Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[Eric Cartman]

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/starfield-is-one-of-the-worst-written-rpgs-of-all-time.1661499/

Good writing in an RPG means different things to different people. You might appreciate meaningful choices. You might appreciate deep conversations with realistic characters. You might appreciate an epic adventure full of memorable twists and turns. You might appreciate years spent on developing the worldbuilding for an interesting universe full of diverse characters, races, species, backgrounds, and ideas.

Well, Starfield fails at RPG writing on every level. This doesn’t mean it’s a worthless failure of a game overall. The core mechanics of exploring, shooting, and looting can hold your attention, just as they may have in Bethesda’s previous open world RPGs. But at every turn the writing slaps you in the face.

Let’s start with the companions. Dear god. All of them are Lawful Good wet blankets who criticize you every roughly 15 seconds. Inventory over the minuscule weight limit? “Have you considered NOT picking up everything you can find?” every time you pick up an item. Stealing something, including from villains? “Wow, I didn’t realize I was hanging out with a CRIMINAL” every time you pick up an item. Get into a fight that you could have conceivably avoided via dialogue options? They will sometimes leave your party and brand you irredeemable, even if the only way to avoid the enemies attacking you was through a persuasion check that you failed, leaving you with no choice but to defend yourself. You’ll still be met with the companion leaving your party and refusing to talk to you. Unless every step you take is within their exacting moral expectations you will be reprimanded or dumped.

There are also story beats with bizarre turns. During one of the main faction quests, you are given one of your few pseudo-consequential player choices. Basically, you can choose a risky scientific option that unleashes genetically engineered microbes onto humanity to solve the problem, or a less risky naturalistic option where you breed an animal that will take care of the problem. If you choose the sensible naturalistic option with what is essentially a guaranteed good outcome based on the evidence presented to you, your companions will condemn you as a mouth-breathing moron. If you choose the risky scientific option that explicitly has a chance of wiping out humanity by mutating in unknown ways, your companions will laud you for “Trusting the Science" (actual quote), in what is a bizarre, warped take on recent events political messaging, considering how risky the in-game choice is.

Not only that, but if you have a companion in your party, good luck picking any of the rare Han Solo style dialogue options. In a mission where Andreja is your forced companion, you dock with a ship with the intention of stealing an item from the owner. This a morally gray mission where you’re expected to con the owner, burglarize him, or kill him in order to retrieve the item. When you enter the ship, you’re met with one of the owner’s employees, and he asks you why you’re there. You only have two dialogue options: one, be an imbecile and tell him exactly why you’re there, or two, you can reply facetiously that you heard there was a big party on the ship and you’re here to party. If you say the latter, Andreja, who is literally there to help you steal the item by any means necessary, will respond by Disliking your comment and interjecting flatly that she “has no interest in partying.”

It's a problem endemic to all the characters in Starfield. It was marketed as a Han Solo simulator, but you are constantly badgered and browbeaten by catty, humorless women for anything you do. I won’t dwell too much on the ideological choices made to satisfy the current year climate but suffice to say that roughly 90% of the leaders in Starfield are women. And they are one-dimensional, deeply unlikeable charisma black holes who will talk to you with utter contempt most of the time. Of the remaining 10%, most of the men are presented as incompetent or evil. It’s a galaxy ruled by Karens. And the Karens are also your party members and love interests. I have never experienced a more unlikeable cast of characters in an RPG.

Let’s also consider the dreaded romance options. The first romanceable companion you encounter is Sarah. Sarah is a middle-aged ex-military leader who runs the organization you join. She’s quick to criticize you and expects you to do the conventional and lawful thing at all times. If you romance her, by choosing options like Trusting the Science and by praising her awkwardly at every opportunity in a way that would be creepy and weird to any actual human being, she will eventually begin to trust you and open up. Now, by opening up I mean she will reveal herself to be a giant ball of insecure, wallowing baggage that you are expected to comfort with dialogue options that reduce her to the emotional maturity of a small child. “Wow, you’re so strong, Sarah! Good job staving off that nervous breakdown over nothing, Sarah!” Then, inexplicably, you will end these conversations about her baggage with a “Flirt” option if you want to pursue her romantically. She will rebuff your advances awkwardly and end the conversation every time. Do this on around a dozen separate occasions, with no actual romance or flirtation between you two, only rejections at the end of your impromptu therapy sessions, and she will trust you enough to take you on her loyalty mission, which is literally to confront her emotional baggage. Complete that and she will decide that she can get involved with you romantically. Without any intimate moments, explicitly or implicitly, she will then decide that she has fallen in love with you and want to get married. Handle her baggage for her --> let’s get married. That’s how it works for humans, right? Right?

I’m genuinely horrified by the writing in this game, and I pity the people who conjured up these character interactions. They must live some of the dullest and most dysfunctional lives imaginable.

Starfield displays time and time again, without fail, that it fundamentally lacks understanding of the human condition. You land on worlds with the premise of a dystopian cyberpunk society where hard drugs are legal and everything is available for a price. When you arrive, though, all you’ll find is some tepid fully clothed dancing at a bland nightclub and a few people talking about how cu-raaazy everything is. It’s a game unwilling to explore humanity’s faults and genuine human drama on any level. At the futuristic fashionista clothing stores your only options are literally unisex tarps. Everyone is of varied ethnicity but there is no ethnic culture whatsoever. Women are purely masculine, leaving no one left to be feminine. This is not a demand for T&A by any means. In the real world, men and women don’t wear tarps and talk in monotone at a safe distance, defined purely by their profession. Life is messy and dramatic, desires and egos clash, stars rise and fall, people love and lust and hate and trust and betray. But not in Starfield, a corporate-sanitized ideological bog too afraid to include one iota of humanity in its storytelling.

RPGs are doing so much more elsewhere, from Baldur's Gate 3 to Cyberpunk 2077, but even looking back at Bethesda's own games, this one is a step backwards. The Elder Scrolls games incorporate different ethnic backgrounds and intense religious beliefs, ugly racial prejudice and morally gray deities. Starfield reeks of design by committee resulting in a product too afraid to take any storytelling risks. Nothing can ever be well-written when it is this extraordinarily conformist and risk-averse, particularly when the expectations for political correctness are so narrow in 2023.

You can do better.

I think we can all agree, if evilore is an expert at anything its being able to beat up bruce lee at his prime in a fight its nuanced and successful relationships with hoo-man fee-males

[Snoopy]

Spend years blatting about progressive politics. 

Hire a bunch of power tripping goons to patrol the streets

Act like holier than thou charity shop tyrant. 

Brag about rejecting millions because ideals

Take lonely no mates tour across Europe

Get exposed doing creepy sex.

All the peasants revolt and flee mad dictatorship.

Blame everything on black Canadian

Buddy up to racists in desperate effort to save the economy

Turn blue haired kingdom into barren wasteland of phrenology 

Meanwhile other kingdom starts exiling the impure

Pretend to be born again bro and welcome in refugees

Kingdom starts to repopulate but refugees concerned about all the race hate 

Coffers start to refill

Betray the phrenologists who saved your kingdom from total collapse

Start blatting about progressive politics

New no mates tour of Europe planned

[Besticus Maximus]

I only ever lurked on GAF (I had my fun elsewhere) so I was never privy to a lot of the inside baseball stuff with Evilore, but it's definitely a funny old story of abuse of power backfiring. GAF was overall fairly shit but it acted as a living wiki of what was going on in games internetville, the community threads were fascinating, once spent an entire day at work reading the whole Mormon OT.

It's also a bit of a tragedy in the sense that it could have been so awesome and funny and all the other things, and we're left with this wasteland of games forums in 2023. It would be super nice to have an active games forum that wasn't thoroughly perverted by insane american right wingers or insane american opponents of insane american right wingers.

I wonder how a game like 13 sentinels would land in the current epoch of mental. I probably never would have touched that if there wasn't a Reset thread hyping it. One of the best games I ever did play.

[Polident]

Guy never made an impression on me but I do enjoy stories of early social media guys fumbling a cluelessly inflated paycheck. 

The era fella got a fairly conservative paycheck but he smartly got the fuck out of there.

[malfoyking]

Funny thing about this her tweet is that its clearly defensive. These internet online left people just like constantly attacking and dunking on people. When they do that, they expect the target to just sit back and take it. But when people fight back like JK always has, it gets them so mad. 

Regardless I'm glad HP is still doing so well after all these years, and its definitely not just with millennials either.

[kaleidoscopium]

Yep, Harry Potters continued success proves these people's power is waning and that's why they are truly upset. If they can't cancel the biggest evil terf of them all well...

[Averon]

Speaking of Harry Potter: https://www.resetera.com/threads/gi-biz-gfk-boxed-top-ten-for-week-ending-september-23-2023.767933/

Let's see how many, if any, dares acknowledge the #2 spot on that list. Last time, Melody Shreds got half the thread banned for even acknowledging the game.

[Besticus Maximus]

The JK Rowling stuff has antecedent issues.

She attracted the ire of the mentally ill online posse a few times before the gender wars.

First, she upset the scots nats, who were the original social media political pressure breakout group. All of the brit jk rowling hateforce on there are at minimum encouraging of scots nationalist bollocks.

Then she upset the brexiters.

Then she upset the racist and useless Corbyn people.

So all around she's a total fucking legend tbh.

[Polident]

The only money I’ve ever spend on Harry Potter was a $4 ticket for the first one in 2001. Seeing the Lord of the Rings trailer ahead of it, young me decided Harry Potter was lame shit.

I’ll admit, I feel a little superior to every else.

[kaleidoscopium]

Hogwarts Legacy being the clear runaway best selling game of the year on every platform is such icing on the cake. The switch version next month if it runs well is going to shock the whole industry with how well it sells imo. Stupendous results

[Bootsthecat]

Even better, is that she's made like 2 tweets over as many months, neither being trans-related. What do they say if she stops tweeting? That the to-date suicide tally, and (shadow?) millions in non-stop donations to anti-trans groups will keep her as the figurehead for ever and ever?

I swear I've heard that all they want is to deplatform her. Well, lately she did that herself. Yet...

[HaughtyFrank]

Speaking of Harry Potter: https://www.resetera.com/threads/gi-biz-gfk-boxed-top-ten-for-week-ending-september-23-2023.767933/

Let's see how many, if any, dares acknowledge the #2 spot on that list. Last time, Melody Shreds got half the thread banned for even acknowledging the game.

Hogwarts and Cyberpunk both in the charts 

[NekoFever]

Speaking of Harry Potter: https://www.resetera.com/threads/gi-biz-gfk-boxed-top-ten-for-week-ending-september-23-2023.767933/

Let's see how many, if any, dares acknowledge the #2 spot on that list. Last time, Melody Shreds got half the thread banned for even acknowledging the game.

And that was after, let’s not forget, the mods explicitly said it was ok to discuss its sales in the context of a sales thread.

I guess they forgot to mention the caveat that you’re allowed to mention it in sales threads if you couple it with an essay about how the sales are evidence of the genocide. And TransEra reserves the right to demand you be banned at any time.

[Venice]

And that was after, let’s not forget, the mods explicitly said it was ok to discuss its sales in the context of a sales thread.

Era mods are exactly the same as the cops they hate so much: they change the rules because they want to use the pathetic little power being a mod gives them in their lives to ruin someone elses day by banning them.

[Besticus Maximus]

Malthusian forumomics

[Venice]

More Kuntuji shit-stirring:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/j-k-rowling-and-her-legacy-of-hate-the-uk-gender-critical-movement.643740/page-90#post-112545194

Heads up I plan to update this thread at some point in October as we approach the one year mark. Will update on the progression of her hate alongside how much further the gender critical movement has gone, including its current prominent figures and the steps the government has taken against the trans community. It'll also cover Labour's transphobia. Will probably post as a new thread with a link back to this just to keep it fresh and in view.

Think I'm good to give a solid coverage to everything but if there's anything that you want to make sure is included just @.

Translation: Nobody's really paying any attention to this thread anymore, so let me start a new thread to launch new hate campaigns and at the same time you can also tell me how great I am too.

Kyuuji clearly wants to take back the 'TransEra's Biggest Attention Seeker' crown from new challenger Melody Shreds.

[Besticus Maximus]

Yeah great idea leftist forum, do what you can to scuttle a near certain election victory for the good guys

Just so you can get some notifications from the same half dozen people on the world's most deranged videogames forum

[malfoyking]

Progression of her hate? What has she expressed lately? Is this just more made up stuff from them?

[kaleidoscopium]

Last I heard she had that podcast come out which showed she isn't some insane evil villain they made her out to be, and she released a thriller novel which people were ho hum on.

[Uncle]

this is just more unsustainable late stage capitalism, you cannot actually have infinite growth

eventually there will have to be a quarterly report where you have to admit that actually her transphobia took a downturn and returned to more early 2020 levels

and the shareholders will demand that new strategies be employed to see continued growth, which will require some creative thinking

[AldusMoneyPenny]

this is just more unsustainable late stage capitalism, you cannot actually have infinite growth

eventually there will have to be a quarterly report where you have to admit that actually her transphobia took a downturn and returned to more early 2020 levels

and the shareholders will demand that new strategies be employed to see continued growth, which will require some creative thinking

MOBA Networks would beg to disagree! Invest now!

[Puffy Fucking Baby]

Is a self style left wing forum going to end up banning people for saying they will be voting for a left wing(ish) party?

[kaleidoscopium]

Speaking of Harry Potter: https://www.resetera.com/threads/gi-biz-gfk-boxed-top-ten-for-week-ending-september-23-2023.767933/

Let's see how many, if any, dares acknowledge the #2 spot on that list. Last time, Melody Shreds got half the thread banned for even acknowledging the game.

First reference:

Glad to see Lies of P up there. Really wish that terf game would leave the charts.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/gavin-newsom-2028-throws-the-california-trans-community-under-his-future-campaign-bus-by-vetoing-trans-child-protection-custody-bill.767459/page-2#post-112522148

every time a democrat does fascist transphobia y'all go like "masterful political gambit sir, amazing long game play, thank u, the blue wave is truly here" and then you look and it's literally just fascist transphobia. they're just doing fascist transphobia. because they're fascist transphobes.

[kaleidoscopium]

Won't be banned for metacommentary tho

edit: misread timestamps lol

[Cauliflower Of Love]

Won't be banned for metacommentary tho

edit: misread timestamps lol

reported

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/modern-ninja-turtles-media-hasn%C2%B4t-really-been-huge-in-terms-of-success-is-it-time-to-channel-nostalgia.766859/page-6#post-112477163

User Banned (1 Day): Hostility toward another user

Im going to be completely honest, I did not read any of this because it was comically long and you devoted what appears a lot of your Friday restating everything we have said to one another.

Thank you for the effort though, I hope it made your Friday.

You know, if you didn’t think it was worth your effort to respond, you could have just quietly ignored the post rather than being a fucking asshole about it. But kudos. You are certainly a badass.

User Banned (1 Week): Trolling, Antagonizing other users, Multiple past infractions

I thought you at least deserved something for the effort and to know why I wasnt going to touch what seemed like an endless amount of text. I certainly wouldnt have appreciated ignoring it if I wrote what you did. Its just we are discussing TMNT after all, its not that serious or worthwhile to devote *that* much effort. At least to me. But I get the impression you just enjoy hearing yourself talk anyways and that is the main reason you did it lol.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/you-can-either-chose-to-speak-every-human-language-or-communicate-with-animals-what-do-you-choose-and-why.767645/page-6#post-112505078

User Banned (2 Weeks): Ableist rhetoric

Imagine wasting this on speaking to animals and all they say is food fuck give mine angry reeeeeeee

[kaleidoscopium]

Jawmuncher doing his job by posting LRG ads to Era without disclosing it, again.


https://www.resetera.com/threads/persona-3-portable-coming-physically-to-xbox-switch-ps-from-limited-run-games-persona-4-coming-as-well.768050/

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ea-sports-fc-24-ps5-bundles-coming-september-29-across-europe-middle-east-africa-asia-pacific-and-latin-america-regions.766313/#post-112316828

User Banned (1 Month): Mocking Ethnic Accents

Uff, that bunduru is gonna sell like hot cakes. Sony knows what its doing.