I wasn’t hesitantly optimistic about Starfield, rather hesitantly pessimistic. I knew they were going to fuck it up, but I thought there could be something interesting somewhere at the core. There wasn’t though. Even if there are good mods, which I’m not sure of at this point, I don’t think Starfield can be worth playing. I love sci-fi, so I would put up with a shit game if they actually cared about the sci-fi concepts, but they didn’t even bother with that. They acknowledged the concept of things like generation ships, but then didn’t care about what made them interesting, for example.
The fact that Morrowind built it’s world as a world and then gave you tools to play in it is what makes it work so well. People in the world can levitate and breathe under water, so some people used that in the world, so you’ll find that the world utilizes it. Also, the spaces are built as real spaces mostly, but all later games built “roller-coasters” where there’s a start point and a fixed path you have to take and an exit. You don’t get to use your brain to find other options. You’re supposed to turn off your brain and follow the quest marker and that’s all. It really sucks.
I’m always stupidly, but reservedly, hopeful that any studio will realize people play their games most frequently to engage them in interesting ideas, not to disengage from them or they’d watch a movie. BG3, making as much money as it has and being as classic an RPG as it is, has given me hope that larger studios will realize their mistakes. If Bethesda put their budget behind a classic RPG then they’d do huge numbers and make another new classic, but I know they won’t.
IMO the problem at this point is leadership. They’ve realized people will buy their shit if they sell a cheap, surface-deep fantasy with interesting visuals and let folks do a very limited number of different things in a single playthrough. Because of that, there’s no nuance to their worlds. They want to make a sandbox game with no reactivity.
Unless leadership resigns I won’t expect anything else than the equivalent of a gas station meal.
The industry always takes all the wrong lessons from successful games. For example, Successful Cool Game (SCG for short) has new technology x. The rest of the industry will ignore everything that actually made the SCG fun and engaging and focus on tech x, because obviously, the new amazing tech x is what made SCG successful! Hey, code monkeys, spend the next 18 months developing tech x, 6 months on the actual game content, then we’ll spend over half of the＄150 million budget on marketing and bam, we have a sure-fire hit! The game fails, and they fire all the code monkeys and close the studio. Rinse and repeat.
I wasn’t hesitantly optimistic about Starfield, rather hesitantly pessimistic. I knew they were going to fuck it up, but I thought there could be something interesting somewhere at the core. There wasn’t though. Even if there are good mods, which I’m not sure of at this point, I don’t think Starfield can be worth playing. I love sci-fi, so I would put up with a shit game if they actually cared about the sci-fi concepts, but they didn’t even bother with that. They acknowledged the concept of things like generation ships, but then didn’t care about what made them interesting, for example.
The fact that Morrowind built it’s world as a world and then gave you tools to play in it is what makes it work so well. People in the world can levitate and breathe under water, so some people used that in the world, so you’ll find that the world utilizes it. Also, the spaces are built as real spaces mostly, but all later games built “roller-coasters” where there’s a start point and a fixed path you have to take and an exit. You don’t get to use your brain to find other options. You’re supposed to turn off your brain and follow the quest marker and that’s all. It really sucks.
I’m always stupidly, but reservedly, hopeful that any studio will realize people play their games most frequently to engage them in interesting ideas, not to disengage from them or they’d watch a movie. BG3, making as much money as it has and being as classic an RPG as it is, has given me hope that larger studios will realize their mistakes. If Bethesda put their budget behind a classic RPG then they’d do huge numbers and make another new classic, but I know they won’t.
IMO the problem at this point is leadership. They’ve realized people will buy their shit if they sell a cheap, surface-deep fantasy with interesting visuals and let folks do a very limited number of different things in a single playthrough. Because of that, there’s no nuance to their worlds. They want to make a sandbox game with no reactivity.
Unless leadership resigns I won’t expect anything else than the equivalent of a gas station meal.
The industry always takes all the wrong lessons from successful games. For example, Successful Cool Game (SCG for short) has new technology x. The rest of the industry will ignore everything that actually made the SCG fun and engaging and focus on tech x, because obviously, the new amazing tech x is what made SCG successful! Hey, code monkeys, spend the next 18 months developing tech x, 6 months on the actual game content, then we’ll spend over half of the＄150 million budget on marketing and bam, we have a sure-fire hit! The game fails, and they fire all the code monkeys and close the studio. Rinse and repeat.