Level and Quest Design Collaboration from 'Skyrim' to 'Starfield'

Open world games and roleplaying games present iteration and communication challenges to design teams that are increasingly specialized. In this 2024 Level Design Summit talk, Daryl Brigner and Will Shen discuss their time collaborating on Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 4: Far Harbor, Fallout 76, and Starfield. Learn how Level and Quest/Narrative Design teams can work together to create memorable experiences.
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[@vita_pulchra_est]

Bro really admitted "we just asked Steve to do the final quest because the level design team is overbooked" implying they were producing all the stuff without a clear ending they are building up on

[@JAIMEGARCIA-gw9re]

My main take away from this is the team grew too big for Starfield and there was too much bureaucracy

[@TheChainsawNinja]

@@JAIMEGARCIA-gw9re this is what gamers repeatedly ask for whether they're willing to admit it or not. All the little details that they demand require extra manpower. E.g. animation quality and voice acting has a huge influence on how people rate the writing quality. So what people are really asking for when they insist Bethesda improve their writing is for Bethesda to hire more writers, more animators, and more studio directors. The revealed preferences are undeniable. Gamers demand enormous 1000 manpower projects and sales repeatedly confirm this.

[@DunmerRefugee]

@@TheChainsawNinja Voice acting doesn't have anything to do with writing. Problem with writing in BGS games is simple, back in the Morrowind days they had writers who were also quest designers. Quest weren't amazing but worldbuilding was really good. Now they have quest designers who are also "writers", as in they need to be able to write a quest, but they're not real writers. They really don't have a real writer to bring strong creative oversight to the project. With TES and Fallout it wasn't so apparent because those titles had already established lore, but Starfield showcased what modern Bethesda is capable of.

[@TheChainsawNinja]

@@DunmerRefugee the fraction of gamers who care about consistent world building is vanishingly small. 90% are merely pretending just so they can suck up to the remaining 10%. Sales figures make this astonishingly clear.

[@pfnieks]

my main take away is that starfield has some of the best quests they've ever done. Overall much better than skyrim, both in variety and in quality.

[@Mb_Drei]

And that would be a totally incorrect takeaway! Having a smaller team and less bureaucracy wouldn't have made Starfield a better game at all, you'd be surprised at how very large teams can still function when well-managed. According to Will's words, I think that the biggest issue inside Bethesda has been the team growing larger while not fundamentally improving: back in Morrowind you could get away with Quests Designers acting as writers, but at this scale the issues become much more apparent. There were also a lot of red flags during the talk like when Will recalled the moment they realized that they had not planned a final dungeon for the main quest and its respective payoff, and also decided to have a large-scope space battle at random during the development. In Triple-A, you SHOULD NOT move out of pre-production stage until this sort of stuff has been at least sketched out or... idk, had a brainstorming session about them. Mine are just guesses since I haven't played Starfield yet, but if you're interested there are videos on the game like the one by Nakeyjakey which highlight the faults in Bethesda's modus operandi.

[@MrInternetMan]

Always love hearing about behind the scenes at BGS. I've interviewed for the quest team before with Will so it's a real treat to hear this kind of stuff.

[@FlameRat_YehLon]

I guess the take away here is: 1. Quest building requires multiple skills and can't be done by a single person if there are too many of it. 2. Don't protect your work against your teammate because everyone is contributing to a single goal. 3. Said goal need to exist. 4. It's okay to not know how to do some part of the work. If you know a teammate know how to do it, leave it to them to figure out. 5. Try letting your teammates understand your words. (By using common languages etc.) And apparently, quest building for Starfield seems to be even more complicated than it already looks like. It probably need its own talk to get broken down. This talk only took one quest as an example and isn't enough to be called "the making of Starfield".

[@tropictiger2387]

It's interesting that both the Skyrim examples feature ideas that are based on ghosts, but it's clear that they didn't have a baseline idea for how ghosts are supposed to work in the setting. It's just anything goes. There are at least four types of ghosts in the series and they are all just whatever was convenient for the quest designer at the time.

[@TheChainsawNinja]

@@tropictiger2387 gamers obsess over lore details because it's frankly the only thing they CAN evaluate because it's easy for even the untrained layman to recognize two plot points are in conflict with each other. Gamers lack the expertise to comment on almost any other aspect of the design, i.e. all the stuff that's actually required to turn that back-of-napkin lore ideas into a playable video game.

[@cht473]

​@@TheChainsawNinja I guess some layman pointing out some obvious issues is making you feel something? Oversight happens and I think developers would love to address them if they have unlimited resources. That being said, Bethesda is really lucky to have that so many gamers volunteering to do the developer's job and fix things themselves.

[@TheChainsawNinja]

@@cht473 the way Bethesda designs their quests is so decentralized, of course you're going to get lore discrepancies. This isn't news to anyone and obsessing over it is just cringe

[@matthewmilam6578]

@@TheChainsawNinjaIt is an easy issue to fix though. You can have decentralized quest design, but you need to have writers as well, preferably a lead writer or narrative designer. De- centralized quest design with no central rules or vision is how you get a boy living in a fridge for 200 years, or a ghoul mafia boss living in the sewers for 200 years. Chris Avellone has a great gdc talk where he goes over the steps he took to put narrative and thematic info into the hands of the whole team so that everyone was on the same page.

[@TheChainsawNinja]

@@matthewmilam6578 A person's opinion on Kid in a Fridge is the number one tell of whether or not they grasp that Bethesda's Fallout is supposed to be satirical. Sure, they could have strong director that micromanages each quest and greatly restricts developer autonomy so the entire story feels coherent; ...or they could lean into it and play it off for fun and laughs.

[@TheBard1999]

Nice to hear a talk from Will Shen.

[@DunmerRefugee]

When they start talking about Starfield, it becomes clear why the game ended up the way it did and why both of them left Bethesda Game Studios.

[@pfnieks]

I don't know how you reached that conclusion, they're just talking about the normal challenges of a big project.

[@TheHalogen131]

​@@pfnieksWhat? You think having a bloated team with no communication and needing a one super guy to make the last mission of the main story is normal? That speaks to complete lack of guidelines, unifying vision and an atmosphere of total panic. Working at Bethesda sounds like a nightmare.

[@pfnieks]

@@TheHalogen131 If bgs is a bloated team, what about rockstar or the cod teams? If anything they're still understaffed for the scale they're aiming for. It's perfectly normal for an expanding team, which had to wfh for a good part of the development, to have communication issues, in this talk they explained how they faced those issues, by improving scheduling and documentation...and by improvising when there was a need for it. If you think this is abnormal, you should listen to other game development stories. If working at bgs was a nightmare, they wouldn't have one of the highest talent retention rate in the industry (still true despite some guys like Will Shen leaving).

[@TheHalogen131]

@@pfnieks I don't care about either of them. Will said, that they hired the same amount of people for Starfield as to 76, so it would have been what, 250 people? With the chain of command so disjointed, that ordinary workers would write to Will himself with questions instead of their team leader. Communication issues doesn't even begin to cover it. What about the requirement, that all talks were recorded, so that the vision (which was clearly absent) didn't get muddled? That's another X amount of random stuff to document instead of focusing on important issues, why did Will have to make the tutorials? Also did you hear how much the quest designers were responsible for even in days of Skyrim?

[@pfnieks]

There are graphs in the video, it's around 150 for fo4, 300 for 76 and 400 for starfield, counting only internal studios, still fairly small for a aaa dev team. Again, none of those issues are as dramatic as you're making them out to be. A growing studio during a pandemic, communication issues are bound to happen, he explained how they tackled these challenges and that's the extent of this conference.

[@interstellardinosaur]

Always fascinating to learn more about how our favourite games are made and the challenges behind them. Thanks for sharing!

[@RorytheRomulan]

I don't know how the hell you people have managed to stay afloat all these years, if THIS is how you operate in the studio. You are disorganized, clearly you are procrastinators because this all implies you have to scramble at the last minute to finish your projects. Do you know what this reminds me of? The "Bioware magic". They didn't have a plan, but they had the confidence that it will all work when the deadline draws to a close, because that's just the "Bioware magic".

[@MemoryPallace]

Starfield is a regression of the formula LOOK AT WHAT THE COMMUNITY IS SAYING AND STOP IGNORING US.

[@andyotic]

what are you saying?

[@NicholasLaRosa0496]

​@@andyoticHe's saying that Bethesda has been dumbing down their game design with each new installment to appeal to casuals.

[@MemoryPallace]

@@NicholasLaRosa0496 yep!

[@ramireza6904]

@@NicholasLaRosa0496 The BY FAR biggest dumbing down Bethesda ever had with their games was from Daggerfall to Morrowind. Starfield on the other hand is surely not a "dumbing down" compared to Skyrim or Fallout 4. In some regards it offers much more depth, take the massive amount of Skillchecks for example.

[@timmygilbert4102]

They aren't going to dumb down their revenue for a few unsatisfied fan😂

[@internetguy7319]

Me when I want to learn how to get worse at level design

[@liam4606]

The designer really thinks those puzzles in Far Harbor were "fun and challenging". Wow. That honestly explains so much about why Bethesda's own games suck so badly.

[@ramireza6904]

Its fun, i liked it alot. Maybe its just not your thing?

[@jrgen7527]

@liam4606 Please don’t fool yourself into thinking that developers in large game companies sit in vacuums and are free to pour out their heart and soul, and that they are free to express their personal opinions on stage, like you are. Your comment is unnecessary and contributes to nothing while also disregarding their intention, their effort and long journey to be standing on that stage. If you want to share your perspectives on Bethesdas bumpy growth, that is welcomed, but remember that they aren’t talking to you. They are talking to game developers, so please have the curtesy to avoid contributing to a problematic culture that leads to worse games. Now that this dude has opened up himself, anyone care to share their perspectives on where this rubbish comes from?

[@nintendude794]

@@jrgen7527 What?

[@jrgen7527]

@@nintendude794 What is it?

[@LabyrinthiaX]

@@jrgen7527 Found the Bethesda employee.

[@objectionableobject7041]

Love the focus on Shared Language. Probably the hardest part of working on multidiciplinary products like games at large scale. Especially since it takes active upkeep to maintain that contact between teams.

[@gunayorbay]

I was legit sad when I had part ways with katria at the end of the quest line

[@Rietto]

"What not do to". Still useful info.

[@overdev1993]

with all respect but Bethesdas quest design isn't really that good, compared to most bigger RPGs it's really weak.

[@TheChainsawNinja]

I think when gamers talk about quest design what they really mean is narrative. Whereas Bethesda's quest designers are more so scenario creators and the narrative comes second.

[@mossy3565]

It depends on what constitutes a quest In skyrim, the actual down to the simplest definition would be "Go to place, grab x, return to quiest giver and get 100 gold" That likely makes up... I would say about two thirds of all quests in that game, with very little variation However Skyrim also allows you to *quest* in a more broad sense, pushing through new territories to reach a location, finding things along the way and coming back to the quest giver far stronger, chaining lots of these jobs together on runs back and forth across the map. Closer to how a a DnD adventure is thought of You're technically right, but also technically wrong. I don't think any company has yet mastered the Bethesda formula, and unfortunately, Bethesda seems to have forgotten it too

[@FlameRat_YehLon]

​@@mossy3565 I'd say Bethesda better perfected their quest formula in Starfield though. Sure it basically takes away the traversal part, but the actual level is much larger than Skyrim and is also an extension of the 3D design of Fallout 4. And about taking away the traversal part... I personally think it does more good than bad. I mean, sure you can traverse through the world properly, but you can also just take the straight part and avoid a good chunk of the POIs, which is less fun but more efficient (and is "maximizing the fun"). And when you need to go even further you fast travel to where you left rather than walk through the old path with new toys for the second time. And the traversal part, when being played in this way, can quickly become more of a burden rather than a "quest". In order to play the actual quest you intended to play, you have to not play the quest you intended to play. And in fact you kinda have to play a part of the game that serves no purpose other than unlocking more quests, unless you are actually launching Skyrim and say to yourself, "I'm going to traverse the map today and don't care about actual quests". And that's how Starfield got it better. If you are talking a quest, you can start playing that immediately. The game would hint to you what other quests are available, but it's up to you to decide if you wish to take a detour. Whatever decision you made, you are always playing the part you intended to play, and there's no "I have to get this done asap or I'm not allowed to play the quest I want to" to be considered.

[@FlameRat_YehLon]

But bigger RPGs would usually lack the feeling of in person experience Bethesda games would have. You are usually being told the epic story of someone else, rather than actually doing the things yourself. Bethesda games usually got quests that aren't very deep, but they usually make it very clear that it's "you" who experience the story, not someone else. I guess a mix of the two could be better, but these two aspects might contradict each other. To get depth you have to dictate the emotion of the player and manipulate the player to think that way, which will always fail sometimes. To prevent going against the player's emotion you can't really imply anything and have to leave the guessing of the outcome to the player, which really can't be done in a very cinematic way. It's not even solvable with a dialog tree, because different people could have different intention when choosing the same option.

[@overdev1993]

@@TheChainsawNinja no not just narrative the things you do for the quest are just generic MMORPG style

[@jubbalubby]

Incredibly illuminating talk from the two devs, gave us a clear look into the process of Bethesda and why things turned out the way they did.

[@rcoppy]

The hate from non gamedevs in this comment section is *wild* for a GDC talk recording LOL I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this bad

[@johnconnorpliskin7184]

I’ll always remember the Emil Pagliarulo hate bandwagon that emerged from one of these game developer talks. That man was mischaracterized into oblivion by angry nerds whose fragile egos would collapse under pressure if they were in his shoes. I’m glad he seems to still be active on social media despite the toxicity.

[@OwnerGriffin108]

Well they were told by the KZbinrs they watch to hate Bethesda so they gotta go be mindless pests and do that wherever they can for some reason.

[@ag8912]

​@@OwnerGriffin108Jesus the amount of copium being consumed here is nuts. I don't really see any KZbinrs telling people to hate on Bethesda or Emil. I do see tons of those nut rider channels tho that relentlessly shill for whatever slop Bethesda excretes these days.

[@TheChainsawNinja]

@@ag8912 "I don't really see any KZbinrs telling people to hate Bethesda or Emil." Lol. LMAO.

[@DrLynch2009]

Bethesda haters live in a echo chamber.

[@SnakeEyes111]

Ah yes quests, the most thoughtful and well thought out systems in BGS games!

[@o_migl]

Genuinely very informative talk, I love to learn how the things I love are made, kudos to Will and Daryl and a big thank you to everyone that worked on these massive projects.

[@Rockmanbalboa]

Shen, Daryl and the other devs really had to do a crazy workflow that would flow better if there was a development doc in Bethesda, he did great in Far Harbor, and its clear with this way of development why him and others left, Starfield dlc being the best representation of it.

[@ledumpsterfire6474]

This talk went a long way in explaining what went wrong within Bethesda. There's no passion here. It's not that they're excited to be developing this amazing project, it's that they're calculating what they think will be the optimal way to ship and sell a product. They put accountants on the creative team and told them to crunch the numbers until a game appeared.

[@punkrachmaninoff]

They are totally useless.

[@happygofishing]

Emil pagliarulo cannot write.

[@jasoncrosby8523]

No wonder AAA games take so long now, companies are just too large to be able to get things done in a timely manor anymore.

[@keepitclean8791]

It's hilarious because a couple of indie developers living off instant ramen can unironically produce better games.

[@neoconker2k8]

Starfield is a great look at what NOT to do

[@FlameRat_YehLon]

So the game shouldn't hint at possible side quests you can take if you got bored of the main quests every now and then, and should leave everything as secret and ask everyone to either interact with everything or look it up online? That's what NOT doing things the Starfield way would be like.

[@JazzzRockFuzion]

@@neoconker2k8 Many millions of players with hundreds of hours logged would beg to differ…

[@ab7333]

Ah yes you know better than specialists.

[@neoconker2k8]

@ab7333 Well, looking at how split the player base is on this game, im not so sure about that. When compared to their other games, it does seem like they did something wrong

[@FlameRat_YehLon]

@@neoconker2k8 Bethesda games didn't really become mainstream until Skyrim, and even then a good portion of people didn't stay because they love the "BRPG" format or Tamriel lore, but rather how huge the mod community is. And it also came right before "let's play" got popular and was one of the luckier games that a lot of influencer plays. So basically, Skyrim was abnormally overrated due to various factors. Fallout 4 kinda took some of the hype as well. And Starfield? The idea came from last century and until two or three years ago only those that attempted to learn Bethesda history deeper would know that it'll come (making it not a very hyped game to begin with), didn't got official modding support until lately (so not a lot of people have to reason to stay), wasn't celebrated by many influencers (didn't got viral), and is in the pass such that a lot of people can just try without paying any additional fee (even those that wouldn't actually try the game if it wasn't free, and many of them would naturally not like the game because it's a bit old-school at this point). All these combined, it's only reflecting how the board audience receive Bethesda games rather than getting worse received than the overrated Skyrim. And it's not like having divided opinions are a bad thing. Am I wrong if I don't like the Souls format? Not really. Same goes here, it's okay to like or dislike the Bethesda format, the only wrong thing is to claim that "it's bad because I don't like it" or "liking/disliking something is wrong". And with that in mind, did Starfield perfect the Bethesda format? Pretty much yes. So it's the right way to do things. And is it okay that a lot of people didn't like the format? Also yes, it's an old format that isn't very cinematic unlike a lot of the recent games do, and can feel boring if you aren't into reading dialog texts and would prefer action shows/combat mechanics. And by the way, Skyrim also get criticism too. It was considered oversimplified comparing to Morrowind or Oblivion (not to mention even earlier games), and the combat was never considered "fun". Fallout 3 also was commonly criticized for having extremely bad FPS gameplay. People did acknowledge that Fallout 4 got much better combat because of that. And that means even the better received Bethesda titles got split opinions. It was just that the criticisms for those got masked by the praise more than Starfield do, and people at the time was more okay with everyone having their own opinions.

[@stock6600]

So, in short, Bethesda's internal managment is a mess and Starfield being the wreck that it is is only a natural consequence of conditions poor devs are forced to work under.

[@punkrachmaninoff]

People need to get fired for producing such space junk and patting themselves on the back.

[@Speculaas]

Having no writers in your studio because it's 'tradition' is just idiotic when every other RPG studio has them on payroll. Is there any wonder why Starfield has lost player interest when worldbuilding and narrative has no craft behind it?

[@badunius_code]

Yeah.... having a writer is not a silver bullet either. WoW (retail) team had writers, didn't help.

[@punkrachmaninoff]

I could rewrite the first hour of Starfield in an hour and it would hold a player's attention longer than the garbage they shipped.

[@FoxSnootz]

Hate comes from a place of passion Ignoring hate will cause people to lose passion, losing passion leads to apathy. And apathy will make you wish they still hate you

[@jacksonjabba]

You do realize neither of these people currently work at Bethesda? And that the issues with fallout 4 and starfield are not level design? And that hate is an ineffective way of delivering constructive criticism? Starfield and fallout 4 both had fundamental design flaws early in development. The level design and quest design was good, but the broader world systems (in starfields case) or broader dialogue systems(in fallout 4’s case) are what fucked over both those games. Those issues are real, and the quest designers and level designers had no part in them. The problem is the industry’s executives focusing on scope and wide audience appeal.

[@Rex-qd1od]

​@@jacksonjabba Hate does bring criticism with it, or are you telling me all the reviews calling Starfield/Fallout76 ass were just ~30 minutes of swearing? To say Fallout 4's dialogue and Starfield's "world system" are what made those games fail completely misses a lot of problems they had, for Fallout 4 quest design absolutely was one of them, the fact that stat checks were a novelty from the USS constitution quest when such feature was standard in previous instalments is indicative of that. Most quests in Fallout 4 boil down to dungeon crawling with occasional charisma rolls. The problem is not the executives, it's the management, Todd was the director in a lot of these games, Emil was a lead developer in them too, a lot of the bad decisions either came from or were approved by them.

[@MartinGP_3dfxlegacy]

Thanks for the conference, I liked so much and it is very useful.

[@johnconnorpliskin7184]

Bethesda Game Studios games are second to none for me in terms of freedom. I love how much liberty designers are given to make unique and interesting locations, characters, and quests. Starfield detractors will call it too much of a slow burn, but I personally love the lack of a world-ending threat. Playing certain quests defintitely raises tension but realistically speaking, it’s a huge galaxy where so much can happen at a given moment. That type of guessing is what keeps me in awe about their games and I look forward to Shattered Space and whatever else including The Elder Scrolls VI.

[@andez1458]

I don’t want to argue but can you please name a character or a quest that is interesting from start to end in Starfield? I like the game but there’s so much missed potential. Not only the game doesn’t live up to the player’s fantasy but even the missions with an intriguing set up are rushed and have a disappointing execution

[@theitechlab]

@@andez1458 I'm not the OP, but I think a lot of this comes down to personal preference/taste. As far as characters go, I think Andreja is a super interesting character that will likely become even more interesting with Shattered Space. Her story is intriguing to me and the fact that she is battling her own internal conflict between remaining loyal to Va'ruun or abandoning them provides an interesting background for her character. I do think that a good chunk of the characters are interesting, though a lot of them could definitely be more fleshed out (Benjamin Bayu, for example). As for quests, I think the main quest is interesting, but the temples really suck the fun out of the story there. I think the Vanguard questline is incredible and probably the best faction questline BGS has put into a game in a long time. I loved the Charbydis questline with the historical figure clones, the Eleos Retreat quests, Mantis quest, and Groundpounder. All really cool stuff to be experienced in those. I do agree that there are some disappointing aspects, but I'm still having fun with the game over 250 hours in, and I've played every BGS game from Oblivion on. Starfield, in my opinion, does a lot of stuff correctly, and the good outweighs the bad by a long shot. Hopefully updates can fix some of the lingering issues the game has.

[@pfnieks]

@@andez1458 the entire vanguard questline. If you love stealth missions, the ryujin questline is amazing; sysdef/crimsom fleet questline is one of my favourite quest ever. The main quest has a problem with pacing, because of the temples, but there's plenty of great missions in there. Then there's great side missions like operation starseed, or even fun little side stories like overdesigned.

[@skyfifer5443]

WW1 ship, are you kidding me? The Constitution was was launched in 1797, it was nearly 120 years old by WW1.

[@Maddrax]

it is interesting that the games get increasingly worse with every new release

[@YourWarriorPoetCOM]

Aloha and mahalo for the informative content.

[@MindlessShowCase]

departments competing due to poor management from the C suite is so painfully relatable. If one manager drops the ball the whole process is DOA

[@mossy3565]

Oh man, needing to personally dictate the games central vision to each and every dev is an incredibly cumbersome system If only there was, like, some way to make a BIG document (Or series of documents) that could be easily read by newcomers to a project, which is updated in accordance with shifts in design and project goals, rather than assessing and reviewing notes and suggestions from the entire team

[@pfnieks]

Look, another victim of patriciantv bs.

[@mossy3565]

@@pfnieks There's a difference between a concept document and a design document A concept doc, like the ones Emil makes, are simply made to pitch a game to publishers and developers A design doc, unlike the ones made for Starfield, are constantly updated with relevant information and evolve alongside the game Will Shen, in this very talk, explains they didn't do that, and instead required constant one-on-one explanations, with different sections of devs not communicating at all. This can work with smaller studios, which is where Bethesda has shined in the past But, well, you can see how that approach doesn't hold out

[@pfnieks]

@@mossy3565 Design wikis are industry standard and they've been used in starfield, as explained by emil pagliarulo himself.

[@mossy3565]

@@pfnieks You got a source, chief?

[@pfnieks]

@@mossy3565 from emil pagliarulo himself: "It's a work-from-home, catch up on the designers' documentation kind of day. Ah yes. Audio interview where I said we don't write up a giant design doc for the whole game before we start, because it gets quickly outdated. Didn't know I had to mention that we write and revise smaller design documents instead. Constantly. Because duh."

[@Warm_Fireplace]

First time someone said "Spoilers for -insert game-" and i didn't care =P Very disappointed with starfield but still great advice =D

[@TomBrienProfessional]

I clicked on the thumbnail that said "Open World Level Design" but this is just guys describing quest objectives.

[@conflictt3224]

Bethesda quests would be amazing if they were a choose your own adventure book. Presented as a game, where the writers are terrified of giving you any meaningful dialogue choices to express your own views on what is happening and what you want to do about it, where you are railroaded into milktoast acceptance of everything everyone says, or only give a pitiful post-Endgame Marvel style "Well maybe your just a meanie" when a character wants you to do something you dont like AND THEN YOU HAVE TO DO IT ANYWAY TO CONTINUE, and NOTHING happens if you stop the quest, there is no choice to just not do it that gets acknowledged by the world. It fucking sucks.

[@acuteaura]

there's a GDC talk from like, 2011 or 2012 by josh sawyer about choice design in fallout nv that combines with this one well. almost all acknowledgement of choices in FNV is flavor, and yet it works beautifully.

[@dathunderman4]

“Milktoast” 😂

[@TidanOfc]

ooo another gdc video!

[@Lenarian]

Shen seems like a decent guy. Shame I don't like his games. Anyway I'm glad he got out of that hellhole company before they find even scarier ways of tormenting their devs and under delivering to customers. Can't wait to watch the dumpster fire of TES6!

[@ab7333]

asmongold bootlicking bandwagoners in 3..2..1..

[@momopirou3107]

interesting. gives a bit more insight on why we got so many inter-planetary fetch quests in Starfield.

[@jameshardy6277]

Sadly, Starfield felt so bland and generic I only managed to last 20ish hours before quitting.

[@adamburgess7890]

Same here, 20 hours and I just stopped.

[@OwnerGriffin108]

You guys are really missing out.

[@lukew6725]

That's 19 hours and 40 minutes more than I managed. 😂

[@keepitclean8791]

​@@OwnerGriffin108On what exactly?

[@MrNocturnal1]

Why so many dislikes?

[@DrLynch2009]

Bethesda haters.

[@jug0]

bethesda is slop

[@JazzzRockFuzion]

Starfield took a hell of a lot more effort than your comment

[@Digiornio]

@@JazzzRockFuzion Effort ≠ quality

[@chrismorel2576]

This comment is quick, concise, and gets the point across without loading screens to pad for time

[@keepitclean8791]

​@@JazzzRockFuzionHm, Yes. That's why they outsourced all that work to 27 different third-party companies (some of which are under suspicion of actual labor violation laws)

[@punkrachmaninoff]

This talk explains why Bethesda can't tell a story or keep anyone's attention for longer than 10 minutes. This talk explains why Starfield was a total flop. Useless and overpaid. When is the lunch order, and what are we having?

[@Starfield_Eclipse]

I hate jira!

[@GiftboxCreativemedia]

It's Will 🔥

[@DrLynch2009]

Bethesda haters live in a echo chamber.

[@coomr419]

Starfield was such a let down

[@YuriMomoiro]

Not a good idea to put this on youtube. Should have kept in the free vault. Toxic gamers incoming.

[@jigglypuff3311]

Toxic positivity is a thing too

[@nintendude794]

*participation trophy button*

[@DrLynch2009]

@@jigglypuff3311 That is an oxymoron, like calling yourself a fascist free thinker or a libertarian socialist.

[@bazzy5644]

@@DrLynch2009 It isn't in fact it's all over youtube. Folks get told critisim is bad where as praise is good. It's kinda insane hoenstly.

[@moritakaishida7963]

I only see bugs and lazy bare minimum world design

[@Spellsword95]

so the stacked chairs in the haunted house are a reference to an obscure film and NOT to the Sixth House stacking furniture in Morrowind? What is this random nonsense? Why?? They had a cool way of connecting these somehow but they opted for haha funny film throwback. WTF?

[@dathunderman4]

Poltergeist is an obscure film? Lmao what?

[@JAIMEGARCIA-gw9re]

Everyone hating on BGS quests design but they are still some of the best. And they create some of the best open world RPGs.

[@conflictt3224]

People dislike BGS Quests not because the quests are inherently badly made, but because they fundamentally fail to be RPG Quests. They ask the player and the player character interesting questions, present these intricate scenarios, go on and on in pompus dialogue about choice and how what you do matters, and then go "Ok so do you want to give up all your money and have to grind for 30 more hours in boring copy paste combat dungeons to progress, or murder 300 orphan kittens and then be lectured about being a horrible person?" The choices presented by the quests, and the dialogue system in general, does not provide you with an adequate way to ACTUALLY engage with the story. Which makes the story, built upon the premise of your actions mattering, fall flat. My choices can't matter if you don't actually give me any fucking choices, Bethesda.

[@jankowalski6842]

I've lost braincells reading your comment

[@SkipperGin]

Nah, they're actually the worst. Bethesda has so little confidence in their player's willingness or ability to explore and navigate their worlds that they decided to have every NPC you pass by rip your journal out of your hand so that they can scribble their quest inside. Every guard in New Atlantis is just gagging for an opportunity to shout at you from twenty feet away that somebody needs help with something so that a pop-up can appear on your screen telling you to go talk to them. By the time you've played Starfield for 10 hours your quest log is filled to the brim with worthless, contextless entries like "Talk to Jacob" and "Find the scientist" that would be completely meaningless without a magical marker telling you exactly where that person is. There's nothing organic about Starfield's quests or their design. I never stumbled upon a quest, I just had them thrown at me. Freestar Rangers are forced on me the second I walk into Akila for the first time. Vanguard forced on me when I follow the main quest. Crimson Fleet forced on me because I accidentally stole an empty coffee cup and got arrested. Ryujin forced on me because I walked a little too close to a recruitment terminal. Speaking of Ryujin, they're a shining example of BGS quest design. "Go here, hack the terminal, walk back". Multiple times in a row. I'll never forget the heart-pounding adventure that was the quest to steal a company's design documents for Ryujin, wherein I just walked past the front desk secretary and multiple security guards, crouched in a cubicle surrounded by employees, hacked the terminal, then walked back out with nobody questioning a thing. What an exciting quest.

[@NerevarOfficialReal]

Too bad the last RPG they made was Morrowind.

[@OwnerGriffin108]

@@NerevarOfficialRealyou are living under several rocks

[@Ragk5231]

When people want to go back in time to bash games that were critical and community celebrated to make them look like they were always bad it tells you all you need to know.

[@Ronuk1996]

That is very true calling games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim bad games when they were some of best at the time is insane.

[@Rex-qd1od]

But they were always bad, they were just publicly acclaimed.

[@Ragk5231]

@@Rex-qd1odyou just made my point.

[@Rex-qd1od]

@@Ragk5231 Your basis for saying skyrim was always a good game is its popular acclaim, the problem is that public reception is not an indicative of quality... it just says how much people liked it. Most folks simply didn't notice the issues with Skyrim at the time, and now, in retrospect, some began to realize the cracks as the "paint aged and began to peel off"

[@keepitclean8791]

​@@Rex-qd1odCan you explain why over 16,000 people are playing a 13 year old game and only 6000 people are playing their latest game?

[@greensky5328]

People WILL hate on this talk. Can't say if it's warrented or not since the only Bethesda game I've played is New Vegas.

[@Rising_Starborn]

New Vegas was done by Obsidian, only published by Bethesda.

[@lexmarovsky6667]

@@Rising_Starborn And it beats any of Bethesda's games in every aspect

[@PandaJerk007]

@@lexmarovsky6667 odd how Fallout New Vegas is one of my least favorite games in the Elder Scrolls-Fallout series. If you are curious, here's my background playing the games: Morrowind 150+ hours, Oblivion 150+ hours, Skyrim 110+ hours Fallout 3 110+ hours, Fallout New Vegas 50+ hours, Fallout 4 ~15 hours

[@nintendude794]

New Vegas was also developed in a shorter time span than any of the other games mentioned-about 18 months. Crazy.

[@jasoncrosby8523]

Most people, Like me, are mad at all the layoffs going on now. Companies choosing profit over the employees and players. I stopped buying AAA games because of this.

[@redfoxdog1]

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