Starfield

[Odine]

Fallout in Space? 

Skyrim + No Man's Sky + Star Citizen + oblivion =?

Despite some reservations I'm on board the hype train. I can't wait to lose months of my life to this game next year 

[Dark Wader]

Yeah I think I’ll be jumping on the hype train as well. The fact it’s a Games Pass day one release means less opportunity for any ‘pre order’ shenanigans to go on and unless I missed something, no mention of any multiplayer - hopefully means the corporate side has leant from the F76 stuff and backed away a bit. 

And building your own ship like a settlement in F4 is really cool. 

[Tank]

I've been lowkey imaging a game exactly like this in my head for years (more or less). I was VERY excited by that gameplay video... but No Man's Sky, Cyberpunk, and Mass Effect Andromeda hurt me bad enough that I remain skeptical that all these things will survive and work in the final product. I hope I am wrong, because if I am, and this game delivers as they promise, it may be my favorite thing ever.

That said, not loving that they are not giving the PC a voice, and the quest for alien artifacts is something I feel like is pretty tired.

[Spider-Man]

I too am cautiously optimistic. Everything shown about this game looks like it was plucked from my day dreams, except like Tank noted the ancient “mystical” artifact trope. I’d rather it just be ancient artifacts, space archaeology essentially… the non-Indiana Jones type of archeology anyway. lol

I’d get a kick out of discovering some ancient civilization and then having my team analyze the findings to discover these people killed themselves and their planet via such and such thing wrong in our present society. At least once anyway. Feels like it’s better than racing for some Holy Grail for the power, fortune and glory.

[Odine]

I'm in love with the UI, the character creation, the ship building UI looks soooo satisfying and fun. Like making a Lego space ship but cool. 

I wanna become a space pirate/viking and bezerk my way across the galaxy. 

[Rogue 3]

Ah man - shame this isn’t coming to the PlayStation.

Out of interest, did No Mans Sky improve with later updates? I got it at release and enjoyed playing it, but it was a bit light initially.  Meant to go back to it, but other things got in the way.

[Odine]

I haven't played it but I've heard they made it kick ass in the end 

[Spider-Man]

No Man’s Sky is notable for over promising and under delivering, but then delivering. It’s a robust game now, with hundreds of hours of gameplay. That said, it’s still not a story driven experience (in the sense of Mass Effect etc) nor is it everyone’s cup of tea in the control scheme manner. I personally didn’t like the flying and navigation stuff, unless they changed that too, because it felt like maths. lol

Afterthought: No Man’s Sky and Fallout 76 are two neat turn around stories for when the developer and fans both don’t give up on a game. Neither are everyone’s thing still (usually because of how the story is told in them), but they have improved so much and are solid gaming experiences.

[Rogue 3]

Nice one - thanks for the tips! Good to have it confirmed that it was improved upon. I enjoyed it at release for what it was, so will revisit that when I get a chance!

[Tank]

Yeah. No Man's Sky took until basically the last couple years to be what it said it would be at launch. They've also added a lot of DLC content to improve things and seem to really listen to their fanbase. My son plays it on and off-- there's not enough story for me to get sucked into it.

Cyberpunk and Andromeda got better partially thanks to patches, but also thanks to modding communities.

Fallout 76 is still trash in my opinion. I just don't like forced multiplayer. Even if they make it so you can't get sniped or attacked or otherwise harassed by no-lifers, the mere presence of uber-gamers on my map is disruptive. ESPECIALLY when they can build their temp bases wherever they want, and all quests recycle, and all loot is randomized. It is just lorebreaking for me-- and I'm not even getting into potential glitches that come with streamed games. I just hate it.

[Guest]

Fallout 76 was a bad idea, and no amount of patches or modding can fix a bad idea.

[Odine]

I really hope Starfield doesn't use Direct X 11. I think it will at least use Direct X 12, but might even be Vulkan. (That would be best for me) because I have discovered even though I have a high end Radeon GPU (RX 6800) it doesn't deal well with old rendering APIs like Direct X 11. As a consequence I sometimes get low frame rates in games like Skyrim. And it's not my hardware, its just the way bethesdas old engine and direct X 11 handles draw calls. Sometimes my modded skyrim dips to 30 FPS in cities or the open world in some instances, and then in a dungeon I'll be running 85-110 FPS. 

Cyberpunk on the other hand, a much more demanding game, runs at a stable 85 fps everywhere..with the odd dip to around 60fps but that's rare. Cyberpunk uses Vulkan as it's API which I think is better with modern GPUs, particularly Radeon cards.

(Boring nerd talk soz)

[Tank]

I thought I had Cyberpunk maximized, and my system is decent.. but then I go online and WLAYS find somebody who has their shit looking sooo much better than mine. It's maddening.

[Odine]

Yeah there is so many variables in PC builds that can affect how the game looks and runs it's crazy. So many minutia to think about. Consoles are an even playing field, though I wouldn't trade my PC for anything.