What I Played Today: September 6

Starfield came out today, and I still have a GamePass subscription, so sure, why not, I’ll try it, and it’s actually a bit of fun! It’s definitely a Bethesda game, with its clanky combat, the weird thing where every conversation involves eye contact (it even cuts to staring down someone else if they have something to contribute to the conversation, it’s disconcerting), a lot of fiddlely little systems, and just a general feeling of jankiness, but it’s still a bit fun!

I am liking it, although I forget how sparse all of the worlds feel when there have been so many tighter immersion sim games before. The characters are shallowly written, and there’s only so many people to talk to and places to go that the capital city of a systems-spanning government feels like a barely-populated village. I don’t know, it works in an apocalyptic wasteland or a frozen wilderness, but an entire galaxy? Boy oh boy, maybe they should have made a wartorn society? But I get why they wanted to do something different, they just didn’t make the world feel real enough. Apparently there’s an entire cyberpunk planet, I wonder how that place is going to feel?

I also feel bad about deviating from the main quest, because everything feels kinda urgent? People keep going missing and getting kidnapped? Or they are patiently waiting for me to go on an expedition with them? These people seem nice, I don’t want to disappoint them because I want to spend an hour dicking around figuring out how surveying works.