Bethesda seems pretty unique in that people who don't enjoy their games will still keep playing every new release. Imagine if like, Total War had a dedicated community of people who do not like Total War games at their very core but have still played every game since Medieval 2 just to complain that, yep, it's still Total War and they still don't like it. "I can't believe it! It's basic grand strategy with real-time battles again!" It sure is.
There's obviously much to criticise with Starfield and a lot to analyse in how they might have fucked up badly by making the central gameplay loop harder to access than in their previous games, but I don't get why people who haven't enjoyed any Bethesda game since MW/Oblivion would even try to play one at this point. "Oh god, I bought a bag of Doritos and yet again it turns out there's Doritos inside!" Correct.
Im going to talk about my experience with Bethesda games:
I have only finished three Bethesda games in my life:
- Fallout 3
- Fallout 4
- Skyrim
Games that I played a lot but never finished:
- Oblivion
- Morrowind
Games that barely played:
- Daggerfal Unity
- Currently Starfield
I have analized why I haven't finished more Bethesda games and the answer was:
- Combat sucks
- Story, narrative and general writing is ass
- Presentation of said bad writing is even WORSE
The three games I finished: FO3, FO4 and Skyrim
I only liked the Fallout games, Skyrim just finished because I felt the obligation to do so but IMO it's the worst TES game ever created.
The Fallout games hooked me immediately because FO3 had this gritty sad world where you had to survive and felt like an actual survivor, I remember the quests were much better than Skyrim and the story too.
FO4 had great gameplay improvements and I enoyed the settlement mechanic (i wish they had been attacked more often and not spawning enemies in the middle of it) it felt more "happy" than FO3 and that is why I prefer FO3 because the atmosphere and feeling like an actual survivor. FO4 BTW did a ton to improve presentation and in Starfield they seem to gone back again.
The VATS mechanic immensely helped me to like the combat, I just love those cinematics this is why I just love FO3 and FO4, VATS really helps me to bypass the shitty Bethesda combat.
I was in love with
Oblivion and I will go back to it at some point because
I think its the better balanced TES that still has some Morrowind in it but the combat is a bit better than Morrowind.
I also was in love with
Morrowind when it was launched in xbox, I couldn't play it myself because at the time I didn't own a pc or an xbox (was a ps2 owner) so I watched my cousin play it and I was so jealous of him for that game, played it like 2 years ago with my GF with a multiplayer mod and it felt super dated,
the combat was just horrible but I did was amazed by the enchanting and the spell creation mechanics but the horrible combat just bored me.
I think Bethesda games DESPERATELY needed:
- Better combat
- Better writing
- Better presentation
So far it seems only the combat is a bit of an improvement and not much, its as basic as any shooter but the other two parts are still bad specially the presentation, when are they going to stop putting static NPC's when talking, they barely move or express anything with their bodies, compare the dialogues with the ones in BG3 and they are night and day.
The strong aspect of Bethesda games has always been the exploration, even Skyrim still has a very strong exploration aspect and they fucking gutted their only strong point in starfield so what do you think is going to happen?
People will notice more the other 3 points I mentioned: bad combat, bad writing and bad presentation.