Starfield didn't want me to have fun (Discussion)

[@FerunaLutelou]

You dont have to finish the game to make a review. If the game makes you quit playing, you simply notify the audience that it happened and explain what you think was the reason behind it.

[@xax2952]

but who is the audience for this slop?

[@The_Glazer]

Exactly. You don't need to finish a meal to say it tastes good. A bite or two is fine. You don't need to drive a car until it rusts to say it's fine a year or two is good etc etc.

[@Anedime]

My bad if you got a notice for my previous response. I had the wrong tab opened.

[@pfeilspitze]

100% agreed. Obviously you can't stop after 30 minutes in a game like this, but the whole "your opinion doesn't count unless you played 20+ hours" trend is horrible and toxic.

[@tutorialboss4090]

It is more telling that the game couldn't hold your attention to completion

[@anotherrandomcommenter4473]

Starfield got me back into No Mans Sky.

[@anotherrandomcommenter4473]

They have a free demo going btw

[@nyx9985]

Starfield is what got me to buy NMS!

[@AxiomArchives]

I checked out No Man's Sky when it first launched, but didn't play very much of it. I've heard it's gotten amazing though, so I'll have to go back to it at some point!

[@iRemainNameless]

Ubi did the same with me last week Skull and Bones got me to buy Black Flag

[@peterd9698]

NMS seems to have a pretty clear vision of what it is. I had a quick look. I don't think it is for me because I don't think it is trying to be an RPG. Im still looking for that great space RPG.

[@Emperor-Quill]

What's the point of adding stealth as an option if it's gonna be more bare bones than a granny in her grave? That's honestly just sad.

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, I was honestly shocked with how little the game seemed designed around allowing stealth. Like they couldn't even give me a throwing rock to distract people lol. What's even funnier is that in the Starfield showcase, with that example they gave with the vents, if the enemy hadn't been right below the vent, there would be no way to tell if there were any enemies looking in the direction of where you would be dropping. You have no way to survey or control the field, and either one or both of those things are crucial for good stealth imo.

[@LukasJampen]

That's how it feels for a number of the mechanics. They have a specific way they want you to play it but at the same time they put in all the stuff people expect from previous games, like stealth, melee, outposts, lockpicking and an open world but implemented them in the worst ways possible and almost completely irrelelvant. If it was a linear story based action game that takes 20 hours it would have been way better paced and just an overall better experience.

[@blue-dragon]

@@AxiomArchives Its even worse when you compare it to Skyrim. Somehow they made an already barebones stealth system even worse.

[@Grogeous_Maximus]

Everything in the game is added, so they could check a box. Parts of the game are gorgeous to look at, but the game mechanics and the game design is by no means a labor of love. It clearly shows.

[@robsolf]

31:30 As is evident in every planet you visit, people have already come to the planet, found out it has nothing worthwhile, and has left decades earlier. All that remains are supplies they left in a cave, or pirates in a facility where they are confident that no one will want to go to. It makes perfect sense in many ways, but it's terrible for a game. And it's remarkably similar in philosophy to Fallout 76 at launch, where the Vaultkeeper already went and had the adventures there were to have in the areas you visit, and you're just there following them for... reasons.

[@SirMacNaught]

This sums up one of my biggest gripes. The more you play the game, the more you realize you're too late and missed all of the interesting stuff that happened.

[@KA-vs7nl]

plus the game happens after this awesome galactic war supposedly happened? why should i care about anything when the party is over?

[@AlanStrandbygaard]

Stealth in Starfield is only implemented to keep you from progressing too fast. If you play the game you will discover everything in the game is designet to slow you down, nothing more nothing less. Stealth doesn't work at all. If you move fast and kill an opponent in the outer area of the combat zone, like an lonely guard, every one else in the base will be alerted automatically. This is not immersive at all. If you kill someone after having moved extremely slow all the time you will be rewarded and get away with a stealth kill. The rest of the enemies will probably not notice you. If you tried this you will discover that they are just standing around, sometimes frozen in weird positions. Everything in Starfield is designet to slow you down and prevent you from progressing too fast. Well, that is how most games work, but in Starfield's case it is extreme. Notice how you had to walk endless planet surfaces before the vehicle was introduced? You had to use HUNDREDS of hours to get a decent set of gear. Legendary items spawn so rarely it isn't worth the effort. If you want to upgrade items you have to spend countless hours to find and pick up those. When you have them you find out you have to do some research first in order to be ALLOWED to eventually upgrade your upgrade skills. Add to this the millions of locks you have to pick all the time. These are part of the massive derailing effort to have you PLAY the game more. Play, play and keep playing. That is the idea. In the meanwhile Bethesda screwed the modding community which left. Bethesda figured out they would make a game where they could introduce and control all the mods and also earn money on each of them. The main idea was to create a money machine keeping players tied to the game and offer mods (small quests, accessoires, alterations etc.) for many years. They just didn't realize that their game wasn't good enough to enable this in a good way. The game was released in a scraped version that ended up being extremely boring and in the end frustrated the fans. I reinstalled the game lately just to see if they managed to implement something good. It was out of boredom I can assure you. But nonetheless I started the game and found the vehicle to be useful. There are some graphical adjustments and some difficulty settings I found usable. But in general the game is still boring. I guess the reason is the lack of work put in the main idea of parallel worlds. If you start a NG+ the world still looks exactly the same. The only difference is how some NPC behave towards you. And then you can do the same ALL over again. Why? Where is the fight for good or vs. evil? Where is MY feeling of actually being important to the story?

[@ourochroma]

It's not you Axiom, the game is unfinished

[@qwqwqwqw99]

I fell for the "it gets good after 20 hours" trick. It didn't. It just gave me more time to get frustrated, bored, and disappointed. I wish I had the good sense to bail out before the refund period ran out. My hope for ES6 is non existent at this point.

[@remixmaster5000]

Played it for the first time last month in anticipation for the expansion and i was bored until 18 hours in where my skill tree started to really form

[@Spectre-907]

The jet packs one is especially egregious because you *have* to equip one as part of your suit or you cant go outside, and until you spec into it, its just dead carryweight

[@AxiomArchives]

I know right?? I will never understand why they just didn't let you use it right away as default, and have the skills for it just be additive on top of that.

[@trucid2]

Space OSHA won't let you use a jetpack until you get your certification lol.

[@drtaverner]

Companions need a "passive, active, neutral, aggressive" mechanic.

[@cassieudy5718]

I love your section about stealth. It's an absolutely raw experience from a normal player trying to do normal things, and wondering why the game doesn't let you. Bethesda needs to study that and learn from it. How are you supposed to know that it's SPACE SUIT NOISE, not line of sight, that was alerting enemies? And you need to wear lighter weight equipment to make less noise. How could you know that? The game literally never explains it. I have hundreds of hours in Starfield and I genuinely don't think that equipment weight is ever explained anywhere. It's a mechanic inherited from other BGS games that actually have armor weight categories. It's a lot more obvious that a sneaky thief wears light weight leather armor in Skyrim. Not so obvious in Starfield when everything is just "Space Suit". GOOD LUCK new player! Enjoy!

[@AxiomArchives]

There's no way...is that really it?! That sounds so ridiculous because you would think if that stat existed on the spacesuits, it would be shown with all the other stats. Is it in the games code or something, is that how you were able to find it? Or is that stat supposed to be just reflected in the weight of each spacesuit, and that's how the game is trying to convey that? Because that's such a massive design oversight if that's the case.

[@cassieudy5718]

@@AxiomArchives The stat exists. It's just "weight." It's all just a copy/paste of mechanics from Elder Scrolls and Fallout. It wasn't changed or elaborated on for Starfield. BGS assumes their players know how it works by now. Weight plays a big role in the stealth calculation. You could take a heavy weapon like a minigun, roll the titanium perk on it to reduce its weight massively, and all of the sudden its a full-auto sneak attack critical machine, same as a tiny pistol. It is never explained in-game. lol

[@MMMNemesis]

Starfield led me to try out Cyberpunk. I am also considering playing the Mass effect trilogy after getting it cheap on sale. The most interesting thing Starfield made me do was play The Invincible. That game was so good I read the book it was based on, so suddenly I am reading a sci-fi classic, all because of Starfield...

[@valentinvas6454]

I also started to play Cyberpunk and Baldur's Gate 3 after Starfield and it's shocking how incompetent and outdated Starfield is. Like the UI, the graphics, the performance, the art style, NPC AI, level design, music, writing, world building, combat.... Everything is light years behind these masterpieces. Even a mediocre game like AC Valhalla is much better in certain areas. Even Fallout 4 was so much more enjoyable.

[@TheGallicWitch]

You should absolutely play Mass Effect. It's my favourite trilogy of all time. ME1 is the best in my opinion, followed by ME3 and I've never been a big fan of ME2 but it's still a great game given where the trilogy has placed the bar in terms of quality. Go all out on roleplaying your Shepard (personally I prefer female Shepard because of her voice actress and the specific options relating to gender in the game) and report back to this comment if you play it one day so I can know who you romanced in each game. Personally I don't romance anyone in ME1 (though the Kaidan and Liara romance are pretty nice imo) and then Garrus for the next two games.

[@wastelanderone]

I played Starfield after Baldur's Gate 3, and it was pathetic compared to that. Then I decided to finally play Cyberpunk 2077 and that, while I have some issues with it, I still had an absolute blast and man, it makes me love No Man's Sky even more.

[@gergopahollo]

I think that Bethesda’s design approach of “just say yes to the player always” and “never lock the player out of content” finally caught up to them and always explaining their shitiness away with just “oh, it’s part of that Bethesda charm” caught up to us. Starfield is not a well written game. It’s a not a well designed game, and it’s not a well executed RPG. The only thing that could have kept it alive was the exploration - which they sacrificed on the altar of having features that look cool on the back of the box and in an E3 presentation.

[@HickoryDickory86]

Apparently, the problem with stealth in this game is how godly it was in Skyrim. It was incredibly powerful (some would argue too powerful) in that game. And rather than take a critical, intellectual look at it to see how they could improve it, in typical Bethesda fashion they decided, instead, to be lazy and "fIxEd it" by nerfing it to hell and making it useless. Bethesda are failures when it comes to listening to critical feedback and iterating upon their game design.

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, I'd heard Skyrim stealth was great, and that's part of why it shocked me that Starfield was so bare-bones. That actually kinda prompted the question of "are all Bethesda games like this" because I thought I was misremembering Skyrim.

[@HickoryDickory86]

@@AxiomArchives Another example is swimming. Apparently water and swimming physics libraries got deleted from the engine somewhere along the line during Starfield's development. I just don't understand why these things happen. It makes absolutely no sense to me. Why constantly reinvent the wheel instead of iterating upon what you've already done?

[@The_hot_blue_fire_guy]

⁠@@HickoryDickory86 I think that the creation engine can be blamed for most of the issues in Bethesdas games, that engine is over 20 years old and held together with pixie dust and dreams. If they had used UE5 or unreal engine, then 80% of the Bethesda jank could be fixed. Sure there would still be issues, but there would be far fewer issues for a technical standpoint.

[@HickoryDickory86]

@@The_hot_blue_fire_guy No, that's not the case. For one, UE5 and Unreal Engine are the same thing. Second, the Unreal Engine is also equally as old and yet people keep worshiping it as the second coming of Christ. It isn't the end-all, be-all of gaming. (I actually hate the CDPR dropped their REDEngine for Unreal. We need technological diversity, as it breeds innovation as well as diversity of game design.) I agree that Creation Engine is held together by pixie dust and dreams, but that's Bethesda's fault. Hell, even Rockstar's RAGE Engine, which they used for _Red Dead Redemption 2_ started it's life as a table tennis (ping pong) game engine. But it got where it is today because Rockstar made the investment of time and money to improve their technology properly. Creation Engine can be equally as great an engine and is a godsent for modders, but it desperately needs a lot of TLC by competent programmers who can dig deep and fix some of its fundamental flaws (like data/asset streaming) that have been duct-tapped and bubblegummed over through the years, to begin paying off all that technological debt they've been accumulating for decades. That may mean entire subsystems need to be rewritten, but so be. It needs to happen, because they can't keep going forward with it in this state. And if they aren't willing to do that, then yes, they need to move on to something else. But I would not recommend Unreal. I would much rather they go with a free and open source engine (like Godot, Stride3D, Bevy, etc.), which they can then freely retool/overhaul for their use case and game style. This would also mean modders have equal access to the open source tools to continue their great work (provided Bethesda didn't change too much so to make them unusable).

[@The_hot_blue_fire_guy]

@@HickoryDickory86 oops! 😅 i ment UE5 or unity, accidental typo. But yah, I agree that if they can fix the creation engine then they should keep it, but right now it’s just holding them back. The best thing would probably be to use UE5 or unity for a game or two and while they are doing that, have a team of competent developers 10-15 people working full time to rework and retool the creation engine, this gives main developers a half decade or so where they don’t need to touch the creation engine and the engine team could have free access to overhaul the engine completely without risking any games currently in development. Or Bethesda could just ask daddy Microsoft for one of there other teams engines that they use for their games. Maybe Bethesda could barrow one of Activision blizzard’s engines? The benefits of being owned by the same parent company.

[@_indrid_cold_]

When I start Starfield my Xbox keeps going into sleep mode. Who could blame it? But I love Starfield because it drove me to buy Baldurs Gate 3 and No Mans Sky which are actually fun to play.

[@Meta_Mage]

Thanks for your insight as someone who has never played a Bethesda game! I played every single one of them since Morrowind and can say the following: They're all heavily flawed games that make up some of these flaws by just letting you bumble around an interesting world at your own pace. Starfield takes away this one massive strength by segmenting the game into thousands of procedually generated maps and small locales across a boring, dead galaxy.

[@AxiomArchives]

Thank you for watching!! Yeah, I feel like the segmenting especially really hurt the game. If the game had just been smaller and more seamless, it could have been denser and more immersive.

[@prauwnsauce]

Starfield made me realize all video games are is the people who made it, if those people suck it’s probably gonna suck too.

[@generalseal6948]

this game won "most innovative" award on steam... a 3080 not being enough to run your game doesnt mean its innovative it means its excessively demanding and poorly optimized

[@chri-k]

The title is the best summary of the game i've heard thus far.

[@AxiomArchives]

Thank you, I'm very proud of it lol. It was the perfect way to describe my experience :D

[@jumpsplat120]

Starfield is a really bad game, and is nothing like Fallout or Skyrim. You basically picked the worst game to play from Bethesda, and I say that as a big Bethesda fan.

[@AxiomArchives]

It's kinda insane that even long-time Bethesda fans think their brand new IP is bad.

[@watchout5508]

Its not jst bad, it's pathetic! Starfield is all the worst of Bethesda in one game... what upsets me most is how Todd said its the game hes always wanted to make...i have no faith for TES6 anymore...​@AxiomArchives

[@joeking9760]

I think it's kinda insane that there are bethesda fans.

[@arandomguy6114]

All Bethesda games are fundamentally bad. The only good thing about them are the mods.

[@Astar24653]

Worst game? What about fallout 76

[@brianhanna3128]

Full admission - I got to the 4th new game plus before the bugs, stutters, in fact all the technical problems finally overcame both the level of frustrated determination to see if it truly was where the actual long term gameplay lay (it wasn't) and my ability to withstand the sheer mediocrity of nearly everything I couldn't skip in pursuit of a faster completion (I did enjoy a lot of the combat but there's never as much of it as you think). Dull first 20 odd hours but I persevered and started to enjoy it, again largely because of the combat and the anticipation of exploration and flight - I'd been spoiled by Elite Dangerous which is a game that really knows how to use procedural generation to properly convey the scale & wonder of the cosmos without generating empty places on a handful of planets or moons just for the purpose, and the flight & space combat models are still untouched, so much so that Starfield's was extremely simplistic and half-arsed by comparison. The companions were just dull despite some of the voice talent recruited and wasted & I wish Bethesda/Todd would drop their obsession with cowboys because I took one look at Sam Coe and noped right on out. However, still I persevered until even the enjoyable things became simply mediocre, companions were there to be left behind at all available opportunities, future content you haven't reached that I won't spoil but god it all just made me cringe by the third playthrough if not the second or first, I could go on but I think you get the idea. I gave it a fair go by any measure but anyone seriously expecting this to be a game of even medium-length repeat play is in for a rude awakening. So I reached the same opinion you did with vastly less efficiency. Cherish the hours you have smartly chosen not to waste!

[@AxiomArchives]

I applaud your determination at least! There's nothing wrong with spending that time if you were enjoying it in the moment. If it hadn't been for the performance issues, I might have continued myself. But if even someone who got to a 4th NG+ is feeling like their time was wasted, I can't imagine what my experience would have felt like.

[@robsolf]

It's funny to see you describe it like this, but that's kinda how I felt, too. Even more than that; to me, it reeks of contempt for its players, which was then affirmed by how they treated the people who posted negative reviews about it. I was a longtime fallout fan, and enjoyed many of the elder scrolls games, as well. But after this game, those sequels are off my radar. I saw the signs of their attitudes toward fans with Fallout 76 as well as many of the "ultimate editions" they'd put out with just blatently deceptive, poor quality real world goods, and decided I don't want to give them any more of my money. If I wanted to pay someone who thinks I'm dirt, I'd get an Onlyfans account.

[@hoo2042]

The real shame is how little your opinion is actually an outlier... I played somewhere around 110 hours total (I hit the same dropping off point you did, but kept going out of morbid curiosity and as a meditation on game design), and the conclusions you came to are basically correct and hold up all the way through. Lol, I'm still watching "Starfield bad" videos a year later... Sigh... Watching a train wreck can be oddly compelling.

[@AxiomArchives]

Sometimes I wonder if I would have grown to like the game more if I hadn't had performance issues and had been able to engage with the game for longer as normal. Comments like these do not give me confidence lol. And I know what you mean! There's no denying that it can be fun to watch people criticize games, though I genuinely tried to make it informed criticism instead of just dunking on it for the sake of dunking on it.

[@setaindustries]

I feel like Elite: Dangerous did it's early game so well. You go from doing low-paying tutorial missions in a 5-star starter bubble to suddenly having access to the entire galaxy with all of it's riches and potential being laid out in front of you. The scale of the galaxy genuinely made me scared but also I have never felt so free in a video game before. Soon enough I was trading cargo worth an order of magnitude more than the starter ship in a spacecraft the size of a residential building. Progressing felt great because I decided to trade cargo and I decided to go pirate hunting, I didn't do these things because some NPC told me to do it.

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, that early game sounds fulfilling and rewarding!! And if Starfield would have been built on the same design philosophy, it could have felt just as rewarding. I've heard a lot of people like Elite: Dangerous. Maybe I'll check it out at some point!

[@detectivemadoka69420]

Starfield is a poorly made mod for Fallout 4, even Fallout 4's "Project Lunar" is more interesting than Starfield.

[@lanterns_glow]

53:15 Most of the Starfield budget (ALLEGEDLY) went up Emil's nose.

[@robsolf]

28:15 For me, the beginning interactions at the mining facility and at "The Lodge" made me feel like I feel when a stranger tries to scam me. If you've ever been approached out of nowhere by a multi-level-marketing person, or a "Dude, I wanna buy your car! Name your price!" con artist, that's how those events feel. You don't really do anything at the mining facility, yet he hands you HIS SHIP and a robot AND THIS "artifact" that is so GD important and inexplicably trusts you to go to the Lodge. This same behavior continues at the Lodge and it in no way feels earned. Passing out from touching an artifact and fighting off a small band of pirates is no reason for these characters to treat you like they do. If it had turned out these folks liked to talk a big game but would never step out of the lodge, themselves(wanted YOU to do all the work and take all the risk)... I might call it a clever bit of writing. But that's not at all how they're portrayed.

[@Dracas42]

I personally don't believe you should have to finish a game to leave a review. Games are an investment of your time, and if you spent several hours of your life being frustrated or bored, then I think that's valuable input for a potential consumer.

[@Ronin11111111]

Watching a Bethesda experts 8 hour full review and your recounting of your 10 hour first time Bethesda experience, both arriving at the same conclusion of "don't even bother with this game" is kind of magical.

[@AxiomArchives]

Holy crap, someone has an 8 hour review of Starfield?? That's some commitment lol, I might have to check that out myself. Good to know that the end result is shared though xD

[@Ronin11111111]

@@AxiomArchives Yeah it's by the channel PatricianTV.

[@LukasJampen]

​@@Ronin11111111he goes really indepth about how broken everything is from pacing to storytelling, quest design and weapon variety. The game has so many flaws and unconnected systems you'd think every mechanic was ripped from a different game and mashed togheter in this (because they are).

[@silvio6377]

lol I also gave up after 7 hours. I’m a big Bethesda games fan but Starfield is just annoying. I really don’t know what the developers were thinking.

[@bawkbawk3236]

Starfield is nothing but busy work and fetch quests. Your quest journal will fill up with garbage just from walking around and catching a word of npc dialog. "Hey stranger, I lost my favorite pencil on Earth. My mother made it on her deathbed with nothing but a nail clipper. Please find it for me. I'll be here, nursing the hell out of this drink, while you spend two hours kicking rocks on a dead, boring planet." I played it longer than I should have. I'm still salty about it. ETA: I'm surprised using health packs wasn't locked in the massive skill tree since everything else was.

[@dylankent9644]

Appreciate the video. I really love the Bethesda style massive open world RPG, but they haven't been releasing quality for years.

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, it sucks that a studio that was once known for being so innovative is now known for putting out middling to disastrous releases.

[@DrVenture45]

I had a similar experience. I had yet to play a game that couldn’t run on my PC. Naturally, I figured Starfield would be no different. It was so frustrating that I switched to Xbox S only to find out that it was almost as buggy on console! I really hoped for better…but even after patch the game is flawed.

[@Ennio444]

Why didnt they do the whole "you're in trouble! We'll send you to Constellation" as a "you fucked up, this is the old timey explorer corps but bow it's where we send the rejects we can't fire". Fill Constellation with colorful characters ranging from the idealist to the pirate, and have yhe character steer Constellation to good or bad, to cynical or idealistic. They could even have the "you're finally awake" moment.

[@AxiomArchives]

That's not a bad idea!! That would also solve the complaint I've heard about where the companions feel overly skewed towards forcing you to play as a "good" character.

[@doggy6108]

i've never played Starfield, but the fact you found a bug at the start is.. pretty bad. also lmao the little red like/thumbsup to the bug is funny gonna watch the rest now

[@AxiomArchives]

Oh, that bug ended up being the least of my concerns xD I hope you enjoyed the rest!!

[@doggy6108]

yeah, i did enjoy the rest! it was a really neat review! hearing you ramble is something i personally enjoy! and mhm, the bug was the least of your problems but.. it wasn't a good start.

[@RatherCrunchyMuffin]

I can appreciate that a lot of people enjoy stealth in games, and are disappointed that Starfield doesnt give them a good option. But games in general i think could do more to make stealth "earned." Not seeing enemies through walls, not seeing their "sight cones," not turning functionally invisible simply because you crouched (you're a dude in a spacesuit holding an axe). All of that feels correct to me. Stealth should be a pain in the ass in most scenarios and really only viable some of the time. For example, if you're wearing a ghillie suit in a forest biome and moving a couple feet every couple min. That would be a fitting price for achieving stealth

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

I feel like there's unexplored middle ground here.

[@sacrosanct23]

I tend to walk near silently pretty much everywhere I go, not by any active choice, I've just always been that way. Even carrying awkward things while wearing a heavy backpack and hard soled shoes. I'm the guy people say needs to wear a bell collar everywhere I go, because they're sick of suddenly having a 6'5" man casting a shadow over them causing them to scream like in a horror movie. Even when they're expecting me. At work. After already having said hello and being the only other person there. Stealth is not a pain in the ass. It's a lifestyle

[@Zorro9129]

Agreed 100%. I haven't played Starfield personally but I followed it closely before and after release. It was Bethesda's one chance to make a comeback after making slop for so many years; instead, they made giga-slop. All the terrible coding, bugs, and performance issues (for whatever reason, objects with completely flat sides had thousands of polygons) can be attributed to the decision by Bethesda to outsource most of their coding to thousands of Indians, trading quality for quantity. This can only be interpreted as some form of cost-cutting, but with the vast budget where did all the money go? None of the writers earned it, considering how bad and bland the story is. It's all phoned-in and soulless. And with the game design, like you said, there is way too much heavy grind to fill out the game, amongst other things that make the game bigger but not better. Starfield is the archetypal example of why AAA games today all are terrible. They are written by HR managers, coded by bottom-of-the-barrel programmers, and designed by people who hate fun. All the NPCs are intentionally hideous, the world looks like a dystopia when it's not meant to be, and you get penalized for trying to do things your way. These games are designed for a "mass market" but all that means is reducing them to the lowest common denominator, instead of encouraging people to raise their standards. This has been the case for years and AAA studios are bleeding money as a result, and it'll continue until they either tone it back or they go under. I hope the latter happens honestly, because we need a radical change. Elite: Dangerous is a far better game for open-world exploration, and Mass Effect is way better for a story-based sci-fi game. And if you just want a massive RPG, Daggerfall Unity looks really good. Funny how a colossal company with modern technology can't beat themselves from over twenty years ago.

[@no.no.4680]

The opening of the game having every character tell you that you're part of something important feels like someone brought up that the opening had no foreshadowing in a meeting, so the writer had to rewrite it. The vision is almost an anti-prophecy. You are Temu Jesus. You saw the vision, but everyone else in the universe had the revelation. 😂

[@AxiomArchives]

Lol, that's a good way of putting it. It just feels off, with no proper buildup to it.

[@mehukattti]

Was a very joyless game, felt like the government had made it 🥱😴

[@xineohpinakc264]

It is the same mechanic in stealth as their old games. In Skyrim you start with little ability to do stealth other than throwing a basket over the shopkeeper's head and looting their store. Enemies will switch to agro without even seeing you and if you are using archery the enemy will literally jump 5ft out of the way to avoid your arrow. At the same time if you have a bounty the city guard will see you even if you are using an invisibility spell at all levels. By late level game you can be standing on top of a person's head and they have no awareness you are there. This continued on into the fallout games as well. I also see the indoor fog machines still exist from their old games for ambience but, it makes enemies invisible from across the room. They see you though. Beth companions always do this. if it makes you feel better the enemy ai is no better just drop back and let the companions run to their death.

[@iRemainNameless]

Bethesda USE to be great. After Morrowind they fell off. TES IV and V were good games, but they weren't what captured me as a fan of Bethesda. They make mediocre kinda trash arcade RPGs now

[@dudemantype]

This video is great! It depicts, almost in real time, the gradual descent into despair and disappointment that most people experienced with this game. Bethesda games are usually annoying, janky and have the finesse of a drunk monkey in a China shop... but they always had flair, edginess and branching quests that would let you mess up the world in unique and hilarious ways through several playthroughs. Starfield has none of that. It feels like it was made for modern school kids. It's horrifically bland, rigid, linear and boring imo. Even the pirates feel like a bunch of pretentious stuck up teenagers. The only things I enjoyed was the ship builder, ship component designs, sound effects, and landscape designs. The rest is dull af.

[@Boomer04888]

I would love to know what the hell happened with the in game map. Like, multiple people worked on it, talked about it, and signed off on it and said "Yes, this is a map that helps people navigate our world". How is that possible

[@gamingguru2k6]

The stealth system is never fully explained. Most people have no idea how it works. For example, the weight of all your equipped gear causes noise. You have to take off your space suit for stealth.

[@justgames2788]

wow great video, i cant believe how much varied content you can which are all equally amazing!

[@AxiomArchives]

Thank you so much!! I really appreciate that :) I've talked about this in past videos, and I talked about it a bit in the Q&A, but I don't wanna be a channel that just does let's plays anymore. I love talking about games just as much! Let's plays and discussions, to me, and both ways to showcase a gaming experience, and I want to do both :D

[@Pillock25]

19:22 Sounds like Skyrim (Damn you Lydia) and Fallout 4.

[@justgames2788]

also feedback on the video: I dunno how you do this but you got the comedy on point, your voice makes things that wouldent be so funny really funny, dunno how to explain it

[@AxiomArchives]

I don't know how I would do that either xD I'm glad you liked it!!

[@nisssei]

gladly my run with starfield wasn't that bad in terms of performance, but you are very on point with other issues.. I also did run around that 100 meters even tho it felt dumb, and I also ran into that invisible wall in space which I totally agree was immersion breaking and very disappointing... And yeahh progression felt like a chore, and also is very stat-based, I think at one point I had like 5 free level-up points to spent, but all choices at that point just felt uninspiring and a bit boring, such a shame really.. I expected a lot since I was a huge fan of skyrim, but that was ages ago I guess games like outer worlds and rainworld spoiled me too much haha.. I went a bit further than you but even without any blue screens I didn't care enough to finish too

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, I have no idea what was up with my performance, but I know I wasn't the only one having issues. And I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks progression sucked. I did notice a lot of the weapon-related ones were just percentage increases to damage, which is fine, but it is very basic stuff. As my first Bethesda game, I wasn't expecting a whole lot, but I was trying to keep an open mind, and even then it fell way short.

[@AstralDragn]

@@AxiomArchives the worst part is that if you know skyrim even a little, you can see the company that developed skyrim in it. It really is a game that shows so much downfall. *I* haven't ever really played skyrim for more than three hours, and I can see just the difference in quality and effort.

[@nisssei]

​ @AxiomArchives Would be a bit of a shame if starfield would ruin bethesta formula for you completelly tho... It might be a nostalgia talking, but skyrim is wayyyyy more immersive than starfield, and that was the most disappointing part about it for me.. I actually would recommend trying skyrim, it's a bit old game, but there are plenty mods to fill that gap. The fact that skyrim still has a passionate modding community when with starfield people seem to don't bother too much is so telling tho..

[@acudaican]

Having just finished watching your vid, the answers to about half your questions are: engine limitations, engine limitations, it's an engine limitation they have to accept in order to have fully persistent clutter and instantiated objects, engine limitations, they were betting on you getting interested enough in the location to pick up more quest threads, engine limitations, engine limitations, it's an engine limitation they have to accept in order to have fully persistent clutter and instantiated objects, engine limitations, engine limitations, they were betting on you getting interested enough in the location to pick up more quest threads.

[@acudaican]

Not excusing their decision making, but yeah, that's the reason lol. Very relatable frustrations, and must be especially baffling if you've never created mods for any of the Bethesda games and/or are otherwise unfamiliar with how the game works.

[@carlosleyva-calistenia6400]

@@acudaican That's one of my biggest gripes with the engine (aside from technical debt, bad implementations and bugs still there from DECADES ago). Wow many dynamic clutter with physics. Many awesome. Much fun hours. Wow. But in the end, it serves no purpose for gameplay at all. It's annoying getting rid of all that trash you accidentally took, and (at least in Skyrim) the only usage for it is to install mods so telekinesis becomes viable to do enough damage throwing those objects.

[@acudaican]

@@carlosleyva-calistenia6400 It makes for some pretty amazing VR experiences though, both for immersion and gameplay. Well, once modded. lol.

[@Hallasammal]

Oh my god, "just by a better computer" he says. I've heard Todd Howard is kind of an ass, and that sure confirms it. Also, i really enjoyed this video even though i've had no interest in Starfield! Would love to see more of these discussion/review type videos if you ever feel like doing more

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, I've also heard he's not the best, at least when it comes to the kind of boss he was during Fallout 76's development. Saying that they did optimize the game for PC when so many people were having issues was certainly a bold statement to make lol. For a little extra context, that question the reporter asked wasn't just his question. They had gathered questions from the community, and that was one of the most asked questions. And I'm glad you enjoyed the video!! More of these are coming for sure! I genuinely loved talking about my experience, and I really wanna talk about more :)

[@antoniogaravo9289]

for the whole segment about stealth : actually stealth in previous bethesda games was overpowerded as fuck, so much so that it became a meme the simply crouching would make you invisible. bethesda tried to fix this, but since AI in a bethesda game is what it is, the only way to do that was to nerf the system into the ground. i'm prett surey dedicated players will still find a way to abuse it, tho for normal players its just super frustrating now.

[@jazzerdazzle5958]

most innovative gameplay for 2023 should have been Rainworld:downpour for sure. When i say downpour makes the game better and bigger, i mean it adds quality of life, more stuff, and quintuples the size of the game. It is criminal that starfield won innovative design, and its criminal that destiny 2 got nominated for community support. AAA games are dying frfr

[@AxiomArchives]

I'm pretty sure Starfield won that award as a troll lol. I don't think anyone really thinks that Starfield was super innovative. Destiny 2 getting nominated for community support was wild though. And I have to agree, the AAA industry has been on a steady decline for a while, and it's having an impact on a lot of the games we're getting.

[@chri-k]

@@AxiomArchivessurely by steady decline recently you mean that it chased visuals into a black hole quite a while ago?

[@brentbentKRFP]

Ironically and much to BGS's chagrin, the best BGS game was Fallout: New Vegas, which was created by Obsidian. It was so good and showed up BGS's laziness that they denied them the ability to make any future games even though many consider it the best modern Fallout game by far. And they only had 18 months to flip this project around while BGS was given four to six years depending upon which version of Fallout it is. If you want to experience that BGS magic it's done through playing Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas. That's the game where your decisions has actual impact on the world and you can kill pretty much everybody--there's no plot armored NPCs that cannot die save a single robot so you can finish the game if you kill everybody else. The first hour should sell you on the game, no idiotic nonsense of it gtets fun twelve hours in. It's fun right from the start. The opening experience alone is great and I don't skip it when I replay it. Great video!

[@Zorro9129]

Todd is still so upset over it that the new Fallout show intentionally retcons New Vegas lore.

[@phantomblade3740]

New Vegas is also far buggier than any of Bethesdas games.

[@AxiomArchives]

I've heard a lot of good things about New Vegas! I've also heard about the short dev cycle, and how it was basically a miracle that the game even got made in time. Maybe I'll check it out at some point!

[@brentbentKRFP]

@@AxiomArchives Yeah, they had 18 months and created the best modern day Fallout. It has great noir and Western vibes to it and you can kill every person in the game save one and still complete the game. Like Larian, they give you several ways to solve problems. And one of the starting traits adds in a dozen absurd situations like a gang of grandmas attacking you while quoting Monty Python.

[@snoodlestuff]

Great stuff! This was a really interesting insight into a game I didn’t really plan on playing (and now definitely don’t plan on playing haha) Interesting to see a perspective on what the game’s like though. It seems there are a few great bits in there - the ship weapon allocation system seems like a genuinely really fun concept that has some cool potential. Shame it’s bogged down by… all the other stuff...

[@AxiomArchives]

I definitely don't recommend it lol. I'm glad I played it through Game Pass instead of paying for it, because man that would have been a waste of money. And yeah, there are things here that are cool and do have potential! Heck, if it wasn't for the performance issues, I might have powered through to see more of that stuff. But even with that, there are so many other things that were just disappointing, and that drag everything down. Although, to be fair, you might have a better experience if you don't go for a stealth build xD

[@sheriph6852]

Finally i see someone address the random freezes mid-fight. I thought it just was my 8 years old PC struggling to run it but seeing as you get freezes as well means there's something fundamentally wrong with the game. Especially considering what it offers compared to what it demands from your system. I played through the entirety of cyberpunk on high settings (with DLSS as i have RTX2060) and while it wasn't a smooth 60fps i could still play and enjoy the game. But with starfield i didn't get past the pirate station mission - constant freezes, no motivation due to boring and stale intro, fast-travel based movement - it all was so off-putting. I'm a huge space nerd but starfield absolutely failed at being interesting. It offers nothing new compared to other games, it's such a downgrade. I would advise playing Fallout 4 instead. I definitely had a lot more fun with it than starfield.

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, the optimization is just bad, and no computer is safe from it. I'll keep that in mind about Fallout 4!

[@LilyMoonWitch]

Bethesda truly innovated with Starfield, just as they did with previous titles. With Fallout 4 they innovated by having a voiced protagonist with a very, very limited dialogue tree, thus taking the Role out of Role Playing Game. With Fallout76 they innovated by making a game so buggy it didn't work, thus taking Game out of Role Playing Game. And finally, with Starfield they innovated by making a game so terrible nobody wants to play it, thus finally taking Playing out of Role Playing Game.

[@watchlover7750]

I loved the ship building, even though it was broken and the interface a shit like all UI of the game. That's it, I literally spent 2/3 of the game playing with the ship builder

[@AxiomArchives]

Glad you had a fun time with it! I genuinely wish I could have experienced it properly myself lol.

[@yayhwey4207]

I had to relearn to perceive missions in other games as meaningful and worth doing again 😢

[@_boux]

1:07:09 Bethesda games are usually not exactly like this. They are absolutely full of bugs and jank, but it's usually nothing that will crash games and break your PC. Like they are usually the funny kind of glitches, like dragons flying backwards and flipping out in skyrim, the giants launching you into the stratosphere, skyrim horse is a term I've seen people use to describe horses acting janky in other games, the oblivion NPC jank is super iconic, tons of really funny clips about that on youtube. The jank in the old games was more forgiven by the players just because of how groundbreaking and innovative these games were for their time. I remember losing my shit about being able to pick up apples and rotating them in front of my face in oblivion or putting a bucket on the shopkeeper's head to make it so that they don't see me steal their stock. The starfield bugs are just boring and obnoxious, like crashing your PC and unbinding your keys, despawning things you need to interact with, clipping stuff out of bounds for no reason, etc. Search for a video named "How Joseph Anderson broke Starfield". It's just sad that this game was released like this

[@AxiomArchives]

Ok, yeah that's the kind of bugs I was expecting lol. I wasn't expecting it to actually impede my fun. Though to be fair, it wasn't only the bugs that did that. It's crazy that games like Oblivion and Skyrim were considered innovative, yet games like Fallout 76 and Starfield are considered outdated. Like the games are supposed to be getting better with each one lol, that's how it's supposed to work. I've heard of Joseph Anderson, but I haven't watched any of his videos. I'll have to check that one out, thanks for recommending it!!

[@everythingandthetardiscons7850]

@@AxiomArchives What the person above said. I haven't played Starfield, but based on videos I've seen, including this one, it seems a step down rather than up. So I don't think it's fair judge the older games based on this. I play the steam versions of Morrowind and Oblivion on a gaming laptop and have not experienced any performance problems. I also have Skyrim for ps4. Do they have bugs? yeah! but they're not that bad and sometimes funny. I love all three of those games. It might also encourage you to know that, while the skills are improved through usage in those games too... A) you don't have to unlock them with skillpoints. You'll either have them from the get go or unlock them by equiping relevant gear or, in case of magic, learning a relevant spell. and B) the game does not blatantly tell you exactly how much you have to use a skill to 'rank up'. Like, there may be something akin to an xp bar or the like for each skill, but no instruction on how many times you need to use the skill, let alone specifics on how you need to use it. Now, I don't know how that would affect you, but for me it makes it feel less like a chore I have to do and instead I just do what I want to do and get naturally better at those things in the process.

[@AxiomArchives]

@_boux I watched the video, and it doesn't seem real. Like the bugs are so ridiculous and so numerous that it's actually hard to believe.

[@_boux]

@@AxiomArchives my favorite one is when the ship split into two different entities. how does that even happen

[@RushB-n9q]

Everything you said about performance is 100% correct. The whole time you were talking is was saying outloud "TALK THAT SH!T"

[@AxiomArchives]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who knows the struggle lol. That performance was so painful xD

[@Whoadayson]

I hear ya on all your problems with SF, well except for the PC issues. I got the game thru MS since its a 'play anywhere' title, and I havent had any of those worrisome issues like you were explaining. If I had, Id be done with it too! I run a 3080ti/R9 5900X so I dont think its your hw at all. Its likely the coding for Gamepass, as it is different than running a licensed version as you cant (or couldnt, not sure where its at now) mod with gamepass. Anyway, I dont play SF for any other reason than space jpegs and checking shit out but really you cant even call em space jpegs because space is optional in the space rpg 👀🤦 They really shit the bed on SF, but is it really suprising, the Skyrim people are all retired... Thanks for your thoughts and the vid!

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, I think somehow my game had a memory leak. Idk if the Game Pass version is more unstable compared to other versions, but I'm glad your experience was better than mine from a technical standpoint! And yeah, if the skyrim people are all gone, that probably didn't help matters. I'm glad you enjoyed the video!!

[@Whoadayson]

@@AxiomArchives Oof yeah, memory leaks are fun! SF may be ok on my rig, but I always get a major memory leak in Star Citizen. I even upgraded to 64GB RAM just to try to solve it but nope, it just gobbles it up. Then I set my pagefile to my game drive and set to 'system managed' and now it wont crash right away (Ive seen it get up to 190GB, wtf right!) but it will jitter, lag and act generally crazy but it allows me enough time to get to a base and log out so I dont lose all my shit. Luckily a game restart solves it for that session. I guess that was a long way of saying, I know all about memory leaks, just not how to fix em damn it. Hopefully your having better results with other less borked games! I think our HW is just fine, albeit a gen or two behind, but Ill be running mine for 3 more yrs probably! Take it easy, thx for the reply! Later

[@frankallen3634]

Stealth never gets better at all, no matter the level

[@higheverrains7386]

For what it's worth, Starfield didn't feel like a Bethesda game to me. Modern Bethesda's usual flavor tends to be about the exploration and the environments. The sterile feeling you mentioned for Starfield was something I felt too and didn't like, and didn't recognize from Fallout or Skyrim. Skyrim and Fallout feel like games the developers loved, in settings they enjoyed, and with mythos and history and lore that intrigued them. Starfield feels flat, a blank slate, without a handful of vague questions, and no answers, in a jaded world you cannot really impact in any way with your choices. In all honesty, the real main character of a Bethesda game is the world, not any individual NPC or even the player character. Skyrim let you follow people as they lived their lives around towns, stumble into ancient ruins older than entire civilizations, or wonder at lost mysteries like the disappearance of the Dwemer or the motivations of old gods, all while sometimes taking your breath away with how beautiful and wild Skyrim's natural vistas could be. The wastelands of Fallout are desolation and destruction, tinged with a vibrant string of hope for humanity's survival, a mishmash of 1950s satire and sarcasm, and a dark undertone of corporate corruption and decimation, and it didn't shy away from either the dark or light of the human soul reflected back upon a warped wasteland. Starfield's world is disjointed, shallow, unconnected, and often very very empty, useful for bland resources, and with the occasional hiccup of simulated life, and you won't experience most of it because you're too busy fast traveling and menu-mashing to look around. If you really want to know the appeal of a Bethesda game, try Skyrim or Fallout (different people prefer different ones, so I'll leave no recommendation and let you work it out for yourself which you'd rather try). Go in prepared to explore the world as the goal, rather than a written story. Bethesda's quests only ever really served to get you exploring the various facets of the world itself. And skip the fast travel when you can/feel the itch to explore, because the real joy of these games lies in the journey between points A and B, at the points of interest or random encounters that make up the path, and bring in the flavor. It makes these worlds feel living and breathing and vast full of people who are living their own lives for their own reasons doing their own things, whereas Starfield just felt like a lot of weirdly cramped empty space built around you the player (not your choices, just you experiencing the everything).

[@XxguaxinimxX.]

So this is the Starfield video! I haven't played the game, but from I've heard from other reviews, although the game is not perfect, it was a big step for Bethesda and was well received.

[@AxiomArchives]

It was well received at the start, but over time it's reputation has soured. So I was very curious to see where I would land with it. I didn't think my experience would be this bad though xD

[@Zorro9129]

Well received by whom? That is the question. Even a lot of modders, whom Bethesda increasingly relies upon to fix their games, got fed up enough after a while.

[@rulerofallcheese2382]

1:07:09 - There's a trend in Bethesda games to take a few steps forward and a dozen steps back. Every game has something interesting if you really look hard enough, but there's a rot that's been growing for decades. For casuals, Oblivion, Skyrim, FO4 are the most accessible. Morrowind and FO3 are excellent, but haven't aged well so you need to push through some clunkiness.

[@Superdosis]

Bethesda's Pete Hines said that Starfield gets good after you complete the main story.

[@user-jh1jt9lo7i]

I liked starfield until I ran into the first of many bugged quest, found out some of the perks are bugged and don’t even work at all but, what really broke the camels back was when I set up a outpost on Bessel 3 and returned to my ship and everything i stored in my ship that wasn’t in the cargo hold got deleted or replaced with junk. 6 months after release and that game breaking bug exist. I won’t buy another Bethesda game, they’re a lost cause.

[@aersla1731]

I think an easy fix for the progression is to just make the challenges retroactive. Such a shame, I had high hopes for starfield not not being an incredible game but good enough. Didn't help that a lot of the youtubers who did earlier reviews were praising the game. It's usually not like me to buy into the hype but I don't I was starving for a good scifi rpgish space game so I bought into it. I like no man sky but I wanted a something a bit more grounded and starfield looked like it would be that. However it's so lacking, I don't even know how they could bring it back. Maybe this dlc will be incredible and be like starfield 2.0, guess only time can tell. Anyway nice discussion piece you brought up some good points, also the whole it gets better after x hours is just bs. I have 100+ hours and I 100% the game and it's pretty much the same all the way through. The issues I have with the game persist till the end of the game. I would also like to see if the game was a finical hit with BGS, just to see how likely it will be whether they support the game long term or not. I am leaning more towards the latter as it has been a bit and we are barely getting an updates.

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, it was hard not to buy into the hype, especially with the dev showcase and all the marketing they were doing. And then when the criticism started coming in, I thought I had tempered my expectations enough, but I had no idea it was gonna be this bad. When it comes to whether or not it was a financial hit, I know it hit a milestone at some point, but I don't remember if they were including Game Pass downloads in that number or not. But I did hear about how Bethesda's been kinda radio-silent when it comes to updating the game, and that really sucks.

[@aersla1731]

@@AxiomArchives I think a majority was gamepass and xbox because we can see the steam sales. Just curious as to how that translate to revue.

[@GhostOfSnuffles]

I bought my first Bethesda game back in early 1995 with Elder Scrolls Arena and almost all of their games since. I legit wanted to love Starfield because i know they won't be making a new game for half a decade at least and that's a long time to wait for a new game to sink my free time into. I didn't buy Starfield and i never will. It looks so unimaginably bland i haven't played a single second of it and yet i feel sick of it. That same feeling you get when playing the same Skyrim character for 200+ hours and you've done absolutely everything of interest in the game and your only choice is to quit playing the game entirely or just suck it up and start a new character, that's how it feels for me when i look at Starfield. Starfield's greatest achievement was making Fallout 4 look good by comparison.

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, I don't blame you for feeling that way. Idk if I can say I thought it looked bland from the outside, but those opening hours were just so underwhelming. I also find it really ironic that you say it feels like a game you've already played for 200+ hours, because it just speaks to how similar it ended up being to every other Bethesda game lol.

[@freddan6fly]

Starfield is made to be played on gamepass and grind hours, not being fun. According to Bethesta comments on reviews on Steam, it is supposed to be good after 10,000 hours. After Starfield I have uninstalled Fallout 4 and Skyrim, because the same thing that is irritating and boring in Starfield (lacklustre RPG, bad skill tree, radiant quests, etc, was already present in Skyrim).

[@christopherrobbins0]

I still want my money back. This is the only Bethesda game I stopped playing before beating. 40 hrs in and I have no interest in it. I played Oblivion after and put 50 hrs in and am still having a blast. So I guess I can thank Starfield for that.

[@drtaverner]

_Starfield_ relies heavily on CPU for some reason. Hell, I got it for "free" with my new processor! (R9 7900X3D)

[@firebornliger]

Congratulations. You have experienced Bethesda game and avoided contracting stockholm syndrom. While Starfield is a low point for them, it is exemplar of their games as a whole.

[@NgaMarsters]

You should try Cyberpunk 2077 if yoy haven't already now that it's fixed. It's honestly amazing and I'm glad I gave it a second chance. I'm saying this here because I've seen a lot of folks compare that game to Starfield.

[@AxiomArchives]

I'm actually very tempted to try out Cyberpunk after the 2.0 update dropped. I was avoiding it before, but maybe I'll see if I can check it out!

[@ThrobbGoblin]

They really bit-off more than they could chew with Starfield. It has a barebones version many other games, "frankensteined" together to create the most underwhelming experience I've seen in a fully-priced AAA game this decade. If I want a good FPS RPG, I'll go play Cyberpunk 2077. If I want a good "Choices Matter" RPG, I'll go play Baldur's Gate or the Mass Effect Trilogy. If I want a good space-exploration game, I'll go play No Man's Sky. (Hey, it even has fishing now.) If I want a good space-sim RPG, I'll go play X4: Foundations, Elite Dangerous, Underspace, or Everspace 2. Hell, even Star Citizen at least has a *hope* of being improved/finished someday, as opposed to Bethesda's "If it's out, we ain't changing anything" approach to development.

[@nazaxprime]

What makes Bethesda games so special into acclaimed by so many people: Mods by the community. People rallied out of necessity because Bethesda sucks so bad, and no kidding, Bethesda just went with it. They did everything to boost their valuation to sell their business to the highest bidder and it finally paid off after milking skyrim fir a decade. I. The process they made it their business to screw consumers as much as possible, rolling all their gains into marketing and advertising while relying on the community to make content for their platforms(which I'd argue is Bethesda's actual product, their engine, not their games.). Turns out, if you have enough money(market share), you can make more. In case you haven't been following along all these decades, thats pretty much the Bethesda story in a nutshell.

[@Scalpaxos]

Bethesda had one magnum opus: TES III: Morrowind, then it slowly went downhill from there, the initial formula still worked but the technology itself was a little bit farther behind at each release to the point where their trusty formula wasn't enough anymore to carry out their games, the apotheosis of this slow decline is definitely Starfield, in this game they didn't even bother keeping the original formula of free exploration despite their claims, you're just loading your way in and out from one small area to another, the last bastion of what Bethesda games had to offer has finally fallen, with this game they even lost their long lasting original fans.

[@Algenpesto]

This game looks hilariously bad. Classic Bethesda. Also, you mentioned in the Q&A I believe that you don't script videos like this? If that's the case then that is pretty impressive.

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, it wasn't great xD it's a shame though that everyone now associates Bethesda with "hilariously bad" lol. And yeah, I just had some notes with points I wanted to touch on, and I improvised the discussion around that. I'm glad you liked it!! Plus I had the magic of editing to help me get rid of a few mistakes and unnecessary bits xD

[@masterpainter78]

Dont worry, I played it all the way through. Having played a lot of games over many decades, Starfield can only be fun for people that have played very few games, easily a 4 or 6 out of 10. So its possible that people will enjoy it and even defend it, its just that well if you have played a lot of games well you have seen all those systems done better. IF you follow science fiction media Starfield will upset you because its poorly done writing that would be just fine about 20 years ago, but as there are many serious competitors in the gaming space with titles going back 20 years even well the science fiction writing is grade level at best and would have been great on a Nintendo Entertainment system from the late 80s. Flight was great back when we were playing Wing Commander Privateer in the 80's on PC. Halo Combat Evolved has way more enjoyable gunplay and combat than Starfield, a game that launched the first Xbox console.

[@JudahBertos]

You saved me from spending money thank you

[@AxiomArchives]

You're welcome! Yeah this game is not worth $70.

[@nikolaybelousov1070]

Fallout 4 and Skyrim ain't that bad. Starfield is basically a pre-alpha total conversion mod for Fallout 4 by a single inexperienced overambitious author. And something tells me TES 6 is gonna be that but for Skyrim.

[@optiondezzo1513]

they made the beginning of the game slow so that you cannot get a refund on steam.

[@masterpainter78]

On Skyrim, you mentioned you had a decision to make early in the game right after the dragon attack. Well that choice was Storm Cloaks or Empire, thing is its not a choice that matters not until much later. Todd even mentioned in Starfield Direct that "we know players hate to be kept out of content" or something along that line? Well I would argue that Todd and Team dont understand that players may not have ever realized on one play through that their choices in prior games never matted. Sure Skyrim the choice of Stormcloaks or Empire mattered, one of the few times they exercised such a thing but it does not have great impact and is not often done enough by Bethesda and here we have Todd proudly saying about Starfield we are locking you out of content due to choices. After all that failed to see he gave away how bad the game was with his words, sigh.

[@Middlefinger-r7b]

It just works 😂 never gets old

[@AxiomArchives]

Todd Howard will never live that quote down xD it's truly amazing.

[@AmericanGadfly]

Picking stealth build in Starfield is about as useful and fun as a wet fart 😂

[@AxiomArchives]

I know, and it makes me so sad that that's the case lol. At least it resulted in good footage of all my companions going rogue xD

[@happyspaceinvader508]

No Man’s Sky is the worst parts of Starfield amplified, and the central single player narrative completely missing. In other words it’s even further away from the successful Bethesda games’ formula than Starfield is. Cyberpunk is a better replacement.

[@mgass1354]

Where to start. People who are older and paid attention have watched the fall of Bethesda under Todd for a long, long time. Morrowind was ok... buggy... complex. And buggy is a feature, not a bug, in Bethesda games. They dumbed the systems down for Oblivion, then further dumbed the systems down to almost non-existent for Skyrim. This is a design choice by Todd because he doesn't like complex; he wants simple so it appeals to the masses. It got worse with the Fallout IP. Fallout 3 wasn't a horrible TRY by Bethesda to bring Fallout into what games were transitioning to at the time. But you knew that Todd was pushing more for a looter shooter than RPG. This was confirmed when Fallout 4 dumbed the systems down further to focus on gun play. They dropped all pretense with Fallout 76; it's a looter shooter. Period. And that is what you got in Starfield; a looter shooter in space using the old engine and Fallout 4 assets reskinned. So no. You don't want to play other games by Bethesda because the other games need to be modded to be good. That is also a feature, not a bug. Modders have fixed all of Bethesda's games; Morrowind has mods, Oblivion has mods, Skyrim has mods, Fallout 4 has mods. The biggest mods people add first fix the bugs. Then, you can add graphics mods. Then gameplay overhaul mods that fix things like stealth, combat, companion AI, etc. It is why Skyrim is played over a decade later; mods. And Todd, after trying to kill the modding scene for Skyrim and monetize it, bet that modders would do the same thing for Starbored. Todd, and those he put in charge like Emil, are the problem. Todd doesn't want an RPG. He wants dumb looter shooters with microtransactions. You saw this in your time in Starbored. Why do your companions just rush in and trigger a fight? Because looter shooter bayyyybeee. Go shoot things. Get your loot. It's FUN! Just wait for Starbored to get it's microtransactions like Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76. They ARE coming btw just as soon as Bethesda believes they can add them and not get TOO much heat from it. TES:VI IS going to be garbage. We know this because Fallout 4 was garbage and almost unplayable on launch. We were told, "get a better computer" for Fallout 4. Fallout 76 was a disaster at launch with Bethesda doing their best to scam the players/customers at every turn. Starbored is a barebones, boring game where you got told, "buy a better computer". And people think with THAT track record SUDDENLY Todd will say, "Hey, lets make a GOOD game". No. So until Todd is gone, Emil is gone, and some others... don't buy Bethesda games.

[@AxiomArchives]

It's honestly been shocking to me how many people have said that you need to go back to before Morrowind to find a good Bethesda game. Like when I posed the question of "are other Bethesda games like this?", I wasn't actually sure what other people were gonna say, but I wasn't expecting the mix of responses to be as...well, mixed, if that makes sense. Also, it's funny you mention the looter shooter aspect, because the initial recording of this video had a part where I expanded a bit on the inventory management stuff, and how games like Borderlands have systems to make inventory management easier that Bethesda just didn't bother including. But I didn't even consider how far that looter shooter system is ingrained into the game. Yeah, no wonder it felt like there was such an emphasis on combat over stealth. It also does feel like Bethesda tries too hard to appeal to a mass audience, and then uses that mass audience to fix their game after the fact. I didn't know who Emil was until I was doing research for this video, but I saw a speech he gave a while back about how he writes stories, and how he sees the player as the most important character in the game. It's presented as something wholesome, but I feel like it was some version of this mindset that caused them to add no NPC's to Fallout 76 at launch, and why it feels like they rely on mods to fix their game. For the microtransactions, now that you mention it, the looter shooter element does lend itself well to that. I'd be very curious to see if you're right about that. I'm not sure there would ever be good time to add them though, they're bound to catch heat to some degree no matter what. If they feel like adding MTX to Starfield could hurt the sales of Elder Scrolls VI, maybe they wouldn't do it? Idk how much they care about their reputation at this point though lol. Either way, it's gonna be very interesting to watch Bethesda over the next few years and see what happens.

[@mgass1354]

@@AxiomArchives "Like when I posed the question of "are other Bethesda games like this?", I wasn't actually sure what other people were gonna say, but I wasn't expecting the mix of responses to be as...well, mixed, if that makes sense." Fanboys will be fanboys. They bought Starbored AFTER they got scammed with 76. Seriously, go watch Internet Historian's video, The Fall of 76, then realize, these same fanboys are defending Starbored. No, the question has to be asked to and answered by people of my generation (the OGG... Original Gaming Generation) if you want an objective answer. I played PONG on home console in 1976 when it came out that Christmas. We played all the RPGs on all the consoles and computers, we watched the progression, the good, the bad, etc. I just installed Morrowind again and if I want to play it on my monitor with todays hardware? Yep. Mod it or get a windowed playthrough. But the game? As an RPG? Is decent. Buggy, but decent. It is one of the reasons you just can't recommend old games to people today; the hardware and aspect ratio differences. The games, like KOTOR, Dragon Age, Morrowind, were designed for hardware from that time, for the kids of that time. Great games in their own right. But play today? After people are used to the graphics, combat, smoothness, etc? I watched a guy run down PONG as trash. From his perspective? With what I said about today's games? He's right. But from OUR perspective? Going from playing in the yard with sticks to suddenly a box that let us play on our tv???? OMG, that game was GREAT. I still run around Fallout 4, not because it is a good game (it sucks actually as anything more than mindless looter shooter) but because it is the latest game I can play on my hardware, mod to fix it all, and Todd hasn't gone to great lengths to screw up... yet... like he has Skyrim. It's not that the games are great. It's that they aren't stopping your gameplay every 3 minutes trying to get you to buy some overpriced skin in the shop. You can just play the game. This is one reason BG3 blew up as it did; no microtransactions, just gameplay.

[@TearfulMoon]

I really like your chill vibe. When it comes to annoying mechanics - yes, most bethesda games are like this. BUT starfield is the worst of them. Previous games didn't lock core stuff like stealth meter behind progression. Companions are always dumb. Ones that I liked I kept "for flavour". Their best companions were in Fallout 4(Hancock and Nick Valentine are my loves!) - with commentary on quests and locations. Starfield companions are a massive step back - they're not only stupid but also bland. The thing about the chore nature of progression - I think they took that lazy move from Fallout 76 - it has "challenges" that reward players with goodies or in-game microtransactional currency - atoms(to buy goodies). Those challenges are always mind-numbingly annoying and unreasonable.(Like kill 1000 robots with your bare hands for measly 40 atoms). I usually love bethesda games (even FO76), but Starfield retroactively soured them for me. Now when I see some lazy decision in their older games I just think "u-huh. I see where it's going.😒"

[@AxiomArchives]

Thank you :) and yeah, when I posed that question, I was kinda wondering if the faults of this game could be retroactively applied to their previous games. It sucks because it feels like Bethesda just refuses to acknowledge that the way they make games just doesn't really work anymore. I honestly wish they would just rein in their scope and try to reset expectations by making a smaller game. Like just make a smaller world, make it more dense with interesting things, and prove they can tell an interesting story in that world.

[@TearfulMoon]

@@AxiomArchives I agree about making smaller fleshed-out world, but for that they need to be humble and have less of a big head syndrome that Todd and Emil have. They need fresh blood and reorganisation.

[@drtaverner]

Stealth is locked behind skill points. It's still not good. If you get the Stealth Armour from the Ryujin campaign it's a _bit_ better, but still lame.

[@kreyes1126]

I tried Skyrim yesterday just to see if it is as good as people say. I got 1 hr. in and realized that 20 yrs. ago it was good. Now, all Bethesda games are terrible.

[@SyphonNL]

No surprise. The only good game Bethesda ever released was Morrowind. It was all downhill from there. Daggerfall arguably only got good through the Unity port. All their worldbuilding has been done by people no longer working at the company or stolen from Black Isle after the Fallout IP sale. This is Emil's finest work. lol. Btw damn, finished the video. Good work btw. I had no idea the fishbowl was that bad. Man they couldn't even get the moon and earth in the same fishbowl LOL Also to answer your ending questions. Check out Morrowind with OpenMW and Tamriel Rebuilt. Or Daggerfall with its Unity port. This is Bethesda's best work. If you looking for Fallout, try Fallout New Vegas. The only good modern Fallout from Obsidian. Funnily enough the space portion of Starfield's problems could have been fixed if Microsoft finally found that long lost Freelancer source code. They could have duct taped that part to the creation engine and actually had a working space sim. But Freelancer was actually a good game. IMO the only game that has truly felt alive in its systems and it was from 2003.

[@AxiomArchives]

Other people have been saying that too, that you have to go back as far as Daggerfall and Morrowind to find a good Bethesda game, which is a bit surprising to me. And I'm glad you liked the video! I'll consider checking out those or New Vegas at some point. And I have no idea what Freelancer is, but I have no doubt it would have been an improvement ove what we got lol.

[@jamesbooth3360]

I enjoyed Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas. At the time of release, they were great. (Excluding bugs, of course, which have always been part of the initial release)

[@AmericanGadfly]

Speaking in general about bethesda, its basically like you said a downward spiral. Every game they release is slightly more dumbed down and slightly worse overall. Skyrim was ok, but made great with mods. Same with fallout 4, but still dumbed down a bit from Skyrim. Starfield weve left good territory and entered meh territory.

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, it's actually pretty sad, because this just shows that they're either really bad at adapting and improving, they're way too reliant on the community to make their games good, or both of those things.

[@stuartrumbel5222]

The game is jam-packed with impediments to enjoyment. A lot of basic stuff is skill-gated that shouldn't be. The rest is bug-riddled, or hampered by bone-headed design decisions.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

Did you...indiscriminately murder miners + pirates? & Barrett still compliments you? 😧

[@AxiomArchives]

As far as I can remember, I only killed pirates. Although I wouldn't be surprised if murdering the miners had no effect on the dialogue lol.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

@@AxiomArchives Barrett didn't even blink lol.

[@carlosleyva-calistenia6400]

1:00:29 Programmers love to crap on languages like Rust or any .NET language because "MuH C++ iS BeTtER", but these kind of memory leaks and memory corruption is what you get when you give C++ to incompetent programmers. Now I know how Fallout 76 managed to brick some PCs on launch.

[@TheOnlyTaps]

🎯💯

[@nazaxprime]

TES6 Will be the same, then well get the whole song and dance about the next guy taking over after much fanfare about the great and powerful Todd's departure... Then Microsoft will milk the Bethesda brand like its been a cornerstone of gaming since Morrowind on the original XBox, since thats what the last decade of pain and suffering was about. Odd, I know, but they were illustrating they were worth a buyout through proving consumer apathy to the whole situation (the state of AAA has a place in this as well, but thats a chew toy for another time). You're assessment was solid, you made it about as far as I did, and for the same reasons. Same experience on a 2070S with half the RAM and an SSD. When installed on a lesser drive, it was worse for audio, but that is just because the games streaming a total trainwreck. If you ever try the Bethesda brand again(which is all they really are), do yourself a favor and wait until it's a year or two old so fans have had time to fix all the bugs, and then don't try to play vanilla... You have to make your own games with a Bethesda title if you want a Bethesda "game" to be in any way better than what you experienced here.

[@AstralDragn]

I didn't expect a hour long video of just starfield, but I can appreciate it~ Going to be honest, might be relying on your narration and whatever amount of script you put into this to not lose interest here Leo XP After playing the game myself and coming away so underwhelmed and then starfield winning an award that I frankly had THREE other games thinking contending far better than it.... Starfield really does make me tired and bored usually. And yea.. There are rumors its a troll effort, but they're awards which could've went to someone who would've actually treated them meaningfully. Your Only Move Is Hustle, Shadow Of Doubt, Heck, I don't think it reached the end 10 options but I honestly think the finals would've been a 100% better choice than starfield. But I guess thats the point if its a troll award. If theres any game that actually displays triple A's serious problem of mediocrity, its this. Game critics will criticize a lot of mechanics that are recycled, and there is merit in that, but I think that many of them forget that familiar mechanics really do help people get adjusted to a game. I mean, Brigador not being a twin stick shooter despite looking like one to some extent, causing massive backlash because it didn't corrolate for players, so bad that they had to change its control scheme to twin stick despite it teaching bad habits for the game to players. Rainworld's tutorials being more or less non-existent and learning anything in the game requires you to inadvertently repeat tricks til you know them.~ I bring these two up because they break the norm of mechanics and controls, and because of that, are relatively unknown. This in of itself shows the value of repeat and steady mechanics such as watch towers, long grass, stealth, or even the RPG mechanics they've stuffed into the later assassins' creeds and far crys (even if personally, I think its really, really garbage as someone who has generally struggled to care for rpgs). They're familiar, they let the player feel confident that they're in territory they can play, and majority of the struggle they might have is cleanly conveyed in levels, numbers, and other information readily available. That is the power of current gen triple A. I think a few people have hit the mark that they're broad appeal, but never super talked about why that might be. Lethal Company, Helldivers 2, and numerous other games have shown you don't need triple A to possibly bring in triple A audience (maybe saying hell divers and lethal company brings in a triple A audience is innately wrong, as they're both very 'gamer sphere' type games with their intrictices, but I think about 80% of people who have bought games digitally would say they've heard of lethal company, its not all, but I'd wager thats majority of players who might play triple A games semi regularly~ only) This is becoming a essay, anyways. My entire point is that triple A is the way that it is because its familiar, but that it doesn't always have to be, at least not 100%, to work. And yet, Starfield over here blowing it all out of the water with just how... bland it is. The fact that they tried to lean into modders making the game interesting says so freaking much, I don't like condemning developers, but Bethesda screwed this so hard that they could very well slip into obscurity if they don't have a big hit on their next release. I'm not confident at all that they could fix starfield like Projek Red fixed cyberpunk....

[@AstralDragn]

about your statement of progression. Its natural for players to want to progress as efficently as possible, but its a very undermining view. I'm not sure if game devs should strive to reward the player that much (making the game potenially too easy) or if players should forego maximum progression for a more fun style of gameplay in the moment.

[@AstralDragn]

Also I don't want to undersell your performance issues, they were by no means okay. Your computer should be more than enough to run a game thats honestly already clearly cut back on several parts of it, but honestly, you put it so perfectly and bluntly I just don't have anything to add on the performance front. I'd offer condolences but I also don't think you missed anything amazing by deciding that because the performance was so terrible and your experience so underwhelming, that you weren't going to bother with it anymore.

[@AxiomArchives]

Yeah, AAA is for sure in a rut. Companies are more and more unwilling to take risks, and are prioritizing making money over making something fun, and it sucks. It's even more insane that Bethesda took a brand new IP and made it the opposite of something brand new. Regarding progression, I feel like the problem could have been mitigated if they had just hidden the requirements for raising rank. Telling the player they have to get 20 pistol kills to raise the rank makes it feel way too gamey, and it makes it feel like you have to do it rather than wanting to do it. Or they could have just gone with Skyrim's system and made it purely based on how much you used the ability instead of having skill points. Or Fallout's system of just skill points lol. In both of those other situations, no matter what you do or how you play, you're making progress at about the same pace. With Starfield's system, in early game at least, some methods are clearly more efficient than others based on which skills you focus on first, and I didn't like that. And I'm glad I didn't miss out on much xD yeah, the performance was unforgiveable.

[@markthompson3725]

Having put literally many thousands of hours into the elder scrolls and fallout series, I can say that starfield is singularly the worst thing bethesda has ever made. I gave up on it and went back to replay oblivion, that 17 year old game is better. At this point i get more entertainment from listening to reviews trash the game on my phone as i play other games than i ever got from actually playing starfield. That's what I'm doing with no man's sky right now, lol. Thanks for the entertainment.

[@AxiomArchives]

No problem, glad I could provide lol!

[@Mezbich]

Bethesda games arent my favorite, but they usually have a pretty decent and fun exploration game loop.... Starfield fucks that up lol

[@megyskermike]

You chose a really bad first entry into bethesda. All I can think is that bethesda hasn't played any games themselves over the past 5-10 years, like who thinks this is acceptable? Did they play their your own game even? Sterile is a great description, by the way, I feel like this is the worst bethesda game for it. It's incredibly generic and takes no risks or evokes any emotions. Even the visceral nature of combat has been sterilized from previous bethesda titles.