*S*T*A*R*F*I*E*L*D* / Starfield

They're still issues because "yeah the games are buggy but it's Bethesda, what are you going to do" has somehow become the accepted mantra over the last 17 years. People might not like it, but the negatives haven't been enough to stop them from buying anyway. The bugs are funny, mods will fix it, you should just get a better computer lol, etc etc.

So they've got no incentive to change, really, because people keep rewarding then for not changing.

Thing is I have these frustrations but I also (Fallout 4 aside) generally get at least 100hrs of brilliant escapism of a kind that other devs don't do.

As a value proposition there are very few forms of entertainment that rival Bethesda games for me, even at 'premium' price points. Most long games I tend to lose interest. I have a fairly low tolerance for obvious padding but for some reason the Bethesda quest structure just clicks for me and I want to keep going to see everything.

They do get rewarded for not changing but I'd argue is because they still offer something unique that people want. I'd argue that we need other developers to rip off the Bethesda formula and show it can be done without these issues. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, it feels like everyone else has given up making big budget first person immersive sims despite the obvious market for them. They have the genre to themselves.

That’s likely true for a lot of people. Especially those that don’t binge on games like many of us do. When it all clicks it’s a very special game. Sadly those moments have been rare for me.

For my part I’m out. Just no compulsion to play it. Tried this morning, and all I had was a bunch of fetch and escort quests in Neon. Life’s too short. I could absolutely go out and make my own fun. Or I could just go and play other stuff.

Loads coming out on GamePass in the coming weeks. Plus Diablo 4 is calling me back.

People will say Witcher 3, but then the counterpoint is Cyberpunk. I love this style of western RPG, so the more games like this the better. For what it's worth I haven't seen a single non-visual bug in 40+ hrs, but then had the same experience with Cyberpunk so maybe I just play in a way that doesn't break this type of game.

Yea, should have said, I’ve played a good bit of Witcher 3 but the “Bloody Baron” quest was the only bit which stood out to me. Never felt like I really had fun with it though.

Cyberpunk I’ve only put about 30 hours into but it didn’t grab me in the same way Starfield has.

Speaking personally... Witcher 3, RDR2, Cyberpunk, Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom. And Fallout: New Vegas.

And yeah, you could say that none of those games scratch the same itch as a Skyrim does, that they're not really the same. But to me they're operating in a similar sort of space, and put paid to the whole "the things that are bad about our games are the necessary price of our AMBITION" line that the Bethesda PR people like to drum out.

They could move it forward in so many little ways, it's so spotty in attention to details which is their biggest weakness.

I was wandering around on a space station with my gun out and random guard 37 commented on the make of the gun which was so cool, yet I can rock up to the pirate capital of the galaxy dressed as Constable Freestar, flying the equivalent of a Police BMW X5 and no one bats an eye.

The best thing about Beth RPGs is that they put you into your characters boots so effortlessly and immerse you in the world, I find myself making choices (most of the time) based on what my character would do in a way that something like BG3 doesn't.

I dream of a Beth rpg with the same attention to detail of something like Red Dead 2

Yes exactly. This is my point really. I've tried all of those mentioned and they either do deliver a similar experience or have other more serious issues.

Third person games don't give immersion, Zelda has no believable characters, decent dialogue or narrative driven quests.

Outer Worlds was very boring and much smaller. New Vegas was great but smaller and even more buggy.

Really the only games since Skyrim that have come close are Prey (again much smaller but excellent for what it was), Cyberpunk (even more janky and plays more like GTA than Bethesda in terms of exploration and quest discovery), Subnautica (again smaller and buggy).

I think we can safely conclude that these games are hard to make.

I really wish there were more. I don't game as much these days and I think a significant part of that is that the 'immersive sim' genre which I love has been poorly served.

It’s not so much X studio have taken the Bethesda formula, tidied up all the tat and absolutely nailed it, more that most decent studios do most areas better at this point, hence the comments about how bloody dated a lot of this looked.

Sure I get that and I find myself incredulous at some of the long standing issues and aspects are very dated.

However I wonder if the reason they persist with their engine and can't/won't resolve some of the long-standing flaws is because no other engine can do this type of game significantly design better. It might just be Bethesda being complacent but they can be because they don't have any direct rivals offering the same thing but better.

Finishing the Groundpounder mission and the characters are literally running circles in the conversation. 😂

I had a mission that involved having to escape while avoiding attacks. I must have accidentally killed a local cause I suddenly got stopped and told to pay a fine. All while gun fire was going off around me.

I guess it’s, what’s the word? it’s not evolutions, that’s for sure 😝, *stages* of a very specific engine that does very specific things I suppose. A perfect case in point would be Starfield actually where, in trying to do something other than the usual open-world-map-with-caves-and-shit game, they’ve been unable to remould the traversal mechanisms baked in to it to work for this slightly different setting. It’s just exactly the same again, with a starry backdrop this time.
And I think that’s damning, rather than some way of excusing the issues in their games. No, perhaps no other game *quite* does the map scale and the NPC amounts, and the items in the world and the multiple strands of quests all at the same time, but so many, like RDR2 do *nearly* all of it and so much more slickly that it’s not even close. I can’t escape the idea that Bethesda are lazy and complacent and a little bit more of the genuine magic of Morrowind is lost each time they spend eons making a new game and go “tadaaaa!” only for them to look a little more dated with each new one.