You’re sensing a bit of bias? Because they’re telling you that they like the game?

I’m sensing a bit of bias from you, being completely unable to understand someone else’s point of view once you’ve made your mind up

I didn’t buy the game, and I am enjoying it immensely.

I get it for “free” because I sub to xbox service. I’d have paid $70 for it, though. As for time, I could have spent it in other games, but it’s the first really fun gaming experience I’ve had in quite a while.

It’s easy to make accusations against Bethesda fans like this, but they’re unfalsifiable. You could make the same accusations of people enjoying any other game and there’s nothing they could do to prove they actually enjoy the game. Except that they DO actually enjoy the game.

I’ve played about 20 games this year. If I had to pick only 1 to play (which isn’t far from the truth anymore with my second job), it would be Starfield. And you might be surprised at the names of games that rank below it on the list. Like Elden Ring (which I will never touch again after my cheat-easy-mode run), Hitman WoA, etc. Maybe I won’t be playing it in a year, or two years. Maybe I will.

I think it’s interesting you brought up Souls Games. Quite literally your first paragraph, I feel about them. I have 100% buyer’s remorse about Bloodborne, and lesser buyer’s remorse about Elden Ring. Neither will I ever touch again. To some extent, I kept trying to convince myself the story is worth their unwillingness to give gamers the controls that would actually make the game fun… and I gave up trying to have fun playing it.

I agree with all your points but cannot disagree more on the inclusion of a difficulty slider for Souls games. I have been very adamant about a difficulty slider “cheapening the experience” or “jeopardising the artistic intent”, but it really doesn’t make a difference - at all.

If your enjoyment of the game stems from the fact that the game is difficult and the inclusion of a difficulty slider cheapens your “sense of accomplishment”, then you might have to reevaluate your priorities.

Consider people with disabilities, for example, who are interested in the lore of Souls games and want to experience them themselves but can’t because the games present themselves to be too difficult (for example in the way some bosses in Elden Ring have seemingly endless attack chains that give you no breathing room at all, requiring very precise input on the player’s side), thus gatekeeping the experience from a potentially enthusiastic and interested player.

Or consider people who are just not interested in a hyper tense and difficult time and just want to experience the story and atmosphere of the game. What’s wrong with that? How does that impact your enjoyment of the game if their experience is completely separate from yours?

For reference, I have platinumed numerous FromSoft Souls games and would not feel any less “proud” of that if the games had difficulty settings.

No Mans Sky was nothing like what Hello Games promised.

Starfield is exactly what Bethesda promised.

I don’t see the discrepancy.

What did Starfield overpromise that we didn’t get? As far as I can tell, we got exactly what we expected - Skyrim in Space.

Take my money, Bethesda, and give me more Skyrim in Space please.

Half the damn quests don’t even require me to leave the city they started in. Maybe you just had bad luck picking all of the quests that are like that and none of the others and I had the opposite. Or maybe you did 3 quests and are talking out of your ass. I don’t know, I wasn’t there when you played the game. I mean, did you even do anything other than main story? Join a faction, do sidequests, anything? Because I could point you to half a dozen quests just in early game New Atlantis that are entirely reliant on dialogue, choices etc. without any killing and that do not give you a mandatory companion. Like, do the UC Security quests, investigate the brownouts in the well, talk to the preacher guy, the art guy in Jemison Mercantile, the collector guys in Terrabrew, the bartender at Viewport, the scientist by the tree. The game will literally put half of these quests in the quest log from ambient dialogue, and the other half you get from just engaging with the world and talking to NPCs in the first city you visit. It’s not like these are incredibly hidden quests you have to go out of your way to find. Hell, when you go to Akila the game just plops a hostage negotiation right in your face. I mean, come on, you’re either being wilfully disingenuous or you played that game blind as a bat.

And if you don’t believe me and don’t want to bother playing the game yourself again, just look at the playthrough of somebody like Many A True Nerd. He did a lot of the quests I just mentioned.

To me this reads like you havent done the Ryujin plotline which has a lot of stealth involved, and the UC/Crimson Fleet one that has some detective work/stealth

Yeah, that happens when you just skip dialogue

my mandatory companion can’t stealth

So tell your mandatory companion to “wait here” when you plan to Stealth Archer. Or give her a chameleon suit. Ironically, the “stealth archer” meme is the most valid critique of Bethesda games, and you’re complaining because it isn’t working well for you.

My opinion is fact and everyone else is wrong. I also watch a million essays over the decline of gaming on YouTube so I am very informed.