I’m here for it, too. I’m glad to see in the gameplay that it really is a new series, but the same type of game they typically have been making. I hope it is better than Fallout 4, though even Fallout 4 was not a massive disappointment. Cyberpunk 2077 was much worse than Fallout 4, even without its glitches.
I keep hearing haters describe it as just “No Man’s Sky with a real Plot and Bigger Budget”
Hell yes, Take my money, that’s what I have always wanted.
Todd Howard did not say procedurally generated planets, but with over 1,000 planets to land on, they must be, right?
I’m seeing “No Man’s Skyrim” thrown around, which is well into “shut up and take my money” territory.
Again, I’m totally fine waiting for reviews, but even if it is “Fallout 4 quality”, I’ll buy it eventually since I enjoy what Bethesda does. I’ll rank their main games since Morrowind, which was a huge gamechanger for them and, well, me.
- Skyrim - I really think that despite its attention and re-releases, it is the best thing they’ve done.
- Fallout: New Vegas - I know they did not make this, but why not count it since it is very much following Fallout 3 and deserves attention?
- Fallout 3 - they really did a great job adapting a 2D game to 3D
- Oblivion - Graphics, despite blowing me away back then, have aged poorly. It also needs an updated interface for PC.
- Fallout 4 - still fun, just a disappointment for me compared to what I hoped.
- Morrowind - I know, can you believe it? I just find it so clunky today and impossible to navigate around. When released, I was through the roof. Now, it’s just great looking but actually quite lacking.
I’m not sure if I missed something, but even if it is Fallout 4 or Oblivion level of success, I’m getting this game.
I’ve never quite understood the hate* for Fallout 4 (not an attack on you, I’ve seen a lot of real vitriol towards it). I replayed it recently on the PS5 and it holds up nicely. Skyrim’s plot isn’t any less open-ended and vague than FO4, and the ability to load mods onto a console game is something I dearly hope we see more of in the years to come.
Maybe that just makes me the sucker target audience. Give me a pretty open world, a moderate but relevant level of character building and customization, and a decent plot with a dose of humor, and I’m good to go.
*For certain definitions of hate. The game was incredibly successful and I believe surpassed Skyrim in sales for a while. Skyrim has just been re-released on every imaginable console in the intervening years. I’m pretty sure I can play it on my fridge, and my fridge isn’t even one of those fancy ones with a screen.
I call bullshit on this being “Skyrim in space”. None of those creatures on his initial walk from the ship to the station tried to eat his face!
Yeah, it was just not as good for me, but I am happy I bought it. I did hate the colony building. I’m hoping Starfield does not require it because I’m planning on skipping it like I did in FO4.
I cheated with the console for any required construction in FO4. I presume the console will be readily available in Starfield.
I am also hoping Starfield doesn’t require any online playing. I believe this is a sinlge-player game, though.
I do wonder. In No Man’s Sky, the planet seeds aren’t generated until they’re discovered for the first time, and then I think each seed is locked in stone when the discovery is uploaded to the central database.
If I had to wager a blind guess (since I haven’t been following Starfield’s development), it would be that each planet will be procedurally generated on the development side and then tweaked/edited to make it exactly what it needs to be for the sections where it intersects with quests. So everyone who visits Cecil IX gets the same planet because they get the same seed, with instructions to add a river here, a plateau there, a settlement over yonder.
My further WAG is a very small number of planets will be heavily modified or maybe even fully original for the main quest, a relatively small further number will be lightly modified for sidequests, and the vast majority will be completely untouched beyond a cursory QA review to be used only for randomly generated radiant quests to satisfy exploration-oriented players.
High content numbers like planets shouldn’t really impress anyone, using no man’s sky as a good example. You can easily make a trillion variations on brown planet orange sky river here ocean here, green planet purple sky, ocean here and river here, but it’s not meaningful or interesting. 20 Hand crafted planets is probably way more interesting than 700 trillion randomly generated ones. The fact that it has 1000 planets is actually a red flag to me until someone reviews it and indicates that this is actually a feature in its favor. But 1000 is a lot better than a billion or whatever no man’s sky has - that is within the realm of semi-curated content along the lines that @Johnny_Bravo describes.
As for why Fallout 4 is considered by many to be bad, we’ve got a bunch of Fallout 4 threads on this board that go over it. This being the main one. Among many criticism, the main one is that the user only has illusion of choice. Previous fallout games had real dialog trees with real choices, Fallout 4 only has “yes” “sarcastic yes” “suspicious yes” “no (yes)”
Anyway, I’ll try it on gamepass if it’s good. I’m not expecting much. People overrate Bethesda based on shit they did 12+ years ago (which itself was overrated) and we’ve had a lot of turnover and bad stuff in the meantime. Fallout 76 is both predatory and a laughable disaster.
I used to work for Bethesda/Zenimax, years ago, and vowed to never give them money again after they abruptly laid me off six months after shipping the game I was working on (and which, years later, is still quite popular).
For most of the video, I was thinking that I could pass on this Bethesda game, as well… but then they showed ship customization. Dammit, I’m gonna have to get this game, aren’t I?
It will impress the people it’s meant to impress, like folks who’ve been wandering through Skyrim for more than a decade (and repurchasing it again and again on different platforms). Or, hell, the folks who’ve been wandering from planet to planet in No Man’s Sky for a similar amount of time. It’s pretty trivial to include a bunch of procedurally generated planets with radiant quests, and it will make lots of players happy. What’s not to like?
I suspect, at the end of the day, Bethesda’s primary intent for these planets is as essentially infinite real estate for its modding community.
The Microsoft Game Pass is one of the best deals in gaming right now (even if the interface is buggy hostile garbage), and this will be available on it from day one. Get a 5-dollar subscription trial when it launches and play it with your rage intact.
I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience with them. Are you allowed to tell us what game you worked on? I was laid off from a school district due to their own incompetence and I still get burned up about it even 9 years later. They screwed up and we lost our jobs? 
Are you saves saved locally in case you buy a game that you were playing on there? If I get the trial and then buy the game from Steam or another company, will my saves work OK?
We once did a Crusader Kings III successor game and nobody reported issues (though it was a real bitch finding the files), but I wouldn’t bet money on save-file compatibility for any given game, especially one owned directly by Microsoft. At minimum, you’ll have to locate the save files and manually transfer them to your Steam folder.
I’ll probably do a single Game Pass playthrough of Starfield when it launches, and then purchase it on Steam a few years later to try mods and stuff. I have no intention of ever buying anything through Microsoft directly; see the above comment about buggy hostile garbage.
It’s a per-game issue depending on how the game stores its save files. A lot of games save to the documents directory, in which case they are platform agnostic.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before- it was Elder Scrolls Online. I was effects lead on it for five years of development, then was laid off six months after the game shipped (along with about 10% of the entire staff, and most of us were older developers). At that point the game was still subscription- and they even removed our free developer accounts, which I thought was particularly petty.
That sucks. I don’t blame you one bit for spending your money elsewhere.
Sucks for sure. Were you able to find another job? Still in the gaming industry?
I don’t know what I was picturing all these years for Starfield, but it wasn’t that. Now that I see it though, I don’t know what else you’d expect from them. That was definitely a Bethsoft game.
I think it’ll be cool. I’m not hyped for it. If I wasn’t getting it on GamePass, I’d probably wait for a sale since there is too much to play.