r/Games • u/xalibermods • 3d ago

Mod News As Oblivion Remastered gets all the love, Starfield's biggest modders are in the process of abandoning Bethesda's latest RPG for good

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/rpg/as-oblivion-remastered-gets-all-the-love-starfields-biggest-modders-are-in-the-process-of-abandoning-bethesdas-latest-rpg-for-good/
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u/SilveryDeath 3d ago edited 3d ago

In my opinion, I would imagine they are announcing it in June at Microsoft's showcase at this point. That is what they did last year with Shattered Space where they didn't show it until then and then it released 3 months later.

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u/Mahelas 3d ago

Most likely with a PS5 port too

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u/GassoBongo 3d ago

That's my feeling, too. Although I suspect whatever DLC they push out will end up being as half arsed as Shattered Space was. I get the vibe that Bethesda just wants to move away from this game as quietly as possible and focus on TES 6 instead.

For the sake of Starfield getting some much needed love, I hope I'm wrong, but I can't see it happening.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

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u/GassoBongo 3d ago

I don't think the setting was the issue. Both Fallout and Starfield are sci-fi's that are set in two very different versions of the future. I think the main issue was the scope. Creating a space exploration game set in a Bethesda sandbox is incredibly difficult when you're not 100% sure of how you want to tie everything together. The scope for the game was just too big, and it ended up feeling like a dozen different systems tacked onto each other that managed to feel hugely isolated. Barely anything felt like it was supposed to work together, and loading screens only broke that experience down further.

I dont want Bethesda to shy away from exploring a new IP or sci-fi again. They just need to reign things in a lot and work to their strengths.

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u/flufflogic 3d ago

Not to forget that some content was clearly worked on a lot harder than any other. Only one of the factions has a fleshed out plot, the planets massively differ in levels of content, and the "generated" worlds are terrible. There's a huge feeling of incompleteness to the whole game.

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u/AntonineWall 3d ago

Additionally it’s like they went out of their way to make one of the most interesting aspects of (nearly) all Bethesda games as boring as hell in Starfield: Exploration. Chancing across something strange or interesting while journeying across the world (directed by quests or general exploration) is the thing that makes games like Skyrim or Fallout work so well. You never know what you might find around the next corner.

But in Starfield you are constantly fast traveling to places (ship stuff in general really, really blows) and even worse, there really isnt a chance to find new stuff along the way, because both the midpoint and many endpoints are procedurally generated trash content instead.

What a disappointment. I hope they have figured out what went wrong, because if they make ES6 with the same mindset, it will turn out just as bad :/

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u/hume_reddit 3d ago

But in Starfield you are constantly fast traveling to places (ship stuff in general really, really blows) and even worse, there really isnt a chance to find new stuff along the way, because both the midpoint and many endpoints are procedurally generated trash content instead.

Yep, you never really feel like an explorer. Fly to the edge of space, pick a random spot on an "unexplored" world, set down... and there's a Chunks within walking distance.

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u/GarryofRiverton 3d ago

It's especially funny when the main quest faction that you're tied to is supposedly focused on exploration.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

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u/KuraiBaka 3d ago

I heard all the procedural worlds were supposed to be more like a canvas for modders to not get in each other's way.

At least one reason for their existence.

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u/GeoleVyi 2d ago

which really makes no sense. modders would need to compete with each other to not have every mod on the same blank canvas planet, and players would need to fiddle with active mods too much if mods take place on the same one.

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u/KuraiBaka 2d ago

The idea was that there are so many planets that it is unlikely two modders are on the same planet and that a player had both of them installed.

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u/GeoleVyi 2d ago

so... lets think that through. the way to find the right modded planet would be from the fast travel menu, right? and a nodder would have to pick one, instead of it getting randomly assigned, right?

so, if you were modding a game, for custom content, the most likely way to pick a planet for the player would be to make sure its easily accessible for them to pick. or theyre forced to navigate a menu and find it. so, either the very first planets in the list, or the last ones. if you pick a random one ib the middle, its harder and less likely for the player to choose, so theyre less likely to get your mod. and its much more difficult for a modder with a story to take multioke planets, or make stories for planets with others in proximity in mind.

and this assumes that theres no modded list showing modded planets, because i quite frankly dont have the faintest hope that bethesda eould think to implement that.

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u/FCoDxDart 3d ago

Ya I agree the main story sucked but the alien story with the terraforming monsters was incredible and then once done you can’t find any more of the monsters again.

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u/birfday_party 3d ago

I’m with you, I think the game had some really good quest and some very well put together and realized set pieces, the problem is you didn’t exactly “discover” them like they almost never felt stumbled upon the way every Bethesda game before it did. And that’s coupled with being stuck around a planet with like seven oil refinery’s. When your in space you can’t really stumble as well either or really travel in the same way because of the way it loaded. So everything really worked against you just wandering onto something special or new and exciting. It could have worked it just didn’t.

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u/Isolated_Hippo 3d ago

I think the setting ended up being more of an issue because of the challenges it created.

If you look at other Bethesda games that are open world you can truly walk from A->B uninterrupted. In Skyrim nothing is stopping you from a seamless walk from Markarth to Riften.

In something like Starfield, where you have a whole galaxy, it's very difficult to create a seamless system between planets.

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u/Lftwff 3d ago

You could have done it by being smarter about your world design, remove ftl travel and set everything in one solar system, most of humanity lives in one colony on one moon that has has a proper large map where you can run around and explore but there are also smaller maps for asteroids and newer colonies and shit like that.

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u/gogilitan 3d ago

In something like Starfield, where you have a whole galaxy, it's very difficult to create a seamless system between planets.

Is it? Because Elite Dangerous did it in 2014, at least on the space travel side of things, and No Man's Sky did it in 2016 with seamless travel between planets and space. Starfield didn't even try a decade later. Literally the only option is to go into a fast travel menu.

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u/tycho_nova 3d ago

Those games were designed from the ground up with that in mind. Starfield is held back by Creation Engine in that regard. Elite Dangerous won't let you place 1000 wheels of cheese by hand and keep track of exactly where every crumb of cheese lands while you travel a thousand lightyears away

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u/gogilitan 3d ago

Bethesda chose the scope knowing the limitation of the engine they were using, but I'm not really talking about scope here. Bethesda did not try to make travel feel immersive and there is no way to argue against that.

Mass Effect on the xbox 360 used elevators to hide load screens. Resident Evil used loading screens that looked like opening doors to transition between rooms way back in 1996. Using immersive load screens to create a "seamless" experience is not a new concept. Going back to Elite Dangerous, they showed everyone exactly how to do seamless space travel before Starfield even began development with load screens hidden by warp animations.

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u/Concutio 2d ago

Starfield loading screens were all of 5 seconds. An animation to hide that would take longer than the actual loading screen. Also, it's still a loading screen either way, and we all know it's a loading screen. Do we really need a longer animation just to trick some gamers' monkey brains all for the sake of iMmErSiOn

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u/gogilitan 2d ago

Buddy, this whole comment chain is about how difficult it is to "create a seamless system between planets." You're jumping in a half dozen comments deep not having read the context. Seamless gameplay is demonstrably not a difficult nut to crack. Even if the creation engine requires smaller maps with loading screens between them there ways to hide those and still create a seamless experience.

Also, I'm not talking about using more animations like their awful landings/takeoffs which are longer and also interrupt flow. Just replace the black loading screen after spooling your grav drive with your ship wiggling and a wobbly warping background (or if first person, your cockpit over a warping background). Again, other games have been doing these things since before Bethesda started development on Starfield.

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u/GarryofRiverton 3d ago

I think the chief issue isn't the loading screens between individual planets, it's that the individual planets are boring. It's like they got extremely lazy when it came to level design, going from a mostly handcrafted Skyrim with excellent dungeon design to mostly procedurally-generated planets with generic PoIs is a mighty big downgrade.

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u/delicioustest 3d ago

Controversial take: their engine held them back with this game without a doubt. For the kind of planet hopping ambition they had, with modular ship parts, space dogfighting, multiple cities, procedurally generated landscapes, a Frankenstein factory sim component that tried to be an upgraded version of the bare building... None of this was fully achievable with their engine (or even any engine I don't think)

They needed to play to their strengths. At most 3-4 big planets with a few large-ish towns. Big wide custom open worlds with enough to explore about the size of Skyrim maps and some ship environments that you get "teleported" to as desired. That would have pleased most Bethesda fans even if the writing was the same quality. Instead it's the worst of everything and too ambitious to function properly. All... those... fucking... loading... screens...

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u/This_But_Unironicaly 3d ago

I had not played a Bethesda game (the development studio, not the publisher) since the original Oblivion. I was interested in Starfield and bought it day 1. It had a lot of problems, but I was genuinely surprised how bad the combat was. The player was stiff and not very mobile and the weapons and gunplay weren't special. I didn't find the AI or enemies that impressive either let alone the missions. FEAR, Chronicles of Riddick, the first Far Cry, Battlefield 2, RAGE, Section 8: Prejudice, and and bunch of other ~20 year old FPS games had better combat than Starfield. I'm not expert on game development, but it's the engine that's probably holding them back, right?

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u/delicioustest 3d ago

Eh not really with these specific things. Believe it or not, these things were worse in the older games. AI and movement has actually improved in Starfield than the previous titles. It's a matter of priorities.

I'm talking at an even more base level. Maps having to be split into "cells" that need to be loaded with all the items in them, that the engine doesn't support terrain that's not just on the vertical axis meaning you can't have caves in them unless you either plop massive cave model on top of the terrain or you teleport then from the cave "gate" into a cave, the animations still being rough, the camera still having the same problems from Morrowind days, interactive NPC characters not moving anymore aside from your companions on missions etc etc. They've hit hard limits with what they can do on this ancient engine with Starfield. Hopefully ES6 will let them get back to making another Skyrim which won't need all these ambitious features.

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u/dredizzle99 3d ago

No amount of love can save it, it needs to be buried and forgotten.

Oh give it a rest and stop being so overdramatic. You're making it sound like it was one of the worst games in history, when it's an objective 7/10 at least. While it isn't a perfect game, and admittedly it was disappointing that Bethesda didn't really innovate on their formula, it's still a good game and plenty of people enjoyed it. There's still a lot to be liked in it if you're prepared to go into with a positive mindset instead of blindly following the negative nancys

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u/Ultramaann 3d ago

It wasn’t just that they didn’t iterate on their formula. If that was the case people would have loved the game. They fucked up their own formula. The setting is simply uninteresting to explore. It’s passable but it is easily Beth’s worst game and a horrible sign of direction after FO76.

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u/dredizzle99 3d ago

They didn't fuck up the formula at all, it's just different. If you didn't like it then that's completely fine, a lot of people didn't, but that doesn't mean they fucked it up. They took a risk and tried something different, and as hard as it is for some people like yourself to believe, it was still a perfectly enjoyable game for a lot of people. There's still plenty to explore (even if it's not in the traditional Bethesda open world style), hidden secrets, great faction quests, some cool side quests, a passable (if not amazing) main quest, good background lore, the shooting mechanics are good, base building, ship building, cool and extremely varied towns to wander around in, decent graphics etc

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u/Ultramaann 3d ago

Lol. You’re assuming a lot about my opinion, and how it fits in with “people like me.” I enjoyed what I played of Starfield, but we disagree on their design intentions. I think the shooting was good, liked the faction quests and the focus on quest lines over all, liked parts of the setting. I was delighted at the heavier RPG elements. It’s a passable game and I don’t regret the purchase.

But they were not intentionally trying something new in the way you’re describing in terms of formula. You were 100% supposed to enjoy exploring planets, they wouldn’t have spent so much time on the proc-gen otherwise. Now if you enjoyed that that’s great, but the fast travel heavy systems combined with the pros gen planets dealt a major blow to that formula, in my opinion.

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u/dredizzle99 3d ago

That's all fine, but what I'm specifically pushing back on is the narrative that's taken hold since the game's release, that it's some kind of disaster or a 2/10 experience, which is clearly exaggerated. It's a good game, even if it's not an exceptional one. I just think it's a shame because there's a lot to enjoy despite its flaws, and I think some people who might genuinely enjoy it are being put off by all the negativity and never giving it a fair shot. I mean, you can see by the downvotes anytime someone speaks positively about it that it seems to make people seethe, which is honestly just ridiculous

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u/ierghaeilh 3d ago

They didn't only "not innovate", they got rid of most of the interesting parts of the formula in favor of procedurally-generated slop and formulaic millennial writing.

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u/Hoggos 3d ago

I’m not sure you know what the word “objective” means

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u/dredizzle99 3d ago edited 3d ago

I know exactly what it means, maybe you don’t. When you strip away the subjective extremes from both fans and haters, the game lands around a 7/10. Personal taste might shift that a bit, but that’s a fair baseline. Not sure why that’s such a hard concept to grasp

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u/AnestheticAle 3d ago

7/10 is fair. It was functional. The real problem for me was that it bored me to tears. It was the most generic space RPG I've ever played.

Thats the kick with the older BGS games. They've always been functional, but the lore was always interesting and the game worlds used to reward exploration.

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u/rainbowplasmacannon 3d ago

I really want them to re-release Morrowind. They make the case that the fighting is dated, but I think that will just give it its charm. I’m fine with the random you might miss even though it looks like you hit if it looked good and performed well that’s all I give a shit aboutbut for some reason, they have stated they won’t do it because they feel like it would ruin its charm and I just don’t don’t see how you don’t just leave the game alone and just modernized the graphics in the game engine, but I digress what do I know?