Well no shit. He figured out that as long as you never “release” a finished game, you’re not going to be blamed for “bugs” while still collecting money on in-game purchases.
There’s a reason he made sure that the in-game store was perfected and ready to go long before the game was anywhere near completed. It’s been the plan ever since he and his team realized that the ultimate scope was likely out of their reach.
That’s because Bethesda’s Creation Engine is a decrepit old shack being held together with random patches and so-called “upgrades”. They’ve needed a completely new engine since FO4/Skyrim, or at least just adopt Unreal. Creation Engine is too old and slow to be capable of that kind of seamless play.
The greater sin for me was that Starfield laid bare all the flaws with every other Bethesda game.
The pseudo-choice that doesn’t really make any difference to the story. You can do every faction’s quest line. Making a choice doesn’t preclude you making a different one once that quest line is done, nor does it have any effect on those other questlines going forward. Choosing the Freestar Rangers should, if not preclude you from joining the commonwealth, then at least have come up in the conversation when you’re trying to convince the Freestar Ambassador to open the archive (for example).
The inevitable stat building in the same direction because it’s simply the easiest way to play the game. You always end up a stealth archer. You always end up a sneak sniper, etc… You can try your best to spec for something else early on, and then quickly realize that it’s not really all that much fun.
The impermanence of being a bad guy. Pay your bounty and suddenly everyone forgets.
In other Bethesda games, the storylines and atmosphere and sidequests were generally enough to forgive this kind of thing. But Starfield was so humdrum that you couldn’t help but be annoyed by the same quirks that you forgave in other games.
God how badly do I want to see a remaster/remake. So under rated. With a bit more fleshing out (It’s a pretty short, pretty linear experience) it could easily compete with the mechanics in Homeworld.
Maybe. But I’d imagine it’s an attempt to force Putin to move some troops around; taking them from other areas to defend this new front.
In Russia, Linux forks you!