"Why would Bethesda give you the option to say no to the main content of the game?" My sibling in gaming, in Morrowind you can literally kill every NPC related to the main quest and lock yourself out of it.
this is especially infuriating in starfield since all the NPCs are essential and (SPOILER): when you beat the main story, the universe resets, revives all the dead characters, and undoes any softlocks you could have made. the fix to softlocks is already built into the game and bethesda STILL took agency away from the player. they had the perfect compromise and declined for no reason.
@@unkosherfood it is the one bethesda game where you basically have the perfect excuse to ruin the entire universe with your choices yet bethesda won't allow you to play with their scripts.
Yeah and some essential NPC could have been killed in a random place, so you needed to restart in another save. It's not as good as you think it is when it happens.
You're correct. Your current gen products will _always_ be judged against your _previous_ products and why shouldn't them be? Would you buy a new car that drives bad, has worse gas mileage, and less features than the previous gen? YOU WOULDN'T. Video games are NO DIFFERENT.
Exactly, every single person on this earth judges or compares old stuff, memories, feelings with new ones. An old vacations with a new one, a job, a car, a girlfriend or boyfriend, house, clothing, food etc. So indeed, why should games be an exception, especially ones made by the same company and genre but not only that, bethesda themselves possibly mentioned "Skyrim" in space. SO a comparison is a must.
The funny thing is, we can compare Starfield to several last gen/cross gen games like RDR2, Cyberpunk, AC Origins and many others and Starfield usually falls short in most aspects. There is nothing in Starfield that feels current gen. Some say it's the scope but nah. They have a thousand repetitive fishbowls and you can loading screen your way across them.
Yes and no What if you're a SH and you make three 9/10 games, then you make a 10/10 game and then you make a 8/10 game Should you hate the 8? No? Why should you? It may be worse but not bad and still a valuable and respectable experience
Starfield came out in the same year as BG3. Somehow, a game based on DnD in a single world following a linear plotline felt bigger and more open-ended than a space action RPG with no classes where you can visit 1700 planets. How Bethesda can make Morrowind in 2002 and then every other game after it loses more and more of what made that game incredible.
Morrowind was made by 8 people. lol Some of them were actual writers: Ted Peterson, Ken Rolston and Michael Kirkbride. Also Julian Lefay to an extent, who co-founded the series and its worldbuilding. All but Rolston left after Morrowind, while Emil Pagliarulo slowly overtook the lead writer role during Oblivion's development, a decent quest designer, but with little to no experience in actual writing. Also, go figure how the overall design philosophy could have gotten so different between TES 3 and 4 - Todd overtook game direction. Now the team consists of 450 people with Todd barely seeming to give any focused direction, creating nothing but a jumbled mess. I swear, dev teams have some kind of critical mass. They should've stayed with their 80 people Skyrim team... that one was mainstream enough to fill their pockets to the brim, but still a fun TES experience.
@@JanTGTX Even Skyrim was already dumbed down. Not completely, but showed the direction everything was heading to. I still remember becoming Archmage of Mage Guild as a... Two Handed sword warrior with zero magic skills. Because Bethesda was so afraid of you missing out on Mage Guild's quests they put SCROLLS with all the spells you would need for magic quests right at the quests location.
@@JanTGTX Well, yeah, I have still played through Skyrim probably 4 times, with minimal amount of mods. Haven't completed main story quest, though, Not once.
I got sent to the interrogation for the first time by stealing a cup before meeting constellation. I was laughing so hard since they kept talking about my "criminal record" I accidentally grabbed the cup when I was grabbing a quest item
My favorite starting perk is Homeowner because it makes nothing about it makes sense or even demonstrates an understanding of how real world concepts work. So you start off owning a house except actually you start off mortgaging a house. You can't even get the coordinates to it until you talk to the bank representative. Your house isn't in New Atlantis or one of the other cities (well ten cubic yards of buildings dropped onto a barren wasteland) in the universe. It's on some otherwise totally uninhabited planet. So you talk to the bank and you have the option to pay your mortgage in full now or wait later. There's no payment plans or interest, so you didn't mortgage your house at all you bought it with an IOU from a very patient and forgiving bank. After paying your home the bank then asks if you want to work as a loan shark for them collecting payments from other clients. It's just so weird. Why is everything like this? Nothing in Starfield resembles a normal interaction, it's like it was written by those aliens from the Strange Planet comics.
@@CaptainMackby the way the innocent civilian slaughter that had you so enraged has a fun caveat. While the game has no problem with killing those worthless menials you can't kill the executive level characters because they are tagged as essential. Starfield has more essential NPCs than any previous Bethesda game. This is most egregious in the side quest with the colony ship where many people enraged by the fact that there was no moral, anti-corporate solution tried to kill all the Paradiso executives only to find the game wouldn't let them. They could kill the employees but not the bosses. This lazy game design and writing is why I say that Starfield is accidental capitalist propaganda. It portrays a world where capitalists reign supreme, their will is indomitable and resistance isn't only futile, it's not even an option. The most mustache twirling capitalist villain is immortal because they're essential but non essential workers can be slaughtered and no one cares.
Paying virtual bills, exactly the kind of experience I want from a video game! Joking aside, whoever thought that this would be a fun idea should be fired as a developer.
@@ShadowMoses900 close the studio down, it's a deep rooted institutional rot they have no interest in solving or even addressing. Mack said he's not going to talk about Starfield in the context of Bethesda's canon but we should because it shows how little problems from previous games have become this cancerous mass that's over taken the whole project. Take the railroading from the Crimson Fleet faction quest, it is exactly like the railroading in the Thieve's Guild quest in Skyrim. Like in Skyrim the game assumes a in game history of criminal actions on your part as a way to start the quest even if you've been a novel citizen. Brynwolf says he knows that everything you've got on you was stolen even if nothing you is stolen and you've never stolen anything in the game. He says this and the game forces you into an interaction with him as soon as you get near him. And just in case youve never set foot inside Riften before you have to engage with Brynwolf and start the Thieves Guild quest as part of the main quest. Bethesda used to be ok with missable content. They used to have factions that were rivals and joining one prevented joining another. They used to have worlds filled with hidden quests that you could discover on a third or fourth playthrough. Now they're terrified of players missing any content and this isn't a new issue. This started with Oblivion and it's only getting worse.
in cyberpunk 2077 theres a mission where you go to your friends funeral and you can mend the relationship between his mom and his girlfriend and pick out personal objects to place on his ofrenda. I wept . I wept like a hungry angry baby. it was beautiful. In starfield i went to a characters funeral and they were there alive and i talked to them and everyone stood around staring at me talking to the person who wasnt dead.
I also didn't have any connection with the dead lady and it would have been a fairly hollow funeral if it hadnt bugged out and resurrected them for some reason.
I agree that vapid choices feel dull and forced, but minor choices that don't affect endings should definitely still be in video games! When done with charm or wit, they really spice up the monotony of the standard beaten path laid before you.
@@michaelpietri9471 Choices don't even need to be that impactful to the "game" to be good. The Witcher 3 gave you moral choices where the only difference would be some gold and three lines of dialogue. But it would *sit* with you if you made the wrong call. In my experience games are at their strongest when you have multiple levels of choices. If you are regularly making choices that have large, medium, and small impacts, then you will hang onto and consider every single option.
Can't make sweeping choices because that's too much effort and not every player would have the exact same experience while being slightly different. Thanks Emil.
The illusion of choice is one my biggest pet peeves in a video game. That's probably why I hated Fallout 4 the way I did. Every conversation ended the same no matter what options I picked.
It just means the dev's are indeed creatively dead including the quest writers. It's just a easy way out but hey we aren't stupid we see right through that. If Bethesda doesn't hire fresh talented writers (which they don't because it might hurt Emile feelings) Elder scrolls 6 will be dead on arrival.
@@Big0h it’s weird . ESO is really cool but if ES6 is like a copy and paste . There’s no saving bathesda . They’re like the 343 for rpg’s at this point . I’m glad Microsoft bought them cuz if ES6 flops , Microsoft is gonna fuck them up and give the IP to other studios especially fallout . I’m Praying for halo too
No, it's probably going to break records despite being just as bad if not worse than Starfield. Bethesda has very, very loyal fans that will defend whatever they put out because they fear change.
I don't know how Mack proceeded with the pirate infiltration quest line. When I did it, I told the commander to buzz off and I would rather go to jail than work for him, so the commander sent me to the entry to the jail to face my sentence. Can you guess what they forgot to do? Lock the door behind me. All I had to do was turn around and walk out of the prison, no alarms, no guards chasing me, I don't even think I got an additional bounty. I quit the game after I got back to my ship, I wasn't interested in a game so lazily made
To me Starfield feels like a bunch of mechanics, locations, etc that the devs DIDN'T make a game out of. You can shoot people, you can drive ship, you can build base - but there's no context, no vision, no experience. That key component has gotten thinner with every Bethesda release but now it is just gone. It's like a board game with no rules or point. You can just roll dice and move pieces and stuff, but there's no game. This is WITHOUT critiquing any of the writing, world building, lore, city design, planet design, characters... so bland.
It's probably that when you have a game company with hundreds of developers, that its many many small teams of devs all working on their own little piece with no contact to the others, and then all their pieces get smashed together by other devs. It screams disconnection and lack of cohesive vision from the top. Like a manufacturing line but for game systems and assets. Bethesda has become to large to succeed in my opinion. Like many studios that have massive success, and then proceed to put out derivative garbage until they burn all their goodwill with consumers not blinded by nostalgia.
@BismuthKaiju Your observation feels correct but it's funny because Bethesda has much smaller teams actually working on the development compared to other AAA studios. Their leadership really fumbled the ball here.
@@PrettyGuardian yeah that's true, but they still have 450 and that team famously only works on one game at a time, which is why we aren't getting a new Fallout anytime soon, which is wild they don't have a separate team for each IP. After Starfield I am not confident that Elder Scrolls 6 is gonna be any better, lol But you are 100% right that it's the leadership and production managers that are at fault. Other companies manage just fine.
"Well, they've impounded our ship. We're stranded on this planet. Meet me, a shipbuilding company's CEO, back at my shipbuilding company offices, so we can figure out what to do. We'll go and have a talk with the guy who did it or kill everyone or something I guess." ?????
It's almost like the staryard that builds his ships isn't on that planet. Also, they impounded your ship. Imagine being like "oh, damn, the bank came and took my house with everything i owned. Guess I'll just have my realitor friend give me a house" it doesn't make sense and makes you sound dumb
@@seff6533 ...my realtor friend is on a galaxy quest with me and all we need to complete it is access to a house, any house, for a little bit. And he can't help with that? In his primary city of business?
@@seff6533 Right. The CEO of a Shipbuilding Corporation in a Galaxy-Spanning setting couldn't possibly, I don't know, know a guy. Put in a few calls. Like, say "Oh, hey, this ship is running a supply run to my Staryard and leaving in a few days. I'm sure we can get our way on board with some persuasion, some influence, possibly a copious bribe. Or, say, the Corporate Offices has a few demonstration ships in dock for impressing high value clients or Pree Junkets. Or, say... Buy another ship on the down-low. --- Now, here's the thing- all of this *could* be explained away, if he just acknowledged the possibility and actively rejected them. In fact, it could be a good, revealing character moment! Does he decide against it because he thinks he's beneath such underhanded skulking? Does he take it as a matter of personal Honour? Perhaps he's worried that if he acts the wrong way, the UC won't give his company more contracts. But- nahh. Just don't think about it.
Worth noting that you probably own multiple ships at this point as well. So, yeah, I could easily write this one ship off, if someone can smuggle me off planet.
@@RobotWithHumanHair. wdym? When Skyrim released in the first year it didn’t have 8000 mods, Starfield gets more mods than Skyrim did. Starfield isn’t buggy, and the updates are adding everything we asked for, it’s released and stable.
@@TheParagonIsDead idk, kinda leaving out the fact skyrim released on a new engine in 2011 and starfield released in 2023, it’s technically a new version of the creation engine but people have had more time to get used to starfield’s workings from the start (and more motivation to fix the game asap)
@@cresoma Skyrim was way more flawed and bugged when it came out than Starfield was… and yet starfield still gets more mods. Barely any if the are bug fixes, most of them are new weapon or quest mods.
You know what there ARE memes of? And have been for years? Todd Howard is a misleading PR management puppet with no soul memes, Todd Howard just says fancy buzz words even though the game doesn't have the function yet and never will. I.E. the common theme being: *Todd will lie to you to get what he wants* And although it turns out to be same hill just at different times Follow the memes, lads. Follow the memes and uncover truthAccept nothing but the truth. Trust no one.
True, people just forgot it existed. This isn't even F76 level of fuck up. It's literally so uninteresting that it fades into oblivion ( not that Oblivion ). Being forgotten is the worst that can happen to a game.
Starfield does have memes but its more of loading field memes, bg3 has bear meme compared to Starfield's empty world etc just memes making fun of starfield on how empty it is
There was plenty of memes .. Plenty of fan art. Planty of ppl doing things with all the crazy stuff you can do with physics in game like collecting items There's plenty of ship building videos..of ppl making ships from other franchise.. Yes all of that has died down after months of launch.. Ppl have this ridiculous level of expectation on starfield..mainly because of skyrim..and how that lasted.. Starfield is a single player RPG..those last months in the consciousness of gamers.. The game did well..but its not going to have a lasting impact anything like skyrim..and that's fine.. Skyrim was a once in a blue moon game..no other BGS game has done what skyrim did. It's unreasonable expectation to expect single player RPGs to live for years.. It's just not likely to happen. The game was still they most played game the year it came out on steam..despite it coming out in december.
Starfield isnt just bad, its insulting, anything good about it is undercut by something in the game. Innovative starship design? Oh shame space exploration is boring and there is nothing to do on your ship.
This. It was so bizarrely awful, that I kept thinking Aston Kutcher could jump out saying I'd been Punk'd. How could Microsoft let Bethesda put this monstrosity out?
What’s sad is that Starfield truly feels like a side project they released with minimal effort. Same thing with 76… but no. These are ACTUAL maximum effort full studio releases!! Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be a disaster!
I got Starfield for free with my AMD GPU at launch. Playtime of 5 hours. I played this game for one afternoon and haven't touched it again. A FREE BETHESDA title and I don't want to play it. I'd have laughed myself out of the room 15years ago.
I got a free copy of the last of us part 1 with mine and the gpu didn't work, now im glad i bought it when i did so i atleast got a good game out of it
Dont worry they just released the mass effect mako so that you can travel from the same outpost to cave over and over again at higher speed so all is forgiven. 10/10
Unfortunately, its not even faster, really. Apparently it's top speed is your character's sprinting speed except when you use the boost, then you can go a little bit faster for just a little bit
People asking for vehicles were just silly anyway. There's no point to exploring, so there's no point to a vehicle. Having it would be just one more thing that would make players think it has promise, only to disappoint you, just like every other system.
@@Axterix13 You know what would have been better than a vehicle? Just landing next to the point of interest. The planets are all entirely empty except for them, the terrain is the same across the entire map, there's no reason to be landing in one spot over any other, so it's not like there's some "better place for landing" that requires you to land miles out from your destination. But then players wouldn't explore the maps? That's because Bethesda didn't give players any reason to do so, not because of landing position. It's not like they're exploring even with the far-out landing positions; they just beeline to the map marker.
Pretty much. Heck... If you gave Fallout 3 modern graphics and Starfield's gunplay they would feel very similar despite a 15 year old gap. Except exploring is better in FO3
Yea it’s insane how behind this game is, and yet games from around early 2010s like New Vegas & Red Dead have infinitely better world building & writing. Starfield is stuck in some alternate version of the past where no good games were ever made because no matter what I compare it to, it just looks like prison slop.
If you compare joining the constellation to joining Delphine in skyrim it makes sense. Bethesda didn't change their game making ideology with making their game a railroad.
At least they didn't make Sarah passive aggressive as fuck for no reason and then made her make us kill...Ummmmm...I wanted to compare an NPC in Starfield that helps us out in a major way and acts as a mentor to us like Paarthurnax does in Skyrim and just realised THERE ISN'T ONE!
😂😂😂 ive seen so many people saying they played the game for 4-5k hours and its still amazing. Like as if bros have been playing the game since release nonstop😂🤦🏽♂️
I got the “infiltrate Crimson Fleet” quest line when, while turning in a quest to the police officer guy on New Eden, I accidentally “stole” a pen off the counter when he told me to pick something up and I misclicked. I was immediately arrested, and told because of how hardened of a criminal I was, I’d be perfect to go deep undercover with the most dangerous pirates in the known systems. Honestly, kind of perfect encapsulation of the game.
@@appelofdoom8211 You absolute monster. Here's a ship and a cover story. I assume from your terrifying pen story you're okay with destroying civilians and stealing candy from babies, so just check in with us when you've got close to the big boss.
@@hanklestank “wow the way you did that one mission is so amazing, we usually have a huge issue with these weirdos trying to infiltrate our upper tiers within the pirate org and get to the boss, but I can tell you’re different! Here go meet him… alone… in that Locked room over there with 3 exits.”
im not gonna lie i dont actually think starfield is that much worse than skyrim and fallout 4. i just think the bland worldbuilding reveals how medicore bethesda has always been.
Starfield is like fallout 4 but you take the best part of bethesda games (the world design) and replace it with 90% generic dungeon templates that repeat
It is a much worse game because of that lack of worldbuilding. Not to mention the complete lack of an exploration gameplay loop like every other BGS RPG. Not to mention terrible companions and terrible quests/factions, as well as just being less of them. The RPG progression is also even worse than ever. Starfield is without a doubt, actually worse than BGS’ previous titles. Bethesda has been mediocre since Fallout 4’s release, but they ARE worse now. Skyrim was actually a good game minus the terrible difficulty scaling and kind of boring perks. I agree that Bethesda has kind of always been mediocre, but technical limitations and lack of competition meant they were actually the best at one point. Ignoring referencing modern standards, (RDR2, CP2077, TW3, etc.) there is no doubt in my mind that their game development is objectively worse now. It’s not even just the fact that Fallout and ES has lore to build off. There is so much more to it.
Skyrim was pretty good by 2011 standards (albeit overrated IMO) but it would be very mediocre in 2023 even with modern graphics. Now Starfield is worse than Skryim and FO4 in many aspects so it feels below average in this day and age.
With TES, BGS inherited the benefit of the established lore from earlier Bethesda's writers up to Morrowind, while with Fallout they benefited from an inheritance of Fallout's existing iconography (and older fans will know, they also butchered its established lore). With Starfield, an entirely new IP with their current stable of writers, it's plain to see how creatively bankrupt they are.
I feel older every time someone says they grew up with minecraft and skyrim. I grew up with super mario bros and the legend of zelda and I was on my way back home from Afghanistan when minecraft launched.
The absolute worsed thing about all of this for me is they teased starfield for decades, it was “that space game” that bethesda were secretly planning. What we got was a 2 year old slapped together hail mary after that vault game nose dived. This was not the game they were working on, certainly not over a decade in development. It was a complete let down.
@@catpurrito5586 Also true. It’s lagging behind most other ES titles like Morrowind when it comes to lore. But it’s pretty normal by Bethesda standards, and is far better than Starfield in that regard.
I still play it a few times a year for about a week or 2. I actually did a playthru with no mods or CC stuff on my Xbox and had alot of fun. Skyrim had alot more going for it even without mods or anything like that. Its not rose tinted glasses, it's just a vastly better game.
I know he has a huge cartoonish meltdown over the Neon main story mission not having any consequences, and in the traditional sense he's right, but there is a secret consequence that you wouldn't know was there unless you looked it up: getting caught and fighting your way through locks you out of the strongest ship engines in the game since they only get made if you do that mission the "right way" which is a complete joke of a consequence.
The moment I decided I really didn't like the game was when I was on Neon and a crime boss threatened me to my face. We where sitting in a bar VIP room, his one bodyguard was outside a closed door and this guy said, "Do as I say or I'll have you killed and your ship sold for parts." I was like "lol ok" pulled my dank full auto railgun assault rifle and shot hin about 30 times in the chest in just over a second... Only for the bullets to pass right through him harmlessly and into the wall behind him.
The worst thing, to me, at least, is that this game is like the worst result of a game that, on paper, is my perfect game. I get to fly in space, fight space pirates, go through interspatial corporate esionage, save people from evil Xeno monsters, and unravel the mysteries of our existence in reality. I SHOULDN'T HATE THIS GAME, AND YET I DO! Because of all the borderline fine shootouts, the fun dogfights, or even interesting quests outside of the dull and lackluster main quest; the levelling and travelling brings anything fun to a dead stop. I don't hate it simply because it's bad, because there are fun things I can find. I hate it because it is BORING and UNSATISFYING on how you get to the fun stuff. It's like riding a 30min Rollercoaster, with 5 hour long Border Patrol Checkpoints holding my back every 5 minute stretch. Like, I wanna make this AGONIZINGLY clear to anyone wanting to argue this game is great: in order to get the most high-quality, top shelf armor, weaoons, ship parts and booster packs, you need to both have the appropriate perks and Appropriate research levels. Which means you: 1. Need to do shit to level up 2. Achieve the needed challenges to qualify to level up 3. Have the appropriate materials to research 4. Have the correct Research perk grade to leaven the stress, and 5. Most of the times, reach the right level of research in other areas to get the research you wahted initially, and make sure you're researching the correct specific branch of research path you're wanting. BARE IN MIND, THIS IS THE PATH NEEDED FOR A SILENCER! A LEVELLING SYSTEM SHOULD NOT HAVE TO FEEL LIKE PAPERWORK! But wait, all of you that'll say "you can just up your bartering and buy it all," A.) Whatever a Merchant has is as randomly generated as a Borderlands arsenal, and B.).YOU NEED TO FOLLOW THE ROADMAP I JUST LISTED TO LEVEL UP YOUR BARTER! Like, I wanted to be a pulpy sci-fi hero, Flash Gordon/Commander Cody style. And yet I felt like Bob the office worker that SOMETIMES saves people from evil after he's done filing for a Research path to get bettet ammo. Hell, I wanted a big Fuck-off frigate to dominate with shields, armor and firepower, so imagine my lamemtation when.THREE WHOLE PERKS OF DIFFERING LEVELS STOOD IN MY WAY! My idea of a Warhammer like superfrigate were dashed because I wasn't lucky enough to be fully leveled enough to pilot Class-C ships or afford certain parts because Perks. And when I did, guess what? SOMETHING ELSE STOPPED ME! I am nit joking you when I tell you that I, a recently new community college student entering IT, have had more fun doing paperwork to get into college than I had actually being Zapp Brannigan, because this game REFUSED to let me just be an actual pulpy hero. Like, I get that there are paths and progressions towards these things to make the victory taste more sweet, but the paths to getting a fully upgraded rifle of all things ROBBED the successful feeling of growth from me. It was vastly less of a triumphant "YES, FINALLY!" And infinitely more of a sore, aching, frustrated "Fucking finally. But what REALLY got my goat was at the end of the questline where I take out the Crimson Fleet and their captain, and not only did the final confrontation become locked to me, but my save files DELETED THEMSELVES. Yes, for some reason, my Lvl 30 save got deleted, and kept deleting themselves until it hit 26, and the only reason it stopped was because I deleted the game. Making me do boring shit to finally have a blip of fun was one thing, but tossing the boring shit I slogged through into the shredder and stepping me back by force is UNFORGIVABLE! If I had the misfortune to meet Todd Hiward after that, I'd wedgie him so hard I'd stick the elastic in his teeth for double the flossing. Followed by a summary kick in the gooch. Yes, I was that furious. In fact, I was so pissed that, as of speaking, I am working to make a Minecraft Modpack or two (either 1.12.2 or 1.19.2) where I can actually do this shit better. Will the writing be better? Probably not. Will it be more fun? Absolutely! Oh, and about the "not playing it multiple times" deal where Bethesda forced you to see everything the first time? Nope, you need to go through multiple NG+ to get the best gear in the game and see alternate timelines. And that's a total of TEN NEW GAME PLUS' TO GET THE BEST GEAR!
I feel you man, the concept makes me want to enjoy it so bad, and I honestly had fun designing my ship, but it doesn't really mean anything cus you can't do much with it
This is why all unmodded Bethesda games absolutely need to have console commands enabled so you can just skip all the dumb bullshit and have the fun you want your own way
You're being so unfair to my boy Sam! He's going through a divorce, is a single father. He was trying his best to move on, he even created a tinder profile and had just started going to the gym and to therapy! 😭 Jokes aside, great job on this one. You keep getting better and better with each video. I can't wait to see what you'll do next!
I hate this argument that we should not compare games, especially games made by the same company/genre. We all know, in spite of all the Skyrim flaws we were made aware of after hundreds of hours later, It was groundbreaking. Now, wanting Starfield to be like Skyrim is indeed wrong but as a customer, the expectation that we have are that, the new games, made by the same studios/devs with more modern technology will not only EXPAND the features that made past games successful, USE all the years of experience to built something as good or near as good as Skyrim. ALL of which Starfield DID NOTHING. The stripped out / barebone features, recycling and not improving a few features and the worse is, EXPECTING that the MODDING community (which in my opinion, made Skyrim even more Successful) will FIX the game for free while not even care to give players a Proper Patch fix for months. Just compare the amount of fixes and added stuff Baldurs gate 3 implemented, with Starfield months after the release and you will understand why Starfield is and will always be, even with mods, a failure.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with comparing games. I just want to approach criticism by evaluating each product on its own merits, rather than making comparison my central argument. I'll use comparison to form an argument, but not to denounce a game entirely
The stiff, robotic humans; the world catered to your experience; the constant loading screens--they all point to one thing. This is a video game adaptation of the film Futureworld (the sequel to Westworld,) and depicts the experience of a future tourist going to a super immersive space theme park for the ultra wealthy.
@epicrotfl7017 Outrage culture infects everything, and comes from all sides. It's what gets the most attention on the internet, and therefore the most money.
Sorry, but the guns don't look good. I mean sooome do. Most are just "make something sci-fi, don't think how it would operate". And, some guns even have broken animations in first person, but correct ones when being in third person camera
Bethesda is historically shit with weapon design, take the Fallout 4 "Assault Rifle" for example, which looks if a Lewis Gun from WW1 and the Prdywen had a risky one-night stand and 9 months later this abomination was born.
@@sergeantdornan4386 yep no different with starfield,ak with a fucking plastic handguard ductaped on top of the wooden one,a pump shotgun where you pump forwards and it looks like the gun would break but it looks like it would break if you pumped backwards because the pump is way too far back.
1:06:34 I thought you were going to refer to Mass Effect for a second because the anti gravity power is literally a rip off of the biotic lift. Starfield doesn't have an original bone in its body.
@@matijasostojic4288 true...but its not that alone that makes it feel disingenuous, its that in combination with everything else...the flat characters, the ripping off of their own material in Skyrim, the uninspired plot...
I feel like the "why do you have to join Constellation" issue could've been solved by making ships big and expensive, and housing Constellation IN a ship. They all live and work there, and instead of using satellites to search for new shiny rocks (in a universe with spaceships!), you go out and search WITH them. So the idea is, you join Constellation to get access to their ship, and you decide where it goes and what they do, for some reason. I also haven't actually played the game, so there may be some reason this isn't the best idea, but hey.
Starfield should have ended with the revelation that Barrett was right. you did get Cosmic Space Cancer and the Alien Powers accelerated your Death. But only if you walk away from Constellation. If you follow the main path, you come across a side quest near the end that hints at (and leads to) a cure for the deathly illness.
I got a friend who is a massive starfield stan and overall bethesda shill. What I notice with these types is that they sing the praises of Starfield and Todd. But they don't play the game. They quit playing in the first month after 50hrs and never touch it again. But never shut up about how good it is and how many "mods" it has.
It's a single player game dude and not everyone games as hardcore as you. I guess I would fall in your category of not playing the game because I'll only play for 6 hours a day throughout one week and then not touch it for the rest of the month until I feel like playing again.
I can understand some games not having much reason to replay it, kinda like nier automata, but the thing is starslop is supposed to be the type of game u beat multiple times. The story literally gives u a in lore reason for it... But the game isn't very fun so there is no reason to be replaying it. Also what do mods have to do with the quality of the game... It's like saying a family car is better than a ferrari because it sold more.
Meanwhile, take a similar fan of Skyrim and just so much as mention the game to them and within a few hours they're redoing their mod load order to start a new game.
it's actually been stated by a employee at bethesda who no longer works there that the game was extremely rushed. and it shows hard this game is the very definition of wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle.
1. Bethesda really expected us to "make your own fun" like this is a school playground. No, b!tch, people paid money to get a *product* and they expect it to work as intended 2. A big reason Skyrim has lasted this long is because: A) Its a solid game in its own right, with a hand crafted world and randomness that makes you WANT to lose yourself in it. Coupled with worldbuilding that is carried over from the other games B) The memes C) The modding community is absolutely *cracked* All of which is sorely lacking in Starfield.
Yeah what sucks Bethesda used to be really good at making your each of your characters feel unique but ever since Skyrim they keep trivializing the choices you make at character creation which sucks.
@@rances4418 role playing is about the choices you choose, and the backround you imagine. not about the traits and content the game gives you for choosing a class. The traits just help you choose different dialogue options and give you a head start, there is no need to lock you to a play style, because you can just lock yourself. There are *many* impactful choices so ig you didn’t play.
@@TheParagonIsDead List some traits that truly give impactful choices and explain how they are, saying people just didn't play the game doesn't help your argument.
I feel like Bethesda is the embodiment of a design intern, that does something good, gets praised for it, and then reuses the same fucking asset in their next 20 designs with literally no change whatsoever, regardless of whether or not it actually fits
I'll be honest and say there's a lot of points in this review that feel like nitpicks. Like these are aspects I can ignore in a good video game because I'm having fun with the rest of it. But the problem with Starfield is there is no good parts. There's so many complaints and missed marks that it gets to the point where the game just isn't good. If you take a massive game like Elden Ring, it's very fun but also has quite a bit of flaws, like levelling up weapons, lack of exploration rewards in the late game, terrible weapon balancing, etc. But people still love Elden Ring because it's so immersive and defeating bosses feels so euphoric. There's no part of Starfield that makes up for its flaws, which just makes the entire game a mediocre slop fest of a video game with no passion behind it. Edit: Just finished watching the video and Mac was right. Starfield IS worse than I thought. Not only is every aspect mediocre, but it ALSO has an inherent flaw in its design where your actions don't matter. It wants to railroad you through a story, which is probably the worst option they could have chosen because every story beat is terrible. A bad story wouldn't matter, IF YOU DIDNT MAKE A STORY BASED RPG. The fact that Starfield forces you into its story and characters amplifies every single flaw it has. It shows you its choices don't matter, it shows you that its writing is terrible, and it shows you that its world is hollow. Holy shit this game is bad.
vendors having infinite money to buy from you makes more sense in a scifi space game, since, you know, digital banking exists. in a fantasy setting it makes more sense - vendors need to keep the coin on them, it lends a little realism that they can't have enough to buy everything off you. but like. major vendors should have effectively infinite money in a game like starfield.
The game will forever be my favorite bad game, the way Bethesda f-ed it up is almost in every possible way feels intentional. Like a factory product optimized to consistently break exactly after warranty. It's impressive in a weird way.
I think it feels like a poorly executed mashup of the 1st Mass Effect, Fallout 4, and No-Man's Sky. It tries to do all of it but doesn't succeed at any of it. It tries to have an epic space story with notable characters like Mass Effect, but fails at creating a compelling story with memorable characters. It tries to have the RPG elements and customization Fallout, but it doesn't contain the depth of those systems. Even the gunplay feels the same. It tries to have the space exploration of No Man's Sky, but it drops the ball by making exploration boring and unrewarding. I think the game would have been better if they focused on exploring a few solar systems with rich, detailed worlds with varieties of different features and memorable characters instead.
@@ShadowMoses900 The second I comprehended the "The funny rock may have messed with your head and we don't know what that means" line from Mack (around 30:20), my first thought was "This is Dragon Age: Inquisition." It seems the "unwilling inductee" trope has a grip on more of BioWare than I'd thought lol
@@ShadowMoses900 classic design philosophy of: "we have to please everybody" forgetting that u cannot do that and the result is always uninspired slop. Refer to: resident evil 6, starfield, fallout 4 (don't think it's bad but it tries to be too much and would be better if focused on having less be better) and others.
I've been saying this since fo4; Bethesda is out of ideas, lazy, and stuck in 2010. They haven't kept with the times and when you're releasing alongside the context of every game thats come out in the last 13-14 years thats basically a death sentence. The crazy thing about the enemy variety is that Fo4 had a decent amount of it, with unique enemy types all with unique animations, different abilities and different ways you could interact with them. You'd think a game with aliens would allow for that same level of creativity but i guess not, dont know what went wrong there.
Something that I noticed about how you’re forced to join Constellation Prior Bethesda games have mostly treated factions as mandatory for the main story… but never which faction. Even if you’re indebted to a group, you are never forced to join them. Theoretically you should despise the Imperials in Skyrim for falsely lining you up for execution, but you can still join them (and considering how off his rocker Ulfric is, that might be the right choice). Likewise you can still side with the Institute despite how awful they treat the populous of the commonwealth. Starfield’s story could’ve worked much better if the faction opportunities that they advertised were actually implemented into the main story. SURE you can join Constellation, but perhaps you’d rather go work for the pirates or an independent system.
yeah, there was a clear and easy opportunity to have multiple factions fight over the artifacts that give you special powers, instead, nobody outside constellation ever gets any knowledge or effect on the main quest. the greedy crimson fleet or the power hungry UC/FC trying to get an edge in the war. the game beats you over the head with the main story and railroads you into joining and then doesnt make it interact with the rest of the game at all. you cant even talk about it with anyone outside of constellation.
So~ fun fact that will piss you off even more about the UCF quest line. You don't need to get a bounty to get it. Or even be a bad guy. If you complete the Vanguard quest line, you're INVITED to Commander Asshat's ship and OFFERED the job. I still refer to him as Commander Asshat despite having been a good boi in my one and only playthrough because I shot *A* guy on one infiltration mission and he chewed me out like I was the biggest piece of s* he'd ever seen in his bed. Reloaded a save and did it right because, again, good boi. Was irritating how he talked to THE Vanguard that uncovered the terraformer threat like that. Makes sense now because Bethesda is bad at their jobs.
Starfield feels like it was AI generated. My biggest issue is it's a game literally about exploring with nothing to explore. There's nothing worth finding. At least nothing on the level of Skyrim or Fallout. I still play Skyrim and still find things I haven't seen before. The sense of scale and adventure in that game is amazing especially compared to Starfield.
Even the names feel like ChatGPT made them. Terrormorphs is by far the most egregious example. Even the names of the setting is weak. "The Settled Systems." And Freestar Collective? This is literally something you could get off Fantasy Name Generators.
What is so crazy to me is Todd started the idea of more immersive AI! If you remember way back when Oblivion ranted on about radiant AI you would of thought that this guy was so in tune with what gamers want. But....Emil stepped in and I think Bethesda actually listened to this guy and his KISS game design. Oblivion was immersive why, well the writers include some of the greatest writers in game design such as Ted Peterson, Michael Kirkbride and Ken Rolston. But a mysterious intern was making his way up the ranks! Emil also worked on Oblivion, as a voice actor......
saying new Atlantis feels like its from 2015 is an insult, The Witcher 3 came out that year and its environments including cities all feel more alive, just the grass billowing in the winds adds so much compared to Bethesda's dead static feeling environments
I saw a guy saying that it gets better 20-40 hours later He wants me to eat a chocolate covered in feces so that I had to eat the feces to get to the chocolate, but in the end, it was covered by feces to begin with and it left a bad taste in my mouth, and ya know what? After 20-40 hours, I ate a low tier chocolate
Let's not forget that they already did the "you have to go to prison to progress" thing during Skyrim in Markarth for the Forsworn questline (also during Oblivion in Bruma for the Arnora/Jorundr quest) and it was implemented much more organically in those games
Fallout: Let's make the Elder Scrolls WITH GUNS Starfield: Let's make the Elder Scrolls IN SPACE bethesda has made the same exact game in just a new setting 10 times over now
I never liked Bethesda. I thought Skyrim was bug-ridden trash and Fallout 3 was just boring. However, I was really hoping Starfield would be good so that all of the Bethesda fans would be happy.
I mean I cared more what happen to Radahn then I did for even Barrett…. …we meet Radahn twice in a fight and he never we even talks…let that sink in TODD!
I liked the 2 miners you work with at the start more than any of the real companions, I was pretty sad to find out they can't do anything other than be on a ship or outpost.
Starfield is the culmination or rereleasing skyrim on every platform, over & over again. Creation Engine is just a Skyrim factory to satisfy shareholders who are institutionally against something new & creative since it isn't a guaranteed cash cow. So, we got Skyrim in space: institutionally safe & non threatening. Something made in a focus group.
Its a refreshing intro for one reason: I'm tired of hearing about how Fallout: New Vegas helped people navigate middle school. Hours and hours spent gushing about how Caesar helped them discover their sexual identity. Sobbing, tear filled explainations about how Veronica taught them about true love. Thats basically the default Bethesda fanboy video introduction. Thank you for going in a different direction. 🎉
I remember the moment I said fuck this game. It was actually the cop quest where I had taken a raider ship and was bringing it planet side to register. I was caught because there was contraband in the hold and I got the special interrogation scene. I didn't like being treated by some career criminal when I complied with the space cops and told the guy to go pound stardust and, after that on my screen a little pop up came up that aid "Join the pirates" and I had the thought "WHAT PART OF THAT DID I EVER CLAIM I WANTED TO BE A PIRATE?" I just wanted to pay the fee, turn over the illegal goods and go about my day but nope, apparently if I don't side with the cops I instantly want to be a pirate.
Bathesda was never the company we thought it was . Skyrim did not age well imo . After playing New Vegas . it's actually sad how little you can do compared to a game like new vegas given that they come from the same engine
When I stole a bunch of random junk in the New Atlantis starport storage, I got taken to the UC commander, and was given that Crimson Fleet job. I told him "no", and was sent to Mars jail - but not Mars jail, because I was spawned *outside* the jail, with no guards, and expected to walk myself in willingly. So I turned around, walked out of Mars jail, and not a single person I passed cared - despite the fact I would have had to walk past them in order to get to the point that I spawned at.
overlooking the fact that people have to like the game to spend time making mods for it, they didnt even set up the modding scene properly. changing the file system to be less open to changes and taking over 6 months to release the modding kit made sure that the modders didnt bother with starfield.
Todd Howard here
Worry not, we just spent most of the budget getting high on crack, no creative bankruptcy here
it makes so much sense now
Just take whatever Kirkbride was smoking when he wrote the 36 Lessons.
I call BS real crackheads would have made a way better game.
@@bulletflight will do
@@TheRealRealToddHowardand get rid of Emil.
"Why would Bethesda give you the option to say no to the main content of the game?"
My sibling in gaming, in Morrowind you can literally kill every NPC related to the main quest and lock yourself out of it.
this is especially infuriating in starfield since all the NPCs are essential and (SPOILER): when you beat the main story, the universe resets, revives all the dead characters, and undoes any softlocks you could have made.
the fix to softlocks is already built into the game and bethesda STILL took agency away from the player. they had the perfect compromise and declined for no reason.
@@unkosherfood it is the one bethesda game where you basically have the perfect excuse to ruin the entire universe with your choices yet bethesda won't allow you to play with their scripts.
Common Morrowind W
@@jesustyronechrist2330 Morrowind really is peak Bethesda.
Yeah and some essential NPC could have been killed in a random place, so you needed to restart in another save. It's not as good as you think it is when it happens.
You're correct. Your current gen products will _always_ be judged against your _previous_ products and why shouldn't them be? Would you buy a new car that drives bad, has worse gas mileage, and less features than the previous gen? YOU WOULDN'T. Video games are NO DIFFERENT.
Exactly, every single person on this earth judges or compares old stuff, memories, feelings with new ones. An old vacations with a new one, a job, a car, a girlfriend or boyfriend, house, clothing, food etc. So indeed, why should games be an exception, especially ones made by the same company and genre but not only that, bethesda themselves possibly mentioned "Skyrim" in space. SO a comparison is a must.
The funny thing is, we can compare Starfield to several last gen/cross gen games like RDR2, Cyberpunk, AC Origins and many others and Starfield usually falls short in most aspects.
There is nothing in Starfield that feels current gen. Some say it's the scope but nah. They have a thousand repetitive fishbowls and you can loading screen your way across them.
Yes and no
What if you're a SH and you make three 9/10 games, then you make a 10/10 game and then you make a 8/10 game
Should you hate the 8? No? Why should you? It may be worse but not bad and still a valuable and respectable experience
Why shouldn’t them be? Lol
@@valentinvas6454 Only the Prices are Current gen 🤣🤣
Starfield gives you action figures and expects you to imagine the fun they have.
That is such a good analogy oh my lord
Starfield gives you hours and hours of high quality content and expects you to play it.
@@TheParagonIsDead Eeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
@@indigowells it’s not a “ehhh” situation, starfield objectively gives you hours of content.
@@TheParagonIsDead And they could've reduced those hours and everybody would be happier for it
Starfield came out in the same year as BG3. Somehow, a game based on DnD in a single world following a linear plotline felt bigger and more open-ended than a space action RPG with no classes where you can visit 1700 planets.
How Bethesda can make Morrowind in 2002 and then every other game after it loses more and more of what made that game incredible.
Look at the staff turnover from those early days
Morrowind was made by 8 people. lol
Some of them were actual writers: Ted Peterson, Ken Rolston and Michael Kirkbride. Also Julian Lefay to an extent, who co-founded the series and its worldbuilding.
All but Rolston left after Morrowind, while Emil Pagliarulo slowly overtook the lead writer role during Oblivion's development, a decent quest designer, but with little to no experience in actual writing.
Also, go figure how the overall design philosophy could have gotten so different between TES 3 and 4 - Todd overtook game direction.
Now the team consists of 450 people with Todd barely seeming to give any focused direction, creating nothing but a jumbled mess.
I swear, dev teams have some kind of critical mass. They should've stayed with their 80 people Skyrim team... that one was mainstream enough to fill their pockets to the brim, but still a fun TES experience.
@@JanTGTX Even Skyrim was already dumbed down. Not completely, but showed the direction everything was heading to. I still remember becoming Archmage of Mage Guild as a... Two Handed sword warrior with zero magic skills. Because Bethesda was so afraid of you missing out on Mage Guild's quests they put SCROLLS with all the spells you would need for magic quests right at the quests location.
@@yorhaunit8s I said "fun", not that it's not dumbed down as heck. :p
@@JanTGTX Well, yeah, I have still played through Skyrim probably 4 times, with minimal amount of mods. Haven't completed main story quest, though, Not once.
dont let these companies lower you expectations to justify their lack of talent
The sad thing is they have the talent, they just dont want to let them do their thing because it might scare the hoes (investors)
Brilliantly succinct comment.
blame the ccp, they control the gaming industry
I got sent to the interrogation for the first time by stealing a cup before meeting constellation. I was laughing so hard since they kept talking about my "criminal record"
I accidentally grabbed the cup when I was grabbing a quest item
"you wouldn't download a cup"
Steal a cup.
Turn into a double agent.
Destroy biggest pirate gang/special operations force.
Sell that cup.
Profit..?
It would have been so easy for them to just add high bounty requirement. Make it so if you have atleast 50k bounty you can activate the encounter.
Just one of the many, many...many immersion breaking quirks we've been exasperated with for decades. They could fix it in minutes, but they never will
@@-carpet- That's the thing, bare minimum for bethesda is way too high of a bar this days it seems.
My favorite starting perk is Homeowner because it makes nothing about it makes sense or even demonstrates an understanding of how real world concepts work. So you start off owning a house except actually you start off mortgaging a house. You can't even get the coordinates to it until you talk to the bank representative. Your house isn't in New Atlantis or one of the other cities (well ten cubic yards of buildings dropped onto a barren wasteland) in the universe. It's on some otherwise totally uninhabited planet. So you talk to the bank and you have the option to pay your mortgage in full now or wait later. There's no payment plans or interest, so you didn't mortgage your house at all you bought it with an IOU from a very patient and forgiving bank. After paying your home the bank then asks if you want to work as a loan shark for them collecting payments from other clients. It's just so weird. Why is everything like this? Nothing in Starfield resembles a normal interaction, it's like it was written by those aliens from the Strange Planet comics.
Excellent point, you're absolutely right
@@CaptainMackby the way the innocent civilian slaughter that had you so enraged has a fun caveat. While the game has no problem with killing those worthless menials you can't kill the executive level characters because they are tagged as essential. Starfield has more essential NPCs than any previous Bethesda game. This is most egregious in the side quest with the colony ship where many people enraged by the fact that there was no moral, anti-corporate solution tried to kill all the Paradiso executives only to find the game wouldn't let them. They could kill the employees but not the bosses.
This lazy game design and writing is why I say that Starfield is accidental capitalist propaganda. It portrays a world where capitalists reign supreme, their will is indomitable and resistance isn't only futile, it's not even an option. The most mustache twirling capitalist villain is immortal because they're essential but non essential workers can be slaughtered and no one cares.
Paying virtual bills, exactly the kind of experience I want from a video game!
Joking aside, whoever thought that this would be a fun idea should be fired as a developer.
@@ShadowMoses900 close the studio down, it's a deep rooted institutional rot they have no interest in solving or even addressing. Mack said he's not going to talk about Starfield in the context of Bethesda's canon but we should because it shows how little problems from previous games have become this cancerous mass that's over taken the whole project. Take the railroading from the Crimson Fleet faction quest, it is exactly like the railroading in the Thieve's Guild quest in Skyrim.
Like in Skyrim the game assumes a in game history of criminal actions on your part as a way to start the quest even if you've been a novel citizen. Brynwolf says he knows that everything you've got on you was stolen even if nothing you is stolen and you've never stolen anything in the game. He says this and the game forces you into an interaction with him as soon as you get near him. And just in case youve never set foot inside Riften before you have to engage with Brynwolf and start the Thieves Guild quest as part of the main quest.
Bethesda used to be ok with missable content. They used to have factions that were rivals and joining one prevented joining another. They used to have worlds filled with hidden quests that you could discover on a third or fourth playthrough. Now they're terrified of players missing any content and this isn't a new issue. This started with Oblivion and it's only getting worse.
@@OsirisLordI don't want Bethesda to be shut down, I just think they need to reevaluate themselves and build a new engine.
in cyberpunk 2077 theres a mission where you go to your friends funeral and you can mend the relationship between his mom and his girlfriend and pick out personal objects to place on his ofrenda. I wept . I wept like a hungry angry baby. it was beautiful. In starfield i went to a characters funeral and they were there alive and i talked to them and everyone stood around staring at me talking to the person who wasnt dead.
I also didn't have any connection with the dead lady and it would have been a fairly hollow funeral if it hadnt bugged out and resurrected them for some reason.
How the hell do you weep for someone you knew for less then an hour and spent like 2 cutscenes with
Ah, yes. That Bethesda magic, like Fallout 4 expecting us to care about a spouse and a baked potato we knew for a five minute prologue.
@@andrewdyson5451 empathy, dude.
There are two characters there that are so alike I thought they are the same and was confused when one died and second one got to funeral.
I really hate it when games give you "Choices" like why even bother if its gonna end the same either way.
I agree that vapid choices feel dull and forced, but minor choices that don't affect endings should definitely still be in video games! When done with charm or wit, they really spice up the monotony of the standard beaten path laid before you.
@@michaelpietri9471 Choices don't even need to be that impactful to the "game" to be good.
The Witcher 3 gave you moral choices where the only difference would be some gold and three lines of dialogue. But it would *sit* with you if you made the wrong call.
In my experience games are at their strongest when you have multiple levels of choices. If you are regularly making choices that have large, medium, and small impacts, then you will hang onto and consider every single option.
Can't make sweeping choices because that's too much effort and not every player would have the exact same experience while being slightly different.
Thanks Emil.
The illusion of choice is one my biggest pet peeves in a video game. That's probably why I hated Fallout 4 the way I did. Every conversation ended the same no matter what options I picked.
It just means the dev's are indeed creatively dead including the quest writers. It's just a easy way out but hey we aren't stupid we see right through that. If Bethesda doesn't hire fresh talented writers (which they don't because it might hurt Emile feelings) Elder scrolls 6 will be dead on arrival.
Mark my words . Elder scrolls 6 is going to flop so fucking hard . Bathesda has learned nothing
Have you seen the cope? Justification of the fans? Bethesda is Blizzard with a coat of painting (And less abuse allegations).
No it won't. It's the Bethesda fans that have learned nothing
@@Big0h it’s weird . ESO is really cool but if ES6 is like a copy and paste . There’s no saving bathesda . They’re like the 343 for rpg’s at this point . I’m glad Microsoft bought them cuz if ES6 flops , Microsoft is gonna fuck them up and give the IP to other studios especially fallout . I’m Praying for halo too
@@Spid3y_69 If ES6 bombs, BGS is going to have a really hard time.
No, it's probably going to break records despite being just as bad if not worse than Starfield. Bethesda has very, very loyal fans that will defend whatever they put out because they fear change.
I don't know how Mack proceeded with the pirate infiltration quest line. When I did it, I told the commander to buzz off and I would rather go to jail than work for him, so the commander sent me to the entry to the jail to face my sentence. Can you guess what they forgot to do? Lock the door behind me. All I had to do was turn around and walk out of the prison, no alarms, no guards chasing me, I don't even think I got an additional bounty.
I quit the game after I got back to my ship, I wasn't interested in a game so lazily made
"It has only ONE design flaw. The door.. MUST BE CLOSED!"
I used to think Starfield is Even Worse than you think, but now I know Starfield is Proof Bethesda is Creatively Bankrupt 😔
At the end of the day... Bethesda's Game Design Was Outdated A Decade Ago.
To me Starfield feels like a bunch of mechanics, locations, etc that the devs DIDN'T make a game out of. You can shoot people, you can drive ship, you can build base - but there's no context, no vision, no experience. That key component has gotten thinner with every Bethesda release but now it is just gone.
It's like a board game with no rules or point. You can just roll dice and move pieces and stuff, but there's no game.
This is WITHOUT critiquing any of the writing, world building, lore, city design, planet design, characters... so bland.
It's probably that when you have a game company with hundreds of developers, that its many many small teams of devs all working on their own little piece with no contact to the others, and then all their pieces get smashed together by other devs. It screams disconnection and lack of cohesive vision from the top. Like a manufacturing line but for game systems and assets. Bethesda has become to large to succeed in my opinion. Like many studios that have massive success, and then proceed to put out derivative garbage until they burn all their goodwill with consumers not blinded by nostalgia.
Yup, and this is wild considering how strong the "NASA-punk" aesthetic is, yet there's nothing... NASA about the game other than the shallow artstyle.
@BismuthKaiju Your observation feels correct but it's funny because Bethesda has much smaller teams actually working on the development compared to other AAA studios. Their leadership really fumbled the ball here.
@@PrettyGuardian yeah that's true, but they still have 450 and that team famously only works on one game at a time, which is why we aren't getting a new Fallout anytime soon, which is wild they don't have a separate team for each IP. After Starfield I am not confident that Elder Scrolls 6 is gonna be any better, lol
But you are 100% right that it's the leadership and production managers that are at fault. Other companies manage just fine.
They got used to "Modders will fix it", just throw a blueprint of a game and they will do the work for free.
"Well, they've impounded our ship. We're stranded on this planet. Meet me, a shipbuilding company's CEO, back at my shipbuilding company offices, so we can figure out what to do. We'll go and have a talk with the guy who did it or kill everyone or something I guess."
?????
It's almost like the staryard that builds his ships isn't on that planet. Also, they impounded your ship. Imagine being like "oh, damn, the bank came and took my house with everything i owned. Guess I'll just have my realitor friend give me a house" it doesn't make sense and makes you sound dumb
@@seff6533 ...my realtor friend is on a galaxy quest with me and all we need to complete it is access to a house, any house, for a little bit. And he can't help with that? In his primary city of business?
@@seff6533 Or he could phone one of his employees to bring a ship to pick us up? dude
@@seff6533 Right. The CEO of a Shipbuilding Corporation in a Galaxy-Spanning setting couldn't possibly, I don't know, know a guy. Put in a few calls. Like, say "Oh, hey, this ship is running a supply run to my Staryard and leaving in a few days. I'm sure we can get our way on board with some persuasion, some influence, possibly a copious bribe.
Or, say, the Corporate Offices has a few demonstration ships in dock for impressing high value clients or Pree Junkets.
Or, say... Buy another ship on the down-low.
---
Now, here's the thing- all of this *could* be explained away, if he just acknowledged the possibility and actively rejected them. In fact, it could be a good, revealing character moment!
Does he decide against it because he thinks he's beneath such underhanded skulking? Does he take it as a matter of personal Honour? Perhaps he's worried that if he acts the wrong way, the UC won't give his company more contracts.
But- nahh. Just don't think about it.
Worth noting that you probably own multiple ships at this point as well. So, yeah, I could easily write this one ship off, if someone can smuggle me off planet.
Starfield expected itself to be incredible.
I'm still mad that my refund got denied.
That means you can pick it up and play it again.
@@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo I'd rather watch paint dry than to play Starfield again for even an hour.
@@DeadlyAntelope that means you can smash your ps5 for fun
When modders declare your game to be unfixable, you know you fucked up.
It’s been a gigantic success with modders, it has 9K mods which is more than Skyrim had when it was released.
@@TheParagonIsDead we are many months away from starfields release, it's mod number now compared to when skyrim was released is disingenuous
@@RobotWithHumanHair. wdym? When Skyrim released in the first year it didn’t have 8000 mods, Starfield gets more mods than Skyrim did.
Starfield isn’t buggy, and the updates are adding everything we asked for, it’s released and stable.
@@TheParagonIsDead
idk, kinda leaving out the fact skyrim released on a new engine in 2011 and starfield released in 2023, it’s technically a new version of the creation engine but people have had more time to get used to starfield’s workings from the start (and more motivation to fix the game asap)
@@cresoma Skyrim was way more flawed and bugged when it came out than Starfield was… and yet starfield still gets more mods.
Barely any if the are bug fixes, most of them are new weapon or quest mods.
Playing Starfield is like playing airsoft against a team that doesn't admit to being shot even though you are doing so point blank.
Memories flooding in?
RIP the copyright protection boys :(
They are on vacation in Europe
Hey! Don't slander orange juice! They are better than this game.
@@1Henrink But what about your tooth enamel?
@@ramunerd orange juice makes it yellow? Huuum with moderation it's ok, this game isn't.
@@1Henrink I'd say the acidity wears down tooth enamel so yeah, everything with moderation... except Starfield 😂
genuinely went up and got a glass of OJ from the fridge during this vid. marketing works.
You know this game is doomed because at launch and to this day there aren’t memes or fan art of it
You know what there ARE memes of? And have been for years?
Todd Howard is a misleading PR management puppet with no soul memes, Todd Howard just says fancy buzz words even though the game doesn't have the function yet and never will. I.E. the common theme being:
*Todd will lie to you to get what he wants*
And although it turns out to be same hill just at different times
Follow the memes, lads. Follow the memes and uncover truthAccept nothing but the truth. Trust no one.
True, people just forgot it existed. This isn't even F76 level of fuck up. It's literally so uninteresting that it fades into oblivion ( not that Oblivion ). Being forgotten is the worst that can happen to a game.
Starfield does have memes but its more of loading field memes, bg3 has bear meme compared to Starfield's empty world etc just memes making fun of starfield on how empty it is
@@l-shadow1775 yeah hahah I forgot about those, not a good look
There was plenty of memes ..
Plenty of fan art.
Planty of ppl doing things with all the crazy stuff you can do with physics in game like collecting items
There's plenty of ship building videos..of ppl making ships from other franchise..
Yes all of that has died down after months of launch..
Ppl have this ridiculous level of expectation on starfield..mainly because of skyrim..and how that lasted..
Starfield is a single player RPG..those last months in the consciousness of gamers..
The game did well..but its not going to have a lasting impact anything like skyrim..and that's fine..
Skyrim was a once in a blue moon game..no other BGS game has done what skyrim did.
It's unreasonable expectation to expect single player RPGs to live for years..
It's just not likely to happen.
The game was still they most played game the year it came out on steam..despite it coming out in december.
Starfield isnt just bad, its insulting, anything good about it is undercut by something in the game. Innovative starship design? Oh shame space exploration is boring and there is nothing to do on your ship.
This. It was so bizarrely awful, that I kept thinking Aston Kutcher could jump out saying I'd been Punk'd. How could Microsoft let Bethesda put this monstrosity out?
@@joe19912 money
What’s sad is that Starfield truly feels like a side project they released with minimal effort. Same thing with 76… but no. These are ACTUAL maximum effort full studio releases!! Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be a disaster!
The best way to play Starfield is to just go play No Man's Sky instead.
I got Starfield for free with my AMD GPU at launch. Playtime of 5 hours. I played this game for one afternoon and haven't touched it again. A FREE BETHESDA title and I don't want to play it. I'd have laughed myself out of the room 15years ago.
Same here. Spent 15 hours playing though, then uninstalled.
@@Washedup007 I... stayed long enough to marry Sarah 😔
I got a free copy of the last of us part 1 with mine and the gpu didn't work, now im glad i bought it when i did so i atleast got a good game out of it
Dont worry they just released the mass effect mako so that you can travel from the same outpost to cave over and over again at higher speed so all is forgiven. 10/10
Unfortunately, its not even faster, really. Apparently it's top speed is your character's sprinting speed except when you use the boost, then you can go a little bit faster for just a little bit
People asking for vehicles were just silly anyway. There's no point to exploring, so there's no point to a vehicle. Having it would be just one more thing that would make players think it has promise, only to disappoint you, just like every other system.
@@Axterix13 You know what would have been better than a vehicle? Just landing next to the point of interest.
The planets are all entirely empty except for them, the terrain is the same across the entire map, there's no reason to be landing in one spot over any other, so it's not like there's some "better place for landing" that requires you to land miles out from your destination.
But then players wouldn't explore the maps? That's because Bethesda didn't give players any reason to do so, not because of landing position. It's not like they're exploring even with the far-out landing positions; they just beeline to the map marker.
Starfield is a game stuck in 2012
Pretty much. Heck... If you gave Fallout 3 modern graphics and Starfield's gunplay they would feel very similar despite a 15 year old gap. Except exploring is better in FO3
@@valentinvas6454 and the side quests are better too
Yea it’s insane how behind this game is, and yet games from around early 2010s like New Vegas & Red Dead have infinitely better world building & writing. Starfield is stuck in some alternate version of the past where no good games were ever made because no matter what I compare it to, it just looks like prison slop.
If you compare joining the constellation to joining Delphine in skyrim it makes sense. Bethesda didn't change their game making ideology with making their game a railroad.
At least they didn't make Sarah passive aggressive as fuck for no reason and then made her make us kill...Ummmmm...I wanted to compare an NPC in Starfield that helps us out in a major way and acts as a mentor to us like Paarthurnax does in Skyrim and just realised THERE ISN'T ONE!
Dude, its little bit slow at the start but its getting better at 10,000th hour !
(Trust me, I played the game)
At that point it's probably just Stockholm syndrome lol
@@ShadowMoses900 Or sunk cost fallacy more likely.
😂😂😂 ive seen so many people saying they played the game for 4-5k hours and its still amazing. Like as if bros have been playing the game since release nonstop😂🤦🏽♂️
I got the “infiltrate Crimson Fleet” quest line when, while turning in a quest to the police officer guy on New Eden, I accidentally “stole” a pen off the counter when he told me to pick something up and I misclicked.
I was immediately arrested, and told because of how hardened of a criminal I was, I’d be perfect to go deep undercover with the most dangerous pirates in the known systems.
Honestly, kind of perfect encapsulation of the game.
I stole a teachers pen once. Might as well send me to infiltrate the mob
@@appelofdoom8211 You absolute monster. Here's a ship and a cover story. I assume from your terrifying pen story you're okay with destroying civilians and stealing candy from babies, so just check in with us when you've got close to the big boss.
@@hanklestank “wow the way you did that one mission is so amazing, we usually have a huge issue with these weirdos trying to infiltrate our upper tiers within the pirate org and get to the boss, but I can tell you’re different! Here go meet him… alone… in that Locked room over there with 3 exits.”
im not gonna lie i dont actually think starfield is that much worse than skyrim and fallout 4. i just think the bland worldbuilding reveals how medicore bethesda has always been.
Yes, I completely agree
Starfield is like fallout 4 but you take the best part of bethesda games (the world design) and replace it with 90% generic dungeon templates that repeat
It is a much worse game because of that lack of worldbuilding. Not to mention the complete lack of an exploration gameplay loop like every other BGS RPG. Not to mention terrible companions and terrible quests/factions, as well as just being less of them. The RPG progression is also even worse than ever. Starfield is without a doubt, actually worse than BGS’ previous titles. Bethesda has been mediocre since Fallout 4’s release, but they ARE worse now. Skyrim was actually a good game minus the terrible difficulty scaling and kind of boring perks.
I agree that Bethesda has kind of always been mediocre, but technical limitations and lack of competition meant they were actually the best at one point. Ignoring referencing modern standards, (RDR2, CP2077, TW3, etc.) there is no doubt in my mind that their game development is objectively worse now. It’s not even just the fact that Fallout and ES has lore to build off. There is so much more to it.
Skyrim was pretty good by 2011 standards (albeit overrated IMO) but it would be very mediocre in 2023 even with modern graphics. Now Starfield is worse than Skryim and FO4 in many aspects so it feels below average in this day and age.
With TES, BGS inherited the benefit of the established lore from earlier Bethesda's writers up to Morrowind, while with Fallout they benefited from an inheritance of Fallout's existing iconography (and older fans will know, they also butchered its established lore).
With Starfield, an entirely new IP with their current stable of writers, it's plain to see how creatively bankrupt they are.
I feel older every time someone says they grew up with minecraft and skyrim. I grew up with super mario bros and the legend of zelda and I was on my way back home from Afghanistan when minecraft launched.
damn. thanks for your service fam.
@@davidwashington9113 He wasn't serving you.
@@jonnyvelocity He was serving 'Merica
My first contact with Minecraft was seeing people build giant swastikas on 4chan, it's hard for me to associate that with anyones childhood
The loading screen in the astral lounge elevator when you can just boost jump to the second floor was the last straw for me 😂
You need a loading screen picture when you go to sleep
that was inexplicable
The absolute worsed thing about all of this for me is they teased starfield for decades, it was “that space game” that bethesda were secretly planning. What we got was a 2 year old slapped together hail mary after that vault game nose dived. This was not the game they were working on, certainly not over a decade in development. It was a complete let down.
2:50 This is a great way of pointing out how mediocre Skyrim really is. And how it’s pretty hard carried by nostalgia and modding.
also carried by its own lore and worldbuilding, which Slopfield lacks
@@catpurrito5586
Also true. It’s lagging behind most other ES titles like Morrowind when it comes to lore. But it’s pretty normal by Bethesda standards, and is far better than Starfield in that regard.
In the end all Skyrim fans got what they deserve in Starfield.
I still play it a few times a year for about a week or 2.
I actually did a playthru with no mods or CC stuff on my Xbox and had alot of fun.
Skyrim had alot more going for it even without mods or anything like that.
Its not rose tinted glasses, it's just a vastly better game.
@@guruvedraI guess, I can still go back and enjoy the fuck outta fallout 3, new Vegas and Skyrim. So, oh well.
The entire community Bethesda created: "our expectations were low, BUT HOLY FUCK"
I know he has a huge cartoonish meltdown over the Neon main story mission not having any consequences, and in the traditional sense he's right, but there is a secret consequence that you wouldn't know was there unless you looked it up: getting caught and fighting your way through locks you out of the strongest ship engines in the game since they only get made if you do that mission the "right way" which is a complete joke of a consequence.
That's actually worse.
@@billjacobs521 correct.
Hell yeah, an hour of Starslop
The moment I decided I really didn't like the game was when I was on Neon and a crime boss threatened me to my face. We where sitting in a bar VIP room, his one bodyguard was outside a closed door and this guy said, "Do as I say or I'll have you killed and your ship sold for parts." I was like "lol ok" pulled my dank full auto railgun assault rifle and shot hin about 30 times in the chest in just over a second... Only for the bullets to pass right through him harmlessly and into the wall behind him.
The worst thing, to me, at least, is that this game is like the worst result of a game that, on paper, is my perfect game. I get to fly in space, fight space pirates, go through interspatial corporate esionage, save people from evil Xeno monsters, and unravel the mysteries of our existence in reality. I SHOULDN'T HATE THIS GAME, AND YET I DO!
Because of all the borderline fine shootouts, the fun dogfights, or even interesting quests outside of the dull and lackluster main quest; the levelling and travelling brings anything fun to a dead stop. I don't hate it simply because it's bad, because there are fun things I can find. I hate it because it is BORING and UNSATISFYING on how you get to the fun stuff. It's like riding a 30min Rollercoaster, with 5 hour long Border Patrol Checkpoints holding my back every 5 minute stretch.
Like, I wanna make this AGONIZINGLY clear to anyone wanting to argue this game is great: in order to get the most high-quality, top shelf armor, weaoons, ship parts and booster packs, you need to both have the appropriate perks and Appropriate research levels. Which means you:
1. Need to do shit to level up
2. Achieve the needed challenges to qualify to level up
3. Have the appropriate materials to research
4. Have the correct Research perk grade to leaven the stress, and
5. Most of the times, reach the right level of research in other areas to get the research you wahted initially, and make sure you're researching the correct specific branch of research path you're wanting.
BARE IN MIND, THIS IS THE PATH NEEDED FOR A SILENCER! A LEVELLING SYSTEM SHOULD NOT HAVE TO FEEL LIKE PAPERWORK!
But wait, all of you that'll say "you can just up your bartering and buy it all,"
A.) Whatever a Merchant has is as randomly generated as a Borderlands arsenal, and
B.).YOU NEED TO FOLLOW THE ROADMAP I JUST LISTED TO LEVEL UP YOUR BARTER!
Like, I wanted to be a pulpy sci-fi hero, Flash Gordon/Commander Cody style. And yet I felt like Bob the office worker that SOMETIMES saves people from evil after he's done filing for a Research path to get bettet ammo. Hell, I wanted a big Fuck-off frigate to dominate with shields, armor and firepower, so imagine my lamemtation when.THREE WHOLE PERKS OF DIFFERING LEVELS STOOD IN MY WAY! My idea of a Warhammer like superfrigate were dashed because I wasn't lucky enough to be fully leveled enough to pilot Class-C ships or afford certain parts because Perks. And when I did, guess what? SOMETHING ELSE STOPPED ME!
I am nit joking you when I tell you that I, a recently new community college student entering IT, have had more fun doing paperwork to get into college than I had actually being Zapp Brannigan, because this game REFUSED to let me just be an actual pulpy hero.
Like, I get that there are paths and progressions towards these things to make the victory taste more sweet, but the paths to getting a fully upgraded rifle of all things ROBBED the successful feeling of growth from me. It was vastly less of a triumphant "YES, FINALLY!" And infinitely more of a sore, aching, frustrated "Fucking finally.
But what REALLY got my goat was at the end of the questline where I take out the Crimson Fleet and their captain, and not only did the final confrontation become locked to me, but my save files DELETED THEMSELVES. Yes, for some reason, my Lvl 30 save got deleted, and kept deleting themselves until it hit 26, and the only reason it stopped was because I deleted the game.
Making me do boring shit to finally have a blip of fun was one thing, but tossing the boring shit I slogged through into the shredder and stepping me back by force is UNFORGIVABLE! If I had the misfortune to meet Todd Hiward after that, I'd wedgie him so hard I'd stick the elastic in his teeth for double the flossing. Followed by a summary kick in the gooch. Yes, I was that furious.
In fact, I was so pissed that, as of speaking, I am working to make a Minecraft Modpack or two (either 1.12.2 or 1.19.2) where I can actually do this shit better. Will the writing be better? Probably not. Will it be more fun? Absolutely!
Oh, and about the "not playing it multiple times" deal where Bethesda forced you to see everything the first time? Nope, you need to go through multiple NG+ to get the best gear in the game and see alternate timelines. And that's a total of TEN NEW GAME PLUS' TO GET THE BEST GEAR!
Pony Stockholm syndrome of appeasement.
I feel you man, the concept makes me want to enjoy it so bad, and I honestly had fun designing my ship, but it doesn't really mean anything cus you can't do much with it
This is why all unmodded Bethesda games absolutely need to have console commands enabled so you can just skip all the dumb bullshit and have the fun you want your own way
@@afterglow1478 thank you for letting me read this angry child's moan about losing his save file to the game's antics. Got a laugh out of it again. 🤣
Todd "tell me lies" Howard and that hack Emil Pagliarulo need to be demoted. That would be a good start ...
You're being so unfair to my boy Sam! He's going through a divorce, is a single father. He was trying his best to move on, he even created a tinder profile and had just started going to the gym and to therapy! 😭
Jokes aside, great job on this one. You keep getting better and better with each video. I can't wait to see what you'll do next!
But look on the bright side! 1 new vehicle is coming and it'll definitely work as intended!
You can use it to drive around the empty planets!
Yeah, intended behavior is "Buggy"
I hate this argument that we should not compare games, especially games made by the same company/genre. We all know, in spite of all the Skyrim flaws we were made aware of after hundreds of hours later, It was groundbreaking. Now, wanting Starfield to be like Skyrim is indeed wrong but as a customer, the expectation that we have are that, the new games, made by the same studios/devs with more modern technology will not only EXPAND the features that made past games successful, USE all the years of experience to built something as good or near as good as Skyrim. ALL of which Starfield DID NOTHING. The stripped out / barebone features, recycling and not improving a few features and the worse is, EXPECTING that the MODDING community (which in my opinion, made Skyrim even more Successful) will FIX the game for free while not even care to give players a Proper Patch fix for months. Just compare the amount of fixes and added stuff Baldurs gate 3 implemented, with Starfield months after the release and you will understand why Starfield is and will always be, even with mods, a failure.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with comparing games. I just want to approach criticism by evaluating each product on its own merits, rather than making comparison my central argument. I'll use comparison to form an argument, but not to denounce a game entirely
The stiff, robotic humans; the world catered to your experience; the constant loading screens--they all point to one thing. This is a video game adaptation of the film Futureworld (the sequel to Westworld,) and depicts the experience of a future tourist going to a super immersive space theme park for the ultra wealthy.
We know why starfield was bad. It was because of "FUCKING PRONOUNS!".
Still makes me laugh
I know right. That video was so dumb that even people who agree with him thought it was over dramatic.
I thought it was lazy pandering to a dumb political ideology, but I just ignored it and went about by business.
@epicrotfl7017 Outrage culture infects everything, and comes from all sides. It's what gets the most attention on the internet, and therefore the most money.
Its ones of the reasons
@@MugthrakaIt's a symptom of one of the reasons
Sorry, but the guns don't look good. I mean sooome do. Most are just "make something sci-fi, don't think how it would operate". And, some guns even have broken animations in first person, but correct ones when being in third person camera
Bethesda is historically shit with weapon design, take the Fallout 4 "Assault Rifle" for example, which looks if a Lewis Gun from WW1 and the Prdywen had a risky one-night stand and 9 months later this abomination was born.
@@sergeantdornan4386 yep
no different with starfield,ak with a fucking plastic handguard ductaped on top of the wooden one,a pump shotgun where you pump forwards and it looks like the gun would break but it looks like it would break if you pumped backwards because the pump is way too far back.
I think Starfield is the best gaming example I've ever seen of a concept art team that cared and an everybody else who didn't
Starfield feels like instead of evolving, the studio suddenly went backwards but in the worst way possible
Going backwards wouldn't even be bad. It's more like they went sideways.
@@michaelmiradezandband yeah thats why wrote "in the worst way possible", its not like they return to their classic masterpieces
I stole a coffee mug to initiate the crimson fleet quest line in my NG+ run.
God I hate this game.
1:06:34 I thought you were going to refer to Mass Effect for a second because the anti gravity power is literally a rip off of the biotic lift. Starfield doesn't have an original bone in its body.
Well to honest psychic/magical power pushing/lifting people through the air isn't exactly a concept made up by Mass effect.
@@matijasostojic4288 true...but its not that alone that makes it feel disingenuous, its that in combination with everything else...the flat characters, the ripping off of their own material in Skyrim, the uninspired plot...
I feel like the "why do you have to join Constellation" issue could've been solved by making ships big and expensive, and housing Constellation IN a ship. They all live and work there, and instead of using satellites to search for new shiny rocks (in a universe with spaceships!), you go out and search WITH them.
So the idea is, you join Constellation to get access to their ship, and you decide where it goes and what they do, for some reason.
I also haven't actually played the game, so there may be some reason this isn't the best idea, but hey.
Starfield should have ended with the revelation that Barrett was right. you did get Cosmic Space Cancer and the Alien Powers accelerated your Death. But only if you walk away from Constellation. If you follow the main path, you come across a side quest near the end that hints at (and leads to) a cure for the deathly illness.
Stealth archer, no matter how many times we tried to play Skyrim we always devolved into stealth archers.
I'm watching part II already. Man, it's great to be a Patron. ☕
I got a friend who is a massive starfield stan and overall bethesda shill. What I notice with these types is that they sing the praises of Starfield and Todd. But they don't play the game. They quit playing in the first month after 50hrs and never touch it again. But never shut up about how good it is and how many "mods" it has.
It's a single player game dude and not everyone games as hardcore as you.
I guess I would fall in your category of not playing the game because I'll only play for 6 hours a day throughout one week and then not touch it for the rest of the month until I feel like playing again.
I can understand some games not having much reason to replay it, kinda like nier automata, but the thing is starslop is supposed to be the type of game u beat multiple times. The story literally gives u a in lore reason for it... But the game isn't very fun so there is no reason to be replaying it. Also what do mods have to do with the quality of the game... It's like saying a family car is better than a ferrari because it sold more.
Meanwhile, take a similar fan of Skyrim and just so much as mention the game to them and within a few hours they're redoing their mod load order to start a new game.
Skyrim was the beginning of the fall off, they legit didn't hire writers for most of the quests.
Its also proof that people dont like the Bethesda formula and only tolerate it if its laced with Fallout or Elder Scroll imagery and themes.
it's actually been stated by a employee at bethesda who no longer works there that the game was extremely rushed. and it shows hard this game is the very definition of wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle.
i like to say "wide as the atlantic,deep as a piss puddle"
Who's ready to star on their field
What are we? some kind of starfield?
and all this time i been fielding my star
I can't. I'm out of ship cage
The king is back
Captain*
@@Parzival0152 The Kingcaptain is back
I think it’s queen fr. It’s hard to say with this one
1. Bethesda really expected us to "make your own fun" like this is a school playground. No, b!tch, people paid money to get a *product* and they expect it to work as intended
2. A big reason Skyrim has lasted this long is because:
A) Its a solid game in its own right, with a hand crafted world and randomness that makes you WANT to lose yourself in it. Coupled with worldbuilding that is carried over from the other games
B) The memes
C) The modding community is absolutely *cracked*
All of which is sorely lacking in Starfield.
Yeah what sucks Bethesda used to be really good at making your each of your characters feel unique but ever since Skyrim they keep trivializing the choices you make at character creation which sucks.
Literally every choice in character creation matters, wdym?
they’re not impactful choices nor do they make your experience that different from others.
@@rances4418 role playing is about the choices you choose, and the backround you imagine. not about the traits and content the game gives you for choosing a class.
The traits just help you choose different dialogue options and give you a head start, there is no need to lock you to a play style, because you can just lock yourself.
There are *many* impactful choices so ig you didn’t play.
@@TheParagonIsDead List some traits that truly give impactful choices and explain how they are, saying people just didn't play the game doesn't help your argument.
@@bee6035 so you didn’t read? It gives you the choices no matter what, it’s about the role you choose (In your mind) that changes the outcome.
It's a good day when Mack posts.
It's even better when you join the Patreon to support him...do it if you haven't already... you know you want to!
I feel like Bethesda is the embodiment of a design intern, that does something good, gets praised for it, and then reuses the same fucking asset in their next 20 designs with literally no change whatsoever, regardless of whether or not it actually fits
14:52 It's sad state of affairs when saying that is considered "controversial" but extremely refreshing to hear!
I joked that it took him half an hour to find something praiseworthy. I was RIGHT!
Crazy how Gen Z thinks Skyrim is peak Bethesda 🥲
I mean, it kind of is. All the other good games in their franchises were not made by them.
@@Lux_Ferox that’s a fair point. I guess I should say “Peak Elder Scrolls”
@@PikaPower131313 That makes more sense yeah.
I'll be honest and say there's a lot of points in this review that feel like nitpicks. Like these are aspects I can ignore in a good video game because I'm having fun with the rest of it. But the problem with Starfield is there is no good parts. There's so many complaints and missed marks that it gets to the point where the game just isn't good. If you take a massive game like Elden Ring, it's very fun but also has quite a bit of flaws, like levelling up weapons, lack of exploration rewards in the late game, terrible weapon balancing, etc. But people still love Elden Ring because it's so immersive and defeating bosses feels so euphoric. There's no part of Starfield that makes up for its flaws, which just makes the entire game a mediocre slop fest of a video game with no passion behind it.
Edit: Just finished watching the video and Mac was right. Starfield IS worse than I thought. Not only is every aspect mediocre, but it ALSO has an inherent flaw in its design where your actions don't matter. It wants to railroad you through a story, which is probably the worst option they could have chosen because every story beat is terrible. A bad story wouldn't matter, IF YOU DIDNT MAKE A STORY BASED RPG. The fact that Starfield forces you into its story and characters amplifies every single flaw it has. It shows you its choices don't matter, it shows you that its writing is terrible, and it shows you that its world is hollow. Holy shit this game is bad.
And all that one path story where your choices don't matter is in a game whose entire story is to justify NG+ in game, so you can do it all again.
vendors having infinite money to buy from you makes more sense in a scifi space game, since, you know, digital banking exists. in a fantasy setting it makes more sense - vendors need to keep the coin on them, it lends a little realism that they can't have enough to buy everything off you. but like. major vendors should have effectively infinite money in a game like starfield.
The game will forever be my favorite bad game, the way Bethesda f-ed it up is almost in every possible way feels intentional. Like a factory product optimized to consistently break exactly after warranty. It's impressive in a weird way.
Stanfield is if Xenoblade 3 Mobius designed a game .It doesn't feel like a human made it.
I think it feels like a poorly executed mashup of the 1st Mass Effect, Fallout 4, and No-Man's Sky. It tries to do all of it but doesn't succeed at any of it.
It tries to have an epic space story with notable characters like Mass Effect, but fails at creating a compelling story with memorable characters.
It tries to have the RPG elements and customization Fallout, but it doesn't contain the depth of those systems. Even the gunplay feels the same.
It tries to have the space exploration of No Man's Sky, but it drops the ball by making exploration boring and unrewarding.
I think the game would have been better if they focused on exploring a few solar systems with rich, detailed worlds with varieties of different features and memorable characters instead.
@@ShadowMoses900 The second I comprehended the "The funny rock may have messed with your head and we don't know what that means" line from Mack (around 30:20), my first thought was "This is Dragon Age: Inquisition."
It seems the "unwilling inductee" trope has a grip on more of BioWare than I'd thought lol
@@ShadowMoses900 classic design philosophy of: "we have to please everybody" forgetting that u cannot do that and the result is always uninspired slop. Refer to: resident evil 6, starfield, fallout 4 (don't think it's bad but it tries to be too much and would be better if focused on having less be better) and others.
I've been saying this since fo4; Bethesda is out of ideas, lazy, and stuck in 2010. They haven't kept with the times and when you're releasing alongside the context of every game thats come out in the last 13-14 years thats basically a death sentence.
The crazy thing about the enemy variety is that Fo4 had a decent amount of it, with unique enemy types all with unique animations, different abilities and different ways you could interact with them. You'd think a game with aliens would allow for that same level of creativity but i guess not, dont know what went wrong there.
Something that I noticed about how you’re forced to join Constellation
Prior Bethesda games have mostly treated factions as mandatory for the main story… but never which faction. Even if you’re indebted to a group, you are never forced to join them. Theoretically you should despise the Imperials in Skyrim for falsely lining you up for execution, but you can still join them (and considering how off his rocker Ulfric is, that might be the right choice). Likewise you can still side with the Institute despite how awful they treat the populous of the commonwealth.
Starfield’s story could’ve worked much better if the faction opportunities that they advertised were actually implemented into the main story. SURE you can join Constellation, but perhaps you’d rather go work for the pirates or an independent system.
yeah, there was a clear and easy opportunity to have multiple factions fight over the artifacts that give you special powers, instead, nobody outside constellation ever gets any knowledge or effect on the main quest. the greedy crimson fleet or the power hungry UC/FC trying to get an edge in the war. the game beats you over the head with the main story and railroads you into joining and then doesnt make it interact with the rest of the game at all. you cant even talk about it with anyone outside of constellation.
??? you aren't forced to join it you can literally say no to them and move on and do something else
@@chaserseven2886as Mack says “if your choice boils down to playing the main story of the game or not, then that’s not really a choice”
@@chaserseven2886that's dumb though, you should have an option to not join and still play the main quest
Damn! That was a good video, way better than the other 2 hour long Starfield videos talking about loading screens
So~ fun fact that will piss you off even more about the UCF quest line.
You don't need to get a bounty to get it. Or even be a bad guy.
If you complete the Vanguard quest line, you're INVITED to Commander Asshat's ship and OFFERED the job.
I still refer to him as Commander Asshat despite having been a good boi in my one and only playthrough because I shot *A* guy on one infiltration mission and he chewed me out like I was the biggest piece of s* he'd ever seen in his bed. Reloaded a save and did it right because, again, good boi.
Was irritating how he talked to THE Vanguard that uncovered the terraformer threat like that.
Makes sense now because Bethesda is bad at their jobs.
Starfield feels like it was AI generated. My biggest issue is it's a game literally about exploring with nothing to explore. There's nothing worth finding. At least nothing on the level of Skyrim or Fallout. I still play Skyrim and still find things I haven't seen before. The sense of scale and adventure in that game is amazing especially compared to Starfield.
Also, Constellation would be a side faction in other Bethesda games.
Even the names feel like ChatGPT made them. Terrormorphs is by far the most egregious example. Even the names of the setting is weak. "The Settled Systems." And Freestar Collective? This is literally something you could get off Fantasy Name Generators.
What is so crazy to me is Todd started the idea of more immersive AI! If you remember way back when Oblivion ranted on about radiant AI you would of thought that this guy was so in tune with what gamers want. But....Emil stepped in and I think Bethesda actually listened to this guy and his KISS game design. Oblivion was immersive why, well the writers include some of the greatest writers in game design such as Ted Peterson, Michael Kirkbride and Ken Rolston. But a mysterious intern was making his way up the ranks! Emil also worked on Oblivion, as a voice actor......
saying new Atlantis feels like its from 2015 is an insult, The Witcher 3 came out that year and its environments including cities all feel more alive, just the grass billowing in the winds adds so much compared to Bethesda's dead static feeling environments
Paper doesn't taste that bad, hear me out.
Ok
@@treasureedison548 have a nice day
For anyone that wants to play Starfield, just play Prospector. It’s free and more immersive space explorer.
We eating good today lads
I saw a guy saying that it gets better 20-40 hours later
He wants me to eat a chocolate covered in feces so that I had to eat the feces to get to the chocolate, but in the end, it was covered by feces to begin with and it left a bad taste in my mouth, and ya know what? After 20-40 hours, I ate a low tier chocolate
Let's not forget that they already did the "you have to go to prison to progress" thing during Skyrim in Markarth for the Forsworn questline (also during Oblivion in Bruma for the Arnora/Jorundr quest) and it was implemented much more organically in those games
Fallout:
Let's make the Elder Scrolls WITH GUNS
Starfield:
Let's make the Elder Scrolls IN SPACE
bethesda has made the same exact game in just a new setting 10 times over now
I wish that this was true, Starfield would be so much better if it was just Morrowind or Skyrim in space
ah yes because other companies like fromsoft don't do the same thing
@@chaserseven2886 True, but they at least put some effort in.
@@chaserseven2886 never said they dont
@kizunadragon9
out of all criticism of starfield, this is the one I find completely brainddead.
as if ES in space would be a bad thing.
I never liked Bethesda. I thought Skyrim was bug-ridden trash and Fallout 3 was just boring. However, I was really hoping Starfield would be good so that all of the Bethesda fans would be happy.
i really wasn't expecting a videogame video, i'm not mad, just surprised
I am a man of many interests
@@CaptainMack yeah, i could tell by your past videos
Nothing more relaxing than an extensive video essay dunking on Starfailed and Bugthesda.
54:39
Plz no yel 🥺
👉👈
...he, in fact, yelled at me more. 😔
But it's hot! I want him to yell at me 😏
@@Infernum639rip
I mean I cared more what happen to Radahn then I did for even Barrett….
…we meet Radahn twice in a fight and he never we even talks…let that sink in TODD!
I liked the 2 miners you work with at the start more than any of the real companions, I was pretty sad to find out they can't do anything other than be on a ship or outpost.
Starfield is the culmination or rereleasing skyrim on every platform, over & over again. Creation Engine is just a Skyrim factory to satisfy shareholders who are institutionally against something new & creative since it isn't a guaranteed cash cow. So, we got Skyrim in space: institutionally safe & non threatening. Something made in a focus group.
Its a refreshing intro for one reason: I'm tired of hearing about how Fallout: New Vegas helped people navigate middle school. Hours and hours spent gushing about how Caesar helped them discover their sexual identity. Sobbing, tear filled explainations about how Veronica taught them about true love. Thats basically the default Bethesda fanboy video introduction.
Thank you for going in a different direction. 🎉
Heck yeah! Funny man is back with a long video after 8 months!
(Btw, nice hair Mack)
I remember the moment I said fuck this game. It was actually the cop quest where I had taken a raider ship and was bringing it planet side to register. I was caught because there was contraband in the hold and I got the special interrogation scene. I didn't like being treated by some career criminal when I complied with the space cops and told the guy to go pound stardust and, after that on my screen a little pop up came up that aid "Join the pirates" and I had the thought "WHAT PART OF THAT DID I EVER CLAIM I WANTED TO BE A PIRATE?" I just wanted to pay the fee, turn over the illegal goods and go about my day but nope, apparently if I don't side with the cops I instantly want to be a pirate.
Bathesda was never the company we thought it was . Skyrim did not age well imo . After playing New Vegas . it's actually sad how little you can do compared to a game like new vegas given that they come from the same engine
When I stole a bunch of random junk in the New Atlantis starport storage, I got taken to the UC commander, and was given that Crimson Fleet job. I told him "no", and was sent to Mars jail - but not Mars jail, because I was spawned *outside* the jail, with no guards, and expected to walk myself in willingly.
So I turned around, walked out of Mars jail, and not a single person I passed cared - despite the fact I would have had to walk past them in order to get to the point that I spawned at.
I have a feeling that Bethesda looked at their previous games & thought modders will do all of the work for their company free of charge
overlooking the fact that people have to like the game to spend time making mods for it, they didnt even set up the modding scene properly. changing the file system to be less open to changes and taking over 6 months to release the modding kit made sure that the modders didnt bother with starfield.
you missed one obvious reason why there are no enemies to test your power: the power you get is cimpletely RANDOM
Thanks for the video brother! What is your opinion on The Binding of Isaac?
Thank you! I haven't played Binding of Isaac much, but I like rogue lites a lot, so I want to play it more eventually