this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Starfield
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Bethesda delivered a Bethesda game. What exactly were people expecting? This is exactly what I expected and am loving it.
I saw a video that claimed no one would have expected the way starship travel works and I'm like "I totally expected it to be work this way!" From the moment they announced it was still on Creation, I had expectations that space travel would be simple cell changes and not seamless travel. I actually expected it to be janky as fuck, too, when actually doing space combat but it's actually quite fine. I mean, the AI is dumb as shit, but it's not full of weird bullshit. The things that did not meet my expectations are all actually good things. I expected it to barely run; it runs fine even with unsupported hardware. I expected to see bugs aplenty; at worst, I've seen some ragdolls spaghettifi.
Maybe it just took getting a relatively stable release for people to realize they have always been fairly shallow action oriented games, with light story and narrative elements that aren't even that well written. There's nothing else to really whine about. 🤷🏻♂️
I imagine the starships are still hats on an invisible NPC.
I doubt it. My suspicion is that the player is sitting still the whole time and everything is being moved around them. This does several things that are smart. Physics for the player stay the same, with gravity being down, without any extra work. It also removes concerns about floating point errors happening around the player, so they could theoretically fly forever in one direction without issues.
There was one part of a certain quest where I board someone else's ship and they take off while I am standing in the bridge; it clearly shows the game is capable of moving these ships as actual vehicles. But you only ever get to see them in motion everywhere else while locked in the seat, in empty space. Cuz even if you were to stand up while at full throttle, the ship stops as soon as you get up.
Yeah couldn't have said it better myself. I'm actually quite impressed with the creation engine improvements. FO4 ran like shit on good hardware when it released. Also based on the newest discoveries it seems like modders actually have a good chance to allow interplanetary travel without fast traveling. I have a theory that the CE devs got the engine 90% of the way there on PC but Bethesda just needed to pull the trigger and release it with feature parity between Xbox S S/X and PC.
They haven't always been action focused games, but they have been moving more and more that way since Oblivion. I played Morrowind for the first real time (I bounced off after not understanding the game the first time) a year or so ago. I spent my first few hours without any combat. I'm not saying that figuratively. It was literally no combat. The game was totally accepting that that's how I wanted to play. There's also plenty of story and interesting mechanics to interact with. Now they make shallow theme parks that try to get you onto the next ride as fast as possible. If you have five minutes without action they think you'll get bored and leave.
When I say action, I really just mean how you play and not necessarily just focused on combat. They focus on the actions you can take, over the dialogue choices you can make. Even Arena and Daggerfall were light on what you could actually change through story stuff, and were more about the player having fun in a myriad of ways. Morrowind, too. Especially with it's somewhat unique dialogue system. You didn't really have choices, as much as being given heaps of information based on keywords. But your choice of how you explored, handled enemies, and what not was incredible.
Plus, they wouldn't be able to warp without moving space around them.
Really thoigh, that sounds incredibly plausible.
It looks like one, but isnt as enjoyable as ones before. Might have been a bad choice to navigate the world in menu format. Quick travel to X location to explore. No walking around a big world, but many small ones. Even tiny ones.
It wouldn't have been horrible if they did it in an Immersive way. For example, Mass Effect had it's big hologram system map. You walk up to it and it zoomed to it, or whatever happened, and it didn't take you out of the world into a menu. It's still a menu, but it feels like it's part of the world. Similarly, the Fallout menus are in the pop boy. While not perfect, it does help it feel Immersive.
The Starfield UI doesn't even try. They give you the watch thing like they're going to do the Fallout menu thing, but then they just don't. There is zero attempt to make it feel like part of the universe. They have the navigation consoles that open the system map, but it still just opens the same menu. That's still better than what you do 99% of the time though.
The one thing you've always been able to say about Bethesda, is despite the many flaws of their games, their new game generally always improves on the previous game in some way.
Not with Starfield. Pretty much every mechanic in Starfield is a regression, and worse, than the games that came before it. The Mechanics, The Perk System, Settlement Building, "Exploration", Character models and faces/etc. All fundamentally worse than previous games.
A lot of people want to dismiss these criticisms as haters just hating on the popular thing, but the thing is that I'm not hating on it.
I'm frustrated, and disappointed. They left so much potential in the game to wither on the vine because they couldnt take the last baby steps give them the polish and critical eye they needed. Its like they got 5 feet from the finish line, shrugged their shoulders, and said good enough and walked away.
I want this game to be good. I can see how it can be good. and it shouldnt be reliant on the modders to pick up the unfinished pieces and make it good by finishing them.
Bethesda is not some small indie dev doing their best by themselves and deserving of understanding. This is a multibillion dollar company that can and should have done better, and deserves to be held accountable and criticized for the legitimate issues.
Yup, and it has some level of replayability that previous titles didn't have.