Matt Nicholson

TL:DR - an uninspiring, boring, barebones framework of a game with the bare minimum of gameplay elements that isn't worth playing until the modding community finish it on Bethesda's behalf. So I'm ten hours in, and I'm not really impressed. Every element of this game has been done better by other games. My initial impression was this felt like a crossover between Elder Scrolls and Fallout - the great soundtrack by Inon Zur is definitely not deviating from the Fallout mold and it works really well. And as far as Bethesda games go, while there's still an element of cardboard NPC to it, it's come along really well, the character interactions look as good as they ever have for the studio. But that's where my praise ends. No Man's Sky does ground exploration better. Elite Dangerous does ship exploration better. The FPS is slow and shallow. NPCs bug out everywhere. All the elements of this game feel like barebones versions of stuff elsewhere. (And sorry, no, I don't subscribe to the idea that Bethesda's bugs are excusable. They don't get a pass because it's funny. This isn't Goat Simulator.) And the weakest part of other Bethesda games sits front and centre - absolutely terrible story writing. I realised this in the first quest - "Hey, you had visions? OK, you can have my ship!" "Yeah, you can't stay here in your job any more, you're an explorer now, goodbye!". The story is weak, in an age where there are dozens of indie games written with beautiful stories, there's no excuse to trot out the same writing teams with no fresh ideas. The story is so linear that there's little point in even having dialogue options. I've been playing through as the most uncooperative, obnoxious character possible just to see if it has any bearing on the story. Spoiler - it does not. And then there's the other complaints - fast travel to a 10-square-meter block of a copy-paste planet, to fight the same pirates, in the same outpost, mine the same ore, repeat. My first and biggest gripe was getting into the ship for the first time, clicking 'take off' - and being taken to a cut scene. What, you can't actually FLY the ship outside of space combat? It's effectively a home for issuing fast travel commands. Sounds petty but when other elements of the game are done so blandly, it's a pretty sad revelation. But what irks me most is that modders will make this game so much better over the next couple of years - and Bethesda will reap all the reward for it. They've released just enough game that the community will finish it for them, and they'll make bank, just like they have by re-releasing Skyrim with community mods. This game will be huge, off the backs of free labour.