Most of the complaints I saw were how soulless and empty and sloppily made it is, so it's really just Fallout 4 in space
this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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I regret to inform you that it is more soulless and empty and sloppily made than Fallout 4. You can repeatedly run into the same points of interest that have the exact same enemies, the exact same diary entries, and the exact same set dressing.
My favorite example is the racetrack some raiders have set up for robots you find in Fallout 4 where the only option you have is to kill everyone there. You can't enter your own robot into the race, bet on the robots, or anything like that. The only way to interact with this marginally interesting thing is to destroy it utterly.
I am certain Starfield has nothing even remotely that clever
I loath 'Raiders' and 'Bandits'. Who are these people, and why are there so many of them?
We must assume that 95% of Skyrims population turned to banditry because Skyrim is a barren wasteland inhospitable to agriculture. They commit their acts of robbery by sitting around in abandoned forts and mines until someone decides to kill them
It should be so easy to make the enemies in Skyrim make sense. There's a civil war going on, there can be deserter factions, mercenaries, hostile warbands, disparate ethnicities like the Forsworn, orcs and dark elves, and yes, bandits, but they should be opportunitistic thieves made up of people who can't make a living because of the war and ex-soldiers, not the majority of the population.
Bandits and Raiders are just the laziest form of enemy. They're people you only need to kill without having to engage with the story in any way, you don't need to think about the factions or politics or their cultures or histories. Compare how New Vegas has distinct raider groups, like the fiends, powder gangers and khans, who are all a part of the story and immediately hostile factions. They can be both, but Bethesda just can't write them like that.
What strikes me on my new Vegas playthrough that I just started is that everywhere I go it feels like a real place and there are things happening and there are people trying to make use of what's around. In Fallout 4. Everybody just sits there all day long. Basically doing nothing. Nobody has any ambition. Nobody tries to change anything or build anything. It's just so empty and soulless.
Yeah for sure. The story of Fallout 4 should have resolved before you ever thawed, or it shouldn't have been happening. The Minutemen were destroyed but I guess no one filled the power void. (What even were the minutemen? A political entity? Did they have a presence in diamond city or goodneigbor? Who paid them? Did they extract taxes from farms? I guess we'll never know). The Commonwealth is a place ravaged by Raiders who thoughtlessly kill and rob farmers, it's basically a no-mans land warzone, but for some reason, people still live and farm and trade there. The railroad and institute have no interest in anything that doesn't involve synths, but they're both in a complete stalemate before the protagonist arrives for no reason. The world doesn't need to literally progress without the protagonist present like in shadow of war or something, but the narrative should act like it will.
Bethesda is in love with this idea of the wasteland as a lawless wild-west with a million tiny factions and no states, even though it's been two hundred years and political power solidified in the west over a century ago. They even destroyed the NCR in the show so they could have this
Very different than, say, New Vegas where all the enemies that fill the "Raider" or "Bandit" niche are named factions with actual reasons for existing and histories that make sense. Legion, Vipers, Jackals, Khans, Fiends, Powder Gangers, and so on, and each of them has their own aesthetic and gameplay touches.
Well sure, I guess 90% of the enemies could just be random jet/psycho addicts wearing scrap metal who rush your power armored ass with a pool cue while yelling "Kickass!". That's fine too I guess...
At least NV gave their Raiders a bit of lore as to why they are meth addicted brigands.
The fuck? Being able to death race would have been a perfect minigame. Same with tears of the kingdom, you can make your own vehicles and there's only one racetrack and it's time trial and sucks?
borderlands 2 (another game about bizarre people in a post apocalyptic wasteland) had a great death race quest - the stuff between the Podunks and the Irish hillbillies or somethin
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that race track, the combat zone, and the entire gunners faction make it feel so empty.
mass effect's plot hook and installations with none of the bioware.
It's genuinely mindboggling how bad it is. The story, quests and universe are somehow extremely bland, boring and senseless even for Bethesda's standards, there's genuinely like twenty barely unique dungeons stretched over like two thousand planets, I'd be surprised if there were more than 10 enemy types, the base-building feels even less relevant than in Fallout 4, the "powers" are irrellevant and how you unlock them is ridiculously repetitive, the crafting is so much worse than Fallout 4 and the whole new game plus system just doesn't work at all.
The one thing I feel actually kinda works is customizing your spaceship (no matter how clunky it is) but they ruin even that in New Game Plus by giving you a shitty non-customizable ship that is just stats-wise much better than any other ship you can probably buy, although new game plus also removes all money and items you earned so you couldn't buy another ship right away even if you wanted to. The ship they give you doesn't even have chairs for your companions so they just stand around awkwardly and it also doesn't have crafting stations, making it even more useless.
It's by far the worst thing they've ever made and that's saying something.
This is advanced CEO brain. He read the same reviews as everyone else did, but he has to conclude that he should play it safer with the company's money, which means we'll probably be getting another Skyrim port or two before TES VI.
The lovingly crafted story|-------------------------|infinite steamed hams ratchet only goes one way.
If a game using more procedurally generated content does well, the ratchet is cranked and the next game has even more busy work. If it bombs, we get a rerelease of the last game a.
The fucked up thing is he's probably right
If they had just made Fallout 5 or Elder Scrolls 6 I'm pretty sure the game wouldn't have gotten nearly as much backlash even if it sucked just as bad because people would have been more forgiving of an existing IP due to feeling loyalty to that series
Everyone ignored how deeply flawed Bethesda games were for years up until this and I don't see too many waking up to how they've always kinda sucked
That's not to say Skyrim and Fallout 3 aren't fun but the base gameplay has never been great
all bethesda has ever been decent at was world design, fallout 3 and skyrim were super well made open worlds imo, just great to walk around in
but the engine and combat and dialogue and storytelling is such trash, every single time, and this time they fucked up the world too
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where is the fucking Fallout 76 single player port Todd
where is the fucking Fallout 4 ported to 76's engine Todd
No Todd. It was dogshit writing and poor code because the engine is horribly out of date.
In comparison to what you've made in the past it was also literally 1:1 Skyrim in space with collecting the powers. What are you even talking about, you are full of shit Todd.
Give Fallout to Larian so they can make an isometric strategy game with it again and do it right. We know why BG3 scares you so much Todd.
Fallout by Larian would be 
Nah hold up this would actually be fire
Right? This is why Todd has nightmares about BG3 changing people's expectations. He knows just how well it could be done.
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How was it divisive? It was universally shat on.
It was divisive between people who will happily eat slop, and people with good taste.
There's always like 25% of people who just like everything. They have no taste and anything that's mainstream or popular they will just uncritically swallow and ask for more. They have no discernment
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I dont know I didnt play it 
I feel like the people at the head of these companies don't even like games.
The difference between this and No Man's Sky is astounding.
No Man's Sky arrives and is dog shit: Look we will fix this, we will get there.
Starfield arrives and is dog shit: This must be divisive because it's different to what we normally do.
The entertainment industry is so fucking stale I had to throw it in the trash. I'm pretty sure making a game that is dissimilar to your last games isn't the issue.
Its deeply embarrassing to have bought and played this game, like what were you expecting I want to ask these people
I really wanna know what its like inside the Bethesda offices to see how they spend so much time turning out total dogshit. I imagine is like where I work where its 99% politics and pointless organisational bloat that doing anything simple takes forever.
The core issue is they literally do not use design docs. They still just kinda fuck around like it's still the 90s
They were about to release that fucking mess like a year and a half earlier but then Microsoft bought them and looked at the game and said are you fucking crazy
I wonder if he actually believes this or is just coping/in denial.
He's right though. The main thing I've seen people complain about is how separated all the zones are, linked by menus and loading screens. People generally know Bethesda games as free and open to explore, where just picking a direction to walk in could lead to interesting encounters and new quests.
It's all the bad parts of Bethsoft games (procedural generated quests, cookie-cutter regular quests, dumb AI, mindless fast traveling back and forth between objectives), and none of the good parts (deep, well thought out lore, interesting quests, believable NPCs and factions, player growth affects more than just numbers, etc).
The good part you're talking about are also not in other Bethesda games
Most of the complaints I've seen is "its just Skyrim in space" so.
I was actually impressed by the level of RPG mechanics they put in this, the character creation alone is much more in depth than Skyrim's (although they are both still some of the lightest RPGs out there). In terms of those aspects it's better than Skyrim. But I have more fun in Skyrim than Starfield because I'm constantly engaged with the game systems: walking, leveling, finding quests and dialogue. I wish Starfield was close to Skyrim like this.
It was absolutely a step in the right direction as far as RPG mechanics are concerned, the problem is that that put it against BG3 and it got slapped hard.
It's probably the best RPG Bethesda has released since Morrowind, but the game design itself sucks.
It's probably the best RPG Bethesda has released since Morrowind, but the game design itself sucks.
The writing is also dogshit. Genuinely the most lib brained rubbish I've ever seen.
Yea, absolutely. None of it makes actual sense from a worldbuilding perspective, I was just pleasantly surprised by the better Roleplaying potential compared to Skyrim and Fallout 4.
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Agree 100%
My pussy is Skyrim in space I’ve got that Caelid attitude
no it was because it was uninspired and boring as hell, just empty nothing
"It just works" - 
Close buddy of mine defended game this soon after release (I don't pay attention to game news so I just shrugged), gotta stay it lowered my disposition toward him a tad :/
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