Bethesda went into the F76 launch with more goodwill than they went into the Starfield launch with. This time around they had eroded that "benefit of the doubt" and goodwill to the point that people were fed up.
The negative reviews - in part - are a condemnation of Bethesda as a whole and their past failure.
Maybe true, as I understand it, the most egregious problem with FO76 on launch was the complete lack of NPCs with stories, dialogue and reasons for you to care about anything in the world.
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Yeah, F76 on launch was also a buggy nightmare. The No NPC's thing was a really bad design decision though.
I came back to F76 a few years later and tried to play it co-op but it just wasn't designed for that either it seems. F76 didn't know what it wanted to be and that's one of the reasons it failed despite incredibly good sales numbers. It also had ALL the exploits and trolling.
If they had focused on making it a solid Co-Op Fallout game that could also easily be played single player then it would have worked great.
I'm glad you like Starfield and I hear Ng+ is interesting at least.
It probably helps that I didn’t have particularly high expectations, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a fair bit. Mainly I was expecting a lot more go somewhere, kill a bunch of guys, return for reward type missions. What I got was probably more time talking to characters and deciding if their problems were worth my time than shooting people.
Also the fact that money actually matters for most of the game makes a big difference for me (even after maxing out the commerce skill). One disappointment I had when I first played Skyrim was I wanted to play as a thief, but by the time I found the thieves guild, I basically had no need of crime anymore and just did the quest line for fun.
I know many people don’t like losing all their stuff in NG+, but for me it meant having something to work towards again. I role played it basically as having a bit of breakdown when [redacted story reason] put me back at the beginning. So my previously upstanding character went off the rails, getting involved in gangs, drugs, smuggling, doing shady work for a shady corporation, etc. Before eventually crawling back to all the goody two shoes at constellation.
