Starfield – is it all or nothing for Xbox? (Picture: Bethesda)
A reader is concerned that the hype for Starfield is out of control and that it’s impossible for the game to live up to expectations.
I’ve got a feeling the next year, probably just the next few months, are going to see some seismic shifts in the games industry. If I was a company looking to get into gaming, someone like Apple or Amazon or Google, I would choose now to do it because all three console makers seem to be in disarray.
Nintendo hasn’t put a foot wrong in a while, but they are about to transition to a new console and that always makes them vulnerable. Nobody has been able to work out why Sony are acting the way they are at the moment (and have been doing for the last year or more) but the seem to be throwing away their reputation in favour of appearing as unresponsive and distant as possible.
And then you have Microsoft, who after their Xbox Games Showcase seem to be in the best position, but as far as I can see it’s a house of cards, with Starfield the shakiest foundation they could have asked for. Yes, a lot of their games looked good but if Microsoft was so confident in them why were none of them playable? Any game can look good if you edit a trailer well enough and I remember just how good Fallout 4 looked before I actually played it…
As many people have already pointed out, Bethesda are about as far away from a safe pair of hands as you could get, and not just because of their infamous tendency towards bugs and jank but because of all the other things they’ve never been any good at, like action, and dialogue, and… faces for some reason.
Perhaps the shooting has got better – I hear they got id Software to help – but just from looking at the trailer you can see the space combat looks off and the dialogue and facial animation is still well behind most other Western role-playing developers.
I’m not saying Starfield is going to be bad, I’ve not played it anymore than anyone else has, but it seems to me that the chances of it disappointing, at least to some degree, are very high.
Especially given the hype of the last week or so. People build themselves up so much, and Xbox fans have so many years of pent up frustration inside them, that it seems a dangerous cocktail to me.
Xbox has promised the world(s) and yet delivering it… I wouldn’t bet on them pulling it off. It seems to me that Microsoft has always had a bit of an inferiority complex in the games industry, as they take even the smallest victory as a major coup, convincing themselves that middling games are masterpieces and flawed developers, like Bethesda, are industry giants.
But, like I said, I don’t know for sure. Maybe all the games they had at the showcase are bangers and Microsoft is just being coy.
What I do know is that if these games, and in particular Starfield and Fable, turn out to be duds, or even just okay, then I think Xbox will have exhausted its last chance.
They’ve already run Halo and Gears Of War into the ground, so who is going to trust them again, with whatever else they pretend is the next big thing?
If they do buy Activision Blizzard perhaps they can just skate by on that but to me the whole showcase was a major risk. If everything works out, then they win big but if they fall on their face… I don’t think they’re getting up again.
By reader Unkle
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A reader is concerned that the hype for Starfield is out of control and that it’s impossible for the game to live up to expectations.