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Starfield, is it getting review bombed?
(youtu.be)
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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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I can’t play it because I own neither.a gaming PC nor an Xbox, but the impression I’m getting from all the reviews and reactions I’ve seen is that it’s basically a good game, if it had been released in 2008.
It looks like they did the best they could, but they did it using an outdated engine that simply cannot be used to make a modern game.
I told my wife I'd have been thrilled to get this game in 2016. In 2023 it does feel dated though, If they don't update the engine significantly before their next game it may actually hurt sales.
I’ve been seeing similar, with people saying they would have liked Starfield more if they hadn’t played Baldur’s Gate 3 first. That’s where I feel like a fair number of the “meh” scores are coming from. It’s like people are saying it’s really good, but not mind-blowing.
I played BG3 first. Near the end of it now. What could Bethesda have done to measure up to BG3?
Be less buggy? SF is a more complicated game than BG3. More stuff than can go wrong. Also BG3 has a lot more bugs later in game, in the part that hasn't been out for early access for years now.
Have more story branches? If ME didn't convince Bethesdas earlier games to put in more choices, why should BG3? Most people know what they get from these games.
Better writing? Thats a very subjective thing. And BG3 have a lot of already existing lore to build on top of.
Some times the quality of a game comes down to luck, timing, and what skill you got available. And trying to figure out which of two good games is objectively the "best" is a waste of time. We should be happy we got two good new games. In two different genres. And measure them against their prequels instead. Has the game evolved since the last game? BG3 has two parent games, BG2 and D:OS. It has improved on them both in combining them. Starfield was born from Fallout. Definitely an upgrade too, while staying true to what we expect in that line of games.
Thats my take on it. If a new XCom came out tomorrow, I wouldn't be disappointed it wasnt BG3, I'd be happy and hope it had improved on XCom 2.
It’s not about “trying to figure out which of two good games is objectively the “best”,” but more like Horizon Zero Dawn coming out right after Breath of the Wild. Horizon is a truly great game, but it suffered from coming out right after what turned out to be a definitive open-world game. It’s not about better, it’s about timing. People would have had different expectations of Starfield had it come out before BG3, just because BG3 changed some people’s expectations of things like quests and ways to do them.
And again, I’m just going by what I’ve seen in reviews and something I’ve noticed in them. I’m never going to play Starfield (nothing against it, but I physically can’t play first person games), so I can’t say one way or the other about what the quests and worlds are like.
I would take the whole "old crappy bethesda engine" meme with a grain of salt.
IMO it is a good engine, it is getting updated by them on every new game like any other engine. And there are a lot of changes all over. For that reason modders have to develop new tools to create meshes, reverse egnineer the changed data formats, etc. Saying that it is the same engine as Skyrim or Fallout 4/76 is just not true.
It is also one of the most mod friendly engine. The content creation tools from Bethesda and modders make it really easy to work with, even for people not able to code themselvs.
And personally the game looks and works fine. Of course you can critique the game itself, but attacking the whole engine is exagerated. Sure it has bugs, and you can attack bethesda about not fixing them, but suggesting that they throw away the whole engine because of a couple of bugs or subjective "looks bad" opinions is ridiculus.
Also, I don't think just using Unity or UE4 (where bethesda devs first need to learn them first) magically fixes every complaint and bug. But it might make the game not as easily moddable.
Is it just an exaggeration, though? It is old. It is... kinda crappy. I've played and loved a bunch of Bethesda games, but they do tend to fuck up in some pretty characteristic ways. So characteristic that they happened in Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallouts 3, NV and 4, and now apparently Starfield. In my hour or so of gameplay I already encountered the "corpses somersaulting around" thing, a tradition since at least Skyrim.
Creation Engine... Creation Engine never changes.
2008?! Nope. No. Not even close. 2015 maybe.
True, it doesn't have raytracing, like most big game engines now. And the first city you come to is VERY plain and clean and oversized and underdetailed. It would probably be better if one started out in Akila or Neon or The Well somewhere with more details. But not every game, particularly one as open and customizable as this, can have EA level models or Cyberpunk level details. Nor is it the engines fault. Seen the Unreal Engine? How old is that one, 1998 i think? Nobody complains about that.
It is the fault of what they want to create. They want an engine that can do big open worlds, with interactable and persistent junk of all kinds, but that they can also very quickly create new content for. And is easily moddable with as little risk of mod conflicts as possible. And a very simulated AI, one that doesn't need handhelding through pre-placed paths, but can navigate freely even through user-created buildings and chaotic situations. They end up looking dumber than other games AIs, but thats only because other games rely more on the illusion of a smart AI.
I agree! The content of the game is the issue, not the engine. Bashing Bethesdas engine is just a meme, at this point.
Linux is 32 years old, people wanting to throw everything away and start new, just because they don't like certain aspects of it, are crazy.
Personally, I don't really care about raytracing, or even improving the graphics that much, IMO they should reuse assets and code if that will make them invest more of their time to improve their writing, quests and let people go their own paths through the quests instead of just having 2 or 3 options (do the quest, don't do the quest and sometimes rat the people out to the authorities). So that we have BG3 level of writing and quests, in different kind of game.
And for god sakes, do simple things like let companions whisper when sneaking.
Also, New Atlantis doesn't look build for Humans but for giants, too much scaled up.
Is whispering while sneaking so easy though? It would double the voice acting budget, time, and the audio asset size. Theres no magic audio filter for making believable whispering out of regular voices.
Well, maybe there will be once game studios start using AI voice actors.
At the very least just lower the voice volume of companions in sneak even if it's lazy fix. I don't need breathy whispers in my ear for funny or throw away dialogue. But that's just my thoughts maybe other people are different.
That doesn't sound like they did the vest they could. They did the vest they could without putting in any effort.