this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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I thought the main quest lines were pretty great.
All the side content is pretty bland though.
The loading screens aren't bad if you're properly using fast travel.
The loading screens are atrocious even for a Bethesda game. Walk up a ladder, loading screen, open a door, loading screen, dock with another ship, loading screen, travel to another planet in the same system, loading screen, land on a planet that's already loaded, loading screen, exit the ship, loading screen. Maybe it's different on PC, but I'm playing on a series S that has pretty fast read/write speeds and that's just absurd. Pretty sure if my character could use the toilet there would be a loading screen for the bathroom.
You don't need to do all that stuff though. Use your missions tab and the map to travel directly where you need to go.
It's a massive open world game, there are going to be loading screens. But you can limit them by fast traveling directly.
So your suggestion is to not play the open-world part of the open-world game?
It's still open world in the sense that there are plenty of places you can go to and in any order without being gated through a linear story line.
Even if you were to ignore my advice, it wouldn't be any more open world because travelling between these areas is always gated by loading screens.
My suggestion is merely to reduce the amount of loading screens between zones.
Instead of leaving constellation, loading Jameisom, getting on the train, loading the shipyard, entering your ship, loading the ship interior, taking off, loading space, going to your map, selecting warp to sol, loading sol, selecting a landing site on Cydonia, loading your ship interior on cydonia, leaving your ship, and loading cydonia.
I'm suggesting you fast travel straight from the lodge to cydonia. Cutting 7 loading screens down to 1.
Of course, I also recommend that you take time to explore the areas you're in.
You're right that the loading screens can be minimized with fast travel, but also, some of the best parts of a game like this is the immersion, which doesn't really work well with loading directly from point to point on your to-do list. I think Starfield is fine, tbh, but I do agree that the amount of loading screens is excessive. Games like NMS and Elite Dangerous have been doing seamless space travel for a long time now. There's really no excuse.
The excuse is the engine they refuse to let die. It's not a good excuse, but that's a lot of the trademark Bethesda wonk.
Yeah, that tracks. I get that as a company, they're gonna wring every resource dry before ponying up the money to redevelop, but that engine's been showing its age for a while now, and Starfield is a great concept that deserved better.
I get what you're saying, but eliminating loading screens in a game like this just isn't feasible.
NMS or Elite Dangerous style space travel might be, but then it would have a similarly cartoonist reduced scale. I wouldn't mind that personally, but I get why they didn't do it.
My primary complaint is that the cities themselves are split up into multiple zones. If Skyrim can be entirely open, so to should Jameison.
I'm not saying they need to eliminate them entirely, just agreeing that there are way too many, and "fast travel to the plot" isn't a reasonable solution in a game like this. I do think (mostly) seamless space travel would go a very long way to helping the overall experience.