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

[Zed Duke of Banville]

This would simulate a torus-shaped planet, but you get the idea.

Toroid-shaped planets are the best planets!

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Maybe I'm wrong.

Theoretically, there should be nothing but relatively empty, sparse terrain for an "uninhabited" planet. Bethesda has had enough practice of pre-loading cells for their games, with Skyrim doing a fairly good job of it. As long as you treat the large cities and establishments as compartmentalized instances, which is exactly what they did with Skyrim's cities until mods "fixed" it, I don't see any monumental problems with them realtime generating the terrain until the algorithm of "you've walked all the way around this planet" is satisfied and you're back to where you started (assuming you somehow never varied your direction).

Maybe one of the reasons they didn't include any land vehicles -- nor, for that matter, the ability to fly your spacecraft freewill in atmosphere -- is because they didn't want to spoil the illusion of how large any given planet is supposed to be.

There isn't a technical limitation, and I doubt there's a planet-size-illusion limitation. It's just the vision Todd had for the game.

As you all know, in Daggerfall, you fast traveled to each dungeon. Sure you could traverse the world on foot, but it would take forever and not be fun. Todd transplanted that concept to Starfield. There will be five kinds of gameplay loops:

Gameplay Loop 1

1. get dungeon marked on map
2. fast travel
3. do some stuff
4. fast travel away

Gameplay Loop 2

1. get zone marked on map
2. fast travel
3. explore zone and do stuff
4. fast travel away

Gameplay Loop 3

1. be in large zone (city, or other area set up to be an area of aggregated points of interest)
2. do lots of stuff in it, including quests within the zone
3. get sent out to gameplay loops 1-2

Gameplay Loop 4

1. autistically build settlements and ships

Gameplay Loop 5

1. get ambushed by a random event
2. deal with it
3. get back to Gameplay Loops 1-4

None of these gameplay loops are enhanced by exploring the world like you would in Todd's other games. Of course, the option to explore is still there... it'll just kinda suck, like in Daggerfall.

 

[Drakortha]

There isn't a technical limitation, and I doubt there's a planet-size-illusion limitation. It's just the vision Todd had for the game.

Todd doesn't have a vision.

Todd works for Microsoft to make and shill products with a Bethesda stamp on it. That's all. And the games are only as innovative and ambitious as they need to be as determined by a corporate body.

Too many people in here still falsely believe these games are a culmination of creative expression. They are not. They are too bland and soulless to be considered as art.

 

[Crispy]

Stupid take.

Bethesda, including Todd Howard, were making games long before they came under Microsoft's umbrella.

Think before you post, please.

 

[Drakortha]

Stupid take.

Bethesda, including Todd Howard, were making games long before they came under Microsoft's umbrella.

Think before you post, please.

And they sold out, especially after Skyrim. You living under a rock or something?

Todd is more a salesperson / actor than he is a designer anymore. It's pretty obvious.

"Buy our game, we're Bethesda. You remember Bethesda, don't you?"

 

[Drakortha]

King Crispy is the kind of retard who gets excited about the new Star Wars because Luke Skywalker appears on the screen.

 

[Crispy]

I've been playing Bethesda games before you even existed. They may not be the pinnacle of PC gaming but a game like Daggerfall gets my respect for the boundaries it pushed.

I don't like nuBethesda any more than you do, but if Starfield harkens back to the way things used to be, it'll get my respect, too.

Keep seething in the mean time, Drakortha. Almost everything I've seen you post has been a shit take.

 

[Butter]

Todd Howard is too hands-off for anyone to mistake him for an auteur. Claiming he has a vision, of all things, is absurd. He mostly just lets his employees do shit they think is cool. People like Emil Pagliarulo and Ashley Cheng probably exercise way more creative influence over Bethesda products than Todd does.

 

[Drakortha]

I've been playing Bethesda games before you even existed. They may not be the pinnacle of PC gaming but a game like Daggerfall gets my respect for the boundaries it pushed.

I don't like nuBethesda any more than you do, but if Starfield harkens back to the way things used to be, it'll get my respect, too.

Keep seething in the mean time, Drakortha. Almost everything I've seen you post has been a shit take.

Daggerfall was like 20 years ago mate. A completely different era.

Starfield will harken back to Fallout 4 and Skyrim. Think that's a shit take? We'll see who's right.

 

[Lemming42]

Todd strikes me as someone who's as impressed by the technical side of things as he is by any actual game mechanics. His remarks about the TES series almost always seem to be that the games are "big" and you can "go anywhere". He just finds the idea of being able to walk in any direction you want without guidance to be cool; the actual specifics of what you end up doing in this big open world is less important, beyond shooting/stabbing/burning things.

It explains Fallout 3 - I think Todd genuinely is a fan of the first Fallout, and truly believed that the Morrowind/Oblivion style of game would be a perfect match for the Fallout franchise, because his main enjoyment of Fallout came from being able to go in any direction he wanted and find shit. Fallout 3 makes it even better, because you can go anywhere in FIRST PERSON!!! No more travel map with knockoff Aphex twin playing over it, you can actually walk through empty space for real now! It also explains why his marketing for Starfield revolves chiefly around the size of it - 100000 planets!!!

I'm not sure exactly who to credit for the good points of Morrowind/Oblivion/Fo3/Skyrim era of games. It seemed like there was always a group of people with reasonably good ideas who managed to get some interesting stuff into the games (and Todd, to his credit, let them do it), but those people seemingly just vanished by the time of Fallout 4. And Todd mainly just seems exhausted these days, like he doesn't care anymore. Wrote about it in a big post somewhere else but he didn't seem enthusiastic about Fallout 4, and he doesn't seem to have rallied for Starfield.

 

[EvilWolf]

Maybe I'm wrong.

Theoretically, there should be nothing but relatively empty, sparse terrain for an "uninhabited" planet. Bethesda has had enough practice of pre-loading cells for their games, with Skyrim doing a fairly good job of it. As long as you treat the large cities and establishments as compartmentalized instances, which is exactly what they did with Skyrim's cities until mods "fixed" it, I don't see any monumental problems with them realtime generating the terrain until the algorithm of "you've walked all the way around this planet" is satisfied and you're back to where you started (assuming you somehow never varied your direction).

Maybe one of the reasons they didn't include any land vehicles -- nor, for that matter, the ability to fly your spacecraft freewill in atmosphere -- is because they didn't want to spoil the illusion of how large any given planet is supposed to be.

There isn't a technical limitation, and I doubt there's a planet-size-illusion limitation. It's just the vision Todd had for the game.

As you all know, in Daggerfall, you fast traveled to each dungeon. Sure you could traverse the world on foot, but it would take forever and not be fun. Todd transplanted that concept to Starfield. There will be five kinds of gameplay loops:

Gameplay Loop 1

1. get dungeon marked on map
2. fast travel
3. do some stuff
4. fast travel away

Gameplay Loop 2

1. get zone marked on map
2. fast travel
3. explore zone and do stuff
4. fast travel away

Gameplay Loop 3

1. be in large zone (city, or other area set up to be an area of aggregated points of interest)
2. do lots of stuff in it, including quests within the zone
3. get sent out to gameplay loops 1-2

Gameplay Loop 4

1. autistically build settlements and ships

Gameplay Loop 5

1. get ambushed by a random event
2. deal with it
3. get back to Gameplay Loops 1-4

None of these gameplay loops are enhanced by exploring the world like you would in Todd's other games. Of course, the option to explore is still there... it'll just kinda suck, like in Daggerfall.

I 100% believe this is realistically what we're getting with planet exploration and honestly I'm fine with it.

Stupid take.

Bethesda, including Todd Howard, were making games long before they came under Microsoft's umbrella.

Think before you post, please.

Have you even read his signature? Ackowledge his agenda.

 

[Robotigan]

None of these gameplay loops are enhanced by exploring the world like you would in Todd's other games. Of course, the option to explore is still there... it'll just kinda suck, like in Daggerfall.

Depends how robust the building and crafting systems are. Survival crafting games get more mileage out of exploration than arguably any other genre. There's something primal in our psyche that is compelled to exploit land for all its resources.

 

[Robotigan]

Todd Howard is too hands-off for anyone to mistake him for an auteur. Claiming he has a vision, of all things, is absurd. He mostly just lets his employees do shit they think is cool. People like Emil Pagliarulo and Ashley Cheng probably exercise way more creative influence over Bethesda products than Todd does.

I think Todd's mostly involved at the highest level overview: world tone, broad themes, and pitches some of the defining mechanics. He's not a meticulous director so much as an ideas guy with a good feel for where the industry is headed. Sort of like the Steve Jobs of gaming except his coworkers like him more.

 

[Butter]

Todd Howard is too hands-off for anyone to mistake him for an auteur. Claiming he has a vision, of all things, is absurd. He mostly just lets his employees do shit they think is cool. People like Emil Pagliarulo and Ashley Cheng probably exercise way more creative influence over Bethesda products than Todd does.

I think Todd's mostly involved at the highest level overview: world tone, broad themes, and pitches some of the defining mechanics. He's not a meticulous director so much as an ideas guy with a good feel for where the industry is headed. Sort of like the Steve Jobs of gaming except his coworkers like him more.

This would be more believable if all of his games since Skyrim hadn't been chasing trends instead of setting them.

 

[Reinhardt]

Who's got time for that gay romance shit? Just grab them by the pussy.

"pussy" from "pus"?

 

[Drakortha]

I think Todd's mostly involved at the highest level overview: world tone, broad themes, and pitches some of the defining mechanics. He's not a meticulous director so much as an ideas guy with a good feel for where the industry is headed. Sort of like the Steve Jobs of gaming except his coworkers like him more.

Todd Howard, the Steve Jobs of Gaming?

... Please have mercy on me. I'm begging you..

 

[NecroLord]

Todd, the Steve Jobs of Gaming?

No, he is not nearly as pretentious and insufferable.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I think Todd's mostly involved at the highest level overview: world tone, broad themes, and pitches some of the defining mechanics. He's not a meticulous director so much as an ideas guy with a good feel for where the industry is headed. Sort of like the Steve Jobs of gaming except his coworkers like him more.

Todd Howard, the Steve Jobs of Gaming?

... Please have mercy on me. I'm begging you..

It wasn't a compliment.

 

[Drakortha]

Ah, my bad. I assumed Steve Jobs was some tech guy that zoomers worshipped. I don't know anything about him tbh.

 

[Kiste]

And they sold out, especially after Skyrim. You living under a rock or something?

How exactly did they sell out (I mean other than by literally by selling the company)?

All I see is a very consistent straight line of , not some sort of post-Microsoft cliff.

 

[Drakortha]

And they sold out, especially after Skyrim. You living under a rock or something?

How exactly did they sell out (I mean other than by literally by selling the company)?

They kicked their own community to the curb. Bethesda forums, which I had been an active member on since Morrowind, got shut down shortly after Skyrim became a major success with the wider gaming sphere. Then came in Bethesda.net in it's place. Bethesda wanted to be like Blizzard.

Ever since then all they've done is put Skyrim on a pedestal for no other reason than it was their biggest seller. Their other titles may as well not exist. Fallout 4 proved they don't care about the source material anymore. At least with Fallout 3 they tried to look like they cared. Todd made a huge post on the forums prior to Fallout 3's release reassuring everyone that the franchise was in good hands. Now look at the abomination that is 76, and now Starfield, where they haven't showcased a single in-depth RPG feature so far. It's a game for people who don't know Bethesda's reputation.

Bethesda don't want to make engaging RPG's. They want to make live service products that are generic enough to capture as wide an audience as possible (does it get any more generic than pseudo NASA in space?) and they want to be regarded as a household brand with their own mascots, as well, so they can sell worthless toys to consumers just like Disney does it.

They sold out. And the people in this thread talking about Daggerfall are seriously delusional.

 

[Silverfish]

Todd Howard, the Steve Jobs of Gaming?

Except Todd is still alive. Who's laughing now?

 

[lycanwarrior]

Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 have reignited the 'quantity vs quality' debate around RPGs that promise a billion hours of gameplay, but I think they can actually deliver:

https://www.pcgamer.com/starfield-a...meplay-but-i-think-they-can-actually-deliver/

 

[tritosine2k]

So what if they are mainstream. Maybe NOT going mainstream was a pie in the sky expectation to begin with. In any case, mobile is here and it can run whatever F3 <> F4 inbetween so just pick up the pace and forge ahead if you know so much about this stuff.

https://leegoonz.blog/2020/09/22/voxelizations-of-shadow-for-mobile-study-case/
https://georgeloines.com/voxel-shadows-report.pdf

you can find complete unity scene for the second.

 

[Crispy]

They kicked their own community to the curb.

Bethesda forums, which I had been an active member on since Morrowind

I see what this is all about now. You got End of Rhined by Todd.