I gave it a pirate's try because I like scifi and I have incredibly low standards when it comes to the slop I consume. It ran like absolute shit and crashed constantly, and the parts I did manage to get through were boring as fuck. Glad I didn't pay for that shit.

the moment I saw the advertisements I was like "Why the fuck are they doing this instead of printing unlimited dollars with TES VI?" and I still don't have an answer to that question.

and you make it exclusively humans. No aliens

i haven't played starfield at all. this true?

i'm more asking not becuase i think you're lying but because i'm shocked like lol wtf?

uh did you forget about the No Man's Sky style weird creatures on every planet that all feel basically the same?

They wanted to do colonial era global exploration but in space. If they included intelligent indigenous aliens then the colonising you do is literally the same as the settler states of the British empire era were doing. And people would genocide the natives.

You're supposed to feel like Darwin or whatever, hopping around islands checking out the local wildlife and geology while documenting it for science. But without the whole genociding all the tribes you meet stuff. The result is directly caused by going for a specific aesthetic vibe but also sanitising it of all potentially awkward features due to wanting to avoid having literally any ideological point whatsoever.

easier to animate

It's a fun mix of Star Trek and Star Wars.

There's something to be said for how horribly naff and unappealing everyone's outfits are in Mass Effect 1. Armour is ugly, civilian clothing is ugly, the scientist overalls are ugly. The latter two especially give off that TNG vibe- all those ugly onesies just draped over these regular looking people's average physiques. The female armours all have boob plates but they're unflattering non-sexy boob plates so they just look kinda awkwardly naked

Then you get to the second and third games and its giant tits and huge asses squeezed into vacuumsealed latex catsuits and big hunky dudes

I think "nasapunk" is fine (but I don't like calling it that), and that Starfield was just poor execution.

I would say Prey aimed for a similar style and pulled it off. There were even actual space shuttles.

Bethesda doesn't use design docs

Not joking they literally just don't

Imo you could do something interesting with the loops where questlines are short but complicated and you typically either get a pyrrhic victory or outright fail narratively due to limited knowledge going in. Then in future timelines you can go in with starborn bullshit and do your best to get the "good" endings. But yeah it's pretty clear that the main plot is utterly detached from the entire rest of the game so it just comes off as weird and alienating.

What really pissed me off is that they gave the Geth this unique and interesting psychology in Mass Effect 2 and then just completely threw it out the window in the sequel by making individuality their reward for helping the good guys, rather than something that Legion described as basically hell for them

Truly bonkers, yeah. Top end rigs just absolutely screaming to deliver 2013 graphics at 1080p60.