The best thing about Starfield's release is how good we're eating with all the reviews ripping it to shreds

I agree with pretty much everything that is said in this review. I gave up on Starfield after 20h of playtime. 75% of this game consists of fast traveling and loading screens.

Starfield is indeed a combination of all Bethesda games limitations, but without the bright side ( meaningful exploration and discovery)

I think Bethesda has achieved something seriously incredible after years of hard work. By streamlining every aspect of their design, and carefully balancing a near total lack of humanity with a similar lack of interaction, they've threaded the needle and created an experience so inoffensive that it barely registers at all. Not only have we avoided discomfort, we've avoided the disturbance of having any feelings whatsoever. Really amazing, and not worth 70 dollars.

I really don't understand how anybody was hyped for this, Bethesda fans suffer almost as much from Stockholm syndrome as Blizzard defenders

Bethesda is what happens when parents keep allowing their children’s terrible paintings on the fridge. At some point you have got to say, “No sweetheart, you’re 56 and you still can’t color in the lines. You’re a terrible artist and we’re sorry for not being honest with you sooner.”

Oblivion NPC dialogue back and forth with nonsense was pretty entertaining, ah nostalgia

This game feels AI generated.

The Ranger thing is a great example of a missed opportunity. Imagine, for example, if being a Ranger created new dialogue and quest completion options. Maybe people who find out you are a Ranger might have different reactions or expectations about you. Maybe the Rangers can help you by providing forensic support in some cases. Maybe the Rangers will come after you if you sully their name by carrying out evil actions. There is a lot they could have done.

"well folks..." 5 seconds in and I already agree with the tone alone. This guy gets it. Another great review and analysis to help us process this mess

I encountered a Terrormorph on Kreet, the very first planet you go to with Vascoe to stop the pirates from attacking you. There was an abandoned lab on the planet and I ran over to it after killing the pirates. Later I realized that POI was just a procedurally generated POI when I started the UC questline and it killed any immersion in that quest for me. The NPCs go into describing the terrormorphs like they're some big bad I had never encountered. I was thoroughly disappointed when I realized I had already killed one at the very start of the game. It was the moment I realized there was really nothing left for me to discover in SF, and I was only 50 hours into the game.

The problem with mods is that modding these games is getting more and more tedious and not worth it in the end.

The fact that every dead-eyed NPC is dead center both horizontally and vertically during dialogue just highlights how phoned-in and copy-pasted the whole thing is. If you're not sure what I mean here, play Baldur's Gate 3 for 15 min.

It's even worse than you think with the romance options. I specifically refused to flirt with Sarah until she initiated any actual interest first and got through all of her questing until the point where they just starkly ask you to choose friendship or romance. This all after, again, I choose no flirtation lines and she never got flirty with me. I chose romance and then her dialogue makes it seem as if I'd be pining for her this entire time and she was falling for me.

I think they make the companions bisexual because if they defined a sexual orientation for them they would lock a decent chunk of a particular companion's content away for a particular play through. They're not being PC they're just ensuring that the content they did bother to make is always available to the player.

I couldn't get past the tech issues and I'm glad you addressed this, I feel like it's THE most important part of building a modern game of this sort and it is totally holding them back. As soon as I saw the trailers, I knew that they had been lazy about updating their engine/tech stack. I loaded into the game expecting jank, and the scripted initial cut-scene seemed ok, seemed modern.... for a second I thought I was wrong, and then when the lift stopped and we stepped off into the mines, I immediately saw the cracks opening up. The sad thing is, this game has already been done, it's called The Outer Worlds, and it was done in Unreal Engine and felt 10 times better than Creation Engine does.

If they stuck to handcrafted content in space, the contrast between being indoors and in the vacuum of space could have been a sick contrast. I remember clearly mass effect pulling it off when you have to space walk through a part of the ship thats been torn away. Like youre fighting enemies with all the sounds then you end up in vacuum and now have to fight those enemies in near silence.

I deleted the game after 20h. As much as i didnt like Fallout 4, it got me going because of the exploration. I also somehow really enjoyed the settlement building. All the junk you picked up was also useful. Here the outposts are useless, just get some credits and buy all the resources you need. The exploration is dead. The moment that i turned the game off and unsinstalled it was when i was on a planet, and decided to check some ship wreckage point of interest. It was EXACTLY the same as the one ive seen like 1 hour earlier, It had the same items, in the same exact position laying around. Like, how lazy can you get. It felt like im being trolled. Not even gonna mention the fantastic Bethesda writing and quest design. How can a company not learn and evolve, instead every next product they produce is worse then the last one, this is the worst Bethesda game. Absolutely soulless.

And don't forget gas vents. Not a single active volcano but gas vents E V E R Y W H E R E !

If it was fallout 4 in space i'd have like the game, but it's not as good as fallout

I don't understand why you don't have more subscribers. You are very thorough.

Todd gives us stun weapons, but they're inconsistent. He gives us brig habs for our ship, but no way to apprehend bounties alive. It's like Todd wants us to play murderous psychopaths.

Always like your content for the simple fact you are the few people who understand the necessity of role playing in a rpg and to correctly identify what it is lol

When I joined the fleet at the end of the legacy quest I got the message that I was now enemies with the UC. I thought they would be permently hostile and was completely disappointed when the quest was over and we were OK all of a sudden.

I dont even know how its possible to create a disaster like this. Ok nevermind i remembered fallout 76 and the almost depression it gave me...

Bethesda Game Studios had one opportunity to fix their broken reputation since Fallout 76, and they blew it in Starfield anyway.

I had zero interest in Starfield. Had I started it, I would have uninstalled the moment anybody said “Starborn,” and I had FUCKING SHOUTS AGAIN.

I don't have the words to describe how much I hated this game. I paid the $100 for early access and it wasn't money well spent. I didn't have any performance issues on the xbox; the problem is just how bad the game is.

It use to be passionate gamers making games. Most of these devs have left companies like blizzard and bethesda to either create their own studios, or dropped out completely. It seems like the new devs aren't very passionate about games with a mix of stakeholder pressure in these companies to pressure deadlines. It's just a job to them.

At least CDPR had the balls to make every single romance-able character in Cyberpunk have their own sexual preference. Judy wont sleep with you if you’re a male V. Panam won’t sleep with you if you’re a female V. It’s a very minor touch but it really does go a long way to truly establish those characters as real people. Granted that sort of thing is CDPRs bread and butter so it definitely expected of them. Not Bethesda unfortunately.

Rachet & Clank did jumping between alternate realities better and more meaningfully. Change my mind.

The people scream at BGS to change or reformat their engine. Tod: *Slaps a V.2 on it and say. "Look how much graphics it can do!"

"...developers are almost afraid to give romance-able characters a defined sexuality" Tell you haven't played Cyberpunk 2077 without telling me you haven't played Cyberpunk 2077. Otherwise this is a thorough and appreciated review. Bugs aside - CDPR has set the new gold standard for open-world action/RPG following 2.0, as have Larian for the legacy style CRPG. Someone press F for Bethesda. Gone but not forgotten.

Best Starfield review . Totally nailed it. Basically they phoned it in. It’s essentially a game geared towards 8 year olds. And maybe that’s their plan. Make a game that’s babies first space game. Then when those kids grow up they’ll be BSG fans. Idk. I do not understand a grown man or woman being able to get past the atrocious dialogue. Great review tho! Very thorough!

Incredible and baffling this game came from the same devs who made Morrowind, one of the most immersive RPG's where player agency is respected and you can absolutely lock yourself out of quests because choices do matter in that game. A game which had smart quest writing and dialogue, because it expects a certain level of cognitive ability from the player.

they've been hiring from the modding community for years. its easy to drag and drop and copy and paste code... its another thing to write your own.

It is kind of funny that Constellation is so goody-goody, yet the only reason to follow through on the whole relic gathering thing is so you can gain power. Which is basically an evil motif, the origin story of some kind super-villain or galactic emperor/sorcerer. If left alone, the Starborn would have gathered up the relics and moved on to a NG+, leaving the galaxy alone. So, off you go on a quest for personal power... while being constantly looked down upon for doing anything slightly non-good. On the whole, it just seems like when designing the game, they forgot to ask the two most crucial questions: "Is this fun?" and, "How can we can change it to make it (even more) so?"

This reloading problem at weapon change occurs in other way when you are base building. Once you built hundreds of containers and set ship to your interlinks, the game checks EVERY single container EVERY time a ship is landing. No matter where in the universe you are, you get constant freezes Lasting SECONDS. It really just breaks your game. Once you just turn off interlinks, all is gone back to normal. What a nice feature 🎉

your comments about companions and npc dialogue reinforces my deep suspicion that they used Chat GPT to develop most of their dialogue in this game.

Modders shouldn't need to keep fixing Bethesda's damn games. Bethesda nees a collective kick up the arse from the community as they finally get their act together and learn how to release quality.

I am sooooooo happy rn. Your Fallout 4 review is my favorite thing on KZfaq.

You know what's crazy, according to a gamesradar article about startfield Phil Spencer he sat down with Todd and i think other Bethesda people and told them to delay starfield to 2023 instead of releasing in 2022 which Bethesda had originally planned on before Microsoft bought the company. He made a joke that tons of xbox's were being for q&a were running starfield. It's insane to me that after so many years of working with gambryo and it's creation derivatives that Bethesda seemingly can't even program with it properly. For so many years I've heard that Bethesda changing engines would be a bad idea because of having to relearn everything and that their main problem is treating polishing and bug fixing like an afterthought, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if it's a combination of spaghetti code, tech debt, and Bethesda's own culture of laziness lack of ambition has finally started to catch up with them combined with the release of BG3 actually SHOWING what a proper role playing game is that much of the general public have realized that Bethesda offers jack shit compared to other companies.

Mods will not save this game, because of how it is built. The worldbuilding is limited to the quests. This isn't Skyrim where you can crawl out of Helgen and immediately ignore any quest to do your own thing for 150 hours, because there is nothing to do outside of what has been placed into the game for quest design. So unless you like staring at the same dozen buildings and fight the same four types of humans in them, or like building outposts that have no purpose aside from producing resources, questing is all you have. Any mod that would enhance the gameplay would do that for the quests. And the quests are insanely bad for all the reasons you mentioned.

Watching some of this corridor shooting/explorting footage gives me Fallout 4 PTSD. They really did reuse a lot of layouts stuff among other things.

You know what this game reminds me of, Basically every Star Wars and Marvel Show you see on Disney plus. A season that's 8 hours long that could be boiled down into 1 hour.

I'm having a hard time actually seeing all the enemies, if it weren't for the gigantic health bar I would have no idea what you're shooting at.

That question to Todd about why isnt this game optimised for PC, he was caught off gaurd with that one hence the pause and Phillip the boy spencer having a giggles at howards expense, absolute magic was that, gan on Todd " This is a nxt gen game maybe ya need to upgrade your PC for this one" absolute quality ,theres games over 10 years old that are more deserved of that title.

The cowboy faction did it for me, above all the galaxy-famous "Rangers". There is the option to ask how many Rangers are out there: 12. No, not 12'000 which is a small amount of people when it comes to a multi-planet civilisation, no.....TWELVE! Then it became clear to me, those rangers are the minutemen from Fallout. This might work in a post-apocalyptic depopulized world, but not in a world where you supposed to believe that there are huge cities and many colonized planets. You are also supposed to believe that the cowboys who have barely nothing but some wild west huts have had a stalemate in a war against the pendant of the United Federation of Planets. I uninstalled the game when the sheriff of this cow-village came to me and asked if i could investigate whats going on near Miss Wilsons (or whatever name she had) farm.."ok", i thought, "lets go have a look, where is her farm?". It turns out, her farm is on another moon. Whats the population of all new colonies together? 80 or so? This is so dumb, the whole universe of Starfield makes no sense at all. Oh, and there is nothing to explore as mankind is already in EVERY system you visit and on every planet, there are already manmade installations, populated by pirates yes, but it means that other humans already found it before you did. You don't "discover" Paris f.e. when you drive there by train, seems there is simply no wikipedia or google in the future where you can simply search for whats in system xy. That was enough, not worth for any more painfull loading screens for that.

Wow, reading the comments is entertaining. People are saying they are enjoying exploring a mostly copy and paste game are the same people that watch the same movie 20 times in a week like its the first time they are watching it. They are the same people who have thousands of hours in a game that can be completed in a few hours.

What has battered me ever since the lunch of Starfield Is the fact that they put so much attention to going into new game plus, which naturally nullifies any consequences of your actions and at the same time they make so many - not even essential - NPCs not killable. I don't understand this approach because they've basically created a game where you wouldn't even need to do any quests in order to finish it, while at the same time boxing you in on every occasion. Starfield literally has more reasons to be like Fallout New Vegas than New Vegas does itself, wtf.

During my play through I realised the “depth” of NPC dialogue. I walked past a guard in my sweet new security armour. This guard was NOT wearing armour. Her line? “You really should get some security armour” …

Starfield makes me want to play fallout new vegas. Mainly because it's a Bethesda game without Bethesda making it.

So it basically looks like Bethesda have released a shell of a game and expect modders to fix, polish and finish it. I do not have high hopes for Elder Scrolls 6.

Another big thing the game is missing is sentient alien species. One of my favorite things from their early games was the ability to play as and interact with non-human characters. Even though I always play as a Breton. lol

As always, top-notch review! Thank you DWT!

It would have been a lot better immediately with just one solar system, but all planets filled with hand-crafted locations. But the limitations of space AND on-foot travel would still have hurt the immersion a lot.

Fantastic review. You hit every nail on the head. I cannot believe how BAD Starfield turned out... I doubt I'll ever play it again which is saying a lot. I've been playing Skyrim for 13 years. Elder Scrolls 6 will almost certainly be dogsh*t and I'll be 40 when it releases, that's if the world isn't destroyed by then... I won't care about ES6. I already don't now. Entertainment as a whole is dead. The world's on fire. Screw Bethesda and their ESG score. They made a universe where I would cheer for the reapers. It's an absolute waste of time to play and arguably an objectively bad experience.

It was very disappointing that after I become a friggin space ranger with a badge and all, you can't use it outside the specific quest.

this game is what i will call a youtube or tv show game, which means you watch youtube or a tv show in the background to pass the time, and the fact i do agree with DWT about an over haul of this game, is why i have yet to get this game, i might ask for this game for christmas this year, hopefully by then some of the problems have bin ironed out

I feel like I’ve been on a long journey with you since watching your Skyrim video… THIS is as far as I’m concerned the definitive Starfield review.

Totally correct on Bethesda's writing. The placing of the Terrormorph attack so close to the meeting about Terrormorphs almost made me want to quit the game. It's obviously a set up to influence the board. A set up that the highly critical board doesn't even question. It totally ruined the plot for me. You know where this is going and are not surprised when it finally does. I also guessed at the Heat leeches as well. Although those large larvae that are always creeping around had me guessing them as well, but maybe they're the larval stage of a Heat leech.

I am subbing to your Patreon bc you have been the only person in any starfield review that has explained the failure of BGS with the creation engine. It would have been much better if they actually updated it, they don't need a new engine. They need new management. Also are you me from another universe? Bc this is pretty much the exact points I bring up when talking about this game.

Starfield is a combination of mechanics that would sound cool if you describe it on paper, but when you get to play the game you will see that all of them are done to the barest minimum of passable effort, and they don't fit inside a fully completed game at all, as if they were done in vacuum in regards to everything else

0:31 God, to think I was rolling my eyes at the people annoyed that Bethesda was taking over Fallout back then.

My God, this Game is what Nightmares are made of. Bethesda is creatively and technology-wise bankrupt. One can just hope that the whole Studio gets replaced by Ai. Awful hand-holding - No branching Story - No Faction End-Game Goals - Characters you just want to stuff in a Bag and throw in the River - No player freedom - Unkillable Characters EVERYWHERE - No Vats - No Gore - No diving - borked Stealth - No Weapon/Armor Repairing(Durability System) - No Building your own Ship/Equipment from Material you Mined/Gathered - No real End-Game Goals - No Transmog - No making your own Contraband - NPCs not dropping what they wear - Can't open Doors, defuse Mines, use Items... when in Scan Mode - Can't control jump height. NPCs can do that. A Charge up Meter is really needed on some Moons, or you fly off like a Rocket - Boost Packs are not really suitable ever/meaning that you need different kinds of Boosters for different Situations but also you need Resistances against Korrosion, Air, Radiation, Bio, and somewhat level conforming Laser, EMP, Bullet Resistance = you need 12+ Boost Packs - Crafting and Building Copy Paste from FO4 but with worse placement control - Awful Controls overall. The game works on GamePad but you need your whole Keyboard if you choose to play on the Keyboard. Make ready to rebind 50 Keys and ignore Conflicts - Very few and lackluster Feats - You should start with level one on each Skill - Skills need to be way more "Exotic". ATM they are mostly "more DMG, can Craft, can buy, can fly - Item Feats are mostly useless and are Copy Paste from FO4 - Skill progression is mostly forgettable and unimaginative - EXP from discovering, Hacking, building, crafting is nearly not existent - Item Notifications gone after 1.5sec = can't check Stats = open Inventory - Carry Capacity sucks - You can't mark individual Items to look/track for - You can't undo all tracking Items - Inventory Menu sucks! StarUI Mod needed = modding mandatory or wasting hours unnecessarily - Can't use Cure Object in Affliction Screen. Again StarUI Mandatory - Not showing "Weather(Corrosion/Radiation...)" Conditions on Planet before landing- Map is awful - Quests send you to places you can't reach - Lifeless Planets are useless - Copy pasted Bases/Caves... no sign of prcedurally generated Locations - Often looking to Scan "Natural Wonder" that I already Scanned because it's not identifyable from the Picture - Planet Map shows 100% scanned even if it's not because of "Costal Area" - Escort Quests that have you travel 1000m+ for low reward - You can't ban Useless Items from Scanner - Rare/Legendary/Epic Items cause 2sec Game Freeze when Equiped and changing to Scanner or cyceling through Weapons - Space Combat at least unskilled at early Levels is pure Stats Game and often undoable because 3v1 - No feeling of actually flying through Space - You still get Stuck and can not jump when on angled Ground as in FO4/Skyrim/Oblivion... - NPC Money should be infinite or at least increased by 4x - Items you pick up/have in Inventory show the worth they have when you buy them from a Merchant, but they should show what they are worth to you, when you sell them - NPC standing on Pilot Seat so only 3rd Person Space Flight or piloting through gap between NPCs Legs - Enemies/Animals on Planet stacked in a Heap, so you think you will fight 3, but it ends up being 12 or more all stacked into one tiny Spot and into each other - Melee Combat as bad as it was in any other Bethesda Game (look what modders did to Skyrims Combat Animations) - Reloading gets Canceled by running and jumping - Typical Bethesda Bullet-Sponge Enemies - Typical run around/jump over Obsacles and slowly chip away their Health - In Ship flight you need to be able to make custom Presets for "Full Power Weapons, Grav Drive, Engines, Shields..." and bind them to F1-F4 or any other Key you choose - Needs City/Outpost/Other Listing on Star-Map to find the Locations + placement of own nameable Markers - Needs Button to stop Quests from coming in. I get 5 new Quests when running around doing one Quest. I don't know how I got the Quests. I don't know who the Quests are from. I have no connection to them. - NPCs need to stop talking over each other. It just can't be too complicated to program in that only one Voice can be played at once. - Finding Quests is a Nightmare. They need to be Structured much better. Time when Quest received/Location of Quest Giver/Nearby Quests/Location of Quest/Radiant Quest... - Still can't go from Sneak to normal Mode whilst doing any other action / meaning Stealth play feels Crap. Sneak to someone with a Melee Weapon, hit them 1 time, wait for Animation to finish, press "Crouch" Key, wait for your Character to stand up, and engage in Comabt. 1995... 19 F*cking 95!!! - I have been playing the Game for 60 hours now and am Level 30 and still I find the same Fire Axe I found on Level 4 over and over 21 DMG - When on the Map Screen, there has to be a Warning that you can not travel at this moment - I am SEETHING because I activated a Mission but the Game decided to not show me that Mission at all, but two other Missions I do not want to do - I decided to do one of the Missions to see what happens... I now have FOUR Map markers. WTF! And I am not allowed to activate even two Missions - Buy Back Disabled as soon as you leave Shopping Window - Can't pay the debt from Dream Home Perk - Game does not tell you what Skills do until you unlock the Line. That means that you can't work to a specific Skill and know its effect - I managed to lock up the Menu by opening and closing it in quick succession. - Can't move after Loading-Screen, but the NPCs can - Crafting is a F*ing JOKE! You dump Skill points and Materials into upgrading but then you look at something like "You can now add a +5 Resistances Mod to Your Jump Pack". And that one cost me 2 Skill Points btw. No mention of that beforhand! - No Planet Wiki showing me what Planet I have been on and what I found on that Planet (Alien Species, "Geysers", Flora...) - No Crafting of Weapons, Armor, Drugs, that are not already in the Game to find - No Enhancement of Weapon/Armor Mods (Stuff like increase chance to poison Enemy by+5%, by "infusing Weapon with 500 Material X, next 5% cost you 1000, next 5% cost you 2000, next 5% cost you 4000... something to make Mining Stuff on Planets useful)- No Melee Weapon Mods - No Melee Weapon Differences in behavior - Can we have 8k+ Planet Pictures for our "Space Journey"? - Just three Slots for Character Itemization (Not promising for what Variety Mods will be able to offer) - Timescale is F*ed when on some Planets. Wait 1 hour(time-unit) passes a VERY long time. Like wait "24 hours" = wait 2400 hours. WHO the F thought this was a good idea?! - Hold Key for every second Option, but sitting down "just works" Absolute Idiocracy. I never imagined Bethesda not improving on their Formula, but even cutting back on the little they had to serve. They are unable to learn and I will only return to see big bouncy Boobs in sexy Costumes. But yea... 3 Item Slots for the Outfit... I don't even have much hope for that to be fun. *Spit

I’ve watched basically all the big KZfaqrs do reviews for Starfield and this is the best review I’ve seen. I also could feel your anger/disappointment as the review went on because I feel the same way about the game. Starfield is infuriating and you’re 100% correct it’s a CATASTROPHIC failure of a game. Bethesda have proven they are incompetent. Will not buy ES6 unless it gets rave reviews by real people and not the outlets.

Buckle up boys and girls, it will be a long one! Going in predicting: 1.5?

It's kinda funny how there's people who hate Starfield but love Skyrim and Fallout 4. To me, Starfield is the same but without the walking 🤷‍♀️ guess aesthetics makes a huge difference for some 🤔

Comprehensive review, the best I've seen for this pile of ...game. Thank you!

Honestly, after thinking about the Pilgrim's notes a bit (specifically their comment on how jumping between universes *is not fulfilling*), the weird way the gamespace is designed, and the way that the mechanics combine... I really think the game wants to incentivise slow play. As such, I reckon I benefited from barely having time to play Starfield at launch. I could never game for more than an hour or two at a time, once every couple of days. So I ended up taking everything pretty slow, spending time in single locations rather than grav-jumping between objectives rapidly, and being pretty happy to sink an entire play session into putting a ship together or fiddling with outposts. Unfortunately, that's also where a lot of weird choices in game design jumped out at me. The absolutely lacklustre "no consequences for your quest decisions" thing. The bizzare gating of quality-of-life features and furniture (like storage) behind pretty investment-heavy perks. The UI design, the inability to remove the weirdly condescending pop-up tips, the way that the game bugs out and resets interiors of ships and player homes, including the contents of containers (and some display furniture doesn't even work). The emptiness of the galaxy. The utter lack of model variants for unique weapons and armour. The way that a lot of loot tables (like mannequins in the wild) are bugged. The weird hivemind-goody-two-shoes-morality of all the companions, despite them being written as very different people. It feels like a game that, in three or four years, will have had enough patches, DLC, and mods (both quality of life and content-based) will be something I can sink dozens of hours into. A nice big sandbox full of stuff, easily able to fit the sheer variety of content that modders like to cram into megapacks - something the old worlds of Fallout and Elder Scrolls never really could accomodate without feeling a bit weird. That said, I didn't mind the floatiness of the main quests and lack of "ending". I think Bethesda put a lot more effort into the "side" quests based around factions, locations, and npcs. The way most people ended up playing Skyrim and Fallout really did ignore the main quest, so I'm not too surprised they went in this direction. I also didn't mind the "choose between your two favourite Constellation companions" moment. I wasn't actually expecting Bethesda to commit to killing off a companion character, and was pleasantly surprised when it tied into the Emmisary's identity too. I didn't view it as "cheap", just kind of interesting. Solid and comprehensive review, as always. Definitely think that a big split in player response has been between slow players and rapid/completionist players.

You know what I think is perhaps the biggest mistake this game makes is? The lack of irony. Seriously. The Outer Worlds and the Fallout games are all satirical, and often outright tongue in cheek. The problem here is un-moddable. The writing is so shockingly poor, you can’t smooth over the cracks because they’re too big; they’re gaping plot holes. I mean, juvenile, ludicrous, insultingly bad, nonsensical, utterly illogical plotting. It’s made me realise just how much you can get away with through the use of satire and irony, because when something is crappy and doesn’t work very well, you can often put it down to the in-world experience. I played Robocop: Rogue City recently and played it right through to the end, setting aside all other ongoing games, because I loved it. Yet, that game is full of jank. Yes, it has beautifully realised scenery in Unreal Engine 5, but the character models never lip sync, or move very well. There’s a LOT of jank in that game, but they aren’t charging Triple A prices for it. Most importantly, they respect the player’s TIME. You never feel like you’re arsing around with fetch quests or collectathons. And the creators, Tayon, clearly LOVED the first two movies, giving us all the lore, the fan service and the gore you could hope for from a Robocop experience. They GET IT and they built a game that they would enjoy playing. And that’s what made me realise how much you can easily forgive for the sake of a great story and compelling characters. I defy anyone to tell me what the theme of Starfield is? Is there a message of any kind? Is there a point to the story? Does Bethesda have ANYTHING to SAY? Because it looks to me like Starfield was clinically sterilised of all meaning or message when they made the choice to ensure that NOTHING could POSSIBLY offend anyone on planet Earth. And I defy anyone to explain any of the gaping plot holes in a way that makes the SLIGHTEST defensible bit of sense.

Amazing video. As the head of a tiny studio myself, I like watching these videos. Helps expand the game design portion of my brain.

Please tell me the inventory reading thing is inaccurate. Please tell me. I don’t want to believe that they’d brute force such a basic software engineering problem.

Don’t forget about the laziness of exploring old prison or nasa colonies that got frozen up or back in time and see that the same weapons the same outfits he’ll even the same tech is the exact same from the time line you are playing in

Bethesda couldn’t even get multiverses right. In a multiverse, you could encounter entirely different life forms, or no life, or different people. In Starfield, it’s the same galaxy, the same people, but events might unfold a little differently. That’s not a multiverse, it’s a time loop.

As an autistic person who is obsessed with video games, it’s fucking heartbreaking to admit that this game was probably the straw that broke the camels back and i have no desire to play any video games anymore. And it’s sad cause thats my favorite thing to do.

A supposedly endless exploration game entering newgameplus is hilarious

I found out about the weapon stuttering issue too late, my entire inventory were legendaries. I was carrying 19 weapons, 17 were legendary. As well as my whole gear setup being legendary. Soooo yeah; I can see why I was lagging so hard. It isn’t as bad now though.

I appreciate how in depth this review is, but I wish examples were shown for each section instead of just B roll. That’s my only real complaint

This game was proof that current bethesda has nothing of the charm that made their old and buggy games worth playing. The people that made that company what it was already left.

I'd imagine starfield getting the Baland Wonderworld treatment, where it's only good for a speedrunning category and nothing else

Man, I appreciate your video, truly. I've watched many reviewers, you're the one pointing out the culture some fans are fermenting by not holding Bethesda accountable for their own games. Every faulty release we have some people saying that mods will fix it and fail to criticize Bethesda. More people need to see this.

Lmao i lost it when you said that you switch to a gamepad for the ship combat.

Funny you mentioned the doors/ladders in the ship builder are random. I hate it. Every time it makes me go around the long way because that's where it put the doors/ladders. There's always a better setup, but you can't have it because Bethesda wants it to be randomized.

"support the heckin modders so they can keep the mods up to date and fix bethesda's game!" "how could bethesda pay the modders and integrate mod support to avoid mod incompatibility!" "nooo my heckin mods are paywalled now! why do i have to pay for mods!" funny how the script gets flipped once somebody calls out the whiner's bluff

It sounds like they took the worst aspects of their pervious open world games and made them even worse.

The number of players on Steam is falling drastically, day on day. It's always going to go down as people finish the game, but Bethesda pride themselves on people playing their games for ever. It's not happening with Starfield. I don't think even modding can save this game. And I absolutely hated that you got a quest marker on _everything_ on the assumption that you're too dumb to do anything or go anywhere on your own.

The problem with Bethesda is not only Todd Howard but all the management and executives.

You know what's actual biggest downer for me about Starfield? It's that Fallout is more Sci-Fi than Starfield. In Fallout you don't just have lasers, hell no. You got power armor, plasmaguns, genetic engineering, portable nuclear reactors, teleporters, actually useable helicopters and other stuff that I forgot to mention too. In Satrfield it's like: "Oh... right! So, all of the cool things, like mechs and power armor, and tanks, all of that exists, it's just against some bullshit war convention so it's all locked up and now we are all a bunch of cartoony 21st century NASA spacemen." Imagine you could just carry around with you a battlemech and play discount MechWarrior whenever you feel like you don't wanna just shoot everyone. Imagine if instead of landing in a designated spot every time, you could just choose a spot on the map and your ship would drop you there in a drop pod. It really doesn't feel like anyone except Todd cared about this game what-so-ever.

The really frustrating thing about Bethesda's downfall is that all of the Bethesda fanboys ( skyrim or fallout 3 is probably the first rpg they'd ever played) are some of the most thought terminating fanbases I've ever seen. If you even consider lightly criticizing their god emperor's masterpiece, hundreds will come out of the woodwork to call you a fake fan and a hater

It's crazy how little things have changed from Daggerfall in most ways beyond graphics.

The proper name for the Crimson Fleet is the Crimson Cringe. I have accepted this head canon.

I love the idea that the settlements are small due to game size limitations. And I remember back in 2003 all of the games that had you play in cities that felt absolutely massive, Jack and daxter 2, Any final fantasy city, KOTOR. And then I also remember Bethesda touting that new Atlantis is the biggest city they've ever made. But in reality its only the biggest by maybe a few square yards. And absolutely microscopic in size for any space faring civilizations capitol.

Wow, very impressive work. Thank you. I deliberately avoided any news or review about Starfield once I knew you were working on your review. So I went into this with the idea that it might be good. First, it's incredible to hear that they released a buggy game again. How can they just get away with this??? This is unbelievable! The game seems incredibly bland an boring. What a waste. I think we an now finally give up any hope Bethesda will ever release anything decent. They just don't care and won't do any effort.

Brah, I feel ya, man. My hopeful self put way more hours and feel the same way. Game freezes, crashes and restarts are norm. Broken missions were fairly common. I never did get to deliver that bottle of whiskey to that fella in neon.

I was hyping myself up for this one so much, but when it came out, man...

"About as engaging as a TPS report..." And...subscribed.

one thing that I never got used to was that stupid XP counter that they decided the best place for it was in the center of the screen, or that some guns have an ammo counter/indicator on them yet the game feels the need to display the ammo again anyway with the quests you can almost tell when the designer putting it together is less familiar/flexible with the engine. I've had quests unusually play out using the engine's own rules (a giant alien killed a quest giver with nothing on my part to contribute to it) only for the game to decide that this NPC can't die, and then they thanked me the killing the alien that I never even saw until it was dead. Some quests require you to have a certain type of outfit equipped, but then some suggest that you do but then they pedal back on it later in the same dialogue that to suggests to me that line was added once they couldn't get the scripting to work properly. it took me a while of just skipping dialogue, ignoring companions and weapons to just go around punching people into ragdolls that there's barely any role playing in this game either, the level up screen is just an upgrade menu and because of NG+ i realised the only actual RPG elements of "completing faction quests can lock you out of other factions" is completely thrown out. I imagine later on they'll be a DLC where you break the cycle and actual get an ending, where your character will get to say an outdated meme as their final words. It's weird that they decided to go with the "25 years in the making" thing yet the final product seems to lack identity after all this time. Maybe they meant it in the same way as I could pull out a game design document I made in college and call it "12 years in the making", it doesn't really mean anything.

The only good thing about Starfield is that it made it so easy to spot the shills and block them. Anyone who gave this game more then a 6/10 with a do not buy recommendation doesn't deserve anything less then to be permanently ignored.

Great recap of the creation engine issues. I never fully understood why people harped on it until now.