(PREVIEW) Starfield Was a Mistake | An Analytical Review (2023)

[@PrivateSessions]

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or just Happy Weekend, whichever you prefer. I decided to just release the first half of the Starfield video now, then drop the whole thing once it's done in a few weeks. It's been a rough few months, but thing's are getting back on track and I got a lot of stuff lining up for the channel, now. Thank you to everyone who's been watching, sending best wishes, signing up on Patreon and stuff: the support has truly been humbling and heart-warming to say the least. It's a real honor and privelage to get to make videos for you all. Thank you ❤

[@selfawaretrashcan4594]

Thank you for your hard work. Excited to crack it open and see how Bethesda flubbed it at the core.

[@_JB_1]

Good to see you posting vids. Hope you are doing better. Merry Christmas

[@Hodoss]

Aw man. I've heard on stream how Starfield did you in. Sounds like you went through White Room torture, bland rice and all. I'm also watching Salty Shrimp's Daggerfall review and that's quite the comparison. From janky and quirky to janky and bland. Bethesda evolved in the wrong direction.

[@3michael919]

Enjoyed the video! The word is "exacerbated" by the way :)

[@grayearly3116]

Glad this game didnt kill you bro

[@righteousham]

I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it: with every game, Bethesda has moved ever closer to the concept of minimum viable product.

[@DeadPixel1105]

Well said.

[@istrumguitars]

Yep. These games have become so cookie cutter in recent years from story to mechanics. They literally copy and paste systems from one game to the next and change nothing beyond the superficial. Smartest thing asked in this review: “where did all that development time go?”

[@fangorn23]

"Starborn" I cringe just writing it. @@istrumguitars

[@alansilvero]

Well, Fallout 76 was the peak of them embracing the "modders will fix it" mindset. It comes as no surprise that Starfield is simply Fallout 4 with much less content (enemy variety, maps). They spent more resources on the marketing than the game itself.

[@fangorn23]

how? you cant even adjust basic ini settings like the FOV without being banned last I hear. how can modders fix anything if they risk perma-bans for fixing anything? @@alansilvero

[@Patrician]

The landing bays on the ships have ramps in order to be wheelchair accessible. Hope that helps!

[@windowsxpabuser]

😂

[@janefkrbtt]

wouldn't loading docs have ramps to move freight though?

[@grayearly3116]

Lmao i automatically assumed thats why they did it too

[@Bob_Ender]

I think Bethesda space magic made wheelchairs a thing of the past, an old-world relic if you will

[@Doctor_Nu]

It's a big help until you need a ladder to access the rest of the ship, and there isn't a single person who has a disability in the game.

[@SugarFreeGaming]

I still cant get over how the game starts, "You touch metal thing and had a vision? Youre the main character have my spaceship and robot and go tell my boss." Like no one could think of a better intro to the story?

[@AmonTheWitch]

hey at least they dropped the "you wake up in prison" part, maybe in 5 games they'll drop the chosen one stuff

[@SugarFreeGaming]

​@@AmonTheWitchif this was the best they could do it's no wonder every other game had you start in prison 😂 but atleast then it makes sense to break out and go do anything you want, this is just dumb and locks you in to having do shit you may not want to do

[@Fabian46544]

I completely agree. I mean, even scaling up the attack (big ass attack by 20 ships and an army of pirates), leaving out the vision, killing your whole crew and having you sneak out (or rambo out) and steal a pirate ship, maybe getting stopped by the space police when you are free would be a better story. You could even do the prison stick afterwards. And I made that shit up in 10 seconds. I mean, come on! That's a fucking terrible start and even that is better than bethasdars shit.

[@spider-spectre]

I literally stopped playing after getting to atlantis and doing one mission cause of that absolutely insulting, spit in the face level of garbage writing.

[@Varangian_af_Scaniae]

@@spider-spectre I came to Atlantis, thought BGS makes good exploring games so I went out exploring. First I got two exactly same robot farm outposts, then I got the biggest ef u too us players. I got two totally different outpost one with a male chief and one with a female chief, both chiefs said the exact same lines. I instantly quit and uninstalled.

[@2BachShakur]

The worst part of Starfield is how Bethesda denies, and even justifies, all its flaws.

[@palpaladin315]

Nah, with gamepass they can get back to focusing on paid, playing customers. - They're not justifying anything. They're telling you to go f*ck yourselves, and get a job. 😄 Just telling it like it is. - You have no idea how good it feels, to ask for support about a product you bought, and actually get it within 12hrs. - Guys like you are gonna have to do some rewiring up there man. 😃☝️

[@mugendono23]

Bethesda fans have been letting them get away with it for almost 2 decades

[@blackfangex6813]

That is what happen when the whole devs leadership is full of hacks that feed of the talents of others, Todd and Emil are the main problem of Bethesda... They hated New Vegas so much that they refuse to let other companies to do spinoff games in fear that they do better than them

[@palpaladin315]

@@mugendono23 Thats not what these guys are about dude; but I agree with you to a certain extent. - These guys are what happens when fanbois gatekeep, and don't get what they want. 😃

[@mugendono23]

@@palpaladin315 what they are about is releasing unfinished jank games and relying on fans to fix them.

[@EdwardG-el9fd]

The reason "astronauts were not bored when they first land on a planet" is that they actually seamlessly land on a planet.

[@dealwolfstriked272]

Don't think too deep on this. That remark was just cause BGS are completely void of new ideas and game play stagnated within and are stuck in this gameplay loop idea. So yeah an easy out would be that astronauts were not bored when they landed on the moon. Huge difference of actually being on the moon as to playing a video game where you fast travel to one.

[@JWalters388]

Bethesda thinks Starfield game development, equals to reaching the moon, apparently.

[@1RoundInTheChamber]

They also had a crap ton of science to do while there. You know, things to accomplish while on the moon. Kinda like there were things to fill the time they spent there. Almost like they had missions...or quests, to do.

[@dudebruh8534]

Also if one thing went wrong there was the possibility they'd DIE! But hey, leave it to Todd to somehow defend a design that's deliberately boring, then compare it to real life. Because everybody wants to play a boring game to take a break from the exiting ones.

[@travisadams6279]

As if landing on the actual moon is akin to playing a boring video game in your living room. What are these people smoking?

[@marshallscot]

The third rank of a perk being "Noticeably increased chance to recover from an injury" is unintentionally hilarious because it implies that the first two ranks are so insignificant that they aren't even noticeable to the player.

[@160rpm]

Yeah, pretty wild that it made sense for them to put it like that

[@jacktaylor6253]

"Heal 5 points of health per second" *has 1000 HP* would be my assumption. Lol

[@CreamySenpai31]

Same thing with carry weight. Fucking fallout 4 almost a decade ago had a max carry capacity of like 350 and in this game, it’s about 275. Also many items in starfield are insanely heavy for no reason. If I have a lot of materials I’d be lucky to carry 5 weapons with ammo. There’s so much wrong with this game, it’s astounding.

[@watchlover7750]

Because you are supposed to replay the game 50 times for how much is supposed to be fun, so you have all the time to reach that level

[@msihcs8171]

@@CreamySenpai31 One of my largest gripes is due to the whole "weight limit" idea, but said weight limit doesn't change if I'm on a planet with lower gravity. This is a BASIC part of physics, larger planetary bodies have stronger gravitational fields (and they even use it to modify jump height etc, so this is a known thing to them.) If they're going to call it a volume limit instead of a weight limit okay, but just how many rifles can my character carry in their prison wallet since I don't see a backpack or any other type of storage container to put them in? I also haven't seen a good justification for the lack of ground vehicles when Skyrim has horses. I LOATHE cut content being sold as DLC, the idea that there isn't a fully fleshed out survival system despite it being a basic pillar of modern RPG's is laughable, and modders made a good one within a few months of release, without official mod support.

[@Gorbz]

There are two things that Emil, Bethesda's main writing guy, has said that I think are very telling for how this game turned out: 1) They do not use design documents as they are "too difficult to maintain" 2) If they had questions in the past, they would just ask Todd, but he was spending less and less time in his office.

[@gremlinqueen6657]

I really hope they get their shit together for Elder Scrolls 6. It's the only Bethesda thing I'm excited for. Maybe Avowed doing well will beat it into them to just try harder at one thing to succeed instead of going into a billion ways.

[@ergohash2517]

Emil is listed as a game designer as well, so he is not solely a writer

[@Blurredborderlines]

@@gremlinqueen6657 ES6 is going to be the death of Bethesda, they simply do not learn from their mistakes

[@davidmujica4363]

bro the have made 3 garbage games in a row(F4, F76 and Starfield) @gremlinqueen6657 , one worse than the other and you expect that ES& gonna be good? lmao@@gremlinqueen6657

[@mrm7058]

@@ergohash2517 according to a Video from camelworks Not really Only Emil and an external.Compared to 16 for Baldurs Gate

[@st-qo7ot]

The final straw for me was going into the Eye. I couldn't believe the space station, that was in all of the marketing and even the first announcement trailer, wasn't fully explorable. The doors are blocked by debris and trash on both ends.

[@JerfVR]

And the entire space was smaller than some of the buildings I made in Fo4's settlement system. Thanks Todd 😂

[@Mike-sf7ex]

Bro. The eye is not a big part of the game it's literally just a deep space scanner and final straw? That was like the first mission 🤣

[@st-qo7ot]

@@Mike-sf7ex bro the thing that was used in the marketing and to announce the game isn't a big part of it. no one said it was a big part of the game.

[@I_enjoy_some_things]

@@Mike-sf7exlazy shill is lazy. Just like Bethesda. Why even try dude? It’s just sad at this point. This pos game has somehow made Star Citizen look good lmaooo.

[@Polomance862]

I think you highlighted the growing problem in BGS's game design. "The desire to prevent players from committing to anything". That quote resonated deeply to make me realize why recent games from Bethesda has just been so barren and lacking. This lack of passion to commit to anything is what halts the joy of the game. New Vegas is one of those games that doesn't shy away from locking people out of content if they go too far in one direction in the story. While Skyrim, Fallout 4, and now starfield just has no commitment to your choices, or if they do they're so minimal in weight that you don't really think about it.

[@Homiloko2]

The irony is that they came up with the perfect mechanic to counterbalance consequences with the 'new game plus' system, then proceed to make a game with no consequences for anything.

[@hoonterofhoonters6588]

People love to talk about replaying Bethesda games and finding new content, and Bethesda is deathly afraid of a player missing a little bit of content and that they might need to do multiple playthroughs.

[@monsterfurby]

@@hoonterofhoonters6588 Even I, a player who generally just does *not* replay games, don't like that kind of cop-out. Give me meaningful choices, let me make my playthrough my own. I love when the way my one playthrough of a game played out reflects my choices and my personality. I love my by-the-book shiny Shepard who eventually decided that enough is enough and started to become more pragmatic over the course of Mass Effect - and the games let me do that. Did I miss content? Yes, absolutely, but it's *my* story, and it's more meaningful to me because I know I, the player, sacrificed some things for others. And if I get curious what could have happened, I have KZbin for that.

[@jasomon2115]

Thats the problem with all AAA games these days. All the best developers dont care if you miss out on content in one playthrough. Looking at rdr2 for example. Larian with bg3 did an even better job of it because they know the player appreciates choice.

[@Homiloko2]

@@jasomon2115 Elden Ring too. Pretty much all the games that have gotten the title of 'game of the year' recently share this trait.

[@arseniykorchevskiy1564]

You know when you’re reading a book, and you suddenly realize you didn’t absorb any of the information you were reading for the last minute? That is what playing starfield feels like, except all the time. It’s like the game is begging you to just play it with 0 attention to anything.

[@JerfVR]

Spot on

[@Anthonille]

wow, great analogy.

[@MorganDMulholland]

Sorry, I wasn't paying attention. What did you say?

[@YeAuldGrump]

There was a console JRP game that a former roommate played where he could handle combat by pushing the same button over, and over, and over.... It would sometimes take him a few moments to realize combat was over, because he was talking to someone - combat literally taking 0 attention.

[@Psyrgery]

That's a great comparison and exactly how I felt during my almost 60 hours playthrough of this game. Had to stop out of boredom and tedium

[@lordspaz88]

Starfield might truly be the first game I've ever played where it is worth LESS than the sum of its parts. There are so many actually intersting mechanic systems but none of them interact with each other in any way.

[@shambhangal438]

Yep, and we all saw it coming - you didn't have to eat in Skyrim (despite a world full of food, recipes, cooking and a night/day cycle)... and the dragons were so nerfed you could kill one with an arrow to the knee (despite loads of meticulous world detail and lore to the opposite). Bethesda's only real problem is 'its not 2012 anymore' as that is the height of their mindset, game engine and tools.

[@honeybadger6275]

@@shambhangal438 Something that always bugged me about the elder scrolls games is there was never any drinkable water.

[@Ch35h1r3C47]

@@honeybadger6275 Who needs to drink water for hydration when you're on your 5th potion of the day? There's plenty of alcoholic drinks around too. I think i read something once about how a lot of medieval people mostly drank weak beers or wines for most of their hydration as a lot of water wasn't safe to drink without boiling it first.

[@magnem1043]

They waited for modders

[@kaludjuti]

This is because of Enrico Sanguliano

[@Trizzle2Jernts]

For Bethesda to say that we're wrong about Starfield because there was no way astronauts were bored when they went to the moon, is a ridiculous statement to make. I'd think the constant fear of death would override any feelings of boredom I'd have felt if I was an astronaut that went to the moon.

[@callumjohnston858]

Exactly. They went on an actual rocket and had a clear reason for going there. It wasn't just playing in Todd's sandbox, there were stakes and motivations and so on.

[@Trizzle2Jernts]

@@callumjohnston858 meanwhile I was packing multiple bong bowls on the moon and was still bored out of my gourd. How???

[@moondiegordr]

Not just that, but they ACTUALLY landed on the fck moon How can they compare that to playing a video game 😂😂😂

[@visassess8607]

That response is just so incredibly tone deaf and out of touch lol

[@Gecko....]

They were doing something only a tiny group of people in the human race will ever do and the stakes were massive. Not only that, Astronauts are hyper-focused people with huge workloads, they had stuff to do every minute of their journey.

[@saltyshrimppasta]

The ship classifications make perfect sense tbh. The weakest ships are class A for “Ass,” and the best are class C for “Capable.” It’s an easy detail to miss.

[@cryoape7833]

Ass Bad Capable

[@Zandofle]

Would that make class B stand for “Better” as in better than class A but still not the best class C?

[@saltyshrimppasta]

@@Zandofle Yes I had that exact same thought in case somebody asked me what B stood for lmao

[@mindaugasstankus5943]

@@Zandofle A - @ss B - botched C - common or some other mediocre/meh synonym starting with C...

[@kenpachi1989]

@@mindaugasstankus5943 more like "Bitch please"

[@Scalpaxos]

BGS responds to players who say the game is boring by saying "No, it's not", you really don't need to go any further because you can't expect anything from a studio so arrogant and enamored of itself as this.

[@misanthropicattackhelicopt4148]

It just boggles them mind that they actually made space boring.

[@CheeseOfMasters]

@@misanthropicattackhelicopt4148 Amazing how something like Kerbal Space Program brings so many fun things into a limited setting of a couple computer generated planets only by letting the player do what the heck he wants. I don't even compare it to Star Citizen Alpha because SC brings so much more to the table it's just not fair to utter them in the same sentence.

[@SpartanArmy117]

@@CheeseOfMasters Agreed but slow your roll there. Star Citizen has been in production like 15 years and is still an alpha. At least Bethesda made a game lol.

[@Carstein666]

@@misanthropicattackhelicopt4148 To be fair, space is boring in real life. It's a whole bunch of nothing. Yeah, there are plenty of interesting things happening in space. But it takes millions and billions of years for them to occur, and they are separated by insanely huge stretches of empty space. Some people may argue that there are still plenty of planets with very interesting things happening on them, like paper thin stretches of ice several kilometers in height. Or planet landing on which will kill you because you will be shredded by small pieces of diamonds that are carried by hurricane-like winds. But a) it is hard to imagine what type of gameplay you can do with this and b) it's almost impossible to create such interesting things with random generation alone, without heavy dose of human involvement.

[@Existential_Robot]

@@Carstein666 I think that's an odd point. There could be an EXCELLENT narrative done with space, without human involvement. Outer Wilds did it, and did it beautifully. Hearthians (the human analogue) have little involvement in the mysteries of their solar system. But there were ruins, puzzles, and other discoveries to be made. I don't think human involvement is the answer in these games; I think alien involvement is the best way forward. Give players a mystery to pursue, and make them ask questions. Make them the little researcher of your universe, weathering all its hostilities and mysteries. For example (we'll use yours), you have to land on a planet with shredding winds and debris... make it into a mechanic. Maybe the storm wanes every now and then, giving you the chance to rush to a new piece of cover. Maybe you have a scientist crew member on your ship that researches shielding that will protect you from the elements. There are genuine, fascinating solutions. Games are just as much a puzzle for devs to solve as it is for the players to solve.

[@Rathdrgnknight]

Learning that Bethesda doesn't use a game design doc when making games makes a LOT of the issues in this game (and previous games) make a LOT more sense.

[@Sp33LzZz]

For me, I knew the game should have been solely set in the Sol system. As that would make “nasa-punk” style make more sense as well as no aliens make sense. And most importantly, we could have had hand crafted planets that were based off real images of the ones we have. My disappointment was immeasurable when I landed on the largest canyon in our star system on Mars and the procedural generator gave me a generic flat “Mars” landscape with nothing to do. That might be a small thing, but for me that was the uninstall moment.

[@ummerfarooq5383]

You think there are 👽 👾 👽 👾 👽 aliens

[@kloakovalimonada]

Exactly. They needed to limit themselves and commit to a direction.

[@anna-flora999]

It's a near mathematical certainty that there are. At the same time the chances of meeting them are astronomically small ​@@ummerfarooq5383

[@ІлляВетров-й2д]

Sorry, but is there at least Olympus Mons in the game? Or is it flat terrain, too?

[@Blurredborderlines]

@@ІлляВетров-й2д it is all flat

[@HoopleBogart]

There are people walking among us right now that will defend this game to their dying breath. This was the most aggressively mild game i've ever had the misfortune of playing. Anytime I see Todd speak now I just pretend he's stoned out of his mind and it makes it a little better.

[@richardclark6858]

😂

[@Nurix09]

Starfield is a solid 6/10 game that feels very dated.

[@roozbeh6999]

Among us

[@tylerthompson3075]

​@@Nurix094/10

[@Nurix09]

​@@tylerthompson3075If you account for the system reqs and really hate the infinite loading screens then... yea

[@TheVividKiWi]

You know the repetition is bad when I can take one look at a dungeon from any given gameplay clip and know exactly what randomly generated POI building it is due to how many times I've gone through each of them.

[@dagda1180]

Is there more variety in one of the many bandit strongholds and caves you can find in Skyrim?

[@sheepgrass500]

This is a preview???? Bestie it's 2 hours long!??!??

[@nickchivers9029]

You must be new around here

[@anotherranger2924]

Bro check out patrician review 💀

[@sergeantsapient]

First time huh?

[@Nelsathis]

@@anotherranger2924 Ok whats going on. i just looked and saw these 'quick' 8-11 hour long retroperspectives. 💀

[@twinsantacruz234]

You'd be surprised at how much time you can spend talking about these games

[@MrReaperofDead]

The beginning footage with the parents talking over each other is actually pretty creepy...It's like the player is in some kind of childhood home simulator, but its constant bugging out and glitching makes it seem like a dystopian nightmare

[@tylerh2548]

Bethesda should make surreal indy walking simulators....i fear the oncoming of Skyrim 2 I MEAN, The Elder Scrolls 6

[@fusrosandvich3738]

​​@@tylerh2548 More like Skyrim 0.3. I don't think they'd even be able to make skyrim again if they tried, only imitate it with a much lower quality product. Which is impressive, cause skyrim certainly ain't a high bar to pass...

[@QueenSydon]

The overlapping chatter, combined with probably the biggest immersion-breaking annoyance imo: When characters stare at you like lifeless puppets even when it makes no sense for them to do so. I hate that so much. It gives off this creepy and fake vibe, ripping away the veil of believability completely. The NPC's have no meaning or purpose other than to focus on you it's stupid.

[@christinaedwards5084]

Dr von braun of fallout 3 would of spiced it up a bit 😂

[@Kris-wo4pj]

@@fusrosandvich3738 idk i mean theyve been rerelease it for 10 yrs at lower and lower quality. its why i no longer say skyrim is a good game for its time cuz technically skyrim came out in 2022 now. its a terrible game for its time.

[@a.a677]

Yeah Starfield never had a chance the moment they decided on the scope being so massive and it being procedurally generated.

[@Boss_Fight_Index_muki]

The problem with Starfield is the things NPCs asks you to do would only make sense in medieval settings. Those "talk to [person]" quests where you travel to another planet, talk to [person], then travel back to the 1st planet, would only make sense in a future where phones somehow don't exist.

[@ummerfarooq5383]

In a future of 99.99% of humanity dying on earth 🌎, why would there be mobile phones?

[@Destroyer_V0]

or lack of interstellar communication weird how FTL systems exist for ships, but not radio signals. that would make instances of, we lost contact with a promising colony start up all the more concerning. Rather than just a regular occurance.

[@FennecZephyr]

Nah, that's fine. Radio signals can only travel as fast as light, so any real-time communication is basically impossible over interplanetary distances. Even from Earth to Mars, our closest celestial neighbor, has a signal delay of 5 minutes at their *closest* approach. Starships can avoid that problem because they have jump drives, and you can't exactly strap one of those onto a phone call, can you?

[@jamesp1389]

​@@FennecZephyr it's a game bro I'm sure they could have had some creative liberty with it

[@fladagreat]

​@@FennecZephyr Just because there is an explanation, doesn't mean it's satisfying or that it changes the fact that those quests are overwhelmingly monotonous, boring and lazy.

[@Farron6]

Your point regarding Elite Dangerous was spot on where everything was in gameplay. Starfield on paper was everything I've been looking for. A Lite Space game which was easier to play than the Elite/Star Citizen games where I could live my Han Solo fantasy. Jumping through menus and fast travelling through everything was not what anyone was looking for.

[@gabrielt6570]

Don't forget the proc gen worlds that make for a zero exploration space game.

[@thepathnotfound]

I’ve played Elite for years and currently explore in the black with a squadron. Searching for alien ruins and landing on planets to scan life signs. There is a lot of real astronomy and science in Elite. I bought Star field and played through the introduction, decided to come back to it again down the road sometime. Loving Lies Of P at the moment.

[@funasylumstudio]

No Man's Sky is Lite Space game with all of those things you asked for. The stipulation being it has no real story and nothing to do other than travel.

[@AlphaGarg]

@@gabrielt6570 Minecraft has proc gen and works great. NMS has proc gen and works okay. The problem isn't the proc gen, it's how unvaried it is.

[@gabrielt6570]

@@AlphaGarg I'll have to think this one over more. One difference with Minecraft off the top of my head is it's a one time procedurally generated world with a focus on building that you can sculpt and it stays that way. Once the map has spawned you can explore, find a cool area or good place to mine and come back even building rail lines to connect bases. Every time you land or re-land on a planet in Starfield it's spawning a new map with just a couple of the same enemy bases you've already cleared a bunch of times and nothing else interesting to see or interact with. That just really kills any idea of exploration for me. You can walk out of the big cities on totally different planets and find the exact same abandoned bases or mines or whatever. If you travel around space for a bit and come back there will be a different "point of interest" generated. To me that's not exploration at all. You might as well just start the game in a house and have one door that you can walk through that always puts you in some enemy base. There's no point to walking around on the same planet or different planets if you're just going to find the exact same thing anywhere you go. The idea of exploration is expanding the area that's familiar. That's literally not possible in Starfield and I think a lot of people like me are feeling "what's the point then?"...

[@King_Sad_Boy]

So much about starfield feels like they learned what the worst parts of F076 were and said "More of that"

[@williamyoung9401]

The Outer Worlds is better. Just play that.

[@King_Sad_Boy]

@@williamyoung9401 100% agree. It's better than anything bethesda has released in 10 years at least.

[@AndrewH9999]

​@williamyoung9401 I really didn't enjoy that game and I will say it's better than starfield. Shows how far bethesda has fallen

[@edalrivers1998]

Proc gen, radiant AI, radiant loot, radiant quests. Once they bring back the radiant conversations and have chatgpt write a script, I believe Todd's magnum opus will be to make the elders scrolls a "radiantly" made game and then he'll retire... ...and radiant mods will fix it.

[@hermitxIII]

Radiant conversations were GOAT. Much better than NPCs having the literal same scripted dialogue in later games. At least in Oblivion when an NPC tells someone they "saw a mud crab the other day" they're probably going to get a different response than the last time.

[@Nurix09]

​​​@@hermitxIIII admit that the radiant conversations were good but that was mainly because of how jank and autistic-like they were. They also tended to be very immersion breaking.

[@gs8494]

I heard Todd tried to do that, then he took an arrow to the knee... I'll get my coat. :P

[@TheGallantDrake]

NMS already pretty much does this, and it’s not bad. Their team had good leadership though, and a clear vision. Starfield doesn’t know what it wants to be.

[@slashrocks19801]

Radiant questing is just a fancy term for what Bethesda did back in Daggerfall but they wanted people thinking it was something new 😂 God people are so gullible.

[@Cheattoe]

13:54 “you should feel small”…… armored core 6 put me into a mech thats about 3 shipping containers high and then still made that mech feel tiny and insignificant in the face of the industrial madness that’s choked the life from a burned out world. What did star field do again?

[@efxnews4776]

In X4 you start the game flying just a small scout ship, and feeling very small, but the galaxy is completely open to you the moment the you start to flying your ship, at the end of the game, EVEN IF you conquer the entire galaxy, you still will feel smalltrying to control and entire galaxy economy... Most space sims have a type of economy, usually you they revolve around buying ships, and are very simplistic, but in Starfield you don't actually have this, you don't have space trucking aspect that most space sims have, X4 in contrast, you could literally end or start wars by just set up a trade route for an specified type of goods or comodities needed or exploited by factions, Starfield doesn't even have a QUEST exploring this sort of aspect of space sims. Byt the way, X4 doesn't even have fps combat or planetary landing, in fact the space exploration is made in sectors, and yet it manages to be far superior than Starfield.

[@skepsisrollins1711]

@@efxnews4776 sorry, what is x4?? I'm slow

[@JimJob-gm9lj]

You are not kidding about the music switching the gameplay. I kept falling asleep while I was playing the game and that’s what made me give up on it. I felt like if you were trying to pull an all nighter, but it was 5 o’clock in the afternoon.

[@Metaphix]

I was so disappointed when I realized how often I was getting repeated buildings and locations. I really thought there would be so much more variations. They've doubled down on all their weaknesses and cut in half all their strengths in this game. The terminals and notes are the worst part, that has always been my favorite thing about their games. The tiny little details that hint at a story, notes, item placements, dead bodies. I see glimpses of that here but like I said the abandoned science lab being the exact same every time i find it just completely kills that for me.

[@dabrams84]

Same here. Key RPG elements: story. Lore. Background. I play RPGs for both the gameplay (sometimes it's action sometimes it's turn-based RPG style stat focused combat, sometimes it's dungeon crawling, sometimes it's puzzles, etc. depending on the game). But, the RPG part is that I can pretend that I am a real character with varied backgrounds in game, talk to people in different ways, have them react differently depending on who I am and what my background is, be able to make divergent choices which give me drastically different consequences (and I don't want to be able to do EVERYTHING all in one play through). This kind of stuff is what I would expect. I'm glad I've always been a buy-way-after-release type of gamer so I can skip this one!

[@lucianjaeger4893]

The poi's needed multiple teams working on the different themes for different factions and way more than 20 different POIs and the removal of endless sprawl of junk inbetween them

[@Homiloko2]

Bethesda got famous for making sandbox RPGs. Then in the following decades they make sure to remove as much roleplaying as possible and making the sandbox as bland and noninteractive as possible.

[@darthdragonborn1552]

The fact that they have the exact same items and clutter, in the exact same locations is fuckin wild.

[@johneverimanne3986]

I tried exploring for 100 hours. I now want to die!

[@PenneyBack]

I just keep thinking "*this* was Todd's dream game?!"

[@ummerfarooq5383]

He mentioned StarFlight. Like StarFlight (1991). I think that game is online

[@ChristopherSadlowski]

If this is his dream I'd hate to see his nightmares. Actually, scratch that. The nightmares would probably be way more interesting.

[@Jiiinxyyy]

"We want to give our players as much freedom as possible, so we let them make the game for us." -Todd Howard

[@Beredaman08]

Todd's comments about 50 minutes in, about the horses in Skyrim and making them less important, was interesting. Even though they aren't at all important for getting around, they are still a fun enough element of the game, where as you travel through misty mountains and hear a dragon roar echo in the distance, or trot through the snow on your way to Winterhold, it feels like it fits the fantasy of an adventurer... It feels *right* to use a horse, even if you don't need it and even if it doesn't add much beyond flavor. And there's nothing like that in Starfield.

[@DNovac]

I like to turn off fast trevel and ride my horse through all the Skyrim. Hell, it is the only available transport in all BGS games.

[@naterod]

I tend to never use fast travel in a game unless it’s very late and I need to get a quest done real quick. I fast travel every fucking where in Starfield. Half of the gameplay loop is spent in menus selecting the next travel destination.

[@GhostOfSnuffles]

Starfield feels like Bethesda conscientiously took the worst parts of all their previous titles and put it all into one game, then made that the main plot.

[@theorbitalone7283]

Bethesda “we made exploring the way it is because thats what astronauts experienced” Also Bethesda “here’s some magic dragon shouts”

[@macdhomhnaill7721]

Two different universes, not sure what one has to do with the other.

[@megavolt67]

@@macdhomhnaill7721 He's referring to how the Starborn powers in Starfield are just a variation on the Dragonborn shouts from Skyrim and the hypocrisy of Bethesda trying use realism as an excuse in spite of reusing such a blatantly fantastical element.

[@terrylandess6072]

That's the tagline of a Simulator. I'll say no more.

[@NicholasWilliams-uk9xu]

@corvus8638 I think government regulates how game studios make games now. They are meant to not be rewarding, in order to destroy the gaming community, and make more factory robotic slaves. The government always goes after the weak, they would never go after the (women's bingo club), they always punch down on the little guy, because that's all communist tyrants know (might = right).

[@nooneeey]

@@macdhomhnaill7721In starfield you are „starborn“ and shout space spells tho, so yes it’s the same

[@Slyslug]

I remember being amazed in oblivion, still sort of am, that npcs had lives. You could see Rindir in his shop then wandering about after shift. Wheras name one npc you remember from starfield, let alone where you can see them living a life. I miss that

[@christinaedwards5084]

You find named npc’s having a terrabrew after hours.

[@SkintSNIPER262]

The only NPC's that have a schedule are the ones in that one side quest on Mars where you need to get something off a computer while no one is around. I was so confused because that office is normally empty. Then when this quest happened NPC's were all working in there. I had no idea there was a schedule until I googled it.

[@yourtubisfilled7164]

Somehow I also long back to Oblivion. Diverse factions with solid career paths, the music, the variety in dungeons, the writing, not so much dumbing down ... in many ways it was their best game imo. Except for the introduction of level scaling and NO CROSSBOWS OMG. That sucked but could be overcome with mods.

[@Ellimist000]

​@@yourtubisfilled7164I cannot describe how hyped I am for Skyblivion in 2025. I really feel like it's going to be the best of both Oblivion and Skyrim

[@personwhohasayoutubechannel3]

One thing that studios never understand is that friendly NPCs are equally as important as enemy NPCs. If I play a game where I'm shooting, slashing, etc. and there's nobody else out there? It just feels so god damn lonely. I felt like this about Elden Ring but nobody seemed to agree with me.

[@MikeHawko]

The astronauts werent bored because they were on the fucking moon. I'm in my bedroom looking at a computer screen.

[@jackweaver1846]

That, and because the astronauts had actual risks. Most of the technology developed for the moon landing was literally just to keep the guys alive up there. Meanwhile, all the planets in Starfield are relatively harmless, except for the occasional acid fart. Bethesda made a game set in SPACE, and decided that suffocation wouldn’t be a possible cause of death. …And they wonder why people think it’s boring 😂

[@GangstarComputerGod]

It’s absurd to even pretend that the comparison is real. I can’t believe how bad the responses to all this have been and that response was the perfect encapsulation of why BGS needs new leadership.

[@marshallscot]

The ship combat is either impossibly difficult if you don't take ship perks, or laughably easy if you take the "correct" perks. I don't understand why such an integral part of the game has to compete with regular character perks. There really needs to be a whole separate set of perks for ships which you unlock in tandem with, and is mirrored to, the regular character perks. That way players are able to specialize there ship gameplay towards stealth, speed, DPS, cargo, etc.

[@Zripas]

At the star of game "You meet 2+ enemy ships, you are dead with 100% certainty" while later on "There is 50 ship armada, you don't care, you can't die!". Spaceship combat had zero balance.

[@mlmii1933]

It's worse than that ... there is no reason to use anything other than particle beam weaponry.

[@ashroskell]

“What’s fun about landing on a planet when there’s nothing there?” Having played both Starfield and Elite Dangerous, I can tell you: The, “fun,” part is the ACTUAL LANDING ON THE PLANET! In Elite, you might want the valuable resources, check your readings, see a gravity that your ship might struggle with, fly down feeling the groans of your ship as the heavy gravity takes hold, battle with the controls so as not to land too hard, see the world grow menacingly below you as the gravity well swallows you and, after carefully guiding your vessel to the surface, after scanning for a safe, flat enough surface to land on, you cut the engines and watch the dust settle and feel a sense of achievement at surviving. But then you know you still have to get those resources and get back off the planet in one piece. You step out, or drive out in your vehicle, look up at the moon and know you can actually go there, enjoying the entire journey without a loading screen, feeling like YOU are achieving it, through smart judgement calls and great piloting. In the back of your mind, while you are working at gathering the resources, you are wondering if you’ll get off that world again. Palm sweaty stress that cannot be relieved until you get off the planet again. And that’s without any added story, any other characters, just you and the elements of the universe, feeling that numinous awe that you can only get from a seamless experience.

[@ummerfarooq5383]

So humans aren't fun but tin can bucket is fun?

[@mildly_miffed_man1414]

@@ummerfarooq5383cringe

[@ashroskell]

@@ummerfarooq5383 : I’m saying you can have all that seamless, “fun,” by playing a game that pits you against realistic elements, using genuine wit, resourcefulness, judgement and skill, even without interacting with other players. Yet you can play with other players in Elite and there are story modes. So you can add all of that to your, “tin can.” I have reasons to loathe Frontier Development, the publishers of Elite Dangerous, as they scammed the public deliberately, advertising their game on console and taking money from new players, all the time knowing they were planning to end support for console versions of the game. Personally, I hope Frontier goes bankrupt and all their devs find better jobs working for a company that isn’t run by petty thieves. But, objectively, Elite Dangerous is a far superior game to Starfield by every measurable metric. It has internal logic that makes sense, which Starfield does not. Everyone talks about these appalling loading screens and the ridiculous mechanics of Starfield so much that they seem to overlook that. Starfield’s story makes no sense. It’s full of juvenile plot holes from start to finish. Why has Constellation, this, “exploration,” organisation which has been around for 40 years by the time you meet them, not even scanned, let alone studied or categorised, ANY of the flora or fauna on their own literal doorstep? How is it that these MacGuffins you’re chasing can turn up within sight of a, “science,” outpost, yet not one scientist in the universe has ever wanted to go and see why the rocks are all floaty in that physics defying way? The side quests are just as senseless and meaningless, the more you give any adult thinking to them. Your companions are sociopaths who will damn you with faint praise if you save their lives, or show mild annoyance if you go on a mass murderer’s killing spree in front of them. Even after shooting them in the head repeatedly, you can then talk them around and bed them if you want, coz’ plot armour! You’re not allowed to fail a mission. The game does not respect the player’s time. The fetch quests and broken economy are frankly insulting. I have better things to do with my time than waste it on a nonsensical fetch questathon. The whole thing is childish and stupid!

[@NahNoWayy]

While this reads highly A coded, you bring up a good point about the commitment Elite Dangerous made to capturing a particular experience. A feat Bethesda was unable, or refused, to reach.

[@Kris-wo4pj]

@@ummerfarooq5383 have been around other humans before? they really arent that great its a very neutral experience 99% of the time with that 1% swinging wildly between terrible and good.

[@infrared6973]

I think the cities are one of the most disappointing things to me in this game because I thought they would be so much more. When I heard the game had a thousand planets and 3 cities i knew this game was really going to lack severely.

[@efxnews4776]

Dude, when i heard that Earth was destroyed due to some bogus climate change caused by space magic, that was a big red flag, Bethesda destroyed Earth so they didn't need to make a SINGLE REAL CITY... In the Mass Effect games, in ME1 and ME2 you don't visit Earth, but you know it is there, in ME1 you can visit the Moon, and see Earth, and you notice that this was the devs just been lazy... but in ME3 they did make their job, and gave us at least 2 cities, Montreal that we basically see while is beeing wreaked by the Reapers, and the devatated London that you go at the end of the game... Bethesda didn't even NEED to make a whole city, just a space port close to a city so we can see the city at the background, it wouldn't be all this hard to do it, maybe explain that there's a matter of authorization from UN or something that doesn't allow spacers to be wondering around Earth at will, no... Bethesda decided to destroy Earth!

[@dylanevartt3219]

I liked the cities, they're pretty big by bethesda standards tbh. There just weren't nearly enough of them and they could have used more to do in them

[@Homiloko2]

We can't expect Bethesda to suddenly turn around from decades of deterioration. It would take a lot of restructuring, firing a lot of the higher echelons, go back to their roots and figure out what worked and why, etc. That's too much risk for such a big company and the investors would never accept it. And at some point you have to accept that the people who made the old games you love have most likely already quit the company or retired from game development. The only hope we can have is that Todd, Emil and etc. decide to retire soon and, in a stroke of luck, get replaced by competent, ambitious people with a great vision.

[@nyranna_]

It's so infuriating how people almost treat besthesda as an indie studio after everything they've done and continue to do, they're like a toxic ex! DUMP THEM you can do so much better

[@Homiloko2]

@97javic Just because you like something, it doesn't mean it can't be better. I say this because I also love Skyrim and Fallout 4 (haven't bothered with Starfield yet, it looks awful.) I have spent hundreds of hours playing and modding Bethesda games and it hurts me so much to see how they've been getting worse in each subsequent generation, and how many obvious improvements could be made. Hell, if they only looked at he most downloaded mods for each game, they'd have half their job delivered on a silver platter. But they do the exact opposite and end up with a worse product that, although generally good, had a ton of potential to be amazing. It's really bittersweet how they mistreat their franchises.

[@nyranna_]

@97javic dude fallout 4 was my first fallout game and got me into the series, i loved that game to death and spent at least 200 hours dicking around and building a massive resort in the commonwealth, i like betheny esda type games, i even play fallout 76 every now and then with friends, starfield makes me angry because i want bethesda games to grow with me and they feel like they're living in the past

[@Gecko....]

They are making more profit than ever despite their games getting worse. People ultimately need to stop giving them money for them to change, I blame gamers.

[@DanJuega]

@97javicLmao you’re the only one that sounds entitled. Your opinion is valid but is very much in the minority.

[@bubbasbigblast8563]

The Titan quest is really the most indicative quest in the entire game: you take a tour of a colony on the moon of Titan, and...that's it. Yet, it's actually a well thought out colony (as befitting its real world significance,) stuck between a sense of independence from being one of the first colonies, and also its inevitable fate of being a tourist trap in a galaxy with much better places to live. But, because the biggest thing you can really do there is make people's day, Bethesda actually plays to its strengths with vignettes and does a solid job selling that the colony is a real place, with its own story. Because the Titan colony DOES actually have thought put into it though, the lack of thought in both Cowboy LARP Ville and Starship Troopers At Home becomes more apparent; and the worst part is, it's not that those two things COULDN'T have worked, but that Bethesda just...couldn't be bothered, for some reason.

[@Warhammer_lover]

> The Titan Quest is really the most indicative quest in the entire game Goodamn, Bethesda put a whole diabloid into the game?!?!?

[@TheGallantDrake]

@@Warhammer_loveromfg I forgot that game existed

[@TheGallantDrake]

They had no design doc or pre-existing lore for reference. The different city design teams had no way to stay consistent.

[@mokkaveli]

​@@TheGallantDrakeyou don't even need design documents to make factions that compliment eachother or are even stylistically similar. You just need to have a cohesive idea of what your game world even is

[@TinyEle]

​@@mokkaveli with a team this big, you need design docs to achieve this.

[@danvgeg]

Todd has won the most video game awards in history. His mother is very proud.

[@fladagreat]

I believe fromsoft would beg to differ

[@victorguzman2065]

Todd Talirico moment

[@dudebruh8534]

Todds power of imagination has no bounds. Every year he wins GOTY awards, receives overwhelmingly positives reviews on steam, and most certainly is the one laughing now after the bullies in his school saw the chess club kid make amazing AAA games. So anyway, I'd rather get aids than play this game.

[@SirViolentDeath]

Hey I understood that reference! (because funnily enough I just watched that Oof video today)

[@AKlover]

I'm pretty certain ES Oblivion made Todd his first few millions and FO3 and Skyrim made him several more, he probably could have retired 10 years ago without A care. When you have "F.U Money" stacked 5X over you don't care about rewards or what "KZbinrs" trying to punch up say.

[@xwing2417]

What made FO3, Oblivion and Skyrim exploration work is that you would see some kind of landmark, and you are compelled to explore it, sometimes for loot sometimes for lore. It felt real. Even FO4s game loop had that, but with more enemies to engage with. Watching this, I'm not sure if I want to play starfield.

[@KIager]

Not just that, on a static map with landmarks you naturally get your bearings. You might see a tall tower in the distance, and you'll pass by it 100+ times before finally deciding to go there one day. Starfield has none of this except maybe for the citites, and even then it's really just New Atlantis.

[@themaazmaaz]

The only positive thing about Starfield: The doors are really cool. My head cannon is that the good devs went on the 'door team' to escape Todd's micromanagement.

[@Nuverotic]

What makes you think Todd micromanages or that he'd be annoying with it? What I'm asking is, what proof do you have that Todd is the problem here? We can PROVE that Emil is a shitty writer that needs to be removed. The worst thing Todd has done that we can prove is over sell his product. Although people would like to call him a liar. I've watched all his content and there are no lies, just some things that didn't pan out exactly as he said. And it's his job to oversell any product so I'm just trying to figure out why Todd get's all the hate.

[@WOWWOW-hk1tb]

​@@NuveroticThe modern man has no concept of nuance so everything is Todd's fault, or Hitler's fault, or Putin's fault, etc.

[@Nuverotic]

@@WOWWOW-hk1tb 100% correct sir. I was trying to say that in a nice way. lol. People forget Zenimax is a huge part of the problem. They likely don't want BGS reworking the engine from the ground up. That would cost money. If they can milk it for more money, they will. Todd doesn't make the games anymore. He just makes sure the teams are doing their jobs and sells their product on stage. Emil and their writing team in general, or lack thereof, is another MAJOR part of the problem. A third problem is their team size. It's WAY too small for modern triple A titles. Last problem, and the most obvious one, is the engine. It needs a reworking from the ground up. Or they need to move over to Unreal. Simple as that. Bethesda definitely needs to change a lot. But I personally don't think Todd is the problem. I think Todd has probably kept them afloat this whole time.

[@MultiJamesman]

Problems in an organization start at the top and go downward. If there is a problem under the boss, it was the boss's job to detect that and fix it. It's called responsibility. Also, he lied about PC optimization / upgrading your computers. Turning Fallout into a soulless, unfinished shooter instead of an RPG garnered some hate as well. People are super mad about Fallout 76 being trash. Then there is the canvas bag issue. Was that a lie? Actually yes, it seems pretty clear on that one. "You want to pay for some canvas? Okay here you go here's something crappy instead." That's a scam, which is based on lies.@@Nuverotic

[@Nuverotic]

@@MultiJamesman I wouldn't call the canvas bag a lie. There was intention to give everyone the bag at first. His job to find problems internally and fix them, including firing Emil? I'll give you that for sure. Upgrading PC's, we can't say that was a lie because it very well could have something they didn't plan for. Fallout 4 becoming a soulless shooter. I'll 100% agree with you on that. 76 was trash, yup I'll give you that too. Still not lies though. So really, if you look at the big picture, in his 30 years of service to Bethesda, or however long it's been, he's had a few times where things went awry and people have taken those as lies, even though they were unplanned so likely not lies, just shitty things that happened. I feel like that's a pretty good track record and can almost promise you every one in the comment section lies more than that on a daily basis. So I'd say Todd is fine. He should definitely fire Emil but, they're probably VERY close friends.

[@camraid9]

The biggest problem with Starfield is the lack of vision, writing and story.

[@danielarcher4060]

The main story is genuinely boring. Nothing really happens.

[@WarBirdGhost]

Chris Roberts has a vision and a Game Design Document, but CIG is still building their core tech to create his vision.

[@richbob9155]

wrong game@@WarBirdGhost

[@amysteriousviewer3772]

So basically everything

[@lobstrosity7163]

Soulless and bland.

[@Shabazza84]

Also, system-jumps in Elite are fun, because the audiovisuals when preparing for a jump and actually doing it and arriving in a system are just so good. I just love how you ship charges it's drive, your ship starts to shudder and roar and you can basically feel that It's now full of energy and wants to GO. And then you put the hammer down and you get a neat jump animation and when you exit in the new system, there is 0 downtime. You are forced to get away of that sun asap and already have you vector for the next stop. That's ... slightly different to Starfield.

[@trippybruh1592]

It was so good I experienced that animation 600 times in one day.

[@tj-co9go]

The problem with Starfield was the contradiction between - the desire for large scale and exploration that their worlds have always tried to achieve, offering a blank canvas for the player to paint on versus - the uniqueness of the hand crafted locations and linear narratives that actually form much of the gameplay Their games have always struggled between these two principlies. TES daggerfall leaned into procedural generation and Skyrim mostly into handcrafting, as well as Morrowind and Oblivion. People say Starfield is like Space Skyrim or Oblivion, but it is more like Space Daggerfall than anything

[@AbstractTraitorHero]

Daggerfall was a good game, starfield was not.

[@GastonGenta338]

They didn't go full procedural like Dagerfall either. In Dagerfall even the cities were procedurally generated. Imagine New Atlantis with 100 hundreds procedurally generated apartment/office towers. Imagine Starfield with not only 4 main cities, but hundreds of those procedurally generated. Shadow of Doubt proof that procedurally generated city with working city maps can be fun.

[@KiraSlith]

I almost wonder if "Space Daggerfall" is still an insult to the compared game. Daggerfall was rudimentary and fugly even for it's time, but it was still at least a "Bethesda game" experience (albeit the theme park version of the experience). Starfield is not.

[@AbstractTraitorHero]

@@KiraSlith Daggerfall reached for the stars, truly tried to reach a peak. It had passion, genuine love & a charm that can not be beat. It tried to reach above our mere planet & slammed head first into the mountains. Starfield is pure soulness neoliberal garbage that aimed for the foothills & burned on the launch pad.

[@KiraSlith]

@@AbstractTraitorHero Soulless absolutely, but I'm not sure about "Neoliberal". I've seen more neoliberal propaganda in furry porn games than Starfield over the 40 hours I've put in thus far, desperately trying to squeeze some vague sense of entertainment out of it. There's one character that's trans, but only if you really stretch the definition beyond breaking point (the female clone of a dude), and there's the pronoun option at the start. A pronoun option which amusingly defaults to the wrong answer more often than it gets it right. I tried making my first character a surfer dude and it immediately assumed the male build, male animation set, and male face presets I picked was supposed to be female, because long hair.

[@SergeiNiclevich]

They say it’s not a space sim (which it’s not) but they tried so hard to have the sci-fi be as grounded as they could (they even got nasa involved and went as far as borderline bragging about the realistic take) so I feel like comparing some aspects to a space sim makes sense (at least when regarding futuristic tech). They wanted realism so much that they ended up not adding much of anything interesting. Boring guns, boring enemies, boring planets, doesn’t matter if it’s realistic, it’s boring.

[@Axterix13]

And even then, they added Starborn powers, which don't even fit into the world. They just exist to make the player "special", or, more likely, so that there is some progress from moving through the story.

[@SergeiNiclevich]

@@Axterix13 the powers were apparently not added in till the last year of development for the exact purpose of comparing it to Skyrim.

[@UnityAgainstJewishEvil]

Wait, you’re serious? They got NASA involved in a game and bragged about its realism, but when your ship gets destroyed in space, it falls like it’s in atmosphere, lmfao? Bethesda is something else.

[@TheBard1999]

How can you call this a grounded sci fi setting? When it has Star Trek's gravity plating, shields and faster then light travel.

[@NoobTamer]

@@SergeiNiclevich That makes their addition somehow worse.

[@hubert1142]

>can you use the word "irredeemable" in a sentence? >the game Starfield is irredeemable

[@dominic.h.3363]

Sarah's monologue reminiscing about her early days in Constellation, citing one of her favorite things about space being the tranquility she can experience in deep space, lounging around and looking out the window with no planets or any other ships in sight... well, that was the moment I decided I want to play THAT game, because that sounds actually good, and ironically, it's an experience you can not have, because in Starfield, space=orbit. That's it. How cool would it be to venture out to deep space to minimise interference/noise and to scan for anomalies yourself, instead you have the fetch quest you get from Vlad that's just the temple version of "Hey, another settlement needs our help." This game is a package where you get the promises delivered in game, and also get them broken in the game. You never have to look at any backstage info to get that feeling of having been lied to.

[@octavianpopescu4776]

Wait, you actually listened to what she had to say? I hated her with extreme prejudice as soon as she opened her mouth the first time we met.

[@dominic.h.3363]

@@octavianpopescu4776 I keep her on the ship for her perks that allow me to keep a decent jump range using a ship with usable cargo space. Those perk points stack you know... It's not as if I take her with me to hear her b&m about "all that junk" I'm carrying, I've got sick of that already when she was locked as my companion for the first Constellation mission.

[@octavianpopescu4776]

@@dominic.h.3363 I absolutely get it, but I just chose to level up those skills, so I don't need her or any companions at all. Except for Vasco, he's cool. Too bad I can't upgrade him... In Fallout 4 I turned Codsworth into a dual Gatling wielding murder machine. It was funny see him be all polite, while slaughtering everything in sight.

[@dominic.h.3363]

@@octavianpopescu4776 I repeat... those skills stack... beyond your level four perk.

[@callmeahh]

​@@octavianpopescu4776 vasco was my favorite companion because he never complained, never had a "witty" one liner to say. but he also bugged out abd wouldn't spawn for me unless i manually left my ship, no clue what that was about

[@BlazeMakesGames]

Oh boy time to settle in for 2 more hours of starfield criticism despite already watching a similar 8 hour video and making several videos on my own! Starfield is truly the game that keeps on giving

[@infernoeagles5812]

Truly the game that keeps giving us nothing 😂

[@ergohash2517]

this channel and that "similar 8 hour video" channel worked together on their research for these videos, they had livestreams/podcasts together

[@BigVorst]

I've gotten many, many hours of video entertainment from SF being torn apart and all for free. It truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

[@charlesrhodes1089]

Starfield was the best advertisement for no mans sky ever.

[@hawkzulu5671]

No Mans Sky, Star Citizen, Elite... Everybody got a bump after StarField released to the masses.

[@gae_wead_dad_6914]

@@hawkzulu5671 For me i just went back to Starsector. Will need to try NMS, but not my type of game anyway. More in it for the RPG stuff.

[@AaronJLong]

Imagine going back to Daggerfall, and when you get out of Privateer's Hold, instead of fast traveling you decide that you'll do what many others do, and you yourself may have done many times before, and head on foot due south to Gothway Garden. But, just as those cozy, snowy 1996 wintery vibes are about to kick in you hit an invisible wall.

[@kowashy03]

when i played starfield it reminded me of daggerfall in this subtle odd way. i thought "wow i want to go back to playing daggerfall"

[@gs8494]

@@kowashy03 Funnily enough I've been playing the Unity build of Daggerfall on my Steam Deck and I'm loving it, even in Unity it's not the prettiest and it hasn't aged as well as I thought but then I remember it released in 1996 and it's staggering to think of the ambition behind it, they reached for the stars with Daggerfall and while they didn't quite make it they made a fucking good effort. That Starfield reminded you of Daggerfall is damming for Starfield, there's 27 years between the two games and what it really shows is how little Bethesda have evolved, if anything it shows how lazy they've become, even though I got through Starfield and enjoyed it for what it was, a Bethesda game and the baggage that comes with that, I know I'll never go back to it. I bought it on Steam to play it as soon as it dropped and quickly refunded it and waited for the game pass release as I just knew it wasn't going to be what I hoped for. I've got 1000's of hours in Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim but I'm not looking forward to TES6 after Todd Howard said it would be on an iteration of Creation engine, the thought of another game in Creation is just a turn off now, they need to build a new engine or license one but the problem is I don't think they have the ability to change, they are stuck in the past and probably wouldn't know how to move on from Creation. As much as I loved Skyrim even that was feeling a bit dated in 2011, Starfield in 2023 feels practically ancient at this point, it's painfully mediocre at best and very lazy and limited at worst, add to that Howards glib remark about it being next gen and you might need to upgrade your hardware to play it when he was asked about its poor optimization tells you everything you need to know. They had a good run but I think they're done now, if I was Phil Spencer I would try to identify the real talent if there's any there and clean up shop with BGS and let them take over let them develop a new engine or license one and start over on TES6, they have the past games and lore to build on and could try to deliver something fresh anything would be welcome, anything but another Creation engine game.

[@AaronJLong]

@@kowashy03 Until Starfield, I'd wished that the wilderness of Daggerfall had plants to scavenge, and small landmarks to make it a bit more interesting. Starfield added the mineral deposits and copy-paste points of interest, and it completely changed the way one looks at an empty procedurally generated wilderness in a way that kills the vibe (along with the invisible walls). Daggerfall Unity had mods that add more random event type stuff that can happen if you're camping in the wilderness, which I think fits the whole vibe much better than stopping every once in a while to mine a resource. But they bungled the procedurally generated landing zones in Starfield so badly that even with like a thousand planets or whatever, ranging from dead rocks to attempts at living alien worlds with different biomes, I'd still rather hike or ride my horse through the forests or deserts of Daggerfall DOS. The 1996/dosbox version, or the ancestor ghost release that added better native windows support, optional additional content, and a higher draw distance. It was atmospheric, it was a chance to decompress a bit, and since you actually could ride from one area to another, and there was the slight chance of finding a dungeon that had not been marked on your map yet, or even one of the secret witch covens, there was still the chance of stumbling onto something new. It was a very slim chance, but in my opinion a Daggerfall witch coven in more interesting than all of starfield's "points of interest" combined, and if you found one back in the day before everyone was online, sharing that information with friends would be like if Mew really was under the truck and you discovered it. But, just the vibe of traveling in Daggerfall, soaking in the atmosphere, feels better than those alien planets that should have been an improvement on what we had in 1996, with a lot more variety in landscapes, biomes, and skyboxes, but if you want to go on a journey you'll soon hit the edge of your little chunk of land, not that there's anywhere to go to. Some realistic sized towns and cities to spice things up, even if they were barely more complicated than the ones in Daggerfall, would've gone a long way towards making the settled systems feel more settled, rather than oh, here's new earth with its one city, there's cyberpunk planet with its one city, there's the planet with the cowboy larp town. You'd at least think the earthlike planet you visit early on would have more interesting places outside of the city than the moon you were forced to visit previously to deal with the pirates with its weird alien bugs and Trama Root, but it seems like everyone lives in one of the few significant cities, a space station, maybe some tiny procgen settlement that wouldn't qualify as a one-horse-town even if horses were available, while the rest, the vast majority of mankind, are random hostile spacers or whatever they're calling themselves holed up in copy-paste mini-dungeons blanketing the surface of just about every rock you visit, spread evenly but just far enough away from each other that you'd hit an invisible wall before finding the same outpost next door. It's hard to take in the vibes when you land somewhere new and are put in a box with the same bite-sized points of interest and resource nodes to mine along the way, all things that are disincentives to what they were saying about soaking in these alien worlds, their landscapes and sunrises and skyboxes. Daggerfall doesn't litter its wilderness with inconsequential outposts and caves that it constantly pulls you towards, it doesn't litter the ground with pieces of iron or candy or whatever to train you to keep your eyes down and stop every few seconds. A monster may attack, but they're usually easy enough to ignore if you wish, especially on a horse. It doesn't stop you if you stray too far from where you fast traveled to. I no longer think that the Daggerfall wilderness is boring due to its emptiness, a necessity to make a world that large almost 30 years ago. I was warming up to it over the years, especially with DFU, but Starfield has made me appreciate those aimless rides through the countryside on a whole new level, and make me think about what could've been if Starfield had allowed something similar.

[@CrusadiaIX]

@@AaronJLong The completely different moods of Daggerfall’s overland travel vs its dungeon crawling is one of my favourite things about Daggerfall; the ride to the dungeon from the town, sketching out paths from village to village on the way or just blitzing straight down the middle of the map, the anticipation of getting there and the worry of “what if there’s a daedra, none of my weapons are powerful enough for that”… versus the sense of relief on the ride home, quest item in hand, racing back to the destination before time runs out.

[@TheVikingbob]

Playing Elder Scrolls Blades (I don't know why either) is a terrifying insight into Starfield. It's a radiant dungeon crawler that pretends to be procedural but quickly reveals there are only ~20 maps, it's entire "loop" is grinding for legendaries from a loot pool where 90% of items are trash, it's a convoluted leveling/ability system that has exactly one right answer, it even has John Q starBladesborn the only kid in the themepark. The ironic part, it did it better.

[@staffanberg6747]

only the planets are generated, the points of intressts are not.

[@NahNoWayy]

​@@staffanberg6747 that's not relevant to the point being made.

[@SwanCollins]

@@staffanberg6747 too bad they didn't handcraft enough POIs or variants to stop players encountering 1:1 copies of them on different planets.

[@TheGallantDrake]

The only thing worse than barren planets is planets where the only POI is copy-pasted from another barren planet… down to the debris.

[@ULTRAOutdoorsman]

Haha I played it for a few hours too, and like Starfield there's faintly a way you can see how it might have been sorta good, but there's no way it could ever have dignity.

[@Stonegoal]

If they wanted a narrative story, they should have modeled it on Mass Effect.

[@FinGeek4now]

In terms of exploration, I think where the procedural designers failed is that they made completed areas that were just randomized placements rather than actual procedural content. This isn't procedural content, it's just random content and the content that is randomized is abysmal at best in quantity. A procedural dungeon would have: - Dungeon type - Dungeon Aesthetic - Dungeon floors - Dungeon rooms - Dungeon hallways (room connectors) - Enemy AI - Friendly AI That's the basics of actual procedural dungeon creation. I can't believe that in 8 years of development time, none of the developers went to KZbin and looked up "procedural dungeon design".

[@jorgefigueroa2231]

Maybe they knew but were told not to make it like that

[@ghandiwon]

If there were hundreds of POIs, I'm not convinced the lack of "procedurally generated dungeons" would have mattered. With the way the game is setup, it could work out akin to how a lot of DMs in TTRPGs: "I'll plop the next cool thing wherever you end up going, that's officially where that thing is now". If Starfield had enough shit to drop in, the POIs placed could actually be based on rules (biome, planet location, system's sector, recency of visit). What's bizarre is that random POIs designs are things that should have survived the 8 years of constant system refactoring and gameplay rewrites. A team just creating maps, assets and isolated stories could have chugged along siloed from whatever chaos was going on outside. Minor addendum: All these abandoned facilities with fully functioning environments and power, yet the Starborn is still building outposts from scratch. Even the pirates understood the usefulness of forgotten buildings.

[@FinGeek4now]

@@ghandiwon This is really just one aspect of the game - "dungeon crawling" for the lack of a better term. If there were more areas that were generated procedurally rather than just a couple that are randomly placed, I think it would have dealt with the repetitive nature of this particular activity. Of course, they should also either make them closer to the player or have had rover type vehicles in the game from the get-go. I also agree with the entire "placement rules" for content as well as the entire "here is an abandoned whatever that is fully powered and stocked with food that hasn't gone bad because..."

[@Ruteekatreya]

quite bluntly, this is a poor equivocation. There's a ton of games that can fairly claim to be procedurally generated that still intersperse bespoke or mostly bespoke additions. Roguelikes are the most famous, with many of them in fact procedurally stringing together bespoke tidbits (EG Hades, Dungeon of the Endless, Enter/exit the guneon, etc.) What bethesda did is procedurally generate the worlds, then handcrafted most of the bits of substance; in principle, this isn't notably different from the examples I just listed. The problems are matters of execution. This is procedural generation, it's just a poor iteration of it that lead to the worst of both worlds.. Anything can be done well, or done poorly.

[@waterpotato1667]

Daggerfall Players enjoy all these things.

[@Soniti1324]

You nailed this analysis, and I think what cemented it for me was your take on the music in Starfield. The first time I got to New Atlantis, and that churning world-beat style thrum started up, I was like "So this is what the background music of Google's HQ in the year 2300 would be".

[@cadcad-jm3pf]

Now that you mention it, New Atlantis does look like a Google HQ. What it certainly doesn't look like is a bustling capital of the "Settled Systems"

[@jacktaylor6253]

The ONLY thing that interested me about Starfield was ship building. Then i learned about the ship combat and mechanics, and sighed

[@GeorgeCowsert]

Bethesda ultimately specializes in creating digital theme parks. They fill every nook and cranny with scripted content for the player to discover, but that comes at the cost of being incapable of improv. If it's not in the script, it can't happen. It is the experience of taking a shortcut on your way to an objective, only to haphazardly stumble into a new questline that makes Bethesda games fun. The sheer amount of stuff they cram into the world makes up for how shallow it all is. Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle personified. Starfield fundamentally breaks this design philosophy due to the sheer nature of space and planets. How can you just stumble into a questline when the game isn't even capable of letting you manually travel from one point of interest to another? If you aren't constantly bombarded with new points of interest as you try and do a single simple quest, then it isn't a Bethesda game.

[@JaniceHope]

I never got into skyrim I was just aimlessly drifting around but there was zero urgency or anything that enticed me into doing anything. I just showed up and suddenly I was somehow special. It wasn't for me at all. So I quit and never looked back.

[@JP-st9hn]

What’s worse is eventually you only have to glance the poi to immediately know exactly who and what’s inside…

[@hermitxIII]

@@JaniceHope I found Skyrim lackluster on release, the gameplay was a step-down and the writing is awful(thieves guild especially), but it still did a good job of introducing quest hooks and landmarks for the player to explore. As an aside, 12 years of mods really do save that game. You can re-add all the mechanical depth that was missing, and what really sets it apart is Skyrim SE's engine allows us to do far more with mods than what was ever possible in previous games(though that may have changed with OpenMW). Oblivion for example is cursed with memory issues, that heavily limit the scope of mods. The mod tools we have are also a lot better and more polished than earlier games. Skyrim really is a "modder's paradise". That's the edge it has over previous installments, and it took a long time to truly become that way.

[@Mike-sf7ex]

I don't think that's true. Bethesda games have always been highly dynamic and Starfield is no different. There are lots of things this game does that nobody seems to give it credit for and the world is actually a lot more seamless than people want to admit. The fact that you can, in real time, fly through space, get out of your pilot seat to interact with the ship that you built yourself, look through the port holes that you placed and see the planets through them in their real orbits and when you fly you can go to third person and swing the camera around, look through the cockpit to see your character in the pilot seat and your crew exactly where they were when you hopped in, dynamically moving in real time... It's actually very impressive. I don't think there are any games currently that take physics sim as seriously as Starfield the level of interactivity is honestly mind blowing when you consider how many objects are actually in this game and they're all persistent and interactive. Of course all this comes at a cost Bethesda themselves said they wanted to keep game spaces separate as a design choice in order to make the game work and not spend all their development budget trying to have it all seamless. In the end it meant exploring Starfield would be different from other Bethesda games but when you look at the state of Star Citizen how can anyone really fault them for that.

[@alberquiky1]

I'm sorry, but did you just praise them for their sky boxes lol? You are literally in a "cell" that is similar to every other cell that bethesda has ever made, except now the skybox reflects some procedural generation. Okay. You know games like Elite Dangerous exist, yeah? No Man's Sky?> Nothing in the game is persistent. The engine revolves around the player, if the player isn't around, than it quite literally *doesn't exist*, to the engine. They can't make it persistent, because their engine *isn't made for that*, that is why Fallout 76 was a horrific buggy mess, because it tried to jam persistency into a game engine, that is literally built ***against persistency***, and any bethesda lie about budget, is them not wanting to develop a new engine, and use the same one from morrowwind.@@Mike-sf7ex

[@daeamiralis]

I really like to see that you and pat take totally different directions on your videos despite working so closely together. Good stuff.

[@koolaidman4869]

It's a testament to Bethesda's failures when two different long-form analysis videos can cover the same game and not repeat each other.

[@ASTROPLANET13]

​@@koolaidman4869KZbin keeps recommending me Star Citizen reviews.... And I'll keep clicking on them.

[@TheL0ngbeard]

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that open world games are not about their size, but their density. If the game is large but points of interest are far between, the boredom sets in, while if there is something interesting every few steps, you don't mind the game being small in comparison. Feels like Starfield took that to the maximum spreading a bit of butter over a galaxy wide slice of bread.

[@DNovac]

Exectly. I better prefer a Skyrim city with 2 and a half houses and 10 residents but with full interior, dialogs and history, than a big empty space city with hundreds of creepy as hell npc-dolls.

[@FhtagnCthulhu]

I disagree a bit, I think there is value in the quiet parts of exploration and in providing a sense of scale. You want to feel that the possibilities are massive, whether by a sense of scale, or by density. Starfield is bad at that too though. I think many elder scrolls fans are surprised Morrowind is the smallest open world TES game. It forces you to explore and pay attention to your surroundings and provides you with interesting discoveries in a way that make it feel larger than it really is.

[@blueblazer9991]

"Generic Orchestral OST" has probably become my biggest pet peeve in gaming, I am so done and over it If you have an orchestral OST I need it to be something memorable and unique, like what Bear McCreary did for GoW or the consistently fantastic music produced by Masayoshi Soken

[@Nurix09]

yeah.... it all sounds so samey and makes me sleepy.

[@gapho5198]

Well that once had the right man for the job, but because HR or the board of directors don't have a single vertebrae between them Jeremy got fired.

[@Bomberman66Hell]

Funny how Bethesda got it right... Twelve years ago... And can't do it now.

[@andreyu5640]

Listen to Plague Tale Requiem soundtracks. Some of them are masterpieces

[@sixwingedasura3059]

I just want a densely packed experience. Skyrim was the last Besthesda game I really enjoyed because you couldn't move five feet without tripping over something to explore or do. Most "open world" games these days are too spread out, and not enough to do.

[@gabrielt6570]

Yeah the nordic ruin puzzles, the amazing caves (darkwater crossing, giants grove), dwemer ruins with semi-hidden chests, all the alters and shrines with cool statues and architecture, the mountains with hard to get to ore....it just goes on and on. Starfield had absolutely zero cool things to explore...literally zero.

[@wdl2499]

You know, when there was oblivion with its less dense with content than skyrim or 3d fallouts maps - there was this feeling that beating it(finishing all quests, visiting all dungeons, etc) is possible. Now when i was playing fo4 or skyrim i was never able to visit all the dungeons or to do all quests. You just grind and grind, looking at every stone and checking every inch in fear of missing out on stuff Tldr skyrim and 3d fo's maps are way too big. Resources spent on maps full with items youll never find and dungeons youll never visit better be spend on quests or game mechanics

[@AyyyGabagool]

I straight up alt f4ed the game when I spent 2 hours fucking around with the ship builder trying to make my ultimate spaceship, fighting against those stupid limitations, just for me to hit the wrong combination of buttons and lost the entire thing by backing out of the shipbuilder by accident. Haven't touched that pile of garbage since then. Nice video.

[@BigMan7o0]

Starfield feels to me like the culmination of the direction they started going with FO4. FO4 had an ocean of content but with the depth of a mud puddle, and I feel like that describes Starfield perfectly. I think the idea of a BGS in space could've worked, but it NEEDED to be a slightly narrower scope, with more hand crafted depth to what was there. IMO they wanted to do too many things at once, and ended up doing them all half assed to fit them all in I am honestly VERY worried for TES6

[@BigMan7o0]

@@kay94 Of course Fallout 4 has more players than NV, its a newer game with better mod support. FO4s mod support is the ONLY reason it kept any semblance traction, if it had bad/no mod support I can guarantee it would be *dead* right now. As for Starfield theres only a ton of hours of content if you crank the difficulty or wander SUPER hard. my first playthrough was only about 120 hours including afk time, so likely closer to 90-100 real game hours. And that was a damn near 100% completion, on the highest difficulty from start to finish, exploring pretty hard up until the last bit of my playthrough when it sunk in how barren and repetitive the game and world is. They didn't set out to make it as enjoyable to as many people as possible, they had no vision for what the game should be. Todd said "space rpg" and that was it. No plan, no ideas, no cohesion, just throw a bunch of space shit at a space wall and hope the no gravity helps it stick. Overall it wasn't a BAD game imo, but at most its a 6.5 in its current state.

[@conformistbastard9842]

I've been worried about tes6 since that "trailer" of a barren landscape.

[@Hirotoro4692]

"slightly" narrower in scope? The hell are you using the word sightly for? Say what you mean! You damn well know it needed to be MAJORLY narrower!

[@daveys_gaming_corner]

I'm not worried about TES6. They nail every Elder Scrolls imo.

[@BigMan7o0]

@@Hirotoro4692 nah I really think they only needed to cut back like 10% maybe 15% of the scope, spend a year or two more on it, and it could've been great.

[@ewjiml]

I couldn’t understand why I liked Elite: Dangerous so much…..you nailed it on the head…..the devs never betrayed the illusion of scale and travel. It was so amazing in Elite: Dangerous that no other game has made travel as exciting to me since.

[@spook9155]

Actually, in skyrim when you alert an enemy they do usually call for help, or at the very least when they engage in combat with you others who are nearby (i.e in earshot i suppose( come and attack you as well. So the 10 year old game still has better AI

[@CharlieKellyEsq]

I really enjoy these video's. It's not because I hate bethesda, quite the opposite. I loved this company 20 years ago. I didn't have steam back then, but I bet I put in 5000 hours into morrowind and oblivion. These were the best games I had ever played. I loved this company and put them on a pedestal that no other gaming company has ever been close to reaching. That is why I'm so disappointed with their latest installments of games. This one especially hurt. Starfield was a new IP, they could do whatever they wanted... and they made this...

[@WackyIraqi777]

That's what killed me. It's not just that Starfield is bad. It's that they had (effectively) unlimited time, unlimited money, a new IP, and this turd is what came out. And of course that they have the audacity to insult my intelligence and respond to my negative review with a response that boils down to "you're playing it wrong." I also cannot understand how ANYONE finds this game to be anywhere above a 4/10.

[@mightywoll3]

​@@WackyIraqi777 Its just more Bethesda Slop, imo the biggest problem is that there are just too few dealers in town so bethesda is never under pressure to change anything, even with SF the major criticism i see from "more casual players" is that it isnt a connected world, when that is imo a minor issue for what the game wants to portray.

[@ummerfarooq5383]

​@@WackyIraqi777 87/100 - honest reviews. 4/10 - suspect

[@WackyIraqi777]

​@@ummerfarooq5383You are on drugs if you think this game is an 87 out of 100. I am certain you can't possibly justify that by pointing at gameplay or writing or anything else.

[@whiteobama3032]

After playing hundreds of hours in Morrowind, I was super disappointed with how Oblivion came out. Its been downhill since then.

[@ishmaelnemo8227]

It's a Christmas miracle! Can't wait to watch this through, I'm impressed you managed to actually dredge your way through the game.

[@chrisstabile3243]

I am a person who played Bethesda games precisely because of the exploration. However, those games were packed with neat little stories that didn’t necessarily have any gameplay value - they were rewards of said exploration. How they think that procedurally generated planets could replace that is mind boggling, especially since they did add some elements of those types of things - just not on any the planets

[@byleth0]

I have to say Starfield might be one of the most entertaining games ever. I mean, I never even purchased it and I got countless hours of entertainment watching KZbin videos about it 🤣

[@deanjustdean7818]

The big space game had its best iteration thirty years ago. It was called Privateer. The sequel to Privateer, Privateer 2: The Darkening, was more open and expansive, but the space travel was not as well realised. What made Privateer great is both gameplay loops were as solid as fukk. One could have hours of fun being a literal Privateer, working as a mercenary on behalf of one or more factions whilst trading whatever one collected from kills, or they could have hours of fun following a quest to discover the origins of an alien artifact. And there were plenty of places to go, as well as a difficulty curve that slowly eased you into the game until you figured out the ideal strategies to pursue each potential path through the game. Sure, there was one kind of vessel that was the only truly viable option for the endgame, but given that we are talking about a thirty year old game occupying at most 60 megabytes of space, that there was more than one pathway to the endgame is pretty incredible. The problem with the big space game is that the genre is limiting in its freedom. If you are free to go anywhere, you have a hard time finding a compelling reason to make your player go anywhere. This is the reason that Privateer was given a core story in which one sought the origins of a McGuffin that was implied to potentially be a big payday for the player character. When a game simply says "go out there and explore" and offers nothing else save maybe a very vague throughline for a McGuffin to pursue, we have a problem. No Man's Sky tried to give us an incentive to go to the centre of the galaxy and a bunch of alien entities, but no implicit or explicit promise of a big reward is offered. And the lengths one has to go to in order to accomplish the goal means that one has to offer a pretty frickin huge reward. Makers of big space sims forget that whilst they have the freedom to go anywhere, do anything, certain rules of gameplay still apply. Another lesson from Privateer was that although there were hundreds of systems and hundreds of planets, you literally could only physically land on perhaps a dozen that offer big chunks of the main story, and one planet or station per system (less, in fact) that offered trade or contracts. Dopey programmers might think this is limiting, but it also enhanced the gameplay. If you came off second best in a fight with pirates or aliens and needed to limp your way back to a friendly settlement for repairs, the reality that not every system had a settlement meant you had to strategise carefully about how to get back. You know, like a good game would make you do.

[@Playbahnosh]

The largest letdown of Starfield is how the main plot and game mechanic essentially makes the rest of the game irrelevant. The focal point of the main plot, the universe jumping, completely destroys most of what would otherwise be called fun in the game. Ship building - It takes an inordinate amount of time to grind out all the levels, skills, unlocks and money to finally be able to build and fly the best ships in the game. Dozens of hours of grinding and messing with the tragic ship builder to finally create a ship I was happy with and served my purpose. Only to basically use it as mobile storage for stuff and companions since space exploration is a bust and ship combat is just unnecessary. And when you jump universes, all your ships are gone. Plus, you get a pre-made starborn ship that only gets better and better the more you universe jump, so doing all that grind again is straight pointless. Outpost building - Once I figured out that outposts are basically useless, I never even built a proper one. I was a huge fan of outpost building in Fallout 4, I spent countless hours on just tinkering with my little towns. But in Starfield, having an outpost is just an exercise in frustration. Requiring ungodly amounts of materials and grinding levels and research....only to basically get a small trickle of resources you can already buy in bulk at shops. I can't even use one as my home base because I can't just store the fruits of my conquests due to the flabbergastingly terrible inventory system. So, yea, no thanks. There's already infinite storage at the HQ and my ship. Other than that outposts serve absolutely no purpose and that saddened me to no end. But even if they did, when you universe jump, all your outposts are gone, all that grind and building is for nothing, so, again, another gameplay mechanic made irrelevant by the main loop. Exploration and crafting - Again with multiverse jumping you lose EVERYTHING, all the stuff you gathered and crafted, grinded countless hours for, armor, weapons, etc., all gone. But, you do get stronger and stronger sets of armor and guns every time you jump, so staying and grinding is, again, made utterly pointless. All the discoveries you've made, the people you befriended, perks and unlocks you got, it's all just gone. The main mechanic of universe jumping makes 90% of the game just freggin pointless. It makes absolutely no sense to do anything other than go straight for the artifacts and temples, since when you jump, you get better ship, gear and space wizard powers anyway. As you keep jumping and get more powerful, the rest of the game just gets more and more meaningless to the point you start wondering why you ever started playing and wasted so much time on this dreck in the first place. Truly, Starfield was a huge mistake.

[@Axterix13]

Slight correction on ship registration. You don't have to talk to anyone to register a ship. You can do it in space, from your ship's menu. This has three advantages: 1) More convenient. 2) It costs less than registering by talking to a technician. 3) In space, you can quickly target your original ship and board it, making it your home ship again afterwards. On the ground, you can fast travel back to your OG ship and make it your home ship again. This way, you avoid being in some crappy ship. Short of it: don't register in person. Just use the menu. Also, it is stupid you have to make it your home ship. Another dumb decision. As for landed ships, most stay landed for quite a while. Only a few take off right away. However, if you kill off the people that disembark from them, then they will take off. So board the ship first, take it over, and only then go kill the people outside of the ship. Another issue with ship combat: The weapon ranges are poorly conceived. Missiles have the longest range and excel at hitting hulls. But enemies at long range are the ones that probably have shields up. So they suck. Lasers are good at taking down shields, and typically have the shortest range. So they too suck. Autocannons, again, good at hitting hulls, longer range than lasers. Overall, particle beams are just the way to go, as they have a pretty decent range and are good at both shredding shields and hull. And then there are turrets, which are great, if not the most accurate against moving targets, but only when they work. They have a bad tendency to decide not to fire. And you can't tell them to attack a target, say if a critical hit kills the crew and you want to blow up the ship for the xp. It'll just tell you you can't tell the turret to fire. Stupid. If I target a ship and tell the turrets to fire at it, they should engage the freaking target. Personally, not a fan of the dragonshouts. They don't fit into the world. If it was Mass Effect and bionics, then sure. Bring it on. But here, it is all "NASA-Punk", right? Nope, sorry. Here you go, player, you are special and can haz dragonshouts. Either make it part of the world or leave it out. Don't kinda cram it in there because you wrote a shitty story to justify NG+ in game.

[@Axterix13]

The worst skill I found to up was concealment. I wanted it so I could snipe at range. Which is probably the main reason most people go for it, I imagine. To up it, you have to do melee attacks from sneak. And lots of them. Starfield's melee combat system is absolute trash, and it is making you do something else (melee) so you can up a skill for its other benefit (how it boosts ranged attacks). Sure, you can go cheese it on a planet with lots of low level critters, but it is still dumb. In order to shoot for more damage from stealth, you have to go melee things. As far as combat goes, definitely get the ability to mod weapons. Most weapons without mods are trash. Sure, you can get a good drop or buy certain ones from stores, but the former is pure luck based and the latter doesn't offer a ton of variety nor let you customize the weapon exactly how you want. And nope, you don't need outpost building for this. Just buy what you need from stores or maybe mine some minerals yourself. Outpost building should only be done if you want to use it to farm a ton of xp or you just enjoy designing cool looking outposts. Otherwise, ignore the garbage system. The thing I hated the most about crafting is how they half-assed the "tracking" bit. It is handy to know what you are looking for, in case you run across it. The problem is that that isn't what it does. It flags everything that a given bit of research or mod needs, regardless of if I have enough of it or not. Now, that's maybe okay for mods, since I might want to slap scopes on multiple weapons or something. But not research. I'm researching this thing once. When I have enough, I have enough. Quit telling me I need copper when I've already completed the copper part of it.

[@lord_horrick]

I can't stand that they added "magic" to it. This is supposed to be sci-fi, you could make technology the "magic". Cloaking systems, heartbeat sensors, repulsor arrays

[@donovian2538]

The problem that we have is that Bethesda perfectly insulated themselves against criticism. Anything we complain about, they can pretend was left there for other content to be added to.

[@cleverman383]

Whether its KOTOR, Mass Effect, or Outer Worlds, there have been many Space RPGs that had no "space exploration", simply go into your ship, fast travel from one planets port to another planet's port, and you're good. But the problem with Starfield over these other games is that it pretends that there's more to it than that. It genuinely may have been a better game if it simply removed the space flight sections entirely and just had you fast travel from one planet map to another, but Bethesda preferred to confuse us about what type of game it was by making us feel like we actually had the ability to pilot our own spaceship through space.

[@00110000]

After watching a bunch of these Starfield reviews, it's interesting to see just how varied the gripes are with the game's failings. I really like your review though, as you seem to truly grasp Bethesda as a company and insightfully compare Starfield to its predecessors. I especially liked your rebuttal of others' claim that Bethesda's world design is outdated when they didn't even use their old design in this entry. Looking forward to the follow up.

[@TheHalogen131]

Yeah, it's cool to see, that no matter the perspective, you can always find SOMETHING, that doesn't work.

[@ItsNotXhad]

re: outposts and onboarding - I strongly suspect this is the result of cut content, or more precisely an overhaul to route around content they couldn't polish into something they were willing to inflict upon players. A lot of people have given various hypotheses why one thing or another looks like something was cut or nerfed (much like the fuel and affliction mechanics you talk about in the video), but one thing I rarely see discussed is that early in the main quest when you're finding a temple you get popups telling you that you can build an outpost and scan booster to increase the range of your scanner. This is absurd because the quest marker is already in range of the temple, 100% of the time. I even have a screenshot of this popup *with the temple in question already on my screen*. I can imagine a hypothetical design of Starfield where this actually made sense. Maybe instead of giving you a marker to the exact location, the best Vladimir can do is say that there's a temple somewhere in a specific planet, or even a specific system. Maybe you're expected to survey planets and find some kind of breadcrumbs to lead you closer to the temple. Maybe in the meantime you build temporary outposts (you can strip down any outpost to get back the materials you spent making it, so you could hypothetically do this constantly if you had the will and the storage space), both to assist with the scans and to gather resources or set up cargo links for any resource-based objectives or missions you have going on. Maybe you hit up some of those randomly generated civilian outposts and do the mission boards there (did you know that mission boards in the various friendly outposts tend to *overwhelmingly* have objectives in the system where you find them, and tend to offer at least one mission even if you're "full up" on the ones from major cities?), which gives you more excuse to hop from planet to planet and wander around, possibly eventually hitting the temple you're looking for, even if it's by accident. You could even build your own mission boards in your own outpost to make this process easier. The problem is that all the mechanics I just described above, I mean literally every last one of them, is an un-fun chore to most people. Surveying is a bit confusing until you "crack the code," then it's just boring. Outposts are a finicky chore. The random missions get repetitive fast by repeatedly dragging you through the small number of randomly placed dungeons. It's really botched that the one mandatory faction is Constellation, the explorers faction, and they couldn't make exploration any fun. So in the name of making the worst parts optional they had to fall back on just having Vladimir tell you where everything is so the entire main quest is the equivalent of asking the Greybeards to tell you where to find dragonshouts in Skyrim. Even if you don't buy my speculation above, consider: all the Constellation mission board missions are about surveying. While these missions are optional, the faction involved is, again, the only mandatory faction. Why would they knowingly do this if wandering planets is so boring? I suspect that they meant for the exploring planets to be more fun and had to reluctantly deemphasize it when things didn't come together.

[@DNovac]

Instead of temles, they should add a quests to accure powers. May be some puzzles in other universe. Or make time trevel to specific moments in the main story to intervent. Would be awesome if Hunter was you all the time. There are a planty of ideas how it can be implemented. For me, it is not engine or gameplay or emptiness bugged the most, but poor storytelling. I recall basicly 2 or 3 good quests in the whole game. It is boring af... All universe looks like morning musical in the kindergarten.

[@kpgames7288]

Even with all its flaws I can't escape the beauty in just trucking through space in elite dangerous, I've sunk way to much time into just flying through space in that game

[@zuzoscorner]

At least, you can fly through space and not just in front of a pretty PNG lol

[@TheSergio1021]

I suppose its the same appeal that Truck Driver Simulator has on a niche audience.

[@gs8494]

That's how I enjoy the game, I think of it as a chill experience, I'm currently heading for Beagle point but this time I went around a third of the way to Sag A then took a hard right and I'm flying counter clockwise around the galactic core just 30 or 40 jumps every few days or so, I have this kink where I land on a planet after my last jump and take a few screenshots to catalogue my journey and I love playing this way, the game has a lot of flaws but a slow burn experience like I'm doing now is perfect.

[@Sargelo]

Hi, We appreciate you taking the time to provide your review and sorry to hear that you did not enjoy your time in Starfield. If you feel that things are getting boring, there is so much more to do than just the main mission! There are many side missions where you can learn more about the people and story of Starfield. You can take time to explore various planets for resources and items. Break the law by smuggling and selling contraband. Build your own Outposts and Starships and customize them to your enjoyment. There are many things to do. Starfield is an RPG with hundreds of hours of quests to complete and characters to meet. Most quests will also vary on your character’s skills and decisions, massively changing the outcome of your playthrough. Try creating different characters with backgrounds and characteristics that clash or are oppositive of your previous character. You will feel like you are playing a totally different game. Put points in different skills from a character you’ve previously created, and you are now faced with completely different decisions to make and difficulties to encounter. There are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you’ve never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours. Even after completing the Main Story, your adventure doesn’t end! You can continue onto New Game+ to keep exploring Starfield and all that is out there! Thanks again and we hope you return to your journey through space soon! Warm regards, Bethesda ChatGPT Support

[@unnatural_log6472]

This is the best Starfield analysis I've watched. Excited to see you finish it.

[@chemicalmix]

Wow. What a review. This video deserves much more love than it's getting. 5/5.

[@nicholasnorris3210]

I was able to enjoy the game that was created, albeit it wasn't a great game. The BIGGEST issue I had with everything is that it wasn't the game they promised to make. "Look at a planet and go there." It actually drives me insane that he was capable of smiling and saying those words, knowing he meant "You can look at a planet, click on it to open the fast travel map, watch and unskippable cutscene, appear in front of the planet after a loading screen, click on the planet again so that you can open up the fast travel map for the planet, click a spot on the planet to land, watch an unskippable cutscene, watch a loading screen, watch another unskippable cutscene, press a button to leave your ship, watch another unskippable cutscene, and then you're on the planet."

[@SYLRMHA]

It just works

[@bumblebeebat-te5xv]

When the word "menu" becomes a verb to denote the main method of traversing a game world, you know you've got a problem.

[@Railith]

I'm glad you're feeling better and getting able to put Starfield behind you.

[@PensFan35]

I didn’t think I’d notice the lack of gore and viscera in Starfield but after seeing how tonally neutered and safe the rest of the game is it felt like I was playing a game that should’ve been rated ‘E for Everyone’ What the fuck were they even trying to do here?

[@dudeskeela]

wow @ 20:40 nearly left me speechless... just imagine playing Skyrim with Starfield exploration. rerolling Whiterun over and over until a dungeon spawns 💀

[@collinames1803]

The ONE pro I give Starfield is it's a AAA studio not doing microtransactions. Unfortunately the reason there arent any is because they are waiting for the community to make them. So I must now move that one pro into cons.

[@hermitxIII]

Looks like someone didn't get the memo about the paid mods incoming on the Microsoft store. Not only are there going to be microtransactions, they expect modders to do all the work for them at no cost to themselves.

[@martinjrgensen8234]

Guess you didn’t play 76😂

[@FeelingShred]

and giving the player the ability to instantly Quicksave-Quickload... can you imagine how worst the game would be if we relied on Autosaves 🤣

[@chilbiyito]

Creation club for Starfield coming soon™

[@FeelingShred]

yeah I keep forgetting about it... it's much perverse what they do, let people make mods for free first and later on charge for THEIR work... much more perverse than what the competition does

[@peepingpetersons]

Came to this channel after the podcast on the Patrician channel! Love your work! Just want to say that I’m rooting for you. I have been in those mental spirals before and I was so happy to hear you took the time you needed for yourself! New subscriber and fan keep it up!

[@darwinism8181]

One thing I don't see many people mentioning is how Starfield treats the booster packs; they always just.... move you a given amount, full stop. Doesn't matter if you're on a low-grav world, doesn't matter if there's atmosphere or near vacuum. You just get moved the amount the pack 'fuel' for and when that's over you just cease all upward movement. And it's really obviously just the FO4 power armor jetpack reskinned to use a separate resource pool, too, there's also that.

[@bEtHeSdA_LAME_sTuDi0s]

Nothing fulfils my life more than these hours long videos that I have to rewatch 9 times to fully absorb

[@daheadsmiter2052]

I got banned from steam discussion for saying that starfield is going to be on the rack at gamestop for 5$.

[@ClonesDream]

You really hurt Beth's PR team lmao

[@lunchmeat9118]

This is actually probably the most intelligent and civilized take I’ve heard on Starfield. Not a crazy gamer rage fueled rant, but a methodical and informed essay about exactly why it fails and how it could have been better. Really appreciated, keep writing man. You’re great at it.

[@rdonshatalov]

I really can't comprehend the fact, that after every those times, when his lies were exposed, Tod Howard still manages to pull up a straight face and continue defending his "work". and what really gets me is that he casually admits, that they basically did EVERYTHING (like removing debuff feature) to make the game less interesting, and he is totally ok with that. when I watch Todd getting all apologetic about Starfield, I only hear the chorus form The Chalkeaters: "we don't want ur endless sh**, this is not the game we need"

[@Homiloko2]

It's because he's a scam artist, and people still eat it up. For the most part.

[@rdonshatalov]

@@Homiloko2 agreed

[@romain13100]

There is no space travel in Starfield, we use teleportation, once we understand that the use of the ship no longer has any interest, then we start to wonder why we play

[@rpemulis]

this happened 2 hours into my playthrough and i made it 4 hours in before uninstalling in frustration.

[@williamwhitney5266]

Start Point Loading... Loading... Loading... Hey you made it to your Destination Loading...

[@zackwalkman8574]

​@williamwhitney5266 you forgot the last part ..Loading .......game crash....

[@nealsterling8151]

This happens if a game developer goes for the lowest common denominator in almost every aspect of gameplay. If you assume your audience to be complete morons you game will end up... limited. They tried to please everyone, but ended up pleasing no one.

[@b130610]

1:34:00 on my playthrough, i went straight to the outpost building after the tutorial rather than waiting till late game, and spent 100 hours having a lot of fun playing the game like space factorio. At some point i realized that once you max out the oytpost skills, theres not much use for resources from outposts other than weapon mods and drugs since vendors have basically no money to buy stuff. I never really vibed with the base building in FO4, despite enjoying other aspects, so i was surprised that it was my favorite part of starfield, and that the game let me basically ignore the entire rest of the game to play with it. It made me appreciate Bethesdas absurd dedication to making almost every mechanic optional because at least in my case, kt really did lead to a unique and engaging role playing experience that i never could have had in a more structured and mechanically tight game like Cyberpunk 2077.

[@csam9167]

After Warrior of Skyrim , it time for : "Sufferer of the Starfield"

[@spaghettimonster7010]

Unironically, the name slaps.

[@joshuamoniodis6555]

You did great work with this one PS. You're quality has sky rocketed since your first Deconstruction vid. I hope you're motivated to continue because I love your essays and look forward to all your releases. Also I hope you're doing and feeling better.

[@kloakovalimonada]

Great video, thanks. The issue with Starfield is that they didn't fully commit to anything, so it's not really a space Sim, an RPG, a shooter, it doesn't have aliens and calls itself NASA Punk BUT still have fucking magic in it. It's a mess.