Emil sounds defensive but he’s right – as someone outside the gaming industry, I cannot fathom how so much effort can result in such a shallow, tepid stew of shit. But because of how much time, staff and money were thrown at it, it’s not a big stretch to assume that incompetence was involved – unless it was leprechauns that stole the game’s vision, plot, dialogue, sense of scale and exploration and replaced it with loading screens.
There are great smaller game devs that actually incorporate modders with their contributions into the game with mentioning and a certain amount of the future revenue. This makes mods basically commercial pull requests. Bethesda should be honest and do that too.
It doesn’t have “it.” I don’t know what “it” is, but I know Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 had “it” and somehow Starfield does not. It is completely devoid of that “it” factor that their other games had, even if it has everything else those games had and more. It is still missing the crucial “it.”
If your talking about MW3, I wouldn’t know. But the MW franchise and COD in general is an objectively shitty game. It’s just cool because you can launch it in minutes and instantly have 14 year Olds in your ear telling you how much weight your mother had recently gained. And if you were angry you could take it out in the game, and then when you loose you can just say “FUCK. OH well this game is a piece of shite anyway”. There is a certain allure to a game that perfectly manages those experiences and the MW franchise certainly had that…
I would go out on a limb and say it’s probably the joys of traveling and discovering things along the way. The Bethesda “magic” is their approach in open world game design. In almost every corner, there’s something interesting to discover (side quests, well crafted environment, and characters). When you take that away and replace it with just mundane fast traveling, loading screens, and procedurally generated empty maps, then you get Starfield. It’s a Bethesda game missing that Bethesda “magic”
Well crafted lovely little places to discover even if they have no impact on the grander story.
That’s it. Auto generated planets and straight forward hub locations makes for boring exploration but in the fallout games you could discover a school that was feeding their kids radioactive slime because they got paid too and it was just a side story. Skyrim games you could stumble upon a house that had been ravaged by accidental tunnels into a cave full of nightmares cracking open in the basement.
Things that you stumble upon naturally while exploring and feel crafted carefully to just be a fun side off thing but if they have to put up a neon sign and make you fast travel to a location to find their little joke of a raider camp then it doesn’t feel special. It’s just a bunch of disjointed maps stuck together through a menu.
It’s tough to make games, so I cut the Devs a lot of slack. Starfield was definitely too ambitious for the engine they built it on but it’s probably the best it could possibly be… With that engine.
I disagree, I’m pretty sure the same-y dungeons and lack of interesting space traversal (but requirement to engage in it) was a design choice, not an engine limitation. I’m happy to cut them slack on a lot of things, but not game design.
I just finished xenosaga episode 1 and it was way better executed than starfield. Starfield felt like chores while Xenosaga managed that I tuned in completely.
I don’t need to know why it is the way it is. For AAA titles it doesn’t matter. Finish the game or fuck off. If you can’t do that your Company should sink and make room for those that can.
Indies proving left and right that it is possible with a lot less.
Man, Outer Wilds was like that Bethesda magic concentrated to a fine point that stabbed right into my heart and I didn’t even want to pull it out.
Just absolutely the best of what passion can do with the mechanics and make something feel original and unique even if it has inspiration from stuff before it.
The thing is that this industry(AAA) runs on poor impuls control and maybe on younger people wo don’t know it any other way.
Why should they(AAA) change? They make profit so there is no incentive.
And If no one would buy that shit on release they would blame the market (“there just isn’t enought people wanting singleplayer expiriences”). Like a child who blames the dog for the fartsmell.
In my opinion it is best to just ignore them(AAA). There are enought devs(AA, A, indie) who deserve my money and, what is more important, NEED the money.
And with those i am more inclined to listen why it couldn’t be the game they promised. NMS for example with their flooded office.
Fair enough, but as far as NMS goes they way over promised what was coming out on release day. They have since really done a good job of cleaning it all up and making a good game, but all they had to do was set realistic expectations rather than the PR nightmare they stirred up.
shades of the Jamie Kennedy documentary where any time someone says they didn’t like Malibu’s Most Wanted he complains that he “worked really hard on it” as though explaining why something is shitty is just as good as making it not be shitty
If your game sucks due to design and implementation decisions that were made with sound rationale behind them, your game sucks. It doesn’t matter at all why it sucks, or that there’s no feasible way to make it better. It sucks. You can tell me that there’s no way to make it not suck, but I play plenty of games all the time that don’t suck.
I think both ideas can be true: that game development is a complex, creative endeavor and that as a product, consumers can be dissatisfied with a video game they paid $70 for.
Lately, I'm finding myself waiting for sales on AAA games because so many release in a buggy, incomplete state. This paid dividends with games like Jedi Survivor, that had a big number of bugs and performance issues at launch and plays decently now several months later.
Jedi survivor didn’t have a big number of bugs, there were some yes and they were patched almost immediately. Anecdotally, I played it starting week one and didn’t experience a single bug, you’re just parroting what you read about and framing it as the average experience.
If you’re going to give an example, how about an actual buggy mess of a launch like cyberpunk, especially since you are also talking about incompleteness. Jedi survivor was an excellent and completed game on launch
Anecdotally, I played cyberpunk starting day 1 and didn’t experience a single bug, you’re just parroting what you read about and framing it as the average experience.
Isn’t that like… Literally the point of waiting for a review? Anyone can have a game work flawlessly when others are having massive issues. Some people may want to test that for themselves, but an increasing number just don’t want to deal, and will… Well, use the reviews to make a more informed decision.
If you’re going to give an example, how about an actual buggy mess of a launch like cyberpunk
Anecdotally, I played it starting day one and didn’t experience a single bug, you’re just parroting what you read about and framing it as a bad experience. Cyberpunk 2077 was an excellent and completed game on launch.
Except for gta online and the trilogy remaster, and rdr2 online. Thats only like 10 years out of the infinity of never, so its probably a good percentage, right?
They fail to deliver on PC every time, and there’s no way I’m buying a console just to play it. I’ll probably even wait for a PC sale since I’ll already have to wait for 2+ years for the PC launch because Rockstar wants to double dip.
You can’t argue me into believing the game is fun when it’s just… overall not that fun compared to other Bethesda efforts.
To be clear, it’s far from an outright “bad” game, but I’m still frustrated that I spent $70 on the fucking thing. If you charge that much, it’s completely reasonable for me to have high expectations for your game.
I enjoyed it but I also know that it wasn’t “great”. But I’ll admit that I got it on game pass and I’m a BES nerd, so that probably elevates it more. Had I paid full price my attitude would probably be very different.
And that’s why I never buy on release. Studios have consistently rewarded waiting for months to a year since you’ll pay a lower price for a better product.
The only reasons I’d buy at launch are:
I’m a game reviewer and somehow didn’t get a free copy
I’m a streamer, so that’s the cost of doing business
it’s an MP game and I can’t convince my friends to play something else
I play almost exclusively SP games, I don’t stream, and I am not a reviewer, so it’s in my interest to wait several months for patches and sale prices.
My biggest complaint is how they absolutely murdered the modding scene for the sake of greed… They wanted their cut of a thing they had NO input in so they forced their way in to have input and in the process ruined modding for those that were good at it…
Seeing how amazing Skyrim was with mods gave me so much hope for what this game could become and now I’m just sickened by what they did… So much potential gone. Now you’ll have to pick between what 4 mods you want as you’ll have to spend $5+ for each one… Yeah I’m not spending $100+ just to make your game fun for you while also paying you…
It’s the changes they made to the way you mod in order to sell mods that screwed with how modding works supposedly. Apparently a few of the good modders have already said “fuck this garbage” and bailed. That coupled with starfields flop leaves less people interested in fighting the system to get mods to work anyway :(
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