Bethesda was bought to be an asset to Game Pass - XBox sales are up as are subs. I'd say mission accomplished no?
***The Official Starfield Thread*** (As endorsed by TNA)
- Thread starter Tek81
- Start date
What does 10 million Starfield players mean? Take my other half, they have downloaded Starfield on Gamepass but they have never played it and since watching videos of people playing have actually decided to uninstall it (that and they've gone back to playing Valheim which is using up all their time), so do they count as one of the 10 million players because they downloaded Starfield? Or is it 10 million active players, ie players who have logged in and played Starfield this week? "Starfield Players" is quite a vague term.Bethesda was bought to be an asset to Game Pass - XBox sales are up as are subs. I'd say mission accomplished no?
As for subs meaning mission accomplished, I dont think we can state that yet, retaining the subs is the point at which we can say mission accomplished for Gamepass subs. For all we know at this point, those new subs who subbed to play Starfield might cancel their subs at the end of the month.
Sure, but that's the same for any subscription service (and why I think they'll all ultimately prove to be unsustainable).
Doesn't refute my point about all Bethesda's self-developed games being successful though - and their lack of impetus to change. I'll think they'll continue to pootle along doing what they do until MS can no longer afford them - then Todd Howard will leave, staff will get laid off, Bethesda will put out something that's critically panned *and* doesn't hit it's sales and/or engagement targets and then MS will quietly shut them down.
I mentioned before in this thread that I think Starfield will be the last 'true' Bethesda game - I don't think that'll be because of the Creation Engine though.
Oh I actually agree with you, I dont think Bethesda will change their engine any time soon, but my point wasnt so much will they as should they and imo the answer to that is yes, they absolutely should.
(as well as stopping hiring GCSE students to do their writing)
I think some of the critiques of the writing are a bit churlish - creating dialogue for a game this vast is always going to be a challenge whilst some of the writing is undoubtably bad there's plenty of quest lines that have great stories and dialogue (I really liked both the voice actress for Imogene Salzo and her dialogue on the Ryujin quests).
Not saying that it can't be better - just that I don't agree that it's all bad.
Romances are clumsily handled without question and this is something Bethesda seems to struggle with - CDPR's work on Cyberpunk (at least for Judy and Panam) was the gold standard here and Starfield falls way short of that (Andreja's dialogue/scenes aren't as bad as Sarah's though) - even Obsidian's work on Fallout New Vegas seems less anachronistic than Starfield does today - Bethesda just seems to want to keep its games family-friendly when it comes to sex and sexuality.
One thing Starfield does really well is incidental exposition whilst you're exploring - but to get this you need to have a companion with you - and since a lot of players in this thread seemingly don't bother with companions they're actually missing out on some subtle but great context and atmosphere.
Its not all bad, some of the side missions are quite well written but when its bad, its truly dire and truth be told has absolutely no justification in being so dire. Something which is just all the more evident to me coming off the back of the generally excellent writing in BG3
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The biggest obstacle will simply be that they have 20 years of processes, tools, knowledge and experience invested in their current engine, all perfected over the years to build the kind of games that Bethesda make. Switch to another engine and all that needs to be rebuilt.
The other main issue is that Unreal (or any other public engine) is not a good open-world engine out of the box, it needs huge amounts of customisation and optimisation work to function as one. Like hundreds of man years. They are doing work to improve that side of the engine but it's very rough and early days. CDPR have decided that's the route they're going down, which is as much an investment on Epic's part as theirs I suspect.
The sort of decision you're looking at making is : Do you want to spend the next X years developing an entirely new engine, OR do you want to spend the next few years making a game (like Starfield!) and making incremental engine improvements on the way. The latter is usually the more appealing option.
The commercial side is pretty obvious.....sure the games are a bit jank and rough round the edges sometimes, but they are wildly, astronomically successful and shift insane numbers....if it ain't broke......
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Some devs are blessed with truly excellent writing teams - other devs not so much. I'd say on average the writing for Starfield is 'adequate' with some clangers and also some standout scenes and stories. Maybe Bethesda should pick up some of those veteran Bioware writers who were recently dismissed due to not being essential any more?
I'd say the general lack of good writing in modern games (and movies) is symptomatic of the lack of importance AAA publishers put on good writing - I mean, imagine being a writer working in an industry where your contribution is considered an unnecessary cost?
Which is of course the same reasoning used by titles like the Battlefield series and the various EA Sports games. Why bother to change when gamers will keep lapping it up.
This is true, the general standard of writing , not only in games but also in TV and Movies is poor
There is just too much of it now for much of it to be any good. Most of it (TV, Games, Movies) are just churned out repetitive rubbish and made with no talent or imagination.
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In a world where so many are spoon fed on a plate so much, the thing that suffers the most is.....
In a world where so many are spoon fed on a plate so much, the thing that suffers the most is.....
Well, the industry is also hugely risk-averse - preferring to back known IP and sequels than branch out to do something new (another reason Starfield should be applauded) - a writer - even a good writer - can only get so much blood out of the stone.
And when devs *do* try to create something new, there's no guarantee it'll find its audience - looks at Callisto Protocol and Immortals of Aveum - these high-profile failures just make the CEOs even more risk-averse (and seemingly learn all the wrong lessons about *why* they failed).
Which is all good and well but does just rather sound like making excuses for them. Poor writing should never be acceptable, its only that there are so many mugs out there who shove their hands in their pockets on command that these sorts of things become acceptable. Unfortunately though I dont see that changing any time soon, especially in a world where so many people have lost the ability to make or take constructive criticism (not aimed at you, speaking generally) , things are becoming much more tribal where take a defensive stance against perceived slander at a persons choice is the more common go-to than objectively looking at things and saying you know what, you've got a point there.
But thats not a Starfield or Bethesda thing, thats just something more widespread on a number of things and perhaps more of a dip into philosophy than gaming
Soldato
Or even more likely, used the £1 for the first month trial and then cancel
All something I thought about last month when considering what starfield will be like. They have 20 years or more of this engine, they must surely have perfected it by now. In fact the opposite feels the case, they've tried to get too much blood out of this stone.
Sure, and that may be the case with starfield, mods will be the decider, but imagine an investor looking at Bethesda release and seeing skyrim sales and the continued success of each "remaster". It's nuts how well that game performed. And then starfield, if I performs really poorly in comparison to skyrim, but still great in comparison to say no man's sky, the investors won't be like "wow you made us good money", they will more likely be like "you're performance is dropping".
The Apple is a good example, where is still sells crazy amounts of phones, but word gets out that one year it sells 1 billion phones instead of 1.1 billion lkle last year, then the value drops 10 percent.
The point I'm poorly making is that even instance numbers can still be a fairly if it's a lot worse than their own previous performance.
Not making excuses for anyone - just pointing out that there's a lot of factors considered when green-lighting games and I guarantee you, writing ain't one of them.
To an exec, good writing doesn't sell more games since it's impossible to quantify it - great visuals? Sure. Zeitgeist gameplay? You bet! Live service? Hell yeah!
Writing? Pfft. Who cares about writing? The audience are dummies that can barely read.
I see writing as an integrity thing - if you're a dedicated developer that wants to make the best game they can you'll hire the best damn writers you can afford and/or attract (and you're in competition with other devs and other media). But their contribution to the final product is only felt after the game has been launched and the reviews come in - that's why writers are IMHO, woefully undervalued by everyone except the teams they work in and the customers that buy their games. For management they're like a "remind me again what we're paying these guys for?"
I see Larian as a studio with integrity - I *used* to see CDPR as a studio with integrity. Has anyone ever been able to say the same about Bethesda? Todd Howard gets called out for lying every single time they launch a new game (doesn't mean the games they make aren't worth playing though).
I mean, when it comes to the average gamer, they're not wrong
Dunno how old you are but I really got spoiled by the movies of the 80's and 90's - cinema's golden era so far as I'm concerned - so many great stories in a couple of decades that put almost everything we see today to shame.I mean, when it comes to the average gamer, they're not wrong
I'm old enough that movies of the 40's, 50's and 60's have the best stories