As someone who hasn’t yet played it but will, and wants to like it, should I read this? Will it point out negative things I might agree with but would never have noticed otherwise?
It’s not that deep. Here’s the two main critiques leveled towards the game in the article.
you don’t always know the consequences of your actions, and they’re not always predictable: a seemingly sensible choice sometimes ends badly, and a seemingly dumb choice could get you a reward
you can load a save and redo your things whenever you want, i.e. save-scum
These are both somewhat obvious just from the structure of the game. Ultimately the conclusion the author is shooting for is that this makes Baldur’s Gate 3 a bad game but a good piece of interactive fiction.
The author uses the mechanics of chess often as sort of an example of the pinnacle of game design which to me is telling. Video Games are much broader than that. Insisting that people should not call the thing you don’t like a game but instead “interactive fiction” is pedantry at best, and gatekeeping at worst.
Sure, if you view the game through the lens of chess you will come away with these flaws. But for example, if you always knew the consequences of every choice the narrative tension would be destroyed. Of course chess has no such concern, so if we’re looking at games through that lens then narrative tension is of no value. Ultimately I think this is just a very narrow viewpoint of what games should be.
This is an interesting piece. It reminds me of the quote “The reason reality is often stranger than fiction is that fiction has to make sense or it wouldn’t be considered realistic.”
The designer’s concern that the game doesn’t consistently give you all the information to inform consistent expectations from the game world is more of a stylistic decision than an objective flaw I think. One of the core appeals of dnd is that it’s impossible to always know what to expect even down to random dice rolls. The game part is very important in dnd, but the roleplaying and emergent narrative are also very important.
If the player is taking it seriously and not save scumming, they are probably not going to have a perfect run and that’s by design. What they will have is a relatively unique game experience with its own mix of successes, failures, and discoveries. If they want to be a murderhobo or munchkin they can and since it’s one-player no one is going to mind. The game can flex into a tactical rpg or a relatively pure story experience as dnd can, but is not going to be the same experience as a chess game or a novel.
Hmm… I think we’re dogging on the author a bit much here. Don’t get me wrong, they’re clearly swimming in philosophical water that’s a bit too deep for themselves, but sometimes you’ve gotta be clumsy in order to explore topics at the edge of theory.
Let’s dial things up a notch and bring Undertale (the Dark Souls of – nevermind) into the discussion. What does it have to say about branching pathways, tonal consistency, and savescum? It says: I was made for you, please enjoy me.
The game adapts to the audience – you, that is. You are weird and hard to please, so the game needs to be flexible without feeling compromised. If you want to leave hidden depths unexplored, the game abides. If you want to vivisect every last detail, the game changes to fit your desire.
It’s alchemy, of course; both magical and unobtainable, so the author isn’t strictly wrong to accuse Baldur’s Gate of falling short. It’s true: sometimes a gap in the curtains opens up and the illusion is spoilt. With that being said, I think what’s missing is the logical conclusion to the criticism: universality – despite being unobtainable – is still worth striving for. To be universal is to distill humanity itself, as great and terrible and impossible as that may be (and here you thought I was joking with that Dark Souls jab!).
I’m trying to get a refund from GOG, after spending nearly a month truly working my most to love the game, to understand what makes people say Baldur’s Gate 3 is a masterpiece.
People said Read Dead Redemption 2 was a masterpiece, and I found myself in agreement. Same with Half-life 1, 2 and 3 (Alyx).
But the almost overwhelming attention to every detail and aspect of those games I cannot see in BG3. Everything from janky animations, buggy combat pathing, awful tutorials, visual glitches, the worst journal I’ve seen since Morrowind, and no pause button in 2023!!
Ironically, nothing of which this article brings up since it seems to shit on save scumming which I don’t care about, all power to the player.
You cannot argue this game is ‘bad’; the story and characters along with competently designed game play would prove that. But it’s no masterpiece to me, and I feel I fell for the the overhype from the fans who just love the franchise.
You can hit the big round turn-based button in bottom right of your HUD to activate turn mode at any time, even outside combat. This effectively pauses the game. The game even makes a sound effect of a clock slowing down and stopping.
The fact that you didn’t find it fun is totally valid. BG3 is a very opinionated game that gets a huge number of things right for its target audience - the people who really enjoy CRPGs, branching paths, and choice driven gameplay. It does sound like that you’re really not into those things, so BG3 could never have been an excellent experience.
The games that you list are designed to be mostly linear experiences, so it was possible for the devs to make the core gameplay shine because they had time to really polish those systems and interactions. There was enough people and time to really tune RDR2’s gunplay, the horse riding, the hunting and tracking, and make the world feel organic.
BG3’s dev time was spent on tuning the combat encounters, tuning the class building options, and making sure the world (almost) always made sense. While baking in hundreds of stories about your companions, side characters, abusive store owners, and lost puppies. The game never holds your hand, only asks “here you are, this is what you’ve done, what do you do now?”. The amount of effort put into respecting the moment to moment choices made by the player is staggering.
The complexity in these systems in BG3 left preeetty clear issues with things that would otherwise have time to be polished out of a game before release (animation jank, visual bugs, pathing, pausing). For me, they were more like bumps in a very scenic road. But I hear you when you come in expecting a shiny polished RPG but there’s all these fourth wall breaking bits that kind of stall the whole show every like 5 minutes.
I think there’s enough nuance here to have both sides of the coin be true - it’s an absolute masterpiece for the players who enjoy the specific experience it offers, and it only makes sense to feel it’s overrated when you’re coming in expecting a cinematic or visceral experience.
I would consider The Witcher 3 a masterpiece as well, far from a linear experience. And I love Fallout, so I know what a good turn based compat rpg is like. And few games have had me so on the edge of my seat as Xcom 2, so I know what an excellent turn based combat system is supposed to be.
BG3 just doesn’t live up to that. The polish fails it, and the combat is just not very fun. The role playing is excellent as long as the other things don’t get in the way, which it does.
Is it possible to block a domain without blocking the OP? I'm sure they're a nice person, but they post the dumbest rage bait articles, and I'm sick of seeing them in my feed.
I think the ones that bother me more are the ones that are rage bait for a thing that the OP hasn't even experienced themselves. Maybe everyone else enjoys X and you find an article that summarizes your feeling on it, so you post that article and say how you share that position. That's all well and good. But posting an article that's angry about FFXVI's depiction of slavery, even though OP has no first-hand experience with the game to say if the article is full of shit or not; that bugs me. I don't know how many of the topics the OP has first-hand experience with, but I know they have none with FFXVI, and all of these articles are just designed to get people angry about something. Plenty of games have slavery in them without having to make their story about slavery being bad; we know slavery is bad. If OP has a problem with it after playing the game and that article sums up their thoughts, then it's okay to post that article. If OP is sincerely as pissed off about every one of these things that the articles they post are pissed off about, then maybe I should block them, because they'd have to be a miserable person. We also don't need 3 slightly updated posts about Baldur's Gate 3's split-screen not working on the Series S.
I post things that I think can get people talking and spark conversations along with things I think are interesting. I posted this, for example, because of the way it was talking about how gamers can get tribal and make it so you can’t seriously talk about a game when that happens because of how some folks lose their shit when you try.
It starts conversations because it's designed to get people angry. It's the kind of engagement-driving Twitter nonsense that the fediverse doesn't rely on. Try shooting from the heart with your own opinion in a self post rather than just posting the most outrageous thing someone said on the internet today.
I mean if you look at the post history, OP has posted a LOT of things, but also posted two mary sue articles with kind of inflammatory takes on BG3, and Starfield. So I would not say they specifically have been posting rage bait.
They are just a super poster, they post just tons of gaming articles that strike their fancy, which is cool it keeps this community fresh, but it’s not always good, just is what it is, I won’t complain really because it’s not like I’m much of a poster.
Is it possible to block a domain without blocking the OP?
You mean, block the domain of the link? Maybe you could do that with a keyword filter in an app. Unfortunately it’s not a native Lemmy/kbin function (yet, AFAIK).
On Steam I have 150+ hours and in my achievements I see that only 0.7% of players have touched 100 planets.
So I don’t think that people are being honest and/or don’t really understand how big the game is.
This game is huge. I spent apx 40 hours just surveying systems. And I can for sure say that the prog gen is very well done. Very well especially when comparing to other space games and when specifically talking about POI integration. Every POI looks like it was built there, with minor glitches and imperfections people with less hours would not even notice. The POIs feel balanced especially when the environment is taken into account.
At 100 planets you really begin to understand the breadth of it. The planets I have been on have anywhere from 3-10+ POIs and you can “push” the invisible wall to prog gen more POIs which I understand breaks some immersion but I am fine with it. Some moons are devoid of anything, some have life, some have POIs, and some don’t. The planets typically have at least 3-5 resources and 3-5 flora and fauna. 6+ is common enough as well. While patterns may emerge between systems, it still feels pretty random and balanced.
And again, this game is massive. I haven’t even seen nearly all of the systems which I imagine will hold some easter eggs.
Lastly, this game is meant to be played slow. It’s an explorer game. You can’t rush or speed run this one. Sure some of the stories suck, yet plenty are good. Just like real life.
I can’t wait to see if someone does an “all systems surveyed” video. Because even if you have your surveyed maxxed you have to scan at the surface too. Unless it’s a gas/ice giant.
I have about 120 hours and I also haven’t touched 100 planets. I don’t see the point in it, when they are mostly empty with randomly generated content that by now I’ve seen every possible thing that can exist, I’d just be seeing more of the same; exploring the same handful of possible base configurations across hundreds of planets isn’t really exploring. None of that stuff is interesting, and the stories and dialogue aren’t very interesting either. It’s exactly what I expected, and I guess I just don’t want that anymore. I want them to actually improve the formula and gameplay, and stop making the same exact game with a different coat of paint.
My experience is kinda the exact opposite, I hate how repetitive the planets are and stopped exploring them besides setting up resource collectors.
What I love about the game is the questing and ship building aspects, there is so much depth to what you can do with your ship that it’s kind of ridiculous that it’s such a small part of the game otherwise.
is it impossible to have a balanced conversation about starfield in particular, or does the internet ad economy tend to exclude the middle of every conversation in favor of loud antagonism and engagement bait?
"An honest conversation about Starfield needs to come from judging the game for what it is. And the game itself is … fine, I guess? A recent Kotaku article articulates in more detail how Starfield isn’t “humanity’s greatest achievement,” but it’s an enjoyable game and that’s fine. The menu system is extremely clunky and the aforementioned encumbrance issue is still there—all systems that haven’t changed in decades. Whether it’s deliveries or the fate of the galaxy, nobody else seems to do anything but you, the player. Just because these are hallmarks of past Bethesda games doesn’t mean that they get a free pass.
And herein lies the problem. Because Starfield is so similar to Bethesda’s previous offerings (for better or worse), Bethesda “fans” are pushing back against critiques of the game as a critique of all Bethesda properties. Looking at Sterling’s video about encumbrance again, the online defense of the game’s issues boils down to fans saying, “I can’t tell you why. I just do.” This is indicative of the lack of thought that Bethesda actively encourages in their games."
Yeah, that article does a good job at summing up the issues here. It really shows that maybe we need to have a broader conversation about how most past Bethesda games are worse in retrospect, actually. Starfield is helping to exemplify and point out that.
Tia Nadiezja over in the comments there also has good points:
"Bethesda games get a pass on serious, game-breaking problems that would kill games from other companies. Skyrim still, a decade and more after its original release, two full remasters in, has more glitches and bugs than Mass Effect: Andromeda or Cyberpunk did at launch, and those bugs did serious damage to those games' reputation.
Throw in the horrific treatment of staff by Bethesda's management and the open transphobia they've displayed, and people should not be playing this bad game. Have some standards, folks!"
That second paragraph has nothing to do with the quality of the game Bethesda Studio made though, not that Bethesda Softworks/Zenimax don’t deserve criticism for the HR issue, but it’s not fair to put that on Todd and his team.
I feel that the problem right now is that Starfield can be both considered a Game of the Year contender as well as an absolute waste of money and time for different people, and they can both be completely correct based on their personal preferences.
Personally, I’ve already played all the Starfield (~45h) I’m likely to play for a long while. It turns out that the majority of the gameplay - random exploration, radiant questing, etc - are things that absolutely bore me, and the crafting/construction/research systems are far too rudimentary, pointless / siloed from the rest of the game, and clunky to keep me particularly interested either. So for me it’s a very mid game, something I’d at best recommend picking up at a significantly discounted sale a few years from now - when there’s enough mods to actually make it interesting.
On the other hand, some people I’ve spoken to turn out to absolutely love the radiant questing and proc-gen worlds, a few of them now having more than twice as much time as me in the game - and still loving every second they can spend in it.
The inventory system was acceptable 20 years ago when 1024x768 was a good resolution. Today it’s bad, and I don’t understand why some people can’t just admit that. It’s kinda telling that after an hour or so of play I started to look for mods to fix my pain points. Nearly 400k people are using the mod StarUI Inventory. I have an ultra wide monitor, and I have to configure my FoV in an ini file. It’s also an HDR monitor… I have to disable HDR on because it’s basically unplayable right now. Flashlight reflections on anything close to shiny are blinding.
The procedural generation doesn’t deserve the praise it’s getting. It’s no where near as complicated as people think. It’s not generating the terrain, it’s just picking from a set of giant pre-made tiles and dropping some rocks and trees on them. It’s not generating the buildings, just picking from a set of pre-made buildings. It’s not even filling the buildings procedurally… I had 2 quests in a row that used the same building. Identical building map, same robot you could reprogram near the front door. Same barricades, same small safe on a desk with the same 2 digikeys on a table just around the corner… There’s only so many cave maps too, but it does look like they block off some of the tunnels with rubble so it feels like more. I explored 2 caves in a row that had the same map, with the same safe up on a cliff you have to jump to.
It’s not ‘bad’, but it’s not as good as it should be. Once you start seeing it, you can’t un-see it and the vast amount of content shrinks. It makes me a little sad knowing how many people worked on this, and how long they worked on it, that we didn’t get more out of it.
Nearly 400k people are using the mod StarUI Inventory.
I love the overall experience, the vibe, the story, etc… but just like Skyrim the UI is trash. Bethesda sucks at UI, especially inventory UI. SkyUI was mandatory when I played Skyrim. I feel the same about Starfield. Same shit inventory mgmt. I still love the game. Hate the UI. I’m on the gamepass version and haven’t even looked to see if I can mod it yet (I’m assuming I can’t).
Eh to each their own. I very much prefer the inventory in a tabular format with all the useful details, up front, that I can sort by. And I’m very much a fan of the value/weight column.
I read this as someone being real mad that the game is chaotic, and it’s like, that’s the best part about the game to me? There’s no ACTUAL DM, so the next best thing is what in my mind I’m calling the “death loop” system, just being able to go back and load a different save. At a game table the DM would, within reason, find a way to work with PCs being ridiculous; since it’s not possible to truly replicate that, the game just embeds chaos in the decision trees instead. That’s literally what makes it so fun. Most of the time the game is telegraphing what the real dumbass choices are, but I like how it’s not always immediately obvious. It keeps me on my toes. And sometimes I just save before choosing the stupidest option simply because I want to watch that shit play out.
I just feel like they’ve fundamentally misunderstood the point here.
No doubt. Enjoy your video games the way you want to enjoy them. I picked up RDR2 again recently, got to the point where you’re supposed to break Micah out of prison, and I’m just like, fuck that guy. I’m going hunting and playing dress-up.
It's a mechanically reasonably modern (it feels very comparable to Deus Ex or Cyberpunk gunplay/stealth wise, with better perk/level-up design) Bethesda RPG. You have to fly around more because it's set in space and most of space is empty, but there are still a lot of places to go and it's easy to get sucked down a rabbit hole.
My complaints are pretty mild. I'd like some kind of speeder for the empty "run a mile" bits, I miss the aimless wandering of terrestrial maps and kind of wish there had been some places set up to feel like that, and I occasionally see issues with texture loading. But it's the game the direct said it was going to be, and I'm personally very happy with it (though if it could get cleaned up enough to run a little better on my steam deck I wouldn't complain).
Exactly. I went in blind. No trailers, no interviews, no hype. All I knew was it was a Bethesda space game. It started off slow, but after about 12 hrs (half of which was me goofing off and gun running for money), I’m starting to really like the game.
Seeing a trashcan explode into a tesseract-can is pretty funny, albeit a bit concerning about what other props have multiple copies embedded in them. I do hope Bethesda seriously re-evaluates their stance and does some optimization and scrubbing. The game runs ok on my system, but my card should not be screaming as hard as it is.
From what I’ve seen and heard, Starfield is on par with Fallout 3. I can’t imagine being upset about that. Fallout 3 is great. Seems like some people wanted it to be No Man’s Sky + Star Citizen + Cyberpunk and like… no, it’s a Bethesda game. You know what that means already. I’m looking forward to picking it up and playing it, as I’ve always enjoyed their games for the weird sandboxes that they are.
"if you just take it for what it is without thinking what you wanted it to be"
Why would I do that for any video game? With that mindset, you could claim any game is good, because you aren't actually engaging with its content on the level that it deserves.
I had no expectations going in (wasn’t planning to play it) and came out having fun. I don’t know what expectations you or anyone else had, but maybe those expectations are what ruined the game. I don’t think anyone’s claiming the game is perfect (anyone who is probably is trolling), but it’s pretty dismissive of its strengths for people to say it’s unplayable (unless you legit can’t run it, which is fair). If all you focus on is what the game doesn’t do well, then you might as well only ever play perfect masterpieces because all other games will be a disappointment. If the price is a concern, it will probably go on sale eventually anyway, assuming you don’t find alternatives before then.
I do think there are a lot of flaws with the game, but those flaws have already been elaborated in great depth by others. Despite those flaws, game is still fun and has a lot of room for mods to come in and make it better.
I wanted it to be a big Bethesda RPG in space, and I got exactly that and I’m happy. People seem to have convinced themselves the game was going to be all kinds of things it never ever hinted at and now they’re upset it isn’t.
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