Starfield - Bethesda's new space IP: will probably be full of fun and easily trackable bugs

[Problematic User Forever]

I really do have to wonder what the aversion to hiring a professional writer or two is when it comes to games.

This is just how Bethesda has *always* done it.

Michael Kirkbride was an artist. I'm pretty sure his whole job originally was to edit photos of pin up models into pixel art for Daggerfall before they just started giving him shit to write for Redguard.

 

[Allison's Chains]

Just installed it and am blindly optimistic going into it. I never bother reading anyone's opinion on games before I've played, just to avoid tainting the experience with groupthink, corporate shilling and the dumbass eternally displeased bitching of /v/irgins.

Will report back

 

[>IMPLYING]

I'm in the middle of a Skyrim run right now and the difference is striking. The Dragonborn's responses to other characters are mostly straightforward with maybe a mean/threatening option thrown in there.

I can't even express how much I hate this fucking reddit Marvel shit where every fucking dialogue option is thos sarcastic quippy shit where you own the npc with your facts and logic.

Even in Fallout 4 where almost every conversation had a sarcastic option it wasn't this bad

There's some of that here too.
Option 1, option 1 but curt, and question.

 

[Zero0]

Found a really cool town, going to explore a while

Spoiler

 

[Night Crawler]

For an established studio, switching engines is a big ask. It means retraining the whole team on a completely different set of tools.

BioWare used to develop UE-based games. Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 were Unreal Engine 3-based. Then, EA forced them to switch to Frostbite (the Battlefield engine), because they were greedy fuckers and didn't want to pay royalties for UE. Frostbite, at the time, had basically no documentation and didn't even have a savegame system. BioWare had to code one into it for Dragon Age: Inquisition, and they still shit the bed with Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem.

Bethesda's Gamebryo fork has its advantages. Namely, it allows retarded-monkey-level developers to snap together prefab pieces very easily and slap them onto some heightmapped terrain and call it a day. The phoneme-based dialogue system means that there's no need to mocap every little interaction. It serves their niche well, however, the fundamental framework of Gamebryo is very long in the tooth.

I figured Bethesda would just continue to use their shitty old engine for as long as they can get away with it. It looks like they can keep doing that for a while.

View attachment 5317599

"Actually I like the piss filter"

I have been playing with a mod for GTA IV that removes the filters in that game. They are known for being ugly. But without them on the game looks kind of odd. The game was clearly made with the filters in mind. Just getting rid of them won't cut it.

As promised earlier having made it to lunch I kinda wanted to give my thoughts on the game after having played right around 55-60 hours (Basically since 11AM Friday through the long weekend). I'll start with a TL;DR: I like the game. There are parts of the game I really like, but I feel like for every part I really like there's another part that I fucking despise. The character writing seems noticeably worse than other Bethesda games, the Space and Ground games feel like they were made by two different teams who never wanted to talk another and some gameplay loops are totally busted. I'm sure the mods will make this into a great experience, but it isn't there right yet. Solid 6/10.

A super hyped up game gets an above average score. How current year. lol

 

[spacko]

all of these people will also have bought skyrim a minimum 4 times (either on steam or cross platform) and have at least a thousand hours in fallout 76. i have verifiable data to back this up and am not just guessing

im not sure who has the most housebeaten fans, bethesda or blizz

 

[Croaking Spider]

I just need to stop playing this shit, it's just making me more disappointed with the state of the game industry. Starfield feels so soulless.

When Fallout 3 came out, it may not have been a masterpiece, but what it did do was reintroduce people to music that hadn't been popular since the 1940-60s. Whenever I think of Fallout 3, the first thing that comes to mind is The Ink Spots and the sight of that buggy (yet interesting) bombed-out landscape.

When Skyrim came out, my first impression of it wasn't "hey wait, this is just Oblivion in Norway". Again, not a bad game, but at least it was memorable and had a relatively well-populated map as far as content goes, especially after the official DLC releases. That's not even including all the modding support it saw.

When I booted up and played Starfield for a few hours, I never even got the impression that this was "Fallout in space". The story, the NPCs, the atmosphere, nothing even as remotely interesting as Fallout's world and lore. Even with the blatant recycling of dragon shouts and wall words, it never felt like "Skyrim in space", just a studio being creatively bankrupt.

People are quick to go to the "b-but wait for all the mods" cope, but I don't forsee the same level of interest in developing mods for Starfield as previous Bethesda titles. When the core systems are unfun and bare-bones, it doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room for expansion.

 

[Breadbassket]

How is the procedural generation system for the game? I know it was something that was marketed pretty hard as this big thing.

 

[Zero0]

How is the procedural generation system for the game? I know it was something that was marketed pretty hard as this big thing.

Awful. Do not engage with it.

 

[Mega Black]

wish Bethesda would embrace codex's.

Funnily enough this is already another thing that Skyrim basically had figured out that they somehow forgot. In game books and texts about the world are an amazing collectible for the discerning dork. Fallout not having something similar has always sucked ass, seems like codex entries you could find around the world would be a natural extension of things.

 

[anustart76]

I finally got to play a little bit of the game, and it RUNS LIKE GARBAGE. I am sorry but I'm about to go on an autistic rant, WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THESE AAA DEVELOPER ASS CLOWNS AND THEIR REFUSING TO OPTIMIZE A GAME AT ALL AND JUST THROWING FSR/DLSS AND IN THIS CASE NOT EVEN DLSS, JUST FSR AND CALLING IT A DAY?! I mean fucking hell, I have a 3090Ti and a Ryzen 5950X and my framerate with DLSS is barely a stable 60 on FUCKING MEDIUM SETTINGS.

FUCKING
MEDIUM
SETTINGS

And this is AFTER the help that id gave them?! If id, the studio that made Doom Eternal, a game that runs like butter at like 90 FPS for me with RTX on and no DLSS on max settings, couldn't get their engine fixed up better than this, I am truly terrified to think of what the absolute fuck this thing ran like before they came in.

 

[Zero0]

I finally got to play a little bit of the game, and it RUNS LIKE GARBAGE. I am sorry but I'm about to go on an autistic rant, WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THESE AAA DEVELOPER ASS CLOWNS AND THEIR REFUSING TO OPTIMIZE A GAME AT ALL AND JUST THROWING FSR/DLSS AND IN THIS CASE NOT EVEN DLSS, JUST FSR AND CALLING IT A DAY?! I mean fucking hell, I have a 3090Ti and a Ryzen 5950X and my framerate with DLSS is barely a stable 60 on FUCKING MEDIUM SETTINGS.

FUCKING
MEDIUM
SETTINGS

And this is AFTER the help that id gave them?! If id, the studio that made Doom Eternal, a game that runs like butter at like 90 FPS for me with RTX on and no DLSS on max settings, couldn't get their engine fixed up better than this, I am truly terrified to think of what the absolute fuck this thing ran like before they came in.

Wasn't ID just helping with the gunplay?

 

[Epoch]

Wasn't ID just helping with the gunplay?

Yeah back in 2014 for Fallout 4, not anymore, probably why they didn't change it. For Starfield it seems like they ripped a few things out of IdTech, but I doubt Id was actually involved beyond that. the TAA ini string mentions Idtech7 and the motion blur is per object like Doom uses, but I think that's the extent, at least until it gets cracked open when xEdit or the Creation Kit get released and we can see everything.

 

[anustart76]

Wasn't ID just helping with the gunplay?

No, they helped with the graphics mostly

https://sea.ign.com/doom-eternal/200464/news/bethesda-clarifies-doom-developer-id-softwares-involvement-with-starfield

 

[derpherp2]

This is a big part of my issue with the spectacle creep of 0483423813238328312gajillion stars, or even galaxies, as opposed to sublight, Newtonian, true NASApunk. Kerbalpunk. Where you can't even tell if there's a ninth planet and the most simple trading run requires a mountain of math formulas and the slightest error will doom the entire mission.

If we had far more random encounters in space even while fast-traveling It would be nice.

Like chart the ENTIRE FUCKING COURSE (including landing in a specific area) and then we just grav jump multiple times, each branch having a chance for a random encounter - including an ability to pause our course charting so we can pop into a planet (or yaknow, give us an ability to send a drone to harvest resources with LIKE EVERY OTHER FUCKING SPACE GAME).

There, all my complaints gone. But no, we have to have 5 seperate loading screens each with a cutscene in between just to have a proper space flight sim experience, to make no mention it isn't REALLY space flight sim since we can't even just land normally.

Like it's so fucking close to being good, but it falls short because you can tell that while the devs like space flight sims, they didn't realize the required nuance for this shit.

 

[MeltyTW]

The world seems typical bethesda, one illogical pirate faction just like tes bandits and fallout raiders as opposed to actual gangs and tribes like the west coast fallouts, sci fi tropes like earth being ruined ala dune and south park episode looking future fashion. just cookie cutter as hell. limited dialogue options and approaches. just no. oh and a special faction that allows anyone and everyone of any morality creed race religion or other faction affiliation in so you can have similar stories even as supposedly wildly different characters (the artifact hunting guys).

Someone probably should have told Todd to tone down the 1000 planets to something like 100 tightly made explorable ones across multiple solar systems. Though then they could use the 1000 planets marketing. Instead you get repeated empty wastelands with nothing to really do on them.

why not like 5 massive maps? or even really just a good chunk of one planet and a moon. you could do a gundam and have orbital colonies and stations and ships and space elevators to visit or use and have a really detailed smaller space. maybe a dlc for a mars situation

 

[Kharash]

I have been playing with a mod for GTA IV that removes the filters in that game. They are known for being ugly. But without them on the game looks kind of odd. The game was clearly made with the filters in mind. Just getting rid of them won't cut it.

Same with Deus Ex Human Revolution. Everyone hated the piss filter so they removed in in the Director's Cut but it just looks off without it.

 

[LightDragonman1]

Given that many have said that the game for some didn't get good until 10-15 hours in, what are some ways they could've made those opening hours not feel so completely tedious and lifeless?

 

[Zero0]

Given that many have said that the game for some didn't get good until 10-15 hours in, what are some ways they could've made those opening hours not feel so completely tedious and lifeless?

Make the main story slightly less shit.

It's literally just fetch quests.

 

[Night Crawler]

Same with Deus Ex Human Revolution. Everyone hated the piss filter so they removed in in the Director's Cut but it just looks off without it.

Something else needs to be done because just getting rid of the filters in these games won't do it. Even with the filters off GTA IV doesn't look that great. Like everything has this raw look to it. There needs to be more done than just taking away the shitty mid to late 2000's and early 2010's brown yellow and grey filters. I hate the filters in GTA IV especially after playing GTA 5 first and seeing the more natural normal looking colors and game world. But I will admit the game looks a bit raw/off without them. I understand that the filters in certain games like GTA IV were part of the art design of the game. They are what provides the atmosphere for the game. If they take them away the lighting and colors need to redone as well. At some points in the game the filters in GTA IV don't look that bad. But then other times they do.