https://www.thejimquisition.com/post/starfield-empty-spaces-review
that's the actual review, don't bother with this shitty forbes article
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Starfield
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Shitty Forbes blog post, even.
i need to get dressed up. no one ever warned me! actually it's fine.
This 100% was said about Skyrim. Bethesda just makes weak RPGs with no stakes or personality.
I'm not sure if everyone's opinion just changed over night, but saying anything bad about Skyrim or Bethesda games used to get you downvoted to hell in casual video game communities, and this is even a Bethesda community.
People praise Skyrim like it's the greatest game ever, like it's the only game they ever played. What happened?
I wish skyrim was as good as people claim it is.
I liked fallout 3 a lot, and i never looked into fallout 4 before it launched. Like i haven't seen anything about the game, except for the launch trailer before i bought it because i happened to be bored. The game was so bad looking and odd that i closed the game to make sure i didn't download the wrong game, or like some scam like: Foulout 4. I did that twice. The game was unplayable and ass ugly. I know they patched a lot of things but the game is just not good, and giving it a 10/10 is insulting to every other video game.
I think Bethesda has enough ass kissing fans who praise their games. Like i wasn't hopeful for starfield at all, but i still had that thing in the bqck of my brain that thought: but what if it's really good. But no, it's optimized badly it looks like modded skyrim, nothing seem to have consequences, the freedom to do whatever you want, absolutely lifeless npc's. They had npc's in all their games but they never got better, but it's fine, best game ever 10/10 can't wait for the next one.
The gameplay in Fallout 4 was better than 3 and NV imo. But Fallout 3 still had the Fallout freedom and charm, which I feel was lost in the others. The gameplay just sucked ass, and even the NPCs from 1998 provided better immersion.
I think 90% of Fallout fans never played the first two.
Instead of hiring 30+ studios to do their work, they should've hired one good studio and ditched their ancient poop engine 15 years ago.
It's mostly people who grew up playing Skyrim who are super positive about it in my experience.
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It's a Stephanie Sterling review, they've had beef with Bethesda for a long time and recently over Zenimax treatment of a trans employee (which is a fair thing to be annoyed by, but hardly the fault of Todd's team at Bethesda). I wouldn't put much stock in their review of this.
Do reviews only matter when the reviewer has always otherwise liked the company? This makes no sense. You're making it out like a conflict of interest, but not showing how that's actually meaningfully biased the actual review, especially given the actual purpose of reviews.
It reads as very biased. They have some good points but every sentence is riddled with negative adjectives. Seems very childish in my opinion. You can see that in all the screenshots as well. Especially talking about uninspired artstyle even though this artstyle is pretty unique in gaming and I really liked it personally.
Maybe? It's a particularly "edgy" games reviewer, it's part of the deal. Thing is, from where I'm standing, it's rather less biased than the people defending the game. At least the review is making specific arguments I am not seeing counterarguments for; I'm seeing "it's subjective" and "they're mad about stuff" (which is only a rational argument if you also go into how/why that's making their arguments shit) and... excuses.
To play Devil's advocate: even if Jim hates BSW with a holy passion and is firmly determined not to like anything about it ever (even the review isn't all negative), that doesn't make it all wrong. "I don't like people criticizing games I like" is natural and fine, but doesn't make for a lot of discussion. The review makes claims one can argue against - that's great, that's discussion. "Well you're just wrong/mad" is less useful.
Are they wrong, then?
Since reviews are highly subjective its impossible to be wrong, except when you make factual mistakes like missing mechanics or technical facts.
My question was an attempt at getting people to elaborate. Like... no, seriously, what is wrong about the review? Bearing in mind that it, too is a piece of media with a given category: Edgy Angry Review Person, a true if hackneyed classic? A lot of the points seemed fair enough to me, but then I'm not a fanboy or hater. "Toss out the entire review" is not very nuanced and blaming it on them being "mad" is downright unconvincing.
For the record, I don't think subjectivity is a good defense. How well you like the browngray paintjob is subjective. How well you like the menu, controls and writing are subjective. "This game is significantly smaller, buggier and less varied than it pretends" are at least a lot less subjective, and those seem like fairly popular takes.
To counter the "it's buggier than it let's on" (which, how does a game imply that it isn't buggy), I'm about 60 hours in and have had precisely 0 bugs. NPC running into someone talking? Yup. Weird physics things? Yup. I wouldn't call those bugs though; that's just part of having the dialog occur in an active world. If I stopped in a busy street and talked to someone and wasn't a foot away, people would walk through the convo. Physics engines are also just going to be limited in how they solve problems with clipping, etc.
I got roped in by the story and have been throughly enjoying the gameplay. I hated the gunplay in Fallout 4. These style BSW games have never been my thing, I trended much more towards Oblivion and Skyrim, so before even getting into this, I was searching and asking others how the shooting worked, how similar was it to Fallout 4 but in space, so I haven't been hype-beasting this game. I hadn't even seen the trailer for it, still haven't. Just heard good things from friends, grabbed it, and have been putting in time like I haven't with a game in a few years.
(which, how does a game imply that it isn't buggy)
Oh, they didn't imply it, they had a whole PR thing going. This being their best-tested game ever and so on. My bare hour of non-cutscene gameplay, already managing to find several old favorite bugs... sort of doesn't add up with that.
I mean, it's perfectly fine to enjoy it. I just think a lot of perfectly legit criticism is met with excuses or weird hostility. JQ (again in a trademark over-the-top "character" that doesn't pull punches) is criticizing Starfield, not everyone's mother or something.
I wonder if some bugs are platform dependent. I've been on Series X, no issues that I can remember. There have been a few times looking for quest items, but I spammed them into inventory and didn't notice. I thought I had one with an invincible NPC, but he died in a low grav setting and just got stuck standing up.
What are you getting, just out of curiosity?
In my brief hour it's just been somersaulting corpses, "badly dubbed Chinese movie" vibes from facial animations being extremely out of sync, and possibly some dodgy collisions - or it might be my aim, or how the aim just seems weirder than in e.g. Fallout 4. The robot companion at the start also blocked me constantly in doorways and firefights at every turn, and that's literally been a meme since Skyrim. At this point I would consider those bugs.
Almost every time something negative is said about Starfield, it feels like walking into a room with Draco Malfoy, Geoffrey Baratheon and bully Maguire bullying on Bethesda/Todd.
But here in this thread, on the worst review I've seen so far, people are actually chill, acknowledging the flaws, but enjoying the game. It's such a fresh breath of air.
Whoops I guess I'll stop having fun then.
Elite Dangerous is as wide as the galaxy and deep as a puddle but that was fun for long time too.
You're allowed to have fun and enjoy things regardless of their quality level, and people who say otherwise are silly and rude.
That also means that just by the nature of enjoying something doesn't mean critiques of it are invalid, that would also be silly and rude.
"An ocean wide, and a thimble deep" has been said about every Bethesda game since Oblivion
Also every space sim in the last decade (yes, I know starfield isn't one). It's such a tired phrase at this point that it lost all meaning anyway.
true, and I have played an unhealthy amount of modded skyrim. let's resurrect the idiots who killed Morrowind, and remind them of their crimes.
Aside from Jim being characteristically edgy and doing the "angry reviewer thing", a major cliché in itself... yeah, checks out. I played for an hour, have been meaning to get back to it... and kind of don't want to.
I will say, as someone who is enjoying my time with it at about 30 hours currently… I felt the same way my first several hours. Which sucks - they absolutely bungled the intro hours of this game - but now that I’ve pushed through that awkward intro I’m having a great time. It’s scratching the same itch that Skyrim did. It’s what I hoped Fallout 4 would be but… in space.
I do tend to run to my ship and physically sit myself in the pilot seat before fast traveling… helps keep me immersed. It’s also a good middle-ground between the convenience of fast traveling to/from star systems and planets versus an endless fast travel menu sim.
I've played thru it once and i'm on NG+. It's about as expected from a BethRPG. It's a fun game with lots of flaws, but I can feel the hook there sucking me back in. I'm happy with my purchase it's a game worth playing IMO. (I especially like how they did the ending and how it feeds into NG+)