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this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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The true hot take most aren't ready to hear is that launch Starfield is a better RPG than launch Skyrim and launch Fallout 4, even if it's a mediocre game overall.
Low bar to clear
I agree, but I've had gamers absolutely mald for such a lukewarm take
Skyrim came out in 11/11/2011. Starfield is 12 years after and I would say that expectation for the qualities should be better. And compared to Starfield in gaming's influences, Skyrim decimates Starfield.
Graphical fidelity and controls improve over time as technology improves. What doesn't improve nearly as much is game design. That's not to say that improvements haven't been made, but by your own logic Morrowind destroys the fuck out of Skyrim when it comes to being an RPG despite being older. Starfield actually reversed this downward trend.
I never tried to argue that Starfield was more influential, because I agree, Skyrim has more of an impact on gaming culture despite being largely okayish.
Morrowind is a better RPG than Skyrim though? I don't understand the argument here
My point is comparing games releasing 12 years apart like this is redundant, isn't it expected that the sequel/next game from the same studio should have better quality (in this case RPG) than the previous one?
In the years after the 1st release till next game/sequel, devs can have more experience/money/bigger team/ect.
I know what your point is, it's just not applicable to Game Design, only to graphical fidelity and perhaps controls and smoothness. Throwing more money or a bigger team isn't going to make the actual Role Playing better, and historically the opposite has happened. Chasing profits leads to making games with more mass appeal, and removes niches.
Again, see Morrowind, Fallout 1/2/New Vegas, Arcanum, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, and more all have vastly superior RPG mechanics to Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 4, and Starfield, despite having smaller budgets, a less experienced team, and less money.
the design being worse is baffling to me, they could've copied obsidian's homework and added the basebuilding/ship building shit and it would've been good.
They did, that's why there's traits and actual skill checks again. However, they still chase that bag and as such made it as generic and profitable as possible.
What they should have been doing is shamelessly copying No Man's Sky while shoveling their own shit into there. The "exploration" in Starfield actively pisses me off and I haven't even touched it in weeks because I uninstalled it after slogging through the tutorial section
Strong disagree. There are no unique builds in starfield because there are such clearly necessary perks to unlock and the never ending, NG+ focus of the game pushes you towards unlocking everything anyway. Similarly no story decisions lock you out of other options later. There’s really no role you can play in starfield except “protagonist.” Not so much a defense of Skyrim, just talking well deserved shit about starfield
The same thing happens in Skyrim, lol. As compared with Skyrim, Starfield is better.
I just think starfields an even shallower experience. Like think of the ability to specialize towards a weapon type. In starfield melee weapons can't be customized and don't get tiers like the other weapon types so they become unusable after a certain amount of play time. There are fewer energy weapons in starfield than in fallout 4, it feels sparse playing with the same 6 guns for the entire game. The EM weapons aren't integrated into any sort of meaningful gameplay loop for incapacitating enemies instead of killing them. You have to just shoot their comatose bodies or let your companions do it for you. Ultimately everyone gets funneled towards using ballistic weapons just by nature of how underdeveloped the other options are. At least in skyrim playing as a mage vs a warrior felt like two distinct and separately rewarding play styles. Again I'm not trying to do too much skyrim defending, starfield is just a bad video game
lol weird to spell "stealth archer" two different ways. i tried to watch a video of the starfield speedrun and fell asleep, maybe modders can rescue it but since it's not even open-world anymore idk how they would. skyrim was barely an rpg and the beth games after it aren't doing any of the things i want from the genre at all.
Skyrim is singleplayer. There is no meta forcing you to play stealth archer. Warrior, Mage and dagger thief are all perfectly viable builds.
But stealth archer is by far the best designed class. Bows feel weighty, arrows have drop distance and stealth is consistently fun. Melee weapons are basically weightless and playing a warrior just consists of spamming the attack button, pausing to spam healing potions, and then spamming the attack button again. Destruction mages play very similarly, and the other ones like illusion and conjuration basically consist of getting NPCs to play the game for you.
Stealth archer manages to be the best one even though the game doesn't even differentiate from an arrow landing in a foot and a headshot, because the other options are so underdeveloped.
all roads lead to stealth archery
Sure, Starfield is a step down in quite a few ways. Still a better RPG.
If Starfield was released in 2011 then yeah sure
I have no idea how you're defining RPG here, but Starfield is worse than any launch Bethesda game since at least Morrowind, in my opinion. The hook in Bethesda games for me is discovery. You set off in a direction on a quest and discover things on the path that pull you different directions. You get lost in a world.
There is not a single moment in the 25 hours of Starfield I played where this happened. It's just literally not possible with the way they designed the game.
The ability to actually roleplay a character you create, ie mechanics within game to reinforce that which you design your character as.
Medical skill checks for doctors, background checks for Freestar natives, piracy subcycles for pirates, etc.
What you're describing has nothing to do with roleplaying, just the setting, which I never tried to argue was better in Starfield because it isn't.
Yeah, that's why I simply said it was a worse game than their previous titles (not worse RPG). I'd argue having better roleplaying mechanics without an interesting world to use them in is a preeeeetty useless endeavor.
Sure. I'd also argue that having better exploration without having decent roleplaying is also completely useless for an RPG.
For specifically an RPG but not for an overall game. There's a reason I still return to and mod skyrim
Sure, but that's not what my point was about.
I don't understand the relevance of your point then
The fact that Starfield is a better RPG than Skyrim and Fallout 4 at launch, which is due to Bethesda games largely being extremely mediocre and largely saved by mods.
Undeniably true but also not the metric by which anyone judges any Bethesda games after Morrowind
Not actually true, Fallout fana especially how the IP has been treated.
Fair point actually, I was ignoring that because the only 3d Fallout that's a good rpg wasn't Bethesda, but you're right that it's still a metric the others are judged by
As far as graphics but mechanically, Fallout NV is more interesting.
Sure, I never mentioned FNV.