Starfield Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[JamesDixon]

Ahaha the random encounters in this game rock. Just met two freighter captains having a Mac vs PC argument about two ship companies. The player can come in and aggro them both by fanatically advocating for a third company they both hate.

It's also a great bit of C&C, as it activates after you do a quest where you can choose to discover some disturbing things about the CEO of one of the companies, which your dialogue options during the encounter reflect.

Why would Apple and PC still be around?

 

[Perkel]

Dude debt is last of his problems

 

[Caim]

Game's so shit dude is trying to escape by breaking his own neck.

 

[Vic]

the haters are trying so hard, forging screenshots!

 

[Robotigan]

I think the issue is what darkpatriot mentioned above - it's deliberately sterile and boring, but new players won't realise it's by design and will instead assume

Sounds like a great idea to start a game with, bore your prospective players to death

It's why Fallout 4 went for an over-the-top vertical slice for its introduction, cinematic dialogue, voiced protagonist, and an established backstory. Fallout fans may have hated it, but it got a better reception from critics. So long as you don't fuck up the execution, cinematics and action-packed intros pay off every single time. Meanwhile slower pacing exposes you to middling responses from players who don't 'get it'. People will deride cinematic games as derivative or uninspired in the delayed retrospectives, but ultimately no critic is willing to put on their tweed jacket and call it out when it happens. No one is actually going to point out that The Witcher 3 is an RPG without builds or RDR2's economy is exhausted with even a little side questing. Even if they do, they wouldn't have the balls to dock the score for it which means cinematic narrative is the lowest risk equilibrium for inherently expensive and risky games.

Everyone on Codex can debate RPG mechanics until they're blue in the face, but we all know that what would make the single biggest difference in the review scores and general audience reactions is if Starfield's core quests were interspersed with space battle action cutscenes.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Dude debt is last of his problems

This whore would like to have a word. Two bonus pics included.

 

[Takamori]

Is this game a unintentional horror game with all these npcs doing the Kubrick stare?

 

[Zombra]

Warning for anyone who ends up trying the game: be ready for spaceship battles to increase in difficulty even though the game does not guide you at all towards improving your ship. As normal in RPGs, you upgrade your personal abilities by leveling up and you upgrade your gear by, well, finding new gear. But in space you don't just find better ship parts floating around; the most you will get from defeating a ship is maybe some scrap metal. As a result you may play the game for hours, levelling up like normal, doing great boosting lockpicking and geology, and then out of nowhere you'll get level 15 enemies in space and you still have the dirt quality level 1 tutorial ship and no skills to fly it. So don't blow all your hard earned credits on a fancy looking gun with +10% electrical damage vs birds. Set some aside to upgrade that ship, the more the better.

EDIT: I play on Very Hard difficulty so if you don't do that it may be less of an issue

 

[Lovely Feather Pillow]

the haters are trying so hard, forging screenshots!

That’s classic Gamebryo charm

 

[Vic]

Is this game a unintentional horror game with all these npcs doing the Kubrick stare?

blown out of proportion for meme value

 

[Vic]

Warning for anyone who ends up trying the game: be ready for spaceship battles to increase in difficulty even though the game does not guide you at all towards improving your ship. As normal in RPGs, you upgrade your personal abilities by leveling up and you upgrade your gear by, well, finding new gear. But in space you don't just find better ship parts floating around; the most you will get from defeating a ship is maybe some scrap metal. As a result you may play the game for hours, levelling up like normal, doing great boosting lockpicking and geology, and then out of nowhere you'll get level 15 enemies in space and you still have the dirt quality level 1 tutorial ship and no skills to fly it. So don't blow all your hard earned credits on a fancy looking gun with +10% electrical damage vs birds. Set some aside to upgrade that ship, the more the better.

interesting, so you have to upgrade your ship too, haven't thought of that! thanks for the warning

 

[Zariusz]

the haters are trying so hard, forging screenshots!

That’s classic Gamebryo charm

I see that Doc Mitchel started to experiment with hypnosis treatments, though im not sure that he uses the correct method.

 

[darkpatriot]

Warning for anyone who ends up trying the game: be ready for spaceship battles to increase in difficulty even though the game does not guide you at all towards improving your ship. As normal in RPGs, you upgrade your personal abilities by leveling up and you upgrade your gear by, well, finding new gear. But in space you don't just find better ship parts floating around; the most you will get from defeating a ship is maybe some scrap metal. As a result you may play the game for hours, levelling up like normal, doing great boosting lockpicking and geology, and then out of nowhere you'll get level 15 enemies in space and you still have the dirt quality level 1 tutorial ship and no skills to fly it. So don't blow all your hard earned credits on a fancy looking gun with +10% electrical damage vs birds. Set some aside to upgrade that ship, the more the better.

You may also want to go ahead and just buy a new ship to start with as a base for either designing your own from or upgrading. Some ships come with components you can only add if you get the starship engineering skill, which is a fairly late game skill.

My current cargo holds and one other component (I forget which one) are ones I can't normally add to a ship because they require that skill, but I get to use them because they were already on it. You can still upgrade and edit the rest, but you get to keep and use those components.

 

[Vic]

You may also want to go ahead and just buy a new ship to start with as a base for either designing your own from or upgrading.

I think you can actually design a ship from scratch too!

 

[Eisenheinrich]

Vic, you're making my day. Your posting in here is hilarious. Love your enthusiasm, man. Never let others shit on what you enjoy.

 

[Alienman]

He is the Swen of Starfield.

 

[Robotigan]

Warning for anyone who ends up trying the game: be ready for spaceship battles to increase in difficulty even though the game does not guide you at all towards improving your ship. As normal in RPGs, you upgrade your personal abilities by leveling up and you upgrade your gear by, well, finding new gear. But in space you don't just find better ship parts floating around; the most you will get from defeating a ship is maybe some scrap metal. As a result you may play the game for hours, levelling up like normal, doing great boosting lockpicking and geology, and then out of nowhere you'll get level 15 enemies in space and you still have the dirt quality level 1 tutorial ship and no skills to fly it. So don't blow all your hard earned credits on a fancy looking gun with +10% electrical damage vs birds. Set some aside to upgrade that ship, the more the better.

You won't have enough cargo for resource intensive projects either. It's pretty evident a lot of people just wrote off space ships entirely when they found out space travel wasn't seamless and started fast traveling everywhere even though their marketing, in-game presence, and overall high-effort production suggests they're core to the experience. A lot of "but what's the point of raiding/exploring all those procedural planets and outposts" complaints, that can be trivially answered with "So you can actually do shit."

 

[Zarniwoop]

United Colonies questline is very good. Every faction is a big hit so far. The only one I haven't gotten into is the cyberpunk megacorp one, and that's only because I'm trying to roleplay a morally-decent character and the megacorp is obviously shady as fuck. In terms of actual content though, it seemed great.

For anyone who's about to start the game tomorrow, trust me on this - explore New Atlantis just enough to get familiar with what it is and who the United Colonies are, do a couple of sidequests if any strike you as interesting (check out The Well), but then leave New Atlantis ASAP and go to Cowboy World to join the Rangers, or Cyberpunk World to join the megacorp. On the way to each planet you should find yourself awash in sidequests and random encounters in space, which are fun. Go back to New Atlantis only when you've gotten to grips with what the game is and the tone it's going for.

I don't know if it's specifically New Atlantis' fault, or just the fact that it's the first city in the game and new players will be confused by it as they don't understand the game's tone and design philosophy, but New Atlantis really does suck. Even now that I'm enjoying the game, I'm finding it a drag to go back to with its endless elevators and trams.

I think the issue is what darkpatriot mentioned above - it's deliberately sterile and boring, but new players won't realise it's by design and will instead assume, as I did, that the whole game is going to be dull. On top of that, the real meat of New Atlantis is in The Well, which new players could easily miss, walking around the endless sterile gardens and shopping centres instead.

The entire game is sterile by design.

I'm level 8 and haven't found anything interesting except for the ridiculous treatment of Earth

 

[Grampy_Bone]

spaceship battles to increase in difficulty

So far the ground battles haven't been the least bit challenging so I felt no pressure to put points into any combat skills, leaving plenty for the tech tree. Also in the story quests you get crew members who can handle particle weapons, shields, astrodynamics, and engineering so those skills are kind of a waste

 

[Eisenheinrich]

He is the Swen of Starfield.

That's high praise.

 

[Konjad]

Guyz im playin starfield, it looks pretty good

Spoiler

but without spess combat

 

[Mortmal]

Guyz im playin starfield, it looks pretty good

Spoiler

but without spess combat

Too much clothes, not skimpy enough, knees too sharp 5/10, wouldnt.

 

[Zombra]

I think you can actually design a ship from scratch!

I wasn't able to find this option but if it's there please tag me.

 

[bobocrunch]

real gamer

View attachment 40883

he told you to go back to twitter and you reply with a twitter meme
im glad your embarrassing porno games are based!

 

[Reinhardt]

Are pronouns rly stopping you from gaming? Or are you just a fake gamer?

there are enough games without this shit to play for 24 hours every day until the day i die.