Oh yeah of course that was the problem with starfield, people just didn’t know what an RPG was
I think I’ll stick with my non-RPG games like Baldurs Gate 3 and Witcher 3 then.
If that’s all they learned, or the most important thing they learned, we might as well just forget about Elder Scrolls 6.
I just played the Mass Effect Legendary edition (Shepard trilogy) through for the first time this year. Had I played it before Starfield, I probably would have hated Starfield. Amazing that BioWare made this in like 2007… and I think 2010 and 2013 for the second and third parts. And then something like Starfield comes out like 15 years later and it’s just… garbage. Really feels like we’re going backwards sometimes. The Oblivion remaster was such a breath of fresh air compared to Skyrim. And now they don’t need to care about Fallout and Elder Scrolls since those are live service games with microtransactions galore.
I will say, for your context, since legendary edition lacks the ME3 multiplayer: Mass Effect 3 was the first major game to use loot boxes. Completely set the standard for the industry.
From the perspective of some, especially at the time, Mass Effect was largely responsible for sending the genre backwards, which supports Pagliarulo’s point. And honestly, if Mass Effect counts as an RPG (it should), then I don’t see why we’d disqualify Starfield.
I certainly wouldn’t not call Starfield an RPG. You would just never hear me call it a good one. And I played it. Extensively. I did all 240 temples to max the Starborn powers. So I did many of the quest lines multiple times. I’ve done the main quest multiple times in both formats (full and fast-tracked i.e. “I already know what the artefacts are so go get them while I rush the ending”). I’ve done the spy one like 2-3 times and the others many more than that. Before they nerfed the invisibility power’s thievery superpower, I was making my first stop (on NG+) Neon and looting the second best gun in the game and selling the duplicates and lesser versions and their ammo. That plus the contraband chest in security (not a vendor chest) set up the run pretty nice. The pirate quest line was actually awesome when it worked, the biggest show stopper being that the game would stop progressing when you attacked/defended a missile battery (in the final space battle). Also liked the vanguard quest line, but the fighting was a huge let down. There’s what, six Terrormorphs on the “Terrormorph homeworld”? GTFO. Revenant (best gun) cuts through them like a hot knife through butter. I wanted more.
As far as RPGs go, action RPGs like Oblivion, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, and others that came out in the late 2010s were looked down upon by people playing the isometric, turn-based RPGs. Some tried to call these games “immersive simulators” instead, I guess to try to keep the “RPG” name pure and also to give action RPG fans their own space. It didn’t work out and we just call them all RPGs now, even if they aren’t simulating a tabletop game of D&D or the like.
Nobody is saying that Starfield isn’t an RPG. Most people are saying that it isn’t a good one and Pagliarulo doesn’t understand that.
So, are people finally realizing that bethesda is horrible?
