Thoughts on starfield?
Thoughts on starfield?
The game is aggressively Bethesda but I'm enjoying the visuals and sniffing the 3d model of every insignificant bit of detritis in the world. I saw a very nice looking bowl, maybe THE bowl of all videogames. Other than that the narrative and main story has already lost my interest after about 10 minutes and I'll be off being a space menace if the game will let me.
Once i found out I can travel using the ship in scanner mode it doesn't feel like a map simulator anymore.
Also the chef having a perk for dueling tickles me.
Game also runs like shit on PC but digital foundry showed most settings being on medium yields good performance with no noticable quality loss.
I'm kinda astounded that Bethesda still seem to be really bad at like, setting up the start of their game and story to let you make a wide variety of custom characters that actually makes sense logically?
Like yeah you can make a decrepit old man in this one and give him a history as a professor, but he's still just signed up as manual mining labor? Like that's just bad and lazy as fuck design. You should not have to put blinders on and selectively choose to ignore core parts of the beginning of the game in order to have a consistent roleplaying experience.
That's one of the reasons why TES traditionally has you being a convict. You could have been anyone, thrown in prison for any reason.
For this one they could have had you be a passenger on a ship that crashes, you go to try to do X (find a radio, find water, whatever) and you discover the macguffin.
Yeah, it's really not that hard, Skyrim just has you crossing a completely imaginary border that probably doesn't even matter to 99% of people at the wrong time when the empire is watching, you could have done it for literally any reason, thats good enough.
Like they even do the amnesia thing in Starfield after you get zapped by the macguffin, an amnesia inducing vehicle accident is like one of the most classic cliches they could have used instead.
Yeah it should have been like the movie Pitch Black. You could even start the game with the two pilots being like, I'm still reading one life sign from the cargo bay! Oh really which one? *character creation begins*
I'm just glad it was short I don't think I could survive another oblivion intro level. I much prefer morrowinds approach of just dumping you on a shore with a vague direction and leaving it at that.
Gameplay: Good, but the AI is trash and needs modding tweaks.
Worldbuilding: Lib trash.
Writing: Trash.
Politics: Trash.
It is probably the best base game for modding they've ever made though and I'm excited for when the Creation Kit eventually drops 6 months from now.
It's also extremely obvious that they've done a "muh russia" with the game because of Ukraine by not including anything about the soviet union nor Laika nor Yuri Gagarin etc etc, yet they include all the America shit.
Didn't need Ukraine to do a historical revisionism on the USSRs space achievements that had already happened
It's just something that should so obviously be included. It's essential to the setting.
Also the fucking pirates have guns with
and "no gods no masters" written on them but are blatantly not anarchists in ideology. The representation of the left in the game is deliberately dogshit written by techbro ancaps.
Acksssually, there's a portrait of Gagarin in the Lodge.
Yea the other planet in the new atlantis system is called gagarin
there's actually a plot relevant planet called Gagarin, with a statue of him in the main square and you get lore about his accomplishments
not as much as I'd wish, but like no other location is seemingly named after any other famous space race figures afaik
Politics: Trash.
This game has you playing as a privately funded grave robber going around stealing the Dead Sea scrolls for the hobby lobby CEO while massacring the natives in the name of eXpLoRaTiOn. It makes sense considering it’s so heavily inspired by NASA for aesthetic and vibe. It’s cool when viewed from a distance but examining the details and thinking critically for a second makes you realize exactly how fucked up and nazi adjacent it all really is
It makes sense considering it’s so heavily inspired by NASA for aesthetic and vibe. It’s cool when viewed from a distance but examining the details and thinking critically for a second makes you realize exactly how fucked up and nazi adjacent it all really is
Sounds like the entire appeal of the SPREAD THE LIGHT OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO THE STARS(tm) marketing euphoria pushed by SpaceX once enough layers are peeled away.
Its the most bethesda game of them all. Terrible writing, story, plot... no improvements to the genre in any way. Plays exactly like oblivion, but with slightly better graphics. And god,
spoiler
the multiverse shit is the laziest of writing from them yet
Quests don't impact the world in any way. Finishing a faction questline just gives you a new item with no impact whatsoever.
4/10 game
spoiler
the multiverse shit is the laziest of writing from them yet
They actually fucking went there? I'm so glad I didn't even start.
Starfield is a game.
good post!
I was really enjoying it until I tried to build ships. The pieces you can build with have very, very limited customization options. They can only turn or flip certain ways, can only snap onto certain spots. It makes all ships end of looking very samesies.
Yeah, folks were having fun building ships, but every ship ends up looking the same even if htey're different shapes, and then wehn you go inside it's all the same sterile space-ikea habitable space.
I didn't realize it was gonna be on game pass lol so I did end up downloading it even though I swore up and down I'd wait on buying until they fixed all the crap they were gonna inevitably do.
The amount of loading screens is kinda profligate, there's more than one quest where you go to a planet (loading screen) talk to a guy then to the next planet (loading screen) and talk to a guy, and just repeat. The combat is pretty bad, I can't say I was expecting super smart AI or whatever but there's been more than a few times where enemies just kinda stood somewhere far away and couldn't figure out how to path to the fight? The main storyline didn't capture my interest. There's still a lot of bugs, nothing that'll bluescreen or whatever but I've had VASCO twirling his head talking to me, the Charlie 3 guy rotating really fast, theres one quest marker that doesnt get removed during a quest in the Well which made me rely on the actual given instructions (which was a nice change of pace), just a bunch of stuff like that. Stealth needs an overhaul, it's hard to get the sneak attacks to rank up and it starts getting really useful at rank 3. Also, unarmed is very very underwhelming and hard to do - which I guess is fair but whatever.
I love the setting and aesthetic, I do like the NASApunk look. I actually gasped at New Atlantis topside and Neon city. Also, there's just so much stuff to find. The sidequests are usually pretty goos. The Well was cool. Getting UC citizenship seems to be a thing Bethesda expected people to do because it has a lot of strong writing, I didn't love UC as a faction but whatever they're obviously very lib. It feels like a lot of people are discounting gastronomy, which is understandable because it takes a lot of work to rank it up to where the buffs are really good. Oh yeah and seeing Earth all fucked up actually made me feel quite sad, I landed on it and just felt... upset I guess, which is a plus for me if a videogame can make me feel an emotion like that.
I didn't know how to feel about the religions... it was interesting to think of organized charitable Atheism as a religion or the like syncretic dialectic synthesis of ALL monotheistic religions? I didn't get to try out the Great Serpent stuff but they're interesting guess to just consider. For some reason the religious struggle in skyrim was cool for me but future humans with made-up religions aren't as cool? I'm not sure why I struggled with it. Also, a lot of the spacesuits are kinda ugly, hard to play fashion field.
I don't think I'd pay separately for this and I don't know if I'll finish it, but so long as it's on gamepass and so long as I keep having that I guess I'll keep it installed. I'm still eagerly anticipating a GOTY edition with unofficial bug fix mod at some point to actually enjoy starfield.
there's more than one quest where you go to a planet (loading screen) talk to a guy then to the next planet (loading screen) and talk to a guy, and just repeat.
Man this is really terminal fast travel game design brain, this is the kind of shit business guys did before cellphones and the internet were considered good enough, just hopping around the world on concordes to have one business meeting and then go back. Don't they have interplanetary communication in this world?
A modern game should have been able to do this all with seamless loading screens, too. I, too, hate the "There will be no cell phones/e-mail in the future". Anything that requires communication should be doable from a console in your ship unless there's a very good reason why you can't. Like if there's a nebula that does space bullshit to cellphone reception then sure, go there. But if you're just having a conversation that should be something you do from your ship or a phone booth or whatever.
Beth made a game with a space aesthetic, but they didn't drop all the crap that only makes sense in a quasi-medieval game. Why are you walking anywhere? Where's your rover or go cart or ATV or atmospheric shuttle? Why are you picking up random bullshit to sell for chump change? Why do you have to kill space rabbits for glue, why can't you just order 20 tons of glue delivered to your location? Why are you surveying for common light elements? There's no way it makes more sense financially to mine and refine your own aluminum isntead of just buying it by the ton from an established producer.
When Todd said "Skyrim in Space" he really meant it. Just tons of game elements that don't make any sense in a futuristish spaceish game.
Interplanetary, yes. Interstellar requires couriers, iirc.
Oblivion was a real mess with the reliance on magical map fast traveling- Morrowind's was perfect, they just had convenient ships and silt striders in most towns. Oblivion had no physical fast travel at all.
Side note, I actually recently discovered a small town in Morrowind with no transport to it, for the first time, after making maybe 30 characters. It's Ald Velothi, a harbor town north of Gnisis.
Anyway, I feel like Starfield couldnt really work without a reliance on fast travel. Not just interstellar/interplanetary, but even across planets. I don't know what else to do. Not even little taxis would make much sense.
If they're using the same combat AI they've been using since the 16th century their AI is capable of being much better than this. It seems like they've turned down all the parameters until they might as well be off. Speed of reaction to the player, intervals at which they fire their guns, interval for seeking cover and repositioning, it's all turned way down.
Religion works in TES because you can, and frequently do, interact with the gods. Whether Talos and Tiber Septim are the same entity has major metaphysical ramifications on the world. Like, if the Thalmor can make Talos and Tiber Septim be different entities through magical Dragon Break fuckery it might allow them to unmake hte world. Religions in space are kind of silly. Like you went to Heaven, god isn't there, why are you still doing this?
It seems like they've turned down all the parameters until they might as well be off.
There is a combat ai mod that basically proves this. Here is some of the code, it's also helpfully commented showing the vanilla number vs the changed numbers.
Personally I think the biggest issue they have with AI is that they're using one universal set of AI for all locations. The game needs different AI parameters for different locations. The cities. Interior spaceship combat. Planet exterior combat. Interior facility combat. These are all very different spaces where the player behaves very differently. Combat in them should be assumed to be different.
;---Idle Time, Reaction Time--- ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatMeleeIdleTime 0.01 setgs fCombatMeleeIdleTime 0.01 ;vanilla = 0.5 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeIdleTime 0.1 ;vanilla = 2 setgs fCombatRangedGunFireWaitTimeMax 0.3 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatEvadeReactionTime 0.15 ;vanilla = 0.15 setgs fCombatDodgeReactionTime 0.1 ;vanilla = 2.5 setgs fCombatRangedGunAnimationDrivenDelayTime 0.3 ;vanilla = 1.5 setgs fCombatAttackAnimationDrivenDelayTime 0.3 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatInitialMovementDelayTime 0.1 ;vanilla = 0.1 setgs fCombatRangedGunInitialDelayTime 0.01 ;vanilla = 0.33 setgs fCombatRangedGunTargetVisibleReactionTimeMin 0.01 ;vanilla = 0.67 setgs fCombatRangedGunTargetVisibleReactionTimeMax 0.3 ;---Combat AI, Behavior--- ;vanilla = 5 setgs fCombatRangedThrowDelay 6 ;vanilla = 10 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeThrowDelay 6 ;vanilla = 15 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeFlushTargetDelay 6 ;vanilla = 5 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeThrowUnreachableDelay 4 ;vanilla = 0.1 setgs fCombatRangedGunAttackChanceMin 0.25 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeThrowChanceMax 0.35 ;vanilla = 0.1 setgs fCombatCoverAdvanceChanceMin 0.2 ;vanilla = 0.5 setgs fCombatCoverAdvanceChanceMid 0.5 ;vanilla = 0.75 setgs fCombatCoverAdvanceChanceMax 0.85 ;vanilla = 0.5 setgs fCombatRangedGunAttackChanceCoverBonus 0.65 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatCoverChangePositionChance 0.4 ;vanilla = 0.5 setgs fCombatFallbackChanceMax 0.6 ;vanilla = 10 setgs fCombatCoverAttackerSuppressedTimeMax 15 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeThrowChanceMax 0.35 ;vanilla = 0.5 setgs fCombatRangedGunTargetVisibleAttackThreshold 0.4 ;vanilla = 4 setgs fCombatRangedMinimumRange 4 ;vanilla = 8 setgs fCombatRangedGrenadeThrowMinimumRange 6 ;vanilla = 0.4 setgs fCombatRangedGunAccuracyMinAccuracy 0.6 ;vanilla = 0.25 setgs fCombatRangedGunAccurateAccuracy 0.45 ;vanilla = 0.1 setgs fCombatRangedGunEffectiveAccuracy 0.2
Oh yeah and seeing Earth all fucked up actually made me feel quite sad, I landed on it and just felt... upset I guess, which is a plus for me if a videogame can make me feel an emotion like that.
Why are the most corpo bazinga landmarks on Earth the only ones standing, and standing alone? Are they made of some sort of The Secret powered material that can endure conditions that turned everything around them to dust?
ive been in a rut of only playing map/spreadsheet games. maybe this will get me out of it, i rlly want to shoot stuff and build custom spaceships
Kerbal Space Program will be your best friend if you haven't already played it
IDK if the new updates made it worse but the version right before they added a for-profit story mode was my favourite game of all time. Perfect amount of parts - not too many, pure orbital mechanics, creativity in problem solving and exploration.
Kerbal is extremely good. The first time you land on the Mun without scattering your rocket across the Mar Imbria feels *good. I learned so much about orbital mechanics 100% against my will. 10/10, would strand a rescue ship sent to rescue the rescue ship sent to rescue the rescue ship sent to rescue the rescue ship in orbit.
Hmm. X4 and Elite Dangerous both allow some customization of ships.
incredibly boring game. you keep feeling like maybe itll get deeper and more interesting but it never does. cyberpunk and baldurs gate at least create vibes and have a somewhat fun storyline to follow.
A space game without sentient alien crew 0/10 BETHESDA MISSED THE POINT AGAIN.
spoiler
Space magic being a spoiler dragon shout thing ughh making it so theres no perks for space wizard
Waiting years for modders to fix everything as usual
It's okay. It's my least favorite Bethesda game. I don't find its version of exploration all that interesting compared to their past entries.
That's my biggest compaint and probably the reason I won't put all that much time into the game. I can excuse a lot of things in a Bethesda game, like a boring main story with bad writing or subpar combat and shitty AI, even the over reliance on fast travel with loading screens, if there was actually something worth to explore.
Between all the procedurally generated stuff I'm having a hard time finding interesting side quests or the kind environmental story telling I like so much from fallout and elder scrolls. Unfortunately I don't care much for exploration if there isn't something cool find. In Skyrim I would often stumble upon a weird or cool place on my way to a quest that turns out to be chock full of little stories. In starfield however I started to ignore most of the points of "interest" on the map because it's almost always a bunch of same looking dudes in space suits with way too much hit points. No little stories, or at best an extremely boring radiant quest.
And even the cities are pretty empty. Where Skyrim shines with it's tight knit communities where NPCs know and (love/hate) each other in starfield you mostly deal with corporations and their workers. But even though these corpos are the epitome of liberal bs every worker just looooves working for them and is eager to tell me their history. And I as the player can only nod and ask for more.
It’s bad.
Its fun, I'm having fun, but frustratingly not as good as it could be.
Level grind curve makes Morrowind look forgiving. There's just a lot of annoying shit and ways things could be handled better like transitions could have been done in game rather than via cutscene, just keep the warp animation up like every space game since Privateer. Encumbrance is irritating, base building is frustratingly obtuse. In terms of choice outside of a couple of quests you are railroaded down good/evil paths. Let Me Shoot the Quest Critical Character Bethesda! There are so, so many CEOs in this game I just wanted to shoot as soon as they tried to push me around. Finally, it looks like the deep lore isn't. The big questions like the main quest and the Varuun seem to just hit a brick wall, and there's so far not a lot of small questions outside "I think the terrormorphs are a sentient civilisation."
The worldbuilding is so, so depressing. It's easier to imagine the complete ending of the human condition than the end of capitalism.
And I'm stuck with the bug where when you go into menus it re-renders at 4k and your framerate tanks into single digits. So that sucks.
The big questions like the main quest and the Varuun
Pretty sure the Varuun will be the subject of DLC. It's a good hook that can't be expanded at all by modding so it's ground they can build on without any fear of losing income to mods.
I'm enjoying it so far for the most part. Combat could definitely be better, wish I had a lean button and a key to cycle through my quick weapons.
I'm not really interested in it. I already have too many games and another big open-world thing would take too much effort. Plus I already have Fallout New Vegas which is better.
But like, I have a goofy taste in games so don't let me ruin your fun.
I'm enjoying it, it's pretty empty in a lot of places but actually I like that you can basically always know whether or not you're gonna have to talk to a human. Because I like listening to podcasts and stuff when I'm playing games like this. Skyrim is a bit too on/off in that regard- which as a game makes it better than Starfield, but as a chill vibes audiobook accompaniment, I prefer Starfield. The dead planets don't even have aliens on them and you won't stumble upon a pirate unless you intend to.
I like the ship building, although I am definitely gonna mod that aspect hard, and use some other kind of mod to adjust enemy ships accordingly.
It's certainly not a great game, but the mods are gonna be so fucking good I stg
I'm probably gonna do one playthrough and then play it again like 3 months after they drop the Creation Kit
Stale.
Honestly I've been playing it but also asking myself why I've been playing it. I've had an overall smooth experience for the most part, some Bethesda jank, some glitches like doors not opening but that's solved with tcl. The more I play though the more I'm finding it to be unbelievably grindy. Levels trickle in once you're in the 30s. People on Reddit were so loud to say you don't need that many resources so the complaints about carry weight and the obnoxious weight of resources was actually a good thing but in reality you need a shitload of them. If you want to do weapon modding, good luck because it's so heavily gated behind not only skills and resources, but research that like 100 hours in and I'm nowhere near close to unlocking all of it.
My goal for the game was to fly a cool ship, to shoot cool guns, and to have a cool outpost. I finally hit class C ships and built one, but it's kinda dopey looking. I don't have the resources to do all the weapon modding research and I've been a loot goblin the entire game picking up everything I can in terms of resources. Even installed a mod that removed the weight of resources.
The game also takes a bunch of steps back from Fallout's weapon modding. In Fallout you could just buy a mod and slap it on the right gun, in Starfield, there are no mod items. If I find a better rifle that's the same exact thing but scaled up, I can't transfer my mods over to it, I have to rebuild all the mods again with all the rare and annoying resources once again. Same with ship building, can't transfer parts between ships.
At this point I've mostly given up on outpost building since that's another level dump to even get to a reasonable point. I know you can harvest resources through outposts and I have been, it's just so obnoxiously boring to teleport between each one to do stuff and the resource demand is also so damn high to build anything.
Haven't touched the main quest since I was first able to just run away and do my own thing. Most stuff in the game is a fetch quest, a go talk to this person quest, or a murder everyone quest. A quest that had an interesting premise, First Contact, was so bad, I ended up putting the game down.
spoiler
You're tasked with investigating a strange ship that arrived in orbit over a resort planet, the resort is rather tiny in planetary terms. You find that the ship is a generation ship, filled with the descendants of people that set out over 200 years ago for this very planet and are shocked to find that people already are at their destination. They want to settle the planet and ask you to negotiate terms for them to be able to settle. You go to the board room and are then faced with the most disgusting shit imaginable. They refuse to give even an inch of ground stating they have a claim that goes back years and that the colonists can either fuck off and die with you doing the murder, be allowed to settle but actually they'll just enslave them, or you can go and foot the bill for a grav drive for them to find a new home on their own. If you try to murder the execs, they're immortal like almost everyone in this goddamn game.
Honestly, I'm mostly ready to just hit up Rimworld and maybe pick up Stellaris in a few days with the new patch coming out tomorrow. Once again Bethesda has made a wide but incredibly shallow experience and left it to the community to make it better. Thank god I didn't pay for it.
I'm liking it a lot so far. I just want to go to different planets and build bases and decorate.
My favorite genre is crpgs and I was obsessed with the original Baldurs gates and planescape torment so I loved the shit out of bg3 and played it up until the release of starfield. With that said, I love starfield and it is easily my game of the year now.
Baldur's Gate 3 is better than Starfield, no question about it. However, since the days of Morrowind, Bethesda games have been exactly my shit. So, I have to agree with you, comrade, that Starfield is the kind of RPG I've been waiting for. Additionally, as a modding platform, this is going to be absolutely massive.
The writing and characters are light years ahead of starfield but I'm going to be getting 100s of more hours out of starfield than bg3. Bg3 would have absolutely been my goty if starfield hadn't released this year though.
Customizing a ship and flying around being a pirate is just too good.
So good. I've lost too much time to the game already. Space RPG? Hook it into my veins plz.
This sounds like a good time, though Bethesda games never manage to hook or hold me for long.
Looks like fallout in space
🔥🔥🔥
My friends are all playing it and talking about it and I heard all the complaints about it from this website already. I'm gonna play it so I can have genuine complaints when I talk to my friends about it.
It was soooooo boring for like 10ish hours, I was going to drop it and replay dragon age origins. But now I'm enjoying it. It's very much a game that you play if you have spare time though. And there's a lot to like as much as hate about it, so you'll probably enjoy it if you skip over the part you don't like.
Imo if you like previous fallout games, it's worth sticking around past the 10 your mark. If you don't like previous fallout games, you're probably not going to like this one.
I played for about 14 hours and got stuck in a quest and my game was fucked and luckily Steam refunded me because at that point I just wasn't having fun anyways.
There is so much about the game that is antiquated as fuck. Like the dialogues, for instance. Maybe it's because I've played some games in the last few years that have some really cinematic and impactful dialogue scenes, like Ghost of Tsushima, or FF16, or even recently Baldur's Gate 3. It's like Bethesda just doesn't care about how dialogue is presented in their role-playing game. That deadpan stare into the camera is so off-putting. It was outdated 12 years ago for Skyrim but we were just starting to get some real bangers in that area then so it was permissible. Now it's just embarrassing. A friend and I agreed that the androids in Detroit: Become Human are more human that the NPCs in a Bethesda game and it's not even close.
Then there is all the little shit. Why no map for the custom-built areas, especially ones involving the main story? Why does nobody react to me accidentally discharging my weapon in New Atlantis? Why is the Fallout 4 color LUT on everything? It doesn't even change per planet. Why does the inventory UI feel like a downgrade where I need a mod to make it somewhat functional? This was a problem in Skyrim and they learned nothing. The inability to kill big story NPCs even when it seems like a completely logical and appropriate time to kill them if that was the playthrough you were going for.
It's so many little things that just feel so lazy on their part, too. For example, I did a quest on Mars to put up pictures of a frog for a boy around the station. When you put up the posters he gives you on the walls it's just a jpg image pasted there. Like, pixel perfect edges like a CSGO clan spray. Except, at least half the clans in CSGO take some time to make the edges of their spray look like its paper peeling off the wall or spray paint overspray or something. The thing is, once you start noticing the complete lack of polish in this game in one or two places you start noticing it EVERYWHERE.
I laughed when the Starfield reddit freaked that IGN America gave it a 7/10. I felt that was generous, if anything. I can't believe this game got 10/10 from people. It's not a bad game by any stretch. Many people will enjoy it. It does some things right. The guns feel good for once in a Bethesda game. The ship-building is cool and innovative. Hell, I'm not even against their loading screens in principle. 10/10, though? Like, perfect score, no flaws? Fuck. Off.
I was already disappointed that I couldn't get crushed or set on fire by the first ship in the game. The amount of collectible junk in the world makes it a nightmare to play because how obsessive I am about missing valuable items. I've had more fun with the character creator than the actual game so far. Really interested to see what modders can do with it though.
You can make the character a frickin non binary!!!
