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
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?
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
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
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.
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.
You just described mass effect
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.
I know! Red engine honestly is pretty great once they got the bugs worked out, I’m sad they’re leaving it. It was extremely immersive, and there’s definitely something about it that feels different.
Red engine was hitting its limits.
UE allows them to focus on gameplay and contents over building the core engine.
Think about cyberpunk? The engine was fine (if unoptimized) but the gameplay and contents were missing.
UE will allow them to focus on their missing skillset
Given the amount of the playable game that takes place on foot, they should have called it Field
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.
Thats not really an answer to their question, though.
Also I disagree :)
I’m sorry if you think I didn’t give an answer. Because I did.
You answered a question with a good answer, just not to the question they aske. They asked about the comment - “it’s not the game we bought into at launch”. They were talking about how a lot of people complained that what the game was at launch wasn’t what had been advertised - what people “bought into”.
You seem to be explaining why it’s “not the game you bought at launch” - which is definitely a valid argument too, just to something else.
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.
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.
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.
Phantom Liberty is a great expansion in its own right, combined with the 2.0 changes just made the entire experience better.
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.
It’s REALLY good.
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’m waiting for the ultimate edition that will include everything here
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
[]happened.
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.
I dislike the narrative that something is “unfixable”, everything is fixable if there is a will to do so.
I don’t know why game developers seem to have inhibitions of changing the game too much after release. For instance reworking and extending the main story in a game seems to be a big red line for them.
For instance I would have wished in Cyberpunk 2077 to actually play Vs introduction into Night City and the individual fixers myself, instead of just watching a cut scene. A DLC could have extended the start of the game a bit.
The same for Starfield, they could extend and improve the main story, characters and locations in an update, but seem hesitant to do so. Something like directors cut, that adds cut content as well as tons of side quests into the game.
If people still want to play the original game, they can make the extended story optional, like sleecting what version you want to play at the game start.
For bugs, they could work together with the community and the “unofficial patch” and engine fixer modders, instead just ignoring them. In Skyrim SSE for instance they still had many of the same bugs that Oldrim had and where fixed by thr community.
Bethesda could improve, and even fix their games, if they would decide to do so. Their DLC just doesn’t seem to be worth what they ask for, it could have been just part of a free update, so that some more people buy the base game.
I just ment you’d have to cut so much that at that point it would basically be a new game. I’m thinking a bit more from the dev point of view. Like an old rusted-to-hell car, everything is fixable. The question is cost: if you have to replace or re-fabricate every piece than you’re better off starting from scratch.
I’m the case of Starfield, changing the core story, characters, missions, and theme is basically the same as replacing the entire car body.
they could extend and improve the main story
I don’t think they can.
I have a strong suspicion that truly talented writers who are able to build memorable stories in great worlds are few and far between, and those that are willing to work in the games industry of today are as rare as hen’s teeth. Most companies, including Bethesda, simply don’t have the talent at hand to fix their mess, or there wouldn’t be a mess in the first place. The truth is probably somewhere between this, and the ol’ “eh, good enough”.
Funny thing is that shipbuilding also felt annoying to me. There were so many arbitrary restrictions that I felt like I couldn’t actually make the ship I wanted, it always felt the same
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.
I just finished playing it for the first time and I was blown away right from the start! Guess I’m glad I waited for the polish, but the world design, voice acting and overall storyline was absolutely fantastic. I couldn’t help feel bad for all the artists that clearly put a lot of love in to the world only to be overshadowed by bugs and poor implementation.
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.… And still could bit fix that some keys are hardcoded. But I agree, with expansion the game was quite enjoyable.
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.
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.
There are 2 important words there that you’re missing.
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.
Thankfully, they’re not the ones who develop Doom. They can publish it all they want as long as they stay the hell away from the actual games.
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
“they” haven’t improved in that they still put out shit games; They’ve improved 76 yes, but they still put out crap too.
“Bethesda hasn’t improved since Fallout '76 was released”
Make sense now?
but fallout 76 has improved. so are ghosts updating it?
nah youre right makes perfect sense
So Bethesda is good because Starfield might be worth playing 10 years after it was released? You’re obviously not understanding the point here.
It doesn’t matter that they improved '76 after the fact. It matters that they keep releasing top dollar garbage that needs years of work after the fact to even be playable.
Like imagine if you bought a brand new car that broke down immediately after you drove it off the lot. You take it back to them and they tell you “We understand you’re disappointed, so if we get time we’ll fix it for you and should have it back to you in a year or two.” Are you going to be satisfied with no car and no money for that long? Does it really make it better if they do actually fix it at some undetermined point in the future?
worst Bethesda DLC’s released of all time
Are we including Horse Armor here?
Bethesda literally invented shitty DLC
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
Welp, guess I can officially uninstall Starfield. Bummer.
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.
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’m enjoying it.
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.
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.
I actually liked beyond earth 🥲
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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.
My sister loves Beyond Earth; I still prefer Alpha Centauri.
Yeah they need to get rid of that cokehead.
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.
and they ended up with something that didn’t really work and shouldn’t have shipped.
That sure didn’t stop the marketing department, as this game was being shoved in our faces left and right as if it was the end-all-be-all game we’d be playing with our grand children in 50 years.
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.
Since Skyrim? I’d say their quality has been slowly declining since Morrowind. It wasn’t that noticeable at first, since oblivion, fallout 3, and Skyrim were still quite good and fallout 4 was decent. But then fallout 76 was a mess at release, TES blades was shit, and starfield just seems lazy.
Skyrim was at least an improvement over Oblivion. It showed they had the ability to recognize and fix the mistakes of Oblivion and still create an interesting world.
Microsoft really knows how to pick the winners, don’t they?
they are a reverse midas. Anything they touch doesn’t turn into gold but into shit
Mierdas touch
Remember, folks: Microsoft kept these people, and fired the ones who made Hi-Fi Rush.
That, alone, was my signal the entire console was going to slowly burn down.
Microsoft is a fucking ghoulish, evil company. The only reason they bought Bethesda was to own their IP. They have Elder scrolls, Fallout, and Doom Because of ID games. That alone is going to bring them so much money, if they ever want to sell any of those franchises in the future, they can sell them for a fortune. That’s probably the reason why they acquired Bethesda to begin with. Laying off Hi-Fi Rush after they delivered an excellent product was just pure evil.
This makes me feel better about them being exclusive to Microsoft now. I’m not missing anything at all.
Well…except the next installations of Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Let’s be honest, that’s what Microsoft were really buying, and neither are anywhere near a release.
Judging by how Starfield turned out, will missing either of those games (which are almost certainly going to be using the same incredibly outdated engine) be much of a loss?
For those of us that miss the lore and story/atmosphere of this games, absolutely.
Don’t get me wrong, Starfield has made me truly worried about the next installment, and I truly believe that milking Skyrim has ultimately left Bethesda in a position where open world gaming just leapfrogged them. The likes of TOTK and Elden Ring have absolutely shattered what they can show to deliver in a supposedly improved generation.
All I can hope is that Bethesda really look at the feedback they received, and take the time to make the necessary changes to their engine. That alone might be enough to at least give a retro feel to the games. I’ll still eagerly await them, but my hopes for them being GOTY are long gone.
The engine isn’t why Starfield sucks. Sure, the constant loading isn’t great but it isn’t the reason there’s nothing fun or interesting to do. It’s also a solvable issue, but they haven’t made the investments they need in the engine.
Starfield is just soulless. The characters are boring, the stories aren’t interesting and don’t let the player choose fun options. The universe is static and nothing matters. There’s just no reason to be involved in the world, so there’s no reason to want to be in it.
They could fix this. I’d say the way they need to go to do so is to stop targeting literally every player. They need to figure out who they’re making the game for and target them. I’m a big sci-fi fan, and I like older Bethesda games. I should have been an easy target for Starfield, but I hated it, not because of the engine but because the stories, characters, and universe weren’t engaging. The engine is an easy target to complain about, but it isn’t what’s holding them back. Indie games can do more with worse engines.
The engine really isn’t suited for the kind of game Starfield wants to be, so it really works against it. But you’re right, even if it were a new shiny engine with the same writing and characters, it would still suck. Likewise, if it had the same creaky engine but actual good stories and characters the constant loading would be easier to overlook. It just has the worst of both worlds.
Neither of which will matter.
Bethesda’s game design is just too old. Playing Starfield felt like playing an RPG from a decade ago. Bethesda just got complacent from back when they were one of the only companies that could seriously do an open-world RPG, now we have CD Projekt-Red and FromSoftware with wildly different, significantly more innovative gameplay experiences. Hell, even other AAA devs like Capcom have been able to outperform in the open world space, Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a ton of fun.
No, sadly I think the design is too new. Morrowind was 22 years ago. It is the direction I’d like to see them go again. A complex world that feels lived in, and actually gives players options to play how they want and figure things out for themselves. The newer boring “design for everyone” approach sucks. There’s no soul and nothing interesting.
FromSoft is somewhat notoriously old-school. Their game design has directly evolved from their older games. Look at King’s Field and then look at Dark Souls. There’s so much similarity. Yeah, ER is more cleaned up with a fuck-ton more money and technology available, but it’s essentially the same design.
Obviously Balder’s Gate 3 is just an evolution of classic RPG design, and it did very well. I’d argue CDPR also has taken classic RPG inspiration more than modern ones. A modern RPG design wouldn’t do half the stuff Cyberpunk did, because it’s not targeting everyone (and no one).
Modern AAA design doesn’t pick a target. Their target is everyone and everything, so they do nothing well. Classic design is knowing who your game is for and making a game for them and not anyone else. Bethesda is doing the former.
(cough) Horse Armor (cough)
Yeah…
Basically every Oblivion DLC that was not Shivering Isles (and MAYBE Heroes of The Nine or whatever) was god awful. And Fallout 3 (aside from the last two hours of the story DLC) was only really tolerated because it was mostly sold as a season pass. Operation Anchorage was a cool novelty that made stealth trivial and the rest… existed.
I would argue that all the fo3 and oblivion DLC were decent. Some obviously better than others, but they weren’t just soulless cash grabs. They had effort go into them, and were fairly new into the DLC space so some trial and error is to be expected. They had a pretty good amount of content for the price relative to the base game, compared to the starfield DLC/ current AAA norms.
According to UESP, Oblivion had
- Orrery: A few spells and a player house with a fetch quest attached
- Wizard’s Tower: a mage player house with a few spells and a fetch quest
- Thieves Den: A few spells and items and a very small dungeon
- Mehrunes’ Razor: Decent sized dungeon to get a dagger
- Vile Lair: A few spells, a player house, and a fetch quest
- Spell Tomes: Literally just spells
- Fighter’s Stronghold: A short dungeon and, you got it, another player house
Then we have Knights of the Nine (really mediocre) and Shivering Isle (arguably the best DLC Bethesda ever made)
Oh. And…
MOTHA FUGGING HORSE ARMOR!!!
People tend to be more favorable to Fallout 3’s DLC than I am (most are incredibly tiny dungeons but with a new tileset). I suspect in large part because Operation Anchorage channeled how amazing storming the memorial was in the base game and… I genuinely don’t know why people are so obsessed with flipping The Pitt. And Broken Steel itself was one of the worse examples of “We’ll finish the game later” of the era… and I played ALL the Blizzard games.
