I can’t edit the above:
Note: Each episode is about an hour long…this is a quite intricate model build where they have to make all the bits from scratch and figure it out as they go.
I am tingling with anticipation, I can’t wait to buy spacehorse armor.
Gamers Nexus put out a comparison of performance on various PCs.
It seems Starfield really wants a robust system. It’s not bad on less than robust but even with newer hardware your PC will be huffing and puffing if it’s not top tier.
I’m a bit worried. I have a 2080TI and while it will “work” I don’t think it will work well. They show a 4060TI struggling at 1440 (it does ok…barely).
I’m still running a 1080 non-TI, and have been feeling overdue for a system upgrade for a while. Between the slideshow that the un-optimized early access KSP is and now this, given that I play on ultra-wide 1440p I think I’m going to have to spring for some new hardware. GPU prices are pretty horrible compared to my last update, even if they are down from the worst of the crypto-mining GPU shortage.
1070 here. I’m also running 2560:1080 when I’m at my desk, or 1920:1080 on the TV. The game defaulted to Low settings, and ran well (around 50 FPS) - I bumped it up to Medium preset and went down to around 30 FPS with some stutter. Will probably have to stick to low.
I’ve had my card for 6 or so years now, might be time to upgrade.
You guys talked me I talked myself into purchasing. The Big One. Not that I needed to play right away, but as some folks mentioned, this is the first Bethesda RPG in a long time, and will likely be the last for quite a while, so why not.
Let us know your thoughts while you play!
It seems some players might have found a way to fly through space. Whether it is more fun to do that I do not know.
From that article:
In order to use this method, players first need to open their scanner and find the planet they want to travel to and point towards that. Then by using the respective prompt on the screen (E on the keyboard, A on the controller), players can select the planet. Finally, using the R key (X on the controller), players can travel to the planet.
I certainly don’t find it to be a deal breaker. The vast majority of the game is “Skyrim in Space”, or more accurately “Skyrim on various planets”.
Despite blowback in a few ares, I still think the game looks like a lot of fun.
I also bought “the big one.” Hey, it’s a long weekend and Newegg had a bit of a discount.
Early thoughts:
It is quite literally:
I posted that 15 months ago, not out of prescience but because we’ve always known that Starfield would be a Bethesda-standard game but with spaceships.
The graphics are pretty (I have a 4070ti at 1440 and I think everything is maxed, I’m running around 80fps). The combat is good. The storyline feels pretty generic so far. The ship stuff is really neat. The interface is pretty good on controller, absolute garbage on mouse/keyboard. The inventory system - particularly with cargo and the way crafting materials are handled - is not so good. Crafting is not so good. They seem to have forgotten important quality-of-life lessons from Fallout about making it easy to access your crafting goods, or else I’m missing important stuff.
I haven’t messed with base building at all yet.
I had a very brief “hmm” of disappointment about how everything is fast travel, but then I stopped to think about it. What would I want otherwise? To be forced to actively fly from one solar system to another every time I wanted to visit the main hub city? Space is big and empty and boring. I want to shoot stuff. Being able to freely fly in planetary atmosphere would be rad, but I understand why they didn’t do it that way. It’s not really a game about exploration. It’s a game about going to places to do stuff.
My two favorite things so far:
You have a list of traits you can pick at character creation. One of them is basically just “your parents are alive and they’re really proud of you.” You can go visit them at their apartment and they write you supportive little notes and stuff. It’s charming as hell.
Screenshots you take in photo mode will show up as load screen graphics. I’ve never felt actively incentivized to take cool photos before.
tl;dr - it’s a neat game that’s not really breaking new ground. It feels exactly like what you’d expect Bethesda to create in this space, which should tell you everything you need to know about whether you’d enjoy it.
I have played almost all of Bethesda’s games and they have been some of my favorite games. Certainly not without flaws but I’ve enjoyed them a lot. I suspect the same will be true for Starfield.
But…given the development time and understanding what makes a really great game I admit I was hoping for a bit better here (with the caveat I have not played it yet so…BIG grain of salt).
As with so many Bethesda games, I suspect modders will make it so much better. I’ll play this in a week and then wait two years and play it again with mods.
This makes me ask a question:
How do you travel planet to planet in No Man’s Sky? People seem disappointed you fast travel/grav-jump(?) to each planet system and can only actually fly around the planets, but in No Man’s Sky, do you fly for an hour or more to get to planets? I know an hour would be faster than lightspeed, but what do you do?
It seems people expected to navigate at least within solar systems without having to fast travel to each planet.
If you land on a planet in Starfield, can you fly up to its moons by taking off from the planet? That I could see as an expectation if the moons are as local as Earth’s and you can travel really fast.
After 3 leisurely hours (0.5 in character creation, and I tend to take my time exploring and learning and opening containers), I just arrived to the first city.
Thus far:
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nice graphics, but the faces are typical Bethesda
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runs nearly always at my monitor cap of 60fps with most things on Ultra; 4070ti 1440
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ship control was very frustrating; I must’ve missed the hint to move your mouse around within the circle to steer; the whole WASD=power thing was confusing, as after a couple battles my engine power went to 0 and wasn’t sure how to get it back (separate from speed control). Also: secondary cannon only seemed to work when I was in a reload phase of the main gun.
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got some good upgrades in loot so it made me feel I was making progress. A kick-ass double barrel shotgun and a suppressed pistol.
Overall I’m enjoying it. But one concern, not unique to this game, is that in the tutorial phase they throw so many instructions at you very quickly, often in tense situations, that it is hard to absorb.
You fast travel between systems and you essentially have a second type of fast travel for getting around inside systems. If you really wanted to you could manually fly from one planet to another using your normal engines but it would take a very long time and be completely pointless.
Hmm, I don’t know that I agree that no new ground has been broken. I think that while there are rough edges to smooth out their model of procedural generation combined with handcrafted content is definitely pushing the medium forwards. So far Starfield feels like a big step forward from either infinite but bland games like Elite Dangerous or No Man’s Sky* or all-too-finite games like The Outher Worlds.
*No Man’s Sky and Elite Dangerous worlds are boring for opposite reasons. Elite Dangerous surfaces are just pretty fucking boring, mostly because there’s very little there. And No Man’s Sky has so much random stuff being thrown at you that it all starts to feel like white noise.
Will Starfield still feel this good once I’ve played it as much as those other games? We will see.
I do think that Starfield has the most room for modders to go wild. I’d love a survival mode where I need to worry about ship fuel, for example.
You aim at a planet, hit the fast travel button, get a loading screen hidden by a cutscene, and you arrive. The complainers are being ridiculous, you can do the same thing in Starfield by using the scanner.
I’m stoked for Starfield. Bethesda games are my favorite, judged from the number of hours played. (Embarrassingly high over the last 10 years.) And I’m a big space game fan.
Last week I was trying to stop reading the articles, especially the “spoiler” ones. Then this weekend I gave in and started studying the more gameplay-related ones, talking about things like fast travel vs. just flying through space (which an article says is more immersive, better and not talked about for some reason in the documentation). Another one said combat was very good, and did NOT include VATS for personal combat, although there was something similar for ship combat, e.g. targeting a specific part.
I especially look forward to the mods, because that’s how I’ve been playing F4 and Skyrim SE for the last several years. Improved QOL, better looking companions, custom outfits, etc.
A lot of the articles also say the game starts generically, even boringly, but then it starts to get better after about 12 hours of play. Anyone here notice this?
Dunno. I’ve been kind of slow on starting the actual main quests because I’ve been a little obsessed with upgrading the starter ship, so I’ve done a number of generic “go kill this bad guy” missions from job boards.
A streamer named Alanah Pearce just flew to a planet without using fast travel. It took 7 hours. I’m not saying this exists for everything, but it is technically doable.
I’m going off this reddit post. I have yet to see the video:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16948m1/to_everyone_who_was_concerned_about_this/