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Starfield is one of the worst written RPGs of all time

I’d go as far to say there’s almost no sexuality present in the game whatsoever. As rare as it is I did manage to find some in Neon, inside the Astral Lounge but it wasn’t what I expected. When I arrived all I could see were some dildo looking guys in women’s clothes dancing on an elevated platform. I simply turned around and left.

Honestly, what is the deal? Murder is fine, theft is fine, fraud is fine, selling is drugs fine… all these things are totally ok but when it comes to female sexuality… that’s where the line is drawn?

I mean… wtf is this supposed to be?

Starfield-Screenshot-016.webp
Wokeness
 

IceSage91

Banned
I’d go as far to say there’s almost no sexuality present in the game whatsoever. As rare as it is I did manage to find some in Neon, inside the Astral Lounge, but it wasn’t what I expected. When I arrived, all I could see were some dildo looking guys in women’s clothes dancing on an elevated platform. I simply turned around and left.

Honestly, what is the deal? Murder is fine, theft is fine, fraud is fine, selling is drugs fine… all these things are totally ok but when it comes to female sexuality… that’s where the line is drawn?

I mean… wtf is this supposed to be?

Starfield-Screenshot-016.webp
Yes because if Bethesda is known for anything it's the amount of sex in their games...
 

Kacho

Gold Member
I’d go as far to say there’s almost no sexuality present in the game whatsoever. As rare as it is I did manage to find some in Neon, inside the Astral Lounge, but it wasn’t what I expected. When I arrived, all I could see were some dildo looking guys in women’s clothes dancing on an elevated platform. I simply turned around and left.

Honestly, what is the deal? Murder is fine, theft is fine, fraud is fine, selling drugs is fine… all these things are totally ok but when it comes to female sexuality… that’s where the line is drawn?

I mean… wtf is this supposed to be?

Starfield-Screenshot-016.webp
The funniest thing are the NPCs there screaming, “wooooo best party ever!!!!”

People were paid to create that garbage lol
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Easily the biggest disappointment of the year for me....I keep finding myself going back to the other games you mentioned: BG3 and Cyberpunk 2.0. Haven't touched Starfield in over a week, and don't see a really compelling reason to go back. I saw someone made some sort of automated mining operation and I thought: cool, if I wanted to play Factorio, I'd play that. I'm coming to a Bethesda RPG to feel immersed in the world, and it's anything but that for all the reasons mentioned here.
I think this gets at the main issue I have with it. It tries to be everything and in comparison to other games that try to be everything, it is one of the best. However, all games that try to be everything end up being mediocre at everything so there aren't actually that many that have tried because most devs are smarter than that. I prefer picking one or two things to be good at.

If I want a space shooter, Everspace 2 is right there.
If I want a systems and crafting simulator, there are like a hundred better.
If I want a good shooter, there are also a hundred that do it better and actually let me fight more than 10 guys per encounter.
If I want an RPG there are many with far better character development, implementation of customization, and writing/relationships.
If I want a character action game there are dozens with far more compelling characters and emotions.
If I want an exploration game, which is the best thing that this game does, I can still find ones that are smoother and more immersive without being distracted by all these other mediocre aspects and amazingly shitty inventory system and completely broken environmental hazard system.

This is a real icarus project from a dev team far too small in its scope of specializations to even be dreaming it. It is even mediocre at being a good Bethesda-style game, which is currently being better done by Zenimax with ESO. Honestly, if they can't meaningfully take the L from Fallout 76 and this and truly learn from it and either up their game (this will take money and a lot of hiring) or work within their actual means (like, say, Double Fine does) then they are not headed down a good path. ES6 absolutely cannot repeat these same mistakes yet again. That would be the final seal of irrelevance.
 
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Darklor01

Might need to stop sniffing glue
I gotta say that this is the first time I felt my companions are a burden other than being either pack mules or when Sarah turns into Sarah Connor and jumps ahead to slaughter enemies while I’m being cautious.

I’m still early in the game but I have noticed that in just about every mission, the leaders are almost all women. It’s not implausible that’s how things could go, but it is a quite noticeable so far.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Good thing I wont miss good writing as I always mash the buttons to skip as much text and dialogue I can in games.

As crazy as it seems, some of the best dialogue and voice acting is in Diablo games (even though it's small in quantity as it's a random loot slashathon game).

I know games are geared to the younger crowd (games arent exactly aimed at people who like Schindler's List or documentaries) but considering how bad the writing is in games as a whole forever, I dont know if it's talentless writers or if it's CEO saying dumb it down. On one hand it seems impossible to have so many bad writers, but also impossible to assume the games are initially better written but execs say re-do the script and dumb it down.
 

Bungie

Member
I’d go as far to say there’s almost no sexuality present in the game whatsoever. As rare as it is I did manage to find some in Neon, inside the Astral Lounge, but it wasn’t what I expected. When I arrived, all I could see were some dildo looking guys in women’s clothes dancing on an elevated platform. I simply turned around and left.

Honestly, what is the deal? Murder is fine, theft is fine, fraud is fine, selling drugs is fine… all these things are totally ok but when it comes to female sexuality… that’s where the line is drawn?

I mean… wtf is this supposed to be?

Starfield-Screenshot-016.webp
As it goes with every BGS game, there's a mod for that. I'm just so blown away by how many people don't know their formula/tone but instantly have these kind of expectations. They have been making games longer than most.
 

Yoboman

Member
Starfield should have been the game after ESVI. ESVI they could have spent time working on the details that have fallen behind the competition. Fixing their engine so it is seamless, can support other modes of transport, improving their story telling, general engine performance, animation, facial animation etc.

Basically they should have been asking how do we do everything that RDR2 does well

Instead it seems like they've settled on PS360 to early PS4 standards being acceptable and focused on obfuscating behind perception of scale

Seems they also forgot that the success they had in Oblivion and Skyrim was by focusing down and making a smaller but more alive open world, over the previous procedural generation like Daggerfall
 
I know games are geared to the younger crowd (games arent exactly aimed at people who like Schindler's List or documentaries) but considering how bad the writing is in games as a whole forever, I dont know if it's talentless writers or if it's CEO saying dumb it down. On one hand it seems impossible to have so many bad writers, but also impossible to assume the games are initially better written but execs say re-do the script and dumb it down.
imo, it's not so much about dumbing down (tho making sure you don't 'overcomplicate' things & possibly leave some people behind does play a role) as it is about safety. in the same way that the sexiness is toned down, the utter absence of anything even resembling humor is glaring. i mean, what're the odds that the entire friggin' galaxy is going to be absent a sense of humor?...

that the same developers that produced the fallout games, which are pretty much inherently offensive, have ended up playing it sooo safe with starfield is just sad & disappointing. i appreciate the effort that's gone into the game, but there's just this core soullessness at it's heart that undoes so much of that effort...
 
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Kagoshima_Luke

Gold Member
I gave up after 17 hours. I was hoping that planetary exploration would keep me hooked, but after three planets, everything was exactly the same. Then I read about it and realized it wasn’t going to change. That’s when I dropped it and I’m not planning on going back.
 

Pimpbaa

Member
I love the game, but then again I am mostly doing sidequests and exploring not doing much of the main quest (I got over 50 hours and just did Sam Coe’s quest). I never play BGS games for the story (they all suck in that regard). I see my companions as just a tool that increases my damage in battle and somewhere I can dump my shit when I become overencumbured. Although potential losing companions due to choices made in the game suck. Right now I’m playing it as if were me, so I make “good” choices most of the time. But I love games that allow me to be evil which I usually do on my 2nd play through. If you want to do that in this game, you have to have a pretty specific set of companions (Mathias, Jessamine, and Vasco apparently). Some say Andreja but she doesn’t like piracy apparently (I don’t know the character since she isn’t part of my team yet)).
 
I agree

The writing is ABYSMALLY infantile

For a game that doesn’t have much else going for it, the least they could do is create a compelling narrative, characters, and dialogue

It is SHOCKINGLY bad for a modern big budget game. Zero personality, completely safe and binary. So many games do these aspects far better even if they aren’t perfect
 
Good writing in an RPG means different things to different people. You might appreciate meaningful choices. You might appreciate deep conversations with realistic characters. You might appreciate an epic adventure full of memorable twists and turns. You might appreciate years spent on developing the worldbuilding for an interesting universe full of diverse characters, races, species, backgrounds, and ideas.

Well, Starfield fails at RPG writing on every level. This doesn’t mean it’s a worthless failure of a game overall. The core mechanics of exploring, shooting, and looting can hold your attention, just as they may have in Bethesda’s previous open world RPGs. But at every turn the writing slaps you in the face.

Let’s start with the companions. Dear god. All of them are Lawful Good wet blankets who criticize you every roughly 15 seconds. Inventory over the minuscule weight limit? “Have you considered NOT picking up everything you can find?” every time you pick up an item. Stealing something, including from villains? “Wow, I didn’t realize I was hanging out with a CRIMINAL” every time you pick up an item. Get into a fight that you could have conceivably avoided via dialogue options? They will sometimes leave your party and brand you irredeemable, even if the only way to avoid the enemies attacking you was through a persuasion check that you failed, leaving you with no choice but to defend yourself. You’ll still be met with the companion leaving your party and refusing to talk to you. Unless every step you take is within their exacting moral expectations you will be reprimanded or dumped.

There are also story beats with bizarre turns. During one of the main faction quests, you are given one of your few pseudo-consequential player choices. Basically, you can choose a risky scientific option that unleashes genetically engineered microbes onto humanity to solve the problem, or a less risky naturalistic option where you breed an animal that will take care of the problem. If you choose the sensible naturalistic option with what is essentially a guaranteed good outcome based on the evidence presented to you, your companions will condemn you as a mouth-breathing moron. If you choose the risky scientific option that explicitly has a chance of wiping out humanity by mutating in unknown ways, your companions will laud you for “Trusting the Science" (actual quote), in what is a bizarre, warped take on recent events political messaging, considering how risky the in-game choice is.

Not only that, but if you have a companion in your party, good luck picking any of the rare Han Solo style dialogue options. In a mission where Andreja is your forced companion, you dock with a ship with the intention of stealing an item from the owner. This a morally gray mission where you’re expected to con the owner, burglarize him, or kill him in order to retrieve the item. When you enter the ship, you’re met with one of the owner’s employees, and he asks you why you’re there. You only have two dialogue options: one, be an imbecile and tell him exactly why you’re there, or two, you can reply facetiously that you heard there was a big party on the ship and you’re here to party. If you say the latter, Andreja, who is literally there to help you steal the item by any means necessary, will respond by Disliking your comment and interjecting flatly that she “has no interest in partying.”

It's a problem endemic to all the characters in Starfield. It was marketed as a Han Solo simulator, but you are constantly badgered and browbeaten by catty, humorless women for anything you do. I won’t dwell too much on the ideological choices made to satisfy the current year climate but suffice to say that roughly 90% of the leaders in Starfield are women. And they are one-dimensional, deeply unlikeable charisma black holes who will talk to you with utter contempt most of the time. Of the remaining 10%, most of the men are presented as incompetent or evil. It’s a galaxy ruled by Karens. And the Karens are also your party members and love interests. I have never experienced a more unlikeable cast of characters in an RPG.

Let’s also consider the dreaded romance options. The first romanceable companion you encounter is Sarah. Sarah is a middle-aged ex-military leader who runs the organization you join. She’s quick to criticize you and expects you to do the conventional and lawful thing at all times. If you romance her, by choosing options like Trusting the Science and by praising her awkwardly at every opportunity in a way that would be creepy and weird to any actual human being, she will eventually begin to trust you and open up. Now, by opening up I mean she will reveal herself to be a giant ball of insecure, wallowing baggage that you are expected to comfort with dialogue options that reduce her to the emotional maturity of a small child. “Wow, you’re so strong, Sarah! Good job staving off that nervous breakdown over nothing, Sarah!” Then, inexplicably, you will end these conversations about her baggage with a “Flirt” option if you want to pursue her romantically. She will rebuff your advances awkwardly and end the conversation every time. Do this on around a dozen separate occasions, with no actual romance or flirtation between you two, only rejections at the end of your impromptu therapy sessions, and she will trust you enough to take you on her loyalty mission, which is literally to confront her emotional baggage. Complete that and she will decide that she can get involved with you romantically. Without any intimate moments, explicitly or implicitly, she will then decide that she has fallen in love with you and want to get married. Handle her baggage for her --> let’s get married. That’s how it works for humans, right? Right?

I’m genuinely horrified by the writing in this game, and I pity the people who conjured up these character interactions. They must live some of the dullest and most dysfunctional lives imaginable.

Starfield displays time and time again, without fail, that it fundamentally lacks understanding of the human condition. You land on worlds with the premise of a dystopian cyberpunk society where hard drugs are legal and everything is available for a price. When you arrive, though, all you’ll find is some tepid fully clothed dancing at a bland nightclub and a few people talking about how cu-raaazy everything is. It’s a game unwilling to explore humanity’s faults and genuine human drama on any level. At the futuristic fashionista clothing stores your only options are literally unisex tarps. Everyone is of varied ethnicity but there is no ethnic culture whatsoever. Women are purely masculine, leaving no one left to be feminine. This is not a demand for T&A by any means. In the real world, men and women don’t wear tarps and talk in monotone at a safe distance, defined purely by their profession. Life is messy and dramatic, desires and egos clash, stars rise and fall, people love and lust and hate and trust and betray. But not in Starfield, a corporate-sanitized ideological bog too afraid to include one iota of humanity in its storytelling.

RPGs are doing so much more elsewhere, from Baldur's Gate 3 to Cyberpunk 2077, but even looking back at Bethesda's own games, this one is a step backwards. The Elder Scrolls games incorporate different ethnic backgrounds and intense religious beliefs, ugly racial prejudice and morally gray deities. Starfield reeks of design by committee resulting in a product too afraid to take any storytelling risks. Nothing can ever be well-written when it is this extraordinarily conformist and risk-averse, particularly when the expectations for political correctness are so narrow in 2023.

You can do better.
I am loving the game, currently around 50 hours in, and yet I can agree 100% with your points. The companions are especially awful. I wouldn't have minded a couple of goody two shoes companions, as long as there were a balance of other types of people. Compared to Skyrim, as just another Bethesda example, there are so few companions and way less personalities. I also agree that the game is way too "politically correct". Maybe they were shooting for a PG game? I will say that it seems their writing has gone down massively since Skyrim
 
I am loving the game, currently around 50 hours in, and yet I can agree 100% with your points. The companions are especially awful. I wouldn't have minded a couple of goody two shoes companions, as long as there were a balance of other types of people. Compared to Skyrim, as just another Bethesda example, there are so few companions and way less personalities. I also agree that the game is way too "politically correct". Maybe they were shooting for a PG game? I will say that it seems their writing has gone down massively since Skyrim

Serious question, how can you love this game despite the writing being so bad?

I have complete indifference to everything I do in the game because it’s written so poorly and story is a central focus in RPGs
 

Faust

Perpetually Tired
Serious question, how can you love this game despite the writing being so bad?

I have complete indifference to everything I do in the game because it’s written so poorly and story is a central focus in RPGs

It is fun to fly around, build your spaceship, visit different planets, and create outposts. That has been what I have primarily done. I struggle to give a damn about the main story, unlike in Oblivion or Morrowind, where I felt compelled to continue. Skyrim far less so and Fallout 4/76/StarField have me avoiding the mains story when possible.
 
It is fun to fly around, build your spaceship, visit different planets, and create outposts. That has been what I have primarily done. I struggle to give a damn about the main story, unlike in Oblivion or Morrowind, where I felt compelled to continue. Skyrim far less so and Fallout 4/76/StarField have me avoiding the mains story when possible.

Yeah I can see that, I guess I’m just not having much fun with those other aspects so it’s really souring my overall experience

I probably place a higher emphasis on writing/story than many. It immerses me into the experience so much more and can make up for elements that are lacking (GTA/RDR)

It just amazes me that it’s not better and as you have mentioned actually regresses from their previous works
 
Serious question, how can you love this game despite the writing being so bad?

I have complete indifference to everything I do in the game because it’s written so poorly and story is a central focus in RPGs

Writing has political correctness.

That's the premise of this thread I think.

It isn't bad in a way it will ruin your experience. It's minimalistic so cannot ruin it. It has certain charm.

Badly written games with a ton of dialogue is what ruins some games.
 

Fess

Member
Just finished the story, which I largely focused on after hearing all the praise, and it was really just piss poor. Honestly, something a 12 year-old could have written.

Mass Effect is leaps and bounds ahead of this. Having dialogue options is no excuse for telling a shell of a story.

Not that I remember much of the stories in Fallout 3, Oblivion or Skyrim but I can't believe people were actually hyping the main quest here.
Where have you seen praise and hype about the main story??

In the OT everybody has mostly been talking about side quests and factions and building ships and bases.

Only thing I’ve seen hyped up regarding doing the main quest was reaching NG+, was said to be something special that hadn’t been done before. Then there was talk about making sure to rush through the main quest because then the game truly starts or something like that, which must’ve been some weird troll because it’s quite possibly the worst advice I’ve ever seen given for any game.
 

sertopico

Member
That's the kind of review I wanted to read.

Thank you.

I almost fell into buying it... Almost.

PS: was also this post written by ChatGPT? :D
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Hopefully we get a shift in american/western writing that is more realistic as Starfields biggest let down how sterile it is.

Where's the orgies on aurora etc?

You pay to get in this secret lounge and its.....nothing....and this is supposed to be on a terrifying planet run by a crime boss openly selling drugs....

Makes no sense at all.
 

DonJorginho

Banned
Lots of reviewers like matty plays
Matty Plays is a Bethesda shill through and through, I like his channel/content a lot but this was the same guy who was openly praising Fallout 76 even at launch all because he got a review code and it was from his beloved BGS, and he only changed his opinion on the game once the entire internet (and as a result his audience) made their dislike for FO76 clear.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Like the 200 year old colony ship with the same internals and computer screens and operative systems and loot and people with the same (boring) looks and clothes like 200 years later.
Yikes… it feels painful… I cannot believe the writer of that scenario had that in mind, so it looks like a “need to get it done, no time in sending this to even an outside studio to finish the assets and textures needed”. This feels like a game with a very long pre-production, a messy production phase with some issues, and then somebody was put in charge to drive it out to completion.
 

sertopico

Member
Good write up. Sounds really awful.

This seems like the future of video games written in the West. Dull, safe and politically correct. The old writers will conform to the zeitgeist and the new ones coming out of the colleges, I dread to think...

Maybe GTA6 will get away with it. 🤷
I've got no high hopes about GTA. The way people get triggered for nothing nowadays killed satire. It's all about one extreme or the other, nothing in between. I miss the 90s.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Good write up. Sounds really awful.

This seems like the future of video games written in the West. Dull, safe and politically correct.
The sad thing is that they think that shaping culture like this will change people fundamentally. As a permanent gene modification…

It will not. They think they are creating a Roddenberry’s like utopia and they know they are probably over reaching and doing evil things and being hypocritical, but they ste stuck in a “end justifies the means” loop… which I believe will be undone. That is a problem because it is likely that the pendulum will swing completely the other way (no middle ground, not enough moderates out there once they keep pushing people into radicalised camps) and a lot of the good things we achieved for society may be undone alongside the excesses.
 

laynelane

Member
It is fun to fly around, build your spaceship, visit different planets, and create outposts. That has been what I have primarily done. I struggle to give a damn about the main story, unlike in Oblivion or Morrowind, where I felt compelled to continue. Skyrim far less so and Fallout 4/76/StarField have me avoiding the mains story when possible.

Your comment reminded me of when I first figured out how to make FO4 a more enjoyable game - completely ignore the main quest starting with 'When Freedom Calls' (ie. leave Garvey in the museum). I don't remember that being such an issue in previous games either.
 
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I like the game a lot - but after playing through it I really don’t have a desire to continue with the new game plus and finish all the other quests I didn’t do. Similar to my feeling with TOTK actually - at a certain point just feels like it takes too long to get things done and a lot of it is busy work.

I don’t really care about the writing much - I liked cyberpunks writing, that might’ve been the one rpg game I got into in that regard. Pan am and Judy were super hot as well which helped… bg3 has no real time combat and I’m getting bored with the turn based stuff.

Maybe open world rpgs just aren’t for me. Elden ring I loved. But that’s a lot of combat. As of now RE4 remake is GOTY for me honestly.
 

Fess

Member
Serious question, how can you love this game despite the writing being so bad?

I have complete indifference to everything I do in the game because it’s written so poorly and story is a central focus in RPGs
There is is a ton of stuff to do. Are you just moving from quest marker to quest marker?

In general, what makes me love a game has always been about well-crafted game mechanics and systems and an entertaining game loop and satisfying progression.

A good story can certainly make a great game even better but a bad story can never make a great game bad for me.

But if you don’t like the game loop then don’t worry about it just play something else. 🤷‍♂️
Just like music or food we all like different things. It’s normal.

As for myself and Starfield. Finished it once, 81 hours, NG+ was a disappointment but I loved the game loop so I instantly went in for another playthrough. Currently spending my time exploring for resources and building a base. Still haven’t touched another game since I started.

I guess for me it’s the combination of the setting, freedom, satisfying combat, finding loot, doing side content and factions, ship and base building, going to different planets to search for resources and scan stuff, raiding bases and ships and just live in the world.

Although, it has been a roller coaster. It wasn’t the game I thought it was. And there is tons of stuff they could’ve done so much better, writing being one thing, and some other things are literally pissing me off for how bad they are.
But I’m at 100+ hours in 3 weeks and can’t stop playing so whatever it does certainly fits my gaming taste. The sum of all things makes it end on a positive note for me.
 
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