Man, "15 hours in and not a single bug." I love Bethesda, but I feel like that's an incredibly bold claim to make and that his definition of bug is probably a bit loose. I wish they wouldn't make this big of a hubbub about it and just let the game speak for itself if it's really that solid.
The author is basing this claim on feedback from FIVE people who have been playing the game. If Bethseda are only expecting a similar number to play it once it's released, then this is a useful metric. Otherwise it's meaningless.
IIRC didn't Microsoft hold the game back specifically to ensure it didn't launch in a horrific state? Bethesda games are known for being a nightmare at launch, and even with these assurances, I'm still expecting the first few weeks to be a mess. That being said, if any Bethesda game was going to launch well, it would be this one.
That's not much of a brag. Just because the monsters in this game won't mysteriously fly off into space only to reappear right behind you seconds later, doesn't mean we should celebrate.
I mean even Skyrim ran pretty nice, till you started playing it long enough to start finding the bugs and jank. Of course, it helped that it had all the familiar jank from the previous games.
In the case they are actually being honest, they could just be speaking relatively - which still doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in me that Starfield is going to be seamless and smooth at launch, or even a few months past launch.
In the case that they are just clearly lying, it's an intentional strategy: they're counting on the fact that they will gain more money from this than they will lose from people discovering it was a lie after the game launches.
For anyone who may have forgotten or may not know: the game is a day 1 launch on game pass. I already have it preloaded and I didn't preorder. You can easily see how buggy the game is for yourself next week.
I think we've all learned our collective lesson at this point (or at least, we should have) not to over-hype games, nor to pre-order them.
I'm going to have to temporarily move in with my dad in October potentially for a few months, should be some decent reviews in by then so I'm looking forward to killing time with this game!
I feel bad for the teams that had to go into "double crunch" mode after BG3 came out. Just so they can get the game into not embarrassing shape for launch.