**** Starfield ****

Kiith

It's gonna be Fallout 4 / Skyrim in space. For better or worse, that's their genre, and the do it (mostly) well. The 1000 planets will mostly be procedurally generated for sure, with a handful being designed. That's obvious, as there's no way they'd be able to that many detailed planets. The combat looked fairly standard fare, I even expect there'll be a VATs type thing with some abilities.

I don't expect any reinvention of the wheel to be honest. And that's fine with me. I love the idea of Skyrim in space, as Skyrim was excellent.

Mr Crispy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120669953#Comment_120669953

Seems the matching headphones are real too.

https://twitter.com/IdleSloth84_/status/1667534635100954624?s=20

Mr Crispy

For those of you who bought the Pip-Boy special edition of Fallout 4........

https://twitter.com/MissDeusGeek/status/1667352387605131266?s=20

johnny_ultimate

Todd Howard: “See that expensive tat? You can go there”

Jordan 199

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120700200#Comment_120700200

Hmmm, I might be interested in that. Might be...

Mr Crispy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120700269#Comment_120700269

I'd probably prefer to spend the money on a standard copy of the game and get a separate watch of my choosing. 😅

Jordan 199

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120700200#Comment_120700200

Price of €299.99 going around for the Collector's Edition. *faints*

SuperBowserWorld

Hmmm, show me the game,

Microsoft/Bethesda.

Not the land fill.

super_furry

This looks incredible. If it lives it to what they're promising, it could be a generation defining game.

johnny_ultimate

I have to be honest, this game is becoming more and more 'not for me' with everything they show. Maybe low expectations will give it an edge when I do actually try it (thankfully with Game Pass that'll be very easy) but almost everything they're boasting about is the stuff I'm increasingly uninterested in when it comes to big old open worlds. But it's the setting and art design that really turns me off - feels derivative of every PS3/360 era sci-fi game aesthetically, just with fancier global illumination.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again though: the music **** rocks.

pixelburp

Snort. Love how the first 3/4s of the trailer is all this attempt towards the profundity of infinite horizons, the heady grandeur of space and exploration ...

... then PEW PEW PEW!! I froze gun with my ice gun!!

Video games.

https://youtu.be/djCmlTXkiSI

Jordan 199

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120669953#Comment_120669953

Well I ordered the controller. I had some credit in my Microsoft account that was a great help.

McFly85

Starfield has undue pressure on it, I kind of feel sorry for the devs in this case.

It went from being a multi-platform Bethesda space RPG with modest expectations(if you like Bethesda games you’ll like this type of thing) to having become something expected to be a generation defining exclusive, which feels impossible to live up to.

It looks grand, and I have gamepass so I will probably try it but they hype around it has a chance for it to be given a far harsher reception than it probably deserves.

SuperBowserWorld

It looks quite beautiful in places and the music is lovely. Ship building is interesting. No mention of whether it's 60 FPS on XSX. Or maybe I missed it. Some of the characters look and sound a bit dopey/amateurish, maybe that's the intention.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120703815#Comment_120703815

Starfield runs at 30 frames per second on both Xbox Series X and S, Bethesda’s Todd Howard has confirmed.

https://www.ign.com/articles/bethesdas-todd-howard-confirms-starfield-performance-and-frame-rate-on-xbox-series-x-and-s

Jordan 199

...

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120702657#Comment_120702657

Yeah I'm kind of the same. I genuinely hope it's a great game as it looks like they've put a huge amount of effort into it and it seems like their dream project in many ways.

But I've just never been able to get into the Fallout/Skyrim/Outer Worlds kind of game that in most ways, this is. And nothing in the developer showcase really showed me why I should.

But it's absolutely a personal thing rather than anything that seems off with the game itself. The game deserves full credit for what it looks like it's doing and if it pulls it off, I'm sure it'll be an incredible experience.

Icyseanfitz

It felt very no man's sky to me, which isn't necessarily a bad thing particularly if they can add something like Skyrims dungeons, fallouts vaults etc on random planet's for proper exploration, add a decent narrative and characters. Could be a very good game as long as like the aforementioned it isn't a collection of a 1000 planets with something interesting on 10 and resources on the remaining 990 planets.

CatInABox

Thought that it looked great, a lot of what was show was definitely my cup of tea.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120703815#Comment_120703815

It's not necessarily the intention, but more a limitation of the engine that they use. All of their games have suffered from the NPCs being a bit... basic. Animation, lighting, it's never been their strong suit, but then, that's never been the point of these games. It's all about their world, and what you can do in it.

On the 30fps/60fps, I can understand why, and even the Digital Foundry guys are understanding of it, giving the ability to steal all the sandwiches as the main reason why, as it's a sign that the game is keeping track of everything in the massive world, and that a lower resolution won't help with that. Disappointed that there's no 40fps option though, that worked great on Plague Tale 2

McFly85

The 30fps thing isn’t really that big of a deal. Recently went back to Bloodborne to get the platinum and while it was jarring for about 30 minutes I stopped noticing after that,

This is going to be supported for years most likely anyway, wouldn’t surprise me to see a patch sometime down the line.

pixelburp

Indeed: these Todd Howard RPGs have had effin' terrible animations since ... well, ever? It has never been the strong suit of the games at all; but while I've forgiven it for a long time - because of all the other aspects those games bring to the table - it has got harder and harder to forgive as rivals and other studios improve. The latter-day Zelda games do so much more with fewer polygons, imbuing their world with a vitality & heft the Howard games lack. The first time a dragon had conniptions on a rock broke the spell forever.

I dunno whether it's a total limitation of that much derided engine, how Bethesda's animation department works or the relative talent within those departments - but it has always been a bit garbage. This YouTUbe channel did a really good deep dive into why their animations are "bad":

https://youtu.be/vqQ5V8JeCjM

Retr0gamer

I'll wait for more information but it's not exciting me so far. I can already guess what the story is due to how bland Bethesda writing is, it will be a mass effect clone with those artifacts either pointing to an enemy attack that will take out the universe or be the answer to an enemy attack.

Also Bethesda can call their engine whatever they like but they are still quite clearly working on their janky as **** Gembryo engine. At least there'll be good video fodder when it comes out.

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120704186#Comment_120704186

I'm going to guess that they haven't bothered their holes fixing those long running bugs from all the way back in Morrowind either.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120704203#Comment_120704203

At least they aren't making games for the PS3 again where they are all released with a bug that makes they unplayable but they still get top review marks.

I'm expecting physics and memory issues out the wazoo.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120704186#Comment_120704186

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120704203#Comment_120704203

Bethesda's Gamebryo is the ultimate case of a gaming Ship of Theseus: cos while they have undoubtedly patched, duct-taped and built upon the original codebase I don't think they've ever had a from-scratch rebuild either. So whilst I totally think like yourself that it's the same engine that has turned into a mythological level of jank ... it's also not totally the same engine as seen with Morrowind either.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120704235#Comment_120704235

It's not really how game engines work though. They aren't really like Triggers broom. It's why all Bethesda games feel the same, why Call of Duty still feels like Quake 3 Arena and Source games have bugs that date back to Quake 1. What usually happens is the renderer gets modernised but that engine core that dictates how the game works at the most granular level remains the same untinkered with. So stuff like movement and even the geometry and look of a game can feel the same. I mean there's a look and feel to Morrowind and Skyrim that's unmistakeable. The granular stuff of how the game works has usually been built for out of date hardware and it's usually hacked with duct tape code to get it working and usually not tinkered with for fear of causing havoc with game logic.

Of course it can work if you've got good coders, the Call of Duty hive mind of studios managed to get Quake 3 Arena running a streaming open world through sheer wizardry and Source despite being based on Quake 1 feels very solid in all iterations. Bethesda's fork of Gamebryo feels like hack jobs built on hack jobs.

Of course it's never enough to spoil these games but I always feel Bethesda games look and feel a generation behind due to the engine.

johnny_ultimate

I find the way Bethesda frames dialogue unconvincing, on top of the dodgy character tech. The dead eyed characters standing still staring directly at the locked camera and into your soul 😅 And it even zooms in to emphasise the dodgy facial animation. It’s just a really dull and static way of presenting conversation IMO - no ‘easy’ way to do it in unbroken first person perspective, granted, but their solution mixed with the technology they use always feels like a bad, outdated solution with no dynamism or energy. Maybe they’ve improved it for this, but still several examples of it in the bits of gameplay I flicked through last night.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120704340#Comment_120704340

"Our engine isn't gamebryo, it's 'Creation 2'. There dead eyed conversation aren't due to the engine, they're part of the Bethesda softworks aesthetic (tm)."

Retr0gamer

https://twitter.com/manfightdragon/status/1668172809498161152?t=gEVHnPo5z6K2DmpXvfO5LQ&s=19

Mudcrabs

TheIrishGrover

I have game pass so I'll give this a go alright but I'm not hugely into open world/sandbox games. I need a narrative. It's why I can appreciate the technical excellence of No Man's Sky (after their overhauls) but never got into it.

This looks like Mass Effect meets No Man's Sky (No Man's Mass Effect, maybe?). Maybe that's a lazy summation based on what we have seen so far but yeah.... a bit "Meh" for me I must admit. And yeah, they really need to move on from characters standing still(ish) while dumping reams of exposition at you