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[LectureMaster]

Todd Howard Offers Theory On Addressing Starfield: Shattered Space Criticism

Todd Howard offers a theory to Xbox boss Phil Spencer about one of the most common criticisms of Starfield's Shattered Space DLC.

gamerant.com

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Xbox boss Phil Spencer has revealed that Bethesda's Todd Howard wonders if holding back the release of Starfield's REV-8 buggy for the Shattered Space expansion could have been the right choice. The REV-8 gave Starfield players a new way to traverse the surface of planets and, for a long time post-launch, was probably the most requested feature for the game.

After almost a year of waiting, Bethesda released the REV-8 for Starfield in August 2024. It was a huge step for the studio, which had never previously released a game on the Creation engine with player-controlled vehicles. It's an impressive feat that massively improves planetary exploration, with many wondering why it wasn't included in the base game in the first place. The release of Starfield's REV-8 came just a month before Shattered Space was launched in a free update, and it was somewhat of a surprise that the feature wasn't bundled with the expansion.

Speaking to Game File, Xbox's Phil Spencer spoke about a conversation he had recently with Bethesda's Todd Howard. Recalling the conversation with Howard about the reception to Starfield's recent Shattered Space DLC, Spencer said, "I think some of the feedback on the expansion is: "We wanted more features." And he's like, "Well, should we have waited to put buggies out?"" Spencer went on, "I think you're trying to tune both development effort and the impact of the expansion. And I think there will always be a balance to managing the game month to month."

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[Scrawnton]

I have a novel idea... developers should stop releasing games in general until they're ready.

 

[Mayar]

 

[reinking]

I guess the question is, should we have held the free content back and added it as part of the paid content to pad the paid content?

 

[hinch7]

Nope still fundimentally a mid game wrapped in RNG as a gimmick. Something that was achieved years ago with NMS years ago, but better. No added features, nor expansion can fix that.

The base game was just hyped coming off the developers prestiege which reviews reflect.

 

[begotten]

Forget about Shattered Space, Starfield should have spent another 2 years in development.

 

[BigLee74]

Are folk still trying to compare NMS to Starfield ?

Starfield shits all over NMS.

 

[Senua]

I have a novel idea... developers should stop releasing games in general until they're ready.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Nope still fundimentally a mid game wrapped in RNG as a gimmick. Something that was achieved years ago with NMS years ago, but better.

Shattered Space is hand crafted.

 

[SJRB]

It's an impressive feat

Man shut the fuck up. It is the most barebones mechanic imaginable and the fact that it took them a YEAR to release it it mindboggling.

Why do none of these morons ever ask Todd any hard-hitting questions? You know, questions like "Todd my man, why did this take a year?" or "Todd how come you made a space exploration game and your DLC revolves around exploring a chunk on a planet? What is up with that Todd?" or "Todd, Bethesda hasn't released a game that is in any way significant to the videogame zeitgeist since Skyrim, which was 13 years ago. Why do you think that is?"

 

[Mayar]

Why do none of these morons ever ask Todd any hard-hitting questions? You know, questions like "Todd my man, why did this take a year?" or "Todd how come you made a space exploration game and your DLC revolves around exploring a chunk on a planet? What is up with that Todd?"

Calm down, you are asking questions that have meaning and real significance. In modern Peress you can't do that, you get punished for that =)

 

[hinch7]

Shattered Space is hand crafted.

I was talking about generally about the game, not specifically the expansion.

I read somewhere its a few hours long with the same terrible writing/story and gameplay the same.. so no surprised it wasn't well received. Reviewers just got over the honeymoon phase years after when the DLC hit. I mean I don't see how you can make an open world game, so closed after a decade of development. Its an astonishing achievement.

 

[Fortress of Regrets]

The vehicle is ass. The expansion is ass. Putting them together wouldn't have made any of it less ass.

 

[Hrk69]

 

[Topher]

Should have been there day one and should have been done better either way.

Are folk still trying to compare NMS to Starfield ?

Starfield shits all over NMS.

"folk"

Only hinch7 talked about NMS and you didn't even reply to him. Either way, he was just talking about vehicles. No need to go into full Starfield defense mode, was there?

 

[VolticArchangel]

 

[Mercador]

Change engine Todd, please.

 

[Roberts]

Starfield is probably my favourite game of the last year, but I never really felt the need for a buggy. Now that they added it, I barely ever used it during Shattered Space and it no way made the experience better or worse. It's not like I don't see the faults in the game, but lack of buggy was definitely not one of them.

 

[Gonzito]

The game would still be boring, because that is the main issue with Starfield. It's just not a good game

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Starfield is probably my favourite game of the last year, but I never really felt the need for a buggy. Now that they added it, I barely ever used it during Shattered Space and it no way made the experience better or worse. It's not like I don't see the faults in the game, but lack of buggy was definitely not one of them.

Where will you go in a buggy? Thats the issue with it. For planet scanning, I am fine on foot. It has limited use case.

With that said, looking forward to playing expansion in future. I liked the art style.

 

[diffusionx]

It’s funny how they keep talking about Shartfield like the issue was marketing or managing expectations or whatever, no the game just sucked and they need to come to grips with this now so they don’t fuck up their next game.

 

[JORMBO]

There is not much reason to use the buggy. The planets are still empty. The expansion added a more densely packed zone, but the rest of the galaxy doesn't give much of a reason to go explore it. And while the expansion zone is better, the writing is still bland. The game just has too many flaws and bad writing to fix at this point.

 

[Atrus]

Insinuating that it shouldn’t have been free but part of the paid dlc so you can appreciate their effort more is the sort of shit tier opinion that has reduced Todd Howard into a meme as an untrustworthy snake oil salesman.

It really doesn’t bode well for the company as a whole when management has their heads so far up their own ass.

 

[Mr Moose]

which had never previously released a game on the Creation engine with player-controlled vehicles

My horse in Skyrim

 

[XXL]

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

No. Your Magnus Copium is perfect as it is. "If this were a PlayStation exclusive, the reception would have been way more positive".

 

[Punished Miku]

I didn't use the buggy until the expansion, and I couldn't stop driving it all over. It's definitely a lot more fun than I expected.

But yeah, if they are planning another expansion, it's fine with me if they hold things back and do larger drops at once. I don't intend to start replaying the game again for each tiny update so you might as well group them all together into big ones.

P.S. Keep adding more variants of the buggy you can buy, more parts, and dramatically increase the effectiveness of the guns and give more options. Missiles, grenades, etc.

 

[BigLee74]

Should have been there day one and should have been done better either way.



"folk"

Only hinch7 talked about NMS and you didn't even reply to him. Either way, he was just talking about vehicles. No need to go into full Starfield defense mode, was there?

Is he of folk kind? It counts. And there’s always a need

Also, I’m pretty sure he was referring more to procedurally generated stuff than the vehicle, but that’s just splitting hairs and I don’t have many left to split!

 

[Skifi28]

Shattered Space is hand crafted.

But the hands have sausage fingers.

 

[simpatico]

Starfield is rotten at it's core. Nothing can save it. A game that depends on having thousands of fully explorable planets is absolutely idiotic. Every open world map of every game ever would not even make up the smallest US state. Why does Bethesda think they can make a map 1,000,000,000x that size interesting?

 

[vaibhavpisal]

But the hands have sausage fingers.

Is it?

Will play it to figure that out.

Base game had some flaws. Thought they wouldn’t be an issue in this expansion.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

There will never be positive starfield reception while I live and breathe

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

months to make vehicles possible... such a mismatch between design needs and tools is hardly seen

 

[artsi]

I feel like Todd and Bethesda are in denial about the suckiness of their game.

Just move on and try to create a memorable experience like Skyrim, instead of whatever soulless thing Starfield was.

 

[Magic Carpet]

The only reception Mr Howard is You and your staff receiving all the criticism and writing it down in a notebook.
Apply that criticism to the very preproduction of your next game. Do this Before a single line of code is typed.

 

[King Dazzar]

They really don't get it do they. Starfield's flaws go far deeper than a damn buggy. Remake it in a decent engine someday and it might be worth another look. Even then though...

 

[ValiantInstance]

Bethesda are done. Todd has gone from an eternal optimist to straight up delusional.

I guess this is what happens when a developer releases buggy messes with poor writing and get rewarded for it.

 

[IntentionalPun]

I thought the DLC was fine. Nothing amazing, but quite a few missions and whatnot. Actually some stuff you find while looking around in caves too like missions you wouldn't know existed.

It's a better planet than most of the rest of the game, which is the bigger problem.

But I've come around to at least liking Starfield quite a bit personally. Although I am a huge Bethesda RPG fan, and still can't really get over how the game doesn't have 1 giant map to traverse.

On PC with mods though all the ship stuff can be basically skipped lol Takes barely any time as there are mods that skip all the dumb animations that get super repetative.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Forget about Shattered Space, Starfield should have spent another 2 years in development.

It cracks me up when I see people say this.

Two years wouldn’t have accomplished a thing for Starfield. It would still have the same mid gameplay issues and it would still perform badly.

Todd and Bethesda are so out of touch with reality when it come to game development are you seriously trying to tell me they would have figured those issues out…C’mon man.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

They really don't get it do they. Starfield's flaws go far deeper than a damn buggy. Remake it in a decent engine someday and it might be worth another look. Even then though...

Yeah, it cracks me seeing people say it needed more time in the oven. More time just means it would have the same issues two years later. The game design was flawed from the start.

 

[mitch1971]

Todd's studio needs to abandon the stone age and at the very least shift to the bronze age.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

No, the games a massively disappointing pile of shit for all of the reasons discussed in multiple threads. It doesn't matter what they throw at the game in terms of content, it's fundamentally not good because of the way it has been created.

Todd is off his rocker at this point and is talking absolute nonsense.

 

[dispensergoinup]

Anecdotally, my friends and I just wanted it to be Skyrim/Fallout in space. I gave it a good 60+ hours and it wasn't.

At the end of the day, that's why we didn't play it religiously for hundreds of hours.

I don't think any amount of drip feeding features would have wiped that bad first impression at this point. The core design is busted.

 

[Ribi]

I have a novel idea... developers should stop releasing games in general until they're ready.

No because they you get people crying about Star citizen, beyond good and evil 2, and Half life 3

Gamers love to talk out of both sides of their fucking mouths

 

[Cyberpunkd]

I have a novel idea... developers should stop releasing games in general until they're ready.

 

[thief183]

I honestly had fun with the game for 40 hours, after that I lost interest cause the samey quests were way too obvious.
Thinking about it I think I don't dislike the game as many of you do is cause I never expected a space exploration game, but just a skyrim with guns in space.

 

[IntentionalPun]

I honestly had fun with the game for 40 hours, after that I lost interest cause the samey quests were way too obvious.
Thinking about it I think I don't dislike the game as many of you do is cause I never expected a space exploration game, but just a skyrim with guns in space.

Yeah I never WANTED space exploration lol.

It just ironically feels like despite the sheer size of everything there's less to do and see than Skyrim.

 

[Loomy]

When you're wondering if a buggy could have saved your expansion, you've already lost.

 

[Flabagast]

This game really was nothing else than a fart in the wind no? That must have been even worse for the expansion.

No need to release it on PS5 imho, it will barely sell anything

 

[lmimmfn]

Holding back on delivering a good game is the issue!!!