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shikamaru317 on 17 August 2023
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rapsuperstar31 said:
shikamaru317 said:

Pre-early access review embargo drop for Starfield makes me think that Xbox and Bethesda are incredibly confident that the game will review well. In the past many Bethesda games didn't even have review codes sent out until a day before release, specifically so that reviews wouldn't be done in-time to influence launch sales.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/dishonored-2/bethesda-review-policy

The fact that they are sending out the review code weeks early and dropping the embargo before early access even begins makes me think they are incredibly confident. This surely must be most polished Bethesda game ever, by quite some considerable margin, for them to be this confident. Makes me think the rumors that the game was content complete a year ago and has been in the polishing and optimization phase for the entire last year were true.

At this point, this is the most confident I've been for a Bethesda game ever at it's launch.

Same, I'm now more confident than ever before that Starfield can review 90+ in-spite of a few hater outlets like Game Rant and PC Gamer likely giving it lower reviews. It's quite a shift compared to what Bethesda has done in the past. For instance their most recent release, Redfall, followed the same day before release review embargo policy they have had since 2016, and they only sent out pre-launch codes to a select few critics they thought would review the game more favorably than others, if you look at the review make up more than 20 of it's 3, 4, and 5 out of 10 reviews came from critics who didn't receive early review code, compared to only 6 of the critics who did receive early review code giving it a 3, 4, or 5 out of 10 review.

The fact that they are sending out review codes to seemingly just about every outlet weeks before release, and dropping the review embargo not the day before release, but the day before early access begins (so 6 days before the official release), definitely shows a level of confidence they haven't had in any Bethesda/Zenimax release since Doom Eternal, which had it's review embargo dropped 3 days before release and went on to review to an 88 meta. Most of the rest of the games Bethesda has published since the 2016 policy change had review embargo drops the day before release, and some of them, like Fallout 76 and Prey, didn't send out pre-release review codes at all.