I am very familiar. It makes it even worse.

Unfortunately, not a lot of people are that involved in the game to care about OGL and its ramifications. Most only want to play what they’ve seen in Stranger Things or Critical Role, they don’t give a fuck about the rent people they watch and like have to pay to WotC. I believe that’s what Hasbro is banking on. They will not back out of OGL1.1 as they knew some more hardcore players would criticize them. But the way news and stories are consumed nowadays, they also knew this would quickly get buried by the unending stream of “information” people consume and ultimately be entirely forgotten or ignored. Most people don’t care about businesses practices if it doesn’t affect them directly. Mix that with the crazy amount of IP crossovers they made in the last couple of years and you start to see how they are setting up a model so basically anyone who’s tempted to try table top gaming will most likely be funnelled into their ecosystem.

I cannot stress this enough. They are owned by Hasbro. Last year was a massive win for both Dnd and Magic the Gathering yet they still layed off thousands of the people that made this possible. Even Sven Wincke of Larian who developed Baldur’s Gate 3 said he couldn’t even properly thank the DnD people he worked with because they were gone short after release. BG3 is probably the best game of the decade if not more and MTG is more popular than ever yet the people making them still get fired. Meanwhile, Hasbro and WOTC CEO’s personally made millions in salary and bonuses.

So no, you are not supporting workers and artists by buying their products. You are proving them right.

I have done all of this. but thanks for posting this. Somehow venting about this kind of anonymously did more help than anything you just listed.

No, not even remotely. I actually feel worst than ever. But I also feel so paralyzed and hopeless.

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Todd? Is that you? And I know you will read this, it’s just human nature.

Yes it’s a bad argument. It doesn’t answer anything. You don’t know thousands upon thousands of people not even mentionning gamers that you talked to that actually played the game and have nothing but good things to say about it. It’s just unproven, unrelated statements. It would still be a bethesda game with all the things I’ve mentionned completely fixed. You just got caught by promises and brand recognition.

I myself said it’s a 6. There’s no hatred i just don’t think it’s the product of a great studio growing to be their best as I’ve thoroughly explained three times now. You just respond pointless straw man arguments when we bring forward valid criticism. You have to defend your points also, and they have to address the points others make. That’s how debating work. You can’t just say “but I like it” and be taken seriously.

You also don’t seem to understand bias. I thought about things I didn’t like and why. Contrary to you I explained with multiple examples why I came up with my opinion of Starfield but you just answer “It’s a bethesda game”. How is that a proper answer? And don’t go with whataboutisms about how the map size is big though, Tell my why the AI got better. Tell me why the quests and choices are good and deep and why the 230000 voice lines make the game better. You go, that’s how you debate. But no you only go back to “but I love it an millions do” on a post about a video (out of dozens) deep diving into the flaw of the game and studio. Tell me why my arguments are bad and why your NG+or whatever they worked so flaming hard on is correcting them.

Also don’t pretend I’m not civil because you disagree and bring forward evidence of your claims. Address the criticism instead of hiding behind your fandom. Don’t use straw man examples like the Beatles vs Cradle or NG+ addition bullshit unrelated arguments. It’s such a bad faith argument you cannot be really believing it’s in your favour. You are free to love it but this was a post about the flaws of Starfield and Bethesda as a whole and, most importantly, why. If you cannot bring anything more convincing than “it’s a bethesda game what did you expect” then you are actually lying to yourself and you know what we are talking about. You just can’t admit it to yourself, because you have to be Todd Howard himself or this doesn’t make any sense.

Stop using “it’s a bethesda game” as an argument. It’s weak and biased. It also deflects the fact that Bethesda games are actually marketed as RPG’s so they have to be compared to what available from other studios when talking flaws and features. You might think it’s enough but it’s not a valid argument. Bad AI and meaningless quests are not stylistic choices, they’re weaknesses. Also you have to address the criticism instead of pointing out other aspects of the game. Trying harder might not have been specific enough but what I meant is they don’t seem to work on the major issues they get criticised for over and over again. And by “they” I also don’t mean the individual devs but the company as a Whole. The presence of NG+ does nothing to improve on the abysmal npc AI or astonishing amount of loading screens and fast travelling.

In all honesty, I’ve never heard or read about the issues you are talking about. Even when googling about the NG+ addition it just talks about Starfield, post-release anwyay. And the complains were not “basically not an Outer Worlds sequel”. It was a let down that it isn’t closer, but the complains are about the lack of meat on Starfields large, dry bones. Outer Worlds is just used often as comparison because of the whole Obsidian/Bethesda past collab that make them very similar at their core especially since both are space themed. Nobody not fanboying was actually expecting Outer Worlds 2. The more optimistic were hoping some step forward but unfortunately, the pessimists were right.

That brings to your next point: bigger does not equal better. Bigger is actually a trap. The bigger the map, the harder it is to populate and bring to life in a meaningful way and Bethesda sucks at this. Here it’s once again just large inaccessible buildings nobody lives in and NPC’s just going nowhere 24/7. New Atlantis is the best example of a “big” map that feels completely dead. Nothing happens anywhere in any city that is not scripted anyway. Everybody is patiently waiting the player crosses the trigger that pushes “play” on the tape. I’d be way more excited if Betheda announced a game that brought back the scale to something like Fallout 3.

And you can’t be honestly saying it was polished and optimized. Todd Howard himself has been consistently caught saying it was optimized in interviews post release when the game still didn’t work properly on XBOX. He also blamed the gamers for poor hardware and told them they’d need to upgrade. This is bullshit, they simply didn’t take enough time, they rushed the release. They also repeatedly said they know the modders will fix for free what their billion dollars microsoft backed studio can’t be bothered with. And nobody is asking for more hand holding. It’s actually a common complain on many AAA rpgs and openworld games that everything is a freaking waypoint on your map and you end up looking at your compass more than the scenery. Starfield is no different here, it’s worse since you can rarely reach any waypoint without multiple loading screens and fast travels.

So yeah, I still believe if they listened and tried harder in bettering themselves, you would still get your “bethesda game” experience but better. Their games feel designed by a consulting firm that did a market evaluation and chose the easily added features instead of the core rebuild of their engine and expansion of the writing team. Shiny graphics and large maps are vague enough to hype up the people to pre-order while not actually having to improve gameplay experience, character building and meaningful world events which are hard to showcase pre-release, not to mention to actually do.

Hey it’s totally fine if those games are enough then, more power to you. I still think you’d enjoy it even more if they did try a bit harder. And I’m not saying genre=lazy, I’m saying there is no such genre as a “betheda game”. The lazyness is in the repetition and lack of meaningful gameplay improvement over the years.

The whole situation is blown out of proportion as is tradition in the modern world everybody can agree with that. But the complain is warranted in my opinion. What you might describe as a “genre”(it’s a style) can also simply be arguments against a lazy studio that doesn’t really progress in a meaningful way. Most of the issues people have with Starfield are the same they were having with almost all the games Bethesda makes. They simply ignore criticism about design. Of course it sells so they have an argument for continuing but that attitude made them stagnate as a studio. They never improved dialog choices. They never improved performance and optimization. They never improved npc AI. They never improved on UI design… They’re just painting by the same numbers every time just with the latest new tech in paint. So while the core is kinda dumb fun most of us like, it’s getting old now and we have every right to hold that against them.

We also cannot ignore all of the other studios making games in the same genre. CDprojeckt released Witcher 2 and 3 which are great example of progress and Cyberpunk which had a rocky start but was still miles in front of anything Bethesda story and role-playing wise. Obsidian themselves made a better Starfield since space exploration is a letdown in both. We just got Baldur’s gate but Larian made both Original Sins that were already chock full of what makes BG so great. Add to that Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Dark Arisen, Breath of the Wild, ALL the Souls games except for Demon. All of that in between Skyrims and Starfields releases. That’s a lot of competition, the genre changed and matured just like shooters did and so many other genres since. You just can’t slap a new coat of paint and then act offended by the criticism. Bethesda has shown many times now that they either ignore or simply don’t understand why they are getting negative feedback. Instead they rely on brand name, overpromise/lie, meme about their weaknesses (which is why I think they are lazy, they know) and then deflect criticism or blame players for being too picky.

That being said I also have over 100 hours in Starfield and I’m not saying it’s a guilty pleasure. It is fun to roam around being a half god everybody fears or love and everything being entirely without meaningful consequences. But I can’t ignore the shortcomings. And when I do so I keep remembering I’ve had the same for a decade.

Edit: I also don’t think the game is a 1/10 or whatever. I’d say it’s a 6 or so.

In that way games are very similar to musical instruments like Fender and Gibson. Both have been selling the same thing for decades, their new stuff is pretty much just a shiny new version and the older the better.