Games is done, person making stuff for new games leaves for new job. News.
Yeah because everyone comes to lemmy or the games radar for their hard hitting political pieces 🙄🙄
Edit: y’all can keep downvoting if you wanna spend the time. Like it or not trying to downplay this from news is just outright incorrect. This is absolutely news for gaming, maybe not the world but it is for gamers.
So with that said, if you’re so annoyed by news you don’t care about, stop consuming it then. There’s a million and one ways to do this.
I’m sick and tired of the unjustifiable whining and corpo boot licking that’s going on around here. The game was yet another failure and the lead dev also chose to leave right after. I’ll give you a hint, most people leave their jobs because of management.
No, but if we reported on every person changing companies, there would be way too much garbage.
For general news sure
For news in gaming, this is absolutely news.
This isn’t just some Joe Shmoe, this was an important individual within Bethesda and within their their games.
Not sure who that’s good for.
Imo the big problems with the game are because they outsourced so much of it.
Although there were too many fetch quests (imo), generally the game I found to be quite engaging. Just, not very deep systems; load times going into even the smallest buildings meant it’s not even approaching open world; drab procedural planets and outposts in a sad attempt to bulk it up; horrid animations and NPC models that wouldn’t be out of place in a game 10 years ago. Not to mention the horrendous amount of bugs I experienced.
This is why I can no longer allow myself to get excited for new games. I paid £7.99 for a month of PC gamepass to experience Starfield, if I paid full price I’d have been very unhappy. Now we pay to be bugtesters.
load times going into even the smallest buildings
Oh my god, it’s such a little thing but the sheer inconsistency with what is and isn’t a loading door is absurd. New Atlantis, the first city in the game is awful with this. You have “the well” where everything is on the same map, no loading. Then you go to the commercial district and it’s a coin flip with little to no logic behind it.
Add the heavy reliance on fast travel to get anywhere and it just falls flat on its face on the open world exploration feeling. Sad considering the plot and dialog make such a huge deal about exploration.
Yeah they really flopped with that aspect. I saw someone refer to it as ‘loading screen simulator’ and couldn’t disagree. I don’t understand how other devs can make things seamless, but Bethesda couldn’t manage it.
Other Devs try to use current gen engines, this is the same engine that Skyrim was on just with more shit added.
It’s the same engine Morrowind was on.
You could argue the same for most games on most Engines. Half Life: Alyx is the same engine as half-life 2 with more shit added over the years (I think they’ve changed it with the upgrade to Source 2, but this really showed as all Valve games would run as
hl2.exe, and source 2 is merely an evolution, not a rewrite).However Bethesda’s Creative Engine was already quite dated by the time Skyrim came out 12 years ago, and hasn’t received any meaningful improvements since. Honestly at this point it’s not a technical issue, any competent software team could have incrementally fixed and upgraded the engine over 12 years, no matter how buggy it was when Skyrim was released and how much spaghetti there was to clean up.
Bethesda just doesn’t care that their game mechanics are stuck in 2009 and the management is probably too set in its ways to figure out another way to write quests or design level without loading screens, too comfortable with the ease of writing dialogue trees without mocap or even some basic “first year of film school” camera placement.Too bad for them Baldur’s Gate 3 showed the world that these things actually matter. I won’t hold my breath for TES VI, the technical gap on their engine is only growing and they still haven’t indicated even an acknowledgement of its flaws.
And it really shows.
I got a feeling the next elders scroll is on the new engine, well I bloody hope it is.
But but but… it just works.
Nonetheless… I still wouldn’t trust them do a competent new engine…
I had all of one complaint about that in all of New Atlantis. There’s a tiny convenience store that’s behind a loading screen. Everything else seemed ok/expected to me.
You have “the well” where everything is on the same map, no loading. Then you go to the commercial district and it’s a coin flip with little to no logic behind it.
Except all of the surface levels in New Alexandria are also in the same map. You can jump down from the commecial district to the space port with no loading screens if you want. The only exceptions are interiors. All other loading screens are from teleporting the player across the map via the NAT and elevators. Saying there’s “no logic” is disingenuous.
I feel like some quests the main idea of them was great… the problems were with the lack of gameplay mechanics… Or world elements lacking
Like ok I have to infiltrate this office and do something there… Ok I will dress up with this clothes from the company I found and try to not get near people. Instant shooting on sight no matter what.
That’s one example but most of the time I find stuff that the quest was interesting but… the actual gameplay implementation it’s super bad and lacking.
I got given a great tip from someone re the stealth, that I WISH the damn game had explained.
You know how you can set your armour to ‘hide when in settlement’ or something similar… easy to forget that setting, turns out we’re tramping around with our armour on, which makes us easy to spot and hear. So to get proper stealth you have to take your armour off (and therefore be quite vulnerable). Makes sense, once explained!
Like ok I have to infiltrate this office and do something there… Ok I will dress up with this clothes from the company I found and try to not get near people. Instant shooting on sight no matter what.
Seems odd to expect of a Bethesda game (or hell, a lot of types of games). It feels like you’re saying “I wish Starfield was Hitman”. But if you may recall, Hitman made some very self-aware comments about how silly or situational “dressing up as” is to stealth.
That’s one example but most of the time I find stuff that the quest was interesting but… the actual gameplay implementation it’s super bad and lacking.
Because of the above reason and reasons like it? It was sorta implemented as the type of game Bethesda fans seek out. Not a Physics simulator and not a Stealth & Dress-up Simulator.
I mean I expect something not necessarily that, but I feel like there should be more mechanics that simply start shooting every one. Like in that specific case it was a laboratory full of people with clothes with fully covered with mask… and plenty of lockers where to steal the same clothes it’s not crazy for somebody to think that was an option
And you had to enter inside certain room with people everywhere, even with the broken ability the game gave you to control people… that was a mess.
It was barely possible unless again you want to start shooting every one but that doesn’t matter it was an example there were other cases with similar stuff were the premise was good but there wasn’t a good implementation.
Like there was this quest were you had to go inside a factory and put something or take it, can’t remember. You can go through the office like you were the king in the castle nobody cares about it , go to the boss office which actually weirdly enough it think was the only way to go into the factory… Like wtf, some mechanics to get entry or something idk…
oh yeah that’s Mike when he is bored enters into the company and the factory like it’s his second home we don’t care.
I mean I expect something not necessarily that, but I feel like there should be more mechanics that simply start shooting every one. Like in that specific case it was a laboratory full of people with clothes with fully covered with mask… and plenty of lockers where to steal the same clothes it’s not crazy for somebody to think that was an option
Interesting. Starfield isn’t my first Bethesda game, so maybe that’s why that didn’t seem like an option to me. Normally, that’s not an option in video games, but Starfield also does a fairly good job at telling you each and every thing you can do.
It was barely possible unless again you want to start shooting every one
I mean… Bethesda games are violent. You’re not going to walk into a hostile location and leave without a trail of corpses. The stealth mechanics are fairly iconic, and it is possible to clear that lab either going unseen or just shooting people from the shadows.
Like there was this quest were you had to go inside a factory and put something or take it, can’t remember. You can go through the office like you were the king in the castle nobody cares about it
Common to most games with stealth and authority mechanics, some areas are “trespassing” areas, and others are not. Starfield is slightly lenient on trespassing areas because it’s not designed to be a Strict Stealth Game.
go to the boss office which actually weirdly enough it think was the only way to go into the factory… Like wtf, some mechanics to get entry or something idk…
If you’re caught picking the lock, you will be arrested or shot. If you have a key, using it is not suspicious. Typical rpg stealth mechanics.
You seem to be looking for a hyper-realism simulator, and not a game?
If you’re caught picking the lock, you will be arrested or shot. If you have a key, using it is not suspicious. Typical rpg stealth mechanics.
But that’s the point… No locks no body complaining about what the hell I am doing there as I said zero attempt at making like oh no you shouldn’t be here… No locking no guards complaining… Only if you pick up some random object… It was really stupid.
I think something that really harmed the overall reception of starfield is baldurs gate 3 releasing a month before it. Quest design in that game is stupendous, with tons of varied stories with interesting characters. And each quest can be solved in tons of different ways due to how in depth the game mechanics are. Starting to play starfield after playing that game made the whole game feel sooooo shallow. For an “open world RPG” I always felt that the devs only ever gave you 1 or 2 options to complete a quest.
I think something that really harmed the overall reception of starfield is baldurs gate 3 releasing a month before it
This is something I don’t get, and cuts to the core of my response to complaints. Almost every complaint people have had with Starfield is something that doesn’t even exist in BG3. Someone was recently whining the “shoot bullets near guards and they don’t aggro”, the bullet animations hitting water. The physics of falling into the bodies of water. All things that just don’t happen in BG3 at all.
Quest design in that game is stupendous, with tons of varied stories with interesting characters
While I am not personally disappointed in Starfield’s quests, I wouldn’t really object if quest-writing were more than a fringe minority of the complaints. It’s pretty much forgotten for the silly complaints most people have. Like the stealth system not being Hitman 3.
And each quest can be solved in tons of different ways due to how in depth the game mechanics are.
This is a fair critique. BG3 is on my to-buy list, but that is oft mentioned to be its strongest point.
For an “open world RPG” I always felt that the devs only ever gave you 1 or 2 options to complete a quest.
Sure. But you would agree that’s pretty much a known quantity for Bethesda? I think there are a few quests in Starfield where they’re not quite to Bethesda’s usual standards (specifically thinking about the paradise planet quest), but all-in-all they are what you’d expect
If someone gave it a 7 out of 10 because it’s “fairly well-executed, but equational” I wouldn’t object despite enjoying it more.
I’m not entirely sure about that. Starfield isn’t my first Bethesda game either—I’ve been with them since Daggerfall. It seems like you might be honing in a bit too much on dissecting XTornado’s points in an attempt to dismiss their perspective.
You seem to be painting Bethesda games as mainly first-person combat titles with vast maps, but we all recognize that isn’t the core essence of their games. Starting from Arena, Bethesda has been striving to immerse players in alternate worlds. They’ve been pioneers in this endeavor, crafting expansive realms with intricate societies, aiming to make players genuinely feel like they’re part of these living, breathing locales. Morrowind dived deep into lore, featuring quests that involved bribery, stealth, and investigation to enhance the world’s authenticity. Combat was the exception, not the norm. Oblivion continued this tradition, introducing scripted AI with daily routines like sleeping, eating, and shopping. Many quests in these games sought to enhance the world’s authenticity where gameplay mechanics fell short. The Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion stands as a prime example of this.
Regarding your comment about the stealth mechanics being “iconic,” that might be stretching it a tad. Bethesda’s game mechanics have often been somewhat simplified versions of their intended concepts, spanning from dialogue systems to stealth and combat. There hasn’t been significant advancement in this aspect since Oblivion, except for a slight improvement in combat seen in Fallout 4.
What truly made these games special was their commitment to crafting believable, explorable worlds. However, with Starfield’s shift to procedural generation, it’s taken a step back in terms of world exploration. Essentially, if you’ve seen one procedurally generated planet in Starfield, you’ve seen them all. In contrast to the handcrafted environments of their previous titles, much of the game feels sterile, as it’s essentially computer-generated.
This leaves the believability of their fictional world as the standout feature, and in this aspect as well, there hasn’t been significant progress since Oblivion. XTornado’s point about the world’s lack of convincing reactions to player actions is valid. And it’s not as if the features they suggested are unprecedented in games of this genre. Twelve years ago, New Vegas introduced a simple disguise system. However, in Starfield, the world remains oblivious to your actions. Even firing a shot at someone’s feet in a bustling city prompts no reaction, making the world seem like a shallow façade, detracting from the game’s core objective of creating a “living, breathing universe” to explore.
While it’s still an enjoyable game for fans of the Bethesda formula, it feels like they haven’t evolved their formula in over 15 years. It’s entirely reasonable for gamers to critique the game’s lack of reactivity. It might have been fine in 2011, but the industry has left them behind, and their worlds feel hollow and fake in this new age.
It seems like you might be honing in a bit too much on dissecting XTornado’s points in an attempt to dismiss their perspective.
I’m not sure I understand what’s wrong with dissecting the points of a perspective when one’s process involves questioning that perspective. It seems the most relevant points altogether.
You seem to be painting Bethesda games as mainly first-person combat titles with vast maps, but we all recognize that isn’t the core essence of their games
I mean, really not at all. If anything, they’re “general-purpose first-person RPGs that let you do a little bit of everything”. A shallow ocean instead of a deep river.
You go on to make a lot of points I would agree with.
Regarding your comment about the stealth mechanics being “iconic,” that might be stretching it a tad
Are you aware of the ever popular “stealth-archer meme”? Can you think of any games where that meme is relevant or has been used? Are any of them not Bethesda games? And then, you go on to say:
Bethesda’s game mechanics have often been somewhat simplified versions of their intended concepts, spanning from dialogue systems to stealth and combat
…exactly!
I guess I should clarify. My critique of XTornado was not that he isn’t allowed to dislike the game. It was that he clearly didn’t know what he signed up for in purchasing it despite it having one the most established featuresets of any game. It would be like me buying the new Madden and complaining because it’s not a driving simulator. Maybe I made a mistake and didn’t read anything about it. Fine. And if I went to the Madden community complaining there’s no 5th gear, I would expect to be corrected by people pointing out that my problem is my ignorance, not the game’s advertising. Then I would get rid of my copy of Madden (I don’t like football or driving games) and move on with my life.
not a Stealth & Dress-up Simulator.
There was an entire quest line dedicated to stealth (Ryujin). There was a skill tree dedicated to stealth. So, why were they in the game?
There was an entire quest line dedicated to stealth (Ryujin)
A quest line. Out of hundreds.
There was a skill tree dedicated to stealth
In Starfield, there are 4 levels of stealth skill, and another 4 levels of a concealment skill. 8 total skill points out of 100+ that have anything to do with sneaking. It’s the least stealth-focus in any game of its genre.
There’s nothing like walking up to a group of four of these half melted mannequin fucks just to have them all turn their heads and stare into your eyes in sync like the collective movement would give momentum to steal your soul in order to sate their empty husks. The gunplay is better though!
half melted mannequin fucks
The best (worst?) example of that for me was my companion sobbing and sniffling during a ceremony, expressing their love and commitment, all with a flat emotionless face. It’s funny you said mannequin because everytime I started a conversation, for some reason my brain would say “Here comes another puppet show”.
Gunplay is definitely decent, though there seemed to be no line between being overpowered and bullet sponge. Also would’ve liked to have seen more imaginative / futuristic weaponry considering the time period. I’m sure modders will create something more fun with the framework.
Another thing that really grated on me was the ‘digital clutter’. A generation ship from hundreds of years ago should not have the same ornaments and books as a ship from the current time period!
Yeah that last part was odd to me too. I will say overall there’s a lot more scenic clutter, which isn’t so bad.
What ever will they do without the man who designed compelling quests such as “go to this cave and grab this item” and “go to this outpost and kill this nameless dude”?
This is literally every quest in every game, though
You could boil chess down to “go to this place and kill this dude” if you wanted
Yeah… No. That’s not even every quest in Starfield, much less every game. I get that you are being hyperbolic, but to imply there is no difference between the generic mission board quests (i.e. Transport Passenger, Kill Target, Survey Planet, etc) and the more handcrafted quest lines (i.e. infiltrating the Crimson Fleet) is overtly reductive and disingenuous.
And while Starfiled does have some actually engaging quests, mostly in the Faction quest lines, its flatout dishonest to try and sweep the problem of its numerous boring generic quests under the rug of “that’s every quest if you get pedantic enough!”.
I wasn’t saying there’s no difference, I was pointing out the absurdity of reducing all of Starfield’s quests to “go to this cave and grab this object.” The quest design in Starfield is actually pretty good. If they had simply not added those odd job radiant quests, I doubt people would be complaining about the game lacking good quests.
As I mentioned earlier, I understand you were being hyperbolic, and I acknowledge that Starfield does feature quests that are more engaging than the generic missions. However, even at its peak, the quest design is of mediocre to subpar quality. The recurring pattern of “travel to location X, eliminate target Y, or retrieve item Z” becomes repetitive. Additionally, the process of reaching these objectives consistently follows the same formula: fast-travel to the nearest point, follow the waypoint marker, enter through the front entrance, navigate through a dungeon that is a copy and paste job, and optionally return to the quest giver.
I recognize that this issue partially stems from the game’s ambitious scope, but it’s a consequence of spreading resources too thin.
Discussing the intricacies of quality quest design is a complex topic, and while Starfield’s quests may lack inspiration at times, it’s important to remember that it can still be an enjoyable game. However, when you compare it to titles like Baldur’s Gate 3, Fallout: New Vegas, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, etc, it becomes evident that Bethesda had to make concessions in quest design to accommodate the game’s vast scale. For a prime example of the same studio achieving more with less in terms of questing, one need only look at Oblivion’s Dark Brotherhood questline
And while removing the radiant quests would have made the problem less agregious, more effort still would have needed to be invested in the handcrafted quests to remedy the problem.
The thing is tho, that’s all the quests in Starfield are even written as. What makes the quest interesting isn’t the goal, but the story surrounding it. The story surrounding a good bulk of the quests in Starfield are literally just “go here and get this. Why? Because we need it.”
Idunno, there are quests in Starfield that I liked. Sarah’s companion mission and the whole Crimson Fleet one come to mind.
Hell, I once bought and played 15ish iterations of a game where the whole goal was to get some broad out of a castle. You never seem to get her out, either. 0/10 terrible design, avoid Nario if you can (I think that’s how it’s spelled).
Folk are gonna try to defend Mario’s quest design because of its generation, ignoring that games like Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda managed to have incredible world building and deep stories with the same technology in the same era
Not to dunk on Mario, there’s a reason it’s widely considered one of the greatest games of all time
I guess the instructions of a quest are just the tip of the iceberg. The goal of mario was just to go right all the way. The real design was the obstacles in the way.
Learn sentences to become a skilled swordman.
This comment has confused me for the last 17 hours, I gotta be missing something here
Cos you haven’t played that game?
Well yeah, the quest could have very simple instructions, but the actual map is designed so achieving the goal requires strategic decision making. I guess the hard is making it so the player self selects the difficulty that is the most fun for them.
Which I think is honestly a lot of players’ fault. Like yeah if you play an RPG, avoid all the sidequests and just go straight to max level as fast as you can, it’s pretty freaking hard for the game designer to make the right guardrails to force you to actually enjoy the game lmao.
That used to be every quest in every game, over a decade ago.
But Starfield released in 2023, and even Ubisoft of all godforsaken developers does a better job at side quests than Starfield did.
Ubisoft of all godforsaken developers does a better job at side quests than Starfield did.
How to tell if a person didn’t play Starfield
Oh I played Starfield alright.
Hopefully, between devs from Bioware, Bethesda, and Obsidian, they can come up with a good RPG. The Iberian horror-fantasy angle sounds interesting, but it still sounds like they are a ways from having anything to show off.
Two years after the Microsoft acquisition and now the Head of Publishing and the Lead Quest Designer are leaving Bethesda after the release of the divisive “Starfield”. Are these the first significant signs of a post-acquisition shake up? Will more key individuals be leaving the company?
many senior personel left after skyrim and fallout4 without making any headlines so its nothing new
most of the quests were pretty lackluster, honestly. It was an interesting game. I put quite a bit of time into it but Phantom Liberty dropping pretty much killed my interest in finishing it. I know that’s sort of a cliche statement at this point but it’s true. I was on the last mission when PL finished downloading and I turned off Starfield and am about to uninstall it and never touch it again.
Probably going to see a lot of this since Microsoft bought them and is still apparently allowed to be basically a monopoly. Microsoft does one thing well: shelve beloved series to never be seen again.
