Starfield’s art direction is painfully boring. I’ve ben watching friends play. It looks like a totally soulless, characterless distillation of every forgettable science fiction movie in the last 30 years. It sure does look NASA, and NASA doesn’t have an artistic vision, they just slap shit together in whatever way won’t explode. The menus, the costumes, the weapons, even the planets, just look painfully generic. Like congrats, Todd, you successfully executed the NASA part alright. There’s no way you could have made more intensely bland, vague, inoffensive rendition of space. There’s no “punk” anywhere to be seen, though.
: p
I can’t believe they made this shit instead of TES Six. It’s like every 2010s space show that got cancelled half way through the first season.
I want to point out that you can totally do space race aesthetics, and all the rich 1960s culture associated with it, and make it look awesome. Arkane did it with Prey in 2017 and made it interesting by layering slick corporate facades over clunky 1960s space station guts and then slathering on the lore nice and thick with a trowel. They even made the rocket and retro-future tech in Deathloop look way more interesting than Bethesda’s done here.
I find it absolutely awesome, the game has the same “just one more quick adventure… oops 5 hours have passed” effect as TES games, but in space. I think I’ve also spent 3-4h in the ship editor at this point.
I’m probably a very boring person
It’ll happen. There have always been a ton of Commie and Anarchist mods for Beth games.
I’m honestly suprised there is no overt cosmonaut art present in the game or even a “evil” russian faction or whatever, just a weird cult so far and “scavengers” (i.e. disenfranchised people scavenging on the remnants of corporate space to survive capitalist space hell )
Hey, I’m glad you’re enjoying it. If you’re having fun with the game that’s awesome. My objections are purely my own. Post some pictures of your ship, show off your ride!
Behold, the result of 4 hours of careful ship design: https://imgur.com/a/ZbfD8tN
I’m enjoying it a ton too. It’s what I wanted no man’s sky to be. Feels good to finally have a space sandbox to play in.
I have, about a year or so ago. Did the capital ship stuff. I played it at release too for a while. I’ve been to who knows how many planets, over 50 for sure. Made some bases. Everything looks like butt and I just don’t really feel like I’m exploring anything. It’s just not for me.
weird, i got to the “how to control ship” tutorial and turned it off because i couldn’t make myself care.
I’m seeing a lot of people saying that it gets better 10-12 hours in once you get an understanding of some of the systems and learn how the game works, but that’s a lot of time investment to figure out if you actually enjoy something.
give me sovietwave or im just going to be a pirate that kills everyone
Yesterday a friend was streaming the game in our discord.
Dear lord, it felt so dull. We came to the conclusion that the ambiance and art direction, that made the mid Skyrim so awesome, wasn’t there.
The Nasa style is just so boring. Is like an hospital, where everything is clean, white and monotonous. There is a word for it, but I don’t remember it.
Is just Capitalist Realism in space.
Is not for me, but I’am glad other comrades are enjoying it. Also, I liked the customization.
Same
That’s one of the reasons why I like classic Trek. As a kid, watching a tv series that showed a better world, was really cool. Now “there is no escape” of the bleak capitalist future in media. Well, at least in the mainstream.
It’s one of the things I really like about Eclipse Phase. There’s a bleak hyper-capitalist future happening inside the orbit of the asteroid belt, but beyond the belt are countless small, loosely aligned pro-social socialist and anarchist habitats and communities. One of hte big setting conflicts is the post-capitalist hypercorps trying to use IP and DRM to prevent people from taking full advantage of the nanofabricators that can just build anything if you have schematics, while hackers and anarchists and information wants to be free people are trying to break the DRM to give people the ability to make whatever they need whenever they need it. It says "Yeah, a better future is possible, but you’re going to have to fight for it.
it also normalized the idea of “space exploration is about doing a capitalism” for way too many people.
Which is hilarious, because exploring space is probably one of the worst ROI things that there is, next to trying to economically exploit the lowest depths of the ocean floor.
Further Slander - It’s the Corporate Memphis of Space Operas.
I just can’t get over how bland it looks. There’s nothing you could take a screenshot of that would be recognizable as Starfield. The rovers, the landscapes, the space suits? They could be from Interstellar, they could be from 2001, they could be from dozens of low budget space simulators or tv-shows or tech demos. And space is just bland, too.
TES and Fallout were janky messes, but at least they looked like something.
I was just looking at the New Atlantis “skyline” being like “This looks like dogshit
TES and Fallout were janky messes, but at least they looked like something
Most of the settlements in Oblivion and Skyrim look like generic medieval European town/city #8491 and any of the leather/iron/steel armor sets also look pretty generic.
I thin Bethesda just hasn’t really gone anything super interesting since Morowind.
