I genuinely didn't know they did their vendors like that.
I genuinely didn't know they did their vendors like that.
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.
The physics engine is genuinely impressive.
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.
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.
Last edited by Adramelch; 10-09-2023 at 05:47 PM.
Just unlocked the thing from the trailer:
Toggle Spoiler
There is a weird amount of applying for and then interviewing for jobs.
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:
.png?width=1200&height=600&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp)
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.
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.
Last edited by Adramelch; 11-09-2023 at 11:42 AM.
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
Last edited by Yevrah; 11-09-2023 at 06:38 PM.
The game has been fairly easy (relatively speaking) on very hard, so you'll definitely need the extra rules if you want a challenge.
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.
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).
Last edited by Adramelch; 11-09-2023 at 07:42 PM.
Here's Isaac.
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.
His parents are never going to believe what he did today.
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.Originally Posted by Adramelch
Vasco says my name.
Modders already going mad
https://twitter.com/Mr_Rebs_/status/1701241355979121100
They need to stop wasting time on that and mod in wearing glasses.
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.
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.Vasco says my name.
"You are trying to kill me, but I am not technically alive".
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.
• 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.
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.
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
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.
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
Last edited by Adramelch; 14-09-2023 at 01:52 PM.
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.
Last edited by Adramelch; 14-09-2023 at 10:53 PM.
Finally trying to scan my first planet. What a load of rubbish this bit of the game is.
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.
But I can open a fridge door in build mode.
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.
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.
He's probably the worse of the lot but they all suck.
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.
Think it's only half that and it's worded stupidly.
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
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:
Toggle Spoiler
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.
Last edited by Adramelch; 18-09-2023 at 08:34 PM.
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:
Toggle Spoiler
Second, backstory:
Toggle Spoiler
(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.
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.
Do they at least have hats?
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.
There are some excellent cowboy hats
As soon Cord gets his hands on one his enjoyment will go through the roof.
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"
I love my Chunks cap.
You also get it very early in the game if I recall correctly. Sets the tone for the whole game really.
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:
Toggle Spoiler
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.
Last edited by Adramelch; 25-09-2023 at 02:08 PM.
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.
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.
Last edited by Yevrah; 25-09-2023 at 02:33 PM.
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.
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.
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.
Last edited by Cord; 25-09-2023 at 06:21 PM.
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