Bethesda Game Studios has not made a solid game since Fallout 4 in 2015. There are many who would argue Fallout 4 is bad, but overall it was very positively received and still has a strong playerbase and modding community to this day. Since then all we've been given by BGS are mobile games, VR spinoffs, Skyrim rereleases, one remaster, and.... Fallout 76 and Starfield. Fallout 76 is, after years of updates, fun for a bit, but no matter how much Todd says otherwise it is not and never will be a mainline entry to the Fallout series. It is a spinoff, a multiplayer novelty, and a great showcase of greed and laziness. The state in which it launched should have been an embarrassment but they show nothing but pride in it.
What about Starfield?
Starfield is just not good. In fact, it is not even as fun as Fallout 76. Over 1600 incredibly dull procedurally generated planets, only a few have anything worth seeing. The main quest is boring, best questlines were a couple of side quests. Pointless base building. Most companions and NPCs are boring and lifeless. Ship building is ok, but not great and has frustrating problems. The "Bethesda charm", AKA bugs, glitches and crashes, is getting old. Writing and world feels so uninspired. Menu navigation is a pain. I am not one to complain about loading screens but it is bad here. I could go on and on. The longer you play this game, the worse it feels to play it as that "shiny new toy" feeling fades away. I've tried to get back into it more than once and I can't do it.
To those who say "download these mods, it makes it so much better"... Fallout and Elder Scrolls are great games at a base level, that provide good foundations for modders to add on to. That is why they have had so much staying power. Starfield is not by any stretch of the imagination a great, or even good game. It is mediocre at best. A lot of modders even abandoned their projects because they decided Starfield was not worth it.
I hope they can pull themselves together for Elder Scrolls VI but only time will tell.
Here are some quotes from those that worked on Starfield, showing just how well they took criticism:
"When Starfield released, I believe people were just not ready for it. It's a different way of looking at it, but Todd is really strong, and he said very, very lightly, 'Look, if you don't like it, then you don't like it, but this is the new thing that we're doing, and we're sticking to it. He believes in his way and it just has proven time and time again that eventually people will understand his vision. It just takes time and this is a common thing for all the big visionaries. Sometimes people really don't understand them correctly, but they were strong enough to stay on course, and Todd will stay on course on Starfield. Starfield will eventually become something that will be legendary. I have no doubt. It's just a matter of time."
- Inon Zur, Starfield's composer
"The point of the vastness of space is you should feel small. It should feel overwhelming. Everyone’s concerned that empty planets are going to be boring. But when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren’t bored. [Not every planet] is supposed to be Disney World."
- Ashley Cheng, managing director of BGS
"We see a lot of players saying 'This is what I want out of a Bethesda game, which is to explore a world in a certain way, and Starfield didn't give me that. I prefer the way it's done in Fallout or Elder Scrolls. I do think for us—particularly me—going into a science-fiction game, I want to be able to land on all the planets. I want the game to say 'Yes' to us, knowing that that content is gonna be different than you've seen from us in the past."
- Todd Howard, executive producer of BGS
"All of us, I think, at some point look to the sky and say, 'Man, I wonder what it would be like to blast off and land on the moon?' We needed the scale to have that feeling. We could have made a game where there are four cities and four planets but that would not have the same feeling of being this explorer. [We made sure that players] get some periods of loneliness."
- Todd Howard again
"Funny how disconnected some players are from the realities of game development, and yet they speak with complete authority. I mean, I can guess what it takes to make a Hostess Twinkie, but I don't work in the factory, so what the hell do I really know? Not a lot."
- Emil Pagliarulo, lead designer and writer on Starfield
