Not according to google? Unless you're counting the people who had the 5-day early access from premium purchases or whatever it was. But the general release was on the 6th. And no, I haven't played Starfield, what's more I don't PLAN on playing Starfield, at least anytime soon (no suitable system to play it on at the moment unfortunately), but that doesn't stop me from being highly skeptical of someone declaring that Starfield "is a massive failure" 3 days after it launched and when all the actual hard numbers I can find about sales actually seem pretty good. For the same reason, actually, that I was extremely skeptical about the hype BG3 had on release. The people who tend to dominate the conversation very early after the release of a game are the people who have a predetermined outcome they want to advocate for (People who WANT BG3 to be game-changingly good, or WANT Starfield to be a failure). You get a more accurate picture of how the game was ACTUALLY received over time, when more normal people have the time to play it.
I mean a million + people had access to it since Sept 1st, including myself. The point is I HAVE played Starfield - for 66 hours. I read other people's reviews, am on the subreddit - where I dare not voice the slightest criticism lest I be immediately downvoted or shadowbanned - and I watch Youtube videos on other people's experience with it - both good and bad.
The consensus is that for a large number of gamers Starfield is not a fun experience. There are a myriad reasons for that - but one of them is that the bar HAS gone up and Larian is partially responsible for that. The vast majority of gamers are becoming more vocal about this sort of thing - and less tolerant of the mediocrity that Starfield represents - ESPECIALLY given the MASSIVE budget that game had.
BG3 on the other hand has been showered with Universal acclaim from people who have been walking through the desert of gaming dying of thirst. There is a groundswell of excitement for how cool this game is, how great the storytelling is, how strange the characters are, and how talented the voice actors and writers have been. There are people refusing to sleep because they want to get just "one more quest done" - and rave about how much joy the combat brings them.
Listen, put your ear to the ground. The community is in a fervor about Bg3. People are having amazing experiences. Bg3 is on the path to cult status.
Starfield will whittle down to a core player base that wants to fuck around with 100+ mods and then get sold a ton of useless DLC and then 4 "updated" versions that don't change much of anything. It's like F76 - those people are just "whales" trapped in the whale farm - moo goes the whale.
No, I don't think so. "A large number of gamers" complain about pretty much everything. I can also find "A large number of gamers" having a blast with Starfield. I think we need to wait and see to see how the general reception is taken.
Your tastes may vary. Case in point, the more I play BG3 the more I don't think it has actually raised the bar at all. I can't help but compare it to its predecessors. In some ways, BG3 outshines BG2 in SOME spots. (Low level combat is much better than the original BG series.) But romances? BG3's feel really half-assed compared to BG2. Plot? BG2's is much more coherent. And then I compare it to Dragon Age: Origins...I don't know, man. I think Larian built some beautiful BONES of a game. I think if other people had access to the developmental tools Larian made to MAKE this game, they could make some amazing games. I do not think Larian themselves actually built all that good of a game with what they had. At low levels there are some great moments. I particularly loved the hag sidequest. But one well-done area is not an entire game. Imo, things begin to fall off in act 2 (where overleveling, itemiation and Larian's homebrew start to make battles extremely easy and gameplay starts to fall apart) and they totally crash in act 3, where both gameplay and narrative become totally unsatisfying messes.
All this "A bunch of people are disappointed with Starfield! The community is in a fervor about BG3!" is really noisy signal, you know that right? Both games have just barely been released. I think a lot of people will be much less in "in a fervor" about BG3 once they get through act 3 and do more playthroughs. Time will tell how they are actually received, and frankly I don't think BG3 will stand the test of time unless something drastic changes. I think it will in general be remembered as the game with a fun first act that fell apart towards the end and which has limited replay value without modders. The very WORST thing one can do, when evaluating a game's quality, is do something vague like "Keep your ear to the ground! Feel the pulse of the community!" in the first weeks after the release. It is exactly that time when you will be getting the most emotional, unbalanced reactions. Only time reveals how a game is actually remembered. Even I might be being unnecessarily harsh on BG3 right now, because it fails in exactly the way I worried that it would fail and it has made me angry because I am so *tired* of watching Larian make the same mistakes over and over. With time, I might reevaluate it and judge it less harshly, once I'm over my disappointment and anger.
