Starfield Thread - now with Shattered Space horror expansion

[Butter]

The Apollo 13 crew had to disable various systems on their return because power was so limited. There's real life precedent for this sort of thing.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I haven't played many space sims, is this system very common or they borrowed it from FTL? Just realized:

Been around for quite awhile. This is from X-Wing Special Edition (couldn't quickly find a picture from the original version, but it's the same deal).

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

lol. lmao even

 

[Losus4]

The Apollo 13 crew had to disable various systems on their return because power was so limited. There's real life precedent for this sort of thing.

Wrong.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

welll, it wasn't strictly power but amperage. don't be a nitpicking asshole.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

thinking "Skyrim in space" would be enough.

but "skyrim in space" WOULD HAD BEEN enough. possibly using today's computing power. instead it's worse at everything skyrim does, and looks the same while requiring 10 times the power.

 

[Caim]

thinking "Skyrim in space" would be enough.

but "skyrim in space" WOULD HAD BEEN enough. possibly using today's computing power. instead it's worse at everything skyrim does, and looks the same while requiring 10 times the power.

Skyrim in space is what happens when you get hit by a Skyrim giant.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

to emulate our nitpicking friend, that's "skyrim space program".

 

[Latelistener]

thinking "Skyrim in space" would be enough.

but "skyrim in space" WOULD HAD BEEN enough. possibly using today's computing power. instead it's worse at everything skyrim does, and looks the same while requiring 10 times the power.

Skyrim just came out at the right time with little to no competition. It's been 13 years.

Many modern open world games are much more technologically impressive than Starfield, even those that came out years before.

But the real problem is that they had 500 people working on it, but not a single really talented game designer.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Many modern open world games

which are? because i can recall only gta6, which has close to no interactivity at all. cyberspunk? almost the same level.

 

[PlayerEmers]

But the real problem is that they had 500 people working on it, but not a single really talented game designer.

True. Imagine the nightmare that is to manage a game project with hundreds of Bethesda tier devs.

 

[Justicar]

The Apollo 13 crew had to disable various systems on their return because power was so limited. There's real life precedent for this sort of thing.

 

[ind33d]

thinking "Skyrim in space" would be enough.

but "skyrim in space" WOULD HAD BEEN enough. possibly using today's computing power. instead it's worse at everything skyrim does, and looks the same while requiring 10 times the power.

actually, starfield existing at all was a mistake. imagine how much better it would have been if starfield were an elder scrolls game and you switched planets using magic like Doctor Strange instead of whatever the fuck this is

 

[Late Bloomer]

Starfield's lead quest designer had 'absolutely no time' and had to hit the 'panic button' so the game would have a satisfying final quest

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/s...the-game-would-have-a-satisfying-final-quest/

It became very clear that we were missing the large final location that was going to tie the story together," says former lead quest designer Will Shen.

According to Shen and Brigner, the sheer number of people working on a game across different studios can cause problems. "It's more difficult than ever to know who does what, who you're supposed to report to," Brigner said. A fractured team can also create a "silo effect," where "every department is scrambling for resources and saying 'no' to collaboration requests," said Shen. This can lead to the "inadvertent consequence of favoring the department" over the needs of the game, as well as slowing even basic collaboration between departments to a crawl.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

actually, starfield existing at all was a mistake. imagine how much better it would have been if starfield were an elder scrolls game and you switched planets using magic like Doctor Strange instead of whatever the fuck this is

I think Bethesda wanted to build a new IP of their own. But this was a mistake. Bethesda almost always sucks creatively. And they never seem to realize it.

Whomever they hired for Daggerfall, Morrowind etc. had more talent in their little finger than Emil, Todd and co. Bethesda consistently rides off the success of far more competent people and then just spams content in the same sandbox formula from Daggerfall. Fallout - someone else's idea. TES - the previous Bethsoft's idea. Even stuff like the Dark Brotherhood is lifted from Daggerfall.

So, yeah, they should have done a TES fantasy space game set it TES' distant future, or else expanded TES into a space multiverse the way Spelljammer did with D&D.

The only possible justification I can see for Starfield is ESG money from Blackrock. Hard to collect on ESG bucks if Asians are substituted out with elves and Africans are really just a bunch of boring dudes from the Northwest.

"Woooo, eat ze bugs! It's ze future!"
~Todd counting the zeros in his ESG payoff probably.

 

[Robotigan]

But the real problem is that they had 500 people working on it, but not a single really talented game designer.

True. Imagine the nightmare that is to manage a game project with hundreds of Bethesda tier devs.

I don't consider "we ran out of time" a good excuse when talking about the climatic finale. Even though it happens near the end chronologically, it's pretty clearly one of the most important parts of your game that deserves attention/planning early on in the process. I work at a large company so I sympathize with his comments on silo-ing and inter-team dependencies, but come on, even I know you should be delivering requirements to your asset production teams early so you don't get caught with your pants down like this. Reading between the lines it sounds like Will Shen got Peter Principled. He was given a larger role and couldn't hack it. He even admits he had to be rescued by another dev as the deadline approached. All of this seems pretty consistent with the fact that he "left" the company shortly after release, sounds like they told him he could either be demoted or leave the company.

Anyway I've always thought Shen was a pretty overrated game designer. Let's be honest, all the praise Far Harbor got was purely reactionary. Fallout fans convinced themselves it was good because theoretically it resolved everything they criticized about the base game--it has a headier premise, moodier vibes, and more skill checks. But in practice, it winds up being really tedious to revisit. Most of the content is fetch quests and those terrible memory puzzles. It's both short and poorly paced. A lot of ideas like the Mother of Fog are superficially intriguing but poorly developed and go nowhere. Most of the map lacks interesting locations and is poorly utilized. And literally all this stuff crops back up in Starfield.

At least Emil gets his set pieces in place and keeps the player entertained if nothing else. You can call his writing corny, but his quests have never felt unfinished or wanting for spectacle. Sort of explains his weird twitter rant. Imagine if you wrote several games that were well-received by mainstream critics but got forced into handing the reins over to someone else due to fan pressure, then that person screws up so badly they wind up getting fired but the fans still blame you for everything.

 

[ind33d]

Starfield's lead quest designer had 'absolutely no time' and had to hit the 'panic button' so the game would have a satisfying final quest

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/s...the-game-would-have-a-satisfying-final-quest/

It became very clear that we were missing the large final location that was going to tie the story together," says former lead quest designer Will Shen.

According to Shen and Brigner, the sheer number of people working on a game across different studios can cause problems. "It's more difficult than ever to know who does what, who you're supposed to report to," Brigner said. A fractured team can also create a "silo effect," where "every department is scrambling for resources and saying 'no' to collaboration requests," said Shen. This can lead to the "inadvertent consequence of favoring the department" over the needs of the game, as well as slowing even basic collaboration between departments to a crawl.

NASA, Never A Single Aryan

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Imagine if you wrote several games that were well-received by mainstream critics but got forced into handing the reins over to someone else due to fan pressure, then that person screws up so badly they wind up getting fired but the fans still blame you for everything.

Except Emil's quest design has sucked since Oblivion.

Everyone kissed his ass and overhyped the Dark Brotherhood questline that made zero sense and relied on gimmicks like poisoned apples that were abandoned in the sequel, or replaced with cringe characters like the Norman Bates knock-off assassin or the loli vampire.

 

[Gargaune]

I don't consider "we ran out of time" a good excuse when talking about the climatic finale. Even though it happens near the end chronologically, it's pretty clearly one of the most important parts of your game that deserves attention/planning early on in the process.

That excuse doesn't hold water about anything in relation to Starfield. The game was originally slated to launch in 2022, before Microsoft got a hold of it and extended development by a half year and then another half year. A year's a pretty long "last minute" by my clock.

 

[Latelistener]

thinking "Skyrim in space" would be enough.

but "skyrim in space" WOULD HAD BEEN enough. possibly using today's computing power. instead it's worse at everything skyrim does, and looks the same while requiring 10 times the power.

actually, starfield existing at all was a mistake. imagine how much better it would have been if starfield were an elder scrolls game and you switched planets using magic like Doctor Strange instead of whatever the fuck this is

Even if Starfield had a seamless world without a single loading screen, literally nothing would have changed.

It's the same pipe dream as "mods will fix it".

 

[Child of Malkav]

Not enough time?
Making the same game, on the same engine, with the same tools, devs (a part of them anyway) having experience of over 20 years in the company, a game supposedly 25 years in the "making" (read: dreaming about it) and 7 in development, almost infinite resources, an army of modders and this is what they come up with? And modders giving up on it soon after.
Pfft, but hey I;m sure there's going to be redemption story arc videos for this cosmic turd in the future.

 

[Robotigan]

Imagine if you wrote several games that were well-received by mainstream critics but got forced into handing the reins over to someone else due to fan pressure, then that person screws up so badly they wind up getting fired but the fans still blame you for everything.

Except Emil's quest design has sucked since Oblivion.

Everyone kissed his ass and overhyped the Dark Brotherhood questline that made zero sense and relied on gimmicks like poisoned apples that were abandoned in the sequel, or replaced with cringe characters like the Norman Bates knock-off assassin or the loli vampire.

Almost all but the most self-serious RPGs have stupid shit. Baldur's Gate was THE RPG of its generation and one of its main characters is a Ranger that takes orders from a hamster. Certain gamers overestimate the medium and feel compelled to be really snobby to compensate. The point is that Emil is able to execute his ideas and follows the cardinal rule of storytelling "Don't be boring." No one seriously considers him to be the Aldous Huxley of video game storytelling, don't worry.

I'm mostly annoyed that the Fallout fandom was dickriding Shen post-Far Harbor and then he fumbles the bag with Starfield and they all go back to blaming Emil. Come claim your boy cowards.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

Except Emil's quest design has sucked since Oblivion.

Emil sucked when he was a game urinalist, he sucked when he worked on Thief 2, the ESG sequel to a great game, now with not just women and niggers injected, but shit level design by Emil. Everything he ever wrote sucked.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Btw I just remembered: didn't Sawyer say after finishing NV that making content using the GECK tool was easy and fast? And he had little experience with the thing.
So how is it for an experienced developer at Bethesda who worked with this tool for the past decades or so?
Just overall shamefur disprey.

 

[Butter]

Emil is able to execute his ideas and follows the cardinal rule of storytelling "Don't be boring."

Lead writer of Fallout 4 btw.