Comparing Starfield to Baldur's Gate 3 (it's worse)

when I Doom scroll on my phone late at night I see people talking about 2023 being a fantastic year in video games comparable to 2007 and 2017 personally I look at the video game industry in 2023 and see that it's completely stagnant I hope that 3 years after Co the games from that era are finally done I know cyber Punk started this phase so maybe it's end of development will finish it some of you may say hey we had a great year they re-released two survival hor Classics Harry Potter is back to being as good as it was in 2003 and they finally gave us a Star Wars game that was only a quarter broken Nintendo spent an entire Zelda game creating the best building system in gaming and then hastily reused the last half of their project to meet the deadline luckily tears of the kingdom is better than breath of the wild in every single way so it gets a passing grade but still it would have been better with a new map armored Core 6 sprang back to life this year and then was politely reminded while why it was killed in the first place Street Fighter created a wonderful game and then immediately murdered that with microtransactions and Mortal Kombat re-released a game they made in 2011 and saved it with microtransactions and in even more good news it looks like Insomniac has finally gotten Spider-Man 2 back to the point where it's as fun as it was in 2004 the Mario team has apparently run out of ideas completely and has turned to recreational drugs for inspiration which is admittedly a baller move in balers Gate 3 broke new ground by giving horny nerds so many trauma victims to save they didn't notice that after 3 years in Early Access the game still launched in a basically broken State I loved playing through Allan Wake 2o but even I could admit that the dark place Allen wake is stuck in is his head in his own ass that game is too smart for its own good and I am being overly cynical here I mean Spider-Man hog Mario gate core are all really good games the problem with all these good games is that none of them are original in 2007 if we're looking at games that weren't based on previously established IP we have a great lineup Team Fortress 2 Bioshock crisis Assassin's Creed Mass Effect Uncharted rockband Crackdown skate and I'm probably forgetting many others and that's in addition to having a great amount of sequels and remakes like Halo 3 for original Ip in 2017 we had fortnite arms Neo cuphead Horizon zero Dawn hellblade what remains of Edis Finch and while that is less than 2007 that's still plenty of original and fresh ideas 2023 pretty much just has Starfield as its own original Ip you could probably slip lies of p in there but technically that's based off Pinocchio and if we're doing things based off books we have to add in so many more games from both those prior years the reason I'm depressed with 2023 is because of Starfield this game should be as good as balers Gate 3 it has the same Legacy going into it but balers Gate 3 is a much better game than Starfield even if it had all of the same problems of Starfield it would be better than Starfield because it has multiplayer even if Starfield does do a few things better than its cooler cousin this game is so damn disjointed it makes you wonder which teams were responsible for which ideas so to start this comparison let's start with the biggest and most glaring and horrible flaw in the game the map I don't think balers gate map is some sort of stand out map even compared to other RPGs like The Witcher or Oblivion it does its job and lets the players brains take over navigation but holy Starfield has two of the worst map systems I have ever seen in gaming this map is a collection of dots now I don't know about you but when I see a series of dots my head instinctively connects them all in a little line my brain will just naturally create a simple tree graph based on the shortest distances to get there it makes sense and it's a good design for fast faster than light traveling system as exemplified in the game FTL see we can only perceive this map in really 2D unless this was like in VR or something it's on a flat screen we're looking at it as a pancake object and yet Bethesda tries to make it feel 3D because they're right realistically one planet can look close to you but actually be much further away than it appears but I have a news flash for the map makers of the world I don't give a if Greenland should be twice the size it is on the the globe I just want a map that I can understand so when I instinctively plot my course and go to a planet that I think is going to be the next correct Choice and then find out I actually have to backtrack through about five or six planets all of them including loading screens it just kills the game and then you go to the map on the ground which doesn't make a lick of sense it's all just dots too you cannot tell me that no one in Bethesda raised their hand at a team meeting and said hey maybe we should make just a regular mini map for one of the many cities that the player is going to continuously go back to truly Bonkers for a game about exploring starfields maps should be the best in the business the next thing balers gate bodies Starfield in is in player choice mainly when it comes to Quest structure balers Gate 3 lets people be the spawn of a literal demon you can kill just about anyone and anything there have never been more essential characters in a Bethesda game than is in Starfield you can't kill anybody in this game ERS Gate 3 builds around that choice it allows for you to be the evilest in the room compare that to being a bad guy in Starfield AKA becoming a pirate which only rewards the player by giving them a bounty and then they also lose out on so much content because every Outpost they go to that has Raiders in it won't attack them Starfield punishes the player for playing their game Starfield is even bad compared to past Bethesda titles in Fallout 4 you can end the game with every major faction you get rewarded for the the time you put into it there's only really one ending in Starfield and it's a Cheesy congratulations ass ending congratulations congratulations congratulations so balers gate has a much much better map much much better player choice but what about the game play itself is turn-based finally more fun than real time well kind of the combat is a bit confusing cuz it's so in-depth but flashy enough to hook new players but what balers Gate 3 doesn't have is any real sense of urgency or surprise your heart's never going to get racing when you play balers Gate 3 or at least the few times that it does it's when you're praying for a dice to roll your way you can see enemies coming from a mile away who are technically disguised but are marked red on your mini map so guess what you know it's an enemy there's no surprise in normal DND D you can't see anything the DM hasn't described to you so it doesn't have this problem in Starfield when you jump to a random location enemy ships will just come out of nowhere start lighting your ass up it's super thrilling and super fun does it get old the up teenth time it happens absolutely but still it's fun while it lasts but for every one of those exciting moments in Starfield there are moments that lack any surprise and are completely dull there are some fetch quests in this game that are literally go here get a coffee go there get a beer it's horrible that should be left to MMOs the other weird thing it does kind of on par with balers gate is crafting and see balers Gate's crafting system wasn't bad but there's no no reason to ever really use it I never found myself in a position where I needed to make potions that weren't already pretty much readily available to me and since most potions are also spells you can typically just have your wizard learn something and then pay to resp crafting just becomes this thing in a lot of games especially RPGs where you don't really have to interact with it and it's only there for the hardcore players Starfield is a little bit like that but I have to give Bethesda credit for simplifying the junk collection system and the building system I think it really captures the vibe of going into scavenge something and then the things you can make are pretty cool but the problem is just like in balers gate there's no place to take that crafting sure you can build colonies and basically many cities with complicated trade routes but there's no Quest there's no end game you can't make your own company you can't compete in the economy it's like Factoria without the rocket and now these next two things are things that I think Starfield does a little bit better than balers gate and one of my favorite features about this game is the new persuasion system I think it's the best Bethesda has ever done and I think it's the best most games have ever done I understand why balder's Gates is all dice rolling and I appreciate that there's things you can learn in the story and different dialogue options that can raise or lower the requirements to meet a lot of those persuasion checks but starfields actually really really good about giving you notes or prior knowledge that you can later use in Persuasion and get the result that you want it just feels so much better than a dice trip check and so much more earned and then the have the reu I mean thieves guilded quests give you a perk that lets you manipulate people and then control them with your mind genius it is a perfect example of what a perk system should be and I know some people hated it cuz it removed a lot of Base skills from other Bethesda games like pickpocketing in both Fallout and Oblivion you can pickpocket much whoever you want right off the bat in Starfield you need to earn that perk but I talk a lot in my video games about how sequels can actually sometimes reduce player power to give them more earned player progression and to give the player such a high-powered perk as a quest reward is perfect one of my favorite moments in this game was getting married to a character named Andrea while gaining my friendship up with another one and then immediately marrying the other character and then brainwashing the other wife into being okay with it it's futuristic gaslighting what's not to love I think you may be right which brings me to the last point I want to make is that the writing of this game is something sometimes better than balers gate the World building is about as good as cyber punks but this doesn't have a board game or novels to base itself off of I think the writers really get a chance to show their strengths in both the funeral Mission and the conversations with the religious elders and also I love how they kill off a main character going around and talking with the different members of constellation and see how they all deal with that grief and loss was insanely interesting and completely gripping the characters grasp with things like religion the concept of an afterlife and what it means to love and be human talking to cororo after her father was just murdered having her be angry and Confused not just at you but at the world and then not having the answers to give her is heartbreaking especially cuz I don't know what I would say to someone like that in real life compare that heavy scene to a similar scene in balder's gate when you tell a child her parents are dead and it's night and day all of this makes starfields characters feel a bit more alive than they were in balder's gate and I'm not saying they're fun or Great Character Sarah Morgan sucks but the reason she sucks is because her character sucks she's not some Leaf in the wind that's going wherever the player tells them to go you can influence her but she has her own thoughts and feelings she just happens to be a super lame wet blanket and that's good you shouldn't like every character in the game to highlight this go onto the balers gate subreddit and ask fans what asterion ending is Cannon to them the answers will be all over the place because the characters of balers gate are complex and the players have complete agency over the character's decisions from fighting style to sexual orientation it's all up to the player this ties the player to their version of the character which is the sign of great game design and writing but it makes the character feel less grounded in the world compare that to another RPG like cyber Punk Judy is not going to suddenly change herself so that a male v can romance her just because the player chose the right dialogue all balers gate characters written after 2000 can't set up camp all they know is smile and bore charge their spell shots twerk be bisexual Eat Hot Chip and lie but what's crazy about starfields amazing writing whether it's the World building the characters or the quests is how incredibly shitty the main story is you step into the center of the universe and then start the game New Game Plus style only this time one or two things might be off about the members of constellation these changes are too minor and the rewards are too meager you lose everything except for your stats the only reward for really going back in time is having to rebuild who wants to spend 60 hours playing a game and then replaying it just to do the exact same things because the quest choices are so limited devil make cry fans that's who but starfields biggest sin and why despite all these things I think it does better than balers gate it's inexcusably bad is that there's so little to do there are really only three cities in this game compared to like what seven in Skyrim I completed the UC Colony Quest and became a well-renowned veteran I should be able to use that clout when I have to sneak back in on an undercover pirate Mission why are there fewer melee weapon types than in Fallout what is the point of having radiant AI if shopkeepers don't eat or sleep so you can't stealth or steal they spent all that year on polish and this still feels incredibly undercooked the one Saving Grace could be the DLC which might solve a lot of problems like not having any melee weapons in it but ultimately that would still just bring it up to par with past Bethesda titles and not the next step in the genre in my Bethesda Fanboy conspiracy theory mindset I just hope Bethesda has a multiplayer DLC planned it feels that way with the way the planets load the map that feels exactly like how you load into a Fallout 76 server the idea of a new game plus becoming a sort of prestige mode online that makes sense but is Starfield anywhere close to being worth $70 nope cyberpunk is a better immersive Sim no man's sky is a better space Sim and balers gate is a better RPG and if you're looking for a new Bethesda RPG in particular try playing Kingdom Come Deliverance or Fallout 76 they're actually pretty great the one bonus is that it's new and original Ip and I will admit that it feels nice to play in a world that's kind of optimistic and happy compared to everything else being such total and I'm glad companies are taking risks on expanded worlds that you can sink your teeth into the lore of even if it is just one company because it's starting to feel gaming years like 2007 are nearly gone with the game standard here at tibs TV I'm Jonathan Rosen blue

Channel: TibsTV

Views: 7,530

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Id: crhqwNMZy24

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 16 2023