Well, we really shouldn’t have expected any different from a Bethesda under Xbox’s grip. Starfield has come out in full release today, and it’s just like every other Bethesda game…though tainted with the Xbox poor quality bug.
So, I guess the Bethesda we all knew and loved is dead.
With Starfield’s mass release on PC and console (well, really just Xbox) taking place today, the faults, bugs, and glitches we’ve all come to expect from newly released Bethesda games were well and truly on display. And, even though the game isn’t nearly as bad as some would have you believe, it’s still not at the level you’d expect from a Triple-A developer.
You know, there once was a time when Bethesda games, despite being buggy messes that would require the work of the fan modding community to fix them, were the pinnacle of gaming for its creativity, storytelling, world-building, game mechanics, etc. Essentially, the greatness of the past Bethesda titles, such as Morrowind, Fallout: New Vegas, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, would outweigh the bad, such as the bugs, glitches, dumb A.I., of the titles.
And, sadly, that’s just not the case anymore as Starfield proves it.
Now, I’m not going to review the game any time soon as it’s still WAY TOO EARLY to post one without a few weeks of playing the game, but I can say that this game is OVERFLOWING with bugs, glitches, HORRIFIC A.I., and some pretty poor game mechanics/designs.
Starting off with the bugs, they’re pretty much the usual, run-of-the-mill glitchy walls, no-texture, enemies not dying/taking damage after dozens of rounds put in them, quests breaking/not advancing, characters glitching in an out of existence, game crashing, etc.
It’s really kind of insane how Bethesda can justify charging $70 for the Standard Edition, $100 for the Shattered Story expansion edition, and $250 (which is CRAZY) for the Starfield Constellation Edition for a game that is barely playable on launch day, yet they’ll do absolutely nothing to fix it and allow unpaid, completely passion-driven modders to do all the bug testing and fixing for them.
Remember when Total War: Rome II came out as a buggy mess and the overwhelming fan backlash nearly took down Sega to the point the company was working 24/7 to make the game playable? Those days are long gone.
Anyways, the really criminal element of this game is that it’s…bland. I knew the thousands of procedurally generated planets would be hollow shells of lifeless, boring, and EMPTY vessels to just bloat the game instead of giving us a much-smaller, hand-designed and crafted set of planets, and that’s exactly what they are.
There’s maybe a dozen or two dozen planets that actually have unique, creative stories, characters, elements, etc…which is a big problem when there’s over 1,000 planets in the entire universe.
(Bethesda/Microsoft-Starfield-Official Gameplay Trailer)
And when the main storyline is even blander than Skyrim’s (which not to say Skyrim’s was bad, but it was extremely straight forward), that is a problem of insurmountable odds to overcome as Starfield’s highly advertised exploration is nowhere near No Man’s Sky.
Yes, the combat is pretty decent, but when your whole game is predicated on the fact you can explore space (which is a lie as you can only fly around the atmosphere and immediate orbit of the planet) and explore new cultures, peoples, etc. and you can’t do that, the game goes down a lot in my eyes. And especially so when flying is so buggy and unmanageable that you feel like pulling teeth whenever you touch your spaceship.
I’m not saying that Starfield is a bad game, but it’s definitely not a Game of the Year Contender or one of the greatest games of all-time as these shill outlets would have you believe. To be honest, I wouldn’t even give the game higher than a 7/10 if I had to give out a score right now.
But, in the grand scheme of things, I really do fear for Bethesda and the future of its legacy IPs (aka: the Elder Scrolls and Fallout) as the quality (or lack thereof) of Starfield really has me worried for the state The Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 5 will come out in as a “Xbox-branded game”.
And with games like Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, God of War: Ragnarök, Final Fantasy XVI, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Hogwarts Legacy, etc. all coming out within the last two years and being exponentially better than Starfield, the days of Bethesda being the cream of the crop in the RPG/ARPG genre are long over. And they might never come back again.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Bethesda/Microsoft) (Starfield Official Gameplay Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Bethesda/Microsoft) (Starfield Official Gameplay Trailer – YouTube)
