I Love Starbound
I want to make this point before I say anything else: I absolutely love Starbound. From the moment I saw their first trailer (that I know of), I felt a deep attachment to what I believed would be a soulful game, and I wasn't disappointed.
Starbound carries with it a simplicity rarely seen today in games. You play the role of a... person? Yeah, a person of your chosen race, exiled from their homeworld for some reason or another, with only a space ship and the clothes on your back. From that point on it is up to you to explore the universe and survive. Elite: Dangerous is the game when I want to feel immersed; Starbound is the game I play when I want to have simple, relaxing fun.
I could spend the rest of this review praising it as much as I want, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. When Starbound was released, it was clearly unfinished, and the first major update in a long time was released this week. This review will concentrate on the changes this update has brought to the game.
And it's not all positive.
So before I go about sounding like someone pissed in my morning coffee, I want to restate the following: I love Starbound, and I love it even more since the update.
Pacing, Pacing, Pacing...
I need to adress this point first because-
"Adress"? Is it "adress" or "address"? It's "adresse" in French, so it must be "address" in English, yeah, I remember something about them being different. And the auto-correct seems to agree.
As you can see, changing the pace of a blog article - or a game - can completely jerk you "out of it", and that's my first major gripe with the update. For someone who played the game after the update, this may not be an issue, but if you played before you will find yourself halted, or at least slowed down after the update.
The first major change in pacing is how you now interact with containers, specifically when closing them. Previously, you opened a container by pressing 'E' and closed it again by pressing 'E'. This created a somewhat easy, intuitive and rapid way of going through your containers; you could open one, rapidly glance at it, and then just leave if it contained nothing interesting.
Now, pressing 'E' seems to open another window for the same container, forcing you to press either 'I', 'Esc' or use the mouse to close the container. For someone who got used to just pressing 'E', this halts the gameplay in a very noticeable manner. It feels like when you're riding a bike and someone suddenly punches you in the kidney, know what I'm saying? No? Moving on...
(I hate complaining without giving suggestions on how to improve things, so here I go. My guess is this was implemented to allow opening of multiple containers at once and transferring items without passing through the inventory (I'm just guessing here, I haven't tried yet), so maybe assign a another key for this kind of operation? Maybe one which would simultaneously open all nearby containers? Food for thought...)
Let Me Tell You about the Time I Almost Died
Another major change is the new Ship-based Artificial Intelligence Lattice, or SAIL for short, which gives a little more structure to the player in terms of progression. SAIL offers various quests and upgrades to your Matter Manipulator (another major change).
Among other things, your SAIL gives you some quests to complete before you can unlock more parts of your ship or before exploring the universe further, giving some form of progression. One of these quests has you travel to the centre of your starting planet in order to gather Core Fragments. This forced me to do something I never did before; dig to the centre of the planet... and that made me feel weird.
Not the digging part, I was fine with that, but it felt strange to be forced to do a very specific action in a game which was previously so open and free. Previously, I could always just stumble on everything I would need, but now I was somewhat forced to follow the path laid before my by the game. This is not necessarily bad, and it allowed me to experience something I missed before the update, but I definitely noticed the hand-holding this time around.
Combat has also been changed in the new update, and I must say that I love what they did. It used to feel a little boring - repetitive, if you will - but now everything, from blocking to aiming to enemy behaviour, feels good, responsive, and fresh. You now have 360-degree aiming when using melee weapons, and ranged weapons have been revamped to now be a viable and fun alternative, even from the start of a new character.
Starbound Was Unfinished, but Now It Feels Unfinished
From the get-go, the development team made it very clear that the game they released was unfinished; when you start up the Starbound launcher, a nice warning reminds you that this is an early beta, and to expect bugs and crashes. Strangely enough, the original game, although obviously unfinished, didn't feel like it. It had that Minecraft quality where there wasn't much to the game, but you could still do pretty much anything you set your mind to.
People had complained previously about the lack of content in Starbound. Now, with the Winter Update, the game is filled to the brim with new content, and that is awesome! I think I need to say it again: I love Starbound, and I love it even more since the update. But now that it's has much more content and context, the unfinished things stand out that much more.
Something strange happened yesterday when I played the update. I sat down, was blown away by all the new content, griped at the whole container closing thing (seriously I'm wondering if it might be a bug at this point), and got my derriere handed to me by the lunar base mission (which is awesome by the way). Then, I stopped thinking, and though "that was awesome, but there's still lots of things left to do". The bizarre part was that I hadn't thought that before.
I was left torn; on one side, I felt like the game still needed some time before being released as Version One-Point-Oh, and on the other side it left me wondering whether it ever will. The game is still marked as beta, leaving the door open for more improvements, updates, and fixes before an official release.
I think that's a bad thing, and will work against both Starbound the game and Chucklefish the developer/publisher. I mean, I get it, I really do; being a developer myself, I understand the need to break free of release dates, to not be restricted by deadlines and commitments, and keeping a game or project in an eternal beta status would achieve that level of freedom.
But then again, what is there to keep this project going, other than sheer force of will? If you're passionate enough, you'll keep the car running for a long time, but what happens once the fuel runs out? I've asked around (I wish I had links to put here to show other peoples' opinions), and I don't think anyone is expecting Starbound to receive an official release anymore, instead receiving gradually-diminishing updates as time goes on.
Chucklefish is a company I love dearly, and I would kill for the opportunity to work for them (I wouldn't actually do that... I mean, I know you wouldn't want me to... right?), but I am nonetheless worried that people will simply lose interest. I won't pretend to know better, but I'm worried, and that's the point. If I, an adorer of the game and its developer/publisher, am worried, what does that mean to the world at large?
En Conclusion
In case this isn't obvious after the above diss-fest, I love Starbound, and I love it even more since the update. I want this game to succeed, I really do, and I am writing this hoping the Starbound team will read it, and hopefully respond to it. The new update gave us many wonderful new things to play with and explore for many more hours, even if it broke the pacing, but now more than ever does the game truly feel like a beta, something which I never really noticed (or didn't pay attention to) before.
But then again, what do I know? Someone pissed in my coffee this morning.
Stay safe, I love you all, hugs and kisses,
Jo
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