With the April 2025 release of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, it feels like the era of Starfield is coming to an end. The latest original IP from Bethesda Game Studios, Starfield, got a considerably more lukewarm response than anyone could have predicted, and, at this point, it feels like Microsoft and Bethesda are trying to brush it under the rug. A rumored Starfield PS5 release was recently reinforced by a trusted insider, but after that, it seems like Bethesda’s premiere space-exploration RPG will end up being grounded.
Starfield would be great if it was a single solar system and they actually designed each planet by hand. Instead of these generated planets all having identical copy pasted abandoned labs and outposts…
The pessimist in me believes that Starfield, and the Oblivion remaster, are testing probes to see how their community/customers will accept big changes to bethesda-style games.
Starfield testing if gamers will accept the abandoning of Bethesda hand crafted worlds with lots of detail and hidden little unmarked interest points, and replacing it with low effort, low cost random generation.
Oblivion Remaster an attempt to test if gamers will accept Bethesda abandoning modding, since Oblivion:Remastered does not support mods (but players/modders still found a way to force them, only because everything but the graphics is still on the old, original engine)
and I think both of these should be ringing major alarmbells for what they are planning with TESVI
edit
and just to clarify. I dont think theres anything wrong with proper use of random generation. Their dungeons are already basically tile sets, Which can be the basis for a great randomly generated dungeon system, That would keep things fresh and new and interesting… especially in Starfield, where there is basically 1 of each type of PoI, and if you’ve explored it once, you’ve explored the entire games worth of content.
Over 6000 hours in Fallout 4.
Less than 300 in Starfield.
I played FO4 today.
I haven’t played Starfield in nearly a year.
Good riddance to Starfield. Fast-track Fallout 5. (I know they won’t.)
In my opinion, I think the best Starfield 2 would be a prequel from the early age of space flight while people were living in space, but still before the invention of the grav drive.
- It should all take place in the Sol System mostly on space stations, asteroid facilities, moon bases, capital ships, ect.
- Be about political factions, corporations, scientists, space criminals, smugglers, raiding pirates, ect.
- Focus on the ship experience including in-system flying, ship/crew management and EVA mechanics. The ship should feel like a working vessel.
- Create a living solar system with both scripted and radiant generated events at scale from player encounters to system wide events based on the current state of the solar system and the players interactions.
- Faction reputation system, with each of the factions controlling “towns” and “settlements” throughout the system.
- Implementation of traditional space game elements such as bulk cargo hauling, blockade running, escort missions, science expeditions, station raids, ect. Previously included mechanics should be revamped to make them more interesting.
- Harsh environments should require different suits and the player should have a special locker on the ship to keep them on board, Upgrading the suit should be part of the core gameplay.
- Streamlined, but present water/food/fuel mechanics, as well as an in-depth wound/injury/medical system.
- A main story about a freelance ship just trying to get by in the solar system. Taking on jobs, contracts, mercenary work. Bringing on a companion means getting their help working around the ship and unlock different stories and quest-lines.
- No galaxy ending event in the main story, instead have a game just about what it’s like to live in the world of Starfield. (although during some very exciting moments.)
I just want to be able to manually fly my ship around everywhere. No cutscenes, disguise planet landings with clouds or something if you have to.
And don’t need POIs evenly spaced out every 2km or so on every planet.
The amount of loading screens to get anywhere was properly annoying compared to previous games.
Which is why once you got to a planet once and unlocked it, you fast traveled everywhere. cause that cut the amount of loading screens by like 80% Which also pretty much eliminated everything space and ship related.
I mean, I understand. I get it. We’re not gonna get wide open planet to space real time transitions and shit, because they are using a game engine that has almost 30 years of institutional inertia behind it. There are just limitations to things that they have to deal with, and from a technical point of view its kinda impressive the shit they continue to kludge into the engine with each game, but it does have its limitations… and I think its long past time for them to figure out a new engine (and I mean new engine, not just rename the current engine again like they did with NetImmerse>Gamebryo, Gamebryo>Creation, Creation>Creation2)… just not UE5, preferably. I would like to get playable framerates without spending 6000 dollars on GPUs, lol.
Yeah I upgraded my 1050ti to get good framerates. I had a lot of fun with Starfield and then took a long break and came back to the story recently. No regrets but it’s not at the level of Oblivion or Skyrim.
