Sniping pirates and leaving them sitting in odd poses is oddly sad. Sometimes they freeze in place sitting on a couch or whatever. Low G has some weird stuff going on when you kill someone too, although watching dead bodies slowly float down is a neat touch.
He has pinned a comment on the first video saying audio won’t be a problem going forward. Not sure if that’s for the videos already out, or for a new batch of videos though, haven’t seen the first batch yet.
The author’s arguing that BG3 makes Starfield look like a shallow RPG by comparison. Their broader point is that Starfield is behind the times compared to most RPGs released in the last couple decades, even compared to something like Fallout 3.
It's even better when Bethesda themselves describes Starfield as the "next-generation of RPGs". It's the same type of Bethesda game that I've been playing for 15+ years just with a new coat of paint. If this is the next-generation, then the future has no ambition whatsoever.
The game seems (to me) to essentially be FPS, Sci-Fi Skyrim, with some space fight minigames. There’s a lot of stuff you can do, but the main storyline is pretty short, the AI sucks, and most of the appeal is side content and looks.
That’s what I expect from Bethesda, and that’s what they delivered. It’s only really “next gen” in the procedural generation department, so it’s basically a regular Bethesda game, with a little bit of experimentation thrown in. That’s what Bethesda delivers, and they deliver pretty consistently.
I’m guessing there will be a ton of cool mods in the next few years for a deeper story, interesting space combat, etc.
For sure. That’s just how articles have to be titled to get clicks unfortunately. It can be annoying, but it helps keep journalism alive, so you take the good with the bad.
Everything time this dude opens his mouth, I get an urge to wear an eyepatch. But hey, if he’s as rich as he alludes here, that shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Disclaimer: My comment is a reaction to the stuff Todd and his minions said in the article, not necessarily about the game itself. I haven’t played Starfield yet. I just find the statements really weak and want to express why I see it that way.
Yeaaahh that’s nice for maybe a couple of hours, but then it starts to get boring. That’s not how you keep players engaged, although there are of course those who don’t find that boring at all.
We’re not astronauts, we’re not there. Astronauts had the thrill of the voyage through space, stepping on the moon and feeling with ones own body how it is to walk on the moon’s dust in low gravity. Also astronauts had and have a shitload of scientific equipment and experiments to carry out, i.e., a purpose beyond the mere jolly walking.
If they were just there for walking and that for days, weeks, months, they would get bored pretty fast as well.
Take a look at No Man’s Sky. Similar problem. The procedural generation algorithm made planets look familiar after you’ve seen a couple. There is nothing new. Exploration became unrewarded. But Hello Games has massively improved on that over the years and produced a game where you can sink dozens of hours without getting bored so easily.
No Man’s Sky still has the same problem it began with, although the landscapes are vastly improved. It doesn’t matter what planet it is, there’s nothing to distinguish it from the last planet other than what species owns the system, the flavor of hazard present, and the overall color.
No Man’s Sky honestly has not enough planets with just dead barren empty planets. At least in Starfield, there’s some magic in seeing actual fauna. You don’t get that feeling in No Man’s Sky because you’ve seen fauna and flora on the last 30 planets you’ve been to. You need those empty planets to make the planets with life actually feel special.
No Man’s Sky still has the same problem it began with, although the landscapes are vastly improved. It doesn’t matter what planet it is, there’s nothing to distinguish it from the last planet other than what species owns the system, the flavor of hazard present, and the overall color.
Regarding the variety and interesting features of the bare planets, I tend to agree. My point was rather that there is more to do now and the fun with - even familiar planets - lasts longer.
No Man’s Sky honestly has not enough planets with just dead barren empty planets.
This is not correct. The amount of more dead planets immensely depends on - spoiler alert -
spoilerthe galaxy you’re in. NMS has different galaxies with different distributions for lush or dead planets. This also has some effects on the difficulty.
You don’t need to. There are different possibilities for switching galaxies. The simplest ones would be to use portals which is accessible very early in the game.
Okay, but from my understanding, in order to change galaxies, I have to find a portal, figure however to use the portal, and then switch galaxies.
For someone whose put in a few hours into the game multiple times as the game has been steadily updated, I didn’t know about portals or even that switching galaxies was even a thing. So telling me I’m incorrect because it’s NG+ COULD have fixed it for me is pretty disingenuous. How am I suppose to know that after going through 6 more galaxies that I can get what I wanted from the start?
Okay, but from my understanding, in order to change galaxies, I have to find a portal, figure however to use the portal, and then switch galaxies.
As soon as you can use the space anomaly (which happens very early) you already have a possibility. But apart from that, sure, it still takes a bit of effort and is not an option available when starting the game. The latter would be a nice idea though.
I didn’t know about portals or even that switching galaxies was even a thing. […] How am I suppose to know that after going through 6 more galaxies that I can get what I wanted from the start?
By using an internet search engine of your choice.
But I get what you mean as this is not clearly communicated right from the beginning in the game and something to be discovered. So your best chance to know this, besides doing the story missions, is to talk to other players or by curiously clicking on some suitable links in the NMS wiki.
The planets being mostly empty is fine. In fact, I think they’re too full if anything. You’re not meant to travel on the planet’s surface for long. You explore a bit if you think you want to build an outpost there, but otherwise you just move on. Most of the “content” is in pre-built areas. Enemy encounters almost always take place in hand crafted facilities, and usually it’ll be for some kind of quest so you land right near it.
The outpost system is where the procedural planets come in. You need to explore some to find the right spot to build with the resources you want. The content there is the building, not the planet. The landscape will effect it some, but mostly it’s whatever you make of it.
That said, the outpost system fucking sucks right now. You have to send resources between outposts with “links”, which take goods into a container and store them in linked containers. All solid goods go in one type, and the same for liquid, gas, and manufactured. I have all of my resources trickling into a main base, so I have all resources available there. This has caused my storage to back up and there’s no way to filter out items you don’t want. Then no resources can come in so you have to go to your storage and clear whatever is clogging it. There’s also no way to delete items as far as I’m aware, so you just dump the excess resources on the ground where they’ll remain forever. It’s really stupid. This is my storage solution for now.
All the crates flow into the next one, so it’s functionally one massive storage container, but with 15 seperate inventories I have to go through to get anything out. There’s also no stairs object you can build, or anything like it, so I stacked cabinets into a sort of access staircase. It’s really bad, but it’s what works for now.
Just a tip if you start playing and build a main base, build it on a low gravity planet so you don’t have as much of a problem if you stack stuff like this.
At least if the Telvanni got their way I’d be able to levitate up to my crates! (I just realized, I may TCL to use the crates because there isn’t a good alternative built into the game systems.)
Yeah, outposts seemed to me to be the thing that Starfield was designed and marketed around, but it’s so jank. So many basic things missing and so many quality of life failures. It’s like they didn’t even test it themselves first.
There’s one part in the story that you need to build a thing in a shop or an outpost, but it doesn’t require you to really build an outpost. I did it so I can have any supplies for upgrading things without too much effort. I think that was a mistake, but now I’m too invested. Lol.
That reminds me of how annoyed I get with Satisfactory as well…
As a Factorio player, this could all be handled so much better in both games, but Starfield is particularly bad. It’s like they never even tried building outposts before launch. So many basic functions are missing.
Yeah, and without any way to actually manage the resources. I want to like it, but I see so many issues that should be easy to solve that they just didn’t. Sure, it’ll be fixed with mods and maybe DLC, but that shouldn’t be required for basic UX.
Another one of my big gripes with outposts is that there is no way to view your existing outposts. There’s not a list, and definitely no way to view what an outpost is producing. Hell, you can’t even view what an outpost is producing when you’re there. It’ll tell you the total quantity produced of everything combined, but not of what. It’s bad.
I’ve played Starfield and it’s fantastic. There’s so much story. The world-bulding is different because there’s literally 1000+ worlds and they’re mostly uninhabited. I’m not sure what else you would expect. There are some huge, in-depth cities and some beautiful landscapes. But there’s also empty deserts and plains, just like we see everywhere in space.
Yeah, the first thing I did when getting to the core was to generate an ancestral galaxy so that there would be more dead worlds. Didn’t like having every place overrun with life.
This is getting a lot of flak, but I mostly agree. I have enjoyed the exploration of random planets as a pleasant aside to quests. Yes, they’re dull. It’s a lot of scanning flora and fauna, if they exist. Wandering slowly around.
But in that sense, it’s actually one of the most immersive activities in the whole damn game. If Starfield has an issue with anything, it’s immersion.
One thing I didn’t like about NMS, frankly, is that every planet seems to be teeming with life. It makes that life feel uninteresting when you find it, because there is no yin to the yang.
I gave Starfield a fair chance, I played it for 20 hours, patiently waiting on why it deserved an “8.4” rating from critics. But it never delivered. The gameplay is a copy of Fallout 4, the user interface is a mess (they’ve gone backwards somehow) and the world is just so generic and uninspiring that I couldn’t bear one more minute of it.
I can see why it’s got a 5.5 from real players.
On a side note, the gaming reviews now mirror Rotten tomatoes. What the professional paid “critics” love, doesn’t necessarily mean the players do, and vice versa. The real players always give a more fair rating.
Imagine it in five years when the modding scene has popped off though. It could truly be something spectacular. Which is frankly the only saving grace of Bethesda games. They’re a solid sandbox/framework for others to fill in.
Ray tracing sounds like a stretch, but with frame generation nothing seams to be impossible anymore. Though I’d rather see them target consistent 60fps now.
Todd forgets this is a game and not real life where you have to train and study for 30 years to go to the moon. He forgot that the main intricacy is the stories you can make for the player.
Like assassins creed has big cities. Which feel dead, not enjoyable.
Some do, but they make it their main draw. The reason Kerbal Space Program is fun, is fun because you can fuck up and die in a million different ways, and not doing so is chalenging and succes is rewarding while failure is hilarious(ly frustrating).
Not fucking up and dying in Starfield means pressing the Use Healthpack frequently enough.
…yes, they do. Soooo many fucking games have that. There’s a whole genre of games built around it. They’re called survival games. A relevant example would be No Man’s Sky.
I am kinda certain no game has dying. I haven’t died in any yet. Although I remember a piece of The Onion of a suicide feature of a car seat. Maybe someone should build a gaming chair with this feature to improve the immersion.
Yes, they do, just not for real. Why would you expect it to kill you for real? What an absurd standard. You’re supposed to be scared for your character’s life, not your own. They’re the one in space, not you…
You do know this threat is about some dev saying the first guys on the moon weren’t bored although there’s basically just sand and rocks to be found? And that because of this it’s fine most planets in a game are baren and uninteresting?
The Bethesda guy compared the game to RL. I am just pointing out why this makes no sense.
In RL most of the “excitement” in space comes from not wanting to fuck up and die. Games don’t have that, Todd.
So many games are all about the struggle to not fuck up and die, and they are plenty tense even though they don’t affect your real body. Ever played Subnautica? I’m not actually underwater but I’m scared of drowning.
I don’t know why the fact that a game can’t actually kill you doesn’t mean it can’t try to introduce tension.
Yeah, planets being barren is shit and realism is a shit excuse for it, but it’s kinda irrelevant to your “games don’t have dying” point, which would apply even if planets were designed better
Dude… You’re even agreeing with me without realizing it. My point is, because a game can’t create tension by threatening you with real death, it needs to be interesting in some way.
It’s a reason why the astronauts weren’t bored on the moon. The fear of death. Games don’t have that and that is one of the reasons games need to be interesting and can’t be dull like the moon. I’ll just rephrase the same thing over and over for you. I do see some things may appear challenging to understand for some.
Read the title of the article and you may be able to piece things together: Bethesda says most of Starfield’s 1000+ planets are dull on purpose because ‘when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there’ but ‘they certainly weren’t bored’
Exactly! Now go tell Todd that his game isn’t real and therefor his example “astronauts on the moon weren’t bored although the moon is dull” doesn’t make any sense.
It’s like you’re getting there without actually ever getting there.
Of course it makes sense. That’s just how games work. You’re pretending you’re in space, and even though you aren’t actually running our of oxygen, your character is. You feel tension for your character.
Y’know playing COD doesn’t mean you’re actually at war, right?
I think you missed the point, lol. Obviously COD isn’t a remotely realistic portrayal of war. You haven’t understood a thing if you seriously thought I was saying that.
But we weren’t discussing realism of mechanics, rather, realism of environment. And the environments are pretty true to life.
It’s the mechanics that make a game fun. Not necessarily the environments. Though they of course help. Fun mechanics are what a game is about.
You mean like a game needs to offer more than dull enviroments to be not boring although the astronauts on the moon didn’t seem to be bored on the dull moon?
Then you have games that do space travel so well that I’m beyond scared shitless in them, like Outer Wilds. So many games have already managed to convey some of these feelings.
Perfect example. Handful of planets, each rich with hand-crafted purpose, space travel is big enough to feel epic, but small enough to not want to skip.
It nails the feeling of exploring a vast area of space, not by being realistic (it is not, by a long shot), but by just making certain experiences feel right.
Yup, classic case of realism not always making the game better.
I went to earth to check it out, I know the lore of why it is a giant sand ball but that also disappoints me. I walked around the approximate area of where I am from and found a small cave. But there was nothing in the cave except some abandoned drugs. I couldn’t interact with the glowing mushrooms, mine any minerals, etc. I was hoping for a sprawling cavern or something and just… nope. I might go back to earth to explore it some more but it’s so bland.
Absolutely makes sense for most planets to be rather barren. What I found a bit disappointing so far - keeping in mind I started yesterday and I’m only a few hours in - is how mostly when you land on a planet there is a key point of interest (an outpost, a mining facility, a city etc) at a landing site and then immediately a whole lot of randomly generated nothing around it. No roads or paths, NPCs, houses etc. I haven’t really been to a place where I got that Skyrim feeling of going out into the wilderness and finding interesting things. I hope that later on there are at least a few areas with more substantial exploration. Still enjoying the game though.
It could really benefit from some sort of vehicle as well.
I land on a planet, sprint 300m to the first point of interest, 900m to the next, 700m to the next etc. and most of it is just sprinting through nothing…
Feels like it’s just wasting my time, as there is literally nothing in between. I think a little hover bike would be a great addition to the game.
I haven’t played Starfield, but that sounds like No Man’s Sky when it first released. A few points of interest per planet, nothing else of note to do there, and the entire planet just became a rather boring trip from point A to point B to point C and nothing more.
You’re saying that doesn’t describe the current state of No Man’s Sky? The only notable buildings I’ve found are the same 3 tiny cookie-cutter outposts dotted randomly all across most planets. Oh sorry, 4 now if you count the camps from the Interceptor update and happen to be on a dissonant planet.
I feel like it wouldn’t take much effort to do better so that’s sad if Starfield hasn’t.
The difference being that was NMS whole loop at launch. Exploring barren and mostly empty planets is just side content to a lot of directed story and side missions here.
that would be perfect, maybe a vehicle with scanner and some mining tool so you could analyse and collect few minerals along the way. would be great QOL improvement.
I will say, finding a vehicle and not being able to drive it was a bit disappointing. But otherwise, I just wish there were more resources on the barren worlds.
Absolutely makes sense for most planets to be rather barren.
This idea is something I’ve heard a lot about Starfield and is why I don’t think I’ll pick it up, at least until a big sale. To me, it seems like they made a fair number of design decisions around what “makes sense” rather than what’s fun.
When it comes to the barren planets, it just adds a bit of immersion IMO. Nobody is forcing you to visit those rocks, and you probably won’t ever land on most of them, but it’s cool that you can. So to me, it’s not something that has a negative effect on my enjoyment of the game.
Makes sense to wait for a sale though. Mods and updates will no doubt vastly improve the game. Personally, I just play it on gamepass.
I'm the same way. Even just going from the "lore" most planets aren't going to have colorful interesting cities in it with unique locations and things to do. A lot of the rocks are going to be desolate with nothing on it, because they should be. When you find something of interest in the desolate void of space, it's gonna be interesting. Every planet having the same formulaic procedurally shaped bar, merchant, and a fetch quest would have people foaming at the mouth about how Bethesda replaced their specific crafted environments with shitty generated ones with no soul.
I haven’t played it yet (A second play through of BG3 sounds more appealing right now), but in general for an singleplayer RPG I would prefer a small full setting to an empty large one. If the environment has almost nothing of interest in it, then I’m going to just be glued to the objective marker, which while not a deal breaker, definitely hurts the experience. In a more curated environment I would ignore the objective marker and go off in a random direction. This means my experience is more unique and gives a proper sense of exploration which can make the game feel bigger even though it is technically smaller.
Yout have to factor in the life sim-element of Bethesda RPGs too. You can theoretically become a mining magnate in Starfield using those planets and resource extraction outposts. That content is there for those kind of players. If you just want to do the directed side content, then as you say, you’d just follow the markets and not need to interact with it. Your exploration will be in the “dungeons” looking about for lore and loot.
Yeah, it’s all part of the freedom the game offers for what you want to do. If you want to be a cargo hauler you’ll rarely see a barren planet as you’re delivering to settlements. If you want to be a bounty hunter, you may see them once or twice when a bounty has holed up there, but if you want to be a space prospector, you will need to spend more time exploring and locating resources to set up extraction plants for.all valid methods of interacting with the universe with different needs for the barren planets.
A place can have a barren atmosphere and aesthtic while also having content to find, even if that content is more sparse or minimal, suited to that lonely environment
That's exactly what they've done.
A "barren" planet still has stuff. In the 5 minutes or so that I did random exploration I found a colonist hut that was razed by pirates with a hidden chest with like 3k credits, and a random vendor who was going a little nuts for being alone so long. Nothing incredible, but enough to make the place not feel dead on a random frozen moon.
I wouldn’t shape any of your decision to playor not play on this particular detail. It really has little to no impact on the game whatsoever. There are a lot of really interesting worlds to explore, it’s really not worth the amount of discussion lately.
Not saying this means “this is the game for you”. Just that this one facet shouldn’t enter into your assessment at all, in my opinion.
Well, one is a linear, turn-based, 3rd person party cRPG.
The other is open world, real-time, 1st person with optional followers, sandbox action-RPG with space shooter elements.
Utterly different animals and any comparison is as invalid as comparing BG3 to Elite, DCS or RaceRoom. I've no interest at all in BG3 because turn-based party RPG-s are not really my jam. And I've never cared much about story-telling, either. I like good worldbuilding, sandboxing, looting, crafting, trying different builds, doing whatever the hell I like at any moment while completely forgetting that something called "main quest" exists, getting technical and modding the crap out of a game and this is where Bethesda shines.
Generally the term cRPG is used for specifically tabletop RPG-s adapted to digital realm. Action RPG-s take those classical RPG concepts and adapt them to a first- or third-person action game—basically Doom with leveling systems.
OK, then why fucking make them? Aren’t games supposed to be fun?
This whole genre really bugs me, and I’m someone who LOVES space games. The best game in the genre IMO is elite dangerous, because their ship to ship combat is so damn fun to play that I can hop in for a bit and have a blast without having to engage with the other systems that are often painfully boring.
The problem here is that people what the feeling of being explorers and finding new things, but video games inherently can’t provide that. There aren’t computers strong enough to produce thousands or millions of planets that all have genuinely interesting features on them that are worth exploring for. “Exploration” in current space Sims is basically “stick your name on something someone else hasn’t already stuck their name on, maybe grab some resources from it, and leave.” That gets dull very fast.
Developers COULD choose instead to make a couple of good, big planets that are interesting and full of actually good content. They could give you a reason to explore beyond “look other planets cool.”
If you made 1000 planets and only 10 of them are at all interesting, and your game is centered on exploring other planets and not really focussed on much else, you’ve made a boring game.
Elite dangerous space combat is literally the most lackluster and boring space combat I have ever engaged in. It’s such a slog.
I find combat where you have less control (weak strafing) and more maneuvering to be more interesting. That said, I think Microsoft allegiance probably did 6dof in space combat the best.
There aren’t computers strong enough to produce thousands or millions of planets that all have genuinely interesting features on them that are worth exploring for.
I don't think there is an infinite amount of "genuinely interesting features" so it's hard to imagine we'll ever get a game with this.
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Aktywne