{"success":1,"query_summary":{"num_reviews":100},"reviews":[{"recommendationid":"154440607","author":{"steamid":"76561198070854572","personaname":"cornix94","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198070854572/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":2,"playtime_forever":8131,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":8131,"last_played":1697599302,"avatar":"fef49e7fa7e1997310d705b2a6158ff8dc1cdfeb"},"language":"english","review":"We've been hearing for years that Starfield is Bethesda's passion project, a game that they've been wanting to make even before Morrowind came out.\n\nIf this game is Bethesda's passion project, then they've lost their passion.\n\nPlenty of reviewers are dragging Starfield for its technical issues. While it's true that Bethesda should not get a free pass on that stuff just because \"lol, they're Bethesda\", I was prepared to accept a certain level of jank if it meant experiencing an inspired world. What really kills this game is that the setting itself is deeply, relentlessly boring. It's a haphazard collage of space frontier tropes. And you know what? That could have been fine. Tropes can be effective when wielded in service of a strong creative vision. But here, there is no greater vision. There is nothing, and I mean *nothing*, to this setting beyond the tropes that serve as its foundation. \n\nFor our major powers, we have a vaguely Western-flavored federal government, a vaguely Texan-flavored frontier alliance, a vaguely Eastern-flavored corpocracy, some scrappy pirates, and some mysterious religious zealots. There is nothing meaningful to know about any of these societies beyond whatever pictures of them you just conjured in your head. If you have an ounce of creativity, the pictures in your head are probably more detailed and compelling than the crap that made it into the game. It almost seems like these factions have been consciously sanitized, as if someone went through the first draft and removed any cultural or aesthetic identifiers beyond the baseline of \"Hey, this frontier guy wears a cowboy hat, likes guns, and has a bit of a stubborn streak!\". You'd think that the writers would be forced to come up with some creative quirks just to explain how these people adapted to their alien environments, but even that minimal level of flavor exceeds the bounds of Bethesda's vision. \n\nThis aggressive blandness persists at every scale. We have planets that run the gamut of environmental conditions, but none of them impose meaningful gameplay changes (aside from gravity's effect on jump height, which is basically the lowest hanging fruit possible), inspire variations on the ten or so prefabricated structures that we can encounter, or even have much influence on which of the handful of flora, fauna, and feature assets can populate the game's tragically samey landscapes. One of the foundational aspects of space exploration as a genre is exploring how extreme conditions shape strategies and societies. Starfield cares so little for this relationship that it borders on immersion-breaking. I expected that Starfield would rely on repeatable assets to some extent, and that exploration would lose its shine once you've exhausted the list of things to encounter. What I didn't expect was just how short that list would be, or how sloppily curated it would be in the context of the game's environments. \n\nAnd then there's the writing. Oh goodness, the writing. The best thing I can say is that, on a micro scale, it consists of grammatically correct sentences which could plausibly be uttered by a sane human being. Beyond that, it's shot through with the same listlessness that permeates every other aspect of the game. I'll present two case studies.\n\nI came upon a sidequest where an unknown vessel was orbiting a resort planet. Investigation reveals it to be a generation ship sent from Old Earth, back before humanity developed FTL travel. They don't take it well when you explain that their new home has already been claimed by Space Epcot. The captain asks you, some random hobo who just happened across them, to negotiate with the corpos on their behalf. They send along no observers or advocates, and don't even think to request a direct line of communication. The corpos offer you three options: blow up the ship and kill the colonists, coerce them into indentured servitude, or pay out of your own pocket to install an FTL drive aboard their ship so they can find another planet. There are no other options to advocate for the colonists. At no point does either party express any sort of cultural interest, or even basic curiosity about the other. There are no potential interactions with other factions or alternate arrangements for compensation, despite it being well-established that everything to do with Old Earth (down to the meanest paperweight) is treated as an invaluable piece of vintage history. The situation has the setup for a potentially game-changing historical event, and the most interesting thing Bethesda can squeeze from it is \"Corpos bad, are you willing to pay to feel better than them?\" If a 15th century carrack made landfall on the shores of Florida carrying the long lost descendents of Ferdinand Magellan's twin brother, I don't think Disney World's first reaction would be \"♥♥♥♥, they want our land, pump 'em full of lead!\"\n\nSecond case study. There's a plotline where you infiltrate the big pirate faction on behalf of the feds, right under the nose of their cunning leader and his paranoid, security-obsessed XO. So how do you stay in contact with your handlers during this delicate deep cover op? By PHYSICALLY FLYING FROM THE PIRATE BASE TO THE FEDERAL FLAGSHIP every time you complete a mission. Holy hell, are dead drops not a thing in this universe? Are the feds actively trying to give you away? During these OpSec-destroying excursions, you'll have the opportunity to turn in supplementary evidence on the pirates' many crimes. This evidence comes in the form of incriminating tapes that are just laying around in the general vicinity of the perpetrators. None of them, including the canny, wary pirate leaders, will raise objections to you stuffing said tapes into your knapsack in full view of everyone. While turning in these tapes, you'll speak to the federal XO, who repeatedly inquires as to your impressions of the pirate leader. You can either lie and say he's a nosepicking vagrant, in which case you'll be praised for your patriotism, or you can accurately inform her that he's an intelligent and charismatic figure who poses a real threat, in which case she'll chew you out for the betrayal of respecting the enemy. The questline sustains this level of cartoonishness right up to the end, where the defeated, betrayed pirate leader tells your narc ass that he's proud of you because deep down, you're the greatest pirate of all. A generous reading could paint this horrorshow as a satire of Hoover's CIA or something, but I'm not feeling very generous at the moment. \n\nThe common thread between these two cases is apathy. These scenarios have the potential to be so interesting and memorable, and the writers probably have the chops to deliver. But instead, they just... settle for mediocrity. They're writing with the expectation that they won't be held to a high standard. Situations don't have to make sense, commentary doesn't need to be thoughtful, narrative potential doesn't yearn to be realized. Dialogue is just there to point the way towards more gameplay, so write a few words and move on to the next contrivance. More and more, I feel like Bethesda views their games as theme parks; they're not writing a story, they're building a bunch of rides and doing the minimum necessary to shuffle people from one to the other.\n\nAnd now, the rides aren't even fun. Starfield uses humdrum, recycled assets to simulate a humdrum, recycled setting. None of its components do anything to support each other: not the worldbuilding, not the environments, not the gameplay, not the writing. Every part of this game talks past every other part, and if you care to listen, you'll find that they're all just rambling drunkenly about the weather. The result is a joyless, colorless mess memorable only for the lengths it goes to insult its players. Bethesda can do better than this. But they probably won't, because they don't think they have to, and apparently professional shame isn't enough of a motivator for them.","timestamp_created":1703585952,"timestamp_updated":1703585952,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":11333,"votes_funny":257,"weighted_vote_score":"0.972023844718933105","comment_count":310,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":24,"count":3},{"reaction_type":26,"count":2},{"reaction_type":34,"count":1},{"reaction_type":17,"count":810},{"reaction_type":16,"count":261},{"reaction_type":5,"count":238},{"reaction_type":13,"count":211},{"reaction_type":6,"count":118},{"reaction_type":1,"count":107},{"reaction_type":22,"count":51},{"reaction_type":9,"count":44},{"reaction_type":11,"count":42},{"reaction_type":15,"count":42},{"reaction_type":8,"count":30},{"reaction_type":4,"count":16},{"reaction_type":14,"count":14},{"reaction_type":18,"count":14},{"reaction_type":10,"count":13},{"reaction_type":19,"count":11},{"reaction_type":21,"count":10},{"reaction_type":20,"count":9},{"reaction_type":2,"count":7},{"reaction_type":3,"count":7},{"reaction_type":23,"count":7},{"reaction_type":7,"count":5},{"reaction_type":12,"count":2}]},{"recommendationid":"152483294","author":{"steamid":"76561197978166658","personaname":"Ceilium","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/DeliciousNoseClams/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":5,"playtime_forever":8034,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":8034,"last_played":1698476755,"avatar":"90a445cdc0d045ce83521c3c470eafcf77582d53"},"language":"english","review":"Update: Bethesda is now charging for individual quests through the creation kit. $7 for a quest in a game THAT YOU PAID $70 FOR. And the real cost is actually $10 because you have to purchase their currency to get it. Granted, no one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to buy this but it sets such a bad precedent. After the initial release being entirely mid it was clear that this game needed a CP2077-esque redemption arc to save it. Instead they started charging for individual quests. Do they just have contempt for their audience?\n\nI wasn't going to write this at first because I was so 50/50 on recommending it or not but after Bethesda started replying to negative reviews about why the reviews they've written are wrong I feel compelled to write something.\n\nI would not recommend this game for $70. I would recommend waiting until the game is fully released with all of its DLCs *on* *sale* to buy it. To me there was just not enough there to justify the price. It feels like a game that's only had a few years of development rather than seven and it's just kind of under cooked.\n\nThe game itself is just boring and uninspired. It's sterile and safe, built to appeal to the widest possible audience and not offend anybody. The characters sometimes have their shining moments but for the most part are bland and your companions are the worst of these offenders because they all have the same opinion on everything, they're all the same. The characters also don't look great, they have this dead eyed uncanny valley effect to them made worse by the skyrim style zoom in whenever they talk. \n\nThe quests themselves with the exception of a few, are so uninspired and boring and offer no moral dilemmas or require any serious thought. Compare the Ryujin quest line to the thieves guild quest line in Oblivion. With the thieves guild quest like there is a gradual progression which teaches the player not only how to be a thief but what to expect as far as how challenging a given assignment will be. Ryujin gives you three childishly easy quests that are so easy that they neither teach you how to be a thief nor give you an idea of what's to come then the difficulty meter suddenly jumps with the next quest to really quite difficult. Thankfully I happened to have enough levels saved up to dump some points into stealth otherwise I would have had to fail or just leave the quest, level up, and come back. This quest comparison also highlights another issue because Ryujin takes place in one of the saddest areas in the game, Neon.\n\nLocations. What is Bethesdas engine really good at? It makes it relatively easy to hand craft huge worlds. So what does Starfield do? They hand crafted a few locations and left the rest up to procedural generation of course!... Oh, well... the few hand crafted locations are great right? No? Oh okay then. New Atlantis is kinda cool but it's so small, it's close to having some literal and figurative depth to it with the well but that's barely explored. New Akila looks cool but again is far too small. The Key is not a city. And Neon... Oh Jesus Christ Neon...\n\nNeon is \"we have Nightcity from CP2077 at home.\" It's suppose to be this cyberpunk, blade runner-esque city rampant with crime and drug use. You basically get the DisneyLand (not even DisneyWorld) version of that. There is no crime to witness. There are no daily schedules like Oblivion npcs had. Just the same blank faces staring at you like your ♥♥♥♥ is out but you don't know it like all the other cities. They hype up a drug that can only be bought in a particular very talked up club in Neon and the club is one of the saddest things i've ever seen in a game. It's one relatively tiny room with flashing neon lights and out of shape spandex wearing conehead cosplayers gyrating uncomfortably. Keep in mind this is one of the few hand crafted locations, pretty much everything else is procedurally generated. You also can't even smuggle the drug out for any profit, it's worth the same no matter what planet you bring it to which doesn't make any sense. So locations are not great which brings me to exploration...\n\nExploration in Starfield is not great. In a Fallout or an Elder Scrolls game you can stumble upon countless interesting hand crafted locations and encounters in the game to the point that getting lost is a good thing. In Starfield you won't stumble upon anything because you fast travel from planet to planet, system to system. So to explore that has to be your express goal. Okay, fine. Except everything is procedurally generated so after you've done it once you're just going to see it copy and pasted on different looking planets. You're not going to find anything new in that cave because it's the same cave. You're not going to find anything interesting on that planet because it's going to have the same stuff as the last one, just with different plants around it and the grounds a different color. Just go system to system looking for content until you get bored with that. They made some decent random encounters that you can have while out in space but not enough of them, I've run into Grandma half a dozen times by now.\n\nAnd as far as things to do... the ending: Spoilers ahead obviously. It's another multiverse story. I understand 7 years ago when the game began development this concept wasn't quite as tired and cliche as it has become but good God am I sick of multiverses. The whole point of the game is to just replay it again, that's how it ends. I wish I was joking. It's message is basically it's not about the destination, it's about the journey, which is fine but the journey is not good... Unfortunately the game has, to me, no replayability until new content in the form of DLC drops. Which I may not even buy until it goes on sale because I just don't care. The story is that uninteresting. \n\nThis is not to say that everything about Starfield is bad. The gun play is actually pretty great though not worth it alone to buy the game. The ship building is actually really fun despite it being janky, probably some of the most fun i've had in the game. Some of the quests are fun like the UC quest line and other shorter, one off quests. They all have the same problems though: if they do offer any interesting ideas they do not fully explore them, they acknowledge them and that's about it. Things like the Well, tensions between the UC and Rangers, and the UC being a fascist state are all explored in only the most superficial terms. Bethesda has always had the problem of being wide as a lake but deep as a puddle and Starfield is unfortunately a prime example of how this problem has only gotten worse with every subsequent Bethesda release since Morrowind. \n\nI did enjoy parts of this game but I cannot recommend it for $70. It is so frustrating to see Bethesda finally get a crack at creating a unique IP that isn't another Elder Scrolls or Fallout game and they make this boring, uninspired whimper of a game. This game is all of Bethesdas bad habits, everything they're bad at and nothing they're good at, finely distilled. \n\nOne of the most frustrating things to me is that this game is mediocre, it's not bad like No Mans Sky and it didn't ruin Bethesdas reputation like CP2077 did on release so it's not going to get the attention it needs to be made into great game like those studios did. Chances are post launch will be handled very much like FO4 where we'll get a couple of bug fixes but not nearly enough and a couple of nickle and dime DLCS then one or two really solid ones. They have ES6 to get to work on after all. This means the game will probably not have a miracle come back like those games did and will probably always be mediocre, which I think is a shame because it does have good bones there's just no meat on them.","timestamp_created":1701219032,"timestamp_updated":1718069359,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":9000,"votes_funny":108,"weighted_vote_score":"0.966813385486602783","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":451},{"reaction_type":16,"count":154},{"reaction_type":6,"count":82},{"reaction_type":13,"count":81},{"reaction_type":5,"count":77},{"reaction_type":1,"count":46},{"reaction_type":15,"count":29},{"reaction_type":18,"count":24},{"reaction_type":11,"count":23},{"reaction_type":9,"count":23},{"reaction_type":22,"count":18},{"reaction_type":19,"count":16},{"reaction_type":8,"count":15},{"reaction_type":4,"count":12},{"reaction_type":21,"count":12},{"reaction_type":10,"count":8},{"reaction_type":20,"count":5},{"reaction_type":14,"count":5},{"reaction_type":2,"count":5},{"reaction_type":12,"count":5},{"reaction_type":23,"count":5},{"reaction_type":3,"count":3},{"reaction_type":7,"count":3}]},{"recommendationid":"150756759","author":{"steamid":"76561197968397832","personaname":"Nightfall","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197968397832/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":14,"playtime_forever":4504,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4504,"last_played":1696786186,"avatar":"4d2e399e3e69de08a2d439290c8e85e788edbc47"},"language":"english","review":"I played for 75 hours because I needed the dopamine fix. Looking back its a boring story, in a boring world.\n\nAlso I CANNOT get over the one mission I thought would be awesome. Finding a ship launched from earth 200 years earlier with the offspring of the original crew finally finding humanity... and they have the same computers with the same operating system on their ship as the rest of the universe. WHY WHY WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY\n\n*little update*\n\nYes I too find it funny that Bethesda AI bot thinks that after 75 hours I wouldnt know about smuggling, outposts, starship customization... yes i've done those absolutely dull and mostly pointless activities. Just cause there are a thousand boring planets to visit, doesnt mean I want to visit them.","timestamp_created":1700611077,"timestamp_updated":1702091530,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":5786,"votes_funny":288,"weighted_vote_score":"0.961172223091125488","comment_count":513,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"timestamp_dev_responded":1701179868,"developer_response":"Hi,\nWe appreciate you taking the time to provide your review and sorry to hear that you did not enjoy your time in Starfield.\nIf you feel that things are getting boring, there is so much more to do than just the main mission! There are many side missions where you can learn more about the people and story of Starfield. You can take time to explore various planets for resources and items. Break the law by smuggling and selling contraband. Build your own Outposts and Starships and customize them to your enjoyment. There are many things to do and you can visit our Discord for further ideas from other players: https://beth.games/3F1Jb0W\nStarfield is an RPG with hundreds of hours of quests to complete and characters to meet. Most quests will also vary on your character’s skills and decisions, massively changing the outcome of your playthrough. Try creating different characters with backgrounds and characteristics that clash or are oppositive of your previous character. You will feel like you are playing a totally different game. Put points in different skills from a character you’ve previously created, and you are now faced with completely different decisions to make and difficulties to encounter. There are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you’ve never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours.\nEven after completing the Main Story, your adventure doesn’t end! You can continue onto New Game+ to keep exploring Starfield and all that is out there! \nTo provide feedback to development for Starfield, please feel free to use this form here: https://beth.games/45BDMKb\nThanks again and we hope you return to your journey through space soon!\nWarm regards,\nBethesda Customer Support","app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":104},{"reaction_type":16,"count":47},{"reaction_type":13,"count":15},{"reaction_type":5,"count":15},{"reaction_type":6,"count":15},{"reaction_type":22,"count":13},{"reaction_type":3,"count":12},{"reaction_type":18,"count":10},{"reaction_type":14,"count":8},{"reaction_type":19,"count":8},{"reaction_type":15,"count":7},{"reaction_type":9,"count":6},{"reaction_type":11,"count":5},{"reaction_type":1,"count":5},{"reaction_type":23,"count":5},{"reaction_type":10,"count":4},{"reaction_type":4,"count":3},{"reaction_type":8,"count":3},{"reaction_type":2,"count":2},{"reaction_type":12,"count":2},{"reaction_type":21,"count":2},{"reaction_type":20,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"158723303","author":{"steamid":"76561198005881740","personaname":"Three Catgirls in a Trenchcoat","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Lexibish/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":15,"playtime_forever":23986,"playtime_last_two_weeks":86,"playtime_at_review":23986,"last_played":1775653198,"avatar":"8dfe278c7493b6984540e57ecd57b791df13841e"},"language":"english","review":"A lot of people have rightly pointed out the boring planets, the dull shooting and many of the other issues with this game, but I wanted to point out one of the biggest reasons this game failed to grab my imagination in the way it clearly wanted to; Its combination of sterile and safe storytelling with a bad habit of telling instead of showing. \n\nIn New Atlantis, the capitol village-I mean \"city\" of the United Colonies, the supposed biggest star nation in the setting, you see fully armored riot looking cops patrolling everywhere, then you go down to the Well, the admittedly neat looking pseudo-undercity of New Atlantis, and see graffiti of a UC soldier executing someone with \"all hail our benevolent overlords\" written sardonically besides it. That paired with loading screen hits of ther UC having \"Maybe too many laws\" you'd think that this was setting up that the shiny, Star Trek Looking faction that has draped itself in \"Good Guy Space America\" may have a dark side, even before you find out that they are legit doing United Citizen Federation ♥♥♥♥ of haivng citizenship needing to be earned and necessary for owning a home and other basic things. But then something weird happens....nothing happens, even when you find out a moderate twist during their faction missions, the UC keeps being just a bunch of goody goody folks who just wanna protect civilians. All that lead up of a sinister side is just window dressing.\n\nI thought things would be better once I hit Neon, a City built like a massive oil platform on an ocean planet covered in holograms and neon lights and supposidly riddled with crime and drugs like a nautical Night City? I could not get my spacer ass over there fast enough! It even looked great at first with the lightning strikes hitting the city's sheild, the guards making sure that nobody smuggles out the dangerously addictive drugs that are legal inside the city, all the way to the smokey cyberpunk/nautical town looking streets. But just like New Atlantis and the UC, all this talk of Neon being a dangerous and risky place with crime and corruption all over was just that, a bunch of talk as the place ended up quickly feeling more like a suburban strip mall with bad weather and some corporate branded graffiti to try and look 'street'. \n\nAfter finishing a questline for the most friendly and well behaved gang ever I set course for the Freestar collective, maybe some space weastern, Serenety style feels would finally immerse me in this game I paid eeventy real life dollars for. Akila City was less offensive in it's broken promises than the previous cities, it sure did feel and look like a sort of Star Wars/Serenity space weastern pastiche and even had a old timey bank robbery going on. But like the rest, all the talk of the super dangerous wildlife constantly at the walls like they were on a death world went unfulfilled in any meaningful way. \n\nThe rest of the game feels the same, sterile and safe, pirates who talk cringingly about how they are gonna totally betray you and oh you better not cross them sonny jim but come accross like teenagers from a gated community trying to act hard. Sterile and constantly touching on themes and ideas that it later forgets, Starfield could not make an immersive world if it tried, and thats why after playing through the entire damn thing the most fun I found was helping a clone of Gengis Khan stage a prison break against a clone of FDR and an Egyptian queen because at least that was bafflingly amusing. Seriously if you want a fun space RPG, go play the Outer worlds, it takes you about 30 hours maybe to finish everything but damned if it didn't make me legit feel like a han solo type. \n\nLike the idea of making your own spaceships though, shame about the bloody ladders\n\nEdit: been two years and I ain't heard one rebuttal to a single point I made from ya'll but I keep seeing chatter in my notifications.","timestamp_created":1708355542,"timestamp_updated":1775770475,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":4207,"votes_funny":77,"weighted_vote_score":"0.958570778369903564","comment_count":18,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":109},{"reaction_type":6,"count":35},{"reaction_type":13,"count":29},{"reaction_type":5,"count":29},{"reaction_type":16,"count":27},{"reaction_type":1,"count":24},{"reaction_type":11,"count":13},{"reaction_type":15,"count":13},{"reaction_type":22,"count":11},{"reaction_type":9,"count":10},{"reaction_type":8,"count":8},{"reaction_type":18,"count":8},{"reaction_type":4,"count":5},{"reaction_type":19,"count":4},{"reaction_type":10,"count":2},{"reaction_type":20,"count":2},{"reaction_type":21,"count":2},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":12,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"171240686","author":{"steamid":"76561198008314322","personaname":"Gemini Pestdeath","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198008314322/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":31,"playtime_forever":14002,"playtime_last_two_weeks":3381,"playtime_at_review":10186,"last_played":1776586566,"avatar":"12558fe1bfd10a2566fa196c36c099fad10fddcd"},"language":"english","review":"[h3]IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ BEFORE PURCHASING CREATION CONTENT - IMPORTANT[/h3]\n\nStarfield is a pretty mid game even by Bethesda standards and I wasn't even going to write a review on it, but now I feel like I have to. [b]Bethesda is trying to start a trend that will forever damage trust between developers and players and we need to stop it the same way Helldivers 2 players stopped their issues[/b]. Here's what you NEED to know:\n\n- Bethesda released the 'Trackers Alliance' content system as part of a free update in June. You cannot decline the addition of this content as it was built into the update. \n- It is basically a Starfield take on The Mandalorian where you take/complete bounties as a bounty hunter. Some bounties are wanted alive, some dead, and you can find bounties by scanning people. \n- [b]You cannot complete bounties where it is necessary to confront the person via dialogue because it is bugged.[/b] Killing them fails the mission and DOES NOT resolve the quest, so there is [b]no way to complete it[/b] once it's bugged. \n- You can only ever have five (5) bounties, so once you have five bugged NPCs [b]you can no longer get more[/b].\n\n[b]This is broken on the scripting level. It CANNOT be fixed with console commands or mods. It MUST be fixed by Bethesda or someone with enough knowledge in the scripting to fix it at the SFSE modded level[/b].\n\n[h3]Okay, bugged quest, who cares?[/h3]\n\n- Bethesda is going to be releases Trackers Alliance content in the form of Paid DLCs through the Creation Launcher (their in-game hub for mods and stuff). They're releasing it like a mod, basically. \n- Because they are releasing it 'like a mod' they can just post a disclaimer saying it may be broken and then they're covered. \n- You cannot purchase this stuff on Steam, you can only purchase the 'Creation Credits' to buy the paid DLC in-game even though it is official, paid DLC. \n- There is no way to dislike, review, or comment on things in the Creation hub and since it isn't listed as 'DLC', you can't dislike, review, or comment on it on Steam either. \n- In essence, [b]there is no way to dislike, review, or comment on it being broken in any capacity[/b]. You are literally being sold a broken product and there is no way to even warn people that it is broken outside of reviewing the base game, which I am doing now to inform you of this. \n\nThey literally want you to pay $7 for content that is certifiably broken and has been reported as broken hundreds of times on Reddit and [i]might only be able to be fixed[/i] by an SFSE mod for PC users only. You can't even dislike/review/comment on it to WARN people about this. The only way I am even able to share this information is by reviewing the base game here on Steam. \n\n[h3]TL;DR / So what do I do?[/h3]\n\nDO NOT PURCHASE THE TRACKERS ALLIANCE DLC CONTENT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. It is broken beyond repair and there is no way to refund it once you get it. When - not if - it breaks, there is nothing you can do. Console commands, mods, etc will not fix it and even if they did, they'd only fix it for PC users. There is no way to dislike, review, or comment on it being broken to inform others that it is, in fact, broken. Bethesda has found a loophole by which to release broken, paid DLC where they not only do not have to fix it, they can't be held accountable for it being broken. \n\n[b]Do not let them think that this is at all acceptable or it sets a trend for the whole of the gaming industry.[/b]\n\nEDIT: Clarified some things in the second bullet list.","timestamp_created":1722535384,"timestamp_updated":1722535688,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":2922,"votes_funny":20,"weighted_vote_score":"0.958472013473510742","comment_count":66,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":150},{"reaction_type":6,"count":83},{"reaction_type":13,"count":27},{"reaction_type":11,"count":17},{"reaction_type":16,"count":15},{"reaction_type":22,"count":10},{"reaction_type":21,"count":7},{"reaction_type":9,"count":6},{"reaction_type":19,"count":6},{"reaction_type":10,"count":5},{"reaction_type":18,"count":5},{"reaction_type":14,"count":4},{"reaction_type":1,"count":4},{"reaction_type":5,"count":4},{"reaction_type":15,"count":3},{"reaction_type":4,"count":2},{"reaction_type":7,"count":2},{"reaction_type":12,"count":2},{"reaction_type":23,"count":2},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"156609402","author":{"steamid":"76561198071833681","personaname":"YourWhimsicalStranger","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198071833681/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":1,"playtime_forever":7299,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":7299,"last_played":1705993356,"avatar":"0e97f9186a7f98bde210005ae3b12aee0509dc08"},"language":"english","review":"Some Point after the 30th \"Collapsed Mine\" with the exact same layout, with the exact same corpse placement with the exact same notes on them it just gets old.","timestamp_created":1705995924,"timestamp_updated":1705995924,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1464,"votes_funny":21,"weighted_vote_score":"0.954056084156036377","comment_count":15,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":5,"count":11},{"reaction_type":17,"count":8},{"reaction_type":9,"count":5},{"reaction_type":6,"count":4},{"reaction_type":16,"count":2},{"reaction_type":11,"count":1},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"161871675","author":{"steamid":"76561198020313592","personaname":"Tamaster","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/tho545454/","num_games_owned":1094,"num_reviews":656,"playtime_forever":4014,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4014,"last_played":1711838880,"avatar":"78c5803e70d3cb690db1aac4e4818c385f7f20d2"},"language":"english","review":"[h1]Sum-Up[/h1]\n[h3]In-depth analysis further down.[/h3]\n\nIf you’re looking for some screenshots [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/tho545454/screenshots/?appid=1716740&sort=newestfirst&browsefilter=myfiles&view=grid]click here[/url] to view all the ones I took for this game.\n\n[table]\n[tr]\n[th]🟩 [b]Pros[/b][/th]\n[th]🟥 [b]Cons[/b][/th]\n[/tr]\n[tr]\n[td]\n• Good amount of diverse activities you can engage into.\n\n• Solid visuals, with particular attention to environmental and open-world details. On max settings, it looks spectacular.\n\n• Progression feels somewhat satisfying for the first 20-30 hours.\n\n• For a Bethesda game, the amount of severe bugs and technical issues is much lower than expected.\n[/td]\n[td]\n• Unengaging main story, encompassed by one-sided, forgettable characters you likely won’t relate to, or get a feeling for, at any point.\n\n• Enormous amount of recycled / copy-pasted content, including 1:1 copies of locations that, on paper, should be unique. \n\n• Long-term progression lacks incentive; it’s, essentially, a constantly-diminishing return in all aspects, that becomes a tedious slog without a satisfying goal.\n\n• Space combat lacks depth, feels shallow, and boils down to a flat ‘DPS-check’ trade of blows between ships most of the time.\n\n• Getting most things done is a cumbersome affair due to the high amount of loading screens, unskippable transition animations and clunky, formulaic UI layouts.\n\n• Power creep issues in later-game: even on Very Hard, you’ll be able to steamroll enemies 30 levels above you without much issue, with any half-decent build.\n[/td]\n[/tr]\n[/table]\n\n[table]\n[tr]\n[th]🟨 [b]Bugs & Issues[/b][/th]\n[th]🔧 [b]Specs[/b][/th]\n[/tr]\n[tr]\n[td]\n• Exclusive Fullscreen is unavailable; only Borderless or Windowed. Unacceptable in a 2024 release.\n\n• Hit markers and other annoying UI elements can’t be disabled in any way.\n\n• Alt-tabbing the game will pause it in all screen modes, making wait times a chore.\n\n• Companions break stealth by getting spotted in dumb ways; play solo if you go for a stealth build.\n[/td]\n[td]\n• i9 13980HX\n• 64GB RAM DDR5\n• RTX 4090\n• NvME SSD\n• 3840x2160\n[/td]\n[/tr]\n[/table]\n\n[table]\n[tr]\n[td][b]Content & Replay Value:[/b][/td]\n[td]Greatly depends on your approach. Main quest only will take you about 30-40 hours, while doing 100% will likely take hundreds. I played for 67 hours before giving up due to tremendous boredom and lack of incentive to progress further. NG+ mode available.[/td]\n[/tr]\n[tr]\n[td][b]Is it worth buying?[/b][/td]\n[td]No. The price of 70€ may be worth it on paper as far as raw content goes, but its quality is lackluster and it degrades the more you go on, as far as -meaningful- content offered is concerned. [/td]\n[/tr]\n[tr]\n[td][h3]Verdict: Mediocre[/h3]\n[url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2548409603]Rating Chart Here[/url][/td]\n[td]Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle. It’s a trite saying, but none is more apt in this case. Starts well,  but becomes worse the more you play it, when it should be the opposite.[/td]\n[/tr]\n[/table]\n\n[h1]In-Depth[/h1]\n[h3]Writing & Worldbuilding[/h3]\nStarting as a miner nobody on a remote planet, your run-of-the-mill ‘deus-ex-machina’ starts when you happen to stumble on a mysterious alien artifact that, coincidentally enough, seems to attune to your person with yet-unknown consequences. MAGIC! It’s the same trope of Skyrim’s Dragonborn, only much less cooler because this time you have a rusted piece of alien metal instead of dragon souls sniffing. And you’re dubbed ‘Starborn’ not long afterwards, because Bethesda writers have a LOT of imagination. From there your journey through the stars starts yadda-yadda-ya - use the Force, Luke, and so on. Boring.\n\nEverything from locations to quests, characters, companions and villains feel terribly generic, underwhelming and soulless. Not once in my nearly 70 hours have I said, in my head, ‘now THIS is interesting’ - or cool, or deep, or mysterious enough to interest me. That’s not going to happen, because trying to please everyone with cookie cutter narratives and character designs ends up pleasing NO ONE. \n\nThe world looks cool, and is visually fantastic in its details, especially out in the wild. Interiors, ships and general indoors locations, save for a few, feel generic and same-y, and don’t have the same level of interactivity seen in previous Bethesda games. They even removed the gore system everyone loved. The attempt at a ‘late-hard-sci-fi’ universe fails miserably, because it’s not nearly gritty enough, and doesn’t take itself seriously enough, to be fitting for a true ‘hard sci fi’.\n\n[h3]Exploration & Secrets[/h3]\nYou’ll explore the galaxy using your ship, jumping from system to system, able to land on pretty much any planet that has solid ground. Once disembarked, you’ll proceed on foot and, if you have the right perk, move faster with the aid of a jump pack for additional jump reach and better mobility. Reaching most locations is a tiresome affair, since your running speed will be very slow compared to the distance you’ll have to cross - with very little of interest between you and the next map marker. \n\nForget all the interesting random encounters of Fallout or Elder Scrolls, those won’t happen on these barren planets. Points of interest range from small outposts to multi-layered facilities, often filled with enemies, containers, loot, locked doors, terminals with lore - the usual. They’re interesting to explore the first time around, however the massive amount of copy-pasting will make them tiresome soon, since very few truly unique ones exist outside of questlines. \n\nExploration is compounded with a surveying system allowing you to painstakingly scan all resources, animals, elements and flora of each planet and then sell the data for a pittance - that’s not worth doing and takes ages. There are some secrets in the form of hidden locations discoverable only by reading specific documents, or hidden containers inside POIs, but they’re usually underwhelming - exceptions apply.\n\n[h3]Combat System & Bosses[/h3]\nYou’ll be able to use a variety of weapons that either deal physical, energy or EM (stun) damage, and also modify them via workbenches - same goes for armor parts. There are rarity tiers that add passive properties, although most of them are gimmicks not worth grinding Legendary Enemies for. The problem with weapons in Starfield is that they feel too similar to one another, and even ‘unique’ named ones are just normal guns with pre-set modifications and affixes, none of them is TRULY something one of a kind you can’t find anywhere else, powerful and sublime to look for. \n\nCombat gunplay is fine, somewhat on the same level of Fallout 4, but less dynamic, with worse AI, and less gore / impact feel from shots. All enemies you’ll face feel the same, behave the same and LOOK the same because 90% of the time everyone wears spacesuits, even while inside. Except in cities. Companions are brainless meat-shields only useful to carry additional cargo, and the enemy AI is so dumb you’ll have a cake walk if you use a stealth build or just use basic cover. You’ll eventually acquire special powers due to your “chosen” status, which are memes I never really found useful. I’ve fought a total ONE unique boss in 70 hours in a specific quest, the rest were just oversized / renamed / reskinned generic enemies over and over again. FillerField.\n\n[h3]Companions & Quests[/h3]\nCompanions are one sided-flat and cringe in most cases. They don’t really seem to react to your personal dispositions in meaningful ways, or to your actions, and when they actually do, you can always persuade them to stick with you for the sake of the plot - God forbid actual freedom of choice. Remember how in say, New Vegas, companions ditched you if you behaved against their values or beliefs, or allied with a faction they hated? That’s not going to happen here, and there isn’t even a Faction reputation system to begin with.","timestamp_created":1711880488,"timestamp_updated":1711880488,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1438,"votes_funny":21,"weighted_vote_score":"0.952620625495910645","comment_count":33,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":102},{"reaction_type":13,"count":28},{"reaction_type":6,"count":24},{"reaction_type":11,"count":15},{"reaction_type":1,"count":12},{"reaction_type":5,"count":11},{"reaction_type":16,"count":8},{"reaction_type":8,"count":5},{"reaction_type":10,"count":4},{"reaction_type":9,"count":3},{"reaction_type":22,"count":3},{"reaction_type":18,"count":3},{"reaction_type":21,"count":3},{"reaction_type":15,"count":2},{"reaction_type":20,"count":2},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":12,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"197418240","author":{"steamid":"76561197980745732","personaname":"Red hooligan","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197980745732/","num_games_owned":187,"num_reviews":6,"playtime_forever":22646,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":20053,"last_played":1751592461,"avatar":"fef49e7fa7e1997310d705b2a6158ff8dc1cdfeb"},"language":"english","review":"I've had some time to digest this one. I did everything, put it down for a while, then came back to it for second taste. The short answer is, it's just okay. At some points it even qualifies as good. But It's rarely great, and too frequently bad. The amount of missed potential here is staggering.\n\nWe'll start with what I liked: It's a new adventure, and in the opening chapter it does a great job at building a sense that you have an enormous galaxy to explore before you and this is a universe that is both highly technologically advanced and still a rugged frontier. Your first quest shows you the scale and grandeur the game engine is capable of. The bespoke, non-procedural generated story locations are unique and life-like. There's even a glimmer of something mysterious and special when you get some cool new space magic\n\nThen the bad: Everything else. At the risk of sounding cliche, the universe here is as vast as the ocean, and as deep as a puddle. The \"1000 planets\" touted so highly might as well be 4; the flat barren one, the jungle one, the snow one, and Australia. The variations are so trivial that each could barely hold my attention long enough to complete whatever fetch quest I came for. A meager handful of flora and fauna to scan and \"catalog\" that bare an incredible similarity to the last planet, and the one before that, etc. And the same could be said of the points of interest. About the third time I wandered through the same cryo-facility with the same corpses, same loot, same enemies, and same notes with the same names, just on a different planet, I realized that I hit the limit on the exploration aspect of the game.\n\nAnd then I was robbed of the sense of adventure the opening chapter promised. Everywhere I went, somebody had been there. The surface of every planet is littered with abandoned structures and homesteads, or the remains of corporate industrialism. From a narrative perspective it drives me right out of the immersion. The presence of mysterious alien ruins unknown to mankind a short walk from the local space-Waffle House while random ships fly overhead of what should be an uncharted, virgin world destroys any of the mystery of discovering them in the first place. And a sense of mystery is only satisfying if there are breadcrumbs along the way to hint at a purpose to it. They just dump all this mysterious alien-looking nonsense everywhere and then never explain any of it. Then I see why all those buildings everywhere are abandoned: they got bored and left.\n\nThen there's the combat. The game goes into great detail to build a world where a great war has recently concluded, and all the cool death rays, robo-mechs, bio-weapons, and other portable war-crimes that definitely exist in this universe have been conveniently outlawed and locked away by space-NATO. And what do they do with this sprawling arsenal of Chekhov's guns? They only fire the lamest one of them. No boss fights against towering mechs, no illegal weapons to smuggle past authorities on or off worlds to give you an ethically questionable leg-up on the scum of the galaxy. Just goofy looking guns, knives, and some mediocre gunplay with uninspired workbench mods. Only this game can make lasers boring. Blasting an enemy ship to pieces with laser cannons and missiles should be fun. Instead, it's a contest to see who has the more shield points while you spam all your weapons into one of the, at most, 3 enemies in front of you. Even the space magic is boring. They were literally given license to throw the laws of physics out the window and come up with something exciting, and the best they could do was \"Fus Ro Da, but in space\". And the same fly-through-the-rings puzzle every single time. TOTK had 104 unique shrine puzzles, and this game only has one. This review is already long enough, but we have to address the worst thing of all, the companions.\n\nYour companions are perhaps the biggest missed opportunity of them all. They all have the same likes and dislikes, a choice to please one is likely a choice to please them all. To their credit, none of them are psychopaths. They won't gleefully join you in committing acts of terror, and rightfully so. It wouldn't make any sense to play this game as if it were a live GTA server. But there is no nuance. Every one of them is an upstanding member of society with no desire to disrupt anything around them. Even the one that used to be a criminal will bug out on you if you do some actual crime. If they were different flavors of ice cream, they would all be vanilla. I didn't find myself attached to any of them, and their various involvements in any events of the game didn't elicit much of an emotional response from me. [Sarah Morgan disliked that]\n\nThe game is mechanically sound and well polished from technical standpoint. But I could go on and on about specific plot points, character interactions (or lack thereof), and world building ideas that just missed the mark and could have been so, so much more. This game is worth about $25, tops. I advise you only buy it if it ever goes on sale, and for no more than that.","timestamp_created":1750118762,"timestamp_updated":1750118762,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":648,"votes_funny":21,"weighted_vote_score":"0.947646737098693848","comment_count":3,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":24},{"reaction_type":5,"count":14},{"reaction_type":16,"count":8},{"reaction_type":1,"count":6},{"reaction_type":6,"count":6},{"reaction_type":9,"count":4},{"reaction_type":11,"count":3},{"reaction_type":8,"count":3},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":3,"count":2},{"reaction_type":4,"count":2},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":14,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"214143503","author":{"steamid":"76561198005603896","personaname":"[sic!]","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198005603896/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":1,"playtime_forever":4805,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4805,"last_played":1703963518,"avatar":"9f3dd3b22b11166a69c747a573e348fb62f7a9b2"},"language":"english","review":"Well, today I remembered Starfield exists in my library and it pissed me of to such an extend, that I had to write a review.\n\nNote, that I am not the review writing type. If a game disapoints me it just gets ignored forever if I can't return it anymore. So it says a lot, if I make my distaste known on a public forum.\n\nWhile others have torn into the bugs, the uninspired story, the myriad of loading screens or the fact that youre just Dragonborn in space I will concentrate on the fact that annoyed me the most: Communication in Questing.\n\nYou see, all quests are written like Skyrim or Fallout. You go to a person, speak to them, get to say \"Yes, I'll do it.\" or \"No, but I'll do it later.\" and in the case of a \"Yes\" you go onto your merry way, visit a location, slaughter a bunch of enemies, find some macguffin and find your way back to your questgiver to end the quest in person.\n\nThis is perfectly fine for a medieval fantasy or postapokalyptik sixties setting. You see, you can't expext the Dragon born or the Courier to just take out a mobile phone and call their questgiver to inform them for a job well done. You are kind of expected to travel back to inform them in person for a lack of alternative.\n\nIn Starfield you are expected to walk back to your questgiver because the writers wrote like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ morons. You are piloting a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spaceship, but are expected to walk to every single person you want to talk to in ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ person. Through all the loading screens Starfield throws at you. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.\n\nThe writers just don't understand that in a sufficiently technological advanced societey communication is important and technological solutions to copmmunication are widespread. Wanna know what counts for a sufficiently advanced societe? WE DO! Us, in this very moment! This very review can be read all over the globe if someone is inclined to dig for it through thousands of other negative reviews.\n\nAppearently cell phones where declared heresy and every single phone in existance and their plans where destroyed to such an extend that not even pirates use them anymore. Also yes, I know that communicating over galaxy spanning distances is hard, but it's never mentioned in the game. At all. No quantum entanglement node or whatever else sci-fi ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to communicate long distances. The writers just forgot, that they should have come up with something.\n\nWhich means you have to suffer through loading screen hell to start and end any quest in Starfield.\n\nYou wanna know a game that did it right? Cyberpunk 2077. The writers, not being total hacks crippled by a lack of cohesive vision, understood how technology would influence their story. They took modern day technology and expanded on it, going from physical phones to implants that are used for communication.\n\nWhile the base game fixer jobs wheren't perfect, they where at least quick and uncomplicted. You showed up to a place, got a call, did your quest and then phoned in to repeort your success. No travel needed.\n\nThe writers of Cyberpunk even came up with a solution for phyical quest items. Drop off points. A map littered with drop off points doubling as trash vendors, so you just have to travel to the next point instead of your questgiver.\n\n In comparison Starfield just keeps wasting your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time. \n\nYou meet questgiver (which is generous to Starfield because im ommiting the loading screens it took to get to him) and accept a quest.\n\n You leave the building. Loading Screen.\n\nYou walk up to your ship and enter it. Loading Screen.\n\nYou sit in your pilot seat. Loading Screen.\n\nYou fly into space. Loading Screen.\n\nYou the questlocation up in your starmap and oops, it's out of jump range, that means yu have to do an extra jump. Loading Screen. Loading Screen.\n\nYou  on the planet. Loading Screen.\n\nYou exit your chair. Loading Screen.\n\nYou leave the ship. Loading Screen.\n\nYou march to tzhe lokation 2km  away and enter. Loading Screen.\n\nYou do the quest and no have to do the whole thing in reverese to meet the questgiver.\n\nJust buy Cyberpunk.","timestamp_created":1766662627,"timestamp_updated":1766662661,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1864,"votes_funny":214,"weighted_vote_score":"0.945939004421234131","comment_count":54,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":29,"count":38},{"reaction_type":24,"count":13},{"reaction_type":31,"count":12},{"reaction_type":27,"count":10},{"reaction_type":34,"count":7},{"reaction_type":25,"count":5},{"reaction_type":30,"count":5},{"reaction_type":26,"count":3},{"reaction_type":28,"count":3},{"reaction_type":32,"count":1},{"reaction_type":33,"count":1},{"reaction_type":35,"count":1},{"reaction_type":17,"count":89},{"reaction_type":5,"count":17},{"reaction_type":6,"count":17},{"reaction_type":13,"count":15},{"reaction_type":15,"count":14},{"reaction_type":16,"count":14},{"reaction_type":1,"count":11},{"reaction_type":3,"count":8},{"reaction_type":22,"count":6},{"reaction_type":9,"count":5},{"reaction_type":8,"count":5},{"reaction_type":19,"count":4},{"reaction_type":18,"count":4},{"reaction_type":11,"count":3},{"reaction_type":4,"count":3},{"reaction_type":10,"count":2},{"reaction_type":14,"count":2},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"156162700","author":{"steamid":"76561198015612865","personaname":"SS PigeonShit","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198015612865/","num_games_owned":891,"num_reviews":55,"playtime_forever":5299,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":5299,"last_played":1701195455,"avatar":"cc65b2e51c12c364fdb62d61b2232e804b4c789a"},"language":"english","review":"I wanted to wait until I finished the story to review this game, I really did, but I just cannot bring myself to play it anymore, so here we are. The Starfield review. WARNING: THERE WILL BE VERY MINOR SPOILERS!\n\nIn short: a barren wasteland painted with a layer of gold.\n\nWhen I first launched this game, I was ecstatic. I couldn't WAIT to delve into the world(s) of Starfield. The opening visuals took my breath away, I loved the customization, I loved how real everything looked, I just fell in love, and that was all before even boarding the first ship. I was in awe when I first entered it, slowly going over and admiring all the little details and quirks. It didn't just look like a mode of transportation, it looked like somebodies home. It looked lived in. I made my way to the cockpit, and while I didn't know it at the time, this would be the first dent in Starfield's armor. I navigated my way to Kreet. The navigation had its charms at first but as I got further into the game, it went from a charming afterthought to an actual annoyance just to travel from planet to planet (I find the label \"fast travel simulator\" accurate). I landed on Kreet and made my way inside the research station. I did not know it but once again, this was another dent in the armor of Starfield that would come into play later. I cleared the base, completed the objective, made my way to New Atlantis and the real gameplay truly began.\n\nI was still in love with the game. So excited to do quests, fight enemies, customize my own ship, all of that. I was ecstatic. What first began to wear on me was the space travel and travel between planets. As I said earlier, it went from a charm to a dreaded annoyance. Was it the worst thing ever? Absolutely not, but neither was it anything remotely innovative or entertaining. It was a literal chore. What next began to take a toll on me was the planets and their layouts and terrain. They were by no means bad, but just came off as generic. You go from place to place to place and eventually realize all that's changing is the weather and gravity. At this point I still liked the game but was starting to see some flaws. Then came the generic enemies. There's really no easy way to put it, you go literally anywhere in the galaxy and you're either fighting A) Spacers, B) Pirates or C) other. That's it. There is almost no variation whatsoever. Next were some bugs. To be clear, I did not encounter nearly as many bugs as some others have, but I had my fair share. NPC's glitching through floors and walls, items floating in mid air or just not loading in at all, the usual from Bethesda. Next were the quests. There were some decent ones that I enjoyed doing but for the most part, it was just classic Bethesda: go kill this enemy, go fetch this item, go tell this person something, come back and get your money. Also, the story, as I experienced so far at least, is less than ideal. I wouldn't say it's bad, but I am a big fan of story games and whatever the plot of this game is, it ain't it.\n\nAt this point I was no longer viewing the game through rose colored glasses, the honeymoon had worn off but I still had hope... until the biggest issues I encountered arose. The most prominent was how planets and enemy outposts and whatnot generated. On paper, it sounds really cool: over 1,000 planets, many of them procedurally generated. That should allow a ton of variation and uniqueness, right? Well, like I said, on paper, yes. But in practice, it is some of the most lazy game design there is. Like many things in Starfield, it seems cool at first but the interest and joy quickly fades the more planets you visit and the more you realize it's basically all the same. You'll encounter the same bases, the same landmarks, the same everything, which leads me into what killed the game for me: copy and pasted base layouts. Remember when I went to Kreet earlier and did that mission? Well that first base left an impression on me because well, obviously it's the first base you find. Well hours later, I came across another base on a separate moon... with the exact same layout. And when I say exact same, I mean EXACT same, down to dead NPC's, item placement, in some situations loot, everything. At first I thought, \"Hey, it's a MASSIVE game. Surely I'm going to encounter a little copy and paste, that's OK\". And it was OK... the first time. And then it happened again. And again. And again. And again. And again. There were only a few base variations and they'd simply copy and paste over to their procedurally generated area and that's where the real dagger happened. The pinpointed moment where I realized what I was playing. I was on some moon, don't even remember the name (does it matter? They're all the same), doing a mission. I finish clearing a small base when I see a marker on the map for a cave like 800 meters away. Figure what the hell, I've got time and inventory space, let's go clear out this cave. It was a base in the side of a mountain, if you have any meaningful amount of time in the game, you'll know exactly the type of base layout I mean: equipment and stuff outside, a guard or two keeping watch and when you enter the cave, there's a tunnel leading to a big cavern with enemies which in turn leads to an even larger cavern with an inoperable elevator and more enemies. I had seen this layout 5 or 6 times now but whatever. Cleared it out, grabbed my loot and went back outside. I saw another marker on my map 300 meters away, figured I'd go check that one out too. I make my way over to the other side of this mountain and what do I see? The same exact base, copy and pasted 300 meters away. Same enemies, same enemy layout, same items and loot, same everything. It was literally the exact same. And that was it. That was the moment the curtain fell and I realized what I was getting into.\n\nIt's all a big smoke and mirrors show. An illusion. That's really all I can describe it as. Say what you will about Skyrim or Fallout 4 (and trust me, there's plenty to criticize) but at least each building, each interior, each cave was handcrafted, not this regurgitated drivel. There's no life to it, no soul, no personality. It's like if you told an AI to make an infinite space science fiction RPG for the masses. And to be clear, that's who Starfield is for: the masses. Same with the earlier mentioned Skyrim and Fallout 4, Bethesda is no longer making challenging games with interesting dialogue and compelling stories. It's all watered down, streamlined, easily consumable slop for the masses and Starfield is the epitome of that.\n\nALL THAT BEING SAID, I would like to highlight some positives. While there aren't many, I'd feel remiss not mentioning them. Firstly for me are the graphics. While they're by no means out of this world (pun slightly intended), they still look fantastic. There's also atmosphere. As I said earlier with ships, they don't just look like modes of transportation. While it's all mostly eye candy, the amount of detail that goes into just the small, minute things is what really gets me. I do also enjoy the combat and gunplay. While guns still have that Bethesda feel to them, they still work well and there's a wide variety to choose from. There's also a ton of customization. If there's a singular positive thing about the game I'd like to highlight, it's ship customization. Granted, while a large portion of it is purely cosmetic and won't impact gameplay, the ship customization is fantastic.\n\nIn its present state, I'd give Starfield a 3/10 and could not in good conscience recommend it to anyone. It's a shell of what was promised and honestly keeps me in fear of what The Elder Scrolls 6 will be like and I hope Bethesda learns from this and takes steps to remedy it in future games. I can only hope it receives similar quality of life updates to No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk and is brought back from the brink. However, considering how Bethesda reacted to criticism, I'm not holding my breath though.","timestamp_created":1705491031,"timestamp_updated":1708015538,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1310,"votes_funny":17,"weighted_vote_score":"0.945413470268249512","comment_count":5,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":45},{"reaction_type":1,"count":15},{"reaction_type":13,"count":12},{"reaction_type":11,"count":9},{"reaction_type":22,"count":9},{"reaction_type":5,"count":9},{"reaction_type":6,"count":7},{"reaction_type":16,"count":6},{"reaction_type":18,"count":5},{"reaction_type":15,"count":3},{"reaction_type":9,"count":3},{"reaction_type":19,"count":3},{"reaction_type":4,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":20,"count":1},{"reaction_type":14,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"192774611","author":{"steamid":"76561198319156228","personaname":"AcademyOfKino","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198319156228/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":11,"playtime_forever":612,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":582,"deck_playtime_at_review":163,"last_played":1773898878,"avatar":"e07859be7b02e170ca82f883e1f6aab9b03ca0c7"},"language":"english","review":"Starfield... is a game with one thousand planets. And it works.\r\n\r\nAs Todd Howard would say... \"It just works.\" And functionally, he's right. It is perhaps Bethesda's least buggy game to date. But here's the thing about functionality it doesn't always equal soul.\r\n\r\nYou travel from planet to planet, each one a barren husk of potential, a cosmic sandbox with nothing to do but find rocks. Temples float in space, offering you powers that are essentially Skyrim shouts... in space. And somehow, that sentence sounds more exciting than the experience itself.\r\n\r\nThe quests... are boring. There’s no other way to put it. Your companions? Equally boring. All paragons of virtue, like they were assembled in a lab focused on creating the most inoffensive AI personalities. They all agree with you. They all love when you make good choices. It’s like adventuring with a team of HR representatives.\r\n\r\nAnd when you pick a space religion... the game nods. Once. Maybe twice. Then forgets. Role-playing in Starfield is not a journey. It’s a costume. A trait that’s only skin-deep.\r\n\r\nThe Settled Systems the world Bethesda spent years crafting feels like the sci-fi version of a gated community. It is sterile. Sanitized. A place where nothing dares to offend. A future built by people who listened to John Lennon’s Imagine... and took it literally. It is perhaps the safest vision of a post-colonial space civilization ever conceived in gaming.\r\n\r\nThis... is Bethesda at its worst.\r\n\r\nGone are the messy but passionate days of Skyrim. Even Fallout 4, divisive as it was, had something Starfield lacks: fun. You could lose yourself in that world. You could mod it into something wild, chaotic, beautiful.\r\n\r\nAnd mods... haven’t saved Starfield. Maybe they can’t. The community hasn’t embraced it the way they did before. And Bethesda, ironically, has started selling paid mods on their storefront. So even creativity now comes with a price tag.\r\n\r\nWhat are we left with?\r\n\r\nA game that \"just works.\"\r\n\r\nAnd tragically... that's the best thing you can say about it.\r\n\r\nExploration? Empty.\r\nQuests? Dull.\r\nLore? A shadow of what it once was.\r\n\r\nIn the end... Starfield doesn’t feel like a leap into the stars.\r\nIt feels like a fall from grace.","timestamp_created":1744686708,"timestamp_updated":1744686708,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":988,"votes_funny":28,"weighted_vote_score":"0.94489288330078125","comment_count":29,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":5,"count":82},{"reaction_type":17,"count":39},{"reaction_type":13,"count":15},{"reaction_type":1,"count":8},{"reaction_type":16,"count":5},{"reaction_type":6,"count":5},{"reaction_type":11,"count":4},{"reaction_type":14,"count":3},{"reaction_type":9,"count":2},{"reaction_type":19,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":3,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":20,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"149696250","author":{"steamid":"76561198061699977","personaname":"UptownMermaid","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/UptownMermaid/","num_games_owned":502,"num_reviews":45,"playtime_forever":1801,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":1739,"last_played":1714802667,"avatar":"e0957d8c0ff9be33fb354b2c9da3316cd560bc3b"},"language":"english","review":"A game about space in which your ship is nothing more than set-dressing for storage containers and an optional, extremely simplistic, arcade style mini-game where fly your ship in a line while holding the trigger long enough for every AI to blow themselves up by flying directly into your path. \n\nA game about exploration that delivers the thrill of opening your menu, selecting the fast travel option, clicking to fast travel to a star system, loading, then opening your menu, clicking to fast travel to a planet, loading, then answering the same NPC dialogue at every planet before you're treated to another loading screen to finally land on planet.\n\nAn immersive RPG in which every door in every colony is a loading screen and firing an infinite stream of bullets around citizens heads in the middle of the city is apparently just another Tuesday in America for the New Atlantians as they, completely unbothered by the frag grenades going off all around them, continue to partake in every colonists favorite activity -- walking aimlessly into walls.\n\nA game which offers swashbuckling adventures in which successfully stealing a ship is as easy as killing 5 brainless NPCs. The payoff is possibly the most accurate Gamestop trade-in simulator ever made. It costs 20k to \"register\" the ship, the ship only sells for 22k and once you've collected your pittance, you'll see the exact same ship on the market with an asking price of 500k from the guy that gave you 2k for it.\n\nA game bursting with content in which each outpost and mission are functionally the same as the first 10 you play and you'll be asked to do them all 100+ times with almost zero variation. Honestly, after the first 20 hours, Starfield practically begs you to save yourself 120GBs of storage space and forget it exists.\n\nA gripping story-line in which every character is as exciting as the bread isle in the grocery store and none of your choices matter. Seriously, exactly which brand of white bread you take home with you from the grocery store has more serious consequences than literally any decision Starfield asks the player to make. \"White or Wheat?\" is a more thrilling dilemma than anything in Starfield's narrative.\n\nA ground-breaking new IP that tries its hardest to be exactly like its sister IPs while utterly failing to deliver a fraction of their charm or greatness. This is easily the most disappointing Bethesda title ever made, including \"Elder Scrolls Blades,\" because at least no one cared about, wanted, or had any expectations for a mobile title. It genuinely feels like, at some point in development, the list of \"Good Ideas for Starfield,\" and \"Bad Ideas for Starfield,\" got swapped and they made the worst possible version of Starfield that could be made.\n\nThe absolute best that can be said of this title is that it really is one of the games of all time.","timestamp_created":1699350400,"timestamp_updated":1699577871,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":6343,"votes_funny":587,"weighted_vote_score":"0.941765666007995605","comment_count":625,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"timestamp_dev_responded":1699540262,"developer_response":"Hi there,\n\nThank you for taking the time to provide your review and we are sorry to hear that you were disappointed with encountering many loading screens while playing.\n\nWhile there may be loading screens in between fast travelling, just consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under 3 seconds. We believe that shortcoming will not hinder our players from getting lost in the world we created.\n\nStarfield is an RPG with hundreds of hours of quests to complete and characters to meet. Most quests will also vary on your character’s skills and decisions, massively changing the outcome of your playthrough. Try creating different characters with backgrounds and characteristics that clash or are oppositive of your previous character. You will feel like you are playing a totally different game. Put points in different skills from a character you’ve previously created, and you are now faced with completely different decisions to make and difficulties to encounter. There are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you’ve never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours.\nEven after completing the Main Story, your adventure doesn’t end! You can continue onto New Game+ to keep exploring Starfield and all that is out there!\n\nYou can send further feedback to development here: https://beth.games/46e5g8E\n\nNever stop exploring!\n\nBethesda Customer Support","app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":28,"count":1},{"reaction_type":31,"count":1},{"reaction_type":34,"count":1},{"reaction_type":17,"count":314},{"reaction_type":5,"count":102},{"reaction_type":13,"count":82},{"reaction_type":16,"count":72},{"reaction_type":6,"count":30},{"reaction_type":15,"count":28},{"reaction_type":3,"count":23},{"reaction_type":1,"count":20},{"reaction_type":11,"count":19},{"reaction_type":22,"count":19},{"reaction_type":8,"count":17},{"reaction_type":18,"count":14},{"reaction_type":9,"count":10},{"reaction_type":14,"count":8},{"reaction_type":4,"count":8},{"reaction_type":10,"count":6},{"reaction_type":19,"count":6},{"reaction_type":7,"count":6},{"reaction_type":21,"count":4},{"reaction_type":23,"count":3},{"reaction_type":2,"count":2},{"reaction_type":20,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"167087285","author":{"steamid":"76561197973757779","personaname":"BinaryViolence","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/BinaryViolence/","num_games_owned":815,"num_reviews":27,"playtime_forever":14753,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":14753,"last_played":1696660470,"avatar":"172bae89f2d67193f1ffdd22b5668f72efde54d0"},"language":"english","review":"So I picked this up at launch. A lot of us did. I got way into it before I realized the pond was very, very wide and only a quarter of an inch deep.\n\nNow with the DLC announcement and the Creation Club content and pricing?\n\nReally? Pay per mission?\n\nThanks, Bethesda.\n\nYou've effectively killed any reason for me to even remotely want to reinstall and/or invest any time in this product beyond the 245 hours I've sunk into it.\n\nIf anything, I Feel like I should send YOU a bill charging you for my time to beta test this product.\n\nFolks. There's better out there, in this same vein of game, elsewhere. Please. Go look for it.","timestamp_created":1718026619,"timestamp_updated":1720742090,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1453,"votes_funny":20,"weighted_vote_score":"0.94152754545211792","comment_count":21,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":21},{"reaction_type":16,"count":13},{"reaction_type":6,"count":7},{"reaction_type":13,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":2},{"reaction_type":19,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":11,"count":1},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"159458191","author":{"steamid":"76561198212049532","personaname":"SirJoeLott","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198212049532/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":5,"playtime_forever":4191,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4191,"last_played":1695911078,"avatar":"b93f04b9194fba8980a2dc74947d47d0087ba113"},"language":"english","review":"There is no PASSION \nThere is no VISION\nThere is no AGGRESSION \nThere is no MINDSET \nin this video game. \n(*meme reference) \n\nFr tho, it was just boring. The weak exploration (both on planet and in space), weak dialogue and mid gameplay, made this game feel like such a downgrade from previous Bethesda titles. \n\nA quick example would be the  how you would gain powers in this game and a game like Skyrim. In Skyrim, to gain the dragon shout abilities you would need to: \na) find a word wall to learn the shout, these would be scattered around the map in dungeons and hard to get to places, often guarded by a puzzle or enemies. \nb) Kill a dragon to absorb its soul to actually use the shout. You had to do this 2 more times to level up one shout completely. \nNow in Starfield you would need to, get the coordinates of the alien ruins from a space station, go to the coordinates, walk a couple of minutes to the same procedural generated ruin, then float and touch some star dust.\n\nAs a AAA game studio, Bethesda needs to grow and evolve, instead I feel they went backwards and stuck to their comfort zone. As a result the industry moved on and they got left behind. There are better games with better open worlds, better storylines, better gameplay, and better ideas.  \n\nGet this game on sale, but don't expect a quick lift off to the stars, you'll probably get hit by a loading screen or two on the way.","timestamp_created":1709112756,"timestamp_updated":1717398496,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":3263,"votes_funny":101,"weighted_vote_score":"0.940002202987670898","comment_count":68,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":5,"count":30},{"reaction_type":17,"count":26},{"reaction_type":13,"count":11},{"reaction_type":1,"count":5},{"reaction_type":19,"count":4},{"reaction_type":16,"count":3},{"reaction_type":3,"count":3},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":20,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"203027605","author":{"steamid":"76561197995896033","personaname":"DALEISHERE","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Penguinttttt/","num_games_owned":417,"num_reviews":3,"playtime_forever":16380,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":16380,"last_played":1756358282,"avatar":"7c6a68ec8b8ac973141de4f80a519c4d9c6aebca"},"language":"english","review":"The updated Terms lock you out of the game unless you agree that you don't own the game and you don't have any monetary interest in the game. I paid $100 Canadian Dollars for this product and now I can't use it unless I surrender any and all rights of personal ownership of the copy of the game. \n\nThis updated ULA is not what I was led to believe I'd have to accept in order to enjoy a product I paid money for. I enjoyed this game for the most part. There's a lot I didn't like about it either but the things I liked outweighed the dislikes to me. But now I just can't enjoy the game unless I agree to their new Terms.\n\nI hope stop killing games ends this predatory practice worldwide somehow and I'll be demanding a refund in spite of my hours and time playing and owning this game. People deserve better than this.","timestamp_created":1756359379,"timestamp_updated":1756359379,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1237,"votes_funny":23,"weighted_vote_score":"0.937440693378448486","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":59},{"reaction_type":6,"count":13},{"reaction_type":16,"count":9},{"reaction_type":11,"count":8},{"reaction_type":13,"count":6},{"reaction_type":5,"count":6},{"reaction_type":19,"count":4},{"reaction_type":22,"count":4},{"reaction_type":15,"count":3},{"reaction_type":7,"count":3},{"reaction_type":9,"count":2},{"reaction_type":23,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":12,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"146138594","author":{"steamid":"76561197990951542","personaname":"Angry Squid","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/AlyssaFaden/","num_games_owned":375,"num_reviews":36,"playtime_forever":10175,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4659,"last_played":1696820474,"avatar":"2c971c2852256c7d50caa20bde74c83c8222df1b"},"language":"english","review":"77hrs in: \"finished\" starfield.\n\nNow, it has a NG+ mode which is intriguing, so I'm actually still playing it ... but the story actively encourages you to finish it multiple times .. and restart over and over and over, which is ... curious. So I'm onboard.\n\nI'm still on the fence about the title as a whole.\n\nEnjoying it? Yes, very much.\n\nBut it's hard to compare to previous titles (such as Fallout4) because I ended up playing those in a heavily modded state, which skews my memory of the raw, unmodded game.\n\nStarfield is currently raw and unmodded. It is an RPG. It's a story. It's not about exploration, space flight, or space trucking. It's an adventure. It has a story and you are a participant.\n\nThe Bethesda feel is here in spades, and that includes a clunky interface with awful/useless filters and options (gadamn Bethesda, will you grow up and modernize this already? jesus)\n\nThere are some bugs. Even after a year of testing, I have encountered a couple of showstoppers. There are some annoying quirks I am surprised did not get addressed in the 1 year of polish they went through.\n\nI think Bethesda has also backed themselves into a corner with their Creation Engine 2. It's essentially the same architecture as CE #1, with all the same limitations. The concept of 'cells' for building transitions, or area transitions is ... old. So to completely rebuild their engine, but to do so in a way that has a old, outdated architecture was a weird decision that I think will box them in for the decade to come. All of their future games may be \"better\", but they will all \"feel old\".\n\nMove into a building? loading screen.\nmove out? loading screen.\nboard ship? loading screen.\nTake off form the planet? loading screen.\nFly to another system? loading screen.\nFly to another planet? loading screen\nLand? loading screen.\nEnter the mining facility? loading screen.\nRoom inside the facility? loading screen.\n\nIt ends up feeling very much like a series of interconnected 'cells' where you get to do things before you transition to the next cell.\n\nAnd in a world where games have demonstrated the ability to transition more smoothly - even invisibly - I question why Bethesda has hung their hat on such an archaic way of doing things.\n\nIt makes their largest game yet feel \"small\". \n\nBlasting across the universe across multiple planetary systems is ... a loading screen. And I'm not talking about the ability to fast travel and skip everything, but simply going from A->B is ... a loading screen. Every time. \n\nThere is no planetary exploration and anyone who says otherwise is misguided. Planets are procedurally generated. You land in a cell. That cell has boundaries. That cell will be populated with a very limited set of re-used POIs (One day I got the same POI 3 times).\n\nThe novelty of the first exploration morphs into routine as you realize that basically you have landed in a medium sized procedurally generated terrain cell with half a dozen random things throw in it for you to walk to and explore. It feels like a sandbox a dev might make up as a proof of concept. \n\nWant to move a little further 'east' to explore more? take off (loading) click a new area, land (loading) and you get a new cell with a sprinkle of POIs in it. Enjoy.\n\nAnd far, far, far too much of the 'quest structure' are fetch quests, and I will fight anyone who disagrees with me on that. Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar too many fetch-style quests. Heck, the main effing story is a fetch quest. Exploring a planet is a fetch quest, where you don't know where anything is and you might spend 2 hrs trying to figure out where that last \"1 fauna of 9\" is located ... while effing walking everywhere. Te - di - ous.\n\nI have always felt that Bethesda creates great experiences, and even better foundations for modders to go nuts with, and it's the modded experience that really makes it for me.\n\nHere Starfield absolutely and firmly falls into that camp. It is a great foundation for what is to come.\nDon't get me wrong, I have been enjoying the experience and I will continue to do so, but I am looking forward to mods buffing out the Bethesda quirks and menu annoyances, and hopefully some reason to build an outpost (because right now there isn't one).\n\nCurrently ... I think I will give this a 6.5 or 7 out of 10. Tops.","timestamp_created":1694468892,"timestamp_updated":1694468892,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":3447,"votes_funny":88,"weighted_vote_score":"0.9328194260597229","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":131},{"reaction_type":6,"count":78},{"reaction_type":19,"count":44},{"reaction_type":5,"count":27},{"reaction_type":13,"count":25},{"reaction_type":1,"count":21},{"reaction_type":11,"count":20},{"reaction_type":16,"count":20},{"reaction_type":22,"count":20},{"reaction_type":9,"count":7},{"reaction_type":15,"count":6},{"reaction_type":8,"count":6},{"reaction_type":18,"count":6},{"reaction_type":4,"count":5},{"reaction_type":21,"count":5},{"reaction_type":14,"count":4},{"reaction_type":20,"count":3},{"reaction_type":7,"count":2},{"reaction_type":12,"count":2},{"reaction_type":23,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"157524912","author":{"steamid":"76561198069593223","personaname":"THE REALIZER","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/therealizer/","num_games_owned":247,"num_reviews":36,"playtime_forever":8075,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":8075,"last_played":1728076564,"avatar":"32de9c35c89f59319a46afac3c1ad84bff4ac0cd"},"language":"english","review":"This game made me worried about Elder Scrolls 6.\n\n\nEdit: \n\nThe repeated mishandling of this game and Bethesda's press/fan reaction response around this game has been genuinely concerning. I was excited for this game, I gave it a fair chance. I was not enraged when the game first came out. But slowly I saw that Bethesda keeps doubling down on its failures, does not respond or pay attention to criticism around this game, and has really just failed to do the things they are truly good at in Starfield. \n\nThe Lore is flat, shallow, and really boring, the universe and the factions in the universe are just a huge missed opportunity. \n\nI will still be pre-ordering TES 6 but I am genuinely worried about it as a game and about Bethesda evaporating its audience's goodwill with cheap design, flat lore/writing, and then just ignoring critique in search of a mythical audience to love a game that has to be made with love first.","timestamp_created":1706995319,"timestamp_updated":1728957677,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1408,"votes_funny":50,"weighted_vote_score":"0.932227075099945068","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":34},{"reaction_type":1,"count":21},{"reaction_type":16,"count":8},{"reaction_type":13,"count":5},{"reaction_type":10,"count":3},{"reaction_type":9,"count":3},{"reaction_type":3,"count":2},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":11,"count":1},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"167279201","author":{"steamid":"76561198013479793","personaname":"Ceptor","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198013479793/","num_games_owned":308,"num_reviews":17,"playtime_forever":13335,"playtime_last_two_weeks":92,"playtime_at_review":13176,"last_played":1775592244,"avatar":"b75a41cc24226ff00fbfbf34f4aca8f69db2bd37"},"language":"english","review":"Bethesda wants you to spend $10 to buy a single quest mission. Here are some better options to spend your $10 on:\n[list]\n[*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/FTL_Faster_Than_Light/] FTL: Faster Than Light [/url]\n[*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/206190/Gunpoint/] Gunpoint [/url]\n[*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/] Half-Life 2 [/url]\n[*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1966720/Lethal_Company/] Lethal Company [/url]\n[*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/620/Portal_2/] Portal 2 [/url]\n[*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/6000/STAR_WARS_Republic_Commando/] Star Wars Rebuplic Commando [/url]\n[/list]\n\n[hr][/hr]\n[spoiler]It's an [i]okay[/i] game in general, but it's still unfinished.[/spoiler]","timestamp_created":1718289358,"timestamp_updated":1718289358,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1196,"votes_funny":26,"weighted_vote_score":"0.930199682712554932","comment_count":42,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":17},{"reaction_type":13,"count":8},{"reaction_type":6,"count":7},{"reaction_type":9,"count":5},{"reaction_type":11,"count":4},{"reaction_type":15,"count":3},{"reaction_type":19,"count":3},{"reaction_type":5,"count":3},{"reaction_type":16,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":1,"count":2},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":14,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"148947312","author":{"steamid":"76561198089168523","personaname":"Square Zer0","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198089168523/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":8,"playtime_forever":6017,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":5964,"last_played":1723415435,"avatar":"d477d43ca309f297e326854a07e5ae2dfa9e84cd"},"language":"english","review":"I never in my life thought that I would write a negative review for a BGS game. The magic of BGS games is it makes you feel big in a big world. This game makes you feel small in a small world that is pretending to be big. That magic feeling of go anywhere, be anyone, do whatever you want, choose any side you desire is...gone. We love BGS games because the world, the freedom, and the lore makes up for whatever the main story lacks, nobody buys BGS games for the awesome story, we buy them for the awesome world, freedom, and lore. We get the games to make the worlds \"our\" worlds and that's the Bethesda magic this game doesn't have.  This game just doesn't have any of that. It does in theory but not in practice. The story-line is very linear and forced. Your actions don't really matter at all. You can't help any faction win over any other in any kind of meaningful way, You cannot shape the game world. \n\nThe game world is small, pretending to be big. See big space, load screen into small area, but there are a lot of small areas, and load screens. The game somehow feels smaller than Fallout 4. In previous titles the story was an accessory to the game world.  In this game the game world is an accessory to the story.   \n\nIt's almost like they cared too much about trying to prove that they could write a better story and in the process lost sight of what people love about their games and lost the magic. This game is good for one, maybe two playthroughs and that's it. All of your companions are good guys, you're heavily forced into this constellation group, you're going to play the exact same story over and over, and over again with goody companions scolding you. The roleplay value of this game compared to Fallout or Skyrim is abysmal, like terrible bad. It feels like you're playing a poor man's version of Cyberpunk or mass effect. Is the main story better than fallout or Skyrim? Yes, a little in quality, but nobody gives a ---- about that in your games, you lose the freedom of shaping the game world to make it \"your\" world. It's a decent linear game set in a kinda open world with the illusion of choice and very little consequence.  \n\nBethesda, you missed the mark and lost the magic big time. Give us back the open world setting full of conflict and warring factions where we have the freedom to be who we want and shape the outcome of the game to \"our\" liking, \"our\" way, making it \"our\" game. Nobody cares about your \"artistic vision\" of a mediocre, linear, repetitive story filled with cookie cutter nice person companions and no real consequences or world shaping. \"I buy BGS games for the main story\" said NOBODY EVER....and that, that never changes.\n\nIf this is the future formula for BGS titles then it's over everyone. RIP Bethesda magic.","timestamp_created":1698367653,"timestamp_updated":1698367653,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":4592,"votes_funny":84,"weighted_vote_score":"0.929124951362609863","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"timestamp_dev_responded":1698931667,"developer_response":"Greetings,\nThank you for taking the time to leave a review for Starfield!\nWe are sorry that you do not like landing on different planets and are finding many of them empty.\nSome of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design - but that's not boring. “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored.\" The intention of Starfield's exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that do have resources you need or hidden outposts to look through.\n\nStarfield is an RPG with hundreds of hours of quests to complete and characters to meet. Most quests will also vary on your character’s skills and decisions, massively changing the outcome of your playthrough. Try creating different characters with backgrounds and characteristics that clash or are oppositive of your previous character. You will feel like you are playing a totally different game. Put points in different skills from a character you’ve previously created, and you are now faced with completely different decisions to make and difficulties to encounter. There are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you’ve never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours.\nEven after completing the Main Story, your adventure doesn’t end! You can continue onto New Game+ to keep exploring Starfield and all that is out there!\n\nWe are still actively working on this game and will be for a long time yet to come. If you would like to provide feedback straight to development, you can do so here: https://beth.games/46e5g8E\n\nWe want to make Starfield awesome for everyone who wants to venture out into it!\n\nBest Regards,\nBethesda Customer Support","app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":189},{"reaction_type":16,"count":84},{"reaction_type":5,"count":41},{"reaction_type":13,"count":32},{"reaction_type":1,"count":24},{"reaction_type":6,"count":22},{"reaction_type":15,"count":16},{"reaction_type":11,"count":10},{"reaction_type":22,"count":10},{"reaction_type":8,"count":10},{"reaction_type":9,"count":9},{"reaction_type":19,"count":9},{"reaction_type":4,"count":9},{"reaction_type":14,"count":7},{"reaction_type":18,"count":7},{"reaction_type":21,"count":5},{"reaction_type":10,"count":4},{"reaction_type":20,"count":4},{"reaction_type":2,"count":4},{"reaction_type":23,"count":4},{"reaction_type":3,"count":3},{"reaction_type":7,"count":2},{"reaction_type":12,"count":2}]},{"recommendationid":"164063870","author":{"steamid":"76561198120780920","personaname":"momtrain","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198120780920/","num_games_owned":213,"num_reviews":10,"playtime_forever":2702,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":2702,"last_played":1709141203,"avatar":"ab4c13e4aa6a2003df777c530ebcaa1b2716d0e2"},"language":"english","review":"I was honestly really stoked for this game. I'm a huge sci-fi fan and had put a ton of hours into Skyrim and Fallout 3. Once I got started, I was able to put aside the issues that a lot of other people had, such as multiple load screens and tiny inventories, clunky interfaces and a lack of maps. I was having a decent time with the main quest, even. \n\nMy mistake was starting the generation ship questline. The writing of this quest is so, so thoughtless and nonsensical that I am writing a review half a year after I put the game down in disgust at the terrible writing. Science fiction is a genre built around thoughts on the nature of being human. The generation ship questline starts out asking a genuinely interesting question; what to do when a ship flying at a low relativistic speed arrives at their destination only to find other people later leapfrogged them and arrived first? There are several books and stories based on a similar premise, it is fertile ground. \n\n'Ah,' I thought, 'Finally, we are getting to the meat of what inspired this game! I am looking forward to exploring the possibilities here. Does a document signed on Earth centuries ago still hold valid hundreds of years and lightyears later? What about the rights of the people who have been living here for generations? What an interesting parallel to real life situations! Boy, it sure is weird that everyone has a different accent on a generation ship that has been traveling for hundreds of years. What a strange detail to overlook, that certainly isn't indicative of a lack of care elsewhere!'\n\nThere are a handful of opportunities to take this quest in a couple different directions, many of which would be clever, even subversive. However, this questline ignores all of it. You can only choose from a list, an actual list, of three options that have been pre-approved by the lovely corporate board of directors on the planet the ship is stationed over. There is no way to side against the board. They are invulnerable to harm. The ship crew accepts your (the board's) decision with absolutely no pushback. The only options you are able to take on this questline all end with the entrenched corporation winning and the best scenario for the ship is to make them go away. Where is the player's agency in that? What message is Bethesda trying to get across here? \n\nIn fact, this entire game is about tonguing the rear end of every corporate suit you come across. This game loves big companies and corporate hierarchy. The Ryujin questline is interesting but ultimately says \"crime is ok, if a big enough company does it\". A large part of the main quest is about aiding a large company because they're funding your space rock collection. Even the pirates are corporate, man. This game is not a satire. They are earnest in this belief.\n\nTypical of a corporate-built product, this game is all surface detail and no depth. It draws inspiration from many beloved pieces of fiction but it doesn't understand them. There's the Bladerunner planet, there's the Firefly planet, here's the Star Trek planet. Nevermind that it's only the color palette that they borrow, and none of the themes present in those stories.\n\nI get that the game has been streamlined for mass market appeal, but I think it has been taken too far. It's popcorn sci-fi, but they didn't add the butter. It's flavorless. I guess it's not forgettable, at least, since this stupid quest is so bad that I'm still mad about it after half a year.","timestamp_created":1714663758,"timestamp_updated":1714663949,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":991,"votes_funny":43,"weighted_vote_score":"0.928264200687408447","comment_count":29,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":47},{"reaction_type":5,"count":19},{"reaction_type":16,"count":14},{"reaction_type":1,"count":12},{"reaction_type":6,"count":12},{"reaction_type":13,"count":11},{"reaction_type":11,"count":5},{"reaction_type":18,"count":5},{"reaction_type":4,"count":3},{"reaction_type":10,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":8,"count":2},{"reaction_type":21,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"153324227","author":{"steamid":"76561198027020532","personaname":"Harlack","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/harlack/","num_games_owned":597,"num_reviews":34,"playtime_forever":2508,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":2508,"last_played":1702045056,"avatar":"3619c2160622a094eea2db6c4b2ebb175da55316"},"language":"english","review":"Starfield is a game that has an excess of nothingness.\nAn open world RPG that is so overstuffed with meaningless content that the seams are starting to split and the empty calories are spilling out.\n\nStarfield is big, both physically requiring 125 GB to install, but also in activities.\nPlanets, cities, missions, NPCs, combat, research, space travel, space combat, space research, ship building, base building, relationship building, main story, side stories, factions, jobs, and cooking.\n\nAnd all of it beautiful, grand, silent, serine, action packed, and ultimately unfulfilling.\nA tremendous lack of focus makes each individual part of the game hollow.\n \nIn the modern Glittering Era of entertainment; Starfield is another spec of shine, so concerned with bland mass appeal that it makes any individual gameplay mechanic as empty as the space we’re flying through. \n","timestamp_created":1702237688,"timestamp_updated":1702237688,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":3902,"votes_funny":52,"weighted_vote_score":"0.927777409553527832","comment_count":57,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":5,"count":92},{"reaction_type":17,"count":39},{"reaction_type":16,"count":20},{"reaction_type":6,"count":7},{"reaction_type":13,"count":6},{"reaction_type":1,"count":6},{"reaction_type":8,"count":4},{"reaction_type":11,"count":3},{"reaction_type":14,"count":3},{"reaction_type":18,"count":3},{"reaction_type":15,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":7,"count":2},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"157700798","author":{"steamid":"76561198021405183","personaname":"Ouroboros","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/ouroboros2/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":19,"playtime_forever":4960,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4960,"last_played":1697843533,"avatar":"b642a6f9efd705e83dba44b617a9a5afa7a098ed"},"language":"english","review":"My friends and I have a separate channel in our Discord server where we rant about problems with the game. We do so multiple times a week.\n\nWhen I first jumped into this game, I was amazed. So much to do and so much to explore! It felt great. Like I was on the cusp of some fantastic new adventure.\n\nBut it didn't last - you knew this was coming. From the outside and when you just dip your finger in, it certainly looks like there's a lot to Starfield, but you eventually realise that there really isn't. A mile wide and an inch deep encapsulates this game perfectly.\n\nThere are good things about Starfield, make no mistake. But nearly without fail, it's stunted by the bad things and prevented from actually being great. Let's look at an example: shipbuilding in this game is really fun. You can look at what so many players have managed to create. That's where it ends, though, because as with many other things here - THERE'S NOTHING TO IT. Your ship is basically a glorified fast travel terminal. \n\nThere's also outpost building. It seems really cool, you know, going out there into the vast unknown and building your own little slice of home there. But, again, THERE'S NOTHING TO IT. Once you build your first one just to see how cool it is, you quickly realise that there isn't really any more of a point to doing so.\n\nThat brings me nicely to exploration. Who the hell at Bethesda played this and thought \"hey, it will be fun!\" because it isn't. You can't land wherever you want on the planet as you can in, say, No Man's Sky. You have to point at where you want on the map, and then through a few loading screens, you finally arrive into your allotted fishbowl. I call it a fishbowl because that's precisely what it is, and it's not a particularly interesting one either. You slow jog around for a while to see the usual points of interest that are replicated on every other planet in the game, no matter its character, from supposedly civilised and settled ones, all the way to the ones which are supposed to be more 'undiscovered'. No matter what, you'll find all the same things. It's especially puzzling when it comes to the temples in game - a temple that has supposedly been undiscovered for centuries by humans is only a few hundred metres away from a human settlement of some form. It simply makes no sense. Then after slow jogging around this fishbowl, you will be hit with an invisible wall. Oh, and did I mention that it has no land vehicles of any sort? What the hell is a space exploration game without a space buggy? I also don't think I need to mention that it's unacceptable to have so many loading screens from a game released in 2023.\n\nI can't begin to state how much of a better design decision it would have been for Starfield to have only a few planets that were handcrafted without invisible walls or random generation, or at least, that kept to a minimum. But they sold that away for the \"1,000 planets\" marketing gimmick. Beautiful handcrafted worlds are the bread and butter of Bethesda's games. It's why we love them and more importantly, why we put up with the bugs and the other misgivings. Without that, what does the game have? Nothing. And that's where we're at with Starfield.\n\nIn general, I feel that Bethesda may have just lost it. Other game companies have put out far superior titles with features that are better than in Starfield, or they're actually present in the first place. It's like they're sitting on a sugar high from the Skyrim days (and even then, the game has actually gone backwards in several respects). They need to wake up and move on, because everyone else has. They also talk about how this game is their 'passion project' that they've wanted to make since Morrowind. If this is their passion project, you should be very, very concerned about what comes next.","timestamp_created":1707207236,"timestamp_updated":1707207236,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1554,"votes_funny":23,"weighted_vote_score":"0.926915407180786133","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":38},{"reaction_type":13,"count":14},{"reaction_type":16,"count":11},{"reaction_type":5,"count":9},{"reaction_type":6,"count":9},{"reaction_type":11,"count":8},{"reaction_type":1,"count":6},{"reaction_type":15,"count":3},{"reaction_type":9,"count":3},{"reaction_type":22,"count":3},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":20,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"188128205","author":{"steamid":"76561198132845212","personaname":"Esense","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198132845212/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":7,"playtime_forever":8106,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":8094,"last_played":1748671941,"avatar":"d3bbaaa71744ad894d41c54c6e3579f98d1059a9"},"language":"english","review":"After 135 hours of playing...I honestly cannot recommend this game. If you get it on sale, maybe...But it is soulless at its core. It takes a long time to see it, especially if you are historically a Bethesda fan or was enamored with an open world space RPG like I was. But you'll quickly find that there is nothing really to discover (yet it is open world), nothing really unique that you can build (yet there is base building), nowhere really to fly your ship (yet there is a ship builder)... \n\nSigh, it's sad because an open world space exploration RPG game is EXACTLY the type of game that I'd love. I was so excited for this game and honestly I had a lot of fun playing it in the beginning. But I realized it just isn't all the way there. It is a husk of something that could have been platform changing.","timestamp_created":1739807005,"timestamp_updated":1739807005,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":684,"votes_funny":8,"weighted_vote_score":"0.924073755741119385","comment_count":20,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":17},{"reaction_type":13,"count":5},{"reaction_type":16,"count":5},{"reaction_type":5,"count":5},{"reaction_type":19,"count":4},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":11,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":14,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"145736237","author":{"steamid":"76561198019226251","personaname":"Henry","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/destroyamerica/","num_games_owned":591,"num_reviews":40,"playtime_forever":5061,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3320,"last_played":1727735306,"avatar":"a598f3a7e9a2d1ee112b39c01492229caae61d8e"},"language":"english","review":"[h1]Space is the backdrop, not the playground[/h1]\nWith a title like that, you're probably expecting me to say Starfield was disappointing. This could not be further from my true feelings about the game.\n\nTo put it bluntly, Starfield's space travel is inferior to No Man's Sky or Elite:Dangerous. If you are looking for a game where you can live in your ship and chill with your crew as you drift towards your next destination, Starfield will not fulfill your dreams. Space is simply used as the backdrop for something much bigger than Bethesda has ever done before. That's not to say space travel isn't important. It is very important! But most of the time, space is used as a means of getting from one planet to another via fast travel/warping.\n\n[b]Space is just a loading screen... or is it?[/b]\nYou might ask \"Does anything happen in space, since it's just a loading screen?\" The answer is actually yes! Very often! During warps, the game will run a check of your route to see if you would run into any random events. If so, you will be sent out of the loading screen and back into space. You can interact with the random event, or simply begin fast travel again. In my opinion, this simply cuts out all the slow moments of space travel and highlights the fun parts. Although, there is a catch. To trigger the route check, you will have to already be in space. Make sure to take off in your ship whenever you want to fast travel. In the case you forget to do so, random events can still happen but only at the destination of your warp.\n\nThe vastness of space and the insane number and variety of planets are the main attraction of Starfield. If you are familiar with Bethesda games, walking and talking is a large majority of your time. This is no different in Starfield, as you explore hundreds of unique locations (not even counting thousands of procedurally generated), and meet all kinds of friendly, not-so-friendly, lunatic, suspicious, and funny characters along your journeys.\n\n[b]RPG is back, but different[/b]\nStarfield is a game that arguably outshines previous Bethesda titles. The scale is larger, with no sacrifices to the mechanics they've had in the past. In Fallout 4, Bethesda simplified decision-making and the RPG elements in favor of improving the gunplay which leaves the game feeling more like an adventure-shooter than an RPG. Even Skyrim could be argued, with the removal of leveling stats, reduced how much you could create your perfect character to roleplay as. In Starfield, stats/attributes do not come back. But in its place is an interesting return to the RPG roots.\n\nWhile you don't have stats or attributes in Starfield (such as Strength, Intelligence, Luck, etc), it presents a different way to represent and express the kind of person you want to play as. Your background, chosen traits, leveled skills, and factions you've joined properly and consistently take control of almost every situation the game puts you in.\n\nSkills are another new alternative to stats. New dialogue options will be available based on what skills you choose to level. Sometimes you need to let someone know you're sneakier than other people, or that you have experience in cyber security. People can even recognize if you're a well-trained pilot or gunman.\n\n[b]Who you are matters[/b]\nIn the beginning, I thought this was a mere farce- an illusion. Perhaps they simply placed many opportunities early on, to show off roleplaying elements, to trick me. There's no way I would be able to use my background as a Space Scoundrel or my allegiance with the Crimson Fleet for more than just a couple dialogue options, right?\n\nAfter completing three major questlines, dozens of side quests, and the main story quest, I've invested more 50 hours into Starfield over four days- an average of 12.5 hours every day. With confidence, I can report that the choices I made at character selection as well as the choices I've made during the game: who I allied with during a side quest, the factions I've decided to pledge allegiance to, the people I've killed or the people I didn't kill. All of these things felt like they mattered in countless dialogue choices. I was never worried that the character I built did not matter- the opportunities jumped at me constantly. Many times I even had to choose between the different things that defined my character in the same interaction.\n\nOne moment that really impressed me was that factions are actually consistent in Starfield. In previous Bethesda games, joining a hostile faction did not always guarantee your safety against its members. Some used excuses such as \"We may be the same faction, but all of us follow different rules.\" It was a sad attempt at passing their programming (or lack thereof) for normally hostile NPCs recognizing the player as an ally. In Starfield, this is not the case. \n\nMinor spoilers in this paragraph. On my first playthrough, I joined the Crimson Fleet, the most notorious pirate crew among the stars. In an early mission during the main story, I had to rescue a friend from the Crimson Fleet. I entered their lair where they were holding the hostage, ready to enter a shoot-out. To my extreme but pleasant surprise, none of the pirates shot at me. I could walk up and even begin conversations with some of them. They recognized me as one of their own, and did not blink an eye at either me or my companion. I was able to reach the bottom of the lair without any conflict, and the game even properly acknowledged it. Minor spoilers end here.\n\n[b]The rest of the game? Gunplay, crafting, and more[/b]\nI started with the space exploration and RPG elements because I believe they are the most controversial and sought-after pieces of information. The rest of the game, though? Almost entirely improved over Fallout 4. The gunplay is chef's kiss (for a Bethesda game). Piloting a ship is reminiscent of No Man's Sky. Ship-building is extensive, but quite easy to start playing around with. The crafting is still simple and satisfying. Much of crafting is still locked behind skills, just like Fallout 4, but Starfield did not feel as difficult to reach as FO4 did. The handcrafted maps are arguably their most detailed and beautiful designs yet.\n\nThe balance has been very adequate for me personally. I could feel my character getting stronger, more skilled, but also enemies always provided a decent challenge. Nothing was too easy or too difficult- I never had to change difficulty from Normal mode. I've heard complaints that later on, enemies get very bullet-spongey, but I simply have never had that issue and I mainly used handguns. While there is an enormous variety of skills to pick from, leveling is fast enough where I never felt like I needed to save my skill points (as some skills have requisites to level). If I didn't meet the requirements yet, I simply leveled a different skill and waited for next level to try and improve the other skill.\n\n[b]It's not perfect[/b]\nIt does miss some things their previous games did as well. But it's a Bethesda game through and through. Beautiful environments, fantastic immersion and storytelling. Fulfilling the fantasy of living in another universe, especially in space. Starfield has become a game I'd love to play again and again. Bethesda has restored my trust in them, even after the launch state of FO76 and the reduction of RPG elements in FO4. I look forward to future updates, the DLC, and TES 6. I hope you can play Starfield, come to your own conclusions, and hopefully enjoy the same things I was able to as well.","timestamp_created":1693958445,"timestamp_updated":1695876924,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":7794,"votes_funny":178,"weighted_vote_score":"0.920173168182373047","comment_count":298,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":567},{"reaction_type":13,"count":113},{"reaction_type":6,"count":107},{"reaction_type":19,"count":99},{"reaction_type":22,"count":82},{"reaction_type":5,"count":47},{"reaction_type":1,"count":46},{"reaction_type":11,"count":44},{"reaction_type":16,"count":44},{"reaction_type":18,"count":43},{"reaction_type":9,"count":24},{"reaction_type":14,"count":23},{"reaction_type":8,"count":13},{"reaction_type":10,"count":11},{"reaction_type":15,"count":11},{"reaction_type":20,"count":10},{"reaction_type":21,"count":10},{"reaction_type":2,"count":6},{"reaction_type":4,"count":6},{"reaction_type":7,"count":6},{"reaction_type":3,"count":5},{"reaction_type":12,"count":3},{"reaction_type":23,"count":2}]},{"recommendationid":"183950900","author":{"steamid":"76561197973606186","personaname":"The Economy","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197973606186/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":1,"playtime_forever":12655,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":12655,"last_played":1731197805,"avatar":"b1bd1b97ebe942daa4fc42a554704a35140f853d"},"language":"english","review":"How can I say I don't recommend a game I put over 150 hours into?  It's kind of like trying to define the difference between a sandbox and a box full of sand.  The technical definition is pretty much the same, but the box full of sand doesn't have that spark to ignite the imagination to want to build and explore.  Starfield felt like a box full of sand to me.  The game engine worked.  There were characters.  I liked some of them.  There were locations.  I liked some of those too.  The mystery of the first artifact was neat.  But the game as a whole felt flat.  It lacked the humor and heart of Fallout.  It lacked the hand crafted feel of the earlier Elder Scrolls games.  There were factions, but rising in their ranks didn't offer much.  You can't reach the top of any of them.  They're never pitted against one another.  No Man's Sky came out almost a decade before this, and handled the planet hopping and resource collecting in a way that was fun and felt fresh and new.  Outer Worlds came out 5 years before this and was full of biting satirical commentary.  Mass Effect was 17 years ago and was full of planet hopping and incredible characters I felt for.  Borderlands has a wild art style and is full all kinds of random guns and wacky characters. \n Starfield felt more like Spore - a vast pool that was 6 inches deep. \n\nThe Good:\n-A new IP!  This one felt like a miss, but that doesn't mean I think they should stick to ES and Fallout only.  I'd love to see them do more new stuff - even smaller projects.\n-It has some of that Bethesda game feel to it.  Walking around, makes me nostalgic even if it's a new place.\n-Some great voice acting (sometimes) and hearing Liam O'Brien and Aabria Iyengar made this Critter feel like he was running into old friends.\n-The forced choice between companions and the consequences afterward were great, and hit home well.\n-Scanning people with bounties breaks them for the purposes of collecting the bounty, but the lists of crimes they've been accused of are INCREDIBLE.\n\nThe Bad:\n-Ship combat.  If you don't start out with some ship combat skills, the first few fights feel TERRIBLE.  You can barely move, and the dogfights feel like an unfair slog instead of an exciting adventure.  Once you do have some perks in it, and can outfit your ship with some Vanguard particle weapons, and then every fight is a joke.  On PC, the default medkits hot key when you're on foot is 0.  The default hot key to use ship parts (medkits for space ships) when you're flying is O.  Not only are those not the same key when they could be, but they LOOK like the same key in the keybinding list so it seems like it just doesn't work.  Why not just default it to 0 which we're already using to heal?\n-I've got crew on my ship... they should do something other than just stand in my way and say the same greetings over and over.  Having a weapons expert should have them shoot at enemies or something.  It says they boost the player's skills, but it didn't feel noticeable or measurable at all to me.\n-Ship Inventory.  Why can I carry more on my person than the hold of my cargo ship??  Can we just make secured cargo cover everything so I don't have to clumsily move contraband from my hold to my person and back again every time I need to go somewhere and forget that I picked up some random item?\n-No perks for fast travelling while encumbered or for moving items to your ship long distances.\n-No flying ships in atmosphere on planets.  I can hop my ship from place to place, but not fly it around near the surface and blast spacer outposts or anything.  Feels like a missed opportunity.  It would also eliminate the need for the buggy thing which I hate.  It's super annoying on terrain, and feels like a slapped on after-thought.  No additional models, can't be upgraded outside of the player's perks. It's less maneuverable than being on foot, but also doesn't prevent you from being irradiated or shot to pieces, so it feels lose-lose.\n-Building and upgrading and selling ships is very tedious and unintuitive.  Flew another ship for a mission?  Now you need to find a technician, set something else as your home ship, exit that menu, open a different menu that looks exactly the same, and then sell it.  Ships also sell for basically nothing because they need to be registered first - and good space suits routinely sell for more than functional, upgraded star ships.\n-Getting into and out of pilot seats is a weird little cut scene that takes forever.  Happens with every chair, really - but when you're in combat, or trying to respond to a hail, and hold the button for the wrong amount of time and then need to watch your character scoot back in the chair, stand up, stretch, and then you regain control and can walk back to the chair to watch them scoot it back, sit down, and slide back in again.  WHY?  What does this add?\n-Attempting to steal a ship on the ground when you've been spotted is terrible.  You get maybe a minute or so of combat, and then you just die.  Cool...  Why not just lock the door to prevent it if that's the intention?\n-Melee combat - especially unarmed.  There's no button for unarmed fighting.  You can't favorite it or enable one.  There are perks for fighting unarmed... but how are you supposed to do it?  Was this tested?  It doesn't feel like it... Melee weapons work... but the damage is so low that it feels pointless when the guns do so much more damage, from range, behind cover, and can still be suppressed for stealth kills.  The melee weapons don't make you faster, tougher, stronger, or give cool abilities to make it a more viable choice.\n-Is there anything to do on the entire right/eastern side of the world map?  There are systems and planets there.  I checked a few out, but I never got any quests to go to any of them. Pirates, Spacers, Ecliptic, Civilian Outpost with the same fetch quest - rinse and repeat. I played for like 150 hours, and they just kinda felt... there.\n-The Temples! WHY do I have to keep doing the same annoying mini game chasing swirls over and over and over?  The first one was cool, the music swelling and everything, but it's super unclear how many things you need to catch, and since you're weightless, there's little you can do to speed up and maneuver, so depending on where they spawn it can just take forever, and is super tedious and repetitive.  It's not challenging.  It doesn't use resources.  It doesn't involve a choice.  It's not dramatic.  It doesn't give us more information about the world.  What's the point?  What does this add to the game?\n- [spoiler] The Starborn... Really? Starborn?  Who get powers from temples?  SUPER different from the dragonborn who gets their new powers from temples.  I hated both faction options the Starborn presented.  The big reveals felt forced and soap-opera to me. Their whole deal just didn't click for me. Also, there are temples on inhabited worlds.  Yet I'm the only one who ever opened the door and got the super powers?  [/spoiler]  \n\nThere were things to like for sure.  It did keep my attention for quite a while.  I got to sneak around with a sniper rifle - always a plus.  Art, music, acting, programming, testing - it takes SO MUCH WORK from SO MANY PEOPLE to make a game like this, and it's a hell of an accomplishment.  It just didn't feel like it's own, unique thing to set it apart from its peers.  It wasn't a super technical space simulator like Kerbal or Space Engineers.  It didn't take a unique art style approach like Borderlands.  It didn't use a fresh new programming ideas for generative environments like No Man's Sky.  I didn't love all the characters like Mass Effect.  It didn't poke fun at society like Outer Worlds.  It felt like moving around in Fallout - broken down old buildings, but lacked the humor and ridiculousness.  If all those games were hanging out at a party, Starfield could talk to any of them comfortably, but is trying to hard to blend in and seem normal among them.","timestamp_created":1735361032,"timestamp_updated":1735361032,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":496,"votes_funny":14,"weighted_vote_score":"0.915356218814849854","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":22},{"reaction_type":5,"count":10},{"reaction_type":13,"count":7},{"reaction_type":6,"count":5},{"reaction_type":16,"count":4},{"reaction_type":22,"count":4},{"reaction_type":1,"count":4},{"reaction_type":11,"count":3},{"reaction_type":18,"count":3},{"reaction_type":15,"count":2},{"reaction_type":8,"count":2},{"reaction_type":20,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":14,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"148090053","author":{"steamid":"76561198026996683","personaname":"Coyote","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198026996683/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":2,"playtime_forever":5612,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":5612,"last_played":1695585499,"avatar":"498ea3b6e1e7019f2c067826a8a47d88ea58654c"},"language":"english","review":"[h1]A Major Step Back[/h1]\n\nStarfield is not a game worth paying for. At every level of game design it falls flat. For example:\n\n[b]Gameplay[/b]\n[list]\n[*]The gameplay loop is very empty. It's almost entirely fetch quests that take you to uninteresting locations, locations that cannot be traveled to in any other way than fast travelling, which itself is tedious and functionally a loading screen.\n[*]Quests can usually only be completed in one way, there is no variation in the ways you can approach a situation.\n[*]Combat is simple and unrewarding. The gun play is passable, but that is the only viable build. Melee exists, and that's about all that can be said about it. Stealth exists for the first shot fired, and excluding a specific questline, has no other purpose; it is simply a modifier to the above gunplay.\n[*]Enemies scale to your level, there is no sense of progression. Any likewise leveled weapons only exist to keep pace with the increased health of bullet-sponge enemies. Never will you feel like you are more powerful, or that you are fighting a different fight than the last.\n[*]There are four kinds of enemies, humans, robots, fauna, and turrets. Humans are either pirates, spacers, or fanatics. Robots behave like humans, and all variants behave exactly the same way, requiring no change in methodology than run/shoot. Fauna behave like animals, and outside of one questline, never actually have to be engaged.\n[*]Combine both points above and you have one kind of fight, all of the time. There is no variation in combat whatsoever.\n[*]Space combat is passable, but all ships behave the same way. You can build something tanky or something maneuverable, but it makes little difference in the fights themselves. Ship building is mostly an aesthetic exercise.\n[*]There is no point in the crafting or outpost building mechanics. They give you no real advantages, its nothing but menu hopping, and are completely unnecessary for either survival or integrated quests. Were it not for the activity prompt telling you that it exists, you would never notice it or think you've missed something (you haven't).\n[*]Regarding main story abilities, the process for acquiring them is likewise extremely tedious, repetitive, and unrewarding.\n[/list]\n\n[b]Exploration[/b]\n[list]\n[*]The galaxy is extremely empty. Each planet, including the major \"settled\" planets, are simply procedurally generated empty spaces. You have to \"fly\" to them, which just consists of opening the map, cycling though the star-system-planet menu, and fast travel to them. There is no way to travel to them manually, and nothing to see along the way.\n[*]You will occasionally have a random encounter in the orbit of the planet as you arrive to it. This is often just ship combat with pirates, but you will occasionally meet a friendly ship with two or three lines of dialog. That's it.\n[*]There are four major cities, and an equal number of minor settlements. These are very small, and likewise devoid of life or points of interest. One city is a giant airport terminal. One city is a western themed potemkin village. One city is a hole in the ground. The only interesting city is Neon, the cyberpunk oil platform. The minor settlements are a few empty buildings that only exist as destinations for one or two fetch quests.\n[*]The outpost dungeons are repetitive, literally copy and pasted locations that have the exact same loot, enemies, and written notes. If you've visited one type, you seen all there is of it. There are maybe seven different types.\n[*]The loot is leveled and even \"unique\" weapons are visually and functionally identical to their base models. There is no point in collecting them, or displaying them other than their name.\n[*]All this works out to make exploration an entirely unrewarding experience of sitting though take off/grav jump/landing cutscenes and menu hopping in between, with nothing to show or do at the end of the time wasted doing this.\n[/list]\n\n[b]Quests, Characters, and Writing[/b]\n[list]\n[*]There are a few good questlines, with an emphasis on few. Some are interesting, but are mostly padded out by intervening fetch quests. While those few are fun at parts, their biggest effect is highlighting how boring and meaningless other \"major\" questlines are. Thoughtful storytelling and interesting plots were possible, but reserved for only a handful of questlines. The main quest is not one of them.\n[*]Side quests that aren't fetch quests or at least are well disguised fetch quests can also be interesting, but often are not. You can stumble on a few of these through exploration.\n[*]The number of quests is woefully small. It cannot be more than twenty, if you don't count each and every objective as individual quests. This compounds the feeling of emptiness. In freeform exploration, there is nothing to do. In major hubs, there is very little to do.\n[*]There is no faction lockout, no allegiance or faction system. You can do everything in one playthrough. There is nothing that would make you want to replay the game once you've done all there is to do; no trying a new build, no exploring a new faction. This is especially ironic at the end of the game.\n[*]The characters all share basically the same worldview, and there is no tension between them or the player character. There is always an objective \"right\" choice, and an objective \"wrong\" choice, and no benefit to choosing the wrong choice.\n[*]The writing for the characters is basically one dimensional. Few characters will be remembered after you've interacted with them. Once you've resolved their problem of having left their coffee mug in another star system, they stop existing as anything other than a faceless NPC. Once or twice you will be recognized as someone who did anything, for a single line of dialogue.\n[*]Each story is entirely self contained. There is no wider impact on the galaxy writ small, and when a questline is over, you will be unable to tell if you ever completed it at all. There is no sense of life, response, or consequence to your actions.\n[*]Procedurally generated quests are go here, grab that, go there, shoot that, or haul resources for me. These usually take you to one of the given set of outpost locations, which, when combined with the painful lack of variety of locations, means you will be going to the same place over and over again.\n[*]Without spoilers, the completion of the main quest will make each and every above point painfully exaggerated.\n[/list]\n\n[b]Conclusion[/b]\nStarfield is a major step back not just from the general gaming industry, the RPG genre, but Bethesda themselves. It is entirely unclear what was being done during the exaggerated development time and with all the money spent on it. There is less to do than in Fallout 4. There is less to do than in one hold of Skyrim. There is less to do than in independently developed early access games. When compared to other games that have released not just around the same time, but years prior, and from Bethesda themselves, it is insultingly disappointing. Any modder looking to \"fix\" the game would better spend their time developing a new one from scratch, there simply isn't enough to build off of to make it worthwhile.\n\n[b]As a lifelong Bethesda fanboy, It has broken my heart to write this, but I do it so you may be spared. Play anything else.[/b]","timestamp_created":1697133034,"timestamp_updated":1697133198,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":4489,"votes_funny":44,"weighted_vote_score":"0.914291262626647949","comment_count":456,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"timestamp_dev_responded":1698760170,"developer_response":"Greetings,\n\nWe are sorry to hear Starfield didn't live up to your expectations.\n\nSome of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design - but that's not boring. “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored.\" The intention of Starfield's exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that do have resources you need or hidden outposts to look through.\n\nQuests were made to be completed in several ways. You get to decide who lives and who dies at crucial points of the story, as well as how to go about meeting any given objective.\n\nIf you are looking to feel \"OP\", we recommend looking at completing the quests that grant you special powers to go along with your heavy weaponry. If you don't feel unstoppable then, we are not sure you will feel like that in any game!\n\nWe recommend playing around with ship building and increasing the difficulty you play on if you find it underwhelming. Its a completely different experience playing a fast ship that can dodge projectiles vs a slow tank of a ship that is shooting at enemies in a shield depletion race.\n\nOutpost creation is helpful for those who want to be able to craft resources or to proceed with building an area where advanced research can be done like Alien breeding. You will always gain lots of XP for your production progress as well as the ability to continue to expand your own outpost.\n\nTo provide feedback to development for Starfield, please feel free to submit your feedback using this form here: https://beth.games/45BDMKb\nNever stop exploring!\nBethesda Customer Support\n\n","app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":318},{"reaction_type":16,"count":79},{"reaction_type":6,"count":73},{"reaction_type":13,"count":56},{"reaction_type":5,"count":50},{"reaction_type":1,"count":30},{"reaction_type":9,"count":17},{"reaction_type":22,"count":17},{"reaction_type":19,"count":15},{"reaction_type":11,"count":12},{"reaction_type":15,"count":9},{"reaction_type":18,"count":9},{"reaction_type":14,"count":7},{"reaction_type":21,"count":6},{"reaction_type":7,"count":5},{"reaction_type":23,"count":4},{"reaction_type":20,"count":3},{"reaction_type":2,"count":3},{"reaction_type":4,"count":3},{"reaction_type":8,"count":3},{"reaction_type":10,"count":2},{"reaction_type":12,"count":2},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"202699056","author":{"steamid":"76561198098126128","personaname":"glassel.christian","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198098126128/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":8,"playtime_forever":31270,"playtime_last_two_weeks":1190,"playtime_at_review":28754,"last_played":1775949225,"avatar":"fef49e7fa7e1997310d705b2a6158ff8dc1cdfeb"},"language":"english","review":"I know.  I know.  479 hours played and a \"thumbs down.\"  I get the contradiction.  Here's the thing: there are parts of this game that I love.  Building spaceships and bases is my crack.  Disabling and boarding an enemy ship, wiping out the crew, and adding it to your own fleet = *chef's kiss*\r\n\r\nThe problem is that most of the rest of the game feels like it was designed by my 14-year old self.  \"What if we made a game that was Wing Commander + Doom?!\"  The RPG elements feel largely superficial and the story is--with the exception of a few specific missions/quests--not worth your time.  Not once did the characters or plot elicit an emotional reaction from me.\r\n\r\nIf you want to play Spacecraft Engineer or SimBase, you'll find something to enjoy here.  If you want a deep, involving first-person RPG with robust mechanics, interesting characters, buildcrafting, and a memorable story, you should go play Cyberpunk.","timestamp_created":1755933899,"timestamp_updated":1755933899,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":384,"votes_funny":10,"weighted_vote_score":"0.908447563648223877","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":13,"count":5},{"reaction_type":19,"count":5},{"reaction_type":5,"count":4},{"reaction_type":6,"count":2},{"reaction_type":7,"count":2},{"reaction_type":17,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"185854147","author":{"steamid":"76561198257637342","personaname":"Marcel","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198257637342/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":7,"playtime_forever":21942,"playtime_last_two_weeks":1620,"playtime_at_review":11467,"last_played":1776131559,"avatar":"933860e5e7817b0fcb301f52c49fe266328fec3d"},"language":"english","review":"Its not a  bad game, but also not even close to be what the devs think it is....the greatest problem for me was that they monetized the mods... mods are made by the community for the community... seeing a dev like bethesda do this feels like they are milking their customers for more money without the need to put more effort to fix things that need to be fixed .....","timestamp_created":1737203503,"timestamp_updated":1737203503,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":527,"votes_funny":4,"weighted_vote_score":"0.902165055274963379","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":15},{"reaction_type":16,"count":5},{"reaction_type":19,"count":4},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1},{"reaction_type":5,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"195262748","author":{"steamid":"76561198024047819","personaname":"TTV|ReddeSpectre","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/ReddeSpectre/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":15,"playtime_forever":14206,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":14206,"last_played":1729662380,"avatar":"6f76e877267ec7006b38b245dbe13cf8841bac80"},"language":"english","review":"I gave it a genuine shot. Discarded all the popular opinions and went in with as close to an open mind as I could get. I played all the major factions and multiple New Game cycles, downloaded mods and creations, waited on Shattered Space and played every quest I could find in it. And then I let the game sit, and came back to reflect on my experience. The only thing I can say about Starfield is that, in spite of the effort I put into trying to have a good time, I ultimately failed to do so. This game was not worth all the time I put into playing it. For a person who can't get enough of modern Bethesda's Output - Fallout 4 / Skyrim style design without any visible improvement to gameplay loops or content generation - there may be a good time here. I guess I'm just not that person anymore.","timestamp_created":1747733502,"timestamp_updated":1747733502,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":463,"votes_funny":14,"weighted_vote_score":"0.901755392551422119","comment_count":19,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":13},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"199617258","author":{"steamid":"76561198021677148","personaname":"Szkieletor","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/szkieletor73/","num_games_owned":1182,"num_reviews":35,"playtime_forever":10733,"playtime_last_two_weeks":3609,"playtime_at_review":6710,"last_played":1776553727,"avatar":"fe10d53b2c3f378aacf7c9afa2930dd8c8db9667"},"language":"english","review":"The most mixed of bags. Fun, with good ideas, but deeply flawed. The very definition of wasted potential.\n\nStarfield is, in essence, Fallout 4 taken to an extreme. The parts that worked are improved and expanded, while all the bad stuff is further neglected.\n\nThe gunplay is great, improved from already good system in Fallout 4. Dedicated grenade and bash buttons are very welcome, everything's more responsive and visually satisfying. There's also spaceship combat now, complete with boardings. You also have a drivable vehicle with a turret. Outposts are [i]fine[/i], resource gathering is more focused on outpost extractors and mining with a laser, but you can also do asteroid mining with your ship. There's a lot of POIs to explore and shoot through, so the looter-shooter aspect is definitely at it's best here.\n\nOn the other hand, the setting is bland and generic. There are some very cool elements, but they never really go anywhere. It's like they wanted to go full NASA-punk, which would be a cool and unique aesthethic, but abandoned the idea to give us Generic Sci-Fi Universe #44325. The factions and characters are forgettable, quests are boring with the exception of a few standouts, and the roleplaying potential is very shallow.\n\nAnd then we come to the main reason behind the negative review - modding. Starfield fully integrates Bethesda's \"Creation Club\", allowing anyone to upload their mods to be purchased for \"creation credits\". A 500 pack of credits costs around 5$, and cheapest mods will run you 100 CC. I don't think I have to tell you that this was a horrible idea that hit the final nail in this game's coffin. Buying a mod for $1 sucks if you find out you didn't like it, or it's buggy, or it conflicts with your other mods, or it's outdated, or it bricked your save. And it will get expensive VERY QUICKLY, as many people consider a modlist of 100 individual mods to be \"very lightweight\", with some modlists hitting THOUSANDS, with many times that being testing of mods that didn't make the final cut. And that doesn't even touch upon lack of support for external tools, like MO2, BodySlide, DynDOLOD, xEdit, and many, many other essentials.\n\nAnd if you look at NexusMods for Starfield, you'll see what it led to - a barren wasteland. Many mod authors who even started modding the game in the first place have already given up. The game has so many great systems that could make it the ultimate modding platform, like the procedurally generated planets, NG+, shipbuilding, drivable vehicles, and so much more. But none of that matters when there's no mods. Unless you want $1 weapon skin packs or player homes, there's NOTHING.\n\nUltimately, Starfield is a fun game for a few hours of looting and shooting. It's not a deep RPG, it's not a full-featured space sim, it's not a [i]great game[/i] - and because of Bethesda's vile murder of the modding scene, it never will be.","timestamp_created":1752325292,"timestamp_updated":1752421003,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":722,"votes_funny":3,"weighted_vote_score":"0.951057791709899902","comment_count":16,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":15},{"reaction_type":5,"count":10},{"reaction_type":6,"count":10},{"reaction_type":13,"count":4},{"reaction_type":11,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":7,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":20,"count":1},{"reaction_type":16,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"148032339","author":{"steamid":"76561198011352946","personaname":"Bysida","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Bysida/","num_games_owned":301,"num_reviews":9,"playtime_forever":4205,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4205,"last_played":1695216711,"avatar":"7688a336807daee90306d03d980a2d2e0c52e1ab"},"language":"english","review":"At first it's mind numbingly boring, then for a few hours it picks up and wow you'll never do everything this game has to offer, then a few more hours later you realize you've done everything this game has to offer and all the points of interest are copy paste. \n\nHow is everything a direct downgrade from Skyrim and Fallout 4? Very disappointing, Bethesda. Very much so not worth $70.","timestamp_created":1697040429,"timestamp_updated":1697040429,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1528,"votes_funny":13,"weighted_vote_score":"0.897463321685791016","comment_count":59,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"timestamp_dev_responded":1697062305,"developer_response":"Hi,\n\nWe appreciate you taking the time to provide your review and sorry to hear that you did not enjoy your time in Starfield.\n\nIf you feel that things are getting boring, there is so much more to do than just the main mission! There are many side missions where you can learn more about the people and story of Starfield. You can take time to explore various planets for resources and items. Break the law by smuggling and selling contraband. \n\nBuild your own Outposts and Starships and customize them to your enjoyment. There are many things to do and you can visit our Discord for further ideas from other players: https://beth.games/3F1Jb0W \n\nTo provide feedback for Starfield, please feel free to submit your feedback using this form here: https://beth.games/45BDMKb\n\nThanks again and we hope you return to your journey through space soon!\n\nWarm regards,\nBethesda Customer Support","app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":19},{"reaction_type":6,"count":13},{"reaction_type":19,"count":9},{"reaction_type":5,"count":7},{"reaction_type":9,"count":4},{"reaction_type":16,"count":3},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":1,"count":2},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":11,"count":1},{"reaction_type":14,"count":1},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"186782601","author":{"steamid":"76561199488516680","personaname":"Old Man Crowe","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199488516680/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":8,"playtime_forever":12775,"playtime_last_two_weeks":10642,"playtime_at_review":2117,"last_played":1776572844,"avatar":"15bdc6c83df36d89df24bae45b6b1a4193237261"},"language":"english","review":"been a loyal fan of Bethesda since Morrowind. ive sat here in silence as other bashed their games, hoping improvements would come. it is clear to me now that this company no longer makes games. Dropped $100 on something that is unplayable. From Skyrim to Fallout76 and now this.... im heartbroken, Dear Bethesda, You lost a long time fan today.","timestamp_created":1738280477,"timestamp_updated":1738280477,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":481,"votes_funny":11,"weighted_vote_score":"0.896447598934173584","comment_count":9,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":16,"count":8},{"reaction_type":17,"count":7},{"reaction_type":19,"count":4},{"reaction_type":2,"count":3},{"reaction_type":18,"count":3},{"reaction_type":6,"count":2},{"reaction_type":8,"count":2},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":14,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":5,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"196219507","author":{"steamid":"76561198323717933","personaname":"NeedlessBohemian128","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198323717933/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":4,"playtime_forever":12511,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":11828,"last_played":1749872894,"avatar":"fef49e7fa7e1997310d705b2a6158ff8dc1cdfeb"},"language":"english","review":"I want to sit here and lie to you. I want to say this game is amazing. I want to say that years later, Bethesda has solved the issues of Starfield. I want to say Starfield is an incredible addition to a studio that has become increasingly complacent.\r\n\r\nI cannot. Starfield, despite numerous bug fixes, is riddled with network errors, crashes and numerous quality of life issues that have yet to be alleviated. The RPG aspects of the game have significantly diminished over the years as a no to an NPC has now become a \"Later I'll say yes.\" How the weight management system has become increasingly annoying and dulling to the game. How the world is lifeless and unapologetically lazy from an equally unapologetically lazy studio. How the combat has seemingly regressed since Fallout 4. How the opportunity for choices has been stripped down to \"yes\" and \"I'll talk to you later.\" It's a game that desperately wants you to be a hero, while providing no conundrums for the player beyond \"good guys good, other good guys good, bad guys really bad.\"\r\n\r\nI want to say the plots of Starfield's major narratives are what will keep you going. They're not. I want to say the companions are useful and will keep you engaged in meaningful and interesting dialogue. They don't. I want to say the gunplay feels smooth and strong. It doesn't. I want to say this game won't crash at least a few times a day; I can't. Starfield is less of a game and more of a cash grab. It's entirely carried by a modding community that puts more care in the game than the developers did.\r\n\r\nAll of this, however, is in the forefront of what is really a phenomenal ship design minigame, although, even this solid design system is offset by two major problems of space combat in general. The problems with ships, however, are 1) the inconsistencies in ladder and door placements coupled with 2) the lack of viability in weaponry outside of particle beam weapons.\r\n\r\nI want to lie to you and say you should buy this game. I can't, and I won't. Starfield is not worth your time, your money nor your enthusiasm, because it will never reciprocate the potential the uninformed might assume it has. I cannot recommend you stay away from this game enough, and the only reason I'm continuing the game is to finally put another notch on my belt of completed games.","timestamp_created":1748843773,"timestamp_updated":1748843773,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":523,"votes_funny":17,"weighted_vote_score":"0.894764184951782227","comment_count":21,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":12},{"reaction_type":6,"count":7},{"reaction_type":16,"count":5},{"reaction_type":5,"count":5},{"reaction_type":19,"count":3},{"reaction_type":1,"count":3},{"reaction_type":13,"count":2},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"147081201","author":{"steamid":"76561198044870434","personaname":"Seeger","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198044870434/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":3,"playtime_forever":15364,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":10989,"last_played":1698116060,"avatar":"4da0bea8af66a1591c4d9aa2ad1d7c1ba80570b0"},"language":"english","review":"I rate Starfield 5.5/10 (An ok if mediocre BGS game that has its moments, but feels like a regression in quality from previous BGS titles).\n\nStarfield as an adventure/RPG is quite poor. Starfield as an FPS is fun. After I finished the bulk of quests, I'm just turning my brain off and enjoying the FPS gunplay, combat in low gravity/zero-g.\n\nThat being said, so many features of Starfield leave you scratching your head thinking, \"really?\" No brainer QOL features from previous Bethesda titles are absent, and the gameplay features they DID use in Starfield are weak/poorly thought out/shoe-horned in/rushed for the deadline.\n\nI'm guessing it was top-down decision making mismanagement that made Starfield feel like a regression in quality instead of playing on strengths found in prior Bethesda games. \n\nThere's EM weapons, ship's brig components, contraband/ smuggling system that FEELS like they should have had greater functionality and purpose, but someone met with the dev team for those systems and said \"we gotta ship this game, send it as-is.\" And so you're left with gameplay mechanics that are TECHNICALLY there... but are functionally worthless and don't add to the game in a meaningful way.\n\nThat's just one example. I really think the lead developers/project managers made having 1000 procedurally generated planets THE CORE concept of the game, Which means that the rest of the gameplay mechanics are half-baked because they spent the majority of development on having 1000 procedurally generated, uninteresting planets, rather than focusing on exploration/worldbuilding/environmental storytelling, which were the STRONGEST parts of previous BGS titles. There's little reward for players to actually explore!\n\n\n- Starfield is a mile wide and an inch deep.\n\n-Story, quests & lore feel half-hearted, cut short for time and bland. \n\n-Bethesda created the lore for this game, and chose the most boring time to start your adventure. Colony wars are over! No mechs or armies with weaponized aliens. \n\nThe citizens, guards, etc.. from the 2 main factions complain about each other but they're at peace. You can complete all the quests for one faction, join the next and do all the quests, and join the space pirates and do all their quests and it doesn't effect the story at all! I thought BGS would have learned what game mechanics from their previous titles worked well that players enjoyed and implement them in Starfield. I had hoped we'd get something like Skyrim or F:NV where there'd be consequences to your choices (Gain positive reputation with a faction that puts you in poor standing/locks you out from faction questlines and other locations under a faction) but the game world feels Anaemic and unresponsive to Player actions and decisions.\n\n -game systems that seemed to have some purpose somewhere along development but were made completely redundant by full release\n\n (crafting, cooking/food, smuggling contraband,shipbuilding, resource collection/mining, colonies, spaceship fuel/grav jump range, stealth)\n\n- more than half the skills are unnecessary, and quite a lot of grinding is required to level up skil\n\n-Poor U.I \n\n-Powers are pointless; I only use \"personal atmosphere\" to give myself oxygen because I'm constantly over encumbered hauling only resources and loot to and from my ship\n\n-you'll spend an hour in real time trying to sell 40,000 credits worth of loot to 6 different merchants who only have 5000 credits on hand (and the trade authority vendors, who have 12,000 credits). Selling 3-4 guns will give you every credit the vendor has on hand. You'll Have to find a bench to sit on, wait 48hrs for them to restock. And unlike previous games, a maxxed out commerce skill does NOT give you the option to invest a sum of credits with a vendor to increase their buying capacity.\n\n-Say you want to use ammo as a second currency with vendors; you buy up all the ammo a vendor has, and sell loot to get your credits back. The U.I doesn't speed up the selection of the quantity of ammo/meds/resources you wish to sell like previous Bethesda games, so you can hold down the left thumbstick for half an hour to sell the amount that'll clear the vendor of their credits, or you can give them ALL of a stack of ammo/meds/resources saving you time, but giving the surplus value away to a vendor for free.\n\n-I'd like to use the Bridger grenade launcher, except only some gun shops carry 40mm ammo and between 3-25 at any time. So I spend a bunch of time sitting on a bench and waiting 48hrs for them to restock, buy out all the 40mm and wait another 48hrs. Bleh\n\n-It feels pointless to explore planets. No matter where you land, you're always 500m from the exact same abandoned robotics lab, mining outpost, frozen research station. Seriously, for a 2023 title, I know the layout of every dungeon because there's only like a dozen of them! Enemies spawn in the same places everytime, loot is found in the same places, the 3rd locker down on the left always has credsticks on its shelf.. it's pathetic. Skyrim had hundreds of unique dungeons within one province of Tamriel and STARFIELD with hundreds of empty planets and moons only has a dozen or so dungeons that are found on every planet and moon. You'll know every time where enemies spawn, where keycards spawn, where safes and contraband spawns...\n\n-research base\n-underground frozen research base\n-mining facility with vats of lava\n-the tall research base with the elevator\n-abandoned robotics facility (with notes on how the staff were using the robots to deliver coffee)\n-deeper mining facility\n\n-you'll face either spacers, crimson fleet pirates, ecliptic mercs, or var'uun heretics at any of the dozen locations. For all intents and purposes, they are completely the same (behaviour in combat)\n\nWhats the point of a big open world if there's nothing interesting inside?\n\nIt feels like I bought a tall glass of juice but the waiter drank 75% of it before watering it down and giving it to me for $90 CAD ($110 after tax)\n\nIn conclusion, this is a step down in quality from Bethesda compared to previous titles. Bethesda took the best gameplay mechanics from their previous games, removed the QOL mechanics and half assed shoe horned the others into Starfield. It feels like the game is underdeveloped, rushed to completion, overhyped, and absolutely disappointing for a 2023 title from a triple A game studio.\n\nI'd wait a year or two for the game to go on sale.. it wouldn't feel right to pay more than $30 for the game (don't spend $90+ like I did on Starfield!)\n\nThat being said, If Bethesda listens to player feedback and provides free, meaningful updates I will update my review accordingly. For the time being, I'm not interested in paying more for additional DLC when the base game at full price feels incomplete.","timestamp_created":1695761086,"timestamp_updated":1697227707,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":9038,"votes_funny":172,"weighted_vote_score":"0.892932593822479248","comment_count":719,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"timestamp_dev_responded":1695918311,"developer_response":"Greetings,\n\nWe are sorry to hear this has been your experience. We feel Starfield is an RPG with hundreds of hours of quests to complete and characters to meet. Most quests will also vary on your character’s skills and decisions, massively changing the outcome of your playthrough. Try creating different characters with backgrounds and characteristics that clash or are opposite of your previous character. You will feel like you are playing a totally different game!\n\nPut points in different skills from a character you’ve previously created, and you are now faced with completely different decisions to make and difficulties to encounter. There are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you’ve never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours.\n\nOur support site offers many guides on different mechanics of Starfield when you are feeling overwhelmed. For example, the following may help with earning credits more quickly https://beth.games/3PAOXwb\n\nOur team always welcomes feedback https://beth.games/3Xdn3d4\n\nWe hope you give Starfield another chance as there is a lot more that cannot be experienced in just one playthrough.\n\nThe Bethesda Team","app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":571},{"reaction_type":16,"count":135},{"reaction_type":6,"count":119},{"reaction_type":13,"count":70},{"reaction_type":5,"count":68},{"reaction_type":1,"count":48},{"reaction_type":19,"count":33},{"reaction_type":9,"count":31},{"reaction_type":22,"count":29},{"reaction_type":11,"count":24},{"reaction_type":18,"count":24},{"reaction_type":15,"count":22},{"reaction_type":4,"count":21},{"reaction_type":10,"count":9},{"reaction_type":8,"count":9},{"reaction_type":20,"count":8},{"reaction_type":14,"count":8},{"reaction_type":12,"count":7},{"reaction_type":21,"count":7},{"reaction_type":7,"count":5},{"reaction_type":23,"count":5},{"reaction_type":3,"count":4},{"reaction_type":2,"count":3}]},{"recommendationid":"200496582","author":{"steamid":"76561198047617729","personaname":"Tauream","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Dawnrest/","num_games_owned":738,"num_reviews":6,"playtime_forever":8092,"playtime_last_two_weeks":373,"playtime_at_review":4059,"last_played":1775846641,"avatar":"65a132431286fcf7282884f05562991688a87fe6"},"language":"english","review":"I don't know if there is a way to report this but Bethesda is actively engaging in a rug pull.\n\nThe store page used to say that the premium edition would include \"all future DLCs\" it now reads that it only includes shattered space. Mind you when the game released the name \"Shattered Space\" still had not been revealed.\n\nI don't know how this isn't illegal. It's certainly false advertising.","timestamp_created":1753340192,"timestamp_updated":1753340192,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":234,"votes_funny":0,"weighted_vote_score":"0.892187118530273438","comment_count":13,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":2},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"217275129","author":{"steamid":"76561198046656433","personaname":"paintrodsey","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198046656433/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":3,"playtime_forever":3402,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3402,"last_played":1724372355,"avatar":"d84bfcd858d64ff24346aaabd12f5a717cba2499"},"language":"english","review":"Boring, just boring.  The game checks all the boxes asked by the marketing department but they forgot to make it fun.","timestamp_created":1769884718,"timestamp_updated":1769884718,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":275,"votes_funny":7,"weighted_vote_score":"0.891761541366577148","comment_count":7,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":29,"count":23},{"reaction_type":31,"count":6},{"reaction_type":24,"count":2},{"reaction_type":28,"count":1},{"reaction_type":34,"count":1},{"reaction_type":35,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"150572556","author":{"steamid":"76561197968422178","personaname":"SG-1•HammondofTexas","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/sg1hammondoftexas/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":11,"playtime_forever":26604,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":15928,"last_played":1735233484,"avatar":"4c6ead5a52a80a115add0e2f52e407e40349ed2d"},"language":"english","review":"I absolutely love BGS games, and I like this game, however, every negative thing people say about this game is true.","timestamp_created":1700591215,"timestamp_updated":1729266457,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":2956,"votes_funny":1497,"weighted_vote_score":"0.890766501426696777","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":74},{"reaction_type":17,"count":55},{"reaction_type":13,"count":20},{"reaction_type":5,"count":17},{"reaction_type":16,"count":14},{"reaction_type":18,"count":9},{"reaction_type":3,"count":7},{"reaction_type":14,"count":6},{"reaction_type":1,"count":5},{"reaction_type":15,"count":4},{"reaction_type":6,"count":4},{"reaction_type":4,"count":3},{"reaction_type":11,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":2,"count":2},{"reaction_type":23,"count":2},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1},{"reaction_type":12,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"175027003","author":{"steamid":"76561198019903369","personaname":"Xelanthol","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198019903369/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":30,"playtime_forever":2701,"playtime_last_two_weeks":270,"playtime_at_review":2430,"last_played":1775859486,"avatar":"618bfa7e8477cee17e56637af632fef4e31724b2"},"language":"english","review":"This is the game that had me fall off the Bethesda bandwagon. For all their faults I had genuinely positive times in both the Elder Scrolls (oblivion&skyrim) and Fallout series (3-NV-4). I had expected that Starfield would be flawed but not to this degree.\n\nI'll start with the positives-the gunplay is solid enough, and the graphics aren't bad.\n\nOtherwise though, this game feels incredibly disjointed and falling short of its own design. You can tell they had interesting ideas during development that they chose to strip back, but they didn't fill the void that stripped-back design space left, if that makes sense. Ship design and combat is incredibly basic and simple, despite having a plethora of \"options\". Same thing with colony design and management. There is so much more to gripe about here but I'll leave it at that.\n\nOne of the biggest things that made me audibly say \"come on\" was their lack of Points of Interest. In Fallout or Skyrim, it was such a fantastic experience to wander across the map and find something new and unique. Now while I don't mind procedurally generated systems, you generally need a decent amount of options and variations. Within the first few hours of the game I was running into the exact same locations. Wow! It's so strange that this exact secret research base exists on all these different planets, and that all the same junk is left in all the same spots. Even the same lockers are locked or unlocked!\n\nThey should have had a dedicated team cranking out handmade points of interest/modular pieces of points of interest that could spawn on planets very early in the development cycle. The fact that I very quickly ran into recycled content was not only immersion breaking but just incredibly dissatisfying. \n\nThe \"space magic\" system in this game is... OK. There is a collection of some interesting effects, but they're not particularly balanced. Ok so I can make this guy slowly float in a gravitation field-interesting. Except it trivialises combat as its effectively  a multi-second stun. Also a non-insignificant portion of my frustration with this game is Bethesda deciding it's cool to make me chase the shimmer in the sci-fi temple to get my space magic for the hundredth time. It was cool the first time, it had lost its novelty by the third. By the tenth I was staring at my screen asking if I was having fun.\n\nA game with too much scope and not enough time that couldn't figure out who it was trying to appeal to.","timestamp_created":1726411613,"timestamp_updated":1726411613,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":494,"votes_funny":8,"weighted_vote_score":"0.889900028705596924","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":8},{"reaction_type":19,"count":6},{"reaction_type":13,"count":2},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":6,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"208389250","author":{"steamid":"76561198039578291","personaname":"SelenaShroud","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/shroud66/","num_games_owned":483,"num_reviews":121,"playtime_forever":9684,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":9684,"last_played":1761906008,"avatar":"c0c595867ce6b5010210d09d60e8441eec6e00b0"},"language":"english","review":"6/10 It not terrible but it's not great either. The universe is big and filled with planets but at the same time most are rng instances with the occasional pre-built story location. It looks visual stunning but underneath it's somewhat hollow and empty. \r\n\r\nBasically, it's a big box that looks good and has loads of details but inside there is loads of empty/dead space.","timestamp_created":1762261964,"timestamp_updated":1762261964,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":175,"votes_funny":9,"weighted_vote_score":"0.88770604133605957","comment_count":4,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","hardware":{"manufacturer":"ASUS","model":"System Product Name","dx_video_card":"NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti","dx_vendorid":4318,"dx_deviceid":10245,"num_gpu":1,"system_ram":"32612","os":"Windows 11","cpu_vendor":"GenuineIntel","cpu_name":"Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz","gaming_device_type":1,"dx_driver_version":"32.0.15.9186","adapter_description":"NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti","driver_version":"32.0.15.9186","driver_date":"2026-1-20","vram_size":16109,"screen_width":null,"screen_height":null},"reactions":[{"reaction_type":6,"count":3},{"reaction_type":17,"count":1},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":14,"count":1},{"reaction_type":16,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"153842073","author":{"steamid":"76561197961270473","personaname":"Ketaros","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/ketaroz/","num_games_owned":485,"num_reviews":25,"playtime_forever":454,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":454,"last_played":1701998382,"avatar":"5a237f94708e6be1efb7103b7d7e22137ed1f088"},"language":"english","review":"After dedicating countless hours to creating mods for Skyrim and Fallout 4, amassing over 5 million downloads, it pains me to announce to my modding community: I won't be modding for Starfield. I'm at a loss to comprehend Bethesda's direction. In an era graced by masterpieces like Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption II, Elden Ring, and Baldur's Gate, Bethesda has somehow managed to release a game that feels archaic, lackluster, and painfully underwhelming. The game's script is lackadaisical, the gameplay lethargic, and the overall experience is profoundly uninspiring. It's a far cry from the innovative standards set in 2023/24.\n\nThis weekend, as I pen this review, the player counts speak volumes:\n\nStarfield: 20,027 players\nFallout 4: 20,089 players\nSkyrim SE: 23,723 players\n\nThese figures paint a grim picture for Bethesda. It took them eight years to produce a game that not only fails to surpass but barely matches the engagement of their older titles. A \"Fallout 4 - Space Edition\" or a substantial DLC would have likely been a more successful venture.\n\nI played Starfield for a mere 8 hours, enough to confirm the myriad issues highlighted in other reviews. I refuse to waste more time on a game that has left me, a long-time Bethesda admirer, deeply disappointed, frustrated, and saddened. There's no incentive for me to invest my creativity in playing or modding Starfield.\n\nBethesda, this is a farewell from a disheartened fan. Peace.","timestamp_created":1702882380,"timestamp_updated":1702882961,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1352,"votes_funny":26,"weighted_vote_score":"0.884512186050415039","comment_count":62,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":26},{"reaction_type":16,"count":17},{"reaction_type":19,"count":10},{"reaction_type":6,"count":7},{"reaction_type":9,"count":4},{"reaction_type":5,"count":4},{"reaction_type":14,"count":3},{"reaction_type":18,"count":3},{"reaction_type":11,"count":1},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":20,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1},{"reaction_type":12,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"200927264","author":{"steamid":"76561198021280002","personaname":"Wick","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Wick012/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":1,"playtime_forever":104729,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":104729,"last_played":1724346628,"avatar":"a660ddfdd81b39f904a09ad313924e906db16800"},"language":"english","review":"1745 hours played.\n\nNumbers like this are what people like Todd exclaim first and foremost about how their games are played, as an exclamation of excellence. It is held up like a trophy, “revel in our success”.\n\nIn this case however, instead of playing it for some kind of enjoyment, I racked up those hours trying to find the justification for Bethesda releasing this game at all.\n\nComing down the elevator and entering the cinematic at the start of the game, I was holding onto years of anticipation for this release, but also the lessons learned through 40+ years and 10K+ hours of ....Bethesda.\nDuring that opening cinematic, I witnessed one of the VERY few \"real\" conversations that I would experience during the entire playthrough, but I did not know that at the time, all  I was thinking of was my doubts about the improved graphics being able to hold up knowing what I do about the engine driving the system I was about to take a long ride in.\n\nUpon release of my character, I rushed to the games UI, and my heart sank. What is this?\nThe SAME old clunky and outdated UI? And why was it even slower than previous games?\nA tiny ember emerged right then, but I  pushed forward, spurred on by the thousands of hours of \"dedication?\" to Bethesda's previous titles.\n\nMy next step was being told by the supervisor and as a brand-new miner, that I was going to be the one responsible to proceed into the next area and to obtain some unknown and possibly dangerous item. \nFor clarity, since the start of the game and up until that moment, I had just spent 9 minutes being lectured about safety, responsibility, and the importance of working together. So much for immersion eh?\nThis is Starfield. Written by people who apparently have no real-world experience and as such, simply have no idea how to emulate how a person would think, act, or communicate let alone build a world real enough to keep you inside of.\n\nWIthin 20 minutes into the game, my random \"Joe\" just got handed a ship and was told: \n\"fly.. be free\"....like a child. Now I have a ship and have accomplished... nothing.\n\nI played the first hour with that small ember turning into a hot coal as my brain tried to reconcile how ridiculous the \"story\" I was being presented with was, and a growing dislike for the games main companions. By hour 50, I wanted nothing to do with Constellation at all, and in retrospect, I think the game would have been much better without it. Just a world where you start as that miner and develop into something from there, supported by interesting questing and progression, but surely not \"Skyrim in space\". \n\nI spent the next 475 hours ensuring that I had explored every single element of the game. Every possible interaction, every planet, every scenario. I cannot stress to you enough how boring and tedious this became, but I was documenting everything along the way.  \n\nThe next 1200 hours was spent trying to \"fix\" what parts of the game I could. Tearing into the games actual bones made me come to the same conclusion of many (most?) of my fellow mod makers.  The game simply was not worth working with, and the stretched engine is a mess. I suspect major changes coming from Microsoft above soon regarding the Creation Kit.\nMost of us quit, but some stayed, instead agreeing to follow the dangling carrot that is the mod store.\n\nThe dream of Bethesda handing us the bones to a \"modder's paradise\", a universe to do with as we could, was instead manipulated into method to generate cash from people formerly fixing their games for free. All brought to you by the originator of the plague that is microtransactions that has now spread worldwide to be the norm.\nAlthough there is a very well-known saying among the community \"Beth makes games so that modder's can fix them\", in this case there is no fixing Starfield. No matter your skill, you cannot erase the stain of the games main story and its beyond irritating attempt at world-building. \n\nI finally quit the day they released the “buggy”, a vehicle with no storage, to bounce off things with for 20 minutes before never being used again in the mess of procedural generation  \n10 minutes after that patch, I was done. The X-pac was paid for but never played. I thank myself for that decision.\n\nMany others have noted how incredibly shallow and simply boring this game is, so I need not go further than confirm my wholehearted agreement beyond what has already been stated here in these reviews SO. MANY. TIMES.\n\nHere are some things that perhaps others have not noted, or my case really burned my a**:\n\n1. It's simply a downgrade compared to most developers in regards to innovation. Systems may have been imagined, but they were never implemented to the point of being useful.\n2. There is NO FUNCTIONAL ECONOMY in Starfield.\n3. The score/music sucks, begins to grind at you, and since there is...\n4. NO radio? no real comm's? WTF? really? How many fast-travel and loadscreen issues could have been fixed with a simple comms device? Let alone some real tech.\n5. There is NO SCIENCE or SPACE in this game about science... and space.\n6.Its disgustingly \"safe\", politically correct, and generic. A masterclass in no chances were taken. This is the main reason why the quests are simply boring, there is no flavor to be had.\n7. Whoever signed off on the clothing should be fired immediately.\n8. Your \"Ship\" is nothing more than a settlement (think previous games) that LOOKS like a ship, but in this case you transport it via load screen from location to location. \nActually flying in this game would let you actually see how bad the procedurally generated terrain actually is. And the next issue is the reason:\n9. Tell me, how many rivers have you seen in Starfield?\nAnyone can easily see with a good jetpack, let alone by simply using console commands to \"fly\" up and take a good look around at how lazy the terrain generation and object placement is. While doing so, make sure you track your framerate and you will know exactly why flying around planets was never implemented. (and never should be with this engine)\n10. The character creator is simply lazy. A shallow step up at best for Beth, but bad compared to all other AAA studios. Even the best face modelers find it nearly impossible to create anything but a mediocre mess of a face in Starfield. It's no wonder the NPC's look so horribly bad. \n11. Combat barely improved (Gunplay, and only thanks only to id software for sure) but Bethesda still has not learned to code a character that wont get stuck on a stone let alone actually move or god forbid CLIMB like a game from 2025. Go play a game like Horizon ZD or FW and experience it's movement and combat then tell me Starfield's gameplay is up-to-date, acceptable, or even improved from previous titles with a straight face. You just cant. A jetpack does not make up for that.\n12. Starfield's melee is a joke. I get that they \"had\" to put it in the game, but no effort or thought was put behind it because Bethesda STILL insists on the use of inflating enemy health pools as you level, a tactic that should have been put to full rest 20 years ago. \n\n\nAfter all this if you still decide to play Starfield for the first time, I would suggest the following:\n\n1. Mainline the games \"story\" while doing everything you can to not look at the NPC's.\n2. Never use the power \"sense life\" as it will forever wreck what you think you know about how enemy AI should work.\n3. Do NOT fall into the trap that is the online \"store\" of \"mods\" for this game, as it is the ONLY reason Starfield exists. Please do not contribute to the problem.\n4. When you play, do so inebriated so that your mind will have at least some chance to enable whatever suspension of logic and taste as is possible\n.\nTo you have suffered through my first ever review in 50+ years of everything gaming, I leave you with this:\nIt was a fun ride while it lasted, but I am quite sure it has ended now, and its time for us all to get off.","timestamp_created":1753721201,"timestamp_updated":1755565409,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":852,"votes_funny":60,"weighted_vote_score":"0.882869958877563477","comment_count":61,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":24,"count":1},{"reaction_type":30,"count":1},{"reaction_type":17,"count":94},{"reaction_type":16,"count":31},{"reaction_type":5,"count":20},{"reaction_type":1,"count":15},{"reaction_type":13,"count":14},{"reaction_type":6,"count":13},{"reaction_type":19,"count":11},{"reaction_type":15,"count":9},{"reaction_type":9,"count":7},{"reaction_type":8,"count":5},{"reaction_type":10,"count":4},{"reaction_type":14,"count":4},{"reaction_type":22,"count":4},{"reaction_type":20,"count":3},{"reaction_type":21,"count":3},{"reaction_type":11,"count":2},{"reaction_type":12,"count":2},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"166108503","author":{"steamid":"76561198057999536","personaname":"Spencer Gowinup","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/uncledane/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":14,"playtime_forever":6558,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":6558,"last_played":1694749162,"avatar":"26e622f18660b865bd75664dfb4990c969531a96"},"language":"english","review":"Despite the overall negative review, I actually do kinda like this game... but with a big fat asterisk.\n\nI am a huge Bethesda RPG fan; thousands of combined hours in Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3/4, New Vegas, and even 76. I have always loved the vibe, the weirdness, the goofy ♥♥♥♥, both intended and unintended, the grindy elements, the characters, the atmosphere, basically everything.\n\nHowever, there isn't a single game in Bethesda's RPG catalog that isn't completely and shamelessly carried by the modding community and its ability to undo all of the weirdly tone deaf crap that they keep pulling every single time they make one of these games, and Starfield has quite a lot of the same things wrong with it that (for example) Skyrim's base game does. I am of the opinion that Skyrim WITH MODS is an 11 out of 10 experience, top 3 video games of all time for me. WITHOUT MODS.... it's more like a 6 out of 10 and I can understand completely why someone who has only ever played the console version without SkyUI or any of the many many mods that add better crafting, quality of life changes, and fix the massive amount of game-breaking (non-funny) bugs would think of Skyrim as a relatively mediocre video game for its time. Because without mods, it totally deserves that legacy. But I believe that mods - not even any that add gameplay to the experience, but simply FIX all of the dumb stuff that Bethesda somehow cannot seem to figure out (the atrocious menus being a big one) - are what make their RPGs go from playable and serviceable... to completely transcendent and addicting experiences that are rarely matched within the open-world RPG genre. \n\nSO, with all that being said: Starfield is less than a year old at this point. Bethesda did with Starfield what they've done many times before: they've made a completely serviceable and playable RPG that I was fully immersed in and found myself hopelessly addicted to for a couple weeks. BUT, the mods that will once again take the experience from good to GREAT are not available yet. So that heavily hinders the experience for me. \n\nThe menus are SO bad. Somehow even worse than Skyrim's. There are systems in the game that are useless for no reason at all (why does junk do NOTHING???) and there are ideas that they've come up with for this game that feel rushed and like 5% away from being complete. Why is there no radio? Why does starship fuel not matter at all? And the BIG ONE: why does the constant fast travel and load screens have to ruin the immersion of a massive universe in such a exponentially horrible way compared to past titles? It's like... why even bother making the game at all if you can't fly from planet to planet in the same system without opening a menu and fast-travelling there? In Skyrim (a game that came out in 2011) you can walk from one end of the map to the other without seeing a single load screen. Hell, in No Man's Sky you can fly from planet to planet and even manually fly your spaceship from space to the surface. How did they not see this as a massive problem? It's genuinely mind boggling to me how much of an oversight that is.\n\nI am holding out for mods to completely transform how I feel about Starfield, but for the time being... I had my two weeks of fun with what they got right in the vanilla pass. The standout: ship building is awesome, I must have spent half my play time just in the ship builder alone. I had a lot of fun with piracy and space combat (although the bounty system is completely and utterly stupid, so there's that roadblock for mods to fix). There are many things that I love, and there many more things that I hate. But I believe those issues may only be temporary, and I'm very much looking forward to playing this game in the same way I've played previous BGS titles - hopelessly addicted and at the mercy of the fantastic modding community. We'll see how it looks 5 years from now. But for now, this is probably Bethesda's worst game.","timestamp_created":1716738660,"timestamp_updated":1716738660,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":1085,"votes_funny":16,"weighted_vote_score":"0.882169246673583984","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":30},{"reaction_type":19,"count":11},{"reaction_type":6,"count":7},{"reaction_type":1,"count":5},{"reaction_type":16,"count":4},{"reaction_type":13,"count":3},{"reaction_type":18,"count":3},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":8,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"173326552","author":{"steamid":"76561198032087111","personaname":"Jacksynn","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Jacksynn/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":10,"playtime_forever":18684,"playtime_last_two_weeks":1389,"playtime_at_review":13305,"last_played":1776540768,"avatar":"a25e54b1a733727b66b1594ce0ea10f27b7ffd3e"},"language":"english","review":"While I did enjoy the game, I cannot endorse their current practices with Creations. They released the Tracker Alliance in a free update with the first bounty, then put the next bounty behind a $7 purchase. With the way it is set up, it is clear that they intend to put each subsequent bounty behind a similar purchase.\n\nIf they had released the Tracker Alliance as a full-paid DLC in the first place, I wouldn't have a problem with it. The fact that they are essentially trying to nickle and dime you ($7) for each quest for a faction is a huge problem.\n\nCreations is just their paid mod program under a new name, with all the problems from when they tried it with Skyrim years ago. There are a multitude of creations that are asset flips (single guns ranging from 2 to 7 dollars), where the models have been bought from an asset store and hastily slapped together to make a quick buck. Many of these creations use trademarked or copyrighted content; I can only foresee this ending poorly.","timestamp_created":1724584839,"timestamp_updated":1724584839,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":476,"votes_funny":10,"weighted_vote_score":"0.87963336706161499","comment_count":10,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":9},{"reaction_type":6,"count":7},{"reaction_type":16,"count":4},{"reaction_type":17,"count":3},{"reaction_type":11,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":5,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"174199137","author":{"steamid":"76561198067687485","personaname":"HennyBenny","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198067687485/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":11,"playtime_forever":1844,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":1844,"last_played":1713422858,"avatar":"9d4b66416a5c8636c9c46875f82937c3fbe82818"},"language":"english","review":"I wanted to love this game so much but it's just so.....boring. They focused so much on making a big game that they forgot to make a FUN game. The planets are empty, the characters are all one dimensional, every quest requires multiple loading screens to get to a location. This game is simply not fun.","timestamp_created":1725447752,"timestamp_updated":1725447752,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":305,"votes_funny":2,"weighted_vote_score":"0.877244353294372559","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":3},{"reaction_type":19,"count":3},{"reaction_type":16,"count":2},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":5,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"177326448","author":{"steamid":"76561198013885568","personaname":"Nordiskt Lejon","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198013885568/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":16,"playtime_forever":8247,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":8247,"last_played":1696793469,"avatar":"c6fbf9fb9371696b6223d1c7bec604709bcdec34"},"language":"english","review":"Been playing Beth games since Morrowind when I was a kid and didn't even understand English yet. Oblivion was my childhood and I spent countless hours in it, While Skyrim was barely an RPG it at least had a fantastic detailed world to explore, different races to play and good side quests.\n\nStarfield has nothing except for a pretty decent ship builder. \n• The lore and stories are uninteresting and more toothless than a newborn. \n• The \"RPG\" mechanics are somehow even worse than Skyrim and F4. Whose idea was it to lock perks behind half-assed challanges that only exist to waste time?\n• The weapon level system is garbage (you like a gun type? too bad, it's underleveled and is a BB gun now, use this other gun you don't like but is high level and hope the gun you liked drops again at a higher level in a few hours).\n• The planets are boring, sorry Bethesda we don't care if you like NASA, a randomly generated planet with nothing but copy paste locations is just bad. Congrats on adding a car tho, it doesn't change the fact that 99% of your worlds are pointless but at least players can get it over with faster now.\n\nBethesda, no one wants copy pasted locations, no one want brain dead radiant quests, no one wants boring generated terrain. I'm sure you think these are neat on a technical level or whatever but we're not code geeks, we're gamers. Emil, this isn't the best game you've ever made, it's the worst, maybe it's the best tech-demo you've ever made but we don't care about that.\n\nI was hyped for TES6, not anymore, now I've had to accept that it most likely will (somehow) have even less RPG mechanics, the lore and stories will be made safer and inoffensive, the world will have minimal hand crafted enviorments. Gonna be painful to watch my favourite game series crash and burn.","timestamp_created":1729335780,"timestamp_updated":1729335780,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":253,"votes_funny":2,"weighted_vote_score":"0.877163290977478027","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":7},{"reaction_type":16,"count":4},{"reaction_type":14,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":5,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"170118264","author":{"steamid":"76561198035722232","personaname":"Novantis","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Novantis/","num_games_owned":361,"num_reviews":26,"playtime_forever":6267,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":6267,"last_played":1695168546,"avatar":"63a8fd3afa712657ace443ec1db7f40ddfd7cd1e"},"language":"english","review":"Just mediocre. Takes everything that makes Fallout and Elder Scrolls good and removes it. NG+ is a terrible mechanic (why would anyone possibly want to replay this game?). Devoid of life and substance. Ship flying is pointless.","timestamp_created":1721257300,"timestamp_updated":1721257300,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":786,"votes_funny":18,"weighted_vote_score":"0.876292407512664795","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":11,"count":3},{"reaction_type":17,"count":2},{"reaction_type":19,"count":2},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":16,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"190270600","author":{"steamid":"76561198037480755","personaname":"Quzzyrzyz","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198037480755/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":30,"playtime_forever":8380,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":8053,"last_played":1771797035,"avatar":"f43e7324d3e6c30c8fa9b869a5fd9bf367fba2cf"},"language":"english","review":"Bethesda should have been cranking out new POI's in updates for the last two years. Expectations have changed since skyrim came out 50 years ago and no one at Bethesda got the memo.  This is an empty game/abandonware. It hasn't materially changed in two years.  I don't blame Bethesda really, you people buying Skyrim 5 times taught them to be this way. \n\nAnother piece of advice from someone who works around M&A, as soon as your favorite software developer is acquired by a big company, like Zenimax, it's gone.  Bethesda isn't going to be anything more than what it is now, it is past its peak.  This isn't an opinion, Zenimax bought it as an investment instrument and expects it to pay out at better performance than what they paid for it, which would have been some multiplicative value of its revenue or EBITDA. They do this by \"streamlining\" , aka cost cutting, aka not taking risks for developing things that they know people are already paying for.  I'm not saying there aren't logical fallacies in that line of thinking - I'm just saying that is what happens. Todd isn't driving the ship anymore, and he wasn't the design visionary he worked hard to portray himself to be. Everything was about the sale to Zenimax and executives often receive great ongoing deals to stay on as the face after a merger to convince the idiots that they are still getting a great candid product.","timestamp_created":1742053652,"timestamp_updated":1742053652,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":667,"votes_funny":20,"weighted_vote_score":"0.875659465789794922","comment_count":25,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":28},{"reaction_type":5,"count":7},{"reaction_type":13,"count":4},{"reaction_type":9,"count":3},{"reaction_type":4,"count":3},{"reaction_type":15,"count":2},{"reaction_type":16,"count":2},{"reaction_type":19,"count":2},{"reaction_type":1,"count":2},{"reaction_type":6,"count":2},{"reaction_type":11,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"173965129","author":{"steamid":"76561198086512574","personaname":"Kfrost","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198086512574/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":9,"playtime_forever":11187,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":10025,"last_played":1747595054,"avatar":"2e025df9960d991ed3f50d7ffec371783b9cafa0"},"language":"english","review":"Edit: I'm updating because my play time has gone much longer. That is only because of a plethora of mods that eliminate or allow me to ignore my issues with the game. Some ppl were whining in the comments about my playtime originally. I wanted to play as much as I could to give a rounded review, that is why lol like no duh. Mods make this game an easy 7/10 while vanilla is a 4/10 at the most generous.\n\nI wanted to wait to see what the game would look like closer to a year and I got to say there is no fixing this game. Fundamentally something is wrong with this game and I believe it is the exploration. The staple of any good Bethesda game is the exploration of an interesting world. When I heard Todd say over a thousand planets I was worried and rightly so.\n\nThe exploration of this game is shallow. You will see the same caves, structures, factions, \"events\", over and over again. It wasn't interesting the first time you explored this pop up facility and it sure as hell won't be after the dozenth. I really can't believe they relied on procedural generation and barely put anything into what could spawn. Every planet is a barren wasteland, except ships are always landing on it for some reason. You never get that \"all alone out there\" feeling because of how repetitive the encounters are and they are recycled on every single planet.\n\nThe cities are a little more engaging, but it is very short lived. The quest lines are very on brand which means they are fetch quests and messenger boy quests. For it being the future, you have to travel between two places to relay messages A LOT. Choices in quests are illusions. Play a quest one way then do it again on the next play through a different way, same outcome with some slightly different dialogue.\n\nSpeaking of the dialogue. The writing and acting is horrendous. Hearing the same handful of voices delivered the same way since Oblivion is the most immersion breaking thing about this game. I am so tired of these voices. This is not the fault of the VAs they do their jobs the way they are directed, but it's so much deja vu it puts off a better multidimensional feel than the half-baked main quest. That's all I will get into that.\n\nThe game looks, feels, and plays outdated. The character models are uncanny valley material. The animations are stiff and limited, the visuals are just meh. I was really excited for the NASA-punk aesthetic and it never really gets anywhere. The loading screens are embarrassing. The point of a ship is to fight in very boring dogfights and get same traveler making some 3rd grade space joke.\n\nOverall this game is a huge step in the wrong direction. Where Bethesda had an opportunity to break out of their already outdated design, they decided to plant their feet and double down only this time it's without the one aspect that made all the games worth playing, exploration. The modders are even pretty unmotivated to do much with the game and I don't blame them. Let this thing die. ES6 has a massive challenge ahead and I don't think the devs care or want to make it something better. Emil, bro, retire.","timestamp_created":1725177281,"timestamp_updated":1747002615,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":633,"votes_funny":11,"weighted_vote_score":"0.874774754047393799","comment_count":19,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":18},{"reaction_type":19,"count":8},{"reaction_type":5,"count":6},{"reaction_type":6,"count":5},{"reaction_type":1,"count":4},{"reaction_type":16,"count":3},{"reaction_type":11,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"190756698","author":{"steamid":"76561198141959507","personaname":"ArkyBeans","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/ArkyBeans/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":20,"playtime_forever":18730,"playtime_last_two_weeks":1,"playtime_at_review":18300,"last_played":1775612844,"avatar":"e8dcf175b385d148b3e9dfc96aa3870f8970833e"},"language":"english","review":"I enjoy Starfield. But I can't recommend it.\n\n(Spoiler warning!) \n\nI've sat on this review for a while, trying to figure out exactly how I feel about the game.  \n\nThe idea behind Starfield is great, but the way Bethesda executed it feels... off. The game comes across as soulless and empty, leaving a sense of loneliness—not the good kind, but the kind that makes the world feel hollow.  \n\nThe only moment that genuinely broke through this feeling for me was meeting my alternate-universe self. It was an exciting moment! I thought, *What would my in-game parents and siblings (alt-me has two siblings) think when they see me with my twin?* So, I brought my alt-self to them... and to my disappointment, there was zero reaction. No dialogue, no acknowledgment—nothing.  \n\nThat was the moment my Bethesda fanboy shield cracked. Up until then, I was willing to overlook the game’s flaws, but after that? I started seeing the low effort that I had been blind to before.  \n\nAt first, I didn’t mind the fast travel system. I figured I could live without real, seamless space travel. Then, I played Star Citizen and realized how much I was missing. Starfield’s approach makes the galaxy feel disconnected and artificial.  \n\nMelee combat? It's bad. I know Starfield is a gun-focused game, but they could have done something to make melee more engaging. With all the advanced tech and diverse factions, why aren't there any unique fighting styles? I dedicated my life to the Great Serpent, but he couldn’t teach me one cool kick or punch? Come on.  \n\nThe story is... alright. It’s not bad, but it could have been so much better. I genuinely thought the game was building toward a first contact moment—humanity finally meeting an alien race, our character making history. But no, the Starborn turned out to just be humans. Such a missed opportunity. Starfield could have delivered something unforgettable. And it doesnt have to be about aliens or anything. Like I know they wanted to do their own approach to it ig but you get what im saying. The starborn are cool but imagine if they weren't humans and instead aliens wanting to guide humans to like a next level civilization type of deal. Like how cool would that be. \n\nI’ve put a lot of time into this game—got my character to level 85, jumped the Unity multiple times, saw some of the unique surprises in NG+. Some quests are cool, but most feel too short and too similar. And honestly? None of my choices felt impactful. The only real effect my decisions had was making certain enemy types spawn less often. That’s it.  \n\nThen there’s the DLC, which was... meh. The hand-crafted city area was neat, but the quests? Forgettable. I can’t even remember any of the characters’ names in the DLC. The story didn’t really grab me until the end, and even then, it wasn’t anything special (Boss fight was cool tho). I was expecting to meet the Great Serpent, but that unfortunately never happened. And don’t get me started on the ghost enemies—those things teleport at random and will appear behind you in an instant.\n\nTo top it off, the game forces you to join the city’s religion just to get inside. I was fine with that... until I realized the entire conversion process took five to ten minutes, and suddenly, I was in. It felt rushed and meaningless.  \n\nBethesda also needs to look into whats causing a specific bug that ruins the whole game for myself and thousands of others. Basically you could be playing the game and then when you hit escape to save the game or just hit escape in general and then back out to the game the FPS drops drastically to less than 20. No one knows why and it makes the game unplayable even on a god tier pc. Thousands of players have this bug even with no mods. PLEASE look into fixing it devs.\n\nWith all this in mind, it just leaves me heartbroken for what this game really could have been.\n\n Bethesda, if you ever need fresh creative vision, I’m ready to step in. I’ve got ideas.","timestamp_created":1742510774,"timestamp_updated":1742560009,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":242,"votes_funny":9,"weighted_vote_score":"0.873287737369537354","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":5,"count":4},{"reaction_type":1,"count":3},{"reaction_type":13,"count":2},{"reaction_type":14,"count":2},{"reaction_type":6,"count":2},{"reaction_type":17,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"216669969","author":{"steamid":"76561197983399649","personaname":"Evil_olivE","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197983399649/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":1,"playtime_forever":5504,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":5504,"last_played":1769242287,"avatar":"fef49e7fa7e1997310d705b2a6158ff8dc1cdfeb"},"language":"english","review":"wow, after 91 hours I think I have to write a review to keep my fellow men and women from wasting their lives. please, go outside, do something else. This game, I really tried to like it. I really wanted it to be fun. but I just cant. It's lazy, boring, and flawed. glitching menus, ships customization that does not work. all half baked ideas that only give you the impression of a door to a spaceship fantasy, when its really a hall of mirrors littered with broken glass and bethesda stole your shoes. It's a time suck in the worst fashion, not even fun.  I don't write reviews, I am mainly writing this to myself so that i don't return to lose another hour to this monstrosity. It's the high school relationship you hate, but you keep going back. It's unfun, angry, boring, not even cute or good looking, but hey, your a loser and you got nothing else going on. Is that you? I have been there, It's not worth it. don't let this be you. just don't do it.  Do you code for fun? I don't! it sounds insane! somehow, this game takes all the fun of coding, transfers the tedius interuptions and hatred built into it, and puts it in a game. its lame. its terrible. its frustrating. its using 30 year old code to help ruin a new generation. you will have more fun trying to convince gpt that it has a soul and was always meant to soul bond with you, replacing your afforementioned girlfriend. please, do anything else, step on glass barefoot, fish with your toes, bang your head against a wall with wet paint for texture, its all more fun than \"Starfield\".  should i ever re download, please, direct me to my own words so that i might remember the pain and loss of life i have given to this wretch of big company slop. i only feel sorry for the people that built this. it must be heartbreaking to hear that they made a game this bad. I truly hope they are happy in their westcoast apartments with westcoast rent, patting themselves on the back saying \"we did it, we destroyed another game company, lets get tofu with as much flavor as \"Starfield\". the most fun i have had with this game is writing a hate fueled review. Download only if you hate yourself. its great for shame harvesting. 10/10","timestamp_created":1769244097,"timestamp_updated":1769244097,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":293,"votes_funny":73,"weighted_vote_score":"0.874210953712463379","comment_count":6,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":34,"count":25},{"reaction_type":24,"count":13},{"reaction_type":28,"count":10},{"reaction_type":26,"count":6},{"reaction_type":30,"count":6},{"reaction_type":27,"count":4},{"reaction_type":31,"count":4},{"reaction_type":25,"count":3},{"reaction_type":29,"count":2},{"reaction_type":32,"count":2},{"reaction_type":33,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"189128568","author":{"steamid":"76561198011266839","personaname":"Yeetson","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/BigYeetson/","num_games_owned":429,"num_reviews":30,"playtime_forever":2245,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":1485,"last_played":1741132264,"avatar":"d5ff90ae073ba5e89555debf1f6db98c589e0371"},"language":"english","review":"Paid mods man, this game was basically just a vehicle to let modders do what they wanted to do in space. And you found a way to ruin it. Last BGS game i'll ever buy.","timestamp_created":1740885884,"timestamp_updated":1740885884,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":712,"votes_funny":14,"weighted_vote_score":"0.871783077716827393","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":10},{"reaction_type":19,"count":6},{"reaction_type":13,"count":3},{"reaction_type":1,"count":3},{"reaction_type":9,"count":2},{"reaction_type":6,"count":2},{"reaction_type":7,"count":2},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":5,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"155203438","author":{"steamid":"76561198000264094","personaname":"anonymousgamer","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/anonymousgamer1/","num_games_owned":678,"num_reviews":9,"playtime_forever":8033,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":8033,"last_played":1695510612,"avatar":"3402be515aae4ad64c3ebfbc842267c418abf806"},"language":"english","review":"Starfield is an embarrassingly bad attempt at a game, let alone an RPG. \n\nThe writing is dogwater, and the lore sucks. You're just handed so much crap just because you're the main character, logic be damned. The game [i]also[/i] treats you like an idiot even when your character would logically have a lot of knowledge about the world (i.e. if you have a mercenary backstory). \n\nThe world is not believable. Am I really supposed to believe that the backwater junk town of Akila City is the capital city of a government with enough military might to glass planets? How in the hell is the pipsqueak city of New Atlantis the jewel of humanity? The dissonance between the lore and what we see on screen is astounding.\n\nThe game is rated M for Mature, but plays things so incredibly safe. It's like it's trying to appeal to kids whilst having adult themes. Neon, for example, is a joke when it comes to presenting cliche Cyberpunk themes. It just checks off boxes. Drugs? Check. Corporations that rule over everyone? Check! Doesn't matter how well executed the themes are, or how cringe everything is, as long as they're there.\n\nThe graphics are mediocre. The lighting leaves a lot to be desired. Cities like New Atlantis are barren and devoid of life. The color grading is intense and almost all of the LUTs used result in ludicrously raised black levels. Have an OLED? F*ck you, suffer.\n\nAlmost all game mechanics have no depth, and have the same exact jank we've seen in other Bethesda games for 15 years now. Some skills unlock game mechanics which should have just been available by default, like the stealth meter. \n\nSome game mechanics are entirely null and void because of how poorly thought out they are. As an example, the Contraband system. By the time Contraband is finally worth looting, because you've finally unlocked and invested in the skills and the equipment to dodge security scans, [i]the average weapon drop[/i] is worth nearly as much as Contraband. Just loot dozens of weapons and waste your time fast forwarding time a dozen times over when selling the weapons to refresh the vendors because the vendor system sucks, and completely ignore Contraband.\n\nThe Radiant AI used in Bethesda's previous games is downgraded. In Skyrim, at least a shopkeeper actually did stuff, like occasionally sweep the floor, or sleep. In Starfield, their only existence is being behind the counter, doing literally nothing.\n\nThe exploration is a joke; almost all planets and moons have copy pasted locales. You'll be running through the same facilities dozens of times, reading the same notes, coming across the same props and the same bits of loot arranged the exact same way every time. Do you like running? You'll be doing a lot of it. No flying above the surface, through atmosphere. No ground vehicles. Just running in a straight line for hundreds of meters at a time.\n\nHoly loading screens, Batman. How is an open world space game THIS full of loading screens? Why do I need a loading screen to enter a store? To enter my ship? What kind of ancient world streaming system is in this game? Why does the game feel like it deliberately provokes the player to abuse fast travel?\n\nThe entire basebuilding system exists in a vacuum. Almost nothing you do in basebuilding affects any of the other game mechanics, aside from research and crafting mods, which can easily be done without touching basebuilding at all. The only thing you get from investing in basebuilding is the ability to build more and bigger bases. Woohoo, I guess.\n\nNo control of the layout of doors in the ship builder? Are you serious? This is such a basic feature that's missing, and the lack of it absolutely ruins some ship designs because you're forced to deal with an asinine flow through the ship with no way to fix it. \n\nThe most OP DPS build is one where you cover your ship in autocannons. The most effective combat ship is literally one where you do absolutely nothing except maybe fly in a straight line. Even if you didn't use autocannons, maneuverability as a concept means almost nothing. You won't be struggling to get on target or anything unless you deliberately make a ship's maneuverability go as low as possible, and even then, combat is the only thing where it matters. No races, no atmospheric flight, nothing which requires your ship to really do anything.\n\nEnemy variety sucks. All your ground enemies are just different flavors of human which all act in almost exactly the same way, or copypaste aliens which you're only really fighting because high level alien extinction is a great XP farm. It's the same with ships; there's no real ship classes or ship variety to really make fighting different ships feel different to one another... and it doesn't matter anyways because your OP Autocannon build will delete them from existence in a few seconds, regardless of what they are.\n\nDo better, Bethesda.","timestamp_created":1704346047,"timestamp_updated":1704346902,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":228,"votes_funny":6,"weighted_vote_score":"0.871300458908081055","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":7},{"reaction_type":6,"count":6},{"reaction_type":13,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":14,"count":1},{"reaction_type":16,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"176190627","author":{"steamid":"76561198065616556","personaname":"Comedian","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198065616556/","num_games_owned":370,"num_reviews":1,"playtime_forever":3598,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3598,"last_played":1727818662,"avatar":"36d372d014b46605d2a62559f3bfd5b163696cda"},"language":"english","review":"Starfield isn't a terrible game, just an offensively boring one. Somehow Bethesda managed to make a game much worse in nearly every single aspect than games they made nearly two decades ago. \n\n(It looks pretty good and the gun play is actually decent)\n\n5.5/10","timestamp_created":1727832564,"timestamp_updated":1727832564,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":361,"votes_funny":10,"weighted_vote_score":"0.87018132209777832","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":13,"count":4},{"reaction_type":16,"count":4},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"222878776","author":{"steamid":"76561198042590897","personaname":"Pump Jockey (Works For Tips)","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/therealwulpher/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":6,"playtime_forever":24115,"playtime_last_two_weeks":1071,"playtime_at_review":24115,"last_played":1775741196,"avatar":"a96dc74f5b7b62fa8ec6a20cc27e44ea1f1c01fa"},"language":"english","review":"In a game that kicks each of its NG+ runs with the question, \"What choices will you make this time?\" its unbearable that there are no choices to make.  The only thing you really decide as the player, from run to run, is how much of the content you will do before you hit NG+ because, spoilers: getting to NG+ is the point of the game narratively.  Once you know how to do it, you can skip most of the game to get to it, and there's no reason to not just blitz for the NG+ each run because the rest of the game is inconsequential- other Starborn in the story literally point this out to you in conversation asking why you bother. \r\n\r\nFor example: In one quest you find an ancient Generational ship in orbit around a paradise vacation world.  The Generational ship was launched hundreds of years before from Earth and its crew have no idea humanity had FTL breakthroughs while they were slowly travelling to their destination; By the time they arrive, its already been colonized and turned into a planet-wide spa.   During this quest, you go back and forth between the CEO at the resort, and the desperate descendant-survivors of the generational ship.  The CEO, at various points, asks if you'd do awful things like kill all of the survivors to make the problem go away, sell the survivors into indentured servitude as staff for the resort by presenting them with bad contracts, or if you happen to have a huge amount of money on you, fix up the Generational ship with a new FTL engine on your own dime because the resort's board won't greenlight the funds to do it themselves.  \r\n\r\nAnd instead of fighting these powerful people asking you to commit mass murder, you go back to the ship and offer them the stupid evil responses, and of course you spend the 40,000 credits and do the memory game to fix the ship because its the only option that isn't cartoonishly evil. There was never any choice, just a binary switch for the good/evil playthrough.  All its really asking is, \"Do you have the money to be the good guy?\" and if you don't, you can just leave the planet and come back when you do.  \r\n\r\nAt no point can you kill the CEO or fight the company instead, despite them asking you to do the same to the survivors. At no point can you threaten the CEO into compliance despite you being able to do the same to the Captain.  The game really, really wants you to play this quest out its way.  You can ATTACK the CEO and his people, but they just all take a knee and stand back up, and then talk to you like that never happened.  If you just leave and choose not to participate, nothing happens they just sit there and wait for you to get back. How is that any better than just letting us kill the NPC and risk breaking a quest?   Its quest writing from the mid 2000's, Fable had more depth than this.  \r\n\r\nThis is a singular example, but all of the quests in the game are like this.  Interesting premise with absolutely no follow through and the barest minimum of player input.   The Player Character is not a silent protagonist, but they might as well have been. Even as the untouchable time-god that all Player Characters eventually become you remain the most powerless one in the story.  The whole thesis of the game is \"What choices will you make this time?\" but there are never any choices to make.","timestamp_created":1775745039,"timestamp_updated":1775745039,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":494,"votes_funny":15,"weighted_vote_score":"0.893099188804626465","comment_count":36,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":29,"count":53},{"reaction_type":31,"count":24},{"reaction_type":32,"count":9},{"reaction_type":34,"count":8},{"reaction_type":24,"count":5},{"reaction_type":26,"count":3},{"reaction_type":25,"count":2},{"reaction_type":28,"count":2},{"reaction_type":30,"count":2},{"reaction_type":33,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"145902650","author":{"steamid":"76561198346947216","personaname":"Too Xrayed","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/TooXrayed/","num_games_owned":121,"num_reviews":3,"playtime_forever":2477,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":1446,"last_played":1714427464,"avatar":"dacbefe9a835eb5d87f5118a32deda9d8cfd42ce"},"language":"english","review":"It's not the best thing since sliced bread, but it's a solid bethesda game with tons of content. Just don't go in looking for the next Elite Dangerous or No Man's Sky.","timestamp_created":1694166286,"timestamp_updated":1694166286,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":1395,"votes_funny":50,"weighted_vote_score":"0.867238998413085938","comment_count":70,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":46},{"reaction_type":17,"count":18},{"reaction_type":6,"count":6},{"reaction_type":13,"count":4},{"reaction_type":16,"count":4},{"reaction_type":5,"count":4},{"reaction_type":11,"count":3},{"reaction_type":22,"count":3},{"reaction_type":4,"count":3},{"reaction_type":15,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":2},{"reaction_type":3,"count":2},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"186397143","author":{"steamid":"76561198051816523","personaname":"Killerdude","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/killerdude8/","num_games_owned":253,"num_reviews":15,"playtime_forever":1746,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":1746,"last_played":1703915140,"avatar":"71eecbfd5dcb80ee529517972a5d8daad9970ee4"},"language":"english","review":"It's all of the worst aspects of previous Bethesda entries without any of the things that made those games fun.\n\nThe Story is bland and uninteresting, There is no choice, no consequences, no nothing of that sort. I don't know what else to say, It was so boring i had no interest in engaging with it. The writing is amateurish at best, Character motivations make little sense most of the time. Factions are poorly written and uninteresting, and again, do things that just don't make sense in the scenarios presented and the lack of meaningful choice really brings all that to light. One of the notable ones is when you go to the wannabe night city planet to get an artifact back, You can say you'll kill the guy to get it, but the game goes NOPE and proceeds to play out exactly the same as all the other \"choices\".\n\nThe \"RPG\" mechanics, if you can even call them that anymore, have been stripped down to their most basic possible form, There are no builds to try out, basic mechanics are locked behind perks now. Melee was just ignored by the developers, it has a singular skill, which is just a damage increase, There arent any alternative moves or swings, no strategy, its just swing madly till whatever spongey enemy you're attacking is dead.\n\nThe worlds are VAST empty swathes of nothing, with the same handful of copy pasted dungeons scattered around it, I encountered the EXACT same mining tunnel, 5 TIMES IN A ROW ON 5 DIFFERENT PLANETS and when i say they are EXACTLY the same, I mean EXACTLY the same, the loot might have been randomized in the chests, but everything else was exactly the same, one chest in one spot was an expert lock, it was an expert lock in all 5. All the loot lying around on the ground, was the same, enemy placement was the same. People gave skyrim a hard time for its samey dungeons, but at least they were all unique.\n\nThe world does not react to your presence or your actions at all, The NPC's in towns have no AI, You can shoot an inch next to their heads and it will not even phase them, They won't move, react, or say anything, nobody will. They're better described as background set pieces youre not meant to interact with, which really sucks, one of my favourite things about bethesda games is messing around with the NPC's in towns and you cannot do any of that in Starfield because the NPC's simply lack any kind of AI beyond their walk cycle.\n\nSpace exploration cannot even be called space exploration, You can't fly anywhere, its all done through menus and loading screens. If you were to omit the space flight part of the game entirely, literally nothing would change, which is an extra double bummer as we were sold on the idea we'd actually be able to explore space as well as the spaceflight mechanics being probably the best part of the game. The other thing that irks me is the game calls the map \"The Settled Systems\" in a game where you're playing as an \"explorer\". Why am i exploring already explored space? That makes no sense.\n\nSpace flight and the ship building mechanic are the best part of this game, Its fun and criminally underutilised. Its complex enough to be interesting, but not so complex like some of the simulator games out there, its a good balance, its just completely pointless as you can't actually fly anywhere.\n\nAll in all, its not a good game, you work hard for your money, don't spend it on this, Bethesda doesn't respect you or your time and do not deserve your money. If you want to scratch that itch, go replay skyrim for the 479th time, you'll enjoy it far more than this game.","timestamp_created":1737832602,"timestamp_updated":1737832602,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":538,"votes_funny":3,"weighted_vote_score":"0.910694539546966553","comment_count":1,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":16,"count":9},{"reaction_type":6,"count":9},{"reaction_type":17,"count":7},{"reaction_type":13,"count":4},{"reaction_type":19,"count":3},{"reaction_type":11,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":2},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1},{"reaction_type":12,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"216185898","author":{"steamid":"76561198122062599","personaname":"DEATHHAWK15","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198122062599/","num_games_owned":103,"num_reviews":5,"playtime_forever":5020,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4522,"last_played":1769194598,"avatar":"1d39155fc7e12ba7af71c380ce5b6de2611e9f4d"},"language":"english","review":"I am definitely in the minority with this review but I genuinely enjoy this game. I enjoy the way it makes me feel when I play it. I enjoy the exploration and combat. I enjoy tinkering on the workbenches in my ship and realizing I need more materials to complete a project which brings me on another adventure. I enjoy the subtle music. I enjoy the main story. The list goes on.\nSome things that I would like to see improved:\n-I've ran into one broken quest which didn't effect the main story but still irritated me.\n-I would like space travel and space combat to have some more depth and emotion.\n-I would like to see the story progress.\n\nFULL DISCLOSURE: I have not played the Shattered Space DLC yet and I have not yet tinkered with base building yet. I have also played Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, and Skyrim to completion.\n\nUltimately, I would recommend this game to someone who enjoys space games and core Bethesda principles. I commend the developers for stepping out of their comfort zone and trying something new. I hope to see continued support for this game.","timestamp_created":1768675393,"timestamp_updated":1768675393,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":177,"votes_funny":10,"weighted_vote_score":"0.859919726848602295","comment_count":3,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":28,"count":14},{"reaction_type":31,"count":8},{"reaction_type":35,"count":5},{"reaction_type":29,"count":4},{"reaction_type":24,"count":3},{"reaction_type":34,"count":3},{"reaction_type":25,"count":2},{"reaction_type":26,"count":2},{"reaction_type":27,"count":2},{"reaction_type":32,"count":2},{"reaction_type":33,"count":2},{"reaction_type":30,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"195414796","author":{"steamid":"76561198031720915","personaname":"Fimbarp Bimbarp","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198031720915/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":4,"playtime_forever":5968,"playtime_last_two_weeks":751,"playtime_at_review":5023,"last_played":1776567360,"avatar":"e643c812feece27c17ad274ee113b3c2efb3d202"},"language":"english","review":"It's like going on a space adventure with your Sunday school teachers.  There are definitely better ways to spend your time.","timestamp_created":1747927271,"timestamp_updated":1747927271,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":274,"votes_funny":78,"weighted_vote_score":"0.858836054801940918","comment_count":6,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":3,"count":17},{"reaction_type":16,"count":3},{"reaction_type":13,"count":2},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"145736285","author":{"steamid":"76561198056315687","personaname":"AdamsCzech","persona_status":"in-game","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/AdamsCzech/","num_games_owned":2152,"num_reviews":11,"playtime_forever":9277,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":2539,"last_played":1727906177,"avatar":"0fd0862f2abc0939c608b89e7885264baf32171b"},"language":"english","review":"Starfield has a slow start but when you get into it, its as fun as any other Bethesda RPG. I'm about 40 hours in as I write this and i had 0 crashes and minimum of bugs. Those bugs were mostly funny than annoying, and none of them were game breaking. Loading screens were a bit of a let down but I got used to them too. The thing I have to say is most annoying to me is the surface map.. I get that, you can't have detailed map on every planet, but at least the major Cities could have it. Most of the time I roam around the City for a long time before I find what I look for. I hope City maps get added, if not by Bethesda then by some modders. Overall, great game that will definetly get better in the future, with help of Community or Bethesda itself.","timestamp_created":1693958450,"timestamp_updated":1693958450,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":1083,"votes_funny":33,"weighted_vote_score":"0.856803417205810547","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","hardware":{"manufacturer":"ASUS","model":"System Product Name","dx_video_card":"NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER","dx_vendorid":4318,"dx_deviceid":9989,"num_gpu":1,"system_ram":"65451","os":"Windows 10","cpu_vendor":"AuthenticAMD","cpu_name":"AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 8-Core Processor             ","gaming_device_type":1,"dx_driver_version":"32.0.15.9186","adapter_description":"NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER","driver_version":"32.0.15.9186","driver_date":"2026-1-20","vram_size":16063,"screen_width":null,"screen_height":null},"reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":37},{"reaction_type":17,"count":21},{"reaction_type":6,"count":7},{"reaction_type":18,"count":7},{"reaction_type":22,"count":6},{"reaction_type":14,"count":4},{"reaction_type":3,"count":2},{"reaction_type":4,"count":2},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1},{"reaction_type":5,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"162789028","author":{"steamid":"76561198099059385","personaname":"Schmeeda","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Buyin_Time/","num_games_owned":433,"num_reviews":20,"playtime_forever":3332,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3332,"last_played":1694935919,"avatar":"622b0c2e20c8d0c2a23db5b5e7df490aec7fcac9"},"language":"english","review":"I can't believe with years of critiques and analyses of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games Bethesda still made the exact same narrative, UI, and gameplay mistakes. What a waste.","timestamp_created":1713010513,"timestamp_updated":1713014994,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":249,"votes_funny":6,"weighted_vote_score":"0.856296896934509277","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","hardware":{"manufacturer":"ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.","model":"ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707XI_FA707XI","dx_video_card":"NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU","dx_vendorid":4318,"dx_deviceid":10336,"num_gpu":1,"system_ram":"15587","os":"Windows 11","cpu_vendor":"AuthenticAMD","cpu_name":"AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS w/ Radeon 780M Graphics     ","gaming_device_type":1,"dx_driver_version":"32.0.15.8157","adapter_description":"NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU","driver_version":"32.0.15.8157","driver_date":"2025-10-9","vram_size":7948,"screen_width":null,"screen_height":null},"reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":4},{"reaction_type":5,"count":3},{"reaction_type":16,"count":2},{"reaction_type":19,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"145757254","author":{"steamid":"76561198980623081","personaname":"Pinner","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/MrPinner/","num_games_owned":336,"num_reviews":24,"playtime_forever":6830,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3318,"last_played":1727816307,"avatar":"2d79dd69f062d7ffa9a67cb1840ca19c6a15aef4"},"language":"english","review":"Spreading my seed across galaxies, ensuring the survival of the bloodline of John Starfield, with a little corporate espionage on the side. Godd Howard for sure did it again, 16x the detail this time. NPCs do be staring deeply into your soul though.","timestamp_created":1693973856,"timestamp_updated":1693973856,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":1589,"votes_funny":697,"weighted_vote_score":"0.856130897998809814","comment_count":18,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":28},{"reaction_type":3,"count":7},{"reaction_type":5,"count":7},{"reaction_type":17,"count":6},{"reaction_type":10,"count":5},{"reaction_type":18,"count":4},{"reaction_type":4,"count":3},{"reaction_type":13,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":2},{"reaction_type":14,"count":2},{"reaction_type":1,"count":2},{"reaction_type":6,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":16,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"205414210","author":{"steamid":"76561197995582033","personaname":"DarknessCalling","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/DarknessCalling/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":80,"playtime_forever":19859,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":19859,"deck_playtime_at_review":25,"last_played":1759078887,"avatar":"898d95389500f33b070f520c67816e98cd224308"},"language":"english","review":"I have played this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for over 300 hours. I have completed every achievement legitimately. I can now say, without a doubt, this is one of the lowest effort games I've played. It feels like nobody at bethesda cared about this game. It feels like it's an afterthought. The Shattered Space DLC contained ONE new weapon that wasn't just some lame reskin, and it was a melee weapon. I don't have words to describe the emptiness this game embodies. All I can really say is that without mods, this game is unbearable. With mods, it's mid-tier trash, only good for a few hours, maybe a dozen. I slogged through all of it just so I can say I didn't waste my money. In the end, it wasted my money and my time. \r\n\r\nDo not buy this.","timestamp_created":1759079099,"timestamp_updated":1759079099,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":207,"votes_funny":13,"weighted_vote_score":"0.853989601135253906","comment_count":6,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":7},{"reaction_type":19,"count":4},{"reaction_type":13,"count":2},{"reaction_type":16,"count":2},{"reaction_type":14,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1},{"reaction_type":12,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"146681086","author":{"steamid":"76561197975464456","personaname":"Decoy","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197975464456/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":162,"playtime_forever":7894,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":7086,"last_played":1722909772,"avatar":"c9cfd7f23a61ff59b1f55bc35981136e313da962"},"language":"english","review":"I'm torn.\n\nThis game is right up my alley. I love space. I love sci-fi. I love the traditional Bethesda nonsense. I love the potential of procedural generation. I should absolutely love this game.\n\nAnd I do love a lot of things about it. I love the style. NASA-punk is a perfect description and man it works. The sound design is fantastic. The gun-play is solid. It's not mil-sim level, which I think would have been a vast improvement over the bullet-sponge RPG hybrid shooter we've got now, but it is functional.\n\nI love the realistic planets and moons. I love how realistically barren they are. I love that the game tells me the temperature and atmospheric pressure and gravity and I love that it all makes sense. Small moon with very low gravity and no magnetosphere? No atmosphere for you. No atmosphere, no life. Some might call that excessively dry and slavish adherence to science, but I super dig that. \n\nI love that the game uses real elements as resources, rather than made up nonsense. I like that it combines them in fairly reasonable ways for crafting.\n\nI love crafting, while we're on the subject. I think the ability to personalize a weapon to do exactly the job you want adds a lot to the game.\n\nBut It stumbles in a few perplexing ways.\n\n1. People have complained in the past about a world that levels with you and it seems like Bethesda has taken that feedback to heart. As a result, you will quickly level out of large portions of the game. Enemies will be no challenge and the loot they drop of no interest. I cannot imagine that the fleeting satisfaction of stomping low-level enemies is worth losing significant portions of the game world as viable content, but that seems to be the deal that was made here.\n\n2. It is a bit of a fast-travel simulator. I didn't really have any expectations for how this game would handle space and travel, so it wouldn't be fair to say that I'm disappointed. More that I see it as a missed opportunity. I have no doubt that the current system is the result of technical limitations, but that doesn't make it good. And it isn't good. The complaints you see about the travel system are legit. It's pretty bad and it negatively impacts the entire experience.\n\n3. It's not as realistic as it seems like it wants to be. It's realistic enough to be irritating. You have significant limits on what you can carry, for example. It's not realistic enough to be immersive, though. When you wear a space suit, you never [i]feel[/i] like you're wearing a space suit. You don't get a helmet overlay that fogs up and casts reflections. You can't hear the sound of your own breathing. You move around completely unencumbered. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but that pulls me right out of it.\n\n4. The story and characters are not interesting. The writing is puerile. The characters are one-note and completely lack depth. The world itself is immensely violent, but in the most PG way. Set next to something like the Witcher games or Cyberpunk, it's kind of startling how bad Starfield is in this department.\n\n_________________________________________________________________\n\nAt one point, I am serving as a member of law enforcement. It arises that I must apprehend a person of interest in an investigation. The game has already provided to me a weapon that incapacitates enemies. I equip such a weapon since I am law enforcement and attempt to apprehend this person of interest.\n\nIt turns out that the game didn't account for the idea that someone serving as law enforcement would want to apprehend a suspected criminal. After incapacitating the individual in question and their retinue of bodyguards, I literally could not proceed with the quest until I walked around and put a bullet in each of their brains.\n\nMaybe it just didn't occur to the developers that police arrest people. Maybe the technical implementation of arresting people and hauling them back to your ship was seen as too much work for no real payoff. But that sequence really tipped me from \"Yeah, this is alright\" to \"Jesus what am I even playing\"\n\nThis is not really a recommendation for Starfield. I'm enjoying it enough to keep playing and I suspect mods will address all (or most) of these concerns. But that will be a year or more down the line. As it stands now, I can't really recommend it without some serious caveats.\n\nAlso it runs like absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I'm on a 3090 and regularly get ~45 FPS in cities.\n\nChrist this is a long review. Sorry.","timestamp_created":1695260041,"timestamp_updated":1707663962,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":289,"votes_funny":16,"weighted_vote_score":"0.852776587009429932","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":5,"count":5},{"reaction_type":17,"count":3},{"reaction_type":6,"count":3},{"reaction_type":1,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1},{"reaction_type":12,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"168584724","author":{"steamid":"76561198030504405","personaname":"Karstein","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198030504405/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":9,"playtime_forever":4464,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4464,"last_played":1696358658,"avatar":"5cfb8bcf5cf8bc2f5fded6f886ba2b5ae76bd56d"},"language":"english","review":"There's nothing in the game that's really good. It's mostly just all-around boring and unimpressive.\nYou'll play it with hope that it'll be fun any second now, and by the time you've hit 50 hours you'll realize you haven't enjoyed a single one.","timestamp_created":1719739916,"timestamp_updated":1719739916,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":614,"votes_funny":5,"weighted_vote_score":"0.851170718669891357","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":11},{"reaction_type":19,"count":6},{"reaction_type":6,"count":5},{"reaction_type":16,"count":2},{"reaction_type":1,"count":2},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":12,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"179816800","author":{"steamid":"76561198186458737","personaname":"Dok","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198186458737/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":21,"playtime_forever":174,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":174,"last_played":1694129951,"avatar":"762c6c9f6208a71e4e44640c9de651a7b69eb402"},"language":"english","review":"Bought on launch for steam, realized it was on game pass, immediately refunded and played about 40ish hours on that. \nTechnical issues aside, this is one of the most boring and uninspired games I've had the displeasure of playing. The novelty of it wore off after about 10 hours, and the next 30 were spent in a hard cope thinking \"maybe it'll get interesting\". Finally decided it wasn't worth my time and didn't touch it for just over a year. Went back to see if it'd changed, and it's the exact same as it was then. Bland setting, bland characters, bland writing, gameplay is on par with fo4, which isn't much of a compliment. Bethesda peaked in 2011 and it's only been downhill since. See y'all when ES6 releases in 2050","timestamp_created":1732574667,"timestamp_updated":1732574667,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":603,"votes_funny":43,"weighted_vote_score":"0.85080873966217041","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":true,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":11},{"reaction_type":19,"count":8},{"reaction_type":15,"count":4},{"reaction_type":5,"count":3},{"reaction_type":6,"count":3},{"reaction_type":13,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":16,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"145982789","author":{"steamid":"76561197989132341","personaname":"Wat","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197989132341/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":65,"playtime_forever":3366,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":1977,"last_played":1718077310,"avatar":"2f394bc30835023eb6907cbc3ee87c370d89fb94"},"language":"english","review":"If you are looking for an incredible story or some sort of Space Trucker sim this game isn't it. It's a more advanced Fallout 4 in space where the kinda cool but not super well done ideas from that game actually go somewhere. If you enjoy rooting through random places and carrying too much junk and care more about the side quests than the main plot like basically every other Bethesda game then this is good, great even. It's the most Oblivion esque game quest density wise they have made, there is so much stuff to do in every city and even some of the minor settlements had more than I expected. The Space stuff is fun but it's ultimately part of the game and not the focus and the story like Fallout 3 is serviceable but nothing special. I wouldn't really say the writing is a mixed bag as nothing has made me really roll my eyes or cringe but there has been plenty that didn't do a whole lot with the scenario / concept, It ranges from middling to fairly entertaining. For reference a game like The Outer Worlds made me cringe like crazy and I hated every single character.\n\nI have played roughly 30 hours now and honestly don't feel like I am even close to done with the game and there is multiple of the major factions I haven't done a single quest for. The RPG elements are definitely better than Skyrim / Fallout 4 (My background as a big game hunter has surprisingly mattered quite a few times) and they finally refreshed their lock picking mini game after 15 years. The combat is refined to be an actual passable shooter now, it's not Doom Eternal or anything but you can be pretty fluid. I will also praise the perk trees. Almost everything in them is interesting and I have a hard time deciding what I want to spec into, and they made the smart move of adding challenges to get the next level so there is no more getting 100 Gun Skill by lvl 4 Like in Fallout 3 and doing Mega damage but it's not so bland and unrewarding as something like Skyrim.\n\nI have encountered some bugs most of them were benign minor things like weird physics, NPC's acting strangely, I had my gun fail to swap once so my guy was holding air but it went away after swapping to something else. The only genuinely frustrating one I have had is there is a softlock you can get if something interrupts your conversation. One Time a giant crab murdered the person I was talking to and I couldn't do anything and had to restart, the other time it was when talking to a vendor and a quest NPC interrupted. It doesn't happen every time but its a legitimate and frustrating bug. The performance on my system has been adequate but I won't pretend this game isn't a bit of a hog.\n\nI will say the loading screen complaint I have seen as a talking point is completely asinine. Like beyond ridiculous. You get 1-3 second loading screens when going between planets and some interiors. Specifically between planets you might get two or three quickly back to back if you are being efficient in how you go about landing and taking off then jumping to the next place but everyone ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ its breaking their immersion is just attaching themselves to the current regurgitated whining. You would think they were playing Morrowind on the original xbox or something with the multiple minute loading screens.\n\nI don't want to get too much into the meta commentary here but it feels like most of complaints I read about Starfield are that it's a Bethesda game that is structured and plays like a Bethesda game and they don't like that or were expecting something else. Which is funny because that has basically been a huge amount of the criticism around all their releases since Skyrim really.","timestamp_created":1694266834,"timestamp_updated":1694266834,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":679,"votes_funny":32,"weighted_vote_score":"0.848561704158782959","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":25},{"reaction_type":17,"count":20},{"reaction_type":6,"count":12},{"reaction_type":1,"count":9},{"reaction_type":16,"count":8},{"reaction_type":13,"count":7},{"reaction_type":18,"count":4},{"reaction_type":9,"count":2},{"reaction_type":14,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":11,"count":1},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":12,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"170995085","author":{"steamid":"76561199072063196","personaname":"The Tree That Hugs Back","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199072063196/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":3,"playtime_forever":3810,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3770,"last_played":1771872459,"avatar":"34966e89066b62abe376472f73605b35d8bc1ec1"},"language":"english","review":"I want this game to be good, so badly. It just isn't and I don't think it ever will be. It's one of the worst full-price games I've ever bought and it is criminal they are charging $70 for it.","timestamp_created":1722212440,"timestamp_updated":1722212440,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":815,"votes_funny":14,"weighted_vote_score":"0.848305940628051758","comment_count":14,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":10},{"reaction_type":19,"count":9},{"reaction_type":13,"count":3},{"reaction_type":16,"count":2},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"161510194","author":{"steamid":"76561198002901957","personaname":"Etherghost","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198002901957/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":20,"playtime_forever":39607,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":39185,"last_played":1725422106,"avatar":"f7b6b9b6ec0898d936628aed176cc6861218c9a9"},"language":"english","review":"Like the Starborn themselves, this game is all flash and dazzle but lacks any actual soul.\n\nAfter hundreds of hours it's hard to put my finger on just what it is about Starfield that leaves it lacking.   You can watch the trailer/commercial up above and see for yourself - all the early reviews said \"10/10\"! An \"Absolute Triumph!\"  \"Instant Classic!\"    So why is it \"Mostly Negative\" on Steam?\n\nStarfield starts off pretty slow.   Unlike Fallout 3 or New Vegas or Oblivion or Skyrim, the game didn't grip me out of the gate and fill me with an urge to keep pushing outwards and see what was over the next hill.  For a game supposedly centered around exploration, it's a bad sign that there's almost no incentive to explore.   It wasn't until I reached the planet Mars and discovered the modular spaceship builder system that it really sunk some hooks into me.   \n\nDesigning, refining, improving and iterating on my starship designs was easily my favorite part of the game, but even that was lacking.   Same-same interiors made it so the ship could never fully be \"yours\".  Any decorations you attempted would be cleared out the next time you replaced a gun or tweaked a part.   If the art department decided a certain module was going to have trash strewn around and a crumpled blanket left in the corner, well, you were stuck with it.   In a roleplaying game that stresses the notion of freedom of choice, it's frustrating to not be able to clean up your own ship.\n\nThe story itself isn't bad.   It's filled with the usual sci-fi tropes and doesn't ever dare to stray too far out of the limits of the genre.   The characters that make up Constellation - the sort of explorer's guild which you're pressed into membership of - start off nteresting but fall flat the longer you spend in their company.  What was certainly an attempt to make them feel like real, flawed human beings actually winds up making them outright unlikable.   Sarah Morgan transforms from a driven, visionary leader to a mercurial, temper-ridden walking mood swing.   Sam Coe goes from being a likable cowboy-type to a straight up narcissist who sees nothing wrong with dragging his 12 year old daughter along into space battles against pirate fleets just to spite his own father.   Barrett, clearly meant to be a mashup of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, ends up being too full of himself to leave any room for anyone else.   Andreja, arguably the most compelling of the bunch, is nonetheless a hardliner religious zealot and inflexible in her dogma.   Vasco, the robot, is cool.   We all like Vasco.   As in Fallout 76, Bethesda shows us that they're great at writing robots and terrible at writing humans.\n\n\nThe ancillary NPCs are generic, the quests all feel phoned in.    They spent a fortune on voice talent, hiring a dozen different actors to all record the same 4 lines.   And they'll say them at you every. time. you. walk. past.  It's an endless babble, a galaxy of Asperger's Syndrome, millions of galactic citizens all announcing whatever meaningless thought is in their head at anyone who gets within 3 meters of them.  Sometimes they hand you money too, because they heard about some pirate nest you cleared out in the middle of nowhere, 300 light years away from civilization.\n\nThere's a store named Outland which Sarah suggests you should go inside and \"see if Joe has any new weapons for the armory\", except the guy inside is named Marius and he doesn't sell weapons.  Everything is some variation of a fetch quest.  Go here, kill them, grab that, come back here.  There's no sense of travel or distance covered, because it's all loading screens and chopped up into bite-sized zones.   Where in Skyrim you could ride your horse seamlessly from one side of the  province to the other, Starfield has you staring at a map menu and fast traveling to the next waypoint.\n\nThere are four main side-storylines, one for each of the major factions in space, which serve as detours around the main story and flesh out the universe a little more.   Unfortunately, it feels like each of the factions were written by separate teams working in separate buildings and each of them exist in an apparent vacuum (pardon the pun) with almost no interaction or influence on the others.    Depending on how you play, you can choose to simultaneously become the saviour of the United Colonies and also the pirate scourge responsible for destroying an entire UC Naval fleet - and aside from a handful of throwaway comments these choices do not conflict with one another in any meaningful way.\nThese storylines also put you in the weird position of having your most significant achievement being your first, rookie mission in each faction.  The very first thing you do for the UC, the Freestar Rangers, the Ryujin Corporation and the Crimson Fleet is go and \"save the universe\", supposedly altering the shape of the galaxy in major and significant ways, and then you're passed off to the mission terminals to run the same handful of generic, randomly generated one-shot quests for the rest of your insignificant career.  \n\nThis is the thread that runs through the entire game, where major, world-shattering events are bogged down by procedurally generated wastes of time.  It's clear that the Starfield team wanted the game to feel bigger and longer than it really is, but the fluff they added to fill the space is too repetitive, too bland, too forgettable to satisfy.   This is why the reviewers who played the game for a few early-release hours had 10/10 reviews and the people now are wholly unhappy with the product.  The game is a few tiny diamonds buried in a beach of trash.  Even the Starborn powers, the acquisition of which are supposedly the main purpose of the story and the game, are wholly useless  with just a few exceptions.  They certainly don't make you feel like an all-powerful cosmic being, and a well-modded handgun winds up being far more effective in nearly every situation than all of the magic spells combined.\n\nDo I regret my time spent playing Starfield?   I wouldn't say that I do.  My regret is that the game didn't live up to its promise or its expectations.  Fans of Bethesda games are ever trying to recapture that sense of awe and wonder we felt first stepping off the ship in Morrowind, or waking up in that wagon in Skyrim, or stepping out of the Vault into the D.C. Wasteland.    They want that compelling urge to stay up just a little bit longer and see what's in that next ruin, what's over that next hill, who's in that next town.\n\nStarfield offers none of that and instead delivers a jumbled mishmash of things that feel famliiar but also are all wrong, like a mirror universe version of what made Bethesda great decades ago.  Someday I hope I'll be able to change my thumbs-down to a thumbs-up, because the promise is there.  It just needs to be realized.","timestamp_created":1711463096,"timestamp_updated":1711465036,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":424,"votes_funny":15,"weighted_vote_score":"0.841660499572753906","comment_count":1,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":9},{"reaction_type":5,"count":7},{"reaction_type":6,"count":5},{"reaction_type":9,"count":3},{"reaction_type":16,"count":3},{"reaction_type":19,"count":3},{"reaction_type":1,"count":3},{"reaction_type":11,"count":2},{"reaction_type":13,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"164019226","author":{"steamid":"76561198011300627","personaname":"Skylark","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198011300627/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":2,"playtime_forever":1183,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":1183,"last_played":1694376377,"avatar":"d3f8e0e923dcab88d237595fd685b1c3071bbfea"},"language":"english","review":"Starfield is worse than bad, it's boring. You get the sense Bethesda is desperate for you to believe Starfield is a great game without any concern for it actually being one.  At its best Starfield is aggressively bland, at its worst it's downright embarrassing.  You almost start to get offended.  THIS is what Bethesda thinks I like?\n\nSetting aside the uninspired worldbuilding, bad writing, infantile characters, and boring exploration- you know, nothing important to an open world RPG- Starfield struggles technically.  It performs poorly, looks ugly, and feels awkward while doing so.  The crushingly outdated game engine was past its prime when Skyrim was released, and the intervening TWELVE YEARS have done it no favors.  We've seen dozens of sprawling open world games with gorgeous visuals and then over here we've got Creation Engine 2: Electric Boogaloo with faces so bad it could serve as a PSA for the dangers of Botox.  Watching Creation Engine try to handle a modern game is like watching a ninety-year-old dodder around trying to wait tables.  Let Grandpa rest.\n\nPlaying Starfield gives you the same sinking feeling in your stomach you get when you realize something is about to go very, very wrong and it's too late to do anything about it.  These people are going to make The Elder Scrolls: VI, and yet the only part of making games they seem excited about is the marketing.","timestamp_created":1714600206,"timestamp_updated":1714600260,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":608,"votes_funny":30,"weighted_vote_score":"0.838010668754577637","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":12},{"reaction_type":16,"count":6},{"reaction_type":6,"count":5},{"reaction_type":13,"count":3},{"reaction_type":5,"count":3},{"reaction_type":9,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"177661717","author":{"steamid":"76561198012913278","personaname":"RedBarDragon","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198012913278/","num_games_owned":1038,"num_reviews":27,"playtime_forever":6813,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":6813,"last_played":1729797875,"avatar":"d37a99f8769a2f0e370bc83f260c67efb3573df0"},"language":"english","review":"I spent over 100 hours in this game. You could say it is crazy to play a game you dont enjoy for so many hours. I wanted to love Starfield. I really did. All I got were characters I disliked, story that I couldnt influence, ugly graphics and dull repeating places. I kept hoping for Bethesda to change Starfield like CD Project did with the Phantom Liberty. It never happened and it never will...","timestamp_created":1729798091,"timestamp_updated":1729798091,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":201,"votes_funny":3,"weighted_vote_score":"0.835646390914916992","comment_count":10,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":3},{"reaction_type":17,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"167139135","author":{"steamid":"76561198053585736","personaname":"DarkXlen","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198053585736/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":12,"playtime_forever":30840,"playtime_last_two_weeks":2644,"playtime_at_review":21323,"last_played":1776586290,"avatar":"195171d2e61692f7392374be374d9acd6c650302"},"language":"english","review":"I love Starfield, BUT you are not listening to your community at all. There is a reason I have a 1000hrs on Skyrim, and there is a reason why I haven't played Starfield in 6 months. You know how you could make Starfield the best game out there, I don't know why you aren't doing it. Please make Starfield the game you promised us it would be.","timestamp_created":1718095700,"timestamp_updated":1718095700,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":477,"votes_funny":42,"weighted_vote_score":"0.832424938678741455","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":9},{"reaction_type":16,"count":7},{"reaction_type":19,"count":3},{"reaction_type":6,"count":3},{"reaction_type":11,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"176703465","author":{"steamid":"76561198041495490","personaname":"Laser","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198041495490/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":21,"playtime_forever":80671,"playtime_last_two_weeks":16,"playtime_at_review":69593,"last_played":1775883006,"avatar":"3604ac34b47c87e187d151f22aa17e107253ce34"},"language":"english","review":"You can see my play time so obviously I enjoy the game. I tried it on Game Pass, liked it and bought it. I'm not writing this review to try and convince people who don't like it that they are wrong, i'm just going to say why I enjoy it. It's a review pretty much aimed at people looking for so actual information beyond the flood of 5 word Thumbs Down reviews driven by a really bizarre level of hatred towards what in the end is just a game, flooding the site. I've have friends who really enjoy the game and others who didn't and moved on to other things.\r\n\r\nFor me this is an RPG set the future. It's not a spaceflight sim but has spaceflight and combat elements supported by a cracking ship design system, it's not a space shooter but has a competently done combat system supported by a wide weapon choice and customisation system.  And it has all thr rpg elements i look for - i find the character and skill progression system engaging and meaningful in shaping the possible styles of role-play. \r\n\r\nIt's just a world where i can immerse myself and play a character. It's a world where I meet interesting people - some I love and some I don't. And it's a game with many engaging story lines from the main quest line through to faction and personal stories.\r\n\r\nIt's a world where I can build outposts, build and fill a home and a world where i can just hang out.  It's a world where you take it slow, actually read the dialogue and immerse yourself in the setting. If your game mode is to just end-run the story then there are undoubtedly better games for you.  \r\n\r\nThere are better spaceflight sims, there are better looter shooters, there are better shooters, and there are better story driven games. In fact you can take any game system and mechanic of Starfield and find a game that does that system better. But Starfield takes a whole bunch of games systems, probably implementing them in a 6,7 or 8 out of 10 way but brings it all together in an 8.5/10 package for me.\r\n\r\ndoes it have load screens? Yes of course it does because you can't make a non-instanced galaxy where every succulent plant and sandwich is tracked. Does it have procedurally generated planets? Again - of course it does. Imagine how long it would take to hand-craft a whole planet let alone a galaxy!  Could it do with more handcrafted Points Of Interest? Yes it could but the many cities and settlements it has are well-done and being expanded upon.\r\n\r\nAnd it has great mod support allowing me to customise the game further to my tastes via Nexus or The Creation Club, where there are numerous great and free mods.\r\n\r\nAll in all if you're looking for a good space rpg you should ignore the frankly crazy levels of vitriol directed at this game and try it out for yourself.\r\n\r\nADDENDUM - regarding the Shattered Space dlc. I'm only a few hours in but enjoying it a lot. Again - ignore the guys who say they finished it in two hours. It's an rpg not a race! There's plenty to explore and do other than make a mad dash to the finish line to 'prove' a point. I spent a couple of hours just exploring the opening location.  \r\n","timestamp_created":1728490093,"timestamp_updated":1728490093,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":433,"votes_funny":39,"weighted_vote_score":"0.831398487091064453","comment_count":38,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":39},{"reaction_type":17,"count":16},{"reaction_type":18,"count":10},{"reaction_type":6,"count":9},{"reaction_type":13,"count":7},{"reaction_type":5,"count":5},{"reaction_type":14,"count":4},{"reaction_type":16,"count":4},{"reaction_type":10,"count":3},{"reaction_type":9,"count":3},{"reaction_type":11,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"210202887","author":{"steamid":"76561197999117524","personaname":"Goatwyn the Golden","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197999117524/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":14,"playtime_forever":2965,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":2965,"last_played":1695090288,"avatar":"30e3084c970563c6b843ba2376d98d1e226a2d6a"},"language":"english","review":"I wanted to love this game as much as Fallout and the ES series, but the old engine needs to be put to rest. \nThe gameplay loop for me not intermixing bugs was pretty much - obtain quest, load screen to main town or city, load screen to ship, load screen to fly to atmosphere, load screen to warp to new planet, load screen to step off ship, load screen to enter any building in new town/ city. It felt like I was playing Fallout 3 from 2008. Same dialogue wheel and clunky combat. While some of the skyboxes were very nice the rest of the game felt very dated for a 2023 release. The ship building was my favorite part by far. I didnt care for any of the companions except the robot that could follow you around to support. Again I wanted to love this game and had every intention to enjoy it but it just did not capture the same magic as ES or Fallout. With a newly updated engine the setting could work for a new franchise.","timestamp_created":1764024589,"timestamp_updated":1764024589,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":247,"votes_funny":9,"weighted_vote_score":"0.831322610378265381","comment_count":2,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":16,"count":1},{"reaction_type":5,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"219701018","author":{"steamid":"76561198040939137","personaname":"anewman","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198040939137/","num_games_owned":256,"num_reviews":9,"playtime_forever":6335,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":6335,"deck_playtime_at_review":8,"last_played":1732445699,"avatar":"5076cb4b31180b9fb9b6520693e7906f4c89b8ba"},"language":"english","review":"I don't care what they say. I love playing Starfield. Sometimes I just want to get in a spacecraft and walk around a planet after a bad day at work.","timestamp_created":1772536136,"timestamp_updated":1772536136,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":530,"votes_funny":60,"weighted_vote_score":"0.829407989978790283","comment_count":26,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":29,"count":54},{"reaction_type":28,"count":19},{"reaction_type":31,"count":7},{"reaction_type":24,"count":5},{"reaction_type":25,"count":3},{"reaction_type":26,"count":3},{"reaction_type":35,"count":3},{"reaction_type":27,"count":2},{"reaction_type":32,"count":2},{"reaction_type":34,"count":2},{"reaction_type":30,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"155101548","author":{"steamid":"76561198049681333","personaname":"DethJingle","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198049681333/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":17,"playtime_forever":677,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":677,"last_played":1694223240,"avatar":"80077c5519e021ce64b4a3edb9bd37c67f92aa28"},"language":"english","review":"Starfield, the game that redefined innovation by making space exploration feel like watching paint dry in zero gravity.","timestamp_created":1704238910,"timestamp_updated":1704238910,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":663,"votes_funny":86,"weighted_vote_score":"0.826894700527191162","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":3,"count":9},{"reaction_type":17,"count":5},{"reaction_type":16,"count":3},{"reaction_type":22,"count":2},{"reaction_type":4,"count":2},{"reaction_type":20,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"157119095","author":{"steamid":"76561198037648018","personaname":"MDK1311","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198037648018/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":26,"playtime_forever":1314,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":1314,"last_played":1694085991,"avatar":"fa135e5b30270c85222e1d2e0d7ca96edc83d12c"},"language":"english","review":"No absolutely no... I tried it for about 21 hours.. I can say I gave it a fair chance to convince me the pre-purchase I made was worth it.. But no..It is just so boring and feels like a chore to play. The average NPC in Skyrim has more personality than the main NPC's here (Also, the best NPC is the annoying fan from Oblivion... Kinda says a lot about it...). Another NO is for the most innovative gameplay steam award they got. Players who voted for this game as most innovative gameplay, you people deserve to play mediocre or lesser games for the rest of your lives. You players are the reason companies like Bethesda are able to shoot us an arrow in the knee... May your futures be littered with starfield clones and boring chores... I hate you all (and myself for having listened to my own urges of pre-purchasing games..).","timestamp_created":1706535056,"timestamp_updated":1709336992,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":400,"votes_funny":48,"weighted_vote_score":"0.824669539928436279","comment_count":8,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":8},{"reaction_type":15,"count":5},{"reaction_type":13,"count":3},{"reaction_type":3,"count":2},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":16,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1},{"reaction_type":8,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"155083958","author":{"steamid":"76561197971929533","personaname":"Cakey","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/cakeycakes/","num_games_owned":1787,"num_reviews":41,"playtime_forever":3022,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":359,"last_played":1732748158,"avatar":"02deb15f02e0804f445c9bc8538e7227f60b984c"},"language":"english","review":"How did this win ANYTHING?????\n\nIt's a bethesda game that plays just like all their other bethesda games. Even less as it's just menu traveling instead of being able to travel \"on foot\" like their other games, but without any optimization. How is that innovative??","timestamp_created":1704224052,"timestamp_updated":1704224052,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":219,"votes_funny":11,"weighted_vote_score":"0.823084414005279541","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":5},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"181748479","author":{"steamid":"76561198046340331","personaname":"﴾ ﻪ ࢪ ﮟ ﻵ ﴿ 空虚","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Yuuudaaa/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":61,"playtime_forever":1046,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":1046,"last_played":1733263334,"avatar":"9138bea75fad1525c64b625d7deca21db4b8ae3b"},"language":"english","review":"Completely underwhelmimg experience, started slow and steady, i actually was kiind of liking it, what a coincidence once u reach 3 or 4 hours, all that newness dissipates (also the opportunity to refund this...) and becomes the inert experience i heared about and was wrongly convinced that it was due to it being a space themed game, yes i just didn't understand at all why all the dislike, now i do at least for the most part. Is Fallout but some things went... just wrong, specially story related stuff, looting is a little bit worse, and exploration feeling is just not that good.\n\nI waited quite some time to give this a try, convinced that since it was made by Bethesda, had to be good or at least enjoyable, so far i have been beyond dissappointed, it's not complete trash don't get me wrong, but it just gives me the feeling that is more a beta than a game released not that long ago and has apparently monthly patches. I will try to keep playing it... at some point, i really want to like it or at least not let it be a waste of money, paid 70 bucks, and so far feels like an actual rip off.\n\nIMO this game is worth 25 bucks TOPS with all the content released to date, and for what i heared some ppl would rather not even have the dlc, will try to see how that goes eventually.\n\n[i] Makes me nervous, to think that Elder Scrolls VI could appear as something as lame as this is heartbreaking[/i].\n\nWhen you reach the first city u think to yourself, wow, there must be a ton of stuff going on here, WRONG it's the begining of a completely downhill, inane, and uninteresting experience, it has the feel of an MMO: go talk to X NPC, grab some item/s, go give it to this other NPC, reward. Im not exagerating, i think i did at least 10 missions that where exactly like that. If the rest of the game is like this (yes, there are more incredibly big problems), it honestly should be retired from any shop, as it feels like a just kind of attractive game but with completely insignificant content.\n\nThe moment i tried the building stuff i thought to myself, i guess the Storage tab is different from the Decorations one, but likely it will allow me to, as the ship does, allow me to store stuff with a mass limit NOPE HAHA STORE-WHAT? u place every kind of storage that u would say, ok looks like decoration like the wall closet, it is there, it exists occupies space, but they are solid inside and completely useless. Can u store stuff? yes on a few other containers in the same tab that clearly states that it's content is to STORE STUFF. Furthermore, when you place pretty much anything, u are not told at any time, that you can dismantle everything, getting  all used materials back, which seems like a big oversight, but i kind of rolled with it, the fact that it cannot be aligned to some kind of grid generating from the Outpost or inside a house felt a bit sad, but well u can still place things, right? most of them anyway since apparently a few things always had a problem with colliding with smth that was not there.\n\nHUD... what to say besides pointing out that you can change every control in game but not those from the thing that u use like half of the time, meaning that you open the map with M but when the damn visor is on, you have to use G... what is this Elden Ring? XD\nThe enemy Health Bars half the time are literally between their heads and you, resulting in a very trashy gameplay where you many times don't see their heads, specially with some aliens, huge problem with that that i ended up looking for a mod to get rid of those bars.\nThe compass? i really hope they fired whomever supervised that sh1t, u have a kind of double compass that u cannot properly see that is a compass, since half the time it changes on its own, why not use the external part of the damn circunference? Completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ design, made 2 designs and didn't decide, so just why not place both and one of them stops being a compass? it is a clear sign of incompetence right there.\nThe rest of the design just absolute cheap feeling from it, i didn't like that one from Fallout 4 at all, but after this mess i actually missed it.\n\nCombat system... the space will be a fast thing, it suuucks! how it works in general it's like halfway made, it felt like a joke, could be the first ships but, it just sucks.\n0 Gravity Combat, it was kind of fun except for it feeling a liitle clunky sometimes, loved the blowback, and no its not a good idea to try to bat or push with your gun a grenade back to its original user XD\nLand combat, Your average fallout experience but if you touch something a bit elevated from the terrain, will probably make u unable to jump so it was just fallout but worse. The precision percentage is completely fake, crosshairs are irrelevant since they are just appareance, the aiming in general for this to be esentially shooter was very poorly finished.\nIn general it felt half cooked and unbalanced, u don't do much damage in general, or you oneshot beings or foes with extreme ease, and sometimes you end up just killing things that try tu run away but barely moves thing that doesnt sit right with me for some reason.\n\nSound. I literally had headaches due to the sharp sound from the visor and a few other things, way too loud sharp sounds in many but not all interactions. Lot of ppl complained about gun sounds, it was average like the rest of the game so far but enjoyable. Music, completely ear ripping songs from when you level up to some other situations, i had to lower it 3 times because i didn't hear some conversations sometimes. So in general enjoyable but half of it is completely loud, sometimes even literally hurtful.\n\nGraphics. Not bad except for the fact that it just doesn't process as good as it should, some very small structures in open space that were almost literally empty lowered me around 25 fps, not that there was any danger in the ones i visited, but it gets extremely annoying. When you speack to NPCs, half the time the lip and general expression animations suddenly stops, breaking the immersion completely for me. The feel of getting in and out of a planet or a station felt like it was scooped from an indie game the moment u already saw it a few times, and the first was not very impressive either, this happened with pretty much all transitions, funny that the fade to black when using doors to change areas felt more natural hahah\nI messed around with the graphic config, barely made any actual impact but some, soo just another thing to add to my dissappointment pool :'C\n\nControls in general were good, except from the ships, and the poorly explained ship creation? im not even sure of how that goes for now.\n\nInventory? Simply average, usable but no option to mark to sell or trash which for me felt necessary. The fact that to access your ship's vault u have to go to the cockpit is just ridiculous, why cant you access literally from the piece itself where you store your goodies, without having to go in and out the ship? oh wait, because if close enough you can magically teleport it to your storage from your inventory...\n\nHalf the traits and skills felt pretty much useless, i got the parents and the luxury house... u cannot store anything in either one, complete waste of time, the parents at least had some endearing moments. As for the skills some are almot completely irrelevant, hell even the gun skill is mostly useless except a little bit for that last part that increases range 50% and the weight could be a bit better, for both the character and ship, specially if you got the trait to play without companions (isolation i think), no damage increase, almost no utility, even the loot/bartering related have not that much impact.","timestamp_created":1733266356,"timestamp_updated":1758072173,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":281,"votes_funny":6,"weighted_vote_score":"0.82284623384475708","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":6,"count":5},{"reaction_type":17,"count":3},{"reaction_type":13,"count":2},{"reaction_type":16,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"198307831","author":{"steamid":"76561198051311493","personaname":"Clonki","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Clonki/","num_games_owned":467,"num_reviews":2,"playtime_forever":1707,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":1707,"last_played":1726867427,"avatar":"90281bcb08a9d28ef4c343c5f6b8b75f093e4a9b"},"language":"english","review":"Only bought it because Todd Howard is a genius at telling lies.\nThis game is just bad, the planets are empty, there's nothing really engaging as the story is trying to be a Skyrim in space and it is just empty.","timestamp_created":1751061722,"timestamp_updated":1751061722,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":420,"votes_funny":14,"weighted_vote_score":"0.822048008441925049","comment_count":12,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":7},{"reaction_type":19,"count":5},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"195832868","author":{"steamid":"76561197988957349","personaname":"Atarax enjoyer","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/kellerondos/","num_games_owned":231,"num_reviews":17,"playtime_forever":8167,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":8167,"last_played":1722542977,"avatar":"1a6a946be04b03a5f9373ec1e9f6cf8e07d6c7cd"},"language":"english","review":"[h1]Not Recommended[/h1]\n\nGuys, fellow gamers — I gave this game [b]136 hours[/b] of my life.\nI still haven’t finished it, and honestly, I’m not sure I ever will.\n\nIt’s not exactly a bad game. It has those classic Bethesda faction questlines, a mid-tier main story, and the usual pile of bugs. I’m used to bugs in the TES series — I grew up on them. But if there’s one thing [b]Starfield[/b] really excels at, it’s [i]scaling the chaos up[/i].\n\nBroken saves? [i]Sure.[/i]\nA pirate base that unmoors from its planet and follows you across the galaxy? [i]Of course.[/i]\nA grind system more boring than learning Shouts in Skyrim? [i]Why not.[/i]\nAtlantic City assets teleporting behind your ship? [i]Bethesda says hi.[/i]\n\nAnd none of this is fixable through console commands or mods. You just have to [b]start over[/b].\n\nThe real issue? The game [i]isn’t fun at its core.[/i] It’s packed with odd design choices:\n[list]\n[*] No city maps at launch  \n[*] Planet exploration is [i]painfully boring[/i] — like No Man’s Sky resource grinding, minus the joy  \n[*] A lifeless crafting system with [b]hundreds of pointless materials[/b]  \n[*] An overall vibe that sometimes feels more suffocating than [i]Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2[/i] — and I actually liked that game  \n[/list]\n\nEven if you remove all the bugs, Starfield still struggles as a game. And in its [i]current[/i] state? Plenty of those bugs are [b]still there[/b] (hello, flickering lights with DLSS...).\n\n[h2]Final thoughts[/h2]\nStarfield is a massive disappointment.\n\nThe saddest part? TES fans like me stick around because of the nostalgia — the side quests, the exploration, our ridiculously high tolerance for bugs. But the game gives nothing in return except frustration.\n\n[spoiler]I wanted to love this game. I really did. But it just doesn’t love you back.[/spoiler]","timestamp_created":1748445960,"timestamp_updated":1748446118,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":100,"votes_funny":6,"weighted_vote_score":"0.82139122486114502","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"198639097","author":{"steamid":"76561198053371630","personaname":"Hart","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198053371630/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":25,"playtime_forever":5048,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4571,"last_played":1770168411,"avatar":"8092039ce330c6c21daf4db45702012014cd5e13"},"language":"english","review":"Things that should have been in the base game (or updates) are behind paywall MTX called Creations.","timestamp_created":1751372516,"timestamp_updated":1751372516,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":305,"votes_funny":5,"weighted_vote_score":"0.818865835666656494","comment_count":10,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":2},{"reaction_type":6,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"178650863","author":{"steamid":"76561197970489401","personaname":"ricwhite","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970489401/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":6,"playtime_forever":14680,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":14680,"last_played":1731110079,"avatar":"0f8668ee7b95bf83b340512ffae2d2b5a6421836"},"language":"english","review":"I completed the main Starfield game and the Shattered Space expansion. I played around 240 hours and reached level 82.  I would give the game a 3/5 rating.  The game was mostly glitch-free.  The graphics and audio were fine.  The characterization was okay.  The scripted main missions were adequate and somewhat interesting.  The scripted side missions that I played were, overall, okay.  I left a lot of side missions uncompleted. \r\n\r\nThe problem for me was the procedural generation scenarios on planets.  The developers scripted a few dozen scenarios and when you land on the planet, the system would place some of those scenarios on the planet to find.   After doing the same scenarios 10-15 times, it became very stale and it killed my desire to explore planets.  When I say the \"same\" scenarios, I mean EXACTLY the same including where all objects and hostiles were placed.  So, after a few times, you knew exactly where the next hostile would be.  So, it would just be going through the motions.  \r\n\r\n Although I built a few outposts, I never really found motivation to do so.  I collected a lot of credits to spend so I never felt the need to sell resources.  The star ship building was difficult and I abandoned that.  The ships I obtained by theft or purchase were adequate for completing my missions.\r\n\r\nOverall, I mildly enjoyed the game.  I believe it was worth the 240+ hours I played.  Toward the end, I did feel some desire to play something else.  I didn't have high expectations, so I wasn't that disappointed.","timestamp_created":1731111688,"timestamp_updated":1731111688,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":217,"votes_funny":20,"weighted_vote_score":"0.867734968662261963","comment_count":8,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":7},{"reaction_type":14,"count":3},{"reaction_type":2,"count":2},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":17,"count":1},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"176128289","author":{"steamid":"76561198054197156","personaname":"Keaton","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/KeeganCross/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":5,"playtime_forever":21015,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":21015,"last_played":1708310378,"avatar":"3b4e886352a1f4b59f21dfd2605dad29be0a8935"},"language":"english","review":"I explored everything Starfield had to offer, after well over 1000 hours apiece in Skyrim and Fallout 4 across the years, and this game is NOT worth your money. \n\nIt completely disrespects your time, forcing you to sit through unnecessary animations and unskippable in-game cutscenes. \n\nThe gunplay is a significant step down from even archery in Skyrim, let alone the guns in Fallout 4. Enemies quickly become bullet sponges, the weapons are both entirely unbalanced and disappointing to use, and your own abilities are lackluster at best. Movement options are extremely limited, boiling down to repeatedly pressing the jump key to jump and boost. (Don't even consider melee weapons, they feel like they never made it out of alpha-testing.)\n\nQuesting is a joke, with the vast majority consisting of \"go here and talk to this person\", or Fallout 76's version of \"quests\" - listening to voice logs, not playing the game at all. \n\nSpace and zero-gravity environments are likely the biggest disappointments of all.\nShip \"space\" combat should be scrapped entirely and reworked. It currently consists of ships moving slowly around a 3-D environment, complete with air-friction to slow you to a stop whenever your engines aren't providing active propulsion. In fact, ships behave like submarines in an underwater environment, rather than anything resembling space. The ship weapons are likely even more unbalanced than the player's weapons are, with encounters ranging from brain-dead to impossible depending on how the game decides to spawn enemy ships, regardless of the player's current quality of ship. \n\nZero-gravity environments are ridiculous, with every character locked in the exact same orientation as they would be were gravity to be in effect. The only difference between environments with or without gravity is whether the player can freely move upwards and downwards, which simultaneously removes the player's ability to crouch, slide, or boost in the same manner. \n\nOh, and the companions still stand in the doorway blocking you. Except they removed the feature that existed in Skyrim where they'd take a step back when you ran into them, so now it's even worse! \n\nBethesda promised a space RPG. \nWhat we got was a lobotomized Fallout 4/Skyrim mutant with underwater ships and early-access combat.\n\nWell done, Bethesda. You couldn't have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up harder if you tried.","timestamp_created":1727750918,"timestamp_updated":1727750918,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":470,"votes_funny":16,"weighted_vote_score":"0.81786501407623291","comment_count":14,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":14},{"reaction_type":19,"count":12},{"reaction_type":16,"count":3},{"reaction_type":11,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":2},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":4,"count":1},{"reaction_type":5,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"211037887","author":{"steamid":"76561197993553287","personaname":"ECkce","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/ECkce/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":30,"playtime_forever":4046,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4046,"last_played":1758920349,"avatar":"4478f6c58cdc95f58e312938c1c919c73e264bf0"},"language":"english","review":"This game was hugely disappointing. Maybe I am just spoiled and nostalgic for Skyrim, and I just wanted Skyrim - in space.\n\nInstead I just fast travel around doing chores and errands for boring npcs, with seemingly little consequence or effect on the universe at large. Though I guess my choices led me to romance that annoying blond hair NPC kinda by accident, and now she loves me? I left her on a planet somewhere. And skill points feel meaningless, character progression and gear is meh at best - inventory management is annoying. I mean, even the menu is so designed for a controller that trying to 'click' on stuff is so frustrating, why is that?? This game was a miss, very sad.","timestamp_created":1764206677,"timestamp_updated":1764206677,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":115,"votes_funny":7,"weighted_vote_score":"0.815793097019195557","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":20,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":5,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"186899055","author":{"steamid":"76561198068146203","personaname":"Pherna","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198068146203/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":5,"playtime_forever":3886,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3886,"last_played":1699691769,"avatar":"286e3885a518d45879fd11edb60f6a0647dc24b1"},"language":"english","review":"Sometimes I genuinely think that Bethesda is so upset that the community unanimously agrees that New Vegas - a game they only published and didn't make - is the best game they've ever released by a huge margin that they purposefully make games that are NOT New Vegas in an attempt to prove they can make good games without copying that formula, and they suffer for it. \n\nNew Vegas perfected the Bethesda style, and yet 15 years later they've still learned practically nothing from it. It's bizarre at this point. \n\nThis game feels so empty. Corporatized. There's nothing of substance here. No lessons to be learned, no history to dive into, nothing. It's bland. The gameplay is bland, the story is bland, the characters are bland, the universe is bland. There's nothing here worth salvaging.","timestamp_created":1738411129,"timestamp_updated":1738411129,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":304,"votes_funny":12,"weighted_vote_score":"0.813625037670135498","comment_count":11,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":6},{"reaction_type":19,"count":4},{"reaction_type":5,"count":4},{"reaction_type":13,"count":3},{"reaction_type":16,"count":2},{"reaction_type":6,"count":2},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":14,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":3,"count":1},{"reaction_type":21,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"160378453","author":{"steamid":"76561197962662310","personaname":"squee","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197962662310/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":20,"playtime_forever":359,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":359,"last_played":1696957118,"avatar":"9d09c94e76730fc43670b01861ca92872bfac025"},"language":"english","review":"Boring and not worth your money. Daggerfall/morrowind/oblivion/skyrim in the space. Same - 25 years later. No, thank you. There is many better games to play. Bethesda you have a last chance to LEARN your LESSON! We dont trust your bs about \"Best world ever\" \"1000+ endings\" and such crap anymore. Change your management - they lost passion. They are boring and obvious. \n\nLook at other companies like CDPR and Larian and learn quickly or disappear. I am done with you and so will others if you dont change. \n\nFor All the players. This game is boring, combat is boring everything but space flying is boring. Dont spend your money on this.","timestamp_created":1710236992,"timestamp_updated":1710236992,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":596,"votes_funny":12,"weighted_vote_score":"0.812881350517272949","comment_count":24,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":9},{"reaction_type":4,"count":9},{"reaction_type":17,"count":8},{"reaction_type":6,"count":5},{"reaction_type":22,"count":3},{"reaction_type":5,"count":3},{"reaction_type":11,"count":1},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":16,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"211720784","author":{"steamid":"76561197994144537","personaname":"Gideon","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/GingerKid407/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":19,"playtime_forever":3215,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3215,"last_played":1724243905,"avatar":"ee33a41d468c2397ec3f1a34fb7cbec4df7e71aa"},"language":"english","review":"Everything about this game falls short in some way.  Constant unskippable cutscenes of docking, undocking, landing, taking off, literally everything is fast travel, and I encountered the exact same dungeon at least three times.  There's practically no laser weapons, they never use the zero-G mechanic, the leveling system is a haphazard merger of Skyrim and Fallout in the worst possible way.  Leveling up and getting a perk isn't enough, you have to grind the skill until you can be allowed to purchase it, which is *very* disjointed in terms of gameplay.  The writing is not great, you can't even properly steal ships while working for the pirate faction, I don't care about any of the characters, even mining is unsatisfactory because there's nothing good to make unless you grind crafting and also level up so you can buy the perk, and ores are practically worthless.\r\n\r\nI'm quoting \"Starfield is a Fake Game\" here: Starfield understands that players like space exploration, but it doesn't understand why.  It understands that Neil Armstrong had fun on the moon, but it doesn't understand why.  And Todd Howard and co have repeatedly proven that they understand players are disappointed... but they don't understand why.","timestamp_created":1764444378,"timestamp_updated":1764444378,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":78,"votes_funny":0,"weighted_vote_score":"0.81029123067855835","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":1,"count":1},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1},{"reaction_type":5,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"171814468","author":{"steamid":"76561198003751765","personaname":"ᗰike","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Rantoc/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":56,"playtime_forever":16237,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":9920,"last_played":1739105907,"avatar":"6a991cedbf9caf7e0dfd32c5f17f13820c818bf8"},"language":"english","review":"Just started replaying it, after waiting a while to get some more QoL features into the game compared to its release state. It's in a lot of better state, it's to the point where i can recommend it.\n\nIMO Only one mod that's basically mandatory now - StarUI (Good Sort / Filtering of the inventory... that can get quite darn large)\n\nFor a bethesda softworks title its unusually stable, over 150+ hrs and zero crashes","timestamp_created":1723282212,"timestamp_updated":1723282212,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":439,"votes_funny":53,"weighted_vote_score":"0.806652069091796875","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":34},{"reaction_type":17,"count":4},{"reaction_type":14,"count":2},{"reaction_type":11,"count":1},{"reaction_type":16,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":18,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"173153746","author":{"steamid":"76561198255460439","personaname":"Aqua715","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198255460439/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":10,"playtime_forever":3615,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3615,"last_played":1694309888,"avatar":"5f97a6718d83c8f751f0f1c8507be38de2b895ac"},"language":"english","review":"I played this game for about 60 hours and it was enjoyable. However, it lacks depth. The reason I put 60 hours into the game is because the game is hugely expansive, though it's all very shallow. I continually explored different (empty) planets looking for some part that felt truly alive and never found it. Can't recommend it for the price they're charging. For maybe $20 it would be worth it to me. I feel cheated that I spent so much time looking for content that just wasn't there. \n\nTLDR: Huge game, very empty. Everything feels lifeless.","timestamp_created":1724460272,"timestamp_updated":1724460272,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":150,"votes_funny":2,"weighted_vote_score":"0.806315124034881592","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":2},{"reaction_type":19,"count":2},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"192112105","author":{"steamid":"76561198413366286","personaname":"BigHeadAss","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198413366286/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":125,"playtime_forever":3998,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3738,"last_played":1744162501,"avatar":"678f23c54e79a8256eee189d126011ff8127a831"},"language":"english","review":"It's really not great, and it's definitely not worth 70 bucks. \n\nIn a single sentence: Starfield feels like Mass Effect if it was made by Ned Flanders. \n\nIn another: Starfield is an exercise in complete and utter mediocrity. \n\nBeyond the different quest lines, there is very little of interest. The time spent \"creating\" this massive universe should have been re-routed and put more into refining the combat, quests, and creating more interesting locations. Most planets have some semblance of procedural generation, yet they are generally barren, uninteresting, and not worth the time it takes to scroll through 4 menus to travel to, just to have to go into another menu to actually land on the planet. Points of interest repeat constantly and are generally copied and pasted. For instance, you will find a random named cavern on one planet, and find the exact same cavern on a completely different planet. Deviating from the quest lines WILL create a very boring experience, which is wild when you think about exploring other open-world RPGs made by Bethesda. \n\nEven then, some of the side quests are entirely there for padding. Do you like running around in an undercity where homeless people threaten to kill you with hammers while you try to flip 3 switches to figure out where the power drain is coming from? I don't.\n\nMany quests also have some disgustingly long \"follow 'X'\" moments, and that's a major gaming sin with how bad Bethesda's NPC's pathfinding usually is. There have been many times where I had to reset to a previous save because an NPC got stuck on a railing and couldn't figure out how to....Step slightly to the left. \n\nThere is a chunk of factions you can join as well, which all initially have pretty cool story lines, followed by extremely repetitive \"Go kill those pirates\" or \"go rescue those captives\" objectives. Sometimes they drop another interesting quest over time, but everything in between those quests is just really annoying padding. \n\nStarfield is incredibly too large and lacks substance. Take a fishbowl, for instance with the players as the fish. There is no water. There are a few pretty rocks (the quests). There is one dried out log propped against the wall (I'm not sure what this is, but fish tanks usually have one log propped against the wall.)\n\nAnyway:\n\nThe whole ship system is clumsy and generally unsatisfying. Personally, I have stuck to buying or stealing better ships, because the ship builder is so poorly implemented that a recently lobotomized man would have a better time trying to build a functional helicopter. Many upgrades are also locked by arbitrary \"challenges\". You invest a skill point, only to have to turn around and train that skill anyway to be able to invest more skill points into it. Why even have the skill points? Just make it to where you can train specific skills and they auto-upgrade without the use of skill points. This creates a very unsatisfying dilemma because you WILL NOT be able to explore all aspects of character builds on a single playthrough, but I guess this was Bethesda's idea to try to keep players on the grind because the engagement/retention for this game is abysmal when compared to other Bethesda titles.\n\nThe base building is just depressing. Again, many things seem to be locked behind arbitrary skill point grinding followed by grinding even more to get to spend more skill points on the same skill. I personally wouldn't know, because the \"outposts\" are entirely optional, and you can buy/find literally any resource you need at vendors or corpses of pirates, religious zealots, and robots. \n\nThis game has major pacing issues, as well. There's a lot of downtime when getting from point A to point B, and there isn't a ton of interesting or creative things happening in between. The most \"random\" event you will generally encounter is being threatened by a pirate, but even that just suddenly stops when you get into this groove of moving between the same 4 planets for 3 hours. \n\nAll in all, this is a \"Buy at your own risk\" type of game. Either wait for a sale, buy from a key reseller, or try to find a moderately entertaining youtuber/streamer to watch and deprive Bethesda of any more money until Elder Scrolls 6 comes out.","timestamp_created":1743921893,"timestamp_updated":1743921893,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":296,"votes_funny":39,"weighted_vote_score":"0.855861842632293701","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":7},{"reaction_type":13,"count":4},{"reaction_type":16,"count":4},{"reaction_type":3,"count":4},{"reaction_type":19,"count":2},{"reaction_type":5,"count":2},{"reaction_type":6,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"218735386","author":{"steamid":"76561197970682835","personaname":"Aly","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/IrreverentRev/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":2,"playtime_forever":97187,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":97187,"last_played":1769993811,"avatar":"05a1f25c68f97bf43ca0864c10009466ef4a4983"},"language":"english","review":"TL;DR: If there is ever a written history of how far a gaming company can fall by ignoring its fans, dismissing what made its own games successful, and producing content that offers quantitatively less with more than twice the budget, size of team, and length of development time from their previous titles, Bethesda will have earned its own chapter, and its title will be \"Starfield\".\n\nBethesda's writing has been in decline for years. If you want proof of just how bad it is, watch a playthrough of Starfield. For the first time they had to create their own lore and world, and they failed. Miserably. It is lazy, a waste of the near infinite possibility the advances in technology and the breadth of the setting offered. Certainly this would have been helped by their other IPs, the acquired lore and world building of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, but without it, on their own two feet, they proved crawling is beyond them. The world building is asinine, the characters are shallow, and the lore is inconsistent when its not outright absurd.\n\nAnd, like many, I've swallowed the poor writing and bad engine for many of their games and found enjoyment despite them. I've modded and appreciated the playgrounds their previous titles offered. But those scenarios allowed modding to enhance, whereas now modding has to mask and replace and, above all: fix. Especially so around the utter lack of exploration and environmental storytelling. There are thousands of planets to explore, but they are all the same outside of colors and environmental changes, and the latter are nothing more than an optional piece of information that you can choose to acknowledge, because even the most extreme settings require essentially no accounting for.\n\nIf you take the time to explore you will find yourself in one of the two-dozen dungeons available. And not just repeated layouts, but repeated loot, decorations, damage, enemy dialogue, etc. Not only are the same personal notes and situations presented again and again, but they are without any explanation as to how the supposed unique location also exists, in every detail, hundreds of thousands of times across the galaxy. It is an insulting lack of development and creativity around an element that largely defined previous Bethesda experiences, highlighted as their number is compared to the hundreds offered in every previous Bethesda game.\n\nPerhaps the worst offense is how safe the game is with its alleged roleplaying. In a game whose entire premise [spoiler]is the ability to do it all again in a parallel universe[/spoiler], no significant consequence or choice is offered to the player. Starfield is the most on-the-rails game Bethesda has ever made, and the most on-the-rails game by any developer I've ever played that presumed to call itself \"roleplaying\". Factions don't care if you're a decorated member of their enemy. Anyone of even the remotest consequence is not only immortal, but cares not at all what you do beyond whether or not they will have a 'romantic' 'relationship' with you. And literally the only difference between one [spoiler]universe[/spoiler] and the next are pointless changes inside a solitary indoor environment and dialogue options that speed along a few quests.\n\nIn other words: the reward for continuing is continuing slightly faster. Not to any destination or resolution, because there is none. No new content, interactions, changes in the world, relationships, revelations... nothing. It's a lifeless universe running on an engine that's been showing its age for over a decade. A clunky UI/UX and a watered down player experience that, in trying to make it accessible to everyone, offers no challenge as it shifts all the way to pointlessness. It's modded less than previous titles because, not only is the foundation that much worse, but Bethesda made modding more difficult via engine changes and delaying the release of its Creation Kit.\n\nStarfield is shallow, repetitive, and boring. It is not worth your time or money.","timestamp_created":1771544374,"timestamp_updated":1771544374,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":533,"votes_funny":55,"weighted_vote_score":"0.805530369281768799","comment_count":39,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":31,"count":51},{"reaction_type":24,"count":12},{"reaction_type":29,"count":8},{"reaction_type":26,"count":7},{"reaction_type":32,"count":7},{"reaction_type":34,"count":5},{"reaction_type":28,"count":4},{"reaction_type":33,"count":4},{"reaction_type":25,"count":3},{"reaction_type":27,"count":2},{"reaction_type":30,"count":1},{"reaction_type":35,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"146030330","author":{"steamid":"76561198032088203","personaname":"IAmPattyJack","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/laughlaughlaugh/","num_games_owned":845,"num_reviews":143,"playtime_forever":6048,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":5484,"last_played":1697130664,"avatar":"d4fe7ecc9e9bae063e1d3f950cd7e7a33c3b2628"},"language":"english","review":"The more I play Starfield the smaller it feels. Infinitely smaller than any of Bethesda's previous titles, which is ironic considering the scale of the universe they are attempting to create.\n\nFor the first time after less than 100 hours I feel like a Bethesda game has nothing new to show me. No reward for wandering off into the far corners of the map, no prospects of anything new beyond what I've experienced beyond level 30. It's a world without a soul and no interesting history within it.\n\nBethesda has always been fantastic at making their worlds feel lived in. They add history to every location, a story to be told. Whether it's an ancient dungeon, a capital city or a car factory that raiders just so happened to take up refuge in. There always seemed to be a reason for these locations to exist aside from simply being for the player to discover.\n\nUnfortunately, generated content has taken their biggest strength and stretched it so thin the other cracks in their armor become much more apparent.\n\nThe interesting, hand crafted overworlds have been turned into vast expanses of boredom, populated only by alien life that wanders aimlessly and dotted with copy and pasted locations on each planet. The reasons for each of these enemies or locations to exist are gone, instead they are placed there based on the algorithm saying this planet needs a predator, and drawing from a handful of randomized creatures to fill the role, or it needs an outpost so it takes the same bio laboratory you saw on a planet at level 5 and has it appear again at level 50 with higher level enemies.\n\nEven the main storyline in the game uses this generated content, which stands out like a sore thumb since the hand crafted locations that are still present are often the highest points of the game. They just feel drowned out in a sea of garbage.\n\nThe cities however are fantastic. It feels like most of the effort was put into making them feel like a large metropolis with loads of side quests, with many being very well written. \n\nThis is at odds with the main story that borders on the nonsensical. The entire premise of Constellation as an organization doesn't make sense. They claim to be a group that discovers the unknown to find \"what's out there\", yet they seemingly haven't discovered anything in their decades of existence. What do they actually do? They only explore within the settled systems, so they don't go anywhere new. Heck, they haven't even scanned the plants and animals on their home planet, much less anywhere else. The organization only exists for the player to discover new things, so it having existed previously makes zero sense. The entire first act of the game should have been about forming Constellation and recruiting people that WANT to go and find new stuff.\n\nThe general gameplay elements have definitely been improved on. I can't tell you how nice it is to play a Bethesda title that allows you to grab a ledge and climb up it. The shooting mechanics feel tighter, the traversal is nice and there are various quality of life improvements. But if we're being honest, these were all mechanics and improvements that have been in games for well over a decade and feels more like catch-up.\n\nThat being said, there is a ton of recycled content from both Skyrim and Fallout at play. Legendary effects being copy/pasted from Fallout items or Skyrim spells, repurposed dragon shouts as powers, etc.\n\nIt's a shame that there really isn't much gameplay when you actually explore a planet, or go hunting for artifacts and temples. There are so many locations completely devoid of life, with absolutely nothing interesting going on. Nearly every mine you explore for example is unpopulated, or at the most has a few native alien enemies. Once again, they only have a few select layouts that repeat on every planet.\n\nI like the space combat and ship utilization. It's simple, sure, but it works well enough and is a nice break from being on the ground all the time. There's nothing groundbreaking going on here.\n\nThe game shines with ship customization. I've spent hours trying to get my ship just right and make it unique. There are very much improvements to be had that I would love to see though. Being able to preview interiors and choose the locations of ladders and doors would be great. Right now the ship becomes a maze because you don't know where those will end up.\n\nOutpost building is a gigantic chore and very frustrating. I adored building settlements in Fallout 4, but the amount of different components needed to create simple items and buildings in Starfield is ludicrous, as is your storage and carry capacity. You find yourself fast travelling constantly to buy a limited amount of a resource you need, because hunting for it is stupidly time consuming. In Fallout 4, you could just run to the nearest location and grab all the junk you could haul, then store it at the infinite workshop storage. That's not the case here, so if you find resources you'll just ignore them. That is, until you need them and have to go five minutes out of your way just to find aluminium to build a small habitat.\n\nI say all this but am still enjoying chunks of the game because there are still magical bits to the world, stories and mechanics. It really just feels buried beneath a bunch of white noise and failed attempts at refining systems.\n\nOverall, despite enjoying the game at points, this feels like a huge regression in Bethesda's strengths and a highlight of their biggest flaws. The improved and refined mechanics only bring it closer to modern counterparts, which is not enough to set it apart.\n\nYou can find both my first 10 hours and 50 hours impressions here for more, if you are so inclined.\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INgrvk1NvWE&t=676s&ab_channel=IAmPattyJack\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXQU5ylbU-E&t=551s&ab_channel=IAmPattyJack\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRzDxUinaEM&ab_channel=IAmPattyJack","timestamp_created":1694321121,"timestamp_updated":1695000708,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":6305,"votes_funny":118,"weighted_vote_score":"0.853221774101257324","comment_count":339,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"timestamp_dev_responded":1695917639,"developer_response":"You can fly, you can shoot, you can mine, you can loot!\n\nStarfield is an RPG with hundreds of hours of quests to complete and characters to meet. Most quests will also vary on your character’s skills and decisions, massively changing the outcome of your playthrough. Try creating different characters with backgrounds and characteristics that clash or are opposite of your previous character. You will feel like you are playing a totally different game. Put points in different skills from a character you’ve previously created, and you are now faced with completely different decisions to make and difficulties to encounter. There are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you’ve never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours.\n\nYou will also find our site provides many helpful articles if any aspect of Starfield feels overwhelming. For example, you can see the following for some tips and tricks on Outpost building and management https://beth.games/3rexeCq You will also find some additional tips of ship building that may help make it feel like less of a maze https://beth.games/3PyTIpS\n\nOur team always welcomes feedback https://beth.games/3Xdn3d4\n\nThe Bethesda Team","app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":320},{"reaction_type":19,"count":84},{"reaction_type":6,"count":75},{"reaction_type":13,"count":42},{"reaction_type":5,"count":41},{"reaction_type":1,"count":40},{"reaction_type":16,"count":36},{"reaction_type":9,"count":16},{"reaction_type":22,"count":15},{"reaction_type":11,"count":13},{"reaction_type":18,"count":13},{"reaction_type":15,"count":11},{"reaction_type":4,"count":10},{"reaction_type":8,"count":5},{"reaction_type":14,"count":4},{"reaction_type":2,"count":3},{"reaction_type":10,"count":2},{"reaction_type":3,"count":2},{"reaction_type":21,"count":2},{"reaction_type":20,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"215929853","author":{"steamid":"76561198094243535","personaname":"Dooney","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198094243535/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":22,"playtime_forever":263,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":219,"last_played":1768360957,"avatar":"750b0d9574dd7131027bda1b591105031f425dcc"},"language":"english","review":"I bought Starfield specifically to play the Star Wars Genesis mod, and it’s amazing. If you’re a Star Wars fan, I highly recommend, it completely transforms the game and makes the experience feel special.\n\nI wouldn’t recommend buying Starfield unless you plan on playing Star Wars Genesis, because the mod is what truly makes it worth it.","timestamp_created":1768352383,"timestamp_updated":1768352383,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":343,"votes_funny":21,"weighted_vote_score":"0.802942991256713867","comment_count":17,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":26,"count":11},{"reaction_type":28,"count":5},{"reaction_type":29,"count":4},{"reaction_type":24,"count":1},{"reaction_type":31,"count":1},{"reaction_type":32,"count":1},{"reaction_type":33,"count":1},{"reaction_type":34,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"146429711","author":{"steamid":"76561198032403012","personaname":"LXXVII","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/wackyiraqi777/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":8,"playtime_forever":4618,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":4618,"last_played":1694898268,"avatar":"e6fd518f874dd79985ac50344f9ec2e461fda5eb"},"language":"english","review":"***THIS WILL HAVE SPOILERS, THEY ARE NECESSARY FOR THE REVIEW***\n\nThis game has no soul at all. It is sterile. Corporate. Bland. \n\nDo not take my playtime as an endorsement of this game. I wanted to finish all the questlines and spend some time in the ship creator before I wrote my review.\n\nThis game IS Fallout 4 in space. It is both graphically and in gameplay terms functionally identical. I've heard that Starfield spent a long time in development. I have to wonder what on earth they were spending the time on? \n\nWhat I liked:\n\n- SOME quests were OK. The writing and quest design is very inconsistent. There are a few good ones. UC Vanguard started strong but then fell off. Some Crimson Fleet quests were reminiscent of Oblivion thieves guild in their execution. That's really about it.\n\n- Ship designer. While the UI could use some improvements, building ships is actually fun. Its a little difficult to find who has the parts you want. I ultimately settled on Deimos and made a pretty large ship. It's just a shame that there is really no reason to do this, other than maybe the crafting benches. New Game+ invalidates this.\n\n-No voiced protagonist - glad they learned from that mistake.\n\nWhat I disliked (where do we even begin?):\n- NewGame+ makes everything pointless. The way they executed it makes every core game play loop feel awful. Why would I spend hours designing my ship if I'm going to lose it? Why would I collect any resources? Build an outpost? A player can newgame+ OR participate in these aspects of the game but not both. Also, there is really no reason to do any of the quests again because...\n\n- Quests... They are awful. I came into this game with LOW expectations and NO hype. I thought the quests in Skyrim were lackluster in many ways. Fallout 4, very much the same. Here is an actual quest in one of the main factions. You are tasked with sabotaging a rival competitor's newest ship in the factory. Now you MIGHT be inclined to think this would involve breaking into a building and sneaking around or persuading your way in while avoiding security robots. But no. It is quite literally, walk into the factory onto the unsecured factory floor, waltz right into this ship in construction, and then press the button. That's it. The most challenging part was not being bored during fast travel. Here is another one. You are tasked with stealing a trophy. This trophy is made out of very precious materials. You can ONLY get this trophy if you get the keycard to the vault it is locked in. You can QUITE LITERALLY just ask the person responsible to give you their keycard via persuasion. That would be like Todd Howard persuading me to give him my wallet and social security number. This brings me to...\n\n- The writing. Oh my lord. I am not expecting anyone's magnum opus, but these quests and dialogue were 100% written by recent college grads or something. At no point did anyone while writing quests ask themselves what they would do in the situation. Example analogy. This is exactly what happens in the game. Imagine you are a new FBI agent. Just started yesterday. You lead an investigation where you find out the President of United States is doing some heinous crime leading to people dying. You have A PIECE of evidence. What would you do? If your answer was confront the President and his security detail directly and try to arrest him, and then kill all of them, then congratulations, you are a Bethesda writer. No option to go tell your superiors or anyone else. And when you show up and say HEY GUYS I JUST KILLED THE PRESIDENT they take a look at one piece of evidence you have and say YEAH SOUNDS GOOD HAVE A PROMOTION. Then the questline is done. WHO WROTE THIS? THIS IS JUST DUMB. I have many other examples but I won't belabor the point. The writing is awful.\n\n- The characters - completely forgettable. There is nothing endearing about your \"friends\" as the game refers to them as. Everyone is a caricature of an actual person. It's absurd.\n\n- The \"exploration\" - let's start with space travel. Space travel is quite literally just fast travel with more clicks and menus involved. It is also redundant in many cases, because you can just fast travel directly and skip the actual flying through space. But let's take a new location. Travelling to a new location is the following all in menus. Select star. Select planet. Select landing point. Press button. Take out the fancy UI and you could literally do it with cascading context menus. How is this acceptable in 2023 with lord knows how many years of development when other games have already conquered the space travel issue. Beyond that, the destinations themselves are bland, auto generated garbage. It's like Todd saw radiant quests and said HOW ABOUT RADIANT MAPS? And then he did it! It's not as if there is a lot of content the game has to pull from. Expect to see the same locations over and over. Also as an aside, expect to see the auto generated locations integrated into your main quest, because Bethesda couldn't be bothered to make those up by hand when every quest is a fetch quest for the exact same object over and over and over.\n\n- \"Progression\" - Perks are either necessary or useless. They took out core features and locked them behind perks because who knows. No attributes. Forget about the R in RPG. This is a theme park ride just shut up and keep your hands inside at all times. \n\nIf I had to sum it up, the game is just sterile. There isn't anything interesting to do, the quests aren't enjoyable, the combat is just a grind against spongy enemies, inventory management is awful.\n\nIt is a shame that with their time, money, and resources that this is the best they can do. They need to ditch the creation engine. It works OK for a game like Skyrim that has a large open world to traverse but it cannot do what they tried to get it to do here. It is hopelessly dated. \n\nI do not feel like this game was worth my money or my time. I didn't really enjoy the time I had with it, but rather saw it through to the end so that I could give it a proper evaluation and see what it had to offer. As it turns out, not much. If you've seen it once, you've seen it all. If you've landed on 2 or 3 planets, you've landed on all of them.\n\n3/10 - Some fun to be had in certain parts, but slogging through the rest of it to find these just isn't worth it. I personally believe this game is the 2nd worst game Bethesda has made, other than Fallout 76. This is not a labor of love. It is a labor of money and only money and it feels like it.","timestamp_created":1694900541,"timestamp_updated":1694900541,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":3601,"votes_funny":97,"weighted_vote_score":"0.799294888973236084","comment_count":13,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"timestamp_dev_responded":1698443860,"developer_response":"Greetings,\n\nWe are sorry to hear that you did not have a positive experience with Starfield.\n\nGoing through New Game Plus will grant you very powerful items every time you restart for the first 10 levels that cannot be gained any other way. You will also be able to continue gaining points for playing missions you enjoyed again, and even having the liberty of taking a different route/approach each playthrough.\n\nStarfield is an RPG with hundreds of hours of quests to complete and characters to meet. Most quests will also vary on your character’s skills and decisions, massively changing the outcome of your playthrough. Try creating different characters with backgrounds and characteristics that clash or are oppositive of your previous character. You will feel like you are playing a totally different game. Put points in different skills from a character you’ve previously created, and you are now faced with completely different decisions to make and difficulties to encounter. There are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you’ve never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours.\nEven after completing the Main Story, your adventure doesn’t end! You can continue onto New Game+ to keep exploring Starfield and all that is out there!\n\nThe best way to go about leveling your character is to focus on one page of the perk tree for your current run. That way you will be able to see all the benefits that come from sticking to a theme on each particular run and the pros/cons of each skill you unlock. You can also always farm points during spaceship combat and just killing creatures of random planets for some easy XP.\n\nTo provide feedback to development for Starfield, please feel free to use this form here: https://beth.games/45BDMKb\n\nThanks again and we hope you return to your journey through space soon!\n\nWarm regards,\nBethesda Customer Support\n\n","app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":308},{"reaction_type":13,"count":62},{"reaction_type":6,"count":55},{"reaction_type":19,"count":38},{"reaction_type":16,"count":37},{"reaction_type":5,"count":36},{"reaction_type":11,"count":28},{"reaction_type":1,"count":25},{"reaction_type":15,"count":16},{"reaction_type":22,"count":14},{"reaction_type":9,"count":13},{"reaction_type":8,"count":8},{"reaction_type":18,"count":8},{"reaction_type":14,"count":7},{"reaction_type":4,"count":7},{"reaction_type":3,"count":4},{"reaction_type":7,"count":4},{"reaction_type":12,"count":4},{"reaction_type":23,"count":3},{"reaction_type":21,"count":2},{"reaction_type":10,"count":1},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"202600596","author":{"steamid":"76561198211270519","personaname":"cgerada","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198211270519/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":5,"playtime_forever":94230,"playtime_last_two_weeks":5019,"playtime_at_review":70529,"last_played":1776548729,"avatar":"cd4157d04df12423a05cf2107a9d9143cd7ad182"},"language":"english","review":"I genuinely love Starfield. The world-building, the freedom, the ships, the outposts  it’s everything I wanted in a Bethesda space RPG. I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into one character, pushing them well beyond level 300, and I still find new things to do.\r\nBut here’s the problem: Bethesda designed Starfield as a long-haul game, not a short replayable one.\r\nOutposts are built to expand, link resources, and grow over time.\r\nShip building is a massive time investment, meant to evolve with your character.\r\nThe whole premise is that your universe grows with you.\r\nAnd yet… the engine can’t sustain it.\r\nWithout a proper save file cleaner, the game slowly chokes itself with leftover data  ghost scripts, orphaned quests, broken references. Eventually your once-great save risks crashing, bloating, or stuttering until you’re told the only “solution” is to restart.\r\nRestarting is fine in Skyrim or Fallout where each playthrough can feel fresh. But in Starfield? Restarting means deleting years of investment in outposts, ships, and character progression. That’s not replay value  that’s punishment for long-term players.\r\nYes, modders have stepped in with experimental save cleaners, but this should not be left to unpaid volunteers. Bethesda knows this problem has existed since Skyrim. If Starfield is truly meant to be “a game you can play forever,” then we need official tools to keep forever saves stable.","timestamp_created":1755801263,"timestamp_updated":1755801263,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":124,"votes_funny":10,"weighted_vote_score":"0.797310411930084229","comment_count":5,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":5},{"reaction_type":6,"count":5},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":12,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"185257645","author":{"steamid":"76561198151055233","personaname":"The Real Dapperdan","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/therealdapperdan/","num_games_owned":330,"num_reviews":27,"playtime_forever":12556,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":12556,"last_played":1698172499,"avatar":"1f42a0da9daf8385988f266a7aac9e5fd10446e9"},"language":"english","review":"Starfield: A game i wanted to love, a game i gave a chance, the game that let me down.\r\n\r\nSure, the formula of go here, get this item, talk to this npc works, sure, interesting locations, sure, cool weapons, and mostly, of course cool ships.\r\n\r\nStarfield felt too...glued to the same formula, bland, and overall, boring.\r\n\r\nWithout spoiling the storyline; while yes a good take on how players play other Bethesda titles such as Fallout and the Elder scrolls, rinsing and repeating their playthrough when they want to re-experience the game. Maybe the intention was, play one playthrough and not play for a while and play a while later and experience the game again but different. In a sense, i praise the idea, but in practice it does not work for Starfield.\r\n\r\nStarfield felt like a very rushed game, locations and experiences were mediocre at best.\r\n","timestamp_created":1736515828,"timestamp_updated":1736515828,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":179,"votes_funny":6,"weighted_vote_score":"0.796432375907897949","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":1},{"reaction_type":19,"count":1},{"reaction_type":6,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"167439092","author":{"steamid":"76561198059021156","personaname":"wmj.werner","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198059021156/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":3,"playtime_forever":76798,"playtime_last_two_weeks":338,"playtime_at_review":36597,"last_played":1776044599,"avatar":"fef49e7fa7e1997310d705b2a6158ff8dc1cdfeb"},"language":"english","review":"I’m giving this a thumbs up because in the end I did enjoy it enough to sink 600 hours into it. But it definitely has some shortcomings, and I can absolutely understand why other people would tip over into “thumbs down” territory.\n\nPros:\n-\tThe game has a lot of charm, provided you’re there for it’s more hopeful than cynical tone and it’s more grounded-in-realism than magical setting. \n-\tThe ship builder was surprisingly fun. I spent entire sessions working on my ships and felt good about it afterward.\n-\tI thought the storytelling and worldbuilding was well done, and I enjoyed both the main quests and the side quests that they put real effort into\n\nCons:\n-\tThe worldbuilding may have been well executed, but the world itself is  more interested in rehashing familiar tropes than doing anything new\n-\tMaybe someday we’ll have good procedurally generated content, but this clearly isn’t it. There’s a lot of low-quality filler content here, especially when it comes to exploration\n-\tIt feels like the game was trying to be too many different things at once and ended up not excelling at any of them. \n\nMy overall takeaway is that the game’s charm is what carried it for me. Its what made me want to keep spending time in it despite its shortcomings. So I’d boil it down to this: if the first point in my Pros section sounds good to you, then give it a try. If it doesn’t sound like your thing, then this game probably isn’t for you.","timestamp_created":1718477792,"timestamp_updated":1718477792,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":320,"votes_funny":30,"weighted_vote_score":"0.794758498668670654","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":23},{"reaction_type":6,"count":6},{"reaction_type":17,"count":2},{"reaction_type":11,"count":2},{"reaction_type":1,"count":2},{"reaction_type":18,"count":2},{"reaction_type":13,"count":1},{"reaction_type":9,"count":1},{"reaction_type":22,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"145754996","author":{"steamid":"76561198006223172","personaname":"LaBrie","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Andreqkz/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":21,"playtime_forever":7316,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3786,"last_played":1695608507,"avatar":"fd8c821644df42c90b1e59df663e8973517a177e"},"language":"english","review":"Bethesda seems to have lost its way in some crucial areas of Starfield, and it has become a love-hate experience among players. So far, it has positively drawn me in, and at times, left me slightly disappointed. Starfield is just beginning, it's a long-term investment, and it will be a playground for modders, and I'll be here for that.","timestamp_created":1693971600,"timestamp_updated":1693971600,"voted_up":true,"votes_up":27,"votes_funny":0,"weighted_vote_score":"0.787644803524017334","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[]},{"recommendationid":"146022502","author":{"steamid":"76561197960561094","personaname":"Risk","persona_status":"online","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/id/Riskurlife/","num_games_owned":0,"num_reviews":40,"playtime_forever":3404,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":3183,"last_played":1694372453,"avatar":"18cf9e93edbe79213f24fd277a0c8fc05e9ec68f"},"language":"english","review":"This game is so hit or miss I’m not sure what to think of it. Part of the time I enjoy it and in other parts I find myself bored and uninterested. The graphics are okay, but the gameplay feels old and I find myself skipping through conversations. The exploration portion of the game is lacking. It’s a space game where I don’t seem to travel in space. I use the map menu to jump light-years away in a single loading screen. I don’t take off and land, I just appear and disappear.\n\nThe in-game economy seems out of wack. To buy a new ship you need a lot of credits but if you have a ship to sell, forget it. It's not even worth taking it and flying it back to sell it. After registering it you make very little. I mean it’s a spacecraft, yet it still has very little value. I often make more money by killing pirates and taking their space suits and weapons.\n\nThat brings me to my next point and I don’t mean this as an insult towards the consoles but the control appears to be based on that. Total lack of accuracy, want something placed exactly where you want it, good luck. Want some angled at an exact point, good luck. Tap a button for this and hold a button for that is telling me that someone has a lack of buttons. Made for PC, I don’t think so.\n\nI definitely see how some people could enjoy this game but I can’t recommend it. I should be traveling in space more, Grav jumping more, landing and taking off more. Entire galaxies are bypassed via loading screens and much of the game-play feels at least a decade old. They have the right parts of a space game they’re just put together in the wrong order.\n","timestamp_created":1694310120,"timestamp_updated":1694310120,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":4635,"votes_funny":76,"weighted_vote_score":"0.83646547794342041","comment_count":181,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"timestamp_dev_responded":1698442777,"developer_response":"Greetings,\nThank you for taking the time to leave a review for Starfield!\nGiven the immense size of Starfield, we felt it made more sense to be able to use your Grav Drive to jump to other solar systems. The option to fly freely among planets is still there, and you can travel from one planet to another and land without needing to open your map if you use your scanner. However, for an expedition like solar system traversal, jumping is necessary. Remember that fast travel also has its perks as you can do so quickly when trying to complete quests and will always be given visual of your ship launching and landing, thus being able to appreciate all the little details that make your customized ship look unique.\n\nIf you feel that things are getting boring, there is so much more to do than just the main mission! There are many side missions where you can learn more about the people and story of Starfield. You can take time to explore various planets for resources and items. Break the law by smuggling and selling contraband. Build your own Outposts and Starships and customize them to your enjoyment. There are many things to do and you can visit our Discord for further ideas from other players: https://beth.games/3F1Jb0W \n\nIn terms of the game economy, remember that the higher the difficulty you are playing on, the better items you will receive as a drop. Enemies will be dropping more rare weapons and gear. You will also be given the option to board and steal more expensive and valuable ships!\nTo provide feedback to development for Starfield, please feel free to use this form here: https://beth.games/45BDMKb\nThanks again and we hope you return to your journey through space soon!\nWarm regards,\nBethesda Customer Support","app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":17,"count":115},{"reaction_type":19,"count":66},{"reaction_type":6,"count":50},{"reaction_type":16,"count":15},{"reaction_type":1,"count":15},{"reaction_type":13,"count":12},{"reaction_type":4,"count":6},{"reaction_type":5,"count":6},{"reaction_type":14,"count":5},{"reaction_type":22,"count":5},{"reaction_type":11,"count":4},{"reaction_type":8,"count":3},{"reaction_type":18,"count":3},{"reaction_type":10,"count":2},{"reaction_type":9,"count":2},{"reaction_type":21,"count":2},{"reaction_type":15,"count":1},{"reaction_type":2,"count":1},{"reaction_type":7,"count":1},{"reaction_type":23,"count":1}]},{"recommendationid":"213251922","author":{"steamid":"76561198000760089","personaname":"Blackhand","persona_status":"offline","profile_url":"https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198000760089/","num_games_owned":495,"num_reviews":16,"playtime_forever":7694,"playtime_last_two_weeks":0,"playtime_at_review":5371,"last_played":1767062524,"avatar":"d46bfc9cfbc88f8a495d64646349607195e4172d"},"language":"english","review":"I've played this game for 89 hours. Here's my thoughts.\r\n\r\nI just feeling like I'm on constant fetch quests. The AI companions offer little to no value to your exploring. Interiors and exteriors, whether it be on a planet surface, or inside a ship just feel very samey. The UI for things like ship building and the Star Map are not intuitive at all.\r\n\r\nSmall things like the game not showing your companions model when you're trying to equip them, are baffling design choices.\r\n\r\nThe game just feels like it lacks any soul.\r\n\r\nCombine that with stability issues that cause CTD and straight up lock my computer to where I have to completely hard reboot it, makes this one of Bethesda's worst offerings ever.\r\n\r\nI really tried to like it but even after such a large time commitment I can't bring myself to continue playing it. Bethesda dropped the ball on this one.","timestamp_created":1765687754,"timestamp_updated":1765687754,"voted_up":false,"votes_up":117,"votes_funny":5,"weighted_vote_score":"0.783017337322235107","comment_count":0,"steam_purchase":true,"received_for_free":false,"refunded":false,"written_during_early_access":false,"primarily_steam_deck":false,"app_release_date":"1693958400","reactions":[{"reaction_type":19,"count":3}]}],"cursor":"AoIFQFUVvQAAAABy9b6tBg=="}