https://www.thejimquisition.com/post/starfield-empty-spaces-review
that’s the actual review, don’t bother with this shitty forbes article
Shitty Forbes blog post, even.
i need to get dressed up. no one ever warned me! actually it’s fine.
This 100% was said about Skyrim. Bethesda just makes weak RPGs with no stakes or personality.
I don’t think it’s fair to call Bethesda games RPGs. They’re more like environmental looter shooters. And if you take them kind of easy breezy not serious you can have fun. But you’re not going to get real roleplay.
You’ll find some cool stories, but not roleplay
I so disagree. I think Skyrim, for example, is all about roleplaying but extremely shallow in the RPG mechanics side of things.
I mean to say, the gameplay is shallow, but that shallowness allows casual players to essentially ignore the mechanics and play characters from bandits to farmers or merchants or nomads or whatever they want. It’s the purest form of roleplaying and I think that’s why Skyrim in particular is still so popular.
That said, my fav is Morrowind because I love stats driven, cronchy RPG mechanics.
You may or may not be right about Skyrim
But 1000% Morrowinds Stat driven cronchy bs was bae (and the best world IMO, God I hated Skyrim from the jump just for that - Funky mushroom land getting around on silt striders to fucking HELL PORTALS to… Every generic fantasy land ever, dragons and all 🙄)
And they turned Cyrodill from a cool interesting tropical jungle into… Fable 4.
Fr that bothers me to this day. Wtf happened to Bethesda’s unique settings? Nothing coming from the elder scrolls IP has matched Morrowind in that regard and I have no idea why.
Todd Howard is why
Purest form of roleplaying? Have you tried or heard about Kenshi? That game is pure roleplaying, this is action game with a bit of rpg sprinkled
Kenshi is awesome. I agree with you.
They’re action rpgs
I’m not sure if everyone’s opinion just changed over night, but saying anything bad about Skyrim or Bethesda games used to get you downvoted to hell in casual video game communities, and this is even a Bethesda community.
People praise Skyrim like it’s the greatest game ever, like it’s the only game they ever played. What happened?
It’s mostly people who grew up playing Skyrim who are super positive about it in my experience.
Eh, I mean I grew up playing Skyrim and love it, but I can also admit that that’s nearly all nostalgia and that it’s a staggeringly shallow game.
I wish skyrim was as good as people claim it is.
I liked fallout 3 a lot, and i never looked into fallout 4 before it launched. Like i haven’t seen anything about the game, except for the launch trailer before i bought it because i happened to be bored. The game was so bad looking and odd that i closed the game to make sure i didn’t download the wrong game, or like some scam like: Foulout 4. I did that twice. The game was unplayable and ass ugly. I know they patched a lot of things but the game is just not good, and giving it a 10/10 is insulting to every other video game.I think Bethesda has enough ass kissing fans who praise their games. Like i wasn’t hopeful for starfield at all, but i still had that thing in the bqck of my brain that thought: but what if it’s really good. But no, it’s optimized badly it looks like modded skyrim, nothing seem to have consequences, the freedom to do whatever you want, absolutely lifeless npc’s. They had npc’s in all their games but they never got better, but it’s fine, best game ever 10/10 can’t wait for the next one.
The gameplay in Fallout 4 was better than 3 and NV imo. But Fallout 3 still had the Fallout freedom and charm, which I feel was lost in the others. The gameplay just sucked ass, and even the NPCs from 1998 provided better immersion.
I think 90% of Fallout fans never played the first two.
Instead of hiring 30+ studios to do their work, they should’ve hired one good studio and ditched their ancient poop engine 15 years ago.
Yeah. I love fallout 1 and 2, and NV is… fine. But at this point, I don’t think I’m a ‘fallout fan’, since I’ve just had zero interest in the series after hating 3 and 4.
And same thing with elder scrolls, and Morrowind. I just don’t like their modern formula, at all.
Bethesda delivered a Bethesda game. What exactly were people expecting? This is exactly what I expected and am loving it.
It looks like one, but isnt as enjoyable as ones before. Might have been a bad choice to navigate the world in menu format. Quick travel to X location to explore. No walking around a big world, but many small ones. Even tiny ones.
It wouldn’t have been horrible if they did it in an Immersive way. For example, Mass Effect had it’s big hologram system map. You walk up to it and it zoomed to it, or whatever happened, and it didn’t take you out of the world into a menu. It’s still a menu, but it feels like it’s part of the world. Similarly, the Fallout menus are in the pop boy. While not perfect, it does help it feel Immersive.
The Starfield UI doesn’t even try. They give you the watch thing like they’re going to do the Fallout menu thing, but then they just don’t. There is zero attempt to make it feel like part of the universe. They have the navigation consoles that open the system map, but it still just opens the same menu. That’s still better than what you do 99% of the time though.
The one thing you’ve always been able to say about Bethesda, is despite the many flaws of their games, their new game generally always improves on the previous game in some way.
Not with Starfield. Pretty much every mechanic in Starfield is a regression, and worse, than the games that came before it. The Mechanics, The Perk System, Settlement Building, “Exploration”, Character models and faces/etc. All fundamentally worse than previous games.
A lot of people want to dismiss these criticisms as haters just hating on the popular thing, but the thing is that I’m not hating on it.
I’m frustrated, and disappointed. They left so much potential in the game to wither on the vine because they couldnt take the last baby steps give them the polish and critical eye they needed. Its like they got 5 feet from the finish line, shrugged their shoulders, and said good enough and walked away.
I want this game to be good. I can see how it can be good. and it shouldnt be reliant on the modders to pick up the unfinished pieces and make it good by finishing them.
Bethesda is not some small indie dev doing their best by themselves and deserving of understanding. This is a multibillion dollar company that can and should have done better, and deserves to be held accountable and criticized for the legitimate issues.
On the other hand, I cannot stand Oblivion, Skyrim or any Fall out game but I am loving Starfield.
Okay, and?
You liking something doesnt magically make the flaws go away or the criticism invalid.
And theres nothing wrong with liking something in spite of its flaws.
I was just saying that despite that I’m enjoying it. When previously the better games couldn’t hook me. Wasn’t saying that there aren’t flaws. It’s still a Bethesda game.
I saw a video that claimed no one would have expected the way starship travel works and I’m like “I totally expected it to be work this way!” From the moment they announced it was still on Creation, I had expectations that space travel would be simple cell changes and not seamless travel. I actually expected it to be janky as fuck, too, when actually doing space combat but it’s actually quite fine. I mean, the AI is dumb as shit, but it’s not full of weird bullshit. The things that did not meet my expectations are all actually good things. I expected it to barely run; it runs fine even with unsupported hardware. I expected to see bugs aplenty; at worst, I’ve seen some ragdolls spaghettifi.
Maybe it just took getting a relatively stable release for people to realize they have always been fairly shallow action oriented games, with light story and narrative elements that aren’t even that well written. There’s nothing else to really whine about. 🤷🏻♂️
I imagine the starships are still hats on an invisible NPC.
I doubt it. My suspicion is that the player is sitting still the whole time and everything is being moved around them. This does several things that are smart. Physics for the player stay the same, with gravity being down, without any extra work. It also removes concerns about floating point errors happening around the player, so they could theoretically fly forever in one direction without issues.
There was one part of a certain quest where I board someone else’s ship and they take off while I am standing in the bridge; it clearly shows the game is capable of moving these ships as actual vehicles. But you only ever get to see them in motion everywhere else while locked in the seat, in empty space. Cuz even if you were to stand up while at full throttle, the ship stops as soon as you get up.
They haven’t always been action focused games, but they have been moving more and more that way since Oblivion. I played Morrowind for the first real time (I bounced off after not understanding the game the first time) a year or so ago. I spent my first few hours without any combat. I’m not saying that figuratively. It was literally no combat. The game was totally accepting that that’s how I wanted to play. There’s also plenty of story and interesting mechanics to interact with. Now they make shallow theme parks that try to get you onto the next ride as fast as possible. If you have five minutes without action they think you’ll get bored and leave.
When I say action, I really just mean how you play and not necessarily just focused on combat. They focus on the actions you can take, over the dialogue choices you can make. Even Arena and Daggerfall were light on what you could actually change through story stuff, and were more about the player having fun in a myriad of ways. Morrowind, too. Especially with it’s somewhat unique dialogue system. You didn’t really have choices, as much as being given heaps of information based on keywords. But your choice of how you explored, handled enemies, and what not was incredible.
Plus, they wouldn’t be able to warp without moving space around them.
Really thoigh, that sounds incredibly plausible.
Yeah couldn’t have said it better myself. I’m actually quite impressed with the creation engine improvements. FO4 ran like shit on good hardware when it released. Also based on the newest discoveries it seems like modders actually have a good chance to allow interplanetary travel without fast traveling. I have a theory that the CE devs got the engine 90% of the way there on PC but Bethesda just needed to pull the trigger and release it with feature parity between Xbox S S/X and PC.
That is how I feel. I’ve put so many hours into their games. If you like their games chances are you enjoy this one. The differences for a new IP are great, but much of the feel is there.
I didn’t think I’d be able to play it for quite awhile since I don’t have anything that can play it right now. Then I realized game pass can be played on some Samsung TVs and mine is one. Was worth the $17 to try it out and for the most part it has ran great.
Yup, and it has some level of replayability that previous titles didn’t have.
“An ocean wide, and a thimble deep” has been said about every Bethesda game since Oblivion
Also every space sim in the last decade (yes, I know starfield isn’t one). It’s such a tired phrase at this point that it lost all meaning anyway.
true, and I have played an unhealthy amount of modded skyrim. let’s resurrect the idiots who killed Morrowind, and remind them of their crimes.
It’s a Stephanie Sterling review, they’ve had beef with Bethesda for a long time and recently over Zenimax treatment of a trans employee (which is a fair thing to be annoyed by, but hardly the fault of Todd’s team at Bethesda). I wouldn’t put much stock in their review of this.
It reads as very biased. They have some good points but every sentence is riddled with negative adjectives. Seems very childish in my opinion. You can see that in all the screenshots as well. Especially talking about uninspired artstyle even though this artstyle is pretty unique in gaming and I really liked it personally.
Maybe? It’s a particularly “edgy” games reviewer, it’s part of the deal. Thing is, from where I’m standing, it’s rather less biased than the people defending the game. At least the review is making specific arguments I am not seeing counterarguments for; I’m seeing “it’s subjective” and “they’re mad about stuff” (which is only a rational argument if you also go into how/why that’s making their arguments shit) and… excuses.
To play Devil’s advocate: even if Jim hates BSW with a holy passion and is firmly determined not to like anything about it ever (even the review isn’t all negative), that doesn’t make it all wrong. “I don’t like people criticizing games I like” is natural and fine, but doesn’t make for a lot of discussion. The review makes claims one can argue against - that’s great, that’s discussion. “Well you’re just wrong/mad” is less useful.
Do reviews only matter when the reviewer has always otherwise liked the company? This makes no sense. You’re making it out like a conflict of interest, but not showing how that’s actually meaningfully biased the actual review, especially given the actual purpose of reviews.
Are they wrong, then?
Since reviews are highly subjective its impossible to be wrong, except when you make factual mistakes like missing mechanics or technical facts.
My question was an attempt at getting people to elaborate. Like… no, seriously, what is wrong about the review? Bearing in mind that it, too is a piece of media with a given category: Edgy Angry Review Person, a true if hackneyed classic? A lot of the points seemed fair enough to me, but then I’m not a fanboy or hater. “Toss out the entire review” is not very nuanced and blaming it on them being “mad” is downright unconvincing.
For the record, I don’t think subjectivity is a good defense. How well you like the browngray paintjob is subjective. How well you like the menu, controls and writing are subjective. “This game is significantly smaller, buggier and less varied than it pretends” are at least a lot less subjective, and those seem like fairly popular takes.
To counter the “it’s buggier than it let’s on” (which, how does a game imply that it isn’t buggy), I’m about 60 hours in and have had precisely 0 bugs. NPC running into someone talking? Yup. Weird physics things? Yup. I wouldn’t call those bugs though; that’s just part of having the dialog occur in an active world. If I stopped in a busy street and talked to someone and wasn’t a foot away, people would walk through the convo. Physics engines are also just going to be limited in how they solve problems with clipping, etc.
I got roped in by the story and have been throughly enjoying the gameplay. I hated the gunplay in Fallout 4. These style BSW games have never been my thing, I trended much more towards Oblivion and Skyrim, so before even getting into this, I was searching and asking others how the shooting worked, how similar was it to Fallout 4 but in space, so I haven’t been hype-beasting this game. I hadn’t even seen the trailer for it, still haven’t. Just heard good things from friends, grabbed it, and have been putting in time like I haven’t with a game in a few years.
(which, how does a game imply that it isn’t buggy)
Oh, they didn’t imply it, they had a whole PR thing going. This being their best-tested game ever and so on. My bare hour of non-cutscene gameplay, already managing to find several old favorite bugs… sort of doesn’t add up with that.
I mean, it’s perfectly fine to enjoy it. I just think a lot of perfectly legit criticism is met with excuses or weird hostility. JQ (again in a trademark over-the-top “character” that doesn’t pull punches) is criticizing Starfield, not everyone’s mother or something.
I wonder if some bugs are platform dependent. I’ve been on Series X, no issues that I can remember. There have been a few times looking for quest items, but I spammed them into inventory and didn’t notice. I thought I had one with an invincible NPC, but he died in a low grav setting and just got stuck standing up.
What are you getting, just out of curiosity?
In my brief hour it’s just been somersaulting corpses, “badly dubbed Chinese movie” vibes from facial animations being extremely out of sync, and possibly some dodgy collisions - or it might be my aim, or how the aim just seems weirder than in e.g. Fallout 4. The robot companion at the start also blocked me constantly in doorways and firefights at every turn, and that’s literally been a meme since Skyrim. At this point I would consider those bugs.
It the review I agree the most with. Starfield has done one thing very well. It’s got me to finally play No Man’s Sky and I’m loving it.
No Man’s Sky, much as I enjoy it, is ridiculously shallow.
What exactly does that mean? Curious because I may also play NMS while I wait for Starfield to mature.
Did you still enjoy it for several hours? Was it fun to do stuff?
I say all this as someone who enjoys NMS, has about 80 hours in it, and there is absolutely fun stuff to do, and is definitely worth playing. Having said that, it is very shallow for the following reasons:
NMS has very little story. I’ve played through all the missions, and there is very little dialogue, very few characters, virtually no choices. So overall the story is very shallow, but it’s fine.
The random NPCs say very little, and do almost nothing. So quite shallow.
The space stations have very little variety, and very little life to them. Same with settlements and trade centers on different planets.
The randomly generated structures take on maybe a dozen varieties, so they get extremely repetitive after the first few hours.
Combat is very limited and repetitive. There’s only a few enemy types, and pretty limited weapon variety. Same with space combat, which pretty much always plays out the same due to limited weapon variety and limited ship controls.
But again, I like NMS, and do recommend it. It’s just not a deep experience.
Almost every time something negative is said about Starfield, it feels like walking into a room with Draco Malfoy, Geoffrey Baratheon and bully Maguire bullying on Bethesda/Todd.
But here in this thread, on the worst review I’ve seen so far, people are actually chill, acknowledging the flaws, but enjoying the game. It’s such a fresh breath of air.
Whoops I guess I’ll stop having fun then.
Elite Dangerous is as wide as the galaxy and deep as a puddle but that was fun for long time too.
You’re allowed to have fun and enjoy things regardless of their quality level, and people who say otherwise are silly and rude.
That also means that just by the nature of enjoying something doesn’t mean critiques of it are invalid, that would also be silly and rude.
I’ve played thru it once and i’m on NG+. It’s about as expected from a BethRPG. It’s a fun game with lots of flaws, but I can feel the hook there sucking me back in. I’m happy with my purchase it’s a game worth playing IMO. (I especially like how they did the ending and how it feeds into NG+)
Aside from Jim being characteristically edgy and doing the “angry reviewer thing”, a major cliché in itself… yeah, checks out. I played for an hour, have been meaning to get back to it… and kind of don’t want to.
I will say, as someone who is enjoying my time with it at about 30 hours currently… I felt the same way my first several hours. Which sucks - they absolutely bungled the intro hours of this game - but now that I’ve pushed through that awkward intro I’m having a great time. It’s scratching the same itch that Skyrim did. It’s what I hoped Fallout 4 would be but… in space.
I do tend to run to my ship and physically sit myself in the pilot seat before fast traveling… helps keep me immersed. It’s also a good middle-ground between the convenience of fast traveling to/from star systems and planets versus an endless fast travel menu sim.
