William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness” should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in conservation or environmental science. It’s a great critique of how colonialism has tainted our understanding of what “wilderness” and nature in general is and humanity’s role in them.
No it’s just another video game. The core competency of this developer is dialogue interaction or dialogue puzzles that help create a sense of immersion in a world with lots of RPG mechanics. It is more or less in line with their previous games. There are quite a few tacked on features.
There’s so much media coverage of video games these days I think it makes it hard to just have them stand on their own merits without having every detail examined and compared across every game that has ever released. People who are spending the money on video games as entertainment will be entertained, but this isn’t a genre defining product and it isn’t a flop either.
Only watched like 2 hours of gameplay footage but seems to have learned from the mistakes of Fallout 4 while keeping the fun stuff like legendary items and weapon customization. If you like Bethesda games and sci-fi I think you’ll love it.
I am having fun with it. The only thing I’ve been super aggravated with is surveying planets. I love the concept, but it kinda sucks having to run thousands of meters to try to hunt down the last little space roach you need for completion. Traversal in general is the game’s weakest aspect. Lemme fly in low orbit to pinpoint where I want to land.
I ran into some storage issues and I’m working to fix that now. The ship building tool is VERY clunky, but I love the ability to upgrade certain parts to my ship and junk.
Personal thoughts - being about 15 hours in; the exploration part is far from exciting, the gunplay is not much improved since Fallout 4, the crafting systems have not really evolved at all, the outpost construction system feels very disconnected from any other gameplay - being a completely optional resource sink more than anything else, the ship construction system is clunky as anything and has a bunch of drawbacks to it, the usability of the UI is mediocre at best - probably slightly worse than the original Skyrim UI, the economy seems completely broken - you’re very obviously meant to have 2-3 digits fewer in your credits than what the game awards you for regular play even without heavy looting, the characters are rather weakly written and seem strangely delayed in reactions to the story, your chosen backstory never has an actual role in gameplay - only been able to skip two 1k credit payments and a “put the cube in the cube hole” puzzle with it so far, etc.
It’s very much a Bethesda game. I’m definitely going to finish the main story - and probably poke into a bunch of the side content as well, but this is definitely not looking like a game I’ll have more than a single playthrough in.
I actually ended up bringing out a USB dancepad I’ve got laying about to play with, since I had to do a bunch of on-planet stuff, and standing and drinking tea while waiting through the traversal for those missions felt much nicer.
People like to shit on every Bethesda game since they don’t like their brand of RPG. For them roll playing means you can do whatever the fuck you want. Do you want to go off and kill every person in sight, well it’s a bethesda RPG so yeah go for it. Do you want to go into people houses at night and steal all their food and mess up the place? go for it. Do you want to… etc. Hell this idea runs so deeply, there’s a mechanic in oblivion I beat you didn’t know existed, goblin warfare. It’s real, it’s just also buggy.
Yeah it’s another bethesda RPG, now with space. I’ve been having a blast with the game so far.
I’m about 20 hours in and enjoying it immensely, for what it’s worth
I think a lot of people had expectations way too high for it, expecting to have a life replacement ala Star Citizen - I didn’t follow any of the marketing, and I’m genuinely enjoying the story and the atmosphere a tonne
It is very Scifi Fallout (love to pick up trinkets) and imo it’s come out really well
Colonialists? You mean “locals” don’t have either needs for industries that support human life, or just plain assholes that’ll needlessly destroy nature for profit?
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