So.. Starfield...

[FauxFurry]

41 minutes ago, polska said:

after 40 hours i can say starfield is a game that needs to be fixed by mods from top to bottom. its worse than fallout 4 and skyrim imho.

 

todd howard and his crew has zero talent if you ask me but we still have to thank him for these games. i was thinking about these modders that bethesda hired, they are slaves of the xbox empire now, poor souls.

It would not be accurate to say that they have zero talent. It is just that Todd has been promoted outside of the zone of his competence. He was better off lower down on the totem pole as was the company he is the face of as a whole.

[Veniat]

4 hours ago, FauxFurry said:

Moving to Vaults underneath the Earth or to man-made satellites with artificial atmospheres until the Earth is made habitable again makes more sense than plopping the entire species to another planet.

They tried so hard to adhere to Hard Science Fiction tropes yet they pick one of the least sensible reasons to migrate to another planet, one so poor that most sci-fi authors turned their noses up at it almost as soon as it was introduced. 

They wouldn't even need vaults really, just a way to keep radiation away from cities. The atmosphere would take a while to collapse, but the radiation exposure would be a problem.

[Wandering_Mania]

8 hours ago, Veniat said:

Even if the magnetosphere suddenly disappeared, and even with our current tech, we'd probably be able to figure out how to make a new one before there was too much permanent damage to the ecosystem.  It'd be a lot easier and faster than moving the entire population en masse to other planets. 

It's a bit more complicated than that. Atmosphere, Magnetosphere, Climate temperature, and Gaseous composition, all play a very significant part in maintaining the balance of keeping Earth habitable. If one fails, they could all fail in a chain reaction that would leave no hope for retaining any kind of sustainable mass population. And even a single rogue asteroid can cause any/all of those elements to fail at once. Just look at the dinosaurs and their E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event).

 

Moving, as strange as it may seem, is actually the easier option, over repairing the cumulative damage to a planet.

 

6 hours ago, FauxFurry said:

Moving to Vaults underneath the Earth or to man-made satellites with artificial atmospheres until the Earth is made habitable again makes more sense than plopping the entire species to another planet.

Well it may make sense on paper, but in practice there's a lot more constant work to be done with those options, and little room to expand, without even more work.

Again, moving is just the easiest option, and leaves lots of room to expand.

 

2 hours ago, Veniat said:

They wouldn't even need vaults really, just a way to keep radiation away from cities. The atmosphere would take a while to collapse, but the radiation exposure would be a problem.

And how would they do that? Build giant lead lined domes? How and where would they get all that lead? And when the atmosphere did collapse, they would be at square one again.

Again, moving is just easier, and has the least future problems that can arise.

[Veniat]

19 minutes ago, Wandering_Mania said:

It's a bit more complicated than that. Atmosphere, Magnetosphere, Climate temperature, and Gaseous composition, all play a very significant part in maintaining the balance of keeping Earth habitable. If one fails, they could all fail in a chain reaction that would leave no hope for retaining any kind of sustainable mass population. And even a single rogue asteroid can cause any/all of those elements to fail at once. Just look at the dinosaurs and their E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event).

 

Moving, as strange as it may seem, is actually the easier option, over repairing the cumulative damage to a planet.

It doesn't happen instantly, or overnight, if the magnetic field fails there should be enough time to try multiple solutions even while the planet evacuates. 

 

19 minutes ago, Wandering_Mania said:

And how would they do that? Build giant lead lined domes? How and where would they get all that lead? And when the atmosphere did collapse, they would be at square one again.

Again, moving is just easier, and has the least future problems that can arise.

lol no, how do you think they're surviving on Mars? Mars is essentially Earth without our magnetic field protecting it from solar wind.  They wouldn't need lead-lined bunkers, basic earth-sheltered buildings would be enough, and they wouldn't even need to be that deep; we're not talking about a nuclear war here.  If they want to be clever? Use large dynamos to generate an artificial magnetic field around large regions, it won't help protect the atmosphere but it would help protect the populace and ecosystem from radiation.

We already have proposed methods of either restarting Mars' magnetic field, generating an entirely artificial magnetic field around Mars, or using other methods to shield the planet from solar radiation, if people were desperate enough and the stakes were so high as to make any gambles worth it we could easily try them all on Earth; and all this is with tech available to us right now, today, if we had enough reason to make the costs worth it. 

Edited September 5, 2023 by Veniat

[Wandering_Mania]

3 minutes ago, Veniat said:

there should be enough time to try multiple solutions even while the planet evacuates.

And who's to say that they didn't in Starfield? Maybe it was just a detail that BGS left out intentionally, or just didn't think of because 'piss poor writing', or any number of other reasons.

 

But still, you know what gives the highest chance of survival? Not having the species gathering in the same place. Right now, on Earth, this moment in time, if Earth suffered an E.L.E. humans would most likely go extinct.

 

But if humans say had another controlled planet, or 5, or 10, or whatever; The loss of 1, would ensure our survival. I have to think that this was the same thinking behind the 'let's move' solution being selected. To ensure the survival of the species.

 

14 minutes ago, Veniat said:

Mars is essentially Earth without our magnetic field protecting it from solar wind.

Actually, Venus is closer to an 'Earth-like twin'.

[Veniat]

7 minutes ago, Wandering_Mania said:

And who's to say that they didn't in Starfield? Maybe it was just a detail that BGS left out intentionally, or just didn't think of because 'piss poor writing', or any number of other reasons.

 

But still, you know what gives the highest chance of survival? Not having the species gathering in the same place. Right now, on Earth, this moment in time, if Earth suffered an E.L.E. humans would most likely go extinct.

 

But if humans say had another controlled planet, or 5, or 10, or whatever; The loss of 1, would ensure our survival. I have to think that this was the same thinking behind the 'let's move' solution being selected. To ensure the survival of the species.

I think you're completely missing my point, they can still leave Earth, they can still expand just in case, but I can't think of a single reason why they'd straight up abandon Earth. 

It's our homeworld, we'd stay there if only for sentimental reasons, the knowledge lost? The history? It all feels rushed and unplanned like the writers didn't even bother asking scientists what they would do if something damaged the Earth's magnetic field.  It's like Assassin's Creed all over again, writers with no background in science writing near-future science fiction without asking scientists what would actually happen; like, earth's magnetic field reverses itself all the time, we're not going to end up with earthquakes and people falling into giant lava filled chasms; we might get a couple of very confused birds for a few days before they get used to it.  We have viable theories that could help save the ecosystem and atmosphere if the Earth's magnetic field collapses. 

They should've just gone with some type of pollutant or substance that's extremely difficult to clean up and damages the Earth's atmosphere similar to the Snowpiercer series; the series, not the book or movie, (god, why do French sci-fi writers have to make everything a metaphor instead of just thinking like, a train is a really dumb way to survive an apocalypse.)

[Wandering_Mania]

57 minutes ago, Veniat said:

I think you're completely missing my point, they can still leave Earth, they can still expand just in case, but I can't think of a single reason why they'd straight up abandon Earth. 

Actually I think your missing my point. Because there are levels of 'abandonment'. Again 'crappy writing' leaves out details that may be going on. Because even if the bulk of the population left that planet; There could still be some in the area (space stations other planetary colonies in Sol and so on) working on a solution to try fix the problem. And it's not like the entire Sol system was evacuated, so Earth was still under 'human control'.

 

1 hour ago, Veniat said:

the Snowpiercer series

That entire series is just unbelievable as hell. Mainly because railroad tracks need constant maintenance, maintenance that those on 'the Snowpiercer' could not do. So that train would derail in a much shorter time than even the series would have in the first 5 minutes. And after a major disaster like presented in that series, the tracks would be unusable. And that's basic engineering.

 

1 hour ago, Veniat said:

a train is a really dumb way to survive an apocalypse

Exactly. As I explained above. But the T.V. series, isn't really much better to be honest.

 

Still, the lack of detail that BGS is synonymous for, leaves a lot up for debate. I mean it may say that "Earth was abandon", but I only question the level of abandonment. As it still remained well within the borders of 'human controlled systems'.

[Veniat]

57 minutes ago, Wandering_Mania said:

That entire series is just unbelievable as hell. Mainly because railroad tracks need constant maintenance, maintenance that those on 'the Snowpiercer' could not do. So that train would derail in a much shorter time than even the series would have in the first 5 minutes. And after a major disaster like presented in that series, the tracks would be unusable. And that's basic engineering.

 

Exactly. As I explained above. But the T.V. series, isn't really much better to be honest.

 

Still, the lack of detail that BGS is synonymous for, leaves a lot up for debate. I mean it may say that "Earth was abandon", but I only question the level of abandonment. As it still remained well within the borders of 'human controlled systems'.

Geothermally or nuclear-powered bunkers would've made a lot more sense than a train; the only reason it's slightly more realistic is that the premise of a chemical released into the atmosphere that massively cooled down the earth is more realistic and that it's implied that the tracks are repaired by people going ahead to check on the lines, also that there are redundant tracks that they can go on in case of emergencies. 

There's more you learn as you go further along in the story but it really is abandoned, they just choose to move on to mars even though mars would be worse off than earth. 

[isee]

They do try and explain the magnetic field disappearing in game. All put this in spoilers for people, because it is actually a late game reveal that has to do with the ending.

Spoiler

The magnetic field fails because of the early gravity drives that were built. They didn't properly contain the radiation from the engines which were punching holes into it, supposedly they eventually fix this. For even more information on why this happened without anyone really noticing or doing proper checks? We need to go deeper. Into yet more spoilers.

Spoiler

So the big through line of the game is about manifest destiny or basically the idea that it is our duty to go out and expand amongst the stars. Much like in the 19th century version, things get sacrificed in pursuit of that goal. A research team finds one of Starfield's mysterious artifacts on mars and the doctor who touches it blacks out and experiences weeks of time in a few short hours.

 

During which he meets an alternate version of himself, this alternate version explains the future he came from which is the setting of Starfield, and tells him how the faulty grav drives cause the human exodus and death of earth, but then a resurgence in exploration, science, and discovery.

 

This man then decides that the earth is a small price to pay for the wonders he had seen, and as he follows the path his doppelganger laid out more and more of what he said becomes true. However like an idiot he decides that the earth has to die for the rest of his visions to come true. So he suppresses and withholds any information about how the first generation grav drives he built are at fault and how every jump 'tears' at the magnetic field surrounding earth.

 

He then 'discovers' it conveniently too late to fix the damages but with plenty of time to make an exodus as they now have a number of ships with new grav drives that don't cause the same problem.

 

Want just a little more detail on the artifacts? Click below for endgame spoilers.

Spoiler

So though you never learn who created the artifacts or why *cough* Fork over twenty bucks to Bethesda to learn about it in the dlc. *cough* It turns out that they are a device meant to allow someone to essentially jump into the center of the multiverse which they call the 'unity' and merge with it. In blunt terms whatever or whoever does this dies, but they also die spectacularly and this is what new game plus is. You enter the center of the universe and die. The concept of 'you' explodes across the multiverse and 'infects' everyone within those multiverses you touch with a watered down version of your ideals and thoughts. Simultaneously an ideal concept of yourself is reborn in many of those universes. Making you something called a 'starborn.' You are not the only one to have done this however and other starborn exsist who have done the same thing before you. There are usually hundreds of them active in any universe at a time all competing highlander style to repeat their initial feat and reach the unity once again and kill themselves to 'get stronger' and continue to explode across even more universes.

 

New game plus is you playing as one of these starborn, enigmatic speeches and all as you proceed to troll everyone and slowly go crazy as you realize that yes killing everyone and stealing their stuff is the fastest way back to the unity.

 

Of course because you keep doing this, and other versions of yourself in other realities also keep doing this, things get...Weird. NG+ all have seeds to them that can affect the story. Including one where all of the main companions are replaced by alternate versions of yourself. It's hinted that by continuing to go down further NG+ routes you are effectively forcing untold trillions of people to align with your values and views.

 

Congratulations! You are now the deadliest virus in existence and reality keeps getting more and more bizarre as you go.

 

Maybe you should stop before something bad happens?...Oh what's that you want to do another run so you can max out your powers?...Okay.

 

 

 

[Wandering_Mania]

1 hour ago, Veniat said:

and that it's implied that the tracks are repaired by people going ahead to check on the lines, also that there are redundant tracks that they can go on in case of emergencies.

And that just contradicts the whole 'We can only survive on this train" part, don't it? As I said, unbelievable.

1 hour ago, Veniat said:

they just choose to move on to mars even though mars would be worse off than earth. 

And I'll still say it again; More places controlled = higher surviveability rates for the species.

[xking]

Review from Optimus.

 

The upper echelon review surprised me the most.

 

Regardless of the review or reviews, whether you going to like this game or not is going to depend on you

Edited September 5, 2023 by xking

[Wandering_Mania]

32 minutes ago, xking said:

The upper echelon review surprised me the most.

Same. He usually is pretty critical about games. And right as he says "...a well optimized..." at 1:14 the FPS noticeably tanks. Which really made me question the validity of the entire review.

[KoolHndLuke]

Knew it. A year ago everybody was like "nah, not interested". Now that it's finally here those same people can't wait to strip them all nude and fuck star pixels, lol. 

[FuzzyDuck]

Months later, i come here to say.

The game is deeply flawed.

From simple things like Lip Sync beeing so bad that it's uncanny (Seriously, i've seen games from 2000's with a better lip sync and facial animations. And that's saying a lot!)
To uninspired combat, the worst UI/UX ever for a Bethesda game ever released.

The amount of options, and dialogue is amazing through. 
The new Deception\Persuasion\Intimidation minigame is perfect to me as it give some strategy over dialogue and not only a "Roll to Interact" or "Meet a threshold to pass"

The level up is genuinally fun, mixing normal skill point level up, with the need to execute certain things to qualify to level up. It may be a little grindy, but i actually like it. Forces you to play a certain style to level that. You can't just spend 5 ponts on stealth and become a ninja.

Again, the facial animations\body animations in conversation are grotesc. No jokes, it's worse than Oblivion, imo. 
Oblivion may be uglier and stiffer, but at least npcs don't feel the need to move each muscles of their face in random directions every milisecond.


So yeah, i'll probably wait for the mods to advance before i delve into it agian.

Gave some 10~20 hours, but it's straight up unpleasent to play rn, SPECIALLY because the UI is SO FUCKING BAD
Whoever thought that to go from one menu to another you have to HOLD A FUCKING KEY FOR 2 SECONDS SHOULD BE FIRED
It may seen as something little, but the amount of times you will get stuck on a menu because you had to press and hold something to exit is frustrating.
And talking about frustrating, the amount of menus, inside of menus, inside of menus, that you need to navigate is just, unecessary

It's impressive how the company that managed to make the Pipboy manageable, could fuck up an UI like that.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, t.ara said:

check the different info-clips....

.....check out the game-mechanics....

...check out technical aspects...

 

 

 

 

[isee]

52 minutes ago, FuzzyDuck said:

Gave some 10~20 hours, but it's straight up unpleasent to play rn, SPECIALLY because the UI

There are already a lot of UI mods that fix many of those problems on the nexus, specifically Starui and undelayed menu.

[FuzzyDuck]

27 minutes ago, isee said:

There are already a lot of UI mods that fix many of those problems on the nexus, specifically Starui and undelayed menu.

Holy! 
Thank you.
Gonna get them!

Right now, i'm only using 120fps Ui Unlocker and DSLL Injector

Gonna see those you mentioned! 
 

[Kargrin]

17 hours ago, polska said:

after 40 hours i can say starfield is a game that needs to be fixed by mods from top to bottom. its worse than fallout 4 and skyrim imho.

 

todd howard and his crew has zero talent if you ask me but we still have to thank him for these games. i was thinking about these modders that bethesda hired, they are slaves of the xbox empire now, poor souls.

Just adding one pointer about this "crew". In the game credits there are around 30 outsourced studios. And one of these outsourcing companies is accused of overexertings it's programmers. Starting around the 10th minute, all outsourced companies.

 

 

This is Skyrim btw:

 

Edited September 5, 2023 by Kargrin

[xking]

Here some tips for anybody playing ( this video has spoilers, if you care about that )

 

 

 

 

[FauxFurry]

Now that today is Starfield's official release date, I will be curious to see how many people even remember the Star Trek game for PC and NES to confirm or deny whether or not Starfield comes across as a modernized version of it minus an abundance of intelligent alien races.

 

[bjornk]

 

[Wandering_Mania]

14 minutes ago, bjornk said:

 

Well he was right with the statement at 3:47. Because when I first booted up the $70 version, as there's no way in hell I'd drop $100 on that shit, the first combat in the game, and Vasko's gun got the old FO4 sound glitch of never stopping. So all through the convo with 'what's his face' about how "your S.P.E.C.I.A.L.", I had to listen to the loud and annoying never ending machine gun fire.

 

From the time of FO4 to this one's release, and BGS couldn't even fix that simple machine gun audio glitch. "It's less buggy" they say. My fuckin' foot! I say.

[Veniat]

22 hours ago, Wandering_Mania said:

And that just contradicts the whole 'We can only survive on this train" part, don't it? As I said, unbelievable.

And I'll still say it again; More places controlled = higher surviveability rates for the species.

Nah, I agree, but it's somewhat more believable not that it makes much sense unless you're obsessed with trains, what's unbelievable to me is that the train is the only place people survived, but one person did survive, I guess there are probably a lot more in bunkers all over the place that the people on the train know nothing about, the problem is that there'd be thousands of bunkers all talking to one another; the cold weather doesn't exactly stop radios from working. 

People could survive off the train just not for long, yet long enough to repair the tracks and have small automated craft fix stuff that's easy enough to repair. 

Starfield's story still makes no sense to me, and it just reeks of scientifically ignorant writers saying I don't care how it works this is how I want it to work. Do you really think if people managed to save the earth's atmosphere and get the grav drive working we wouldn't have people exploring and colonising as far as they could get? People do that now just for fun and profit. The earth dying isn't the problem with the story, it's that they used the earth's magnetic field to do it when magnetic fields aren't that complicated to generate. 

[OmegaBlaster]

I really don't think SF is as bad as some people are meme it out to be (although the crowd npc has been lobotomized, can't argue witht that). 

 

But this game does not feel like Bethesda's 'decades in the making' magnum opus. And the space stuff does feel rudimentary when lined up next to NMS, E:D, or SC.

Edited September 6, 2023 by OmegaBlaster

[bjornk]

No Man's Sky seems far more impressive technically compared to this turd, although I don't think it's worth 60 bucks.