Starfield

Since we don't have a topic yet on Starfield, I'll make one. Consider this an open discussion for anything Starfield related.

I was pleasantly surprised this morning when checking the Steam Store and found a listing for Starfield, while not available for preorder yet, it can be wish listed. I'm really glad to see that, as just this week I had this lingering, gnawing, rat-infested fear that Starfield might only be available on the Microsoft or Bethesda Stores. But I can put that to rest now. PCG also had an article this morning on the very same thing:

Starfield Steam page appears as Bethesda cranks up the marketing machine | PC Gamer

I'm not worried that Bethesda will over-promote the game (like CP2077 was), they're a veteran studio with a lot of experience and know how to trickle out just enough information. We haven't seen any actual gameplay footage yet, but I'm sure we will in 2022. As a huge fan of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, I can't help but be extremely excited for Starfield. "Skyrim in space!", I'm there.

The Steam page if you haven't seen it:
 
It is certainly a very intriguing game and I think that is the best term to describe Starfield, at least for me. I can't say "exciting" because Fallout 76 was a bus fire and Todd Howard showed that he'd lie extensively if it served his purposes. So I am going in with skepticism but it's impossible to deny that a new IP from Bethesda Game Studies is very intriguing. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it.
 

Sarafan

Community Contributor
I'm waiting for Starfield, but I also fear that it'll have a very similar gameplay to TES and Fallout series. I'm quite tired with the formula. I hope that it'll be somewhat distinctive from the mentioned games, but all Bethesda titles have a similar style. We have to wait for gameplays. I keep my fingers crossed though.
 
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It's weird, but I may be more hyped for this than any other upcoming game, and I don't even know anything about it. I guess my imagination is the best hype machine. But I love the Fallout games, even the revamped Fallout 76, and I'm guessing this will be kind of Fallout in space (I think they said it would be Skyrim in space, but that's kind of weird).

Can't wait to see some in-game footage and find out more about what in the world you'll be doing--probably fetch quests in space!
 
Actually, a question just occurred to me: Will our protagonist player character be voiced, as he/she was in Fallout 4? I haven't seen anything related to that, and I kind of have mixed feelings about it. One the one hand, I think it gives a bit more personality to our player character, on the other hand(more down the road kind of thing), it makes its more difficult for certain types of mods to be developed, specifically companion mods and to a degree some quest-type mods.

Which reminds me of another concern/question: Will mod support remain the same now that Bethesda is owned by Microsoft? They have to know that the longevity of games like Skyrim are mostly due to the talent of the modding community, so I'm hopeful they won't screw that up.

I guess my imagination is the best hype machine. But I love the Fallout games, even the revamped Fallout 76, and I'm guessing this will be kind of Fallout in space
Oh yeah, my imagination is running wild as to what Bethesda will do with a completely new IP and 10 years of technical advancements (since Skyrim). I never played FO76 (only because I've just never dived into the online gaming scene), but I loved both FO3 and FO4. FO4 gets a lot of abuse, but I personally loved it. It's such an open sandbox that a player can approach it however he/she wants, especially when modded. My great passion in FO4 is the settlement building and management. My Sanctuary Hills house & pool:
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but I also fear that it'll have a very similar gameplay to TES and Fallout series. I'm quite tired with the formula.
I understand that some have that feeling and that they want something new and a different formula for Bethesda RPGs. For me, I love that "formula" that Bethesda uses to make RPGs: vast interactive worlds where we can go anywhere, do just about anything, and just role play who we want to be. It's much the same approach that Pyranha Bytes takes when making their games; same basic formula in how they create their game worlds and gameplay. I greatly admire both studios for sticking to it and avoiding change just for the sake of change with no real focus.

It's Bethesda - the game will likely have great moddability. Those mods will take months to build up, at a minimum. No point in buying until that happens.
Hopefully the mod community and the modding tools will be a strong force in the longevity of Starfield as it was with Skyrim. But for myself personally, I couldn't possibly wait. For every game I've ever modded, I've always played it first in its "vanilla" form without any mods. How can I tell what to mod if I don't know what areas/aspects of the game that I want to alter?

Not only that, there are those "Wow!" moments that Todd Howard mentioned. Escaping the dungeon in Oblivion and seeing that huge world as you stepped out, fleeing Helgen in Skyrim, seeing the night sky, the wind in the snow covered trees; and it just felt so cold, but you could go anywhere. And exiting the vaults in both FO3 and FO4 and seeing the huge devastated world to explore. Those are moments that are embedded in my mind, and I wouldn't want to miss them in Starfield.
 
I agree with @mainer , I love the Bethesda formula and always do a vanilla run before considering any mods, besides maybe a community patch. I doubt I'll get the game as soon as it releases though, as I expect I'll have to upgrade my PC to be able to play it, as I wouldn't want to play it with all the settings set to Low. And while I don't care much for mods, the game will probably get patches for several months after release at least.
 
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Actually, a question just occurred to me: Will our protagonist player character be voiced, as he/she was in Fallout 4?

I know a lot of people who are very passionate about this question, but I'm not really one of them. I can deal with it either way. If I were forced to pick one, I'd probably go with voiced, but only because I enjoy good voice acting, which I assume would be the case here.

Which reminds me of another concern/question: Will mod support remain the same now that Bethesda is owned by Microsoft?
When Microsoft decided the game would not be a Windows store exclusive, they lost all hope of the game not being modded. But Bethesda, I'd imagine, will still have a lot of influence over things like this, and they've always supported a good modding scene.

My great passion in FO4 is the settlement building and management. My Sanctuary Hills house & pool:

That house is beautiful. I didn't do much building, other than what was required, in FO4, but it's my favorite part of F76.

I really enjoyed F76. It's basically a PvE game because you can choose in the options not to participate in PvP. People can still try to kill you, but there are harsh penalties and no gains for doing it. I don't recommend the game, though. Their server problems are atrocious and never ending. I was going to log in right now and take a picture of my latest base for you and couldn't get into the game yet again. Of course, I'm just playing the game on Xbox Game Pass, and all their servers are crap. It may be different if you had it on Steam. One last thing on F76, after they retooled the game (it launched as a sandbox without any sand in it), it's very much like a regular Fallout game now. Unfortunately, you have to pay $13/mo if you want to play it solo, which is ridiculous, especially since you still have to be online and their servers don't work a majority of the time (zero exaggeration there).

I understand that some have that feeling and that they want something new and a different formula for Bethesda RPGs. For me, I love that "formula" that Bethesda uses to make RPGs: vast interactive worlds where we can go anywhere, do just about anything, and just role play who we want to be.

I always see people describe Bethesda games as a mile wide and an inch thick, a huge empty map, but then you see people (probably the same people) complain that Ubisoft maps have too much stuff on them. Personally, I like how both companies approach open world games, but Bethesda games just seem to have a more personality to them for me. They are more immersive because of how they handle NPC's and create a living world where things just go on without you (Ubisoft has dabbled in this formula, but hasn't really gotten it right yet). I probably didn't describe that very well, but anyway...
 
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Just watched the Xbox showcase. I don't want to overstate it, but based on what they showed today, Starfield makes Star Citizen look like a quaint little indie game. I believe they said there were hundreds of star systems you could explore (could have just said 100). You can land on any planet anywhere you like. You can build your own outposts. You can design and build your own ships. Space combat looked really good, as did gun combat on the surface with the jetpack. Couldn't really tell much about the narrative, but it sounds like you'll have a lot of freedom to do things as you wish.

There was a lot more. I'm sure they'll put the videos on PCGamer. About the only negative I saw were the same old ugly NPC's.
 
Over 100, with over 1,000 planets.

Looks interesting for sure. If the RPG side isn't mind numbingly R, but rather more PG, I'll be interested—if there's an Intro Tutorial to Very Easy I can play and replay.

Sounds like the RPG side is going to be like Fallout. The question is which one? Everything up until Fallout 76? I think you could handle that. Fallout 76? Well, that's a bit much. It is a bit of a mess. But then again, Fallout 76 was designed to keep you busy, as it's a live service game. I can't imagine them going that complex in a single-player game where they aren't wanting you to buy crap all the time.
 
Just watched the Xbox showcase. I don't want to overstate it, but based on what they showed today, Starfield makes Star Citizen look like a quaint little indie game. I believe they said there were hundreds of star systems you could explore (could have just said 100). You can land on any planet anywhere you like. You can build your own outposts. You can design and build your own ships. Space combat looked really good, as did gun combat on the surface with the jetpack. Couldn't really tell much about the narrative, but it sounds like you'll have a lot of freedom to do things as you wish.

There was a lot more. I'm sure they'll put the videos on PCGamer. About the only negative I saw were the same old ugly NPC's.

I'm a bit worried about the space combat part. Bethesda games are always going to be janky, so them making an entire new combat system worries me. I'm also worried it'll be mandatory for a bunch of missions but not actually very fun to do. Though I assume you can still change the difficulty mid-game like in other Bethesda games, so at least you can always switch to easy to avoid getting stuck on an annoying space combat mission you don't want to deal with.

I also wonder if you can actually land anywhere you like. I assume you need an open space big enough for your spaceship and I don't think you can fly it in the atmosphere, so I'm guessing you still have to choose a preset place to land. I figure these landing spots will then kind of function like fast travel points.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by how good the NPCs looked. Then again, I haven't played Fallout 4 or 76, so my main comparison is Skyrim and my expectations were therefore very low. The lip sync still seems off though.
 
Overall, I thought the Starfield reveal was pretty strong. A major concern for me is size. With so many planets, there's going to be a lot of procedural generation with barren planets that really have nothing going on. Generally, I prefer more constrained, curated experiences.

The core experience looks promising overall, but I'm not super hyped about it either. Crafting, resource, gathering, outpost building, and ship customization aren't things that really move the needle for me. Plus, I'm more of a traditional fantasy guy anyways, and I generally don't like sci fi as much. I was really hoping to see Avowed, which is a more anticipated title for me (although given how long it has been since we've seen it, I think there is some cause for concern about how development is going).
 
I watched that video this morning, and I have to admit that I'm more psyched now than before. I was very impressed by the actual gameplay and visuals.

Briefly, some of the things that impressed me (some of these may be negatives for others, they're just my personal preferences):

1- Graphic detail and variety look better than any game they've made, especially that first city (can't remember the name). Same with the character models and weapons.
2- Combat looks great to me, with the ground combat footage having a definite Fallout 4 feel which is fine by me. And there's also space combat (which I had wondered about) and I'm glad they included that in the game.
3- Exploration, which is always a huge point for me in Bethesda games feels just massive, with space, planet side, and city exploration there's going to be a lot of variety. I can see my first play through of the game going into the hundreds of hours.
4- Resource gathering, base building, ship building (and flying!), and weapon crafting; I love those things, and one of the main reasons I played so much Fallout 4. I can't wait to see what mods come out for those elements.
5-The UI seems very minimal, which is good.
6- The conversation scenes were brief, but looked detailed. @Pifanjr mentioned he felt that the lip syncing looked a bit off, but to me it looked better that either Skyrim or Fallout 4. What I didn't see (or don't remember) is how our character responds. I'm still curious as to the details of how your character's responses will be handled , or if our character is voiced, which I'm assuming at his point that he or she won't be, which I'm fine with.

So, yeah, overall I'm extremely hopeful for Starfield, and I really didn't see any negative issues in what that gameplay reveal showed.
 

Sarafan

Community Contributor
Looks like Bethesda Games Studios prepares for a great come back after a very bad Fallout 76 release. From what I've seen emerges a gigantic game made with passion and dedication. I'm surprised how good the game looks. And I'm not talking here about the graphics (which are very good on their own), but the gameplay aspects. It's funny that Bethesda may actually deliver a better Star Citizen than Chris Roberts. What am I talking about? The game is something more than Star Citizen. It's a combination of SC, Mass Effect, No Man's Sky and Fallout 4. I'm delighted by the gameplay. I'll probably buy it on release date even if it's buggy like a standard Bethesda title. A very ambitious project and it looks like they'll actually manage to lift it!
 
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Overall, I thought the Starfield reveal was pretty strong. A major concern for me is size. With so many planets, there's going to be a lot of procedural generation with barren planets that really have nothing going on. Generally, I prefer more constrained, curated experiences.

I'm really curious how the planets are going to turn out. Skyrim apparently had 338 fast travel points, so I think they should be able to have at least a decent number of planets that are worth exploring, with the rest being either radiant quest level of interesting or resource node level of interesting. I expect you'll have no reason to visit more than, say, a hundred planets on any one playthrough though, unless the explorable area on each planet is really constrained.

5-The UI seems very minimal, which is good.

I also thought the UI looked really good. I especially like the radial weapon select menu. I hope that on PC we can still use the number keys as hot keys though.

6- The conversation scenes were brief, but looked detailed. @Pifanjr mentioned he felt that the lip syncing looked a bit off, but to me it looked better that either Skyrim or Fallout 4. What I didn't see (or don't remember) is how our character responds. I'm still curious as to the details of how your character's responses will be handled , or if our character is voiced, which I'm assuming at his point that he or she won't be, which I'm fine with.

I agree it's still far better than any other Bethesda game, but it did feel more wooden than, for example, Mass Effect (though I haven't played Mass Effect in years, so I might be wrong about that).

I'm really hoping the player character isn't voiced. I think it would make it a lot harder to immerse myself in the game.

EDIT:

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/BethesdaStudios/status/1536369312650653697
 
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The only thing that impressed me with Starfield was the ability to customize your ships with parts/colors. That is at least something I have not done much of in similar games before, so call me excited. The whole 1000 planets pitch just made me a bit nauseous. I have heard the boring pitch before and it is going to boil down with probably 10 unique planets and the rest being stuff you land on to grind fluff you can't find on the other planets. Most likely, you won't be visiting them at all, because they will be boring as hell or Star Citizen will release before you manage to.

Combat/movement looked bad, definitely needs a lot of improving. Yes, yes, it's not out yet, but if this is what they care to show, call me uninterested. The shooting/weapon crafting looks similar to Fallout 4, which could be a good thing shooting-wise, but the crafting in Fallout 4 was not what I would call a full-fledged crafting system.

The main hub looked pretty cool. I would not mind walking around there, much Mass Effect 1 vibe here. Definitely good if they focus on such details of similar hubs so they feel inviting and original. The different fauna/flora was nothing special, nothing like you'd see in for example Morrowind where every place felt different from each other.

Am I being too pessimistic? Perhaps, but THIS is the game Todd Howard in his shiny leather jacket and shoes are saying is the new vision from Bethesda, something really made for gamers to enjoy and he says stuff like: ambitious, epic, you can create the most flexible character, background/traits. Well, if it is so bloody incredible, then why does it look so bland, or perhaps soulless would be a better word?

I hope they do manage to bring back some juice in the company, I hope they make their best game ever!, but at the same time, I'm not going to cry if the game releases like a pile of shait. I'm ALMOST expecting Bethesda to screw this up somehow. Oh, and let's not forget microtransactions: Since you can customize your own ships, I'm definitely not going to be too surprised if they put in a cash shop where you can buy premium skins for your ship for starters.
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Zloth

Community Contributor
Overall, I thought the Starfield reveal was pretty strong. A major concern for me is size. With so many planets, there's going to be a lot of procedural generation with barren planets that really have nothing going on. Generally, I prefer more constrained, curated experiences.
The two aren't exclusive. They could hand craft some big base that's going to be somewhere on the planet, then determine where it will be randomly. The procedural generation starts at the edge of that area and keeps going over the whole planet. When the generation gets near another base or the other side of the planet, it gets less random and picks out a way to smoothly transition to the parts that have already been generated.

If you land at some random place, you'll likely find procedural generation. What you see will be specific to whatever random seed you used to start the series of random numbers. If you go to the base, though, you'll see what everyone else sees. If you walk from the base out into the wilds, you'll eventually (and hopefully smoothly) transition from the hand crafted to the procedural.

(Edit: or they could just make the whole planet procedural and make the adventures happen in not-too-large buildings that they can plop down in lots of places. If they're slackers.)
 
So I watched the extended Xbox Games Extended Showcase and was thinking that maybe, just maybe they would actually do, and I quote " deeper dives into" games like Starfield. But no, I get to see grown men, one slightly constipated it seems (or perhaps it is hard to fake being excited about smoke and mirrors) talk about Starfield in the most shallow way possible. No dives into even a single mechanic in Starfield, just two people talking about how cool it would be to talk with other people about how they did the side-quest. Are you kidding me?! THAT is how they are presenting how great this game is, that you can talk to colleges about it by the water cooler, having an epic water cooler moment?

Are we going to be ok with just that? Fumble our fingers and go "Well, it's not like they did not talk about Starfield, they just wanted to express their love?" You know, (and I am mostly comparing this with the first E3 Starfield showcase) when I first watched Howard present Fallout 4 back in 2015, I was not only surprised by the early release date but I was overwhelmed with good vibrations!. Not only did they show us something that looked pretty much finished, but Howard also showed A LOT of the game, THE GAME, not just shallow parts of it. The segments that were shown were also done well and it made me crave for more. I still remember that good feeling, being excited about something you knew would be awesome! In case you all have forgotten about just how f.ing epic that presentation was, please, do watch it again and compare it to the Starfield presentation and tell me THAT is not how you sell a game and how you present it packaged with an EPIC (to use Uncle Pete's fancy wording) ribbon!. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTq3q8e8nhA
 
The two aren't exclusive. They could hand craft some big base that's going to be somewhere on the planet, then determine where it will be randomly. The procedural generation starts at the edge of that area and keeps going over the whole planet. When the generation gets near another base or the other side of the planet, it gets less random and picks out a way to smoothly transition to the parts that have already been generated.

If you land at some random place, you'll likely find procedural generation. What you see will be specific to whatever random seed you used to start the series of random numbers. If you go to the base, though, you'll see what everyone else sees. If you walk from the base out into the wilds, you'll eventually (and hopefully smoothly) transition from the hand crafted to the procedural.

(Edit: or they could just make the whole planet procedural and make the adventures happen in not-too-large buildings that they can plop down in lots of places. If they're slackers.)


"I should also add that we have done more handcrafting in this game, content-wise, than any game we’ve done. We’re [at] over 200,000 lines of dialogue, so we still do a lot of handcrafting and if people just want to do what they’re used to in our games, and follow a main quest, and do the questlines, you’re gonna see what you’d kind of expect from us. But then you have this whole other part of, ‘Well I’m just going to wander this planet, and it’s going to provide some gameplay, and some random content, and those kinds of things.’ Kind of like a Daggerfall would, if you go way back."

Again, the philsophy here is about saying yes to the player, allowing them to make detours into areas the designers wouldn't ever have been able to fill out, and providing something to do there, even if it's not a part of the main game.

The procedurally generated planets are just there to prevent having to use (invisible) walls or constraining players to only visit 10 planets in the entire galaxy. They don't actually contain anything interesting, but the game won't tell you you can't land somewhere. You can check out any planet you come across, gather a few resources and then take off again. Or if you really like the vibe of it, you can decide to build a base there.

It's just a way for the galaxy to feel big, even if most of it is empty. And it's a nice way to give the players who are really into base building a lot of different environments to build their base in.

So I watched the extended Xbox Games Extended Showcase and was thinking that maybe, just maybe they would actually do, and I quote " deeper dives into" games like Starfield. But no, I get to see grown men, one slightly constipated it seems (or perhaps it is hard to fake being excited about smoke and mirrors) talk about Starfield in the most shallow way possible. No dives into even a single mechanic in Starfield, just two people talking about how cool it would be to talk with other people about how they did the side-quest. Are you kidding me?! THAT is how they are presenting how great this game is, that you can talk to colleges about it by the water cooler, having an epic water cooler moment?

Are we going to be ok with just that? Fumble our fingers and go "Well, it's not like they did not talk about Starfield, they just wanted to express their love?" You know, (and I am mostly comparing this with the first E3 Starfield showcase) when I first watched Howard present Fallout 4 back in 2015, I was not only surprised by the early release date but I was overwhelmed with good vibrations!. Not only did they show us something that looked pretty much finished, but Howard also showed A LOT of the game, THE GAME, not just shallow parts of it. The segments that were shown were also done well and it made me crave for more. I still remember that good feeling, being excited about something you knew would be awesome! In case you all have forgotten about just how f.ing epic that presentation was, please, do watch it again and compare it to the Starfield presentation and tell me THAT is not how you sell a game and how you present it packaged with an EPIC (to use Uncle Pete's fancy wording) ribbon!. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTq3q8e8nhA

I think they started showing Starfield now because they'd expected to release this November, but realized too late the game wasn't ready yet and didn't want to delay their showcase, for which they now didn't have nearly as much content to show as they were planning on. This presentation would've probably looked a lot better if they had delayed it for several months as well.

It probably would've been better too if they had just been honest about how much work the game still needs instead of trying to hype up something that isn't ready yet.
 
I think they started showing Starfield now because they'd expected to release this November, but realized too late the game wasn't ready yet and didn't want to delay their showcase, for which they now didn't have nearly as much content to show as they were planning on. This presentation would've probably looked a lot better if they had delayed it for several months as well.

It probably would've been better too if they had just been honest about how much work the game still needs instead of trying to hype up something that isn't ready yet.

Good points, especially the last paragraph about not hyping to game up. I guess that is one of the things that makes me pretty angry: Not being transparent and honest enough. The whole No Man Sky fiasco is an example every game company should take into consideration when trying to overhype their games.

It can go really wrong, though I don't think Bethesda is not going to deliver on its promises, just that those promises probably are exaggerated and cleverly worded. Basically, you might think: "Ohhh, shipbuilding, cool! I can build my own ship! Then you find out you can't really build the whole ship, just tiny pieces, and those pieces come from a selection of not that many unique pieces, and then you find out the best colors are hidden behind a paywall or that they are not that great looking..." kind of like how it was with the building at the early release of Fallout 4. Let's hope they listen to you @Pifanjr and let's hope the next presentation will be an epic one, one that uncle Pete and Howard can really stand tall behind.
 
The two aren't exclusive. They could hand craft some big base that's going to be somewhere on the planet, then determine where it will be randomly. The procedural generation starts at the edge of that area and keeps going over the whole planet. When the generation gets near another base or the other side of the planet, it gets less random and picks out a way to smoothly transition to the parts that have already been generated.

If you land at some random place, you'll likely find procedural generation. What you see will be specific to whatever random seed you used to start the series of random numbers. If you go to the base, though, you'll see what everyone else sees. If you walk from the base out into the wilds, you'll eventually (and hopefully smoothly) transition from the hand crafted to the procedural.

(Edit: or they could just make the whole planet procedural and make the adventures happen in not-too-large buildings that they can plop down in lots of places. If they're slackers.)
That's almost certainly the case. I guess my comment was just a roundabout way of me saying that I don't really want games to be massive. I think Starfield is going to be a good game and, for a particular kind of player, it's going to be amazing. But for me, I'd rather have a 10 times smaller world with more density. At the end of the day - and I mentioned this in another thread - I think my views are more a reflection of the fact that I don't love BGS games like a lot of people do. For core fans, I think this will satisfy. But I (probably unfairly) hoped that Starfield would win me over, and from what I've seen it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
 
I just finished watching the entire video of the IGN interview with Todd and I was pleasantly surprised of the space combat stuff they talked about. It's apparently going to be relatively slow (Todd mentioned Mechwarrior as an inspiration) and you'll have to manage energy for your (multiple) weapon systems, engines, etc. and you'll also be able to board and steal ships, so it's not as shallow as I feared it would be.
 

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