Anyone who expected Starfield to win Most Innovative Gameplay, are you offering divination services to the public?

It was an easy call to make. Steam Awards are voted by the public, so it's all about name recognition.

The other finalists in that category were Shadow of Doubt, Contraband Police, Remnant II, and Your Only Move Is Hustle. Of all these, I had heard about Starfield and Remnant II.

I'm sure some of these games are awesome and I want to check them out by virtue of being finalists, but it was pretty clear Starfield was gonna win on brand recognition alone.

Like someone else said it's gotta be a result of the voting for the awards being awful. I wanted to like Starfield and (ducks down) even got it early at the higher price.*

But yeah lol innovation is a joke. Makes me feel bad for the devs who really made innovative stuff this year.

*To be fair I had a shitty week before that and needed a new Bethesda game to make my life less awful so it...worked? It was my comfort food ok?????

I know, what an upset. Fifa2023 should have taken it.

It's probably an ironic award, though I stand by the statement that Starfield isn't any worse than Bethesda's other mainstream titles post-Morrowind, except for the fact that it can't ride on the writing of much better writers who either left the company or made the IP they acquired.

Starfield is the first pure creation of Modern Bethesda, and they can't rely on the excellent lore and world building of other games like Fallout 1 and 2, Morrowind, etc.

That being said, 90% of issues can be solved by halving the radius for POI generation, adding a huge number of new POIs for the pool, and adding a survival mode to make shipbuilding important, space travel require fuel, and spacesuits necessary for environmental protection.