The Starfield Rant - Bethesda's Game Design is OUTDATED

In Starfield every companion is Jacob Taylor

The irony of Todd Howard telling us to upgrade our PCs to play Starfield when his company has refused to upgrade their engine or formula in the last 10 or so years is unreal.

"outdated" is probably the most accurate and all encompassing description of Bethesda.

I know I'm late to the party but.... Congratulations Starfield you make Mass Effect Andromeda look like a masterpiece by comparison.

This is the first creative exercise Todd and his people have done. Fallout was created by a different studio and Bethesda just bought the IP. Elder Scrolls had its roots in DnD fantasy and brought actual writers on board to create the world and lore. So, with their first original IP since the 90s, they had a free opportunity to really flex their creative muscles and show us their boundless imaginations. And they made NASA with guns.

You know what is the real immersion breaker for me? Those ancient, mysterious, never-before-seen magical temples of obviously alien origin, the discovery of the century! Every single one within 500 metres of a mining operation, a spaceport, or a civilian outpost.

The fact that they had free reign to dream up an original Sci-Fi universe and made something so bland it's kind of impressive.

As soon as I heard "thousand planets to explore" I knew to be very afraid. It's just absolutely obvious to me that there's never going to be a thousand planets with meaningful content in them. That in itself isn't scary - it would be fine if there's 999 empty filler planets and one good one, if that one really was good. But when the game director themself brings out "big numbers" as the headline feature of the game, it gives me a message on their priorities. It's the same as with "we have 17 000 endings" or "262 different monsters, 43 weapons, 11 new character classes" and blah blah. The numbers don't matter. Does it have a meaningful, fulfilling, engaging story? Does it have seriously fun gameplay? Does it have a genuinely interesting game world? Does it have beautiful, thought provoking art? Is it challenging or is it casual? You can try asking questions that are relevant to yours and trying to apply the publisher's headline claims to those. "What's the game like?" - "It has a thousand planets!" "Umm... Okay. Well, does the game have a message, or do you learn something about life when you play it?" - "It has 262 different monsters!" "I... Oh boy. Well, what sort of emotions do you think a player might feel while playing?" - "You can play as 11 different classes!" "That's not - oh never mind I'll just go play something else."

This game is the most “phoned in” game I’ve played in probably 15 years. Bethesda knows they basically have to do the absolute bare minimum and the community will just make mods and fix it for them.

Isn't the Bethesda motto "Why bother fixing and improving things when the fans will do it for us"?

The hilarious thing about Hancock, is if you ever accidentally fired your gun at nothing, while not in combat, he'd say "You see 'em too huh?". That line caught me off guard and had me laughing for quite a few minutes while I was playing FO4

Amazing. Everything you said was completely correct. The illusion of choice in this game is what frustrates me the most. Especially considering Obsidian gave Bethesda the perfect blueprint for crafting an RPG with Fallout: New Vegas. That game released in 2010 and had, what, an 18 month development cycle? And yet, every quest can be cleared in multiple ways, choices matter, and so do the skills and traits you choose. The way you build your character has an impact on your entire playthrough, and on the world around them. I just don't understand how that game can be so good, do so many things right, and yet Starfield has regressed in so many ways.

I feel like this game is the next step towards them finally realizing their vision of having modders create the entire game for them

Starfield is an amazing game that I think is well worth the $5 I’m gonna pay for it in 3 years

Thinking about the immortal npcs, i have to bring up baldurs gate 3. In BG3, if you kill an inportant npc, it usually is reflected with new dialog, or even a new npc coming to take their place. An example of this would be allowing the tieflings to die in the goblin invasion, but still defeating the goblins. During your party at the camp, new tieflings will be there to replace the essential ones killed. The fact that Bethesda cannot code in a failsafe, or alternate story paths depending on your decisions is mind boggling

28:58 The devs at Obsidian thought of this ahead of players. In Fallout: New Vegas, they created a character in the form of an AI called Yes Man who inhabits a series of robot called a securitrons and can jump from one after another if killed indefinitely. Because of this, any actions taken by the player, the Yes Man/Independent questline will always be available. This means that if all other avenues of completion are impossible (for example, due to high Infamy with all major factions, killing key important characters), the game can still be completed even if a laser or plasma weapon respectively disintegrates or melts him. This does not cause any quests he is associated with to end or fail. In The Outer Worlds, a character be the name of Phineas Vernon Welles, a fugitive scientist who helps the player, cannot be killed because the game makes it so you can kill anyone else you want and still progress the storyline by reading stuff of looting their bodies. If someone absolutely needs to be alive for the story to continue, they are kept away from the player, like Phineas and a chairman character.

I'm glad that a lot of gamers are taking off their nostalgia goggles, and realize that Bethesda is a shadow of its former self.

Speaking of protected NPCs, there was a character part of the Mars mining quest that makes it pretty obvious he's going to kill you. So while he was walking me to his ship I put a bullet in his head, but he was unkillable. So I reloaded my save and let the scenario play out more. I couldn't persuade him to stand down so I had to kill him... you know the thing I tried to do before, but wasn't allowed to.

The more I hear about Starfield; the more happy I am I never wasted my money to buy it.

Playing Cyberpunk again for the expansion after trying Starfield, I realised how important it is to have NPC do stuff in conversation. Having a character interact with the environment, walk around or even just lean on a railing adds so much over two people awkwardly standing static with a zoomed in camera. Edit: Though I actually liked the lockpicking, I found it more interactive than most systems as far as mini-game puzzle mechanics go and there was actual tangible difference between an easy and master lock. The loot was 100% not worth it though, there seems to be no real relation to lock difficulty and what you get, the reward needs to match the effort.