A 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Larian Studios head has come to Bethesda's defence following an unfavourable comparison between 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur's Gate 3 and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield. In response to the criticism, Larian's director of publishing Michael Douse says it's "not true or right" to say that Bethesda devs lacked passion for Starfield, as others highlight that the game's review scores fall below Baldur's Gate 3's.
This comes as former Blizzard developer Mike Kern once again goes after Bethesda, saying that the devs had no passion and didn't "respect gamers' time." While the comment was made to complement Larian and Baldur's Gate, Douse has still come to Bethesda's defence, saying this line of attack is "a disingenuous oversimplification" of game development.
"The difference that passion makes," says Kern, comparing the reviews between Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield - the former being much more complimentary. "AAA does not respect gamer's time."
"This is a really disingenuous oversimplification, man," replies Douse. "It’s not true, or right, [to] suggest that the average developer at Bethesda lacks passion. You can respect those folks while disliking the game. But you can’t say t🌊hey didn’t care."
It wouldn't be the first time Kern has been accused of making a bad-faith argument against Bethesda in recent weeks. Before launch, the developer kicked off a strange discourse surrounding Starfield's title screen, tweeting: "Starfield's start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn't care." It was enough to get a response from Bethesda's own head of publishing, calling Kern "highly unprofessional".
Back to Larian, Douse seems to agree with some of the criticism Starfield and other triple-A games have faced, just not the line of attack that Kern has gone for. In a follow-up, Douse says that "economics" and "risk aversion" are holding the industry back - something we saw earlier this year with layoffs across Microsoft-owned studi♏os, including Bet♔hesda itself.
In any case, this won't be the last time Starfield is compared to Baldur's Gate 3. Not only are they both huge RPGs, they almost shared the same release window. In fact, Baldur's Gate 3 came to PS5 the same day that Starfield launched on Xbox and PC, adding a console war element to the discourse. This isn't to say that the games shouldn't be compared, of course, just that these contextual factors made bad-faith arguments all the likelier, particularly while Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't have an Xbox launch date.