I somehow entirely missed the hype around this game and came across it again only accidentally on early release day when looking at some other sale on Steam. Been playing it and it seems fine to me in a vague Skyrim-in-space sort of way, which is all what I was expecting from a Bethesda RPG.
The world seems alive enough and there are plenty of side-quests and amusing / interesting things to discover. Now suddenly I have been coming across a bunch of posts everywhere where the game is supposed to be terrible or something. Still seems fine to me, but maybe I have lower standards after decades of gaming. shrug.
I’ve put about 200 hours into Oblivion and 180 into Skyrim, 150 each into Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, all without mods. Been happy every time. I think the whiners need their attention spans checked. Go watch Paw Patrol if you need constant action, you big babies.
i’ve seen a couple of people play the start, it looked fun
question is how many of yers have paid for it huh
The game has incredibly bad performance issues and dogshit politics.
For a game they’ve dubbed “Nasa punk”. There’s no punk at all. It’s 98% corporate fantasy wish fulfillment for musk-brained techbros and 2% punk. The criticism of capitalism is so paper thin that you can barely notice its presence anywhere at all.
The space pirates use guns with anarchist symbols on them and say anarchist slogans but are clearly not anarchists in ideology and instead are straight up thugs and raiders.
The UC military is presented as real professionals, which is not really correct. If they accurately represented the US military that they’re based off of then they’d being jarheads, except for the recruiters and media where the professional show is put on. This is fantasy wish fulfilment at best, or propaganda at worst.
There is no bigotry, patriarchy, etc in this universe and it’s absolutely absurd. The universe would have these, capitalism provides an incentive to exploit. Marginalised people are the easiest to exploit. Capitalism has an incentive not to solve marginalised people’s problems fully and the further away you get from states enforcing laws to try and mitigate these problems the bigger they would get. So in space and because of the colony wars these issues would have gone through the roof.
It is bizarre that there are wars occurring and yet there are no space refugees anywhere? Where are they? Also there’s no homeless people which is fucking weird again. Also no slums or self-constructed accomodation on the periphery of the cities which really ought to exist given that the player can do just that. It’s all so idealised to a ridiculous extent.
Everyone doesn’t have the money for a starship, there is one absurd mission where you apply for an admin assistant job. You’re expected to fly into space and to a space station with your own starship to apply for an administration and assistant job? There should be a private shuttle company that people use to taxi around space for things like this.
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In short, the politics are dogshit and the performance is bad. But, the gameplay is good if you like other bethesda titles it plays just like them. Additionally, I think it’s probably the strongest ever game they’ve released for modding… And probably their best title since Oblivion (not counting New Vegas which they didn’t make).
bethesda announces game concept.
people freak.
bethesda announces game. 
people hype.
bethesda starts hyping the game.
people go fucking nuts hyping the game as a result. their social media team plants those seeds to make it look organic.
a year or more of speculation occurs.
todd howard being his little schmuck self comes out and boasts about their new game.
people lose their god damn minds.
whispers of shitty gameplay start occurring closer to launch.
the masses tell those people to fuck off how could they know, dishonest review etc etc.
the big names in game reviews all review it and give it out of the park amazing reviews.
people go batshit crazy. people are out in the streets killing their parents for a chance at the new bethesda god game.
the game is released and is somewhat playable but jesus fuck is it lacking, it’s buggy, and every character looks like they’ve been updated from skyrim graphics of yore. the story sucks. the game play is empty but goddamn is there a lot to explore.
everyone rushes in like a madman.
everyone realizes the gameplay sucks.
people start bitching.
others say “oh don’t worry, DLC and user created mods will fill the game out nicely.”
years pass.
the unpaid modding community pours their heart and soul into making the game not fucking suck.
after all the DLC has come out (all with mostly positive or mixed reviews on steam) the game will go dark for a year or so.
todd howard wakes from his capitalist vampire coma needing fresh life force. the blood money of his unsuspecting idiot fans.
todd howard makes it into the office and says we could make a new game or we can milk this game for the next decade and a half. quick come up with names to rerelease the game under. game of the year edition. complete edition. master edition. elite edition. remastered. remastered complete. anything works!
over the course of the next three decades, todd howard is fed the blood of bethesda’s fan base.
he is swollen, like a fat tick upon his harkonen throne, waiting to burst.
“the people. they call for a NEW game”, he says, a devilish sneer contorts his face.
and the cycle continues.
and these fucking idiots. every goddamn time.
This comment is better written than the game itself.
That comment or this comment?
Why are people pretending the game isn’t getting glowing reviews? Is the Bethesda hate circlejerk still going on?
I like the game, but reviews are pretty unreliable these days. Cyberpunk 2077 also got a load of 8/9/10s on release and that game ran like shit and was full of bugs.
Stop complaining. Play it if you want, don’t if you don’t want to. People just like to be popular and liked. Everyone bandwagoned on Baldurs Gate being good but I can’t think of a type of game I hate more than that. Now everyone is bandwagoning on this because A- they don’t have an Xbox or a PC, or B- they want to be cool and alternative.
I mean come on, last week everyone was saying “omg Baldurs Gate has no microtransactions! Roleplaying! GOTY!” And now with Xbox/Bethesda making a game just like that, you guys instantly roast it for being…a Bethesda game.
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My GF played it a lot and I saw so many bugs, quests breaking, and crazy difficulty spikes. But when Bethesda has some bugs? Oh my gosh, people start rioting. People just love to hate when they get the chance.
Yeah it’s weird, I’ve seen a few really annoying bugs in bg3 and a fair bit of plot confusion and quest muddling - if Todd had made it people would be screaming about that and ignoring all the great parts.
Half my inventory is full of random things I don’t know if I need, most from weird side quests that were never really explained or resolved in any meaningful way and I’ve forgotten about. The writing isn’t bad but it’s often confusing, I often find myself having to pick at random because I haven’t memorized enough weird names and background lore to know what I’m actually saying.
The leveling and combat system is top notch though so props to them for inventing that.
And I’m certainly not saying it’s not great, it’s a great game and a lot of fun but if it had been the target of a anti circlejerk rather than a pro one we’d be seeing a totally different side to it.
Exactly. It always seemed to me like the game was held together by tape and toothpicks. If Bethesda, EA, Ubisoft or some other bigger company had made the game, people would give it a 6-7/10 and would complain up and down about the mechanics.
Well if you want to get nitpicky there’s no “roleplaying” in a Bethesda games because there are no bad outcomes. Minor spoilers about BG3.
For instance in BG3 I went into a camp swords blazing and murdered everything in sight. Turns out I killed a recruitable companion along the way that I never would’ve found out if I hadn’t read about it online. Technically speaking that’s an undesirable outcome because I’m going to miss out on some content but at that moment I didn’t give a fuck and similarly the game just went along with it. At no point did the game even hint that maybe I shouldn’t kill that character, if anything the game told me the objective is to kill that character. Had it been a Bethesda game I 100% would’ve been prevented from just murdering that companion and the game had given me a chance to recruit them.
Similarly I reloaded one hard fight 4 times to save a character who was relatively important to the story. That bitch just kept on running into AOE effects and getting herself killed. BG3 didn’t give a fuck if that character lived or died because the story would’ve continued without her. We all know how Bethesda handles characters that are important to the story, they literally cannot die.
And finally I’m currently at a point where the game gave me 2 choices, either I send one of my companions into eternal servitude or another character important to the story dies. Maybe there’s a third option that lets me save both but I might’ve missed it. If this was a Bethesda game there wouldn’t even be such a situation because it doesn’t matter what you choose, either option has a bad outcome.
And those are just examples from my current playthrough. From what I’ve seen others play you might not even get to those decisions, which means some decisions will lock out other decisions down the line and that’s once again something Bethesda does less and less with each game
Baldurs gate 3 gets praise because it’s a great game, Starfield gets shit because underneath it’s just Skyrim in space. Are we supposed to give praise for a game that follows a decade old design philosophy? If Doom 93 came out today should we lose our collective minds? No, because the industry has moved forward. Our expectations should be higher than Skyrim. There are good things about Starfield. The moment to moment combat seems excellent and Bethesda clearly has improved the visuals compared to FO4 and FO76. But the rest of the game seems it could’ve just as well been released back in 2011.
And before you think I’m some hyped up tweeb who is now disappointed that Starfield didn’t live up to the hype, I haven’t been hyped about a Bethesda game since Fallout 3. I’m well aware how easily Bethesda springs up hype and how the final product doesn’t really match the hype they promote. I had pretty basic expectations of what Starfield might be and I feel like Starfield was pretty much in the ballpark to the expectations I had: good shooting, lots and lots of loading screens and menus and very little of actual “space”. That’s to say I didn’t have high expectations in the first place.
All that gameplay you described? Is ancient. The industry has moved on as you say. You clicked through menus and virtually rolled dice to do that. That’s so old, it predates video games themselves.
At least Starfield is more modern than turn based gameplay.
Rule of thumb. Wait until you see top ten mod lists for Bethesda games and is at least on sale.
