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?
Everspace 2 (first one was a rogue like, you don’t need to play it to enjoy the sequel)
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw (also a sequel, the first one doesn’t have a Y axys so you may not like it)
Chorus
All three are a lot of fun, neither are AAA games so they lack a bit of polish but aren’t vanilla as hell either. I enjoyed each one better than Starfield but neither as much as ME 1-3.
Cowboys in space is not my favourite trope, but I’ve heard good things about the first Rebel Galaxy. How was the switch from 2D combat to 3D combat in the sequel? (And is the story any good?)
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
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.
+1 for that. One of the best space sims, despite its age, and my first contact with actual zero-g dogfighting (boost, turn off engine, rotate ship to try and hit the enemy)
I can’t believe (actually I can) that Microsoft didn’t base starfield’s space mechanics (and overall everything else) from Freelancer. The template to improve upon was right there.
Considering all the problems Bethesda had with simply making space work at all, I’m not surprised they didn’t even try to look into better games to copy from
Shit, even Star Trek: Online does what Starfield promised better, and it’s basically just another dime a dozen MMOs with a high profile licensed IP behind it.
For the most part, it’s either going to be missing a few things you’re looking for, or will offer everything but not actually be good/finished (such as with Star Citizen or anything ever made by Derek Smart, and why none of those are in the above list).
I’ve had my eyes on the X series for a long time. But they’re “fly around in your ship and do stuff” games and not “fly around and walk around” games, right? I’ve also heard there’s no learning curve, more of a learning wall.
You’re right, Star Trek Online is close to my ideal game. If only it weren’t a janky MMO…
I looked at Derek Smart’s games. I don’t think I’m cut out for this. But they kinda reminded of a GDC talk by Jeff Vogel where he talks about how he makes a living by making these niche isometric RPGs.
What about it being a janky MMO takes it away from being your ideal game though?
Quite a bit, I think. It being an MMO has some practical consequences, namely the fact that I can’t play it offline and the monetization of the game. It also influences the game mechanics: For example, STO’s combat uses tabbed targeting¹. I like tabbed targeting² but I don’t think it’s the peak of combat systems; a different combat system could/would make the game more engaging and enjoyable.
I can look at the individual parts of the game. There STO shines. But when I look at STO as a one compact package, it doesn’t.
¹ It also has a shooter mode but I remember it being janky as hell.
² I’d actually love to see a sort of “offline MMO” which would use tabbed targeting.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
Lots, but only a few that are worth a damn. I’ve come to call them “Han Solo Simulators”.
Its a genre that seems to attract a lot of half baked game designers. Make a big universe sandbox where you fly a spaceship to space stations and planets and moons and trade stuff and do pirate shit or anti-pirate shit. Lots of people have this idea, only a few make anything good out of it. Doesn’t seem like it can go wrong, and yet . . .
Battlecruiser 3000 AD is a particularly infamous case of 90s Internet lore. By all accounts, it did eventually patch the game up enough to be decent, but it took years to get there. At release, the game’s installer would crash for most people. However good it might have ended up, the Internet drama was better than the game ever could be. Look up “Derek Smart” if you’re interested.
The X series is one I want to like, but it’s been really buggy for me. Like rage quit when it destroys my progress kind of buggy. I haven’t played X4, though.
No Man’s Sky was an infamous mess at launch. Unlike Battlecruiser 3000 AD, it did eventually change its reputation, but it was a long, hard road. I played it a few years ago and found it uninteresting, but basically playable.
And then there’s Star Citizen. I’ll just leave it at that.
Anyway, the Elite series is probably the most successful for single player or smaller multiplayer, and Eve: Online for massively multiplayer.
Try Freelancer. It’s literally free / abandonware by Microsoft. It’s a little old but perhaps it will scratch the “big space game” itch you’re looking for?
Microsoft themselves hosted it for the longest time but they don’t anymore
There is even a mod called “Discovery” which ads an online MMO component …buuuut there’s a huge emphasis on Role playing and PvP so that might not be for you (it isn’t for me either)
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps Starsector? It’s a top-down sandbox rpg. I personally find the lore and world-building interesting. Has great mechanics, and you can really get into the nitty-gritty when it comes to ship and fleet builds, you can basically do anything you want, whether you want to do solo stuff or form an empire. It also has a fantastic modding community.
Came here to suggest it and here it is, the newest comment! The modding scene is insane, too, for such a relatively small and unknown game.
I love Starsector. I just wish it was written in something more performant than fuckin’ Java. But, if it were, there probably wouldn’t be the mods for it there are today.
One of these days, I’m going to get around to writing a quest line of my own. Honest.
Yeah, Starsector is probably my favourite lesser known game. There’s a mod/tool called “Mikohime Java 24” that’s supposed to help a lot with the performance, but I haven’t had a chance to test it myself. Would be great to see another quest line, if I had the skills I’d love to make a mod myself lol.
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.
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.
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.
SpaceBourne 2 is a single-player, open-universe RPG and third-person shooter game with an abundance of features, including role-playing, mining, trading, piracy, crafting, and deep exploration. The story picks up where it left off in SpaceBourne, but now the player’s goal is to build a new empire in the galaxy, with the methods of doing so being completely up to the player.
so for something completely different and focusing solely on the “size” aspect:
the biggest, that i am aware of, game in terms of sheer SIZE involved, is Stellaris:
it’s a paradox grand strategy game, not first person at all, so completely different from the other recommendations and probably nothing to do with what you asked for…but if you want something truly MASSIVE…well…can’t go much larger than galaxy spanning all out war involving gigantic fleets and armies!
so if power fantasies is something you’re interested in, maybe take a look! it’s pretty easy to get into, but has a lot of depth (but no requirement) to master later on! and it has a lot of settings regarding game speed and difficulty to tailor it to your tastes.
and mods, god help me, the mods; play a couple hours to get to know the game, then definitely get Gigastructural Engineering from the workshop.
short list of ridiculous engineering:
Attack Moons
Behemoth Planetcraft
Neutronstar Gigaforge
Matryoshka Brain
and a bunch, even more ridiculously huge projects!
(sidenote: the new DLC subscription on steam is…kinda worth it honestly. not the worst idea, especially to just try it out for a couple hours. i was extremely skeptical, but it’s kinda, surprisingly, less predatory than the previous “we’ll release 2 20$ DLCs, and 1 30/40$ DLC per year” model…)
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?
Really it just means the sorts of bugs you find with minimal QA testing combined with stilted voice acting, potentially untranslated audio or text, cultural beats that don’t quite cross over, and some game design choices that are different than how a game developed alongside western games might do things.
If you can stand this lack of polish, these sorts of games can at least give amusement for their price point.
It’s loosely in the same genre but you may like Rebel Galaxy. It takes a slightly different approach to space combat making it closer to naval warfare. Very enjoyable soundtrack.
Love this game! Just reinstalled yesterday after years to start a replay of it.
I just hope if they make a third they go back to this style (more capital/naval ship feeling) and not the smaller fighter style the second one adopted.
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Everspace 2 (first one was a rogue like, you don’t need to play it to enjoy the sequel)
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw (also a sequel, the first one doesn’t have a Y axys so you may not like it)
Chorus
All three are a lot of fun, neither are AAA games so they lack a bit of polish but aren’t vanilla as hell either. I enjoyed each one better than Starfield but neither as much as ME 1-3.
Also I’ve had some luck with https://www.50gameslike.com/ finding games.
Everspace 2 is heaps of fun and looks fantastic.
I’ll check out all three of them!
Cowboys in space is not my favourite trope, but I’ve heard good things about the first Rebel Galaxy. How was the switch from 2D combat to 3D combat in the sequel? (And is the story any good?)
The story is alright, but the combat is pretty good.
Cool site. Thanks for the link.
You’re welcome!
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.
+1 for that. One of the best space sims, despite its age, and my first contact with actual zero-g dogfighting (boost, turn off engine, rotate ship to try and hit the enemy)
I can’t believe (actually I can) that Microsoft didn’t base starfield’s space mechanics (and overall everything else) from Freelancer. The template to improve upon was right there.
Considering all the problems Bethesda had with simply making space work at all, I’m not surprised they didn’t even try to look into better games to copy from
X3: Reunion/Albion Prelude
X4
Elite: Dangerous
Spacebourne 2
Shit, even Star Trek: Online does what Starfield promised better, and it’s basically just another dime a dozen MMOs with a high profile licensed IP behind it.
For the most part, it’s either going to be missing a few things you’re looking for, or will offer everything but not actually be good/finished (such as with Star Citizen or anything ever made by Derek Smart, and why none of those are in the above list).
I’ve had my eyes on the X series for a long time. But they’re “fly around in your ship and do stuff” games and not “fly around and walk around” games, right? I’ve also heard there’s no learning curve, more of a learning wall.
You’re right, Star Trek Online is close to my ideal game. If only it weren’t a janky MMO…
I looked at Derek Smart’s games. I don’t think I’m cut out for this. But they kinda reminded of a GDC talk by Jeff Vogel where he talks about how he makes a living by making these niche isometric RPGs.
In X4 you can walk around on ships and stations, jump in other ships etc. It’s very limited though, which is a shame.
The gameplay is fantastic though, you could lose days building an empire.
What about it being a janky MMO takes it away from being your ideal game though?
I really wouldn’t look at DS’s games, they are shite.
Quite a bit, I think. It being an MMO has some practical consequences, namely the fact that I can’t play it offline and the monetization of the game. It also influences the game mechanics: For example, STO’s combat uses tabbed targeting¹. I like tabbed targeting² but I don’t think it’s the peak of combat systems; a different combat system could/would make the game more engaging and enjoyable.
I can look at the individual parts of the game. There STO shines. But when I look at STO as a one compact package, it doesn’t.
¹ It also has a shooter mode but I remember it being janky as hell.
² I’d actually love to see a sort of “offline MMO” which would use tabbed targeting.
Thanks!
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)
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!
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.
Hm. In my opinion Outer Worlds was just as boring and mediocre as starfield.
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!
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.
Yeah, I really enjoyed the polish of it and how it showed us what a better fallout could be.[
That said, it was woefully lacking on content and committed a cardinal sin of gaming: the ending felt like the game was just getting started.
Also, not a fan at all of whoever is telling them to ignore romance options.
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.
It’s not the be~st choice, it’s spacer’s choice!
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
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.
Lots, but only a few that are worth a damn. I’ve come to call them “Han Solo Simulators”.
Its a genre that seems to attract a lot of half baked game designers. Make a big universe sandbox where you fly a spaceship to space stations and planets and moons and trade stuff and do pirate shit or anti-pirate shit. Lots of people have this idea, only a few make anything good out of it. Doesn’t seem like it can go wrong, and yet . . .
Battlecruiser 3000 AD is a particularly infamous case of 90s Internet lore. By all accounts, it did eventually patch the game up enough to be decent, but it took years to get there. At release, the game’s installer would crash for most people. However good it might have ended up, the Internet drama was better than the game ever could be. Look up “Derek Smart” if you’re interested.
The X series is one I want to like, but it’s been really buggy for me. Like rage quit when it destroys my progress kind of buggy. I haven’t played X4, though.
No Man’s Sky was an infamous mess at launch. Unlike Battlecruiser 3000 AD, it did eventually change its reputation, but it was a long, hard road. I played it a few years ago and found it uninteresting, but basically playable.
And then there’s Star Citizen. I’ll just leave it at that.
Anyway, the Elite series is probably the most successful for single player or smaller multiplayer, and Eve: Online for massively multiplayer.
Try Freelancer. It’s literally free / abandonware by Microsoft. It’s a little old but perhaps it will scratch the “big space game” itch you’re looking for?
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/freelancer-bbb
Microsoft themselves hosted it for the longest time but they don’t anymore
There is even a mod called “Discovery” which ads an online MMO component …buuuut there’s a huge emphasis on Role playing and PvP so that might not be for you (it isn’t for me either)
https://discoverygc.com/
For single player mods there is one called “Crossfire”
Yes! Freelancer is an amazing (albeit slightly dated) game. It takes some effort to get set up, but it does run quite well on Linux.
Freelancer Alpha One Dash One.
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 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.
Perhaps Starsector? It’s a top-down sandbox rpg. I personally find the lore and world-building interesting. Has great mechanics, and you can really get into the nitty-gritty when it comes to ship and fleet builds, you can basically do anything you want, whether you want to do solo stuff or form an empire. It also has a fantastic modding community.
Came here to suggest it and here it is, the newest comment! The modding scene is insane, too, for such a relatively small and unknown game.
I love Starsector. I just wish it was written in something more performant than fuckin’ Java. But, if it were, there probably wouldn’t be the mods for it there are today.
One of these days, I’m going to get around to writing a quest line of my own. Honest.
Yeah, Starsector is probably my favourite lesser known game. There’s a mod/tool called “Mikohime Java 24” that’s supposed to help a lot with the performance, but I haven’t had a chance to test it myself. Would be great to see another quest line, if I had the skills I’d love to make a mod myself lol.
Check out sseth’s review of you’re interested
;)
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.
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.
mmmmmmmn
Delicious copium.
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 $420.69, and it might be released in a few years.
SpaceBourne 2
SpaceBourne 2 is a single-player, open-universe RPG and third-person shooter game with an abundance of features, including role-playing, mining, trading, piracy, crafting, and deep exploration. The story picks up where it left off in SpaceBourne, but now the player’s goal is to build a new empire in the galaxy, with the methods of doing so being completely up to the player.
so for something completely different and focusing solely on the “size” aspect:
the biggest, that i am aware of, game in terms of sheer SIZE involved, is Stellaris:
it’s a paradox grand strategy game, not first person at all, so completely different from the other recommendations and probably nothing to do with what you asked for…but if you want something truly MASSIVE…well…can’t go much larger than galaxy spanning all out war involving gigantic fleets and armies!
so if power fantasies is something you’re interested in, maybe take a look! it’s pretty easy to get into, but has a lot of depth (but no requirement) to master later on! and it has a lot of settings regarding game speed and difficulty to tailor it to your tastes.
and mods, god help me, the mods; play a couple hours to get to know the game, then definitely get Gigastructural Engineering from the workshop. short list of ridiculous engineering:
(sidenote: the new DLC subscription on steam is…kinda worth it honestly. not the worst idea, especially to just try it out for a couple hours. i was extremely skeptical, but it’s kinda, surprisingly, less predatory than the previous “we’ll release 2 20$ DLCs, and 1 30/40$ DLC per year” model…)
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?
Really it just means the sorts of bugs you find with minimal QA testing combined with stilted voice acting, potentially untranslated audio or text, cultural beats that don’t quite cross over, and some game design choices that are different than how a game developed alongside western games might do things.
If you can stand this lack of polish, these sorts of games can at least give amusement for their price point.
It’s loosely in the same genre but you may like Rebel Galaxy. It takes a slightly different approach to space combat making it closer to naval warfare. Very enjoyable soundtrack.
Love this game! Just reinstalled yesterday after years to start a replay of it. I just hope if they make a third they go back to this style (more capital/naval ship feeling) and not the smaller fighter style the second one adopted.