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

[Caim]

Doesn't matter where you go, there will always be some "abandoned outpost" or whatever that isn't actually abandoned. Sure makes it feel like an unexplored galaxy out there.

another abandoned outpost needs your help

 

[mediocrepoet]

I think we've very nearly reached the point where we'll have to start considering Call of Duty as an rpg. The legendary final step in the long decline.

As has been prophesied in the Elder Scrolls!

 

[Caim]

The guy reacted to the fallout of him not liking a game he played for 27+ hours.

 

[man-erg]

How much of an actual RPG is it, then? The bit's I've seen are mostly just shoot outs with pistols and rifles. Looks more like a lite FPS with some RPG elements tacked on. Like Borderlands but with far less interesting weapons. Do the guns ever get more interesting and actual futuristic spacey? if it has DNA seeking biological bullets than can be fired from 5 miles away, seeking out the person you've programmed a DNA match too, I may get it. But if all it is is space pistols, space rifles and a bit of space metal horse combat, might as well stick with RDR2.

Yeah, it's a looter shooter. Kill stuff, get rare weapons, get xp, etc. My issue right now is severe lack of enemy variety. I've been fighting the same type of enemies the whole time, I also think I made a mistake thinking that the wildlife are supposed to be posing a threat. I'm going to do some more exploration and see if I can kill real level 65 enemies with my lvl 16 character.

Yeah, that's the impression I get - there must be 10000 hours of shootouts with Space Pirates on YT already! I have a free key unlocked on PC release day and still not sure whether to use it or give it away. I don't despise FO4 or FO3, but don't like them all that much either. 30 - 40 hours and seen all they have to offer. And it looks like Starfield will be much the same. Can't get over how earthbound it all looks. Cowboy hats. Automatic rifles. Bars not too different to modern city bars. Then there's the space travel that looks much like 100+ games of the past 30 years. Only it will be worse. Because Bethesda. Is there not anything like a gravity gun? A nuclear missile launcher to nuke whole settlements? An option to role play a space insurance salesman?

Please somebody correct me, point out that I'm wrong and the game isn't derivative and full of the standard lazy minded space game tropes all in that cheesey easy to digest Bethesda sauce, else I'll be giving my key away! I so want to believe the hype but my faith is waning.

 

[Ibn Sina]

I am close to uninstalling just because of the combat alone, I am not even going to talk about all the other bad mechanics and grotesque animations and modeling.

Basically firearms in this game are extremely unsatisfying. You feel like you are firing from a BB gun or an airsoft gun. There is no visible feedback either visual or gameplay wise that the enemy got shot. The enemy does not get staggered. When they die from firearms they just collapse in the most hilarious way. The guns do not sound good and do not pack a punch, even with advanced revolver.

That is why I said Fallout 4 gunplay is better, because even with pipe guns if you hit an arm or a leg you can see the visual and gameplay cues that you hit that area. The enemy limbs, his weapon fall, he holds his arm and you might even dismember him if you keep shooting at it.

Here in starfield you can shoot anywhere you like on the enemy does not matter leg, arms, head its all the same damage output and makes no mechanical difference. The game is a massive step backwards in the shooting department alone. That is not to mention the lack of enemy variety they are just no interesting, its 95% humans and some bugs and alien crabs thrown in. Tougher enemies is just the same pirate with more health bars.

Combat is so clean, like if it was made for a pg13 movie with emphasis on no blood and gore. Combat does not feel visceral. Most of the time it feels you and the enemies are playing laser tag game at a park or something.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The game telegraphs to you that the crimson fleet massacred a defenseless research outpost, only for you to find Barrett calmly chatting with their leader about the nature of space travel, and when you wipe out the crimson fleet he kind of regrets you doing it, saying their leader was a cool guy for a crimson fleet boss. No, fuck you, bethestard writer. Machete kills the bad guys.

 

[AwesomeButton]

am I the only one who prefers Andreja over her?

I haven't met her yet. But... "Machete gets the space babes!"

 

[Ravielsk]

This yet again smells like another Fallout 3 situation where anyone defending is doing so more out of some principle rather than because they have an actual reason to defend the game. I have yet to hear or read any good reasons to invest into this game and I do not see that changing any time soon. Because basically even the praise I hear most of the time sounds like a half-assed negatives.
"Oh, its get better the further you go." - great another FFXIII, didn't know Todd made JRPGs
"Its really freeform, you can do anything you want." - so yet again Bethesda has no actual idea what the gameplay loop is like
"The story is not horrible." - wowsers trousers if that is not a fucking selling point then I do not know what is!

The cherry on top is that my rtx 4070 seems to be barely enough to run the game at 1080p while its still looking like a stripped down GTAV. This is a new low even for Todd and the fact that he is mysteriously silent about it all just points me in the direction that this is the best the game can do and no patches will come along to fix it.

 

[man-erg]

Combat does not feel visceral. Most of the time it feels you and the enemies are playing laser tag game at a park or something.

You've summed up exactly what it looks like in the Let's Plays. Laser tag in a park. Once you realise that, find it hard to see how the game can hold your interest. There's plenty other games do the same, but better.

 

[Lemming42]

On a long walk across the surface of Mars to get to a cave, and it's winding me up how much empty space all the planets have. I don't care if it's realistic, it's a videogame!

Imagine if, instead of 500 empty planets or whatever, the game had four planets that were all as in-depth as Skyrim, Cyrodiil, or Vvardenfell. There'd be cities on each one and then wilderness to explore full of dungeons and outposts and things - not procgen'd, but handmade.

Bethesda could have really doubled down on the formula they've used since MW here and created the Bethesda game to end all Bethesda games. Instead, they've created another one of their usual offerings, but made it harder to play by scattering the content out across a huge empty universe. You've got as much actual content as Skyrim, but you've got to trek through empty rocky fields to get to it.

 

[Lemming42]

Basically firearms in this game are extremely unsatisfying. You feel like you are firing from a BB gun or an airsoft gun. There is no visible feedback either visual or gameplay wise that the enemy got shot. The enemy does not get staggered. When they die from firearms they just collapse in the most hilarious way. The guns do not sound good and do not pack a punch, even with advanced revolver.

There's massive enemy stagger, they go flailing all over the place if they're shot. I'm using the Deadeye revolver and it staggers enemies with pretty much every hit.

Just shot this dude 8 levels above me now and he started complaining he couldn't hear and you can see him staggering backwards there. He kept going for like two meters.

 

[mediocrepoet]

How much of an actual RPG is it, then? The bit's I've seen are mostly just shoot outs with pistols and rifles. Looks more like a lite FPS with some RPG elements tacked on. Like Borderlands but with far less interesting weapons. Do the guns ever get more interesting and actual futuristic spacey? if it has DNA seeking biological bullets than can be fired from 5 miles away, seeking out the person you've programmed a DNA match too, I may get it. But if all it is is space pistols, space rifles and a bit of space metal horse combat, might as well stick with RDR2.

Yeah, it's a looter shooter. Kill stuff, get rare weapons, get xp, etc. My issue right now is severe lack of enemy variety. I've been fighting the same type of enemies the whole time, I also think I made a mistake thinking that the wildlife are supposed to be posing a threat. I'm going to do some more exploration and see if I can kill real level 65 enemies with my lvl 16 character.

Yeah, that's the impression I get - there must be 10000 hours of shootouts with Space Pirates on YT already! I have a free key unlocked on PC release day and still not sure whether to use it or give it away. I don't despise FO4 or FO3, but don't like them all that much either. 30 - 40 hours and seen all they have to offer. And it looks like Starfield will be much the same. Can't get over how earthbound it all looks. Cowboy hats. Automatic rifles. Bars not too different to modern city bars. Then there's the space travel that looks much like 100+ games of the past 30 years. Only it will be worse. Because Bethesda. Is there not anything like a gravity gun? A nuclear missile launcher to nuke whole settlements? An option to role play a space insurance salesman?

Please somebody correct me, point out that I'm wrong and the game isn't derivative and full of the standard lazy minded space game tropes all in that cheesey easy to digest Bethesda sauce, else I'll be giving my key away! I so want to believe the hype but my faith is waning.

Game is boring, derivative and full of gay wokeness and googly eyed negronauts. PM me your key, plz.

 

[Vic]

don't understand that locational damage doesn't exist. The crosshair gives visible feedback when you hit an enemy's weakspot, and hitting them in the head enough often staggers them and they cry out "my eyes!"

 

[mediocrepoet]

don't understand that locational damage doesn't exist. The crosshair gives visible feedback when you hit an enemy's weakspot, and hitting them in the head enough often staggers them and they cry out "my eyes!"

"My eyes! ... taking six .45 rounds to the face really smarts! I can hardly see! And what... was that a grenade!? I feel sunburnt!"

 

[Potato Canon]

I don't have any sympathy for anyone who would buy this. Did you not learn your lesson from the last two Bethesda monstrosities? How could you think this time would be any different?

 

[AwesomeButton]

The guns do not sound good and do not pack a punch, even with advanced revolver.

That is why I said Fallout 4 gunplay is better, because even with pipe guns if you hit an arm or a leg you can see the visual and gameplay cues that you hit that area. The enemy limbs, his weapon fall, he holds his arm and you might even dismember him if you keep shooting at it.

Look at this, and weep like I did:

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/69403?tab=videos
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/videos/14224
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/65834

 

[AwesomeButton]

Imagine if, instead of 500 empty planets or whatever, the game had four planets that were all as in-depth as Skyrim, Cyrodiil, or Vvardenfell.

But this would be work. Whereas generating a rock landscape costs nothing.

 

[Robotigan]

From everything I've seen and read about the game in the last week...I maintain my opinion from the first trailer - the game's weakest point is the lack of hook. They have good set-up with Nasapunk they were going for, but aside of that it's rather dull. Compare that to grandiosity of Oblivion and its daedric invasion, epicness and dragon fighting in Skyrim, even the satirical climate of 60s in Fallout 4. All of the previous Bethesda games had concrete identity. Starfield doesn't seem to have even half of that.

I agree, at least about the plot hook. But at the same time this is literally what everyone said they wanted.

• "I don't want to be a super important chosen one right away! I want to play an ordinary person going about their business."
• "Bethesda sucks at main quests, they should stop making them altogether!"
• "You become too powerful too quickly! You're supposed to be weak in the beginning!"
• "I hate the tutorialization and hand holding!"

I had always been suspicious of these complaints because outside of Morrowind (and Fallout 76 strangely enough), most of the RPGs I've played with any kind of budget do elevate the main character to a privileged status. People say this stuff because they think it makes them sound sophisticated and it's easy to discount the value of the main hook on subsequent playthroughs when you're already familiar with how the game works. Even the people who never completed the main quest, probably followed along with it until they were comfortable with the mechanics.

I'll say this for Morrowind though, you don't get to the disorientingly huge Vivec City right away. It eases you in with Seyda Neen and then Balmora so it becomes clear that you're not supposed to hang around one city for too long. Starfield drops you into New Atlantis right off that bat, maybe to parallel Mass Effect? But it suffers the exact same problem as Mass Effect. The player hasn't played enough of the game to know what the game is yet so they're going to meander around and mistake the "get to know the city" fetch quests as being the meat of the game. Heck, most of the big city economy isn't even useful to the player yet. All they really need is a Riverwood Trader.

Best Bethesda baseline game to date, would be much better if they had the game take place on just a few hand-crafted big locations instead of immense space filled with repetetive content.

I think gamers need to play more board games. Board games are procedural by their very nature. You can't rely on presentation, convoluted narratives, or highly scripted events. You need game systems that provide meaningful engagement and diversity across permutations derived from the same base state. Furthermore, you also can't just chuck arbitrary complexity at them because the setup will become unbearable. You need to tune mechanics that are simple on their face but explode into emergent decision networks in practice. Chess and Go are very elegant games because their rule sets are so simple you could teach them to a child in 15 minutes, but the decision networks are so complex that even with entire datacenters of computing resources thrown at them they remain un-solved.

I guess what kind of annoys me is that despite this stuff being the closest to what the technical definition of a "game" is, reviewers don't seem to take it into account very much unless they're evaluating a strategy game or boomer shooter or something. Worse yet, sometimes good game mechanics look janky and good animations make for poor mechanics but the animation is always what wins critics over. Now I do understand that some games are more about an immersive story than the game loop but it's increasingly common that games that are definitively the former also advertise themselves as the latter, do it poorly, and no one calls them out on it. Rockstar's economy completely breaks down if you do more than a few side missions and yet no one seems to care.

 

[Lemming42]

Imagine if, instead of 500 empty planets or whatever, the game had four planets that were all as in-depth as Skyrim, Cyrodiil, or Vvardenfell.

But this would be work. Whereas generating a rock landscape costs nothing.

But the baffling thing is, they've done the work - it's just scattered out across the needlessly large map. They've more or less made one of their usual games, in terms of the amount of actual quests and content and such.

It'd be like if they made Skyrim, except decided that Windhelm and Whiterun should exist on completely different maps which can only be travelled between via fast travel, and that those maps should be one hundred times larger than they need to be, and that the game's dungeons should spread across them with miles of blank space in between that the player has no vehicles to travel across.

Bethesda's formula was "there's always something worth checking out over the next hill", which was perfect and kept people playing for hours, but in Starfield it's "there's always something worth checking out if you spend an hour messing around going to look for it first".

 

[Vic]

just checked out what reddit says about this because you are all whining bitches here and they all say "man I was so bored in my first few hours but then it just clicked!"

wtf

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Looks like MxR is back to doing mods for a Bethesda game. Reupload because he showed too much of Starfield's first nude mod, which is made by the guy who made the first nude mod for Skyrim.

I'll be the coomer and say that anything that doesn't reach the standards of Skyrim nude mods is completely trash, but also expected. The customization, details and physics (That applies not just to the naked bodies but also to clothing and armors) of Skyrim mods are unmatched.

 

[Lemming42]

just checked out what reddit says about this because you are all whining bitches here and they all say "man I was so bored in my first few hours but then it just clicked!"

wtf

That's been my experience too, and my girlfriend's, and two of my friends. You are highly unusual and unique for enjoying New Atlantis, which everyone else hated. Take it as a compliment.

 

[Vic]

just checked out what reddit says about this because you are all whining bitches here and they all say "man I was so bored in my first few hours but then it just clicked!"

wtf

That's been my experience too, and my girlfriend's, and two of my friends. You are highly unusual and unique for enjoying New Atlantis, which everyone else hated. Take it as a compliment.

todd created a masterpiece that only those of the highest IQ can immediately grasp

 

[Crispy]

One time I saw the exact same NPC model 3 times in an alley.

This has mostly been solved, and for quite a long time. It still occasionally happens, but there's a lot more variety in random NPCs now.

Now for Starfield I can say that the world feels much more alive, and if you walk around in Akila NPCs actually talk with each other like in Oblivion. "Isnt this where we had our first date?" "No we had our second date here", children running up to their mom and having little gossip. etc.

This is also p. much an illusion. It's just the new version of, "I saw a mudcrab yesterday," with just a little less retardation factored in.

Plus, the randomly generated NPCs actually result in many NCPs looking unique and the facial animations are actually very fluid

wut

 

[Lemming42]

Lmfao. Alright, it turns out when you agree to marry someone, a lot of their dialogue changes. This is very cool most of the time, and adds a nice touch. However, I've just discovered that sleeping in a bed while in the presence of your beloved causes some dialogue of a humorous, erotic nature to trigger:

On its own, this is fairly amusing. However, it's not context-sensitive - it's just any bed. So I'm getting these lines in this room:

This is a raider base that we're clearing out, and the only reason I went to sleep was to heal myself. You may notice a raider's freshly-slain corpse is lying face-down on the bed we were in. This has added a whole new galaxy of unfortunate and shocking implications. There are also more raiders actively hunting us, raising questions about the safety and rationality of our romantic escapade.

Todd, please patch it so that the funny sexy dialogue only triggers when sleeping aboard the safety and decency of the player's ship. With no corpses present. Thanks.