I entirely agree about Starfield and how aggressively mid it is. All Starfield managed to achieve (for me) was turning it off and booting up a heavily-modded romp through Skyrim for a few dozen nostalgic / fun hours.
Hell! If Microsoft wanted a "win," give Obsidian (not Todd / not Bethesda / not the Creation Engine) an unlimited budget and unlimited manpower to totally remake Skyrim for modern audiences.
Y'all must not be content being "blacklisted" by *just* Nintendo, and wish to add Guerrilla Games / Sony Playstation to that list, with how bafflingly and unnecessarily hard you guys routinely shit on the Horizon franchise, whenever it's brought up on the podcast.
Wow! Giant Bomb really showing their whole ass, huh.
Y'all boycotting Hogwarts coverage because of JK Rowling (who had nothing to do with the games, beyond IP--IIRC), but Atomic Heart being tied to / made by a pro-Russian dev, funded in part by Russian owned Oil / Gas company Gazprom (basically, Putin's oil and gas company), allegations of Atomic Hearts collecting data for Russian state officials, and Mick Gordon donating ALL of his proceeds from Atomic Heart to Red Cross Ukraine...
Between that and how much y'all STILL GO TO BAT FOR WWE, despite its terrible, decades-long history of workers' rights, misogyny, sexism, racism, assault and ties to the McMahons...
If you want to not cover Hogwarts, that's fine, but the hypocrisy is getting to be a bit much: either it all matters or none of it does.
For the record, I don't agree with any of JK Rowling's personal politics, buuut: why does the WWE & the McMahon's (who are literal human garbage) get a continual pass, but a Hogwarts / Harry Potter sim game with--I assume--no direct involvement from Rowling beyond the IP (please correct me if I'm wrong) gets put on blast???
I don't see any other calls for boycott or not covering games like Call of Duty, because Acti-Blizz is also a dumpster fire, controlled / run by similar human garbage / sex pests as Vince McMahon.
Edit: quite honestly, it seems like the height of hypocrisy to me, cherry-picking what to be outraged by: either it all matters, or none of it does.
Whether or not it's a "hot mess" / broken at launch (it's a BETHESDA GAME, so it's guaranteed)... it don't matter.
If games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Fallout 76 have shown us anything: gamers are addicts who don't care "how the sausage gets made" and apologists who fill forgive repeated slights, surrendering their consumer rights (when the shouldn't); Microsoft will still hype the game to the Moon, trotting Todd "Sweet Little Lies" Howard out on stages to drive hype / pre-sell it; it will still have massive pre-order numbers (even with Game Pass); Bethesda's Modding Community will still devote 10's of thousands of UNPAID man hours / labor to fix Starfield, make it playable, and create content for it (See: Skyrim), which Bethesda knows / exploits (because Todd & Crew can't be bothered to fix anything in their broken games, regardless of how many editions they release over the years); Xbox / Bethesda stans will come out in force to vehemently defend inferior products they're paying good money for (which is true for all gamers); media outlets and Twitch / YT streamers will still, unironically call it good / the best / the "GOTY" (cause Microsoft's money spends)...
It just doesn't matter. Gamers have long-accepted paying full-price for "public Alphas / Betas" of AAA games, from billion / trillion dollar publishers and devs.
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