General Question About Immersion

[Guest]

I'm looking forward to trying out Starfield after The Game Awards using a trial of Gamepass Ultimate. How is the immersion in the game? Does it feel lived in? Is it fleshed out enough where one could role-play and virtually "live in" the game like people do with Skyrim and Oblivion (and if you're really old like me, Star Wars Galaxies)? I'm looking to get into a game like that but since Elder Scrolls has been around already forever, I was hoping I could experience that sort of immersion with a new IP.

 

I originally thought Cyberpunk 2077 was going to feel like this open world game that I could role-play living a life in a SciFi setting like that but it's obviously far from that. I just want to know if Starfield is that way so I can temper expectations.

[nIn nIn nIn]

I am a fan of the game, so will answer in that context.

 

Like all BGS games, you do not need to follow the main quest at all. You can in fact ignore it completely. You will miss out on a LOT of stuff.

 

The universe presented to us is very large. And mostly quite empty. The vanilla game lacks the density of points of interest and mob spawns that we are used to in earlier GBS games. Mods will fix that in time. SF1Edit being released before the creation kit has meant the volume of mods is increasing earlier that I expected. This is a good thing, but bare in mind mods created without the creation kit have the potential to be less stable than is ideal. Caveat being buyer beware.

 

As soon as MO2 goes fully live with the public release (it's currently at release candidate stage) - I am going to remove all my current manually installed mods, and go fully with a new character and mod list - I am following a lot of interesting stuff on Nexus - and am intending to 100% ignore the main quest (Constellation) and go 100% independent pirate. Will see where that takes me. I expect to quickly become most wanted in the universe. Hopefully that will be fun.

 

Just bare in mind, the gamepass version has a more limited modding ability than the steam version - primarily because SFSE is only compatible with the steam version. 

[travelmedic]

Overall I really like the game, in spite of a few ways it could be better.  I'm 400 hours into my game and still haven't finished the main quest, but spend a lot of time surveying planets and stuff like that.

 

My best advice to you is don't expect it to be exactly the same as Skyrim or Oblivion.  Yes, there are some similarities, but stuff like exploration, while still there, is VERY different than what you're used to in Elder Scrolls.

 

As far as immersion, there are a few different faction questlines you can follow - either follow all of them or just concentrate on one or two.  There are two major governing bodies in the universe - think Imperials and Stormcloaks.  There is a corporate espionage line - think Thieves Guild.  There is the pirate faction - think Dark Brotherhood.  Plenty of side quests too, some memorable, some not so much.