Starfield is My New Diablo

I was pretty darn excited for Diablo IV over the course of the last several years. Unfortunately, while the final game is a technical achievement as far as artwork, sound effects, and music go — the core game isn’t very fun to play. It’s designed more like a slow <a href="https://xander51.medium.com/diablo-ivs-first-season-is-as-fun-as-a-sad-old-fisherman-82778c9fd8d3" rel="noopener">free-to-play slog</a> than the Diablo games of the past, almost like it was meant to benefit from the still-unfinished Microsoft Activision deal that would have seen it show up on Game Pass. On a subscription service, its cruddy pacing and microtransactions wouldn’t be nearly as much of an issue as they are inside a full priced seventy-dollar game. Game Pass just got another big RPG in Starfield, and its direct-action gameplay and single purchase monetization design couldn’t be more different from Diablo IV, yet I think it hits many of the notes I was expecting from the next generation of the iconic hack-and-slash loot series. Starfield takes Bethesda’s traditional open-ended design and mechanics, and pairs them with a wildly huge amount of content. The game’s marketing promises 1,000 planets to explore, and indeed, there are a ton of procedurally generated worlds in the game to go along with its impressive fully written story. These worlds function a whole lot like good Diablo levels. Pick a landing zone on a planet, and the game quickly whips up a stack of fun content to explore. There’s animals and plants to scan. Beasts to fight. Installations and caves to poke around in. Enemies to overcome. Quests to complete. And loot — so much loot. <a href="https://xander51.medium.com/starfield-is-my-new-diablo-833b2a8beda9">Click Here</a>