Imo the big problems with the game are because they outsourced so much of it.
Although there were too many fetch quests (imo), generally the game I found to be quite engaging. Just, not very deep systems; load times going into even the smallest buildings meant it’s not even approaching open world; drab procedural planets and outposts in a sad attempt to bulk it up; horrid animations and NPC models that wouldn’t be out of place in a game 10 years ago. Not to mention the horrendous amount of bugs I experienced.
This is why I can no longer allow myself to get excited for new games. I paid £7.99 for a month of PC gamepass to experience Starfield, if I paid full price I’d have been very unhappy. Now we pay to be bugtesters.
Oh my god, it’s such a little thing but the sheer inconsistency with what is and isn’t a loading door is absurd. New Atlantis, the first city in the game is awful with this. You have “the well” where everything is on the same map, no loading. Then you go to the commercial district and it’s a coin flip with little to no logic behind it.
Add the heavy reliance on fast travel to get anywhere and it just falls flat on its face on the open world exploration feeling. Sad considering the plot and dialog make such a huge deal about exploration.
Yeah they really flopped with that aspect. I saw someone refer to it as ‘loading screen simulator’ and couldn’t disagree. I don’t understand how other devs can make things seamless, but Bethesda couldn’t manage it.
You could argue the same for most games on most Engines. Half Life: Alyx is the same engine as half-life 2 with more shit added over the years (I think they’ve changed it with the upgrade to Source 2, but this really showed as all Valve games would run as hl2.exe, and source 2 is merely an evolution, not a rewrite).
However Bethesda’s Creative Engine was already quite dated by the time Skyrim came out 12 years ago, and hasn’t received any meaningful improvements since. Honestly at this point it’s not a technical issue, any competent software team could have incrementally fixed and upgraded the engine over 12 years, no matter how buggy it was when Skyrim was released and how much spaghetti there was to clean up.
Bethesda just doesn’t care that their game mechanics are stuck in 2009 and the management is probably too set in its ways to figure out another way to write quests or design level without loading screens, too comfortable with the ease of writing dialogue trees without mocap or even some basic “first year of film school” camera placement.
Too bad for them Baldur’s Gate 3 showed the world that these things actually matter. I won’t hold my breath for TES VI, the technical gap on their engine is only growing and they still haven’t indicated even an acknowledgement of its flaws.
I had all of one complaint about that in all of New Atlantis. There’s a tiny convenience store that’s behind a loading screen. Everything else seemed ok/expected to me.
You have “the well” where everything is on the same map, no loading. Then you go to the commercial district and it’s a coin flip with little to no logic behind it.
Except all of the surface levels in New Alexandria are also in the same map. You can jump down from the commecial district to the space port with no loading screens if you want. The only exceptions are interiors. All other loading screens are from teleporting the player across the map via the NAT and elevators. Saying there’s “no logic” is disingenuous.
I feel like some quests the main idea of them was great… the problems were with the lack of gameplay mechanics… Or world elements lacking
Like ok I have to infiltrate this office and do something there… Ok I will dress up with this clothes from the company I found and try to not get near people. Instant shooting on sight no matter what.
That’s one example but most of the time I find stuff that the quest was interesting but… the actual gameplay implementation it’s super bad and lacking.
I got given a great tip from someone re the stealth, that I WISH the damn game had explained.
You know how you can set your armour to ‘hide when in settlement’ or something similar… easy to forget that setting, turns out we’re tramping around with our armour on, which makes us easy to spot and hear. So to get proper stealth you have to take your armour off (and therefore be quite vulnerable). Makes sense, once explained!
Like ok I have to infiltrate this office and do something there… Ok I will dress up with this clothes from the company I found and try to not get near people. Instant shooting on sight no matter what.
Seems odd to expect of a Bethesda game (or hell, a lot of types of games). It feels like you’re saying “I wish Starfield was Hitman”. But if you may recall, Hitman made some very self-aware comments about how silly or situational “dressing up as” is to stealth.
That’s one example but most of the time I find stuff that the quest was interesting but… the actual gameplay implementation it’s super bad and lacking.
Because of the above reason and reasons like it? It was sorta implemented as the type of game Bethesda fans seek out. Not a Physics simulator and not a Stealth & Dress-up Simulator.
I mean I expect something not necessarily that, but I feel like there should be more mechanics that simply start shooting every one. Like in that specific case it was a laboratory full of people with clothes with fully covered with mask… and plenty of lockers where to steal the same clothes it’s not crazy for somebody to think that was an option
And you had to enter inside certain room with people everywhere, even with the broken ability the game gave you to control people… that was a mess.
It was barely possible unless again you want to start shooting every one but that doesn’t matter it was an example there were other cases with similar stuff were the premise was good but there wasn’t a good implementation.
Like there was this quest were you had to go inside a factory and put something or take it, can’t remember. You can go through the office like you were the king in the castle nobody cares about it , go to the boss office which actually weirdly enough it think was the only way to go into the factory… Like wtf, some mechanics to get entry or something idk…
oh yeah that’s Mike when he is bored enters into the company and the factory like it’s his second home we don’t care.
I mean I expect something not necessarily that, but I feel like there should be more mechanics that simply start shooting every one. Like in that specific case it was a laboratory full of people with clothes with fully covered with mask… and plenty of lockers where to steal the same clothes it’s not crazy for somebody to think that was an option
Interesting. Starfield isn’t my first Bethesda game, so maybe that’s why that didn’t seem like an option to me. Normally, that’s not an option in video games, but Starfield also does a fairly good job at telling you each and every thing you can do.
It was barely possible unless again you want to start shooting every one
I mean… Bethesda games are violent. You’re not going to walk into a hostile location and leave without a trail of corpses. The stealth mechanics are fairly iconic, and it is possible to clear that lab either going unseen or just shooting people from the shadows.
Like there was this quest were you had to go inside a factory and put something or take it, can’t remember. You can go through the office like you were the king in the castle nobody cares about it
Common to most games with stealth and authority mechanics, some areas are “trespassing” areas, and others are not. Starfield is slightly lenient on trespassing areas because it’s not designed to be a Strict Stealth Game.
go to the boss office which actually weirdly enough it think was the only way to go into the factory… Like wtf, some mechanics to get entry or something idk…
If you’re caught picking the lock, you will be arrested or shot. If you have a key, using it is not suspicious. Typical rpg stealth mechanics.
You seem to be looking for a hyper-realism simulator, and not a game?
I think something that really harmed the overall reception of starfield is baldurs gate 3 releasing a month before it. Quest design in that game is stupendous, with tons of varied stories with interesting characters. And each quest can be solved in tons of different ways due to how in depth the game mechanics are. Starting to play starfield after playing that game made the whole game feel sooooo shallow. For an “open world RPG” I always felt that the devs only ever gave you 1 or 2 options to complete a quest.
I think something that really harmed the overall reception of starfield is baldurs gate 3 releasing a month before it
This is something I don’t get, and cuts to the core of my response to complaints. Almost every complaint people have had with Starfield is something that doesn’t even exist in BG3. Someone was recently whining the “shoot bullets near guards and they don’t aggro”, the bullet animations hitting water. The physics of falling into the bodies of water. All things that just don’t happen in BG3 at all.
Quest design in that game is stupendous, with tons of varied stories with interesting characters
While I am not personally disappointed in Starfield’s quests, I wouldn’t really object if quest-writing were more than a fringe minority of the complaints. It’s pretty much forgotten for the silly complaints most people have. Like the stealth system not being Hitman 3.
And each quest can be solved in tons of different ways due to how in depth the game mechanics are.
This is a fair critique. BG3 is on my to-buy list, but that is oft mentioned to be its strongest point.
For an “open world RPG” I always felt that the devs only ever gave you 1 or 2 options to complete a quest.
Sure. But you would agree that’s pretty much a known quantity for Bethesda? I think there are a few quests in Starfield where they’re not quite to Bethesda’s usual standards (specifically thinking about the paradise planet quest), but all-in-all they are what you’d expect
If someone gave it a 7 out of 10 because it’s “fairly well-executed, but equational” I wouldn’t object despite enjoying it more.
If you’re caught picking the lock, you will be arrested or shot. If you have a key, using it is not suspicious. Typical rpg stealth mechanics.
But that’s the point… No locks no body complaining about what the hell I am doing there as I said zero attempt at making like oh no you shouldn’t be here… No locking no guards complaining… Only if you pick up some random object… It was really stupid.
I’m not entirely sure about that. Starfield isn’t my first Bethesda game either—I’ve been with them since Daggerfall. It seems like you might be honing in a bit too much on dissecting XTornado’s points in an attempt to dismiss their perspective.
You seem to be painting Bethesda games as mainly first-person combat titles with vast maps, but we all recognize that isn’t the core essence of their games. Starting from Arena, Bethesda has been striving to immerse players in alternate worlds. They’ve been pioneers in this endeavor, crafting expansive realms with intricate societies, aiming to make players genuinely feel like they’re part of these living, breathing locales. Morrowind dived deep into lore, featuring quests that involved bribery, stealth, and investigation to enhance the world’s authenticity. Combat was the exception, not the norm. Oblivion continued this tradition, introducing scripted AI with daily routines like sleeping, eating, and shopping. Many quests in these games sought to enhance the world’s authenticity where gameplay mechanics fell short. The Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion stands as a prime example of this.
Regarding your comment about the stealth mechanics being “iconic,” that might be stretching it a tad. Bethesda’s game mechanics have often been somewhat simplified versions of their intended concepts, spanning from dialogue systems to stealth and combat. There hasn’t been significant advancement in this aspect since Oblivion, except for a slight improvement in combat seen in Fallout 4.
What truly made these games special was their commitment to crafting believable, explorable worlds. However, with Starfield’s shift to procedural generation, it’s taken a step back in terms of world exploration. Essentially, if you’ve seen one procedurally generated planet in Starfield, you’ve seen them all. In contrast to the handcrafted environments of their previous titles, much of the game feels sterile, as it’s essentially computer-generated.
This leaves the believability of their fictional world as the standout feature, and in this aspect as well, there hasn’t been significant progress since Oblivion. XTornado’s point about the world’s lack of convincing reactions to player actions is valid. And it’s not as if the features they suggested are unprecedented in games of this genre. Twelve years ago, New Vegas introduced a simple disguise system. However, in Starfield, the world remains oblivious to your actions. Even firing a shot at someone’s feet in a bustling city prompts no reaction, making the world seem like a shallow façade, detracting from the game’s core objective of creating a “living, breathing universe” to explore.
While it’s still an enjoyable game for fans of the Bethesda formula, it feels like they haven’t evolved their formula in over 15 years. It’s entirely reasonable for gamers to critique the game’s lack of reactivity. It might have been fine in 2011, but the industry has left them behind, and their worlds feel hollow and fake in this new age.
It seems like you might be honing in a bit too much on dissecting XTornado’s points in an attempt to dismiss their perspective.
I’m not sure I understand what’s wrong with dissecting the points of a perspective when one’s process involves questioning that perspective. It seems the most relevant points altogether.
You seem to be painting Bethesda games as mainly first-person combat titles with vast maps, but we all recognize that isn’t the core essence of their games
I mean, really not at all. If anything, they’re “general-purpose first-person RPGs that let you do a little bit of everything”. A shallow ocean instead of a deep river.
You go on to make a lot of points I would agree with.
Regarding your comment about the stealth mechanics being “iconic,” that might be stretching it a tad
Are you aware of the ever popular “stealth-archer meme”? Can you think of any games where that meme is relevant or has been used? Are any of them not Bethesda games? And then, you go on to say:
Bethesda’s game mechanics have often been somewhat simplified versions of their intended concepts, spanning from dialogue systems to stealth and combat
…exactly!
I guess I should clarify. My critique of XTornado was not that he isn’t allowed to dislike the game. It was that he clearly didn’t know what he signed up for in purchasing it despite it having one the most established featuresets of any game. It would be like me buying the new Madden and complaining because it’s not a driving simulator. Maybe I made a mistake and didn’t read anything about it. Fine. And if I went to the Madden community complaining there’s no 5th gear, I would expect to be corrected by people pointing out that my problem is my ignorance, not the game’s advertising. Then I would get rid of my copy of Madden (I don’t like football or driving games) and move on with my life.
I’m not sure I understand what’s wrong with dissecting the points of a perspective when one’s process involves questioning that perspective. It seems the most relevant points altogether.
The problem is that by nitpicking his specific suggestions, you were avoiding engaging with his central idea. Which, from my point of view, seems to be that for a game as interested in creating a believable world as Starfield, it felt rather fake due to limited options and the inconsistent way it chose what actions to react to.
His suggestions weren’t even that extreme, and could have been accounted for in a myriad of ways. New Vegas’s disguise system, little improvements to the trespassing system, level design that compensated for the limited AI, more frequent use of scripted areas that do react more authentically. Even just a system that has NPC’s react to being shot at would go a long way. Hell, earlier Bethesda titles would give you a persuasion penalty if you had your weapon drawn.
Are you aware of the ever popular “stealth-archer meme”? Can you think of any games where that meme is relevant or has been used? Are any of them not Bethesda games?
I am aware of the “stealth-archer meme”. I suppose I just view the word iconic as synonymous to exemplary. Or as Webster puts it: widely known and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence. Which I would not call Bethesda’s stealth mechanics. But I’ll chalk this up to a difference of word usage, and can definitely agree with the idea that Bethesda’s stealth is certainly iconic in the sense that it is “identifiable by it style”.
he clearly didn’t know what he signed up for in purchasing it despite it having one the most established featuresets of any game. It would be like me buying the new Madden and complaining because it’s not a driving simulator.
While I can kind of see your point, you are being hyperbolic to an extreme here. Madden does not advertise itself as a driving simulator, Starfield on the other hand did advertise itself as a living breathing universe to explore. Starfield does try to react to the players actions, and the discrepancy between what is accounted for and what is ignored is stark. Coming face to face with this discrepancy often breaks immersion as much as if Madden suddenly asked you to drive him to Chili’s halfway through a football game.
To drive the metaphor a bit further, Starfield’s lack of reactivity would be more akin to receiving no penalty in Madden for tackling someone after a play had stopped. Sure, the developers didn’t have to account for actions the player could take, but when trying to convince players of the legitimacy of the world, little things like this go along way. And Bethesda’s advertising definitely tried to sell players on the notion that the world would “feel alive”, and given the way they used to push the industry forward in this regard, it’s fair for players to feel disappointed in the stagnation of the design. Especially when so many other games have raised the bar in this regards.
Edit:
I suppose I should respond to this as well.
Bethesda’s game mechanics have often been somewhat simplified versions of their intended concepts, spanning from dialogue systems to stealth and combat
…exactly!
While it’s true that the mechanics are shadows masquerading as the action, the glue that tied these shallow actions together in a Bethesda title was the believability of the world around you. Making the world oblivious to many of your actions draws the flaws of the games into sharp focus and breaks immersion. It’s to be expected that players notice and complain about this.
The problem is that by nitpicking his specific suggestions, you were avoiding engaging with his central idea
He was comparing it to Hitman, intentionally or not.
that for a game as interested in creating a believable world as Starfield, it felt rather fake due to limited options and the inconsistent way it chose what actions to react to.
I’m not sure I really agree that’s his central point. At least, it’s definitely not what I’m critiquing. If he thinks Bethesda games are not believable, that’s his right.
I am aware of the “stealth-archer meme”. I suppose I just view the word iconic as synonymous to exemplary
The Stealth-archer meme is as much an insult as a compliment to Bethesda games, but it is Iconic. We all note that wonderful way you can walk literal circles in full view of people while picking them off and everyone else stands their with their thumbs in their ears.
While I can kind of see your point, you are being hyperbolic to an extreme here. Madden does not advertise itself as a driving simulator, Starfield on the other hand did advertise itself as a living breathing universe to explore
I firmly disagree. Please be careful accusing your interlocutor of exaggeration. My point is that Starfield clearly presented itself as a Bethesda game. Despite possibly “hyperbolic” in its marketing to diehards who watched Todd Howard, it definitely did not involve misleading advertising.
To drive the metaphor a bit further, Starfield’s lack of reactivity would be more akin to receiving no penalty in Madden for tackling someone after a play had stopped
Ever play Blood Bowl? Would you have taken points away from Blood Bowl 7 if you were allowed to decapitate the other players because “that’s not realistic”?
There was an entire quest line dedicated to stealth (Ryujin)
A quest line. Out of hundreds.
There was a skill tree dedicated to stealth
In Starfield, there are 4 levels of stealth skill, and another 4 levels of a concealment skill. 8 total skill points out of 100+ that have anything to do with sneaking. It’s the least stealth-focus in any game of its genre.
There’s nothing like walking up to a group of four of these half melted mannequin fucks just to have them all turn their heads and stare into your eyes in sync like the collective movement would give momentum to steal your soul in order to sate their empty husks. The gunplay is better though!
The best (worst?) example of that for me was my companion sobbing and sniffling during a ceremony, expressing their love and commitment, all with a flat emotionless face. It’s funny you said mannequin because everytime I started a conversation, for some reason my brain would say “Here comes another puppet show”.
Gunplay is definitely decent, though there seemed to be no line between being overpowered and bullet sponge. Also would’ve liked to have seen more imaginative / futuristic weaponry considering the time period. I’m sure modders will create something more fun with the framework.
Another thing that really grated on me was the ‘digital clutter’. A generation ship from hundreds of years ago should not have the same ornaments and books as a ship from the current time period!
Imo the big problems with the game are because they outsourced so much of it.
Although there were too many fetch quests (imo), generally the game I found to be quite engaging. Just, not very deep systems; load times going into even the smallest buildings meant it’s not even approaching open world; drab procedural planets and outposts in a sad attempt to bulk it up; horrid animations and NPC models that wouldn’t be out of place in a game 10 years ago. Not to mention the horrendous amount of bugs I experienced.
This is why I can no longer allow myself to get excited for new games. I paid £7.99 for a month of PC gamepass to experience Starfield, if I paid full price I’d have been very unhappy. Now we pay to be bugtesters.
Oh my god, it’s such a little thing but the sheer inconsistency with what is and isn’t a loading door is absurd. New Atlantis, the first city in the game is awful with this. You have “the well” where everything is on the same map, no loading. Then you go to the commercial district and it’s a coin flip with little to no logic behind it.
Add the heavy reliance on fast travel to get anywhere and it just falls flat on its face on the open world exploration feeling. Sad considering the plot and dialog make such a huge deal about exploration.
Yeah they really flopped with that aspect. I saw someone refer to it as ‘loading screen simulator’ and couldn’t disagree. I don’t understand how other devs can make things seamless, but Bethesda couldn’t manage it.
Other Devs try to use current gen engines, this is the same engine that Skyrim was on just with more shit added.
It’s the same engine Morrowind was on.
And it really shows.
I got a feeling the next elders scroll is on the new engine, well I bloody hope it is.
But but but… it just works.
Nonetheless… I still wouldn’t trust them do a competent new engine…
You could argue the same for most games on most Engines. Half Life: Alyx is the same engine as half-life 2 with more shit added over the years (I think they’ve changed it with the upgrade to Source 2, but this really showed as all Valve games would run as
hl2.exe, and source 2 is merely an evolution, not a rewrite).However Bethesda’s Creative Engine was already quite dated by the time Skyrim came out 12 years ago, and hasn’t received any meaningful improvements since. Honestly at this point it’s not a technical issue, any competent software team could have incrementally fixed and upgraded the engine over 12 years, no matter how buggy it was when Skyrim was released and how much spaghetti there was to clean up.
Bethesda just doesn’t care that their game mechanics are stuck in 2009 and the management is probably too set in its ways to figure out another way to write quests or design level without loading screens, too comfortable with the ease of writing dialogue trees without mocap or even some basic “first year of film school” camera placement.
Too bad for them Baldur’s Gate 3 showed the world that these things actually matter. I won’t hold my breath for TES VI, the technical gap on their engine is only growing and they still haven’t indicated even an acknowledgement of its flaws.
I had all of one complaint about that in all of New Atlantis. There’s a tiny convenience store that’s behind a loading screen. Everything else seemed ok/expected to me.
Except all of the surface levels in New Alexandria are also in the same map. You can jump down from the commecial district to the space port with no loading screens if you want. The only exceptions are interiors. All other loading screens are from teleporting the player across the map via the NAT and elevators. Saying there’s “no logic” is disingenuous.
I feel like some quests the main idea of them was great… the problems were with the lack of gameplay mechanics… Or world elements lacking
Like ok I have to infiltrate this office and do something there… Ok I will dress up with this clothes from the company I found and try to not get near people. Instant shooting on sight no matter what.
That’s one example but most of the time I find stuff that the quest was interesting but… the actual gameplay implementation it’s super bad and lacking.
I got given a great tip from someone re the stealth, that I WISH the damn game had explained.
You know how you can set your armour to ‘hide when in settlement’ or something similar… easy to forget that setting, turns out we’re tramping around with our armour on, which makes us easy to spot and hear. So to get proper stealth you have to take your armour off (and therefore be quite vulnerable). Makes sense, once explained!
Seems odd to expect of a Bethesda game (or hell, a lot of types of games). It feels like you’re saying “I wish Starfield was Hitman”. But if you may recall, Hitman made some very self-aware comments about how silly or situational “dressing up as” is to stealth.
Because of the above reason and reasons like it? It was sorta implemented as the type of game Bethesda fans seek out. Not a Physics simulator and not a Stealth & Dress-up Simulator.
I mean I expect something not necessarily that, but I feel like there should be more mechanics that simply start shooting every one. Like in that specific case it was a laboratory full of people with clothes with fully covered with mask… and plenty of lockers where to steal the same clothes it’s not crazy for somebody to think that was an option
And you had to enter inside certain room with people everywhere, even with the broken ability the game gave you to control people… that was a mess.
It was barely possible unless again you want to start shooting every one but that doesn’t matter it was an example there were other cases with similar stuff were the premise was good but there wasn’t a good implementation.
Like there was this quest were you had to go inside a factory and put something or take it, can’t remember. You can go through the office like you were the king in the castle nobody cares about it , go to the boss office which actually weirdly enough it think was the only way to go into the factory… Like wtf, some mechanics to get entry or something idk…
oh yeah that’s Mike when he is bored enters into the company and the factory like it’s his second home we don’t care.
Interesting. Starfield isn’t my first Bethesda game, so maybe that’s why that didn’t seem like an option to me. Normally, that’s not an option in video games, but Starfield also does a fairly good job at telling you each and every thing you can do.
I mean… Bethesda games are violent. You’re not going to walk into a hostile location and leave without a trail of corpses. The stealth mechanics are fairly iconic, and it is possible to clear that lab either going unseen or just shooting people from the shadows.
Common to most games with stealth and authority mechanics, some areas are “trespassing” areas, and others are not. Starfield is slightly lenient on trespassing areas because it’s not designed to be a Strict Stealth Game.
If you’re caught picking the lock, you will be arrested or shot. If you have a key, using it is not suspicious. Typical rpg stealth mechanics.
You seem to be looking for a hyper-realism simulator, and not a game?
I think something that really harmed the overall reception of starfield is baldurs gate 3 releasing a month before it. Quest design in that game is stupendous, with tons of varied stories with interesting characters. And each quest can be solved in tons of different ways due to how in depth the game mechanics are. Starting to play starfield after playing that game made the whole game feel sooooo shallow. For an “open world RPG” I always felt that the devs only ever gave you 1 or 2 options to complete a quest.
This is something I don’t get, and cuts to the core of my response to complaints. Almost every complaint people have had with Starfield is something that doesn’t even exist in BG3. Someone was recently whining the “shoot bullets near guards and they don’t aggro”, the bullet animations hitting water. The physics of falling into the bodies of water. All things that just don’t happen in BG3 at all.
While I am not personally disappointed in Starfield’s quests, I wouldn’t really object if quest-writing were more than a fringe minority of the complaints. It’s pretty much forgotten for the silly complaints most people have. Like the stealth system not being Hitman 3.
This is a fair critique. BG3 is on my to-buy list, but that is oft mentioned to be its strongest point.
Sure. But you would agree that’s pretty much a known quantity for Bethesda? I think there are a few quests in Starfield where they’re not quite to Bethesda’s usual standards (specifically thinking about the paradise planet quest), but all-in-all they are what you’d expect
If someone gave it a 7 out of 10 because it’s “fairly well-executed, but equational” I wouldn’t object despite enjoying it more.
But that’s the point… No locks no body complaining about what the hell I am doing there as I said zero attempt at making like oh no you shouldn’t be here… No locking no guards complaining… Only if you pick up some random object… It was really stupid.
I’m not entirely sure about that. Starfield isn’t my first Bethesda game either—I’ve been with them since Daggerfall. It seems like you might be honing in a bit too much on dissecting XTornado’s points in an attempt to dismiss their perspective.
You seem to be painting Bethesda games as mainly first-person combat titles with vast maps, but we all recognize that isn’t the core essence of their games. Starting from Arena, Bethesda has been striving to immerse players in alternate worlds. They’ve been pioneers in this endeavor, crafting expansive realms with intricate societies, aiming to make players genuinely feel like they’re part of these living, breathing locales. Morrowind dived deep into lore, featuring quests that involved bribery, stealth, and investigation to enhance the world’s authenticity. Combat was the exception, not the norm. Oblivion continued this tradition, introducing scripted AI with daily routines like sleeping, eating, and shopping. Many quests in these games sought to enhance the world’s authenticity where gameplay mechanics fell short. The Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion stands as a prime example of this.
Regarding your comment about the stealth mechanics being “iconic,” that might be stretching it a tad. Bethesda’s game mechanics have often been somewhat simplified versions of their intended concepts, spanning from dialogue systems to stealth and combat. There hasn’t been significant advancement in this aspect since Oblivion, except for a slight improvement in combat seen in Fallout 4.
What truly made these games special was their commitment to crafting believable, explorable worlds. However, with Starfield’s shift to procedural generation, it’s taken a step back in terms of world exploration. Essentially, if you’ve seen one procedurally generated planet in Starfield, you’ve seen them all. In contrast to the handcrafted environments of their previous titles, much of the game feels sterile, as it’s essentially computer-generated.
This leaves the believability of their fictional world as the standout feature, and in this aspect as well, there hasn’t been significant progress since Oblivion. XTornado’s point about the world’s lack of convincing reactions to player actions is valid. And it’s not as if the features they suggested are unprecedented in games of this genre. Twelve years ago, New Vegas introduced a simple disguise system. However, in Starfield, the world remains oblivious to your actions. Even firing a shot at someone’s feet in a bustling city prompts no reaction, making the world seem like a shallow façade, detracting from the game’s core objective of creating a “living, breathing universe” to explore.
While it’s still an enjoyable game for fans of the Bethesda formula, it feels like they haven’t evolved their formula in over 15 years. It’s entirely reasonable for gamers to critique the game’s lack of reactivity. It might have been fine in 2011, but the industry has left them behind, and their worlds feel hollow and fake in this new age.
I’m not sure I understand what’s wrong with dissecting the points of a perspective when one’s process involves questioning that perspective. It seems the most relevant points altogether.
I mean, really not at all. If anything, they’re “general-purpose first-person RPGs that let you do a little bit of everything”. A shallow ocean instead of a deep river.
You go on to make a lot of points I would agree with.
Are you aware of the ever popular “stealth-archer meme”? Can you think of any games where that meme is relevant or has been used? Are any of them not Bethesda games? And then, you go on to say:
…exactly!
I guess I should clarify. My critique of XTornado was not that he isn’t allowed to dislike the game. It was that he clearly didn’t know what he signed up for in purchasing it despite it having one the most established featuresets of any game. It would be like me buying the new Madden and complaining because it’s not a driving simulator. Maybe I made a mistake and didn’t read anything about it. Fine. And if I went to the Madden community complaining there’s no 5th gear, I would expect to be corrected by people pointing out that my problem is my ignorance, not the game’s advertising. Then I would get rid of my copy of Madden (I don’t like football or driving games) and move on with my life.
The problem is that by nitpicking his specific suggestions, you were avoiding engaging with his central idea. Which, from my point of view, seems to be that for a game as interested in creating a believable world as Starfield, it felt rather fake due to limited options and the inconsistent way it chose what actions to react to.
His suggestions weren’t even that extreme, and could have been accounted for in a myriad of ways. New Vegas’s disguise system, little improvements to the trespassing system, level design that compensated for the limited AI, more frequent use of scripted areas that do react more authentically. Even just a system that has NPC’s react to being shot at would go a long way. Hell, earlier Bethesda titles would give you a persuasion penalty if you had your weapon drawn.
I am aware of the “stealth-archer meme”. I suppose I just view the word iconic as synonymous to exemplary. Or as Webster puts it: widely known and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence. Which I would not call Bethesda’s stealth mechanics. But I’ll chalk this up to a difference of word usage, and can definitely agree with the idea that Bethesda’s stealth is certainly iconic in the sense that it is “identifiable by it style”.
While I can kind of see your point, you are being hyperbolic to an extreme here. Madden does not advertise itself as a driving simulator, Starfield on the other hand did advertise itself as a living breathing universe to explore. Starfield does try to react to the players actions, and the discrepancy between what is accounted for and what is ignored is stark. Coming face to face with this discrepancy often breaks immersion as much as if Madden suddenly asked you to drive him to Chili’s halfway through a football game.
To drive the metaphor a bit further, Starfield’s lack of reactivity would be more akin to receiving no penalty in Madden for tackling someone after a play had stopped. Sure, the developers didn’t have to account for actions the player could take, but when trying to convince players of the legitimacy of the world, little things like this go along way. And Bethesda’s advertising definitely tried to sell players on the notion that the world would “feel alive”, and given the way they used to push the industry forward in this regard, it’s fair for players to feel disappointed in the stagnation of the design. Especially when so many other games have raised the bar in this regards.
Edit: I suppose I should respond to this as well.
While it’s true that the mechanics are shadows masquerading as the action, the glue that tied these shallow actions together in a Bethesda title was the believability of the world around you. Making the world oblivious to many of your actions draws the flaws of the games into sharp focus and breaks immersion. It’s to be expected that players notice and complain about this.
He was comparing it to Hitman, intentionally or not.
I’m not sure I really agree that’s his central point. At least, it’s definitely not what I’m critiquing. If he thinks Bethesda games are not believable, that’s his right.
The Stealth-archer meme is as much an insult as a compliment to Bethesda games, but it is Iconic. We all note that wonderful way you can walk literal circles in full view of people while picking them off and everyone else stands their with their thumbs in their ears.
I firmly disagree. Please be careful accusing your interlocutor of exaggeration. My point is that Starfield clearly presented itself as a Bethesda game. Despite possibly “hyperbolic” in its marketing to diehards who watched Todd Howard, it definitely did not involve misleading advertising.
Ever play Blood Bowl? Would you have taken points away from Blood Bowl 7 if you were allowed to decapitate the other players because “that’s not realistic”?
There was an entire quest line dedicated to stealth (Ryujin). There was a skill tree dedicated to stealth. So, why were they in the game?
A quest line. Out of hundreds.
In Starfield, there are 4 levels of stealth skill, and another 4 levels of a concealment skill. 8 total skill points out of 100+ that have anything to do with sneaking. It’s the least stealth-focus in any game of its genre.
There’s nothing like walking up to a group of four of these half melted mannequin fucks just to have them all turn their heads and stare into your eyes in sync like the collective movement would give momentum to steal your soul in order to sate their empty husks. The gunplay is better though!
The best (worst?) example of that for me was my companion sobbing and sniffling during a ceremony, expressing their love and commitment, all with a flat emotionless face. It’s funny you said mannequin because everytime I started a conversation, for some reason my brain would say “Here comes another puppet show”.
Gunplay is definitely decent, though there seemed to be no line between being overpowered and bullet sponge. Also would’ve liked to have seen more imaginative / futuristic weaponry considering the time period. I’m sure modders will create something more fun with the framework.
Another thing that really grated on me was the ‘digital clutter’. A generation ship from hundreds of years ago should not have the same ornaments and books as a ship from the current time period!
Yeah that last part was odd to me too. I will say overall there’s a lot more scenic clutter, which isn’t so bad.