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Impressions: Starfield
TL;DR: Consider me… whelmed. Not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed. Just whelmed.
The initial few hours of Starfield are incredibly weak. Like, insultingly bad for a Bethesda game. I had no sense of grounding in the game world like with Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 3, or even Oblivion. After an hour or so, you get dumped into New Atlantis, which is the Starfield equivalent of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Hinterlands. There is plenty of things to do in the city, all of which you absolutely should not be doing. Not to say the quests are bad per se, but I felt myself burning out of the game after sessions 2 and 3 were all just questing in the city with zero combat.
I decided to break away from New Atlantis and things began to improve. Following the main quest, I get to Mars. Instead of going to the bar where the quest wants me to go, I instead strike out towards an unknown marker. Looks like some kind of rocket structure. I see a spaceship just sitting nearby… so I steal it. The devs have a heavy thumb on the economic scale in this game, so while you can certainly steal a better ship than you have, it costs like 90% of the sell price of a ship to register it, which you need to pay before you can sell it (or customize it). My profit is like 1700 credits, which is the equivalent of selling four guns from dead pirates.
I fast travel back to the rocket pad, climb all the way to the top, which it seems like the devs intended. At the very tippy-top, I see three chests up there containing common gun drops and ammo. Yay.
That is when it hits me. “Exploration” only happens in instanced content in Starfield. Had this been a Fallout title, there would have been a skeleton up there or some other environmental storytelling (audio log, etc). Had this been Elder Scrolls, there may have been some Daedric portal or a unique item or something. The rocket pad is a Point of Interest, yes, but I will no doubt be seeing similar rocket pads across the 1000s of planets in the game, and they all need to have a chest at the tippy-top.
Or maybe I am wrong, and the launch pad on Mars was specifically hand-crafted. In which case… yikes.
On my next play session, I go into the bar as intended. Along the way, I overhear a conversation about how some miners are being turned away by the mining supervisor. I talk with him, and he asked me to mine some Iron “off the books” so that it looks like his team exceeded quota and thus will get approval to some badly-needed upgraded equipment. I do that, and now he’s asking me to become an executive assistant to “help” the Fiscal manager to sign the paperwork. No doubt there will be further shenanigans in the space station as I try to get the request approved.
The above is the type of thing I’m actually impressed with while playing the game: mundane-sounding side-quests end up becoming more involved and interesting. There are a tons of these and you can do them or not do them at your leisure. It makes the game world feel a bit more alive and interconnected. As opposed to the literal game world, which is dead and fragmented by loading screens.
Having said all that, I am becoming increasingly okay with it. In Buddhism, “unfulfilled expectations” are the root of all suffering. In a recent Starfield play session, I cleared out a random den of Spacers on Mars, went outside, fast traveled to New Atlantis and off-loaded my loot to vendors, then fast traveled back to the Martian surface to continue looting the building. Is that, strictly speaking, dumb game design? Yes. Is it all that different than fast traveling to vendors in any other Bethesda game? Er… no. It only feels dumb because I have some unfulfilled expectations that this is a good game space games are necessarily immersive sims that play out more like No Man’s Sky.
I dunno. I typically do not mod games on a first playthrough, but I’m feeling like maybe giving myself 1000 more carry weight might actually make the game more immersive than leaving it as-is.
Microsoft Buys Bethesda, the World
File this under Holy Shit, Batman:
Today is a special day, as we welcome some of the most accomplished studios in the games industry to Xbox. We are thrilled to announce Microsoft has entered into an agreement to acquire ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda Softworks.
As one of the largest, most critically acclaimed, privately held game developers and publishers in the world, Bethesda is an incredibly talented group of 2,300 people worldwide who make up some of the most accomplished creative studios in our industry across Bethesda Softworks, Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios. These are the teams responsible for franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein, DOOM, Dishonored, Prey, Quake, Starfield and many more.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/09/21/welcoming-bethesda-to-the-xbox-family/?ocid=Parterships_soc_omc_xbo_fb_Video_buy_9.21.1
As it says, Microsoft is buying ZeniMax and all its subsidiaries, of which Bethesda is a part. Among other things, this means that Starfield, Elder Scrolls 6, Fallout 5, etc, will be coming to Game Pass on Day 1. That link also indicates the deal was for $7.5 billion. Which is like… 3.5 Minecrafts.
Another amusing detail is that Bethesda and Obsidian are going to be under the same roof again. Perhaps there could be another New Vegas-esque collaboration? Obsidian are good storytellers when they don’t have to build worlds from scratch. When they do, we get garbage like Outer Worlds.
What else could this mean? Well… since Microsoft is going all-in with the Game Pass, there’s a remote chance that Bethesda-specific subscriptions get rolled into Game Pass itself. For example, Fallout 76 has the Fallout 1st subscription and then there’s Elder Scrolls Online’s sub. Like I mentioned yesterday, Game Pass doesn’t include everything, like DLCs and such. That said, EA Play’s subscription is getting rolled into Game Pass for no extra charge. So who knows?
Overall, I am extremely excited. I feel the same way currently as I did way back in the day, when the first few Steam sales started. I hated that Valve was forcing me to download Steam just to play Half-Life 2 and otherwise jump through a lot of hoops. Then once the sales started, it all clicked that this was the future. Well, the future is happening again. And now instead a future heralding the sale of horse armor, we get a timeline where you can play AAA games on Day 1 for $4.99 $9.99/month.
[F76] Sidenote
File this under “It’s all starting to make sense” (from Wikipedia):
BattleCry Studios was founded on October 3, 2012, as subsidiary of ZeniMax Media, headed by Rich Vogel as its president.[1] Initially, BattleCry Studios was seeking employees with experience in microtransactions and free-to-play games.[2]
On May 28, 2014, BattleCry Studios announced their first game, BattleCry.[3] On September 10, 2015, it was reported that BattleCry Studios had laid off a “substantial portion” of their staff.[4] On October 7, 2015, the development on BattleCry was halted for the studio to work on different projects.[5] One of the studio’s first projects following the hold of BattleCry was the modification and restructuring of Bethesda’s Creation Engine (in conjunction with sister company id Software, utilizing netcode from Quake) to support multiplayer functionality in anticipation of then upcoming Fallout 76.[6]
When you follow the [2] link, you get an Engadget article from 2012 that states:
Bethesda may be known for its one-of-a-kind offline RPGs, but its new Battlecry Studios division is looking to ride the online free-to-play gravy train.
Eurogamer has sussed out a few details based on the firm’s job postings, which include a “monetization designer” and a platform lead position that requires experience with “design and implementation of microtransaction systems and services.”
The advertisements also suggest some sort of console release, as Bethesda notes that “console experience — preferably next generation (PS3, Xbox 360)” is preferred.
Battlecry is headed by former Star Wars: The Old Republic executive producer Rich Vogel.
While the hotbar-selling SWTOR is kind of a hilarious gotcha moment, Rich Vogel also did Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies back in the day. So… he either sold out or allowed his vision to become corrupted by publishers, although those are basically the same in the end.
Maybe we can argue about how much each Bethesda Studio contributed to the overall Fallout 76 package, but my money is that the corrosive, microtransaction design came from the studio headed by the guy who introduced the world to selling hotbars in an MMO. And, of course, Todd Howard… who is either an empty suit or willing participant in this nonsense.
Nuked Frog
Remember last month when we were wondering about whether Bethesda’s latest monetization strategies were a boiling frog scenario? Well, they just tossed the frog in the microwave and nuked it:
PRIVATE WORLDS, SCRAPBOXES & MORE COME TO FALLOUT 76 WITH FALLOUT 1ST
Ever since Fallout 76 launched, we have consistently worked to improve and evolve the experience based on your feedback. That’s why we’re excited to launch Fallout 1st, a premium membership that offers something players have been asking for since before launch: private worlds for you and select friends. In addition to this huge feature, Fallout 1st also includes a host of exclusive items and membership bonuses, all of which you can find detailed below. And the best part? Fallout 1st is available right now.
Yep, Fallout 76 now has a $13/month (or $100/year) subscription option.
A bargain at… none of the price
Reddit is understandably losing its shit.
That last post is a great tip, BTW
The subscription itself unlocks Private Worlds, e.g. your own personal game world that up to seven other friends can join, infinite Scrap storage, a tent to act as a mobile second base, a monthly stipend of Atoms (premium currency), and some lookalike NCR armor from New Vegas. And emotes or something.
While it came as a shock to most everyone, Bethesda did “prime the pump” last week though, when they flat-out said they’ll be selling utility in the Cash Shop going forward:
Our approach to [Atom Shop] items at launch was to keep them purely cosmetic. But after looking at all the data, it became clear that to consistently deliver content that keeps Fallout 76 fresh and exciting for all, we needed to rethink our approach to the Atomic Shop.
While we had many ideas on what to add to the Atomic Shop, one of the ways was the direct result of the community’s feedback. We heard from many of you who wanted items with some real utility. Starting in April, we began adding items such as Repair Kits, Scrap Kits, the Collectron Station, and a working Refrigerator. These have since become the most popular category in the Atomic Shop. We’re also still working on all the previously announced items and new cosmetic categories.
[…]
Of course, players can also buy Atoms, and we’re careful with everything we add to not upset the game’s balance. Our main objective is to avoid a situation where players can spend money to gain a competitive advantage or make the game worse for other players. Even more so, we want systems that allow players who do choose to buy Atoms to make the game better for others, not just themselves. With these principles in mind, we make careful decisions about the items we offer to keep it fair for everyone.
That was the same News post that stated the much-anticipated Wastelanders update – which will see the introduction of actual NPCs – was delayed into Q1 of next year to, and I quote with heavy emphasis, “make sure the work we’re doing hits our quality bar, and yours.” Er, yeah. Sure.
The tragedy is that I can see where Bethesda was coming from.
Private servers and the eventual modding piece that goes with it has indeed been one of the most requested features since before the game even launched. Now it’s here. Considering that Fallout 76 basically runs off of Amazon Web Services (AWS), it was never going to be a “use your own hardware to host” scenario. Which means a subscription. So they made one. And if you already have a subscription offering, why not throw in a few additional features to try and entice the people who don’t care about private servers? Hence all the ancillary stuff like the Tent, infinite Scrap box, etc.
Where the dick meets the car door though is the timing.
Imagine if Wastelanders was coming out next week. A huge, sprawling NPC horde that changed damn near every inch of the game world with new quests, factions, and activities. Imagine that it was… at least passably decent. In the midst of all this positive press, imagine Bethesda rolling out this subscription, letting you have your private Fallout experience with no one killing the NPCs or starting quests before you get there. Some of the outrage would still be there – Bethesda has claimed Stash space is limited for server stability reasons, but the Scrap Box can also exist in public servers – but Wastelanders itself could be pointed to as being “free DLC” as promised.
Alas, it was delayed and the suits decided to roll out Fallout 1st anyway.
To be clear, I have no interest in defending Bethesda per se. This subscription was rolled out despite the Wastelanders delay because whatever dipshit suit in charge didn’t want to lose the holiday cash. Hell, the subscription was rolled out despite the “private” servers themselves being already-looted empty servers, with no control over who on your friend list can join. Oh, and the Scrap box is eating scrap too, I guess?
To an extent, none of this matters. Not because “it’s Fallout 76,” but because whales in gaming are not an endangered species and each dollar they spend on shit like this is a vote you never get to make with a boycott. People were calling bullshit on these lines from Bethesda:
We heard from many of you who wanted items with some real utility. Starting in April, we began adding items such as Repair Kits, Scrap Kits, the Collection Station, and a working Refrigerator. These have since become the most popular category in the Atomic Shop.
…but are you really sure that it’s bullshit? Does it really surprise you that utility items were added and that people buy them by the thousands? Shit, a while back I was logging into Guild Wars 2 every day for a month hoping that Character Slots would go on sale in the Utility tab of the cash shop. I barely even play GW2! That was just for Character Slots too, and not any of their actual Utility items like daily resource nodes, special zones with crafting stations, and so on. Fallout 76 is no GW2 or Elder Scrolls Online though, so the hubris is especially galling despite the methods being identical.
My prediction? The subscription details will eventually change, private servers will actually be private, and mods will change how the whole system works on a fundamental level. People who still don’t like survival games will continue to not play Fallout 76 anyway, and yet they will still buy Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 on release because self-control across a population that is 72% overweight/obese is clearly not a strong suit. And really, why wouldn’t you play games that give 40-400+ hours of fun just because another team in the studio keeps slamming their dick in a car door?
Then again, maybe I have just been reheated one times too many.
FridgeGate
So here we are again: another Fallout 76 patch and another controversy. Unlike the previous patch in which a bug existed in the new raid that could delete all your character’s worn items, the focus of collective ire is on… a $7 fridge in the cash shop.
There is also technically a robot that (slowly) collects junk for you too.
Reddit, of course, is having none of it. The fridge itself does not add to Stash space, but allows ~15 food items stored inside it spoil 50% more slowly. There is already a backpack item that you can earn via gameplay that has a fridge mod option (90% reduction) to slow spoilage of all food in your inventory, and there is a Perk under Luck that does likewise. Nevertheless, this is Pay 2 Fridge Win:
hypnotoaster01
What happened to no pay to win?imprezobus
It lost
…or is it? There have been some counter-current threads poking fun at the absurdity. Many of those people have been accused of being (paid) shills, as if Bethesda had otherwise demonstrated the level of sophistication necessary to coordinate an effective PR campaign of any kind despite every possible evidence to the contrary.
Between the extremes are more sensible concerns. For example, the general idea that Pay for Convenience incentivizes inconvenient game design. Or how the mere existence of these items permanently close off design space, because anyone who bought one would get rightly pissed if there was a 90% freezer added to the game later. I would also include under “sensible concern” the question of why there wasn’t a trashy, rusted out fridge added as a sidequest reward that anyone can get while the pristine $7 version peacefully exists in the Atom Shop.
It is a fair question to ask why we’re bothering to talk about this at all. There is a general, background radiation-level of concern around microtransactions and cash shops, but the primary impetus to rage was the simple fact that Bethesda said the Atom Store would be cosmetic only.
Here are the tweets from Pete Hines:
Or did they?
There is another Reddit post that highlights the fact that the context around the above Tweet matters. Specifically, the now-deleted question was asking whether someone could buy a legendary minigun from the Atom Shop, and Pete Hines replied “No. Only cosmetic.” In other words, specifying that one cannot buy guns, but only cosmetic skins for guns.
The “cosmetic only” takedown continues in this extremely well-sourced post that essentially shows that Bethesda never gave any particular indication that cosmetics were the only thing slated to arrive in the Atom Shop. The stress was no competitive advantages and no P2W items. When people questioned the existence of Repair Kits – which allow you to repair gear instantly in the field – Bethesda responded with allowing different versions to be found in-game, and stated “If we find that Repair Kits do offer any sort of competitive advantage once they are available, we will make any changes necessary to ensure that advantage is removed.”
In fairness, there are some counter-arguments in that last link that show other contexts in which Bethesda employees have stated “cosmetic only.”
For myself, I find the entire argument complex and interesting.
First, I have a longstanding hatred of microtransactions and the erosion of Consumer Surplus that results. You see this in Fallout 76 with the fridge and the junk robot that could have been in-game quest rewards, but you also see it more broadly… everywhere. Guild Wars 2 is an egregious example of how the fashion endgame is essentially co-opted by the gemmed endgame. Sure, you can technically farm in-game gold to turn into gems to purchase new armor models, but why all those extra steps? Because shareholders.
On the other hand, a fridge and repair kits are about the most benign bullshit that I can imagine getting worked up about. Yeah, something something boiled frog, but Bethesda has been exceptionally communicative regarding fan feedback to changes. It doesn’t stop them from slamming their dick in a car door every patch, but I am not getting a nefarious vibe here. Last patch they added an in-game Atom Shop kiosk despite the fact that everyone has to click through an Atom Shop screen on game startup. After fan outrage, that in-game kiosk was removed with the very next patch.
Second, it’s fascinating from the “they lied!” angle. Let’s put aside the question of whether they really lied or misspoke or whatever. Are developers allowed to change their minds? Probably… not, right? A Tweet or interview from before the game was released saying one thing and a change in strategy (to get more money, mind) would rightfully be considered a Bait & Switch. There are X number of people who would not have purchased the game at all if they knew there was a possibility of P2W items down the road (not that these are P2W by any stretch).
On the other hand, Bethesda brought all this up in an April 2019 blog post:
We read tons of feedback and suggestions from the Fallout 76 community, and Repair Kits were a popular request that we wanted to get into players’ hands. We also felt we could try out something new with these, both in-game and in the Atomic Shop. As we look to the future, we’re exploring ways we can bring other community-driven ideas to the game as well, such as refrigerators for C.A.M.P.s, ammo and food converters, and even the ability to send scrap to your stash without having to head home. Repair Kits are our first attempt at a utility item like this, and we plan to make adjustments based on your feedback, so we hope you’ll share your thoughts with us when they go live later this month.
Five months ago, utility fridges were on the roadmap. At some point we are going to see “ammo and food converters” and chances are good that we are going to be here again, having the same conversation about P2W when they come out too. Probably still absent any sort of indication about what someone is winning for having paid.
I’m conflicted with the whole thing. Part of that is probably because I actually really enjoy the Fallout survival game experience, and hate seeing Bethesda snatch defeat from the jaws of victory every patch. Another part is a sort of reflexive “Fake News!” reaction when everyone piles on the game just because that’s the game we pile onto now. It used to be No Man’s Sky and now it’s Fallout 76 until something else comes along. I thought it was still Anthem’s turn, but whatever.
I would say none of this matters and go on my merry way playing the game, but that’s not how games work these days. Even though Fallout 76 is very much a solo survival game for me, its continued development hinges on cash shop purchases and the community reaction to them. Plus, you know, it’s a shame when artistic resources are spent on paywalled material when it could have been integrated in gameplay instead.
So, Bethesda, for god’s sake man, be careful with that car door.
Well, That Was Quick
Welp, Bethesda will be sending out canvas bags eventually:
We are finalizing manufacturing plans for replacement canvas bags for the Fallout 76: Power Armor Edition. If you purchased the CE, please visit https://beth.games/2QDropM and submit a ticket by Jan. 31, 2019. We’ll arrange to send you a replacement as soon as the bags are ready.
There is an interesting paragraph in the VentureBeat article of the same news:
In multiple messages to consumers, Bethesda explained that it made the change due to cost and a shortage of canvas material. Cotton, which makes up most canvas, is the subject of import taxes in the trade war between the United States and China. It’s possible those tariffs, which went into effect in July, pushed up the per-unit cost of the canvas bags.
As VentureBeat notes in the very next paragraph, and everyone in /r/fallout notes half a dozen times each thread, this doesn’t mean Bethesda didn’t fuck up. As with most things, it’s not so much about the crime, but about the cover-up. Canvas too expensive? Fine. Alert the buyers, give them the opportunity for a refund, continue on with life. Not enough canvas can be sourced before the release date? Sounds fishy, but keep in mind that the Power Armor edition was shipped late even with the nylon replacement, which indicates that this probably wasn’t the nefarious plan from the start. In any case, alert the buyers that they will get nylon now, and that canvas bags will be coming later.
What you shouldn’t do is what Bethesda did. Which was this:
Because, absent any further communication, what it appears to be is that some suits at Bethesda chose nylon because it was cheaper, didn’t tell anyone because they didn’t care/thought no one would notice, thought $5 in cash shop currency would suffice to shut people up, and then got real scared when they realized that although my Big Mac might not look like the picture, McDonalds can actually get sued if the beef patties were replaced with chicken.
If I were them, I’d ask Todd Howard to put out a short mea culpa regarding the communication failure, and then move on with life. Otherwise, we’re on to the next two panels:
Or maybe Bethesda does nothing more. The meme will last longer, but again, everyone will be buying Elder Scrolls 6 regardless of whatever happens with Fallout 76. I was browsing some of the reaction to the canvas bag replacements, and someone leveled this “threat“:
Oh man, it did cost them a shit ton. I sure as hell won’t support them monetarily anytime soon, and I hope many people won’t as well.
Do what you want cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!
That moment when people desperately want to boycott your games but they just can’t stop themselves from playing them. Viva la revolución! Or something.
CanvasGate
In today’s Two Minutes of Hate, we’re once again getting very angry on other peoples’ behalf for something we find them stupid for buying in the first place:
In short, the $200 Power Armor edition of Fallout 76 is advertised as containing, among other things, a canvas bag. But the bag that arrived was actually nylon instead. When someone wrote into Bethesda support to complain, they were greeted with the meme-worthy:
We’re sorry that you aren’t happy with the bag. The bag shown in the media was a prototype and too expensive to make.
We aren’t planning on doing anything about it.
An actual Bethesda PR went on to clarify:
Thanks for tagging us in this post. We’re not sure if you’ve seen this make the rounds on various areas of the internet, yet, but we’ve made an official statement about this issue and included it below:
“The Bethesda Store’s Support member is a temporary contract employee and not directly employed by Bethesda or Bethesda Game Studios. We apologize to the customer who took the time to reach out. The support response was incorrect and not in accordance with our conduct policy. Unfortunately, due to unavailability of materials, we had to switch to a nylon carrying case in the Fallout 76: Power Armor Edition. We hope this doesn’t prevent anyone from enjoying what we feel is one of our best collector’s editions.”
Many people are hammering on this response as well, for essentially restating the first message while throwing the other employee under the bus. After all, is there much of a difference between “unavailability of materials” and “too expensive to make”?
Well… yeah, actually. Enough canvas might not have been available in order to reach the distribution date, whereas enough nylon would have been. Sometimes you can throw money at a problem and make it go away, and sometimes you can’t. Or maybe it truly was a $1 vs $5 decision and they scrapped the plans for canvas based on that alone.
Speaking of $5, Bethesda put a little extra squirt of acetone on the PR fire by offering 500 Atoms to anyone who purchased the Collector’s Edition of the game. It’s difficult to imagine this amount not having been selected due to $5 being the actual value of the canvas bag in question. In any case, the gesture itself only inflamed the nonplayerbase further, who then took to the streets of /r/fallout to advise others to not accept the Atoms, lest they forgo their potential class-action lawsuit payouts.
I was originally planning on making a joke about how my food never looks like the pictures on the menu, but this older article on false advertisements is making me think people might have a case. The ad says canvas, it wasn’t canvas, case closed. I’m no expert in bird law though.
That said, I get it. If I were a nonplayer of Fallout 76, I’d be bored enough to be outraged too. As an actual player of a game that has become a punchline however… well, shit. It’s tough defending an otherwise fantastic game (IMO) that’s going to get better with each patch when the company behind it can’t seem to stop embodying (hilarious in the abstract) metaphors of their own products. “We were promised canvas, but the game we got was nylon.” Shit literally writes itself.
Ultimately, Bethesda will be fine. “I’m not going to buy Elder Scrolls 6 at release based on Fallout 76!” “Bethesda’s reputation is ruined forever!” Yeah you are, and no it’s not. Skyrim sold 30 million copies since 2011. Fallout 4, which was widely panned before and after release, sold 12 million copies the first day. This doesn’t mean that Fallout 76 is safe from being dropped, but as controversies go, this will be forgotten (and forgiven) the moment we get another 5-second video clip of some mountains overlaid with monks singing. Or by Christmas. Either/or.
I just hope that, you know, there continues to be Fallout 76 patches until then.
Fallout 76 is a Survival Game
Seeing as I’m a cynical bastard most of the time, it’s fascinating experiencing the frothing internet rage from the other side of the glass for once. “Don’t buy Fallout 76!” “This game feels like an alpha!” “The micro-transactions are ridiculous!” “It’s a glitchy, buggy mess!” Cool story, bros. Imma be over here being totally absorbed in my hunt for Aluminum and Adhesives for 5-6 hours a day.
Hey, I’ve been there IRL.
I mean, is this what it feels like to really enjoy something and then encounter someone who doesn’t, for reasons that seem so disconnected from your personal experience so as to seem divorced from reality? Politics is one thing, but somehow this seems even more extreme.
Let me break it down for you: Fallout 76 is a Survival game. I do not just mean Fallout 76 has hunger and thirst meters, I mean the games you must compare it to are other Survival games. Games like:
- ARK
- The Forest
- Metal Gear Survive
- RUST
- State of Decay (1 and 2)
- Subnautica
- The Long Dark
- 7 Days to Die
- Conan: Exiles
- No Man’s Sky
Fallout 76 does indeed come up short against some of those. Subnautica is much prettier, for instance. You can’t dig into bedrock and build your own personal bunker like in 7 Days to Die. But the complaints about lack of story, or the emptiness of the world, etc, suddenly become quite silly when you start asking where the NPCs are in, say, ARK. Fallout 76 is better than State of Decay in every category (story, gameplay, basebuilding, etc). Conan: Exiles lets you have slave NPCs at your base, but they aren’t materially different than some turrets most of the time.
Granted, some of these are $30 games and not $60, but still.
Totally stealing this player’s base design.
If you want to be mad at Bethesda for not making Fallout 5 happen in 2018, then… okay. I don’t think that was ever in the cards even if Fallout 76 didn’t exist, but maybe. It’s like being mad at Blizzard for the Mobile Diablo fiasco – that was a mismanagement of expectations, and likely had zero impact on the work of Diablo 4, which is inevitably coming.
Having said that, I begrudge no one for waiting 6+ months for the (ahem) fallout to settle before taking a second look. Fallout 76 is absolutely a game that will be in better shape a few patches from now. Stash size will be bigger, bugs/crashes will be reduced, some of the quests will actually be completable, there might be more of an endgame, Workshops might be worth something, and so on. No Man’s Sky was a huge letdown on release, but look at it now, within the context of survival games. If I still had space on my SSD, I might have booted NMS up again with this latest patch.
If I were not spending every waking moment playing and enjoying (!!!) Fallout 76, that is.
Impressions: Fallout 76 (Beta)
I managed to put a solid five hours of play into the Fallout 76 Beta last night.
My overall impression is that the game is fun, despite the frustrations. Whether the game will continue being fun for any particular length of time is another matter entirely.
Let’s start with the basics. The game is gorgeous. Prior Fallout titles judiciously used green/brown wasteland scenery and only populated certain pockets with relatively normal plant life. Here in West Virginia though, you start out in a vibrant, Autumnal wilderness. The music has also been surprisingly good. In fact, I pretty much have left the Pip-Boy radio off through my entire playthrough. One, because it was unnecessary, and two, because everyone around you can hear it.
Speaking of other people, well, they exist. I did not run into any griefers during my playthrough, nor did anyone stream rap music or racial slurs. Conversations were cordial, and mostly focused on pointing people towards where the good loot was located. As reported pretty much everywhere, there is no text chat – everything is open mic.
That said, people are also distracting. Listening to one of the dozens of holotapes strewn across the landscape is hard when XxSephirothxX is chatting about (and demonstrating) how the cars can be punched until they explode in a huge fireball. You can always listen to the holotapes later, but they are often context sensitive to where you found them.
The economy of the game takes a significant shift in thinking. Within about ten minutes of starting, I came across a few ruined buildings with about five Scorched (burnt ghouls that can use guns). I killed four but actually died to the last one, which appeared to be an elite of some kind (had a crown near his level indicator). I respawned, walked back down, picked up my bag of dropped junk, killed the elite, and started looting. The elite was somehow carrying half a dozen pipe rifles. Jackpot, right?
Not really.
There are vendor robots and kiosks in various locations, but the vendor rate appears to be 10% or less. As in, if the item says it’s value is 30 caps, you get 3 caps at best. Fast traveling about four inches on the map costs 7 caps. Moving your CAMP costs 5 caps. Blueprints are 120 caps.
The vast majority of the time, you are much better off scrapping… well, everything. Collect a bunch of weapon, Junk, and other sundries, find a workbench of any kind (thankfully) and break them down for parts like scrap metal, screws, and the worth-its-weight-in-gold aluminum. Breaking down weapons gives you a chance to acquire modding blueprints and the like as well. Then take those bits and pieces and upgrade, repair, and otherwise craft the gear you want.
This feels like more of a sea change in practice than it might come across in text. Damn near everything drops weapons… which I guess normally happens in Fallout games. But now you need to hoard stuff and collect all the things so you can scrap it, because crafting is now a huge component to the game at every level. Settlements in Fallout 4 might have been whatever to you, but your CAMP is basically the only home you’ll ever have. Weapons and armor wear down and break at inopportune times, and even if they don’t, you need this stuff to upgrade your existing stock.
Having said all of the above, there are some somewhat serious concerns.
For one thing, the inventory management of Fallout 76 is hardcore. Now, it’s a typical Fallout game insofar as weight is basically the only driving concern… but it’s a big one. A lot of people on Reddit found out early that your Stash (shared inventory) has a weight limit of 400 lbs of stuff. This might seem like a lot or a little, but the bottom line is that you can easily reach this cap in less than 10 hours of playing. Hell, if you come across some early Power Armor, that’s nearly 100 lbs right there. Junk has weight, scrap has weight, weapons that you can’t use yet – yes there are minimum level restrictions on weapons – have weight. All of this adds up quickly, and I have no idea what exactly the plan is for when you aren’t level 7 and have a full Stash. Throw everything out? Only loot 1-2 key resources? I’m hoping that this weight limit is a Beta thing.
Another issue is that this game is very much a console port. Again. Pressing Esc brings up your map. Then you have to press Z to open the settings/options menu. What? Fallout has never had a particularly good UI scheme, but I found it largely impossible to tell what blueprints I had just acquired from scrapping a gun. For example, I unlocked “Ivory Handle” but did not see it as an option when modifying any of my guns. Maybe it was an ivory handle to a knife? No idea. You have to dig into the Pip-Boy to find out what the disease you just picked up does. Again, this is par for the course for Fallout games, but this is also a no-pause, no safe place survival game.
Don’t get me started on the CAMP screen when trying to build shit. Let’s just say that Z and C are involved to navigate around. It’s not intuitive at all.
There is no Beta tonight, but there will be some extra time this weekend. I plan on playing as much as possible. The game is a lot of fun, despite my grumblings. But like I said at the beginning, it’s hard to tell for how long. At some point, there will be a transition from “loot all the things” to “can’t loot all the things” to “don’t care about looting things.” It’s tough to forecast how quickly that transition will occur, but I can already see it on the horizon.
When it comes, I suppose that’s when we’ll see the griefers really come out of the woodwork.
In An Age 
The Early Starfield Reviews Are In
Sep 1
Posted by Azuriel
To be clear, I have not played Starfield – the Game Pass version is not out yet. However, there is a Reddit megathread with many of the top review sites linked. Verdict? Mostly good. Ish. A fewer big outlets like GameSpot, PC Gamer, and IGN have given it 7/10 scores though.
One common complaint about the game is the disjointedness of fast travel. There are 1,000 planets to land on in the game, but the actual landing bit is a cut-scene and/or menu prompt.
At first, this seemed like a silly complaint to me, especially when people compared it to No Man’s Sky. Yes, there is an element of fidelity to the simulation in NMS when you fly towards a planet, break through the atmosphere, and then choose to land literally wherever. But that is something they have to incorporate because the fundamental gameplay is so repetitive and shallow. If you could just instantly warp to a Point of Interest, you would “consume” everything it had to offer within 30 seconds and then be done with all the, e.g. language unlocks in an afternoon. Heading back out into space feels good, yes, but its function is padding.
The criticism harder to shake off is when the reviewers point out how segmented exploration gets vis-a-vis fast travel. You may have seen this Skyrim meme before:
That is absolutely something that happened to me while playing Skyrim. Or the times you are just wandering around and stumble across a faction fight, or bandit camp, or whatever else. There are bandit camps in Starfield, and (presumably) faction fights, and other similar events. But the nature of the game would appear to make these things less organic. They just appear on the planet menu. And so I can see how that could become an issue with some people, and possibly myself.
That said… we’ll see. I have always been a proponent of flying in MMOs despite that encouraging the exact behavior I was describing, e.g. drop in and drop out gameplay. I don’t necessarily feel the need for the NMS flying around if the destinations and Points of Interest are themselves are a worthy goal. And if planet exploration is just the equivalent of driving around with the Mako in Mass Effect, we can… just not do that.
Again, time will tell. I have been looking forward to Starfield for a long time and I love sci-fi as a setting and Bethesda games in general. I’m not quite sure why they felt the need to add 1000 planets though.
Posted in Commentary
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Tags: Bethesda, No Man's Sky, Sci-Fi, Skyrim, Space, Starfield