I don’t get it.
People wanted another Bethesda game.
They got what they wanted.
I said in 2008, after playing the first Fallout game by Bethesda instead of Black Isle: “Only Bethesda could manage to make a post apocalyptic prostitute boring.”
They’ve always been boring, they’ve always had ugly character models, and the writing has always been bad. You get what you paid for.
I think the fundamental problem is that people had different expectations for a game set in space, both because Bethesda stoked them (all of that talk of having the idea decades ago / first new franchise in however many years / etc) and because after No Man’s Sky people kind of expected that with their budget / resources they would manage to create something richer + more seamless.
In retrospect, if they’d simply sold it as “Skyrim in Space,” admitted to the limitations up front - same underlying engine, limited amount of variety to procedurally-generated content, loading screens instead of seamless takeoff/landing, etc - and not pretended that it was something new, the response would have probably been much more uniformly positive.
I think you’re on the right track, but I think it’s also because recent games did better with similar ideas. People shat all over Mass Effect Andromeda, but it hid loading screens behind interplanetary and FTL travel that was actually visualized. In my brain, I know they’re cutscenes to cover for loading data, but it’s enough to take you out of it being a “game” and allowing you to suspend your disbelief. It’s hard to suspend disbelief when there’s a loading screen constantly in front of you.
Yeah, but you can do the same thing in Star Field, just takes a bit of learning. You get the exact same cut scenes for loading even, ala Mass Effect. The reality is the game offers fast travel, as essentially jumping 5 times and loading and seeing the cut scenes is the same thing as just loading to the end.
This game feels more like a test, do you actually want to explore, or do you want to hop point to point for the quest. You can do either. It just seems to offer fast travel as the first option, but you can take the slow way around too
The setting lowered my expectations. Modern sci-fi has this weird obsession with being sterile and boring. Compared to the magical fantasy of Elder Scrolls and the zany retro-futurism of Fallout, it was guaranteed to be boring.
after No Man’s Sky people kind of expected that with their budget / resources they would manage to fix that game’s problems and create something richer + more seamless
That was basically what I hoped for. NMS type game, but with Skyrim/ fallout level modding, stories, quests and deeper meaning to it.
And with better procgen. They have the manpower and expertise to do that.
I haven’t bought the game yet, waiting to see the initial responses. Now… I’ll probably pick it up on sale sometime, when bugs are fixed and there’s solid mods.
Honestly I still think waiting to buy a Bethesda game is smart if you aren’t a huge fan or something. Skyrim was pretty crap at launch and all the praise it gets now is mostly referring to Skyrim well after launch when patches and mods turned it into something good.
I played Skyrim at launch and it was great.
Mods added another level to the game but I can happily play the game without.
I mean, it is extremely polished. I have encountered a total of 2 bugs over my entire playtime. By this time in fallout 4 I lost track of the number of bugs I saw, things jittering atound, people’s faces acting wonky, nome of that here.
I just want Spacerim tho
Closest I can get you is “Spacerimming: An Anal Odyssey”, will that do?
No but I’ll hold on to that for now thanks
Skyrim mods to the rescue?
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Everyone recalls, but they also recall Hello Games spending the next several years fixing the game and fleshing out to be closer to their original vision, which is what they were selling to people: their vision. They should have been selling the game, not the vision, but they took their fuckup on the chin and risked a lot. Hello Games took a big risk by doing this. There was no gaurantee they would appease gamers and they essentially had no income except for continued sales of No Mans Sky.
Also NMS was Hello Games’ first game ever, so you can give them a little slack for having no idea what they’re doing.
Bethesda is a 30+ year old juggernaut who waits for modders to fix their games and has been re-releasing their last successful game for a full decade now.
Hello Games made NMS better because they felt bad. Bethesda made Skyrim better to re-release it and get more money.
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I think the difference here is Hello Games took a big risk taking 2-3 years to fix it while asking for nothing more in exchange. What they did is basically unheard of because its hard to pay people without known future income.
Do you think Bethesda will take 2-3 years to “fix” this? I don’t.
They’ve always been boring
Strongly disagreed. Pre-Oblivion their games were great. Hoping for a return to engrossing stories taking place in a rich, expansive universe was not entirely unreasonable.
Morrowind was their best, but I would say 21 years on, it’s really tough to be like “Yeah, this time they’ll get back to their roots.” No, it’s time to move on. All the people who made those games what they were have retired, moved on, or died.
Well, I’d argue that Daggerfall was their best game, story-wise, but Daggerfall is even older. And that’s the point, isn’t it? More time passed between Skyrim and Starfield than between Daggerfall and Oblivion. A lot can change in so many years, and I do believe that hoping for something new was not entirely unreasonable.
Then again, the keyword there is entirely, isn’t it. I personally didn’t expect very much from Starfield, and, also personally, I can’t say I fully understand the amount of hype surrounding it.
They could have given us something old, or something new, but they didn’t. Just the same shit as last time, wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.
Surely there’s an element there of rose tinted glasses? All of us were 21 years younger. There were less games coming out and they were harder to get for many of us.
You didn’t need to work so damn much to keep your head above water, or were below working age altogether. It was a lot easier to find the time to really immerse yourself in the lore and it required a lot of reading both in-game and out.
It was also all new to us, truly novel experiences with every leap in gameplay, graphics or mechanics being applied to brains that weren’t completely immune to dopamine and over-stimulated constantly.
I played Ultima VII so much that my friends and I would quote the game to eachother at school…we were fully immersed in it and it was bloody huge for its day.
To be honest I barely even try with these type of games anymore. I know it isn’t going to satisfy me. I tend to enjoy mastering movement mechanics and skill based competitive games. Sure, they also release the same game every year repackaged, but there’s usually enough of a tweak to movement mechanics and gun physics that it’s a challenge to get gud again and I get a real kick out of genuine competition.
I played Starfield for several hours on the weekend and I do my best not to judge too harshly given what I’ve said above but I feel as though there will never be a game ever again that grabs me enough to make that genre worth paying the money. It’s me that’s changed moreso than the lore being watered down. “Damn you, Avatar!”
I grew up with Skyrim and mod it religiously - that’s where my nostalgia comes from. And even I’ll say that Morrowind completely blows it out of the water on nearly every front.
Skyrim’s a lot more accessible, and I love it for that, but that’s about it.
I’d recommend you go back and read some critical reviews of Arena and Daggerfall. The complaints are exactly the same: the graphics engine is out of date, the characters are lifeless, the writing is just okay, the story is shallow, etc. Bethesda has scaled back the RPG mechanics since Morrowind, for sure, but their games ultimately have the same Bethesda DNA, for better or worse. For what it’s worth, I’m enjoying Starfield at launch much more than Fallout 4 even now, updated, expanded and modded.
My friend, I don’t need to go read the video game history about Daggerfall: I wrote some of it. :)
And I stand by my statement. That game was the height of storytelling that came out of Bethesda in a bunch of small but important ways, although Morrowind is not far behind, in a somewhat different fashion. And there is a definite shift in the series from the moment Ted Peterson left the team. Patently, not a shift I am personally very fond of, but to each her own.
I can’t remember all that well, I was a child at the time, lol. I go back to Morrowind once in a while, and I do find the writing to be more immersive, as opposed to the more recent games where it’s a series of linear, ham-fisted novellas. So far, Starfield seems much improved over Fallout 4 or Skyrim in that regard, but I’m not all that far in.
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I think we were all expecting them to rebuild the engine sometime between fallout 4 and now instead of just duct tapping a flashlight (new lighting system) to it.
It’s such a bad engine the Phil Spencer came out and said every QA tester at Microsoft is working on Starfield:
is that because Microsoft doesn’t have QA anymore?
Consumer Windows is just an endless Early Access release now.
The Creation Engine itself is just Gamebryo with a flashlight duct taped to it. IMO the engine is a huge part of what makes Bethesda games so fascinatingly unique.
The engine should be rebuilt from the ground up though. It’s full of problems and it’s fundamentally dated, for example one of the most obvious things a new version of the engine should include is making the world completely seamless - no more loading instances, no more loading screens entering interiors, etc etc. But all the other problems with the engine need addressing. And they can do a huge amount to make it better for the mod scene if they rebuild.
Continually slapping more and more fixes on this engine fundamentally ignores the fact it is impossible for it to get around several issues it has at its core without a rewrite.
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This engine is already great for modding, but I suppose it can always be better. Do you know any technical details about why the worlds can’t be made seamless? There were open cities mods for Oblivion & Skyrim, so it seems like it’s probably technically possible. Seems like that may be more of a compromise related to memory allocation on consoles.
I dunno, I don’t expect Bethesda to write a new engine from scratch, no one does that. They made New Atlantis seamless to an extent I haven’t seen in previous Bethesda games, so as long as they keep making incremental improvements, I’ll be satisfied.
Do you know any technical details about why the worlds can’t be made seamless?
I don’t know the technical details but I know that when you attempt to add new map area to any existing map (for example the overworld) the physics engine does not engage for those spaces. You have to create new map areas for anything new.
There are also hardcoded limits to the number of entities that can be loaded in-engine at any one time. When you go over the alotted number of NPCs for example it starts spawning them in the sky, this causes the infamous flying horse bug everyone has seen in modded Skyrim when they’ve added too many new NPCs to zones. I think newer games have had some bandaids slapped on the engine to increase this but it’s still there.
Open Cities works because the cell already exists, so they just took everything in the city zone and moved it into the existing world cell, which is identical in size. So there’s no problem with this causing issues. This can’t be done for a lot of buildings (to create interior/exterior) because of various issues such as NPCs not knowing where their house is unless it’s a defined place you go through a loading screen on, so taking houses and slapping them into open world would completely break scripting for their daily routines, same for every building in the game. Some of them are tardis design too, bigger on the inside than the actual building is on the outside.
Well a lotta games are “in development”, doesn’t mean that they get developed in that time.
As an enjoyer of both Oblivion and Morrowind I’m going to say that I think it’s more likely that the people at Bethesda who were key at making their past games good have either been promoted beyond their positions of expertise or simply left for greener pastures. Bethesda hasn’t always been trash, and people are quick to forget transgressions from nearly a decade ago (yes! It’s been that long!)
It’s been 21 years since Morrowind, and 17 years since Oblivion. Been longer than a decade. Two in Morrowind’s case. I would put Morrowind down as “peak Bethesda,” and their games have been slowly turning to crap since. I agree, I think they lost a lot of key players who worked for them, and they’ve never been able to regain their footing.
21 years since Morrowind
🫠
Not always, n’wah
Skyrim is literally one of their worst-written games and only has a saving grace of a wide open world that is interesting to explore.
Personal opinion, Morrowind was still boring, but had the best writing, best style, and required the most from the player. Morrowind was peak Bethesda and that was over 20 years ago.
Starfield at launch is more compelling than Fallout 4 or Skyrim, but falls short of Morrowind. It’s in the mix somewhere alongside Oblivion and Fallout 3, IMO.
🔥Hot take🔥
Eta: emojis, for that hot take
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Morrowind is a role-playing game, and in this role, you needed to be able to do things like research the world you’re in to figure out what to do, not have a rando who has a big fancy exclamation point above him telling you exactly where to go with a waypoint. It’s just different ways to approach the game. One is functionally role-playing within the world you exist in, and the other is “Fuck all this, I just want to play a game, I don’t want to think hard.”
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Really. You’re gonna pull the people like different things argument after telling this person that they’re just pretending to enjoy Morrowind? That’s some next level hypocrisy right there.
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I don’t know why people pretend they actually enjoyed sitting there deciphering all the text/journals/notes/etc. to get directions and navigate the world and enjoyed it.
This was you saying the way you don’t like is wrong.
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I don’t think the dude was insinuating that they thought people were “brain-dead” because they enjoyed Skyrim more than Morrowind - it’s literally just the way the games are.
Like you said yourself, waypoints were added for a reason. Morrowind can be pretty bullshit at times with directions, and the game does straight-up lie to you a few times, but you also can’t deny that Skyrim is literally telling you to go that arrow on your compass for every single quest. One’s not better than the other, but with Morrowind, you do get the sense of being on an adventure since you have to figure stuff out and encounter weird people on the way, whereas with Skyrim it’s waaaaay easier to get into because you can legitimately turn your brain off and let it relax a bit.
One’s not better than the other,
No, but one is genuinely “role-playing” while another is… not.
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I played Morrowind after playing Skyrim and I found it much better.
It’s much less accessible, but the writing is actually good and it has the best ‘R’ in RPG of any game I have ever played. The character progression is amazing and there are so many fun ways to build a character.
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Thanks Todd Howard 🙏
“He can’t keep getting away with it!!”
There’s a trait you can pick that exactly explains my problems.with the game. The trait is ‘Dream Home’. It is described as
‘You own a luxurious, customizable house on a peaceful planet! Unfortunately it comes with a 125,000 credit mortgage with GalBank that has to be paid weekly.’…
I thought this was a cool way of adding increased difficulty for myself. I tend not to play at the hardest setting because I don’t have much time to play. But having to plan ahead and work around this limitation sounded like it would add an interesting wrinkle to the strategy I’d have in the game.
However, when you start the game you discover that the loan has to be paid off in full… And you have unlimited time to pay it off. The only way to be foreclosed upon is if you actively go tell the bank to foreclose on you. It’s like they had the idea, but couldn’t be bothered to implement it.
What’s worse is 120k is nothing in the game. You can easily get there within a few hours of play. This is just one example, but it speaks to the game’s complete unwillingness to give the player anything negative or push them any way from their ‘freedom’. The sheer fact you are not locked out of any faction or faction mission is another example. There are 0 stakes in the game and you feel 0 connection to the people you meet or places you visit. Not helped by Sarah potentially being one of the most annoying judgemental characters in any Bethesda game I’ve ever encountered.
Update: I eventually visited this ‘Dream House’. It kinda sucked. The planet it is on is kinda ugly. There is more to this mechanic than I originally thought, however. When you visit you can pay 500 credits for 1 week of access as a ‘payment’ towards the principal. Still very deceptive of the original description.
The only way to be foreclosed upon is if you actively go tell the bank to foreclose on you
Bethesda once again being so scared of the player making a choice, so they lock down anything that actually changes the game behind a giant 🚨 ARE YOU SURE??? 🚨
I mean there are a whole bunch of players that seem to have a problem with actually dealing with consequences. Just look at the bg3 players who are so pissed about “missing content” when they murderhobo their way through the game. Like no shit you killed the people who give you quests, of course you’re going to miss out on their stories.
The sheer fact you are not locked out of any faction or faction mission is another example.
Ah, so Skyrim in space
vast as an ocean but as shallow as a puddle
I swear every space game is described like this
I think it’s because so many space games try to dazzle with the unfettered dream of exploring the endless cosmos. But you obviously can’t fill an endless cosmos with interesting things to do. Hell, most of space is just dead rocks and hot gas.
I feel like dyson sphere program is somewhere further, it being a sandbox factory game means you can do basically as much as you can reasonably handle on your computer, although story wise it’s not great since it’s not meant to be a story game
Someday I’m interested in making an open world game (short on features because I’ll never have giant budgets) that embraces the friction of inconvenience, but finds enjoyable ways for people to circumvent them.
Eg: You can’t easily locate yourself on the map, but you can use a radio to ping towers and triangulate, which gives a breezy interface - or just ask locals. You can’t fast travel, but train stations get you where you’re going - and you might get an interesting conversation or even a whole questline on board.
When ARMA Reforger released it was chaos, with 95% of the people hopelessly lost at all times. It’s because the game gave you a map, a compass, and nothing else for navigation. Best. Immersion. Ever.
Always on instant GPS with augmented reality waypoints between abstract objectives is what kills player immersion (and developer creativity). If I can just follow an arrow from point to point and complete a game: it wasn’t worth making the game.
Yep. Theres no exploring, theres just “run to waypoint. grab thing waypoint is on, run to waypoint, hand over waypointed item, find next waypoint source, repeat”
Cause devs want to dumb games down so any mouth breathing reject can conquer it without any effort, to bring in that sweet sweet idiot money.
Not every game mechanic needs to be a struggle.
And not every person can dedicate hours of time each week to play. Doesn’t make them mouth breathers.
But I agree they should at least give you the option to turn it off or on.
At least it is a Bethesda game, so someone will mod it in.
Its not a struggle to read the quest text and find a location on your own volition.
If thats a struggle, then you should be playing games that don’t require reading.
I think Zelda does this pretty good already.
So if you don’t pay, they still won’t foreclose on you? So what’s the point of paying lol
Man. Was really hoping to be wrong about it, but I mean, it is bethesda. Can’t expect a full up to date game without gamebreaking bugs or missing features when they could just rely on unpaid mod creators for that.
There are no (known) gamebreaking bugs
Why didn’t you pick any of the more negative traits? Like your example is the most basic harmless one. There’s ones with way more downsides. Did you pick the ‘2 loving parents’ trait and are mad they don’t kill you on sight? lmao. Like I picked wanted where I always have a bounty and it’s cool. I’ve had a bounty hunter show up in the middle of a boss fight before. Both in space and on ground. Added a decent complication. A few of the others are pretty long term negatives like weakening aids and food.
I also don’t know if you explored much because the game has a pretty robust ailments system. Like if you pre-plan sure you can have all the expensive cures on hand, but you can get quite a few ailments at once from fucking around. I had a cough for like 4 hours because I couldn’t find an aid for it. I eventually had to go to a doctor to get rid of it.
I did pick other negative traits. My problem with this one is it straight up lies to you in the description. You think it is going to be negative but instead it is the most basic boring version of what that trait could be. I’ve explored many hostile environments where conditions are common and haven’t had a situation where I didn’t already have the sure on hand but I tend to loot a lot.
You can’t change your traits after starting. For my play style, this one should have been perfect. Instead it just sucked all fun out of the potential mechanic.
its like the trait that gives you living parents.
makes a big deal out of having to send them money every week.
Its little more than a rounding error on your accounts, the amount you end up sending.
And they end up giving you several amazing things or free.
spoiler
___ A big honkin awesome ship, Thats got amazing cargo capacity for as early as you get it: Just gotta visit them a few times to get it and a pretty fuckin awesome pistol that, when i got it, was outdamaging everything i had except shotguns by at least a factor of 2.
Seriously, money in this game is a joke. Getting to be a rich removed is easier than building water purifier settlements in Fallout 4.
My wife, a couple friends, and I have all put a ton of hours into this game and absolutely love it. I put several hours into the shipbuilder alone. Every hand built sidequest I run into feels like a TNG episode. And I love the kinda Becky Chambers / Star Trek-style utopia with mystery and drama theme they’ve got.
This is the most Bethesda game they’ve ever made, for better of worse. It doesn’t hand hold you. There are plenty of times where I’ve looked at my quest log, found nothing i could do except the main quest, and then decided just to jump to a random system - only to get pulled into some crazy new adventure for a couple hours. You’re supposed to be an explorer, if you put even the smallest effort into exploring, you will be rewarded.
A lot of people complaining were never going to like this game or any Bethesda game and I don’t know what to do with those people. The amount of constant negativity on the internet makes me really appreciate stories like TNG and writers like Becky Chambers and Cory Doctorow, because they’re so positive and affirming and optimistic and when they criticise, they also offer solutions. And this game really scratches that itch for me.
And after almost 40 years of life dealing with the constsnt cycle of negativity and hatred and anger and frustration and drama, on the internet, a global scale, and in my own life…I’m just tired. I can’t play games with “edgy dark stories” anymore. I can’t go back to New Vegas because its bummer after bummer. And i know a lot of people thrive on that “scortched earth” bullshit but I just can’t anymore.
I just…wanna sit down and play a game. And maybe one where everything is okay for once. And this is that game for me.
I don’t get the hate, fuck 'em. I’m absolutely loving the game, it’s exactly what I wanted and more. In fact, I get the same feeling I did playing Skyrim, you’re doing some side mission, then you see something absolutely stunning. Earlier I was on some grey barren moon looking for resources, I look to the right, see the red planet, it’s ice caps, and other two moons with the milky way behind them.
I like the TNG comparison. The side missions are so much better than in other Bethesda games I’ve played. Even little interactions with the NPCs or little events and conversations that just happen as a part of the world and not some quest. Love it.
Damn it. Now I might have to try to buy it. In was thinking game pass as I would probably just do the main story and be done… But if the side quests aren’t just some, go pick up this item and bring it back, id love that.
I mean there is that too but it’s how the story is told. Maybe the voice acting and characters are better also.
Yeah that’s fair. Even if you see negative stuff about a game online, if you enjoy something then just enjoy it. Online toxicity and negativity are out of your control. Just get comfy and find peace in knowing that you’re having a good time.
Head to Paradiso for a StarTreky adventure.
Man that last quest for Sarah was a such a TNG moment. Overall the writing in this game is a cut above most - that quest was sort of an obvious twist, but it was executed really well. I find myself wishing the animations could keep up with the writing and voice actors sometimes, but we can’t have it all.
Are you hoping for cut scenes with specially rendered segments? Because I hate that stuff and would rather see animations built within the game world, like we have in most of these Bethesda games.
Cut scenes ruin games for me. It’s why I never finished a Mass Effect game.
No, just more emotion in the animations. You know how real people will sort of look up & to the left or something, maybe put their finger or hand up if they’re trying to remember something? Or they’ll look around and move their head a little, scratch their chin, etc. if they’re thinking. Or they’ll scrunch their eyebrows up and look at the ground if they’re sad?
That kind of thing.
Okay yeah, those would certainly be improvements. And… we have the technology.
The eyes are always looking at the player as well. Kind of makes them look psychopathic.
Strange, I hate the Bethesda POV and would rather have a cinematic view that helps sell the acting and narrative. Nothing kills my Interest quicker than a boring me looking at you view of things.
Why are people pretending the game isn’t getting glowing reviews? Is the Bethesda hate circlejerk still going on?
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Yep, he just added a few panels because he didn’t want to look like an idiot.
Oh no I’ve been found out 🥹
It didn’t come out on PS5.
I like the game, but reviews are pretty unreliable these days. Cyberpunk 2077 also got a load of 8/9/10s on release and that game ran like shit and was full of bugs.
Every game gets and 8, 9, or 10 lol.
this game is a negative -5/7 in my heart
Rule of thumb. Wait until your see top ten mod lists for Bethesda games and is at least on sale.
Well… MxR just dropped an immersive mod list.
Impossible. There is no time to have created a list of mods. Unless the list is just BetterHUD and a few options for Reshade
I hear the word immersive in his voice now
i have gamepass unrelated to this game, i’m probably going to try it out if the dlss mod can be installed on the gamepass version (which looks like it can be). if the game sucks, i’m happy, nothing kills excitement better than actually experiencing the thing and getting disappointed, so i can finally evict this game from my head. and if the game doesn’t suck, i’m also happy because all these years later i finally get to play star citizen, i just apparently had to wait for bethesda to make it.
I’m waiting for the Moddinglinked (Viva New Vegas and Midnight Ride) guide before I starts torrenting it
I somehow entirely missed the hype around this game and came across it again only accidentally on early release day when looking at some other sale on Steam. Been playing it and it seems fine to me in a vague Skyrim-in-space sort of way, which is all what I was expecting from a Bethesda RPG.
The world seems alive enough and there are plenty of side-quests and amusing / interesting things to discover. Now suddenly I have been coming across a bunch of posts everywhere where the game is supposed to be terrible or something. Still seems fine to me, but maybe I have lower standards after decades of gaming. shrug.
Its fallout 4 in space.
But with a worse interface and a lot more menus that are annoying to navigate.
that’s just console first UI design school Bethesda have subscribed to since Skyrim.
I know, its heavily consolified, but its bad even for bethesda.
Skyrim
arguably since Oblivion
Honestly this plus “Skyrim-in-space” make me feel pretty confident that this game is going to have staying power just because we know how good the modding community is for bethesda games. Skyrim was panned up front as genre generic fantasy with a pinch of viking magic but has been played continuously for a decade plus because it made for such a good blank slate to add onto. Also I guarantee every current UI issue already has modders working on it. Starfield script extender just dropped and the game hasn’t even officially been released
Which really sucks, if you think about it.
Cause you and I both know the only thing that makes Bethesda games big sellers is the fact that anyone that buys them goes “Oh boy, I cant wait for the modders to make it actually interesting/fun/etc”
But at the same time these games are very moddable. Not every game has great mod apis and they suffer for it. It’s like would you rather buy a shitty product that breaks easily or a shitty product that breaks easily that you can also fix easily? Clearly the second. That’s what Bethesda’s games and reputation were (in my mind at least) pre Fallout 76. So no, I don’t think it’s shitty at all. The community of modders exist because Bethesda made the games moddable, not because the games suck. If the games sucked and weren’t moddable then people wouldn’t be buying them in the hopes they could mod it.
I’d rather buy a product thats decent, and doesnt rely on waiting 6 months for the community to do all the dev legwork.
Yeah, no shit, that’s not the point of the comparison though, goober.
its literally what we’ve been talking about this entire time.
and please, if you’re gonna insult me, at least be more inventive at it than a grandmother from the 1950s
Some mods have attempted to fix the menus.
I’d like to see some complete UI overhauls at some point, but right now I’m using a mod that increases the refresh rate to 120hz from 30 in the menu’s
Yeah the interface is awful.
On the other hand, I came across pirates boarding a freighter yesterday. I shot down the pirate ship and boarded the freighter. The gravity generator was malfunctioning so it would sometimes have gravity and sometimes be zero g. There were navigation puzzles, some of which could only be done in normal grav and some in zero-g.
None of the random side content in FO4 is anywhere near that interesting.
You’ll be bored by that new radiant by the 10th time you do it.
It’d probably grate on me the second time I do it. Doesn’t mean that it’s not more interesting than the generic “this settlement needs you to shoot some dudes” FO4 encounter.
Its more interesting because its the first time you’ve encountered it. after a year you’ll have the same criticisms about starfield radiant quests that you did about fallout 4 radiants.
Fallout 4 is a much better FPS. But Starfield is a much, much better RPG.
Eh… I’m not sure I agree with that statement, but to each their own
I don’t understand why is it popular to shit on Bethesda games? Just don’t play it if you don’t like it. At least it has no microtransacrions or Battle Pass nonsense.
I imagine a lot of people bought it, enjoyed it for a few minutes too long to refund, and are now stuck with 60 bucks down the shitter
Makes you wonder why game demos aren’t a thing anymore
Well steam is really pushing devs to use demos again, given it’s mostly indie at this moment but slowly more and more demos start showing up, which is nice. One can hope AAA will do this to but I highly doubt they will
70 bucks*
I don’t understand why it’s so popular NOT to shit on them. Remember when Andromeda came out with many of the same issues, and people fucking REAMED it (rightly)? Now Bethesda is finally getting SOME criticism for their shitty business and game development practices and we have lots of people out here suckling at their teat defending them for some reason. “Leave them alone, it’s just a Bethesda game, why do people love to hate them, wahhhh.”
As if Bethesda isn’t one of the most beloved companies of all time, and most everyone started from a place of WANTING to love this game. But they’ve been making shitty decisions for years, hiding behind the nostalgia of their past titles, and they are overdue some criticism. It doesn’t mean everyone hates them.
I dont know why pepole shited so much on Andromeda.it was fairly ok title and i personaly was looking forward to next part( which sadly probably wont happen ). Certainly gameplay fitted andromeda more than inquisition. Alghtough from what i have seen i definietly wouldnt be so amazed as some journalist seem to be but Its a ok title. Not a BG3 for certain. Alghtough i admittedly never really liked bethesda style games.i even prefered dragon age 2 rather than skyrim. Bethesda games are too diluted for my tastes.
Remember when Andromeda came out with many of the same issues, and people fucking REEMED it
No, enlighten me, because I fucking hated Andromeda.
Typo on my part, but a definition of ‘ream’ is to reprimand or beat up, essentially
It actually means to make a hole bigger
As a phrasal verb it also means to reprimand severely
I wonder why they’re synonymous.
I dont think gamers know what they want.
They know exactly what they don’t want at least
That isnt clear either. I wonder if some people are just routinely negative about major releases? I usually don’t have wide expectations and get into games for niche reasons, for settlement and ship building in this case. I’m not really invested in what the more negative gamers have to say because it doesn’t have much to do with why I want to play the game. Also I feel like too many are just outrage poisoned so their opinion is just guaranteed to be ridiculous.
When this is the first meme I see a community make. I know the game is mid as fuck.
thanks for summing me up
Removed by mod
If my therapist and my dealer both failed at getting me to do tgat, what chance you think you have?
Tgat? Is that an acronym of "Toke, grin, assess, twerk "?
Occams razor dictates yes.
The negative opinions basically boil down to the following:
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people who have played the game and genuinely don’t like it (like asmongold) and have good arguments why they don’t like it. I respect these people opinions. You can tell them apart because they actually name the things they don’t like in the game with constructive arguments.
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People who haven’t played the game and probably never will and just regurgitate what the hate train is saying. If you ask them why it usually boils down to “it looks boring”, okay cool have played it? No? Okay is there anything else you don’t like? Then the usual “bethesdaslop” and calling people idiots or shills start. I mean what are you even trying to accomplish? Are they just annoyed others are having fun while they’re angry? I don’t take these people seriously and you can usually easily pick them out of the comments.
The game will probably get review bombed on metacritic and the likes, I’m calling it now. Just the amount of stupid articles and YouTube make it a self fulfilling prophecy. I won’t give a shit, I’ll try it on gamepass when it comes out. If I like it I will keep playing it and if I don’t I will stop. It’s as simple as that.
I really don’t see why people feel the need to jump on some hate train just for the sake of disliking something. It’s just as annoying as people who want to be contrarian just to look interesting.
People are just weird, and typically have zero foresight.
I think you’re pretty much spot-on.
I understand some of the negative reviews, but over-all, I’ve enjoyed it so far. More importantly, it has massive potential.
Asmongold gets on my nerves despite the fact he usually has well-conceived opinions. Offhand, do you have a summary of what his complaints are?
I don’t really want to rewatch the 4 hour or so stream but off the top of my head’ -ship combat wasn’t fun (he didn’t get it and found it unreasonably hard) -he did not care for the RPG elements and doesn’t like games where you have to play for a lot of hours before it becomes fun -he found the combat clunky compared to other shooter games
He admitted he probably wasn’t the right audience for the game since he never really liked Bethesda games. He just wanted to try something different. Also story seems to be not that important to him generally. I personally love Bethesda games and can get completely absorbed in them. But I can also definitely understand it’s not for everyone.
All that makes sense. I remember him defending P2W action games. And I did stumble onto a reaction video of him laughing at random things that CP2077 thought of but weren’t in Starfield. Fair enough.
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Starfield is fun to me 🤷♂️
People keep saying it’s Skyrim in space. Great, I got a good 400-500 hours out of Skyrim.
It’s not. No exploration or interesting story, no ‘wow’ factor like Alduin flying down on you for the first time. Don’t expect Skyrim. Not even close.
No exploration? Isn’t there a class built specifically around it?
You are mistaking true exploration for unlocking new locations
I guess I will find out tomorrow.
Have you not been watching gameplay?
I don’t really do that anymore. Gameplay footage vary rarely gives me what a actual gameplay feels like.
I seen gameplay for Minecraft and shrugged it off originally. Ended up being the best game in the world a year later.
you guys really think it’s boring? :/
At this point I don’t trust anyone. Reviewers obviously paid off to give positive reviews, but then just as annoying is all the pure anti Bethesda hate here. I don’t trust anyone to separate their Bethesda love/hate from the review of the actual game.
I think there was one review that was like “it’s a sci Fi Skyrim in space” and that sounds like it’ll be the most accurate.
sci Fi Skyrim
Shit bro that’s all you gotta say.
I’m a basic bitch like that I like my Bethesda kiddie pools.
“it’s a sci Fi Skyrim in space”
Tbh, that DOES sound pretty great IMO 🤷
That’s all I really wanted from this game. I like the fact the environments are actually different looking instead of Wasteland Fallout or Fantasy Skyrim.
What is Skyrim but a shadow of Oblivion, which is only a shadow to Morrowind? Hard pass if it’s anything like Skyrim. Stupid puzzles, stupid quests, stupid lore. They treat you like a kindergartener, and you guys like it. 🤷
Why don’t you just post your IQ and get it over with 🤷♂️
Lmaoooooo
And that user’s name? Albert Einstein.
For me this is the first Bethesda game I’ve played (other than a few hours of Skyrim but I didn’t get far), and I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit. It’s not a perfect game, probably not even my game of the year, but I’ve been finding myself wanting to play it over all of the other games currently in my backlog.
I really don’t see what the hate is about, Bethesda promised space Skyrim, and that’s basically what we got.
The one time ign was actually on top of it, and people mass disliked the video. That 7 was deserved.
Yea I felt the same way and spent the $30 bucks on Xbox to play it early. I really think this game is a huge “Your mileage may vary”.
If you have a PC I would look into a gamepass trial or something to try it out before buying it. Or like someone said buying it on steam and then refunding if it’s not your thing.
I didn’t have super high expectations but honestly it’s really solid and it does have its flaws that are sometimes in your face, but I’ve had a lot of highs so far when playing too. If you’ve played a Bethesda game before, you can expect what you’re getting into.
I’ve found if you have a good attitude going into things you’ll generally feel better about them. Going in expecting it to be shit, and all you’ll find is shit.
Buy it and return it after 2hrs if it’s not your style. Or you can pirate it and pay them if you feel like it lol.
I played 10hrs on Steam then refunded.
I was expecting a 2023 game with 12 years of development and 6 months delay for polish.
I got Fallout 4 (2015) with scifi-skin.The thing that pissed me off the most:
It’s not as open and “huge scale” as people seem to think it is. It’s kind of “fake open” if that makes sense. You cannot get into your ship and fly 800m east to your mission. If you do that, a new instance is loaded and your mission is not there. You have to run that 800m.How do you refund after 10 hours? You get 2 hours max i thought
2 hours max for a guaranteed refund, anything else (within 2 weeks) needs to be approved by a human to make sure you’re not just beating the game and returning it after.
Steam are usually nicer with games that is not officially released yet.
Oh that’s gonna suuuuuuuck for me
I am the person who will cheese distance running in NMS by triangulating an objective and summoning my ship to it, and Starfield apparently says “lol nope motherfucker you’re walking”
People are weird when it comes to Bethesda. If you like Bethesda games, you’ll probably like this one. I haven’t gotten to play myself yet but watching friends who have it it looks fun. Does it look 10/10 GOTY? Not really. But it looks full* of fun stuff.
I think in some way all Bethesda games can feel ‘boring’, but kinda in a good way? Like sometimes you’re just wandering a city with no real goal. It isn’t thrilling or adrenaline pumping, but it’s cool and immersive. Some people find that kind of slower pace boring. I think it’s cool. Not everything gotta be full throttle all the time.
*edit
I think they’ve been putting out very similar games since like fallout 3. If that’s what you are looking for, it’s fun. People for some reason seem to put unrealistic expectations on things. I assume this game is just improved graphics fallout 3 in space. Which isn’t a bad thing, but if you expect a revolutionary game you are in for disappointment.
Some of my friends played and immediately hated it and brought up comparisons to newer games, but this isn’t the new Unreal engine, this is the same Creation Engine they’ve been using for 11 years, which is based on the 26yr old gamebryo engine.
Personally as someone who loves Bethesda games, and who understands the limitations of the engine, I am thoroughly enjoying myself, will it beat bg3 for goty? Unlikely, but it’s still fun
At some point they gotta ditch the Creation engine and make a new one from scratch. The reason Halo Infinite ended up being a turd was because of its engine.
TES6 is confirmed to be using Creation Engine as well… That’s like 4 or 5 years down the line. Think of that
Bethesda hasn’t really changed their formula, so if you’ve played Skyrim or Fallout 4 you quickly fall into the ‘quest marker->dungeon->vendor->crafting’ loop and the game stops being stimulating
Except you’ve left out a huge bullet point from that loop that has always kept me enjoying their games: quest marker->EXPLORATION->dungeon->vendor->crafting.
The procedural generation of this game immediately told me I wouldn’t enjoy it (even though I hoped they knew what they were doing), because walking around Bethesda worlds has always been one of the best parts of the exoerience, and they went and optimized it out so that it’s mostly a series of menus. And damn if that’s not been their game design strategy for the past decade-plus—‘optimize’ out all the fun parts, make the game as simplified as possible, even if it means cutting out core features fans love.
It really is. At first I was excited about the apparent scale, but the way they’ve hashed it all together all it does is make you jump through a bunch of janky menus and poorly done travel sequences to get to your next carbon-copy action sequence. Combine that with forcing you into a walking simulator when you COULD just use your god damn space ship and it’s just boring and procedural.
I can see some people really getting into it: the grind to gather resources and build bases etc but really it’s nothing new and if you don’t get off on this kind of mindless gameplay then you are going to be disappointed. Just raid, pick up a bunch of random junk, sell it, build shit. God, how many times have we got to play the same game in a different setting?
I will say that they have dramatically improved gunplay compared to past titles. Like REMARKABLY, and I found the graphics to be pretty decent but if you want to play with everything on ultra and no resolution scaling, you’d better have a supercomputer. Indoor fights are difficult to lose even in the very early game, but trying to raid abandoned space bases etc will put you in a situation where the AI has got a bead on you from 4 or 5 different angles at once. Top, mid and bottom levels, incoming fire from enough places that you simply can’t find cover - the way that you win is by not attempting to take these bases until you have sufficiently upgraded your HP and shields. Literally you are corralled down the story path through sheer necessity until you get to the point you can just jetpack to each enemy whilst taking fire and take them out without too much worry.
EDIT: Another bit of playtime.
Imagine if they left you free to use your ship as you see fit? Crew it with NPC’s, upgrade the firepower and put in a few manned turrets. Maybe let you play with friends and form a pirate crew? You know, the way that battlefield has allowed for this sort of open world vehicular co-op for the last what, 13 years? Once you got good at flight maneuvers you’d be just about unstoppable low flight altitude and it would be fun as hell.
Alas, the ship is nothing more than a teleporter with some janky, repetitive space combat out the front window. What a missed opportunity.
are you playing on PC? I’m on xbox and the shooting feels harder and less natural than it did in FO76 or 4. I wonder if they optimized it for PC more than xbox
Really dial in the sensitivity I’d say. It took me like legit cranking it up and then adjusting down by 2% at a time to find a sweet spot. But it’s definitely much more responsive and tighter than any other Fallout-esque game they’ve done. Those always felt mushy.
I’ll say too it’s probably that the games aim assist is very light. Like almost hardly there. For a single player offline game it could use a small increase. Like I’m still able to head shot dudes but it’s noticeable, and combined with muscle memory for similar games, having hardly any ‘magnetism’ is an adjustment. I keep meaning to look if there’s a slider in the settings.
ok thanks for the tip! i’ll give that a try. i think i got too used to the mushy shooting in fallout and compensated by using a lot of left stick (moving) to handle the finer aiming. so it’s just not what i got used to haha
Yeah playing on PC. It’s certainly not the best combat ever but it is worlds better than any previous Bethesda title save possibly for their involvement with RAGE, but I think that was more of a publishing deal and the gunplay was all ID software.
I can’t comment on using a gamepad, it has always felt like writing left-handed to me.
I’m on Xbox and enjoying the shooting far more than any fallout. My favorite part of the game so far is the combat I think
huh, maybe it’s just me then. i’ll give it some more time, only about 4 hours in the game so far.
How could they? They haven’t played it.
This is sadly the first Bethesda game that hasn’t held my attention. The moment I had to deal with that space combat tutorial I knew I would never want to fight in space again for how boring it felt rotating in circles to keep hitting the same button to fire locked on attacks. Nothing about that felt fun or enjoyable and then trying to fast travel and having to go through the menus was worse.
Then when i got to the first area after the prologue I kept getting my AI robot companion running into as I tried exploring. I lost count of the number of times I tried looking in corners of small rooms only for Vasco run straight up to me and push me into a corner I have to spend 1 minutes trying to jump over.
Finally New Atlantis made me ask for a refund from how horrible the map system was. Trying to explore the large place was tedious and just such a step back from all Bethesda’s previous work with making the maps detailed for you to see where stuff was. Here I was just using the mission waypoints and ignoring everything else.
I had fun at the beginning but there are just many things that caused me sway my opinion into not wanting to play it again. Hopefully I can get the $32 refund for the premium shit since I don’t think I’ll be sticking around for the DLC.
I doubt that OP has played starfield
I like the game
I literally spent my entire Labor Day weekend playing this game so anybody that says it’s boring I’d really don’t understand what they’re talking about
I’m not surprised. I haven’t seen vids or played Starfield, but just judging by how Fallout 4 and Skyrim play, I was gonna expect the game to get old and boring really quick between the bland gameplay and milquetoast writing of those two games.
Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Morrowind were probably their last good games, with Morrowind being Bethesda at their absolute best imo.
I’m quite sure you’re in the minority judging Skyrim as boring.
I mean I’m gonna have to agree with the guy though. Skyrim was all but earth shattering… In 2011. Have you tried playing it recently? It feels old and repetitive. There is obviously still some fun to be had and some memorable bits but on the whole it’s just outdated plain and simple.
I think the vast majority of enjoyment people derive from it is nostalgia driven which I can totally respect, but that only lasts for like 4-5 hours once a year tops. I feel like a new player who never touched it in the golden years would likely get bored fast
I mean, recently I played skyrim for the first time and it was far from boring
No, I haven’t played it recently. I also don’t play Pacman anymore but it still is one of the cornerstones of computer games and a great game. Yes, Skyrim may be bland compared to modern RPGs but so are the others @Poggervania listed.
You say that, but you also have younger people who play Bethesda’s older games like Morrowind and Daggerfall to this day and are able to enjoy them in their own right.
It’s hard to put into words because another poster was right - there’s still some sort of draw to not just Skyrim, but their games in general. It might be nostalgia, it might be the atmosphere, no idea - but when you play the games, it’s just so… blah. Like it’s so close to being good, but they just miss the mark in some capacity.
Using Morrowind as an example because of how much I like the game, the environment, the atmosphere, and the writing are really well done - but god fucking dammit, I have to game the system in order to maximize my attributes on level up so I don’t die to RNGesus. As a mage, I don’t want to level up Long Blade or Heavy Armor - but I kind of have to because I need more carry weight from Strength and the HP gain from Endurance is not retroactive, so I have to get that to 100 as soon as I can so I don’t die to a sneeze. In Skyrim, they made leaps and bounds in the general combat - which is great, but holy fuck who gives a shit about the world when it effectively goes on pause for you and everybody is as wooden as the trees surrounding them? Fallout 4 is actually a really good gameplay loop and settlements are fun, but I’m not even playing a character - I can say “yes” in three different ways or “not right now” to pretty much every dialogue option and quest, and everybody is “quirky” in the way the cast of The Office is “quirky” it feels like. The writing really misses the mark 90% of the time.
I think it’s that, at least for me personally, is what makes them boring but still have that draw.
I’m not denying it’s impact on modern gaming, I’m just saying it’s old. Like it certainly deserves a spot in the gaming hall of fame but it doesn’t really stack up against more modern RPGs. Technology is moving forward and so should games, yet Bethesda is so stuck on Skyrim they have refused to innovate for a comically long time
yeah i never thought super mario bros was a good game, maybe in the 80s it was but its just boring and repetive today
I can get the sentiment about the combat being uninspired and a bit bland, and things being formulaic but… There is still something that draws me in. I really have no words for what it is, but somehow these games suck me in despite their problems and “boring” mechanics.
Probably. I haven’t played any of the DLCs, but I just can’t get into Skyrim nowadays because I get quickly bored of it all. The only time I managed to complete all of the quests and the main quest was back at release, but now whenever I play it feels like a slog to go through a painfully bland world and setting. I usually give up after a few hours of playtime, and now I just haven’t played in years.
Meanwhile, I was around 30-40 hours into my latest Morrowind playthrough before BG3 dropped, and was putting a fair whack of time into Battlespire, so maybe I’m finally becoming old lol.
I’d say Starfield is in a lot of ways a return to form. So far, none of the actual quests I got from NPCs were as simple as “Go there and kill bandits”, like the majority of quests in Fallout 4. Those proc-gen quests have been relegated to Mission Boards for various factions (and there’s also more variety of them. Beyond killing, you have smuggling missions, cargo transport, passenger transport, surveying and some other stuff). Most of the quests I’ve done so far have also been very interesting, I’ve talked my way out of multiple confrontations/bossfight and I’ve robbed a valuable trophy and bank credentials from a luxury cruise ship with not a single shot fired, just using my cunning, persuasion and a little bit of blackmail and bribery. I keep thinking that I am going to get those “please kill those raiders” quests, like when I got a distress call from somebody having trouble with spacers (this games version of generic raiders or bandits), but instead I had to repair communication satellites and negotiate a mutual defense pact with the settlers of that system. Like, I’m 50+ hours in (yes, genuinely) and the game keeps surprising me with new and interesting content. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the content available.
Sure, you can’t completely fuck everything up and go murder everyone in the game like in BG3 or FNV or something, but it is actually a really solid RPG. The writing isn’t as deep, philosophical and politically charged as New Vegas, but it’s good. Way better than Fallout 4s main story (and better than Fallout 3s main story, which secretly sucks.) I actually had some interesting conversations in the game and chuckled quite a few times at some of the responses I could choose. My background and traits actually do come up in conversation, even had one of my traits help me win a persuasion minigame (which is actually quite interesting in this as well). Skills like Persuasion, Intimidation and Bribery actually matter and allow you to finish quests in different ways. I get a little bit angry everytime somebody calls it Fallout 4 in space, because unlike Fallout 4 Starfield is actually a roleplaying game, even if it doesn’t live up to the heights of Baldurs Gate 3. If you’re gonna call it anything in space, Oblivion would probably be the most apt comparison.
