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Starfield Thread - now with Shattered Space horror expansion

Stella Brando

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2005
Messages
9,497

Bethesda needs a change after Starfield's middling release, just not the one you're thinking of​



Astronaut on alien planet


I've been a Bethesda fan for decades, by which I mean I consider Morrowind my favourite game of all time and I've gotten progressively crankier about everything released thereafter, so perhaps it's inevitable that the dull thud Starfield made when it released has made me start thinking about the studio, its past, and its future. In short? I think it needs a change. A major one.

But not, perhaps, the change most people of my disposition might usually demand, which is to see if Ken Rolston fancies coming back before luring Michael Kirkbride into a room containing a dragon's hoard of substances and not letting him out until he's rewritten the Bible. You can't go home again, and if we learned anything from Starfield's anodyne plot and forgettable characters, it's that Bethesda just isn't chasing narrative complexity at this point.

It is, however, interested in systems. Bethesda's worlds are (usually) ones in which everyone has a job, a routine, and a bedtime, and even though Starfield jettisoned all that in favour of a panoply of crafting doodads and some No Man's Sky-style inspiration, it's still heavy with unrealised systemic potential in the same way all the company's games are. So here's my pitch: Bethesda, let your games write themselves, because I'm not sure you're all that interested in doing it anymore.

In essence, what I mean by this is to turn these rolling sandboxes into something more akin to Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, or Crusader Kings. I don't mean "turn them into strategy games," but rather lean into the jank, the weirdness, the haphazard collection of systems that often fail to mesh.

Let Constellation fall apart because Andreja slept in Sarah's bed and everyone got a bit shooty about it. Let major characters fall out because one of them is programmed to love sweet rolls and another is violently allergic. Get a bit State of Decay with it: I want Akila City to collapse into factional conflict because everyone disagreed about whether Pearl Jam rules. If the main quest—if we still have to have one—becomes unbeatable in that time? Que será, será.

A brawl on the streets of Skingrad in Oblivion's gang war mod.


Earlier this year, I messed around with an Oblivion mod that arbitrarily placed every single NPC in Cyrodiil into one of a few gangs and then set them all at each other's throats, sparking a province-wide war that would only end when one gang won a climactic final conflict for the Imperial City itself. That, well, probably wouldn't work as the basis for a multi-million dollar first-party Microsoft release, but doesn't it set your mind to wondering?

What if the studio fleshed out its orphaned and simmy systems a bit more, giving its NPCs likes, dislikes, schedules, desires and impulses? What if those memetic conversations about mudcrabs could actually mean something, maybe devolving into arguments or sparking relationships based on the character of the, uh, characters involved? What if we were trading stories about the latest wild thing that emerged organically from our Starfield playthroughs instead of asking each other which of the side quests is "The Dark Brotherhood one" (meaning the one that's actually worth your while) this time?

Because to me, Bethesda's games have felt at odds with themselves for a while. They're big, narrative-driven RPGs where the narrative is paper-thin, and sprawling clockwork worlds where none of the systems ever really bounce off one another. It's gotta go one way or the other, and frankly I want to see the studio get weird with it. I'm very happy to continue playing inside this ancient, rickety engine if the things it ends up producing are actually interesting. People played Dwarf Fortress with ASCII graphics for literal decades!

Right now, the studio that made my favourite game of all time feels like it's at a creative dead end. Don't get me wrong, I'm not forecasting doom. I don't doubt Bethesda can continue making games along exactly these lines and making more money than god in the process. But I don't think its current trajectory will produce a game that blows anyone's mind in the foreseeable future, certainly not the way it used to. And since we can't go back to 2002, why not reach for the stars?


https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-ne...g-release-just-not-the-one-youre-thinking-of/
 

Fedora Master

STOP POSTING
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
31,572

Bethesda needs a change after Starfield's middling release, just not the one you're thinking of​



Astronaut on alien planet


I've been a Bethesda fan for decades, by which I mean I consider Morrowind my favourite game of all time and I've gotten progressively crankier about everything released thereafter, so perhaps it's inevitable that the dull thud Starfield made when it released has made me start thinking about the studio, its past, and its future. In short? I think it needs a change. A major one.

But not, perhaps, the change most people of my disposition might usually demand, which is to see if Ken Rolston fancies coming back before luring Michael Kirkbride into a room containing a dragon's hoard of substances and not letting him out until he's rewritten the Bible. You can't go home again, and if we learned anything from Starfield's anodyne plot and forgettable characters, it's that Bethesda just isn't chasing narrative complexity at this point.

It is, however, interested in systems. Bethesda's worlds are (usually) ones in which everyone has a job, a routine, and a bedtime, and even though Starfield jettisoned all that in favour of a panoply of crafting doodads and some No Man's Sky-style inspiration, it's still heavy with unrealised systemic potential in the same way all the company's games are. So here's my pitch: Bethesda, let your games write themselves, because I'm not sure you're all that interested in doing it anymore.

In essence, what I mean by this is to turn these rolling sandboxes into something more akin to Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, or Crusader Kings. I don't mean "turn them into strategy games," but rather lean into the jank, the weirdness, the haphazard collection of systems that often fail to mesh.

Let Constellation fall apart because Andreja slept in Sarah's bed and everyone got a bit shooty about it. Let major characters fall out because one of them is programmed to love sweet rolls and another is violently allergic. Get a bit State of Decay with it: I want Akila City to collapse into factional conflict because everyone disagreed about whether Pearl Jam rules. If the main quest—if we still have to have one—becomes unbeatable in that time? Que será, será.

A brawl on the streets of Skingrad in Oblivion's gang war mod.'s gang war mod.


Earlier this year, I messed around with an Oblivion mod that arbitrarily placed every single NPC in Cyrodiil into one of a few gangs and then set them all at each other's throats, sparking a province-wide war that would only end when one gang won a climactic final conflict for the Imperial City itself. That, well, probably wouldn't work as the basis for a multi-million dollar first-party Microsoft release, but doesn't it set your mind to wondering?

What if the studio fleshed out its orphaned and simmy systems a bit more, giving its NPCs likes, dislikes, schedules, desires and impulses? What if those memetic conversations about mudcrabs could actually mean something, maybe devolving into arguments or sparking relationships based on the character of the, uh, characters involved? What if we were trading stories about the latest wild thing that emerged organically from our Starfield playthroughs instead of asking each other which of the side quests is "The Dark Brotherhood one" (meaning the one that's actually worth your while) this time?

Because to me, Bethesda's games have felt at odds with themselves for a while. They're big, narrative-driven RPGs where the narrative is paper-thin, and sprawling clockwork worlds where none of the systems ever really bounce off one another. It's gotta go one way or the other, and frankly I want to see the studio get weird with it. I'm very happy to continue playing inside this ancient, rickety engine if the things it ends up producing are actually interesting. People played Dwarf Fortress with ASCII graphics for literal decades!

Right now, the studio that made my favourite game of all time feels like it's at a creative dead end. Don't get me wrong, I'm not forecasting doom. I don't doubt Bethesda can continue making games along exactly these lines and making more money than god in the process. But I don't think its current trajectory will produce a game that blows anyone's mind in the foreseeable future, certainly not the way it used to. And since we can't go back to 2002, why not reach for the stars?


https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-ne...g-release-just-not-the-one-youre-thinking-of/
Who asked?
 

Lemming42

Arcane
Joined
Nov 4, 2012
Messages
6,806
Location
The Satellite Of Love
Yeah honestly I think Emil's conducting himself reasonably well in the face of a tidal wave of vitriol. He obviously deserves reasonable criticism for his role in making stuff that sucks dick but a lot of grifters make it so weirdly personal and latch onto individual figures to blame for literally everything which gets pretty fucking nasty.

It must be really demoralising to still be working on Starfield at this point; a year of patches (which break more shit) on a game that few people care about and the DLC was going to be the one-shot chance at a Phantom Liberty moment, which flopped. The more I think about it the more convinced I am that they should just drop the entire game and their future plans for it and start the agonising work on TES VI.
 

ind33d

Learned
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
1,790
amazing how bethesda's demoralizing hopeless hell-world games like Fallout never seem to run into development problems...
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
13,001
The more I think about it the more convinced I am that they should just drop the entire game and their future plans for it and start the agonising work on TES VI.
Is that a ting of panic I sense?
Bethesda Softworks' management must have realized by now that they can't possibly complete The Elders Scrolls VI before CDPR finishes their next Witcher game, which might well have a customizeable protagonist and will certainly feature an Open World. They face the agonizing prospect of CDPR stealing Bethesda's old audience, which has been waiting 13 years and counting for another Elder Scrolls game, and which would already have overlapped substantially with the audience of The Witcher III in 2015.
 

ind33d

Learned
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
1,790
Did the game originally have vaults/bunkers like Fallout? Like you would land on a planet and look for survivors, and the deeper down into a vault you go, the more weird and supernatural things become? I'd pay for a mod that added dungeons like that to random planets with a Destiny exotic at the end or whatever
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
58,207
I think Emil is being genuine. He seems like a friendly guy who loves doing what he does. It's a shame he's not good at it.

I think he is far less contemptible than the fans.

His only crime is that he sucks. Their crime is allowing this company to prop on their shit for decades, push it at the top even. Bethesda should have sunk at Oblivion and Fallout 3, but thanks to the "fans" they got shot to the highest level of success and fame.

I say fuck them. I hope Bethesda keeps sucking even more, especially since it seems the fans can't let it go so it's gonna be fun to enjoy their endless torture at consuming this utter slop while pretending to like it.

Just watch as they'll learn nothing from Starfield and the copium will start anew once Elder Scrolls 6 becomes to hit the news.
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
10,385
Location
Grand Chien
Look guys don't be like that, Bethesda paid a lot of money to several consulting firms in order to come up with a strip club concept that wouldn't offend any modern audiences
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
10,385
Location
Grand Chien
Modders will fix it!

Actually in this case it's quite likely that someone will actually fix this and post the results on LoversLab lol
 

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