Bethesda games have always been incredibly shallow. How is there anyone that doesn't see this?
I think it’s the time of development. Bethesda games used to be shallow, but they also came out moderately paced. Now things like starfield take the better part of a decade and it’s still just as shallow, which has some people a bit underwhelmed. Personally it’s been so long since a Bethesda game came out, as a person who isn’t a Bethesda fan to start with, I forgot how shallow Bethesda games were.
They still average about 6 years per major release... Fallout 4 came in 2015, and if you don't count Fallout 76 as a major release, that was only 8 years ago, right in line with the dev time they've pretty much always had.
Honestly all I see with starfield that failed to meet expectations are one good and one bad:
Good: The performance and stability are actually good for once. This was unexpected, but welcome.
Bad: The writing and story are boring, bland, generic, and uninteresting. This wasn't expected because usually this stuff is at least semi-decent. There's usually something that at least has a cool basis. Starfield doesn't. It's all references and tropes and nothing particularly interesting or unique. It's hard to even be motivated to wanna shoot bad guys beyond "well, they're the bad guys and I am here to shoot 🤷🏻♂️."
We didn't expect the story to be bad? The only games of theirs that had good stories were Daggerfall and Morrowind. Oblivion's story was... fine at best. Skyrim's was hot garbage. Daggerfall's story is pretty impenetrable too.
I honestly can't remember more than a handful of characters in any of their games. Of the characters I do remember, I think the jester assassin from the dark brotherhood is the only one I had any kind of affection for.
The problem is people defending the games as perfect 10/10 GOTY. And just the general gamers who get super whiny and mad if anyone complains about anything in Starfield, saying that's just the "Bethesda genre".
Yeah, the amount of "it's supposed to be that way" I see is crazy. It's fine if it's supposed to be like that, but it doesn't mean people are wrong for not liking it.
It’s kind of amazing to me that Larian bumped up the release of BG3 by a month on PC because they didn’t want to compete against Starfield (and given the two big patches, maybe they could have put that extra month to good use), and it turns out it was Bethesda that should have been the one worried.
I haven't played Starfield. But I have been amazed at the depth of Baldur's Gate 3. You can see the handcrafted world every where you look. And this makes a world you enjoy spending time in.
I'm enjoying Starfield far more than I expected.
That said the NPC interactions are incredibly sterile in comparison to the full mo-capped acting of the BG3 NPCs. The Starfield NPCs feel like mannequins just spitting out their lines.
That's like 75% of the work for BG3. There's absolutely some work implementing DnD mechanics into code and designing encounters, and obviously the assets for the world have to be created as well, but the vast majority of their time was spent on dialogue choices and designing the story in general.
It's a great game for it, but we're a good ways away from being able to do the same in an FPS/TPS with real time combat that isn't absolutely brutal. BG3 could be what it was in terms of interactions because it was a CRPG. But it had to be a CRPG to do it. ARPG isn't the term for what Starfield is, but games with reasonably rewarding action take too much work on that element to invest the time into every encounter that BG3 does. Balancing probabilities and maps for encounters for a CRPG isn't trivial, but it costs way less to do than building out all those mechanics and skill trees into real time physics.
They're different games with different goals.
I finished bg3 tonight. The credits are 35 minutes long and it felt like half of it was all the actors. Such an expansion game, even the animals have voices (if you can speak to them)
It absolutely a masterpiece and I'll be playing it for a long time.
I'll just also be playing Starfield for a long time because it's a different game that scratches a different itch.
The writing of BG3, both storyline and interpersonal for every NPC, is top tier.
In Starfield, it's like they put together a committee of pretentious artsy fartsy people who think that their Tumblr page makes them writers and a bunch of execs.
And anything that combination of creatively dead asswipes came up with was canon.
It's a combination of trying to hard to be clever with the most derivative shite story I've seen in a long ass time.
Starfield would be a better game without its main story.
If it was allowed to put all the focus on being someone in this games universe, it would be far better than any elements of the main story existing in the games universe.
Joining Constellation or not should also be an option.
And Constellation should've been more of a JRPG style guild with people focusing on various branches of enterprise in the game and giving missions for those. A questhub rather than this club. They all already have their own specialization.
But seriously, the main story is just all levels of meh.
Between Elden Ring's UI-free exploration and Baldur's Gate 3 character interactions, I'm sadly doubting Starfield will do for me.
I just skip through the dialogue shit in Starfield. The fun is in the kleptomania dungeon crawling and just turning off your brain for stupid time. BG3 requires brain on. The last good Bethesda RPG that actually had depth to it was Morrowind. I feel so bad for all the younger people that never got to experience the good years of CRPGs. Not that bad tho... They can get their asses on GOG and get the old classics.
Yeah I finished my playthrough of bg3 just in time for starfield. Been playing it constantly since. Loving the game. Hard to compare the two as well, they're rpgs sure but very different. Should pc gamer start writing articles about the lack of base building in bg3?? Bottom line is if you like Bethesda games, you'll like Starfield. Didn't like Skyrim or Fallout very much? You won't like Starfield.
I like Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas, hate Fallout 3, 76, and Starfield. The former are not comparable to the latter.
I am on the same page as you. New Vegas especially since it was really Obsidian not Bethesda and it shows. FNV is in my top 5 of all time. I liked Skyrim enough. Not a fan of Fallout 3, 4, or 76 so I have a feeling I am not going to like Starfield much. Though I am going to give it a try anyway.
It's not fair for the rest of the Triple A games this year.
BG3 is a hard act to follow considering it was molded from the wishes of players for several years before release.
It's totally fair. Other companies _could _engage in more dialog with players and take feedback into consideration before release, but they'd rather lean on their prior accolades and slowly leak teaser trailers and whatnot to build hype instead.
I think you mean, time for Bethesda to get their act together rather than create trash. I love skyrim, morrowind, and am excited for starfield, but larian is a bit smaller than Bethesda who is owner by zenimax who is owned by Microsoft and therefore has the folks to make awesome things. And yet you have BG3 as a masterpiece. It's all excuses to me. I wouldn't call it unfair. I'd call it fair. I'd say larian is even handicapped, and they just kicked the pants off Bethesda.
You're not wrong in the slightest.
You'd think that Bethesda would spend a few years of the decade they take to make games to be better.
At this point, I feel like everyone complaining refuses to play Starfield because they want to play Starfield. Like how about we start writing articles that Call of Duty isn't as in depth as Escape From Tarkov? Both are shooters, so they both should be the same thing.
This is an interesting take. I adore Skyrim and just yesterday started playing BG3. I am enjoying it, but I never did anything else with DND (parents thought it would make Jesus sad or whatever) and so I am finding it more complex from the get-go than I would like, but I’m trying to learn. I still do feel like I’m missing out on a lot by just going with “whatever” and not putting enough thought into character creation, spells, etc, but it’s a lot to learn and I’m only 1 day in :)
Skyrim, on the other hand, was very easy to pick up, start playing, and just…explore and discover. Because of that, I was eagerly anticipating Starfield but sadly I do not possess the platform required to play it so I am reading the reviews to see if it’s worth buying an entire XBox for. If it’s as great as Skyrim, yes. If it’s meh, no.
So, reviews like this make me wonder if the author enjoys and/or is already familiar enough with the steep learning curve for it not to get in the way and by extension the game itself. Would they have been fine with Starfield had they never played BG3? And is Starfield “simple” enough for me to have a great time, or is it too much of what the author complains about here? - Repetitive quests, limited choices, etc?
It’s a hard question to answer, and the stakes are higher for me because of the console thing. I guess I could send the console back at least if the game isn’t for me? Idk.
I've got a steam deck. BG3 runs fine on it and surprisingly so does Starfield. (albeit both on low graphics settings, but I'm cool with that). BG3 is also ok because it's turn based. Though, so far, any blips in fps in Starfield haven't messed up my being able to survive firefights.
BG3 has a steeper learning curve for sure. I love the character interactions and the voice acting is superb. Starfield is easier to just pick up and start playing. (though my first time navigating my ship was a WTF moment and the game threw you into a ship battle right away) The early battles are easy enough that even with flailing, you survive. Over time I've gotten more accustomed to the controls. FWIW, NPC dialog and interactions are more janky for sure than BG3. BG3 is so smooth and realistic with dialog and expressions.
Both games have abysmal inventory systems. hahahaha! So far, I'm enjoying both games. I've put BG3 down for a bit to allow time for Larian to clean up Act 3 a bit more. I'm 85 hours in and all of the story threads are coming together and the consequences of my choices are getting thick.
Starfield is a hit with me too. It's a grand exploration game. It scratches the Skyrim itch. It might be a looter shooter, but so far, I'm enjoying the quests. Eventually I will build outposts and build my own ship. There's no VATs any more, except in ship to ship battles where you can use the targeting system.
Unlike BG3, you aren't limited on how much you can develop your character. BG3 is capped at level 12 so you only get a few times to choose new spells/skills/abilities. Eventually, you're at your limit. Starfield has so many skills you can get, that I imagine that once you get many hours in, you'll be at such a high level and have so many skills that it will still be a blast to play. Early on, it's all so new, later on, you'll have so many options for things to do and how to do it that the gameplay will still feel fresh.
Long story short, I like both equally, but for very different reasons. Starfield is a big plate of good ole home cooking/mac and cheese. BG3 is a multi-course gourmet meal. I also have a steam deck, so I imagine that Starfield would play just fine on XBox.
Just heads up a lot of the act 3 bugs were addressed in the patch last week. I’ve encountered none in act 3 so far.
I still do feel like I’m missing out on a lot by just going with “whatever” and not putting enough thought into character creation, spells, etc, but it’s a lot to learn and I’m only 1 day in :)
As someone who has run tabletop games including DnD for a few decades, your approach is perfectly valid. While any complex system can be gamed for optimal outcomes, it was designed to be roughly even enough that there are not a lot of choices that penalize you too much as long as you pay attention to vulnerabilities/resistances/immunities which can often be overcome with potions and other magic items.
Do what sounds fun and then have fun is not missing out on anything other than spending time not playing the game just to squeeze out edge cases. Some people enjoy that and thankfully the game caters to both casual players and optimizers.
I feel you. I spent a several hours learning about D&D character creation when I picked up BG3. And I spent a couple more hours crafting a back story that I used to influence my character traits. I've never played D&D before, but BG3 is the most fun I've had with a game in several years.
Don't fret too much about your early-game spell/leveling decisions. Pretty early in the game, you get the option to re-spec any and all characters for a small fee. You can mess around with new synergies, or go so far as converting characters to an entirely different class, any time you want.
If I want a massive rpg with great characters and things to do, I'll go play daggerfall. If I want amazing space exploration I'll go play Elite or No Man's Sky. The idea of any modern Bethesda game just sounds boring to me.
I played star field for an hour and fell asleep
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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