One of Cyberpunk 2077’s developers doesn’t seem happy with someone using his game to dunk on Starfield.
We’ve yet to finish our Starfield review, but it’s already obvious to everyone that the game suffers from all the usual technical problems of a Bethesda game.
Some will be less bothered by this than others, but certain fans have started to make direct comparisons between Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077, presenting the latter in a much more positive light than usual.
One of Cyberpunk 2077’s own quest designers, Patrick K. Mills, jumped onto Twitter to defend Starfield, blasting the comparison video as ‘fake criticism.’
Despite what you might imagine, the video in question doesn’tfocus on any bugs or glitches but rather technical differences between the two games.
One example is how pointing your gun at other characters in Cyberpunk 2077 elicits a reaction, causing them to crouch in fear or run away, but none of that happens in Starfield.
Another is how shooting at bodies of water, or diving into it, in Cyberpunk 2077 creates ripples, but not in Starfield.
How times have changed
(Tbc this fake criticism is actively harmful to the way the audience interacts with the medium and I hate it, but it’s very funny to see after how many hundreds of these were made to ridicule cp2077) https://t.co/lvtAGDawfv— Patrick K. Mills (@PKernaghan) September 5, 2023
‘This fake criticism is actively harmful to the way the audience interacts with the medium and I hate it,’ he tweets. Although he does admit it’s funny seeing Cyberpunk 2077 being presented as the better game when these same types of videos were made to criticise it in the past.
‘There’s no commentary, just a handful of features being compared,’ Mills adds in response to someone defending the video.
‘What’s the meaning of this comparison? How does this relate to how I should feel about or experience these games? Useless criticism.’
It is possible to read Mills comments as being passive aggressive – after all he did highlight the video – but he does seem to be genuinely frustrated at the comparison.
The lack of interactivity in the Starfield world is something we’ve already noted in our review and there are certainly some sections of the two games that look quite similar – with both having a heavy influence from Blade Runner.
The one clear advantage Starfield has over Cyberpunk 2077 is that, while it does contain noticeable bugs, it’s nowhere near as broken as CD Projekt’s game was at launch.
Most fans seem to have forgiven those problems by now though and it’s going to be interesting to see how Starfield’s reputation evolves over time…
cyberpunks one of my fav games of all time but I still think comparing a game on launch vs a game thats had years to get polished is pretty odd. I think we all remember how shit cyberpunk was on launch bc of the pressure to make it run on consoles, and that it took years to shine
— clam (@clamty_) September 5, 2023
Yep. False comparison. At the beginning, CP2077 also lacked water dropping and water explosion physics. It was being compared to Red Dead 2 at the time. If we were comparing both Starfield and CP2077 during their initial releases, CP2077 was the bigger joke.
— SunJeong 𩺠MODDER & VTUBER âï¸ (@SeungEum_Jeong) September 5, 2023
They do have somethings to improve and fix in Starfield for sure, but the game is far more stable and has far less bugs than Cyberpunk at launch ð¤·ââï¸
Great job Bethesda ð— Matt (@K1NGxKO) September 4, 2023