Videogames Latest: Starfields of Glory

[Ser Not Appearing]

Starfield is great so far, tbh.

[Werthead]

Starfield is very solid. It's odd to play a Bethesda game this highly polished and (mostly) bug-free.

Its main strengths so far are the incredible visual design and the sense of space and scale.

The main weaknesses are a mind-bogglingly dull opening - no getting chased by a dragon like Skyrim's opening or having to outrun an nuclear explosion like Fallout 4's - and the groan-inducing feeling when you realise that space travel is very limited, and it just a mini game (based on 2003 title Freelancer more than anything else) that you can avoid 95% of the time by just fast-travelling to another system. The game also has very poor local maps (the scanner interface feels like it should be the default interface), and it has that  thing of every system and command feeling like they all take a few button presses too many to get going.

The writing does seem better than usual (not saying much) and everyone and their uncle agrees the game takes ages to get going but the story actually goes in some interesting directions and there's some gut-punches in the narrative, something Bethesda usually doesn't achieve at all.

Protip: take the "have parents" option during character creation. It's very entertaining.

Something that Noclip mentioned in their 2-hour analysis of the game today, is that Bethesda have seriously sanded off a lot of their rough edges and jank but the game is also lacking some of the idiosyncratic and randomly humorous elements they are known for.

Another plus is apparently the game has some wild unpredictability: they mentioned what started off as a very basic fetch quest turned into a multi-star-system spanning epic side-quest of surprising twists and turns (whilst an actual stealth infiltration mission for a faction was very underwhelming), and as the game continues characters you met earlier in the game will show up later on and some completed quests will spawn unexpected sequel quests later on, which is really interesting: Bethesda were notorious for having big quests that you'd complete, would feel like they'd have more consequences down the road but then nothing ever happens again. That now seems to have been fixed.

The main takeaway is that this is a Bethesda game, it is Skyrim or Fallout 4 in space with the possible weakness that the game downplays the sense of random discovery in those games (since you're effectively fast-travelling everywhere whether you want to or not). Go in knowing that and having enjoyed their games before, you'll probably be fine with this one.

[horangi]

17 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Starfield is very solid. It's odd to play a Bethesda game this highly polished and (mostly) bug-free.

Are those of you commenting on the game using reviewer keys or am I missing some other way to play before Wednesday.  (Which, given this is holiday weekend in the US, I say boo to their release date.)

[Luzifer's right hand]

Hey Freelancer was fun. It had a lot of hidden mechanics that made multiplayer very entertaining.

Biggest was that you could disable that magic drive that made ships fly like planes and keep coasting while turning the ship around. PvP was lots of fun because of that. The AI had no defense against that in single player though.

[Martell Spy]

Edited to add so I'm not putting out misinformation: It launched last night if you paid for the Premium edition.

Played a few hours of Starfield. It launched last night at 5 pm here in Pacific time. Looks solid. Zero crashes or even visual bugs. It seems like they may have even accounted for caught behind object errors as the robot Vasco got in my way once and I was backed in a corner, then there was a slight movement from the robot and I was out.

Ground combat is very crisp, really looking forward to getting into the jet packs and stuff later.

Space dog fights are a lot of fun. My main advice would be to remember you have a thruster. Forgot that a while and it made things difficult, but it's night and day using them. Playing a Long Hauler so I have ship skills. The early space combats became easy once I figured that out, with me getting on their tails and destroying them pretty easy.

I haven't seen much of the game yet, I'm in the early stages searching for the pirate captain at the research base. My general sense though is the writing is at a pretty high level. Found lots of books with interesting lore and tidbits in them in the base, reminds me of Morrowind in that sense. I've met only one major character so far, Barrett, but I was very impressed. Just a really cool guy. Someone my character would actually want to work with. Better than most of Fallout 4 characters.

I'm annoyed I can't make many choices on what to do yet, but that's typical Bathesda. The early mission annoyed, but it was kind of genius as it was very short. And they immediately offer you a way out. I wondered if it would be very railroadish when you join Constellation, but it makes total sense for 99 percent of characters, even surly ones. Here's a way out of being a miner wage slave, and by the way we are loaning you a ship.

Great looting in the base, great items in general. One of my favorite things to do on Bathesda games.

Love the scanning mechanic. You can scan flora, alien animals, and mineral deposits. Also I really like that you can apparently later sell this knowledge, but I'm not somewhere I can do that yet. 

Can't wait to design and modify my own ships. Also to see the big cities. Plus, smuggling and piracy, but I'll have to make another character for that, as it's outside this character's moral bounds. I usually make 1 character for a Bathesda game for a long time so I can really get into it, but I am probably going to end up making four or five relatively fast this time. At a minimum I want to do a crook and a scientist, probably eventually a diplomat.

Skill tree looks great. It was a lot of fun to go through it all once I got a chance.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 1, 2023 by Martell Spy

[horangi]

33 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Edited to add so I'm not putting out misinformation: It launched last night if you paid for the Premium edition.

 

Thanks, since it comes with the future expansion, I went and got it.  Started the download and saw it was only going to take 10 minutes to download.  Then saw it was 10 minutes to download the soundtrack- how in the world is a sound track 6gbs!

[Werthead]

Protip for PC players: the game defaults to a Field of View value of 70 and you can't change it (in a video game in 2023!). To fix that:

1. Go to Documents/MyGames/Starfield.
2. Create a text file with Notepad and save it as "StarfieldCustom.ini"
3. Inside the text file add the following: 

4. Quote

   [Camera]

   fFPWorldFOV=100.0000

   fTPWorldFOV=100.0000

 

Obviously you can switch the 100 to 85 or 90 or whatever value you'd prefer.

[Luzifer's right hand]

15 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Protip for PC players: the game defaults to a Field of View value of 70 and you can't change it (in a video game in 2023!). To fix that:

1. Go to Documents/MyGames/Starfield.
2. Create a text file with Notepad and save it as "StarfieldCustom.ini"
3. Inside the text file add the following: 
4.  

 

Obviously you can switch the 100 to 85 or 90 or whatever value you'd prefer.

Bethesda...Bethesda never changes. 

Is the framerste still tied to the physics engine or did they bother to port the fix they found for Fallout 76?

[Ser Not Appearing]

The only real criticism I have relates to just overall feeling like I wish there was more to do in space because it's largely just the dog fights.

But that's it for legitimate criticism for me. There's nitpicks like how I hate having to hold a button to do something if pressing it isn't going to do something different ... stuff like that. It feels like a Bethesda game otherwise and with a giant universe. Tons of stuff to do, cool quests and unexpected encounters along the way.

Today if I get arrested for carrying contraband. Was not disappointed.

Level 7 or 8 if that matters.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Ser Not Appearing

[Ser Not Appearing]

I guess I should also say that The game is super clean in terms of bugs and performance and I suspected by the time you start adding entire planets and all sorts of interesting stuff from mods, it'll go down as a fully legitimate and on par successor to the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games they've done.

Even without mods, you would need multiple playthroughs just to begin scratching the surface of everything that's in the game. I'm already on a quest line that I may or may not have even discovered if I was doing a different kind of playthrough.

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, horangi said:

Thanks, since it comes with the future expansion, I went and got it.  Started the download and saw it was only going to take 10 minutes to download.  Then saw it was 10 minutes to download the soundtrack- how in the world is a sound track 6gbs!

I don't see any evidence that if you get the Premium you get the game now. And I'm not sure I want to pay an extra $30.

[Ser Not Appearing]

6 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I don't see any evidence that if you get the Premium you get the game now.

You certainly do get early access. That didn't mean you want to pay for it ... but it's there.

[Werthead]

I tried my first rando landing zone and I'm reasonably impressed at how it worked. It generated a whole bunch of interesting stuff around my ship, including resources, a surface outpost and a multi-floor installation which had been invaded by pirates, as well as a couple of caves with creatures to scan.

The first one also generated a whole load of crates and furniture floating eerily about 15 feet in the air. I think it was supposed to generate a platform supporting them but the platform had not loaded in. The first and only bug I've encountered so far.

IMMEDIATELY ESSENTIAL PROTIP: choose a starting career which gets you the extra carrying capacity and select the carrying capacity skill as your first one. The game is a pain in the butt with carrying stuff. It does have a better system than most Bethesda games, since you can immediately unload stuff when you're back on your ship (there's a control panel just behind the pilot's seat for it) and you can sell stuff from your ship's hold.

If you use scanning mode when piloting your ship and you have waypoints loaded in for your mission, you can automatically jump to your required destination without arsing around with the menus by just pointing your ship at the POI and hitting the prompt that comes up. On an early breadcrumb trail mission around the Solar system, this was extremely useful. This doesn't work with landing at POIs on a planet though, for some reason.

ETA: Ah, it does work with landing, but you need to press R rather than E. Bit weird.

57 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I don't see any evidence that if you get the Premium you get the game now. And I'm not sure I want to pay an extra $30.

Apart from a bunch of us playing it right now? *confused*

The only way you don't get early access is if you buy the bog standard version. Everything else gets you immediately into the game.

Edited September 2, 2023 by Werthead

[Corvinus85]

20 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Apart from a bunch of us playing it right now? *confused*

The only way you don't get early access is if you buy the bog standard version. Everything else gets you immediately into the game.

My Steam page doesn't describe what the Premium edition is, so I was confused how people knew to get it. But now I saw the announcement about the early access. I still don't know what the Premium edition is supposed to contain besides that, though.

And there are no user reviews yet, so either that's still locked or not a lot of people have bothered to get it.

[horangi]

2 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

My Steam page doesn't describe what the Premium edition is, so I was confused how people knew to get it. But now I saw the announcement about the early access. I still don't know what the Premium edition is supposed to contain besides that, though.

And there are no user reviews yet, so either that's still locked or not a lot of people have bothered to get it.

In addition to the usual soundtrack and minor premium media you will probably never use, it also comes with an IOU for the first expansion/story pack.  That's what made the difference for me, since I would likely end up buying it anyways. 

[Werthead]

5 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

My Steam page doesn't describe what the Premium edition is, so I was confused how people knew to get it. But now I saw the announcement about the early access. I still don't know what the Premium edition is supposed to contain besides that, though.

And there are no user reviews yet, so either that's still locked or not a lot of people have bothered to get it.

This is technically "Early Access" and you can't leave reviews for Early Access, at least if the developers don't want it and if the EA period is for under a certain period (certainly under 5 days is okay).

[Ser Not Appearing]

I haven't been crazy bothered by over encumbered in this game. It can be annoying but upgrading one of the abilities requires you to run out of O2 a bunch of times so it's almost helpful to run out faster, in a backwards story of way.

[Ser Not Appearing]

By the way, this lock pick game is excellent. It's the best that I've played. What other game has a really good one?

[Rhom]

58 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

By the way, this lock pick game is excellent. It's the best that I've played. What other game has a really good one?

Thought Splinter Cell had a good lock picking mechanic.

[Argonath Diver]

I tried it out tonight and quit not a half hour in. I'm a PC gamer through and through, and Bethesda's increasingly console-oriented UIs have thrown me off through the Fallout and ES series. Even equipping the very first item in the game was a total mess from a UX perspective as a keyboard/mouse gamer.  Ugh. I wish I were able to play modern games with a controller, but my thumbs are completely useless compared to my mouse control. Navigating menus with the E and R buttons and such is ridiculous for a 9-figure-budget game. Eff off, Bethesda.

Anyway the game is absolutely gorgeous on Ultra settings and I'll adapt to the console UI using keyboard/mouse after a few hours once I get a day off.

I had a coworker at our bar call in 'sick' tonight and get caught by the rest of us when he left his Discord on - he'd played it 13 hours straight and even my boss was mad but impressed.