I accuse

[Odrackyir]

Skyrim is cool looking and its got a good soundtrack. If you disagree you are a ****** btw.

But that's about it...

Looked like strange, alien inhabitants to me

There was much more wrong with it other than the setting. I'm sure there's a good way of doing NASApunk, but Bethesda is never going to be the right team for it, they don't take it seriously enough.

The whole thing was doomed as Todd's passion project without someone reigning in his yesmen/bloat/dev resource waste.

Todd Howard had little to do with developing Starfield besides approving concepts when there were conflicts on the project because Emil wouldn't do his job.

How did it come to that?

I'd like to hear the arguments of younger people - born +2000 a.C. in defence of the indefensible. That'd mean, in defense of the slop in the high tower castle IVORY _******* TOWER - the dumbed down, graphically driven sequels to once respectable sagas: BG3, Skyrim, DA:I, name yours. You may also use this space to further any argument in favor of products that've been disparaged by the veterans in the past.

I'll inaugurate the discussion with the following thesis: After six years of waiting and unfulfilled promises in the shape of axed game mechanics (i.e. in-engine season simulation) Skyrim was the canary in the mine for what was to come in the 2010s and 20s: The turning of AAA into SSS (Securing Sheckels with Slop).

Any random singular battle in BG3 is more tactical, engaging, memorable, and fun than literally every encounter in BG1 put together.
I could name probably every fight in BG3 and mostly remember how I approached them because it's simply the superior game. On the other hand, I couldnt tell you jack **** about the countless autoattack snorefest encounters on flat open terrain I went through in BG1.

I'm convinced that most people's memories of BG1/2 combat is heavily altered by later playthrus with swordcoast stratagems.

Care to elaborate? what are those stratagems?

[rusty_shackleford]

Care to elaborate? what are those stratagems?

It's a mod that completely revamps the encounters, extensive enemy AI, etc.,

[A Chinese opium den]

Skyrim is cool looking and its got a good soundtrack. If you disagree you are a ****** btw.

But that's about it...

You won't get away with this.

[Odrackyir]

The dumbing down of BG3 mechanics is more to do with DnD's 5E dumbing things down, so I have to blame WoTC there. Even though I think there's room for improvement with older eras, I don't consider 5E an improvement.
Aside from that, it's much less egregious than Skyrim or DA:I for ******* up RPG mechanics-- what Larian ****** up is the content, and if you've read much of the BG3/ No Alphabets threads, you'll see the various examples of that which shows how much of a cluster **** it was, Act 3 in particular.

Bethesda games fulfil a niche that no one else even attempts, and Skyrim was just good enough to get away with such big flaws, whereas Starfield is utter trash consigned to the garbage pile of history.
I'm not even sure if they're dumbing it down for casuals, ******* or journos, but it's abysmal.

Only DA:Origins is decent, DA2 & DA:I would be better off scrapped.
All these devs like Bioware are hiring a diverse, fruity circus of freaks instead of White & East Asian geeks, at the behest of higher powers & incentivisation models through investment-management companies. It's more to do with that than the differences between generations. Tastes also change with age, I played mostly FPS/ action when I was younger, and grew into enjoying RPGs more.

That's right. Earlier in the process we find instances where they messed up the mechanics. Like in Warhammer Fantasy, Skyrim... Then later on, they messed up the content itself, like MtG, D&D... I personally could never get into Divinity OS 2, leave alone Tyranny or PoE. I could not put my finger on it, but something was spiritually lacking in there. And the notion of weimarization of entertainment I've read elsewhere is absolutely on point. Is it the lack of that faustian spirit I've seen mentioned elsewhere?

What I can't wrap my head around is the way they managed to leave IPs standing, in a perfectly mediocre state of affairs, without the entire industry collapsing altogether in the process. It's like some insane game of Jenga. They've turned everything into a shell of its former self, and yet it all apparently still stands.

5th ed., MtG, the pre-sequels, all of it. I'll insist, I don't understand how they so chirurgically ****** it all up. How they even seemed to know where to stop.

[Statesman]

Looked like strange, alien inhabitants to me

There was much more wrong with it other than the setting. I'm sure there's a good way of doing NASApunk, but Bethesda is never going to be the right team for it, they don't take it seriously enough.

The whole thing was doomed as Todd's passion project without someone reigning in his yesmen/bloat/dev resource waste.

Todd Howard had little to do with developing Starfield besides approving concepts when there were conflicts on the project because Emil wouldn't do his job.

No one is saying he was a developer. Pushing the (in my opinion) wrong concepts forward is exactly why the final product came out as slop.

[Vergil]

The whole thing was doomed as Todd's passion project without someone reigning in his yesmen/bloat/dev resource waste.

Todd Howard had little to do with developing Starfield besides approving concepts when there were conflicts on the project because Emil wouldn't do his job.

No one is saying he was a developer. Pushing the (in my opinion) wrong concepts forward is exactly why the final product came out as slop.

This being Todd's passion project sounds like more marketing and not some genuine sentiment to me.

[Statesman]

Todd Howard had little to do with developing Starfield besides approving concepts when there were conflicts on the project because Emil wouldn't do his job.

No one is saying he was a developer. Pushing the (in my opinion) wrong concepts forward is exactly why the final product came out as slop.

This being Todd's passion project sounds like more marketing and not some genuine sentiment to me.

It could be, but I'd bet for it to be a bit of both. Todd apparently wanted to make his own original IP/franchise for decades and had been pitching space RPG projects for years. There are Usenet posts, interviews and even internal memos supporting his interest. It is only natural, then for the marketing department to tie that sentiment into a sales boost.