Starfield is facing controversy before launch due to its unappealing start menu, despite being one of this year’s most anticipated releases. A Bethesda executive has since responded to the criticism.
Starfield Start Menu Drama: What went wrong?
The entire Starfield start menu drama started after former Blizzard developer Mark Kern shared a screenshot of the game’s start screen. In his tweet, he stated “The physiognomy of start screens. The start screen of a game can reveal a lot about how rushed the team was and how much pride they took in their work.” This statement snowballed into a massive discussion within the gaming community, and many were asking two questions.
“Is the game facing a rushed and unpolished development cycle?” or “Do the developers don’t care about the game or take pride in Starfield.” Mark further added that unrealistic deadlines may cause developers to be overworked or the team just didn’t care since the start menu screen is often created at the very end of a game’s development. However, Pete Hines, Head of Publishing at Bethesda, fired back at this criticism in his tweet.
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Hines responded to Kern by stating that the start menu was “one of the first things that we settled on” and that they chose a menu format they have used for many years. He pushed back by adding that “Questioning out a developer’s “care” because you would have done it differently is highly unprofessional coming from another “dev”.
Our Take on the Matter
A start screen is undoubtedly an integral part of a game since it is the first thing you see once you launch a game. Picture firing up a brand-new game you got on the first day of its release, the intro cinematics and publisher names go by, and you’re finally in. Halo: Reach (2010) is a great example of this, with its main menu being barebones but still offering a gorgeous view of Reach’s horizon. However, claiming that the start menu indicates the devs’ care and hard work is a stretch, to say the least. Starfield’s release is just days away, so we shall know soon enough whether the game is a rushed and unfinished mess.
