I do think it’s absolutely damning how little I’ve seen anyone talk about the starfield companions, even in the form of criticism or a joke, but it also feels like the average person doesn’t realise just how dire of an omen that actually is
because there are four romance options in the game
Like even Fallout 4, despite how colossally mid that game is, got an enormous fandom response revolving around that game’s NPC companions. There was at least one aspect of that game’s writing that excited people and started so much conversation and fanfictions. It gave Fallout 4 an identity among Bethesda’s catalogue. What about Starfield? What makes it unique?
There’s just something about playing Starfield for about ten hours, putting it down because I got so bored and frustrated with it, and going back to Baldur’s Gate 3 and starting Cyberpunk 2077, both games that are not perfect but have a ton of heart and soul put into them, particularly into the character writing.
There’s nothing to Starfield. Of the characters in it, perhaps one of them has any traits or writing worthy of deeper analysis. Everyone else is a generic cardboard cutout, a cliche, a bland yes-man who exists solely to empower the player, or Mean Criminal Thug.
Starfield is weak. It is empty. It is a poor little nothing of a game squirted out of Todd Howard’s asshole as a middle finger to the idea of well-written RPGs. It is the apotheosis of Bethesda’s empty-sandbox approach to game design. Even beyond the characters, which as I said barely exist, the game is barren of almost anything interesting, and what little exists is locked behind a mountain of aggravating loading screens (INCLUDING IN THE MAIN HUBS, because Bethesda continues to insist upon using the Creation Engine which cannot handle seamless transitions), terrible and confusing space piloting controls, or both. Bethesda’s game design philosophy allegedly pursues player immersion above all other considerations, yet I was constantly yanked out of the game world by the wooden characters and by needing to stop every five minutes to fast travel to another star system because the game is so fragmented and disconnected. I’ve felt far more immersed in BG3, where every character and environment feels fully realized and has a story to tell, or in Cyberpunk, where I will occasionally forgo fast travel entirely and ride my motorcycle in the moody neon lighting, drinking in the sights and the sounds of the city.
Anyway I think we should kill Todd Howard with rocks