this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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Bethesda games have always been incredibly shallow. How is there anyone that doesn't see this?
I think it’s the time of development. Bethesda games used to be shallow, but they also came out moderately paced. Now things like starfield take the better part of a decade and it’s still just as shallow, which has some people a bit underwhelmed. Personally it’s been so long since a Bethesda game came out, as a person who isn’t a Bethesda fan to start with, I forgot how shallow Bethesda games were.
They still average about 6 years per major release... Fallout 4 came in 2015, and if you don't count Fallout 76 as a major release, that was only 8 years ago, right in line with the dev time they've pretty much always had.
Honestly all I see with starfield that failed to meet expectations are one good and one bad:
Good: The performance and stability are actually good for once. This was unexpected, but welcome.
Bad: The writing and story are boring, bland, generic, and uninteresting. This wasn't expected because usually this stuff is at least semi-decent. There's usually something that at least has a cool basis. Starfield doesn't. It's all references and tropes and nothing particularly interesting or unique. It's hard to even be motivated to wanna shoot bad guys beyond "well, they're the bad guys and I am here to shoot 🤷🏻♂️."
We didn't expect the story to be bad? The only games of theirs that had good stories were Daggerfall and Morrowind. Oblivion's story was... fine at best. Skyrim's was hot garbage. Daggerfall's story is pretty impenetrable too.
I honestly can't remember more than a handful of characters in any of their games. Of the characters I do remember, I think the jester assassin from the dark brotherhood is the only one I had any kind of affection for.
And the issue is that even their best games, like New Vegas, show their age. None of their past writing in games stands up to modern levels of expectation for big budget video games. The fact that Starfield isn't any better and is perhaps at even a slightly lower level than their previous games just makes it seem too outdated.
Importantly, New Vegas was not made by Bethesda
The problem is people defending the games as perfect 10/10 GOTY. And just the general gamers who get super whiny and mad if anyone complains about anything in Starfield, saying that's just the "Bethesda genre".
Yeah, the amount of "it's supposed to be that way" I see is crazy. It's fine if it's supposed to be like that, but it doesn't mean people are wrong for not liking it.
It also doesn't mean people are wrong for liking it...
Idk man, Skyrim felt pretty deep in its time period. I spent so much time becoming a member of the thieves guild, and it felt important and immersive. It's shallow compared to BG3, sure, but it also came out 20 years prior.