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

[anustart76]

Which isn't good, because Fallout 3 also had an absolute dog shit ending that I personally never got over even after it was "fixed", but I seem to be in a minority in that particular opinion.

I was disappointed when I found out you and your dad both die.

 

[indigoisviolet]

The characters are objectively fugly.

The grand joke with this is that anyone living in New Atlantis or Neon could walk into a little shop and change their entire physical appearance and even sex with a handful of credits, which in turn means the horde of hideous fat niggers lumbering about the streets wanted to look that way. They paid money to look that way. The women paid money to look old, haggard, flat chested, flat arsed, and like they haven't slept properly for a month.

Which brings up another thematic problem: when anyone can walk out onto any planet and plonk down an Outpost Beacon thus claiming a generous little circle for themselves, instantly set up a farm, mineral extractors, industrial processors, starship workshops, and build a massive home for themselves defended by robots... why is anyone sitting on their hands in The Well? There aren't poor people any more in Starfield, just lazy niggers. Any one of those "refugees" - which is what they clearly are, despite there being nothing in the game to draw them to New Atlantis per se - could walk 100m outside of the city and start printing credits, but they don't.

Starfield suffered from the same thing 2010's Star Trek In Logo Only did: the writers didn't understand their own setting.

 

[Drain Todger]

Part of me wonders if somebody offhandedly described how roguelike games work to him, and he thought, "A game where you just do the same thing over and over? That gives me the perfect idea!" I mean, procgen and multiple runs are all you need, right? Why have things like a deep, cross-run progression system or narrative that shifts over time as you unlock new areas and story beats? Just go from square one again, but with a new ship and suit.

That's one of the main reasons why I hate roguelikes to begin with. The whole point of playing a Bethesda game for a thousand hours is to accumulate literal loot mountains, overlevel your character to be able to kill guys by stabbing them with a rusty fork, and become a multi-millionaire in whatever currency the game has. Starting from square one (without having to roll up a new character) breaks the sense of continuous accumulation of wealth and power that defined Skyrim and the like.

To top it off, having a protagonist who is doomed to live out the same few months of their life over and over again for centuries is really, really depressing.

The grand joke with this is that anyone living in New Atlantis or Neon could walk into a little shop and change their entire physical appearance and even sex with a handful of credits, which in turn means the horde of hideous fat niggers lumbering about the streets wanted to look that way. They paid money to look that way. The women paid money to look old, haggard, flat chested, flat arsed, and like they haven't slept properly for a month.

Which brings up another thematic problem: when anyone can walk out onto any planet and plonk down an Outpost Beacon thus claiming a generous little circle for themselves, instantly set up a farm, mineral extractors, industrial processors, starship workshops, and build a massive home for themselves defended by robots... why is anyone sitting on their hands in The Well? There aren't poor people any more in Starfield, just lazy niggers. Any one of those "refugees" - which is what they clearly are, despite there being nothing in the game to draw them to New Atlantis per se - could walk 100m outside of the city and start printing credits, but they don't.

Starfield suffered from the same thing 2010's Star Trek In Logo Only did: the writers didn't understand their own setting.

Why is anyone sitting on their hands in New Homestead's container houses, or in the Stretch in Akila, or in the shithole apartments of Ebbside in Neon? The game is trying to make some kind of a political statement about the real-world cost and scarcity of housing... in a setting where the apparent population density is less than that of Wyoming and everyone is a lazy nog surrounded by billions upon billions of square miles of literal free real estate.

 

[Moths]

So, I just watched that 8 hour PatricianTV video. I heavily recommend everyone do the same

I decided to take up your offer however 20 minutes in I was jumpscared


lads a Vtubing faggot

 

[indigoisviolet]

I still don't understand why there's only a pool of like 5 dungeons.

That's the problem with making absolutely everything radiant, players will experience an endless loop of the same shit.

In my personal quest to fill my shielded cargo bay with illegal items, I counted 49 radiant recurring base buildings, but only half were of any interest.

I took notes...

Spoiler: Details about a game nobody cares enough about to put into a wiki

Respawning Sites With Contraband (9)

Cryolab Accident With Vent Maze: contraband chest outside main entrance slap band in the open, and a suitcase full of organs hidden high up in a dead end tunnel, loads of enemies to shoot, loads of loot, map arches back on itself if you follow the ice

Helium Mine: contraband chest inside mine, loads of enemies to shoot, decent enough loot and guns

Military Training Camp With Robot Targets For Marines To Fight: one unit of contraband on shelf inside, limited loot

Large Robotics Sales Building With Nice Coffee Shop And Locked Lift: contraband in an underground back office near exit lift, average amount of loot, loads of enemies

Large Abandoned Industrial Site With Gas Mine And Spaceship Being Stripped Down At Top: one unit of contraband inside spaceship, loads of enemies, loads of loot

Small Medical Research Building: a single unit of contraband in the lobby with the beds behind locked door, a few people to shoot at, dev remembered that mines exist, average loot

Tall Research Building With Elevator And Apple Chunks Balanced On Soft Toys In The Locker: single unit of contraband spawns in the vents, average amount of enemies and loot, disappointing loot in the room you have to unlock with the computer up on the top walkway

Abandoned Starport You Land At With Another Starport Underground You Can Actually Jump Down Into Seemlessly: aurora spawns in the room directly before the restaurant, loads of enemies, loads and loads of guns, loads of loot

Huge Research Starport Base Being Attacked By Local Wildlife: contraband is in the locked spaceport kiosk, average amount of enemies, average loot

Other Loot Sites (19)

Standard Mining Complex With Lookout Tower, Small Spaceship Pad, And Huge Jump Down Interior: you'll see this one a lot as artifacts can spawn at the rock face, average amount of enemies and loot, no contraband

Medium Toast Kitchen Science Complex Leading To Gas Mines: loads of enemies, loads of explosive scenery, spaceships often land with more enemies, average loot, no contraband, toast and butter

Medical Cryolab You Jump Down Battle Damaged Crater To Enter: average everything, no contraband, zoomer humor frozen patient visual jokes

Incongruous Massive Inland Oil Rig With Spaceport: always overrun by Swarm monsters, grind combat skills here, no contraband, poor loot

Fucking Massive Lava Pool Science Complex: loads of enemies, average loot, forgets Player can fly and forces you to unlock things at terminals to proceed

Huge Industrial Building That Forgets Players Can Fly: loads of enemies and turrets outside you can just hop over and pick off from the various rooftops, complicated layout that would drive staff crazy trying to navigate daily, a little puzzle to reach a chest in a passageway, only average loot

Shoot Out The Emergency Exits To Enter Tall Industrial Building: no contraband, requires Energy Cell to open main doors but there isn't one anywhere in the building, hardly any loot, waste of time beyond the room in which everything explodes on impact

Large Starship Breakdown Plant Mislabeled As Weapons Development Plant: lots of guns to loot, lots of enemies to shoot, no contraband

Medium Starship Breakdown Plant With Tall Walkways: decent enough enemies, guns and loot

Long Huge Military Base With Auto Turrents Everywhere: loads of high level guns, loads of enemies to shoot, loads of loot, no contraband

Squat Medium Sized Military Base Battle Damage Variant: it's visually taken a direct hit from orbit despite the claims on the datapads that the local trees have somehow uprooted the place, guns, average loot, hidden room in middle of impact crater

Tall Robotics Lab With Auto Turrets Fucking Everywhere Outside: loads of enemies, two energy cells, average amount of loot, dev remembered mines exist

Large Abandoned Industrial Complex With Walkways And Outhouses: loads of enemies fucking everywhere, lots of explosions, but only average loot and not worth the effort to be honest

Medium Abandoned Industrial Site With Auto Turrets, Long Kitchen, Bunk Beds, And A Locked Internal Door That Doesn't Make Sense: loads of loot, guns and enemies

Medium Abandoned Industrial Complex With Auto Turrets In The Middle And Chems Table On Roof Of Main Complex: lots of enemies, average loot, no contraband

Underground Listening Outpost: loads of enemies to shoot, decent amount of loot, guns, and often spawns Boba Fett armor, no contraband

Small Research Post Straddling A Little Valley: limited enemies and loot, guns in the locked room

Massive Mining Complex With Recreation Area For Staff And A Locked Medbay With Nothing In It: loads of enemies, average loot

Sites With Limited Loot (21)

Hugely Tall Spaceport Tower With Winding Gantries: small number of enemies, limited loot

Massively Tall Observation Deck: no loot, usually overlooking a whole lotta nothing

Massively Tall Observation Deck Battle Damage Variant: it fell over, amusing but still boring

Tiny Storage Shed In The Middle Of Nowhere Being Attacked By A Muthafucking Terrormorph: if you turn around on Kreet and walk away from the tutorial dungeon, over the hill in pretty much a straight line you'll find one of these right away. A little joke by a dev, perhaps? It's Level 10, tearing through three redsuit enemies, can beat the shit out of your robot babysitter so you're on your own with limited ammo, easily the best time you'll have in Starfield

Hypermassive Drilling Rig: no loot or enemies, but totally in keeping with scifi setting, fun to climb to top and marvel at what we could achieve in zero G

Hypermassive Building Site With Cranes Being Attacked By Local Wildlife: no loot

Small Military Storage Facility: boring

Tiny Military Storage Sheds: occasionally full of dead soldiers a propos of nothing with decent armor, poor loot otherwise

Small Military Barracks: boring

Civilian Outpost Built Into Massive Rock face: boring

Civilian Outpost Built Like A Little Hamlet: often triggers a pirate spaceship raid

Collapsed Mine: boring

Not Collapsed Mine Being Attacked By Local Wildlife: occasionally hilarious if local wildlife is puny and peaceful

Empty Building Site With Small Cranes: boring

Pipeline Nexus Being Attacked By Local Wildlife: boring

Industrial Pipes Guarded By Robots: boring

Solar Farm Guarded By Robots: boring

Tiny Research Tower Guarded By Robots: boring

Small Research Building Guarded By Robots: boring

Small Research Building Being Attacked By Pirates: boring

Settler Industrial Building Site: boring

A personal gripe: I disliked all the dead bodies, like the Player was always arriving minutes after yet another civilian massacre. It also cheapened the times when discovering dead bodies was significant.

It's not broken as a concept. They could overhaul this, remove duplicate local spawning, and limit their current pool of radiant buildings to systems up to Level 30. Then they would have to curate the rest of the Galaxy. Put at very least one unique point of interest into every higher level solar system, to make the journey worthwhile. There is nothing you can currently do or see out there that you cannot do right next door to the three big cities.

 

[Sniperwoof]

I wonder how butthurt it makes Bethesda knowing that Joshua Graham is one of the most popular and iconic videogame characters of all time.

Even normies know who he is thanks to AI voice memes on YouTube and tik tok.

Meanwhile can you even name a Starfield characters off the top of your head?

 

[TVB]

Wait what? Really? The only thing I saw of this TV show so far was Vinesauce having a aneurysm at the massive 72pt font Todd Howard name with the description of "legendery game Dev" followed by a pretty obvious Marvel style joke-followed-by-pause and have been ignoring it, but are they really this fucking petty?

That is next level. Like holy shit.

And not just Todd Howard but a couple "talented" writers Jonathan Nolan and Geneeva Dwovert-Robertson.

 

[ChadBrazilian]

I decided to take up your offer however 20 minutes in I was jumpscared

View attachment 5585640
lads a Vtubing faggot

I think he changes vtuber model every stream. It's a running joke. In another stream, it was a master chief one.

I wonder how butthurt it makes Bethesda knowing that Joshua Graham is one of the most popular and iconic videogame characters of all time.

Even normies know who he is thanks to AI voice memes on YouTube and tik tok.

Meanwhile can you even name a Starfield characters off the top of your head?

I think it's Emil who is more butthurt than anybody else. He can not accept that he is a garbage writer.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

I think it's Emil who is more butthurt than anybody else. He can not accept that he is a garbage writer.

For real. People like to say Todd is seething, but I think he stopped caring about Starfield over a year ago. He's too focused on Fallout TV and Indiana Jones at this point. Well, really he's too focused on retirement but he knows he needs to get them out of the way first.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

The grand joke with this is that anyone living in New Atlantis or Neon could walk into a little shop and change their entire physical appearance and even sex with a handful of credits, which in turn means the horde of hideous fat niggers lumbering about the streets wanted to look that way. They paid money to look that way. The women paid money to look old, haggard, flat chested, flat arsed, and like they haven't slept properly for a month.

Is that hard to believe? People put rings through their noses and lips like cattle, cut their hair to look like men, fill every spare inch of their body with ink drawings of pop culture figures, dye their hair like its cotton candy, wear intentionally ripped clothes...

I mean, I know what you're saying, it's shitty Bethesda world design, you can imagine it as some stupid absurdist fashion statement though.

The Unincorporated Man had a smart take on body modification that people in the future would find things like not having completely straight teeth or having any sort of skin blemish as horrific as we would one of those Indian monster-children from the charity ads.

 

[indigoisviolet]

stupid absurdist fashion statement

Yeah, I'd buy that in a better science fiction setting. Especially as you can nip back to the geneswap barbers and stop being a grotesquely fat nigger any time you like. It would even make for a satirical sideplot: the geneswap shop has unexpectedly closed its doors and half of New Atlantis is now unironically trapped being a nigger. The la-di-dah Terrabrew Liberals start treating their friends differently, and the niggers become mostly peaceful. The player has to locate the geneswap barbers before the city tears itself apart.

We could mod this using the New Atlantis Is Burning model. NA stays burning until the sidequest is finished.

It's a little bit beyond Besthesda, though, pic-related is how they railroad you into the main plot with just the most egregious bullshit dialogue option I think I've ever seen outside of a satire:



It's straight out of the Incredibly Fast Generic RPG Simulator. Keep in mind the player has just stood up from an industrial injury on their first day at work, only to watch on in horror as their colleagues get cut down by pirates: "Oh golly gee, I do wonder what your artifact is though!!!!" Your black faggot ass just got us shot up, AIDSnigger, I'll shove my gun up your artifact if you don't fuck off right now.

Spoiler: I really wanted to enjoy this game, you know?

Throughout there is a disconnection from events that have just this second occurred, coupled with an over-emphasis on binary choices stressed as extremely important that never have any payoff.

Starfield 1.9 needs to make Constellation entirely optional, and open up new player starts depending on a faction choice screen with at minimum these options: UC, FSC, Serpent Cult, Pirates, each with their own main quests and overarching Universe Changing Goals. The UC wants to agressively exterminate the Serpent Cult with wall to wall spaceship armada battles, FSC want to build up their colonies to a more sustainable level and create a green economy or whatever, something non-combatant like that, but someone is sabotaging their efforts, the Serpent Cult want to bring about the Arrival Of The Great Snake That Consumes The Universe only to discover it's a metaphor for self-control or whatever, and the pirates want to take and hold a single star system of their own and then get recognised as a legit faction, but to do that you have to unify all four branches of pirates... Then NG+ bullshit locks you out of the choices you have already played whilst leaving the Universe changed by your previous faction outcomes. Not fucking "lol Sara is a pot plant now!!!"

SciFi isn't difficult to come up with fun ideas for. One of the later NG+ could have us warping through time right into the UC FSC xenotech mechwar itself, and you can play either side to win if you like, removing the losing faction and all they have achieved from your next NG+. It's not inconceivable to work backwards from a 100% victory outcome Universe for each faction, but also conceal that's what you've done to make all the interlocking things work moving forwards. It just requires the will to map it all out beforehand.

 

[moocow]

Yea I know it's shit I've played it but even slop games have dedicated fan communities even if they're small.

I've never seen a game of this scope go from highly anticipated and discussed to literally zero web presence whatsoever in two months.

Yeah, it's bizarre. There's barely even any obvious troll or shill threads for it on /v/ either. It's just dead.

Console sales are falling due to games being fucking shit, no other reason

The Switch is still selling like gangbusters, though. 130+ million units and counting. I don't see the other consoles making it long term though. I'll be genuinely surprised if we get another Xbox generation or a PlayStation 6. If Microsoft and Sony are dumb enough to try, I think Nintendo's going to have them by the balls.

I guess people have already figured out what the Switch 2's SoC is going to be (a beefier flavor of the NVidia kit they're already using) and its performance has been broadly pegged at "somewhere between a PS4 and PS4 Pro," which is phenomenal if they can keep it in the same form factor and preserve at least the same battery life as the Switch. They've never cared about 4k, and the PS4 was no slouch at 1080p. If the Switch 2 can manage at least that level of performance when docked, and keep a good battery life on the go (since the screen will probably be 720p, the GPU won't have to work as hard), it'll fucking murder whatever MS and Sony crank out. Especially since they're likely to be priced in the $500+ range while the Switch 2 may not even hit $400 at launch.

I'm guessing this is going to be addressed with DLC/Expansions, similar to what they did with Broken Steel.

I'm not convinced there are even going to be any expansions. Maybe if they had day-one DLC in the works but couldn't make the deadline, they can wrap that up and launch it, but I can't imagine at this point they'd be dumb enough to start working on new DLC from scratch now.

They just make big open sandboxes. Theme parks. And you go from ride to ride or side quest to radiant quest.

The sad thing is they can make good material. They had a go at making an actual theme park in the Nuka World DLC for Fallout 4, and honestly they nailed it. I'd put it right behind Far Harbor in terms of quality DLC for the Fallout games. That fuckin' greeter robot that gives you directions around the park, but occasionally glitches out and tells you in its chipper, polite voice to kindly go fuck yourself (in various ways) still cracks me up. Plus the added bonus of pissing off everybody in the main game content if you side with the raider gangs and turn them loose on the Commonwealth.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

I'm not convinced there are even going to be any expansions. Maybe if they had day-one DLC in the works but couldn't make the deadline, they can wrap that up and launch it, but I can't imagine at this point they'd be dumb enough to start working on new DLC from scratch now.

I mean...they already sold it to a shit ton of people. They kinda *have* to make it.

That doesn't mean it will be good or actually fix anything, though.

 

[indigoisviolet]

I keep finding Starfield folders! It's like I can't physically remove the game from the drive.

Have some picture references, I guess.

Spoiler: The location of the tutorial level terrormorph

Turn directly around from where your ship is facing and walk over the hills, it spawns tearing up some high level redshirt pirates at a boring low loot pipeline site, and then rampages South East towards the little storage shed to beat up some more.

I'd like to believe this was deliberate. I'd like to think this was Old School "when the game says go this way, turn around and go the other because there will be something interesting there..." A reward for the curious and/or rebellious, back when devs were called programmers and nerds styled themselves as cyberpunks, releasing games coded in their bedrooms to thumb their noses at stale corporate entertainment. The entire area is both persistent and curated despite using radiant buildings, with three(!) pirate landing sites, and introduces the player to every aspect of planetary scanning, including the concept of completely scanning a biome.

Many things work against this hope, though, chiefly the lack of cargo space to fully loot the area, the aggressive, abrupt and ultimately restrictive manner in which the tutorial hurries you along to raid the Kreet Research Lab and then fuck off to New Atlantis, the way the Tutorial doesn't understand that more pirates have landed if you choose to shoot the pirate captain, and also, you know? It's Bethesda, they employ ESG Managers, not computer programmers. It could well be that the devs simply forgot that particular Generic Pipeline Building B always spawns a terrormorph attack... it's not like this encounter changes your dialogue options during the UC questline whereupon you act as if you've never seen one before, let alone had to take one down with a mining laser. But... in the event that this area and all the fun stuff in it was entirely deliberate, good job, unnamed old school cyberpunk programmer.

Oh, and I left out a radiant base from the list up there: you will encounter the same Research Building that serves as the Tutorial dungeon bringing the total up to 50 radiant buildings I saw repeat themselves in the game trying to max out my shielded cargo bay. I blanked it out of my mind in disbelief, I think. Of all the lazy bullshit Starfield pulls, to have the player walk through the Kreet training dungeon again on another planet borders on deliberate insult.

 

[moocow]

I mean...they already sold it to a shit ton of people. They kinda *have* to make it.

That doesn't mean it will be good or actually fix anything, though.

Ah, okay. I didn't realize they'd already put one on pre-order.

lol imagine pre-ordering a digital product with no feasible chance of "scarcity." I still can't believe people actually do that.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

Ah, okay. I didn't realize they'd already put one on pre-order.

lol imagine pre-ordering a digital product with no feasible chance of "scarcity." I still can't believe people actually do that.

It was part of their "deluxe" edition more than just a straight pre order, but yeah lol

 

[The Last Stand]

I'm calling it. Starfield will be underwhelming with procedural generated planets, barren story and lots of glitches. Space itself is vast, how can one make a video game out of this world?

Ahem. Made in July. Turns out my prediction was correct.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

Have some picture references, I guess.

dumb question but i remember a huge military base on that planet where you can get an end game tier shotgun and contraband, was i just lucky that run or is it another deliberate thing like the terrormoprh? also IIRC the logs in the lab are all about that beast getting out and killing everyone, the pirates just were using that place as a base i guess.

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

I’m sure it’s been pointed out, but the ending of the game is incredibly similar to how No Man’s Sky ends. In that you either decide to “restart” or stay where you are.

 

[indigoisviolet]

dumb question but i remember a huge military base on that planet where you can get an end game tier shotgun and contraband, was i just lucky that run or is it another deliberate thing like the terrormoprh? also IIRC the logs in the lab are all about that beast getting out and killing everyone, the pirates just were using that place as a base i guess.

Oh, yeah, the Kreet research was all about trying to put a control chip into a terrormorph wasn't it? So it is deliberate.

Which makes the inclusion of a Helium Mine interesting, as they are Top Tier contraband loot sites: you get two stacks of 5, minimum, and no way to hide it from the scanner. I don't recall what the other buildings on that map were, beyond a useless "shoot the emergency exits out to enter" tall building, which admittedly is novel, so maybe the person designing the Kreet landing area was told "put everything into it!" and nobody went back and checked what that would entail for the hapless new player? Maybe they hadn't determined what the tutorial was going to highlight, so left their options wide open? I've certainly captured both Ecliptic and Crimson Fleet spaceships during that tutorial run, but had no way to register them until I sold all the second hand guns, not that it effected anything meaningful at that point of the game other than making the dialogue with the landing crew guy at NA seem odd when he commented on recognising The Frontier.