Cyberpunk's storytelling makes Starfield seem ancient

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 102 points 1 year ago

This is some of the most honest feedback about Starfield. It's not bad. It's just horribly dated.

It's a standard Bethesda game, and it's great for a Bethesda game. But Bethesda hasn't updated anything in years, over a decade even. Characters are flat, storylines are fun but not engaging, it's just.... fine.

If this had come out in 2014-2016 as a successor to Skyrim it'd be one of the best games, I firmly believe that. But it didn't, they took their time building it, which is good, but now we have games like the Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, RDR2, even ME3 came out after Skyrim. The format for story propelled RPGs has changed, and the bar has been raised.

Again I don't want to be one of the "Oh bethesda bad boooo" people because honestly, I'm still having a ton of fun in Starfield. It's just that for a brand new game... it's really showing it's age.

[-] vagrantprodigy@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 67 points 1 year ago

Honestly Baldurs Gate 3 is what really makes it look bad. Playing Starfield after playing that highlights all of the shallowness in Starfield.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 27 points 1 year ago

Exactly. Compared to games from the early 2010s? It'd hold up. Compared to games in the early 2020s? It just can't even be compared.

[-] Moonguide@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 year ago

Yup, this. I've played two runs by myself and on my fourth with some buddies and I'm still finding out meaningful stuff I didn't do on my solo runs. Starfield is an upgrade in tons of aspects over previous beth titles (big exception is planetside exploration), they fixed tons of issues both Skyrim and F4 had. Skill checks, while not as present as they should be, pop up once in a while. Skill tree isn't as boring as F4 but build variety suffers, same as in Skyrim. Character background pops up in convos sometimes (but isn't as deep as it could be).

That's starfield. It has the makings of a good game, and it is, but it plays it very safe. And because of that, NPCs are boring, as is the story, as is combat, as is pretty much everything else in the game. The only thing that impressed me was that one mission in the main quest but even that one was limp dicked on the finish. And ship costumization, but if I wanted in-depth ship mechanics I'd play KSP.

Like the game was too ambitious and too chicken shit at the same time.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I really like this, honest feedback to them. The game is obviously made by committee. That's exactly what my wife and I have been saying, that they did a lot of cool ideas - and then dropped them half way through. None of the ideas are fully thought out or finished, it all screams "Some suit said 'no this is great, move on'". Some quick examples

Base building, awesome concept, I want to build a base on a foreign planet.
- But what do I do there?
Automated crafting. Awesome, I love Satisfactory! I can do this.
- Wait, I can't limit items in transit, so I can really only transport one item over a link? So it can't really be automated.
Oh sweet, I can build my own spaceship?!
- But you are rarely actually in space and really when you are it's just a mini game between planets.
and you get companions to hang out with you on your ship?
- But they don't interact with each other or do anything like help you fight other ships.
Oh and we get to have a fleet of ships?!
- but they aren't actually a fleet. You never get to assign someone as captain of another ship to help you fight pirates. You just... pick which of your ships you want to fly right now.

And that's just some. Like so so so many cool awesome fun ideas that were just... "I don't want to play with this anymore." The fleet one especially stings. I was really hoping I could assign someone as captain of another ship, and when we jumped/spawned in space there it would be on my left, and it could help me fight pirates. I mean, how hard would it be to program that? They already have the ship, they have AI for dogfighting other AI, it would just follow behind you until you entered combat.

[-] acastcandream@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

don't worry, the gap gets a lot smaller when you reach act 3 in BG3 lol

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[-] squid@feddit.uk 28 points 1 year ago

Idk I find starfeild could even be a downgrade in some way, no ai habits like shop keepers must be on a meth bindge as they never leave they're stores, the openish world is gone, in one lengthy mission I'd see 5/6 loading screens, usually when going from planet to planet then into the city then to do the objective then repeat in reverse.

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[-] Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If this had come out in 2014-2016 as a successor to Skyrim it’d be one of the best games,

LOL nah, it'd be shat on like FO4 was. Maybe not as heavily, because it didn't opt for voicing the protagonist, but sure as hell wouldn't be called "one of the best games".

[-] SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org 4 points 1 year ago

My son complains about this but I'm glad they didn't give the protag.

[-] acastcandream@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

it’d be shat on like FO4 was.

FO4 printed insane money and won countless awards. It did fine lol

[-] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 year ago

They said FO4 was shitty, not that it lost money

Looks like Starfield is more of the same.

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[-] dsemy@lemm.ee 36 points 1 year ago

I don’t play Bethesda RPGs for the set pieces.

I don’t care that Cyberpunk’s NPCs are programmed to walk to a specific place, stand in a specific way and say a specific thing at a specific time.

Cyberpunk’s main quest claims you have a few weeks to live just when the game really opens up to you, so thematically you are discouraged from pursuing side content, but it doesn’t really matter since except for a few quests most are very generic and most of their “story” is delivered through a call anyway. Great storytelling right there.

The NPCs in Cyberpunk are braindead, and when the game came out the set pieces didn’t work half the time.

I really rather Bethesda spend their time improving the parts of the games people who like their games want them to improve, instead of focusing on stuff their competitors are doing.

[-] SaltySalamander@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago

In other words, you've got maybe a couple hours in Cyberpunk.

[-] dsemy@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

36 according to Steam. Sorry I don’t have more than a full day and a half to give a game before I give up on it to play something I enjoy.

[-] acastcandream@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

What? Dude the best part of the game is the opening 5hrs. It's all downhill after that.

[-] Ashtear@lemm.ee 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's too bad you didn't like the narrative structure with the calls in CP2077. That one ending uses them (or I guess you could call them voicemails, considering) to devastating effect. One of the most harrowing sequences I've seen in a game. It might have even saved a couple of lives.

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[-] valpackett@lemmy.blahaj.zone 32 points 1 year ago

for me, Horizon Zero Dawn was the real "wow, open-world storytelling can be that good and not classic Bethesda nonsense" moment

[-] exu@feditown.com 11 points 1 year ago

Idk, maybe it's just that I'm comparing too much of the Witcher 3, but the story and importantly sidequests in Horizon Zero Dawn are mediocore at best for where I'm at atm. I'd concur it's better than Bethesda though.

[-] ampersandrew@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

The Witcher 3, to me, made Bethesda games feel dated. The structure of the game is nearly identical, but when you arrive at your quest, it never plays out entirely straight forward, much like the Witcher source material. Cyberpunk does follow along those same lines, even if it never quite hit the highs that Witcher 3 did.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

HZD is very Ubisofty, but done right, as in it's not littered to the brink with pointless collectibles and can actually be completed. It's way more action than role-play or story focussed but that's not a bad thing in itself. I think of it more like Tomb Raider, and for that kind of game HZD has plenty and very good storytelling.

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[-] hot_milky@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 year ago

I would be satisfied if Bethesda did stick to their "ancient ways". Focusing more on environments and immersion rather than character-driven storytelling like any other RPG. Of course they did neither for Starfield unfortunately.

[-] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 year ago

I don't remember who said it, but in some youtube video they said something along the lines that fallout 76 could have been the ultimate bethesda game if it was actually finished on release and didn't have that stupid "no human NPCs" gimmick, as it REALLY embraced that environmental design that they're actually good at.

They can clearly make fun games, look at skyrim and fallout 4 which tons of people love to just run around doing quests and fighting stuff in, but then they always bollocks it up by forcing in a story that barely makes sense upon closer scrutiny and they never capitalize of the potential of really truly interacting with the world.

I think bethesda could actually make the best VR game so far, the format plays perfectly into what they're good at since as valve realized people just want to rummage around drawers for hours on end and explore the environments.
Hell even as is skyrim VR seems pretty sweet, imagine if they actually designed the game for VR from scratch!

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

Fallout 4 VR was a cool experience. I don't know about a good game though. It doesn't help they didn't even seem to test if it worked. For example, red dot sights don't really work by default (though there's a mod to fix it). By default it's just a texture on the center of the sight, which isn't how that works. The mod just makes the dot display (near) infinity forward. That's just one minor issue that's obvious. I don't think any of the DLC works with it and most mods don't either, so it's pretty limited.

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[-] tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 24 points 1 year ago

It’s the most "mid" game I’ve ever played.

Also, it is not an RPG.

[-] squid@feddit.uk 5 points 1 year ago

There isn't such a thing as modern RPGs, not mainstream anyway

[-] ampersandrew@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

Even with an extremely narrow definition, that's a bold thing to say in the wake of Baldur's Gate 3.

[-] squid@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't say baldurs gate is mainstream, at least not in the same way as cyberpunk or Bethesdas games

[-] ampersandrew@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago

It's in the top ten most played games on Steam and had sold at least 5 million; even that number is two months old and doesn't include PlayStation. If I were to wager a guess, which you can often extrapolate from the number of reviews on Steam, it's much closer to 10 million, which is how many copies a typical Assassin's Creed or FIFA game will sell. Baldur's Gate 3 is mainstream.

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[-] Case@unilem.org 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Unless things change drastically for their RPG division, I'll repeat what I've said since oblivion. Bethesda makes great modding platforms, the content within the game is a loose theme that modders can play with.

Yes the new Fallouts are just TES in the Apocalypse.

Yes starfield is little more than TES in space.

I buy Bethesda games for mod potential.

If they said no mods to all future games I wouldn't buy another one. I don't play ESO and I have never touched fallout 76 for this reason.

[-] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago

I mean ESO isn't a bethesda game, it's made by zenimax.

And from what i remember it's actually pretty decent for what it is, it definitely looks nice and iirc while it has microtransactions to catch the whales, it isn't an absolute twat about it and there at least was a membership system that was/is quite reasonable.

[-] squid@feddit.uk 20 points 1 year ago

I can agree, cyberpunk has a much gritter mature and well thought out world were as Bethesda titles demand cognitive dissonance

[-] LoamImprovement@beehaw.org 17 points 1 year ago

The only thing I don't like about Cyberpunk's writing is that everyone seems to be deathly allergic to pronouns, even when it would clearly make the dialogue flow better.

[-] fckgwrhqq2yxrkt@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago

That's to help you remember the names.

[-] gothicdecadence@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Never realized that but you're probably right! It never irked me, I just assumed it was a stylistic decision. I actually like it tbh

[-] fckgwrhqq2yxrkt@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Yea! It always seems to help me remember them.

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[-] HelixTitan@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago

I think it is just a new modern game so therefore hyperbole demands it much be either the best thing ever or trash. A lot of people said RDR2 was "dated" design as well. I think they both have strengths, same with Cyberpunk. I think only BG3 is a step forward for RPG storytelling, Cyberpunk, Starfield, Red Dead all have issues, but they allow the player to get immersived in their worlds and at the end of the day that's all that matters.

[-] lemillionsocks@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago

Oh man this discourse has been absolutely typical Gamer garbage on the various subreddits. Every day a new thread with thousands of posts not reading the article but rushing in to say the same thing. It's weird because they are very different games and it also feels like Im taking crazy pills because while I have not played cyberpunk(Im waiting for it go get super cheap on sale before I bother with it) I remember the launch being an absolute shitshow and the general consensus on the story being "meh".

Suddenly starfireld comes out and now Cyberpunk is heralded as the greatest at everything. Like you dont have to pick a team you can just like what you like. I get bethesda sold out to microsoft and is now under scrutiny, and I get that the same vocal posters let themselves get wrapped up in hype, but this is excessive.

[-] HumbleHobo@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It seems weird that you are judging Cyberpunk without ever having played it. Saying that the general consensus is "meh" is not accurate at all. The game had bugs and it had some technical and gameplay issues that made its much more mature brethren seem better or more well thought through. That's true.

There's a huge BUT here though. The storytelling and main questlike through Cyberpunk, at launch, was pretty freaking spectacular. I say this as someone who readily acknowledges the issues with the game at launch. Yes, they have addressed most of those issues, and the game feels better now, but the same story from launch-day is still there and is a rather compelling and great experience. I'm on my second playthrough of it now with the PL expansion and so far it's been so much better.

And this is all to say nothing of the truly jaw-dropping level design and aesthetics, AT launch, that the game is still sporting. I remember saying when I first played this at launch that I really hope they release some more expansions for this game because the environment is so richly detailed, it feels like I'm running around in a dystopian nightmare.

[-] lemillionsocks@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

Like I said I'm basing my assessment on both games by the response the community gave and reviews Ive read and seen. I tend to do the patient gamer thing and wait for big steam sales before buying a game(unless its something I really want and sometimes I know indy games are already cheap and grab it at a lesser sale). Cyberpunk had a similarly criticized launch with the multiple daily 1001 posts on reddit and much like starfield has people who defend it you had people defending cyberpunk as well.

But from the outside looking in it was literally the same. You had the people who let themselves get spunup by the hypemachine absolutely let down when the game didnt live up to the hype.

You had the people who were chastising the bugs and "dated mechanics" how the game "didnt feel alive" and the "driving physics suck"

You had the hardcore CRPG fans for whom the only true RPG is: Baldurs gate 2, Morowind, Fallout 2, and special mentions to fallout new vegas. They'd come in and criticize lack of options and choice and blablabla.

You had the youtubers clowning on the game like Dunky showcasing a bug-fest.

And among people who actually reviewed the game the community consensus I saw was polarizing. Some did love it but a lot of people expressed it not living up to potential.

Again I cant say for sure(maybe next winter sale will be my time to shine) but it's feels like this outrage cycle was targeting cyberpunk for a while and then one day it just stopped. And now that its time for the community to throw their poo at something again cyberpunk is the hero of the story.

So sorry for the rambling but in short my post is less a personal judgment of cyberpunk and more a "the community hated this game and had little good to say about it, and now it's their precious baby and starfield is the bad one". I know its not happening here but I figure rather than spitting into the wind on reddit I'd complain about this weird online discourse here.

[-] HumbleHobo@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

I think the reason you saw the response you saw is that a lot of the players who bought Cyberpunk on the PC early on were too busy PLAYING the game to talk about it online. If you were a console user though you had little choice though, the console versions of Cyberpunk were awful at launch and deserved much of the scorn they received, I am not certain on stats, but I'm positive that most of the game-breaking bugs were on the console. Yes, I noticed some bugs on my first playthrough on the PC, but it wasn't as dramatic as what I saw people posting regarding console Cyberpunk.

[-] SaltySalamander@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Beat the game within the first week of release (on PC). There were no serious gamebreaking bugs, and you are correct, the story is essentially unchanged between release and now. The story was always great.

[-] acastcandream@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah I don't get it. Cyberpunk is getting serious rose-tinted glasses. I hear PL has greatly enhanced it but it just dropped and CDPR has been fixing the game for what? 3 years? That was a rough initial 18mo in particular.

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[-] ampersandrew@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

The criticism of Red Dead had little to do with the impressive systems that they built for the world and a whole lot to do with how they took that freedom away from you in missions. There was very much a way they could have kept the linear story that plays out the same way every time without cutting to a hard fail state for using your brain. That's the part that felt dated, especially contrasted against the actual cool, innovative stuff that exists in the same video game.

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[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 15 points 1 year ago

Starfield is the first and only Bethesda game I haven't really liked. It's got all the same gameplay elements, but it's lacking the world building and interesting stories. The lore is bland as fuck, barely scratches the surface of what you'd want to know, and none of the stories really lean into actually telling you about the world in a fun way, opting instead to give big blocks of dialogue that are nothing but history and exposition. Where is the environmental story-telling they've always had? Is the blandness of the world simply a matter of it being new and young and not having nearly as much history as Elder Scrolls and Fallout to build on? Have they simply lost their touch? Believe me, I have tried to like this game. I am a huge fan of space stuff and Bethesda games, but it just doesn't have that certain something that makes their games actually fun.

[-] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 8 points 1 year ago

Hint: the previous games weren't exactly amazing at this either. Worse, in many areas. It's quite rose tinted from nostalgia

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Regardless of the quality of the writing, they certainly had more interesting ideas in their lore and settings that added something to the experience. That's what Starfield is lacking.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 year ago

It's really strange. The area under the main NC city was pretty good. It had character. Locations felt like they belonged and not just stuck there because they needed something there. It tells you a story about the people who live there. It's literally the only place in the game that does this that I've seen. I don't understand how so much went wrong with Starfield.

[-] DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago

Starfield made Starfield feel ancient by being entirely unoptimised.

[-] Pratai@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago

No, it’s Bethesda that makes Starfield seem ancient.

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