It’s both!
The amount of time spent in combat is not the same as the number of quests resolved by combat. Yes, most quests end up in a fight but most of your time is spent traveling/exploring, crafting/modding, conversations, buying/selling, etc.
Sure, and that’s fine. Again, I played an absolute ton of most Bethesda games. My response was based on the fact that people were suggesting that improving combat was something that would somehow make something else worse.
But your average Joe installs the game, follows the quests and does a shitload of combat because it is ultimately one of the most important player actions in the world as they’ve designed it.
My hope is that they simply improve it for their future titles and I don’t believe at all that it has to come at the expense of anything else.
Would be cool if conflict was rare in general. I think of wagon trains in the Great Plains in the 19th century. Their primary hazards were disease, hunting accidents, weather, drownings during river crossings, and bison herds. Hostile interactions with the locals happened, but were rare and reflected tensions caused by decades of trespass and violence. Most interactions with the locals involved trade, ferry and guide services, etc. I can’t see constant threat being a thing except maybe if you’re on a literal battlefield.
Banditry is a thing. But it has typically arisen when people had to make the difficult decision between starving to death and resorting to activity that contains a significant risk of death and capture (which under most governments in history has also meant death.) It requires organization, a black market infrastructure, and ties to local communities. It’s not just dudes waiting in the forest, but I don’t think there are any games at all that try to provide context for the mobs you face. (Horizon makes motions toward this, which mostly has the effect of revealing just how shallow this aspect of games is.) There’s no real ecology or political economy or legal paradigm. We usually just get “save the world by killing everything in your path.” CRPGs suffer from a critical lack of imagination about their storytelling and gameplay possibilities. Bethesda isn’t uniquely bad in this area, but they also don’t really stand out in any way.
This is an interview with Emil Pagliarulo, lead designer and writer on Starfield. He talks a lot about his time at Bethesda but also talks a bit about Starfield.
Reading him gush about his position was as fun as reading his gushing review for Thief: The Dark Project on Adrenaline Vault umpty-ump years ago. I liked that he name-dropped Thief a couple of times in this interview, too.
I had no idea Emil worked for the Avault! I know him as the dark brotherhood quest designer starting in Oblivion.
Yeah, could definitely feel his passion in the way he talked about his job. That’s awesome…and rare.
Oh wow, avault!
I wrote a review for them once upon a time, as a free lance writer. It was an old Wii game called Carnival Games. Talk about giving the jank to the new guy. :)
We had a fight with the owner back in the day, stupid tempest in a teapot stuff. I always liked the site, anyway.
It’s a short one, but here’s a new video.
I don’t have a Twitter account, but if you’re into mysterious tweets, here you go:
Stephen Ford appears to be an actor, so I would assume he has a part to play in the game.
I like that he made a TARS reference. TARS is one of my favorite characters in any movie.
New video, focusing on the music of Starfield.
I am kind of getting annoyed by these “updates” on starfield that tell us so little about the actual game.
The best gameplay for me in elderscrolls was being stuck in dungeons in daggerfall ,desperately trying to climb a shaft out, almost making it, slipping, and falling back into the depths. I never even got close to beating that game but I had ADVENTURES
To the point of that video, cresting a mountain or coming out of a fight right when the music changes to something grandiose made for some awesome Skyrim moments. The darker ambient tracks within a dungeon were the same way, adding to the creepiness and tension.
That was because the dungeons, some of them at least, were randomly created, and sometimes that process neglected to include an egress. Oops. Happened a lot to me.
Same. I’m hoping we get a big gameplay reveal here soon so I can start getting hyped. Instead all these little videos/blogs/updates just annoy me.