Indie developer Running with Scissors saw its recent mockery of Starfield backfire after numerous fans advocated for Bethesda's upcoming title in quite a ferocious manner. The controversy emerged just as a different developer defended Starfield's polarizing choice of frame rate.The June 11 Starfield Direct featured over an hour of previously unseen footage from the upcoming space-faring RPG, in addition to revealing plenty of new information about the game. And while the event also saw Xbox promise that Starfield has the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game ever, the newly debuted footage still invited some criticism over the title's technical aspects. One such sentiment was shared by Postal series maker Running with Scissors, whose representative took to Twitter to compare a promo shot for the original Red Dead Redemption to a Starfield character screenshot, pointing to the differences between the two as the reason why developers "upgrade engines when making new games."And while the cheeky tweet amassed over 630,000 views as of June 13, it also elicited a largely negative response from both Bethesda and Running with Scissors fans alike. Some of the latter hence called for the studio to fix Postal 4 before "bullying" anyone else, as one fan put it. Others dismissed the criticism as unfounded, positing that Bethesda games feature unprecedentedly complex systems and technically challenging features such as open-world object permanence, so it's par for the course that it doesn't push the envelope in terms of graphics. That particular argument was recently strengthened by Todd Howard's claim that Starfield is five or six games in one.
Meanwhile, Reddit user LoomingDementia tracked down the exact part of the June 11 Starfield Direct from which the comparison screenshot originates from. They have subsequently accused Running with Scissors of misrepresenting the game, arguing that the image was taken from a Starfield menu using a stripped down character model. The clearly flat background in the clip suggests the simplified visuals are a stylistic choice and not representative of how the characters will look during actual gameplay, according to their reasoning.
While Todd Howard himself likened Starfield to Red Dead Redemption during the June 11 showcase, it's likely that Running with Scissor's comparison was simply inspired by the featured character's cowboy attire. Either way, the online backlash against this bit of mockery only made the studio double down on its original criticism, although a company representative did concede that the post was mostly intended as "comedy."
"We know our games aren't comparable," the developer said, adding how that doesn't mean it cannot point out some "truths about the state of the gaming industry." The Arizona-based studio also acknowledged the criticism aimed at its latest game, promising that more Postal 4 fixes and improvements are on the horizon.
Starfield launches September 6 on PC and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Reddit