deanb Posted August 28, 2023 Report Share Posted August 28, 2023 Figure I'd make a thread for this (surprised I hadn't already). Comes out in a few days (early release at least). I'm kinda hype (I am using it as a reason to get a new PC), I get that Bethesda stuff can be clunky but I kinda like the largeness of the worlds and coming across little weird bits and just immersing yourself in something for hours and hours. There's signs in some of the videos (especially their deep dive) this is likely still on Creation Engine (aka Gamebryo) so I'm sure it'll have some cute little bugs like being launched into space by putting down a sandwich (and not because you hit the "launch my ship into space" button). I'm curious to see what they'll do with the planet side of things - I'm figuring it'll be sort of in-betweens Mass Effects planets and No Mans Sky - they're many many planets, and some auto-generation for a few and some set pieces on others. figure that the auto-generated ones will be an evolution of the auto-quest thing they had in Skyrim and (annoyingly done) in FO4 with Garvey and his settlements in distress - so you'll have like "Bognor Regis III" with a space complex being attacked by pirates but it'll be nameless pirates and auto-cobbled together base. Looking forward to building my own space ship - it looks pretty intuitive and high customisable. And I'm enjoying they're not really pushing the main story side of things with the alien artefact ring things; I'm sure by now they have a ton of data that says no one ever found Shaun or got rid of Macho Man Randy Savage the dragons. Regular trailer: Deep Dive Tested (Adam Savage from MythBusters) has an ongoing series where they build up the default ship. It's been pretty fun so far. Especially if you're into prop building stuff - it's been broken into various steps so like 3D printing, lighting, painting, and is to culminate in them doing a motion control shoot with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted August 28, 2023 Report Share Posted August 28, 2023 (edited) I'm really torn on whether to get it or not. I bounced off of Fallout 4 pretty quickly and couldn't get into Skyrim the last time I tried. I've been avoiding the marketing mostly because I kinda didn't care. But now the early access comes on the exact date my vacations start, so it's tempting to buy it if only because I'll actually have 10 days to no life the game and Bethesda RPGs are kinda perfect for that. It being a sci-fi game also makes it way more appealing to me. Kinda wish Starfield and Phantom Liberty had swapped release dates, though, cause I'd much rather have that time to sink into the latter tbh :(. Edited August 28, 2023 by toxicitizen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted August 28, 2023 Report Share Posted August 28, 2023 You could always just get a month of Game Pass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted August 28, 2023 Report Share Posted August 28, 2023 I don't think that would let me play on Sept 1st, though? That kinda defeats the purpose for me. By the actual launch date, I'll be halfway through my vacation and probably wouldn't have enough time left to really dig into it. I'd like to have a realistic chance of finishing it before Phantom Liberty, and with MK1 early access on the 13th that's not going to happen unless I can pretty much finish it before having to go back to work. Besides, if I were to get into it and play for a hundred hours, I'd rather be earning achievements on Steam. I still haven't finished Trails to Azure anyway, so I might end up not getting it at all to focus on that. Or maybe I'll just get Armored Core 6 instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MetalCaveman Posted August 28, 2023 Report Share Posted August 28, 2023 Looks cool, from some early impressions some people are saying it's their "least buggiest game to date", though I'm sure there's still some issues lol, that said, between limited budget and limited time, I think I'll pass for now. Definitively looking forward to playing it at some point though. The Tested stuff has been pretty neat, always cool to see how stuff like that is made. \m/ \m/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted August 29, 2023 Report Share Posted August 29, 2023 21 hours ago, toxicitizen said: I don't think that would let me play on Sept 1st, though? That kinda defeats the purpose for me. By the actual launch date, I'll be halfway through my vacation and probably wouldn't have enough time left to really dig into it. I'd like to have a realistic chance of finishing it before Phantom Liberty, and with MK1 early access on the 13th that's not going to happen unless I can pretty much finish it before having to go back to work. Besides, if I were to get into it and play for a hundred hours, I'd rather be earning achievements on Steam. I still haven't finished Trails to Azure anyway, so I might end up not getting it at all to focus on that. Or maybe I'll just get Armored Core 6 instead. You can get a month of game pass and then get the $30 upgrade to the premium edition for early access... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted August 29, 2023 Report Share Posted August 29, 2023 4 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said: You can get a month of game pass and then get the $30 upgrade to the premium edition for early access... Didn't realize you could do that but I kinda don't want to own anything tied to Microsoft's shitty app. It's cheaper but if I'm going to be spending money at all I'd rather it be on the Steam version. It was never the price that was giving me pause, anyway; just the fact that I bounced off of Bethesda's previous two games. Plus, this is a game that's guaranteed to be a better experience a year from now once all the DLC will be out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted September 3, 2023 Author Report Share Posted September 3, 2023 General thoughts at 12hrs in; The instant there's a mod to change the names from "Silenced Grendel" "Modified Grendel" "Grendel" to "Grendel - Modified" "Grendel - Suppressed" I'm getting it. Explanation for the lockpicking minigame is obtuse. I think I've got the hang of it now but something that could have done with a visual tutorial. It's not as intuitive as the pick/hairpin of Fallout/TES. You kind of need to actively decide to explore. Like say Fallout you can be heading to a mission point and along the way find a library with super mutants and go explore that, then continue to your quest and stumble on a hut of cannibals and a note that activates a new quest, etc. But due to the navigation/jump drive thing it sort of means you very much go a direct to b, no Cs and Zs in the middle. I do like you can (assuming you're close enough) send stuff straight to your ship, and you can also sell stuff direct from your ship. Nice QoL. Though with the in-world thing of your ship having set storage (compared to a chest of infinite space that you get in TES/FO) Snowy really likes ensuring I'm healed up or picking the most suboptimal gun for a situation (he likes to step on my quick access keys) I'm liking the skill upgrade mechanism of doing challenges before you can upgrade to the next step. I dislike finding out that's how it works when I was wanting to spend more on carry weight They've really nailed how my home town looks. Probably needs proper maps for some of the set locations - New Atlantis is not fun to navigate. Had google so I could find out where my church was as the map for the area is just heigh dots with a few place markers. Which is fine for Random Planet Alpha III Seti with a few caves and oil rigs plopped about, but less so for major metropolitan area. Had a headache getting onto the NAT to change zones because while I could see it, it was 100ft below me behind inch thick glass and for the life of me I couldn't find it. Bonus is however: Fast travel mode of "point your scanner at a place - normally your ship - and zip straight there" is pretty neat. Do need a rover or something for planets though. I do like them cheating with the food design. Someone just said "make everything a cube, change the label to say "Apple" "Wine" "Mac n Cheese" and call it a day. Not got on to ship building and settler building just yet. I am somewhat chomping at the bit on that one but the game is happy to hold me off from that for now. Same with upgrades/mod benches too. I've got materials from casual mining but 95% of mods require base materials I've not had access to yet. Surprised there isn't a "break this item down" kind of option. Turn eggmund in plastics, circuit board, and wire or something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted September 3, 2023 Report Share Posted September 3, 2023 I've got a bunch of mods to recommend for PC players: DLSS & XeSS Bridge: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/196 This one replaces FSR with DLSS or XeSS for if you have an RTX or Intel card. It gave me a 5% performance boost right off the bat, without changing any settings, just because DLSS can run in hardware while FSR was having to run in software. Neutral LUTs: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/323 This one gets rid of the weird color grading a lot of the environments tend to have, massively improves the look of the game imo. As a side benefit, it makes the black of space actually look black, instead of navy blue. Though I do recommend using his suggested modification to increase star brightness back to vanilla levels (or higher, I cranked mine way up to 500, vanilla is 110, I would have gone higher but above 500 you start to get weird flashing artifacts). Smooth UI: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/270 This one replaces the UI elements that normally run at 30 fps (the ship reticle, some of the menus, etc) with versions that run at up to 120 fps instead. Really makes the experience feel smoother. QoL ini tweaks: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/381 Just a few nice Quality of Life tweaks you can make to the ini, pick and choose which ones you want. Quick & Clean Main Menu: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/418 This one skips all the intro stuff so you launch straight into the main menu, and also gets rid of some of the main menu clutter, like the Message of the Day. Just nice. Value to Weight Ratio Sort: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/476 Makes one of your inventory sort options the item's value-to-weight ratio, so you can figure out what's best to hang onto and what's best to dump when you get over encumbered. And finally, last but definitely not least, I recommend using SpecialK for anyone with an HDR display. The game uses Windows Auto-HDR rather than native HDR, and it's fine, but SpecialK can inject HDR and does a better job. Basic instructions for setting it up and download link: https://wiki.special-k.info/SpecialK/Global Instructions for getting HDR working: https://wiki.special-k.info/en/HDR/Retrofit The main stable version doesn't work with Starfield right now, you need to update it to the nightly one from the Discord. There are instructions on doing that in the first link. Enjoy! 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted September 3, 2023 Report Share Posted September 3, 2023 (edited) 2 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said: Smooth UI: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/270 This one replaces the UI elements that normally run at 30 fps (the ship reticle, some of the menus, etc) with versions that run at up to 120 fps instead. Really makes the experience feel smoother. Worth noting that this one replaces game files and it sounds like this disables achievements. So the Achievement Enabler mod is also handy if you want to prevent your save from being flagged as modded. But yeah, this mod is kind of a must. It's baffling that they'd have those UI elements run at 30fps. The PC version is lacking some really basic stuff... Edited September 3, 2023 by toxicitizen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted September 4, 2023 Report Share Posted September 4, 2023 3 hours ago, toxicitizen said: Worth noting that this one replaces game files and it sounds like this disables achievements. So the Achievement Enabler mod is also handy if you want to prevent your save from being flagged as modded. But yeah, this mod is kind of a must. It's baffling that they'd have those UI elements run at 30fps. The PC version is lacking some really basic stuff... It does not disable achievements, none of the ones I listed do. I've been playing for hours with all of them and have still been getting achievements*, without the special achievement re-enabler mod. As far as I'm aware the only ones that disable achievements are console commands. *I've been playing the MS Store/Game Pass version, so I can't swear it works the same on Steam, but I'd be very surprised if they were stricter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted September 4, 2023 Report Share Posted September 4, 2023 1 hour ago, TheMightyEthan said: It does not disable achievements, none of the ones I listed do. I've been playing for hours with all of them and have still been getting achievements*, without the special achievement re-enabler mod. As far as I'm aware the only ones that disable achievements are console commands. *I've been playing the MS Store/Game Pass version, so I can't swear it works the same on Steam, but I'd be very surprised if they were stricter. That's possible. I read that any mods that modifies game files will disable achievements but I didn't verify for myself, I didn't wanna take any chances so I installed the mod just in case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted September 7, 2023 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2023 Soundtrack for when you're commuting to your non-space trucker job 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted September 9, 2023 Author Report Share Posted September 9, 2023 I quite like Jonathan's videos on the Royal Armouries channel and was waiting for his video on Starfield. Some good thoughts on certain weapons in space too. Bethesda games have always been a bit funky on guns - I would say this feels the most like they've had a proper thought on how these work. (this is also how I find out the Grendel is a P90, which given the SG-1 chat in Discord yesterday is something that has made me ashamed to not notice) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted September 13, 2023 Author Report Share Posted September 13, 2023 Final video (I presume, given context) of the Frontier build. (it's a shame that given the model looks really good that it looks like a model in the final filming ) Full playlist here; https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJtitKU0CAejiJisqHdCX4O-1-zJzfW36 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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