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Bethesda On Starfield's Big, Empty Planets: Not Every Location "Is Supposed To Be Disney World"

Turns out that a big, empty planet is the perfect environment in which you can contemplate your insignificance in a cold and uncaring universe.

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gamespot.com
Jin_Sakai10d ago (Edited 10d ago )

Because everyone wants a barren wasteland with a 1km barrier when exploring a planet.

Let’s see…

You can’t continuously walk the circumference of a planet: you'll hit a boundary eventually

You can’t fly your ship anywhere on a planet: Landing and taking off are purely cutscenes, and there's no way to fly to a different region without returning to orbit first

You can’t run out of oxygen: You have an oxygen meter, but it's not real. "Oxygen" is just Endurance from Skyrim and Fallout 4. A sprint meter, essentially.

You can’t fly to every planet: Saturn for example, you can’t land and you must fly for hours to get closer in which eventually you’ll just clip through the planet as It’s basically a giant prop.

lelo2play10d ago (Edited 10d ago )

Absolutely! When the human race reached the Moon, it was filled with Disney parks and attractions.
When they reach Mars, it will be filled with 7 Star Hotels, 20 Eiffel Towers, 15 Big Ben's, and so on...

Both the Moon and Mars are lovely places to live.

Jin_Sakai10d ago (Edited 10d ago )

Because in real life humans land on a planet with a cutscene and can only explore a 1km barrier.

Obviously he’s figuratively speaking when referring to Disney Land…🙄

lelo2play10d ago (Edited 10d ago )

@Jin_Sakai

Starfield is a game that's suppose to imitate real life, you explore... Lets say in the future you can take a ship and start visiting several unexplored planets. Not taking into account things like gravity, high/low temperatures, breathable air, etc, most of the planets you visit would be uninteresting, barren wolds.
There are other games out there where you can visit many worlds, each filled with lively colors, beautiful landscapes, lots of animals, and so many other things. Starfield isn't that game.

As for invisible walls, it's unfortunate, but like or not most games have invisible walls. Starfield is not the first game with invisible walls, and won't be the last. Played Baldur's Gate 3 last month, it had invisible walls. Played Uncharted 4 PC few months ago, it had invisible walls.

Palitera10d ago (Edited 10d ago )

Wouldn't it be easier to just admit already that they made empty worlds just for marketing's sake, to fool idiots?

"MORE THAN ONE THOUSAND PLANETS TO EXPLORE!!!"

Not only you fell for it, you are fighting for it lol

neutralgamer199210d ago

Let’s be real here we play games to get away from reality. So yes give me less planets but all fully exportable and full of interesting content

lelo2play10d ago (Edited 10d ago )

@Jin_Sakai
Bethesda have been saying for ages that most planets from the game were barren and empty. You could visit the planets, but likely find nothing of interest there. If idiots weren't paying attention to Bethesda's words, then it's their own fault for believing something diferent.
Starfield is an RPG with some exploration elements, among other things. If you wanted Starfield to be essentially about exploration, you have the wrong game. So the question is... were you paying attention?

toutmanifik10d ago

That's real life though. Starfield is a game so I would like to have a little fun with my $70 purchase. Speaking only on the topic of exploration in Starfield.

10d ago
raWfodog10d ago

“Played Baldur's Gate 3 last month, it had invisible walls. Played Uncharted 4 PC few months ago, it had invisible walls.”

BG3 and Uncharted 4 devs never intimated that exploration was free roam. Todd Howard’s opening statement in the Starfield Direct suggested exactly that.

lelo2play9d ago (Edited 9d ago )

@mrxo

When someone like you relies on name calling to make a point, just shows off your ignorance, immaturity and lack of intelligence.

Binarycode9d ago

Nobody has reached the moon, other then rovers. Nobody has ever left LEO.

Rocketisleague9d ago

You know how other games handle this? You can fly around the planet and spot 'interesting points' and then land there, or else don't land. Its up to you. Its part of the mystery and exploration to be engaged in the seemlessness. What's it called...immersion? Something bethesda tossed away a long time ago

SyntheticForm9d ago

To be fair, no location should be Disney.

iEatNapkinz9d ago (Edited 9d ago )

I think the point is that the game isn't a real life sinulator. It's a fantasy/sci-fi game that could have been more imaginative with its planets, landscapes, and lore behind those properties

It's definitely not a bad game but it's 100% underwhelming from expectations

+ Show (11) more repliesLast reply 9d ago
Outside_ofthe_Box10d ago

"You can’t fly to every planet: Saturn for example, you can’t land and you must fly for hours to get closer in which eventually you’ll just clip through the planet as It’s basically a giant prop."

Isn't Saturn just a planet made of gas? So I don't think it has an actual surface you can land on and big gas planets like like that usually crushes whatever ever object penetrates the atmosphere because of the insane pressure.

Jin_Sakai10d ago (Edited 10d ago )

It is but that fact that it’s just a prop you can clip through and not even 3d rendered is ridiculous.

DOMination-9d ago

I've not played it so I am basing this purely on what you've said - it sounds like it wasn't really intended that the players would visit Saturn so I can understand that decision. Having said that, our you'd think the planets in Sol would have had more effort put into them.

jwillj2k49d ago

Not my words but I agree “Don’t talk science landing on gas planets but be okay with your character becoming super human with space magic.”

Nothing in this game is possible it’s all fake we can’t make spaceships, we can’t fly to other planets, we don’t have these make believe guns and suits. It’s a game you should be able to land on ALL types of planets if you have the right ‘make believe’ equipment. Stop being a hypocrite.

VariantAEC6d ago

@Jin_Sakai
Apparently it is a 3D object with a low resolution image plastered on top of it. Nothing remotely difficult to render at all especially on Xbox Series PS5 consoles and modern PCs.

+ Show (1) more replyLast reply 6d ago
Bobertt10d ago (Edited 10d ago )

The uproar about the barrier is dumb. I have played it and the area you can walk in is huge i wasted hours exploring it without hitting the boundary. You can easily return to your ship and just fly to another spot on the planet to walk past the boundary. Who cares if you can't walk across an entire planet in one shot you can still explore the entire planet and logically it wouldn't make sense to walk to the other side of a planet and leave your ship behind.

I do agree it sucks you can't fly on the planet but i never expected that from the marketing. I do wish there were vehicles like Mass Effect but i figure that was more for balancing as it's still a Bethesda game at it's core and they probably want you to fight the enemies and not use a vehicle to run them over. Like in Mass effect there was no reason to get out of the vehicle unless it was to pick up an item or enter a building since you could easily kill everyone outside.

I also agree the Oxygen meter is mislabeled but why would we want an actual oxygen tank meter in a game like this? You complain about not being able to walk the entire planet in one go but if they used an actual Oxygen meter you would constantly have to return to the ship to refill the tanks anyway.

As for Saturn it's a gas planet there is literally no solid matter there that's why you can't fly there. I am still early on but as far as i know only it's only the gas planets you can't fly to because that makes sense.

If i had to make some complaints about Starfield it would be about the broken HDR. The way the game doesn't explain or tell you about a lot of abilities/features like the location of the storage on your ship or how you can charge the cutter to do more damage or mine metals way faster. Hell it didn't even tell me i had a scanner i walked around for a long time on Kreet looking for the location for my quest before i clicked the scanner button by accident and found it showed a route to the quest, could highlight items, reveal unknown markers, and fast travel.

MrNinosan10d ago

No, you can't explore the full planets. You can explore some zones of a planet.
In No Man Sky, you can explore full planets.

Instead of making a very cool looking Starmap, they could've had a list:

Galaxy A:
Planet A:
Location A, B, C

Planet B:
Location A, B, C

Etc, because that's how limited the exploration is.

Notellin10d ago ShowReplies(2)
porkChop9d ago

It's genuinely hard to take your criticisms seriously when you complain about not being able to land on Saturn, a planet made of gas. From what I understand the only planets you can't land on are exactly that, gas giants. Which makes sense.

+ Show (4) more repliesLast reply 6d ago
Magatsuhi10d ago

So why bother making it then? Seems like it's just a ploy to be able to say big worlds

CobraKai10d ago (Edited 10d ago )

That’s actually good. Kinda gives that feeling of discovery.

VersusDMC10d ago

I like how Forespoken (and other games) got spam comments about having an empty world even though it was explained in the game.

But for Starfield it is justified because it's in space?

I guess i shouldn't be surprised about hypocrisy here...it all depends on what system it's on here.

ravens5210d ago

Funny thing is Forspoken world wasn't empty lol. 🤷🏾 There was an agenda with that game.

darksky9d ago

I played Forspoken recently and it's a decent game.

CS79d ago

Lol. Agenda?

Where was this agenda for FF XVI, God of War, deathloop, returnal, R&C, Horizon, Miles morales, TLOU2, FFVII remake, GOT.

You guys really need to get a grip.

OptimusDK9d ago

This willl be a modding heaven gooing forward - and everybody said it was pure stupid to have 1000 planets - but the game is bigger than any bethesda game anyway in regard to the handcrafted planets - the rest is just extra and somthing that can be eveolved over time.

But hey i guess when you can not have something it has to be shit on. As for Forespoken is was a bad game pure and simple and the empty part was not the reason.

rippermcrip10d ago

No Man's Sky got absolutely destroyed their false promises. A team of 17 people.

Bethesda gets a pass though apparently.

JEECE9d ago

Even at launch NMS has much more advanced flying mechanics than Starfield, and obviously that game has improved leaps and bounds since then. I already prefer Starfield's on foot segments though.

badz1499d ago

And Starfield even has the team at DF supporting it! 30fps, all the loadings, lots of broken promises and all...

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