Starfield: Todd Howard’s Beautiful Mess

Starfield was supposed to be Game of the Year Bethesda is a Powerhouse and it's a studio that I love Fallout Skyrim a myriad of other games that defined childhoods and made many fall in love with gaming in the first place but now Starfield is out and it's not exactly the Masterpiece we expected some people are definitely happy but many are considering it to be a real letdown the open world isn't very open at all ship piloting feels like an afterthought the story isn't life-changing they forgot to add Maps the animations and dialogue look like they were designed by a fourth grade class and the game takes four calendar days to become even slightly fun critics are disappointed the general public feels deceived and I'm sitting here in the corner like an idiot because I love this game despite all of its flaws I still love the Beautiful Mess of Starfield and today I'm going to tell you why but first I need to cover why people are pissed about the game in the first place now to clarify people aren't saying that the game is terrible but what we're seeing here is another classic example of a studio doing a terrible job at setting expectations now this doesn't happen too often but if we take a look back oh that's right it happens all the time you see Starfield needed to do well and their new parents over at Microsoft needed a commercial Victory more than ever following the massive flop of their new dumpster fire of a game redfall but Bethesda was not worried because they had Todd Howard at the helm and one thing about Todd is that he can sell a goddamn video game NASA meets Indiana Jones something we feel uniquely positioned to pull off if I was going to come you know it's for Starfield it's an epic about hope our shared humanity and answering our greatest mystery when you actually play the game cuz it's a game like we don't really kill you you may be wondering just how big is this game over 1,000 planets all open for you to explore the ship took off into space so now I'm in in outer space our first new franchise in over 25 years doing 100 planets or a th000 or 10,000 or a million planets it's not it's just you just press you just change the number and press the button 1,000 planets a living breathing world the most ambitious game Bethesda has ever created say what you will about Todd but the man is a Wordsmith and boy does he know how to build hype about a game and the thing is I don't think he's even doing it in a nefarious way I I think Todd loves gaming I think he loves his studio and I think he's just doing what needs to be done in order to sell as many copies of the game as possible it's his job but this plague of over promising and underd delivering has been poisoning the industry for years now and Todd is definitely one of the worst offenders so hype for Starfield was at an all-time high and to be honest I was kind of turned off by the way the game was branded I don't come to Bethesda for procedural generation or endless exploration I I want a carefully curated world that has real depth and secrets to uncover not 1,000 planets of what a computer thinks is fun I mean I want Todd to sit there and place every Rock and Star by hand is that too much to ask so I was in the skeptic group along with people like Jack sath who has a great video on the topic that you should check out but did that stop me from pre-ordering the $100 version of the game so I could play a few days early absolutely it did not and then the game released and reviews were good but they weren't great and Bethesda isn't a studio that makes good games they're known for making great ones especially in a year where we've had so many hit games Starfield just doesn't really join the conversation so I've seen people that are really happy with the game for sure but a lot of the discourse is coming from people who feel let down remember those 1,000 planets they're empty they're copy and pasted by an AI in a way that feels messy repetitive and honestly like a step back from games that did it better in the past past like way in the past that living breathing world we were promised doesn't really feel alive the characters feel stiff and the content sparsity makes it feel dead and empty on many occasions I mean how is it supposed to be a breathing World Todd we're in space here come on it's just kindergarten level stuff the characters look embarrassingly bad especially after balers gate just raised the industry bar on realistic dialogue animations so these things are unusual even in your experience mom I want to go home and the most ambitious game Bethesda has made to date I don't know it's definitely the best looking and I bet they invested a lot in some of the new systems but I feel like a lot of that investment was misguided and would have been benefited from being directed Instead at giving the game more depth giving it more handcrafted experiences I would so much rather have 50 planets full of life than 1,000 full of nothing and at the Crux of the whole mess is the loading screens when I picture a space game I want to be able to walk over to my ship get in and fly away all in one seamless motion but in Starfield it's more like this so I realized the game isn't what it was supposed to be and the way it was marketed feels predatory and I'm the victim I I should hate this game and I should be pissed at Bethesda but Todd God damn it you've done it again I absolutely love Starfield I know I shouldn't but the game scratches an itch I didn't realize I had and has me smiling like an idiot despite all of its issues from the very start the game just reeks of Bethesda hey you you're finally awake during that opening sequence I couldn't help but smile you're riding that elevator down to the mines the mines that I yearn for I was immediately brought back to the carriage in Skyrim I basically walked through the game's Helgen and finally emerged from the caves to Holy cow you guys there's a whole world out there and here I thought we'd be stuck in that cave for the next 50 hours and that Bethesda feeli keeps up the entire game first there's the characters who are hilariously Bethesda I know I was just Clowning on them earlier but they do admittedly look better than they ever have before sure they have a little trouble keeping eye contact but let's be honest put me in a social situation and I'm doing the same damn thing and the dialogue those characters deliver is hilarious the entire time and again I couldn't help but think back to Skyrim I feel like Bethesda dialogue is just a series of statements rather than a flowing conversation so it feels a bit awkward especially when paired with the goofy jokes and the awkward Cadence that they love to throw in but Bethesda gets a pass here because I'm not coming for the world's most serious most transformative story I'm here for more times like this when I get to declare that no I'm not coming with you for I am an elevator person now and I build my kingdom here but again in classic Bethesda style because I'm expecting such a light and sloppy story Story the few times that they subvert those expectations it really hits and I won't spoil anything but the story has some great twists and turns that hit a lot harder When You're Expecting elevator Kingdom talk there's actually a reason for this goofy writing that I didn't know about I was listening to Triple click the other day and one of the co-hosts Jason shrier was explaining how Bethesda has all their Quest writers write all the dialogue in the game whereas Studios like laran have dedicated Quest and dialogue teams and looking at the dialogue in both games side by side uh didn't see any elevator Kingdom talk and balers gate going to have to give the point to Bethesda here and finally there are the incredibly Bethesda systems a perk system Alla Fallout Limitless fast travel annoying shopkeeper budgets menus that have barely evolved over the past decade hell even jumping with the Y button is nostalgic and yeah I play with a controller on my PC because I have what they refer to to in the medical community as issues and you're probably thinking yeah I get that the game reeks of Bethesda but that didn't sound all that positive and from an objective standpoint you're totally right but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this first my experience with this game is not objective and I know for a fact that many of you will feel the same exact way all these systems all these great design choices even the sloppy design choices combined together to create an incredibly cozy experience for years and years Skyrim was my favorite game the memories I have with that first playthrough Those Years playing on a small screen wrapped in a blanket and while the crisp fromont snow fell behind me those are the memories that came flooding back as soon as I stepped into Starfield it didn't matter that I didn't see a dragon the whole time though I did have some close calls my God the dragons are back despite the game having little in common with Skyrim or Fallout you cannot help but be persistently reminded of them while you play and so Bethesda is holding themselves back by sticking to their guns in some departments but I am so glad that they did because I really wouldn't have cared about another space game but I am absolutely going to play the entirety of a game that feels like Skyrim in space but that wasn't enough to make me love it that was enough to give me a nostalgic feeling and enough to Hoodwink me into a full playthrough but the game actually hooked me in other surprising ways first we need to talk about the game's art Direction because I really think it's the unsung hero here I seen the game described as NASA Punk which basically means that it's sci-fi but rooted in actual space technology in the same way that movies like Interstellar and 2001 of Space Odyssey were and these two movies are not only some of the greatest space films of all time but they're some of the greatest works of media in recent history and it's because of how they combine incredible cinematography with the incalculable beauty and Aura of space and Starfield takes that and for the first time applies it to a game with massive success and to me it's clear that this is what Bethesda was going for the game has this crazy film grain and tons of cinematic cut scenes that are basically the video game version of these movies I mean the docking sequence the spaceship that Vladimir lives on they even have their versions of how and tars who immediately became my favorite character even when he was roasting my ass I am looking at one and the art Direction spills into the music as well I mean you guys probably know that I'm a bit of a video game music freak but wow the music in this game is simply incredible there's these long droning atmospheric Melodies that come just short of taking the Forefront of your mind as you play the game the depth the sense of wonder and adventure and the unknown that they evoke really something special and this all bundles up into a game that is unlike anything else I've ever played before I don't think games need to feel like movies but sometimes it's not a bad thing when your experience feels cinematic Starfield captured lightning in a bottle with its art design but funnily enough it's not even my favorite thing about the game you see space games are not usually my cup of tea but something about experiencing space through a video game is an incredibly unique experience I mean usually we're experiencing it through a movie or a documentary and where there's this constant narration or narrative filling the what's the word space but a video game doesn't have that same need one thing I love about open world games is how you can choose your own pace and I think pairing that freedom in Starfield with the space atmosphere Bethesda has created results in something truly special it's because space is this concept that we can't truly grasp as terrestrials the isolation is on a scale that you literally can't find on Earth but it evokes a hauntingly beautiful sense of freedom and Tranquility when you experience it and I think Bethesda has captured that better than any game that's come before it I mean I won't even CLA claim that it's the best space game out there no man's sky does exploration better outer Wilds has a better narrative but Starfield has the best atmosphere and pairing that with both its beauty and its sound design results in something truly special now it's known as a loser so it's not uncommon for me to smile at my monitor when I'm playing games alone in my room but never have I smiled so much at the pure atmosphere of a game than in Starfield flying my ship through their beautifully realized space landing on planets where I'm literally the only life form it is a surreal feeling and it is one that is difficult to realize despite its shortcomings despite its loading screens Starfield is still able to suspend your disbelief and you'll forget you're playing a video game instead it's just you your ship and a field of stars wait so was Starfield the perfect next generation of video games that Todd and their marketing department hyped it up to be no it really wasn't and I wish they hadn't spent so much of their time and money trying to convince us that the game was something that it was not but they still found their way into greatness is it the most fun I've had playing a game in years am I in love with the combat the quests the characters not really but it's somehow both an incredibly cozy and nostalgic Bethesda experience and a glance into the haunting beauty of space and for me that's an experience that I won't forget and if you want a similar haunting beauty of space space between uploads that is drop a sub it's free you will be getting a bill in the mail but it's free for now now I know I had a blast with this game but I'd be curious to see what you guys think so please drop your comments below till the next time this has been moroi bye-bye

Channel: Meraki

Views: 1,678

Keywords: starfield, starfield review, meraki, merakiplays

Id: ZapRxNyj8lo

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2023