What It's REALLY Like To EXPLORE In Starfield!

does exploration just work in Starfield well the answer to that is yes but not perhaps in quite the way as some people would expect in this video then I want to talk about What exploration in Starfield means to me and how I have approached it also I am fully aware that people do have concerns about exploration in the game and I'm going to discuss those issues further into the video so exploration that means a different things to a different people and I don't think one definition invalidates any of the others also when it comes to exploring a based gameplay pretty much every game has a different approach and this is how I've approached it with the Starfield we're going to walk through one example on just one of the moons one of my most recent Expeditions or exploration based sessions so on the screen right here I just left an outpost I've been there for one of the main quests completed that objective left the area and then decided it'll be pretty interesting to take a look around this moon now it is Barren it's not quite as visually interesting as some of the more life focused planets out there but nonetheless it seemed to me there might be a few things interesting to take a look at around here after a few moments of just eyeballing The Horizon I noticed a larger Tower off in the distance so I decided to head in that direction now it took a bit of time to actually get there a few minutes in fact and this really does for me at least convey some of the vast sizes of these worlds must I know that these maps that we're on are bounded they do have invisible walls unless I've intentionally said out to hit them they've really not been a problem so after a while I arrived at the location it turned out this Tower was a massive drill for an oil well now you never quite know what you're going to find at these types of locations sometimes there can be resources loot other times there can be pirates on this occasion there was nothing especially interesting there in terms of NPCs one thing that did really get my attention was this stranger structure at the top side of the well it took me a few moments to work out what was going on here initially I thought it was some sort of Flora a strange plant growing out the top of the structure but after a couple of moments I realized that what had happened is the well had ruptured and the well the oil whatever chemical is inside had erupted out turned up into the void because space is so cold it are then Frozen creating this fascinating Frozen Fountain after a few more moments of exploring this area I decided to move on now there was a small little Hab here that I could have gone inside of but I decided not to now after a few more moments of Walkin I had an encounter that I can only describe as a spoiler so I won't talk about it here it's okay for those of you slightly further into the story I guess but for those of you not then it's well a pretty big spoiler so we'll entirely avoid that but do keep in mind that was the second interesting thing that had happened on my journey so far I then saw a structure off in the distance this looked like some sort of or but you can see it on the screen right here very very small there in the distance but that really does go to show the massive draw distance that this game does have now I brought up the suits scanner and this didn't give me any marker for what this location might be it turns out that the scanner only highlights certain objects within your immediate environment it doesn't reveal to you every single location what's more the areas that it does reveal you'll see as black icons much like we saw in um Skyrim and these will change to White icons once you've actually discovered them at any rate this particular structure was not showing up on the scanner so I decided to spend some time walking over that way and it was quite a treack now on Route I discovered a new geological feature and you can see this is a crater and at the bottom of it was some type of liquid on the edges of the crater was also a resource that will come in handy later on into the game once you start doing other activities such as base building none of this was of immediate use to me then so I decided to move on as I got closer to the structure I could see indeed that it was a building once I got fairly close some Poppin did happen a ship suddenly spawned there now I guess this ship was meant to well be there all along but sometimes I guess these things just happen the game is a protested game so bugs are to be expected at any rate I decided that this ship looked to be unguarded and there was some NPCs here but they were not hostile so whilst no one was watching I boarded the ship picked the lock to the cargo hatch and got inside the ship sat down in the seat of the ship and once you're sat there you will to all intents and purposes actually own the ship but it won't yet be your main ship you'll need to return to a shipyard or other such similar location to make this your main home ship and have your crew a transferred over along with all your equipment and items also in order to sett the ship or modify it you will need to pay a fee to register it at any rate now i' effectively claim to ship and the NPCs outside were not aware of this yet because I hadn't flown away I decided to leave the ship and check out the structure that I had walked to now it turned out that this was a Frack inside and there was a few NPC workers here they're all friendly enough a few of them telling me I shouldn't really be in the area as it's not a tourist destination and my being here was preventing them from working I tried interacting with a few NPCs by looking over to them and pressing the E key and they just gave me a few lines of dialogue and nothing I could really do then this one dude I could interact with and I could ask him what he was doing there and what activities there were for me to do around here he told me he informed me that there is a mission board nearby so immediately I turned back to check out that mission board and yes sure enough that was indeed here and there's a whole bunch of missions I could take on and then do standing nearby to the admission board was this person this turned out to be a store owner of sorts and I could buy a few items from them one thing of particular interest was that they were selling nose now I purchased one of these and it was a note telling me that there's abandoned cargo up in space and that as the cargo was abandoned it would be legal Salvage so immediately I headed out to my new ship launched up into space and headed towards the destination that was revealed to me on this note and yes indeed it did turn out there was some cargo here that I could claim it was at another planet so I did have to travel there incidentally there's quite a few people to say that to travel from A to B you need to use the star map that's not true what you can actually do is bring up your ship's scanner highlight the destination with your ship by orientating towards that destination and then press the r key and you will then well basically move towards that location so still no free flight here unfortunately but even still it did feel to me at least that I could fly to these various locations now later on I wanted to know whether or not I could return back to that fren site and sure enough I still could that's still available and keeping in mind that the these are all a precisely generated locations precisely generated missions and NPCs it means that there's a whole bunch of different things to find and discover now whilst back at the fren site one of the NPCs approached me and asked for some help on a particular activity they gave me some coordinates to a cave and asked if I'd go and mine some minerals from there the cave itself was a long distance took quite a while to walk to it but nonetheless inside there it was pretty interesting it wasn't a large cave but it was very very dark and very atmospheric now I'm going to leave it right there and stop describing that particular Adventure because I feel you probably get the point by now and do keep in mind that everything I've discussed in this video took place on a Barren Bland Moon there's plenty of other planets out there that are visually much more interesting so for me exploration in Starfield is largely what I was hoping it would be and largely what I was expecting that ability to wander the surface of planets have Random Encounters discover interesting locations and meet NPCs all of which can lead to some interesting quests along the way of course there's going to be people who do have the complaint that given enough time there's going to be a lot of repetition in both bases content Mission types and all that sort of stuff but tell me a game that relies on procedure generated content that doesn't have any form of repetition now that said as I mentioned in my previous video on first impressions of Starfield as a space game well the space section of the game is a little bit disappointed in the sense that the area of space is far smaller than I would have liked I never had the expectation that I'd be able to freely fly from planet to planet as I mentioned in the videos before release I always dealt that was very much in question yet it's still something I would really like to see albeit as long as the travel times aren't too long all that said the space actions of the game certainly serve as an interesting Counterpoint to everything we have down on planetary surfaces the space section of the game is something I'm going to be talking about in more detail in an upcoming video taking everything into account then and consideration for me I do feel exploration in Starfield is very very good but again this will be subjective and it will depend upon your definition of What exploration actually means to you that said Starfield is not a spacium it's not no man's sky or Elite dangerous or Star Citizen and it was never intended to be Bethesda made that very very clear for a long time now however that's not to say that people's concerns about the nature of exploration is unfounded a lot of it does makeable a lot of sense to be honest the Transitions and the loading screens the bounded areas are certainly going to be problematic if you come in at the game from the perspective of it being free roaming in the same sense as no man's sky on that note however the limitations the boundaries of space have always been a bit up in question we've never known for sure what size they actually are well recently some streamers specifically specifically Alana Pierce has spent a few hours traveling from one planet to another in this example she tried traveling all the way to Pluto and she didn't once hit any invisible walls this says that space is large the outside was that when she arrived at the destination Pluto didn't actually exist the only thing there was a marker so the problem of course is that this doesn't really help anyone who is looking for free flight space travel but what it does mean is that modding the game to be free flight should be a very possible given enough time generally speaking then if exploration to you in a space game is the ability to fly around in deep space on those long long Journeys and well hopefully discover some interesting looking planets or other space-based anomal is then well just maybe a Starfield is not going to be for you it's certainly not that type of game on the other hand if exploration to you is similar to what you enjoyed in the Skyrim or Fallout 4 that is all the various Des stations connected by a vast open world area where you're not forced into a transition into different screens or different zones and don't have to rely on a map then again you may have some issues with Starfield and that is entirely understandable the maps and loading screens between zones is certainly something that a lot of people are well they do have issue with also the ability to effectively completely ignore your spaceship and fast travel to any destination any planet that you've previously visited again is something that does bother some people but ultimately that is a choice it's a choice to play the game that way just because the Fast Travel option is there it doesn't mean that you have to use It ultimately then as with everything else it really comes down to how you approach Starfield and how you want to play it for me exploration is always different from game to game in Elite dangerous it was all about exploring the vastness of space discovering interesting looking planets for No Man's sky for me it was a somewhat different it was about pushing forward always heading towards a new destination a new location and discovering interesting things along the way in Starfield it's very different again it's about immersing myself in these various different environments and these different planets discovering what sort of activities are there and what sort of events are occurring around the various Maps as you will have seen it's entirely possible to head on out and have some very interesting Adventures that Lead You from One activity to another and for me this was always the thing I enjoyed the most with the Elder Scroll series as well as the Fallout games at any rate that's my thoughts and feelings on exploration in Starfield do let me know what you think about all of this in the comment section below I'm especially interested to hear from people who have played Starfield so far and how you've been approaching it but also I'm very interested to hear from those who haven't yet had hands-on experience what are you looking forward to what are you most interested in trying out what are you disappointed with so far do let me know in in the comment section below as always thanks for watching and I'll catch you guys and girls next time

Channel: ObsidianAnt

Views: 81,220

Keywords: starfield gameplay, starfield review, starfield bethesda, bethesda starfield, starfield how to, starfield game, starfield gameplay review

Id: A9rfGKxhJfY

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 04 2023