I was once talking to a friend about this funny feeling I get when playing certain games. There's this very, very specific flutter in my stomach I get when a game world opens into an expanse full of possibility. Leaving the vault in
Fallout 3, looking out at the distant mountains for the first time in
Skyrim, all that. I realized later the only time I got the same feeling outside of games was when I entertained some kind of idea that I sensed had the potential to branch off. The feeling was possibility itself, manifesting in my gut. There's nothing like it, and I never confuse it with anything else. It is a completely unique sensation that I get any time my brain is flooded with things that might happen.
I told him I got the feeling any time I was cresting a hill and about to find out what was on the other side.
Yes, this is about
Starfield.
I'm about nine hours in, and those nine hours have come over maybe 24 hours.
So far, it's not great. It's not bad either. It's incomplete, the grade. It's too early, and I'd say that regardless, but I'm saying it more definitively because I've heard from several others that it takes at least this long to really get going. I had this with the last two Zelda games, too, where it's exciting at first, then frustrating, but then becomes a lot of fun the moment you get
just comfortable enough to start making meaningful choices, and just familiar enough with things to exploit your successes. Once you have that feedback loop of effort -> success -> results, you can have a good time, but before that point things can feel clunky.
I strongly suspect, however, that even when I reach that point, some of the little things in the game will feel clunky still. There's way too much clicking between menus to jump through systems, find things in your inventory, etc. Thankfully this kind of thing is easily fixed, particularly with mods (before long, nothing this early though), but the game's doing so much sometimes that I wonder if it ever had the potential to make any of these processes feel smooth.
It feels far less streamlined than Fallout or Skyrim, which I guess makes sense. It's a totally new IP, with some new systems, and it's trying to do a bunch of things at once. There's potential for sequels to be something really special. There's still potential for
this to be really special. But in the early going, it does feel like they needed all the time they had just to get the basic experience stood up, without sanding down those edges.
They did, however, seemingly fulfill their promises about bugs. Having very few issues. I think maybe that was a decision: release a game with far fewer bugs than their previous efforts, even if it's at the expense of the various systems interacting in clunky ways. I'm okay with that for a first swing at a new experience.
All that said, it's still starting to scratch that open world itch, albeit slowly. I expect I'll get pretty hooked on it over the next dozen hours or so, as is usually the case, when I hit that sweet spot where the systems and controls have become second nature, and the loop is looping, but I haven't yet exploited it to make anything feel too easy. I'll post again when that happens (or if it doesn't).
Oh, and the music is great, and the story seems like strong so far. Great voice acting, too.
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