Starfield's first DLC is one of the worst Bethesda and DLCs of all time

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Buttflapper@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

Starfield steam page for the DLC currently shows eight user review score of 41%, making this one of the worst Bethesda DLC’s released of all time. This is so horribly, shockingly bad for Bethesda, because it shows as a gaming company, they are no longer capable of delivering a really good gaming experience as they had in the past. Some of the reviews sum up quite nicely what is wrong with this DLC…

Less content than any skyrim DLC. Less than The Fallout 4 story DLCs. Doesn’t change of the complaints people had with the base game, writing is still at a 4th grade level.

Quick: If you are looking to buy my answer is no, you aren’t missing much content. I was really hoping to enjoy this DLC. Took about 4 hours for the main story and maybe 2 more hours to 100% the achievements.

These two reviews I think really summed up what Starfield has become, $70 for an AAAA title that has extremely little buy-in from the community, horrifically low amount of replayability and can be breezed through easily. It’s mind-boggling to see this

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scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Remember when Cyberpunk fucked up their release. They knew they fucked up and owed it to the gamers. They told their board and stockholders to hold off, and that they needed to rebuild trust with their users before they could make line go up.

So they took their time, they redid many of the mechanics that people didn’t like, the fixed all of the bugs, and then they released Phantom Liberty - one of the best expansions I have ever seen in gaming history. Good enough where it could have been a game on it’s own.

That is how you rebuild trust with the community. You tell your stockholders to shut the fuck up and let you do what you do best. If they don’t trust you to do that, then fuck em, they can sell their stock, why are they holding stock in a company they don’t trust?

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- dinckelman@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Post-2.0 Cyberpunk is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time. You can tell it’s a product of effort, and love for the project. They have taken in a considerable amount of feedback from pre-1.5.
  
  Meanwhile, Starfield is a complete miss in just about every way imaginable, and the expansion has followed through the same footsteps. On top of that, the studio actively gaslit people who expressed disapproval, even when it was constructive criticism.
  
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  - scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I fully expect them to say it’s getting “review bombed” now, which is the current industry redefining of a term to make it come off as “It’s not us, it’s the stupid gamer’s fault”
    
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  - intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Did they fix the driving?
    
    That was the one and only reason I gave up the game. It was amazing from the start, and then I got in a car and it was horrible, and I stopped.
    
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- TommySoda@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Same with No Man’s Sky. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but they buckled down and delivered on almost every promise that they failed on back at release. Not only that but every update since the game came out has been for free. Both No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk are fantastic games, and they were garbage on release. Bethesda has been doing the opposite approach and avoiding feedback from fans since Skyrim came out the first time.
  
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- acosmichippo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Cyberpunk was buggy, unoptimized, and kind of unfinished, but the fundamental game design was sound.
  
  Starfield on the other hand is broken at its core. The Bethesda RPG experience just does not translate to the open worlds space map they built the game on. So they can’t take the cyberpunk approach because they’d have to build an entirely different game from scratch.
  
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  - scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I don’t know why anyone decided that that engine was the right way to go. The number one thing that killed the game for me was the endless loading screens. Constantly. Whenever I started feeling immersed, a new loading screen would pop up and it ruined it for me. We have engines left and right that don’t need to do this anymore, but starfield, the game that’s trying to base itself to be a realistic exploration game, decided that endless loading screens were still the best way to go
    
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  - intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Given the amount of the playable game that takes place on foot, they should have called it Field
    
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- HeavyRaptor@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The difference is, there is no fixing Starfield, it is rotten to the core. You would have to re-do most of the story elements and writing, and the disjointed, empty world. On top of that you’d have to fix the bugs and technical limitations like the constant loading screens. At this point you would be throwing out most of the game and basically starting from scratch with a few systems done, like the ship building and possibly gunplay.
  
  I think cyberpunk never became what many wanted, but if you let go of your expectations, it is a good game.
  
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  - scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Funny thing is that shipbuilding also felt annoying to me. There were so many arbitrary restrictions that I felt like I couldn’t actually make the ship I wanted, it always felt the same
    
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  - cmhe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I dislike the narrative that something is “unfixable”, everything is fixable if there is a will to do so.
    
    I don’t know why game developers seem to have inhibitions of changing the game too much after release. For instance reworking and extending the main story in a game seems to be a big red line for them.
    
    For instance I would have wished in Cyberpunk 2077 to actually play Vs introduction into Night City and the individual fixers myself, instead of just watching a cut scene. A DLC could have extended the start of the game a bit.
    
    The same for Starfield, they could extend and improve the main story, characters and locations in an update, but seem hesitant to do so. Something like directors cut, that adds cut content as well as tons of side quests into the game.
    
    If people still want to play the original game, they can make the extended story optional, like sleecting what version you want to play at the game start.
    
    For bugs, they could work together with the community and the “unofficial patch” and engine fixer modders, instead just ignoring them. In Skyrim SSE for instance they still had many of the same bugs that Oldrim had and where fixed by thr community.
    
    Bethesda could improve, and even fix their games, if they would decide to do so. Their DLC just doesn’t seem to be worth what they ask for, it could have been just part of a free update, so that some more people buy the base game.
    
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- Letstakealook@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I might need to revisit cyberpunk, I didn’t know an expansion was ever released. I kind of hit max level doing mostly side quests within 4 months of launch and lost interest.
  
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  - teft@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They changed a lot, but in a good way. I had also spent a while away from the game and came back recently for the expansion. It’s really good.
    
    I would suggest starting a new character from scratch if you pick up the DLC. You’ll really appreciate the new changes to cyberwear that way.
    
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  - scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s pretty legit. It stands on it’s own, and they also improved the base game quite a bit. I’d suggest it for sure
    
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  - pseudonaut@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s REALLY good.
    
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  - Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    basically the major points of change was launch, then cyberpunk edgerunners clothing dlc patch (1.0 but bigs fixed). 2.0 rewrote some of the games mechanics that dropped before the expansion. and then the expansion was released (which added new endings)
    
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  - gcheliotis@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m waiting for the ultimate edition that will include everything here
    
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- net00@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I mean, it all hinged in the fact that under all those glitches and bugged mechanics CDPR still had a nice game. Starfield can’t be salvaged cuz the core game is just mediocre shit.
  
  I wanna say it’s a failed IP at this point, but who knows how many copies sold. What is sure is it doesn’t deserve any more of my time. I have the DLC but won’t reinstall that garbage
  
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  - ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It certainly sold a lot. Bethesda once claimed to have over 10 million players across all platforms. Even if we assume half of those were using gamepass, that’s still 5 million sales.
    
    Of course, if you compare it to Fallout 4’s first 6 months, with reported 12 million sales on day-one, that’s a significant letdown.
    
    Starfield is a very real “could have been”, if only [huge list of changes] happened.
    
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- exu@feditown.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I didn’t play it at the time because of the bugs, but from what I saw the good parts of Cyberpunk were already present. Stuff like storytelling, interesting characters etc.
  Starfield has none of that.
  
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- VelvetStorm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m still mad the monowire doesn’t work how it was said it would and that the cops can’t be bribed and shit like that. It’s a great game now and a lot of fun to play but I won’t ever trust another game company again like I did with them after they made witcher 3.
  
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- inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I just finished playing it for the first time and I was blown away right from the start! Guess I’m glad I waited for the polish, but the world design, voice acting and overall storyline was absolutely fantastic. I couldn’t help feel bad for all the artists that clearly put a lot of love in to the world only to be overshadowed by bugs and poor implementation.
  
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- boonhet@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  On that note, how is Cyberpunk still 60 euros on Steam? I know it’s been getting better with the DLC and everything, but the game’s been out for ages.
  
  That said, I might have to buy Phantom Liberty. I bought and finished the base game like 2 or 3 years ago I think and I really enjoyed it even back then.
  
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  - scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Personally I think it’s worth it, it’s one of the few games I happily would pay full price for again. They did a full redemption arc, their game is now up there as one of my favorites of all time, next to Witcher 3 and RDR2. I think they deserve my money. What I really think is that Cyberpunk deserves 60. How the fuck can Assassin’s Creed think that they’re on the same level (or higher) than that?
    
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  - sparky@lemmy.federate.cc ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It does go on sale from time to time. I picked it up on Xbox last year for 60% off if I recall correctly.
    
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- Carighan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  … And still could bit fix that some keys are hardcoded. But I agree, with expansion the game was quite enjoyable.
  
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Katana314@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Remember, folks: Microsoft kept these people, and fired the ones who made Hi-Fi Rush.

That, alone, was my signal the entire console was going to slowly burn down.

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- Buttflapper@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Microsoft is a fucking ghoulish, evil company. The only reason they bought Bethesda was to own their IP. They have Elder scrolls, Fallout, and Doom Because of ID games. That alone is going to bring them so much money, if they ever want to sell any of those franchises in the future, they can sell them for a fortune. That’s probably the reason why they acquired Bethesda to begin with. Laying off Hi-Fi Rush after they delivered an excellent product was just pure evil.
  
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RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Still better than Horse Armor. So no, not Bethesda’s worst DLC.

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- very_well_lost@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  At least horse armor was good for the memes. This is so bland no one even cares to meme about it.
  
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- Buttflapper@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Still better than Horse Armor. So no, not Bethesda’s worst DLC.
  
  The difference is that Oblivion wasn’t bad at all. It was terrific. Starfield was trash from the beginning, then delivers a trash DLC. That’s much worse. No improvement.
  
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- ech@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  There are 2 important words there that you’re missing.
  
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  - samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Shattered Space is one of the DLCs of all time.
    
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jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
(cough) Horse Armor (cough)

knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/horse-armor

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- Glytch@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This was exactly my first thought. Not surprised that the pioneers of shitty dlc made shitty dlc.
  
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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah…
  
  Basically every Oblivion DLC that was not Shivering Isles (and MAYBE Heroes of The Nine or whatever) was god awful. And Fallout 3 (aside from the last two hours of the story DLC) was only really tolerated because it was mostly sold as a season pass. Operation Anchorage was a cool novelty that made stealth trivial and the rest… existed.
  
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  - pancakes@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I would argue that all the fo3 and oblivion DLC were decent. Some obviously better than others, but they weren’t just soulless cash grabs. They had effort go into them, and were fairly new into the DLC space so some trial and error is to be expected. They had a pretty good amount of content for the price relative to the base game, compared to the starfield DLC/ current AAA norms.
    
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- samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Which was exclusive to…Microsoft! Full circle.
  
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WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Microsoft really knows how to pick the winners, don’t they?

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- aluminium@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  they are a reverse midas. Anything they touch doesn’t turn into gold but into shit
  
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  - Asafum@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Mierdas touch
    
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- ryathal@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They do ESO makes anything else the company does largely irrelevant. Same as Blizzard back when Activision bought them.
  
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Soup@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This makes me feel better about them being exclusive to Microsoft now. I’m not missing anything at all.

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- samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You’re not. I pirated it on release and was very glad I didn’t buy it.
  
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- EnderMB@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Well…except the next installations of Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Let’s be honest, that’s what Microsoft were really buying, and neither are anywhere near a release.
  
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  - samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Judging by how Starfield turned out, will missing either of those games (which are almost certainly going to be using the same incredibly outdated engine) be much of a loss?
    
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  - djsoren19@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Neither of which will matter.
    
    Bethesda’s game design is just too old. Playing Starfield felt like playing an RPG from a decade ago. Bethesda just got complacent from back when they were one of the only companies that could seriously do an open-world RPG, now we have CD Projekt-Red and FromSoftware with wildly different, significantly more innovative gameplay experiences. Hell, even other AAA devs like Capcom have been able to outperform in the open world space, Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a ton of fun.
    
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BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
And it was something people were hoping would save the game. But, it’s unfortunately more confirmation that Bethesda can no longer produce quality games.

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- dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Bethesda was obviously already toast to anyone paying attention when Fallout '76 came out. They certainly haven’t improved since.
  
  …And I can’t believe that these are the motherfuckers who own the rights to Doom now.
  
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  - BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    saying 76 hasnt improved since just shows everyone you dont know what youre talking about
    
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  - samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Thankfully, they’re not the ones who develop Doom. They can publish it all they want as long as they stay the hell away from the actual games.
    
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Asafum@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve given up on every major developer/publisher, so-called AAA garbage, except for capcom for monster hunter and square enix for final fantasy. I’ll be extra sad the day they too go the way of every other greedy lazy “AAA” game company…

At least indie devs care to make a good game and not try to make a money printing IP machine with some game like aspects in it.

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- SorryforSmelling@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  as a hige indi/small developer fan i see great times ahad. AAA will fail, clmpanys will close and developers will find new homes in smaller teams. by 2030 i predict a golden age for AA and and perhabs also a new golden age for indi.
  
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- Buttflapper@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  [deleted]
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  - Ashtear@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    “AAAA” isn’t a thing. That was just Guillemot being an idiot and flailing on an investor call.
    
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  - Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    $70 is going to be the new normal price for AAA. Prices haven’t increased in decades. I don’t like it, but that’s what it is. It’s not AAAA because of the price, nor is that even a thing.
    
    AAA comes from credit rating scores. It essentially means nearly guaranteed returns. It was used to identify games that need to be stocked for game stores. AAA is going to sell. AA is slightly less but still good. Etc. There is not AAAA credit rating. That was just stupid marketing buzzwords that don’t matter.
    
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  - samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    So Tears of the Kingdom was AAAA?
    
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- Reviever@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  oof ffxvi? the “rpg” which is just a action game. ff vii remakes are at least good.
  
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  - Asafum@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m not a purist lol I enjoyed the hell out of FF16. I think 8 and 13 were the only ones I didn’t really care for
    
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- TheHotze@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Even Capcom I’m not preordering. If wilds is getting good reviews a couple days after launch I’ll get it. (Even though I’m pretty sure it will be a good game)
  
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  - Asafum@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I feel like monster hunter is kinda hard to mess up, unless they suddenly decided to make it turn based with micro transactions for extra turns or something lol
    
    The “story” is: omg big monster messing up the ecosystem, go fight! So it’s really all down to gameplay lol
    
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- samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Nintendo’s games are still usually very good, even though their business practices suck ass.
  
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MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Hey im all for giving Bethesda shit for publishing an incredibly bland game, but 8 reviews hardly seem like a solid foundation to make that title

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hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I have no hope for The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5. It was a good run but like all things. Everything comes to an end.

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kembik@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I don’t think this means ES6 is doomed. Did anyone play the Civ space game? It was an offshoot one-off experiment that wasn’t really well recieved and they quietly moved on.

My guess is that this game pivoted during development and they ended up with something that didn’t really work and shouldn’t have shipped. The failure to find something good in this experiment may be isolated to this game.

The fact that they released it in the state they did could be more about their workflow and project pipeline/target milestones they need to hit than it is about their ability to execute.

The failure here is in design, ES6 has a tried and true design to follow.

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- Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The problem is Starfield isn’t a one off. It’s the latest in a line of progressively worse games. Every game since Skyrim has been worse than the one that came before it.
  
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  - sushibowl@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Since Skyrim? I’d say their quality has been slowly declining since Morrowind. It wasn’t that noticeable at first, since oblivion, fallout 3, and Skyrim were still quite good and fallout 4 was decent. But then fallout 76 was a mess at release, TES blades was shit, and starfield just seems lazy.
    
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- ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Story and worldbuilding wise, ES6 has a very bleak future ahead. Emilio Pagliarulo, the de facto director of Starfield and lead writer, has shown that no hole is deep enough that he won’t dig it further down when it comes to lack of quality and consistency. Not that Skyrim’s main story was good, but it was certainly better than Starfield’s. There’s also the disturbing indifference of “the world” to everything happening around it. Literally nothing you do in Starfield affects anything outside its own storyline. Hell, shooting up in the air or using fucking space magic in the middle of a city generates no reaction from npcs if nobody is hit.
  
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- exu@feditown.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If ES6 is just a refreshed Skyrim I really see no reason to buy it. There are much more interesting RPGs than the Bethesda style nowadays.
  
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RangerJosie@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m enjoying it.

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zecg@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I am really enjoying this downfall of Bethesda, Blizzard, Ubisoft and EA, more than I enjoyed anything they published in half a decade. I wish death also to Gearbox. It’s coming and after Randy bought and promptly ruined RoR2, my schadenfreude is tingling.

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NOT_RICK@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Welp, guess I can officially uninstall Starfield. Bummer.

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gcheliotis@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Sometimes I wonder whether Starfield truly deserves all the bad publicity or whether people are also still upset because it became an Xbox exclusive and that is clouding their judgement. I know it does affect me for one. I got a ps5 for gaming and I’m automatically much less interested in anything that isn’t on the platform. And I was of course very disappointed when Microsoft outright bought all these huge IPs and made them exclusive to Xbox.

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Chocrates@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
But but, we’ve been told Bethesda hears us and was fixing it!

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paladin3494@feddit.dk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not really. It isn’t as good as Far Harbor aeven though the world building is better and more interesting. Of course it’s way worse than Dragonborn. But it’s definitely better than Nuka World and Automaton. And also better than the Pitt and Mothership Zeta even though it’s difficult to make comparisons with Fallout 3

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brrt@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Glad I didn’t buy the DLC and decided I’ll wait for some sort of definitive edition to play Starfield again. I hope by that point it will be a better overall game and have enough new things to make it worth the time.

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GhiLA@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Cool Bethesda, just dump the Gamebryo source code off to us before you get liquidated by Shittersoft since you’re basically budgeted into making half-baked shit until you go bankrupt anyway.

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yamanii@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They aimed at Far Harbor and arrived at The Pit, this was their chance, there’s not even random content since it’s all in the same planet, they just forgot they were doing a RPG and gave no meaningful choices, there are plenty of bad endings that just make you load a save lol.

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