What a snoozefest. This game “just works” and does nothing else past that. The characters have no personality. The worlds feel lifeless because of the braindead NPCs. The writing feels like a first draft with no interesting dialogue, but at least the voice actors do the best they can with what they were given. To add on top of that, the main story seems to think you’re getting a sense of wonder from the mystery behind the relics you collect and the characters have the audacity to constantly question if you actually care about solving that mystery, which is HILARIOUS because it gives you no reason to care for even a second.
As if this wasn’t a bad enough start, the gameplay itself is a bore too. The gunplay is passable at best. The “choices” you’re given pretty much always let you succeed, so there's no tension because there's no risk of failure. The exploration consists of nothing but walking around empty planets and moons between several loading screens. This is a video game - not a real-life space mission; you can't expect walking around a barren, procedurally-generated level to be the least bit engaging. The cities you visit are the most generic, uninteresting environments. Just as one example, Neon is supposed to be your typical cyberpunk city overrun with crime, poverty, and corporate control. Cool. But where's the crime? Where are the bad living conditions? Where are the emotions from NPCs that detest all this? You couldn't have had NPCs do random crime to each other or, better yet, to the player? The best of this that I saw was during the corporate side quest when the employee you replaced confronts you, but even that was over quick and wasn’t that memorable.
And to the BGS employees who are responding to the reviews: look, we get it. You spent years working on this new IP expecting people to love it just like with Fallout and The Elder Scrolls only for people to shit on it relentlessly. That hurts, and most of us understand it wasn’t your fault but the fault of the people who led the project. I just hope BGS takes this as a wakeup call that you can’t expect adoration if you don’t put in the effort to offer an enjoyable experience to your audience.
As if this wasn’t a bad enough start, the gameplay itself is a bore too. The gunplay is passable at best. The “choices” you’re given pretty much always let you succeed, so there's no tension because there's no risk of failure. The exploration consists of nothing but walking around empty planets and moons between several loading screens. This is a video game - not a real-life space mission; you can't expect walking around a barren, procedurally-generated level to be the least bit engaging. The cities you visit are the most generic, uninteresting environments. Just as one example, Neon is supposed to be your typical cyberpunk city overrun with crime, poverty, and corporate control. Cool. But where's the crime? Where are the bad living conditions? Where are the emotions from NPCs that detest all this? You couldn't have had NPCs do random crime to each other or, better yet, to the player? The best of this that I saw was during the corporate side quest when the employee you replaced confronts you, but even that was over quick and wasn’t that memorable.
And to the BGS employees who are responding to the reviews: look, we get it. You spent years working on this new IP expecting people to love it just like with Fallout and The Elder Scrolls only for people to shit on it relentlessly. That hurts, and most of us understand it wasn’t your fault but the fault of the people who led the project. I just hope BGS takes this as a wakeup call that you can’t expect adoration if you don’t put in the effort to offer an enjoyable experience to your audience.