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?
Haven’t seen anyone mention Starpoint Gemini. Warlords was probably the best iteration. Kinda like Eve but single player and a half way decent story.
These are the ones I’ve played over the years. Hope I’m not missing anything:
Elite Dangerous - Highly reccomend this, it’s basically a huge sandbox, with full size galaxy, “real” star distances and orbits, excellent flight model. It also has the most awesome community around it. Downsides are that while it has lore and ongoing background story, there’s no quest, no interesting characters, no rpg elements. Also there’s quite a learning curve, and quite a grind (albeit maneageable these days). There’s also a new colonization feature in the works that will involve a lot of comunity effort. If you do decide to play it, join a group, a squad, or just buzz me so I can add you here and there. Friends make the game sooo much better.
Everspace 2 - This may be what you’re looking for, as it has story, good gameplay, arcadey flight model and lots of rpg elements. Overall a great game. Only problem with it is that it’s not particularly large. Its universe is far smaller than starfield’s.
NMS - Another one with an immense galaxy. This one has a storyline, but not a lot of rpg elements. A lot of it is procedural and after a while feels very samey and shallow. It does have crossplay and a great community as well.
X4 - Not especially large, but great single player game, with a universe that feels lived in. Also no rpg and I hear the endgame gets a bit managery.
Spacebourne - Haven’t played it long but iy gas good potential. There’s a bunch of systems, there’s quests, reminds me a bit of freelancer. The downside is that there’s a single dev, so development is slow and there’s a fair amount of jank.
Edit:
ME - I feel it is still king of story driven spage-rpg even after all these years. Maybe give Andromeda a try? The story is meh, but it has great gameplay, and far fewer bugs.
I always felt Andromeda got a bad rap. It’s not a great game. It’s not on par with mass effect. But it’s fine, I had fun. I never felt like it was a waste of money. Not a masterpiece, but I enjoyed it
Yeah. It had a bad launch. I wish we had gotten the expansion about the Quarian ark.
Definitely, instead we only got a kinda crappy book
There’s always Star Citizen… :)
Okay but really I agree that Starfield is a mess. The thing is, nobody else has really delivered on the whole package yet. Ground and space combat, trading, and a narrative.
Mass effect and Freelancer gave two different sides of the coin and I think they’re the next closest.
Throwing Elite Dangerous in there as well. The learning curve is steep, and story is not driven by anything but you. But oh my god does it satisfy that “fuuuuck space is so big” feeling. The one thing that was fun in Starfield was the gunplay, which is the only thing missing in vanilla Elite, but they have an expansion that adds that. I haven’t played Odyssey, but supposedly it has gotten much better over the years.
I have Elite Dangerous on Steam. I have 8 hours of playtime. Alas, without a story to hook me in, space trucking is not for me. :(
Adding to the other comment, I feel like you can get a taste for all that by visiting the game’s subreddit. Seeing all the cool things people do and how the community moves the story forward really motivates me to play the game. I guess you could also watch a youtube video to get up to date on the story and different ways to play the game.
It is a great game but you really do need to look stuff up to fully enjoy it, unfortunately. Also, space trucking is only one way to play it.
You have to read the news in game. There is an evolving story line about the thargoids invading known space. There are new colonies that are being formed hundreds of light years from known space that need protection and supplies. There are communities like the fuel rats that are constantly coming to the rescue of stranded explorers. It’s a really big, open, beautiful galaxy that has a lot going on. It’s a shame it always gets overlooked because you have to search the story out instead of it being served to you on a platter by npc and cutscenes. Don’t get me wrong, I looooove a good story driven game. Elite is probably, in my little opinion, the best execution of a true open world game. You just have to really search for the story, and I can see how that could be a barrier for entry for a lot of people.
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.
I too wish for a game like this but apparently it’s impossible to do it, either due to lack of vision, budget or expertise (or all of the above). Starfield sounded perfect on paper and it was a good studio to attempt it but in the end it was just a bland, soulless, boring mess of a game.
As for my suggestions, I just got smaller games, not larger ,and in that vein honestly: FTL. It’s a 2d sprite roguelike and yet it’s the best game at giving me the feeling of being a scrappy starship captain on the run, trying to scrounge together resources in order to complete my trip despite overwhelming odds.
The second closest game is Starbound but your mileage will vary, it feels unfinished and there is no real story to speak off, although the ship you continually improve and build in over time as you explore the universe does start to feel cozy and homely. It is also basically a worse Terraria in space so if you don’t like gameplay like that, skip.
If you like Mass Effect you ought to try KOTOR1 and 2, oldies but goldies, but they do have the same weaknesses you already outlined for ME, it’s very much a set story.
Faster Than Light’s my jam! For me, it was dethroned from the throne of roguelite games by Slay the Spire.
Starbound was the first and last game I pre-ordered. I wish they would have stuck to the original vision with the survival mechanics. Thinking about it, Starbound is basically a proto-Starfield. The both promised an experience based on a different game (Terraria in space vs. Skyrim in space) that was undercut by the overuse of procedural generation. (Someone please create an 8 hour video essay about this.)
Go check out the multiverse mod for FTL. It added a ton of variety and content and put FTL straight back into the top spot for me.
Yep, there are definitely many comparisons between Starbound and Starfield, it is why I was excited about SF in the first place - it looked like a big budget SB made by an experienced veteran team! The joke’s on me I guess lol
In a similar vein, if you want to try something new check out starsector. You have to get it from their website currently but it’s a great game, lots of potential, lots of mods.
You can try to revive the sector, build your own mega corp, become a pirate, be a slaver, be an anti-slaver, gun running.
No FPS parts though
I’ve heard of it and tried to get into it a few times but I think I just lack the time/patience of my youth to get into something like that anymore, its a steep learning curve and you have to make most of the fun yourself / RP.
The Outer Worlds is pretty much what Starfield could and should have been and was made by Obsidian, the developers behind a ton of other great games such as (in chronological order, with the best of all games ever bolded)
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2
- Neverwinter Nights 2
- Fallout New Vegas
- Pillars of Eternity
- Tyranny
- Pillars of Eternity 2
There’s even a sequel to it coming out some time this year so you don’t run as much of a risk of running out of game any time soon!
Starfield was much better than Outer Worlds IMO. I enjoyed my time with Starfield, it’s not perfect of course. I’ve tried to get through Outer Worlds three times but it’s just not fun, I also strongly dislike New Vegas. Just ok writing doesn’t make up for shitty gameplay.
Hm. In my opinion Outer Worlds was just as boring and mediocre as starfield.
Thank you! Felt like I was I playing a different game than everyone else.
Everyone mocked Starfield’s Neon for being Discount Cyberpunk. But at least they played it as straight as they could. Like, I could believe people live there and had a life.
It felt like Outer Worlds kept trying to make jokes about how cruel capitalism is versus tell a real story. Like, “Oh boy time to go increase shareholder value!” Or “I love Space nuts. I have to say that or I die.” Like wtf, where’s the subtlety?
It’s not Borderlands 3 bad, no where near it. But it’s pretty bad.
You aren’t wrong, but it’s better than starfield.
Hard disagree. They’re both equally boring as shit, but Starfield at least had decent ship flying/building mechanics. What did outer worlds have? Nothing.
world building that makes sense
It did? Outer Worlds was just an over-exaggerated parody of capitalism, Starfield at least had some somewhat-believable world building in terms of how the tech progressed, how/why did humans start to live among the stars, conflict between different religions or factions, the xenomorph threat…
Like I’m not saying any of these were done well, but it did have decent worldbuilding and some neat ideas, it was just the execution that sucked. OW might have some better parts than SF, like companion writing (although it was pretty cliched and cheesy there too) so I’m really surprised you use world building as your example lol
I’d agree that most of the world building in SF was better, but the unity just destroyed everything. It made it so everything you did, did not matter.
im just salty about starfields world building shouldve chosen different example
OWs world building was fine. nothing special, just fine. there were stupid things but they were either a joke or there to back up a point (“we moved this dangerous animal to this planet to make a deodorant and now its killing us” 👈 this shit is supposed to be funny and anti corporation. does it work? dunno, its stupid, might be funny to someone, its fine, little cringe )
starfields world building just grinds my gears. when there are stupid things, they are there because someone at bethesda thinks its coool as heck or didnt think it through. fucking space cowbois. fucking colony war. why add mechs into your world and ban them? why artificially limit the number of star systems the nations can control?
tldr - both are shit but starfields worse
Yeah I played it halfway and it didn’t grip me like New Vegas and KOTOR2 did. The story just seemed pretty convoluted and meandering.
Gameplay was about as fun as NV though!
It’s not the be~st choice, it’s spacer’s choice!
I’d say it was a solid 7/10. One of the DLCs (Peril on Gorgon I think) is better than the base game, I’ve heard.
On a good day, Starfield’s a 5/10 in my eyes.
Totally agree the dlc really made it one if those “it gets good after x hours” sorta things; All different vibes for the dlcs too. The raider one was lonely but it felt like it was supposed to be.
In this genre of “big space games”, The Outer Worlds stands near to Mass effect, because it follows “the Bioware formula” pretty closely: The player and a group of followers visit several semi-open worlds, where they look for a MacGuffin related to the main story while solving local problems. (I’ll write a short essay about the Bioware formula someday…)
The Outer Worlds was a good game (not great) and I look forward to the sequel. I’ve played most Obsidian games and I wish they wrote more sci-fi.
I enjoyed Starfield, but it wasn’t anywhere near good enough to put the same hours into it as most Bethesda games. It had such potential, but they dropped the ball.
I vote for Elite Dangerous…
It’s 10,000 miles wide and an inch deep, but that’s still a lot of water.
Glad you acknowledge the major problem. I found that once you realize how little there actually is to do in every system, and how similar it all feels, the illusion is destroyed and there’s very little besides PvP that’s still interesting. If they could somehow roll in some of the bigger systems from EVE Online that would be sick, but the expansions have shown that mostly what they care about is having an easily maintainable product, not an exciting one.
Not really what is looked for here in most ways, but there’s Parkan.
I have little to say other than it exists.
Star Citizen is the only modern game that I’ve got any hope for. It’s still years from being a proper game, but in the meantime you can have a surprising amount of fun in the persistent universe, assuming you can run it at acceptable framerates.
It gets a ton of hate, which I think is pretty unjustified given that it’s the single most ambitious gaming project ever, and the progress they’ve made with in-house tools is frankly amazing. Just don’t go dropping hundreds on ships and you won’t have anything to regret.
mmmmmmmn
Delicious copium.
Store Citizen
Lol
Classic no-thought throwaway line that dismisses the massive accomplishments already made. Literally, you can go play the game right now and it’s better than Elite Dangerous, for a lower price.
Feel free to stop by the store and purchase a thought out response for only $420.69, and it might be released in a few years.
I believed in Chris Roberts because of Freelancer and backed it on Kickstarter, and have watched from the shadows as the story has unfolded. I occasionally dipped my toes in to see how it was coming along, but the performance was awful on midline hardware so I put it back down and waited. Now that the turmoil at the top has come out and people are leaving, I don’t hold much hope for the future of the game.
I think the reason it gets a ton of hate is that Roberts had gone and proven that Microsoft were absolutely right to take Freelancer away from him so it could get finished. They weren’t shackling a maverick genius, they were mitigating losses from his poor leadership.
Maybe check out Starsector by https://fractalsoftworks.com/. It’s written in Java so it runs on basically anything, and it’s 2d top-down but the detail on the ships is great. I love this game very much because it scratches most of the itches I was hoping for from Star Citizen.
I know there has been some controversy around it, but Star Wars Outlaws might be worth a look.
It’s not.
Why not? Seems like a fun adventuring game that lets you travel from planet to planet solving problems/doing tasks for people. Seems similar to what the OP is looking for.
It’s not fun and the writing is bad.
Fun and bad writing are subjective. Would you care to be more specific on why it’s not good?
Not really, there’s plenty of reviews out there. I just don’t think that someone who found Starfiield to be mid will find Outlaws any better.
Duskers. A game that seems to be inspired heavily by the aesthetics of the first Alien movie. Instead of one terrifying xenomorph, there are four (?) different kinds all working independently to exterminate humanity. You’re at the point in the story where they’ve basically succeeded, and you’re trying to figure out what the heck happened. You get to do some basic scripting as well!
Prey is worth your time.
Prey is so good! It’s one of my favorite games. It is not really like Starfield, though
Yeah, I’ve heard that it’s a great immersive sim. I wouldn’t call it a big space game™.
No, there’s nothing Skyrim about it in terms of game style. No open world, but it’s a very cool rpg space game.
Star Citizen will get a story mode called Squadron 42 witch should be feature complete and it has a star studded Hollywood cast. It looks worthwile but it won’t be here for at least a year.
A year or twenty. Given how long they are taking, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game was never released.
SQ42 has gone gold and is in polish phase, I would expect it within two years for sure.
I can’t tell if it’s satire or not
Given the history of these guys, I am not gonna believe it until I see the game released and in the stores. Until then, as everything around star citizen, this is vaporware aimed at milking the whales that keep giving them money.
I love how it gets called “vaporware” when it’s a playable product with more gameplay than many MMOs. I’m also very grateful to the whales for providing the funds to develop the game.
Well, Star Citizen is playable right now (and has been for years), and they recently showed over an hour of supposedly live Squadron 42 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.
Yeah the prologue level they showed looked incredible. I really hope they can give the game all the polish it needs, after so long in development they absolutely need to release something with quality to match.
Now, many years after the game’s original 2015 release target, developer Roberts Space Industries (RSI) says that, with just a year or two of additional “polish,” the game will finally launch sometime in 2026.
Lmao
I enjoy your optimism. I hope we see Squadron 42 soon and I hope it’s good. (The shitstorm if it isn’t would be huge!)
Star citizen right now is great if you have a group of friends to play with. You can divide up work, do your space cowboy stuff. You and your friends just need a high tolerance for jinky systems
I’ll just assume you didn’t mean to respond to me. In any event, Squadron 42 is completely separate from the main game so I’ll wonder how jinky it might be.
I’m commenting late, but there is The Precursors which does require Slavjank tolerance, but if you have it, it provides an interesting flavor on a space opera adventure.
I also haven’t tried The Tomorrow War which seemingly requires even higher Slavjank tolerance, and probably isn’t a top of all time game, but seems interesting if you like peering into strange forgotten games. Warlockracy did a video of this one.
I’ve actually heard of The Precursors before. It was featured in Tehsnakerer’s Playing series. I don’t know what my tolerance of slavjank is. I’ve played Operation Flashpoint a lot when I was a kid. Does that qualify as slavjank?
