Every Bethesda RPG, ranked from worst to best
Every Bethesda RPG, ranked from worst to best
If you think we won't sneak in a sly reference to New Vegas just because it's not a Bethesda RPG you don't know us very well.
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.
Lol yeah this is suffering from a lot of recency bias.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's all a matter of personal taste. But yeah, Beth's best games are definitely in the past.
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.
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...
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!
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)
How is ESO outsourced? It's made by a studio within Zenimax that was basically created just for that game.
They might as well include Fallout NV (which would of course top the list if it were included)
what? it is.
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.
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).
checks which game is "best"
This list is 100% accurate.
Morrowind is the best, but putting Oblivion above both Skyrim and FO3 (nevermind ESO and SF)? Hmmm...
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.
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.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.
Either the world's standards are low or mine are high, none of these are very good compared to FNV
FNV isn't a Bethesda game.
I immediately know Morrowind would be the top. The game has not aged well.
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.
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?
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.
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)