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

[wishbonetail]

Jokes aside, this is a only mainstream developer whose games im somewhat anticipating.

 

[Caim]

Jokes aside, this is a only mainstream developer whose games im somewhat anticipating.

You are anticipating Starfield because you want to enjoy it.

I am anticipating Starfield because I want to enjoy the shitshow.

We are not the same.

 

[Lemming42]

The enjoyment and the shitshow are completely intertwined at this point.

I would be looking forward to this were it not for Fallout 4, a game so shockingly bad that it made me lose faith in Bethesda's ability to make the type of game they're known for. For all the flaws of Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim, Bethesda built up quite a bit of goodwill over that period, all of which was squandered with Fo4. Each of those games has something to recommend it, and even Oblivion which is easily the worst of the lot IMO still has a few sparks of inspiration here and there, but Fo4 was just completely abominable and an absolute waste of time.

All they have to do to have a massive success on their hands is make "Skyrim in space" but I genuinely think that's beyond their ability nowadays. People would welcome and laugh at the glitches as part of the fun, as they did back in the day with the Skyrim glitch compilations and the examples of Todd's lies set to Fleetwood Mac, just as long as the core game is still fun enough to make it worthwhile, which it probably won't be.

 

[Crispy]

Do you really consider Fallout 3 to be better than Fallout 4?

 

[Lemming42]

Yeah, absolutely no question about it. Fallout 3's quest structure for the sidequests is actually really good at times, occasionally better than NV's, even if the content (story and dialogue) is typically pretty bad. Every sidequest in the game has several solutions, including non-combat (or very limited combat) ones. Fallout 4's quests are virtually all linear from what I remember - I genuinely cannot actually remember a single quest from Fo4 other than the one with the 1950s gangster guys in that one vault.

Most locations on the map have some kind of backstory to uncover or some hidden unique thing to find, and have a pretty clear start and end point, the latter of which contains your reward (usually the end of the mystery you've been investigating plus a special item). In Fallout 4, a lot of locations just feel completely empty, with the combat itself being the whole motivation to enter a location.

The only appeal of Fallout 4 is that the combat mechanics are theoretically better, but in practice it still feels like the usual clunky bullshit to me, only with the addition of "legendary" enemies who have stupid health bloat, and a weapon modding system that you're forced to engage with if you don't want combat to become a massive chore. I prefer Fo3/NV's combat just because it's usually over quicker.

I would seriously argue that the gulf in quality between Fo3 and Fo4 is equivalent to the one between FNV and Fo3. Fo3 is generally a worse version of New Vegas, but Fo4 is generally a worse version of Fo3, the result being something really profoundly bad IMO.

 

[Crispy]

Well, that's certainly a detailed answer, to which I can only think to reply: yours is the first evaluation of Fallout 3 I've ever read here that actually praises its quests and storyline.

 

[wishbonetail]

Yeah, absolutely no question about it. Fallout 3's quest structure for the sidequests is actually really good at times, occasionally better than NV's, even if the content (story and dialogue) is typically pretty bad. Every sidequest in the game has several solutions, including non-combat (or very limited combat) ones. Fallout 4's quests are virtually all linear from what I remember - I genuinely cannot actually remember a single quest from Fo4 other than the one with the 1950s gangster guys in that one vault.

Most locations on the map have some kind of backstory to uncover or some hidden unique thing to find, and have a pretty clear start and end point, the latter of which contains your reward (usually the end of the mystery you've been investigating plus a special item). In Fallout 4, a lot of locations just feel completely empty, with the combat itself being the whole motivation to enter a location.

The only appeal of Fallout 4 is that the combat mechanics are theoretically better, but in practice it still feels like the usual clunky bullshit to me, only with the addition of "legendary" enemies who have stupid health bloat, and a weapon modding system that you're forced to engage with if you don't want combat to become a massive chore. I prefer Fo3/NV's combat just because it's usually over quicker.

I would seriously argue that the gulf in quality between Fo3 and Fo4 is equivalent to the one between FNV and Fo3. Fo3 is generally a worse version of New Vegas, but Fo4 is generally a worse version of Fo3, the result being something really profoundly bad IMO.

F4 is a survival FPS not an RPG. And it excells in that niche, only rivaled by STALKER, which has better shooting but no character progression.
Locations empty or not is dependent on game difficulty. On survival you'll need all the shit you can get and this is the only difficulty this game should be played on. Also, everything will die faster including pc, so that resolves hp bloat.
By the way, i still have a PTSD from albino scorpions, mutant overlords, ghoul reavers and Point Lookout's rednecks with hp size of the behemoths in F3.

 

[Lemming42]

Well, that's certainly a detailed answer, to which I can only think to reply: yours is the first evaluation of Fallout 3 I've ever read here that actually praises its quests and storyline.

Not the storyline so much, but definitely the quest structure. There are some things that I don't think have any equivalent even in New Vegas.

Sperging incoming for anyone interested, feel free to ignore:

fallout sperging

- You can lie to Moira about every single task she gives you for her book, letting you skip essentially the entire quest if you meet a variety of appropriate skill checks. Depending on how often you do this, the book's quality will decrease, which yields a different blurb on the copy of the book you get, plus a different reward for finishing it. In other words, you're given a skill check to skip part or all of a quest, but it backfires on you later in a logical way. I don't think this ever really happens in any other Fallout game.
- Additionally, giving her sarcastic responses consistently will get a different reward (inexplicably, I think you get more action points or something) and the blurb again changes to reflect that the book is useless but amusingly-written.

- Everyone was pissed off by the Harold/Oasis quest but I actually like it quite a lot, not least because it's a relatively rare example of a moral dilemma in a Fallout game that's actually a dilemma and doesn't have an obvious, optimal answer. There's a lot going on in it. Four distinct solutions (that I can think of), and absolutely none of them end well for everyone.

- A lot of the dungeons have plenty of alternate routes and environmental skill checks. "Stealing Independence" is a very straightforward quest on the face of it - go to a dungeon, go to the end, get an item, return to questgiver. But in practice, there's quite a bit more going on:

I don't remember Fo4 having any dungeons of that nature. There's some other stuff going on in the background too - for example, if you refuse to work with Sydney, she's added to the random events deck and spawns later with her relic-hunting-partner to ambush you.

- Everyone knows this one, but there's an alternate solution to "The Superhuman Gambit" that's really clever - again, from a quest structure standpoint, not so much a writing standpoint. The writing for this one puts a lot of people off, because it's completely retarded on a basic conceptual level, but: you can get a piece of information on a random nondescript terminal in a ruin on the other side of the map that gives you information that opens up a new dialogue option to peacefully resolve the quest. At no point does the game direct you to go there, you'd have to either reason it out yourself or get lucky by stumbling across it earlier. I can't think of NV having anything too similar.

- Another well-known one - Tenpenny Tower fucks you over if you try to solve it the heavily-telegraphed peaceful way. Again, I can't think of any other quest in Fallout that does this. One of the main issues with NV for me is that everything tends to go exactly the way you want it, with minimal resistance, all the time (ie everyone in Primm just dumbly accepting your verdict about their future). The only thing I can think of that even comes close is that they were originally going to do it for Junktown in Fo1, but changed their minds during development.

- There are numerous occasions where acting like a dickhead will just bar you completely from quests, areas and dialogue. Off the top of my head: Scribe Yearling will refuse to deal with you at all if you refer to the Brotherhood as "assholes" upon first meeting her, which locks you out of a small repeatable side-quest, a lot of exposition dialogue, and a source of money. The Outcasts will also turn hostile if you tell them to fuck off, which again locks you out of a whole area with a small sidequest, a lot of plot information, and a repeatable source of money. This was the case in Fo1 and Fo2, but never seems to happen as much in NV.

Basically if you go on the wiki and look at the Quick Walkthrough flowchart for most Fo3 sidequests, you'll see decent quest structure replete with multiple distinct solutions, alternate routes, etc - often structurally better than NV quests. Fallout 4's are almost all linear, as far as I know.

F4 is a survival FPS not an RPG. And it excells in that niche, only rivaled by STALKER, which has better shooting but no character progression.
Locations empty or not is dependent on game difficulty. On survival you'll need all the shit you can get and this is the only difficulty this game should be played on. Also, everything will die faster including pc, so that resolves hp bloat.
By the way, i still have a PTSD from albino scorpions, mutant overlords, ghoul reavers and Point Lookout's rednecks with hp size of the behemoths in F3.

This might be true but I feel like it's not what Bethesda are known for, what Fallout's known for, nor what people expected from the game. I think it's a sad direction for the franchise to go in. My main memory of Fo4 was desperately searching fo some kind of settlement or named NPC or quest and just perpetually coming up blank. I spent ages deliberately avoiding scrapping desk fans for scrap because I thought the settlement building shit and weapon modding system would be an extra feature on top of the existing game, not the core of the entire game!

Yeah, the Albino Scorps and Overlords were terrible - to the point where you might as well play without the Broken Steel .esm enabled (since the DLC itself is really shit anyway). On the other hand, I played Point Lookout for the first time relatively recently and weirdly had no trouble at all. That DLC-exclusive rifle they give you, can't remember it's name, makes relatively short work of the inbred guys.

 

[Crispy]

I respect your attention to detail in your evaluation of the quests in Fallout 3. I think I disliked so many aspects of the game that I may never have paid enough attention to them to ever care, but you make a good case.

 

[Butter]

Do you really consider Fallout 3 to be better than Fallout 4?

Fallout 3 actually feels like it's trying to be a Fallout game, even if it fails miserably at the attempt. Fallout 4 feels like it was made out of spite, like the people behind the scenes didn't want to be working on Fallout. It's better in several regards, e.g. dungeon design and general flow of combat, but it's also soulless and has no real vision.

Both are shit games that can't be recommended for any reason though.

 

[Crispy]

I've only ever considered the Todd-era Bethesda games to be LARPing simulators so I thought Fallout 4 was the much more entertaining game, but I realize that's not saying much.

Heavily-modded Skyrim is even better at it, so I don't think there's anything particularly unforgivable holding out hope that Starfield will allow some quality star LARPing.

 

[Ryzer]

Morrowind is Todd's era btw, It's the game he has the most input on.

 

[Crispy]

Yes, I realize that, but you and I both know -- and should be able to agree upon -- that the colloquial acceptance of "Todd-era games" should be Oblivion and on.

 

[Camel]

- Another well-known one - Tenpenny Tower fucks you over if you try to solve it the heavily-telegraphed peaceful way. Again, I can't think of any other quest in Fallout that does this. One of the main issues with NV for me is that everything tends to go exactly the way you want it, with minimal resistance, all the time (ie everyone in Primm just dumbly accepting your verdict about their future). The only thing I can think of that even comes close is that they were originally going to do it for Junktown in Fo1, but changed their minds during development.

The Tenpenny Tower's punch in the gut would've been far better if Bethesda had somewhat telegraphed the ghoul's betrayal. You see a typical story about prejudice and discrimination and act accordingly. The Pitt's main quest which gives you two equally bad choices in it's moral dilemma was also memorable for me.

 

[Lemming42]

Been a while since I've played it but I think you can get a few clues that the ghouls aren't quite right - the leader doesn't really try to hide his racism or his preparedness to use violence. Plus if you decide to play him a bit and offer to work with him, he'll tell you his plan to let the Ferals into the tower, at which point you can be pretty certain that letting him inside is going to end in tears.

The thing that always annoyed me about it is that you can't suggest the obvious solution of the ghouls just moving to Underworld, but I suppose the point is that the leader was a bit of a psycho and wasn't prepared to settle for anything less than getting in the tower and punishing the people inside.

 

[Zombra]

Yeah, I didn't really think about it until Lemming42 brought it up but Fallout 3, while flawed in many ways we can pick at, really did have good choice and consequence. Another Bethesda game I played through from beginning to end with three very different characters, having a distinct and uncompromised* experience with each.

*Except for being forced to kill a cockroach at the very beginning, ruining my intended "pacifist" playthrough.

Anyway I think we all agree on this score that Fallout 4 failed hard to give any sense of choice or consequence, and more to the point any sense of build diversity, even if some missions allow you to pick a side at the very end. There was no feeling at all that multiple playthroughs would be different in any way.

I'm hoping that they learned from this somewhat for Starfield. There is at least a minimal amount of lip service being given to character creation meaning anything, which it really didn't in F4.

 

[Trithne]

*Except for being forced to kill a cockroach at the very beginning, ruining my intended "pacifist" playthrough.

I think you can even excuse this - You're a child being given a gun and told to shoot the cockroach. Probably similar to an experience many people who go on to never kill anything have had over the years. The experience of killing the cockroach is what made the character a pacifist.

I greatly disliked F3, because of all the reasons that have been over the years - The retcons, the worldbuilding, the nonsense plot. But I have to agree with the statement that "Fallout 3 actually feels like it's trying to be a Fallout game" - It failed at it, but it tried.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

yeah, i remember the fantastic quests in fallout 3.

-go walk on a mine. for science.

-tighten 4 bolts or we'll all die of thirst.

-hello, i'm a perfect stranger, have you seen my father?
-but of course, he just moved to the next city.
[repeat]

-i do drugs.
-don't do drugs.
-i won't do drugs.

-i fight the good fight.
-[int 7] so you fight the good fight.

 

[Risewild]

- You can lie to Moira about every single task she gives you for her book, letting you skip essentially the entire quest if you meet a variety of appropriate skill checks. Depending on how often you do this, the book's quality will decrease, which yields a different blurb on the copy of the book you get, plus a different reward for finishing it. In other words, you're given a skill check to skip part or all of a quest, but it backfires on you later in a logical way. I don't think this ever really happens in any other Fallout game.
- Additionally, giving her sarcastic responses consistently will get a different reward (inexplicably, I think you get more action points or something) and the blurb again changes to reflect that the book is useless but amusingly-written.

You forgot to mention that you can just convince her not to write the guide altogether (using a Speech check), and we get a totally different perk reward, she gives a 30% discount to the Lone Wanderer, she more than doubles her repair skill and even her voice changes to be sadder instead of her usually enthusiastic one.

You also forgot to mention that if we complete the "get irradiated" quest's optional objective we get mutated and receive a perk as an extra reward.

 

[Camel]

- You can lie to Moira about every single task she gives you for her book, letting you skip essentially the entire quest if you meet a variety of appropriate skill checks. Depending on how often you do this, the book's quality will decrease, which yields a different blurb on the copy of the book you get, plus a different reward for finishing it. In other words, you're given a skill check to skip part or all of a quest, but it backfires on you later in a logical way. I don't think this ever really happens in any other Fallout game.
- Additionally, giving her sarcastic responses consistently will get a different reward (inexplicably, I think you get more action points or something) and the blurb again changes to reflect that the book is useless but amusingly-written.

You forgot to mention that you can just convince her not to write the guide altogether (using a Speech check), and we get a totally different perk reward, she gives a 30% discount to the Lone Wanderer, she more than doubles her repair skill and even her voice changes to be sadder instead of her usually enthusiastic one.

You also forgot to mention that if we complete the "get irradiated" quest's optional objective we get mutated and receive a perk as an extra reward.

Wasteland Survival Guide is the best quest in the game, yeah. Bethesda also cut a subquest of MC having to print it.

 

[Trithne]

Writing the Wasteland Survival Guide could've just been a game in itself, and would've been a better basis for one than the game it was.

 

[Zed]

It's interesting that they haven't released more gameplay videos since the last time. Doesn't this release in like september?

 

[Zombra]

It's interesting that they haven't released more gameplay videos since the last time. Doesn't this release in like september?

I feel like historically Bethesda haven't shown a hell of a lot until just before release. I remember having very little idea what Skyrim was going to even look like until I was playing it. I guess that was 12 years ago but still. Am I crazy?

 

[KateMicucci]

Do you really consider Fallout 3 to be better than Fallout 4?

Well, that's certainly a detailed answer, to which I can only think to reply: yours is the first evaluation of Fallout 3 I've ever read here that actually praises its quests and storyline.

For me Fallout 3 was a case of "the food is terrible, and the portions are too small!" Coming out of Oblivion and Morrowind where you couldn't walk ten feet without getting a new quest, Fallout 3 felt very empty. I was shocked that my quest journal was frequently almost empty. Even the "large" settlements, megaton, tenpenny and the aircraft carrier, had almost nothing to do.

Oblivion and Skyrim also never had quests that were just fundamentally retarded the same way as Fallout 3. The worst you could say for them is that a couple of Emil's had some plotholes. In TES you never had anything so stupid as little lamplight, the survival guide or the superheroes.

 

[Lemming42]

There's a lot of unmarked stuff in Fo3 and settlements tend to have weird little subplots going on. The aircraft carrier for example, Rivet City, has:
- two major, marked quests: The Replicated Man and Stealing Independence
- is visited as part of the main quest, Strictly Business, The Wasteland Survival Guide, and probably a couple others
- an unmarked quest to gather shotguns for the guard commander (I can't remember if there's anything interesting about this or if it's as boring as it sounds)
- an unmarked quest to either arrange or ruin a wedding
- an unmarked quest to donate to the church
- an unmarked quest to either frame or absolve a council member of crimes, with different rewards depending on who you pick
- an unmarked quest to save a woman from slavers or turn her in, with different rewards
- an unmarked quest to talk an old guy out of suicide (iirc there's a couple different ways to do it, including getting him to adopt one of the random homeless kids who's running around)
- an unmarked quest to bully one of the homeless kids into running away, which then opens a second unmarked quest to go find him and convince him to return home

I like these as a way to build flavour - it's like Junktown in Fo1, where you've got two big quests (Help Gizmo/Help Killian and Stop the Skulz), and then a lot of little things like mending or ruining the relationship between the waitress and the boxer, taking and restoring Neil's urn, convincing the Skulz's doorwoman to leave the gang, helping the woman who is taken captive by the raider if you stay at the Crash House, stopping or blackmailing the doctor who sells human meat, recruiting Dogmeat, etc