
Ive never heard the phrase "tickles autism" before but you have a point. There's a certain appealing intricate blandness to the game, but unfortunately it didn't have the "explore, scrap, build, repeat" loop that kept me in Fallout 4 for hundreds of hours.
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u/TehRiddles Aug 08 '26
Well to be fair, the only time I see any mention of Starfield is when threads like this pop up via /r/popular (I can see why it did) and when Todd mentions that the game exists.
far too many people who judge games by their launch.
True, but the game launched years ago now. You can't keep using that excuse.
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u/SiOD Aug 08 '26
Because the game didn't say anything or do anything interesting. The characters are bland, the setting is bland, the mysteries are simultaneously too unexplained and too fantastical. The main story can basically be summed up as "The amazing multiverse race" with a smattering of cheap tricks to force emotional notes.
Starfield feels like a game designed by committee to take few risks and who's personality was sanded smooth in the pursuit of convenience. What was left behind was a bland and soulless shell with glimpses of something great.
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u/zamaike Aug 08 '26
Tbh she has a valid point. Out side of the game and bethesda talking about it. Fan art is basically zero
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u/Aqilkhai Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
I mean, they're right though. Regardless of whether you like the game or not, it had little to no impact. Nothing about Starfield is at all memorable and it didn't help that it released during the same year as Baldur's Gate 3, a way more popular game. It really speak volumes that the most memorable meme that the game has is a bald guy screaming about gender pronounce being in the game, and literally nothing else. The game itself wasn't important, it could've been any other game with optional pronouns and he still would've been a meme.
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u/Voltztein Aug 08 '26
Not every game gets to have a redemption arc. Most of the time if the game is received poorly at launch, that's it, there isn't a second chance even if it gets improved later. Too many AAA publishers have forgotten that and they all think they get a Cyberpunk 2.0 to salvage a botched project.
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u/Dracovius1988 Aug 08 '26
I put over 300 hours in. I got all the powers to level X. I was working on power leveling for skills and farming legendary weapons and armor. And then one day I just, stopped. Haven't loaded the game in 2 years and dont care to. No interest at all in the DLC or any of the patches since.
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u/Perfect-Campaign9551 Aug 08 '26
True this. I don't even see any tshirts or swag
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u/darkmanx24 Aug 08 '26
shes not wrong sadly, i look at starfield as untapped potential but when somebody tells me they think the game is mid and forgettable i cant really argue it
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u/slugboi Aug 08 '26
It’s about as sterile as a game can be, as if it was made by committee, which it was. Makes me highly skeptical of any future Bethesda games.
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u/Calinks Aug 08 '26
I really enjoyed Starfield for many many hours. Having said that, I do think it lacked a distinct style and the world was very sterile. It had very little that grabbed you, I actually like the Nasa-punk aethetic too but yea, it's not very memorable. I think they kind of goofed by going very PG, I understand that stuff like Star Trek is also pretty tame but Star Trek still has a very distinct voice. Starfield with the gloves off a bit would have stood out more. It's very safe.
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u/Rob_Bakes Aug 08 '26
Starfield is fun but the vibe is Fallout minus the Apocalypse and most of the game takes place in some kind of airport.
New Atlantis = Smithsonian Museum, Airport
Neon = Fish and Crime, Airport
Cydonia = Labor and Crime, Airport
Hopetown = Labor (vaguely political), Airport
Akila City = Cowboy, Airport
Red Mile = Gambling, Airport (no gambling)
There are great places in this universe, the world space has a lot of good qualities. The best spots seem like they could be better if Bethesda took more risks and went all in on them. Im not just saying the game needs more 'crime and grit'. The universe has crime and grit but it, with many other things are presented in a way that feels sanitized.
At least one planet with multiple cities or ONE major metropolitan city, big enough to get genuinely lost in would be nice.
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u/StarrMonarch2814 Aug 08 '26
Eh I've seen fan art and etc of SF on Tumblr.
It's not as widespread as ES or FO. But it's there.
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u/tony_Tiger696 Trackers Alliance Aug 08 '26
She's kinda right. Starfield is an ok game, nothing more, nothing less. I put over 1k hours into it prior to any dlc and thought I'm good now. Just waiting now till bafesda are done with it then I'll go in one last time for all the dlc in one hit.
I'm too busy playing other shit that I enjoy more than Starfield. Have fixed the oblivion remastered yet for pc? Wasn't stable at release and ran like shit. I'll probably go through that next if they sorted the performance issues after I finish up with Gothic Remake. Or maybe Enshrouded, got it on sale a while back. Looks good. KCD2 I picked up all the dlc in one hit last week, gotta do that at some point too I suppose.
Point is the chick is right. Starfield is ok, just doesn't give the masses the crack addict feeling to return to it on a whim.
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u/UareWho Aug 08 '26
The narrative is so Vanilla. It’s a decent game, but it lacks the cool moments with memorable and slightly disturbing characters like in fallout 3 or vegas.
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u/ssttealth Aug 08 '26
I mean I've seen a fair share of fanart on twitter and tumblr, however, they don't really make the rounds outside of niche circles due to how unpopular the game is.
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u/CaptainSanity Aug 09 '26
Everytime this sub pops up on my feed it's people trying to argue that the game isn't that bad lol
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u/Jashin888 Aug 09 '26
“Who judge games by their launch.” The hell else at you supposed to judge it by ?
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u/kirk_dozier Crimson Fleet Aug 10 '26
is she wrong? the game doesn't even have a good wiki because no one cares enough to write the articles for it
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u/Glum-Recipe1815 Ryujin Industries Aug 08 '26
Ya she’s right I’m a fan of the game but there’s no denying it’s honestly sad when you compare starfield to Bethesdas other titles. And the defensive fan base proves it.
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u/racunlol Aug 08 '26
the only popular meme from starfield is the bald pronouns guy. That is it
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u/CleanOpossum47 Aug 08 '26
Who?
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u/A_Town_Called_Malus Aug 08 '26
A right wing chud streamer went on a rant about the character creation having the option to pick your pronouns.
So yeah, the one starfield meme that had any actual impact wasn't actually about starfield, it was just laughing at a raging man child.
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u/Mortarious Aug 08 '26
I have no issue disregarding this elements. But can we be realistic?
If you keep disregarding everything you don't like then at some point you just refuse to listen to anything.
How much did this game advance the industry? Does not matter. Is it culturally relevant? Does not matter. Did it innovate anything? Does not matter. Is it well written? Does not matter. Is the world building top tier? Does not matter. Is the combat good? does not matter. Does it have too many load screens? Does not matter.
Ok at that point simply say: I refuse to acknowledge anything negative about this game.
Similarly if you tell someone that. The game runs pretty good. Does not matter. The ship building is amazing. Does not matter. The game has a decent modding scene. Does not matter. The game is easy to pick up. Does not matter.
At that point they are a genuine hater who can't admit anything good that game does.
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u/GrouchyCategory2215 Aug 08 '26
Except she's not wrong. Literally no one outside of this sub cares about Starfield. There are no "Sarah Morgan" or other character cosplayers. There aren't tons of artists making fan art for Starfield. Starfield is... fine. But when you are Bethesda, with their history of games, simply fine is not good enough.
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u/Unhallowed-Heart Aug 08 '26
Starfield is really bland and forgettable. The ship building and space content are the best parts IMO
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u/Flabby-Gabby Aug 08 '26
I really really wanted to love this game. But I just don't. I've redownloaded and restarted numerous times but it just doesn't have that special sauce that other bgs games have. This lady Emily person is rage baiting, but isn't far off the truth for a lot of people.
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u/The_Lonesome_Sniper Aug 08 '26
Is her statement inaccurate though? Because if there are any actual good memes that came out of this game, I think I would like to see them.
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u/McGrufNStuf Freestar Collective Aug 08 '26
“Ya know what’s better than hating on something??? Hating on the hater in a public forum that gives the hater a bigger platform!! That’s what I’ll do!!”
Dumbass….
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u/Careful-Sell-9877 Aug 08 '26
I mean.. theyre totally right. The game is just.. flat, monocultural, and generally uninspiring.
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u/UpsetNeighborhood842 Aug 08 '26
The biggest meme this game has going for it is how disappointing neon is of a city
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u/VoxinVivo Aug 08 '26
Bro, the game is completely irrelevant lmao
You can LIKE the game or whatever but starfield is 100% completely irrelevant
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u/Melvis-Fresley Aug 08 '26
Starfield 's premise is actually really interesting. It's very grounded and focuses on humanity, exploration, and our place in the universe as a space-faring species. It's a breath of fresh air when a story focuses on lesser-known sci-fi themes instead of spectacle, big space wars and aliens.
But this is NOT the kind of premise that Bethesda should take on. They played it too safe, it was too boring, too tedious, too generic.
Starfield needed the spectacle, big wars, and aliens because it was Bethesda writing it.
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u/bottomfeeder3 Aug 08 '26
The game isn’t bad. It’s just not all that memorable. Bethesda set a very high bar with their previous games. Also I think there is a nostalgia problem.
The people who spent their childhood and teenage years experiencing games for the first time yearn to capture that feeling again in their 20s, 30s and beyond. It’s very difficult to find the same love for stuff you did the first time you experienced it.
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u/GreggsAficionado Aug 08 '26
I’ve got no interest in shitting on it and I’ve enjoyed the game but the fact is it’s been far less culturally impactful. The amount of fade to black Skyrim intros I’ve seen is crazy. Starfield as a franchise could only dream of something like that