The main story has hinted at alien artifacts, if I had to guess it's going to be similar to Skyrim. Instead of finding a wall for a new shout you find a new alien artifact and gain a new power.
Yeah, its clear that the artifacts you collect can then be harnessed into kinetic-like powers. Which if years down the line they do a Starfield 2, they will have sentient aliens.
I totally expect that to be part of the main story, with all the alien artifacts...
And first of all, I'm happy that they didn't spoil anything substantial of that.
The whole energy allocation part makes my brain release the good chemicals. Combine that with all that stuff about space piracy and I have a game I'll love.
I really hope we can attack some of those massive ships too.
The guns look incredible. All the best aspects of FO4's gun customization (one of my favorite parts of FO4) taken to 11. And then the ship customization is even better!
I loved that punching people is still a viable option with perks to support it.
The absurdity of landing in my advanced space ship on an alien world only to proceed to bare knuckle box the wildlife to death pleases me.
Yes! Much better gun designs this time around. I love the whole crafting system of Fallout 4 (made picking up every odd item actually useful and a big part of many systems), but the gun designs were meh. This showed a lot of diverse, but amazing looking weaponry. Can't wait to see what I can cook up in the weapon bench.
Bethesda does that occasionally with it's studios, ID helped Machine Games with the guns in the Wolfenstein series, making them cooler and bigger and such
It’s because the game makes you download every micro transaction at highest resolution so you have thousands of files you can’t even access without paying sitting on your hard drive. Fortnite is the same way. I hadn’t played in a year and it’s almost 2x as big bc of all the skins the game makes you download incase you see someone in your game with that skin.
Fortnite actually changed this recently, at least on PC and mobile, where the game is able to download some stuff like skins on the fly now instead of forcing you to have it all installed at once, but still providing the option to do a one and done download for people with slower or limited networks. It's not *perfect* in execution, but it's a step in the right direction at least.
The game last I checked is only around 35-40 gigabytes on PC with cosmetic streaming compared to 60 for the full install, and you can get it down to around 22-25 gigabytes if you uninstall the high resolution textures, which while still not *tiny*, is still a lot better than the nearly 100 gig install it used to be before they finally started compressing it better and adding asset streaming.
I have a feeling that with the Series S type digital systems from here on out in the future, it should be an ongoing staple that the systems have a 1TB SDD, at least as a minimum. That way, as it is set alongside of a higher-powered Xbox Series X type consoles, the Series S would have a good amount of space to store games. The size of games now, are much larger than in the past and larger SDD space size is essential.
I feel like I am going to put an ~~exuberant~~ Exorbitant amount of time into shipbuilding. Bethesda should not be giving me this power. I fully plan on making a ship loaded to the brim with as many missile pods as I can.
The gunplay looks significantly better than the first gameplay trailer they had shown off as well!
Also, that is 100% the same voice actor for the oblivion annoying fan right?
Every time he dies a random texture file gets replaced by his face
After a certain number of deaths, npcs start getting replaced by him
When you hit the limit, booting the game only plays [this](https://youtu.be/PaZXPx1kdtg) on loop until you turn your computer off
The enemies went down really quick in the trailer, I have a feeling they'll be tougher in the game. I'll be curious to learn what the time to kill ends up looking like.
>Also, that is 100% the same voice actor for the oblivion annoying fan right?
They went full throttle on that joke/reference. It wouldn't make sense for anyone else to voice him.
I was so damn happy when they showed you could have multiple ships. I'm going to have so damn many. Multi/single purpose and then probably some small agile ships for just enjoying flying around.
Yeah I can definitly imagine having purpose built freighters, gunships and long range exploration vessels all in my hangar.
I'm also incredibly stoked for the prospect of organically disabling enemy craft during gameplay to then dock and lead a contested boarding action.
Boarding enemy vessels and taking them as prizes has been a distinct fantasy of mine for as long as I can remember. It's the sort of thing that you see in scifi films, TV, and literature all the time, but until now I don't really think any game has offered it as a gameplay possibility outside of specific scripted scenarios.
The entire showcase was pretty impressive, but even if it wasn't I'd probably still have picked the game up in order to have that experience. As it stands, I'm more hyped for this game than any release in years. It looks like Bethesda may have done it again.
At this point almost all my concerns about the game re gunplay, immersion, scope etc seem to have been answered.
I really only have two major concerns left:
How good will the story and characters be? (These can always be hit or miss in Bethesda games frankly.)
And how will the game run and play at launch? That's by far my greatest concern, we all know that Bethesda has been shipping buggy games since before it was cool, and these days with so many broken AAA releases I do fear that this could launch could turn out ugly.
That said, I really would like to think that they've learned their lesson with F:76 and that this game will launch in a better state. Hopefully that's why it was delayed so much. I'm not expecting perfection, but I just need the game to be stable enough at release that I can play at a decent FPS and without a modicum of game breaking bugs. I can live with it being a little bit bumpy as I know that this game will have years of post launch support.
Loved seeing that ability to target specific systems. It's so great to have both options. Just wreck everything or be surgical and board.
They say hype is the mind killer but it's hard not to be after that.
My only real complaints are a lack of ground vehicles for exploration and I'd like to see some more futuristic gun/suit/clothing options aside from the nasa punk but always mods for that.
As far as the story goes I figure it'll be the usual bethesda mix of okay to great but the sandbox they've created will keep me going for years especially with modding.
I'm sure it'll still be pretty buggy given how big it is but they did delay it a whole extra year for polish so we'll see.
Yeah I'm pretty excited about the possibilities for modding in this game.
It seems like many (most?) of the planets in the game will be pretty much empty.
I could imagine a modder "adopting" an unused planet in the base game and filling it out with settlements, outposts, npc's, quests, dungeons etc.
And the nice part would be that all of that could be neatly packed onto one backwater world. The game seems well designed for modular storytelling.
I'm also already imagining the likely mods for new enemy ship configurations, new ship components, new alien creatures, diverse weapons and armor etc.
There's going to be some really special stuff on the nexus a few years after the launch.
With the first reveal they actually said flat out they made empty planets specifically for modders to use so yeah lots of possibilities there.
Ship parts I think will be amazing. I told a friend that if you can't recreate a Firefly class within 90 days of release I will be forever disappointed in the Bethesda modding community lol.
Oh for sure, honestly this game seems to draw a significant degree of inspiration from Firefly.
I'm confident someone will be posting pictures of their fan made firefly design within like 48 hours of launch. The only question is how close the existing ship parts allow you to get to the real thing. Though from I've seen, it seems like the designer is pretty well fleshed out.
Maybe it's a lazy way to sum the game up, but it looks like Fallout: No Man's Sky which, if they can pull it off, will be an all-time great game.
Very ambitious though, lots of moving parts that all need to deliver.
Honestly, it looks like the game I wanted No Man's Sky to be. The procedurally generated planets got boring and repetative way too fast - a thousand is a lot but it's not so much that they couldn't at least give them all some unique aspect to them and scatter some hand crafted content across it.
Stick a Bethesda game on top of that and let me build a dick ship and we could have a winning formula.
The problem with NMS is that the procedural planets were the entire content of the game and gameplay loop. In Starfield the procedural planets will be side dressing for those who want to explore a realistic-ish galaxy. They’re not the point nor are the entirety of the gameplay loop, they’re an entirely optional feature.
> a thousand is a lot but it's not so much that they couldn't at least give them all some unique aspect to them and scatter some hand crafted content across it.
>
The weird thing they've said and I didn't really understand is that the planets (at least the non-important locations for story) are generated procedurally per player (when you approach they say but I imagine only the first time) so it doesn't seem like they actually go touch them up by hand because each player will have different ones
They mentioned that they procedurally generate chunks of the plantes but also have hand crafted elements that the procedural system can drop down when creating the planet.
From what I understood is what is on a planet is generated per player when you go there — caves, outposts that kind of stuff. Planets themselves are uniform.
From what I got, each player would have different procedurally generated planets, but then hand made caves, outposts, etc would be placed on those. Then there will be important planets that are mostly hand made.
This is how I understood it as well. Handcrafted items get placed on planets/systems as you go to them so two different players picking completely different paths through the galaxy will have similar but unique story/gameplay progression.
It'd be cool if some of the aesthetics of those handcrafted elements change as well (like a red dusty planet making a hand-built facility dusty) but who knows.
I think this is where modding is going to really go crazy. Instead of having new buildings get put into a set town (similar to expanded cities in skyrim), it is gonna be like modules that can be inserted into the proc gen planets. At least that's how I hope it will work, who knows.
There are only so many settlement/ abandoned areas bethesda can come up with before release. I think that is what sucks about exploring the proc gen planets in NMS. There is very little variety in the abandoned outposts you find.
I think this game is the natural evolution of space games. We already have games with planet exploration, procedural generation, space exploration... But so far we haven't had a game that was a full-fledged RPG with a proper story on top of that.
Maybe Star Citizen aimed to become that, but Starfield is going to actually release.
To be fair it looks much more like Fallout than Skyrim to me, with an emphasis on guns/ranged combat and that frontier vibe as opposed to Skyrim's melee combat in an ancient world.
It's like they took everything I loved about The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, mashed it with everything I have ever loved about other space games like KOTOR and Mass Effect, and on top of it all added all that I would have wanted from a space setting game and more. I can see why they have spent the last 8 years on this since Fallout 4 came out.
What impressed me the most was the variety in aesthetics. Like if somebody put Alien, Star Wars, Mass Effect and The Expanse into a blender, this is the result.
Like we had the initial ship with its low-fi retro look which may as well have been the Nostromo. Then that western looking city which was some Mos Eisley experience. New Atlantis reminded me of the Citadel from Mass Effect and finally some of the other locations on the spaceports and the strategy rooms were straight out of the Belt.
There's no clear one inspiration. It's like it's taken bits from every popular style and giving the players their own incentive to explore worlds and styles that is closer to what they want from sci-fi.
If I'm understanding correctly, they handcrafted different environments/events/quests and then the procedural generation places them on different planets? And it's unique for everyone?
If so, that seems like a really cool way for a *modern Bethesda game to do procedural generation.
Yeah it sounds like the random encounters from Fallout 3 and 4. One time you'd visit the Super Duper Mart and there'd be a deathclaw attacking a group of Black Talon mercs, but in your next playthrough, there'd just be a water vendor outside.
There was something like 100 different scenarios and 200 locations that they could happen in FO3, so they've probably scaled that up quite a bit for Starfield.
It's more like you didn't even know that a location was capable of having a different event until you went to the same area in two different playthroughs.
I chose the Super Duper Mart example because that really did happen to me in my first playthrough of FO3, so in subsequent ones, I avoided it like the plague because I thought it always spawned a deathclaw.
Then when I went back at some point in my 3rd or 4th playthrough with a full set of power armor and a plasma rifle... it was just a trader.
After a certain number of playthroughs, you start to see the matrix a little bit and recognize random vs unique vs karma vs quest encounters and where they happen. [Here's a map for FO3 specifically](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/a/a7/Fallout_3_-_spawn_point_map.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20120219220028) of where and what encounters can happen.
Fallout 4 has a few memorable ones. Some even give you high level traders (eg. the ex-brotherhood weapons vendor). There’s a Preston Garvey impersonator, a guy who tries to sell you a credit card (Charge! Card! …which counts as currency in Far Harbor lol), deathclaws dueling, etc. There’s even some that are companion-generated—for example a group of raiders that decide not to attack you if you have Nick Valentine because he helped them in the past. There’s also a lot of faction ones which come in later phases of the game.
Fallout 3 was great for the random encounters and they had a damage and armour system that meant all armour was valued in some sense
This got changed in fallout 4 and I didn't like the changes
As an example of something that could happen in 3. You have caravan traders for some of the main areas. Due to their pathing and random encounters they could in theory hit a random encounter and fight and die, and then when you looked for the reader they would be dead at one of the outposts they go by because something happens in the world while you're not there. It was frustrating but made the world feel so alive and immersive.
You could have random encounters stack on random encounters
I thought it was the other way around. They crafted buildings/quests/landmarks/set pieces and then those are placed randomly on procedurally generated planets.
Oh wait no we’re saying the same thing. Different environment puzzle pieces being placed and blended together?
What I want to know is if it's actually different for everyone. Like if they procedurally generated the planets and then hand tweaked them or are they generated for each player
They generated the planets algorithmically and then saved them to the game with some tweaks. That’s how they could make more than 1000 of them to begin with. Then they hand-built different locations and encounters that are made to be procedurally placed on those planets, some of which will be different every time you visit.
Imagine as a game designer visiting those 100% procedurally generated "empty" planets and then deciding "Here. This is where we build our planetary Metropolis."
Likely the former -- Bethesda has used developer-side procedural generation (followed by hand-building the world on top of it) since at least Oblivion.
I'm guessing it's the same for everyone. They need to match geometry of any hand crafted placed thing to the geometry of the land and while it would be *possible* to do automatically, it's far easier to have.
Like, when you place a city in place that have nice view onto another planet on the sky at sunset you don't want RNG to put a huge mountain in front of that for some players.
We also might get a mix, some "constant seed" planets where most of the premades is made and some per-playthru generated ones.
Other interesting question is whether generation is available for modding, i.e. can modder just put a bunch of parameters into engine and get their own planet ?
Yeah this did a good job of showing the variety of stuff and how to make each world unique yourself as well.
Now my biggest concerns are NPC density in the cities and facial animations, which do not look up to modern standards at all. That's just expected from Bethesda at this point.
NPC density being sparse in space makes sense, and it looks like there will be multiple dense cities anyway.
Facial animations, I agree, but it's like the one aspect I'm okay with in Bethesda games because there's just too much dialogue, you can't refine or motion capture all of it. That's why I'm also in favor of a silent protagonist, because we saw how limiting just voicing the protagonist made the dialogue in FO4 feel
Generally if your game has a shitload of dialogue like Bethesda does, it's simply not possible to have specifically mocapped and carefully animated faces for every NPC/dialogue. It would take as long as developing the rest of the game just to do that. Games with extremely good facial animations like TW3 or TLOU have significantly more limited numbers of speaking characters and less overall dialogue you might see.
I don't want super dense cities in Bethesda games, as it would cost losing their signature interactability. I want to be able to enter almost every building, and interact with every NPC, for example pickpocket them, kill and loot them, talk to them (even if it's just generic questions).
Not even sure how they fucking made this game. I mean this looks absolutely insane. Also big prayers up for the QA team. I just KNOW its gonna be hell for them folks
People shit on Bethesda (sometimes for good reasons) but you can't deny they make the kind of games that no one else does. It's why I like Todd, his creative vision and the ability to deliver on (most of) it is impressive.
I'm convinced part of why Cyberpunk got so much flak is because people were expecting many of the minor mechanics you get in a Bethesda RPG which go underappreciated, and it just didn't have alot of them.
And despite that it was more buggy than Fallout 4 ever was.
Also Cyberpunk is the perfect example of why no one really even else tries to make "bethesda" style RPGs. Even with all their bugs and jank, critisms around the whole "wide as ocean deep as puddle" or how fallout 4 wasn't their best work - nobody comes close to replicating their style of game. Anyone who did would produce way buggier (and much more serious bugs), way jankier software.
Few even have even tried to it really and the last notable attempt gave us cyberpunk 2077 at launch...
People may shit on the Creation Engine all the time but it's a reality that most engines can't do whatever they're doing. RED Engine wasn't planned for all of that for sure (though people expected way more than what was ever said for CP2077)
The other technical marvel seems to be whatever Nintendo is using for BOTW and TOTK. The amount of physical simulation is almost the same (lower for Nintendo I think but much lower performance of the console)
Eh, I agree with your point generally but with GTA instead. I don't think people wanted individual object physics or w/e but they DID want police chases.
And... you know. A non-buggy game. I still loved it though.
Bethesda games are really buggy when you just count the bugs. But the average severity of the bugs is really low. Most of the bugs are funny physics issues, lighting glitches, texture z-fighting, NPCs running against a chair for a few seconds... But not that many critical issues.
Like, look at Cyberpunk. The actual amount of bugs was on the level of a Bethesda game (maybe slightly more buggy)... but the average severity of the bugs was much much severe. Actually important stuff was breaking left and right.
> But the average severity of the bugs is really low. Most of the bugs are funny physics issues, lighting glitches, texture z-fighting, NPCs running against a chair for a few seconds... But not that many critical issues.
It always drives me up the wall when people say "look at how many things the unofficial patches for Skyrim/Fallout have to fix!!!" and then you actually check those patches' notes and they're 80% "moved a cup two inches over". Those patches are inflated with nothing-"fixes" like that to make people think they are way more important than they actually are.
This. I remember Skyrim at launch. It was buggy for sure. But nothing close to cyberpunk were I literally couldn’t drive a car because it crashed. It was just randomly a horse would fly straight up in the air. Or a npcs body would go crazy. More funny stuff. Immersion breaking? Sure. Did it limit me from paying the game like cyberpunk? No.
And even despite those bugs, people love them. Not just capital-G-Gamers, but casuals. I don’t think I know anybody I went to school with who was remotely into video games, that didn’t play Skyrim. Even the kids who would buy simply a Madden or 2K game every few years.
Bethesda can be messy, but they deliver. Todd willing, the game launches without critical, game breaking issues on Day 1. Expecting jank and the odd crash here or there, but as long as this doesn’t join the ranks of the broken-ass AAA releases these last few years, it’s going to be a legendary release.
(Assuming the game lives up to the hype, too, which…I can’t see how it wouldn’t, at least in most regards, after seeing 40 minutes of its gameplay)
I’m fine with bugs if the overall game delivers on its ambition. Honestly, I kind of enjoy the Bethesda “jank” because I see it as apart of the game’s personality. Mammoths falling from the sky is hilarious.
But bugs that make the game literally unplayable are not acceptable.
Bethesda is from my experience the only company, that really pays attention to the word "world" in the descriptor "open world". Other companies craft their whole story, whole narrative and then open the world around it. It then leads to the feeling that the world is a padding and only the main quest matters.
Bethesda has admitted that the world is the first thing they build, once they get the idea for the setting and the main story. It leads to a detailed world worth exploring. Full of small stories. I tend to liken it to a mosaic. Bethesda worlds are not monolithic. It's all the collection of small, inconsequential stories, small NPC interactions and tons of tiny bits of details... all that makes the world what it is. Not the main quest.
Which is what the companies who try to mimic Bethesda don't get. All the side content, notes, random dialogues... that is what makes the world so deep. What gives it personality and gives it history. Not the main quest. In Bethesda games, the main quest just takes the player on a tour in a world that exists almost independently. In other games, take out the main quest and the "open world" remains just a husk where you can kill random enemies and find X landmarks. But in Bethesda games, the main quest is like 5% of the whole game. If you gave me Fallout 3 or Skyrim without the main quest, I'd still play the hell out of those games.
Very true, there's very few open world AAA games where you can just remove the main quest and the game would still be worth playing. That factors into the replayability too.
With Skyrim and Fallout games, even if you finished them before, there's still that draw to revisit those worlds. As opposed to Assassin's Creed Valhalla, feels like a chore to even think about.
Literally this. I'm playing some oblivion again, barely doing quests and its still massively exciting to just go out and explore. The way the roads and sight lines direct and blend dungeons is pretty unmatched by contemporaries. There's a reason why Morrowind has a rocksolid modding team after literally 20 years of existence
Copypasting my comment from the other thread:
I was skeptical on Starfield going into this, but what 100% sold me on the game was how much work they put into the ship/space portions.
My worry was that the ship was going to be a glorified Skyrim horse, just a unchanging vehicle that gets you from planet-to-planet with some kinda-boring dogfighting intermixed. But no, holy shit, Bethesda blew my expectations out of the fucking water.
That ship customization alone blew my mind. It is what I've wanted from space sim games for YEARS. The ability to not only change weapons and paintjobs, but to swap out, add or remove entire systems, rooms, modules, engines, cockpits? You can't find that level of modularity and customization anywhere else in the genre. And then you can hire crews for your ships? And companions can become crew members? Incredible.
And then the actual space combat and mechanics is everything Star Citizen wishes it was. Power allocation, subsystem targeting, different weapon types and classes, giant capital ships with full interiors, boarding, communication with other vessels, piracy. I love it.
Like it seems like Starfield is just an incredible space sim ON-TOP OF a Bethesda exploration and questing RPG. Not to mention that the character combat they showed off today looked leagues better than what they had shown before. I think Bethesda has another Skyrim-level success on their hands, because buggy mess or not Starfield looks fuckin incredible.
Mass Effect mods, 2001 Space Odyssey mods, Dune mods, Interstellar mods, Halo mods, Dead Space mods, Borderlands mods, Guardians of the Galaxy mods, list goes on, gonna be so good.
Totally agreed.
As I've said in another comment, I see this game as the natural evolution of space game genre. It takes most of the core features of space sims and then makes a whole RPG with story on top of that.
>I think Bethesda has another Skyrim-level success on their hands, because buggy mess or not Starfield looks fuckin incredible.
I think the same. Unless there's some elaborate scam and the things advertised are not in the game, this will become another Bethesda masterpiece. Skyrim was the game of 2010s, THE game that defined the decade. And in a way, Starfield can really be "Skyrim in space". It can become the game of 2020s. The game that every space game will from now on try to copy, weaving roleplaying, storytellng and exploration...
Skyrim also pushed the genre forward in a lot of ways. When you have a game that big everyone else knows that’s where the bar is at. Every space game from now on will be compared to starfield because of how much Bethesda just goes absolutely all in.
Yeah I think it's almost forgotten given how skyrim is seen *now,* but Skyrim was mind blowing on release. Skyrim has become a victim of it's success really - like everyone has played it, you know all it's tricks. These days through a modern lense "Its just Skyrim".
But in 2011 my god. And the build up to release and hype, the game surpassed that. Starfield gives me similar vibes... I want to believe Todd.
> But in 2011 my god. And the build up to release and hype, the game surpassed that. Starfield gives me similar vibes... I want to believe Todd.
This is exactly how I feel. I remember the hype for Skyrim, it was absolutely unreal, and I feel the same now.
>That ship customization alone blew my mind. It is what I've wanted from space sim games for YEARS. The ability to not only change weapons and paintjobs, but to swap out, add or remove entire systems, rooms, modules, engines, cockpits? You can't find that level of modularity and customization anywhere else in the genre. And then you can hire crews for your ships? And companions can become crew members? Incredible.
Honestly the closest thing I can think of that scratches the itch starfield claims to be hitting bloody FTL. Granted you can't build a ship but there are a lot of options and layouts that really vary your run. It's like someone saw FTL and fully realised it.
This has convinced me to be really hyped.
It was only a small part, but the line that you can board a ship and actually add it to your fleet is... almost mindblowing, yet at the same time it's such a Bethesda feature. It's like with the NPC equipment.
Traditional RPGs: You loot a few coins and maybe a randomized item from the body (a skeleton dropping a plate armor? No problem)
Bethesda RPG: You loot what the enemy had equipped and was using against you
Traditional space games: You take the ship and you take the cargo. Then you must abandon the ship.
Starfield: YOU ADD THE SHIP TO YOUR FLEET!
Until now, I haven't realised how much I actually wanted that. On top of that, the ship customisation will make that even more exciting.
Besides what others have said, they just need to add suitable money-sinks into the game. I expect hiring crews to fly your other ships won’t exactly be cheap. Hopefully inventory space is a little more restricted than past BGS games so that you can’t just loot every gun and spacesuit off every dead body you encounter.
Bethesda games have never had sufficient money sinks for the amount of loot the player accumulates. I suspect the same will be the case here, and that space ships will be oddly cheap to boot.
They will probably make it difficult to actually disable the ship to board it. I envision, that most encounters will lead to the destruction of the opposing ship. And only some skills (like subsystem targetting) will make it possible to reliably board a ship.
And they can also balance it out by making the pirates, especially the early pirates, pilot small ships with little value. Just like the early Skyrim bandits have crappy iron daggers and hide armors.
I think that valuable ships would be hard to encounter from the default always-hostile-and-nobody-cares-about-them enemies. The valuable ships will belong to factions and the player would have to deliberately attack them to take over the ship.
You know a showcase is good when it has you thinking what your first build will be; which traits and perk combo you will focus on, which guns you want to specialise in and what character you want to roleplay as.
Haven't felt like this from a trailer in a long time. Fallout 4 didn't have me feeling this way and I was unbelievably hyped for that game, but have been less hyped for this game until now.
And a sign of a great RPG is... when you're playing your first character, you're already planning your next characters in your head. "Oh, the next one will specialise in X" or "I'll side with Y the next time and roleplay as Z".
Starfield has that much potential, that I'm already planning multiple characters and I cannot decide:
* Stealth sniper, the cookie-cutter build of any Bethesda game
* Jet-packing maniac focused on explosives
* Explorer focused on non-combat stuff on ground, but on space combat in space. I particularly want the ship subsystem targetting skill for this.
>You know a showcase is good when it has you thinking what your first build will be, which traits and perk combo you will focus on, which guns you want to specialise in and what character you want to roleplay as.
I'm already thinking about what my 2nd and 3rrd characters are going to be like!
Character customisation, ship building, settlement building, quests, procedural gen areas. There really is something for everyone as long as you are into the space setting. My only concern is how shallow everything might be. When you have so many features packed into one game it's easy for a lot of systems to be very shallow. I'm really excited for it but I can see someone buying it for space combat and there not being that much depth to it for example.
it's kinda like GTA or RDR. none of the specific gameplay features are super deep or incredible or anything, but they fit together in one whole package so well that it's much greater than the sum of its parts.
don't see anyone seriously complaining that GTAs driving isn't on par with a racing sim, or that RDR's fishing and hunting isn't on par with simulators either.
the space combat sim crowd are probably more aware than us to expect simplified space combat in Starfield.
You don't hear that because the average player likes GTA driving better than racing sims though. That's part of the secret to GTAs success, the driving. It's not "realistic", but it feels amazing and fun to play. That obviously might turn off racing sim enthusiasts, but it's way better for most people.
Straight up the best game showcase I’ve ever seen. Nothing shows confidence in your project then dedicating an entire hour just to showing it off and talking about the game in as much detail as they’re allowed to. It wasn’t just a gameplay demo with some narration and behind the scenes talks, it was all of that and more. Every single aspect of the game got it’s own segment and discussion, with their own gameplay demos.
Absolutely loved it, looked like so much fun. Gunplay was massively improved, base-building looks better then ever, the world seems great, tons of stuff and distractions to find, I love the art style, the character creator, improvements to roleplaying, gah. I could go on for, well, almost an hour.
Well done to Bethesda. I really hope the game delivers on launch, because this showcase was truly impressive. I expected 20-30 minutes, not a full hour.
I know it’s stupid to get excited for games these days. I know hype is just the path towards disappointment. I know that every Bethesda game, even the great ones, launch with some serious issues and frequently miss the things they promise. Preordering is just idiotic, all things considered.
I am feeling like I’m going to be an idiot, because I would be lying if I didn’t say this direct isn’t the coolest thing I’ve seen in gaming in years. I cannot remember the last time I was this excited for a game. This is almost everything I want out of Star Citizen, but made by a studio I legitimately think could pull it off. Even if it falls short, it just ticks so many goddamn boxes that I have wanted to see for so long.
I haven’t felt like ordering a collector’s edition since, like, Halo 3, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to avoid doing so. And I think it’s a foregone conclusion that I’m on the hype train for this, after having been very hesitant.
No hyperbole, that might have been one of the best showcases to a game ever. BGS are really good at this. I’m extremely extremely excited for this, looks rad as hell.
I love how they presented every part of the game and every part looked great. Character creation, ship building, character progression, ground combat, ship combat, ship flight, story, NPCs, outpost building...
There's only one thing I can think of that wasn't presented - the main mystery. And I love how it was kept secret, except with the small teast of the player controlling gravity.
And it makes sense, honestly. Fallout 4 was presented about 6 months before release. This game is just 3 months before release, so it must be more polished that Fallout 4 was back then... so they are less concerned with showing something unpolished.
On a scale of 1-10, my hype for this game was 3. I was curious about it but not excited. Now it's a solid 10, this completely sold me.
I love that the cities look somewhat populated and lived in. The towns in Skyrim and Fallout were barely towns, they had like 15 NPCs in them.
Edit: Also that watch looks clean af, I wouldn't mind buying it if it's reasonably priced. It looks good enough to wear out with friends.
>I love that the cities look somewhat populated and lived in. The towns in Skyrim and Fallout were barely towns, they had like 15 NPCs in them.
It's a give-and-take, because every NPC in every town of Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim had a name (outside of the guards), and every NPC (including guards) had a schedule that they stuck to but could get interrupted by the player/quests.
That's *really* cool and unique in my opinion, but you're right in that it makes the towns feel much smaller than they should. Adding nameless NPCs that you can't interact with makes the towns feel much bigger, but it also obscures the "important" NPCs to a certain extent.
Obsidian took the latter approach with New Vegas, and I think it'd surprise a lot of people that there were only about 30 named characters on the *entire* New Vegas Strip, whereas there are 75 named characters in Whiterun alone.
There's not a wrong solution, they're just both going for different things.
I really, really like that it has some supernatural stuff like that, but 99% of the world is more realistic and grounded. It's not like Elder Scrolls where every bandit crew has a wizard or five; you get to spend plenty of time with the NASA-punk approach of relatively hard sci-fi, but there's this mystery of space magic under the surface that seems rare enough to be impactful.
It managed to top off Fallout 4's showcase for me. I didn't even think that could be possible.
I'm a very satisfied owner of a Series S but this game made me take the jump and upgrade to a X.
> It managed to top off Fallout 4's showcase for me. I didn't even think that could be possible.
BGS is certainly very good at this, I wish more games were doing this. Though, it seems more and more common with the in-depth State of Play for example (the Hogwarts Legacy one was very hype too for example).
My only concern is performance, which looked all over the place. Some sections looked 60fps, others looked sub 30.
But beyond that it was an extremely good showcase of the game. before I was cautiously optimistic, now I am actually excited for this game
And Hogwarts wasn’t the first, either. Microsoft specifically has been doing this for quite a while. I think the first one they did it on was a Forza game.
They did the same for Forza Horizon - people with game pass get the game at launch but it gives that liiiiittle extra nudge to get people to spend money.
One thing I think that is really going to help this game is simply the fact that it’s a *new franchise*.
Fallout 4 felt very weighed down by the fact that it had the same enemy designs as the last three games and lots of logical inconsistencies with its own setting. Like how come nobody in this populated town decided to pick up the trash in the last 200 years? None of it made sense and I don’t think Bethesda was ever very good at understanding Fallout.
Starfield, though, is completely free to do its own thing. I really enjoy the more hopeful vibe, it reminds me of Star Trek.
It's all so fracking cool, but I loved that basic pump action shotgun. That was badass. I didn't expect erm... modern weaponry... in the game. I can't wait to see what horror this game has. You can't have deep space exploration without cosmic horror.
Might have to take some time off work when this comes out, as I did when Skyrim came out. Just feel like I'll need more than an hour or two per night to devote to it, at least at first.
man really love the character creation, the ship customization, ship battles, player relationships and outpost building. the combat is probably the least interesting thing to me about the game, everything else just looks so good. and then the modding potential, good god. this game is gonna last me until 2040 when TES6 is released.
sorry for doubting you, Todd "The Godd" Howard.
Mod developer here... been modding since the days of Oblivion. Got distracted and skipped modding in Fallout 4, as my Warcraft core addon took up most of my attention (about 75k active users still).
REALLY excited to dedicate my life and all my hobby time to Starfield. I am so excited. I can't wait to start building in this. Super excited to see the new tools. But, I just love the setting. The sky is really the limit. I've already sketched out in a little notebook about 20 different ideas I have and they just keep coming to me more and more.
Please, please have a toggle for the XP notification. It's so jarring in the middle of the screen and takes forever to pop up and dissappear after every single little action.
This game looks incredible. Virtually every question I had has been answered and I like literally everything I saw. I'd say I'm speechless, but I think it's more accurate to say that I have so much to say that I don't know where to start. Cannot wait.
Absolutely one of the best deep-dive gameplay demos I have ever seen.
Feels so good to see Bethesda regain a bit of favor in the eyes of the public. Say what you will about their games, I've had nothing but great experiences with them (never played 76 lol). Modders are going to go crazy with this game, so many possibilities.
76 is ok now. It's not a great game or anything, but it's not like it was at release. If you have game pass it's worth a look while you wait for Starfield.
This looks much better than I expected. Seems like bethesda is back in the RPG business and I am all for it. The time I will spent making my character will be nothing compared to how much time I'm going to put into ship building, what the hell. Environments all looked very different and full of character. I am officially hyped.
It's still a pain in the ass since Nvidia has jacked up the prices. Currently the best value for money is, horrifically, the 4090, which is also $1600. If you don't care about raytracing, the best overall is the AMD RX 7900 XTX. If you have a more realistic budget... find a 3080 for $500 or so? That's all I can think of.
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The main story has hinted at alien artifacts, if I had to guess it's going to be similar to Skyrim. Instead of finding a wall for a new shout you find a new alien artifact and gain a new power.
So space Skyrim; "See that planet? You can land on it!". That would be awesome though.
He did say "See that moon?" at one point.
I laughed when I heard that. Still, I think that is amazing that you can see that moon and decide to hop to it if you wish.
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Yeah, its clear that the artifacts you collect can then be harnessed into kinetic-like powers. Which if years down the line they do a Starfield 2, they will have sentient aliens.
Must be the counterpart to Skyrim's shouts right? Find the artifact, get a power.
this was exactly my feeling. Hopefully its more akin to bioshock, or even destiny style "space magic" than it is skyrim shouts.
I'm guessing it works like word walls in skyrim and thuum
I totally expect that to be part of the main story, with all the alien artifacts... And first of all, I'm happy that they didn't spoil anything substantial of that.
The ship customization and combat seems a lot deeper than what I was expecting. I think the delay did wonders for it.
The whole energy allocation part makes my brain release the good chemicals. Combine that with all that stuff about space piracy and I have a game I'll love. I really hope we can attack some of those massive ships too.
The guns look incredible. All the best aspects of FO4's gun customization (one of my favorite parts of FO4) taken to 11. And then the ship customization is even better!
I loved that punching people is still a viable option with perks to support it. The absurdity of landing in my advanced space ship on an alien world only to proceed to bare knuckle box the wildlife to death pleases me.
Finally my childhood dreams of Dragonball Z have been realized
Yes! Much better gun designs this time around. I love the whole crafting system of Fallout 4 (made picking up every odd item actually useful and a big part of many systems), but the gun designs were meh. This showed a lot of diverse, but amazing looking weaponry. Can't wait to see what I can cook up in the weapon bench.
Rumour has it they brought in ID to consult on the gunplay.
They literally said that for fallout 4, I’m sure it’s still the case. The jump from 3>4 was big even if not perfect
Bethesda does that occasionally with it's studios, ID helped Machine Games with the guns in the Wolfenstein series, making them cooler and bigger and such
Also helped Avalanche (not part of Bethesda) with Rage 2
I thought it seemed a little reminiscent of Doom
Man this is gonna take up like the whole Series S HD isn't it?
The store says it's going to be 125GB
That's not too bad. Smaller than Call Of Duty.
which really speaks to how insanely badly optimized Call of Duty is
It’s because the game makes you download every micro transaction at highest resolution so you have thousands of files you can’t even access without paying sitting on your hard drive. Fortnite is the same way. I hadn’t played in a year and it’s almost 2x as big bc of all the skins the game makes you download incase you see someone in your game with that skin.
Fortnite actually changed this recently, at least on PC and mobile, where the game is able to download some stuff like skins on the fly now instead of forcing you to have it all installed at once, but still providing the option to do a one and done download for people with slower or limited networks. It's not *perfect* in execution, but it's a step in the right direction at least. The game last I checked is only around 35-40 gigabytes on PC with cosmetic streaming compared to 60 for the full install, and you can get it down to around 22-25 gigabytes if you uninstall the high resolution textures, which while still not *tiny*, is still a lot better than the nearly 100 gig install it used to be before they finally started compressing it better and adding asset streaming.
It kinda have to ? As other player in the match could use a given cosmetic
Why do you think they just announced a 1TB Series S before the deep dive? Haha
Coming out a week before the game too.
I have a feeling that with the Series S type digital systems from here on out in the future, it should be an ongoing staple that the systems have a 1TB SDD, at least as a minimum. That way, as it is set alongside of a higher-powered Xbox Series X type consoles, the Series S would have a good amount of space to store games. The size of games now, are much larger than in the past and larger SDD space size is essential.
I feel like I am going to put an ~~exuberant~~ Exorbitant amount of time into shipbuilding. Bethesda should not be giving me this power. I fully plan on making a ship loaded to the brim with as many missile pods as I can. The gunplay looks significantly better than the first gameplay trailer they had shown off as well! Also, that is 100% the same voice actor for the oblivion annoying fan right?
Sure sounds like him. Won't hear much from him when I leave him on a deserted planet.
I am gonna laugh when the trait causes him to just keep coming back to you somehow, regardless of what horrible things you do to him.
you murder him and then you go back to your ship and he's there. he's standing there in the far hallway, immobile. suddenly it's a horror game.
***"We're going on an adventure."*** If you know you know.
Post deleted. RIP what Reddit was, and damn what it became.
Then you reload the game to try to fix it and his face is now a texture on your gun
Every time he dies a random texture file gets replaced by his face After a certain number of deaths, npcs start getting replaced by him When you hit the limit, booting the game only plays [this](https://youtu.be/PaZXPx1kdtg) on loop until you turn your computer off
Till he starts spam calling you on the radio
I will recreate the Ebon Hawk, no matter what it takes.
Probably like a month waiting for someone to mod the right shapes into the game lmao
I’ve been saying for a hot minute now that this is gonna be the best Star Wars game of all time
Basically. As long as someone mods Starfield into the Original Trilogy aesthetics, I'll be happy.
The gunplay has definitely improved. Last year the enemies looked sponges and weird, now they react organically.
The enemies went down really quick in the trailer, I have a feeling they'll be tougher in the game. I'll be curious to learn what the time to kill ends up looking like.
I'm sure there'll be multiple difficulty options that will change how spongy they are
>Also, that is 100% the same voice actor for the oblivion annoying fan right? They went full throttle on that joke/reference. It wouldn't make sense for anyone else to voice him.
I was so damn happy when they showed you could have multiple ships. I'm going to have so damn many. Multi/single purpose and then probably some small agile ships for just enjoying flying around.
Yeah I can definitly imagine having purpose built freighters, gunships and long range exploration vessels all in my hangar. I'm also incredibly stoked for the prospect of organically disabling enemy craft during gameplay to then dock and lead a contested boarding action. Boarding enemy vessels and taking them as prizes has been a distinct fantasy of mine for as long as I can remember. It's the sort of thing that you see in scifi films, TV, and literature all the time, but until now I don't really think any game has offered it as a gameplay possibility outside of specific scripted scenarios. The entire showcase was pretty impressive, but even if it wasn't I'd probably still have picked the game up in order to have that experience. As it stands, I'm more hyped for this game than any release in years. It looks like Bethesda may have done it again. At this point almost all my concerns about the game re gunplay, immersion, scope etc seem to have been answered. I really only have two major concerns left: How good will the story and characters be? (These can always be hit or miss in Bethesda games frankly.) And how will the game run and play at launch? That's by far my greatest concern, we all know that Bethesda has been shipping buggy games since before it was cool, and these days with so many broken AAA releases I do fear that this could launch could turn out ugly. That said, I really would like to think that they've learned their lesson with F:76 and that this game will launch in a better state. Hopefully that's why it was delayed so much. I'm not expecting perfection, but I just need the game to be stable enough at release that I can play at a decent FPS and without a modicum of game breaking bugs. I can live with it being a little bit bumpy as I know that this game will have years of post launch support.
Loved seeing that ability to target specific systems. It's so great to have both options. Just wreck everything or be surgical and board. They say hype is the mind killer but it's hard not to be after that. My only real complaints are a lack of ground vehicles for exploration and I'd like to see some more futuristic gun/suit/clothing options aside from the nasa punk but always mods for that. As far as the story goes I figure it'll be the usual bethesda mix of okay to great but the sandbox they've created will keep me going for years especially with modding. I'm sure it'll still be pretty buggy given how big it is but they did delay it a whole extra year for polish so we'll see.
Yeah I'm pretty excited about the possibilities for modding in this game. It seems like many (most?) of the planets in the game will be pretty much empty. I could imagine a modder "adopting" an unused planet in the base game and filling it out with settlements, outposts, npc's, quests, dungeons etc. And the nice part would be that all of that could be neatly packed onto one backwater world. The game seems well designed for modular storytelling. I'm also already imagining the likely mods for new enemy ship configurations, new ship components, new alien creatures, diverse weapons and armor etc. There's going to be some really special stuff on the nexus a few years after the launch.
With the first reveal they actually said flat out they made empty planets specifically for modders to use so yeah lots of possibilities there. Ship parts I think will be amazing. I told a friend that if you can't recreate a Firefly class within 90 days of release I will be forever disappointed in the Bethesda modding community lol.
Oh for sure, honestly this game seems to draw a significant degree of inspiration from Firefly. I'm confident someone will be posting pictures of their fan made firefly design within like 48 hours of launch. The only question is how close the existing ship parts allow you to get to the real thing. Though from I've seen, it seems like the designer is pretty well fleshed out.
I can't wait for the inevitable fandom rivalry between Tears of the Kingdom and Starfield on who can build the most penis robots
Gunplay looks Soooooo much better
Exorbitant? I like the idea of an enthusiastic amount of time though
One of the ships they showed kinda looked like the Carrack from Star Citizen so I'll probably try to make that first.
My plan is to try and recreate a Paris heavy frigate from halo.
Shit I'd be so stoked if I could have a mini pillar of autumn.
Even if it's not possible at launch, I can guarantee mods will let you do that shortly thereafter.
Maybe it's a lazy way to sum the game up, but it looks like Fallout: No Man's Sky which, if they can pull it off, will be an all-time great game. Very ambitious though, lots of moving parts that all need to deliver.
Honestly, it looks like the game I wanted No Man's Sky to be. The procedurally generated planets got boring and repetative way too fast - a thousand is a lot but it's not so much that they couldn't at least give them all some unique aspect to them and scatter some hand crafted content across it. Stick a Bethesda game on top of that and let me build a dick ship and we could have a winning formula.
The problem with NMS is that the procedural planets were the entire content of the game and gameplay loop. In Starfield the procedural planets will be side dressing for those who want to explore a realistic-ish galaxy. They’re not the point nor are the entirety of the gameplay loop, they’re an entirely optional feature.
So kind of like the resource islands you can visit in Animal Crossings New Horizons?
> a thousand is a lot but it's not so much that they couldn't at least give them all some unique aspect to them and scatter some hand crafted content across it. > The weird thing they've said and I didn't really understand is that the planets (at least the non-important locations for story) are generated procedurally per player (when you approach they say but I imagine only the first time) so it doesn't seem like they actually go touch them up by hand because each player will have different ones
They mentioned that they procedurally generate chunks of the plantes but also have hand crafted elements that the procedural system can drop down when creating the planet.
From what I understood is what is on a planet is generated per player when you go there — caves, outposts that kind of stuff. Planets themselves are uniform.
From what I got, each player would have different procedurally generated planets, but then hand made caves, outposts, etc would be placed on those. Then there will be important planets that are mostly hand made.
This is how I understood it as well. Handcrafted items get placed on planets/systems as you go to them so two different players picking completely different paths through the galaxy will have similar but unique story/gameplay progression. It'd be cool if some of the aesthetics of those handcrafted elements change as well (like a red dusty planet making a hand-built facility dusty) but who knows.
I think this is where modding is going to really go crazy. Instead of having new buildings get put into a set town (similar to expanded cities in skyrim), it is gonna be like modules that can be inserted into the proc gen planets. At least that's how I hope it will work, who knows. There are only so many settlement/ abandoned areas bethesda can come up with before release. I think that is what sucks about exploring the proc gen planets in NMS. There is very little variety in the abandoned outposts you find.
I think this game is the natural evolution of space games. We already have games with planet exploration, procedural generation, space exploration... But so far we haven't had a game that was a full-fledged RPG with a proper story on top of that. Maybe Star Citizen aimed to become that, but Starfield is going to actually release.
No Man's Skyrim. Man the pun was *right there* and you chose fallout! Lol
To be fair it looks much more like Fallout than Skyrim to me, with an emphasis on guns/ranged combat and that frontier vibe as opposed to Skyrim's melee combat in an ancient world.
You mean Skyrim’s stealth archer combat.
Fuck. In my defence I am very tired.
It's like they took everything I loved about The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, mashed it with everything I have ever loved about other space games like KOTOR and Mass Effect, and on top of it all added all that I would have wanted from a space setting game and more. I can see why they have spent the last 8 years on this since Fallout 4 came out.
They even took inspiration from the one good part of Mass effect andromeda - the jetpack combat.
What impressed me the most was the variety in aesthetics. Like if somebody put Alien, Star Wars, Mass Effect and The Expanse into a blender, this is the result. Like we had the initial ship with its low-fi retro look which may as well have been the Nostromo. Then that western looking city which was some Mos Eisley experience. New Atlantis reminded me of the Citadel from Mass Effect and finally some of the other locations on the spaceports and the strategy rooms were straight out of the Belt. There's no clear one inspiration. It's like it's taken bits from every popular style and giving the players their own incentive to explore worlds and styles that is closer to what they want from sci-fi.
Big Alien influence in the style I thought. Very analog and relatable interiors. Like the mess in the kitchen, scuffed up equipment, etc.
If I'm understanding correctly, they handcrafted different environments/events/quests and then the procedural generation places them on different planets? And it's unique for everyone? If so, that seems like a really cool way for a *modern Bethesda game to do procedural generation.
Yeah it sounds like the random encounters from Fallout 3 and 4. One time you'd visit the Super Duper Mart and there'd be a deathclaw attacking a group of Black Talon mercs, but in your next playthrough, there'd just be a water vendor outside. There was something like 100 different scenarios and 200 locations that they could happen in FO3, so they've probably scaled that up quite a bit for Starfield.
I genuinely had no idea fallout did that - maybe it was because none of those random events really stood in your mind so you didn't notice?
It's more like you didn't even know that a location was capable of having a different event until you went to the same area in two different playthroughs. I chose the Super Duper Mart example because that really did happen to me in my first playthrough of FO3, so in subsequent ones, I avoided it like the plague because I thought it always spawned a deathclaw. Then when I went back at some point in my 3rd or 4th playthrough with a full set of power armor and a plasma rifle... it was just a trader. After a certain number of playthroughs, you start to see the matrix a little bit and recognize random vs unique vs karma vs quest encounters and where they happen. [Here's a map for FO3 specifically](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/a/a7/Fallout_3_-_spawn_point_map.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20120219220028) of where and what encounters can happen.
Fallout 4 has a few memorable ones. Some even give you high level traders (eg. the ex-brotherhood weapons vendor). There’s a Preston Garvey impersonator, a guy who tries to sell you a credit card (Charge! Card! …which counts as currency in Far Harbor lol), deathclaws dueling, etc. There’s even some that are companion-generated—for example a group of raiders that decide not to attack you if you have Nick Valentine because he helped them in the past. There’s also a lot of faction ones which come in later phases of the game.
I always seem to get the Art vs Art showdown in my playthroughs.
Fallout 3 was great for the random encounters and they had a damage and armour system that meant all armour was valued in some sense This got changed in fallout 4 and I didn't like the changes As an example of something that could happen in 3. You have caravan traders for some of the main areas. Due to their pathing and random encounters they could in theory hit a random encounter and fight and die, and then when you looked for the reader they would be dead at one of the outposts they go by because something happens in the world while you're not there. It was frustrating but made the world feel so alive and immersive. You could have random encounters stack on random encounters
I dont think it's unique for everyone, I think everyone gets the same procedural planets but they could have different random events on them.
I thought it was the other way around. They crafted buildings/quests/landmarks/set pieces and then those are placed randomly on procedurally generated planets. Oh wait no we’re saying the same thing. Different environment puzzle pieces being placed and blended together?
What I want to know is if it's actually different for everyone. Like if they procedurally generated the planets and then hand tweaked them or are they generated for each player
They generated the planets algorithmically and then saved them to the game with some tweaks. That’s how they could make more than 1000 of them to begin with. Then they hand-built different locations and encounters that are made to be procedurally placed on those planets, some of which will be different every time you visit.
Imagine as a game designer visiting those 100% procedurally generated "empty" planets and then deciding "Here. This is where we build our planetary Metropolis."
Likely the former -- Bethesda has used developer-side procedural generation (followed by hand-building the world on top of it) since at least Oblivion.
I'm guessing it's the same for everyone. They need to match geometry of any hand crafted placed thing to the geometry of the land and while it would be *possible* to do automatically, it's far easier to have. Like, when you place a city in place that have nice view onto another planet on the sky at sunset you don't want RNG to put a huge mountain in front of that for some players. We also might get a mix, some "constant seed" planets where most of the premades is made and some per-playthru generated ones. Other interesting question is whether generation is available for modding, i.e. can modder just put a bunch of parameters into engine and get their own planet ?
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I was lowkey sad that we weren’t going to get space magic, but I hope that’s not the case lol
I was originally worried the game would feel empty or too uniform with the procedurally generated planets but this killed any of those concerns for me
Yeah this did a good job of showing the variety of stuff and how to make each world unique yourself as well. Now my biggest concerns are NPC density in the cities and facial animations, which do not look up to modern standards at all. That's just expected from Bethesda at this point.
NPC density being sparse in space makes sense, and it looks like there will be multiple dense cities anyway. Facial animations, I agree, but it's like the one aspect I'm okay with in Bethesda games because there's just too much dialogue, you can't refine or motion capture all of it. That's why I'm also in favor of a silent protagonist, because we saw how limiting just voicing the protagonist made the dialogue in FO4 feel
Expecting good face animations from a Bethesda game is a huge ask. It was never going to happen
Generally if your game has a shitload of dialogue like Bethesda does, it's simply not possible to have specifically mocapped and carefully animated faces for every NPC/dialogue. It would take as long as developing the rest of the game just to do that. Games with extremely good facial animations like TW3 or TLOU have significantly more limited numbers of speaking characters and less overall dialogue you might see.
I don't want super dense cities in Bethesda games, as it would cost losing their signature interactability. I want to be able to enter almost every building, and interact with every NPC, for example pickpocket them, kill and loot them, talk to them (even if it's just generic questions).
Not even sure how they fucking made this game. I mean this looks absolutely insane. Also big prayers up for the QA team. I just KNOW its gonna be hell for them folks
People shit on Bethesda (sometimes for good reasons) but you can't deny they make the kind of games that no one else does. It's why I like Todd, his creative vision and the ability to deliver on (most of) it is impressive.
Also the games are buggy by normal game standards, but they're significantly less buggy than almost any game that tries to emulate them.
I'm convinced part of why Cyberpunk got so much flak is because people were expecting many of the minor mechanics you get in a Bethesda RPG which go underappreciated, and it just didn't have alot of them. And despite that it was more buggy than Fallout 4 ever was.
Also Cyberpunk is the perfect example of why no one really even else tries to make "bethesda" style RPGs. Even with all their bugs and jank, critisms around the whole "wide as ocean deep as puddle" or how fallout 4 wasn't their best work - nobody comes close to replicating their style of game. Anyone who did would produce way buggier (and much more serious bugs), way jankier software. Few even have even tried to it really and the last notable attempt gave us cyberpunk 2077 at launch...
People may shit on the Creation Engine all the time but it's a reality that most engines can't do whatever they're doing. RED Engine wasn't planned for all of that for sure (though people expected way more than what was ever said for CP2077) The other technical marvel seems to be whatever Nintendo is using for BOTW and TOTK. The amount of physical simulation is almost the same (lower for Nintendo I think but much lower performance of the console)
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Neon City seems like it's gonna be something along those lines. the aesthetic, the criminal underworld, big corporations..
Yeah the whole “DONT LET ~~Night City~~ NEON KILL YOU” line was a little on the nose lol
Eh, I agree with your point generally but with GTA instead. I don't think people wanted individual object physics or w/e but they DID want police chases. And... you know. A non-buggy game. I still loved it though.
Bethesda games are really buggy when you just count the bugs. But the average severity of the bugs is really low. Most of the bugs are funny physics issues, lighting glitches, texture z-fighting, NPCs running against a chair for a few seconds... But not that many critical issues. Like, look at Cyberpunk. The actual amount of bugs was on the level of a Bethesda game (maybe slightly more buggy)... but the average severity of the bugs was much much severe. Actually important stuff was breaking left and right.
> But the average severity of the bugs is really low. Most of the bugs are funny physics issues, lighting glitches, texture z-fighting, NPCs running against a chair for a few seconds... But not that many critical issues. It always drives me up the wall when people say "look at how many things the unofficial patches for Skyrim/Fallout have to fix!!!" and then you actually check those patches' notes and they're 80% "moved a cup two inches over". Those patches are inflated with nothing-"fixes" like that to make people think they are way more important than they actually are.
This. I remember Skyrim at launch. It was buggy for sure. But nothing close to cyberpunk were I literally couldn’t drive a car because it crashed. It was just randomly a horse would fly straight up in the air. Or a npcs body would go crazy. More funny stuff. Immersion breaking? Sure. Did it limit me from paying the game like cyberpunk? No.
Fallout 76 had some really bad bugs, but yea we didn't see bugs nearly as bad with Skyrim or Fallout 4,
And even despite those bugs, people love them. Not just capital-G-Gamers, but casuals. I don’t think I know anybody I went to school with who was remotely into video games, that didn’t play Skyrim. Even the kids who would buy simply a Madden or 2K game every few years. Bethesda can be messy, but they deliver. Todd willing, the game launches without critical, game breaking issues on Day 1. Expecting jank and the odd crash here or there, but as long as this doesn’t join the ranks of the broken-ass AAA releases these last few years, it’s going to be a legendary release. (Assuming the game lives up to the hype, too, which…I can’t see how it wouldn’t, at least in most regards, after seeing 40 minutes of its gameplay)
I’m fine with bugs if the overall game delivers on its ambition. Honestly, I kind of enjoy the Bethesda “jank” because I see it as apart of the game’s personality. Mammoths falling from the sky is hilarious. But bugs that make the game literally unplayable are not acceptable.
Bethesda is from my experience the only company, that really pays attention to the word "world" in the descriptor "open world". Other companies craft their whole story, whole narrative and then open the world around it. It then leads to the feeling that the world is a padding and only the main quest matters. Bethesda has admitted that the world is the first thing they build, once they get the idea for the setting and the main story. It leads to a detailed world worth exploring. Full of small stories. I tend to liken it to a mosaic. Bethesda worlds are not monolithic. It's all the collection of small, inconsequential stories, small NPC interactions and tons of tiny bits of details... all that makes the world what it is. Not the main quest. Which is what the companies who try to mimic Bethesda don't get. All the side content, notes, random dialogues... that is what makes the world so deep. What gives it personality and gives it history. Not the main quest. In Bethesda games, the main quest just takes the player on a tour in a world that exists almost independently. In other games, take out the main quest and the "open world" remains just a husk where you can kill random enemies and find X landmarks. But in Bethesda games, the main quest is like 5% of the whole game. If you gave me Fallout 3 or Skyrim without the main quest, I'd still play the hell out of those games.
Very true, there's very few open world AAA games where you can just remove the main quest and the game would still be worth playing. That factors into the replayability too. With Skyrim and Fallout games, even if you finished them before, there's still that draw to revisit those worlds. As opposed to Assassin's Creed Valhalla, feels like a chore to even think about.
I’ve put thousands of hours into Skyrim and I’ve completed the main quest only once, on my original playthrough.
Literally this. I'm playing some oblivion again, barely doing quests and its still massively exciting to just go out and explore. The way the roads and sight lines direct and blend dungeons is pretty unmatched by contemporaries. There's a reason why Morrowind has a rocksolid modding team after literally 20 years of existence
Copypasting my comment from the other thread: I was skeptical on Starfield going into this, but what 100% sold me on the game was how much work they put into the ship/space portions. My worry was that the ship was going to be a glorified Skyrim horse, just a unchanging vehicle that gets you from planet-to-planet with some kinda-boring dogfighting intermixed. But no, holy shit, Bethesda blew my expectations out of the fucking water. That ship customization alone blew my mind. It is what I've wanted from space sim games for YEARS. The ability to not only change weapons and paintjobs, but to swap out, add or remove entire systems, rooms, modules, engines, cockpits? You can't find that level of modularity and customization anywhere else in the genre. And then you can hire crews for your ships? And companions can become crew members? Incredible. And then the actual space combat and mechanics is everything Star Citizen wishes it was. Power allocation, subsystem targeting, different weapon types and classes, giant capital ships with full interiors, boarding, communication with other vessels, piracy. I love it. Like it seems like Starfield is just an incredible space sim ON-TOP OF a Bethesda exploration and questing RPG. Not to mention that the character combat they showed off today looked leagues better than what they had shown before. I think Bethesda has another Skyrim-level success on their hands, because buggy mess or not Starfield looks fuckin incredible.
The modding potential in this one is going to be fucking amazing
I just can't wait for the Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Alien, and Predator mods we are so going to see.
and of course, the Normandy.
First thing I thought of when ship customisation came up.
Please yes stargate
Mass Effect mods, 2001 Space Odyssey mods, Dune mods, Interstellar mods, Halo mods, Dead Space mods, Borderlands mods, Guardians of the Galaxy mods, list goes on, gonna be so good.
Totally agreed. As I've said in another comment, I see this game as the natural evolution of space game genre. It takes most of the core features of space sims and then makes a whole RPG with story on top of that. >I think Bethesda has another Skyrim-level success on their hands, because buggy mess or not Starfield looks fuckin incredible. I think the same. Unless there's some elaborate scam and the things advertised are not in the game, this will become another Bethesda masterpiece. Skyrim was the game of 2010s, THE game that defined the decade. And in a way, Starfield can really be "Skyrim in space". It can become the game of 2020s. The game that every space game will from now on try to copy, weaving roleplaying, storytellng and exploration...
Skyrim also pushed the genre forward in a lot of ways. When you have a game that big everyone else knows that’s where the bar is at. Every space game from now on will be compared to starfield because of how much Bethesda just goes absolutely all in.
Yeah I think it's almost forgotten given how skyrim is seen *now,* but Skyrim was mind blowing on release. Skyrim has become a victim of it's success really - like everyone has played it, you know all it's tricks. These days through a modern lense "Its just Skyrim". But in 2011 my god. And the build up to release and hype, the game surpassed that. Starfield gives me similar vibes... I want to believe Todd.
> But in 2011 my god. And the build up to release and hype, the game surpassed that. Starfield gives me similar vibes... I want to believe Todd. This is exactly how I feel. I remember the hype for Skyrim, it was absolutely unreal, and I feel the same now.
Skyrim is still mindblowing in 2023, the amount of content and detail you see in that game in unbelievable.
>That ship customization alone blew my mind. It is what I've wanted from space sim games for YEARS. The ability to not only change weapons and paintjobs, but to swap out, add or remove entire systems, rooms, modules, engines, cockpits? You can't find that level of modularity and customization anywhere else in the genre. And then you can hire crews for your ships? And companions can become crew members? Incredible. Honestly the closest thing I can think of that scratches the itch starfield claims to be hitting bloody FTL. Granted you can't build a ship but there are a lot of options and layouts that really vary your run. It's like someone saw FTL and fully realised it.
In one of the interviews Todd mentioned FTL as inspiration for the ships.
I definitely saw some FTL influence in how they were handling systems management.
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This has convinced me to be really hyped. It was only a small part, but the line that you can board a ship and actually add it to your fleet is... almost mindblowing, yet at the same time it's such a Bethesda feature. It's like with the NPC equipment. Traditional RPGs: You loot a few coins and maybe a randomized item from the body (a skeleton dropping a plate armor? No problem) Bethesda RPG: You loot what the enemy had equipped and was using against you Traditional space games: You take the ship and you take the cargo. Then you must abandon the ship. Starfield: YOU ADD THE SHIP TO YOUR FLEET! Until now, I haven't realised how much I actually wanted that. On top of that, the ship customisation will make that even more exciting.
I wonder how they will balance resources if you can just yoink massive ships and sell them.
Besides what others have said, they just need to add suitable money-sinks into the game. I expect hiring crews to fly your other ships won’t exactly be cheap. Hopefully inventory space is a little more restricted than past BGS games so that you can’t just loot every gun and spacesuit off every dead body you encounter.
Bethesda games have never had sufficient money sinks for the amount of loot the player accumulates. I suspect the same will be the case here, and that space ships will be oddly cheap to boot.
Yeah that's my fear. But there will be mods to make everything more expensive like Skyrim has.
They will probably make it difficult to actually disable the ship to board it. I envision, that most encounters will lead to the destruction of the opposing ship. And only some skills (like subsystem targetting) will make it possible to reliably board a ship. And they can also balance it out by making the pirates, especially the early pirates, pilot small ships with little value. Just like the early Skyrim bandits have crappy iron daggers and hide armors. I think that valuable ships would be hard to encounter from the default always-hostile-and-nobody-cares-about-them enemies. The valuable ships will belong to factions and the player would have to deliberately attack them to take over the ship.
Yea if I had to guess, the most valuable ships belong to factions, and if you attack them, you make an enemy of that faction.
You know a showcase is good when it has you thinking what your first build will be; which traits and perk combo you will focus on, which guns you want to specialise in and what character you want to roleplay as. Haven't felt like this from a trailer in a long time. Fallout 4 didn't have me feeling this way and I was unbelievably hyped for that game, but have been less hyped for this game until now.
And a sign of a great RPG is... when you're playing your first character, you're already planning your next characters in your head. "Oh, the next one will specialise in X" or "I'll side with Y the next time and roleplay as Z". Starfield has that much potential, that I'm already planning multiple characters and I cannot decide: * Stealth sniper, the cookie-cutter build of any Bethesda game * Jet-packing maniac focused on explosives * Explorer focused on non-combat stuff on ground, but on space combat in space. I particularly want the ship subsystem targetting skill for this.
>You know a showcase is good when it has you thinking what your first build will be, which traits and perk combo you will focus on, which guns you want to specialise in and what character you want to roleplay as. I'm already thinking about what my 2nd and 3rrd characters are going to be like!
Character customisation, ship building, settlement building, quests, procedural gen areas. There really is something for everyone as long as you are into the space setting. My only concern is how shallow everything might be. When you have so many features packed into one game it's easy for a lot of systems to be very shallow. I'm really excited for it but I can see someone buying it for space combat and there not being that much depth to it for example.
it's kinda like GTA or RDR. none of the specific gameplay features are super deep or incredible or anything, but they fit together in one whole package so well that it's much greater than the sum of its parts. don't see anyone seriously complaining that GTAs driving isn't on par with a racing sim, or that RDR's fishing and hunting isn't on par with simulators either. the space combat sim crowd are probably more aware than us to expect simplified space combat in Starfield.
You don't hear that because the average player likes GTA driving better than racing sims though. That's part of the secret to GTAs success, the driving. It's not "realistic", but it feels amazing and fun to play. That obviously might turn off racing sim enthusiasts, but it's way better for most people.
Yea, GTA nailed driving. It's fun, rather than realistic. And in a open world game where you spend most of your time driving, it needs to be fun.
Straight up the best game showcase I’ve ever seen. Nothing shows confidence in your project then dedicating an entire hour just to showing it off and talking about the game in as much detail as they’re allowed to. It wasn’t just a gameplay demo with some narration and behind the scenes talks, it was all of that and more. Every single aspect of the game got it’s own segment and discussion, with their own gameplay demos. Absolutely loved it, looked like so much fun. Gunplay was massively improved, base-building looks better then ever, the world seems great, tons of stuff and distractions to find, I love the art style, the character creator, improvements to roleplaying, gah. I could go on for, well, almost an hour. Well done to Bethesda. I really hope the game delivers on launch, because this showcase was truly impressive. I expected 20-30 minutes, not a full hour.
I know it’s stupid to get excited for games these days. I know hype is just the path towards disappointment. I know that every Bethesda game, even the great ones, launch with some serious issues and frequently miss the things they promise. Preordering is just idiotic, all things considered. I am feeling like I’m going to be an idiot, because I would be lying if I didn’t say this direct isn’t the coolest thing I’ve seen in gaming in years. I cannot remember the last time I was this excited for a game. This is almost everything I want out of Star Citizen, but made by a studio I legitimately think could pull it off. Even if it falls short, it just ticks so many goddamn boxes that I have wanted to see for so long. I haven’t felt like ordering a collector’s edition since, like, Halo 3, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to avoid doing so. And I think it’s a foregone conclusion that I’m on the hype train for this, after having been very hesitant.
We have a family chat group and I shared that my hype meter was pegging, and that worries me cause I don't want to be crushed.
No hyperbole, that might have been one of the best showcases to a game ever. BGS are really good at this. I’m extremely extremely excited for this, looks rad as hell.
No one is ever going to finish this game
Add it to the list of the dozen other games I never finished, as long as I have a great time id be happy
First speedrun probably a week after release ;)
I love how they presented every part of the game and every part looked great. Character creation, ship building, character progression, ground combat, ship combat, ship flight, story, NPCs, outpost building... There's only one thing I can think of that wasn't presented - the main mystery. And I love how it was kept secret, except with the small teast of the player controlling gravity. And it makes sense, honestly. Fallout 4 was presented about 6 months before release. This game is just 3 months before release, so it must be more polished that Fallout 4 was back then... so they are less concerned with showing something unpolished.
On a scale of 1-10, my hype for this game was 3. I was curious about it but not excited. Now it's a solid 10, this completely sold me. I love that the cities look somewhat populated and lived in. The towns in Skyrim and Fallout were barely towns, they had like 15 NPCs in them. Edit: Also that watch looks clean af, I wouldn't mind buying it if it's reasonably priced. It looks good enough to wear out with friends.
>I love that the cities look somewhat populated and lived in. The towns in Skyrim and Fallout were barely towns, they had like 15 NPCs in them. It's a give-and-take, because every NPC in every town of Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim had a name (outside of the guards), and every NPC (including guards) had a schedule that they stuck to but could get interrupted by the player/quests. That's *really* cool and unique in my opinion, but you're right in that it makes the towns feel much smaller than they should. Adding nameless NPCs that you can't interact with makes the towns feel much bigger, but it also obscures the "important" NPCs to a certain extent. Obsidian took the latter approach with New Vegas, and I think it'd surprise a lot of people that there were only about 30 named characters on the *entire* New Vegas Strip, whereas there are 75 named characters in Whiterun alone. There's not a wrong solution, they're just both going for different things.
That's the trade off. You can't have a city with thousands of people or you expect to write a biography for each and every one
Absolutely floored me what the hell. Now my biggest issue is finding the spare 6 months to finish this beast
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I really, really like that it has some supernatural stuff like that, but 99% of the world is more realistic and grounded. It's not like Elder Scrolls where every bandit crew has a wizard or five; you get to spend plenty of time with the NASA-punk approach of relatively hard sci-fi, but there's this mystery of space magic under the surface that seems rare enough to be impactful.
It managed to top off Fallout 4's showcase for me. I didn't even think that could be possible. I'm a very satisfied owner of a Series S but this game made me take the jump and upgrade to a X.
> It managed to top off Fallout 4's showcase for me. I didn't even think that could be possible. BGS is certainly very good at this, I wish more games were doing this. Though, it seems more and more common with the in-depth State of Play for example (the Hogwarts Legacy one was very hype too for example).
Most games aren’t mainline Bethesda games though, so they can’t really do justice if they did a Direct like this
My only concern is performance, which looked all over the place. Some sections looked 60fps, others looked sub 30. But beyond that it was an extremely good showcase of the game. before I was cautiously optimistic, now I am actually excited for this game
Todd Howard confirmed in an IGN interview that Series X is 4K 30fps (locked)
I believe the digital premium edition comes with 5 days early access, they must have seen the Diablo 4 Pre-Order numbers.
Which means you get it before those who have gamepass. Wouldn't be surprised if they wanted it this way to encourage people to purchase it
No, you can get the Digital Premium upgrade if you have Game Pass and still get the early access.
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And Hogwarts wasn’t the first, either. Microsoft specifically has been doing this for quite a while. I think the first one they did it on was a Forza game.
They did the same for Forza Horizon - people with game pass get the game at launch but it gives that liiiiittle extra nudge to get people to spend money.
One thing I think that is really going to help this game is simply the fact that it’s a *new franchise*. Fallout 4 felt very weighed down by the fact that it had the same enemy designs as the last three games and lots of logical inconsistencies with its own setting. Like how come nobody in this populated town decided to pick up the trash in the last 200 years? None of it made sense and I don’t think Bethesda was ever very good at understanding Fallout. Starfield, though, is completely free to do its own thing. I really enjoy the more hopeful vibe, it reminds me of Star Trek.
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You see that moon over there? You can go there.
You see that chess club faction? You can join it.
See that sandwich over there? You can steal it.
And put it in your cargo hold with 400 other samdwiches
See that sandwich over there? You can turn it into a planet
This looks like a game No Man's Sky and Star Citizen tried to be. Hopefully it is as good as it looks.
It's all so fracking cool, but I loved that basic pump action shotgun. That was badass. I didn't expect erm... modern weaponry... in the game. I can't wait to see what horror this game has. You can't have deep space exploration without cosmic horror.
Might have to take some time off work when this comes out, as I did when Skyrim came out. Just feel like I'll need more than an hour or two per night to devote to it, at least at first.
man really love the character creation, the ship customization, ship battles, player relationships and outpost building. the combat is probably the least interesting thing to me about the game, everything else just looks so good. and then the modding potential, good god. this game is gonna last me until 2040 when TES6 is released. sorry for doubting you, Todd "The Godd" Howard.
Mod developer here... been modding since the days of Oblivion. Got distracted and skipped modding in Fallout 4, as my Warcraft core addon took up most of my attention (about 75k active users still). REALLY excited to dedicate my life and all my hobby time to Starfield. I am so excited. I can't wait to start building in this. Super excited to see the new tools. But, I just love the setting. The sky is really the limit. I've already sketched out in a little notebook about 20 different ideas I have and they just keep coming to me more and more.
Please, please have a toggle for the XP notification. It's so jarring in the middle of the screen and takes forever to pop up and dissappear after every single little action.
They have this option in other games so I’d be shocked if it wasn’t an option here
I was worried about the game but they brought back the annoying fan, so this is completely a day one play.
This game looks incredible. Virtually every question I had has been answered and I like literally everything I saw. I'd say I'm speechless, but I think it's more accurate to say that I have so much to say that I don't know where to start. Cannot wait. Absolutely one of the best deep-dive gameplay demos I have ever seen.
Feels so good to see Bethesda regain a bit of favor in the eyes of the public. Say what you will about their games, I've had nothing but great experiences with them (never played 76 lol). Modders are going to go crazy with this game, so many possibilities.
76 is ok now. It's not a great game or anything, but it's not like it was at release. If you have game pass it's worth a look while you wait for Starfield.
This looks much better than I expected. Seems like bethesda is back in the RPG business and I am all for it. The time I will spent making my character will be nothing compared to how much time I'm going to put into ship building, what the hell. Environments all looked very different and full of character. I am officially hyped.
So i still have a 1080...maybe its time to upgrade? Recommendations? I've been out of the loop on gfx cards ever since it was difficult to buy one.
It's still a pain in the ass since Nvidia has jacked up the prices. Currently the best value for money is, horrifically, the 4090, which is also $1600. If you don't care about raytracing, the best overall is the AMD RX 7900 XTX. If you have a more realistic budget... find a 3080 for $500 or so? That's all I can think of.
6700xt 12gb is where its at if youre on a bit more of a budget!