June 2023 PC Gamer Article Links and Discussion

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Starfield shows a lot of promise, so I just cross my fingers that they manage to incorporate everything they showed in the presentation into the game world in a polished and creative way. I hope the main story will be interesting, the exploration unique feeling, the lore interesting and that they'll scatter secrets that you'll be able to find on your voyages. This is one of the things I really loved about Morrowind, in which you could find a really good item hidden in some cave and it was not always obvious where it was hidden. Maybe you could find a really dumb/fun weapon, like one that has a 100% chance to jam because it is called "The Pacifist".

Most importantly: I really, really, really with bloody sugar on top hope they make the game for ADULTS!. I'm so incredibly fed up with games that have the 18+ mark and is basically teen game. I understand that the age rating is not always correct, but I feel that the newer Bethesda games with the 18+ marking have been kind of lackluster in that department, with Fallout 4 as an example. I just want to have an adult game without it being basically Hentai porn on Steam. Ok, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard - There you have an adult game that IS actually for adults, but they are few and far between and I'm not saying it has to be Manhunt or Postal for being adult, just....BE more adult.

Ok, that turned into a little rant:p
 
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Starfield shows a lot of promise, so I just cross my fingers that they manage to incorporate everything they showed in the presentation into the game world in a polished and creative way. I hope the main story will be interesting, the exploration unique feeling, the lore interesting and that they'll scatter secrets that you'll be able to find on your voyages. This is one of the things I really loved about Morrowind, in which you could find a really good item hidden in some cave and it was not always obvious where it was hidden. Maybe you could find a really dumb/fun weapon, like one that has a 100% chance to jam because it is called "The Pacifist".

Most importantly: I really, really, really with bloody sugar on top hope they make the game for ADULTS!. I'm so incredibly fed up with games that have the 18+ mark and is basically teen game. I understand that the age rating is not always correct, but I feel that the newer Bethesda games with the 18+ marking have been kind of lackluster in that department, with Fallout 4 as an example. I just want to have an adult game without it being basically Hentai porn on Steam. Ok, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard - There you have an adult game that IS actually for adults, but they are few and far between and I'm not saying it has to be Manhunt or Postal for being adult, just....BE more adult.

Ok, that turned into a little rant:p
Unless they come up with super interesting stories with adult themes, I don't really care what it's rated. I'm not even sure what those ratings mean. Nudity and shooting pirates doesn't do anything for me. I'd like adult writing/subjects like in a Quinten Tarantino movie or something like No Country for Old Men. That's when things get really interesting. But I'm not sure Bethesda has that in them.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqMdQBox15s

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZlwofdi3yg
 
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@ZedClampet No Country for Old Men is a perfect example in my eyes. Really good writing with an insanely cool and scary antagonist. The Bloody Baron quest in Witcher 3 is an example of what I am looking for in a game: A dark-themed story, a character with good/bad sides that has a mature complexity, some violence/gore, and a decent (open-ended) ending. If Starfield could have some sidequests or parts of the main story with some of those elements I would be very happy.

They do have it in them because while I said Fallout 4 lacks maturity, they did have some quests with darker themes, so perhaps not as bleak as I portray, I just did not remember them/not memorable for me. The older Fallout games had a darker setting though and I feel it was like that with the Scrolls games also.
 
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maybe I could do this part time instead of making a game
No need to choose. You'd get even more dev time waiting in the various lines and load/unload spots, which make up a big chunk of a trucker's life.

I'd like adult writing/subjects like in a Quinten Tarantino movie or something like No Country for Old Men
Yeah. Only remotely possible in a tightly controlled game like a Visual Novel with minimal interaction. Once you give the player agency, narrative control decreases rapidly and with it most chances of the nuance required for interesting adult themes.

a really dumb/fun weapon, like one that has a 100% chance to jam because it is called "The Pacifist"
:D You need to play Far Cry 2!

find a really good item hidden in some cave and it was not always obvious where it was hidden
The 'sameness' of loot always bugs me, no diff if you trip over it on the beach, or spend 10 minutes exploring a hidden cave—spoiler, it's behind the waterfall—or climbing a craggy mountain. Would love to see effort rewarded with better stuff.

A dark-themed story, a character with good/bad sides that has a mature complexity, some violence/gore, and a decent (open-ended) ending
You need to play Far Cry 4! :D
 

mainer

Venatus semper
I fully expect to do what the article said and focus on side activities instead of the main quest line, and probably won't go back to it until I've more or less exhausted all that I want to do elsewhere. With the crews, exploration, outpost building, ship building, etc. I fully expect to set all sorts of mini-goals for myself.
Myself as well. I fully expect to get involved in settlement & ship building. Which will require resource gathering from planetary exploration, so I see those as my primary goal. Also doing side quests. Like all Bethesda games that I've played, the main quest line is something that I mostly follow later in the game. I think it's the thing that I love most about their games, is you can play that way (or anyway you want) and still have tons of things to do.

*******************************************************************​

It was great to finally see some news from Obsidian about Avowed. I was sure that they had temporarily shelved this game to work on Outer Worlds 2, but I'm happy to be wrong. It won't be coming out until at least 2024, but it's also nice to see them focus on the companions as a major gameplay feature. Maybe Obsidian will take the place of the old Bioware, with the focus on companions and personalities.

 
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Myself as well. I fully expect to get involved in settlement & ship building. Which will require resource gathering from planetary exploration, so I see those as my primary goal. Also doing side quests. Like all Bethesda games that I've played, the main quest line is something that I mostly follow later in the game. I think it's the thing that I love most about their games, is you can play that way (or anyway you want) and still have tons of things to do.

*******************************************************************​

It was great to finally see some news from Obsidian about Avowed. I was sure that they had temporarily shelved this game to work on Outer Worlds 2, but I'm happy to be wrong. It won't be coming out until at least 2024, but it's also nice to see them focus on the companions as a major gameplay feature. Maybe Obsidian will take the place of the old Bioware, with the focus on companions and personalities.

I really, really love that Avowed trailer. I can't believe it's been 3 years since it was announced. No wonder I'm so old. Whoever is in charge of time has lost control.
 

Zloth

Community Contributor

mainer

Venatus semper

Of course, it's never actually going to happen. Though I'd watch it if it did, the problem is I'd want them both to loose. It was a funny article, with a couple of quotes that stood out:

Billionaire clowns bloviating at one another.

and

To be fair to Musk he later added that "I have this great move that I call 'The Walrus', where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing".

Which is really kind of gross if you think about it too long.
 

I hadn't heard of DirectStorage before, but as the last line of the article says, it would be a good reason for Starfield to require a SSD.
If I remember correctly, it was introduced by the current gen consoles and can be sort of emulated with a fast SSD.

******

I noticed some people requesting a cheat mod for Troy. The mods I had already made gave boosts to both the player and the AI, so this morning I went in and made a pure cheat mod, and Guido and I are testing it out right now. So far, I think it's way too cheaty. Might make a second, nerfed version. I'm not really sure specifically what people want/expect, but with the current version, it's just "make as many armies as you want as fast as you want and roll across the world like a coked up Alexander the Great." There's no challenge at all.
 
DirectStorage
It's a good yoke, brought in for the new Xbox 2-3 years ago, and then ~a year ago for PC. If I recall correctly, on Xbox it used DirectX, PCI Express, and SSD to work its magic, whereas on PC it'll be mostly done via the GPU:


cheat mod
Can you make a quickie for Diablo 4?
I want to sort of nonchalantly drop a Level 100 screenie into the big thread—aka Colif's Diary—with "Gee, that took all my time after dinner", and watch a few people melt down :devilish:
 
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In the past, Microsoft has tried to argue that "mid-sized" games like Bethesda's make sense as exclusives in a way that both smaller and larger titles don't, but it's hard to believe that its decision-making isn't driven mostly by what it can get away with in the eyes of regulators.

"Hard to believe" is an understatement, calling Starfield a "mid-sized" game is just straight up lying.
 
calling Starfield a "mid-sized" game is just straight up lying
From a biz POV it's mid-sized, and I think that statement was in a business context rather than from a player POV.

♣ It's a new IP and therefore the audience reach is unknown.
♦ The studio is known for buggy releases, and there's no guarantee MS's apparent extra focus on QA will in fact yield significant improvement this first time—culture mesh is generally the biggest problem in any corporate takeover.
♥ Add in that it's single player only and there goes any hope of mega status at this stage.

At this stage, Starfield is like Cyberpunk 2077 before its release—huge hype and expectation among ardent gaming fans about a new single player IP. CDPR's great prior record didn't save the day, will MS's intrusion on the quality front overcome Bethesda's record?
 
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From a biz POV it's mid-sized, and I think that statement was in a business context rather than from a player POV.

♣ It's a new IP and therefore the audience reach is unknown.
♦ The studio is known for buggy releases, and there's no guarantee MS's apparent extra focus on QA will in fact yield significant improvement this first time—culture mesh is generally the biggest problem in any corporate takeover.
♥ Add in that it's single player only and there goes any hope of mega status at this stage.

At this stage, Starfield is like Cyberpunk 2077 before its release—huge hype and expectation among ardent gaming fans about a new single player IP. CDPR's great prior record didn't save the day, will MS's intrusion on the quality front overcome Bethesda's record?
There is no way this is a mid-size game from a business context. It's been in the Steam top 20 (and sometimes in the top 5) for months, and it's not even releasing for another month and a half. I suspect that by the time it launches, like Cyberpunk 2077, it will have already sold millions of copies on just that one platform.

*************


I find these beautiful.
 
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Agree with most of the article. Unfortunately.

The community is surprisingly chill and politics in game lobbies are actually kept to a minimum. The Steam forums are a dumpster fire but that's pretty much every single game.

They released the game in a state that completely invalidates the nuanced approach they advertised to the events. At the moment it's nothing more than a foundation for awesome tactics with a steep price tag apparently designed to weed out some of the ghoulish clowns.

This game could've dropped the Fallujah name and avoid the bad press but they stuck to it, creating expectations of intent....which have been mostly squandered for the moment, and from my experience with tac shooters and milsims, the only thing preventing an army of chuds from descending on the game is that they're unwilling to pay 40$ for 4 missions.

To be honest I don't really care about the name of this game anymore than I care to play Call of Duty (press F to ruin a virtual funeral, no russian, etc) or care about the politics of Arma 3 or whether or not the devs of Squad thought about inhumane weaponry while designing their own rendition of Fallujah, which did not cause no uproar. If I realize my lobby is full of unsavory individuals who pull me out of the experience I join another one.

However they made the choice to reap some interest by reviving a contentious dead name, so if you are going to slant your concept in that direction, I will be expecting something that I have not seen since Spec Ops : The Line without breaking the fourth wall. Is that easy to do? No. But you put yourself in that situation now it's time to deliver and the current state of your product, although early access, does not bode well for your overall PR legitimacy.

Maybe a future update will finally integrate the other side of the coin, but at that point in time it's going to come across as the afterthought everyone is suspecting, and you are also going to piss off a sizeable chunk of your community who bought it for the tactics but also in part to make a point about "pWnIg tEh libslolz" based on the first available build. My glee for the community cleanup will be hard to conceal but my hopes are low.

TLDR Game is good but devs stuck themselves between a rock and a hard place because for all the defensive PR they did, none of the supposed "nuance" is there at the moment.
 
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mainer

Venatus semper

Well that's something. How often do you see a major game released almost a month early? I can understand Larian not wanting to release BG3 at nearly the same time as Starfield, as the RPG gamers of the world want to play both games. It will give many gamers the chance to play both games this year.
 
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