Gaming

This is some of the most honest feedback about Starfield. It's not bad. It's just horribly dated.

It's a standard Bethesda game, and it's great for a Bethesda game. But Bethesda hasn't updated anything in years, over a decade even. Characters are flat, storylines are fun but not engaging, it's just.... fine.

If this had come out in 2014-2016 as a successor to Skyrim it'd be one of the best games, I firmly believe that. But it didn't, they took their time building it, which is good, but now we have games like the Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, RDR2, even ME3 came out after Skyrim. The format for story propelled RPGs has changed, and the bar has been raised.

Again I don't want to be one of the "Oh bethesda bad boooo" people because honestly, I'm still having a ton of fun in Starfield. It's just that for a brand new game... it's really showing it's age.

I don’t play Bethesda RPGs for the set pieces.

I don’t care that Cyberpunk’s NPCs are programmed to walk to a specific place, stand in a specific way and say a specific thing at a specific time.

Cyberpunk’s main quest claims you have a few weeks to live just when the game really opens up to you, so thematically you are discouraged from pursuing side content, but it doesn’t really matter since except for a few quests most are very generic and most of their “story” is delivered through a call anyway. Great storytelling right there.

The NPCs in Cyberpunk are braindead, and when the game came out the set pieces didn’t work half the time.

I really rather Bethesda spend their time improving the parts of the games people who like their games want them to improve, instead of focusing on stuff their competitors are doing.

for me, Horizon Zero Dawn was the real "wow, open-world storytelling can be that good and not classic Bethesda nonsense" moment

Unless things change drastically for their RPG division, I'll repeat what I've said since oblivion. Bethesda makes great modding platforms, the content within the game is a loose theme that modders can play with.

Yes the new Fallouts are just TES in the Apocalypse.

Yes starfield is little more than TES in space.

I buy Bethesda games for mod potential.

If they said no mods to all future games I wouldn't buy another one. I don't play ESO and I have never touched fallout 76 for this reason.

I can agree, cyberpunk has a much gritter mature and well thought out world were as Bethesda titles demand cognitive dissonance

It’s the most "mid" game I’ve ever played.

Also, it is not an RPG.

Starfield is the first and only Bethesda game I haven't really liked. It's got all the same gameplay elements, but it's lacking the world building and interesting stories. The lore is bland as fuck, barely scratches the surface of what you'd want to know, and none of the stories really lean into actually telling you about the world in a fun way, opting instead to give big blocks of dialogue that are nothing but history and exposition. Where is the environmental story-telling they've always had? Is the blandness of the world simply a matter of it being new and young and not having nearly as much history as Elder Scrolls and Fallout to build on? Have they simply lost their touch? Believe me, I have tried to like this game. I am a huge fan of space stuff and Bethesda games, but it just doesn't have that certain something that makes their games actually fun.

Starfield made Starfield feel ancient by being entirely unoptimised.

No, it’s Bethesda that makes Starfield seem ancient.

I think it is just a new modern game so therefore hyperbole demands it much be either the best thing ever or trash. A lot of people said RDR2 was "dated" design as well. I think they both have strengths, same with Cyberpunk. I think only BG3 is a step forward for RPG storytelling, Cyberpunk, Starfield, Red Dead all have issues, but they allow the player to get immersived in their worlds and at the end of the day that's all that matters.