bethesda announces game concept.
people freak.
bethesda announces game. 
people hype.
bethesda starts hyping the game.
people go fucking nuts hyping the game as a result. their social media team plants those seeds to make it look organic.
a year or more of speculation occurs.
todd howard being his little schmuck self comes out and boasts about their new game.
people lose their god damn minds.
whispers of shitty gameplay start occurring closer to launch.
the masses tell those people to fuck off how could they know, dishonest review etc etc.
the big names in game reviews all review it and give it out of the park amazing reviews.
people go batshit crazy. people are out in the streets killing their parents for a chance at the new bethesda god game.
the game is released and is somewhat playable but jesus fuck is it lacking, it’s buggy, and every character looks like they’ve been updated from skyrim graphics of yore. the story sucks. the game play is empty but goddamn is there a lot to explore.
everyone rushes in like a madman.
everyone realizes the gameplay sucks.
people start bitching.
others say “oh don’t worry, DLC and user created mods will fill the game out nicely.”
years pass.
the unpaid modding community pours their heart and soul into making the game not fucking suck.
after all the DLC has come out (all with mostly positive or mixed reviews on steam) the game will go dark for a year or so.
todd howard wakes from his capitalist vampire coma needing fresh life force. the blood money of his unsuspecting idiot fans.
todd howard makes it into the office and says we could make a new game or we can milk this game for the next decade and a half. quick come up with names to rerelease the game under. game of the year edition. complete edition. master edition. elite edition. remastered. remastered complete. anything works!
over the course of the next three decades, todd howard is fed the blood of bethesda’s fan base.
he is swollen, like a fat tick upon his harkonen throne, waiting to burst.
“the people. they call for a NEW game”, he says, a devilish sneer contorts his face.
and the cycle continues.
and these fucking idiots. every goddamn time.
If you like Bethesda games, you’re gonna like this one. If you don’t like Bethesda games, you’re not going to like this one. I don’t know what else to tell you, bud.
Don’t mistake the bitching of a vocal minority of lemmy/reddit posters and YouTube influencers (who bitch primarily for clicks) as “everyone”. There are actually a lot of people who like these games - myself included - and a lot of them aren’t on any sort of social media. I loved vanilla Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, and Fallout 4 and love modded versions even more. I’m having a blast with vanilla Starfield right now - easily dozens of hours over the long weekend. And I’ll probably love modded Starfield even more as well.
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. A Bethesda game.
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 / Microsoft bought the company just to get it as an exclusive / etc) and because 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.
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.
But they kind of already did say most of that stuff.
They said long before the game came out that there was no seamless takeoff/landing. They said they upgraded their Creation Engine for Starfield, AFAIK they never said it was entirely new.
Either way, I like it. Its fun.
Either way, I like it. Its fun.
And that’s great! I think we’re mostly talking about the people who are whinging about it. People who are enjoying it, let em enjoy it.
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
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.
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. 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 real big 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.
Also, Hello Games is just 26 people and Bethesda is 420 people and owned by Microsoft.
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.
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’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 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:
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.
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.
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.
I’m fine with their writing and their overall gameplay. It’s just that they managed to make space feel boring and tiny. All those little areas in-between the loading screens really don’t feel like a vast space opera at all.
Also I wish they would just invest into some new game mechanics. Proc gen planets look great and exploring them could have been so much fun 🥲
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
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.
There’s a little open world game called Miasmata with that triangulation system! It’s an open world survival horror. It’s pretty short though, and I bet you could get it for just a few bucks on sale. I really enjoyed my time in it, and the world is the perfect mix of dreary and serene.
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.
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.
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.
Rule of thumb. Wait until you see top ten mod lists for Bethesda games and is at least on sale.
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.
