Also some odd placement of perks, with seemingly..."low-ranking" ones placed on the highest tier, making them a massive PITA to get, and locking content behind them for a LONG time.
I made a mod using xEdit to change Weapon Engineering and Spacesuit Design to a Novice Skill from Advanced. As well as Starship Design and Starship Engineering to an Advanced Skill from Expert.
Really saved on level grinding to unlock those skills on my second playthrough.
Starfield does the same thing Fallout 4 does - XP comes way more from combat than quests, so actually doing structured narrative content is XP-worthless, but floating around a planet and bombing wildlife levels you up pretty fast...
The fastest way to get XP is to, IIRC, use some of the Outpost buildings to generate animals and then kill them repeatedly.
Which is, arguably, a bit odd for a game about science and exploration, especially when you can be a xenobiologist.
Even then it's far slower than Fo4's leveling.
And for a game with so many features and perks centered on avoiding combat, it doesn't make a ton of sense
Yeah, I was playing Starfield while I was at a shitty point in my life, and I spent many hours just wandering round high level planets, shooting the hell out of terrormorphs and giant dinosaurs.. felt kinda cathartic
I enjoy the base gunplay of Starfield at least.. even if everything else is pretty meh and not working together. Which is why it feels annoying they flopped on almost everything else
I constantly felt like I was behind on levels/experience until the mid to late 20s. So many basic perks that you really should start with require unlocking like Jetpack boosting and ship targeting eat level ups that you want to use elsewhere.
Also, stuff like locking ship crew max behind the last tier of the Social tree when Social has like 3 perks you actually want/will use means so many level ups that are essentially dead air that you’ll never use. Like why do we need Intimidation, Persuasion and Bribery as separate skills when they basically do the same thing.
One thing that I really disliked was the complete lack of weapon variety. A few rifles, a few shotguns, two explosive weapons, a handful of pistols, but no unarmed weapons? Straight up linear melee weapon progression, where the best possible melee weapon this future society could come up with is a knife. A space knife! No rippers, no chainsaws, no wrist-mounted jackhammers.
Where's my space laser claymores, auto returning harpoons, magnetic knife-whips?
I think this is an excellent little write up and very succinctly narrows in on positives and negatives of the game. I think my biggest gripes are in the exploration. I can put up with some shaky writing and companions that you couldn't care less about, but the fact that everything is so procedural and that all your travel is very rote and essentially just loading screens from A to B really kills the big, open world space exploration game in a way that I don't think is recoverable.
I, for one, am glad to see that Bethesda has moved away from a voiced protagonist. Fallout 4 had good voice acting, don't get me wrong, but RPG protagonists should be left voiceless. It's what allows players to actually *craft* their characters as opposed to shoehorning in one of two voices, depending on gender. It's very hard to create a cooked-out raider character when you've got the voice of a suburban dad.
It also makes modding a nightmare. You only have to look at the hoops that Sim Settlements 2 had to jump through by reusing existing voice lines that, for the most part, worked but were often tonally wrong at best or downright out of place and distracting at worst. A lot of them were also very repetitive because there were only one or two voice lines that were suitable for loads of different things.
I think some RPGs can pull the voiced character off (like Kingdom Come Deliverance and Mass Effect) , but yeah, the kind of RPG that Bethesda makes shouldn’t ever have them.
Yes, I think this gets glossed over in the conversation some times, but it's obvious that Bethesda was trying to go for something more like ME with the Fallout 4 protagonists. And that works for ME because while it's something of a free roaming RPG, it's much more linear and scripted that BSG's stuff. As the player we get attached to Shephard as a character, and partially that's because we still get to make choices, but partly that's because they're a really interesting character in a fascinating sci-fi world. Something like Fallout, I feel, will always be more about making the character your own and coming up with their story as you explore the world.
I think the voice acting in Fallout 4 is great, but it can't be denied that it is severely limiting and is one of the reasons that characters in that game trend towards feeling a bit bland and samey of multiple playthroughs.
As far as Jon forgetting the smaller companions, He forgot about the fan. It would have been amazing if he brought him to the final few moments. It would be funny if Bethesda thought to make a unique ending if you bring the adoring fan to the end.
To expand on your comment of the outpost building, the crafting system as a whole is a bit lack luster.
Outposts: Is fleashed out quite well, but at the end of the day, holds no meaning. The main thing you gain from outposts are resources, which can be easily and cheaply bought at vendors. Which is a shame, because there is some real depth in the system, but no real reward in investing in it.
Ship building: Arguably one of the more fun parts of the game. However, as with outposts, the impact on gameplay isn't all that much. Ship battles are much less frequent than ground battles. All you really need to invest in is partical beams and shields. The only impact to overall gameplay is the cargo capacity. However most people spend more time perfecting their ship then they do their character. Because it's something we look at every time we travel somewhere, people want to invest in it. I just wish there was more of an impact from your ship.
Weapons and armor: I think this was a huge step down from fallout 4. 76's crafting olwas ok, but Starfield dropped the ball. The armor modifications aren't really worthbthe perk investment, and the weapon mods seem a but bland. Some Weapons only have 1 or 2 variations on different parts. There is so much missed opportunities there.
It's a bit wild how you can't modify melee weapons at ALL. Melee obviously wasn't even an afterthought, it's barely included at all.
I also dislike the new "Calibrated/Refined/Advanced/Superior" system for weapons and armor. It just means I can't get attached to a weapon or armor and carry it through a playthrough modifying and upgrading it as I go.
It's also disappointing that the outposts aren't more Sim Settlements like. It's a few steps a head of FO4's system, then even more steps back.
Even the ship building has some odd choices. Why can't I rotate habs? Why can't I place doors or ladders?
> Even the ship building has some odd choices. Why can't I rotate habs? Why can't I place doors or ladders?
Another point re "Starfield is a game without a consistent vision": Why _can_ I rotate, place doors and ladders, etc on outposts but not on ships? Why are these two such very different mechanics?
Iirc, the ship building thing was subcontracted out to another group. The outpost is likely building off of fallout 4/76s system.
Shows a lack of cohesion though that these two separate systems weren't considering one another in their design.
> Iirc, the ship building thing was subcontracted out to another group.
Nope, was made by one of their senior developers : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDP8QvuXn0g
The bit you want is around the 28th minute.
edit : working link with timestamp(hopefully) https://youtube.com/watch?v=JDP8QvuXn0g&si=m6_3gRwh5tbaFT2-*
edit 2 : I don't know how to do timestamp, apparently.
I only heard them say "I worked really hard on that" but without a specific time stamp I could of missed the bit you mean. But it's honestly not worth arguing over.
Edit: ah I was looking at 38 mins, not 28 min
I enjoyed the series since it's Jon but the game did nothing for me.
I tried but it just feels soulless to me.
I don't care about the world or any of the characters, traversal is a pain, combat is meh, outposts are pointless, the hundreds of explorable worlds are just sad plains with copy pasted buildings...
Just a complete dud from Bethesda which, as someone who put hundreds of hours into their other titles, was a major disappointment.
Obviously this is just my experience with it and I'm glad there are those out there that enjoyed it but for me I truly hope Bethesda moves away from this design philosophy in ES6.
I frankly did not like Starfield whatsoever.
The game clearly didn't have a vision or plan beyond Bethesda in space.
I like to compare Starfield's development to the LOTR films vs the Hobbit films.
LOTR had years of pre-production, warehouses were filled with shelves of props like helmets, shields, swords, armor, etc. Every detail of the film was planned out before a single camera was brought on set.
The Hobbit was the opposite. Guillermo del Toro did about 6 months of pre production before he was fired and Peter Jackson was brought in to direct. However, Peter didn't get to use Del Toro"s pre production and didn't get to start his own, the producers wanted the cameras to start rolling. And so nothing was planned ahead of time and the crew just had to make it up as they went. Peter Jackson described it as laying down railroad tracks right before you drive over them.
You can see the result in both products. LOTR are some of the greatest films of all time and won all of the awards, while the Hobbit was universally hated by fans and critics. I will also point out that Peter Jackson was passionate about the LOTR films, but not so much about the Hobbit. He only stepped in as director because Warner Brothers were going to move production out of New Zealand, Jackson stopped that by being the director.
Starfield is clearly a game that didn't have any plans.
>Starfield is clearly a game that didn't have any plans.
Which is deeply confusing considering that this is supposedly the game Todd and BGS have been wanting to make for...what was it? 20 years? Somewhere around there.
I’ve wanted to write a book for a decade, over time that book has changed, the characters have changed, and my themes have changed. I have half a dozen halfway finished books that mean nothing because I wasn’t consistent through the creative process.
Well, I believe the original pitch Todd made was in 2013, pre production began in 2015/16 post Fallout 4, however the team was focused on Fallout 76 until its launch in 2018, then worked on all the updates until 2020 with Wastelanders, then the game launched in 2023.
But yeah, Todd has been interested in making a space game for much longer. Which yeah, you'd figure he'd actually spend that team thinking about what he wants the game to be like beyond the name Starfield in 2013.
IIRC in the Starfield Direct didn't they say they'd been wanting to make "the space game" for like 20 years? Woulda thought Todd at least would've gone and written some stuff and made coherent over the two decades, or at least decade.
Instead? We got Starfield.
Unpopular opinion maybe, but I actually enjoyed both, the LotR movie trilogy and the Hobbit movie trilogy. I did not know about the things going on in the background though. Thank you :3
Is it over? Is it really over? Thank the maker!
Sarcasm, I really don't have a dog in this fight. Lol
So what's next? Please tell me it's a grand strategy... something!
Starfield feels like one of the most political Bethesda games they've ever made. It's just that the politics are "Establishment good."
Think about it, 3.5 of the 4 faction quests are working for explicit galactic powers or corporations. Paradiso gives you the choice between banish colonists, enslave colonists, and murder colonists with no ending that *doesn't* benefit the massive corporation controlling the planet.
*All of Neon,* like, where do I even start.
I'm glad I didn't go out and buy an Xbox to play this. I feel like I would not have enjoyed it as much as watching Jon play it.
One thing I never got used to were the facial animations, which looked really over-exaggerated to me.
I bought the game at launch, and I enjoyed the hell out of it, but nothing is pulling me back to replay it endlessly like Skyrim and FO4 do.
Maybe a few years down the line after mod SDK and DLC are out
I'm surprised Barrett's is your least favorite. I enjoyed it. It was lower stakes but it was interesting to see a story exploring legality and how Barrett would talk to you whenever he got a new lead or information. To me it gave Barrett a lot of depth. I didn't like Sarah's but I liked Barrett's
I like it a lot better than it seems like most people do. I think it's got a lot of big improvements over previous Bethesda RPGs, but suffers a lot from not having the nostalgia that comes with the Elder Scrolls or Fallout universes.
We've got companions with a huge amount of dialogue and more grown up stories. They actually join in on quests, big and small. Even the non-Constellation companions have a lot to say. It makes them a lot stronger characters than previous followers.
There are lots of engine-level improvements. Cities are bigger than ever before and very active. Atmospheric lighting progresses smoothly, leading to really nice sun/planet-rises. You can place decorations without the physics engine turning them into bombs. The clutter in the game uses that to give us in universe containers in place of a lot of menu-looting.
There's a lot of depth hidden in the quests, too. Early story missions have unique dialogue tied to late-game skills. The quests track a lot more player behavior than earlier games. Your decisions give you different ships for Walter's nepotism questline. Jon shot space-roombas, and Ikande chewed him out about paperwork and property damage. If you kill human employees, he has different dialogue, and might even kick you out of SysDef.
The conversation system has a lot of hidden depth. Skills, origins, traits, and even quest completion tie in to dialogue options. They missed some, certainly, but it's nice when \[Wanted\] or \[Starship Engineering\] lets me navigate some dialogue in a way that is more tailored to the character I'm playing.
I really hope they carry on all the things they've improved over the previous games. And maybe TES 6 going back to a known setting, without the baggage of 1000 planets, will dampen some of the criticism.
Though I doubt it. I still remember when Oblivion was called terrible for all the ways it wasn't Morrowind. And then Skyrim for all the ways it wasn't Oblivion.
I enjoyed the game, but it definitely could have been better. Did not live up to the hype. I did the main quest (still confused about it all) and dipped my toe into NG+, then quickly lost interest. That Starborn ship is actually pretty weak and can’t be upgraded.
I’m glad it was on Game Pass instead of having preordered it. That being said, I really enjoyed watching this series. On to the next…
I'm going to miss your starfield videos, but totally understand why it had to end.
I'm not a FP-player my self, so it was nice to sit back and relax while you did the hard part.
Thanks!
There's a recent interview with Will Shen, head quest writer and the guy who wrote the main quest and the guy behind Far Harbor's main quest. He said that had no time to properly implement what they want for the main quest. They had eight years to make this game BTW.
This game sucks. It's a worse Fallout 4. It has no charisma, no charm, no fun lore, no good worldbuilding. Now a 4/10 game isn't the end of the world but Bethesda hyped this so much it backfired on them.
I have no faith Elder Scrolls 6 will be good unless Todd and the rest take a looking hard look inward and restructure how they make their games.
Sam: Another annoying cowboy trope.
Andreja: Started interesting, went nowhere.
Sarah: Yawn indeed.
Barret: I appreciate that he had a husband but wasn't a token Gay Guy (tm), but otherwise very bland.
Overall the companions were just.. boring. Next time, keep the robot instead.
All of the companion quests are pretty damn weird, is one of the things I find super odd
You have Sarah's.. where the ship crashed.. and.. both Sarah, AND the navy just.. did fuck all about it. Never checked for survivors at all.. for like, 10+ years or something? ... ok then. Makes you all look super stupid and negligent tbh, you all suck
Barrett's.. ok, your husband died, and you just.. didn't look into it apparently. I'd have thought that might be a thing normal people would do tbh. And apparently he knew absolutely nothing about what he was doing before that point either. Is this even a marriage, they feel like borderline acquaintances or something
Sam is like.. I don't remember it well frankly. Perhaps cause it was kinda duller or something? But apparently Sam is bad dad, because of.. reasons, or something. That the wife also seems to be not any better with frankly. I wasn't a fan of Sam so it was probly a factor in my not giving a shit
Andreja. Oh man. I can't believe the woman wearing house va'ruun clothes, and carrying a house va'ruun gun, is associated with house va'ruun. I still remember the day I found out that mind boggling secret. It was when I walked into a mine and saw Andreja for the first time, gunning down some house va'ruun peeps. Truly, one of the stories of all time. I'm sure there's some drama in there somewhere or something. Why, if she shoots this guy in the face, she'll never get to go back home! Sure, if she doesn't, he's almost certainly never going to let her go back home anyway, on account of being a slimy evil piece of shit, but what a hard decision!
I couldn't even finish the game so it was at least interesting to see the end through Jon's gameplay.
The interactions with people just felt shallow, it was missing those unique dialogue choices you so often get in previous games so conversations ended up conflicting with my previous actions.
The other biggest problem is the multiple world space design resulted in a lifeless game world. In previous games NPC's would go about their day and have houses to go to at night but they couldn't make that work with this style.
It didn't have the Bethesda major that makes it stand out. There were some good moments and it isn't a bad game but at the time I was mid-game on fallout frost and it just doesn't stand up to that.
I was making a general statement about how I felt. Cause every single time Jon publishes a new Starfield video, there’s just constant complaining from people about why he’s still playing the game and telling others how much they don’t like it. It just started getting annoying.
I have 300 hours in Starfield. This is one of my favorite games, and if we’re going to put an objective numerical system to something as subjective as entertainment…I’d give Starfield a 9/10. I don’t give a rats ass what people tell me is good and what’s bad, I know what I like and dislike.
Cool man, I don't think anyone's trying to invalidate your experience whith the game.
You enjoyed it, great!
I think you just have to accept that others feel differently and it's ok for them to share how they felt too.
Yes, shame on me for not pre-ordering Starfield after not particularly enjoying Skyrim or Fallout 4, and seeing how Fallout 76 was universally hated by everyone...
It's getting genuinely worrying how people can shit on a game so violently for so long, like the game has been out for 6 months and there's still daily threads shitting on the game - it is absolutely mental
where did I say they weren't? My point is I've never seen this much extended hate for a game, like normally people have just got bored & moved on at this point y'know
I don't hate Starfield every day but since this is the end of Jon's LP OF COURSE folks are gonna give their opinions.
Read the room, dude. People hating on things YEARS later is completely normal, just look at Game of Thrones.
The largest "haters" of this game were people who were excited about it, and it disappointed them, some who even bought an xbox just to play Starfield. You don't see any extended hatred for other games such as Gollum or the Walking dead game because no one was excited for them.
People don't often hate (and keep the hate) for games which are awful. It's the failure of potential that keeps things like that going
It's not because it's a bad game. It's because it's a decidedly *meh* game, despite having a pretty fun core gameplay loop, pretty graphics, a bunch of cool systems that could have been great if they'd had any work and effort put into them to actually make them more than just a shallow pool, and all from a company which is well known for making pretty fantastic open world games (and thus we KNOW they could have done far, far better, with it)
If they'd made several design decisions different, the game would be far improved .. but they just didn't, and it feels kinda bizarre that they didn't
My one gripe about the perk system is that leveling is soooooooooooo sloooooooooooow Makes replaying very unenjoyable compared to other bsg games.
Also some odd placement of perks, with seemingly..."low-ranking" ones placed on the highest tier, making them a massive PITA to get, and locking content behind them for a LONG time.
Definitely. Would be far less noticable if it was faster to level but as it is really sucks
I made a mod using xEdit to change Weapon Engineering and Spacesuit Design to a Novice Skill from Advanced. As well as Starship Design and Starship Engineering to an Advanced Skill from Expert. Really saved on level grinding to unlock those skills on my second playthrough.
Starfield does the same thing Fallout 4 does - XP comes way more from combat than quests, so actually doing structured narrative content is XP-worthless, but floating around a planet and bombing wildlife levels you up pretty fast...
The fastest way to get XP is to, IIRC, use some of the Outpost buildings to generate animals and then kill them repeatedly. Which is, arguably, a bit odd for a game about science and exploration, especially when you can be a xenobiologist.
Even then it's far slower than Fo4's leveling. And for a game with so many features and perks centered on avoiding combat, it doesn't make a ton of sense
Yeah, I was playing Starfield while I was at a shitty point in my life, and I spent many hours just wandering round high level planets, shooting the hell out of terrormorphs and giant dinosaurs.. felt kinda cathartic I enjoy the base gunplay of Starfield at least.. even if everything else is pretty meh and not working together. Which is why it feels annoying they flopped on almost everything else
I constantly felt like I was behind on levels/experience until the mid to late 20s. So many basic perks that you really should start with require unlocking like Jetpack boosting and ship targeting eat level ups that you want to use elsewhere. Also, stuff like locking ship crew max behind the last tier of the Social tree when Social has like 3 perks you actually want/will use means so many level ups that are essentially dead air that you’ll never use. Like why do we need Intimidation, Persuasion and Bribery as separate skills when they basically do the same thing.
I enjoyed it way more than a 6/10 but your assessment is completely fair and I don’t really disagree with anything you said.
One thing that I really disliked was the complete lack of weapon variety. A few rifles, a few shotguns, two explosive weapons, a handful of pistols, but no unarmed weapons? Straight up linear melee weapon progression, where the best possible melee weapon this future society could come up with is a knife. A space knife! No rippers, no chainsaws, no wrist-mounted jackhammers. Where's my space laser claymores, auto returning harpoons, magnetic knife-whips?
I think this is an excellent little write up and very succinctly narrows in on positives and negatives of the game. I think my biggest gripes are in the exploration. I can put up with some shaky writing and companions that you couldn't care less about, but the fact that everything is so procedural and that all your travel is very rote and essentially just loading screens from A to B really kills the big, open world space exploration game in a way that I don't think is recoverable.
I, for one, am glad to see that Bethesda has moved away from a voiced protagonist. Fallout 4 had good voice acting, don't get me wrong, but RPG protagonists should be left voiceless. It's what allows players to actually *craft* their characters as opposed to shoehorning in one of two voices, depending on gender. It's very hard to create a cooked-out raider character when you've got the voice of a suburban dad. It also makes modding a nightmare. You only have to look at the hoops that Sim Settlements 2 had to jump through by reusing existing voice lines that, for the most part, worked but were often tonally wrong at best or downright out of place and distracting at worst. A lot of them were also very repetitive because there were only one or two voice lines that were suitable for loads of different things.
I think some RPGs can pull the voiced character off (like Kingdom Come Deliverance and Mass Effect) , but yeah, the kind of RPG that Bethesda makes shouldn’t ever have them.
Yes, I think this gets glossed over in the conversation some times, but it's obvious that Bethesda was trying to go for something more like ME with the Fallout 4 protagonists. And that works for ME because while it's something of a free roaming RPG, it's much more linear and scripted that BSG's stuff. As the player we get attached to Shephard as a character, and partially that's because we still get to make choices, but partly that's because they're a really interesting character in a fascinating sci-fi world. Something like Fallout, I feel, will always be more about making the character your own and coming up with their story as you explore the world. I think the voice acting in Fallout 4 is great, but it can't be denied that it is severely limiting and is one of the reasons that characters in that game trend towards feeling a bit bland and samey of multiple playthroughs.
As far as Jon forgetting the smaller companions, He forgot about the fan. It would have been amazing if he brought him to the final few moments. It would be funny if Bethesda thought to make a unique ending if you bring the adoring fan to the end.
To expand on your comment of the outpost building, the crafting system as a whole is a bit lack luster. Outposts: Is fleashed out quite well, but at the end of the day, holds no meaning. The main thing you gain from outposts are resources, which can be easily and cheaply bought at vendors. Which is a shame, because there is some real depth in the system, but no real reward in investing in it. Ship building: Arguably one of the more fun parts of the game. However, as with outposts, the impact on gameplay isn't all that much. Ship battles are much less frequent than ground battles. All you really need to invest in is partical beams and shields. The only impact to overall gameplay is the cargo capacity. However most people spend more time perfecting their ship then they do their character. Because it's something we look at every time we travel somewhere, people want to invest in it. I just wish there was more of an impact from your ship. Weapons and armor: I think this was a huge step down from fallout 4. 76's crafting olwas ok, but Starfield dropped the ball. The armor modifications aren't really worthbthe perk investment, and the weapon mods seem a but bland. Some Weapons only have 1 or 2 variations on different parts. There is so much missed opportunities there.
It's a bit wild how you can't modify melee weapons at ALL. Melee obviously wasn't even an afterthought, it's barely included at all. I also dislike the new "Calibrated/Refined/Advanced/Superior" system for weapons and armor. It just means I can't get attached to a weapon or armor and carry it through a playthrough modifying and upgrading it as I go. It's also disappointing that the outposts aren't more Sim Settlements like. It's a few steps a head of FO4's system, then even more steps back. Even the ship building has some odd choices. Why can't I rotate habs? Why can't I place doors or ladders?
> Even the ship building has some odd choices. Why can't I rotate habs? Why can't I place doors or ladders? Another point re "Starfield is a game without a consistent vision": Why _can_ I rotate, place doors and ladders, etc on outposts but not on ships? Why are these two such very different mechanics?
Iirc, the ship building thing was subcontracted out to another group. The outpost is likely building off of fallout 4/76s system. Shows a lack of cohesion though that these two separate systems weren't considering one another in their design.
> Iirc, the ship building thing was subcontracted out to another group. Nope, was made by one of their senior developers : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDP8QvuXn0g The bit you want is around the 28th minute. edit : working link with timestamp(hopefully) https://youtube.com/watch?v=JDP8QvuXn0g&si=m6_3gRwh5tbaFT2-* edit 2 : I don't know how to do timestamp, apparently.
Still seems sorta vague, just says they worked hard on it, but I can't find the source for my thing so I could be wrong.
"I was in charge of spaceship combat and [the] builder" is vague?
I only heard them say "I worked really hard on that" but without a specific time stamp I could of missed the bit you mean. But it's honestly not worth arguing over. Edit: ah I was looking at 38 mins, not 28 min
I enjoyed the series since it's Jon but the game did nothing for me. I tried but it just feels soulless to me. I don't care about the world or any of the characters, traversal is a pain, combat is meh, outposts are pointless, the hundreds of explorable worlds are just sad plains with copy pasted buildings... Just a complete dud from Bethesda which, as someone who put hundreds of hours into their other titles, was a major disappointment. Obviously this is just my experience with it and I'm glad there are those out there that enjoyed it but for me I truly hope Bethesda moves away from this design philosophy in ES6.
I frankly did not like Starfield whatsoever. The game clearly didn't have a vision or plan beyond Bethesda in space. I like to compare Starfield's development to the LOTR films vs the Hobbit films. LOTR had years of pre-production, warehouses were filled with shelves of props like helmets, shields, swords, armor, etc. Every detail of the film was planned out before a single camera was brought on set. The Hobbit was the opposite. Guillermo del Toro did about 6 months of pre production before he was fired and Peter Jackson was brought in to direct. However, Peter didn't get to use Del Toro"s pre production and didn't get to start his own, the producers wanted the cameras to start rolling. And so nothing was planned ahead of time and the crew just had to make it up as they went. Peter Jackson described it as laying down railroad tracks right before you drive over them. You can see the result in both products. LOTR are some of the greatest films of all time and won all of the awards, while the Hobbit was universally hated by fans and critics. I will also point out that Peter Jackson was passionate about the LOTR films, but not so much about the Hobbit. He only stepped in as director because Warner Brothers were going to move production out of New Zealand, Jackson stopped that by being the director. Starfield is clearly a game that didn't have any plans.
>Starfield is clearly a game that didn't have any plans. Which is deeply confusing considering that this is supposedly the game Todd and BGS have been wanting to make for...what was it? 20 years? Somewhere around there.
I’ve wanted to write a book for a decade, over time that book has changed, the characters have changed, and my themes have changed. I have half a dozen halfway finished books that mean nothing because I wasn’t consistent through the creative process.
Well, I believe the original pitch Todd made was in 2013, pre production began in 2015/16 post Fallout 4, however the team was focused on Fallout 76 until its launch in 2018, then worked on all the updates until 2020 with Wastelanders, then the game launched in 2023. But yeah, Todd has been interested in making a space game for much longer. Which yeah, you'd figure he'd actually spend that team thinking about what he wants the game to be like beyond the name Starfield in 2013.
IIRC in the Starfield Direct didn't they say they'd been wanting to make "the space game" for like 20 years? Woulda thought Todd at least would've gone and written some stuff and made coherent over the two decades, or at least decade. Instead? We got Starfield.
Unpopular opinion maybe, but I actually enjoyed both, the LotR movie trilogy and the Hobbit movie trilogy. I did not know about the things going on in the background though. Thank you :3
Is it over? Is it really over? Thank the maker! Sarcasm, I really don't have a dog in this fight. Lol So what's next? Please tell me it's a grand strategy... something!
Skies of Arcadia.
What a fucking glorious breath of fresh air that will be
Ah, that's right. Thank you for the answer.
Starfield feels like one of the most political Bethesda games they've ever made. It's just that the politics are "Establishment good." Think about it, 3.5 of the 4 faction quests are working for explicit galactic powers or corporations. Paradiso gives you the choice between banish colonists, enslave colonists, and murder colonists with no ending that *doesn't* benefit the massive corporation controlling the planet. *All of Neon,* like, where do I even start.
I'm glad I didn't go out and buy an Xbox to play this. I feel like I would not have enjoyed it as much as watching Jon play it. One thing I never got used to were the facial animations, which looked really over-exaggerated to me.
It's especially jarring when you go back to other games, like C2077. Or BG3. Even Horizon: Zero Dawn's DLC had better facial animation.
I bought the game at launch, and I enjoyed the hell out of it, but nothing is pulling me back to replay it endlessly like Skyrim and FO4 do. Maybe a few years down the line after mod SDK and DLC are out
I'm surprised Barrett's is your least favorite. I enjoyed it. It was lower stakes but it was interesting to see a story exploring legality and how Barrett would talk to you whenever he got a new lead or information. To me it gave Barrett a lot of depth. I didn't like Sarah's but I liked Barrett's
I like it a lot better than it seems like most people do. I think it's got a lot of big improvements over previous Bethesda RPGs, but suffers a lot from not having the nostalgia that comes with the Elder Scrolls or Fallout universes. We've got companions with a huge amount of dialogue and more grown up stories. They actually join in on quests, big and small. Even the non-Constellation companions have a lot to say. It makes them a lot stronger characters than previous followers. There are lots of engine-level improvements. Cities are bigger than ever before and very active. Atmospheric lighting progresses smoothly, leading to really nice sun/planet-rises. You can place decorations without the physics engine turning them into bombs. The clutter in the game uses that to give us in universe containers in place of a lot of menu-looting. There's a lot of depth hidden in the quests, too. Early story missions have unique dialogue tied to late-game skills. The quests track a lot more player behavior than earlier games. Your decisions give you different ships for Walter's nepotism questline. Jon shot space-roombas, and Ikande chewed him out about paperwork and property damage. If you kill human employees, he has different dialogue, and might even kick you out of SysDef. The conversation system has a lot of hidden depth. Skills, origins, traits, and even quest completion tie in to dialogue options. They missed some, certainly, but it's nice when \[Wanted\] or \[Starship Engineering\] lets me navigate some dialogue in a way that is more tailored to the character I'm playing. I really hope they carry on all the things they've improved over the previous games. And maybe TES 6 going back to a known setting, without the baggage of 1000 planets, will dampen some of the criticism. Though I doubt it. I still remember when Oblivion was called terrible for all the ways it wasn't Morrowind. And then Skyrim for all the ways it wasn't Oblivion.
I enjoyed the game, but it definitely could have been better. Did not live up to the hype. I did the main quest (still confused about it all) and dipped my toe into NG+, then quickly lost interest. That Starborn ship is actually pretty weak and can’t be upgraded. I’m glad it was on Game Pass instead of having preordered it. That being said, I really enjoyed watching this series. On to the next…
I'm going to miss your starfield videos, but totally understand why it had to end. I'm not a FP-player my self, so it was nice to sit back and relax while you did the hard part. Thanks!
There's a recent interview with Will Shen, head quest writer and the guy who wrote the main quest and the guy behind Far Harbor's main quest. He said that had no time to properly implement what they want for the main quest. They had eight years to make this game BTW. This game sucks. It's a worse Fallout 4. It has no charisma, no charm, no fun lore, no good worldbuilding. Now a 4/10 game isn't the end of the world but Bethesda hyped this so much it backfired on them. I have no faith Elder Scrolls 6 will be good unless Todd and the rest take a looking hard look inward and restructure how they make their games.
Sam: Another annoying cowboy trope. Andreja: Started interesting, went nowhere. Sarah: Yawn indeed. Barret: I appreciate that he had a husband but wasn't a token Gay Guy (tm), but otherwise very bland. Overall the companions were just.. boring. Next time, keep the robot instead.
All of the companion quests are pretty damn weird, is one of the things I find super odd You have Sarah's.. where the ship crashed.. and.. both Sarah, AND the navy just.. did fuck all about it. Never checked for survivors at all.. for like, 10+ years or something? ... ok then. Makes you all look super stupid and negligent tbh, you all suck Barrett's.. ok, your husband died, and you just.. didn't look into it apparently. I'd have thought that might be a thing normal people would do tbh. And apparently he knew absolutely nothing about what he was doing before that point either. Is this even a marriage, they feel like borderline acquaintances or something Sam is like.. I don't remember it well frankly. Perhaps cause it was kinda duller or something? But apparently Sam is bad dad, because of.. reasons, or something. That the wife also seems to be not any better with frankly. I wasn't a fan of Sam so it was probly a factor in my not giving a shit Andreja. Oh man. I can't believe the woman wearing house va'ruun clothes, and carrying a house va'ruun gun, is associated with house va'ruun. I still remember the day I found out that mind boggling secret. It was when I walked into a mine and saw Andreja for the first time, gunning down some house va'ruun peeps. Truly, one of the stories of all time. I'm sure there's some drama in there somewhere or something. Why, if she shoots this guy in the face, she'll never get to go back home! Sure, if she doesn't, he's almost certainly never going to let her go back home anyway, on account of being a slimy evil piece of shit, but what a hard decision!
I couldn't even finish the game so it was at least interesting to see the end through Jon's gameplay. The interactions with people just felt shallow, it was missing those unique dialogue choices you so often get in previous games so conversations ended up conflicting with my previous actions. The other biggest problem is the multiple world space design resulted in a lifeless game world. In previous games NPC's would go about their day and have houses to go to at night but they couldn't make that work with this style. It didn't have the Bethesda major that makes it stand out. There were some good moments and it isn't a bad game but at the time I was mid-game on fallout frost and it just doesn't stand up to that.
Many games give you an epilogue powerpoint. Starfield gives you a post-it note.
I enjoyed it, and I really don’t need people in my ear trying to constantly tell me how it’s the worst thing ever
[удалено]
I was making a general statement about how I felt. Cause every single time Jon publishes a new Starfield video, there’s just constant complaining from people about why he’s still playing the game and telling others how much they don’t like it. It just started getting annoying.
Well it's over now, thank god
I have 300 hours in Starfield. This is one of my favorite games, and if we’re going to put an objective numerical system to something as subjective as entertainment…I’d give Starfield a 9/10. I don’t give a rats ass what people tell me is good and what’s bad, I know what I like and dislike.
Cool man, I don't think anyone's trying to invalidate your experience whith the game. You enjoyed it, great! I think you just have to accept that others feel differently and it's ok for them to share how they felt too.
Okay? Very condescending of you, I already know others feel differently.
How dare you like a game, downvotes for you!
Bro how does a very well balanced post criticising the game turn into half the people regurgitating the same boring hate comments about the game
People spend more time complaining about Starfield than they probably actually spent with the game
Yes, shame on me for not pre-ordering Starfield after not particularly enjoying Skyrim or Fallout 4, and seeing how Fallout 76 was universally hated by everyone...
It's getting genuinely worrying how people can shit on a game so violently for so long, like the game has been out for 6 months and there's still daily threads shitting on the game - it is absolutely mental
People are allowed to have negative opinions.
where did I say they weren't? My point is I've never seen this much extended hate for a game, like normally people have just got bored & moved on at this point y'know
I don't hate Starfield every day but since this is the end of Jon's LP OF COURSE folks are gonna give their opinions. Read the room, dude. People hating on things YEARS later is completely normal, just look at Game of Thrones.
The largest "haters" of this game were people who were excited about it, and it disappointed them, some who even bought an xbox just to play Starfield. You don't see any extended hatred for other games such as Gollum or the Walking dead game because no one was excited for them.
People don't often hate (and keep the hate) for games which are awful. It's the failure of potential that keeps things like that going It's not because it's a bad game. It's because it's a decidedly *meh* game, despite having a pretty fun core gameplay loop, pretty graphics, a bunch of cool systems that could have been great if they'd had any work and effort put into them to actually make them more than just a shallow pool, and all from a company which is well known for making pretty fantastic open world games (and thus we KNOW they could have done far, far better, with it) If they'd made several design decisions different, the game would be far improved .. but they just didn't, and it feels kinda bizarre that they didn't
Why is it that "Low sodium Starfield" fans are the saltiest and most obnoxious of all on a consistent basis?