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This is the thing where I keep pointing at with Bethesda having no real sense of spectacle in the game. I had this same issue to a lesser extent with Skyrim, some voice actor rambles on and on about location names/factions and people that I have no investment in or want to have engagement in because I, the player, have no input in on any of the story or nor do they even spend maybe a minute of CG like in Mechwarrior 2 about what's going on in the world. Skyrim patches over this by having a world that you just wander around and hit up semi-unique dungeons as you roll around and a dragon attack, but Starfield has "Over 1000 planets to go to" so if/when you disengage with the plot more or less immediately (like I did), if you're not doing the Constellation quest or doing anything with the UC or Ryujin, the entire thing is a series of loading screens with a bunch of repetitive POIs.
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Mar 21, 2024 19:07
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I wonder how the localization teams handled the Indum part of the main quest, because goddamn that conversation was a massive rear end-pull.
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Mar 21, 2024 19:14
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I think Bethesda intended for there to be but couldn't pull it off. The mechs are like... the biggest and most obvious bit of that. They needed even just one extremely cool scene where you hop in a mech and fight something. And it doesn't even need to be a fully functional mech. You can be hopping in some half-scrap pile that lumbers around and you have to fight, I don't know, a giant Terrormorph, and all it requires is some clever use of asset shrinking, loading screens and UI and you can project the idea of being in a cool giant robot fighting Godzilla. It would take nothing to do it, like genuinely less effort than a random minigame in FF7 Rebirth. And they still didn't.
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Mar 21, 2024 19:14
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ImpAtom posted:I think Bethesda intended for there to be but couldn't pull it off. Or just jump in the cockpit of a mech in one of the factories and use the guns, even if you can't maneuver them.
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Mar 21, 2024 19:22
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Everyone just building their part of the game and wishing they were in the mech silo. Turns out, there is no mech silo!
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Mar 21, 2024 19:24
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they could've literally just reused almost the same exact code/animation that they used for the fallout 4 power armor/liberty prime and just reskinned the HUD and it would've been an improvement
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Mar 21, 2024 19:25
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Octopus Magic posted:they could've literally just reused almost the same exact code/animation that they used for the fallout 4 power armor/liberty prime and just reskinned the HUD and it would've been an improvement poo poo, it goes beyond that. Does anything as impressive as the FONV B29 or FO3's version of Liberty Prime ever happen in Starfield? Those games are 14 and 16 years old respectively, could run on a 360. and used an earlier version of the same engine Starfield is in. But I can't think of a single thing in Starfield that I would describe as epic or cinematic in the slightest. No big, flashy, impressive event or spectacle to make you feel like the game is at least trying to make you go "oh wow." And this despite mechs, Aliens-with-the-serials-filed-off, and giant dinosaurs that eat the earlier mentioned totally-not-chestbursters all existing in the universe. poo poo, just have some big final fight at the end of a faction quest that happens on a planet and have the player and friends about to get overrun when a space ship flies in and blows the living poo poo out of the enemy in a shot-for-shot remake of the B29 bombing run.
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Mar 21, 2024 19:37
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Yaoi Gagarin posted:fixing a bug is not bikeshedding lol. Of course not, homie. Where'd you see that? Splorange posted:Picking low hanging fruit ain't bikeshedding. The literal definition of bikeshedding is when low-hanging fruit is pretty much the only thing anyone works on. In this regard the patch notes--and the entire game as a product--are a giant neon arrow pointing at the vast majority of work hours being spent re-arranging deck chairs. quote:Look, I hate to break it to you, but Bethesda made a metric shitton of money and they'll make an even more obscene amount of money doing DLC for this because people love slop. They ain't collapsing. Did you know that Todd Howard isn't in charge of BGS anymore? Microsoft put a brand new person above him late last year. Of course Starfield didn't lose money, but anyone who thinks that Starfield hit internal metrics for sales and sentiment is out of their minds in a really funny way. Of course BGS isn't going out of business; when I say collapse I'm talking Bungie, Blizzard, Bioware, and friends. Anyone disagree with that?
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Mar 21, 2024 19:47
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Cyrano4747 posted:poo poo, it goes beyond that. The big naval flag ship that UC Sec has wrote some checks that didn't get cashed. There are some fairly large ships in Starfield, but they fight exactly like the smallest ships from the start of the game. I never had wing commander or tie fighter growing up, but I remember spending a lot of time blasting away at the Star Destroyer in the final Shadows of the Empire level on the n64, and Starfield didn't meaningfully advance my fantasy past that point.
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Mar 21, 2024 19:49
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Chillmatic posted:Did you know that Todd Howard isn't in charge of BGS anymore? Microsoft put a brand new person above him late last year. I never understood how that's supposed to mean anything. Did you think Todd had zero oversight when Bethesda (the publisher) owned BGS? The studio didn't grow stupidly large because Todd liked big numbers, someone told him he was going to have to make more stuff and expanding was the only way to keep up.
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Mar 21, 2024 20:02
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Jack B Nimble posted:The big naval flag ship that UC Sec has wrote some checks that didn't get cashed. There are some fairly large ships in Starfield, but they fight exactly like the smallest ships from the start of the game. No capital ship or star station battles might be one of my biggest gripes about this game. I still remember fighting one of those huge Kilrathi carriers for the first time in Wing Commander 3 and flying through the landing bay blowing up unscrambled fighters is one of the absolute coolest video game memories I have.
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Mar 21, 2024 20:09
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The legendary ship battles are surprisingly unsatisfying, both in terms of challenge and reward. They're slightly bigger than regular NPC ships, they fight exactly like every NPC ship, with the same weapons and tactics, but they have considerably more hit points. Your rewards are slightly more of the same random resources you get for blowing up any NPC ship.
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Mar 21, 2024 20:19
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infernal machines posted:The legendary ship battles are surprisingly unsatisfying, both in terms of challenge and reward. And you can't even board them. I expected not being able to steal them, fair enough. But it's so boring that you can't even board the things and get into a half-hour, deck-by-deck firefight.
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Mar 21, 2024 22:18
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Q_res posted:And you can't even board them. I expected not being able to steal them, fair enough. But it's so boring that you can't even board the things and get into a half-hour, deck-by-deck firefight. The real crime is not being allowed to steal/own that awesome (main quest?) Casino ship. Iirc, there isn't even a cockpit you can access, they didn't even bother giving it a proper ship layout.
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Mar 21, 2024 22:23
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ImpAtom posted:I think Bethesda intended for there to be but couldn't pull it off. Didn't trainwiz have something like this in Skyrim, even?
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Mar 22, 2024 01:02
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The Galbank ships have only a tiny bit more money than regular ships. what the hell is that?? It's a bank ship, that's when piracy is supposed to be good you idiots!!
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Mar 22, 2024 01:21
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They had to go out of their way to make piracy unrewarding. I'm not really sure why, but they made drat sure it was a bad proposition no matter what, and not just because you'd lose all your companions and get a bounty. You can make more money selling a gun than you can selling a ship and they made it like that on purpose, for some reason. But, also, narratively, despite this incredible handicap, there is a fleet of pirates just about able to wipe out the loving space navy, spread across the known systems. infernal machines fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 02:02
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we don't talk about galbank no seriously I've started a post in response to that like 5 times and keep getting mentally hamstrung by "remember this way galbank was used in the plot and what the universal implications are if it actually worked like that" and have to hold back from yelling again
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Mar 22, 2024 02:05
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infernal machines posted:But, also, narratively, despite this incredible handicap, there is a fleet of pirates just about able to wipe out the loving space navy, spread across the known systems. they're incompetent backstabbers who will shoot each other in the head over slights and nobody bats an eye because That's How Game Developers Think Anarchy Works (see also: elite dangerous) but also simultaneously were powerful enough to turn a war and can't be fought directly by the space navy and would suddenly immediately ascend to the point of being a galactic power if they got their hands on a couple million credits worth of cash
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Mar 22, 2024 02:10
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eviltastic posted:I think I disagree - "more content that is better written" would do a lot to dilute the impact of some of the existing stuff that is unfixably dumb, and is assuming less of a can opener than would be needed to fix boring gameplay. While a lot of the setting's blandness comes from being a pretty generic pastiche of space scifi tropes, a lot more came from just plopping them down without really using them for anything but window dressing. It's not just that parts of the story and setting don't hold up to scrutiny, it's that lots of it goes unexplored entirely, or we're just told about it and never shown it. It really does not help that the options at the unity are “yes” and “yes, but later” when they have becoming starborn portrayed as having issues, with a character that has rejected it and explained why. You never get to actually engage with that theme at all
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Mar 22, 2024 02:15
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:they're incompetent backstabbers who will shoot each other in the head over slights and nobody bats an eye because That's How Game Developers Think Anarchy Works (see also: elite dangerous) but also simultaneously were powerful enough to turn a war and can't be fought directly by the space navy and would suddenly immediately ascend to the point of being a galactic power if they got their hands on a couple million credits worth of cash And in traditional Bethesda fashion, the only result of completely destroying them and locking up their generals is a random encounter space battle with the sister(?) of one of the pirates that dies on The Key. I'm not certain, but I don't think there's any post-quest reactivity if you side against Sysdef. Ugly In The Morning posted:It really does not help that the options at the unity are “yes” and “yes, but later” when they have becoming starborn portrayed as having issues, with a character that has rejected it and explained why. You never get to actually engage with that theme at all Think about the consequences of this incredible power and its toll on your humanity, but think about it during your NG+ playthrough, having already accepted it. infernal machines fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 02:18
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infernal machines posted:And in traditional Bethesda fashion, the only result of completely destroying them and locking up their generals is a random encounter space battle with the sister(?) of one of the pirates that dies on The Key. You have a bounty as an incidental from killing “friendlies” but you can go on to be a first class UC citizen after because Bethesda cannot design for quests locking things out even in a game where the main quest is made for NG+
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Mar 22, 2024 02:23
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Yeah, it's impressive that they made NG+ an explicit and intentional mechanic that you almost have to engage to unlock skills past a certain point and then also made it so that there were no mutually exclusive quests anywhere in the game. So what exactly are you playing NG+ to do? In this universe I chose the engineered phage to end the Terrormorph threat, but in the previous universe I chose the alien dinosaurs. [A picture of Pam from The Office saying "It's the same picture"] infernal machines fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 02:35
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infernal machines posted:Yeah, it's impressive that they made NG+ an explicit and intentional mechanic that you almost have to engage to unlock skills past a certain point and then also made it so that there were no mutually exclusive quests anywhere in the game. And that is literally the only choice in the game that matters because if you pick the dinosaurs people ate to death despite chunks being a thing, you might see one in a random encounter. Maybe.
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Mar 22, 2024 03:04
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Ugly In The Morning posted:And that is literally the only choice in the game that matters because if you pick the dinosaurs people ate to death despite chunks being a thing, you might see one in a random encounter. Maybe. The funny thing is I came across a dinosaur fighting a "diseased terrormorph" or something later? which made me wonder if both outcomes happened anyways, but I didn't want to go back and pick the disease to see
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Mar 22, 2024 03:12
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Ugly In The Morning posted:And that is literally the only choice in the game that matters because if you pick the dinosaurs people ate to death despite chunks being a thing, you might see one in a random encounter. Maybe. I have seen the dinosaur twice in the wild and I regret nothing.
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Mar 22, 2024 03:28
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After siding with the pirates the scold lady asked me why I did it and I chose because I felt like it. That was the true answer, I wanted to see if anything interesting would happen for once. Then she scolded me for daring to try to send the game's sterile scripted vision off the rails.
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Mar 22, 2024 03:46
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I was not breathlessly awaiting this game but I'm disappointed to read about what a soulless and disjointed mess it is.
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Mar 22, 2024 17:24
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Having factions you can join seems at odds with Constellation being a bunch of neutral explorers. Then again, the Starborn, a mysterious collection of extradimensional reborn angels who talked to God have absolutely no impact on the setting except for that one priest dude being one. You'd think some of the faction leaders might care about having precognitive powers or trying to get their hands on Starborn ships. You'd be wrong.
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Mar 22, 2024 18:07
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Or that they'd care that you used mind control powers on the president to make her leave the office so you can loot in peace
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Mar 22, 2024 18:29
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Azhais posted:Or that they'd care that you used mind control powers on the president to make her leave the office so you can loot in peace God that whole quest was so loving weird. It literally gives you the ability to mind control anyone in the universe and just make them do whatever the gently caress you want and the game never acknowledges it after. gently caress, that's the whole hook to a better game that would then be about every single government, corporation, military, criminal gang, and the loving girl scouts for good measure trying to murder you to dissect your brain or just eliminate a horrible threat. edit: at the bare loving minimum the could have given you an option to try and jedi mind trick the starborn and have one of them say "lol get rekt noob, I got that upgrade 3 universes ago"
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Mar 22, 2024 18:37
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Cyrano4747 posted:God that whole quest was so loving weird. The best part is that the CEO tells you to mind control the board members but if you don't do it the worst they do is shelve the tech and not immediately move to fire the CEO. There is also an implant that blocks the mind control that, as far as I know, no one at the company gets.
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Mar 22, 2024 19:08
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Having factions you can join seems at odds with Constellation being a bunch of neutral explorers. You'd think anyone, anywhere, in any faction, including the so called explorers would have an interest in the origins of the artifacts and temples. They do not. The closest you get is the Unitarian kid in Constellation speculating about god or whatever.
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Mar 22, 2024 20:10
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yeah it'd be one thing if it was just some old rubble but it's got poo poo floating and spinning around and making sparkles
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Mar 22, 2024 21:29
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No one, in the entire history of space exploration, was the least bit interested in the floating rocks around the ziggurat 250 metres from their science outpost.
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Mar 22, 2024 23:11
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infernal machines posted:No one, in the entire history of space exploration, was the least bit interested in the floating rocks around the ziggurat 250 metres from their science outpost. the thing is you could almost, almost see a story there, like "after we used alien tech to accidentally rip earth's biosphere apart science and curiousity became extremely culturally rejected, don't ask any question, don't even think about investigating things, only bad can come of it" and use that to both explain the "just stay away, don't look at or think about those things" POIs near temples and how humanity went hundreds of years with terrormorphs Just Popping Up And Nobody Cared To Ask Why, it's fine, don't think about it but that'd result in some interesting questions to ask and be answered, instead of the actual answer of "only the player is allowed to progress the plot from the initial stasis state the universe exists in"
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Mar 23, 2024 01:27
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If only they did this, if only they did that. A common story in many a Fallout 76, Anthem or Mass Effect Andromeda thread. The compentecy crisis runs deep. Some current leadership teams are no longer able to adeqautely manage the complex systems necessary for modern game development. After all the legacy star talent burned out and moved on there was nothing left but husks. Yet people keep throwing money at zombie companies hoping for some fresh meat. Hey I'm guilty of it too. On occasion. Much like aliens from Alpha Centauri I'd really like to believe, even if in my heart I know there's nothing there but vacuum gas. I paid for this loving piece of poo poo, for example.
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Mar 23, 2024 10:07
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infernal machines posted:They had to go out of their way to make piracy unrewarding. I'm not really sure why, but they made drat sure it was a bad proposition no matter what, and not just because you'd lose all your companions and get a bounty. You can make more money selling a gun than you can selling a ship and they made it like that on purpose, for some reason. The bounty/piracy system was unquestionably one of the countless dumb things about the game, but there are (or were) stupid ways to cheese it to make the missions from the pirate board one of the fastest way to earn credits. You can greatly reduce or totally avoid bounties by acting in a very specific way, and it becomes faster than selling stuff because you don't have to wait/sleep to have the vendors' cash reset. Independent piracy sucks no matter what, since you don't have the board payouts to offset the bounty. From playing the game last year I remember that:
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Mar 23, 2024 21:30
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I honestly forgot the piracy board was a thing, I mostly avoided the auto-generated missions because I found them really unengaging and anything involving boarding a procgen ship was a nightmare because of the absolutely nonsensical layouts.
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Mar 23, 2024 23:19
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Plus Beth has been training us to avoid radiant quests for over a decade now.
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Mar 23, 2024 23:22
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