alt Hacker NewsStartfield is boring because of the bad writing and they made a space exploration game where there are loading screens between the planet and space and you don’t actually explore space.
They fundamentally misunderstood what they were promising, it’s the same as making a pirate game where you never steer the ship or drop anchor.
You can prove people are not bored with the concept as new gamers still start playing fallout new Vegas or skyrim today despite them being old and janky.
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I think my point stands. Procedural generation is a tool that usually works best when it is supplementary. What makes New Vegas an amazing game is all the hand built narratives and intricate storylines. So yeah, I agree, Starfield is boring because of the story. But if the procedural vastness was interesting enough to not be boring, then we wouldn't be talking about this to begin with.
This is why Sid Meier's Pirates [0] remains such a great game.
It was really a combination of mini-games:
- you got steer a ship (or fleet of ships) around the Caribbean
- ship to ship combat
- fencing
- dancing (with the Governors' daughters)
- trading (from port to port or with captured goods0
- side quests
Each time I played it with my oldest, it felt like a brand new game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Pirates!