CohhCarnage rips into Starfield’s story and its ‘high-school level writing’

Starfield is yet to fully release but it seems everybody and their mama, and their mama’s couch have formed an opinion on Bethesda’s behemoth of a space adventure. Streamers are of course front and center in the debate. One such streamer, CohhCarnage, finds major faults with a particular aspect of Starfield—its story.

CohhCarnage let loose on the quality of writing in Starfield while streaming the game on Sept. 4. Within a minute, he articulated how big of a letdown the lore and main story have been for him and most people he’s talked to, and came to the conclusion plenty of Bethesda fans have been repeating for at least the last decade—you don’t play a Bethesda game for the main story.

CohhCarnage begins his demolition job of Starfield’s story with a disappointing sigh over what it could have been before completely slamming the final product. “[Starfield’s story] could have been so much better, could have been really cool, but instead we got this high-school level writing stuff,” CohhCarnage begins, before moving in for the kill: “It’s just not very good, not very interesting, it was not very engaging.”

Turns out CohhCarnage is far from the only one within his circle who’s feeling that way about Starfield’s story, as he proceeds to explain. “What’s funny is I’ve talked to a lot of people that are in my friend group that have beaten the game, and all of them feel the same way. I haven’t really talked to somebody who’s like ‘yeah, I really love this story.’ Everyone’s been kind of like ‘yeah, it’s a Bethesda game, you don’t play it for the main story,” he said. CohhCarnage’s final words—”That sucks man, I don’t want to feel that way”—make it clear enough that his criticism comes from a place of love instead of malice toward Starfield or Bethesda.

That impression is further enhanced by the fact that even while heavily criticizing Starfield’s writing, CohhCarnage still managed to slip in a positive remark in there, saying that the story being so bad is “unfortunate, because there are so many parts of this game that are really good.”

Despite the obviously negative opinion that CohhCarnage has of Starfield’s story and writing, that he still remains rather positive about the game overall is a testament to the good job Bethesda has done in other aspects.