"Everyone's concerned that empty planets are going to be boring. But when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored." Yeah, because they were on the actual fucking moon, Todd. Probably a tiny bit more exciting than exploring a moon in a video game.
I completely agree. I play Elite Dangerous and while I thoroughly enjoy the game for what it is, I am always perplexed at all the posts of people basking in the glory of exploring the galaxy as if they are really doing it and posting picture after picture of the same proceduraly generated barren rocky planet.
Yeah, once you start bringing real life into it, there's no comparison. Going on a casual walk through the park and seeing a squirrel is more exciting than 99% of "exploration" in video games
@@meal_team_six Elite is more about space exploration itself as opposed to the planets. The feeling of pointing your ship in one direction, turning your thrusters on & enjoying the journey. Elite's space is populated with numerous anomalies and dynamic events, and the immersion is top tier. The sound design is second to none tbh
Everyone's concerns were spot on Todd LOL. I don't hate this game, had some good quests and combat moments, but wow the exploration is kind of just objectively fucking bad. It's incredibly segmented with endless loading and when you're actually on a planet there's virtually NOTHING there 99% of the time. Maybe a temple to grab an ENTIRELY useless power, or a randomly generated pirate base that's based on one of about 3 templates the entire universe uses. Once you've explored 1 planet in this game you've literally explored them all. I really couldn't believe how bad this aspect of the game turned out and considering exploration/immersion were the best things about previous bethesda games, this is a pretty massive problem. Even the actual cities feel like they're lacking, there's only 4 of them and there's way less worthwhile questlines in those areas than I was expecting. Realistically in terms of worthwhile handcrafted content, there's about 45-50 hours worth between the faction and major side quests/main quest. & even the main quest is about 50% repetitive garbage. Even with all these huge flaws I'd give this game a 7 as I did have fun with it, but I'm truly shocked anybody gave it a 9 or 10.
@@accelerator8558 LOL the devs or someone is actually going on Starfield reviews on steam and telling people, it's MEANT to be empty, but that's not boring. An ACTUAL quote they said was, "When people landed on the moon it was pretty bare but they weren't bored were they?" So Bethesda loves to also tell you what you find fun lmao!
@@eldenvedetta635 sorry we want to scape this BORING reality and have fun afther work or studie, not to by even more bored while playing video games, if that the case them i better look for some good books
@@DeltaNovum it is not the problem with Loading screens itself, it is the amount of loadingscreens or the Menu itself that you are interacting instead of having Real gameplay. And UI interactions is not a bad thing but if they try to strech the time you has to use them or interact for no reason is the worst. And that is just on top of the Iceberg of the Starfield Problems.
I grew up in a VERY different era.. where maximum *fun* was the goal of any video game. Just imagine someone saying "But Pac Man gets REALLY good after the 20th quarter"
Its funny cuz they aren't even remotely unique. They're basically all the same rocky wasteland... just different colors and status effects. All the same "abandoned mining facility" or "abandoned cryo lab"... literally all with the same layouts, same exact rooms, same cave systems, same locked doors. Legitimately, identical. This game is beyond insulting.
The game feels like a vacation in Vegas. On paper, the world’s your oyster. In practice, you’re standing in line (for the hotel shuttle, for the Uber, for the hotel check-in, for the nightclub, for the buffet, for the concert, for Blue Man Group, etc) for like 75% of your time in town.
Man, been to Vegas many times for business. I can't stay there very long. Quite an obnoxious town imo. And I even love blackjack and almost always make money on it. Just the constant lights and music and people. Wakeup hung over in the morning, last thing I want is a bunch of flashy lights and annoying music playing the second I step out of my room
I believe Fallout 76 has a better world and exploration loop than Starfield and that’s saying something for a BGS game because up till Starfield 76 was their worst game.
One thing I really hate about the Starborn is that there's never really a reason to become one. I mean... in Skyrim, you had Alduin to fight. In Fallout 4, you had the Institute and Brotherhood of Steel to tango with (assuming the BoS was your foe), and then you get to Starfield, where your foe was... the Emissary and the Hunter? I don't accept that these guys are supposed to be the main villains. They want to stop you becoming a Starborn because they want the power for themselves / to maintain the balance of power, but... why? What's the significance of becoming more powerful? Why is it so important to maintain the balance of power? What's so bad that can happen if we aren't powerful enough to deal with it, or that the balance of power could somehow disrupt? In Skyrim, the powers you unlock are used to solve puzzles or to deal with dragons directly. In Starfield, the powers you unlock are completely pointless. You never need to use your powers to solve any puzzles or deal with any greater foe, and most of the powers are gimmicks that I can't even justify using for exploration. It would be one thing if like... the Starborn are entities that are trying to stop some greater power, and they don't want you becoming Starborn because of the horrors they've witnessed. They know what they face and they can handle the threat, but knowing what they've seen, they don't want you or anyone else exposed to it. So when they learn you have the artifacts, they demand you hand them over for your own good. And when you refuse, well... they do what they must to save you from the suffering they've endured. It would make their goal and their reasons for stopping you more understandable. And now that you're a Starborn, you realize that you've doomed yourself to a life of pain, and now it is your duty to help them in their fight against this powerful entity. But in order to do that, you need to become more powerful... so you need to go find more powers and hunt more relics, and you can't have them fall into the hands of mortals... so you do what you must in order to save the multiverse and our very existence. At least then, the story would be interesting and the reason for us having to go out and gather all of these powers would make it a lot more desirable. But as it stands? You're becoming more powerful because you want to become more powerful. That is such a shallow and boring goal. Becoming the ultimate being just for the sake of it is not compelling story writing. So being the Space Dragonborn is not sensible.
@@eabutler6861 I care. I and others who appreciate a good story. If you're someone who just wants to turn their brain off and become a space wizard, then more power to you. But I had more fun playing Skyrim and being the Dragonborn than I ever will have being the Starborn.
@@BETRvids the game was good and the story wasn't great but it was original and made the ng+ interesting.....I didn't spend 100 hours in my first playthrough which made the ng+ more rewarding....they tried something new and I liked it....let's be honest most video game stories are terrible.,..the lore is what most people like....it was an ok game... Far from terrible
@@eabutler6861 I wouldn't call the Starborn story original. Giving you some random vision of things you don't understand? Mass Effect. A mysterious relic that nobody understands? Also Mass Effect. Even at the end, if you ask who made them, the Unity entity refers to them as the Creators, and refuses to elaborate. Oh, so the Reapers? Now yes, going into NG+ had some interesting prompts, especially if you completed content on a previous playthrough and just want to see what your character will say. But a few interesting dialogue prompts doesn't make up for an overall boring story. There was no Alduin to fight, no Reapers to stop, no Nihilanth to end, and no real final foe or world devastating, realm shattering apocalypse that you need to forestall. And no, I don't accept that the Hunter or the Emissary are your main villains / enemies. I don't accept that the relics and the powers they grant people exist solely for the Starborn to fight amongst themselves. That's a stupid plot! And... I disagree with you on the lore. There are certainly lore snippets around and things for us to discover, but most of what I've picked up is completely forgettable because none of it is relevant to anything that's happening out in the universe. Even the Starborn story itself is completely self contained and you never have a reason to bring it up anywhere else. The average joe on his day to work, fighting terrormorphs or dealing with stolen Hope Tech ships, would never notice there's a multiverse war going on between magical relic hunters because it literally never comes up. And nobody is afraid to talk to you, to fly away from your ship, or even to flee at the sight of you when you land in the space port. An obviously alien vessel with unknown weapon capabilities, and a cloaked stranger stepping out from a starry background and giving off so much radiation that people think you fly too close to suns? Yeah, I think people might be a bit more afraid of you! But nobody reacts to literally anything. So there's zero point in remembering anything because it never, ever comes up. Understand, I'm not some salty gamer who is just trying to disagree with every point you make just because 'lol hating Starfield is fun'. There are massive flaws with the story and how this all plays out, and I hate how lazy it was all done and how nobody in the universe knows or cares about anything that is happening. And I absolutely hate that for all the tedium, the fetch quests, and the bullshit we have to put up with in the name of 'questing' and 'becoming the Starborn', we find that it literally all amounts to jack squat because there's no final foe, no new challenging puzzles, no... nothing. No innovation or careful planning went into creating and designing the temples where we get our powers, Bethesda thought it would be fun to make us have to fly to Vladimir every time we wanted to get a new relic site, instead of... you know, just transmitting it to us or something. Getting the relics involves fighting the same enemies in the same spots on every NG+ playthrough, etc. etc. It's just all... so... lazy... and boring.
it's a fucking game. Everything about a game is a filler. If it wouldn't be you would start at the end. You would instantly get to the final story/battle and done. It's what is gaming, movies books are all about. Putting in fillers so you can spend your time on it. God damn...is this some tic toc bullshit?
The Freestar Ranger quest had me laughing. I played through a bunch of what seemed like an early quest to become a SPACE RANGER ! YAY! Then… no missions… 😂 I became a space ranger and discovered this new job comes with absolutely no work.
Almost like someone on the dev team played RDR2 and decided late in development that they should make a cowboy planet, and that’s what they did cuz there was NO DESIGN DOC. No guidelines, no plan. Just Todd and Emil the good idea fairies.
This is one of those games that you can't criticize because an entire subset of people exist who just go around telling those reviewers that they either didn't play long enough or that they obviously loved it because they played too much.
I love when they say oh are you a developer then why don't you make a better game? It's so dumb it's like I'm not a chef either but I can tell you this food sucks.
It's not just this game. Bethesda has for some ungodly reason just absolute loyal fans who think they can do no wrong. And this is from some one who has been playing Bethesda games since the original Fallout. Those kinds of people just can't be reasoned with. They are going to say what they want and it's their truth.
They should have just made one solar system with 3 or so planets full of detail and content then a few more barren ones and moons. Have different biomes on each planet too, It doesn't even have to be a single theme for each one there can be variety just like on earth. The barren planets/moons could have survival challenges like limiting your oxygen with refill stations, different atmospheric challenges or difficult terrain. Maybe you have to set up bases and oversee a new colony. Maybe a planet has an outbreak of an alien virus that turns everything into ghoul like creatures making it a fully hostile planet. Just makes far more sense than thousands of empty boring planets devoid of content, how did they ever think that was going to be a good game?
LOL, that all sounds like a lot of work for Bug-thesda! Why do that when they can just let the players flesh out their soulless shell of a game with mods?
I remember hoarding every weapon and armor in Oblivion and Skyrim, getting a house, organizing everything, and then finding a way to showcase all of it. Think about all of the weapons in Skyrim...Chillrend, Grimsever, Nerveshatter, Champions Cudgel, dawnbreaker, Miraak's sword, Nightingale Blade, Windshear, Harkon's Sword, Auriel's Bow, Mehrune's Razor, Blade of Woe, Nightingale Bow, Soulrender and Bloodscythe, Ebony Blade, Daedric sword of the vampire...the list goes on and on. And we wanted every single one of them. We wanted to showcase them in our player homes. Then i think about Starfield weapons and armor, and i truly couldn't care less. There was nothing exciting to me about any of it. I didn't want to collect it or display it...i just looked for which had the highest stats, and i sold the rest or just dumped it. So exploring Skyrim and Oblivion was about finding all of the great special loot. I remember in Oblivion finding an amulet of luck laying on the ground on the top floor outside of one of the forts, and i was jazzed up that i found such an elusive piece. I don't want to explore AT ALL in Starfield because i know i'm not going to find anything that i care about getting. So it's pointless to me. I quit the game after 2 weeks. I tried and tried to sit back down to play, but it was just a chore. The game is garbage, i'm sorry. It's like seeing your high school crush 20 years later, and she's a mess...and you wish you just kept that memory in your head because it was so much better than the realization that present version crushes all of the nostalgia. Wishing for the next iteration of Oblivion and Skyrim...the dream of recorking the genie in the bottle, has been shattered, and i'm so bummed about it. I went back to playing Powerwash Pro Simulator. My oh my...a sad state of affairs at Bethesda.
I had the exact same feeling I put points into energy weapons and LMAO there are TWO energy rifles in the game. TWO! wheres all the unique gear??!? some of the most popular mods on nexus are reskins of ugly ass mantis armor. what a joke. what were the armor and weapon designers doing for EIGHT years!?
I completely agree, unfortunately I never played Morrowind, but I sank hundreds of hours into Skyrim(more so with mods). I played Starfield the week it was released and gradually lost interest.
The first time I went into the Oblivion Gate I think they were called and came out with all of this extremely powerful loot I was hooked. It actually felt like you were crawling into hell and at the time it was tense because they were so powerful but it was so worth it. I was fairly young at the time and I borrowed my friends copy and I beat it but his game was scratched so it would freeze right before the ending and it was like five or six years before I saw the ending to that game
You gotta go play morrowind if you want a game that gives the player cool loot. And this is not rose tinted glasses opinion, I only first played the game in 2021.
Heck even In fallout 4 i started collecting all the "unique" weapons and items in the game and put them on display at my base. Though I have to admit Bethesda needs more work in its gun department because holy molly mw2019s guns were so spot on, the looks,sounds, and details. Also it pains me to say that even their own cod game that was set in space felt more alive with its weapon art style, unique planets with gimics like mercury where you had to time when to move as to not get fried by the sun's rays. Being able to customize your own jackals weapons and paint job. The tools at your disposal in the campaign like the grapple hook being used to pull enemies to you to rip their air hoses off, or to close the gap between you and them. Hacking hostile robots to take control of them in first person or self destuct. Anti-grav grenades to make enemies float in pressurized areas, to get the drop on them. Shooting windows to watch as enemie soldiers get sucked into the vacuum of space. Seeker mines throw one of these bad boys and watch as they run at the enemies to blow them up, need I say more.
@@Theautisticlibertarian Bethesda fans tend to act more like a cult than typical fans. Thats probably why the haters are tearing into them so hard this time. Becauae this time it's not a 20 year old beloved IP and they didn't have any good ideas to take from other games and now its so obvious they are bad at this that no one can honestly deny it. So we're just hammering the fandom for being complicite in Howard's creative theft and they're doubling down and becoming more devout cultists. Id just say away unless you've got experience dealing with religious nuts because that's what we're dealing with.
And it's kinda funny Todd talks about how us going on Moon wasn't boring. Yea of course it wasn't, cause that is real life. The dude is literally comparing an experience in game vs real life and wonder why people are bored in a game that doesn't even do the simulation properly but just sprinkle procedurally generated assets around and call it a day. Games should always be first and foremost fun and interesting with artistic touch. Realism has so many shortcomings and grows old very quick because we can just live life to experience it.
I recently started playing fallout 4 again, and after about 30 mods added im loving it. And that sums up the Bethesda experience for me. They're good at making a foundation, but modders have to come in and build the house.
Smaller maps that are concentrated with content will ALWAYS beat big empty maps no matter how great the graphics are or how beautiful it all looks. We don't have much time in a day so when I sit down to relax and play a game for a few hours I want it to feel like I actually experienced something in that time: experienced a good story, solved a fun puzzle, beat a hard boss - it has to feel rewarding. There is nothing rewarding about walking in an empty world for hours.
President of the country: "Well, as the message boy who delivered this message about this humanity ending crysis, I'll let you decided what we're going to do about it" Return home to house full of companions, All of the companions simultaneously upon you walking through the door: "When you get a second, I want to talk to you about how I feel about the choice you picked on behalf of the president about the cryzsist, Oh, and its going to be the exact same opinion that all of us have" This is an RPG apparently.
@@aralornwolf3140 Yeah, largely. But, well, Fallout 3 and Oblivion weren't much better, either, in that regard. It's hard to draw the exact line. But I wouldn't even mind that too much if they did it well, but they aren't.
I put 30 hours into Starfield before deciding that I've had enough. I'm an expressive gamer and Starfield had me sitting back in my chair, emotionless. I love the Bethesda rpgs, I go back to them every year. Heck, I even had some fun playing Fallout 76 6 months ago. Starfield is just bad... really bad.
Yea. What would really blow your mind is when you realize their RPGs are just as empty and crappy. Just a bunch of copy and pasting. Once you've played one cave in Skyrim you've played them all, and it's nothing but a bunch of monotonous repetition
@@choosetolivefree you could say that about real life as well, I bet nothing you do today will be different than any other day Edit: lmao, sorry to challenge you guys with such a profound and abstract thought. my only regret is getting replies from weird negative people trying to turn the comment into something that it isn't, but I do find your interpretations pretty interesting.
@ryz8 what a brain dead take. video games aren't real life. We play them specifically to escape the monotony of life for a few hours. "Welp, this show/game is boring and repetitive, but so is real life so I can't complain!" 🤓🤓🤓
It's mind-blowing the fact that we have to explain why it is not a masterpiece. Have you seen the main page of the game? That wall of 10/10 reviews? Microsotf crawlers...
10/10 for a game with THIS many insanely obvious issues is INSANITY. I usually NEVER humour the paid reviews conspiracy shit, but goddamn it's looking kind of like a viable answer for this madness lol
If only Starfield would learn how to hide their loading screens. I remember Batman Arkham games have door scanners and elevators to hide loading screens. Todd could have easily made the player ship in to a loading screen, while the planet/space/starsystem is loading, you could just walk around your ship seamlessly. The engine not able to make the entire universe open is not the problem, it's the fact that they don't know how to hide their loading screen is.
This game really did have the potential to be something incredible…5-10 years from now, when fans have modded the game and fixed mostly all of the problems and Bethesda just implements the modding community’s work and all of the DLC Bethesda adds onto the base game into an anniversary edition.
2:17 That's the best description I've heard. "Planetary travel might as well be another loading screen." Couldn't have said it better. I played an hour, did the first mission and first flight and then stopped playing because I had literally zero fun the entire time. And I don't play a game for hours on end to "get to the fun." Skyrim IMMEDIATELY captured my attention with the AMAZING opening, and exploration as you said is AMAZING in that game. But MineCraft is procedurally generated and I LOVE exploring in that game more than anything, even MODS can ADD entire environments / biomes that still are BEAUTIFULLY generated. So It's not procedural generations fault for Starfield being so bare. They just didn't have GOOD procedural generation.
The worst major game-breaking bug in Starfield is for the "Power From Beyond" main radiant quest where Vladimir gives you locations for new Starborn powers. For a very large number of players, this quest will bug out if Vlad happens to give you a location where the temple spawn will conflict with any other location that's already spawned on the given planet. No distortion will appear on your scanner, the temple will not spawn, and you will be unable to obtain any more Star powers. The only known "fix" is just to head to NG+ and hope the quest doesn't bug out again! Now that I've seen how bad the exploration is in Starfield, it's no wonder that Bethesda REALLY wants players going to NG+ to artificially extend gameplay. So don't expect an actual fix anytime soon for this broken quest. Bethesda's latest response is, "we are aware of the issue and will address in a future update". THANKS BUG-THESDA!! What an amazing coincidence that the single worst game-breaking bug in Starfield just happens to perfectly align with forcing the player into the NG+ game-loop.
Wait, you're onto something. The Starborn you encounter looking for more artifacts are just them looking and hoping for non bugged temples! The story is deeper than I thought 11/10 Starfield.
I think the astronauts on the moon were not bored by the emptiness and the expected bleakness, because every step they took was filled with danger and potential death/mission failure. But Starfail makes exploration feel like an afternoon walk, even dismissing the complexity and fragility of technology we have right now in writing, gameplay and npc dialogue. I think the potential for immersion was damaged by this and i don't see the possibility for mods to fix that, besides maybe a survival mode mod. A mod that takes the technical challenge of traversing and surviving space seriously.
This, but I also feel like they werent bored because it was an extraordinary feat that an immense amount of planning went into. In starfield, travelling to another planet is like taking an uber to mcdonalds.
I had this same experience! So many people lied with the "OH IT GETS SO GOOD AFTER 40 HOURS" bullshit. If anything, the game peaks in the 20-40 hour range IMO, then when you're overpowered, have the best gear, etc, and have finished the very few actually worthwhile questlines, there's nothing there but a goofy as shit and poorly written main story and endless procedurally generated empty planets/fetch quests. I was expecting some good late/end game stuff and there was NOTHING to fucking do after 60 hours except dick around with activities/mmo style quests or land on bullshit planets and gather resources so I can spend them on weapons and bases I don't need!
The opening in Spider-Man 2 is a perfect example of how to start strong and hook the player. If your game takes 10-20 hours to become enjoyable, then maybe it isn’t very good? Bethesda has had decades to figure all of this out, so why do people consistently give them a pass?
Bethesda Game Studios hereby presents; Todd Sim - it's a settlement management game! One with even less loot than Starfield, worse combat and even more loading screens. Pre-order your copy now and get the Preston Garvey DLC for free!
Agreed he’s stealing the company into baffling directions, if this is his “dream game” his dreams must be dull as fuck. I hope he doesn’t ruin elder scrolls 6 lord help me
If you bring up any of this in the Bethesda sub reddit you get down voted, not even the Starfield reddit just the general bethesda page. They don't even try to justify it they just get mad. Though I guess it makes sense Redditors would be the only people who like a game as safe and risk-free as this game.
@Dozik1403 it's so weird how desperately they defend a video game, like they made it themselves and are personally offended or something. I've never seen a community so afraid to ask for what they paid for, and so in denial that they didn't get it.
@@rocketsocks3116 it's almost a cult like subreddit, I think LowSodiumStarfield is even worse when it comes to this. But yeah I completely agree, the community lacks a spine to say anything about Bethesda's effort to improve the game and add content.
I went into starfield very skeptical and only played it because it was on game pass. But for the 20 or so hours I played it the only thing that was going through my mind was “damn I want to play Skyrim again” And don’t even get me started on the shitty companions😂
Comment on Starfield subreddit i saw had a really good point. Simply make things matter. If something like fuel consumption and acquisition had a higher impact, exploring too far into space unprepared would be more dangerous. And it would make it necessary to create fuelstations and bases as you progress further and further into space. It was something along these lines, there was more but i dont remember. Basically it feels like to me that most big devs today have completely forgotten what makes games fun, and why. Or its just the money people running the show 110%. And jesus the NPC's are just so creepy looking. I swear besides most hardsurface models, its like nobody at the Bethesda art department has eyes.
I think it's the random NPCs that are the problem, and that they were randomly created by just grabbing options out of the character creator, resulting in mixes that just don't work--someone with like really back skin, almond-shaped Asian eyes, with red hair, and just a weird mix of facial features, creates a bizarre science experiment.
The first time you beat O and S and realize you're only about halfway through the game was pretty mind-blowing. I loved the player comments that were left around the boss area once you beat it that says "now the real game begins" and stuff like that
And it's basically just scaled down so that you dont walk real life kilometers and stuff. In starfield it feels they scaled everything up and didnt give you even a car to use.
I think the whole critiquing space is in a really good spot right now. We have tons of passionate creators which is great. The more perspective we have the better
The sad thing to me is we have less now than we did a decade ago in terms of "randomized content", branching dialog and quest options etc. Diablo had generated dungeons, randomized quest etc and that game was made in the 90's. Heck Sega Gensis games like Phantasy Star had branching story lines and multiple endings and that was what the 80's? The graphics have improved, the size of games has gotten bigger but that is about it. You still have invisible walls, buildings you can't enter and so on.
Todd - "I love Redguard. The game did not do well for the company but i love it." Todd future quote - "Starfield was my baby, but it did not do particular well for the company, but i adore it." -We can all agree that Todd have a weird sense of "fun"...or he has German lineage in him. Both would explain why he is so much anti-fun oriented.
The one main mechanic I did not do, outpost building (only because the sales woman in Atlantis who sells the majority of things needed to get started did not spawn for me no matter how much I tried), and I realize doesn’t matter much anyway. It was my final straw, the reason I stopped playing and uninstalled the game. But honestly, who cares about an outpost? I’m going to spend all of this time getting money and resources to build something that gives me back money and resources? After I finally make my money and resources back… What do I do with it? What fun does the game offer at the cost of the time and money and resources spent to build the outpost to give me money and resources? It just feels like a galactic waste of time and I would presume the bugs would continue. I’m already completely convinced there will be something else down the road that screws up my gameplay And that is absolutely not worth investing my time into if the game is going to screw me over. Or if the game is going to be so confusing, not informing me on what I have to do or where I have to go. I spend a quarter of my time looking things up online. That isn’t fun. I definitely found myself enjoying the game less and less as I played. I became more annoyed with what I couldn’t do, more annoyed with all of the non-gameplay stuff I found myself having to do (restart the game, restart the console, figure out what’s wrong online…). And I’m looking at the rest of my games thinking “why am I not spending my time playing all of these other games? I’m sitting here wasting my time in this one empty, buggy mess of a galaxy. I got my Xbox on sale used, but that’s still too much money to have spent to deserve such a poor experience with the game for so long.
It's just a step backwards really ..even in fallout 4 as dreadful as it is, if you put time on your outpost it generally became part of you..but in starfield it is literally meaningless..
I LOATHE all “settlement building” and the like in Bethesda games. Such a HUGE waste of the dev team’s time and resources for the EXACT reasons you listed. I DO NOT CARE about making a generic “base” that really serves no purpose to the game at all. How about focusing on interesting/unique quest lines and dialogue?? 😡
I had to quit exploring as much as i wanted because I keep getting a glitch where if I explore too deep into one of the procedural tiles my character will drop dead without warning. Literally from full health with no enemies nearby and appropriate gear for any environmental conditions-my character just freaking dies on the spot if i go too far from the landing zone 🙄. I don’t lose too much progress because of the autosaves, but it’s so annoying because this game won’t even let me TRY to fully grind it out on these procedural tile maps. Like I was trying to embrace the idea of just wandering around farming XP from taking out fauna and collecting credits and bullets from the corpses in randomly generated outposts or agriculture stations, but my copy of the game will not even let me have that simple monotonous joy. And before Todd tells me it’s my fault for having an ancient or sh*tty PC… 13900K 3090ti Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB w/heatsink 64 GB 6600MHz CL34 RAM A f*ckton of system cooling in a room with AC. I think more than anything that’s the comment I’ve least appreciated from Mr. Howard: that consumers need to take some personal responsibility and upgrade to the top modern parts to handle the complexity of Starfield… The game is pretty and all, but I’m only playing at 1440p with my hardware, and it certainly doesn’t look stunning enough that I should feel like the performance issues/glitches are my own fault for not having a 4090.
I had a feeling Starfield players would jump ship and dive into Cyberpunk 2077 and that's exactly what's happening. Starfield looks outdated and boring. Cyberpunk 2077 is now a masterpiece.
@@nuclearpugg I have zero interest in Starfield. It looks dull and outdated as hell. And those dancers in that Neon night club......oh my God. Think ill stick with the strippers in Jig Jig street of Night City.
My explanation for the star-born: The whole thing exists, to make the game an online-service game, where people are playing and paying infinite, to power up Bethesda profits.
Which won't be easy and let's remember that the main story cannot be changed. You can mod the game, add this and that but the main-core of the game cannot be altered and for the modders to come up with a full DLC in 2-3 planets, would take months and probably years before they are polished and ready to be launched. In the meantime, I will dedicate my time to play other games in 2024 and wait for the next Star Wars ( from UBISOFT ) which I believe, and according to them, will be a revolution in the gaming industry. Will see.
Gonna be honest. Im here for the modding. To add to your Starborn idea, I think the Starborn could also be a point of interest for the factions. Nobody knows who they are and maybe the factions are pointing fingers that they are agents for the opposing side. Which adds stakes from their actions, that could potentially lead to another colony war.
Why would anyone pay $70 for a buggy game full of procedural generation when you could just continue modding skyrim or fallout depending on which theme you prefer
I love Skyrim because of the atmosphere created by the music and the environment. I've watched several playthroughs of Starfield and frankly I'm not very impressed given the hype beforehand. It looks like another case of I'm paying full price for a half finished piece of kit. I'll stay with Mass Effect, The Outer Worlds and Skyrim for now.
The crimson fleet faction/questline is by far my favorite in the game- ans it is way more fun if you actually play it like a psychopath. If you start the quest by doing something illegal and then opt to attack ikande when he tries to get you to spy on the fleet, you never have to report back to him. For the full pirate experience, massacre everyone everywhere.
*The astronauts weren't bored.* Cause if you get robbed in an game and in real life, will feel the fuckin same, right Todd??? Or if you meet an Leopard or somethin irl, you sure will not fear it since you meet alot of them in game, right???
This is the most accurate review of the game. Exactly how I feel about starfield. I got as many achievements in the game as I could before it got boring to me and Deleted the game, went back to playing fallout 4 and fallout NV. Also I gotta beat skyrim again.
“It just works” Well, it does. It turns on, you can play a game and do stuff… I guess. But saying “it just works” is like talking about a toaster not a dining experience at a restaurant. It just working when you switch it on is the least literally any game can hope to achieve. Even ‘Big Rigs’ accomplished that, Todd. Hahaa!
Had a lot of fun with starfield for days after launch, but the more I played the more stale things got, the exploration gets boring after seeing the same locations everywhere outside of major cites, the outpost building feels pointless unless you wanna grind materials for weapons and armor mods, and the factions feel super bare bones without having a karma system. Once I started playing other games I've had no reason to go back to starfield
I do find it funny how everyone shits on Ubisoft but for whatever fucking reasons that's beyond me Bethesda somehow gets a pass by the same folks. They shit on devs for buggy unoptimized games for Bethesda? The modders will fix it. I honestly do not get it and I find it insane this game cannot run on a 2080Ti at 60FPS on LOW. I can run RDR2 ultra everything and get 80-90
There are fantasy people and there are sci-fi RPG people. We don’t mix. This is what you get when you give a sci fi property to people who would rather be making medieval fantasy
Bethesda has been watering down their games since Morrowind, in both mechanics and world building: examples being how Skyrim's spells are weak and all the same while the Nords worship the Imperial pantheon and not their gods.
A few of the settings were pretty. A couple conversations were interesting. The idea behind taking flaws during character creation reminded me of old school RPGs. I played about 10 hours, spent half that time wishing I was playing something else. My buddy said the same thing: Not a good sign when you're spending most the time thinking about doing literally anything else.
I had a lot of fun going through all the quest lines and having my Bethesda experience. For me, by the time you hit NG+ and are farming resources and trying to explore new areas and build your outposts, fly through space etc, you really start to ask yourself why you’re not playing No Man’s Sky instead. I think the hype around the game really backfired, and nobody is getting what they expected out of this game
Might as well have let people choose the "points of interest" on a planet from a menu and spawn you there directly, at least then they would be respecting player's time, every design choice in this game is botched in a multitude of ways it's amazing it works at all...or that anybody with a working brain thinks it's a 10/10 game. And there is definitely ways to make exploring a 1000 planets interesting, add more dynamic weather, add rare but epic and hazardous weather or physics phenomenon that happen from time to time and require the player to react in certain ways (magnetic storms, super volcanos, acid rain, etc, add faction bases and simulate small skirmishes between the factions on these planets, and droending on how yiu intervene the factions resources are affected and so is your standing with them, make the flora and fauna interact with each other in interesting ways like the animals do in games like Red Dead Redemption and Farcry...etc etc, most of these ideas has been done before, the innovation would have been doing them on a bogger scale, or if not possible due to technical limitations they could have reduced the scope of the game to 100 or even just 10 interesting planets, they just chose the worst of both worlds.
They could've made very interesting setting that poses a question: how would humans evolve living on different planets evolve across the galaxy? You'd have completely different people, with distinct physical characteristics, languages, architecture, cultures. Instead you have bland modern day humans that really aren't any different from one another.
The timeline in the game isn't long enough and bio-engineering not prevalent enough for drastic evolutionary changes. But the cataclysmic events of the story should have led to very diverse and unusual cultures. There should have been very different civilisations. There could have been interesting differences, conflicts and commonalities between them. Instead we get this strange mono culture with some LARPy factions that don't feel believable at all. This is some of the worst sci-fi worldbuilding I have ever seen.
@@Baalur agreed, and for those who didn't pay attention to the few obscure collectibles, the grav drive was discovered c 2140 and the game takes place in 2310.
You got to it as I was typing: There should've been a handcrafted world in each major location map; like outside of New Atlantis should basically be a Whiterun hold sized area full of unique content, quests and characters to explore. Same with Akila, Hopetown, Paradiso, and Gagarin. Then, there basically shouldn't have been human structures in random landing sites...at all. It should feel sparse. Instead, the marked locations on various worlds should've had maps with more concentrated content, even if it's procedural.
After watching a few videos criticising Starfield, I think I know what one of the big problems was. Lack of focus. There wasn’t a clear idea of what the game was supposed to be.
Don't disagree about the loading screens. But the space travel is a little less painful and a little less boring if you use the scanner to travel through space instead of the menu. I know that I'm in a minority, but I sort of like that some of the planets are very barren. I like that it's spread out. I understand why people don't like it though.
I'm right there with you but the problem is EVERY planet is this way. Even ones considered "densely populated". (whatever that means in a BGS title, 10 people in a town etc...) I don't mind having several planets be wastelands but the whole game is that way. Even the 'cities' don't feel very populated or large, same as always for BGS. Likely an engine limitation.
To add to your main quest not making sense, I'll add this: Barrett breaks the plot with a suplex. He also got the same vision from first touching one of the artifacts that Constellation already had, same as you. In his own quest you can get him the twin power, just like you, and those twins are AWARE of it. And he can be on the ship with the armillary when you jump to go to the unity, right there with you... And yet he's not Starborn? You come back from the unity...and he asks you about it like he doesn't know? He fulfills every other connecting piece, but somehow doesn't cross over? Sus AF. Or, as they say, never blame on malice what is easily contributed to stupidity.
The Hunter actually appears very early in the game, as The Hunter. He makes some rather ominous, cryptic statements to you if you talk to him. However, unless you go where he happens to be hanging out, you won't see him. Although it is a place people have to pass by countless times.
While I do think this is cool, the Hunter hanging out in New Atlantis isn't the same as a villain introduction in the main story since you don't know anything about him at that point. Also, I would assume that many people will miss the Hunter so this comes across as more of an Easter egg. It's a cool Easter egg, but it doesn't fix my issues with the main story.
@@feebleking21 I don't disagree. You're right, there is nothing to really get you hooked on the main quest line in the beginning. My feeling is that they could have introduced the Starborn sooner, but in a very subtle way. Maybe as something mysterious adversarial toward constellation, but constellation doesn't understand why. I mean that is basically what they did, but way late into the story. They could have stretched that out further over the story, and added a little more intrigue to joining constellation. People thinking constellation was defunct, I think, was an attempt to add some intrigue, but it didn't land. Secret group of explorers who collects artifacts, but...they have no idea why. No wonder so many people dip out on constellation as soon as they get in the game. I can sympathize with the notion of exploring space for the sake of exploring space, but...that's a hard sell for a lot of people trying to play a game.
@zachrohler1047 Yeah, I gave up on them eventually. Sarah would get angry at me just for defending myself. The Adoring Fan is less annoying than the members of constellation. Ironic. Haha
I concur, ever since I've bought, installed the game and played it, I honestly felt a bad vibe right when the loading screens and pointless animations kicked in and couldn't last more than 30 min into the game before uninstalled it and requested a refund. The game is awesome in itself, but the loading...................my GOD the LOADING, even with SSD/NVMe/RAID 0 ...whatever, still, LOADING after loading screen, breaks the emersion.
They won't. They haven't taken note of criticism since before Skyrim, and they're still raking in ungodly piles of cash. Good for them, not so great for innovation in gaming.
The most fun Bethesda game after TES Arena: Fallout 4 on survival and "1 death = start over" rule (brings real emotions and fear), with mods "Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch" for many bug fixes, "Horizon" for extra difficulty and many new interesting systems, "Enable console" for getting out of remaining occasional bugs and calling stuck companions to my location (moveto player), "Tough vertibirds" because that junk kept literally autohoming on my head whenever something destroyed them. The goal is not to finish the main quest, but to live as long as possible while also levelling up. This way you can enjoy the game over and over again and it never gets boring.
I randomly ran across a video the other day where an indie dev compared his game to Starfield and it felt so rediculous. A multi million dollar project in the making for 7 years looked less deep (in aspects related to space, the focal point of Starfield) than a single mans work of 5 years. Incredible
It's really proof of how the massive budgets and development times of games today are overwhelmingly due to graphics and voice acting. The mechanics aren't improving very fast, design philosophy is forgotten, and they refuse to hire good writers, but damn is it pretty.
@@BWMagus Ironically big companies end up working like public sector services. They gobble up money and shit out a reused code without much effort into evolution. Their business is as cold as it gets - No soul!
If your biggest technical issue was the weird mesh in front of your gun after exiting a container, then you were lucky. I had almost completed a manufacturing base to flood the market with the most expensive components, and the last cargo link in my system just wouldn't work. Kept giving me an error that the link could not be established. Hours into building the base wasted. I don't even want to play anymore.
22:40 the most disappointing thing about the Crimson Fleet questline is that Delgado didn't betray you. I was expecting after I turned in the Legacy crypto key thing, he would then say "good job rook, but I'm keeping your cut" or something like that, leading to a potential battle. But he just gave you the fair share.
Everyone shit on that IGN journalist for saying what she felt about the game, and now EVERYONE is saying the exact same thing's she did about the game. Pays to let the hype die down before dying on that hill.
My feeling is that it still had years to go in development or had even been shelved but when MS came in they said get it out. It just seems like lots of the machinic in the game are unfinished, take the maps for example or lack of. It seems more like a FPS shooter than a space sim and for some reason was rushed. Maybe they can fill it out in the years to come.
What a shame this game had soo much potential. But yet again another Bethesda game REQUIRES modders to fix and make the game actually fun and playable.
In response to introducing the villain--The Hunter is actually leaning up against a wall at the Viewport bar in New Atlantis. The first time you go there in the first run, not NG+, you can speak with him. I think the Emissary is probably somewhere too but I haven't found him
Well here my opinion aka review that holds no water but hey. I find the game fun and got 80 hours right now and haven't been bored yet Very simple. But the game is successful and that's good. Also people got different taste they told us this be a science fiction meaning they weren't going nms route. They already told us about the planets I mean they told us to the face. My expectations where met. Only problem is the crashes when I save to often.
@@lolicongang.4974 Oh it's you again, lol. I'm not surprised. Shouting to the hilltops to say "I LIKE STARFIELD GUYZZ". Well seems I responded to you after all. lol
I made my character to be stealtjy, got into the first fight situation, sneaked up behind two people who were turning their back to me, and when i was three meters away from them they turned around and shot at me. Thanks Bethesda
Starfield cutscenes feels like a awkward AI generated video that has weird pacing. Idk why they do the dumbass screen focus instead of freely allowing you to speak like in Fallout 4. Idk how everything is going backwards in this game lmfao
The wholesale copy and pasting of POIs/outposts instead of making the procedural generation of these locations done at a modular level is EGREGIOUS! I should not be finding duplicate environmental lore on multiple planets with the same corpses and junk and notes!
No mans sky is no where near good as starfield which doesn't have bugs. You are breaking the game trying to glitch so it smacks those glitches back at you
If it didn't come with my game pass I would've been absolutely pissed if I spent full price on this. Edit/slight spoilers: In my first playthrough where I kinda just did the main storyline, I did get arrested and ended up signing up with the crimson fleet. I tried to make my own fun. I became a starborn and decided that wracked with guilt, but still not wanting to side with UCvanguard, that as a highly leveled cosmic being I would just go..kill the entire crimson fleet. So I do enough to get let on to the Key, then try to kill everyone. Guess what? Todd didn't plan on me making my own fun. None of the plot essential pirates are killable. It dawned on me that I wasn't playing a role playing game and I went back into the loving embrace of cyberpunk 2077. There is so much writing in this game. Half assed writing but i didnt need much.. I would've accepted the quests failing as a consequence. That's all I really needed. But no, I was playing with Todd's toys wrong and he made them immortal like a child insisting the pretend lasers didn't hit his favorite action figure. Goddamn
kind of glad that people are starting to sour on the "bethesda formula", hopefully the lack of resounding acclaim will finally be the push the studio needs to completely rework to development pipeline, because the last time it "just worked" was in 2002
Nope. He is laughing with pride thinking how he managed to sell a lazy game with lies and vague statements and managed to make huge profit out of it whereas the BG3 devs had to work so hard for similar profits.
@@XanVicious The Outer Worlds was nothing to write home about but funny enough it was still far more memorable than Starfield for me - at least you can feel like the devs tried to play to their strengths and make the most of their very limited budget and come up with some decent dialogue with tons of options and reactivity. Starfield on the other hand is offensively forgettable in just about every aspect; the lore, story, world building, factions, companions and characters in general - it's all so risk-free and lifeless to the point where it feels like an AI generated the whole game. I swear walking through fucking New Atlantis felt more dystopic than Megaton.
He managed to peddle shite in respectable numbers. Probably laughing it off as the only guy in the company worth his money through his marketing bullshit and lies.
When he says “it just works” he must be referring to the unpaid labor that is the modding community that fixes and enhances their games. They do put in hard work, he’s right
Honestly yes very spot on, because procedural generation is very much that in games (especially when used so much like in Starfield) and it is a shame they thought it could deliver the same experience as true hand made title. It can never satisfy the itch, it only shows the short comings of the technology.
@@TowerWatchTVthey didn't think hitting the procedural generation button for every part of the game would be better they just wanted to do the least amount of work while being able to hype their game being really big and then excuse the emptiness with the realism arguments
You know what pisses me off the most, is they had SO MUCH time to get it right and have plenty of content to play through and actually have a good combat system. But instead we got this gigantic puddle of nothing.
I know people have had genuine criticisms of Bethesda writers in the past which are valid, but I have always thought those stories were worth experiencing in a game. This is the first Bethesda game where I seriously thought that I as a layman could write better and more interesting stories for almost every faction.
I dunno. I've felt that way about them since Skyrim. I actually felt pretty immersed in Oblivion's world due to how creatively written the quests and characters were. Not only is it just in the writing, but what you do in the quests too. I don't think there's a single quest in Skyrim that doesn't just include some variation of going through a dungeon to get some sort of item, or kill some sort of person. That's pretty much every quest in the game. While Oblivion is regularly a bit more interesting, such as stalking NPC's for an insane person, having simple wave defense quests where NPC's go with you and you have different outcomes depending on if they survive, a quest involving a cursed house in which you have to guide an NPC to open a secret room where you fight a necromancer, or the quest where a boat is stolen when you're sleeping on it and you have to clear it out of bandits to return. It was stolen because the innkeeper made up some lie about a hidden treasure to attract visitors.' Even if we ignore the actual writing, dialogue, etc. The quests in Skyrim are pretty much all the same from from what they require of the player. While Oblivion made an effort to be more creative in its quest objectives.
@@pagatryx5451 Oblivion is my favorite game of all time and I agree that Skyrim's quests were lackluster, especially the guilds. However Skyrim still managed to present a compelling world full of lore and detail. The same goes for Fallout 4 and to a much lesser extent 76. Starfield being so disjointed and bland it feels like there is no point to anything I'm doing other than what I make up for myself in my own head. Someone recently told me that the game was broken up into several different studios in places like Cambodia and it shows. There was no creative vision for this, just product specs and expectations of scale to put in the marketing like having 1000 planets.
@@pagatryx5451 Skyrim still gave an immersive world with its wide myriad of terrains and regions and some of its more unique dungeons, especially the dwemer ruins. There were also pretty fun quests, such as the daedric ones. then there is the fact that skyrim at its core is still an TES game, meaning that its world is by default more interesting than starfield's.
@@pagatryx5451Oblivion was decent but Bethesda hasn't made a decent world since Morrowind and they lost all the staff that made TES by the time Morrowind shipped.
