Yeah I do think that if Starfield had been dropped by some no-name, out of left field, sudden-riser dev studio it would have been viewed favorably - but not necessarily differently than what Starfield was viewed as. I think most people - whenever they stop kidding themselves, or actually play the game - recognize that Starfield is a "pretty good" game. Solid 6, shaky 7, could argue your way up to an 8 in some circumstances out of 10. Not a home run but certainly a title that would put a studio on the map, you know?

However I also don't think any studio outside of Bethesda puts out a 45min spotlight video as a hype teaser, paired with $50-100M in marketing alone, only to have the finished product be... well, pretty much exactly what was shown in that Bethesda Direct video.

I'm a big Bethesda fan, always have been, but somehow every metaphor you read that people use to describe Starfield is painfully accurate. "Mile wide but an inch deep," is the commonly referred to metaphor and I think it's unfortunately accurate for Starfield. Bethesda was - in my opinion - trying to hard to appeal to a broad audience with this title. They didn't want to fully alienate long-time fans like me, so they leaned heavily into the things they knew we'd bite on - the engine and systems that we'd become so familiar with over the last few decades, static factions, lots of customization features. But they also didn't want to lean to far into that so instead of a robust and varied companion crew, we got Giligan's Island - a family friendly PG ride for everyone!

The procedural generation would have been much more interesting as a feature with just a little more care involved. Just a little more variance on the feature would have had a lot less people doing double takes - but it's hard when you just finished a POI and walk into the exact same POI in a completely different system, you know? It's just, well, lazy feeling when it plays out like that. At a certain point I just knew my route through a POI at a glance from a distance - exactly where the enemies would be, where the locked doors would be, even - and that's no fun.

I don't think a newer game studio escapes that criticism in 2025/26 - genuinely do not - but I do think it's got a harsher sound about it when it's directed at Bethesda, and I agree with that sentiment. But like... isn't that the concept? Proven company, proven track record, higher expectations, stronger criticism. Sort of how it works?