Fun Fact: early plans for Mass Effect Andromeda involved players exploring over 1000 procedurally generated planets across the Andromeda Galaxy, but the team gave up on it pretty late in development because no matter what they tried, they couldn't make the planets fun to explore. Anyway, Starfield.

What they should have done is have like 10 planets with worlds roughly 60% the size of Skyrim. That would have solved a lot of these issues

bgs spent so much time making "a game you can play forever" but forgot to make it a game u actually want to play forever.

Man’s got an early copy and still gave it an honest review…. Respect

The irony of over a thousand planets with a fast travel system means that no matter how big the game is, it feels exponentially smaller.

The really frustrating thing is: Bethesda already learned this lesson with the early elder scrolls games. The thing that set their games from Morrowind onward apart, was that they opted for a small, but lovingly handcrafted and almost infinity detailed/interesting world. But apparently they just... Forgot about that? If any studio should have known better, it's them

Starfield made me realize how incredible of a feat it was for the developers of Elite Dangerous and No Man’s Sky to create those games. Sure they’ve been actively developing for those games for years after they released, but that just further proves that what those devs have done is actually unfathomably impressive.

Mass Effect is an interesting comparison piece because the universe didn't need to be inconceivably massive to prompt interest. What made the setting feel big were the characters. Having teammates that you actually grew to care enough about that you wanted to help them and learn about their personal place in the galaxy. It was all about the journey of all the little pictures that made up the whole, not stretching one big picture so thin that you could never see the end of it.

If instead it had like 10~15 big, highly-detailed planets with a ton of stuff to do and another 30~40 small but hand-crafted planets with a few things to do, that would have been infinitely more appealing than 1000+ empty rocks

This game's most incredible achievement is that it managed to take the vastness of space and make it feel tiny. Truly groundbreaking.

You completely read my mind with this one. It's so dry I just cant finish it no mater how hard I try. So many hours in FO and TES games but I cannot get over the setting and lack of world building/immersion here. Also: If you are going to go "no aliens", you have to do something like Dune and have many more dramatically different cultures.

Arlo being disappointed he couldn't find a fun friend is the most wholesome burn

very nice to hear Arlo still speak freely about Bethesda's controversies even though they provided him with this review copy. Real display of integrity

It's so impressive to me how Arlo is so expressive despite never blinking... it's really amazing

A lot of positive feedback I heard about the game is “it reminds me of No Man’s Sky”, “it reminds me of cyberpunk”, “it reminds me of Skyrim” The things people liked were things done better in other games, I never heard anyone praise a particular part of the game

"Let's make a space exploration game where it's pointless to explore space." -Todd Howard

All the resources to make any game they wanted, and they made a game about exploring places humans have already been, warping around the galaxy to a distant planet to talk to Sarah and Mike.

"See you in 14 years" really hits home, because the world is severely lacking with anything that approaches Elder Scrolls or Fallout style gameplay and scope.

Everything about Starfield just makes me want a space rpg where we can travel a well-crafted galaxy encountering all kinds of fun and unique aliens (even _as_ aliens) that isn't bogged down by a shallow sense of size and grandeur. Quality over quantity everytime.

You should never feel bored getting from point A to point B in a video game. Fast travel is to cut down on time so you could focus on other aspects of the game you haven't experienced yet. It's not meant as a replacement or the ONLY means of travel!

I've enjoyed these critiques of Starfield more than the actual game

I love how Arlo got a free copy of Starfield and his response was "..Oh well! Better luck next time"

You hit the nail on the head with the writing thing. Current western fantasy has an addiction to gratuitously miserable situations. It's like they can't help themselves.

“I just wanted a fun friend and I couldn’t even find one.” Feels bad man.

I thought I was going crazy because I love Skyrim and Fallout, but I'm struggling to get into Starfield, but Arlo perfectly articulated why the worlds of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout are just so much more interesting.

This game was just everything that drives me crazy about Bethesda games crammed into one. I was bored and annoyed after 8 hours.

For those with sleep issues this is a great game. Puts tou right into sleep. I fell asleep right at the beginning when the quest was mining and blah conversation. Its teuly amazing feat of accomplishment

The point about no aliens is so true. Thats one reason i love mass effect, it also had space politics and tedium but the fact that there were alien races their own history, culture, politics etc and we can have them as companions . That made the game so much interesting and amazing

I really wish they followed No Man's Sky's lead of having both a jump drive & warp drive, where you jump from system to system and then you initiate the warp drive to jump between planets. I feel that would've been more immersive than the fast travel system they have.

I remember getting Oblivion at a local game store without knowing anything about it.....came home and entered a massive world and got lost..... truly an insane experience for the time

I don’t even understand the appeal of huge open world games. Give me a tight, crafted experience every time.

This is one of the most realistic reviews for this game. I wanted to love it so bad. SOOOO bad.

There was a reddit post that really explored how a lot of this game changed during development that arguably made it feel hollow. Here is some text from the post: "I didn't know exactly where to start, but I think it needs to be with Helium-3. There was a very important change to fuel in Starfield that split the version of the game that released, from the alternate universe Starfield it started as. Todd Howard has stated that in earlier iterations of the game, fuel was consumed when you jumped to a system. This was changed and we no longer spend fuel, but fuel still exists in the game as a vestigial system. Technically your overall fuel capacity determines how far you can jump from your current system, but because you don't spend fuel, 1 jump can just be 2 if needed, rendering it pointless. They may as well not have fuel in the game at all, but it used to matter and even though it doesn't now, it's still in the game. Remember the vestigial aspect of this because that will be important. So let's envision how the game would have played if we consumed fuel with jumps. The cities and vendors all exist relatively clumped together on the left side of the Star Map. Jumping around these systems would be relatively easy as the player could simply purchase more Helium-3 from a vendor. However, things change completely as we look to the expanse to our right on the Star Map. A player would be able to jump maybe a few times to the right before needing to refuel and there are no civilizations passed Neon. So how else can we get Helium-3 aside from vendors? Outposts. Outposts in Starfield have been described as pointless. But they're not pointless - they're vestigial. In the original Starfield, players would have HAD to create outposts in order to venture further into the Star Map because they would need to extract Helium. This means that players would also need resources to build these outposts, which would mean spending a lot of time on one planet, killing animals for resources, looting structure POIs, mining, and praising the God Emperor when they came across a proc gen Settler Vendor. In this version of Starfield these POIs become much more important, and players become much more attached to specific planets as they slowly push further to more distant systems, building their outposts along the way. Now we can just fly all around picking and choosing planets and coming and going as we please so none of them really matter. But they used to. What is another system that could be described as pointless? You probably wouldn't disagree if I said Environmental Hazards. Nobody understands them and they don't do much of anything. I would say, based on the previous vestigial systems that still exist in the game, these are also vestigial elements of a game that significantly shifted at some point in development. In this previous version of the game, where we were forced down to planets to build outposts for fuel, I believe Hazards played a larger role in making Starfield the survival game I believe it originally was. We can only speculate on what this looked like, but it's not hard to imagine a Starfield in which players who walk out onto a planet that is 500°C without sufficient heat protection, simply die. Getting an infection may have been a matter of life and death. Players would struggle against the wildlife, pirates, bounty hunters, and the environment itself. Having different suits and protections would be important and potentially would have been roadblocks for players to solve to be able to continue their journey forward. This Starfield would have been slow. Traveling to the furthest reaches of the known systems would have been a challenge. The game was much more survival-oriented, maybe a slog at times, planets, POIs, and outposts would have mattered a lot, and reaching new systems would have given a feeling of accomplishment because of the challenges you overcame to get there. It also could have been tedious, boring, or frustrating. I have no idea. But I do think Starfield was a very different game and when these changes were made it significantly altered the overall experience, and that they were deep enough into development when it happened, that they were unable to fully adapt the game to its new form. The "half-baked" systems had a purpose. Planets feel repetitive and pointless because we're playing in a way that wasn't originally intended - its like we're all playing on "Creative Mode"

the things that could have gone wrong with starfield felt like such obvious worries that i thought there was no way they'd fall into those pits, and then they fell into almost every single one.

The saddest part is that I don't see Bethesda intending to pull a Cyberpunk/No Man Sky stunt with this one.

Before the game came out i was Desperately hoping that starship travel would be a long process that you could do whilst wandering around your ship, upgrading, repairing and interacting with crew whilst random events or sights would happen, alternatively you could simply sleep to speed up the process creating a “fast travel” the current system pulls me out of the game and the loading screens are just painful

I would have been totally fine with like one solar system of interesting planets ...give us like 9-12 fully fleshed out planets for us to explore. most of the temples and ruins and caves we find can have cookie cutter content that is reused here and there but sprinkle in some hand crafted dungeons and locations for us as well....kinda like how skyrim was broken up into different zones that all felt different and had a vibe to them....Starfield missed this big time

Navigating the galaxy in Mass effect had a nice rhythm to it, including exploration. Beyond that, everything tied together as part of the wider experience, whereas Starfield is disjointed, and that's a nightmare in such a big game.

"Way too much work" translation being the Creation Engine even in it's sequel form probably could not handle flying around the planet because of the cell based way they construct environments.

One of the most level-headed Starfield videos out there.

20 hours in I was trying to go to Akila city (a place I had been a dozen times) and realized I didn't know the name of the star system and would have to look it up or check every star system to find it. Making so much of the game fast travel mandatory causes it to loose so much sense of place.

I'm glad you said something about the "all humans are bad" narrative that I see way, way too often these days. It really is such a tired, boring, and soul-killing theme. There's always been a present air of positivity in your vids - I appreciate that.

Hey bro, I spent years as a puppeteer. Great work on your puppeteering skills! You got the lip sync and head movements down. I see so many people with a "detached jaw" or they bite their words or their head is cocked in a weird way. You definitely have some experience. Looks good!

the crimson fleet questline broke my heart, because there was _almost_ something great there. And then like the rest of the game, it was hollow in the end. Made me put it down altogether. Side note, the game is very, very playable while under the influence of mind altering substances. Just, I open the game back up again with no memory of how I got to where I am and trying to remember if space fus-ro-dah was something I dreamed up while high or an actual ability they thought was appropriate to put in the game.

Arlo's got balls of steel for calling out Todd despite them giving him a review copy. You're a real one

I literally fell asleep walking from point A to point B on one planet. The repetition of each planet and cave was torture to me. I didn't finish the game. It felt like a chore to me.

Here's interesting idea for Bethesda : 1. Build high quality small world 2. Expand the world for each Patch / Season Pass 3. Profit, you just made Genshin in Space

I agree. It's painful to admit their beloved devs have changed but at least we have the older games that embody what is so memorable

as I've gotten older and wiser I've started to appreciate that bigger does always not mean better-in fact, it usually doesn't. tightly packed, refined worlds with specific constraints are usually far more enjoyable to explore. I think the reason that stuff like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, FO3, FONV, and FO4 really hit the itch for exploration IS the fact that, while big, they're (compared to Starfield) WAY more dense. It's the reason that indie titles with shoestring budgets but really honed gameplay loops (think your Super Meat Boys, your Ape Outs, your Hollow Knights, your Dredges, FTLs, Gungeons, etc) are so impactful and fun. They don't try to be TOO BIG. They create small worlds and focus on the important part: the gameplay. Prior Beth RPGs really hit the sweet spot of size - they were big enough to give you a sense of wonder, and small enough to make exploration really rewarding. You could just pick a direction, walk 30 seconds, and find something new and exciting. Starfield just doesn't have that.

The travel thing is spot on, if I can step into an elevator and be given a hidden load screen why can’t the warp speed loading screens be from the pilot seat and just be a skybox outside to make it look and feel like I’m traveling same with landing on planets give me a entering the atmosphere burning that blocks my view from the windows while my ship lands

Agree so much on the land exploration. I’ve got two kids and a super busy job! If they had just given me a land vehicle and 12 interesting planets, where, after the kiddos are put to bed, I can turn my brain off and explore…hey….great!

Starfield could have taken a thing or two from Freelancer as for fast travel unlocking warp gates/finding them to travel to new areas.

This review is 100% reflective of everything I think and feel about the game.

Should have limited the game to a solar system with several habitable planets and moons. Then they could actually have you fly around if you want and maybe include some static jump gates or something to unlock or build.

20:09 I would also argue that so many story NPCs and party members are marked as essential. Even so- with a game where it's main facet is centered about "multiverse", it removes the stakes and the desire to do it more than once. Imagine how much more incentivized the player would be if characters could straight up die. How many side quests and storylines would just end, but the devs were crafty and intelligent enough to find a way to direct the players towards the multiverse point so they could go again. Maybe save the npc that died in the last run, and all that stuff. But it's just shallow. You can't even go in water in some city areas. You just walk on top the water. And there are people at bethesda spending their time arguing with and telling players "no you're wrong" instead of working on fixing and making the game enticing and fun. That suggests there's something not right going on in the studio; and that makes me incredibly nervous with how the next elder scrolls game will be.

The real ick for me is Bethseda was trying to do everything. They wanted to keep the space things grounded and somewhat realistic, but then they add space powers. Every uncharted planets there is no sense of danger or crisis that you need to prep for in advance to land safely. The space section imo could had some sort of tow assistance for those chased by pirates or board a ship and find out you have to finish the delivery.

With you on that "tedium can be fun" thing, if a game really immerses me in its world and how it feels then really just about anything it does can be super fun. Shame Starfield is way too big for that

A appreciate how real his reviews feel. He admits to getting a review code, then jumps into what he honestly feels about it. Poirfect!

if you want a space exploration, building, combat point game. that doesnt really have a main quest. its more about journey and making awesome massive bases and ships, with great space and ground combat against massive factions. And dont mind graphics being top of the line; id suggest Empyrion: Galactic Survival It was a game first released in 2016 in Alpha. and has alot of what No Mans Sky is, but with free ship and base building using block systems rather than prefabs. It also has a large steam workshop. And its singleplayer, co-op, or multiplayer. Oh. and where starfield has 'over 1000 planets' Empyrion has over 1000 galaxies. But the first few galaxies are enough tbh.

Kudos to you man you should win an award for this review. This is exactly what the game is and exactly how I felt playing it.

I enjoyed Starfield at the beginning, but over time I realized it really didn't have anything new to offer. Surprisingly, it drove me to give No Man's Sky another try, which ended up being an incredible experience! they've really done some work on it the past few years, it's a whole new experience these days!

Back in the 90s, it was a technical marvel that they were able to procedurally make all of Tamriel walkable in TES Daggerfall. It was one-of-a-kind, and it didn't matter that the landscape was empty and pointless because it was _there._ It was a novelty. In 2023, however, No Man's Sky has been out for 7 years, and has pretty much blown every other attempt at making large-scale procedural universes out of the water (especially when it comes to actually making those procedural worlds... _fun?)_ Starfield wanted to compete with that by doing the same thing Bethesda did back in the 90s: an empty world with sparse content that sounds impressive but isn't very fun to actually play, only this time it's not even that much of a technical achievement because "boring and empty but immense universe" was accomplished by like 11 people in a basement in the UK the better part of a decade ago. It's honestly shocking how much Starfield apes modern No Man's Sky, too. Procedural planets? NMS. Modular base building? NMS. Flying around in space scanning for distress beacons and stuff? NMS. Even the central plot around these anomaly people who were granted power by an unknowable alien god-machine in a previous universe is ripped _straight_ from NMS. Except worse, because at least NMS has interesting, satisfying answers as to what this god-machine actually is and what's really going on. Oh, and also _spectacle?_ Even at launch when NMS was boring, at least going inside an Atlas station and bearing witness to this eldritch apathetic cosmic entity was _memorable_ and _evocative_ and _atmospheric._ Whereas the whole thing in Starfield is just... forgettable. Bethesda really is a different company. _None_ of the originality and creativity that originally created the Elder Scrolls universe is present here anymore.

I love your recommendation for the space travel I was literally in the middle of writing a comment describing that when you started suggesting the warp drive random encounters.

Just one thing. A song for You.: "Be sure its true, when you say, I Love You. Its a sin, to tell, a lie..."

This has been incredibly vindicating for me. I can't believe BGS' epic space adventure main quest was about collecting rocks and evading _not_ aliens.

But Arlo, you have to either love this game unequivocally or despise it with all your strength. Nuance is not allowed.

In my own write up I feel like we landed in the same place a lot of the time. The space stuff just didn't... add much. Spreading the bethesda across a sector of space just really spread the content thing instead of expanding it. You look at previous titles and the content is in the journey. I vividly remember playing fallout 4 without minimal fast travel and I would constantly run into content that I never would have found if I fast traveled around. It made the world feel full of life. Starfield feels like Bilbo. Butter spread over too much bread. 36:10 I 100% felt this. every time I went to pick up the controller again I was like... I don't... really want too.

I love your writing and delivery. This channel is unique and what youtube needs.

I enjoyed the outer worlds more than starfield, in the outer worlds every world you visited had a good size map with a good amount of hand crafted interesting areas.

What they should've done with Starfield is like how the Firefly universe is set up. They are in one solar system that has something like 15 planets and about 100 moons. Then you can do the whole dynamic of having the "outer rim" and the "inner rim" of the solar system and then you also don't have to talk about the "FTL" travel 'cause it's all in the same solar system so people won't question travel times as much.

One of the things I like about Starfield was getting a house and being able to add furniture and stuff to it. But it's not so fun when the next time you load your game your stuff has clipped half way through the floor.

i literally spent all my time - picking up the items off the floor in my ship - that got spat out when I did upgrades. my entire 280 hours was trying to get succulents to stand upright on a side table.

Starfield is just a generation behind the stuff we’re getting this year and it shows. Bethesda needs to rework their game design to match the current state of open world games. In a year that has given us Baldur’s gate 3, TOTK, and Lies of P, Starfield just doesn’t stack up.

I love the example of exploration in ME1. The biggest thing that was lost in ME2 was an understanding of the size of the galaxy. Roaming in planets in ME1 gave the players an understanding of what worlds could exist in the galaxy, Habitable or otherwise. Some were easy to traverse, some were hilariously difficult. Also the Thresher Maw appearing as an invasive species on multiple planets was really interesting for how explorers change worlds in ways they don't intend, which informs intergalactic policies on what worlds can be interacted with.

Two things that would immediately fix the planet surface issues. 1. Cool vehicles that could be customized like your ship. It would cut down on travel time and games where i can drive a goody vehicle and jump around often make me forget about even traveling from point A to B (i.e gta) 2. Larger planet map. Its already randomly loaded with basically nothing on it so it wouldn't (or shouldn't) strain the game much

It would be cool if the game was a set of chapters. Say, 4 planets, and 3 long-lasting travels between them. Think of it like being in a ship and living in it for a while, doing sidequests and mini-events to manage the ship's shields and systems, researching things, etc etc.

I just appreciate having a KZfaqr I love who isn't human like so many others. Thank you Arlo. You work so so hard.

Your statement about quantity over quality made me think of Elden Ring and honestly I think that game straddles the line excellently. The majority of the dungeons are simple but I enjoyed doing all of them way more than I did when attempting to explore planets in Starfield.

Star Ocean does what you mean with the limited planets thing, each game has only a few planets to explore but they´re overflowing with content and fun stories

It's really amazing to me how few people are even aware that space sims exist as a genre, and think things like energy management are from this game, and not from the original X-wing for DOS.

I feel Starfield suffers from scope creep just like the launch of No Man's Sky. It wants to be a space RPG and space and planetary exploration on a thousand planets while dealing with the constraints of the engine.

This game did more to make me want to play Phantom Liberty than CDPRs entire advertising budget.

First time viewer here. Haven't played Starfield yet. Amazing review! Feel like I just listened to a friend describe his experience. Thanks for making this.

If I had a nikel for everytime there was a space game that was massively overhyoed before launch and then massively disappointed, I'd have two nikels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

Had to immediately think of windwaker with the great sea and the many small Islands. Traveling the distants yourself, waiting it out, is a part of Immersion you cannot not have

even daggerfall's procedurally generated dungeons, there was not one like the other, there were some "modules" that were the same, but the overall layout was always different. in starfield i visited outposts on different planets with the same layout and enemy and item container placement. and where daggerfall's approach would be terribly outdated and really not acceptable today, starfield did it even worse somehow.

The problem with Starfield is that it is a Skyrim sized game played on a map that is a million times bigger, and it is spread out in a way that makes it feel small. This game would be so much better if they squeezed it all into a single solar system.

I'm glad I'm not the only person on the planet who likes Starlink *hugs her Startail figurine*

Let this be a lesson to the gaming industry as a whole: bigger isn’t always better.

Not sure if you’ve played Outer Wilds Arlo but that is the space game of my dreams. It’s a relatively small galaxy but with so much depth so you still get the feeling of space exploration and discovery (and even scale without spoiling anything) without the tedium of fast travel or an overwhelmingly large universe to explore.

I'm like a lot of other hardcore BGS fans. I was emphatically in love with this game for the first 100 hours, which that itself is certainly worth the cost of entry. Now that I've crossed beyond 200+ hours, I've grown pretty tired of the loop and have lost interest in most of the game. This is abnormal for me in particular. I played FO4 and Skyrim for 8+ months without hitting this kind of wall. In Skyrim and Fallout, I had played through most of the available quest lines and had 2 or 3 different characters. But with Starfield, the tedium set in much sooner and It became clear to me how much was missing or ripped out to support this vision of 1000+ planets with "unlimited exploration". I didn't feel like a character in a living breathing world - I felt like a small character in a series of even smaller worlds. This game NEEDED some kind of free-form space travel, even if it was boxed in each system. The vision for me didn't land. The existence of this vision took so much away from the overall feel and immersion of the game that it left me feeling a little sad and bitter. All of this isn't even including mixed feelings about the engine itself and how little that seems to have changed from previous games. Hopefully DLC and mods improve on these areas and deliver on the complete experience I thought we'd get from BGS.

Thank you! You've perfectly described my 'meh' feelings toward Starfield. Like you, I also enjoyed my time on the MAKO in ME1, and also obsess over collecting and upgrading stuff. I wish they'd concentrated on maybe 100 planets at the most and given them some individuality.

Listening to Arlo talk about the space stuff I was thinking “y’know Starlink did all this in a cool way” and then boom he mentions Starlink haha

I grew up loving Star Trek and games like Morrowind and Oblivion. The concept of combining "Bethesde-style Exploration" and "Space" should have been everything I ever loved. Instead, it feels like we're getting our first real look at what "Games Made by AI" are going to be like, and it's... not great.

And then... Outer Wilds is an indie game, where exploration and discovering in a planet system, is the core experience. And they nailed the feeling. Bigger doesnt mean better.

I just would like to say that I bought Starlink based on Arlo's recommendation. And it's one of the most played games in my Switch. My 2020 was flying across space.

I'm in the "Really don't like this game at all" group. You hit the nail on the head with the art style being boring and not having aliens. I want my Sci-fi to be fantastical, not "realistic". That's just me though. Really wish there were aliens too....

I didn't realize how much not having gore in Starfield was such a turn off. Being able to lob off body parts and such makes gameplay a lot more fun

I wouldn't call it "tedium" or "fluff", at least not in general: I'd call it "the gameplay loop". Every game has gameplay loops of varying degrees, with the primary gameplay loop being the minute-by-minute activities, like fighting monsters, dodging obstacles, and exploring places. Games have more than one loop- finishing quests, collecting and crafting resources, leveling up, etc. But the primary gameplay loop is most important because its what you spend the majority of the game doing. Loops can be tedious if its too slow or unrewarding or needlessly complicated, but when done right it can be almost addictive (sometimes literally with gambling/skinner box mechanics but that's another story).

Here are my three things that would save Starfield: 1) Modular dungeons. Sure I walked ten minutes to get there, but the fact that "collapsed mine" is identical in every way to the last "collapsed mine" I found is devastating to this game. If each dungeon was constructed on the fly from 128 different types of stairwell/hallway/room/pit instead of 1 premade asset, this game would be worth exploring. 2) Cohabitation. Stand on any mountain top and you will see the computer at work. Landing zone ringed by POIs that are exactly 900m from your ship and 900 meters from each other on a spider's web. That is not real. Humans group together near water or resources. If I land in the middle of nowhere, it should be populated by no one. And when i land at a grand set piece, make it real. 3) Personal Stores. Let me build a store and advertise it to NPCs. Ask yourself, why do industry? Walking up to random NPCs and selling off 23,000 adaptive frames does not make sense. Instead, let me set up trade routes. Let me set up fleets of ships and pay for NPC pilots. Let me create a mercenary force of pirates or of guardians to rob/protect the galaxy. The designers obsessed over "How?" instead of "Why?" and it shows.