Just recently, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said he hopes Starfield will be a 12-year hit, just like Skyrim.
Yeah no fucking shit Phil, the fans would have loved a generation-defining megahit as well! Maybe you should have told Todd to try making the game good as well as marketable?
No, they need a competent dev team. To this day, Valve is using a game engine that is, at its core, the Quake engine from 1996. Goldsrc? Source? Source 2? All increasingly heavily reworked versions of the Quake engine. And they can use it for everything from Alyx to Dota 2! If Valve can do it, why can’t Bethesda?
I agree, and the same logic applies to the creation engine. However, so many people still, when complaining, say it’s GameBryo, which is just stupid. It shows their lack of understanding of how game development functions.
The problem is that the Creation Engine 2 is, in a lot of ways, still the Gamebryo engine. It has all the same advantages, as well as all the same issues. Hell, there are literally bugs shared between Morrowind, Skyrim, Fallout 4, and even Starfield.
You can’t compared CE to something like, let’s say, the Unreal Engine. The Unreal Engine has actually had absurd amounts of resources poured into it, effectively making it a new thing. But the Creation Engine simply hasn’t been - it desperately needs more time and money put into it.
I’m confident there isn’t much, if any, GameBryo left in the creation engine. Sure, they may share some bugs, but that doesn’t mean much. They could be caused by things Bethesda introduced.
I do agree that UE has had a lot more development, and that’s the issue with the Creation Engine, like I said. They haven’t invested in it like they needed to. They’ve done the bare minimum to keep the renderer looking modern (though I’d argue Starfield totally failed, specifically with faces), but not updating the core engine. UE is a commercial product on its own though, and it’s designed to be a lot more versatile than CE. CE is meant to make Bethesda games and that’s it. CE shouldn’t ever be expected to compare to UE on everything.
To this day, Valve is using a game engine that is, at its core, the Quake engine from 1996. Goldsrc? Source? Source 2? All increasingly heavily reworked versions of the Quake engine.
All Valve statements about the Source2 port of Counter-Strike say Source2 is a completely new engine.
It’s new in the sense they have rebuilt large enough parts of it to fully justify giving it a new name. Certainly it’s very far removed from Quake. It’s not like they’ve been sitting on their hands for almost 30 years. But it’s not like they rebuilt it all from scratch, either; just the parts they needed to. Old code is still being used, and even new code still sometimes uses the old as a base. The most obvious visual example that comes to mind is the pattern they still use for flickering lights which has been around since the Quake days.
It’s a bit of a Ship of Theseus situation, but I think my point still stands: Bethesda doesn’t need an entirely new engine, they need devs who can (or more likely, need to give their devs time to) properly rebuild the parts that need it.
The most obvious visual example that comes to mind is the pattern they still use for flickering lights which has been around since the Quake days.
But you wrote “To this day, Valve is using a game engine that is, at its core, the Quake engine from 1996” and that’s just untrue. Just because nobody ever saw the need to change the light flickering pattern for no reason other than to make it new, doesn’t mean that Source2 is “at its core” still Quake1. Even the community-maintained wiki (not a officially sanctioned Valve document, btw) you’ve linked only speaks about “some residual Quake code”.
Another to look at it is that if Valve properly managed their VCS, you could do git ls-files HEAD^10000 and see Quake/goldsrc code building the foundation for everything that came after. Every subsequent rewrite and refactor was shaped and constrained by what came before and what hadn’t been rewritten yet. If they had started with another engine, they wouldn’t have ended up here.
Beyond semantics, Source 2’s lineage is still very apparent. While the engine is very good at what it does, it’s without question much better suited to a rather specific class of semi-realistic 3D games. It has a look, a feel, strengths and weaknesses. It can’t be Unity or Unreal Engine, and it would have been a ridiculous mistake to use it as a base for Elite Dangerous or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or Terraria.
Funny that you claim deeper insight into Source2 than Valve.
Source2 was first developed for Dota. It’s way more likely that its limitations are because it was never developed as a complete allrounder, not because some minor bits and pieces like flickering pattern were developed in the 1990s because that’s also where Unreal Engine was first developed.
And why wouldn’t I be? The person who claimed that Source2 was basically Quake1 at its core had two bits of “proof”, the Valve wiki that refers to “some residual Quake code” and light flickering pattern. That’s it. Suddenly it’s just “semantics”. Yeah, right. Valve developers referred to CS2 as a completely new engine. That’s not semantics, that’s not splitting hairs, that’s straight of Valve’s mouth.
Surprisingly, that isn’t what the thought experiment has in mind. It was created before any kind of engine for a ship, so clearly they had other ideas. Generally it’s asked if it’s still the same shop when only one board from the original ship remains? If so, is it suddenly a different ship when that board is replaced? Before then all other boards were part of the Ship of Theseus, so why does that one board matter? If it doesn’t matter though, what does it mean to be The ship of Theseus?
I know the original thought experiment but it doesn’t apply here because Source2 is a completely new engine with some residual stuff brought over like light flickering pattern.
It is not a “completely new engine”. That’s an insane statement. The renderer is mostly new, but the way it handles entities is pretty much the same. An engine is a large collection of tools. Some of those tools being changed out doesn’t mean you have a whole new toolbox.
Please talk to the Valve developers who said this in interviews about the Source2 Counter-Strike port that they make insane statements. I’m simply believing the actual creators over random guys on the internet.
And the creators of The Creation Engine 2 said the same thing, but we don’t believe them around here do we…
I doubt they said that it’s totally new. Give me a source for that. I believe the renderer is mostly new, but there’s still many components that inherit from the existing tech stack.
Me: “It literally just says ‘some residual Quake code’.”
You: **Fuck, he got us. Quick, be needlessly aggressive!!!. “Give me a source for that.”
Me: “I don’t make an archive of transcripts of every interview I’ve ever encounter. Despite that, your camp made the initial claim, so if anything it’s your side that needs to produce the proof and you didn’t…”
You: “Haha! Gotcha! While neither me not my friends have produced any evidence for our initial claim except the four words ‘some residual Quake code’ on a wiki literally everyone can edit and light flickering on Imgur, we are victorious via the old tactic of making baseless claims and then aggressively demanding evidence from THEM!!!”
Your camp: “At its core Source2 is still just Quake1!!!”
Find where I said this. I’ll wait. I said it’s not Quake, and the Creation Engine is equally not GameBryo. They both contain heritage from their past. I’ve only pointed out that’s the people saying “the Creation Engine is GameBryo” also tend to say Source, Unreal, etc. aren’t what they used to be. You can’t have it both ways. Source 2 still has components of Quake, so either it isn’t Quake (which it isn’t) and CE isn’t GameBryo, or it is Quake and upgrading an engine can never fundamentally change things.
I’m not a part of any camp. Please stop trying to throw everyone into a box so you can argue against outrageous claims. Your strawman is recognized and not appreciated.
You with your aggressive and childish choice of words are in no position to make any demands towards me. In fact, if you were confident that you had any leg to stand on, you’d be more relaxed and would not act like that.
I’m not engaging with that any longer. You’re not baiting me.
Didn’t even read my comment I assume. You stopped when I called you out for making up something I said, and then you say I’m the one using “aggressive language” and baiting you. Sure buddy.
GameBryo doesn’t exist in their engine anymore. I’m reasonably confident that there is hardly anything left in that engine from GameBryo. Their engine has plenty of issue, but they’re technically fixable with the right investments. I always disagree that they need to switch engines, and I used to disagree that they should (because it would incur a huge technical lag). They haven’t seemed to make the investments that they need to to make it acceptable for a modern engine though, so if they aren’t willing to do that they need to change something.
I think it’s because it was designed to be able to handle hundreds of persistent objects in a scene as a priority over graphical performance. That’s why Bethesda games have so much collectable junk - because they can.
At least the parts that are mentioned in performance tweaking guides that instruct users to edit config files and the parameters are all named bTemporalAA_idTech7=0 etc.
Just wanted to chime in that I absolutely love Starfield. I didn’t watch any trailers, didn’t read any of the hype. It’s exactly what I assumed it would be.
I didn’t watch any trailers, didn’t read any of the hype, had low expectations, and didn’t have to buy it…and Starfield still managed to disappoint me.
I did the same and enjoy it. I think it’s embarrassing that a AAA can spend so long on a game and have it basically be fallout in space with very little in the way of innovation. But I also didn’t expect anything more, and it scratches the itch I was wanting it to scratch
I feel like AAA games usually aren’t innovative. AAA games have large budgets and therefore need to have mass appeal which usually means a relatively safe existing formula with a lot of the budget going towards graphics and scale (and marketing). That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and I wouldn’t say no innovation happens in AAA games… but it’s not that surprising that they can be a little formulaic.
Honestly all games are kind of starting to feel the same to me and I’m not sure if it’s what I’m playing, that I’ve played too many games and “seen too much”, or that I need a break or what lol.
A break isn’t a terrible idea in my opinion. Give yourself a chance to step away and I bet by the end of your break you’ll end up getting excited to return something in particular
I’d say, after myself gaming since pacman on the atari, it’s a basic principle of taste in general:
Your palate is an exponential convergence. Ever only tried piss and puddlewater as drinks? Then you’d probably say “piss is #1”. After testing another 10 drinks, it’s probably down to #8. And another 190 drinks it’s maybe down to #200.
Saying, the more diverse items of a thing you’ll consume, the more refined your palate grows and so does your standard.
I mean, i once thought pacman or pong were graphically and gameplay-wise the absolute tits. After a felt gazillion games later, they wouldn’t exactly pass the same bar.
Starfield is totally mediocre. I didn’t expect much. Even less. I pirated it to test it, and after some hours i still wanted a refund. But it had great loading-screens!
I see we got a connoisseur here. But that really depends on the climate, age and main ingredients in puddlewater. What if it’s 90% hobo-puke after a week in bright sun? 🤔
I’ve only seen people stream it and it looks… like a Bethesda game. Like, to a fault.
I’m reading that’s what a lot of people expected, and I’m honestly surprised.
I thought Bethesda would put their jankiness aside and give us something that’s wide, deep, and polished. But it really feels like Bethesda has been releasing the same game ever since Daggerfall, just with different skins.
I guess better the devil you know? I’ll probably play it at some point when it’s finished.
The game may have been 25 years in development, but their AAA standards must have also been from that time.
There would have been a period of time where Starfield’s release would be heralded as one of the greats (probably 2013-2017). But in 2023, it already looked outdated on release.
I’ve only seen people stream it and it looks… like a Bethesda game. Like, to a fault.
I’m reading that’s what a lot of people expected, and I’m honestly surprised.
With one massive, at least for me, flaw. Previous Bethesda games had handcrafted maps which invited you to explore every region. There was so much to find in the most unexpected places. Starfield doesn’t have that. I mean sure, even on remote desolate planets you can find objects of interest, but in the end they do repeat very quickly. In Starfield the world is much bigger but ultimately less diverse and well built. And to me that’s a less appealing game.
And another smaller problem is that they no longer seem to want to go into the darker stories. The game does have quite some potential of exploring darker themes like the despotic parts of the UC organisation for example. But it never does dive deeper but sticks to the surface. You can imagine that there’s much more going on but you don’t get to experience this.
It’s been years but Daggerfall to me feels like the ideal RPG. They did make it a point to make simpler games after Daggerfall. Beginning with Morrowind, the magic categories slowly got reduced, the skills were intentionally consolidated and reduced in number. That’s the reason why the later games sold really well. Starfield still sold well despite the valid criticisms but they should have trended into more complexity for a space game. Bethesda games are the junk food of games (and sports games are Mountain Dew or something).
Personally I think the moment when Bethesda lost their way was somewhere between Skyrim and the DLC for Skyrim. Maybe its unprecedented commercial success went to their corporate heads.
Maybe. For me it was the original Skyrim paid modding fiasco, because while they did apologize they then went back and tried paid modding again with the Creation Club, with the lame excuse that they were “mini dlc’s”, not actual mods. It was a complete betrayal, and that’s not even mentioning the fact that they’re straight up just doing paid modding now with zero excuses.
Not to mention Fallout 76 with the atomic shop, the shitty bag they tried to scam people with, the whole rum debacle, and ofc their shitty subscription service. I also didn’t love Fallout 4 so that didn’t help either.
And also also, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Fallout 3 either. Hot take, I know, but I prioritize choice and rpg mechanics, and Fallout 3 really didn’t have any outside of “good choice vs comically evil choice”. So to me it always felt like a mediocre fps game with a cool open world. But I’ve always loved Morrowind and New Vegas, and Skyrim’s modding scene has kept me playing for over a decade.
Back in 2012 I couldn’t put Skyrim down for 2 or 3 playthroughs, even without mods. Of course I’m older now and got less spare time… but I didn’t even get past the first few quests in Starfield. I don’t know why it doesn’t grab me the same way.
I’m there too. I was really excited for the game. Didn’t watch any promotional material. Have never seen a trailer for the game and stayed away from any media of it. I got bored so fast and I can’t force myself to keep playing it as it felt like there was nothing more to see after the first few hours
Because its empty. In skyrim you see NPCs having interesting interaction with each other and the PC. In starfield you just quick travel from empty city to empty planet
Like the other comment says, it’s empty, but I mean it in a different way. It has no soul. Skyrim you can feel the passion in the quests, the characters, and the world. Starfield is super bland, despite being a new IP they could have done anything with, and being sci-fi, which the purpose of sci-fi is to critique our current world. It’s the most milque toast sci-fi I’ve seen. It doesn’t question the current status-quo, despite corporations literally destroying Earth. You can rarely question authority. The characters all have identical views on everything, and that’s the “good” view that doesn’t really try to change anything for the better.
Also, the connecting fibers of the game just don’t exist. No system really ties into another, besides making money but money is nearly worthless. Nothing seems to have been considered on how to make it function as a cohesive product.
It tries to be emotional, at least the main story. But it fucking fails miserably. I think the only part that actually got me feeling dread or interest was going to visit NASA on Earth. That shit was amazing it pisses me off we only spend ONE FUCKING MISSION on that planet and never go back for anything else.
I think a lot of this stems from doing less with more and vice-versa.
The passion people put into their creations shows in the tiniest things we don’t notice but still affect us. It’s why I think some movies can hold up for decades and others feel more like a fad, even if the former has fewer resources to work with and the latter technically ‘does more.’
To your point about small movies, I’d say it’s true of many indie games too. It isn’t about “doing less with more” more than doing more with more is their issue here. They tried to do everything, and didn’t do anything well and didn’t try to connect the pieces together to make a solid product.
Factorio, for example, knows exactly what it is and it does it perfectly. Every system in the game ties into the core system of building your factory. Skyrim doesn’t know what it is and the pieces are scattered everywhere. Your ship is totally disconnected from everything else (except as a money and skill point sink). Outposts are disconnected from everything else (again, except for those two things). They just had too many resources to spend and didn’t set up the foundations to make it all work together.
It depends on whether the game improves. Cyberpunk got patched into a decent state, no mans sky as well. I doubt that’ll happen with starfield, but maybe.
I finally started playing Cyberpunk this week and I’ve been having a blast. I totally skipped it at launch though. That said, I don’t have faith Bethesda has what it takes to make Starfield great. They’ve been a joke for a long time.
I’m not qualified to talk about how those games have storytelling problems, but I can say for certain that the game, on a mechanical level (i.e freedom to role play, being able to finish quests in a variety of ways, etc) was not what they pitched.
Honestly, people who say it’s a great RPG have not played any good RPGs, but it’s a fucking legit FPS. I finished it like 3 times {including launch day} start to finish and the most enjoyable thing is the gunplay builds you can make
Cyberpunk was functional at launch, I beat the entire game week one. I experience no game breaking bugs, there were numerous non game breaking bugs but nothing that took me out of the experience much.
I did my playthrough on the superior PC platform though.
Nevermind the fact it was so shit on consoles they literally took it out of storefronts and the innumerous broken things regardless of platform. The game ran like ass on a fucking 3080. Even on PC it was worse than PS3 Skyrim currently, and I should know because I have like 500 hours on that (200 are loading screens)
Nah, it’s not the same. CDPR got cyberpunk to the point where it’s an amazing game, even on launch it was a good game. Bethesda will not put that work in, they will rely on modders, and oops, the modders cant be bothered with this hit trash. That means it’ll forever be known as a terrible game.
Right, I had the exact same experience. I see people parroting that it was completely unplayable at lunch, when that’s just completely untrue. I also did my first play through as soon as the game came out on PC and had no major issues.
… It got removed from stores for being false advertising. The launch was pretty fuckin bad bud, you being the handful of lucky ones with a beefed up rig is a nice lotto ticket but games dont get removed from digital stores by the store itself over some mild reddit salt
Cyberpunk 2077 is an actually great game now. Always had the potential to be one, but the devs fucked it up. But at the core, it was still a good game. And then the devs dedicated the time needed to make it actually great. If Starfield becomes the same in a couple of years, what’s wrong with picking it up then? Just don’t pick it up right now.
I recall a lot of promises about how you would need to replay the game 3 times because each background you chose would completely alter the game, from beginning to end.
Pretty sure it got the mass effect 3 ending treatment, no?
Pretty sure it got the mass effect 3 ending treatment, no?
No, the endings diverge pretty drastically. Some even have entirely different end missions.
If you have a quote with them saying that about the backgrounds I’d be interested tho - the backgrounds are pretty much solely for some additional flavor dialogue, nothing more.
That was a functioning feature in the game when they were working on it, that they removed because it caused issues. That was an active choice on their part - not something they lied about.
Well, that's not a good sign for Starfield's modding future. Honestly, it feels like post-Skyrim Bethesda just assumes their games will have a robust modding community. Except that for a game to garner that kind of community it has to be, you know, good. Maybe Bethesda hopes paid modding will be the carrot that brings modders to Starfield, but even if that becomes the standard I don't expect many people will want to make mods for a game they don't even enjoy playing.
You’re still up against the limitations of the engine. There’s no way for example to mod in interstellar flight because the engine just can’t support environments like that.
Yeah, I didn’t particularly enjoy base fallout 4, but I could see a lot of potential there. It felt like “if only I could change these things, then it will be good”.
Modding FO4 is a must, and honestly adding in lighting fixes and better bullet acoustics changes the game so much with those two things. It needs a lot more but I’ve always felt those mods are so needed to make it engaging on a vanilla level.
This is why I can still play Fallout 4 heavily modded and have a lot of fun. Because the core gameplay is really good. It just needed more quest variety and RPG elements.
Starfield is wrong on a fundamental level. Exploration is a HUGE problem in Starfield and frankly with how they implemented it there’s not much you can do to fix it. However, land rovers would be a great step.
Given that they’ve recently tried to bring back paid mods, I wouldn’t be surprised. I booted up Skyrim last night to see the new store and my god. They REALLY try to push credits on you.
This bullshit all started with horse armor in Oblivion and sure enough…fucking horse armor in the Skyrim store too. I love playing Fallout and Skyrim with mods but no way am I giving Bethesda more money for them
Even if Starfield isn’t a hit right out of the gate, it’s possible it will develop a small but dedicated community that will keep it alive. They could show us some cool stuff in a few years.
To be honest though, I’ve never really cared for modding.
You’re not necesarrily wrong, but modders currently have a more difficult time than with Skyrim.
As far as I’m aware, modding tools from Bethesda haven’t been released yet, kinda limiting what people can do.
Not that it can’t be done, its just more difficult and time consuming than using producer built tools. People were modding games before any one put out tools for that purpose. Notepad and a hex editor can get you a long way if you know what you’re doing, at least back then.
I guess I should say this is from the perspective of a PC gamer, primarily. I’ve used consoles in the past, sure, but my last console was an Xbox 360 and before that a PS2.
I never thought I would read that someone else had the same last consoles as me, feels good to not be alone there. I recently got a ps3 for the first time about a year ago solely to get the MGS collection and play through MGS4 since it wasn’t available anywhere else. Also some gundam games but I haven’t gotten around to getting those.
I think somebody said something on those lines already but there’s so much work to do to mod starfield into something good that the whole thing would be like 80% mods by the time you were finished. Unless there’s an API it’s just going to be mods interacting on top of other mods and the whole thing is going to be a nightmare.
I’ve looked into it and it’s not exactly easy considering how clearly they need modding in order to make the game a success. You would think that it would be in their interest to make it simple but, nope.
It wasn’t until they ported about 70% of Skyrim Together’s revered code to the Starfield project, though, that they bumped into a problem: “This game is fucking trash.”
“I didn’t realize this until after I actually started playing the damn game a week after launch,” they say. “The game is boring, bland, and the main draw of Bethesda games, exploration in a lively and handcrafted world, was completely gone.
The modder started working on it before playing the game. It’s kind of funny in a way, but also cool that they wanted to give people multiplayer ASAP.
Thing is Skyrim wasn’t particularly handcrafted or lively either, the models for things like dungeons were repeated all the time and the NPC liveliness was lacklustre compared to eurojank games like Gothic.
Dunno why you’re getting downvoted. The game is awesome, great lore and story, great combat, great enemy design and much more. However, while the first ulcerated tree spirit is kinda cool. The 10th, isn’t as much.
Those optional tree spirits guard modifiers for your one off special effects flask, which is a pretty big deal for the game and not a mechanic you want to optionally leave behind.
Not to mention, you dont know what modifier the tree has until its dead, so without googling everything you cant skip trees whose drops you dont want.
Something like 80% of elden ring is optional content. If youre only allowed to be frustrated or annoyed by main plot progression content, youve basically asked for people to not talk about the game.
Seems like a pretty supid line in the sand to draw
That’s turning things on their head though. Daggerfall created some hype in its heyday because it was procedurally generated and so huge. But it turned out to be a gimmick and nowadays it’s just a cult classic for some people due to its Elder Scrolls pedigree and a landmark in gaming history because of the procedural generation.
hey we never know what the future holds, starfield may be something like the first big game to take advantage of procedural generation for future games that do it better with even more powerful tech. or its like daggerfall again lol
The problem is that daggerfall was impressive at the time, but now that everyone else learned how to do its one trick and modify it, its become less impressive in hindsight.
Starfield didnt do anything impressive. Nothing its done is new. Even its praise is just “well its fallout in space.” So without breaking ground and boundaries, it cant play the same tune daggerfall did.
Not sure why this is downvoted, radiant quests were a big feature in Skyrim, and were technically kinda impressive, but still repetitive. Likewise, quests for the College of Bards were mostly just a dungeon fetch quests and things.
It’s still a great game, but it was great for the bits that were handcrafted.
But give it 5-10 years and I’d be very interested to see another pass at procedural generation using machine learning, especially dialogue, could open the doors to more creativity than would be possible when doing it all by hand!
That part where he talks about being made fun of for being in chess club…
…it’s like no… that’s not why people made fun of you, Todd. They made fun of you because you were the twerp claiming your uncle at NASA could get you on a spaceflight and then kept making excuses as to why the final story was your uncle taking you on a regular ass flight. People don’t like people who lie painfully obviously for attention and interest.
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