Hear me out, Bethesda hasn’t made a really successful game since Skyrim. their new overlords are more than happy to shuffle them around, and who’s to say Todd Howard won’t retire after TES6 is launched?
I’m seeing a lot of parallels to Bioware, with game after game not doing as hot as the previous ones, and XBOX being very trigger happy with axing studios that aren’t pulling their weight, similar to EA.
It’s possible TES6, if it releases, will be the make it or break it of the company.
They banked really hard on Starfield being the game that’ll determine how things will go for them. Starfield ended up not being that good of a reception because it was simply overhyped. Now everyone’s expectations on TES VI and Fallout 5 are all but lukewarm because they’re expecting more of the same which is Bethesda’s model.
But really, Starfield was that game for Bethesda and it under-delivered.
Wasn’t it also just not very good? Plenty of games were overhyped or rushed then their rep picked up after people’s expectations leveled off, or the game was patched.
I barely ever hear about starfield, and when i do it’s only about why it’s not good.
Its good enough to spend time moaning about it not being great.
It has two or three issues, and the problem is theyre buried so deep in the design they compromise everything and are essentially unfixable.
The art, setting, bespoke quests are all great. Even the gunplay really, which is a shock but its honestly fun.
Ship building is possibly the best ship design system ever made. And its completely pointless, you will never see the inside of the ship as you teleport to PoIs and barely see the outside.
Inventory management is hell. Building your own mining base depends on very large inventory usage. And the reward is more materials for your inventory to do upgrades to weapons and armour you barely need.
The environmental damage system is incomprehensible so luckily it almost never matters. You take damage breathing in your sealed space suit?? Ridiculous.
The skill system does not feel good, all it can do is unlock stuff above that doesnt feel like it really matters, or gives more inventory management nonsense; or give incremental improvements to damage etc that do not feel good.
And the kicker, Skyrim draws you in by promising and delivering more and more new places to explore and once thats replaced with random pois the entire game collapses around it. When exploring feels pointless the entire game feels pointless.
I really liked Starfield and I played it for about 250 hours, multiple new game plus runs and all. It is not a bad game, I liked the characters and the story and especially the world with its near future NASA-punk setting. And yes, such a setting means that most of space is boring and that travel between planets (or even stars) in real time would take ages, very boring ages with nothing other then darkness around them. So the gravity jump mechanic and the focus on events around planets was only logical.
The big problem that Starfield had was that so many people had the idea or the fantasy that Starfield would be a game that it a) never was and that b) Bethesda never said that it would be.
I play, and I mod and create mods for, games with versions of the creation engine for over 20 years now, I began with Morrowind back then, and I have a very good idea and understanding of how the engine works and where its powers and limitations are, maybe that’s why the picture that I had from the game was very close to what the game delivered (loading screens and all) and why I was able to had (and still have) so much fun with the game. There was no huge hype cliff based on wishes and imagination that I could fall down from.
Starfield could’ve been amazing - just like how well Cyberpunk 2077 or No Man’s Sky turned out. But that would’ve required Bethesda committing to long term QoL updates, DLCs, etc., for little to no profit.
Exactly, if Bethesda had put half of the effort CD Project Red and Hello Games put into fixing their games, they could have polished Starfield into a great game. The potential is there, it has some interesting ideas, it just has some very rough edges.
The way they just abandoned it vs how CD Project Red keeps releasing “final final final” updates to Cyberpunk like they still have something prove shows the huge gap between both studios culture.