Saturday Morning Gaming: If you can’t be a good example, be a cautionary one
Starfield is the Next Big Thing coming down the pike from Bethesda. “Skyrim in Space” was the shorthand everybody used because nobody knew anything about the game except that it was made by Bethesda, it was set in space, and we were probably going to buy it 5 or 6 times before all was said and done.
It was announced at E3 all the way back in 2018 when we still had E3s:
That’s pretty exciting! I mean, it doesn’t tell you much of anything about the game but the music swells and you’re yelling to yourself “OH MY GOSH AFTER THE MODDERS GET THEIR HANDS ON THIS, THIS WILL BE AN AMAZING GAME!”
Last year, we finally got the teaser trailer:
That didn’t tell a whole lot more… okay, there are guns, there are robots, and there are sandwiches.
And, apparently, you can launch even though the cereal container is left open. Why would you leave the cereal container open? That stuff goes stale too quickly under the best of circumstances.
Since then, there have been some little pieces of information coming out in drips and drabs. We know the names of the faction you’re a part of, we know the name of the chief oppositional faction, and we know the names of the factions that it’s okay to shoot on sight:
And, last month, we finally learned about the robot that will become our main man:
And, see that? At 0:10? “One of our favorite companions in the game.”
THAT MEANS THAT THERE WILL BE OTHERS! Who, presumably, aren’t as good.
And we kept getting more and more excited about how it’s coming out on 11/11/22, 11 years to the day after Skyrim came out. It got a steam page and everything!
Well, of course, it got delayed:
An update on Redfall and Starfield. pic.twitter.com/pqDtx26Uu6
— Bethesda (@bethesda) May 12, 2022
And, of course, I’m thinking what everybody is thinking.
Daikatana.
Duke Nukem 4ever.
Cyberpunk 2077.
On top of everything, we’re in a place where Bethesda said “we can’t release it yet, it’ll be too buggy.” BETHESDA SAID THAT.
So I guess I’m hopeful that it’ll come out in the first half next year and cynically thinking that 11/11/23 will be more likely.
But a late game is only a disappointment once and a rushed game is a disappointment forever.
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is Starfield promotional art.)
Starfield was conceived when they gave up on getting gravity to work right in Skyrim and just decided to roll with it.Report
I’m playing through the Sim Settlements 2 mod on Fallout 4. It has the ‘automated settlement building’ from the first Sim Settlement stuff, plus a frankly gigantic plotline involving the Gunners and apparently eventually building an actual government. And an actual police force.
And when I say gigantic I mean it. This mod is DLC size…I’m like 60 hours into this specific game, and I haven’t actually done much of the main storyline (Main plot currently says I have to go into the Glowing Sea, Preston wants me to retake the Castle, I have met the Railroad but not really done anything with them, etc.) and the main storyline parts I have done are because the mod is clearly set up to have you do it _during_ parts of the main quest as a sort of gatekeeping.
So it’s been like 40 hours of actual mod-added stuff, and I’ve no idea how close to the end I am. And it’s fully and fairly-well voiced, with interesting characters, it actually interacts with the rest of the game in interesting ways. Like Concord is rebuilding itself, by itself. It’s not a settlement I’m in charge of or anything, it’s just…people have started living there, put up walls, etc. The area _around_ Diamond City has some shops and things, people just start _living_ places as nearby areas get cleared and settled.
It’s not only still being updated and fixed, but it just released Chapter 2, with entire new plots and characters that get added.
Incidentally, this is the first time i’ve ever played on Very Easy mode (Because I only care about the story here, and I’ve already beaten the game on Survival) so the combat is hilariously easy, but…I hadn’t realized that Very Easy seems to nerf your companion’s combat also, too. I can stand there and watch Raiders and Piper exchange gunshots for like five minutes, doing almost no damage to each other…or damage to me either, although my guns do actually work.
Oh…and I think this is the first playthough I’ve gotten Curie in a synth body before I even _met_ the Railroad, so I took her along to meet them, hoping there would be _some_ comment during that…but apparently not.Report
Holy crap, that sounds awesome.Report
It’s weird, because literally eight years ago or something I was in a discussion on the Steam forum about how there should be a Fallout 4 mod that let you build a government and do taxes and stuff, and in it I mentioned the first Sim Settlements and said they _sort_ did something like that, where you set up shops that paid taxes to operate defenses, but it all was local, and it would be cool if they then went on to make a government, where you collect those taxes and use it to build parts of the government and clear other areas.
…and, like, either I can see the future, or the guy who did this saw my comment, or (more likely) it was really obvious to a lot of people, but when I read what version 2 did I legitimately said WTF?!Report
Oh, another fun fact: During the development of Fallout 4, stuff with the Gunners were planned as a DLC, and if you look around, you can find a lot of hints that they’re doing something very specific, and funded by people outside the Commonwealth.
But this idea was cut pretty early in development, thus leaving the Gunners a sort of weird disconnected Raider faction with some fairly heavy bases like GNN and Quincy, places that probably were originally going to be off map without the DLC (Like Far Harbour), and they just moved them on the map and now you can fight your way into…for no actual reason.
This is despite the fact the Gunners play a pretty important part in the backstory of the Minutemen. We never really get any answers or anything, and it weirdly sorta leaves the Minutemen story unfinished also. They get no closure at all.
I mean, this mod isn’t going to answer those questions canonically either, but it has, at least, invented some explanations of some stuff. Never did explain who the Gunners were working for, although as the author probably has no idea what that canon intention is, that’s probably for the best.
It is an interesting question, actually. The obvious answer is The Institute, but that fundamentally doesn’t make any sense, and the hints point to it being someone outside the Commonwealth. Current money is on the Enclave, despite the fact they really, really should not still exist. (Also, the Enclave is literally never mentioned in Fallout 4.)Report
I’ve been playing a ton of Banished, a city builder in which you start out (on Hard mode) with four families, a handful of children, and a wagon full of food and supplies and nothing else, and you’ve got to build a settlement from nothing. You’ve got to build a place for collecting resources and collect enough stone and wood to build houses and facilities for hunting and collecting food from the nearby forests before the first winter arrives and you all freeze to death. You can’t even engage in agriculture until you’re able to build a trader and collect enough resources to trade for seeds or animals. The only enemies in the game are your own incompetence as a strategist and the occasional tornado, fire, disease, or blight. I have yet to get through a game without suffering through a couple of seasons without people starving to death because I outgrew my food supply. Think of it as the original Warcraft without orcs. I started out playing with mods because who wouldn’t want to raise llamas instead of sheep if you had a choice, am I right? However, I started over with no mods because I wanted to earn achievements. It’s a delightfully engaging sandbox of a game, if you’re into that sort of thing.Report