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

[Miller]

I've been told by someone who presumably knows more than me that Creation Engine 2 is basically a Ship of Theseus at this point, therefore it functions just fine as a modern engine. I'm a but skeptical though considering its limits are a bit noticeable.

To be honest the engine is a non-issue. Sure, they use Gamebryo, modified the shit out of it and turned it into the Creation Engine and modified it again for Starfield. As long as the engine does what they want, there's no reason to switch to another one like UE5 for example, because it would create more problems for the studio if their devs have to learn how to use it.
Another good example of an engine that got updated throughout the years: the one that the Call of Duty studios use.

 

[Epoch]

To be honest the engine is a non-issue. Sure, they use Gamebryo, modified the shit out of it and turned it into the Creation Engine and modified it again for Starfield. As long as the engine does what they want, there's no reason to switch to another one like UE5 for example, because it would create more problems for the studio if their devs have to learn how to use it.
Another good example of an engine that got updated throughout the years: the one that the Call of Duty studios use.

I think most of the issue people have is just how broken the engine itself is. Modders can only fix so much with DLL injection and stuff. The engine works fine (for the most part) for the games, but the second they start getting modded things get exponentially worse. Not the best comparison but compare OpenMW to Skyrim (different games I know), the stability of OpenMW is so much greater than even the Creation Engine with the 64 bit port for Skyrim SE. I believe Fallout 4 still has engine level bugs going back to Morrowind (I haven't played Fallout 4, but I've heard this is the case).

Call of Duty was started on the Quake 3 engine, so it already had an extremely solid foundation. It's the same with Source 2, both it and COD still have code from Quake 1 in them. History has shown that Bethesda just doesn't have the most technically capable developers. Doesn't mean their games are bad, their engine is just duct taped together.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

Well he did say out of any Bethesda game, so if Skyrim shipped with 1000 bugs, and Fallout 4 with say 2000 and Starfield ships with 999 bugs it would be the less buggy of the three, purely in numbers of course.

EDIT: Also he can declare half the bugs to be "features" and pretend it has less bugs than the other games

I think it's bold to make any sort of declaration of bugginess after Redfall tho

Like it's Bethesda so people should expect bugs, to say something like that just builds an expectation

 

[Super Hans v2]

To be honest the engine is a non-issue. Sure, they use Gamebryo, modified the shit out of it and turned it into the Creation Engine and modified it again for Starfield. As long as the engine does what they want

But the engine is exactly what's holding back from realizing what would be a flat-out better game. Not having seamless planet landing is the fault of the engine, as will be the obscene amount of load screens that we'll be seeing to do anything, as will the stiltedness of multi-character dialogue scenes,

 

[𝓡𝓪𝓹𝓲𝓷 𝓒𝓪𝓻𝓵𝓽𝓸𝓷]

I'm there too, the showcase was more than I was expecting. I thought it was going to be 996 barren planets, and 4 with cities on them. Plus, I like it whenever someone creates a future that is hopeful instead of dystopian.

All I'm wondering is if the random seed is per player profile, versus per instance. If I visit a planet today, leave and wait an in-game month/couple of days IRL on the other side of the map, when I return will I find the same procedural entities, or will it be a new instance?

I would imagine per profile just because it's going to be so narratively driven and the per instance thing would make it hard to get attached to anything outside of the scripted storyline

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

But the engine is exactly what's holding back from realizing what would be a flat-out better game. Not having seamless planet landing is the fault of the engine, as will be the obscene amount of load screens that we'll be seeing to do anything, as will the stiltedness of multi-character dialogue scenes,

It takes them 5+ years to develop these games as is, moving to a new engine would likely completely destroy their productivity.

Not to mention kill the modding community, as any engine they move to will no doubt be less capable in that regard.

I really don't know why people harp on this engine nonsense. Everyone constantly retools and rebuilds their fucking engines and if they don't they're using someone elses engine that is constantly retooled and modified. Why Bethesda became the scapegoat for this shit baffles me as it's been a complaint since fucking Oblivion. Do people really think FromSoft, Rockstar, EA, Ubisoft, Unreal and others havn't been using the *same* engine for 15 years now?

 

[Leaf Wage Slave Jr]

I really don't know why people harp on this engine nonsense. Everyone constantly retools and rebuilds their fucking engines and if they don't they're using someone elses engine that is constantly retooled and modified. Why Bethesda became the scapegoat for this shit baffles me as it's been a complaint since fucking Oblivion.

At this point, I'm assuming it's the usual "the devs are precious uwu babies" mentality, where "everything bad is mean ol' corporate's fault" - ie. it's easier to blame the games being buggy as shit on the engine and corporate wanting to save money rather than accept that Bethesda doesn't exactly have actual talent on staff. There's a reason modders usually have to unfuck Bethesda games. People need to stop coddling Developers - if a game is shit, they should get shit.

I almost miss the old days, before consoles were connected to the internet by default. If a game was shit, there was no magical Day 1 patch to unfuck it - it made you learn who to avoid...

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

So is there magic in Starfield or psychic powers or whatever?

At the very end of the presentation they seemed to show something that looked like psychic powers, or at the very least some kind of science based superhuman manipulation of physics itself.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

People are theorizing that the alien artifacts will probably give you some sort of "powers" in the same vein as Dragon Shouts in Skyrim

IDK how I feel about it. I definitely want some kind of "magic" abilities in the game but Dragon Shouts for the most part sucked ass outside of like 3 or 4 of them, but that's also due to the fact that there was an actual magic system in the game so...

 

[ATandTism]

PatricanTV did a decent, if long winded, breakdown of the trailer. No looking good for The Liar Todd given their track record. I'm totally convinced it will be mid at best.

 

[Epoch]

The new character face system is going to suck real bad. It seems like its the same thing Star Citizen is using, just blending between different pre-made models. Star Citizen's face system is extremely limited and the faces all look wack, based on what they showed it seems even worse with this. They probably removed FaceGen and are using this new preset thing entirely, people have showed how good FaceGen can look with proper sliders and base meshes, modded Skyrim and even Elden Ring all still use FaceGen.

I expect modders will quickly made a new program in the same vein as Bodyslide that lets you generate faces using community models and sliders and then bake that into a mesh that gets imported to the game. I expect Bethesda has done nothing to improve character bodies despite Bodyslide existing for pretty much a decade at this point, every character will have the same body with slight changes when you increase the weight from 0 - 1. They should really be looking at the most popular mods and try to integrate those into the game.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

PatricanTV did a decent, if long winded, breakdown of the trailer. No looking good for The Liar Todd given their track record. I'm totally convinced it will be mid at best.

Can't wait for PatricianTV to play a thousand hours and make a 24 hour video just to bitch about how much he hates it *rolls eyes*

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Can't wait for PatricianTV to play a thousand hours and make a 24 hour video just to bitch about how much he hates it *rolls eyes*

I'm waiting for the first of all the Steam reviews where someone with 1000+ hours gives it a thumbs down and declares it not worth 60 bucks. Hopefully it will happen within the first 1000 hours of the release.

 

[Asian tech support]

PatricanTV did a decent, if long winded, breakdown of the trailer. No looking good for The Liar Todd given their track record. I'm totally convinced it will be mid at best.

@Miller in the chat replay there.
Had this on yesterday as background noise. The guy might be long winded and autistic but I think that most of the points are valid.

I found it funny that he didn't buy the cowboy city though. In the Expanse, Mars was initially populated by Texans (and pajeets) and developed a culture in accordance with those who first settled. Revolvers and chaps aside, the first wave of colonists might have been good ol boys. The Starfield cowboys do seem larpy and I don't trust Bethesda to provide sufficient information to justify the larp but it could work in a vacuum.

 

[Dixieland Buckaroo]

The Constellation Edition seems to have sold out in a day or so. Will be interesting to see if any more get released or if this is it. And how much, if any, buyer's remorse will come from those buyers.

 

[blablabla]

this game will be mediocre and full of woke shit. and it was already made, it was called the outer worlds

 

[PuffyGroundCloud]

The new character face system is going to suck real bad. It seems like its the same thing Star Citizen is using, just blending between different pre-made models. Star Citizen's face system is extremely limited and the faces all look wack, based on what they showed it seems even worse with this. They probably removed FaceGen and are using this new preset thing entirely, people have showed how good FaceGen can look with proper sliders and base meshes, modded Skyrim and even Elden Ring all still use FaceGen.

I expect modders will quickly made a new program in the same vein as Bodyslide that lets you generate faces using community models and sliders and then bake that into a mesh that gets imported to the game. I expect Bethesda has done nothing to improve character bodies despite Bodyslide existing for pretty much a decade at this point, every character will have the same body with slight changes when you increase the weight from 0 - 1. They should really be looking at the most popular mods and try to integrate those into the game.

I'll wait for some crazy modder that can somehow remake the whole face system.
I definitely expect CBBE body mod will be in the game ASAP

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

The Constellation Edition seems to have sold out in a day or so. Will be interesting to see if any more get released or if this is it. And how much, if any, buyer's remorse will come from those buyers.

I don't even think it actually went up for pre order on Best Buy yet, but I honestly can't believe in 2023 people are still overspending on these 300+ dollar special editions that don't even come with a physical copy of the game.

 

[Mary the Goldsmith]

I expect Bethesda has done nothing to improve character bodies despite Bodyslide existing for pretty much a decade at this point, every character will have the same body with slight changes when you increase the weight from 0 - 1.

if they do this then it would be a step back from Fallout 4 that did have a more in depth face creator and did have a body slide that you could tweak to depending on how skinny, fat or muscular you wanted your character to be, I don't use bodyslide mods so I don't know how in depth those go

 

[Epoch]

if they do this then it would be a step back from Fallout 4 that did have a more in depth face creator and did have a body slide that you could tweak to depending on how skinny, fat or muscular you wanted your character to be, I don't use bodyslide mods so I don't know how in depth those go

I admittedly never played Fallout 4 because I saw what Fallout 3 was like. I'm used to Skyrim so thats my bad. In the trailer it shows a fallout muscle/skinny/fat slider, but the face looks to be the Star Citizen thing. It also matches that they described.