Bethesda's Game Design Was Outdated a Decade Ago

I have made not one but two separate videos  claiming that blank's game design is outdated and while I'm very proud of those videos and I  pretty confidently stand by those critiques I wasn't planning on ever using the same outdated  title again because I just didn't want it to become this gross youtubery Series where I'm just  the outdated guy what is up Gamers welcome back to part 39 of outdated stuff today we're going  to be taking a look at this expired banana on my counter if that ain't out

dated then you better  call the dog catrick cuz it must be raining cats and dogs out here but when thinking about the past  10 years of Bethesda game studios catalog Fallout 4 Fallout 76 a billion more versions of Skyrim  and now Starfield there is not a more succinct or accurate word to describe how I feel about  these games I have personally made things that some people did not like and criticized and that's  great h honestly that's fine that's exactly how it should be why am I saying that rig

ht now just  to say that I know what it feels like I want to make it clear that I have a lot of respect and  appreciation for the hardworking individual devs that crunch 12-hour days to release AAA games on  time that we all get to play thank you for making video games everyone who makes video games out  here in the prairie so I promise I don't mean to be hyperbolic or dramatic just for the sake of it  when I say I am truly baffled by Starfield it is seriously shocking to see just how little thi

s  game attempts to improve or even successfully reuse the same formula and same Frankenstein  game engine that Bethesda have been selling to their fans for well over a decade I cannot  understand how this is the space adventure Todd Howard has dreamt of making for 25 years and  cooked in the oven for eight but I wanted to try I really wanted to understand I wanted to  love this troubled game so badly and I stayed committed to this relationship sh for hours and  hours and hours ignoring every po

ssible red flag that came my way but I can't do it anymore and  I feel like I have to make this video If just purely for my own sanity no this one is for me  because this damn space game changed [Music] me people often describe Bethesda games as  Bethesda games but what does that even mean in 2011 I would have said open world action RPG  where you could go anywhere do anything good or evil Knight or wizard but you're definitely  going to be a sneak Archer like every single time without fail to m

e it meant giant world with  total player freedom to do what they wanted to do don't like someone shoot them in the face want  someone's stuff sneak behind their waist want to climb that mountain hump it on the face Fallout  3 was my first Betty game after convincing my dad that no I do dude it's not violent at all you you  don't have to be uh violent you could choose to be good and talk your way out of every situation  which was total [ __ ] bull crap yes these games might be RPGs but they heav

ily lean on the action  part of action RPG can you sometimes do quests non-violently definitely but more often than not  your to-do list revolves around you killing people and things and spiders and Ghouls and there's  usually not a whole lot of wiggle room around that part A lot of the time your choices are  boiled down to okay so do you want to set him on fire first and then shoot him or just do them  raw if you play Fallout New Vegas made by obsidian those are some RPG ass RPG choices where I

feel  like the player has way more freedom to express themselves morally ethically whatever in a given  Quest but as much as I gush about New Vegas on this channel there is something missing in this  game when compared to Fallout 3 atmosphere I think Bethesda typically crushes that [ __ ] even though  New Vegas is a much better game mechanically Betty World felt a lot more engrossing to explore even  if a lot of the supposed Freedom promised to the player is kind of an illusion you know you can

't  actually kill anyone if they're an essential NPC for a quest line they just take a nap on the  floor still Bethesda does a really great job at making you feel like you're on this Grand  Adventure and the soundtracks dude oh my God the Skyrim soundtrack alone might be up there  with Chrono Trigger for like the greatest video game score ever made all of these songs make you  feel like you're living inside of an ancient blade made of W oh my God I'm getting really [ __ ]  tired of always coming

home to this dude saying some more stupid crap hi I'm Jakey Jakey and  Jakey attorneys at law thanks to oper GX for sponsoring this video is your browser boring  does it make you want to go outside no don't go out there there's wolves out there oper GX is  a web browser for gamers that you can customize in the GX Door located over here you can get  a variety of browser mods such as my own that have their own background music keyboard sound  sounds opening and closing of tab sounds theme and col

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hen I upload a new video  in 3 months use this link located down below to download Opera GX today thanks again to Mr  GX for sponsoring this video and now let's get on back to whatever the hell super n j64 is he's  Counting Stars let's see if he counts all 120 of them he probably didn't even do Tik to clock yet  cuz he's a worthless piece of [ __ ] but because Bethesda games are so unique and so dearly beloved  by so many fans people often give them a free pass when it comes to certain issues be

cause eh it's  a Bethesda game what are you going to do issues such as da melee combat and extremely dated  gun combat even for the time brain dead enemy AI clunky UI that always have to be fixed with  mods optimization and performance issues that always have to be fixed with mods enough bugs to  fill aing terrarium that always have to be fixed with mods if any other AAA Shooter had the same  issues that Fallout 3 had where the guns barely even functioned and cast bullets from their mouths  like

spells from a wizard sleeve and the game ran at 6 frames per second on the PS3 because oops  you saved too many times don't do that people would Riot but because these issues are part of  a giant package and the appeal is usually greater than a sum of its janky Parts people just kind of  go what are you going to do it's a Bethesda game which sure maybe in 2008 maybe some of this stuff  could be ignored but it is not 2008 anymore hell it is not even 2011 my brother in a post Skyrim  world where

they have re-released that game so many times and it has sold over 60 million copies  now the whole but it's a Bethesda game excuse is you guessed it [ __ ] from a butt Fallout 4 was  when I could no longer stay blind to bethesda's strong reluctance to leave the caveman Stone Age  prehistoric time dude you can still feel all of the typical creation Jank underneath everything  you still had to edit an inii file to change the fov or turn off mouse acceleration the physics  were still tied to the f

rame rate the load times could still go on for an eternity but hey at least  they made guns function like kind of of actual guns this time which should be the bare minimum  for a firstperson shooter in 2015 meanwhile Halo's 14 getting ready for her winner formal simple  things for a shooter like swapping weapons or throwing grenades felt super unresponsive in wonky  like the game was constantly fighting you on every delayed input and again 2015 this this wasn't like  a long time ago but man I st

ill played the [ __ ] out of this game and it is the Fallout 4 is the  most barebones RPG where Fallout New Vegas went left toward old school traditional Fallout games  Fallout 4 was like all right so it's kind of like janky Minecraft but with guns which turns out is  actually pretty fun the gameplay Loop of exploring a detailed Bethesda World filled with cool stuff  getting Loot and supplies from fighting baddies and using Vats using those supplies to upgrade  your guns working on your settleme

nts with the janky ass Builder that also has to be fixed with  mods it was all pretty fun to me objectively my critic brain is like yeah this game has a lot  of flaws and the dialogue system really sucks and the perk tree sucks and the role playing  options are basically non-existent and the main story makes like zero sense if you stop and  think about it because if someone was searching for their kidnapped baby son why would they stop  and help a bunch of other families first and eat 100 Brad r

oaches but subjectively my Bethesda  brain is like oh boy I better scram up some more of these desk fans even with all its Jank  and there is a lot of Jank in Fallout 4 like any area downtown just straight up doesn't run well  at all for what it was I had fun with Fallout 4 but what it was was unfortunately a very Crystal  Clear sign that Bethesda was falling behind the times harder than ever before also I went to  kindergarten in first grade here and uh walked home from school one day and reali

zed we got out  early because of 9/11 I don't know why I'm talking about that right now I wish I could say I was  shocked when Fallout 76 turned out to be [ __ ] from a butt but dude dud I wasn't shocked at all  not trying to be on some cool guy [ __ ] but the second I saw the reveal presentation and how it  was going to run on the same janky ass engine that barely manages to work as a single player  game and now it's going to be multiplayer online like www.com type online yeah Todd and I'll be

a  monkey's uncle oh my sweet bimbo you have return you all know this story game comes out one of  the worst launches ever bug terrarium is like 16 times the detail Bethesda get super scummy  about refunds and then get super scummy about pushing these overly priced microtransactions also  cheaps out on the canvas bag that's supposed to be included in the collector's edition it was awful  Fallout 76 is like the poster child for taking advantage of a devout fan base and releasing  a clearly unfini

shed faulty product I'll see a lot of people online chalk up 76 is failure 2  well it wasn't Todd and his main team that made the game it was their there was their B Team  Bethesda Austin but I'm pretty sure that's not the full story according to several Anonymous devs  that worked on 76 as quoted in this Kotaku article that you should check out people from multiple  Bethesda Studios worked on this game senior staff from Fallout 4S team staff taken away from the  Starfield team staff taken away

from the redfall team at Arcane which Jesus Christ that's a whole  that's a whole thing on its own Jiminy Cricket and a jockstrap 76 as described in this article  sounded like a massive live service black hole that no one wanted to touch because the writing  was all over the bug covered walls that it was never going to end well but in typical AAA Game  Dev fashion QA teams get treated like total [ __ ] and upper management ignores issues raised and  continue to force everyone to Crunch toward th

is deadline they knew they were never going to make  and yeah Todd Howard may have not directed 76 but he's still listed as executive producer and he's  the one that went on the big stage and was like this is the biggest [ __ ] game we've ever made  it's 16 times awesome you're all going to nut yo run that John Denver joint and the pre-orders go  crazy and everyone's hyped out of their minds and then it comes out and it's atrocious and suddenly  now Todd is all yeah we knew it wasn't going to be

like a high Metacritic score game but you  know what it sold really well it's not about how it starts it's about what it becomes thank  you very much y'll run that John Denver Jo come on man according to that same article Todd was  very adamant on the whole no NPC's feature no matter how much the dev team pleaded that it was  an insane choice for Bethesda you know the studio most closely associated with NPCs but also maybe  Todd isn't the main bad guy responsible you know maybe he was just unde

r a lot of pressure from big  money investors of parent company zenax to make a live service Cash Cow that would exploit fans and  inevitably make a ton of money I don't know all the details but there's enough breadcrumbs to make  it insane to me that someone along the food chain with authority whether Todd or otherwise didn't  stop and adamantly scream hey uh let's maybe delay this game permanently but at the end of the day it  doesn't really matter regardless of whose fault 76 was the damage w

as done and the pressure was on  after an underwhelming and outdated Fallout 4 and an underbaked and severely malnourished Fallout  76 Bethesda really needed to reach for the Skyrim once again and dunk another classic into our laps  but Todd he don't play basketball he plays [Music] chess I was the kid I was writing games when I  was you know 12 whatever and uh the other kids in the block would say you know I'm going to play  quarterback for the Cowboys and I'd be like I'm going to make video ga

mes and everyone's going  to play them like you dork go back to the chess club Who's Laughing Now yes I was in the chess  club it's hard not to like Todd Howard he has this Michael Scott type Charisma that's weirdly  hard to resist and I find his story of repeatedly applying to Bethesda only to be rejected over  and over really inspiring cuz once he got his leather jacket ass wearing ass through that door  he would direct marind executive produce Oblivion direct both Fallout 3 and Skyrim love hi

m or  hate him the man's resume speaks for itself and good God would you look at that jacket for being  considered AAA Bethesda is not a very big Studio around 100 people made Skyrim and they currently  only employ like 420 people across all of their Studios for comparison at least 1,000 people  worked on GTA 5 before its release and 6,000 different people have worked on it since which is  crazy to me considering how slow GTA online still is on the one hand I think it's really impressive  that B

ethesda is much smaller than other bigname Studios because it means they must have some  really powerful paladins over there casting some serious Buffs but also when you're making that  AAA money and your games continue to come out janky as [ __ ] maybe hire some more fing people  to make your games actually function properly when you sell them for $70 One Source from that  same article said Bethesda is a big company that thinks it's a small company with a mentality  of well the worked in the '9

0s so we're just going to keep doing it I mean yeah after playing  Starfield that's definitely what it feels like boy I'll tell you what I I booted that some [ __ ] up  it was like it was like seeing an ex for the first time in eight years a poorly optimized ex who  struggles to have human-like facial expressions Starfield isn't even just Skyrim again but in  space which was always Todd's elevator pitch no it would be such an improvement if it was but  no this is not a Bethesda game based on the

definition the dumbass by the piano game earlier  that signature Bethesda open world exploration and sense of scale and freedom and that feeling of  ooh there's something interesting around every corner gone but J both there's like a thousand  planets how can it get any more open world than that yeah and you want to know what you do on 99%  of those thousand planets this You Walk and Walk and Walk and Sprint and jump and Jetpack jump  and get really good at watching your O2 Sprint to go up and

down and up and down there is no  Rover to drive there is no ship to fly you just Walk and Walk and Walk until you get to the most  copy pasted structure that you have already seen a bunch of times Starfield is the exploration  equivalent of holding the Player Two controller that isn't actually plugged in it is the illusion  of Planetary Exploration duct taped together by a thousand loading screens and a strong desire to  waste so much of your time let's talk about fast travel can you say fast t

ravel fast travel can you  say loading screen loading screen loading screen loading screen before fast travel after fast  travel loading screen fast traveling to complete a quest fast traveling to start a quest that's  so silly loading screen peekaboo loading screen can you say F travel wasting your time no wasting  my time yes 2023 Bethesda release this in 2023 oh no can you say leather jacket in other Bethesda  games you wanted to walk to your destinations because fast traveling meant you migh

t miss out  on some neat dungeon or cool unique structure or wacky enemy along the way not only is fast travel  highly recommended whenever possible in Starfield but it is straight up required you cannot fly  your ship from planet to planet or even on a single planet you can enter your ship with a nice  loading screen and then sit in your pilot's chair with a nice unskippable animation and then take  off with another nice loading screen and then pick your destination from space and fast travel 

there with another loading screen and then click on the planet to land with another loading screen  or if your destination is in space do another unskippable animation to dock your ship followed  by another immediate loading screen but hopefully if you've already discovered the specific  location you want to go to you can just fast travel straight there the second I realized I was  avoiding my ship whenever possible you know the central core part of a space exploration game it  was over the most

heartbreaking part is that the ship Builder is [ __ ] amazing it's like virtual  Legos it is by far the best new thing Bethesda did with this game but where do you get to fly  your ship that you just lovingly spent 3 hours making in orbit yay let's [ __ ] go if you want to  see your magnificent creation actually move around and fast travel on up to space and Float around  fighting bad guys and running away from cops with the awful bounty system which I will get to later  I will spend way too mu

ch time talking about that later what's really weird is that between the  different elements you can mine on planets and the different things you can prioritize within the  ship Builder there's enough breadcrumbs here to assume that at one point Starfield was probably  more of a survival type space game meaning that landing on a planet maybe served more of a purpose  than just sort of wandering around aimlessly maybe the temperature changes in extreme conditions  actually mattered more than they

currently do which is like not really at all the ship Builder  even has options to upgrade the fuel tanks or a grab drive so that you can jump further into  a system but if you don't upgrade those things that's fine too you'll just have to fast travel  to a closer system at first and then fast travel to the one you actually want to go to so upgrading  that stuff in your ship just saves you from seeing two loading screens and now you only see one how  is this game real Starfield has a planets an

d I wish it had like five yeah not every planet in  real life space would have a bunch of cool stuff on it either yeah duh but that's not my point my  point is that this is not really a good illusion of anything other than the unfortunate passage  of time no man's sky can also have some boring ass procedurally generated planets but you know  what at least you can actually fly to them playing Starfield is like watching a magician pull a  rabbit out of a hat but every time he's about to do it he's

like no you got to close your eyes  while I do it though but what about perform what I'm not a Best Buy Geek Squad looking ass don't  say I am Darfield may have been made with the shiny new creation Engine 2 but you ain't fooling  anyone with that two Todd you may have slapped a spoiler on it but it's still a [ __ ] geom Metro  I'm still editing an inii file just to change the fov or turn off mouse acceleration to make aiming  feel better I'm still clicking on doors and seeing that all too fami

liar Fade Out loading screen all  the time why did you not optimize this game for PC uh we did it's running great it is a nextg PC  game we really do push the technology so you may need to upgrade your PC for this game but it's  got a lot of great stuff going on in it and the fans are responding awesome all right Todd I  upgraded my PC but I still can't turn on HDR or even mess with the brightness settings even  though the Xbox version already has HDR and to get a decent frame rate I have to use

upscaling  but I have an Nvidia card and you only have FSR supported with no dlss oh someone already modded  dlss into the game within like a couple days oh programmers are making comrads of breakdowns  on Reddit detailing just how poorly optimized the game is nah Todd said it's optimized and  it's probably optimized I believe him I will follow my Nord brother into the Pearly Gates  of sovereign guard and finally graze my hand upon that Holy leather breaking news as of  November 15th Bethesda i

s finally patching Starfield adding an fov slider poorly implemented  HDR and much needed dlss support along with clear massive performance gains for both CPU and GPU  areas it's almost as if the game did in fact launch very unoptimized the timing couldn't be  better 2 months after everyone already stopped playing it this game hurts my stupid giant head  I can't understand it I can't seem to do anything right after experiencing this so-called game oh  my god I didn't even bring that up yet God d

amn it in Starfield you can build settlements and you  have more freedom than ever with the builder but there's not a whole lot of motivators to interact  with it other than harvesting resources from a planet largely void of life add that to the  super confusing structure of actually trying to connect your settlements across star systems  and all the Fast Travel screens in between and your ship cargo and your inventory and getting  over encumbered and in Fallout 4 it wasn't fun because the Build

er was good hell no it's  janky as hell and super frustrating but it was fun because you were bringing life back into  the apocalypse and building off of really cool existing unique structures so that the dumbass  settlers could take back the land but all of that was powered by the initial core desire  of actually w wanting to go out and explore and shoot stuff oh yeah that's right you shoot  guns in this game uh Starfield also has [Music] guns Starfield has perks just like Fallout 4  and one of

those perks is called rapid reload and it does exactly what you think it would do it  makes your reloads faster at least that's what it should do I'm a gamer I like going fast it throw  it on top send send me the bill it's on the it's on the house days later I'm playing the game and  I throw my last grenade I reload my gun and it's way faster than usual what's going on here come  to find out that perk hasn't worked the entire time I've had it because evidently if I have  any sort of throwable e

quipped rapid reload just doesn't work I thought maybe I was alone but  nope I looked it up and apparently it's a common bug that at least as of November 15th still  persists also you know that text that appears at the top top of the screen in Bethesda games  when you're doing stealth that says hidden not only does this 2023 game use the same barebone  stealth mechanics that are like 20 years old at this point seeing that text up top that's a perk  now and you can spend another whole ass perk po

int and I quote to upgrade the stealth meter which  just shows you if you're being close to being detected which is basically exactly what the  itical thing already did in sky but this is way better and worth spinning the point trust me  the Gunplay in Starfield is an improvement over Fallout 4 but that's like saying a bicycle is  an improvement over a Razor scooter it's still not an AK-47 the guns generally work a bit better  with less delay you're a bit more agile you have a jetpack which some

times that can be fun but as a  shooter in 2023 this game is still getting lapped by games from 2012 hell games from 2007 2004 I'm  serious sit down play Starfield for an hour and then go boot up Far Cry 3 or buy Bioshock or  Call of Duty 4 or any game in The Orange Box and then go back to Starfield and tell me how  it feels especially on controller it just feels wrong Fallout 4ce shooting was barely serviceable  only because of everything that surrounded it it worked good enough because you got

to explore  a cool map and frequently fight cool varied enemies using Vats in Starfield the cool map is  gone the enemies are sometimes varied but it is predominantly brain dead humanoid space pirates  that will just stand there and let you shoot them and Vats doesn't exist anymore so the act of  shooting someone needed to feel really really good throw in the still clunky melee combat the super  unintuitive UI of menus inside of menus and the d-pad weapon swapping from Fallout 4 because  appare

ntly having a weapon wheel might make the creation engine explode and what you have  is a worse version of something that you have already played eight years ago all right so what  about Quest Bethesda has always been so strong strongly associated with NPCs and quests here's an  example of the most common basic ass type of quest in Skyrim hey can you go to this dungeon and kill  a bad guy all right sounds good you know what I'm even just going to walk over there cuz it's not  that far wa what's

this a dragon in this economy well I mean I'm here I may as well ladder stall  Tomahawk the dragon real quick all right that's done um what what was I do oh right the dungeon  oh hold on a second there's a cave right here I mean I'm here 20 minutes later all right that  was a pretty cool cave and I I feel like I got some cool [ __ ] out of that uh anyways uh oh the  dungeon all right let me just stealth Archer these freaks real quick get some loot okay I'm done that  was a pretty enjoyable fun h

our of gameplay I just got to experience here's an example of the most  common basic ass type of quest in Starfield hey we lost our scientist friends can you go find him  we don't know where he is because we don't have any walkie takies or email or texting or or cell  phones in this in this planet in this world yeah sure I guess all right damn he's kind of he's  kind of out there whatever I'm sure some cool stuff will happen along the way 5 minutes later  man I sure am getting pretty good at spr

inting and jetpacking and you know I bet the cave will  have like a cool monster in it or something once I get there oh it's literally just you uh and  now I have to take you back with me well okay apparently I can just fast travel back but I don't  take you with me so I just went to tell you that your friends are looking for you and now you're  finding your own way back and going back so why the hell did I even need to come find you in the  first place what the hell even is this game dude I [ _

_ ] you not that type of quest pops up all  the time and even if it is an operation go rescue baby scientist it is something similarly mindless  and uninspired a lot of quests in Starfield just play out as a game of fast travel telephone  where you talk to one person and they're like hey go tell this person in another galaxy that I  said this and you're like okay and you go through several fast travel loading screens and land out  a place and go through another loading screen and then walk throu

gh a city and get to another place  and talk to them and then you finally talk to the person and they're like well tell them that I  said this and so you do all of that again and you go through all the Fast Travel loading screens  and the loading screens and the entering building loading screens and you're like all right well  they said this and it's like is this what we're doing now like if I'm like 8 years old and you  told me like take all the graphics and stuff away that like hey this is wha

t video games are going  to be like I'd be like what the [ __ ] and this game is not a super in-depth Choice complex  branching narrative Rich dialogue crpg like I don't expect that from Bethesda and that's  fine I I never have but if you're not that and you're also o not successfully doing the thing  that largely defines your games AKA satisfying and rewarding open world exploration then what the  hell even are you like I don't know what genre I would even call this game oh no I'm being hold up

  we're collect on a bounty oh man we're we'll talk we're going to talk about the bounty in in a bit  that's really funny timing all right well sorry gaming before the game came out Phil Spencer  Xbox guy uh said something along the lines of I don't remember exactly but it was like ah I  played it so many hours whatever I'm going full space pirate and I got excited when I heard this  because I love game systems that let you [ __ ] around and find out I'm sure some of you remember  how I obsessed

over The Wanted bounty system in Red Dead 2 because I just love pushing things  and trying to understand how they mechanically work i think i can confidently say that the bounty system in Starfield is far worse than in Red Dead 2 being a space pirate is so strongly discouraged that it is borderline impossible the first time you get arrested, you don't go to jail but this colonel or whatever I don't remember his name is like hey we don't actually want to  throw you in jail but we want you to be

an informant in the uh space  pirate Fleet departed style you [ __ ] rat" I saw there was an option that said "frick u im fighting my way off this ship" so obviously I quicksaved and then did that. it was a total blood bath  like I killed so many dudes and racked up such a high Bounty but I noticed that a lot of the  named NPCs wouldn't actually die when I shot them which was a bit concerning but I I just  kept on fighting and eventually I fought my way all the way into the cockpit and there was

  a second where I was like oh [ __ ] am I about to hijack this police ship and get the [ __ ] out  of here nope can't can't fly this ship and before people go in the comments and say oh it's cuz you  got to upgrade your pilot license thing nope you still can't fly it you can't fly this ship or  a whole lot of other ships for that matter no matter what just just like you can't kill a lot  of NPCs no matter what because Bethesda wants you to do space their way this ship bull ship  uh isn't exclus

ive to just that Quest either if you've played the game you know that a lot of  the times when you land on a planet another ship will coincidentally land around the same time and  you could see them and run over there and fight them and you would assume ah I just killed all  these Pirates all right logical Next Step loot the ship take the ship but a lot of the time not  every time but a lot of the time at least for me it just wouldn't let me most of the time I just  saw this prompt and I I didn'

t know why so that Bounty I mentioned during the shootout with the  space cops yeah it's very easy to quickly rack up a very high bounty in this game and whenever  you travel to a planet that has a major city they do a forced Contraband scan on your ship  before you can land do I even like video games anymore they also check to see if you have a  bounty in that star system Contraband can be hidden to help avoid detection on the scan but it  requires having hidden cargo space on your ship why am

I here why am I doing any of this normal  items you can pickpocket or steal aren't marked as Contraband but they are marked as stolen items  and they have this little red icon but Contraband icon Contraband Contraband items always have this  orange icon because it means they're extra illegal help me so let's start here say you want to be  a grimy little space Thief so you're constantly pickpocketing and stealing stuff wherever you go  in typical Bethesda fashion a lot of the time if you're sneak

ing in stealing you won't get caught  stealing hope you spent the perk point on the stealth thing but oops sometimes you just do get  detected even if no one is around to witness you murder that person except that person or no one  is around to witness you steal that cup except that cup suddenly everyone in the Galaxy knows  that it was specifically you that stole that cup even though apparently cell phones or email or  fax machines or texting don't exist based on the context of most of our [ __

 ] Quest objectives  I don't want to do this anymore please let me go so now you have a bounty in that star system  and then you're like well if I already have the Bounty then I I guess I'll just just keep doing it  if anyone gets in my way I'll shoot him cuz I'm a freak that's my identity now I'm a freak I wasn't  wasn't born this way but I was molded by Todd and his and his leather so you're traveling around  stealing stuff from all these planets trying to have a grand old time and your Bounty

is getting  pretty stacked but oh [ __ ] there's a main story mission in a city that you haven't been to yet  in a star system that you have that giant bounty in you get scanned the cops are pissed you can  choose to fight them off and grab drive fast travel away but if you want to ever enter that  City you're going to have to do something about that Bounty so you wor back and this time you're  like all right well I can't pay the bounty cuz it's insane so I guess take me to jail and when  you g

o to jail in this game the cops will not only remove every single item from your inventory  that was ever stolen which slowly lists away at the top of the screen one by one which this this  is never explained in the game as like some lore accurate space technology that tracks ownership  it's just magic where a cop four planets away knows that you stole this specific pen but your  punishment for jail time is an XP debt it will never lower your current level but it will erase  any current XP progr

ess that you've made towards leveling up and potentially even put you into  the negative as well if it's high enough which it will be this is kind of like how jail time and  Oblivion could randomly lower some of your skills Starfield says hey we know we can't actually Force  the player to sit in a jail cell but we want there to be some sort of consequence for being bad and  part of me is like damn that's actually kind of interesting and creative except leveling up takes  a long ass time in this

game for example to level from Level 10 to level 11 it's around 900 XP and  it only gets exponentially more grindy the higher you get so if you have a high Bounty which is not  hard to get you will be in this much debt have fun crawling out of that hole you filthy little  pirate [ __ ] it's also worth noting that much like a lot of stuff in this game this mechanic  is barely explained at all and the only way to realize that you are in XP debt or track it is to  look at the status screen I unders

tand having some sort of punishment for doing something bad and  getting caught I I really do but when leveling is this grindy and the perks you get from leveling  up don't actually work or just straight up aren't worth it in the game requires you to be scanned  in order to land on certain planets because you can't actually just [ __ ] fly the ship to the  planet in this godamn space game being punished this harshly for choosing a play style that is  supposed to be viable in this so-called RPG i

s just super disappointed Starfield would be a  disappointment regardless of whatever year it came out but unfortunately for Bethesda 2023 was  obscenely stacked with fantastic games in each of those specific genres that Starfield takes turns  cosplaying as it is an open world exploration game with little to no actual meaningful exploration  it is a glorified looter shooter that is still catching up to games that are now old enough to  be in high school and it is a role playing game with so so f

ew meaningful roles to actually play  in relationships to engage with I really want to like this game I am always going to cheer for  Todd and Bethesda because they have given me so many amazing memorable experiences for the  past 20 years that have largely influenced my love for gaming I want the next Elder Scrolls  game to knock it out of the park I will always root for anyone trying to make an ambitious video  game but after seeing what Bethesda has put out over the last decade I just couldn'

t contain  these thoughts and feelings any longer I hope this video was at least kind of interesting or  at the very least digestible in a way that sort of made sense even though I feel like I should be  in the psych ward if you could still see me right now thank you so much for watching my video  and I'll see you next time this is actually my off-road ball because when I was filming the  uh campfire scenes my dumbass didn't realized that a yoga ball that I've been using for like  6 years uh sho

uldn't go out in the woods where there's like prickly goat head things and I popped  a bunch of holes in it but fortunately my sister the same one that I stole the original yoga ball  from had another gray yoga ball uh that's like got a bunch of ribs on it uh so this my this my  off-road ball also I only realized recently that there's like no aliens in Starfield like big  eyed gray [ __ ] from signs not a single one