smh

Steaming my hams?

Skyrim is 13 years old and has many more players. It says "Starfield was not a return to form for Bethesda."

I thought replayability was sort of Bethsoft's MO?

It's not really a great sign for the developers if their game doesn't have a ton of replay value I imagine. Consider Skyrim, it's the same general type of game, but people play that game over and over and make modifications to it to keep it fresh and enjoyable even now, and as a result Bethesda has been able to resell it for other platforms or with extra content or related merch for years, because people like it enough to keep coming back. If Starfield isn't managing the same despite being the same sort of game from the same company, then that both serves as a warning to those who haven't gotten it yet that the game probably isn't as enjoyable by comparison, and also doesn't give the devs as much incentive to keep making any improvements to it.

Hard disagree that taking the chance on a new IP was a bad call. It didn't work out, but more of the same thing forever would be worse.

I don't even know, if I would normally truly agree that simplification isn't at least aiding their mass appeal, but Starfield did get absolutely stumped by a traditionally complex RPG (Baldur's Gate 3)...

Basically give us a Morrowind clone with a better leveling system, remove the hit rolls, and updated visuals.

OH, and voice acting. Nit because it's better than text, but because the writing on Morrowind was way too verbose. I don't need to read a 30-page essay on the history of the history of a family whose servants once believed they spotted a mythical ring that culminate in a fetch quest.

I disagree that they took the lesson that streamlining was the reason for Skyrim's success, because Starfield is not streamlined in the least. It's a complex series of menus and loading screens that lead to empty planets and probably other types of content, I'm not sure, because I hated navigating the menus and loading screens.

The lesson they should have taken from Skyrim is that the more immersive the game feels the more popular it will be. Immersion doesn't require streamlining, and features like spellcrafting would be hugely welcome back for ES6, IMO.

But there's no way to enjoy a space exploration game where the space exploration is handled so incredibly clunkily.

I definitely think that it was voted for as a "joke" vote

I guess “lately” is relative considering that Fallout 76 has been out for awhile and had a disaster of a launch.

I say this as someone who is a huge Skyrim and fallout fan, but people need to realize that Bethesda might be dead soon and be absorbed into Microsoft.

Let me help wake you up to why. First, their games are developed incredibly slowly. This is showcased by Starfield really well. That game took 7 or 8 years to make and yet, it’s very unfinished. They cannot make games quickly. And clearly they’re being forced to. Fans will wait a long time, but when your franchise gives each generation one game to play, your goose is cooking. Not to mention the glacial pace means that Starfield screwed them big time.

This part is huge though: their tools are ancient and always have been. I know engines get reworked to fit new projects, it’s common in development. However, they haven’t invested at all in their engine and it shows big time. People were even saying it about FO4 how it ran very very poorly and couldn’t handle the cities at release. Everything in that engine was very similar to Skyrim so of course Starfield failed because it’s the same engine with little time spent upgrading it properly. In fact, that’s why the game sucks. They spent too much time on engine stuff and the project moved forward without content due to technical limitations.

Then all the minor stuff. Their PR sucks. FO76 was a scam and still has a subscription to it. Horse armor. Re-releasing games 3 times.

But that’s just the game studio. What about the publishing arm? Well, mostly fine except for Redfall. Seems the only thing they can manage sorta well is the Doom franchise. But my god what happened to Prey and why not have Prey 2?

In summary, Bethesda doesn’t appear to have it in them despite being a huge studio and I’m not looking forward to its future handling of TES6

I can see that side of things, but people often re-play games that they love.

Looking at Bethesda's games being played right now, Starfield is 4th place, but the newest by far.

Skyrim (special Edition) https://steamdb.info/app/489830/charts/
26,600 players online when I made this comment.

Fallout 4 https://steamdb.info/app/377160/
19,650 players online when I made this comment.

The Eldar Scrolls online https://steamdb.info/app/306130/charts/
16.304 players online when I made this comment.

Starfield https://steamdb.info/app/1716740/charts/
9,086 players online when I made this comment.

Fallout76 https://steamdb.info/app/1151340/charts/
7,596 players online when I made this comment.

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).

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.

mod makers need to want to make mods for it first... we can't just assume that the modders will fix it if there's nothing worth fixing. multiple modders that have made mods for previous Bethesda games have said they aren't doing this one.

It's graphics aren't great and they lost the exploration element of Skyrim. It just sucks

The graphics are actually really dated. I don't use Reshade very often, but for this game it's necessary if you want even basic things like ambient occlusion (seriously, the shadows and lighting are so bad in this game).

But yeah, "corporate RPG" is correct. The game checks nearly every box for what you'd expect from a Bethesda game, but the game is just so soulless and boring. Bethesda doesn't write the best stories but they really dropped the ball on this one. At no point did I form any sort of feelings for the characters. They never have anything interesting to say nor give me any reason to care if they live or die.

The Outer Worlds was good, though...