Procedural generation is fine. But you can definitely see that Starfield was intended to be a platform for user-generated content straight from the start, and I think they must have convinced themselves that they didn’t really need to care too much about the game itself, because those chumps - sorry, players - would add all the content for them on their own. It’s like Metaverse all over again. They forgot they actually needed to make something worth playing and users’ time investment before it would become a money printing machine. Also, probably like 4 people who worked on Daggerfall still work at Bethesda and most of their games between then and now didn’t use procedural generation much at all, so I don’t understand why so many people make this argument. Like oh it’s normal for me to put DSLs in my software projects, here check out this git repo I worked on 25 years ago when I was in college, our customers should have been prepared for the shit job I did with it this time.
Actually, I think I would be completely fine with Bethesda just churning out TES POI and storylines without trying to do anything significantly more complicated than what they did in Skyrim. Just focus on the world building and the story and do some simple gimmick that’s a little more creative than “shouts/dragonborn but in space”. I suspect most other players would be happy with something of similar scope.
> I think they must have convinced themselves that they didn’t really need to care too much about the game itself, because those chumps - sorry, players - would add all the content for them on their own
Were they wrong? Skyrim sits at 70k mods after who knows how many years. Starfield has 10k already. I’ll admit it might not go as far as Skyrim, but still.
I feel the fact they did procgen is not as bad as the fact that what was not was just slightly less compelling than usual.
Actually, I think I would be completely fine with Bethesda just churning out TES POI and storylines without trying to do anything significantly more complicated than what they did in Skyrim. Just focus on the world building and the story and do some simple gimmick that’s a little more creative than “shouts/dragonborn but in space”. I suspect most other players would be happy with something of similar scope.