Yes Todd, video games have changed. Some would even say grown & matured. Every game has aspects & mechanics from multiple genres. Like, one of the most played racing games is GTAV, probably.
Ok so he doesn’t understand what makes an rpg beyond skill points. Explains a lot in hindsight. And got so close to clarity when he said they are making a game true to who they are. Just one fast travel away.
The bastardization of rpg really sucks. What about the old-school fallout and elder scrolls games, even? Surely Todd must be familiar with those. They were a lot more rpg than 90% of rpg games today.
I want my choices to matter. The choices largely do not matter, if you’re even given a real choice at all. This has been the issue with their RPGs since Oblivion, and has only gotten worse over time. I don’t just mean how I move through a dungeon and take care of enemies; I mean in dialogue. When I am presented with a logical thing I could do or say, but I don’t actually have the option to do it, it sucks.
The problem is that Todd and the rest of the creative team decided rather than doubling down on the RPG elements in a meaningful way, they would rather strip away all the mechanics and nerf them into essential obsolescence.
Planets were originally going to be a lot less forgiving and you would need different space suits for the environments. So for example, your frost prevention suit wouldn’t help you in a high radiation environment, and you would need a different set of suits for different conditions. Not anymore! Now we just get a little icon in the HUD that says “planet conditions bad” and does nothing meaningful.
Starfield just made me want to go back to Cyberpunk 2077 where all the ground-based mechanics are done better, or to No Man’s Sky, where all the ground-based and space-based mechanics are better.
The multiple NPC’s on my ship won’t talk over one another while I’m hailing another ship.
There is the fan, cora, cole, myself, and another crew member I bought in a bar all sharing a class A ship with a single bed, maybe one of these Habs should have been filled with bunks to make sense?
The game shouldn’t crash constantly.
More original names for things that ‘the artifacts’. That’s a good first draft but come on.
Fallout and Elderscrolls had a lot of fun little side stories that revealed themselves on notes and computers as you explored the world. Starfield is lucky to have one memo talking about the facility before the spacers arrived to murder everyone.
Enemies should empty clip after clip into the window I am standing behind.
I always make these fat, clunky, massive ships with enough habs to theoretically actually house my crew. They don’t maneuver too well but they feel more logical than what is effectively a starfighter holding 7 people when the crew is clearly only 3 or 4.
To your note about environmental stories: they are definitely there. You can find derelict ships floating in space with audio or text logs about what may have happened. Some of them are pretty creepy.
I’m the system map, there will be POIs near planets. They’ll say either “ship,” “hostile activity,” or “sensor contact” which will all give you something to do.
God of war ragnarok tuned this way down. Level is tied to equipment (max 9), xp is spent as currency on skills. I really liked it. Didn’t feel like the game was RPGified at all.
Similarly, Fable did that. Using specific skill types would grant experience points to spend in that category, plus a general xp currency that can go into any category.
Which is exactly how the elder scrolls has been since Daggerfall at least. The only difference is you didn’t have any specialization choices until Skyrim with the perks.
Dudes stuck in the 90’s. I’m a little surprised he even knows what other games look like. He’s only worked with one game engine his entire career.
Oh wait, that’s not true. He also released two mobile games… that are the same game, artwork and everything. So, two game games. He has created two different games his entire career.
Please please please STOP saying “game engine” for every little shit, it doesn’t matter at all most of the time. In this particular case, it doesn’t matter in the slightest, not even one tiny bit.
Interesting take, my friend. Interesting take.
Feigning complete ignorance after telling someone they don’t know what they’re talking about is one way to stop any discussion.
You’re obviously way too smart for the rest of us.
Please explain to us dummies how an engine tailered for the last 20 years specifically for open world skill point based action rpgs has nothing to do with open world skill point based action rpg games.
Creation is tailored specifically for Bethesda games. It’s a branch of GameBryo. People want them to stop using Creation because of how janky and buggy thier games are. The idea being if they used a better engine the games would be better.
Personally I think it’s Todd Howard and Pete Hines that are the causes of the stale janky games. But the engine (again, the only platform they’ve ever worked with) does not help.
Epic also doesn’t claim Unreal is a completely brand new engine when it releases a new version update.
I also don’t see the exact same bugs in unreal 5 that I did in unreal 3.
Creation engine 2 has the same bugs I saw in fallout 3, and the same limitations. They’ve updated it to use 64 bit so they can cram in more shitty scripts, and they’ve updated it to use modern rendering techniques. The underlying issues with quest triggers, npc spawning, and collision are all still present.
That’s only a problem if you’re gonna release the same game 6+ times on the same engine with slight upgrades and expect the modding community to keep up.
Overhauling the engine to fix long standing bugs won’t necessarily change the fact that it’s a plug-in based engine.
There’s only one company I know of that has done that exact same scenario. Sounds like a problem they made for themselves.
I always feel like the only games Todd ever played was Pacman and Skyrim.
Man games are so good now, no need to improve or change anything, we have arrived
Hey hey, that’s not entirely true. Before the creation engine, they did use gamebryo as well as an in-house engine for the older titles pre-Morrowind.
Its just that the creation engine is a carbon copy rip off of gamebryo. The initial version of the creation engine even had the same bugs from gamebryo, some of which persist to this day.
Yeah Todd, that means people want a deeper RPG experience than you give with just a simple perk system that allows you to be good at everything all at once.
Heh. Playing the game now. You’re gonna have to sink hundreds of hours to fill that damn tree. I got 48hrs clocked and only Level 26. Barely touched rank 3 perks and haven’t maxed out one yet.
I say if you put a month game time into a single character, fuck it be good at everything. Builds be damned. You earned it.
The game is designed in a way where if you really wanted to you could level about as fast as you would like but many of the challenges to spend those points will take you hours to complete so power leveling really isn’t a thing and you are encouraged to specialize because the last level of a perk is usually the most powerful. Many aspects of this game are done better elsewhere but the broad variety of activities combined with improved dialog and quest structure are really appreciated in the setting. It’s not perfect and takes a while to get really engaging but the whole package is the best Bethesda game in recent history.
Thats not true! Skyrim came out 2 years ago. Before that they had Skyrim which came out 5 years ago, piggybacking off the success of Skyrim which came out 6 years ago. There was also Skyrim back in 2011 which I guess was more than 12 years ago but it feels like just yesterday.
Oof, I would consider fallout 3 to be recent history but I’m an old fart.
Edit: I bet I’d care more about 76 if I ever played the game. From looking at as Starfield they made some mistakes with it an felt they needed to improve a few things.
No. What it is is their best game since Skyrim. I’m enjoying it for what it is. For one I’m playing a charismatic/diplo character and there are so many Persuade and skill check options in dialog. Far more than in the last 4 Bethesda games combined. And if that’s boring I’ve also specced into John Wick one/two hit kill Pistol shit too.
Fortunately for them, they already got your money. That’s the Bethesda MO… over-promise, under-deliver and fans will justify the rest. How many endings was FO3 suppose to have? I fully understand liking something that has flaws, but they shouldn’t be excused because of it.
But it doesn’t have the same RPG elements as I was hoping
I feel like hope wasn't warranted there with the obvious streamlining trend since Skyrim*. I could maybe see being cautiously optimistic, as in waiting for reviews.
Not that it comes as a shock, I'm sure I'll hear others say the same with the next elder installment.
*=They at least made an attempt with FO3, skill checks+perks (plus the XP system is less grind-y than Oblivion even if it is simplified and less "immersive"). Also improved upon by FONV. (I didn't have a good start with Morrowind, in fairness it probably was my fault for some of it but I don't think skill grind and dice-roll misses are a good combo plus needing meta-knowledge even if that's what makes replaying fun... because slog.)
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