Your work on this video did the one thing Starfield is lacking on the most. You took your time and put a lot of thought into what you were doing. As for Starfield, there's a lot of things that just don't add up for a game that's been 8+ years in the making. It feels like it was rushed. Sorta like it's been remade multiple times, all the while over reaching, trying to be the biggest map ever made. There's so much room for Starfield to grow, but I fear it's already too late for most gamers. The one and only hope that we had was the moder's, and with the recent news on that front, it's not looking too promising. That said. Thank you for putting this video together. it's nice to see a realistic and well thought out critique, after so many by people whom didn't even take the time to play the game. Looking forward to seeing your next video.
@@ColorsFadeGaming well now i have to ask you how you feel about star trek's story of people living onboard their federation ships knowing they could possibly run into trouble while onboard that ship at any time. because that often happened in the show believe it or not, so in contrast to your comments of the game having a child onboard a ship that constantly runs into these same situations with children or entire families onboard the ship would often run into conflict, now it was never the purpose of that show to seek out or engage in combat, but the danger was always there in the show so the federation always made sure they were ready for that possible situation given diplomacy failed on them, they at the very least had the capability to fight back or defend themselves. ultimately i do agree with you that most of the writing of starfield is badly written though, and i do still think to much procedural generation does take part in the scope of the game's goals and makes it a bit less interesting because it makes every planet feel more of the same, just slightly different on every planet. i think some procedural generation is fine, but when people keep touting NMS for being better i don't see that game doing it any better, in my eyes that game does it even worse than starfield, but what NMS does better is actually makes it feel like your in a space game where you can take fly in a planet instead of a very limited box and land and take off anywhere on that planet and actually not have to go through a pre-scripted cutscene/ load screen just to get to space and actually use your FTL jumps in real time instead of getting to your destination in a few seconds making the game feel like a load screen simulator, that right there is poor game design for the mechanics of the game. now i disagree that it's the creation engines fault, yes this engine has issues with the load screens, but one point you talked about that i do agree with is they thought this through before they chose to go another route, i think the space traveling can be at the very least simulated via their engine, maybe not like NMS in the sense of the way the ship travels, but it could work similar to how it worked in the star trek shows and movies where the ship jumps into its warp and the player can walk around the ship and chat with personnel while they wait to get to their destination as the grav drive automatically fly's to the destination, now i'm not saying that it would need to be too long like star citizen, but i feel it could be based on the location you are headed and your ships resources and the engine you currently have on your ship and the distance of the planet your headed to, without the need of a load screen, well technically there is a load screen during that whole sequence, but the player wouldn't know the difference because it was a delayed load screen event like how it was in FO4 when the player entered into an elevator, the player didn't know they walked into a delayed load door to the next section of the game to load into because that was being obstructed by the confined space of the elevator as the player can't see what's being loaded up outside. anyway this post is maybe a little too long, i apologize.
as an after thought. I'm older and disabled, so I have a little more time than a lot of people for gaming. That said, I have a few hundred hours into this game and I'm enjoying the grind and/or just taking my time on this game. I only expected Fallout 4 with better scoped weaponry. I got just what I asked for, so much so, That switching from Fallout 4 to Starfield, feels like it's a new DLC. And I honestly have to say that it's still better(for the most part) than Fallout 1 ;)
@@5226-p1eyeah NMS is overhyped. I think it's good for kids, but the planetary variation isn't great and mechanics aren't too deep with some jank for each. It's mainly just the planet streaming and multiplayer option that wins it, I think. There's tons of appeal to "I'm gonna grind for my unique and quirky proc gen seed" just look at minecraft, but once you load something in minecraft the creative depth is way more robust.
Another example of horrible writing was the very beginning when a complete stranger gave me his ship, I was left scratching my head like what the hell happened
There was a plot device for that. "Protocol indigo" was it? He lent you the ship under the watchful eye of the robot expressly for getting to the lodge with the artifact. Even i remember that & i only played through the start once.
And it could have been avoided with a simple flip; he makes a deal, and if you fly the Pirate's ship with the artifact, he will cover the cost and paperwork to register the ship.
For 8 years development, by a studio with decades of experience, financially backed by Microsoft (one of the largest companies in the world)...those facts considered....the game is absolute garbage.
Agreed with their amount of resources and time making rpgs And time for feedback and they just did space fallout 4 which is just Skyrim but post nuclear they all feel the same and its painful
One thing I rarely or never hear about Starfield's exploration problem is it' planet-side structure: there's 1 quest per "cell" or chunk, and its always 500m away from the landng zone too. That's why the temples are as unexciting as they are: there are the only thing of interest in their Cell, and they always re 500m away from where you land. On the first time your search for a temple, Vladimir says your scanner will help find the temple, and you think y'oull have to traverse the map and make a good amount of way to reach it, but it's actually already in sight, just next to you, as it's a tall structure (and always the same). This means that you enter a cell, do 1 quest, and then leave, there's no other (even radiant) quest in the cell that you can bump into on the way to your quest-next-door. The only time you get more than 500m away form your ship it to scan a planet or search for ressources. This is a sister problem to non-seamless travel and content density. One way to solve this problem could be to have larger areas with more quests, 1 or 3 such areas per planets like the prexisting location markers we have currently, with small settlements and more random encounters and local quests (radiant or not) and then let the player know that the rest of the planet is unhabited, and there's no signs of life there except for the occasionnal secret facility or exploration team.
I too have played the game for 200+ hours. A lot of youtubers, reviewers, critiques seem ill equiped or not motivated to actually explain why this game is terrible past 'everything is boring' and 'the guns feel the same'. 'This is loading screen simulator'. You start to get to the crux of the matter. All the evidence is in front of us. Each game they make gets worse, their progression in the craft of video game development has deteriorated over time. They are unmotivated, uninspired, lazy. And lazyness is the key factor here. They want to do less and make more money. We can compare Starfield to each past Bethesda entry and see how basically every mechanic is stripped down, simpler, doesn't work, or is just gone. The laziness goes all the way through every facet of the game, the writing, world building, characters, themes - all bare minimum (or less sometimes) all companions are the same morally, there is no cultural diversity, the lore is there was a war. What is shown on screen is incongruent to what we're being told, there's no difference in the games they make past setting. In Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield there are no phones, no vehicles, etc etc. The best comparison I can make is imagine if Rockstar released all their games in reverse order. They get simpler, cruder, and less refined and ambitious over time.
This is false. I watched several videos critiquing the game, and the content creators make excellent points. Regardless, it's not very difficult to see Starfield's flaws (dated design approach, bad writing, boring gameplay, dated graphics, dated presentation etc.)
@@Rapunzel879 I don't know how what I said is false. I said "a lot of youtubers" not all, or most, or even a number. And besides just saying something is boring or bad is just an opinion, not a critique. Showing evidence, comparisons, or explaining in technical terms what makes a thing bad or boring is what I'm looking for.
I don’t think it was laziness. Mainly because there is no hard evidence to support this. Honestly I’m not sure there could be since identifying laziness is more about intention, perceived competence vs actual ability among other things. Tough to assess from an outsiders view imo. Mainly I think attributing the short comings of Starfield to laziness is an overly simplifed cop out. The effort in rendering hundreds of 3-D models from weapons to aid items seems robust. The “nasa punk” aesthetic as reflected in the design of the various ship building parts and space suits is quite cohesive and detailed. The volume of quest dialogue, written and recorded data slates required a significant amount of effort. The thing is hard work does not always result in a successful outcome. Conversely a failure is not always the result of a lack of effort. This distinction is valuable because if one wants to succeed in a previously failed attempt the answer is not always, ‘just work harder and do more’. I do think that Bethesda’s leadership has become complacent, creatively stagnant, overall staffed by less skilled devs (via the leaving of several vets) and has adopted certain practices (like not using a central dynamic game design document) that hinder significant innovation, communication and coordination.
@@vincer7824 I'm sure the studio worked hard on the game. The issue is that their efforts were largely misplaced. Their game design is outdated, and yet Bethesda hasn't updated it. There are objective problems with the Creation engine beyond the obvious graphical limitations, and it needs significantly more work to be competitive in today's environment. Eight years is a lot of time to update their engine, enemy AI, combat, quest design, and dialogue presentation, but very little has changed since Fallout 4. The bulk of the work went into making procedurally generated planets etc, stuff that the community doesn't care about.
excellent video would love more like it. separately i found starfield to be best understood not as a game or game world but as a harrowing first-person reconstruction of a total psychotic break from reality afflicting a very boring person.
Best review ever! And it is a fair point. Occasionally seeing people say the NPC's are believable. That the combat is excellent. Can only assume they have a secret version of the game before that Bethesda employee had the breakdown and wrecked it all.
I feel that the good writing was reserved for some of the very small incidental meetings, for example the child wanting to sell lemonade - that one made me laugh. I agree about the factions and the main quests however.
To settle the "5 planets" argument. Because that's a point I myself believe. We're not talking (or at least, I'm not talking) about 5 procedurally generated planets. I'm talking about 5 planets, wherein you can visit an open-world map (smaller than Skyrim or Fallout 4) which would have been handcrafted. You mention The Outer Worlds' writing. But that's the way they built their game too, and it works. Marvelously. Keep the procedural generation for barren moons, asteroids and planets, and let people fly there. And in space. That alone would have made the game much more condensed, and much more interesting. But you're right, it wouldn't have solved the abysmal writing of the game. Oh, and the scale of it too. The UC is a gigantic, galactic spanning organization. And yet their capital city is the size of my bathroom. Mass Effect gave us sprawling urban landscapes a decade ago. Just add a freaking backdrop of a tentacular city as far as the eye can see....
Replace SF references with Skyrim references and you've got a Skyrim critique. i.e. I found your assessments of SF in Skyrim when I stopped forgiving Skyrim's gameplay designs and stopped modding it about 2017/18. I think their writing team works independently of each other. Bethesda's story editor(s) only mildly review the different story threads for major inconsistencies with a disregard for the nuances of the narrative.
yeah the only saving grace for skyrim is the strong sense of atmosphere that pulls people into that world without it the many problems it has would be a lot more obvious
Planets in NMS are like the size of big cities, you can walk around the planet in like 10 hours. Real scale is the big problem, even one real scale planet is still hilariously too large for hand crafted content.
I dont think the scale was the problem, its just how the game was designed around that scale. If they had atleast made the POIs themselves procedurally generated by using the same technology that roguelike games use for their dungeons, like Remnant, the exploration side wouldve been way better... But alas, the horrible writing is the main problem. It doesnt matter how big or small the gameworld was, it was still gonna suck due to the immersion breaking writing
i was making some of the travel points on reddit and people were claiming you can't implement travel between worlds because of distance, when I suggested some kind of fast interplanetary drive or time dialation, they said you can't because "it doesn't fit the lore of the universe", the cope is so strong. People wanted to get everywhere instantly, they also made excuses for the intro and how cheaply and inexplicably you get your first spacecraft. I think this generation of players, the vertical scrolling tik tok generation just want shit fast and they don't want to take their time. the fast travel fetch quest loop is a dopamine experience created specifically for them.
Yesssss! Omg, thank you. As a hobbyist non-professional game dev who has spent a lot of time building procedural asset generation systems, it has been so frustrating to hear people blaming the procedural planets for bethesda's poor decisions and lack of imagination and lack of technical skill applied to the procedural systems. They did a garbage job. I'm going to be so mad if other devs back off on procedural stuff because of the starfield criticism. Starfield contains so many things that could be fun and are not. Doubling down on better systems would fix so much of it. If you have procedural terrain generation, there is absolutely no reason aside from lack of imagination and commitment, that you need to generate that terrain inside of a sandbox that players can't walk outside of. You can generate the terrain as you need it from any distance and start from far away and get close in. People have been doing this on consumer hardware for decades now. I did it myself in my spare time in 2005. The star citizen tech demo dunked so hard on bethesda's pathetic attempt. In 2023, we don't need loading screens to go from your ship, to an adjacent dock ship, then to land on the surface of a planet, get out of your ship, walk inside of a cave. If Bethesda used less procedural generation, only would have been worse. Players attracted to starfield want to explore space. We didn't launch the game to navigate menus. If I get in a space fight, why can't I take that fight to the ground? Ships can be procedurally generated. Buildings can be procedurally generated. Factions can be generated, and all of their interactions can be generated, the economy can be. I feel like people are mad and blaming the procedural generation because they can see some signs that it was used, but every single thing in the game is painstakingly meticulously crafted, which is why all the factories look the same. It's why the planets are the same no matter how many games you start or how many times you go new game plus yourself into a "new" galaxy. Bethesda fumbled the ball so bad on procedural content. I paused your video 30 seconds in and started this comment ramble, so I'm hoping that your take is somewhat similar, because I'm so tired of people getting this so very wrong. The game is bad and boring because Bethesda made it bad and boring. Also it has procedural content. Also the game would be less bad and boring if they took the creation engine handcuffs off of the procedural generation and made it actually dynamic and spent time making the dynamic systems fun, or if they took the game out of space and didn't try to pretend this was a space game and spent their time making something fun out of stuff creation engine can actually do.
Oh, yeah the writing is terrible. You can have terrible writing and a fun game. You can have a terrible game I still want to play because the writing is so good. You probably shouldn't do both bad writing and bad game. 15 hours into the game, I realized I wasn't playing a modern Mass Effect, I wasn't going to feel engaged in the story, and I wasn't going to care about a single individual NPC in the entire game because the writing was just amateur. Voice acting was good tho... I immediately abandoned the plot and made my own fun as far from New Atlantis as I could go
I was having the exact same thoughts watching the video. I hope actual devs don't back off of developing procgen tech after seeing all of this backlash. It's just done badly in Starfield. I would go so far as saying Starfield doesn't even have actual procgen. Its systems are more akin to procedural placement.
Let's face it, Starfield is an average Indy game, GFX/quests. Made by an AAA developer who couldn't care less because the fan people will buy it just because of the name and the hype. Bethesda is like most of the AAA companies now that pump out what are basically early access games that they may finish if they get enough sales. It is a shame because as you say they have made so many great games in the past, I guess it's just a sign of the times. Why do something when you don't have to?
The Striker's Gang quest gets even worse. Eventually, you can help them out and get them hired as the city's new security team. There is another unrelated quest that requires you to go ask the security team for info on a murder. Do you think Bethesda thought about this? Of course not. You can't go and ask your gang buddies for help, even though you can find them all standing around at the security office. Absolutely irredeemable and lazy writing.
I could have done a whole long video on the Strykers questline alone. When they end up joining the Neon city police force I almost laughed myself out of my chair. I wanted to think it was a genius stroke of writing commentary on the state of police forces in the wake of events like George Floyd's murder, but there's no way I thought Bethesda's writers were that self aware. It had to be an accident.
You just articulated exactly what I feel about the game - disappointment. You hit the nail on the head with this breakdown and cited some examples of precisely what I felt is so frustrating, the lack of good writing and folllow-through - I so wanted to give Cora those books! :D (plus having a kid in space - no-one asked for that). Skills, fast travel and companions are all lazy and/or irritating. Thanks for the thoughtful and well presented video - I hope Bethesdsa sees it and takes it on board.
Nothing pissed me off more than space combat already happening on a planet i want to land on, because of the fact that combat immediately starts and you cant land on whatever rock in the middle of nowhere you want to land at in combat. So you're either forced to endure another two loading screens as you warp away and warp back and pray there isnt another random combat encounter Or endure the combat as you either waste materials surviving it, or waste time as you mop the floor with whatever is being a nuisance.
One quest chain that I really didn't like is the UC one. It committed what I consider a cardinal sin. It treated you like you were stupid. It set things up in a way that their big surprises are obvious, but then it refuses to let me be NOT surprised.
@@ColorsFadeGaming What's even worse is that when you start a new game and head down there, even though you have complete fore knowledge of who he is, you're still required to play dumb and act surprised.
One egregious detail about the First Contact mission that i haven't seen commented much is that most of the tech they have inside the ship is the same as the rest of the universe. It is so ridiculous that they didn't even bother making specific assets like the "pre-war" stuff in Fallout.
That's actually the most comment complaint I've seen from people, which is why I didn't mention it. You can scroll down through these replies and others have said the same thing. It's a common refrain on Reddit. I give Bethesda a pass on that one because it would have meant building new assets for a singular mission, and that's just not their style. But yeah, it was immersion breaking.
Very well done critique. Sat through the whole thing uninterrupted. Most “essayists” begin to repeat themselves or beat a point to a pulp by jamming it down the viewers throats but you articulated your points well and structured the critique nicely. You also presented your evidence convincingly and really nailed it down to a problem of immersion and shallow worldbuilding. Starfield unlike other RPGs like Cyberpunk miss the mark almost all the time on a pivotal question: Why am I here doing this? If the player can’t answer that in a story based RPG without having purely intrinsic goals then the writers have failed. In cyberpunk I always felt gripped by the fact I’m a merc, I’m living V’s life in Night City. When it comes to Starfield I’m just questing and completing some objectives until I get bored with little investment. Add to that by limiting player choice by making anywhere between 50-80% of NPCs “essential” tagged and I no longer feel as if I have agency. My character in Starfield kills criminals by the dozen like it’s nothing. He loots and steals from criminals and sells the loot for cash. When I forst found the Ebbside Strykers and they threatened me and told me that they were the last of their kind I saved and shot all of them, hoping to snuff them out. But no, mom said no, Todd Howard told me they have an everything force field in the name of the almighty side quest.
It's also the limitations of the engine itself. The creation engine can only create terrain in a certain amount of chunks, this would include empty space. This is why they have the issue of the tiny bubbles of areas.
There's no doubt the engine itself is a hindrance. But given that, why not use a different engine? They had a lot of time to make this game. It's the decisions that lead to these outcomes that baffle me.
Couldn't agree more. Morrowind despite its flaws had such an interesting setting, believable factions plausible motivations... and all this played out through the various quests the player was shown who this group is, what they stand for and why. Morrowinds writing was good... it had SO MANY other problems, but... in an RPG writing is so important that its easy to look past whatever other flaws a game has if the writing is top tier. Bethesda used to have good writing... WTF happened...
I think you nailed it. When writing is great, we can look past flaws in technology, graphics, whatever. But when the writing is bad, it doesn't matter how pretty the rings are around your planets. It all begins and ends with the writing.
I agree completely, in an RPG writing is KING and Bethesda used to be so good at it, when I play through Morrowind I actually want to go on because I want to find out what's really happening... because the narrative is compelling, because the setting is captivating, because the factions and characters are engrossing and believable... Morrowind, alien as it is, feels like a place that could actually exist because the writers took the time to think about what might happen if this place was real. Oblivion did the same, not as well, but it did the same, then Skyrim... I love Skyrim to pieces, but the writing that was slightly worse in Oblivion just... fell off a cliff. What happened to Bethesda...@@ColorsFadeGaming
All of what you mention that is lacking requires the one thing that Bethesda seems to be increasingly allergic to. Effort. Since Fallout 4 I've noticed Bethesda has simply stopped putting in the effort they used to in to their games. Disappointing, especially when you've already seen what they are capable of when they are actually trying.
You absolutely nailed it, the writing was utterly atrocious and immersion breaking, and the game design compounded this. Playing Cyberpunk again with its new DLC after Starfield, I couldn’t believe how superior the writing, characters and immersion was in Cyberpunk, no contest at all. Bethesda has an awful lot ahead of them to catch up, because they are seriously lagging behind now unfortunately.
I am very surprised that no one seems to pick up on the other major immersion breaking writing in First Contact. Kudos to you for calling it out as an example, but the thing that jarred me right out of the game aside from the contrived "dilemma" is that it is a 200 or more year old ship, and all the tech looks the same, you can find weapons that you use in current day, there is nothing that distinguishes their time from our time other than they say it. Just horrible. Great criticism on the game, but your aside comparing living in the USA to taking you kid into combat situations is a bit ridiculous, and propogates a stereotype. Just my suggestion but stick to writing criticism. The USA has way lower statistics for violent deaths under the age of 20 than many other countries.
Yeah, the tech being exactly the same - I mean, I kind of expected that because Bethesda is not a company that's going to build different assets just for one quest. I could excuse it if the writing was any good, but it's not. So the whole thing becomes one big toilet bowl.
Yes, I've been saying for months, that the engine and assets are fine, even have great potential. And the whole game needs to be remade with some hard fisted direction and overall management, a new setting, new lore and new stories. I keep saying make Microsoft pull together some 50 to 80 man team, and give them the license to use Blizzards StarCraft universe and make a new game with the StarField engine and assets.
I like how all the Starfield review essays have reached the same conclusion: everyone blames the tools (proc. gen and the engine) but not the one who uses them wrong (Bethesda)
This game is like a gorgeous woman you happen to luckily pick up, date, and to find ultimately uninteresting and boring. Do you hit and quit it or try your hand at commitment long term? Yup
Completely agree with the writing being bad and under done, the first contact mission didn't even give you tot option to try and do what the captain ask you to do negotiate the parideso people to leave. I feel like they must have cut a bunch of quest line options. they really should have told more of thsies classic scifi stories, another is the parrel universe story where you are swapping back and forth, this should have been a system used across lots of missions, showing whats going on in multi universes.
What really got to me was the main quest. After all the hype, and the mystery surrounding the artifacts, I really thought the main story was going to be a First Contact type of story, and I was excited for that. But then it ended up being the illogical nonsense they came up with just to try and pull a "gotcha" moment for NG+ and I was so disappointed.
imo the bad writing is partially a side effect of scope: they had to fill a "universe" of content and thus probably rushed a lot in the writing department with half-baked ideas.
Honestly, I found the writing problem of having to turn off my brain to enjoy the game has been an escalating problem since Oblivion. For me, Fallout 3 was when I gave up on story because the whole world was painfully stupid. I had the most fun exploring the metro tunnels, as that was the only time I was actually immersed. Skyrim had enough distractions that I could immerse myself again, though there were several "I need to turn off my brain"-stories and moments there, mostly in the factions. I really could not stand more Fallout, so I skipped New Vegas (which appears to have been a big mistake on my part as that game lives on by strong writing despite it's technical issues). With NW being well written I tried to hype myself up for Fallout 4, but a single stream showed me it was another "idiots playground" where the writing and much of the world design was as immersive as eating gravel and pretending it's cornflakes... Bethesda really needs to up their game. They desperately need not only more and better writers, they need good project leadership to make their game come together as a whole and not as a bunch of parallell isolated systems that feels like they were made in isolation from each other. Because when I look at Fallout 3 and 4, I see a world where the writers and level designers worked in different offices and didn't speak past the first draft. There are so many places where what the world presents and what the story say's outright contradicts each other I just can't find any immersion in their stories or their settlements. I have to turn off my brain and not think to enjoy anything, and I can't just consume content without thought like that. As for another major issue with Starfield. I offer this: Do you need outpost building? No, it's entirely optional. Do you need to gather resources? Do radiant quests? Design your own ship? Join factions? No, it's all optional and you can just mainline the main story if you want and never engage with most of the game. The very idea that everything has to be optional means it has to be designed as an isolated option with no requirement to engage with it and that is why Starfield is, ultimately, just a collection of optional isolated systems scaled up in every way. It's all just scattered optional systems in a game without all the connective parts that make it all come together into what feels like a complete game. You're not meant to think about it, you are supposed to consume content without thought and I can't. I can't enjoy another "idiots playground", where I have to pretend to be an idiot, just for mindless fun. I reached my threshold for keeping my brain turned off when I killed hundreds more bandits than there are people in the rest of Skyrim. I can't keep pretending not to see all the nonsense and just mindlessly consume content...
It's an SM58 Clay, thanks for asking! I'm a musician, so I had one laying around. Not as convenient as a USB mic, but like you say, the sound quality is great.
As far as the procedural nature of it ruining starfield, i have to say i think the inclusion of it is what makes some of the "real" flaws with Bethesda games as a whole enter the focus. For example bethesda have always had fairly shoddy writing and npcs, but that didnt so much matter as that wasnt the focus of the game. Bethesda games are primarily exploration games, and NPCs acted mostly as a vehicle to push players in new directions. Now that exploration has been almost completely removed in favour of the procedural planets though, the main gameplay loop is interacting with the story/NPC's and combat, the first of which becomes an absolute chore the more hours you spend with it. Bethesda have basically removed a core part of the "Bethesda magic", and instead shined a light on what has traditionally been one of the poorest parts of their games for 20 years. This is why people think reducing the scope would help, because we'd get 5 handcrafted planets to fully explore and fly between No Mans Sky style. I do agree that the writing in Starfield is a step down from Skyrim and maybe even F04, but the lack of quality isnt something new. This is compounded by the lack of any impressive environmental storytelling, which IS actually a strongpoint of bethesda. Id say its actually where they put their focus on when it comes to writing, especially in skyrim. Again this is something only sacrificed because of the focus on procedural planets, and the subsequent loss of exploration and use of travel by load screen. It doesnt help that you pointed out 2077 either, which has an absolutely fantastic story and characters and overall writing, and rose from the ashes at a very unfortunate time for bethesda, as did BG3 tbh. When you compare the three from a purely writing and narrative standpoint, bethesdas archaic approach is very very evident. Being sandwiched between 2 RPG giants like that cant have been fun for them. I still think opinions on Starfield would have soured at some point, but i think being presented with 2 beautiful games like the ones mentioned really shortened the lifespan of players tolerance. So to summarise, Procedural Generation IS the problem in many ways, not because it exists, but because it was focused on to the detriment of many other systems, a lot of which were core to the standard bethesda experience. Lack of exploration, Travel by menu systems which comes along with constant loading screens, highlighting the poor writing because of a shift in the purpose of NPC's to the narrative, and im sure i could name more things impacted by it. Their entire design philosophy was incompatible with the type of game they were trying to make. I'll stop here, i could rant for hours and ive only just covered, and tried to add to, your first point. I'd make a video essay myself on it if i had the balls, but i guess i'll just have to stick to ranting in comment sections lol. Hope my 2 cents were worth something! Also thanks for the nod to Panam, absolutely adored that character, Judy and kerry too. Actually felt like believable people instead of...whatever the companions in Starfield were. EDIT: Just noticed your 2077 playthrough when i was looking through vids, are you a returning player or a new one in your playlist playthrough? As someone who played from release 3 years ago i love watching and listening to new players react to the game.
Frankly, Emil Pagliarulo needs reassigned. His whole writing philosophy doesn't work for an open-world game, and Microsoft needs to send him to a developer that makes linear stories instead of wide open worlds. He thinks the point of an open world is for everyone to experience everything, so he goes minimal on the story to avoid hiding anything where people will miss it, and . . . no. When you're doing a wide open world like this, you NEED to write what he calls "the Great American Novel" in order to have enough content to make the wide world worthwhile.
I think the greatest argument to make in favor of this is Baldur's Gate 3. There are a myriad of ways the encounters can play out, but Larian was never worried about players "missing out" on content. Instead, they created a really diverse set of outcomes for most of the choices in the game, and as a result players have been enthusiastically sharing stories and posting videos about all the different ways encounters have gone. And it's driven a lot of engagement for the game, with everyone swapping stories, and players saying, "Wow, I didn't see that in my playthrough; I need to play it again!" I've not heard from one player who played BG3 and said they were done with it after a single playthrough. The different outcomes and easy-to-miss content has players going back for more. Conversely, Bethesda thought they would intentionally build a game for repeat playthroughs but they did such a poor job building their game that few players want to even finish it once. I think the lesson is clear and you've hit on it as well: You gotta build a great game and not worry about players missing content. If you're first concern is "we want players to see everything," then you're doing it wrong. And Bethesda is, sadly, doing it wrong.
@@ColorsFadeGaming That player engagement and community building is part of the entire point of these big games, yeah. Without it, you're basically building your company to be in the Mobile Gaming industry and just make people shell out for soulless cash grabs.
Outer Wilds honestly made it more interesting. Besdies the time mechanic, the dlc, Echoes of the Eye, was amazing for a space exploration game. Instead of adhering to "realism", the planets and space stations should feel worthwhile in their exploration. As there is so many stories you can tell.
Bad writing that's for sure and also bad dialogues, forgettable NPCs, repetitive aliens and facilities all over the galaxy and so on. It's a game made with the "good enough" state of mind. Maybe you should talk to Emil who desperately tries to explain that making games is hard, this is the guy responsible for all those flaws. He was already doing a bad job in the past but i guess that with Starfield he was just uninspired and not interested and just did his job in the most lame and lazy way. Time for him to rtetire and forget about game writing, he has always been bad at it and that last one is really the last nail in the coffin! Starfield is the last game from a dying company, Fallout 76 was the first sign and now we really see that Bethesda is just a manufacturer of shallow games for Microsoft. Tasteless, avoiding conflict, avoiding any possible thing that could offend anyone, a supposed 18+ game made for children.
Thank you for this vid. You hit on the biggest issue with Starfail, the writing. The writing is horrendous, lazy, and immersion breaking. The other thing that is immersion breaking is all of the loading screens, but I can ignore them since my PC loads pretty quick. I also tried to tell people that the biggest problem with the writing is the lack of Showing in writing. There is too much telling be it the quests, or note/memo pads. One of the things BGS was known for was visual story telling yet they hardly do that at all in Starfail. Emil must go. They said Will Shen did writing on Starfield but I'm starting to doubt that. If they want the game to stay relevant they must completely rewrite the game and release a 3.0 since they are already close to a 2.0, a 2.0 that won't be anything like Cyberpunk's 2.0. Starfield has a cool aesthetic but that's all it has going for it right now.
I disagree with your assessment on the skill system. I actually think it's a nice change from other TES games and BGS FO games. I do agree that you're spot on for the writing and other contentions on the problems. I think that ultimately it's a game made by amateurs. When you're first starting to do something, you copy what is already there and then maybe make some modifications after you understand what makes the game good. Like if you wanted to make your own run-and-jump platformer video game, you'd start by copying the mechanics of SMB. And then once you've understood how it works and why it's a good game, you'd then go on and add different things to make it unique. BGS mimicked Skyrim and FO4, and didn't understand what made those games great. It's an amateur game made by a professional game studio theoretically made by veterans. It's like they saw the 'house' that is Skyrim, and then took it apart and reassembled it in a different order in a different location with no idea why things are they way they are; they don't understand what players saw in the game and what makes them great. The foundation for Starfield is pretty much the same as Skyrim, but they didn't understand why this part in this corner was here in this place. So they just replaced it with a similar looking thing from another part of the foundation. It's a flawed product and terrible game, since they didn't understand what players enjoyed about Skyrim or FO. They only saw mechanics and reconfigured how they work and thought that would be enough. They George Lucas'd it. Also, the writing I believe was made by a psychopath who doesn't understand human interaction at all. When you talk to an NPC, it almost never matters what you say, which dialogue option you choose. This is written by someone who literally views humans this way, in that it doesn't matter what you say since everyone around them IRL is an NPC their for their amusement. It would also explain the terrible 'romance' writing options. I believe they do literally view romance and sex as 'put token in and get sex out'.
Yeah but if we're being honest they 100% are a problem contributing to the overall problem. Procedural worlds, levels even rooms are crap. World design is far more important than its given credit for.
Lmao at your trying to moral grandstand gun violence in the US when Europe has had a knife crime epidemic so bad that now every other teenager in the UK have reported being victims of or witnessing knife crimes & in 1 in 5 of them skipped school due to feeling unsafe (guardian November 2023 ) and is currently the third leading cause of death in Europe overall as of 2011 (Victoria and Albert Muesum ). Ontop of Germans estimating at least 30 knife attacks per DAY in 2022 with 12355 estimated between CIM's Police stats and BKA's cheif with a possible additional 8000 more according to some reports. It's the society not the weapon as people are finding ways to hurt and kill each other in droves world wide.
11:39 I’m enjoying your video but this part I feel like you just got wrong. The paradiso execs didn’t want to share the planet because they considered the entire planet as their resort, so either it’s real estate for future resorts or it’s already being used by the guests, either way the colony ship and its people would’ve been an eye sore to them So do you as the player side with corporate greed and take the money to get rid of the colonists? do you take the middle ground and help them find a new home? Or do you convince the execs to allow them to stay? I’m also pretty certain you can ask the colonist why they don’t just do what your suggesting, and it’s because paradiso has a lock around the entire planet This quest and the quest with the clones on crucible and the one where you make drugs were the only 3 memorable side quests (other than faction quests) and the only 3 that really felt like classic Bethesda side quests, I really thought there’d be more out there like those hidden on distant planets…….nope, there wasn’t….i checked every planet I would know
If Bethesda were smart and mature they would do what Sean Murrey did at Hello Games, LISTEN to ALL of the critism, catalog/catagorise it, then implement what can be done But Bethesdas track record is releasing the same game 12 times with the same bugs... then releasing a new game and having bugs carried over from the old game... bugs that modders fixed years ago :/ Todd, stop lying, this is not a next gen game
Yes and no. When I have to visit 100 procedural worlds before I find any new or interesting content then procedural worlds are a problem. Having said that, procedural worlds are not responsible for bad NPCs, bad dialogue, ships that you don't actually fly, etc. They are simply one problem among many.
Agree, it's core issue that no dlc can fix is such awful writing. So bad that I almost felt punked. I kept thinking, "maybe I'll go to another planet and they'll reveal New Atlantis is actually a settlement of bad clones". But then I went to Neon and it was the same lame disney-esque world everywhere. And that only highlights the other problems with menus, loading screens, empty planets, etc. It's like one of those really atrocious low-budget 70s movies made by a religious group.
Good video. I disagree with you though on the scope. When you make 1000 planets and a large chunk are ones with nothing on them it can make people tired to explore. So what they needed was a main quest that doesn't let you touch the boring planets unless you had reason within the story to go there set up outpost and take control of the resources as part of the quest. The idea is that you can have the boring planets just that having to find where the non-boring planets are is harder if you let us see more boring planets overall because we have to sift through the junk to see the good stuff. One thing they could have done is have 2 parts to the main quest: you are dying of a disease and there is a time limit to finish the main quest. The character will get the cure for the disease once main quest is done but part 2 is searching for a villain around the galaxy who has a lot of secret bases all over the place and you have to take out these bases to lower his power and influence on everyone around him. You become more and more popular the more strongholds you wrestle control from him and get more help from the people being enslaved by them. The idea is you are a hero but the first half is dealing with something you have to do FIRST so that you get a good idea of what is out there in the galaxy like a tour of its most important places. Then and only then after you have done it, you can concentrate on fighting the evil. In the popular metroidvania genre, you often start out as a badass with great gear and somehow you lose it all and must regain it again. That is what I think needs to be implemented in a starfield 2 where you WERE a badass, a tragic event happens to you that alters your body in some way that might kill you over time (sort of like super hero origina story) and you must control or contain the problem to stable levels before you can pursue your enemy. (the antogonist is classic bad guy who wants to use super weapons to control everything and it gives you an excuse to go and control every planet with valuable rare resources to obtain support. The resources do not go to YOU specifically but the resistence effort in taking out the villain) I think a much simpler story would have worked better. You could have factions but they are seperate from the main quest and the main quest involves trying to make the world much safer to travel for the average person. They can tap in to the science fiction horror movies like aliens and the Thing for inspiration on why this threat is such an urgent event to have to deal with. (like the Flood in Halo) The point I am making is, you need to give us an exucse to see the boring planets so when we get there we don't JUST explore them but do things there that is fun. In minecraft you don't just explore craft and build things, you do have dangerous enemy. The game needed to have space monsters or something out there that makes the act of travelling extremely risky for normal people which would require bounty hunters, treasure seekers, and archaelogists (to help with languages and mysterious ruins) along with pilots that can fight to be common. Unlike our real world, aliens would exist much more as a horror creature than what you see in star trek. When you do find caves you should be terrified of goiing into them because you don't know what you will see. With all the people and money microsoft can afford they need monster and creature designers, they need people to create ruins that look cool and different and unique, and they need other things in space other than human made ships to fight. Eg machine-based life forms that aliens made to attack you on sight while flying around in space the same way Elder Scrolls has monsters to encounter on your journey in between towns. Robots can survive in space without oxygen so robot monster ship things evolving there makes sense to me. The aliens that built them would have ruins all over the place but be extinct or disappeared mysteriously like the Dwemer in Elder Scrolls. What I want is something that feels like a mission impossible movie but in space. You assemble a team os specialists to get the villain but you never really live on the planets or do anything there to settle because you are jumping from location to location like james bond to save the galaxy from the bad guy who is dangerous and threatens the security of the human race. The aliens are there as complication but the sole reason to move around a lot is that there is urgency. The problem with Bethesda is they want a survival sim in space. No what I want is a RPG in space but moving at faster pace. There is a threat to all humanity, you are the hero, and the exploration is merely a means to an end: find the secret bases, control the important areas on planets with rare resources to deny the evil villain those resources to build his armies. Once you get more control, your own army is growing in influence. If the villain is symbolic of an evil necromancer raising the undead army to kill you, you are the hero sent to unite people to fight against him using your powers. There would be a sense that if you fail none of the sim life stuff you do matter. The problem? They focus on the simulated life stuff too much because they are thinking of Minecraft too much. It should be a RPG first and sim second.
Its heartbreaking, as long-term Bethesda fans want nothing more than a good Bethesda formula game. Alas, I think Todd, Emil et al at Bethesda think we're playing their games as time sink amusement parks, but forget that we're playing them because sometimes they create memorable moments. That means writing good enough that we can love, or hate, characters and factions in their world. While the side players take can vary, that means writers who aren't deterred from expressing a point of view, even if it offends some players. Want to make your factions political caricatures: Great!. I came to hate the racism of Nords in Skyrim, and that made the game better. Nowhere have I seen any online discussion about the ethical merits of the UC Vanguard vs the Freestar Rangers. What were they fighting over? What motivates people to join the Crimson Fleet? Crass materialism, or are they political dissidents and Robin Hoods? If an RPG can't stir debate about the issues it raises, has it created a single memorable moment?
26:26 - No... they'll say "well, you don't want to have to fly for 26 years to get to pluto, do you?" When I just want the ability to fly, and "ftl" within system.... quickly... with no loading screen....
The possibilities were endless and all you had to do for the last 10 plus years was write the story and they took the easy way out. Have they never been inspired by watching any Star Wars movies or the Star Wars games? Have you never played the original Quake or Unreal (decades old) for inspiration. Poor writing, poor world implantation, terrible weapons, horrendous surface maps. But it's a great cut scene and loading screen program. They should've hired you to be the senior writing supervisor. How long before there's a lawsuit for false advertising against Bethesda I wonder.
Money and time spent on Procedural Generation can affect the quality of writing. Also, the way they wrote everything was thinking about 1000 planets in mind, so the quest structure and writing in general changed because of it. So yeah, Procedural Generation affected writing. That is no excuse for it to suck though, they just did not adapt well. The skill system follows the same idea as the writing, because the huge grind probably came with the idea of having a massive universe to explore, however it was poorly implemented too. I get that they could have done a better job at everything, but I do believe procedural generation actually affected it, because their poor decisions came from it, even though the procedural gen was not exactly the one to blame exactly. ----> I'm glad someone finally mentioned that 5 planets is still too much, and that it would be hard to make them be good. I also want to add to the fact that if Bathesda did 5 amazing best planet ever, it WOULD NOT be starfield, it would be something else. You need many planets to make exploring space feel good, it is the unknown, the huge distances... that is what makes Star Citizen, No Mans Sky and Elite Dangerous have their own audience. Make 5 planets and we are talking about Mass Effect, which does not attract the same type of feeling.
Do you folks understand that the writers don't write the procedural generation code? There are completely different teams in a studio like Bethesda. Saying procedural generation affected the quality of the writing is just... wrong.
@@ColorsFadeGaming there are 1000 planets because of the procedural generation. In Skyrim, stories can happen, as you said, by exploring the world. The procedural generation lead to them having loading screens, which lead to them not having quests happening in the open world like skyrim (through organic exploration). So it affected the whole game. Sure they could have done a much better job at writing, I agree with you. But their adaptation to 1000 planets was poor. How you explore affects quests design. They could have had the same shitty quests but with better writing, for sure, but even then it would still be affected by how the entire game works
Feels like the natural evolution of the "KISS/Keep It Simple Stupid" mentality, that has been employed by Bethesda Game Studios, worming its way into the wrong areas of development.
With the engine they were using, they literally couldn't make the game that they had envisioned. This was the best they could offer. They should have scrapped this game early on, instead they mailed it in and put out a product just so that they could go and make their next game.
The problem is PAID MODS!!!!! Bethesda designed a blank canvass for modders to fill up. That way they could sell loot crates, I mean mods for the next ten years and modders will not run out room to add content. This is not a game it is a cash grab. Why NG+? Because if you get too many hours on a save the game falls apart. Ship land but no enemies exit them. You blow up ships and get no credit because they have no crew on them. Load times get longer and longer. There are times I wonder if the game froze. MY PC is way beyond the recommended specs of the game. This game uses up to 20GB of my 32GB of RAM. Skyrim: Bethesda hyped the game and modders extended its life. Fallout4: Bethesda hyped the game and modders extended its life. Starfield: Todd Howard hyped the modability of the game. Then got the paid mod page up and running before the Creation Kit even launched. So tell me that I am wrong. 5000+ hours in Skyrim and mod author on Nexus. Tell me that I'm wrong and do not know.
Above all else, the MAIN PROBLEM is the Creation Engine which, no matter how much they tweak it, still has, at its core, the Gamebryo Engine. What worked fine for Prince of Persia 3D near 25 years ago no longer works adequately for the scope of games they want to build now. Microsoft-Bethesda needs a brand spanking new Engine.
Great video. Only reason I bought Starfield was for more of the settlement building like in Fallout, and even that is worse. I put $70 and 250 hours into Starfield. It had its moments, but I will never sit down to play one of the 4-5 maps again, or give Bethesda another dime of my money. Theyre dead to me.
You could've just buy Satisfactory and build like a devil mega factories :D check out on YT what ppl are creating. Honestly there is NOTHING on Starfield that some games already did in the past 100 x better.
I think you have misunderstood most peoples' arguments regarding procedural generation. When they say the game would have been better with far fewer planets, what they mean is that with fewer planets Bethesda could have done away with procedural generation and hand crafted those planets and the locations on them. Yes the writing is terrible, but Bethesda writing has been bad for years. Good exploration made up for it in previous games, but there is no meaningful exploration in Starfield, which means that the badly written story is basically all you have left.
Do you trust Bethesda to "hand craft" five planets? Or even one? Did you know they used procedural generation for Daggerfall? Point is, outside of Daggerfall, Bethesda has never built anything bigger than 5.5 km. Saying they could have reduced Starfield's playing space to 5 planets and "hand crafted" them completely misunderstands how they would have gone about making those worlds. They' would still use procedural generation. Anyone would. It's not the proc gen that's the problem. It's what they're doing with it. It's like saying the cake has crappy frosting, but making a smaller cake won't make the frosting taste less bad. You still have to make better frosting. And if you're going to make better frosting, might as well stick with the bigger cake.
@@ColorsFadeGaming You can use preocedural generation in development, to create the world, then handcraft what's on the world. That's done by a lot of games. Daggerfall used procedural generation to create a massive world - and it didn't work, which is why they abandoned it for Morrowind. The problem of using procedural generation in game is that you can't then produce unique locations or story, just copy/paste content.
Think about how it could work. For instance, take Andreja's intro quest. We find her killing mercs in a cave that is recycled by the game over and over for other quests. But imagine if Bethesda had made 450 unique locations in the game - hand crafted content as you say, to sprinkle throughout the game world (you and I are on agreement this can be done). Then you marry these locations AND quests to random procedurally generated planets and locations. Couple that with the Radiant AI quest mechanics and what you could have experienced is finding Andreja on different planets inside different dungeons. For one player, they might find Andreja on a barren world inside that cave that we already find her in. But for another player, they might find her on a tropical world inside an elaborate science facility. And with randomized Radiant AI quests and content appropriate to each biome, even getting to Andreja's location could provide vastly different exploration and adventure experiences. Every play through could be different and we could be marveling at all the different ways the game could play out (much like how people are marveling at all the various ways Baldur's Gate 3 is playing out). And the thing is, Bethesda already did this in a very minor way with NG+ and the temples. Vladimir tells you straight up in your first NG+ that the temples aren't where you said they would be, because they are on different planets. This idea already works, but Bethesda didn't see fit to extrapolate it to the logical conclusion of working with the whole game. And they didn't build nearly enough dungeon assets and interesting Radiant AI quests to actually make the exploration and adventuring meaningful. The procedural generation isn't the problem. Bethesda's design philosophy and writing are.
@@cdeford2daggerfall was a financial and creative success for Bethesda so I’m not sure where you got the idea that it didn’t work. they abandoned the daggerfall formula because battlespire and redguard were such massive financial drains on the company that it had to be restructured to be a subsidiary under zenjmax. After the restructuring many of the old daggerfall devs left the company people like Todd Howard who had a different design philosophy took the series in a different direction.
@@ColorsFadeGaming All that would give you more possibilities, but in my view what players who play games for a long time want is to take a single character and build a life around that character, visiting new places, finding new things, collecting things, filling their homes and creating their own stories apart from what the game gives you. With RNG, however many pois you create, you will soon exhaust them. And NG+ just throws all that away. Radiant quests are one reason I didn't like Skyrim as much as other Bethesda games, because they're just meaningless filler.
Honestly, it feels like they did the bare minimum possible to enter the "space rpg" genre, its actually tragic, such lazy game design. Id love to propose that question to Todd Howard "So how many unique locations were in skyrim? Fallout 4? And how big was the budget for those games... ah right starfield had a much bigger budget, right. So why couldnt you craft as many unique locations as those games had, and just used random generation to place those hundreds of POIs around the game world? Implementing some system to stop the same POIs from appearing too often, theyd be a huge list, you could conceivably go weeks, months of playing before the same loaction reappeared, by which point the player would likely have completely forgotten they'd seen this space before" Why wasn't it done this way 😢.
dont mean t b rude but i swear i wonder sometimes if there are actually real people working at bethesda , or just some poorly programmed AI which has problems understanding sum very basic things
I absolutely agree with this. I have played the game for 872 hours--more than most, I believe, and I have not seen the "deep layers" that the devs are touting. I created 5 different characters, tried to roleplay it in different ways, but every outcome was the same. I saw a few different dialogue choices, but that's all. Those simply made it easier to accomplish some goal within the conversation, or had no impact at all. I believe some very heavy modding would be needed to spice it up and fix the bland quests, but I've been seeing some statements from modders that they will not be wasting their time on it. I can't say I blame them. If the game doesn''t grip you in it's vanilla state, then it needs to be re-written from scratch. What modder is going to tackle that? I'm putting this one in mothballs, and going back to something more exciting. I've wasted enough of my life on it.😕
I think it's more than just bad writing. The setting itself is sterile and bland. Good setting needs interesting conflicts, mystery and strong theme/"vibe". Morrowind has all of that in spades, other Bethesda games less so. I'd scrap entire "Starborn" nonsense, and make it more about human civilizations and cultures, evolved on different planets, clashing together, each with different physiology, philosophy, technology and cultures.
I didn't want to even get into the illogical, nonsensical, boring Starborn plotline. It's so unnecessary. But it's Todd Howard's "gotch" moment for NG+. I'm with you though, it wasn't necessary and the game would have been better served by a much different "main" conflict.
Todd should’ve kept that crap game to himself to enjoy. I played off gamepass. Stopped after I completed the first playthrough. The most boring game I wasted my time playing.
Concerning the idea modders can't fix the main quest because of voice acting... I think you severely underestimate the mod community. Entire dlc sized mods have been crafted by modders (for free) for Skyrim. They have full voice acting, whether it be hired actors or vasynth. SDA is an entire rewriting of Serana with a new voice actor. We have companions like Inigo, who have quest awareness, fully voice acted, and future updates include handmade quests just for him. It's entirely possible to fix Starfield, it's just a matter of when we get the CK for it and if anyone is around to bother doing it when it drops.
I'm not underestimating the modding community. Are they going to hire Emily O'Brien, Barry Wiggins, Elias Toufexis, et al, to redo the main quests in Starfield? No. I'm fully aware of mods like Inego, Falskaar, The Forgotten City, and several huge quest mods in Skyrim because I've actually played them. And while many of those mods do have voice acting, it is often subpar (and so is the writing, because it's modders and not professionals). So to think that modders can fix the main quests in Starfield is folly. They can't hire the original voice actors and if they try and sub them out, you're likely get worse overall quality. That's not fixing the problems. Can modders add new content? Sure. And I'm sure some will. But at this point, I wonder: Why bother? It's a subpar game from a developer that is clearly allowing their standards to drop. The reason people went to great lengths to build stuff like Falskaar and The Lost City is because Skyrim was actually cool and fun *already*. It made sense to invest time building great mods because the game, at its core, was already good. Starfield isn't that game. It is already so far behind the quality of previous Bethesda titles that the only thing modders can do at this point is make it suck slightly less than it already does. But there's no path forward for modders to lift the game from "meh" to "OMG, this is awesome now guys!" It ain't happening.
Well, I guess I'm more optimistic about what can be done. I'm.just not sure SF will get the mod community that it needs. Maybe the main quest is unfixable, but there's got to be ways of diminishing the bad effects of it. Oh no, I'm starting to sound like George Lucas after screening the Phantom Menace, realizing it's a clusterf**k. Maybe it is beyond repair after all. I guess we won't know till the CK drops, but if nobody bothers to try to fix SF after that, it's dead for good.
@@DraugothI think your Lucas/TPM comparison is apt. And like TPM, I'd say Starfield sits in the same boat. There are moments real entertainment (ship building, The Duel of Fates), but taken as a whole... not something I want to experience a second helping of.
@@ColorsFadeGamingSpeaking of the ship builder...I find with every positive in this game there is some kind of player unfriendly negative. The UI is bad enough (reminds me of windows metro), but not being able to sort parts by categories like brand, class, etc is insanely baffling to me. Modders have fixed this, but this should have never been an issue.
Very well thought out and articulated critique - not just a rant. I didn't dislike my time with Starfield but continually wondered what could possibly have been going through the dev's heads during development. As an indie or near indie effort I've have called it pretty great. With Bethesda's experience and Microsoft's money it's inexcusable.
Yeah, that's the thing - we always have to view things in context and I think that's a good way to look at it. Were this an indie title, I think we'd accept a lot of the problems. But it's Bethesda. 420+ employees, a long history of making games, etc. We deserved better.
@@ColorsFadeGaming I would argue it all comes to the price. Put this game out for $10, own up that it didn't turn out as they had hoped, and I wouldn't argue or complain. Creating a fun and engaging experience, but also innovating and trying new things.. they won't all be bangers. I don't want studios to go the COD route and stay safe and keep rehashing the same thing over and over, but i also don't want to pay $70 for a trash-tier game either. This game should've stayed in development, Skull and Bones it and start from scratch, and release it when it's actually fully ready (QA tested, has the basics like dlss, etc), or again, released at $10.
I sometimes wonder if it's a deliberate parody. They are having a laugh at the fan base. "Let's see what stupid things we can put in and still have people clocking up 1000 hours?". The chubby dancers in the cyber club...it has to be a joke? As best, it's something middle aged executives came up with because they think it's what the youth of today are into. The whole art style is like that. Done by people with bad taste, no taste, or a list of 100 objects to design by lunchtime else Bethesda would fire them. Quantity over quality.
@@OrangeNash At some level, I wish you were right and that Bethesda was having a laugh at player's expense. What I find more likely (and worrying) is that the Bethesda devs really think the game is good, that the dialog is good, that the art style and direction (dancers in the cyber club) are good.
I put 200+ hours into Starfield and was definitely guilty of turning my brain off and just accepting the game for what it was and I had a good time with it. But the whole time, I had this feeling that the game looked pretty good visually, but lacked so much on the intellectual and emotional side. Exploration felt bad, the quests were mediocre, and the player agency is basically an illusion. I've watched a lot of Starfield analysis/critique videos to help me understand what I was feeling and it is crazy how many others felt the same way. This video expertly articulates that feeling and is hands-down one of the best and most thoughtful videos on the subject. The devs and anyone who played Starfield should watch this.
I really wanted to love Starfield. I mean, the whole NASA-punk/Alien 1 esthetic alone drew me in. But I couldn't even endure all the faction quest lines (which are supposed to be the best thing about Starfield). Instead, the most entertaining thing about Starfield turned out to be watching all the RU-vid essays on what's wrong with it.
Nice analysis! I especially enjoyed your rant about crappy, irresponsible RPG romances. IMO, to make proc gen really work well, a game has to be modular and systems-driven so that the pieces can be rearranged at a sufficiently granular level, and so relatively small differences in those arrangements can have meaningful consequences for gameplay. It boggles my mind that Bethesda created a game across 1,000 planets with literally the same exact instances of dungeons and outposts being copy-pasted over and over. That's just game design malpractice.
Right? When I saw certain outposts that were carbon copies of other outposts, modular design was the first thing that came to mind. I could not understand why they didn't go that route. It could have made a difference.
@@ColorsFadeGamingpersonally, i was really hoping they would have story driven Procedural content, as in I believe It was Skyrim, there is a book which describes a cabin in the woods, what it was made of, what happens there, what caused it, in horror genre style, down to items found there in a book... And if you find this place the detail is such you can enter the place unarmed, and run straight to the discarded weapon to defend yourself. I was really hoping we'd have similar books generated in mad lib form for quests, that then generate or modify appropriate nearby locations, at a minimum for variety of locations and a hook to make you look for it... Hearing this game is as bad as it is hurts, i never felt procedural generation would be the problem, though i expected bugs and lack any investment to have made me want to aquire this game at launch, I'm glad you could clarify some of the concerns i could only see the tips of the icebergs on through trailers and other reviews.
@@michaellane5381Yeah, I feel like there's still huge potential in procedural generation but it has to be done right. What the Trese Bros. are doing with Cyberknights: Flashpoint is a good example of what procedurally generated quests can do.
This has been the best, most accurate critique of this game. Just went through the romance arc and it was so cringy. And even the companion says “that was out of nowhere.” It’s like the whole game is the *wink wink nudge nudge* of trolls who thought their customers were in on the joke.
Appreciate this. I also have 100+ hours in Starfield, and I also wanted to love it, but I ended up back in Skyrim again. Why? For me, it comes down to the stark beauties of living in Skyrim -- the moments when the music, the ambient soundscape, and the visual lighting all come together and make me breathe deeply. Just standing in a field and listening to the crickets is magic in Skyrim. There is no such magic in Starfield. It's an industrial grind of a game. I don't want to live here. OK, paused at six minutes in to collect my thoughts, now back to your video.
Do yourself a favour and please play something not made by Bethesda. There's a whole universe of non-Bethesda games out there, that have soul, are well crafted, fun and even challenging if you want that. Don't go back to Skyrim. It's part of the problem, not the solution. You have to admit you have a problem, before you can solve the problem. One step at a time, you can do it, break the addiction 🙂
@@OrangeNash I am sure you are right, friend, and I am looking for such a game. Had great hope for The Witcher 3, but can't deal with 3rd person pov. I'm old, and I gotta have it like I gotta have it. 😂
@@OrangeNashskyrim Modded is a new whole experience, I played from the day it was released to this day, plus other games and real paper based rpgs. It's not an addiction, it's called passion
I'm in my NG+ now, and am noticing that the most interesting things that happen, already happened and either someone is telling me about it, or a museum is letting me know about it. Seriously, NPC's will be all like, "Barrett looked at me like he knew it was the end!" Like... don't TALK cinematics to me, WTF TODD?? Also, I don't think any game did romance like Cyberpunk did. When Judy pecked my cheek after the a quest, the fact that it gave me goofy flutters instead of making me uncomfortable was a hell of an accomplishment for a game! Then going to her apartment an Johnny kinda cracking wise on how Judy makes V a little gaga lol. It was so perfect. And then the unerwater thing, mixed with emotional drama afterwards - DAMN... I love me some good writing...
Cyberpunk's romances were top notch. Honestly, I always find romances in video games so uncomfortable anyway, but Cyberpunk's romances worked, like you say. They were excellently crafted!
Unless we want to see Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 suffering from the same issues, it's time to stop giving Bethesda a pass. They need to be called out, and I'm happy that we have passionate people like you doing such a great job at presenting the real issues with the game.
They way you call out a company is with your wallet. So it's already too late, Starfield is already a commercial success for Bethesda, they won't change anything.
I've played for about 300 hours and have no more desire to explore the planets I visit. Once you visited the same abandoned cryo lap 10 times, you realise you don't want to do it again. I have no idea how people can NG+ this game 10 times already.
Says the guy who has played 300 hours. I stopped playing completely after the tutorial when some random guy gave me his spaceship. I knew the game was trash.
14:30 That's an interesting point. But it matches the rest of the game, in that nothing really feels earned. You don't really choose a certain path which leads to one or more characters taking to you above others. They all just admire you for continuing the main mission(which is mostly running), and that's somehow an aphrodisiac for everyone you meet. And the "1 camera dialogue" makes that look as robotic as it is.
My solution to the level system would be this: Remove levels completely. They fill no real purpose. Revamp the "Challenges", and make that basic skill increase. Then add a small fee to actually get to the next level (see it as taking a drivers license after much training; also this could be something to do with all those credits you hoard and never use). As for the planets, my biggest gripe is that there are so many critters that are reused on different planets. Also, what's with almost every planet having asteroids where you jump in?
The sameness of the orbital locations (nothing, debris, or asteroids) is quite stunning given there's 1,000 planets. Like, wow Bethesda. That was the most variance you could come up with?
There are a few ways they could have made quests better. I thought that the waiting room/airport lounge place would have people show up, looking for help. I hate the kiosk so much. I agree, its just this "click here for quest" and its dumb. Imagine if you showed up at night and this one seedy looking man was waiting. He walked up to you and tells you that he has a special mission needed... but there is a catch." Or if you go in day and a trader is there saying he needs you to clear a space station for him to setup a shop. Then after you do this, you get a new shop in space? Why didn't they do any of this?
It's baffling, for sure. It certainly makes the case for going back to the design of Morrowind and Oblivion, where NPCs had schedules - they ate, slept, worked their stores then closed up shop, etc. Missions in Oblivion often revolved around following someone on their routine, or only showing up at the precise time and NPC was doing a certain thing. If you had that sort of gameplay in Starfield it could have helped build out a much more immersive world.
Excellent analysis and for the most part spot on. For me, the writing was the biggest impediment, particularly because I'd picked up Baldur's Gate to give me something to play while waiting for Starfield's release so I came directly from there. That made Starfield's shortcomings even more pronounced because BG3's writing is some of the best in the last decade. Same is true of CP2077 where the writing was good enough to allow me to put up with the technical shortcomings until those were (mostly) patched out. Starfield was such a huge disappointment after all the hype leading up to it...and will be the last Betthesda game I preorder.
Best breakdown for sure. The 510 unique location in f04 killed me. 15-20 poi in a 1000 planet game, a vehicle that doesn't function as a vehicle (point a to point b) seamless just blows my mind.
Let's not forget that stupid exploding tree quest forcing you to help the sleazy coworker who deserved a beating. Or how fun was it being scanned for contraband a million times? (Or worse having some that you cannot find). I quit the torture, err, game (100+ hrs) cause I couldn't take it any more... I like to believe that tree eventually exploded just out of sheer boredom. Great video! Made me reflect on why I like a game.
@31:00 I couldn't help but to think about Freelancer when you mentioned this. A much older game (from 2003) that also had many star systems, but where you could fly through asteroid-fields and nebula and discover hidden stuff in them like derelict ships with unique loot or pirate bases, that you could engage ... or land on them if you had friendly relations with them. Or wormholes, that brought you to otherwise unreachable systems. That alone made exploration much more rewarding. (it doesn't have planet exploration tho)
Freelancer was a pseudo-sequel to one of my favorite franchises of all time, Origin's Privateer series. I love all those games and Starfield could have learned a lot from them. But Bethesda's developers seem completely unaware those titles even exist.
And Freelancer's successor, Star Citizen, like No Mans Sky, has seemless travel throughout the solar system including to and from planetary surfaces, plus, it's a real-scale solar system in a multiplayer environment. Yes, Star Citizen is still in development, but it and Starfield were in development at the same time.
Boring treks to acquire powers is indicative of a dead and empty game world, which IS directly tied to poorly executed procedural world generation. A planning and environmental design issue, not writing. By comparison Skyrim and Fallout 3 / 4 had many interesting and hand crafted locations to discover along the way, rewarding curiosity and exploration...and adding immersion. With negotiations, neither side would trust someone from within the other. So a neutral outsider makes sense. But it DEFINITELY needed to be written better. Not illogical, but definitely LAZY. The exposition with the Strykers/Disciples is 100% trash. Not only does good writing show, not tell; but it is very INCONSISTENT. And consistency is critical to immersion. 100% behind the "give player something to do" feel of...many modern games, honestly. If I want that, I'll get a job. 😂
16:12 - Your ignorance is showing. Stopped watching after this nonsense. HOW can I take ANYTHING you have to say with even the humblest measure of credulity or seriousness when you are so quick to spread misinformation / disinformation.
I disagree on one point. I could tolerate bad writing if there was a world to explore. No amout of even great writing could get me to play game with no exploration and this proc-gen crap is NOT exploration. I played long enought to unlock all the weapon and suit mods and build a great ship. The problem was that there is nothing to do with the cool toys. This game was a fail. I'm back to playing fallout 4 and skyrim.
It gets better when your background is a diplomat/politician or other civic service guy. You suddenly, for no reason become a miner, than some rando assumes you can pilot a starship, than you are railroaded into shoot up with pirates as if your character ever held a gun in hand and than you suddenly are a spaceship engineer and bob the space base builder. This is insane xD to think that ppl were shtng on CP2077 life path choice but noone even mentions this crazyness is mind boggling.
