Starfield Critique - A Galactic Disappointment

Bethesda games are often criticized for being as wide as an ocean with the depth of a puddle Todd heard this and thought what if instead of an ocean we expanded the game world to the size of the Galaxy and now we have Starfield the most bloated and boring Bethesda game I've ever played this is the largest world that Bethesda has ever made and yet it feels like the smallest Todd Howard is famous for saying it just works but what does he really mean when he says that well literally he's just talking about Fallout 4 Base building but on a deeper level why do his games just work for so many people Bethesda games tend to have overly simplistic combat bad programming and inconsistent writing in other words when you break a Bethesda game down into its individual Parts they aren't very good but they just work for so many people because the whole of exploring a Fantastical world is greater than the sum of its parts exploration is typically the only thing these games get right but in Starfield it's the worst part sometimes it doesn't just work everything wrong with star field exploration can be seen by comparing the space powers to the dragon shouts from Skyrim in Skyrim dragon shouts were hidden across the world as a universal reward for exploration even if you didn't find any good loot in the dungeon at least there'd be a dragon shout at the end in Starfield if you want to get a space Power you ask a quest Giver to tell you what planet has a temple fast travel to the planet walk in a straight line for three to five minutes to reach the temple and then you do the same floating through light Mini-Game to get a new space power as you walk to a temple you're very unlikely to find any other points of interest on the way because they're also spread out at most you might find a few weak aliens that I just end up running past to get to the temple sooner the main problem that many people have with star field is that you can't seamlessly travel from a planet into space like in no man's guy instead space travel is done through loading screens while I agree that this is a problem it's only one part of a larger issue not only does loading screen space travel suck but Planetary Exploration is so boring that it might as well be another giant loading screen that only leads to randomly generated generic boring content it's so bad that most players will just ignore exploration outright essentially removing the open world from the Bethesda game if you want to explore you'll have to go to your menu zoom out of the planet zoom out of the star system navigate to a correctly leveled star system in fast travel then you watch a loading screen a landing animation and walk in a straight line for three to five minutes until you reach a point of Interest unfortunately none of these points of interest are interesting at best you'll find a copy pasted pirate camp and at worst you'll find a Planet trait which is useless unless you're trying trying to fully scan a planet or a cave with a few alien enemies and basically nothing in it very rarely I would find side quests on the planets but these were all randomly generated and boring I might find someone asking for help back to his ship then I'd walk with him for a few minutes and the quest would be over it's beyond dull scrolling through the menus to fast travel feels like a loading screen the loading screen is a loading screen and walking in a straight line on the planet to reach a point of Interest might as well be a pretty loading screen all of Starfield exploration is a loading screen and it just leads to terrible content also space travel feels like a series of loading screens if you want to sell Contraband to a vendor without getting scanned by the authorities you'll want to go to the den spaceship in the wolf system unfortunately Todd doesn't let us fast travel into spaceships so you have to navigate out of your star system find wolf then click on the den watch a load loading screen pilot the ship forward for a while hold the dock button watch the unskippable dock and cut scene hold the button to board ship and then watch another loading screen also you can do inventory management what the [ __ ] Todd they also don't let you fast travel to the vendors in the main city of New Atlantis so you have to walk to the elevator every time to reach the elevator loading screen that leads to the well so space travel is blocked by loading screens planetary travel is one giant loading screen selling to vendors is a big loading screen and reaching the destination for each Quest by walking through the same city over and over again might as well be another loading screen also Todd decided to have a realistic inventory limit of 140 pounds that barely improves as you play the game if you surpass the limit you can't fast travel and will eventually lose oxygen and take damage this means you'll constantly be staring at more screens to do inventory management with your companion and spaceship but for some reason is in the starting spaceship has an inventory limit of 450 pounds the spaceship probably weighs about 10 tons or something but the cargo limit is 450 pounds even though I'd only pick up rare items Med packs and ammo I'd still have to go to vendors after every large dungeon but the problems with exploration don't stop there because in a domino effect bad exploration also means that the side quests and cities suck too the point of a city or town in a Bethesda game is to push players out of the city and into the open world to complete quests while on the journey to completing the quest the player might find dungeons towns characters enemies or additional quests this is the exploration fueled Bethesda gameplay Loop that so many people love in Starfield exploration sucks and the game designers know it so the vast majority of side quests don't push you out to explore but keep you trapped in the city this means that most side quests are dialogue heavy fetch quests oddly enough the beginning city of New Atlantis has the worst batch of side quests many people recognize that the first 12 hours of star field is the worst part of the game and I think the crap side quests in new Atlantis are largely to blame in one side quest I walk a guy to a store and buy soup in another I collect bulbs by trees for research a third one has me asking people to go to church none of these side quests have any interesting twists dialogue or combat I'd have more fun doing side quests in an MMO and that's really saying something the best side quests in the game are in neon but they're still not great since neon is a crime-filled city you'll sometimes find yourself in combat so it's a bit more exciting but it pales in comparison to traditional Bethesda exploration since side quests are the only only meaningful thing you find for exploring cities and most of them suck that also makes the city suck I'll go into more detail later but the faction quest lines and main story are also poorly paced there's way too much fast traveling around planets to talk to people and the massive walls of dialogue this game presents isn't nearly good enough to make up for the lack of exploration and combat in the quests so what am I getting at here what's the point of me complaining about everything I do not hate every part of this game I'll talk about the positives later but I'm trying to explain how starfield's flaws go beyond too many loading screens fundamentally the entire Bethesda gameplay Loop is completely [ __ ] in this game in every conceivable way space travel is boring Planetary Exploration is boring and many side quests are boring which makes the cities boring this means that what most players will do in Starfield is just rush the faction quest lines since everything else isn't very good but those quests are full of mediocre dialogue and don't lead to combat enough so the gameplay Loop is still when you're doing the game's best content many people are saying that the main issue with Starfield is that it's just another Bethesda game that didn't evolve in any meaningful way I wish this statement was true but I do not agree with it Starfield is the de-evolution of Bethesda it's a regression I fully believed that Starfield would not live up to its insane hype but I'm baffled that it came out this bad so why is Starfield so massively flawed the way I see it Bethesda is all about creating fantasy simulators that give the player complete freedom of course they are never able to achieve this perfectly but they do a good enough job for most people Todd Howard wanted to create a game that was about his own fantasy of living in the future as Humanity was colonizing new planets Todd himself stated that he didn't want to have too many points of interest too close together on planets because it would feel too gamey Todd Howard is also quoted as saying everyone's concerned that empty planets are going to be boring but when the astronauts went to the moon there is nothing there they certainly weren't bored Todd was so caught up in the fantasy of a semi-realistic space exploration game that he forgot to make the game fun exploring Baron planets just isn't fun no matter how realistic it is this is probably why the player Can Only Hold 140 pounds at the start of the game it's supposed to be realistic even if it isn't fun except for the spaceship cargo that just doesn't make any sense I know I sometimes come across as a bit too negative on this channel but I don't enjoy [ __ ] on someone's dream project how however I also have to be honest and say that I didn't enjoy the majority of Starfield so how do we fix Starfield well there's the easy way and then there's the hard way let's go over the hard way first which would be making 1 000 planets interesting to explore the first thing we need to do is make the points of interest spawn much closer together so you can find stuff on the way to other locations they could also add vehicles to make exploration faster and while this would help exploration it wouldn't fix the main issue I want to find combat and side quests on the way to distant locations so a higher quantity of locations is needed also every time you land on a planet you can only explore so far before you hit an invisible wall and having a vehicle would reveal just how small the explorable area really is the second and more important fix for exploration would be to include more quality handcrafted side quests on planets although this is extremely important it's also kind of impossible when you land on a planet you want to have quality content in every direction and maybe some filler Combat on the way to get into the Bethesda gameplay Loop so let's say you land on a planet and three to four high quality quests spawn only for the player to find one good Quest and then leave the planet forever should Bethesda delete the high quality locations from previous Planet maps and respawn them on new planets what if the player wanted to re-explore a previous planet to see if they missed something but they despawn the high quality quests to go somewhere else and even if they did this eventually you'd just run out of high quality quests because the player would just do all of them but at least until that running out Point exploration could be better the whole point to this game design rant was to show how there's no real way to make exploration interesting on 1000 planets although they could have done a much better job with making randomly generated planets interesting there's no real way to fix star field and make it as good as past Bethesda titles without reducing the amount of explorable area so with fixing star field the hard way isn't really possible what about the easy way the more I played star field the more I dream of what it could have been imagine how fun the game could have been if it was only three handcrafted maps for three different planets yes they could have also done something like 10 Maps but I personally think that three would have been the ideal each map could have been very big and dense with things to find there could be an industrial water planet that would be like Bioshock combined with the water planet from Star Wars this Planet would lead to the city of neon another planet would be a traditional Wilderness with City suburbs that would lead to new Atlantis and the third planet would be a desert with many ruins and that would lead to Aquila City each hand-crafted map would be full of secrets and Dungeons and the majority of City quests would push you to explore the open world surrounding it the more I played Starfield the more I kept obsessing over what could have been instead Bethesda committed to the idea of one thousand explorable planets and the game is a thousand times worse off for it I've been very negative so far so it might surprise you to learn that I actually liked some of Starfield one thing that I enjoyed was the combat I liked some of the bigger Arenas that had verticality and the guns all felt satisfying to shoot to make the Arenas more interesting you'll fight enemies at different levels of gravity and in some cases you can even fly in zero gravity which is kind of fun of course this is still a Bethesda game so I have my share of issues with the combat my first issue with combat is that the enemy AI isn't aggressive enough they should throw more grenades and Rush the player more often to force me into constant movement in the Arenas or at least they should be more aggressive in very hard mode since the AI rarely does this most of Starfield plays out like an overly simplistic cover shooter I'd also prefer it if you had to do an animation to heal like in Fallout 4 to make healing riskier healing's a bit too strong in Starfield the AI for a lot of enemies in Starfield just isn't very great they'll take cover against nothing and you'll just shoot them in the head a bunch so that happens the combat is lacking enemy variety especially when you consider that alien combat isn't really fun the aliens are so easy to kill with your mobility and ranged weapons that they're just fodder enemies there also aren't any fun boss enemy types since most boss battles are melee aliens who can't keep up with my Mobility options my final problem with combat is that every faction was made to be beatable as your first faction and there's no level scaling so after completing two factions the game became ridiculously easy I understand why level scaling an entire world like in Skyrim or Oblivion is problematic but I really think that faction quests and maybe enemies and side quests should have level scaling so that it doesn't become too easy of course there is one more issue with combat that is actually more important than all of the others just a tiny amount of combat will lead to inventory management so my favorite parts of the game quickly leads to my least favorite part of the game despite my many issues I still had fun with the combat in Starfield I like the Boost pack I enjoy weapon switching all the guns feel satisfying to shoot and the combat Arenas present a fun challenge the this is why it sucks so badly that I rarely got to engage in combat side quests faction missions and exploration did not get me into Fun combat encounters nearly enough of the time far less than previous Bethesda titles instead I was just wandering through the cities talking to people most of the time and although Starfield has the largest cities of any Bethesda game yet they also feel like the smallest just like the rest of the game there's hundreds of lifeless NPCs walking in a line with no real purpose another reason why the universe feels so small is the lack of human settlements there are the four major cities of new Atlantis Sidonia Aquila and neon outside of this there's a couple of buildings here or there as well as some randomly generated human settlements but those human settlements are really small and it's just really lacking substance it's awkward to see the skyscrapers of new Atlantis surrounded by mostly Wilderness why did they feel the need to build vertically when 99 of the planet is Barren if all of this content was in one or maybe a couple of maps it would be really impressive but separated by loading screens over a thousand Barren planets the universe doesn't feel believable the cities are also separated by tons of loading screens which makes them feel even more artificial it's really weird how Starfield is the only game I've ever played that requires an SSD card to be played on and yet it requires more loading screens than more impressive looking games do on a hard drive that were released many years ago one more thing to note the game launched without any maps for cities or anything in the game this makes finding vendors much harder this isn't even in my top 20 issues with the game but it sure is stupid the last negative thing I'll cover in this section of the video are the bugs this is as the game so how many glitches you encounter will be extremely variable for me it wasn't that bad the worst glitch I found was how at one point in the game exiting containers and chests started causing a giant thing to appear on the screen I think this is an unwrapped gun texture but I'm not sure once this glitch occurred the first time it would always come back so it was really annoying outside of this the only other annoying glitches that everyone will experience is dialogue Jank overall this is probably one of the least buggy Bethesda titles and if I was to list out the game's top worst issues bugs wouldn't even be there but there are bugs because it's a Bethesda title now that I'm done with the critique of the combat and exploration I'm going to devote the rest of the video to analyzing the writing the factions and the main story as I stated before the vast majority of faction missions are mostly dialogue and walking to places with minimal combat this makes it in important that the dialogue and choices are well written since that's the majority of the game but in typical Bethesda fashion most of the character writing is really boring it's hard to pinpoint exactly why the dialogue is so boring because most of it isn't actively bad it just usually isn't any good either it's extremely mid I found myself spam skipping through most of the heaps of dialogue in the game I also disliked bethesda's overuse of having the player character listen to other people's boring conversations standing around While others talk feels like an outdated way of doing storytelling and Starfield does this all the time while playing Baldur's Gate 3 I never skip through the dialogue because most of the characters are interesting Baldur's Gate 3 also had cinematic camera angles and better facial animations star field has the boring Fallout 3 camera for all conversations the facial animations land in The Uncanny Valley and and characters look plasticky this means that all star field has to rely on is its writing but most of it isn't any good part of the reason for the lackluster writing is because starfield's setting does not play to the strengths of bethesda's writers my favorite writing in a Bethesda game are the side quests in Oblivion because Bethesda is at their best when they are raiding wacky fantasy quests with a Twist on them they aren't very good at writing in a serious setting which is probably why they don't make very good Fallout games as I move on to analyze each individual faction I will bring up examples of good and bad writing but I want you to know that these examples are not the biggest problem with the writing in the game the biggest problem is that when the writing isn't being actively good or bad its default is to bore me also for a game that was in development for eight years there aren't that many factions there's only 5 five joinable factions including the main story faction of constellation I was especially disappointed when my bounty hunter couldn't join the tracker Alliance which is the Bounty Hunter faction there also aren't any faction quest lines for the three major religions or the trade Authority as for the factions you can join we're going to start by analyzing the evil pirate faction the Crimson Fleet this was my least favorite faction because I rarely got to engage with my favorite parts of the game which is combat this is because I was secretly an undercover agent for the good guy faction the UC Vanguard and they would kick me out if I killed innocent people I also hated this faction because every time I wanted to turn in a mission I had to return to both the Crimson Fleet and UC spaceships and you know what that means more loading screens I didn't enjoy how the Crimson Fleet Quest was designed the objective in the first mission is to find crix's Legacy crix is the founder of the Crimson Fleet Pirates and his lost treasure was never found while this is a cool setup for a side quest the issue is that it's the only main objective for the entire length of the faction until the battle between the UC and the Crimson Fleet it gets boring when every single mission in a faction is all about slowly moving towards one goal I'd prefer it if there is another main objective that takes three to four missions to complete like defeating some villain or something that could lead into crix's Legacy so that there's some momentum in the quest design I also think that the worst written side quest in the game is in the Crimson Fleet it's so bad that I actually think it's funny and I kind of like it I'm trying to steal a prestigious and expensive award without killing anyone so I walk up to the person whose job it is to deliver the award the woman is dismissive of me because she is very busy and for some God forsaken reason the game allows me to persuade her into giving out the diamond encrusted award she goes from being angry at me to saying just take the damn thing already why would she do that she's getting paid to give the award away I'm not offering her any money to give up the award I'm also not threatening her why would I even be allowed to persuade someone out of doing their job and into a legal activity for No Gain how is this writing he weighs after doing a bunch of mediocre dialogue you're able to enter the ship where cricks died with his money this is the best part of the faction there's actually combat now with the robots and after you get krix's Legacy there's this really cool metroid-esque Escape scene where the spaceship starts exploding and robots try to kill you as you leave it this was really fun if you stay too long you'll lose oxygen and die which means you're on a real time limit to escape once you escape the ship you have the choice to give krix's Legacy to either the UC Vanguard or the Crimson Fleet and I chose to be a good boy inside with the Vanguard this led to another part of the game that I hated which is space combat it's slow tedious and has no real skill for outplaying opponents space combat desperately needs a barrel roll or something to give you a way to outplay opponents with higher stats you can't even boost out of enemy fire you just die space combat really is just hit trading with ships until the bigger man wins and if you want to win you have to invest a crap ton of money in your ship and skill points into piloting which is what I did later or you can just lower the difficulty after beating the enemy spaceships in Easy Mode I switched back to very hard mode and I found the Gunplay to be easier in very hard mode than the space combat in Easy Mode and I had even bought some things to improve my ship and had ship healing items the terrible balancing is also a real shock because this was the first faction I beat and I was in very hard mode and I still found the Gunplay too easy moving on to the end of the faction I wanted to kill the Crimson Fleet leader Delgado once I talked to him he insinuated that he was going to blow up the ship soon so I persuaded him into opening the doors so I could kill him quicker unfortunately persuading Delgado to open the doors also causes him to go to prison which turns him into an invincible NPC there's a lot of invincible NPCs in this game which made me miss the old days of Morrowind so instead I loaded a save and just attacked him and got to do a fun combat Arena which ended with me killing Delgado although I enjoyed the final few missions of the Crimson Fleet most of it was mediocre dialogue with minimal combat and a lot of loading screens the Crimson Fleet is going to set a standard for every faction in the game that isn't the Vanguard of starting out really boring and only becoming somewhat good towards the end another faction that encapsulates this statement perfectly is the Freestar Rangers similar to the Crimson Fleet there is only one goal that you are trying to solve for the entire faction and the quest line doesn't become interesting until the end but unlike the Crimson Fleet the goal you're trying to solve is infinitely more boring mercenaries are trying to steal land from Farmers that's it that's the hook for the entire faction if this was an Elder Scrolls faction the conflict with the farmers would resolve in the first Quest before leading on to more interesting things but not in Starfield in the first Ranger Mission you're trying to help the farmers and in the last Ranger Mission you're trying to help the farmers the Rangers have the most boring writing of any faction in the game but at least there's a good amount of combat so I had more fun with the Rangers than with the Crimson Fleet the writing starts to get interesting towards the end when I learned that one of the main villains was ex-military from the war between the three star Collective and the United Colonies during the end of the war the Freestar Collective almost won but decided to sign a peace treaty with the United Colonies instead the ex-military soldier had some pretty good dialogue about how the deaths of his friends were meaningless because they weren't able to avenge their deaths and take down the United Colonies despite history being within their grasp this good dialogue with the ex-military soldier made me think of how much better the Freestar Rangers could have been if the farmer conflict resolved after two missions and led to the player discovering plans about a rebellion against the Freestar Collective the ex-military soldiers would be trying to overthrow the government so they could continue their war against the United Colonies and the final mission would be you defending Aquila City from the ex-military soldiers it could be very epic instead you learned from the ex-military soldier that he was employed by businessman Bob hoped to take over the Farms once you confront Bob Hope he says that he was using a dangerous fertilizer that destroyed the farmer's crops to undercut his competition and he wanted to buy out the land for cheap to cover up his involvement in killing the crops I tried to arrest Bob he said no and then I killed him after this a woman who knew Bob said the stupid this thing in the entire quest line she was upset that I killed Bob and said it felt like an ambush followed by an execution even though I tried to arrest him and then he ambushed me with four soldiers there isn't even a dialogue option for me to tell the woman that he was ambushing me I was the one with less soldiers either way the twist that Bob Hope was the bad guy was boring and predictable the moment I first met Bob I literally thought this uncooperative rich guy is obviously the bad guy and then he was the writing was beyond predictable the best writing in the faction was the ex-military guy and I wish his rebellion was the main conflict not the farmers the next faction is ryujin Industries I feel sort of mixed on this faction the beginning of the faction feels a lot like Morrowind there isn't a large overarching plot and you just do disconnected mission which makes this faction feel like an actual job I kind of enjoy the fantasy job approach to morrowind's factions but it also feels a bit outdated to not have a good hook for the first five missions of a faction still I like this more than introducing a hook in the first mission that doesn't get resolved until the last few missions like with the Crimson Fleet or the Rangers you get reprimanded for killing people during ryujin missions so it doesn't have much combat like with most factions instead you just do stealth and Digi picking the stealth kinda sucks in this game and even though I wasn't static for stealth I've heard similar things from other people who did put points into stealth enemies will tend to catch you even if you're above their heads it feels like they're always just staring up and it's very annoying the thing I liked most about ryujin was the digi picking this is starfield's lock picking minigame and it's pretty entertaining the X expert and Master locks are somewhat mechanically challenging as you need to think through which picks you might need later as you get through each layer of the lock once the plot gets going it becomes somewhat interesting you have to choose between helping the CEO masako or helping the higher up ularu betray the CEO and take over the company overall ryugen Industries felt like a slightly better version of the Crimson Fleet with a less cool ending while the ending of the Crimson Fleet had you running out of an exploding spaceship to choose sides in an Intergalactic war in ryujin you just do a big crappy stealth Mission followed up by a board meeting I was going to rank the factions from worst to best as the video went on but I can't really do that anymore because I think that the Crimson Fleet the Rangers and ryujin are all about the same in terms of quality which isn't very high although the Crimson Fleet probably would be better than the other two if you were a bad guy since you'd get into combat more often however I think everyone is in agreement on what the best optional faction is in the game the UC Vanguard this is the only faction in the entire game that actually starts out interesting you go on a mission to investigate an outpost on the planet only to learn that it's been attacked by the most dangerous alien in the Galaxy the terror morph you turned on the power at the base and lead the terror morph into a bunch of turret fire it feels good to kill such a strong enemy at such a low level using the turrets the idea of how the terror morphs are born presents a cool mystery these creatures always exist around human colonies after they've existed for at least 70 years but no one knows how they get there they can mind control weaker humans into killing their friends and when you fight a terror morph they will give your character auditory hallucinations Joy Joy the Terra morphs are a real threat because they once managed to take over an entire city in londinian like the other faction quests the main conflict Remains the Same from start until finish but the threat of parasitic aliens taking over humanity is cool enough for me to care the whole time there's also some interesting plot twists revealed along the way although I like this quest line it's not all good there was some particularly bad dialogue when I was talking to the leader of the United Colonies Council I needed classified information that could help me defeat the terror morphs but in the wrong hands it could be used to spread the terramorphs to enemy colonies as an act of terrorism I want the information to continue the quest and the leader of the council looks at me and asks me what I would do if I was in her position hand over the information or not so one of the country's leaders is hesitant to hand over sensitive information Nation to a low-ranking Vanguard soldier in case he's secretly evil and instead of letting me try to convince her she asks me to tell her what to do how is this woman even a leader it this is just really stupid writing as the one who actually collected the sample in question did this terramorph seem at all alarming to you luckily the bad dialogue is interrupted by a terramorph attack this leads to a cool event where you battle terramorphs in the city streets of New Atlantis as Citizens flee in Terror at some points in the quest line you learn that Hadrian the scientist who helped you defeat the first Terror morph is actually a clone of UC General vevictus they victus was a genius General who was cloned so that the UC could have access to more brilliant soldiers after londinian was taken over by terramorphs he decided to bomb the city rather than evacuate it murdering everyone within for this he was executed by the United Colonies government but in a cool twist I later learned that vivictus was not dead he was too brilliant of a general for the UC to kill outright so they faked his execution and let him stay alive in prison to help catch criminals in case one day there was another war and his genius was needed it again through completing UC Vanguard missions you learned that you can combat the terror morph Threat by spreading a virus that kills terramorphs while being harmless to humans or we can spread the acely's aliens which eat terramorphs while being non-hostile to humans either way the resources to eliminate the terror morphs are in londinian so we have to explore the terramorph infested ruins of the city that vevictus bombed I thought this was a really cool mission to end the quest line on unfortunately the combat was pretty bad the Terra morphs are Health sponges that don't pose any real threat because alien combat kinda sucks in this game most of an alien's damages from melee but they can't catch up with the player's Mobility from the Boost pack and they can't easily follow the player onto elevated surfaces so you can just sit on top of a building or crate and be completely safe mechanically the terramorph fights are not good but the spectacle of fighting a giant alien with your homies as you hear auditory hallucinations is kind of fun to me in londinian I witnessed something that I thought was terrible writing but for once Bethesda actually proved me wrong we find one of the most common aliens in the Galaxy a heat leech and it turns into a terror morph it does this because it passed by a Lazarus plant in bloom which speeds up the development of nearby heat leeches this means that all terramorphs come from heat leeches at first I thought this made no sense if heat leeches are one of the most common aliens in the galaxy and every human settlement is eventually attacked by a terror morph then how could no one have noticed a single heat leech turning into a Terra morph this is especially odd when you consider that the entire city of londinian was attacked by Terror morphs well there's a bit of an explanation for this we learn later through an audio recording that vivictus bombed londinian because the people did witness heat leeches turning into Terror morphs and they victus didn't want the information to escape from londinian so he killed them all since the Lazarus plant that speeds up a heat leeches development only exists in londinian no one in any other planets would witness this instead there would only be rare Terror morph attacks from old heat leeches who matured slowly and we can assume that anyone who saw the heat leeches transform probably died to the Terra morph soon after there are UC Vanguard soldiers stationed in londinian but they don't really explore the interior of the city where the Lazarus plants are so it's somewhat believable that they wouldn't have seen it assuming that there aren't too many Lazarus plants on the planet if this explanation was a bit too complicated for you to follow along with what I'm saying is that Bethesda actually made a complicated plot that doesn't have any major plot holes and is also interesting the UC Vanguard questline genuinely impressed me in another twist we learned that vevictus has been having his old partner spread mature heat leeches across the Galaxy to create a threat of Terror morphs that his clone Hadrian could solve once his old partner was dead in the terramorphs were dealt with Hadrian would be a hero and vevictus could be released from prison for helping bring down the terror morphs Hadrian probably could have died along the way if it wasn't for the player but vivictus probably cared less about Hadrian and more about himself creating a problem that somebody else would solve and he would be seen as a hero for giving information the only issue for fayevictus is that the player found a recording in londinian of vivictus admitting his knowledge of how terramorphs are created and deciding to destroy the city to keep the knowledge secret I decided to use this tape in a meeting being with the council as evidence against vevictus so he could actually be executed this time I decided to use the materials gathered in londinian to make a virus that would kill the terramorphs and the Galaxy was saved there's a reason why the UC Vanguard section of this video is longer than the others the quest line actually has a degree of intrigue and depth not found in the other factions the quality is consistent across most of the quest line as opposed to the other three factions which have large amounts of boring content last but not least we have the main story this is one of the most interesting main stories I've seen in a Bethesda game and it's also probably the worst one this is because the story starts off so boring that I would have dropped it if I didn't force myself to get through its terrible first 10 hours and then it becomes a genuinely enjoyable space mystery I think the flaws with starfield's main story three may be a result of Bethesda overreacting to the criticisms of Fallout 4's story many people disliked that Fallout 4 was about a father trying to find his son because if the main story is of Paramount importance to the main character then why would I ever stop to do side quests I need to save my son for Starfield the writers saw this and decided to basically not have a hook for the story The Hook is you touch an artifact see a vision and then enter a group of explorers at constellation who want to collect more artifacts that's it that's the hook you touch space rocks for the first 10 hours you are hunting mcguffins you don't know what the artifacts do and they don't even have the decency to introduce a main villain until around the 10 hour mark my only notes for the first 10 hours of the main story is that I wanted to uninstall I don't like the main story of sky room considering I never beat it but at least that game had the decency to introduce the main villain and story hook right away you are attacked by Alduin and then turn out to be the Dragonborn who's destined to defeat Alduin I still dislike Skyrim's main story because I think it should take longer for you to kill a dragon and be known as the Dragonborn and many main story quests are really boring I prefer how Morrowind handled being the chosen one far more with the slow roll out of powers but hey at least Skyrim's plot does the bare minimum Starfield does not do the bare minimum you are just collecting artifacts for 10 plus hours many people criticize Starfield for having a weak opening 12-ish hours and when you do the main story first it only gets worse the story gets a bit better after you escape neon and are met by the starborn this starborn's name is the Emissary he asks for your artifacts and when you declined to share he attacks you and you escape with the grav jump finally the game introduces both the villain and an interesting mystery who are the star-born are they alien or human and if these powerful people want the artifacts could the artifacts actually be interesting later in the game another star born called the Hunter attacks constellation and depending on if you defend constellations home base or their spaceship a different companion will die every playthrough the two different companions who could die will be different which is kind of cool for me Sam co-died the developers have an entire funeral for the Fallen companion which really drove home the impact of their death later in the main story you meet up with the starborn who are having a meeting in their spaceship and they invite you to attend when you enter the star-born spaceship you are greeted by the two star born who attacked you previously the Emissary and the Hunter her the Emissary reveals himself to be Sam Coe The Companion who died in the earlier Quest he explains how he is a different Samco from an alternate universe who gathered all the artifacts and made it to the center of the universe which turned him into a starborn every star-born is like the main character of their own universe and every time they collect the artifacts and reach the center of the universe they are sent to a new dimension where they'll have to recollect all the artifacts again in an infinite Loop of collecting artifacts and going to the center of the universe the Emissary wants to control who gets the artifacts to keep the balance of power in check while the Hunter wants to gather all the power for himself I thought this was a really cool Twist on the story I did have one issue with how this scene played out the Emissary and the hunter are having a meeting to discuss a peace treaty even though they've never agreed to peace before in the countless times they fought over the artifacts it doesn't make any sense to me why one of them didn't start using this meeting as an opportunity to Ambush the other since they've never agreed to peace before this is especially true because if you try to kill either one of them they'll just turn into an invincible NPC either way after leaving the meeting with the starborn you set out to find two more artifacts to get one artifact you find yourself in a research station where you start Dimension hopping into a do maternal level this was a genuinely fun mission where you navigate through a light World in Dark World setting I enjoyed this Mission so much it made me think about how much missed potential exists in starfield's narrative I'm going to propose a way that Starfield could have made the first 10 hours of its story more engaging firstly they need to introduce the star-born villain far earlier I think the starborn should probably appear at the end of the first or second Quest however I don't want the companion death or the a reveal of who starred born are to be earlier just the villain introduction villains are necessary for stories to be engaging and the Mystery of who the star-born are and why they want the artifacts is far more interesting than simply touching space rocks after the starborn are introduced they should immediately have several Dimension hopping missions they could move the previously mentioned mission where you are caught between a research station in the Dark World to be far earlier but they could also change the plot so that the artifacts themselves create riffs in the Multiverse this would make every encounter with an artifact an opportunity for Dimension hopping Between Worlds and it would make so many of the missions so much more fun now I know I'm being a bit of an Internet armchair game developer right now it's easy to spit ideas out in a video but it's much harder to execute them well in a video game the reason I'm doing this is because because the last couple missions of starfield's main story are so good that I can see the potential for this to be bethesda's best main story but it's not it's one of their worst and I'm trying to brainstorm away to fix that I would say it starts out worse than every other faction Quest and that's really saying something when I don't even like the beginning to most other factions however the ending missions of the main story is probably the best part of the game and I wish the whole thing was at this level of quality transitioning back to the main story the other artifact we need before the final encounter is in NASA which for some reason still has Digi pick locks and modern robot technology that we've seen throughout the rest of the game apparently it hasn't evolved in the last couple hundred years you've learned that a scientist discovered an artifact and that the power of the artifact destroyed Earth the force man into exploring the star I can assume it left NASA intact so that someone could find the final artifact after you get the artifact you are confronted by the Emissary and the hunter they ask you to choose who you are going to side with but I wanted all the power for myself so I betrayed both of them this leads to a really cool Final Mission as you approach the final artifacts you find yourself Dimension hopping to different points in the game at one point you relive the beginning of the game when you were a miner touching an artifact for the first time and then later you find yourself in a parallel universe where you died to the hunter instead of your companion you have a conversation with Victor as he holds your dead body in his hands and you can either encourage or discourage him from collecting the artifacts once you reach the final artifact you meet up with the Emissary and the hunter which results in the best part of the game as you fight the starboard the room turns into zero gravity and you start start to fly around eventually the screen Fades to Black and you find yourself Dimension hopping through the final battle this is so genius one second you're in the constellation home base then you're battling in the undercity of new Atlantis and then you're doing a shootout in the neon nightclub switching between the dimensions was genius the music was amazing and the Arenas you find yourself fighting in are actually well designed mechanically thematically visually and musically this ending is a banger too bad I wouldn't have seen it if I didn't force myself through the game's terrible first half after you kill the starborn and collect all the artifacts you're able to grab jump to the center of the universe there you meet the unity which is sort of like the multiverses equivalent to a God and they appear as the player character Unfortunately they don't really answer any questions or give any reasons for the artifacts existing and only say vague things about the answers lying with the creators but you can't meet the creators so you don't get any answers the space visuals in this ending environment is really beautiful and I also like how they did the epilogue as you walk up to the different people next to you the unity explains how your choices will affect the future of the universe you're given the choice to either leave the unity and remain in your universe or touch the center and become starborn if you become starborn you enter new game plus you retain all your levels skill points and space Power abilities but lose all your items money and companions you do get some cool starborn armor and a star-born spaceship you can also meet up with constellation and redo a sped up version of the main story as a starborn or redo the story in its entirety pretending to not be a starborn of course it's impossible for Bethesda to account for the Player's knowledge of the future sure in every quest in New Game Plus but the idea is cool nonetheless once you do enough New Game Plus runs there are fun alternate realities you can find yourself in that I've seen on YouTube such as a universe where another star-born version of yourself is evil and attacked constellation or Another Universe where constellation is entirely made up of different versions of yourself which became star born starfield's amazing Final hours combined with its interesting New Game Plus idea made me really wish the game was better so that I'd want to replay it although I liked how the main story ended with the player entering an alternative Universe I unfortunately have to say that in typical Bethesda fashion the plot doesn't make any damn sense the main plot hole of this game is however the hell the Emissary and Hunter can even exist they talk like a single Consciousness and both say they've been to the unity hundreds of times but that statistically impossible and I have the math to prove it for the hunter to reach the unity one she has to collect all the artifacts and kill the Emissary they're both the same level so we'll say he has a 50 chance to win in reality it's lower than that due to other star-borne and constellation but we'll make it easier for the Hunter and the math the Hunter says he's been to the unity hundreds of times so we'll say he's won at least 200 times his odds of winning 200 times are one in one followed by 60 digits or the number on screen damn one in November decillion odds and the hunters still only level 40. every time you start a new game plus there's a new Hunter who's reached the unity hundreds of times so it's statistically impossible that they are all one Consciousness an alternative explanation is that I'm talking to multiple people who've been absorbed into one Consciousness this makes sense because the hunter refers to himself as multiple and the emissarian hunter both split into Duke duplicates during the final battle maybe there is a collective of people who side with the Emissary or the hunter once they reach the unity and their individuality is wiped out and they're absorbed by the person they sided with well this explanation can't be true because the player character isn't absorbed into either one when they side with one or the other in a playthrough the only other explanation I can come up with is that in the majority of universes a single person reaches the unity most of the time and every time a duplicate From Another Universe reaches the unity they absorb into each other as one Consciousness with shared memories and they can split into multiple bodies this doesn't happen to the player character because they're told they usually never reach the center of the universe but think again because in some of the new game plus playthroughs you can literally meet the star-born versions of yourself and we don't all fold into one Consciousness with clone Powers so how are the Emissary and Hunter doing that if you want my honest answer I don't think anyone at Bethesda thought as hard about their plot as I am right now I don't think there is an underlying logic behind any of this it doesn't make sense either they're an individual conscious that keeps reaching the unity and that's statistically impossible for the amount of times they say they did it or they're a collective group of consciousnesses but then how does that group form there's no explanation and none of the ones I can think of make any sense the tldr is Bethesda made an extremely complicated Multiverse plot but it doesn't make any sense star field leaves me feeling truly baffled that is the word I kept thinking while I was playing this game I am baffled I cannot understand how during the game's eight years of development no one realized that the idea of 1000 planets wasn't fun or interesting or maybe people did realize it but they couldn't upset Todd and they had to go along with his idea I think after the massive success of Skyrim Todd Howard started to overestimate the skills of Bethesda and thought they should embark on their most ambitious project yet but I'm not exaggerating when I say that almost every single creative decision that makes star feel different from past Bethesda titles directly makes the experience worse Bethesda is at their best when they make a densely packed open world with fun things to find and Starfield is Bethesda at their worst except for maybe Fallout 76 at launch but I don't know if that even counts as a Bethesda game I don't think that every part of Starfield is awful at points I felt like there was a good game trying to claw its way out of this mess but every time I found myself entertained something terrible happened to rip me out of my fun I would enjoy a combat encounter and then I barely pick up any loot and I have to do inventory management instead through loading screens I finish a fun part at the end of a faction Quest and then I start another faction Quest or do a side quest only for it to have mountains of boring dialogue with little combat and the little combat I do isn't challenging or fun because faction quests don't scale the level of any of the enemies for every fun part of Starfield there's boredom just around the corner however I really liked the Multiverse idea at the end of Starfield where you can enter a new game plus in a new dimension it left me longing for the answer to a deep philosophical question in all the infinite universes of the Multiverse in which Universe does Starfield have good exploration I wish the game took place there [Music] foreign

Channel: Feeble King

Views: 357,383

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Id: S4QfNwTVbGE

Length: 56min 12sec (3372 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2023