It’s very telling that we’re still talking about whether Starfield is a good game or not over a year after its release. Bethesda first announced the game almost a decade ago and then slowly worked on cranking it out until it finally got released in 2023 after several delays. The response was mixed, depending on who you talked to. Critics hyped it up quite a bit, while gamers were less impressed and soured on the game as time went on. Even with all of that, Bethesda continues to praise its title and note that it’s “one of the best games” that they ever made.
Emil Pagliarulo, who was the lead designer on the game, is one of the team who is doing that. He sat down with GamesRadar and made some interesting statements about what it was like working on the RPG:
“I think in a lot of ways, Starfield is the hardest thing Bethesda has ever done. We pushed ourselves to make something totally different. To just jam into an Xbox the biggest, richest space simulation RPG anyone could imagine. That we pulled it off makes Starfield something of a technical marvel. It’s also, in a lot of ways, the best game we’ve ever made.”
On the one hand, you have to agree that it was one of the hardest things that Bethesda did, as they were attempting to make its first new IP in decades, and they wanted to make something that matched the IPs they “took over” and improved in various ways. That kind of pressure is something many crack under.
However, for him to say they “pulled it off” is a bit tone-deaf to the numerous complaints that have come about from the fanbase since its launch. Even the recent DLC hasn’t been immune from people saying that it’s “boring,” incomplete, and doesn’t use its own characters properly.
One of the biggest complaints that gamers gave the title was that the universe felt empty, which is a complete contrast from the “richest space simulation” that Emil noted in his quote. Many also noted simple gameplay issues that were resolved by mods of all things long before Bethesda ever got around to adjusting them.
Plus, that doesn’t acknowledge what some of the game’s team members said about it, including how, at the end, they realized they didn’t have a “finale” for the main campaign and had to hit a “panic button” to bring people in to finish it.
It’s one thing to hype up your own product, but it’s another to state that it’s one thing when others, in great numbers, say it’s another.
