Overall pretty valid criticisms, I am able to enjoy the game pretty well because my expectations were very tempered, and I still find it to be enjoyable in most of the Bethesda ways I've come to expect, which is really a culmination of too many small touches for me to exert the effort of writing down and cataloging.
The only thing I'll say to all of that is that when you said that the writing quality wasn't what we expect of Bethesda or a mature game, that's a bit silly. I'm a Bethesda fanboy, basically, and even so I've only ever expected serviceable to middlingly poor writing out of any of their games, and that's about what I feel the internet expects as well, not that that makes the criticism invalid, the writing is... well, serviceable at best or middlingly poor at worst, and I don't really come in with any expectations for good writing out of a game rated mature, either.
All a mature rating means is whatever specific traits are listed on the rating, leisure suit Larry box office bust is rated mature, and that game's writing is not emotionally mature by any means.
You are correct about most of these issues, though. Somehow, by sheer amount of story content and stuff to acquire and build, I'll probably still spend about a hundred hours in it before modding, and modding will probably take it to unknown lengths. I do believe when Todd Howard says the game was made to be played for a long time that he's indirectly talking about the mod support and the game's premise and interplanetary setup being the most ripe for user generated content, and I believe that that'll add much beyond the game's natural life, in an even larger ratio than older Bethesda games, which is its own possible criticism.
Even still, I'd have to say that the game lets down on enough critical fronts that it'll be my least favorite Bethesda game, with the top two spots going to Oblivion and Fallout 4, for me, personally. I do also have to admit, when I look at the big picture, getting more than a hundred hours of enjoyment out of a game, even for the full $70, is good value for time spent, to me, and I do enjoy the game. I don't enjoy it massively, but I can spend time in the world and accomplish tasks and feel satisfied, or enjoy the gunplay or conversations enough that I can't complain.
I've bought other games of higher critical opinion that I spent far, far less time in, and didn't get the same amount of cumulative enjoyment out of, because they just don't tap into my brain in whatever primal way that Bethesda games fit in, even Starfield, puzzlingly enough.
That's the problem with criticizing Bethesda games. The aspect of mod compatibility and creation is at once one of its greatest strengths, and also its most obvious and provocative criticisms, and the line between the two is very difficult to distinguish from an objective point of view.
That'd be if you're crazy enough to not do any of the major quest chains or general side quests, those almost entirely take you to unique areas with their own exploration outside of the random exploration ones that you find just by exploring the galaxy.
I think it points to a larger issue with the game, which is being able to to distinguish and access the kinds of content that you want. You could easily randomly explore and end up seeing the same installation three times, or you could also randomly find other quests and go explore three unique locations and dungeons in a row instead. There is absolutely a large amount of unique content to play, though, it's disingenuous to say otherwise.
Nice to get a general update on how Adventure Mode is coming. Ive never been able to get into Fortress Mode, so I think the steam version of adventure mode will be a good gateway for people to be able to play Dwarf Fortress without just getting into real complicated fortress setups out of the gate
Ahh, your wording of "re releasing the remake" confused me.
I feel the only reason Atlus is doing it this way is because they can squeeze more money out and that they've set the precedent since Persona 3, so the worst people can say is "they've been doing it this way since the PS2"
FES wasn't a remake, just additional content re released. I would much rather it was included in this new version of the game, but bringing 3 "up to scratch" with where 5 put the series would require a huge revamping of the game, so I can accept FES being additional content later. I'd rather DLC than a new version of the game, though.
A top favorite for me, for sure. I love the art style of the station, the zero gravity sections, the exploration of it all, the different skills you can use and how that plays into the story, the combat feels good, the premise is at its core interesting and good sci Fi, it just ticks so many boxes.
Picked up Might & Magic Clash of Heroes, which is basically an RPG turn based version of a match 3 game. Pretty fun so far, I really love these RPG combined takes on simple puzzle games, like Gems of War, Puzzle Quest and such.
There's pieces of that in Everspace, I could totally see your game working and being pretty fun in a similar manner, less arcadey than Everspace, but still accessible
Damn dude, now I'm actually remembering base maintenance in online competitive games where you play a single character at all. Back in the day I used to enjoy that in Command & Conquer Renegade. Id hang back and repair people's vehicles and the base when it came under attack.
Now I'm just imagining AC Black Flag, but Waluigi just replaces Edward whole cloth, just does all the voicelines and everything, everybody else just pretends he's a normal guy.
As a video game you control it, you can explore the world, you can increase or decrease the pace, you can blow through for a surface level casual experience, or you could find collectibles or logs that may expand on world lore, the type of stuff that is either wholesale more thoroughly expected from a book, or cut from a movie for pacing, these things can now be in a player's control on a case by case and player by player basis.
Parts of a story can be affected by choice, even when heavily scripted. Spoilers for The Last of Us, but near the end Joel is required by by the story to get Ellie back from the Fireflies, and you can justify his motivations for what he has to do to yourself or not, but at the peak moment where he actually finds her, after killing endless soldiers that fired upon him, he encounters surgeons who were about to work on Ellie. The player can decide for themselves whether they kill the surgeons or let them live, and not in a dialogue option way, but just based on whether you actually shoot them or not, and that choice can say things about both the player or possibly the player's mental image of Joel.
That's a relatively small example, but only video games can provide these sorts of small divergences in experience affected by player choice, and of course that experience is altered in the tv show version of that game, because its not possible to deliver it in the same way.
You play games to experience a mechanical challenge or expression of your intent and skill, but that doesn't mean other people don't go to games to experience story, whether that's a mostly pre-written experience like The Last of Us, or a story told by the player's statiscal build and gameplay choices, like Mount & Blade.
Even something you'd expect to be heavily pre-written, like a visual novel, can break the normal flow of time and events to allow or even require you to revisit previous sections and allow new choices that change the path and ending of the game, like 999.
What you consider the ideal video game just isn't what everybody does, and that's awesome because video games are such a massive and malleable medium that they can accommodate for all of that. You can enjoy Doom and Super Meat Boy, and other people can enjoy Phoenix Wright and Dear Esther. There's no art police that said three types of mediums are enough or ideal to express everything, the market and humanity decide that, and we decided collectively that video games can do story in new and interesting ways, too.