You have spoken like someone who isn't much of a fan of the kinds of worlds and RPGs that Bethesda Game Studios creates. If you are a fan, then you would know full well that what you saw is only just scratching the surface of a much larger, more epic experience. Hell, they literally showed you enough to confirm as much. All Bethesda RPGs are loaded with content and different ways to play and experience it all.
You look at what you saw, and to you it's lackluster, but I'm not sure I buy that claim and think the negative outlook has more to do with it being Xbox exclusive, which is a shame that this is what gaming has become. Drop your focus on "xbox guys" and focus instead on gamers who love Bethesda RPGs or ambitious open world RPG simulations in general. Focus instead on why it is so many people continue to play Bethesda's games for upwards of 10 years or close to it. Why would a sci-fi, space exploration focused open world RPG by the creators of Elder Scrolls Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 excite anybody? That's what you should be entertaining before which sets of console warriors are excited about it.
You're worried about how it "changes the conversation" for Xbox like this is a talk show where we discuss the 2024 presidential horse race. Nobody cares. We just want exciting looking games. Gamers who love RPGs are looking forward to Starfield. Playstation guys are looking forward to Starfield. Many of the "xbox guys" you reference are also Nintendo and Playstation guys as well. I sure as hell am. Many of the "xbox guys" people speak of also own PS5s.
Fans like myself watched the gameplay and can't help but think of all the freedom and possibilities. They showcased some brief combat, which looked great besides framerate, we saw small examples of how the world reacts to the player (ships came flying in and landing mid-combat, we saw a taste of what would happen if we shot an enemy's jetpack, we saw space flight and space combat, zero g combat, we saw we can clear a decent sized gap by using the jetpack, we saw ship customization, the ability to staff our ships, we saw building our own space settlements for resource generation with the ability to have characters we meet staff those also, we saw weapon/item crafting customization, the character creation, the backgrounds, the skills, traits that have positive effects and negative effects, the skill trees, we saw the different factions, we saw how they're handling persuasion, we saw the ability to board enemy ships, we saw some of the characters we will meet, got a sense of the some of the story and dialogue systems, we see the clear Oblivion influence, we saw multiple different locations and planets, we saw some impressive attention to visual detail, and graphically it really does look like a big visual jump from past Bethesda games. We know that there are quests designed to allow us to rid ourselves of specific traits and their negative effects, we saw our background choice impact how characters speak with us. We got to see some of the hostile or non hostile creatures that are on the planets.
Stop viewing games based on the console they're on and just based on looking like interesting games. Do you know there are people who would choose a game like Fallout or Elder Scrolls over a game like TLOU 10 times out of 10? And there are people who would choose a TLOU style game over Starfield? Just as there are people who would choose an Elden Ring over the next Spider-Man. Gamers are getting likely one of the games of the generation from Bethesda because they've never failed in making something memorable when they put their minds to making a great singleplayer rpg experience.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
and it makes a lot of sense to me.
kotaku.com
