Bethesda are individually rebutting Starfield Steam reviewers, defending the loading breaks and "empty" worlds

rockpapershotgun.com:

Bethesda's heaping plateful of space-spaghetti Starfield presently rejoices in the status of a Mixed Steam user review rating, with over 80,000 such reviews posted to date. Bethesda High Command are clearly displeased with this, and several unnamed but platform-verified developers have begun replying to and rebutting individual Steam reviewers, giving apparent priority to complaints about the game's loading breaks during fast travel and when moving between maps.

"While there may be loading screens in between fast travelling, just consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under 3 seconds," reads one such reply (thanks to Eurogamer for passing this on, and to Juicehead for the original spot). "We believe that shortcoming will not hinder our players from getting lost in the world we created."

The post also reacts to the criticism that Starfield gets pretty samey by calling attention to how the experience may vary, depending on your progression and dialogue choices. It exhorts the reviewer to try rolling different characters with different specs. "You will feel like you are playing a totally different game," the post suggests, adding that "there are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you've never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours." Let's not forget those endgame options either. "Even after completing the Main Story, your adventure doesn't end! You can continue onto New Game+ to keep exploring Starfield and all that is out there!"

Another developer response sets out to address "frustration with fast travel making the universe feel much smaller", in what could almost be a reference to Alice B's Starfield review headline.