I haven’t played Starfield. But I have been amazed at the depth of Baldur’s Gate 3. You can see the handcrafted world every where you look. And this makes a world you enjoy spending time in.
I’ve played both for > 30 hours (200ish for bg3) and bg3 is so much deeper. Quests feel meaningful and have multiple options to complete, plus they’re not just go here grab this kill that quests. The facial/body rigging in bg3 is in a different league compare to starfield, Bethesda has always had wonky faces and lip sync but it just looks really bad coming from bg3’s full body/face mocap of real actors and then looking at starfield’s horse chomping wheat talking animation and washed out faces.
I will say starfields ships and guns are great, the guns feel good, customization is fun and impactful, ships are the same way. I could spend as long in the ship builder as I do character creation in BG3 and that’s great. Starfield has promise of modders can fix some of the jack and barrenness which I’m sure they will. BG3 doesn’t need modders help to be great
You’re asking the same question people have been asking Bethesda for 20 years.
At a certain point you have to come into a Bethesda game with an expectation of jank, that’s their “charm”, then modders polish the rough rock for a few years and you have a nice gemstone at the end of the ordeal. Is that a fair expectation for consumers? No not really. Is it ever going to change? Not likely, the company will fail before Todd makes them finish a game before releasing
That said the NPC interactions are incredibly sterile in comparison to the full mo-capped acting of the BG3 NPCs. The Starfield NPCs feel like mannequins just spitting out their lines.
That’s like 75% of the work for BG3. There’s absolutely some work implementing DnD mechanics into code and designing encounters, and obviously the assets for the world have to be created as well, but the vast majority of their time was spent on dialogue choices and designing the story in general.
It’s a great game for it, but we’re a good ways away from being able to do the same in an FPS/TPS with real time combat that isn’t absolutely brutal. BG3 could be what it was in terms of interactions because it was a CRPG. But it had to be a CRPG to do it. ARPG isn’t the term for what Starfield is, but games with reasonably rewarding action take too much work on that element to invest the time into every encounter that BG3 does. Balancing probabilities and maps for encounters for a CRPG isn’t trivial, but it costs way less to do than building out all those mechanics and skill trees into real time physics.
I haven’t played Starfield. But I have been amazed at the depth of Baldur’s Gate 3. You can see the handcrafted world every where you look. And this makes a world you enjoy spending time in.
How does starfield feel shallow if you haven’t even played it?
I’ve played both for > 30 hours (200ish for bg3) and bg3 is so much deeper. Quests feel meaningful and have multiple options to complete, plus they’re not just go here grab this kill that quests. The facial/body rigging in bg3 is in a different league compare to starfield, Bethesda has always had wonky faces and lip sync but it just looks really bad coming from bg3’s full body/face mocap of real actors and then looking at starfield’s horse chomping wheat talking animation and washed out faces.
I will say starfields ships and guns are great, the guns feel good, customization is fun and impactful, ships are the same way. I could spend as long in the ship builder as I do character creation in BG3 and that’s great. Starfield has promise of modders can fix some of the jack and barrenness which I’m sure they will. BG3 doesn’t need modders help to be great
That’s a gripe for me tho.
Modders should be adding to the game, not fix issues and fill potholes Bethesda couldn’t be arsed to finish.
Why am I paying Bethesda when the modders are doing the heavy lifting?
You’re asking the same question people have been asking Bethesda for 20 years.
At a certain point you have to come into a Bethesda game with an expectation of jank, that’s their “charm”, then modders polish the rough rock for a few years and you have a nice gemstone at the end of the ordeal. Is that a fair expectation for consumers? No not really. Is it ever going to change? Not likely, the company will fail before Todd makes them finish a game before releasing
That’s the tag line for the article, not OPs thoughts.
I’m enjoying Starfield far more than I expected.
That said the NPC interactions are incredibly sterile in comparison to the full mo-capped acting of the BG3 NPCs. The Starfield NPCs feel like mannequins just spitting out their lines.
That’s like 75% of the work for BG3. There’s absolutely some work implementing DnD mechanics into code and designing encounters, and obviously the assets for the world have to be created as well, but the vast majority of their time was spent on dialogue choices and designing the story in general.
It’s a great game for it, but we’re a good ways away from being able to do the same in an FPS/TPS with real time combat that isn’t absolutely brutal. BG3 could be what it was in terms of interactions because it was a CRPG. But it had to be a CRPG to do it. ARPG isn’t the term for what Starfield is, but games with reasonably rewarding action take too much work on that element to invest the time into every encounter that BG3 does. Balancing probabilities and maps for encounters for a CRPG isn’t trivial, but it costs way less to do than building out all those mechanics and skill trees into real time physics.
They’re different games with different goals.