Starfield

[one-armed dwarf]

While I like the game a lot and think it's a lot better than post Oblivion bethesda games, something in it bothers me so much

 

Fuel system: it limits how far you can go in your spaceship. You must hop from galaxy to galaxy with the galaxy map, increasing the likelihood of random encounters and skirmishes

 

Cool, right? Very fun and immersive take on a fragmented open world

 

Except fast travel completely skips the lot of it, lol. The need to plan a course, the possibility of random encounter (unless FT-ing straight into orbit) and the need to consider fuel at all. Here, just let me fast travel right into the heart of UC space with all this contraband I'm smuggling, lol

 

I understand the time saving and accessibility reasons for putting that in, and I definitely think you need it for exploring the proc-gen planets. Appreciate that not everyone is interested in the experience I'm describing here. But at the same time, given that they put the fuel in for space travel I wonder if there wasn't a way to implement FT that it doesn't completely obliterate immersion like that. It occurred to me as I made my first (terrible) attempt at a completely custom ship. Why install anything other than default fuel? I couldn't think of any reason. It's not a system that feels like it's made in consideration for the way fast travel works

 

I'll try and force myself to just not use FT too much, but it's one area where Morrowind had a super immersive take on how to implement fast travel that was both convenient and immersive. It sort of feels like they tried the same with Starfield, but maybe the development of this game was more silo-ed between systems and UI and there was less agreement over how to integrate it together. It's one of those areas where I think you feel the strain of delayed development a bit. In my mind though, upgrading fuel & grav jumps would be like upgrading fast travel, rather than FT being a 'skip' mechanic

 

mods I suppose

 

edit to be clear it just seems to be surface to planet fast travel that has this issue, while in space it actually seems to be implemented as above (I think). It's weird though

[Nag]

Booted it earlier just to make sure it did... my god, those black levels! How did that hdr work pass?

 

Did absolutely nothing and then turned it off... I'll be able to put some decent time in to it Thursday onwards as I booked Friday off work (something I haven't done for a game in years)

[Nigel Tufnell]

Only had an hour of this so far, will get a more time in over the weekend.

[Maryokutai]

This game has almost unreasonable amounts of stuff in it. I'm going to put this in a spoiler just in case but it's just a description of what you can find on a base on one of Saturn's moons, completely unrelated to any main or side story:

 

Spoiler

I discovered it by randomly pinging a ship above Mars' orbit simply because I hadn't done that before and wanted to see what happens. Immediately triggered one of those 'activities' that asked me to check out a base called Homestead on the aforementioned moon. After landing, the people that work and live there tell you that it's one of the earliest colonies humanity built after leaving earth and while the rest of the galaxy moved on they decided to stay, from which point onward the entire thing basically receives its own lore. Inhabitants grow their own crops and have picked US states as last names. There's a museum with (unfortunately very American) memorabilia from earth, and one of the 'quests' you can accept is a discovery tour for tourists that took at least half an hour to get through and consists of nothing more than one NPC explaining in excruciating detail how the people live there and what's to see inside out outside their base.

 

I'm roughly 15 hours in now and haven't even seen any other big city than New Atlantis. And I'm not even engaging with the nonsensical bullet points à la 'over 1000 planets' as I haven't even landed anywhere that was randomly generated (and don't plan on doing so). But the handcrafted stuff is just so remarkably good it makes you wonder why they didn't focus more on that pre-release. To an extent I actually did worry a bit that this would lean too heavily into procedurally generated 'content', but that's absolutely not the case.

[Nag]

I've had a quick blast on it now, probably around 2ish hours... quite a bit of that was trying to decide what to do with my character tbf...

 

 

So hot female Bounty Hunter was the order of the day, I'm terrible with character creation tools to be honest so I just settled on (in my opinion) the prettiest face and tweaked eye/hair colour and styles. Went Bounty Hunter as I wanted that Boost Pack skill opened up as quick as possible.

 

 

Traits were a little harder to decide, I've not made up my mind if I'll roll solo or take a companion so traits regarding that were out, ones that played off different alliances against each other just sounded a little boring so the three above are what I settled on.

 

As for the game itself I've literally just entered the Kreet Research Lab, people who are playing will know that's not very far at all... shooting feels fine although, at the moment, nothing special. I'm a little worried the the game is going to keep bombarding me with information and systems that I'm gonna need to remember in order to play it properly... and at one point I made the mistake of zooming out the map and realised just how fucking big this game could be.

 

I'll be putting in some hours over Thursday and Friday so we'll see how this thing goes.

 

[Maryokutai]

I hope that's not a spoiler, but traits aren't set in stone. For example, I picked Kid stuff, a trait where I have my parents living in NA and I 'have' to send them some money in regular intervals. But I can just go to them and tell them I won't be doing that anymore and the trait disappears. For the other two traits I picked I discovered a clinic that would help me get rid of them for a fee.

 

Not sure if you can apply a new one after removing one, so I chose to not meddle with it and leave it as is for the time being.

[one-armed dwarf]

With regard to elevated blacks, from what I see SDR is the way to go. I ended up installing a mod to remove the filter and I think Starfield is one of the best looking games this gen tbh. The detail/lighting on all the items and materials and how cluttered interiors are make it very immersive. It's very inconsistent tho, sometimes it looks shit!

 

Curious how you find playing with those traits, I'm guessing then you'll be speccing in a space ship direction earlier on than I have. I am only now getting 'Piloting' to +1 and still have to get the systems targeting. The way they start you off with space ships in this game feels like Morrowind, in that they feel like completely useless death traps that can't maneuvre around enemy fire. Which I like! I enjoy the helplessness as you figure that stuff out. Now with piloting, I can strafe (very slowly) as the enemies come charging in

 

Feels like there's a steep learning curve with space combat. I keep reloading my save the past few days as I design yet another giant useless space liner that can't maneuver around shit. Targeting systems will make it way easier though

[DisturbedSwan]

Played the first couple of hours last night, up to some derelict space station on the first planet you go to after the Mining Colony, so very early in.

 

Impressions are mixed its fair to say. Graphically, it's a bit disappointing, it looks and feels like a last-gen game to me, the facial animations in conversations are pretty terrible and have a decidedly last-gen feel to them, you just don't get that nuance in facial expression you do from the likes of BG3 and FFXVI (both of which I'm playing with this concurrently). It's definitely an improvement from Fallout 4 back in 2015 or so but yeah, serviceable but not fantastic by any means. Definitely not a current-gen showpiece, graphically at least.

 

The rest has been pretty good. Combat feels ok so far, like Fallout without VATS (I wish VATS was in here under another name or something) and the general exploration and adventuring is as good as ever, how they make it so satisfying to just open lockers and find shit I'll never know lol.

 

It definitely reminds me way more of Fallout than TES at the moment, even the kooky robot is similar, I called my character Sally Orgasmo and the robot went 'welcome back captain orgasmo', that gave me a right chuckle.

Early days though, but yeah, a mixed first impression its fair to say but I have enjoyed my time with it and look forward to learning more as time goes on, it also passed the 'I haven't drunk any water' test which is a good sign. After all these years it's just so nice to play a BGS game again.

 

Pics:

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[spatular]

I played a bit too, i have a problem with picking stuff up, spending most of my time picking stuff up, getting overencumbered then having to work out what to drop. Im working on my weight lifting skillz. Its odd though in other ways the game is really streamlined with fast travel and stuff. So ive wasted a lot of time, but also saved a lot of time, its sort of evening itself out.

 

the graphics are a mixed bag sometimes i think it looks really nice, other times it looks odd/bad.

the tutorials arent great, especially ship flight.

 

quite enjoying it so far anyway.

[Nag]

Tbf @one-armed dwarf I've not opened the perks screen yet... I've no idea how I'm going to shape my character.

 

One thing I do need to try and avoid though is picking all the most boring ones... something I do all to often in this style of game.

[Nag]

You'd better believe I've just glitched getting that Mark 1 spacesuit...🤣

[Nag]

Can't say I'm the games biggest fan with how it deals with travel... am I supposed to be fast travelling everywhere? Why is there no local map? Am I supposed to be wondering around everywhere with my scanner out to find everything?

 

I dunno... it kind've feels like I'm playing the game wrong and makes me pine for the question marks of Skyrim and Fallout.

[spatular]

Yeah im just fast traveling everywhere and just going with it also not sure thats how its supposed to work. And yeah there definitely should be maps, found one via google for one of the towns. Also wouldnt mind some more space combat after going to the trouble of finding out how it works, but it doesnt seem to happen much, maybe im fast traveling past it all.

[one-armed dwarf]

ymmv but what I'm doing is manually 'setting course' all the time, and with that a lot of the game mechanics lock into place. The important of prep (repair ship, ship parts, assigning crew members according to proficiencies like energy shields and such). The grav jump range, the number of random encounters that can happen in orbit. The way that the procedurally generated planets fulfill more of a role as a 'pitstop' in between major story beats on your way to each destination. The various proc-gen rabbit holes that you can choose to go down while on those pitstops (but to be honest, the way they generate this content doesn't seem very good). You sort of see the way the systems are meant to interlock

 

But as mentioned, FT skips it all. It's makes some aspects of the game feel very vestigial. But I think doing it with 'set course' slows the pace down, forces you to spend longer times in each section of the system and take your time with quests and stuff. You can sort of see the intended flow of space ship -> space fights -> explore a proc gen area (maybe), sell ship salvage/do repairs -> reach destination -> do authored content (which can and often consumes hours and hours). But it lacks a guiding hand that makes the questing, movement and discovery aspects feel inorganic. FT is supposed to make the game feel more easy, but it can also make it feel more overwhelming and confusing. It might be a bit of a trap but again ymmv, it's just how it felt to me anyway

[spatular]

Yeah i dont know ive skipped a lot of stuff with fast travel it sounds like but inventory management takes so long i sort of dont mind saving time elsewhere

[Maryokutai]

Today I found out that you can leave New Atlantis and run around on the planet. Of course that's basically what Bethesda has been doing for decades, but with the fragmented world in this game, I adapted so quickly to the idea that cities and outposts were separate instances that it never even crossed my mind to try it out. For the record there's not much to find out there, but I like that there's still some of their classic free-roaming DNA here.

 

Also, as a quick update, I'm now roughly at 20 hours and still haven't visited any other city. I think I have to force myself at some point because the Vanguard questline seems to pretty much lock you into Alpha Centauri and Sol for quite a while. I do recommend doing those though, it's a really interesting mix of Alien and Mass Effect. Yes, sci-fi tropes galore, but some surprising twists and turns in my opinion.

[one-armed dwarf]

For me I'm feeling conflicted about some things. There's so much stuff that's really interesting about it, but the core of the 'RPG' inside still has that Bethesda thing of 'we want everyone to be able to see everything'. So you end up with lengthy plotlines about corporate subterfuge involving hacking terminals to tank a share price, and every mandatory [Security] skill check is 'novice'....

 

That said, once the Ryujin plot got going it got really good and there are some optional secrets with [Expert] and [Master] checks. But left me wishing there was a greater sense of connection between the skills you choose to develop, the factions you join and your ability to progress within and scope to experiment outside of set paths if you wanted to try a different option. The game flirts with a bit of that from time to time, and there's some genuinely compelling dialogue decisions to be made within Ryujin that allowed me to get into the character mindset and think through what outcome I liked best, positive or negative. But it's still quite compartmentalized and has that thing Oblivion has where it's very much a short story within a collection of short stories rather than in Morrowind where promotion is gatekept by your skills

 

I think the game could be a lot better than it is if it went a bit harder in some of these directions, wrt role playing. I have a lengthy flight coming up though and this has shot New Vegas to the top of the queue for loading onto the Steam Deck. Provided it works, I hope it does, apparently that game does all the things I'm asking for here.

 

edit the last ryujin mission does seem to strongly favor heavy investment in stealth, I will grant. I did not put much in stealth, so I used the subtle tool of loud murder instead. Worked well enough

[Nag]

I wish this game explained a few things a bit better...

 

 

I was thinking myself how the fuck are you supposed to remember where you've been... that helps I guess.

[mmmark]

 

[mfnick]

Gave this a bit of a go, only around 4 hours so not long. But yea, it’s enough to know it’s not for me. Just got zero interest in any characters or the story at all so far. I thought I’d like how fast travel centric rather than open world it is but it’s just irritating how long you spend in menus - which are also bad. 
 

I really hate how much shit there is you can pick up. It’s really hard to tell what items are interactible or collectible (unless you spend all your time in scanning mode & I’ve stated many times how much I hate that) and then 99% of it is useless shit like notepads. Which means I just end up ignoring it which further means I’ll miss the actual shit I do want or need. Why can’t I compare other weapons apart from my equipped one while looting too? 
 

The combat is meh. 
 

I also googled the part people go on about “where it gets good” around 15 hours. Couldn’t believe how tame that turning point was tbh. The NG+ is nowhere near as special as people make out either. They definitely aren’t worth me trying to persevere with it anyway. Ah well, cost me nothing extra to try it at least. 
 

I may just be in the wrong space of mind for it too at the minute. Really fed up of most AAA games these days which feel like they’re wasting my time. I may try it again in a few months with a different mindset.