Games

[icycalm]

4chan rumor: Bethesda Game Studios's Starfield reveal inbound plus info
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1385319

[icycalm]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1716740/Starfield/

November 11, 2022.

This will sell a lot of 'boxes.

[icycalm]

Official Gameplay Reveal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmb2FJG ... XVyolQO3wj



I skimmed the video back when it was shown a couple months ago, but now I sat down to watch it carefully, and I will offer some comments.

When I saw it absentmindedly it appeared very impressive, but that impression collapsed on the careful watch. Right off the bat, the little mech they show is disgusting. Typical Western bucket design as seen in the Titanfalls, but even worse here. BattleTech > Titanfall > Starfield, but note that BattleTech's designs are still pretty bad.

The environments are a mixed bag, but the city they show is ugly, and not in a good dystopian way. Just boring buildings and layouts and colors. Boring flora too. Some industrial/office facilities they show in the middle of nowhere, where the shooting takes place, are pretty good for what they are, but the planetary environment is another mixed bag. It looks good enough on the short-scale, but I bet if you zoomed out it would look repetitive and unimaginative, lacking any grand features. I suppose Star Citizen has spoiled me forever now. I would have set all these reservations aside to wait for the final product if not for the fact that the world-building is obviously boring generic programmer story, which ruins what little interest I would have in exploring these subpar environments.

Enemies don't move at all when you shoot them, so what else is new. Otherwise the gunplay looks acceptable for the genre. I have a whole essay on Patreon on why first-person shooting MUST feel crap when you add heavy-stat ARPG mechanics to it. I'd be okay with it if everything else was stellar, but if you add the shitty world-building and meh environments, why would I bother?

And to top it all off, at least half the characters appear black, and probably way more than half if you add browns. Is this game going to sell a lot of units outside of white people nations? Only then I would accept this—but still wouldn't play the game.

The game is AT BEST a 3/5 going by the trailer, if the shooting ends up fun and the story and environments turn out half-decent. In all probability though, the game is 2/5 like basically everything Bethesda has ever made. A new jacket in Star Citizen is worth more to me than this entire game. It doesn't even have to be a very cool jacket.

[icycalm]

https://twitter.com/RGamerB_/status/1693971426468941889

Starfield has a loading screen for ladders. :cry:

That ship isn't fully interactable like Star Citizen for example, and you are loaded into a new location when moving between compartments of your ship, no 60fps option is a crime for a game this ugly in 2023! :facepalm:

https://twitter.com/FIREK2029/status/16 ... 0699480360

Imagine #Starfield with land vehicles and no invisible walls while exploring? Good thing I don't have to imagine that with other space games. This is what you guys are missing when you cap for no land vehicles in Starfield.

Invisible walls are the best walls.

[icycalm]

lmao

TL;DR Starfield doesn't have planets.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... han_what_i

Planets in Starfield. It's different than what I (and a lot of others) thought.

DISCLAIMER: This post isn't to shit on SF. It looks pretty special. I hope it has immense success. I will pick it up at some point. This post is to talk about specific comparisons related to SC and other space sims. In particular, planets.

So a lot of people saw the way BGS presented and marketed the planets in Starfield and instantly started making comparisons to SC, saying that Starfield is doing achieving the same thing etc etc. Yes No Man's Sky did that too but keep in mind that it is a much smaller scale, lacks physics, simulation and is very low production value. Starfield actually is AAA production value, immersive, physics and so on. You can see why people made this comparison.

I and many others assumed that you would cutscene land onto a planet, and then have a sphere with proc gen landscape that was massive, and have some assets, resources, and maybe AI scattered around. No one is going to walk across an entire planet, but I expected some continuity in the planet landscape. The point here is the freedom, sense of scale and immersion. The sense that you are on an actual planet. If a game offers this, I find it very exciting for some reason. And I know I'm not the only one. Ofcourse, detail and immersion is key here, and Starfield is AAA so I was hyped.

Turns out this was wrong.

1. When you land in a location, the game generates a 10kmx10km (?) tile of explorable landscape based on overall planet biome data. You run into invisible walls when you reach the border. Tiles are big enough that it might not be a problem for most, but small enough that you will notice, at least from the reviews I've seen. Bit of a bummer but you can only travel on foot anyway, so who cares.

2. Apparently tiles do not have continuity. If you land on one tile, and then land on another tile as close as possible to it, the landscape for that tile is generated separately and does not continue w.r.t. the other tile. Meaning you cannot *really* see terrain or landmarks off in the distance and then go land there to experience it. This for me is quite a big deal.

3. The game apparently saves the generation for a limited number of landing tiles based on some factors (idk what they are). After which it deletes the oldest ones.

So it seems more like a unique blend between Mass Effect 2 and procedural planets in space sim games. I just expected it to offer something that it doesn't actually have. Having adjusted my expectations, I don't think it's a big deal, and I appreciate the thought behind the design. It's kind of smart. I still believe the marketing of the planets was a bit dishonest. Todd did mention tiles in one interview but they never addressed the implications, and the comparison/assumptions they knew everyone would make. This whole thing came as a big surprise to so many in the SF community.

When it comes to planets, seamless scale + fidelity, the only game I have seen to recreate the SC fantasy is Beyond Good and Evil 2 from Ubisoft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK74hRUq2DY shows an old tech demo. This is still being worked on, and I think will be the first true competition for SC in this particular aspect.

The problem with the BG&E games is that they look stupid, with monkey characters or whatever. So I am not holding my breath for that one. Ubi hasn't made a good game in years. It's probably not coming out anyway.

Yup. Every similar game that comes out just further goes to show why SC is taking so long (on top of the other unique aspects of their dev process).

Every time something comes out that does some piece of what SC wants to be and everyone comes out of the woodwork to complain about why SC takes so long, all I can think is that these people aren't really looking at what's there. It's always one or two features that come close, but "cheat" or otherwise do things in a "lower fidelity" way.

Now there's nothing wrong with that. Games have always kinda "cheated" things, and finding the places you can do that and the ways you can get away with things without impacting the core player experience is part of the "art" of game dev. SC itself surely "cheats" some things.

But what makes it so different is that the point at which they'll start "cheating" things is so much further than almost any other game, and it's trying to be like 3 different games in one while doing so.

So yeah, it's fucking taking a while, because go figure when you're trying to do a triple marathon with no shortcuts... It's gonna take a lot longer than a single marathon with more allowed shortcuts.

You can agree or disagree that this approach is worthwhile, and I totally get people who just don't care and only see a massive budget and dev time... But if you can't at least understand where that dev time comes from, you're either woefully underqualified to be discussing much of anything, or you're just not even interested in trying.

[icycalm]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... tarcitizen

I'm sorry Starcitizen

After playing Starfield for 15hrs, I can honestly say that Starcitizen is one of a kind. I'm sorry for all the insults I heaped on you CIG all these months. It seems no other studio can even attempt what you're doing this millennia.

Please do me one favor CIG and release sqd42 soon.

Starfield was so not a space sim I thought it would be, there is no space flight, just cutscenes and loading screens, I was so dissatisfied and disappointed, it did not scratch that space itch at all for me. What a huge let down from Bethesda.

I hope I get to experience Sqd42 anytime this century.

[icycalm]

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... ed/1716740

That brings us to Starfield, the latest game from Bethesda, their first new IP in ages, and the final destination of their increasingly lazy, uninspired and utterly "safe" game design. Though I fail to understand why they were so hell bent on creating a "new" IP when they did absolutely nothing original with it. Starfield does absolutely nothing new, it's just a long series of sci-fi tropes done better by others without adding anything, or putting an interesting new spin on anything. With the recent Elder Scrolls and Fallout games they had the luxury of copying the homework of the great talents that created those franchises, but with Starfield they had to learn to walk on their own, and they faceplant right out of the gate.

The main story is the most tedious, derivative and repetitive slog I've ever experienced in a Bethesda game. Most quests are simple fetch quests, the EXACT SAME fetch quest, repeated for hours on end. The story takes forever to build any kind of momentum, and it barely reaches the pace of a gentle jog before it reaches its final unsatisfying end. It opens to a far inferior version of Mass Effect's inciting event, before going into some pseudo-religious claptrap and ultimately devolving into the most overdone sci-fi trope that has been plaguing popular culture in recent years. You'll know it when to get there, trust me. I can barely describe how much I hated the main story, and it certainly didn't help that I predicted most of the big story reveals along the way.

But what about the open world? It's always carried Bethesda games before. 1000 planets of adventure must be something, right? No. Bethesda dropped the ball here monumentally. The open world is basically a lie, an illusion of content. In truth the worlds you visit are little more than vast empty expanses of open terrain with the occasional copy/pasted structure dotted around. And it's extremely obvious how lazy it is, every "random" structure is identical down to the placement of every last item, enemy, and decoration. Worse yet is the fact that you can't fly directly to the structures, nor are there any kinds of mounts or vehicles available so you'll spend vast amounts of time walking to things. At least you can fast travel back, and good god you have to fast travel a lot in this game. Enjoy the loading screens.

The worldbuilding is some of the worst I've ever seen. There's no depth to anything. In playing it safe, every faction is just a generic stock entity, "space law enforcement", "space bank", "space bandits", "space pirates". Every character is a basic cardboard cutout, with terrible facial animations and wooden acting to boot. All animal and plant life across the galaxy is basically the same models, just with different names. It's all so bland and repetitive I can barely remember the names of any of the characters I encountered. There's nothing to distinguish one person or place from any other. Every area is equally diverse, with no distinguishing features to set them apart from any other. The worst example of this I experienced is when I found a 200 year old generation ship, launched at sublight speed from Earth to colonize another planet, and I discovered the people born and raised on said ship all spoke with clearly distinct Earth accents like Russian, African, English etc. Are you joking? Did the Africans isolate themselves in a ghetto in Cargo Bay 3 for two centuries? Did the Russians conquer and establish a fiefdom on deck 9? Bethesda's writers have clearly never experienced a truly multicultural society, because it doesn't work like this. After growing up together in a community sealed inside a spaceship they should speak the same English accent, and probably a strange form of English that distinctly diverged from what everyone else speaks after two centuries in isolation. But that idea was just too clever for Bethesda.

Then there are the bugs, of which there are many. This is pretty much part and parcel of any Bethesda game, but needs to be addressed. I've personally experienced a plethora of minor irritants such as t-posing corpses, wild physics and poorly scripted quests and triggers. This on top of many, many crashes and freezes. Save often is my advice. Hard saves, so that you can revert if necessary.

Beyond bugs there are also endless little irritating quirks that makes the game a pain to play. There are no local or interior maps, so finding your way around cities or buildings becomes irritating. Particularly in cities which have been built around long detours to get to anything, most likely to hide how small they really are.

The "skill challenges" you have to complete to progress character skills. It's just another system meant to slow the game down, to pad out the time it takes to get anything done. And the challenges are never anything interesting like, breaking into the secure vault of a band of religious zealots, or hunt a lethal predator loose on a space station that's falling into a black hole. No, it's just a grind. Do X thing Y number of times. I particularly hated having to grind space combat to pump up my Piloting skill so that I could use a ship with longer jump range.

Then there are escort quests, thankfully I haven't found many, but trying to keep a character with the survival skills of a clinically depressed lemming alive is never fun, especially with the sheer number of bloodthirsty aliens the game throws at you.

Ultimately a lot of the game's issues beside the stale writing and uninspired worldbuilding, boil down to engine limitations. The game is built on the back of the aging Creation Engine, which itself is an evolution of the Gamebryo Engine Bethesda has been using since Morrowind, over 20 years ago. Please Bethesda, let it rest. It can go no further.

To conclude, Starfield is all the bad connotations of the word "Bethesda" distilled into one game. This is the final destination for all of the lazy choices, overhyped features, stale writing, and "vast but shallow" design philosophy that Bethesda is known for. What else can I say but this? Bethesda. This isn't good enough any more! Your lazy, half-assed efforts aren't good enough. You had the unmitigated gall to ask 100$ for early access to this uninspired piece of ♥♥♥♥, the worst product you have ever cobbled together. If we are to have any hope of a decent Fallout or Elder Scrolls game in the future, there has to be a serious shakeup at Bethesda. And I doubt Todd Howard is the only problem as some have suggested. For a game to so utterly fail in so many aspects takes a considerable team effort. I can only hope that this game's failure is a wake up call and that the future will see some positive changes.

Final score: Bethesda / 10

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... ed/1716740

Enter ship *cutscene*, sit down *cutscene*, launch *cutscene*, jump to next area in space *cutscene*, dock at space station *cutscene*, exit space station *cutscene*, jump to next planet *cutscene*, land on planet *cutscene*, get out of chair *cutscene*, exit ship *cutscene*,

you may now proceed to walk around the planet. No there are no ground vehicles so you have to walk, have fun.

Game is a glorified loading screen, you can't fly to locations in space, this is on top of the combat still being the same left click spam for melee, and the exact same shooting as fallout4, fallout3, NV etc.

Imagine spending 10 years making this game and calling it your biggest game ever. Good job Todd.

Just let modders fix your game. Again. Oh yeah the performance is horrible, the textures are trash and there isn't even an FOV slider. Like I said, good job Todd.

[icycalm]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... try_sc_out

Bored of Starfield…try SC out?

So I used to be on the bandwagon hate train of SC. Just for the sheer amount of money spent in dev.

I’m a sucker for space games…hundreds of hours in Elite Dangerous but was hoping for something that had more exploration…enter starfield. I played about 72 hours, completed the main quest, and then just wondered and did side quests hoping to explore the galaxy and see where I would end up.

And I think I’m done. The graphics are horribly dated compared to the 5 year old Red Dead 2. The cities are lifeless with the horriddly repetitive NPCs who recycle the same 20 faces and don’t dialogue in any meaningful way. Nothings pulling me back in as the exploration is stunted compare to Elite Dangerous.

So with that….would SC fill my itch? Is there exploration? How are the NPCs? Are there things to do?