Anyone else feeling like everything in this game has super low intensity?

[Fridge Guardian]

Minor Spoilers ahead. I'm 40 hours in, and I can't help feeling like I'm not part of any real world at all. Situations which should be scary are almost funny, seeing everyone just standing idle while (just making an early game example to avoid spoilers), Terrormorphs arrive on New Atlantis. They just stand idle, and the guards do the same thing few meters away, making the whole scene feel just fake. And I could name many more examples of this incredibly low intensity permeating my entire 40 hours. The pace is constantly slow, and this hardly changes during exploration, quests, or whatsoever. I guess the positive side is the game manages to relax me a lot.

What do you think?

[Topper]

Ignore the bank robbery in Akila. Check later for Sam's quest: Bank robbery still going on. Ignore it. Come back a year later: Still that bank robbery. Ignore it. Putting up a sign: "Welcome to Akila City, robbing the bank since 2330."

[Bingy Bingy]

I feel that way with the quests - definitely the main quest and with some of the faction quests too (some faction quests are quite well written). It just doesn't feel impactful and I can't bring myself to care about any of the companions, they're too cardboard-cutout. I think it has something to do with both the toothleless 'safe' writing and the fast travel ping-ponging around star systems to complete the quests. Because of this it feels like ticking boxes rather than an engaging storyline.

The NPC AI and interactivity (both enemies and background NPCs) is really poor too, even compared to past Bethesda games. Overall, yes, it does make the worlds and the galaxy of 1000 planets feel bland and static.

[CurrySpirals]

Originally posted by Topper:

Ignore the bank robbery in Akila. Check later for Sam's quest: Bank robbery still going on. Ignore it. Come back a year later: Still that bank robbery. Ignore it. Putting up a sign: "Welcome to Akila City, robbing the bank since 2330."

That’s like going to a Renaissance Faire dressed as Spock and then complaining it didn’t have an authentic vibe. Starfield is a role playing game. You have to role play the quests. If you don’t engage with them, that’s on you.

[Topper]

Well, I expect a game to let time run it's cause. E.g. if I chose to not engage in the bank robbery, because let's say: I'm a pacifist, then when I come back, and I would ask the Marshal how the robbery went, he would say: "Yeah well, we rushed in and all hostages were killed."
This would make sense. But SF forces me to do jobs, which I don't want to do. Like helping these smug dorks from Constellation.

[~ Fabulous ~]

I feel like they want things to be safe as possible, no gore no glory kill and everything dark in the lore are in the background, nothing crazy is going on which you can experience first hand, even jokes are missing, feels like playing an E rated game or at most T rated game

[devilmalice]

The game is tame, to a point I looked up the esrb rating thinking it's T.

Aside from the design and writing I'm a nuclear reactor instead of a cog. I do, can do, best do things on my own and don't need the world to interfere.

Originally posted by Topper:

Well, I expect a game to let time run it's cause. E.g. if I chose to not engage in the bank robbery, because let's say: I'm a pacifist, then when I come back, and I would ask the Marshal how the robbery went, he would say: "Yeah well, we rushed in and all hostages were killed."
This would make sense. But SF forces me to do jobs, which I don't want to do. Like helping these smug dorks from Constellation.

I know I'll hate it but I wish there's a time aspect when it comes to quests. As you said, if you take some time getting to Akila you could see reaction to bank bloodbath. And some quest would get you to another standoff where you manage to diffuse the situation, making the marshal contemplating if you would have saved the lives of the employees.

[The Nameless]

Originally posted by Nomad_92:

Minor Spoilers ahead. I'm 40 hours in, and I can't help feeling like I'm not part of any real world at all. Situations which should be scary are almost funny, seeing everyone just standing idle while (just making an early game example to avoid spoilers), Terrormorphs arrive on New Atlantis. They just stand idle, and the guards do the same thing few meters away, making the whole scene feel just fake. And I could name many more examples of this incredibly low intensity permeating my entire 40 hours. The pace is constantly slow, and this hardly changes during exploration, quests, or whatsoever. I guess the positive side is the game manages to relax me a lot.

What do you think?

I think you're just too used to video games and have gotten jaded with them. You notice these things, while someone newer to video gaming or with a stronger ability to immerse would tune them out.

Maybe it's time to take up a new hobby? Add another if you already have one, or a few. Spend some time away from the keyboard for awhile.

Meanwhile hardcore video game addicts like myself will continue to obsess.

[nemovadis]

Funnily I'm just on this quest on NG+. I wouldn't be so harsh, when you're out of the train you have a couple wounded soldiers standing in front of you, but others are running towards the action, it's partially static, yes, but not shockingly so. Some games have more dynamically managed factions and quests, but it's not always nice to fail just because a couple NPC were stupidly killed before you could intervene - without going into too much details, if you tried Baldur's gate 3, there's a character whose death in an inn from some of the antagonists has logical, dramatic consequences, but it's not exactly fun and most players will reload rather than face this.

[The.Spaz.]

That's done on purpose because of the main story:

TLDR: You are stuck in a cosmic groundhog's day... but you are no Bill Murray.

Long version: Once you gather all the artifacts and become a Starborn you find out that you and others like you, have been living in a simulation created and maintained by a highly advanced AI system as a result of some catastrophic malfunction and also that you have been stuck in a loop where you have lived the same life and made the same choices countless times prior. You and the others are supposed to be a part of the AI's security system, codenamed "Star Born" that is tasked with maintaining the simulation indefinitely when a routine update malfunctions and corrupts parts of the system.
The aggressively passive nature of the AI causes it to start hard rebooting the simulation as an aggressive measure to defend it's self by deleting the issue but to no luck. In-fact the reboots resulted in further significant damages and data loss that caused you and others to forget your identity and function. It also doesn't help that the robust adaptable feature of the sim crudely tries to fit you into the world after each restart, making for an agonizingly slow realization of your duty as a Starborn. You never feel like you are a part of this world because you were never meant to be a part of it but rather part of the program that maintains it and the world feels outdated because it is. The malfunction prevents the AI from connecting servers to update and forces the AI to do a hard reboot in retaliation, reverting the sim to its base unpatched version.
Luckily the AI is supposed to be smarter than a Bing search engine and eventually realizes that it is stuck in a loop. So it devises an alternative strategy of complex but discreet self recovery process that inserts story lines and quest events into the sim that has you and others collecting and isolating parts of an artifact which is supposed to be a means of communication with an extraterrestrial entity or some higher life form that the AI pretends to be. You are definitely no Bill Murray if you haven't figured out that you are stuck in a cosmic version of a "Ground Hogs day" and those "artifacts" are actually the malfunctioning pieces of code in visual form. The AI is simply trying to get you to do your damn job without telling you it's your damn job so they don't have to really pay you for it.
Anyway, its still not enough just to gather the artifacts and gain all the powers. Becoming a starborn is just part of the plan. Now you have to re-do everything all over again from the start but will retain all your memories, powers and experiences in what the AI calls a "partial reboot"(NG+). Once you get everything to 100%, you will finally be able to interact with the artifacts and nullify it's effects at which point the story abruptly ends. Since you are no Sly Stallone, you are simply left with a "Cliff Hanger" with no real closure or payoff. Despite the AI rambling about the "creators" it never really explains who or what the creators are and why was the sim created? For all you know this could all be happening in a giant server warehouse on Earth funded by NASA... or Elon Musk...

[zombygunner]

let me tell you how we are in this game. YOUR A WORKER AND THATS IT! you will never own anything besides a ship, your parents own the house, and everyone else owns the rest,you will never own a settlement lol

[Krudtugle]

Jankbryo has huge problems with scripted events and scenes with many moving actors. That's why these uncanny bugs destroy immersion completely.

[Wotek]

Originally posted by The.Spaz.:

That's done on purpose because of the main story:

TLDR: You are stuck in a cosmic groundhog's day... but you are no Bill Murray.

Long version: Once you gather all the artifacts and become a Starborn you find out that you and others like you, have been living in a simulation created and maintained by a highly advanced AI system as a result of some catastrophic malfunction and also that you have been stuck in a loop where you have lived the same life and made the same choices countless times prior. You and the others are supposed to be a part of the AI's security system, codenamed "Star Born" that is tasked with maintaining the simulation indefinitely when a routine update malfunctions and corrupts parts of the system.
The aggressively passive nature of the AI causes it to start hard rebooting the simulation as an aggressive measure to defend it's self by deleting the issue but to no luck. In-fact the reboots resulted in further significant damages and data loss that caused you and others to forget your identity and function. It also doesn't help that the robust adaptable feature of the sim crudely tries to fit you into the world after each restart, making for an agonizingly slow realization of your duty as a Starborn. You never feel like you are a part of this world because you were never meant to be a part of it but rather part of the program that maintains it and the world feels outdated because it is. The malfunction prevents the AI from connecting servers to update and forces the AI to do a hard reboot in retaliation, reverting the sim to its base unpatched version.
Luckily the AI is supposed to be smarter than a Bing search engine and eventually realizes that it is stuck in a loop. So it devises an alternative strategy of complex but discreet self recovery process that inserts story lines and quest events into the sim that has you and others collecting and isolating parts of an artifact which is supposed to be a means of communication with an extraterrestrial entity or some higher life form that the AI pretends to be. You are definitely no Bill Murray if you haven't figured out that you are stuck in a cosmic version of a "Ground Hogs day" and those "artifacts" are actually the malfunctioning pieces of code in visual form. The AI is simply trying to get you to do your damn job without telling you it's your damn job so they don't have to really pay you for it.
Anyway, its still not enough just to gather the artifacts and gain all the powers. Becoming a starborn is just part of the plan. Now you have to re-do everything all over again from the start but will retain all your memories, powers and experiences in what the AI calls a "partial reboot"(NG+). Once you get everything to 100%, you will finally be able to interact with the artifacts and nullify it's effects at which point the story abruptly ends. Since you are no Sly Stallone, you are simply left with a "Cliff Hanger" with no real closure or payoff. Despite the AI rambling about the "creators" it never really explains who or what the creators are and why was the sim created? For all you know this could all be happening in a giant server warehouse on Earth funded by NASA... or Elon Musk...

I haven't gone that far in the game, but if this is true, honestly, I don't think this is some meta genius from Bethesda about the overall quality of their game. This is just Bethesda incapacity to purposefully write a good storyline. Their idea to make a memorable game about exploring space is to make it matrix groundhog day...

I mean, this is like "everything you lived is a simulation/dream" is a tired old cliché that is generally frown upon in pretty much any writing course, for very good reasons. It just rob the narrative of any substance it could have had. Because it make your audience feel cheated.

Was it frankly too much to ask to actually have a story revolving around space exploration or a lore rich universe where human have settled the stars? Was that whole "your life is a simulation" bs trully necessary?

Am I seriously the only feeling this whole plot twist is just the result of some pretentious writer who wrote himself into a corner?