• pyrflie@lemm.ee
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    4 hours ago

    Considering his credits for “creation” include Fallout 76 and Starfield, Starfield is the best he’s had a hand in creating.

  • ngwoo@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    This is the attitude that forced Blizzard to rework everything about themselves, caused FFXIV to launch in a disastrous state, and made Concord

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      Yeah this new stock of devs just don’t have it in them to deliver anything great. Their values and language likely prevent them from even considering something more visceral. Wouldn’t be surprised if most of them have lived such uninteresting lives they have nothing to draw from. That’s at least what they write like.

      Seems they don’t know why their hero kills, they don’t believe in the culling the player enacts. They’d probably rather he didn’t.

      They seem like they’d prefer to make Animal Crossing in space, they don’t really want to write about empire, conquest, terrible crimes, deep-seated hate. Ending threats.

      They don’t even want to know how the tools of the trade work. Just look at the animations for the models, you can tell that whoever worked on then feared being put on an FBI watchlist if they looked up a video on how pump action shotguns work.

      These kinds of dev teams are fully incapable of writing good villains and a cast of characters with wildly different moralities that are grounded in something real.

      They’re not interested in combat games. They shouldn’t touch them. They should leave and make room for those who want to.

      • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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        2 hours ago

        What are you on about? Almost every top person working on Starfield has been there since the days of Oblivion/Fallout 3. Bethesda in general is known for high retention, there’s a lot of the old guard there.

        If anything you should be complaining that there’s not enough new blood in Bethesda.

    • The Snark Urge@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      In August 2023, Todd Howard described his intent behind The Elder Scrolls VI as wanting to make “the ultimate fantasy-world simulator”,

      That’s when you should have known. TES is at heart a novelistic series that is owned by a studio whose entire style is now “short term crafting and gameplay loops occurring within a physics simulation”.

      • boonhet@lemm.ee
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        23 hours ago

        The same could be said of Skyrim, but tons of people loved it and it’s still a great framework for modding if Bethesda themselves don’t give it a good storyline.

        • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          9 hours ago

          Skyrim had a narrative, it had stories that raised curiosity enough to engage with the gameplay loops. Some of the side quest were even pretty good, the main quest was meh.

          Increasingly Bethesda seems to be building their games around gameplay loops with narrative increasingly ancillary. They’ve optimized for grind without giving a reason to grind.

        • The Snark Urge@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          Quite so, but I’ll be damned if fans are ever going to redo TES6 in whatever engine they make for (god forbid) TES10, forty years from now.

    • arefx@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      This has been obvious for a few years now. I used to get shit on for voicing this opinion a couple years ago and now it seems almost universally agreed upon. Bethesda is truly shit now.

  • Omega@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    “This is, of course, a slightly wild thing for the studio that made Morrowind (its actual best game) and Skyrim (its most popular game by miles) to say”

    Accurate

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          9 hours ago

          FO3 did some thing much better than NV. NV is the best written, by far, but it’s different, not better, for gameplay. FO3 was closer to the original games in gameplay. There were a lot more random events while traveling, and they could react with each other in really unique ways. NV essentially removed this. There are a lot of other areas of difference too, but NV always gets remembered as better, and I think that’s largely because the things FO3 did better are systemic, so less noticeable, while NV had better stories, which you have to notice.

          • And009@reddthat.com
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            7 hours ago

            I always get lost in the randomness of Bethesda. NV was the only one with a storyline I could recall tbh.

            Don’t know if I actually finished vanilla Skyrim

  • spicystraw@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I wonder if there is some definition gap in what Bethesda thinks makes a good game and what make a good game in the eyes of players.

    They have probably done a lot behind the scenes improvements that warrants them to say that this has been the best to work on, but clearly it’s not the best to play.

  • teft@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Anyway, apparently Bethesda hasn’t been too dissuaded by the lukewarm reception its space sim got. Pagliarulo says it’s now joined Fallout and Elder Scrolls on the podium as one of Bethesda’s "big three”.

    What a bunch of fucking clowns. Smoked too much copium it looks like.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      2 days ago

      Yeah.

      It’s so depressing.

      Like you telling me out of 250 developers on Starfield, nobody is losing their shit that this project isnt at all critically acclaimed like many of their other releases?

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 days ago

    Tons of people still play Skyrim.

    Something tells me that, in 10 years, few if any will still be playing Starfield.

      • olicvb@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        According to SteamDB: [edit:Starfield has] around 10k every day which is about the same as Hogwarts Legacy, Bloons TD6, and No man’s Sky

        • Grumpy@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          Which version is that? The original Skyrim (aka oldrim) isn’t even purchasable on steam and hidden unless you bought it back then. But some people still play that because some old mods only support oldrim.

          Special edition is the main one now. It’s holding 30k very steadily since 2020 https://steamdb.info/app/489830/charts/#breakdown

          Many of modders also moved to gog version, myself included. Because I can permanently version control on gog unlike stream.

          • olicvb@lemmy.ca
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            1 day ago

            I was talking about Starfield (i get how my comment isn’t precise in that way now, i’ll add an edit… oops)

            • pyre@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              the original deus ex is a masterpiece. you should be playing that every other year minimum. what the fuck kind of interpretation is that.

                • pyre@lemmy.world
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                  1 day ago

                  I don’t have vr but if anything justified having it, it would be to immerse yourself in the world of deus ex.

                  arkane’s prey would be nice too.

          • shadowedcross@sh.itjust.works
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            2 days ago

            Why? It has one of the biggest modding communities in gaming, so there’s a lot for people to like about it still, assuming they’re fine with modding it.

            • pyre@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              because it’s slop. there are so many more games to play that have better writing, direction, characters, environments, exploration, combat, RPG elements, and overall design.

              I don’t get Bethesda fans insisting on modding bland ass games. you can play a game that’s better to begin with.

                • pyre@lemmy.world
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                  1 day ago

                  I didn’t say it’s wrong, I said it’s sad. also star field is objectively the sloppiest slop game even coming from the slop masters that are bethesda game studios. literally nothing about the game is remarkable.

                  while skyrim had a mediocre story handled badly and annoying af characters, it was at least carried by great environmental design and some memorable side quests, which is to say it greatly rewarded exploration.

                  the one real strength of their open worlds, and they threw that in the garbage to instead add fishbowls of minimally randomized and endlessly repeated slop separated by untold amounts of loading screens, tedious inventory management, and empty space where you do nothing but run in one direction. because there isn’t even anything you can encounter between points of interests so you don’t even explore.

                  yes, it is slop. and it is sad that people are playing that game for the sake of justifying their ovehyped purchase rather than playing better games which is almost any other game you have heard of.

      • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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        2 days ago

        I played 100 hours of Starfield. I dont remember much of it to be honest, nor am I interested in going back.

        And yet I picked up Elden Ring back up like half a dozen times since release.

      • Magiilaro@feddit.org
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        1 day ago

        I have started a complete new game 2 days ago and have again a lot of fun with Starfield. Can’t wait to see all the new content from the DLC.

        I would say that Starfield is the best NASA punk planet exploration RPG Bethesda has ever made

          • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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            19 hours ago

            I wish I could say that. I played Daggerfall and I spent 4 hours in the tutorial dungeon. And in the game, if I wasnt dying, then the game was crashing.

          • Magiilaro@feddit.org
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            1 day ago

            I never said it is the best game they ever made, but it is the best NASA punk space RPG they ever made 😁

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I don’t play FO4 anymore either. I will say I appreciate the stories, but their attempts to make games you can live in just don’t measure up anymore. Not when you have games like no man’s land and satisfactory. We know just how comfy a game can be.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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        1 day ago

        I mean, I do, to see what new mods are out.

        Gun modding is an absolute shit show btw. Everyone tries to make their guns use the real or unique calibers and it’s kind of a massive pain.

  • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    Emil, Howard, and Hines are why Bethesda can’t make good games anymore. Corporate hacks that have pushed for more mundane gameplay with every new game.

    They also spearheaded piecemeal DLCs and consistently try to find ways to monetize mods.

  • shani66@ani.social
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    2 days ago

    Even disregarding just how bad starfield is, Emil is the literal worst person to say this. He is completely, shockingly incompetent when it comes to his job.

  • Codex@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’d wait to see if fans are still trying to port Starfield to new engines in 20 years before I start talking about my company’s “best” work.