Nope, been playing it for a couple days now. It’s just the same as it ever was. The web port itself is seamless (been playing on Firefox with a 10-year-old Macbook), but the game has a clunky, PITA UI.

It’s kinda maddening in that no matter how well you clear every level, your character is likely to stall at some point and you’ll have to start over. For anybody who doesn’t know, you can start the game over again using the same character and re-loot the same levels; they don’t respawn once you clear them otherwise. In this way you can continually train up your character to make it further into the dungeon. At first it seems like this was a mistake, but then it seems that it actually was a design decision. It was the first of its kind, so it gets a pass I suppose.

The shopkeepers inventory also does not cycle until you buy something and then that slot refills. So whatever you’ve got is what you’ve got. Unlike most of the games that came after, you are actually somewhat dependent on the shopkeepers for decent gear.

That said, it’s still fun. Really fun. It’s not hard to see why it started something.

We need to just work on making our own. Then the Vulcans will find us.

Yes and this is what Starfield doesn’t do. Starfield doesn’t actually have whole planets generated by a shared seed. Planets in Starfield are just unlimited sources of randomly generated playboxes. Since the planets don’t actually exist, they can’t properly be said to be explorable.

For anyone interested in this topic, there is a super great video that explains the difference between procedural generation and random generation and how a tiny amount of data can be used to generate extremely complex things.

But I don’t think they can grab that explorer fanbase again, they are just against procedural generation in general, they probably wanted Outer Worlds but bigger.

I don’t think that’s true. Elite Dangerous is one of my favorite games and it’s procedurally generated. I think the issue is that that’s not exactly what Starfield is.

When you “land” in Starfield (outside a handcrafted city or similar), you land in a procedurally generated box made just for you. It isn’t repeatable by anybody but you. Other people who “land” in the same spot will not see what you saw, they get their own procedurally generated box. The contents of the box are similar (the terrain is the right color, the flora and fauna are the same). If you were to see something particularly cool in your box (although I never did when I was playing the game) - ie: “unusually tall mountain range” or “unusually deep valley” - you can’t tell someone “hey go to coordinates x,y and check this out!” You CAN do this in Elite Dangerous. All worlds, all settlements - everything is the same for everyone, and if you explore through it all and you find something interesting, you can share it with people.

In Starfield, your box always contains an uninteresting/unremarkable patch of terrain and magically, literally everywhere you land, there are structures and ships within walking distance - none of which anyone can get to but you.

There is literally no WAY to explore. Everywhere you land, it’s just another box and it will always contain the same variation on the same things. That isn’t exploration. Exploration implies things that exist whether you are there or not and which can be found by someone if they look long enough.

Spicy cole slaw topping a sandwich made of slow-smoked pulled pork is absolute nirvana.

Oh come on, who reads a book while they’re getting head?