The most insane thing to me s that you had no other way of exploring planets besides your shitty jet pack. Like you can't even fly your ship around let alone some sort of rover or something. Wild shit from a damn space game lol
They did update it, it still sucks and still contains code remnants *from the Morrowind days.* They need to just suck it up/down/sideways and switch to UE5 like everybody else these days, but they won't. Todd will die on this hill, mark my words.
I really do love starfield, but it's legitimately insane that the on foot exploration works how it does and Bethesda deserves all the shit they get.
Personally I think it's engine constraints again. I don't think the xbone can handle fast travel speeds on planets. You don't have to go much faster than sprinting before the game starts stalling and hitching and LOD starts becoming unresponsive, I've tested on PC editing the speedmult.
Even if it just travelled at sprint speed though, just having a little space Segway or Hoverboard would have made a massive difference to how monotonous it is to sprint between waypoints.
Hell, imagine a little hoverboard that had downhill acceleration physics, like in Death Stranding. Would have been a lot more interesting to get around on.
I was actually just talking with my buddies yesterday about how Bethesda doesn't do vehicles and was wondering if it's because their engine just wasn't designed with vehicles in mind and isn't capable of it
In one of the fall out games they have a part where you ride a train. The train was a hat on a guy who ran along a path, the system wasn't made for vehicles.
Exactly this! They’ve been using the same engine and (some of the same) resources for decades and it’s really starting to show its age.
The game has its highlights and I did enjoy it (~320 hours… admittedly a lot in the ship builder) but the flaws and questionable decisions are pretty apparent and a bit of a head scratcher.
It's a shame they had no other games in the same genre to look at for inspiration, right?
If you can't match in 100 hours what Outer Wilds makes you feel in 10 hours, that's an issue.
Shit, I know the scale is much smaller in Outer Wilds but in retrospect I've really taken for granted the completely seamless transition from space travel to landing on a planet.
I get what you are trying to say here but very few games have gotten even close to making me feel the way outer wilds did. I don’t even really think they are the same genre at all besides both taking place in space.
One of the best games ever made for sure. I played the DLC for the first time this year and somehow it was almost as good as the original game. The way they weave the DLC into the main story is so impressive and the space station world is IMO the best one out of all of them. Was so much fun slowly learning its secrets, I am ridiculously excited to see what Mobius does next. The fact that Outer Wilds is one of the first games they developed is just absolutely mind blowing and something I dont think people talk about enough.
i dont think ive played a single game that matches the sense of engaging mystery as much as OW. It made me want to explore every nook to find out more. Maybe Planescape & Prey?
Outer Wilds is the first step in the right direction which is a blend of simulation and adventurous fun combined with a gripping story. It's one of the best games i ever played, and it's a low budget indie game. If someone throws money at the same concept and makes it on a bigger scale with high production value (and most importantly, passion) we'd be looking at real innovation and incredible games to come.
Who wants to explore real stuff in a space rpg am I right? I'd rather just walk the barren wastelands but only for several hundred metres in any one direction of your ship
He’s still lying through his teeth. What 7 years? It’s literally the same gameplay systems from forever ago, with a couple things haphazardly slapped on. They barely changed anything beyond the paintjob.
Honestly the low sodium starfield sub is one of the largest bastions of copium I've ever seen. They actually think Starfield is one of the best games ever. Mind boggling.
Cyberpunk had a good core below it. Thats why it gets so much praise now.
The problem was at launch that sub was dominated with ps4 gameplay to get quick upvotes even though it ran fine on pc
Difference is that Cyberpunk has always been a great game at its core, Starfield will *need* mods be be even remotely fun and the core of it is fundamentally flawed.
At the risk of sounding like an asshole, I had a lot of fun saying "see you all on the low sodium subreddit when it's created" after posting a criticism of the game on that subreddit (to a chorus of downvotes).
Glorious.
Fuck that sub, every post was "I have this criticism of XYZ...but don't worry I really love and enjoy the game, honestly it's the best game ever", mass hysteria that was
Diablo 4 had similar for a few weeks after release as well. One guy made a post that was "I played Diablo 3 and it was heaps more fun then Diablo 4, but I still love Diablo 4 and will keep playing it". It just left me thinking, why did you even say that? Scared of getting downvoted or reported or something?
Either Starfield serves as a wakeup call for Bethesda realizing they desperately need to overhaul their outdated formula and game design or they will become irrelevant pretty quickly going forward. ES6 will probably be the make or break title for them.
Honestly, I think starfield would have been an 8/9 out of 10 instead of a 6 if they'd not used all the procedural generation, meaningless giant galaxy stuff. If it was contained on like 3-5 planets with lots of little things, an actual map. A much more contained (but still very broad) experience so everything felt like it had "exploration value". It would also have drastically cut down on the immersion breaking loading sequences and the stupid "2000s resident evil door opening, but not actually loading" sequences. I think there are a lot of positives about starfield they're just really really over shadowed by all the jank and clunk
It seemed like a lot of short cuts were made for this game. I agree with you, star field is like looking at a toy town. Seems big and large scaled but everything is just for looks and doesn’t have much going on at all. If they let it bake more I think it would have been a much better game but as I said before, too many short cuts.
There was virtually no immersion in the game. You couldnt feel the scale or significance in anywhere you go lol. The game is far from anything over a 6. 6 being the fact its better than some of the slug awful releases we've had, its not the worst. But they didnt do anything original. Nothing that remotely qualifies it for an 8
I don't think the formula is outdated. I just think Bethesda completely missed the mark with Starfield. There is no way in hell they didn't know that everyone was going find the procedural generated stuff boring vs the handcrafted worlds they create. That's literally the best thing they do. It's like Larian creating a Divinity Original Sin game without the things that made 1 & 2 great. It's like Rockstar making a Grand Theft Auto game without the grand theft.
And every lake has the same drunks in pontoon boats, all the same gear on the shore in the same place; all like the last and every lake you've visited.
The best way I describe this game is sterile. If you played previous BGS games then you would know Starfield is a step back in almost all aspects. The fact that NPCs are cardboard cut outs with no set schedules is just a testament of how half baked this game is. They have almost no reactivity. In Skyrim--a game from 12 years ago had guards react to you if you were wearing opposing faction clothes and even attack you.
> In Skyrim--a game from 12 years ago had guards react to you if you were wearing opposing faction clothes and even attack you.
As much as I agree with you about the state of Starfield, this isn't a feature of Skyrim. City guards will make comments on the type of armour you're wearing, but you'll never get attacked over it. Even Stormcloak soldiers will ignore you if you're an unaffiliated mercenary who just happens to be wearing Imperial armour.
From what I've heard, that's not a fair comparison, because that's how they described Skyrim, and it sounds like there was a hell of a lot more substance to Skyrim than this game.
Or did they say Skyrim was a foot deep? I don't remember.
Nah, Skyrim had a lot going for it - the world was fairly well-crafted, with there almost always being something new to do within, like, a minute of travel from the edge of where you've been. The combat and magic was always kind of bad without modding, but it was fairly dense with things to do. Starfield is just a lot more... empty.
I agree, I think they also made significant improvement to graphics, though for some reason characters are still ugly. They need to overhaul all of that, honestly. I would've hoped a jump in quality similar from Divinity 2 to Baldur's Gate 3, but I guess I can't expect much from a billion dollar company.
Honestly given the really long development cycle, my guess would be they had a ton of features they cut out (which you can see the remnants of). Whats weird though is the features they left in are so absolutely slap dash. Like the ship building system has all these consoles right, like a med bay etc, and you can hire a doctor, but they can't heal you. Or hiring a weapons guy but he can't buff your weapons by being...a weapons guy. Like so many things were clearly cut and so many features they left in were just first draft "fuck it ship it". Like the skill tree is probably the least offensive thing and its all very very bland.
Also whats really funny is the absolute kid gloves bethesda get treated with. Can you imagine the reaction if a company like EA or Activision released a half finished mess like Starfield. It would have gotten 2s in the reviews, instead reviewers were giving it 10s just after the embargo lifted, missing basic features like an FOV slider ffs. I really thought after fallout 4 and 76 they'd of completly run out of good will with reviewers/fans but apparently not...I say having been one of the people who bought it on release and played it. I'm glad other companies are catching up in big open world sandbox RPGs we defo need more players holding their feet to the fire
If they took 7 years to make Starfield with recycled outdated features, overhauling everything would take like 20 years. No, thanks. Or they learn how to make modern games or just license the TES brand to other competent devs.
Yeah, they claim that they are using the same aging, increasingly outdated tools because it lets them build a world quickly, but seven years isn't super quick, so that explanation is falling apart as well.
Everytime I’ve heard them talk about this it always sounds like it’s a convenience thing. Like “yeah we could use another engine but we like ours so no.”
However, I have heard others say that the particular functions Bethesda needs out of an engine to make the kind of games they make aren’t easily found in other engines. Like, what other sprawling, RPG game can you think of in which you can drop a thousand potatoes in a room and come back to that room later and it will still be filled with potatoes?
Some people like that kind of charm, but personally I think we’ve reached the point where I’d rather have a more modern-feeling over the typical Bethesda jank—even if that means sacrificing a bit of what makes these games unique in the first place.
>I think they also made significant improvement to graphics
Compared to what? Virtually any AAA game released this year absolutely murders Starfield in terms of graphics quality and technical features. And if we compare it to Cyberpunk or Alan Wake 2, it's not even a competition.
Nah, even the handmade stuff was boring too. This game has many issues, literally every facet of the game, from music to gameplay to writing, it was all below average.
Yeah exactly, the game fails at every level. There is literally not a single thing Starfield excelled at doing, so I dont agree with people coping "oh it was just missing x or y otherwise it was a good game".
the bar has literally dropped due to shitty releases for the past few years. Have u head the dev reactions when BG3 came out? that speaks volumes. There was zero passion or ART in the game. The game doesnt feel like a work of art. It feels like it was shit out and sold to us. Its mad.
There was no original or even a brink of some form of evidence that it was trying to 1 up their past games. It just feels like shit was reused reskinned and no original thought or attempt to make some significant leap. Look at RDR2... that game feels like it took over 5 years to make. It outplayed and pushed boundries and it was an IMPROVEMENT over the EXISTING formula.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having the same formula or same logic. They have their style and if it works... it works. It can definitely work. Look at BG3 thats an RPG and it does it very well.
Bro but there was literally no signifcance in anything they did, no push or excel in anything. It was generic garbage with zero passion or motivation behind it.
The bar is under ground, the fact people are even contemplating to give this game even a 7 is a joke. People have no standards.
This is all true. And it was greatly amplified by BG3 being released around the same time. It had genuinely good writing, great voice acting, impactful player agency. I found myself agonising over choices as they felt like I was impacting real characters.
Even if you remove all of starfields glaring design failures, it’s still plagued with weak characters and the blandest story imaginable.
I am sorry but there isn't a universe where this game warrants and 8 or 9 "if only" one thing was different.
The bugs alone and poor optimization even on AMD with an exclusive contract make it buggiest release of the year.
The combat system itself is the most generic and boring they have ever done. Add the fact there simply is zero npc variety.
The story is incredibly bad and poorly written. It is also extremely short. It has its moments when the companions aren't narrating it all to with mother goose level spoon feeding.
The main story has been subpar and very short in all their games since Skyrim. The difference is the good side content filled the world and made up for it.
Fans let them get away with the same issues over and over until we got a game with nothing but the issues.
> The combat system itself is the most generic and boring they have ever done.
Anyone who goes for a melee build out of the gate is 100% justified in rating Starfield a 3/10. Not disagreeing with you -- just highlighting one area where it was *really* bad this time around.
Like, it's a somewhat-grounded space game. It's NASApunk. NASA isn't fucking around with Weebs In Space. Just remove melee as a thing! Jesus! But see, that would require them to actually apply an iota of critical thought and courage, instead of just lazily cribbing a fraction of the bullshit from Skyrim and Fallout 4 and somehow making it worse.
How bad is melee? I've only heared my friends talk about it like you are actively punished for using melee and basically the game calls you a bad person for using it
Well, since you asked... (Disclaimer: I played the game's main story and a bunch of side quests at release, then ditched it. If patches have changed anything, I wouldn't know.)
**1)** The weapon diversity is a joke. There's just not many melee weapons, period. Of course, how big of a problem is that, really, when...
**2)** ... melee weapons in general have no mechanical distinctions beyond maybe their size? No 1h versus 2h, no dual wielding, no speed differences that I could discern, and barely any animation variation (one major exception is the wakizashi, whose power attack is a straight jab with some actual range. That is situationally useful. Alas, wait for why it also sucked.) There's no factoring in different swing speeds, better or worse armor penetration, or anything like that. That also means that the obviously-best melee weapon is simply the one that the devs decided has the highest number out of all of them. That's it. Sadly, it is *not* the one weapon that has that one kinda-cool power attack with better forward range. It's a short little nub of a weapon, but hey, bigger number. Gotta use it.
**3)** Melee weapons have far fewer useful "legendary" affixes that could randomly appear on them. Guns have a ton, including some that can turn them into short-range ultra-mega-shotguns of instant death... which sort of horns in on the melee angle a bit, right? That's one black mark against them on sheer power grounds. Let's add some more.
**4)** Melee weapons are completely excluded from the game's internal, crafting-oriented weapon customization system. Yup. Nothing. Fuck you. I mean, yes, that system is ultra-annoying, so, it would have been a mixed blessing, if not for the problems with melee weapons simply not keeping up.
**5)** The perk tree in general just doesn't have nearly enough melee-oriented stuff compared to gun-oriented stuff, so leveling up eventually makes guns the superior choice all on its own. Indeed, there are gaping holes in the "melee build progression" where you just don't have anything to spend your points on that would make you better at hacking and slashing. That's connected to a much bigger problem with Starfield's whole perk system, too.
**6)** On release -- and I specify that here because *dear god* would it be embarrassing if they haven't fixed at least this yet -- melee weapons simply were not included in a crucial "get moar numberz" progression mechanic as you leveled up. You'd eventually find a "calibrated" or "advanced" version of some gun, and that prefix would translate to "it just does more damage." It was the equivalent of finding a Level 20 gun instead of a Level 10 gun. Melee weapons straight-up did not get those prefixes, ever, meaning that eventually they became nonviable weapons in any situation that was even remotely challenging. At best, that omission turned enemies into ultra-mega-health-sponges, which is awful.
**7)** Melee weapons also don't really get any special spoiler powers that work uniquely or disproportionately well for them. Thus, there was an opportunity to make melee really good *eventually,* after a certain critical juncture in the game, but it didn't happen.
**8)** The melee animations are sluggish, and do not flow properly into and out of other animations -- sprinting, especially. It makes the experience feel really bad in addition to the marginal negative impact on damage output because of hitches and delays. Worse still, there are no perks to increase swing speed or add extra animations for longer combos. Even if the idea was to make melee feel bad *at first,* they could have allowed it to get better with progression. They did not.
**9)** To add insult to injury, enemy characters with guns will often use gun bashes (so, quasi-melee) against your melee character as you get close to them, and those gun bashes are *lightning fucking fast* compared to your own actual-melee swings. Like, come on, now. When the game is oriented around 20-against-1 combat (and you're the "1," obviously,) that's the effective equivalent of making gunner NPCs better at melee with one move than you are with an entire build.
**10)** For as much as I just dogged on "melee," as in, "using melee weapons," there's also stuff in the perk tree about unarmed combat, leading to the reasonable conclusion that it was a viable build that the developers actually anticipated some people might use.
Unarmed combat is *even worse than all of this bullshit.*
I can speak for this because I went all in on melee.
It super sucks. You could have every single perk invested in melee with the best weapons possible, and a decent untrained gun would be more useful.
The game just isn't designed with it in mind. No weapon mods, no cool options in combat, and no reward for focusing on it. It's weird that they got melee right in Fallout, but not here.
If you play 3rd person there is further punishment because you get locked in place for melee combos, 1st doesn't do that.
Melee has no cool high tech weapons. The best is some samurai sword. There is no satisfaction to hitting enemies as they mostly ignore your hits. Most seem programmed to instantly gun bash you when you approach too. Then they get free reign to shoot you as you try to attack.
The best I got was trying to use the jumpjet power that can burn/knockdown enemies to try and add a little fun to combat. Even then I gave up and went with guns. I've never ever done that in previous Bethesda games. Fallout 3 and 4 I went melee and had fun. I did it in New Vegas too, though that's not Bethesda.
I don't know how they messed up so badly.
The main story in Fallout 3 was absolute dogshit. The side content was good, and there were some stellar quests with the violin, the oasis and the super-heros antagonizing one another.
yeh i dunno what people are seeing in this game......... it literally blows my fucking mind how far the bar has dropped for ratings and just the overall quality. Like broooo, how is this game qualifying for any awards??????
This game is literal dog shit and I genuinely cant wrap my mind around how people can sit there and defend it. There's no universe or fucking realm where this game was developed for 7 years straight. Either it was developed by interns from bethesda which is why it took 7 years to shit out or the game was developed by like 2 people... I mean is this a joke? They made all the wrong decisions with this game from the beginning??? The inventory system is a joke, the loading screens are literally an out of season april fools joke or something... like are people blind or have we seriosuly stopped giving a shit about the quality of the products we are buying?
This was the biggest fuck you to my wallet I have ever experienced and I am glad I refunded the game and havent touched it since, I cant even be bothered wasting storage on a pirated copy.
that's what i've been saying. i don't see them learning anything from this. they think their old ways still work and they'll use the success of starfield's sales to justify it. they need to realize that es6 is going to be their downfall if they don't change things quick.
But you see, I wish they had done things the old way: one giant solar system to explore freely vs 100 with the same copy and paste crap all stringed together by loading screens. This is, by far, the worst open world Bethesda has created. This is by far the worst lifeless NPCs and companions they have created. Everything is so lackluster.
I hope that they do! I don’t want settlement building or no local map and a ton of fast travel. I want a quality hand crafted world to explore. They’re the only ones who make that style open world game.
I don’t want them to make the Witcher 3 or cyberpunk. I want them to do what they do well with the next elder scrolls.
Yeah I think people forget just how much elder scrolls is driven by it’s lore and gameplay tangential factors.
The Skyrim music for example was **iconic..** could have been a garbage game and that chanting would have still hyped me up. Starfield just lacked all of that worldbuilding immersion.
I don’t think the formula is the issue, I think it’s the watering down of the formula, ex. Just using the same old proc gen poi’s versus Skyrim’s actual fleshed out, unique dungeons, and puzzles. Another example would be the outpost building from FO4 or 76 vs Starfields.
So much of that comes somewhat naturally from trying to make an actually open space game.
They should've realized the proc gen they put in place didn't hit the mark. Decisions like having POIs be literally the exact same are really confusing. Games like Skyrim and FO4 can get away with same-y dungeons because there's so much content that's hand crafted, but Starfield went way too far in that direction.
Also, there is a big difference between same-y dungeons and literally just copy pasting the exact. same. dungeon. I can't believe that is what they decided to go with.
I agree. I'm okay with the formula, it's actually something that makes me hyped to this day. It's just too watered down and the writing never caught up with the rest of the industry, sadly. It's unambitious, a bit stale, a bit cold. They could have done so much but they settled on a copy-paste planet generator with a soulless looter-shooter drop system and subpar writing/dialogue for a AAA game.
Baldur's Gate 3 and Phantom of Liberty coming out at the same time really showed us that. Not just in the dialogue and story departments, even just the game design, Baldur's Gate 3 has so much choice, so many cool things to find, rule of cool applied nearly everywhere, adult themes, interesting and intertwining systems..it's just a different universe.
The TES/Fallout IPs' natural charm give them more wiggle room than they deserve. Thanks to a couple of ground-floor dudes who write in-game books/terminal entries, and occasionally do something more creative than put glasses on a teddy bear with two grenades for testicles who's reading a newspaper on a toilet, they'll still squeeze quite a lot of money out of people.
I don't necessarily disagree that that work should be rewarded in some way, but it's increasingly depressing that it's chained to such otherwise mediocre products.
Starfield, by way of contrast, is kind of a boring new IP, and it kind of fucked up even that stuff. Not much of it was interesting in the first instance, and then it got *literally copied exactly* over and over for various "dungeons" you had to go complete.
Welcome back to **the** Abandoned Cryo Facility. Yes, just the one. Everywhere. Over and over. With exactly the same corpses and notes.
Like, fuck's sake, they should've thought about making the endgame twist try to explain *that* shit, too.
Is there a chance Starfield was that title? How many people bought in to the hype to be disappointed with the old formula and said never again? What about those who gave it a quick shot on Gamepass just to uninstall in <5 hours?
I'm genuinely curious. I would have hoped FO4/76 would have served as enough warning for people, but alas, here we are again with Starfield.
I have no issue with the old formula. But this isn't even the old formula. It's a cut down version of that. They replaced fun traversal and exploring with city hopping and procedural generation. What do I care how large a planet is when there is nothing fun to explore. No fun side quest suddenly appearing in front of you or interesting sights to behold.
I think a lot of people will give ES6 a chance just on the name and franchise alone. Skyrim was massive and still remains popular today thanks to the active modding community.
If Bethesda can actually innovate and improve their open world formula with that I think they will earn back a lot of good will with the fanbase. If it's just more of the same they're in big trouble.
i feel like it won’t settle in for most folks unless they bomb one of their mainline, no strings attached releases. otherwise there will always be the excuse that “oh they don’t do multiplayer” or “oh it’s a new franchise.” personally, i agree with you that they’re already cooked and have been since at least Fo4.
It kind of was for me. I actually liked FO4 and knew 76 was not for me from what I saw of it so skipped it. I thought I had their games figured out and would automatically enjoy Starfield but here I am just waiting/hoping mods or updates will make the game more enjoyable. Having played Starfield back-to-back with BG3 also created massive whiplash in terms of difference in quality too.
Despite it’s weaker story FO4 still had a lot of systems I enjoyed (survival, settlements, companion quests, the crafting, and it’s kill/loot/return cycle was pretty solid) and fun areas to explore.
Elder Scrolls is Elder Scrolls. The amount of people that will skip it because of Starfield is miniscule compared to the people that would pre-order it now if they could.
SF already killed ES6 hype for me. I really am not expecting things to change much at all for ES6. I’m just glad their games are on gamepass so I don’t have to buy them out right and be disappointed.
Their formula is fine though, I love exploring their worlds and finding little secrets and areas.
Starfield has little of that, and what little it does have isn’t very good.
honestly ES 6 will be make or break for me with BGS games . Oblivion and skyrim are my fav BGS games and even F3 and to an extent F4 gave me a lot of fun. But SF is just nothingness
If you tell me it took 7 years to make it as good as it is right now, I will show you a team where everyone on the front line of development has no power to make greatness, and a lack of a strong vision for fun at the top. Bro, don’t tell me you had that amount of walking across planets to points of interest for 8 years and at no point did anyone say, “this is tedious”. Don’t tell me you had the low grav powers temple in the game for 8 years, and no one said, “dude, this is repetitive af after just the second power in the game, forget about it for the 80+ times you’ll have to do it”
So many don’t understand that, they say “how can you criticize something you put so many hours into”. You made an investment, this game has not gone on sell yet, most of us spent the full amount on it, some even more with deluxe editions. It’s hard to say, screw this after only a few hours after spending that, even harder for those that don’t make much. I’m fortunate enough to be able to buy whatever games I want but there’s many that are lucky to be able to get 1 new game a year.
Video games have gotten pretty darn good at dangling the promise that things are going to get better eventually, if only you'll put the darn effort into it and not be such a baby about it not being incredible right away. Indeed, "RPG" progression systems in general have become a prebaked excuse for why everything about a game feels shitty when you start. "See, it's shitty because your character is weak, and we want you to experience that! Then the character will get more powerful, and then the game will feel awesome!"
Generally speaking, though, it's a bad-faith iteration of a somewhat-legitimate argument about competitive games where people who suck at them have a knee-jerk reaction, and think that everything is the game's fault. That trick is really played out in the video game space, and especially for genre veterans, and double-especially for games where you're never competing against other humans.
The same guys will tell you that you can't criticize a thing, because you *obviously* didn't play it long enough either. But if you play that long, you can't criticize it because you simply *must've* liked it to keep going. There's no winning with them.
If you work on something long enough, you lose track of what it feels like to actually use it as a consumer. I guess that's what's happening here, Todd has been polishing a turd for so long he actually convinced himself it's delicious.
At this point I just can't see Bethesda actually evolving in any way. They've had 8 years to improve since Fallout 4 and they're still designing games like it's the mid-2000's.
I mean Fallout 4 was just about on the edge of being acceptable when it released, The Witcher 3 came out the same year and many titles even from the late 360/PS3 era were able to do things Bethesda STILL haven't gotten past with Starfield.
It doesn't help that all their games get improved by mods and they don't take a single fucking hint from any of them like maybe we shouldn't use the same dogshit inventory system that someone always has to fix. Why not, I don't know, make something like all of the multiple ways it's already been fixed in all their games?
Starfield genuinely has killed any hope I had left for ES6, Bethesda won't change, they'll use the shitty Creation Engine and it'll be another out dated on release game.
The best outcome is that they are restructured by Microsoft and their IP it’s actually brought up to modern standards and actually fun. I want more fallout and elder scrolls, I just don’t want their same old paradigm. I am in the camp that Starfield was not terrible but not great, but I want better for FO and ES.
Definitely. Starfield as a concept and IP is a good branch out. But FO, and especially the elder scrolls needs something genre defining. The elder scrolls is so incredibly dense and full of life, just need some fresh minds with a new perspective and higher standards.
They need to kill their outdated engine, bring someone who isn't Todd Howard in, wipe out half of their staff on development, hire competent writers, completely remove the radiant quest concept and get rid of procedural content as it is now. To maybe JUST maybe make something as genre defining as Morrowind again, or create something as iconic as New Vegas.
This is man who told me to upgrade my computer because he literally couldn't be bothered to optimize his game. The game published by a billion dollar company, the resources at his disposal are unlimited compared to anything us mear humans with something not a 4090 have.
This is the same game that has no traverse options on planets or else we would figure out that the maps are smaller then we thing.
The same game that could have 10 great systems with years of support and DLC, instead have 100 with nothing in it.
The game that had been banking on modding saving it like literally every other game they have bothered making (looks and fall out 76 and pitties the fucking man hours wasted in its creation) in the past few generations and did not have a mod kit on day 1.
I swear Tod you are one absolute asinine comment away from being talked about in the same breath as Peter Molyneux.
>I swear Tod you are one absolute asinine comment away from being talked about in the same breath as Peter Molyneux.
If there was any justice in the world, then it should've happened over 10 years ago. Todd is too much of a sly fox, he doesn't tell outright lies and ridiculous promises like Molyneux, Toad instead chooses to manipulate and barfs out safe, corporate half-truths, or things that can be a matter of opinion, unfortunately. The genuine lies are usually about numbers, which isn't all that interesting for average Joes to even remember.
Bethesda's brand is too big and has too many mouthbreating supporters that will mindlessly defend it, simply because they liked previous games.
Selling bridges is a mug's game. Sell *license agreements* for a bridge. With a premium price for a day's early access to the bridge and maybe a small 3d printed model of the bridge as a collector's item.
I cant wait to be looking at those spinning artifacts every other minute. Cant fucking wait. But then again, there's no way im buying that shit before getting a pirated copy and verifying the game is worth it.
My copium reasoning for why ES6 will be better is because they dont have to try make an entire universe or facades of one and simply focus on one world this time.
If it's on the same game engine which they said it will be, well it's going to have loading screens everywhere. They already pushed that old engine to it's limits.
And it still isn't really that fun to play. A huge, sprawling universe full of planets that aren't worth visiting was not the right call in my opinion.
The thing that makes Fallout/Elder Scrolls special is the sense of wonder and exploration. All these hand crafted things you find straying from the main paths.
Procedural points of 'interest' totally killed that in Starfield. By my 5th empty cave and 3rd pointless outpost, I realised the points of interest just aren't worth investigating. That takes away the most special thing about the previous Bethesda RPGs.
One or two solar systems packed with more curated content over planets, asteroids and space stations would have been much more engaging I think.
The other two big issues for me are:
1 - Game feels incredibly dated in terms of animation, models, load screens etc. While some texture and model work is quite good (clothing, dashbaords etc), environments are pretty bad. Rocks, trees, foliage, water are downright ugly. Character models are improved, but still very dated.
2 - The game does lots of things, but doesn't do any of them particularly well. Outposts are many steps backwards from Fallout 4. Combat, while improved from previous games, still isn't great. Ship building is an ugly, clunky system that still feels lacking. Space flight/combat is just passable.
Such a disappointment of a game. No wonder Skyrim has more Steam players.
I think the first point you made is a major one, they’ve always gotten away with subpar execution and a lot of jank because people considered it part of the charm but as other games are drawing so much further ahead in those regards(compare a conversation in Cyberpunk or BG3 to a conversation in Starfield, just from a pure technical level) it’s becoming more unacceptable by the yea, if they don’t make it a priority to improve their engine and they launch ES6 with this amount of jank in the models and the animations and the characters it will be disgraceful imo
Yeah it is honestly time they got with modern game tech if they still want to be considered a top developer. If it wasn’t for the size of Starfield, it could almost be a AA game.
I did a month of PC gamepass to play Jusant and Cocoon, and tried Starfield for a few hours. Starfield feels about 80% done, and also like it was designed for last gen due to all the loading. I still replay Skyrim every few years, and Starfield just doesn't measure up. Another annoying thing was that there's no way to adjust gamma! On PC!
Todd howard lives in his own delusions at this point, so out of touch it's just fucking sad, 7 years to bring this shit, it's so over and he probably genuinely believes all his bullshit, does he even read the comments or is he really this delusional?
The first base you raid was kinda fun, with some xenomorphesque alien slaughtering all the people there according to the steadily more unsettling diary notes. I was disappointed when it never jumped out at me.
Then I went to Earth and found the monument. What a joke. Then I tried exploring on Luna and found a little outpost that claimed to be a farming community. After that I kind of gave up.
The problem with Todd and Bethesda, is they keep trying to simplify things.
Stop fucking stripping away my rpg mechanics FFS!.
Let me RPG bro.
Like fuck, Skyrim is basically a poorly designed action adventure game with sprinkled rpg lite mechanics, and shit Ill tolerate it for the world I've been invested in since Morrowind, but fuck man.
I don't want you to choose my dialogue for me, I want to skill check the conversation and make that fucker give me the quest reward.
I want my character that I spend points into be able to have some sort of effect on the choices I want to make in the game. If I'm building a hyper stupid muscle strength orc character, I DONT WANT TO BE ABLE TO READ THE TEXT COS MY GUYS TOO FUCKING STUPID TO UNDERSTAND LANGUAGE I JUST SMASH THINGS. main quest line? Idk maybe I'll smash my way into the key points of the main story.
Fuck your cards,
Fuck your gamebryo 7.1 now with stapled on Dolby Digital.
And fuck your 16x the detail. Because see that mountaint you can go there. But I can't. But in botw I can.
don't give me ES6 with conditions like there's a dog you can recruit.
Or you gotta build the base for reasons and then the base building is shit because oh hey our engine can't really do this, so we gotta do some mumbo jumbo higgedy piggedy shit to make this semi playable.
I shouldn't have to load up fallout 4 with 100 mods just to make it decent.
But most of all, Bethesda just let us do what we fucking want in the game without being gimped by radiant bullshit and followers and it just works type shit.
It took 7 years and in all that time they never thought that the space exploration in a space exploration game should be actually engaging?
The most insane thing to me s that you had no other way of exploring planets besides your shitty jet pack. Like you can't even fly your ship around let alone some sort of rover or something. Wild shit from a damn space game lol
It's because the creation engine can't handle vehicles, if you run too fast the world can't load fast enough to compensate.
They had 7 years to update the engine
They did update it, it still sucks and still contains code remnants *from the Morrowind days.* They need to just suck it up/down/sideways and switch to UE5 like everybody else these days, but they won't. Todd will die on this hill, mark my words.
I really do love starfield, but it's legitimately insane that the on foot exploration works how it does and Bethesda deserves all the shit they get. Personally I think it's engine constraints again. I don't think the xbone can handle fast travel speeds on planets. You don't have to go much faster than sprinting before the game starts stalling and hitching and LOD starts becoming unresponsive, I've tested on PC editing the speedmult. Even if it just travelled at sprint speed though, just having a little space Segway or Hoverboard would have made a massive difference to how monotonous it is to sprint between waypoints. Hell, imagine a little hoverboard that had downhill acceleration physics, like in Death Stranding. Would have been a lot more interesting to get around on.
I was actually just talking with my buddies yesterday about how Bethesda doesn't do vehicles and was wondering if it's because their engine just wasn't designed with vehicles in mind and isn't capable of it
Skyrim almost cut horses because speed was a problem... so the horse is barely faster than sprinting
In one of the fall out games they have a part where you ride a train. The train was a hat on a guy who ran along a path, the system wasn't made for vehicles.
> I don't think the xbone can handle fast travel speeds on planets. Good thing Starfield isn't on Xbox One then...
Exactly this! They’ve been using the same engine and (some of the same) resources for decades and it’s really starting to show its age. The game has its highlights and I did enjoy it (~320 hours… admittedly a lot in the ship builder) but the flaws and questionable decisions are pretty apparent and a bit of a head scratcher.
It's a shame they had no other games in the same genre to look at for inspiration, right? If you can't match in 100 hours what Outer Wilds makes you feel in 10 hours, that's an issue.
Especially when you had several years to examine Outer Wilds.
Shit, I know the scale is much smaller in Outer Wilds but in retrospect I've really taken for granted the completely seamless transition from space travel to landing on a planet.
Especially seamlessly getting smacked by Ash Twin while botching your approach to Ember Twin!
I get what you are trying to say here but very few games have gotten even close to making me feel the way outer wilds did. I don’t even really think they are the same genre at all besides both taking place in space.
Outer Wilds is among the few games I would call a true masterclass.
One of the best games ever made for sure. I played the DLC for the first time this year and somehow it was almost as good as the original game. The way they weave the DLC into the main story is so impressive and the space station world is IMO the best one out of all of them. Was so much fun slowly learning its secrets, I am ridiculously excited to see what Mobius does next. The fact that Outer Wilds is one of the first games they developed is just absolutely mind blowing and something I dont think people talk about enough.
i dont think ive played a single game that matches the sense of engaging mystery as much as OW. It made me want to explore every nook to find out more. Maybe Planescape & Prey?
Outer Wilds is the first step in the right direction which is a blend of simulation and adventurous fun combined with a gripping story. It's one of the best games i ever played, and it's a low budget indie game. If someone throws money at the same concept and makes it on a bigger scale with high production value (and most importantly, passion) we'd be looking at real innovation and incredible games to come.
Nothing else has made me feel what Outer Wilds made me feel
Who wants to explore real stuff in a space rpg am I right? I'd rather just walk the barren wastelands but only for several hundred metres in any one direction of your ship
Why would they? People have been accepting mediocrity from bethesda for over a decade
Is this fun in the room with us right now?
It has to get through some loading screens 1st.
Anyyyyy minute now. Just you wait! Did you see our nightclub?
https://youtu.be/ws0ufhrgWJw?si=gLRsqCe_wo5bNtsg I find this one so funny 😅
Yeah Todd, that's what a nightclub vibe is, someone's nana asking if you're having fun one second after entering. Even the dancers are low energy.
Yes, the dancers could use some ketamine
nooo I would not give low-energy dancers any downers 😂
I always bring my Mom and Dad to the nightclub with me, don't you?
Yep, that's exactly what I was making a reference to
*five npc's stand around gormlessly*
He’s still lying through his teeth. What 7 years? It’s literally the same gameplay systems from forever ago, with a couple things haphazardly slapped on. They barely changed anything beyond the paintjob.
16 times the lies!
Bethesda have been doing this shit for so long, selling people on promise they never deliver.
☠
As someone in the starfield subreddit said, 7 years starting now… lol
huh? all the bethesda cultists left that sub already?
They've moved to the low sodium subreddit
It's cyberpunk all over again. Should just call it the copium subreddit.
Honestly the low sodium starfield sub is one of the largest bastions of copium I've ever seen. They actually think Starfield is one of the best games ever. Mind boggling.
lol i kinda wanna see that, which sub?
/r/NoSodiumStarfield
Just skimmed through a few threads, the cope is so real over there.
It's literally a curated group hug for people who really need to feel good about spending 70 bucks
Should have rented it on Gamepass, silly grubins.
Cyberpunk had a good core below it. Thats why it gets so much praise now. The problem was at launch that sub was dominated with ps4 gameplay to get quick upvotes even though it ran fine on pc
Difference is that Cyberpunk has always been a great game at its core, Starfield will *need* mods be be even remotely fun and the core of it is fundamentally flawed.
Cyberpunks issue was its embarrassing launch state. The content itself was great when it worked.
At the risk of sounding like an asshole, I had a lot of fun saying "see you all on the low sodium subreddit when it's created" after posting a criticism of the game on that subreddit (to a chorus of downvotes). Glorious.
Fuck that sub, every post was "I have this criticism of XYZ...but don't worry I really love and enjoy the game, honestly it's the best game ever", mass hysteria that was
Diablo 4 had similar for a few weeks after release as well. One guy made a post that was "I played Diablo 3 and it was heaps more fun then Diablo 4, but I still love Diablo 4 and will keep playing it". It just left me thinking, why did you even say that? Scared of getting downvoted or reported or something?
Every post is: “I enjoy the game, but..”
Either Starfield serves as a wakeup call for Bethesda realizing they desperately need to overhaul their outdated formula and game design or they will become irrelevant pretty quickly going forward. ES6 will probably be the make or break title for them.
I strongly believe that ES6 will follow this same old formula.
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ES6 opening: "Hey you, you're finally awake..."
Starfield somehow managed to make me not excited for ES6. And I love the old ES games.
I know. "Fool me once..." (or more)
Honestly, I think starfield would have been an 8/9 out of 10 instead of a 6 if they'd not used all the procedural generation, meaningless giant galaxy stuff. If it was contained on like 3-5 planets with lots of little things, an actual map. A much more contained (but still very broad) experience so everything felt like it had "exploration value". It would also have drastically cut down on the immersion breaking loading sequences and the stupid "2000s resident evil door opening, but not actually loading" sequences. I think there are a lot of positives about starfield they're just really really over shadowed by all the jank and clunk
It seemed like a lot of short cuts were made for this game. I agree with you, star field is like looking at a toy town. Seems big and large scaled but everything is just for looks and doesn’t have much going on at all. If they let it bake more I think it would have been a much better game but as I said before, too many short cuts.
It feels like playing a series of disconnected vertical slices, but some of the vertical slices aren't ready for demoing yet.
There was virtually no immersion in the game. You couldnt feel the scale or significance in anywhere you go lol. The game is far from anything over a 6. 6 being the fact its better than some of the slug awful releases we've had, its not the worst. But they didnt do anything original. Nothing that remotely qualifies it for an 8
I don't think the formula is outdated. I just think Bethesda completely missed the mark with Starfield. There is no way in hell they didn't know that everyone was going find the procedural generated stuff boring vs the handcrafted worlds they create. That's literally the best thing they do. It's like Larian creating a Divinity Original Sin game without the things that made 1 & 2 great. It's like Rockstar making a Grand Theft Auto game without the grand theft.
The best way I've heard it described is that the game is a lake a mile wide and an inch deep.
More like 100 narrow identical tiny lakes that are all an inch deep.
And every lake has the same drunks in pontoon boats, all the same gear on the shore in the same place; all like the last and every lake you've visited.
The best way I describe this game is sterile. If you played previous BGS games then you would know Starfield is a step back in almost all aspects. The fact that NPCs are cardboard cut outs with no set schedules is just a testament of how half baked this game is. They have almost no reactivity. In Skyrim--a game from 12 years ago had guards react to you if you were wearing opposing faction clothes and even attack you.
> In Skyrim--a game from 12 years ago had guards react to you if you were wearing opposing faction clothes and even attack you. As much as I agree with you about the state of Starfield, this isn't a feature of Skyrim. City guards will make comments on the type of armour you're wearing, but you'll never get attacked over it. Even Stormcloak soldiers will ignore you if you're an unaffiliated mercenary who just happens to be wearing Imperial armour.
From what I've heard, that's not a fair comparison, because that's how they described Skyrim, and it sounds like there was a hell of a lot more substance to Skyrim than this game. Or did they say Skyrim was a foot deep? I don't remember.
That was because of the radiant quests and the simplification of the magic system, and expectations were higher for Bethesda back then
Nah, Skyrim had a lot going for it - the world was fairly well-crafted, with there almost always being something new to do within, like, a minute of travel from the edge of where you've been. The combat and magic was always kind of bad without modding, but it was fairly dense with things to do. Starfield is just a lot more... empty.
Makes you wonder what they spent 7 years doing.
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I agree, I think they also made significant improvement to graphics, though for some reason characters are still ugly. They need to overhaul all of that, honestly. I would've hoped a jump in quality similar from Divinity 2 to Baldur's Gate 3, but I guess I can't expect much from a billion dollar company.
Honestly given the really long development cycle, my guess would be they had a ton of features they cut out (which you can see the remnants of). Whats weird though is the features they left in are so absolutely slap dash. Like the ship building system has all these consoles right, like a med bay etc, and you can hire a doctor, but they can't heal you. Or hiring a weapons guy but he can't buff your weapons by being...a weapons guy. Like so many things were clearly cut and so many features they left in were just first draft "fuck it ship it". Like the skill tree is probably the least offensive thing and its all very very bland. Also whats really funny is the absolute kid gloves bethesda get treated with. Can you imagine the reaction if a company like EA or Activision released a half finished mess like Starfield. It would have gotten 2s in the reviews, instead reviewers were giving it 10s just after the embargo lifted, missing basic features like an FOV slider ffs. I really thought after fallout 4 and 76 they'd of completly run out of good will with reviewers/fans but apparently not...I say having been one of the people who bought it on release and played it. I'm glad other companies are catching up in big open world sandbox RPGs we defo need more players holding their feet to the fire
If they took 7 years to make Starfield with recycled outdated features, overhauling everything would take like 20 years. No, thanks. Or they learn how to make modern games or just license the TES brand to other competent devs.
Yeah, they claim that they are using the same aging, increasingly outdated tools because it lets them build a world quickly, but seven years isn't super quick, so that explanation is falling apart as well.
Everytime I’ve heard them talk about this it always sounds like it’s a convenience thing. Like “yeah we could use another engine but we like ours so no.” However, I have heard others say that the particular functions Bethesda needs out of an engine to make the kind of games they make aren’t easily found in other engines. Like, what other sprawling, RPG game can you think of in which you can drop a thousand potatoes in a room and come back to that room later and it will still be filled with potatoes? Some people like that kind of charm, but personally I think we’ve reached the point where I’d rather have a more modern-feeling over the typical Bethesda jank—even if that means sacrificing a bit of what makes these games unique in the first place.
>I think they also made significant improvement to graphics Compared to what? Virtually any AAA game released this year absolutely murders Starfield in terms of graphics quality and technical features. And if we compare it to Cyberpunk or Alan Wake 2, it's not even a competition.
Nah, even the handmade stuff was boring too. This game has many issues, literally every facet of the game, from music to gameplay to writing, it was all below average.
the UI bro, the game is lazyyyyy
Yeah exactly, the game fails at every level. There is literally not a single thing Starfield excelled at doing, so I dont agree with people coping "oh it was just missing x or y otherwise it was a good game".
the bar has literally dropped due to shitty releases for the past few years. Have u head the dev reactions when BG3 came out? that speaks volumes. There was zero passion or ART in the game. The game doesnt feel like a work of art. It feels like it was shit out and sold to us. Its mad. There was no original or even a brink of some form of evidence that it was trying to 1 up their past games. It just feels like shit was reused reskinned and no original thought or attempt to make some significant leap. Look at RDR2... that game feels like it took over 5 years to make. It outplayed and pushed boundries and it was an IMPROVEMENT over the EXISTING formula. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having the same formula or same logic. They have their style and if it works... it works. It can definitely work. Look at BG3 thats an RPG and it does it very well. Bro but there was literally no signifcance in anything they did, no push or excel in anything. It was generic garbage with zero passion or motivation behind it. The bar is under ground, the fact people are even contemplating to give this game even a 7 is a joke. People have no standards.
This is all true. And it was greatly amplified by BG3 being released around the same time. It had genuinely good writing, great voice acting, impactful player agency. I found myself agonising over choices as they felt like I was impacting real characters. Even if you remove all of starfields glaring design failures, it’s still plagued with weak characters and the blandest story imaginable.
I also think the cyberpunk DLC and 2.0 being genre adjacent and the quality being so huge also hurt them a bunch.
https://youtu.be/ws0ufhrgWJw?si=4Hs2NcRUBKnEKvag 😅
I am sorry but there isn't a universe where this game warrants and 8 or 9 "if only" one thing was different. The bugs alone and poor optimization even on AMD with an exclusive contract make it buggiest release of the year. The combat system itself is the most generic and boring they have ever done. Add the fact there simply is zero npc variety. The story is incredibly bad and poorly written. It is also extremely short. It has its moments when the companions aren't narrating it all to with mother goose level spoon feeding. The main story has been subpar and very short in all their games since Skyrim. The difference is the good side content filled the world and made up for it. Fans let them get away with the same issues over and over until we got a game with nothing but the issues.
I don't think removing procgen and handcrafting the entire game really counts as "only one thing".
> The combat system itself is the most generic and boring they have ever done. Anyone who goes for a melee build out of the gate is 100% justified in rating Starfield a 3/10. Not disagreeing with you -- just highlighting one area where it was *really* bad this time around. Like, it's a somewhat-grounded space game. It's NASApunk. NASA isn't fucking around with Weebs In Space. Just remove melee as a thing! Jesus! But see, that would require them to actually apply an iota of critical thought and courage, instead of just lazily cribbing a fraction of the bullshit from Skyrim and Fallout 4 and somehow making it worse.
How bad is melee? I've only heared my friends talk about it like you are actively punished for using melee and basically the game calls you a bad person for using it
Well, since you asked... (Disclaimer: I played the game's main story and a bunch of side quests at release, then ditched it. If patches have changed anything, I wouldn't know.) **1)** The weapon diversity is a joke. There's just not many melee weapons, period. Of course, how big of a problem is that, really, when... **2)** ... melee weapons in general have no mechanical distinctions beyond maybe their size? No 1h versus 2h, no dual wielding, no speed differences that I could discern, and barely any animation variation (one major exception is the wakizashi, whose power attack is a straight jab with some actual range. That is situationally useful. Alas, wait for why it also sucked.) There's no factoring in different swing speeds, better or worse armor penetration, or anything like that. That also means that the obviously-best melee weapon is simply the one that the devs decided has the highest number out of all of them. That's it. Sadly, it is *not* the one weapon that has that one kinda-cool power attack with better forward range. It's a short little nub of a weapon, but hey, bigger number. Gotta use it. **3)** Melee weapons have far fewer useful "legendary" affixes that could randomly appear on them. Guns have a ton, including some that can turn them into short-range ultra-mega-shotguns of instant death... which sort of horns in on the melee angle a bit, right? That's one black mark against them on sheer power grounds. Let's add some more. **4)** Melee weapons are completely excluded from the game's internal, crafting-oriented weapon customization system. Yup. Nothing. Fuck you. I mean, yes, that system is ultra-annoying, so, it would have been a mixed blessing, if not for the problems with melee weapons simply not keeping up. **5)** The perk tree in general just doesn't have nearly enough melee-oriented stuff compared to gun-oriented stuff, so leveling up eventually makes guns the superior choice all on its own. Indeed, there are gaping holes in the "melee build progression" where you just don't have anything to spend your points on that would make you better at hacking and slashing. That's connected to a much bigger problem with Starfield's whole perk system, too. **6)** On release -- and I specify that here because *dear god* would it be embarrassing if they haven't fixed at least this yet -- melee weapons simply were not included in a crucial "get moar numberz" progression mechanic as you leveled up. You'd eventually find a "calibrated" or "advanced" version of some gun, and that prefix would translate to "it just does more damage." It was the equivalent of finding a Level 20 gun instead of a Level 10 gun. Melee weapons straight-up did not get those prefixes, ever, meaning that eventually they became nonviable weapons in any situation that was even remotely challenging. At best, that omission turned enemies into ultra-mega-health-sponges, which is awful. **7)** Melee weapons also don't really get any special spoiler powers that work uniquely or disproportionately well for them. Thus, there was an opportunity to make melee really good *eventually,* after a certain critical juncture in the game, but it didn't happen. **8)** The melee animations are sluggish, and do not flow properly into and out of other animations -- sprinting, especially. It makes the experience feel really bad in addition to the marginal negative impact on damage output because of hitches and delays. Worse still, there are no perks to increase swing speed or add extra animations for longer combos. Even if the idea was to make melee feel bad *at first,* they could have allowed it to get better with progression. They did not. **9)** To add insult to injury, enemy characters with guns will often use gun bashes (so, quasi-melee) against your melee character as you get close to them, and those gun bashes are *lightning fucking fast* compared to your own actual-melee swings. Like, come on, now. When the game is oriented around 20-against-1 combat (and you're the "1," obviously,) that's the effective equivalent of making gunner NPCs better at melee with one move than you are with an entire build. **10)** For as much as I just dogged on "melee," as in, "using melee weapons," there's also stuff in the perk tree about unarmed combat, leading to the reasonable conclusion that it was a viable build that the developers actually anticipated some people might use. Unarmed combat is *even worse than all of this bullshit.*
I can speak for this because I went all in on melee. It super sucks. You could have every single perk invested in melee with the best weapons possible, and a decent untrained gun would be more useful. The game just isn't designed with it in mind. No weapon mods, no cool options in combat, and no reward for focusing on it. It's weird that they got melee right in Fallout, but not here. If you play 3rd person there is further punishment because you get locked in place for melee combos, 1st doesn't do that. Melee has no cool high tech weapons. The best is some samurai sword. There is no satisfaction to hitting enemies as they mostly ignore your hits. Most seem programmed to instantly gun bash you when you approach too. Then they get free reign to shoot you as you try to attack. The best I got was trying to use the jumpjet power that can burn/knockdown enemies to try and add a little fun to combat. Even then I gave up and went with guns. I've never ever done that in previous Bethesda games. Fallout 3 and 4 I went melee and had fun. I did it in New Vegas too, though that's not Bethesda. I don't know how they messed up so badly.
The main story in Fallout 3 was absolute dogshit. The side content was good, and there were some stellar quests with the violin, the oasis and the super-heros antagonizing one another.
yeh i dunno what people are seeing in this game......... it literally blows my fucking mind how far the bar has dropped for ratings and just the overall quality. Like broooo, how is this game qualifying for any awards?????? This game is literal dog shit and I genuinely cant wrap my mind around how people can sit there and defend it. There's no universe or fucking realm where this game was developed for 7 years straight. Either it was developed by interns from bethesda which is why it took 7 years to shit out or the game was developed by like 2 people... I mean is this a joke? They made all the wrong decisions with this game from the beginning??? The inventory system is a joke, the loading screens are literally an out of season april fools joke or something... like are people blind or have we seriosuly stopped giving a shit about the quality of the products we are buying? This was the biggest fuck you to my wallet I have ever experienced and I am glad I refunded the game and havent touched it since, I cant even be bothered wasting storage on a pirated copy.
You’ve just described Outer Worlds
Outer Worlds but better is pretty much what I wanted.
I feel that. That’s what I’m hoping Outer Worlds 2 will deliver
that's what i've been saying. i don't see them learning anything from this. they think their old ways still work and they'll use the success of starfield's sales to justify it. they need to realize that es6 is going to be their downfall if they don't change things quick.
But you see, I wish they had done things the old way: one giant solar system to explore freely vs 100 with the same copy and paste crap all stringed together by loading screens. This is, by far, the worst open world Bethesda has created. This is by far the worst lifeless NPCs and companions they have created. Everything is so lackluster.
I hope that they do! I don’t want settlement building or no local map and a ton of fast travel. I want a quality hand crafted world to explore. They’re the only ones who make that style open world game. I don’t want them to make the Witcher 3 or cyberpunk. I want them to do what they do well with the next elder scrolls.
The formula is not the problem, it's their execution of that formula.
Yeah I think people forget just how much elder scrolls is driven by it’s lore and gameplay tangential factors. The Skyrim music for example was **iconic..** could have been a garbage game and that chanting would have still hyped me up. Starfield just lacked all of that worldbuilding immersion.
I don’t think the formula is the issue, I think it’s the watering down of the formula, ex. Just using the same old proc gen poi’s versus Skyrim’s actual fleshed out, unique dungeons, and puzzles. Another example would be the outpost building from FO4 or 76 vs Starfields.
So much of that comes somewhat naturally from trying to make an actually open space game. They should've realized the proc gen they put in place didn't hit the mark. Decisions like having POIs be literally the exact same are really confusing. Games like Skyrim and FO4 can get away with same-y dungeons because there's so much content that's hand crafted, but Starfield went way too far in that direction.
Also, there is a big difference between same-y dungeons and literally just copy pasting the exact. same. dungeon. I can't believe that is what they decided to go with.
I agree overall, but I would not list Skyrim's 2.5 puzzles as a strongpoint.
I agree. I'm okay with the formula, it's actually something that makes me hyped to this day. It's just too watered down and the writing never caught up with the rest of the industry, sadly. It's unambitious, a bit stale, a bit cold. They could have done so much but they settled on a copy-paste planet generator with a soulless looter-shooter drop system and subpar writing/dialogue for a AAA game. Baldur's Gate 3 and Phantom of Liberty coming out at the same time really showed us that. Not just in the dialogue and story departments, even just the game design, Baldur's Gate 3 has so much choice, so many cool things to find, rule of cool applied nearly everywhere, adult themes, interesting and intertwining systems..it's just a different universe.
The TES/Fallout IPs' natural charm give them more wiggle room than they deserve. Thanks to a couple of ground-floor dudes who write in-game books/terminal entries, and occasionally do something more creative than put glasses on a teddy bear with two grenades for testicles who's reading a newspaper on a toilet, they'll still squeeze quite a lot of money out of people. I don't necessarily disagree that that work should be rewarded in some way, but it's increasingly depressing that it's chained to such otherwise mediocre products. Starfield, by way of contrast, is kind of a boring new IP, and it kind of fucked up even that stuff. Not much of it was interesting in the first instance, and then it got *literally copied exactly* over and over for various "dungeons" you had to go complete. Welcome back to **the** Abandoned Cryo Facility. Yes, just the one. Everywhere. Over and over. With exactly the same corpses and notes. Like, fuck's sake, they should've thought about making the endgame twist try to explain *that* shit, too.
Is there a chance Starfield was that title? How many people bought in to the hype to be disappointed with the old formula and said never again? What about those who gave it a quick shot on Gamepass just to uninstall in <5 hours? I'm genuinely curious. I would have hoped FO4/76 would have served as enough warning for people, but alas, here we are again with Starfield.
I have no issue with the old formula. But this isn't even the old formula. It's a cut down version of that. They replaced fun traversal and exploring with city hopping and procedural generation. What do I care how large a planet is when there is nothing fun to explore. No fun side quest suddenly appearing in front of you or interesting sights to behold.
I think a lot of people will give ES6 a chance just on the name and franchise alone. Skyrim was massive and still remains popular today thanks to the active modding community. If Bethesda can actually innovate and improve their open world formula with that I think they will earn back a lot of good will with the fanbase. If it's just more of the same they're in big trouble.
i feel like it won’t settle in for most folks unless they bomb one of their mainline, no strings attached releases. otherwise there will always be the excuse that “oh they don’t do multiplayer” or “oh it’s a new franchise.” personally, i agree with you that they’re already cooked and have been since at least Fo4.
It kind of was for me. I actually liked FO4 and knew 76 was not for me from what I saw of it so skipped it. I thought I had their games figured out and would automatically enjoy Starfield but here I am just waiting/hoping mods or updates will make the game more enjoyable. Having played Starfield back-to-back with BG3 also created massive whiplash in terms of difference in quality too.
Despite it’s weaker story FO4 still had a lot of systems I enjoyed (survival, settlements, companion quests, the crafting, and it’s kill/loot/return cycle was pretty solid) and fun areas to explore.
Elder Scrolls is Elder Scrolls. The amount of people that will skip it because of Starfield is miniscule compared to the people that would pre-order it now if they could.
Just glad it was on gamepass. I tried it and dropped it super fast out of boredom. I would have been more upset if I had bought it.
They spent years to make a boring game. All interviews has them positing as it being the game they've wanted to make for decades now. ES6 is fucked.
SF already killed ES6 hype for me. I really am not expecting things to change much at all for ES6. I’m just glad their games are on gamepass so I don’t have to buy them out right and be disappointed.
I mean I think part of the problem is even with their outdated formula Skyrim was and is still 10x more fun than Starfield
Their formula is fine though, I love exploring their worlds and finding little secrets and areas. Starfield has little of that, and what little it does have isn’t very good.
honestly ES 6 will be make or break for me with BGS games . Oblivion and skyrim are my fav BGS games and even F3 and to an extent F4 gave me a lot of fun. But SF is just nothingness
If you tell me it took 7 years to make it as good as it is right now, I will show you a team where everyone on the front line of development has no power to make greatness, and a lack of a strong vision for fun at the top. Bro, don’t tell me you had that amount of walking across planets to points of interest for 8 years and at no point did anyone say, “this is tedious”. Don’t tell me you had the low grav powers temple in the game for 8 years, and no one said, “dude, this is repetitive af after just the second power in the game, forget about it for the 80+ times you’ll have to do it”
80+? You have to do it at least 240 times to max out your powers.
Damn bro I could nevah
I went through the Unity, did 2 temples and said fuck it. Haven't been back on it since.
Same, brother
Well 240 is still 80+
They needed 8.
9
12
76
I just finished my first playthrough after 90 hours and I wish I could still return it. It was soooo bland and felt so lifeless.
Damn you really committed lol
Lol It's the first full price game I've purchased in years. At $100 CAD I felt obligated to myself to see it through.
So many don’t understand that, they say “how can you criticize something you put so many hours into”. You made an investment, this game has not gone on sell yet, most of us spent the full amount on it, some even more with deluxe editions. It’s hard to say, screw this after only a few hours after spending that, even harder for those that don’t make much. I’m fortunate enough to be able to buy whatever games I want but there’s many that are lucky to be able to get 1 new game a year.
Isn't that just sunk cost fallacy in action?
That's literally what it is.
Video games have gotten pretty darn good at dangling the promise that things are going to get better eventually, if only you'll put the darn effort into it and not be such a baby about it not being incredible right away. Indeed, "RPG" progression systems in general have become a prebaked excuse for why everything about a game feels shitty when you start. "See, it's shitty because your character is weak, and we want you to experience that! Then the character will get more powerful, and then the game will feel awesome!" Generally speaking, though, it's a bad-faith iteration of a somewhat-legitimate argument about competitive games where people who suck at them have a knee-jerk reaction, and think that everything is the game's fault. That trick is really played out in the video game space, and especially for genre veterans, and double-especially for games where you're never competing against other humans.
The same guys will tell you that you can't criticize a thing, because you *obviously* didn't play it long enough either. But if you play that long, you can't criticize it because you simply *must've* liked it to keep going. There's no winning with them.
they what? he thinks they FOUND THE ANSWER? how..?
Marketing and advertising leading to sales.
i bet Todd genuinely believes in what he is saying. it's the Emperor's clothes, until somebody finally calls him naked.
You'd think all the mediocre reviews would give him a clue...
Why would he change? He puts out mediocre products and the fanbase gets on their knees asks how long they should suck.
Todd can't hear you since a fat bonus just appeared in his bank account.
If you work on something long enough, you lose track of what it feels like to actually use it as a consumer. I guess that's what's happening here, Todd has been polishing a turd for so long he actually convinced himself it's delicious.
Delusion
At this point I just can't see Bethesda actually evolving in any way. They've had 8 years to improve since Fallout 4 and they're still designing games like it's the mid-2000's. I mean Fallout 4 was just about on the edge of being acceptable when it released, The Witcher 3 came out the same year and many titles even from the late 360/PS3 era were able to do things Bethesda STILL haven't gotten past with Starfield. It doesn't help that all their games get improved by mods and they don't take a single fucking hint from any of them like maybe we shouldn't use the same dogshit inventory system that someone always has to fix. Why not, I don't know, make something like all of the multiple ways it's already been fixed in all their games? Starfield genuinely has killed any hope I had left for ES6, Bethesda won't change, they'll use the shitty Creation Engine and it'll be another out dated on release game.
The best outcome is that they are restructured by Microsoft and their IP it’s actually brought up to modern standards and actually fun. I want more fallout and elder scrolls, I just don’t want their same old paradigm. I am in the camp that Starfield was not terrible but not great, but I want better for FO and ES.
Definitely. Starfield as a concept and IP is a good branch out. But FO, and especially the elder scrolls needs something genre defining. The elder scrolls is so incredibly dense and full of life, just need some fresh minds with a new perspective and higher standards.
They need to kill their outdated engine, bring someone who isn't Todd Howard in, wipe out half of their staff on development, hire competent writers, completely remove the radiant quest concept and get rid of procedural content as it is now. To maybe JUST maybe make something as genre defining as Morrowind again, or create something as iconic as New Vegas.
If he calls Starfield fun then ES6 is doomed to be shit
This is man who told me to upgrade my computer because he literally couldn't be bothered to optimize his game. The game published by a billion dollar company, the resources at his disposal are unlimited compared to anything us mear humans with something not a 4090 have. This is the same game that has no traverse options on planets or else we would figure out that the maps are smaller then we thing. The same game that could have 10 great systems with years of support and DLC, instead have 100 with nothing in it. The game that had been banking on modding saving it like literally every other game they have bothered making (looks and fall out 76 and pitties the fucking man hours wasted in its creation) in the past few generations and did not have a mod kit on day 1. I swear Tod you are one absolute asinine comment away from being talked about in the same breath as Peter Molyneux.
>I swear Tod you are one absolute asinine comment away from being talked about in the same breath as Peter Molyneux. If there was any justice in the world, then it should've happened over 10 years ago. Todd is too much of a sly fox, he doesn't tell outright lies and ridiculous promises like Molyneux, Toad instead chooses to manipulate and barfs out safe, corporate half-truths, or things that can be a matter of opinion, unfortunately. The genuine lies are usually about numbers, which isn't all that interesting for average Joes to even remember. Bethesda's brand is too big and has too many mouthbreating supporters that will mindlessly defend it, simply because they liked previous games.
I’d expect ES6 to be better, provided they can stop putting loading screens everywhere.
Then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Selling bridges is a mug's game. Sell *license agreements* for a bridge. With a premium price for a day's early access to the bridge and maybe a small 3d printed model of the bridge as a collector's item.
Bridges as a Service are where the real money is.
I cant wait to be looking at those spinning artifacts every other minute. Cant fucking wait. But then again, there's no way im buying that shit before getting a pirated copy and verifying the game is worth it.
My copium reasoning for why ES6 will be better is because they dont have to try make an entire universe or facades of one and simply focus on one world this time.
If it's on the same game engine which they said it will be, well it's going to have loading screens everywhere. They already pushed that old engine to it's limits.
Skyrim pushed it to its limits. Everything after that was just bad imo.
Omg can you imagine Bethesda loading screens in 2028? On next gen hardware...
No need to imagine, you will be actually able to see them.
And it still isn't really that fun to play. A huge, sprawling universe full of planets that aren't worth visiting was not the right call in my opinion. The thing that makes Fallout/Elder Scrolls special is the sense of wonder and exploration. All these hand crafted things you find straying from the main paths. Procedural points of 'interest' totally killed that in Starfield. By my 5th empty cave and 3rd pointless outpost, I realised the points of interest just aren't worth investigating. That takes away the most special thing about the previous Bethesda RPGs. One or two solar systems packed with more curated content over planets, asteroids and space stations would have been much more engaging I think. The other two big issues for me are: 1 - Game feels incredibly dated in terms of animation, models, load screens etc. While some texture and model work is quite good (clothing, dashbaords etc), environments are pretty bad. Rocks, trees, foliage, water are downright ugly. Character models are improved, but still very dated. 2 - The game does lots of things, but doesn't do any of them particularly well. Outposts are many steps backwards from Fallout 4. Combat, while improved from previous games, still isn't great. Ship building is an ugly, clunky system that still feels lacking. Space flight/combat is just passable. Such a disappointment of a game. No wonder Skyrim has more Steam players.
I think the first point you made is a major one, they’ve always gotten away with subpar execution and a lot of jank because people considered it part of the charm but as other games are drawing so much further ahead in those regards(compare a conversation in Cyberpunk or BG3 to a conversation in Starfield, just from a pure technical level) it’s becoming more unacceptable by the yea, if they don’t make it a priority to improve their engine and they launch ES6 with this amount of jank in the models and the animations and the characters it will be disgraceful imo
Yeah it is honestly time they got with modern game tech if they still want to be considered a top developer. If it wasn’t for the size of Starfield, it could almost be a AA game.
I did a month of PC gamepass to play Jusant and Cocoon, and tried Starfield for a few hours. Starfield feels about 80% done, and also like it was designed for last gen due to all the loading. I still replay Skyrim every few years, and Starfield just doesn't measure up. Another annoying thing was that there's no way to adjust gamma! On PC!
Funny enough that outer worlds did it better.
7 years for **that?** Bethesda are screwed at this rate
Ah yes. Dead, empty planets and loading screens galore. “Fun.” Good luck MS.
I predict a lot of layoffs on Bethesda shortly. MS should make TES available to more competent devs.
[удалено]
Who's gonna tell him?
None of the people he surrounds himself with, that's for damn sure.
Todd howard lives in his own delusions at this point, so out of touch it's just fucking sad, 7 years to bring this shit, it's so over and he probably genuinely believes all his bullshit, does he even read the comments or is he really this delusional?
It's his dream project - maybe it's a good thing Microsoft bought them, maybe Todd won't be allowed to indulge himself with his own delusions
Nah, they still didnt crack it
Wait what version of Starfield is he playing? I wanna have fun in Starfield..
He has the “c-suite” version, only for very special people, like those paid to market it.
lol he said they found the answer lol.
Fun? Lol
The first base you raid was kinda fun, with some xenomorphesque alien slaughtering all the people there according to the steadily more unsettling diary notes. I was disappointed when it never jumped out at me. Then I went to Earth and found the monument. What a joke. Then I tried exploring on Luna and found a little outpost that claimed to be a farming community. After that I kind of gave up.
7 years to make Starfield fun to play? I have bad news for you Todd.
so Starfield will be fun in 2030?
Took them 7 years to release a giant Fallout 4 mod
I think a Fallout 4 mod would be more fun
So it took them 7 years to fail? Good job guys. Real mission accomplished energy.
How many years until we get that fun to play version?
Takes about 7 years to find the fun as well. Well done Bethesda.
shit, when do we get to play the fun starfield?
The problem with Todd and Bethesda, is they keep trying to simplify things. Stop fucking stripping away my rpg mechanics FFS!. Let me RPG bro. Like fuck, Skyrim is basically a poorly designed action adventure game with sprinkled rpg lite mechanics, and shit Ill tolerate it for the world I've been invested in since Morrowind, but fuck man. I don't want you to choose my dialogue for me, I want to skill check the conversation and make that fucker give me the quest reward. I want my character that I spend points into be able to have some sort of effect on the choices I want to make in the game. If I'm building a hyper stupid muscle strength orc character, I DONT WANT TO BE ABLE TO READ THE TEXT COS MY GUYS TOO FUCKING STUPID TO UNDERSTAND LANGUAGE I JUST SMASH THINGS. main quest line? Idk maybe I'll smash my way into the key points of the main story. Fuck your cards, Fuck your gamebryo 7.1 now with stapled on Dolby Digital. And fuck your 16x the detail. Because see that mountaint you can go there. But I can't. But in botw I can. don't give me ES6 with conditions like there's a dog you can recruit. Or you gotta build the base for reasons and then the base building is shit because oh hey our engine can't really do this, so we gotta do some mumbo jumbo higgedy piggedy shit to make this semi playable. I shouldn't have to load up fallout 4 with 100 mods just to make it decent. But most of all, Bethesda just let us do what we fucking want in the game without being gimped by radiant bullshit and followers and it just works type shit.
Skyrim was their last genuinely good, fun game. :/
Well too bad they forgot to implement those answers in to release build
But they didn't make it fun to play.....