"They left so much to the player's imagination that in the end they forgot to say anything" Absolutely BRUTAL

Emil Pagliarulo: "I got so passionate writing the background for the 3 religions in Starfield that it caused me to have my own crisis of faith in real life." Starfield's religions: 1. We're atheists that respect all religions, but are more concerned with scientific progress than preaching. 2. We're space Christians that respect all other religions and try to explain scientific discoveries in made up biblical terms. 3. We believe that God is a giant snake in space that will eat everyone who doesn't believe in him, and we'll kill everyone who says otherwise.

Emil Pagliarulo (Bethesda's head writer) is, unfortunately, a none-too bright egotist hack writer. Try explaining that to him, though. Even though there's a mountain of evidence going back all the way to Oblivion and beyond.

What people often forget is that liking something doesn’t mean it is good.

My favorite part of the Starborn is that their objection to me searching for artifacts boils down to: "We had a meeting, decided we don't like you, and don't want to see your ugly face in any other universes."

I liked F4 even with all those problems...but Starfield was terrible lol

It’s funny how everything they talk about in the trailer ends up being all the actual game story is.

What's out there? Rocks and an abandoned outpost, that's what's out there.

I'm not a Bethesda fan boy. But I am a 67 year old Skyrim fan boy. I played Skyrim since Special Addition came out and 95% of that play time is a modded Skyrim. But Starfield? I played 74.5 hours and uninstalled it. I give the game a 4.5/10 and that's for the art department because the game looks pretty good. Excepting water. The game was over hyped, falsely advertised (simply listen to Todd explaining all the cool exploration we can't do), horrible optimization, no immersion, uses a crap engine, totally crap UI, bug filled, glitch filled, crashes, repetitive, boring, broken stealth, horrible perk system, janky base building (with little instruction), janky ship building (with little instruction), copy/pasted POI's, absolutely dreadful and contradictory companions who don't care who or what you are other than you're important, no-name citizens that walk back and forth on an invisible tether and many times get in your way, weak main and side missions, overloaded cut scenes and load screens, mediocre gun play with bullet sponge targets. Really bad circa 2011 AI. There are no real choices with consequences. Any choice you make still takes you on the direction Bethesda wants you to take. Thus, the traits and abilities you pick in character generation have little to no benefit. There is no depth or relevance to this game and its components. This game has no role playing despite it being labeled an RPG. This game has no soul. The junk you pick up is pointless, extremely underwhelming carry weight, arbitrary level farming to mend/boost your XP/perks/ money, vendors with little money, NO MAPS, companions scolding you one after the other because you chose the dialog Bethesda didn't want you too, more loading screens in five minutes of play than the entirety of Elden Ring, 300 years of human fiction with nothing to really show for it, no challenging locations or bosses. And no reason to actually make an outpost to farm stuff because you can simply purchase it at a vendor. A "2023 next gen game" with 2006 water graphics? Starfield is fundamentally flawed on so many levels. It is NOT open world. It's plagued with bad game design decisions, half baked systems, bland & uninspired writing and outdated quest design. It isn't "Skyrim in Space", nor is it "Fallout in Space". Starfield is a downgraded, mediocre and soulless mixture of Skyrim & Fallout 4, without the free world exploration and the charm of neither. It's a regression from Bethesdas previous titles in all aspects and the saddest part is that it took them 8 years to create this piece of mediocrity with unparalleled boredom. Mario Cart is more fun than the spaceship battles in Starfield. What's even worse is that devs had ALL the creative freedom to write whatever the hell they wanted; there is no established lore that restricts them from going crazy. And yet they went for the most banal unimaginative take on sci-fi. Funny thing with Londinium - I decided to try landing randomly on the planet, ignored the UC ship telling me to stay away and menu clicked my way down there. As soon as I got out, another random ship came a few hundred metres away, as they do. I wandered over, found it was a Freestar Ship that had landed at a "small settlement" or something like that. On Londinium. The planet that was quarantined because it was over-run with monsters. Sigh. Later, I’m desperate to complete the main quest so I can finally uninstall. I made it to the buried temple - which is of course just another copy paste junkyard. Sarah said she wanted to speak to me and told me that Barrett was worried about her back at the lodge. Well, Barrett fraking died on the Eye when the Hunter attacked about 30 hours ago! What little immersion I had left was instantly taken away! TLDR; Abysmal writing. The worst part is they made a world (worlds) that were already explored. It all feels like we were late to the party. Every planet is littered with copy/pasted factory’s and outposts, you are never more than a 1000 meters from a structure. The whole colonial war already happened and you just get to hear about all the cool interesting events that already occurred. No matter how far you go, there are almost always humans waiting for you there. Even the plants & wildlife that you need to scan already have names. Therefore, locations have already been discovered in the past. What really burns my backside is that New Game + merely allows you to replay the game over again with the same or different companions; ie., Sarah becomes a potted plant, all the Constellation members are children and I think the very worst is all the Constellation members are you with different personalities (and that's to name just three of the 10 or so variations you get. Not only that, when it comes to the writing and consequences of going through the Unity, Sam Coe's questline revolves around restoring a relationship with Cora's mother, Lillian Hart, yet when it comes to the Unity, Sam shows not the slightest consideration of Lillian in allowing young Cora to go through the Unity. I would think she would be devastated. Also, if you do NG+ to bring all 24 powers to level 10, that means you'd have to jump through 1200 glowy-glitter things in 240 temples. No, thanks. This game was labeled as "Next generation" gameplay? Don't stop to think Bethesda will fix anything other than the most egregious problems and that modders can "fix" the game when Bethesda won't. I've come to the realization that the game is fundamentally flawed in a way that no mod or update can actually fix. It's the base level structures of the game that are so unappealing. Modders can come very close to it, but I don't see that as a modders unpaid job. An example would be that modders made Skyrim better. But they didn't "fix" it. As I sit now with 74.5 hours into Starfield, I honestly don't think I'll ever play this game again. At least not without a Cyberpunk 2.0 and DLC type upgrade. And this Bethesda mediocrity has me very worried for Elder Scroll 6. Don't settle for mediocrity.

Emil's writing style is keep it simple stupid (Not using it in the correct context, because Emil isn't very bright) because gamers don't care about good writing. Hand them a story and they'll ball it up and make a paper airplane out of it. This is his mindset. He will never write good stories.

Man I haven’t seen the Skyrim trailer in YEARS and I still get chills. Such a stark contrast to today

In my opinion Barrett is the perfect representation of what is wrong with the writing. His writing is so abhorrently childish and It seems like the person who wrote him has never actually talked to a human being in their life. I’ve never seen such a horrible attempt at making a “charismatic” and “funny” character in my life. Every line of dialogue that leaves his mouth seems worse than the last and treats the player like we are a 11 year olds in the way it expects you to be impressed with the most trivial and childish rhetoric.

"You didn' t trust the science" is all I need to know about the level of writing in this game.

Hey I'm offended not all of starfields writing is pure cringe, alot of it is just pure shit.

I didn't find the companions likeable at all. They annoyed the fk out of me each in their own ways. I preferred to ditch them whenever it was permitted by the game.

Its like Bethesda is deathly afraid the player will miss content so they will do everything in their power to make nothing matter. Sure you can be the Assassin and Thief leader of skyrim, authority will still be chill around you

I found Starfield so boring and the character's so one dimensional that I took it off my PC. I think Skyrim was Bethesda's high point. They haven't progressed beyond it.

For 48 hours I was patiently waiting for when the story gets good. As i approached the ending, it hit me - Starfield is Midfield. The writing is Safe, Bland, Uninspired, Unimaginative. The big heads at Bethesda are in the bubble of their own greatness.

The biggest plot hole in FO4 and a constant annoyance, is the insistence that there’s no way to tell if someone is a synth, except there’s a giant fucking vacuum tube in their head. Apparently X-ray doesn’t exist in the FO universe, even though the institute can apparently scan every atom in your body to teleport you. But I still loved it, way better than Starfield.

Naming the city "New Atlantis" is kinda like naming a boat "New Titanic"

Fallout 4's writing is on next level compared to starfield. I've played games for more than 20 years, and it feels like Starfield was not written by humans. That's right, procedurally generated storylines. That's what we get nowadays

To me the worst part of the game is having literally zero exploration. I could live with all the bad writing if there were small hand crafted maps on a few planets that were fun to explore. This proc gen crap is not actual exploration at all. I seriously can not understand how they thought this was a good idea.

I've been playing video games (especially rpgs) for thirty plus years. I knew starfield was garbage in the first half hour. Uninstalled and never looked back. The arrogance of anyone to say "you need to play more" or anything like that, is appalling. My time is too valuable to waste out on garbage. Fuck you bethesda. You broke my heart for the last time.

When this game first came out, I remember the staunch supporters would jump down the throats of ANYONE that talked bad about it. I remember one dude posted a youtube short about how he thought starfield would be bad, and his comments were riddled with hate and the like to dislike ratio was even worse. That guy basically predicted everything that happened to starfield and the die hard Copers are quiet as a church mouse

Tbh. I'm pretty sure Earth is a barren wasteland because Bethesda would have to recreate every city on earth. Since you can land wherever you want that would be quite impossible.

Jumping from Baldur's Gate 3 character writting and relationship to Starfield was like a slap to the face. I don't remember the last game where I was so desinterested and bored out of my mind with the npc companions.

Uninstalled it day one. The minute homie gave me a ship for just being a warm body in the area, I knew it was gonna be downhill from there.

I think Starfield's story would be way better if it was Barrett's story. He would be a Starborn. That's why he knew where is and how to recognise the first artifact. That's why he knows the right answers in conversations and can get out safe from difficult situations as he knows the outcomes already. This time though he wants to set things "right". Here's where our character comes in and helps/messes all up and take over the Unity. That would lead to the New Game + loop.

I spoke to someone who said they didn't like Starfield, so they gave it an 8/10. They DIDN'T LIKE IT, but still gave it 8/10, 4 stars out of 5. I'm convinced this is where the positive reviews come from, people who don't understand fractions.

I give Into the Spiderverse and Everything Everywhere a free pass for using the multiverse because they use the it in a different way and as a central point of the story rather than a crutch. The big problem with Multiverses' is that the idea encourages laziness.

I got into Fallout with New Vegas. I played F4 next. Did not like the story, but since it was an improvement from the old Fallouts, I loved exploring all of the open world, crafting armor, modding weapons and killing everyone in VATS. The story was half good atleast. I really wanted to love Starfield. After FO76, i had no expectations from the technical aspects of the game, but I never imagined the writing could get any worser than F4. Starfield main story is half fetch quests and the other half some multiverse garbage that only serves to push you into NG+ if this playthrough of torture was not enough. The trailer is fully misleading to build up hype as you pointed. This loading screen sim is just not fun.

Don't forget they wouldn't even allow you to agree with Matteo that dreams were important. The conversations were so full of flowery words it just felt like someone wanting to sound smart but who really wasn't and just used big words to fool you. It made me so uncomfortable I just pushed on to the awful end. Also seriously no one saved any animals, not even pets? WTF Chocolate Labs

My favorite part was being a human e-mail system, delivering messages. If they were clever I'd think they were mocking FNV fans.

THANK YOU! At last someone pointing out a thing among many things that infuriated me. Every member of Constellation wants me to jump to a new universe...no choice is given for even my spouse to agree when I say I want to stay with them. The whole thing contradicts everything the "story" has said before. I married Sarah. She said had she loved Aja, she'd have quit Constellation to go be with her. She tells me how happy she is we'll spend our lives together; nothing is more important. Then, she shoves me toward the Unity. In the Unity, the fake me tells real me that our devotion to our marriage is an example to others who get married. Yes because devotion is jumping away to another universe and never seeing each other again. Everyone except Barrett expresses apprehension about the dangers of going, but then if I turn back they're disappointed and tell me I must go. And even my dialog choices don't let me give reasons why it makes no sense to go or why I don't want to ever do it. No one questions why the Unity was made, why anyone would want to jump, who besides the genetic "Creators" made it. They'd be more concerned over the dangers of a piece of candy a friend game them. It's like a bad use of the bad things in the Mass Effect 3 ending. Beyond that, the Pilgrim's writings and even what the Hunter says demonstrate how bad going into the multiverse is, that it destroys your humanity and your connection to pther people, but still I want to go? And Sarah wants me to? I didn't help people and fall in love in this universe to jump to another and leave this all behind. And so much of the dialog is like confusing things, as if going to another universe and doing things impacts your real universe. The inanity of even wanting to find artifacts and yo use them is only reinforced by the fact that one helped destroy Earth. All I want to do is find and destroy them. I want to banish the Hunter and Emissary (seriously a bad guy named the Hunter...a 10 year old wrote this) from every reality. And the Starborn with such memorable lines, " you don't deserve this. You must die." Honestly, generic mustache twirling idiotic bumbling bad guys whose existence tells me I don't want to do what they do. But then the stupid story claims I want to be just like them. 🤦‍♀️ No choice.

Finding the nature of the artifacts would have been much better as a background goal instead of being the main point. Great stories generally involve human nature/conflict as a main story point.

Thank you for citing the authors of the clips. I hate it when someone reposts the hard work of others but never give them credit.

Honestly the worst thing Marvel has done is made it so multiverses get hated on just for existing. Don't get me wrong, I understand the feeling, but they're such a cool thing when done properly, as seen by Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, Spiderverse, and the first couple seasons of Rick & Morty. With them you're able to see the sometimes slight, sometimes massive variations left upon both characters and humanity, and allowing them to interact with one another. The number of stories that could be told with such a thing are endless. But then there's the MCU, who typically use it as nothing more as an excuse to put a different actor in the same suit. No substantial differences, maybe an excuse to throw X character into the plot, hell, it even spawned the idiotic line of "I love you in every universe." And as a result of the MCU's shit writing, it's gonna become a risk going anywhere near multiverses, and that's just kind of a shame.

Just finished watching the whole video, and there is so much to unpack here-but rest assured, I found myself nodding in agreement so many times, I thought my head might roll right of my neck. While your editing has gotten better and better over the years, this video-while im sure it was a monster to finish-really shows off all that experience; I'd hit the 'like' button a hundred times if i were able just based on the editing alone. Bravo, sir!

Martin; yes. Absolutely. Serana = no. Because there's a point where the prophecy (which is revealed in that final scene with Serana and the BBEG to have been bollocks all along anyway) states specifically it needs the blood of A daughter of Coldharbor. Not which one. Not that it has to be JUST that one. Serana's mother is still in the game; so you could remove Serana and still have that point as a driving narrative. There's also the point that without EITHER of those two, you have NO known direct daughters of coldharbor so Harkon's ambition is thwarted before it even starts. Since the third elder scroll is tied to figuring out the Dawnguard prophecy and has no impact on the main game at all, Serana really DOESN'T matter that much to either plot. Other than being forced on the player to make it SEEM like she matters (and the fact they locked her mother in a magic box, so she HAD to) I'm also still pretty salty that you can't marry her. Yes, I know what happened with Malog Bal; but victims of that sort can still HEAL from such traumas, and find love in healthy, stable relationships. There are plenty of examples in the past of women that have been "graped" for their first time. Bore out the child as consquence before they even understood the mechanics of their body, and moved on. To find said husband they did love and make a new life - there was a story in the news years ago about an adopted daughter who found her birth mother and had it explained in this EXACT circumstance. So Serana not being marriageable was retarded on Bethesda's choice. I'm also still peeved that Bethesda has effectively made Bethesda.Net inaccessible on consoles presently. (Sometimes you delete a game because you're done with it for a bit; but that doesn't mean you'll never play it again - and I can't get my mods back because I can't access the freaking server. As far as I've looked up there's some sort of bug thing, or trick to it = but it's still bullshit that it happened at all)

I thought Starfield was going pretty well, and then they dropped an awful multiverse reveal. It made everything I had been working towards, null. Because, my actions didn’t matter.

When you showed the comparison between Starfield's narrative trailer, and the Skyrim narrative trailer, I noticed two things: One: Starfield comes off very namby-pamby with the introduction, while Skyrim comes off very badass and exciting. A proper medieval fantasy to get you excited. And two: Skyrim's trailer still makes me all tingly inside after all these years. Starfield barely made me feel anything. Can we have games like Skyrim back, please?

I disagree with you on Far Harbor, but it would take too long to explain why and I'm lazy, but one thing I'll say is that nobody believed Far Harbor to be a writing masterpiece, just competent, which is far above what Bethesda managed to provide since Fallout 3.

Multiverse is as bad as the typical Scooby Doo ending "it was a bad man dressed as ghost all along". Actually, Scooby Doo has better writing than Starfield.

I do want to mention that the scene where you are chased by The Hunter is actually entirely devoid of stakes and a sense of real danger. I found another analysis of starfield as it compares to Cyberpunk's DLC which really showcases Starfield inability to properly storyboard (Spoilers Below! I'll try to put it far enough into my comment so you need to click 'read more') The comparison of The Hunter's chase scene and the spider/crab-like machine that gets hijacked is startling. One is a spectacle of sheer robotic engineering and firepower, the other is a faceless dude who's got just any old weaponry. The dialog and fear from the President who you are safeguarding really exemplifies the horrible situation you are in and their scattered feelings as shit goes down. Everyone else in Starfield just repeats the same line over and over again. The sheer destruction of the spider bot is palpable, massive lasers that cut through concrete, it's turrets shred through steel like butter. The Hunter aimlessly walks around your ship waiting for you to take off. You're character V is emotive and expressive and gets into jams throughout the scene and it shows their characterisation well. The player in Starfield is mute and never changes animations. I could keep going, but I think you get the point I'm trying to convey. Bonus unrelated take: Genshin Impact, a game with a rather good story but asinine and crack adelid ability for 'storytelling' is still better than Starfield's slop.

Starfield sets up so many game mechanics and just.... doesnt use them... The game explicitly tutorialises non-lethal weapons, and at no point are they actually able to be used, not even when you are doing a quest where you are a cop who might want to arrest non-compliant people. The whole premise of new game plus gets utilised so little, usually just being the occasional alternate speech option. The very first thing i did in new game plus was head back down to Vectera, I could not talk to anyone, could not tell them the pirates would be back, could not prevent Barret from being captured, all they gave me was the "get going" generic dialogue. Just some examples of many It's almost as if they didnt have a design document

I wonder, did i get this right? In Starfield some scientist knew that inventing a grav drive will destroy Earth's atmosphere but did it anyway because it was worth it in the long run. So... if he knew that why didn't he invent in, idk, on the Moon? Or a space station?

Starfields opening hours were really good, also refreshing to see a more grounded space setting, but the more you play starfield the worse it gets, not just the writing but the game itself, they’ve somehow gone backwards since Skyrim (which was kind of the first stepping stone)

I think you spent more time and effort creating this than Beth's team of story writers did with their job.

Something about Bethesda releases across the studios working under it, is that the writing is more often than not is friggin atrocious. The example i've been burnt by is Rage 2, and what happened with Wolfenstein after The New Order.

Multiverses aren't the problem, it works just fine for an existing element within a setting. Bethesda's presentation of a multiverse is simply unsophisticated and ultimately pointless, because absolutely nothing is done but the same thing over and over again. Marvel and DC's presentation of multiverses are done for the sake of telling a completely different story or a slightly different story away from the main canon or just to tell a different version of a canonical storyline within that timeline, it works there in that regard, usually anyways.

It feels like the people behind this game has never had an original thought or any sense of wonder ever in their entire lives. Shallow and pretense doesn't even begin to describe it.

I have no problem playing games with bad stories either, but if the story is supposed to be the point, then no, that's just a bad game.

I wouldn't have a problem if it wasn't for the fact that there are fucking essential NPCs in a game about the Multiverse

I almost wonder if the story was an afterthought. Like, maybe their initial idea was just to throw you into their massive world and the artifacts and powers were just things you could randomly find (or find via random side-quest), but eventually, a few atrophied neurons fired off somewhere and they at least managed to realize that would be a disaster. So they cobbled together this crap and stapled in on.

Hack screen writers got more out multiverse theory than any physicists

I agreed with so much of this. Nearly 90% of the issues with Bethesda games since Skyrim can be laid squarely at the door of the lead writer. The ever clueless Emil. I enjoyed his petulant Twitter foot stamping of late that “it’s not him, it’s us”. My father used to say that if you go through the day and all you meet is assholes, it’s time to take a look at yourself. Also, love your accent. It’s like Starfield getting slagged off by a Khajiit.

Cringe is a compliment for starfield's writing, as if it had a personality to be called cringe, void of all soul and humanity is a better description, at least they hit rock bottom and can only go up from here, right?

Multiverse stories aren’t inherently terrible, but introducing them to stories that aren’t already based around them sets it up for failure. Everything Everywhere All At Once and the Spider-Verse movies are properties that START with these ideas in mind, hence their success. Tacking them on last minute without buildup is why it’s so bad

Emil Pagliarulo, the man who held a sort of Ted Talk where he said that he believes that anything beyond simple stories and characters in games don’t matter. That’s why Bethesda games seem like they’re targeting PG audiences with their shallow writing. How is this dude still working at Bethesda?

Todd Howard is like a human shield to Emil Pagliarulo lol

I wouldn't say it's cringe so much as just bad and boring. To be compelling you have to discuss power dynamics that the player/reader can relate to. A threat of violence or a desire to help someone in need can go a long way. Starfield has very few of these types of encounters or elements. You would think that the Neon city Ryujin questline would be chalk full of them but it isn't. The only questline that I would honestly say is serviceable enough is the UC Vanguard one and the reason it's interesting is because the obvious bad guy gives you a choice to join him and do obvious bad guy stuff. People are supposedly dying and you could be involved in making more of that happen if you want to be evil. That's interesting. It signals wider ramifications in the game world with actual consequences. Even if there are only a couple actual followup events, it still feels like something is happening in the game world. That's why Snorefield is so boring. It has so many quests that are just glorified MMO-style newbie quests where you fetch a thing or interact with a widget. That's not interesting. To be compelling the player needs to feel like they are shaping the world with their actions and choices.

Multiverses aren't inherently bad. Multiverses are a central plot element in games like Half Life and Remnant, and both of those games are excellent. The problem with the depiction of multiverses in Starfield and the MCU is that in the former, it only exists to justify New Game Plus in universe, and in the latter, it exists for the purpose of lazy nostalgia bait, allowing for crossovers without breaking established canon. In Half Life and Remnant, the multiverse isn't portrayed as near identical parallel universes, but vast alien worlds that incite mystery and intrigue in the players exploring them.

Q: what's out there? A: Star born Q: who are they? A: no fucking idea. The end. Starfield, ladies and gentlemen.

Multiverse storylines aren't inherently bad. The issue is that it's usually done poorly. It can be done properly

Bethesda became so concerned with making money they forgot how they used to make money.

I liked Far Harbor because it has more endings than the main game, the latter of which has two, with four tones of "blow up the Institute" constituting half the choices. Looking back, there's only one real good ending for Far Harbor(the one where DiMa comes clean and you gather enough clout in the Harbor's denizens to *not* enact a witch hunt), and DiMa's only really endearing when he has Nick Valentine present to bounce a pingpong ball of NPC interaction... something most players won't know about unless you *exclusively* have Nick as your follower for every DiMa-related interaction. You can also be honest with the one-dimensional storytelling and blow up everybody on the island for funsies. By the way, I still find it weird that The Railroad thinks it's okay to neuter the Synths via blowing up their birthplace; the writers also missed a chance to have Poetic Justice be the Railroad ending, with the Institute being taken over by The Railroad. But then someone would have to write a questline where this victorious Railroad would have to fight The Brotherhood of Steel, and that seems like too much work when you can just attach a radiant quest system to the Settlements that Need Your Help.

The more media surrounding Emil's shitty writing I consume the more I realize that this dude *really* needs to go to therapy for whatever the fuck happened during his childhood surrounding religion and religion adjacent things. It feels like almost every single story he writes he feels the need to relate it to religion in some way or another, specifically Catholicism. I dont think his "crisis of faith" had anything to do with the actual writing of Starfield's religions. I think it has to do with the fact he has some religion based mental trauma that he refuses to try and confront because when he does he has a complete breakdown. This is of course entirely speculation and likely isnt true. Point is the guy clearly has issues.

I think multiverse is an interesting concept.. but it isn't done well in any media I have seen. I'm sure it could be done though.

Ive been preparing a script for a Vid on Pagliarulo, and the hateful hack actually made enough noise where he's now in spotlight and it will feel wrong :C And yeah, the multiverse Idea made me thing that you'll be able to screw around with Main quests a lot in NG+. After seeying all they added, the whole thing just seemed wrong

Emil "never listen to criticism" Pagliarulo and Todd "if it doesn't work don't improve it, cut it" Howard simply can not make anything good anymore. sadly.

I respect your opinion on multiverse stories and humbly disagree with it. I enjoy multiverse stories. The only thing that is wrong with them is when they are written horribly (excluding spiderverse, the MCU and starfield fall into this list). It's like time travel. I HATE time travel stories, but when they're written good, I can somewhat get behind them.

Goodsprings tutorial is better written than the entire Starefield game.

sad thing is, the trailer could MAYBE be effective if the game felt even 1/1000th that exciting. The discovery of the artifacts is so profound and amazing and important that it could change everything....that not even your own fellow members are all that interested in it. And as soon as your done...you go to the next universe and nothing changes for them except your gone.

Did anybody else find the moment that you visit your first alien temple and gain a gravity-based superpower to be "genre breaking"? This was a sci-fi exploration game (sort of) and what you discover are various superpowers. I quit playing the game for 3 weeks when that little reveal happened.

I disagree about the beginning. I have never felt so forced into a story as in the beginning of this game. But I agree with the rest. Starfield has no real theme, and despite that it still fails with its teams. 😛

You know what's sad, they could of leaned in to the whole multiverse concept in a way that worked. Have actual choice and consquence, remove essential tags on most if not all NPC's at some point. Let character's die let quests become incomplete-able as a result. Screw around in the first playthrough, go to the next universe, maybe there's some characters you want to try and save this time around so you can do certain quests. Maybe allow you to be more self-aware and mess with certain chars by telling them that they died in another universe or you killed them and have their reactions play out. Not perfect still, but it would feel like a sandbox and give reasons to NG+

I'm convinced you can't strip your enemies after you kill them and the fact there's NO GORE (two direct downgrades from FO4) is because of the cartoonishly diverse cast of characters and they can't be having any heckin violence against womens and minorities!

Thank god I have game pass, cause I basically got to the first meeting with constellation, talked to all the npcs, and it hit me as I talked to them all; "Oh god Bethesda's writing has not fucking changed at all since Fallout 4." I quit, and uninstalled.

The first mod I installed was the "skip dialogue" mod, and then I uninstalled the game as I couldn't stand the copy paste of everything.

multiverses done well can be great. I think time travel in non time travel centric mediums is the the most egregious mechanism .

This is fantastic for what looks to be a "debut" video on your channel. Top-level quality commentary on this (blaaaaaaaand) game. I cannot wait for part 2. Subscribed!

did the shitty writing epidemic start with game of thrones? i man there always was shitty writing, but it feels nowadays it's like 80%+ of media

The most important aspect of the new, and hip team at Bethesda is their pink and violet hair colors.

After giving up with Starfield, for reasons which have been well covered (shit gameplay, shit immersion, shit story, shit writing, shit everything really), I started to play Baldurs Gate 3 having never played a game like it. Initially I was seriously overwhelmed with the complexity of it all, but gradually the game started to give back to me… things fell into place, slowly but surely. I’m terrible with games, but after a lot of effort I’ve just completed clearing out the Goblins camp and I’m blown away by how immersive and well written and acted the game is… it’s like night and day with Starfield. I remember seeing a clip of the recent game awards where Starfield was up for an award in the same category as BG3, at the time I thought nothing of it, but now I’m offended that anyone would even think about putting those two games together.

The multiverse isn't a bad concept, it's just been used badly in some cases

I like how a third of the comments are just defending the device of multiverses. Guys, they are generally shit. Even Star Trek's multiverse stories are pretty shit. Just having an alternate universe where random things are tweaked is not interesting, it's just random. The only value they have is in the character writing, telling some personal story of how the CHARACTER changed as a result of their experiences, but that's a pretty universal rule, and generally requires ignoring the multiverse as much as possible in a story ABOUT it.

The way that Starfield pretends to have in-depth religion factions, but then just stick to the old "1 good, 1 questionable good, 1 raider" factions.

The point about a single man's ambition dooming Earth could have been made interesting if they'd set up the scientist as some kind of hero figure who was believed to have led mankind away from the collapse of its first home (bonus points if Earth had been paradisal due to tech advancements and living in the Settled System had been comparatively hard). That way there'd be a feeling of betrayal from the characters in-universe and potentially an intentional mirroring of Constellation's own drive to learn about the artifacts regardless of the consequences (bonus points if there had been obvious consequences). They were close to having something that could have worked, but fumbled it at just about every turn.

Congrats on blowing up mate. Expecting good things from ya.

youtube algo blessed you, put you in front page for me! Quality video! hope you grown and dont stop making videos mate! subbed!

the fact that no one in the writing team said "erm guys, why would anyone collect the artifacts, go to the end of the universe, fight against a coin toss version of yourself, restart, collect the artifacts again to go to the end of the universe and to fight against a coin toss version of yourself again, restart and continue this forever?" is deeply concerning

I think that even the oft-cited RPG fuck up of choices having no consequences could have worked in Starfield if handled properly. In Dragon Age II (spoilers follow) no matter what you do, one of your siblings dies, you lose your mother and the ending is the same no matter your choices, Kirkwall is torn apart and the Mage-Templar starts. The difference is, the writers made it the point of the game. The whole storyline is you fighting a losing battle and the quests are just damage control. The whole game plays out like a greek tragedy, so when there are no multiple endings, it doesn't feel disappointing, because the theme of the story that in a society as fucked up as this one, one person can do nothing to prevent it from collapsing. In the hands of better writers, Starfield could have pulled something similar.

player: "please give me the VERY expensive trophy so that I can give it to my lame pirate friend" braindead NPC: "why the hell would I do that? it is my job to make sure this award is presented" player: "PRETTY PLEASE" BDNPC: "you're starting to convince me" player: "Oh go on I need it to continue this bullshit quest" BDNPC: "Fine just take it" there are so many dialogues that play out like that and it's beyond fking dumb real people don't act like that even if they have been lobotomized I rolled my eyes so much during this game that I looked like a great white shark eating a fur seal. I strongly believe that a pre-teenager could write a better story with better dialogue than Bethesda shits out

Emil must have some kind of connection in that company. As long as they have him working there the stories will continue to be lame

Its almost like commercialised corporate driven media sucks.

Encouraging proactive engagement and advocacy is key to addressing challenges. By actively participating in constructive discussions, writing articles, and engaging with relevant authorities, we can work towards a more balanced and fair societal environment. Fostering open dialogue instead of resorting to cancel culture will contribute to a healthier discourse and ultimately create positive change.

Tried it on game pass. Got to maybe level 20/25 ish. Maxed out my ability to make cool spaceships only to find out… I had to actually go to far corners of the galaxy to do a Easter egg hunt for ship parts to build my dream ship with a shit load of creds to boot… yeah, that plus the awful story telling I could t even bring myself to finish it

Yeah I never bought the game because I never could understand what it was about from the trailers, but it seems the game was indeed about nothing.

There's no story to be found. And soon, there will be no players to be found.

Skyrim was fun. And it looked nice (mountains, northern lights, snow..). But it was too big, too shallow, generally quests and NPCs were meh. And that plot was wank. Especially that civil war stuff.