Starfield

[Raoul Duke]

New title coming from Bethesda on 11/11/22 (they love a numerically pleasing release date). Xbox/PC exclusive.

https://www.polygon.com/e3/22532074/starfield-release-date-bethesda-softworks-xbox-pc-e3-2021


https://youtu.be/B-LlfIXT8to

[Ian]

How long is it since they first mentioned this and yet still bugger all is known about it?

Could really do with it being a proper departure from Elder Scrolls and their Fallout games, lol if it's using the same engine and is just the same sort of thing but SPACE.

[Raoul Duke]

It's a new engine, from what I read. I'm absolutely fine with Space Fallout/Skyrim though :nodd:

[Mike]

Free on GamePass too I bet!

[Ian]

It's a new engine, from what I read. I'm absolutely fine with Space Fallout/Skyrim though :nodd:

Skyrim managed an impressive feat in that I played about 110 hours of it and it's left very little real impression on me. One day I just stopped and I have no urge to go back or real desire for an Elder Scrolls 6.

If it comes out and it actually looks like a modern game and like an actual RPG then I may be interested but I won't hold my breath.

[Mazuuurk]

It's a new engine, from what I read. I'm absolutely fine with Space Fallout/Skyrim though :nodd:


Thats basically Outer Worlds, no? Except the lack of scale (which I suppose is half the point of those games).

[Raoul Duke]

OW has smaller, much more contained environments from what I remember from when I played it. I'm not sure what they're going to do with this - I think each planet will be like a Far Harbour or Nuka World, rather than some procedurally generated No Man's Sky effort. But I don't see how that scales to any sort of space exploration idea.

[Raoul Duke]

Game delayed until next year :moop:

[Raoul Duke]

Whole load of stuff announced here:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmb2FJGvnAw&t=665s

So, No Man's Skyrim then, yeah?

[Shindig]

It could be interesting to see them get out of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls universe. Assuming they don't just have ready made stand-ins for Brotherhood of Steel, Thieves Guild or whatever. And they don't start the game with, "FAMILY MEMBER MISSING! FIND YOUR DADWIFESONKING."

[Raoul Duke]

The story looks like some 'hunt the space mcguffin' and there are a bunch of factions, from what I see

[Ian]

I wet my pants with excitement when I saw the sort of grey, rocky planet you'd tire of driving the Mako around.

These boys know how to put a hype trailer together.

[Raoul Duke]

New release date confirmed: Sept 6th 2023


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raWbElTCea8

[Dark Soldier]

This is gonna be the most broken piece of shit ever.

[Yevrah]

I know that's often levelled at Bethesda (and I clearly love them so am probably biased), but just how many balancing patches have been released for Elden Ring, for example, and how much broken shit has been found in that game a mere year after release, without so much as a peep?

[Raoul Duke]

Or FIFA - same wonky bullshit every year, multiple patches and still many things borked

[Shindig]

I often wonder how many FIFA patches are to do with security. As for Bethesda, just make something I would like. Fallout 4 just didn't click for me.

[Raoul Duke]

Security? Doesn't seem like a lot, considering the amount of filthy cheaters on PC right now with their 7ft tall teams of invisible Messi's :D

[Shindig]

I never said the patches worked. :D

[Yevrah]

I avoided FIFA as people do complain about that a lot, but Elden Ring was lauded as one of the best games ever made (which it probably is in fairness) despite the end game being an absolute cake walk upon release if you happened to use one of the ludicrously over powered weapons.

I loved it, but one can say that while also citing that's it's ridiculous that they're still releasing balancing patches (not to mention all of the other game breaking glitches still in existence). Excluding Fallout 76 for the first year or so, it's as broken as any Bethesda game now, if not more.

[Dark Soldier]

By broken, Yev, I'm not talking balance. I'm talking the absolute clusterfuck of horrendous bugs, fucked animations and multitude of other things that are ever present in Bethesda games.

Elden Ring got away with it as unlike Fallout, Skyrim etc...its a great game.

But then I am the opposite in that I find Bethesda games to be the absolute worst and Todd Howard the walking definition of a cunt.

[Shindig]

I remember the PS3 version of Skyrim having a bug where save file sizes grew exponentially.

[Ian]

There's also an element of Bethesda games looking janky and outdated (in terms of animations etc.) even when they're working as expected which has made them extra meme-able and adds to a reputation for this sort of thing.

[Raoul Duke]

Trailer


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfYEiTdsyas

Gameplay deepdive


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMOPoAq5vIA

[Shindig]

It looks decent but the true test of any Bethesda open world is how quickly it breaks outside of a controlled demo. I'm more annoyed Phil Spencer got on stage with a Hexen shirt. Pull that trigger, dickhead.

[Mike]

Looks pretty great! Excited to play, just a shame I won’t have time to play it

[Ian]

It still looks.... Fine.

At least they showed off some.planeys that aren't grey rocks this time, and the cities look pretty if a bit tropey.

I'll play it because it's on Game Pass, otherwise I'd be waiting for a sale

[Raoul Duke]

I'm all in. Got the early access version and gonna take the day off work to play :drool:

[Yevrah]

Been looking more and more at this and if Bethesda have got it right we could be looking at one hell of a game. The idea of seeing a planet in the distance and thinking "I'm going to fly to that", then doing so, landing, exploring and colonising it is so fapworthy it's untrue.

[Raoul Duke]

Been looking more and more at this and if Bethesda have got it right we could be looking at one hell of a game. The idea of seeing a planet in the distance and thinking "I'm going to fly to that", then doing so, landing, exploring and colonising it is so fapworthy it's untrue.

Have you played No Man's Sky? Seems like you'd love that. If it's basically that + Fallout 4 it's going to be le GOAT.

Some absolute bastard "friend" of mine has organised his wedding for the release weekend so my plan of spending four or so days balls deep in it have been curtailed somewhat :moop:

[Yevrah]

Played a bit of No Man's Sky but struggled to get into it through what I perceived to be shoddy in game mechanics. I would have given it another go, but this will probably stop that from ever happening.

[Gray Fox]

if Bethesda have got it right

There's your problem right there. Probably will be a very good game at some point, but I'm not convinced that will be at release.

[Yevrah]

Skyim, Fallout 4 were both fine on release. Fallout 76 was an absolute sack of shit, but was hopefully an outlier.

[Shindig]

Look, I like backwards dragons like the rest of you but Skyrim was not fine on release. I had to stop playing because my PS3 save would not stop growing exponentially.

[Yevrah]

Ah yeah, it never worked on PS3, did it? No issue with that this time round though.

[Mazuuurk]

Been looking more and more at this and if Bethesda have got it right we could be looking at one hell of a game. The idea of seeing a planet in the distance and thinking "I'm going to fly to that", then doing so, landing, exploring and colonising it is so fapworthy it's untrue.

That's how it always starts. Then BOOM - genocide and slavery.

[Dark Soldier]

Bet Yev is fucking moist for this

[Yevrah]

I am, but with the caveat that I've never really enjoyed space games, so hopefully Bethesda can change that.

Will you be on it DS?

[Adramelch]

You should get that checked, if anything the Mass Effect series was a banger (yes even Andromeda, even if less so).

[phonics]

Bethesdas AI generated quests have proven themselves to be the worlds most boring thing so I can't wait for 120 planets worth of them.

[Yevrah]

What, the radiant ones? Just don't do them.

[Dark Soldier]

I am, but with the caveat that I've never really enjoyed space games, so hopefully Bethesda can change that.

Will you be on it DS?

It's on Gamepass so ill give it a shot but we've danced the dance of my Bethesda hatred before.

[Yevrah]

Download done. Only 100GB for the actual game, with another 20GB for the soundtrack and artwork.

[Gray Fox]

For some reason it's taken me this long to realise this is a Microsoft exclusive. A bit annoying, but what can you do.

[Mike]

Do I go PC or Xbox… I’m thinking PC for mods and stuff.

[Yevrah]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek3I6_9c58E

Hold me.

[Yevrah]

Do I go PC or Xbox… I’m thinking PC for mods and stuff.

Mods will be on Xbox I'd imagine, but the depth and range of them on PC will be far greater.

[Mike]

I’ve just spotted it has cross save, so can always move over. Thinking of doing the GamePass upgrade thing so I can play Friday, as my wife is away

[Mazuuurk]

Oh ffs this is Xbox exclusive?

No get the fuck out, I might have to get an Xbox just for this. Are Xboxes any good compared to PS5?

[Mike]

If you just want it for this, get a Series S for £250, then get GamePass. You can get it cheaper if you sign up for Xbox Live Gold, then use the £1 conversion to GamePass. It’s not as good as it used to be, but still cheaper than paying for GamePass outright.

[Ian]

Spending hundreds of pounds to play any game is mad, for a Bethesda game I'd be getting you sectioned.

[Mazuuurk]

If you just want it for this, get a Series S for £250, then get GamePass. You can get it cheaper if you sign up for Xbox Live Gold, then use the £1 conversion to GamePass. It’s not as good as it used to be, but still cheaper than paying for GamePass outright.

If I got an XBOX I'd get whatever is the latest. But after a quick google, it looks like that is XBOX Series X (seriously...?) and that doesn't fit into the TV bench I have, looks like a god damn computer, so whats even the point in a console then?



Spending hundreds of pounds to play any game is mad, for a Bethesda game I'd be getting you sectioned.

Dunno, I had a lot of fun with Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 3.
Basically Fallout is fun.

[Dark Soldier]

The Series S is fucking shit and is criminally underpowered but if you don't mind 720p at a barely stable 30fps you'll be grand. I sold mine and upgraded to the X.

[Mike]

If I got an XBOX I'd get whatever is the latest. But after a quick google, it looks like that is XBOX Series X (seriously...?) and that doesn't fit into the TV bench I have, looks like a god damn computer, so whats even the point in a console then?


You can put it sideways if it helps, I had mine like that for a while.

The S and X came out at the same time, the X is just more powerful and has a disk drive. If you’re going to keep it past playing Starfield and have the money, get the X

[Baz]

If I got an XBOX I'd get whatever is the latest. But after a quick google, it looks like that is XBOX Series X (seriously...?) and that doesn't fit into the TV bench I have, looks like a god damn computer, so whats even the point in a console then? .Series X is the best console ever made.

[Dark Soldier]

I have bought the early access from the Iceland store for 18 quid just so I can piss on a mate's chips about how shit it is. What a life.

[Yevrah]

You’ll love it really DS.

If it’s as good as F4/F3/Skyrim the price of a Series X will be well worth it.

[Dark Soldier]

Surprised you're not on the early access business Yev.

[Yevrah]

From Sep 1st? I am.

[Dark Soldier]

Legend I can tell you how shit is too :drool:

[Mike]

I have bought the early access from the Iceland store for 18 quid just so I can piss on a mate's chips about how shit it is. What a life.
It’s been odd about my name and date on my card, shall try on the laptop later

[Dark Soldier]

Use revolut or something if you have it. Way easier. I chucked 20 quid over, it blocked it cos it thought I'd been hacked, said it was me and it went through.

[Raoul Duke]

I'm on the early access train. Annoyingly I have to go to a wedding so will only get a day or so on it before I have to travel

[Yevrah]

Will frigging the time zone work so we can play it from whenever on Thursday?

[Mike]

Use revolut or something if you have it. Way easier. I chucked 20 quid over, it blocked it cos it thought I'd been hacked, said it was me and it went through.

Sorted, MS wouldn't let me add my Revolut or Monzo card. Chase worked fine though.


Will frigging the time zone work so we can play it from whenever on Thursday?
I think it launches at the same time world wide. So 1am here, 10am in Sydney.

https://i.imgur.com/A0FnQ2l.png

[Dark Soldier]

One week to go. Yev is rapidly printing out pictures of Todd to hang on his walls.

[Yevrah]

I'm stroking the version I have of Todd's Cafe Racer leather jacket.

[Raoul Duke]

There's a (very WIP) build planner here (https://nukesdragons.com/starfield/character) - some minor spoiler-y stuff there, obviously

[Gray Fox]

I've noticed this is a straight to gamepass title. Quite strange to see a Triple A title straight on there. I have a decent gaming PC too so I might yet be able to get on this.

[Yevrah]

Yeah, it’s Microsoft’s play to sell more consoles.

[Mike]

I've got it installed on the Xbox and my laptop ready. Cross save means I can play on Xbox, but when the wife wants the TV, I can keep going on the laptop. It's like living in the future.

[Dark Soldier]

36 hours until the jankfest begins.

[Yevrah]

Is there a day 1 patch? Last thing I want to do is sit down to play it and have to wait for 50gb to download…

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

There is, only 15gb apparently.

[Raoul Duke]

They've already pushed out a patch and the fixes were fairly minor, so I think it'll be in better shape than other releases

[Yevrah]

Supposedly I can download the patch now, so with that in mind the plan is:

Get home from work tomorrow
Start Download for the patch
Set alarm for 12:50am
Go to bed
One snooze
Get up at 12:59
Play the shit out of it until I need to start work again at 9am

:drool:

[Raoul Duke]

I'm going to bed early-ish tonight then getting up at 6am to start playing for 7am until I fall asleep in my chair :drool:

Tonight I need to go on a mission to stock up on snacks and supplies

[Mike]

My daughter isn’t napping Friday, wife is off to York so it’s 6pm bedtime and on the game for me.

[Mike]

Of course, this means she’ll fall to sleep in the day and be up till like half 7

[Baz]

I have installed it.

[Adramelch]

Same though didn't see much reason going for early access so will just wait until the 6th.

[Dark Soldier]

7/10 from IGN and Gamespot.

Internet is about to fucking explode lads.

[Raoul Duke]

Reddit review megathread (https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/166fbp1/starfield_review_megathread/)

Those two you mention seem like outliers on the low end, looking at the meta-score

[Dark Soldier]

Its dead on arrival lad

[Ian]

7/10 from IGN and Gamespot.

Internet is about to fucking explode lads.

I assume they've already been given death threats for not calling it a 12/10 masterpiece by freaks who've not played the game yet?

[Raoul Duke]

I'm already searching for DS's home address. Me and Yev are heading up to his place with sledgehammers, dressed in matching spaceman outfits

[Gray Fox]

Jokes on you, he's into that shit.

[Yevrah]

Listened to two reviews on the way home from work (JuiceHead and Mr Matty Plays) and my takeaways were...

It's one of the most ambitious games ever made and while they've reached for he stars they haven't quite hit them, partly it seems due to the technology simply not being available within the mainstream yet (too many loading screens, a weird system of navigating space and planets etc.).

Now neither reviewer actually said those words, but add up what both of them were saying and that's where I got to. In terms of the rest of it, a lot of it sounds amazing, but it'd be boring to focus on that, so my causes for concern were:

It doesn't sound like they've recreated the feeling of exploration in Skyrim and Fallout in space, which if true, is a massive disappointment given that they had limitless possibilities to work with. Now some of that issue seems to stem from the above limitations and I'm hopeful that avoiding things like fast travel will mitigate it somewhat, but it's a worry nonetheless.

It also sounds like the crafting, upgrading and outpost mechanics are seriously fucking complicated, which I'm not too bothered about (as if the game's very good I'll learn them) but if they make Fallout 4 look simplistic that is going to lead to a lot of people just binning huge swaythes of the game off.

It also sounds like 100 hours is nowhere near enough to review it properly, which they both admitted.

[Dark Soldier]

Hearing him say that the tiles you land on aren't contiguous. So you see a huge structure or mountain way off in the distance that looks interesting but your 'tile' boundaries stop before it. You go to the map, move to a tile closer to it, it no longer exists as its a new 'seed tile'.

That's a bit mad tbf. You're not actually exploring planets then, just randomly generated little sandboxes that do not link to each other in logical ways.

[Yevrah]

Hearing him say that the tiles you land on aren't contiguous. So you see a huge structure or mountain way off in the distance that looks interesting but your 'tile' boundaries stop before it. You go to the map, move to a tile closer to it, it no longer exists as its a new 'seed tile'.

That's a bit mad tbf. You're not actually exploring planets then, just randomly generated little sandboxes that do not link to each other in logical ways.

Yeah, that ties into the worry I have. On face value, it's simply not a good system.

[Ian]

If that's true DS then that's impressively shit.

Hey guys, you know how you like exploration? Well what if we did that but without the best part of exploration? You're welcome.

[Dark Soldier]

Apparently their engine has always been a tile based system. But because this is so VAST this is what you get. Rather than spending some of the 8 fricking years making a new engine or summat.

[Yevrah]

I've heard that you can walk for half an hour on some of these planets having landed, which if true would make them the size of Skyrim, so my guess would be it isn't the fault of the engine, more that the technology simply isn't there yet to have that many planets that big, with diverse things in them, in a game.

Doesn't change the end result mind.

[Shindig]

"See that mountain? It won't be there by the time you get to it."

https://www.pcgamesn.com/wp-content/sites/pcgamesn/2023/08/todd-howard-4-550x309.jpg

[Baz]

One thing I truly hate about console gaming is mid-game loading screens, and this seems to have a lot.

[Yevrah]

Just seen that the Gamespot review was based on 55 hours play across both the Xbox and PC versions, 27 1/2 hours average on each. Which, assuming these guys get paid enough to make a living from working for Gamespot, is a pathetic effort.

[Dark Soldier]

I've heard that you can walk for half an hour on some of these planets having landed, which if true would make them the size of Skyrim, so my guess would be it isn't the fault of the engine, more that the technology simply isn't there yet to have that many planets that big, with diverse things in them, in a game.

Doesn't change the end result mind.

Video reviews also say they've seen identikit outposts, landmarks and all kinds of stuff within the space of 3 or 4 hours across different planets. So the concept of diverse may not be as large as Todd claims, shockingly.

[Shindig]

Just seen that the Gamespot review was based on 55 hours play across both the Xbox and PC versions, 27 1/2 hours average on each. Which, assuming these guys get paid enough to make a living from working for Gamespot, is a pathetic effort.

Written by Michael Higham who pulls double duty between FanByte and Gamespot, by the looks of things. I find it very hard to find people at the top end of the gaming press who aren't working for several publications at once.

Also, he finished the game. I don't know what more you want.

[Yevrah]

I want him to play it more - the main story has never been the best thing in any Bethesda game, sometimes far from it, so 'finishing it' doesn't particularly mean much in that context.

I mean, I don't know for sure, as I obviously haven't played a second of it yet, but I'd be surprised if that amount of time (based on other reviews) is anything like sufficient.

[Adramelch]

Unless the criticism is "not enough content", then I'd say finishing the main story qualifies as having played it enough to write a review. That's what the majority of players will experience.

[Ian]

That might be true for what your preferred experience of a Bethesda game is* but you can't be reasonably claiming that nearly 30 hours isn't enough to know what's what. Strong "actually you need to give this show until season 4 to really see the best of it" vibes if so.

The story isn't ever the best thing in a Bethesda game but I've also never played one that showed me much after a few dozen hours that it didn't before then.

* And this is of course totally fine. Horses for courses. If I was playing a game by a dev who actually do good stories I'd be wary if they said they hadn't done that much of it.

But if you want the sweaty 300 hour review then you're gonna need to wait for that, if you want the "Now I've played the game more here are my further thoughts" then you're gonna need to wait for those too. Or just blame whoever decided on the embargo which is, objectively, bad for consumers. From what I can gather all but the most established games journos are either underpaid staff writers or freelancers knocking their pan in for multiple places like Shinners said and probably don't have the time, energy, or enthusiasm for doing the "Yeah but what if you want to spend three days grinding mudcrabs and minmaxing?" take you might be after.

[Dark Soldier]

Main story apparently if you mainline it is 20 hours. So he did almost double that on top of other stuff. A lot of these journos, due to the pay, also have jobs outside of reviewing so have to fit it in too.

Guy I know works for a lot of top gaming sites/magazines as freelance (Edge, Eurogamer etc) and he's lucky to bring in a grand a month doing several reviews and comprehensive articles.

He prob wanted to play more, but the sites will put pressure on as a post release review maybe a week or so later means you're dead in the water.

[Yevrah]

Yeah, that's fair and I appreciate that the criticism is solely from my perspective.*

*The perspective of someone who could well play this for 100s of hours.

[Yevrah]

That might be true for what your preferred experience of a Bethesda game is* but you can't be reasonably claiming that nearly 30 hours isn't enough to know what's what

Maybe, but according to one review the base building stuff doesn't properly unlock until late game and that'll potentially be a huge chunk of the game he's not covered.

[Yevrah]

Right, I need to go to bed now to even vaguely stick to the plan. Streaming from 1am if I wake up...

[Ian]

Maybe, but according to one review the base building stuff doesn't properly unlock until late game and that'll potentially be a huge chunk of the game he's not covered.

This is fair, but if he'd gone "I've only played 30 hours of this and it's a 9/10 for me" would you have made the same criticism?

It's fine to be a mark for a game. I've definitely been there, I'd be surprised if anybody on here hasn't. But if you know you're gagging to play it on release, that it's a big old hefty thing and that you're probably going to like it way more than average there's probably no gain in bothering with day 1 reviews or, ugh, 'the discourse.'

[Ian]

Also I don't think I've ever been as excited for a game as you are for this, going to bed and setting an alarm to play a shift of it before you start work. :D

Reminds me of a bloke on a podcast I listen to whose love for Nintendo games is greater than I think I've ever had for anything.

[Yevrah]

This is fair, but if he'd gone "I've only played 30 hours of this and it's a 9/10 for me" would you have made the same criticism?

No, because DS wouldn't have posted about it if they'd rated it 9/10. I get the insinuation though and while it's clear as day I love Bethesda games, if this one is shit/disappointing/whatever, I'll be saying so.

Definitely going to bed now...

[Yevrah]

Also I don't think I've ever been as excited for a game as you are for this, going to bed and setting an alarm to play a shift of it before you start work. :D

Yeah, I genuinely feel like a little boy again and even then I can't recall getting this hyped for a game. That said, this excitement will pale into insignificance when Elder Scrolls 6 is out, particularly if it's got all of Tamriel in it.

[Yevrah]

Many a True Nerd started his stream 74 minutes ago and he's still in the character creator...

[Dark Soldier]

Hugging his plushy power armor as he sleeps bless

[Ian]

Definitely going to bed now...

:D

https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExNXpvOGRubHE4ZHRqajk2ZmVsd2R3NjF vbDlxNGN0dG0xY280cWh1eCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfY nlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/KEXq9JVp3OyZmxZw0W/giphy.gif

I have zero hype for this and I'd still be very surprised if it's bad. I'll probably be a bit bored after a certain amount of time though. But we shall see. Need to finish BG3 first and then decide if I'm doing Shadow Gambit before or after this.

[Adramelch]

Maybe, but according to one review the base building stuff doesn't properly unlock until late game and that'll potentially be a huge chunk of the game he's not covered.

A bit unrelated to the specific discussion and to us playing games to the death, but if that's actually the case, that's horrible game design in the grand scheme of things. The vast majority of players won't give you that much time.

I also expected to get more than my money's worth for the game, I just don't think it will live up to its hype (very few games do nowadays mind you).

[Shindig]

Metal Gear Solid 2 was probably the last game I was that excited for. Although I did queue up for GTA IV with all the 'I'm buying four copies for my three kids' crowd. I tend to come to the good games late. As a kid/young adult it was due to having no money of my own. As an adult, I've inherited so many free games I simply can wait til an impulse buy.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I wonder if Yev has fallen asleep or he can't because he's too excited.

[Shindig]

He'll be shitting himself if he has to delete FIFA to make room for it.

[Yevrah]

Sleep update: All was going well until 5 minutes ago when the neighbour's car alarm went off (it does that periodically, I've no idea why) and now I'm wide awake. I'm going to be ruined in the morning.

[Gray Fox]

Call in sick > set status to appear offline and hide achievements progress > Bash the game for as long as you can through into the middle of the day > cat nap so you can still sleep later > back at the game until the evening/night > back to bed as normal > "sorry boss it must have been a 24 hour thing, anyway there's this game called Starfield..."

[Yevrah]

We are on.

https://www.twitch.tv/chemicallocust

[John Arne]

First impressions, Yevrah?

Also, your twitch link isn't live/working, fyi.

[Yevrah]

Should be working now.

Still in what I assume is the tutorial and first impressions are there is an absolute shit load going on. Started on Very Hard and have put it down to Hard, which feels about right. Standard combat is pretty good, the ship combat is pretty good although I found it much easier in third person and I don't like that it's quite hard to tell what you can pick up without pointing your cursor at everything. Lockpicking confused me.

[John Arne]

I'm no games nerd but it seems a stretch to call this "open world", given there is a load screen and cut every time you move from one place to another, and everything is procedurally generated. Do Bethesda claim/call it open world?

Watching Yev, its a good looking game, but i can't be doing with the loading screens and shit.

[John Arne]

Also, I'm guessing the game is a tad jumpy/laggy because I'm using a VPN (thx communism) and not because the game is a bit jumpy/laggy?

[Yevrah]

New Atlantis looks fucking huge. I don't like the menu navigation, but suspect I'll get used to it.

[Yevrah]

Also, I'm guessing the game is a tad jumpy/laggy because I'm using a VPN (thx communism) and not because the game is a bit jumpy/laggy?

Think it's whatever you're doing as it's really smooth to play.

[Baz]

Is it fun?

[Ian]

Bethesda haven't achieved good menus / inventory management even once, have they?

[Yevrah]

Is it fun?

It's genuinely hard to say. I'm enjoying individual aspects of it (the combat is fun, the spaceships are fun), but the whole thing is of such a scale that I don't feel remotely settled with it yet. I only made it to 4am and efforts to continue at 6am just resulted in me falling back to sleep again, but I think I'm going to need the whole weekend to even get some sense of how good or otherwise it is.

See by scale I don't mean the space exploration, as so far I have to say that is pretty underwhelming as I don't think there's that much to it. You pull up the map, you choose a star, you choose a planet and then magically warp to the Felix Baumgartner position. A fiddly bit ensues where you need to get the game to give you the prompt to view the planet, which is done through a combination of scanning it and other things - I'm not quite sure what - and then you get to choose a point of interest (if one is there) or just land where you like. Landing where you like seems to guarantee you'll see nothing but desolate open space and choosing a point of interest puts you in the middle of some things, with a fair bit of open space to run through to get to said things. The map for this stuff is absolute dogshit and I suspect it's been done deliberately to hide the fact that these planets are nothing like the open World of Skyrim and Fallout. That said, I only made it to half a dozen of them and didn't find any that contained meaningful alien life, so they could be much better than I've experienced so far, I just fear they won't be.

No, by scale I mean that there are so many systems in the game and once you're out of the tutorial there is almost no hand holding to guide you through any of them. Research, cooking, weapon upgrading, spacesuit upgrading, outpost building, the opportunity to pick up a million things and no real idea what to do with any of them - these systems all sort of sit there and I reckon you could avoid almost all of them if you chose to and just crack on with the main story. But, that isn't why I enjoy Bethesda games so I want to get to grips with them and that is going to take time, a lot of time. There are other things as well that it doesn't hand hold you with. I picked the trait that gives you a house - I've no idea where it is and how the mechanic for paying for it will work. I got a boost pack - I've no idea how to use it. On face value it's a behemoth of a game, with so much going on and my feeling is you'll be missing out if you ignore it all, which I reckon the game will let you do.

[Raoul Duke]

I've been playing for a few hours now. Still in tutorial mode a bit but going off-piste on the first moon you fly to. Did some exploring and just killed my first Terramorph (this game's Deathclaw). It was a mega battle and took nearly everything I had :cool:

This is a pretty good video on some of the less explained mechanics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYh51ISa2eI). For the Boost Pack you need to unlock the perk in Science (?) and then equip a pack that has it. It's one of the coolest new things though.

The main gripes I have at the moment are the lock picking (way too fiddly and time consuming) and the inventory management is pretty shit (hard to see the info, random symbols all over the place and trading stuff with a companion is worse than FO4).

[Yevrah]

With you on the random symbols stuff and I hate that it’s in games. We, as a species, have these random symbols we’ve been using for centuries called words, which everyone understands, just fucking use those.

[Raoul Duke]

Btw - if you're having trouble locating an objective, have it active and use the scanner to show the path with arrows on the floor. Makes the lack of map those reviewers were complaining about a non-issue

[Yevrah]

I may get used to it more, but as it stands the selecting of a planet to go to and choosing a point of interest to land on is horribly done. It just feels so laborious. The "map" for New Atlantis is a work of sheer incompetence as well. Give me one showing me where and what all the stores/buildings are you fucks.

And these sorts of irritations seem to cut across almost everything at the moment, making this game a ball ache to play.

[Dark Soldier]

I'm...surprisingly not feeling this. It defo feels like Bethesda's most stable, huge project yet. But it's just a bit shit. Loading screens everywhere. Gunplay is shocking, as expected. Inventory and UI is real real clunky.

I mean this take isn't exactly a shock to anyone in here, like. But Christ irs just vast and a bit barren and dull and run everywhere and fast travel.

Can see a fair few putting hundreds of hours into the thing but I'm already contemplating binning it.

[Dark Soldier]

And binned. Enjoy lads!

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Yev is sharpening a knife as we speak.

[Yevrah]

Right, it took some pain and there remain some baffling decisions by Bethesda, but I'm getting into it a lot now after about 10 hours play time.

[Mike]

I’ve enjoyed my first evening with it.
Made my evening when Vasco called me Captain Mike. Shame he’s such a big lumbering buffoon.

[Raoul Duke]

Finished up last night with an awesome mission to rescue some UC base. Took me a few hours clearing out a couple of outposts, some space battles and then a final big attack.

Combat-wise I've ended up using an aggressive shotgun/knife combo. The enemies are fairly passive so just running at them and blasting their heads off seems to work pretty well :D

Space battling against multiple targets is very tricky though. I managed to figure out a way to cheese it though and lured the gimps back to Jemison where a load of UC ships blasted them to pieces for me :drool:

[Ian]

Combat-wise I've ended up using an aggressive shotgun/knife combo. The enemies are fairly passive so just running at them and blasting their heads off seems to work pretty well :D

I haven't watched the full thing yet but a brief clip I saw from... either Escapist or MATN showed some enemies just standing there while whoever it was filled them with bullets. Is that fairly indicative, then?

[Raoul Duke]

I think they get distracted by whichever target they lock onto first and don't reprioritise effectively. I'm running around with a companion and if the enemy is distracted you can just rush them

[Yevrah]

Loving this now. It is Skyrim/Fallout in space, it just does its best to convince you it isn't.

[Dark Soldier]

I started again (different build) and am mainlining the story. It's actually okay in a 7/10 enjoy the datedness of the whole thing. Aspects of it feel good, aspects of it feel thoroughly old gen. Its just way too ambitious for this rickety old piece of shit engine.

[Dark Soldier]

Also just realised you can grab high end gear through display cases without lock picking them. My space suit and weapons are now lol

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

They had that in Fallout 4 at the start IIRC. Could use the dog to just take them.

[Shindig]

Game logic. :cool:

[Mike]

Alright lads.
https://i.postimg.cc/R0bwkXX2/Starfield-02-09-2023-22-40-29.png

[Dark Soldier]

Popping onto Yev's stream and he has a max carry load of 225, but he's carrying 570 or something made my day.

Btw there's no sound on your stream Yevrah

[Yevrah]

Popping onto Yev's stream and he has a max carry load of 225, but he's carrying 570 or something made my day.

Btw there's no sound on your stream Yevrah

My record is 900 and something. :D

No idea why there's no sound.

[Yevrah]

34 hours into the save I started on Saturday morning and I'm absolutely loving this and I've barely scratched the surface yet.

[Raoul Duke]

34 hours into the save I started on Saturday morning and I'm absolutely loving this and I've barely scratched the surface yet.

Copy that. A lot of people on Reddit are also seemingly realising the same - the game is huge, a bit slow to start but that's because it's gigantic.

I spent last night clearing out an abandoned farm on Pluto of some massive beasts who'd run amok :drool:

[Yevrah]

I’ll type up some further thoughts when I get a chance to (when I’m not either working or playing it) but as I suspected mainlining the main story/reaching judgement after under 30 hours is simply not doing what is there justice.

[Shindig]

Yeah, curse that mainstream media for not having the patience for '30 hours until it gets good'.

[Dark Soldier]

I absolutely hate that nonsense with a game. Like, a TV series, it takes an episode to get good? Sure that's max an hour out of your life. Film takes half an hour or whatever.

The game only gets good at end game and new game plus lads just put in 60 hours of time into something you're actively disliking you'll see.

Anyhoo had a softlock with this last night where incouldnt do anything, genuinely game ending if you were running one save, could've reloaded the save, but just binned it completely outright. 15 hours is more than enough time to say if something is arse or not.

[Yevrah]

Yeah, curse that mainstream media for not having the patience for '30 hours until it gets good'.

That's not what I'm saying and I think the "takes 30 hours until it gets good" is a fundamental misunderstanding/misrepresentation of the situation. It took me 10-12 hours of genuinely not enjoying it to get into it. The game is good/very good/excellent/whatever from the get go, but it hides this behind some seriously complicated and not at all spoon fed to you mechanics. Some of these actually work very well when you persevere and understand them and some could still do with improvement.

But the point is that if you're simply fast travelling from A to C every single time, avoiding all of the incredible immersion in the World just to get the main story done then I'm not remotely surprised that you had an average shit time with it as you're missing out on so much that makes the game great.

[Yevrah]

Take this post...


I may get used to it more, but as it stands the selecting of a planet to go to and choosing a point of interest to land on is horribly done. It just feels so laborious. The "map" for New Atlantis is a work of sheer incompetence as well. Give me one showing me where and what all the stores/buildings are you fucks.

And these sorts of irritations seem to cut across almost everything at the moment, making this game a ball ache to play.

The star travel system is actually fine, I wouldn't necessarily say brilliant or anything, but once you're absorbed it plays its part in making you believe that you're in a tiny part of a huge universe. Little things like getting out of your chair manually (rather than warping straight to your final destination) and hammering down on the thrusters and spinning around from the planet you've just left before grav jumping all play their part in avoiding the feeling of a loading screen/fast travel lobby that so many have complained about.

And on the other hand the map in New Atlantis remains an abomination and absolutely needs to be changed, but what it has done is force me to understand where things are which also helps towards that immersive feeling of actually being there.

[Adramelch]

That's still bad design on their part. The vast majority of people will not give the game that chance and will possibly even refund (I have a couple of those in my extended circle). That's not to say the game has to hold your hand, but it has to keep you engaged from minute one and it's obviously not doing that for a lot of people.

Starfield will be afforded more leeway on that regard cause it's from the people that made Skyrim, but at some point that reputation will not matter anymore.

Case in point, the steam charts:

https://i.gyazo.com/bcfcc64ac289008166f8c93485501ce6.png

Now part of the drop is the weekend being over, but the trend still continued going down today and you have to factor in the fact that it's people who got early access, which you would typically expect to stick with the game longer. It will peak tomorrow with the full release, but we'll see.

That's not to say you can't enjoy the game of course. I haven't even played it yet and I will probably stick with it regardless, I'm mostly talking on a general level.

[Yevrah]

That's still bad design on their part. The vast majority of people will not give the game that chance and will possibly even refund (I have a couple of those in my extended circle). That's not to say the game has to hold your hand, but it has to keep you engaged from minute one and it's obviously not doing that for a lot of people.

Starfield will be afforded more leeway on that regard cause it's from the people that made Skyrim, but at some point that reputation will not matter anymore.

On the one hand I agree with that take in principle, but then on the other Bethesda have had a load of flak for simplifying their IPs over the years (ruining Fallout, by releasing a not RPG and dumbing down the Elder Scrolls series with Skyrim) so with this reaction I'm not sure how they can actually win.

I think some of the problems have come from the reviews and the things that they implied or stated. The "30 hours until you enjoy it" thing came directly from them and it's manifestly wrong (DS can play as much as he likes and he's never going to, for example) and the other is the planet procedural generation thing, which was widely slated (a take that I bought into before I'd given it a chance with another post I can't be arsed to quote on page 3) but when dovetailed with the hand crafted stuff (and not just running from one point of interest to another) it works very well. If I had a YouTube presence I'd absolutely be releasing a "How to enjoy Starfield" video now, which I think would absolutely bang and Youtubers are missing a trick by not doing so.

[Yevrah]

And in terms of barriers to entry, what about Elden Ring? A game that should rightly go down as one of the best ever, but if you played it new to the series (I'd imagine there were millions of people who did) you'd have been missing out if you binned it off after a few hours due to those barriers.

[Adramelch]

Clearly those barriers weren't there with Elden Ring. It was a difficulty barrier than understanding the systems surely? The fact that it kept that many players despite that barrier shows you exactly what I mean "no handholding but keeping people engaged". Same with Baldur's Gate 3 (which will inevitably be a point of reference for Starfield). Probably among the most complicated games you'll find, a relatively niche genre, tutorials that are informative yet discrete ("during combat you have an action, a bonus action and movement" rather than highlighting the spell you need to press) and yet it had great player retention (lost something like less than 10% of players within 2 weeks).

And on top of all that, there's the Bethesda trademark of a multitude of bugs. Again, I haven't actually played yet (no early access) and even though I've tried to stay away from the subject so nothing gets spoiled, I've come across too many a video with serious bugs.

[Yevrah]

Clearly those barriers weren't there with Elden Ring. It was a difficulty barrier than understanding the systems surely? The fact that it kept that many players despite that barrier shows you exactly what I mean "no handholding but keeping people engaged". Same with Baldur's Gate 3 (which will inevitably be a point of reference for Starfield). Probably among the most complicated games you'll find, a relatively niche genre, tutorials that are informative yet discrete ("during combat you have an action, a bonus action and movement" rather than highlighting the spell you need to press) and yet it had great player retention (lost something like less than 10% of players within 2 weeks)

But we don't know how many people Starfield has lost yet do we, all we're going on is the NARRATIVE that fuels Youtube clicks. If you look at its reddit for example, the initial reaction (similar to the one I had) has died down hugely and the positive comments are shining through now. As I said above I'm convinced a fair bit of the negatives came from perceptions people had due to reading/seeing reviews (from all creators, not just Gamespot) and projecting those on the things they were seeing in game. I know I certainly did that and I'm still yet to see a review that chimes with why I think this could be an absolutely amazing game.

[Yevrah]

Just seen your edit Adra, how does that graph compare with Elden Ring? I'm also not convinced that shows much of a trend until we see the data for today and another comparable weekend (which I get that there won't be come full release). In any case, if the narrative changes loudly enough (and it appears as though it's starting to) a lot of those people will come back.

[Yevrah]

And on top of all that, there's the Bethesda trademark of a multitude of bugs. Again, I haven't actually played yet (no early access) and even though I've tried to stay away from the subject so nothing gets spoiled, I've come across too many a video with serious bugs.

And this is another thing that I'm just not convinced is as widespread as the reviewers made out, partly due to them playing an unpatched version for 10 days of their 14. I've seen three bugs in my 34 hours so far on this save. One a floating door, another having to stand on a table to get to talk to someone and an odd one when you put a storage container down in an outpost and it says there's already mass in it.

[Adramelch]

Just seen your edit Adra, how does that graph compare with Elden Ring? I'm also not convinced that shows much of a trend until we see the data for today and another comparable weekend (which I get that there won't be come full release). In any case, if the narrative changes loudly enough (and it appears as though it's starting to) a lot of those people will come back.

That's the first couple of weeks of Elden Ring (it doesn't keep the hourly data so that's just daily sadly).

https://i.gyazo.com/eb8ae2386c35fb979cef59277dcd57dc.png

The main "concerning" part of what I linked for Starfield is that at 19.00 today the game had 170k concurrent players as opposed to 250k yesterday. It is limited data nevertheless, so just making a premature analysis I guess. It's just a steeper decline than usual I guess (there's always a decrease after the first weekend of any game of course).


And this is another thing that I'm just not convinced is as widespread as the reviewers made out, partly due to them playing an unpatched version for 10 days of their 14. I've seen three bugs in my 34 hours so far on this save. One a floating door, another having to stand on a table to get to talk to someone and an odd one when you put a storage container down in an outpost and it says there's already mass in it.

A big part of the ones I've seen are immovable npcs (that some times weren't even supposed to be there from what I gathered) boxing you in. All said videos were from players by the way, I pay literally no attention to reviewers.

[Dark Soldier]

Take this post...



The star travel system is actually fine, I wouldn't necessarily say brilliant or anything, but once you're absorbed it plays its part in making you believe that you're in a tiny part of a huge universe. Little things like getting out of your chair manually (rather than warping straight to your final destination) and hammering down on the thrusters and spinning around from the planet you've just left before grav jumping all play their part in avoiding the feeling of a loading screen/fast travel lobby that so many have complained about.

And on the other hand the map in New Atlantis remains an abomination and absolutely needs to be changed, but what it has done is force me to understand where things are which also helps towards that immersive feeling of actually being there.

To counter the initial thing. By manually holding a button down to launch, is just extending you before a loading screen. If pressing a button to sit in a cockpit then holding a button to watch an identikit cut scene, into a loading screen improves your immersion fairplay, but almost all players aren't going to do that when you can just fuck off into the stars and forego the extra 30 seconds of process.

Pointing to a position and again holding down a button to initiate an identikit grav jump cutscene before a black loading screen is the same. What immersion is there to 'holding X then cutscene' really adding? They couldn't even be arsed masking the loading screen with a 'load cutscreen' seeing you fly through the wormhole there, or follow the ship leave the atmosphere etc. When you have grav jumped, it just loads into you floating in front of a planet. Nothing. You can't even launch your ship off a planet manually, can't even lift it into the air. Its just 'here is asset watch asset'.

Even Destiny masked loading screens on the 360 with static 'space travel' immersion scenes, even if it did take a minute to load back then.

It just feels lazy. It just feels lazy in a lot of places. It also has very good ideas in a lot places. I could write a whole novella on the randomly generated slices of planets which are fucking abhorrent and almost insulting at times.

I visited Neon. Actually a fantastic piece of design. But then you very quickly realise it's a load of shopfronts most of which require yet another cutscene to load a single tile room, and the sheer verticality, complexity of construction is just that. There's nothing when you look around.

I also got softlocked there. Pickpocketed a key, used said key, I was not allowed to leave the location. Could not exit, could not warp. Spent 30 minutes, no hidden vents or escapes. Just absolutely stuck there for eternity.

[Dark Soldier]

Adramelch I've had the boxed in thing multiple times. My favourite was being caught stealing so went behind a table, against the wall. About 10 cops rocked up, leapt over the table at me, but seemingly that object being there completely fucked their AI as they kept asking how I was doing etc. Second I stepped away from the table, after pushing through the NPC crowd, they arrested me. Can't even pathfind a 2 foot piece of elevation.

[Yevrah]

To counter the initial thing. By manually holding a button down to launch, is just extending you before a loading screen. If pressing a button to sit in a cockpit then holding a button to watch an identikit cut scene, into a loading screen improves your immersion fairplay, but almost all players aren't going to do that when you can just fuck off into the stars and forego the extra 30 seconds of process.

Pointing to a position and again holding down a button to initiate an identikit grav jump cutscene before a black loading screen is the same. What immersion is there to 'holding X then cutscene' really adding? They couldn't even be arsed masking the loading screen with a 'load cutscreen' seeing you fly through the wormhole there, or follow the ship leave the atmosphere etc. When you have grav jumped, it just loads into you floating in front of a planet. Nothing. You can't even launch your ship off a planet manually, can't even lift it into the air. Its just 'here is asset watch asset'.

Everything you're saying should be the only right answer and there should be no reason why extending your time doing something works as well as it does (for me at least), but it does. Maybe it's catching a glimpse of space as I swivel out of my chair, maybe it's all of these little things adding up to make a greater whole, I'm really not sure, but since I started again on Saturday morning I've felt like I was in space, both when I'm playing the game and when I'm thinking about it. Very few games have ever accomplished the latter, but Bethesda do it time and time again and FromSoft did it too with Elden Ring.

[Raoul Duke]

The main "concerning" part of what I linked for Starfield is that at 19.00 today the game had 170k concurrent players as opposed to 250k yesterday. It is limited data nevertheless, so just making a premature analysis I guess. It's just a steeper decline than usual I guess (there's always a decrease after the first weekend of any game of course).

The drop is probably attributable to the US "Labor Day" holiday. They're all back to work/shooting up schools now

[Raoul Duke]

Yevrah - have you done the Mantis quest yet? it's kinda the Silver Shroud of Starfield and you get some mega rewards for it :nodd:

[Yevrah]

Not yet RD, only 17 quests down so far (3 of them main ones). That said, I have seen a bit of what that quest is about due to a video popping up for it in my Youtube feed with more information crammed into a thumbnail about something than I've ever seen before.

What are your thoughts on the game now overall?

[Dark Soldier]

Yev never get VR you will never leave.

[Dark Soldier]

https://youtu.be/B4JWMxV8pz0

[Yevrah]

This may shock you, but I got the PSVR2 and sadly, it's crap. Played it for about two weeks and haven't touched it since.

[Adramelch]

The drop is probably attributable to the US "Labor Day" holiday. They're all back to work/shooting up schools now

It's still a much steeper decline than Elden Ring/BG3 had from Sunday to Monday, but I am probably reading too much into this and we won't know for a couple weeks anyway, since the full release is tomorrow. Not that it matters on a personal level, there will be people that enjoy the game a lot and there will be people that will hate it. I'm more trying to speak on a game (or product in general I guess) design basis, and how the "it gets good" way doesn't generally work.

[Mike]

Spent the last two evenings in Neon. Still really enjoying this.
My photo mode is mostly my guy posing in front of stuff
https://i.imgur.com/K5Fog7n.jpeg

[Shindig]

Oh, that HeelVsBabyFace rant was very much real. What a shaven bollock.

[Raoul Duke]

Not yet RD, only 17 quests down so far (3 of them main ones). That said, I have seen a bit of what that quest is about due to a video popping up for it in my Youtube feed with more information crammed into a thumbnail about something than I've ever seen before.

What are your thoughts on the game now overall?

Not go time to write up a fuller answer, but loving it really. It's just all the shit I love in Beth games plus awesome space stuff.

There's things that are a bit wank still like inventory micro-management, it's slow to open up a lot of the skills etc. but all fairly minor stuff. The atmosphere and style makes it a great space shooter

[Baz]

Yev in ‘man excited for game likes said game’ shock news story.

[Alex]

Oh, that HeelVsBabyFace rant was very much real. What a shaven bollock.

I've never been aware of this guy before but I looked up his full two and half minute rant on the matter out of morbid curiosity. Cringeworthy doesn't begin to cover it. What an absolute tit. It's presumably literally a five second screen you navigate through in a hundred hour game.

[Yevrah]

Yep, absolute ball bag.

[Adramelch]

It's quite amazing that he's still doing this. I first came across him like a decade ago with his WoW videos and they were exactly the same thing. The fact that he has that large a following should be mindblowing, but it's actually not surprising given the current state of the internet (and society I guess).

[Gray Fox]

Oh, that HeelVsBabyFace rant was very much real. What a shaven bollock.

You can tell he's super serious because he had to take off his headset.

[Shindig]

It's quite amazing that he's still doing this. I first came across him like a decade ago with his WoW videos and they were exactly the same thing. The fact that he has that large a following should be mindblowing, but it's actually not surprising given the current state of the internet (and society I guess).

I found him whilst getting into MauLer's stuff. I abandoned ship as soon as I realised he was a genuine basement dweller. Critical Drinker can fuck of as well. "This Disney film isn't for me any more. HOLLYWOOD HAS FAILED."

[Adramelch]

Played a few hours, so far so good. I could see systems that will probably annoy me in the future but the overall gameplay seems more than good enough to keep me interested. One thing that I immediately noticed however is the graphics. I don't particularly care about graphics in RPGs, but still the game looks like half a decade behind in that respect, if not more.

As for the whole steam chart discussion, the game launched fully today and it peaked at 270k concurrent users. Meanwhile BG3 was at 380k today and the game has already been out for more than a month. That can't be considered successful from Bethesda's point of view surely? Let's see how the weekend goes I guess.

[Shindig]

Steam numbers won't tell the whole story. Microsoft's getting a surge of console sales off the back of this.

[Adramelch]

Oh yeah, and I don't mean to say they won't make money out of the game (even without the console sales), just that it won't have met their expectations.

[Dark Soldier]

It's prob the fact you can pay a tenner on PC (or about five from CDKeys) and get it a month via PC Gamepass also. So loads woulda prob gone that route to try it.

[Yevrah]

Yeah, the game pass numbers both on pc and Xbox will have cannibalised a significant figure of the users who would have otherwise played it on steam, you’d imagine.

[Yevrah]

Am I missing something with storing of resources in outposts?

I can either use my ship and it has everything stored there available or I can build one of each of the storage containers that don’t hold much at all and have to put the rest in crates that aren’t linked to crafting?

[Raoul Duke]

Am I missing something with storing of resources in outposts?

I can either use my ship and it has everything stored there available or I can build one of each of the storage containers that don’t hold much at all and have to put the rest in crates that aren’t linked to crafting?

You can build multiple of the storage things and link them together using R2 and it'll daisy-chain them

[Yevrah]

Cheers RD, looks like it's only one of the transfer container you can build. Point number 78 that looked like a problem and isn't.

[Raoul Duke]

One other pro-tip: you can hold Start to jump straight to the Starmap

[Dark Soldier]

You can also hold the big X button in the centre of the pad to turn the game off.

[Yevrah]

Does it bother you that Bethesda games live rent free in your head?

[Dark Soldier]

No there's not much left I hate in this world so it is quite refreshing to have something irrational still there, makes me feel young.

[Yevrah]

Very good answer. :D

[Shindig]

:D

This is still probably a game I pick up when it eventually comes to Playstation/Epic gives it away for free. Also, for a game about space, it's seems decidedly vanilla. I want wild alien shit. Imagine a first contact dialogue tree where you have no idea if any responses will land.

[Adramelch]

I do not like the space combat. Like, at all.

[Raoul Duke]

It took me a while to get used to it. It helps to have an upgraded ship and the VATS-like targeting thing. I'm starting to get to grips with it now, I think

[Adramelch]

I got the grips of it in terms of the mechanics and all, but it feels like I'm permanently fighting the controls rather than the enemy ships (the keyboard and mouse version of it is a complete and utter clusterfuck, but even with the controller it just feels off), and even outside that it just feels too slow and sluggish.

I am enjoying the game and all (still only 10-ish hours in mind you), but there's too many things where I can't help but feel "what the fuck were they thinking". From the dreadful menus (which are a Bethesda staple, but that shouldn't be an excuse), to the pointless fetch quests (it's 2023 lads), to the ridiculous face-to-face (for lack of a better description) dialogue scenes.

[Yevrah]

I think I've seen enough now to say that this is a masterpiece. It has a few flaws no doubt, most of which I'd imagine will be patched out in due course, but when playing it I feel like I'm in and exploring space.

[Shindig]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcLl7qnjS7g

I genuinely didn't know they did their vendors like that. :D

[Ian]

I reckon game devs joining Bethesda must be a bit like when as a person who's only ever worked private sector you join the civil service.

You come in and see all the weird shit they do and eventually ask why and the answer is "well that's just how we do it" and also bewilderment that you don't think it makes sense.

[Dark Soldier]

The physics engine is genuinely impressive.


https://youtu.be/fX6NqLWH4Ao

[Shindig]

Someone must've went full Neil Buchanan with one of these games and made a big face you can only see from a great height.

[Adramelch]

I just had a side-mission that I accepted on Mars, which required me to apply to be the assistant of a local manager. But, oh wait, you have to go to the local headquarters, that are located on a starstation that's in orbit, in order to fill out the application. I go there only to find that I had to use a computer to fill the application online, which then sent me back to Mars to work for said manager. The series of missions were all named "Red Tape [insert word]". Game design of the highest level that.

[Raoul Duke]

Just unlocked the thing from the trailer:

Fus Ro Dah :drool:

[Mike]

There is a weird amount of applying for and then interviewing for jobs.

[Adramelch]

Someone figured out that the enemy AI will always shoot at the middle (or center of mass I guess) of the ship and built this invincible beauty, which is both hilarious and genius:

https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/the-by-ai-unbeatable-ship-they-shoot-through-the-middle-v0-2ddrm6lllrmb1-(1).png?width=1200&height=600&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp

[Yevrah]

The ship variations and possibilities in this game are absolutely immense.

I nicked one the other day that was essentially a flying hotel, with 8 floors on the thing.

[Adramelch]

That and the fluidity of the combat (a few AI bugs aside) are the strongest parts of the game for me. I am having a lot of fun with the game, but there's a lot of issues that's keeping it from being a great game in my opinion. Most of them are relatively small/seemingly unimportant, but there's so many of them that it adds up and it breaks the flow of the game, as well as my immersion.

[Yevrah]

Right, I've gone through 80 hours or so with my Bounty Hunter on hard mode and I think I understand enough about the game to notch up the difficulty and add in some self imposed rules.

-No buying resources, I need to extract, cut or manufacture them - Rather than just do a circuit of shopkeepers to get everything I need, which is just a bit naff.
-Try to implement the Fallout 4 only saving in beds (or when the game does it for me). Might be hard to stick to this one if I've hauled some great shit, but basically I want to avoid save scumming.
-Might do the above for ammo and weapons too, but that might be a step too far, particularly on the ammo front, so we'll see.
-As much as possible link having perks to being able to do things. i.e. at least 1 of Outpost engineering before I start building outposts.
-Finish the 'tutorial' with nothing in my inventory so I don't get a credits leg up before we start in earnest

[Adramelch]

The game has been fairly easy (relatively speaking) on very hard, so you'll definitely need the extra rules if you want a challenge.

[Yevrah]

I think the problem I found on Hard was if you go solar system by solar system (doing everything) there is so much XP to be had that after the initial challenge dies down you're always going to be overpowered.

[Adramelch]

I've just been doing side-missions as they come on very hard and that's already the case. It's a common theme in most games out there nowadays. The hardest fight on Witcher 3 on Insanity is legitimately the first fight against the ghouls (though that game is sort of the extreme in that respect).

I've also been kind of spoiled by how Larian handles difficulty settings, where they actually add abilities/items/moves on enemies as you scale up the difficulty rather than just numbers (they weren't the first to do that of course, just my most recent memory).

[Yevrah]

Here's Isaac.

https://i.postimg.cc/Y9XSb4Y2/Unknown-2023-09-11-19-34-39.png (https://postimg.cc/hzdgGt2N)

A brilliant science student, so good he garnered the nickname "Professor", who having just finished his geology PhD is basically still a child. He volunteered for a mining mission to see what he'd learnt in action in the real World, that ended up with him being touched up by an artifact, forced to fly a ship by a middle-aged homosexual and his robot, before shooting a space pirate in the head.

And here he is wielding his first firearm, look at the terror in his eyes.

https://i.postimg.cc/VL0NWk61/Starfield-2023-09-11-19-50-47.png (https://postimg.cc/MvxxWxVr)

His parents are never going to believe what he did today.

[Yevrah]

I've just been doing side-missions as they come on very hard and that's already the case. It's a common theme in most games out there nowadays. The hardest fight on Witcher 3 on Insanity is legitimately the first fight against the ghouls (though that game is sort of the extreme in that respect).

I've also been kind of spoiled by how Larian handles difficulty settings, where they actually add abilities/items/moves on enemies as you scale up the difficulty rather than just numbers (they weren't the first to do that of course, just my most recent memory).

Indeed. To add to that, when you're actively trying to avoid it it also really hits you just how much loot this game throws at you in the tutorial. Legendaries in crates, thousands of credits worth of shit to pick up and my personal favourite, 102 kgs of materials on your ship, just sat there. Kreet will make a great find for someone one day, although I did get to see the physics engine in action as I dumped it all behind my ship.

[Yevrah]

Vasco says my name. :chief:

[Dark Soldier]

Modders already going mad

https://twitter.com/Mr_Rebs_/status/1701241355979121100

[Mike]

They need to stop wasting time on that and mod in wearing glasses.

[Yevrah]

Spent some time bounding around a couple of moons in Alpha Centurai with Isaac last night. I was already enjoying the planetary exploration but chuck in mining of resources that I actually need and scavenging ammo/weapons/suits and it took it to a whole new level. I reckon I could do about 30 hours in Alpha Centurai alone playing this way. :drool:

[Alex]

Vasco says my name. :chief:

I started this yesterday and was worried Vasco was going to rival Codsworth in the "annoying Bethesda early game robot companion" stakes (apologies to any Codsworth fans) but I really like him. Some of his dialogue in combat in ace.

"You are trying to kill me, but I am not technically alive". :D

I haven't got very far at all. I've just flown to that first moon and dealt with the pirates there.

First impressions are:

• I love the whole look and feel of it. I really like sort of spacey, hard sci-fi content and the world in general definitely seems to be scratching that itch for me.

• Character creation was great. In fact it was too great, I already know in the back of my mind I'll probably be back there after ten hours re-doing my guy with a different background and traits due to some probably inconsequential niggle that burrows into my mind about the choices I made. :moop:

• I like the gunplay, it feels pretty solid. I went with "hard" and the combat difficulty feels about right.

• I also like the ship combat from the very little I have experienced so far - I used to play a lot of Elite (not that I was ever much good at it) and it's very much just copied that system, which I am fine with.

• The UI is definitely pretty clunky on the in-game menus - there seems to be a lot of clicking through various screen to get to things that I really want to be able to access quite easily, although I may be missing some shortcuts I don't know about yet.

• I know it's Bethesda but there is too much stuff to potentially pick up, they seem to have gone into absolute overdrive with it this time. It sort of makes finding things that are worth picking up a little bit tedious! They could really use an option to "auto consume" minor health items (food and drink) without picking them up, because they add so little on to the health that it's just a ball ache to pick them up and then navigate to the inventory to consume them.

• Maybe I was being slack but I was confused as fuck by the lock picking mini-game at first. Now I realise what is going on I really like it. It actually makes you think a little bit and get some satisfaction out of cracking one. Although I have seen a screenshot online of one of the most advanced versions of the lock and - fuck that. :D

That's about all I can think of so far.

First impressions - very good!

The potential for it to take over my life is definitely there.

[Raoul Duke]

They're adding an "eat" button in the next patch.

I'm up to Level 20 now. Finally moved on from New Atlantis to Akila, which I like as a mood change if nothing else. Managed to pick up some decent new weaponry as well

[Yevrah]

If I stick to this save and I will unless Bethesda release a survival mode, I reckon I'll clock up 1,000 hours+ on it.

[Adramelch]

I was a bit disappointed by Akila I have to say. I did enjoy the change of scenery so to speak, but a) I felt they went way too hard on the far-west theme considering the context of the game and b) it's too small for what is sort of the capital of the Collective.

I did the Red Mile planet the other day and those fucking mobs almost gave me a headache. They are ammo sponges, they have a rather big aggro range, they blend in the environment very well and they will chase you literally for hours. I hated that experience, but I also sort of loved it at the same time, because I think that was the intention when they created them.

So far I'm genuinely enjoying the game but as I've mentioned it has a lot of little horribly designed things that ruin my experience somewhat. They will be sorted with mods no doubt, but it's just a bit disappointing to see. I am level 20-ish as well (50 hours in), started as a Cyber-runner or whatever that one is called and I am a little bit disappointed with my choice (in terms of the starting skills), although it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Pickpocket and stealth are just a bit too niche really, or at least have been for me.

I think this is a great take on the game:


https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pofiWxrUOuE

[Yevrah]

Out of interest Adra, what are the horribly designed things still hampering your experience?

[Adramelch]

Out of interest Adra, what are the horribly designed things still hampering your experience?

Off the top of my head:

- I often feel like I'm fighting the menus and the inventory system
- I thought the Mass Effect 1 surface maps were bad and yet here we are in 2023 with something worse
- AI movement is all over the place at times
- The myriad of loading screens feel like they sort of disturb the flow (thankfully they are short)
- A lot of fetch missions that have no place in a modern game (has noone heard of remote communication in 2330 or what?). I know they are optional and all, but it's still bad game design in my opinion.
- The dialogue is often lacking for a game of that genre and the way dialogues are done (with that close up face-to-face shot, even when the other person's sitting) is a bit immersion-breaking
- Overlapping dialogues
- The gold old Bethesda classic where people start shooting at you for picking up an apple yet don't react when you point a gun right in their face
- The economy is totally bonkers. I can sell the Frontier for like 7k which is fewer than 100 sodas from a vending machine


None of it is big enough to make me not enjoy the game, but all of it added together just does what is other wise a very good game a big disservice. And what's worse is that it's mostly issues that were easily preventable (rather than them being big picture stuff that you can't change after you're in too deep), so it feels like a missed opportunity. Some of them they have already said they will be fixing and most of them will be fixed by mods for sure, but for a game of that budget and that long a development cycle, they just shouldn't have been there.

[Mike]

Finally trying to scan my first planet. What a load of rubbish this bit of the game is.

[Adramelch]

I've yet to understand why I can two-hand a cutter while in scanner mode, yet I can't open most menus nor use a med pack.

[Yevrah]

But I can open a fridge door in build mode. :D

Isaac update and absolutely loving the save. The process to find the resources to build infinite storage containers without buying materials was a painful one and I made some mistakes along the way (largely due to not writing down at the start what I needed for every object), but it is done and I now can build all of the small storage containers and have unlimited access to sealant, adhesive,cosmetic, fibre and structural material.

Very Hard difficulty and not buying ammo or medpacks is also working quite nicely, I can kill things but the legendary enemies and their multiple health bars feel like bosses as a result. Up to level 21, largely from just scanning planets (which I do enjoy, maybe because I can't buy the materials I find there, giving added reason to explore) and taking down any PoI in my path. Still haven't started the main quest and up to about 30 hours in now.

[Yevrah]

Oh and Vasco is horrific. His one liners entertain, but he attacks everything that comes anywhere near us, blocks doorways, warps in front of me, pushes me off my aim when I've got a scope out and runs away from combat he's engaged in if I nip back to heal.

Is he representative of the rest because if so, I don't know how companions have regressed so much.

[Adramelch]

He's probably the worse of the lot but they all suck.

[Yevrah]

Tempts me to take the isolation perk. Am I reading that right that it's 20% extra damage at rank 1, up to +80% at rank 4? If so, that's absolutely massive.

[Yevrah]

Think it's only half that and it's worded stupidly.

[Raoul Duke]

The other thing with companions is that they're all absolute flanges and start moralising if you steal shit. I'm not an evil character but I steal things and they all whine whereas I'll blast 15 pirates to death with a shotgun and they'll gimme a high-five

[Adramelch]

I think I've figured out how to "group up" most of my grievances with the game. A lot of the systems make me feel like the game doesn't respect my time. Needless intermediate menus, all the loading screens (some of them completely pointless, surely you don't need a loading screen to load a single room), the ridiculously slow waiting system to progress time (which is conveniently coupled with the ridiculously low amounts of credits on basically every vendor), the ridiculous fact that the game pauses every time you alt+tab (even during loading screens, is this 1995?) and all those fetch quests. The latest one to trigger those thoughts:

I am doing the Crimson Fleet undercover questline and you often need to go back to UC Vigilance to report your findings. Totally reasonable. However I was just at the Key, we decided that we need to go steal some decrypting device and then the game made me travel to the UC Vigilance to report, then immediately back to the Key for a handful of lines before going on with the plan for the device. They gave some bullshit reason or another, but it's just that type of design that baffles me.

What's triggering is that all of the above are deliberate decisions. They are not (or should not be) technical limitations, they are not bugs, they are not unfortunate design choices, they are just meant to be like they are.

[Ian]

As soon as I saw there was a chef background it all fell into place.

First, make a bloke who looks like he could be a nutcase chef:
https://i.ibb.co/6P8gTsZ/image.png

Second, backstory:
https://i.ibb.co/QdtcRmw/image.png
(Name selected for resemblance to the word Starfield, not the man himself of course.)

He's a chef who hates space but got into trouble because he kicked a gangster out of his restaurant because they complained about the food and is now on the run and having to deal with being in space.

This is, unfortunately, by far the most fun I've got out of the game so far. I have only done a little but it has not done one entertaining or interesting thing yet.

[Cord]

I've also started this within the last few days and I'm not finding it very promising at all. Like if Bethesda played Mass Effect and thought lets do that but without any of the story, character or colourful touches, and just kept the planet scanning and driving around featureless expanses. Which is a worry as usually I enjoy the beginning of Bethesda games and then slowly lose interest after 30 hours as I realise I've seen everything it's got to give and it's just going to repeat itself a lot, whereas in this, I've not really had the sense of wonder or exploration to begin with.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I've also started this within the last few days and I'm not finding it very promising at all. Like if Bethesda played Mass Effect and thought lets do that but without any of the story, character or colourful touches, and just kept the planet scanning and driving around featureless expanses. Which is a worry as usually I enjoy the beginning of Bethesda games and then slowly lose interest after 30 hours as I realise I've seen everything it's got to give and it's just going to repeat itself a lot, whereas in this, I've not really had the sense of wonder or exploration.

Do they at least have hats?

[Cord]

The most fun I've had was visiting the clothes shop in the first city you get to, but thus far it's a hatless life for me.

[Raoul Duke]

There are some excellent cowboy hats

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

As soon Cord gets his hands on one his enjoyment will go through the roof.

[Ian]

I suspect the hats will be worse BG3 so I will not be so easily.impressed.

It set the bar very high with the "Rufflesome Blaggart's Hat"

[Yevrah]

I love my Chunks cap.

[Adramelch]

I suspect the hats will be worse BG3 so I will not be so easily.impressed.

It set the bar very high with the "Rufflesome Blaggart's Hat"

You also get it very early in the game if I recall correctly. Sets the tone for the whole game really.

[Adramelch]

Finished the game, 97 hours in. While I had a decent time with it (enough to make me go all the way), I can't see how the game would be anything above a 7/10 in its current state and even that feels a bit generous. I've already spoken about all the time-wasting little systems that add up to a decent chunk of time spent in unnecessary things (loading screens, unintuitive menus etc). The main story I thought was very lacklustre (and unoriginal in parts), with equal amounts of bad and lazy writing. In fact I think the UC Vanguard/Vigilance stories were notably better. Which highlighted another weak point of the game: There's this Freestar Collective vs United Colonies arc throughout the game yet the former get a very forgettable and quite low-stakes storyline, while the latter are fighting to save the world. The Ryujin one was decent, if a bit repetitive:

Though I wasn't able to convince them to not release the Neuroamp, even though I tried, and then every companion "scolded me" for supporting it (one of many examples of bad writing across the game).

Speaking of companions, they are all very bland and I wouldn't be surprised if a big number of players just opt to play completely solo.

Combat is fun, but the way accuracy is handled in this game is a bit weird (the guns just shoot at a completely different location than your crosshair, rather than it being hard to aim). That said, I played on very hard and it was ridiculously easy. You get showered with broken legendary weapons from the various questlines that trivialize everything, but even outside those a decently modded rifle or Magshot just makes things so easy (and I didn't even bother modding them myself, just used what I found). Space combat did become more enjoyable whenever I got a decent ship, so not many complaints there.

Ship building is one of the strongest parts of the game, yet they made the baffling decision to not give you access to all possible parts at one location. Surely you get a lot of them if you build your own landing pad, but even then it's not everything. Just one more example of the game not respecting your time. And I would even be fine with that being the case, if we could somehow save incomplete drafts of ships so that we can go to the other location and complete them. But that's not an option.

I am generally a completionist when it comes to games, but after surveying a few planets I just decided it wasn't for me. It's all extremely bland and same-y. I also stayed away from outposts altogether (just didn't see the point) and crafting, which, while more realistic with the multiple stations and skill dependencies and all that, felt like a chore.

So yeah, for me one of the weakest entries in Bethesda's catalogue, but I still got my money's worth (which shows there was potential for a great game, but there's too many missteps) so a solid 6-7 out of 10.

[Ian]

6 hours was enough for me. Not enough to have any informed opinions, but enough to realise it hadn't threatened to not bored me at any point and that I'd be better just playing something else. Huzzah for Game Pass.

[Yevrah]

I fail to see how anyone could be bored by absolutely everything in it, but then I guess people would say the same about my take on RDR2.

As for your take Adra, I disagree with a fair bit of it, but you've absolutely hit the nail on the head in terms of it not respecting my time. There are so many things in it that take far longer than they should, but then bafflingly it undermines what would be pretty strong incentives to explore (to get resources, which would take more time) by letting you buy absolutely everything you will ever need for the price of a few foam cups from the vendors. I thought I'd got round this by not allowing myself to buy anything bar ships and houses, but having only surveyed 70-odd planets, set up eight outposts and completed a mere 4 main quests I'm now sat on over 10,000kg of resources, including 2,000kg of manufactured components and I haven't once used the fabricators - it's just all stuff I've found in (my limited exploration of) the universe.

If they ever release a survival mode for this, which I suspect won't be that easy to do due to the mountains of time that passes when you travel anywhere, they need to strip everything the game gives you so easily right back.

[Yevrah]

Oh and the Outposts are just a bit crap. I sort of get how it all works now, but whether you buy or find resources there is absolutely no need to bother setting one up that multiple outposts feed into as providing you have the main resources covered (Iron, Aluminum, Nickel, Sealant, Adhesive, Structural etc.) in at least one place, you'll seemingly always have enough of the rarer resources to do exactly what you want. I assumed they were going to take the approach from Fallout 4 and expand on it, but what they seem to have done is ignore that, take the approach from Fallout 76 instead and (apart from display cases, which are immense) regressed on that. You should absolutely be able to build your own colony, where people come to live and if they're not working on that as we speak for a future DLC then they really need to be calling me.

[Ian]

I fail to see how anyone could be bored by absolutely everything in it, but then I guess people would say the same about my take on RDR2.

I almost like the space combat, but if I wanted that I'd just go and play more of Squadrons which does a lot of the same things but slicker. (Because it's its whole thing, and it does fuck all else.) But the combat, writing, characters, environments, etc. did zero for me. Which is fine, not everything has to be for me. And I'm sure if I'd persisted there'd have been some bits and pieces I liked but it hadn't happened in the time I'd spent with it so far.

I sort-of liked RDR2, but I feel like it's an impressive achievement more than I game I could ever love (as with most Rockstar games) so I never finished it either.

[Cord]

I'm struggling to pluck up the motivation to go back to it already (probably about ten hours in). The shooting/space stuff is fine and feels mostly like the Bethesda games I liked, but I find the world really quite bland, the dialogue functional and lifeless, and a lot of the quests are stuff that I'd probably find dull in an MMO in 2005 let alone a single player game in 2023.

I'll try and force myself to keep going, but I expect the chances of me finishing this are small.