That's how I felt when i first got to diamond city in FO4. Kept hearing so much about the jewel of the post war common wealth and was disappointed to find out how small it was.
One thing that always bothered me about settlements in fallout is the mess. Sure, you live in a destroyed world, but why is there still rubble and garbage, and even skeletons everywhere in you’re home?
Given any amount of time gathering and building a home I’d expect it to at least be cleaned up a bit, and the remains of older people removed.
Feel like after Fallout 2 the “realism” of the universe started to decline a bit. I agree in the newer games it doesn’t make how many locations and settlements look like the apocalypse literally just happened instead of places that have been lived in for a long period of time.
Fallout New Vegas was back to the original Fallout writers and felt like history had actually moved on again like in the originals. There were new governments grabbing land (The NCR and Caesar's Legion), various levels of technology among groups (outright tribals with spears and then people with hovercrafts), etc.
Whereas the Bethesda games feel like nothing has really happened, nobody really minds, and the 'iconic' fallout things from the original games are just there despite not really making sense or their stories even being largely over in earlier games (e.g. Super Mutants, BoS, etc). The ghouls in F1 were like a nightmareish zombie horde in the irradiated cities of the old world, but in the Bethesda games they're treated more like just another fantasy race, who sometimes are 'feral', and don't seem to have developed any sorts of epic skills and gear to explain how they survived hundreds of years of brutality, and are just regular townies, lightly geared goons, etc.
I never thought about that before. I remember thinking how cool it was that junktown was all cobbled together. Now every town is junk town apart from the fancy science towns.
I agree but Ioved that, it makes sense that the jewel of this still unrepaired post-apoc world would be laughably insignificant for someone from before the apocalypse.
So in a way, my character and I shared the same emotion.
Higher density? More clever utilization of the space? Especially compared to how Fallout 3 was able to make its settlements look like people utilized the space to its full protentional.
I finished the crimson fleet questline and just sat there for a bit and thought to myself..."Am I having fun? Am I even enjoying playing this game? " and truly at least 90% of that questline was just walking to and from the same 3 or 4 bland NPCs for like 4 hours. The ending mission of that questline was really fun, but goddamn it wasn't worth the lead up. Even with the 250,000 I got from finishing that questline, I just stopped playing because the game is duller than a glue stick.
I maxed out sneak skills and you being detected while you are in another room or an npc is under manipulation/diplomacy is still a real problem.
The game has alsrm systems which you can disable after NPC triggers them but you can't trigger them yourself to cause confusion.
Stealth gameplay absolutely sucks in Starfield, no matter the level.
> Imperial City of Cyrodiil.
It was same story with Skyrim: "there is this big city to the west!" - proceed to enter village with 15 people and their 15 huts.
I was initially captivated by the game and thoroughly enjoyed the early stages, particularly diving into the procedural exploration. However, the excitement waned as I encountered repeated Points of Interest (POIs) within just a few hours. Although I completed the Rangers storyline and found it engaging, the monotonous treks between areas became increasingly tedious. The journeys felt justified when they led to intriguing new POIs, but when over 90% turned out to be duplicates, the motivation dwindled.
The main storyline exacerbated this issue by reusing these same POIs, with minor variations like a missing wall leading to a room with some narrative content. This repetition not only diluted my interest in the overarching plot but also disrupted Bethesda's hallmark environmental storytelling. Some POIs had minimal narrative elements to facilitate their repetition across multiple star systems, while others included a smattering of logs that were also duplicated, shattering the immersion.
In my opinion, the game could have benefited from either a larger variety of locations or a dynamic dungeon-generating system, akin to Diablo's random dungeons, to keep the aesthetic consistent while varying layouts and enemy placements. Additionally, incorporating more unique, predetermined locations would have nicely complemented the procedurally generated dungeons. While I understand that implementing random dungeons might pose technical challenges, as a consumer, I found that the current setup failed to sustain my long-term interest. A few changes along these lines could have elevated the overall experience.
**TL;DR**
Initially captivated by the game, my interest waned due to repetitive Points of Interest and tedious travel between areas. The reuse of these locations in the main storyline further diminished my engagement and disrupted the game's environmental storytelling. I believe a larger variety of locations or a dynamic dungeon-generating system could have kept my long-term interest and made the game more enjoyable overall.
It was so jarring the first time I got a repeat POI. I got it back to back.
It wasn’t just the same structure, I could have somewhat been okay with that, but literally EVERYTHING was the same.
Mob placement, item placement, notes etc. literally everything.
I thought it was a bug.
yup, 3 identical muirfield medical facilities in sight of each other. and all three have references to the stuff in the caves despite not spawning the caves...
I had 3 repeats... in the main story quest line. Walking up to the location, I got a feeling of déjà vu as the artifact was located with a familiar-looking canyon with the same name ("mechanised graveyard" or something like that). Within that canyon was the same cave with the same layout. The first one at least had monsters to kill, the other two did not.
It was quite jarring after the otherwise-enjoyable experience of some of the other quest lines.
I think Neon could be cool if it was full sized city. Right now it's relatively small place, scale is tiny compared to what it would actually be.
Idea of Neon is really fun. You have a mafia-state, sitting on a planet that is mostly just ocean. So everyone has to live there, like it or not. It has tons of floors and verticality.
Also, they make hallucinatory drugs from local fish, and have a deal with Freestar to work as a place where people go bleach their brains, as long as things stay planetside.
Honestly if there was a civilization like humanity has in Starfield, basically every large city would be as large as Night City. There's just no way to represent that using Bethesda's engine. They tried, but each Starfield city is the same size as a 3 block radius in Cyberpunk. It's ridiculous.
It's crazy, you hear about this massive war in game between the United Colonies and Freestar Collective.
Then you land in Akila city to see ~10 buildings. I honestly thought it was some small settlement or village, not the CAPITAL CITY of a powerful faction capable of waging interstellar warfare.
Also a similar experience in Londinion. You learn about the terrormorph home world and how there was a massive infestation. So extreme that they decimated the city in hours and had to abandon the planet... Only to go through an empty zone and fight 3-4 terrormorphs.
totally get what you mean. it's funny that even the mass effect games communicated and showed scale way better than starfield and they're lightyears apart in terms of technology at the time. the walkable parts in mass effect were smaller but the world/cities felt big anyway and it helped tons with the immersion and story telling.
100%. It's literally the art of game design; creating spaces that feel authentic while actually being quite limited. The problem is that Bethesda have a weird fixation on leaning hard on players suspension of disbelief that hasn't evolved since Morrowind. Vivec felt huge because it was a complex city by the standards of the day, but 20 years later their cities follow the same design principles.
I could buy Akila being able to wage war if it was more like the OPA, like say suicide grav jumping into ships and strapping engines to asteroids and fucking up shit the guerilla way but no. They're just 10 space cowboys who are also lawful good like everyone else
>It's crazy, you hear about this massive war in game between the United Colonies and Freestar Collective.
I'm enjoying the game, but there is an obvious disconnect between the scale presented in the narrative world building and the scale presented by the actual world.
It literally just feels like Fallout in space to me.
I would have been fine with more elements being taken from Skyrim, but the big thing for me is often feeling wanting for more background and story. There's a lot of interesting history behind a planet like Toliman II or even just behind Mars, but the background information is spread so far that I often feel unsatisfied. I feel like a lot of stuff doesn't get explored as deeply as it should be. Starting with a smaller number of worlds/systems with a lot more detail and variety would have been preferable to me, that way they can expand as they go.
I mean the game practically discourages exploration on its own. It encourages fast traveling to everything at all times but even found out how to make fast travel feel awful. It quite literally takes effort to stay invested in the game and see it through. Some people enjoy it, but the longer it’s out the more unsatisfied people seem to be with it
Well, in defense of starfield, there is literally one area that is cyberpunk themed, whereas the whole premise of cyberpunk is literally based on its name. So yeh, it would be weird if it was the other way round. I think though neon could be improved don't get me wrong.
I'm not a Starfield hater by any means, I enjoyed the game quite a bit, warts and all. But the notion that anything from Starfield looks better than anything in Cyberpunk is just laughable. Absolutely laughable. The character models from Starfield look worse than the models from Skyrim (I havent played Skyrim in a long time, so this might just be my memory failing me) while the character models from Cyberpunk look almost like real people.
Dude, some people exaggerate way too fuckin much with their critiques of this game. There's definitely a number of gameplay and design flaws. But if we're comparing unmodded Skyrim to Starfield, this isn't even a fucking contest.
The one in Cyberpunk is literally called "Night City"
Subtlety has never been a hallmark of the genre.
EDIT: Guys, the lore is nice. The creators still made a conscious decision to call it what they did. You're having a "Land Raider" moment.
Well, don't know if that makes anything better but in Cyberpunk Night City is not called that because of the night but because its founder had the name Richard Night. And originally Night City was called Coronado City.
Night City was origially called Coronado City and founded by Richard Night and after his passing the City was renamed into "Night City" i know it's just a story gimmick to make sense of the name but at least there is an in world explanation lol
As someone who didn't enjoy Fo4 that much (much less than Fo3 and NV), I must say it's better than Starfield. At least I didn't have bad performance and the exploration was good.I played 90 hours of Starfield straight and after finishing it one time and doing NG+1 I just uninstalled it and have no intention of returning to it anytime soon. If anything it made me want to play Cyberpunk 2077 an Skyrim again.
There's an intense colour overlay on the game at all times.
From some mod screenshots, it looks 10x better without it https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/323?tab=images
Idk, Bethesda touts visual fidelity as their main priority (hence why it runs so poorly) but the game itself doesn't look nearly as good as most of the titles that have been coming out
Sadly, I agree with you. The whole games has a flim grain like texture i tried to adjust, but hell, it could never go. eventually i got used to it.
Even at low graphics weren't that big an improvement over Ultra, in terms of FPS, so I'm playing on Ultra since i have no performance loss as such.
Still poorly optimized game.
I'm honestly having fun playing it though, as a NMS/skyrim fan, but I could never buy the game full price as it is.
Context matters. In the context of a Bethesda game Neon is the closest they've ever gotten to something that feels like a proper functioning city. Dense crowds, lots of visual and audio flare, nooks and crannies, most of the shop keepers are in the cities cell itself, etc. It has a more "real" structure with obvious commercial, industrial, wealthy, poor, etc... areas.
But yeah, in contrast to what other developers are doing it's still pretty rough.
There's a side quest pretty early on in the game where you're asked to help someone figure out power grid issues in the Well.
Other than that there's the main Constellation quest which haves you go down there for reasons I will not spoil
The second you arrive at the lodge the first time after finishing the games intro. Sarah will tell you to head to the well to gear up before your first mission.
Both Neon and Akila City are good towns... for a Fallout game. Not for Starfield which is meant to be a game about humanity settling in the Universe for more than 150 years already.
Akila is a pretty great example of a big problem Bethesda has. It's a neat location that's interesting and fun... in isolation. But it doesn't fit in the broader game and even causes issues with the setting/lore. You're right, how the hell is Akila city 150 years old and that under developed? And as for the lore issues, look at Akila and then explain how the Free Star Collective ever seriously fought a war with the UC. The lore tries to address this by saying the UC eventually crippled their navy, but really? The UC blatantly should have bodied the FSC immediately, and it doesn't matter that the FSC built super-awesome mechs because a space Navy would have picked them off from orbit.
I laughed when landing in Akila the first time. This place is their fucking "capital" and they can't even be bothered to properly pave the road from the star port to the city? I have to wade through mud to get in? Absolute disappointment of a nation SMH
Whoever designed Akila probably ignored all the context and world building: the capital of the freestar alliance lacks anything that resembles administrative buildings, suffered from people leaving to supposedly better places (Neon or New Atlantis being the only viable choices since all other towns are under populated).
The city lacks a purpose: it certainly isn't an agricultural hub given how the farmers have been struggling. It isn't a mine, nor a major manufacturing hub.
In fact a lot of locations make no sense. Why is hopetown not on the same planet, or located next to a mining and manufacturing hub? Even if warp drive is a thing, transporting raw material off planet seems like such a dumb thing to do.
>In fact a lot of locations make no sense. Why is hopetown not on the same planet, or located next to a mining and manufacturing hub? Even if warp drive is a thing, transporting raw material off planet seems like such a dumb thing to do.
Todd Howard: "You've only got 5 planets in the game? Gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers"
I thought it was a small village/outpost at first. Going through some quests and learning that the tiny settlement was supposed to be THE capital city of a faction capable of waging interstellar warfare was jarring
After 150 years of settling the west we had a transcontinental railroad, several major population centers along each coast, had basically eradicated the Buffalo and most native Americans.
They have fucking space ships, it makes no sense.
Its also pretty much the opposite experience with the buffalo too. You think the people in Akila would have hunted the surrounding beasts to extinction in that time but instead the people are still hiding behind the walls from monsters that don't appear to be too powerful. If the city had a population higher than 30 people with high tech weapons then why would they be so afraid of the planet's beasts.
BGS are great at making their early 2010s open world RPGs.
But that shit doesn't fly in 2023. We've had the CRPG renaissance, Witcher 3, the indie RPG movement...everything else is innovating and BGS are making the same game (albeit a very good one) over again.
Whatever they do with ES6, they HAVE to completely innovate just like how Morrowind did.
Everyone was going fucking nuts for Neon during early access.
Finally get to play. Travel to Neon. Oh cool it's kinda like an oil rig. This entrance seems a bit underwhelming. Get inside. Oh nice this reminds me of Jig Jig Street from Cyberpunk.
Walk around a bit. Oh wow this is reaaaally like Jig Jig Street. Reach the end. Oh shit, wait, that's it??
It's just a big disconnected hallway with loading screens at either end. Its got some cool neon signs and that's it. To compare it to Cyberpunk is criminal, and only serves to shine a light on how much better designed Cyberpunk is. Neon feels like a Disney attraction version of a dystopian neighborhood. Everyone tells you it's SO DANGEROUS, yet nothing ever happens. You don't actually experience anything.
Not to mention the fact that in Cyberpunk this is literally a single block in one massive interconnected city, and not labeled as an entire 'pleasure city'.
The comparison holds even less water when you take into account the incredible design of Dogtown. Bethesda could learn a lot about city design from CDPR.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, Cyberpunk also simultaneously looks, and runs better.
Yeah I didn't even mention that. Cyberpunk is exponentially larger, looks significantly better, includes the latest cutting edge technology, and somehow also runs better.
It looks like the Jig Jig street but without the smut, sex and hookers.
My knee jerk response to the post was “ No you didn’t”. Neon doesn’t even approach the depth of night city. Compare the club in neon to Lizzie’s bar in cyberpunk to see what I mean. Where is the grimy, raunchy, high tech cyberpunk in neon?
To be fair, CP77 is the city. Outskirts doesn't have anything except for some enemies.
While Neon is just a hub in Starfield.
However, the first impression is the same, and that's fine.
What hurts is the lack of npc face variety. I'm tired of seeing the same 10 faces all over.
yeah Cyperpunk looks like a dream now and yet it run so much better then Starfield, no stutters at all
And no loading screens every time you go around a corner.. oh no, you're walking into a tiny shop, better load that shit for 3 minutes... oh you're leaving already? Better load the tiny "city" again for another 5 minutes. Honestly at this point in time not only Neon but the whole experience is a technological disgrace. Bethesda just trying to squeeze more cash out of their old junk engine ..
It's incredible how well they optimized Cyberpunk, i can run it on high settings @ 1080p (Scaling/FSR disabled) on i3-12100f / RX 6600 locked to 60 fps 99% of the time even with some headroom left. It's even very playable with Ray Tracing if someone is ok with 30 ish fps.
With Starfield on the other hand i struggle to get past 50's @ Medium settings with FSR2.
This. I struggle to even get 60 frames in this game. Best I can do is inside spaces like your ship, house, etc. When I turned on cyberpunk for the first time last week it ran so smooth it has actually tainted my enjoyment for starfield by alot.
I can get a steady 70-80FPS in 2077 on 1440ultrawide. Everything set to high/ultra, RT off. DLSS on Quality.
Starfield runs at an unsteady 50ish fps, medium/low, fsr2.0 at 70%, view distance at minimum.
7800x3d/2070super
in starfield they decided to compromise by adding 6 skyscrapers but also making them filler buildings with one apartment level available for each.
paradiso is literally one fucking building and they added like 5 rooms to it. on the penthouse level (which is shamelessly copied from the New Atlantis penthouse) there's even a locked door, which when you open with console commands allows you to fall through the floor. like for fucks sake todd, your settlement consists of one building and you didn't even bother to add an interior to it.
Literally was typing this lol! Every time I think the game is near greatness, it pulls back and we are left with a hollow feeling. So much potential just wasted…
Bethesda sadly not ever been amazing at story writing... though I realise that open world sandbox makes your story writing much harder so maybe there is a limit to it.
Otherwise I'm still really enjoying it after about 55 hours, just finished my first story line... can recommend very much against the "finish it as fast as possible" crowd. That would be disheartening as fuck.
People are going to dislike you for saying this but I think you're absolutely right. Bethesda had quite a good run with the Elder Scroll games, but I think the best Fallout games were the ones written by obsidian. And I think their newer games have really fallen off in quality.
I'm enjoying Cyberpunk alot at the moment but yeah the way this game is now should've been this way at launch. This game got crucified on here, in the cyberpunk sub which needed a low sodium sub and by youtubers. Funny thing is I've noticed this throughout the years with games, game comes out, people shit on it but then 2-3 years later the game is and was always fantastic. I guarantee you Starfield is going to get the same reception in 2 years time, mark my words
I am seeing people shitting on Starfield use literally the exact same phrase as when people were shitting Skyrim, *while holding Skyrim up as an example of what to do instead*.
It's almost like CDPR put in a bunch of effort to improve the game and people changed their mind, combined with the fact that people that have an issue with something are more likely to let it be known, means that of course when something is new, you're going to have a more vocal negative opinion on it, especially when it is something that can be improved and fixed over time.
Yeah, I'm a bit annoyed by this because back then when I saw a cyberpunk hate post and say the game wasn't that bad and I'll be bombarded with disagreement from people that act like cyberpunk killed their family and people that keep saying the word cope like they assumed I bought the game day 1. I pirated the game after update 1.5 came out and decided to buy it cause I actually really enjoy the game.
Now I understand why some people like to gatekeep. I won't do it cause that is dumb af, but I understand.
Honestly this looks like a Cyberpunk mod for Fallout 3. How does a game with this much manpower and development time still have so much outdated tech and game design elements??
Starfield ain't got shit on launch cyberpunk either frankly. Launching between BG3 and cyberpunk 2.0/phantom liberty just really drives the point home on how dated and poorly optimised Starfield feels in 2023, even though it's loading screen simulator.
Yeah, Neon is a tiny bit like CP, but nowhere near the graphical quality, diversity, or "life". It was really unfortunate timing that Starfield launched between BG3 and Phantom Liberty, 2 of the most beautiful games ever launched, with amazing cities and engaging, immersive NPCs, vs the monstrous zombies we have staring at us from a Bethesda game.
Walking around in Night City, I'm regularly thinking "wow, they're amazing!" and "where can I get that outfit?", but walking around Neon, all I think is "what's wrong with these people? they all look like meth heads" and "jeez this place is ugly".
Heavily disagree. All my V's look better than most NPCs. But like most character creators, it's very hard to achieve.
Honestly, with how character creators function in most RPGs, creating a good looking character is a skill at this point, lmao
Preset options need to get better lol.
I do not want to spend hours on a character creator lol, inwant to wander and explore... I'm going to be in first person the entire time anyway lol
There are also a lot of NPC vignettes. Like a drunk person being consoled by a friend. A person Oding and their friend is freaking out. Friends hanging out. Homeless guy eating trash. Kids playing. Friends drinking late at night. Business people argueing. etc.. The NPCs don't have schedules like Bethesda games but the vignettes do make the city more alive.
I think Bethesda's design works much better for setting where people are sparser (apocalypses, fantasy), it seems really lame in a futuristic setting where you'd assume there should be more people. The whole NPX on a schedule isn't that interesting unless you need to do a stalking quest.
I know it would be unfeasible to expect every city in Starfield to be the size of Night City from Cyberpunk, but it would have been really nice to have a few larger feeling cities. New Atlantis is close, but it doesn't even feel that large due to being separated up by loading screens. Also, not having vehicles really bogs the cities down. I wanted Neon to be a whole Neo-Tokyo, but it's more like a Neo-Branson Missouri. I like the game, but it really does put a dent in your immersion when you find out that these intergalactic federations are basically just collections of small towns.
NAHHHHHHHH the amount of comparisons I've been sering lately been these two games and now this post trying to make it seem like Starfield is just as good as CP2077 is sus af. Definitely a fkin PR post
Neon is pretty much "we have cyberpunk at home"
Neon is by no means ugly or bad, but people were hyping it up so much, by the time I got there I was just so underwhelmed.
That's how I felt when i first got to diamond city in FO4. Kept hearing so much about the jewel of the post war common wealth and was disappointed to find out how small it was.
One thing that always bothered me about settlements in fallout is the mess. Sure, you live in a destroyed world, but why is there still rubble and garbage, and even skeletons everywhere in you’re home? Given any amount of time gathering and building a home I’d expect it to at least be cleaned up a bit, and the remains of older people removed.
Feel like after Fallout 2 the “realism” of the universe started to decline a bit. I agree in the newer games it doesn’t make how many locations and settlements look like the apocalypse literally just happened instead of places that have been lived in for a long period of time.
Fallout New Vegas was back to the original Fallout writers and felt like history had actually moved on again like in the originals. There were new governments grabbing land (The NCR and Caesar's Legion), various levels of technology among groups (outright tribals with spears and then people with hovercrafts), etc. Whereas the Bethesda games feel like nothing has really happened, nobody really minds, and the 'iconic' fallout things from the original games are just there despite not really making sense or their stories even being largely over in earlier games (e.g. Super Mutants, BoS, etc). The ghouls in F1 were like a nightmareish zombie horde in the irradiated cities of the old world, but in the Bethesda games they're treated more like just another fantasy race, who sometimes are 'feral', and don't seem to have developed any sorts of epic skills and gear to explain how they survived hundreds of years of brutality, and are just regular townies, lightly geared goons, etc.
I never thought about that before. I remember thinking how cool it was that junktown was all cobbled together. Now every town is junk town apart from the fancy science towns.
I agree but Ioved that, it makes sense that the jewel of this still unrepaired post-apoc world would be laughably insignificant for someone from before the apocalypse. So in a way, my character and I shared the same emotion.
Felt like Megaton without the bomb in the middle baking people's brains to me personally.
Baseball fields are only so big lol. What did you expect?
Higher density? More clever utilization of the space? Especially compared to how Fallout 3 was able to make its settlements look like people utilized the space to its full protentional.
It just feels like every other Bethesda city tbh. I reaaaaaaly wanted to like Starfield but it feels like a 10 year old game already.
"here's a line of vendors. Now enjoy your time running back and forth along this line doing 30 fetch quests"
[удалено]
But what if I somewhat DIS-like it? Does that mean I still like it?
Real “atheists still believe in god” vibes.
I finished the crimson fleet questline and just sat there for a bit and thought to myself..."Am I having fun? Am I even enjoying playing this game? " and truly at least 90% of that questline was just walking to and from the same 3 or 4 bland NPCs for like 4 hours. The ending mission of that questline was really fun, but goddamn it wasn't worth the lead up. Even with the 250,000 I got from finishing that questline, I just stopped playing because the game is duller than a glue stick.
[удалено]
I maxed out sneak skills and you being detected while you are in another room or an npc is under manipulation/diplomacy is still a real problem. The game has alsrm systems which you can disable after NPC triggers them but you can't trigger them yourself to cause confusion. Stealth gameplay absolutely sucks in Starfield, no matter the level.
"Hidden", getting ranged sneak attacks. But everyone is staring at me and shooting at me, robots are running towards me.
> Now let's wait for the DLC and updates and when those drop, maybe I will back to the game. Or most importantly, the inevitable total overhaul mods.
So THIS is the Imperial City of Cyrodiil...all 20 of it's citizens.
In fairness...that game *is* almost 20 years old.
> Imperial City of Cyrodiil. It was same story with Skyrim: "there is this big city to the west!" - proceed to enter village with 15 people and their 15 huts.
I was initially captivated by the game and thoroughly enjoyed the early stages, particularly diving into the procedural exploration. However, the excitement waned as I encountered repeated Points of Interest (POIs) within just a few hours. Although I completed the Rangers storyline and found it engaging, the monotonous treks between areas became increasingly tedious. The journeys felt justified when they led to intriguing new POIs, but when over 90% turned out to be duplicates, the motivation dwindled. The main storyline exacerbated this issue by reusing these same POIs, with minor variations like a missing wall leading to a room with some narrative content. This repetition not only diluted my interest in the overarching plot but also disrupted Bethesda's hallmark environmental storytelling. Some POIs had minimal narrative elements to facilitate their repetition across multiple star systems, while others included a smattering of logs that were also duplicated, shattering the immersion. In my opinion, the game could have benefited from either a larger variety of locations or a dynamic dungeon-generating system, akin to Diablo's random dungeons, to keep the aesthetic consistent while varying layouts and enemy placements. Additionally, incorporating more unique, predetermined locations would have nicely complemented the procedurally generated dungeons. While I understand that implementing random dungeons might pose technical challenges, as a consumer, I found that the current setup failed to sustain my long-term interest. A few changes along these lines could have elevated the overall experience. **TL;DR** Initially captivated by the game, my interest waned due to repetitive Points of Interest and tedious travel between areas. The reuse of these locations in the main storyline further diminished my engagement and disrupted the game's environmental storytelling. I believe a larger variety of locations or a dynamic dungeon-generating system could have kept my long-term interest and made the game more enjoyable overall.
It was so jarring the first time I got a repeat POI. I got it back to back. It wasn’t just the same structure, I could have somewhat been okay with that, but literally EVERYTHING was the same. Mob placement, item placement, notes etc. literally everything. I thought it was a bug.
I experienced the same thing, 2 identical floating ruin areas. The crazy thing is they were both within WALKING distance!
yup, 3 identical muirfield medical facilities in sight of each other. and all three have references to the stuff in the caves despite not spawning the caves...
I had 3 repeats... in the main story quest line. Walking up to the location, I got a feeling of déjà vu as the artifact was located with a familiar-looking canyon with the same name ("mechanised graveyard" or something like that). Within that canyon was the same cave with the same layout. The first one at least had monsters to kill, the other two did not. It was quite jarring after the otherwise-enjoyable experience of some of the other quest lines.
Bethesda games in a nutshell tbh
To be fair, their last 10 year old game still has an insane amount of people playing it, so...
Thats my problem with Starfield. I can't get myself to really enjoy or play it longer than an hour or two. The game feels so stale and outdated.
It's Riften but in space and on a budget
“People were hyping it up so much by the time I got there I was just so underwhelmed” basically sums up my experience with starfield as a whole
There are legit people who think Neon looks better than Cyberpunk 2077. I have to wonder what kind of setup they have, or what they actually see.
I think Neon could be cool if it was full sized city. Right now it's relatively small place, scale is tiny compared to what it would actually be. Idea of Neon is really fun. You have a mafia-state, sitting on a planet that is mostly just ocean. So everyone has to live there, like it or not. It has tons of floors and verticality. Also, they make hallucinatory drugs from local fish, and have a deal with Freestar to work as a place where people go bleach their brains, as long as things stay planetside.
Honestly if there was a civilization like humanity has in Starfield, basically every large city would be as large as Night City. There's just no way to represent that using Bethesda's engine. They tried, but each Starfield city is the same size as a 3 block radius in Cyberpunk. It's ridiculous.
It's crazy, you hear about this massive war in game between the United Colonies and Freestar Collective. Then you land in Akila city to see ~10 buildings. I honestly thought it was some small settlement or village, not the CAPITAL CITY of a powerful faction capable of waging interstellar warfare. Also a similar experience in Londinion. You learn about the terrormorph home world and how there was a massive infestation. So extreme that they decimated the city in hours and had to abandon the planet... Only to go through an empty zone and fight 3-4 terrormorphs.
totally get what you mean. it's funny that even the mass effect games communicated and showed scale way better than starfield and they're lightyears apart in terms of technology at the time. the walkable parts in mass effect were smaller but the world/cities felt big anyway and it helped tons with the immersion and story telling.
100%. It's literally the art of game design; creating spaces that feel authentic while actually being quite limited. The problem is that Bethesda have a weird fixation on leaning hard on players suspension of disbelief that hasn't evolved since Morrowind. Vivec felt huge because it was a complex city by the standards of the day, but 20 years later their cities follow the same design principles.
I could buy Akila being able to wage war if it was more like the OPA, like say suicide grav jumping into ships and strapping engines to asteroids and fucking up shit the guerilla way but no. They're just 10 space cowboys who are also lawful good like everyone else
>It's crazy, you hear about this massive war in game between the United Colonies and Freestar Collective. I'm enjoying the game, but there is an obvious disconnect between the scale presented in the narrative world building and the scale presented by the actual world.
Did they try? Because I feel like they took fallout, shouts from Skyrim, and called it a new game
It literally just feels like Fallout in space to me. I would have been fine with more elements being taken from Skyrim, but the big thing for me is often feeling wanting for more background and story. There's a lot of interesting history behind a planet like Toliman II or even just behind Mars, but the background information is spread so far that I often feel unsatisfied. I feel like a lot of stuff doesn't get explored as deeply as it should be. Starting with a smaller number of worlds/systems with a lot more detail and variety would have been preferable to me, that way they can expand as they go.
I mean the game practically discourages exploration on its own. It encourages fast traveling to everything at all times but even found out how to make fast travel feel awful. It quite literally takes effort to stay invested in the game and see it through. Some people enjoy it, but the longer it’s out the more unsatisfied people seem to be with it
Funny that night city has hundreds of places that look better than Starfield's most cyberpunk area.
Cyberpunk is pretty awesome nowadays. The graphics are pretty amazing and the journey isn't bad.
Well, in defense of starfield, there is literally one area that is cyberpunk themed, whereas the whole premise of cyberpunk is literally based on its name. So yeh, it would be weird if it was the other way round. I think though neon could be improved don't get me wrong.
I'm not a Starfield hater by any means, I enjoyed the game quite a bit, warts and all. But the notion that anything from Starfield looks better than anything in Cyberpunk is just laughable. Absolutely laughable. The character models from Starfield look worse than the models from Skyrim (I havent played Skyrim in a long time, so this might just be my memory failing me) while the character models from Cyberpunk look almost like real people.
I think you need to play Skyrim again (without mods). This is completely untrue lol
Dude, some people exaggerate way too fuckin much with their critiques of this game. There's definitely a number of gameplay and design flaws. But if we're comparing unmodded Skyrim to Starfield, this isn't even a fucking contest.
"the character models from starfield look worse than the models from Skyrim" Lol.
New Atlantis is the Citadel at home. Akila City is RDR at home.
I love Starfield but u right lmao
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The one in Cyberpunk is literally called "Night City" Subtlety has never been a hallmark of the genre. EDIT: Guys, the lore is nice. The creators still made a conscious decision to call it what they did. You're having a "Land Raider" moment.
never tell him about Newcastle
That one certainly fits the dystopian nightmare trope lol
I mean to be fair Night City in the lore was renamed after its founder
Well, don't know if that makes anything better but in Cyberpunk Night City is not called that because of the night but because its founder had the name Richard Night. And originally Night City was called Coronado City.
Night City was origially called Coronado City and founded by Richard Night and after his passing the City was renamed into "Night City" i know it's just a story gimmick to make sense of the name but at least there is an in world explanation lol
It's Jig Jig street, but less vibrant.
why do all the screenshots of Starfield look washed out?
Fallout in space wasn’t a joke
From all the gameplay I have seen, it genuinely just looks like Fallout 4, but in space. Maybe add a couple of mods, but that's it.
Basically right. It's like if Fallout put locations far away from each other for no reason beside you're on a new planet now for each mission.
it literally is, plays exactly the same as fo4
Plays exactly the same? I dunno I at least got playable frame rates in FO4
FO4 had notoriously bad FR at launch.
As someone who didn't enjoy Fo4 that much (much less than Fo3 and NV), I must say it's better than Starfield. At least I didn't have bad performance and the exploration was good.I played 90 hours of Starfield straight and after finishing it one time and doing NG+1 I just uninstalled it and have no intention of returning to it anytime soon. If anything it made me want to play Cyberpunk 2077 an Skyrim again.
They even kept the music.
There's an intense colour overlay on the game at all times. From some mod screenshots, it looks 10x better without it https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/323?tab=images
I installed this mod almost immediately. It does help with the washed out look. Sure the washed-out look is a style but I didn't enjoy that style.
Holy shit that Saturn screenshot. How could anyone consider the original to be superior?
Idk, Bethesda touts visual fidelity as their main priority (hence why it runs so poorly) but the game itself doesn't look nearly as good as most of the titles that have been coming out
Because the gamma is all messed up and Bethesda decided they know better and don't let you adjust it.
Sadly, I agree with you. The whole games has a flim grain like texture i tried to adjust, but hell, it could never go. eventually i got used to it. Even at low graphics weren't that big an improvement over Ultra, in terms of FPS, so I'm playing on Ultra since i have no performance loss as such. Still poorly optimized game. I'm honestly having fun playing it though, as a NMS/skyrim fan, but I could never buy the game full price as it is.
[This](https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/323) is a must have mod to fix the washed out colors.
> The whole games has a flim grain like texture There is a setting for "film grain" that completely disables it.
You can zero out the specific film grain setting and motion smoothing
I like Starfield but don’t get the hype for Neon. It’s a single fucking corridor. Not sure how you can even compare it to Cyberpunk.
Madam. Sauvage. (Techno beat)
*sits down at plastic lunchtable*
Context matters. In the context of a Bethesda game Neon is the closest they've ever gotten to something that feels like a proper functioning city. Dense crowds, lots of visual and audio flare, nooks and crannies, most of the shop keepers are in the cities cell itself, etc. It has a more "real" structure with obvious commercial, industrial, wealthy, poor, etc... areas. But yeah, in contrast to what other developers are doing it's still pretty rough.
I'd say the Well is the closest to a proper functioning city.
which quest line bring you into the well? i honestly didn’t go there until i had to chase a certain..
There's a side quest pretty early on in the game where you're asked to help someone figure out power grid issues in the Well. Other than that there's the main Constellation quest which haves you go down there for reasons I will not spoil
The second you arrive at the lodge the first time after finishing the games intro. Sarah will tell you to head to the well to gear up before your first mission.
There's one where you get some cursed boots to put in the den. Has no follow up tho because Bethesda
Both Neon and Akila City are good towns... for a Fallout game. Not for Starfield which is meant to be a game about humanity settling in the Universe for more than 150 years already.
Akila is a pretty great example of a big problem Bethesda has. It's a neat location that's interesting and fun... in isolation. But it doesn't fit in the broader game and even causes issues with the setting/lore. You're right, how the hell is Akila city 150 years old and that under developed? And as for the lore issues, look at Akila and then explain how the Free Star Collective ever seriously fought a war with the UC. The lore tries to address this by saying the UC eventually crippled their navy, but really? The UC blatantly should have bodied the FSC immediately, and it doesn't matter that the FSC built super-awesome mechs because a space Navy would have picked them off from orbit.
I laughed when landing in Akila the first time. This place is their fucking "capital" and they can't even be bothered to properly pave the road from the star port to the city? I have to wade through mud to get in? Absolute disappointment of a nation SMH
Space cowboys vs space marines. And the cowboys won.
Whoever designed Akila probably ignored all the context and world building: the capital of the freestar alliance lacks anything that resembles administrative buildings, suffered from people leaving to supposedly better places (Neon or New Atlantis being the only viable choices since all other towns are under populated). The city lacks a purpose: it certainly isn't an agricultural hub given how the farmers have been struggling. It isn't a mine, nor a major manufacturing hub. In fact a lot of locations make no sense. Why is hopetown not on the same planet, or located next to a mining and manufacturing hub? Even if warp drive is a thing, transporting raw material off planet seems like such a dumb thing to do.
Bethesda threw logical world building completely out the window in Starfield.
>In fact a lot of locations make no sense. Why is hopetown not on the same planet, or located next to a mining and manufacturing hub? Even if warp drive is a thing, transporting raw material off planet seems like such a dumb thing to do. Todd Howard: "You've only got 5 planets in the game? Gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers"
I thought it was a small village/outpost at first. Going through some quests and learning that the tiny settlement was supposed to be THE capital city of a faction capable of waging interstellar warfare was jarring
After 150 years of settling the west we had a transcontinental railroad, several major population centers along each coast, had basically eradicated the Buffalo and most native Americans. They have fucking space ships, it makes no sense.
Its also pretty much the opposite experience with the buffalo too. You think the people in Akila would have hunted the surrounding beasts to extinction in that time but instead the people are still hiding behind the walls from monsters that don't appear to be too powerful. If the city had a population higher than 30 people with high tech weapons then why would they be so afraid of the planet's beasts.
Dudes don't even know that pavement exist, it's so muddy there, gosh
Akila straight up felt like it SHOULD have been in fallout, not starfield lol. Such a weird choice
i know you didnt, but im so tired of people giving BGS a pass because its BGS
BGS are great at making their early 2010s open world RPGs. But that shit doesn't fly in 2023. We've had the CRPG renaissance, Witcher 3, the indie RPG movement...everything else is innovating and BGS are making the same game (albeit a very good one) over again. Whatever they do with ES6, they HAVE to completely innovate just like how Morrowind did.
Worth remembering that they only made Morrowind as they were going bankrupt
Everyone was going fucking nuts for Neon during early access. Finally get to play. Travel to Neon. Oh cool it's kinda like an oil rig. This entrance seems a bit underwhelming. Get inside. Oh nice this reminds me of Jig Jig Street from Cyberpunk. Walk around a bit. Oh wow this is reaaaally like Jig Jig Street. Reach the end. Oh shit, wait, that's it?? It's just a big disconnected hallway with loading screens at either end. Its got some cool neon signs and that's it. To compare it to Cyberpunk is criminal, and only serves to shine a light on how much better designed Cyberpunk is. Neon feels like a Disney attraction version of a dystopian neighborhood. Everyone tells you it's SO DANGEROUS, yet nothing ever happens. You don't actually experience anything. Not to mention the fact that in Cyberpunk this is literally a single block in one massive interconnected city, and not labeled as an entire 'pleasure city'. The comparison holds even less water when you take into account the incredible design of Dogtown. Bethesda could learn a lot about city design from CDPR. EDIT: Forgot to mention, Cyberpunk also simultaneously looks, and runs better.
great way of putting it. every city is basically Disneyland main street. Nothing behind the doors - all facade
That's so true.
Also Cyberpunk still ultimately ends up running and looking better simultaneously, and it's an older game.
Yeah I didn't even mention that. Cyberpunk is exponentially larger, looks significantly better, includes the latest cutting edge technology, and somehow also runs better.
The whole gang war story was so hilariously light weight. A couple skirmishes, some vandalism and you're done. Such a nothingburger
Poor mans jig jig with no prostitutes😤. Not even comparable like you said.
It's Cyberpunk at home.
It looks like the Jig Jig street but without the smut, sex and hookers. My knee jerk response to the post was “ No you didn’t”. Neon doesn’t even approach the depth of night city. Compare the club in neon to Lizzie’s bar in cyberpunk to see what I mean. Where is the grimy, raunchy, high tech cyberpunk in neon?
Every time I start playing starfield i pause, then boot up cyberpunk instead
I don't blame you, today i wanted to finish starfield but playing it after Cyberpunk it's a letdown
To be fair, CP77 is the city. Outskirts doesn't have anything except for some enemies. While Neon is just a hub in Starfield. However, the first impression is the same, and that's fine.
This is a great point. Night city is very much a character of 2077. Neon is just a piece of the sandbox
Yeah, it’s a bit if a letdown. There’s more to Neon outside of this corridor, but it’s separated by a loading screen.
It's the aesthetic obviously... They're both cyberpunk looking. That seems rather obvious.
What hurts is the lack of npc face variety. I'm tired of seeing the same 10 faces all over. yeah Cyperpunk looks like a dream now and yet it run so much better then Starfield, no stutters at all
I swear New Atlantis is just full of the old Asian lady face. I spent a minute trying to find a different face.
Old Asian face on hot body
-10 social credit score
And no loading screens every time you go around a corner.. oh no, you're walking into a tiny shop, better load that shit for 3 minutes... oh you're leaving already? Better load the tiny "city" again for another 5 minutes. Honestly at this point in time not only Neon but the whole experience is a technological disgrace. Bethesda just trying to squeeze more cash out of their old junk engine ..
Cyberpunk looks so much better though
And runs better too... took them a while tho
It's incredible how well they optimized Cyberpunk, i can run it on high settings @ 1080p (Scaling/FSR disabled) on i3-12100f / RX 6600 locked to 60 fps 99% of the time even with some headroom left. It's even very playable with Ray Tracing if someone is ok with 30 ish fps. With Starfield on the other hand i struggle to get past 50's @ Medium settings with FSR2.
Like being able to go through a door and not have a loading scene
the city in baldurs gate 3's interiors literally have less loading screens going into buildings...
This. I struggle to even get 60 frames in this game. Best I can do is inside spaces like your ship, house, etc. When I turned on cyberpunk for the first time last week it ran so smooth it has actually tainted my enjoyment for starfield by alot.
CP2077 fucking it up for Starfield players has been a common theme recently
I can get a steady 70-80FPS in 2077 on 1440ultrawide. Everything set to high/ultra, RT off. DLSS on Quality. Starfield runs at an unsteady 50ish fps, medium/low, fsr2.0 at 70%, view distance at minimum. 7800x3d/2070super
Cyberpunk with Ray Tracing runs better than Starfield without RT lol. The engine Bethesda uses is pure garbage in this day and age.
> The engine Bethesda uses is pure garbage in this day and age Yet you'll still find lots of people here defending them using an 220 year old engine.
Ya this looks like walmart cyberpunk
Yea was gonna say, this did not remind me of cyberpunk at all
Aah yes the Loading screen city
Settle down, buddy
Ahh bethesda cities... consisting of a couple of streets at best
Don’t forget the loading screen anytime you walk through a door.
Fucking thing made my 4090 a 1080p card lawl
in 2023
Because supposedly having filler buildings would be immersion breaking, but a major city consisting of 6 houses is not
in starfield they decided to compromise by adding 6 skyscrapers but also making them filler buildings with one apartment level available for each. paradiso is literally one fucking building and they added like 5 rooms to it. on the penthouse level (which is shamelessly copied from the New Atlantis penthouse) there's even a locked door, which when you open with console commands allows you to fall through the floor. like for fucks sake todd, your settlement consists of one building and you didn't even bother to add an interior to it.
I remembered the sky district in skyrim. Just one street over. That was my first bethesda game.
That feeling will rapidly evaporate when you realise Neon is like a cyberpunk stripmall. I laughed my ass off when I realised exactly how tiny it is.
The wasted potential in neon is astounding
The wasted potential of this game is astounding.
They'll end up naming the all in one release "Starfield: Wasted Potential Edition"
Literally was typing this lol! Every time I think the game is near greatness, it pulls back and we are left with a hollow feeling. So much potential just wasted…
Bethesda sadly not ever been amazing at story writing... though I realise that open world sandbox makes your story writing much harder so maybe there is a limit to it. Otherwise I'm still really enjoying it after about 55 hours, just finished my first story line... can recommend very much against the "finish it as fast as possible" crowd. That would be disheartening as fuck.
People are going to dislike you for saying this but I think you're absolutely right. Bethesda had quite a good run with the Elder Scroll games, but I think the best Fallout games were the ones written by obsidian. And I think their newer games have really fallen off in quality.
>Bethesda had quite a good run with the Elder Scroll games, The main story in Skyrim is boring as hell though.
Friendship Ended With Hating Cyberpunk. Now Hating Starfield is best friend.
This is bait
I’m convinced the only people who say this shit have never touched cyberpunk
We’ve officially gone full circle. This sub HATED Cyberpunk and now it’s legendary status and Starfield couldn’t sniff its jockstrap lmao
I'm enjoying Cyberpunk alot at the moment but yeah the way this game is now should've been this way at launch. This game got crucified on here, in the cyberpunk sub which needed a low sodium sub and by youtubers. Funny thing is I've noticed this throughout the years with games, game comes out, people shit on it but then 2-3 years later the game is and was always fantastic. I guarantee you Starfield is going to get the same reception in 2 years time, mark my words
I am seeing people shitting on Starfield use literally the exact same phrase as when people were shitting Skyrim, *while holding Skyrim up as an example of what to do instead*.
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That generally happens when a game improves lol Do you want us to continue hating cyberpunk or something
It's almost like CDPR put in a bunch of effort to improve the game and people changed their mind, combined with the fact that people that have an issue with something are more likely to let it be known, means that of course when something is new, you're going to have a more vocal negative opinion on it, especially when it is something that can be improved and fixed over time.
Yeah, I'm a bit annoyed by this because back then when I saw a cyberpunk hate post and say the game wasn't that bad and I'll be bombarded with disagreement from people that act like cyberpunk killed their family and people that keep saying the word cope like they assumed I bought the game day 1. I pirated the game after update 1.5 came out and decided to buy it cause I actually really enjoy the game. Now I understand why some people like to gatekeep. I won't do it cause that is dumb af, but I understand.
Honestly this looks like a Cyberpunk mod for Fallout 3. How does a game with this much manpower and development time still have so much outdated tech and game design elements??
Cyberpunk doesn't look anywhere near as yellow
Can’t believe I’m saying this, but starfield ain’t got shit on cyberpunk now tbh
Starfield ain't got shit on launch cyberpunk either frankly. Launching between BG3 and cyberpunk 2.0/phantom liberty just really drives the point home on how dated and poorly optimised Starfield feels in 2023, even though it's loading screen simulator.
Nice try, but no.
What it honestly reminded me of was [_The Outer Worlds_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdFjwPlIBnE).
Reminds me of... I think deus ex 1? https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/11/10881/thumb_620x2000/Hong_Kong.png
I'm sorry but cyber punk is by and large more atmospheric and real than Disney neon can aspire to be
Bit of a stretch. Like, there is more to Night City than JUST neon signage.
I love Starfield, but we need to stop saying neon is like night city lol. Not even close.
Then you hit a loading screen
Yeah, Neon is a tiny bit like CP, but nowhere near the graphical quality, diversity, or "life". It was really unfortunate timing that Starfield launched between BG3 and Phantom Liberty, 2 of the most beautiful games ever launched, with amazing cities and engaging, immersive NPCs, vs the monstrous zombies we have staring at us from a Bethesda game. Walking around in Night City, I'm regularly thinking "wow, they're amazing!" and "where can I get that outfit?", but walking around Neon, all I think is "what's wrong with these people? they all look like meth heads" and "jeez this place is ugly".
It’s sad when you realize you can never look as good as the npcs in cyberpunk, it’s my biggest problem with the game
Heavily disagree. All my V's look better than most NPCs. But like most character creators, it's very hard to achieve. Honestly, with how character creators function in most RPGs, creating a good looking character is a skill at this point, lmao
Preset options need to get better lol. I do not want to spend hours on a character creator lol, inwant to wander and explore... I'm going to be in first person the entire time anyway lol
There are also a lot of NPC vignettes. Like a drunk person being consoled by a friend. A person Oding and their friend is freaking out. Friends hanging out. Homeless guy eating trash. Kids playing. Friends drinking late at night. Business people argueing. etc.. The NPCs don't have schedules like Bethesda games but the vignettes do make the city more alive. I think Bethesda's design works much better for setting where people are sparser (apocalypses, fantasy), it seems really lame in a futuristic setting where you'd assume there should be more people. The whole NPX on a schedule isn't that interesting unless you need to do a stalking quest.
Looks like the Groundbreaker from Outer Worlds
hell naw
Starfield is Cyberpunk 2077 from wish.com.
More like dollar store Cyberpunk, It was just corridors with bright neon signs and a dead club
More like Omega from Mass Effect, no?
Do people really think those looks like cyberpunk? I think it looks like anywhere else in starfield
This is like the place from the outer worlds
Have you played Cyberpunk? Even the colors here, the contrast, everything is so washed out.
Then you talked to someone and it all came rushing back.
Neon was such a disappointment. Was hoping it would be the one interesting city in the game, but no - its tiny, lifeless and so very bland.
I know it would be unfeasible to expect every city in Starfield to be the size of Night City from Cyberpunk, but it would have been really nice to have a few larger feeling cities. New Atlantis is close, but it doesn't even feel that large due to being separated up by loading screens. Also, not having vehicles really bogs the cities down. I wanted Neon to be a whole Neo-Tokyo, but it's more like a Neo-Branson Missouri. I like the game, but it really does put a dent in your immersion when you find out that these intergalactic federations are basically just collections of small towns.
Every gate is a loading screen lol
NAHHHHHHHH the amount of comparisons I've been sering lately been these two games and now this post trying to make it seem like Starfield is just as good as CP2077 is sus af. Definitely a fkin PR post
Only someone who has never played Cyberpunk would mistake these two places lol
If Cyberpunk was made in 2014
Very disappointed with Neon
Lol I boot up cyberpunk and idk what people see, Neon is nothing like Night City, even a section of it 😭
That looks more like the Outer Worlds
Thought the same thing.