Wow! I suddenly like Starfield now. Knowing the devs had a hard time made the dialogue good, fast traveling everywhere not annoying, and the storyline compelling.
The general problem with Starfield is the things NPCs asked you to do would only make sense in a medieval setting. Those "talk to [person]" quests where you travel to another planet, talk to [person], then travel back to the 1st planet, would only make sense in a future where phones somehow don't exist.
The in-universe explanation (that they mention in passing in one early story mission) is that radio signals between star systems are unusably slow so you need ships with grav-drives to deliver messages BUT it would still be stupid for people to trust some rando to do their chores. There'd be an established courier service, and it would've been cool to see them actually put in the effort for their world building, but it's all so half-baked.
"this meal tastes like shit". "Oh, well you must be a 5 star chef then." I don't have to work as a dev to tell if a game is outdated doesnt function or is boring the same way i dont need to be a 5 star chef to tell someone a meal is awesome. You put something out and charged people money for it, it is subject to fair and deserved criticism.
He's not saying you don't have a right to complain or criticize, the problem is with saying that they put no effort and passion into making their awful, boring, uninspired game. No matter how bland you think Starfield is, you have no clue how much effort and work and sacrifice goes into making it. You can say "this mmeal tastes like shit" but you can't say "you should've put a little more cilantro, let it breathe, sautee the almonds and then add a bit of mint, that would've been better"
This is coming from a studio that had the full Power and money of Microsoft behind it. They can take off whenever they want and have a super lax no crunch culture. It’s been delayed several times. And then released next to balders gate and phantom liberty. 2 of the best reviewing games this year. It’s really hard to take the guy seriously when they failed to deliver.
@@Gatitasecsii World building wise it is 100% uninspired though, they don't connect the game world to itself. You can find posters talking about cybernetic limb subsidies for veterans, and yet we see not a single prosthetic limb in the game. There is no architectural differences between the two major factions, they are also socially in the same boat only Governmentally different. If I get a picture that shows the burger comes with lettuce and I'm presented with a burger without lettuce calling them out for not trying hard enough isn't wrong regardless of how hard they tried because they felt it was good enough to sell.
@@Gatitasecsii If the 5 star chef has the best cut of meat from the best part of the world in the best state ever. We can still complain that he didnt cook it, didnt add a pinch of salt and that the fries we ordered with it never made it to the table. This is how sales work, you create a product/service and sell it. People will experience if its good or bad. And if we know restaurant B uses certain ways of cooking and seasoning we can also say that Restaurant A should or could use all of those things.
I'm sure it's hard to make a game. It was hard to make Elden Ring, Baldurs Gate 3, Dragon Age Origins. But EMS is also a hard job. Being an engineer while you're on deployment and the ship is rocking back and forth is a hard job. Everyone has a hard job. That's life. The consumer does not care how hard someone's job is. I think Asmongold put it best when he said something to the effect of (not a direct quote) it doesn't matter if there's someone in 100 degree weather doing road work, if there's a bump in the road then it needs to get fixed. (Ok...if you're a Starfield fanboy please don't read any further cause you're gonna get mad). Emil is also a terrible writer. I would rather listen to the Twilight audiobook than listen to Starfields dialogue. Stardew Valley has more character depth than the ones in Starfield and it was made by one dude who taught himself everything. Emil is someone whose ego got hurt. He can't take criticism because he's been surrounded by people who just bow down to him and Bethesda keeps promoting him. Dude needs to be fired or retire. I loved FO4 despite it's writing, and I kept hearing about how if you love FO4 you'll love Starfield. But IMO that's not true. Starfield is so boring, I'd rather play FO4. Heck, I'd rather play Morrowind.
That’s a insult to morrowind and morrowind is great it’s a age game but it 1000x better starfield mainly because Emil didn’t put his stupid hands on it
Exactly this is the same company that doesn't even fix their own games and charges for content/mods they don't even own. Some game devs are so entitled acting like their jobs are important to society or something. 6 figure salary whining about making videogames.
And truth be told, I feel like Luke here plays too strongly to the logical part of Emil's statements. YES. There will be technological limitations. YES. It is important to understand why certain things came to be in order to informatively critique them. But it doesn't matter how far back certain choices were made that effect gameplay, MISTAKES ARE STILL MISTAKES!!! Like, he completely sidesteps the whole Twinkie analogy, and as so many of these funnier and more articulate commentors below have stated, "Yeah, I can't seamlessly recreate a twinkie, but I sure as !@#$ am able to tell when a twinkie tastes bad." And the fact is, Emil being a director doesn't make his statements righteous but misinterpreted due to his position. The fact that he's a game director DOES completely change the way these statements SHOULD be interpereted. If it was some ordinary dude who said all of this, than it would be a twitter thread advocating for thorough research and informative criticism. But because it is Emil, Starfield's Writer (for those who don't know, Starfield's story SUCKS), this is absolutely a twitter thread that exists solely to stroke Emil's ego and make self-justified excuses for why his objectively bad choices should not be questioned by the lowly worms who are "funny that they think they know what game development is like".
I agree with everything you said Starfield aside from graphical fidelity is a downgrade in Skyrim and Fallout 4 in so many aspects including the writing I think Luke was pretty effectively gaslit by Emil’s tweets.
The guy is pretending a large amount of the criticisms are new. Most of the loudest complaints have been around for a decade. So yes he is definitely gaslighting and obfuscating the laziness of Bethesda.
Considering Emil doesnt want to use any sort of game design document, I dont think he fully understands game development. No wonder it took so long to make Starfield and is such a disconnected mess.
Considering that Starfields biggest problems are fundamental design flaws and mismanagement with the game's direction, it's safe to assume that Emil is the one that failed at his job. He's the guy who follows the "keep it simple, stupid" philosophy and he has been criticized for bad writing and design choices for ages. Instead of taking accountability and admitting that he messed up, he goes on to write an essay of a twitter rant, blaming the consumers and complaining about how hard his job is. One is definitely disconnected from reality and it's certainly not the critics.
Once you pay $70 for a game, you are allowed to critique it. Once something is sold (whether it’s a toaster, a car, or an album) it is subject to review by the buyer.
Even in the store it tells u that u can’t leave a review unless u buy it ppl bought it or in my case was smart enough to play that shit for free thru cloud gaming before purchasing then left a review Ppl wanted shooting to be on par with destiny a hover bike like in destiny a hardcore fallout like survival mode with sims 4 like needs gotta eat or this gotta sleep or this cities the size of gta or cyberpunk not a small village on random planets we wanted to actually fly to the planet and other gamers got mad at other gamers for asking for planet to space traversal in a space game Oof Jesus Christ Starfield had all the hype and died like one toO
All of what he wrote is true. I 100% agree with him. Those are definitely the challenges and issues faced when making a game like this. But EVERY developer faces those challenges. That doesn’t change the fact that they made a very meh (not horrible, just meh) game, when other developers facing the same challenges made a BG3, for example.
And as a consumer why the fuck i should care about it. Every job is hard, and every one have his own problems. I don't wanna hear from car mechanic he fuckup my car, because his job is hard I don't wanna hear from chef that he burn my steak because his job is hard I don't wanna hear from contractor that my new house have crooked walls because his job is hard
@@rayvintankerson6818Just because they're different doesn't mean the thrust of his argument is false. The consumer is under no obligation to sympathize with your experience as a game dev. Which are a whiney entitled class of people who don't receive anywhere near the amount of scrutiny they deserve.
It would be fine is a normal dev wrote this. But this guy is the LEADER (I must emphasize, the leader) of the story telling in starfield. All the people who wrote starfield were under this guy, and it's his fault the story in this game is embarrassingly bad for what is considered a story game
the fact that the person who for years everyone said "yeah this guy is the problem, hes not good at the writing lead role" presents himself like this, it basically just confirms that everyone was right the whole time.
@@TheFuronMothership More like he's making excuses for his team doing a bad job and getting pilloried for it. You don't have to be a Michelin Star chef to criticize food, and gamers don't have to be fucking developers to rightfully call out a game as a boring, outdated chore of an experience. Something being difficult to do doesn't excuse it from criticism.
@@TheFuronMothership Sounds more like he's using them as a shield , for crap that might come his way , as a leader . Half of what he's saying sounds like "it's not us it's management" , well he is one of the "management" , have been for years and multiple games , even if not the head honcho obviously
@@Seoul_Soldier I'd be more inclined to agreee if the 'criticisms' weren't coming from angry jaded cynics who're so entitled they think their opinion alone will fix everything wrong with the game. 9 times out of 10, the 'criticism' I see being hurled toward the devs on Twitter iisn't actual constructive criticism. It's "lmao this game is dogshit, the story is trash, Spider-Man 2 has a way better story lol be more like Spider-Man 2." Or "this game is so fucking boring bro there's nothing to do and it's repetitive." Which is an oxymoron, since the game would have to provide you things to do for it to be repetitive. Hell, even you sound remarkably aggressive like Bethesda personally pissed in your corn flakes. Is Starfield Bethesda's worst game? I'd say so. I still had fun with it though, fun is subjective. A lot of people don't like Baldur's Gate 3 because it's turn-based and they think that style of combat is boring. Are they wrong? No. They just like different things. And can we please stop using terrible food analogies? It doesn't take a team of 200+ five-star chefs to make a a single burger, nor can I ever remember any restaurant meal I've ever had being charged $70. (Not even the four star hibachi place near where I live.)
If memory serves there was a sort of TED Talk by the main writer. He basically said they don't use a game design document since Fallout 3. If you don't know what that is, it's basically a blueprint for how the game should be made. The basic equivalent is like an architect trying to make a building without said blueprint... Let that sink in
What is it with gamers and terrible food analogies? It doesn't take a dedicated team of several hundred people to make a single pizza that costs $70. Also, you ever hear the saying "even when pizza is bad, it's still good?" The same could be argued for video games. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Plenty of people don't like Baldur's Gate 3 because they don't like turn-based combat, but that doesn't make it objectively bad. It won GOTY. Starfield isn't a bad game. Slightly above average at worst, and Bethesda should be applauded for at least taking a risk to develop a brand new IP even if it doesn't pan out. Companies who don't take risks and constantly play it safe are exactly the reason why game franchises like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed go stagnant.
@Aeternus-The-Invisible-War Gladly. Much rather cope with the state of Starfield than be a social media moron who can't respond with anything other than monosyllables.
Life and work is difficult. An adult complaining that it's difficult sounds too stupid. No sh!t Sherlock. Sure, doxxers and harrasers suck. But "you not game dev, you opinion stupid", is the dumbest view from a supposed "talented game dev".
All Emil is doing here is shifting blame and gaslighting the customers. With such an inability to accept their own failings and problems, as single dev and studio, and solve them during the development process it does not surprise me that they could not create and release a good product.
Emil is such a bad writer even his strawman metaphors are awful. Twinkies? Out of everything on Earth you pick Twinkies? The most manufactured, artificial, food-adjacent cream-filled objects ever made.
I guess I can empathize that creating games is an incredible marvel of technology. We can also acknowledge some companies do it with fewer bugs, better gameplay, and without going negative on their player base.
I don't make twinkies either, but if it was a fancy package with garbage inside, I would still complain regardless of how hard it was to make. Likely I would question why they had chosen to fill it with garbage after there previous twinkies had a sweet sugary filling.
@@Vladimirlives13 Actually have proofreaders to make sure I'm not trampling the lore. Write in a way that assumes the player has at least 2 brain cells. Create believable worlds, characters, and factions.
@@Vladimirlives13 well first off don't get rid of a design document so people making seperate quests in the SAME game can make sure they logically work together.
In response to "its a marvel it even works": Just because a bad movie had a development hell behind the screen doesn't make it any less of a bad movie, same thing for gaming. We need to stop listening to the excuses companies are giving and not give Bethesda a free pass just because its Bethesda, as it permeates the trend of gaming companies not finishing games upon release and fixing it over a couple of years. Starfield is clearly not $70 standard and that's fine, but they shouldn't act like it is.
I feel like Cyberpunk was this golden statue covered in an insane amount of dirt and mud. They took the time to deep clean it, and now we are left with a beautiful work of art. Starfield, on the other hand, is just like trying to polish a turd. The game at its core is just bad. At the end of the day, they can clean it up as much as possible, putting a bow on it to top it off, and its still just gonna be a turd... a well polished turd. Bad UI, no local map, bad writing, poor quest design, boring space, and planets decimated by loading screen hell, average gunplay, crap melee, slow boring traversal, limited copy paste content, fast travel simulator. If they use the excuse that the game has to do too much to generate and run everything that they have made, then they need to change the engine. Everyone knew it was time to let it go a long time ago, and when you have source code in Skyrim that you can also find in Morrowind, then there's a problem. I am aware that some companies use old ass engines that are revamped for modern games but the big difference is that Bethesda would have to take the time to rip the Creation Enginge or "Gamebrio Engine" apart and rebuild it from the ground up. The foundation was built poorly, and now they are building upon that foundation using super glue and duct tape. Modders themselves have said that the engine is pretty shit to work with. Most of us know that it takes only the slightest gust of wind to break it. To conclude if one of your top modders who i would say is a developer in a sense quits, then you know you fucked up.
It’s a ridiculous argument. It’s like saying “If you can’t fully disassemble and then reassemble components to make a car, then you CAN’T tell when you’re driving a piece of shit.” Don’t need to be a mechanic to know I’m driving a POS Emil.
He just outlines how any team project works. Look at bridges and any other software. Congrats my dude, building things is hard…. No shit, but when the user does not like what you made that’s all matters at the end…
I 100% disagree with Emil. Why do we need to be reminded of the technical prowess needed to make games? This is like Nvidia releasing a poorly performing GPU and then pushes back and tries to remind us about about the technical "difficulties of making circuit boards. I DON'T CARE! Someone who has chosen to work in a given industry does not get to make excuses for producing a product that lacks behind expectations. This is ludicrous to me. Game developers all over complain about how difficult it is to make games. Boo-hoo. I DON'T CARE. They have chosen to have careers in game development. What I am expecting is value for the money I spend on a product. And in 2023, if a AAA game is cobbled together as if it is done by an Indie studio, built on decades old, outdated technology....sorry, but I just can't accept something like that. Bethesda failed miserably to produce a "next-gen" game even though they boast about their technological advancements making Starfield. This is complete nonsense and they are trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
Emil's "philosophy" for writing is "keep it simple STUPID". So there you have it - why FO3 and FO4 stories are the way they are, Skyrim factions are... like meh (civil war especially).
I literally just finished PatricianTV's 8 hour dissertation on Starfield. I like Starfield, but it's tough to argue his points. Hopefully Bethesda learns a few lessons for TES-VI
They never learned from Fallout 4 as everything wrong with Starfield basically comes from FO4. The awful dialogue, the lack of choice, the boring main quest, awful shooting mechanics, and the lackluster world with nothing to do but loot. Those were major problems with FO4 they copy and pasted.
I AM VERY VERY AFRAID FOR ELDER SCROLLS 6. Because based on these responses I don't think they are willing to listen to community feedback. Lower your expectations folks.
Modding is about enhancing or changing a game that's already great on its own. It is not about taking an underperforming game and working on it to help the dev get more sales. Bethesda has a great modding community that has kept their games active, but they started with a good game.
If an engineer builds a bridge and it falls down, can he say, "But you don't know how hard it was!!! You've never built a bridge and you didn't even pay for it" The Resources Tod and Bethesda had are in proportion to what they promised they'd deliver.
Terrible analogy. A bad game won't potentially injure or kill people, and nobody ever has to pay $70 just to use a bridge. Video games are a luxury entertainment product that take a large team of creatives to make a whole, nobody sets out to make a bad game. But even if they make a game that's bad, it's not gonna hurt anybody, and you can refund it. A more accurate analogy would be "You've never worked on a film, you have no idea what goes into the creation of films." Which is true. It's easy for gamers to shit on art when everyone sees game devs as mustache-twirling bond villains who only care about money. And while that can be true in the case of some games, it's not the fault of the devs, that's on the executives and the publisher. Devs don't make the rules, they just work there. The only exception to that is indie devs.
@@TheFuronMothershipcalling it a terrible analogy cause there isn’t any fatal suffering doesn’t make it a bad analogy. This game is still the figurative “collapsed bridge” that it truly is 🤷🏻♂️. Why don’t you instead tell me more about how I should enjoy starfield more than no man’s sky that seemingly pulls off more than half of starfield’s mechanics better than Bethesdas A-Team has ever cooked 🫢.
@@TheFuronMothership Nobody sets out to make a bad game, but when they do then they deserve to be criticized or they will never fucking improve. Starfield is the way that it is because BGS has been giving pass after pass after pass for their half-baked games. Oh, mods will fix it. Oh, DLC will fix it. Oh that's just "Bethesda jank". This is what happens when a studio is insulated from criticism. And yeah, you're right. Video games are "luxury entertainment products" but the average person has to work for their money so they should get their money's worth. Giving someone a glass of piss and calling it lemonade isn't a good value for money. Also, whether you can refund it or not depends on the whims of Microsoft (if you're not on Steam). And if you needed to work in the film industry to criticize films then every film critic would have a degree in cinematography. And they don't. Because you don't have to work in the film industry to know a bad movie when you see one. Anyone who thinks that you do isn't worth listening to, much like Emil. People criticize me if I screw up on my job (I'm a paramedic) and I don't ask to see their medical license. Why? Because you don't need to work in emergency medicine to criticize me when I make a mistake. I just take the criticism and try to improve from it instead of throwing an online tantrum and telling people they "don't get it".
@@TheFuronMothershipOh god, dogshit take, to call it a terrible analogy because a hypothetical consequence of the analogy results in deaths is really fucking stupid, the deaths in this case would be disappointed fans, and the families of the dead people in this case would be the people being critical of the developers and the engineer would be the developers trying to defend their product because they worked so hard on it Your argument falls void when you try and put a hyper focus on a hypothetical detail without even trying to fully translate the analogy
He has some point's, but why should i care how hard it is at the end of the day i'm paying for it so i will call out bad stuff when i see it. Yet again another bad PR move by someone at beth, i wonder how hard the beth faithful are gonna defend this one.
Because him working hard to help create this game matters. You working hard for the money you spent on it, doesn't. (Internet disclaimer: Yep, I'm being sarcastic)
Agreed @takechan569 ...imagine if everyone acted the way that people in the entertainment industry expected consumers to act, it wouldn't make sense. Take for instance how clothes are made it passes through a lot of hands take a lot of workers to get the material then ship that to who ever came up with the design and so on and so forth not only that but most clothes are made in foreign countries which use child labor or heavily under pay there employees (sweat shop workers) but you don't hear those companies gaslighting there consumers if there product is bad by telling us how we should feel for there employees. It's not Mt job to give a f about employees that's the employers job 🙄. I buy the product if it sucks idc why the short comings are there it doesn't make the final product any better. Or take a test a teacher doesn't care that you over slept or studied really hard and still failed the end result is that you failed. Fml these are the types of companies in America who gaslight Americans into tipping/paying there workers 😂😂
And would like to say that I'm not stating that devs don't work hard or that it didnt take a lot of work to get this kind of tech to work the way that it did what I am saying is that as a consumer it isn't my responsibility it's the companies responsibility
I have no faith that Bethesda could make Starfield worth playing (to me) even if they poured all of their blood, sweat, and tears into it. They simply don't have the talent or vision. That being said, they still provide a seemingly endless supply of free entertainment through the act of constantly embarrassing themselves in front of the entire internet. Absolute laughingstock clown company.
You dont get to tell the customer they cant complain or criticize a product for any reason, thats it period especially when your product is being charged at the highest premium price
If this is the attitude of the developers towards the customer, as civil and intelligent as it may be, I have no hope for Starfield and Bethesda. Don't say anything. Just apologize and fix the problem if possible! I can only imagine how much worse TES6 will be.
We're bending backwards here to marvel at achievements that's so ubiquitous a thirteen-year-old does it today on his laptop. I find the post so telling. This is exactly what it means to be out of touch - despite any good intentions - you can only see your job and not the purpose of the product. This guy does not come off as a gamer; he doesn't sit down and find joy in the same things the players do, so he doesn't know either how someone that enjoys modern games will read his post OR how they will receive a Bethesda game.
Seems like a common thread running through Bethesda; completely out of touch, responding to criticism and negative reviews in such a weird and oblique way, or todd howard regarding poor optimization “it’s just your computer bro time to upgrade”.. Your critiques don’t matter when they already made their holy $$.. they’ve coasted off Morrowind and modders, making the same game for decades now, at some point it doesn’t “just work”. The next ES game is definitely going to make or break them 🍳
"You can criticize the game, especially if you paid for it." So sick of Game Pass being used to deflect criticism. It's had *such* a negative impact on the industry.
The Patrician 8 hour criticism of starfield is the real cause of emil gaslighting tweets. He just didn’t like someone pointing out the failures and shortcomings of starfield
Emil as a lead writer/designer has been the center of criticism for years, any TES/ Fallout fan knows his the worst writer at Bethesda. Because the old games sold millions of copies everything was swept under the rug. Bethesda and Emil especially is out of touch and clearly don't listen the fans or their criticisms, the moment their new game with the same issues since Fallout fucking 3 is getting criticized and they think they won't be able to sell and re sell it for the next ten years. Emil, out of all people, comes out and tries to argue with fans. He has no right to argue, since they absolutely didn't listen to anything the fans said, instead they opted for the working formula of Fallout 4 and Skyrim, a grindy slop with awful story and quest, even more shallow RPG and serviceable shooting. I'm sure there was a meeting where Emil and Todd said " The fans already bought Skyrim and Fallout 10 times, why should we improve on the formula? They will eat it again". That's just insulting to every Bethesda fan.
As an engine and game dev I completely understand his position. This is why I'm never comfortable being very critical of almost any game, unless they are obviously a lazy cash grab, asset flip etc. But that's just because of my background. I think people 100% are entitled to and should criticize games for what they are, especially when they pay good money for it. I can criticize a movie I watch, even though I've never made a huge movie before in my life, I still can have an opinion on the end result. The whole death threats etc towards the developers is just something that boggles my mind. Apart from it being completely uncalled for an absurd in the first place, people should realize, that especially in AAA, a programmer or artist for that matter are just given a feature or asset that they are in charge of making, often from a spec or a concept. They are not responsible for the game as a whole.
"You should be thankful this game even exists!" No, I'll instead be thankful for the hundreds of other games that do so much more with so much less. I can't cook, but I can tell if a chicken wing is raw. I don't make games, but I can point out if Morrowind from 22 years ago had better melee combat than Starfield. And that's the least of its problems. I don't intend to sound as harsh as I probably will, but I'm not getting gaslit into feeling bad for failures on top of failures on top of failures.
The space exploration game where you can design and build your own spaceship… which then cannot use to fly anywhere. And were the assholes? After 70 hours I consider Starfield to be the single biggest ‘miss’ in 42 years of gaming, it could and should have been life changing….its actually hot garbage which appears to have been designed to drive the player crazy.
For Todd Howard and Emil Pagliarulo - here is a quick answer for your frustrations and problems Baldur's Gate 3 So please, for the love of God, at least have some dignity, decency and modesty, shut up, learn from this developer, learn from your mistakes and deliver better experience with new Skyrim game.
This guy's post is fine and understandable. It doesn't change the fact that there are dozens and dozens of games that made smarter choices and resulted in a better end product. And some of these came out a decade ago. So it's just baffling how certain decisions at Bethesda are getting approved in the first place.
He's totally out of touch. If Bethesda, Todd, early access reviewers and influencers didn't lie about a $70 game people wouldn't react as harshly to how bad it was. Him making that post is just more cope for the fire. They asked for all the hate they're getting, why complain now?
They made a choice to pander, and go woke go broke is not something we throw around lightly, Disney has gone full woke and they have lost billions. Starfield is garbage, I don’t need to understand game development to see that
I'm pretty sure Emil has never had to put a central IV line into a patient or do an hour of CPR. If I mess either of those things up should I just tell him "you don't know how hard being a paramedic is, be grateful I even did it in the first place"? I will forever hate this line of thinking. You don't have to be a mechanic to criticize cars. You don't have to be a cook to criticize food. And you don't have to be a game dev to criticize game design.
Nice false equivalence. Failing your job as a paramedic literally costs lives. Game design takes years of collaboration between multiple teams of skilled creatives. It's easy to criticize art when you haven't made it yourself, and at the end of the day, your criticisms are your opinion. Devs might listen to their communities more if they criticisms they actually gave were constructive and not just the toxic vitriol of jaded social media potatoes. If someone doesn't like Baldur's Gate 3 because they don't like turn-based combat, does that mean, objectively, that Larian 'made a bad design decision?' Of course not. It just means that the game isn't for them. I don't like side scrollers or beat-em-ups. Are they poorly-designed games? I'm not the biggest fan of MOBAs, I guess that means the devs who made Overwatch are terible at making games. Is Starfield buggy? Yes. Is it unplayable? No. Is the story bad? That's subjective. Personally I liked it because it did something other than 'eldritch horrors want to unalive humanity because space is scary.' Is the gameplay bad? No. It's a competent ARPG. It's not the best combat ever, but it's perfectly servicable and isn't the focus of the game. I'd be more upset if Starfield's combat what what we got in the next Halo.
@@TheFuronMothership Right, so all these constructive criticisms in the steam reviews making detailed listing of everything people didn't like about the game and were met by "game developer" accounts with "nuh uh, its not boring you are playing it wrong, you played only a 100 hours so you didn't play enough" is just toxic vitriol on behalf of the players in your opinion? Who is making the false equivalence now of conflating the predominately constructive criticism with the few extremes in order to dismiss it all as just hate bandwagon? Also if your game is "not made" for the big chunk of your players base, thats failure in marketing on your behalf for making your game out to be something it wasn't, instead of marketing it for the people that would actually like it, and thats in line with Bethesda, they tend to oversell their games and their aspects while releasing a bland sandbox that they rely on modders to fill and on their brand loyalty to carry it, something that they have already spent with FO76, the problem is that with Starfield modders are already abandoning it so the prospects of it getting better solely on Bethesdas shoulders arent that great.
If we are to use the food analogy - think of games as meals delivered by the studios. Some are burger and fries, some are pizzas, some are sandwiches, some are just chips and some are 3 course silver service with wine in crystal glasses. The food delivered by bethesda is white bread. Just bread. It's edible but completely boring without additions from modders. It is dry white bread without the modders adding the peanut butter and jam, or mayo, tomato slices, bacon and cheese.
I 100% believe that if the world building, characters and overall story was better Starfield would be in an OK position. Still not game of the year, still not critically acclaimed - but in an OK position. I say this because all the flaws on delivery and lack of important features would be predominantly fixed by insanely dedicated modders. I am concerned however that this won't happen because these modders just aren't in love with the universe that is Starfield. Not good team...
Shouldn't release a subpar game, then ask people to appreciate that you're behind in your field. Imagine if one of your friends was always late, and when you said "hey, when we agree to meet, I'd appreciate you getting here when you say you will", and his answer is - "Do you have any idea how complicated the human body is, and what goes into even taking one step, nevermind driving a car???" Nope, not cool.
Considering how it runs and the fact that there are a lot of systems that work I can’t give it a 4. I’d say it’s above average game at least (6). I personally had fun with it but nowhere near as much as I was expecting to.
@@kirkvanallen5202 I don't think there's anything above average about it. Everything in the game is done better by other games. It's incapable of accomplishing simple things that other games with much smaller teams figured out YEARS ago. And it doesn't run well enough for me to give it free points for that.
@@plannein it runs well in my experience and if other game do things better does that mean Star field doesn’t do it well? That doesn’t connect to me. The lighting in the game is very good some of the environments are quite nice to look at. The gunplay is average. The shipbuilder is better than any other space game I’ve personally played. The copy pasta content is boring/trash. The character models are okay to bad at times. The main story is average and actually better than es5. The side faction quest lines are actually average to pretty good. I agree other games do space exploration much better but that doesn’t by default make a game bad.
@@applebees563 in todays age of gaming not really. I’d assert plenty of storyline in the game are average to good. Starfield isn’t a goty or 10/10 for sure but I also find it unfair when people say it’s a below average game etc because I just feel it’s not just based on the stability and systems alone.
"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry I love this quote, and from the moment I heard about Starfield and its companion system, this feeling was what I imagined the story could offer. Not necessarily romantic love in the form of romance options, but the notion of looking outward together in the same direction. Stargazing on a cloudless night with a loved one. Waxing philosophical with a close friend. A team of scientists and engineers making childhood space fantasies real. Just sharing a feeling of awe with other beings. Even if these themes weren't present (I understand that games are not designed to cater to my own personal imagination, of course), I hoped that I could at least project them onto whatever this game had to offer. Instead, what I got was dead-eyed character models staring unblinkingly directly into my eyes and talking about some pointless space-politics crap while an off-screen companion was waiting in the wings to judge my bland response. I got archetypal factions with shallow lore and goody-two-shoes companions that were more interested in floaty rocks than they were about space exploration. I got black hole loading screens and space debris inventories. Don't get me wrong, I've put days of my life into this game and found some enjoyment in it, but to say that it felt uninspired is an understatement. Everything, from the characters to the factions to the storylines, felt inward-looking, navel-gazing, and small-world-ish, when all I wanted was to feel like I was looking, and then journeying, outward together with these characters.
So you're ok with mediocrely, because all I hear is excuses. Remember when devs were jealous, attacking Elden Ring and Baldur Gate 3 this year. It was too good.
A main thing that I started to implement as a developer working on games is this: "Designers/managers/whomever that does not do any actual implementation or production of assets cannot under any circumstance use the following words: "Can't we just", "Can we just", "How about the just". Basically banning the idea that things are simple all the time and easy to implement and they don't take much time at all. 1. This helps that grasp the idea that they have to be more thoughtful of the idea's they present and think about the choices they make before even asking for features. 2. It helps me keep my sanity.
There's no excuses for 10 years of work and $100,000,000 spent. Hell, in 10 years you could probably pull some random stranger off the street and teach them game development from the ground up and still get better results.
The funny (or sad I guess) thing is that in 10 years From Software released Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, Deracine, started working on Elden Ring and Armoured Core 6. Let that sink in.
I think the point he was actually trying to make is that gamers tends to act like they know why some decisions were made. Like "they did that because they're lazy and they want modders to do the work" or "it's not in the game because it was cut for the future paid dlc", where in reality those decisions may have very different reasons - technical or economical. And he said: you can dislike the game, but just don't make assumptions when you don't have the knowledge.
Oh, yes! Let's talk about respect. It's a two way street you know. So what about the respect Devs/Pubs have for the time their customers spend to earn the money to buy their game? What about the respect for the money spent by their customers on their game? Ok we're not game dev professionals, but we ARE game players. How about respect for our experience we have playing your game?
I think he’s right to make this statement. He clearly isn’t discrediting the criticisms, I think he’s just reminding people to be more sensitive and conscientious while they make criticism-state your complaints respectfully, don’t scream them in a fit of rage
To me, the first question a big studio should ask themself before creating a game is: What are the games in that genre? Are we able to create something better or new, something that will push the genre further. Will we be able to give players a never seen before experience? And no mather the studio, if they are answering no to one of those questions, they should not start making that game at all. I never understood the reason behind studio wanting to create a worst version of what already exist on the market. Like The day before, a million other zombie games online so who care about the day before.... anyway thats my opinion.
I don't think so, Their problem isn't if they can make something better in a genre. If that is the case you won't see 80% of the game have now. Starfield and The Day Before issue is The Exact Opposite. The Day Before promises Too Much for too little capability. Look back at what their answer to: "What are the games in that genre? Are we able to create something better or new, something that will push the genre further. Will we be able to give players a never seen before experience?" Higher Quality Graphic was it? MMORPG shooter? Realistic gun controls and animation? Dense urban map? Any game have all of that in one zombie game? They answer all your question. They are just incapable of doing it. Starfield, what do they promise? OVER 1000 PLANETS, an RPG and exploration in quality of a Bethesda game, A NEW Ceation Engine 2.0! I think the problem is exactly your question. It shouldn't be if we can make it bigger. They fail because they answer your question and overshot. it should be as simple as: "What fun can be created with the capability we already have?" No overshot, No undershot
No, Starfeidl went the lazy way... one of the core moment in the main story is when you find the first temple and you capture the light in zero gravity..... The first time it was great to see... When i realized they copied 20 times the same exact temple with the same exact thing to do.... Well to me they did it the lazy way! They decided to create a space game where the gameplay in space is alost inexistent.... No Bethesda did not listen, they made a game like they always make it without correcting their error from the past games making it an outdated game to play and even with better graphics the game still feel like it was made 10 years ago.
@@FulguroGeek I mean that's the exact case isn't it? They overshot. They want to go bigger, they are incapable of doing so. They start pre-production with what is Bigger and Better not what we can do. They set themself up for failure. I don't think it's laziness, they stretch their resources wide but thin as fuck. Even generated, Over a 1000 planets! ™-Tod Howard. Need resources, can they make multiple different unique tamples when they need to make plants, rocks, etc for this x/1000 planet to generate.
starfield isn't a story about how hard game development being hard, it's a story about what happens when a dev studio becomes complacent. is it game development hard? sure, but so is every other form of art. but when not one but two indie studios (larian for the deep rich player driven rpg side, and hello games for the space exploration side) run laps around a studio that has thousands of devs. makes "game development is hard" sound more like whining then anything else. especially when you complain that your audience "doesn't get how hard my job is" instead of saying "yeah we fucked up, it's a smelly turd we obviously bit off more then we could and made some bad decisions and it hurt the over all product, all we can do is learn and do better next time." sounds a lot better then bitching about criticism and people not bending over backwards to praise you.
The biggest problem in this debate is that Bethesda and other developers does not know/want to accept that GAMERS THEMSELF often got more and more knowledge about how game got developed, especially with all the recent dramas. And especially in case of Bethesda titles - how old is fanbase and how much its memebers know about good/bad sides of them.
Every game dev has hell to go through to get a game made, let alone make a good game, and have to concede their dreams of perfection to bring something to reality. Fine. True. The problem with Starfield, is that the devs seem to have conceded things that should be prioritized, and prioritized things that should have been conceded. Id take a 3 planet game with a few moons, one space station, Fallout 4 graphics, and a 30 hour questline over what we got any day of the week, as long as the story made sense, the game ran well, npcs were interesting characters, there were a rover to ride, free space flight and exploration, and there were no load screens. Heck even half the loadscreens. The priorities of convenience, variety, immersion, and fun were left out of the game, apparently in lieu of 1,000 planets to explore.
I think the excuse of saying games are magic so just appreciate that they exist is a bit dated. I understand that they work a long time on these games but at the end of the day. It’s a product being sold, as part of a business that is not exactly new. We’ve had photo realism and games at scale for a while now. This is a studio, that’s owned by one of the largest companies on the globe and has unlimited resources. It’s been sold as their next big thing, their first new ip in 20 years and it’s their least buggiest game ever. But the game doesn’t have a map or poi for the planets/cities. It’s not that graphically impressive. Theres nothing new about it except it’s in space. It plays like an old game. It’s not bad. But it’s literally the epitome of it ain’t broke don’t fix It but also don’t improve anything. And then to say fans don’t know what they’re talking about? The game launched around balders gate and phantom liberty. It exposed the flaws of starfield and made it easy for consumers to see what a great new game should look like. Like I said, I don’t think it’s bad, it was disappointing. And although I haven’t beat it, it hasn’t really encouraged me to go back to do that.
It's just another example of Bethesda over hyping, over promising and under delivering. No different then anything else they put out, its no different then FO76's "16x the detail."
Nobody’s really going to care how much effort your team put into something if that something still ends up turning out bad. Also it’s hard to look at something like say, the procedural-generated planets and think that this is the product of a lot of hard work on par with traditional handcrafted content.
They didnt even bother to think of a star trek teleporter as a fast travel method if they wanted to be even more lazier. At least it wouldve made things a little more immersive.
Starfield just sucks. Until they accept that, there's no hope for Elder Scrolls 6. They've been on a downward trend for a decade now. It's time to clean house.
I know they said that they're going to add more modes of transport, but if they just want to avoid doing the work required to do so, I honestly would be okay if they just made jetpacks have better and faster propulsion and also make them work continuously instead of just doing steam engine toots. Basically, just turn it into a real jetpack with infinite boost and any differences between jetpacks will be its ability to be used on planets of higher gravity.
He is number 2 behind Todd basically... He shouldn't have said anything. Much like the guy who said BG3 shouldn't be a raised standard They both had foot in mouth disease. Starfield was suppose to be like Skyrim. be beloved. Be screwed up with creation club junk.Covered up with player mods. Made for every device out there and sell a ton even 10 years later. That won't happen and I expect Phil Spencer will be upset. Whether he might consider forcing change in Beth remains to be seen though.
Issues with his statements are: yes it is hard to make games. Yes it is a marvel. Yes many gamers dont know how games are made. BUT those gamers do have comparisons. If another product is better in quality and sold at a lower price, there are questions to be asked. His game does not exist in a vacuum. Secondly: if there are bugs, i understand. Performance issues, sure. Things that dont work out in reality, can happen. But a good indicator for talent and a base line of quality is dialogue. Dialogue is cheap. Everyone can write dialogue. You dont have to study to write good dialogue. There are tons of redditors that come up with well written stories. If your in game dialogue is not believeable, not witty, not funny, not deep, not nuanced, not varied. Thats an indicator for lack of care and talent and quality.
He is shifting blames from his failure as a designer and a writer. He's like Pete Hines 2.0. How is it our fault they made a game in 2023 that looks outdated by a decade? How is it our fault as players that BGS overpromised and underdelivered? How is it our fault Emil sucks at writing? BGS has completely lost their touch with their community driven by greed & outdated visions. It's not the first time they have lashed out on their community. He should remember, they set expectations for their player-base and failed to deliver. No one pulled them by the tongue to brag about 1000 planets (which btw was an immediate red flag for me) that are not even in the game. They have no one, but themselves to blame for setting limitations upon themselves by using ancient tech for an engine instead of shifting to smth else. Even CDPR has made the decision to dump their OG RED Engine. Whoever is at the helm of it all at BGS is to blame for how mediocre Starfield is. Truth is, and they should probably recognize it themselves - people like Todd, Emil and whoever else responsible for creative decisions have outlived their "innovative" visions circa a decade and a half ago. Either they need to re-evaluate their creative thinking or follow Petey's footsteps and yield the spot to someone younger and more in tune with modern gaming. Blaming the gamers for your own missteps is never a good look or decision. Admit you screwed up, apologize and say you will do better and DO BETTER (tldr, take examples from FF14 dev team). People already are losing hope and interest in TES6, if the BGS "leaders" don't stop these responses, they will nuke any and all good will that has remained with heir dwindling community.
Emil is one of the reaosn why beth games wirting is kinda bad right? the whole keep it simple stupid! get an actual lead writer who knows how to write good stories
I do not care about him whining on twitter, calling fans disconnected about a game that has same problems that are from like 2004. It’s fucking 2022, every fucking game studio face problems making video games and yet somehow still make better games than starfield. He’s just butt hurt that people are not eating up the game and calling 10 out of 10. Just because people are not making video games like him, do not mean they can’t criticize a game they are paying their hard earn money on.
I think what he’s saying is a miracle is not a technical miracle, but the fact that a game gets shipped at all. Because outside of three or four game companies, everyone’s working on different things, not everyone knows the vision, and/or the vision has been changed two or three times in development. And again outside of those three or four companies that work like a well oiled machine, no one talks to each other.
I agree with everything you said here, Luke. To be fair, I enjoyed Starfield for what it was. I played for over 320 hours before I did my first NG+ (but quit after about 8 to 10 hours of that). I wanted to do everything I could before going through. NG+ didn't really add anything for me, other than a few(very few) "Starborn" dialogue options. I do feel like I had fun up to that point, and that it's an "ok" game. I DON'T feel like it's a bad game...it just isn't great. It has issues, and many of them leave me feeling like Bethesda was, at best, resting on their laurels, and at worst decided they just didn't feel like bothering. They did do some good stuff in there, but just as much of it was lackluster and run-of-the-mill Bethesda. Some game mechanics are clunky or unnecessarily limiting, "romances"(which they barely qualify as) were incredibly one-dimensional and unfulfilling(as they were in Skyrim), and the sheer number of load screens was unacceptable. I can see ignoring unreasonable vitriol, but come on- people who have loved Bethesda games for years are trying to help them with much needed constructive criticism. I just see a string of excuses. How hard it is to make a game is irrelevant. I don't need to know how hard it is to make a car...all I care about as a consumer is whether or not the car is worth my investment of hard-earned dollars. If you CANNOT make the game you are trying to sell us then don't sell it to us as the game you wish you could make instead of the reality of what you're capable of. I have been fairly staunch defender of Starfield and I'm glad they are trying to fix things(even if it is happening at a snail's pace), but even *I* am giving Bethesda side-eye at this point. If you aren't willing to listen to honest criticism and acknowledge there were issues from people who did enjoy the game give people little hope for Bethesda's future projects. No wonder people are feeling deflated about Elder Scrolls 6. SMH
@lukestephenslive Normally, I agree with you and am more on the side of forgiving devs, your rant at 10:18 about a game being a technical marvel is a bad strawman. Engines aren't devs. Devs aren't the ones doing the miraculous calculations. And while the dev's job is to make the content and formulas for those engines, it's still significantly easier than what you're making it sound like. They aren't coding in machine code. They aren't writing linear code, but have it done segmented with object oriented programming. No, devs, shouldn't be attacked because of bad decision making, but at the same time, they shouldn't be propped up for the miracles of basic object oriented design and accepting legacy code.
Starfield is a brutally difficulty game. Just ask Asmongold dying loosing hours of progress, and rage quitting. Or that it didnt have a ui feature to tell Asmongold what a grendel is he had to use his own eyes and look at the floor and find the grendel dropped right there near the enemy.
People are allowed to criticize things, especially things they pay for. If you can’t handle negative feedback, that’s on you. Naughty Dog probably has safe space closets in their office. People are so weak and soft
Wow! I suddenly like Starfield now. Knowing the devs had a hard time made the dialogue good, fast traveling everywhere not annoying, and the storyline compelling.
Yeah I think that is exactly how the devs actually want you to think! It’s pathetic.
Me too :)
if icould thumbs up this comment more i would
They made the wrong game. We wanted a space simulator, not Cross Country Canada in space.
Light wood laminate! Light wood laminate! Light wood laminate!
The general problem with Starfield is the things NPCs asked you to do would only make sense in a medieval setting. Those "talk to [person]" quests where you travel to another planet, talk to [person], then travel back to the 1st planet, would only make sense in a future where phones somehow don't exist.
The in-universe explanation (that they mention in passing in one early story mission) is that radio signals between star systems are unusably slow so you need ships with grav-drives to deliver messages BUT it would still be stupid for people to trust some rando to do their chores. There'd be an established courier service, and it would've been cool to see them actually put in the effort for their world building, but it's all so half-baked.
@@SamuelCatsy That doesn't make any sense because there are literal emails in the game that you can read.
@@planneinare the emails between systems?
bethesdas version of "what? you guys dont have phones?"
The fact they don't have cars is beyond me.
"this meal tastes like shit". "Oh, well you must be a 5 star chef then." I don't have to work as a dev to tell if a game is outdated doesnt function or is boring the same way i dont need to be a 5 star chef to tell someone a meal is awesome. You put something out and charged people money for it, it is subject to fair and deserved criticism.
Missed the message lmao. Love the I ternett
He's not saying you don't have a right to complain or criticize, the problem is with saying that they put no effort and passion into making their awful, boring, uninspired game.
No matter how bland you think Starfield is, you have no clue how much effort and work and sacrifice goes into making it.
You can say "this mmeal tastes like shit" but you can't say "you should've put a little more cilantro, let it breathe, sautee the almonds and then add a bit of mint, that would've been better"
This is coming from a studio that had the full Power and money of Microsoft behind it. They can take off whenever they want and have a super lax no crunch culture. It’s been delayed several times. And then released next to balders gate and phantom liberty. 2 of the best reviewing games this year. It’s really hard to take the guy seriously when they failed to deliver.
@@Gatitasecsii World building wise it is 100% uninspired though, they don't connect the game world to itself. You can find posters talking about cybernetic limb subsidies for veterans, and yet we see not a single prosthetic limb in the game. There is no architectural differences between the two major factions, they are also socially in the same boat only Governmentally different. If I get a picture that shows the burger comes with lettuce and I'm presented with a burger without lettuce calling them out for not trying hard enough isn't wrong regardless of how hard they tried because they felt it was good enough to sell.
@@Gatitasecsii If the 5 star chef has the best cut of meat from the best part of the world in the best state ever. We can still complain that he didnt cook it, didnt add a pinch of salt and that the fries we ordered with it never made it to the table.
This is how sales work, you create a product/service and sell it. People will experience if its good or bad. And if we know restaurant B uses certain ways of cooking and seasoning we can also say that Restaurant A should or could use all of those things.
I'm sure it's hard to make a game. It was hard to make Elden Ring, Baldurs Gate 3, Dragon Age Origins. But EMS is also a hard job. Being an engineer while you're on deployment and the ship is rocking back and forth is a hard job. Everyone has a hard job. That's life.
The consumer does not care how hard someone's job is. I think Asmongold put it best when he said something to the effect of (not a direct quote) it doesn't matter if there's someone in 100 degree weather doing road work, if there's a bump in the road then it needs to get fixed.
(Ok...if you're a Starfield fanboy please don't read any further cause you're gonna get mad).
Emil is also a terrible writer. I would rather listen to the Twilight audiobook than listen to Starfields dialogue. Stardew Valley has more character depth than the ones in Starfield and it was made by one dude who taught himself everything.
Emil is someone whose ego got hurt. He can't take criticism because he's been surrounded by people who just bow down to him and Bethesda keeps promoting him. Dude needs to be fired or retire.
I loved FO4 despite it's writing, and I kept hearing about how if you love FO4 you'll love Starfield. But IMO that's not true. Starfield is so boring, I'd rather play FO4. Heck, I'd rather play Morrowind.
Preaty much every job is hard.
You don't see doctors or construction workers complaining about that
That’s a insult to morrowind and morrowind is great it’s a age game but it 1000x better starfield mainly because Emil didn’t put his stupid hands on it
BG3 is overrated in my humble opinion. It looks nice but the story and dialogue feel like it was all written by an angsty horny teenager.
Someone forgot to tell him how capitalism works.
Exactly this is the same company that doesn't even fix their own games and charges for content/mods they don't even own. Some game devs are so entitled acting like their jobs are important to society or something. 6 figure salary whining about making videogames.
And truth be told, I feel like Luke here plays too strongly to the logical part of Emil's statements. YES. There will be technological limitations. YES. It is important to understand why certain things came to be in order to informatively critique them. But it doesn't matter how far back certain choices were made that effect gameplay, MISTAKES ARE STILL MISTAKES!!! Like, he completely sidesteps the whole Twinkie analogy, and as so many of these funnier and more articulate commentors below have stated, "Yeah, I can't seamlessly recreate a twinkie, but I sure as !@#$ am able to tell when a twinkie tastes bad."
And the fact is, Emil being a director doesn't make his statements righteous but misinterpreted due to his position. The fact that he's a game director DOES completely change the way these statements SHOULD be interpereted. If it was some ordinary dude who said all of this, than it would be a twitter thread advocating for thorough research and informative criticism. But because it is Emil, Starfield's Writer (for those who don't know, Starfield's story SUCKS), this is absolutely a twitter thread that exists solely to stroke Emil's ego and make self-justified excuses for why his objectively bad choices should not be questioned by the lowly worms who are "funny that they think they know what game development is like".
Well said and exactly! Preach !
I agree with everything you said Starfield aside from graphical fidelity is a downgrade in Skyrim and Fallout 4 in so many aspects including the writing I think Luke was pretty effectively gaslit by Emil’s tweets.
The guy is pretending a large amount of the criticisms are new. Most of the loudest complaints have been around for a decade. So yes he is definitely gaslighting and obfuscating the laziness of Bethesda.
Has anyone noticed that the shotgun animation is the same from fallout 4, or is that just me ?
Considering Emil doesnt want to use any sort of game design document, I dont think he fully understands game development. No wonder it took so long to make Starfield and is such a disconnected mess.
Thru were cooking him in the starfield subreddit too
Considering that Starfields biggest problems are fundamental design flaws and mismanagement with the game's direction, it's safe to assume that Emil is the one that failed at his job.
He's the guy who follows the "keep it simple, stupid" philosophy and he has been criticized for bad writing and design choices for ages.
Instead of taking accountability and admitting that he messed up, he goes on to write an essay of a twitter rant, blaming the consumers and complaining about how hard his job is.
One is definitely disconnected from reality and it's certainly not the critics.
Once you pay $70 for a game, you are allowed to critique it. Once something is sold (whether it’s a toaster, a car, or an album) it is subject to review by the buyer.
Even in the store it tells u that u can’t leave a review unless u buy it ppl bought it or in my case was smart enough to play that shit for free thru cloud gaming before purchasing then left a review
Ppl wanted shooting to be on par with destiny a hover bike like in destiny a hardcore fallout like survival mode with sims 4 like needs gotta eat or this gotta sleep or this cities the size of gta or cyberpunk not a small village on random planets we wanted to actually fly to the planet and other gamers got mad at other gamers for asking for planet to space traversal in a space game Oof Jesus Christ
Starfield had all the hype and died like one toO
All of what he wrote is true. I 100% agree with him. Those are definitely the challenges and issues faced when making a game like this. But EVERY developer faces those challenges. That doesn’t change the fact that they made a very meh (not horrible, just meh) game, when other developers facing the same challenges made a BG3, for example.
uh Larian also had those challenges.
That's what they were saying I think Luv.@@ANGRYWOLVERINE2060-ft2nc
And as a consumer why the fuck i should care about it. Every job is hard, and every one have his own problems.
I don't wanna hear from car mechanic he fuckup my car, because his job is hard
I don't wanna hear from chef that he burn my steak because his job is hard
I don't wanna hear from contractor that my new house have crooked walls because his job is hard
@@pegercan’t compare a game dev process to a chef or car mechanic. Two totally different fields that come wit very diff situations
@@rayvintankerson6818Just because they're different doesn't mean the thrust of his argument is false. The consumer is under no obligation to sympathize with your experience as a game dev. Which are a whiney entitled class of people who don't receive anywhere near the amount of scrutiny they deserve.
Making Elden ring was probably hard too and that game is awesome
same as BG3, FF16, Hogwarts Legacy...
They want us to respect them working really really hard... to polish a turd.
It would be fine is a normal dev wrote this. But this guy is the LEADER (I must emphasize, the leader) of the story telling in starfield. All the people who wrote starfield were under this guy, and it's his fault the story in this game is embarrassingly bad for what is considered a story game
the fact that the person who for years everyone said "yeah this guy is the problem, hes not good at the writing lead role" presents himself like this, it basically just confirms that everyone was right the whole time.
Just sounds like he's sticking up for his team to me. 🤷♂
@@TheFuronMothership More like he's making excuses for his team doing a bad job and getting pilloried for it. You don't have to be a Michelin Star chef to criticize food, and gamers don't have to be fucking developers to rightfully call out a game as a boring, outdated chore of an experience. Something being difficult to do doesn't excuse it from criticism.
@@TheFuronMothership Sounds more like he's using them as a shield , for crap that might come his way , as a leader . Half of what he's saying sounds like "it's not us it's management" , well he is one of the "management" , have been for years and multiple games , even if not the head honcho obviously
@@Seoul_Soldier I'd be more inclined to agreee if the 'criticisms' weren't coming from angry jaded cynics who're so entitled they think their opinion alone will fix everything wrong with the game. 9 times out of 10, the 'criticism' I see being hurled toward the devs on Twitter iisn't actual constructive criticism. It's "lmao this game is dogshit, the story is trash, Spider-Man 2 has a way better story lol be more like Spider-Man 2." Or "this game is so fucking boring bro there's nothing to do and it's repetitive." Which is an oxymoron, since the game would have to provide you things to do for it to be repetitive.
Hell, even you sound remarkably aggressive like Bethesda personally pissed in your corn flakes. Is Starfield Bethesda's worst game? I'd say so. I still had fun with it though, fun is subjective. A lot of people don't like Baldur's Gate 3 because it's turn-based and they think that style of combat is boring. Are they wrong? No. They just like different things.
And can we please stop using terrible food analogies? It doesn't take a team of 200+ five-star chefs to make a a single burger, nor can I ever remember any restaurant meal I've ever had being charged $70. (Not even the four star hibachi place near where I live.)
If memory serves there was a sort of TED Talk by the main writer. He basically said they don't use a game design document since Fallout 3.
If you don't know what that is, it's basically a blueprint for how the game should be made. The basic equivalent is like an architect trying to make a building without said blueprint... Let that sink in
I can’t make a pizza from scratch (making the raw dough) but I can tell you when one tastes like shit
Dough is just flour and water with a pinch of salt buddy; even you could make it (from scratch).
And love
What is it with gamers and terrible food analogies? It doesn't take a dedicated team of several hundred people to make a single pizza that costs $70. Also, you ever hear the saying "even when pizza is bad, it's still good?" The same could be argued for video games. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Plenty of people don't like Baldur's Gate 3 because they don't like turn-based combat, but that doesn't make it objectively bad. It won GOTY.
Starfield isn't a bad game. Slightly above average at worst, and Bethesda should be applauded for at least taking a risk to develop a brand new IP even if it doesn't pan out. Companies who don't take risks and constantly play it safe are exactly the reason why game franchises like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed go stagnant.
@Aeternus-The-Invisible-War Gladly. Much rather cope with the state of Starfield than be a social media moron who can't respond with anything other than monosyllables.
@@TheFuronMothership what exactly did bgs take a chance at ?
"We had a hard time making all these bad decisions, feel bad for us"
Exactly
Life and work is difficult. An adult complaining that it's difficult sounds too stupid. No sh!t Sherlock.
Sure, doxxers and harrasers suck.
But "you not game dev, you opinion stupid", is the dumbest view from a supposed "talented game dev".
All Emil is doing here is shifting blame and gaslighting the customers. With such an inability to accept their own failings and problems, as single dev and studio, and solve them during the development process it does not surprise me that they could not create and release a good product.
Emil is such a bad writer even his strawman metaphors are awful. Twinkies? Out of everything on Earth you pick Twinkies? The most manufactured, artificial, food-adjacent cream-filled objects ever made.
It’s pretty crazy that I never see Miyazaki or anyone at FromSoft typing out a bunch of bullshit excuses on reddit or twitter.
I guess I can empathize that creating games is an incredible marvel of technology. We can also acknowledge some companies do it with fewer bugs, better gameplay, and without going negative on their player base.
It took Todd 7 years "To find the Fun in Starfield".
Sooo... should I come back in 6 years years?
I don't make twinkies either, but if it was a fancy package with garbage inside, I would still complain regardless of how hard it was to make. Likely I would question why they had chosen to fill it with garbage after there previous twinkies had a sweet sugary filling.
Yes. Emil is very accomplished.
At destroying lore, ruining franchises, and writing nonsense.
How would you do it better?
@@Vladimirlives13
Actually have proofreaders to make sure I'm not trampling the lore.
Write in a way that assumes the player has at least 2 brain cells.
Create believable worlds, characters, and factions.
You'd be amazed how far effort can go@@Vladimirlives13
@@Vladimirlives13 fire emil and bring back kurt khuulman, Michael kirkbride and Ted Peterson
@@Vladimirlives13 well first off don't get rid of a design document so people making seperate quests in the SAME game can make sure they logically work together.
In response to "its a marvel it even works": Just because a bad movie had a development hell behind the screen doesn't make it any less of a bad movie, same thing for gaming. We need to stop listening to the excuses companies are giving and not give Bethesda a free pass just because its Bethesda, as it permeates the trend of gaming companies not finishing games upon release and fixing it over a couple of years. Starfield is clearly not $70 standard and that's fine, but they shouldn't act like it is.
I feel like Cyberpunk was this golden statue covered in an insane amount of dirt and mud. They took the time to deep clean it, and now we are left with a beautiful work of art.
Starfield, on the other hand, is just like trying to polish a turd. The game at its core is just bad. At the end of the day, they can clean it up as much as possible, putting a bow on it to top it off, and its still just gonna be a turd... a well polished turd.
Bad UI, no local map, bad writing, poor quest design, boring space, and planets decimated by loading screen hell, average gunplay, crap melee, slow boring traversal, limited copy paste content, fast travel simulator.
If they use the excuse that the game has to do too much to generate and run everything that they have made, then they need to change the engine. Everyone knew it was time to let it go a long time ago, and when you have source code in Skyrim that you can also find in Morrowind, then there's a problem.
I am aware that some companies use old ass engines that are revamped for modern games but the big difference is that Bethesda would have to take the time to rip the Creation Enginge or "Gamebrio Engine" apart and rebuild it from the ground up.
The foundation was built poorly, and now they are building upon that foundation using super glue and duct tape. Modders themselves have said that the engine is pretty shit to work with. Most of us know that it takes only the slightest gust of wind to break it.
To conclude if one of your top modders who i would say is a developer in a sense quits, then you know you fucked up.
It’s a ridiculous argument. It’s like saying “If you can’t fully disassemble and then reassemble components to make a car, then you CAN’T tell when you’re driving a piece of shit.” Don’t need to be a mechanic to know I’m driving a POS Emil.
Bro literally said you CAN complain.
It doesn't matter how hard it is to build a car, at the end of the day it has to be able to drive well.
He just outlines how any team project works. Look at bridges and any other software. Congrats my dude, building things is hard…. No shit, but when the user does not like what you made that’s all matters at the end…
I 100% disagree with Emil. Why do we need to be reminded of the technical prowess needed to make games? This is like Nvidia releasing a poorly performing GPU and then pushes back and tries to remind us about about the technical "difficulties of making circuit boards. I DON'T CARE! Someone who has chosen to work in a given industry does not get to make excuses for producing a product that lacks behind expectations. This is ludicrous to me. Game developers all over complain about how difficult it is to make games. Boo-hoo. I DON'T CARE. They have chosen to have careers in game development. What I am expecting is value for the money I spend on a product. And in 2023, if a AAA game is cobbled together as if it is done by an Indie studio, built on decades old, outdated technology....sorry, but I just can't accept something like that. Bethesda failed miserably to produce a "next-gen" game even though they boast about their technological advancements making Starfield. This is complete nonsense and they are trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
Emil's "philosophy" for writing is "keep it simple STUPID".
So there you have it - why FO3 and FO4 stories are the way they are, Skyrim factions are... like meh (civil war especially).
I literally just finished PatricianTV's 8 hour dissertation on Starfield. I like Starfield, but it's tough to argue his points.
Hopefully Bethesda learns a few lessons for TES-VI
This game has me convinced that TES 6 is going to be a disappointment.
Keep hoping, bc it's likely not gonna happen
They never have before, why would they start now?
We've been critiquing their games for over a decade and they've been making the same mistakes for over a decade.
I have 0 hope for BGS
They never learned from Fallout 4 as everything wrong with Starfield basically comes from FO4. The awful dialogue, the lack of choice, the boring main quest, awful shooting mechanics, and the lackluster world with nothing to do but loot. Those were major problems with FO4 they copy and pasted.
How are people that like Bethesda still okay with them having modders fix their games?
I AM VERY VERY AFRAID FOR ELDER SCROLLS 6. Because based on these responses I don't think they are willing to listen to community feedback. Lower your expectations folks.
Modding is about enhancing or changing a game that's already great on its own. It is not about taking an underperforming game and working on it to help the dev get more sales.
Bethesda has a great modding community that has kept their games active, but they started with a good game.
If an engineer builds a bridge and it falls down, can he say, "But you don't know how hard it was!!! You've never built a bridge and you didn't even pay for it" The Resources Tod and Bethesda had are in proportion to what they promised they'd deliver.
I was literally thinking of this exact example yesterday lol 😂
Terrible analogy. A bad game won't potentially injure or kill people, and nobody ever has to pay $70 just to use a bridge. Video games are a luxury entertainment product that take a large team of creatives to make a whole, nobody sets out to make a bad game. But even if they make a game that's bad, it's not gonna hurt anybody, and you can refund it. A more accurate analogy would be "You've never worked on a film, you have no idea what goes into the creation of films."
Which is true. It's easy for gamers to shit on art when everyone sees game devs as mustache-twirling bond villains who only care about money. And while that can be true in the case of some games, it's not the fault of the devs, that's on the executives and the publisher. Devs don't make the rules, they just work there. The only exception to that is indie devs.
@@TheFuronMothershipcalling it a terrible analogy cause there isn’t any fatal suffering doesn’t make it a bad analogy. This game is still the figurative “collapsed bridge” that it truly is 🤷🏻♂️.
Why don’t you instead tell me more about how I should enjoy starfield more than no man’s sky that seemingly pulls off more than half of starfield’s mechanics better than Bethesdas A-Team has ever cooked 🫢.
@@TheFuronMothership Nobody sets out to make a bad game, but when they do then they deserve to be criticized or they will never fucking improve. Starfield is the way that it is because BGS has been giving pass after pass after pass for their half-baked games. Oh, mods will fix it. Oh, DLC will fix it. Oh that's just "Bethesda jank". This is what happens when a studio is insulated from criticism. And yeah, you're right. Video games are "luxury entertainment products" but the average person has to work for their money so they should get their money's worth. Giving someone a glass of piss and calling it lemonade isn't a good value for money. Also, whether you can refund it or not depends on the whims of Microsoft (if you're not on Steam).
And if you needed to work in the film industry to criticize films then every film critic would have a degree in cinematography. And they don't. Because you don't have to work in the film industry to know a bad movie when you see one. Anyone who thinks that you do isn't worth listening to, much like Emil. People criticize me if I screw up on my job (I'm a paramedic) and I don't ask to see their medical license. Why? Because you don't need to work in emergency medicine to criticize me when I make a mistake. I just take the criticism and try to improve from it instead of throwing an online tantrum and telling people they "don't get it".
@@TheFuronMothershipOh god, dogshit take, to call it a terrible analogy because a hypothetical consequence of the analogy results in deaths is really fucking stupid, the deaths in this case would be disappointed fans, and the families of the dead people in this case would be the people being critical of the developers and the engineer would be the developers trying to defend their product because they worked so hard on it
Your argument falls void when you try and put a hyper focus on a hypothetical detail without even trying to fully translate the analogy
He has some point's, but why should i care how hard it is at the end of the day i'm paying for it so i will call out bad stuff when i see it. Yet again another bad PR move by someone at beth, i wonder how hard the beth faithful are gonna defend this one.
Because him working hard to help create this game matters. You working hard for the money you spent on it, doesn't.
(Internet disclaimer: Yep, I'm being sarcastic)
Agreed @takechan569 ...imagine if everyone acted the way that people in the entertainment industry expected consumers to act, it wouldn't make sense. Take for instance how clothes are made it passes through a lot of hands take a lot of workers to get the material then ship that to who ever came up with the design and so on and so forth not only that but most clothes are made in foreign countries which use child labor or heavily under pay there employees (sweat shop workers) but you don't hear those companies gaslighting there consumers if there product is bad by telling us how we should feel for there employees. It's not Mt job to give a f about employees that's the employers job 🙄. I buy the product if it sucks idc why the short comings are there it doesn't make the final product any better.
Or take a test a teacher doesn't care that you over slept or studied really hard and still failed the end result is that you failed. Fml these are the types of companies in America who gaslight Americans into tipping/paying there workers 😂😂
And would like to say that I'm not stating that devs don't work hard or that it didnt take a lot of work to get this kind of tech to work the way that it did what I am saying is that as a consumer it isn't my responsibility it's the companies responsibility
I have no faith that Bethesda could make Starfield worth playing (to me) even if they poured all of their blood, sweat, and tears into it. They simply don't have the talent or vision.
That being said, they still provide a seemingly endless supply of free entertainment through the act of constantly embarrassing themselves in front of the entire internet.
Absolute laughingstock clown company.
You dont get to tell the customer they cant complain or criticize a product for any reason, thats it period especially when your product is being charged at the highest premium price
If this is the attitude of the developers towards the customer, as civil and intelligent as it may be, I have no hope for Starfield and Bethesda. Don't say anything. Just apologize and fix the problem if possible! I can only imagine how much worse TES6 will be.
Limitations arguments have its limites!
And Starfield is one of these games that can't be forgiven!
It's really messed up to charge $70 for bad product and even more so when you try to shame your customers afterwards.
We're bending backwards here to marvel at achievements that's so ubiquitous a thirteen-year-old does it today on his laptop.
I find the post so telling. This is exactly what it means to be out of touch - despite any good intentions - you can only see your job and not the purpose of the product. This guy does not come off as a gamer; he doesn't sit down and find joy in the same things the players do, so he doesn't know either how someone that enjoys modern games will read his post OR how they will receive a Bethesda game.
Seems like a common thread running through Bethesda; completely out of touch, responding to criticism and negative reviews in such a weird and oblique way, or todd howard regarding poor optimization “it’s just your computer bro time to upgrade”.. Your critiques don’t matter when they already made their holy $$.. they’ve coasted off Morrowind and modders, making the same game for decades now, at some point it doesn’t “just work”. The next ES game is definitely going to make or break them 🍳
"You can criticize the game, especially if you paid for it." So sick of Game Pass being used to deflect criticism. It's had *such* a negative impact on the industry.
He is crying "I worked so hard, so you have to like it!! You can't say anything bad!
The Patrician 8 hour criticism of starfield is the real cause of emil gaslighting tweets. He just didn’t like someone pointing out the failures and shortcomings of starfield
Emil as a lead writer/designer has been the center of criticism for years, any TES/ Fallout fan knows his the worst writer at Bethesda. Because the old games sold millions of copies everything was swept under the rug. Bethesda and Emil especially is out of touch and clearly don't listen the fans or their criticisms, the moment their new game with the same issues since Fallout fucking 3 is getting criticized and they think they won't be able to sell and re sell it for the next ten years. Emil, out of all people, comes out and tries to argue with fans. He has no right to argue, since they absolutely didn't listen to anything the fans said, instead they opted for the working formula of Fallout 4 and Skyrim, a grindy slop with awful story and quest, even more shallow RPG and serviceable shooting. I'm sure there was a meeting where Emil and Todd said " The fans already bought Skyrim and Fallout 10 times, why should we improve on the formula? They will eat it again". That's just insulting to every Bethesda fan.
As an engine and game dev I completely understand his position. This is why I'm never comfortable being very critical of almost any game, unless they are obviously a lazy cash grab, asset flip etc. But that's just because of my background. I think people 100% are entitled to and should criticize games for what they are, especially when they pay good money for it. I can criticize a movie I watch, even though I've never made a huge movie before in my life, I still can have an opinion on the end result.
The whole death threats etc towards the developers is just something that boggles my mind. Apart from it being completely uncalled for an absurd in the first place, people should realize, that especially in AAA, a programmer or artist for that matter are just given a feature or asset that they are in charge of making, often from a spec or a concept. They are not responsible for the game as a whole.
"You should be thankful this game even exists!" No, I'll instead be thankful for the hundreds of other games that do so much more with so much less. I can't cook, but I can tell if a chicken wing is raw. I don't make games, but I can point out if Morrowind from 22 years ago had better melee combat than Starfield. And that's the least of its problems. I don't intend to sound as harsh as I probably will, but I'm not getting gaslit into feeling bad for failures on top of failures on top of failures.
The space exploration game where you can design and build your own spaceship… which then cannot use to fly anywhere. And were the assholes? After 70 hours I consider Starfield to be the single biggest ‘miss’ in 42 years of gaming, it could and should have been life changing….its actually hot garbage which appears to have been designed to drive the player crazy.
For Todd Howard and Emil Pagliarulo - here is a quick answer for your frustrations and problems
Baldur's Gate 3
So please, for the love of God, at least have some dignity, decency and modesty, shut up, learn from this developer, learn from your mistakes and deliver better experience with new Skyrim game.
Don't believe that Elder Scrolls 6 will be good, particularly if it's made by the same devs. Bethesda is dying, it shows in everything.
7/10 is still too high. What mechanics in this game are 7/10 quality? I get wanting to be fair but... the game shipped without city maps.
This guy's post is fine and understandable. It doesn't change the fact that there are dozens and dozens of games that made smarter choices and resulted in a better end product.
And some of these came out a decade ago.
So it's just baffling how certain decisions at Bethesda are getting approved in the first place.
His response makes me hate it more.
This Emil guy is part of thr problem at bugthesda.
He's totally out of touch. If Bethesda, Todd, early access reviewers and influencers didn't lie about a $70 game people wouldn't react as harshly to how bad it was. Him making that post is just more cope for the fire. They asked for all the hate they're getting, why complain now?
To be honest I would prefer even one planet that is well made than all these100000 planets that offer nothing.
If any of the old Skyrim dev's came out and said Emil took credit for their ideas I would not be surprised or second guess them tbh.
mans wrote all that but i bet if they used a game design document he wouldn't have had put those tweets out.
They made a choice to pander, and go woke go broke is not something we throw around lightly, Disney has gone full woke and they have lost billions. Starfield is garbage, I don’t need to understand game development to see that
I'm pretty sure Emil has never had to put a central IV line into a patient or do an hour of CPR. If I mess either of those things up should I just tell him "you don't know how hard being a paramedic is, be grateful I even did it in the first place"? I will forever hate this line of thinking. You don't have to be a mechanic to criticize cars. You don't have to be a cook to criticize food. And you don't have to be a game dev to criticize game design.
Nice false equivalence. Failing your job as a paramedic literally costs lives. Game design takes years of collaboration between multiple teams of skilled creatives. It's easy to criticize art when you haven't made it yourself, and at the end of the day, your criticisms are your opinion. Devs might listen to their communities more if they criticisms they actually gave were constructive and not just the toxic vitriol of jaded social media potatoes.
If someone doesn't like Baldur's Gate 3 because they don't like turn-based combat, does that mean, objectively, that Larian 'made a bad design decision?' Of course not. It just means that the game isn't for them. I don't like side scrollers or beat-em-ups. Are they poorly-designed games? I'm not the biggest fan of MOBAs, I guess that means the devs who made Overwatch are terible at making games.
Is Starfield buggy? Yes. Is it unplayable? No. Is the story bad? That's subjective. Personally I liked it because it did something other than 'eldritch horrors want to unalive humanity because space is scary.' Is the gameplay bad? No. It's a competent ARPG. It's not the best combat ever, but it's perfectly servicable and isn't the focus of the game. I'd be more upset if Starfield's combat what what we got in the next Halo.
@@TheFuronMothership Right, so all these constructive criticisms in the steam reviews making detailed listing of everything people didn't like about the game and were met by "game developer" accounts with "nuh uh, its not boring you are playing it wrong, you played only a 100 hours so you didn't play enough" is just toxic vitriol on behalf of the players in your opinion? Who is making the false equivalence now of conflating the predominately constructive criticism with the few extremes in order to dismiss it all as just hate bandwagon?
Also if your game is "not made" for the big chunk of your players base, thats failure in marketing on your behalf for making your game out to be something it wasn't, instead of marketing it for the people that would actually like it, and thats in line with Bethesda, they tend to oversell their games and their aspects while releasing a bland sandbox that they rely on modders to fill and on their brand loyalty to carry it, something that they have already spent with FO76, the problem is that with Starfield modders are already abandoning it so the prospects of it getting better solely on Bethesdas shoulders arent that great.
Isn’t Emil the reason BGS storytelling has gotten so bad? I remembered people saying he’s the whole reason FO4 went with the dialogue wheel
If we are to use the food analogy - think of games as meals delivered by the studios. Some are burger and fries, some are pizzas, some are sandwiches, some are just chips and some are 3 course silver service with wine in crystal glasses.
The food delivered by bethesda is white bread. Just bread.
It's edible but completely boring without additions from modders. It is dry white bread without the modders adding the peanut butter and jam, or mayo, tomato slices, bacon and cheese.
Too apologetic towards Emil imo.
I 100% believe that if the world building, characters and overall story was better Starfield would be in an OK position. Still not game of the year, still not critically acclaimed - but in an OK position. I say this because all the flaws on delivery and lack of important features would be predominantly fixed by insanely dedicated modders. I am concerned however that this won't happen because these modders just aren't in love with the universe that is Starfield.
Not good team...
Shouldn't release a subpar game, then ask people to appreciate that you're behind in your field.
Imagine if one of your friends was always late, and when you said "hey, when we agree to meet, I'd appreciate you getting here when you say you will", and his answer is -
"Do you have any idea how complicated the human body is, and what goes into even taking one step, nevermind driving a car???"
Nope, not cool.
Starfield is not CLOSE to a 7/10. The game sucks. It is a 4 at best. It's hardly worth playing for free.
Considering how it runs and the fact that there are a lot of systems that work I can’t give it a 4. I’d say it’s above average game at least (6). I personally had fun with it but nowhere near as much as I was expecting to.
@@kirkvanallen5202 I don't think there's anything above average about it. Everything in the game is done better by other games. It's incapable of accomplishing simple things that other games with much smaller teams figured out YEARS ago. And it doesn't run well enough for me to give it free points for that.
@@plannein it runs well in my experience and if other game do things better does that mean Star field doesn’t do it well? That doesn’t connect to me. The lighting in the game is very good some of the environments are quite nice to look at. The gunplay is average. The shipbuilder is better than any other space game I’ve personally played. The copy pasta content is boring/trash. The character models are okay to bad at times. The main story is average and actually better than es5. The side faction quest lines are actually average to pretty good. I agree other games do space exploration much better but that doesn’t by default make a game bad.
@@kirkvanallen5202 A game running and having functional systems is “above average”? Are you joking?
@@applebees563 in todays age of gaming not really. I’d assert plenty of storyline in the game are average to good. Starfield isn’t a goty or 10/10 for sure but I also find it unfair when people say it’s a below average game etc because I just feel it’s not just based on the stability and systems alone.
"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I love this quote, and from the moment I heard about Starfield and its companion system, this feeling was what I imagined the story could offer. Not necessarily romantic love in the form of romance options, but the notion of looking outward together in the same direction. Stargazing on a cloudless night with a loved one. Waxing philosophical with a close friend. A team of scientists and engineers making childhood space fantasies real. Just sharing a feeling of awe with other beings. Even if these themes weren't present (I understand that games are not designed to cater to my own personal imagination, of course), I hoped that I could at least project them onto whatever this game had to offer.
Instead, what I got was dead-eyed character models staring unblinkingly directly into my eyes and talking about some pointless space-politics crap while an off-screen companion was waiting in the wings to judge my bland response. I got archetypal factions with shallow lore and goody-two-shoes companions that were more interested in floaty rocks than they were about space exploration. I got black hole loading screens and space debris inventories.
Don't get me wrong, I've put days of my life into this game and found some enjoyment in it, but to say that it felt uninspired is an understatement. Everything, from the characters to the factions to the storylines, felt inward-looking, navel-gazing, and small-world-ish, when all I wanted was to feel like I was looking, and then journeying, outward together with these characters.
So you're ok with mediocrely, because all I hear is excuses. Remember when devs were jealous, attacking Elden Ring and Baldur Gate 3 this year. It was too good.
A main thing that I started to implement as a developer working on games is this: "Designers/managers/whomever that does not do any actual implementation or production of assets cannot under any circumstance use the following words: "Can't we just", "Can we just", "How about the just". Basically banning the idea that things are simple all the time and easy to implement and they don't take much time at all.
1. This helps that grasp the idea that they have to be more thoughtful of the idea's they present and think about the choices they make before even asking for features.
2. It helps me keep my sanity.
There's no excuses for 10 years of work and $100,000,000 spent.
Hell, in 10 years you could probably pull some random stranger off the street and teach them game development from the ground up and still get better results.
The funny (or sad I guess) thing is that in 10 years From Software released Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, Deracine, started working on Elden Ring and Armoured Core 6. Let that sink in.
I think the point he was actually trying to make is that gamers tends to act like they know why some decisions were made. Like "they did that because they're lazy and they want modders to do the work" or "it's not in the game because it was cut for the future paid dlc", where in reality those decisions may have very different reasons - technical or economical. And he said: you can dislike the game, but just don't make assumptions when you don't have the knowledge.
Oh, yes! Let's talk about respect. It's a two way street you know. So what about the respect Devs/Pubs have for the time their customers spend to earn the money to buy their game? What about the respect for the money spent by their customers on their game? Ok we're not game dev professionals, but we ARE game players. How about respect for our experience we have playing your game?
I think he’s right to make this statement. He clearly isn’t discrediting the criticisms, I think he’s just reminding people to be more sensitive and conscientious while they make criticism-state your complaints respectfully, don’t scream them in a fit of rage
Asking gamers to be sensitive and conscientious is like asking water to not be wet.
@@TheFuronMothership I agree that gamers are stupidly immature but you can’t pin that on Emil, I think he’s allowed to ask us to be better
To me, the first question a big studio should ask themself before creating a game is:
What are the games in that genre? Are we able to create something better or new, something that will push the genre further.
Will we be able to give players a never seen before experience?
And no mather the studio, if they are answering no to one of those questions, they should not start making that game at all.
I never understood the reason behind studio wanting to create a worst version of what already exist on the market.
Like The day before, a million other zombie games online so who care about the day before.... anyway thats my opinion.
I don't think so, Their problem isn't if they can make something better in a genre. If that is the case you won't see 80% of the game have now. Starfield and The Day Before issue is The Exact Opposite.
The Day Before promises Too Much for too little capability. Look back at what their answer to:
"What are the games in that genre? Are we able to create something better or new, something that will push the genre further.
Will we be able to give players a never seen before experience?"
Higher Quality Graphic was it? MMORPG shooter? Realistic gun controls and animation? Dense urban map? Any game have all of that in one zombie game? They answer all your question. They are just incapable of doing it.
Starfield, what do they promise? OVER 1000 PLANETS, an RPG and exploration in quality of a Bethesda game, A NEW Ceation Engine 2.0!
I think the problem is exactly your question. It shouldn't be if we can make it bigger. They fail because they answer your question and overshot. it should be as simple as:
"What fun can be created with the capability we already have?" No overshot, No undershot
No, Starfeidl went the lazy way... one of the core moment in the main story is when you find the first temple and you capture the light in zero gravity..... The first time it was great to see... When i realized they copied 20 times the same exact temple with the same exact thing to do.... Well to me they did it the lazy way!
They decided to create a space game where the gameplay in space is alost inexistent....
No Bethesda did not listen, they made a game like they always make it without correcting their error from the past games making it an outdated game to play and even with better graphics the game still feel like it was made 10 years ago.
@@FulguroGeek I mean that's the exact case isn't it? They overshot. They want to go bigger, they are incapable of doing so. They start pre-production with what is Bigger and Better not what we can do.
They set themself up for failure.
I don't think it's laziness, they stretch their resources wide but thin as fuck. Even generated, Over a 1000 planets! ™-Tod Howard. Need resources, can they make multiple different unique tamples when they need to make plants, rocks, etc for this x/1000 planet to generate.
starfield isn't a story about how hard game development being hard, it's a story about what happens when a dev studio becomes complacent. is it game development hard? sure, but so is every other form of art. but when not one but two indie studios (larian for the deep rich player driven rpg side, and hello games for the space exploration side) run laps around a studio that has thousands of devs. makes "game development is hard" sound more like whining then anything else. especially when you complain that your audience "doesn't get how hard my job is" instead of saying "yeah we fucked up, it's a smelly turd we obviously bit off more then we could and made some bad decisions and it hurt the over all product, all we can do is learn and do better next time." sounds a lot better then bitching about criticism and people not bending over backwards to praise you.
He's just mad people are bashing his mediocre work.
The biggest problem in this debate is that Bethesda and other developers does not know/want to accept that GAMERS THEMSELF often got more and more knowledge about how game got developed, especially with all the recent dramas. And especially in case of Bethesda titles - how old is fanbase and how much its memebers know about good/bad sides of them.
Every game dev has hell to go through to get a game made, let alone make a good game, and have to concede their dreams of perfection to bring something to reality. Fine. True. The problem with Starfield, is that the devs seem to have conceded things that should be prioritized, and prioritized things that should have been conceded. Id take a 3 planet game with a few moons, one space station, Fallout 4 graphics, and a 30 hour questline over what we got any day of the week, as long as the story made sense, the game ran well, npcs were interesting characters, there were a rover to ride, free space flight and exploration, and there were no load screens. Heck even half the loadscreens. The priorities of convenience, variety, immersion, and fun were left out of the game, apparently in lieu of 1,000 planets to explore.
You know there are people with actually difficult jobs? Game development is not one of them.
@@bobmcbobbington9220 Lmao, make us a game then, if it's so easy.
It's like yea I can't piss, but I can damn sure tell when pee is in my mouth
“Game development is haaaaard”
They wouldn't last a Day one day of my life... All they do is sit and program and have fun... Yeah it's so HARD
I think the excuse of saying games are magic so just appreciate that they exist is a bit dated. I understand that they work a long time on these games but at the end of the day. It’s a product being sold, as part of a business that is not exactly new. We’ve had photo realism and games at scale for a while now. This is a studio, that’s owned by one of the largest companies on the globe and has unlimited resources. It’s been sold as their next big thing, their first new ip in 20 years and it’s their least buggiest game ever. But the game doesn’t have a map or poi for the planets/cities. It’s not that graphically impressive. Theres nothing new about it except it’s in space. It plays like an old game. It’s not bad. But it’s literally the epitome of it ain’t broke don’t fix
It but also don’t improve anything. And then to say fans don’t know what they’re talking about? The game launched around balders gate and phantom liberty. It exposed the flaws of starfield and made it easy for consumers to see what a great new game should look like. Like I said, I don’t think it’s bad, it was disappointing. And although I haven’t beat it, it hasn’t really encouraged me to go back to do that.
You know what? I take back everything I said about games like The Day Before and Mighty Number 9. Making games is hard you guys.
It's just another example of Bethesda over hyping, over promising and under delivering. No different then anything else they put out, its no different then FO76's "16x the detail."
Nobody’s really going to care how much effort your team put into something if that something still ends up turning out bad.
Also it’s hard to look at something like say, the procedural-generated planets and think that this is the product of a lot of hard work on par with traditional handcrafted content.
They didnt even bother to think of a star trek teleporter as a fast travel method if they wanted to be even more lazier. At least it wouldve made things a little more immersive.
Starfield just sucks. Until they accept that, there's no hope for Elder Scrolls 6. They've been on a downward trend for a decade now. It's time to clean house.
I know they said that they're going to add more modes of transport, but if they just want to avoid doing the work required to do so, I honestly would be okay if they just made jetpacks have better and faster propulsion and also make them work continuously instead of just doing steam engine toots.
Basically, just turn it into a real jetpack with infinite boost and any differences between jetpacks will be its ability to be used on planets of higher gravity.
He is number 2 behind Todd basically...
He shouldn't have said anything.
Much like the guy who said BG3 shouldn't be a raised standard
They both had foot in mouth disease.
Starfield was suppose to be like Skyrim.
be beloved. Be screwed up with creation club junk.Covered up with player mods. Made for every device out there and sell a ton even 10 years later. That won't happen and I expect Phil Spencer will be upset.
Whether he might consider forcing change in Beth remains to be seen though.
Issues with his statements are: yes it is hard to make games. Yes it is a marvel. Yes many gamers dont know how games are made. BUT those gamers do have comparisons. If another product is better in quality and sold at a lower price, there are questions to be asked. His game does not exist in a vacuum.
Secondly: if there are bugs, i understand. Performance issues, sure. Things that dont work out in reality, can happen. But a good indicator for talent and a base line of quality is dialogue. Dialogue is cheap. Everyone can write dialogue. You dont have to study to write good dialogue. There are tons of redditors that come up with well written stories. If your in game dialogue is not believeable, not witty, not funny, not deep, not nuanced, not varied. Thats an indicator for lack of care and talent and quality.
He is shifting blames from his failure as a designer and a writer. He's like Pete Hines 2.0. How is it our fault they made a game in 2023 that looks outdated by a decade? How is it our fault as players that BGS overpromised and underdelivered? How is it our fault Emil sucks at writing? BGS has completely lost their touch with their community driven by greed & outdated visions. It's not the first time they have lashed out on their community.
He should remember, they set expectations for their player-base and failed to deliver. No one pulled them by the tongue to brag about 1000 planets (which btw was an immediate red flag for me) that are not even in the game. They have no one, but themselves to blame for setting limitations upon themselves by using ancient tech for an engine instead of shifting to smth else. Even CDPR has made the decision to dump their OG RED Engine. Whoever is at the helm of it all at BGS is to blame for how mediocre Starfield is. Truth is, and they should probably recognize it themselves - people like Todd, Emil and whoever else responsible for creative decisions have outlived their "innovative" visions circa a decade and a half ago. Either they need to re-evaluate their creative thinking or follow Petey's footsteps and yield the spot to someone younger and more in tune with modern gaming.
Blaming the gamers for your own missteps is never a good look or decision. Admit you screwed up, apologize and say you will do better and DO BETTER (tldr, take examples from FF14 dev team). People already are losing hope and interest in TES6, if the BGS "leaders" don't stop these responses, they will nuke any and all good will that has remained with heir dwindling community.
We're not allowed to criticize games now because they're "so hard to develop"? What a joke.
I see a lot of excuse making in what he says.
Emil is one of the reaosn why beth games wirting is kinda bad right? the whole keep it simple stupid! get an actual lead writer who knows how to write good stories
I do not care about him whining on twitter, calling fans disconnected about a game that has same problems that are from like 2004.
It’s fucking 2022, every fucking game studio face problems making video games and yet somehow still make better games than starfield.
He’s just butt hurt that people are not eating up the game and calling 10 out of 10. Just because people are not making video games like him, do not mean they can’t criticize a game they are paying their hard earn money on.
I think what he’s saying is a miracle is not a technical miracle, but the fact that a game gets shipped at all. Because outside of three or four game companies, everyone’s working on different things, not everyone knows the vision, and/or the vision has been changed two or three times in development. And again outside of those three or four companies that work like a well oiled machine, no one talks to each other.
I agree with everything you said here, Luke.
To be fair, I enjoyed Starfield for what it was. I played for over 320 hours before I did my first NG+ (but quit after about 8 to 10 hours of that). I wanted to do everything I could before going through. NG+ didn't really add anything for me, other than a few(very few) "Starborn" dialogue options. I do feel like I had fun up to that point, and that it's an "ok" game. I DON'T feel like it's a bad game...it just isn't great. It has issues, and many of them leave me feeling like Bethesda was, at best, resting on their laurels, and at worst decided they just didn't feel like bothering. They did do some good stuff in there, but just as much of it was lackluster and run-of-the-mill Bethesda. Some game mechanics are clunky or unnecessarily limiting, "romances"(which they barely qualify as) were incredibly one-dimensional and unfulfilling(as they were in Skyrim), and the sheer number of load screens was unacceptable.
I can see ignoring unreasonable vitriol, but come on- people who have loved Bethesda games for years are trying to help them with much needed constructive criticism. I just see a string of excuses. How hard it is to make a game is irrelevant. I don't need to know how hard it is to make a car...all I care about as a consumer is whether or not the car is worth my investment of hard-earned dollars. If you CANNOT make the game you are trying to sell us then don't sell it to us as the game you wish you could make instead of the reality of what you're capable of.
I have been fairly staunch defender of Starfield and I'm glad they are trying to fix things(even if it is happening at a snail's pace), but even *I* am giving Bethesda side-eye at this point. If you aren't willing to listen to honest criticism and acknowledge there were issues from people who did enjoy the game give people little hope for Bethesda's future projects. No wonder people are feeling deflated about Elder Scrolls 6. SMH
The f you talking about bro, technological marvel…the game was broken when I played it, had to redo a mission 3 times fool…technical marvel my ass
@lukestephenslive Normally, I agree with you and am more on the side of forgiving devs, your rant at 10:18 about a game being a technical marvel is a bad strawman. Engines aren't devs. Devs aren't the ones doing the miraculous calculations. And while the dev's job is to make the content and formulas for those engines, it's still significantly easier than what you're making it sound like. They aren't coding in machine code. They aren't writing linear code, but have it done segmented with object oriented programming.
No, devs, shouldn't be attacked because of bad decision making, but at the same time, they shouldn't be propped up for the miracles of basic object oriented design and accepting legacy code.
It’s crazy that Luke thinks any of us here consider Bethesda a serious studio in 2024.
This studio has been dead for a long time.
Starfield is a brutally difficulty game. Just ask Asmongold dying loosing hours of progress, and rage quitting.
Or that it didnt have a ui feature to tell Asmongold what a grendel is he had to use his own eyes and look at the floor and find the grendel dropped right there near the enemy.
People are allowed to criticize things, especially things they pay for. If you can’t handle negative feedback, that’s on you. Naughty Dog probably has safe space closets in their office. People are so weak and soft