Bethesda's Starfield

[Unagi]

You get an A/B choice of being happy about it or telling her it's over, if Sara is an exemplar.

Also... I assume that was what would happen if I picked the "I think it's time we went our separate ways". Is that just a 'meet ya back at the Lodge' request then? hmm.

[Isgrimnur]

Haven’t explored that option, but my wild speculation is that you can’t progress other relationships past a certain point if you’re still married to someone else. I could be wrong, but I don’t see polygamy getting mainstreamed without us hearing about it by now.

[Smoove_B]

That is correct. There's a go/no-go point for each relationship and if you've moved beyond it with one of the NPCs, the others will comment on that when or if you try to cross that point with them.

[Unagi]

Walter Stroud is voiced by Armin Shimerman (Quark, from DS9)

Also, Andreja's voice is done by Cissy Jones, who was also Delilah in Firewatch (the voice on the radio), among a number of other roles in other games (like Joyce from Life Is Strange and Katjaa in The Walking Dead).

[Blackhawk]

The constant level loading is really annoying me.

I honestly think this is where a really strong PC supports this game the most. For me, they are not too bad, they generally last about 1.5 seconds or so. The entire game design wouldn't work before SSD, IMO.

It's not the length of loading that is the issue (it's fast for me) it's the frequency

That was always going to be an issue. Open world games just create the illusion of standing in an open world. It's actually surprisingly similar to how a Holodeck supposedly worked. In a holodeck you're standing in an area with stuff in it, but everything you see in the distance is all just projected on the wall. As you move toward something, the stuff (trees, people, etc) behind you become projections on the wall, while the stuff on the wall in front of you is seamlessly replaced with actual stuff you can touch.

Most open world games work that way, constantly adding/removing the content from the world as you go (basically streaming the world in around you dynamically as you need it, just like a holodeck.) Bethesda's games, however, essentially create little cubes you stand in, and only load things in when you go from one cube to the next. It's like playing a grid-based game where you carry a torch - the square of light around you is all that's actually loaded, and when you move forward one square, it lights up a new row of squares in front of you while darkening a row of squares behind you, whole squares all at once.

Because of that difference, the engine can't actually handle large areas, especially if you're moving fast (which is why space seems to be just another little cube you can fly around in - that's not the planet you see like in No Man's Sky, it's a picture of a planet that loads into a map of the planet when you tell it to.) It's why moving from planet to planet is a loading screen - the planets don't actually exist in the same space you're in, and they can't make you move fast enough through the 'void' between them to make live FTL travel possible, as they'd have to load new 'space' cubes several times per second. It's why large structures don't actually contain what they appear to - they're just empty models with a door or elevator that loads you into a new cube of stuff (which is also why you can't actually see out of the windows - the world isn't actually out there.)

[Unagi]

~Bored Andreja~

[Blackhawk]

Is she playing Starfield?

[jztemple2]

Is she playing Starfield?

Probably waiting for the next patch.

[Blackhawk]

Is she playing Starfield?

Probably waiting for the next patch.

They just released the beta patch notes today. She's going to be disappointed.

It's taken them this long to come up with that?

[Isgrimnur]

I'd really like to know what components all those plants and animals I've surveyed have available.

[Unagi]

Is she playing Starfield?

Obviously, I'm still enjoying myself, but thanks for the crack.

[Unagi]

They just released the beta patch notes today. She's going to be disappointed.

It's taken them this long to come up with that?

Yeah, I'm not impressed.

Although, one of the quest bugs I have will be addressed (Heart of Mars, rock spawns inside map)

But, there are a few others (thank god none of mine are some of the deal-breakers they describe fixing, I guess...) they still haven't addressed it would appear.

[Blackhawk]

Not one thing on the list I posted when I finally gave up has been fixed.

[Unagi]

~Bored Andreja~

For those who didn't "get it"...

It was a spin on Raffaello's, ~Bored Angels~

[jztemple2]

I think you are raising the intellectual level of this thread higher than it deserves

[Isgrimnur]

That needs a Grunbegriff appearance

[Max Peck]

Since those patch notes are for the beta branch, I'm hopeful that there may be more fixes to come before they release a patch for the main branch. The big one that I'd like to see fixed is the bug that prevents NPC ship crews from spawning, which makes boarding in space trivially easy and boarding on the ground impossible (except for Starborn ships -- you can board them to your heart's content once the bug kicks in).

The beta requires a separate dowload, so I'll be giving it a pass.

[Blackhawk]

So far almost all of the fixes have either been general ('stability'), or they have been errors in individual quests. I'm really waiting for the one thing they haven't touched yet - the general bugs that affect everything.

[Max Peck]

I finished up the Crimson Fleet storyline tonight.

[Unagi]

Probably the best of all the faction quests.

Although I think my favorite single mission in the game, if I only picked one, would be Entangled from the main mission line.


And Congrats on 100%

I’m still missing a couple, as I’m below level 100 still (just barely) and haven’t yet made the giant leap.

[Max Peck]

For my money, the Legacy has the best environmental storytelling that I've found in the game to date. I spent at least an extra hour scouring the ship to make sure I hadn't missed any audio logs.

Now that I've finished all the main faction storylines, I'm planning to step back and tackle my the backlog of games that's been building up over the summer. First up, I rolled a Femme V (#TeamJudy) Streetkid character in Cypberpunk 2077 this morning. Between the 2.0 revamp, the DLC and the fact I haven't played in a couple of years, it should be a fresh experience.

I wouldn't advise anyone to take a bet that I won't fire up Starfield and run some terminal missions though...

[Unagi]

For my money, the Legacy has the best environmental storytelling that I've found in the game to date.

I'll give you that, it was the best set of recordings and some of the best/unique sets in any of the 'dungeons'. Plus it carries the weight of the entire faction storyline with it, and your own certain doom.
I yield.

[Unagi]

Archimedes V-a

[Unagi]

[Grifman]

I finished up the Crimson Fleet storyline tonight.

Congrats!

[hepcat]

Ooof, Starfield basically being ignored at the 2023 Game Awards.

[Blackhawk]

Ooof, Starfield basically being ignored at the 2023 Game Awards.

And they only took home one prize at the Golden Joystick Awards, taking Best Xbox Game (beating out Chants of Sennaar, Hi-Fi Rush, Planet of Lana, Dead Space, and Pentiment.)

Hopefully they take this for what it is: A wake up call. People love the style of the gameplay they offer, but are tired of the sloppy, lazy implementation (bugs, repetitiveness, lack of polish, engine limitations.) I really, really hope that this gets them (and especially their new corporate overlords) to turn Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 5 into what they have the potential to be.

[hepcat]

My biggest complaint was just a feeling of "been there, done that" that pervaded the 40 hours or so I put into it before I went back to BG3.

[Unagi]

Alrighty.
I've finally completed all the achievements and moved on to NG+...

Whew.. what a journey.

I look forward to a break and eventually going back to it.

[Max Peck]

Hopefully they take this for what it is: A wake up call.

As far as I could see, the sales numbers were good and the reviews were pretty good. The PR department might care about awards, but the C-suite will be looking to the revenue, and I doubt they're all that unhappy with how the game performed.

[Blackhawk]

Hopefully they take this for what it is: A wake up call.

As far as I could see, the sales numbers were good and the reviews were pretty good. The PR department might care about awards, but the C-suite will be looking to the revenue, and I doubt they're all that unhappy with how the game performed.

No doubt. But the marketing department (which, for the first time, isn't the Bethesda marketing department) will be looking at other factors as well - like how much the active player count dropped after the first week across different platforms, and how unimpressed people (including the industry, which is where future press comes from) were with the game after the first couple of weeks. It shows that people have become dissatisfied with the Bethesda formula and jank (especially after the FO76 series of catastrophes), and that just recycling that formula isn't going to keep working forever.

But the big factor is Microsoft. Bethesda might have just kept milking it, but Microsoft has already dropped comments over the past couple of years that show that they're aware of Bethesda's reputation, and that they're wanting it changed.They're keeping a much closer eye on this sort of thing than Bethesda is. They didn't drop 7.5 billion dollars (the fourth biggest studio acquisition in history) to end up with a failing model. Starfield was the last near-pure Bethesda game (it's development time was about 75% prior to acquisition.) I have a feeling that MS will be much more active in the direction the future titles take - they have a completely different planning and marketing approach than Bethesda did.

[Grifman]

Does anyone know what determines the number of digipick selections I have to choose from when I attempt a lock pick? Sometime it's been 6, other times 4, and I don't understand why. Anyone?

[Max Peck]

Does anyone know what determines the number of digipick selections I have to choose from when I attempt a lock pick? Sometime it's been 6, other times 4, and I don't understand why. Anyone?

That's determined by the difficulty level of the lock (novice/advanced/expert/master), where novice has the fewest and master has the most.

[Isgrimnur]

Starfield's 1.8.86 Update Officially Adds DLSS Support and Finally Allows You to Eat Food on Sight

[hepcat]

and Finally Allows You to Eat Food on Sight

Big whoop. I mastered this skill IRL ages ago.

[Blackhawk]

[Grifman]

Wow, the new patch really increase my performance tremendously, easily getting between 130 and 150 FPS on high quality. Pretty amazing, this should have been there all along.

[Grifman]

From what I have read, the biggest complaints are the loading screens rather than true space travel, and the redundant POI’s that you see again and again. The POI’s can be fixed to some extent by just coding it that you don’t see a POI again until you have run through all of them - I’ve read that some of the are pretty rare. And maybe they could add a few others. But loading screen/lack of true spaceflight probably can’t be fixed. It’s a limitation of the Creation Engine, it’s probaby all they could do to sort of build a fast travel mechanic that hints at space flight and add space combat on top of that.

That said, I’ve played 36 hours which is enough to reach a judgement IMO (and I have watched a number of videos too). I really like the game. I feel like there are a lot of positive aspects that BGS isn’t getting credit for:

1) The whole persuasion mini-game is great. People claimed about Fallout 4 that only charisma mattered, they wanted something more complicated. There’s not only the mini-game but checks for Introvert, Extrovert, various backgrounds, skills, etc. It’s much deeper than previous games
2) No voiced protagonist. It never mattered to me one way or another but it really bothered some people, so here it is.
3) The variety of guns is great, much better than previous games where I always looked for mods that added weapons because the vanilla were usually so bad. That said, melee weapons are pretty limited, but there’s a reason you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight, so there.
4) Quests are varied and interesting. The faction and companion quests seem pretty interesting and deep. I love it while space traveling and wandering into a situation that I never expected. Lots of fun there.
5) People complain about exploration but I enjoy entering a system, seeing what’s of interest orbiting the planets, then looking at what is on the planets after you scan them. And then I chose what I am interested in. Running into random ships is always fun/interesting, and finding quests is great also.
6) Voice acting is very good, with different accents reflecting the variety of Old Earth and so far no repeatable (that I can tell) voices being used.
7) The variety of role playing possibilities probably exceeds that of most games. You can be a bounty hunter, soldier, lawman, explorer, colonizer, pirate, drug lord, big game hunter, freight hauler, miner, farmer, and probably others I haven’t thought of or seen.
8) Not a positive but there sure are lot of obese people running around on New Atlantis. Surely 300 years in the future they would have solved that problem.

Anyway, I’m greatly enjoying the game. I think for some people, the problem is that the game doesn’t really break any new ground in significant ways as I see a lot of comparisons to BG and CP2077. It’s the same old BGS formula, shinied up and put into space but it has the same gameplay loop. I understand that, but for me this hits a sweet spot. The positives far outshine the negatives for me.

[Max Peck]

I'm pretty much in the same boat. I can see all the flaws that people criticize, but I really enjoy the game anyway.

[Unagi]

I'm pretty much in the same boat. I can see all the flaws that people criticize, but I really enjoy the game anyway.

Same here. It charmed me.

They >do< need to get the quest bugs hammered out though.