The thing with No Man’s Sky is that it’s supposed to be in the vein of old pulp sci-fi which was usually quite scientifically inaccurate and more fantasy and philosophy.
When’s the last time you played? I ask because there are “dead” systems - no conflict, no economy, not even a space station. If you haven’t played in a while, you might want to boot it up again. A lot has changed!
There's ways to make places feel barren, open, unexplored and still be interesting. I've played several games that had sections that were essentially "empty" but still hand designed to be interesting. We don't need 1000 planets, we need good content.
One of the primary reasons people like Bethesda games is that they give players a large world to explore that's jam-packed with interesting things to see a do. If Bethesda abandons that and admits that majority of the content they expect players to interact with is going to be boring, procedurally-generated, then why should people play Starfield?
Bethesda isn't known for deep, complex stories. Their best writing is traditionally their side content with main stories panned. Their combat is pretty basic, but functional. Their RP is pretty sad and NPCs could be a lot better, especially these days. So it seems Bethesda has given away their biggest plus: an interesting world to explore.
The best part is, they already made a game with a gigantic world full of procedurally-generated content: Daggerfall, which is remembered fondly for a reason.
Funny you say that, Daggerfall is fondly remembered but only in spite of it’s procedurally generated overworld. Daggerfall’s openworld is extraordinarily barren, remarkably so. You literally will get lost if you walk more than 5 minutes from a town, and not in a fun way but because every direction you look is literally the exact same three tree and rock sprites and you lose sense of direction. Daggerfall’s overworld is so bare and empty and large it actively encourages you to engage in the fast travel system with fleshed out gameplay mechanics like camping supplies and vehicles.
You can land on Pluto though you aren't really meant to. It's just there for decoration.
This is similar to how you can glitch outside of Whiterun in Skyrim, though doing that in the same worldspace as Whiterun will just let you be up close to the low-detail versions of the outer world, which you aren't really meant to do.
A disclaimer: I havent played the game and probably wont for a few months to a year when its on steam sale so I’m going to just speak based on what the article is saying and experience with other games.
I think its a tricky balancing act to make when it comes to creating an open world game where you travel through space. Different games have approached it differently with some games opting to scale everything down super small and letting you suspend disbelief(like outer wilds) but that wouldnt work as well on a game like this. Other games go for the hub approach where your ship is a hub that connects you to different open maps on different planets. This approach also works in letting you travel the stars and lets the story do the heavy lifting of conveying scale, but it doesnt mesh with the bethesda open world style. Likewise it can also sometimes turn your ship into just a metroid style elevator and so instead of feeling how big the universe it you effortlessly fast travel across the galaxy. Other games fill the space by making big procedural generated never ending expanses, but that can be hit and miss and not really what a lot of people want in a game like this one.
I understand wanting to pad things out a little bit to prevent things from feeling toy like in the way that Outer Wilds did, but it does run the risk of just being boring and uninteresting and leave you wishing for a more “gamified” tighter experience or at least less openness and more zipping to the places that matter. That said if exploring is worthwhile it could make it less of a bummer. I think Wind Waker and breath of the Wild are good examples of this. Wind Waker’s sailing was notoriously long and boring when it came out, however while most of the islands are small rocks, they all have something. Some secret, some rabbit hole leading to something interesting, a piece of heart, a chest of ruppies, SOMETHING. If you engage with it and mark your map along the way, and explore then the mostly empty map becomes a little more engaging.
Likewise Breath of the wild’s map isnt full of little side stories and secret villages or anything so if you decide to go off into that distant peak it will usually be self motivation. That said the game does reward you every time even if it’s not a huge reward. You will find ruins of some mysterious lost nation, you will find ruins referencing past zelda games, and shrines, and even a stupid little korok puzzle. The little gamified reward for exploring the area makes it less barren and worth exploring. So if it’s more Wind waker island, or breath of the wild and less Mass Effect 1 I can see this empty areas working.
Concurrent players on launch is really only a metric of hype - from what I’ve seen so far in discussions, the game itself is shaping up to be a pretty big let down
Kinda seems like people hating just to hate. It's a Bethesda game in space, albiet with slightly more menu travel.
It's a fine game. I wouldn't say it's a let down unless you're expecting fully fledged landing and docking systems. I've actually been pleasantly surprised.
From the grapevine, it's less that it sucks, more like it's meh. 7/10 and all that. Exactly what you'd expect from Skyrim / Fallout 4 in space, but somehow more bland in terms of characterization and storyline.
Same Bethesda shallowness and jank. People who just like exploring a big universe and doing repetitive stuff mindlessly will enjoy it, people who want more choice and character interaction with a compelling story probably will not.
It's kind of like the old Bethesda / Bioware split, except that Bioware's basically dead now, and Larian's doing what they used to do, but possibly better in some ways. Then there's Obsidian who used to be like Bioware / Bethesda but better in the past, but nowadays they seem content to just try to copy Bethesda while adding some "quirkiness" and hoping it'll work.
Me too, but some of my favorites were console exclusive. There's really no reason for those games to be PC or console exclusive these days. The financial math tends to not work out either.
If it literally can't be done on a controller, then sure, but I've now seen people happy with the controls for Age of Empires II on an Xbox pad, so Arma can probably be done too. I've never played Tarkov, so I can't speak to it.
Tarkov mostly because of how you loot. When you kill a player and start looting there are a bunch of nested containers that you need to rapidly search. You need to click and drag things out of pockets into your rig, maybe you want to pack the victims backpack with their own stuff and then put that backpack inside your own… It’s a lot of fast clicking and dragging. I’m not sure how you’d make that work on a controller. I mean, I know how, but having a cursor controlled by a joystick would make looting very slow.
That being said I have no problem with games being on all platforms. And also you could potentially make a KB/M game for consoles just plug those into the console. I remember Socom on PS2 supported keyboards for text chat, and there was that short lived Eve FPS on PS3 that supported the mouse. But you’d still have to make it support the controller by default.
having a cursor controlled by a joystick would make looting very slow
Perhaps, but aim down sights allowed for controllers to toggle two different sets of aiming speeds on demand, and Destiny-style cursors allowed for fast inventory management on character equipment screens that typically only worked on a mouse. There's probably a way to do it that's a little bit different than just mapping a mouse cursor to an analog stick that requires devs to be a bit more clever about it. The wildest one to me is that Baldur's Gate 3 looks entirely different when using a mouse and keyboard as opposed to using a controller. The likes of Elder Scrolls come up with one UI that can be controlled with either device, but even if I think that UI works great in both realms, people who've been playing those games for 20 years have a certain expectation for how it should look and work.
I don’t blame the lack of good shooters on consoles. Consoles never interfered with that before. I blame the popularity of Battle Royale. Everything is a fucking BR now. And it’s not like they just took the gameplay style; they also took the jank.
All the best new shooters are indy developed boomer shooters with retro aesthetics. And I’m getting kinda over that, too. The genre needs some new ideas.
I miss playing good shooters since the PS360 era, way before the battle royale genre entered the game.
It's when the genre exploded on consoles and it was when the genre was overly simplified and dumbed down
Before, some multiplatform FPS changed between the PC version and the console version. The console versions often had maps changed or even completely removed (and enemies where altered too) because they where too much for a controller
I am also kinda upset that people can't post reviews on steam, it feels like cheating the system. The game is out, over 200 000 people are playing it, why can't we see its score? How is it different from any other big launch? Should all early access games not be reviewable until they are out, meaning some can't get a score for years and years?
I mean it’s definitely not a great experience on the steam deck. I would imagine even the Series S can run the game better than the Deck can. Especially at 1080p since the deck only has an 800p screen. (Yes you can dock it but the experience will be even worse than the already reportedly poor visuals on the 800p screen)
If that report about the Series S losing split screen is true that seems like a pretty good compromise while also allowing a decent quality single player experience for Series S owners.
And what exactly do you consider “a great experience”? Because in act 2, with the game looking as shit as it possibly can, it still struggles to stay above 20FPS. I haven’t bothered trying act 3 on Deck, but act 3 is even more resource-intensive than act 2 so I can’t imagine it fares any better. “A great experience” is admittedly subjective, so I can’t say you haven’t had what you consider to be a great experience on Deck, but vaguely describing it as “a great experience” is negligent at best and outright disingenuous at worst. My act 2 experience on Deck was abysmal, and I think most opinions on that level of performance would agree.
For those that don’t care about Linux, or portability, or the steam deck being a PC, and just want to play BG3 on their TV for as cheap as possible, the Series S is by far the best option. That the game will also look and run significantly better than it does on steam deck is icing on the cake.
You need to change some settings. I forget which, but I think it’s fsr completely off and a few others. Then I capped it at 40 fps and it stays there while looking pretty good even in act 3.
The Series S is very frequently on sale for $50 off, sometimes more, and often comes with a bundled controller or game.
The Deck is only playable in Act 1. The frame rate in other acts struggles to reach 20 FPS, even on low settings. Also, the $400 deck you’re referencing cannot even install the game unless you buy an accompanying microSD (which I can’t imagine provides a good BG3 experience) or an SSD which you then crack open the steam deck to install (which will be too intimidating to most casual, non-tech people).
$450+ is a more accurate price point for playing BG3 on Steam Deck; 50% more than the Xbox MSRP, which is significantly discounted every few weeks. The Xbox will also offer a much more convenient experience to those who want to play the game on their TVs, and the game will look nicer on that hardware.
The Deck is an awesome little device, but you’re overselling it here, and ignoring a lot of nuance.
Curious to hear what settings you were using? Because after this steam deck fanatic kept harping about how it was a perfect experience from start to finish if you have the right settings, I went back and tried it on my Deck. In act 3, in a sparsely populated area of the city, I was hovering in the low 20s with frequent dips into the teens. With everything set to low (except textures on mediu) and all the visual flourishes like god rays, bloom, etc disabled. FSR couldn’t even improve things.
The steam deck is about half as powerful as the Series S. If you don’t want mobile gaming, there’s zero reason to buy the steam deck over the Series S.
And if a person doesn’t care about the steam library, linux operating system or emulation? If they just want to play BG3 and other modern games on their couch, running natively on their machine in a convenient, no-fuss manner? Will you admit that, for that person, the Steam Deck is a terrible option and they’d be far better served, both financially and visually, by buying an Xbox Series S, even at MSRP?
No, not at all. The deck is much more convenient and no fuss. It has sleep / resume. I can be in the middle of a battle in BG3, put the thing into sleep and set it down for a week. Press resume and I’m instantly back to where I left off. No turning on the TV, booting the console, starting the game, loading your save. And the portability is convenient even for just in the house. Play on the couch, at the table with coffee and breakfast, in bed before falling asleep.
Then when you factor in the value you get from being able to play modern games comfortably while traveling, I stand by my point that you’re a fool if you buy a series s over a deck.
I do almost all my gaming on the deck. It's great because of what it is as a handheld. If you don't intend to use those features, the lack of power makes a serious dent in the value it provides. And "no fuss" is correct compared to other PC handhelds, but crazy compared to an Xbox.
Yeah, this person is so deluded in their steam deck zealotry that they’ve lost touch with reality. In one comment they argue the steam deck’s value is in its Linux OS and ability to emulate Switch games, then in the next they argue that the thing is “much more convenient and no fuss”. The only convenience is in the portability. If you aren’t interested in sacrificing power for portability, that offers zero value. As for emulation, arguing that is no fuss would be laughable. Even native steam games can be iffy, requiring troubleshooting like swapping proton versions and entering launch commands. There’s a reason ProtonDB exists, and the Xbox doesn’t need something comparable.
The Steam Deck is great for what it is, but the only console it compares (and is vastly superior) to is the Switch.
It's basically all I use, and most of the headaches are more about publisher hostility than any actual issues with Linux (no, you not being able to install your fucking rootkit is not a failing). I basically don't even look at any of those statuses because I don't feel like I need to. Almost everything actually does just work.
But we're comparing it to a console lol. That, to the point of baked in performance settings tuned to the exact hardware, are their whole purpose.
Agreed. It’s a lack of publisher support that has created the issues with Linux gaming. To some extent I understand, given the minute market share Linux has historically possessed, but ultimately it’s just corporate greed. Valve is serving as a force for change, though; not altruistically, but a force nonetheless. Once Linux has a large enough install base, publishers will go where there’s money to be made, whatever anti-cheat concessions they have to make.
Lmao. Mate, I was an early adopter of the steam deck. I appreciate it for what it is, and I acknowledge its limitations. Meanwhile, you live in a fantasy where those limitations don’t exist and you’re unable to even acknowledge basic, objective facts. It’s fine that you love your steam deck but Jesus Christ, go touch some grass. Get outside your bubble for a second.
Feel free to elaborate on how the Deck is convenient to someone that isn’t interested in playing on a tiny, washed-out 800p display with sub-2 hour battery life while playing BG3, and how playing on a TV is less fuss with the Steam Deck than the Xbox. Quick resume is a completely different topic that would be irrelevant, even if the Xbox didn’t already have the exact same feature.
Then when you factor in the value you get from being able to play modern games comfortably while traveling
Worthless to someone that only wants to play at home on their TV, or isn’t tethered to an outlet. It seems you’re wholly incapable of comprehending that there are people with different use-cases and priorities than your own, and for those people the Steam Deck is a vastly inferior and costlier option. Buying the device that best meets their needs doesn’t make them a fool. It’s astounding that you don’t get this.
I would probably save up for the seriesX or PS5. If the S is already getting iffy here, what content are they gonna take out in future games? Why take that chance instead of saving for a system that’s actually convenient? I’d say avoid the series S.
The only reason the S is iffy here is because of couch co-op, which is already virtually extinct in the AAA space. The S is fine for what it is. But I also wouldn’t buy one at MSRP. I own 2 Series S consoles, but I paid $350 new for both and got a free headset with one of them. At $200, which is what it will likely be selling for again this black friday, it’s a steal. It’s twice as powerful as the Deck and it can properly utilize game pass.
Sure, the Steam Deck is cool, but a Series S can actually be bought in most of the world. Last I checked, Valve only sells it in less than 20 countries
Yeah I only go on for the occasional community day if I like the shiny just so I can transfer it to a game that is actually fun to play. Trouble is I’m running out of fun main line games now too…
I really hope Gamefreak/nintendo can get their house in order, the IP deserves so much better than it’s gotten the past few years. Arceus was an encouraging development, I hope they build on that.
it’s not really what’s good or not, some devices function weird with some stuff. I’ve had the game open for the whole day or more and the only I ssue I had, before upgrading to 32GB (Had 16) is that the game went to the swap after alt tabbing for some time since it seems like nowadays 16 is nothing if you have 20 tabs open (don’t judge me), discord, telegram, nvidia broadcast (takes 1 gig) and some other shit. In any cast, after switching back it took 2-3 minutes of moving stuff to the ram again and it all worked well.
Now that I have 32 GBs of ram I have had zero issues with the game, I believe it takes something like 6-7GB.
For reference I have a 5800 and a GTX 3080, but this is more of an issue with the API calls they are using and how is the processor runing those calls and how they interact with memory.
Here I am wondering when I’ll get three hours in a row to play a game. No kids even just life but wife around so things get limited compared to living alone. Mean if a safe and reload works, least that doesn’t take too long.
vg247.com
Aktywne