I have a feeling Bethesda thought they were going to have a hit with Starfield, and when it was came out to painfully average reviews, they really had to think about their design philosophies. Or they didn’t think about them at all and ES6 will be just as painfully average. We’ll see.
Apparently the big problem is that Todd Howard is the creative director for all 3 franchises. While he’s good at that role, he’s constantly getting pulled between the 3 series, limiting his ability to maintain a cohesive vision for any 1 game.
Plus there’s way more people in the studio, so while coworkers talked to each other a lot in the past (even on lunch breaks) there’s simply too may people to have that close of a relationsip with anymore
From the reviews I saw it didn’t help that starfield looked and played like a skyrim sci-fi mod that leaned into the Bethesda loading screen meme on purpose.
It was more like Fallout with a space theme and significantly less style in gameplay.
The biggest issue imo was scope. It was too big of a universe to do a lot of the environmental storytelling that BGS is famous for. And the more traditional storytelling was stretched too far over that expansive world. Sure, there were concentrations in cities, but that made the empty space in between more noticable.
That being said, the setup for Starfield’s setting could have been great for modders as there was tons of area to serve as a blank canvas. Unfortunately there seems to be a minimum threshold for content density for modders to jump on that, and it looks like BGS fell short
I have a feeling Bethesda thought they were going to have a hit with Starfield, and when it was came out to painfully average reviews, they really had to think about their design philosophies. Or they didn’t think about them at all and ES6 will be just as painfully average. We’ll see.
Apparently the big problem is that Todd Howard is the creative director for all 3 franchises. While he’s good at that role, he’s constantly getting pulled between the 3 series, limiting his ability to maintain a cohesive vision for any 1 game.
Plus there’s way more people in the studio, so while coworkers talked to each other a lot in the past (even on lunch breaks) there’s simply too may people to have that close of a relationsip with anymore
From the reviews I saw it didn’t help that starfield looked and played like a skyrim sci-fi mod that leaned into the Bethesda loading screen meme on purpose.
It was more like Fallout with a space theme and significantly less style in gameplay.
The biggest issue imo was scope. It was too big of a universe to do a lot of the environmental storytelling that BGS is famous for. And the more traditional storytelling was stretched too far over that expansive world. Sure, there were concentrations in cities, but that made the empty space in between more noticable.
That being said, the setup for Starfield’s setting could have been great for modders as there was tons of area to serve as a blank canvas. Unfortunately there seems to be a minimum threshold for content density for modders to jump on that, and it looks like BGS fell short