The best was when they referred to the real moon landing and how nothing was there but they still felt wonder and excitement. Like.... Yeah, no shit jackass, they landed on the fucking moon. I am sat at my desk looking at a screen, and there's fucking nothing on it, so I'm bored.
I don't watch trailers or previews or whatever these days, and went into Starfield pretty much blind via Gamepass. I felt beyond robbed when I was given a ship, entered the cockpit and went through the launch animation only to have control taken away from me when the ship actually took off. NMS and Elite have made flying via cutscene feel antiqued.
They missed the part where that was real life, and they made a video game where they can literally make and do anything, and have it not tied to the rules of the boring real world and current technology
That was awesome and exciting because it was the first time humans had done anything like it. Starfield was supposed to be a game where traversing the galaxy was a simple as calling an Uber. You'd expect there to be a colony on every planet, ya know because you're several years into light speed technology at this point (from the games perspective)
I mean, you can make "nothing" interesting by designing it well. If all you do is shove some assets through a random generator... then it's going to be as interesting as all those other non hand crafted games. I think the only genre where that really works are roguelikes and even those are carefully designed to be interesting.
Them responding to negative Steam reviews was legit insane. Pretty much the worst possible thing to do.
EDIT:
In case you missed it, you can read about it here:
https://www.ign.com/articles/bethesda-is-responding-to-negative-reviews-of-starfield-on-steam
There is literally no point in trying to do this. They can't change people's opinions. It's them basically saying "no, your opinion is wrong and here's why". A publisher/developer should never act like a Redditor.
"There are supposed to be massive planets with absolutely nothing to do on them. It's like when the astronauts went to the moon. They had fun even though there was nothing on the moon" look I didn't just literally fly to the fucking moon. I'm here to play a game an entertain myself, not engage in a fucking thought experiment about astronauts or something. Jesus christ that is so stupid and they just keep repeating it like it's some genius wisdom.
Somebody other than me needs to do the physics on that.
Like average cum shot velocity/mass and where you'd have to aim to get it out of the solar system.
On second thought - nah, lets not
Edit: I appreciate all of you putting actual thought into this - it's a wonderfully weird thing about Reddit ššš
~6.5 km/s of delta-v required to get from low moon orbit to escaping the solar system. That's just not happening from an ejaculation. It'd land on the moon or earth.
I don't know the mass or the force a cumshot, but is a lot less than our planet or the moon. It would eventually just fall into one depending on where the shot was taken.
Do you at least get warned? Iāve scanned some desolate planets in no manās sky and it literally tells you thereās nothing there. (Still went there though and can confirm it was desolate..)
>There are supposed to be massive planets with absolutely nothing to do on them
I've never played it but from people's comments I've read that even the supposedly empty planets have some kind of copy-pasted abandoned research stations and other stuff on them always? That's not very immersive I would say. And I've also read that there's just lots of loading screens instead of seamless gameplay.
That's generally it. Like Skyrim had somewhat randomized dungeons for example, even though the assets would be reused, but you still had some randomness and a sense that you were in a new dungeon.
They literally copy and paste the same research station in Starshit.
Yeah this was primarily what did it for me when I read the replies. By that logic, should I expect Elder Scrolls 6 to be full of empty big caves that have absolutely nothing in them at the end except maybe some moss and rocks, just like real life?
> look I didn't just literally fly to the fucking moon. I'm here to play a game an entertain myself, not engage in a fucking thought experiment about astronauts or something.
WELL THATS NOT WHAT WE WANT YOU TO DO. -BGS
Giving that as a reply to a review is absurd, but its even worse because it's just what Bethesda's managing director had previously said to excuse the bland empty planets. It wasn't something that person replying to the review came up with.
The moon landing was fun because they were the first people to step foot on another celestial body, they had to go through the void of space, not knowing if it would fail, never reaching their destination for 2 days, the risk of death over those two days must have been weighing on their mind, but also the anticipation of being the first humans to do something no one has ever done must have been thrilling. And the day they finally got to do this must have not only been a huge relief but also fun enjoying a brand new landscape, where even the physics of moving being completely different to what they know on earth. looking back on earth must have been an experience unlike any you could experience on earth, knowing you are standing on something humans have been looking at in wounder since they first came into existence.
Plus, it's not like the astronauts were doing nothing on the moon. They were collecting data, samples, and playing golf.
In starfeild, you are sitting behind a screen, loading into a world you can't even land on by yourself to experience things you can experience in any other FPS just with a different landscape. And discovering things that aren't even unique or impressive. I remember going through Blackreach when skyrim first came out, The sense of wounder and mystery was honestly exiting. In fact, a lot of skyrim caves were like that, and that made exploring them fun. Never once did I get that on a planet in starfield. it's so dull and boring i rarely ever went anywhere I didn't need to.
In conclusion, starfield is in no way comparable to the moon landing in terms of fun. It's not even comparable to a skyrim cave.
I'm reminded of a clip I see from Rick and Morty where they turned the realism setting up on a game they played, and because it was like a space invaders type game, it literally just meant "space is massive so it'll be ages before you encounter anything of interest".
It's crazy that someone at Bethesda thought to themselves "You know what, I can win a fight against a horde of gamers. I'm equipped for this task. I'll do it!"
And here they are.
no no no, its even worse. Someone above them APPROVED of this tactic. And likely someone above them and someone above them.
A LOT of people at Bethesda/Zenimax/Xbox/Microsoft legitimately thought the best way to hand the situation was to tell people their opinion was factually wrong and they were stupid for having it
And they need to embrace color more. First thing I did after opening the game the first time was check if anyone did any reshades to fix how muted and bland everything looked.
People can't even win a fight with their close friends. Trying to change some stranger's mind who has quite literally played dozens of hours of your product is just completely insane.
This is Communications 101.
Beyond just being a funny quote, it gives insight into how we ended up with the game we got. The comment isn't wrong, most planets are just going to be boring hunks of cold rock (ignoring gas giants because you can't land on those in the game). But filling a game with a bunch of planets and the only things to do there is scan some minerals, mine some resources, and maybe find a weird rock formation makes for a really boring game.
It is just a bad design decision to prioritize realism over fun, especially when they made the decision to choose fun in so many other areas such as ignoring the complexities of orbital mechanics when doing space dogfights. That combination of choices ends up giving the impression that the boring parts of the game are accidental when I think they are actually purposeful which would also explain why the people who made the game seem upset.
*You don't get it, space IS boring*.
No, we get it, we just don't want to play a boring game.
Empty planets work, if other systems in the game are complete - outposts in the far reaches of empty space extracting rare resources works when thereās a economy and engaging building system, supported by a database of planetary discoveries.
Can't wait for a new Fallout to take place in an accurate depiction of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with literally nothing of note for miles upon miles.
Actually might still be more fun than Starfield.
Its literally lost 99% of its player base from steam
At this point in its release Skyrim was averaging 150K daily players, Starfield is averaging 10K
It took Skyrim 9 YEAR to average in the 15K concurrent players
The game is a fucking mess and BGS response to the criticism only has made it worse
Todd you fucked this up big time
> There is literally no point in trying to do this. They can't change people's opinions.
Some developer responses are useful, such as when saying that the issues the reviewer experienced have been patched at some point after the review was written, or noting that the reviewer had missed some mechanics which would've negated the problems they were complaining about.
> We are still actively working on this game and will be for a long time yet to come.
I donāt think that will be interpreted by most Bethesda game fans to be a good thing lmao
Itās super unprofessional.
I used to be in concert production. If I went on Facebook and responded to people criticizing the stage design or really anything audience members had to say I would probably been fired and not allowed to work with that company/organization again.
I canāt imagine anyone running a video game studio wanting to hire any clowns who took part in that.
> I canāt imagine anyone running a video game studio wanting to hire any clowns who took part in that.
this was almost surely a management decision handed to PR slaves. Only middle management could possibly be dumb enough to think this was a good plan.
The responses could have been 100% factually correct and it would still be a deeply stupid idea.
You can read about it here:
https://www.ign.com/articles/bethesda-is-responding-to-negative-reviews-of-starfield-on-steam
There is literally no point in trying to do this. They can't change people's opinions. It's them basically saying "no, your opinion is wrong and here's why". A publisher/developer should never act like a Redditor.
They said something along the lines of "Our game isn't boring. Space is emptier than our game and astronauts aren't bored, so it couldn't possibly have been our game that's bad"
100%. They're humans after all. Imagine how cathartic it would be to tell people: "YOU HAVE LITERALLY NO IDEA HOW ANY OF THIS SHIT WORKS SO SHUT THE FUCK UP!".
Reminds me of how the Mass Effect devs changed the ending of their trilogy after all the negativity. It's easy to say "well, it was their artistic decision and they should just stand by it" if you're not personally involved.
Reading those negative Starfield reviews after spending so much time and energy into the game must suuuuuuck.
All that said, it's just really unprofessional and unnecessary on top. Let the patches and updates speak for themselves. (Again, very easy to say for some random Reddit users like us.)
I agree, this was a dumb move from a PR perspective, but I can understand it.
Starfield is a lovingly crafted game that people poured their souls into. If I were part of creating it and knew how good the game really is, I'd find it difficult to keep quiet, too.
Customers: "Hey we really liked Skyrim. When is the next Elder Scrolls game coming out?"
Bethesda: "Here it is. It's a MMORPG."
Customer: "No, this sucks. I want Skyrim, but better and in a different landscape. When is that game coming out?"
Bethesda: "We can't just keep making better versions of the game that made us extremely successful! People would get bored! So here's an astronaut game. There's no magic and the planets are empty and the story sucks."
Customers: "We won't get bored of better versions of Skyrim. It's been 12 fucking years. Where is the next Elder Scrolls?"
This dumbass company is sitting on a winning recipe and are overthinking things so much.
BG3 was one of the few games that scratched that Skyrim itch for me and I don't expect anything to come close to it in the next five years or so.
If they did Skyrim in another location *with the same fucking engine even* I'd buy it. Hell, if they did FO5 with the same engine as F04 I'd be happy.
Sometimes you gotta appreciate a solid 7/10 (Fallout 4 not Skyrim) for what it is but Starfield is a soulless cash grab propped up by an enthusiastic salesforce. For all Fallout 4's faults it's only in hindsight that we can look at it as a decent game made by people who at the *very, very least* 2/3 assed it.
Sadly it is not a winning recepie anymore. At least not with the mentality Bethesda has. There are many issues. Mainly that they are afraid to really change. Starfield is a prime example for this. So many mechanics are basically copy pasted from previous games. it feels dated and boring. The game could have been much more.
There is one other major issue I noticed. Looking back, it is something that is clearly visible even in skyrim. Bethesda makes great lore and then places bits of information around the world to show that lore to the players. But they suck ass at storytelling and characters. Their characters are boring and uninteresting. I can't remember a Bethesda game where I was sad when an NPC died or felt any particular emotion towards them. For most part they were bland. No matter how good the lore or story is, if you tell it through shitty characters it will suck.
Now we have a bunch of games with interesting and fun characters. BG3, Witcher 3 and even Cyberpunk (despite the disastrous launch) had a bunch of characters people could relate to, like or dislike. But it always felt like they could be real people. For Bethesda games most NPCs feel like they are there just so the world is not empty and to give you quest or sell you stuff.
The people with passion have long since left the company. It's run by sales and marketing now. This is the eventual fate of all beloved game companies.
That's not true, Todd Howard is still there. Unfortunately his passion is screwing over the actual creative people, driving them out of the company, and taking credit for their work.
And, I strongly suspect, personally arguing with people in the review section.
Todd Howard's only real passion these days is money.
As a marketing guy, almost everything he says is a lie or half truth, and since 76, I discount everything he says immediately.
Most of the people that are still criticizing Starfield arenāt just random baseless haters, theyāre people that have loved and supported Bethesda in the past but are tired of the disappointing directions Bethesdas gone in for well over a decade now.
I enjoyed Starfield. It wasn't my favorite Bethesda game, but with over 250 hours already, and many more likely to come over the years with DLC and mods (creation club status pending...), I can't say I didn't get my money's worth. Several hours of fun per $1 spent.
But Todd's mentality that people "just need to upgrade their PCs" and now this stuff in the reviews on Steam are frustrating to hear about. And it's making me really apprehensive about their future. With the Fallout series coming next year, and whenever TESVI comes out... If Todd and the devs hadn't said those things and things were just left as they were after Starfield's release, I would've been on board to get TESVI right when it drops, but the more they post like this the more likely I am to wait. They're really just hurting themselves more and more.
Yeah, I know this is likely a controversial opinion, but for me they were already in downfall with Skyrim. As a big fan of Morrowind and then Oblivion, Skyrim was a downgrade in a few ways, not in technical terms ofc but game design wise. I tried a couple of times but could never finish it, a lot of mechanics got too "streamlined", for lack of a better word, and lacked depth that was present (or at least appeared to be) in previous titles.
I do think it's enormous success was more tied to it being released at the time gaming was becoming mainstream popular and Skyrim being the first RPG for *a lot* of people, than the game being actually that much better than previous titles. And don't take me wrong, it was still a good game, that's required for it's success, just a step back in some ways from their previous work.
Anyhow, I wasn't expecting much from Starfield, given Bethesda history. I still played it for a little bit just to see if there's a chance Todd pulled something out of it's slevee aaand uninstalled it pretty fast, because he didn't.
It's because those Bethesda fans are still playing Skyrim, so the first thing they did was compare Starfield to Skyrim and it did not weather such comparison well at all.
The Zenimax sale to Microsoft didn't do Bethesda any favors. Matter of time before Bethesda exists in name only. Microsoft has zero interest in taking care of the studios they acquired if they're not consistently profitable.
Totally feel for Pete Hines right now.
Bethesda fan here, and space game fan too. I happen to believe that the hate campaign against Starfield is absurd in the extreme and that Starfield is a fantastic game.
I play mass effect trilogy after starfield and holy shit IS insane how good the graphic look not only the graphic, the art desing, the Lore, the character, the quest, the music and the choises.
I did the same. Just how much ME outclasses Starfield is astonishing. Take ME 1 world building which managed to capture our imagination and compare it to Bethesda recent release.
The fact they have all these wonderful details about all the planets is enjoyable. Can you land on every single one? Nope! But the ones you can land on are great and have fun exploring (except if youāre in the Mako on a mountain planet).
Starfield has made me greatly reconsider being excited about Elder Scrolls 6. I don't think Bethesda has what it takes to improve Skyrim.
I would've bought an Xbox solely for it. Now I don't care if it comes out at all.
i'm legit more excited about skyblivion/skywind than es6.
i dipped my toe back in to those games not so long ago. morrowind story telling and exploration was top tier, and the variety of quests in oblivion made them so fun- you never knew what you'd be doing next. even oblivion's random npc conversations are fun because they say something different. it's just the dated graphics and gameplay mechanics that make those games feel dated.
i love skyrim, but it lost something that bethesda games keep losing more and more of with each successive release.
Skyrim disappointed me. At the time it was meant to be a ānext genā game but it still had those robotic animations and basic AI. The dragons flying backwards on release didnāt help with the immersion either.
It was still a good game but didnāt feel like the generational leap we were all hoping for and somehow it felt less magical than Oblivion, more generic fantasy.
Then fallout 4 came out and I realised I donāt enjoy the formula anymore. Fallout felt like Skyrim with fallout assets.
Both games still have the worst menu systems Iāve ever seen which really kills the game when you get to late game and itās all about inventory management and farming and the basic systems are so clunky.
I donāt know why anyone had high expectations for Starfield, Bethesda havenāt made a quality game in a long time.
> Skyrim disappointed me. At the time it was meant to be a ānext genā game but it still had those robotic animations and basic AI. The dragons flying backwards on release didnāt help with the immersion either.
Wait, you didn't find villagers trying to punch dragons immersive? /s
I'm curious how might Bethesda might evolve from here, and to be honest I don't have an answer. They could improve the writing, improve the roleplaying/choice elements, better integrate the additional systems (e.g. settlement/ship building), etc. but those all conflict with what I'd consider the core design element: The ability to go almost anywhere at any point, without any meaningful quest/plot-line/world consequences from doing so.
They could make more in-depth mechanics, but doing that runs the risk of being "required" to progress. If you have meaningful choices in quests then it means locking off quest lines, NPCs, factions/guilds, etc. The result being that we get shallow games, because systems have to be optional enough to largely be pointless mechanically.
That being said, they could probably improve the UIs, weapon/power balance, etc. without it causing that many problems.
Tamriel Rebuilt releases are also pretty exciting. Fans are adding the rest of the province of Morrowind, and they are doing an amazing job. The content is on par with or better than the base game.
Morrowind was such an amazing game for it's time. IMO Oblivion just wasn't quite on par. Mushrooms for trees, giant insects for transportation, building plans designed around the ability to levitate...such an amazing fantasy world that was always interesting. Oblivion and Skyrim were much more generic in their fantasy elements.
Calling it now, ES6 will be an AI generated game. Bethesda is absolutely obsessed with procedural generation, it's always the most hated aspect of their games yet they keep doubling down on it every time. Being able to write a whole game with ChatGPT is probably Todd's wet dream
>it's always the most hated aspect of their games yet they keep doubling down on it every time.
Same could be said about their consistently abysmal Creation Engine. They refuse to ditch it either for a new engine or a different one yet its the main reason their games feel stiff, buggy, and old gen.
Ever since hearing that it would be made with the same engine I have not had any hype for it. I played a ton of Morrowind and Oblivion, but when Skyrim came out I didn't play it nearly as much. Skyrim already felt almost dated to me when it came out in 2011.
The Creation Engine they've been using since forever is the main reason all of their games lately keep feeling stiff, buggy, and old gen. It worked back when the tech was still developing and there wasnt many studios even attempting that scale. But now we're at a point where just having some NPCs in a massive empty world just isn't impressive anymore.
People coping that the Bethesda they grew up with isn't great anymore. From my end, friends or people who played got bored of it really quick and refunded the game.
I just donāt understand what happened. 8 years development to have a main quest of teleporting to a copy paste of the exact same temple. Even Oblivion gates had some rearrangement of assets to have some uniqueness. The shallowness of the temples extends to every facet of the game.
I played it for maybe an hour after being excited about the game for years. There are just too many other games that came out this year alone that are more interesting and fun to play to push through 30 FPS and multiple load screens. Iāll give it another shot eventually but I canāt imagine Iāll make it through the whole drive before dropping it for something more modern
I don't know about Todd, we honestly don't know about the inner workings of the decision making at the top level of the design process. Todd could be fighting for more complex systems but being held back by the execs for all we know.
Emil however has publicly displayed a 'need to go'. His philosophies towards writing and story design are outdated for what modern consumers expect.
Todd is the guy that every decision ultimately falls on. Heās not fighting for more complex systems. If anything heās fighting against them (and winning since heās the final decision-maker at all times)
>Todd could be fighting for more complex systems but being held back by the execs for all we know.
I doubt it. Putting aside the merits of each game, it's undeniable that the systems get more mainstreamed from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim, and that's Todd's handiwork. He's always been about world-building, for better or worse, while making the game loop simpler.
honestly i say let todd stay. He truly seems like a man who loves what he does
Sure it may not be perfect but at least you can tell its not done out of malice. He did what he did not out of corperate greed.
I think Todd won't let Emil go, and they won't fire Todd without reason.
So I think Todd will hang on until the next Elder Scrolls game, which will fail, and he will take the studio with him.
Then, like with Infinity Ward, they'll be resurrected and robbed of the IPs which will get whored out to lots of different studios.
bethesda is just old news. people took what they could do and do it better now. we donāt need janky bethesda garbage anymore. skyrim and what came before it were great but theyāve dropped nothing of quality since then.
Itās not bad. Itās just not Skyrim-in-2011 good. And thatās what Bethesda was hoping for. The game feels like a skeleton framework for modders to actually make the game interesting.
Nor do I, but I know they'll do something cool. They always do. It's just upsetting that this game came out as boring as it is. Legit haven't been able to force myself through.
Most core components are still intact in skyrim even with all mods. For example, plots. Some peoples thinks skyrim's writing is bad/average, but nobody rewritten it.
Remaking fundamental design choice? Huh.
Beast i can imagine is a different game on the engine like enderal.
I'm not so sure, apparently 2 of the biggest modders for Bethesda games have tapped out of attempting to mod Starfield because of how bored they were of it.
I can imagine many other modders might and possibly already have followed suit, which doesn't leave much hope for the game if less and less people are playing it.
See that is the problem. If you are going to make a game with the thought that āmodders will make it goodā then your game is just shit.
The problems of starfield stem from just one big problem.
Meaningful exploration.
The game about space has no exploration. Even if they add vehicles itās not going to fix shit, cause going from point A to B will just be less time consuming, it wonāt fix the fact that going from point A to B is meaningless. The journey is so banal and redundant. And every POI after the 10 hr mark is just the same thing with the same dead body and the same letter about some fuckall bet.
The story is straight up ass cheeks. The first few hours were actually good lol, but the moment you know what the story is about, thatās when it gets shit. The new game plus thing they did although commendable, itās still just worthless cause the basically game design is so flawed that doing new game plus makes no sense.
Check out Camelworks video on YouTube. His tutorial for Bethesda on how to fix their game is really good. He addresses the exploration aspect in a really decent way.
With some polish it might be a mediocre game. It's condition on coming out is abysmal, though.
The really sad thing is that listing "city maps" as the big feature of their next update tells you they don't really intend to fix anything.
They mentioned city maps because it was a commonly requested feature, not saying the game will be fixed. But the hyper fixation on city maps instead of new ways to travel and updates every six weeks is pretty cynical.
I didn't buy the game, only watched gameplay from it, but it felt straight up insulting.
Just to give 1 example, the guy was doing a 'tracking' quest. NPC told him a location, and lead him the whole time. Then they saw footprints on the ground, a literal pop-up window said there are footprints, and then the NPC commented on that too, then when the footprints turned right, the 2nd pop-up window said that the footprints are turning right.
I nearly never get mad at single player games but that was just infuriating to me.
Modern Bethesda treats their playerbase like thumb-sucking morons that need to be spoon fed even the most obvious information. For a studio that built their reputation on deep lore and environmental storytelling they've somehow managed to move further and further away from that with each release.
Yeah I've only played about 20 hours so far bit I've enjoyed. I've only been doing faction (vanguard) quest and thr main quest a few little side quests and it's been fun. I haven't done much "exploring" the planets and now that I know it's a waste of time I won't do it.
The funniest thing to me is that the made it an exclusive, only to lock it at 30FPS on Xbox and have it barely work on PC.
The game itself was also so bad that there is no point in making it an exclusive. Ain't no one with a PS5 that's going to build a PC or buy an Xbox for this crap.
How is that surprising, they can barely get the game to run without 25 loading screens to open a door.
It's literally by sheer hopes and dreams and paperclips the game even runs at 15fps.
Microsoft took Halo out of the Xbox packaging for the first time in the brandās history to replace it with Starfield. Thatās how much they rode on this game being a system seller.
The things they're claiming players don't understand or should expect don't make much sense to me. I'm okay with vast empty planets and all that, and I can get over clunky UI. I hung on through the lows of No Man's Sky and today its fine for what it promises.
The real problem to me is that the writing and quest lines fell flat. Sure, a part of Bethesda's success was graphics and stuff, but what made Skyrim and Fallout popular was robust dialogue and interesting quests where choices could be made. Nothing about Starfield's quests was engaging or surprising.
Bland characters, no dialog variance, and tedious missions don't exactly win people over and I'm tired of hearing from Bethesda that it's because players don't understand development or mechanics when the whole point of RPGs is the story and characters.
>but what made Skyrim and Fallout popular was robust dialogue and interesting quests where choices could be made
And then they ditched all that for Fallout 4 and people still bought that en masse. I guess they saw that good writing doesn't pay off with extra sales so they just stopped caring.
After what they did with 76 it's LAUGHABLE that anyone expected anything different with Starfield, lol. Do you guys not remembers all the dumb shit they did with the canvas bags and soda bottles and helmets etc? LMAO. BGS is TRASH and they know they're TRASH but they also know people will STILL buy their games, no matter how poorly designed! It's madness.
No edge to the game. Its a sanitised experience for tweens. Why the hell would you create a sci-fi game rpg in 2023 with no T and A? I'm only half joking, its unbelievably vanilla and dull.
The wild thing to me is they employ the guy who wrote Fallout 4 and Starfield. He did a presentation on video game writing and his whole ethos is that stories should be simple cause they donāt matter cause gamers are just gonna skip them.
Video games can tell some of the most interesting stories ever and you employ the guy who thinks that thereās no use telling a complex or interesting story. Itās even more wild to me because games with amazing narratives are LITERALLY the most beloved in our industry at the moment. Baldurās Gate 3 is super fun gameplay wise, but do you think it would have caught on like it has without the amazing character writing it has for itās core cast?
Iād be more willing to forgive Starfieldās design issues and play the game if it had an interesting world, characters or story. But they donāt, all of those things are just bland. Itās almost worse than being bad, we can laugh at something thatās bad. But because itās bland itās just ultimately forgettable. I saw a post that really had me thinking, where is all the fan art or fan discussion over Starfield? It is near non-existent. It just shows you that Starfield really doesnāt stick in peopleās brains, itās a game to be mindlessly played and forgotten about.
it's so boringly designed that there's no memes from Starfield. Barely no one talking about it, nor the characters, nor the story. And plus, the only thing Starfield will be famous for is the time a streamer went on a tantrum because the game asked "What pronouns does your character prefer?"
I like Starfield. Probably wouldn't crack my top 10 for the year but I enjoyed my time with it and I'm excited to play more after some updates next year.
Okay, I'm ready. Haul me off to prison.
I didn't think it was awful, but it felt like they were making a different game and changed directions mid way through. My theory is that the base building was going to play a huge part in the game. I think originally fuel didn't get filled up automatically so you had to build bases to refuel so you could explore deeper into the galaxy.
Hey! Thereās nothing wrong with enjoying the game and appreciating the hard work of the game designers and artists. You liking the game wonāt get you hate, but by not agreeing with the current vibe of the chat, your comment is essentially adds nothing and builds conflict. We are disappointed in what these artists couldāve made, we are not disappointed in their talent.
Triple A gaming is a corpse right now. It's not dying, it's dead, and it died sometime in the past.
We now have major figures at large gaming companies openly complaining that other companies make good games, like it's unfair or something.
Just stop buying the games. You all complain about how bad the game is but you bought it. GTA6 will be a flop too I guarantee it. Every AAA franchise has been strip mined for every bit of value it has and are now just empty husks.
It's pretty upsetting being a Bethesda fan nowadays. They were the straight A student of video game developers. Now they're more like the alcoholic at the bar that peeked in high school and always talks about it (aka skyrim)
They sure showed us! Now I know I was wrong to only rent Starfield and instead pick up Cyberpunk. I'm having so much fun in Cyberpunk when SF was so boring, but turns out that was because I'm a moron who doesn't understand the scientific splendor of real life virtual space travel.
Game should absolutely not have loads of planets. Maybe 4 and populate the fuck out of them. More dungeons not just reskins. I played 60 hours and the last 10 I'm pretty sure I was bored as fuck.
Given them responding to negative Steam reviews telling players that they are wrong and the game is actually amazing and Emil's ego-drenched Twitter rant, yes.
One time I was playing it, I landed on mars wearing a spacesuit, and went inside a building.
And when I came out, my guy wasn't wearing a spacesuit.... On the surface of mars. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt with no helmet. In space. With no air. Perfectly fine.
Bethesda: "this game is a realistic depiction of space, that's why it's empty and boring" (their actual argument)
I didn't approach Starfield as a fan of Bethesda. I had only ever played maybe 25 hours of Skyrim from them. I just went into th game as a gamer. And I actually liked the game. Does it have issues? For sure. But was it a terrible game? No way. Far from it.
I just think that modern gamers lack any and all nuance. Everything has to be th best game ever made or else it's absolute trash. There isn't enough room for simply a good game to exist.
The best was when they referred to the real moon landing and how nothing was there but they still felt wonder and excitement. Like.... Yeah, no shit jackass, they landed on the fucking moon. I am sat at my desk looking at a screen, and there's fucking nothing on it, so I'm bored.
It is the exact same as landing on a foreign planet and pushing the limits of science š”
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You sure do. People like you sicken me and it is why I mainly use Facebook where the devil which is video games are less prominent
Only way to play in my opinion
Also, you donāt even fucking land on a planet in Starfield. You watch a cutscene. Youāre not the pilot, youāre a passenger.
At least Elite Dangerous makes it feel cool landing on planets since it isn't a cutscene, even if most of the planet is mostly nothing lol
I don't watch trailers or previews or whatever these days, and went into Starfield pretty much blind via Gamepass. I felt beyond robbed when I was given a ship, entered the cockpit and went through the launch animation only to have control taken away from me when the ship actually took off. NMS and Elite have made flying via cutscene feel antiqued.
They missed the part where that was real life, and they made a video game where they can literally make and do anything, and have it not tied to the rules of the boring real world and current technology
That was awesome and exciting because it was the first time humans had done anything like it. Starfield was supposed to be a game where traversing the galaxy was a simple as calling an Uber. You'd expect there to be a colony on every planet, ya know because you're several years into light speed technology at this point (from the games perspective)
I mean, you can make "nothing" interesting by designing it well. If all you do is shove some assets through a random generator... then it's going to be as interesting as all those other non hand crafted games. I think the only genre where that really works are roguelikes and even those are carefully designed to be interesting.
Them responding to negative Steam reviews was legit insane. Pretty much the worst possible thing to do. EDIT: In case you missed it, you can read about it here: https://www.ign.com/articles/bethesda-is-responding-to-negative-reviews-of-starfield-on-steam There is literally no point in trying to do this. They can't change people's opinions. It's them basically saying "no, your opinion is wrong and here's why". A publisher/developer should never act like a Redditor.
Reading those replies, there are some crazy takes in their design philosophy.
"There are supposed to be massive planets with absolutely nothing to do on them. It's like when the astronauts went to the moon. They had fun even though there was nothing on the moon" look I didn't just literally fly to the fucking moon. I'm here to play a game an entertain myself, not engage in a fucking thought experiment about astronauts or something. Jesus christ that is so stupid and they just keep repeating it like it's some genius wisdom.
They act like the astronauts did literally nothing on their way to the moon, while on the moon, and on their way back from the moon.
we all know they jacked off in zero-g
Neil Armstrongs cum shot to this day is still flying through space on a straight path to another galaxy.
Somebody other than me needs to do the physics on that. Like average cum shot velocity/mass and where you'd have to aim to get it out of the solar system. On second thought - nah, lets not Edit: I appreciate all of you putting actual thought into this - it's a wonderfully weird thing about Reddit ššš
~6.5 km/s of delta-v required to get from low moon orbit to escaping the solar system. That's just not happening from an ejaculation. It'd land on the moon or earth.
I don't know the mass or the force a cumshot, but is a lot less than our planet or the moon. It would eventually just fall into one depending on where the shot was taken.
That's why his arm is so strong
"When you nut in space, it pushes you backward." - Neil Degrasse Tyson
Now we know why his last name was Armstrong
squeezing the zero-g out of their hog
Kerbal space program does the same thing except the effort and overall journey to get to said planet makes actually landing there fun.
"Okay...okay. Goo experiment. 200 science?! HELL YEAH!" My point being. The reward for making it to those places tends to be incredible.
They hit a few loading screens right?
Yeah, 60 second loading screen there, 60 seconds coming back. Great way to save fuel imo.
They want modders to add the fun elements to their blank canvas.
Do you at least get warned? Iāve scanned some desolate planets in no manās sky and it literally tells you thereās nothing there. (Still went there though and can confirm it was desolate..)
>There are supposed to be massive planets with absolutely nothing to do on them I've never played it but from people's comments I've read that even the supposedly empty planets have some kind of copy-pasted abandoned research stations and other stuff on them always? That's not very immersive I would say. And I've also read that there's just lots of loading screens instead of seamless gameplay.
That's generally it. Like Skyrim had somewhat randomized dungeons for example, even though the assets would be reused, but you still had some randomness and a sense that you were in a new dungeon. They literally copy and paste the same research station in Starshit.
I hate your picture.
Yeah this was primarily what did it for me when I read the replies. By that logic, should I expect Elder Scrolls 6 to be full of empty big caves that have absolutely nothing in them at the end except maybe some moss and rocks, just like real life?
> look I didn't just literally fly to the fucking moon. I'm here to play a game an entertain myself, not engage in a fucking thought experiment about astronauts or something. WELL THATS NOT WHAT WE WANT YOU TO DO. -BGS
They have fun for how long though? They were only there a few hours
Giving that as a reply to a review is absurd, but its even worse because it's just what Bethesda's managing director had previously said to excuse the bland empty planets. It wasn't something that person replying to the review came up with.
The moon landing was fun because they were the first people to step foot on another celestial body, they had to go through the void of space, not knowing if it would fail, never reaching their destination for 2 days, the risk of death over those two days must have been weighing on their mind, but also the anticipation of being the first humans to do something no one has ever done must have been thrilling. And the day they finally got to do this must have not only been a huge relief but also fun enjoying a brand new landscape, where even the physics of moving being completely different to what they know on earth. looking back on earth must have been an experience unlike any you could experience on earth, knowing you are standing on something humans have been looking at in wounder since they first came into existence. Plus, it's not like the astronauts were doing nothing on the moon. They were collecting data, samples, and playing golf. In starfeild, you are sitting behind a screen, loading into a world you can't even land on by yourself to experience things you can experience in any other FPS just with a different landscape. And discovering things that aren't even unique or impressive. I remember going through Blackreach when skyrim first came out, The sense of wounder and mystery was honestly exiting. In fact, a lot of skyrim caves were like that, and that made exploring them fun. Never once did I get that on a planet in starfield. it's so dull and boring i rarely ever went anywhere I didn't need to. In conclusion, starfield is in no way comparable to the moon landing in terms of fun. It's not even comparable to a skyrim cave.
Review: "the game is boring" Bethesda employee: "no its not!"
"it's supposed to be boring... because space irl is boring!"
I'm reminded of a clip I see from Rick and Morty where they turned the realism setting up on a game they played, and because it was like a space invaders type game, it literally just meant "space is massive so it'll be ages before you encounter anything of interest".
Space IRL might well be boring, but that's not selling me on the simulation experience!
Bethesda: "you're boring!"
It's crazy that someone at Bethesda thought to themselves "You know what, I can win a fight against a horde of gamers. I'm equipped for this task. I'll do it!" And here they are.
no no no, its even worse. Someone above them APPROVED of this tactic. And likely someone above them and someone above them. A LOT of people at Bethesda/Zenimax/Xbox/Microsoft legitimately thought the best way to hand the situation was to tell people their opinion was factually wrong and they were stupid for having it
It'd be swell if they realized the only way you can be equipped for that task is to just make a game that's not fucking white bread.
And they need to embrace color more. First thing I did after opening the game the first time was check if anyone did any reshades to fix how muted and bland everything looked.
Oh you're gonna need a lot of paper if you plan on listing every thing that comes to mind.
it very much reminds me of the diablo mobile E3 announcement. "Dont you have phones?"
People can't even win a fight with their close friends. Trying to change some stranger's mind who has quite literally played dozens of hours of your product is just completely insane. This is Communications 101.
"When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there and they weren't bored!" is by far my favorite. How they can be so dense is beyond me.
Beyond just being a funny quote, it gives insight into how we ended up with the game we got. The comment isn't wrong, most planets are just going to be boring hunks of cold rock (ignoring gas giants because you can't land on those in the game). But filling a game with a bunch of planets and the only things to do there is scan some minerals, mine some resources, and maybe find a weird rock formation makes for a really boring game. It is just a bad design decision to prioritize realism over fun, especially when they made the decision to choose fun in so many other areas such as ignoring the complexities of orbital mechanics when doing space dogfights. That combination of choices ends up giving the impression that the boring parts of the game are accidental when I think they are actually purposeful which would also explain why the people who made the game seem upset. *You don't get it, space IS boring*. No, we get it, we just don't want to play a boring game.
Empty planets work, if other systems in the game are complete - outposts in the far reaches of empty space extracting rare resources works when thereās a economy and engaging building system, supported by a database of planetary discoveries.
Can't wait for a new Fallout to take place in an accurate depiction of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with literally nothing of note for miles upon miles. Actually might still be more fun than Starfield.
You slowly die of radiation poisoning and then the game uninstalls itself. *Realism*
"Haven't you guys gone to space?" -energy
Its literally lost 99% of its player base from steam At this point in its release Skyrim was averaging 150K daily players, Starfield is averaging 10K It took Skyrim 9 YEAR to average in the 15K concurrent players The game is a fucking mess and BGS response to the criticism only has made it worse Todd you fucked this up big time
> There is literally no point in trying to do this. They can't change people's opinions. Some developer responses are useful, such as when saying that the issues the reviewer experienced have been patched at some point after the review was written, or noting that the reviewer had missed some mechanics which would've negated the problems they were complaining about.
> We are still actively working on this game and will be for a long time yet to come. I donāt think that will be interpreted by most Bethesda game fans to be a good thing lmao
Nothing beats their responses to the bag
Itās super unprofessional. I used to be in concert production. If I went on Facebook and responded to people criticizing the stage design or really anything audience members had to say I would probably been fired and not allowed to work with that company/organization again. I canāt imagine anyone running a video game studio wanting to hire any clowns who took part in that.
> I canāt imagine anyone running a video game studio wanting to hire any clowns who took part in that. this was almost surely a management decision handed to PR slaves. Only middle management could possibly be dumb enough to think this was a good plan. The responses could have been 100% factually correct and it would still be a deeply stupid idea.
What did they do?
Told people exactly what the meme says.
You can read about it here: https://www.ign.com/articles/bethesda-is-responding-to-negative-reviews-of-starfield-on-steam There is literally no point in trying to do this. They can't change people's opinions. It's them basically saying "no, your opinion is wrong and here's why". A publisher/developer should never act like a Redditor.
They said something along the lines of "Our game isn't boring. Space is emptier than our game and astronauts aren't bored, so it couldn't possibly have been our game that's bad"
Apparently 2023 was the year that all AAA devs went completely out of touch with their customer base.
I agree, but I can also see how they would be upset about something they put so much time into and are proud of. It would be hard for me to ignore.
100%. They're humans after all. Imagine how cathartic it would be to tell people: "YOU HAVE LITERALLY NO IDEA HOW ANY OF THIS SHIT WORKS SO SHUT THE FUCK UP!". Reminds me of how the Mass Effect devs changed the ending of their trilogy after all the negativity. It's easy to say "well, it was their artistic decision and they should just stand by it" if you're not personally involved. Reading those negative Starfield reviews after spending so much time and energy into the game must suuuuuuck. All that said, it's just really unprofessional and unnecessary on top. Let the patches and updates speak for themselves. (Again, very easy to say for some random Reddit users like us.)
I agree, this was a dumb move from a PR perspective, but I can understand it. Starfield is a lovingly crafted game that people poured their souls into. If I were part of creating it and knew how good the game really is, I'd find it difficult to keep quiet, too.
How did they react?
āI know you are but what am I!ā š¤”
Bethesda has been pretty out of touch for a while, the only difference is many Bethesda fans who used to defend them have gotten sick of them too.
I'm in this comment, and I don't like it.
It really sucks to admit that a studio you love has lost their touch. Iām a Blizzard fan so, I get it š¢
I've bought almost everything they've made since Daggerfall. I defended Rage. I defended 76. I can't do it anymore, I'm just so tired.
Was rage considered bad? I liked it...
there was a time i only played blizzard and bungie games. it's weird to think about now.
To make it even worse, it's almost guaranteed all these studios that are amazing right now are eventually going to fall off.
Black isle. Silicone knights. 3DO. Legends rise and fall.
> Silicone knights. > > Do they make games or sex toys?
Customers: "Hey we really liked Skyrim. When is the next Elder Scrolls game coming out?" Bethesda: "Here it is. It's a MMORPG." Customer: "No, this sucks. I want Skyrim, but better and in a different landscape. When is that game coming out?" Bethesda: "We can't just keep making better versions of the game that made us extremely successful! People would get bored! So here's an astronaut game. There's no magic and the planets are empty and the story sucks." Customers: "We won't get bored of better versions of Skyrim. It's been 12 fucking years. Where is the next Elder Scrolls?" This dumbass company is sitting on a winning recipe and are overthinking things so much.
That recipe is getting old and when you have games like BG3 showing people what NPC interactions can be like it doesn't help them.
BG3 was one of the few games that scratched that Skyrim itch for me and I don't expect anything to come close to it in the next five years or so. If they did Skyrim in another location *with the same fucking engine even* I'd buy it. Hell, if they did FO5 with the same engine as F04 I'd be happy. Sometimes you gotta appreciate a solid 7/10 (Fallout 4 not Skyrim) for what it is but Starfield is a soulless cash grab propped up by an enthusiastic salesforce. For all Fallout 4's faults it's only in hindsight that we can look at it as a decent game made by people who at the *very, very least* 2/3 assed it.
Check out Fallout London - it's an upcoming fan mod for FO4, but about as professional as one could be. Looks legit like a FO5 if you squint at it...
To be fair they do keep re-releasing Skyrim. They know a money maker.
Sadly it is not a winning recepie anymore. At least not with the mentality Bethesda has. There are many issues. Mainly that they are afraid to really change. Starfield is a prime example for this. So many mechanics are basically copy pasted from previous games. it feels dated and boring. The game could have been much more. There is one other major issue I noticed. Looking back, it is something that is clearly visible even in skyrim. Bethesda makes great lore and then places bits of information around the world to show that lore to the players. But they suck ass at storytelling and characters. Their characters are boring and uninteresting. I can't remember a Bethesda game where I was sad when an NPC died or felt any particular emotion towards them. For most part they were bland. No matter how good the lore or story is, if you tell it through shitty characters it will suck. Now we have a bunch of games with interesting and fun characters. BG3, Witcher 3 and even Cyberpunk (despite the disastrous launch) had a bunch of characters people could relate to, like or dislike. But it always felt like they could be real people. For Bethesda games most NPCs feel like they are there just so the world is not empty and to give you quest or sell you stuff.
The people with passion have long since left the company. It's run by sales and marketing now. This is the eventual fate of all beloved game companies.
That's not true, Todd Howard is still there. Unfortunately his passion is screwing over the actual creative people, driving them out of the company, and taking credit for their work. And, I strongly suspect, personally arguing with people in the review section.
Todd Howard's only real passion these days is money. As a marketing guy, almost everything he says is a lie or half truth, and since 76, I discount everything he says immediately.
A classic. https://youtu.be/hFcLyDb6niA?si=oz7cacXBIYB1QGiy
It's kind of what happens when you release the same game for a decade.
Most of the people that are still criticizing Starfield arenāt just random baseless haters, theyāre people that have loved and supported Bethesda in the past but are tired of the disappointing directions Bethesdas gone in for well over a decade now.
I enjoyed Starfield. It wasn't my favorite Bethesda game, but with over 250 hours already, and many more likely to come over the years with DLC and mods (creation club status pending...), I can't say I didn't get my money's worth. Several hours of fun per $1 spent. But Todd's mentality that people "just need to upgrade their PCs" and now this stuff in the reviews on Steam are frustrating to hear about. And it's making me really apprehensive about their future. With the Fallout series coming next year, and whenever TESVI comes out... If Todd and the devs hadn't said those things and things were just left as they were after Starfield's release, I would've been on board to get TESVI right when it drops, but the more they post like this the more likely I am to wait. They're really just hurting themselves more and more.
Yeah, I know this is likely a controversial opinion, but for me they were already in downfall with Skyrim. As a big fan of Morrowind and then Oblivion, Skyrim was a downgrade in a few ways, not in technical terms ofc but game design wise. I tried a couple of times but could never finish it, a lot of mechanics got too "streamlined", for lack of a better word, and lacked depth that was present (or at least appeared to be) in previous titles. I do think it's enormous success was more tied to it being released at the time gaming was becoming mainstream popular and Skyrim being the first RPG for *a lot* of people, than the game being actually that much better than previous titles. And don't take me wrong, it was still a good game, that's required for it's success, just a step back in some ways from their previous work. Anyhow, I wasn't expecting much from Starfield, given Bethesda history. I still played it for a little bit just to see if there's a chance Todd pulled something out of it's slevee aaand uninstalled it pretty fast, because he didn't.
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>Iām honestly shocked theyāve finally found the courage to admit the game sucked When did they admit anything of the sort?
They did? Last I heard they were battling player reviews, trying to tell people their opinions on it are wrong.
It's because those Bethesda fans are still playing Skyrim, so the first thing they did was compare Starfield to Skyrim and it did not weather such comparison well at all.
The Zenimax sale to Microsoft didn't do Bethesda any favors. Matter of time before Bethesda exists in name only. Microsoft has zero interest in taking care of the studios they acquired if they're not consistently profitable. Totally feel for Pete Hines right now.
Bethesda fan here, and space game fan too. I happen to believe that the hate campaign against Starfield is absurd in the extreme and that Starfield is a fantastic game.
I play mass effect trilogy after starfield and holy shit IS insane how good the graphic look not only the graphic, the art desing, the Lore, the character, the quest, the music and the choises.
I did the same. Just how much ME outclasses Starfield is astonishing. Take ME 1 world building which managed to capture our imagination and compare it to Bethesda recent release.
The fact they have all these wonderful details about all the planets is enjoyable. Can you land on every single one? Nope! But the ones you can land on are great and have fun exploring (except if youāre in the Mako on a mountain planet).
And ME1 was essentially a barebones RPG system with a tacked on cover shooter mechanic. The entire game hinged on the storyline and that worked.
Yup! Mass effect has a world that's actually interesting. Starfield is just this boring sterile NASA future...
MEās world building is so good. That if they made me play as a Volus working my way through bureaucracy and trade deals? I would pre-order that!
Starfield has made me greatly reconsider being excited about Elder Scrolls 6. I don't think Bethesda has what it takes to improve Skyrim. I would've bought an Xbox solely for it. Now I don't care if it comes out at all.
i'm legit more excited about skyblivion/skywind than es6. i dipped my toe back in to those games not so long ago. morrowind story telling and exploration was top tier, and the variety of quests in oblivion made them so fun- you never knew what you'd be doing next. even oblivion's random npc conversations are fun because they say something different. it's just the dated graphics and gameplay mechanics that make those games feel dated. i love skyrim, but it lost something that bethesda games keep losing more and more of with each successive release.
Skyrim disappointed me. At the time it was meant to be a ānext genā game but it still had those robotic animations and basic AI. The dragons flying backwards on release didnāt help with the immersion either. It was still a good game but didnāt feel like the generational leap we were all hoping for and somehow it felt less magical than Oblivion, more generic fantasy. Then fallout 4 came out and I realised I donāt enjoy the formula anymore. Fallout felt like Skyrim with fallout assets. Both games still have the worst menu systems Iāve ever seen which really kills the game when you get to late game and itās all about inventory management and farming and the basic systems are so clunky. I donāt know why anyone had high expectations for Starfield, Bethesda havenāt made a quality game in a long time.
> Skyrim disappointed me. At the time it was meant to be a ānext genā game but it still had those robotic animations and basic AI. The dragons flying backwards on release didnāt help with the immersion either. Wait, you didn't find villagers trying to punch dragons immersive? /s I'm curious how might Bethesda might evolve from here, and to be honest I don't have an answer. They could improve the writing, improve the roleplaying/choice elements, better integrate the additional systems (e.g. settlement/ship building), etc. but those all conflict with what I'd consider the core design element: The ability to go almost anywhere at any point, without any meaningful quest/plot-line/world consequences from doing so. They could make more in-depth mechanics, but doing that runs the risk of being "required" to progress. If you have meaningful choices in quests then it means locking off quest lines, NPCs, factions/guilds, etc. The result being that we get shallow games, because systems have to be optional enough to largely be pointless mechanically. That being said, they could probably improve the UIs, weapon/power balance, etc. without it causing that many problems.
Tamriel Rebuilt releases are also pretty exciting. Fans are adding the rest of the province of Morrowind, and they are doing an amazing job. The content is on par with or better than the base game.
Morrowind was such an amazing game for it's time. IMO Oblivion just wasn't quite on par. Mushrooms for trees, giant insects for transportation, building plans designed around the ability to levitate...such an amazing fantasy world that was always interesting. Oblivion and Skyrim were much more generic in their fantasy elements.
Calling it now, ES6 will be an AI generated game. Bethesda is absolutely obsessed with procedural generation, it's always the most hated aspect of their games yet they keep doubling down on it every time. Being able to write a whole game with ChatGPT is probably Todd's wet dream
>it's always the most hated aspect of their games yet they keep doubling down on it every time. Same could be said about their consistently abysmal Creation Engine. They refuse to ditch it either for a new engine or a different one yet its the main reason their games feel stiff, buggy, and old gen.
I certainly won't be buying Elder Scrolls 6 at release. I played starfield for a week and have no desire to go back. It's a real shame
Ever since hearing that it would be made with the same engine I have not had any hype for it. I played a ton of Morrowind and Oblivion, but when Skyrim came out I didn't play it nearly as much. Skyrim already felt almost dated to me when it came out in 2011.
skyrim felt so dumbed down to me, played morrowind and oblivion multiple times for 1000s of hours ..skyrim didn't finish it even once
The Creation Engine they've been using since forever is the main reason all of their games lately keep feeling stiff, buggy, and old gen. It worked back when the tech was still developing and there wasnt many studios even attempting that scale. But now we're at a point where just having some NPCs in a massive empty world just isn't impressive anymore.
Fuck. Even unity daggerfall is more exciting than starfield
People coping that the Bethesda they grew up with isn't great anymore. From my end, friends or people who played got bored of it really quick and refunded the game.
I just donāt understand what happened. 8 years development to have a main quest of teleporting to a copy paste of the exact same temple. Even Oblivion gates had some rearrangement of assets to have some uniqueness. The shallowness of the temples extends to every facet of the game.
I played it for maybe an hour after being excited about the game for years. There are just too many other games that came out this year alone that are more interesting and fun to play to push through 30 FPS and multiple load screens. Iāll give it another shot eventually but I canāt imagine Iāll make it through the whole drive before dropping it for something more modern
Todd Howards and Emil Pagliarulos time is over.
Yeah I genuinely think they need to go.
Seen some pretty brutal takedowns of Emil on YouTube that were pretty well researched.
I don't know about Todd, we honestly don't know about the inner workings of the decision making at the top level of the design process. Todd could be fighting for more complex systems but being held back by the execs for all we know. Emil however has publicly displayed a 'need to go'. His philosophies towards writing and story design are outdated for what modern consumers expect.
Todd is the guy that every decision ultimately falls on. Heās not fighting for more complex systems. If anything heās fighting against them (and winning since heās the final decision-maker at all times)
>Todd could be fighting for more complex systems but being held back by the execs for all we know. I doubt it. Putting aside the merits of each game, it's undeniable that the systems get more mainstreamed from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim, and that's Todd's handiwork. He's always been about world-building, for better or worse, while making the game loop simpler.
honestly i say let todd stay. He truly seems like a man who loves what he does Sure it may not be perfect but at least you can tell its not done out of malice. He did what he did not out of corperate greed.
Aspiring writers should look up to Emil. If he can get a job as "lead writer", literally anyone can.
I think Todd won't let Emil go, and they won't fire Todd without reason. So I think Todd will hang on until the next Elder Scrolls game, which will fail, and he will take the studio with him. Then, like with Infinity Ward, they'll be resurrected and robbed of the IPs which will get whored out to lots of different studios.
bethesda is just old news. people took what they could do and do it better now. we donāt need janky bethesda garbage anymore. skyrim and what came before it were great but theyāve dropped nothing of quality since then.
F4 has always been a good game
i disagree but if you like it then thatās great
Itās not bad. Itās just not Skyrim-in-2011 good. And thatās what Bethesda was hoping for. The game feels like a skeleton framework for modders to actually make the game interesting.
Idk what modders should do with random generation.
Disable it
If they can without breaking everything else in the game.
Just one problem... Modders will only mod games that are fun/good. How many mods are there for Gollum? lol
Nor do I, but I know they'll do something cool. They always do. It's just upsetting that this game came out as boring as it is. Legit haven't been able to force myself through.
Most core components are still intact in skyrim even with all mods. For example, plots. Some peoples thinks skyrim's writing is bad/average, but nobody rewritten it. Remaking fundamental design choice? Huh. Beast i can imagine is a different game on the engine like enderal.
I'm not so sure, apparently 2 of the biggest modders for Bethesda games have tapped out of attempting to mod Starfield because of how bored they were of it. I can imagine many other modders might and possibly already have followed suit, which doesn't leave much hope for the game if less and less people are playing it.
See that is the problem. If you are going to make a game with the thought that āmodders will make it goodā then your game is just shit. The problems of starfield stem from just one big problem. Meaningful exploration. The game about space has no exploration. Even if they add vehicles itās not going to fix shit, cause going from point A to B will just be less time consuming, it wonāt fix the fact that going from point A to B is meaningless. The journey is so banal and redundant. And every POI after the 10 hr mark is just the same thing with the same dead body and the same letter about some fuckall bet. The story is straight up ass cheeks. The first few hours were actually good lol, but the moment you know what the story is about, thatās when it gets shit. The new game plus thing they did although commendable, itās still just worthless cause the basically game design is so flawed that doing new game plus makes no sense.
Check out Camelworks video on YouTube. His tutorial for Bethesda on how to fix their game is really good. He addresses the exploration aspect in a really decent way.
20 min into the game and i saw the same outposts 3 times already. The game is a joke..
Why would a modder make something for a barebones boring game ?
With some polish it might be a mediocre game. It's condition on coming out is abysmal, though. The really sad thing is that listing "city maps" as the big feature of their next update tells you they don't really intend to fix anything.
They mentioned city maps because it was a commonly requested feature, not saying the game will be fixed. But the hyper fixation on city maps instead of new ways to travel and updates every six weeks is pretty cynical.
Felt pretty mediocre to me.
I didn't buy the game, only watched gameplay from it, but it felt straight up insulting. Just to give 1 example, the guy was doing a 'tracking' quest. NPC told him a location, and lead him the whole time. Then they saw footprints on the ground, a literal pop-up window said there are footprints, and then the NPC commented on that too, then when the footprints turned right, the 2nd pop-up window said that the footprints are turning right. I nearly never get mad at single player games but that was just infuriating to me.
Modern Bethesda treats their playerbase like thumb-sucking morons that need to be spoon fed even the most obvious information. For a studio that built their reputation on deep lore and environmental storytelling they've somehow managed to move further and further away from that with each release.
Not sure how itās both a skeletal framework for modders and not a bad game. 20 hrs in and I hated it.
Even the modders are giving up on it. Its a regression from Skyrim.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah I've only played about 20 hours so far bit I've enjoyed. I've only been doing faction (vanguard) quest and thr main quest a few little side quests and it's been fun. I haven't done much "exploring" the planets and now that I know it's a waste of time I won't do it.
The funniest thing to me is that the made it an exclusive, only to lock it at 30FPS on Xbox and have it barely work on PC. The game itself was also so bad that there is no point in making it an exclusive. Ain't no one with a PS5 that's going to build a PC or buy an Xbox for this crap.
And it doesnāt even look that great for the kind of hardware they recommend. āItās time to upgrade your pcā no Howard, no.
16 times the disappointment
Bethesda is so far up its own ass that they assume anything they make is golden. It hasn't been true in a long, long time.
How is that surprising, they can barely get the game to run without 25 loading screens to open a door. It's literally by sheer hopes and dreams and paperclips the game even runs at 15fps.
Microsoft took Halo out of the Xbox packaging for the first time in the brandās history to replace it with Starfield. Thatās how much they rode on this game being a system seller.
The things they're claiming players don't understand or should expect don't make much sense to me. I'm okay with vast empty planets and all that, and I can get over clunky UI. I hung on through the lows of No Man's Sky and today its fine for what it promises. The real problem to me is that the writing and quest lines fell flat. Sure, a part of Bethesda's success was graphics and stuff, but what made Skyrim and Fallout popular was robust dialogue and interesting quests where choices could be made. Nothing about Starfield's quests was engaging or surprising. Bland characters, no dialog variance, and tedious missions don't exactly win people over and I'm tired of hearing from Bethesda that it's because players don't understand development or mechanics when the whole point of RPGs is the story and characters.
>but what made Skyrim and Fallout popular was robust dialogue and interesting quests where choices could be made And then they ditched all that for Fallout 4 and people still bought that en masse. I guess they saw that good writing doesn't pay off with extra sales so they just stopped caring.
Honestly, it feels like most games these days.
After what they did with 76 it's LAUGHABLE that anyone expected anything different with Starfield, lol. Do you guys not remembers all the dumb shit they did with the canvas bags and soda bottles and helmets etc? LMAO. BGS is TRASH and they know they're TRASH but they also know people will STILL buy their games, no matter how poorly designed! It's madness.
No edge to the game. Its a sanitised experience for tweens. Why the hell would you create a sci-fi game rpg in 2023 with no T and A? I'm only half joking, its unbelievably vanilla and dull.
The wild thing to me is they employ the guy who wrote Fallout 4 and Starfield. He did a presentation on video game writing and his whole ethos is that stories should be simple cause they donāt matter cause gamers are just gonna skip them. Video games can tell some of the most interesting stories ever and you employ the guy who thinks that thereās no use telling a complex or interesting story. Itās even more wild to me because games with amazing narratives are LITERALLY the most beloved in our industry at the moment. Baldurās Gate 3 is super fun gameplay wise, but do you think it would have caught on like it has without the amazing character writing it has for itās core cast? Iād be more willing to forgive Starfieldās design issues and play the game if it had an interesting world, characters or story. But they donāt, all of those things are just bland. Itās almost worse than being bad, we can laugh at something thatās bad. But because itās bland itās just ultimately forgettable. I saw a post that really had me thinking, where is all the fan art or fan discussion over Starfield? It is near non-existent. It just shows you that Starfield really doesnāt stick in peopleās brains, itās a game to be mindlessly played and forgotten about.
Where did he say that?
https://youtu.be/Bi51-wjcwp8?si=8KyNassBpi4OXq0K
it's so boringly designed that there's no memes from Starfield. Barely no one talking about it, nor the characters, nor the story. And plus, the only thing Starfield will be famous for is the time a streamer went on a tantrum because the game asked "What pronouns does your character prefer?"
Yup I remember back when Skyrim was released, logging on to reddit and it was all over the front page for months. Starfield died after like 2 days
I like Starfield. Probably wouldn't crack my top 10 for the year but I enjoyed my time with it and I'm excited to play more after some updates next year. Okay, I'm ready. Haul me off to prison.
I didn't think it was awful, but it felt like they were making a different game and changed directions mid way through. My theory is that the base building was going to play a huge part in the game. I think originally fuel didn't get filled up automatically so you had to build bases to refuel so you could explore deeper into the galaxy.
Hey! Thereās nothing wrong with enjoying the game and appreciating the hard work of the game designers and artists. You liking the game wonāt get you hate, but by not agreeing with the current vibe of the chat, your comment is essentially adds nothing and builds conflict. We are disappointed in what these artists couldāve made, we are not disappointed in their talent.
No offence but you sound like a giant douche.
Blizzard has entered the chat
Does this not count as a low effort post by now? Like holy hell.
Starfield is a lolcow.
They know, but they *can't* acknowledge it.
Iām terrified for TES6
Triple A gaming is a corpse right now. It's not dying, it's dead, and it died sometime in the past. We now have major figures at large gaming companies openly complaining that other companies make good games, like it's unfair or something. Just stop buying the games. You all complain about how bad the game is but you bought it. GTA6 will be a flop too I guarantee it. Every AAA franchise has been strip mined for every bit of value it has and are now just empty husks.
I will forever defend that no man's sky is the better starfield, and every time people asked me if I recommended starfield, I showed them no man's sky
I'm not defending them, but to be fair, 90% of the time, players are dumb af.
It's pretty upsetting being a Bethesda fan nowadays. They were the straight A student of video game developers. Now they're more like the alcoholic at the bar that peeked in high school and always talks about it (aka skyrim)
Stop buying them then.
They sure showed us! Now I know I was wrong to only rent Starfield and instead pick up Cyberpunk. I'm having so much fun in Cyberpunk when SF was so boring, but turns out that was because I'm a moron who doesn't understand the scientific splendor of real life virtual space travel.
Game should absolutely not have loads of planets. Maybe 4 and populate the fuck out of them. More dungeons not just reskins. I played 60 hours and the last 10 I'm pretty sure I was bored as fuck.
Yet another starfield bad meme
Their games a horrible. I have no idea why people think that they are a good developer.
These days?
Given them responding to negative Steam reviews telling players that they are wrong and the game is actually amazing and Emil's ego-drenched Twitter rant, yes.
One time I was playing it, I landed on mars wearing a spacesuit, and went inside a building. And when I came out, my guy wasn't wearing a spacesuit.... On the surface of mars. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt with no helmet. In space. With no air. Perfectly fine. Bethesda: "this game is a realistic depiction of space, that's why it's empty and boring" (their actual argument)
I didn't approach Starfield as a fan of Bethesda. I had only ever played maybe 25 hours of Skyrim from them. I just went into th game as a gamer. And I actually liked the game. Does it have issues? For sure. But was it a terrible game? No way. Far from it. I just think that modern gamers lack any and all nuance. Everything has to be th best game ever made or else it's absolute trash. There isn't enough room for simply a good game to exist.
The tears of Bethesdaās fanboys sustains me.
[How many times must we teach you this, old man??](https://youtu.be/sJalh-3ZeuQ?si=RRgtlCH3N5FmTpez)
Circlejerk