My Random Thoughts on  

* Followup on the Failure of Bethesda's Generational Cycle: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6qXKY8crKj8.html&pp=gAQBiAQB More Links Below: * $5-ish "We Have Starfield At Home": store.steampowered.com/app/502720/Star_Explorers/ * Starfield "First Play" Playlist: ru-vid.com/group/PL9qQ3PJcmlre_crSvXdyN29_Fh0bOk1rt * Other Live-Content: www.youtube.com/@Zhakaron/streams * Final Fantasy 14 New Player Guide: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CzjOx_U1NvI.html

My biggest gripe with Starfield is that there are no real consequences. You're never really blocked off from any content and you're not allowed to kill characters because then you can't do their quest. This in a game with New Game + You should be able to take different paths every playthrough, with different factions and characters of different moral alignments.

Im hopeful for the eventual "What if Starfield was good"

whoa ... Star Explorers is basically low-res Starfield but was released 5 yrs prior?

It's kind of nice seeing someone go into their review with "I LOVE Starfield despite its flaws BUT the flaws are DEFINITELY THERE and should be addressed." It's pretty cool to me that you're honest that you love the game but instead of defending it, you're willing to go "The game really needs improvement".

New person here. Came by after seeing you mentioned in comments of that NKB video and just less than five minutes it was pretty clear the "Starfield hating hipster" bit was a big misrepresentation. Enjoy the presentation style and the grounded critique, too often these days its thinly veiled hating for clicks. I am more surprised that I somehow haven't visited this channel earlier(YT algorithm sucks) However it happened I'm happy to have ended up here.

"Toddern Bethesda" I...I am speechless

Flavor text is surprisingly effective and I wish there was more of it in games. One of the reasons I played Kerbal Space Program was just to see the flavor text for the science experiments...

My biggest gripe with starfield is that there are a million well written scifi galaxies and they chose to make their own ip that lacks anything original or good writing. Imagine if this was based on larry nivens ringworld, asimovs trantorian empire, douglas adams' hitchikers guide, or literally any heinlein fantasy. They would actually have some depth good writing to fall back on and real science and gadgets premade for them since bethesda clearly doesnt spend the time to craft a world themselves

Starfield is probably the most uninspired, unimmersive Bethesda game they have ever made. Immersion is one of the things i love about Bethesda's games and Starfield is just devoid of it. Don't get me wrong there are some things Starfield did well, but for every thing that Starfield did well there are like ten things that it did terribly. This game just made me want to go back and play their older games.

Im surprised you dont have more subs. Ive been watching you for a long time and you always are a joy to watch. Very well worded and on point.

I'm glad you decided to critique the game despite your overall enjoyment of the experience. We really need more grounded reviews that separate our emotions and experiences from the overall product. The internet and the industry would benefit greatly from it.

As a student with a fairly rigorous curriculum I've found even more value from reviews to help me make sure I wont waste my time. I think I can probably skip Starfield for now, a real shame. Always a pleasure watching your content though!

Making variations of furniture and treasure containers should not even need designers. Just have a random list of objects that could be placed at that location. So at a certain location a table would be rolled from a list of 5 different looking but about same size tables with a chance to remain empty space perhaps. Do that on loading the space and every plsyer would see different things at same locstions.

I just want to add a small comment concerning pronouns in this game, if you play in french or some other language where gender is baked into almost everything like verb conjugation and declination of adjectives and what not, then, and only then would the choice matter and in my opinion it adds more depth, i can't see how this is a problem, i love this feature and you'd be amazed how many rpgs don't have this. Of course in english it makes no real impact.

"The story is garbage but the gameplay is fun," is the video game critique version of "I like her for her body."

Honestly Bethesda makes better dungeon crawlers than RPGs in my opinion.

46:35 "Ofc you still would need some sort of a Vehicle" - Or ... Alien Mounts that you can ride on habitable planets ... we already have the Xenosociology skill or the Alien Reanimation Power ... why not just let me Mount the Aliens and use them as my ride ?

I expected a certain amount of jank, some bugs and I didn't expect the companions or story to be Bioware level but man I was so let down by the lack of exploration. That's the one thing I thought I'd get. Then when I discovered the Starborn powers I was done with the game. That choice felt so lazy. It actually made me mad. I think the game suffers from bland companions, lack of player freedom, minimal exploration and bad writing which is sad because I actually enjoy the gameplay. The shooting is fun.

where's the flavored dialogue that lets me tell Constellation where to shove their goody-two-shoes bullcrap?

You have the best, most complete gameplay, taking into consideration how and why gamers play.

I find the idea of Sarah being a sex maniac hilarious

make a few changes with the points of interest - yes totally agree. Kept coming across crashed starships. Nothing there, nothing to search. No survivors. Just the same ship. The same crater. The same debris. They could have swapped things up. Had several different ship types. Have survivors in one. Looters in another. Have sections of the ship that could be entered and searched with horrible creey crawlies in them. Anything to make it look like Bethesda gave a crap.

Every Bethesda game post-Morrowind has had the same writing shortfalls: Depthless, flat dialogue that makes characters seem like wooden caricatures of people instead of well-rounded, complex individuals with flaws, quirks, and goals (for reference, compare to Baldur's Gate 3, Fallout New Vegas, The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk). Shallow plots without any engaging themes or artfully compelling narratives. They come across like amateur improvisations of stories rather than labors of passion forged by an insightful, well-read writer who understands human tragedy and has something interesting to say about the human condition. A general sense of cartoonish unseriousness, as if the only narrative goal were to entertain children. A lack (especially in the Fallout games) of logical cohesion in world-building, i.e., nothing makes sense if you think about it. For example, Fallout 3 and 4's worlds don't seem to have coherent socioeconomic systems that explain why people live the way they do, or how they feed and take care of themselves. It seems like these points are glossed over by the team in favor of a freewheeling "The point is to have fun, you guys!" philosophy that disdains the application of logic when telling stories. However, prior to Starfield, people still generally loved Bethesda games for their well-designed, immersive overworlds that were fun to explore and dungeon dive in. But Starfield threw out that feature in favor of randomly generated gruel peppered with copy-and-paste prefabbed dungeons that run on constant repeat, thereby leaving us with a product that highlights all of Bethesda's flaws without including any of their strengths (barring perhaps art design), which caused us to finally begin fixating on the crap writing and really taking it to task.

So I’m sure everyone has stories like this. But my first time in Starfield my first character. I basically made like a space criminal. And one of the things I did was I tried stealing stuff on the starter planet. I noticed that I got pretty good at doing it. But eventually I started wondering like why aren’t there any cameras here. And then I remembered cyberpunk and all of the security in there. And I remember looking at the security tree in this thing in the promo and I was like oh maybe they have hacking like cyberpunk. Frankly this game would have benefited a lot from drawing more from that well.

Subscribed! Your calm, open and detailed way of talking about the pros and cons is relaxing and authentic. Very good video!

Now, with the vastness of Tamriel Rebuilt, I don't even consider the "Main Quest", as I find exploration, questing, dungeon crawling and Faction action more interesting and immersing.

I only played for about 12h when i heard about the Starborn stuff and i was like "really? Starborn?". This whole game just feels uninspired in the creative side to be honest. I only stopped playing because i need a new gpu to play this in an acceptable performance level. I'll probably wait for Bethesda to "finish" working on it before i return to complete/mod the shit out of it. I like the Bethesda gameplay loop so at least that salvaged it for me but i understand everyone that has problems with it as a game.

Personally i don't really have a use for the new game plus mechanic since for me half the fun of these games is making a new character but i am excited for what modders could potentially do with it

I find the aggressive blandness of their pan-humankind monoculture so dull as to be objectionable. As for gunplay and combat I thought Cyberpunk shat on Starfield if you like that kinda thing.

Been waiting for this! My opinion main quest is terrible. Factions and some side quests are great. Looking forward to mods.

I know for a fact to not expect anything great story-wise as long as Emil is in a position of power. The gameplay loop of previous Bethesda games, along with Emil, has kept any desire to play Starfield at bay. I’m sure there’s plenty of good qualities, but I already have everything it can offer that I already want.

I know this video is 2 months old, but hearing your thoughts on the game, I have gone from "I didnt trust it to be good and it isnt so I wont bother ever" to "I didnt trust it to be good, and in many cases it isnt, but I can see me getting some fun out of this someday" and thus it went from "never buying it" to "probably later, on sale, after some mods" Edit: one mod I want is redone gun models, not all, but a decent selection of the vanilla guns look... kinda ugly to the point of being distracting, not all, some are even great. Idk, just a personal line in the sand that matters to me and not many others

Would the temporal cleanup idea make increasing bugs in longer playthroughs canon 🤣

Zaric, ive watched you for 10 years. you still ramble with the best. i also laughed with the visions from the shards. I thought ive been here before as Shepard on ME, and then before that on KoTOR. that said, both had far more interesting payoffs

I haven't played this game at all, but every bit of combat I see just looks so bad. Like is there no recoil? Even the enemies look like they have no reaction to being hit? The ragdolls too, they look super boring.

The dungeon changes would make a world of difference, I thought they would be doing something like that, boy was I disappointed.

I love the core gameplay loop as well, especially since they have finally perfected their gunplay and movement. the main factions have great quests as well. However as you say, Constellation is considered by a large amount of players to be absolutely unbearable. And I am one of them. I absolutely HATED them and after dropping them my enjoyment went up x100. On NG+ cycles I never interacted with them outside of the one mandatory interaction. There is also a tremendous dearth of unique locations. I believe in total we have about 27. That sucks. That objectively is a paltry amount of content.

I just want Kerbal space program meets fallout 4 meets no man's sky meets morrowind. Is that so much to ask? (yes, the answer is yes, that doesn't mean I can't dream tho)

I would've liked it a bit more if every single follower had a fully fleshed out quest & romance option. Like Marika Boros mentions she has parents in hopetown but you never get any option to bring her to them or anything like that. I was a bit dissatisfied that the non constellation crew members were just husks with flavor. Still better them than the actual husks that are the generic mercenary xyz specialist with only a single skill point.

would expect anyone who loved daggerfall and wishes bethesda went back to those days would love starfield. well, maybe besides the lack of total freedom in the choices your character can make. personally i prefer "modern bethesda"'s maps to starfield's/daggerfall's "exploration". i'd prefer if they made 1 or 2 planets or moons, and kept it dense like how they did stuff from morrowind. also, don't really care much for very branching quests or having complete freedom in choices, tho it's cool when it's there, to me a game doesn't require them to be an RPG. starfield's butchering exploration aside, i quite like the side quests and they're pretty much all i do in the game.

i bet someone already told you or you wont read these comments. But the reason why no one remembers you marry Sarah is because she asks to keep it secret from everyone else becuase they don't need to know everything about her life. It's basically the same thing as Bethesda not having the NPCs remembering it's just the excuse they never even knew.

Isn't Kris Takahashi on Bethesda's payroll now? Would explain the dialogue changes.

Starfield's package of gameplay systems just didn't ring for me. I don't care for planet exploration, building bases, and the space combat looked like and had the difficulty of Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters. I was appalled how melee weapons did not get any modifications like FO4's, and the pool of base weapons is even slimmer. I did not get far into the MQ or any faction's quests, but the worldbuilding and presentation did not appeal to me. Then you have the expected Bethesdajank... and it reminded me why I only play Bethesda games with a healthy dose of mods. Great video, Zaric. I've dropped the game some hours into the MQ, so hearing from someone who has taken the time to run through all the factions and endgame was valuable to me. Also, I wonder if you heard of Kurt Kuhlmann leaving Bethesda for the second time. Some days ago on his linkedin profile, he says he left the company and is a free agent, although it was not widely reported and the post looks to be removed now. EDIT: Nevermind, the post's still on his profile...

I definitely prefer fallout companions. They still had "enough" depth and variety. Just not a lot of story involvement. They all have interesting and unique comments on locations and certain situations that I'm still finding.

I just love seeing exploding space ships.

Wow, you gave a lot of context to a lot of the criticisms I had, and have seen around youtube. Though I'm still massively disappointed, the disparate creative process you described explains a LOT.

I saw and talked to the Hunter while he was walking over to the bar. He definitely stood out, and we had a conversation, it was interesting to have that reveal later on.

Dude so cool to see you are still making videos!!!!!!

The dev who who has to do the tweaks you speak of will say they need 4 months when it would only an afternoon 😊

That "Shattered Space" DLC... I would personally be disappointed - at least with the concept - if it was all about anomalies caused by the Starborn, but I'd be damned if that wouldn't be an appropriate title for a DLC exactly about that. Not only that, Will Shen was "in charge" of the main quest, whatever that means - and while this could mean nothing at all, I believe Shen was also the Lead Designer for Far Harbour, the first "expansion" for F4. Shattered Space could be an opportunity for him to explore things he wouldn't (or couldn't) in the vanilla game. Plus, while it could be about a war or a Second Serpent's Crusade, I don't think this DLC will be "Dragonborn sized", and will be more "Dawnguard sized" - and Emil is on record saying Va'Ruun is his favourite religion in Starfield: I fully expect the Va'Ruun DLC to be the biggest and maybe the last expansion for Starfield, and I think Emil will want control of that one. Regardless, don't you think that Bethesda introducing traits/backgrounds/skill checks and the better factions/characters are a good sign for TES VI, where the worldbuilding is mostly in place already? Or will they throw it all out of the window thinking that this is what players didn't like?

Daggerfall had like an infinite number of randomized dungeons, why can't Starfield do that?

I wish I could get into it, but I just can't. can play like an hour at a time at most

I pretty much have the same feelings as you; i love the game for what it is, and thats not everybodies cup of tea. I had zero expectation other than fun. And im having a lot of fun.

I feel like Bethesda's design philosophy is to strip everything that doesn't give you an immediate dopamine hit away, and in doing so, they made a game that is addicting but lacks long term satisfaction or appreciation. A friend of mine compared it to Cookie Clicker in that regard, and I think I agree. Starfield is just RPG Cookie Clicker.

I can't believe that the missive board was such a popular mod for Skyrim they decided to make it a whole game

The issue with dungeon crawling in Starfield is that there's a very limited set of unique dungeons. And "random" dungeons have, like, maybe, 20 different layouts. Not much dungeons to explore really.

I went in expecting it to be a space themed dungeon crawler, and while that's what I got, it severely lacks content, it needs more gear, more dungeons, more skills that actually affect you playstyle, etc. I'm hopeful for the future of the game, it will only get better from here, but as it stands, it's very meh. I also dislike the way they did random encounters, only getting those after travelling to a new orbit takes away from the immersion.

I’m not going to like starfield, the sheer amount of bugs and cut content along with how dumb the organization of Constellation turns me off a bit. It takes basically what the worst critics say about Skyrim and Fallout 4 and combine it into one game. The writing for the story is just a bit stupid

Amazing Z! Watching the streams was so fun :) I am glad you’re putting this out!

The awful writing in this game really killed it for me. I enjoyed the dungeon crawling, but once the veneer of everything new wore off I realized how much I dreaded talking to NPCs. Almost without exception the characters annoy the hell out of me and the inconvenience of going through sitting animations, docking animations, and six or seven loading screens to turn in a quest then slog through a conversation that I don't enjoy at all, when I just want to get back to shooting things is why I uninstalled it.

Starfield also heavily reminds me of Starbound to an extent I can't ignore, and that isn't a bad thing. Where Starfield is like Fallout 4, Starbound 's gameplay is similar to Terraria. Starbound is built around procedural space and planet travel mixed with handcrafted areas and a main quest, lite side-questing, mining, building, etc except its all in 2D. It also has an incredible mod scene and is very malleable to make into the game you want. It's very fun and expansive after so many years. Starbound also features direct aliens, as in you can play as them, meet them, the main quest is surrounding learning about the races (and eventual eldritch horrors). It has so much more variety in culture and architecture (gorgeous sprite work backing that up). It has more of a fantasy twist so gear and buildings can be primitive, retro sci-fi, industrial... seriously there is so much variety it blows my mind. I understand that the level of detail is lower than in Starfield, but Starbound just shows a lot more creative potential than Bethesda were willing to. Less realistic, for sure, but there is so much potential with Starfield and I think they really opted to go more shallow instead.

For anyone interested, Star Explorers is on sale for $2.99 rn

Honestly am in love with this game. Scratches the itch that gets me to visit modded skyrim every year

Pronoun options in modern RPGs don't do any favors for role-playing. The game world isn't supposed to conform to the player's whims and have no agency of its own. People generally base their opinion on the appearance of others instead of some tab that was chosen at the character creation. We all have the right to choose what pronoun we want whenever we want, but you can't magically control everyone to know that. The option should only become available with people you converse with who acknowledge it.

Are you telling me you don't really hate nords? wtf?!

i think i get what you're saying "its a good game" as contextualized by 15 years of stokcholm syndrome 🤣

My favorite part of new games plus is landing my starborn ship, talking to constellation in my starborn suit and firing off a starborn power before I should have them and lying to there face about who I am and have them believe me completely. Even if I have full conversations about being starborn with other starborn in front of them.

During the crimson fleet quest when the other recruit comes up to you and says he is gonna come after you for revenge i tried to just take my gun out and kill him but he was a protected npc and went unconscious, i lost all ability to use my imagination and roleplay in the game after that

best thing abput starfield is its potential. The moment they will add a few companions in the dlcs that are sure to happen and expand the crafting/outpost systems even further the game will be golden.

During one of the main faction quest lines I got alerted to the presence of some bounty hunters due to having the bounty hunter background. I would assume, though can't confirm, that had I not had that background then I would have blindly ran into the ambush completely unawares. That was a nice touch.

This game is offensively boring and the NPCs are boring trash not to mention ugly and annoying. You seem to be putting too much thought into this since Bethesda couldn't be bothered to do any

Good work, Zaric. You've been in the background of my life for the past 8 years or so, and I very much appreciate your input

Everything you articulated totally resonated with me. I thoroughly enjoyed playing Starfield (about 150 hours) while simultaneously recognizing its flaws / focus. I'm really excited for the future of the "platform". Side note, I'm happy I played BG3 AFTER I played Starfield, because it really highlights Bethesda's illusion of choice design and I think it would have negatively affected my enjoyment of Starfield if I had seen Larian's attention to story detail first.

Starfield is like a really fun DLC to Fallout 4, and its gotten 200+ hours out of me. Game of the year? probably not.

The amount of planets to dungeon variations that is recycled is like too much cake and not enough icing , have like 20 variations per 100 planet or something... if that is too much when you do math than DONT HAVE OVER 1000 PLANETS!!!!

I can't stand Constellation's 4 followers you have to adventure with. Not only are they all "good" and super judgemental, their form of "good" is a tight window of what is considered good. They hated lots of things I considered good, or morally correct/necessary. I share your view that Starfield was a good dungeon looters shooter, and I also loved surveying all the creatures and plants. I did this for 425 hours. But I only got 49 of 50 achievements because I hated Constellation members to such a degree I couldn't hang out with even one of them long enough to get the achievement for maxing affinity with one of them. Ugh.

Hard agree that the Vanguard questline is the best. I also called out the two twists, one of them pretty much as soon as the mystery was mentioned and I took a minute to sit back and ponder over it, but I view that as a positive! They actually have a mystery that has a solution a player can figure out. It isn't some out of nowhere bullshit explanation for a twist, if you actually stop and think (something a lot of their players won't do) it's a reasonable conclusion to draw, but you do need to sort of stop and think on it and not just run blindly from quest marker to quest marker.

3:25 i also think they are incapable like you do, but i think they are also unwilling because it entails putting more effort than what they're comfortable doing. Basic QOL is too much work. Innovating is too much work. If i had to describe this game in a word, it'd be "effortless". Bethesda is off my radar, for _good_ . Even the reason i'm here writing this comment was simply because i enjoy your rants lmao. i couldn't care less about bethesda, or their games anymore

This is why you're an amazing Utber. You can love the game and enjoy it, but you're always objective.

Starfield is an RPG is laughable 😂 it’s a straight line shooter game in a fake SPACE 🤔 NPC’s the ugliest, Load Screens Galore & shooting everyone has little consequences 🫣 The fallout series blows this game out the park as well as Skyrim. Great Video, gives a different perspective 🎉

This is one and only Starfield review I've been waiting for and will watch. Not going to play the game itself however. It looks exactly like Destiny 1-2 and I find it too creepy and weird to overlook 🙈 Really appreciate Zaric opinion on Starfield, he's like a doctor-professor to me when it comes to Bethesda games. Always calm and collected, with opinions based on facts and logic. And his knowledge is infinite!

finally, an opinion so biased i cant help but trust it completely

Appreciate your thoughts. It got me to give Starfield another try. 4 weeks later I've not touched it since giving it "another try" and I don't think I will go back again. There are too many gameplay systems which are not enjoyable enough to overcome the bad in the game and the lore/universe just isn't 1/10th as engrossing as Elder Scrolls or Fallout. Still glad you gave me motivation to try once more. Enjoy yourself!

The main quest was mostly enjoyable for me, and I was not concern with the lack of moral choices since that is expected at this point with Bethesda games. Looking for mysterious space artifacts is initially interesting, at least for me. Although, it did get a bit slow and boring in the middle of the story as not a lot was known at that point other than space powers and enemy npc starborn characters. Then at the end, it got really interesting, with the Unity and different universes. Although, it is more like a mostly parallel universe than a different one. It is nice that new "Starborn" dialogue exists with the new game plus. And sometimes I'll spend way to much time running on barren worlds or messing with the ship builder.

Hopefully, we will not have the modding problem, Lua/MGE/MWSE vs. OpenMW when modding starts in earnest.

This is the most solid and poetic review I've ever seen. You are incredibly talented, Zaric. I hope you use your talents to improve the world, and give your gifts to your children.

my conclusion of this video is: I will buy and play this game in 3 years when mods and update are abundant and good enough to make it a fun bethesda experience

Why cant they just make a good story?? Its ridiculous.. And the horrible facial animations and lack of body movment when conversing is painful.. They are literally decades behind the industry in game development.. They have to evolve or they are in big trouble

I've enjoyed starfield. Currently trying to hoard every roll of toilet paper.

13:51 Lost me on this. You can't cut folks heads off in starfield. You ~ "I love body type 1 and 2. It lets me make the body type 1 walk in animation type 2 style." That's freedom? Please, I prefer having the ability to cut a dudes head off. Stop wasting folks time with your pointless language games.

Starfield has been a huge disappointment. Easily the worst game Beth has ever made.

I wonder what you think of my Deadly Hazards mod, if you have tried it that is. How it changes gameplay, and if a change like this does the game any favors or not. You have some very great thoughts on stuff :)

Fire Emil Pagliarulo

I pretty much hated all of Constellation, except Vasco, then he kept getting in my way in combat....I threw him from many, many cliffs. He kept coming back. Sigh. Oh, and Barrett the Useless was like cancer in my eyes and ass at the same time, then I got a wonderful gift... he was killed by the Star guy on the Eye. It brought a tear to me eye, though that may have been the cancer. Long story short, f@ck Barrett, and they screwed the pooch on Starfield. Hurry modders, hurry.

I’m glad I didn’t buy the game have you guys noticed all game quality’s have been reducing consistently overtime?

Im really torn. I still play skyrim, and so you would think i would really want to play this game. But just dont have any urge to do so.

this guy GETS iT. seriously.

Can wait to play this in 5 years!