Starfield Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[tentanz]

People were saying the same thing before Skyrim was announced. BGS was done and TES was over, then they caught a zeitgeist by the balls.

 

[gerey]

People were saying the same thing before Skyrim was announced. BGS was done and TES was over, then they caught a zeitgeist by the balls.

Skyrim was a Hail Mary for Bethesda, a completely unexpected success caused by a set of circumstances they will never be able to replicate.

I genuinely believe Bethesda have been so shy about showcasing TES VI because they are quite afraid it will not live up to the popularity of Skyrim.

And even if we ignore that, their past few offerings have been met with ridicule and derision. Not many people liked Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 was and still is a colossal trainwreck. Does anyone here believe Bethesda have the talent and dedication to make Starfield something special? Anyone I ask just assumes it's going to be Fallout 4 with janky, buggy spaceship travel offering the same basic Bethesda: The Game gameplay loop everyone's getting very sick of. They don't have the polish, the ambition, the writing talent or the graphical muscle to compete with other games, so if Starfield fails to recapture the Skyrim magic then it's going to be another flop.

 

[Saerain]

People were saying the same thing before Skyrim was announced. BGS was done and TES was over, then they caught a zeitgeist by the balls.

Skyrim was a Hail Mary for Bethesda, a completely unexpected success caused by a set of circumstances they will never be able to replicate.

I mean, that was also Oblivion before it. And Morrowind.

 

[Jenkem]

 

[Drakortha]

Starfield is more dead than Cyberpunk

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Skyrim was a Hail Mary for Bethesda, a completely unexpected success caused by a set of circumstances they will never be able to replicate.

Arguably, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was a "Hail Mary pass" for Bethesda Softworks, since they needed considerable funding, enabled by a change in ownership, to complete development of the game, and, as a 3D open world RPG, Morrowind offered something different from any previous CRPG, yet sold quite well and ensured the future of the company, which had been on the brink of bankruptcy before the new funding was acquired.

Oblivion was designed for consoles and intentionally dumbed-down in many aspects to appeal to a broader audience. It sold substantially better than Morrowind, but this was not a "Hail Mary" in any sense, just building on Morrowind's success with a much larger budget.

After Oblivion, Bethesda adapted this game engine for Fallout 3, which also sold well, and then created Skyrim. By this point, they had a vast budget to spend and used what they had learned from Oblivion and Fallout 3 to appeal even more broadly, with gameplay dumbed down even further from Oblivion, though various other issues, such as level-scaling, were corrected. The scale of Skyrim's tremendous commercial success was unexpected, but it was not surprising that it sold substantially better than its immediate predecessor and again not at all a "Hail Mary".

I genuinely believe Bethesda have been so shy about showcasing TES VI because they are quite afraid it will not live up to the popularity of Skyrim.

And even if we ignore that, their past few offerings have been met with ridicule and derision. Not many people liked Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 was and still is a colossal trainwreck. Does anyone here believe Bethesda have the talent and dedication to make Starfield something special? Anyone I ask just assumes it's going to be Fallout 4 with janky, buggy spaceship travel offering the same basic Bethesda: The Game gameplay loop everyone's getting very sick of. They don't have the polish, the ambition, the writing talent or the graphical muscle to compete with other games, so if Starfield fails to recapture the Skyrim magic then it's going to be another flop.

Bethesda already lacked the talent and dedication to make Oblivion, Fallout 3, or Skyrim something special. However, all three sold quite well, with mass appeal, especially to console gamers, and generally favorable reviews from those who played them.

 

[Drakortha]

I played Morrowind on Xbox

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Skyrim already launched in a fairly incomplete state (civil war faction questline, horses etc) to meet that 11/11/11 marketing date. Starfield's dumb 11/11/22 date -which only a handful of nerds would even "get"- certainly wasn't worth rushing the game for.

Unlike Bethesda, Microsoft is likely less concerned with whether Starfield is just in a good enough state to make a tidy profit at launch compared to how the game reflects on the desirability of future bethesda xbox/gamepass exclusivity that they paid good money for, and the future value of the IP. They likely care more about BGS games as console sellers, less interested in simple unit movers that are quickly forgotten about (FO4) or create a bad outlook for their company (fo76, cyberpunk). The cyberpunk case must be particularly scary because it showed them that simply bribing out the "gaming media" (Hines' specialty) might no longer be enough to control the consumer's opinion/discourse (in the past the gaming media was even shameless enough to turn beth game bugs into publicity points).

On the other hand it could be they'd rather wait until next-gen console adoption is more significant after thanksgiving/xmas/easter (both next-gen consoles sold a lot less than projected so far, even taking shortages into account). Less likely but there might even be a new platform to sell the game on by then, see Nintendo's Zelda BOTW2 -an asset flip of BOTW1 allegedly in development since 2017- also recently having its release date pushed from late 2022 to first half of 2023. Wouldn't be the first time Nintendo sat on finished zelda games to launch them with a new platform (TP, BOTW).
They've been selling streaming versions of PS4/XBO multiplat games on the Nintendo Switch for years now (starting with AC Odyssey, RE7 etc), so why not big PS5/XSX multiplat streams next? MS also just made Epic's Fortnite available as a stream for free running on their xbox cloud gaming servers, no subscription to gamepass/payment even required. MS will stream Fortnite to your PC/tablet/phone at their expense, so they obviously want to push the service pretty hard.

 

[Caim]

It just didn't work.

 

[vortex]

It just didn't work.

It shall work!

 

[Modron]

Skyrim already launched in a fairly incomplete state (civil war faction questline, horses etc) to meet that 11/11/11 marketing date. Starfield's dumb 11/11/22 date -which only a handful of nerds would even "get"- certainly wasn't worth rushing the game for.

I am pretty sure these dates aren't chosen for nerds but to excite bugmen who have weird hardons for the number 1.

 

[Caim]

It just didn't work.

It shall work!

After the modders are done with it.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

A delayed game is not always eventually good. If a game is shit, poorly managed and badly made it will be shit no matter how much you delay it. People need to realize making a game isn't like laying a house brick by brick in a linear fashion. And you just need more time to build it. It's more like cooking. You do a bunch of bits as best you can. And combine them into a whole that is greater. You can have shit ingredients but if you know how to cook you can still make good food. If you have the best ingredients in the world but you're a tranny that was told they were good by their groomer when you aren't at all, you will make shitty food in 10 minutes or several hours either way. The same is true for gamedev.

 

[ferratilis]

 

[vortex]

Spoiler

 

[Kem0sabe]

Skyrim was a Hail Mary for Bethesda, a completely unexpected success caused by a set of circumstances they will never be able to replicate.

I genuinely believe Bethesda have been so shy about showcasing TES VI because they are quite afraid it will not live up to the popularity of Skyrim.

And even if we ignore that, their past few offerings have been met with ridicule and derision. Not many people liked Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 was and still is a colossal trainwreck. Does anyone here believe Bethesda have the talent and dedication to make Starfield something special? Anyone I ask just assumes it's going to be Fallout 4 with janky, buggy spaceship travel offering the same basic Bethesda: The Game gameplay loop everyone's getting very sick of. They don't have the polish, the ambition, the writing talent or the graphical muscle to compete with other games, so if Starfield fails to recapture the Skyrim magic then it's going to be another flop.

They haven't showed anything because there's nothing to show. Game is still in pre production and they will only move forward once starfield is released.

 

[vortex]

Inb4, Bethesda announces they will be using Unreal engine 5 for their next game after Starfield.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Inb4, Bethesda announces they will be using Unreal engine 5 for their next game after Starfield.

then it will be death of Bethesda as their game is not really worth playing with no gazzilions of mods

 

[Nifft Batuff]

A canceled game is eventually good.

 

[gerey]

While it's true that postponing the launch of a project that is clearly struggling is the proper course of action to ensure it's not a complete dumpster fire, the fact you are postponing the release of the game for nearly a year, especially since you already had a meme date picked beforehand, speaks a lot about the general state of the project, and the company at large.

I mean, Fallout 4 came out near the end of 2015 - that's nearly a whole 7 years of development time, by one of the biggest and most profitable companies in the industry, that are likely reusing a lot of assets, technology and the same engine they've been working with since Morrowind, on top of having access to MS's infinite money printer for a year now.

And it's not like they can use Fallout 76 as an excuse, that one was made by the B Team and came out a colossal trainwreck.

What exactly have Bethesda been doing these past 7 years? I have no illusions that Starfield is going to be anything more than the same game they've been shitting out for the past 20 years, with the added gimmick of flying a spaceship, so why is it taking them so long? Surely implementing that one mechanic can't be that much of a challenge.

You could argue that designing assets for a new IP can take time, but with Bethesda's money they have the financial muscle to just throw more artists at the task to get it done quicker - it's not like the company has ever been famous for the quality of their 3D objects or their art direction.

Is the issue implementing ships and procedurally generated planets? Surely that can't be that challenging, both features have been present in one form or another in games since Elite.

They made Morrowind, a game with vastly grander ambition and complexity 20 years ago, with far less resources and experience than they have now, and with a fraction of the budget (even accounting for inflation).

 

[Butter]

They spent at least 3 years hunting down the last bits of complexity in their formula.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Todd said a couple months ago that FO76 has 11 million players.

Not many "new ones" tho, most of them must be old whales or consoletards.
Since Bethesda abandoned their own launcher and forces everyone to migrate to steam, I did so as well in preparation for my quarterly visits. Of course using an exisiting account did not work, so I had to create a new one. Because Bethesda.

Anyway, I now had access to steam achievements and their percentages. They are not retroactive tho. But remember, it is available on steam for 2 years now, so every "new" pc player since then would have picked that.
"Reach lvl 20" has something like 20% of all steam users. Yeah...

Edit: FO76 also had several trial weekends, I trust Todd to count those as "players" as well.

 

[CaffeineConquistador]

Link to actual article for those of us who don't have to filter their lives through fucking 4chan https://www.cracked.com/article_33718_starfield-bethesdas-new-blockbuster-isnt-looking-good.html

Here, for those of you offended by 4chan let me link to you "cracked.com" Fucking hell dude, really?

The top stories are a Jake Gyllenhaal livestream, 15 facts about will smith movies, and of course 15 facts that live rent free in our heads.

Zombra is an idiot, but Cracked still being around is amayeeezing.

 

[CaffeineConquistador]

I quite enjoyed Skyrim back then despite its obvious shortcomings, but the "evolution of Bethesda" doesn't make me very excited about this.

Rather, I'm going fully-on retro to revisit Starfield's lead's biggest achievements to gamingkind:

Life Of The Party (nuff said).

Plus his AV review of the original Thief, which may have been one of the reasons why he eventually got a job in this industry in the first place (the times, they seem to be a-changing).

After that, it apparently was mostly all downhill from there. Also, quite curious to read opinion pieces on games of yore like that from somebody who's now infamous for his "paper airplane" and "keep it simple" lectures on games design/writing. :D



But then he witnessed Looking Glass going bust first-hand, so maybe you can't blame him if he went into opposing directions thereafter. (But you still should).

He is credited for writing and quest design on Morrowind Bloodmoon and quest design on Oblivion too. I was watching this video
(if you want a laugh read the comments) and he seems quite out of touch. But then again, I have played many hours of several games he has been involved in.

Yeah, he's definitely past his prime now. Back in the '90s when he was writing for Avault, right when he said he was leaving for Looking Glass, I email him and asked if he could autograph my Thief 1 box. He said "sure, send the box, pay for shipping, return shipping," gave me the address to his new place of work and all that. So I did and never saw my box again.

 

[Funposter]

You could argue that designing assets for a new IP can take time, but with Bethesda's money they have the financial muscle to just throw more artists at the task to get it done quicker - it's not like the company has ever been famous for the quality of their 3D objects or their art direction.

Their 3D assets suck but the art direction is usually top-notch