Starfield

[DisturbedSwan]

4 hours ago, shinymcshine said:

For a 'choose your own destiny' RPG there's still a huge focus on shooting things - how about allowing you to use other skillsets to achieve your objectives ? Is there sneaky stuff, tech hacks, psychic skills, diplomatic solutions ?

 

Yeah, that was one of the huge issues I had with F4 in that often quests just ended in a firefight and there wasn't as many cool ways to resolve a quest with speech, sneaky shenanigans etc. than in F3 and New Vegas. So it'll be a huge win for me if they've brought that back for this. Apparently the protagonist isn't voiced like in F4 which should enable a greater autonomy when approaching quests as more dialogue options are open to you from the get-go. 

 

22 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

I'm thinking 980 of the 1000 planets fulfill the same role as random dungeons in the overworld of Skyrim/Oblivion/MW, and there'll be things like distress beacons and other points of interest for the actually important 20 planets or something like this.

 

imo the point of these games isn't to complete them anyway, or to do everything. All the Bethesda games I've completed have had shitty and boring main storylines and are best just seen as weird worlds to live in and follow some plot threads and discoveries, not to check a bunch of checklists off. Which makes them better than Ubisoft at least.

 

For a lot of reasons I don't think a game like this will demo very well, cause there's a bunch of stuff in here you've seen before in other games. It'll boil down to whether or not the space sim stuff is actually really good or not I think. The shooting is going to suck so there's no point keeping high hopes for that, but I do hope that all the other stuff is going to surpass similar stuff that's out there (short of being a hardcore elite dangerous or star citizen type of thing, it's not going to be remotely close to that)

 

The proc gen planets stuff is actually a bit of a throwback as well, to Daggerfall which procedurally generated all of High Rock and Hammerfell

 

I'm hoping they're like that but my completionist brain will likely want to seek them out regardless and then burn out most likely lol. I never played Skyrim, F3 or F4 in a completionist way though and just kind of stumbled from place to place going 'ooo, what's over here?' a lot until I eventually went to a big town or settlement and picked up some story threads. But yeah, I completely agree that the main storylines are usually pretty shit and worth ignoring for the far superior side and guild quests (in Skyrim and F3 anyway), F4's story is a little better but still pretty shite all things considered. 

 

In my head I'm imagining this game to be quite similar in terms of planetary exploration to Mass Effect Andromeda, but I could obviously be completely wrong. If I'm going to a planet, being dropped in a relatively big open world with some kind of planetary transport to explore the local wildlife then I'll be happy. If it's an endless open world on every planet with a million things to do and no planetary transport I'll likely burn out on it before long. 

 

Who knows though really, I have faith in BGS - even after F4 and to a lesser extent F76 - so I hope they pull through. For me, that feeling of being utterly lost and enthralled in a world is what BGS do best and haven't really been matched on this front (even by themselves in F4) so I hope this is the game that once again reaches the highs of F3 and Skyrim and isn't somewhat disappointing like F4. But it'll be fun to find out.

[radiofloyd]

I need to watch the trailer again on a big screen (but the fact that I haven’t probably says something about how uninspiring it was). What I saw looked very generic. Looked liked a lot of things we’ve seen a hundred times before. On the other hand, originality isn’t everything, and it has all the ingredients of a game I would enjoy. But I don’t think Starfield will be anyone’s most wanted game of 2023.

 

In spite of its mixed reception, I loved Cyperpunk, and I feel like It set a pretty high bar for a multi-system, open world (kind of), cinematic, futuristic (albeit not set in space) action-rpg. I haven’t played Fallout 4, so Cyberpunk is probably the bar I will be comparing this with.

[bellow]

3 hours ago, radiofloyd said:

. But I don’t think Starfield will be anyone’s most wanted game of 2023.

 

It's mine😃

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[one-armed dwarf]

This is still definitely one of those things I think where none of it will appear interesting at all until people can actually play it. It just doesn't really demo well but none of Bethesda's stuff other than Skyrim really does I think.

 

While they are talking about dialogue tho, I hope those speech checks hook into some reactive based design based on larger scale decisions you can make and isn't just a check based on XP invested, and that failed checks could lead to interesting branched outcomes in quest design.

 

My larger takeaway from the way Todd talks about this game is they are trying to go for a return to form when it comes to the RPG stuff, if you compare this to the anemic RPG creator and dialogue options that Fallout 4 had. Backstory 'traits' is a big thing in Daggerfall (I want to check that one out) that influences lots of things in your playthrough. It sort of looks like a winding back of the 'dumbing down' aspects of Bethesda games since Oblivion launched maybe. I'm really interested in how it turns out

[radiofloyd]

Yeah it was a good interview. If nothing else it was nice to hear about his inspirations for the game. Sometimes an interview like this can be better PR for a game than a gameplay reveal… 

[DisturbedSwan]

 

Some excerpts from the Video by Era users Bxrz, Krakenking189 and Almalexia:

Quote

Gems from interview:

- He says he met with LucasArts in 2009 and pitched the Indiana Jones game (Its always been on his bucket list). Deal fell apart for publishing issues and he didn't have the team ready. ~10 years later, he pitched the game again and they (LucasArts) said he loved it. Said Machine Games is the perfect fit cause of their storytelling. Said looking at the game is part of his day-to-day (aswell as playing/making Starfield). Hes actually more involved with the development on Indiana Jones more than I initially thought.

- Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 was different intentionally. They were trying new things in F4.

- Says in Starfield the star systems will have levels attached to them.

- Says you won't be stranded out in space with no fuel. Its a "fun-killer". Maybe for a hardcore survival mode in the future

- Different space suits will have buffs to gases/toxicity/temperature. Will be useful depending on what planet you travel to

- Robot enemies are confirmed.

- Wishes their games (ES6 specifically) didn't take as long to make as they did but they do

- Will always support mods and hired modders that are now professionals.

- Not putting Starfield on PS5 helps with focus. Says they've always primarily focused on Xbox when it came to consoles. They went into development focused on Xbox so the exclusivity isn't abnormal for them. Xbox brought Bethesda to consoles with Elder Scrolls: Morrowind

- Xbox top engineers are helping with Starfield development on Series X/S

- Delaying Starfield was tough but the right thing to do. They wanted to say they could get it done (given the amount of work left and the amount of time remaining) but it was too much risk involved to the team, the game, the fans and Xbox

- Says theres added pressure to deliver for everybody with Starfield since they are a platform seller now. Making "THE GAME"

- Says he prefers console to PC cause hes in front of a PC all day at work

Feel free to make new thread(s) based on any of this information

 

Here's some info on Starfield from the man himself.

The world is generated in tiles, like usual Bethesda games. They made these tiles look like realistic landscapes, put them together, and then wrap them around a planet.

Todd says they could do way more than 1000 planets but decided to set a limit due to the detail of naming them and having a distinct feeling about each one. The star systems are leveled Todd specifically mentions a "Level 40 System" so different systems will be of varying difficulty.

The tone is that space travel should feel dangerous and that they have dialed this back and forth during development.

Can possibly mine planets for fuel?

"They get into environmental things" on planets. Space suits, buffs, gasses, toxicity, temperature.

There are robots. Robots are mostly utility robots. Starfield is a deeply human world.

Other ships DO come and go from the starports. (I love this.)

You can jump into a system and see a freighter, other ships can contact you.

 

4 of the followers in starfield have deeper relationship options than they've ever done, as an example, instead of a rigid hate/love meter, if you do something that pisses your friend off, they'll behave differently for a time instead of removing X amount of points from the meter
planets have actual orbits and move around the sky

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I think June was the rumoured date for this, well now it's September

 

 

That works for me, FFXVI and SFVI in one month is already too much

 

Still unsure about this one, I hope it comes together in a more interesting way than the footage so far has indicated

[Nag]

Hopefully they can stick to this one... and hopefully they can drop Forza in around July time to sit nicely between this and Redfall.

[DisturbedSwan]

Yeah September is fine for me, not within 12 months like they said last year though but delays happen as we know, hopefully they can stick to this date.

 

Nice for MS to finally have a big tentpole release date to pin their hat to after Halo in late 2021, also there was a rumour last month that Forza 8 had slipped to Q3 or later so I think that'll end up coming out after this, maybe late September? Who knows.

[mmmark]

 

[radiofloyd]

A week after Baldur’s Gate 3 lol, no chance I’ll be playing this at launch. I’ll get to it eventually. Probably after I play Hogwarts Legacy.

[mmmark]

 

[radiofloyd]

This looks very good. Not in any one particular area but, I could see it being very addictive and fun to play. 

[DANGERMAN]

It's really not grabbed me yet. I could absolutely see it getting its hooks in if I played it, but so far I think it looks a bit dry and dull 

[DisturbedSwan]

 

I have to say this really impressed me, I watched part of it live but was getting moaned at by the Wife to turn it off so did so. Watched it back later that night in bed on the iPad and it looks pretty fantastic.

 

Graphically it's very much a current-gen game, the visuals impressed me a lot, the combat looked much faster paced than I thought it would be and with the perks like the Booster Pack (or whatever they call it), the melee focused one (can't remember the name) and some other it looks like you can switch it up however you like and make it as silly and fun as you like, which is always good to me.

 

It's the cities in particular that have sold me on it though, no one does towns and cities like BGS and I want to explore New Atlantis and the other places I saw in the presentation so fucking badly already. I can imagine myself getting utterly lost and ending up in some zaney weird questlines around the city, completely forgetting what I went there for in the first place. The exploration looks absolutely top tier as well, as is expected from BGS but no one does open world games like them in my view, and if they bottle that 'I wonder what's over there?' feeling you get repeatedly in Skyrim and Fallout 3 but was slightly mismanaged in Fallout 4 then they'll be on to a winner with this.

 

How big the game is is daunting though, 1000 planets?! Jesus, that's a whole lot, I suppose a lot depends on how much there is on each planet, if it's just a few settlements on each similar to Mass Effect then it won't be too bad but if you can literally explore entire planet after entire planet that might be a big turn off for me. All the customisation options of outpost building, ship building and all that are super overwhelming for me too, I won't be bothering with those parts of the game other than when I have to to complete a questline or something.

 

The only other big question mark is whether than footage shown was on PC or console really, because it looked so bloody good visually that I'm a little worried there might be a CB2077 situation going on where they've only shown high end PC footage, but who knows. This is BGS and I do expect some bugs but I really hope this can be their most bug-free game at launch.

[one-armed dwarf]

Following from what nag said in another thread, wrt 30fps, the thing is at some point the penny has to drop with games of this type. You either get these hugely ambitious games with tons of scope simulating tons of different things at once, or you get 60fps. It can be either/or with a game like this and it's not always a case of just turning the resolution down

 

Though I will say that MS should probably embrace VRR a bit better here and give people a 40fps option as well, cause that really is just almost as good as 60 at times.

[Nag]

Oh don't get me wrong, I really couldn't care less about the fps as long as it's locked (and with how vrr works on Xbox it pretty well should be) 30fps will be fine... I'm more into things looking as pin sharp as possible on screen so I'll take the 4k visuals thanks.

[DANGERMAN]

1 hour ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Following from what nag said in another thread, wrt 30fps, the thing is at some point the penny has to drop with games of this type. You either get these hugely ambitious games with tons of scope simulating tons of different things at once, or you get 60fps. It can be either/or with a game like this and it's not always a case of just turning the resolution down

 

Though I will say that MS should probably embrace VRR a bit better here and give people a 40fps option as well, cause that really is just almost as good as 60 at times.

I think I disagree with all this 😅

[one-armed dwarf]

In what sense?

 

I'm talking about when a game seems to be CPU bound in a more game design sense. eg, physics, AI, and whatever procedural and simulation elements this thing is going for.

 

Maybe that isn't actually the case with Starfield and it's just graphics optimising, but taking PC completely out of the equation, if someone where to ask would I be ok with them cutting back on their game design to escape a CPU bottleneck, I'll take the 30fps. Like that is a problem which can't easily be fixed with a performance mode (maybe make the draw distance a lot worse could work, I dunno)

 

TOTK is a good example of that too. Tons of systems in that game