The fact that this game was actually nominated as "best RPG" with the likes of baldurs gate 3 and final fantasy XVI is ludicrous enough.
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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to be fair, ffxvi is not really an rpg either.
I read a reviewer that said “It’s a beautiful game about space exploration that has no space exploration” and they were completely right. It’s just fallout in space. Who thought Quick Travel the game would be compelling space exploration
But it's not Fallout in Space. I can travel from one edge of the map to the other in Fallout or Skyrim and stumble upon a pitched battle or a cultist ritual or a lost dog or a juicy plot hook. In Starfield I can travel from one interstitial area to the next interstitial area to listen to a bland NPC tell me to go to the next interstitial area.
It's okay. I look forward to mods. Right now it's like somebody reskinned Super Mario Bros from the NES with a generative image AI trained on NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day and Mass Effect 1 stills.
That's what I found really interesting about Cyberpunk 2077.
It took me a long time before I even started using fast travel in that game. I actually enjoyed walking through the city. Even on later replays and when I'd finished almost all the side quests.
Far from perfect game even after all the bug fixes, and kinda empty after the end game, but I can't help thinking it illustrates how Bethesda's been left behind in many ways. It'll be interesting to see what the next GTA's like. If they manage to make a more immersive world to explore.
I gave up on Starfield to try Cyberpunk again with the new fixes and I'm now probably 150 hours in and I think I've only fast travelled once? Maybe three or four times if you count the mid mission moments where you're riding in a car with someone.
It's kind of wild that Neon had to be split in half by a loading screen, but you can go from one end of Night City to the other with none, and Night City is way more detailed, and quite frankly probably has more unique geometry to load and render than Neon + entire surrounding planet.
The reason for that is because, yet again, for the three hundred thousandth fucking time, Bethesda is using, still, a modified creation engine.
There is an argument to be made that Half-Life: Alyx runs on a "modified Quake engine". At no point was the engine completely rewritten, though it went through several major evolutions and presumably none of Carmack's original Quake code still survives... probably.
What matters is that Valve made several major overhauls over the years and is well aware of both the strengths and weaknesses of its engine and taylors its games to them. I mean, you couldn't run Elite Dangerous on Source 2, but nobody asked. Seemingly, nobody at Bethesda corporate asked if CE was capable of multiplayer (hence Fallout 76), and nobody at Bethesda corporate asked if CE was capable of half the shit that Starfield would have to provide for exploration to be compelling in the way that it is in Skyrim.
I just wish CP2077's driving was better, I find it impossible to drive the good cars.
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Everything is way better and more detailed in Cyberpunk.
It feels like everybody is so generic in Starfield. They don't feel like they have personalities.
You travel 10KM in any direction in Cyberpunk and you'll be dealing with an entirely new set of gangs with their own slang and their own backgrounds and their own heritage.
You travel 10KM in any direction in Starfield and you'll either find nothing or an entrance to another procgen cave with the same spacers as everywhere else.
For me it's not so much the travel; the main story tries to sell this idea of exploring the unknown, but literally everything you find is a known quantity in some form or another.
It’s just so bland and formulaic. Against deep RPGs like BG3, it just pales in comparison.
The funny thing is, I think the fact that the RPG mechanics are finally better than the last game developed by Bethesda, instead of worse, highlights just how mediocre Bethesda games are.
I still think once mods and DLCs come out in full force it will be remembered more positively.
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The Best RPG list is basically Baldur's Gate 3, and four more games to make it look like it has competition. It doesn't.
I still think TotK is a better game overall than BG3.
For me it came pretty close between the two but eventually BG3 came out on top. Totk was great but after 200+ hours I was done with Totk. I currently have almost 200 hours in BG3 and I feel like there's still so much more to play. I also feel like most of my issues with BG3 (like the poor performance in act 3 and some questlines breaking) are things Larian will fix while the issues with Totk (no rebinds, not being able to infuse weapons from inventory, menus in general, almost everything related to the sage powers) are unlikely to get fixed.
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I have not played it. I love scifi and open world games, but the trailers never spoke to me.
The universe looked so generic. I know Bethesda tried to force the label of “NASApunk” (whatever that means) but it just ended up with the same aesthetic of all those DeviantArt pages where people draw angular, scalloped metal scifi greeble over modern pictures. I didn’t feel any kind of vision coming out and grabbing me.
That’s aside from all the optimization and technical issues that I hear are bad even by Bethesda standards.
I watched part one of a play through. The moment I heard United colonies and Freestar Collective. I knew it was going to be the most generic space setting possible.
Starfield was 60 pretty ok hours on game pass, I personally have nothing against it, don't care about it much. But those who actually give a shit about The Game Awards: why? Slim list of nominees, several categories total bollocks anyway, judges vote worth 90% against 10% crumbs to the public vote ( see 'how are winners selected' https://thegameawards.com/faq )
Why would you want extensive public participation in an award ceremony? If you want a popularity contest just look at sales numbers. What purpose do awards even serve if they aren't curated beyond validating your own preferences?
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I'm curious what the design, and reaction to, of Starfield might say about what we'll expect from ES6. For three games now (Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield), have been marked by Settlement building and Radiant quests.
While radiant quests were there in Skyrim, in these later games it felt a lot like Bethesda were making it a core part of the mission design structure. There are a lot of blurred lines in Starfield that make it difficult to tell them apart. (That's more a comment on main missions being so generic than the radiant quests being so good, unfortunately).
Settlement building seems to be a core part of Bethesda's DNA now, and I wouldn't be surprised if the narrative follows a Kingmaker style where you build up a settlement of rebels over time or similar. I imagine the other ES staples will be tied to this too, Thieves Guild = establishing a branch within your new settlement to attack Big Bad Evil Vs joining an established one etc.
I really wonder how much of this poor reaction to Starfield makes its way through to actual change, but my feeling is ES6 will have a lot of hype, but similar feelings of disappointment. I hope I'm proved wrong.
Ultimately, unless they deviate from the formulaic structure (follow arrow on compass to have awkward uncanny conversation with a mannequin who tells you to go to copy and paste dungeon where you have asynchronous combat against copy and pasted enemies) eventually, people will have the same gripes with ES6 that they didn't know they had with Skyrim. At this point, Creation Engine games are nostalgic, but Bethesda thinks they're still the future.
I can't imagine Beth cares about game awards as long as their sales are good.
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Played my full version demo before purchasing. Was bored on day one. None of this surprises me.
Don't worry Bethesda, you can try again at next year's game awards after you've fixed the bugs and modders have added the features!
after ~~you’ve~~ the modders have fixed the bugs
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Painfully average is how I'd describe it. There's games with better graphics, better RPG elements, better open world, better space sim, better procedural generation use, better writing, better any one thing (except maybe ship building?). For a game that promised it all it's turned out to be your average jack of all trades, master of none.
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What's the point in making a game "as stable as possible",
when it's not even fun?
Aren't you just polishing shit at that point?
It is more stable than their other releases, but that's a very low bar.
I'd never call it stable without that very important context.
Plus, it doesn't pass that bar by more than a few inches.
Yeah, it isn't the best game, so it doesn't belong between the nominations.
Also because so many amazing games came out this year.
But that doesn't make it a bad game though. Had plenty of fun with it.
Yeah. It's a good game. That's all. Pretty formulaic and not Bethesda's finest work. Good, but nothing award worthy.
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It got a best audio nominee at the golden joysticks and a best rpg at the game awards. Taking up air that could have been used for actual worthy contenders but big money's get the auto nomination
It definitely doesn't deserve best RPG.
It might win the most "it's alright I guess", game of the year award.
When a game like Hardspace has better writing than your game, you fucked up.
Which is not a knock on Hardspace by-the-by. It's just that writing isn't the focus of that game, and even Blackbird said, "let's take a big swing at this anyways".
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