To add to other comments, Bethesda NPCs haven't aged well. Especially when they're right next to Baldur's Gate 3 NPCs. Starfield left a lot to be desired. Can't believe we've been lacking ES for this
I stopped playing BG3 to try Starfield when it came out. I got through the intro, landed at that first populated world, and stopped to talk to a janitor at the train station. She said something like, "Boy, I sure would like a cappuccino from TeraBrew!" and a quest tracker popped up for me to go buy her a cup of coffee. I delivered it to her and she gave me a bag of apple slices that healed 1 HP or some shit.
I went back to playing BG3.
Its fucking jarring. Same story here. Stopped my BG3 cause my friend begged me. I said nah and he let me remote play it to try it out. I instantly recognized the same bullshit from all the way back to Oblivion out of the NPCs. They just feel dated now. Especially next to BG3 who probably put a ton of work into their NPCs.
I've no faith in Bethesda anymore. I played about 25 hours in Starfield and had finished the ranger questline and felt that is so shallow. Then I started thinking about all the quests that I did and how they didn't change or lead to anything. If Bethesda don't change how they structure quests then I won't play any of their future RPGs.
The name of the game has changed. Its no longer about shoving stuff in a big world. Players of the genre want their choices to matter in an adaptive world. Bethesda didn't get the memo they were so caught up in their empty dream sandbox.
Edit: I should also add expected AI behavior is evolving. After Rain World, I notice bland AI.
It used to be that if you wanted an open world game you had a handful of options, and for RPGs Fallout and Elder Scrolls were really the only options. Nowadays we have more open world games than you can shake a stick at. Bethesda doesn't seem to realize that the rest of the industry has caught up with and passed them in a lot of ways
20 years ago this was Bethesda's style. They were the open-world rpg simulation. Now and Indie Dev can drop 6 character models and 6 objects into a game engine and have similar functionality in maybe a month. Two weeks if its hunkering down like a game jam. Technology has surpassed their products. They need to do something to spice it up or ES 6 is gonna bomb.
I'm convinced I'll still be playing Skyrim in 2035 when TES6 is released. There are so many mods due to come out in the next 3 years.
Same, I wanted to like starfield very much but it just felt hollow.
Maybe you just need to upgrade your PC
EDIT: Damn, really didn't think I'd need the /s for this one
Ugh. It sounded just like "What? You guys don't have phones?"
Man if it ran on a toaster people would be bitching that these toasters are holding the game back why aren't they not using the full power of my new Gen console/$2000 RTX PC?!
Can't fucking win.
It's fine to require newer hardware but the game has to justify it. You can't have a game that looks like Starfield and claim it needs a high end system to run when games like BG3 and Cyberpunk also exist.
Yeah... No. I agree that people will always bitch about shit, but Starfield released with many optimization issuses worth bitching about. Such as flatout bad memory allocation (causing it to misalign with the CPU page size), an incorrect imlementation of DirectX12's ExecuteIndirect feature causing major issues with GPU's, and some insanely stupid choices regarding basic customization features (why do you have to change the resolution of your desktop to play the game in full screen at your desired resolution ffs!?).
If it was a case of the game being so cutting edge it needed top of the line hardware that would be one thing. But frankly it was just so poorly optimized that they hoped top of the line hardware would mitigate their quality control issues.
Thank Vivec for modders at least, as this has been Bethesda's MO for decades.
To add to other comments, Bethesda NPCs haven't aged well. Especially when they're right next to Baldur's Gate 3 NPCs. Starfield left a lot to be desired. Can't believe we've been lacking ES for this
I stopped playing BG3 to try Starfield when it came out. I got through the intro, landed at that first populated world, and stopped to talk to a janitor at the train station. She said something like, "Boy, I sure would like a cappuccino from TeraBrew!" and a quest tracker popped up for me to go buy her a cup of coffee. I delivered it to her and she gave me a bag of apple slices that healed 1 HP or some shit.
I went back to playing BG3.
Its fucking jarring. Same story here. Stopped my BG3 cause my friend begged me. I said nah and he let me remote play it to try it out. I instantly recognized the same bullshit from all the way back to Oblivion out of the NPCs. They just feel dated now. Especially next to BG3 who probably put a ton of work into their NPCs.
I've no faith in Bethesda anymore. I played about 25 hours in Starfield and had finished the ranger questline and felt that is so shallow. Then I started thinking about all the quests that I did and how they didn't change or lead to anything. If Bethesda don't change how they structure quests then I won't play any of their future RPGs.
The name of the game has changed. Its no longer about shoving stuff in a big world. Players of the genre want their choices to matter in an adaptive world. Bethesda didn't get the memo they were so caught up in their empty dream sandbox.
Edit: I should also add expected AI behavior is evolving. After Rain World, I notice bland AI.
It used to be that if you wanted an open world game you had a handful of options, and for RPGs Fallout and Elder Scrolls were really the only options. Nowadays we have more open world games than you can shake a stick at. Bethesda doesn't seem to realize that the rest of the industry has caught up with and passed them in a lot of ways
20 years ago this was Bethesda's style. They were the open-world rpg simulation. Now and Indie Dev can drop 6 character models and 6 objects into a game engine and have similar functionality in maybe a month. Two weeks if its hunkering down like a game jam. Technology has surpassed their products. They need to do something to spice it up or ES 6 is gonna bomb.
I'm convinced I'll still be playing Skyrim in 2035 when TES6 is released. There are so many mods due to come out in the next 3 years.
Same, I wanted to like starfield very much but it just felt hollow.
Maybe you just need to upgrade your PC
EDIT: Damn, really didn't think I'd need the /s for this one
Ugh. It sounded just like "What? You guys don't have phones?"
Man if it ran on a toaster people would be bitching that these toasters are holding the game back why aren't they not using the full power of my new Gen console/$2000 RTX PC?!
Can't fucking win.
It's fine to require newer hardware but the game has to justify it. You can't have a game that looks like Starfield and claim it needs a high end system to run when games like BG3 and Cyberpunk also exist.
Yeah... No. I agree that people will always bitch about shit, but Starfield released with many optimization issuses worth bitching about. Such as flatout bad memory allocation (causing it to misalign with the CPU page size), an incorrect imlementation of DirectX12's ExecuteIndirect feature causing major issues with GPU's, and some insanely stupid choices regarding basic customization features (why do you have to change the resolution of your desktop to play the game in full screen at your desired resolution ffs!?).
If it was a case of the game being so cutting edge it needed top of the line hardware that would be one thing. But frankly it was just so poorly optimized that they hoped top of the line hardware would mitigate their quality control issues.
Thank Vivec for modders at least, as this has been Bethesda's MO for decades.