It’s different. They both have pros and cons.
The creator of Space Exploration was hired before they started the Space Age DLC, so a lot of lessons learned from it are implemented in Space Age.
There are tons of great overhaul mods to play though. I’d probably play something else before doing a Space Exploration run because they do share so many similarities it might be better to leave some space between playing them.
As others have said, it’s DLC. It might as well be a new game though because it changes so much. It also released with a free update that’s pretty big too.
Unreal Engine is old as fuck too (1995). The engine doesn’t matter if they put the work in to fix the issues. The problem is they don’t seem to be making that a priority.
I don’t agree that all of it has always been trash, but the quest writing mostly always has. For your Skyrim example, I went to the midnight release. I completed the main quest within a 24h period IIRC and I remember just being incredibly disappointed. I haven’t finished it again since. Honestly, Skyrim in general is a letdown besides the world they built, although they could have done a lot more to make it more interesting and feel more lived in and real instead of an amusement park.
Their writing in the past has been really strong in world building. They’ve had really interesting lore and reasons for us to be doing what we’re doing. Most of the people who did that are gone now though, and they have been for a while, so I don’t expect it in the future.
Honestly, I mostly agree they should be mostly empty and boring. They aren’t though. They’re absolutely full (of really boring stuff). There are no empty spaces. If there were then finding something would feel special. However, anywhere you land it shows you at least like ten points of interest nearby. I don’t think there’s anywhere on any planet that isn’t inhabited despite supposedly no one colonizing most of the planets. Every location is generic, so none of its unique and you never find anything special.
Excitement and fun is built on the juxtaposition of the opposite. If everything is equally interesting, nothing is interesting. For example, in some space games finding life on other planets is exciting, because it’s rare. In other games there’s life on nearly every planet and it’s boring because it’s not different than anywhere else. To use loot drops as an example, if every drop was a legendary, legendary drop would be boring. You need most drops to be bland common items so the legendary drop stands out.
Well before Starfield came out they said they couldn’t make TES6 yet because the technology didn’t exist. Starfield’s development, I assume, was partially about building this technology. That makes me assume it’s the procedural generation or the ships. If the former, I doubt it’s the main game world or TES6 is fucked. I would suspect maybe something like plains of oblivion that are proc-gen or something.
To me, one of the biggest things that make Starfield feel so bad is the planets are so boring, specifically because there’s too much to do (and it’s all meaningless). Every location is surrounded by the exact same amount of points of interest. There’s no barren areas and more habituated areas. It’s all this bland uniform container of “content” with nothing making any of it stand out. Proc-gen only works when it can be used to make a lot of boring empty space with a few interesting unique things to find. I don’t think they’ve figured that out yet.
Yeah, good point. The Switch isn’t just a console. I guess that’s probably why it’s portable; to sell one for each child. We did each have our own Game Boy in my household, mostly I think to make road trips less hell.
The Switch is an insane device to me. It’s been underpowered before it launched, but 32GB storage? I had flash drives twice that size when the Switch came out. What the fuck?
Back in my day I had to share a single console with my siblings. We had to take turns playing single-player games. This can be fine, and can even be a bonding activity. I’m not sure if it’s “ideal”, but nothing is. Most likely your kids will outgrow the Switch soon anyway, or they could not even like it to start with, so don’t go overboard buying them each a console. You can decide in the future to buy more if you want, but the new Nintendo device is also on the way, so that’s something to think about.
Yep. It isn’t even a new thing for proc gen. That’s how it’s almost always done. You use perlin noise (usually multiple layers) to create different areas with different types of content. They just didn’t do this, except for resource patches which are the least important thing to worry about.