Baldur's Gate 3 has ruined Starfield for me
Baldur's Gate 3 has ruined Starfield for me
Bethesda's latest can't help but feel shallow by comparison.
Bethesda's latest can't help but feel shallow by comparison.
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I haven't played Starfield. But I have been amazed at the depth of Baldur's Gate 3. You can see the handcrafted world every where you look. And this makes a world you enjoy spending time in.
I'm enjoying Starfield far more than I expected.
That said the NPC interactions are incredibly sterile in comparison to the full mo-capped acting of the BG3 NPCs. The Starfield NPCs feel like mannequins just spitting out their lines.
That's like 75% of the work for BG3. There's absolutely some work implementing DnD mechanics into code and designing encounters, and obviously the assets for the world have to be created as well, but the vast majority of their time was spent on dialogue choices and designing the story in general.
It's a great game for it, but we're a good ways away from being able to do the same in an FPS/TPS with real time combat that isn't absolutely brutal. BG3 could be what it was in terms of interactions because it was a CRPG. But it had to be a CRPG to do it. ARPG isn't the term for what Starfield is, but games with reasonably rewarding action take too much work on that element to invest the time into every encounter that BG3 does. Balancing probabilities and maps for encounters for a CRPG isn't trivial, but it costs way less to do than building out all those mechanics and skill trees into real time physics.
They're different games with different goals.
I finished bg3 tonight. The credits are 35 minutes long and it felt like half of it was all the actors. Such an expansion game, even the animals have voices (if you can speak to them)
It absolutely a masterpiece and I'll be playing it for a long time.
I'll just also be playing Starfield for a long time because it's a different game that scratches a different itch.
And the animals are fucking hilarious! I enjoy the cats most of all, especially the "film noir PI" one in act three. I wish he could become another pet in the camp.
Gotta join the cat society in act 3
There is a cat society!? o_O Not yet through act three, I hope I haven't missed it.
Haha I don't think there really is but one of the cats talks about it. I forgot its name, one of the strays in the streets
The writing of BG3, both storyline and interpersonal for every NPC, is top tier.
In Starfield, it's like they put together a committee of pretentious artsy fartsy people who think that their Tumblr page makes them writers and a bunch of execs.
And anything that combination of creatively dead asswipes came up with was canon.
It's a combination of trying to hard to be clever with the most derivative shite story I've seen in a long ass time.
Starfield would be a better game without its main story.
If it was allowed to put all the focus on being someone in this games universe, it would be far better than any elements of the main story existing in the games universe.
Joining Constellation or not should also be an option.
And Constellation should've been more of a JRPG style guild with people focusing on various branches of enterprise in the game and giving missions for those. A questhub rather than this club. They all already have their own specialization.
But seriously, the main story is just all levels of meh.
Starfield falls into the classic Bethesda problem of here's your story, go do it, also here's a bunch of unrelated side quests.
Also feel free to murder literally everyone you come into contact with it probably won't matter.
Sarah begs to differ.
Let me guess: She’s an essential character and can’t even be killed.
"Millennial writing" is the term I've seen used
I mean, BG3 is an incredibly well-crafted and focused RPG, but you cannot in good faith compare it to a game with orders of magnitude more NPCs and voice lines, they're simply not comparable.
Quality, not quantity.
I cant speak to the qualiry of starfield, but i do t think the teo games should be compared.
Bg3 is extremely story driven and incredibly immersive with detailed and intricate combatz catering to many different playstyles in an almost sandbox format.
Starfield is a vast exploration and semi combat focused rpg. Relying more on managment of inventory, crafting and development of kit.
Personally its not my style, skyrim was great but i always got bored way before completing it so i dont think im gonna enjoy starfield.
Tbf, Bethesda is a big team owned by Microsoft, a company with DEEP pockets.
How does starfield feel shallow if you haven't even played it?
I’ve played both for > 30 hours (200ish for bg3) and bg3 is so much deeper. Quests feel meaningful and have multiple options to complete, plus they’re not just go here grab this kill that quests. The facial/body rigging in bg3 is in a different league compare to starfield, Bethesda has always had wonky faces and lip sync but it just looks really bad coming from bg3’s full body/face mocap of real actors and then looking at starfield’s horse chomping wheat talking animation and washed out faces.
I will say starfields ships and guns are great, the guns feel good, customization is fun and impactful, ships are the same way. I could spend as long in the ship builder as I do character creation in BG3 and that’s great. Starfield has promise of modders can fix some of the jack and barrenness which I’m sure they will. BG3 doesn’t need modders help to be great
That's a gripe for me tho.
Modders should be adding to the game, not fix issues and fill potholes Bethesda couldn't be arsed to finish.
Why am I paying Bethesda when the modders are doing the heavy lifting?
You’re asking the same question people have been asking Bethesda for 20 years.
At a certain point you have to come into a Bethesda game with an expectation of jank, that’s their “charm”, then modders polish the rough rock for a few years and you have a nice gemstone at the end of the ordeal. Is that a fair expectation for consumers? No not really. Is it ever going to change? Not likely, the company will fail before Todd makes them finish a game before releasing
That's the tag line for the article, not OPs thoughts.