Some of yall are really upset about me saying Larian showed up out of no where and yes! They did. No one was expecting BG3 to be what it was, even during early access. So yes people were expecting a great game, not a revolutionary one I think that's pretty obvious and a silly thing to argue about lol Also yes I know i should have said stood i didn't feel like editing it because I'm lazy, cry about it
Silly indeed. Honestly, I've felt this way about Bethesda for a while now. I've increasingly been *trying* to like what they made rather than organically loving it, to the point where I didn't even think about Starfield. Rather than Mass Effect or the next Bethesda project, I'm just so much more interested to see what Big Indie is doing, so to speak--the ex-Bethesda devs making Wayward Realms, the ex-Bioware devs making Exodus... and of course, whatever Larian makes next. I hope Veilguard will wow me, but I don't trust any AAA anymore. I've been waiting for a good vampire RPG of any variety ever since Bloodlines, and the field is still so utterly barren. Crossing my fingers for Big Indie to take over the world.
Except that BG3 is not revolutionary in any way, unless you consider having good graphics and motion capture is a revolution for crpgs, as this is the thing that actually made it succesful.
I will say one thing, and that is that Baldurs Gate 3 is Divinity Original Sin 2 on Stereoids. So there was a precedent for Baldurs Gate being amazing, but nobody could have dxpected it to be THIS good.
One thing that I think is really pertinent about Larian is that their previous DOS games were excellent, but they had absolutely zero cinematic dialogue scenes. So they went from having no experience with RPG cinematics, to having the best in the business. I think Bethesda had an opportunity to do something similar with starfield but totally flubbed it. Starfield was supposed to have really deep space exploration elements in it, and Bethesda had an opportunity to really elevate the space exploration genre. But instead, the space exploration feels like a tacked on minigame
The senior team (Todd, Emil, etc.) did not originally create either Elder Scrolls or Fallout. Todd inherited Elder Scrolls when the original senior team left Bethesda after Daggerfall, and Bethesda acquired Fallout when Interplay went bankrupt. Todd and team had enormous success that speaks for itself building upon the worlds they inherited, but they did not lay the foundation. This was their chance to show their chops at world building from the ground up, and . . . they are just not good at it.
What a weird dishonest way to discredit him as if under his leadship we didn't get Fallout 3 and Elder Scroll Skyrim when he was Game Director and if Official Modding Community didn't create the company would've been lost to relevancy long time ago.We remember his failure in Fallout76 but we forget Elder Scroll Online which worked phenomenal If you hate him as a person or don't like his work that's fair but don't lie or discredit his achievements just because you hate his last Work he's not Neil Drunkman 😂 who steal other work and lay on it for a decade and abusing his critics.
@@Vonkepplers Yes but I didn't forget the disaster it has on launch from buggy unplayable mess to duffle bag travesty 😂 they learned their lesson made it good they gone nearly bankrupt it took Microsoft to bought Zenamax for Fallout 76 to survive.
@MrApoorvaSingh753 Some successes doesn't mean he's the next Steve Jobs. Bethesda lacks consistency and with each new release it gets more water downed, more bugs and jumbled. And they know this, Todd managed with skyrim and Fo3 because a lot of people who worked their knew what they were doing and the studio was much smaller. Now it's too big for its own good and it shows.
You can invite her parents but not yours if you pick the Kidstuff trait. What an immersion breaking oversight. Your parents show up to so much random and unimportant stuff that is supposed to feel like a coincidence as if you ran into them traveling in the same city you both live in but you’re on whole other planets in whole other star systems… oh look my parents are on Akila, oh look my parents are on Neon, oh look my parents aren’t at my wedding… just kidding that makes sense because Bethesda gave me no dialogue options to invite them!…
At least in Skyrim, NPC's that you've done work for it paid the services of will show up to your wedding. Even if you're only a few hours into the main quest, there's a good chance that Balgruuf will arrive. It may be a paper-thin veneer of immersion, but at least the effort was made.
Starfield frustrated me so much because it felt like every time there was an opportunity for something unique or even just interesting to happen, Bethesda decided to run as far as possible in the opposite direction. And as far as companions are concerned, Fallout 4 had way more interesting, varied companions than Starfield, Starfield is actually such a step backwards and that's crazy. Fo4 released in 2015! Companion writing should have gotten better, not worse. I truly don't understand what happened here
Heart of Mars is my favorite example of the lowest quality content that Bethesda allows into the game for some reason. Quest giver was so excited about this thing, I thought it would be something more than just a rock, but it ends up just being a rock in a cave to sell. And ironically it is one of the most commonly bugged quest out there, despite its simplicity and shortness.
I've not really liked Bethesda games since FO3 (not counting NV because it wasn't them) although I liked FO4 on a first run but with this specifically I just couldn't help but think how Mass Effect 1 did everything better apart from obviously Starfield ship building and Mass Effect came out in 2007 or something. I've said it before but I'm convinced Todd and the rest of the people high up haven't played a video game since 2010. I genuinely believe they still think they're at the forefront of open world RPGs. I'm convinced he's never played The Witcher, Cyberpunk, BG3, Mass Effect, a Dragon Age, Dragons Dogma. Even Deus Ex and stuff does certain things better and that's another old one.
I have a theory. Maybe they just didn’t put much into this game. Maybe they never intended for it to be great… maybe it’s just a money grab, a side project that only a few people worked on while the bulk of the studio continues on the main mission which is ES6
Here comes the wall. Probably the worst thing about this is that the same happened back in 2015 when Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 released about 6 months apart, and Bethesda didn't really improve or learned some obvious lessons from back then. Fallout 4 also did try to go for more characterization, voiced protag and more cinematic look for dialogs, but it was received very poorly because Bethesda often stops half-way into thinking through their designs. Their writing in general feels like it is completely disconnected to the level design or other forms of presentation. The entire philosphy often looks like "best-effort assumption of what writing can be in this particular place" instead of just getting people together to make something coherent. Not to mention this constant tug-of-war when Bethesda wants player to be unburdened with any sort of complex decision making, while sometimes offering solid characters that have some complexity to them to explore. I remember a comment from a friend once that Bethesda wants to be Bioware sometimes, but they never really understood how to do it, and some character end up being palatable almost accidentally. The other major pitfall is that Bethesda insists on making player a chosen one (I guess they still can't get rid of Oblivion trauma) , while the rest of the world doesn't really adjust to that. This gap between what are you supposed to be vs your actual place in the world is something they still cannot bridge. They don't even give enough time for you to accept your role as someone or even buy into it, because they keep shortcutting your "ascension" to some imporant status with every game. Not even 10 min into the Starfield, and you already get a ship and a robot and unwarranted trust from other characters. It also doesnt help when the protagonist's writing is done in a way that they are almost a complete newcomer to the world, which leads to a ton of just stupid moments of "tell me everything about the government under which I was supposedly living for years". Which one do you want me to be, Todd? A faceless avatar, or a character, or a dress up doll, or a chosen one, or what? Bethesda games are so player-centric, this creates this almost a tunnel vision that entire world exists to serve the player only. NPCs are barely interacting with each other, and if they do, it is some contextless nonsense that often happens just once. People were complaining about lack of NPC schedules, but it was not only because those systems were a staple for games like Bethesda's, but also because it is one of the basic tools that ensures authenthicity of the world and helps people to get immersed just a little bit better. It is already difficult to suppress your disbelief in Bethesda games, but they are indirectly insisting with their design decisions that people don't need those systems and those things, they need more god damn LEGO aka ship building and such. I like LEGO, but c'mon. It is just funny that the ship building and housing are the things that end up with the better fidelity, while the rest of the game is lacking a follow-up. The way they prioritize their features is just weird. This is not a direction, it is exactly the lack of a proper grip on things. And with players already having barely any agency or place in the world, you can't even do something basic as dress up as you see fit because they will most likely spend time making realistic scans of various food items than add more equipment slots. PS: I fully expect TES6 to have magic schools removed and introduced with magical everything-soup "where you can do anything".
Ugh yes, what is it with Bethesda and their insistence on making me a "chosen one?" When I was playing Starfield last year, I remember ranting at my husband that I didn't want to be Space Jesus! I just want to explore and find cool stuff and maybe build a neat base and go on some adventures with my friends. I liked the chosen one narrative better in Skyrim - maybe it works better for me in fantasy than sci-fi? - but here I just found it obnoxious.
You make a good point, I felt like with Fo4 they tried to add a sandbox but to a game that is an RPG. But they only half baked everything and hope it all meshed together. Bg 3 despite being a different game, really pulled the third person cinematic convo that fo4 was trying to pull but without a voice protag (though they did consider it).
Funny thing, you are supposed to be The Chosen One, yet every single peasant disrespects you all the time for seemingly no reason. As if random people in real life randomly insult others while walking for no reason.
@@carlosleyva-calistenia6400 Yeah, the insults or dismissive behavior or witty remarks about your character stats even from the regular guards is one of the simpliest way to provide some reactivity to your actions, but this is just exhausting and feels so old. Instead of the world that has its own pace and rules, it is just player-facing mirrors that reflect you and only you.
Fallout 4 is my favorite game from them.. I know it wasn't what everyone wanted but I still to this day love it so so so much, it was my personal 10/10 but of course it could always be better.. everything after that though was downhill..
My reaction to playing Starfield really was the parent going "I'm not mad, just disappointed". I wanted to love it so much but now I'm side-eyeing TES VI which I hate to say.
This may be good for ES6.. cause now everyone’s expectations for it have been significantly lowered…. This is one of the main issues Starfield had.. everyone was expecting “Space Skyrim” and it didn’t come close to delivering
I’ve accepted that it’ll be notably worse than Starfield at this point. Bethesda has lost their touch and I can finally understand why they’ve been so hesitant to release ESVI. They know it’ll flop.
Yah! Which I find so weird for a game that was seemingly (originally anyway) focused on hard sci-fi and a realistic sense of our future history. It felt like there was a ton of potential.
Yeah, the animation is stiff sure, but I don't think that would matter if the writing itself was compelling. Starfield's issue is more that its world and characters feel weirdly... sterile? I don't know if there was a crackdown from higher-ups trying to appeal to a wider audience, or if they just didn't have a strong enough sense of direction to make something more distinct, but it feels like whatever personality the setting might have had was sandblasted down for inoffensively bland mass marketing.
I 100% agree with this… I want so badly to like this game but I just can’t get immersed in it. Even more than the issues with exploration or loading screens, the writing and lore is a far bigger issue in my opinion.
@@YorkJonhson sterile is a great word! one thing i wanna add tho is i don't think you end up at sterile indistinct stuff by aiming for diverse appeal, plus good mass marketing is exciting and entertaining. defo feels like a lack of clear and distinct direction, for sure
@@nickohhh Yeah, that's fair. I guess I'm just thinking of Bethesda's past games or similar sci-fi set-ups, and feel like Starfield lacks the themes or risks that made those sort of games memorable. And one of the easiest possible explanations for that is that higher-ups didn't want to push the envelope with anything and risk driving off newcomers for a new IP. So it doesn't have Fallout's satire, over-the-top violence or fantastical questlines. It doesn't have Mass Effect's alien companions, cultures, or emphasis on branching moral choices. It doesn't have Cyberpunk's cinematography or cynical dystopian edge. Heck, Neon is supposed to be Starfield's hive of sleazy debauchery and there isn't so much as a character with a bare midriff. It does have impressive ship building, and the hard sci-fi NASA aesthetic is unique for what it's worth, but it isn't enough to carry the whole setting for me personally.
Innovate or die. Bethesda has been banking on their old cred the same way Blizzard has, but even more desperately clinging to the nostalgia of their old successes. The fact of the matter is that the old guard of most of these studios have either retired, burned out, or left the industry entirely due to how toxic and rotted out the major publishers have become. The studios are just names filled by a cyclical series of devs who are drawn in fresh, have no idea how the systems and concepts work, get used up like disposable cogs, and then kicked when the quarterly profit margins are in danger so the executives and shareholders don't take a hit. It's a series of symptoms linked to the larger problem of the industry overall.
"It plays like Skyrim in Space" IF ONLY that was true! Skyrim gleamed brightly with it's ambience, aestetic, the music and world is just ASMR euphoria with creeks, nature and the soothing, deep music, it had a immensely cozy vibe to it. Starfield feels like the most sterile versions of sci-fi tropes all just mushed together in a incoherent mess: Akila City is a retro-futuristic cowboy aesthetic with using such terminology such as a bar named the "Hitching post" when some consider Earth a myth, let have animals to hitch or know about horses, Neon is the most sexless, gritless cyberpunk city ever, no one to mug you, everyone being neighbourly, New Atlantis....I mean the name is the only thing distinctive about it.
Larian didn't just sneak up out of nowhere they've been here. They ascended with Divinity Original Sin 2 and with Baldur's Gate 3 pretty much cemented that they're the top dog when it comes to RPGS. I remember saying how Larian, Obsidian, CD Projekt Red and Owlcat surpassed Bethesda years ago but I'm glad people are starting to see it now. Bethesda has fallen off and I don't think ES6 is going to be what brings them back to glory
I played Larian's Divine Divinity in the early 00s and it was an excellent game. In fact, the only reason I had faith in them doing BG3 was because of how much I enjoyed Divine Divinity and Original Sin 2.
@@La-PetitMortI mean more casual folks probably don’t but people deeply into RPGs absolutely do, I knew of divinity way before I got deep into the RPG rabbit hole
@@La-PetitMort Larian's Divinity: Original Sin 2, aka DOS2, was at 7.5 million copies last I heard, meaning before BG3 it was the literal bestselling CRPG of all time. You being clueless to its existence doesn't mean "literally nobody knows" the game. Baldur's Gate 3 only exists because Wizards of the Coast played DOS2 and loved it. And if you don't know Wizards of the Coast, again, that's not "literally nobody knows"--you don't know. Just you.
Larian hires actual writers. CDPR hires writers. Bethesda has their designers do their writing. The flaws with that approach are made really apparent with Starfield.
When i think of starfield i always think of matteo design and tht someone thought hes a cool character in a serious way and gave him a baby hat 😂, how is that even possible
These comments show the real issue: the audience. I keep hearing people complain about writing, when Bethesda never built their empire on writing. Somewhere down the line, the last of us had a tremendous ripple effect, and I am witnessing it right now.
@@sagearmaggedon7307 *_All_* previous games made by Bethesda have decent writing. Exploration is useless and nonsensical if it isn't backed by a good storyline and Starfield has none of that.
@@rosesareredbutzerglingssti9290 the game isnt about exploration either sadly. This is not skyrim or fallout in space, its something different entirely. As for the writing, I found some things in Starfield far more advanced than their previous works.
The thing that killed this game for me was when I tried to fly to a planet and realizing I was not getting closer and had to teleport there. I wanted to fly my ship around, to go somewhere, not just teleport from point A to point B and then from there to C.
That one was a big one for me too. Only game I know that did this very well was No Man's Sky. You'd take off, you'd enter the atmosphere, then soon you were in space. There's a real thrill to see the transitions. But they decided to skip that whole part, which felt so dated. Like come on, we already know how good space travel can be in a modern game, yet you cut corners on that part? Didn't make sense.
@@azurespot8277 Star Wars Galaxies, just before being shuttered by SOE, had an actual ship flight system where you could take off, land and travel between planets.😊
For me it was after I encountered the very same raider lair everywhere. It felt like there were only two or three NPC locations that randomly spawned all over the place. The game felt so coporate and soulless.
@@strange144 Literally the second science facility I entered had the same layout as the first, the whole game is just copy pasted assets on different colored planets and this was Todd's "dream game".
Yeah, I felt this one too. The joy in previous Bethesda games was to just point yourself in a direction and go, and to feel like a fully-realized universe is around you. I understand that space presents some pretty big challenges with this, but if you can't do a space game that plays to your strengths, then maybe it isn't the best setting for you.
Emil Pagliarulo in a recent article said that he thinks Starfield is the best game they have ever made. TES 6 is dead. By saying that Emil has just confirmed that TES 6 is going to be just as statrfield. Procgenned, efortless, Boring SLOG I had to force myself to finish the last hour of this new DLC, and finally I cleared this game off my SSD.
To be fair, he said he thought it was 'in some ways' the best game they've ever made and the context made it fairly clear he meant that in terms of the technical aspects of the game. Obviously Starfield isn't very technically impressive, but I guess it is probably their most 'advanced' game.
@@cerdic6305I don't think the procgen is really the problem, the problem really is how it is applied. For example, the procgen of No Man's Sky is well applied, it's not perfect, but you only start to notice after some hundred hours, and even then you still can be surprised with just the procgen of NMS. One example of this is how terrain and is generated in NMS... How much cave models Starfield has? One? Two? In NMS every single cave is UNIQUE. Theres channels here on TH-cam dedicated solely to speleology in NMS.. And that's just one of the ways NMS procgen tech does great. Unfortunately Bethesda can't apply the same tech in their outdated engine.
Gamers saying that a game required no effort or had none put into it because they didn't like it will always astonish me. Most gamers couldn't even make a quarter of what Bethesda has even with their wants and apparent effort that Bethesda seemingly doesn't put into their massive RPGs. StarField was anything but effortless and passionless. Arguing otherwise is just being a bias and ignorant fool.
@@channel45853 "most gamers can't make a quarter of what Bethesda does..." Gamers only play games, they are the ones who will measure how fun and enjoyable a game is, the role of a gamers isn't make games, is play them and pass feedback if they feel the need. Not all gamers are devs, but some are AND some even managed to pull off better games than Starfield, one who cames to mind is Spacebourne 2 from a turkish solo dev.
You have more patience than I, friend. I think I managed to log about seventy hours into Starfield before I uninstalled it. That's coming from a 39 y/o gamer with numerous BGS titles under my belt from Morrowind to FO3. I was hyped like you because I thought "BGS space game? oooo shiny" and it wasn't shiny :(
Me too! I'm 32 I tried twice and got about 40h in and tghen called it quits. It's just so damn boring. I don't care about any of the people. It all falls flat.
I'm 60, have been playing games for over 30 years and I have approximately 1220 hours in Starfield, that compares to the 1215 hours in FO4, the 800+ hours in Skyrim(a game in which I never even finished the main story). The problem with most people is overhyping themselves and expecting the game(s) to be more than what is being offered. I play Larian games and expect a certain style, I play a game from CD Projekt and expect a certain style, same with Obsidian, inXile and Owlcat and I NEVER compare those games to each other because each studio has it's own strength and weaknesses and none of them make the same style, other than being in the overall RPG genre(each is nuanced in my opinion). The thing is all of these comments are INDIVIDUALS OPINIONS, and everyone is entitled to their opinion or should be.
Emil recently said in an interview that he considers Starfield the best Bethesda game. They're not going to learn. With some serious removal of a lot of senior devs, expect more of the same lifeless medicrity for future DLC & Elder Scrolls 6
@@jungtothehuimang I don't think so. I think they just need to listen to respectful criticism. Not haters, not rage baiters, but fans who were disappointed and can speak about it like Kala or Mr Matty or others who have criticism that is productive and genuine.
That dude is tuck in the past, he thinks the way he makes games have charm, and maybe they did early on, but that charm has dissolved into puddle of musty crud. They're like that guy in high school with a mullet and Camaro who hasn't changed in 25 years.
@@jungtothehuimang everyone works for money, the problem is that companies like Bethesda invest just the bare minimum in their product, charge full price and expect modders to fix and add everything else for free. And people keep paying for a mid videogame at best that needs a shitton of mods to be entertaining, reminds me to people buying the 585 (and counting) stupid Sims 4 DLC's with just few ugly clothes and hairs, or games like fifa every year...
I’m not gonna lie, but I was expecting Starfield to be a better version of Mass Effect Andromeda. It probably would’ve been a massive success if it went off of MEA’s bones imo
I was kind of hoping for some cool alien people to talk to, and at least NPC systems at least on par with Skyrim. Somehow just felt worse in all fronts.... Graphics did not feel updated enough, it did not need to be Unreal burn the GPU down levels... but the game no joke I have to open the nVidia Control Panal just like Skyrim just to mess with resolutions is outrageous! Messing with INI files just to get it working right like back in the day... Like none of that should be a thing.... played it and just felt disapointed coming from a BGS fan....
@@arcadeportal32 As a BioWare fan, they’ve really set the bar high for me as an RPG player and fan. So whenever I play a new RPG I have an expectation based off of my BioWare & CDPR experiences that the story, companions, and cutscenes will be a certain way. Starfield was beyond disappointing
@@Nubii0_23 I think mods in Skyrim spoiled me as well, so used to the very good and quality NPC mods like Inigo, or Khajit will Follow and the NPC system from Skyrim or even Oblivion then played Starfield and it just felt like a big step down. Maybe also it follows the Fallout 4 format vs ES that probably tore me away as well. Not a massive fan of Fallout 4 but at least it got me hooked enough to play through the main quest 3 or 4 times vs Starfield that I struggled just to want to finish to the end.
ME:A is also a better game than Starfield, even with its flaws. It's why I'm so sad that ME:A never got supported further and we never got the DLC it deserved which may well have helped the game improve even more. Yet I think even with how bad Starfield is, people will ultimately play it more than ME:A.
Those who paid attention to MEA's development know that the game also was supposed to have 70 or so rng planets as well. Funny, how Bioware in the end realized it was a stupid idea, but Bethesa thought putting a thousand of rng planets was a good idea.
Starfield could have benefitted from any of these: Starting with the evacuation of Earth Taking place during any of the wars Aliens Fewer worlds, curated content...but Shattered Space makes me think they're incapable Uses for the ships you build Choices that matter More meaningful companions No Unity and freaking stupid jumping universes. Fix this one. More meaningful exploration...instead of just abandoned human buildings with copy/paste enemies. It reeks of AI involvement. Badly used AI. The random citizens are all procedurally generated and don't react like those in Skyrim. It's like all of it was just AI created which is what Microsoft said they'd be going to.
yea the mediocre quality of Starfield coupled with some of the more vocal parts of the dev team actively resisting criticism back when it launched has me extremely pessimistic for TES6.
My main criticism is the writing and mission design. I’m willing to look past a lot if those two are solid. It felt like there was no lore, world building or literary rigor. And so much repetitive gameplay.
Emil, the writing director, should go as well. He stated BGS hasn't used a design document since Oblivion and that's no way to make a product, least of all large and complex games that take almost a decade to make.
@@ivoryowl because they use "design wiki" or so he said but he is just not a very good writer and designer and he is essentially the main guy at Bethesda when it comes to game development.
@@ivoryowl This guy should definitely be fired. If there is anything that I disliked most in this game - it's the writing. Like pretty much all Bethesda's games didn't shine in this department, but in Starfield it's just terrible.
There was an GDC with the lead designer Will Shen. In that GDC he talked about how Bethesda evolved in terms of cooperation with other departments. But in that talk he showed that why Starfield is the way it is was due to a massive breakdown of communication. They had too many people and couldn't coordinate it well enough. They also didn't have a unified vision. Worst of all the final mission in the base game was not finished and the game was to launch soon. All of that is why Starfield feels so dated. It had to be for the developers to get any work down because they had so many issues. That doesn't excuse the problems Starfield has but I think it is interesting to know why it ended up the way it did. The only other thing I want to say is that I think Starfield's problem isn't that it isn't innovative. It is that it doesn't succeed at what it set out to do. I also just one to say that the issue with the Creation Engine is that its a bad engine. Its that Bethesda doesn't use it or respect it properly. If they switched to another engine they would still run into the same problems as before.
This was a pattern quite a few have observed for a while. Skyrim, while a fun game by its own right, has seriously cut down on a lot of elements that made prior games unique and engaging. The lore, worldbuilding, and characterization was seriously lacking, but the gameplay loop was fun enough. FO4 was a step further, it became a looter shooter with a fallout coat of paint. It had even worse lore and worldbuilding, and the story had moments that were legitimately stupid. Character choice was so simplified compared to prior titles that it felt that no thought was put into their own story. Modern Bethesda has cut down so many aspects of their game to streamline their "gameplay loop" that they forgot how to make an actual engaging game. This honestly makes me believe that Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be the most mediocre game they are going to make. At least a bad game will be laughed at and memed about, but a mediocre game will be forgotten by most.
I think their biggest issue is that they know modders will pick up their slack and so they create games with the intention of them being modded. The gameplay, story, charactrrs, and even the engine are so incredibly stagnant, tired, and old.
@@rhylin26 that's why the hole Bethesda is digging for themselves will keep getting deeper if they don't commit to making actually innovative, fun, new games. From soft games are all similar but different enough to feel like their own thing. Even DA games reinvent the wheel with each game. Bethesda just needs to pull their heads out of the butts.
Honestly don't think that's the case. If it were, the modding tools would have been released with the game, not 10 months after. Plus they have statistics on how many people actually use mods and it's less than third.
@@tanna_k yes they have been using the same outdated engine with no willingness to innovate or change because the engine they're on is easiest for modders to use. it's just frustrating that they have shown no willingness to update their gameplay or story model in like 20 years. if it's not due to them wanting modders to carry the community forward then I can only assume it is laziness.
@@jungtothehuimang The idea of releasing a game with no mod support for its first *10 months* and expecting modders to come fix it for you is nonsense. I'd wager they stayed with Creation Engine because it's easiest for _them_ to use, the same reason all other devs stick to the engines they use. As someone who's actually worked on a game (though not professionally) I think the bethesda community has a very unhealthy obsession with blaming the engine for stuff it has little to do with. I do think they should have gone further with the upgrades they made for Starfield, but that's far from the game's biggest problem. They could have made a great game on this engine, but they failed hard with both game design and writing. If they hadn't, there wouldn't be as much of a conversation about engine.
One name, Pagliarulo, the writer with skills comparable to the founder of scientology is the sole writer for Bethesda and he is the biggest negative the studio has, no joke.
This company has been needing more, and better writers for decades now. Their environmental artists ,and designers are f*cking top tier. The need for professional writing is on display throughout the past few tittles.
You speak from my soul, that's how I feel about this game. It feels old-fashioned and dusty. I have no interest whatsoever in my companions and the so-called relationships.
Bethesda has no passion or real talent left. I think they lost most of it already with Fallout 4, they won't change either, they wouldn't even know how, that's how stuck they are.
Starfield it's so bare bones that you can't even compare with games like BG3 or Cyperpunk 2077/Phantom Liberty. It's not even that Stanfield is horrible but everything is so basic and diluted in a galaxy seized procedurally generated game that you can't really compare. I hope this is a wake up moment for Bethesda because if they don't deliver on TES6 that can be a do or die moment for the studio. They need to come back with the bold design of Morrowind and Oblivion, like the Crazy NPC work of oblivon was impressive for the time and they simply dropped it in future games, they need to try that type of innovation again.
I really love Starfield, but their games do need a new direction. I do believe that people overvalue engines, I really don't believe the creation engine is the reason the game feels dated, I think that feeling really just comes from the direction. They do want to stick to their lane, which I respect, but they really need to evolve.
Engine is definitely a problem here. Or rather I guess the complacent way they use it is the issue. Cause you’re right, there’s no reason they COULDNT change creation engine to get rid of the weird dead eyes or finally change the sleep animation or give NPC actual idling. They could probably even figure out how to turn those black cutscene doors into the rendered hallway experience of modern games. Lots of studios have proprietary engines & it’s fine. But they won’t, that’s not what they do. They don’t push the technical envelope or advance systems and they literally never have. So the way for them to actually improve the myriad of borked technical issues is to start using Unity or something. The sooner the better.
From what i've heard the biggest problem at Bethesda is Todd Howard himself. Apparently he puts his devs on the project, then walks in at a later stage, shits on everything, and then he just walks out again. But again,it's a rumour i've heard.Can't actually verify it's legitimacy.
I feel very much like you did. I played BG3 and went right into Starfield and I just couldn't play as much as I really had wanted to. I kept waiting to be sucked in and I just wasn't. My player character literally looked like my Dovaahkin, why? They need to update that engine. I wanted Skyrim in space, I wanted a reason to go explore and it just wasn't there. I decided to just not play it and wait awhile and see if perhaps later on, I might be more receptive to it. Perhaps after some updates and tightening up, I'll jump into it and love it.
I have over 200 hours in this game and I agree. While I overall like the gameplay loop, the games characters and story just feels flat? For me the game feels modern but it’s the story and characters that feel super dated and how you interact with the world with them. I can tell you so much about characters in Skyrim, fallout 3 4 and new Vegas and the issue is that starfield characters don’t have personality. The motion capture would be nice but that’s not gonna improve much of what’s wrong with the game. The game needed a soul and the writers just didn’t care
I think Kala misrepresented Bethesda and the modding community there, just a bit: I do not think Bethesda gave any thought to what modders could do with the vast empty spaces, I think they were just pleased that whole maps could generate themselves, regardless of how empty they are, and it's only modders that can do something to add any interest to them.
By hour 4 in Starfield I had used ~ to console in credits because I simply was not going to play another Bethesda game where the in universe equivalent of Walmart carries approximately 12 dollars on hand for purchases. I should have quit the game then, the fact that playing was unbearable in the out-of-box state shoulda really clued me in more than it did.
Worst part of the creation engine is it runs like an absolute joke. I've got a 3070 and can happily run Cyberpunk at 1440p/60fps but I had to pull all the graphics down close to minimum to even get 1080/30fps (and this is really 720p with DLSS) for a game that looks a full generation behind.
I cannot stand Starfield's facial animations!! I feel like you can see the engine picking and choosing the facial animations. Like "oh the character is fluctuating their voice so trigger the raised eyebrows expression." More than anything, the stiff character animations make Starfield feel soulless (imo). They feel like robots.
I want Starfield to be great in the same way I wanted No Man's Sky to be great (and it eventually was). Long before the game came out, I had even considered buying an Xbox Series S for it. Unfortunately, I think Starfield is going to fade into irrelevance over the next year or so unless they bring out a second DLC that knocks everybody's socks off. As things stand, I'll probably never play Starfield. There are just too many games out there that are way more worthwhile. I think you're exactly right about the Creation Engine. It makes Starfield look old, as though an Xbox 360 game was remastered for Xbox Series consoles but they neglected to sufficiently update the character models and animations.
My favorite thing is building ships, but there’s nothing that highlights that. I would love scenarios that require more specialized designs. Such as space races or fight simulators. Trade routes that use my own ships would be cool too; having to balance speed, range, and cargo capacity versus operating costs. You can tell the bones for a heavy space sim were there, but they got scared and now we have what we have.
I am an older BGS fan who loved Morriwind, this whole Starfield drama feel like Deja Vu, but it's actually not, that were a lot of fans stopped loving Bethesda back in the days of Oblivion, lets just say that exploring a generic tomb / cave was not a comparison to exploring a Daedric/ Dwemer Ruin. I am looking at Starfield right now, the planets looks plain, in general there seems to be a terrible lack of imagination. Earth has Mariana Trench, Mars has Olympus Mons, with base to peak measurement of 22km, there are Lava planets, there are water planets, they can do some crazy and weird geometry to give the player a sense of exploration, like Stalker: Call of Pripyat, the player has Jetpacks, why not have places that expand vertically upward instead of just flat plains? What sort of Aliens and weird civilizations can you find at these places? How about a hidden nation of people that lives underground? Or aquantic life forms that doesn't speak English? This game has so much potential, I can only sign...
YES! You hit the nail on the head on exactly what is Bethesda's problem. They act like Skyrim came out a few years ago and no one else is making RPGs, only them. They refuse to look at their contemporaries and continually seek to recapture past glory without any realization as to what made Skyrim amazing in the first place. Skyrim was the first of its kind a massive RPG set in a living breathing world that felt alive which was a novelty in 2011, not so much anymore. A Dev from Bethesda came out in some article the other week saying Bethesda is worried they can neither match nor recapture the magic of Skyrim for the Elder Scrolls 6 whenever nobody wants Skyrim 2. We want an innovation to the series and proof that Bethesda still has the ability to create amazing RPGs. They need to forget and move past Skyrim in order to create something innovative. Bring back actual RPG elements, skills, classes, more races and subraces, make actual consequences and gameplay features based around your characters race and class. Let your players actually be who they want to be. If i want to be the bad guy, let me. The biggest difference between Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield is present in the two games character creation. Baldur's Gate asks, "Who are you?" At the beginning of every game and your race and class plays a huge impact on the entire game, choosing to play as a Drow will have a very different experience than playing as a human. While in Starfield's case the game should ask you "Who were you before you became Constellation's errand boy." Because thats all it will ever acknowledge you as. Want to be a feared crimson fleet pirate with a million credit bounty on your head, too bad! Nobody will ever acknowledge that choice and the game will harrass you until you finally give yourself up and pay the fine or serve jail theres no way around it. You get my point though Bethesda needs to look outward at other games and replace that dying engine or else the spiral will continue and Elder Scrolls 6 will flop.
I’ve been trying to articulate what I felt was “off” with Starfield for a year and this video did it perfectly. I would always come back to it seems like it has no personality, but you hit it on the head when you said no heart. I feel I even tried to will it into existence 200 plus hours, unlocked every achievement, but in the end just like you no matter how much I wanted to love it I really only liked it. Great video.
Played Starfield. Was so hype for it. But after putting in loads of hours, I got bored. Then Phantom Liberty came out and BG3 (console) and I just never went back to Starfield. My issues with SF are the fact that you’re given an illusion of choice and agency when there is none, the planets are copy-paste for the most part, all the companions are the same and not one morally grey companion (why be a space pirate if *all* your companions are gonna chastise you for it?), romances limited to cheesy repetitive voice lines, horrendous NPCs that bomb your screen mid-interaction, the incessant crashes and glitches, the waiting on the cut screens just by opening a door, the boring interactions with other characters, the repetitive combat situations (it’s so far into the future but the weapons seem stuck in the 21st century)… I did download Shattered Space and I’ll check it out because it looks visually stunning but in the meantime I’m on my nth play thru of BG3 (fully evil Dark Urge). I’m no longer hype for ES6.
I'm not the person who blames Emil for every single BGS bad decision but after seeing his paper airplanes take everything made clear for me why writing is soooo disconnected in later Bethesda's games. How can you say such a thing when there's a dosens of games being celebrated by it's narrative and characters? Fallout New Vegas was released with multiple bugs and bad performance but people CARED about world, people CARED about characters. And yet BGS learned NOTHING from this, it's baffling.
I think the main problem is that they are out of touch. And not with fans bdut with the company itself. They aren't managing it well enough with all the seperate studios and games in the works. So it feels waterdowned and lacking woth little to no strong direction to stay on course.
I just want to say how refreshing it is to see real, genuine criticism of this game. TH-cam is chock full of bandwagon haters (*cough* Luke Stephens *cough*) making clickbait videos that add literally nothing to the overall discussion on Starfield. As for your thoughts, I 100% agree with you. I am a massive Elder Scrolls fan, and I enjoy all the modern Fallout games as well. For a long time I would have told people that Bethesda was my favorite developer. But I just cannot get into Starfield. I played about 30 hours at launch and got so disillusioned with the game after I realized how half-baked and useless so many of the mechanics were (food, crafting, and especially base building). I tried a few days ago to start fresh and make it to Shattered Space, but I lost interest after only a few hours of playtime. I have come to realize that Starfield will never have a Cyberpunk redemption arch. Cyberpunk is a great game that was unfinished at release, whereas Starfield is a mediocre game that was doomed from the get go. It is frustrating, and a little insulting, but mostly its just sad. I truly fear for Elder Scrolls 6.
Unfortunetly Bethesda's lead designer and lead writer Emil Pagliarulo is a prime example of toxic positivity and still holds the opinion that Starfield is their greatest game ever. BGS is just fundumentally broken on structural and institutional level and even an engine change wont do much when you dont have dedicated writers and your designers dont understand your players or even modern players in general. People have been criticising them since Oblivion and Fallout 3 for railroading, removing rpg mechanics and poorer and poorer writing and worldbuilding but they never listened and I doubt they will now. I have pretty much already accepted that mainline the Elder Scrolls games ended with Skyrim.
Modder here - The barren content wasn't for us, even if they say it was. We really don't like it anymore than anyone else does. Most modders I've interacted with have little to no interest in Starfield. In my humble opinion, the writing of the game is just really below par and bland.
Thanks Kala. Tho I personally loved Starfield. I understand the criticism coming from fans, though I'm glad to hear your take. Although being respectful and honest, even though I don't fully agree with your take, since Bethesda isn't Bioware or CDPR. It's good of you to not rage bait or hate for the sake of it, I believe it's because, how they advertised as Skyrim/Fallout in space have them expect big open lively world to explore big mystery to unfold as we progress (instead leading one to another) and not empty Space you explore and create life which would work if they put more effort in it.
Thank you so much! And I definitely don't want to rage bait or be unfair. I think it's important to remember people who care about their work are behind these games so while we can be critical we can also be kind 🫡
But, but, the NPCs go to work every day on a schedule! On an additional note, the emptiness and boring planets wasn't to cater to modders, it was simple laziness.
I said in another comment that I think Kala missrepresented the Bethesda/Modding community here. It's a case of Bethesda laziness, and modders being the only way to create any interest in the vast emptiness of Bethesda's 'tech leading empty landscape procedural generation'.
@@2138Dude I guess I hadn't noticed; funny they didn't even use the one part of their prehistoric engine they used to go on and on about for the last 20 some years lol.
I don’t think the technology is the problem, it’s the writing. Enderal and Fallout 4 used even older versions of Starfield’s engine, but their characters and stories were still far more compelling.
Thank you for sharing this. Having 60+ hours in Starfield, I can say that it feels like a theme park without stakes. There's nothing that encourages you as a player to really explore or feel like you can have an impact on the world around you. Even without the technology, The Elder Scrolls games managed to have some memorable characters. But if the stakes aren't there - if *they* don't care, why should you as the player?
I understand why people criticize the engine, I do too, but we also have to consider the implications this will have in the modding scene. The creation engine being a decade old has given people time to learn its intricacies. If they swap it now, the community is going to have to re-learn everything and we're not going to have the same level of modding we do now for a while. To be honest, I just don't see newer BGS being worth the effort. If SF was quickly abandoned due to being "bad", how much more likely is it to happen if now you also have to learn a new engine? I don't think it's the engine is the issue, the issue is Bethesda not investing enough resources to make newer versions a larger technological leap compared to previous iterations. SF is the first game using the Creation Kit 2. If we think about it, Unreal and Unity have been around for a long time, too, and they are leagues ahead of what they used to be when they launched. The only benefit of the doubt I can give Bethesda is that they are a gaming company and so it's not a priority for them to update their engine, unlike, Unreal and Unity, where that became their sole focus.
Bethesda should hire the writers and artists from Elden Ring to do world building. You don’t need to create boss battles or any of the Dark Souls mechanics but OMG each region including the underground cities were so unique and interesting. That’s what we need in a space exploration game. Unique things to explore.
This is why I'm not worried about Bioware☝🏿. Trying to change while keeping the foundation keeps one fresh & innovative. Bethesda has to change or improve their engine. Then, they have to revamp how we engage in an interactive sandbox🧐
I waited for starfield because of '76. Played it quite a bit, had fun, but it really didn't make any sense. It wasn't easy to wait even then, because I started with Arena. Many buggy hours in Daggerfall; more,much more in Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4. Now I'm glad I waited, and, if ES6 comes out, probably won't pre-order.
They didn't ask the question, what part of this game will make you feel in awe and excited for experiencing it. Space travel is a very niche interest, people just see it as a load screen between content, like KOTOR had. I feel for ES6 they need to invest in character writing and experiences, the graphics have already peaked for environments, the first mods i install on skyrim are the interesting npcs mods
The worst is the writing, you can have the most awsome character but if the dialogues are dumb or childish or made to not offend anyone, you end up with a lifeless annoying companion. Everything seems to have been approved by a monk living in a cave under an old monastery, Bethesda and Starfield seem to have gone a religious puritanist way where seing a naked arm is the most daring thing you can imagine. And everything is in the same mood, bland, conservative, secure and outdated, the fruit of a company driven by old guys who have lost their spirit, start to look for religion by the fear of age and death and just use old safe recipes to produce generic content.
Yeah it feels like they try to appeal to some kind of weird American Christian Conservatives for some reason. Weird puritanism and lack of fun even in games
For comparison phantom liberty is also 30$ Also bethesda already has been left behind. They dont wanna give up the game engine because how else could modders fix their games.
Starfield is amazing and the more I play it I see they deliberately just didn't try to add too much "spectacle" to everything and I appreciate it. It made me realize that there are some games where I don't want "sexy" characters or all of this highly scripted crafted content and set pieces, focus tested emotional moments or anything like that. I like that the game just is and has the tools for me to have my own fun. I respect the bad decision for them to offer something that feels so dated in this time and I look to other games to move the needle forward but not this one. Starfield is so cozy to me, so familiar but infinitely new. You might see it as been there done that but I see it as a game released today that will be around 10 years from now and will keep getting fresh injections of contend and life. idk
You are spot on about the characters. I remember first playing Final Fantasy 2 (IV) for the first time with my friend when we were in the 5th grade soon after the SNES came out. We were both mesmerized by the characters. Cecil, Rosa, Tellah, Golbez etc. A game from over 30 years ago had characters that were incredibly memorable, with no 3d animated cut scenes, no voice acting, nothing but 16bit graphics and an amazing story and characters that felt real. Great characters stick with you. Hell, Bethesda should know this from the success of the Fallout TV series! That show has great characters, Lucy, Maximus, the Ghoul, Muldaver, Lucy’s dad. All of them have interesting stories and motivations that are revealed over time and make you want to watch more. Why can’t they bring that to their games? That’s exactly what they need.
12:47 Honestly their development time just begs the question "what are they doing with all this time?" especially if they aren't switching to a new engine or taking any risks with something new they aren't already intimately familiar with and what they do release comes packaged with classic Bethesda jank.
What is quite sad (and telling about modern times) listening to this review / opinion, is how many times you feel a need to "soften" your opinion. "I don't hate it", "im happy if you enjoy it", "I want the best for Bethesda" etc. Some time ago, one could present their opinion, and these notions were... kind of obvious, we didnt need to remind everyone that we respect other opinions or we are not criticising out of malign intent. But nowadays, stuck between the hammer of aggressive grifters and the anvil of psychofans, i understand the need. But also, listening to recent interviews with Tod or with Emil - i feel this is the reason, why i dont have much hope for ES6 or F5. The vibe they show is of the Russian monarchy in January 1917. They cling to the few sycophantic voices around them as a proof that their course is correct; and ignore vast criticism, attributing it to the same nihilism and toxic negativity of a vocal extreme. For me Bethesda needs a major leadership shakedown to wake up. With Todd Howard at its helm - I dont expect anything good, not anymore 😔
Was never really interested in Bethesda games for the characters. Exploring, building up your character and living in the world was always the main draw.
I wanted to love it too. I went back and started playing it to get ready for Shattered Space. For the first couple of days I was loving it again, but after getting deeper into the game, it just felt soo blehh again. Wanted to like it so bad.
Even though I enjoy Starfield and have probably played it for over 100 hours (and I haven't even finished the main story yet), I completely agree with all your criticisms. First of all, the game does feel very outdated. The only thing that suggests it's a modern game is the graphics, assets, and sound. Everything else looks like it was made in the 2000s. NPCs walking in completely random patterns and vanishing into thin air when they enter in interior; companions who don't always pretend to be doing anything when on the ship, but just stand there and stare at each other in silence; endless loadings and no sense of seamlessness; a huge number of game conventions that other developers are trying to get rid of; and, of course, the animations and almost complete lack of staging. The lack of unique animations and staging is my particular pain. My favorite example is a wedding. I thought, "wow, a whole WEDDING, it's such a significant event for my character, there definitely should be some unique cutscenes or at least a kissing scene." I fly to the wedding venue and... it's just a dialogue between three NPCs on the beach. Yes, the dialogue itself was quite cute, but there is no special cutscene, no set-up, nothing. Just regular dialogue, of which there are a millions. In the whole entire game I have counted only 3 or 4 unique animations, clearly made with mocap. And in these moments the game looked good and alive! But, unfortunately, this is very little. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the characters did not touch my soul as much as, for example, the characters of ME did. They have written stories, personalities, opinions and views. And they are voiced okey. But it seems like something is missing. Charisma? I don’t know. I've completed the personal quests of almost all the companions and spent a lot of time with them in general, but for some reason they still don't resonate with me the way that Liara alone did, for example. I have a slightly different attitude towards planet exploration. I like to explore them with TH-cam in the background. You can think of it as a form of meditation. But the fact that you very quickly start to notice repeating assets of plants, animals, landscapes and even human structures really frustrating. It lacks uniqueness. Anyway, thank you for this video, you really voiced most of my (and probably many others) criticism of this game. Let's hope Bethesda listens to it. Time will tell.
Yes, nobody expected BG3, THATS THE POINT. Bethesda never, ever actually tried to improve anything. They thought they were already the best, listen to any interview and they'll say it with their chests. And they never grew out of it. And when a competitor showed up, as they INEVITABLY do, of course the complacent Bethesda couldn't compete. They were the best... about two decades too late now.
I felt like Shattered Space was so much of what I’d already seen in the base game that after the pathetic initiation cave and duel “side quest” I decided to put the game down. I don’t see myself putting any more time into the game.
A nice example of constructive criticism, by someone who, like me, played Bethesda's games since Morrowind. Now THIS - not haters nor white knights - is what Bethesda needs! Subscribed.
Your not wrong BGS is resting on there behinds back in 2011 they were on top. Because they went all in. 13 years later they still think there on top, and still living in the glory days and worst of all they are acting like they no best. I love playing Starfield I've got about 1000 hours in on the game so far. But, you are correct Starfield doesn't have it, like Skyrim did. Because they didn't go all in they just did the bare minimum. And for me the biggest fail is the back story and the lore it's about 5% of what we got with Skyrim. Skyrim had way more writers then Starfield has. In Starfields credits there is only one writer listed. Which kind of explains why the 4 main companies dialog is pretty much the same. Like I said earlier they only did the bare minimum, there still living in the glory days. The more writers the better, assign one to each of the main NPC's in the game and you will see a marked difference in the dialog. I think I've gone on long enough this is just an old man's rant for the day. Enjoy.
One thing I'll say about Starfield; it's made me excited to finally break out of my Bethes-tard rut and try some new games. Have fun with TES6, guys; I'll just be over there playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Thank you, that was well said. Your words represent many players like me who are fans, and want to love the game, but it fell short. I appreciate your candor without the rage bait as you put it, and I really hope that Bethesda listens to voices like yours. A game with a great story, deep lore, and rich characters create an interactive world that you can easily be immersed in, which Starfield has the potential to do, but is lacking.
Couldn’t agree more. The magic, the exploration, the immersion, what you want from Bethesda wasn’t there. Instead we got them trying a bunch of new stuff that they weren’t very good at.
"Larian came out of no where...." Maybe you should try "Divinity: Original Sin," if BG3 is Larian's Skyrim, D:OS is their Morrowind (in the sense that it was the begging of what became their current formula).
DOS was a good game but far away from the success like all other RPG hits. I even play games like Pathfinder, BG3, Pillars of Eternity, Rogue Trader - DOS dont give me the fun.
@@gheeddeschain9638 Well, Original Sin does in some ways feel like as much of a strategy game as an RPG. It was my first real CRPG though (before that I'd only played table-top and first person RPGs), and from I gather also the point when Larian moved away from real-time single character in favor of party and turn based. Then I'm an old DM from the 80s who refused to call any videogame an RPG until the 2010s, and one too poor to buy many games, so my experience with RPG videogames in general is limited. I was impressed with Original Sin enough to play it through twice, though.
This is fair criticism. I'm only about 20 hours in but it does feel old, I think you're spot on, a lot could be overlooked if they had filled this game to the brim with deeply written motion captured characters.
I use fanfiction to determine how much of a cultural impact in fandom any particular piece of media has. Let's compare a random Baldur's Gate 3 character (Shadowheart) to a random Starfield character (Sarah Morgan) and see how many works are tagged in AO3. Shadowheart has 8528 entries. Sarah Morgan has 150. This is dire.
Feels like Bethesda is afraid to hire competent writers. Look at Fallout 3 and quests like blowing up Megaton or little Big Town or Reilley’s rangers. Or finding a uniquely named weapon or helping the kid with the ants and getting a new perk. Or the wasteland quest that takes you all over the map. Those rewards were fulfilling. Bethesda needs to adapt the approach “Quality over Quantity”.
all good points, I agree. the comparison to Mass Effect makes me want to replay the trilogy, what an awesome series. FemShep's voice actress was so good
The scariest comment comes from Bethesda itself. According to X, the game writer said "Starfield is the best game we ever made". At that point my worries for ES6 was confirmed.
It's BGS game, it's exactly what everyone SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED, anyone thinking otherwise just doesn't get it and are expecting BGS to completely overhaul their formula and to completely replace the easily modifiable Creation Engine and the one that their modders are MOST FAMILIAR with. The loading screens have nothing to do with the Creation Engine, it's just how they make the cells...I'm pretty sure that the number of loading screens can be easily reduced.
Bethesda won't "bounce back" from Starfield, because they don't recognize the need to "bounce back". They (at least their lead writer) believe that Starfield is the best game they have ever made. That's not something somebody who is willing to take criticism on board would say.
I wasn't thinking about the extra content as much as I was hoping for bug issues to be solved. No body has commented on the nice improvements to the game overall and we got a little extra story progression to boot. Well done, Bethesda. Looking forward to future updates.
Some of yall are really upset about me saying Larian showed up out of no where and yes! They did. No one was expecting BG3 to be what it was, even during early access. So yes people were expecting a great game, not a revolutionary one I think that's pretty obvious and a silly thing to argue about lol
Also yes I know i should have said stood i didn't feel like editing it because I'm lazy, cry about it
Silly indeed. Honestly, I've felt this way about Bethesda for a while now. I've increasingly been *trying* to like what they made rather than organically loving it, to the point where I didn't even think about Starfield. Rather than Mass Effect or the next Bethesda project, I'm just so much more interested to see what Big Indie is doing, so to speak--the ex-Bethesda devs making Wayward Realms, the ex-Bioware devs making Exodus... and of course, whatever Larian makes next. I hope Veilguard will wow me, but I don't trust any AAA anymore. I've been waiting for a good vampire RPG of any variety ever since Bloodlines, and the field is still so utterly barren. Crossing my fingers for Big Indie to take over the world.
Except that BG3 is not revolutionary in any way, unless you consider having good graphics and motion capture is a revolution for crpgs, as this is the thing that actually made it succesful.
I will say one thing, and that is that Baldurs Gate 3 is Divinity Original Sin 2 on Stereoids. So there was a precedent for Baldurs Gate being amazing, but nobody could have dxpected it to be THIS good.
One thing that I think is really pertinent about Larian is that their previous DOS games were excellent, but they had absolutely zero cinematic dialogue scenes.
So they went from having no experience with RPG cinematics, to having the best in the business.
I think Bethesda had an opportunity to do something similar with starfield but totally flubbed it.
Starfield was supposed to have really deep space exploration elements in it, and Bethesda had an opportunity to really elevate the space exploration genre. But instead, the space exploration feels like a tacked on minigame
@@Creslin321 if by the "the best in the business" you mean crpgs, yeah. Otherwise they are not even close.
The senior team (Todd, Emil, etc.) did not originally create either Elder Scrolls or Fallout. Todd inherited Elder Scrolls when the original senior team left Bethesda after Daggerfall, and Bethesda acquired Fallout when Interplay went bankrupt. Todd and team had enormous success that speaks for itself building upon the worlds they inherited, but they did not lay the foundation. This was their chance to show their chops at world building from the ground up, and . . . they are just not good at it.
This all of this.
What a weird dishonest way to discredit him as if under his leadship we didn't get Fallout 3 and Elder Scroll Skyrim when he was Game Director and if Official Modding Community didn't create the company would've been lost to relevancy long time ago.We remember his failure in Fallout76 but we forget Elder Scroll Online which worked phenomenal If you hate him as a person or don't like his work that's fair but don't lie or discredit his achievements just because you hate his last Work he's not Neil Drunkman 😂 who steal other work and lay on it for a decade and abusing his critics.
@@MrApoorvaSingh753 Plus Fallout 76 is actually good and has been for sometime now.
@@Vonkepplers Yes but I didn't forget the disaster it has on launch from buggy unplayable mess to duffle bag travesty 😂 they learned their lesson made it good they gone nearly bankrupt it took Microsoft to bought Zenamax for Fallout 76 to survive.
@MrApoorvaSingh753 Some successes doesn't mean he's the next Steve Jobs. Bethesda lacks consistency and with each new release it gets more water downed, more bugs and jumbled. And they know this, Todd managed with skyrim and Fo3 because a lot of people who worked their knew what they were doing and the studio was much smaller. Now it's too big for its own good and it shows.
I dropped the game when my wedding with Sarah Morgan was just us and another npc just standing in a beach lol
You can invite her parents but not yours if you pick the Kidstuff trait. What an immersion breaking oversight. Your parents show up to so much random and unimportant stuff that is supposed to feel like a coincidence as if you ran into them traveling in the same city you both live in but you’re on whole other planets in whole other star systems… oh look my parents are on Akila, oh look my parents are on Neon, oh look my parents aren’t at my wedding… just kidding that makes sense because Bethesda gave me no dialogue options to invite them!…
At least in Skyrim, NPC's that you've done work for it paid the services of will show up to your wedding. Even if you're only a few hours into the main quest, there's a good chance that Balgruuf will arrive. It may be a paper-thin veneer of immersion, but at least the effort was made.
Starfield frustrated me so much because it felt like every time there was an opportunity for something unique or even just interesting to happen, Bethesda decided to run as far as possible in the opposite direction. And as far as companions are concerned, Fallout 4 had way more interesting, varied companions than Starfield, Starfield is actually such a step backwards and that's crazy. Fo4 released in 2015! Companion writing should have gotten better, not worse. I truly don't understand what happened here
Heart of Mars is my favorite example of the lowest quality content that Bethesda allows into the game for some reason. Quest giver was so excited about this thing, I thought it would be something more than just a rock, but it ends up just being a rock in a cave to sell. And ironically it is one of the most commonly bugged quest out there, despite its simplicity and shortness.
I've not really liked Bethesda games since FO3 (not counting NV because it wasn't them) although I liked FO4 on a first run but with this specifically I just couldn't help but think how Mass Effect 1 did everything better apart from obviously Starfield ship building and Mass Effect came out in 2007 or something. I've said it before but I'm convinced Todd and the rest of the people high up haven't played a video game since 2010. I genuinely believe they still think they're at the forefront of open world RPGs. I'm convinced he's never played The Witcher, Cyberpunk, BG3, Mass Effect, a Dragon Age, Dragons Dogma. Even Deus Ex and stuff does certain things better and that's another old one.
I still think it was a missed opportunity to not have any aliens in Starfield
That's how I felt almost every quest had that feeling it's annoying and made me drop the game
I have a theory. Maybe they just didn’t put much into this game. Maybe they never intended for it to be great… maybe it’s just a money grab, a side project that only a few people worked on while the bulk of the studio continues on the main mission which is ES6
Here comes the wall.
Probably the worst thing about this is that the same happened back in 2015 when Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 released about 6 months apart, and Bethesda didn't really improve or learned some obvious lessons from back then. Fallout 4 also did try to go for more characterization, voiced protag and more cinematic look for dialogs, but it was received very poorly because Bethesda often stops half-way into thinking through their designs. Their writing in general feels like it is completely disconnected to the level design or other forms of presentation. The entire philosphy often looks like "best-effort assumption of what writing can be in this particular place" instead of just getting people together to make something coherent.
Not to mention this constant tug-of-war when Bethesda wants player to be unburdened with any sort of complex decision making, while sometimes offering solid characters that have some complexity to them to explore. I remember a comment from a friend once that Bethesda wants to be Bioware sometimes, but they never really understood how to do it, and some character end up being palatable almost accidentally.
The other major pitfall is that Bethesda insists on making player a chosen one (I guess they still can't get rid of Oblivion trauma) , while the rest of the world doesn't really adjust to that. This gap between what are you supposed to be vs your actual place in the world is something they still cannot bridge. They don't even give enough time for you to accept your role as someone or even buy into it, because they keep shortcutting your "ascension" to some imporant status with every game. Not even 10 min into the Starfield, and you already get a ship and a robot and unwarranted trust from other characters.
It also doesnt help when the protagonist's writing is done in a way that they are almost a complete newcomer to the world, which leads to a ton of just stupid moments of "tell me everything about the government under which I was supposedly living for years". Which one do you want me to be, Todd? A faceless avatar, or a character, or a dress up doll, or a chosen one, or what?
Bethesda games are so player-centric, this creates this almost a tunnel vision that entire world exists to serve the player only. NPCs are barely interacting with each other, and if they do, it is some contextless nonsense that often happens just once. People were complaining about lack of NPC schedules, but it was not only because those systems were a staple for games like Bethesda's, but also because it is one of the basic tools that ensures authenthicity of the world and helps people to get immersed just a little bit better. It is already difficult to suppress your disbelief in Bethesda games, but they are indirectly insisting with their design decisions that people don't need those systems and those things, they need more god damn LEGO aka ship building and such. I like LEGO, but c'mon. It is just funny that the ship building and housing are the things that end up with the better fidelity, while the rest of the game is lacking a follow-up.
The way they prioritize their features is just weird. This is not a direction, it is exactly the lack of a proper grip on things. And with players already having barely any agency or place in the world, you can't even do something basic as dress up as you see fit because they will most likely spend time making realistic scans of various food items than add more equipment slots.
PS: I fully expect TES6 to have magic schools removed and introduced with magical everything-soup "where you can do anything".
Ugh yes, what is it with Bethesda and their insistence on making me a "chosen one?" When I was playing Starfield last year, I remember ranting at my husband that I didn't want to be Space Jesus! I just want to explore and find cool stuff and maybe build a neat base and go on some adventures with my friends. I liked the chosen one narrative better in Skyrim - maybe it works better for me in fantasy than sci-fi? - but here I just found it obnoxious.
You make a good point, I felt like with Fo4 they tried to add a sandbox but to a game that is an RPG. But they only half baked everything and hope it all meshed together. Bg 3 despite being a different game, really pulled the third person cinematic convo that fo4 was trying to pull but without a voice protag (though they did consider it).
Funny thing, you are supposed to be The Chosen One, yet every single peasant disrespects you all the time for seemingly no reason.
As if random people in real life randomly insult others while walking for no reason.
@@carlosleyva-calistenia6400 Yeah, the insults or dismissive behavior or witty remarks about your character stats even from the regular guards is one of the simpliest way to provide some reactivity to your actions, but this is just exhausting and feels so old. Instead of the world that has its own pace and rules, it is just player-facing mirrors that reflect you and only you.
Fallout 4 is my favorite game from them.. I know it wasn't what everyone wanted but I still to this day love it so so so much, it was my personal 10/10 but of course it could always be better.. everything after that though was downhill..
My reaction to playing Starfield really was the parent going "I'm not mad, just disappointed". I wanted to love it so much but now I'm side-eyeing TES VI which I hate to say.
Same we can only hope for now until they start sharing screen shots and gameplay.
In a thousand years 😅
This may be good for ES6.. cause now everyone’s expectations for it have been significantly lowered…. This is one of the main issues Starfield had.. everyone was expecting “Space Skyrim” and it didn’t come close to delivering
TES6 Will be like Starfield.
@@martinjrgensen8234 hopefully not but, hey we still have like a decade left to wait 😭
I’ve accepted that it’ll be notably worse than Starfield at this point. Bethesda has lost their touch and I can finally understand why they’ve been so hesitant to release ESVI. They know it’ll flop.
The writing is just boring and doesn't hold up when compared to other games. Worse, the lore is uninteresting.
Yah! Which I find so weird for a game that was seemingly (originally anyway) focused on hard sci-fi and a realistic sense of our future history. It felt like there was a ton of potential.
Yeah, the animation is stiff sure, but I don't think that would matter if the writing itself was compelling. Starfield's issue is more that its world and characters feel weirdly... sterile? I don't know if there was a crackdown from higher-ups trying to appeal to a wider audience, or if they just didn't have a strong enough sense of direction to make something more distinct, but it feels like whatever personality the setting might have had was sandblasted down for inoffensively bland mass marketing.
I 100% agree with this… I want so badly to like this game but I just can’t get immersed in it. Even more than the issues with exploration or loading screens, the writing and lore is a far bigger issue in my opinion.
@@YorkJonhson sterile is a great word! one thing i wanna add tho is i don't think you end up at sterile indistinct stuff by aiming for diverse appeal, plus good mass marketing is exciting and entertaining. defo feels like a lack of clear and distinct direction, for sure
@@nickohhh Yeah, that's fair. I guess I'm just thinking of Bethesda's past games or similar sci-fi set-ups, and feel like Starfield lacks the themes or risks that made those sort of games memorable. And one of the easiest possible explanations for that is that higher-ups didn't want to push the envelope with anything and risk driving off newcomers for a new IP.
So it doesn't have Fallout's satire, over-the-top violence or fantastical questlines. It doesn't have Mass Effect's alien companions, cultures, or emphasis on branching moral choices. It doesn't have Cyberpunk's cinematography or cynical dystopian edge. Heck, Neon is supposed to be Starfield's hive of sleazy debauchery and there isn't so much as a character with a bare midriff. It does have impressive ship building, and the hard sci-fi NASA aesthetic is unique for what it's worth, but it isn't enough to carry the whole setting for me personally.
Innovate or die. Bethesda has been banking on their old cred the same way Blizzard has, but even more desperately clinging to the nostalgia of their old successes. The fact of the matter is that the old guard of most of these studios have either retired, burned out, or left the industry entirely due to how toxic and rotted out the major publishers have become. The studios are just names filled by a cyclical series of devs who are drawn in fresh, have no idea how the systems and concepts work, get used up like disposable cogs, and then kicked when the quarterly profit margins are in danger so the executives and shareholders don't take a hit. It's a series of symptoms linked to the larger problem of the industry overall.
"It plays like Skyrim in Space" IF ONLY that was true!
Skyrim gleamed brightly with it's ambience, aestetic, the music and world is just ASMR euphoria with creeks, nature and the soothing, deep music, it had a immensely cozy vibe to it.
Starfield feels like the most sterile versions of sci-fi tropes all just mushed together in a incoherent mess: Akila City is a retro-futuristic cowboy aesthetic with using such terminology such as a bar named the "Hitching post" when some consider Earth a myth, let have animals to hitch or know about horses, Neon is the most sexless, gritless cyberpunk city ever, no one to mug you, everyone being neighbourly, New Atlantis....I mean the name is the only thing distinctive about it.
Larian didn't just sneak up out of nowhere they've been here. They ascended with Divinity Original Sin 2 and with Baldur's Gate 3 pretty much cemented that they're the top dog when it comes to RPGS. I remember saying how Larian, Obsidian, CD Projekt Red and Owlcat surpassed Bethesda years ago but I'm glad people are starting to see it now. Bethesda has fallen off and I don't think ES6 is going to be what brings them back to glory
I played Larian's Divine Divinity in the early 00s and it was an excellent game. In fact, the only reason I had faith in them doing BG3 was because of how much I enjoyed Divine Divinity and Original Sin 2.
Literally nobody knows what those games are.
@@La-PetitMortI mean more casual folks probably don’t but people deeply into RPGs absolutely do, I knew of divinity way before I got deep into the RPG rabbit hole
@@La-PetitMort Larian's Divinity: Original Sin 2, aka DOS2, was at 7.5 million copies last I heard, meaning before BG3 it was the literal bestselling CRPG of all time. You being clueless to its existence doesn't mean "literally nobody knows" the game. Baldur's Gate 3 only exists because Wizards of the Coast played DOS2 and loved it. And if you don't know Wizards of the Coast, again, that's not "literally nobody knows"--you don't know. Just you.
@@La-PetitMort Why are you speaking for everybody?
Larian hires actual writers. CDPR hires writers. Bethesda has their designers do their writing. The flaws with that approach are made really apparent with Starfield.
When i think of starfield i always think of matteo design and tht someone thought hes a cool character in a serious way and gave him a baby hat 😂, how is that even possible
These comments show the real issue: the audience. I keep hearing people complain about writing, when Bethesda never built their empire on writing. Somewhere down the line, the last of us had a tremendous ripple effect, and I am witnessing it right now.
@@sagearmaggedon7307 *_All_* previous games made by Bethesda have decent writing. Exploration is useless and nonsensical if it isn't backed by a good storyline and Starfield has none of that.
@@rosesareredbutzerglingssti9290 the game isnt about exploration either sadly. This is not skyrim or fallout in space, its something different entirely. As for the writing, I found some things in Starfield far more advanced than their previous works.
@@sagearmaggedon7307 Starfield *_IS_* about exploration and discovery. But that element, like everything else in that game, was badly implemented.
The thing that killed this game for me was when I tried to fly to a planet and realizing I was not getting closer and had to teleport there. I wanted to fly my ship around, to go somewhere, not just teleport from point A to point B and then from there to C.
That one was a big one for me too. Only game I know that did this very well was No Man's Sky. You'd take off, you'd enter the atmosphere, then soon you were in space. There's a real thrill to see the transitions. But they decided to skip that whole part, which felt so dated. Like come on, we already know how good space travel can be in a modern game, yet you cut corners on that part? Didn't make sense.
@@azurespot8277 Star Wars Galaxies, just before being shuttered by SOE, had an actual ship flight system where you could take off, land and travel between planets.😊
For me it was after I encountered the very same raider lair everywhere. It felt like there were only two or three NPC locations that randomly spawned all over the place. The game felt so coporate and soulless.
@@strange144 Literally the second science facility I entered had the same layout as the first, the whole game is just copy pasted assets on different colored planets and this was Todd's "dream game".
Yeah, I felt this one too. The joy in previous Bethesda games was to just point yourself in a direction and go, and to feel like a fully-realized universe is around you. I understand that space presents some pretty big challenges with this, but if you can't do a space game that plays to your strengths, then maybe it isn't the best setting for you.
Emil Pagliarulo in a recent article said that he thinks Starfield is the best game they have ever made. TES 6 is dead. By saying that Emil has just confirmed that TES 6 is going to be just as statrfield. Procgenned, efortless, Boring SLOG
I had to force myself to finish the last hour of this new DLC, and finally I cleared this game off my SSD.
To be fair, he said he thought it was 'in some ways' the best game they've ever made and the context made it fairly clear he meant that in terms of the technical aspects of the game. Obviously Starfield isn't very technically impressive, but I guess it is probably their most 'advanced' game.
it didn't make for great reading did it!
@@cerdic6305I don't think the procgen is really the problem, the problem really is how it is applied.
For example, the procgen of No Man's Sky is well applied, it's not perfect, but you only start to notice after some hundred hours, and even then you still can be surprised with just the procgen of NMS.
One example of this is how terrain and is generated in NMS...
How much cave models Starfield has? One? Two?
In NMS every single cave is UNIQUE.
Theres channels here on TH-cam dedicated solely to speleology in NMS..
And that's just one of the ways NMS procgen tech does great.
Unfortunately Bethesda can't apply the same tech in their outdated engine.
Gamers saying that a game required no effort or had none put into it because they didn't like it will always astonish me. Most gamers couldn't even make a quarter of what Bethesda has even with their wants and apparent effort that Bethesda seemingly doesn't put into their massive RPGs.
StarField was anything but effortless and passionless. Arguing otherwise is just being a bias and ignorant fool.
@@channel45853 "most gamers can't make a quarter of what Bethesda does..."
Gamers only play games, they are the ones who will measure how fun and enjoyable a game is, the role of a gamers isn't make games, is play them and pass feedback if they feel the need. Not all gamers are devs, but some are AND some even managed to pull off better games than Starfield, one who cames to mind is Spacebourne 2 from a turkish solo dev.
You have more patience than I, friend. I think I managed to log about seventy hours into Starfield before I uninstalled it. That's coming from a 39 y/o gamer with numerous BGS titles under my belt from Morrowind to FO3. I was hyped like you because I thought "BGS space game? oooo shiny" and it wasn't shiny :(
Me too! I'm 32 I tried twice and got about 40h in and tghen called it quits. It's just so damn boring. I don't care about any of the people. It all falls flat.
Im about 30 and I spent maybe 40 hours. That’s all I could tolerate
Same, the game gets worse the longer you play it
I'm 60, have been playing games for over 30 years and I have approximately 1220 hours in Starfield, that compares to the 1215 hours in FO4, the 800+ hours in Skyrim(a game in which I never even finished the main story). The problem with most people is overhyping themselves and expecting the game(s) to be more than what is being offered. I play Larian games and expect a certain style, I play a game from CD Projekt and expect a certain style, same with Obsidian, inXile and Owlcat and I NEVER compare those games to each other because each studio has it's own strength and weaknesses and none of them make the same style, other than being in the overall RPG genre(each is nuanced in my opinion). The thing is all of these comments are INDIVIDUALS OPINIONS, and everyone is entitled to their opinion or should be.
@@zaklex3165 I'm not sure where I said that my opinion is solid fact? Can you point to it?
Emil recently said in an interview that he considers Starfield the best Bethesda game.
They're not going to learn. With some serious removal of a lot of senior devs, expect more of the same lifeless medicrity for future DLC & Elder Scrolls 6
Todd Howard can't keep getting away with this
Todd & the writers should be fired imo
@@jungtothehuimang I don't think so. I think they just need to listen to respectful criticism. Not haters, not rage baiters, but fans who were disappointed and can speak about it like Kala or Mr Matty or others who have criticism that is productive and genuine.
That dude is tuck in the past, he thinks the way he makes games have charm, and maybe they did early on, but that charm has dissolved into puddle of musty crud. They're like that guy in high school with a mullet and Camaro who hasn't changed in 25 years.
@@julilla1 they haven't really shown any willingness to do so or to change, they only seem to have dollar symbols in their minds
@@jungtothehuimang everyone works for money, the problem is that companies like Bethesda invest just the bare minimum in their product, charge full price and expect modders to fix and add everything else for free. And people keep paying for a mid videogame at best that needs a shitton of mods to be entertaining, reminds me to people buying the 585 (and counting) stupid Sims 4 DLC's with just few ugly clothes and hairs, or games like fifa every year...
I’m not gonna lie, but I was expecting Starfield to be a better version of Mass Effect Andromeda. It probably would’ve been a massive success if it went off of MEA’s bones imo
I was kind of hoping for some cool alien people to talk to, and at least NPC systems at least on par with Skyrim. Somehow just felt worse in all fronts.... Graphics did not feel updated enough, it did not need to be Unreal burn the GPU down levels... but the game no joke I have to open the nVidia Control Panal just like Skyrim just to mess with resolutions is outrageous! Messing with INI files just to get it working right like back in the day... Like none of that should be a thing.... played it and just felt disapointed coming from a BGS fan....
@@arcadeportal32 As a BioWare fan, they’ve really set the bar high for me as an RPG player and fan. So whenever I play a new RPG I have an expectation based off of my BioWare & CDPR experiences that the story, companions, and cutscenes will be a certain way. Starfield was beyond disappointing
@@Nubii0_23 I think mods in Skyrim spoiled me as well, so used to the very good and quality NPC mods like Inigo, or Khajit will Follow and the NPC system from Skyrim or even Oblivion then played Starfield and it just felt like a big step down. Maybe also it follows the Fallout 4 format vs ES that probably tore me away as well. Not a massive fan of Fallout 4 but at least it got me hooked enough to play through the main quest 3 or 4 times vs Starfield that I struggled just to want to finish to the end.
ME:A is also a better game than Starfield, even with its flaws. It's why I'm so sad that ME:A never got supported further and we never got the DLC it deserved which may well have helped the game improve even more.
Yet I think even with how bad Starfield is, people will ultimately play it more than ME:A.
Those who paid attention to MEA's development know that the game also was supposed to have 70 or so rng planets as well. Funny, how Bioware in the end realized it was a stupid idea, but Bethesa thought putting a thousand of rng planets was a good idea.
Starfield is the game that peaked in high-school.
wow that is scary accurate lmao
Was Starfield in the chess club?
"Who's laughing now?"
Starfield could have benefitted from any of these:
Starting with the evacuation of Earth
Taking place during any of the wars
Aliens
Fewer worlds, curated content...but Shattered Space makes me think they're incapable
Uses for the ships you build
Choices that matter
More meaningful companions
No Unity and freaking stupid jumping universes. Fix this one.
More meaningful exploration...instead of just abandoned human buildings with copy/paste enemies.
It reeks of AI involvement. Badly used AI.
The random citizens are all procedurally generated and don't react like those in Skyrim.
It's like all of it was just AI created which is what Microsoft said they'd be going to.
I get the same read. Anything a human cant be bothered to make I cant be bothered to interact with.
yea the mediocre quality of Starfield coupled with some of the more vocal parts of the dev team actively resisting criticism back when it launched has me extremely pessimistic for TES6.
Hopefully the negative reviews wake them up.
ES6 is looking pretty grim. I wonder what 'prisoner' entrance they will use this time...
oh yeah i forgot about that!
My main criticism is the writing and mission design. I’m willing to look past a lot if those two are solid. It felt like there was no lore, world building or literary rigor. And so much repetitive gameplay.
I don't want to hate Starfield or see Bethesda close. I do want to see Todd finally shown the door.
I feel the same way as you. Bethesda can't make a generational leap until Peter Pan moves on.
Emil, the writing director, should go as well. He stated BGS hasn't used a design document since Oblivion and that's no way to make a product, least of all large and complex games that take almost a decade to make.
@@ivoryowl because they use "design wiki" or so he said but he is just not a very good writer and designer and he is essentially the main guy at Bethesda when it comes to game development.
@@ivoryowl This guy should definitely be fired. If there is anything that I disliked most in this game - it's the writing. Like pretty much all Bethesda's games didn't shine in this department, but in Starfield it's just terrible.
@@ivoryowlimho as long as he's in charge of the writing, there won't be another good Bethesda game
There was an GDC with the lead designer Will Shen. In that GDC he talked about how Bethesda evolved in terms of cooperation with other departments. But in that talk he showed that why Starfield is the way it is was due to a massive breakdown of communication. They had too many people and couldn't coordinate it well enough. They also didn't have a unified vision. Worst of all the final mission in the base game was not finished and the game was to launch soon.
All of that is why Starfield feels so dated. It had to be for the developers to get any work down because they had so many issues. That doesn't excuse the problems Starfield has but I think it is interesting to know why it ended up the way it did.
The only other thing I want to say is that I think Starfield's problem isn't that it isn't innovative. It is that it doesn't succeed at what it set out to do. I also just one to say that the issue with the Creation Engine is that its a bad engine. Its that Bethesda doesn't use it or respect it properly. If they switched to another engine they would still run into the same problems as before.
This was a pattern quite a few have observed for a while. Skyrim, while a fun game by its own right, has seriously cut down on a lot of elements that made prior games unique and engaging. The lore, worldbuilding, and characterization was seriously lacking, but the gameplay loop was fun enough. FO4 was a step further, it became a looter shooter with a fallout coat of paint. It had even worse lore and worldbuilding, and the story had moments that were legitimately stupid. Character choice was so simplified compared to prior titles that it felt that no thought was put into their own story.
Modern Bethesda has cut down so many aspects of their game to streamline their "gameplay loop" that they forgot how to make an actual engaging game. This honestly makes me believe that Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be the most mediocre game they are going to make. At least a bad game will be laughed at and memed about, but a mediocre game will be forgotten by most.
I played fallout 4 and starfield but honestly starfield is better
I think their biggest issue is that they know modders will pick up their slack and so they create games with the intention of them being modded. The gameplay, story, charactrrs, and even the engine are so incredibly stagnant, tired, and old.
The trap is that modders don’t put the work into games that they don’t already find fun.
@@rhylin26 that's why the hole Bethesda is digging for themselves will keep getting deeper if they don't commit to making actually innovative, fun, new games. From soft games are all similar but different enough to feel like their own thing. Even DA games reinvent the wheel with each game. Bethesda just needs to pull their heads out of the butts.
Honestly don't think that's the case. If it were, the modding tools would have been released with the game, not 10 months after. Plus they have statistics on how many people actually use mods and it's less than third.
@@tanna_k yes they have been using the same outdated engine with no willingness to innovate or change because the engine they're on is easiest for modders to use. it's just frustrating that they have shown no willingness to update their gameplay or story model in like 20 years. if it's not due to them wanting modders to carry the community forward then I can only assume it is laziness.
@@jungtothehuimang The idea of releasing a game with no mod support for its first *10 months* and expecting modders to come fix it for you is nonsense.
I'd wager they stayed with Creation Engine because it's easiest for _them_ to use, the same reason all other devs stick to the engines they use. As someone who's actually worked on a game (though not professionally) I think the bethesda community has a very unhealthy obsession with blaming the engine for stuff it has little to do with. I do think they should have gone further with the upgrades they made for Starfield, but that's far from the game's biggest problem. They could have made a great game on this engine, but they failed hard with both game design and writing. If they hadn't, there wouldn't be as much of a conversation about engine.
One name, Pagliarulo, the writer with skills comparable to the founder of scientology is the sole writer for Bethesda and he is the biggest negative the studio has, no joke.
At the very least, BGS needs to employ dedicated writers. Quests designers are NOT the same thing, and are NOT a viable substitute.
The NPCs in Bethesda games often feel very robot-like
This company has been needing more, and better writers for decades now. Their environmental artists ,and designers are f*cking top tier. The need for professional writing is on display throughout the past few tittles.
You speak from my soul, that's how I feel about this game. It feels old-fashioned and dusty. I have no interest whatsoever in my companions and the so-called relationships.
Bethesda has no passion or real talent left. I think they lost most of it already with Fallout 4, they won't change either, they wouldn't even know how, that's how stuck they are.
I'm still hoping for exodus 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Same here, I even have more hype since the Archimedes engines book released!
The what? @BjornCadwell
Ol' school hype in me for this one too, Drew Karpyshyn being my main reason.
Me too. My radar is tuned in on it.
Starfield it's so bare bones that you can't even compare with games like BG3 or Cyperpunk 2077/Phantom Liberty. It's not even that Stanfield is horrible but everything is so basic and diluted in a galaxy seized procedurally generated game that you can't really compare.
I hope this is a wake up moment for Bethesda because if they don't deliver on TES6 that can be a do or die moment for the studio. They need to come back with the bold design of Morrowind and Oblivion, like the Crazy NPC work of oblivon was impressive for the time and they simply dropped it in future games, they need to try that type of innovation again.
I really love Starfield, but their games do need a new direction. I do believe that people overvalue engines, I really don't believe the creation engine is the reason the game feels dated, I think that feeling really just comes from the direction. They do want to stick to their lane, which I respect, but they really need to evolve.
Engine is definitely a problem here. Or rather I guess the complacent way they use it is the issue. Cause you’re right, there’s no reason they COULDNT change creation engine to get rid of the weird dead eyes or finally change the sleep animation or give NPC actual idling. They could probably even figure out how to turn those black cutscene doors into the rendered hallway experience of modern games. Lots of studios have proprietary engines & it’s fine.
But they won’t, that’s not what they do. They don’t push the technical envelope or advance systems and they literally never have. So the way for them to actually improve the myriad of borked technical issues is to start using Unity or something. The sooner the better.
From what i've heard the biggest problem at Bethesda is Todd Howard himself. Apparently he puts his devs on the project, then walks in at a later stage, shits on everything, and then he just walks out again. But again,it's a rumour i've heard.Can't actually verify it's legitimacy.
bethesda is listening, remember when they told everyone they were wrong about starfield being boring? don't get your hopes up for ES6.
"Larian showed up out of nowhere" is an absolutely crazy statement to make...
I feel very much like you did. I played BG3 and went right into Starfield and I just couldn't play as much as I really had wanted to. I kept waiting to be sucked in and I just wasn't. My player character literally looked like my Dovaahkin, why? They need to update that engine. I wanted Skyrim in space, I wanted a reason to go explore and it just wasn't there. I decided to just not play it and wait awhile and see if perhaps later on, I might be more receptive to it. Perhaps after some updates and tightening up, I'll jump into it and love it.
I have over 200 hours in this game and I agree. While I overall like the gameplay loop, the games characters and story just feels flat?
For me the game feels modern but it’s the story and characters that feel super dated and how you interact with the world with them. I can tell you so much about characters in Skyrim, fallout 3 4 and new Vegas and the issue is that starfield characters don’t have personality. The motion capture would be nice but that’s not gonna improve much of what’s wrong with the game. The game needed a soul and the writers just didn’t care
Thanks for the shout out to us non-modders! Some assembly required belongs to cheap furniture, not AAA priced games.
I think Kala misrepresented Bethesda and the modding community there, just a bit: I do not think Bethesda gave any thought to what modders could do with the vast empty spaces, I think they were just pleased that whole maps could generate themselves, regardless of how empty they are, and it's only modders that can do something to add any interest to them.
By hour 4 in Starfield I had used ~ to console in credits because I simply was not going to play another Bethesda game where the in universe equivalent of Walmart carries approximately 12 dollars on hand for purchases.
I should have quit the game then, the fact that playing was unbearable in the out-of-box state shoulda really clued me in more than it did.
Worst part of the creation engine is it runs like an absolute joke. I've got a 3070 and can happily run Cyberpunk at 1440p/60fps but I had to pull all the graphics down close to minimum to even get 1080/30fps (and this is really 720p with DLSS) for a game that looks a full generation behind.
I cannot stand Starfield's facial animations!! I feel like you can see the engine picking and choosing the facial animations. Like "oh the character is fluctuating their voice so trigger the raised eyebrows expression." More than anything, the stiff character animations make Starfield feel soulless (imo). They feel like robots.
the fact that ES6 is going to be on that same game engine means its already over.
I want Starfield to be great in the same way I wanted No Man's Sky to be great (and it eventually was). Long before the game came out, I had even considered buying an Xbox Series S for it. Unfortunately, I think Starfield is going to fade into irrelevance over the next year or so unless they bring out a second DLC that knocks everybody's socks off. As things stand, I'll probably never play Starfield. There are just too many games out there that are way more worthwhile.
I think you're exactly right about the Creation Engine. It makes Starfield look old, as though an Xbox 360 game was remastered for Xbox Series consoles but they neglected to sufficiently update the character models and animations.
i started starfield, thankfully for free on gamepass, and it just made me want to play Mass Effect, so i went and did that instead.
My favorite thing is building ships, but there’s nothing that highlights that.
I would love scenarios that require more specialized designs. Such as space races or fight simulators.
Trade routes that use my own ships would be cool too; having to balance speed, range, and cargo capacity versus operating costs.
You can tell the bones for a heavy space sim were there, but they got scared and now we have what we have.
The space content is little more than a tacked on shooting gallery. Building a ship is a nigh on pointless endeavor
It is like that with every single system. Base building could have been something special, building up actual colonies on planets. But no.
I am an older BGS fan who loved Morriwind, this whole Starfield drama feel like Deja Vu, but it's actually not, that were a lot of fans stopped loving Bethesda back in the days of Oblivion, lets just say that exploring a generic tomb / cave was not a comparison to exploring a Daedric/ Dwemer Ruin.
I am looking at Starfield right now, the planets looks plain, in general there seems to be a terrible lack of imagination. Earth has Mariana Trench, Mars has Olympus Mons, with base to peak measurement of 22km, there are Lava planets, there are water planets, they can do some crazy and weird geometry to give the player a sense of exploration, like Stalker: Call of Pripyat, the player has Jetpacks, why not have places that expand vertically upward instead of just flat plains? What sort of Aliens and weird civilizations can you find at these places? How about a hidden nation of people that lives underground? Or aquantic life forms that doesn't speak English? This game has so much potential, I can only sign...
YES! You hit the nail on the head on exactly what is Bethesda's problem. They act like Skyrim came out a few years ago and no one else is making RPGs, only them. They refuse to look at their contemporaries and continually seek to recapture past glory without any realization as to what made Skyrim amazing in the first place. Skyrim was the first of its kind a massive RPG set in a living breathing world that felt alive which was a novelty in 2011, not so much anymore. A Dev from Bethesda came out in some article the other week saying Bethesda is worried they can neither match nor recapture the magic of Skyrim for the Elder Scrolls 6 whenever nobody wants Skyrim 2. We want an innovation to the series and proof that Bethesda still has the ability to create amazing RPGs. They need to forget and move past Skyrim in order to create something innovative. Bring back actual RPG elements, skills, classes, more races and subraces, make actual consequences and gameplay features based around your characters race and class. Let your players actually be who they want to be. If i want to be the bad guy, let me. The biggest difference between Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield is present in the two games character creation. Baldur's Gate asks, "Who are you?" At the beginning of every game and your race and class plays a huge impact on the entire game, choosing to play as a Drow will have a very different experience than playing as a human. While in Starfield's case the game should ask you "Who were you before you became Constellation's errand boy." Because thats all it will ever acknowledge you as. Want to be a feared crimson fleet pirate with a million credit bounty on your head, too bad! Nobody will ever acknowledge that choice and the game will harrass you until you finally give yourself up and pay the fine or serve jail theres no way around it. You get my point though Bethesda needs to look outward at other games and replace that dying engine or else the spiral will continue and Elder Scrolls 6 will flop.
I was astonished at just how little I cared about ANYONE in starfield, I honestly came to HATE most of the characters who I was supposed to love,
I’ve been trying to articulate what I felt was “off” with Starfield for a year and this video did it perfectly. I would always come back to it seems like it has no personality, but you hit it on the head when you said no heart. I feel I even tried to will it into existence 200 plus hours, unlocked every achievement, but in the end just like you no matter how much I wanted to love it I really only liked it. Great video.
And that storyline! Whoever thought the Starborn and the Starborn reborn thing was a good idea really needs to rethink that.
Played Starfield. Was so hype for it. But after putting in loads of hours, I got bored. Then Phantom Liberty came out and BG3 (console) and I just never went back to Starfield.
My issues with SF are the fact that you’re given an illusion of choice and agency when there is none, the planets are copy-paste for the most part, all the companions are the same and not one morally grey companion (why be a space pirate if *all* your companions are gonna chastise you for it?), romances limited to cheesy repetitive voice lines, horrendous NPCs that bomb your screen mid-interaction, the incessant crashes and glitches, the waiting on the cut screens just by opening a door, the boring interactions with other characters, the repetitive combat situations (it’s so far into the future but the weapons seem stuck in the 21st century)…
I did download Shattered Space and I’ll check it out because it looks visually stunning but in the meantime I’m on my nth play thru of BG3 (fully evil Dark Urge). I’m no longer hype for ES6.
I'm not the person who blames Emil for every single BGS bad decision but after seeing his paper airplanes take everything made clear for me why writing is soooo disconnected in later Bethesda's games.
How can you say such a thing when there's a dosens of games being celebrated by it's narrative and characters? Fallout New Vegas was released with multiple bugs and bad performance but people CARED about world, people CARED about characters. And yet BGS learned NOTHING from this, it's baffling.
I think the main problem is that they are out of touch. And not with fans bdut with the company itself. They aren't managing it well enough with all the seperate studios and games in the works. So it feels waterdowned and lacking woth little to no strong direction to stay on course.
I just want to say how refreshing it is to see real, genuine criticism of this game. TH-cam is chock full of bandwagon haters (*cough* Luke Stephens *cough*) making clickbait videos that add literally nothing to the overall discussion on Starfield.
As for your thoughts, I 100% agree with you. I am a massive Elder Scrolls fan, and I enjoy all the modern Fallout games as well. For a long time I would have told people that Bethesda was my favorite developer. But I just cannot get into Starfield. I played about 30 hours at launch and got so disillusioned with the game after I realized how half-baked and useless so many of the mechanics were (food, crafting, and especially base building). I tried a few days ago to start fresh and make it to Shattered Space, but I lost interest after only a few hours of playtime. I have come to realize that Starfield will never have a Cyberpunk redemption arch. Cyberpunk is a great game that was unfinished at release, whereas Starfield is a mediocre game that was doomed from the get go. It is frustrating, and a little insulting, but mostly its just sad. I truly fear for Elder Scrolls 6.
Unfortunetly Bethesda's lead designer and lead writer Emil Pagliarulo is a prime example of toxic positivity and still holds the opinion that Starfield is their greatest game ever. BGS is just fundumentally broken on structural and institutional level and even an engine change wont do much when you dont have dedicated writers and your designers dont understand your players or even modern players in general. People have been criticising them since Oblivion and Fallout 3 for railroading, removing rpg mechanics and poorer and poorer writing and worldbuilding but they never listened and I doubt they will now. I have pretty much already accepted that mainline the Elder Scrolls games ended with Skyrim.
If we’re real Starfield is not at the AAA level. It’s at a mediocre AA level.
Yes, it is not AAA. And I am tired of pretending it is.
Modder here - The barren content wasn't for us, even if they say it was. We really don't like it anymore than anyone else does. Most modders I've interacted with have little to no interest in Starfield.
In my humble opinion, the writing of the game is just really below par and bland.
That's exactly how it is, in Starfield I feel very lonely because I can't do anything with the robot-like, emutionless characters and the freak NPC's
A lot of planets are lifeless. In fact I'm dying to learn how to change at least a few. I never have that issue with No Man's Sky.
Thanks Kala.
Tho I personally loved Starfield. I understand the criticism coming from fans, though I'm glad to hear your take. Although being respectful and honest, even though I don't fully agree with your take, since Bethesda isn't Bioware or CDPR. It's good of you to not rage bait or hate for the sake of it, I believe it's because, how they advertised as Skyrim/Fallout in space have them expect big open lively world to explore big mystery to unfold as we progress (instead leading one to another) and not empty Space you explore and create life which would work if they put more effort in it.
Thank you so much! And I definitely don't want to rage bait or be unfair. I think it's important to remember people who care about their work are behind these games so while we can be critical we can also be kind 🫡
But, but, the NPCs go to work every day on a schedule!
On an additional note, the emptiness and boring planets wasn't to cater to modders, it was simple laziness.
I said in another comment that I think Kala missrepresented the Bethesda/Modding community here. It's a case of Bethesda laziness, and modders being the only way to create any interest in the vast emptiness of Bethesda's 'tech leading empty landscape procedural generation'.
In starfield? They don't go anywhere, they stand 24/7
@@2138Dude I guess I hadn't noticed; funny they didn't even use the one part of their prehistoric engine they used to go on and on about for the last 20 some years lol.
I don’t think the technology is the problem, it’s the writing. Enderal and Fallout 4 used even older versions of Starfield’s engine, but their characters and stories were still far more compelling.
Thank you for sharing this. Having 60+ hours in Starfield, I can say that it feels like a theme park without stakes. There's nothing that encourages you as a player to really explore or feel like you can have an impact on the world around you. Even without the technology, The Elder Scrolls games managed to have some memorable characters. But if the stakes aren't there - if *they* don't care, why should you as the player?
Wait, didn't the moders say this game wasn't worth modding?
I understand why people criticize the engine, I do too, but we also have to consider the implications this will have in the modding scene. The creation engine being a decade old has given people time to learn its intricacies. If they swap it now, the community is going to have to re-learn everything and we're not going to have the same level of modding we do now for a while. To be honest, I just don't see newer BGS being worth the effort. If SF was quickly abandoned due to being "bad", how much more likely is it to happen if now you also have to learn a new engine?
I don't think it's the engine is the issue, the issue is Bethesda not investing enough resources to make newer versions a larger technological leap compared to previous iterations. SF is the first game using the Creation Kit 2. If we think about it, Unreal and Unity have been around for a long time, too, and they are leagues ahead of what they used to be when they launched. The only benefit of the doubt I can give Bethesda is that they are a gaming company and so it's not a priority for them to update their engine, unlike, Unreal and Unity, where that became their sole focus.
Bethesda should hire the writers and artists from Elden Ring to do world building. You don’t need to create boss battles or any of the Dark Souls mechanics but OMG each region including the underground cities were so unique and interesting. That’s what we need in a space exploration game. Unique things to explore.
This is why I'm not worried about Bioware☝🏿. Trying to change while keeping the foundation keeps one fresh & innovative. Bethesda has to change or improve their engine. Then, they have to revamp how we engage in an interactive sandbox🧐
I genuinely wonder where that 200-400 million dollar budget went towards. Probably marketing and building renovations over the course of development 😅
I waited for starfield because of '76. Played it quite a bit, had fun, but it really didn't make any sense. It wasn't easy to wait even then, because I started with Arena. Many buggy hours in Daggerfall; more,much more in Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4. Now I'm glad I waited, and, if ES6 comes out, probably won't pre-order.
They didn't ask the question, what part of this game will make you feel in awe and excited for experiencing it. Space travel is a very niche interest, people just see it as a load screen between content, like KOTOR had. I feel for ES6 they need to invest in character writing and experiences, the graphics have already peaked for environments, the first mods i install on skyrim are the interesting npcs mods
The worst is the writing, you can have the most awsome character but if the dialogues are dumb or childish or made to not offend anyone, you end up with a lifeless annoying companion.
Everything seems to have been approved by a monk living in a cave under an old monastery, Bethesda and Starfield seem to have gone a religious puritanist way where seing a naked arm is the most daring thing you can imagine. And everything is in the same mood, bland, conservative, secure and outdated, the fruit of a company driven by old guys who have lost their spirit, start to look for religion by the fear of age and death and just use old safe recipes to produce generic content.
Yeah it feels like they try to appeal to some kind of weird American Christian Conservatives for some reason. Weird puritanism and lack of fun even in games
For comparison phantom liberty is also 30$
Also bethesda already has been left behind. They dont wanna give up the game engine because how else could modders fix their games.
Starfield is amazing and the more I play it I see they deliberately just didn't try to add too much "spectacle" to everything and I appreciate it. It made me realize that there are some games where I don't want "sexy" characters or all of this highly scripted crafted content and set pieces, focus tested emotional moments or anything like that. I like that the game just is and has the tools for me to have my own fun. I respect the bad decision for them to offer something that feels so dated in this time and I look to other games to move the needle forward but not this one. Starfield is so cozy to me, so familiar but infinitely new. You might see it as been there done that but I see it as a game released today that will be around 10 years from now and will keep getting fresh injections of contend and life. idk
💯 BG3 is nothing that I want to play. I love that in SF I can choose to not even play the main quest and just do whatever I want.
You are spot on about the characters. I remember first playing Final Fantasy 2 (IV) for the first time with my friend when we were in the 5th grade soon after the SNES came out. We were both mesmerized by the characters. Cecil, Rosa, Tellah, Golbez etc. A game from over 30 years ago had characters that were incredibly memorable, with no 3d animated cut scenes, no voice acting, nothing but 16bit graphics and an amazing story and characters that felt real. Great characters stick with you.
Hell, Bethesda should know this from the success of the Fallout TV series! That show has great characters, Lucy, Maximus, the Ghoul, Muldaver, Lucy’s dad. All of them have interesting stories and motivations that are revealed over time and make you want to watch more. Why can’t they bring that to their games? That’s exactly what they need.
“Stood the test of time.” “Standed,” is not a word. But, thanks for this. You nailed it.
is this a video about starfield or BG3 lol
12:47 Honestly their development time just begs the question "what are they doing with all this time?" especially if they aren't switching to a new engine or taking any risks with something new they aren't already intimately familiar with and what they do release comes packaged with classic Bethesda jank.
What is quite sad (and telling about modern times) listening to this review / opinion, is how many times you feel a need to "soften" your opinion. "I don't hate it", "im happy if you enjoy it", "I want the best for Bethesda" etc. Some time ago, one could present their opinion, and these notions were... kind of obvious, we didnt need to remind everyone that we respect other opinions or we are not criticising out of malign intent. But nowadays, stuck between the hammer of aggressive grifters and the anvil of psychofans, i understand the need.
But also, listening to recent interviews with Tod or with Emil - i feel this is the reason, why i dont have much hope for ES6 or F5. The vibe they show is of the Russian monarchy in January 1917. They cling to the few sycophantic voices around them as a proof that their course is correct; and ignore vast criticism, attributing it to the same nihilism and toxic negativity of a vocal extreme. For me Bethesda needs a major leadership shakedown to wake up. With Todd Howard at its helm - I dont expect anything good, not anymore 😔
There is about a 5% chance that Elder Scrolls 6 will be good and I am being as optimistic as possible.
Was never really interested in Bethesda games for the characters. Exploring, building up your character and living in the world was always the main draw.
I wanted to love it too. I went back and started playing it to get ready for Shattered Space.
For the first couple of days I was loving it again, but after getting deeper into the game, it just felt soo blehh again. Wanted to like it so bad.
Even though I enjoy Starfield and have probably played it for over 100 hours (and I haven't even finished the main story yet), I completely agree with all your criticisms.
First of all, the game does feel very outdated. The only thing that suggests it's a modern game is the graphics, assets, and sound. Everything else looks like it was made in the 2000s. NPCs walking in completely random patterns and vanishing into thin air when they enter in interior; companions who don't always pretend to be doing anything when on the ship, but just stand there and stare at each other in silence; endless loadings and no sense of seamlessness; a huge number of game conventions that other developers are trying to get rid of; and, of course, the animations and almost complete lack of staging.
The lack of unique animations and staging is my particular pain. My favorite example is a wedding. I thought, "wow, a whole WEDDING, it's such a significant event for my character, there definitely should be some unique cutscenes or at least a kissing scene." I fly to the wedding venue and... it's just a dialogue between three NPCs on the beach. Yes, the dialogue itself was quite cute, but there is no special cutscene, no set-up, nothing. Just regular dialogue, of which there are a millions. In the whole entire game I have counted only 3 or 4 unique animations, clearly made with mocap. And in these moments the game looked good and alive! But, unfortunately, this is very little.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the characters did not touch my soul as much as, for example, the characters of ME did. They have written stories, personalities, opinions and views. And they are voiced okey. But it seems like something is missing. Charisma? I don’t know. I've completed the personal quests of almost all the companions and spent a lot of time with them in general, but for some reason they still don't resonate with me the way that Liara alone did, for example.
I have a slightly different attitude towards planet exploration. I like to explore them with TH-cam in the background. You can think of it as a form of meditation. But the fact that you very quickly start to notice repeating assets of plants, animals, landscapes and even human structures really frustrating. It lacks uniqueness.
Anyway, thank you for this video, you really voiced most of my (and probably many others) criticism of this game. Let's hope Bethesda listens to it. Time will tell.
Yes, nobody expected BG3, THATS THE POINT. Bethesda never, ever actually tried to improve anything. They thought they were already the best, listen to any interview and they'll say it with their chests. And they never grew out of it. And when a competitor showed up, as they INEVITABLY do, of course the complacent Bethesda couldn't compete. They were the best... about two decades too late now.
I felt like Shattered Space was so much of what I’d already seen in the base game that after the pathetic initiation cave and duel “side quest” I decided to put the game down. I don’t see myself putting any more time into the game.
A nice example of constructive criticism, by someone who, like me, played Bethesda's games since Morrowind.
Now THIS - not haters nor white knights - is what Bethesda needs!
Subscribed.
Your not wrong BGS is resting on there behinds back in 2011 they were on top. Because they went all in. 13 years later they still think there on top, and still living in the glory days and worst of all they are acting like they no best. I love playing Starfield I've got about 1000 hours in on the game so far. But, you are correct Starfield doesn't have it, like Skyrim did. Because they didn't go all in they just did the bare minimum. And for me the biggest fail is the back story and the lore it's about 5% of what we got with Skyrim. Skyrim had way more writers then Starfield has. In Starfields credits there is only one writer listed. Which kind of explains why the 4 main companies dialog is pretty much the same. Like I said earlier they only did the bare minimum, there still living in the glory days. The more writers the better, assign one to each of the main NPC's in the game and you will see a marked difference in the dialog. I think I've gone on long enough this is just an old man's rant for the day. Enjoy.
One thing I'll say about Starfield; it's made me excited to finally break out of my Bethes-tard rut and try some new games. Have fun with TES6, guys; I'll just be over there playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Thank you, that was well said. Your words represent many players like me who are fans, and want to love the game, but it fell short. I appreciate your candor without the rage bait as you put it, and I really hope that Bethesda listens to voices like yours. A game with a great story, deep lore, and rich characters create an interactive world that you can easily be immersed in, which Starfield has the potential to do, but is lacking.
Couldn’t agree more. The magic, the exploration, the immersion, what you want from Bethesda wasn’t there. Instead we got them trying a bunch of new stuff that they weren’t very good at.
Great video and amazing criticism. You deserve way more views [ignore the haters]
"Larian came out of no where...."
Maybe you should try "Divinity: Original Sin," if BG3 is Larian's Skyrim, D:OS is their Morrowind (in the sense that it was the begging of what became their current formula).
DOS was a good game but far away from the success like all other RPG hits. I even play games like Pathfinder, BG3, Pillars of Eternity, Rogue Trader - DOS dont give me the fun.
@@gheeddeschain9638 Well, Original Sin does in some ways feel like as much of a strategy game as an RPG. It was my first real CRPG though (before that I'd only played table-top and first person RPGs), and from I gather also the point when Larian moved away from real-time single character in favor of party and turn based. Then I'm an old DM from the 80s who refused to call any videogame an RPG until the 2010s, and one too poor to buy many games, so my experience with RPG videogames in general is limited. I was impressed with Original Sin enough to play it through twice, though.
This is fair criticism. I'm only about 20 hours in but it does feel old, I think you're spot on, a lot could be overlooked if they had filled this game to the brim with deeply written motion captured characters.
I use fanfiction to determine how much of a cultural impact in fandom any particular piece of media has. Let's compare a random Baldur's Gate 3 character (Shadowheart) to a random Starfield character (Sarah Morgan) and see how many works are tagged in AO3. Shadowheart has 8528 entries. Sarah Morgan has 150. This is dire.
Feels like Bethesda is afraid to hire competent writers. Look at Fallout 3 and quests like blowing up Megaton or little Big Town or Reilley’s rangers. Or finding a uniquely named weapon or helping the kid with the ants and getting a new perk. Or the wasteland quest that takes you all over the map. Those rewards were fulfilling. Bethesda needs to adapt the approach “Quality over Quantity”.
all good points, I agree. the comparison to Mass Effect makes me want to replay the trilogy, what an awesome series. FemShep's voice actress was so good
The scariest comment comes from Bethesda itself. According to X, the game writer said "Starfield is the best game we ever made". At that point my worries for ES6 was confirmed.
It's BGS game, it's exactly what everyone SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED, anyone thinking otherwise just doesn't get it and are expecting BGS to completely overhaul their formula and to completely replace the easily modifiable Creation Engine and the one that their modders are MOST FAMILIAR with. The loading screens have nothing to do with the Creation Engine, it's just how they make the cells...I'm pretty sure that the number of loading screens can be easily reduced.
Bethesda won't "bounce back" from Starfield, because they don't recognize the need to "bounce back". They (at least their lead writer) believe that Starfield is the best game they have ever made. That's not something somebody who is willing to take criticism on board would say.
I wasn't thinking about the extra content as much as I was hoping for bug issues to be solved. No body has commented on the nice improvements to the game overall and we got a little extra story progression to boot. Well done, Bethesda. Looking forward to future updates.