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.
"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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
To be fair it takes balls to not admit being shot despite getting shot point-blank with a paintball gun. Very much different than not admitting getting hit when playing dodgeball.
Half Life, a game 25 years older than Starfield, has NPC reactions to gunfire. They will cover, or run away, and they even have varying reactions towards friendly fire. The game even has fucking Cockroach AI so there's no acceptable excuse for Starfields piss poor NPC reactions
"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.
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.
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!
@@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
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?
Yeah but instead of filling their game with an insane amount of content that wherever you go you will find something to do they did the opposite. They put nothing in their game
@@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.
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.”
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!
@@ericm3327 I agree about the combat being either too difficult or too easy depending on whether you use auto targeting. You have settings that can mitigate the grind or you can play in creative mode. My problem is I can't play with a controller at all, because I can't aim quick enough in combat. And if you're gonna use the quick target key, you can play blindfolded. But, interestingly, this doesn't destroy the experience for me. No Man's Sky is about an infinite journey and it accomplishes that goal in spades! When you get tired of being on the road trip, essentially, you get tired of the entire 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.
Feels like Cyberpunk with that shady implants dealer that you visit him in a quest and you can beat him or not, and if you beat him you loose access to him as a vendor. The game buzzes on your ears the whole quest about how this guy's tech is trash, the scenario shows you them, even your character says this, so any normal player will think thar hitting him isn't a big deal because you'll only loose access to trash gear. Turns out he sells some of the strongest implants in the game. And people keep comparing Starfield to Cyberpunk as an example of a better game
@@renanleandro5914 see, that right there is an example of not conveying potential consequences is a good light, whereas in the Starfield example, never ONCE is it even implied that there MIGHT be a potential consequence one way or the other. Especially because this type of impact is never seen before or after, it's a one-time unique impact on the WHOLE GAME WORLD for that playthrough and they don't even have the decency to tell you the consequences either way. I had to go out of my way to look up what the best engines in the game were and how to get them, turns out I had unlocked them like 20 hours earlier, but they only show up in the vendor inventory of one unique kiosk inside a tiny building in Neon that is never mentioned.
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.
@@Axterix13 They at least would have, in theory, let you cover the long boring distances faster, getting the tedious trips over with. Except apparently not.
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.
It really is baffling. This is the game that they took 8 years to make? This is Todd's dream game which he's been 20 years thinking about making but didn't had the technology yet? What amazing technology is being used here?
😂😂😂 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😂🤦🏽♂️
55:44 in cyberpunk, there are multiple times when an npc draws a gun on you and tells you not to take another step and will actually kill you if you do
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
@@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.
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.
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.
Or have it simply be "Join up with us and we'll put scanning stuff on your ship so we can make sure that whatever happened with the magic rock doesn't kill you"
Todd was right, there's lots of fun to be derived from Starfield... by watching it get dunked on till the end of time. Genuinely laughed all the way through this. Great video. Looking forward to checking your other stuff.
"Bethesda knew there was a sizable chunk of their audience that wouldn't care about this" Wasn't there a showcase for the game where Todd talked about all the blank slate planets that would be in the game for people to build their own stories on or some bullshit? That's literally saying "yeah we're not gonna make the game. Modders can do that shit" which is actually crazy.
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 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 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
This is by no means meant as a derogatory comment, just an observation, but watching the intro and listening to what you said, made me realise I've been playing video games longer than a lot of people are alive.
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......
I think a easy way to get you to want to join Constellation would've been instead of just saying you might have a space tumor. Have the rock give you the 1st gravity magic, but you can't control it. So randomly stuff just starts levitating around you. That's when Barret says "Oh I've got some buddy's at Constellation that could maybe help." Then when you get to Constellation you have a fit of anti grav. The scientist lady says "Oh that had the same readings as the artifacts! Put yours over there and let me analyze it... Yeah so I bet if you find a few more (Or go to the source), you can get that power under control." That makes you want to: #1 Go get the powers. (I played 90% of the game not knowing there was space magic in it. Since I stayed off the main story quest for as long as possible.) 2. Makes you want to be a part of Constellation, cause they can help you get your powers under control.
Thanks for the NPC reactions rant, I fucking hated people saying you couldn't compare BG3 to Starfield because they are different games. Like completely ignoring the fact Starfield NPCs felt a decade behind, and the games came out a fucking month apart.
people love to hate on pagliarulo, but he's just one example of the real issue, that Bethesda doesn't have writers anymore and leaves the design of their setting up to individual questline developers throwing cliches at the wall.
On the topic of people not reacting to guns and gunfire... Gothic, an Action RPG released in 2001, had its NPCs being very cross with the player if they drew a weapon near them without enemies being present, and especially in towns. And if you did not put it away right quick, the went and beat you to a pulp. That was 23 years ago. Bethesda is a damn joke at this point, only no one is laughing.
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 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 should be noted that Bethesda had been doing false advertising for their games since day 1, before Todd was even involved. TES Arena was originally going to be a party based arena fighting game, hence the name. They had already advertised and pretty much created the party based system, but changed their minds mid development and made a different game.
They went to the trouble of making a space pirate class, and created and entire space pirate faction you can join just to have every system in the game actively discourage you from roleplaying as one.
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.
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.
@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.
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 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
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
1:01:38 I've been playing through Yakuza like a dragon, and it's been an incredibly different experience to what I've been used to in western RPG games. The game feels alive, the dialogue is funny and the characters feel more human. Yakuza is the kind of game that Bethesda would look down on, just like Ubisoft looked down on elden ring (lol) and they are worse off for it.
If skyrim and starfield got released both at the same time in 2011. I would still pick skyrim. If oblivion and starfield came out back when oblivion was released i would pick oblivion If fallout 3 and starfield got released the same day i would pick fallout
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.
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.
Fantastic video! I was laughing my ass off at the OJ, and I love that you kept bringing that back as it went on. "I haven't forgotten about your BS 'reward', game!" Really well-thought out and so far your explanations make a lot of sense. And I still love that you provide alternative examples of how things you complain about could have been handled better. It shows the contrast between dispassionate people working on a game as a product and someone who is passionate about games. Looking forward to part 2!
42:00 I think the biggest difference as far as long-distance communication goes is that you were on New Atlantis, and he calls you in the same star system. There's no need for FTL communication then... But that's just offering explanations when the writing doesn't, so it's probably not how it was intended.
Man the Captain's content is honestly super entertaining to watch, especially in this video. Looking for all the random editing details is such a treat for my eyes
Starfield is the definition of an anti-passion project. Made by slapping together ideas and concepts from better games and Fankensteined into existence with no soul.
Don't get me started on the outposts. What's the point? I can't sell items in bulk because vendors have a cap on what they can buy, so I now have a planet filled with high-end manufacturing components I can't do anything with. They left out simple features you find in other base building games such as inventory management and organized storage. What a waste of potential.
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.
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.
@@Ordoscc will do
@@TheRealRealToddHowardand get rid of Emil.
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.
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
"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.
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.
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 🤣🤣
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
My expectations are already at the bottom, hence why I'm not wasn't money on vast majority of games. Also because I'm poor but that's whatever.
@@KaimArgonarEyyyy Yeah, Im pretty much in the same boat
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.
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.
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.
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?
To be fair it takes balls to not admit being shot despite getting shot point-blank with a paintball gun. Very much different than not admitting getting hit when playing dodgeball.
Half Life, a game 25 years older than Starfield, has NPC reactions to gunfire. They will cover, or run away, and they even have varying reactions towards friendly fire. The game even has fucking Cockroach AI so there's no acceptable excuse for Starfields piss poor NPC reactions
"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.
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.
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!
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!"
Holy shit that’s hilarious
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
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.
genuinely went up and got a glass of OJ from the fridge during this vid. marketing works.
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
"We are not afraid to put things into our games majority of players will miss." - Hidetaka Miyazaki
Bethesda is the exact opposite.
Yeah but instead of filling their game with an insane amount of content that wherever you go you will find something to do they did the opposite.
They put nothing in their game
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.
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.”
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!
RIP the copyright protection boys :(
They are on vacation in Europe
The best way to play Starfield is to just go play No Man's Sky instead.
Pretty much. Especially if you desire to be a pirate.
No man’s sky is okay but it’s just too much gathering stuff. And ship combat is not good at all
@@ericm3327 I agree about the combat being either too difficult or too easy depending on whether you use auto targeting. You have settings that can mitigate the grind or you can play in creative mode. My problem is I can't play with a controller at all, because I can't aim quick enough in combat. And if you're gonna use the quick target key, you can play blindfolded. But, interestingly, this doesn't destroy the experience for me. No Man's Sky is about an infinite journey and it accomplishes that goal in spades! When you get tired of being on the road trip, essentially, you get tired of the entire 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.
That's actually worse.
@@billjacobs521 correct.
Feels like Cyberpunk with that shady implants dealer that you visit him in a quest and you can beat him or not, and if you beat him you loose access to him as a vendor.
The game buzzes on your ears the whole quest about how this guy's tech is trash, the scenario shows you them, even your character says this, so any normal player will think thar hitting him isn't a big deal because you'll only loose access to trash gear.
Turns out he sells some of the strongest implants in the game.
And people keep comparing Starfield to Cyberpunk as an example of a better game
@@renanleandro5914 see, that right there is an example of not conveying potential consequences is a good light, whereas in the Starfield example, never ONCE is it even implied that there MIGHT be a potential consequence one way or the other. Especially because this type of impact is never seen before or after, it's a one-time unique impact on the WHOLE GAME WORLD for that playthrough and they don't even have the decency to tell you the consequences either way. I had to go out of my way to look up what the best engines in the game were and how to get them, turns out I had unlocked them like 20 hours earlier, but they only show up in the vendor inventory of one unique kiosk inside a tiny building in Neon that is never mentioned.
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.
Yeah...Bethesda's Game Design is Thoughtless and Insulting.
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.
@@Axterix13 They at least would have, in theory, let you cover the long boring distances faster, getting the tedious trips over with. Except apparently not.
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.
It really is baffling.
This is the game that they took 8 years to make?
This is Todd's dream game which he's been 20 years thinking about making but didn't had the technology yet?
What amazing technology is being used here?
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😂🤦🏽♂️
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
55:44 in cyberpunk, there are multiple times when an npc draws a gun on you and tells you not to take another step and will actually kill you if you do
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
Or have it simply be "Join up with us and we'll put scanning stuff on your ship so we can make sure that whatever happened with the magic rock doesn't kill you"
Todd was right, there's lots of fun to be derived from Starfield...
by watching it get dunked on till the end of time.
Genuinely laughed all the way through this. Great video. Looking forward to checking your other stuff.
"Bethesda knew there was a sizable chunk of their audience that wouldn't care about this"
Wasn't there a showcase for the game where Todd talked about all the blank slate planets that would be in the game for people to build their own stories on or some bullshit? That's literally saying "yeah we're not gonna make the game. Modders can do that shit" which is actually crazy.
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 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.
My first contact with Minecraft was seeing people build giant swastikas on 4chan, it's hard for me to associate that with anyones childhood
@@UPter0nAssociate Minecraft or associate Swastikas with anyone's childhood?
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. 🤣
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 😂
This is by no means meant as a derogatory comment, just an observation, but watching the intro and listening to what you said, made me realise I've been playing video games longer than a lot of people are alive.
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......
The king is back
Captain*
@@Parzival0152 The Kingcaptain is back
I think it’s queen fr. It’s hard to say with this one
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 think a easy way to get you to want to join Constellation would've been instead of just saying you might have a space tumor. Have the rock give you the 1st gravity magic, but you can't control it. So randomly stuff just starts levitating around you. That's when Barret says "Oh I've got some buddy's at Constellation that could maybe help." Then when you get to Constellation you have a fit of anti grav. The scientist lady says "Oh that had the same readings as the artifacts! Put yours over there and let me analyze it... Yeah so I bet if you find a few more (Or go to the source), you can get that power under control."
That makes you want to: #1 Go get the powers. (I played 90% of the game not knowing there was space magic in it. Since I stayed off the main story quest for as long as possible.) 2. Makes you want to be a part of Constellation, cause they can help you get your powers under control.
I like that idea, great job!
Thanks for the NPC reactions rant, I fucking hated people saying you couldn't compare BG3 to Starfield because they are different games. Like completely ignoring the fact Starfield NPCs felt a decade behind, and the games came out a fucking month apart.
14:54 even though this game aged like milk this moment aged like fine wine
I stole a coffee mug to initiate the crimson fleet quest line in my NG+ run.
God I hate this game.
Hell yeah, an hour of Starslop
Todd "tell me lies" Howard and that hack Emil Pagliarulo need to be demoted. That would be a good start ...
people love to hate on pagliarulo, but he's just one example of the real issue, that Bethesda doesn't have writers anymore and leaves the design of their setting up to individual questline developers throwing cliches at the wall.
On the topic of people not reacting to guns and gunfire... Gothic, an Action RPG released in 2001, had its NPCs being very cross with the player if they drew a weapon near them without enemies being present, and especially in towns. And if you did not put it away right quick, the went and beat you to a pulp. That was 23 years ago. Bethesda is a damn joke at this point, only no one is laughing.
Stealth archer, no matter how many times we tried to play Skyrim we always devolved into stealth archers.
The entire community Bethesda created: "our expectations were low, BUT HOLY FUCK"
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 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.
how the hell can anyone immerse into it with such shity towns?
akila is the worst thing in starfield
It should be noted that Bethesda had been doing false advertising for their games since day 1, before Todd was even involved. TES Arena was originally going to be a party based arena fighting game, hence the name. They had already advertised and pretty much created the party based system, but changed their minds mid development and made a different game.
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
They went to the trouble of making a space pirate class, and created and entire space pirate faction you can join just to have every system in the game actively discourage you from roleplaying as one.
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.
I don’t know how true this is but I hear the convincing dialogue is randomly taken from a pool.
54:39
Plz no yel 🥺
👉👈
...he, in fact, yelled at me more. 😔
But it's hot! I want him to yell at me 😏
@@Infernum639rip
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
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 was the litmus test for game reviewers, you know who’s real and who isn’t based on how they reviewed it
I'm watching part II already. Man, it's great to be a Patron. ☕
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.
Damn! That was a good video, way better than the other 2 hour long Starfield videos talking about loading screens
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
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 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
Skyrim was the beginning of the fall off, they legit didn't hire writers for most of the quests.
14:52 It's sad state of affairs when saying that is considered "controversial" but extremely refreshing to hear!
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
1:01:38 I've been playing through Yakuza like a dragon, and it's been an incredibly different experience to what I've been used to in western RPG games. The game feels alive, the dialogue is funny and the characters feel more human.
Yakuza is the kind of game that Bethesda would look down on, just like Ubisoft looked down on elden ring (lol) and they are worse off for it.
If skyrim and starfield got released both at the same time in 2011. I would still pick skyrim.
If oblivion and starfield came out back when oblivion was released i would pick oblivion
If fallout 3 and starfield got released the same day i would pick fallout
They should have just made Garfield
A space adventure about a cat
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
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.
Fantastic video! I was laughing my ass off at the OJ, and I love that you kept bringing that back as it went on. "I haven't forgotten about your BS 'reward', game!"
Really well-thought out and so far your explanations make a lot of sense. And I still love that you provide alternative examples of how things you complain about could have been handled better. It shows the contrast between dispassionate people working on a game as a product and someone who is passionate about games. Looking forward to part 2!
Thank you so much! You're very kind, I'm really glad you enjoyed the video
"Vlad's kindness betrays the fact that he used to be a big-time pirate."
I think you meant _belies._
I mean, the pirates let their hostages go if you ask nicely... sounds like kind pirates to me 😂
42:00 I think the biggest difference as far as long-distance communication goes is that you were on New Atlantis, and he calls you in the same star system. There's no need for FTL communication then... But that's just offering explanations when the writing doesn't, so it's probably not how it was intended.
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!
Man the Captain's content is honestly super entertaining to watch, especially in this video.
Looking for all the random editing details is such a treat for my eyes
Thank you! That's so sweet
@@CaptainMack awwwww no problemmm
I just wanted to say what was on my minddd! ^w^
Also can't wait for Part 2 to come out for us poor people lol!
Starfield is the definition of an anti-passion project. Made by slapping together ideas and concepts from better games and Fankensteined into existence with no soul.
Don't get me started on the outposts. What's the point? I can't sell items in bulk because vendors have a cap on what they can buy, so I now have a planet filled with high-end manufacturing components I can't do anything with. They left out simple features you find in other base building games such as inventory management and organized storage. What a waste of potential.
54:58 I've officially watched more of this video than I have played the game. And that's sad because I used to love Bethesda games.
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.