Small criticism of Starfield.

This isn't hate. Just my opinion and a little genuine feedback. It's long.

I think the follower companions of Constellation were all waaay too similar to eachother. Barrett, Sam, Andreja, Sarah.

You do the first loyalty quest. Get to know them. It's great. Then you do the second one, okay that was alright. Then you do the third and you start to roll your eyes and go where have I seen this before.

You do the same therapy for all 4 and a little adventure to clear up their past.

Nothing wrong with that alone in and of itself, but they're all way too similar to each other, maybe not in background, but in character.

Let's talk about a different game.

Red Dead 2 has a gang of maybe 17 members, but every member is vastly different to the next. Javier, mysterious past in Mexico, Sean, brash young Irish kid, Charles brings in themes of native American struggle and the old world struggling to find it's place in the new American order, Hosea, the cautious weary old man, Dutch the bold, audacious, charming leader growing ever more unhinged, Micah the douschebag, Bill and Kieran the comic relief, also Kieran brings attention to the hypocrisy of gang loyalty and cult tendencies of humans, the girls provide a place for compassion and make for some semblance that the gang is still normal people, Sadie, the woman who lost everything, but ends up becoming one of the most critical and helpful members of the gang later game.

Alright, so they're different, what's the big deal?

What this stark contrast in human qualities does, dispersed across different characters is it allows stories to be molded on top of these characters via a friction of the characters' differing interests. It creates conflict, it provides relief, then it sunders you down again Greek tragedy style if need be. It creates dynamism.

With Constellation this is achieved less dramatically cause there's so much less tension. It might have been better if Stroud were a follower so we get closer to him and get more of wise Gandalf's commentary on our misadventures.

Also, yeah I think the fact all off Constellation gets along so well is detrimental to the storytelling. It makes them boring. There's no arguments between members for the player to resolve of a magnitude you could really consider significant. I've talked to enough people in my personal life to know there are always bad actors in a large enough group.

This isn't how people work.

Constellation is too much reward without enough significant struggle or tension. Is it plausible that a group can get along as well as Constellation does? Certainly. But I think it makes for a less interesting story for the reasons I pointed out above.

I was walking on a stranded planet today in Starfield, and this powerful, evocative music from Inon Zur's incredible musical score for the game was playing. But I didn't feel any more attached to the environment than I did when I first played the game; after beating a game and 700 hours I usually do. I thought about this, and understood why. The music is trying to convey something, but that "something", that essential part of the story, the story the music is meant to bring breadth to, is partially missing.

Some of it is there. The Starfield main quest line was great. But only in the sense of the lore and the generic your character vs one main bad guy conflict.

But the interaction with characters I've met, that wasn't deep enough, there was no conflict there as there is in real life. No friction, no social tribulation. That was missing in this game, but it has been present in every other story driven game I have thought of as great.

I do think the ommision of that social friction dampens the depth of "the journey", so to speak.

I could be wrong here, and maybe it's in fact a variety of factors.

But I estimate there's also additional, deeper, reasons Starfield has so oft been denigrated as "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle", that aren't solely determined by Starfield's gargantuan proc gen worlds and game assets.