Given Werthead noted that the game still feels like an Oblivion reskin, I doubt his remark is sponsored, and claiming otherwise is not a fair assertion to make against someone who simply was happy with a product they purchased, even if others are unhappy with the same purchase.
It can be equally true that they fixed bugs and thoughtfully designed a new area... and that said area takes only a few hours to play through. I probably wouldn't pay $30 for that personally.
In general...
Disclaimer: I do not (yet) own Starfield and cannot comment on the game from a personal perspective.
I have been following a lot of reviews and discussions about Bethesda and Starfield in particular, trying to decide if I ever eventually want to get it, and just with interest in a studio whose games I have often enjoyed, even if I found them deeply imperfect. No one does area and dungeon design for this sort of game better than they do, IMO... other stuff unfortunately is lacking. And I wasn't shocked to hear basically it looked great but didn't have a lot of stuff beneath the surface.
IMO if Bethesda is to survive and make great games again, someone at Zenimax or Microsoft needs to do whatever it takes to get rid of Todd Howard and Emil Pagliarulia. Both are deeply, deeply out of touch with what their own player base wants and both seem to be phoning it in and making a lot of marketing-friendly comments that have little basis in reality. Todd Howard once said in an interview that basically he greenlights any idea someone shares for a game... which is exactly why Bethesda's games have increasingly a dozen half-developed mechanics and features rather than a reasonable but smaller number of well-implemented game elements. Emil Pagliarulia, IIRC, is the dipshit who at some point claimed all Fallout players didn't care about story and dialogue and just wanted to walk around and blow shit up, so he doesn't work as hard at writing story as he used to because he felt the fans didn't appreciate it. (Fallout players want story AND dialogue AND walking around and blowing shit up, thank you.) His recent statements about Starfield seem equally oblivious (no pun intended).
There are a lot of incredible designers and developers at Bethesda and they deserve far better leadership, and their fans deserve the games they could be making if they just had a better hand on the rudder.
Disclaimer 2: I have zero personal relationship with Bethesda. I do happen to know a couple people who work there or who have worked there. Their comments about working there have in no way informed this post.
Fairly generous?! Are you getting paid by Bethesda (genuine question) because 5-6 hours of story content and absolutely nothing else new about it for $30 US dollars is NOT "fairly generous" it's a cash grab.
Shadows of the Erdtree, THAT was generous (basically a whole other game for $40).
It's more like 12-15 hours of content. You can maybe speedrun the main quest through the expansion in 6 hours or so, but not doing any of the side-quests and not doing the exploration of the area around the city (which leads to locations and side-quest chains which do not spiral out of main questline).
In that sense it's pretty much exactly like Point Lookout, Old World Blues or Nuka-World, but not quite on a par with Far Harbor or Dragonborn amongst Bethesda expansions. And of course the base game is Bethesda's weakest in some considerable time (perhaps since Daggerfall), although some of the criticism is overblown. Now including Shattered Space, I have 93 hours in Starfield which is less than half what I have in Skyrim or Fallout 4, and only more than New Vegas, Oblivion and Fallout 3 because they are smaller games with less actual content in them (though I do have more in New Vegas but only because of multiple playthroughs).
Currently playing STALKER 2 and it's making me wish that Fallout 5 will take more of a cue from this (obviously not as insanely punishing though) and not the increasing trend towards blandness that Bethesda is pushing.
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It feels like it's a good time to re-express my flabbergastness that Bethesda still hasn't released Elder Scrolls 6.
It feels like it's a good time to re-express my flabbergastness that Bethesda still hasn't released Elder Scrolls 6.
And if we see it in 2028 I'll be surprised, and if it was delayed until next decade, that would not be too surprising either.
And if ES6 comes out and it's like Starfield, or just a slightly prettier Skyrim, I think that's when the wheels will come off the Bethesda juggernaut.
I'm more flabbergasted since Microsoft now owns Bethesda that they're not holding their nose to the grindstone to bring them in ES6 ASAP.
Unless they're doing that to make them churn out another Fallout, since the success of the TV series has generated massive interest.
Either way, it's odd to me that they're not pushing them harder to produce something, and produce something successful. I know Starfield earned them a ton of money, but I think that was largely due to advance sales, and if enough players have lost faith in them, they may not get the same buy in the next time around without a reasonable demonstration it's either going to be worth it, or be distractingly desirable enough people will forget what the reality might be.
Starfield sold something like 10 million copies on release, not including people playing on GamePass, so clearly there was no financial blowback for the game being underwhelming.
There's also not much to be done to produce games more quickly. AAA video games now take 4-8 years to make of full-time production, let alone pre-production before that. Elder Scrolls VI only entered full-time production in 2023, so the people expecting it to come out much before 2028 (I encountered one enraged person who is expecting it to come out next year and would not be told otherwise) I think are in for disappointment. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see it before 2030, and Fallout 5 until the mid-2030s, unless they do get entire second teams on them.
If Avowed does not do too great, I can see Microsoft tasking them to make a new Fallout game in the interim.
Starfield sold something like 10 million copies on release, not including people playing on GamePass, so clearly there was no financial blowback for the game being underwhelming.
I know Starfield earned them a ton of money, but I think that was largely due to advance sales, and if enough players have lost faith in them, they may not get the same buy in the next time around without a reasonable demonstration it's either going to be worth it,
Emphasis mine. My suggestion was that the financial blowback would be the effect on the next production. Much like how many recent movie flops have been comments on disappointments with prior entries or similar films, not the quality of the given film itself, per se.
There's also not much to be done to produce games more quickly. AAA video games now take 4-8 years to make of full-time production, let alone pre-production before that.
A fair point. I remember the days of publishers pushing devs to get something out in 18 months or less, but they weren't doing full mocap for every animation then.
Nonetheless, I don't think that stops a publisher/owner from pushing for faster production, even if it's unreasonable. It's been done before. It can happen again.
I want to note that what I said was that I am surprised Microsoft is not pressuring them to get ES6 out. I don't believe they have magical powers to make it go faster, but my question was why isn't MS putting pressure on them? Not why won't it come out faster?
Elder Scrolls VI only entered full-time production in 2023, so the people expecting it to come out much before 2028 (I encountered one enraged person who is expecting it to come out next year and would not be told otherwise) I think are in for disappointment.
Really? I had to check the dates on that and, yeah, confirmation it was in full production in 2023. Which is shocking, given they announced it in 2018. Yeah, preprod can take awhile. Still. All the more pressure on Bethesda whenever it does come out to knock it out of the f*#!ing park, or they're going to no longer be an asset to their owners.
If Avowed does not do too great, I can see Microsoft tasking them to make a new Fallout game in the interim.
Not following. If Avowed does poorly, why would MS trust Obsidian with such a massive IP if they disappointed them?
Then again, bringing up Avowed is itself a good point. Maybe the hope is Avowed will stave the craving for a semi-openworld grand fantasy.
Obsidian have previously shown good work when taking a Bethesda first-person RPG engine and combining it with their own writing chops (Fallout: New Vegas).
Obsidian's recent own-brand first-person RPG (Outer Worlds) was somewhat underwhelming and only sold okay (and only because it was a low-budget project).
If Avowed does meh, especially because for some reason they are not leaning hard on the Pillars of Eternity name recognition, that might convince Microsoft it's better to use Obsidian on an established IP with a certain degree of guaranteed, backed-in sales rather than continuing down this road of original IP material which is not selling great. Outer Worlds 2 will also be instructive in that regard. Obsidian may also want to use the "From the original creators of Fallout!" card whilst they still have Leonard Boyarsky on their team and Tim Cain as an advisor.
That said, Grounded's quiet success (20+ million sales and growing) and massive, massive profitability (the game cost peanuts, years ago) is giving Obsidian a lot of leeway with Microsoft on their other projects. And Pentiment costing little, doing surprisingly well probably helped them as well.
And if ES6 comes out and it's like Starfield, or just a slightly prettier Skyrim, I think that's when the wheels will come off the Bethesda juggernaut.
I've thought about that, too. I imagine that Bethesday is also thinking about that. Maybe that's why they keep delaying it.
I'm more flabbergasted since Microsoft now owns Bethesda that they're not holding their nose to the grindstone to bring them in ES6 ASAP.
Yes! I almost mentioned that in my above post, but then I looked up that Microsoft bought Bethesda in March 2021, and decided that maybe they are applying pressure, but it's too soon to see any results of that.
I hadn't heard of Avowed before this conversation. I watched a trailer for it, and read the Wikipedia article on it. Looks pretty, and the gameplay looks interesting, but is the world/story going to be interesting?
Nothing to do with Bethesda, but I recently heard about a game called atomfall. You can pre-purchase it on Steam.
Don't know much about it, but it certainly looks good from the page on the link. Set in an alternative post-apocalyptic UK where something went wrong in the 1960s or 1970s.
It's due late March 2025.
It's definitely Bethesda-like. Would be interested in seeing some actual gameplay from it.
AVOWED is set in the same world as PILLARS OF ETERNITY and PILLARS OF ETERNITY II: DEADFIRE, earlier CRPGs from Obsidian. Those were party-based isometric, whilst AVOWED is first-person with a single protagonist, so the setting has about twelve years of development behind it already.
ATOMFALL looks interesting. It's based on the Windscale disaster, which was Britain's closest thing to Three Mile Island. It wasn't actually that bad, it was more a case of it could have been really bad but they got it under control.
I am very fond of PoE, so Avowed sounds like it might be worth it. Post apocalypse 1970s UK is right up my alley, too, so shall check out Atomfall.
I hadn't heard of Avowed before this conversation. I watched a trailer for it, and read the Wikipedia article on it. Looks pretty, and the gameplay looks interesting, but is the world/story going to be interesting?
As Werthead said, it takes place in the same world as the Pillars of Eternity games. If you haven't played those and you liked oldskool Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment and the like, I highly, highly recommend you pick them up. Also Obsidian is writing it.
In other words, yes, the world is fantastic and the story is going to be excellent.
PS: If you want to see what Obsidian's been up to lately, check out Pentiment. Very different sort of game, but amazing. Sort of a love child between Disco Elysium and a drunken 16th century monk's illuminated manuscript.
PPS: Avowed is going to be like Elder Scrolls where you can swap between first and third person. Thank god, or I wouldn't be able to play it.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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I'd be surprised if they don't have a new Fallout game in rapid development (not saying it will be shorter development, but that it was greenlit and bumped up in priority) from someone, whether Bethesda, Obsidian, or someone else. The TV show was a huge success and getting Fallout V out before it's off the air, after 5+ seasons, is likely a priority.