This how You keep a spirit of the Black Lodge …

To clarify, it was released in Europe as well :)

That’s fair, I 100% agree. No matter the reason for a game’s poor quality, you shouldn’t let it off the hook. Especially if it’s a commercial product.

Personally though, I don’t think he’s pretending not to have heard that point. He clarifies multiple times in the thread that he’s fine with people criticising his work. Instead, he’s speaking to a kind of criticism that claims – incorrectly – to know things about the game’s development, and that offers naive solutions to complex problems. In my opinion, that kind of criticism is pretty worthless, and takes up air that could otherwise be spent discussing the game’s real, concrete problems.

But I get the frustration. Bethesda’s response to criticism of Starfield has been dismissive on the whole, so the director of the game coming out against some criticism is tone-deaf from a PR perspective.

Also, it seems like no-one who complains about discourse online takes the time to provide examples of what they’re complaining about… So it’s hard to know what exactly Emil is talking about here.

I think it’s a fair point. They’re not arguing against all criticism, just the kind that comes from a place of ignorance for how games are made. There are certainly a lot of people who say things like, “why didn’t the developers just do X Y Z”, with no empathy for or understanding of how games get made. It’s possible to criticise things without spreading ignorance.

I was really worried about this game from the trailer but this is actually looking sick as hell… I like that they’re playing with different kinds of monsters and environments. And co-op sounds like a lot of tense shouty fun.

I dunno – I’m sympathetic to the DLC argument, but bad performance isn’t something I can forgive on launch day. I’m sure they’ll patch it in time, but if I buy a full-priced game, I expect it to run decently well. Anything less makes for a poor user experience. If a publisher truly cares about user experience then they won’t release a game in that state, or if they do, they’ll make it 100% clear on the storefront that the game has performance issues.

For sure. That’s just how articles have to be titled to get clicks unfortunately. It can be annoying, but it helps keep journalism alive, so you take the good with the bad.

The author’s arguing that BG3 makes Starfield look like a shallow RPG by comparison. Their broader point is that Starfield is behind the times compared to most RPGs released in the last couple decades, even compared to something like Fallout 3.

Not sure, just didn’t know any unions had that kind of power. I’m from AUS, so maybe things are different here

Why do you describe unions as a labour cartel? Never heard that phrasing before.

Damn, that’s super impressive. Would love to see a breakdown on how they achieved that look, especially with how the arm/gun movements are animated.

Pretty dangerous territory making a game about bodycam footage though. Wonder if they’ll try any commentary on that or if they’ll try to play it safe.