I am trying very hard NOT to spend $20 just to have it five days early.
I failed this check, rather unusually for me. My excuse is it's Obsidian but really it's MS so I shouldn't have. I did make myself not order takeout at least!
It's very good imho.
Metacritic-wise, reviews are like 85% which is probably fair but a lot of the more negative ones say "Oh the story is uninvolving" and I think that for those reviewers, that's probably true, because the story is really one that's only going to grab you if you're in actually reading and thinking about lore and listening to what NPCs say and thinking about that. I'm not saying that to be crappy to people who don't do that - I get it! Some games make me just press "Skip" - and really good storytelling will smash through that (Cyberpunk 2077 manages it, for example). But like, for me, a Pillars lore fan, this already intense. And a lot of other reviews are like "The story is great!" and I think they're on the same track as me, actually reading all the stuff and going "Oh wow that means...".
But even if you ignore the lore, the combat is bizarrely great. Totally unexpected from Obsidian, never seen this before in any of their games. It's snappy, dangerous, exciting, keeps you moving and thinking, and extremely unusually, it's highly playable at lower framerates. Almost every recent game, once you hit 30-40 FPS, let alone the 20s, the combat goes to trash. Normally you gotta hit 60 or its bleeeeh. This feels great even at those FPS. I guess those extra months of polish paid off.
I really hope Bethesda is actually looking at this, Cyberpunk 2077 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and seeing that melee combat in first person doesn't have to be absolutely bland trash like it is in all their games, and learning for Skyrim 2: Redguard Boogaloo. But I know there's a 90% chance they aren't (Starfield learned literally nothing from the games between it and Fallout 4, buuuuuut Fallout 4's gunplay was actually an insane improvement from 3/NV and clearly had learned a bit from shooters).
Plus the first main companion you get is played by Brandon Keener - GARRUS! That sexy voice is back, just without the distortion!
More details tomorrow, I'm going to go play it more!
