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this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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I wasn't expecting anything groundbreaking to be honest, and I was fine with that. And yet, it still underdelivered.
The opening section where some hotshot explorer just GIVES you his organisation's only ship and robot has to be the most idiotic and unbelievable moment in gaming narrative history (at least in my experience).
"Ok... Maybe it gets better." I thought. It didn't.
Most of the quests are just fucking awful and nonsensical - "Oh hi, I'm a top scientist for MAST, we have access to all the latest cutting edge technonology. Oh, apart from WiFi. Sorry can you go and pick up my sensors I placed nearby because I'm fucking lazy? Thanks." Honestly, I had no words for this one, and it wasn't the only one. Just laughably dogshit.
I had some good fun initially exploring and the ship customisation was cool, and I even enjoyed the space combat for a while, but the whole game feels like it was made 20 years ago.
That's quite an accomplishment in a way I suppose.
I don't think even modding can save it.
THANK YOU for calling this out. The story is the most hamfisted, milquetoast, bland, unbelievable lazy writing I’ve ever seen in a video game. Hey, you’re a random miner on her first day at work, here’s a ship and a secret society you’re supposed to be in. Welcome to the video game.
Fuck off.
Hahah yes exactly. I know Beth isn't highly regarded for writing/narrative but it makes Skyrim look like Shakespeare.
I actually thought Skyrim's environmental storytelling was pretty good to be fair.
And yeah I think you called it with "lazy". As a writer myself I actually found it almost offensive how utterly dogshit and low effort it was from a company that has the resources to do so much better.
I sincerely got the bends from basically alt-tabbing from the middle of Baldur’s Gate 3’s superlative storytelling straight into “OMG I’ve never seen someone generically mine a rock as good as you” and I had to turn it off (I eventually played it for about 10 hours, but I also initially installed it to a slow SSD and it was also unplayable aside from the garbage intro.)
Oooo! That’s the phrase I’ve been looking for for a few years. Yes! You know what game has amazing environmental storytelling? The MMO RPG Guild Wars 2. It’s typical high fantasy on the surface with its own unique style but the environment slowly unveils that it’s really a post-post-post apocalypse world. I enjoyed that aspect the most. Leaving typical big city fantasy hub to find yourself swimming thru radioactive waters covering a submerged skyscraper. So cool.
Kinda like Elfstones of Shannara book fiction turned out to be.
I think Bethesda, and really all other RPGs could benefit from being basically sandboxes without any real "main quest".
Make it about me and what I want to be in this fantasy world. Not what lame ass story the writers shat out to meet deadlines.
Lore, not linear stories. World building and evironmental story telling, not a tiny fish bowl with little exploration.
I mean, the main quest is like 10 percent of the game and playtime for most players. The remaining 90 percent is exploring, side quests, meeting interesting people, and obtaining power and fame. All of which happen on account of the player and their own story they want to tell in the dev's world.
Yep. Depends on the RPG and what you want to play to some extent - Baldurs Gate 3 shows just how good a well-written "traditional" branching narrative RPG can be for example.
When it comes to sandbox RPGs, I totally agree. Or at the very least keep the main story optional.
Have you played Kenshi? It does that really well I think.