A Starfield rant thread

[Gameplayer]

Family friendly corporatism, just wow but it really does describe that odd vibe.

Makes me think of the junior rangers in Skills city.

 

If drugs and alcohol were removed what rating would the game have?  Consider it is MA17 right now.

[DDetrix]

11 minutes ago, HappyHimitsu said:

BG3 get's too much praise lol?!  
The game is PHENOMENALLY good in so many regards; this coming from a solid gamer of the last 4 decades who has played thousands over the years. 

You're entitled to your opinion of course, but the game is objectively such a well made title that I can't really take anybody seriously after I hear them say that, even if they aren't a fan themselves. 

To continue on with the Starfield rant theme tho, why in the hell does this site have a section dedicated to the worst Bethesda title of all time, and **NOT** Baldur's Gate 3, a game where there is quite literally sex and nudity built in???? 

 

Siding with the goblins was not like siding with the legion in Fallout NV. Gale the drugged out mage who claims to fuck a god? Companions need serious help. I kill Karlach on the spot so I have no idea who she is but... according to game telemetry, she is less romanced than the mindfrayer. ~Harsh. Astarion should been more grey or at least more understandable (why would he side with the goblins? just makes no sense)

 

It's an adult story. The game designers treat you like a grown up so that's why you're feeling that way. The first pillars of eternity was like that, very mature in it's delivery and ideas put forward. I like the storyline in bg3 much better than PoE but both had some dark themes and didn't treat you like an idiot. 

 

If BG3 had the evil route finished. So yes half your team drops but you pick up new evil companions. (imo planned with the female drow but clearly was cut) Someone fixed the companions, I heard they fixed shadowheart. I guess she was as unlikable as the rest of them until the rework. I'd give you that 'PHENOMENAL' but until then it's just good.  I know I'm not alone with saying bg3 is a good game but is a bit underbaked.

 

Back on Starfield, I think the storyline was pg-13. Very light, nothing too dark and pretty easy to follow. Most adult gamers find that pg-13 stuff boring.

 

[nIn nIn nIn]

8 hours ago, Gameplayer said:

Family friendly corporatism, just wow but it really does describe that odd vibe.

Makes me think of the junior rangers in Skills city.

 

If drugs and alcohol were removed what rating would the game have?  Consider it is MA17 right now.

 

In Australia - where I live - it's rated R18+ the highest rating because of the drugs. Without the drugs, it would get a MA15+ because of the violence and gore. What gore? All the huge blood smears found wherever facilities have been slaughtered by Varuun, Ecliptic, or Terromorphs. There are a LOT of those facilities in the game.

[DocClox]

6 hours ago, nIn nIn nIn said:

 

In Australia - where I live - it's rated R18+ the highest rating because of the drugs. Without the drugs, it would get a MA15+ because of the violence and gore. What gore? All the huge blood smears found wherever facilities have been slaughtered by Varuun, Ecliptic, or Terromorphs. There are a LOT of those facilities in the game.

 

I was fighting Va'ruun zealots in zero gee last night and I unloaded a Big Bang at one of their heads. I was quite gratified by the explosion of red mist that resulted. (If a little disappointed that he still had a head afterwards, admittedly).

[nIn nIn nIn]

35 minutes ago, DocClox said:

 

I was fighting Va'ruun zealots in zero gee last night and I unloaded a Big Bang at one of their heads. I was quite gratified by the explosion of red mist that resulted. (If a little disappointed that he still had a head afterwards, admittedly).

 

I love the Big Bang. Likewise disappointed at the lack of dismemberment. But flip side is no more exploding chunks when getting a crit with a shiv. (ie Fallout 4).

[Demonwise]

18 hours ago, GrimReaper said:

Hm, I don't know. Starfield in my opinion is at least sanitized to hell and back. There's no rough edges or anything like that, it's all perfect corporate shlock. Compare the world of Starfield to those of Skyrim or Fallout - almost no gore, nothing that could be considered offensive. Hell, even the female bodies are androgynous - while you couldn't create your big titty waifu in Fallout or Skyrim either, at least some of the time some amount of skin was shown (like the forsworn or raider armors). In Starfield? Even the supposedly biggest and seediest nightclub in the galaxy has dancers in weird full body suits that look like space teletubbies.

 

And in my opinion that's hard to fix with mods because the entire game oozes this corporate family friendliness. In Skyrim and Fallout sex and nudity was much more believable but I can't really imagine people in Starfield being so naughty and daring to have sex with each other because everything is so sterile and clean. Every place is equally as diverse as the next and that worries me for the next Elder Scrolls - imagine how boring and safe it would be if every settlement had an equal representation of every race. Not to mention that the racial conflicts in Windhelm would be a big no-no nowadays unless you of course use it as a soapbox to preach how bad fantasy racism is. Just look at how WotC is gutting the DnD system because orcs = black people or whatever. Meanwhile, every conflict in Starfield - such as between the UC and the FC - is surface deep and abstract.  Anything more than that and you risk upsetting a certain crowd.

 

My simple guess is that a Starfield that would've released pre 2016 - this was also the time when google cracked down on edgy content on its platforms - would look rather different than the version we have today.

 

I certainly agree with this sentiment. To continue with this thought progression, not only was gritty, nasty, 'naughty', and otherwise dark human behavior more prevalent in the fallout games it was pervasive nearly everywhere. In those games if you were nearly anywhere outside of the singular major 'towns' and few scattered settlements you would be met with this behavior embodied by characters like the Raiders. For any of this kind of sentiment to be added to Starfield, I think modders would have to resort to making entire cities or towns that were more like low-social tier, poverty stricken trade cities filled with squalor like you would see in any classic dystopian sci-fi movie.  Areas like that would give believable context to the naughtier more extreme mods that one is prone to find on this site. That said, it's the opposite situation of the fallout games. Fallout = naughty everywhere outside VS Starfield = naughty no where except in select pockets and individual cities/town. 

 

It would be pretty cool if the modding community was able to eventually create an entire planet that was the embodiment of debauchery and devolved human interaction.

[mircislav]

1 hour ago, Demonwise said:

It would be pretty cool

Human race will always fuck each other (literally or otherwise) where ever they are... problem is, Starfield is so stick up game (everyone is soooooo friendly and polite - this must be Gates influence...) it almost for primary school kids - unbelievable for Bethesda so far... On the other hand, there is "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" so...

[Gameplayer]

10 hours ago, nIn nIn nIn said:

 

In Australia - where I live - it's rated R18+ the highest rating because of the drugs. Without the drugs, it would get a MA15+ because of the violence and gore. What gore? All the huge blood smears found wherever facilities have been slaughtered by Varuun, Ecliptic, or Terromorphs. There are a LOT of those facilities in the game.

Just weird that there is no actual gore?

Ok I would have to jump in game and go look for floor and wall decals.

Where is the body decal or chunks such as those present in fallout games, these are absent.

 

Are we going to get a blood an guts dlc?

 

I suppose this has something to do with a countries laws on entertainment products.

[nIn nIn nIn]

The lack of gore has to be for a valid reason. Usually the devs modify games in different regions to comply with local laws. An example being Belgium has banned loot box shenanigans, so many games don't offer loot boxes to Belgians. As for BGS and Starfield, the ratings is different in some regions. Australias highest rating is 18+ (adults only), so adding gore and dismemberment won't change the rating at all (for me).

 

This could be an interesting subject to explore, and discuss.

[GrimReaper]

On 10/23/2023 at 4:18 PM, DocClox said:

 

[...]

 

I reckon it's doable. It'll work better if we work with the setting rather than against it, but definitely doable.

Idk, for me at least Starfield feels so sterile to the core that anything sexual would feel out of place. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

[DrunkenCow]

On 10/24/2023 at 6:12 AM, mircislav said:

(everyone is soooooo friendly and polite - this must be Gates influence...) it almost for primary school kids

 

Microsoft published the original Mass Effect that shipped with soft-core porn cut scenes, brutal depictions of slavery, and space-nazi death camps.  Starfield is just crap writing from hacks that you've already rewarded for their terrible job by buying the game.

[mircislav]

1 hour ago, DrunkenCow said:

Microsoft published the original Mass Effect

In that time, uncle Gates had other priorities.

[DocClox]

1 hour ago, DrunkenCow said:

 

Microsoft published the original Mass Effect that shipped with soft-core porn cut scenes, brutal depictions of slavery, and space-nazi death camps. 

 

 

I always wondered: how did that carry over into subsequent games in the series?

 

[Gameplayer]

Wonder how Mass Effect 5 will turn out since well it's owned by Microsoft?

 

Quality of game stories been pretty bad with a few nice exceptions that really stand out.

Been wanting Bethesda to actually stand up and deliver, but have read a lot of the guys from previous games retired or went to work with other studios so bgs has bled out it's old talent and now it's like all new guys.

[DDetrix]

Outside of the top down influences. I think the problem with gaming is personality/paradigm thinking. So there are more personality types but the real guilty one is Blue personality.  Just google it ~ enthusiastic, sympathetic, communicative, compassionate, idealistic.. etc. 

 

Seem pretty good traits until you attempt to make a game. Look at fallout 4, you will love your son and you will want to look for him.  Can't be a bum, or bad dad. Hack, you can't even be a realist. Lot of guys don't have the time/ability to bond deeply with their kid until they are not so depended on the female. So realistically, I lot of guys could say the world is over and I should start a new family. 

 

To a Blue personality, the idea someone wouldn't be 100% sympathetic and compassionate is simply unacceptable.  Sticking with Fallout 4, your main character doesn't have the ability to be truly evil. Can't kill the minutemen. Even if you side with the brotherhood you're just following, you can't suggest something that even Maxson tells you to chill. To add options like that would make those blue personalities very upset.

 

It's easy to say: It's just a game. Making the evil route makes the good route more worth it. etc. Games of the past didn't have many Blue personalities, mostly Greens, Oranges and Reds. So it was the cowboy days but the industry has 'grown' up so here we are. Let's hope all modding sites don't get the urge to 'grow up' too.

[pashax]

On 10/23/2023 at 5:08 AM, Miauzi said:

Do we have a compass... so that we know approximately where north is... because on the planetary overview map the sea is, for example, "east"?? No of course not!

How did you miss the compass? It's in the lower left corner of the screen. The largest tick is north, and the other three thick ticks are the cardinal directions. Annoyingly, it gets turned off in scanning mode in favor of telling you basically irrelevant details about the planet environment. I'm not convinced the landing point on the planetary map has much to do with the actual generated landscape beyond determining the biome. I've tried heading in the direction that the ocean should be, only to arrive in a swamp (at least as much as Starfield can generate such a thing).

[Miauzi]

Vor 8 Minuten sagte Pashax:

Wie hast du den Kompass vermisst? Es befindet sich in der unteren linken Ecke des Bildschirms. Der größte Haken ist der Norden und die anderen drei dicken Haken sind die Himmelsrichtungen. Ärgerlicherweise wird es im Scanmodus ausgeschaltet, um Ihnen im Grunde irrelevante Details über die Umwelt des Planeten zu verraten. Ich bin nicht davon überzeugt, dass der Landepunkt auf der Planetenkarte über die Bestimmung des Bioms hinaus viel mit der tatsächlich erzeugten Landschaft zu tun hat. Ich habe versucht, in die Richtung zu gehen, in der das Meer sein sollte, nur um in einem Sumpf zu landen (zumindest so viel, wie Starfield so etwas erzeugen kann).

 

We know from the experiments around "New Atlantis" that neighbouring landing zones are geographically related ... so if I hit the exact eastern zone of New Atlantis ... and then go west... I see the outline of the city at the landing zone boundary.

So if west of my landing zone (addition "coast" is important there) are the ocean landing zones (which are "closed") ... I reach the beach ... the biome transition from "ocean" to "land" (forest, savannah, desert etc.) when walking westwards ->.

Now - on the basis of these "irrelvant" data I see, for example, whether I have scanned all animal and plant species of the biome - from this I can then deduce whether I now (in this landing zone) have to search further ... or whether I have to change to another biome (landing zone type).

Since I have the scan mode permanently active ... I have completely overlooked this "compass" ... so my mistake.

?

[pashax]

On 10/24/2023 at 6:45 AM, Gameplayer said:

Just weird that there is no actual gore?

Ok I would have to jump in game and go look for floor and wall decals.

Where is the body decal or chunks such as those present in fallout games, these are absent

Especially weird around predator enemies like Terrormorphs. Given how the game describes them, there's no way they wouldn't dismember their victims. I can maybe understand the lack of gore around victims of human enemies (none are considered cannibals in-game), but why do predators simply kill their prey and then walk away? Why are there no partially eaten prey animals? Fallout 4's giblet system was silly (and extremely annoying when one of them got stuck inside your character's head), but this is even sillier in the opposite direction.

  

On 10/23/2023 at 8:51 AM, GrimReaper said:

In Starfield? Even the supposedly biggest and seediest nightclub in the galaxy has dancers in weird full body suits that look like space teletubbies.

Weirdly, there are bikinis and swim trunks outfits on Paradiso, so it's not like the game has no skin shown anywhere, which makes the incredibly conservative costumes in Neon even odder. "Sure, you can take drugs in our club, but we better not see any collarbone or ankle!" Absolutely ridiculous. The drugs gets it an ESRB "M" rating already, so it's not like having realistic party-goer outfits would've changed that rating.

 

9 hours ago, Gameplayer said:

Been wanting Bethesda to actually stand up and deliver, but have read a lot of the guys from previous games retired or went to work with other studios so bgs has bled out it's old talent and now it's like all new guys.

While I'm sure that caused some problems, I wouldn't blame the new guys for this. I think it's the most senior parts, including Todd Howard, that are responsible for these issues. I think there's no one left to tell them when they have a bad idea or when they're misprioritizing things. Executive meddling can ruin plenty of things, but having as many resources as you want and nobody to second guess them seems to have similar consequences. Lots of artistic types seem to do better work when they're working under constraints or restrictions, whether it's filmmakers, musicians or game designers.

Why do I think it's the senior team's fault? It's because you can see the seeds of most of the bad ideas in Starfield in Todd's prior games. An overreliance on easy fast travel? Any game after Oblivion. Copy/paste dungeons? Skyrim. Dialogue trees that terminate exactly the same regardless of your choices? Fallout 4. Supposedly important choices being completely irrelevant so it doesn't lock you out of some other faction quest line?  Fallout 4 again. Spending too much of your gameplay in menus? All of them. An inventory management system that is completely at odds with the crafting and base building mechanics? Fallout 4. Telling you the death of someone is tragic and profound without bothering to get you invested in that person? Fallout 4. Incredibly dumb enemy AI that you can easily cheese? Skyrim is probably one of the worst, but they're all guilty of this. Bad story telling and writing? Each subsequent game tends to get a little worse. And on and on.

I do actually like a lot of things about the game, from the aesthetic of the world and spaceships to the gunplay and the mobility of the boostpacks. The worldbuilding (not to be confused with the planets themselves) is fairly engaging, and the factions are among the better ones in a BGS game (not as good as Skyrim's best, but also nowhere near as bad as Fallout 4's). There are also a handful of genuinely good quests in there like "Entangled" from the main questline where the designers remembered to give you a choice that has an effect on the outcome of the quest (including a hidden third possible resolution), or the UC Vanguard mission that has you trek into Londinion. But it's hard to not see all the many deep flaws and broken systems, too. Space travel is somehow more menu driven than even Mass Effect was, despite there being games twenty years old that do it better including EVE Online or even Microsoft Freelancer. Missions railroad you to a specific outcome even when details of the mission could change by your decisions without impacting the next missions. Cut game features were not even fully disabled properly, leading to seemingly bizarre game mechanics. And so on. I can't hate the game, but I also can't love it, and I really do want to love it.

  

2 hours ago, Miauzi said:

Now - on the basis of these "irrelvant" data I see, for example, whether I have scanned all animal and plant species of the biome - from this I can then deduce whether I now (in this landing zone) have to search further ... or whether I have to change to another biome (landing zone type).

Since I have the scan mode permanently active ... I have completely overlooked this "compass" ... so my mistake.

The irrelevant data I mean is the surface temperature, O2 concentration and gravity level which replace the compass for some inexplicable reason. The temperature and O2 concentration affect nothing because you're not going to take off your spacesuit and they never change, and you'll figure out the gravity level the first time you jump. In fact, those particular planetary details should be reported by your ship's HUD when you touch down, not while on foot. The compass should've always been visible.

Edited October 26, 2023 by pashax

[RohZima]

Though SF is barely mentioned - this video does mention why exploration kind of failed & what has gone wrong at Beth.

 

Skyrim had a small team and they massively expanded staff and it didn't work well.

 

This former Lead Designer, Bruce Nesmith, he mentions all these great features from Oblivion onwards that he was responsible for, and even features in Starfield.

 

He retired to write novels in 2021.

 

He said he couldn't even get to speak to Todd because "everything goes through Todd" and there was a big queue to see him.

 

 

Edited October 26, 2023 by RohZima

[DrunkenCow]

21 hours ago, DocClox said:

 

 

I always wondered: how did that carry over into subsequent games in the series?

 

 

We got offensive stereotypes for followers and a pay-to-win single player game to cap the trilogy.

 

21 hours ago, mircislav said:

In that time, uncle Gates had other priorities.

 

Microsoft does enough wrong that you don't have to create things to complain about.  Starfield is 100% on Bethesda, the company that made over a billion dollars off the time travelling dragon rubbish.

[DocClox]

12 minutes ago, DrunkenCow said:

We got offensive stereotypes for followers and a pay-to-win single player game to cap the trilogy.

 

So that was instead of the soft core porn?

[Mr. Otaku]

On 10/24/2023 at 8:33 PM, nIn nIn nIn said:

The lack of gore has to be for a valid reason. Usually the devs modify games in different regions to comply with local laws. An example being Belgium has banned loot box shenanigans, so many games don't offer loot boxes to Belgians. As for BGS and Starfield, the ratings is different in some regions. Australias highest rating is 18+ (adults only), so adding gore and dismemberment won't change the rating at all (for me).

 

This could be an interesting subject to explore, and discuss.

 

I don't think these decisions were motivated by ratings. As i mentioned earlier in this thread (or another thread idfk) games like RDR2 and Cyberpunk can get really gory and they're still massively successful in many if not all regions (there can be outliers i'm not aware of). I think they simply didn't wanna bother adding dismemberment to all the spacesuits and shit, like we know a lot of changed and nerfed some time during development so maybe they had plans for it but then got binned.

 

And apparently they also shipped the game with a fair amount of underwater content already and we just don't know why it was cut entirely, only optimistic explanation is maybe this is for a future dlc. Overall they made a lot of decision they simply didn't need to make and nobody knows for sure why.

[DrunkenCow]

On 10/26/2023 at 6:29 AM, DocClox said:

 

So that was instead of the soft core porn?

 

No, we got some grade A cringe that was so cringey they went back to porn.

[belegost]

On 10/24/2023 at 5:03 PM, nIn nIn nIn said:

Belgium has banned loot box shenanigans

Reminds me of this GDC talk from several years ago about loot boxes. A 30 minutes presentation about regulations, legal loopholes and how to avoid them. It was the lowest rating GDC video I've ever seen. Before YT removed dislike visibility it had something like 95% downvote rating with comments to match.

Edited October 30, 2023 by belegost

[DocClox]

23 hours ago, DrunkenCow said:

 

No, we got some grade A cringe that was so cringey they went back to porn.

 

So you're not holding the Mass Effect writing up as an example of good writing to which Starfield should aspire?