Starfield Thread - now with Shattered Space horror expansion

[ERYFKRAD]

You'd have no trouble immediately recognising a screenshot from each of these games, which I don't think is true of Starfield.

That's obviously saints row

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

City is supposedly all about drugs but junkies don't exist, and the only homeless beggar you meet is akshually super smart and talk like she has a business degree.

Neon has one junkie depicted properly; any resemblance to a Codexer must be purely coincidental.

 

[Lord_Potato]

There are sections of Starfield that have impressed upon me some thought towards being "artistic". Neon City, for example, almost evokes a better cyberpunk atmosphere than even Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 does.

Lol, no. Night City in Cyberpunk is an entire city, so it offers many different flavors - there is an entertainment district, business downtown, industrial zone etc. It has many nightclubs, also differing in flavor and style.

Neon City is three small gamey areas (core that pretends to be cool, but is too cramped due to engine limitations, poorfag dwelling place and fish factory) with the world's lamest nightclub. Music there is crap, and dancers are guys in latex alien suits and everyone cries out 'that's the best place in the galaxy' or 'I worked for years to get here' for maximum cringe factor.

Akila is also rather convincing, imo, as a frontier-type town.

It would be perfectly convicing if it was indeed a frontier town, a besieged outpost of humanity on the far fringes of the known galaxy.

The problem is, it is none of these things. Akila is the capital city of the Freestar Collective, the second most powerful faction in the galaxy. It is the seat of the board of Governors and the main HQ of the Rangers.

Are we really to believe that a power that fought United Colonies into a standstill and once fielded an enormous army of battlemechs can't deal with some nasty critters living outside the very walls of its capital city?

Devs where trying to achieve too much with poor Akila. It should indeed be a frontier town, while FC should receive a proper capital.

 

[Crispy]

A E S T H E T I C A L L Y

 

[Lemming42]

The inconsistency is part of the aesthetic problem, though - plenty of individual elements of the visual design could work in isolation, but when taken together as one whole they're jarring and incoherent. Then you factor in the logic issues mentioned above and the result is that it doesn't feel like a coherent setting at all, even by its own internal logic. By contrast, in their pre-Fo4 games, the art direction was often the only thing holding the games' setting together.

Any individual aesthetic/visual strengths each of the planets have just serve to further disintegrate the player's interest in the game's setting, because each one raises new questions about what the hell anything is meant to mean, and makes it even less clear what technology level the setting it at, what the culture is, how people live, etc. Akila would look great if the game was a space western, but then there's the solarpunk planet and the cyberpunk planet right next to it, and our ship looks like something out of a crap 1970s BBC sci-fi series, so what could have been a case of pleasing art direction becomes something that repels the player even further from being able to invest in the game's world.

It'd be like if Whiterun was a medieval european castle filled with knights wearing plate armour and saying "hail" and having jousting tournaments, and then Falkreath was Victorian London with gaslamps and carriages, and Windhelm was a tribe of nomadic Amazons from Ancient Greece who are also wearing Apple watches, and the player was travelling around in a Sherman tank. Being a bit faceitous but you get the idea - each element might be cool on its own but it'd be completely impossible for players to invest or immerse in the world, especially if these massive discrepancies in technology, style, and culture weren't given any real explanation (as in Starfield).

 

[Gargaune]

Lemming42, can you elaborate some more on your preference for Fo3's aesthetics over 4's? I felt like whatever art direction Fo3 could've boasted was severely hampered by the technical implementation and buried under a mountain of sick filter. Meanwhile, Fo4's decision to forego the Western-inspired desert for semi-charred woodlands was a definite step back (as the Desperados mod proves), but it's otherwise visually sound and there's parts where the style really shines through, like downtown Boston or even DC. Fo3 does have the superior worldspace over Fo4 and NV, it genuinely feels more like a wasteland should, but as a consequence of scope and density, so level design rather than art direction.

P.S. The Institute aesthetics admittedly don't work, though, not narratively and not visually. I get that's it's meant to be different, but way too much Star Trek.

 

[Lemming42]

The DC parts of Fallout 3 tap into a very majestic early 20th century America vibe, I think. As a kid I remember seeing the old Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes cartoons and I was always utterly enraptured by the background art, the big city skyscrapers and the strangely unsettling suburbs. Buster Keaton movies too, that showed off towering 1920s city streets. I'm from the UK which might factor into it, the whole thing looked very unusual and appealing to me, both for the fact that it was decades before I was born and also as it was mostly incomparable to the type of architecture I'd seen in real life. Fallout 3 calls on that exact feeling really well.

That sense of lushness and majesty contrasts brilliantly with the decay inherent to the Fallout setting. The Statesman Hotel is really cool, both the exterior and interior - you can imagine the flappers and bigwigs who would have walked down those red-carpeted corridors once upon a time. The visual design is complemented massively by the radio too, a rare stroke of genius for Bethesda. Listening to a langurous Billie Holiday song while roaming around what's left of an opulent, decadent past era is wonderfully evocative.

As for the wasteland, it's a step down but it does radiate a degree of eerie 1950s faux-cheeriness, again contrasted with brutal destruction. I also like how the visuals call upon pulp fiction and b-movies - the Mirelurk, for example, was designed to deliberately to look like a cheap rubber costume from a 50s movie, and the Feral Ghouls look similarly pleasingly bizarre. That all ties into the game's overall intended tone, which is surreal and pulpy. Compare with the Fo4 variant; the Fo3 one looks stylised and unique while the Fo4 one seems to be going for a dull realism and just looks like a slightly shitty rendering of a corpse:

With Fo4 I'm just generally never sure what exactly it's meant to evoke, the 30s - 50s influences are still there in parts but some of the buildings look downright strange, like plastic toys that have been inflated to skyscraper size. That could be cool - especially the contrast between the old pre-20th century brick buildings and the garish newer ones - but the whole game's tone and mood seems so muted to me that I'm not really sure what they're going for with the visual design. Fallout 3 goes straight for the pulp stuff and showers you with pulp era/"golden age" of sci-fi era aesthetics right out of the gate, while my main memories of Fallout 4 are people in rags standing around on farms, the unusual skyscrapers in Boston, and Diamond City which sadly made no impression on me. There's also those mobsters with tommy guns who just felt very out of place, especailly with the greatly reduced presence of the pulp themes, though I only played the game in full once or twice so I could have missed the explanation for their presence.

As with the Starfield criticisms above, part of the issue with Fo4's art direction is that I can't really tell what tone the game is going for overall, so I'm not sure what moods or influences the visuals are meant to be calling on. Fallout 3 evokes (successfully IMO) old pulp magazines, 1950s b-movies, and a sense of bitter nostalgia, whereas Fo4 doesn't really evoke anything for me other than a weird feeling of gaudiness. Fo3 often went for visually striking, highly memorable surrealness too: the immaculate Tenpenny Tower standing in the middle of the barren wasteland, the entirety of Oasis, the gravity-defying structure of Megaton, stuff like that, which I don't remember there being much of in Fo4 - understandable since they reduced the pulpiness and went for something a bit more grounded, but it makes it harder for the game to carve out a visual and thematic identity.

 

[Gargaune]

I have to wonder whether the higher visual density is also playing a role, it's easier to maintain a consistent style when you're working with fewer objects. You're right that the high-tech buildings got a reskin, kinda moving into a space age retrofuturism, though some of the 30s deco trim is still present, like on the National Guard Training Yard building. It's definitely more mixed, but then I felt the urban part of the Capital Wasteland was a little repetitive, whereas Fo4's Boston is more like real-life London - you pop up at Bank in the 19th century and then boom, the Walkie-Talkie's melting your hat.

There's also those mobsters with tommy guns who just felt very out of place, especailly with the greatly reduced presence of the pulp themes, though I only played the game in full once or twice so I could have missed the explanation for their presence.

Nah, you didn't miss anything. It's one of my major recurring bugbears with Bethesda, the "whatever, bro" worldbuilding. But that's on the writers, not the artists.

 

[Fedora Master]

Rename thread to Starfield - Epic Shit Takes from Bethestards

e: Thank you!

 

[Elttharion]

Bethesda are individually rebutting Starfield Steam reviewers, defending the loading breaks and "empty" worlds​

Bethesda's heaping plateful of space-spaghetti Starfield presently rejoices in the status of a Mixed Steam user review rating, with over 80,000 such reviews posted to date. Bethesda High Command are clearly displeased with this, and several unnamed but platform-verified developers have begun replying to and rebutting individual Steam reviewers, giving apparent priority to complaints about the game's loading breaks during fast travel and when moving between maps.

"While there may be loading screens in between fast travelling, just consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under 3 seconds," reads one such reply (thanks to Eurogamer for passing this on, and to Juicehead for the original spot). "We believe that shortcoming will not hinder our players from getting lost in the world we created."

The post also reacts to the criticism that Starfield gets pretty samey by calling attention to how the experience may vary, depending on your progression and dialogue choices. It exhorts the reviewer to try rolling different characters with different specs. "You will feel like you are playing a totally different game," the post suggests, adding that "there are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you've never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours." Let's not forget those endgame options either. "Even after completing the Main Story, your adventure doesn't end! You can continue onto New Game+ to keep exploring Starfield and all that is out there!"

Another developer response sets out to address "frustration with fast travel making the universe feel much smaller", in what could almost be a reference to Alice B's Starfield review headline. (I'm sure we're just flattering ourselves.)

"Given the immense size of Starfield, we felt it made more sense to be able to use your Grav Drive to jump to other solar systems," it reads. "The option to fly freely among planets is still there, and you can travel from one planet to another and land without needing to open your map if you use your scanner.

"However, for an expedition like solar system traversal, jumping is necessary. Remember that fast travel also has its perks as you can do so quickly when trying to complete quests and will always be given visual of your ship launching and landing, thus being able to appreciate all the little details that make your customized ship look unique."

This particular dev comment also reiterates Bethesda managing director Ashley Cheng's argument prior to Starfield's release that the game's abundance of quest- and building-less planets is designed to create a sense of "overwhelming" vastness and make you "feel small".

"We are sorry that you do not like landing on different planets and are finding many of them empty," it reads. "The intention of Starfield's exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that do have resources you need or hidden outposts to look through."

This latter post also tries to defend the game's NPCs against the accusation of being "dead-eyed" and "boring", arguing that "to keep Starfield as dynamic as possible, NPCs are not fully scripted so weirdness can ensue sometimes. The goal is to make believable characters on the screen with realistic reactions to your character." Last but not least, it urges the player in question to get off the critical path. "If you feel that things are getting boring, there is so much more to do than just the main mission!" In conclusion: "Never stop exploring!"

There are quite a lot of these developer responses, some posted as recently as yesterday. Many are copy-and-pasted. I get the impression the customer service teams have basically been told to look busy. It isn't making much difference to Starfield's fortunes: at the time of writing, the game has once again fallen behind its indefatigable ancestor Skyrim in the daily Steam player charts. Many of the reviews Bethesda are trying to debate consist of a single sentence. One just reads "Midfield".

Do you know what, though - I sympathise a bit with the defence of empty planets, albeit for different reasons than those given above. In a game otherwise defined by lashings of loot and bricabrac, there's something quite cathartic about heading off into the wilds of an uncharted world and finding no Content to feast on.

It's the first thing I did on the very first planet you visit during the intro - which I think is otherwise one of the least compelling intros I've ever sat through - and I found it transformative. No loot or quest markers to worry about: just the changing texture and sound of the procedural terrain underfoot, random pockets of wildlife I could study from afar, a range of porous rock formations and plenty of hills to climb, with nothing to see on the other side but another valleyful of dust and entropy.

What I am essentially saying is: perhaps the planetary exploration aspect of this game is more enjoyable if you play against type and treat it like a walking simulator? I think there's a lot of artistry to the game's setting that vanishes in practice because you're not sufficiently encouraged to perceive it, and no, I'm not just talking about taking photographs of especially glossy objects and obvious setpieces like planets orbiting overhead. Mind you, if an astral walking sim is what you're after, you're probably better off with Orchids to Dusk or The Anglerfish Project, to pick a few.

Source

Lmao

 

[0sacred]

​

"Remember that fast travel also has its perks as you can do so quickly when trying to complete quests and will always be given visual of your ship launching and landing, thus being able to appreciate all the little details that make your customized ship look unique."

that's... brilliant.

 

[Lord_Potato]

​

"Remember that fast travel also has its perks as you can do so quickly when trying to complete quests and will always be given visual of your ship launching and landing, thus being able to appreciate all the little details that make your customized ship look unique."

that's... brilliant.

And not even true. When yoy fast travel to known location you don't get cutscenes of space ship launching and landing.

And that's a good thing, because it would be infuriating to watch the same fucking cutscene every time.

Unfortunately we are not granted such mercy when it comes to docking.

 

[Just Locus]

 

[Tweed]

Neon has one junkie depicted properly; any resemblance to a Codexer must be purely coincidental.

I didn't know Alfred E. Neuman posted on the Codex!

 

[Morgoth]

A E S T H E T I C A L L Y

...the lack thereof.

 

[taxalot]

My favorite thing about this game is still than wherever you land, there are man made structures at a walking distance.

 

[Infinitron]

Bethesda are individually rebutting Starfield Steam reviewers, defending the loading breaks and "empty" worlds​

Bethesda's heaping plateful of space-spaghetti Starfield presently rejoices in the status of a Mixed Steam user review rating, with over 80,000 such reviews posted to date. Bethesda High Command are clearly displeased with this, and several unnamed but platform-verified developers have begun replying to and rebutting individual Steam reviewers, giving apparent priority to complaints about the game's loading breaks during fast travel and when moving between maps.

"While there may be loading screens in between fast travelling, just consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under 3 seconds," reads one such reply (thanks to Eurogamer for passing this on, and to Juicehead for the original spot). "We believe that shortcoming will not hinder our players from getting lost in the world we created."

The post also reacts to the criticism that Starfield gets pretty samey by calling attention to how the experience may vary, depending on your progression and dialogue choices. It exhorts the reviewer to try rolling different characters with different specs. "You will feel like you are playing a totally different game," the post suggests, adding that "there are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you've never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours." Let's not forget those endgame options either. "Even after completing the Main Story, your adventure doesn't end! You can continue onto New Game+ to keep exploring Starfield and all that is out there!"

Another developer response sets out to address "frustration with fast travel making the universe feel much smaller", in what could almost be a reference to Alice B's Starfield review headline. (I'm sure we're just flattering ourselves.)

"Given the immense size of Starfield, we felt it made more sense to be able to use your Grav Drive to jump to other solar systems," it reads. "The option to fly freely among planets is still there, and you can travel from one planet to another and land without needing to open your map if you use your scanner.

"However, for an expedition like solar system traversal, jumping is necessary. Remember that fast travel also has its perks as you can do so quickly when trying to complete quests and will always be given visual of your ship launching and landing, thus being able to appreciate all the little details that make your customized ship look unique."

This particular dev comment also reiterates Bethesda managing director Ashley Cheng's argument prior to Starfield's release that the game's abundance of quest- and building-less planets is designed to create a sense of "overwhelming" vastness and make you "feel small".

"We are sorry that you do not like landing on different planets and are finding many of them empty," it reads. "The intention of Starfield's exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that do have resources you need or hidden outposts to look through."

This latter post also tries to defend the game's NPCs against the accusation of being "dead-eyed" and "boring", arguing that "to keep Starfield as dynamic as possible, NPCs are not fully scripted so weirdness can ensue sometimes. The goal is to make believable characters on the screen with realistic reactions to your character." Last but not least, it urges the player in question to get off the critical path. "If you feel that things are getting boring, there is so much more to do than just the main mission!" In conclusion: "Never stop exploring!"

There are quite a lot of these developer responses, some posted as recently as yesterday. Many are copy-and-pasted. I get the impression the customer service teams have basically been told to look busy. It isn't making much difference to Starfield's fortunes: at the time of writing, the game has once again fallen behind its indefatigable ancestor Skyrim in the daily Steam player charts. Many of the reviews Bethesda are trying to debate consist of a single sentence. One just reads "Midfield".

Do you know what, though - I sympathise a bit with the defence of empty planets, albeit for different reasons than those given above. In a game otherwise defined by lashings of loot and bricabrac, there's something quite cathartic about heading off into the wilds of an uncharted world and finding no Content to feast on.

It's the first thing I did on the very first planet you visit during the intro - which I think is otherwise one of the least compelling intros I've ever sat through - and I found it transformative. No loot or quest markers to worry about: just the changing texture and sound of the procedural terrain underfoot, random pockets of wildlife I could study from afar, a range of porous rock formations and plenty of hills to climb, with nothing to see on the other side but another valleyful of dust and entropy.

What I am essentially saying is: perhaps the planetary exploration aspect of this game is more enjoyable if you play against type and treat it like a walking simulator? I think there's a lot of artistry to the game's setting that vanishes in practice because you're not sufficiently encouraged to perceive it, and no, I'm not just talking about taking photographs of especially glossy objects and obvious setpieces like planets orbiting overhead. Mind you, if an astral walking sim is what you're after, you're probably better off with Orchids to Dusk or The Anglerfish Project, to pick a few.

Source

Lmao

lol, Pete Hines leaves Bethesda and next thing you know this happens.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Looks like all the stuff people bitch about is kinda baked in at the very foundation, so no amount of 'mods will fix it' can unfuck this mess.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Game devs arguing with reviews is like fat girls declaring themselves hot. No one is fooled and it only makes them look ugly and stupid.

 

[mediocrepoet]

My favorite thing about this game is still than wherever you land, there are man made structures at a walking distance.

But you can't really land at one, at least not without pixel hunting, unless it's a POI.

 

[Vic]

Starfield - Epic Shit Takes from Bethestards​

 

[agris]

Many of the reviews Bethesda are trying to debate consist of a single sentence. One just reads "Midfield".

 

[Ryzer]

Game devs arguing with reviews is like fat girls declaring themselves hot. No one is fooled and it only makes them look ugly and stupid.

Better answer to negative reviews like Cleve does.

Git gud

UPDATE : This marvelous snowflake has now been playing the game for 152+ hours and actively participating in the forums as well as providing demands for revisions and giving feedback on the RPG system he would like changed. He has been playing this game ten times longer than the average game on Steam and will probably continue to play it well into the future. He insists the game doesn't deserve a good review.

 

[Vic]

Game devs arguing with reviews is like fat girls declaring themselves hot. No one is fooled and it only makes them look ugly and stupid.

Better answer to negative reviews like Cleve does.

Git gud

UPDATE : This marvelous snowflake has now been playing the game for 152+ hours and actively participating in the forums as well as providing demands for revisions and giving feedback on the RPG system he would like changed. He has been playing this game ten times longer than the average game on Steam and will probably continue to play it well into the future. He insists the game doesn't deserve a good review.

fits

 

[Shaki]

Game devs arguing with reviews is like fat girls declaring themselves hot. No one is fooled and it only makes them look ugly and stupid.

Except when Cleve does it, then it's based