Starfield steam page for the DLC currently shows eight user review score of 41%, making this one of the worst Bethesda DLC's released of all time. This is so horribly, shockingly bad for Bethesda, because it shows as a gaming company, they are no longer capable of delivering a really good gaming experience as they had in the past. Some of the reviews sum up quite nicely what is wrong with this DLC....

Less content than any skyrim DLC. Less than The Fallout 4 story DLCs. Doesn't change of the complaints people had with the base game, writing is still at a 4th grade level.

Quick: If you are looking to buy my answer is no, you aren't missing much content. I was really hoping to enjoy this DLC. Took about 4 hours for the main story and maybe 2 more hours to 100% the achievements.

These two reviews I think really summed up what Starfield has become, $70 for an AAAA title that has extremely little buy-in from the community, horrifically low amount of replayability and can be breezed through easily. It's mind-boggling to see this

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[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 40 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Cyberpunk was buggy, unoptimized, and kind of unfinished, but the fundamental game design was sound.

Starfield on the other hand is broken at its core. The Bethesda RPG experience just does not translate to the open worlds space map they built the game on. So they can't take the cyberpunk approach because they'd have to build an entirely different game from scratch.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I don't know why anyone decided that that engine was the right way to go. The number one thing that killed the game for me was the endless loading screens. Constantly. Whenever I started feeling immersed, a new loading screen would pop up and it ruined it for me. We have engines left and right that don't need to do this anymore, but starfield, the game that's trying to base itself to be a realistic exploration game, decided that endless loading screens were still the best way to go

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

even without the loading screens it would still be terrible. get a quest, go to your ship, take off, travel to other system, land, exit your ship, walk to destination, reverse all that to turn the quest in, rinse and repeat. it's just a tedious experience.

the best part of Bethesda games is just being able to wander around aimlessly in a pretty environment, likely stumbling upon little easter eggs or side quests along the way. none of that exists in Starfield.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 6 points 1 month ago

Reading it like that, the loop sounds straight off Diablo 1 on PSX. Get quests, head to the dungeon, loading screen, wipe the floor, loading screen, wipe next floor, back to town, loading screen, turn in.

That kind of loop is not bad in itself, but Bethesda applied it to the wrong type of game.

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 3 points 1 month ago

You just described mass effect

[–] antithetical@lemmy.deedium.nl 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That was one of the things that really helped with the immersion for me in Witcher 3 and even Cyberpunk. You walk into a building, house, etc and the world outside just continued and was present. I'm still quite impressed with their engine and it is a bit sad that they'll be switching to UE5 for the next Witcher.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I know! Red engine honestly is pretty great once they got the bugs worked out, I'm sad they're leaving it. It was extremely immersive, and there's definitely something about it that feels different.

[–] Pieisawesome@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Red engine was hitting its limits.

UE allows them to focus on gameplay and contents over building the core engine.

Think about cyberpunk? The engine was fine (if unoptimized) but the gameplay and contents were missing.

UE will allow them to focus on their missing skillset

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 13 points 1 month ago

Given the amount of the playable game that takes place on foot, they should have called it Field