I am always amazed at how Bethesda can take the most fantastical game concepts, duct tape them together, and somehow show me the most boring version of that thing
Honestly this game made me realize how bad they would have had it with Fallout 4 if they didn't have over 20 years of established lore by actual good writers.
what amazes me even more is the fact that people just keep forgetting about Bethesda pulling this bullshit and then acting surprised when they prove themselves to be exactly who they've always been.
its brilliant to me that bethesda can learn absolutely nothing from the failures of their previous games and still get praised for making the most generic sci-fi game ever
They literally cannot fail, because the fans have the bar set to the lowest of expectations, and they even praise mods that fix the game, which sets the bar even lower... Gaming is just going to get worse, the more people set their expectations super low and praising for getting less delivered, even something as basic as shipping a fixed/polished game.
A "Bethesda game" has been wittled down to an exact point that they have to make the same game over and over again, or else they wouldn't be making a "bethesda game" anymore. Their entire company and philosophy has been denominator-ed into a checklist of features.
Shouldn't be too shocking, these days 'gamers' and people in general have had their standards lowered so low that they've basically broken through the basement and fallen into an abyss... Like there's people out there who praise Fo76 ffs...Every year the literal copy and paste worst every year NBA/2K/EA sports games top the charts every time they release somehow despite being some of the literal worst slop gaming produces...
Fun fact, I found the terrormorph planet all on my own through exploration without joining the vanguard. I was whiteknuckling my way through the facility, waiting to the find the creature around the next corner and expecting the fight of my life. My friend who was playing told me about terrormorphs, and I was scared to death to find one. After my 2nd lap around the facility I started to relax a little. Lap 4 had me googling on my phone. Turns out if you don’t join the Vanguard there’s no enemies. Just a lot of corpses for no reason. The terrormorph just isn’t there. They could have left it there. They could have built in that if you join the vanguard you can say “oh my god I was there, it was a terrormorph!” But no. There was nothing. And I wasted an hour. I tried to play the game a little after that but that was probably the turning point for me. I just didn’t give much of a shit after that.
@@fkboyStalin What if you just don't like them? There were plenty of times where I didn't help/join a character/faction in Skyrim because I didn't like their attitude. XD
I mean, I wont defend starfield much but this is explained logically. The reason the terrormorphs are there is because they're being used to attack settlements and this particular attack doesn't happen until you progress the UC storyline because the attacks are becoming more frequent once you uncover the plot
Starfield helped me realize Bethesda hasn't made game for decades. They make RPG maker tool kits. The campaigns they put in are there to simply show off the features the newest iteration is capable of and then we wait for others to actually make interesting experiences with it.
gonna be honest dude most people who have played an elder scrolls or a fallout have never even touched a mod. thats why the most downloaded mods for each series are sex mods or UI fixes or modernizations. half the people who install mods for these games are tech coomers or normies. then you look and see rimworld or starsectors modbase and very little of it is cosmetics with most mods being content based. some being high quality DLC size.
@@jimster1111 I mean, You're just wrong. The biggest ones are the fixes and making things okay to use by fucking 2010 standards sure. But right beneath those four or five is weapons, armor, the huge story quests, the multiple total overhaul mods, ect ect ect. I fucking love rimworld, but to say that most mods aren't just. "Here's some guns. Or new building stuff." exactly like skyrim is. Well, that'd be a lie.
I hate, hate the on foot travel.....I mean come the fuck on, advanced spacefaring civilisation and they forgot how the wheel works? Or never invented hover-propulsion? And forget the jetpack, even the forward thrust ends with an upward curve, so you're more likely to travel upwards instead of forwards. You gotta tap-tap-tap the thrust to go straight ahead. It's annoying. That's how I would describe this game, in the core of it is fun, but there are like a million of annoying "features" that just suck the enjoyment out of the game.
The lack of NPCs reacting to firing your weapon in public is just a straight up downgrade from Skyrim, guards would comment if you walked around with weapons drawn and tell you to stop shouting because you were making people nervous.
In Morrowind, NPCs will straight up like you less with a weapon drawn (It was between a 5-10 percent disposition penalty), making them harder to persuade or barter with.
It's a fine and ok game. Nothing really groundbreaking or innovative but I've still had fun with it. Honestly disappointed though. Definitely not their greatest game by any means.
In Fallout 4 during loading screens, you had those various 3D models that you could spin around and zoom in and out... you'd think it wouldn't be a huge step to make these loading screens such that you can fly your ship while it's loading the next thing
Warframe did this 11 years ago. During Their loading screens you are able to move your ship around and its perfect entertainment for 10-30 seconds at a time
They could literally lock you at first person view looking out your cockpit and add warp effects all around the ship to mask loading assets. But nope. No effort or anything.
What's crazy about begging for me is how any of 21 backgrounds you select end up as miner. Like diplomat, piglrim or gangster decided one day that they will be miner from now on without explanation "why". I think it was a great setup to make our character a prisoner, like in Gothic 1 a mining colony or just prison like Riddick's Butcher Bay. Bethesda already copied Mass Effect, give this backgrounds more roleplaying oportunities and be more believable. Also our character knows how to pilot a starship, but doesn’t know how to use a jetpack. Like in cheap comedy our character lands spaceship, NPC approaches. NPC: Could you help me with this, you can use jetpack to get there. Character: Sure, but use „jetwhat”? NPC: Jetpack, that thing on your back. C: This, I though it was fancy looking backpack. NPC: It has 1 button just press it. C: I don’t know how. NPC: Just press it, you piloted a spaceship with thousands of buttons. C: Yeah, so what it doesn’t mean I know how to press this one button.
I still don't get why Dragon Age Origins from 2009 can make original storylines for all the backgrounds and classes at the start that have lasting impact on the game and yet that has never once been attempted by any other game developer in the intervening years since. Its definitely no hardware limitation.
@@tallesttree4863 It's a money 'limitation' aka they don't want to spend the resources on it when they can still make money doing less. Forget making good products, we'll make somewhat serviceable products that der consoomer will buy anyway. I hate that term too, I'm not a consumer I'm a customer
For starfield, rather than 21 backgrounds that don't really do anything, I'd think something more like the cyberpunk system of having 3 backgrounds that give you completely different introductory paths that clearly explain how you got to be in the situation you're in would have worked better. "lots of backgrounds" works for something like BG3 which is based on D&D, a system where the characters background is from an indeterminate time in the past and the players are EXPECTED to make up their own headcanon as to how they ended up in the tavern or whatever, that is an intrinsic part of creating your own character. With BG3 it also makes it an easy thing to do, since you were, essentially, abducted by aliens, how you got there is fairly self-explanitory. For starfield, especially with how linear the story is, it would have been more interesting to have few but bespoke and fleshed out origin stories I think.
You know that creeypasta of "Every copy of Mario 64 is personalized"? Starfield is like that, I've seen bugs in my game that no one else has. People range from having no issues to seeing the world collapse around them. It's like each person's Starfield is in a constant state of mutation and the only differing factor is how fast it happens.
Going from Baldurs Gate 3 to this is tough man. Feels like you are going back ten years in terms of RPG mechanics. Honestly would've been pretty sad if I didn't have Baldurs Gate to play and I was stuck playing this. This has to have been the most average game I have ever seen.
I got this game for free because I bought and AMD graphics card for my first ever gaming computer. I've seen so many similar comments to this that I bought BG3 and can confirm it's a much better game lol.
Even 10 years ago this game would be bad. New vegas came out in 2010, dragon age origins is from 09, vampire the masquerade bloodlines a game from 04 blows starfield out the water. Dishonored is a better rpg than starfield and dishonored is not even a rpg. I would not even take the game for free. The game is not mid, it's below mid, at BEST the game is 2/10. The game is unacceptably bad for a 2023 game. That's just my 2 cents on it tho.
Everyone who likes this game: "It's actually kind of fun if you ignore 85% of the systems, content, and literally every single narrative element." Me continuing BG3: "Mmhmm, riveting. Glad you're having fun. Keep going, sport."
@@Frostman411Now that I've finished the game I don't think I'll go back to it anytime soon considering the only thing I enjoyed were the unique quests and of course they won't be unique now that I know everything that happens in the quests I might even have a new found appreciation for skyrim which I didn't like as much before.
I was getting annoyed by how panned the reviews were for this game. After 3 minutes of watching gameplay footage, it was clear to me that people weren’t being at all critical. Thank you Strat for being you. I’m overjoyed to see how much your channel has grown.
Well, between the fact that it’s Bethesda (which has it own legion of apologists and sycophants) and the fact that they recently got acquired by Microsoft/Xbox (same scenario), it seemed like there was a CONCERTED EFFORT (almost like how there was with Halo Infinite’s “review cycle” despite its player-base dropping like a stone only 3 months later) from certain review outlets to rate this game as GENEROUSLY as possible because they’re either hardcore Bethesda fanboys, they know HOW IMPORTANT this release was for Xbox, or some combination of BOTH.
Just watching the reveal trailer and how the trees were Dreamcast-PSO-tier flat-texture foliage (which was great at the time don't get me wrong, but unacceptable from all their bragging in 2023) told me everything: yup, they lied about changing engines, it's still a cobbled-up Gamebryo with all its flaws, it's still gonna be streamlined and probably moreso than Fallout 4 because the more they advance, the more Todd wants power over the player and reveals how terrible he is at roleplaying in general, and of course it's gonna be an empty sandbox of "do stuff because why not but only the way we want you to" because they want that mass appeal for casual roleplayers who don't have that much time to crunch numbers or get involved in a complex plot with a notebook at your side. Also never forget Todd's biggest influence was Ultima 4, a game that railroaded you into playing the goodest guy you can imagine and constantly punished you for not doing so, including healing yourself before your companions (if my memory's correct), and since he's taken control after Morrowind, every single one of his games has shown more and more how invasive his view of railroading and his projection people want to play HIS fantasies the way HE imagines them has become. I bet the next Bethesda "RPG" will be a linear story, no bad guys allowed (not even joining them for nothing) and stealing and picking unauthorized locks will be gone too, I can perfectly imagine a watered-down old-school Zelda (in that you're the good guy and does no wrong, but worse) with no experience system at all, just story- or mission-gated stat unlocks with tiers of "ok you can open this now because you've amassed enough gold stars by being a good obedient little player, who's a goddy-wunny widdwe pwaya? Yes you are, here's a slightly better weapon and some perks, now go kill some baddies". And they'll have the gall to brag the map is even larger but we all know it's gonna be emptier. And people have railed on Lords of the Fallen (2014), it's a thousand times better, combat works, exploration is rewarding, the mood is interesting and the lore intriguing...
I think one of the most annoying things for me is the main character syndrome or whatever you want to call it. You are the main character and everyone knows and reacts to that. The worst case of this I've seen so far is when you first arrive in New Atlantis. There's some kid being comforted and insisting his parents are still alive just on a different shuttle. I ignored this, literally walked on by without even hearing the end of the conversation. Couple hours later a kid approached me and was all happy to see me. It was the kid who's parents were missing. He was telling me how he was right and stuff and his parents came and seemed thankful to me for some reason. I literally hadn't done anything, I ignored the encounter but somehow that kid still craved my attention. It's also really annoying how your crew, or anyone really seem to think you want something if you come within a few meters of them. Walking around my ship and have a chorus of "did you need something?" "Got something for me?" or other such lines. They even do it when I'm busy on a workbench and just happen to walk past me. They crowd the captains quarters whenever I sleep there, it's my damn room can't they stay out of there? Their little conversations are apparently so important for me to know that they broadcast it over the entire ship. If I hear the Coe's talking about bedtime stories or book budgets while I'm fighting a fleet of enemy ships one more time I'll turn the damn ship around and no one will get milkshakes. Companion chatter is also incredibly annoying. Being bitched at for taking a nap, complaining that I'm apparently looting too much. Even using the same line meant for junk when I'm literally picking up ammo or a medpack. And if I have to talk to that annoying girl at UC Distribution Center one more time I'm going to flip out. Stop yammering and let me sell my trash. Why does she seem so confused when I ask to buy/sell? Good game for killing time and strangely addicted. Ship building is nowhere near as good as people praise it for but it's still a step up from the nothing other games provide. Sick of the "lived in" feeling always being loads of clutter. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in the world that cleans up after myself with how much praise the "lived in" feeling gets. Real disappointed at the lack of cop missions. There's like 3 or 4? and you can't even do half of them until you finish the Vanguard stuff. Was hoping for some more fun cop stuff or investigations. The "investigation" we got was preschool tier and super short. Couldn't even go talk to the guy being accused of the crime.
@@KainYusanagi Not sure about that, I don't remember seeing any other kids and he's there the first time you land in New Atlantis. When I encountered him again he even said he was the kid from the spaceport. Security are talking to him and wanting to send him to foster care assuming his parents are dead as they were part of some attack on a colony somewhere. At that point of the game you've only really been to that abandoned science place to kill the pirates then headed straight to New Atlantis.
@@Atelierwanwan Yes, I'm talking about when the kid's parents show up; he was saying that they were on another shuttle, and I never got that parents scene (specifically, the one where they thank you) until after I did some space combat and saved a shuttle that was being attacked (wasn't a hauler).
You get 3 or 4 semi crafted quests per faction (even then with plots aimed at sub 80 IQs) and after that it's just filler/timebloat, go here, kill X repeat for infinity.
I am bewildered by the free quality pass that Betheshda gets almost every time. Mediocre combat, mediocre writing and bugs for days and yet somehow they always have enough critics singing the highest praises.
@@OliveDrabCrusader Ghost Recon Breakpoint was a game where my friends and I skipped pretty much all the dialogue we could because it was completely wooden and worst of all detracted heavily from the flow of the gameplay.
“Oh no one plays the main story mission” is such a stupid argument against improving the main story of Bethesda games, because the simple fact is no one would say that if their stories were, you know, good.
53:40 what really surprised me too was that SO many NPCs are unkillable yet also dont ever come up in the main quest after that point. Given the 'ending' of the game, I have ZERO idea why they wouldnt let you off any of those characters. The collector guy is a huge example i can think of.. or the crimson fleet leaders. If the world is supposed to be shaped by your actions why cant i have an ending where I was a one man death machine who then left to try another life.
We're talking Bethesda, here. Have you never seen Skyrim? There's high chance that just having a name makes an NPC in the middle of nowhere immortal. I mean, after the Civil War, you're outright told to deal the remaining faction camps littered around: The leaders of those camps are immortal, despite being TOLD to deal with them. Or Dawnguard: You're baited in with the option to go full vampire hunting loon, but the moment Serana shows up, NOPE, you either play nice with her, or the story doesn't go anywhere. And all that is ignoring that practically any main-story NPC is immortal, and you can't deal with Ulfric out-the-gate for no justifiable reason. The sad truth is they've actually regressed: Fallout 4 was fine with you burning down three of the factions the moment you met them, but Starfield almost seems offended that you'd want to break ties with the game's Empire.
It’s infuriating how so many game studios will buy positive reviews. Now more than ever, we need people giving brutally honest reviews so people don’t waste their money on a bad game.
"Go safe, go steady" then 2 minutes later she's telling you to ignore the scanner anomalies and sending you off into the back of a cave alone and unarmed under the guise they'll come get you if something goes wrong 😂
of course, she says that, you really expected her to be honest - later that other guy starts to freak out over the readings in his sensor and she shuts him up and orders you to press on and that everything will be ok. This is totally in line with a character who is lying to you, I mean, its blazingly obvious and not deep or unobvious, but you are complaining that its shallow simply because she says everything is fine and then sends you into danger a few moments later? This is why we cannot have nice things - some of you need to find all and ever excuse to whine about their games, that you whine about BS that doesn't even make sense, or just outright lie. Who could take a Bethesda whiner seriously? You people are no better or worse than their fanboys.
@@xBINARYGODx from the conversations I have seen from the game, it doesnt really make sense thou. Your character doesnt really talk to her like what she is. So its just shallow bad writing.
Honestly, this game killed my excitement for ES6. Hardly any innovation, mid story, same old Bethesda combat, planets are unexciting, and so much more. Still, I think it is a game that you can easily sink hundreds of hours into and have a good time. I just want more than the bare minimum and the need to make a "experience" instead of a good game.
yeah bethesda has had a looooong streak of really mediocre games lately even fallout 3 which is one the better fallout games still fall into a slightly lower tier of mediocre but every other bethesda rpg releases have been getting more and more mediocre. I seriously have no more faith in bethesda and I would love to see the fallout and elder scrolls franchise be written and design by obsidian or anyone else really cause bethesda has no idea on how to make an good rpg.
The only hope for ES6 is a new or overhauled engine. Will still have tons of bugs, but maybe then their next game will release in a playable state Maximum copium
@@handsomeboi3767 It seems like Obsidian have started to regain their lost competence with the release of the Outer Worlds DLC. I don't care about Outer Worlds at all but I would like to see the studio take on another Fallout game, preferably with the NV writer at the helm. New Vegas has had a huge cultural resurgence in the last few years so a spiritual successor would get tons of hype behind it
Isn't it very similar to the movie situation of today? We are overflowed with very expensive but mediocre media and at the same time people are very defensive about it. Not only online. I met a woman at a birthday party and she was really emotional involved when I told her that I think there are some very objective points why Amazons Rings of Power is inferior to Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings Trilogy and she was very determined by her subjective statement "But I like the show! Its truly great!!" Nevermind its also an interesting observation that most people who act as they were fans move very fast to the next "cool thing" after successful consume and seem to forget most of it. Its a very disturbing fast food mentality and many problems in fandoms like "tourists" are connected to it.
@@Max_Kraft What's funny is that it took me a long time to realize I'm not a fan of anything. I have a great admiration for a lot of series and franchises, but I can always come away from it feeling cheated or like it was just shit if the quality isn't genuinely good. So in actuality, I'm not a fan. A fan is a fanatic, someone who will consume it mindlessly and love it no matter how flawed. I don't think I can do it. There are things I want to like, but as I get older I have less tolerance for bs. So I cling to the past, to the thing I think was good. It's also possible nostalgia plays a factor, but I usually succumb to that realization and will also abandon any game or movie which has been despoiled by my objectivity. Anyway, point is, I agree. I don't know how people listen to the top 40 music stations, and next weeks it's like a whole new set of songs and you don't have the time to appreciate them in like any way. Just move on to the next thing. It feels like the most instinctual consumption with no regard for the artistry in any way. Same goes with Games, movies, etc. I know I sound like an omega hipster and on some level I am but the degree to which people will just move on from one flavor of the month to the other and they claim to like it baffles me.
I think it's due to two factors. First, people have been conditioned to seek instant gratification instead of quality. Two, insertion of political sloganeering instead of exploring actual political themes. People will defend their "tribe" to the death, even if it's all surface level and completely meaningless.
The difference between SF and BG3 is that BG3 is objectively a good game. It isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it's a very good gaming experience for people who enjoy that genre. Just like there's been amazing sports games, even tho some people hate football. Starfield is ONLY good to people who love starfield. Automatically being an RPG fan, a space fan, an open world fan, etc. None of those factors matter because it isn't objectively good at any of those things. You have to specifically enjoy starfield to think it's an amazing game. Everyone else sees it for what it is... it's between a 5 and a 7 out of 10.
@@tgs5725 ok. You don't have to. But now you are objectively wrong. I played it and did not find it compelling at ALL. Big fan of d&d and classic western rpgs. It simply isn't good.
This game is the embodiment of "its fine I guess". Not sure how they managed to make a walking sim and fast travel sim in the same game but once I realized after 80 hours in that nothing you do matters and the central loop Is just restarting your world over and over hunting powers so you can obliterate enemies who are already pushovers on the hardest difficulty I completely lost interest.
This basically sums up exactly how I felt about the game at 100hrs. Towards the end of the main quest I began to think "Well I could go do X but it doesn't matter", and that's kind of not the best message to send the player. I know you can just *not* pursue the NG+ upgrades, but like... What if you want them?
totally - the feeling of 'what's the point' wouldn't leave my head - from base building, to making money to better ships ....and after the scooby doo ripoff in the main quest, I knew that groundhog day was coming...thats the point I dropped my controller and haven't returned to it.
Why does it take you 80 hours? The first 3 hours of the game already suggested that. There where no stakes at all and the dialogues and wooden npcs put me to sleep. Remember how Mass Effect introduced us to the game and they could have just copied that also but decided to make it as meaningless as possible.
How old are you? Be honest please. I am genuinely interested in how gamer age correlates with the time they need to realise the game's boring. I'm 26, and it took me just an hour.
It's appalling how anyone pointing out this game's flaws are instantly labelled as "haters", by the rabid fanboys who only ever focus on what little good this game provides.
The majority of Starfield reviews for me have been people pointing out such flaws. The only weird part about that is I couldn't find anyone doing this for BG3, and you had to be an olympic hurdler to get pass the bugs in Act 3 in order to reach the finish line. You really can't find many people criticizing Starfield? Is my youtube algo just broken?
@@chasmurphy1227 The channels that I subscribe to and other vids I've seen haven't outright given them 10/10 reviews but neither have they specifically pointed out major flaws. Basically they boiled down to "Its a good game" without blatantly shilling.
I wonder what BG3's excuse has been for having so much RNG then (especially in conversations). Its been over a decade since new vegas after all (and 6 years since divinity 2).
To be quite honest. I started suffering from Bethesda fatigue with Skyrim. I never finished it because either you grind the main quest till you get bored but don't finish it or you play in the sand box till you get bored and never even get into the main quest. Fallout 4 was exactly the same problem. I spent too much time on the side activities that the main quest felt like an immense slog to get through. I would rather have less sandbox and more deep story (Mass Effect 1) or only sandbox and hardly any story (like Kenshi, Minecraft, etc)
Honestly Kensh is a bad example, because "make your own story" there is as shallow as it gets. You wanna be a skin bandit? Sure, get skin, wear it. Boom, you're a skin bandit. What changes in the world? Nothing. Any ramifications? None, except a bounty maybe. @@Zodroo_Tint
Fallout used to be amazing series of player-driven choices. It got turned into a dumbfck shooter for casuals. RPG elements are nuked in FO4. Dialoge options are atrocios and story is retarded with plot twist being mega obvious. Go play Fallout New Vegas and its expansions. Massively immersive games that reward your time and builds. Boycott Bethesda trash
Never Finished skyrim coz the main Story softlocked itself twice. Once on xbox360 by release. Tried again on PC, again it softlocked. Can't progress the Mission because the person doesn't exist where it says it does. And now i tried again on xbox x, achievements are bugged - completed the wizards sidestory but the chivie to join the mageguild isnt unlocked. Once starfield bricked itself during the corporate storyline I uninstalled and haven't looked back. They KNEW about the issue for weeks and instead they update graphical issues instead of the mountain of quest issues that I and many others had. "Just revert you save so far back that the problem isn't there and then quicksave by the npc in question after every queststage for every quest to make sure it doesn't happen" Absolute clowns all of them.
Story missions have hard locked me twice where companions would walk up to an "inaccessible" door required to open for the mission - and the companion would just freeze and eventually bug out entirely.
The second you said "ripped off mass effect" it was like the glass shattered. Down to the scanning of planets and landing at preselected 'points of interest' from a map, this is first person ME1 all over again.
Whole mining with a laser gun is straight from NMS. After learning that entire space part is just a screen saver and loading screen simulator I just downloaded NMS. Playing it after all those years I enjoy it much more, It not Elite dangerous but its as close as we got to arcade spacegame.@@Casshio
Too bad they didn't have interesting characters like Mass Effect. It's a clunky, boring mess 90% of the time. I love this TYPE of game so I'll finish it, but it's such a letdown.
@@themagnus2919 not to mention the ENTIRE time you're in your ship the gameplay is a 1:1 rip of elite dangerous ie I literally only knew how to optimise my weapons & shields and grav jump & dog fight because I played elite dangerous 😂
Bethesda games like this one feel more like an accumulation of mechanics than they do a cohesive experience. Its got a bunch of different gameplay bits.thatake up the sum of its parts that never come together in a way that makes it greater than the sum of them.
This is a great take, and puts to words what I felt about Fallout 4. You can beat the game without ever touching the settlement system. So why'd they waste all that time and resource on including it? It doesn't help you advance, it doesn't really provide any benefits you can't get using generic crafting facilities, money is too easy to come by just with loot alone. It's completely disconnected from the rest of the game. Starfield kinda feels the same. I don't know why they give me these space magic dragon shouts (because that's what they are, let's not lie to ourselves) when you never need them whatsoever. They might make combat slightly easier but the enemies in this game are pushovers even on the hardest difficulty. Ship combat can be skipped entirely by just grav jumping away and then jumping right back. The only surefire things you HAVE to invest in are your shooting skills and perks. Starfield is a first person shooter with a bunch of superfluous systems and mechanics that don't really enhance the shooting, and in turn are not enhanced by said shooting either.
BGS have no creativity and the addition of Microsoft, just meant each guy gets paid more. They didn't spend extra on the development of this game, and it was basically all put towards marketing and expanding their creation engine rather than enriching the actual game. But after Fallout76 everybody knew what was coming, I doubt ESO6 will be great look at how poor Online was! BGS have gone the same way Rockstar have. One game in 12 years.
Every one of those mechanics has, by itself, been done far better by many other games too. Gunplay, space flight, exploration, base building etc etc. All are below average by themselves. It's whether the whole hodge podge together is for you. Starfield is truly unique and groundbreaking in that no game has ever merged such poor combat, generic quests, empty planets, repetitive environments, lockpicking, stealth and space flight in one game.
this reflects 100% what I thought the game would be like a series of almost good moments in a sea of classic bethesda check lists and mediocre gamedesign I'm so glad you made this video Strat cause, to be honest, yeah, other creators DID make this game out to be bethesda's return to form but the truth is: bethesda never had a form to begin with
@@MisterMelvinheimeryes, this. TBF, most commenters here haven’t played Morrowind - or it’s been so long that they don’t have it in mind. But yeah, Morrowind was (is) magnificent.
I'll still have fun and entertainement from Oblivion and Skyrim, even tho they are modded to fucking hell and back. After 12 hours of Starfield, i have none of that..., its systemic, formulaic and its checkboxes and menus, i'm still wondering where the game is...
40:01 I feel you, I've always found their pacing for these things gives me a severe case of whiplash. In under a week of in-game time, you can go from just starting out in the Mages guild, to the head of the freaking school. And they could solve this if they just messed with time jumps or had time lapses. Romance in this game is insane to me, You can marry someone you just met in like a week's time. Something they could easily solve by having large amounts of time pass as they travel from planet to planet. They could have implemented a system where traveling from one part of the universe to the other, took a few years in game time or something, and let companions bond passively as they travel with you. I know they want to let players play as they want, but any verisimilitude they hope to establish goes out the window their quest structure has always been that way with guilds, you go from untrusted unproven New Recruit to space Mayor Emperor Diplomat in 48hrs.
Morrowind was the last Bethesda game that did factions right. Joining certain factions locked you out of other factions on the same playthrough. This game is particularly ridiculous because you can join the space cops and also space pirates on the same playthrough.
totally agree, it feels like now they're afraid of players maybe missing content or something, It feels like if they develop a storyline or a mission they want all players to experience it, even if it doesn't make sense, also greatly reducing the incentive for replayability. And I know everyone will bring up the new Baldurs gate as an example, but there have been plenty of ARPGs that ask players to commit to a choice and stick to it. @@Flyon86
@@Flyon86Well, if they had systems where you could double-cross a faction by joining with one of their rivals, it would be ok. I'm sure that's not the case. I mean why would they give you consequences for your actions? That would just be bad because we all know, consequences suck. Lol! This is Bethesda. I don't expect anything other than unoptimized, buggy, garbage that crumbles under it's own weight. This is even worse because of them bending the knee to the woke crowd while making things even more complicated by adding They/Them pronouns and separating gender from body type. I've heard it has pissed off some in the Trans "Community" because the NPCs don't even use the right ones when talking about your character. Great job, Todd!
Wing Commander Privateer 2 had a great solution to mimicking space travel with level cells; you chart out your destination, and travel along empty level cells that you jump to manually.
your bit about how the premise of the game itself was immersion-breaking is exactly how I felt. the longer I played, the less sense any element of the story or world building made, and the more I disliked or just didn't care about anything I was doing. final straw was when I landed on earth finding a procedurally-generated desert and the companion character was just like, "oh the atmosphere went away, don't worry about it"
What do you expect them to do with hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of employees? Model Earth? Only Minecraft players can do that for free, or something.
@@OrgusDinthere are plot reasons for why Earth is the way it is within the lore. It actually makes sense, even if it’s probably a larger excuse to not model Earth fully and you have to find books to go to individual Earth locations.
@@tzenethWhat? You mean I have to actually play the game and engage with the lore to find out why the Earth is dead? How dare they force me to explore the game and engage with its content!
29:30: Hours?! Man, there better be something fun to do in the first 20 minutes of a game or I'm out. I am 38 now - the unlimited free time of my youth is over. There are so many games being released that I am never going to have time to play more than a tiny selection of them. This is no way I'm playing something on the promise that it'll get good 20 hours in.
The UC Vanguard quest is singular in the regard you described. The Rangers, a small elite group of law enforcement, just require you to do one radiant quest before joining. The pirate faction - which would involve piracy you'd think - is a treasure hunt.
Only played the joining quest but when i met the leader and listened to what he said i immediately thought: Seriously ? The legendary pirate named ...forgot (Gol D. Rogger) left the single biggest treasure somewhere out there and you can have it if you can find it. ... i kind of heard the first Opening in the back of my head Well i guess there could be worse than adapting *the best pirate manga story* into space
I wasn’t sure about your review style but I actually really enjoyed the more laid back approach to it. Thank you for your perspective. You make good unique points.
In my intro sequence heller wasnt even in the elevator. Lin would ask him questions and nobody would answer. It was very confusing considering it was the very first thing in the game. I just thought Lin was insane.
It's just embarrassing. The idea of modern AAA game dev is that you make the first 20 or so hours really polished so that the average reviewer doesn't realize how borked it is. I really thought Beth taking an extra year was to do that.
That'd be a brilliant intro to a game where your tutorial giver actually is insane, but that would require creativity and personality, two things -No Man's Sky 2- Starfield lacks
You know what's even funnier... They had a giveaway where the prize was a Starfield branded hard drive. The person who won it couldn't even install and play The Game on the hard drive, bgs gave them. Does anyone remember those canvas bags? Kind of reminds me of that.
I binged your Videos quite a lot right now and have to say that UA-cam is blessed to have content Creators like you Keep up your great work I appreciate it
I abandoned the Constellation story line almost immediately and I did not regret it. I also played early access and avoided spoilers. What ended up happening was that about 40 hours in I happened to be looking for Aluminum and stumbled on one of those Anomalies and I ended up finding the first temple organically. That was a pretty awesome feeling, especially because at the time I had no idea that space magic was even a part of the game. I wish they would have buried those temples in more generic exploration missions, so that exploring became exciting and space magic mystical.
My only real beef with the game so far, is that the temples have nothing on them =/....there aren't even a lot of them, they should have made Unique dungeon for them, like skyrim.
@dormiebasne3578 That would be interesting to know. But I also ended up making my first settlement on a planet that just so happened to be where a certain mech factory ended up being.
I mean just stay away from the Constellation storyline. It legitimately ruined a lot of my experience with the utterance of one single word. "Multiverse" Like fuck me, make everything about this game about exploring the vastness of space immediately not matter anymore.
Just get ready for more of that word, because everything has to be on the "multiverse" bandwagon for at least the next five year, when it's finally run into the ground and exhausted. I mean, it already is, but we all know how movie and television production companies and game devs are. They absolutely wear a concept out until it become unpalatable.
its be besthesdaest bethesda game that ever bethesdaed. my favorite part was when Todd Howard shows up at the ending and says "You were the Starfield all along". Fascinating
Can we talk about the guns and the absolute disgrace. Where are the unique weapons? Where is the different variants? There’s like 16 weapons in this game and the “unique ones” are literally a reskin of an already regular weapon with a different ability. Finding cool weapons and armours was such a fun part of these games.
The best part is that the more "unique" a weapon is, the more it freezes your game whenever you pull up your scanner. I have this collection of legendary weapons I'd love to use, but have to use whites in order for the game to work.
@@Wavedashnoir Yeah there’s 7 “unique variants” in this game and 5/6 are just regular guns just with a new static ability. Quest rewards give you regular shit you loot and sell anyways. Weapons and armour are super super bland in this game (among other things). Also what is the point of farming materials? Pretty much everything you’ll ever need you can just buy anyways. My biggest gripe is NO INTERACT BUTTON IN SURVEY MODE. How many times can you click it on and off opening lockers and shitty locked safes haha.
-Everything looks the same -Constant loading screens -Ten minutes of walking between objectives It's like they took Vivec City from Morrowind and made a whole game out of it.
Feels both good and bad that I predicted this whole Starfield thing. Falllout 4 and 76 both pointed towards Bethesda moving away from details, effort and actually building a world unfortunately. They really went out of their way to avoid putting in some effort this time though. Unfortunately it happens, businesses grow and eventually the people who actually made it special leave, and you're left with current Bethesda. Hopefully one day they'll be able to return to the living and interesting worlds they used to create, but more than likely not.
Yeah, I kind of wish LaFey world collaborate with whatever ex Obsidian is called now. Black Rock??? It is late, so forgive my not recalling the proper name. Anyway, I wish they'd try to produce a new game. I agree with Strat in that I kept thinking of Outer Worlds and can not help but think they were lampooning Starfield and not just FO4. Outer Worlds was not perfect, but it was fun. It hooked me right away. SF sadly has not
Yeah I was about to say ever since skyrim blew up the way it did bethesda doesn't seem the same anymore. Other companies have been changed by that one evergreen juggernaut as well like Rockstar has with GTA5 and it sucks to see.
Everyone loves Morrowind but damn it, I been chasing that Oblivion high with Bethesda since and realize I'll never relive that sense of wonder, jank and hot garbage that made me love Oblivion that much more.
@@craeshendo The funny thing is I didn't play oblivion much until this year and now I'm so disappointed in myself for missing out on it. It just has a vibe like no other.
I remember watching one of your videos where you said you werent doing so well and you could possibly die soon, every time i see a new vid from you im so glad to see you are still around and kickin. Love your vids man and keep up the good work!
All I wanted from bethesda was a game that was cohese and that felt like I was in a live universe. They had horrible implementation of too many mechanics. They managed to make an impressive ship that was rendered useless as soon as you were done with the tutorial because other than discovering new galaxy paths, the ship will be an avatar for fast travel, at best. They managed to make everywhere you went either feel empty or full and devoid of soul. They honestly should've focused on a single planet or maybe a single state, or a region in the future that would feel more real and made it as good as possible. The reason why people love the elder scrolls and fallout (we don't talk ab out 76) is due to the fact that it feels real within the boundaries of that universe. The constant fast travel that literally cuts off billions of light years makes the game feel so far from reality that it doesn't feel RELATABLE. I had really high hopes for this, but the lack of relatability with the world that they created basically killed the experience for me :/
Played a good chunk of it. Got to cowboy world, did a few quests there and went back to play New Vegas, and now I don't really want to play more Starfield. whoopsies
I find it funny that people compare this with BG3. But if you chose "I wanna stay here and mine" at the start in a game like BG3, there would be a whole ass part of the game about mining asteroids that would connect it to the grander game.
For whatever reason, UA-cam decided to show me this video with the thumbnail of the SSSniperwolf apology tweet. That’s hilarious to me as I’ve never seen a bug like that before, I was so confused.
There is a mod that will remove the boundary around the landing area, so you can keep walking around the procedurally generated ground and POI´s keep appearing as you move forward, but, at some point if you move too much close to the edge you won't be able to fast travel directly to your ship because It's now out of sight in your HUD, you have to backtrack from POI to POI until your ship is again available on screen. Good thing is, you can walk around on foot the entire planet, bad thing is the POI's are randomly generated as you move forward, so you can end up getting similar places to explore.
The exploration aspect feels worse than the open world in Daggerfall....At least there you really have 15,251 cities, inns, homes, temples, graveyards and dungeons etc. You can actually travel by foot, horse of ship between them, no loading screens, unless you are entering a dungeon.
Amen. As soon as I saw people use the phrase "Daggerfall in space", I know they were either memeing hard or had never played Daggerfall. A thousand separate instances does not a Daggerfall make.
The cities were to scale, too. Thousands of folks could realistically live in a lot of the cities. Even if most of it was devoid of anything interesting, it still made it extremely immersive, and this coming from someone who only played Daggerfall a few years ago with the Unity release.
This was meant to be Microsoft's big slam dunk 😂😂😂 your footage takes me back to being a kid trying to run Oblivion on my pos family windows xp machine, some things never change I guess
Fun fact: Oblivion ran like shit at release because the grass models had way more polygons than they should have. I remember downloading an optimized grass mod and gained like 20 fps and the grass looked the same.
It looked like ass and ran locked at 30 fps for me... Then I updated my driver and it immediately shot up to 170 FPS, so I cranked the graphics settings. Maybe hes too busy trying to figure out how to be popularly edgy to update his? Or hes a cheap ass who wont buy a new GPU, and insists on running it on a 1050.
What are you talking about, this game is great. Choose your pronounce, watch loading screens than walk for 5 minutes in direction without anything happen. It's a peak gaming, almost perfect. If they add loot boxes it would be a 10/10
36:45 => I figured out that none of the ship elements can be turned into any direction you want. For example, the biggest storage (300 units) I found from my early 1st city shopping session is that it could only be attached on the side of the ship. Not behind, not front, not top and not bottom. And that sucks rotten balls.
I loved when I had to choose between two npcs to turn a quest into and they were standing right next to each other and the other one didn't even react or acknowledge me before or after never change bethesda
@austinfaces1490 probably talking about the "investigate brown outs in the well" quest line. You can give the info at the end to the Trade Authority or the chick you've been helping. All that happened when I "betrayed" the chick was her saying "I trusted you", but then you talk to her and she doesn't care anymore. Also, the TA lady says that the Authority will remember your help and what not, but that is just a lie. You get no discounts, and if you go to any other Trade Authority, they have no clue who you are.
Ever since it came out, I've known that this game isn't meant to be good, it's meant to appease shareholders and the bethesda fanboys who think this is Skyrim in space. Yes, it's Skyrim in space, complete with mediocre writing and gameplay designed to addict.
I've noticed the writing is really uneven in places. Also how immersion breakingly "current day" some of the themes are. That and the generically "Firefly" patina over the whole thing.
I think in my opinion Skyrim and Fallout at least did a better job than this fucking game did. Skyrim and fallout 4 have the same issue of being as Wide as a ocean but deep as a kitty pool. Starfield is literally wide as multiple oceans but deep as a fucking water filled pothole💀. Skyrim and Fallout4 at least dotted the map with dungeons, points of interest side quest with somewhat compelling story(granted not always well done) and actual goals of acquiring legendary gear,artifacts etc. Starfield is basically like taking the original no mans sky before the update and just sticking 10-15 enemies in 2 buildings per planet and giving them 300 health and calling that a rpg game. That and omg the fucking dialogue, dude I didn’t think dialogue could ever get worse than oblivions but Jesus fucking Christ this game somehow managed to give every character in this game fucking DOwN SynDROMe!!
My biggest problem with starfield is they destroyed the joy of exploration by creating numerous hubs, but you can no longer wander to find unexpected content because aside from the hubs the worlds are empty and space exploration is simply using the menu to fast travel
At this point it's clear that essential npcs only exist to limit the player's freedom. Not only are most if not ALL npcs with this flag in areas where it's impossible for them to be attacked by random hostiles, but even if that was still possible, Skyrim introduced the protected flag which makes it so ONLY the player can kill the flagged npc.
i really tried with bethesda but i think Fo4, 76 and now Starfield have all been massive misses for me. i really hope the next ES game is actually good and makes some waves in the industry. their gameplay/tech is like 6 years behind still.
I don't think Bethesda understands what made their game so successful with Oblivion and Skyrim. ES6 might be their last chance before Microsoft gives them the Halo treatment.
@@Vyleea They just don't know how to build around it, or make it fit in other genres. They found a balance in those games they cant replicate since as you said, they don't know what made those games good.
@@MiracleManMax I didn’t buy it, I have gamepass. edit: I was also gifted 76 from a friend and it was months after release to try. FO4 I did buy on release because Bethesda was my favorite studio growing up. I just ended up never finishing it because I didn’t like it.
Starfield is probably the dullest game I've played in the last decade. I was prepared for it to be mediocre, I was prepared for it to be uninspired, but I wasn't prepared for it to be this thoroughly bland. The Bethesda formula is usually enough to carry their games even when they are mediocre, but this one is the first time I just couldn't be bothered to keep playing at all.
Same here man. Fallout 4 was a mixed bag for me but I still managed to actually finish the main quest and see most of the vanilla game, I just never bothered to experience the DLCs and the only one I'd have enjoyed was Far Harbor and the frustration would be why didn't they just make Far Harbor's design philosophy the design philosophy for the rest of the game?
@@cowboybenbop I think my concern is that while mods can add some interesting characters, the actual framework for having that matter isn't there. I think everything added will always just be disconnected from the rest of the game and there can't be any interaction.
512GB SSDs start at $25 my dude. Part of it is textures, part the engine. I was fighting the HDD speed-limit modding New Vegas more than a decade back; didn't take that much to overload it. Easiest way to cause problems were by increasing character speed. This explains the lack of vehicles & planetside flying; the engines giving its all at walking speed.
Bro I know I’m all cynical these days, but seriously, I had been cringing for years everytime someone went off to me about how excited they were for Starfield because all I can think about is “yeaaaah those last five Bethesda games were *really* good and not at all buggy messes with nothing to really do and shallow ass npc’s who repeat the same two lines…”
Rust, the survival crafting game also needed an SSD. I got an ssd around that time anyway to keep my pc alive a little longer, as it boots and runs a lot quicker off ssd. I mean i get that it’s frustrating to have to switch things out for the one game that you want to play, but SSD is old tech at this point and extremely helpful. Not like RTX where it’s just fancy, like ssd is ridiculously fast compared to hdd.
I've worked enough retail and food service to tell you why there's always blood in the Wendy's bathroom. Junkies will often use public restrooms as a shooting gallery. When you find blood in the bowl, on the walls, or even on the ceiling, it's because of either the normal amount of blood that comes with injecting yourself with dope, or blowing said shot and spattering blood all over the walls (or ceiling, which I've seen and subsequently had to clean). The in the bowl blood is because of the piece of paper they use to wipe off any excess blood from a normal shot that went alright. When you're sticking a needle into a vein, there's often at least some blood, even if it's just some on a piece of paper. They then drop this bloody piece of toilet paper into the toilet and that gives the water that striking blood color you've encountered.
A lot of games are gonna require SSDs very soon. It's a massive bottleneck for a lot of games already but it works, barely. SSD storage has also become way way cheaper. You can get a more than good enough drive with 2TB storage for less than 90 USD.
At this point I'd just love a game that plays exactly like Elite Dangerous with the legs update, but just offline in single player, without the online component, so I can cheat a little if it gets too grindy and not have to worry about online connection and updates on my steam deck.
Elite needs to roll that joke and buy an abandoned property to stick in there or something. I'm not giving elite a pass for that abomination just because starfiled is worse!!! Elite never made up to us for that drop.
How morrowind solved the important npc thing was perfectly fine. Just have a pop up saying you dun goofed, reload to continue the story or continue and fuck around in sandbox.
"i feel like I'm playing Outer Worlds" man this is it, the exact feeling I had! Except it had no f n sense of focus, or humour (even in Outer Worlds that wasn't exactly mindblowing but at least it gave it some levity).
Your reaction to the shipbuilder is basically the same as mine. Granted now that I know how it works it’s not so bad but I can’t imagine a new person or someone who’s not familiar with video games trying to figure that shit out
48:51 The funny part is you can f*ck the quest up so a hostage dies and the Ranger dude is still like "I think you're Freestar Ranger material, wanna join?😃"
Oh Bethesda! At it again buying review scores! I can't decide if the B in Bethesda stands for Boring, Buggy, or Broken. I'll be saving my money for a better game that doesn't waste my time. Thanks Strat for the honest review.
I feel almost like Bethesda decided "this is too hard" after making Morrowind, an actually interactive and content dense game (it wasn't perfect, but it was absolutely an RPG), and decided to see how little roleplaying something sold as an RPG could contain before people would notice. They've been reducing features ever since, and while there were graphical fidelity updates, and rather beautiful landscape design in Skyrim, we lost quite a bit in exchange. I know the Bethesda Marketing Executives think console owners are somehow unintelligent enough to actually understand more complex RPG mechanics than "put perk here" with everything else being hidden under the hood. But I'm pretty sure most people have some degree of self-determination and can look at somewhat complex choices without their brains melting. They present these more recent game world's as an entirely open player determinant experience, but it's just not, there's even a decrease in what Bethesda was historically good at, handcrafted world building and environmental storytelling (this was excellent even in Skyrim which simplified many of the historical TES elements) with the introduction of randomized, procedurally generated environtments to fill up everything that isn't part of the main story content. It looks and feels more like a walking simulator than it does an IS or true RPG. I feel like old Bethesda would have made a worse looking game, but far more fun with far more interactivity.
Even in my first ever procedural generation class they made us change the generation of the levels based on difficulty I feel like they could of had very small basic places to start maybe you explore two small places then the next planet you land on has medium and then large and then expansive bases. You can also have cool procedurally generated weapons. Maybe they have different skins or unique attachments maybe those attachments even change how the gun works so if you want the range of a sniper on your shot gun you can! Then you can get slugs and use your shotgun as a sniper idk
I think one of the main issues I have with Starfield stems from the fact that it really does feel like Bethesda took away the exploration aspect their games are known for in favor of "Ooh, look at how many planets we've made!" It's like, yeah, you've got a lot of planets, but many of them are just boring and empty with some copy pasted locations. That's not fun! I stopped playing the game and haven't felt the urge to play it again because I think to myself "What's the point of going through this game and building my character if there's nothing really grabbing my attention out there in space?" And there's just constant load screens like you said and it's just... A fun but VERY frustrating time. Honestly I prefer Fallout 4 to it because at least you can explore the map of Fallout 4 with no load screens and each location is unique and the world is cohesive rather than jumping from boring planet to boring planet with a few good ones mixed into the thousand duds.
@@rockapartie That's sad to hear. I play some games which heavily reuse map resources (Mechwarrior 5 comes to mind) but they at least change it up by changing objectives, enemies, and the equipment you have access to. Sounds like that won't happen here.
I find it amusing that Bethesda would be proud of their cookie cutter 1000 planets while No Mans Sky has literal BILLIONS of planets. And hides it's loading screens better, as well as allows for flight on planets and seamless travel from surface to space and vice versa.
@@rockapartie Ah, I wasn't thinking the equipment you find, but the equipment you have access to. The loot's levelled, which means that it doesn't change much. Higher numbers = better gun. Do any of the guns change how you approach combat at all? I guess at the very least they should have grenade launchers or specific stun weapons or something. I've played a few games (MMOs) with heavy reuse of randomly generated dungeons, but with that said they did have a fully connected overworld that wasn't procedurally generated.
Thanks for the in-depth review. I haven't bought it yet, but been looking forward to doing so. I had watched a couple other reviews from other YTers who aren't Bethesda fanbois, but they generally were more positive than yours. Lots of thoughts on this game coming from different games. Coming from Space Engineers, X-Universe, and other Space Sims: Looks like space doesn't have much going on. This is sad since I quite often enjoy the space part of the sim and treat this as my main home. No asteroid bases for me, I guess. Coming from other open-world games (GTA, Skyrim, Fallout, Starbound): The Immersive part looks real weak. While Bethesda game NPCs generally don't react to violence all that much, even Skyrim at least had the guards tell you to not shout in the middle of the city, or to put your blade away when drawn. From a "Living world" perspective this looks like one of the weakest offerings so far. Nothing happens outside of what the player gets involved in, it seems. From a procedurally generated point of view, it also seems like little actually exists that's dynamic. Except for some points of interest (which sound barren) there's the specially crafted missions, which is what previous Bethesda games are known for having a lot of but it leaves you with only pockets of things to do in a giant universe. Coming from story-driven games (Mass Effect, Dead Space, Bioware games in general): It seems like the stories are all undercooked, as are the NPCs. What I'm seeing doesn't look to draw me into the world or the people. No unified worldbuilding that sucks you into the world as the narrative progresses. That's not unexpected since it is an open world, and this is one of the normal trade-offs that has to be made. Still, Skyrim and the Fallout series had some depth of character to its people and factions which would lend an overall feeling to the areas they were part of. That may still be true of the main characters/factions (eg UC Vanguard quest giver) but not of the settlements you end up going to for the missions themselves. The factions may be better fleshed out, but its people less so. NPC interactions a la Oblivion's Radiant Conversations may have been janky but at least they made the world feel alive. Since it seems like most NPCs don't actually exist in their world (they do as bodies, not as members) it leaves a large void even within the areas that include content. It also seems like you're still stuck with Fallout's dialog options of: Happy yes, angry yes, wary yes, and maybe later. It doesn't look like choices matter much in the game beyond some flavour text. Quests are largely scripted, but nothing matters or has any impact on any other part of the game, world, or universe. Having not played the game yet, I'm guessing that this is the resulting feel I can expect. Coming from Bethesda games (TES specifically, but also Fallout): It seems like the open world no longer is. You have instances that you jump between to give the illusion of a full world but which aren't actually connected. The closest example of a Bethesda game with this kind of procedural generation is Daggerfall, which had a huge overworld that was largely barren, but you _could_ traverse it manually if you wished to. Dungeons were also dynamically generated in most cases, which led to some jankiness but did provide a huge amount of variability for low resource cost. You lose that with Starfield; it seems that there's a huge overhead for the game to simply run while not providing much randomly generated stuff to do. You also lose most of the dynamism provided by a real connected overworld where mobs and NPCs can interact with one another and cause unique encounters. Instead you're silo'd off to small areas you can visit which are more or less disconnected from the rest of the universe if only by distance rather than a hard wall. I also wonder if any of the instancing is actually kept? I hear you can just land anywhere on the planet (to create a new procedurally generated instance) but what happens if you leave the planet and come back and visit the exact same spot later? Is the land the same? Does it change at all? I'm guessing it will change since it doesn't actually keep a map of the world, just generates it as it needs to. Kind of reminds me of D&D videogames with overworld movement, except random encounters no longer exist. You're adventuring around curated content but not actually within a world. Nothing changes outside of what the murder hobos cause to change along a few pre-scripted plot points. You can't really go off script and make your own adventure like you can in open worlds, but nothing is connected together in a campaign like a story-driven adventure. It seems like a weird broken mix of the two. Put another way, the world exists for the player to move around, but the world itself has no capacity to move the player.
8:00 You probably didn't know that you can highlight your objective while looking at it. Outside the map screen press the use key on the objective and it will let you highlight and jump to it without opening the map, game never explains it, but it is better than pulling open the map every time; just slightly.
At a guess it has to keep loading from the hard drive because it remembers everything that you previously did in an area so if you picked up a sandwich and dropped an empty bottle it has to load that every time you come back it's was an impressive idea back when Skyrim did it but not worth the resource requirements.
Its funny how the game even tries to tell you that "Space exploration is overrated , who even does that anymore" because they knew they fucking couldnt.
I am addicted to listening to people rip this game apart. It's a good time to be alive.
Dude me too this is like my 15th “starfield sucks” video
I just can't believe people think this is an average Bethesda release. How embarrassing.
Doing the same thing, Bro. LOL
yeah, me too, surprisingly. It is very relaxing and can always play it when I'm working.
I thought I was the only one :D
I am always amazed at how Bethesda can take the most fantastical game concepts, duct tape them together, and somehow show me the most boring version of that thing
Have you never heard them explain their build philosophy!? Thats exactly what the mission statement is!
Honestly this game made me realize how bad they would have had it with Fallout 4 if they didn't have over 20 years of established lore by actual good writers.
@@RazorsharpLT They did fuck the lore in FO3.
what amazes me even more is the fact that people just keep forgetting about Bethesda pulling this bullshit and then acting surprised when they prove themselves to be exactly who they've always been.
@@theblancmange1265 not as bad as 4 or 76 though.
its brilliant to me that bethesda can learn absolutely nothing from the failures of their previous games and still get praised for making the most generic sci-fi game ever
They get praised and make a ton of money no matter yet, so they have no incentive to put effort into their games.
@@Rusty126just like Pokémon!
They literally cannot fail, because the fans have the bar set to the lowest of expectations, and they even praise mods that fix the game, which sets the bar even lower...
Gaming is just going to get worse, the more people set their expectations super low and praising for getting less delivered, even something as basic as shipping a fixed/polished game.
A "Bethesda game" has been wittled down to an exact point that they have to make the same game over and over again, or else they wouldn't be making a "bethesda game" anymore. Their entire company and philosophy has been denominator-ed into a checklist of features.
Shouldn't be too shocking, these days 'gamers' and people in general have had their standards lowered so low that they've basically broken through the basement and fallen into an abyss...
Like there's people out there who praise Fo76 ffs...Every year the literal copy and paste worst every year NBA/2K/EA sports games top the charts every time they release somehow despite being some of the literal worst slop gaming produces...
Fun fact, I found the terrormorph planet all on my own through exploration without joining the vanguard. I was whiteknuckling my way through the facility, waiting to the find the creature around the next corner and expecting the fight of my life. My friend who was playing told me about terrormorphs, and I was scared to death to find one. After my 2nd lap around the facility I started to relax a little. Lap 4 had me googling on my phone. Turns out if you don’t join the Vanguard there’s no enemies. Just a lot of corpses for no reason. The terrormorph just isn’t there. They could have left it there. They could have built in that if you join the vanguard you can say “oh my god I was there, it was a terrormorph!” But no. There was nothing. And I wasted an hour. I tried to play the game a little after that but that was probably the turning point for me. I just didn’t give much of a shit after that.
Vanguard? Bro, how many things did they copy paste from other franchises? All I see is:
- No Man's Sky
- Elite Dangerous
- Destiny
- Mass Effect
@@Gunth0rand marketing promising star citizen
you have no reason not to join though, you can do every faction in one playthrough no biggie.
@@fkboyStalin
What if you just don't like them? There were plenty of times where I didn't help/join a character/faction in Skyrim because I didn't like their attitude. XD
I mean, I wont defend starfield much but this is explained logically. The reason the terrormorphs are there is because they're being used to attack settlements and this particular attack doesn't happen until you progress the UC storyline because the attacks are becoming more frequent once you uncover the plot
Starfield helped me realize Bethesda hasn't made game for decades. They make RPG maker tool kits. The campaigns they put in are there to simply show off the features the newest iteration is capable of and then we wait for others to actually make interesting experiences with it.
Yea and it's really apparent with starfield, it's all loosely related gameplay that modders get to fix 😂
gonna be honest dude most people who have played an elder scrolls or a fallout have never even touched a mod. thats why the most downloaded mods for each series are sex mods or UI fixes or modernizations. half the people who install mods for these games are tech coomers or normies.
then you look and see rimworld or starsectors modbase and very little of it is cosmetics with most mods being content based. some being high quality DLC size.
Then why do they lie about it for sale?
@@jimster1111 I mean, You're just wrong. The biggest ones are the fixes and making things okay to use by fucking 2010 standards sure. But right beneath those four or five is weapons, armor, the huge story quests, the multiple total overhaul mods, ect ect ect. I fucking love rimworld, but to say that most mods aren't just. "Here's some guns. Or new building stuff." exactly like skyrim is. Well, that'd be a lie.
@@jimster1111 "Coomers/normies"
lol, lmao even.
"This is a Bethesda game, you explore with your feet on the ground, I get it..."
The ban on Levitation Magic has had far reaching consequencea.
He's literally jet-packing EVERYWHERE, but whatever. (I mean, I'd probably do the same.)
@@reesetorwad8346more like Jet gliding, the animation looks like old kung Fu flying rigs for special effects
I hate, hate the on foot travel.....I mean come the fuck on, advanced spacefaring civilisation and they forgot how the wheel works? Or never invented hover-propulsion?
And forget the jetpack, even the forward thrust ends with an upward curve, so you're more likely to travel upwards instead of forwards. You gotta tap-tap-tap the thrust to go straight ahead. It's annoying.
That's how I would describe this game, in the core of it is fun, but there are like a million of annoying "features" that just suck the enjoyment out of the game.
levitate 300 for 1 sec was basically how I lived my life in Elder Scrolls 2
@@kittydaddy2023 you deserve better my friend
The lack of NPCs reacting to firing your weapon in public is just a straight up downgrade from Skyrim, guards would comment if you walked around with weapons drawn and tell you to stop shouting because you were making people nervous.
This, this game's npcs are worse than oblivion atleast oblivion npcs felt alive even if their conversations were awkward.
Gothic fucking one had this figured out. One!
In Morrowind, NPCs will straight up like you less with a weapon drawn (It was between a 5-10 percent disposition penalty), making them harder to persuade or barter with.
@@docwhammo Worth noting that Ultima V had NPC schedules in 1988
@@docwhammoThey took the radiant AI out back then too lol
I'm glad other people are seeing the same flaws I'm seeing. I feel like I've been gaslit by a ton of people calling this Bethesda's magnum opus 😂
It's really not but I still think people are being too hyperbolic about it. It's a fine to good game that is a fun timesink for people like me
It's a fine and ok game. Nothing really groundbreaking or innovative but I've still had fun with it. Honestly disappointed though. Definitely not their greatest game by any means.
That was Morrowind. All the releases after Morrowind were progressively worse and worse.
Paid shills and brainwashed casuals.
many people cannot be objective, just wait a few months and people will start to complain
In Fallout 4 during loading screens, you had those various 3D models that you could spin around and zoom in and out... you'd think it wouldn't be a huge step to make these loading screens such that you can fly your ship while it's loading the next thing
Warframe did this 11 years ago.
During Their loading screens you are able to move your ship around and its perfect entertainment for 10-30 seconds at a time
They also had semi interesting lore tidbits to read but nope just look at the docking arm extend woah so futuristic
They could literally lock you at first person view looking out your cockpit and add warp effects all around the ship to mask loading assets. But nope. No effort or anything.
Assassin's Creed (2007) has loading screens where you can run around with your character.
@@theblancmange1265 I just want "Supreme Snowboarding" by Housemarque, from 1997 or something... Goddamn thatsa good snowboarding game
What's crazy about begging for me is how any of 21 backgrounds you select end up as miner.
Like diplomat, piglrim or gangster decided one day that they will be miner from now on without explanation "why".
I think it was a great setup to make our character a prisoner, like in Gothic 1 a mining colony or just prison like Riddick's Butcher Bay.
Bethesda already copied Mass Effect, give this backgrounds more roleplaying oportunities and be more believable.
Also our character knows how to pilot a starship, but doesn’t know how to use a jetpack.
Like in cheap comedy our character lands spaceship, NPC approaches.
NPC: Could you help me with this, you can use jetpack to get there.
Character: Sure, but use „jetwhat”?
NPC: Jetpack, that thing on your back.
C: This, I though it was fancy looking backpack.
NPC: It has 1 button just press it.
C: I don’t know how.
NPC: Just press it, you piloted a spaceship with thousands of buttons.
C: Yeah, so what it doesn’t mean I know how to press this one button.
I still don't get why Dragon Age Origins from 2009 can make original storylines for all the backgrounds and classes at the start that have lasting impact on the game and yet that has never once been attempted by any other game developer in the intervening years since. Its definitely no hardware limitation.
@@tallesttree4863I loved that part of Origins so much. It gave the game so much replayability with the way your background interacts with the story.
@@tallesttree4863 It's a money 'limitation' aka they don't want to spend the resources on it when they can still make money doing less. Forget making good products, we'll make somewhat serviceable products that der consoomer will buy anyway. I hate that term too, I'm not a consumer I'm a customer
For starfield, rather than 21 backgrounds that don't really do anything, I'd think something more like the cyberpunk system of having 3 backgrounds that give you completely different introductory paths that clearly explain how you got to be in the situation you're in would have worked better.
"lots of backgrounds" works for something like BG3 which is based on D&D, a system where the characters background is from an indeterminate time in the past and the players are EXPECTED to make up their own headcanon as to how they ended up in the tavern or whatever, that is an intrinsic part of creating your own character. With BG3 it also makes it an easy thing to do, since you were, essentially, abducted by aliens, how you got there is fairly self-explanitory.
For starfield, especially with how linear the story is, it would have been more interesting to have few but bespoke and fleshed out origin stories I think.
nah my character was a fucking professor, why in the hell am I a MINER
You know that creeypasta of "Every copy of Mario 64 is personalized"? Starfield is like that, I've seen bugs in my game that no one else has. People range from having no issues to seeing the world collapse around them. It's like each person's Starfield is in a constant state of mutation and the only differing factor is how fast it happens.
Holy shit, they took radiant quests to its natural conclusion, radiant bugs!
Each go through the Unity is different, or something
Yeah right. You've got bugs nobody else is having. Sure
@@og_ice_freezer
Missing the point lmfao.
@@InvadeNormandy "I've seen bugs in my game nobody else has". Direct quote. What am I missing again?
Going from Baldurs Gate 3 to this is tough man. Feels like you are going back ten years in terms of RPG mechanics. Honestly would've been pretty sad if I didn't have Baldurs Gate to play and I was stuck playing this. This has to have been the most average game I have ever seen.
10? Try 25 years
I got this game for free because I bought and AMD graphics card for my first ever gaming computer. I've seen so many similar comments to this that I bought BG3 and can confirm it's a much better game lol.
Even 10 years ago this game would be bad. New vegas came out in 2010, dragon age origins is from 09, vampire the masquerade bloodlines a game from 04 blows starfield out the water. Dishonored is a better rpg than starfield and dishonored is not even a rpg. I would not even take the game for free. The game is not mid, it's below mid, at BEST the game is 2/10. The game is unacceptably bad for a 2023 game. That's just my 2 cents on it tho.
After my first playthough i found myself severely missing skyrim and fallout 4.
@@kj12351also to add on to your point, the dark souls franchise is far more role playing than starfield too.
Everyone who likes this game: "It's actually kind of fun if you ignore 85% of the systems, content, and literally every single narrative element."
Me continuing BG3: "Mmhmm, riveting. Glad you're having fun. Keep going, sport."
Legit I've been just thinking of going back to BG3 and calling starfield a wash.
@@Frostman411Now that I've finished the game I don't think I'll go back to it anytime soon considering the only thing I enjoyed were the unique quests and of course they won't be unique now that I know everything that happens in the quests I might even have a new found appreciation for skyrim which I didn't like as much before.
You sound like a patronising person.
I like Bg3 but act 3 is a buggy mess and the ending is kinda shit
To be honest, you are just objectively a contrarian attention seeker if you bash BG3
I was getting annoyed by how panned the reviews were for this game. After 3 minutes of watching gameplay footage, it was clear to me that people weren’t being at all critical. Thank you Strat for being you. I’m overjoyed to see how much your channel has grown.
Same when Cyberpunk was released. Got unexplainable 8's and 9's from most outlets.
Well, between the fact that it’s Bethesda (which has it own legion of apologists and sycophants) and the fact that they recently got acquired by Microsoft/Xbox (same scenario), it seemed like there was a CONCERTED EFFORT (almost like how there was with Halo Infinite’s “review cycle” despite its player-base dropping like a stone only 3 months later) from certain review outlets to rate this game as GENEROUSLY as possible because they’re either hardcore Bethesda fanboys, they know HOW IMPORTANT this release was for Xbox, or some combination of BOTH.
Just watching the reveal trailer and how the trees were Dreamcast-PSO-tier flat-texture foliage (which was great at the time don't get me wrong, but unacceptable from all their bragging in 2023) told me everything: yup, they lied about changing engines, it's still a cobbled-up Gamebryo with all its flaws, it's still gonna be streamlined and probably moreso than Fallout 4 because the more they advance, the more Todd wants power over the player and reveals how terrible he is at roleplaying in general, and of course it's gonna be an empty sandbox of "do stuff because why not but only the way we want you to" because they want that mass appeal for casual roleplayers who don't have that much time to crunch numbers or get involved in a complex plot with a notebook at your side.
Also never forget Todd's biggest influence was Ultima 4, a game that railroaded you into playing the goodest guy you can imagine and constantly punished you for not doing so, including healing yourself before your companions (if my memory's correct), and since he's taken control after Morrowind, every single one of his games has shown more and more how invasive his view of railroading and his projection people want to play HIS fantasies the way HE imagines them has become.
I bet the next Bethesda "RPG" will be a linear story, no bad guys allowed (not even joining them for nothing) and stealing and picking unauthorized locks will be gone too, I can perfectly imagine a watered-down old-school Zelda (in that you're the good guy and does no wrong, but worse) with no experience system at all, just story- or mission-gated stat unlocks with tiers of "ok you can open this now because you've amassed enough gold stars by being a good obedient little player, who's a goddy-wunny widdwe pwaya? Yes you are, here's a slightly better weapon and some perks, now go kill some baddies".
And they'll have the gall to brag the map is even larger but we all know it's gonna be emptier.
And people have railed on Lords of the Fallen (2014), it's a thousand times better, combat works, exploration is rewarding, the mood is interesting and the lore intriguing...
You were getting mad for people pointing out how bad it is?
@@Zamibiastory, characters, graphics, city all were solid nines. Old gen consoles were pure shit though.
I think one of the most annoying things for me is the main character syndrome or whatever you want to call it. You are the main character and everyone knows and reacts to that. The worst case of this I've seen so far is when you first arrive in New Atlantis. There's some kid being comforted and insisting his parents are still alive just on a different shuttle. I ignored this, literally walked on by without even hearing the end of the conversation. Couple hours later a kid approached me and was all happy to see me. It was the kid who's parents were missing. He was telling me how he was right and stuff and his parents came and seemed thankful to me for some reason. I literally hadn't done anything, I ignored the encounter but somehow that kid still craved my attention.
It's also really annoying how your crew, or anyone really seem to think you want something if you come within a few meters of them. Walking around my ship and have a chorus of "did you need something?" "Got something for me?" or other such lines. They even do it when I'm busy on a workbench and just happen to walk past me. They crowd the captains quarters whenever I sleep there, it's my damn room can't they stay out of there? Their little conversations are apparently so important for me to know that they broadcast it over the entire ship. If I hear the Coe's talking about bedtime stories or book budgets while I'm fighting a fleet of enemy ships one more time I'll turn the damn ship around and no one will get milkshakes. Companion chatter is also incredibly annoying. Being bitched at for taking a nap, complaining that I'm apparently looting too much. Even using the same line meant for junk when I'm literally picking up ammo or a medpack. And if I have to talk to that annoying girl at UC Distribution Center one more time I'm going to flip out. Stop yammering and let me sell my trash. Why does she seem so confused when I ask to buy/sell?
Good game for killing time and strangely addicted. Ship building is nowhere near as good as people praise it for but it's still a step up from the nothing other games provide. Sick of the "lived in" feeling always being loads of clutter. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in the world that cleans up after myself with how much praise the "lived in" feeling gets. Real disappointed at the lack of cop missions. There's like 3 or 4? and you can't even do half of them until you finish the Vanguard stuff. Was hoping for some more fun cop stuff or investigations. The "investigation" we got was preschool tier and super short. Couldn't even go talk to the guy being accused of the crime.
For the kid: I think you save them in one of those random spacer/pirate encounters.
@@KainYusanagi Not sure about that, I don't remember seeing any other kids and he's there the first time you land in New Atlantis. When I encountered him again he even said he was the kid from the spaceport. Security are talking to him and wanting to send him to foster care assuming his parents are dead as they were part of some attack on a colony somewhere. At that point of the game you've only really been to that abandoned science place to kill the pirates then headed straight to New Atlantis.
@@Atelierwanwan Yes, I'm talking about when the kid's parents show up; he was saying that they were on another shuttle, and I never got that parents scene (specifically, the one where they thank you) until after I did some space combat and saved a shuttle that was being attacked (wasn't a hauler).
You get 3 or 4 semi crafted quests per faction (even then with plots aimed at sub 80 IQs) and after that it's just filler/timebloat, go here, kill X repeat for infinity.
"Need something?"
I am bewildered by the free quality pass that Betheshda gets almost every time.
Mediocre combat, mediocre writing and bugs for days and yet somehow they always have enough critics singing the highest praises.
If this writing is mediocre, what would be an example of a game with BAD writing?
@@OliveDrabCrusader Ghost Recon Breakpoint was a game where my friends and I skipped pretty much all the dialogue we could because it was completely wooden and worst of all detracted heavily from the flow of the gameplay.
@@Killicon93 Sounds like they're both bad
@@OliveDrabCrusader fire emblem engage. the localization especially.
Honestly it IS mediocre, but then you realize they spent 400 million to make this mediocre and THEN it gets sad... @@Killicon93
“Oh no one plays the main story mission” is such a stupid argument against improving the main story of Bethesda games, because the simple fact is no one would say that if their stories were, you know, good.
The most amazing and groundbreaking game of 2013! Happy tenth anniversary, Starfield!
considering Fallout: New Vegas came out in 2010, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't even be groundbreaking (for Bethsoft) in 2013.
It broke new ground
This attempt at humor was released in 2013
Consoomer
@@sdFreerey So do you get paid by the dick suck or is it a package deal kid of thing?
53:40 what really surprised me too was that SO many NPCs are unkillable yet also dont ever come up in the main quest after that point.
Given the 'ending' of the game, I have ZERO idea why they wouldnt let you off any of those characters.
The collector guy is a huge example i can think of.. or the crimson fleet leaders. If the world is supposed to be shaped by your actions why cant i have an ending where I was a one man death machine who then left to try another life.
I dunno about the crimson fleet guys but the collector is totally killable he just surrenders after and you can kill him for real if you want.
This is what hurts the most, can't even kill people, so stupid; worse than Fallout and Skyrim
Have new game plus
Have unkillable npc's
Wut
We're talking Bethesda, here. Have you never seen Skyrim? There's high chance that just having a name makes an NPC in the middle of nowhere immortal. I mean, after the Civil War, you're outright told to deal the remaining faction camps littered around: The leaders of those camps are immortal, despite being TOLD to deal with them. Or Dawnguard: You're baited in with the option to go full vampire hunting loon, but the moment Serana shows up, NOPE, you either play nice with her, or the story doesn't go anywhere. And all that is ignoring that practically any main-story NPC is immortal, and you can't deal with Ulfric out-the-gate for no justifiable reason.
The sad truth is they've actually regressed: Fallout 4 was fine with you burning down three of the factions the moment you met them, but Starfield almost seems offended that you'd want to break ties with the game's Empire.
Killing every living being in the universe would have been a nice personal quest 😂
It’s infuriating how so many game studios will buy positive reviews.
Now more than ever, we need people giving brutally honest reviews so people don’t waste their money on a bad game.
"Go safe, go steady" then 2 minutes later she's telling you to ignore the scanner anomalies and sending you off into the back of a cave alone and unarmed under the guise they'll come get you if something goes wrong 😂
Bethesda writing is usually like this, people just say stuff without it mattering. Just talking to talk.
Honestly most accurate part of working as part of a "we care about you" working class gig
of course, she says that, you really expected her to be honest - later that other guy starts to freak out over the readings in his sensor and she shuts him up and orders you to press on and that everything will be ok. This is totally in line with a character who is lying to you, I mean, its blazingly obvious and not deep or unobvious, but you are complaining that its shallow simply because she says everything is fine and then sends you into danger a few moments later?
This is why we cannot have nice things - some of you need to find all and ever excuse to whine about their games, that you whine about BS that doesn't even make sense, or just outright lie. Who could take a Bethesda whiner seriously? You people are no better or worse than their fanboys.
@@xBINARYGODx from the conversations I have seen from the game, it doesnt really make sense thou. Your character doesnt really talk to her like what she is. So its just shallow bad writing.
look how nobody agrees with you. Apparently you have never heard of a thing called CONSISTENCY in story telling. @@xBINARYGODx
Honestly, this game killed my excitement for ES6. Hardly any innovation, mid story, same old Bethesda combat, planets are unexciting, and so much more. Still, I think it is a game that you can easily sink hundreds of hours into and have a good time. I just want more than the bare minimum and the need to make a "experience" instead of a good game.
The only thing I hope for from TES6 anymore, is to be a competent technical platform for modders to play around. Other than that... yeah no.
yeah bethesda has had a looooong streak of really mediocre games lately even fallout 3 which is one the better fallout games still fall into a slightly lower tier of mediocre but every other bethesda rpg releases have been getting more and more mediocre. I seriously have no more faith in bethesda and I would love to see the fallout and elder scrolls franchise be written and design by obsidian or anyone else really cause bethesda has no idea on how to make an good rpg.
bethesda have been sterilizing their games since Oblivion, making them more and ever increasingly safe and generic to the point we see in Starfield.
The only hope for ES6 is a new or overhauled engine.
Will still have tons of bugs, but maybe then their next game will release in a playable state
Maximum copium
@@handsomeboi3767 It seems like Obsidian have started to regain their lost competence with the release of the Outer Worlds DLC. I don't care about Outer Worlds at all but I would like to see the studio take on another Fallout game, preferably with the NV writer at the helm. New Vegas has had a huge cultural resurgence in the last few years so a spiritual successor would get tons of hype behind it
Bethesda are at a place where people will defend 4/10 games like their life depends on it.
People seem to defend 4/10 games from most studios these days
Isn't it very similar to the movie situation of today? We are overflowed with very expensive but mediocre media and at the same time people are very defensive about it. Not only online. I met a woman at a birthday party and she was really emotional involved when I told her that I think there are some very objective points why Amazons Rings of Power is inferior to Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings Trilogy and she was very determined by her subjective statement "But I like the show! Its truly great!!"
Nevermind its also an interesting observation that most people who act as they were fans move very fast to the next "cool thing" after successful consume and seem to forget most of it. Its a very disturbing fast food mentality and many problems in fandoms like "tourists" are connected to it.
@@Max_Kraft
What's funny is that it took me a long time to realize I'm not a fan of anything. I have a great admiration for a lot of series and franchises, but I can always come away from it feeling cheated or like it was just shit if the quality isn't genuinely good. So in actuality, I'm not a fan. A fan is a fanatic, someone who will consume it mindlessly and love it no matter how flawed. I don't think I can do it. There are things I want to like, but as I get older I have less tolerance for bs. So I cling to the past, to the thing I think was good. It's also possible nostalgia plays a factor, but I usually succumb to that realization and will also abandon any game or movie which has been despoiled by my objectivity.
Anyway, point is, I agree. I don't know how people listen to the top 40 music stations, and next weeks it's like a whole new set of songs and you don't have the time to appreciate them in like any way. Just move on to the next thing. It feels like the most instinctual consumption with no regard for the artistry in any way. Same goes with Games, movies, etc. I know I sound like an omega hipster and on some level I am but the degree to which people will just move on from one flavor of the month to the other and they claim to like it baffles me.
thats why they got bought by microsoft. they needed the shills in their pocket.
I think it's due to two factors. First, people have been conditioned to seek instant gratification instead of quality. Two, insertion of political sloganeering instead of exploring actual political themes. People will defend their "tribe" to the death, even if it's all surface level and completely meaningless.
The difference between SF and BG3 is that BG3 is objectively a good game. It isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it's a very good gaming experience for people who enjoy that genre. Just like there's been amazing sports games, even tho some people hate football. Starfield is ONLY good to people who love starfield. Automatically being an RPG fan, a space fan, an open world fan, etc. None of those factors matter because it isn't objectively good at any of those things. You have to specifically enjoy starfield to think it's an amazing game. Everyone else sees it for what it is... it's between a 5 and a 7 out of 10.
1-3 out of 10*****
I enjoy the genre and hated BG3. Lackluster characters imo and a story that wasn't really compelling. Objectively good it ain't.
@@calebbridges4748 imma be honest. I don't believe you.
@@tgs5725 ok. You don't have to. But now you are objectively wrong.
I played it and did not find it compelling at ALL.
Big fan of d&d and classic western rpgs. It simply isn't good.
"Forget about radiant quests. How's about a radiant game? I bet they'll love that!"
-todd Howard, probably
This game is the embodiment of "its fine I guess". Not sure how they managed to make a walking sim and fast travel sim in the same game but once I realized after 80 hours in that nothing you do matters and the central loop Is just restarting your world over and over hunting powers so you can obliterate enemies who are already pushovers on the hardest difficulty I completely lost interest.
In conclusion: How "It just works" became "It just exists"
This basically sums up exactly how I felt about the game at 100hrs. Towards the end of the main quest I began to think "Well I could go do X but it doesn't matter", and that's kind of not the best message to send the player. I know you can just *not* pursue the NG+ upgrades, but like... What if you want them?
totally - the feeling of 'what's the point' wouldn't leave my head - from base building, to making money to better ships ....and after the scooby doo ripoff in the main quest, I knew that groundhog day was coming...thats the point I dropped my controller and haven't returned to it.
Why does it take you 80 hours? The first 3 hours of the game already suggested that. There where no stakes at all and the dialogues and wooden npcs put me to sleep.
Remember how Mass Effect introduced us to the game and they could have just copied that also but decided to make it as meaningless as possible.
How old are you? Be honest please. I am genuinely interested in how gamer age correlates with the time they need to realise the game's boring. I'm 26, and it took me just an hour.
Its nice to finally hear someone point out the flaws in this game instead of gloss over or not even mention them.
It's appalling how anyone pointing out this game's flaws are instantly labelled as "haters", by the rabid fanboys who only ever focus on what little good this game provides.
@@dirge7459 Sadly its the effect of people becoming shills only for the sake of having perks and caring nothing about integrity.
The majority of Starfield reviews for me have been people pointing out such flaws. The only weird part about that is I couldn't find anyone doing this for BG3, and you had to be an olympic hurdler to get pass the bugs in Act 3 in order to reach the finish line. You really can't find many people criticizing Starfield? Is my youtube algo just broken?
@@chasmurphy1227 The channels that I subscribe to and other vids I've seen haven't outright given them 10/10 reviews but neither have they specifically pointed out major flaws. Basically they boiled down to "Its a good game" without blatantly shilling.
The moment I learned it had essential NPCs was the exact moment I knew not to bother. It's been over a decade since New Vegas there's no excuse
EXACTLY, there's literally dialogue choices that say *attack but you still can't kill the npc, it's so annoying
Bethesda didn’t make new Vegas
@@omensoffate Yeah I know, you can tell by the fact it's competently designed
I wonder what BG3's excuse has been for having so much RNG then (especially in conversations). Its been over a decade since new vegas after all (and 6 years since divinity 2).
@@VrindlevineBeing a D&D adaptation. Some bad ideas are inherent to the rule system
To be quite honest. I started suffering from Bethesda fatigue with Skyrim. I never finished it because either you grind the main quest till you get bored but don't finish it or you play in the sand box till you get bored and never even get into the main quest. Fallout 4 was exactly the same problem. I spent too much time on the side activities that the main quest felt like an immense slog to get through. I would rather have less sandbox and more deep story (Mass Effect 1) or only sandbox and hardly any story (like Kenshi, Minecraft, etc)
To be even more honest you gonna make your own story in Kenshi.
Honestly Kensh is a bad example, because "make your own story" there is as shallow as it gets.
You wanna be a skin bandit? Sure, get skin, wear it. Boom, you're a skin bandit.
What changes in the world? Nothing. Any ramifications? None, except a bounty maybe. @@Zodroo_Tint
Fallout used to be amazing series of player-driven choices. It got turned into a dumbfck shooter for casuals. RPG elements are nuked in FO4. Dialoge options are atrocios and story is retarded with plot twist being mega obvious. Go play Fallout New Vegas and its expansions. Massively immersive games that reward your time and builds. Boycott Bethesda trash
Never Finished skyrim coz the main Story softlocked itself twice. Once on xbox360 by release. Tried again on PC, again it softlocked. Can't progress the Mission because the person doesn't exist where it says it does. And now i tried again on xbox x, achievements are bugged - completed the wizards sidestory but the chivie to join the mageguild isnt unlocked.
Once starfield bricked itself during the corporate storyline I uninstalled and haven't looked back.
They KNEW about the issue for weeks and instead they update graphical issues instead of the mountain of quest issues that I and many others had.
"Just revert you save so far back that the problem isn't there and then quicksave by the npc in question after every queststage for every quest to make sure it doesn't happen"
Absolute clowns all of them.
Story missions have hard locked me twice where companions would walk up to an "inaccessible" door required to open for the mission - and the companion would just freeze and eventually bug out entirely.
The second you said "ripped off mass effect" it was like the glass shattered. Down to the scanning of planets and landing at preselected 'points of interest' from a map, this is first person ME1 all over again.
Not just Mass Effect.
It also somewhat tried to do what No man's sky did. And failed hard.
Whole mining with a laser gun is straight from NMS. After learning that entire space part is just a screen saver and loading screen simulator I just downloaded NMS. Playing it after all those years I enjoy it much more, It not Elite dangerous but its as close as we got to arcade spacegame.@@Casshio
It also has some odd similarities to the Outer Words.
Too bad they didn't have interesting characters like Mass Effect. It's a clunky, boring mess 90% of the time. I love this TYPE of game so I'll finish it, but it's such a letdown.
@@themagnus2919 not to mention the ENTIRE time you're in your ship the gameplay is a 1:1 rip of elite dangerous ie I literally only knew how to optimise my weapons & shields and grav jump & dog fight because I played elite dangerous 😂
Bethesda games like this one feel more like an accumulation of mechanics than they do a cohesive experience. Its got a bunch of different gameplay bits.thatake up the sum of its parts that never come together in a way that makes it greater than the sum of them.
It's what makes modding them so great tho
This is a great take, and puts to words what I felt about Fallout 4. You can beat the game without ever touching the settlement system. So why'd they waste all that time and resource on including it? It doesn't help you advance, it doesn't really provide any benefits you can't get using generic crafting facilities, money is too easy to come by just with loot alone. It's completely disconnected from the rest of the game.
Starfield kinda feels the same. I don't know why they give me these space magic dragon shouts (because that's what they are, let's not lie to ourselves) when you never need them whatsoever. They might make combat slightly easier but the enemies in this game are pushovers even on the hardest difficulty. Ship combat can be skipped entirely by just grav jumping away and then jumping right back. The only surefire things you HAVE to invest in are your shooting skills and perks. Starfield is a first person shooter with a bunch of superfluous systems and mechanics that don't really enhance the shooting, and in turn are not enhanced by said shooting either.
BGS have no creativity and the addition of Microsoft, just meant each guy gets paid more. They didn't spend extra on the development of this game, and it was basically all put towards marketing and expanding their creation engine rather than enriching the actual game.
But after Fallout76 everybody knew what was coming, I doubt ESO6 will be great look at how poor Online was!
BGS have gone the same way Rockstar have. One game in 12 years.
Every one of those mechanics has, by itself, been done far better by many other games too. Gunplay, space flight, exploration, base building etc etc. All are below average by themselves. It's whether the whole hodge podge together is for you. Starfield is truly unique and groundbreaking in that no game has ever merged such poor combat, generic quests, empty planets, repetitive environments, lockpicking, stealth and space flight in one game.
Exactly, it's all half half. This game needs so many mods to be good, wait a year at least
this reflects 100% what I thought the game would be like
a series of almost good moments in a sea of classic bethesda check lists and mediocre gamedesign
I'm so glad you made this video Strat cause, to be honest, yeah, other creators DID make this game out to be bethesda's return to form
but the truth is: bethesda never had a form to begin with
Whole heartedly agree.
Bethesda has been garbage since Todd Howard took over. It's time to admit it, even the games you enjoyed from them since have been shitty
@@afterglow1478no amount of bad releases will ever convince me morrowind was bad.
@@MisterMelvinheimeryes, this.
TBF, most commenters here haven’t played Morrowind - or it’s been so long that they don’t have it in mind. But yeah, Morrowind was (is) magnificent.
I'll still have fun and entertainement from Oblivion and Skyrim, even tho they are modded to fucking hell and back.
After 12 hours of Starfield, i have none of that..., its systemic, formulaic and its checkboxes and menus, i'm still wondering where the game is...
40:01 I feel you, I've always found their pacing for these things gives me a severe case of whiplash. In under a week of in-game time, you can go from just starting out in the Mages guild, to the head of the freaking school. And they could solve this if they just messed with time jumps or had time lapses. Romance in this game is insane to me, You can marry someone you just met in like a week's time. Something they could easily solve by having large amounts of time pass as they travel from planet to planet. They could have implemented a system where traveling from one part of the universe to the other, took a few years in game time or something, and let companions bond passively as they travel with you. I know they want to let players play as they want, but any verisimilitude they hope to establish goes out the window their quest structure has always been that way with guilds, you go from untrusted unproven New Recruit to space Mayor Emperor Diplomat in 48hrs.
Morrowind was the last Bethesda game that did factions right. Joining certain factions locked you out of other factions on the same playthrough. This game is particularly ridiculous because you can join the space cops and also space pirates on the same playthrough.
totally agree, it feels like now they're afraid of players maybe missing content or something, It feels like if they develop a storyline or a mission they want all players to experience it, even if it doesn't make sense, also greatly reducing the incentive for replayability. And I know everyone will bring up the new Baldurs gate as an example, but there have been plenty of ARPGs that ask players to commit to a choice and stick to it. @@Flyon86
@@Flyon86Well, if they had systems where you could double-cross a faction by joining with one of their rivals, it would be ok. I'm sure that's not the case. I mean why would they give you consequences for your actions? That would just be bad because we all know, consequences suck. Lol!
This is Bethesda. I don't expect anything other than unoptimized, buggy, garbage that crumbles under it's own weight. This is even worse because of them bending the knee to the woke crowd while making things even more complicated by adding They/Them pronouns and separating gender from body type.
I've heard it has pissed off some in the Trans "Community" because the NPCs don't even use the right ones when talking about your character.
Great job, Todd!
Wing Commander Privateer 2 had a great solution to mimicking space travel with level cells; you chart out your destination, and travel along empty level cells that you jump to manually.
your bit about how the premise of the game itself was immersion-breaking is exactly how I felt. the longer I played, the less sense any element of the story or world building made, and the more I disliked or just didn't care about anything I was doing. final straw was when I landed on earth finding a procedurally-generated desert and the companion character was just like, "oh the atmosphere went away, don't worry about it"
What do you expect them to do with hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of employees? Model Earth? Only Minecraft players can do that for free, or something.
@@OrgusDinthere are plot reasons for why Earth is the way it is within the lore. It actually makes sense, even if it’s probably a larger excuse to not model Earth fully and you have to find books to go to individual Earth locations.
@@tzenethWhat? You mean I have to actually play the game and engage with the lore to find out why the Earth is dead? How dare they force me to explore the game and engage with its content!
@@HellsYeah8 Right? I mean who wouldn't want to engage with content that is vapid, boring and terrible?
.... it makes it just pointless ..... destroying the cradle makes it all pointless !!!
29:30: Hours?! Man, there better be something fun to do in the first 20 minutes of a game or I'm out. I am 38 now - the unlimited free time of my youth is over. There are so many games being released that I am never going to have time to play more than a tiny selection of them. This is no way I'm playing something on the promise that it'll get good 20 hours in.
The UC Vanguard quest is singular in the regard you described. The Rangers, a small elite group of law enforcement, just require you to do one radiant quest before joining. The pirate faction - which would involve piracy you'd think - is a treasure hunt.
The rangers questline has you more so be a detective than a gunslinging cowboy for 90% of the questline. I felt blue balled.
I got around that feeling by picking up some ranger bounties each time i went to turn in at The Rock, ymmv though.
@@Mr.Goat123joins police, fills in paperwork everyday and buying coffee😂
@rockapartie corpo ryujin is pretty good, crimson fleet with uc security combo is pretty good, but that's the best content in this game by far
Only played the joining quest but when i met the leader and listened to what he said i immediately thought:
Seriously ? The legendary pirate named ...forgot (Gol D. Rogger) left the single biggest treasure somewhere out there and you can have it if you can find it. ... i kind of heard the first Opening in the back of my head
Well i guess there could be worse than adapting *the best pirate manga story* into space
It’s crazy that waiting 24 hours in Morrowind took literally half a second
I wasn’t sure about your review style but I actually really enjoyed the more laid back approach to it. Thank you for your perspective. You make good unique points.
I’m halfway through the main story and every single quest has been fetching an artifact….
In my intro sequence heller wasnt even in the elevator. Lin would ask him questions and nobody would answer. It was very confusing considering it was the very first thing in the game. I just thought Lin was insane.
Maybe his face was just tired. Or he phased through the elevator before the screen faded in for the intro sequence.
It's just embarrassing. The idea of modern AAA game dev is that you make the first 20 or so hours really polished so that the average reviewer doesn't realize how borked it is. I really thought Beth taking an extra year was to do that.
Confusing? You listened to the dialogue?
That'd be a brilliant intro to a game where your tutorial giver actually is insane, but that would require creativity and personality, two things -No Man's Sky 2- Starfield lacks
Just look at the Skyrim vr clip in this video
More things change the more they stay the same
Best thing about Starfield is that it made me want to replay the Mass Effect trilogy again.
Yeah been playing through it again and it's just better.
Omg, I actually did that. Watched the Starfield release and immediately downloaded the M.E. remasters. Been having a blast.
Or No Man's Sky.....I haven't played the last three major updates, time to get back into it, I guess.
The real ones too not the remake crap
I went back to playing ME Andromeda and even that felt far more enjoyable than 30+ hours of Starfield lol
You know what's even funnier... They had a giveaway where the prize was a Starfield branded hard drive. The person who won it couldn't even install and play The Game on the hard drive, bgs gave them. Does anyone remember those canvas bags? Kind of reminds me of that.
At least it was better than Horse Armor. At least the hard drive had a use other than complete disappointment. Still pretty bad though.
I binged your Videos quite a lot right now and have to say that UA-cam is blessed to have content Creators like you
Keep up your great work I appreciate it
I abandoned the Constellation story line almost immediately and I did not regret it. I also played early access and avoided spoilers. What ended up happening was that about 40 hours in I happened to be looking for Aluminum and stumbled on one of those Anomalies and I ended up finding the first temple organically. That was a pretty awesome feeling, especially because at the time I had no idea that space magic was even a part of the game. I wish they would have buried those temples in more generic exploration missions, so that exploring became exciting and space magic mystical.
My only real beef with the game so far, is that the temples have nothing on them =/....there aren't even a lot of them, they should have made Unique dungeon for them, like skyrim.
Yeah what a bunch of nerds I would just play pirate storyline
@dormiebasne3578 That would be interesting to know. But I also ended up making my first settlement on a planet that just so happened to be where a certain mech factory ended up being.
I mean just stay away from the Constellation storyline. It legitimately ruined a lot of my experience with the utterance of one single word. "Multiverse"
Like fuck me, make everything about this game about exploring the vastness of space immediately not matter anymore.
Just get ready for more of that word, because everything has to be on the "multiverse" bandwagon for at least the next five year, when it's finally run into the ground and exhausted.
I mean, it already is, but we all know how movie and television production companies and game devs are. They absolutely wear a concept out until it become unpalatable.
its be besthesdaest bethesda game that ever bethesdaed.
my favorite part was when Todd Howard shows up at the ending and says "You were the Starfield all along".
Fascinating
Dude does that actually happen
@@amberatilano6718 yes
@@amberatilano6718It really does lol. I didn’t believe it until I saw it. Give it a google.
@@amberatilano6718 Todd is waiting for you at the center of the universe to sell you Starfield DLC.
@@amberatilano6718todd starfields all over you ..
Can we talk about the guns and the absolute disgrace. Where are the unique weapons? Where is the different variants? There’s like 16 weapons in this game and the “unique ones” are literally a reskin of an already regular weapon with a different ability. Finding cool weapons and armours was such a fun part of these games.
Out worlds has better whepons. Let that sink in
Soo, just like every other bethesda game with guns
The best part is that the more "unique" a weapon is, the more it freezes your game whenever you pull up your scanner. I have this collection of legendary weapons I'd love to use, but have to use whites in order for the game to work.
@@Wavedashnoir Are you kidding? OW had fucking dogshit combat, absolute Mid game at best imo
@@Wavedashnoir Yeah there’s 7 “unique variants” in this game and 5/6 are just regular guns just with a new static ability. Quest rewards give you regular shit you loot and sell anyways. Weapons and armour are super super bland in this game (among other things). Also what is the point of farming materials? Pretty much everything you’ll ever need you can just buy anyways. My biggest gripe is NO INTERACT BUTTON IN SURVEY MODE. How many times can you click it on and off opening lockers and shitty locked safes haha.
-Everything looks the same
-Constant loading screens
-Ten minutes of walking between objectives
It's like they took Vivec City from Morrowind and made a whole game out of it.
At least Vivec had some cool stuff going on. Wolverine Hall on the other hand...
Early access to a BethaTestda game is a punishment from god himself.
Ha I love that line. Shamelessly stealing it
Really had to stretch that to make it work huh?
You spelled Todd wrong
Feels both good and bad that I predicted this whole Starfield thing. Falllout 4 and 76 both pointed towards Bethesda moving away from details, effort and actually building a world unfortunately. They really went out of their way to avoid putting in some effort this time though. Unfortunately it happens, businesses grow and eventually the people who actually made it special leave, and you're left with current Bethesda. Hopefully one day they'll be able to return to the living and interesting worlds they used to create, but more than likely not.
Yeah, I kind of wish LaFey world collaborate with whatever ex Obsidian is called now. Black Rock??? It is late, so forgive my not recalling the proper name. Anyway, I wish they'd try to produce a new game. I agree with Strat in that I kept thinking of Outer Worlds and can not help but think they were lampooning Starfield and not just FO4. Outer Worlds was not perfect, but it was fun. It hooked me right away. SF sadly has not
Skyrim made it obvious before Fallout 4
@@JoshuaKevinPerrySkyrim was a mid rpg but it did have detail in its world.
Yeah I was about to say ever since skyrim blew up the way it did bethesda doesn't seem the same anymore. Other companies have been changed by that one evergreen juggernaut as well like Rockstar has with GTA5 and it sucks to see.
The best thing about starfield is that it made me play actual bethesda games like oblivion again
Skooma ❤
Everyone loves Morrowind but damn it, I been chasing that Oblivion high with Bethesda since and realize I'll never relive that sense of wonder, jank and hot garbage that made me love Oblivion that much more.
@@craeshendo The funny thing is I didn't play oblivion much until this year and now I'm so disappointed in myself for missing out on it. It just has a vibe like no other.
Oblivion is total garbage lmao
@@chaosmorris5865 that makes starfield worse than garbage then
I remember watching one of your videos where you said you werent doing so well and you could possibly die soon, every time i see a new vid from you im so glad to see you are still around and kickin. Love your vids man and keep up the good work!
With every day that passes, my hope for Elder Scrolls 6 continues to plummet
All I wanted from bethesda was a game that was cohese and that felt like I was in a live universe. They had horrible implementation of too many mechanics. They managed to make an impressive ship that was rendered useless as soon as you were done with the tutorial because other than discovering new galaxy paths, the ship will be an avatar for fast travel, at best.
They managed to make everywhere you went either feel empty or full and devoid of soul. They honestly should've focused on a single planet or maybe a single state, or a region in the future that would feel more real and made it as good as possible.
The reason why people love the elder scrolls and fallout (we don't talk ab out 76) is due to the fact that it feels real within the boundaries of that universe. The constant fast travel that literally cuts off billions of light years makes the game feel so far from reality that it doesn't feel RELATABLE. I had really high hopes for this, but the lack of relatability with the world that they created basically killed the experience for me :/
Played a good chunk of it. Got to cowboy world, did a few quests there and went back to play New Vegas, and now I don't really want to play more Starfield. whoopsies
I find it funny that people compare this with BG3. But if you chose "I wanna stay here and mine" at the start in a game like BG3, there would be a whole ass part of the game about mining asteroids that would connect it to the grander game.
For whatever reason, UA-cam decided to show me this video with the thumbnail of the SSSniperwolf apology tweet. That’s hilarious to me as I’ve never seen a bug like that before, I was so confused.
There is a mod that will remove the boundary around the landing area, so you can keep walking around the procedurally generated ground and POI´s keep appearing as you move forward, but, at some point if you move too much close to the edge you won't be able to fast travel directly to your ship because It's now out of sight in your HUD, you have to backtrack from POI to POI until your ship is again available on screen. Good thing is, you can walk around on foot the entire planet, bad thing is the POI's are randomly generated as you move forward, so you can end up getting similar places to explore.
The exploration aspect feels worse than the open world in Daggerfall....At least there you really have 15,251 cities, inns, homes, temples, graveyards and dungeons etc. You can actually travel by foot, horse of ship between them, no loading screens, unless you are entering a dungeon.
Amen. As soon as I saw people use the phrase "Daggerfall in space", I know they were either memeing hard or had never played Daggerfall. A thousand separate instances does not a Daggerfall make.
The cities were to scale, too. Thousands of folks could realistically live in a lot of the cities. Even if most of it was devoid of anything interesting, it still made it extremely immersive, and this coming from someone who only played Daggerfall a few years ago with the Unity release.
I miss LaFey & Kirkbride. Avellone too.
no you can't, if you want to go to between cities in daggerfall you have to fast travel, the wilderness cells are not connected
@BiomechanicalBrick Thanks. I have dabbled with it. My God, I'm so bad at it, but that's the fun. I keep going back. Games were a bit more brutal.
This was meant to be Microsoft's big slam dunk 😂😂😂 your footage takes me back to being a kid trying to run Oblivion on my pos family windows xp machine, some things never change I guess
Fun fact: Oblivion ran like shit at release because the grass models had way more polygons than they should have. I remember downloading an optimized grass mod and gained like 20 fps and the grass looked the same.
I'm so glad even UA-camrs like you are unable to run this beautiful POS perfectly. It is indeed a Bethesda game.
Just can’t hold all these 5200rpm disk drives 😢
It looked like ass and ran locked at 30 fps for me... Then I updated my driver and it immediately shot up to 170 FPS, so I cranked the graphics settings. Maybe hes too busy trying to figure out how to be popularly edgy to update his? Or hes a cheap ass who wont buy a new GPU, and insists on running it on a 1050.
What are you talking about, this game is great. Choose your pronounce, watch loading screens than walk for 5 minutes in direction without anything happen. It's a peak gaming, almost perfect. If they add loot boxes it would be a 10/10
36:45 => I figured out that none of the ship elements can be turned into any direction you want. For example, the biggest storage (300 units) I found from my early 1st city shopping session is that it could only be attached on the side of the ship. Not behind, not front, not top and not bottom. And that sucks rotten balls.
I loved when I had to choose between two npcs to turn a quest into and they were standing right next to each other and the other one didn't even react or acknowledge me before or after never change bethesda
Which quest?
@austinfaces1490 probably talking about the "investigate brown outs in the well" quest line. You can give the info at the end to the Trade Authority or the chick you've been helping. All that happened when I "betrayed" the chick was her saying "I trusted you", but then you talk to her and she doesn't care anymore. Also, the TA lady says that the Authority will remember your help and what not, but that is just a lie. You get no discounts, and if you go to any other Trade Authority, they have no clue who you are.
Ever since it came out, I've known that this game isn't meant to be good, it's meant to appease shareholders and the bethesda fanboys who think this is Skyrim in space. Yes, it's Skyrim in space, complete with mediocre writing and gameplay designed to addict.
I've noticed the writing is really uneven in places. Also how immersion breakingly "current day" some of the themes are. That and the generically "Firefly" patina over the whole thing.
Skyrim has more to explore and better dungeons imo
Idk man, I've been having a good time
@@joshua8414 their lead writer is on record saying story doesnt matter in games because gamers dont care they just skip through dialog
I think in my opinion Skyrim and Fallout at least did a better job than this fucking game did.
Skyrim and fallout 4 have the same issue of being as Wide as a ocean but deep as a kitty pool.
Starfield is literally wide as multiple oceans but deep as a fucking water filled pothole💀.
Skyrim and Fallout4 at least dotted the map with dungeons, points of interest side quest with somewhat compelling story(granted not always well done) and actual goals of acquiring legendary gear,artifacts etc.
Starfield is basically like taking the original no mans sky before the update and just sticking 10-15 enemies in 2 buildings per planet and giving them 300 health and calling that a rpg game.
That and omg the fucking dialogue, dude I didn’t think dialogue could ever get worse than oblivions but Jesus fucking Christ this game somehow managed to give every character in this game fucking DOwN SynDROMe!!
Starfield is the best game ever. I didn't buy it, I haven't played it - but that's what I've decided
My biggest problem with starfield is they destroyed the joy of exploration by creating numerous hubs, but you can no longer wander to find unexpected content because aside from the hubs the worlds are empty and space exploration is simply using the menu to fast travel
At this point it's clear that essential npcs only exist to limit the player's freedom. Not only are most if not ALL npcs with this flag in areas where it's impossible for them to be attacked by random hostiles, but even if that was still possible, Skyrim introduced the protected flag which makes it so ONLY the player can kill the flagged npc.
i really tried with bethesda but i think Fo4, 76 and now Starfield have all been massive misses for me. i really hope the next ES game is actually good and makes some waves in the industry. their gameplay/tech is like 6 years behind still.
Maybe... don't buy it at release. Let people review it for awhile, let it simmer. Pass along.
I don't think Bethesda understands what made their game so successful with Oblivion and Skyrim. ES6 might be their last chance before Microsoft gives them the Halo treatment.
@@Vyleea They just don't know how to build around it, or make it fit in other genres. They found a balance in those games they cant replicate since as you said, they don't know what made those games good.
@@MiracleManMax I didn’t buy it, I have gamepass.
edit: I was also gifted 76 from a friend and it was months after release to try. FO4 I did buy on release because Bethesda was my favorite studio growing up. I just ended up never finishing it because I didn’t like it.
@@rockapartie i did enjoy far harbor. What i really hated was the factions and main quest in the base game.
Starfield is probably the dullest game I've played in the last decade. I was prepared for it to be mediocre, I was prepared for it to be uninspired, but I wasn't prepared for it to be this thoroughly bland. The Bethesda formula is usually enough to carry their games even when they are mediocre, but this one is the first time I just couldn't be bothered to keep playing at all.
Same here man. Fallout 4 was a mixed bag for me but I still managed to actually finish the main quest and see most of the vanilla game, I just never bothered to experience the DLCs and the only one I'd have enjoyed was Far Harbor and the frustration would be why didn't they just make Far Harbor's design philosophy the design philosophy for the rest of the game?
Do you think mods will fix it?
No the chracters are terrible, it hasn,t got an ounce of the heart that previous games had@@TheInsomniaddict
@@cowboybenbop I think my concern is that while mods can add some interesting characters, the actual framework for having that matter isn't there. I think everything added will always just be disconnected from the rest of the game and there can't be any interaction.
512GB SSDs start at $25 my dude.
Part of it is textures, part the engine. I was fighting the HDD speed-limit modding New Vegas more than a decade back; didn't take that much to overload it. Easiest way to cause problems were by increasing character speed. This explains the lack of vehicles & planetside flying; the engines giving its all at walking speed.
Gotta love that gamebryo engine with updates duct taped to it
it's funny you say that cause that problem is also in skyrim, it's why horses are so slow and dragon riding is just them kinda swooping in a circle
>unironically saying "my dude"
Aaaand statement discarded
Strat desperately trying to smother the NPC with the pillow at 57:10 just encapsulates Bethesda games to me.
56:16 Skyrim guards reacted when you had your weapon drawn. Garfield guards don't give a single fuck
Starfeild feels like if Activision said they wanted to make skyrim in space
Activision has the sense to build a functional engine first. I don't know if that's true. Its just an easy punch and I'm taking it!!! Lol.
@nicholasb4284 I ment more how the world / worlds just feel so lifeless and souless
Bro I know I’m all cynical these days, but seriously, I had been cringing for years everytime someone went off to me about how excited they were for Starfield because all I can think about is “yeaaaah those last five Bethesda games were *really* good and not at all buggy messes with nothing to really do and shallow ass npc’s who repeat the same two lines…”
Your videos deserve WAY more traction than they get.
Your outerworlds retrospective video brought me to your channel. I was so relieved to see more recent videos from you! Stay strong!
As a PlayStation fan boy I see this as an win 😂
41:08 "Why put this ship here if I can't even steal it? You know I want to steal it Todd."
*_This man is, like.... literally me._* ;)
Thank god someone is talking about how astoundingly bad the writing is
Rust, the survival crafting game also needed an SSD. I got an ssd around that time anyway to keep my pc alive a little longer, as it boots and runs a lot quicker off ssd.
I mean i get that it’s frustrating to have to switch things out for the one game that you want to play, but SSD is old tech at this point and extremely helpful. Not like RTX where it’s just fancy, like ssd is ridiculously fast compared to hdd.
I've worked enough retail and food service to tell you why there's always blood in the Wendy's bathroom. Junkies will often use public restrooms as a shooting gallery. When you find blood in the bowl, on the walls, or even on the ceiling, it's because of either the normal amount of blood that comes with injecting yourself with dope, or blowing said shot and spattering blood all over the walls (or ceiling, which I've seen and subsequently had to clean). The in the bowl blood is because of the piece of paper they use to wipe off any excess blood from a normal shot that went alright. When you're sticking a needle into a vein, there's often at least some blood, even if it's just some on a piece of paper. They then drop this bloody piece of toilet paper into the toilet and that gives the water that striking blood color you've encountered.
Todd really watched the release of No Mans Sky and thought to himself "Yeah, lets make a worse game"
A lot of games are gonna require SSDs very soon. It's a massive bottleneck for a lot of games already but it works, barely. SSD storage has also become way way cheaper. You can get a more than good enough drive with 2TB storage for less than 90 USD.
Babe wake-up, new strat-edgy video
I'm awake ❤
Thanks, babe.
At this point I'd just love a game that plays exactly like Elite Dangerous with the legs update, but just offline in single player, without the online component, so I can cheat a little if it gets too grindy and not have to worry about online connection and updates on my steam deck.
Elite needs to roll that joke and buy an abandoned property to stick in there or something. I'm not giving elite a pass for that abomination just because starfiled is worse!!! Elite never made up to us for that drop.
How morrowind solved the important npc thing was perfectly fine. Just have a pop up saying you dun goofed, reload to continue the story or continue and fuck around in sandbox.
"i feel like I'm playing Outer Worlds" man this is it, the exact feeling I had! Except it had no f n sense of focus, or humour (even in Outer Worlds that wasn't exactly mindblowing but at least it gave it some levity).
Your reaction to the shipbuilder is basically the same as mine. Granted now that I know how it works it’s not so bad but I can’t imagine a new person or someone who’s not familiar with video games trying to figure that shit out
if you don't feel like learning the mechanic you can just buy new ships and/or use the upgrade menu instead of the ship builder
48:51 The funny part is you can f*ck the quest up so a hostage dies and the Ranger dude is still like "I think you're Freestar Ranger material, wanna join?😃"
"Well, you were absolutely no help in the fight against this giant, want to join the Companions?"
@@dmdeign7116"You aren't even able to pickpocket someone, want to join the Thieves' Guild?"
@@hammerstix5791 "Wow, you don't have a drop of magic potential in your body. Congratulations, you're the new Arch Mage!"
Oh Bethesda! At it again buying review scores!
I can't decide if the B in Bethesda stands for Boring, Buggy, or Broken.
I'll be saving my money for a better game that doesn't waste my time. Thanks Strat for the honest review.
I feel almost like Bethesda decided "this is too hard" after making Morrowind, an actually interactive and content dense game (it wasn't perfect, but it was absolutely an RPG), and decided to see how little roleplaying something sold as an RPG could contain before people would notice. They've been reducing features ever since, and while there were graphical fidelity updates, and rather beautiful landscape design in Skyrim, we lost quite a bit in exchange.
I know the Bethesda Marketing Executives think console owners are somehow unintelligent enough to actually understand more complex RPG mechanics than "put perk here" with everything else being hidden under the hood. But I'm pretty sure most people have some degree of self-determination and can look at somewhat complex choices without their brains melting.
They present these more recent game world's as an entirely open player determinant experience, but it's just not, there's even a decrease in what Bethesda was historically good at, handcrafted world building and environmental storytelling (this was excellent even in Skyrim which simplified many of the historical TES elements) with the introduction of randomized, procedurally generated environtments to fill up everything that isn't part of the main story content. It looks and feels more like a walking simulator than it does an IS or true RPG.
I feel like old Bethesda would have made a worse looking game, but far more fun with far more interactivity.
Even in my first ever procedural generation class they made us change the generation of the levels based on difficulty I feel like they could of had very small basic places to start maybe you explore two small places then the next planet you land on has medium and then large and then expansive bases. You can also have cool procedurally generated weapons. Maybe they have different skins or unique attachments maybe those attachments even change how the gun works so if you want the range of a sniper on your shot gun you can! Then you can get slugs and use your shotgun as a sniper idk
crazy how everything you said is already in the game possible to implement, lmao, Bethesda things.
I think one of the main issues I have with Starfield stems from the fact that it really does feel like Bethesda took away the exploration aspect their games are known for in favor of "Ooh, look at how many planets we've made!" It's like, yeah, you've got a lot of planets, but many of them are just boring and empty with some copy pasted locations. That's not fun! I stopped playing the game and haven't felt the urge to play it again because I think to myself "What's the point of going through this game and building my character if there's nothing really grabbing my attention out there in space?" And there's just constant load screens like you said and it's just... A fun but VERY frustrating time. Honestly I prefer Fallout 4 to it because at least you can explore the map of Fallout 4 with no load screens and each location is unique and the world is cohesive rather than jumping from boring planet to boring planet with a few good ones mixed into the thousand duds.
@@rockapartie That's sad to hear. I play some games which heavily reuse map resources (Mechwarrior 5 comes to mind) but they at least change it up by changing objectives, enemies, and the equipment you have access to. Sounds like that won't happen here.
I find it amusing that Bethesda would be proud of their cookie cutter 1000 planets while No Mans Sky has literal BILLIONS of planets. And hides it's loading screens better, as well as allows for flight on planets and seamless travel from surface to space and vice versa.
@@rockapartie Ah, I wasn't thinking the equipment you find, but the equipment you have access to. The loot's levelled, which means that it doesn't change much. Higher numbers = better gun. Do any of the guns change how you approach combat at all? I guess at the very least they should have grenade launchers or specific stun weapons or something.
I've played a few games (MMOs) with heavy reuse of randomly generated dungeons, but with that said they did have a fully connected overworld that wasn't procedurally generated.
Thanks for the in-depth review. I haven't bought it yet, but been looking forward to doing so. I had watched a couple other reviews from other YTers who aren't Bethesda fanbois, but they generally were more positive than yours. Lots of thoughts on this game coming from different games.
Coming from Space Engineers, X-Universe, and other Space Sims: Looks like space doesn't have much going on. This is sad since I quite often enjoy the space part of the sim and treat this as my main home. No asteroid bases for me, I guess.
Coming from other open-world games (GTA, Skyrim, Fallout, Starbound): The Immersive part looks real weak. While Bethesda game NPCs generally don't react to violence all that much, even Skyrim at least had the guards tell you to not shout in the middle of the city, or to put your blade away when drawn. From a "Living world" perspective this looks like one of the weakest offerings so far. Nothing happens outside of what the player gets involved in, it seems. From a procedurally generated point of view, it also seems like little actually exists that's dynamic. Except for some points of interest (which sound barren) there's the specially crafted missions, which is what previous Bethesda games are known for having a lot of but it leaves you with only pockets of things to do in a giant universe.
Coming from story-driven games (Mass Effect, Dead Space, Bioware games in general): It seems like the stories are all undercooked, as are the NPCs. What I'm seeing doesn't look to draw me into the world or the people. No unified worldbuilding that sucks you into the world as the narrative progresses. That's not unexpected since it is an open world, and this is one of the normal trade-offs that has to be made. Still, Skyrim and the Fallout series had some depth of character to its people and factions which would lend an overall feeling to the areas they were part of. That may still be true of the main characters/factions (eg UC Vanguard quest giver) but not of the settlements you end up going to for the missions themselves. The factions may be better fleshed out, but its people less so. NPC interactions a la Oblivion's Radiant Conversations may have been janky but at least they made the world feel alive. Since it seems like most NPCs don't actually exist in their world (they do as bodies, not as members) it leaves a large void even within the areas that include content. It also seems like you're still stuck with Fallout's dialog options of: Happy yes, angry yes, wary yes, and maybe later. It doesn't look like choices matter much in the game beyond some flavour text. Quests are largely scripted, but nothing matters or has any impact on any other part of the game, world, or universe. Having not played the game yet, I'm guessing that this is the resulting feel I can expect.
Coming from Bethesda games (TES specifically, but also Fallout): It seems like the open world no longer is. You have instances that you jump between to give the illusion of a full world but which aren't actually connected. The closest example of a Bethesda game with this kind of procedural generation is Daggerfall, which had a huge overworld that was largely barren, but you _could_ traverse it manually if you wished to. Dungeons were also dynamically generated in most cases, which led to some jankiness but did provide a huge amount of variability for low resource cost. You lose that with Starfield; it seems that there's a huge overhead for the game to simply run while not providing much randomly generated stuff to do. You also lose most of the dynamism provided by a real connected overworld where mobs and NPCs can interact with one another and cause unique encounters. Instead you're silo'd off to small areas you can visit which are more or less disconnected from the rest of the universe if only by distance rather than a hard wall. I also wonder if any of the instancing is actually kept? I hear you can just land anywhere on the planet (to create a new procedurally generated instance) but what happens if you leave the planet and come back and visit the exact same spot later? Is the land the same? Does it change at all? I'm guessing it will change since it doesn't actually keep a map of the world, just generates it as it needs to.
Kind of reminds me of D&D videogames with overworld movement, except random encounters no longer exist. You're adventuring around curated content but not actually within a world. Nothing changes outside of what the murder hobos cause to change along a few pre-scripted plot points. You can't really go off script and make your own adventure like you can in open worlds, but nothing is connected together in a campaign like a story-driven adventure. It seems like a weird broken mix of the two. Put another way, the world exists for the player to move around, but the world itself has no capacity to move the player.
8:00 You probably didn't know that you can highlight your objective while looking at it. Outside the map screen press the use key on the objective and it will let you highlight and jump to it without opening the map, game never explains it, but it is better than pulling open the map every time; just slightly.
what would be better is to actualy FLY A SPACESHIP !!!!
this is inception levels of simulation
@@ealtar Just like you can in Mass Effect right?
@@xraxisxtremestream1511Mass Effect doesn't act like you can fly your ship. It's very clear about space flight being an over glorified menu.
@@xraxisxtremestream1511 whaboutisms 9000 ??? ME never pretended to be space exploration .. mkay ... why even mention ME ????
At a guess it has to keep loading from the hard drive because it remembers everything that you previously did in an area so if you picked up a sandwich and dropped an empty bottle it has to load that every time you come back it's was an impressive idea back when Skyrim did it but not worth the resource requirements.
Its funny how the game even tries to tell you that "Space exploration is overrated , who even does that anymore" because they knew they fucking couldnt.
Idk what world you live in to think you're the only person to hate this game
He a special boi 😂
Because the shills are numerous
Because there are different people made by different opinions and tastes :/
@@flowerthencrranger3854 what a pointless comment
@@omensoffate
It had enough points for you to respond :V