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They make sand-boxes, not games. Pretty pools that look big on the surface, but when you dive in you find out they're only an inch deep. And the bottom is full of cracks and hasn't been cleaned in ages.
They're on record excusing lazy design, poor writing and being buggy messes on 'the community (modders) will do/fix it'. On the other-hand, they're not competing (from their perspective) in the same field. In Todd's own words - they make dungeon-crawlers, not RPG's. The purpose of the npc's and quests are to get you to the dungeons, not to tell a story.
I understand Bethesda focuses more on the sandbox aspect but it's not like they're doing a good job at it either. IDK what's up with their game engine that prevents them from making large scale cities and you need go thru loading screens behind every door. Or why they still struggle to write compelling dialogue for their NPCs when Larian could write like 10x more dialogue lines, all of which are far more meaningful.
Is Bethesda just incompetent or something? Maybe being a big studio doesnt mean much when your staff are s***
As for them not making RPGs... that's just nonsensical. They've made at least 4 of them. While something like Daggerfall is very much a dungeon crawler, it has effectively nothing in common with Bethesda's more popular titles. Even Oblivion, 2 entries removed from Daggerfall, had already shifted from spending 90+% of your game time in dungeons mindlessly slaughtering randos for loot toward a more narrative focused social experience encouraging role play and character choice. And this trend was only solidified further when Fallout 3 released, doubling down further on meaningful character choice. It wasn't until Fallout 4, which had a completely different lead writer with a completely different game design philosophy from what Bethesda had become known for that things started going awry.
This has been a bit long-winded, but it's important to tie this point back into the original topic... Bethesda makes RPGs, and Baldur's Gate 3 is also an RPG, but they are not the same kind of game. They have a different focus. For Bethesda, the player is everything. I emphasized the phrase "character choice" in regard to them for this reason, because it's all about you. Their goal was never a coherent living world, it was to give you as a player the feeling that the decisions you make in-game matter, especially in regard to game mechanics. Progression is tied to decisions you make, and how you grow is determined almost exclusively by them. The world at times feels like it stops existing when you're not actively engaging with it, but that's ultimately the result of focusing on you first and foremost. Conversely, Baldur's Gate 3's focus is on the world, the things that live in it, and the way they interact. It's not about you, it's about the cool people you meet, the cool places you visit. The way those people think and feel, the things that happen, how they grow. It makes you feel like you matter, not by making you feel important, but by making you feel insignificant. That feeling isn't pleasant, so we try to reject it, we put in effort to prove we do matter... and that's exactly what the game wants from you, so it rewards you by giving you that acknowledgement. You have made a difference, and this world that does not care about you, and will continue on without you... it responded to you. You've left your mark on it.
So... yeah. Starfield and BG3 are different games. They're not trying to be similar. They're actively trying to do different things. I'm not a fan of Starfield specifically, but that's because it fails to be a proper Bethesda game, not because Bethesda games are bad by nature.
The ridiculous hate-train on Starfield makes absolutely no sense to me. I play it, I'm enjoying it, and this "let's hate Starfield" fad is stupid.
This is a great game which I'm loving as well. It's too bad people can't find something better to do with their time than troll the internet with "I hate Starfield, do you hate Starfield... WHY NOT!!!!!".
Bethesda hasn't given a ♥♥♥♥ since Oblivion. Every game they've released since Oblivion has been the same game, but progressively worse as they dumb it down further and strip out important parts bit by bit until you're left with nothing but the vague resemblance of an RPG where the only skills that matter are combat-related, the story is shallow, the world empty, and the characters one-dimensional while the game holds your hand and spoon-feeds you rewards for little to no effort. Every title they release is more empty and buggy than the last, and every time people gobble it up anyway only to be increasingly disappointed as time goes on until they mod it until it's unrecognizable - then falsely claim the game is "great" after having been modded 200 times.
Skyrim, for example, is at best a mediocre game. It's boring, it's broken, it's empty, it lacks any semblance of depth or humor, and it's devoid of anything resembling cleverness but because it's so easy to mod people have tricked themselves into thinking it's a good game when it just isn't. It coddles you the entire time, forces you to fight everything and resolve every problem with violence, makes you the best at everything you do, it has nothing original or intelligent or thought-provoking to say, the world is barren, rewards come with the push of a button, characters exist not as people but as plot devices, it's frighteningly easy in terms of difficulty... the entire game feels half-finished without mods installed. FO3, FO4, Starfield - all the same deal.
You don't even need mods to play BG3 and have a good time. It's just that good. Pristine storytelling, wonderful and memorable characters, engaging content, a reward system that makes you put in effort, an interesting world worth exploring, a fun and challenging combat experience, multiple paths to resolve situations, the ability to actually roleplay the character you're playing as, etc.
Bethesda just doesn't make good games. They make mod-tailored sandboxes that they dress up as RPGs. Remove mods from the equation and their games would not be as popular, and if you need mods to make your game fun then your game sucks.
Maybe it's something to do with the game having no story structure or the design director admitting there was no design document or Todd telling people to upgrade their PCs before they even figured out how to make an FOV slider, much less implemented DLSS properly[www.pcworld.com] or the AI-generated review responses saying bizarre ♥♥♥♥ like that it's players' fault that exploration is boring[www.forbes.com]. Maybe it's the fact that you have to do the temple minigame 240 times, including walking the 0.5-to-1-kilometer every single time, to max out powers that were more useful in older Bethesda games, or that you hit a loading screen going up and down elevators in Neon or New Atlantis or Cydonia when you can actually just fly to their destinations more quickly without loading screens, or the blatantly unbalanced skill trees to where only about 1/3 of the perks even have any discernible difference on your game, or QoL regressions like not being able to press a button to empty your hands when there are like 20 levels dedicated to empty-handed combat or not being able to choose where doors go in your ship without essentially reverse-engineering the algorithm for door placement. Maybe it's the fact that the game is sold for $70 and is currently behind schedule compared to Skyrim and Fallout 4 for modding tools and DLC with essentially nothing to show for it. Maybe it's that Pete Hines acted like someone at Bethesda had an original story to tell[wccftech.com] before just making yet another "Bethesda game."
Maybe it's that the game is actually bad. You must live a blessed existence if you find it enjoyable, and that should serve you well if Bethesda delude themselves into thinking Starfield was something to be proud of.
I don't hate Starfield.
Thing is, the "Betheda style RPGs" often don't work for me. I personally prefer party-based to single-player first-person ARPG style. It's why I prefer Wasteland to Fallout, and some of this type of game (party-based) to CP2077, Witcher, or Skyrim et al. I'm not saying I won't play that other type of RPG, but those are my preferences. I like Diablo for what it is, I did play Diablo 3.
It's cool. I noticed Starfield has interactive companions like Sarah Morgan, and is more party based. That looked good. Apparently, you can put 3 crewmates on your starship. Others you can put in outposts. But you can only take 2 of them with you on missions, for a party of 3. (One of them, Vasco, is a robot. A pretty simplistic robot, not a Data style android.) It does have romances. I've heard they're not so great, but yes, you can court Sarah Morgan.
The character development is interesting. Basically more skill-based than class-based. Different companions specialize in different skills and skill trees.
Then I started hearing and seeing other things that were like, uh. Like the universe is full of procedurally generated planets with nothing of interest on them. Like the game features no sentient alien races (unlike Mass Effect, Trek, etc.), just maybe some alien "critters" on various planets. The space combat DOES definitely look better than Rogue Trader's, I will say that. (RT's space combat looks like it came from 1995.)
And that the plot's main McGuffin is the multiverse, that essentially the plot concludes with you assembling an artefact that gives you "Starborn" McGuffin powers (like a supernova or anti-gravity field) , & meeting some multi-versal version of yourself in the "Unity", and that after doing so, you can start a NG+ which is now you in a different universe than the one you started in. Hmmmkway.
Dunno. I'm still not interested. Doesn't mean I "hate" it. Or would rag on its fans. Or even rant against Todd Howard. I like that it's party based, other stuff, not as much. Of recent sci-fi RPGs, I can say I liked KOTOR more than Mass Effect.
They make the skeletons of video games and expect people to finally put some meat on them via mods. That's how they get their games made on the cheap and suckers keep them alive for them.
Scummy strategy to be sure, but clearly an effective one.
I doubt we will know the stories behind Starfiled project until long, but there's been leaks already:
- Procedural generation was no way in plans, and appeared in middle of project, it would be like if in middle project BG3 was changed to be first person real time, or that BG3 had areas procedure generated added at middle project.
- The project management derailed from lack of coordination for a very big team (not bigger than BG3 peeks) with multiple teams working on similar topic need be totally trashed at a point. No idea how Larian achieve go through such problems without that much experience with so big team.
- Microsoft had to enter the project, force the team admit the release had to be delayed again, one year, and a year fully dedicated to QA and cleaning not adding more features and bugs with them.
- Starfield manages 5 vocal acting languages, greedy BG3 only one, greedy retroactively, I can admit BG3 sell success was totally impossible to predict at this level, TB is an incredible bet for AAA video games.
- BG3 use a years old engine but with much less aged origins than Bethesda engine.
- BG3 is huge in term of content overall, but it still skips the traps of filling well wide open world blueprint, Starfield both gave up reuse again the classic wide open world blueprint but tried kept a wider area sum perspective. This is generating much more filling quality problems than the astute BG3 blueprint has, the surprise is such BG3 blueprint could sell as well than most successful open world AAA games.
- For the dev age origin, it's not that clear, the modern Bethesda origin was largely setup from many key people joining for Morrowind, and when Morrowind was released it was 2002, Larian first RPG was released just some months after. But it's possible that the switch to TB with DOS1 leaded to a large team refresh as Bethesda never had, but just the standard series of leaving and new hires any dev not bankrupting has.
Dayum damn, thank you for this. Exactly my thoughts.
Some other annoyances:
- They somehow made less NPCs killable, even some totally inconsequential ones. Meanwhile you can still attack whoever you want in BG3.
- Planet exploration without land vehicles. Who the eff thought this was a good idea? At least in BG3, even without horses, it wasnt a concern. But in Starfield where you need run miles to a destination with emptiness in between? The heck.
- Copy-paste POIs. Did they task only a small team to do POIs or something? It's freaking crazy they even re-used the same POIs for the MAIN QUESTLINE.
-Even less npc immersiveness than before! Where's the ai schedules? Why are guards not reacting to shootings? No reaction to outfits (eg. wearing pirate outfit in front of UC)?
- They added underwater creatures but no swimming underwater. Genius.
- They devolved the dialogue camera from Skyrim and FO4. Genius.
- Loading screens just to take a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ elevator when the next area is literally loaded in the same map already. Genius