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Starfield does feel like they didn't know what to do with the lore. In general, I like BGS's style of doing NPCs, alongside with Obsidian's et al. It's a more muted take. However, SF had some surprisingly non-committal approaches.
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Jan 18, 2024 15:26
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Philippe posted:It's a game that knew what resources it was working with and stuck to them. Yeah the NPCs all kinda look stiff and were clearly made in the character creator, and the KOTOR-style world doesn't always work, but dammit it's a game that tries to Say Something, the guns feel meaningfully different, and there aren't seventy different styles of bullet you need to keep track of. Still, the weapon damage types in it actually meant something. Really baffling that Starfield has the big kinetic/energy/EM split and then almost nobody uses EM weapons, and it's almost impossible to tell what armour enemies have and the overcomplicated damage formula would still make it impossible to gauge effectiveness even if you did know. Was there a perk under Scanning or something that I missed, that made carting around energy and kinetic weapons meaningful?
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Jan 18, 2024 15:30
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moist turtleneck posted:People weren't playing the game because the water didn't shimmer enough It bums me out every time a planet has that 'underground ocean' trait because the area you find it in looks so cool and mysterious and vibrant but you can't dive in to explore it. Or any other water feature for that matter.
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Jan 18, 2024 15:32
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Talkie Toaster posted:I'm not so sure about it Saying Something, it pulls a lot of punches and ends up with a vague "Executives are selfish and short-sighted, all non-corporate alternatives are either psychos or useless" theme. Still a lot better written and more fun though. That's fair. It's hard to make a proper anti-capitalist product if you want to work again. It pulls some punches and the anticapitalist themes are broad and cartoony, but the sheer amount of text is enough to make it work for me. It tries to say something, but it doesn't always work. The MSI questline especially feels pretty wishy-washy. Cyberpunk, by contrast, feels much more anticapitalist and anticorpo. You can't replace or reform these people, the best thing you can do is to dasharez0ne it and just leave.
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Jan 18, 2024 15:40
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Philippe posted:Martin Callahan is such a good character. He's got carbon monoxide poisoning, he loathes his entire life with a passion, and he hasn't slept in two days, but that's not gonna stop him from extolling the virtues of Spacer's Choice merchandise. They managed to make a city that is powered by lightning and has a huge energy collection array that's getting struck by big 'ol bolts non stop because the planet it's on is in a near perpetual state of sever thunderstorm somehow boring and visually uninteresting. That description is metal as gently caress and I'm sure there are some graphical designers that could spool up some sick concept art of a rain swept oil derrick city being lashed by lightning while under the glittering faraday cage umbrella a techno-futurist neon libertarian dystopia peddles any good and any vice you could think of. Instead we got a drizzly strip mall. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 15:41
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Cyrano4747 posted:They managed to make a city that is powered by lightning and has a huge energy collection array that's getting struck by big 'ol bolts non stop because the planet it's on is in a near perpetual state of sever thunderstorm somehow boring and visually uninteresting. I seriously wonder what CDPR's level designers could do if tasked with designing Neon. No loading screens, tons of verticality, and design space they're already familiar with (wet neon-lit metal corridors and far-too glitzy streets). There's even a cool bar, even though the Neon bar (I don't remember what it's called) is a pale shadow of Lizzie's.
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Jan 18, 2024 15:43
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Philippe posted:I seriously wonder what CDPR's level designers could do if tasked with designing Neon. No loading screens, tons of verticality, and design space they're already familiar with (wet neon-lit metal corridors and far-too glitzy streets). There's even a cool bar, even though the Neon bar (I don't remember what it's called) is a pale shadow of Lizzie's. Cyber-Geralt in a running diving aquatic battle with one of the drug whales with a cyberpunk missile turret on its back. Jump from skiff to skiff to platform, climb the oil derrick, dodge the attacks, and harpoon the whale with a lightning rod, then the storm blows it the gently caress up. Whale blubber and drug juice rains down on all the orphans and techno dance clubs and there’s a huge rave. Or you could awkwardly jump around a rooftop and fire escape in a drizzle. Three level 17 guys named something like ENFORCER are milling around aimlessly. Once they see you they will lazily spray submachine gun fire at you while their Cover AI attempts to direct them to take cover behind an air handler. This causes a canned “crowd screaming” sound bite to play for 2 minutes as every NPC in the area does a bizarre arms flailing retreat. The next time you talk to the Whale Drug CEO or the Gang Leader of the ENFORCERS you shot he says something like “You’re gonna pay for this!” before standing up and t-posing for 5 seconds.
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Jan 18, 2024 15:51
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space uncle posted:Cyber-Geralt in a running diving aquatic battle with one of the drug whales with a cyberpunk missile turret on its back. Jump from skiff to skiff to platform, climb the oil derrick, dodge the attacks, and harpoon the whale with a lightning rod, then the storm blows it the gently caress up. Whale blubber and drug juice rains down on all the orphans and techno dance clubs and there’s a huge rave. Or even the Heist escape. You're just fighting dudes, but the arena's more interesting.
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Jan 18, 2024 16:04
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Philippe posted:Martin Callahan is such a good character. He's got carbon monoxide poisoning, he loathes his entire life with a passion, and he hasn't slept in two days, but that's not gonna stop him from extolling the virtues of Spacer's Choice merchandise. The whole five minutes spent with Martin Callahan is more engaging / entertaining than any single character conversation in a Bethesda game in a very, very long time. "You would never ask if you knew what it's like in here." Cyrano4747 posted:They managed to make a city that is powered by lightning and has a huge energy collection array that's getting struck by big 'ol bolts non stop because the planet it's on is in a near perpetual state of sever thunderstorm somehow boring and visually uninteresting. This just occurred to me; do they even actually render the lightning or any effects from it? It seems like if you're on the upper levels of Neon you should be getting constantly bombarded with bright flashes and thunderclaps, making it an absolute hellscape. That should be the part of Neon everyone actively tries to avoid unless they're too destitute to have any say in things, not the well-shielded underbelly.
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Jan 18, 2024 16:25
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Philippe posted:
It’s because they confused “more stuff” with “good design”. Neon just has more and more piled on until it becomes visual overload and you stop caring. Groundbreaker and Kabuki have some actual design language and familiar things in them to anchor you to the sci fi and cyberpunk hellacape. It lets you have the context to have an actual reaction to stuff instead of it being a light show…. And neon isn’t even a very good light show.
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Jan 18, 2024 16:44
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It doesn't help that there's no design contrast in Starfield (yes, the capitals of the UC and Freestar are "outdoor space mall" and "frontier cowboy town" respectively, but within a space it all looks very samey). The poor areas of Neon look about the same as the rich areas, even though everyone makes a big whatdo about how rundown the bad part of town is. In Cyberpunk you can look at how different the different areas of Watson are (port areas, rundown shantytowns, medium-income apartment buildings, etc). Or compare the Totentanz to Lizzie's Bar.
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Jan 18, 2024 16:54
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Sandepande posted:I like having a better water. Morrowind was the first time I remember being impressed by water graphics, so theres heritage there, for me.
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Jan 18, 2024 18:06
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Simiain posted:Morrowind was the first time I remember being impressed by water graphics, so theres heritage there, for me. Lol same. I remember my buddy had some hot poo poo new ATI card (a 9800 I think) that he got right about when that launched and all of us heading over to his dorm room to watch him stand on the dock in that first town your start in and marvel at the water.
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Jan 18, 2024 18:17
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the 9800 was legendary
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Jan 18, 2024 18:20
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Patch details: https://beth.games/47AF8W1 Not a lot of interesting stuff here, but I suppose “redo the entire game” was a bit optimistic of me…
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Jan 18, 2024 18:28
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I thought it was gonna have QoL stuff
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Jan 18, 2024 18:31
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The game being less broken is QoL, right?
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Jan 18, 2024 18:32
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the "companions crowd around the cockpit after a jump" thing is nice. My terran battlecruiser style C class ship had that problem.
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Jan 18, 2024 18:44
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infernal machines posted:The game being less broken is QoL, right? The QoL of someone who thinks they should play more Starfield is not improved
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Jan 18, 2024 18:44
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Credit where credit's due - and I'm going to be the first one to say that the patch notes are pretty meh to me and aren't anything like what it would take for me to touch this game again - we're still early enough in the launch cycle that all they're realistically going to be doing is bug fixes and adding in features that were cut before launch.* A significant overhaul is likely a year away, earliest, and likely to come packaged along with a DLC. *I mean, come on, the loving only way they had DLSS ready that quickly is if it was essentially done and they yanked it for ~mysterious reasons~ that no one is openly admitting.
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Jan 18, 2024 19:31
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lol, its funny to compare this to BG3s patch cycle. obciously that game had some late game issues as well, but 4 months in im pretty sure they had at least 2 major patches with 1000+ fixes, qol updates, and then also several hotfixes, etc
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Jan 18, 2024 20:58
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I think it’s a fair comparison. It’s not great that BG3 had that many issues to fix in the first place, but if you look at the patch notes thread for Starfield on Reddit it’s full of people talking about bugs this patch doesn’t address.
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Jan 18, 2024 21:14
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I'm thinking about starting this up, having finished BG3. This being a Bethesda game, I'm sure there are mods to consider. I'm just looking for the basic mods, that enhance the game, or fix up any issues that are glaringly stupid. I'm just thinking things like the script extender, a better UI, and something similar to fixing Oblivion's common bandits walking around carrying daedric gear. I don't really want to look around myself because I don't want to get spoiled. Is there a nice simple list I should be looking for?
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Jan 18, 2024 22:36
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Node posted:I'm thinking about starting this up, having finished BG3. This being a Bethesda game, I'm sure there are mods to consider. I'm just looking for the basic mods, that enhance the game, or fix up any issues that are glaringly stupid. I'm just thinking things like the script extender, a better UI, and something similar to fixing Oblivion's common bandits walking around carrying daedric gear. I don't really want to look around myself because I don't want to get spoiled. Is there a nice simple list I should be looking for? I mean if you don't have a burning need to play this, and I feel like you haven't if you've left it this long, then just wait for the toolkit. Or maybe you're a returning player and I misunderstood. Anyway, I think the best mods you can get right now are probably reshades? Make the darks dark, etc.
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Jan 18, 2024 22:54
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Mod tools aren’t out. The only mods I’d recommend are StarUI and something to tweak the awful color filtering.
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Jan 18, 2024 22:59
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Does the patch address the "all the companions are assholes all the time and i loving hate them all" bug?
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Jan 18, 2024 23:03
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Powershift posted:Does the patch address the "all the companions are assholes all the time and i loving hate them all" bug? I know you're not talking about my adoring fan
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Jan 18, 2024 23:06
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Who honestly had a problem with the asteroid
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Jan 18, 2024 23:12
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Inspector Hound posted:Who honestly had a problem with the asteroid Was the only actually enjoyable companion
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Jan 18, 2024 23:18
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queeb posted:Was the only actually enjoyable companion Never disliked anything, never shot up an office building, it really was the only good one.
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Jan 18, 2024 23:24
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hawowanlawow posted:I know you're not talking about my adoring fan 
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Jan 19, 2024 00:51
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaZXPx1kdtg
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Jan 19, 2024 01:33
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Starfield always sounds like Garfield now in my head wherever I read it after seeing it like that in a comic somewhere.
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Jan 19, 2024 02:59
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Starfield without Starfield
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Jan 19, 2024 03:01
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Tiny Timbs posted:I think it’s a fair comparison. It’s not great that BG3 had that many issues to fix in the first place, but if you look at the patch notes thread for Starfield on Reddit it’s full of people talking about bugs this patch doesn’t address. BG3 didn't have a simultaneous console release, which really puts a damper on throwing out fixes as fast as possible. Having to push your patches through certification testing cycles slows everything a ton. And BG3's speedy patches weren't all perfect either, there was one that they had to roll back almost immediately and it left players unable to continue their save until the next patch dropped because of version mismatch.
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Jan 19, 2024 03:19
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Wasn’t there a BG3 patch that completely stopped Mac players from even starting the game for like two weeks? Not saying that BG3 is equivalent to Starfield, but the patches each game needs are vastly different. Node posted:I'm thinking about starting this up, having finished BG3. This being a Bethesda game, I'm sure there are mods to consider. I'm just looking for the basic mods, that enhance the game, or fix up any issues that are glaringly stupid. I'm just thinking things like the script extender, a better UI, and something similar to fixing Oblivion's common bandits walking around carrying daedric gear. I don't really want to look around myself because I don't want to get spoiled. Is there a nice simple list I should be looking for? Honestly, I’d get a month of gamepass and try it out before shelling out $60 or whatever. It’s pretty divisive and a lot of people bounce off it in the first few hours. I’m more positive on Starfield than most - I played about 80 hours and mostly enjoyed it, but by the end I was Absolutely Done and can’t see myself going back any time soon. Just temper your expectations a bit; it’s not a solid narrative experience with well designed systems underneath like BG3 is. But if you enjoy it, there’s still fun to be had.
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Jan 19, 2024 03:58
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webmeister posted:
You know, I heard someone suggest that the Bethesda gameplay loop is not exactly good, that it absorbs a lot of time in a way that isn't actually a gameplay experience with a lot to recommend it. I don't really agree with that exactly, but it made me mentally review my own play experience enough to realize that the reason I like Bethesda games so much is they basically have always done a version of what Elden Ring does - when you want the harder, more engaging experiences you just go out on a quest or a dungeon, but if you want spend an hour zoned out and walking through towns or down roads, you can. So you can turn your brain off and waste your day if that's what you want to do, but there's a more demanding game interwoven into the experience. But, with Starfield more than any previous game, it feels like the loop is inching towards the tipping point of just being a waste of time. I've played as much Starfield as Baldur's Gate 3 and that just makes no drat sense; I certainly don't feel like I have, I don't have the same resonance or depth of experience, because so much of it was just filler. Now, admittedly a lot of that is self imposed because I always avoid fast travel in their games, but either because Starfield is worse or because I've just become more aware of it, I'm more critical and less forgiving of it this time. It's like, I'll turn my nose up a pointedly casual game like a walking simulator or a narrative game, but then when I play Starfield that's a lot of my play time? I felt the same way about the Witcher 3, except I just felt it was more, well, worth it.
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Jan 19, 2024 04:46
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Jack B Nimble posted:You know, I heard someone suggest that the Bethesda gameplay loop is not exactly good, that it absorbs a lot of time in a way that isn't actually a gameplay experience with a lot to recommend it. I don't really agree with that exactly, but it made me mentally review my own play experience enough to realize that the reason I like Bethesda games so much is they basically have always done a version of what Elden Ring does - when you want the harder, more engaging experiences you just go out on a quest or a dungeon, but if you want spend an hour zoned out and walking through towns or down roads, you can. So you can turn your brain off and waste your day if that's what you want to do, but there's a more demanding game interwoven into the experience. But, with Starfield more than any previous game, it feels like the loop is inching towards the tipping point of just being a waste of time. I've played as much Starfield as Baldur's Gate 3 and that just makes no drat sense; I certainly don't feel like I have, I don't have the same resonance or depth of experience, because so much of it was just filler. Now, admittedly a lot of that is self imposed because I always avoid fast travel in their games, but either because Starfield is worse or because I've just become more aware of it, I'm more critical and less forgiving of it this time. never forget that bud light is the most popular beer in america. what people want is not the same thing as what is best, this ofc applies to basically everything (or was, it's modelo especial now i think)
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Jan 19, 2024 04:57
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Iacen posted:Patch details: https://beth.games/47AF8W1 Patch details posted:Fixed an issue that prevented Windows users saving if their username featured certain characters (PC). But is "certain characters" code for "all non-ascii-characters"? They didn't release a game in 2023 which wouldn't be able to handle unicode in usernames, right?
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Jan 19, 2024 07:19
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Wipfmetz posted:I never started starfield a second time, so I might just not have noticed that. If you name your character: ‘); DROP TABLE Gamebryo;~~ it will delete Starfield from your computer
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Jan 19, 2024 07:26
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