It looks like Skyrim in space and I don't really get why anyone was expecting something else

I mean, yeah, if you aren't into the core elements of a game you probably won't be interested in the game. It's like say, "I'm not impressed with the new Mario game. I don't want to do platforming, and I don't care about powerups or collecting things."

Sounds like you simply don’t like science fiction video games then. Thanks for letting us know. I’m gonna go play some Starfield now.

People are getting pretty spicy with the responses. OP was just underwhelmed by a game getting a lot of hype. Like lots of people are going to like it, but not everyone. I think theyre just trying to generate discussion, not say "everyone who likes starfield is an CHUMP!!" or something.

Personally I'm excited to see what the mod landscape is going to look like in a year. As with most Bethesda games, I couldn't care much less about the game itself outside of that key feature.

It's a space clutter looter

Played 8 hours last night so this is a very early impression. I love clutter looters and didn't expect much else from Bethesda's Fallout/Scrolls main studio. The Bethesda crafted areas are excellent if you are looking for what I call a Fallout / Elder Scrolls clutter looter. Lots of stuff to loot, the FPS combat is much better than Fallout 4 or 76. Don't expect a space sim like SC or NMS this is a Bethesda Fallout/Scrolls style game with a bunch of additional systems on top of it.

First person combat

I've played both SC and NMS. While exploring a station in Starfield I thought to myself... this is what SC should have been for their foot exploration. The derelict stations in NMS are rather static environments and never cared for them much. What surprised me about the Starfield AI is they will "flee" or "flank" by running past you at times. I've lost track of enemies at times because of this and have had to go hunting for them.

Ship travel

There is fast travel. If you are looking for a space flight sim this is not for you. I don't have an issue with fast travel as I get no thrills from traveling in space 1:1. There is simulation and there is stupid... SC leans a bit too heavy into the latter. Don't expect 1:1 space travel in Starfield, it isn't made for that.

Ship combat

Again this is not a space flight sim. Most recently coming off Everspace 2 I do miss the strafing controls and pedal usage, but that game is star fighter like combat. Starfield does have a ship editor and seems to be more about load out than fighter style combat. Think a bit more like Expanse style combat. I don't have much time in this area of the game so I can't say a whole lot more about it.

Initial impression

I love Bethesda clutter looters and this one is in space. Going to eat up the Bethesda crafted clutter looter areas. The 1,000 worlds will likely function as a massive canvas for future mods.

I agree it was very boring and the writing in the intro was incredibly weak. Every time I expected that wow moment (helgen, opening the vault) i just found disappointment instead. "Wow a fight! oh I'm just randomly handed a ship? ok sick time to fly, oh it's just fast travel. New Atlantis is about to be crazy, oh it's just a bland city" and everything being beige didn't help. Fallout has the cool roleplaying in the wasteland factor, Skyrim has the cool fantasy aspect, Starfield seemed to just be 'space' but other games (Mass Effect, Outer Wilds, hell even the first half of The Outer Worlds) did it better.

It seemed p clear they don't feel the need to innovate or have any ambition because their dedicated fan base is so large now that they don't really have to. Which is fine but wasn't for me.

Yeah, also getting strong "not for me"-vibes. Looks like a less grimey Fallout in space. Graphics seem to be far less amazing as I imagined from trailers.

Edit: Buuut I think lots of people will have fun with this and that's cool!

It is exactly as shitty as I expected it to be. Another crappy bethesda game in a long line of garbage. I think the last game from them I truly enjoyed was Morrowind. I don't think New Vegas counts. Fallout 4 was depressing being so close to good. Every moment in that game screams half baked. That quest where you help the robots out with their ship showed me just how possible it was to make the game good, but then it was the only good quests besides maybe the silver shroud one.

I don’t want to hear how good this game is because I only own a PS5 and don’t have a gaming PC.

It's not as open and "huge scale" as people seem to think it is.
It's kind of "fake open" if that makes sense.
You cannot get into your ship and fly 500m east to your mission.
If you do that, a new instance is loaded and your mission is not there.

Made me disappointed.

Personally from the screenshots and the vids I didn't feel like the game would be for me. Is there actual story? Are there fun characters to hang with?

Bethesda games have quite a recognizable formula, and this seems like their blandest implementation.

But hey, i am basing this on the other games and a handful of material. Ill probably crack it and wait for it to lower in price big time.

I already have space game. It's called No Mans Sky and it's pretty darn cool.

Sounds like you got No Man's Skied

I actually like exploring the universe, but I've been pretty disappointed from what I've seen so far. They tried to add space-sim elements to it, but did a half-assed job at it. To make things worse, the planets are mostly barren and not worth exploring either.

In saying that, it is a Bethesda gene, so I'm expecting some beefy mods that add more content and immersiveness to the game, and once that's done, I may consider buying it when it goes on sale.

In the meantime, I'm really looking forward to finally playing Cyberpunk as it was meant to be, with the new Phantom Liberty DLC.

I played for a few hours last night and, so far, I feel exactly the same. I'm going to try to barrel through the main narrative for a bit, which is supposed to "open up" the game a lot more - but the game systems and UI themselves are a major part of what is killing it for me. That, and the fact that the game so far seems to be little more than a mediocre FPS.

Bethesda have made some of my favorite games, especially Elder Scrolls but this time I'm just not very interested. I read they added procedural generation which seems like the worst choice possible when the strength of their games always has been environmental storytelling (as in you explore and stumble upon things that make the world feel "lived in").

I'll buy the game later, might as well wait for patches, mods and such!

The gunplay looks pretty fun to me. That's the most important part for me, if the actual combat isn't fun, then that's a different story, but it looks pretty cool. Cool enough for me to try it out on gamepass.

A Twitch stream said Starfield was on. When I looked at the stream, the person who I assume was the streamer was sitting on her bed, DJing bad music, and talking about how she thought canals were natural, not manmade.

I muttered something rude and didn’t keep watching.

It's pretty decent if you liked Bethesda's other AAA games. I was actually surprised that there was even some amount of spaceship piloting at all - I just assumed it would be 100% fast travel.

However, the game runs like dogshit - even on my decently mid-range system, it takes 15-30 seconds of loading between menus, and I swear I spent half the time I played waiting for the game to load. I assume that this is meant to take advantage of the Xbox and PS5's faster memory and DirectStorage, but on PC it's borderline unplayable