Well, one is a linear, turn-based, 3rd person party cRPG.
The other is open world, real-time, 1st person with optional followers, sandbox action-RPG with space shooter elements.
Utterly different animals and any comparison is as invalid as comparing BG3 to Elite, DCS or RaceRoom. I've no interest at all in BG3 because turn-based party RPG-s are not really my jam. And I've never cared much about story-telling, either. I like good worldbuilding, sandboxing, looting, crafting, trying different builds, doing whatever the hell I like at any moment while completely forgetting that something called "main quest" exists, getting technical and modding the crap out of a game and this is where Bethesda shines.
Generally the term cRPG is used for specifically tabletop RPG-s adapted to digital realm. Action RPG-s take those classical RPG concepts and adapt them to a first- or third-person action game—basically Doom with leveling systems.
Is anyone else done with Nintendo? I bought the switch when it first came out after buying every other dang console for years and it just snapped in me finally that many of their flagship games are the same lifeless thing every time and not even as close to fun as their predecessors that I can still play today. Mario party was such a fucking let down for me. The only game I was able to get into so far was smash bros and it didn’t last too long. Tried that animal crossing game during pandemic but it was so bad you were just a manipulated slave to animals getting you to put chairs in your house…it was Soo boring. I tried Zelda too but man I didn’t enjoy weapons constantly breaking. I think the last straw for me was the new Pokemon games and how bad they ran. I came to the conclusion what’s the point of buying this thing when I just have way more fun on PC for way cheaper price for games overall? Can’t even play with anyone on Nintendo anyways without paying for access to their servers while also having to have Internet. Even if you get a ballin PC overtime the game library is way more extensive and less expensive for the most part with sales and steam key sites. Nintendo never budges on pricing for anything.
Mario Odyssey was the best Mario game I’ve every played, so not all bad. I just borrowed a Switch to play it though. Nobody is forcing you to pay the Nintendo tax!
I’ve played the switch more hours than I think any previous console. For all its flaws the switch is home to so many quality Nintendo experiences at this point that if someone finds that this is the generation that they’ve tired of Nintendo then it’s possible they simply don’t like Nintendo style games anymore.
Mario Party indeed was a pile of shit. But there are so many incredible games.
I’ve got a mid-grade PC and haven’t had any issues except the potato people with weird speaking animations and that ugly green filter over everything. Used a mod to take care of the second thing. While I am enjoying the game quite a bit, I’ve long wished that Bethesda could up their art style and animations. Thank fuck they got more than 5 voice actors now.
Bg3 I think really has shown us what is achievable in today’s games. The branching and intricate story around the Prisim you retrieve at the start of BG3 (without going into spoilers) and the repeated revelations about it and how to can change the direction of the story. Even the companion stories that feed seamlessly into the main plot.
My playtime in starfield is limited at the moment but I’ve been picking along a quest line for a company doing some corporate espionage stuff. But every mission has felt so lackluster. The first mission to “infiltrate” a rival company office and plant a virus. I expected to be putting my stealth skill to the test and breaking into thier server room, dodging the cameras and guards. But what I actually did is walk unimpeded into thier 2 room office space past the reciption desk and though the security checkpoint, squat next to a computer in a cubicle, do the hacking mini game (which is the same as the lockpick one! A downgrade from fallout) click a button and then walk out. I didn’t even have to convince anyone I should be there or even hide my presence.
The following missions were equally uneventful. Run to a “secure” place unopposed, squat, click the gizmo, run back. In one I had to wear a suit, which the vendor in the same building would sell me, and the game even told me that.
Such a stark change from even the simple quest path to out kargha in the druid grove as a wrong 'un in BG3
Ray tracing sounds like a stretch, but with frame generation nothing seams to be impossible anymore. Though I’d rather see them target consistent 60fps now.
Bethesda’s RPGs have always been shallow in the choice you have with dialogue and altering the story, but deep with the detail, world-building, and mechanics of gameplay. Arena is almost no different in the gameplay loop as Starfield. They went through various phases of how to use rules and complexity of certain systems, but have since settled in a formula established first by Morrowind and refined with Oblivion and further with Skyrim.
They are not about the story. The story is just kinda there to drive some motivation and give context to your own thing. They excel at immersing you in the world and allowing you to just play however you want without restrictions (such as being a god in everything without having to start over and build specific characters to do specific things). They have a pretty good track record of doing good environmental story telling and adding in all those little stories in notes and terminals that aren’t even tied to quests.
But when it comes to stories and dialogue? They had ONE game that was a masterpiece, Morrowind, and the rest have ranged from absolute shit to pretty good. And not one of them, not even Morrowind, actually have the same kind of choice and sweeping changes affected through dialogue get in a story-focused RPG like Baldur’s Gate. Bethesda will likely never have a game as well written as Morrowind again, because that isn’t what they are about.
They are very much about the action over the words. Despite the jank as fuck AI, the combat is still fun somehow (and imagine how much more fun it could be if the AI didn’t suck!), it’s incredibly easy to lose yourself in the world because of how detailed it is, and there are plenty of shenanigans to pull once you begin to dive in and see how everything works. Like, I can’t wait to completely fill one of the huge craters near my base with watermelons and then dive in.
This is it. Forget all the tracked on nonsense. The base building, the character management, production chains all that nonsense…
If you focus on the combat/looter aspect of the game, that part is actually pretty good. A world apart from the janky combat of Fallout, it actually feels pretty visceral.
They may not explode like in Fallout, but there is a new fun spectacle in town: Shooting out backpacks on low gravity environments and launching your enemies off world.
And this is why I didn’t buy Starfield. I loved Morrowind and was disappointed with Skyrim, and I think it’s because I prefer a tighter, more linear story and don’t like “messing around” as much. I watched a gameplay video, and the things that player got excited about (all the side content) really didn’t grab my attention, and the story itself seemed a bit flat.
I probably would’ve loved it as a kid, but that’s not what I’m looking for these days.
So for me, BG3 is the better game. But younger me would’ve preferred Starfield. They’re both great games, just for very different audiences. And I could totally see someone having exactly the opposite opinion as me, which just shows how great both are.
First game to just have constant crashes on my seven year old RX480, which is great since otherwise the game runs completely fine. Support doesn’t seem to want my crash reports either, I guess in Todds world, I should just throw the thing in the trash for a game that does literally nothing special in the tech department.
With my experiences playing the game with an unsupported GPU and getting a solid 60 fps still as long as no NPCs are in the vicinity, I don’t think it’s the GPU side of things that needs optimization. It’s whatever uses the CPU.
It could be optimized better for intel. They have had that issue in the past.
Though… I limit my voltage to keep it from shooting up to 95c from their latest firmware updates (AMD cpus push themselves to the thermal limit intentionally), I kinda wonder if that is having an effect. It’s never been a problem before, however.
In comparison to BG3, the dialogue and stories are incredibly bland in Starfield.
If you don’t compare it to BG3 though, then the dialogue and stories are still incredibly bland.
I swear every Bethesda game does this. For example, when you get three dialogue options, they all say basically the same thing, and they all set up the player to be dunked on by the NPCs response…
Or the only options are:
“wow! Incredible! I love kittens, good on ya kid!”
At least the stories were pretty good for the most part. Starfield’s story and lore are just so generic and boring, and the dialogue ranges from corny to just flatout awful. Even compared to previous Bethesda games, the story elements in Starfield are a yawn fest that feel like they were written by history majors and not people who love science fiction.
BG3 is critically acclaimed and on path to win every GOTY award this year. Taking this into consideration any game compared against BG3 may look lackluster, not just Starfield.
I didn’t play these games yet but I did play The Outer Worlds and it was acceptable to me. If Starfield is a game along the same lines then I am OK with that.
Hogwarts Legacy was a very solid title with very memorable characters, story and wow what a detailed fun world. Have not played BG3 yet so cannot compare, but Hogwarts is my GOTY so far.
Just finished Hogwarts yesterday for the first time. I absolutely love the world building, but I found the story a bit lacking. In my mind I ended up siding with Ranrok, in his quest to free the goblins, Sebastian (Solomon was an asshole thorough and through), and the ending was pretty vanilla. Also the whole idea in the ending of keeping the ancient power secret makes no sense: the same implications could be made100% for normal magic
Remember when Sean Murray said prior to NMS launch that it was part of their vision for you to be alone in a vast uncharted universe with nowhere to call a home? That was code for, “we don’t have multiplayer or basebuilding, and there’s not really anything interesting enough for you to stay there long term”.
Give Starfield a few years, they’ll figure out what to do with those planets.
The author’s arguing that BG3 makes Starfield look like a shallow RPG by comparison. Their broader point is that Starfield is behind the times compared to most RPGs released in the last couple decades, even compared to something like Fallout 3.
It's even better when Bethesda themselves describes Starfield as the "next-generation of RPGs". It's the same type of Bethesda game that I've been playing for 15+ years just with a new coat of paint. If this is the next-generation, then the future has no ambition whatsoever.
The game seems (to me) to essentially be FPS, Sci-Fi Skyrim, with some space fight minigames. There’s a lot of stuff you can do, but the main storyline is pretty short, the AI sucks, and most of the appeal is side content and looks.
That’s what I expect from Bethesda, and that’s what they delivered. It’s only really “next gen” in the procedural generation department, so it’s basically a regular Bethesda game, with a little bit of experimentation thrown in. That’s what Bethesda delivers, and they deliver pretty consistently.
I’m guessing there will be a ton of cool mods in the next few years for a deeper story, interesting space combat, etc.
For sure. That’s just how articles have to be titled to get clicks unfortunately. It can be annoying, but it helps keep journalism alive, so you take the good with the bad.
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