Josh Schmidt

Bethesda really needs to rethink their writing team. Like the rest of Starfield, the story and characters are BORING. It feels like the story was written by the HR department at Bethesda. There's so much dialogue where nothing of substance is said. The overall story is ehh. It's pretty linear without much player choice. When you think you have choice, you reaply dont. The Va'Ruun is basically a cheap millenial insert for Islam with no actual spiritual substance. It all boils down to science at the end of the day....again. It's just boring like the rest of Starfield. This game had so much potential. So many interesting aspects that could have combined elements from The Expanse, Prometheus, Dune, and Star Trek to make a truly interesting experience with the feeling of loss, intrigue, and beauty. Instead we got this uninspired slop. Im nervous about TES 6. I think it may be time for Microsoft to step in and clear house at Bethesda. Between Fallout 76 and Starfield, Bethesda is circling the drain.

The level of difficulty killed this expansion for me. It feels made for only the most advanced base game player who's at level 200+. The base game was difficult but fair. Shadow of the Erdtree is an order of magnitude more difficult. But this difficulty adds nothing. Its just hard for the sake of being hard. It forces a lot of repetition. Hit boxes on bosses are all out of whack. Minor enemies have the strength of some bosses in the base game. Bosses are frequently immortal mid-animation when attacking your spirit ash. Many boss move sets consist of like 10 animations in a row, which you have to spend hours mastering to avoid. This game forces you to be terminally online looking up ways to deal with a boss. The level of difficulty in the expansion just feels like an attempt to get attention. It's a game designed to get attention from streamers who spend 1000s of hours mastering games. As far as the story... it feels like the writing was written in Chinese, then translated to Latin, then translated to Hebrew, then to Russian, then to English. I'm sure there's a plot somewhere in there but you'll probably need to have a YouTuber explain it to you. Shadow of the Erdtree has a beautiful art style though. Especially when it comes to weapons. But don't worry. You won't get to use most weapons. You get limited re-specs so get ready to never re-spec your character because you want to save it for later. Idk. Maybe 2/5 is too harsh for this game. Clearly a lot of effort was put into it but it doesn't feel designed for normal gamers. It feels designed to just gain clicks and attention for being hard.

Its a really mid game. Unfortunately the story is super shallow. It's more multi-verse nonsense with many mechanics ripped right out of No Man's Sky. There's no "great question" answered, like Todd promised. There's no Prometheus story here. No intelligent aliens. No existential threat. At the end of the day everything feels meaningless in this universe. There's no feeling of loss, of what once was, like we get with Fallout or The Elder Scrolls. It's a story written by a Chase Bank boardroom. Its safe and stale. Then theres the personalities. Oof... Every single faction is extremely similar. Similar motives. Similar structure. Almost all are some form of a Republic.. Even the bad guys aren't all that bad... The companions are beyond boring. They're all "Good Guys". Once you get over the weird facial animations plaguing this game, you discover that there's no soul to any character in it. Then there's the typical Bethesda bugs. Its better than Fallout 76 but the Creation Engine is creaking here. Prep for a ton of load screens. The ship builder is buggy and confusing. Go on YouTube to learn how to use it. I sure had to... base building is the same way... Somehow planets feel less interesting than No Man's Sky. You'll see the same caves, outposts, shipwrecks, etc. scattered throughout the planets. The weapon design is mid. Not horrible but not good. If you're a gun-nut, you're eyes might bleed from some of the things you see in this game. Guns were clearly created by someone who isn't that familiar with guns... Ship combat gets boring after 2 or 3 battles. Again nothing epic. Honestly it's super disappointing. Maybe mods and patches will help it in the future but the standard game is eh... Using boost packs can be kinda fun...so there's that... But yeah. Bethesda really needs some restructuring. Idk if they've just gotten too big or too many committees are being consulted about every game design element or if they just lost passion, but if Bethesda is to thrive, they desperately need to restructure. This disappointment can't happen with TES 6.