this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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It's kinda crazy how quickly people just... stopped talking about Starfield after release. Like, even if it ended up being bad or disappointing, people would've at least still been talking about it in that capacity.
Starfield was one of the most hyped releases in years, at least since Cyberpunk, yet when it finally released, it seems like the entire gaming world played it for a few days, collectively decided, "eh, this is alright I guess," then moved on. I don't think I've ever seen the mood towards a game shift so rapidly from massive hype to complete indifference...
I think discussion around it just became toxic, you can't really say anything about Starfield without a bunch of people hijacking the conversation to talk about how much they hate it.
Maybe I just don't look at the right parts of the internet to end up seeing it, but I haven't even really seen anyone talking about hating it.
I watched some videos on it after it released and for about a week after my whole YouTube frontpage was full of Starfield-bashing (many with several hundred thousand views) so it's definitely out there.
Yeah a couple of streamers I watch made it a point to stream “starfield bad” streams and then stream literally anything else while talking about how it was better than starfield
I don’t hate it, I’m mostly just ambivalent to it. It felt like Bethesda’s Ubisoft moment, where they went from being a company that had been doing something really well and switched to doing something really safe…which is iust boring and generic nowadays. For the first ten or fifteen hours it was like ooh my first Bethesda game in ages! And then I put it down and never felt compelled to go back. I don’t hate it, I don’t love it, I don’t really feel anything towards it. Skyrim grabbed me from jump street and I was all in, same with FO…idk I really wanted to like Starfield…but I just never really felt anything towards it.
I'm not sure how, you got lucky.
Lemmy was filled with posts linking to clickbait articles from PcGamer bashing the game.
YouTube just flooded my feed with videos about how Starfield was the worst game ever made, modern gaming was dying or something of the sort after watching a couple positive reviews.
Even in comment sections, whenever I mentioned some nitpic I had about the game, I'd get answers bashing the game as if I had said it was terrible.
It was pretty much everywhere for a month and a half to the point I just decided to stop trying to find discussions on it.
That's what hype does. Hype can be good if the end product lives up to it, or the hype isn't so potent. Tears of the Kingdom comes to my mind for this. The hype was more like "it's coming, we think it's going to be cool" and a couple of gameplay vids. Then their reputation combined with the understatement of how good the game actually was created a wildfire of good hype.
Starfield was like "PREPARE YOURSELVES FOR THE BEST GAME EVER MADE, IN THE WORKS FOR HALF A DECADE, YOU'LL NEVER PUT IT DOWN, GAME OF THE YEAR GUARANTEED" and created a ton of bad hype. Bad hype is good for sales, but creates unrealistic expectations and makes a lot more people go "meh" once they find out what it is.
Let me tell you a secret: bad hype is intentional. All that matters to a studio is how much they sell, not that players continue playing.
Bad hype makes players stop talking about a game pretty quickly.
But didn't TOTK also have the issue that to some it felt like an "expansion pack" (Probably closer to a switch's version of Majora's Mask, where many assets are reused and remixed with a new gameplay element added). While it was a good game its probably not as revolutionary as BOTW. It also doesn't help it was the switch's first 70$ title.
Totk was the 2nd open world Zelda. Starfield is the 5th Bethesda game. AssCreed would be the 27th? Ubisoft game
Diminishing returns I guess
I'm not really commenting on how the actual game was, just the hype building up to it. Nintendo consistently teaches a masterclass on hyping their IPs. Whether or not the game was good, or worth the money, is an opinion beside the point.
In the same vein, people call starfield "fallout but in space" and "fast travel simulator 2023". There are plenty of things to criticize there too. But I honestly think the reason those criticisms weren't taken in stride like totk was is because of all of bad hype surrounding the release. People expected a lot more.
Also, "as revolutionary as the last one" is probably not the standard we should hold all sequels to. Changing the fundamental design of a series is important to do periodically to keep it fresh, but well executed iteration is also really important. I definitely feel I've gotten my time outta totk, and I'm not done with it, tho I have gotten a little distracted by life, bg3, and picking ror2 back up.
Also for anyone looking at full price switch games as too expensive, you can pretty frequently find $100 eshop cards for $90, which you can use to buy a 2pack of game vouchers, and effectively get any switch game for $45, including totk.
I mean, the only game on the GOTY list where the hype is still going is Baldurs Gate 3. At least thats how it feels to me. Granted Im not into nintendo games as I once was both the new Zelda and Mario felt like they flew by me. Maybe it was the stacked year. maybe I didnt have as much time for gaming or maybe Im not seeing them much on the internet. BG3 sure feels like its cementing itself into the 2023 zeitgeist.
Well calling Starfield impressive but also immediately-boring would be a massive understatement.
It almost feels like a benchmark. With all the gameplay depth and immersion that goes along with running one. It's not bad at what it does, quite the opposite in fact. It's stellar. But there's just so little to it, despite the massive world fulll of blips and bits. It's Skyrim driven to an insane extreme: Even wider, even grander, even more impressive. And even more shallow. Much more shallow.
This is where I was. Decent game, just lost interest after like 2 weeks. There was a bit too much fishing around in the inventory and clicking through menus.
There were definitely a few cool moments in it, but I think they got to engrossed in the procgen planets to really give it all that handcrafted feel. Having 1000 planets forced the content to be too spread out. And other games have been out for years that handle the procgen better.
7/10 review guy was right. Decent game with some cool parts, but also a lot of issues and annoyances.
Funny thing is that when Morrowind came out using the grandfather of their current engine, they even advertised how every single stone was hand-placed and how that made the world feel more alive compared to a procedurally generated world. Guess some things still hold true.
Yeah this about sums up my feelings on it. The main story seemed alright from what I experienced, and the characters seemed fairly interesting. Better-written than FO4, at least. I was particularly charmed by the PC's parents that you get when you take that one perk at character creation.
But the exploration just feels... dull and empty. Surveying planets just felt like a chore, and any particular landing spot on a planet was just a few cookie cutter lairs scattered among a bunch of nothing. Didn't feel like you were actually discovering anything interesting.
I feel like the same thing thing happened with FO4 until the new mod tools came out. Like I bought starfield, it’s ok, but IMO it won’t hit it’s stride as a game I play frequently until there are a bunch of mods to improve QoL