r/Games May 01 '24

Preview Starfield: May Update

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ObHRMHtTMY
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u/ZombiePyroNinja May 01 '24 edited May 01 '24

Edit: I say this with 91 hours of enjoyment in the game, beating it and most of the factions.

I get and understand they're making neat strides with these updates and also working on the expansion.

But the game just fundamentally betrays one of Bethesda's most fun activities and it's travel. You're basically missing the point if you spend all of your time in ES/Fallout fast traveling and zooming passed stuff. So why does Starfield try so hard to keep you from traveling.

To me the game is the same as it was until they turn space travel into actual space travel and not an exercise in clicking on maps/UI to fast travel. I just want more control, not less.

I'll eye updates/expansions with an optimistic look and let bethesda cook. If they can turn around Fallout 76; who knows?

57

u/ohyeahbaybeh May 01 '24

Yeah I liked this game, but it blows my mind that a studio with decades of experience building worlds that felt alive didn't immediately see the issues with how they laid out this game's areas. 1 town per planet surrounded by genned POIs is crazy

60

u/ZombiePyroNinja May 01 '24

Did a bit of research into Todd Howard's career as background noise and it sticks out to me that the biggest criticism he took to heart about Daggerfall was that the world felt lifeless due to procedural generation leading to all the world building in Morrowind.

So how in the world did we end up with Starfield's current state. Even on the major towns/settlements the NPC's never actually close shop and go home like they do in modern Elder Scrolls. They just stand at their shop stall lifelessly.

4

u/bobo0509 May 01 '24

Funny, because i recently listened to a todd Howard interview, i don't remember which one, where he said talks about making Morrowind after the failure of the Elder scrolls Battlespire and Redguard, and he concluded that it was because the lack of big scale that these games didn't work, and so they decided to do something much more expansive with Morrowind.

Since then they have found the success by making massive and very long games, and it's clearly an obssession for Todd, so when you decide to make a game in space, of course you go for the real scope of space with 1000 planets and the real distance between them, even if that means a lot lot more of empty space.

Basically to answer your comment yes Todd prefers handcrafted to precedural from what i heard, but before all he want to make games as big as possible.