168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield wasn’t the game any of us hoped it would be. After waiting more than 10 years for a new 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bethesda Game Studios title, there was hope that Todd Howard would blow our minds🎶, introducing an RPG that not only changed the landscape of the genre, but the medium itself.
Turns out it was pretty much Skyrim in space, but with more restrictions in the ways we could explore and interact with its ‘sprawling’ solar system. In true Bethesda fashion, it had the expansiveness of the ocean yet was mired by the depth of a puddle, to the point that once you had explored one planet, you’d pretty much done them all. The thrill came in exploring dense cities before embarking on personal quests with your companions, but even those failed to spark players’ imagination in the same way 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate 3 or Hades did. Starfield was, and still is, out of touch.
The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same
The reason I’m꧂ bringing this argument up again is because game director Todd Howard told Kinda Funny in a that Starfield was “too different” to games his team’s done in the past. While I don’t entirely disagree with this sentiment, it’s far from the whole sto♑ry.
It is true that Starfield tried something different as it transplanted players🍸 from the single open world we’re used to exploring to a universe full of them. It still kept many similar gameplay ideas and systems that have defined Bethesda RPGs for almost two decades now.
You are still speaking t꧟o characters in the same predictable ways and doing skill checks to either talk🎃 your way out of a situation or inevitably go all guns blazing out of desperation. All experience is still earned by discovering places and doing things, feeding into upgrades that will slowly build your character into something formidable and unique.
Everything unfolds similarly, no matter how immersive it might be, and that was ultimately the impression the majority of players came away with.🐓 Starfield is a staggering technical milestone for Bethesda, but as a video game in 2023, it didn’t measure up to our expectations. It was still Space Skyrim, or even The Outer Worlds, withoutไ the charm.
I imagine Howard is referencing the fact that, unlike Fallout 3 and Skyrim before it, Starfield is infinitely more regimented in the player experience. You are constantly hopping from new planet to planet, building a crew around you that can be truඣsted and depended on when things get tough, as opposed to the lone wanderers and the odd companion that defined its past efforts.
Can Shattered Space Change The Fortunes Of Starfield?
We were all excited for Starfield, just like we were all excited about Fallout 4, and both released into a landscape that has moved on with more innovative takes on open world game design already eclipsing what Bethesda brought🅰 to the table years ago.
Neither are bad games, but compared to greats like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or Baldur’s Gate 3 which arrived in the same year as Fallout 4 and Starfield respectively, they felt infantile. A diffeꩲrent kind of RPG obviously, but it ♉doesn’t matter how different a game is if it fails to move on with the times and evolve out of necessity. I’m not sure Starfield did, or it only broadened its own formula without bothering to acknowledge outside trends.
Even The Legend of Zelda, a franchise which is infamous for sticking to tradition long after diminishing returns have begun to set in, took a good hard look at the modern world only to create two masterpieces in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tears of the Kingdom. Not only did it take hallmarks 🌳first established by then popular open world games, it also sought to subvert the mechanics we’ve grown accustomed to while simultaneously changing what it means to be Zelda. That took (Bokoblin) guts, and the results speak for themselves.
Bethesda is stuck in a similar rut, but it didn’t take the steps it needed to take with Starfield to change its trajectory. With how long games like ⛄this take to m🔥ake nowadays, when will another chance come along? And will that one also effectively just be another take on Morrowind?
Starfield’s May update brings several quality-of-life improvements into the fray ahead of the Shattered Space expansion, but when the foundations are so intrinsically tied to the studio’s archaic past, it would take something drastic to shift the needle. It floundered in a year when what it meant to play a sprawling RPG like this had changed significantly, and once again, it failed to adapt,change, or pursue innovation in the right ways. It feels ancien💮t, not different, and that is Starfiel🧸d’s biggest shortcoming.
Starfield is the first new IP from Bethesda in a quarter of a century, launched for the next-gen Xbox Series X|S and PC. Taking place outside our own Solar System, you play a member of the Constellation, a collective of explorers set on discoverin🔴g new worlds.
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