Starfield Deep Dive: Procedural Worlds Are Not The Problem

It's become a common refrain to blame Starfield's issues on procedural generation, but in this video I'll make the case that other issues are at the core of Starfield's issues.

[@Thorn696_X]

Your work on this video did the one thing Starfield is lacking on the most. You took your time and put a lot of thought into what you were doing. As for Starfield, there's a lot of things that just don't add up for a game that's been 8+ years in the making. It feels like it was rushed. Sorta like it's been remade multiple times, all the while over reaching, trying to be the biggest map ever made. There's so much room for Starfield to grow, but I fear it's already too late for most gamers. The one and only hope that we had was the moder's, and with the recent news on that front, it's not looking too promising. That said. Thank you for putting this video together. it's nice to see a realistic and well thought out critique, after so many by people whom didn't even take the time to play the game. Looking forward to seeing your next video.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Thanks!

[@user-tp5yb4hr4w]

@@ColorsFadeGaming well now i have to ask you how you feel about star trek's story of people living onboard their federation ships knowing they could possibly run into trouble while onboard that ship at any time. because that often happened in the show believe it or not, so in contrast to your comments of the game having a child onboard a ship that constantly runs into these same situations with children or entire families onboard the ship would often run into conflict, now it was never the purpose of that show to seek out or engage in combat, but the danger was always there in the show so the federation always made sure they were ready for that possible situation given diplomacy failed on them, they at the very least had the capability to fight back or defend themselves. ultimately i do agree with you that most of the writing of starfield is badly written though, and i do still think to much procedural generation does take part in the scope of the game's goals and makes it a bit less interesting because it makes every planet feel more of the same, just slightly different on every planet. i think some procedural generation is fine, but when people keep touting NMS for being better i don't see that game doing it any better, in my eyes that game does it even worse than starfield, but what NMS does better is actually makes it feel like your in a space game where you can take fly in a planet instead of a very limited box and land and take off anywhere on that planet and actually not have to go through a pre-scripted cutscene/ load screen just to get to space and actually use your FTL jumps in real time instead of getting to your destination in a few seconds making the game feel like a load screen simulator, that right there is poor game design for the mechanics of the game. now i disagree that it's the creation engines fault, yes this engine has issues with the load screens, but one point you talked about that i do agree with is they thought this through before they chose to go another route, i think the space traveling can be at the very least simulated via their engine, maybe not like NMS in the sense of the way the ship travels, but it could work similar to how it worked in the star trek shows and movies where the ship jumps into its warp and the player can walk around the ship and chat with personnel while they wait to get to their destination as the grav drive automatically fly's to the destination, now i'm not saying that it would need to be too long like star citizen, but i feel it could be based on the location you are headed and your ships resources and the engine you currently have on your ship and the distance of the planet your headed to, without the need of a load screen, well technically there is a load screen during that whole sequence, but the player wouldn't know the difference because it was a delayed load screen event like how it was in FO4 when the player entered into an elevator, the player didn't know they walked into a delayed load door to the next section of the game to load into because that was being obstructed by the confined space of the elevator as the player can't see what's being loaded up outside. anyway this post is maybe a little too long, i apologize.

[@STARSHIP_GUN]

"Remember you are a powerful fu**ing woman" written on in game coffee mugs.

[@Thorn696_X]

as an after thought. I'm older and disabled, so I have a little more time than a lot of people for gaming. That said, I have a few hundred hours into this game and I'm enjoying the grind and/or just taking my time on this game. I only expected Fallout 4 with better scoped weaponry. I got just what I asked for, so much so, That switching from Fallout 4 to Starfield, feels like it's a new DLC. And I honestly have to say that it's still better(for the most part) than Fallout 1 ;)

[@LeMicronaut]

​@@user-tp5yb4hr4wyeah NMS is overhyped. I think it's good for kids, but the planetary variation isn't great and mechanics aren't too deep with some jank for each. It's mainly just the planet streaming and multiplayer option that wins it, I think. There's tons of appeal to "I'm gonna grind for my unique and quirky proc gen seed" just look at minecraft, but once you load something in minecraft the creative depth is way more robust.

[@user-ju8hg9iq8h]

For 8 years development, by a studio with decades of experience, financially backed by Microsoft (one of the largest companies in the world)...those facts considered....the game is absolute garbage.

[@blub9633]

Technically like 5 years

[@user-ju8hg9iq8h]

@@blub9633 Irrelevant point

[@oukeith]

It's not garbo it's just mid as hell.

[@eyllyssaunders5345]

Agreed with their amount of resources and time making rpgs And time for feedback and they just did space fallout 4 which is just Skyrim but post nuclear they all feel the same and its painful

[@benjaminmathon7417]

@@eyllyssaunders5345 But Skyrim got a handcrafted world full of stuff to discover, Starfield is not even that.

[@edsherwook5196]

Another example of horrible writing was the very beginning when a complete stranger gave me his ship, I was left scratching my head like what the hell happened

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

That was so bad and I almost included it in the video. But then, like I said, I could cite examples all day. The game is riddled with bad writing.

[@skyriminspace]

There was a plot device for that. "Protocol indigo" was it? He lent you the ship under the watchful eye of the robot expressly for getting to the lodge with the artifact. Even i remember that & i only played through the start once.

[@edsherwook5196]

@@skyriminspace pretty lazy way to make a bunch of ridiculous jumps. I missed that because the whole process was ridiculous

[@skyriminspace]

@@edsherwook5196 depends on your perspective i guess.

[@downix]

And it could have been avoided with a simple flip; he makes a deal, and if you fly the Pirate's ship with the artifact, he will cover the cost and paperwork to register the ship.

[@jbdds.9727]

I put 200+ hours into Starfield and was definitely guilty of turning my brain off and just accepting the game for what it was and I had a good time with it. But the whole time, I had this feeling that the game looked pretty good visually, but lacked so much on the intellectual and emotional side. Exploration felt bad, the quests were mediocre, and the player agency is basically an illusion. I've watched a lot of Starfield analysis/critique videos to help me understand what I was feeling and it is crazy how many others felt the same way. This video expertly articulates that feeling and is hands-down one of the best and most thoughtful videos on the subject. The devs and anyone who played Starfield should watch this.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Thanks JB. Appreciate it.

[@Shinkami_Chuu]

One thing I rarely or never hear about Starfield's exploration problem is it' planet-side structure: there's 1 quest per "cell" or chunk, and its always 500m away from the landng zone too. That's why the temples are as unexciting as they are: there are the only thing of interest in their Cell, and they always re 500m away from where you land. On the first time your search for a temple, Vladimir says your scanner will help find the temple, and you think y'oull have to traverse the map and make a good amount of way to reach it, but it's actually already in sight, just next to you, as it's a tall structure (and always the same). This means that you enter a cell, do 1 quest, and then leave, there's no other (even radiant) quest in the cell that you can bump into on the way to your quest-next-door. The only time you get more than 500m away form your ship it to scan a planet or search for ressources. This is a sister problem to non-seamless travel and content density. One way to solve this problem could be to have larger areas with more quests, 1 or 3 such areas per planets like the prexisting location markers we have currently, with small settlements and more random encounters and local quests (radiant or not) and then let the player know that the rest of the planet is unhabited, and there's no signs of life there except for the occasionnal secret facility or exploration team.

[@acrosstundras]

I really wanted to love Starfield. I mean, the whole NASA-punk/Alien 1 esthetic alone drew me in. But I couldn't even endure all the faction quest lines (which are supposed to be the best thing about Starfield). Instead, the most entertaining thing about Starfield turned out to be watching all the KZbin essays on what's wrong with it.

[@rorqualmaru1254]

Very well thought out and articulated critique - not just a rant. I didn't dislike my time with Starfield but continually wondered what could possibly have been going through the dev's heads during development. As an indie or near indie effort I've have called it pretty great. With Bethesda's experience and Microsoft's money it's inexcusable.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Yeah, that's the thing - we always have to view things in context and I think that's a good way to look at it. Were this an indie title, I think we'd accept a lot of the problems. But it's Bethesda. 420+ employees, a long history of making games, etc. We deserved better.

[@SepticTank53]

@@ColorsFadeGaming I would argue it all comes to the price. Put this game out for $10, own up that it didn't turn out as they had hoped, and I wouldn't argue or complain. Creating a fun and engaging experience, but also innovating and trying new things.. they won't all be bangers. I don't want studios to go the COD route and stay safe and keep rehashing the same thing over and over, but i also don't want to pay $70 for a trash-tier game either. This game should've stayed in development, Skull and Bones it and start from scratch, and release it when it's actually fully ready (QA tested, has the basics like dlss, etc), or again, released at $10.

[@OrangeNash]

I sometimes wonder if it's a deliberate parody. They are having a laugh at the fan base. "Let's see what stupid things we can put in and still have people clocking up 1000 hours?". The chubby dancers in the cyber club...it has to be a joke? As best, it's something middle aged executives came up with because they think it's what the youth of today are into. The whole art style is like that. Done by people with bad taste, no taste, or a list of 100 objects to design by lunchtime else Bethesda would fire them. Quantity over quality.

[@rorqualmaru1254]

@@OrangeNash At some level, I wish you were right and that Bethesda was having a laugh at player's expense. What I find more likely (and worrying) is that the Bethesda devs really think the game is good, that the dialog is good, that the art style and direction (dancers in the cyber club) are good.

[@Jinkypigs]

totally agree. to me it was still an enjoyable jaunt, a solid 8.0. but definitely failed to maximise the potential.

[@philipajfry]

I too have played the game for 200+ hours. A lot of youtubers, reviewers, critiques seem ill equiped or not motivated to actually explain why this game is terrible past 'everything is boring' and 'the guns feel the same'. 'This is loading screen simulator'. You start to get to the crux of the matter. All the evidence is in front of us. Each game they make gets worse, their progression in the craft of video game development has deteriorated over time. They are unmotivated, uninspired, lazy. And lazyness is the key factor here. They want to do less and make more money. We can compare Starfield to each past Bethesda entry and see how basically every mechanic is stripped down, simpler, doesn't work, or is just gone. The laziness goes all the way through every facet of the game, the writing, world building, characters, themes - all bare minimum (or less sometimes) all companions are the same morally, there is no cultural diversity, the lore is there was a war. What is shown on screen is incongruent to what we're being told, there's no difference in the games they make past setting. In Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield there are no phones, no vehicles, etc etc. The best comparison I can make is imagine if Rockstar released all their games in reverse order. They get simpler, cruder, and less refined and ambitious over time.

[@Rapunzel879]

This is false. I watched several videos critiquing the game, and the content creators make excellent points. Regardless, it's not very difficult to see Starfield's flaws (dated design approach, bad writing, boring gameplay, dated graphics, dated presentation etc.)

[@philipajfry]

@@Rapunzel879 I don't know how what I said is false. I said "a lot of youtubers" not all, or most, or even a number. And besides just saying something is boring or bad is just an opinion, not a critique. Showing evidence, comparisons, or explaining in technical terms what makes a thing bad or boring is what I'm looking for.

[@Rapunzel879]

@@philipajfry I see. I really recommend Big Dan's rant on Starfield. Of all the videos I watched, his is the best.

[@vincer7824]

I don’t think it was laziness. Mainly because there is no hard evidence to support this. Honestly I’m not sure there could be since identifying laziness is more about intention, perceived competence vs actual ability among other things. Tough to assess from an outsiders view imo. Mainly I think attributing the short comings of Starfield to laziness is an overly simplifed cop out. The effort in rendering hundreds of 3-D models from weapons to aid items seems robust. The “nasa punk” aesthetic as reflected in the design of the various ship building parts and space suits is quite cohesive and detailed. The volume of quest dialogue, written and recorded data slates required a significant amount of effort. The thing is hard work does not always result in a successful outcome. Conversely a failure is not always the result of a lack of effort. This distinction is valuable because if one wants to succeed in a previously failed attempt the answer is not always, ‘just work harder and do more’. I do think that Bethesda’s leadership has become complacent, creatively stagnant, overall staffed by less skilled devs (via the leaving of several vets) and has adopted certain practices (like not using a central dynamic game design document) that hinder significant innovation, communication and coordination.

[@Rapunzel879]

@@vincer7824 I'm sure the studio worked hard on the game. The issue is that their efforts were largely misplaced. Their game design is outdated, and yet Bethesda hasn't updated it. There are objective problems with the Creation engine beyond the obvious graphical limitations, and it needs significantly more work to be competitive in today's environment. Eight years is a lot of time to update their engine, enemy AI, combat, quest design, and dialogue presentation, but very little has changed since Fallout 4. The bulk of the work went into making procedurally generated planets etc, stuff that the community doesn't care about.

[@vhhawk]

Appreciate this. I also have 100+ hours in Starfield, and I also wanted to love it, but I ended up back in Skyrim again. Why? For me, it comes down to the stark beauties of living in Skyrim -- the moments when the music, the ambient soundscape, and the visual lighting all come together and make me breathe deeply. Just standing in a field and listening to the crickets is magic in Skyrim. There is no such magic in Starfield. It's an industrial grind of a game. I don't want to live here. OK, paused at six minutes in to collect my thoughts, now back to your video.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Haha, fun comment. Yeah, I loved that about Skyrim too. Such a great game.

[@OrangeNash]

Do yourself a favour and please play something not made by Bethesda. There's a whole universe of non-Bethesda games out there, that have soul, are well crafted, fun and even challenging if you want that. Don't go back to Skyrim. It's part of the problem, not the solution. You have to admit you have a problem, before you can solve the problem. One step at a time, you can do it, break the addiction 🙂

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

@@OrangeNash I play tons of games. Haven't touched Skyrim in years and have no desire to go back. It's a nice memory and I want to keep it that way.

[@vhhawk]

@@OrangeNash I am sure you are right, friend, and I am looking for such a game. Had great hope for The Witcher 3, but can't deal with 3rd person pov. I'm old, and I gotta have it like I gotta have it. 😂

[@m.j3113]

​@@OrangeNashskyrim Modded is a new whole experience, I played from the day it was released to this day, plus other games and real paper based rpgs. It's not an addiction, it's called passion

[@Flagsitta]

This has been the best, most accurate critique of this game. Just went through the romance arc and it was so cringy. And even the companion says “that was out of nowhere.” It’s like the whole game is the *wink wink nudge nudge* of trolls who thought their customers were in on the joke.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Yes. And thank you for the comment Flag!

[@radweld]

I've played for about 300 hours and have no more desire to explore the planets I visit. Once you visited the same abandoned cryo lap 10 times, you realise you don't want to do it again. I have no idea how people can NG+ this game 10 times already.

[@CoolestKidOnTheShortBus]

Says the guy who has played 300 hours. I stopped playing completely after the tutorial when some random guy gave me his spaceship. I knew the game was trash.

[@daviddamasceno6063]

Unless we want to see Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 suffering from the same issues, it's time to stop giving Bethesda a pass. They need to be called out, and I'm happy that we have passionate people like you doing such a great job at presenting the real issues with the game.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Thanks mate. Perfectly said!

[@jaroslavsvaha6065]

They way you call out a company is with your wallet. So it's already too late, Starfield is already a commercial success for Bethesda, they won't change anything.

[@sinisterdesign]

Nice analysis! I especially enjoyed your rant about crappy, irresponsible RPG romances. IMO, to make proc gen really work well, a game has to be modular and systems-driven so that the pieces can be rearranged at a sufficiently granular level, and so relatively small differences in those arrangements can have meaningful consequences for gameplay. It boggles my mind that Bethesda created a game across 1,000 planets with literally the same exact instances of dungeons and outposts being copy-pasted over and over. That's just game design malpractice.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Right? When I saw certain outposts that were carbon copies of other outposts, modular design was the first thing that came to mind. I could not understand why they didn't go that route. It could have made a difference.

[@michaellane5381]

​@@ColorsFadeGamingpersonally, i was really hoping they would have story driven Procedural content, as in I believe It was Skyrim, there is a book which describes a cabin in the woods, what it was made of, what happens there, what caused it, in horror genre style, down to items found there in a book... And if you find this place the detail is such you can enter the place unarmed, and run straight to the discarded weapon to defend yourself. I was really hoping we'd have similar books generated in mad lib form for quests, that then generate or modify appropriate nearby locations, at a minimum for variety of locations and a hook to make you look for it... Hearing this game is as bad as it is hurts, i never felt procedural generation would be the problem, though i expected bugs and lack any investment to have made me want to aquire this game at launch, I'm glad you could clarify some of the concerns i could only see the tips of the icebergs on through trailers and other reviews.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

@@michaellane5381Yeah, I feel like there's still huge potential in procedural generation but it has to be done right. What the Trese Bros. are doing with Cyberknights: Flashpoint is a good example of what procedurally generated quests can do.

[@cathulhu3772]

Shadow Warrior 2 made levels that way . :)

[@sinisterdesign]

@@ColorsFadeGaming I do believe there's a little game called "Together in Battle" doing some interesting things with procedural generation as well. 😉

[@chloewebb5526]

I'm in my NG+ now, and am noticing that the most interesting things that happen, already happened and either someone is telling me about it, or a museum is letting me know about it. Seriously, NPC's will be all like, "Barrett looked at me like he knew it was the end!" Like... don't TALK cinematics to me, WTF TODD?? Also, I don't think any game did romance like Cyberpunk did. When Judy pecked my cheek after the a quest, the fact that it gave me goofy flutters instead of making me uncomfortable was a hell of an accomplishment for a game! Then going to her apartment an Johnny kinda cracking wise on how Judy makes V a little gaga lol. It was so perfect. And then the unerwater thing, mixed with emotional drama afterwards - DAMN... I love me some good writing...

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Cyberpunk's romances were top notch. Honestly, I always find romances in video games so uncomfortable anyway, but Cyberpunk's romances worked, like you say. They were excellently crafted!

[@Derrideme]

excellent video would love more like it. separately i found starfield to be best understood not as a game or game world but as a harrowing first-person reconstruction of a total psychotic break from reality afflicting a very boring person.

[@OrangeNash]

Best review ever! And it is a fair point. Occasionally seeing people say the NPC's are believable. That the combat is excellent. Can only assume they have a secret version of the game before that Bethesda employee had the breakdown and wrecked it all.

[@ertymexx]

My solution to the level system would be this: Remove levels completely. They fill no real purpose. Revamp the "Challenges", and make that basic skill increase. Then add a small fee to actually get to the next level (see it as taking a drivers license after much training; also this could be something to do with all those credits you hoard and never use). As for the planets, my biggest gripe is that there are so many critters that are reused on different planets. Also, what's with almost every planet having asteroids where you jump in?

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

The sameness of the orbital locations (nothing, debris, or asteroids) is quite stunning given there's 1,000 planets. Like, wow Bethesda. That was the most variance you could come up with?

[@macatron69]

This is the best breakdown of why Starfield failed that I’ve seen so far. I agree with everything you said!

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Thanks for watching Jason!

[@korruptwisdom8688]

Best breakdown for sure. The 510 unique location in f04 killed me. 15-20 poi in a 1000 planet game, a vehicle that doesn't function as a vehicle (point a to point b) seamless just blows my mind.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Thank you!@@korruptwisdom8688

[@robsolf]

14:30 That's an interesting point. But it matches the rest of the game, in that nothing really feels earned. You don't really choose a certain path which leads to one or more characters taking to you above others. They all just admire you for continuing the main mission(which is mostly running), and that's somehow an aphrodisiac for everyone you meet. And the "1 camera dialogue" makes that look as robotic as it is.

[@Akatharie]

I feel that the good writing was reserved for some of the very small incidental meetings, for example the child wanting to sell lemonade - that one made me laugh. I agree about the factions and the main quests however.

[@skyriminspace]

The Australian guy on mars who wants your help improving the yield in the mine. A great quest.

[@shayliakara]

There are a few ways they could have made quests better. I thought that the waiting room/airport lounge place would have people show up, looking for help. I hate the kiosk so much. I agree, its just this "click here for quest" and its dumb. Imagine if you showed up at night and this one seedy looking man was waiting. He walked up to you and tells you that he has a special mission needed... but there is a catch." Or if you go in day and a trader is there saying he needs you to clear a space station for him to setup a shop. Then after you do this, you get a new shop in space? Why didn't they do any of this?

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

It's baffling, for sure. It certainly makes the case for going back to the design of Morrowind and Oblivion, where NPCs had schedules - they ate, slept, worked their stores then closed up shop, etc. Missions in Oblivion often revolved around following someone on their routine, or only showing up at the precise time and NPC was doing a certain thing. If you had that sort of gameplay in Starfield it could have helped build out a much more immersive world.

[@chengong388]

Planets in NMS are like the size of big cities, you can walk around the planet in like 10 hours. Real scale is the big problem, even one real scale planet is still hilariously too large for hand crafted content.

[@altair-x]

around 25 hours on average sized planets

[@anonymous_dot_com2326]

I dont think the scale was the problem, its just how the game was designed around that scale. If they had atleast made the POIs themselves procedurally generated by using the same technology that roguelike games use for their dungeons, like Remnant, the exploration side wouldve been way better... But alas, the horrible writing is the main problem. It doesnt matter how big or small the gameworld was, it was still gonna suck due to the immersion breaking writing

[@laszlomiko9085]

There was probably less writing than you imagine because Bethesda apparently no longer uses design documents. Great video.👍

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

I know, right? When I heard that I just about fell out of my chair.

[@StoneDigitalArtCanada]

Excellent analysis and for the most part spot on. For me, the writing was the biggest impediment, particularly because I'd picked up Baldur's Gate to give me something to play while waiting for Starfield's release so I came directly from there. That made Starfield's shortcomings even more pronounced because BG3's writing is some of the best in the last decade. Same is true of CP2077 where the writing was good enough to allow me to put up with the technical shortcomings until those were (mostly) patched out. Starfield was such a huge disappointment after all the hype leading up to it...and will be the last Betthesda game I preorder.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

You and I can be friends. Thanks for the comment Chris!

[@olderandy4798]

Let's face it, Starfield is an average Indy game, GFX/quests. Made by an AAA developer who couldn't care less because the fan people will buy it just because of the name and the hype. Bethesda is like most of the AAA companies now that pump out what are basically early access games that they may finish if they get enough sales. It is a shame because as you say they have made so many great games in the past, I guess it's just a sign of the times. Why do something when you don't have to?

[@dakunssd]

I don't enjoy the writing in Starfield. I do enjoy you going off on it.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Hahaha, that comment made my day. Thanks @dakunssd.

[@FebrithDarkstar]

You just articulated exactly what I feel about the game - disappointment. You hit the nail on the head with this breakdown and cited some examples of precisely what I felt is so frustrating, the lack of good writing and folllow-through - I so wanted to give Cora those books! :D (plus having a kid in space - no-one asked for that). Skills, fast travel and companions are all lazy and/or irritating. Thanks for the thoughtful and well presented video - I hope Bethesdsa sees it and takes it on board.

[@kuertee]

Replace SF references with Skyrim references and you've got a Skyrim critique. i.e. I found your assessments of SF in Skyrim when I stopped forgiving Skyrim's gameplay designs and stopped modding it about 2017/18. I think their writing team works independently of each other. Bethesda's story editor(s) only mildly review the different story threads for major inconsistencies with a disregard for the nuances of the narrative.

[@driver3899]

yeah the only saving grace for skyrim is the strong sense of atmosphere that pulls people into that world without it the many problems it has would be a lot more obvious

[@mgmchenry]

Yesssss! Omg, thank you. As a hobbyist non-professional game dev who has spent a lot of time building procedural asset generation systems, it has been so frustrating to hear people blaming the procedural planets for bethesda's poor decisions and lack of imagination and lack of technical skill applied to the procedural systems. They did a garbage job. I'm going to be so mad if other devs back off on procedural stuff because of the starfield criticism. Starfield contains so many things that could be fun and are not. Doubling down on better systems would fix so much of it. If you have procedural terrain generation, there is absolutely no reason aside from lack of imagination and commitment, that you need to generate that terrain inside of a sandbox that players can't walk outside of. You can generate the terrain as you need it from any distance and start from far away and get close in. People have been doing this on consumer hardware for decades now. I did it myself in my spare time in 2005. The star citizen tech demo dunked so hard on bethesda's pathetic attempt. In 2023, we don't need loading screens to go from your ship, to an adjacent dock ship, then to land on the surface of a planet, get out of your ship, walk inside of a cave. If Bethesda used less procedural generation, only would have been worse. Players attracted to starfield want to explore space. We didn't launch the game to navigate menus. If I get in a space fight, why can't I take that fight to the ground? Ships can be procedurally generated. Buildings can be procedurally generated. Factions can be generated, and all of their interactions can be generated, the economy can be. I feel like people are mad and blaming the procedural generation because they can see some signs that it was used, but every single thing in the game is painstakingly meticulously crafted, which is why all the factories look the same. It's why the planets are the same no matter how many games you start or how many times you go new game plus yourself into a "new" galaxy. Bethesda fumbled the ball so bad on procedural content. I paused your video 30 seconds in and started this comment ramble, so I'm hoping that your take is somewhat similar, because I'm so tired of people getting this so very wrong. The game is bad and boring because Bethesda made it bad and boring. Also it has procedural content. Also the game would be less bad and boring if they took the creation engine handcuffs off of the procedural generation and made it actually dynamic and spent time making the dynamic systems fun, or if they took the game out of space and didn't try to pretend this was a space game and spent their time making something fun out of stuff creation engine can actually do.

[@mgmchenry]

Oh, yeah the writing is terrible. You can have terrible writing and a fun game. You can have a terrible game I still want to play because the writing is so good. You probably shouldn't do both bad writing and bad game. 15 hours into the game, I realized I wasn't playing a modern Mass Effect, I wasn't going to feel engaged in the story, and I wasn't going to care about a single individual NPC in the entire game because the writing was just amateur. Voice acting was good tho... I immediately abandoned the plot and made my own fun as far from New Atlantis as I could go

[@DM-hm4us]

I was having the exact same thoughts watching the video. I hope actual devs don't back off of developing procgen tech after seeing all of this backlash. It's just done badly in Starfield. I would go so far as saying Starfield doesn't even have actual procgen. Its systems are more akin to procedural placement.

[@mrm7058]

@31:00 I couldn't help but to think about Freelancer when you mentioned this. A much older game (from 2003) that also had many star systems, but where you could fly through asteroid-fields and nebula and discover hidden stuff in them like derelict ships with unique loot or pirate bases, that you could engage ... or land on them if you had friendly relations with them. Or wormholes, that brought you to otherwise unreachable systems. That alone made exploration much more rewarding. (it doesn't have planet exploration tho)

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Freelancer was a pseudo-sequel to one of my favorite franchises of all time, Origin's Privateer series. I love all those games and Starfield could have learned a lot from them. But Bethesda's developers seem completely unaware those titles even exist.

[@Aero_Yuki]

And Freelancer's successor, Star Citizen, like No Mans Sky, has seemless travel throughout the solar system including to and from planetary surfaces, plus, it's a real-scale solar system in a multiplayer environment. Yes, Star Citizen is still in development, but it and Starfield were in development at the same time.

[@cathulhu3772]

It gets better when your background is a diplomat/politician or other civic service guy. You suddenly, for no reason become a miner, than some rando assumes you can pilot a starship, than you are railroaded into shoot up with pirates as if your character ever held a gun in hand and than you suddenly are a spaceship engineer and bob the space base builder. This is insane xD to think that ppl were shtng on CP2077 life path choice but noone even mentions this crazyness is mind boggling.

[@markwheeler4417]

As always this is well considered and, from what I've seen from the playthrough, spot on.

[@76campzilla88]

Wasn't sure exactly why I quit this game after 30 hours, but this video explains that to me

[@johndeighan2495]

Good points, well made. To be honest, Bethesda's quest design has been abysmal for a long time. Walking into the Bard's College in Skyrim is a good example of it! Bad quest design, bad main story, bad dialogue, badly-written NPCs and companions, bad facial animation... and yet Skyrim was still a great game. To understand why Starfield isn't, we have to look at where it departs from Skyrim and other Bethesda titles. The lack of a large, continuous, content-rich world to explore is huuuuge. Then there's the heavy reliance on fast-travel, procedural generation and load screens... but these problems all flow from the previous one. There's also the fact it's a new IP, so there's no store of goodwill: Starfield is not judged against previous entries in a series, but against what's out there in AAA gaming right now. And on that measure, Starfield comes up woefully short. There are other things too. But yeah, whatever the Bethesda "magic" may consist of, it's definitely lacking here.

[@MrReaperofDead]

As a writer, I always cringe when somebody asks me to consider giving people a 'script' or investing in a script for something. Do they not know that that's the worst way to begin any project that involves writing? When a company employs a script for a plot and concept first before anything else, it completely neglects the roundedness needed in order to make a coherent story and plot. There are things that a script can't tell that a novel takes the time to world build. This is one of the reasons why most movies and games suck now a'days, because they don't world build, don't go into the intrinsics of a concept or idea. They just go "Script please!" and what you wind up with is what you have for Starfield and Marvel: a movie or game with nothing but talking scenes, no relevance to the world or set, no grounded concepts, or any room to create scenes that are meaningful or pull at the player or viewer's emotions. It's just work to complete the work. It's what separates the Ms. Marvels from your Harry Potters. Your Star Treks from your boring snoring Starfields. People. Write your ideas out on paper first, don't just cut to the dialogue and set.

[@notfound379]

Let's not forget that stupid exploding tree quest forcing you to help the sleazy coworker who deserved a beating. Or how fun was it being scanned for contraband a million times? (Or worse having some that you cannot find). I quit the torture, err, game (100+ hrs) cause I couldn't take it any more... I like to believe that tree eventually exploded just out of sheer boredom. Great video! Made me reflect on why I like a game.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Thank you for commenting! I'm glad I could make you reflect!

[@emmd1137]

this is the most succinct and well thought out video on this topic i've seen yet congrats on getting this down to 40ish minutes. there is definitely a 2 hour version of this video in another universe.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Thanks! Yeah, there's a longer version... I wanted to get it down to 30 minutes but there was too much to cover.

[@darrenharper609]

There's one easy way to make local space travel and exploration more interesting and that's by taking a page out of the Freelancer book and allow FTL travel. You lock onto the location you want to travel to and you enter a Star Wars style hyperspace tunnel. On the way you can be pulled out of FTL by pirates or you could get a notification of a deep space anomaly that you can leave FTL and investigate. It makes sense to have cutscenes for travel to other systems but local travel can be done without any.

[@case384]

The unique POI to planet ratio is definitely the most mind boggling thing I've seen about this game. It could've been avoided so easily, but as mentioned the writing is also terrible, I have no hope for Elder Scrolls. I'm glad you talked about these problems because a lot of people have missed them or not realised how big of an issue they are. I think the environments in the next elder scrolls will be good, but everything else will be another downgrade, even if they overhaul creation or use another engine (so the AI isn't a decade old) the current writers aren't capable and the people at the top are making terrible decisions.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Yes, yes, and yes. And yes, I'm no longer optimistic about ES6. I was, but Starfield has killed any hope I had for that game. Because it's the decisions behind the results that are the most concerning.

[@MGrey-qb5xz]

The hell boomer what does this have to do with engine?

[@profbfc]

Wow after watching the video quality and brilliant commentary, I thought you had millions of subs. Good job

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Thanks mate! Trying to get there. Maybe someday! But I appreciate you commenting!

[@ullysses95]

Now this is a criticism that I wanted Bethesda to respond to

[@TheOCDDoc]

They’ll argue that we don’t understand what goes into game design. I’ve played Skyrim a few times, finished everything FO4 and it’s DLCs have to offer, tried to play new Vegas (graphics and mechanics too clunky for me)… I was excited for Starfield, but it got disappointing quickly. It also didn’t help that I played BG3 first and I contrasted the NPCs and Companions in both

[@XeonProductions]

Some of the design decisions seemed like they were designed to box you into one game play style. There is no evil playthrough with actual consequences, so they created these horrible companions to box you into a good playthrough. Many of the other design choices in the game seem like they were designed to waste your time and inflate gameplay hours, like having vendors with no credits, having a pitifully small inventory, and spacing quest objectives out on barren planets with no land vehicles. It's like they don't want you having many credits, so you have to slow grind to buy the bigger ships. I think many of the design choices were done with malice and greed. It's also weird how quick and efficient they are at patching bugs that allow you to get in-game currency faster, almost as if they plan to allow you to buy in-game currency with real currency in the future. IT also seems like they cut out the Va'ruun homeworld Dazra and luxury liner ships for future DLCs, which doesn't work because the game feels incomplete to begin with. The whole game was just a minimum viable product to please the shareholders.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

All true. You're correct.

[@Mitheledh]

One quest chain that I really didn't like is the UC one. It committed what I consider a cardinal sin. It treated you like you were stupid. It set things up in a way that their big surprises are obvious, but then it refuses to let me be NOT surprised.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

And the problem is, the entire game treats you like you're stupid. That is something this dude cannot abide.

[@Mitheledh]

@@ColorsFadeGaming What's even worse is that when you start a new game and head down there, even though you have complete fore knowledge of who he is, you're still required to play dumb and act surprised.

[@sniperfi4532]

It makes total sense. If you removed all the random generated planets you’d still end up with only 5 or 6 of you took all unique locations into account. 8 years is along time to spend in the oven and still come out undercooked.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Oh man, that last line... perfect. Undercooked indeed.

[@Jkend199]

Couldn't agree more. Morrowind despite its flaws had such an interesting setting, believable factions plausible motivations... and all this played out through the various quests the player was shown who this group is, what they stand for and why. Morrowinds writing was good... it had SO MANY other problems, but... in an RPG writing is so important that its easy to look past whatever other flaws a game has if the writing is top tier. Bethesda used to have good writing... WTF happened...

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

I think you nailed it. When writing is great, we can look past flaws in technology, graphics, whatever. But when the writing is bad, it doesn't matter how pretty the rings are around your planets. It all begins and ends with the writing.

[@user-wr6dj4ib9o]

morrowind had no flaws

[@Jkend199]

I agree completely, in an RPG writing is KING and Bethesda used to be so good at it, when I play through Morrowind I actually want to go on because I want to find out what's really happening... because the narrative is compelling, because the setting is captivating, because the factions and characters are engrossing and believable... Morrowind, alien as it is, feels like a place that could actually exist because the writers took the time to think about what might happen if this place was real. Oblivion did the same, not as well, but it did the same, then Skyrim... I love Skyrim to pieces, but the writing that was slightly worse in Oblivion just... fell off a cliff. What happened to Bethesda...@@ColorsFadeGaming

[@Project2457official]

Very well done critique. Sat through the whole thing uninterrupted. Most “essayists” begin to repeat themselves or beat a point to a pulp by jamming it down the viewers throats but you articulated your points well and structured the critique nicely. You also presented your evidence convincingly and really nailed it down to a problem of immersion and shallow worldbuilding. Starfield unlike other RPGs like Cyberpunk miss the mark almost all the time on a pivotal question: Why am I here doing this? If the player can’t answer that in a story based RPG without having purely intrinsic goals then the writers have failed. In cyberpunk I always felt gripped by the fact I’m a merc, I’m living V’s life in Night City. When it comes to Starfield I’m just questing and completing some objectives until I get bored with little investment. Add to that by limiting player choice by making anywhere between 50-80% of NPCs “essential” tagged and I no longer feel as if I have agency. My character in Starfield kills criminals by the dozen like it’s nothing. He loots and steals from criminals and sells the loot for cash. When I forst found the Ebbside Strykers and they threatened me and told me that they were the last of their kind I saved and shot all of them, hoping to snuff them out. But no, mom said no, Todd Howard told me they have an everything force field in the name of the almighty side quest.

[@chenoir]

To settle the "5 planets" argument. Because that's a point I myself believe. We're not talking (or at least, I'm not talking) about 5 procedurally generated planets. I'm talking about 5 planets, wherein you can visit an open-world map (smaller than Skyrim or Fallout 4) which would have been handcrafted. You mention The Outer Worlds' writing. But that's the way they built their game too, and it works. Marvelously. Keep the procedural generation for barren moons, asteroids and planets, and let people fly there. And in space. That alone would have made the game much more condensed, and much more interesting. But you're right, it wouldn't have solved the abysmal writing of the game. Oh, and the scale of it too. The UC is a gigantic, galactic spanning organization. And yet their capital city is the size of my bathroom. Mass Effect gave us sprawling urban landscapes a decade ago. Just add a freaking backdrop of a tentacular city as far as the eye can see....

[@Banzai431]

All of what you mention that is lacking requires the one thing that Bethesda seems to be increasingly allergic to. Effort. Since Fallout 4 I've noticed Bethesda has simply stopped putting in the effort they used to in to their games. Disappointing, especially when you've already seen what they are capable of when they are actually trying.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

It does feel like the effort is completely gone, doesn't it?

[@sparkzmentalz2]

Starfield critique videos are more immersive than Starfield.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

LOL, you might be right! At the very least they're more entertaining. I've been learning a lot while watching other folks' impressions.

[@cassieudy5718]

The Striker's Gang quest gets even worse. Eventually, you can help them out and get them hired as the city's new security team. There is another unrelated quest that requires you to go ask the security team for info on a murder. Do you think Bethesda thought about this? Of course not. You can't go and ask your gang buddies for help, even though you can find them all standing around at the security office. Absolutely irredeemable and lazy writing.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

I could have done a whole long video on the Strykers questline alone. When they end up joining the Neon city police force I almost laughed myself out of my chair. I wanted to think it was a genius stroke of writing commentary on the state of police forces in the wake of events like George Floyd's murder, but there's no way I thought Bethesda's writers were that self aware. It had to be an accident.

[@newdefsys]

I imagine a space game where you need to get your ship into a stable orbit around an unknown planet and analyze the surface and atmosphere along with the gravitational field and punch in some simple calculations for speed and angle in order to land where you want. Otherwise you end up landing far away from you're target and now you have to traverse a potentially dangerous environment with limited supplies and ammunition, (You landed 10 minutes away from your objective, but you're space suit's air supply only lasts 7 minutes, and you dont have enough fuel for another landing attempt. _Too_ _bad_ _for_ _you_ ! Go back where you came from and try again, when you learn how to operate your craft and have more supplies.)

[@RobsRedHotSpot]

26:51 I think it's worth mentioning that No Man's Sky is a highly experimental example of advanced procedural generation. Aside from Minecraft and a handful of other open-world proc-gen games, NMS *would* be fairly difficult to replicate. They use a multi-layered system to generate star systems, planet biomes and local landscapes on the fly on your PC and then upload the results to servers so these are persistent for different players. Weapons, ships, flora, fauna and minerals are generated using a modular system where individual components are mixed and matched to produce a substantial variety. Over the years, they've made great strides to increase the variety of the gameplay loop and exploration. The result is clearly better than Starfield, although one of the most common complaints about NMS remains that after 100 hours or so, many planets and mini-dungeons start to feel pretty samey. You are spot on about traversal though. It's *fun* to spend time in NMS, whether you're exploring, fighting, building or ship-hunting. I come back to it regularly.

[@LuxPerp]

38 minutes said more and analyzed more deeply than 8 hours from some other reviewers. 100% agree with your primary point and deeper analysis: it’s the poor writing and poorly selected and implemented basic mechanics, not procedural generation that disappoint so deeply.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Thanks Lux

[@ethangnasher3848]

Man, i can feel more passion from the people criticizing the game than the game itself or people who worked in it speaking about the game. They're not even pretending to try anymore man, they know they're part of a giant too big to fail.

[@ToxicPickle424]

Overall, Starfield's true problems lie in the fact that Bethesda had no real plan on how they were going to take what they did well and adapt it to something so much larger than even their largest previous games. They also, and this is something PatricianTV dug into, had no design document which meant they literally had no plan on how to build everything, no person or group of people coordinating all the vast moving parts and keeping them consistent, and no way for all the various development teams to know what systems they could hook into when building their respective portion of the game. Bethesda is a complete mess and there is no fixing this unless a complete shake-up of the company happens. Microsoft could potentially do this but they don't exactly have the best track record either.

[@Izzmonster]

It's also the limitations of the engine itself. The creation engine can only create terrain in a certain amount of chunks, this would include empty space. This is why they have the issue of the tiny bubbles of areas.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

There's no doubt the engine itself is a hindrance. But given that, why not use a different engine? They had a lot of time to make this game. It's the decisions that lead to these outcomes that baffle me.

[@Izzmonster]

@@ColorsFadeGaming I honestly believe the bethesda "devs" don't know anything about actual videogame creation and are basically glorified modders

[@dessertstorm7476]

i was making some of the travel points on reddit and people were claiming you can't implement travel between worlds because of distance, when I suggested some kind of fast interplanetary drive or time dialation, they said you can't because "it doesn't fit the lore of the universe", the cope is so strong. People wanted to get everywhere instantly, they also made excuses for the intro and how cheaply and inexplicably you get your first spacecraft. I think this generation of players, the vertical scrolling tik tok generation just want shit fast and they don't want to take their time. the fast travel fetch quest loop is a dopamine experience created specifically for them.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

"The cope is so strong." LOL, you got me with that one. I laughed, because you're correct.

[@ElijahuPincher]

What's crazy, is that seamless space travel wasn't even invented by Hello Games. It appeared, before that, in a game for the old-ass playstation 2 called Haven: Call of the King. Sadly, that game did not sell well, so we didn't get a sequel

[@kenmck7802]

Emil:" Making games is hard". Soooo we'll let the MODDERS make the game that ...Todd always dreamed of and what the PAYING CUSTOMERS really deserve.

[@koyooko5160]

Nothing pissed me off more than space combat already happening on a planet i want to land on, because of the fact that combat immediately starts and you cant land on whatever rock in the middle of nowhere you want to land at in combat. So you're either forced to endure another two loading screens as you warp away and warp back and pray there isnt another random combat encounter Or endure the combat as you either waste materials surviving it, or waste time as you mop the floor with whatever is being a nuisance.

[@SubKrypt]

You absolutely nailed it, the writing was utterly atrocious and immersion breaking, and the game design compounded this. Playing Cyberpunk again with its new DLC after Starfield, I couldn’t believe how superior the writing, characters and immersion was in Cyberpunk, no contest at all. Bethesda has an awful lot ahead of them to catch up, because they are seriously lagging behind now unfortunately.

[@NoSleepDaChimney]

“ I am Bethesda’s target audience “ is crazy cuz you’re the first person to actually acknowledge that

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

I wanted to love this game so much.

[@ClayAsbury122]

Great take. Accurate. Btw what microphone do you use? Audio quality is excellent.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

It's an SM58 Clay, thanks for asking! I'm a musician, so I had one laying around. Not as convenient as a USB mic, but like you say, the sound quality is great.

[@ClayAsbury122]

@@ColorsFadeGaming haha musician here too. Hard to beat a Shure SM58. Cheers

[@abstragento0087]

The procedural process just needed to be more sophisticated like a onion first the landscape and then seed experience's in a decent way everywhere

[@MikePhantom]

one correction: oblivion did not had the limitation on fast travel. as soon something got marked on your map even if you NEVER went there you could fast travel there. also morrowind had no map based fast travel only public transport

[@roon6425]

I think procedural generation is one of the core problems. Hand-crafted worlds are much better than soulless randomly-generated slop

[@donkeysaurusrex7881]

Game has lots of problems. Procedural generation is definitely one of them.

[@aramondehasashi3324]

Procedural generation is a tool it's how you use it that matters. You do know that Oblivion used it for the creation if the landscape and dungeons? They then went in and handcrafted everything else after. It fine to use it to generate lots of stuff quickly but you can't just rely on it to do everything.

[@solodagci]

I agree with everything you said 100%. Thank you for your in depth analysis on what's wrong with this game.

[@atmosphere60]

Couldn't agree more. Something that's hobbled Bethesda games for some time now is the dialogue. It's not just bad, it's amateurish, like the writers can't grasp the simple concept that dialogue is action - the moments in which characters really get to SHOW us who they are, without TELLING us about it. Bethesda characters actually use their dialogue to tell us who they are - it's such a noob writer's error and they've been doing it for many years now.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

I thought Fallout 4 had some pretty great moments and I really was hoping it was Bethesda turning a corner, but then we got 76 and then we got Starfield and now I have no confidence.

[@nickzukowski4106]

I appreciate the emphasis on what mods can and (most likely) cannot fix. I'm looking forward to the release of the modding tools and although my skills/abilities are limited, based off of my experience with the CK and FO4 I feel like some things are definitely more do-able than others (I've got a number of starfield projects I'm looking forward to implement, time permitting). I've found that things which make significant changes to vanilla quests (like how a quest is structured or conditioned) can be quite difficult to make and can cause all sorts of issues while new unique player homes and dungeons are pretty straight forward (albeit some what time consuming).

[@tomusmc1993]

I am very surprised that no one seems to pick up on the other major immersion breaking writing in First Contact. Kudos to you for calling it out as an example, but the thing that jarred me right out of the game aside from the contrived "dilemma" is that it is a 200 or more year old ship, and all the tech looks the same, you can find weapons that you use in current day, there is nothing that distinguishes their time from our time other than they say it. Just horrible. Great criticism on the game, but your aside comparing living in the USA to taking you kid into combat situations is a bit ridiculous, and propogates a stereotype. Just my suggestion but stick to writing criticism. The USA has way lower statistics for violent deaths under the age of 20 than many other countries.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Yeah, the tech being exactly the same - I mean, I kind of expected that because Bethesda is not a company that's going to build different assets just for one quest. I could excuse it if the writing was any good, but it's not. So the whole thing becomes one big toilet bowl.

[@TourFaint]

It's not procgen's fault, its just bad procgen. Bethesda has enough puzzle pieces to make randomly generated dungeons a'la daggerfall and they have they technology to make them fun. Minecraft mods make fun procedurally generated dungeons, rougelikes make fun procedurally generated dungeons. Like most things that are completely broken in starfield, it's a solved problem. There is no excuse to mess this up anymore.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Yep, this.

[@DamonCzanik]

I thought that this video would solely focus on the writing at first. It's a major problem, but not the only one. So pleasantly surprised. The overall game has many problems that add up. Just watch the StarEngine demo to imagine a world where Starfield was built in that engine. Bethesda's engine cannot handle large areas. It needs a 64 or 128 bit world coordinate system and streaming technology created to keep everything running in RAM. The bad writing is bad, but I can overlook bad writing in a sandbox game. There's not much of a narrative in No Man's Sky, X4, Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous. But their immersive worlds and unique gameplay experiences make up for that. I'd argue that a big problem not being discussed is management. This is not a small studio. Microsoft has money. You don't need a new engine but you do need to upgrade it. They are not doing that and it's so far behind other engines. Again, watch the StarEngine demo. 64/128 bit world coordinate system, procedural planets, bug fixes, UI fixes and streaming tech. Or get a new engine. This and every major issue was okayed by management. They're okay with mediocrity. A problem is not that the world generation is procedural. It is a problem that it's flat. Planets are round. You'll need a procedural planet for seamless transitions to air and space. So it's still a problem but one of many. They all combine to a mediocre experience. And that's the worst part. This game had potential. They settled for mediocrity.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Totally - upper management (and I'm going to specifically say Todd and Emil) are the problem. Emil believes in writing shallow characters and stories because he thinks his players care more about "looting duct tape," and Todd seems totally fine trying to bullshit us instead of building a great game. Every time I hear him talk I get the same creepy feeling I get when I listen to tentpole preachers. He's just trying to grift us as this point.

[@WaruWicku]

One egregious detail about the First Contact mission that i haven't seen commented much is that most of the tech they have inside the ship is the same as the rest of the universe. It is so ridiculous that they didn't even bother making specific assets like the "pre-war" stuff in Fallout.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

That's actually the most comment complaint I've seen from people, which is why I didn't mention it. You can scroll down through these replies and others have said the same thing. It's a common refrain on Reddit. I give Bethesda a pass on that one because it would have meant building new assets for a singular mission, and that's just not their style. But yeah, it was immersion breaking.

[@kosmohs]

This game is like a gorgeous woman you happen to luckily pick up, date, and to find ultimately uninteresting and boring. Do you hit and quit it or try your hand at commitment long term? Yup

[@Piwai_who]

Finally someone said it thank you! I played it for a while, i enjoyed it at first but after a few hours it's really just...meh, I'm not spending my time modding this game in it's actual state.

[@MDFGamingVideo]

Boring treks to acquire powers is indicative of a dead and empty game world, which IS directly tied to poorly executed procedural world generation. A planning and environmental design issue, not writing. By comparison Skyrim and Fallout 3 / 4 had many interesting and hand crafted locations to discover along the way, rewarding curiosity and exploration...and adding immersion. With negotiations, neither side would trust someone from within the other. So a neutral outsider makes sense. But it DEFINITELY needed to be written better. Not illogical, but definitely LAZY. The exposition with the Strykers/Disciples is 100% trash. Not only does good writing show, not tell; but it is very INCONSISTENT. And consistency is critical to immersion. 100% behind the "give player something to do" feel of...many modern games, honestly. If I want that, I'll get a job. 😂

[@declancampbell1277]

As far as the procedural nature of it ruining starfield, i have to say i think the inclusion of it is what makes some of the "real" flaws with Bethesda games as a whole enter the focus. For example bethesda have always had fairly shoddy writing and npcs, but that didnt so much matter as that wasnt the focus of the game. Bethesda games are primarily exploration games, and NPCs acted mostly as a vehicle to push players in new directions. Now that exploration has been almost completely removed in favour of the procedural planets though, the main gameplay loop is interacting with the story/NPC's and combat, the first of which becomes an absolute chore the more hours you spend with it. Bethesda have basically removed a core part of the "Bethesda magic", and instead shined a light on what has traditionally been one of the poorest parts of their games for 20 years. This is why people think reducing the scope would help, because we'd get 5 handcrafted planets to fully explore and fly between No Mans Sky style. I do agree that the writing in Starfield is a step down from Skyrim and maybe even F04, but the lack of quality isnt something new. This is compounded by the lack of any impressive environmental storytelling, which IS actually a strongpoint of bethesda. Id say its actually where they put their focus on when it comes to writing, especially in skyrim. Again this is something only sacrificed because of the focus on procedural planets, and the subsequent loss of exploration and use of travel by load screen. It doesnt help that you pointed out 2077 either, which has an absolutely fantastic story and characters and overall writing, and rose from the ashes at a very unfortunate time for bethesda, as did BG3 tbh. When you compare the three from a purely writing and narrative standpoint, bethesdas archaic approach is very very evident. Being sandwiched between 2 RPG giants like that cant have been fun for them. I still think opinions on Starfield would have soured at some point, but i think being presented with 2 beautiful games like the ones mentioned really shortened the lifespan of players tolerance. So to summarise, Procedural Generation IS the problem in many ways, not because it exists, but because it was focused on to the detriment of many other systems, a lot of which were core to the standard bethesda experience. Lack of exploration, Travel by menu systems which comes along with constant loading screens, highlighting the poor writing because of a shift in the purpose of NPC's to the narrative, and im sure i could name more things impacted by it. Their entire design philosophy was incompatible with the type of game they were trying to make. I'll stop here, i could rant for hours and ive only just covered, and tried to add to, your first point. I'd make a video essay myself on it if i had the balls, but i guess i'll just have to stick to ranting in comment sections lol. Hope my 2 cents were worth something! Also thanks for the nod to Panam, absolutely adored that character, Judy and kerry too. Actually felt like believable people instead of...whatever the companions in Starfield were. EDIT: Just noticed your 2077 playthrough when i was looking through vids, are you a returning player or a new one in your playlist playthrough? As someone who played from release 3 years ago i love watching and listening to new players react to the game.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Lotta great points there.

[@Jaasau]

I almost didn’t give you a like for the asinine sociopolitical backhand toward the US, but all your arguments about Starfield were extremely compelling and enlightening. So…a begrudging like you shall receive.

[@xXDeiviDXx]

I like how all the Starfield review essays have reached the same conclusion: everyone blames the tools (proc. gen and the engine) but not the one who uses them wrong (Bethesda)

[@peterd9698]

Hi. I haven't played the game. I have been following reviews because Im fascinated by the design issues. Not just in a negative way. I think they are an interesting puzzle. About all the writing issues. This also points to a higher-level issue. A failure of checks and balances, quality assurance, whatever process is meant to apply common sense within a project. In deference to a recent developer post, I won't speculate on what happened internally.. but I would like to learn one day :) I do think there is a real problem of combining unlimited procedural worlds with a Bethesda style RPG. No Mans Sky doesn't seem to have any RPG elements which is why it never really grasped me. So far, my best solution is: _I do not have a way of combining unlimited procedural worlds with an RPG._ However, procedural worlds can be combined with other styles of games such as Survival, looter/Shooter, Trade and empire, Tower Defence.. so perhaps the problem could be how to combine an RPG seamlessly with a subset of those game genres? You could also make exploration more interesting with more special locations.. and you MUST find a way to NEVER repeat a location EXACTLY. Even to just stop finding special locations would be better than that IMO. (This would mean special locations are essentially "quantum ogres" I believe.) About the seamless travel from surface to-from space: It would certainly be nice and add another 10% of experience on top of everything. I think we could do a lot with the old technology though. *There have been many successful spacegames that are **_purely_** in space.* The way I see it there is no technical obstacle to seamless _inspace_ travel. The stellar map could be as densely packed with locations and radiant quests as the skyrim map. Planets are just textured spheres so there is no technical issue preventing you flying seamlessly between all 1000 of them, or loading/unloading key objects like stations. You are essentially doing skyrim minus the terrain. Then the only transition is from the planets surface to-from about 100km above the planets surface. (edit) Note: With an inspace game, a lot of the character interaction would have been handled with a com-call. Personally I think this would really add to the immersion while reducing the tedium of certain quests if communication was handled with com-calls when sensible, but you knew the person was physically there anyway. As a nice bonus, you could add realtime lightspeed timelag which is why you would want to be within 0.1 light seconds of a planet before using coms.. but you could call from the earth to the moon with a 2.6 second lag (1.3x2) if you wanted. ps: I think Starfield has the potential to be a great game. I call it "Starfield New Vegas" 😎

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Personally, I think this is a totally solvable problem (marrying RPG to procedural worlds). But I love problem solving so I'm optimistic that way. That said, to me there's a way to do it, but it might require much better technology that Bethesda's Creation Kit engine allows.

[@peterd9698]

@@ColorsFadeGaming Wow, my post looks like a crazy man’s manifesto now I’m reading it on my iPad. I typed that out on my pc and it looked a lot smaller. 😎

[@purelite9184]

As appreciative as I am for the in-depth analysis, you have truly killed my excitement to play Starfield again 😄It is sad, but everything you said was true and echoed my thoughts on my initial play through. Awesome video!

[@emrysmyridden]

involving a random stranger in a hostage situation... did no one think of hostage for the the player role? leaving you with stealth negotiation and combat solutions to the problem without the burden of disbelief.

[@rosumparat]

A steam user made the perfect description of Starfield's level of quality: " - Did you want an exploration game? In Starfield you can walk around the same flat planets with nothing on them for absolutely no reason. - Did you want a story driven RPG? In Starfield you can enjoy the same bare bones stories again and again and again in NG+. - Did you want innovative combat? In Starfield you can get used to bland Skyrim shouts and dumbed-down Fallout gameplay at the same time without pesky features such as recoil, player movement or a personal will to live. - Did you want to be a smuggler? In Starfield you can be a space UPS man, running from kiosk to kiosk delivering contraband exactly the same way every time with no purpose! - Did you want rich dialogue? In Starfield the dialogue was written by people who, one time long ago, almost had a mildly interesting conversation. - Did you want interesting companions? In Starfield everyone is Toby from HR!" Couldn't said it better myself.

[@Geraduss]

Yes, I've been saying for months, that the engine and assets are fine, even have great potential. And the whole game needs to be remade with some hard fisted direction and overall management, a new setting, new lore and new stories. I keep saying make Microsoft pull together some 50 to 80 man team, and give them the license to use Blizzards StarCraft universe and make a new game with the StarField engine and assets.

[@TheFilmGuyOfficial]

Completely agree with the writing being bad and under done, the first contact mission didn't even give you tot option to try and do what the captain ask you to do negotiate the parideso people to leave. I feel like they must have cut a bunch of quest line options. they really should have told more of thsies classic scifi stories, another is the parrel universe story where you are swapping back and forth, this should have been a system used across lots of missions, showing whats going on in multi universes.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

What really got to me was the main quest. After all the hype, and the mystery surrounding the artifacts, I really thought the main story was going to be a First Contact type of story, and I was excited for that. But then it ended up being the illogical nonsense they came up with just to try and pull a "gotcha" moment for NG+ and I was so disappointed.

[@TheFilmGuyOfficial]

yeah i think they thought the idea was cooler than what it was haha.@@ColorsFadeGaming

[@abredolflincler1423]

Minecraft comes to mind whenever I see people complain about the procedural generation in starfield, the game's worlds are procedurally generated, with no unique locations or dungeons, and yet the landscape is filled with valleys and massive crags, mountains, lakes, beaches that are all wonderful to look at, somehow the world feels intriguing, even before you discover the mechanics and the mining and crafting. I shit you not the first time I ever booted up minecraft I built a house and a boat, and for the better part of a month I was just walking and walking and sailing, I didn't know about advanced crafting and the neather and all that stuff.

[@davidodea5799]

Excellent deep dive. You've got my Sub!

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

Thanks Dave!

[@Amgarrak]

I think with the writing, bethesda should stick to really out there characters. Like I know it seems like a semi-strange thing to say, but in addition to what I feel is partly a problem with boring planets and boring dungeons they have made is, that the entirety of the Shivering Isles dlc for oblivion is so memorable. As they intentionally leaned into the weird alien-like geometry, the strangeness of character dialogue, that players and reviewers noted for the base game.

[@ChadSparkes]

About six minutes in and I already see that you're missing some important details. In the Akila Freestar intro, Sam Coe is absolutely not a required companion - you can visit Akila before ever meeting him, and that bank robbery quest is already set up and waiting for you. There are certainly some issues with Bethesda's writing, but I suspect more of that is due to accommodating player choice than many critics realize.

[@o-mangaming5042]

Frankly, Emil Pagliarulo needs reassigned. His whole writing philosophy doesn't work for an open-world game, and Microsoft needs to send him to a developer that makes linear stories instead of wide open worlds. He thinks the point of an open world is for everyone to experience everything, so he goes minimal on the story to avoid hiding anything where people will miss it, and . . . no. When you're doing a wide open world like this, you NEED to write what he calls "the Great American Novel" in order to have enough content to make the wide world worthwhile.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

I think the greatest argument to make in favor of this is Baldur's Gate 3. There are a myriad of ways the encounters can play out, but Larian was never worried about players "missing out" on content. Instead, they created a really diverse set of outcomes for most of the choices in the game, and as a result players have been enthusiastically sharing stories and posting videos about all the different ways encounters have gone. And it's driven a lot of engagement for the game, with everyone swapping stories, and players saying, "Wow, I didn't see that in my playthrough; I need to play it again!" I've not heard from one player who played BG3 and said they were done with it after a single playthrough. The different outcomes and easy-to-miss content has players going back for more. Conversely, Bethesda thought they would intentionally build a game for repeat playthroughs but they did such a poor job building their game that few players want to even finish it once. I think the lesson is clear and you've hit on it as well: You gotta build a great game and not worry about players missing content. If you're first concern is "we want players to see everything," then you're doing it wrong. And Bethesda is, sadly, doing it wrong.

[@o-mangaming5042]

@@ColorsFadeGaming That player engagement and community building is part of the entire point of these big games, yeah. Without it, you're basically building your company to be in the Mobile Gaming industry and just make people shell out for soulless cash grabs.

[@urk5204]

Watching this while I play Morrowind

[@kenmck7802]

Hey I appreciate your attempt to teach Emil but, really, if he hasn't gotten it by now he NEVER will. Don't hurt yourself.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

LOL, I love that comment.

[@gabrielt6570]

I disagree on one point. I could tolerate bad writing if there was a world to explore. No amout of even great writing could get me to play game with no exploration and this proc-gen crap is NOT exploration. I played long enought to unlock all the weapon and suit mods and build a great ship. The problem was that there is nothing to do with the cool toys. This game was a fail. I'm back to playing fallout 4 and skyrim.

[@eRe4s3r]

It is actually pretty funny that much like explained in the video, you can only tell how utterly flawed the game is by playing it for quite a while (took me nearly 150 hours to realize how deeply flawed the game is) the sad thing is that nothing will change. Bethesda literally thinks we are playing the game wrong or something. But the writing is only half, the other half is that once you visit places where logically nobody was for nearly 200 years and you see doors, turrets and computers IDENTICAL to the ones 200 years later (I am of course, talking about the ABYSMAL main story plot point with NASA on Earth) you can tell they didn't even *care* about this when making it. That was such a huge disconnect that I was stunned and all my immersion was lost. Only played it to see what is up with NG+ and turns out, not much either. To me this killed exploration is the true baffling element. That was their sales pitch "explore a huge universe" except... there is NOTHING TO DO EXPLORE. Every system someone else was already there, built something there, or got killed in a cave by some bandits. Who signed off on making a space exploration game with no exploration neither in space nor on the ground? Bagh, such a disappointing title in 2023.. thankfully other games saved the year

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

The utter contempt Bethesda had for players when it came to the "Exploration" part of the game is mind-boggling. I mean, does it get worse than a main story where you literally join a club of explorers and then never explore anything except some old crumbling "temples" (the origins of which are still never explained anywhere in the game). So bad.

[@GOOBANGI]

The best they can do is populate the galaxy with unique locations, quests, and npcs with future dlc

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

You're probably right. I'm working on a video now about how I'd "fix" Starfield, even though to most folks way of thinking it can't be fixed.

[@dayday8421]

This is a great video and you've just earned a new subscriber

[@abrahambobst4602]

Thank you for this vid. You hit on the biggest issue with Starfail, the writing. The writing is horrendous, lazy, and immersion breaking. The other thing that is immersion breaking is all of the loading screens, but I can ignore them since my PC loads pretty quick. I also tried to tell people that the biggest problem with the writing is the lack of Showing in writing. There is too much telling be it the quests, or note/memo pads. One of the things BGS was known for was visual story telling yet they hardly do that at all in Starfail. Emil must go. They said Will Shen did writing on Starfield but I'm starting to doubt that. If they want the game to stay relevant they must completely rewrite the game and release a 3.0 since they are already close to a 2.0, a 2.0 that won't be anything like Cyberpunk's 2.0. Starfield has a cool aesthetic but that's all it has going for it right now.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

It's becoming very clear that Emil's philosophy on video game writing is... not good.

[@patriot639]

Agree with what is said here, disagree with the random jab at the USA.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

What's there to disagree with? The statistics speak for themselves.

[@patriot639]

@@ColorsFadeGaming Yeah... I've lived in the USA for many decades. if you want to speak of places where it is unsafe to leave your kids because of murders you're going to need to be a lot more specific. Like Chicago or LA, nowadays you can include portland and seattle, but the vast majority of the USA is not subject to such insanity.

[@ColorsFadeGaming]

@@patriot639 That's just a flat-out lie. You should probably educate yourself. Texas and Florida are two of the top states. The shootings happen everywhere. I was born and raised here, btw. I'm a veteran. Not a foreigner. www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2023-10-26/mass-killings-in-america-by-state

[@theminerboy5694]

8:52 I love the random NPC casually sliding a prop along the floor with telekinesis.

[@stuartrumbel5222]

I very much doubt they even used editors in the creation of this game. It's 'Tell, don't show'.

[@mathieu4179]

Roses are red Violets are blue Pagliarulo just needs to go