Starfield

[Harrison]

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Has anyone tried this game yet?

You would have needed to be living under a rock to avoid seeing something about this game. Microsoft and Xbox have been throwing money at it, as the next greatest revolution in gaming, and saying it is their complete focus as a first party project for the Xbox brand. If true that's a lot to pin all your hopes on.

It's one of the only exclusive games this generation the Xbox had received, compared to many on PS5. So you can only play this if you have an Xbox or PC. It was released on Gamepass day one so costs nothing more to try out. And also available on Steam if you are not a subscriber.

I do have Gamepass so didn't have to pay anything extra for it, so thought I would give it a try.

Prerelease footage might have given the impression this was a space sim akin to Elite or No Mans Sky, but with full RPG story led missions. That's definition not true. Instead it feels exactly like Fallout or Skyrim but set in a space based future.

The spaceship bits are just in space doing dog fights against pirates or travelling to a planet or ship. You can't physically fly down to a planet or fly around the planet surface and land where you like. Instead when you arrive at the planet you can open up the starmap, get a rotatable view of the planet and pick one of the predetermined sites and select land. It then goes to a loading screen, followed by a landing animation, then you are landed and sat in the cockpit ready to leave the ship and walk around.
Similar to how KOTOR handled it 20 years ago . So in reality the planets are just like each big location in theirprevious games, and the spaceship is just the quick travel mechanism between them.

There is a bit more to the space ships than just that though. You do get full flight controls when in space. You have power management a bit like Elite, NMS or Star Wars Squadrons and can move powerbertween weapons, shields and engines Etc. The space fighting is pretty good if a little easy feeling. You have access to lasers, bullets and missiles. And navigating and moving between systems is similar to landing. You pick a destrination on the star map, divert your power to the engine, and tell it to jump. You then instantly arrive at your destination.

You can also upgrade your ship at a dealer. Bolt on new modules to replace or make the ship bigger. Asd extra weapons. And can buy new ships. Able to own a maximum of 15.

There is also a ship designer where you can buy all the parts and build whatever you like. I've seen some games build ships that look a bit like the Millenium Falcon. In only 10 hours into the game so am still using the first ship, so can't really comment on that further. I've also only had dog fights with a few pirate ships so am far from discovering everything. Apparently there are derelict ships you can discover and board to determine what happened to them. That sounds like fun.

When on planet however the game is very Skyrim/Fallout in look, feel and action. Combat isn't that different, all be it without the Pip boy. You talk to NPCs with the same multi answer and question optio s system. Plus the persuasion questions to try and get them to agree to something. You can recruit people to join your crew (party), thrn they follow you around, or are waiting at the ship, depending on what you are doing. And they fight alongside you. So the majority of thy game mechanics, look and feel of the game is like all their other games. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you liked the Fallout and Morrowind games you will really enjoy this.

I've tested it on PC, and also on Steam Deck via Gamepass Ultimate cloud streaming and it ran well on both. Obviously the cloud streaming is locked at the same 30fps as the Xbox version. I know I'm never fussed about fast framerates, and for a game like this which isn't a twitch shooter the framerate is fine.

One thing is certain, it feels like it's going to be a very large game overall and I've only just got started. I would say it reminds me the most of a mix of Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic, with the addition of some space flight and combat similar to No Mans Sky.

Worth playing? Definitely. Not revolutionary but very good. Definitely a 10/10.

If there is one negative is that the character models and overall objects in the game don't look any different to Skyrim or Fallout. You can even see many of the same assets being used again. And the character animations when they talk are still fairly basic.

Bugs are few so far. I've encountered many instances where I've approached an NPC and started a conversion and had to look at the back of their head for the whole thing, or they are stood behind something. The only other one was the woman with me jumped over an obstacle behind me, but her animation got stuck mid-jump so she then floated along next to me with her legs tucked up and her arms out to the side. That was quite funny.

Let me know what you thought of it if you have given it a go.

[Demon Cleaner]

I played for around 30 hours now, would say my experience is mostly positive.

There are some bugs, like game just quitting or freezing, f.ex. if I play with the controller, after 10-20 minutes I cannot move around anymore and have to continue playing with mouse/keyboard, nothing helps, only a fresh game restart. I doesn't happen when I connect the controller with a cable though. And before you say something, I play EVERY other game with the SAME controller over BT, so it's not the controller or the connection.

One quest I cannot finish because there's a bug. Have probably to wait until it's fixed. I've encountered a fair amount of bugs, none of them game breaking though, just annoying.

Character models are indeed not the best, especially the eyes, like drawn in Deluxe Paint. No idea why Bethesda still goes with the old engine and doesn't change to Unreal engine?

People are always complaining about the Ubisoft formula, but after 30 hours in I must say that there are also many fetch quests and uninteresting stuff you're doing over and over again. Running back and forth, luckily the fast traveling system is working and PC loading times are fine. Best to go to a mission point is to open the menu and click on set way point with X (I think), it will skip everything and take you straight away to the landing zone where you need to go, I'm using that all the time, saves a lot of time.

Gameplay starts to get repetitive after 30 hours, most of the people say the game gets more interesting with time, I feel the opposite at the moment.

Surveying a whole planet is pain in the ass, I did one for the L.I.S.T. mission as I had to, but the whole thing took me over one hour and was super boring at some point as there's also not a lot to discover on a planet. There are many points of discovery but after the 10th abandoned factory, which btw look nearly identical, you don't feel anymore like investigating the building. I had one of those where I went underground with the lift and it looked like a 1:1 copy of a building I just had been 1 hour before but on a different planet.

No map in cities, wtf, you will get lost easily. Find the weapon shop you were in last time, good luck finding it. But the cities are by far the nicest spots in the game, I like them very much.

Talking to NPCs is also rather nice, although I don't wanna hear the vendor's life story, but all the others are fine. I like that you always get also to chose to be bad, especially when the NPC starts talking shit straight away, so you can reply accordingly, or just kill him. I tend to be ruthless in those situations and I can if I then really want to.

Other than that the world(s) feel nice, a lot to discover, space combat is ok I guess, nothing too fancy. I have the Shieldbreaker ship, which is gorgeous and very powerful. I also like the whole setting and like you mentioned it has also in my opinion a lot in common with Mass Effect (I never played KOTOR) and I find Starfield to be the better game, as you have a lot more freedom in what you're doing.

Didn't bother yet with base building and I will probably also skip that, too much time to invest.

For your information, there's a little glitch where you can get an excellent armor suit straight from the beginning. If you enter the lodge of Constellation, go straight away through the door on the right and downstairs. There are several rooms and one has a couch in it. On the left side of that room there is a suit behind a glass container which you cannot open because you don't have enough skill yet. Although if you stand in front of it and fiddle around with the cursor on the right hand side of the container at mid height you eventually will see the word mannequin pop up, then you can click and you will get the suit plus helmet and backpack.

If I forgot to mention something I will let you know later, or perhaps you have some questions?

[Harrison]

Here is one of the few honest reviews about this game.

https://www.eurogamer.net/starfield-...SwynSNbylEl78k

Most reviews just praise it, but this one really digs into what's not so great.

They highlight how bad maps are, and as you mentioned the complete lack of city maps. So many times it's so easy to get lost. You end you just following marker points. And the planets are barren, with the planet maps being some of the most boring I've ever seen with just landing markers. Elite got planet maps right over 30 years ago so there is no excuse there.

But the review hit the nail on the head about one big thing that is missing. Exploration. You can just fast travel everywhere. Unless you are on a planet then you have to run everywhere in each location. No mounts. The one thing that was epic about games like Skyrim was walking through the landscape exploring massive vistas and discovering things. You can't explore in Starfield, which is mad when you consider how big the game is.

Have you tried building your own ship yet?

As I mentioned above I've still been using the first ship, just upgraded a bit. I can afford a better one now and will be devoting some time to exploring different ships when I get more time next week, but so far in the game it hasn't really motivated me to beyond curiosity.

[Demon Cleaner]

Have you tried building your own ship yet?

I'm not really into that kind of customization, feels just like a waste of time when there are tons of other things to do.

Just installed 2 mods, one that improves the inventory UI a lot, I always hate f.ex. when I don't see how much of an item I already have in stock, so I know if I need to buy more or not. This mod is highly customizable and you can chose between around 30 different stats you want to see in your inventory.

Also installed a mod that completely skips the docking and landing animations as they get boring with the time.

[Harrison]

I've just read the following review and think this sums up the game really well.

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/sta...ftihnwQSWYv5so

[Kin Hell]

I gotta download this from somewhere & check out the FPS rates on my rig.

I hear it's a proper Hardware killer.

[Harrison]

No need to worry about framerates mate. It was designed to run at a silky smooth 30fps. No need for anything more.

[Kin Hell]

No need to worry about framerates mate. It was designed to run at a silky smooth 30fps. No need for anything more.

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PC Gamer also reports that if you own an RTX 30-Series GPU, you may need to update the firmware. If you already own an RTX 40-Series GPU or a motherboard that supports Resizable BAR, you should be good to go.

Then you must download the Nvidia Profile Inspector and make the following changes:



Select Starfield in the profile drop menu
Navigate to section 5
Set the rBAR feature to enabled
Set the rBAR options to 0x00000001 (Battlefield V, Returnal etc)
Set the rBAR size limit to 0x0000000040000000 (Battlefield V, F1 2022, etc)
Hit Apply Changes at the top right

From here:

https://www.gamingbible.com/news/sta...08446-20230912

nVidia respond.....

https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-drive...rmance%20notes.

This is what happens when left to Consolers to screw it all up.

The COD series got properly consoled up during it's demonic & demised progression/regression so I guess it was only natural for them to shaft this game from the beginning....

[Demon Cleaner]

Interesting, I just checked and I have driver 537.42 installed, which is the latest. But I didn't play Starfield for over 2 weeks now, waiting for some major update, there was a minor one 5 days ago though.

Regarding performance, it always ran quite well for me so far, could not complain, will have to see what the new nVidia driver really changes.

[Kin Hell]

Interesting, I just checked and I have driver 537.42 installed, which is the latest. But I didn't play Starfield for over 2 weeks now, waiting for some major update, there was a minor one 5 days ago though.

Regarding performance, it always ran quite well for me so far, could not complain, will have to see what the new nVidia driver really changes.

Which nVidia card do you have DC?

*EDIT*

Just had a look at this after installing the FitGirl repack. Quite impressive graphically. Got as far as orbiting the planet but need to hit the sack..... zzzz
Maybe the 537.42 will help me span on all three monitors correctly? - I'm on 537.13 atm....