Starfield steam page for the DLC currently shows eight user review score of 41%, making this one of the worst Bethesda DLC’s released of all time. This is so horribly, shockingly bad for Bethesda, because it shows as a gaming company, they are no longer capable of delivering a really good gaming experience as they had in the past. Some of the reviews sum up quite nicely what is wrong with this DLC…
Less content than any skyrim DLC. Less than The Fallout 4 story DLCs. Doesn’t change of the complaints people had with the base game, writing is still at a 4th grade level.
Quick: If you are looking to buy my answer is no, you aren’t missing much content. I was really hoping to enjoy this DLC. Took about 4 hours for the main story and maybe 2 more hours to 100% the achievements.
These two reviews I think really summed up what Starfield has become, $70 for an AAAA title that has extremely little buy-in from the community, horrifically low amount of replayability and can be breezed through easily. It’s mind-boggling to see this
Microsoft really knows how to pick the winners, don’t they?
Remember when Cyberpunk fucked up their release. They knew they fucked up and owed it to the gamers. They told their board and stockholders to hold off, and that they needed to rebuild trust with their users before they could make line go up.
So they took their time, they redid many of the mechanics that people didn’t like, the fixed all of the bugs, and then they released Phantom Liberty - one of the best expansions I have ever seen in gaming history. Good enough where it could have been a game on it’s own.
That is how you rebuild trust with the community. You tell your stockholders to shut the fuck up and let you do what you do best. If they don’t trust you to do that, then fuck em, they can sell their stock, why are they holding stock in a company they don’t trust?
The difference is, there is no fixing Starfield, it is rotten to the core. You would have to re-do most of the story elements and writing, and the disjointed, empty world. On top of that you’d have to fix the bugs and technical limitations like the constant loading screens. At this point you would be throwing out most of the game and basically starting from scratch with a few systems done, like the ship building and possibly gunplay.
I think cyberpunk never became what many wanted, but if you let go of your expectations, it is a good game.
Post-2.0 Cyberpunk is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time. You can tell it’s a product of effort, and love for the project. They have taken in a considerable amount of feedback from pre-1.5.
Meanwhile, Starfield is a complete miss in just about every way imaginable, and the expansion has followed through the same footsteps. On top of that, the studio actively gaslit people who expressed disapproval, even when it was constructive criticism.
I fully expect them to say it’s getting “review bombed” now, which is the current industry redefining of a term to make it come off as “It’s not us, it’s the stupid gamer’s fault”
It’s not a review bomb if it’s fully deserved. If you make a bad product, you deserve a bad review, and maybe Bethesda should have thought about that ahead of time
Did they fix the driving?
That was the one and only reason I gave up the game. It was amazing from the start, and then I got in a car and it was horrible, and I stopped.
I never found that to be an issue, personally. It’s not as satisfying, as it is in other games, but i enjoyed it enough
I’m still mad the monowire doesn’t work how it was said it would and that the cops can’t be bribed and shit like that. It’s a great game now and a lot of fun to play but I won’t ever trust another game company again like I did with them after they made witcher 3.
Same with No Man’s Sky. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but they buckled down and delivered on almost every promise that they failed on back at release. Not only that but every update since the game came out has been for free. Both No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk are fantastic games, and they were garbage on release. Bethesda has been doing the opposite approach and avoiding feedback from fans since Skyrim came out the first time.
Saying NMS delivered is pure copium. It has become a great game in it’s own right but it’s not the game we bought into at launch and never will be.
Huh? Why not? Genuine question, I never bought in at launch
At launch, for me at least, it was a cool lonely scramble to survive.
Now it’s a multiplayer game with a bunch of super easy shortcuts all over the place, even outside of the multiplayer. I enjoy playing with my friends, but the solo experience is definitely worse now.
I never figured a reason to even bother with multiplayer in NMS, except maybe to speed up base building. The only real challenge of the game is surviving the first hour, even on hardcore/permadeath.
Yeah, I have the permadeath achievement. Once you get off the first planet you’re fine.
It used to be harder for a lot longer. Now you can just teleport anywhere you want at anytime.
Thats not really an answer to their question, though.
Also I disagree :)
Oh god, so there is absolutely nothing they can ever do to make up for it, I guess. Even after like 10+ MAJOR updates and expansions over 6+ years for free, they can’t possibly ever do enough for some people, I guess.
Cyberpunk was buggy, unoptimized, and kind of unfinished, but the fundamental game design was sound.
Starfield on the other hand is broken at its core. The Bethesda RPG experience just does not translate to the open worlds space map they built the game on. So they can’t take the cyberpunk approach because they’d have to build an entirely different game from scratch.
I don’t know why anyone decided that that engine was the right way to go. The number one thing that killed the game for me was the endless loading screens. Constantly. Whenever I started feeling immersed, a new loading screen would pop up and it ruined it for me. We have engines left and right that don’t need to do this anymore, but starfield, the game that’s trying to base itself to be a realistic exploration game, decided that endless loading screens were still the best way to go
That was one of the things that really helped with the immersion for me in Witcher 3 and even Cyberpunk. You walk into a building, house, etc and the world outside just continued and was present. I’m still quite impressed with their engine and it is a bit sad that they’ll be switching to UE5 for the next Witcher.
even without the loading screens it would still be terrible. get a quest, go to your ship, take off, travel to other system, land, exit your ship, walk to destination, reverse all that to turn the quest in, rinse and repeat. it’s just a tedious experience.
the best part of Bethesda games is just being able to wander around aimlessly in a pretty environment, likely stumbling upon little easter eggs or side quests along the way. none of that exists in Starfield.
You just described mass effect
Reading it like that, the loop sounds straight off Diablo 1 on PSX. Get quests, head to the dungeon, loading screen, wipe the floor, loading screen, wipe next floor, back to town, loading screen, turn in.
That kind of loop is not bad in itself, but Bethesda applied it to the wrong type of game.
Given the amount of the playable game that takes place on foot, they should have called it Field
… And still could bit fix that some keys are hardcoded. But I agree, with expansion the game was quite enjoyable.
I didn’t play it at the time because of the bugs, but from what I saw the good parts of Cyberpunk were already present. Stuff like storytelling, interesting characters etc.
Starfield has none of that.I might need to revisit cyberpunk, I didn’t know an expansion was ever released. I kind of hit max level doing mostly side quests within 4 months of launch and lost interest.
They changed a lot, but in a good way. I had also spent a while away from the game and came back recently for the expansion. It’s really good.
I would suggest starting a new character from scratch if you pick up the DLC. You’ll really appreciate the new changes to cyberwear that way.
I would definitely need a new character, nothing worse than picking up an old save and having zero clue about what’s going on in game. I think I’ll put that on my list, I really did enjoy the game at the time I played it, and I definitely got 100 hours playtime from it.
I’ve had it sitting in my library, maybe it’s finally time to play it. Which is the better voice actor to pick, dude or chick?
I prefer the male voice but the female voice is more emotive. Plus the female avatar gets a nice story with Judy.
I’m the opposite. I prefer the fem VA, but I like Panam just a bit more than Judy.
It’s pretty legit. It stands on it’s own, and they also improved the base game quite a bit. I’d suggest it for sure
I was having fun, despite the flaws at launch. I’m sure with improvements and more content it’ll be a great one to revisit.
Oh trust me, I had a decent time playing it. I played through it 100%, did all the side stuff, did the base building - everything. But, I still felt annoyed and bored a good chunk of the time. The game was fine. But it was only fine. I wouldn’t say it was revolutionary or anything Bethesda said, it was just… fine.
Phantom Liberty is a great expansion in its own right, combined with the 2.0 changes just made the entire experience better.
It’s REALLY good.
I’m waiting for the ultimate edition that will include everything here
basically the major points of change was launch, then cyberpunk edgerunners clothing dlc patch (1.0 but bigs fixed). 2.0 rewrote some of the games mechanics that dropped before the expansion. and then the expansion was released (which added new endings)
I mean, it all hinged in the fact that under all those glitches and bugged mechanics CDPR still had a nice game. Starfield can’t be salvaged cuz the core game is just mediocre shit.
I wanna say it’s a failed IP at this point, but who knows how many copies sold. What is sure is it doesn’t deserve any more of my time. I have the DLC but won’t reinstall that garbage
It certainly sold a lot. Bethesda once claimed to have over 10 million players across all platforms. Even if we assume half of those were using gamepass, that’s still 5 million sales.
Of course, if you compare it to Fallout 4’s first 6 months, with reported 12 million sales on day-one, that’s a significant letdown.
Starfield is a very real “could have been”, if only
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happened. ]
worst Bethesda DLC’s released of all time
Are we including Horse Armor here?
Bethesda literally invented shitty DLC
Not really. It isn’t as good as Far Harbor aeven though the world building is better and more interesting. Of course it’s way worse than Dragonborn. But it’s definitely better than Nuka World and Automaton. And also better than the Pitt and Mothership Zeta even though it’s difficult to make comparisons with Fallout 3
This makes me feel better about them being exclusive to Microsoft now. I’m not missing anything at all.
Still better than Horse Armor. So no, not Bethesda’s worst DLC.
At least horse armor was good for the memes. This is so bland no one even cares to meme about it.
There are 2 important words there that you’re missing.
Still better than Horse Armor. So no, not Bethesda’s worst DLC.
The difference is that Oblivion wasn’t bad at all. It was terrific. Starfield was trash from the beginning, then delivers a trash DLC. That’s much worse. No improvement.
And it was something people were hoping would save the game. But, it’s unfortunately more confirmation that Bethesda can no longer produce quality games.
Bethesda was obviously already toast to anyone paying attention when Fallout '76 came out. They certainly haven’t improved since.
…And I can’t believe that these are the motherfuckers who own the rights to Doom now.
saying 76 hasnt improved since just shows everyone you dont know what youre talking about
He didn’t say that. Might want to reread what it’s saying, instead of what you think he’s saying.
he’s saying “they” haven’t improved since 76 came out. i don’t know what else he could possibly mean by that, especially since 76 itself has improved immensely since coming out
Hey im all for giving Bethesda shit for publishing an incredibly bland game, but 8 reviews hardly seem like a solid foundation to make that title.
EDIT : I’ve realised that autocorrect might have gotten you since around 1, 1k user reviews still sit at around 42% positive
I have no hope for The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5. It was a good run but like all things. Everything comes to an end.
I don’t think this means ES6 is doomed. Did anyone play the Civ space game? It was an offshoot one-off experiment that wasn’t really well recieved and they quietly moved on.
My guess is that this game pivoted during development and they ended up with something that didn’t really work and shouldn’t have shipped. The failure to find something good in this experiment may be isolated to this game.
The fact that they released it in the state they did could be more about their workflow and project pipeline/target milestones they need to hit than it is about their ability to execute.
The failure here is in design, ES6 has a tried and true design to follow.
The problem is Starfield isn’t a one off. It’s the latest in a line of progressively worse games. Every game they’ve released since Skyrim has been worse than the one that came before it.
If ES6 is just a refreshed Skyrim I really see no reason to buy it. There are much more interesting RPGs than the Bethesda style nowadays.
Which one off Civ space game? Alpha centari or beyond earth?
Story and worldbuilding wise, ES6 has a very bleak future ahead. Emilio Pagliarulo, the de facto director of Starfield and lead writer, has shown that no hole is deep enough that he won’t dig it further down when it comes to lack of quality and consistency. Not that Skyrim’s main story was good, but it was certainly better than Starfield’s. There’s also the disturbing indifference of “the world” to everything happening around it. Literally nothing you do in Starfield affects anything outside its own storyline. Hell, shooting up in the air or using fucking space magic in the middle of a city generates no reaction from npcs if nobody is hit.
I actually liked beyond earth 🥲
Yeah they need to get rid of that cokehead.
My sister loves Beyond Earth; I still prefer Alpha Centauri.
Welp, guess I can officially uninstall Starfield. Bummer.
I’m enjoying it.
Glad I didn’t buy the DLC and decided I’ll wait for some sort of definitive edition to play Starfield again. I hope by that point it will be a better overall game and have enough new things to make it worth the time.
I’ve given up on every major developer/publisher, so-called AAA garbage, except for capcom for monster hunter and square enix for final fantasy. I’ll be extra sad the day they too go the way of every other greedy lazy “AAA” game company…
At least indie devs care to make a good game and not try to make a money printing IP machine with some game like aspects in it.
as a hige indi/small developer fan i see great times ahad. AAA will fail, clmpanys will close and developers will find new homes in smaller teams. by 2030 i predict a golden age for AA and and perhabs also a new golden age for indi.
I agree with you. Want to remind people this is NOT AAA, is AAAA which is $70. Not $60, but $70 when it’s not on sale. $10 more for this worse quality
“AAAA” isn’t a thing. That was just Guillemot being an idiot and flailing on an investor call.
But but, we’ve been told Bethesda hears us and was fixing it!
Thats just usual Microsoft speak while plugging their ears and finding new ways to milk you.