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

[Hafnar the Jester]

You know AAA refers to production values, right?

It refers to whatever you want it to. In normiespeak it just means big budget.
And I'm sure Rimworld had humongous budget, especially compared to Bethesda

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You know AAA refers to production values, right?

It refers to whatever you want it to. In normiespeak it just means big budget.
And I'm sure Rimworld had humongous budget, especially compared to Bethesda

I think you'd be surprised at how small the budget is for Bethesda's games.

 

[Hafnar the Jester]

I think you'd be surprised at how small the budget is for Bethesda's games.

More than 100 000 000 USD per game is small?

This conversation reminded me that I forgot to take my meds today because I start to needlessly question reality.

 

[Zombra]

In this thread

What is AAA

 

[The Wall]

Anything that costs less then 1 trillion dollars is indie game, like Skyrim

 

[Caim]

In this thread

What is AAA

It's called AAA because when you see how shit it is it makes you want to scream AAA.

 

[Robotigan]

Then again, whether Bethesda is "AAA" at all is debatable. I'm not sure people realize how few developers they actually have.

They're AAA. The scope of their games and the resources spent on them is comparable to other major players in the industry.

When you see thousands of names in the game credits for RDR2 or LoU2 that's actually a bit of a glimpse into their troubled development (another indicator being how much time they spent in production). These games are of similar scope to Breath of the Wild and God of War which have just a few hundred developer credits, much closer to a Bethesda title. It's not so difficult to arrive at the natural conclusion that RDR2 and LoU2 must have been horrifically mismanaged if they required a gargantuan list of contributors and several months of crunch to get a similar output. And indeed insiders have confirmed as much. Rockstar and Naughty Dog have a reputation within the industry for being grindhouses that chew through young, bright-eyed new grads until the project is complete. Which also means they work at a really inefficient pace and sometimes wind up throwing dozens of novices at problems that could been solved by an experienced dev in like a week. But unlike CDPR, Rockstar and Naughty Dog are the golden boy of very large publishers with deep pockets so they get all the money, delays, and resources they need until their projects are done.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

They're AAA. The scope of their games and the resources spent on them is comparable to other major players in the industry.

Bethesda has never released the development costs of their games, any notion otherwise is unfounded speculation.

 

[Robotigan]

Bethesda has never released the development costs of their games, any notion otherwise is unfounded speculation.

Every time they hold an E3 conference for one of their games, they reserve the Figueroa Billboard spot. I'd call that AAA.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Every time they hold an E3 conference

Bethesda never even attended E3 until 2015.

 

[luj1]

That depends, do you consider Stardew Valley and Rimworld to be AAA games?

No, and why would I? The amount of man-hours and staff Rimworld took (and its sold copies) are nowhere near anything made by Bethesda after Morrowind. Rimworld is not a literal part of Zoomer/Millenial culture like Skyrim/Fallout are.

You know AAA refers to production values, right?

most of those production values went to marketing and Hollywood voice actors... their every game is a technical zombie

so they are AAA in name only

 

[DeepOcean]

To be fair, EA also pay their Q&A team for Battlefield less than the marketing department wastes on toilet paper and this after torturing them with Battlefield 2042 for years, so, not paying alot for the actual developers is a standard for AAA games.

 

[Hafnar the Jester]

AAA is like that Chad screwing your girlfriend on the side. Everyone claims he exists, but noone ever sees him.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

You know AAA refers to production values, right?

It refers to whatever you want it to. In normiespeak it just means big budget.
And I'm sure Rimworld had humongous budget, especially compared to Bethesda

I think you'd be surprised at how small the budget is for Bethesda's games.

there's actually no budget at all. it just works.

 

[udm]

It just works.

 

[Baron Dupek]

New "video" dropped
Welcome to Constellation?
more like
Welcome to Constipation

move along

 

[vortex]

move along

You just wait when Strield drops, and we learn what Constellation actually is, we'll be blown away.

Inb4, it's multiplayer mode.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Inb4, it's multiplayer mode.

Of course it is.
FO76 was just a testbed for retrofitting multiplayer (back in) to the engine. People who think it won't have multiplayer are silly.

 

[Ryzer]

It will be marvellous.

 

[Smocaine]

New "video" dropped
Welcome to Constellation?
more like
Welcome to Constipation

move along

William Shen was the Lead Designer on Far Harbor, he's now the Lead Quest Designer (and likely writer) on Starfield, so that's great news
Emil is the Design Director, which is fine I guess since he likely isn't writing

 

[Kev Inkline]

So Bethesda is now an indie studio? Codex always finds fresh angles.

 

[KateMicucci]

Emil is the Design Director, which is fine I guess since he likely isn't writing

Emil is still responsible for most of the bad design decisions. The writing is the last thing I care about.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Can't wait for the November, each game from Beth gave me at least 100 hours of joy.

 

[Smocaine]

• Giant open-world for the player to do what they want, focus on non-linear exploration.
• "It's nice with Starfield to go back to some things we didn't do, the backgrounds, the traits, defining your character, all those stats. There's so many games now that do those things, that people are ready for something that does a lot of the things that older hardcore RPGs, something that we used to do, doing those again in a new way."
• Severely levelled up the tech for character creation, scanning real-world models etc.
• "What makes the world feel whole, what are the groups that would make it feel whole and believable, and how does the player interact with them?"
• The foe faction, the Crimson Fleet, can be joined.
• If you're a good player and don't want to play as a bad guy, you can join the Crimson Fleet and report on them to your superiors/other factions, allowing you to be a 'space cop'.
• New persuasion mini-game, didn't start with "Let's do an evolution of the old Oblivion system, but there are a couple of beats there."
• With the persuasion mini-game, you have to think about "What's my risk here, which do I want to choose? We didn't want it to be a system where there was definitely the 'right' thing to say."
• "It feels like you're having a conversation where you're actually trying to persuade somebody of something."

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

LOVE YOU TODD, bring this shit as fast as possible.