Planets with open vast plains of nothingness are exciting because the moon is empty.
Consumers have been waiting countless years for Bethesda’s next major release following 2015’s Fallout 4, that was until we got the announcement for “Starfield” an alleged open world RPG that allows players to traverse across the galaxy exploring new and interesting worlds.
Then the game released and what we got was an “meh”.
Bethesda continues its tradition of launching games with bugs and glitches, and although this trend persists with their recent release, Starfield, there are notable improvements since their previous game. They’ve successfully introduced non-sluggish combat to the Creation Engine. However, reminiscent of Fallout 4, Starfield features a somewhat lackluster main story and a modernized dialogue system that I personally hate.
And the PC performance is woeful, no doubt contributed by the fact that the Creation Engine simply needs to be euthanized and the fact that Bethesda had outsourced a large portion of its modeling to low-rate third world individuals who simply have no goddamn clue what the word “tris” and “topology” actually mean.
Bethesda blamed the woeful PC performance on simply “you should upgrade chum” but in reality the whole game is just an unoptimized shitshow, with various models carrying a disgusting amount of bloat.
Starfield remains largely unchanged versus Fallout 4, the main story narrative is garbage, with the only redeeming aspects found in optional side quests that hilariously enough provide more satisfaction than advancing through the main storyline. Bethesda’s signature lies in crafting vast, expansive open worlds that grant players the freedom to explore, uncover, and spend countless hours engaging in various activities.
Yeah, well there’s hardly any of that in Starfield, because there is no actual “open world”, rather you’re simply traversing across various planets that are both one dimensional in layout but in terms of actual content as well.
So, it’s a modernized Bethesda game that takes mainly the downsides of Fallout 4 and removes the open world aspect that was essentially their saving grace, needless to say the game was immensely overhyped upon reveal until its release and then simply it was met with a mixed reception as the game seemingly could’ve used another couple years in the oven.
Starfield has sold lots of copies, how much exactly nobody really knows, it topped sales charts for its week of release but in conjunction with being an XBOX Game Pass title raw statistics are hazy, it did manage to achieve over six million “players” between sales and game pass users during its launch phase but the hype seemingly died off right thereafter.
Does it deserve to miss out on nominations for the pathetic rigged theatrical event that calls itself the “game awards”? Not really, with Starfield only being nominated for just a single category, best RPG to be exact, but it’ll no doubt be beaten by the bear fucking spectacle that was Baldur’s Gate 3.
Now that we’ve gotten the summary for Starfield out of the way, it’s rather uncanny for these large scale prominent developers to actually respond to consumer inquiries or reception whether they be positive or in this case, negative.
As of now, Starfield holds a “Mixed” rating on Steam.
Reflecting feedback from both recent and overall reviews. Although Bethesda representatives have assured players of ongoing improvements to the game, the impact of these efforts is yet to be fully reflected in the reviews and most likely nothing is ever going to change until we see the full release of the Creation Kit and allow for a couple years time for modders to attempt to redeem the poor qualities of the game itself.
I’m not just speaking about mods that remove the pushed pronoun options either, the only reason why people continually come back to Skyrim after all these years is quite simply for the game mods, majority of which are simply degenerate and or smutty by nature.
Clearly, an intern at Bethesda has been running amuck, responding to negative reviews for Starfield that seemingly have only sparked more negativity in response due to the hilarious postings by a Bethesda employee defending the game and its lack of content.
Bethesda seemingly are now acting like an indie developer who seems rather unhappy that their work is being received negatively by the fans, replying to negative Steam reviews for Starfield that essentially plug the game with all the good “juicy” bits that it has to offer while obscuring the reality of the game.
In a response to a negative review that critiques the mediocre writing, voice acting, quest and world design, dubbing the game as being “mid”, the response feels like candid and automated, summarizing the countless hours it would otherwise take to explore and complete quests that otherwise dynamically change across your playthrough.
Basically one big ol’ wall of text that isn’t actually a response written by an actual human being but rather an automatic reply that summarizes what sort of game Starfield is and what players can expect from within it.
But that wasn’t the only response by a Bethesda representative that negative Steam reviews have seen.
This one feels a lot more genuine and you can really tell that the individual behind the response has some experience in politics because it’s all straight up lies.
Because you see, the negative responses regarding the rather vague and empty depictions of planets inside of Starfield were meant to be that way, what with the game having around half a decade of developmental time allocated towards it and yet it still feels empty within. Just because you’re not playing an open world game and therefore are limited in how you traverse across open areas of barren wasteland, that doesn’t mean that Starfield is boring.
You’re supposed to feel “small” in the world, just like real life, you’re quite possibly the only living organism on the planet you’ve just landed on and that’s okay because you’re supposed to take it all in and think to yourself that you not only as a player in this large open world but also in real life amount to absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Empty planets are exciting because the astronauts didn’t expect to find anything when they went to the moon, because of course the journey in and of itself was exciting and a worldwide event.
When you “incorrectly” critique Starfield for being “boring” just think back to the astronauts, who went to the moon inside of a tinfoil shuttle, they certainly weren’t bored. How could they possibly be bored? They even played golf.
And finally the last response, which defends the large obscene load screens that continually plague Bethesda games, despite of course other studios including indie developers achieving far greater amounts of assets and content with minimal amounts of loading screens obstructing gameplay.
Essentially, the intern at Bethesda who is writing all of this bullshit, or maybe they’ve also outsourced this position to Mumbai as well, either way the responses are largely copy-pasted and feel as if Bethesda are gaslighting players for simply not enjoying the game, because of course these people cannot handle criticism more rather you’re just playing the game incorrectly for noticing its flaws.
