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?
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…)
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.
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.
Haven’t seen anyone mention Starpoint Gemini. Warlords was probably the best iteration. Kinda like Eve but single player and a half way decent story.
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!
Hm. In my opinion Outer Worlds was just as boring and mediocre as starfield.
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 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!
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Store Citizen
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.
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)
For single player mods there is one called “Crossfire”
I too wish for a game like this but apparently it’s impossible to do it, either due to lack of vision, budget or expertise (or all of the above). Starfield sounded perfect on paper and it was a good studio to attempt it but in the end it was just a bland, soulless, boring mess of a game.
As for my suggestions, I just got smaller games, not larger ,and in that vein honestly: FTL. It’s a 2d sprite roguelike and yet it’s the best game at giving me the feeling of being a scrappy starship captain on the run, trying to scrounge together resources in order to complete my trip despite overwhelming odds.
The second closest game is Starbound but your mileage will vary, it feels unfinished and there is no real story to speak off, although the ship you continually improve and build in over time as you explore the universe does start to feel cozy and homely. It is also basically a worse Terraria in space so if you don’t like gameplay like that, skip.
If you like Mass Effect you ought to try KOTOR1 and 2, oldies but goldies, but they do have the same weaknesses you already outlined for ME, it’s very much a set story.
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.
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.
if only elite dangerous had a campaign
Prey is worth your time.
Prey is so good! It’s one of my favorite games. It is not really like Starfield, though
Yeah, I’ve heard that it’s a great immersive sim. I wouldn’t call it a big space game™.
Star Citizen will get a story mode called Squadron 42 witch should be feature complete and it has a star studded Hollywood cast. It looks worthwile but it won’t be here for at least a year.
As much as I’m a fan of the project, I don’t think SC/SQ42 would scratch the same itch that somebody who just got done playing Starfield or Mass Effect would feel. Star Citizen is way more on the simulation side and light on RPG elements.
I enjoy your optimism. I hope we see Squadron 42 soon and I hope it’s good. (The shitstorm if it isn’t would be huge!)
A year or twenty. Given how long they are taking, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game was never released.
Well, Star Citizen is playable right now (and has been for years), and they recently showed over an hour of supposedly live Squadron 42 gameplay (obviously somewhat spoilery for the start of the game), so there’s some hope at least…
Of course, it remains to be seen how much more of the story is finished to the same extent, and at what point will it be consistently playable on contemporary hardware (I haven’t played Star Citizen in a long while, so I’m not sure what state it’s in, and I don’t know if Squadron 42, being a single player game, will be as susceptible to server issues, or if it’ll even need servers), but it gives a good idea of the state of the main game features and how it’s intended to feel.
SQ42 has gone gold and is in polish phase, I would expect it within two years for sure.
Given the history of these guys, I am not gonna believe it until I see the game released and in the stores. Until then, as everything around star citizen, this is vaporware aimed at milking the whales that keep giving them money.
I love how it gets called “vaporware” when it’s a playable product with more gameplay than many MMOs. I’m also very grateful to the whales for providing the funds to develop the game.
