Strange way to say it’s just not good enough to get awards. I’m not “ghosted” by the Michelin guides every year, my cooking just isn’t that good.
The fact that awards are just assumed for any big title in spite of a decidedly lacklustre reception says a lot about the industry.
The Game Awards is by no means innocent of this, but it has glimmers of sincerity at times and this is one of them.
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.
According to the article, Starfield was still nominated for best RPG… so, not really ghosted. More like they got the participation award for the unfinished, under-baked game they put out.
It would have been insulting to the other devs if they were nominated for GOTY, because Starfield isn’t even in the same league as the other nominees and Bethesda should play those to see what an actual polished game feels like.
Because they ghosted us when we asked where the rest of this “25 year dream” game was
I mean, the best thing about Starfield for me was that watching the trailer inspired me to fire up No Man’s Sky again after a couple years away.
But I guess sensational headlines get more clicks.
It’s just not an exceptional game… I get that some like it, it has some great bits like the ship builder and the improved gunplay since Fallout4, but overall it falls short. Starfield’s greatest flaw isn’t the constant loading screens, the limited role playing mechanics, the dated engine, the empty planets, or the 10 other things people were dunking on it when it came out. You can definitely feel the death by a 1000 cuts, but it’s major flaw for me is that the game is just bland, boring, and safe which in 2023 (especially for this type of story driven game) is unforgivable.
I think it could be a massive playground for modders if they release the creation kit. But it used to be that modders fixed Bethesda games. Now they have to create all the content as well because Starfield is empty.
“ghosted” lmao, maybe it just didn’t make the cut.
Was it because… It was a steaming plate of nothing? Hilarious that Bethesda used to be the gold standard for gaming, but they’re still stuck in 2011
I honestly do love the game but like, this year was stacked lol. I had a blast with it but other stuff was better
Likewise, I’m enjoying it but it just doesn’t deserve any awards in a year when other games that are simply better came out. It’s a firmly mid tier game and it was (not) awarded accordingly.
Lol because it was not a good game.
Bethesda tactic: Half-ass your game development and let the modders finish the work without having to pay them!
Bethesda tactic: Half-ass your game development and let the modders finish the work without having to pay them!
Even better: Those modders pay for the privilege to mod the game in the first place!
Then re-release it for the next several decades.
Makes sense to me. Things that don’t deserve awards tend not to receive any.
Maybe they’ll kill gamebryo now.
Oh who am I kidding, they’ll just say they made it better for ES6
Gamebryo is the least of their problems, making soulless triple A games is what is plaguing Bethesda and Arkane now.
Will it’s unfinished. So yeah.
Man, I wish Todd would invite himself just like EA did with their starwars battlefront 2 ads in the middle of the event. It would be fun to see everyone deflecting questions such as “what did you like about starfield?”