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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   2278 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 1, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Starfield thread.

Mediocre writing, animations, gameplay, many loading screens. And yet I can’t deny I played until 7am today, and I started very tired and wanting to go to sleep at 10. There’s a certain charm to this game that’s hard to describe, a sense of adventure that was in Skyrim but not - in my opinion - in Fallout 4 (although that might just be because I find post apocalyptic settings very boring). I slept for three hours, now I can’t stop thinking about playing some more. You overhear something, then the next thing you know you’re off a grand adventure around the galaxy; time vanishes.

Would I recommend it? I’m not sure, all the criticisms are valid. But I’m having more fun with it than with Baldur’s Gate 3 so far.

in Fallout 4 (although that might just be because I find post apocalyptic settings very boring).

Nah, it's not you. Fallout 4 was a shameless cashgrab trying to milk the positive sentiment people had for the previous part. It felt very sterile to me as well, but I loved Fallout 3.

I'm a little bit worried about the positive comparison to Skyrim, though. I know lots of people love it, but in my opinion it was already missing something fundamental to Bethesda games.

Whenever I've seen opinions on the wider Elder Scrolls series, it has always been that the most recent edition has been a tragic dumbing down of the series. People who played Daggerfall find Morrowind to be a mass market, lowest-common-denominator mess. People who played Morrowind think the same of Oblivion, and those who played Oblivion find the same issue with Skyrim.

I've only played the last two, but from what I've seen of the other games there is certainly some truth that the series gradually became simpler, more accessible - but perhaps at some cost. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar plan was in place for Fallout, until New Vegas came along and ruined any chance of people looking positively at the others.

I thought Fallout 4 was pretty decent, mechanically anyway. The gunplay was fine ("best in series" is not saying much, but I'll say it anyway), the settlement building and crafting were shallow but offered a decent respite from the endless "walk from person a to person b" quests or clearing what looks like the same dungeon post apocalyptic factory for the 10th time. I didn't play the story through to completion (and probably the less said of the writing, the better) but it was a reasonably memorable ~30 hours before I got bored. I liked the power armor. Solid 7/10.

Starfield seems considerably streamlined, even compared to Fallout 4. The loss of attributes means the only thing differentiating your character build is your choice of skills now, and unfortunately I have terminal RPG brain and cannot justify taking anything that doesn't grant me more utility (e.g., better lockpicking to open more doors and explore more locations, higher persuasion chance to open up new quest options, etc) and the combat isn't exactly difficult (you can spam medkits to brute force any encounter, even on Very Hard) so I can't see myself dropping a point into any of the weapons skills until, like, level 30+.

Companion AI seems even more braindead than I remember in Fallout 4, with followers regularly getting stuck on geometry, and they don't teleport to you until you change location, so they're useless in most fights. The space combat is basically just a minigame (and a hard DPS check if you're up against >3 enemies, as there aren't any useful mobility options, cover/asteroids are rare and get destroyed almost immediately) but the lego-style ship customization is still pretty fun to toy around with. Jump jets are cool, different planets having different levels of gravity makes combat feel a little different depending on where you are.

It feels extraordinarily casual. This is not necessarily a criticism, it's just a reasonably well executed AAA video game, with all that entails. My biggest complaint is that the design is unambitious: it's Fallout 4 In Space. Any time they had a choice of introducing more systematic complexity, they chose against. With the extended development cycle I was hoping we'd see something genuinely novel, but alas. I think they either experimented a lot (and cut a lot) or spent most of their time on content (and from what I can tell, there is a ton of it). Overall, it seems competent. It's not God's Gift to Gaming or whatever people were hyping themselves up for: it's a mainstream Bethesda game with as many rough edges filed down as possible. I'm still having a good time and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in an open world sci fi light RPG shooter.

The gunplay was fine ("best in series" is not saying much, but I'll say it anyway)

VATS is objectively the only proper way to play a Fallout game, so that's irrelevant.

the settlement building and crafting were shallow

I saw the potential in it, but it felt pointless.

but offered a decent respite from the endless "walk from person a to person b" quests or clearing what looks like the same dungeon post apocalyptic factory for the 10th time.

There's the rub, even if Fallout 3 had the same quest structure, it didn't feel like endless "clear dungeon"/"escort person". It felt the way 2rafa is describing Starfield - going on an adventure.

but it was a reasonably memorable ~30 hours before I got bored. I liked the power armor. Solid 7/10.

The contrast between your description and the final grade feels rather flabbergasting. I'd never give a 7/10 for a game too boring to finish (and yeah, I couldn't force myself to complete it either even though Steam says I clocked in 75 hours). As for memorability... I suppose, but I only remember it because of how disappointing it was.

It feels extraordinarily casual.

Ok... this is pretty much why I haven't bothered with a mainstream game in a long time. Thanks for the warning.

Starfield definitely seems more systematically complex than Skyrim, there’s a lot more to do, skills and stats are more prominent etc. I don’t know that dialogue is more complex, but then again I don’t think Morrowind had particularly complex dialogue trees vs the CRPGs of that era either.

but then again I don’t think Morrowind had particularly complex dialogue trees vs the CRPGs of that era either.

Yeah, I don't think the dialogue was particularly good, but the world-building was. The quests, the books you could find, all the little details scattered around the map... it was all very well done.

Yeah, I don't think the dialogue was particularly good, but the world-building was. The quests, the books you could find, all the little details scattered around the map... it was all very well done.

Seconded. The purpose of NPCs in Morrowind is admittedly to be walking lorebooks and direction-givers. The only character you can have in any way a dynamic conversation with is Vivec. (Which, hey, he achieved CHIM, so...) But Morrowind didn't focus on character relationships, so judging it by this rubric seems to miss the point.

Morrowind's writing is good in the same way of Dark Souls or Outer Wilds. It isn't about the interaction of characters. It's the process of collecting shards the backstory in your mind, and eventually piecing together truth out of fragments.

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