In Space No One Can Hear You Scream a Funny Thread Title - The Starfield Thread

[Sarex]

Why put in the effort when it will be modded eventually...

[Hurlshort]

8 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Character animations are probably the one thing where it's fair to compare BG3 and Starfield directly against each other. And it's no contest. BG3's motion captured faces are amongst the best ever seen in video games, Starfield's are just one step above using literal sock puppets.

Eh, I'd say Starfield is more function over fashion. BG3 is amazing, that's for sure, but you also have to wrestle with the camera. Starfield is pretty muted in comparison. It does have some nice looking moments. I also had it set to high and was surprised at how dull everything was, but once I upped the setting to Ultra, everything got sharper. It didn't seem to affect performance, so that's nice.

I'm comparing Starfield more to games like No Man's Sky, X4, and Elite: Dangerous. It's a decent upgrade on those.

edit: Oh, I went to the moon and jacked some big ship out from under a group of spacers. I don't know that it is better than my starter ship, but it looks cooler.

Edited September 4, 2023 by Hurlshort

[Theonlygarby]

I'm not good at creating my own fun.  I think I need the game to be fun.

 

It's good though.  It's just lacking in the places Bethesda always lacks.  Story telling, immersion, characters, dialogue, mission variety, that sort of stuff.

Show up to the biggest city in the universe.  Store cashier says "I haven't seen you before, you must be new"  she must have an insanely good memory.

Land on a companions home planet he says "landing on a new planet never gets old"

Lady is yelling at a government building about how they killed her dad.  No one else is around, just yelling at a building.

After I finished the first main quest, I hadn't done anything beyond explore a bit.  Talk to a character and she says "nothing that compares to the stories I've heard about you though."  What stories?  I haven't done anything yet.

It's little things that just add up to take me out of the game.

 

Everyone treats you as the main character and it annoys me.

 

It actually makes sense that Bethesda thought they could make a game with just datapads and computers to tell you the story (fallout 76)  because their characters feel like datapads that just tell you things, and serve no other purpose. (I feel like I might have stolen this analogy from someone)

Edited September 4, 2023 by Theonlygarby

[HoonDing]

They really managed to put the snarkiness up to 11 with the guards.

[InsaneCommander]

Bethesda Exec Defends Starfield's Bugs: 'We Embrace Chaos'

 

[Hurlshort]

I found a nice planet to start building a habitat. I just chose a random place to land. Then I stumbled upon a deserted Merc base that wasn't as deserted as advertised nearby. The randomization is pretty well done from what I can tell. I'd put it a notch above the genericness of No Man's Sky. I imagine it will get repetitive if all I do is randomly explore, but there is also a lot of main hubs that are handcrafted, so I doubt it will be an issue. Building bases is nice, definitely better than Fallout 4. I assume I can assign some of these groupies I have to stay there, instead of crowding my ship.

Spoiler

Also I unlocked my first shout, and I didn't even have to kill a dragon. I'm not sure how I feel about the superpower thing. I am really enjoying the low pressure setting. You're not really a chosen one, you aren't chasing down a family member, in fact there is no real pressure or time limits to do anything. You can just explore. It's a pretty chill game.

 

[HoonDing]

Just when I had forgotten about him completely, Adoring fan showed up in Cydonia. My quest diary is also filled to the brim again.

Boosting around low-G planets is fun.

Still unsure how the randomization works. The "random" science base I found on Pluto was really extensive and detailed, even with some backstory.

[MrBrown]

Great excuses

https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-says-most-of-starfields-1000-planets-are-dull-on-purpose-because-when-the-astronauts-went-to-the-moon-there-was-nothing-there-but-they-certainly-werent-bored/

[kanisatha]

2 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Great excuses

https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-says-most-of-starfields-1000-planets-are-dull-on-purpose-because-when-the-astronauts-went-to-the-moon-there-was-nothing-there-but-they-certainly-werent-bored/

Well, I want the game to be a realistic sim of what third-stage space exploration would actually be like, so I'm not only okay with this but am very happy they did it this way.

[Hurlshort]

2 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Great excuses

https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-says-most-of-starfields-1000-planets-are-dull-on-purpose-because-when-the-astronauts-went-to-the-moon-there-was-nothing-there-but-they-certainly-werent-bored/

I'm not sure why people are surprised by this. There are quite a few main planets that are busy and full of life, but the idea that they were going to populate 1000 planets doesn't even fit into the setting. 

I've been to about 5 planets so far, and they've all been pretty interesting. But I'm also following the story and quests. If I wander aimlessly, then yeah, I'll probably find a bunch of boring caves.

[HoonDing]

Undoubtedly it will become dull if one tries to 100% survey every single planet. But who in their right mind would?

Though it might still be interesting to see what the "randomizer" comes up with. Even on Charon I had one interesting encounter.

[majestic]

*sniff*

Ah, the smell of copium in the morning. Not that it is morning here, mind, but sure it morning somewhere.

[Wormerine]

4 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Great excuses

https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-says-most-of-starfields-1000-planets-are-dull-on-purpose-because-when-the-astronauts-went-to-the-moon-there-was-nothing-there-but-they-certainly-werent-bored/

If going to moon was as easy as jumping into a car and picking a parking slot from UI, no one would care to go to the moon. Getting to the moon is the interesting part, and I don't think you will see people complain that planets are empty in Kerbal Space Program.

[Theonlygarby]

I've been pretty critical of starfield.  However, I gave up on the main quest and started doing some faction quests, and they are a lot more interesting.  Still early but it seems as though there are actually some interesting choices in dealing with quests... but that main quest is dreadful (some people like it)

[Keyrock]

3 minutes ago, Theonlygarby said:

I've been pretty critical of starfield.  However, I gave up on the main quest and started doing some faction quests, and they are a lot more interesting.  Still early but it seems as though there are actually some interesting choices in dealing with quests... but that main quest is dreadful (some people like it)

I mean, that's every Bethesda game, isn't it? You get a mediocre at best main quest but there are usually some really fun side quests, for example some Daedric quests in TES. 

[Hurlshort]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

*sniff*

Ah, the smell of copium in the morning. Not that it is morning here, mind, but sure it morning somewhere.

Why do you come into a thread about a new game and try to harsh people's buzz?

[Malcador]

No 40k mods yet?

[Hurlshort]

It will be interesting to compare this game to Star Citizen when it comes out in 30 years.

[Theonlygarby]

52 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

I mean, that's every Bethesda game, isn't it? You get a mediocre at best main quest but there are usually some really fun side quests, for example some Daedric quests in TES. 

Yes but I had seen all over reddit and YouTube people saying "the main quest is actually really good" or "you gotta complete so and so part of the main quest, then it gets really good"

[Hurlshort]

6 minutes ago, Theonlygarby said:

Yes but I had seen all over reddit and YouTube people saying "the main quest is actually really good" or "you gotta complete so and so part of the main quest, then it gets really good"

As I hinted at earlier, the best part of the new main story, compared to other Bethesda games, is the lack artificial urgency or emotional attachment put into it. No rescuing a family member or stopping gates of Oblivion. There are no giants yelling at you to come visit them on a mountaintop. It's a pretty chill exploration vibe. Build a big base, customize a cool ship, and scan some plants. 

Edited September 5, 2023 by Hurlshort

[Azdeus]

4 hours ago, HoonDing said:

Undoubtedly it will become dull if one tries to 100% survey every single planet. But who in their right mind would?

I'm fairly sure I've done more than that in Elite

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

Why do you come into a thread about a new game and try to harsh people's buzz?

It is because being a buzzkill and bringing people down is one of the few ways I can make my miserable existence more fun. The same reason I approach every competitive game I participate in with Conan in mind: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

Every now and then I re-read the Galactic Starfighter forum thread dedicated to whinging about me playing the game. It just never gets old, although it appeared to get shorter in the meantime as posts have disappeared for some reason or were deleted the amount of posts per page were increased.

I thought you would have figured that out by now. I do have been around for a bit, yes?

Edited September 5, 2023 by majestic

[LadyCrimson]

I don't really get the complaint re: flying between planets and/or it taking hours if you try to force it (altho I hear once you get there it's just a 2D image placeholder, not an actual planet). I mean, space is big, and likely pretty empty in terms of (human) landable planets, what do you expect. That's why so many movies stick ppl in hibernation, right?  I can understand wanting a little more interactive visuals or whatever in terms of arriving and landing tho. Like having an option to manually land the ship, something like that (I think you don't?).

At least for Achievement hunters, it appears they saved a headache by not having a "visit all 1000 planets" or something similar. 

I have withstood temptation re: early access pricing. So now I can take my time wondering if I want to try it at full price or wait for the likely repackaged to resell/improved thrice version six years from now.

I think the main thing I'd interested is exploration, even knowing the random planets are nothing special. eg, find the 10% of planets that are more interesting/visually kewl. I'd also have to decide whether to rush to NG+ to use that mode as a main playing/building/goofing off field (there's reasons for that, but most normal ppl probably wouldn't care/shouldn't do that, but I'm not normal).

Edited September 5, 2023 by LadyCrimson

[Tale]

This game has been weird to me. Up front I do not meet the minimum requirements as my SSD is too small to put the game on, so it's running on HDD. This is the likely culprit on a load of issues with it freezing up that are always connected to audio. The music cuts out after landing on a planet and goes deathly silent for a while before picking back up, the game just freezes for maybe no reason at times (probably loading something I don't even notice), every character I talk to starts miming their dialogue before the actual words get spoken...

I spent hours dealing with this, getting frustrated, thinking it looked ugly right up until I just upped the resolution scaling. No longer am I running at half-resolution, but three quarters, medium graphics settings, and the game looks fine. And, magically, most of that freezing seems to have gone away. Everyone acts like they want to load every single dialogue they might ever say when I interact with them, but no longer does it freeze randomly while running around. Gameplay has smoothed out. And I think it even stopped the issue where it would freeze the first time I shot a guy in any encounter.

[majestic]

24 minutes ago, Tale said:

I spent hours dealing with this, getting frustrated, thinking it looked ugly right up until I just upped the resolution scaling. No longer am I running at half-resolution, but three quarters, medium graphics settings, and the game looks fine. And, magically, most of that freezing seems to have gone away. Everyone acts like they want to load every single dialogue they might ever say when I interact with them, but no longer does it freeze randomly while running around. Gameplay has smoothed out. And I think it even stopped the issue where it would freeze the first time I shot a guy in any encounter.

There's a DLSS2 by PureDark mod that came out shortly after the game launched. By all accounts I have read so far it works better than FSR in the game (same if not better performance, much better visuals), so if you have the hardware for it, do yourself a favor and get it (it does not break achievements). The DLSS2 version is free, the DLSS3 one is not, but frame generation does not work properly anyway as it leads to very visible artifacts. There are DLSS mods that were not made by PureDark that include frame generation, but those require Reshade, which you may not want to install and coud potentially lead to issues with game patches.

I have also seen video footage where rendering at the native resolution leads to better performance than using the FSR upscaling in the game.

#justBethesdathings

Edited September 5, 2023 by majestic