Pre-release Starfield main menu critique goes beyond ridiculous

Bethesda’s Starfield is one of the most hotly anticipated titles of 2023, which is a heck of an achievement for a year that’s already played host to heavy hitters like Hogwarts Legacy, Resident Evil 4, and Diablo 4, to list a few. It’s easy to see the appeal, too, as by Todd Howard himself. It’s a given, of course, that not everyone will find themselves enjoying what appears to be a classic Bethesda Game Studios RPG, but some may have taken their biases a tad too far.

In fact, some early critique coming from a particular game developer has drawn the ire of Bethesda Game Studios’ own Head of Publishing, Pete Hines. Certainly, there’s room for critique in every project – especially one as large and substantial as Starfield appears to be. Whether the critique that’s now being directed at the game is valid or not, however, is a wholly different matter.

The physiognomy of start screens.

The start screen of a game can reveal൲ a lot about how rushed the team was and how much pride they took in their work.

Starfield's start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn't care.

— Grummz (@Grummz)

Judging Starfield by its Main Menu

Mark Kern of Firefall infamy has taken to Twitter/X to argue about the “physiognomy” of Starfield‘s main menu screen, claiming that its simplicity betrays “hasty shipping deadlines.” Rather pointedly, Kern feels that Starfield is a game that’s been made by a “passionate team overworked, or a team that didn’t care.” Before making these claims, Kern said that a given game’s start screen is, in fact, extremely telling of how much pride a dev team has taken in its work, and that it’s something that’s “often done at the very end of [a game’s] development.”

It is telling, perhaps, that Kern decided specifically to reference when bringing his claims to light: a pseudo-scientific theory claiming that a person’s character or personality could accurately be assessed from the appearance of their face.

Bethesda’s Pete Hines did not mince any words.

Or they designed what they wanted and that’s been our m💜enu for years and was one of the first things we settled on.

Having an opinion is one thing. Questioning out a developer’s “care” because you woul✨d have done it differentꦰ is highly unprofessional coming from another “dev”

— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon)

Basing critique on the aesthetics of a game’s main menu is an interesting choice of argument, though, and it is certainly worth pointing out that Bethesda’s behavior implies the opposite of what Kern is saying. , specifically, giving them weeks’ worth of access.