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Starfield Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,328
Location
Flowery Land
New leaked screenshots, 2018 build, images are upscaled.
oDawFAW.jpg

AZyStfm.png

nzDfZsW.png

5DC27Z4.jpg

UQk7iPr.png

rHkgwt4.jpg

Now I am just even more confused about what the hell this game is supposed to be. RPG? Space sim? Immersive sim?

Honestly? I wouldn't be surprised if Bethesda didn't know either and that's why it's taking so long.
 

ADL

Prophet
Joined
Oct 23, 2017
Messages
3,682
Location
Nantucket
Now I am just even more confused about what the hell this game is supposed to be. RPG? Space sim? Immersive sim?
If it's anything but an RPG I'd rather just play Star Citizen for my immersive sim space sim fix. I'll take Star Citizen jank over Bethesda jank a million times over.
 

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
New leaked screenshots, 2018 build, images are upscaled.
oDawFAW.jpg

AZyStfm.png

nzDfZsW.png

5DC27Z4.jpg

UQk7iPr.png

rHkgwt4.jpg

Now I am just even more confused about what the hell this game is supposed to be. RPG? Space sim? Immersive sim?
They didn't set any expectations like CDPR with Cyberjunk where they announced it 8 years before its eventual release with supposed details of what to expect, followed by Cinematic Trailers and drip-feeding of information about what to expect and bullshot E3 Trailers the following years building up Hype and expectations to a degree they couldn't possibly satisfy, or No Man's Sky if you prefer where the developer did a tour spreading bullshit about what it's going to be on mainstream talk shows and interviews at E3.

They'll likely release a game Trailer and unleash the Hype machine just a few months before the actual release.

This guarantees that as long as it's not a total shit-show on release like Fallout 76 or similar disappointment won't set in, it'll be talked about, fawned over and praised, maybe proclaimed the "new Mass Effect" or whatever by almost everyone based on their non-existent expectations.
 
Joined
May 7, 2021
Messages
206
I love Todd Howard. Enough to have his face on The Last Supper on my wall soon, next to Suda51, Yoko Taro, Hideki Kamiya, MCA, and Dennaton.

But even I have to admit Starfield's probably just going to be a "See that moon? You can land on it" Fallout 4 clone.

Never change, Todd.
 

Saerain

Augur
Patron
Joined
May 27, 2011
Messages
495
I don't know about this Fallout 4-to-Baldur's Gate spectrum. Put me down somewhere between Daggerfall and Elite.
 

Drakortha

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 23, 2016
Messages
1,657
Location
Terra Australis
I just heard that they are shutting down their Bethesda.net forums, and they say "use our Discord server"

They shut down the Official forums for that Bethesda.net crap back when Skyrim came out. The success of Skyrim really killed any semblance of care Bethesda had for their original community.
 

Drakortha

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 23, 2016
Messages
1,657
Location
Terra Australis
That forum had been around for a long time. I was a member from about 2005, it was probably the first forum I signed up for, before Oblivion was even out and I was familiar with all the usernames there. It's a shame, really, that Bethesda just didn't give a fuck anymore when they made bank with Skyrim. They are losers that aspire to be just like Blizzard.
 
Last edited:

Wunderbar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2015
Messages
8,809
Some guy posted a compilation of info on their engine update. Doesn't look like he's knowledgeable on the subject matter.

General:

Let's start with some general facts and interesting things regarding the size of this update the creation engine has received. The number of employees who soley worked on engine upgrades has increased by a magnitude of 5 (meaning theres now 5 times as many people working on engine stuff than before - sorry for the confusion). This is coming from Todd Howard itself. They now have several core engine programmers and various other coders and programmers to work full-time on engine stuff. Previously they didn't have their own engine team but rather upgraded their engine on the fly/throughout development time of their next game.

"This overhaul on our engine is probably the largest that we've ever had, maybe larger than Morrowing to Oblivion" -Todd Howard

And he's right. They did....alot. Like I said they now have an entire dedicated team to engine related work. Which is why it took them longer than expected. This is going to power Starfield and all games after.

Even an outside company called theForge is helping them out with updating/customising their next-gen creation engine.

This is going to be b i g.

Visuals/Graphics/Rendering:

The stuff most people usually only care about when they hear "engine upgrades". Which is why I put it on-top of my list.

In 2018 BGS implemented Vulkan API into their engine. As I'm not an expert in that regard I can't really tell you what kind of improvements we will see because of that only that a) it probably makes raytracing more possible and b) its something alot of games are using nowadays.

LOD detail, Rendering distance, volumetric and atmospheric lighting aswell as subsurface scattering and realistic space-screen reflections will see remarkable improvements. (belongs to lighting segment but I let it stay here)

New layered material system:think of a vast library of decals in all sorts of shapes and sizes easily being appliable onto surfaces. Games like Star Citizen or Doom Eternal use this tech to easily change the looks of a wall or any kind of asset. Its fast, easy and very modular. Perfect for creating or changing the environments.

This can also be applied to textures.

Photogrammetry:3D real environment scanning will be used from now on and you'll likely see it in Starfield (heck you can already see it being used/experimented with in Fallout 76 to a smaller extent).

They are using realityCapture for archiving, photographing and capturing all the real world assets.


Shadows:

Right now creation engine handles shadows in a different way than other game engines do. Shadows, shadow draw distance and shadow quality will be much better from now on. Right now the way the engine handles shadows is by using the CPU, instead of GPU. This will change with a new renderer that they implemented. The days of ugly shadows shall be over.

If raytracing is implemented into their new engine expect it to handle alot of shadowy aspects of it.

Lighting:

Bethesda Game Studios is now using real-time global illumination/dynamic lighting tech called "Enlighten" from siliconstudios. Global Illumination adds alot of realism to a scene and can do wonders in games.

Ray-Tracing:Before anyone gets hyped about it, no. There is (almost) no indicator that future games will support ray-tracing, due to the changes they've made and now having a core engine programmer team they might support it however. "So you're telling me theres a chance?" Yes. There is a chance. Alot can happen within 3-5 years. However if their next game Starfield supports ray-tracing I doubt it was a design decision from the very beginning.


Animation:

Their new engine will support/power an entirely new animation system. Since future games such as Starfield will have to support zero-G and now...for the very first time in a BGS game ever....working ladders!!! ...its animation system is going to have to support a whole lot of new animations. This imo is going to be one of the most interesting engine upgrades creation engine has ever received.

Animators recently switched to Autodesk Maya to create/animate their animations. Maya is one of the "industry standards" for animating in video gaming. Other companies such as Naughty Dog or Ubisoft use it aswell. It's only a minor change and probably won't change much but I thought to mention it aswell.

Facial Animation: expect to see a huge leap over facial animations.

General improvements: character movement and controls, predictive foot IK, cloth simulation, bone scaling (which personally has me hyped for modding purposes), more advanced player customization (which will also further improve more diversity in NPC's).

Havok behaviour has been replaced with a custom animation system (which doesn't mean Havok is gone/replaced entirely).

Physics:

/Crabrave 60fps cap is gone /end CrabraveOf course this is going to to be implemented from 76 into Starfield and every other game. Tying the physics and game to the framerate may have worked in the past for them but also came with a huge set of limitations. Everyone should be thankful its gone.

I added Physics right under animations because they usually go hand in hand. Bethesda isn't going to ditch Havok. Instead it will be further improved upon and modified to support things like zero-g environments and other stuff that will be needed for Starfield. (This is also why BGS now needs a dedicated core engine programmers team). People seemed to suggest that they might ditch Havok but that contradicts to what job listings in the past have indicated, they instead improved on it and maintained it. Now animations, streaming and physics are going to be vastly improved.

I can see the usual "stiffness and staticness" that we are so so used to in BGS games being a thing of the past. RIP.

Procedual Gen/Streaming:

Procedual generation:has always been apart of creation engine. Back in Oblivion times their Forest generation tech was incredible, never before have we seen such detailed and procedually generated forests in a video game.

This time alot of focus has been put on procedual tech. ...Which is understandable when you want to make a space exploration-based video game. This is where Starfield is probably going to set itself apart the most (apart from being well...in space) from Fallout or The Elder Scrolls.

Rendering distance:"sixteeeeen times the details". Yes, that ain't a joke. Rendering distance was one of the MAJOR improvements in Fallout 76 and will be/has been further improved for Starfield. If you're flying around in your spaceship which is also a fast, moving object you will need a much more improved rendering distance to see objects like other space ships, asteroids, planets, stations, etc...

Cell Streaming Tech:

Now this is going to be one of the biggest changes.Cell loading and streaming has been improved with every title so far but this time it's going to be the biggest jump as I think this was one of the biggest hurdles Bethesda had to figure out throughout the development of Starfield and their next-gen creation engine.If you're going to fly in your spaceship in space (or in atmoshphere) you're going to have to make substantial changes to the way world cells are loaded in and out. SSD's facilitating quick content streaming will definitely help out on that regard."When we saw what we could do with the new tech..." -Todd Howard

Interior Cells: More and more interior cells are part of the worldspace nowadays as you can see from Fallout 76. More cluttering objects and more complex worldspace cells are going to be the norm and further advanced for Starfield and beyond.

NPC/AI:

Per Todd Howards words, future games will offer alot more NPC's on screen than in previous games. This isn't directly a thing because of engine upgrades but everything is connected in a way such as the more fine tuned and upgraded creation engine is and the better the consumer tech is the more will be possible to bring on screen at the same time.

You will be able to see entire cities filled with lots and lots of NPC's on screen. I do not believe they are going into the direction of Cyberpunk but more like what we are used to from them just with more npc's.

Radiant AI will make a return and be more advanced than in previous games. Random spawn entities in space is going to be very interesting.

Voice modulation tech for NPC's. With this you can add lots of variety to npc's voices without needing a bazillion different voice actors.

Pathfinding:

Todd already mentioned to expect improvements on AI pathfinding and hey, if everything else on the engine gets attention so does pathfinding. You'll need tech to support for example pathfinding in zero-g environments, aka SPACE. Space isn't 2D, you cant just throw doritos everywhere and expect ships/spacesuiters to follow them.

Space is a 3D environment which requires alot of changes and new stuff for the creation engine. They never really had real 3D-traversal environments in a BGS game this is imo going to be one of the most interesting things to see how creation engine will handle it.

Features/Game Systems:

This part of my write-up has not really something directly to do with next gen creation engine but its improvements will definitely have an impact on the game's systems and new features:
  • Ladders, yes ladders will be in the game (think I said that above already)
  • flyable spaceships
  • ship customisation
  • zero-g
  • artificial gravity (not per-se a game system probably but still someting cool lorewise)
  • space and ship-to-ship combat
  • crew management system
Modding:

Next gen creation engine will be better than ever for modding and also push Microsoft's platform-wide modding system for consoles which is coming at a later date.
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2011
Messages
1,676
Location
Core City
Whatever this game turns out to be, one thing I am absolutely sure of: the Codex thread and the reaction of other people around the internet in general (and all the drama that will ensue) will be 100 times more interesting than the game itself.

I'm so hyped for that.
:popcorn:
 

Doktor Best

Arcane
Joined
Feb 2, 2015
Messages
2,849
You can tell a game is gonna be super interesting when most most of the leaked pictures show..... walls. And panels. And walls with panels. So exciting.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'm gonna wait 5 years after release when the full all-DLC-included edition costs 15 bucks during a Steam Summer Sale and there's three dozen gameplay rebalance mods and some foot fetish mods I can install to make the gameplay better and give me something to look at :M

As long as the moddability is the same as all other Bethesda games, it's gonna be decent years after release with enough mods installed over it.
 

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