this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Starfield
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It's a Stephanie Sterling review, they've had beef with Bethesda for a long time and recently over Zenimax treatment of a trans employee (which is a fair thing to be annoyed by, but hardly the fault of Todd's team at Bethesda). I wouldn't put much stock in their review of this.
It reads as very biased. They have some good points but every sentence is riddled with negative adjectives. Seems very childish in my opinion. You can see that in all the screenshots as well. Especially talking about uninspired artstyle even though this artstyle is pretty unique in gaming and I really liked it personally.
Maybe? It's a particularly "edgy" games reviewer, it's part of the deal. Thing is, from where I'm standing, it's rather less biased than the people defending the game. At least the review is making specific arguments I am not seeing counterarguments for; I'm seeing "it's subjective" and "they're mad about stuff" (which is only a rational argument if you also go into how/why that's making their arguments shit) and... excuses.
To play Devil's advocate: even if Jim hates BSW with a holy passion and is firmly determined not to like anything about it ever (even the review isn't all negative), that doesn't make it all wrong. "I don't like people criticizing games I like" is natural and fine, but doesn't make for a lot of discussion. The review makes claims one can argue against - that's great, that's discussion. "Well you're just wrong/mad" is less useful.
Are they wrong, then?
Since reviews are highly subjective its impossible to be wrong, except when you make factual mistakes like missing mechanics or technical facts.
My question was an attempt at getting people to elaborate. Like... no, seriously, what is wrong about the review? Bearing in mind that it, too is a piece of media with a given category: Edgy Angry Review Person, a true if hackneyed classic? A lot of the points seemed fair enough to me, but then I'm not a fanboy or hater. "Toss out the entire review" is not very nuanced and blaming it on them being "mad" is downright unconvincing.
For the record, I don't think subjectivity is a good defense. How well you like the browngray paintjob is subjective. How well you like the menu, controls and writing are subjective. "This game is significantly smaller, buggier and less varied than it pretends" are at least a lot less subjective, and those seem like fairly popular takes.
To counter the "it's buggier than it let's on" (which, how does a game imply that it isn't buggy), I'm about 60 hours in and have had precisely 0 bugs. NPC running into someone talking? Yup. Weird physics things? Yup. I wouldn't call those bugs though; that's just part of having the dialog occur in an active world. If I stopped in a busy street and talked to someone and wasn't a foot away, people would walk through the convo. Physics engines are also just going to be limited in how they solve problems with clipping, etc.
I got roped in by the story and have been throughly enjoying the gameplay. I hated the gunplay in Fallout 4. These style BSW games have never been my thing, I trended much more towards Oblivion and Skyrim, so before even getting into this, I was searching and asking others how the shooting worked, how similar was it to Fallout 4 but in space, so I haven't been hype-beasting this game. I hadn't even seen the trailer for it, still haven't. Just heard good things from friends, grabbed it, and have been putting in time like I haven't with a game in a few years.
Oh, they didn't imply it, they had a whole PR thing going. This being their best-tested game ever and so on. My bare hour of non-cutscene gameplay, already managing to find several old favorite bugs... sort of doesn't add up with that.
I mean, it's perfectly fine to enjoy it. I just think a lot of perfectly legit criticism is met with excuses or weird hostility. JQ (again in a trademark over-the-top "character" that doesn't pull punches) is criticizing Starfield, not everyone's mother or something.
I wonder if some bugs are platform dependent. I've been on Series X, no issues that I can remember. There have been a few times looking for quest items, but I spammed them into inventory and didn't notice. I thought I had one with an invincible NPC, but he died in a low grav setting and just got stuck standing up.
What are you getting, just out of curiosity?
In my brief hour it's just been somersaulting corpses, "badly dubbed Chinese movie" vibes from facial animations being extremely out of sync, and possibly some dodgy collisions - or it might be my aim, or how the aim just seems weirder than in e.g. Fallout 4. The robot companion at the start also blocked me constantly in doorways and firefights at every turn, and that's literally been a meme since Skyrim. At this point I would consider those bugs.