Starfield - A Complete Critique | Part 1
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- Check out Evan's Channel: / @evprince
First Impressions Matter.
Bethesda's massive success in this millennium can be attributed to a larger, more casual audience being enveloped into a genre that once excluded them.
Traditionally, Role Playing Games were too complicated or confusing, so when they were streamlined and offered on a fantastical and post-apocalyptic platter, RPGs were in the perfect position to place a once niche game studio among the headline grabbing, record breaking triple-A crowd.
But what happens when that general audience start to see the cracks? What happens when the issues once only criticized by the “hardcore” crowd become so ingrained into the game that the audience at large now notice them too?
Starfield was inevitable. It had been forecast since Oblivion. It was only a matter of time until ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’ became ‘It’s Too Simple Now, Stupid’.
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Essay: docs.google.com/document/d/1H...
Introduction 0:00
Character Creation 2:15
The Mines 14:52
Combat 42:28
Keys to the Ship 54:01
Kreet 59:23
Persuasion & Dialogue 1:26:34
First Impressions Matter 1:38:59
Conclusion 1:43:52
#jwlar #starfield #critique - Hry
Thanks to Evan Prince for all his fantastic work!
Remember to check out his channel! (Link in description)
Part 2 coming early next year 😉
I've heard PatricianTV is making a critique of Starfield soon, you might want to message him and ask if he wants a collab or something lmao
Uncle jokes. 😶
Also the - "Going up to the artefact and seeing a vision" is NOT FINE. It's literally the laziest way to tunnel you into the main quest... and also Mass effect? Literally ripping off one of the best sci-fi games of the last decade? i mean ffs
You know I feel the exact same way, but I was trying to be as nice as I could lmao.@@RazorsharpLT
I'm not angry at them, i'm angry at Bethesda for their gaul. Some people can forget it i'm sure, but i didn't.
Honestly out of ALL the games they could have retreaded - they could have took the influence that Mass Effect was taking from - Star Control II, and ripped that game off. Seeing THAT story in a fresh perspective, of you being a freedom fighter in a galaxy controlled by a higher power, gathering allies for the final fight in a covert manner etc. while something even worse lurks behind the veil that justifies the evil empire... So many possibilities, and they literally just... ugh @@evprince
The moment that starfield died for me was pretty early on. I landed on earth's moon as close to the landing zone of apollo 11. When I got off my ship it was raining
That is absolutely hilarious.
I ran in to a sand storm on a planet with no atmosphere.
It also rained on the moon the first time I visited it... so I'm guessing they had a timed trigger in the early game, that most players hit around a similar time. You'd think they'd have a basic system in place, to flag certain planets based on their atmosphere / environment to not rain. Looking at Bethesda's last few games, and how little they've evolved, its quite clear they have a leadership problem / management problem. Seeing the same canned, robotic NPC animations is laughable, the fact that a canned animations can still sometimes override the NPC instantly ragdolling is game breaking to watch. sometimes you shoot an enemy sitting down and they slump over, cool! Another time I shoot and kill them, but they stand up first... then slump over and die. or calmly eat a face full of bullets while yelling at me, as they first go through their robotic 3 second furniture animation first, before reacting to the bullets i'm shooting into them.
At no point during development, did Todd Howard play his own game, other than for marketing, he's failed as a leader. You think if he ever tested the game, flew his ship up with any amount of crew, he would notice all the random NPC dialogue triggers going off together,. I don't need to hear Sam and Cora talk about books, at the exact same time that my Adoring fan starts blurting his canned lines, at the exact same time Andreja tells me she "needs to talk to me", at the exact same time that Barret needs to tell me I had a perfect take off, at the exact same time a UC ship hails me and starts vomiting narration at me. The NPC's around the player character should work as a unit, so if their is randomized conversation that takes place, its done as a unit, so it can only go off once, so the player character doesn't get bombarded with 2-3 sentences that overlap. And even if they do have other NPC's talking amongst themselves at random, apply proper filters so they sound like background convo, and don't overwhelm active dialogue. You add a low pass filter to background dialogue, aggressive stereo imaging / "widening" and viola, you can have background conversation that doesn't overwhelm the mid channel and active dialogue. Its odd they mess up with the dialogue so badly, yet when I'm in a gunfight at a distance, they do proper sound occlusion and delay for sound FX at a distance, or obscured, thats actually quite impressive.
Bethesda' clearly has a management problem. Their projects are probably so massively fragmented and working together poorly. Certain areas look amazing graphically, then I watch a braindead NPC star jittering and walking into furniture and it ruins everything. They need to sit down, and have a meeting where they force everyone working at Bethesda to play GTA 5 and Red Dead Remption 2, and then GTA 4, and then GTA 3. And explain, "THIS IS THE BASELINE, work UP form here"
If you can't improve upon games from almost 20 years ago, you shouldn't have a job in game development.
You full of shit 🤣
Starfield died for me when they announced 1000 planets. Here I knew that they were, again, giving more importance to quantity over quality and that the game would be heavily using algorithms instead of beeing handcrafted.
And after trying it for myself, not only was I right, but it's even worse than I thought. To make a game that big they removed everything that was good in the previous ones.
The moment that broke starfield for me was when I accepted a quest from an NPC to find a missing miner, but the scripting broke so the guy who gave me the quest became the lost miner. So I talk with him again, he gets a different voice, and says he’ll return to the camp after being bribed. So I pay him and he returns (doesn’t move) to the mining camp. He turns back into the quest giver NPC and gave me some credits and XP. Just insane.
Lol that's fucking hilarious. Bethesda unintentionally turned it into a quest about split personality and way more entertaining than their own script.
that sounds like a hilarious quest idea, shame it was accidental
Another example of lazy greed. Trying invest the bare minimum so as to barely achieve plausible deniability.
The game treats you being a miner more seriously than any choice you actually make.
My xenobiologist MC in conversation with a fellow xenobiologist when asked what they used to do for a living: "I was a miner"
What do you want, everyone was underage at some point in their life
@@mrpissed Chuck Norris was born as a grown man
Its been years, thanks for taking me back bro. @@EggEnjoyer
Deep Rock Galatic also has you as a miner but.
1. That's the main plot of the game and it's fun
2. You're a space dwarf on a deathworld, you're basically a soldier thats good at mining.
Also I had more fun with xeno studies then I did in Starfield, and most of my time was fighting it to the death.
There is this business perspective in game dev studios. You create something great to buy good will from your audience. The problem is that making something great is hard and expensive. So once you have that good will you can cash in on it by making something cheap and terrible. You just need to be cynical and able to lie with a straight face.
Todd Howard/Bethesda have done. This 3 or 4 times in a row now. Just laughing at what suckers we are, I bet that they can hardly believe we will give them our money again.
The worst part about dialogue being poorly and inconsistently written is exemplified to me through Andreja's quest line. if you are a follower of the great serpent there are a couple of lines that bring it up with her, but in the same dialogue she'll say something like "you can't know how I grew up" or "nonbelievers don't understand". It killed any ability I had to care about the story or characters.
It's mostly better written than fallout 4. I'll give em that at the very least
For me it was the UC quest line. When you have your companion saying the predators route is good, and then after the quest, disliking that you went that route...
Of course, the stupidity goes beyond that, in that quest, because, well, the smart thing is to use the predators, while keeping the other route as a backup in case of an outbreak. But that isn't a route that is there, because it would mean no Constellation member finger waggling at you. You can't even suggest it, and then have it shot down for some reason.
@@Axterix13 it burns me up that the uc kidnapped me, strongarmed me into being their mole, and then they (and my companion) had the _audacity_ to feel betrayed when I sided with the crimson fleet. They threatened me, on multiple occasions, while the pirates gave me a fair shake. When they captured me, my only mission became sending them home to their families as a red slurry. But when they asked why I was doing this, I was only given the dialog options "I'm not telling" "money (despite them paying me to be a mole)" and "being bad is fun". That was when any plans to finish the game died for me.
@Deathelement53 same writer emil. This was trash writing and the fo4 was trash writing.
@pcraft8785 true. The companions and their writing in FO4 was some of the only good or decent writing and that's nowhere to be seen in Starfield. The same writer can still make good or decent shit while making trash elsewhere
> 5 years = retrospective
< 5 years = critique
might as well be a post mortem for this game lol
Can you cite where you get that metric from?
@@SiriusSphynx Emotions and random and prolly a sprinkle of quirkiness lol
@@notakirakarakaza2118 'Starfield: An Autopsy'
@@SiriusSphynx “can you cite where you get that metric from” 🤓👆
This is the moment that broke Starfield for me:
I had just finished the quest in Neon, that ended with the "Starborn" ship showing up and threatening at the end. I thought "oh wow - we actually have aliens here? We have something *unusual* here? Finally!!".
Flew back to the city planet, to the explorer base, cutscene with characters speculating if this is aliens, humans, gods or w/e... I thought that the universe was finally getting a little bit interesting and engaging, finally we'd be seeing something other than cartoon animals or just humans with guns.
Then, went off in space, landed at a random planet to do some planet scanning miniquest, and *saw the alien ship landing not far off* . I thought - "wait, what? really?" and ofc went there to investigate. Walked up to the ship - nobody around. But cool, I'm seeing the alien craft upclose! I jumped on the wing, walked up and... wait, is that a door? a human-sized access hatch? and of course, not interactable. Then I look in the distance and see a small group of humanoid figures walking from the alien ship towards some random direction. Okay.. chased the group down, got into a firefight, and - okay, they were more hp-rich, but they were just humans with guns that despawned when killed.
And then it hit me. The only thing that had peaked my interest, the only glimpse of excitement in this boring milquetoast universe, was a facade for yet more dudes with guns to kill. The "aliens" are just reskins of pirates; the "alien ship landing" is the same kind of RNG event as a pirate ship landing and attacking you. It's just a randomly generated encounter, with no lore, no story, no meaning to it, and it will happen 100 more times. There was nothing for me to actually discover. There was nothing.. meaningful about it.
And thereafter.. why should I be interested in the main plots "are they aliens? are they gods? are they a human faction?" when I had already seen that it was just more dudes with guns and the same behavior as random pirates.
That moment broke the game for me, it broke the only thing in the setting that felt potentially interesting, it broke the desire to keep progressing the story, and it broke my faith in the game having anything that didn't feel RNG-ed from a list of 100 options.
"Starborn" epitomizes how creatively bankrupt they are in the writing department.
Yep, this happened to me exactly and I didn’t progress much further in the main story afterwards. I was really interested and excited too! I really hope full mod support make this game worthwhile but I’m doubtful
And... When you find out, like 2 quests later, it literally was just humans with guns.
Such a boring universe. What's nice in TES and Fallout is that there are different enemy types that actually have some differences in tactics.
Starfield is just animals that will try and melee with an optional "spit" attack and guys with guns who all act basically the exact same. It's like Fallout went "oops all raiders and bloat flies!"
the lead designer of Bethesda having a "keep it simple stupid" attitude is the most rage-inducing thing ever, the lead designer of an RPG studio, the last kind of game that should be simple or stupid. I will absolutely throw hands with Emil if I ever get close to him (in minecraft)
@@Vecha302 Nah it started with morrowind. They definitely simplified and removed things between daggerfall and morrowind.
@@honeybadger6275 The stuff cut for Morrowind was just bloat.
@@jorgizoran4340 That's cope. It doesn't change the fact that since todd took over they have consistently cut more and more from their games until we got to where we are now where there isn't enough left to even call it a game.
deep breath, have a cup of tea
there is a balance to be found. For me morrowind was very close to where it should be. Skyrim improved the combat and visuals but removed too many fun mechanics@@honeybadger6275
I got this game FOR FREE and i still feel robbed. The days of Morrowind are long gone huh
Well said. I started with Morrowind and loved it. Oblivion too but not quite as much. Skyrim bore me and this looks absolute crap.
@@rokzakrajsek9864 Oblivion was the one I started. However I think its aged the most. I remember giving Morrowind a proper go and its like that Danny DeVito meme "I get it". If you put the effort in to get past the jank and the fatigue system then the game is so rewarding. Especially when you basically become a god narratively and mechanically.
Skyrim tho, I mean I love it. The mechanical depth isn't there, neither is the narrative depth. Skyrim is a casual game. Which isn't a bad thing its just such a different type of elder scrolls game compared to Morrowind. Sometimes all you want is a classic, uncomplicated adventure. I think I'd actually define Skyrim as a cozy game.
Unfortunately After Skyrim they just kept dumbing down their mechanics and writing, down and down and down... Now we have starfield. In my opinion its the worst Bethesda game to date that I've played. Bugs aside it might even be worse than fallout 76 (I never played it so I dunno)
Its a fucking shame. I dread the next Bethesda game.
@rokzakrajsek9864 Oblivion has some cool features and I love the dlc, but I always hated the scaling and essential npcs
That moment when you realize Morrowind is actually a really bad game and you have to take off the rose colored glasses.
@@RezaQin It is bad but it was special when it came out. It was the last effort from Bethesda to stay alive and the result were something creative and immersive. The problem is they didn't fixed what is wrong and kept what is good, they went on the casual route and throw out everything what can not be sold to the mindless masses.
Non of the Bethesda game is really good. But during Morrowind they still had what need to make good games. They were still a game developer company. Since Oblivion they are just a money making company and nothing more.
I have no rose colored glasses on, I stood in front of a Mudcrab in Morrowind and shot an arrow into his face from 1 meter distance and missed, I know how much Bethesda is unable to evolve. But I appreciate Morrowind because it is a game not a product.
It bothered me way too much that the old NASA facility from hundreds of years ago had the exact same Starware OS on their computers.
Yup. And that colony ship too.
Pure lazy greed.
Yup, and the same robot enemies. Extremely lazy. And this was in development for a decade?
Starware OS is Windows 25, so that's why it is the same from century to century. Compatible with Windows Vista..
@@SteveMacSticky no it's lazy writing
Starfield is three month old , yet feel already so old
it's gameplay style was already 10 years outdated when it came out
@@saber2802 indeed it was...
Starfield is three months old, yet feels so old already.
Even the critics arent entertaining because of the game
Falllout 76 was so much more fun to critic, starfield bores without even making you sleepy
Older than fallout 4
"the elders scrolls world has magic and dragons, but that doesn't mean an armoured core mech could drop from the sky and fit right in" - unless they named it pelinal whitestrake I guess
Or Numidium and Akulakhan, in certain interpretations
Isn’t that just Skyrim’s dwarves?
I mean to be fair - at least Pelinal was still a subtle "Mech-not-Mech" type of deal. You never really could tell. The ambiguity is the genius of it.
I mean you could argue that tonal architects was just a type of magic, but nobody can recreate it now. So it does kinda fit in.@@samueltitone5683
@@RazorsharpLT A futuristic time traveling space terminator makes perfect sense in a universe where there's a future era where people live on the moons and Nirn has turned into a giant clockwork machine.
For me, big problem was that from a role-playing perspective, how some of those backgrounds ends up as miner. While some of them I can explain, others are just unbelievable and hard to accept, for example: diplomat, cyber runner, chef or professor throws their carrer or life path to become a miner.
Another problem was being forced by Bennet to visit Constellation, like I'm being kidnapped and not have a will of my own.
Also our character knows how to pilot a starship, but doesn’t know how to use a jetpack. (Bounty hunter does)
Like in cheap comedy our character lands spaceship, NPC approaches.
NPC: Could you help me with this, you can use jetpack to get there.
Character: Sure, but use „jetwhat”?
NPC: Jetpack, that thing on your back.
C: This, I though it was fancy looking backpack.
NPC: It has 1 button just press it.
C: I don’t know how.
NPC: Just press it, you piloted a spaceship with thousands of buttons.
C: Yeah, so what, it doesn’t mean I know how to press this one button.
I created an explorer character because I love space and my goal was to explore all of it. I was flabbergasted to have ended up as a miner for whatever reason, AND being forced to act surprised when I saw a spaceship and act like I've never seen space before, it actively harms my brain
The opening is what killed the game for me. I don't understand why Bethesda had to create such a contrived opening for the game, forcing you to be a miner (whatever the background), freely hand you over a legendary ship. It's like being a nobody and getting the millenium falcon so you can deliver a package, it makes absolutely no sense.
Why couldn't they just have a different opening for each class? It doesn't have to be super long or anything.
Soldier? Spawn in New Atlantis during some combat training for the UC Vanguard, have your boss tell you that constelation is looking for someone to break a few skulls.
Explorer? Spawn literally anywhere in the universe with a flyer pointing you towards constelation.
and so on.
Or just go the NewVegas way; Wake up in the hospital after hitting your head, create character, done, go wild.
Just put me in the shoes of the ROLE I want, point me towards the main questline, and let me do whatever I want, with some basic ship. Hell, maybe give players a set amount of credits and let them build their first ship, so there's some variation there too. Bethesda is so afraid of players having a thought while playing, they just railroad absolutely everything. I really wanted to like this game, but Bethesda really took everything bad from their previous games (things people were desperatelly modding away) and doubled down on them.
Also, please for the love of god fire Emil Pagliarulo and never let him have a career ever again. The guy has absolutely no talent for being a director of anything, he literally sucks the soul of any universe he gets his grubby little hands on. I hate this guy with a passion.
@@minoxs +1 for team "throw Emil into the shadow realm"
After many, many hours I still had no idea why Barrett gave me his ship apart from a contrived plot device.
Bizarre and was probably one of the first things to challenge my immersion before it was broken repeatedly.
@@JerfVREmil and Todd, he’s arguably an even bigger part of the problem. It’s his job to shoot down any potentially good ideas, and every former person at Bethesda attests to the fact he has no clue what he’s doing.
@@DeepTissueExplorer
Well said friend, and I especially appreciated that last line.
It seems many are noticing that funny little habit of those “people.”
hopefully bg3 makes game companies realize the locking gamers out of content due to their starting choices is not exactly a bad thing.
Especially when you have a game mechanic revolving around redoing the game multiple times.
@@LordJaroh This is the biggest thing I want in upcoming RPGs like FABLE, Elder Scrolls VI, Avowed, and maybe even Dragon's Dogma 2.
Don't worry about players not being able to do everything on a single character. Let there be good and bad choices, let there be consequences, let there be limitations. If I get locked out of a Mage faction for being a Warrior, that's fine! I'll make another character to try the playstyle some other day! Hidden special dialogue for being a Spellblade that let's me join both but the game never eluded to this feature? Yes please! Let me discover things!
You can find a lot of creativity in the indie market - they're not afraid to let their ideas run wild. Big corps just want to keep shareholders happy. You don't see much deviance from the mean in that space, but occasionally corps hit on something. BG3 probably won't change things, but it should absolutely be held up as the paragon it is.
@@justinkroboth360my le RPG... Le let me skip content?!
That's if you have quality content though. Starfield looks like a big step towards having most of a games content generated procedurally.
I believe BGS realized early on that Starfield was an exceptionally empty game, so the tutorial has to be drawn out o create a sense of grand depth begging to be explored. A longer tutorial gives the player less genuine play time to make an informed decision if they aim to refund their game.
So true
Man, it feel so nice when youtube actually works for once and recommends quality content maker, subscribed!
I wish Todd Howard could see this video. It’s like no one was at the studio to make these points to the team. Just yessmen all in agreement.
He doesn't care. Non of them do.
For what? As if a random youtuber can influence him.
@@dutchmilk one random influencer can’t, a random influencer’s community on the other hand…..
@@dutchmilkI think the backlash against starfield is probably the most vocal of any Bethesda game. This criticism is important. At least it's more important than gassing up this POS game and pretending it deserves a good score
Dude - Todd Howard retired after this game.
Why do you think this is so bland? It's literally a cash in "my retirement check" so he can get back to aging. A small tick off the box promise to investors.
Imagine at the beginning you could join the pirates depending on your background.
16:15 You were caught crossing the border, but the game doesn't specify you were trying to escape skyrim. For all you know, you could've been trying to illegally enter the nation instead.
Great point, it's up to you!
I always interpreted it as you coming in rather than out, so it's interesting to see it the other way
I always played it like this haha makes it more realistic when I don't know how anything works
I always played a nord anyway so in my head I was trying to return home. Usually as some merc for hire wanting to see my homeland after the last bloody campaign
You could be legally entering and just had the misfortune of being close enough to Ulfric's escape team for the Imperials to catch you in the sweep.
They don't care because they're trying to end the war and you're collateral damage.
There's three flavors of sidequest.
1. Fast travel somewhere and walk through several loading screens and talk to a person, then go back.
2. Go to a boring POI and get something.
3. Very rarely go somewhere *slightly* unique and get something.
Now this isn't very different than most of Skyrim's sidequests, but the main difference is Skyrim's sidequests serve a secondary function of guiding you to explore the province. Exploring Starfield is meaningless because of the procgen. So the best they can do is guide you to places you wouldn't normally go (because the cities are so terribly designed) like The Well in New Atlantis, the residential district on Cydonia, or Neon's obnoxious Ebbside. Also "Find me a magical artifact" is more exciting than "Get me the sauce for my fast food slop cubes because the Chunks company is incompetent"
"This could had been an email" as a quest design philosophy is absolute insanity.
@@igrvks The in-universe explanation is that radio signals are too slow to go between star systems so they have to hire couriers. But in that situation there would be a service who loads all the emails into a grav-drive equipped shuttle, jump to a distribution center, and the distribution center would send out shuttles to go to systems and relay the messages. They'd probably do it daily, and charge extra for express messages sent out hourly. Like if they even gave a seconds thought to their worldbuilding it'd be something like that. There's no reason the Chunks guy on that one planet would ask some rando captain to go pick up his sauce.
You know it's bad when PatricianTV went radio silent when Starfield dropped, hell PrivateSessions got hospitalized.
Are they Bethesda shills?
No, they are very much not Bethesda shills
Private sessions got hospitalised 😂😂
That's a meme right
@@Guitar-Dog no, he had a nervous breakdown and had to go into therapy, look at his community posts
@@picklejarmonsterfanboy9367 oh no, hope he's alright and recovering.
Good meme though
Well. At least Starfield gave us HOURS of great content in form of critique videos. Some really, REALLY good ones (like this one).
watching the mainstream wake up to NuBeth's mediocrity has been more entertaining than Starfield could ever be.
Oblivion and Morrowind or classic fallout remaster and in my eyes all is forgiven. Until then, this isn't the company i grew up loving. It's one thing to move away from your original audience. It's another to abandon and forget about them. It was us the consumers that saved bethesda with morrowind. They don't owe us anything but i wish they remembered that with all their micro transactions, media embarrassments and lawsuits.
@Timoshemperoni for years I said I wanted a trilogy or screen adaptation of the old republic era of star wars. I wanted to see Revan's story told on screen for so long.
Until Disney happened. Now every day I hope I don't get that wish.
I used to want an Oblivion remaster.
I used to want Bethesda to update Morrowind and finish it in the original vision they had.
Now I'm hoping they never touch them again, because I have zero hope they'll improve them and every expectation that they'll make it worse.
If they return to oblivion or worse, Morrowind, I expect nothing less than a "Reforged" situation
Same. Preserve good things and leave them as they were. Especially when the people working on them have zero respect or care for the things we loved.@@alexanderrahl7034
@@TimoshemperoniMorrowind had a unique setting and a somewhat interesting story but that's about it. Compared to other, more obscure RPGs of its time such as Gothic it still felt quite lifeless and poorly written. Oblivion is no better than Starfield, you're just nostalgic for it. Bethesda has been putting out the same repackaged slop for two decades. It's fine to admit you enjoy it, I love Oblivion, but see it for what it is. It baffles me how people are shitting on Starfield and then defending the older games.
@@alexanderrahl7034See my comment above. Bethesda games have never been "good." It's fine to enjoy Morrowind and Oblivion, but they still objectively suck ass in many of the same ways modern Bethesda games do, especially Oblivion. You're just nostalgic for them.
I find many of the longer, more thoughtful critiques (like this one) are hitting the exact same points and I'm glad to see it. Like you said in the intro, the problems are becoming too obvious to ignore. I'm glad that Bethesda is finally getting more substantial pushback after making such a bland, empty, soulless, corporate-aggrandizing product. However, as I've said before, I don't see Bethesda actually learning from this feedback. The fact that they responded to criticism with "have you considered that the game is good?" shows a disconnect between them and their audience too broad to ever be closed.
Looking forward to the rest of the critique!
Except you're clearly not their audience, considering you describe their games as "bland, empty, soulless,corporate product" while i'm sorry Starfield is nothing like that for a lot of people, and certainly not from the point of vue of Bethesda devs.
They will indeed probably not change a lot because their games sell all like crazy, because a shit ton of people, who are not as vocal as the haters, but who buys and play games, actually really love what they do, and i am one of them, even if Starfield has more problems that i would love to and didn't live up to my expectations, it's still an amazing game and of the one i want to keep playing more and more regularly.
My god the PC RPG elitists are some of the worst i have seen in the video game community, you don't like the type fo game Bethesda makes, don't play them, they will not change the type of game they love making for you guys, who don't even respect their work.
@@SuperBallani Ah yes, the game-not-for-gamer argument
Is the type of gamer starfield was made for, in the room with us right now?
@@SuperBallani But it clearly *is* bland, soulless and empty for a lot of other people. It's no good saying "well, that's your problem, not the game's". Seriously, what kind of lame response is that? People who BOUGHT THE GAME clearly *are* the audience. I mean, why do you think they bought the game? Because they expected to hate it? Because they knew it would be soulless and bland? Because they don't like Bethesda games? Come on, think logically. They bought the game because they liked what Bethesda has done in the past and hoped to like this too. It's not their fault that they just... didn't.
You're the type of gamer that Bethesda loves, and it's because of people like you that they will continue to shovel out continuous dreck and shit and have you eat it up because you keep fooling yourself into thinking it's chocolate. What a tool of a response. @@SuperBallani
@@johndeighan2495 I don't think anyone who makes an argument like this is really intending on thinking much at all. If anything, they're purposefully saying it in bad faith just to get a reaction.
That, or they somehow have such an utterly twisted view of what a target audience is that "people who bought the product" are somehow not the target audience. Which to be frank seems to be a pretty common situation nowadays, so...
if you think about Daggerfall, has the largest explorable landmass (technically speaking). Yet Starfield has technically the smallest explorable landmass (crafted). Where did they go wrong?
I don't get it... Daggerfall is procedurally generated too. and Starfield clearly has more handcrafted content... and in raw KM² a thousand worlds would ultimately dwarf Daggerfall.
@paulfouquet2646 if only it felt that way though. Starfield feels smaller perceptually for me at least. Yes they both have procedural and crafted dungeons, but Starfield actually feels smaller to me. It feels much less explorable compared to say fallout 4, skyrim, daggerfall, new vegas. Just how it feels to me. I like the game, but it still feels smaller somehow despite that whole universe laid out in front of me.
@@darrenc2721I'd say it's because your brain can tell that it's functionally just a bunch of disconnected zones you need load screens to get to with content you could see basically anywhere else in the game.
Whereas in Daggerfall the dungeons were also procedurally generated and seemed to just sprawl out forever and theoretically you could walk from one to the other even if you'd never want to.
@bat-stranger3067 and get lost in them daggerfall dungeons too. It did happen.
It's worth mentioning that once you get the Frontier you're not allowed to jump to any system other than Alpha Centauri until you turn in the artifact.
I learned this when I tried to do the first mission of the UC Vanguard quest line, but found that it wouldn't let me go to Tau Ceti II.
It took me a while to realize that I needed to turn in the artifact before the game would let me do my own thing.
I was enjoying Starfield for awhile. Finally decided to make the trip to Earth. Running through my mind was the endless possibilities of what Earth could look like, I was going to visit a monument in London!
The shock when I landed and found out that Earth was just a procedurally generated desert with no trace whatsoever of humans other than the 'special cool buildings'. When I eventually found out what happened to Earth, I was even angrier.
I can go to a random moon on the edges of the playable area, and find traces of long abandoned outposts, mining facilities, and pirate bases. But somehow Earth, the home of humanity, is still just an empty planet with a gigantic desert.
That was the moment where my ability to deal with Bethesda's BS storytelling ruined the game for me. I'm not buying ES:6 when it comes out, unless it gets overwhelmingly positive reviews, and I see gameplay worth the $80 they'll charge for it.
The "touch strange artifact, see a strange vision" thing was done better by Mass Effect.
I'm waiting for the Bethesda dev to leave a copy&paste comment under this video.
Modders can't save this game it's over.
That speech check to be shown the macguffin doesn't actually let you not steal it. Emil was dead set on you committing "crime" to complete the main quest (as if you haven't been) with a 600cap bounty even if you snuck though and were never detected in stealing it. It then comes back in the end to "throw it back in your face" and make absolutely sure you feel annoyed and disinvested in the finale.
The fact they choose not to have any alien races to play as was the first thing that made me turn away from the game, and the list only got longer the more I learned about the game.
This game has sad dad energy
anyone who use "it's a bethesda game" to avoid certain criticisms should really look back at morrowind and how it's lore was so insanely imaginative and fun.
That's why older gamer have been complaining about bethesda games ever since, it wasn't the simplification of gameplay, not really, it was how boring the games became story and lore wise.
Bethesda lost the ability to write well a long time ago, now they've even lost the ability to create interesting physical spaces to explore. What they're left with is gameplay that would have been adequate 10 years ago in an entirely different genre and a game engine that was a relic 5 games ago.
I agree. The problem is not just that they've lost the talent as writers, but they've actively removed the talented people. Todd he has always been a small, self-centered man and he promoted as writers and main devs the people who acted as yes men to him and couldn't cast a shadow over him.
If he was smart, he wouldn't have gotten rid of Michael Kirkbride among older Elder Scrolls writers and devs, and would have opened the door to people involved with old Fallout.
Man I remember watching your first impressions live. I think they have definitely held up over 4 months. Thanks for the video. Always appreciate your perspective and Evan's contributions as well!
If Starfield was an actual RPG, then killing off the entirety of Constellation would create a new branch in the story. But since Starfield is a faker, that doesn't happen, and it's even worse, since every diologue option is there merely as a decorative interactable interface. Bethesda has marketed Starfield as a roleplaying game, then Baldur's Gate 3 said "no, this is roleplaying game".
That look the NPCs give you is like a judgement: "You're actually playing this? I have to be here, what's your excuse?"
Starfield is so soulless it's not even funny. I genuinely felt i was talking to cardboard cutouts when talking npc's
Its because Bethesda is soulless. The company isn't purpose-driven, they are money-driven. It makes a massive difference in the quality.
The literal cardboard cutout sprites of Daggerfall have more life to them.
@@sayerslayer1854
Like all companies?
I would call it flawed design, if they just wanted to make money, they wouldn’t even think of making a new IP and this type of game in general.
@@flowerthencrranger3854 This.
It's actually impressive that they used all this time and money and made something so....*dead* *lifeless* & *uninspired*
Bethesda will never attempt creating an IP like this again. Not while Todd Coward is still around, and not without gutting most of the current employees
Overall, let Starfield be a cautionary tale to the future game designers who're beginning to like the smell of their own farts
When you talk about "the writers" ... were there any? I sat through the end credits looking for them, and the only mention I saw of "writing" was credited solely to Emil Pagliarulo (who we all know and love...)
It's entirely possible I missed it, but if not, that would explain why so much of the writing is bad, repetitive, and uninteresting. One dude can't be responsible for a game with this many characters, plots, and personalities. We aren't talking about Tolkien here.
I think he was the head guy, but there are a ton of writers under him. Like character writers, quest writers, etc. And even then, some of the quests and characters will have multiple writers.
I love how the artifact is like ten steps away from a place where dozens of people are working.
Beautiful crossover. I enjoy both of your channels for a while now. Can't wait for part 2
The name "Starborn" just shows how lazy Bethesda has become. Cannot even have a name that doesn't sound like Dragonborn.
Reject modernity,
Replay Fallout 1 and 2
reject classicism,
replay wasteland 1988!
Play Daggerfall Unity
You are right.I don’t know way peoples don’t play the og’s they not that difficult and fun if you watch a guide. They don’t know what they’re missing out. This is coming from some body who was born ten years after the second game was released.
Mass Effect Andromeda had arguably more interesting planets to explore and a ground vehicle to explore them in. The game obviously has plenty of problems but it did planetary exploration better (something important in a space game) by limiting the number of planets and handcrafting them instead of using procedural generation to make countless interchangeable and boring planets.
@@luciusdebeers6176 I was hyped for Andromeda and ignored all the warning signs because I love Mass Effect and thought the concept was great. Despite everything it did wrong I have a bit more respect for it than I used to after starting a new playthrough due to my disappointment in Starfield’s “exploration”.
@@JaelaOrdo i was disappointed with it but the exploration and combat were fun and i liked the companions and little things like Lexi hitting on Drack in a sciency way. i was only pissed when they turned the planned dlc into comics i get it but i wanted more i got into the hopeful drama of it all. its not mass effect trilogy good but i like the saturday morning cartoon show of it all its a nice change of pace with the trilogy's space opera seriousness of it all esp after the stress of mass effect 3.
You know a game messed up when it makes people go " actually, I'd sooner play Andromeda"
I liked Andromeda. Sure, it wasn't great like the original trilogy, but I had a lot of fun with it. I've only done 1 playthrough, though.
I was going to buy the game anyway, but I definitely fell into the hype. In my first playthrough I thought the game was fine until I beat it and realized, "Wow, this is honestly worse than Skyrim." I have more fun killing thousands of Dragur in the same crypt than I do walking on a rock with nothing to do, truly a bethesda moment
Beth games used to be niche that generate a ton of hype which helps fund the next titles even though the bulk of the players will leave the game.
Skyrim changed that, and now bethesda seems keen on designing their games to retain that larger audience for longer. By doing that they are going to lose both audiences.
Imo they don’t have the collective competence to compete for the mainstream audience successfully.
The core Beth fans overlooked or excused so much that was ‘off’ about their games because of the unique exploration among their other strengths.
This shielded them in some way from being compared to other games by becoming a genre unto themselves. However that is a favor the masses have not afforded them rightly opening up the comparisons to the full gamut of other contemporary games.
In attempting to appease the masses they have left behind a lot of what their core audience loved but failed to realize that in almost every other area, combat, graphics, writing, traversal mechanics, etc… they are so underdeveloped and lacking vision as to be inadequate at best and near embarrassing at worst.
I love your channel so much! Your Daggerfall video got me to try the other elder scrolls games, and I find your commentary very informative as well I would love to see you do a video on cyberpunk 2077 on the gameplay and narrative.
Brilliant work as always, and thanks to cluing me into Evan Prince and his channel. Definitely going to be diving into some of his videos now, starting with his Star Wars Starfighter and Battle for Naboo ones (such under-covered games in the Star Wars canon....). What can I say but.... I kinda want you to dive into Outer Worlds now, lol. I mean, it's just such a good contrast to BGS' take on the same concept of making a retro-futuristic space RPG, y'know? BGS goes too big, Obsidian goes smaller and more focused. BSG goes for aesthetically grounded and bland; Obsidian goes for pulpy and colorful. BGS goes for mostly illusory role-playing options here; Obsidian goes for... well, you get the point. I think it would make for a good video companion when all is said and done, but I sure am enjoying more thoughtful content focused entirely on Starfield right now! Great video and can't wait for Part 2.
I like how you tied it all together with the dumbing down of games for mass-appeal.
It’s mainly to rebuttal the common reply that we shouldn’t expect better from Bethesda. Even with their downward trend, they have managed to do better.
@@JwlarI feel a lot of people that defined the magic of Bethesda have slowly left the company and by now it'd just the simpletons left
Before launch, i came across a scary amount of people who carried this mindset of "it doesn't matter, modders will fix the game" and after playing too much starfield, it honestly feels like Bethesda carried that same mindset
I feel like Bethesda just doesnt care anymore, at least not about anything other than TES.
Just look at New Vegas vs Fallout 3/4, its incredibly evident that rhe NV team put care and even love into the game, whereas rhe others just feel hollow.
This is the first BGS game that I have quit after just a few hours. I've been playing Bethesda games for nearly 20 years now, and I have never felt this way before. I found the menus to be tedious and unintuitive, and I was just so freaking bored. I found myself getting frustrated, and I just haven't had any desire to pick it up again.
Nice video, thank you Jwlar and Evan
Thanks for watching 🙏🏼
28:06 lol you had me cracking up with this skit well done
Great review! 👍 Looking forward to part 2
Second comment, but I just finished the video! Lovely work as always, Jwlar (and Evan!) That RLM audio clip around 1:20:20 had me in tears - nothing can signify disappointment quite like Mike Stoklasa saying "no no no no". 😅 I had a feeling going into this game that I would be let down, but good lord. It's like they couldn't quite decide what they wanted Starfield to be. I used to think "man, I must have changed" because I bounced way the fuck off of Skyrim and could not get into it at all. I played Daggerfall back in the day (I think I was about, uh, 12, when it launched?) and I was hooked. I never beat it, but I spent hundreds of hours in it just... having fun. I liked Oblivion well enough, but when Skyrim dropped, everyone around me was seemingly enthralled by it and I couldn't add anything to that conversation. So, again, I felt like some was wrong with *me*, but through videos like yours and PatricianTV, I've come to understand that it is probably more of a case of Bethesda's priorities changing. Granted, Dark Souls came out right around Skyrim, and that opened up an entirely new world to me - Skyrim's combat never stood a chance after that. But still, I had hope that Starfield could turn things around. I feel like they really need to bring some storytellers back into the fold because Emil and crew are not cutting it. It looks pretty enough, at least?
People saying that Starfield should not be compared to a decade old game (or even 2 decade old games), because they have different engine are the hardest copium consumers in the galaxy.
Using the Creation Engine was a choice Bethesda made. 7 years is so long, you could order, learn and make the game on an entirely new engine that is not ancient and garbage and has a modding kit.
Elder Scrolls VI is already dead and these fans pave the way with unworthy praise to it's doom.
28:18 I think it's even worse... mining is made mostly useless by the abundance of shop-available materials and later the player built extractors.
Also by the Harvest Element power. Vacuum up every inorganic resource instantly within a spherical radius (that gets bigger for each NG+). It's also usually the quickest way to scan the resources on a planet.
I sort of would disagree on the mining bit. Extractors and outposts are the thing that is pretty meaningless. There are two reasons to do it, pretty much. One is because you want to "decorate"... you want to make a pretty outpost. The second is because you want to power level (which amounts to saying the game isn't really fun, because you're doing a repetitious boring task rather than playing the game). But beyond that, why bother? Why dig through the bad skill tree system, wasting valuable points,when you can do your crafting in your spaceship or at the constellation? Why bother when you can buy most of what you need, and the couple you don't, you just mine?
Mind you, you won't mine much, but it is better than outposts.
@Axterix13 extractors: infinite xp, with how hard it is to find decent combat and how long the leveling is this is great. Infinite credits, and huge storage, making it so you never have to let a component go when it might be useful later. Even picking a few bad skills at level 20 can set you back such as starship level, just say fuck bad level design and abuse bad game design to bypass it.
Fantastic video, and all very true.
I can’t wait for part 2!
Also, this video deserves at least 10x more views.
LETS GO BRO been waiting for this
back when the fanbase thought oblivion was taking a major step backwards for bethesda, it was mostly because they weren't able to aesthetically portray the world in game as detailed and unique as they were able to with Morrowind like it deserved to be. Now they aren't even building around a complete world on paper anymore.
bethesda replying to negative reviews: "yeah but have you considered that your opinion is wrong"
Great and thorough evaluation, but coming from you, that ain't no surprise. Well done.
Yeah I don't think Todd Howard's going to be there for much longer
It made money, that’s all that matters.
Todd Howard now has so much money, he could easily walk out any time and never have to work another day in his life.
I remember the feeling I had when I chose to fly at full speed towards that first planet you're put in front of for the space battle tutorial. I kept going and going, all power into the thrusters, but the planet wasn't getting any bigger through the window.
but that couldn't be right, I'm sure it's just a really big planet.
well of course we all know what it is - there's an invisible cube of "space" we can fly about in while shooting our guns or whatever, but you can't actually travel to the planet at all. you go into a menu to load onto the planet.
it wasn't disappointment, it was disbelief. this was next-gen - they kept saying it. "next-gen. next-gen!"
but _No Man's Sky_ had seamless space / planet transitions, however dull the initial game may have been. and that was in what, 2016?
sigh. it's just a letdown. what's more to be said?
*spore* let you fly from space to planet without a menu. in 2008. its inexcusable for a game of this size with this budget to just shrug its shoulders and go 'can't be done!' for such basic gameplay elements.
And it's not even like this would be all that difficult. Trigger boxes have been in the engine since Morrowind, they could've literally just placed a trigger box around the planet object which opens the landing site selection. Same with other planets - they're not actually there, which is fine, but was it really too much to ask for a supercruise-esque system where you fly to another planet, maybe marked on some kind of HUD?
I have no idea what they were thinking.
It's not daggerfall. Everyone here is thinking this. How far we have fallen.
Let’s see if Ted Petersen can pull off a better game with wayward realms
I’ve been waiting for this one!
Love the video but im very worried about people retroactively praising Skyrims intro. We all hated it in 2011 and for many years after that. Lets remember the most highly praised opening in a BGS game is Morrowinds, which starts up slow and follows through with that. The problem with Starfield is that its boring, doesnt introduce you to the world, then gives you a ship and calls you the chosen one.
Trust me dude, I wasn't praising Skyrim's opening because I think it's all that great. It's only great when compared to Starfield and I wanted to compare to a recent Bethesda game.
The perk system is a complete failure. Imagine if the option to target a specific limb in VATS was locked behind a perk, and without it you would aim randomly.
BGS is still making the mistake of holding back what would be basic combat techniques in other games for high level play. For example, Skyrim's Block skill tree has Parries (a staple of many melee focused action games) as a late unlock . Projectile deflection is more reasonable to lock behind skill tree progress than the Parries and Shield Bash knock back were.
excited for Part 2!
Bethesda fans deserve this game
the one that annoyed me with persuasion was the guys in the bank, it had something like, "NO i DON'T CARE ABOUT HOSTAGES!!!." and persuasion, "Hmmm you make a good point I don't want anyone to die." seconds later.
They could have made modern daggerfall in space. Instead they made daggerfall in space minus most rpg elements.
Starfield is nothing like Daggerfall.
That's called Star Explorers. Literally made by a hardcore Daggerfall fan. Also looks like it came out at the same time as Daggerfall for aesthetics.
Amazing how quickly you improve production quality. Both your speech and editing. Great work, love your content!
Oh finally! Was waiting for this Jwlar :)
Why are all named npcs immortal. Why did someone program a dialogue option that says "i'm done working with you [attack]" and when you click it and start shooting every named npc on the station is immortal.
Emil doesn't believe in choices
Man, you offer the perfect balance of commentary, factual info, objective/subjective opinion and nitpicks. Would watch you critique literally anything. Great job.
1:28:40 - To be fair, I wouldn't go to a theme park where the rides impacted each other.
As a native St Louisan it was a big heartbreaker to see the Arch included in the game when it was given no fanfare. The entire game is joyless, emotionless, broken and stale. Nothing's ever been as 5/10 as this
some of my frustrations with starfield:
1 you have to mine for resources but you don't get no xp for mining..
2 you can build an outpost, but you can't create a trade link to any major planets or hubs except if you have a trade authority questline..
3 you don't get xp for building..
4 1 perk per level up, so you have to choose if upgrade a skill or start a new skill..( i think some things could be cool in the leveling system, but the way you only really level up if you have a rank one is a bit stupid.. they could off opened with rank 0 meaning if you mine or kill or do something that can be related to a skill then you get points and when you open up a rank you level up and get a skill point .. and if you level up 10 times a major skills you level up to level 2 a,d get an extra skill point.. .. like in older Bethesda games or like in Cyberpunk 2077 . )
5 you have an whole system to do weapon upgrading , but you get too many weapons anyway that it doesn't really matter same for Armor ...
there are other points but these are some of the things that came to mind..
That intro animation was cool. Had to rewatch it a few times
54:00 Great question! Its Because Bethesda sure didn't make a design document capable of carrying over anything more substantial than a post-it note on Todd Howards desk locked behind his office door
I really thought that removing wanted would be a cool mission line to figure out what happened. I was super bummed to find out all i had to do was pay my bounty...
Even before release I was disillusioned that Beth were wasting development hours on this versus ES6
ES6 Will be just as trash they don't have any talent left
It won't be a waste until we see whether or not they've learned from Starfield.
Unless es6 learns what morrowind did right, and oblivion onward did wrong, it will not be good
@@extremechimpout let me cope in peace
They've made 3 bad games in a row please temper expectations accordingly.
Very good alternate start offered at the end of the video.
I found my immersion shattered exploring a hostile atmosphere planet i.e cant breathe without space suit. Only to find a random generated outpost with outdoor areas with someones half eaten lunch around a table outside.
Got to the main city and stopped playing out of boredom. At least did not pay a cent and got if with xbox membership for free. Now happily playing phantom liberty.
Honored to have been involved. Cannot wait to show you all part 2!
A intro idea I had
Player arrives in a space station with one other person (Think a taxi pilot) , ship has some repairs needed and you head to a bar (I assume the game has the bar tender gives rumor idea) and talk with the tender & he speaks of a quick easy and fast job > intro from here
Adds more ommph while opens up various backgrounds
Mate this video is amazing. My only gripe is the advert placement every 5 mins. it makes me seriously consider not running them just because they interrupt the video so often. I dont know if you control this fully but one ad every 15 minutes surely is reasonable? Anyway thanks for the content. Subbed
This is gonna be good
When skyrims opening looks legit...
A better opening would have you as a random spod on a passenger liner. Dending on the background you would be crew /pilot or passenger. The ship gets attacked by pirates. Barrett is on board the ship travelling incognito. The ship crashes. You and barrett survive largely unharmed. Other passengers are stuck and barrett says something like "hey grab that mining cutter its a simple use tool just aim it at the debris and cut these folks free." Teaches you how to use it without being confined to being a miner.
Funny, because being a space miner is an option to gain money in more open space sims, that not focus entirely on combat, you go to asteroid field and blast asteroid and get minerals, some older games even let you build mining facilities or make some asteroid different so you can get rare materials, from single players games to online games, I spend literally ours playing those games and learning the mechanics.
A lot of people complain about the engine and it's clear why but I personally just want good writing, dialogue and the freedom to play different play styles. My favourites are FNV, oblivion and morrowind but I'd gladly take another Skyrim or Fo4 if it didn't take so long to make just to disappoint us. I used to play all the CODs and Dynasty warriors and they released so many clones but it was still new and exciting. We know their not releasing masterpieces anymore so what is with the long wait?
My disappointment was immeasurable when the "aliens" I eventually began encountering turned out to just be NPCs I already met cosplaying Eon from Ben 10: Race Against Time.
Looking forward to part 2.