Starfield has a release date

[Sly Boots]

I personally think it's an absolutely pathetic kind of "No, actually..." from them. Fair play if a review gets things wrong and a developer wants to comment to explain that someone has made a mistake. But all of the quotes I saw for this were more along the lines of them making excuses or outright saying "Actually the game is fun and you are wrong" in a roundabout way.

The one where they tried to justify their game being boring by saying that space is actually really quite empty so that's why they were happy to ship a ton of empty procedural generated planets is a zinger.

Like I've seen a few people point out, saying the astronauts weren't bored when the got to the moon and there was nothing there is dumb, because they were on the FRICKING MOON, not sat playing a boring videogame. It's such a crap excuse for not bothering to properly populate your gameworld and actually make exploration at all rewarding.

[Lenny Solidus]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment ... r-AA1kz1tZ

[Wrathbone]

I'm very much of the view that you should never voice disagreement with someone who is fairly criticising your creative endeavours. If the criticism is factually wrong or just unconstructive abuse, by all means have at 'em, but as a creator you don't get to tell your audience what they like and what they don't like, no matter how strongly you disagree with them.

On the other side of the coin, accepting criticism does not mean agreeing with it. Todd Howard absolutely had a thematic vision for Starfield which he's talked about quite a lot, that of "beautiful desolation", and that's what he's tried to get Bethesda to deliver. A lot of people don't seem to enjoy that, it seems, but I don't believe the answer is to change the game to appease everyone so much as to change the game to better execute that vision so that people do genuinely appreciate it. That, to me, would be the approach with the most artistic integrity.

I think it's more likely that they'll churn out a DLC as fast as possible then forget about Starfield ASAP. I really like it, but I'm clearly in the minority, and Bethesda are going to have to do a lot of work to get fans back on board with ES6.

Did people really learn absolutely fuck all after the release of Fallout 76 back in 2018? I've not bought a Bethesda game since Deathloop

The many, many problems with Fallout 76 were rooted in them nailing netcode to an engine which should never have been let anywhere near the internet. That and initially having no human NPCs. The perceived issues with Starfield I think are very different.

Also, Deathloop was not a BGS game. It was a Bethesda-published game. Different dev studios.

[Lenny Solidus]

I succumbed to generalising a great deal in my above post (maybe a little too much vitriol on top) that the game was poorly received by almost everyone, which obviously is not the case. Those who defend it truly have found something worthy within its offering I've seen many a video with some even proclaiming it to be some of the studios best work just misunderstood, however that might have been achieved that made the punt a considerable healthy one. Most likely this will for many be courtesy of mods assisting in that eventual realisation albeit partial or otherwise as an experience as close to pre-release expectations as possible.

Still. Disillusionment be thy name for a lot of people who bought it too, and the growing concern surrounding ES6 after something as ridiculously and continually successful as Skyrim given the mixed Steam reception of Starfield is holding up as more than valid.

Also, Deathloop was not a BGS game. It was a Bethesda-published game. Different dev studios.

Fuck - I knew that too. I'm travel weary. I shall go away now.

[Raid]

To be honest, I don't think Starfield was worse than Skyrim, it's just that the problems are magnified by how much the experience is sliced up by the half-arsed space segments. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they released ES6, it feels the same as Skyrim, and people don't take to it either.

[Sly Boots]

I think it's definitely worse than Skyrim, which itself I felt was a downgrade from Oblivion. But at least it was rewarding to explore, you'd set off with one thing in mind, be distracted en route by half a dozen other things, and every set of caves or ruins would have something memorable to discover. It blew my mind the first time I stumbled across the subterranean expanse of Falkreath. Stealth was also a good and viable way to play, stealth in Starfield is garbage.

[Mantis]

Todd Howard absolutely had a thematic vision for Starfield which he's talked about quite a lot, that of "beautiful desolation", and that's what he's tried to get Bethesda to deliver.

Whilst I'm sure there is a chance that is true, by and large I think Todd Howard is full of shit. It would not surprise me at all if he knew that they were not capable as a team of producing anything more than a massive empty experience because they lacked the time, resources and technology to do anything else so he went all in on trying to sell the desolation of space as a concept. Not that I think it was really emphasised all that much anyway from the pre-release promotional material, though admittedly I didn't watch an enormous amount of it.

I would be more interested in hearing the opinions of some of the more junior devs who worked on it a few years from now when people move on from the studio and can give a more candid telling of their experiences there. I bet it went through a fair share of development troubles.

You can never trust a word that these top creatives in big studios say because they are first and foremost in their positions to do what they are told by the board and shareholders, which is to make as much money at the lowest cost as they possibly can. Bethesda have been churning out the same tired game formula for twenty years now operating on that basis.

[Wrathbone]

Todd Howard absolutely had a thematic vision for Starfield which he's talked about quite a lot, that of "beautiful desolation", and that's what he's tried to get Bethesda to deliver.

Whilst I'm sure there is a chance that is true, by and large I think Todd Howard is full of shit. It would not surprise me at all if he knew that they were not capable as a team of producing anything more than a massive empty experience because they lacked the time, resources and technology to do anything else so he went all in on trying to sell the desolation of space as a concept. Not that I think it was really emphasised all that much anyway from the pre-release promotional material, though admittedly I didn't watch an enormous amount of it.

I watched all of it and it was a major point of discussion. It’s an idea Howard has had since the 90s and he appears to have really pushed for it as his pet project, something which rings true because I imagine the Bethesda board would have preferred him to stick with Elder Scrolls or Fallout as known money-makers. You say they lacked time and resources to do anything else, but considering the monumental successes of Skyrim and Fallout 4 and the fact they spent 8 years developing Starfield, I question that. They did Starfield because Todd wanted to do it, and if I was to speculate I’d say that he was against Bethesda’s decision to make Fallout 76 but agreed to it on the basis that they let him make Starfield. But that’s just my guess.

I don’t think he’s full of shit at all. Quite the contrary, I think he’s a remarkable game designer whose biggest flaw is doggedly sticking with an engine that desperately needs replacing from scratch.

[Mantis]

Fairplay, I was not aware of that background. The majority of my experience of him is seeing him constantly shilling Skyrim on every new platform for the last decade.

[DjchunKfunK]

I personally think it's an absolutely pathetic kind of "No, actually..." from them. Fair play if a review gets things wrong and a developer wants to comment to explain that someone has made a mistake. But all of the quotes I saw for this were more along the lines of them making excuses or outright saying "Actually the game is fun and you are wrong" in a roundabout way.

The one where they tried to justify their game being boring by saying that space is actually really quite empty so that's why they were happy to ship a ton of empty procedural generated planets is a zinger.

Like I've seen a few people point out, saying the astronauts weren't bored when the got to the moon and there was nothing there is dumb, because they were on the FRICKING MOON, not sat playing a boring videogame. It's such a crap excuse for not bothering to properly populate your gameworld and actually make exploration at all rewarding.

I think it is a totally fair decision to make regarding a space game and it's something I want from a space game personally, to have those areas of barrenness. They are right space is mostly empty and I think this gets to one of the the main issue people have with Starfield. A lot of players came to the game expecting Skyrim in space but a) that was impossible to create on a scale whereby it would feel like you were exploring multiple galaxies and b) I don't think it would have been the right way to go about making the game, especially as all along they have talked about making a "realistic" version of space as Wrathbone mentions above. I do think that this is partly on Bethesda though as they didn't do enough to set expectations around the type of game Starfield would be but I also think it is an inherent problem with openworld space games like this, as soon as you allow players to explore planets a lot of people are going to expect those planets to at least have something to do on each one if not full of things to do and that is just not possible without infinite money and infinite time.

There are various issues with Starfield but I do think the way they approached the construction of the world and planets is not one of them.

Regarding exploration, part of the problem there is the decision they made around travel so exploration doesn't feel like exploration should as you are opening a menu and pointing at a planet and arriving there. I'd argue that if it had been possible to populated every planet in a way some players wanted, that would also have removed any feelings of exploration as you would know that there is something on every planet, so it's less about exploring and finding things and more about just going on a tour. In Skyrim sometimes there are empty spaces which make finding things feel better, Starfield tries to do the same but the scale at which is attempts this is possible at odds with how some players enjoy games.

Stepping away from Starfield for a moment I think if I was to boil it down I don't think it is possible to make a massively successful openworld space RPG, the setting and the genre are not compatible. If you make it just a galaxy with say ten planets full of content it would feel small and not give that sense of scale you would want from a space game but if you go big you can't populate it in a way that a lot of players would want.

On a personal note there are things I like about Starfield but I didn't play a huge amount as I think I've started to tire of the Bethesda style of storytelling. That and my general issue with huge openworld games just taking up too much of my time. They need to hit a much higher bar in terms of overall quality than a 10 hours or less game has to.

[Wrathbone]

On a personal note there are things I like about Starfield but I didn't play a huge amount as I think I've started to tire of the Bethesda style of storytelling.

Starfield is the first Bethesda game where I've not enjoyed the story, which for me is why it's not as compelling as their previous games. I know people bang on about the Elder Scrolls lore being generic twaddle (which I firmly refute - I will die on that hill ), but there is a wealth of history and fantasy metaphysics to delve into. Starfield on the other hand feels sparse and a bit mundane in that regard. There were almost zero moments where I discovered something that shocked or surprised me or reframed my understanding of the galaxy and its history. The main questline in particular was a fizzle, not a bang.

What I like about Starfield is cruising around the galaxy killing pirates, trading loot, doing odd-jobs, modifying my ship, etc. That makes it a good game, but without the feeling that there's something truly worthwhile out there yet to be discovered, it will never be a masterpiece.

[Maturin]

Yeah, in terms of general Bethesda-bashing, its' worth mentioning Skyrim is one of my favourite games (and most played games) of all time. So I don't agree with there being a fundamental issue with their approach to making games.

95% of the greatness in Skyrim came from everything other than the main quest line (which is fine by the way, it's just not amazing). That's where the game truly shines, but you do have to invest in that more open-ended approach, with snippets of storytelling. It's the vibe that hooks you in.

I sadly don't have the rig to play Starfield so I can't really talk about it in comparison, but the 'fluidity' of previous Beth games does seem to be missing from what I've seen.

[Raid]

Stepping away from Starfield for a moment I think if I was to boil it down I don't think it is possible to make a massively successful openworld space RPG, the setting and the genre are not compatible. If you make it just a galaxy with say ten planets full of content it would feel small and not give that sense of scale you would want from a space game but if you go big you can't populate it in a way that a lot of players would want.

I disagree with that, albeit on a theoretical level. Snowy and I started looking at Star Citizen this week, and while I've not the best experience with the alpha so far (there are some fundamental issues that make it borderline unplayable in its current state), the technology on display would have fixed my biggest problems with Starfield. I went from my starting apartment, to the building lobby, to the tram system, through a 50km tram ride (at hundreds of metres per second) to the spaceport, to the hanger my ship was delivered to, climbed into my ship cockpit, flew out into the world, boosted straight upward into the upper atmosphere and then into space, arrived at a space station using the quantum drive (that setting's FTL technology), docked, and travelled to the station's shopping centre.... all without seeing one single loading screen. It's hugely impressive, and even though the game is currently set in just the one star system, the scale is truly enormous, and it sells it because none of it is compartmentalised. You're in a first-person perspective, and in control of your character the entire time. If you could populate that sort of game world with missions, you would have the game that I think Starfield wanted to be. You just need time and budget, and I think Star Citizen provably has both.

I really don't think you need to do these universe-spanning epics, because even the scale of one star system gives you all the population centres, the desolate moons, the vast open expanses of nothing if you really want them, you could ever want. If you try to expand out into entire galaxies, the only way to make it remotely palatable is to shrink the experience down; to cut out the travel time and the scale and the connectedness, which entirely defeats the point.

[Snowy]

My experience with Star Citizen has also been a little rocky to start with, but with some real positives.

Not knowing anything really, I picked the game up and started playing. The tutorial section didn't teach me a huge amount, but did let me do the same as Chris in leaving the planet and going to the space station. I then tried to do a package retrieval and delivery mission which bugged as the cargo drop-down compartment in my teensy starter ship was seemingly a mirage. I popped the container in it, closed it up, and first time around did not spot that the box fell straight through the cargo space and onto the planet surface. I promptly got into my ship and flew to the drop off point only to realise that the ship was empty.

I tried again this morning (off work with a flu bug, so figured I may as well do something with my day) and had the same problem. I asked in chat if anyone could tell me what I was doing wrong, and a helpful chap offered to come to me, pop the parcel in his hold (in his much larger ship) and help with the delivery. He let me fly his ship to my destination, giving me help along the way when I ran into questions, and I dropped the cargo off making myself a pitiful £3000 spacebucks. However, I was then invited to join them and given carte-blanche on what we did - as I had no clue what the options were, I said I would be happy to tag along on whatever they had planned, which turned out to be asteroid mining.

I stayed in the ship the guy had picked me up in, and we flew to a space station and met with 2 other players from their organisation. We got into a mining ship they owned called a MOLE and took off. What was really cool here is that I was now part of a multi-crewed ship. I sat on a sofa while we jumped to the asteroid belt, then got into a turret to help with the mining. The ship has three turrets, each with different mining laser setups - we had one player manning each while the fourth piloted us. While we searched for a lucrative rock, I was given the lowdown on what we were doing. We wanted to find a rock with a decent proportion of valuable deposits, which we would then have to break into smaller chunks to extract from. The mining lasers would either fragment or extract, and fragmenting involved careful management of the laser's power to hit and stay inside the sweet spot to break it open cleanly. Overcook it and the asteroid could explode, which with larger asteroids can mean your ship being destroyed. I was shown the ropes and ended up cracking several asteroids down into manageable chunks. Once done, you scan the fragment and, if it contains a sufficient percentage of the good stuff, then extract the ore from it. We did two mining runs in total. Once you have filled the hold, you have to travel to a refinery station and pay for the ore to be refined. You can sell it as it is, but it is worth loads less. This refining takes hours of real-time to complete, and once completed you then have to transport it to another location to actually sell it.

The whole ethos of the game feels like it is to replicate all the activity that your avatar would get involved with. I have to admit, until I saw the recent tech demo below, I had figured the game was vapourware.

[

Having dipped a toe into it now, while there is absolutely jank in there, the sheer audacious scope of what they are building is just mindblowing. The mining was a lot of fun (and helped me out of the poverty you start in) but I have not even scratched the surface of the activities available within the game. It is still in alpha, so the jank is to be expected, and I know that at points along the way they will do server wipes so I needn't get too attached to my bank balance or any possessions. Still though, it looks incredible and, when you don't have any glitches or issues (I had no problems at all in about 3 hours gaming) is a really incredible game experience.

[DjchunKfunK]

I'm not sure where to star with Star Citizen, a game that has been in development for 11 years at this point and to many is just a straight long con.

Even if I believed that Star Citizen was bug free as it is now and was ever going to come out, I think first and foremost it is going along the same lines as the traditional space game so it is in the vein of Elite Dangerous or Wing Commander. So the focus has been on the space travel and I readily admitted that Starfield falls down here. From what I have seen of the ground stuff it's not much cop and as for the story stuff who knows.

Star Citizen is not an openworld rpg, which is what Starfield is and it is in that arena that I made the comment about the setting and the type of game not gelling for a mass market audience.