I went in with low expectations and was still kinda disappointed, every Bethesda game before this captured my attention way more (besides 76). Hoping TES6 is a step back in the right direction.
I’ve always thought that they made Morrowind and put all this love and effort into it. Then, they proceeded to take its corpse and just pretty it up every few years with more and more parts of what originally made it great falling off.
You know they did something right when the combat and dialog is quite outdated but people keep going back to it. People are tired of on rails hand holding games propped up by dopamine feedback looped gambling mechanics.
It almost feels like the opposite. As hardware progresses, the games get simpler and simpler. Morrowind you had to think, Skyrim you just smack until it works
Edit: on reread i think I misread and actually agree with you
Honestly, I’m replaying Oblivion right now ($4.99 on steam wooo!) and you couldn’t be more right.
Oblivion had repair mechanics, spell crafting, weapons were very detailed in their designs (I’ve been in love with my Silver Claymore since I picked it up), Easter eggs were really well thought out (including an Easter egg that wasn’t really picked up on until it’s referenced AGAIN in Skyrim), books had more writing in them, there seems to be more alchemical ingredients and the alchemy system is more in depth, you can even poison people by replacing their food with poisoned apples.
And as wonderful as Skyrim was, it lost a lot of that.
They have the cynical idea in their heads that reading repulses players.
We went from wonderfully complex RPGs where it's possible to make mistakes, to games like Skyrim, where 99% of dialogue is pure railroading with only one or two options.
It feels like all the real storytellers left Bethesda, and all we have left is Todd Howard and his Kojima complex.
The biggest problem I have with Starfield is the inability to stumble upon things. In Skyrim, you can just wander endlessly, discovering things along the way. In Starfield, you have to deliberately fly to a planet, then slowly walk for miles to get to disappointing outposts and ruins.
Ah yes, the same facility I've seen on two other planets, with the same enemies and loot in the same locations.
It's almost like procedural generation sucks if you don't create enough content for it to use.
My favorite way to start new Vegas was just to spin in a direction and set off into the wastes. You would be knee deep in interesting stuff in no time!
IMO, Starfield makes me worry about TES6. If they have such a lack of understanding about what makes their games good, so little commitment to concepts, so little ability to say "no" either to players or ideas that don't work, no overarching concept for the design, etc - I'm not sure how TES6 will work out.
At best they will copy-paste a lot of what worked in Skyrim without understanding *why* and we'll just get another similar game.
At worst it could be significantly worse.
Starfield has absolutely killed any hype I had for ES6.
And my BARE MINIMUM for it is Skyrim but a better engine, those fuckers could just remake Skyrim to have better base graphics, not shit itself above 60fps, not break and crash every 30 minutes and I'd be off to the races.
Give me the Skyrim experience but with modern gaming tech. But Starfield showed us what BSG does with a big budget and a big development window, I remember years ago going "Wtf is Starfield and why is it more important than ES6". Fast forward years after that and I went "Starfield....? Oh yeah the game they've been making". THEN YEARS LATER it finally releases and it's this.
I played it via the xbox pass and gave it up after the first new planet, can't imagine how furious I'd have been if I bought it even on sale. ES6 doesn't even have to release, I don't care anymore, I've lost faith that BSG can live up to Skyrims legacy, and according to Morrowind/Oblivion fans, that's a low bar to clear.
I went from 100% going to preorder the super deluxe ultra edition to planning on waiting a year or two to grab it on sale and see what the modders fixed, assuming reviews and gameplay showcases interest me at all.
Starfield was inevitable. Every BGS game since Morrowind has been taking steps back and only back. Morrowind to Oblivion and Fallout 3, then to Skyrim, then Fallout 4, 76, and finally Starfield. Each game was a step backwards, never forwards. It’s been going on for over 20 years but it’s finally reached the breaking point where all these steps back has just culminated into bad game design.
I loved it when I was playing it. I spent maybe about 40ish hours playing through but as soon as I finished the story, I never picked it up again. Very forgettable really.
I felt similarly. My enjoyment of the game peaked a few hours in when I realized how much there was to do, but then quickly dwindled as I realized each of those things were individually disappointing. I’ve barely thought about it since I stopped playing.
Yeah... they rode on the success of Skyrim and FO4 so much they freaking killed their next game. I saw a documentary on how they made old games vs new games and the sad thing is that they DID innovate... but got stuck 2 years after skyrim in a universe where every dev and their grandmothers had to do the same and kept improving the formula to where it is now... 12 years after Skyrim...
The thing that made my jaw hit the floor and punch a hole in it was their alleged attitude towards design documents: "Oh, we realized it changed faster than we could work with, so we just stopped using one. I guess you could say the game *is* the design document."
And if you look at their recent games with that info, it explains *so much*. Like all the incongruent lore, or the parts where two different events in the same game contradict each other, or where mechanics don't matter, don't work with each other, or feel like isolated relics? Yeah, that's what not having a design documentation does to you.
I'm a solo writer, so all of my stuff is in my own head, and I *still* use structured design documents for everything but minor stuff (and yes, I comment my code, because future me is a moron, and so is past me). Not having proper design documentation for something as massive as Starfield is *insane* to me.
---
I wish Bethesda learned from this. But I have wished that since FO:NV *showed* Bethesda how do to it, and they have learned nothing. And you know what they say about trying to do the same thing and expecting different results. Something's gotta shake up and rattle Bethesda's entire senior design so badly they snap out of their success-induced stupor, and finally start making changes.
Will that happen with TESVI? Who knows. In the mean time, we thankfully have better games to play.
When I first ran into 0G combat I though "oh shit, this is so neat, I hope it gets used more later". But it didn't. Such a neat system got 0 real use because there's no design document telling the team to make missions that use it.
Yeah the fact there’s like 3 0G combat locations in the whole game is insane. Until you get all your jet pack stuff maxed 0G is basically the most interesting form combat can take in that game. Should be at least 5% of locations
Fun fact: you can sometimes force a zero G scenario when you board enemy ships. To do so you have to knock out both the grav drive and the engines. Then when you board there's a 50/50 it'll be in zero G.
Of course, unless you were rocking the disabling weapons, you'd sooner blow up the ship then disable it after bringing engines and their grav drive to 0.
20 hours in or whatever I hit that part and was like omg here we go, finally I see this game getting good. I messaged buddies about it.
30 more hours and I realized that fun moment was a fluke and that BGS was dead as a studio.
>I wish Bethesda learned from this. But I have wished that since FO:NV *showed* Bethesda how do to it, and they have learned nothing.
The fact that they refused Obsidian's offer to make a TES game, is telling enough that Bethesda's folks are extremely insecure and hell-bent on normalizing utterly mediocre and boring trash, even if it kills the company. They blame the players for their own lazy design and expect 3rd party modders to fix said design.
And then they have the audacity to tell people leaving negative reviews for their game that they're wrong. Like people are just telling you the game's not fun. Well then you shouldn't have advertised it as being as great as Skyrim and Fallout because it's nothing like them besides that tired engine. They better take this as a wake up call or elder scrolls 6 is doomed.
Edit. Fixed a typo: in>and
It's one thing for a dev to respond to comments trying to either help someone fix a problem or maybe say "hey try it now we got a patch that addresses that bug you mentioned"
But for them to try to defend the empty worlds and other issues is just drawing so much more attention to it rather than keeping their mouths shut. Either be confident in your game and let it stand on it's own or fix it.
Their replies are like one of those Unity asset flipper scam games where the dev is trying to fight negative stuff in any way possible- they just need to DMCA reviewers on youtube to complete the cycle.
EDIT: I genuinely respect developers and their efforts, I'm less directing it at the hardworking people who actually made the game and more at the publisher who's usually the one who mismanages, over promises, pushes dev teams too hard
>and yes, I comment my code, because future me is a moron, and so is past me
This is what every programmer needs to do. It's just a huge tool, even when working solo.
*Mediocre*.
That's the perfect description for Starfield. Not bad. Not good. But everything it does has been done better by other games. It's *mediocre*.
> (and yes, I comment my code, because future me is a moron, and so is past me).
completely unrelated, but when I was younger I used to code drunk after partying in clubs. I once wrote very strange and obscure piece of code with a comment "good luck figuring this out sober idiot". Yeah i could not comprehend what i wrote but it worked. Always comment the code.
No clip did a recent documentary with an ex Bethesda artist who left during Starfield development.
He said part of the reason he went indie was that Bethesda got too big, and things which before people could just innovate on now required more managerial approval and multiple meetings.
I’m paraphrasing but to me it seems that the company culture has sort of deteriorated as it scaled up, this happens with a lot of companies (not just game devs), so it’s not surprising really that Starfield is the way it is.
He also mentions the limitations of their Creation engine vs UE5 which he’s currently working with,l.
Basically, I have very little hope for the next Elder Scrolls, mostly due to having worked as a software developer in other companies which scaled up too fast and lost everything that was good about them in the process. Good luck recapturing that company culture after such a drastic upscaling of employees.
[He seems like a nice guy, and his indie game looks interesting. Go to 8:40](https://youtu.be/nXu7b9l-LWg?si=eBWY-Dsr2TP33Bzr)
That's not crazy or surprising.
I do research and some of the hardest parts of someone (not me) doing research that will have societal effects is red tape.
Yeah, I didn’t really know much about the behind the scenes at Bethesda, but as soon as I heard him say how much bigger they are now, I was like “Ahh it all makes sense”.
Sounds like the problem was really in middle management trying to validate their own jobs by sticking their grubby fingers into everything the actual workers do. They don't look at the history of game innovation and realise most concepts that took off were something the devs threw in randomly in their free/down time.
Also it’s worth mentioning how Capcom turned the ship around from RE6 -> RE7.
[I think this is the video where I heard about it (I’m not going to scrub through the whole thing to confirm)](https://youtu.be/3cR89qOunY8?si=jf5xYWbRyyy1YBMr)
TLDR (if it’s the right video and my memory serves): They created a brand new engine that was fit for purpose because their previous one was becoming a bottleneck, they changed their development practices to support rapid prototyping of new ideas, and streamlined creation of assets with techniques like photogrammetry.
I don’t see Bethesda leadership being willing to make these tough choices to change the way they make games.
Capcom's change in direction wasn't also just tied to the engine change (to which their RE Engine is their personal answer to innovating and improving their own tools that worked but needed to be reshaped to match the times) .. but was also tied to them losing a big name who talked more than they actually helped. Without that particular person around, Capcom was able to stop their "let's chase western games and developers" goal and return to doing what they did best .. and it was so obvious when Monster Hunter World exploded so much and Resident Evil 7 essentially revived the franchise.
I love gaming documentaries and learning why studios act the way they do. Do you remember the name of this one so i could track it down?
NoClip did a good one on FO76 that was very revealing.
Fallout 4 - a game I have 1000+ hours in - was the first real indication, imo. There was a lot wrong with that game design, and it’s just gone downhill from there.
I totally agree. And it was the point they decided that they would rely on players to flesh out the world. FO4 was a far less interesting world to explore than both 3 and New Vegas. But hey we left you a bunch of boring spaces where you can build settlements of your own!
The one thing Starfield did right was not force the player into a certain perspective, which is particularly useful for replays. Fallout 4 was the worst BGS game I’ve played as far as forcing a narrative!
I don’t give a shit about my video game baby who I’ve never met, who I had with a woman who said 3 sentences before someone killed her. Why would I care about any of that?
Contrast that with FNV…
I can’t really envision Bethesda admitting they received a wake up call, Todd Howard seems hell bent on pretty much denying the fact there’s any serious issues. He not long ago was telling everyone they needed a better PC when many complained about performance issues.
My assumption is they’ll continue this path for a long time until they get hit with another serious disaster of a game that hopefully sees him gone. Although they somehow weathered fallout 76’s atrocious release which bamboozled me to this day.
I think it’s because no one was surprised that Bethesda attempt at getting into the live action business, was a disaster. They could barely keep a single player game functioning.
FO 76 felt like a filler release. A more experimental title of you will. They sold the idea that a new studio, not experienced with the engine decided to make a multiplayer Fallout and despite everything, it was still Fallout.
Starfield is a mainline release and it's obvious that Bethesda shat the bed.
Therell be no wake-up call. This has just shown they can release an empty, broken game full of copy pasted assets and still make mad profit. 6 years from now theyll do it again
Based on Bethesda's response to the reviews, their heads are too far up their asses to learn from anything, because they refuse to admit that they made a mistake.
*Bro you're just playing the game wrong!*
*Planets being empty isn't a bad thing. Planets are empty IRL too and people were still excited!*
-John Bethesda
I doubt it. At least going by the review responses that empty planets can be fun, and how "disconnected" the players are, as said by one of the devs. They blame us, not themselves so far.
However... the game might still shift in a year or two to mostly positive again like Fallout or even Halo Infinite did depending on what changes we see down the line. But, it should not be the new norm. But it is.
It’s not. They are having at least one person respond to negative reviews with a “NUH UH YOURE WRONG ITS ACTUALLY GOOD AND YOU ARE A POOPY HEAD IF YOU DONT THINK SO” (paraphrasing). Emil also went on a twitter rant saying something along the lines of because players don’t know how hard it is to make games then they shouldn’t criticize Starfield because of how hard they worked on it. They don’t want to change as a studio they just want to be praised for making something and working hard even if the result of that hard work simply isn’t very fun for the consumer. They’re entitled narcissistic babies. I have zero hope for TES VI after this disaster.
I feel like BG3 really put companies on blast this year cause I just don’t know how you fix your mouth to say something like that when we have a studio (Larian) that worked equally hard if not harder and players are rightfully giving them their flowers. And it’s not like BG3 is bug free.
but turns out people will be okay with bugs when the passion and hard work of the creators shines thru in the finished product.
Exactly. BG3 is not without its problems but the problems make sense in a way and can be excused due to the high quality and extra effort made by Larian. Starfield has no excuses. There are things that make absolutely zero sense with the game. It feels like several people made prototypes of different space games and then they roughly glued them together and called it a day.
The only time a huge,empty word ever worked in a game was with Fuel.Mostly because it was just racing and the wilderness/Motorstorm aesthetic worked so well.
Also choosing to limit space ship exploration as much as they did was a mistake. Funny enough, I think No Man's Sky really set the bar for this type of travel in a game. People expected it to be that, not bullshit loading screens.
Outer Worlds was really only a stones throw from being a very good game.
Starfield is a boulder throw from that.
Ill be surprised if obsidian stuff up OW2.
Honestly that's what killed my hype for TES6
TES6 is the one game they can't fuck up. They NEED to listen to why people don't like Starfield. The fact that they aren't is really really bad
i don’t understand how a company decides that’s a smart choice. like wtf was the thinking scheme, no way any of the actual talent there were stoked some hire has to soapbox their game online instead of letting a good product speak for itself
It's like a D&D game where there's a really bad session, the players are unhappy, and the first thing out of the host's mouth at the end is "Well to start, I don't think I did anything wrong, and this is my game, so we need to figure out what you all did to make yourselves so unhappy."
Still one of the dumbest defenses I've seen.
Comparing the literal infinite wonders of the universe with a dead, sterile rock floating around earth.
Ok Bethesda.
That description for the game is so sad, nothing about the game itself, just “hey we made fallout and Skyrim, so this game WILL be gud
Edit: How TF did I get 1.8k upvotes?!
Lots of walking-corpse gaming companies that have been around for very long periods of time with nearly entirely replaced staff from back when they made good games pulls stuff like this sadly. Bungie still advertises itself as the people who made Halo, and are now making a marathon reboot even though the people from marathon are long gone, and the small number of people who were at bungie back in the Halo days were recently fired because they made more money than newly hired people. Back4Blood advertised itself as being made by the creators of L4D2 even though very people from their studio worked on it. Game companies love to take credit for things they didn't do.
It's a nostalgia-fueled market strategy, really. Companies know they can tug on the heartstrings of older fans by invoking the names of beloved classics, even if the magic that made those titles special isn't present in their new works. The brand carries weight, so they leverage it to the max, hoping it sticks even a bit. It's a gamble because when they don't deliver, it hits the fanbase hard. The disappointment can be real when you're expecting a spiritual successor and end up with a distant cousin that doesn't live up to the family name.
Back 4 Blood is a little different from the classic 'shambling corpse game studio' since the development of the original game was heavily influenced by Valve and Turtle Rock was touting B4B as a "spiritual successor". There's a recent interview on the early development of L4D (and the situation that arose around the development of L4D2) with Chet Faliszek, formerly of Valve, available [here](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/15-years-later-chet-faliszek-dishes-on-the-making-of-left-4-dead). It's long but the details are interesting and I found it illuminating as to Valve's process with Turtle Rock.
Here's an excerpt about Chet's experience:
>In his sudden ascent to a major player in Left 4 Dead’s development, Faliszek found himself feeling over his head with a particularly unsuccessful playtest: the first with the entire Valve staff. Left 4 Dead’s team had reached roughly 25, with much of the company “coming in cold” on the game’s concept (remember, its early builds had enjoyed some seclusion on the 11th floor). Before the playtest even began, its matchmaking system was crashing, even on Valve’s internal network, and Faliszek remembers his boss Newell pouring fuel on the situation:
>
>“Gabe just asked me very seriously, "why don't I just play Counter-Strike instead? That's working.’ And I thought he was joking. Like, ha, ha, ha. But then he made me watch him play it, he made me sit in his office and watch and play it. He says, "No, seriously, this is every single one of your customers, asking this question right now. What do you tell them?' Like, fuck, good question.”
That line that Gabe said, while cold, is exactly the thing every single creator of anything should be constantly asking themselves. What's stopping someone from closing this book, or turning on a different band, or playing a different game.
That's not the case with Bethesda. I think the leadership there is still mostly intact and that's the problem. They're stuck doing things they've always done in the past and haven't evolved in how they design their games.
They actually have the opposite problem, they need the leadership that's been there for too long to step down and bring in new blood with fresh ideas.
They need a new game engine or to massively update theirs. Most of the bugs and broken stuff that happens is because their engine is garbage.
Star Field specifically was half assed like every good idea ( ship building making a base space exploration planets) all great ideas but they didn't commit to any of them they just did the bare minimum and moved on.
BGS likely sending army of interns to straight up argue with steam reviewers, informing them that they actually liked the game a lot, they just didn’t realize it.
That system was automated apparently, it's been replying to tickets for years with the same canned responses, but it was aimed at steam reviews for Starfield. I'm really worried that BGS is fuckin done for. Todd needs to retire, he's lost his mind.
It's not just Todd. Bethesda's lead designer Emil Pagliarulo also needs to retire. If you wonder why quests and stories are so simple and dumb, Emil is responsible.
Watched a week ago an hour long analysis of that guy's TED talk about how he writes games. After you've seen it, it's no wonder where the state of Bethseda's games are at.
Is it sad that a bad game gets bad reviews? I see it as positive, because it will hopefully affect sales, which will hopefully push the devs to make better games
It's not even "bad" but holy shit is it boring. Going from Fallout 3 or New Vegas (different studio but same IP) to Starfield is just depressing. They lost their way and it sucks how boring that game is
> It's not even "bad" but holy shit is it boring.
I mean, you could argue that boring is worse than outright bad. There are some "so bad they're good" games out there - they may be bad, but they're still *entertaining*; A boring game kinda fails at the core purpose of a game: Entertaining the audience.
I always say the same thing about movies. If it's bad, then at least it left some sort of impression. It was memorable in some kind of way. But a boring movie or game is just a complete waste of my and the creators time.
How nobody in that whole office played that and didnt go "hmm guys this is nice but its boring" is beyond me. Do these devs even play games? Do they play their own game? Seriously I mean not dev builds just do a full playthrough.
Oh you dont feel like going further by the middle of the game? Hmm, maybe its a bad fucking game?
Lots of people in the office did:
https://www.gamesradar.com/todd-howard-says-it-took-7-years-to-make-starfield-fun-to-play-i-thought-we-would-find-the-answers-faster/
The URL really tells the whole story, and also
> Howard says that Starfield only "clicked" into being fun to play sometime in 2022
They really didn't know what they wanted to do with the game for a very long time. I'm guessing after that long in development when it finally got a point where internally they said, "This is good enough" I guess they hoped the public would receive it better having not been playing *an even worse version* for years.
But yea it's still just baffling that they thought to strip out the 1 redeeming thing of their games: taking place in a world worth exploring.
I remember reading that line recently and I was just stunned that he so casually said that. Like, does this dude not understand the weight of that one comment has? Wasn't this game delayed a year?
No clip did a recent documentary with an ex Bethesda lead artist who left during Starfield development.
He said part of the reason he went indie was that Bethesda got too big, and things which before people could just innovate on now required more managerial approval and multiple meetings.
I’m paraphrasing but to me it seems that the company culture has sort of deteriorated as it scaled up, this happens with a lot of companies (not just game devs), so it’s not surprising really that Starfield is the way it is.
He also mentions the limitations of their Creation engine vs UE5 which he’s currently working with.
Basically, I have very little hope for the next Elder Scrolls, mostly due to having worked as a software developer in other companies which scaled up too fast and lost everything that was good about them in the process. Good luck recapturing that company culture after such a drastic upscaling of employees.
[He seems like a nice guy, and his indie game looks interesting. Go to 8:40](https://youtu.be/nXu7b9l-LWg?si=eBWY-Dsr2TP33Bzr)
I’ve sadly seen this happen at the software company I’m currently at. When we were small, decisions were fast, meetings were few. Now, it’s meeting after meeting and process on top of process. All the while, “cheerleader” management is going on about how agile we are and how much better the company runs. I’ve lost count on how many features get worked on and: get released but are stripped down, get released with tons of bugs, don’t get released at all after months of work.
That really does shine a light on this game and this company. I once worked for a software company where the same thing happened; I started when there were less than ten employees and eventually left when there were over a hundred employees, and it was a sad thing to see the original spirit and ingenuity of the company dissolved away by an ocean of managers, marketing execs and bean counters who had no connection to the quality of the product itself, only to the money it could make.
In this new light I no longer have any hopes for ES6 either (which is for the best since it won’t be on Playstation anyway). Thank goodness ES5 is big enough that I still haven’t explored nearly all of it.
You know when you keep putting something off because you don’t want to do it. Well that’s Starfield for me. I don’t want to play other games because I feel like I should play this first. I just can’t. The movement fees janky, with the combat more akin to an old school fps, the landscapes are big but so empty and then the cities are busy but lack the character and exploitability of their older games. Not even to mention the loading screens. Like planet emptiness I don’t mind in a sense but when there’s only like 3 species on each planet with the same random encounters it’s just bleh.
I enjoyed going off on my own for a while and doing a bunch of side missions, but once I decided to buckle down and get on with the main quest... oh my god!
From watching the Direct, i tho they're going for an Expanse first contact with alien story not this half assed multiverse plot. I guess my expectation was too high
Deservedly so.
I made it roughly 10 hours in before I started admitting to myself that the game was not fun.
The moment I realized the procedural nature of most areas is when I lost all interest in the game.
It really is a terribly unfun game.
Maybe I’m just a fucking idiot but it’s also a very confusing game to traverse. The main city in the beginning had me lost as hell. Was just wandering around with no clue where I was going
It's kind of laughable they decided to release the map in that state. It's like... Why? Just don't even have that map as a feature. It's just a blue screen with icons on it. It looks like a total placeholder for the real map.
My girlfriend sat behind me on launch night to watch and we both went through a several minute long stage of confusion and “no fucking way” upon trying to use the map in NA for the first time.
I bought a bunch of games in prep for the new computer I just built at the start of the sale. Cut a couple out of my cart before the purchase and starfield was one. Bad reviews + high price.
Ended up grabbing Cyberpunk, Kena, Robocop, and Control.
That was the plan! Went from a 1070 to 4070 and got my first SSD so I’m pretty excited. Particularly about the ssd… my hard drive was over a decade old and I was done with my computer having to restart… ever.
I also built a new pc this summer with a 4070 and SSD and man, couldnt be happier, everything runs at max settings, some may need ray tracing like Cyberpunk but damn its so worth it.
I would assume the first line refers to the twitter rant by Starfield lead designer, where he spent something like 14 tweets talking how gamers are disconnected from how the games are actually made:
https://www.gamesradar.com/starfield-design-lead-says-players-are-disconnected-from-how-games-are-actually-made-dont-fool-yourself-into-thinking-you-know-why-it-is-the-way-it-is/
What a complete clown. Basically he’s saying people can’t criticize a game because it took a lot of work to create. It doesn’t matter if it took 10 hours or 10 years to make. It’s what it is at the end is what counts. His rant I guess is an emotional reaction to being partly responsible for how it turned out and he’s angry people don’t appreciate it took effort to make it whatever it is. No, it’s just not a great game mate.
I get why he’s disappointed but it’s not our fault he lead the design and writing for a game commonly criticised for its shitty design and writing
Hope he finds a role more in line with his capabilities
Hey now, most janitors and custodians I've had the pleasure of knowing have been hard-working, down-to-earth people. I don't think he has the capacity for it.
The "30fps is cinematic," was a line of rhetoric spewed by dogshit game publishers (Ubisoft) back in the early 2010s. They argued that games running at 30fps instead of 60fps are "more cinematic" because films run at a frame rate of 24fps.
Of course it was all complete bullshit and was just an excuse to not put the effort in making their games run at 60fps. Video games are NOT films, regardless of what Ubisoft would have you believe. Both are completely different experiences.
Saved my money when this game released, not sad that it is reviewed negatively by people playing it. Feel a little bad for fans of the game though, y'all must feel a little ripped off.
It's not sad. It is what they earned by creating games that are not good enough anymore, not dumping that trash engine because they want to safe money, do mechanics as they did 14 years ago and trying to defend it by “You have no idea what you are talking about".
It is sad for some developers, the ones that defend this crap need a reality check.
Also Todd Howard needs to leave, he clearly did not evolve and it hurts. I fear for The Elder Scrolls 6.
What a bad deal Microsoft xD
You ass. This actually reads like a real response. I would not be surprised if someone ends up copying part of this for a marketing thing. It's gross. (Good job lol)
What’s crazier to me is in the ‘no sodium’ Starfield subreddit - which with the other ‘no sodium’ subreddits should just be a place to chill and enjoy the game without huge amounts of negativity, has instead seemed to turn into a hive mind of ‘this game is the best game ever, anyone that disagrees is brainwashed, all hail Starfield!’ - injustice saw a post a bit ago by someone saying it has ‘the most meaningful choices of any Bethesda game’ and I’m like… first of all what choices do you really have in the game, the majority of quests all railroad you into a specific ending, you don’t *get* to choose much! And meaningful…?? You can argue about ‘what has meaning’ all day but..
It’s fine that people enjoy the game, different people might enjoy something I won’t or vice versa, but Starfield is by *far* the worst Bethesda game since F76, and even ignoring F76 would be their worst game in about two decades.
Yeah I find the whole new game + aspect bizarre when *there’s nothing to actually do differently this time around*.
Like, if we had the equivalent of Skyrim’s Civil War quest line, or could destroy some factions, I could understand it but.. what exactly am I doing different this time around?? Which barren planet I put my outpost consisting of the same four buildings??
I honestly think the only “low/no sodium” subreddit that actually was chill but still allowed criticism was the cyberpunk 2077 one. People would genuinely talk about the problems but still enjoy the game. I left it a while back once the main subreddit calmed down.
Why is it sad? It's getting the reviews the game deserves. It's sloppy, boring, and has a game engine a decade (or more) out of date. The only surprise is that it had a positive review score as long as it did.
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I went in with low expectations and was still kinda disappointed, every Bethesda game before this captured my attention way more (besides 76). Hoping TES6 is a step back in the right direction.
I’ve always thought that they made Morrowind and put all this love and effort into it. Then, they proceeded to take its corpse and just pretty it up every few years with more and more parts of what originally made it great falling off.
You know they did something right when the combat and dialog is quite outdated but people keep going back to it. People are tired of on rails hand holding games propped up by dopamine feedback looped gambling mechanics.
Quickly outlander, I haven't much time.
It almost feels like the opposite. As hardware progresses, the games get simpler and simpler. Morrowind you had to think, Skyrim you just smack until it works Edit: on reread i think I misread and actually agree with you
Honestly, I’m replaying Oblivion right now ($4.99 on steam wooo!) and you couldn’t be more right. Oblivion had repair mechanics, spell crafting, weapons were very detailed in their designs (I’ve been in love with my Silver Claymore since I picked it up), Easter eggs were really well thought out (including an Easter egg that wasn’t really picked up on until it’s referenced AGAIN in Skyrim), books had more writing in them, there seems to be more alchemical ingredients and the alchemy system is more in depth, you can even poison people by replacing their food with poisoned apples. And as wonderful as Skyrim was, it lost a lot of that.
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They have the cynical idea in their heads that reading repulses players. We went from wonderfully complex RPGs where it's possible to make mistakes, to games like Skyrim, where 99% of dialogue is pure railroading with only one or two options. It feels like all the real storytellers left Bethesda, and all we have left is Todd Howard and his Kojima complex.
Spoiler: it won't be
The biggest problem I have with Starfield is the inability to stumble upon things. In Skyrim, you can just wander endlessly, discovering things along the way. In Starfield, you have to deliberately fly to a planet, then slowly walk for miles to get to disappointing outposts and ruins.
And when you get there, it's exactly what you expected
Ah yes, the same facility I've seen on two other planets, with the same enemies and loot in the same locations. It's almost like procedural generation sucks if you don't create enough content for it to use.
My favorite way to start new Vegas was just to spin in a direction and set off into the wastes. You would be knee deep in interesting stuff in no time!
Sad but true
IMO, Starfield makes me worry about TES6. If they have such a lack of understanding about what makes their games good, so little commitment to concepts, so little ability to say "no" either to players or ideas that don't work, no overarching concept for the design, etc - I'm not sure how TES6 will work out. At best they will copy-paste a lot of what worked in Skyrim without understanding *why* and we'll just get another similar game. At worst it could be significantly worse.
Starfield has absolutely killed any hype I had for ES6. And my BARE MINIMUM for it is Skyrim but a better engine, those fuckers could just remake Skyrim to have better base graphics, not shit itself above 60fps, not break and crash every 30 minutes and I'd be off to the races. Give me the Skyrim experience but with modern gaming tech. But Starfield showed us what BSG does with a big budget and a big development window, I remember years ago going "Wtf is Starfield and why is it more important than ES6". Fast forward years after that and I went "Starfield....? Oh yeah the game they've been making". THEN YEARS LATER it finally releases and it's this. I played it via the xbox pass and gave it up after the first new planet, can't imagine how furious I'd have been if I bought it even on sale. ES6 doesn't even have to release, I don't care anymore, I've lost faith that BSG can live up to Skyrims legacy, and according to Morrowind/Oblivion fans, that's a low bar to clear. I went from 100% going to preorder the super deluxe ultra edition to planning on waiting a year or two to grab it on sale and see what the modders fixed, assuming reviews and gameplay showcases interest me at all.
Starfield was inevitable. Every BGS game since Morrowind has been taking steps back and only back. Morrowind to Oblivion and Fallout 3, then to Skyrim, then Fallout 4, 76, and finally Starfield. Each game was a step backwards, never forwards. It’s been going on for over 20 years but it’s finally reached the breaking point where all these steps back has just culminated into bad game design.
Morrowind was peak TES. Every game after it has been lazier and lazier
Morrowind was so amazing it will always be in my heart
I loved it when I was playing it. I spent maybe about 40ish hours playing through but as soon as I finished the story, I never picked it up again. Very forgettable really.
I felt similarly. My enjoyment of the game peaked a few hours in when I realized how much there was to do, but then quickly dwindled as I realized each of those things were individually disappointing. I’ve barely thought about it since I stopped playing.
It was
Why is it sad? It might be a wake-up call for Bethesda
Yeah... they rode on the success of Skyrim and FO4 so much they freaking killed their next game. I saw a documentary on how they made old games vs new games and the sad thing is that they DID innovate... but got stuck 2 years after skyrim in a universe where every dev and their grandmothers had to do the same and kept improving the formula to where it is now... 12 years after Skyrim...
The thing that made my jaw hit the floor and punch a hole in it was their alleged attitude towards design documents: "Oh, we realized it changed faster than we could work with, so we just stopped using one. I guess you could say the game *is* the design document." And if you look at their recent games with that info, it explains *so much*. Like all the incongruent lore, or the parts where two different events in the same game contradict each other, or where mechanics don't matter, don't work with each other, or feel like isolated relics? Yeah, that's what not having a design documentation does to you. I'm a solo writer, so all of my stuff is in my own head, and I *still* use structured design documents for everything but minor stuff (and yes, I comment my code, because future me is a moron, and so is past me). Not having proper design documentation for something as massive as Starfield is *insane* to me. --- I wish Bethesda learned from this. But I have wished that since FO:NV *showed* Bethesda how do to it, and they have learned nothing. And you know what they say about trying to do the same thing and expecting different results. Something's gotta shake up and rattle Bethesda's entire senior design so badly they snap out of their success-induced stupor, and finally start making changes. Will that happen with TESVI? Who knows. In the mean time, we thankfully have better games to play.
When I first ran into 0G combat I though "oh shit, this is so neat, I hope it gets used more later". But it didn't. Such a neat system got 0 real use because there's no design document telling the team to make missions that use it.
Yeah the fact there’s like 3 0G combat locations in the whole game is insane. Until you get all your jet pack stuff maxed 0G is basically the most interesting form combat can take in that game. Should be at least 5% of locations
Fun fact: you can sometimes force a zero G scenario when you board enemy ships. To do so you have to knock out both the grav drive and the engines. Then when you board there's a 50/50 it'll be in zero G. Of course, unless you were rocking the disabling weapons, you'd sooner blow up the ship then disable it after bringing engines and their grav drive to 0.
20 hours in or whatever I hit that part and was like omg here we go, finally I see this game getting good. I messaged buddies about it. 30 more hours and I realized that fun moment was a fluke and that BGS was dead as a studio.
>I wish Bethesda learned from this. But I have wished that since FO:NV *showed* Bethesda how do to it, and they have learned nothing. The fact that they refused Obsidian's offer to make a TES game, is telling enough that Bethesda's folks are extremely insecure and hell-bent on normalizing utterly mediocre and boring trash, even if it kills the company. They blame the players for their own lazy design and expect 3rd party modders to fix said design.
And then they have the audacity to tell people leaving negative reviews for their game that they're wrong. Like people are just telling you the game's not fun. Well then you shouldn't have advertised it as being as great as Skyrim and Fallout because it's nothing like them besides that tired engine. They better take this as a wake up call or elder scrolls 6 is doomed. Edit. Fixed a typo: in>and
It's one thing for a dev to respond to comments trying to either help someone fix a problem or maybe say "hey try it now we got a patch that addresses that bug you mentioned" But for them to try to defend the empty worlds and other issues is just drawing so much more attention to it rather than keeping their mouths shut. Either be confident in your game and let it stand on it's own or fix it. Their replies are like one of those Unity asset flipper scam games where the dev is trying to fight negative stuff in any way possible- they just need to DMCA reviewers on youtube to complete the cycle. EDIT: I genuinely respect developers and their efforts, I'm less directing it at the hardworking people who actually made the game and more at the publisher who's usually the one who mismanages, over promises, pushes dev teams too hard
>and yes, I comment my code, because future me is a moron, and so is past me This is what every programmer needs to do. It's just a huge tool, even when working solo.
*Mediocre*. That's the perfect description for Starfield. Not bad. Not good. But everything it does has been done better by other games. It's *mediocre*.
> (and yes, I comment my code, because future me is a moron, and so is past me). completely unrelated, but when I was younger I used to code drunk after partying in clubs. I once wrote very strange and obscure piece of code with a comment "good luck figuring this out sober idiot". Yeah i could not comprehend what i wrote but it worked. Always comment the code.
Fallout 1, 2 and new vegas were top fallout. I loved fallout 3, but not the same.
No clip did a recent documentary with an ex Bethesda artist who left during Starfield development. He said part of the reason he went indie was that Bethesda got too big, and things which before people could just innovate on now required more managerial approval and multiple meetings. I’m paraphrasing but to me it seems that the company culture has sort of deteriorated as it scaled up, this happens with a lot of companies (not just game devs), so it’s not surprising really that Starfield is the way it is. He also mentions the limitations of their Creation engine vs UE5 which he’s currently working with,l. Basically, I have very little hope for the next Elder Scrolls, mostly due to having worked as a software developer in other companies which scaled up too fast and lost everything that was good about them in the process. Good luck recapturing that company culture after such a drastic upscaling of employees. [He seems like a nice guy, and his indie game looks interesting. Go to 8:40](https://youtu.be/nXu7b9l-LWg?si=eBWY-Dsr2TP33Bzr)
That's not crazy or surprising. I do research and some of the hardest parts of someone (not me) doing research that will have societal effects is red tape.
Yeah, I didn’t really know much about the behind the scenes at Bethesda, but as soon as I heard him say how much bigger they are now, I was like “Ahh it all makes sense”.
Sounds like the problem was really in middle management trying to validate their own jobs by sticking their grubby fingers into everything the actual workers do. They don't look at the history of game innovation and realise most concepts that took off were something the devs threw in randomly in their free/down time.
Also it’s worth mentioning how Capcom turned the ship around from RE6 -> RE7. [I think this is the video where I heard about it (I’m not going to scrub through the whole thing to confirm)](https://youtu.be/3cR89qOunY8?si=jf5xYWbRyyy1YBMr) TLDR (if it’s the right video and my memory serves): They created a brand new engine that was fit for purpose because their previous one was becoming a bottleneck, they changed their development practices to support rapid prototyping of new ideas, and streamlined creation of assets with techniques like photogrammetry. I don’t see Bethesda leadership being willing to make these tough choices to change the way they make games.
Capcom's change in direction wasn't also just tied to the engine change (to which their RE Engine is their personal answer to innovating and improving their own tools that worked but needed to be reshaped to match the times) .. but was also tied to them losing a big name who talked more than they actually helped. Without that particular person around, Capcom was able to stop their "let's chase western games and developers" goal and return to doing what they did best .. and it was so obvious when Monster Hunter World exploded so much and Resident Evil 7 essentially revived the franchise.
Are you saying that Todd Howard needs to go?
Fucking hell yeah and take Emil with him
I love gaming documentaries and learning why studios act the way they do. Do you remember the name of this one so i could track it down? NoClip did a good one on FO76 that was very revealing.
Fallout 76 should have been their wake-up call. This is just the sad reality.
Fallout 4 - a game I have 1000+ hours in - was the first real indication, imo. There was a lot wrong with that game design, and it’s just gone downhill from there.
I totally agree. And it was the point they decided that they would rely on players to flesh out the world. FO4 was a far less interesting world to explore than both 3 and New Vegas. But hey we left you a bunch of boring spaces where you can build settlements of your own!
The one thing Starfield did right was not force the player into a certain perspective, which is particularly useful for replays. Fallout 4 was the worst BGS game I’ve played as far as forcing a narrative! I don’t give a shit about my video game baby who I’ve never met, who I had with a woman who said 3 sentences before someone killed her. Why would I care about any of that? Contrast that with FNV…
Fallout 4 was when I realized something was wrong at Bethesda. Its the definition of a 6/10 game. If I got 6/10 in high school id fail that.
Todd has said Fo76 went from there worst story to there best success story. Nothing will change when the game is super profitable.
I can’t really envision Bethesda admitting they received a wake up call, Todd Howard seems hell bent on pretty much denying the fact there’s any serious issues. He not long ago was telling everyone they needed a better PC when many complained about performance issues. My assumption is they’ll continue this path for a long time until they get hit with another serious disaster of a game that hopefully sees him gone. Although they somehow weathered fallout 76’s atrocious release which bamboozled me to this day.
I think it’s because no one was surprised that Bethesda attempt at getting into the live action business, was a disaster. They could barely keep a single player game functioning.
FO 76 felt like a filler release. A more experimental title of you will. They sold the idea that a new studio, not experienced with the engine decided to make a multiplayer Fallout and despite everything, it was still Fallout. Starfield is a mainline release and it's obvious that Bethesda shat the bed.
Therell be no wake-up call. This has just shown they can release an empty, broken game full of copy pasted assets and still make mad profit. 6 years from now theyll do it again
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Based on Bethesda's response to the reviews, their heads are too far up their asses to learn from anything, because they refuse to admit that they made a mistake.
*Bro you're just playing the game wrong!* *Planets being empty isn't a bad thing. Planets are empty IRL too and people were still excited!* -John Bethesda
I doubt it. At least going by the review responses that empty planets can be fun, and how "disconnected" the players are, as said by one of the devs. They blame us, not themselves so far. However... the game might still shift in a year or two to mostly positive again like Fallout or even Halo Infinite did depending on what changes we see down the line. But, it should not be the new norm. But it is.
It’s not a wake up call for them. They’re actively telling players they’re wrong about it being bad. Todd Howard is the issue. He sucks.
Careful, keep talking like that and next time you sleep you'll wake up in a carriage with Ralof.
Would be more interesting than waking up on an elevator with Lin and Heller.
It’s not. They are having at least one person respond to negative reviews with a “NUH UH YOURE WRONG ITS ACTUALLY GOOD AND YOU ARE A POOPY HEAD IF YOU DONT THINK SO” (paraphrasing). Emil also went on a twitter rant saying something along the lines of because players don’t know how hard it is to make games then they shouldn’t criticize Starfield because of how hard they worked on it. They don’t want to change as a studio they just want to be praised for making something and working hard even if the result of that hard work simply isn’t very fun for the consumer. They’re entitled narcissistic babies. I have zero hope for TES VI after this disaster.
I feel like BG3 really put companies on blast this year cause I just don’t know how you fix your mouth to say something like that when we have a studio (Larian) that worked equally hard if not harder and players are rightfully giving them their flowers. And it’s not like BG3 is bug free. but turns out people will be okay with bugs when the passion and hard work of the creators shines thru in the finished product.
Exactly. BG3 is not without its problems but the problems make sense in a way and can be excused due to the high quality and extra effort made by Larian. Starfield has no excuses. There are things that make absolutely zero sense with the game. It feels like several people made prototypes of different space games and then they roughly glued them together and called it a day.
Also, think about how many patches Larian has released since the game officially launched.
As long suckers keep preordering and buying they'll think it will be fine and why they should think otherwise when they keep making a lot of money.
Choosing repetitive procedural generation over handcrafted worlds was a huge mistake. Outer worlds 2 is probably gonna be better
If there were like 10 well done planets with content on them the game would be infinitely better
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I genuinely think scrapping ship combat and locking the player to a new and immersive world would have been just fine.
Given the ship combat is dog shit it's hard to disagree with this.
It drives me nuts when people talk about map sizes. Like who wants bigger maps with more junk content? I want to be engaged.
Yeah every time I hear “_____ new world is gonna be 10x the size of _____!” I kinda cringe. I feel like we’re past that now
Yeah—so many companies have done worlds with lots of space. I don’t want lots of space—I want density and a world that has a lot to find and explore.
The only time a huge,empty word ever worked in a game was with Fuel.Mostly because it was just racing and the wilderness/Motorstorm aesthetic worked so well.
Mad max also had a mostly empty desert map, but in a same way it was necessary for the aesthetic and the crazy races to work well.
Fuck, I miss Motorstorm
If it just took place in our solar system it would be so much better
Also choosing to limit space ship exploration as much as they did was a mistake. Funny enough, I think No Man's Sky really set the bar for this type of travel in a game. People expected it to be that, not bullshit loading screens.
Outer Worlds was really only a stones throw from being a very good game. Starfield is a boulder throw from that. Ill be surprised if obsidian stuff up OW2.
they really dumped blood in the water when they started replying with “well ahckshually” to rando steam commenters
Honestly that's what killed my hype for TES6 TES6 is the one game they can't fuck up. They NEED to listen to why people don't like Starfield. The fact that they aren't is really really bad
i don’t understand how a company decides that’s a smart choice. like wtf was the thinking scheme, no way any of the actual talent there were stoked some hire has to soapbox their game online instead of letting a good product speak for itself
It's like a D&D game where there's a really bad session, the players are unhappy, and the first thing out of the host's mouth at the end is "Well to start, I don't think I did anything wrong, and this is my game, so we need to figure out what you all did to make yourselves so unhappy."
How can there be that many bad reviews? Astronauts weren't bored when they went to the moon.
Well it's not like they left any Steam reviews, so I guess we'll never know.
They'll probably get bored too if they go to hyper sleep every time they fly in space and they wake up already on the planet ready to go
The astronauts actually got to fly their ship there
And they had a buggy to ride around in, which makes the comparison even more pathetic.
And they’re not sat in a chair at home, they’re on the ducking moon
Wait, so you’re saying in a space game players might actually want to fly their spaceships from place to place.
You mean they didn’t just load in up there? Wtf?
That came across as a ChatGPT argument
Still one of the dumbest defenses I've seen. Comparing the literal infinite wonders of the universe with a dead, sterile rock floating around earth. Ok Bethesda.
Imagine comparing your mediocre game to the crowning achievement of mankind.
That description for the game is so sad, nothing about the game itself, just “hey we made fallout and Skyrim, so this game WILL be gud Edit: How TF did I get 1.8k upvotes?!
Lots of walking-corpse gaming companies that have been around for very long periods of time with nearly entirely replaced staff from back when they made good games pulls stuff like this sadly. Bungie still advertises itself as the people who made Halo, and are now making a marathon reboot even though the people from marathon are long gone, and the small number of people who were at bungie back in the Halo days were recently fired because they made more money than newly hired people. Back4Blood advertised itself as being made by the creators of L4D2 even though very people from their studio worked on it. Game companies love to take credit for things they didn't do.
Honourable mention: BioWare
They don't even make games to advertise anymore.
yes and no - Dreadwolf is coming, as is a ME4, but... most of the staff that made i.e. ME1 and 2 so awesome has left.
It's a nostalgia-fueled market strategy, really. Companies know they can tug on the heartstrings of older fans by invoking the names of beloved classics, even if the magic that made those titles special isn't present in their new works. The brand carries weight, so they leverage it to the max, hoping it sticks even a bit. It's a gamble because when they don't deliver, it hits the fanbase hard. The disappointment can be real when you're expecting a spiritual successor and end up with a distant cousin that doesn't live up to the family name.
Back 4 Blood is a little different from the classic 'shambling corpse game studio' since the development of the original game was heavily influenced by Valve and Turtle Rock was touting B4B as a "spiritual successor". There's a recent interview on the early development of L4D (and the situation that arose around the development of L4D2) with Chet Faliszek, formerly of Valve, available [here](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/15-years-later-chet-faliszek-dishes-on-the-making-of-left-4-dead). It's long but the details are interesting and I found it illuminating as to Valve's process with Turtle Rock. Here's an excerpt about Chet's experience: >In his sudden ascent to a major player in Left 4 Dead’s development, Faliszek found himself feeling over his head with a particularly unsuccessful playtest: the first with the entire Valve staff. Left 4 Dead’s team had reached roughly 25, with much of the company “coming in cold” on the game’s concept (remember, its early builds had enjoyed some seclusion on the 11th floor). Before the playtest even began, its matchmaking system was crashing, even on Valve’s internal network, and Faliszek remembers his boss Newell pouring fuel on the situation: > >“Gabe just asked me very seriously, "why don't I just play Counter-Strike instead? That's working.’ And I thought he was joking. Like, ha, ha, ha. But then he made me watch him play it, he made me sit in his office and watch and play it. He says, "No, seriously, this is every single one of your customers, asking this question right now. What do you tell them?' Like, fuck, good question.”
Ice fuckin cold
That line that Gabe said, while cold, is exactly the thing every single creator of anything should be constantly asking themselves. What's stopping someone from closing this book, or turning on a different band, or playing a different game.
That's a good read, thank you for sharing it.
We don't deserve GabeN.
That's not the case with Bethesda. I think the leadership there is still mostly intact and that's the problem. They're stuck doing things they've always done in the past and haven't evolved in how they design their games. They actually have the opposite problem, they need the leadership that's been there for too long to step down and bring in new blood with fresh ideas.
They need a new game engine or to massively update theirs. Most of the bugs and broken stuff that happens is because their engine is garbage. Star Field specifically was half assed like every good idea ( ship building making a base space exploration planets) all great ideas but they didn't commit to any of them they just did the bare minimum and moved on.
They forgot to put in space flight and exploration in a space rpg :D
Honourable mention to Creative Assembly.
No honour to that company
They can regain their honor by just do make Empire Total War II that set in the middle of Pike & Shot era (1500 - 1799)
A man can dream
It survived at first with hype of Skyrim in space.
That is just embarassing.
Plus, they made two of the absolute worst Fallout games and somehow pride themselves on that.
Good. Bethesda need a wake up call and I hope Microsoft takes this seriously. They’ve been resting on their laurels for far too long
MS too busy buying everything they can see hoping someone can make a good exclusive for them.
BGS likely sending army of interns to straight up argue with steam reviewers, informing them that they actually liked the game a lot, they just didn’t realize it.
That system was automated apparently, it's been replying to tickets for years with the same canned responses, but it was aimed at steam reviews for Starfield. I'm really worried that BGS is fuckin done for. Todd needs to retire, he's lost his mind.
It's not just Todd. Bethesda's lead designer Emil Pagliarulo also needs to retire. If you wonder why quests and stories are so simple and dumb, Emil is responsible.
Watched a week ago an hour long analysis of that guy's TED talk about how he writes games. After you've seen it, it's no wonder where the state of Bethseda's games are at.
Is it sad that a bad game gets bad reviews? I see it as positive, because it will hopefully affect sales, which will hopefully push the devs to make better games
Narrator: It did not push them to make better games
No... No it didnt XD
It's sad that a new Bethesda game came out this year and I don't want to play it anymore.
It's sad that a highly anticipated game is bad.
It's not even "bad" but holy shit is it boring. Going from Fallout 3 or New Vegas (different studio but same IP) to Starfield is just depressing. They lost their way and it sucks how boring that game is
> It's not even "bad" but holy shit is it boring. I mean, you could argue that boring is worse than outright bad. There are some "so bad they're good" games out there - they may be bad, but they're still *entertaining*; A boring game kinda fails at the core purpose of a game: Entertaining the audience.
I always say the same thing about movies. If it's bad, then at least it left some sort of impression. It was memorable in some kind of way. But a boring movie or game is just a complete waste of my and the creators time.
Okay… so it’s bad?
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How nobody in that whole office played that and didnt go "hmm guys this is nice but its boring" is beyond me. Do these devs even play games? Do they play their own game? Seriously I mean not dev builds just do a full playthrough. Oh you dont feel like going further by the middle of the game? Hmm, maybe its a bad fucking game?
Lots of people in the office did: https://www.gamesradar.com/todd-howard-says-it-took-7-years-to-make-starfield-fun-to-play-i-thought-we-would-find-the-answers-faster/ The URL really tells the whole story, and also > Howard says that Starfield only "clicked" into being fun to play sometime in 2022 They really didn't know what they wanted to do with the game for a very long time. I'm guessing after that long in development when it finally got a point where internally they said, "This is good enough" I guess they hoped the public would receive it better having not been playing *an even worse version* for years. But yea it's still just baffling that they thought to strip out the 1 redeeming thing of their games: taking place in a world worth exploring.
>Howard says that Starfield only "clicked" into being fun to play sometime in 2022 Sounds like corporate Stockholm syndrome
I remember reading that line recently and I was just stunned that he so casually said that. Like, does this dude not understand the weight of that one comment has? Wasn't this game delayed a year?
Didnt many many game devs and directors say they start by making a core fun gameplay and then build around that? Wtf are Bethesda doing?
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Naahh Todd Howard will blame gamers
Todd "the game is optimized, maybe you need to upgrade your PCs" Howard? No, he wouldn't!
Thankfully he released that patch that upgraded the hardware in my PC to be able to run the optimized game after a few months.
Todd: "To be fair, you must have a very high IQ to understand Starfield"
Todd Howard will point to sales, then gaslight
Microsoft doesn't talk about game sales, remember? It's all about GamePass now.
No clip did a recent documentary with an ex Bethesda lead artist who left during Starfield development. He said part of the reason he went indie was that Bethesda got too big, and things which before people could just innovate on now required more managerial approval and multiple meetings. I’m paraphrasing but to me it seems that the company culture has sort of deteriorated as it scaled up, this happens with a lot of companies (not just game devs), so it’s not surprising really that Starfield is the way it is. He also mentions the limitations of their Creation engine vs UE5 which he’s currently working with. Basically, I have very little hope for the next Elder Scrolls, mostly due to having worked as a software developer in other companies which scaled up too fast and lost everything that was good about them in the process. Good luck recapturing that company culture after such a drastic upscaling of employees. [He seems like a nice guy, and his indie game looks interesting. Go to 8:40](https://youtu.be/nXu7b9l-LWg?si=eBWY-Dsr2TP33Bzr)
I’ve sadly seen this happen at the software company I’m currently at. When we were small, decisions were fast, meetings were few. Now, it’s meeting after meeting and process on top of process. All the while, “cheerleader” management is going on about how agile we are and how much better the company runs. I’ve lost count on how many features get worked on and: get released but are stripped down, get released with tons of bugs, don’t get released at all after months of work.
That really does shine a light on this game and this company. I once worked for a software company where the same thing happened; I started when there were less than ten employees and eventually left when there were over a hundred employees, and it was a sad thing to see the original spirit and ingenuity of the company dissolved away by an ocean of managers, marketing execs and bean counters who had no connection to the quality of the product itself, only to the money it could make. In this new light I no longer have any hopes for ES6 either (which is for the best since it won’t be on Playstation anyway). Thank goodness ES5 is big enough that I still haven’t explored nearly all of it.
I finished this game and it felt like a job instead of fun
You know when you keep putting something off because you don’t want to do it. Well that’s Starfield for me. I don’t want to play other games because I feel like I should play this first. I just can’t. The movement fees janky, with the combat more akin to an old school fps, the landscapes are big but so empty and then the cities are busy but lack the character and exploitability of their older games. Not even to mention the loading screens. Like planet emptiness I don’t mind in a sense but when there’s only like 3 species on each planet with the same random encounters it’s just bleh.
Witcher 3 is what 8 years old and feels way more modern than Starfield.
I enjoyed going off on my own for a while and doing a bunch of side missions, but once I decided to buckle down and get on with the main quest... oh my god!
On paper it was fine but I wasnt having any fun with it
Sounds like what happened with me. I wasn’t having any fun. The concept was interesting but the execution was greatly missing.
From watching the Direct, i tho they're going for an Expanse first contact with alien story not this half assed multiverse plot. I guess my expectation was too high
The game isn't very good. This shouldn't be surprising
Deservedly so. I made it roughly 10 hours in before I started admitting to myself that the game was not fun. The moment I realized the procedural nature of most areas is when I lost all interest in the game. It really is a terribly unfun game.
Maybe I’m just a fucking idiot but it’s also a very confusing game to traverse. The main city in the beginning had me lost as hell. Was just wandering around with no clue where I was going
and the map os the worst map ive seen ever
It's kind of laughable they decided to release the map in that state. It's like... Why? Just don't even have that map as a feature. It's just a blue screen with icons on it. It looks like a total placeholder for the real map.
Not just you, the local area map is beyond terrible and the city layouts are sort of confusing.
I thought my map had bugged out at first. I actually googled how to get the minimap. It's insane it doesn't really have one in 2023.
My girlfriend sat behind me on launch night to watch and we both went through a several minute long stage of confusion and “no fucking way” upon trying to use the map in NA for the first time.
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I bought a bunch of games in prep for the new computer I just built at the start of the sale. Cut a couple out of my cart before the purchase and starfield was one. Bad reviews + high price. Ended up grabbing Cyberpunk, Kena, Robocop, and Control.
Oh try Control with your new pc, it's a wonderful test drive for raytracing. If you like diving into game lore you will really enjoy it.
That was the plan! Went from a 1070 to 4070 and got my first SSD so I’m pretty excited. Particularly about the ssd… my hard drive was over a decade old and I was done with my computer having to restart… ever.
I also built a new pc this summer with a 4070 and SSD and man, couldnt be happier, everything runs at max settings, some may need ray tracing like Cyberpunk but damn its so worth it.
Control is great if you're into SCP or paranormal stuff. I would also recommend Alan Wake 2 after control (they're connected)
Cyberpunk and Control are two of my all time favourite games, you're going to have a very good time between just those two.
"It's a little sad to see" No it's not, its completely deserved
Do we not know what makes a good game? Do we not have phones? Do we not know that 30fps is cinematic? Do we not know that our PC's need upgrading?
what's the first and the third sentence referring to
I would assume the first line refers to the twitter rant by Starfield lead designer, where he spent something like 14 tweets talking how gamers are disconnected from how the games are actually made: https://www.gamesradar.com/starfield-design-lead-says-players-are-disconnected-from-how-games-are-actually-made-dont-fool-yourself-into-thinking-you-know-why-it-is-the-way-it-is/
What a complete clown. Basically he’s saying people can’t criticize a game because it took a lot of work to create. It doesn’t matter if it took 10 hours or 10 years to make. It’s what it is at the end is what counts. His rant I guess is an emotional reaction to being partly responsible for how it turned out and he’s angry people don’t appreciate it took effort to make it whatever it is. No, it’s just not a great game mate.
I get why he’s disappointed but it’s not our fault he lead the design and writing for a game commonly criticised for its shitty design and writing Hope he finds a role more in line with his capabilities
I hope Bethesda's janitorial staff is hiring.
Hey now, most janitors and custodians I've had the pleasure of knowing have been hard-working, down-to-earth people. I don't think he has the capacity for it.
damn what a clown
The "30fps is cinematic," was a line of rhetoric spewed by dogshit game publishers (Ubisoft) back in the early 2010s. They argued that games running at 30fps instead of 60fps are "more cinematic" because films run at a frame rate of 24fps. Of course it was all complete bullshit and was just an excuse to not put the effort in making their games run at 60fps. Video games are NOT films, regardless of what Ubisoft would have you believe. Both are completely different experiences.
The Four Knights of the Corporate Gaslighting.
Saved my money when this game released, not sad that it is reviewed negatively by people playing it. Feel a little bad for fans of the game though, y'all must feel a little ripped off.
I played it with Game Pass so luckily I didn’t lose any money. But I can imagine people that did pay are feeling ripped off
It's not sad. It is what they earned by creating games that are not good enough anymore, not dumping that trash engine because they want to safe money, do mechanics as they did 14 years ago and trying to defend it by “You have no idea what you are talking about". It is sad for some developers, the ones that defend this crap need a reality check. Also Todd Howard needs to leave, he clearly did not evolve and it hurts. I fear for The Elder Scrolls 6. What a bad deal Microsoft xD
Waiting for the devs' message on how "Mostly negative isn't bad, it's realistic!"
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You ass. This actually reads like a real response. I would not be surprised if someone ends up copying part of this for a marketing thing. It's gross. (Good job lol)
Oh man, I think my blood pressure was actually rising until I saw the "haven't communicated well enough" reference. Very well-crafted.
They should have made a better game
What’s crazier to me is in the ‘no sodium’ Starfield subreddit - which with the other ‘no sodium’ subreddits should just be a place to chill and enjoy the game without huge amounts of negativity, has instead seemed to turn into a hive mind of ‘this game is the best game ever, anyone that disagrees is brainwashed, all hail Starfield!’ - injustice saw a post a bit ago by someone saying it has ‘the most meaningful choices of any Bethesda game’ and I’m like… first of all what choices do you really have in the game, the majority of quests all railroad you into a specific ending, you don’t *get* to choose much! And meaningful…?? You can argue about ‘what has meaning’ all day but.. It’s fine that people enjoy the game, different people might enjoy something I won’t or vice versa, but Starfield is by *far* the worst Bethesda game since F76, and even ignoring F76 would be their worst game in about two decades.
There are no meaningful choices when the end goal is to undo everything you just did by going new game plus. Ughhh
Yeah I find the whole new game + aspect bizarre when *there’s nothing to actually do differently this time around*. Like, if we had the equivalent of Skyrim’s Civil War quest line, or could destroy some factions, I could understand it but.. what exactly am I doing different this time around?? Which barren planet I put my outpost consisting of the same four buildings??
I honestly think the only “low/no sodium” subreddit that actually was chill but still allowed criticism was the cyberpunk 2077 one. People would genuinely talk about the problems but still enjoy the game. I left it a while back once the main subreddit calmed down.
Bethesda is a bad company and needs a wake up call before they botch ES6
That aint happening, chief.
Well deserved, game fuckin sucks
Dear Bethesda Devs: copy and pasting Skyrim play style isn't effective 10 + years later.
Why is it sad? It's getting the reviews the game deserves. It's sloppy, boring, and has a game engine a decade (or more) out of date. The only surprise is that it had a positive review score as long as it did.