10 Video Games That Are Painfully Behind The Times

For as great as they are, Bethesda have a history of overpromising and underdelivering (especially in recent years). Modern examples include Fallout 76, Rage 2, and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Unfortunately, it looks like 2023's Starfield – which was first officially announced in 2018 – will be added to the list.

Among its largest primitive problems is the fact that the first-person dialogue scenes won't have a voiced protagonist. Not only did 2015’s Fallout 4 prove that Bethesda could (and would) hire actors to flesh out their main characters, but several newer first-person projects – such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Dying Light 2 – feature them as well.

Unlike 2016’s No Man’s Sky (to which Starfield is often compared), Starfield won’t allow players to seamlessly move between space travel and planetary exploration, either. Instead, players will see a quick cutscene or (hopefully) brief loading screen every time they leave or approach a new place.

Beyond that, the game’s reported 1,000 procedurally generated worlds appears to subscribe to the old-fashioned mindset of quantity over quality. Issues with animation, character design, gunplay, and AI functionality have also reared their ugly heads in preview builds.

Starfield may be arriving in 2023, but it already seems stuffed with outdated cargo.