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Starfield

Sep 3, 2023#1

Dave

So I've been playing this game a lot and there are very many things I like about it. In fact, I think it's my new Skyrim for replayability and content. And, like Skyrim, I have hardly scratched the surface of the main game storyline. Like Skyrim, it's a very hard game to spoiler. It's actually not that necessary. My buddy and I are each playing it through and it's amazing how little we've done in common. Most games if you have two people playing side by side, even if they are single player games you are pretty much doing the same thing just at different times. Not so with Starfield. In Starfield we are doing radically different things and only have a couple of the mainline quests in common. So how is it?

Good:

Open world RPG where you can do pretty much anything you want.
Skills are very well thought out and progress logically if not slowly.
Replayability is off the friggin' charts! You could play this game 50 times and never play the same character twice.
The RPG side of this is really decent, with good voice acting and some funny moments. Example: One of the character traits I chose was that I have parents in one of the main planets that I can visit and stay with if I want. I went to see them and my dad is basically my character model with a balding head and grey hair.
Your followers can not die. This is good because they are fucking morons. Sometimes they will run in front of me when I'm mining or shooting a bad guy. If they could die I'd have already been alone hundreds of times.
Outposts are cool but not real well explained. Once you get them, though, they are very interesting.

Bad:

It's Bethesda. Everyone immediately trusts you or puts you in a position of power that is very not how life works. Example: Very beginning of the game you are a novice miner. You find an artifact and go to give it to the customer. You are then attacked. You fight off the attack and the customer says, "Hey thanks! Here's my ship!" And that's how you get your first ship. Makes 0 sense but without it you'd be stuck on that tiny planet for a while.
There are about 50 ammo types and finding it is a pain in the ass. And when you use a gun you just watch the number fall and cry a little inside. I have a very powerful gun at 12th level that I love but can hardly ever use it since, you know, ammo for it is a holy grail kinda rare.
Random attacks happen. This isn't always a bad thing and when you are on a planet it's not that difficult to deal with. In space, though? You're fucked. Get ready to load your save. Sure my character is level 12 and the system I'm jumping into is comparable, but my SHIP hasn't improved and so gets shredded every time. Why don't I upgrade, you say? Well...
Upgrading and improving ships in convoluted and confusing. I expect I'll get better at it eventually, but for now it's just a pain. And expensive. Don't forget expensive. And since every vendor has a hard limit dollar amount, I can't just sell everything I pick up and move on with my life. I have to hunt several to offload stuff which takes time.
Did I mention that inventory space while not exactly limited, is harsh as fuck. Right now, for example, my inventory is full, my follower's inventory is full, and my SHIP'S inventory is full. And there's no place to sell anything on the planet I'm on. So I have to drop things I'd rather not drop.

Ugly:

It's Bethesda. I've crashed twice (thank you, autosave!) and at one point had to reboot since my follow quest bugged out. The person I was supposed to be following was stuck between a desk and a chair and would not move. And the eyes. The dead Bethesda eyes. Yeah, their voices are great but the eyes haunt my dreams.

I guess I would say this game is very worth it. I know it looks like there's a lot of bad but in most cases you can control some of that with experience or ship/backpack mods in game. I give this one 8/10.

Sep 3, 2023#2

Dave

This just happened to me. I'm getting ready to jump out of the system on some mission or other. An unknown ship comes storming in and hails me. I abort the jump and answer the hail.

"Hey. We've been attempting to reach you about your ship's extended warranty..."

Sep 4, 2023#3

Far

I guess you get more ship modules as the game progresses, currently, it feels very rough to make anything that looks even sort of ok with the limited ones I have access to.to but this is what I've hobbled together and slapped on enough cargo holds to be usable.

The AI is terrible but the gunplay is a lot of fun, especially when you get to some of the low-gravity places.

One of my favourite things to do so far is board landed ships and commander them. If I'm out roaming around and a ship lands, you better believe I'm going to at least take a look.

The lack of a real map when on settlements is super annoying but it does force you to know the map yourself. Like all Bethesda games, it will really shine in 6 months to a few years once modders get going.

I'm enjoying the hell out of it but it did take a few hours to get it's claws in. Now I can't see myself playing anything else for the near future at least.

Sep 4, 2023#4

Far

While it wasn't my intent to make April O'Neil: Space Ranger, found this in a shop and here we are.

Sep 4, 2023#5

PatrThom

Far said:
While it wasn't my intent to make April O'Neil: Space Ranger, found this in a shop and here we are.

At least you can be sure your companions won't die.

--Patrick

Sep 4, 2023#6

Far

With Dave's insurance hail and now this, galaxy is full of comedians apparently.

Sep 5, 2023#7

Sara_2814

It has a something of a learning cliff, since they don't really explain shipbuilding or outpost building, but once I got the hang of it, it's been a blast. It feels huge. I set aside the main mission for now and I've been having fun with side missions that take me to new planets, plus working on the ship, outpost, and research/crafting. There's just a ton of stuff to do, no matter what you're in the mood to do. You can spend the day building stuff or spend the day blasting pirates.

I'm playing on a laptop that is exactly the minimum system requirements. I tried it on High graphics and it was doing okay for a while then started stuttering and had a few crashes, so I moved to Medium and that seems to have helped. Medium graphics is okay--except for beards. At a distance, the beards turn into this really weird stubble that looks like hair plugs all over their faces. :eek:

I got my second ship by accident. Just wandering around a planet, visiting the "unknown" sites and I stumble on a bunch of Ecliptic pirates with their big shiny ship on the ground. So I murdered them and stole it. I've been learning how to mod ships with it (it came with much bigger reactor and engines than the first ship, so cheaper to add things). All I want is MOAR CARGO SPACE!

As far as dumbass companions...

I have a hard time with missions like the one with the Terrormorph at the food processing facility. Jump scares and being chased just freak me the fuck out. And of course I started this quest line at night, thinking "Oh, it's a first mission for the Vanguard, I just need to fix some comms, maybe fight off some pirates at most, and then I'll go to bed" and then end up in Space Jurassic Park. And that proximity sensor only made it worse, with the "beep beep beep" while I'm trying to figure out where I need to go next without getting ripped to shreds. (I've seen this movie--I'm gonna die!) So I'm hiding in the first building with the breaker, and I make sure to shut the door because "beep beep beep" is getting faster, and as I'm moving across the room in a crouch (I didn't know if it could see me through the big window, and there's a hole in the roof in the next room), for some unknown reason dumbass Sam goes back over to the door (the opposite direction I'm moving) and opens it again. And I'm yelling "Dude, what the fuck are you doing? You fucking dumbass!" as I'm trying to hurry back over to close the door again before we get found and eaten. If companions could die, I would have fed him to the Terrormorph.

Thankfully, I didn't get around to the Vanguard missions until I was level 15, so I had a helmet with Chameleon that made me invisible in crouch when not moving, plus a gun that literally kills things with fire. I managed to get some of the turrets turned on and they helped me take out the nightmare fuel pretty fast. Then I stayed up another couple hours to work on my ship and outpost to calm down enough to go to sleep.

Sep 5, 2023#8

Frank

I haven't played it yet since my internet issues continue to plague me, but I have seen some pretty hilarious videos of bugs (such as a base on the moon replicating itself right down to notes).

I'm pretty excited for it to kick the absolute shit out of my aging PC.

Sep 5, 2023#9

Far

Frank said:
I haven't played it yet since my internet issues continue to plague me, but I have seen some pretty hilarious videos of bugs (such as a base on the moon replicating itself right down to notes).

I've had this happen and now seeing it's common I worry it's not a bug so much as a limitation of the way "extra" content is generated. With so many celestial bodies and being able to land anywhere on basically all of them, if it's just pulling bases, caves, settlements and what not from an appropriate bag and plopping them in when you fly down I was expecting some copies but it's now occured twice to me, and actually specifically with a Moon base as well now that I recall. Was the video you saw duplicating

a base over taken by robots due to a man named Callum pulling the age old SciFi blunder of putting too much trust and faith in AI. The base was specifically doing work with obsidian and you needed to unlock an elevator up to a large platform over lava.

I also had it occur with a mineral processing plant as well. While the facility was large, nearly everything was a direct copy of the first one I'd been through.

Sep 5, 2023#10

Ravenpoe

I don't have the early access edition, when I get around to playing this it will be the free version on gamepass. But a friend of mine has early access, so I've played it.

And just from the four or so hours I played I'm going to say, it's fine? It feels like a Bethesda game, like fallout 4 in space.

I probably won't get around to playing more until much later, I've got at least another 100 hours of Baldur's Gate in me first, but I feel like everyone so amazed with the space stuff never got to play Elite Dangerous. At least back when it was good, it's shit now, run into the ground from poor management, but it will always be my ultimate space game

Sep 5, 2023#11

Dave

I just romanced my partner. I know she loves me but in reality all she is to me is a 5% bump in experience.

Sep 5, 2023#12

Far

Ravenpoe said:
I probably won't get around to playing more until much later, I've got at least another 100 hours of Baldur's Gate in me first, but I feel like everyone so amazed with the space stuff never got to play Elite Dangerous. At least back when it was good, it's shit now, run into the ground from poor management, but it will always be my ultimate space game

I don't think anyone is amazed with the space stuff. Most people seem to be actively upset about how it's handled in that you can't manually fly from atmo down to the planet or between celestial bodies. Other than that it's just used as a way to dogfight in orbit and dock at space stations. Or once you select a route as a way to hide a loading screen.

Sep 5, 2023#13

Far

Edit: I was so tickled by the Titanic reference I didn't even catch the Pee Wee and Lord of the Rings ones. Not sure what the music player might be referencing.

Sep 5, 2023#14

Dave

Stranger Things?

Sep 5, 2023#15

figmentPez

Dave said:
Stranger Things?

Stranger Things would be analog, right?

The first digital music player in pop culture that comes to my mind is the Zune in Guardians of the Galaxy 3, but there are probably tons of iPods in movies. Which one would be found hanging from a tree, though?

Sep 5, 2023#16

PatrThom

“music player hanging from tree branch” might be reference to both Rocket and Groot?

—Patrick

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