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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[–] verdigris@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 days ago

The E:D devs shit in every existing player's mouth when the first paid expansion dropped, and they've never fixed their abusive pricing model. You're actively punished for being a legacy user.

I probably would have bitten the bullet and kept playing if the game wasn't incredibly shallow, though. Somehow it manages to still be that way after several content expansions... Everything is a novelty that gets repetitive the second time you do it, and the variance between systems is frankly embarrassing. PvP is the only facet that has any real replay value, and I'd rather dogfight in Star Citizen.