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Starfield takes home the Golden Joystick Award for best Xbox Game of the Year 2023

It's my front runner for GOTY, and easily my favorite sci-fi game of all time.

Discussion on here is just like Halo Infinite where people may be able to find a flaw or two, but that very quickly gets turned into "the game has zero redeeming qualities and you're a complete joke if you even like it." It's literally not more intellectually deep than peer pressure bullying from elementary school. It's fine if you don't like it, but you have zero claim on any kind of objective opinion. I think the game's phenomenal in countless areas, from art design, graphics, quest design, voice acting, to gunplay. It has by far my OST of the year and I can post 30 tracks as examples.

It's literally one of the best looking games I've ever seen. The scale is unlike anything I've played. That ship I zoomed in on in this picture is 3 stories tall, and you can walk around all of it. The scale of the space station next to it is just gigantic. And I have limitless examples of stuff like that.

JfYog3P.png


JfIwegs.png


This isn't even one of the big cities. The scale is just gigantic when you look at how small the people are. It's difficult to even take pictures of it. And there's layers underneath that, multiple shops, quests, NPCs. I've just literally never even seen a game like this.

JJzIKrb.png


I don't really encounter any areas in games this large, and all the assets are extremely highly detailed.

JJLrQQR.png


The lighting is phenomenal, and a giant upgrade over anything they've done previously - extending to even lighting the planets themselves. And they change completely over time, or depending on where you land on the planet and where it is orbiting the sun.

JfzXo4j.png


JfzNJV9.png


Jfzjndx.png


And a lot of the people claiming Hi-Fi Rush was robbed were actually the same people massively talking shit on Hi-Fi Rush in January when I said it was a GOTY contender. It absolutely is still a GOTY contender, but I think Starfield is a lot more ambitious and impressive, and I am literally one of the biggest advocates for Hi-Fi Rush on here, and I got shit constantly for hyping that game up too.

Several of the quests are among the best I've ever played in an RPG, like Entangled, or the multi-part Crimson Fleet quest. Even basic side quests have 3-4 parts to it and are surprisingly deep.

I will never change the minds of people that hate the game, and that's not even my goal. But if you guys can't even fathom that this is at the top of consideration for BEST XBOX GAME this year, then you guys are just lying or trolls in my opinion. If you have eyeballs you can see it's an incredibly impressive and ambitious game. It doesn't even take an argument to refute the bullshit. It's self-evidently absurd and exaggerated to the max.

Just look at the game with your actual eyes instead of being morons. And my pictures are just capturing a tiny, tiny fraction of the game. I'm still playing it and I'm at 315 hours.

The visuals are indeed great but what in the ever foving luck were they thinking with these loading screens on next gen systems? It's hard to enjoy a game where you have to navigate am average of 5 or 6 loading screens just to complete a sidequest. That shit ruins this game straight up. It's especially tedious on console without mouse and keyboard and with each load being several seconds longer than PC.
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
The visuals are indeed great but what in the ever foving luck were they thinking with these loading screens on next gen systems? It's hard to enjoy a game where you have to navigate am average of 5 or 6 loading screens just to complete a sidequest. That shit ruins this game straight up. It's especially tedious on console without mouse and keyboard and with each load being several seconds longer than PC.
I genuinely don't care if people hate the game, so I usually do try to avoid this kind of back and forth. But I really didn't care even a little bit about the loading screens. They're short. To me it just sounds so exaggerated. Everyone played games with loading screens all last gen. I guess none of those games are even playable now. It just is so ridiculous and unbelievable to me. Yes, it would be smoother if it wasn't there. But it's just not a big deal for me, or something I really even notice.

There is some weirdness with the engine though, so I can't say why they do it. That pic I showed of the city in my post, Gagarin, has zero loading in it. Tons of NPCs, quests, multiple shops and detailed interiors. And you just walk outside the city and you're in a full wildnerness tile as well. No loading. You can also get off the space port in New Atlantis, and if you climb over the walls and scale a few mountains, and walk all the way around, you can leave the space port and walk through a huge wilderness tile and walk all around all of New Atlantis in full with no loading on any of it. So I don't know why they do it. Maybe it helps stability or something. I don't know.

But people can check my posts from before the game came out. I fully expected loading screens.


I never thought anyone was promised no loading screens. Seems like extremely exaggerated outrage, but everyone has a right to their own opinion so if people want to pass on entire games for that that's on them. Tears of the Kingdom has a loading screen on every shrine too. Just not the end of the world for me.
 

Fredrik

Member
Congrats!
I have too many hours logged to not have it as my GOTY too, but on PC. That is if I would vote today, which I won’t because in my world the year ends the last december and by that time I might have played more games.
 

Hoddi

Member
Congrats!
I have too many hours logged to not have it as my GOTY too, but on PC. That is if I would vote today, which I won’t because in my world the year ends the last december and by that time I might have played more games.
I feel the same way. I've yet to play many of the other contenders but I've had an absolute blast with Starfield so far. I racked up some 45 hours in the span of a week which is not something that I generally do.

I'm looking forward to going back in once the DLSS patch comes out as I've still barely touched the main quest. And then I have BG3 to play as well.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
Starfield is my GOTY, currently at more than 250 hours into it, but what is up with these nomination lists? Are they going with exclusives only? If so where is Forza Motorsport, and why the heck would Chants of Sennaar or Dead Space Remake be on this list? If it includes all third party games then why choose the ones they did? Neither Chants of Sennaar or Dead Space Remake should legitimately be anywhere near a GOTY list with so many other amazing games out this year. So weird. I feel exactly the same about the best Playstation game nomination list and winner as well. Weirdest nonsensical nomination list ever.
RE4 got nominated for best PS game but not best Xbox game. Dead Space remake for vice versa.

What kind of loony toons logic is behind their nominations?

IKR, weird choices for the third-party inclusions.

Starfield is a great game. I have like 150 or so hours in so far and I'm sure I'll add to that. I'd also consider it my GoTY.
 

Fredrik

Member
I feel the same way. I've yet to play many of the other contenders but I've had an absolute blast with Starfield so far. I racked up some 45 hours in the span of a week which is not something that I generally do.

I'm looking forward to going back in once the DLSS patch comes out as I've still barely touched the main quest. And then I have BG3 to play as well.
Yeah I think Starfield could break my past record for days played in a row. Don’t think it’ll surpass Elden Ring on playtime and devouring the whole hobby for me but it’ll be fun to see the yearly Steam stats.
I have the beta for the update installed now so will play some during the weekend and check out the new stuff.
 
It's literally not more intellectually deep than peer pressure bullying from elementary school. It's fine if you don't like it, but you have zero claim on any kind of objective opinion. I think the game's phenomenal in countless areas, from art design, graphics, quest design, voice acting, to gunplay. It has by far my OST of the year and I can post 30 tracks as examples.

There's a significant amount of people that disagree with you. That doesn't make it peer pressuring or bullying to have a disagreement with your stance. The user scores are not good for this game. And the metacritic is far below the accolades you are lavishing upon it. Objectively, these aspects show that you are an outlier in your opinion (which you are entitled to)

My personal opinion is that it's one of the worst big budget AAA games I've ever played, and given that it was a big reason why I purchased an Xbox Series X, I am extremely disappointed with how it turned out (thankfully, GamePass has been quite good recently otherwise). The writing is atrocious, the characters are infantile one note caricatures, the quest design is extremely basic, tedious, and uninteresting, the combat is merely serviceable (but horribly balanced), and the infrastructure of the game's systems are so awfully designed that it's an absolute chore to play this game. A myriad of awful, poorly planed and integrated systems wrapped in some of the worst UI I've witnessed. And to top it all off, there's zero meaningful exploration and design for 99% of this game. It's just flatout dull, pedestrian, outdated, and would be easily forgotten about had it not received an enormous amount of hype and graphical polish.

The only positives I can list for it are that the soundtrack at times is good and the art design (at times, for the interiors) is fantastic. But everything gameplay or story related is an enormous blunder. Many people agree with me on this.
 
Starfield is a good game. However, it is in no shape or form a step forward for an open world experience. It is a stagnate release. FYI, I have over 200+ hours in this game because I enjoy the Skyrim/Fallout formula.

People complain about repetitive copy paste design in open world Games.

This solves that.

But as I said, it's not perfect and formula still needs some work. Some planets need to have elaborate quests associated that tell their story, of people living there.

It needs to drive planet exploration.

Its super ambitious and definitely is a step forward for open world games.
 
Whatever Starfield is, it's "open world" (use that term loosely) is significantly worse than either of those types of games you mentioned.

Your issues with it are mainly related to how Bethesda makes games. It's a system driven game, you want story/character driven title.

If you don't see value in it's character building, how you get powerful etc, it is not a game for you.
 

mrmustard

Banned
nah there wouldn't be so much of a defense force here if it was a multi and everybody knows it.
its worst reviewed bethesda rpg with middling user reception for a reason.
There is no need to defend a mid 80s game. It's where most AAA games land and some of you guys are pretending like it's utter crap while celebrating other games with less score, the same score or just a few points more like the second coming of christ, It's not perfect, but it's a good game.
 
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There is no need to defend a mid 80s game. It's where most AAA games land and some of you guys are pretending like it's utter crap while celebrating other games with just a few points more like the second coming of christ, It's not perfect, but it's a good game.

Low 80s with much worse user scores. Doesn’t sound like GOTY does it?

This game was hyped up to be a 95+ killer app
 
I fell off starfield HARD. I loved about ten to 15 hours of it. Maybe I’ll give it another go some day but it just felt kinda boring at a certain point. There’s just no edge to any of it… and the getting the powers is tedious, and the general traveling around is just jumping thru way too many loading screens to get to the next mission. I burnt out. Same thing happened with TOTK for me too tho to be fair. Just wasn’t having fun after awhile
 

Fredrik

Member
Deserved. 80 hours in, many more to come. There wouldn't be so much hate if it was a multi and everybody knows it.
Yeah console-only fanboys are the worst, they just go from exclusive to exclusive complaining and exaggerating. Just plain toxic behaviour. They can literally spend a weekend just argueing about stuff they don’t like or dig out new bugs or whatever in a game they have already dropped instead of spending the weekend playing and talking about a game they actually like. If a game goes multi the noise usually goes away. Unless there is a 1fps difference then the noise will be about that instead… 🤦‍♂️

For me Starfield is my most played game of the year and if I would vote today it would be my GOTY no doubt, on PC.
But I still hope to play through more games before doing my own GOTY list at the end of the year. Not a fan of these early lists, it’s disrespectful to games releasing near the holiday, especially long games where you might choose one and the other games have to wait.
 
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mrmustard

Banned
Yeah console-only fanboys are the worst, they just go from exclusive to exclusive complaining and exaggerating. Just plain toxic behaviour. They can literally spend a weekend just argueing about stuff they don’t like or dig out new bugs or whatever in a game they have already dropped instead of spending the weekend playing and talking about a game they actually like. If a game goes multi the noise usually goes away. Unless there is a 1fps difference then the noise will be about that instead… 🤦‍♂️
100%. Just look at the MC user score. So many people only have reviewed Starfield with a red score and no other game or Starfield with a red score + PS games with a 10. It's just pathetic. Of course this goes both ways, but there are much more PS fanboys. MC userscore is a shitshow.

This hobby could be so cool and gamers should be united, but unfortunately there are too many sickos out there.
 

Fredrik

Member
100%. Just look at the MC user score. So many people only have reviewed Starfield with a red score and no other game or Starfield with a red score + PS games with a 10. It's just pathetic. Of course this goes both ways, but there are much more PS fanboys. MC userscore is a shitshow.

This hobby could be so cool and gamers should be united, but unfortunately there are too many sickos out there.
Playstation and Xbox fanboys are both the worst. It’s not about the games. It’s some sort of new sport or something. I’m just waiting to see hooligans fight at the gaming events.
I enjoy plenty of Sony’s and Microsoft’s games, and the services too if priced well, but the war is so behind me when I close in to my 50s and it would all be erased instantly if I could do a Thanos finger snap. 🫰
 

mrmustard

Banned
Playstation and Xbox fanboys are both the worst. It’s not about the games. It’s some sort of new sport or something. I’m just waiting to see hooligans fight at the gaming events.
I enjoy plenty of Sony’s and Microsoft’s games, and the services too if priced well, but the war is so behind me when I close in to my 50s and it would all be erased instantly if I could do a Thanos finger snap. 🫰
I got the 4 infront of my age myself and this nonsense is beyond me. In the 80s/early 90s people in school had a Nintendo or a SEGA or PS1 or a Game Boy/Game Gear. Mid 90s most went for a Pc. I have never ever seen someone fighting over the platform. We all were just talking about the games. I have no idea at what sad point in your life you become a console warrior. But it is what it is, the ignore list helps.
 

IFireflyl

Gold Member
It's my front runner for GOTY, and easily my favorite sci-fi game of all time.

Discussion on here is just like Halo Infinite where people may be able to find a flaw or two, but that very quickly gets turned into "the game has zero redeeming qualities and you're a complete joke if you even like it." It's literally not more intellectually deep than peer pressure bullying from elementary school. It's fine if you don't like it, but you have zero claim on any kind of objective opinion. I think the game's phenomenal in countless areas, from art design, graphics, quest design, voice acting, to gunplay. It has by far my OST of the year and I can post 30 tracks as examples.

It's literally one of the best looking games I've ever seen. The scale is unlike anything I've played. That ship I zoomed in on in this picture is 3 stories tall, and you can walk around all of it. The scale of the space station next to it is just gigantic. And I have limitless examples of stuff like that.

JfYog3P.png


JfIwegs.png


This isn't even one of the big cities. The scale is just gigantic when you look at how small the people are. It's difficult to even take pictures of it. And there's layers underneath that, multiple shops, quests, NPCs. I've just literally never even seen a game like this.

JJzIKrb.png


I don't really encounter any areas in games this large, and all the assets are extremely highly detailed.

JJLrQQR.png


The lighting is phenomenal, and a giant upgrade over anything they've done previously - extending to even lighting the planets themselves. And they change completely over time, or depending on where you land on the planet and where it is orbiting the sun.

JfzXo4j.png


JfzNJV9.png


Jfzjndx.png


And a lot of the people claiming Hi-Fi Rush was robbed were actually the same people massively talking shit on Hi-Fi Rush in January when I said it was a GOTY contender. It absolutely is still a GOTY contender, but I think Starfield is a lot more ambitious and impressive, and I am literally one of the biggest advocates for Hi-Fi Rush on here, and I got shit constantly for hyping that game up too.

Several of the quests are among the best I've ever played in an RPG, like Entangled, or the multi-part Crimson Fleet quest. Even basic side quests have 3-4 parts to it and are surprisingly deep.

I will never change the minds of people that hate the game, and that's not even my goal. But if you guys can't even fathom that this is at the top of consideration for BEST XBOX GAME this year, then you guys are just lying or trolls in my opinion. If you have eyeballs you can see it's an incredibly impressive and ambitious game. It doesn't even take an argument to refute the bullshit. It's self-evidently absurd and exaggerated to the max.

Just look at the game with your actual eyes instead of being morons. And my pictures are just capturing a tiny, tiny fraction of the game. I'm still playing it and I'm at 315 hours.

The game is good, there is no doubt about it. The issue is that the game isn't great. The Elder Scrolls games were better than Skyrim. Starfield deserves kudos, but it does not deserve awards. Nothing it did was amazing. Most of what it did was already done in other games. Bethesda did not release a flop with Starfield, nor can anyone call it a failure. But neither did they release anything extraordinary or groundbreaking.
 

mrmustard

Banned
The game is good, there is no doubt about it. The issue is that the game isn't great. The Elder Scrolls games were better than Skyrim. Starfield deserves kudos, but it does not deserve awards. Nothing it did was amazing. Most of what it did was already done in other games. Bethesda did not release a flop with Starfield, nor can anyone call it a failure. But neither did they release anything extraordinary or groundbreaking.
Isn't that the case with 99% of the games? I agree, Starfield is no GOTY material and will probably not even win top 5 most awards, but it's still a good game with lots of time to spend in. People just expected much more, but that's their own mistake. I never expected a 94+ game and so i'm not disappointed.
 
Starfield is my GOTY, currently at more than 250 hours into it, but what is up with these nomination lists? Are they going with exclusives only? If so where is Forza Motorsport, and why the heck would Chants of Sennaar or Dead Space Remake be on this list? If it includes all third party games then why choose the ones they did? Neither Chants of Sennaar or Dead Space Remake should legitimately be anywhere near a GOTY list with so many other amazing games out this year. So weird. I feel exactly the same about the best Playstation game nomination list and winner as well. Weirdest nonsensical nomination list ever.
Dead Space is absolutely one of the best of the year, no reason at all it shouldn't be included. Saying that the Resident Evil 4 remake is even better so where is that?
 
The systems and character building in Starfield are extremely poor

How so?

You can choose to role play a whole variety of characters, get married/divorced, buy a house and decorate it with cool stuff from all over galaxy.

If you are interested in combat, again ton to progression that feeds into weapon crafting, ship building etc.

There is ton of stuff to do if you find this interesting. Personally I find it very compelling.

Criticizes Ubisoft and Witcher 3 open world design while saying Starfield is trying to fix that when this is Starfield for the most part



Cracking Up Lol GIF by HULU


It needs more work.

At least 20 systems need one habitable planet that has a hour long unique quest dedicated to that planet. This will make exploration completely different.

I am not harsh on them simply cause difficult to build stuff, they have already delivered.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
100%. Just look at the MC user score. So many people only have reviewed Starfield with a red score and no other game or Starfield with a red score + PS games with a 10. It's just pathetic. Of course this goes both ways, but there are much more PS fanboys. MC userscore is a shitshow.

This hobby could be so cool and gamers should be united, but unfortunately there are too many sickos out there.
Yeah, MC user review scores have always been shit. Any user review system that allows unverified purchases and reviews cannot be relied upon. That's why Steam's user reviews are the best so far.
 
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