I find it insane how Bethesda is afraid to put consequences in a game with a IN-WORLD BULT-IN RESET MECHANIC where there are actual characters in the story talk about doing things and fucking around in the multiverse. They literally could add consequences while not really locking the player, they had an out and still didn't take it. It's like they tried to f this up
I can only assume there's a major conflict of vision at the studio, with some people wanting more substantial stakes and pushing for that to some extent, but studio heads digging in their heels and wanting to recapture making Oblivion for a fourth time.
Problem is of course that more choices means more writing needed, and more importantly, more programming and more voice-acting. Which of course costs money. And daddy stockholder wants profits, not costs.
I think Bethesda got way too big for its britches. I don't think Todd, and the rest of the management team, has the skillset to manage such a large team of devs. Their quality of work declines the larger they get. Also, they still seem to think "bigger=better" since that seems to have masked the shortcomings in their games before. It no longer does that at all.
To provide a (admittedly reductive) management perspective: 90% of players will never even finish their first playthrough. By the time the reset does provide value, the customer is already balls deep in the sunk-cost-fallacy. Real consquences and differences means content produced that will not be seen by many players. Pruning branches costs the game less then cutting storylines but "saves" development ressources.
From my point of view, it isn't even that they are scared of puting consequences, but more so that their lazy writting skills refuses to cement any player choice event as real. It is especially apparant in Elder Scrolls games, but it is also present in Fallout 4 compared to Fallout 3. Their reasoning is that they want that the player's game is their canon when they play the sequel. The best examples I can give on this, are the Dark Brotherhood and the Civil War in Skyrim. The Dark Brotherhood questline has two ways to be completed. Either you join them, or you kill all of them. If you joined them, by the end, most of the members die either way. But if you decide to kill them, since Cicero wasn't there, whatever your choice may be, in the next game, they can canonise that the Falkreath sanctuary was destroyed, but the night mother was kept safe in Dawnstar. And thus, the Emperor will still get murdered in Skyrim, and Motierre will still disappear, whether or not you killed him. For the Civil War, whether or not you side with the Empire, there's a letter that is on a stormcloak corpse in a ruin near the border of the playable map that states that there's a massive army massing on the other side of the Jeral moutains. Which means that, no matter what you chose, the Empire will re-take Skyrim. But they wont cement who won between Tulius or Ulfric. They'll probably come up with some bullshit that they both disappeared due to "inset event here". It is a stupid, and lazy way to not undo events that may or may not have happened to a player. Just like every single protagonist of Bethesda games disappear to mostly never be seen again (And for the case of the Hero of Kvatch, he became Sheogorath, and took his likeness, so whether or not your player character was a man, a mer, a cat, or a lizard, etc, doesn't matter the character changed appearance.
Bethesda games have always had problems with consequence implementation IMO. They claim they want to provide countless choices to the player, but the choices you ultimately get amount to yes/no answers. Bethesda see consequences not as a creative tool to open up more possible options for role-playing or new gameplay ideas, but like a child does. Consequences = bad, so no consequences because that might make the player feel bad.
100% agree I realized this when I played New Vegas after Fallout 4 Since NV's ending was a fairly detailed slideshow of my courier's consequences, I felt like I actually changed the world in more ways than one This is enforced by the DLC's having endings directly tied to the vanilla game Fallout 4 on the other hand is just the sole survivor's reflection on things Though alright it made me feel like all of the settlements I made and the factions I destroyed had absolutely no long-term impact on the world Like the main story can happen even if my vault dweller died in their cryogenic pod I felt empty and unfulfilled
they seem like they're almost trying to make their RPGs into a hybrid between a traditional roleplaying game and an immersive sim, but with all the actual draws for each specific genre gutted to make room for the surface level conventions of the other.
But why are consequences bad? I have a hypothesis and it's that Bethesda's answer to what should the player feel is powerful. Which is definetly a valid answer and plenty of games do try to evoke that feeling. But Bethesda follows it to the point of eliminating all other feelings because feeling something other than powerful means you're not feeling powerful. So making the player feel sad, conflicted, powerless, or out of control is a big no no. Having player choices lock them out of content might make the player feel left out and that's not a powerful emotion. Negative consequences don't invoke power so that's out. As a result Bethesda games are basically lobotomized and it gets worse with each game. This is why Starfield is so emotionally tepid.
@@Lisasaur Me too. It's so addicting. I wanted so bad for this game to be good. Went in completely open minded and blind. So now I'm getting my money's worth from starfield by watching about how bad it truly is
its gotten worse, at least a lot of the side quests in fallout 3 had different outcomes, I think it was mainly the main quests that were linear af. Stats and skills I feel were more fun in fallout 3 and NV. Bethesda in their quest to dumb things down have actually made it less fun to level up. They went the borderlands route of perks and you get bs like "deal 20% more dmg with this type of weapon" or "here's the next set of craftable mods to level up your gear with"
There's nothing to distract you from them in Starfield, your only other options are procedurally generated planets with radiant quests. At least in Skyrim and Fallout there was stuff to find and locations to see.
Bethesda has always had problems with their games, but Starfield is objectively worse than their previous entries. The sense of exploration is lacking, and the NPC radiant AI is non-existent. In the elder scrolls games, villagers lived their own little lives with schedules. In Starfield, NPCs have all the life of your average Chuck E Cheese animatronic puppet.
Because those games have redeeming qualities. Sure they were full of certain aspects of "Bethesda Mediocrity" but they had enough good merits to overlook the mediocre bits.
Stealth only works if you have a super lightweight space suit on. Or better yet, remove your space suit entirely. The stealth / noise mechanism is heavily tied to equipment weight. The best part? They never explain this anywhere in game. There is no "light, medium, heavy" armor class. There is no loading screen tip. There is no crafting menu explanation. No. You are just expected to know, because this is how it worked in their previous game. Oops.
@@karpai5427 Pretty much yes, you could even use the armor workbenches to equip a stealth bonus mod under the misc. section for all of your armor pieces.
Which is stupid because the places you'd have your suit on have thin atmospheres... so you'd be nearly silent regardless. And in places where your suit is hidden... it shouldn't count towards your weight.
@@xXDeiviDXx They've been doing it at least since Oblivion. At least they had to decency to explain it there, though i think it was on a loading screen and mentioned in one of the stealth skills.
I hate the notion of creating accessibility by depriving the game of its natural challenges. Starfield is one that makes it TOO accessible, to a point it feels a game made for kids.
The game is meant to be replayed considering it’s NG+ yet because of the design where you’re allowed to play all of the content of the game no matter if it makes no sense, gives me very little reason to replay.
imo as someone who has a brain that is just incompatible with certain mechanics in games, for me, the best accessibility is often a variety of _options,_ not a guarantee that I will succeed at any method I choose because they're all impossible to fail. Being given the win no matter what just makes me feel condescended to
@@Romanticoutlaw and to give some perspective, in the same year, we had two extremes, Starfield being the extremely limited, no space for actual role-playing, and Baldur's Gate 3 being extremely flexible on role-playing. Starfield in comparison was a joke, a complete failure on giving us an experience.
The illusion of choice, it is like having 3 or 4 doors each with an option on it but when you enter the door you then realize it leads to the same room when you look back at the doors, that is what StarField feels like with word options.
They actually did something very similar in the Fallout 4 DLC Nuka World. At the start of that DLC you have to run a gauntlet full of traps and enemies. At one point you reach three doors, and the announcer says there's death behind two of them. As it turns out, the left door is the way forward and the other two doors don't have anything behind them and set off really minor traps that'll barely scratch you if you're at the recommended level for the DLC.
Which is why I think if they ever switch to develop on Unreal Engine it will be the death of them, since modding on Unreal is locked to just model or texture swaps there won't be anyone to save them from bad game decisions or fill their game with more content.
It's the modding and the world design (maybe a bit of gameplay loop of exploring and looting) that made Bethesda Games really popular. But Bethesda has been retrograding in innovation, and Starfield itself lacks a good world design. Looting in Starfield just a drag and the world design (and lore) are just bad.
This is absolutely false. Their games are popular because they are digestible, games like skyrim or fallout 4 didn't sell because of them modding community. The mods definitely keeps them alive that's undeniable but they're are not the reason they are popular to begin with.
To be fair hearing is a thing but I imagine the stealth system is dumber than that. edit: oh yeah I just saw how quick the detection was it's really stupid
@@appelofdoom8211 even skyrim and fallout 4/76 don't have sound sensitivity that high and give you skills to reduce the sound alert range (its baked into the stealth skill for 4/76)
@@Daynger_Fox Yeah but if I remove the spacesuit I forget to put it back on and my character starts dying as soon as I leave a place. Wish they had a workable steal suit.
My biggest complaint with the game is that I’m not able to “Be who I want to be” like Mr Howard promised. I wanted to become a true space pirate. But no, you’re literally forced into the boring goody two shoes Constellation club…
you can be pirate but can you join them by pirating enough ships to get their attention or something similar? no, you do literally any crime in new atlantis whether it be stealing a pen or killing everyone in the government building and theyll send you in as a mole
They've struggled to give "Evil" characters good options since FO3. And even in FO3 most of the "Evil" options were nonsensical "Cartoon Villain" options. It's really not that hard to write Evil options in a videogame, just imagine what a completely self-interested scumbag would do in any given situation, then let the player do it.
@@JasonSchwartz51580 most choices with evil options in games come down to do you want more money to add to your limitless treasure hordes or do you not want to kill the innocent family
You pick all these traits that are different each time at the beginning of the game only to play the exact same character every time, it is basically the illusion of choice.
Not what I did. I made my street rat, dropped the artifact, ditched vasco, said maybe later to Sarah and joined ryujin. When I was done, I built a new character and did something else. Constellation didn't align with my build so I didn't do it. Did the same with my smuggler/pirate.
Bethesda decided you had to play the House ending, but also wanted you to play both the NCR and legion questlines with all the energy of a kid showing you they drew a picture with crayons and want you to put it up on the fridge, even though your not entirely sure if its supposed to be a 3 legged dog or a tree, but hes very proud of it.
@@Graal888 what is that supposed to mean? What the fuck is the difference? I probably hate this more than I should but it does not make it less stupid. I want to know why smartasses say that silencers don't exist. Who made these people?
Bethesda went from allowing you to be a stealth god in Skyrim capable of stealing the clothes off of people's backs without them noticing and slaying an entire fortress of enemies as "nothing but the wind" to now your best stealth build has all the hiding ability of Chopper from One Piece in Starfield.
Much like the old Blizzard, the old Bethesda is no more. Never cash out your reputation. It works the first time, 2nd time maybe...but after that, you're back to where you started.
I was moderately intrigued by the Cyberpunk Ripoff company quest chain, but it was the most boring quest chain ever. A low bar in an already boring game. Starfield is a victim of the way Bethesda makes games. They made outpost building pointless, because in case a player didn’t want to build bases, they didn’t want it to matter too much. The same with space combat, the companions, main quest etc etc.
The outpost thing is a symptom of fo4. Settlements were supposed to be totally optional, but in-fact were not. So a bunch a players came to hate settlements, because the system was dogwater and was clearly just bethesda not doing their job and outsourcing the creation of content for the game to the player. I think the outpost system may make more sense in this game, but they insist on locking things stupidly behind player level, which was another piece of trash from fo4.
The introduction to the Crimson Fleet is a joke. Remember the first time you enter their station and you see 2 member arguing and then suddenly one kills the other? Because hell yeah they are pirates, criminals and rules dont matter to them. Yeah rules dont apply to any of them except you. You are seemingly the only one who isnt allowed to act that "freely". Later down the questline when you snitch on that traitor in the Crimson Fleet, he gets thrown out of the Crimson Fleet crew and you remember that the only way out is by death but SURPRISE you cant kill him and you are NOT allowed to kill him because then all Crimson Fleet member go after you. Wow, such immersion...
It's kinda funny that Skyrim comes out and sneaky archer is like, the best build in the entire franchise and then starfield comes out and makes stealth archer completely unviable.
The only build in Starfield is funi shooty man. Melee has no support, stealth has no support, the totally-not-space-magic is relegated to the totally-not-space-dragon-shouts...
Fun fact: you can bypass locks on glass cases because the panels don't even close correctly. By angling your camera the right way you can just loot whatever is inside the glass case completely bypassing the lock. And yes, this is not a bug, it's a *feature*.
In my recent playthrough I was not able to do it. The might have patched that out recently. Didn't fix performance issues but that suit in the basement of constellation is now fixed.
Not only that, but long guns mounted sideways on certain racks so you could just walk up and take it via the parts that poked out without ever even putting your crosshairs on the case itself
Sarah got so annoying during the Crimson fleet arc i wish i would've had a option to push her out the airlock from a high altitude before going into orbit
@Zorothegallade-gg7zg including random civilians who, at most, are attached to a fetch quest! I tried to voluntarily fail a fetch quest once to get it off my quest list by killing the quest giver. Essential. Fair, I guess, but in that case let me tell them I don't wanna do it anymore! I don't wanna do a quest that could be solved by a cellphone!
@@Romanticoutlaw my problem is the opposite - I cannot remove quests that are bugged or unfinishable. Like a quest for that latino-sounding guy in Cydonia, a repeatble quest (funny by the way how all the morally questionable guys sound latino...) where I had to pick up five helmets. Only it didn't give, and finding five of the same is basically impossible. So the quest just lies there. Annoying as heck. Not the worst bugged quest, but still annoying.
My favorite theory about this game is that it was a scheme by leadership at Bethesda to trick investors. Microsoft ended up buying Bethesda, and paying off their substantial debts.
What's so infuriating about how mediocre the faction storylines and gameplay is that there are two ways to instantly make them better that would improve what I'm pretty sure Bethesda was intending with its main quest. 1: Let players fail quests in interesting ways. If you can't do X or Y because you already killed Z, just inform the player that they messed up or that it's not possible. Then on the next run, the player could either leverage their skills or foreknowledge to complete the quest, or just kill Z again because it's funny. 2: Make each faction storyline mutually exclusive, then tie them into the main storyline. This gives players the chance to tell Sara and Constellation to go screw themselves, and as a bonus it would let you engage with what the game wants you to believe makes you super special. If you get to the end of each run as someone different - a pirate, an explorer, a space cowboy etc. - and all the consequences that came from that, it would hit a lot harder than just doing whatever you can be bothered to achieve before deciding you were tired of that run.
A multiverse is just begging for the "because it's funny" ending because that's the only ending it can have. When you're God, who exactly is going to stop you? Could've leaned into the meta thing, maybe tried to do something interesting, but no. Bethesda built a sandbox without the sand.
The game just felt so soulless, safe and bland. When I went to the Neon club it felt so childish IMO. I play SWTOR and there are more adult themes and looking dancers in that game than SF and SW is a family friendly IP. The game constantly reminded me that I was playing a video game with it's ability to break my immersion. I finally had enough when I got to the quest where you are forced to rob the guy of one of the artifacts. There should've been an option to stealthily steal it, buy it or convince him to hand it over. Instead, I had to force the guy, who seemed like a pretty chill dude, to give me an artifact and I got a bounty for it which broke my immersion because I had just joined the United Colonies force. It also perturbed me that my companions were constantly disagreeing with me on morality but had no problem with me robbing the guy just because he had something they wanted. It felt like they had split personalities at times. I played 50 hours and I was done. I may revisit it in a few years if there are some massive mods to overhaul the game.
The worst part about all of this is the fact that the game ends and introduces NG+ in the form of a different universe.... Which is identical to the one you just finished playing at! Why not let you experience the different choices and their ramifications in NG+?!?!
But you can't change your traits. So, do you want to try alternate universes in hopes of seeing new things? Or do you want to create a new character with different traits in hopes of seeing new things? Which is it?
And there are apparently unique things you can see when you get new game+ like a timeline where you met several versions of yourself or one where Andreja killed constellatiom but as far as I know it's all rrandom to get these
I was surprised they didn't even just randomly change the trait tags to offer up some differences each cycle. It would have been pretty funny starting as a loner soldier, then replacing the alternate you that was tech criminal still living with their parents. A couple of minor dialog choices to occasionally comment on how different "you" are now wouldn't be amiss either.
If you notice the 2 deck nova galactic cockpit is in a museum on Earth attached to a model of the first grav drive ship which means the cockpit is 300 years old and no one has bothered to make any new designs over time.
@@RobotWithHumanHair. If you go to the NASA site museum on Earth go to one of the models that is one of the first grav drive ships if you look closely at the front of the model you’ll see the Nova Galactic cockpit which means it is 300 years old design.
Wow, Bethesda really hasn't made any advances over the years - not just the same creaky game engine, but the same story structure and beats. Starfield seems like nothing but a reskin of Fallout 4.
I would argue they have actually regresses. I'm not sure if the studio has had significant brain drain over the last 10 years, or if the old heads or just phoning it in, but Starfield development was LAZY and embarrassing.
they literally rehashed the 'dragonborn' idea- 'starborn', or whatever it was. that's the MOST on-the-nose plot point ripoff i've EVER seen in a game. they were so freaking lazy they couldnt even come up with a new word for it.
Not only that, they had the same bugs and glitches in their games sense Morrowind, that game came out in 2002. Bethesda peaked in 2002, after that everyone else moved on, they didn't and they expect people to buy and like their stagnated slop.
Hard for them to do anything tech wise when they licence an engine (gamebrayo) that's not been updated by its developer since 2012. Its legitimatly dead tech with a new renderer Bethesda threw on top. They've been using the exact same gameplay codebase since oblivion /fallout 3. nothing but Lazy devs. And at least one person at the studio needs to read creating emotion in games by David Freeman.
I started the Ryujin questline before I had the stealth perks. I realized I was terrible at stealth so I leveled those skills while I did other stuff. Came back and realized that all the quests were some version of crouch-sneak into an office, do 1 thing, then walk out. It was probably the most disappointing thing for me in the game. I was really looking forward to something like the thieves guild quests.
Morrowind - Hard RPG systems and unique fantasy world Oblivion - Watered down RPG (a lot easier) in a generic fantasy world Skyrim - Hand holdy action/rpg in a generic fantsy world Fallout 4 (WTF its just an action game with zero rpg elements or challenge) Starfailed - you cannot fail its just click button for more moving lights. I used to love Bethesda games but they have been devolving for 20+ years now and everyone in the games industry has at least moved past the systems they were using in the 90's instead of dumb them down
I actually wouldn't mind if Bethesda stayed in the past, but they keep getting worse. The only improvement over time is graphics and, although this will upset purists, getting rid of the leveling system in older TES games--that was such a pain.
This is just a factually incorrect post lol. You can have your own opinions about the quality of the games, but Fallout 4 objectively contains "RPG elements" by virtue of including levels and a skill system, as well as multiple routes you can choose (even if they do pale in comparison to previous games). Also calling Skyrim and Oblivion "generic fantasy worlds" is just complete nonsense, the entire Elder Scrolls series is HEAVILY inspired by fantasy novels of the 80s and 90s as well as Dungeons and Dragons. This is agonizing nostalgia bias.
Idk if it's funny or sad that I came up with more intriguing stories while playing Lego friends at a ripe age of 7 then a bunch of professional story writers at a famous game studio
Yeah, but you're not as cowardly as the BGS Team. Seriously- they're so pathologically averse to telling the player 'No' narratively they squeeze all the weight out of their narrative. And then, mechanically, *gestures at video*
@@dunno.__. They've somehow managed to combine two of the worst DM archetypes: The one who'll 'Yeah, sure' to everything and anything to the extent that it becomes incoherent, *and* the one that thinks their crappy stuff is *so* good that the party absolutely *has* to be railroaded through it to experience it 'properly'. And those two are normally mutually exclusive!
emil "keep it simple, stupid" pagliarulo has his thumb on it. so yeah, it aint gonna be a complex story. cuz according to him "players dont like it". he also thinks "write what you know". so ofc we get almost the same scene that we got in fallout 4 when we entered goodneighbor ,when entering the key the first time.
The big red flag pre release was the lack of vertical slice showcase. A complete gameplay loop near the start of the game that shows off as many systems as possible for press and then new players. The best modern example is the meat plant from CP2077. It changed a lot since first shown, but even at the disastrous 1.0 release it showed a single objective achievable through every possible plagstyle, each with its own pros and cons. I look for previews to say they've seen the level from the trailer but done completely differently there's a reason this was trailer mission. As far as I remembe, Starfield trailers were just - "you can do this" - cut to completely different scene - "and you can do this" - repeat Turns out the vertical slice was a crepe.
For the Crimson Fleet, you can join without being an informant. You refuse the blackmail, they throw you out on the street, and eventually an NPC in Cydonia recruits you into the fleet. That way you don't have to report back to Sysdef all the time. However, at the end of the quest line Akande will still talk to you like you were his informant, because Bethesda didn't include alternate dialog.
oh my god....... all they had to do was make matthieu revealed to be the mole if the player wasn't and add like five lines of dialog. But apparently that was too much to ask
One of my pet peeves with the Ryujin industries quest line is there was no way to use your mind control powers to make YOU the ceo. I know it’s a running joke with Bethesda, but this is one of the only ways you can reasonably take over a company; and that’s a far better reward than the idiotic mission board you can only access through 3 loading screens.
There should be many ways to steal a trophy from a cruise ship in space but I am forced to take the same path every time, the same can be said about the artifacts.
This is funny because I modded Skyrim to have more realistic stealth detection and it makes it harder but interactive because lighting and noise is more important than arbitrary sneak perk values. In Starfield, the AI just knows you're there.
@@panzer00 Yeah, making Skyrim more realistic honestly makes it a lot more fun. Using mods that make stealth detection a lot less forgiving, combat significantly more deadly, and being restrictive with my build have made the game feel really fresh. Like, being able to be killed by 1 or 2 arrows meant maintaining stealth was a must for stealth builds and the higher difficulty meant I had to be very meticulous and thoughtful about how I approached stealth. On the other hand, using a melee build in these circumstances meant that you had to utilize your shield extensively to block arrows and then weave around enemies/ rush them to take them out quickly. Blocking was literally the most important skill, and it was so different from the vanilla tank everything and just focus on high damage output because now everything had a high damage output, including the common enemies that I now had to fear. Making a pure mage also is a lot more interesting because I really utilize all the different kind of spells to avoid detection, take enemies out quickly, and heal quickly when I engage in direct combat because I do not have a high defence or health pool. This type of high risk gameplay probably isn't for everyone, it can certainly be frustrating at times, but I find it so much fun.
@@lif6737 you actually had to think about your encounters. Bethesda doesnt want it's players to have to think while playing. Most game are made so that people can just turn off their brains and win because fun? I guess.
@@touko7447don’t forget he was also quoted to say that nate was the soldier in canada (and is a war criminal) because he felt particularly quirky that day. All the backlash he got made him tweet something along the lines of “twitter is bad but at least i can talk to likeminded individuals” (not 100% sure)
My whole issue with the Bethesda design is how anti roleplaying it is. Those games constantly treats your character as YOU, the player, instead of as a character, it's the complete opposite of roleplaying. Everything is designed around that. The whole quest system is basically NPCs coming to you and saying "hey you, the player, i have a quest for you, do you want to play that quest ?", it doesn't care who or what your character is and what his/her motivations are, it's always directly talking to YOU, it's all about giving you more "content" to "explore". Those games are SANDBOX, not RPGs.
The skills are designed like that because they want you to grind for hundreds of hours before you have the ability to do anything. You can't engage with most systems and gameplay elements until you do that. (and once you do, you find out those systems are trash and useless anyway, e.g. boarding and stealing ships, base building) You are constantly blocked off from natural gameplay by lacking skills, which feels horrible. You board a ship and try to steal it? Sry you can't pilot it(your companion that is high level pilot can't either, and even if you do, you can only sell for peanuts, making it completely pointless waste of time, you will make as much by looting 1 gun). You want to upgrade your ship while you have 10 times the money and resources necessary? Sry you can't do that. Wanna use this ship building system to make a cool custom ship? Sry you can't do that. Come back after you grind for 100 more hours and unlock all the skill if you want to properly interact with the system. Which keeps happening all the time, completely and suddenly destroying a gameplay experience you are actively having. You feel like you did something cool by taking on a strong ship and boarding it to take it, or sneaking when 1 lands to steal it? Suddenly you realize you can't do anything about anything and just... leave, flaccidly. (which can be some of the most memorable things in a game, still remember in Fallout 2 when right at the start of the game, I ran into random direction on the world map, ran into an Enclave base. Snuck inside in a very weird way, found my way to the barracks underground, stole a power armor from a locker. Went out to try and leave, sergeant saw me, took me for a guard, sent me back to my post. I had to stand there, waited for a chance to escape and eventually did it. Ended up with a super high level piece of gear, power armor, right at the start of the game. It was epic. In shartfield, I managed to take over a ship that was way better than mine, but you can't pilot it or do anything with it, so you just leave.) There are many other core design issues with it that are made to force you to grind, like how you level the tiers. Which should at least be tracked before you unlock the skill(Ideally redesigned completely). But anyway, there are so many massive design(and writing) issues you are not even covering or are skipping over in the 2 videos, you could make 20 hours of talking about it and it still probably won't cover everything. (ofc. the borderline non existent and horrible world building, piss poor writing, and technical quality that is surpassed by games from 15-20 years ago makes it not worth playing either way, even IF the gameplay itself was good, or if the skill progression and char development was good) (Lmao 1$ bounty, what e menace to the galaxy)
The reason all those skills are split between skill trees so nonsensically is because Bethesda has no idea how to balance their games. If you could just grab all the skills you want and that synergize well together you would be too powerful, too early. But of course, all of this does not matter because the game is completely broken.
Fun thing about the Neurolink: it does do things outside of the quest... Except IT doesnt do anything, the Manipulation skill does things. It literally just gives you the first perk tier of Manipulation, except you'll still need to spend a perk point on tier 1 if you want to further upgrade it. The Neurolink isn't even a unique mechanic, it's just a perk disguised as a unique reward.
Because it's "big" and the Game Awards don't give a fuck about videogames other than marketing the idea that they're "big" as well. That's the only reason why Baldur's Gate 3 won GotY. Not for any of its actual merits. Yahtzee made a good video about it a while ago. "How to Predict The Game Awards"
@CErra310 this is such a weird take. 'if a better game came out that year, that game wouldve won'. like, yeah, thats how competitions work. im not saying the awards arent asinine but im genuinely having a hard time picturing a year in which bg3 *doesnt* win
The design is thoughtless because of US. We paid for the dame skyrim 5 times over, and every fallout game is a massive success. Todd thinks that he doesn't need to improve, he doesn't need to change. Mf already got the perfect formulae and doesn't want to inovate.
My biggest complaint about the skill system is the amount of basic game mechanics that are locked behind it. Want to use a jetpack (which was HEAVILY advertised for the game)? Put skill points into it. Want to even attempt stealth? Skill points into it. On top of that the game assumes you have certain skills sometimes. In one of the first missions, when you get attacked in space with Sarah, Sarah specifically says to target certain parts of the enemy ships to immobilize and disarm them. Unless you put one of your first 3-4 levels in systems targeting, you LITERALLY CANNOT DO THIS. Why even include the voice line if 99% of players can't even do what she's suggesting at this point in the game? The game also assumes you have multiple points in persuasion since there's so many speech checks.
I actually like restricting certain aspects of gameplay in theory because I think build making presents a ton of replay value, encourages roleplay, and makes your choices really impactful. Like, I'm probably in the minority, but I actually like that you have no stealth meter without investing a point into stealth. Stealth shouldn't be broken like it is, but I like the idea of building a strong, heavily-armoured and combat focused character that can theoretically stealth, but who has a massive disadvantage if they try too given that I can't see enemy detection. In that case, stealth is engaged with incredibly carefully and more as a last resort, and instead the game incentives me to use my build like I built it to be used, going in guns blazing and wiping out a base. The game should punish you for trying to engage with gameplay mechanics you haven't invested in (or even cut off gameplay mechanics in some cases), but heavily reward you for that investment by improving the skill immensely or unlocking new abilities. I don't think that's a bad thing, the issue is Bethesda designed a game where certain skills are effectively required, such as with jetpacks (which should have just been equipment with mods determining their effectiveness), where build viability is often locked into the late-game, where the skill tree does not effectively synergize with the perks offered in each branch, and where the reward for developing your build is often awful. I want my build choices to matter, but ironically Bethesda forces everyone to be a jack-of-all-trades.
@@lif6737 I agree, a balance is in order. Like you say, jetpacks are probably a bad choice for the game, but I like not being able to see the stealth meter without investment. I found basebuilding to be an irritating aspect, as the system is not very enjoyable without substantial investment. Getting into the basics of something should be enough to clear the major logistical hurdles. Starfield is just all over the place with these features.
The best Bethesda game I've ever played - without mods - was Morrowind. Every game after Morrowind needed mods. New Vegas is great with or without mods but it's not really a Bethesda game.
You know what's so _fun_ about your observation of Starfield just being a reskin of Fallout? That as far as quest structure is concerned, the Crimson Fleet is this game's Institute, and Sysdef is their Railroad equivalent.
The worst part about all of this is that they've been doing this for like 20 years.. and skyrim came out of it and printed money for them. How skyrim reached the level of praise and popularity it did, i will never understand. Other than the fact that it was in the right place at the right time, the game really has nothing going for it.
Bethesda trying so hard to remove RP in the RPG. Soon maybe we will get a hack and slash game instead, Oh wait nvm their melee combat system suck in everygame. The best thing in Fallout game was how i try to kill everyone by hit them with melee in stealth infront of them without getting reputation damage. Fallout 3 show how bad the game lack of detail (No farm, No food but people somehow survived and got ton food to sell, Main quest is about purified the water for the people but they are doing just fine without the water problem) and now here we are again in Starfield
They helped popularize sandbox rpgs but struggle to allow for the rpg part. You hit the nail on the head and I'd even go so far as to say that the best mods that come out regarding their games are re-introducing, flushing out, and/or introducing role-play elements to their writing for faction, main questlines, and even just general interaction mechanics. I think back to mods like The Choice is Yours, Alternate Start: LAL, At Your Own Pace. All of which allow for the player to choose if you want to do something or not, when you want to do something, and even how you can go about doing things so that role play in Skyrim is actual role play. The saddest part of Starfield for me was when I pulled back and thought, "this will be really good when the modding community starts up." A year later and it feels like the modding community can't get off the ground (at least for console, which is how I play). It's a pity because the SkyrimXboxMods community is so big that the subreddit for it is always active. Part of it is to do with the modding drama bethesda kicked up when Starfield released (they had been messing with console modding to the point where it wildly upset the console modding community). Love your videos as always, Mack!
from a pc player, the modding scene was dead two months in, because people didn't _want_ to make mods for it after they played it enough to see how empty it was. There was a general sentiment that starfield was just built as a skeleton with the expectation that modders would fill it out, and let's just say [Everyone disliked that.]. Not dissimilar to fo76's lack of npcs because they expected players to fill that role with roleplaying. People want a complete game they can add to, not a shell to give unpaid labor to
I noticed in Fallout 4 it is practically impossible to refuse a quest. I answered "I am not interested." and the guy replied "In case you change your mind in the future..." and I got the quest anyway. There is so little content Bethesda needs to make sure you see all of it in its shallow glory.
IRL a spaceship in space doesn't slow down when you get off the throttle. Some times when launching your ship there is a dude walking past - he'd be turned into powdered toast, then there's how they can fly when in atmo. Then there's the fact that when on a planet in your hermetically sealed spacesuit you are affected by poisonous gasses. LASER rifles give kickback like a shotgun when in zero G. I can't believe Toddles doesn't know, or didn't consult a high school student on the absolute basics, like Newton's 1st Law of Motion. For the love of Dog, even Homer bloody Simpson knows that. I'm so sorry for that unhinged rant, it's been bothering me for ages. My GF is at the point of relentless mockery, which is hilarious and well deserved.
@@Bob-Jenkins Hahahaha i get you! I remember an interview or something when they were asked about the setting and they were talking about having it more grounded and calling it nasapunk or whatever. It's amazingly stupid gamedesign 😂
The NG+ is a perfect example of lack of thought as to how you can not lock players out of content for their descisions. You literally go to a new Universe and start over. You are perfectly free to make a different choice, they could have actually had consequences for destroying Sysdef if they actually made the consequences matter.
Being tied to Constallation was one of the worse narrative choices for this game. Realistically you should be completely free unless you choose a specific start aswell as each major faction having a role in the Unity quest. So you can choose who to continue the main questline with. That way if you do side with the pirates you are no longer allowed in UC space wothout an immediately being hunted. You literally yave NG+ built in. You should be able to be locked out of factions or fail some quests. You can retry again later.
When I tried to solve the quest involving the settlers stuck in space getting blocked from landing on the planet by the rich snobs by shooting the rich snobs who deserved it, and finding out they were ALL IMMORTAL, I knew this was definitely a Bethesda game.
@@Vaguer_Weevil Well we mostly use cows as they're very easy to handle, produce quite a lot for very little labor with very little downsides. (the tons of methane they produce has become quite the issue for the climate) But very good point, milk can have many sources. Ask me not questions and I’ll tell you no lies. One doesn't know, one can't answer.
There’s a simple reason why Bethesda is so bad at this: Money. They are only interested in doing the bare minimum and every decision they make for the game from narrative to mechanics comes down to how little can we do for the least amount of cost possible? Giving players agency and having consequences and branching paths of tackling a situation would mean more lines for voice actors, more resources to create more content…and more money spent. That’s a no no
The "Starfield is Fallout" Idea is also funny because that ship thats been floating through space is 200 years old and thats actually roughly the time between when the bombs dropped and when most of the fallout games take place (Outside of 76)
In my playthrough I sided against the Crimson Fleet and my god does the game try to guilt you over choosing to betray the Fleet. They force you to gun down every named NPC you meet during your time with the Fleet and have all of them call you a backstabber. Like, every one of them is either a murderer or worse, and the one guy that didn't choose to be there you can spare. You expect me to feel bad about this?
Hey Mack, long time stalker, first time viewer, im really disappointed you didnt include facts about dates or any other fruits. I hope you can continue to grow your skills in content creation and produce riveting content around dates.
my theory for why the stealth skills (and other such synergizing things) are distributed across a bunch of different skill trees is literally just to waste your levelups, so that it takes you more levels to create the actual build you want. It's just to bloat playtime/to make the game more artificially difficult than it otherwise would be. But maybe I'm just attributing malice to what can be explained by incompetence
Why would you ask the guy with less seniority and accomplishments what they think of their marginally more seasoned superior? What kind of sense does that make? It's such bad storytelling.
Honestly it should have been like dishonored, where many abilities are built around loud and messy assassinations, making being quiet and non-lethal more rewarding
The second part does tend to be the best one in the trilogy. This game reminds me of the 2 guard problem so I'll paint a picture. There are two guards blocking separate paths of pristine brick, each guard will give a statement and while one will lie the other will tell the truth, it is said that going down the wrong path will lead to dire consequences. Luckily you knew about this beforehand and bought an expensive crystal that allows you to read minds, this will ensure you know who is lying. You go up to the two guards, one says "the path behind me is made of brick" while the other says "the path behind is is made of gold", you can immediately tell who is lying without even needing the expensive crystal. You realise that this puzzle was a complete waste of time and you wated all your money. you walk down the truthful path and make to your destination where you see the second path that the lying guard was blocking also reach the destination, the only difference is that the lying path had a pebble in the road. This is the 2 guard problem written by the genius Todd Howard.
Wow.... I'm just speechless...I love being stealthy in games. Was even thinking of giving starfield a chance and was planning a stealth play through. You saved me of wasting 30 hours building this character.
I think what I find most baffling is that Bethesda created the perfect excuse to experience everything from entering the unity (or whatever they call it). Like they literally could of had the best of both worlds. Have serious consequences for the factions, because once you enter the unity, you can experiance it again, or change it.
Listening to the rant about stealth builds being impossible to get going because they were implemented without any thought or care is amusing because this entire diatribe could be applied 1:1 to magic in skyrim, which is allegedly the best rpg ever made
Join the college fix one of the anomalies with the gloves, you now have basically infinite magic for two hours. When it runs out, fix the 2nd. 2hrs later fix the third. Mage build is now easy to get going
@@Christina-g4s infinite magic and zero point to having it because the "build" consists of picking impact and dual-casting fireball to stunlock everything to death
@@CErra310 Yeah I remember everyone kept talking about how much magic sucked in Skyrim because no damage scaling, but like when I actually tried it, it was probably my easiest playthrough ever. A bit tedious because of the low damage, but never did I feel in any kind of danger. Even when a dragon came to attack, I could just endlessly stunlock it to death.
As someone who love space ship Combat, I'll tell you as someone with thousands of hours of combat experience in elite dangerous: Starfield is almost copy and pasted to the T from elite dangerous. The ui is similar, power distribution is identical, the movement is almost identical. It's just worse in every way. The numbers are horribly tuned. Every aspect just feels like a far far inferior version of EDs space Combat
So here's why you keep getting spotted to quickly while stealthing: You are wearing a space suit, which is categorized as heavy armor so the enemies are detecting you based on the sound you are technically making and the penalties to your stealth rating as a result of wearing heavy boots. So to be really effective at stealth, you need to take off the space suit and put on some normal clothes and boots... in a game where you have to be wearing a space suit most of the time. See, Bethesda never really updated their stealth system's core mechanic of how detection works all that much since Morrowind, way back in 2002, where the weight of your footwear was one big contributing factor to being detected, I think. I'd been using MCP a lot these days and they allow some tweaks to stealth in that game. Even so, footwear/boot weight affecting stealth has been a thing since at least Oblivion if it didn't start in Morrowind.
Even then, though, weight should only really affect your stealth when moving. It's always been described as being the noise you make while moving, which is also affected by how fast you move. He seemed to kept getting detected even when standing still.
Starfield tried(key word here) to be an open world adventure in the same year of Tears of the Kingdom, it tried to be a sci fi shooter action game in the same year of Armored Core 6, and it tried to be a dynamic rpg in the same year of Baldur's gate 3. There was no way for it to stand out, even if it wasn't as sad a display as it ended up being
Skyrim never had good melee, and I assume that not even half of the original cast that made Skyrim is left, so they ruined melee completely this time. I have zero hopes for Bethesda and will never replay Starfield the way I replayed Skyrim or Oblivion several times.
I enjoyed Skyrim at the time, but had some issues with the design. Then The Witcher 2 came out and solved many of the issues I had. But then The Witcher 3 came out and I never wanted to go back to a Bethesda game. So I just played Cyberpunk 2077 instead of Starfield, never regretted it. Even with the launch issues, I still loved what CP2077 was doing, and now it's simply an amazing game that I just play as comfort food just to live in the world of Night City. I wish Starfield was like that, but it just isn't.
Witcher 3 does not at all have the Skyrim kind of freedom, at the starting tutorial area if you try to attack the soldiers in training, they kill you in like 2 hits, all because the game doesn't want you to fight friendly NPCs. CB2077 is a lot better in this regard but Witcher 3 was not it, it's not really a "Bathesda-like" if you can't kill random NPCs, and yes obviously Starfield also has this exact problem.
If you are great at parrying, you can kill a lot of friendly soldiers at the beginning of the game. I did it out of curiosity near the captain that tells you to kill the griffin.
For me the "Bethesda Killer" were the Shadow of Mordor games. Seeing enemies who strategize, diversify, and react in many different ways to your actions including retreating when it's clear you have the upper hand is night and day compared to Bethesda's cookie cutter "Rawr imma hit you till one of us dies" enemies.
@@dannydogs4385 except in one of the early missions you can easily kill some normal soldiers not new recruits, so why are the recruits much much stronger?
@@Zorothegallade-gg7zg enemies in Bethesda games never strategized, being silly has always been one of the charms of Bethesda games. Clearly you wanted more serious games not Bethesda games.
my Khajiiti Rogue, Agnetha: has her Sneak at Legendary and capped so she can sit, naked, in a bandit camp and nobody even notices. Your Starborn showed one toe and the planet saw you... Got to wonder just how the hell Bethesda screwed this up when literally they just had to grab their own Perk code section from Fallout 4 or Skyrim and then focus on the "NASA Punk" around them but at least the skills would have worked.
Duke Nukem forever 2001 had pipe mini games first. Suppresors are gun attachments that reduce sound, and silencers are parts of guns that silence sound. Suppresor sounds louder than silencer sound when gun is fired.
1:05:56 i hate to be pedantic and this video is AMAZING but calling starfield fallout is WAAAAAAAYYY too charitable. fallout 1, 2 and new vegas are still, to this day, the peak of role playing in videogames. It'd be more accurate to say is basically fallout 4 SPECIFICALLY... annnnnddd thats probably what you meant, isn't it.
@@haserrea Starfield is (Bethesda's) Fallout. Fallout 1, 2 and NV are not Bethesda titles, one keyword can make a world of difference but I just assumed it was implied by Captain. Is specifically Fallout 4 really that much different from 3 and 76?
@@sirjmo no, yeah you're absolutely right. is just with the discourse surrounding fallout sometimes im not sure which of the games they are referring to. but it was pretty obvious in hindsight.
I feel there's some kind of "armor" bug with the stealth... when I take my space suit off, the difference is huge in being detected... but... can't really stealth around with no space suit in a vacoom...
The more I learn about Starfield, the less I wanna play it. I was gonna get it on launch, but decided against it because its a Bethesda game and their recent game release history is terrible (as with what seems to be most other companies). The only games I would even consider pre-ordering or getting on launch now is if FromSoft makes it.
If you really really want to try it, gamepass for 1 month is what I’d do. I didn’t like the game at all, but at least I got to play the Mass Effect Trilogy for the month and that was worth it.
The design document for this game was just "fill that shit up." No need to put care and thought into any interaction, no need to flowchart anything into something that makes sense, no need to check for immersion breaking stuff, if concept doesn't work just loading screen that shit problem solved, if NPC death leads to complication, no just make that shit immune, prob solved, whatever just. FILL. THAT. SHIT. UP. It's both lazy for not figuring things out and not lazy because I mean.. they did fill that shit up. "We're Bethesda-game, we're immune to criticism lmao people will eat this up no matter what." And it did.
59:18 My main issue with this is why are they called Terromorphs if they didn't know they morph from something else? And as PatricianTV pointed out, was no one checking what Heatleechs were doing with all that heat they were leeching? Did no one do research on Heatleechs to find out what they are in the who knows how long they've been a pest? Never played the game so maybe there's something somewhere explaining this. Like how in Cyberpunk 2077 you can hear on the news or offhandedly in a main quest conversation that most pets are banned in Night City after several viral outbreaks spread by dogs, cats and birds lead to an act being created. People still own them, they are just are taxed heavily for doing so only the rich can afford them.
I still think starfield is significantly worse than anyone has been able to adequately put into words so far. I guess we need another few years to really let the content creators wrap their minds around this colossal failure of a game.
I had this wakeup call in Oblivion, during the Dark Brotherhood storyline, when I figured out 2 quests into the traitor storyline that someone was swapping out the Dead Drops...and there was absolutely no way to raise this to Lucien and you were forced to play an oblivious idiot.
i honestly dont think Bethesda purposely makes the game easy for casual players to make it more accessible, the real issue is the LACK of man power to implement these systems to the game since Bethesda is a REALLY small team for modern "AAA game" standards. I think Bethesda had less than 600 ppl working on starfield, meanwhile games like cyber punk had DOUBLE the developers than Bethesda this issue needs to be brought up more often and ppl choose not to, they decide to blame the "engine" and Todd Howard on EVERYTHING instead, even though the engine is fine... although, if they did hire more devs, they can heavily improve on the engine too
I was going to say, the fact that the advanced mind control tech they hype up is also just a skill you could unlock independently is also a perfect metaphor for the fact that Bathesda is terrified of players missing content.
Considering the locking out of questlines - this is especially relevant considering the whole replay+ (or whatever it is called), that because there is nothing in the new rerun just becomes utterly pointless. Why redo the exact same stuff when there is literally nothing that changes? How it is exploration when you are just redoing what you have already done?
33:14 Taking inflation into account, if starfield takes place in 2330 and the Average rate of inflation is 3% for the American dollar, I find that the price of a 66 credit carton of milk is really around $8.41 or 8.50 to keep math simple
