this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
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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?

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[–] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] winety@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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?

[–] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago
[–] 9bananas@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

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...)

[–] verdigris@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

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.

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