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Bethesda lead designer says Starfield is "hardest thing Bethesda has ever done" and the best game they ever made

ZehDon

Member
Hey look, I like Starfield plenty, but it's in no way BGS' best game. I'm playing Oblivion and Fallout 3 on my Steam Deck, and both of those games are just that much more engaging across the board despite being two generations removed.

Starfield's biggest issue for me is that they got rid of their engagement loop of "Going to do A, but I bumped into B, then I accidentally found C, and then I got interrupted when I saw D". Starfield requires a very direct player who deliberately makes their own fun. When you head off to do A, the game doesn't get in your way - no B, C or D. For some folks, that's clearly a show stopper. I don't mind it much frankly, but it's unquestionably less engaging than Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, or even Fallout 4.
 
To just jam into an Xbox the biggest, richest space simulation RPG anyone could imagine.

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Kacho

Member
I dunno man, I played it for 60 hours when it released and just kinda lost interest. Really hated the empty planets.

Other BGS games usually pull me in for like 200+ hours. Maybe I'm just old lol.
I had the same experience as you. Hit a wall after 60ish hours and dropped it. I can still play older BGS games for 100+ hours, but Starfield? Nah...
 

Laptop1991

Member
"Best game they have ever made", lol, Bethesda live in a totally different universe to their fans and former fans nowadays, they might not have any fans in god knows how many years it takes to release TES6 at this rate, lol, he must be trolling us at this point now, Emil has lost the plot lol.
 
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Fess

Member
The ship building/combat was genuinely cool. Trying to disable enemy ships, then board/loot them and either hijack the ship or blow it to pieces, was really cool.

Base building also seemed pretty interesting and in depth, like there’s a lot of cool stuff you could do, although I didn’t even experiment with that in my first play through.

For better or worse Starfield felt like a middle-of-the-road Bethesda RPG but with a new setting and a couple fun new gameplay systems to experiment with.

What I’d really like is some better writing/characters and more impactful choices. That would’ve taken Starfield from like a 7/10 to a 10/10 for me.
For me it’s a mix of Fallout and No Man’s Sky and.

And the ship building and outpost building mechanics are both fantastic. Especially ship building.

I genuinely love some things, many things, but I also get frustrated by how they miss the target completely on some things.
But they’ve improved it a lot since the release and they seem satisfied enough at the reception to keep working on it. That’s good news for me!

Space adventures and sci-fi of all kind has always been my favorite ingredient for games. Some of my favorites; Elite, Starglider 2, Space Quest, Super Metroid, Mass Effect, No Man’s Sky, etc, and now Starfield.

Dream updates:

Flying vehicles
, can’t drive a car in a jungle and it takes forever to walk.
Jepack builder, dismantle other packs to get the perks and then build your own with the perks you want.
More cities, can’t have a whole galaxy with like 10 cities, at minimum they should add a new one every year.
Hand-crafted dungeons with preset epic loot. Similar to the Mantis lair, needs to be more of that.
Turn your outpost into a settlement. Invite regular npcs to your outpost when it’s big enough, let them set up shop and do their thing when some key requirements for the outpost are met.
Better trading. Galactic trading boards with resources specific traders on specific planets want to buy for high amount of money. The trading economy and crafting mechanics should be greatly updated so you could live as a space trader.
 
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the praise is universal and growing

Great video. Reviewer comes off sincere and distraught.

There was a time where after blazing a lot of trails in open world gaming, Bethesda looked stagnant as they refused to address any of their weaknesses while other developers took on open worlds and ran circles around them. But nowadays it no longer feels like they refuse to change, it feels like they're actually getting worse.
 

ChorizoPicozo

Gold Member
Great video. Reviewer comes off sincere and distraught.

There was a time where after blazing a lot of trails in open world gaming, Bethesda looked stagnant as they refused to address any of their weaknesses while other developers took on open worlds and ran circles around them. But nowadays it no longer feels like they refuse to change, it feels like they're actually getting worse.
yep. reviewers just offer a surface level criticism, while these type of content creators are usually the ones that make indepth analysis.

this shit happened with Starfield already (2-3 weeks after release) . fortunately this time Bethesda/Xbox didn't do "slimy platform things" and let/give up/didn't have the budget to try to crate a positive and fake narrative around the game.

i dunno if there is enough fanboy drama online around the critical reception.... But it's in the low 50s....that is a score that kills AAA studios.
 

BigLee74

Member
Starfield was very good. Certainly the most ambitious game they’ve done.

But Skyrim was better.

And Fallout 3 (my first Bethesda biggie) was better still. Although its main story was even worse. I remember something about water.
 

BigLee74

Member
Hey look, I like Starfield plenty, but it's in no way BGS' best game. I'm playing Oblivion and Fallout 3 on my Steam Deck, and both of those games are just that much more engaging across the board despite being two generations removed.

Starfield's biggest issue for me is that they got rid of their engagement loop of "Going to do A, but I bumped into B, then I accidentally found C, and then I got interrupted when I saw D". Starfield requires a very direct player who deliberately makes their own fun. When you head off to do A, the game doesn't get in your way - no B, C or D. For some folks, that's clearly a show stopper. I don't mind it much frankly, but it's unquestionably less engaging than Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, or even Fallout 4.

That’s not quite true. I had a few of instances where I was doing a quest for A, and got side tracked by B, then C etc. Especially if you’re in the cities.

It’s just less likely to happen anywhere else due to the fragmented playing area.

But yes, considerably worse in that regard.
 
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ZehDon

Member
That’s not quite true. I had a few of instances where I was doing a quest for A, and got side tracked by B, then C etc. Especially if you’re in the cities.

It’s just less likely to happen due anywhere else due to the fragmented playing area.

But yes, considerably worse in that regard.
That's fair. I can't recall that happening to me, to be honest. But I did spend a lot of time exploring - which was just me talking to a POI, completing POI, and then picking the next POI to walk towards.
 

YeulEmeralda

Linux User
For me it’s a mix of Fallout and No Man’s Sky and.

And the ship building and outpost building mechanics are both fantastic. Especially ship building.

I genuinely love some things, many things, but I also get frustrated by how they miss the target completely on some things.
But they’ve improved it a lot since the release and they seem satisfied enough at the reception to keep working on it. That’s good news for me!

Space adventures and sci-fi of all kind has always been my favorite ingredient for games. Some of my favorites; Elite, Starglider 2, Space Quest, Super Metroid, Mass Effect, No Man’s Sky, etc, and now Starfield.

Dream updates:

Flying vehicles
, can’t drive a car in a jungle and it takes forever to walk.
Jepack builder, dismantle other packs to get the perks and then build your own with the perks you want.
More cities, can’t have a whole galaxy with like 10 cities, at minimum they should add a new one every year.
Hand-crafted dungeons with preset epic loot. Similar to the Mantis lair, needs to be more of that.
Turn your outpost into a settlement. Invite regular npcs to your outpost when it’s big enough, let them set up shop and do their thing when some key requirements for the outpost are met.
Better trading. Galactic trading boards with resources specific traders on specific planets want to buy for high amount of money. The trading economy and crafting mechanics should be greatly updated so you could live as a space trader.
This is my problem with Bethesda: they turned their games from RPG into Minecraft.
 

Da1337Vinci

Member
Thinking now more about what Emil said it seems like he is not mentioning any design decisions that elevate starfield to be the best of bethesda.

I can see the technical side he mentioned that indeed compare to their own games starfield show improvements in that regard.

Nonetheless If he or anyone in bethesda can't see the difference between starfield and their other franchises in appeal/freedom.

It is looking grim for the upcoming Fallout and Elder Scrolls games.
 

Cyberpunkd

Member
The sad thing about this, coupled with Concord and Ubisoft blaming gamers for poor sales of Outlaws, is that apparently "toxic positivity" is a thing. Like, there is no way he can say with a straight face this is the best thing a company did, there is no alternate universe where Starfield is better than Morrowind.
 
Would have been a hell of a lot better had they included the vehicle day one. I might have actually wanted to explore. But having to literally run for 5 to 10 minutes just to get to main quest objective sapped away whatever desire I had for exploring. So many things in this game were close to being great. If the game had been released today, I think reception would have been a lot better.
That's not the only problem, the problem is what you discover out there is also boring, it's always some abandoned location with a few pirates or something. I lost interest in exploring because there was never anything interesting that I found.
The exploration in FO and Skyrim you would encounter random settlements, towns, etc. You couldn't do that in SF, by design, that's why the exploration game loop doesn't work in SF.
 

Roni

Member
To state this when No Man's Sky exists is pretty disingenuous. He specifically said "space simulation".
 
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Fess

Member
This is my problem with Bethesda: they turned their games from RPG into Minecraft.
You mean the crafting and building mechanics?

For me they’ve just iterated on their previous building mechanics, like building the mansion in Skyrim, and made that mechanic more complex and open.

But it’s all optional, some don’t do any of that.

You still have the same RPG quests as in their previous games.

The big differences in Starfield is the size of the world and how they generate the map and fill it with dungeons and loot. It’s very much like No Man’s Sky in world structure but you have distinct biomes and it’s chopped up in squares. Then there is roleplaying and factions and cities. And the gun combat feels great.
Melee is still typical Bethesda melee combat. I play as a space samurai now, I just rush up to anyone and starts slashing, maxed out skills for melee. Very powerful build tbh, but it’s awful for bigger aliens like terrormorphs. Did a quest which ended with two terrormorphs, after a couple quick deaths I swapped to something with more ranged fire power.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
It's so cheesy when video game employees always have to plug their games as best ever, best graphics, best AI, etc.... How often do you see people in other industries do this?

We get it. The game is shit half the time, but you still got to promote it for sales and ego boosts. Relax.
 

YeulEmeralda

Linux User
You mean the crafting and building mechanics?

For me they’ve just iterated on their previous building mechanics, like building the mansion in Skyrim, and made that mechanic more complex and open.

But it’s all optional, some don’t do any of that.

You still have the same RPG quests as in their previous games.

The big differences in Starfield is the size of the world and how they generate the map and fill it with dungeons and loot. It’s very much like No Man’s Sky in world structure but you have distinct biomes and it’s chopped up in squares. Then there is roleplaying and factions and cities. And the gun combat feels great.
Melee is still typical Bethesda melee combat. I play as a space samurai now, I just rush up to anyone and starts slashing, maxed out skills for melee. Very powerful build tbh, but it’s awful for bigger aliens like terrormorphs. Did a quest which ended with two terrormorphs, after a couple quick deaths I swapped to something with more ranged fire power.
I think they spend too many resources on that crafting stuff. What I want out of a single player RPG is a good story and fascinating world building.
 

BigLee74

Member
It's so cheesy when video game employees always have to plug their games as best ever, best graphics, best AI, etc.... How often do you see people in other industries do this?

We get it. The game is shit half the time, but you still got to promote it for sales and ego boosts. Relax.
You serious?

All the time. Every person. Every industry!
 

Fess

Member
I think they spend too many resources on that crafting stuff. What I want out of a single player RPG is a good story and fascinating world building.
I agree on the world building, it’s important, but I like that they added something different that makes me keep playing it after the story has been told. And I like No Man’s Sky so for me it was the perfect addition. But I understand that it’s not for everyone.

Could have more cities and roleplaying quests coming from that. And more Mantis quests, that was awesome, should make more quests from loot like that. The drifting old earth ship was a great idea too, but clearly rushed. It’s a massive game, they should have a team that do nothing but build new quests and assets and then they could add that through updates to make the updates more interesting. Modders do a lot but not enough.
 
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