It's also hilarious that this is coming from someone who works for Bethesda, and Bethesda made Morrowind, which is their game where more "blood, sweat and tears" were spent and it is still considered a masterpiece to this day.
Todd Howard's words about the making of Morrowind:
Todd Howard said:
There were six of us at the time, right? The studio had gotten that small, and I was in charge of Morrowind, but by that time, once you get to that point, there was this element of no fear. What's the worst that's gonna happen? We could go out of business. Well, let's go all in. This is the game. Let's put all our chips on the table. This is the game people want from us, this is the game we wanna do.
I doubt Starfield had more "blood, sweat and tears" put into it than Morrowind (where a studio of 6 made one of the most iconic games of all times), the game that saved Bethesda from bankruptcy and turned it into one of the most popular AAA studios for decades.
And yes, game development is a lot of work. And yes, game development is riddled with stupid decisions that are not made by the developers themselves but by the "big wigs". And yes, the players will never know why certain things were decided and why certain things are the way they are. But this doesn't mean that the player has to like a game and can't criticize it. Even Emil says that sometimes he feels like doing the same, but he doesn't because he works in the industry and doesn't want to create bad blood or something like that.
I respect the game developers, those people who work to make games, who are forced to crunch and toil to release a finished product. But that doesn't mean I respect the finished product.
If I go to a restaurant, I can respect the chef and the staff, but if they serve me food that is lacking I have the right to complain about it. As a consumer who paid for my meal, I don't need to know why the chef decided to replace the eggs with onions, why the sauce is lumpy and foggy instead of clear and smooth and why they made my meal mostly bland and tasteless, even if I can taste a "good enough" flavour in one of each ten bites I take. This is even more true if the restaurant has built up a reputation and has been serving a specific type of food for more than 20 years now, so it creates a certain expectation on the customer.
I haven't got Starfield and will never get it. Since Skyrim I said I wouldn't get another Bethesda game because they get more boring with each new one, and look and behold, even many Bethesda fans have been saying how boring they think Starfield is. It's worth mentioning that there are still plenty of people defending Starfield around, and I have no doubt that once the modding scene gets in full force it will probably "fix" a lot of problems and will bring back a lot of players. But for me, Bethesda has lost my interest since I played Skyrim.
