129 Votes in Poll
@Timgretio No, that's not true. I played Cyberpunk 2077 at launch on console. I'm not gonna argue it was great, it was a mess, but it's npc designs and variety was not a problem. Yeah you'll get duplicates every game that's an open world has that.
I play Starfield enough to see the exact same npcs in New Atlantis. Night City has variety and they react to the player character actions. If you look suspicious in front of the police and don't leave when they ask you to, they open fire. I've had plenty homeless beggers ask me for money on Night City and I give them money, gangs will be fighting randomly and I join in.
We need to acknowledge the fact that going up against the current competition which is Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty and Baldur's Gate 3, Bethesda is lagging behind. Their design philosophy is dated, their engine is dated, and if their gonna compete they need to step up their game.
I like dated, frankly, it makes them stand out. Starfield had a lot of issues but that has a lot more to do with starting a fresh IP with no precedents and decisions already made, and the awful content mill aspect of their philosophy that came about in Skyrim than with something wrong with core environmental design I would argue.
And I also played cyberpunk early, I’m not slinging shit arbitrarily, I hated seeing crowds of duplicate npcs who do nothing but pathfind in a circle next to their triplets. The focuses of that game were very strange and I have my own share of issues with it.
New Atlantis is my favorite city. There are a ton of vendors and POIs, and it’s simple to navigate. I’d like Akila City much more if it wasn’t such a maze. Cydonia is just very depressing.
So you're telling me if Starfield launched with cinematic camera angles like Baldurs Gate 3 and have pro mocap animation for the characters and seamless space to planet transitioning instead of so many loading screens. You're telling me you wouldn't sing it's praises?
Press F to doubt. At the end of the day, I wanted to love Starfield and it didn't happen.
^Amen, what an utter waste of a major settlement.
^^All of these would be improvements, but my biggest issues are the generally bad resource system and the boring ass planets. Your critiques here aren’t critiques to do with modernity, they’re just elements you liked.
Why'd nobody vote for Cydonia?
I kinda think the green gardens of new Atlantis look kind of bad and uninspired
@Timgretio So mocap cutscenes isn't a modern system used?
The engine they use is dated and old. Of course if the story was good and worldbuilding I wouldn't care as much.
Cutscenes have never been the way Bethesda likes to present story, and I don’t mind that.
Look, I don't think you're understanding the problem here. The issue isn't that there isn't cutscenes, the issue is that Bethesda's method of providing the story is stiff, unemotional, and dated. It's the same method from Oblivion from over 15 years ago. They also just have the characters blurt out so much information it gets boring especially if you don't understand the universe. Their constant long unbroken sentences just don't feel natural and the body language is basically robots.
If they want to do live cutscenes then take a page out of Cyberpunk 2077 and have mocapped movement and blocking so it feels more real. Now again there's multiple problems here with their design philosophy.
But at the same time if the universe interesting then maybe I'd forgive it.
What do you think?