People don’t want to accept BGS is not the same company that made Skyrim and Oblivion anymore. Elden Ring and BG3 have already shown the next RPG that impacts the zeitgeist will not come from a studio that is as lazy and monetarily/micro-transaction obsessed as BGS has become. Todd’s interest is less in making great games anymore than getting paid from the sale of BGS to Microsoft and holding an oracle-like status in the gaming industry that comments on everything the way Elon Musk does from Twitter.
Seamless procedural space flight (without planetary exploration) is something they achieved in the 80's with the first Elite games. PCs back then were very primtive. The game's 3D models were all just simple wireframe models, but still an amazing feat of technology. I'm sure, if someone competent would build a space exploration game from the ground up with today's technology and progress of procedural generation, it would be amazing. Loading screens should be obsolete in exploration games due to streaming assets and very fast nvme storage and DDR5 RAM in large capacities in current PC's and consoles. Same with ReBAR. Most games don't make (good) use of the fast storage technologies. At least multi-core technology has progressed. But i think something like this will not happen in the 2020's due to the corporate landscape of subscriptions and microtransactions. Another problem i see is that games developed in the US are incorporating their political issues into games, which leads to confusion with international audiences. I don't live in the US and don't know what it's all about. It's even worse in movies and series, where thing have become very estranged.
You have successfully made me want to play this game... simply just to see how bafflingly it was designed first hand... Discourse is fun :) P.S. still not spending my money on it
saying this on an 8 hour video should put thing into perspective when people say that shit for video games. like just ask them to sit through this vid before forming an opinion
I think it's obvious it can't arrive that fast. Brexit made EU (Italy) - UK transfer of goods much, much more difficult. The people delivering it are probably still filling in forms or waiting at customs. I'm on the EU side and I make sure to never order anything from the UK, unless I want it delivered in 20 years. I think he should get his jacket in 1-2 weeks probably.
if they really meant to make the universe feel vast, empty and unexplored they did a really bad job, because you can find the same abandoned research station on every planet.
& wherever you choose to land on almost any planet there will be human POI’s in every direction! Where is the space exploration on behalf of humanity? ..Being the first human to set foot on a planet & plant a flag. The first person to encounter an alien creature. It all feels like it’s already been done by many others before you 😅
@@t-rexreximus359 "Please go to this unexplored planet, scan the natural resources and find this hidden temple no one has seen and that we can only track via a mysterious signal" And then you land on the planet, next to a FACTORY full of PEOPLE, and you can LITERALLY SEE THE TEMPLE IN THE BACKGROUND... It's literally insulting to players how badly written the situations are that are supposed to propel you into the game world.
@@ModuliOfRiemannSurfaces Modders aren't going to make this game fun for you. It was pretty selfish of so many people to just assume modders wouldn't have better things to do with their time than make such a boring, broken game enjoyable. It's not the job of modders to make this game good. Stop assuming that. Nobody is entitled to their creativity or effort. Wait forever.
Most Bethseda products are much better experienced as memories; I enjoy what I remember of Fallout 4 and even 76; the gameplay and vistas that are there are great to think about. But when I booted it up again, you remember the constant walking, the work and work that battles can be and its not fun, its just busywork to leave you with that one last image in your head you like.
@@kevinboyle9784 They are also mostly dated by the time they came out, gameplay easily broken and carried almost entirely by atmosphere, which is constantly shattered by bugs and jank requiring a will to ignore or laugh at it's problems. Modding culture exists for these reasons in Bethesda games.
Same. I think I got to like 6 hours, maybe, but that was really forcing myself to try and get into it. Which was such a shame because on paper Starfield is a perfect game for me lol.
Tbh, I’m sure there will be some critiques of this being too long, I’m a huge fan of the tangents. This isn’t a video essay, it feels like a long video of someone just, explaining stuff, and yknow I dig that.
As I said over in the Patreon post, this is VERY different from big deep dives I've done before. It's much more conversational in approach and I'm hoping it feels cozy and casual for the audience. I'm always down for feedback so I'm excited to see how people respond!
@@LukeStephensTVI just started but I'll be watching over the next 8 hours, once it's done I'll let you know what I think! Regardless of my future opinion though, this is a monumental feat. Good work dude
@@LukeStephensTV It gives me the feeling and idea of talking with friends about a game and showing each other video clips and information we found online about it.
The Astronauts landing on the mood werent bored because: - the whole earth was watching them ( great main story) - they where at a great risk all the time ( enviromental damage/ dangerous encounters got nerved) - they had cool rover to run around in ( no vehicles) - they had no loadingscreens every 5 seconds :)
It was also the first time anyone actually went to the moon. There was a whole joke in Futurama about people getting so bored with the moon that they just turned it into an amusement park.
I lost my ability to fall asleep without some kind of a podcast on background. I put on long nonsence videos (wh40k lore, star wars sequels critique, dark souls lore etc). Starfield discussions make a perfect lullaby. I expect to rewatch this monster of a video like 100 times. Thanks, Luke. My sleep schedule is now secure.
Hard disagree that Fallout 4 was the first time that BGS stopped focusing on details in their writing. Fallout 3 takes place 200 years after the Great War, but had nonsensical things like Vault 106 where psychotropic gas was pumped in to see what would happen, yet what do you find when you crack open this sealed vault? Crazy vault dwellers in pristine suits trying to kill you, people who, by all accounts you find in the Vault, should have been dead for 200 years. Then there's Little Lamplight, they're not even the product of some crazy vault experiment, they're just the descendant of _lost elementary school kids_ who decided they can't trust adults and started exiling everyone who _hit the ripe old age of 16,_ and somehow managed to maintain this for 200 years (let's not think too hard on how the kids had successive generations considering their policy, the writer clearly didn't). Also let's not forget the project the Vault Dweller's father wanted to revive was to take a fully functional Garden of Eden Creation Kit, which is a terraforming device that has the ability to instantly cleanse acres of land of radiation and revive the local ecosystem (shown to work in Fallout 2, it was used to build Vault City), *into a glorified water filter.* Worse yet, that giant water filter plant he built _pumps the cleansed water directly back into the irradiated lake it draws from._ Oh, and in the original ending your two _radiation immune companions_ refuse to flip the switch to turn on the filter for you, because it would fill the chamber full of lethal radiation. That's just _some_ of the terrible writing in Fallout 3. I didn't like Fallout 4's writing either, but it was still less offensive than Fallout 3's.
my favourite part of fallout 3 is when you get sent on a quest to find food and medicine... at the local supermarket.... and succeed. Anyone with a few braincells to rub together would have realised that a huge concrete building full of food would be a place everyone would seek shelter after an atomic war. Super-duper mart should have been the intro town, not Megaton.
@@Aerinndis Agree. Given that Cyrodiil should have been lush jungle and Imperial city vast, with abandoned parts.. And nothing like Vivec's dick-spear anywhere..
@MundaneThingsBackwards Whoa, you're reading too much into what I wrote. I didn't say Fallout 4's dialogue delivery or mechanics were better; I was talking about the attention to detail in the world building, how quests and locations fit into the context of the game setting, etc. and how Fallout 3 was terrible at that. Fallout 4 replaced most of their typical quest chains and locations with the settlement system, which did make the world feel incredibly empty and boring, but that also meant there was simply less terrible writing to be offended by.
@MundaneThingsBackwards Well, give me some examples instead of vaguely waving at how more choices and better dialogue somehow elevates the writing _as a whole._ I gave three examples, two are locations that don't make sense and the third is integral to the whole plot. No amount of good dialogue or choices fix the specific problems I pointed out about them. Fallout 4 does have something equally as bad: the ghoul kid in the fridge. Despite establishing ghouls do need food, the kid somehow magically survives being stuck in the fridge for hundreds of years and a slaver magically appears to buy him off you the second you open the fridge. Thing is, Fallout 4 is so boring and forgettable that it took me a while to recall that, despite playing it only 7 years ago (I waited two years after release for it to get plenty of community patches before buying it). By contrast, Fallout 3's world building was so bad that I still remember what offended me _in detail 16 years after playing it._ That's why I find it more offensive, because at least I remember what offends me.
The GOAT. This was one of the most comprehensive, intellectual, deep dive videos that I have ever seen. Well done Luke! You have definitely become my most preferred UA-camr. Keep up the great content; I'll be looking forward to more.
If you play this video on one monitor, and Noah Calwell-Gervais' 9 hour Fallout retrospective on another, it breaks the simulation and opens a portal back to the real world.
The way I describe Starfield = Skyrim in space but the devs didn’t love it and didn’t give it a soul. Couldn’t connect to one character. It’s basically the equivalent of the new Star Wars films. It has all of the parts to be good barring a personality.
@@chapman3713 I’ve seen PatricianTV’s and Private Sessions videos in their entirety as well as Nakey Jakey’s, Synthetic Man’s, and Strat-Edgy’s. I’ve watched about 30 hours of reviews for a game I haven’t played and have no intention of ever playing lol these long form videos ripping BGS a new butthole are addicting and I can’t stop watching them.
Private sessions was the best to me as I feel like me and him have the same idea of what makes a good bgs game, and I was constantly agreeing with everything he brought up.@@Chest_Rockwell1
Any good critiques of Bethesda's games from people in the 40+ age range that can be recommended? While I enjoy these other critiques, there is a lot missing from hearing from someone who was there for at minimum the release of Morrowind through til now. While Luke can look over old usenet/forum posts, he wasn't engaged at all in the 2000s with the critiques that already existed regarding Bethesda. I'd like to listen to someone who was.
@@AusTraLiaNPsyChO Super late reply and you've probably either found something already or moved on, but I have to shout out Zaric Zhakaron. Don't know if he actually fits that age bracket but even if not, he was most certainly in the ballpark and engaged with a lot of that stuff at the time. He's been talking Bethesda and the problems they've developed over time longer than most everyone else and the fact that no one else mentioned him here is disappointing.
Something I've learned through experience sounds like it would be very apt for this situation: Many hands may make light work, but TOO many hands make everyone confused about who's doing what.
It's crazy. In late 2023 we had 3 important points for RPGs. Baldur's Gate 3 hit first. Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion pack hit soon after. The story and interesting characters of BG3 and Phantom Liberty stand in sharp contrast superior to Starfield's.
I love how Emil at 8:08:00 manages to make himself the misunderstood genius, ridicule the player base who don't care about his lackluster stories AND those who dive into them. Yet he disregards the gaming stories written by people with actual talent that make people spend hours analyzing and speculating about it. Look at games with good writing like God of War, RDR2 or those with deep and interesting lore and characters like Elden Ring that people love to analyze. No Emil, the reason people don't take your writing seriously isn't because gamers make paper airplanes even when given the greatest American novels, it's because your writing is shit in comparison to the point where the best use of the paper it's written on is to make paper planes.
"Oh, this must be a compilation." *notices its all new and spits out coffee* I love Starfield critique because I think this game is the perfect storm of a lot of issues that have been building with BGS games that can no longer be ignored. Its a fun discussion, will listen in the bg at work.
I'll hire you tomorrow. Where I live in Washington state NO ONE wants to be employed. Personally I have bills so need to work. I'm crazy for thinking that's how it is for everyone. I was wrong lol
@@JohnTheSavageBNW So you want someone flaunting authority? I know how to code, I've been making games for hobby since 1999 and I actually understand what the "16x times the detail" quote really means (spoiler alert: nothing of value to a game). It's simply unforgivable that their game engine is still carrying bugs from Morrowind. That's all I need to say.
Imagine shouting in a fridge for hundreds of years and finding out ur family has been living in the same home all that time a few miles away. I’d be ducking furious with them. But no billy is not only patient but forgiving to the point where I think billy is actually Christ reborn
"If you search Emil, you'll find a lot of videos roasting him." Yup, because Emil is literally everything wrong with the story writing at BGS. He is the definition of: "Oh! Do this cool thing... We'll figure out canon later." Great example is the one you included here, and it gets worse! They actually created a backup character (Dr. Scara) who is pumped to work on Liberty Prime, just in case your story choices up to that point prevent you from getting Li out of the Institute... But rather than have some meaningful dialogue checks you could fail that would force you to go with the backup scientist, there is no way to fail this dialogue tree. If Li ends up on the Prydwen, she will ALWAYS end up working on Liberty Prime.
Seriously do not know how he hasn't been replaced yet. Sure he can make some interesting quests, but everything he writes completely lacks depth and is often nonsensical. I'm really not sure if the lack of depth and nonsense of the writing is his fault or that Bethesda isn't willing to put in the effort required to make a proper RPG with game altering decisions.
I love how Emil at 8:08:00 manages to make himself the misunderstood genius, ridicule the player base who don't care about his lackluster stories AND those who dive into them. Yet he disregards the gaming stories written by people with actual talent that make people spend hours analyzing and speculating about it. Look at games with good writing like God of War, RDR2 or those with deep and interesting lore and characters like Elden Ring that people love to analyze. No Emil, the reason people don't take your writing seriously isn't because gamers make paper airplanes even when given the greatest American novels, it's because your writing is shit in comparison to the point where the best use of the paper it's written on is to make paper planes.
People who say someone is "everything wrong with ______" are definitely missing the forest through the trees. You're focusing too much on one individual - maybe it's the way in which decisions are made in these corporate environments that is the problem.
@MundaneThingsBackwards no, Emil does not produce results. The sales are in spite of him, not because of him, and Bethesda would have to be deaf to not know that by this point. Something can sell well and be bad. Or have part of it be bad. Emil's take on ignoring critiques and criticisms about his writing explains EVERYTHING about games he's written. But he's Todd's buddy and therefore he's safe. Or he's always been safe til now; Microsoft might not think he's so safe.
1:16:25 You cannot kill major NPCs in Skyrim. Basically anyone tied to a quest is immortal, at least until you complete their content. Try killing Balgruuf and you will see him in the classic down on one knee animation no matter how many times you smack him.
Seeing ppl upset at Star Wars outlaws only taking 5 mins to get across the map , meanwhile Starfield having you walking 20 mins real time in empty planet . I’ll take the Star Wars outlaws lol
I’m sick of the bigger is better mentality when it comes to open worlds. I can’t even stand breath of the wild, it’s too big and too empty. I used to love that kind of thing when I was a kid, but now I just don’t have time for meaningless time wasters. I want a packed small open world. Weirdly Starfield gave me that and I know that sounds massively contradicting but it did. It didn’t want you to explore a vast emptiness. And I never did and I enjoyed it
The two biggest benefits to fast-travel is easily being able to take your loot back to your base and finishing a quest that's taken you all the way across the map, both without having shlep on foot back to where you need to go. The Horizon mod for FO4 has a nice mechanic that gives you virtual eyebots that scavenge and can carry loot for you.
Not far in, but I agree that many of Starfield's biggest critics are people that genuinely were looking forward to the game. A year before release I even thought it would beat out BG3 for me, because I had been playing it from day one of Early Access and was concerned I played around with Act I too much. I ended up being totally wrong and even a bit resistant to any future Bethesda title.
I don't mind fast travel being in RPG/Adventure/Open world games - in fact, I think its necessary as the maps keep getting larger and larger. I don't want to have to spend 20 minutes just to go from one place to another in a quest every single time if I don't want to. That being said, I don't want to HAVE to fast travel everywhere. I'd like it to be an option that I can take if I want. My issue with the game design of Starfield is you essentially HAVE to fast travel everywhere. There's literally no other way to get around.
Just got to the Pete Hines part where you defended him, but you didn't cover everything with him. When it comes to Starfield and the lies, he is the face for it. He did an interview around a week before release and when asked if you could fly from planet to planet he said he believes so. Which turned out to not be true. He also brought up how you can spend an entire real life week just exploring space and never landing on a planet, just space stations and exploring space. Obviously that was a massive lie. Todd deserves a lot of blame for a lot of things, and many of the fans deserve a lot of the blame for Starfield assuming features would be in the game when BGS never said they would be. But Pete Hines very much lied about features in this game more than once and he deserves some blame too.
The statements made by Starfield apologists whilst talking with Todd are bias, deceit, half truths, and saving face, because they’re talking with their idol, Todd Howard, and they don’t want to burn that bridge. No experienced, honest gamer and/or reviewer can defend Starfield. It’s impossible.
I mean he said "Skyrim is exactly what people wanted to see from the Elder Scrolls" and he just skipped over the first 2 Elder scrolls and the creator of the series and why the series was about to end and the creator left to paint Todd in a really good light.
This was actually really great. You can feel the amount of time it took you to research and organise all the information, 8h+ seems crazy but you made it not seem like 8h. Very enjoyable. Thank you
I still don't quite understand what people mean when they say Starfield had better combat than Fallout, or even really Skyrim. Maybe just on a basic mechanic level for the actual shooting, but from a satisfaction level I think it pales in comparison to their older games. Without the gore and with everyone basically just in full spacesuits all the time, combat felt a whole lot less interesting, and I think the general design of the alien wildlife made them far less interesting to fight as well, especially compared to things from the FO and ES series.
Skyrim had a far better variety of gameplay styles that make it 100x more interesting then starfield and the wildlife in starfield lacked focus all the creatures in fallout were interesting because we knew what they were how they came about and were easily distinguished in starfield whenever you come across a new alien species it just looks like some random shit slapped together and with a severe lack of interaction dialogue or lore with said creatures it feels more so that this is something that YOU the player interact with it doesn’t feel like a part of a well established world because there are no quests or npc interaction with alien life aside from the random chance hostile aliens attack a power station or something
@@Ornithopter470 That's what I'm getting at; without the intangibles, the technical is disappointing. So when people talk about it being improved compared to Fallout, it's a complete non-starter, the conversation should have always been that it's worse than Fallout, due to the lack of oomph, technicals be damned.
The janky combat and miserable AI is honestly one of the things that pissed me off the most about the game. Im in this base and theirs one idiot I havent killed and hes 4 rooms away crouched behind a box doing nothing and the gun play is just as jank as ever.
@@Mark-O-V They could've had the perfect mix of absolute nothing and extreme levels of life. The cities should've been 5-10x bigger, and to be honest there should've been at least 7 or 8 cities. The parts that are supposed to be beaming with life still make me feel completely alone. I feel more life in a Minecraft village.
@@RynJckif they did that the game would've been over 200 gigabytes😂. This game is already 120gb and it's mostly barren and empty so if they actually decided to fill up the game with life and cities it would need an insane amount of space
50:15 i feel like you are doing todd a bit dirty here. "all it took was morrowind, oblivion, fallout 3 and skyrim then todd was considered one of the best" you mean to tell me that making multiple goty's for a decade straight will get you a good reputation? who could have guessed?
Todd's first announcement of Redguard in 1996 was posted exactly 2 months after I was born... WOW. I'm still working my way through the video, and plan on finishing. Amazing job so far!!
It's so infuriating when people say "well you wouldn't want to walk all the way around a planet, that would be boring," and then in the next breath go "yeaaa moons are going to be barren and empty, that's realistic not boring." Its like ...... MF!! I would much rather have a smaller hand crafted solar system with a handful of really interesting and diverse planets, OR an expansive and realistic universe with survival sim mechanics and seamless exploration. But Bethesda decided to shoot for somethin in between those two and ended up pissing both camps off. Like why use procedural generation if you're only going to use it for a limited 1 sq km of map? Why create hand crafted points of interest if you are just going to copy and paste them on every planet??
It’s so frustrating lol I hate how many people do this realism cope. If it was like Kingdom Come Deliverance then it would make sense to argue realism. But they are arguing it in a game where you get space super powers lol. Like I have no problems melding realism with sci-fi, but when you then use realism as an excuse to stuff boring filler into a game, that’s where it gets irritating. Mass Effect 1 did barren planets. But you had the Mako which was so fun to drive around in that it made the barren planets way more fun to explore. There was always something to find and arguably Mass Effects lore is far more interesting so when you find a corpse on a barren planet that has a message about lore it felt mysterious.
Pretty sure it’s been explained that seamless planets are impossible because of how the creation engine works. Like, they would have to change multiple load bearing structures to make it work. Starfield’s biggest failures come from trying to make a game on an engine that CANNOT RUN THAT GAME.
I am currently deep into my 3rd full playthrough of The Outer Worlds, a game which works so well for me because it took a much more handcrafted approach to its biomes. It was also done in a much shorter time-frame and much lower budget than Starfield.
@@TheMarcHicks I was shocked that more people didnt mention the Outer Worlds when discussing Starfield. Like Fallout NV before it, Obsidian showed again they can do Bethesda RPG's better than Bethesda.
7:44:05 The reason fast travel exists, and should continue to exist for many games is simple, most games have nothing else to discover in between area's and travelling back and forth between places with nothing new to discover isn't fun for many people, fast travel thus removed the needless tedium that people do not wish to deal with. The counter argument for why fast travel should be in a game like Fallout 4 is because a core aspect of that game is exploration, but there's nothing really new to discover once you've been to a place, hence traveling through a place you've already explored just feels like unrewarding and pointless back peddling. If I want to sell things from my settlement storage, I don't want to have to travel to Diamond City and back 10+ times on foot, no I'd rather just fast travel and not waste my time more than I already am. You said with my exact counter argument at 7:52:26. It's not so bad in games like Cyberpunk 2077, because the world is beautiful and traversing it is fun, that was one of the few games that I never fast travel in because it takes about 5 minutes tops to travel from one side to the other and I love driving and listening to the music so much I just travel manually. But some games can take you dozens of minutes to get to where you want to go, with nothing but the ringing in your ears to keep you company.
It's actually really cool how the Howard brothers influenced so many people with their stuff. I grew up watching the Tinkerbell movies, then I started playing the Fallout games when I got old enough! 😯
42 min - that's just nonsense that that game had cutting edge graphics in 1997.. in 1998 there was HALF-LIFE. In 1996 first Quake released... Those were 3D games with seriously cutting edge graphics.. how could have that crappy 2D game had one of the best graphics in 1997? That doesn't make sense. It looks like a game from 1985. Todd was full of crap even then.
Starfield is definitely frustrating because I love the art style and exploring the hand crafted areas but finding those areas are very difficult. Still enjoy hopping into Starfield every once in a while but still can’t believe some of the decisions that they made when making the game.
For 8 hours though? I’d say the point has been made countless times, from many different sources, including Luke lol. I love Luke’s takes though, his videos are usually entertaining and informative.. but I have children, hobbies, stuff to do lol and there’s no way I could possibly dedicate that much time to a Starfield critique of all things. I do hope this is viewed by BGS staff eventually lol and maybe it’ll be influential one day, for the right people 🙏
And I finished it. A week or so later. In my car. While doing work. While eating. While doing chores. It's really good stuff, Luke (and team)! I enjoy your content.
I recently spent nearly 2 hours reinstalling the 85+ gigs that takes up Starfield just to get bored within the first 10 minutes. They didnt fix anything worthwhile to gameplay. The new "improved" map is still barely functional and the loading screens somehow feel longer now.
I very much dislike the rng looter shooter mechanics they started to add to their games, it became a crutch for the more interesting unique items they used to pepper throughout the game. If you're a hoarder you crave unique items, they're like little trophies you collect overtime and can reflect on your progress.
The absolute best thing about Starfield is the many several-hours-long deep dive videos people have made exploring Bethesda's ineptitude and what went wrong with the game.
I was using this video to test my new internet service which was just activated today. Soo that loading screen in the intro had me freaking out for a second 😅 Well played sir, well played
Do you think the reason they were marketing Starfield as “Skyrim in space” instead of Fallout is perhaps because of all of the negative press Fallout had been getting at the time with FO76? “Skyrim in space”, no matter how inaccurate a comparison, just gave off better vibes for Bethesda fans. Not sure how much that nickname had to do with the intended tone of the game. Just a thought.
Nah, it's because Skyrim is their biggest game with the longest lasting passionate fan base. "Skyrim in space" will capture way more people than "Fallout in space".
As someone whos worked in tech animation there's something that has bothered me about this game since before it launched and I'm shocked that I've never seen anyone bring it up so I'm gonna vent here... The character jumps, lands, and shortly after it rotates maybe 10-15 degrees to the left... it happens almost every time I see someone jump and its been present since before release in all the marketing videos. Drives me nuts 16:12
Every time you put that jacket on and absolutely swim in it, it seems to me like a good representation of how Bethesda fails. The heart is in the right place, but...details matter.
I just realized that, by the time you start the actual story in Fallout 4, Codsworth has been running non-stop for longer than the stuff he's running on had been produced, to the extent running out of it caused a world-wide resource crisis and eventually deleted the world in atomic war. How DID they ever run out of something that it takes longer to deplete than they've been producing it? I'm guessing their long-awaited tech was the procedural generation tool.
@@TheREALSimagination mkay You do know they're running on nuclear reactor right? That's the whole premise of the fallout universe. In the 50's they made incredible breakthroughs in atomic technology, even your pipboy is running on nuclear. So yeah, not getting you at all.
@@wolfgang4534 Ok, so they have tiny machines or whatever that make or sustains the fuel. I know they're not running on gas, and that's my point: how could they run out of this fuel when the tech allowed them to use it for so long at a time? Dunno how old your Mr. Handy is, but even if that fuel source was produced and put in the day before the game starts, that's still 210 years of fuel burning, plus the in-game time. I feel like, if everything had little generators to make them go instead of or in addition to the fusion core/cell/battery to preserve the run-time, that just makes it even more confusing how something could run fine for 200 years but the stuff ran out in supply and production in, what, 120 years?
Thank you, not a single review I've seen so far touched the financial part of the situation, that brings a lot of sense. Sad that yet another legendary studio became a corporate slave, but yeah, everyone have to pay checks.
A huge problem i have with starfield is that despite being the future human race, even taking into account that they are spread out among planets. The few cities we see have an IMMENSLY small population. Like skyrim has a larger population than the universe in starfield.
I know this is an old video, but I ended up selling my Series S around 3 or 4 months ago and I still miss Starfield and the gameplay loop. I loved building ships and slowly expanding outposts and adding different little details to them. This game would’ve been fantastic if after building outposts NPC‘s would show up and use your different areas. I’m sure there were reasons it couldn’t happen but I would spend so much time building an outpost and tweaking it and it would just feel so empty. If it weren’t for that I think the game would be in my top 10 all time
Hey Luke, I don’t agree with your statements about the design document. Most are not arguing that they don’t use design documents, it’s that they don’t use a CENTRALIZED design document (which is why we see stuff like starfield be so disjointed) It’s fine that they do document their work in sections but the fact that it doesn’t get compiled Into a centralized document is why the game ends up so disjointed.
They'll never let you choose an exact amount of credits to buy, you always have to buy slightly more than you actually need and end up with like 50 useless ones
wow, good editing. 8 hours, but feels dense and well edited. You didn't repeat yourself, and you went through each area well. Thoroughly enjoyable. It was fun to follow along with my more limited knowledge, with your added details. This is the longest actual review i've ever seen. Review of the game, the politics and everything else. So many other long videos like this are commentary live streams or venting, which is less focused and concise. I'd say this is my favorite and best source for the entire Starfield experience, from concept and politics, to actual game and reception.
Solid video. Just made it across the finish line. And because you put so much time in on it, I watched at 1x speed. I think your express alot of great points. Thank you for putting the time into doing this video.
Just got to the part where the original review is played, and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, I can't get over how much more I vibe with the tone of this video
Changing my comment, since you do mention christopher Weever getting screwed. Bethesda writing, nuka world dlc where you can become a raider leader and then go back to Preston and be like "who cares I'm a raider, what are you gonna do about it?!" And preston garvey just backs down after tearing into main character, says he'll still be the right hand man for the minute men.
Support me and the team directly and get cool perks: www.patreon.com/lukestephenstv
Or don't, I'm just glad you're here watching :)
You're not going to look good in that jacket with those pants or hair style.
People don’t want to accept BGS is not the same company that made Skyrim and Oblivion anymore. Elden Ring and BG3 have already shown the next RPG that impacts the zeitgeist will not come from a studio that is as lazy and monetarily/micro-transaction obsessed as BGS has become. Todd’s interest is less in making great games anymore than getting paid from the sale of BGS to Microsoft and holding an oracle-like status in the gaming industry that comments on everything the way Elon Musk does from Twitter.
Seamless procedural space flight (without planetary exploration) is something they achieved in the 80's with the first Elite games. PCs back then were very primtive. The game's 3D models were all just simple wireframe models, but still an amazing feat of technology.
I'm sure, if someone competent would build a space exploration game from the ground up with today's technology and progress of procedural generation, it would be amazing. Loading screens should be obsolete in exploration games due to streaming assets and very fast nvme storage and DDR5 RAM in large capacities in current PC's and consoles. Same with ReBAR. Most games don't make (good) use of the fast storage technologies. At least multi-core technology has progressed.
But i think something like this will not happen in the 2020's due to the corporate landscape of subscriptions and microtransactions. Another problem i see is that games developed in the US are incorporating their political issues into games, which leads to confusion with international audiences. I don't live in the US and don't know what it's all about. It's even worse in movies and series, where thing have become very estranged.
You have successfully made me want to play this game... simply just to see how bafflingly it was designed first hand...
Discourse is fun :)
P.S. still not spending my money on it
do fallout 4!
I think you’ve crossed the 10 minute mark Luke………..
Just a bit
Just how do u create an 8 hours Starfield rant???
yea he really stretch the video for that 10 minute mark smh
Are u sure?
The best kind of shameful algorithm pandering! Jkjk
Don’t worry! The video gets REALLY good after 8 hours lol.
Dude. Too spot on. I gasped. Thank you.
I heard you need to hit new video plus at least five times before or really takes off.
Damn you beat me to it
saying this on an 8 hour video should put thing into perspective when people say that shit for video games. like just ask them to sit through this vid before forming an opinion
😆😂😂😂
This video has 22K views in 5 hours all of them are still watching the same video 😂
205k views in 8 days and everyones still watching the same video
@@moosyu Still watching the same video. So good
Yeah, yeah, yeah ok,
Swaggergini mercy, swaggin every Thursday
I think that jacket is a perfect metaphor for Starfield: too big, filled with nothing, and size could have been cut in half to be useful.
Most if all, he wore it for ten minutes and took it off.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I think it's obvious it can't arrive that fast. Brexit made EU (Italy) - UK transfer of goods much, much more difficult. The people delivering it are probably still filling in forms or waiting at customs. I'm on the EU side and I make sure to never order anything from the UK, unless I want it delivered in 20 years. I think he should get his jacket in 1-2 weeks probably.
@@octavianpopescu4776 What in the holy BOT response was that?
@@SpudsMcGeese It's an explanation for his situation with the jacket, why there are such long delays.
if they really meant to make the universe feel vast, empty and unexplored they did a really bad job, because you can find the same abandoned research station on every planet.
& wherever you choose to land on almost any planet there will be human POI’s in every direction! Where is the space exploration on behalf of humanity? ..Being the first human to set foot on a planet & plant a flag. The first person to encounter an alien creature. It all feels like it’s already been done by many others before you 😅
Yeah its so goofy when you show up to one of those ancient temples and there is just a random factry right next to it.
@@t-rexreximus359 "Please go to this unexplored planet, scan the natural resources and find this hidden temple no one has seen and that we can only track via a mysterious signal"
And then you land on the planet, next to a FACTORY full of PEOPLE, and you can LITERALLY SEE THE TEMPLE IN THE BACKGROUND... It's literally insulting to players how badly written the situations are that are supposed to propel you into the game world.
This is actually the main reason I quit. Waiting for mods that overhaul how POIs work.
@@ModuliOfRiemannSurfaces Modders aren't going to make this game fun for you. It was pretty selfish of so many people to just assume modders wouldn't have better things to do with their time than make such a boring, broken game enjoyable. It's not the job of modders to make this game good. Stop assuming that. Nobody is entitled to their creativity or effort. Wait forever.
Maybe the real Starfield was the reviews we watched along the way 🤔😂
I sure as hell have got more entertainment out of all of these reviews and deep dives than from the game itself, tbh
The reviews have delivered more hours of entertainment than the game, so... unironically yes
Most Bethseda products are much better experienced as memories; I enjoy what I remember of Fallout 4 and even 76; the gameplay and vistas that are there are great to think about. But when I booted it up again, you remember the constant walking, the work and work that battles can be and its not fun, its just busywork to leave you with that one last image in your head you like.
@@kevinboyle9784 They are also mostly dated by the time they came out, gameplay easily broken and carried almost entirely by atmosphere, which is constantly shattered by bugs and jank requiring a will to ignore or laugh at it's problems. Modding culture exists for these reasons in Bethesda games.
the real Starfield is the loading screen we watched along the way
The loading screen in the intro has me dying😂😂
That was so funny and unexpected 😂.
I looked at my phone to see if the video has quit playing altogether. Amazing and brilliant.
IKR LOL
Fitting
That one got me.
This is longer than Hellblade 2
Hahahahaha
Oh that's funny 😂
And this video is free unlike hellblade 2
god what a disappointing pile of poopoo that game was 💀
Longer than cod mw3 campaign
It's my sleepover and I get to choose the movie
I like Blue Oyster Cult 🌈
6:24:18 matty interviewing todd is like a state appointed journalist interviewing a dictator
When the video is longer than my playtime.
Mine too lol. I might have gotten to 8 hours, maybe.
Same. I think I got to like 6 hours, maybe, but that was really forcing myself to try and get into it. Which was such a shame because on paper Starfield is a perfect game for me lol.
It was fun for like 48 hours, then I sucked the game dry of non radiant content
Damn I only made it about 1hr 45min.. 🤷🏼♂️
Damn so you know nothing about the game?
Tbh, I’m sure there will be some critiques of this being too long, I’m a huge fan of the tangents. This isn’t a video essay, it feels like a long video of someone just, explaining stuff, and yknow I dig that.
As I said over in the Patreon post, this is VERY different from big deep dives I've done before. It's much more conversational in approach and I'm hoping it feels cozy and casual for the audience. I'm always down for feedback so I'm excited to see how people respond!
@@LukeStephensTVI just started but I'll be watching over the next 8 hours, once it's done I'll let you know what I think! Regardless of my future opinion though, this is a monumental feat. Good work dude
@@LukeStephensTV Nah man .. this is the perfect, I'll put this on, with a 30 min timer before bed and listen to it over several nights
@@jeffmacs2o223 is it available on spotify? Or does yt have a timer feature?
@@LukeStephensTV It gives me the feeling and idea of talking with friends about a game and showing each other video clips and information we found online about it.
I've got my popcorn and I'm ready for 8 1/2 hours of Luke talking about Starfield.
popcorn, and breakfast, and lunch, and dinner hahahaha
It's almost as long as he spent talking about Suicide Squad.
What about inches?
That’s a lot of popcorn
How did you comment 4 days ago when it was posted 4 hours ago 😳
I always loved the fact that Todd Howard adoring fanned himself into a job 😂
Yes!
The Astronauts landing on the mood werent bored because:
- the whole earth was watching them ( great main story)
- they where at a great risk all the time ( enviromental damage/ dangerous encounters got nerved)
- they had cool rover to run around in ( no vehicles)
- they had no loadingscreens every 5 seconds :)
This. Someone tag Todd.
It was also the first time anyone actually went to the moon. There was a whole joke in Futurama about people getting so bored with the moon that they just turned it into an amusement park.
Brother, I have a full time job.
I know I have one yet I’m here. I’m just thinking about the moolah this video is costing me
I put this on in the background at my own full-time job. It's like a one-sided conversation.
Just play it while you sleep
I will watch it over the next 2 weeks, in parts.
You can pause and go backwards😂
I lost my ability to fall asleep without some kind of a podcast on background. I put on long nonsence videos (wh40k lore, star wars sequels critique, dark souls lore etc). Starfield discussions make a perfect lullaby. I expect to rewatch this monster of a video like 100 times. Thanks, Luke. My sleep schedule is now secure.
Lutein Sleep Club?
I do the same, and this will be great 😂
I drive with it playing like a podcast
@@nickolaiproblem Luetin sleep club indeed
@@nickolaiproblem lutein cured my insomnia last year. Now i do amber king.
The loading screen to get into the ship in the intro was genius
Hard disagree that Fallout 4 was the first time that BGS stopped focusing on details in their writing. Fallout 3 takes place 200 years after the Great War, but had nonsensical things like Vault 106 where psychotropic gas was pumped in to see what would happen, yet what do you find when you crack open this sealed vault? Crazy vault dwellers in pristine suits trying to kill you, people who, by all accounts you find in the Vault, should have been dead for 200 years.
Then there's Little Lamplight, they're not even the product of some crazy vault experiment, they're just the descendant of _lost elementary school kids_ who decided they can't trust adults and started exiling everyone who _hit the ripe old age of 16,_ and somehow managed to maintain this for 200 years (let's not think too hard on how the kids had successive generations considering their policy, the writer clearly didn't).
Also let's not forget the project the Vault Dweller's father wanted to revive was to take a fully functional Garden of Eden Creation Kit, which is a terraforming device that has the ability to instantly cleanse acres of land of radiation and revive the local ecosystem (shown to work in Fallout 2, it was used to build Vault City), *into a glorified water filter.* Worse yet, that giant water filter plant he built _pumps the cleansed water directly back into the irradiated lake it draws from._ Oh, and in the original ending your two _radiation immune companions_ refuse to flip the switch to turn on the filter for you, because it would fill the chamber full of lethal radiation.
That's just _some_ of the terrible writing in Fallout 3. I didn't like Fallout 4's writing either, but it was still less offensive than Fallout 3's.
my favourite part of fallout 3 is when you get sent on a quest to find food and medicine... at the local supermarket.... and succeed.
Anyone with a few braincells to rub together would have realised that a huge concrete building full of food would be a place everyone would seek shelter after an atomic war.
Super-duper mart should have been the intro town, not Megaton.
I'd go so far as to say you could see these issues popping up at least as early as Oblivion. Its just gotten slowly worse since then.
@@Aerinndis Agree. Given that Cyrodiil should have been lush jungle and Imperial city vast, with abandoned parts.. And nothing like Vivec's dick-spear anywhere..
@MundaneThingsBackwards Whoa, you're reading too much into what I wrote. I didn't say Fallout 4's dialogue delivery or mechanics were better; I was talking about the attention to detail in the world building, how quests and locations fit into the context of the game setting, etc. and how Fallout 3 was terrible at that.
Fallout 4 replaced most of their typical quest chains and locations with the settlement system, which did make the world feel incredibly empty and boring, but that also meant there was simply less terrible writing to be offended by.
@MundaneThingsBackwards Well, give me some examples instead of vaguely waving at how more choices and better dialogue somehow elevates the writing _as a whole._
I gave three examples, two are locations that don't make sense and the third is integral to the whole plot. No amount of good dialogue or choices fix the specific problems I pointed out about them.
Fallout 4 does have something equally as bad: the ghoul kid in the fridge. Despite establishing ghouls do need food, the kid somehow magically survives being stuck in the fridge for hundreds of years and a slaver magically appears to buy him off you the second you open the fridge. Thing is, Fallout 4 is so boring and forgettable that it took me a while to recall that, despite playing it only 7 years ago (I waited two years after release for it to get plenty of community patches before buying it).
By contrast, Fallout 3's world building was so bad that I still remember what offended me _in detail 16 years after playing it._ That's why I find it more offensive, because at least I remember what offends me.
The GOAT. This was one of the most comprehensive, intellectual, deep dive videos that I have ever seen. Well done Luke! You have definitely become my most preferred UA-camr. Keep up the great content; I'll be looking forward to more.
I was about to go the gym. I guess i'll go in 8 hours.
lol quit being lazy and listen to this at the gym
Yo, could it be THE hidden one? Top notch creator
Yoooo I wqs just watching our strongest assassin video before I watched this 😂
@@norenttv_ It's a not podcast sir.
It's longer than the amount of time i played starfield
If you play this video on one monitor, and Noah Calwell-Gervais' 9 hour Fallout retrospective on another, it breaks the simulation and opens a portal back to the real world.
Don’t forget PatricianTV’s 20 hour Skyrim analysis lmao
@@SwooshJush83wait 20 hours?
@@cozzyonoyes. Twenty hours.
@@jeremytitus9519 isnt like 2 parts that combined together are 20 hours?
The way I describe Starfield = Skyrim in space but the devs didn’t love it and didn’t give it a soul. Couldn’t connect to one character.
It’s basically the equivalent of the new Star Wars films. It has all of the parts to be good barring a personality.
2:54:00 is where I’m at; “oh so you guys do use design documents, it just seems like no one is on the same page whatsoever. Ok cool.”
This and PatricianTV’s video equals 16 hours of Starfield critique - love it
Throw in Private sessions for an extra 4.5 hours. Make a day of it.
@@chapman3713 I’ve seen PatricianTV’s and Private Sessions videos in their entirety as well as Nakey Jakey’s, Synthetic Man’s, and Strat-Edgy’s. I’ve watched about 30 hours of reviews for a game I haven’t played and have no intention of ever playing lol these long form videos ripping BGS a new butthole are addicting and I can’t stop watching them.
Private sessions was the best to me as I feel like me and him have the same idea of what makes a good bgs game, and I was constantly agreeing with everything he brought up.@@Chest_Rockwell1
Any good critiques of Bethesda's games from people in the 40+ age range that can be recommended? While I enjoy these other critiques, there is a lot missing from hearing from someone who was there for at minimum the release of Morrowind through til now. While Luke can look over old usenet/forum posts, he wasn't engaged at all in the 2000s with the critiques that already existed regarding Bethesda. I'd like to listen to someone who was.
@@AusTraLiaNPsyChO Super late reply and you've probably either found something already or moved on, but I have to shout out Zaric Zhakaron. Don't know if he actually fits that age bracket but even if not, he was most certainly in the ballpark and engaged with a lot of that stuff at the time. He's been talking Bethesda and the problems they've developed over time longer than most everyone else and the fact that no one else mentioned him here is disappointing.
Boring is the worst verdict for any entertainment media.
It can be bad, but fun or at least memorable. Beign boring is much worse than being bad.
Todd is so good at pitching games he should start a company just to make pitches.
Something I've learned through experience sounds like it would be very apt for this situation: Many hands may make light work, but TOO many hands make everyone confused about who's doing what.
Emil keeps talking as if the RPG genre isnt known for storytelling and intriguing characters......
It's crazy. In late 2023 we had 3 important points for RPGs. Baldur's Gate 3 hit first. Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion pack hit soon after. The story and interesting characters of BG3 and Phantom Liberty stand in sharp contrast superior to Starfield's.
I love how Emil at 8:08:00 manages to make himself the misunderstood genius, ridicule the player base who don't care about his lackluster stories AND those who dive into them. Yet he disregards the gaming stories written by people with actual talent that make people spend hours analyzing and speculating about it.
Look at games with good writing like God of War, RDR2 or those with deep and interesting lore and characters like Elden Ring that people love to analyze. No Emil, the reason people don't take your writing seriously isn't because gamers make paper airplanes even when given the greatest American novels, it's because your writing is shit in comparison to the point where the best use of the paper it's written on is to make paper planes.
@@noamias4897how’d you make it that far😂😂 seek help
@@justinwinningham4892 was listening to the video at my office job during the more menial tasks, going through it chapter by chapter
@@noamias4897 sake
"Oh, this must be a compilation."
*notices its all new and spits out coffee*
I love Starfield critique because I think this game is the perfect storm of a lot of issues that have been building with BGS games that can no longer be ignored. Its a fun discussion, will listen in the bg at work.
An 8+ hours essay from Luke is all I want on an unemployed Thursday morning
Are u me
I wish I was unemployed
Good luck finding work.. cheers to better months to come.
I retired at the end of May.I am 67 years old and I grew to hate my job. Now I am bored. I am tired playing games.
I'll hire you tomorrow. Where I live in Washington state NO ONE wants to be employed. Personally I have bills so need to work. I'm crazy for thinking that's how it is for everyone. I was wrong lol
Toad Howard: I disrespectly disagree
You forgot the part where he then starts gaslighting you into thinking the game is good
@@PrinceKael14lol can anyone you code? This guy can’t who runs this channel. He makes money off of people who hate Todd. It’s hilarious
@@JohnTheSavageBNW You don't have to be a pilot to know a plane shouldn't crash
@@JohnTheSavageBNWlol are you a wheat farmer? i bet you complain when bread tastes bad! .i.
@@JohnTheSavageBNW So you want someone flaunting authority?
I know how to code, I've been making games for hobby since 1999 and I actually understand what the "16x times the detail" quote really means (spoiler alert: nothing of value to a game).
It's simply unforgivable that their game engine is still carrying bugs from Morrowind.
That's all I need to say.
Imagine shouting in a fridge for hundreds of years and finding out ur family has been living in the same home all that time a few miles away. I’d be ducking furious with them. But no billy is not only patient but forgiving to the point where I think billy is actually Christ reborn
Billy is a synth, thatstwhy the Gunners wanted to buy him.
😂😂 😂
"If you search Emil, you'll find a lot of videos roasting him." Yup, because Emil is literally everything wrong with the story writing at BGS. He is the definition of: "Oh! Do this cool thing... We'll figure out canon later."
Great example is the one you included here, and it gets worse! They actually created a backup character (Dr. Scara) who is pumped to work on Liberty Prime, just in case your story choices up to that point prevent you from getting Li out of the Institute... But rather than have some meaningful dialogue checks you could fail that would force you to go with the backup scientist, there is no way to fail this dialogue tree. If Li ends up on the Prydwen, she will ALWAYS end up working on Liberty Prime.
Seriously do not know how he hasn't been replaced yet. Sure he can make some interesting quests, but everything he writes completely lacks depth and is often nonsensical.
I'm really not sure if the lack of depth and nonsense of the writing is his fault or that Bethesda isn't willing to put in the effort required to make a proper RPG with game altering decisions.
I love how Emil at 8:08:00 manages to make himself the misunderstood genius, ridicule the player base who don't care about his lackluster stories AND those who dive into them. Yet he disregards the gaming stories written by people with actual talent that make people spend hours analyzing and speculating about it.
Look at games with good writing like God of War, RDR2 or those with deep and interesting lore and characters like Elden Ring that people love to analyze. No Emil, the reason people don't take your writing seriously isn't because gamers make paper airplanes even when given the greatest American novels, it's because your writing is shit in comparison to the point where the best use of the paper it's written on is to make paper planes.
People who say someone is "everything wrong with ______" are definitely missing the forest through the trees. You're focusing too much on one individual - maybe it's the way in which decisions are made in these corporate environments that is the problem.
@MundaneThingsBackwards no, Emil does not produce results. The sales are in spite of him, not because of him, and Bethesda would have to be deaf to not know that by this point. Something can sell well and be bad. Or have part of it be bad. Emil's take on ignoring critiques and criticisms about his writing explains EVERYTHING about games he's written.
But he's Todd's buddy and therefore he's safe. Or he's always been safe til now; Microsoft might not think he's so safe.
1:16:25 You cannot kill major NPCs in Skyrim. Basically anyone tied to a quest is immortal, at least until you complete their content. Try killing Balgruuf and you will see him in the classic down on one knee animation no matter how many times you smack him.
you can kill Astrid as soon as you meet her.
Luke, I love you. Please consider a dark mode browser extension
Luke, can we get an audio version of this put on spotify? Love that we finally got a long form critique
Seeing ppl upset at Star Wars outlaws only taking 5 mins to get across the map , meanwhile Starfield having you walking 20 mins real time in empty planet . I’ll take the Star Wars outlaws lol
Def excited for it.
I’m sick of the bigger is better mentality when it comes to open worlds. I can’t even stand breath of the wild, it’s too big and too empty. I used to love that kind of thing when I was a kid, but now I just don’t have time for meaningless time wasters. I want a packed small open world. Weirdly Starfield gave me that and I know that sounds massively contradicting but it did. It didn’t want you to explore a vast emptiness. And I never did and I enjoyed it
For a game of Outlaws length, its world is perfectly sized, there is no pointless world bloat
The two biggest benefits to fast-travel is easily being able to take your loot back to your base and finishing a quest that's taken you all the way across the map, both without having shlep on foot back to where you need to go. The Horizon mod for FO4 has a nice mechanic that gives you virtual eyebots that scavenge and can carry loot for you.
Not far in, but I agree that many of Starfield's biggest critics are people that genuinely were looking forward to the game. A year before release I even thought it would beat out BG3 for me, because I had been playing it from day one of Early Access and was concerned I played around with Act I too much. I ended up being totally wrong and even a bit resistant to any future Bethesda title.
Witnessing peak cinema
I don't mind fast travel being in RPG/Adventure/Open world games - in fact, I think its necessary as the maps keep getting larger and larger. I don't want to have to spend 20 minutes just to go from one place to another in a quest every single time if I don't want to.
That being said, I don't want to HAVE to fast travel everywhere. I'd like it to be an option that I can take if I want.
My issue with the game design of Starfield is you essentially HAVE to fast travel everywhere. There's literally no other way to get around.
Just got to the Pete Hines part where you defended him, but you didn't cover everything with him. When it comes to Starfield and the lies, he is the face for it. He did an interview around a week before release and when asked if you could fly from planet to planet he said he believes so. Which turned out to not be true.
He also brought up how you can spend an entire real life week just exploring space and never landing on a planet, just space stations and exploring space. Obviously that was a massive lie.
Todd deserves a lot of blame for a lot of things, and many of the fans deserve a lot of the blame for Starfield assuming features would be in the game when BGS never said they would be. But Pete Hines very much lied about features in this game more than once and he deserves some blame too.
The statements made by Starfield apologists whilst talking with Todd are bias, deceit, half truths, and saving face, because they’re talking with their idol, Todd Howard, and they don’t want to burn that bridge. No experienced, honest gamer and/or reviewer can defend Starfield. It’s impossible.
I mean he said "Skyrim is exactly what people wanted to see from the Elder Scrolls" and he just skipped over the first 2 Elder scrolls and the creator of the series and why the series was about to end and the creator left to paint Todd in a really good light.
Holy shit! 8 HOURS LONG! My man, that's some serious stuff right there. You will not break me, I WILL watch this whole thing!
This was actually really great. You can feel the amount of time it took you to research and organise all the information, 8h+ seems crazy but you made it not seem like 8h. Very enjoyable. Thank you
he's struggling to hit that 8 minute mark
I still don't quite understand what people mean when they say Starfield had better combat than Fallout, or even really Skyrim. Maybe just on a basic mechanic level for the actual shooting, but from a satisfaction level I think it pales in comparison to their older games. Without the gore and with everyone basically just in full spacesuits all the time, combat felt a whole lot less interesting, and I think the general design of the alien wildlife made them far less interesting to fight as well, especially compared to things from the FO and ES series.
I think they're referring to things like weapon animations/behaviour, like recoil, things like that.
Skyrim had a far better variety of gameplay styles that make it 100x more interesting then starfield and the wildlife in starfield lacked focus all the creatures in fallout were interesting because we knew what they were how they came about and were easily distinguished in starfield whenever you come across a new alien species it just looks like some random shit slapped together and with a severe lack of interaction dialogue or lore with said creatures it feels more so that this is something that YOU the player interact with it doesn’t feel like a part of a well established world because there are no quests or npc interaction with alien life aside from the random chance hostile aliens attack a power station or something
Starfield has well executed combat from a technical standpoint. It's mechanically solid. It's just not great anywhere else.
@@Ornithopter470 That's what I'm getting at; without the intangibles, the technical is disappointing. So when people talk about it being improved compared to Fallout, it's a complete non-starter, the conversation should have always been that it's worse than Fallout, due to the lack of oomph, technicals be damned.
The janky combat and miserable AI is honestly one of the things that pissed me off the most about the game. Im in this base and theirs one idiot I havent killed and hes 4 rooms away crouched behind a box doing nothing and the gun play is just as jank as ever.
The opening of this intro just shows how vastly lifeless the world of Starfield truly is
This really could've been the skyrim of space 😔
and somehow, the parts that do have life - are also quite lifeless
Ikr
@@Mark-O-V They could've had the perfect mix of absolute nothing and extreme levels of life. The cities should've been 5-10x bigger, and to be honest there should've been at least 7 or 8 cities. The parts that are supposed to be beaming with life still make me feel completely alone. I feel more life in a Minecraft village.
@@RynJckif they did that the game would've been over 200 gigabytes😂. This game is already 120gb and it's mostly barren and empty so if they actually decided to fill up the game with life and cities it would need an insane amount of space
50:15 i feel like you are doing todd a bit dirty here. "all it took was morrowind, oblivion, fallout 3 and skyrim then todd was considered one of the best"
you mean to tell me that making multiple goty's for a decade straight will get you a good reputation? who could have guessed?
fallout 3 """""""best writing""""""" yeah sure, please convince me any of those were deserved
Todd's first announcement of Redguard in 1996 was posted exactly 2 months after I was born... WOW. I'm still working my way through the video, and plan on finishing. Amazing job so far!!
It's so infuriating when people say "well you wouldn't want to walk all the way around a planet, that would be boring," and then in the next breath go "yeaaa moons are going to be barren and empty, that's realistic not boring."
Its like ...... MF!! I would much rather have a smaller hand crafted solar system with a handful of really interesting and diverse planets, OR an expansive and realistic universe with survival sim mechanics and seamless exploration. But Bethesda decided to shoot for somethin in between those two and ended up pissing both camps off.
Like why use procedural generation if you're only going to use it for a limited 1 sq km of map? Why create hand crafted points of interest if you are just going to copy and paste them on every planet??
It’s so frustrating lol I hate how many people do this realism cope.
If it was like Kingdom Come Deliverance then it would make sense to argue realism. But they are arguing it in a game where you get space super powers lol.
Like I have no problems melding realism with sci-fi, but when you then use realism as an excuse to stuff boring filler into a game, that’s where it gets irritating.
Mass Effect 1 did barren planets. But you had the Mako which was so fun to drive around in that it made the barren planets way more fun to explore. There was always something to find and arguably Mass Effects lore is far more interesting so when you find a corpse on a barren planet that has a message about lore it felt mysterious.
Pretty sure it’s been explained that seamless planets are impossible because of how the creation engine works. Like, they would have to change multiple load bearing structures to make it work.
Starfield’s biggest failures come from trying to make a game on an engine that CANNOT RUN THAT GAME.
@@ServalSignyup. I just don't understand why they thought this was a good idea in the first place. 8 years and 200+ million dollars wasted
I am currently deep into my 3rd full playthrough of The Outer Worlds, a game which works so well for me because it took a much more handcrafted approach to its biomes. It was also done in a much shorter time-frame and much lower budget than Starfield.
@@TheMarcHicks I was shocked that more people didnt mention the Outer Worlds when discussing Starfield. Like Fallout NV before it, Obsidian showed again they can do Bethesda RPG's better than Bethesda.
This video is way longer than the time I enjoyed playing Starfield. Thank you, Luke Stephens.
I still can't get over the fact they made a space game that barely lets you fly your ship.
Trust Bethesda to innovate the idea of putting a vehicle in the game, then not letting you actually _go anywhere_ in it
7:44:05 The reason fast travel exists, and should continue to exist for many games is simple, most games have nothing else to discover in between area's and travelling back and forth between places with nothing new to discover isn't fun for many people, fast travel thus removed the needless tedium that people do not wish to deal with.
The counter argument for why fast travel should be in a game like Fallout 4 is because a core aspect of that game is exploration, but there's nothing really new to discover once you've been to a place, hence traveling through a place you've already explored just feels like unrewarding and pointless back peddling. If I want to sell things from my settlement storage, I don't want to have to travel to Diamond City and back 10+ times on foot, no I'd rather just fast travel and not waste my time more than I already am. You said with my exact counter argument at 7:52:26.
It's not so bad in games like Cyberpunk 2077, because the world is beautiful and traversing it is fun, that was one of the few games that I never fast travel in because it takes about 5 minutes tops to travel from one side to the other and I love driving and listening to the music so much I just travel manually. But some games can take you dozens of minutes to get to where you want to go, with nothing but the ringing in your ears to keep you company.
It's actually really cool how the Howard brothers influenced so many people with their stuff. I grew up watching the Tinkerbell movies, then I started playing the Fallout games when I got old enough! 😯
42 min - that's just nonsense that that game had cutting edge graphics in 1997.. in 1998 there was HALF-LIFE. In 1996 first Quake released... Those were 3D games with seriously cutting edge graphics.. how could have that crappy 2D game had one of the best graphics in 1997? That doesn't make sense. It looks like a game from 1985. Todd was full of crap even then.
You can lead a Todd to water, but you can't make it drink :)
LMFAOOO LOADING SCREEN IN THE BEGINNING💀💀
Starfield is definitely frustrating because I love the art style and exploring the hand crafted areas but finding those areas are very difficult. Still enjoy hopping into Starfield every once in a while but still can’t believe some of the decisions that they made when making the game.
people enjoy the downfall of this game because it's satisfying to see a scammer revealed
For 8 hours though? I’d say the point has been made countless times, from many different sources, including Luke lol.
I love Luke’s takes though, his videos are usually entertaining and informative.. but I have children, hobbies, stuff to do lol and there’s no way I could possibly dedicate that much time to a Starfield critique of all things.
I do hope this is viewed by BGS staff eventually lol and maybe it’ll be influential one day, for the right people 🙏
@@SilverDay17 yeah everyone knows luke's boring i was just explaining the phenomenon
@@numberonedad 😂😂 damn
@@SilverDay17 that's his shtick, vanilla. and long-winded
And I finished it. A week or so later. In my car. While doing work. While eating. While doing chores.
It's really good stuff, Luke (and team)! I enjoy your content.
Honestly an awesome video, really happy to sit and watch the entire history and context surrounding this game and its release. Thank you so much Luke!
Oh my god. 8 and a half hours of Luke?? My day has been pleasantly made
I recently spent nearly 2 hours reinstalling the 85+ gigs that takes up Starfield just to get bored within the first 10 minutes. They didnt fix anything worthwhile to gameplay. The new "improved" map is still barely functional and the loading screens somehow feel longer now.
If it wasn’t for this channel, I might have forgotten about Starfield.
I very much dislike the rng looter shooter mechanics they started to add to their games, it became a crutch for the more interesting unique items they used to pepper throughout the game.
If you're a hoarder you crave unique items, they're like little trophies you collect overtime and can reflect on your progress.
There's a reason there are so many skyrim mods that are just player homes with display cases for basically all unique items.
The absolute best thing about Starfield is the many several-hours-long deep dive videos people have made exploring Bethesda's ineptitude and what went wrong with the game.
I was using this video to test my new internet service which was just activated today.
Soo that loading screen in the intro had me freaking out for a second 😅
Well played sir, well played
Nice to see short form videos from you
Do you think the reason they were marketing Starfield as “Skyrim in space” instead of Fallout is perhaps because of all of the negative press Fallout had been getting at the time with FO76? “Skyrim in space”, no matter how inaccurate a comparison, just gave off better vibes for Bethesda fans. Not sure how much that nickname had to do with the intended tone of the game. Just a thought.
That’s exactly correct
Nah, it's because Skyrim is their biggest game with the longest lasting passionate fan base. "Skyrim in space" will capture way more people than "Fallout in space".
YOU ARE THE GOAT, I truly love your long critiques!
The real starfield was the loading screens we saw along the way
We called it. It’s a starfield video that is 8 hours long.
Thanks Luke & team ❤
Watching this during my night shift, this is perfection 🙏❤️
As someone whos worked in tech animation there's something that has bothered me about this game since before it launched and I'm shocked that I've never seen anyone bring it up so I'm gonna vent here... The character jumps, lands, and shortly after it rotates maybe 10-15 degrees to the left... it happens almost every time I see someone jump and its been present since before release in all the marketing videos. Drives me nuts 16:12
Made it to the end. Thank you for this long form content. Absolutely fascinating!
“Also shoutout to Velcro wallets. Those things are tight.” Got an audible laugh from me on that one
Every time you put that jacket on and absolutely swim in it, it seems to me like a good representation of how Bethesda fails. The heart is in the right place, but...details matter.
I think their past actions prove that their heart isn't in the right place.
Tell me you know nothing of Bethesda without telling me you know nothing about Bethesda 😂
16 times the detail
I just realized that, by the time you start the actual story in Fallout 4, Codsworth has been running non-stop for longer than the stuff he's running on had been produced, to the extent running out of it caused a world-wide resource crisis and eventually deleted the world in atomic war. How DID they ever run out of something that it takes longer to deplete than they've been producing it?
I'm guessing their long-awaited tech was the procedural generation tool.
Hmm what?
@@wolfgang4534 Just that I question how all the fuel had dried up in 100 or so years when a tank seems to last forever.
@@TheREALSimagination mkay
You do know they're running on nuclear reactor right? That's the whole premise of the fallout universe.
In the 50's they made incredible breakthroughs in atomic technology, even your pipboy is running on nuclear.
So yeah, not getting you at all.
@@wolfgang4534 Ok, so they have tiny machines or whatever that make or sustains the fuel. I know they're not running on gas, and that's my point: how could they run out of this fuel when the tech allowed them to use it for so long at a time? Dunno how old your Mr. Handy is, but even if that fuel source was produced and put in the day before the game starts, that's still 210 years of fuel burning, plus the in-game time.
I feel like, if everything had little generators to make them go instead of or in addition to the fusion core/cell/battery to preserve the run-time, that just makes it even more confusing how something could run fine for 200 years but the stuff ran out in supply and production in, what, 120 years?
@@wolfgang4534 Sorry, I see you wrote 'reactor', not 'generator'. Guess I just don't really understand how that works.
I just realized I used to watch Luke Stephens when his walls were red and black and had no idea it was the same dude
Thank you, not a single review I've seen so far touched the financial part of the situation, that brings a lot of sense. Sad that yet another legendary studio became a corporate slave, but yeah, everyone have to pay checks.
Damn, I thought my internet was crapping out on me during that purposely inserted load screen for the intro.
Same here 😂
A huge problem i have with starfield is that despite being the future human race, even taking into account that they are spread out among planets. The few cities we see have an IMMENSLY small population. Like skyrim has a larger population than the universe in starfield.
"Hey, honey... leave me alone for 8 hours. I'm going to space."
I know this is an old video, but I ended up selling my Series S around 3 or 4 months ago and I still miss Starfield and the gameplay loop. I loved building ships and slowly expanding outposts and adding different little details to them. This game would’ve been fantastic if after building outposts NPC‘s would show up and use your different areas. I’m sure there were reasons it couldn’t happen but I would spend so much time building an outpost and tweaking it and it would just feel so empty. If it weren’t for that I think the game would be in my top 10 all time
Wow dude, you are an incredible video creator. Amazing job!
Hey Luke, I don’t agree with your statements about the design document.
Most are not arguing that they don’t use design documents, it’s that they don’t use a CENTRALIZED design document (which is why we see stuff like starfield be so disjointed)
It’s fine that they do document their work in sections but the fact that it doesn’t get compiled Into a centralized document is why the game ends up so disjointed.
They'll never let you choose an exact amount of credits to buy, you always have to buy slightly more than you actually need and end up with like 50 useless ones
wow, good editing. 8 hours, but feels dense and well edited. You didn't repeat yourself, and you went through each area well. Thoroughly enjoyable. It was fun to follow along with my more limited knowledge, with your added details. This is the longest actual review i've ever seen. Review of the game, the politics and everything else. So many other long videos like this are commentary live streams or venting, which is less focused and concise. I'd say this is my favorite and best source for the entire Starfield experience, from concept and politics, to actual game and reception.
Solid video. Just made it across the finish line. And because you put so much time in on it, I watched at 1x speed. I think your express alot of great points. Thank you for putting the time into doing this video.
Great job brother this is a better format or critique
I'm so ready for cardboard cutout-Todd Howard staring at me for 8 hours👀
I swear more money has been made by video creators talking about Starfield than revenue from actual copies sold.
and that's a good thing lol if they ever get back to Fallout 3 level then I'd hope they make a lot of money off it....and I'd love to play that!
This video succinctly sums up how I felt about starfield
‘Succinctly’😅
This is my favorite video on this channel so far, it's so chill and cozy but still very engaging
Just got to the part where the original review is played, and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, I can't get over how much more I vibe with the tone of this video
Luke this is your best video keep it up!
luke stephens has now become john starfield
Underrated comment!
I know luke is gonna get hate for making another starfield video, but it really should be called the todd Howard/bethesda saga.
Now that's what you call a deep dive. Really enjoyed this video. I'm definitely subscribing 👍👍
Changing my comment, since you do mention christopher Weever getting screwed.
Bethesda writing, nuka world dlc where you can become a raider leader and then go back to Preston and be like "who cares I'm a raider, what are you gonna do about it?!" And preston garvey just backs down after tearing into main character, says he'll still be the right hand man for the minute men.