Whiny nerds who haven’t read a new book in over two decades shed tears over the fact their boring-ass game sucks and is getting swirlied in the toilet bowl by actual cool games
im hesitant to call Starfield actually “cool” yet. BG3 is rad though.
im hesitant to call Starfield actually “cool” yet.
I’ve been tearing into it a lot, but it is genuinely the best thing Bethesda’s put out in the past 20 years. It’s still tepid Bethesda mush but the writing quality has varied wildly. The quest I posted about yesterday was just awful, but I did a questline today that entailed hunting down every member of a fascist militia and ultimately led to being able to just summarily execute a CEO for his crimes (but mostly for resisting arrest, because he was very dumb too).
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hunting down every member of a fascist militia
I get to kill Vanguard???
No, it’s some weird revanchist stabbed-in-the-back lunatics from the FC whose entire plan was to get the warrior’s death they were denied by the war ending (the dumbest part being their side won and their primary grievance is that they were arrested when they tried to keep fighting after the war ended). You hunt them and their new devotees down in the FC Ranger questline which is a nonsensically written organization that’s trying to be a mashup of Texas Rangers and ME Specters but at the same time is a toothless federal agency with less than a dozen members who are operating on behalf of the weak federal government of a federation of ancap despotries that simultaneously grants them no legal powers but also lets them just run around doing whatever with no oversight to the point that you can literally just up and kill one of the dictators of the FC at the end of it and literally no one cares.
[Worldbuilding spoilers ahead]
Ahhh a different fascist militia that wouldn’t end the war then! Makes sense.
Both sides suck ass and this universe is absolutely missing a socialist faction pursuing a Star Trek-like future. If I end up starting a mod project for the game one of my ideas on the backburner is a socialist faction who are essentially neo-bolsheviks that cite Star Trek in-game as their inspiration for the future they’re fighting to build.
I also think a project is needed to add much-needed depth to the liberal cities. The Well in New Atlantis is getting cited by libs as the “punk” part and the “dark underbelly” but it lacks punch. It’s just the old town, no longer maintained. There’s no real economic criticism in it as far as I can see and it’s only bad because it’s old. Additions like beggars, homeless and desperate peddlers selling trinkets and tourist guff spilling out into the upper level and train station entrances will make an absolutely massive improvement. Throw in some radiants for pickpockets, beggar actions, UC police beating someone to death (give them guns with no ammunition and they should beat the target to death), among other things and you’ll have an environment that gives the player a much stronger representation of the underbelly that should exist more clearly in these places. Might also be an opportunity to tell some real poverty stories, include stories about kids more for some impact, particularly as kids in Bethesda games are almost non-existent and when they do exist they’re always just incredibly annoying.
Anyway that’s more or less my notes-taking so far for mod improvements to parts of the game that annoy me. The only other major settlement I’ve visited so far is Mars and that’s got some relatively ok critique going on because of the fracking explosions. But I haven’t seen it really tell any stories about what the impact of those explosions would be on the people though. Could be an avenue to go down to give it more depth and criticise its society better.
Oh and I hated the quest on Mars where I had to get an admin-assistant job. Why did they send me in my own spaceship up to the spacestation to apply for a job on the planet? It’s so ridiculous. Someone getting an admin-assistant job would not have enough money to own their own starship. There should be a shuttle that the poor people pay to use and get from A to B when needed.
Someone getting an admin-assistant job would not have enough money to own their own starship. There should be a shuttle that the poor people pay to use and get from A to B when needed.
Something about the future being as extremely car brained as present day North America is kinda unintentionally funny though.
It’s fucking weird. The idea of being a space pilot is literally the fantasy the game sells. But that’s meaningless if everyone in the galaxy with even an admin job has a spaceship like they’re cars. Why would people work as gunner/engineer on someone else’s spaceship if they have enough money to own their own? Why are all these people working with/for the player for wages?
It’s absolutely ridiculous. You need to ground space travel in people who dream of going to the stars but are stuck due to it being out of their means vs the people who do have the means. And you need to give the player many different possible backstories for how they attained these means. Either luck. Or piracy. Or they’re a super engineer who built one. Or they’re actually rich. Etc etc. You’ve got to give the player roleplay options to properly fill this in.
All of these things should be relatively easy to fix though, since the only places you have to change to fix these are the major cities. You can probably fix this with 10-15 new NPCs per city with dialog, and then a bunch of NPCs with no dialog other than a 1 line response.
Yeah I think it’s also a big problem that the money system is so compressed that it’s hard to know how much anything is worth. Like if an apple or a meal is around 100 credits, then the 10k that small ship would cost is basically walking around money for most people. A penthouse apartment on Neon is 25k is, so is property just really cheap there or is food expensive?
Ultimately gameplay balance and all that, but it seems like very strange world building to me.
Why would people work as gunner/engineer on someone else’s spaceship if they have enough money to own their own?
For a wage? Like, idk, they still need income no matter how cheap starships are
It’s absolutely ridiculous. You need to ground space travel in people who dream of going to the stars but are stuck due to it being out of their means vs the people who do have the means. And you need to give the player many different possible backstories for how they attained these means. Either luck. Or piracy. Or they’re a super engineer who built one. Or they’re actually rich. Etc etc. You’ve got to give the player roleplay options to properly fill this in.
Yeah, the game starts you off as a laborer working on a job site that can’t even afford have a ship permanently on station, then you’re just given a decent starter ship that’s worth more than most other small ships and that’s it you’re set until you can get a better one or make meaningful upgrades to it. The Frontier really should have been a non-modifiable, non-sellable ship that’s just there to paper over the issue of you needing a ship until you can buy, find, or steal one for yourself.
The powers in particular seem like they can be VERY powerful and will remain strong even when you raise damage significantly.
Yeah, it feels like ME1 biotics all over where they’re just free hard CC options that can lock down entire rooms as every enemy is stuck ragdolling around for 30 seconds each. They really need to just get shunted to zero-g movement with maybe some “disoriented” debuff instead of ragdolling as they drift around. Enemies can literally maneuver just fine in zero-g and it even makes sense that a bunch of people used to fighting onboard ships that can lose or regain gravity at any moment wouldn’t just go limp if gravity suddenly got a bit weird.
In the future nothing will be handled by e-mail.
All the quests in futurey games where you have to go to some place in person instead of just calling someone on your phone or sending an e-mail are… upsetting.
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We’ll figure out how to toggle the “essential” flag and then their days will end.
Yeah that’s a good one. The crimson fleet stuff rules too. I want to make a mod that adds more communism flavor to the crimson fleet (or takes out all the individualist bs from freestar collective). Pirates are cool but building communism in space capitalism is way cooler
If you tell me I have to play either Harry Potter games or No man skies but Bethesda, I’d choose the latter in a heartbeat.
BG3 is legitimately one of the best games I’ve ever played. They have to iron out the bugs still, frankly, but it was a pure blast to play through the game. One of the most impressive games I think I’ve ever seen, narratively, because of the sheer amount of choices with actual consequence there are in the game.
I’m waiting on the mods. That’s what makes most Bethesda games good, lol.
It gets much better, but its a really shit first 15-20 levels. The game wants you to play it in a specific way and my god it’s going to hurt you with boredom until you do.
isn’t it just like a once-and-done single player game? of course other newer games are gonna overtake it
By, like, C-list devs iirc. Not exactly AAA title material, even with the IP.
How you gonna diss the Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour devs that way?
Not even c-list, that’s too generous. They were a half-step above shovelware devs. Everything they ever released was kids movie tie-in garbage.
BUT YOURE A WIZARD NOW, 'ARRY
If I wanted to play a good shitty wizard game I’d re-install Magicka
Dunka dunka! Was Magicka 2 any good? I had a lot of stupid fun with the first one.
I played through it once and never felt the itch to do it again. It’s not bad exactly, but it feels like they put too much thought into balance after making Wizard Wars so it doesn’t have the same level of unbridled chaos and danger that made the first one so much fun. Also I think the camera is zoomed in closer or something because everything felt kind of smaller-scale.
I’d play the PS1 HP with blocky-ass hagrid
Remember all the streamers throwing a fit about how they had to play it even if it meant shoveling more money at a transphobe because it was the biggest game of the year (in February lol)
“Biggest game of the year” just means whatever game got the most advertising
Pizza Tower is still the best game to come out this year, fight me nerds.
EDIT: So TIL that Pizza Towers dev is a shithead (see replies below) so pirate that shit
pizza tower dev is iffy af tho from what i hear
Wdym?
He put a Native American stereotype in the game because Nintendo removed one from Mr. Game & Watch in Smash Bros and has a history of using slurs. CW: racism and homophobia https://batz.tumblr.com/post/710753810688180224/i-dont-pay-attention-to-pizza-tower-stuff-what
Oh that fucking SUCKS, god damn it. Why can’t one thing I like not be connected to some kind of bigoted shit
You might like Caves of Qud, and that dev is a decent person as far as I can tell (and it has been tested somewhat)
I might need to make an antistreamer aktion emoji
pizza tower is too expensive
Pirate it lol the dev is shit
Yarrgh
Not interested in Starfield, but 2023 has games like Pizza Tower, Pikmin 4 and Baldurs Gate 3. Why would I ever play Hogfarts Legacy of Piss?
BG3 is unmatchable, not only for hogwarts legacy but for every other game.
Starfield on the other end… is the same oblivion stuff but in 2023 and without 2023 capabilities
from what i head the systems are worse than a bunch of their own previous work let alone contemporary products. maybe someday i’ll play more than 10 minutes and find out for myself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I was a fan of both DOS 1 and 2 and I’m finding the systems in BG3 much more fun. I like the action economy of 5e much more than the pips of their earlier games.
Pretty much. Bet if they re-released oblivion, prior to BG3, it’d still roflstomp horkboris legacy
and without 2023 capabilities
They’ve gotta rewrite the engine from the ground up if they want to bring it up to modern standards. There are fundamental problems with it at its core that can’t be resolved without a rewrite that addresses limiting decisions that were made with its overall design a very very long time ago.
Gamebryo really needs to be thrown in the trash. It’s just absurd that they’re still using it. They don’t even have to, can’t they use the Idtech engines?
Idtech engines
I suspect that ID lost one of their most important people when Steven Ash died, this man has consistently had a hand in projects that have turned into cult hits or very high quality games in some way and I don’t think that’s a coincidence, I think they were probably highly influential on every single team they were on. I would be very tentative about assuming ID’s work maintains the current quality without him.
You are right, they should rewrite the engine, but they didn’t and they preferred enforce the development on the re-re-re-re-re release of titles like skyrim for every possible platform on the plant.
Look at what Larian did instead… Took 6 years, added beta access and listened to the players. BG3 is far from being bug-free or “perfect” but they released a game that give almost total freedom on how you can play it, and doesn’t feel like you are on rails every time.
The problem is bethesda and others “AAA” software houses for years just did the lazy job and now that a software house showed what 6 years of real development should look like everyone is doing the Pikachu face and crying because “We don’t want BG3 to set a new standard”. The issue is us, the players, that keep buying shit for too much money.
The issue is us, the players, that keep buying shit for too much money.
Randian logic, absolute nonsense.
Entertainment serves as escapism under capitalism and is as much a requirement for people as food. “The problem is people keep buying bad food, not the companies that make unhealthy cheap shit.”
As long as people are captured by a system of wage slavery they will be compelled to seek escapism from it for their own sanity. The companies shovelling out dogshit are taking advantage of that, it’s not the fault of the buyers, it’s the fault of the system. If you gave these companies to the employees making the art instead of shareholders and publishers you’d get work that is a passion instead. The problem is ultimately where power lies in the companies, with the ownership.
I’m waiting for the modding community to overhaul Starfield in 1 - 3 years before I’ll even touch it.
BG3 is a blast and I can’t get enough. It’s the first game I’ve played that’s felt like I’m a part of a fantasy novel. IMO it’s because unlike a lot of other CRPG’s it’s really good about pacing out it’s lore and not info dumping all over the player.
I’m waiting for the modding community to overhaul Starfield in 1 - 3 years before I’ll even touch it.
I’ll still hold some interest on the next TES game exactly because of this.
But for starfield based on the reviews I’ve seen the issues are pretty much fundamental to the game as designed, e.g exploration limitations doesn’t seem like something that can be easily modded so I’m not holding any hopes that mods will fix this.
I remember around the time of the HP game release chuds were rallying around it to own the libs or whatever.
I’m glad that the HP game is going to be forgotten in favor of two games that let you choose pronouns, one of which lets you choose a penis or vulva.
Even before release, Hogwarts Legacy looked like an extremely by the numbers TrIpLe A game by some developers who’d never made anything good. It was totally carried by the license and being released at a quiet time for big bideo bames, no wonder even the biggest Rowling fart hufflepuffers don’t care about it anymore
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fart hufflepuffers
If it’s any consolation to the HP libs, your game got an all-time concurrent player peak of 879,308 while BG3 only got 875,343. But also the games this year are stacked and Harry Potter sucks, so get owned.
You just reminded me that I need to hop back on BG3.
Still on my first playthrough and I want to do several more eventually. 😭
Same! I’m barely out of the nautiloid wreckage, and already having a blast.
I finished my first playthrough, and now I don’t know what to do with myself. I keep coming back to BG3 and playing the first 3 hours with a new character.
879,308
s
It’s wild to get angry over pronouns in SF materials, in particular. If I’m reading some spacefarring material and there isn’t at least one alien race or human being bucking a gender binary, I’ll be dissapointed as hell.
Especially since aliens have little reason to follow human ideas of gender and sex
Why would one get mad that some people enjoy another game more than they enjoy the game one enjoys more than the game they enjoy more?
I asked myself the same thing. If you enjoy your slop, what do you care about what the other piggies eat?
Because you want to feel validated that your slop is especially good
I would simply not attach my personality into triple A by the numbers garbage made from the IP of Terf-Queen.
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bg3 boring? did we play the same game lol
There are people who just equate anything turn based with boredom. I’m not one of them, but they exist.
DAE turn based!!! in CURRENT-YEAR!!!
I dont mind the loading screens. I just dont mind that there are a lot of them since they are like less than 5seconds each ? Of course I would prefer no loading screens at all but im also sure a seamless Starfield would be a much bigger and probably expensive game to make.
There are things that bother me about Starfield. The loading screens arent one of them.
I think it’s more that the transitions are jarring. If they’d made jumps and inter planetary transitions first person cutscene loads like a lot of space games like freelancer, there’d be less complaining. And occasionally they are that and they decided not to make it the only way.
Anyway script extender is now out, so open cities and better transitions are likely a monthbor two away.
Elite dangerous doesn’t even having loading screens for flying from surface to orbit to another star system. Like there are loading screens, but they’re all hidden so it looks seamless. Ten year old game.
