The Failure of Starfield

how could you say that Starfield failed or is a failure I mean after a month it's still being played by quite a lot of people so what the hell is this random Lan even talking about well just like the 10 out of 10 reviews on the launch by the lowest grade incompetent life forms on the planet known as the gaming journalists well you can have something that's both popular well at least for a while and not just be a flawed but a giant turd as an example a month after the release Starfield fell behind Fallout 76 in review scores on Steam now of course there are good parts about the game even with that said still we come here for the failures didn't we and Starfield boy seven out of 10 even that if anyone else made this game wouldn't have been this high so come with me and let's take a look at the failures of [Music] Starfield let's then start this out with exposing some lies why did you not optimize this game for PC uh we did it's running great it is a nextg PC game we really do push the technology yeah no in my own testing I thought that something was wrong but without proper tools I could really only guess at what cost Starfield to be so GPU bottleneck even on my heavily CPU bottleneck rig the fact that there was no anti-aliasing fov texture frame limiter and many other setting Sliders in options on the launch made me think that the engine did some [ __ ] things on the fly to Target specific frame rate even with Dynamic resolution settings turned off that was my best shot in the dark as to why indoors and Outdoors of let's say new Atlantis looked so much differently visually however thanks to other creators most notably digital Foundry as an example this walking area in neon is supposed to be a populated part of that cyberpunk City and with my optimized settings at 1440p FSR 2 balance mode on the RTX 2070 super it runs at just a bit above D FPS do you think this looks right for the performance that you are seeing in my mind's eye I kind of want to say no cuz I think of something like cyberpunk 2077 where in similar scenarios at my Alex's optimized settings with that same FSR 2 balance mode at 1440p well I see a game there that looks similar in visual style and feature set for graphics but it's running a good deal better on this 2070 super than Starfield is and these shots of cyberpunk I'm showing here on the right also have Ray Trace local Shadows enables to as well so a game with raay tracing is running better than Starfield without Ray tracing if you're on Intel and Nvidia you're getting a bizarrely worse experience here in comparison to AMD gpus in a way that is completely out of the norm I mean seriously look up nearly any other Benchmark of any other rasterized game there's no really good reason why an RTX 380 should perform this much worse than an RX 6800 XT that issue combined with the poe core and thread scaling on the Intel chip I specifically measured here above six cores shows me that this game is only partially optimized at launch it seems optimized for AMD systems but not so much so for Intel and Nvidia ones so I would say Bethesda needs to do some work in optimizing better for those platforms even if Todd drank a jug of stupid juice or has some wildly different definition of a quotquot optimized game this still is a lie and adding you you may need to upgrade your PC for this game is just out of touch insincere elitist patronizing now even if you don't care much for the technical stuff Starfield demands massive Hardware horsepower to run it at acceptable frame rates if you want to know how outrageous it is just look starfields PC specs are notably higher than cyber punks and they look like this and for shits and giggles crisis remaster recom mended specs are lower than starfields minimum now let that sink in so why um Starfield is not like cyberp Punk which even back in the day when it launched did try to push graphical Fidelity along with Ray and later down the line path tracing methods or say something like Modern Warfare 2 which try to push the general average visuals forward with appropriate optimization now despite these games stumbling and having a questionable success on achieving these things at least you could see these visuals and Fidelity being pushed so what is betesda doing with Starfield that is so great so unique or industry leading that the game needs this much horsepower maps are small and downright ugly at times there aren't a lot of models or details floating around either no rate tracing or any other new tech so what what is taking up so much processing power so tell me Todd it is a next gen PC game what the [ __ ] does that even mean to you I guess in betesda mind more polygons equal better graphics right a game full of hyper pooly assets to the level that Star Citizen or escape from Taro would get envious however all of them serve little to no purpose who cares if the sandwich has thousands of polygons in it well at least the faces are very detailed and yet betesda thinks that this is the only thing that they need to convey him ocean but hey I guess it fool the [ __ ] stay idiots we call gaming journalists so task failed successfully however performance is more of a symptom to divider technical problems and yet still funny that you could literally downgrade Graphics by a half and not only it would become more playable let's say even maybe 60 frames a second on consoles that should have been there but even Tech Specialists and enthusiasts like myself could probably not tell the difference between how it looked so tell me Todd what is so there's a next gen PC game about Starfield what tech are you pushing so hard that it demands the Monstrous hardware specs cuz I sure as [ __ ] will say that cyberpunk definitely looks better than you and it runs better too and it too is not that greatly optimized either but okay but as there's not not known to be any kind of a leader in anything in this industry well maybe except for this and this so game play is the key right well like an amateur rally driver we're jumping from one ditch into another exploration gee for a game that's supposed to be making you feel like an Explorer or spaceship captain and discovering things you sure don't do much exploration and even when you do it's like a bargain cheap ripoff of what every other space game has done before yes that includes the [ __ ] Mass effects first the fact that you can't circumnavigate the planet is a big one instead you get tossed into a wide open but limited map that's gated off with literal invisible walls now go [ __ ] yourself second why are there no vehicles on planets something we consider you know we're going to do outer space we're going to do planets once you do vehicles it does change the game play so by focusing once you land in your ship that you're on foot it lets us really for the players make it an experience where we know how fast they're seeing things oh sorry what is this oh what is this Skyrim footage doing in the Starfield video oh no now clearly there are no vehicles to minimize chances of players hitting the limits of these Maps Third only a few points of interest because these maps are limited as [ __ ] things to do in them are also limited as [ __ ] the game spawns in literal handful of pois around your Landing site while the rest of the map is a wasteland it's not necessarily the worst thing but it's a very blatantly forced one fourth even scanning plants and animals feels half fast while you have to press and hold to scan a planet to perform a scan on foot you just walk up to a thing and press e and move on boy Todd do I feel like an Explorer now Fifth and this is probably the biggest one no matter which of the thousands of planets you land on there always seems to be some random human Machinery Left Behind as an Explorer you know what I really like landing on a planet that no one has gone to before stepping 10 steps out to my teleporting house and seeing a run down McDonald's right in front of me now sure what I'm feeling is exploration yes but in Detroit rather than space and sixth there literally is no space exploration in space since your ship is more of a teleporting house than an actual spaceship there is no space discoveries just Random Encounters that you always get when you teleport in again feels very forced and if you're one of those educated players who have tried let's say a Le dangerous n sky or X4 boy this in particular will feel insulting even putting direct discoveries aside remember that skeleton floating under yarl's house in White Run yeah well cities in starfi F don't have these unique and interesting hidden props and loot even in cyber punk you would occasionally find something hidden away on the rooftops in this massive sprawling City seriously how hard was it to put a few skeletons posing on top of let's say new Atlantis UC security building just for shits and giggles so as a game that tries to convey the feeling of Discovery and exploration it utterly fails this failure reaches further than a few other problems because the game tries to do literal planets and when there's frankly little to discover well I guess you can ask a Le dangerous how that makes you feel at the end of the day and while we're talking about the Starfield and how that makes you feel well you know what makes the game's World feel real and believable the fact that the world reacts to your actions in fact it's one of the stronger points of Skyrim your actions oddly do affect well at least a few things sure it's mild in comparison to something like immersive Sims but at least it's good enough for the [Music] [Applause] time now back to reactive worlds you know it's astonishing how boring everything becomes once the best your AI can do is run around like roombas you know Roomba cleans your house and then of course the best one came it's an epic role playing game where you get to be who you want and go where you want okay so I want to kill all children oh lame okay well at least I can kill everyone else right someone help me oh okay [ __ ] you Todd now what else oh illusion of choice I haven't seen you you in a while now sure in the recent times cyber Punk was dogged for basically the same problem but unlike cyber Punk Starfield insultingly dangles options and choices in your face constantly but then I've heard nothing here to convince me that we should do anything but wait for the level of oh never mind even if you [ __ ] up in the persuading someone to do something here's the same result thanks for putting in extra effort [ __ ] you long story short Tod's old saying of where you get to be who you want and go where you want is a bold face Li to anyone with modom of brain power and skeptical thinking the failure of the game's World lacking nearly any reaction to your actions creates the blandest most boring and shallow Universe you know I'm surprised that cops and guards even come after you after you steal or commit some crimes it's a [ __ ] Miracle at this point shouldn't games become more complex and refined over time rather than being downgraded milk toast vers version of their predecessors not to mention competitors and peers and speaking of downgrades holy [ __ ] did I not expect to find this many instances where Starfield is simply a lesser game in pure mechanics than its predecessors now of course you can check out the full list in this video but to summarize there is no swimming in the game local map somehow got worse distinct lack of character animations and interactions mods no longer are stored but destroyed upon new mod crafting jail is now a loading screen without gameplay no ammo crafting no armor crafting no weapon crafting space Dragon shells even upgraded feel actually weaker there is no real encumbrance penalty you can't fully loot enemies no Gore system no companion orders and shopkeepers no longer check what you're doing behind their backs except sometimes they do or is this an AI bug or coding problem and basically the list goes on now of course there are upgrades and that's expected so to those whiny [ __ ] saying that oh well it's not a criticism if you don't highlight the positives how about [ __ ] you yes it still is but to make those babies happy Outpost mechanics mostly are upgraded but there are still notable downgrade aspects as well uh character faces and too many pointless props have too many polygons FPS gameplay finally is actually mediocre and that's a praiseworthy thing yes I'm being serious not a hint of sarcasm I promise and finally starfields probably the least buggy game release betesda has ever done and yet the point of this failure is most of all the word regress simple features that would add flavor and depth to Starfield which clearly were present in their past games were chosen not to be copied over like so many other things now I can understand downgrading a mechanic for gameplay purposes think Securo for example but if you're going to do that like seiro you better have a good added reason for doing so and Starfield simply does not even if copy pasting is lazy a good thing is a good thing regardless again Ask from software what's more looking at the past betesda games especially Skyrim and New Vegas oops they didn't make that one but well regardless why should you play Starfield when the older games frankly feel like they have more to offer on mechanical level alone well maybe it's because of the story the space the new setting is a holy new one and sure if medieval Magic game does not work for you if Kitty's first post-apocalyptic Americana is not your jam well maybe space exploration Discovery oh wait hold on we talked about that um well maybe futuristic space game kind of is your jam sadly in typical betesda fashion the main story is bad now at first like many other reviewers I summarize the story as being somewhat bad and with a very slow burn even the few blessed Souls who managed to turn off their brains and eventually like the story said that it only becomes good at the end of act two which takes 20 or so hours of Play Time still you got side quests they surely can scratch an itch right after delving deeper and sensing that something was not quite right now I can Pro claim nearly all stories in Starfield be they side quest small interactions or the main big one are really boring if not downright insultingly bad I'll try not to spoil too much here plus I want to delve deeper into this topic in my hypocritical review down the line but first the presentation you see stories in Starfield for the most part happen by you talking to a character pretty standard stuff however even the act of talking to someone is where the problems lie you see for some reason ever since Fallout 4 Once you engage with the character betesda grabs your camera violently rips it out of your face like Dooms Slayer rips kakad Demon's eye out and shoves it directly in front of the character you're talking with in a medium frontal shot always this has two problems first you always see this stupid dangle and trust me Starfield has a lot of dialog they even boasted about this and this angle already is the most boring shot you can ever take now I'm not a film student and even my dumb [ __ ] ass knows that so it gets very very very repetitive and monotone fast so how the [ __ ] are you going to create a compelling scene oh wait hold on you won't let's work for the screenwriters but hold on do we even have screenwriters and the other problem or solution depending on how you look at it is that all you ever will see is a character's upper body so even if there were animations and gestures all you would see is a cut down versions and you know I'd like to be naive and say that oh well they did this for the optimal look no sadly I can't I suspect that this is to Mas the lack of animations and definitely scene creation this became so apparent when I booted up cyberpunk sure they cinematography the [ __ ] out of these animations and scenes to the level of actual movie screenwriting but hell it's so engaging and then you compare it to something like this I guess I'd want the same thing excuse me Marshall not now Alex we're in a meeting I know but this is important I've done it I've cracked the encryption on the slates and boy the moment when you talk to a character and some random supporting actor runs in into the room and starts talking camera immediately cuts to them you know what I feel at that point like I was hit by a [ __ ] semitruck there is is no sense of place and worst of all there actually are no scenes in this game the best you're ever going to get is something like this and that's not a scene it's just a simple animation and if you're wondering there's barely a handful of these types of animations throughout the whole game I [ __ ] you not now of course YX is being very hypercritical but can you really call this a scene sure in a traditional sense I guess you could say that they are there like characters sitting in the board meeting like in rugan's quest line but whatever character pacing placement animations and actions could there be in this scene are utterly obliterated by one thing zero [ __ ] given about screenwriting and presentation of the story whoever made the decision to have a camera ripped out of your face did so as a cost cutting measure and nothing else in fact I found so many moments where Lighting in the room you know the scene was so bad that whenever a camera was ripped out of your face it also was given a flashlight to illuminate the character's face rather than having actual Lighting in the scene I only have one thing to say to the writers of Starfield scenes [ __ ] do you speak it oh but I'm not done so but this the thing that whatever leftover value in these side quests could be salvaged by three things action that happens when you're not talking with the characters the dialogue value itself or the consequences now let's skip the analysis of consequences and remember that illusion of choice yeah that one pretty much killed any meaning of consequences you could even say that consequences are quite uh inconsequential want to be a super bad guy well guess what you can't kill everyone even when you are allowed to blow up a whole Generation ship No One Cares kill everyone in reuion or pirate quest lines all you get is less credits oh wow much consequences in indeed now as for the action well my favorite one thus far was the terramorph attack on new Atlantis now that should tell you enough about already but for those who haven't played through all that happens is the city lights or rather specifically one part of the city namely the starport its lights turn red a few debris props appearing here and there and the Spaceport is attacked by three teram morphs yeah that's about it I [ __ ] you not yeah so all that now is left is the dialogue will that save the story yeah no we'd need to know the name of the star system wouldn't we no systems named finite or ad that just leaves in and dumb [ __ ] me and I I thought my video scripts were long-winded boring driil at times but Jesus [ __ ] dancing on Shakespeare's grave not only characters take a dramatic is he all right pause after every line but no one proof for this Dil characters just go on and on in tangents now I'm not a writer so it's kind of hard to put in obvious terms but the general lack of short sharp and concise dialogue is there and cyberp punk precisely displays how it's done each line each action is to drive the plot forward even in optional side questions actors in the scene answer precisely and directly in a Charming manner Starfield doesn't do that I've never experienced this before well maybe in staro Gemini but that's a whole different bad story writing so pair boring and long-winded often pointless dialogue with zero action zero scene anything and a single monotone camera angle and even the best story will evaporate faster than a dog in a particle accelerator after sitting down and examining this I realized on the first glance every story in Starfield feels boring but why and that one question why led me to realize all of them are bad to anyone out there I dare you I dare you to find me a good story in Starfield I'm serious I want to be proven wrong so poke me on Discord and let me know it's astonishing how much more interesting even Skyrim's main quest plan becomes just because the game does not rip your face off and place it in the optimal C shot distance and that's nothing to say about the value of the dialogue itself sure it may be a lot of it but just like dog [ __ ] just because there's a lot of it doesn't make it good and that is not all the story the game the tone everything is so sanitized now as I'm looking at the script this segment alone is the longest one so I'll be short here there is no Gore you can't kill children in fact all Nam characters can be killed even the well you know the poverty stricken underbelly of new Atlantis is so clean and cuddly yet the game tries to have that edge so long as the game can fit in the PG rating or whatever it's just lamentable and most of all pathetic sure cyber Punk has this super stylized super serious grownup sex drugs and rock and roll friend but at least it didn't pretend to have something it didn't Well story tone wise at least so remind me what's so good or hell even okay about Starfield story and yet the worst failure of Starfield comes in the form of loading screens and some sometimes menus for a solid decade at least open world games have more and more shifted into ever more seamless experiences namely masking and erasing the need to disrupt the player's game playay and worst offender of this gameplay disruption has always been the loading screen where the player's good time comes to a screeching halt like the nails on the chalkboard as the player is presented with a pulsating UI penis instead of the gameplay closely followed by the UI that is not present in game there is a reason why original Dead Space was so praised thanks to incorporating elevators that unload the level that you came from and loading the following one ahead of you and the UI that existed as part of environment not a blank screen or even a HUD element it was extremely immersive despite being a third person game even Space games like let's say no man's sky and most notably Elite dangerous utilizes clever loading screens that feel like actual gameplay during the level transition between star systems and then Starfield shs out this still even if betesda Incorporated some kind of transitional animation or cut down gameplay likely dangerous there still would be far too many loading screens case and point single rooms of all the lazy and backwards things to bring back from 1990s and I [ __ ] you not 19 90s single room loading screens why actually it's quite a good question why does Starfield need so many loading screens when in a modern age asset streaming is becoming so common place now of course we can speculate on a few things but the best educated guesses we have is the [ __ ] creation engine originally called net immerse in 1997 like that that sink in before it was named game Brio in 2003 and let that sink in this engine was taken in by betesda and first game using it was Oblivion again let that sink in since then though betesda has genuinely improved it to incredible level however the engine was based off an old archaic Tech essentially limiting what the size of the map is or how it's basically connecting Maps between each other back in 1990s asset streaming well technically speaking yes there was some development made on it but it really wasn't possible because of well simply the Hardware's limitations so instead what the games often did was load everything in the ram which was at the time the fastest and still is the fastest part of the memory aside from the CPU cache and loaded stuff from there so to change these limitations for the engine would really mean that you would have to pretty pretty much scrap the engine or at least a big chunk of it and that's well that takes a long time and often is not really worth it either and so today these limitations still exist this is why even if it's bizarre that single rooms literally need to be loaded when you remember that take it came from well at least you can understand it so loading levels is a fundamental limitation of the engine okay but the game still could be good and yes that is true however Starfield attempts to make a space game while now it is possible to make a loading screen game based space game asset streaming has proven to be the biggest benefit most of all for the genre see loading screens aren't as noticeable when you have some kind of Overworld Skyrim and Fallout both have it but what is the Overworld for Starfield what is the big gameplay map where you spend most of your time running about Galaxy map well that's the closest it's got yes a [ __ ] menu is your Overworld now unlike Fallout and Skyrim there is no one big map that you the player can spend the time enjoying the gameplay in and even this is ruined by something that usually is a good feature in these games but in Starfield it only exacerbates the loading screens the fast traveling fact that there are very few places you can't use fast traveling from utterly derails any kind of feeling of gameplay immersion if the player had to walk back to the exit of a dungeon and then walk up to their ship and then walk to the cockpit inside of the ship the game immediately would feel so much more different and it's kind of funny that forcing the player to do certain boring and often tedious things actually can be a lot more immersive don't believe me try playing Elite dangerous or Star Citizen actually especially Elite dangerous it too has has small noticeable loading moments as your ship changes environments but it never gives you the option to fast travel yes the game becomes very slow and often very boring waiting simulator due to the distances you need to manually fly to however Elite also is the most immersive space game out there because of it and only in a good way too well Star Citizen goes a Step Beyond and forces you to carry individual boxes and click select buttons to open cockpits and doors to even enter the ship to begin with these seemingly tedious tasks despite their bad connotations actually are very very very good design choices you see you can't have shortcuts and immersion at the same time and so Starfield on the other hand goes the extreme opposite end of this and allows you to skip far far too many things to a point that the game becomes more loading screens and menu opening than actual game play I was making a critique of the coffee [Music] [Music] here [Music] just Christ you can teleport right into the city you K why so no scanning again what so you don't need to go through scans excuse me what the [ __ ] is this game is there any semblance of [Music] structure I enjoy exotic foods from and you made it back I trust you've brought excellent and and now if you now tell me was that even a good gameplay even compared to Fallout or Skyrim it's abysmal and why wouldn't player use it it's faster and easier and yet what it does in turn for the whole game is take its immersion and Blows Its brains out in the Town Square that's how violent this fast traveling loading screen Laden gameplay turns out us like I joked while back you don't feel like you're traveling and flying a spaceship you're the menu man teleporting everywhere with your teleporting house even the glimmers of gameplay mostly combat that's fun anymore is just a brief distraction between countless menus and loading screens I talked how Starfield is a downgrade a regression of bethesda's old games and boy fast traveling loading screens are the best or should I say the worst examples of how bad it becomes like Mr planket once said some so subtle you might not have even noticed but your brain did excessively boring story on the first glance that becomes increasingly worse the more you think about it being presented in the blandest possible way with little to no action or Fanfare and this is the best you'll ever get to see I [ __ ] you not while the overarching tone of exploration and Discovery doesn't exist in space at all and on the planet it's akin to checking out boxes on the checklist at best a stale static world that never reacts to anything you do in a meaningful sense all compounded by ugly environments plastered with Hyper pooly models and subpar optimization that borders on blatant lies thanks to the face of the company why did you not optimize this game for PC uh we did it's running great it is a nextg PC game if you turn off your brain maybe thinking for you is a bit too hard sure Starfield has low s to do in it and there are quests to fulfill so as long as you keep your brain smooth Starfield might even entertain you sure combat is actually decent for once Until you realize that some of the skills haven't even been play tested or most weapons are unbalanced while whole game is designed to be based on grinding sure until you realize all that Starfield is flawed but okay game right sadly though thanks to these failures Starfield ends up being extreme boring in some sense it is better than being bad but when it comes to being remembered you know I much rather have cyberp Punk a bad game that improved itself and was actually memorable for both good and the bad even today and there you go these are the biggest failures for Starfield a regressive lazy copypaste job they turned into their own new unique IP which kind of becomes suspect in of itself considering that something like no man Sky exists so there you go hopefully you enjoyed it and well hey if you did I would really greatly appreciate some support on the patreon cuz hey this thing makes it work basically or this sort of a stuff work overall go check out the other parts of this miniseries you know failures of uh video games there are a couple of interesting things on Elite carable and a few other ones uh namly OverWatch but regardless check out the patreon support if you can and if you deem this content worthy of support there's a lot more to say about this topic overall and I will hypercritical is something I am aiming to do when that will come out who knows but until then you got this a sort of a glimpse into what is to come so thanks for watching and tell me what is worse becoming boring or being outright bad Fallout 76 or Starfield

Channel: TheYamiks

Views: 147,274

Keywords: theyamiks, yamiks, the yamiks

Id: n086HhK-TwU

Length: 36min 57sec (2217 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2023