Hearing my Long Todd speak always brightens up my day

Luke is so annoying

A space game lacking freedom nothing else has to be said…star field will be my biggest gaming disappointment ever I was there and I was bored

space rpgs are so dumb, either limit players to a single solar system, or just a single planet and its moon. star wars had to limit the number of planets so that every planet felt unique and not just some random rocks. space is fucking boring

starfield is like cyberpunk, the studio should just have not tried. gun combat is awful for role play

destiny was shit, but their support and communication was much better than starfield

I refuse to accept this idea that AAA requires considerably larger teams now than they did ten to fifteen years ago. Marginally bigger sure, but more than five times the size for marginally improved fidelity is nuts. Everybody uses the notion that games are built at a higher fidelity which requires more artists, better animation, better physics etc. but in reality most of those things have hardly moved forward AND the tools used to build assets are supposedly much faster and more efficient than they were back then. In addition to the tools being better, back then artists would build assets and then downscale them to work within the hardware constraints so the assets they were building weren’t significantly less complex than they are now. Just take any franchise that existed ten years ago that still exists today and compare the old version to the contemporary version, is there really that big of a difference? The improvements that we do see, outside of rare examples, are clearly incremental improvements on what came before. Immediately I think of Call of Duty, battlefield, assassins creed, far cry, every sports game and every racing game. The improvements are there but you have to look closely to find them and if you run those old games on a modern pc you may not even find the differences.

I think the true explanation for why teams are so much bigger is that the industry has been overrun by people with very little experience and technical expertise outside of what they learned in school and it literally requires five times as many people to MAYBE match what developers did in the past. There has been a push by every major publisher to hire based on quotas and culture instead of ability. When you combine that with modern society’s sheer distain for criticism you end up with leadership that can’t properly lead for fear of hurting someone’s feelings and ending up in HR purgatory. That is why smaller studios, outside of the western, cultural echo chamber are blowing much larger studios out of the water.

“And lazyness breed stupidity” John Henry Eden, Fallout 3

As a developer, I think that week was just when they pushed it in….the ideas and possibly some of the code was already done, esp if they knew game jam was coming…after crunching code all year, it’s hard to imagine everyone has the energy for a non-mission critical week of passion projects. This is more of a recruiting/get free features stunt

Well who woulda fuckin guessed.

Oh my gosh. Another Starfield rant when the main videogame industry news are about how ACS FAILED AND UBISOFT WAS BOUGHT BY TENCENT? This channel is a joke.

Not, Starfailed suffers from a total lack of anything meaningful to do with what limited freedom it gives. Because there’s just little worth exploring or experiencing in its insipid, badly conceived and written setting. It just shuffles you between small, isolated pseudo-sandboxes filled with mediocre to lackluster content via an endless procession of immersion breaking loading screens, trying to convince you this somehow constitutes a vast, rich, explorable universe of endless possibilities. And failing miserably at it.

Mass effect 1,2 and 3 were wayyyyyyy better

I want my starfield premium edition money back….. like a moron i thought once i get a ship then this game could actually be fun, but yea that did not happen. Thanks to that it went over 2 hours of gameplay hours and well steam refused my refund request. Now i have this crap game stuck in my library for the eternity.

1:44 actually yes. Skyrim received a free post launch update that included mounted combat, ranged/magic killcams, and a several other minor additions

lolno. It suffered from not having any talent. Every design and mechanic fucking scuked. From dialogue, to character, combat system, crafting, etc. Everything sucked balls. Clueless company that should be flipping burgers instead of developing video games.

As a dev the thing I say about star field is it doesn’t suck it’s pretty fun for what it is, but your like this could be so much better. The game was just designed very poorly, no one thought about load screens and making the gameplay based around their engine, they didn’t focus on any gameplay elements or loop, they just tried to have so much, so they excel that noting and just have a broad range of mechanics. They also should’ve designed the quest better density over quantity. They don’t take advantage of the areas they made enough like neon or any of the planets they just are barely used and have no point. Also the Wild West planet should’ve just been scrapped it’s dumb and pointless the outfits suck it’s unoriginal. And they should’ve had mutated humans more if they didn’t want to do aliens like the snake people should’ve been kinda snake like in eyes, and maybe even skin somewhat have fun because the universe is just boring.

2 years after NMS launch they’ve already start to turn it around.
Starfield after 2 years and they’ve gone radio silent after 1 sub par dlc

I loved starfield no it wasnt perfect and could use some work, i hope they work to make it better caus its an awsome game.

Seems to be the trend – the more employees, the more watered down games. (Ubisoft, Bioware, Bethesda)

I get the point of “too many people” but who fvcking care? This is not excuse. This is a reason. But its not our problem. I will go with that pizza. Imagine that you have a pizzeria. Very small buiznes. Its just you as cook, your wife as waitress and older lady from neighbourhood helps with cleaning. Its a small charming place with nice vibes and good food. You cannot expand into multibilion empire, all your new location are mess, your waitresses ignore customers, your cooks pizzas are bland or tasteless. And when people are mad about that you saying “its bc you cannot expect the same quality in such big company.” Shut the fvck up. If your products drops in quality then we have full rights to give you one way ticket into “go fvck yourself”.

Honestly, my gut feeling with the dragon shouts in Starfield is that they decided they needed something to make the starborn “special” in a game play way. So they just brought over the shouts. Basically, “we poorly or didn’t design this, so what’s the least effort/time intensive way to at least somewhat address the problem?”

People aren’t playing starfield cuz their waiting for elder scrolls 😂😂😂omg

Im worried for Elder Scrolls 6 that it won’t be good, Bethesda is going downhill😞.

Yall need to listen to what Timothy Cain said about his dev experience with outerworlds fallout ect….its whats wrong he posted it about a yr ago on YouTube

Game development is being bastardized by children who have been coddled their whole life and don’t know what a hard days work means or being held accountable for your work

Its easier than ever to make a video game …just bc it looks better doesnt mean it’s harder to do has anyone seen what you can do in a afternoon on UE 5? Idk sure maybe it’s hard af on other engines but that sounds like an engine problem clearly they’re suffering from bloat like the dude from fallout 4 development said they can’t even assign tasks to specific ppl bc these jack wagons couldn’t dare to be responsible for something…

Gameplay first, cool shit second.

They also fucked the “going into/out of space/planets” by cutting to a black loading screen on every key moment of that process.

think one of the biggest if not biggest hinderance is the “chain of command” nowdays, before you had idea pop up in your mind, made litle demo of it without thinking too much was either good or bad things continue as normal. now you have to consider does it offend someone? does it tick all the inclusivity boxes? is this gender neutral? can you monetize it? and if any of these boxes didnt tick now you are called to HR for questioning why didnt you this or that and now you will never bring up any ideas ever again. feels like this is very common for bigger firms, at least where i have worked for. bringing up ideas is major pain in the ass, always feels like you are being judged with “look at this guy thinking hes better than us” attitude and put in watchlist so next time you clock in 20 seconds late you for sure will be notified for it

Skyrim is also a bad example, since that also suffered. Morrowind was a good mix of developer freedom along with a clear design philosophy put forth by the leads.

I understand that you are trying to explain the situation at the studio and the root cause of the many problems with this company , but the end consumer doesn’t and shouldn’t care about these things but only the end product and it’s painfully obvious how mediocre titles like Skyrim and fallout are .Now that the nostalgia card is out of the picture with starfield all the flaws that this company has are more apparent then ever .In the end Bethesda can produce only one thing mediocre games wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle with no substance .

None of them can code, that’s the real truth. Most AAA devs are as talentless as their management. Anyone good got forced out decades ago.

Starfield suffered from the same thing most modern games sufder from. Investors running the company not govong a rats patootie about quality, only returns. Completely missing the truth that QUALITY GIVES BETTER RETURNS. Rest in peace all game studios that continue down the same road as Midway. Quantity pushed out the door to appease investors, ignore QA (Where Q actually stands for QUALITY) to make sure those numbers get met…

Basic common sense thrown out the window for one of the seven.

That sizzle reel is proof of what I have been saying about devs for years. If studios just left them to make a game they would get way more done and everything would be higher quality. Some people on YouTube seem to think that the devs or certain games are stupid hacks, but just to get a foot in the door at some of these companies they have to be the best of the best of the best. The devs working in these studios are insanely talented, it’s the management constantly giving and changing demands that stops and resets progress on a game. Don’t blame devs for doing what they are told, blame management for being incompetent

Todd: “I wanna create a space-exploration game where we say ‘yes’ to the player as much as possible.”
Me: “Can I roam around in Space?”
Todd: “Yes.”
Me: “Can I land on different planets wherever I want?”
Todd”…Yyyyes.”
Me: “Is there going to be stuff on these planets?”
Todd: “Yes. Technically.”

Game Jam was replaced by modders (who don’t get paid).

The Bethesda we all loved is long gone. If the next ES game ever releases I can almost guarantee that every Skyrim fan will be extremely disappointed. And then Todd will blame the fans

4:39 That’s what she said.

Todd wanted to say yes to the player as much as possible. Depends which questions you ask. Will you limit the game to half a dozen small hand crafted planets? No. Will there be fun exploration like in Skyrim and Fallout? No. Will each cave be unique? No. Can you manually fly down to the planet’s surface? No. Will you be using a new engine? No.

Something I’m hating about all these interwoven levels of obscurity. When a game says “From the studio/company that worked on” you no longer know what that means. There was that lady who claimed to work on something but only provided fonts for a UI team in a disconnected project.
Just smoke screens that confuse buyers.

starfield suffered from the lack of a good game

At this point I’m wondering if companies like BGS should adopt some form of democracy, to ensure that the developers are able to work on projects that they actually believe in. Because the “leaders” have become increasingly ineffective at delivering quality content and enthusing the people to work towards the greater goal.

Baseball, Huh?

I think selling to Microsoft killed any chance if ever getting something like Skyrim again.

Xbox is too corporate, and Bethesda has become too bloated.

Since Fallout 4 you are so railroaded by simplistic quest design and essential NPCs that you might as well be playing a linear game. Bethesda is so ass-backwards.

As someone who tried to like this game and didn’t jump on the hate bandwagon immediately all I can say is lack of freedom is the least of this game’s problems

I’m sorry, but a game doesn’t have to look amazing to be wildly popular like Skyrim! That is a fallacy. We would much rather play games with lesser graphical quality and amazing stories and gameplay than a gorgeous game that is soulless or completely lacking in storytelling. We just disagree there.

I played stalker 2 and un-installed starfield

Gun in RPG make gamers to remove the Dev freedom than many other things.

what’s starfield?

I think its really depressing that they can accomplish so much more in a week of unscheduled free time than literally a year of development with a fixed schedule. Look at how little content Starfield has gotten so far…. its literally less than this video of one week of work…

Also how much do you wanna bet that Starfield WAS fun before Todd thought it was fun….. I bet it was way better.

No, sorry, this is not what I want from Starfield. I enjoy the freedom and that I am not forced to take a certain path or solve puzzles. STarfield allows much more freedom how to solve a quest, with cleverness, with brute force, with Starborn powers or ignoring the quest alltogether. I enhoy the beauty and the peace of the desolate planets. I remember many years ago there was a small game doing just that in a much more primitive way, visiting empty planets, sometimes with simple creatures walking around. I liked it, but Starfield took it to technical perfection. Even after hundreds of hours you can still find some random encounters in Starfield and new mysteries not connected to any other quest.
Itś just fascinating and I don´t want it any other way.
I think people play Starfield the wrong way. You should not fast travel, you should not run around, just walk around and immerse yourself in the beauty of the environment. I could spend hours just watching the different creatures interacting with each other. I build ships, so that I enjoy living in them and flying around with them, I build outpost so that they exactly fulfill my needs. I set my own goals in the game. Sometimes I get stranded on Planets and have run out of fuel (requires a mod), searching rnecessary esources to get flying again and sometimes fight enemies on the way can take days, but itś fun. Because afterwards you feel that you have survived a really difficult situation.
But you have to stop fast travelling and running in order to enjoy the game. You have to forget the quests and focus on your own goals. Then Starfield becomes its own universe.
ANd if something is not in the game, then there are always mods for it.

Dude a Starfield vid? Why?

It’s been a while so my brain is a little fuzzy on things. But, I remember being so surprized and then delighted by the end of one single quest in the Skyrim DLC, Dragonborn. Out of nowhere I could “craft” little spiders with different elemental properties that I could unleash on the world around me. It was such a unexpected little gimmicky fun thing, and yet I found myself sidetracked in their use in so many creative ways. It gave me genuine Morrowind/Daggerfall vibes for a brief few hours. I remember watching that dev’ compilation. When I discovered the “spider crafting” in Dragonborn, I had a tingling it came from sessions like that.

All is gone now. Replaced by people that think generating vast environments in Unreal Engine somehow equates to creativity. 🙁

Todd SAYS it was done in a week. You believe what he says?

Starfield is a prime example of “Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle”

some past creations mods are having an effect on Starfield.., content, emotes, gameplay (CCTV camera, new survival mode mods, for ship survival too), NPC looks changers..
…. the past creations, were the kind of creations we want, multiple part (big, new companion, story & combat or crafting content), which continues in a next creation coming soon / something to look forward too.
.., new weapons should be added, but new companions are (more?) important..
…
eitherway, lately, with the new (City – Civilizations) NPC & new “emote at many spots in the game” creation, gameplay mods, etc. ..now the cities, ships etc. now have full immersion.. (to keep more players, more mods need to be free (but achievement unfriendly) .., a few key but not free creations should be free or cheaper..
… some do carry a fair price, but as the game was so bare bone, more key creations should be free / gifted to the players.., Xbox might be hind this approach? (so bare minimum, pay for the rest..)
..
..eitherway again, the past few creations (also like City NPC looks mod) are giving me hope, we will get more key mods (3rd person camera mod and in general more of what gamers want, .. + not sanitised).. and Starfield might really reach F4s level of deepth & options at some point …
… the mods are finally turning Starfield around in some major aspects, .. the past new creations / mods give hope.
…
(this text written in 2 parts on my mobile.., its compaosed oddly, sorry)

SAVE ME, TODD HOWARD!

Someone had the bright idea of making detailed 3d solar systems and then not let you freely fly through them. Boring!

Opinion subject to change, will accept sponsorship check to read nicer 3 paragraph article next 30 minute video 😅

26:03 “It’s too big, but not big enough”
Basically it’s big, but lacks depth. Wide as the ocean, but deep as a puddle.

Rust does a similar thing once per quarter or so. They call it Hackweek, and some really cool and creative ideas have found their way into the game as a result of it!

After business school, I learned while working, that Human Resources are useless.

I’m pretty sure that I am the only guy who likes Starfield. But it needs a complete overhaul. The flight travel is terrible. And the reason for exploring is absent. Mods make it better, but don’t think for one minute that a game is satisfactory as long as later down the road, we as gamers add playable content.

At what point did Bethesda say “I guess I better start hiring more people than I need or even know what to do with?”

I like to be alone when i eat a full pizza

Im watching this while playing NMS. Over 840+ hrs currently

Starfield suffered from lack of competence(from top to bottom), bad story telling, and that weird femenist tone troughout the game.
Also that weird open world bubble/loading screen universe … just bad design again.

Big business has been eating at quality media for decades. Terminal velocity was hit more recently however

11:13 Honestly, Japanese Devs are really, really good at making systems that all work together. The only thing they fall short of is that they use older engines, and they have a philosophy that if it ain’t broke, why fix it. So, a lot of them will use the same or similar systems rather than use new ones and bring something entirely new to the table

It’s a weird dichotomy to lack any freedom but also not have a design document.

I can’t understand anything about Starfield is there anyone else?

building to schedule instead of building to quality.

Fuck this game. So. Much.

“Xbox exclusive” lol

Dunbar’s Number seems to apply here. Teams with about 150 or so people can be far more effective when they actually know who they’re interacting with. Stronger relationships lead to better collaboration.

Purkeypile has got to be on Microsoft’s shit list by this point.

I completely disagree that gamers want better fidelity and graphics. Maybe some do, but if that was the case games like Lethal Company and wouldn’t have gotten popular and Pokémon would have died years ago. Gamers want games that are fun or interesting and continue to be fun and interesting after hours of playtime. Skyrim was only popular because it simplified itself from Oblivion for a more casual audience, which simplified itself from Morrowind and then from Daggerfall for the same reasons, but a lot of these simplifications ended up losing a lot of what made the series (and Bethesda) unique to begin with. I myself was incredibly disappointed with Skyrim because I felt that it had lost a lot of what made it interesting and complex in order to be bigger and prettier and the fact that Skyrim was considered acceptable in the day is because there aren’t many products similar to Skyrim. People made peace with mediocrity because, well, where else are you gonna go? And honestly it has made me hate Skyrim more because Bethesda learned all the wrong lessons from its (in my opinion) undeserving success.

My standards for fun have not really changed much since I played Morrowind or even Oblivion. I can continue to play older games and still find them fun. Bethesda simply doesn’t offer any of the complexity or intrigue they used to have as a smaller team and you can really feel it.

it’s raging against the dying of the light

The reasons you gave for a bigger team did not play out in reality, Fidelity is not better combat is not better that sort of thing, it’s just about corporate bloat.

My take is Bethesda has several massive issues plaguing it.
1. The biggest issue is they suffer from is their refusal to see issues.
2. They have lots of people and managers but zero leadership. Everything has to be approved by Todd so the managers are just dead weight with no ability to manage their teams.
3. They have a terrible mindset of not caring how their games are released since the modding community always bailed them out.
4. And lastly, their engine is beyond outdated but they also refuse to eithee build a new one or learn to use a different one.

Like many Studios now, BGS have lost it.

The funny thing is Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall are actually really similar games since they are both massive and procedurally generated worlds but the quality of game design is far superior in TES2 with some of the deepest RPG mechanics in gaming…

Sixteen times the management dysfunction.

They should have a fundamental rule that says if the fun isn’t there at the start, burn it down and try again.

Bugthesda is cooked.
Toddbits aren’t safely edible.

He also said people like you are the reason he wanted to leave the company as well, but you clearly skipped that part.

Sadly you can’t go back. Bethesda started out as a group of people who made games out of passion, it was a business but profit wasn’t the sole motivation. Jump ahead 30 years and they are a piece of a huge corporate behemoth who’s goal is singular.

Luke I’d love to hear you do an interview with Rebelzize at the Skyblivion team, not only to get insights on Skyblivion, but to hear how he manages the project! Could give a peek into how a smaller team operates to create something on the scale of Skyrim!

Quite possible.
I’d say the biggest flaw of the game was how “sterile” it felt which just made the whole experience boring.
I really tried. I put 200 hours into it hoping it at some point would click but it just never did and was a huge waste of time.
All the quests just felt like a giant checklist to work trough.
The only questline I remotely liked was the pirate one but that ghetto stereotype Naeva killed even that.

What happened after 7 years to make it fun? Did they just say, ‘screw it, we’ll just make it a shooter’? Because the people who liked it seem to have come from that end of the spectrum.

Lack of Freedom and a real lack of NPC interaction and reactions.

Much like Obsidian, the bethesda with creative drive is gone. And after 76, I will never pre order, or likely order within a year, any bethesda product.

If you are excited for any Elder Scrolls or Fallout game past this point, you are brain damaged

Dynamic Seasons mods have been a thing in Skyrim modding for a long while now. Modders can come up with this stuff with the creation kit. Every single thing you see here has been done by modders and not just that, far better and more complex versions of it. This actually isn’t really impressive. But it goes to show what devs can do with freedom.

If Starving Field is any indication, there’s little hope for the next generation Skyrim, or fallout 5.

Bethesda has become just another soulless cog in the machine now like any other dev that loses its vision/hunger. They now seek to please shareholders over gamers which is bad for the long term in my opinion.

Its just sad boys. Its just sad.

Stanfield is 100% corporate product. Skyrim wasn’t.

Fromsoft has managed scaling up brilliantly despite also being very revolved around one man’s vision. Demon Souls started out as Sony’s response to Oblivion, and since then despite growing at the same rates Fromsoft has managed to make more games than Bethesda that have been rated better

Bethesda’s management has simply failed and there’s no quick way of fixing it

To be honest, they had a fairly broad scope of what would be fun to see in the game, but then somehow failed to scale down to the “minimal fun” which would keep players engaged and instead scope-creeped into a million cookie cutter, middle-of-the-road features.

brand recognition totally got me to pre order this game and it will be the last time for the rest of my life , lesson learned

I am so baffled with Starfield. They’re trying to mix futuristic with magic and shit. Prey had more sense and better approach in combat mechanics in a futuristic setting.

More people play Skyrim than a vowed right now, the you can’t get away with Skyrim today doesn’t fit the actual player numbers.

The water arrows and assassin’s vision are actually concepts taken from Thief

Gaming industry is dying.

Game Jam days are likely long gone.

Todd et al have to go.

Todd Howard is responsible for their biggest successes but also the reason we’ve seen their biggest failures!

They desperately need a team to focus on improving the engine because their current engine is so antiquated.

A radio would fix most of the quest issues with Starfield. It’s the future with ftl and nobody has a phone or radio. Why do I have to go in person to talk to every quest giver?

Graphics is not equal to success, look at elden ring, it has a perfect art style, but fidelity wise is pretry bad, has lot of technical problems,on the consoles doesn’t even hit 60 fps, etc etc, and still sold kpre than 20 million copies,and is one of the most acclaimed games of all time, why? Because it had a vision, it had something going on, bethesda games don’t have anything, the writing isn’t good, the combat isn’t good, the graphics aren’t good, and some things are just outright outdated like the constants loading screens.

8:40 with all due respect to the managers, but having a meeting between programmer, designer and an artist is way more effective to the quality of the game. Just let them communicate, improvise and bounce the ideas of each other.

Oh. So if Todd was actively developing Starfield, like he was with Skyrim, it wouldn’t be in the bad spot it’s in now.

The two pizza rule actually does apply to all human group dynamics. Human brains seem to be able to only track six to eight people interacting at the same time. After that, every additional person instinctively falls into a spectator role instead of trying to participate. I saw that countless times in university.

Tod: “Free”
Microsoft:

If they had more freedom Starfield would been
Dustborn in Space

I remember playing Fallout 4 when it first came out and even though it’s one of my favorite games of all time, it’s incredibly buggy. Especially in side quests. Some games like Minecraft and Stardew Valley were started by one person and many other examples.

Point is I don’t think Bethesda getting bigger is the only issue plaguing them, though it’s probably a good part of it, I think they are a uniquely Bethesda issue. What that unique issue is, I’m not sure. I do love do their ideas and RPG and faction mechanics, I just don’t think a “machine gun” approach for bigger projects work.

I haven’t played Starfield but from the sounds of it, they might need to focus on a handful of planets at a time and maybe update the game Minecraft style every once in a while with 3-5 new planets to explore and interesting content to see. And have a dedicated team for bugs because their games do not age that well. But that’s an idea, not a requirement.

They’ve killed my excitement for ES6.

As an RPG I didn’t like Starfield because I gained skill points faster than I could complete the challenges needed to use them

Good Howard’s job is now to manage the Multi-media side of things for Bethesda IP’s.

I believe he is going involved in the next Elder Scrolls at an executive level but I do not think he has any real part in the games development.

He is too busy with Fallout S2 and probably trying to get Elder Scrolls made into a TV Series which I think he was also hoping to achieve with Starfield.

It’s all about the money now, not the art form

Aside from the main lack of communication…I see the problem, They were successful going from Skyrim to Fallout 4 employee wise, but then they more than doubled during Fall out 76 and then added 40% more employees. Expanded too quickly and there fore chaos. Pandemic didn’t help either. I know Naughty Dog suffered from the same issue but they did address it and worked to improve it. Although it’s hard to tell since they burned through a good chunk of their staff from TLOU Part 2.

They couldn’t even be bothered to implement mouse and keyboard support to Xbox lol

Dev Freedom is nor the issue here

It’s not just about Bethesda getting bigger; it’s about how the drive for profit is changing creative industries, games and movies alike. Investors want predictable returns, and that kills the “anything goes” creativity that used to make Bethesda games special. Investors want predictable returns and force execs to derisk their projects. Creativity is a risk. Yes it has enormous upside potential, but it’s not a guarantee. Think about how much more organic and experimental older games felt. That kind of dynamic development seems to be gone now. You can even see it in Starfield, where the systems feel disconnected, like they were made by different teams working in silos.

And remember, Bethesda was privately owned back in 2011. The shift to finding a buyer and now being under Microsoft’s wing has probably made this worse. So, while team size matters, the bigger issue is how the pressure for constant profit is reshaping how games are made.

9:36 Look here look listen will never not be funny. It’s been like 7 years since that meme and I still die.

I was ine if the few who loved the game.. BUT.. I still agree with majority of points made for what needs to be fixed. However, the most fun for me was modding it haha

More employees, more managers, more bureaucracy, more expenses, less communication, less creativity, less fun, less profit.

No it sucked because all the quests were dull and repetitive. No matter your choices you ended up with the same outcome. Zero player freedom when it came to the story. One of the worst games I ever played as far as that goes. Then Baldurs Gate 3 came out around the same time and it blew away Starfield in every single way. It just made it even more clear how bad Starfield was. The dlc was also god awful. I fell asleep 3-4 times trying to play it. When I finally finished it I saw how underwhelming it was. Just crap.

The fundamental problem is Bethesda only knows how to make *Authored Content.*
They don’t know how to make *Dynamic Content,* they dabbled a bit in Skyrim and Fallout 4 but they never managed to figure out how that works.
The fact is in order to actually make Dynamic Content actually work you need to create entier new games based on entier new genres on top so that you can have enough Systems and Mechanics to drive that Dynamic Content/Gameplay.
They would need to make a 4X Strategy Game and Colony Sim like Rimworld, fully functioning as a game, in order to have that kind of Dynamic Content.
The only known example of a game that actually does have that Dynamic Content is the *X series* with *X4: Foundations* as an example, but that isn’t even procedural since it doesn’t need to be procedural, the Dynamic Gameplay is enough.
Games like Starsector and Mount and Blade are also close, but as you can see they are entierly dependent on battles.

If you look at that expose from a few years ago it was devs and designers talking about working at Bethesda and its severely broken work culture. But one of the big revelations was how, once Fallout 4 was released Todd had no time for anything but Starfield. Employees talked about pulling Todd away from Starfield reluctantly to have Fallout 76 meetings, when people would plead with him that the game needed NPC and he would wave them off and go back to Starfield. That called it “seagulling” where he would fly in, shit all over everything, and then fly out. I don’t believe that today’s Bethesda and especially today’s Toss and Emil are capable of creating a Skyrim or Fallout 3/4 any longer. They are too corporate focused on profit and including micro-transactions over creating a great game, appealing to players, or making something someone could play for hundreds of hours.

Why not have smaller groups working on the core games? They could have two groups alternating between Elder Scrolls and Fallout so no group gets stuck on one game, and the games get done faster.

1 person, no problems.
10-30, creativity.
100-unlimited people, only problems, but no freedom to be creativ.You’ll just be a number, and your ideas won’t be in demand anymore.
Perhaps the big studios should start there.

I felt that the controls for both base building and ship building were reversed, to the point that is was always confusing jumping between the two, and is was frustrating

no design document- Emil P.

They need to make like 500 more POIs and random things to have happen. There’s not spontaneity. Other than the odd grandma spaceship that does nothing at all really.

I just want a space game that lets me fly away from multi culti dystopian nightmare I live in. Perhaps build a colony with my own people away from this mess.

When a game studio gets more corporate, passion dies.
That’s why gamers are stepping down on AAA games and go for AA or indie games.
I have little to zero hope for the next TES…

I am not really with Luke on this one. To me it feels like Todds god complex got out of hand with Starfield and he had a certain vision of the game but not enough artistic imagination of how it could all come together. And that wouldnt even be a problem if he would have managed the people with that skill well but i think his pride didnt allow it and thats why Starfield became Starfield…

Schedule 1 is slaughtering every AAA game right now and it was made by 1 guy in less than 3000 hours. Starfield had around 5.4 million work-hours poured in and most didn’t care for it.

Thanks Luke for this torture. Imagine if all these features were implemented…
And now back to reality…these features will never see the light of day. I would even bet that they wont be in TES6…

Oh my favorite game to mock 😅

Bookmark 17:35

The creativity needs to be in pre-production.

The scope of the project needs to be agreed and tightly controlled once you go into production.

Where possible scope creep should be avoided and any major issues that arise that require scope changes need to be effectively dealt with quickly (no long delays waiting for Todd), and the scope needs updating and briefing out to the whole team.

That is what always blew my mind playing through starfield, everything interesting already happened. The colony war would have been so much better of a story and setting. What we got was just so boring and toothless.

I’m building a game right now with my team. I refuse to go out and get us funding until we figure out if it’s fun.

I tell the guys, have fun. Go with your gut. Find the fun first. The money will come when we’re onto something…

We’re getting close

14:15 That article nailed my biggest issue with starfield. They really picked the most boring era of their starfield universe to build a game for. Give me the first FTL missions, or the mech wars, or when alien empires are found. Starfield as it is is just bland and nothing of consequence happens to anyone.

You are free to stare at loading screens for hours on end

Starfield is the perfect example of a game with so many things to do but no reason to do them.

It’s like no one had the chance to sit down to play the final product and say, “Hey, this doesn’t feel fun to play after 40 hours. There aren’t any meaningful pursuits or exciting hooks to keep you exploring the galaxy.”

I’ve heard game development studios from the 90s through about 2010 or so described as toxic and horrible places with a sort of frat house vibe. Games media too actually. Now I know the truth. They were just having fun with what they were doing. If you look at photos of the dev teams back then, ignoring what color they are or what’s in their pants, they’re all smiling genuinely. They’re obviously close. They’re FRIENDS.
Now, for fear of someone feeling left out, that’s not allowed anymore. They’re not having fun, and if they’re not having fun, neither are we.

Cope. If these things were great to push time spend for people they would put it in, even when it’s a 3d model t posing. These people cope about what they did. 7 years to make a game fun and the Devs did not manage to make it in a gameplay perspective? This is such a shift victim purpose. No, these people are at fault too. These people could not even make an oblivion with all their creativity and freedom shoved up in their ass for 10 years. If you think you work on the most dogshit product ever created and you stay, you don’t have moral authority over the people that decide that. You are just a shit person that tries to come off better to get jobs in the future. If you had morals and a backbone you would have quitted. Pathetic buhu I am the victim behaviour when they could have changed it but they did not.

What does Luke Stephens think about Khazan: First Berserker?

TES6 is going to be a major disaster. BGS tends to bring thier tech from game to game. There will be ship creation with TES skin, but that begs the question what is going to be done with the proc gen tech? Build your ship modularly like Starfield. Loading screen into ship like SF. Enter a map the ocean with different island chains. Load on the coast just outside of island chains. Go to map and choose a dock on one of the islands on the tile of islands you selected, loading screen/animation docking to the plank of your ship on that dock to proc gen specific island that covers an entire tile. Then explore empty boring island with 3-5 randomly generated POI that has no purpose. If people think there will be seamless ship travel like AC:Odyssey they are going to be disappointed. Think of the island chains as solar systems in starfield. And the specific islands as the planets.

Starfields story was BORING

Killcams did end up the game, and I actually hate them, because they break the player’s choice of first person perspective.

Its almost like you need to have fun in order to make a fun game.
Sidenote, Emil is a lazy sack of potatos. Probably paid bank, had years to write and best he came up with was “starborn”. Good work you donkey.

Funny because the game suffers from lack of freedom without a load screen.😂

You literally showed us this same exact thing about the modding for a week back when Starfield first came out. Why are you showing the same shit over and over?

13:25 this mirrors Mass Effect Andromeda’s development issues

Bro with so many teams they could have been doing 4 smaller games instead of 1 Gigantic one. Each is more contained, more organized, and cohesive, but not every game needs to be double the size, have triple the missions, and a bunch of mechanics (that they won’t use), and have to play extremely safe with no space to test things… Bro God of War 1 doesn’t have nowadays graphics, or map size, and way less quests/objectives than today’s norms, but is still better than most of today’s industry.

8:27 this is so funny because I literally just yelled at my manager today because he’s been on a stupid power trip since being promoted to manage whereas we used to be on the same level. He literally only got promoted temporarily because the actual manager left (also because he was tired of dude being so lazy) and he had more time in the company than me. I had to humble his ass today and now he’s texting me trying to be buddy buddy again lmao

starfield is the biggest pile of junk i’ve ever owned it could have been great

Current Steam Player Numbers.

Starfield 3,266
Fallout 4 14,016
Skyrim SE 22,446

Starfield is doing just fine lads.

that water arrow to turn off the light is straight copy modern Thief 2014 gameplay 😂

Been playing star field for the last week. Its awesome. If you enjoy BGS games then the formula is there. It really is. Essentially the content is centered around factions instead of regions. For example, the free star collective, several missions take place in or around Akila, but a lot are just themed around the faction and you bop around to different places doing space lawman stuff. The funny thing is when you watch something like Star Wars, all you see is light speed jumps from A to Z, a landing sequence, then work on that planets surface, in a specific area. Same formula here.

“pizzas”, you say?

He’s like the guy from the fable series, I just realized this

Prey 2017
Prey 2

‘sound familar?’

I’ve always said the engine was never the issue, it’s the management…

(future) Bethesda games in general need 2 things. First and foremost 100% less loading screens – except for 2; when you start the game and when you load a game. Nothing against cutscenes hiding loading screns but i’m sure you all get what i mean. Second: an amazing plot around a (in my opinion – voiced) protagonist

The next elder scrolls is not going to worth anyone time and honestly hope it fails, so that Bethesda can actually learn from they’re obvious mistakes.

The difference between Skyrim is night and day! 😅

Starfield is NOT a bad game by any means. I was more disappointed with the lack of content that should have been flowing out of Bethesda alongside awesome mods like FO4/Skyrim. There is so much stuff that could be built into the starfield universe but it was just silence from devs and modders. I feel the ending is just shit completely and they could have used that to do a bunch of crazy things like changing up pretty much the entire game on your 2nd or 3rd playthrough. No aliens at all? One unity could have brought you into an alternative version of starfield where those big bug things took over and everything is ravished and quests are centered around that. Nope. Nothing at all like that. What if in one unity passthrough brings you to a universe where Earth is still green and they haven’t found the artifact yet? Please hire me so I can help you stop doing dumb things.

They abandoned Starfield it’s crazy

I bought Starfield because I enjoyed the Fallout and Skyrim games. Never been so bored with a game as I am with the redundancy, running back and forth, poor writing, excessive NPC banter to the point playing Starfield is more like a bad desk job than a game.

The push for greater graphics has been nothing a burden to the industry. We are expecting graphics that should not be a commonplace expectation for another couple generations. Graphics fidelity was not the problem, it was the implementation. They would have been better off sticking the Skyrim graphics.

a lot of these became mods in nexus mods, I wonder if those modders were bethesda employees they were so much more creative back then

@Luke Steven’s brother, you’re in danger of becoming a predictable, insufferable talking head.

They completely fumbled the world building with their premier game. Not just the history, but the logistics of how their world operates.

It’s because they don’t have enough Core gamers in the management role who will play the thing before giving feedback and not just treat things like code merge.

I don’t know. The game feels directionless. all the mechanics are disconnected from each other. With total freedom it might have been even more of a incoherent mess. There is some freedom that is nice, but the systems need to interlink, an play off each other, and assist each other. That’s the real broken part.

I think much of it is just cope, there already exists a great exploration game(no man’s sky) I thought they would build on that and add action since no man’s sky is mostly only exploration and I loved that game but wanted more action, yet they couldn’t even touch hello games toes

The best example is, they made all of those demos in one week in 2012, but Starfield did not have a map of its capital city at launch. Not even a 2d one, no maps for cities at all, how is that even possible? Did they even create the design of the city?

I think the core problem with Starfield, and yes its because they tried too much but more importantly the concept is so compelling. If the concept was just flat and it was “simply a bad game” we would be saying “I guess they went downhill, move on to something else” and not give it a second thought. The concept though of this type of game in this setting is just SO compelling that we are almost desperate for it to show glimmers of what it has the potential to be.

I dont agree that procedural generation itself is boring. Elite is arguably more “boring” that Starfield in theory as there is even less to do on each planet. But Elite has a strong player base. Starfield’s issue is that it lacks any depth in those mechanics. It might as well just be a massive earth sized world with a teleport button. Your house moving with you when you fast travel does not make it a space ship.

wonder how long till they figure out that trying to manufacture games like a factory with manpower tend to result in shit compared to game created by smaller teams of artist

WAIT THIS CANT BE GOOD GOR NEXT TES 😭

That says a lot, that’s why it reflects on how even having some positive things the game also doesn’t let you be creative, sad.

Starfield was a massive scam. It was never meant to be good.

As someone who really did like starfield for what it is I definitely was disappointed that when you did find something super interesting and cool looking that’s all it was. Cool “looking”. There was nothing there other than something that seemed like it might be cool but was just set dressing.

3:20, guards reacting to darkness and reigniting the lights are extremely easy to do. It is basically just another branch in AI’s behavior tree. If all other systems already exist (pathfinding, interractions, animations, vision, etc.) It probably could be done in a few hours, but most likely even less.

yes im surprised and long before this im not excited for elder scrolls 6 AT ALL i tihnk its gonna be mid

Only original game this shit company ever released & it was a total disappointment; says a lot about BGS; Todd & Emil are total assclowns.

Starfield would have benefitted significantly from a more focused design approach. Rather than offering 1000+ procedurally generated planets with minimal interactivity, the game could have featured around ten meticulously crafted planets—each densely packed with engaging content, meaningful exploration, and dynamic environments.

This foundation would not only enhance the base game experience but also provide a natural structure for future DLCs. Each expansion could introduce a new planet that is fully explorable—allowing players to fly and land anywhere on its surface, with rich, diverse activities and stories to uncover. By investing more time and creativity into each individual world, Bethesda could deliver a more immersive and satisfying experience, rather than spreading content thin across a vast, empty galaxy. And in doing so, could keep the game alive for many many years

Source for Todd not being involved and accessible to the team? Sounds made up

Yeah, don’t expect TES6 to be any better guys 🙁

Starfield would have been so much better had they started us with a hundred planets and from there had periodic dlc where they’d introduce a certain number of new planets at a time with a certain number of them being hand-crafted and more in-depth and interesting. There was so much potential that was never tapped.

They should bring back the Game Jam…partly for players and partly for devs. There’s no reason why they can’t break the company into smaller teams to make it happen more efficiently.

I hate to find some glee in the thought of BGS crumbling -I think it’s because we all feel so burnt over Starfield and because Todd is so infinitely punchable.

It’s kinda wild that it feels like a team 8x larger, manages to make less.

I didn’t think your voice could get more annoying.

Starfield suffered from a lack of immersiveness, story, game design, game mechanics and most of all, fun

Corporate bloat is a major problem. It will cause a lot of these companies to fail. These best games in the last 10 years were made by small teams or even individuals.

Starfield wasn’t fun, they never found it.

(Re)Todd

Explains why there’s no soul to Starfield

It is very concerning seeing former devs coming out and disclosing organizational issues. I believe the “old Bethesda way” left with many of those developers after Skyrim/Fallout 4. Elder Scrolls 6 will be large and full of cool stuff, but it won’t be nearly as fun.

That’s why I worry about companies like Warhorse and CDPR. They’re both growing companies with successful titles and dedicated fanbases. And it kind of seems like success just corrupts. all these AAA studios with 400+ employees put out bloated garbage, while all the studios with 120 or so employees put out banger after banger.

How does anybody ever let that man on a microphone?

It has a structure problem. Too much freedom to just NOT do anything in the game

Having worked at places like IBM, Compaq, Hp (and closely with Microsoft) , my whole life, places like that are so “corporate” it sucks the creativity from individuals.. Microsoft buying Bethesda was a double edged sword… they had the financial backing, but lost creative abilities…

The general problem with Starfield is the things NPCs asked you to do would only make sense in a medieval setting. Those “talk to [person]” quests where you travel to another planet, talk to [person], and travel back to the 1st planet, would only make sense in a future where phones somehow don’t exist.

As much as I love Starfield, lack of developer freedom is super apparent.

The devs wanna make an amazing game and the investors want to make the most amount of money. But then the devs bosses come in and fuck it up for everyone

They absolutely did not take 7 years to find the fun. They surely found it multiple times and kept cutting on the “yes”s.

There is absolutely no reason to play starfield while cyberpunk 2077 exists in the state that it’s in.

The teams with this issue may start big, but it’s the constant downsizing (to optimize performance) that causes this. The team does something in half the time it did last time, and that becomes the expectation going forward, and as the team shrinks and/or the planned features are fine-tuned to its size, that doesn’t account for the “free time” that the devs use to add “cool stuff”.

Can we stop saying Todd Howard is a great visionary but a bad leader/developer. He’s a BAD visionary. His vision was creatively bankrupt and a failure

The fact they never did anything with the seasons changing tech that one dev made for the game jam is insane! Especially for fallout 4 being in New England known for harsh winters especially

toddssss gottta goooooooo!!!

Todd said it best when he said Starfield’s game design felt schizophrenic.

starfailed

Can’t Todd Halliday make the management just overhaul everything? Someone needs to talk to him.

I think the issue with game company culture is the right ppl HAVE to be in charge. Yes you need your HR. Yes you need some type of financial advisor. You do need a couple “suits” close to the boss. But the boss needs to not only be a gamer, but a passionate one. Whi care about the craft of gaming and what makes it fun. Its safe to assume vast majority of game developers chose that job because they truly love gaming. So why make moves to completely kill that motivation. Obviously ypu need standards and practices. But if I have creative passionate employees giving me their 2 cents, imma listen.

“I knew the meeting was going poorly when they brought in the third pizza…”

why doesn’t bethesda evolve into the studio that they were before? more games in less time and better quality and reception at that

Tbh I used to hate Starfield but after downloading some mods and being able to access the game without having to grind for every little thing it’s actually fun. Don’t get me wrong the load screens are annoying and there’s some design and gameplay mechanics that feel old but the game is 1000% more enjoyable with some minor tweaks.

why does the east seem able to put out high quality games but these studios don’t seem able to? how is the east is managing it?

Luke: With a team that’s this scale, basically, you have to have a checklist of activities
Emil Keep It Simple Stupid: We don’t need no stinkin’ documentation

27:00 I gotta disagree on that estimation. Bethesda always acts like everything is okay. But that doesn’t mean it’s what they think. It’s all a show for marketing. Just look at how Todd was like at the game awards when Starfield was released. Still smiling, but you could feel how forced it was. How disappointed in himself and his work he was. There are memes about his appearance in the game awards for a reason.

most of Bethesda are 9 to 5 people now.. all the KEY creatives have left.

Game Jams are nothing new. We were doing things like this back in college in 2009, its mainly a thing indie devs do. All Tod did was do something that already existed

I wonder if a company like Bethesda could get back to being a small group of creative devs. Create a team of 75 of your most creative people and make them the core team. They operate the way Bethesda used to operate. They come to with ideas and they focus on the fun. Once they find what they want to do, it then gets sent to the workforce. 300-500 people who do the actual grunt work implementing and polishing the ideas that the core team came up with. You have to have a large team right now, but you also need to maintain what made the company what it is. The only way i can think to do that would be to split the team into 2 groups. The fun group and the grunt group.

For The Last of Us (2013), Naughty Dogg mentioned the team didn’t find the fun until late into production.
The point you make about Bethesda not finding the fun in this game until late into production is not as damning as you think.

The most fun you can have with BGS these days is guessing which sales pitch will be the biggest let down:
Fallout 4 (2015) – Fully voiced protagonist
Fallout 76 (2018) – Fully online
Starfield (2023) – 1000 generated worlds
ES6 (TBD) – Have fun guessing.

The axis unseen is not good btw. I encourage you to play it live. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts

he didn’t mention his academic credentials. Hell has frozen over

They changed game jam to game Vegimite

The BGS Game Jam breaks my heart. There is clearly so much inspired passion and creativity in their teams that gets ABSOLUTELY CRUSHED by upper management. Starfield conceptually probably would have been a masterpiece until the suits got involved.

starfailure lacked in everything, it was a failure of all, master of none. It lacked depth, creativity, story writing, any sort of vision, graphical fidelity, engaging gameplay. You name it, it lacked it. There’s a reason it flopped

If you can’t make a prototype with a fun gameplay loop, You are going to have an issue. If it has not found the fun in 7 years, you have failed in your fundamental design.

Honestly I wish more games that are like rpg based have like seasons and stuff that would be cool

Bethesda has been meh for a while now

Japanese folks actually pointed out that on AC Shadows’ trailer alone, you could see different and conflicting seasonal trees/plants/fruits/flowers that are present within one scene at the same time. So they couldn’t even get that right.

Business school mentioned at 7:00

Is it all because of not having freedom not rlly
The outsourcing stuff being large company lack of communication and all that too played a part

yes
Blackreach was one of those .

These bots are hilarious lmfao

Do the same as Bethesda, just let the game die already

The game is the definition of dull slop

Bethesda has become entitled, lazy and uninspired.

Bro can’t stop milking Starfield 😭🙏 it’s been a year bro let it go

You’ve literally don’t like 20 videos on this why are you making another video on the same subject? You do this video like every few months.

Do they think they’re Valve?

Never been so close to a fresh drop like this

If you watch the No Clip documentary they talk about the game jams! One of the devs made a custom base builder, which they added into Fallout 4.

All I see is bots 😔

Here with all the bots

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