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Bethesda new game is coming soon. What kind of character do you intend to play? How will you approach the game? I will build myself a Cyberneticist (guess I painted too many Iron Hands, ) and build an Outpost on the fringes of the galaxy to extract valuable resources from the environment. With the help of the hard-earned cash from that endeavour I will mod my body and my starship.

 Strg Alt wrote:
Bethesda new game is coming soon. What kind of character do you intend to play? How will you approach the game? I will build myself a Cyberneticist (guess I painted too many Iron Hands, ) and build an Outpost on the fringes of the galaxy to extract valuable resources from the environment. With the help of the hard-earned cash from that endeavour I will mod my body and my starship.

Haven’t even looked at it.

Fully intend to get it and wear it out, but I’m going in blind as possible.

Same here. I'm okay with "spoilers" for a theme park kind of game like Fallout 76, but I'd rather not get that for a single player RPG with an actual story. You know how it is with marketing. These guys just can't resist.

I'm currently interested in space games and Starfield is coming along at the right time. I might just throw money Bethesda's way even though we all know how that's likely to go. But who knows. I got lucky with Fallout 4 that was surprisingly free of bugs right from the start. At least for me. Wouldn't mind repeating the experience.

Waiting to see the review embargoes end. (Aug 31).

It looks like a standard exploration/shooter from Bethsoft, but I don't want to deal with the usual bugs (though I didn't have much trouble with FO4 either).

My biggest issue is the early access is tied to the premium edition which is tied to the first DLC which has nothing but a title. I _definitely_ am not willing to throw money at unknown content (especially since the early FO4 DLCs were empty garbage)

After some consideration I have decided to buy the premium edition. This means early access and sadly no CBBE mods at the start but I really loved building settlements in Fallout 4. Happy junkrat times await me.

I am getting it despite normally not wanting to Pre-order, hopefully better than their last outings.

And get to try out the Xbox adaptive controller on a shooter yay!
Which may end up quite fun with foot pedals, and a bunch of buttons everywhere with my joysticks.

So far I am going in about as blind as possible, not even watching any footage. Just reading a few bits of info.
Giving them a chance, will see what it gets me.

I pulled the trigger and got me the premium edition. Now I'm waiting for that to blow up in my face. At least in the short run. Long term there's no Bethesda game that I didn't get an obscene amount of hours of play time out of, so it should be a pretty safe purchase regardless.

 Strg Alt wrote:
After some consideration I have decided to buy the premium edition. This means early access and sadly no CBBE mods at the start but I really loved building settlements in Fallout 4. Happy junkrat times await me.

"I get early access to the game if I pay for the premium edition. Also I have to wait longer before I see boobies sing the sweet song of freedom if I pay for the premium edition. No deal, Bethesda!"

Glad we established the early access thing is a classic example of Bethesda not knowing their customer base.

 Geifer wrote:
I pulled the trigger and got me the premium edition. Now I'm waiting for that to blow up in my face. At least in the short run. Long term there's no Bethesda game that I didn't get an obscene amount of hours of play time out of, so it should be a pretty safe purchase regardless.

 Strg Alt wrote:
After some consideration I have decided to buy the premium edition. This means early access and sadly no CBBE mods at the start but I really loved building settlements in Fallout 4. Happy junkrat times await me.

"I get early access to the game if I pay for the premium edition. Also I have to wait longer before I see boobies sing the sweet song of freedom if I pay for the premium edition. No deal, Bethesda!"

Glad we established the early access thing is a classic example of Bethesda not knowing their customer base.

The correct term would be BBT (Bouncing boob technology).


Bethesda said they were going for NASA-Punk style. This is all good and nice although I love good old retro sci-fi too. I am pretty sure Barbarella CBBE will become a thing. "My stepmother is an alien" (1988) is also a good indicator what kind of character I will try to build within the political correct restrictions imposed by the devs which will be lifted without a doubt by mods in probably the first month or two.

I'm tempted to pull the trigger for the Premium Edition. Still mulling it over, though there's a good chance that I will.

And has Bethesda actually issued a statement about breast jiggle? Or is that merely something that players have observed from the trailers?

Eumerin wrote:
I'm tempted to pull the trigger for the Premium Edition. Still mulling it over, though there's a good chance that I will.

And has Bethesda actually issued a statement about breast jiggle? Or is that merely something that players have observed from the trailers?

Starfield is a modern video game. So most of the in silico women will be bland at best and flat as a board in regards to physique. BBT is therefore off the menu. Although everybody who has played Skyrim and Fallout 4 knows that with just a few twists you can spice up the gameplay by a wide margin.

 Strg Alt wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
I'm tempted to pull the trigger for the Premium Edition. Still mulling it over, though there's a good chance that I will.

And has Bethesda actually issued a statement about breast jiggle? Or is that merely something that players have observed from the trailers?

Starfield is a modern video game. So most of the in silico women will be bland at best and flat as a board in regards to physique. BBT is therefore off the menu. Although everybody who has played Skyrim and Fallout 4 knows that with just a few twists you can spice up the gameplay by a wide margin.

Modern western game, perhaps. There was recently a fuss because Amazon is localizing a Japanese game called Blue Protocol, and removing the jiggle physics (and no, I don't know anything about the game other than that minor news blurb).

I started the pre-load before leaving for work today. Went for the premium edition.

Sixteen and a half hours of download time for me. Should be doable over the course of two days.

The early reviews are fairly mediocre (average of 88/100 ) isn't great. Sub 90 with review inflation isn't good.

I don't think it'll bomb, but the Gamespot review described everything I fear about the game. That it is ultimately just another Bethesda game, a mile wide and an inch deep. They really need to ditch their in-house engine. I don't see how they stay competitive with their current design philosophy. Morrowind was noteworthy for being an open-world game in a time when that was rare and this was true again for Oblivion (the first game by them I recall really hitting the masses), FO3, and Skyrim. By the time FO4 came out other companies were releasing sprawling open-world games of their own and even though I don't personally like TW3, CDPR showed that it was possible to make an open-world RPG with a higher quality storyline, voice acting, combat, etc.

Me, I wouldn't want Bethesda to get any funny ideas. I like their games just fine the way they are. I very much prefer continuity from a game studio. Want something different? Give another game developer a try.

If Starfield is Skyrim IN SPACE, I'm happy. Of course it's not. I yelled at people and nothing happened. But so far gameplay feels smooth. I'm picking up all sorts of junk. I spent an hour customizing my character. I'm taking it nice and slow, so I'm not very far along yet. For me the interesting part is outposts. Bethesda incrementally improved home/settlement mechanics in previous games. If Starfield does well in that regard, I get what I want out of the game.

I'm glad my character stays silent and I get text based conversation options. We'll see if there are meaningful choices in there. I'm not far enough along to have seen much of that. Voice acting for NPCs seems fine. Smoother than in previous games, I'd say.

 Strg Alt wrote:
Bethesda new game is coming soon. What kind of character do you intend to play? How will you approach the game? I will build myself a Cyberneticist (guess I painted too many Iron Hands, ) and build an Outpost on the fringes of the galaxy to extract valuable resources from the environment. With the help of the hard-earned cash from that endeavour I will mod my body and my starship.

Well, I can answer that now. I'm playing a space trucker. Hope there aren't any suspicious distress calls coming in from inhospitable planets anytime soon!

The problem is bethesda owns ip's that don't deserve the disservice that is bugthesda... Looking at fallout especially.

I looked up the MQ and it's worse than anything I could possibly have ever imagined.
I know a lot of people dislike the FO4 MQ, but this is so much worse.

Meh, the main quest is hardly the main appeal of Bethesda games.

Made it mostly out of the tutorial. Seems to run good and its very pretty. Only real critique I would say is that the UI in the inventory and stuff is a little clunky. The fast travel particularly is a little convoluted, and the menus in general are kinda hard to navigate. I don't know if its the lack of contrast or what.

It almost reminds me of Total War 3 Kingdoms where the aesthetic designs of the UI was distracting from the actual contents of the UI. Which I feel weird saying since the menus are very minimalist.

Story critique so far

 Grey Templar wrote:
Meh, the main quest is hardly the main appeal of Bethesda games.

Made it mostly out of the tutorial. Seems to run good and its very pretty. Only real critique I would say is that the UI in the inventory and stuff is a little clunky. The fast travel particularly is a little convoluted, and the menus in general are kinda hard to navigate. I don't know if its the lack of contrast or what.

It almost reminds me of Total War 3 Kingdoms where the aesthetic designs of the UI was distracting from the actual contents of the UI. Which I feel weird saying since the menus are very minimalist.

Story critique so far

Spoiler:

Seems good if a little generic. Though I will say the way you get given the ship at the beginning and sent to Constellation seems very contrived. This guy you just met swaps places with you so you can leave and gives you his ship... No drama or anything. No real drive to find out answers about your vision. Seems like we could have used another 20 minutes or so, maybe a death of some mentor figure to give some motivation to find out about the artifact.

I don't really feel any particular connection to Constellation yet. I kinda just want to go explore instead.

I suspect the UI will be one of the first things to get a mod, as has been the case since Oblivion. Personally I'm not bothered by it. Last time I used one of those was Skyrim. Bethesda probably took a look at what's popular there when they introduced subcategories and filtering in Fallout 4. Starfield looks like it's using the slightly more refined Fallout 76 inventory, look aside of course, including a new stuff category. I mean, yeah. It's controller friendly categories whose contents you scroll through in alphabetical order. But I'm used to that, so it doesn't feel bothersome to me. I do like that you get a character preview of the specific attire category you're in. In Fallout 76 you have to take off your costume first if you want to see visual changes to your armor or underarmor. I'm glad Starfield is smoother than that, especially since I'm nowhere near finished shopping for the perfect outfit.

trexmeyer wrote:
I looked up the MQ and it's worse than anything I could possibly have ever imagined.
I know a lot of people dislike the FO4 MQ, but this is so much worse.

Spoiler:

You become Starborn. No, seriously, you can find video clips of this. You become Starborn and get access to Starborn powers that are literally visually worse than Skyrim's Dragonborn shouts and dramatically inferior to a plethora of mod powers I've seen across the years.

The intro is hands down one of the worst for Bethesda. Its 'But Thou Must!' stripped of any veneer of story or setting excuse. Even the standard Bethesda prisoner beginning (there's a moon and pirates right there) and stumbling across the thing would've worked better than this did. That you are a space miner (working day 2) and then in character creation pick a background that has feth all to do with mining is just a cherry on top of the crap Sunday. FO4 main quest is decent, its just too set in stone, down to unimportant professions and a personal timeline that doesn't matter. This just dispenses with pretending that its anything other than a game and gets you to the MQ starting point. Which honestly they could have done with your character at the door of Constellation holding a flyer, and it would've made more sense.

The game does get better (exploration and wandering and shooting), but that was a real rough start.

As to the spoiler, yeah, I knew that was coming (trailers and all that). Its... there I'm not sure why, because it hammers home that this is Skyrim in Space. While I've enjoyed the environments and exploration, everything else is pretty thin.

My worst complaint is that for a Space RPG, the Space aspect is... sad and under-cooked. You don't have a ship. You have a reskinned Skyrim house with a turret mini-game attached. You don't really fly anywhere, you just fast travel from islands of skyrim biomes to a different skyrim island. Actually attempting to fly the ship in any meaningful way is simply inconvenient (like docking with space stations) or completely impractical (anything else). Its mostly a big cargo container. The fact that some of the biomes are on different planets doesn't matter in the slightest. [For example, I just finished a quest with a bar refilling, and I just fast travelled back to the Constellation building and the bar is still refilling exactly where it was. I was multiple solar systems away, but, nope, there I am. Convenient, I suppose, but it doesn't make me feel like space and jump drives are a factor in the world.

I'm having fun with it, but mostly wandering around exploring, like you do in Bethsoft games. Outpost building is pretty janky, like Fallout settlements, you just don't have to deal with snapping individual wall sections this time. (Just trying to straighten out individual bits and bobs like desks and consoles so they line up in a room). Companions and persuasion I largely haven't messed with beyond a couple quests (persuasion in particular seems designed to fail unless you seriously invest in it)

So, its fun if you go in expecting another standard Bethsoft exploration shooter. But it isn't... amazing or mindblowing by any stretch. Fun for decompressing after a rough month (where BG3 is engrossing and demands my full attention). Whatever they iterated in the 2.0 Creation engine, they didn't touch gameplay mechanics and it really shows.

I figure the intro is probably about as good as it can be in order to rush you into the stars asap with your own ship but still give you a hook for the main story. As far as why you're there as a new miner regardless of your background, that's largely left to the player's imagination: you're there for whatever reason gets you there.

I feel like its trying to be both Elder Scrolls/Fallout and No Man's Sky but in doing so fails at both. I haven't been terribly impressed thus far.

Maybe I'll revisit in a year or so.

Definitely feels like a game that you get during a steam sale and not a day one buy.

I snagged the download for Game Pass, but it's still locked for me until tomorrow. Definitely glad I didn't pre-order it based off what y'all are saying.

Voss wrote:
My worst complaint is that for a Space RPG, the Space aspect is... sad and under-cooked. You don't have a ship. You have a reskinned Skyrim house with a turret mini-game attached. You don't really fly anywhere, you just fast travel from islands of skyrim biomes to a different skyrim island. Actually attempting to fly the ship in any meaningful way is simply inconvenient (like docking with space stations) or completely impractical (anything else). Its mostly a big cargo container. The fact that some of the biomes are on different planets doesn't matter in the slightest. [For example, I just finished a quest with a bar refilling, and I just fast travelled back to the Constellation building and the bar is still refilling exactly where it was. I was multiple solar systems away, but, nope, there I am. Convenient, I suppose, but it doesn't make me feel like space and jump drives are a factor in the world.

It really is unfortunate that fast travel isn't just convenient to the player but to the developers as well. It invites lazy shortcuts where otherwise they would have to think gameplay aspects through. The question of how far distances have to be and the degree to which the world has to be filled with interesting content to keep the player interested in making the trip is easily answered if your go to answer is instanced areas accessed by fast travel. Elder Scrolls and Fallout did pretty well for immersion if you just didn't use fast travel. Skyrim even brought back immersive travel options that Oblivion had ditched because of the availability of fast travel. That was a good sign.

Starfield's space travel went straight in the other direction. You basically have no choice but to use thinly veiled fast travel that has some serious issues with immersion. First time you land, you get a landing animation and then switch to your character sitting in the pilot chair. Of course there's a quick option to immediately exit the craft because woe be on anyone who has to walk ten meters to the airlock, right? Further visits to the same spot unfortunately don't even do that anymore. You land, you spawn in the spawn point in front of your ship. Or, even more annoyingly, in a place like Cydonia on Mars, you spawn away from the landing pad at the end of the walkway, outside the corridor to the colony's airlock. As someone who doesn't use fast travel at all unless there is absolutely no way around it, I think this stuff is terrible for immersion. Annoyingly they got it right with docking. You dock at the same space station however many times, you start out in your seat every time.

A quirky instance of this is my first outpost. I landed, scouted around, and apparently placed my outpost too close to the landing site. Because of that the ship now parks some way off in an alternate spot. Except, the map marker for the landing site is still in its original place. Now when I land there I spawn right where the landing site is while my ship spawns way in the distance. Did I jump out of my ship in mid air? Did I hike past my outpost to get to the landing site, only to have to walk straight back because obviously I visit to do stuff at my outpost and not at the now defunct landing site. It's pretty bogus and not thought through very well. But I suspect nobody at Bethesda cares if they even thought about it in the first place, because I can just fast travel to fix that issue, immersion be damned.

Voss wrote:
I'm having fun with it, but mostly wandering around exploring, like you do in Bethsoft games. Outpost building is pretty janky, like Fallout settlements, you just don't have to deal with snapping individual wall sections this time. (Just trying to straighten out individual bits and bobs like desks and consoles so they line up in a room). Companions and persuasion I largely haven't messed with beyond a couple quests (persuasion in particular seems designed to fail unless you seriously invest in it)

Maybe I just got lucky, but I failed two persuasions and passed four or five so far. And I even tried to get one of those failures because I really wanted to shoot the guy. I'm not quite sure how the system works, but I didn't get the impression that it was unfairly weighted against an unskilled character so far. It also seems more engaging than Bethesda's other attempts at speech check options, in so far as you are asked to make decisions instead of just clicking a single option and let RNG take over. It certainly felt like going with options that might be reasonable counters to the NPC's demeanor led to success more often than not.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I figure the intro is probably about as good as it can be in order to rush you into the stars asap with your own ship but still give you a hook for the main story. As far as why you're there as a new miner regardless of your background, that's largely left to the player's imagination: you're there for whatever reason gets you there.

I like the game so far, but I don't think the miner thing is thought through very well. You can give your character various backgrounds. Job, origin, age that would determine job experience, and they all lead to you taking up a space pick to start the story in the right place at the right time. It's just a mismatch of the vastly open options you as the player get to choose from and the very specific second job you have at the beginning of the game. It's forced, there's no two ways about it.

The two jobs are also something that exist in complete isolation of each other. Sometimes I and others identify me as a long hauler (my job from character creation). Other times I get to talk myself up as a miner from that two day stint, but don't get that noted down in my file local security apparently has ready access to. The prospecting I do on the side? The mining operations I run? That's yet to come up anywhere. The whole thing doesn't feel very well integrated.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Meh, the main quest is hardly the main appeal of Bethesda games.

Made it mostly out of the tutorial. Seems to run good and its very pretty. Only real critique I would say is that the UI in the inventory and stuff is a little clunky. The fast travel particularly is a little convoluted, and the menus in general are kinda hard to navigate. I don't know if its the lack of contrast or what.

It almost reminds me of Total War 3 Kingdoms where the aesthetic designs of the UI was distracting from the actual contents of the UI. Which I feel weird saying since the menus are very minimalist.

Story critique so far

Spoiler:

Seems good if a little generic. Though I will say the way you get given the ship at the beginning and sent to Constellation seems very contrived. This guy you just met swaps places with you so you can leave and gives you his ship... No drama or anything. No real drive to find out answers about your vision. Seems like we could have used another 20 minutes or so, maybe a death of some mentor figure to give some motivation to find out about the artifact.

I don't really feel any particular connection to Constellation yet. I kinda just want to go explore instead.

The problem is, as always, that bethesda writes the MQ so badly that it affects the rest of the world.

Small things in F04 like jet in a prewar vault. Add up to Gunners, armed equivalent or better than the Brotherhood without any background at all.

Maybe I just got lucky, but I failed two persuasions and passed four or five so far. And I even tried to get one of those failures because I really wanted to shoot the guy. I'm not quite sure how the system works, but I didn't get the impression that it was unfairly weighted against an unskilled character so far. It also seems more engaging than Bethesda's other attempts at speech check options, in so far as you are asked to make decisions instead of just clicking a single option and let RNG take over. It certainly felt like going with options that might be reasonable counters to the NPC's demeanor led to success more often than not.

Well, for the few I've had, its usually been a situation where the green option (likely to succeed) nets a +1, and they need 4 successes is 3 attempts.

The math on that just plain doesn't work. On the other hand, I got an orange one to proc for a +4, so succeeded in a conversation I didn't expect to.

It didn't actually matter 5 minutes later (based on how that story played out), but oh well.

----
As for general immersion and backgrounds, its bad, because their writing is paper thin as always.

I hit Neon, and one of my traits (neon street rat) finally came up (still waiting on big game hunter, alien dna or introvert).

Except... well. I talk to the guard at the spaceport entrance, as she's giving the rundown on the place and the rules.

Me [NSR special dialogue]: I know the score, I grew up on Ebbside.

Her: stock dialogue

Next new dialogue prompt for me: 'What's Ebbside?'

\sigh.

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
I snagged the download for Game Pass, but it's still locked for me until tomorrow. Definitely glad I didn't pre-order it based off what y'all are saying.

To be fair, it actually is the least buggy Bethsoft game I've ever played. No hard crashes, no buggy quests (so far). A few weird physics reactions where critters flip into the air like a Skyrim Giant launch when they die, and enemies getting launched into walls/ceilings and get wedged there every so often when their boost packs explode on death. I think a robot touched a wall when it 'died' and its arm got caught in the wall graphic. But pretty minor stuff all around (and not surprisingly, stuff that still happens in Skyrim and FO4).

Most common one is the landing cutscene, where the camera becomes odd. It seems to start at the landing point, and then reorients for the ship descent, sometimes at an odd angle. It makes it look like the game just places the ship on the ground first, then plays a cutscene over it of stock landing footage mapped to whatever the landscape is.

The exploration and combat is fun. Outposts are resource management heavy (I finally just popped down an aluminum mine, because its the constant choke on outpost construction).
I have gotten identical points of interest on the same planet (once within a kilometer of each other), so that isn't perfect.
Some of the side quest are really interesting, but I've been trying to push the main quest along. Partly to be done with it, partly for quest rewards. (The XP gain for exploration honestly sucks).

Voss wrote:
Well, for the few I've had, its usually been a situation where the green option (likely to succeed) nets a +1, and they need 4 successes is 3 attempts.

The math on that just plain doesn't work. On the other hand, I got an orange one to proc for a +4, so succeeded in a conversation I didn't expect to.

It didn't actually matter 5 minutes later (based on how that story played out), but oh well.

I often led with a yellow one when I liked the text. The medium difficulty worked decently for me so far and it gets the ball rolling and makes finishing persuasion with green followups fairly easy. I think I even got a longer chain of four or five attempts because of some pushback and recovery. And I didn't lead with a green one because I don't trust Bethesda and figured the easy option is there to trick people who only look at the numbers instead of selecting a fitting reply.

I have to echo the point on the state of the game. It's remarkably free of bugs I didn't get any animation issues. So far I had two crashes and instead of spawning on the ramp to an airlock, I spawned under it (there seems to be a no clip fix kicking in after a short while, so at least I wasn't stuck). Interestingly all three things happened on Mars. Other planets have been fine so far. And considering that it was the weekend and I may have overindulged, that's a trifling amount of issues in a lot of hours for the launch version of a Bethesda game.

I can understand looking to the main quest for leveling. Yeah, exploration doesn't yield much XP. Although I've had a bit of success hitting Piazza I on a survey mission. XP for the landmarks is paltry as ever, but I found some construction workers in need of a problem solver and some colonists with an easy task that got be a decent XP boost, not to mention the murderhobo camp I wandered into next to the murderhobo camp I was supposed to clear for the construction workers. I'd consider that a reasonable amount of variation that yields decent XP and some good gear and loot. And I'm not even done yet. That was a fun chain of discoveries. Although I should get back to actually taking pictures of flowers that I actually went there for. Got a bit sidetracked...

Not Online!!! wrote:


The problem is, as always, that bethesda writes the MQ so badly that it affects the rest of the world.

Small things in F04 like jet in a prewar vault. Add up to Gunners, armed equivalent or better than the Brotherhood without any background at all.

Well balance scaling problems is hardly unique to Bethesda. All RPGs generally have issues once you reach the upper end of leveling and the enemies end up just becoming absolute bullet sponges because nothing would be a challenge otherwise.

Jet in a sealed pre-war vault... Well, its a fairly minor continuity error. But who's to say that you couldn't have people invent Jet independently of each other? Or at least stuff that is mechanically identical and thus just labeled as such for convenience. Some things are just game mechanics and don't have to have lore implications.

That is a lazy excuse for a lack of imagination of solving RPG shooter mechanics. F.e. via introducing higher ammounts of enemies or better AI or higher availability of grenades, as other shooters have done.

Not a baseline military force in Fallout without any lore at all.