So, Starfield was a disappointment (in my opinion). The story isn't interesting. The lore and world-building do not make sense. The game mechanics do not mesh together. (And it doesn't run well on the Steam Deck.)

But the promise of Starfield? The big space game? The big space RPG where you can play as Captain Reynolds type character? That's something I can get behind. I want to traverse space, visit different planets, get lost, meet interesting characters, solve their problems, and shoot some stuff. Two games come to my mind when I think of this:

No Man's Sky
Mass Effect

I've only played a few hours of No Man's Sky, but I think it does space traversal well. To put it bluntly, flying from planet to planet without interruption is better than fast travel. But the gameplay loop did not

Mass Effect nails the space adventure side of things. You visit multiple interesting places, you meet different people with curious problems, and you solve these problems (mainly by shooting). But it's a typical Bioware game: The places you visit are small and confined, and there are (comparatively) few of them. The space traversal is done by clicking a few buttons in a menu.

My question is: Are there any “big space games”? Are there any games that deliver on the promise of Starfield? What are your favourite sci-fi RPGs?

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[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Sometime in 3025.

[–] evujumenuk@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

When Squadron 42 finally comes out, it'll just be considered commentary on contemporary issues. Basically like Job Simulator… in space

[–] Skipcast@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

2026 i think they've announced somewhat recently, we'll see if it actually holds though

[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm old enough to remember the Kickstarter campaign. I lost track of how many release dates flew by since then.

[–] Skipcast@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Yeah they gave up announcing new release dates for it like half a decade ago if not longer lmao, but now they've started again. Hopefully it's true this time.

[–] leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well, they recently showed over an hour of supposedly live gameplay (obviously somewhat spoilery for the start of the game), so there's some hope at least...

Of course, it remains to be seen how much more of the story is finished to the same extent, and at what point will it be consistently playable on contemporary hardware (I haven't played Star Citizen in a long while, so I'm not sure what state it's in, and I don't know if Squadron 42, being a single player game, will be as susceptible to server issues, or if it'll even need servers), but it gives a good idea of the state of the main game features and how it's intended to feel.

[–] CrowAirbrush@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I bought myself into sf before you got a hangar, i only had that one person race ship and after a while they added a hangar where you could spawn and walk around it.

After a while i noticed loads of reviews so i tried playing it, but always ran into issues making it unplayable. So i got really fed up with it for a while.

Then a couple years later i could actually run it with some issues, ended up buying a better ship and i'm now basically waiting for it to release and computer parts to be affordable once again.

I would love for star citizen to be my jam, but i doubt i'll ever be able to put enough time into it. The most i ever managed to do consistently was diablo 4 season 1 to 3 before i dropped it completely.