this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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Every Bethesda RPG, ranked from worst to best (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 1 year ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org
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[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 39 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Haha, PCG really hates Starfield. Calling it worse than FO76 and ES:Arena? Lmao.

Before it released I remember their articles about how it wasn't going to be as good as BG3, despite no one inviting that apples-to-oranges comparison but them themselves, and now they're out to do their best to convince everyone they were right.

Personal note: in that last linked article, they compared BG3 vs SF to Disco Elysium vs Outer Worlds, and I think this is hilariously just showing how much this is about their predilection for narrative-core games.

  • I like Disco Elysium. I like BG3. They are much better narrative RPGs. I also feel absolutely no desire to go back and replay them.
  • I go back to Outer Worlds and Starfield. They are much better open world RPGs.

Like, chill PCG. It's a good game, enjoyed by lots of people. If your staff is more into narrative-core RPGs with linear progression, that's cool, but you don't need to demonize Starfield to enjoy BG3. The worst Bethesda game? Worse than '76? Come on.

[–] lemillionsocks@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago

Lol yeah this is suffering from a lot of recency bias.

[–] Vodulas@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

FO76 had a rocky start for sure, but they have made a ton of updates. It is easily better then Starfield now. If you compared them release to release then FO76 would be worse, but I think they are comparing current state.

[–] Renacles@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fallout 76 is a lot better than what it was at launch but it's still nowhere near close to Starfield. It's a weird mesh of ideas that don't really fit together but are still enjoyable separately.

[–] Vodulas@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

See that is how Starfield felt to me. Different strokes I suppose

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Personally, hard disagree. I don't find FO76 fun at all. The world feels small, the characters are boring, and finding zany houses sprinkled around breaks any versimility of the world, which is the cornerstone of Bethesda's games.

[–] Vodulas@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I think the houses fit in the world, but the world is definitely small. I still enjoyed my time in it a lot more than my time in Starfield, which is mostly open fields with the occasional settlement/work site/lab dropped in. I don't think Starfield is a bad game, just not an exciting one.

[–] ampersandrew@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

despite no one inviting that apples-to-oranges comparison but them themselves

Eh, Larian invited it by counter-programming Starfield's release date with BG3 on PS5.

[–] Ashtear@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I like Disco Elysium. I like BG3. They are much better narrative RPGs. I also feel absolutely no desire to go back and replay them.

Really? This is crazy to me. I get Disco, but outside of intentionally regenerative games (such as roguelikes/lites), I don't think I've had my hands on a more replayable game than BG3 in years. There's so much you don't see in a given playthrough.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't doubt it has new events, new ways that things can pan out, etc... but it's the same characters, the same goblin camp, etc.I am very big on exploration, and without a world large enough to find places I haven't seen, or at least places that it's been so long since I saw that I don't remember it, I bounce off games very fast.

[–] Ashtear@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Yes and no. My second play had countless new characters--three of them playable--several new zones, and a ton of new gameplay. I was constantly finding new places, new encounters, new conversations. I know there are still several zones I haven't poked around in.

The main story beats don't change much but there are still a lot of branching paths to get to them. Hell, you could even completely skip the goblin camp if you wanted.

Game studios just don't do the kind of extra work to cover player choice like Larian did here. It's why the game made waves in the industry. I'd say unless you really went over it with a fine comb the first time around (125 hours or more), it's absolutely worth revisiting at some point.

[–] Faydaikin@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's all a matter of personal taste. But yeah, Beth's best games are definitely in the past.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, as someone who hasn't played Starfield and has no interest in playing it, all their criticisms were just saying they didn't care for the style starfield was going for. Which is fine, but that doesn't make it a bad game.

It could be that "NASA punk" is boring to 99/100 people, but that doesn't mean a game in that style is bad. I think we can all agree that games that are enthralling to a very niche set of people are a good thing, because we all want that game to be for us. We don't want or expect every game to be equally enthralling to every person.

[–] Faydaikin@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For me, the "NASA punk" wasn't the turn off.

Starfield could have been a great game. But the general route Beth has taken with Fallout, and continued in Starfield, doesn't appeal to me. Pointless building filler, environmental storytelling over actual storytelling, radient quests everywhere and so on.

I have no doubt they'll do the same with TES. Just half-assing it really. Skyrim was already pretty flat, so...

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, Morrowind was mind blowing when it came out. Then I skipped Oblivion, and Skyrim, mechanically, wasn't that much of a leap over Morrowind. Sure it looked better and had voice acting, but it still feels like a static world. I wouldn't consider Witcher 3 to be quite the same genre as TES, but imo W3 raised the bar for my expectations from Bethesda. So far I think they still have not made a game as good as W3.

[–] Faydaikin@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Witcher 3 is a CDProjectRed game.

I don't think Beth' is capable of making a game even close to The Witcher 3. XD

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 points 1 year ago

No don't you understand? They gathered two other people, who work directly with them reviewing games the same way they do. If they don't like it it means it's a bad game. Obviously!

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

People will point at Skyrim and Morrowind to showcase how much better their older games were, but pretend Oblivion didn't happen. :P

[–] Faydaikin@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oblivion is the weird transition point, ngl.

[–] cnnrduncan@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Personally I feel that way about Morrowind - mechanically it's like a stripped down, worse version of Daggerfall while also being an inferior implementation of a fully 3d game than Oblivion.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Morrowind is imo the best from a gameplay mechanics perspective. The utility magic alone was such a huge loss for future games.

I could cast levitation, walk up to the moon prison, magically open the lock, use chameleon to sneak inside, steal stuff from 30 feet away with telekinesis, and if the guards find me, jump down with slowfall and then escape underwater with waterbreathing.

[–] cnnrduncan@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Daggerfall has most of that, and has extra stuff like the ability to climb walls without magic! IMO the dice-roll combat also feels way better in Daggerfall than in Morrowind.

[–] 1simpletailer@startrek.website 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Of all the TES games Oblivion has aged the worst. If you didn't play it at the time its really hard to be objective about it now. Too much Bloom and ugly potato faces combined with its floaty, clunky combat make it a chore to play today. Game had some great quest writing though and Shivering Isles is a GOAT expansion. It also has an undeniable, if somewhat unintentional, goofy charm to it that I love.

At the time a lot of Morrowind fans hated it for going against established lore and "dumbing down" the series, but it did well critically and was generally well received by the public. It got a lot of people, including myself, into the series. I went back and played Morrowind and loved it so I can see a lot of Oblivion's weaknesses more clearly, but I still have a soft nostalgic spot for it in my heart.

[–] Faydaikin@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

I absolutely agree with you. And I did play it back when it came out.

There's a few more things that goes in the "Meh"-pile of changes Oblivion brought to the table. Like the boundless fast-travel system and streamlining magic (although I did like the quick-cast mechanic. But that got scrapped as fast as it was implemented with Skyrim) and so on.

[–] Halosheep@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oblivion is my personal favorite so definitely up to personal interpretation.

[–] cnnrduncan@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah personally I reckon that Oblivion and Daggerfall are the two best TES games ever made - both are better than Morrowind, and significantly better than Skyrim.

I also reckon that Starfield will be up there with Oblivion and Daggerfall a couple years after the modding tools are released!

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Weird that the author includes ESO. That's an outsource game using Bethesda's IP. They might as well include Fallout NV (which would of course top the list if it were included)

[–] qfjp@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

How is ESO outsourced? It's made by a studio within Zenimax that was basically created just for that game.

[–] Thalestr@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I stopped playing ESO years ago after around 10,000 hours of playtime. It's nice (or perhaps unsurprising) to hear that they still haven't addressed how badly they messed up the story structure and pacing. Rather than have the expansions be an accessory to the main story and tutorial - they acted as replacements. A game design choice I'm 99.9% sure was made by management and not by any actual dev team. It was a confusing, convoluted mess with only a few expansions but I can't imagine how bad it is now with even more.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

To be fair, ESO shouldn't really be on this list. ESO was developed by Zenimax Online, not Bethesda Game Studios (Todd Howard's team). It's as close to Fallout or Starfield as Prey or Doom are (same publisher, different devs).

[–] Omegamanthethird@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

checks which game is "best"

This list is 100% accurate.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Morrowind is the best, but putting Oblivion above both Skyrim and FO3 (nevermind ESO and SF)? Hmmm...

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

"Yes."

(Best)

Morrowind

Oblivion (New Vegas would tie here if Bethesda)

FO3

FO4

Skyrim

(Worst)

Didn't click the link but this is the true order whether the link agrees or not. ESO/76 doesn't even make my list and I'm behind on SF, haven't played it yet, so it is left off as a "TBD."

[–] Omegamanthethird@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I do love Morrowind. It's one of my favorite games of all time. But I'm putting Skyrim, FO3, and FONV above Oblivion easily.

[–] Thelsim@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m just glad Daggerfall got some appreciation. It is horribly outdated now, but back then it was the first game that really let me explore an open world and role-play as whoever I wanted to be (within the limitation of the game of course). I could do anything I wanted, go anywhere I pleased.
I don’t think I ever got far in the plot, but I spend months exploring every other nook and cranny. I still remember the vibrant online community it created in the form of webrings where people shared tips or showed off their screenshots in self-made geocities websites.

[–] lowvisnitpicker@startrek.website 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I've spent hundreds of hours in Daggerfall and never got far with the story, but I did figure out how to fly in the void outside the dungeons and shoot the really hard monsters with arrows! Daggerfall is so ridiculously big it probably has hundreds of towns that have only ever been visited by one obsessive kid who made a point to click on them all.

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Either the world's standards are low or mine are high, none of these are very good compared to FNV

[–] Malgas@beehaw.org 15 points 1 year ago

FNV isn't a Bethesda game.

[–] HairHeel@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I almost gave up on Starfield because the main quest is just chasing MacGuffins around the universe, apparently? But I started doing the Ryujin Industries side quests and those are kinda fun I guess.

[–] averyminya@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The side quests really make the game. My issue came down to after that first playthrough I did all the quests... So in ng+ what do I do, different choices?

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

the ng+ actually have some crazy changes to the game, that are randomized. You can either get a normal world, or 1 of 10+ altered worlds.

[–] averyminya@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

I remember seeing those articles. It was just tough putting together a life and stacked character and complete quests to throw it away for my experience which was another normal boring one (clarify, only boring because it was all exactly the same, I liked my first playthrough).

I like the game, it has a strong message behind it. It's tough rebuilding your mantis ship decked with other quest ship materials and your alignments when you get a not crazy NG+

[–] mojo@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

I immediately know Morrowind would be the top. The game has not aged well.

[–] Sina@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

While I know they just wanted to shit on Starfield, but at least I like how they've put Oblivion & Morrowind at the top, because I agree those two are by far the best on this list.

As for Starfield, It's basically Skyrim in space. To me most of the criticisms Starfield gets outside of the -to me- irrelevant technicalities (loading screens, performance) apply to Skyrim as well. I played Skyrim at release and I was super disappointed, now playing Starfield felt largely the same, but a wee bit better. I don't think the whole RPG progression system makes sense in a scifi rpg shooter, so that part is worse than Skyrim obviously, but at the same time the planets & various biomes make open world exploration more fun to me, though the main story is equally bad & there are a lot of immersion breaking things that make no sense "in space". For example I love the digipick minigame, but it's immersion breaking as f. (and then there is that part where I just joined a serious intergalactic organization & after like 1-2 missions they sent me on a diplomatic quest to decide the fate of the galaxy, basically)