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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.
The only people I have seen complaining about it are here on Lemmy. Which honestly, the more time I spend here, I almost feel like its more negative than Reddit was. Maybe its the low population, maybe its bot astroturfing, I dont know. But its really unfortunate this place has really gone downhill.
Top front page post on reddit right now is complaining that people are misrepresenting why people are disappointed with the game. Basically, arguing that the game is disappointing and that people should be accepting critiques of it.
This is the third post on the front page of reddit. Lots of people are complaining.
Yo, your old.reddit link is now redirecting to reddit.com. Did those dirty bastards remove old.reddit?
Hmm, I missed that about seamless takeoff/landing. But as @dingus mentions, you can use cutscenes and animations and other things to make that feel more immersive / continuous even if they are temporarily dropping you out of the engine.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
🫠
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 🥲
Yeah one of the best parts of the game, the planets look great. There's just not much to do on them.
Thanks Todd Howard 🙏
"He can't keep getting away with it!!"