Starfield by Bethesda -- PC and Xbox exclusive -- 09/06/23

Doesn’t matter that much from a design perspective does it? Regardless of how many they ship day one, they’re not accommodating the old potatos.

I think you’re right, it really shouldn’t. Build for the future not the past, right?

Really? That’s a hot take to me. Not that I DIDN’T like Oblivion, but aside from it just looking better, I’m not sure I even liked it as well as Morrowind. Skyrim does A LOT of things really well.

Oh man I hope not. I mean, like I said, I liked F4 just fine, too, but there are definitely areas I hope they stick more to the Skyrim side of things.

Worth noting: He did describe it as “Skyrim in space,” not “Fallout 4 in space.” Seems likely they heard people’s complaints, such as the things you mentioned, and maybe are not going to repeat those decisions? Hopefully, maybe.

Stolen from RPS… No idea about accuracy.

The Internet has done some impressive sleuthing via the trailer, the first behind-the-scenes Bethesda put out (which had a surprising amount of not-blurred-out-stuff on dev screens) and the interviews they’ve done in the last two days.

The game’s set circa 2325, your starship is called the Frontier and was built by Nova Galactic. The ship is armed with two cannon systems and a missile launcher. It is powered by a GFLA (Graviton Field Loop Array) which propels the ship to FTL speeds by harnessing gravity waves (it’s basically the Alcubierre warp drive). There are no FTL communications, however.

The ship’s big navigation table has around 20 star systems visible. It’s unclear if the map is the only map available, a zoomed-in version or if all the systems are visitable in-game. Named locations include Cheyenne, Sagan, Lunara (on the moon?) and Narion. The city or base New Atlantis is located on Jerrison in the Alpha Centauri system. Cydonia might be a city on Mars. Ferrera 4 is also mentioned.

The dominant space government is the United Colonies, which has two military wings: Vanguard and SysDef (System Defence?), presumably for offensive and defensive actions. The UC might be ruled over by MAST, the Military, Administrative and Scientific Triumvirate. There’s a rank called “Ranger,” which might be the player’s starting rank in Constellation.

I like the prospect of playing a relatively ‘low-tech’ science fiction game, at least compared with something like a Mass Effect. I’d love to see a true pioneering spirit in the game, the opportunity to really cast out for places no human has ever set foot. This is the kind of stuff that really fires up my imagination.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you could upgrade the ship with new engines, weapons, etc.

On the contrary – I would be surprised if that option WEREN’T included.

Hmmm … ship weaponry implies ship to ship combat …

Quick, Bethesda, sell jpgs!

I… don’t believe that’s a contrary statement, but now I’m confused so I could be wrong.

Okay maybe the “on the contrary” rang wrong.

His statement sounded like “There’s a possibility that this might be a feature.” Me, I would be shocked if it weren’t in there. That’s almost an expected feature.

Nuance is all, and I wasn’t trying to be argumentative. I think the thing he said “could be” in there will almost definitely be included. Not that I have any insider information, just…it seems like a given for any spaceship game.

Yeah, I would say all 3 have different strengths and weaknesses. I enjoyed all 3 in different ways.

Morrowind:

Strengths:

  • Dope ass map that came with it. So good.
  • I love the systems. How you could create and combine spell effects. Made me feel like I was hacking the game systems and breaking them.
  • Exploration was incredible. Such a strange wonderful landscape.

Weaknesses:

  • Terrible combat. Possibly the least satisfying first person melee combat in any game I’ve ever played. Limp press left mouse button to swing sword, then hold, then let go of left mouse button. Yuck.
  • After you “hack the game systems” (which felt awesome), the game was super easy, barely an inconvenience. So easy that I got bored. So after about 23 hours or so of gameplay, I felt like there was no challenge left in the game at all, and I stopped playing because even the exploration started feeling meaningless since nothing pushed back at me, nothing was dangerous anymore.

Oblivion

Strengths:

  • Much better melee combat than Morrowind on Xbox 360, could block with the shield on left trigger, and swing sword with the right trigger. When the enemy banked into your shield blocking arm you felt it through the controller. Satisfying. (PC version still had the limp mouse button interface for melee. Lame.)
  • Even though the world exploration had you looking at a more generic fantasy landscape than Morrowind, they had a lot of unique things to find throughout the world. There was a quest where you could get lost inside a painting. There was a quest in which you got trapped inside a frozen landscape looking for bigfoot. There was all these Oblivion gates that opened up that basically took you to a hellscape. There were so many unique places to go, I felt it made up for the more generic landscape. You never knew where you would find the next unique quest that could take you to some kind acid trip or other thing.
  • As long as you didn’t “hack the system” this time by building a chameleon suit for yourself, the combat stayed challenging for much longer than Morrowind.

Weaknesses

  • Generic landscape, no unique WTF looking landscapes and cities like Morrowind.
  • Could make a chameleon suit that broke the game systems and made you invincible pretty much
  • The level scaling made it so that whatever you fought kind of was a similar level to you, which gave a feeling that you never really grew stronger, even though you did.
  • Eventually you gained enough equipment through quests that just like with Morrowind, you were strong enough to beat anything, and exploration felt meaningless again. But it happened pretty late in the game this time.
  • It felt more limiting than even Morrowind that you had do something in order to improve it. So you had to constantly run and jump everywhere to improve athletics, etc.
  • Unlike Morrowind, the world was more broken up, and you couldn’t fly, you couldn’t experiment with spells to the same extent.

Skyrim

Strengths:

  • Much improved melee combat on the controller than even Oblivion. You could now do power attacks and a couple of other moves that improved on the controller melee combat system of Oblivion. Plus you could use the excellent controller controls even on PC. (Still included support for limp mousebutton melee combat).
  • New system where you leveled up, you didn’t have to only improve the things you had been doing, could improve other skills. Could get perks. Made for much more interesting leveling.
  • Hard difficulty was really well balanced. I played for over 120 hours, longer than Oblivion. I only saw 60% of the world, maybe less, and it was still challenging.
  • Much better scaling system so that it only scaled monsters when you first went to an area. So you could still have monsters that were very weak to you later, or monsters that were really strong, and yet, it was still an open world where you could go anywhere.
  • Exploration excellent as usual, with a combination of interesting landscapes like in Morrowind, and some unique quest places like in Oblivion

Weaknesses:

  • Like the other two, still had weak animations and character looks and faces and such.
  • Landscape wasn’t as interesting as Morrowind, unique places weren’t as unique as Oblivion’s quests.
  • Yes, game systems were even better, and you couldn’t break the game systems but that also meant that it felt less thrilling.

I personally would love to explore Morrowind with Skyrim’s systems, if that’s possible. I’m not sure if that’s possible all around. I remember exploring some places in Morrowind using a levitation spell and extended levitation to get into some places where you couldn’t go on foot.

But I could totally see how Oblivion could be someone’s favorite. Or Morrowind. Or Skyrim.

Fair enough. And wonderful synopsis!

Custom-creating spells was one of my absolute favorite parts of Morrowind. And oh, man…that exploration. Oblivion felt like a step backwards on both of those counts, to me. And hell yes to flying.

Skyrim is an absolute masterpiece, and the ability to have a different weapon/spell/shield in each hand is just…really effective and can be a lot of fun, especially for spellcasting.

Still miss custom spells, but I deal.

Is it a spaceship game? Obviously it’s going to have a bigger scope, but could it not easily be along the lines of Outer Worlds, or for that matter Mass Effect, where the spaceship is basically a fast travel hub between planets?

Okay, touche. That’s a very valid point. And I suppose that jives quite well with “Skyrim in space.” So maybe my assumption was way off-base.

I’m going back to the information Alistair found on RPS -

It’s true that this may be background info. The Normandy also had weapons that were never used outside of a cutscene. But to have those kind of details at this stage of discussion might mean they’re a bit more than window dressing.

HORSE ARMOR, CONFIRMED!!!

The main story. I f’n hated it. The constantly appearing things to Oblivion, the very similar Oblivion instance maps for those … just annoying. Skyrim peppered things with the Divines much better in my opinion. And lets be frank, the dragons were simply amazing and still are to be honest. Nothing made me feel like I’m knee deep in a high fantasy RPG than when I had to run out and actually battle a dragon (after the first initial scenes anyway.) It felt so crazy. The fights against liches, also crazy.

That’s the only thing that drew my attention in this pointless teaser. My first thought was: I wonder how old that bread is. Then, there’s a sandwich shop nearby?