Starfield - Leaked Screenshots

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Think more No Man's Sky and Outer Worlds than Mass Effect.

Conflating No Man's Sky and Outer Worlds, which are nothing alike, means I've decided this insider has no idea what they're talking about.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
Conflating No Man's Sky and Outer Worlds, which are nothing alike, means I've decided this insider has no idea what they're talking about.

I hope you are right. To me No Man's Sky is mostly about inventory management and grinding resources. The exploration got stale quickly, since things were too similar. And there was no story to speak of.

Ive read a lot of people like its zen-like quality, but to me it was just a chore and a bore. At least after a few hours.

Originally Posted by Silver
I hear that Todd Howard is a big fan of Starflight and Star Control 2 so I am expecting a first person spin on those games.

And also the Ultima spin-off Martian Dreams.
I know because he bought one from me about 20 years ago.

Originally Posted by SveNitoR
I hope you are right. To me No Man's Sky is mostly about inventory management and grinding resources. The exploration got stale quickly, since things were too similar. And there was no story to speak of.

Ive read a lot of people like its zen-like quality, but to me it was just a chore and a bore. At least after a few hours.

When was the last time you tried no man's sky? It has come a long way.

I was playing No Man's Sky for awhile last year. I agree it's come a long way compared to what it was at the beginning, but I still wouldn't want an RPG to be too similar to it.

I think it's good for what it is, but I'm not a big fan of procedural generation, and the content in NMS is probably 99% procedural generation.

Originally Posted by rune_74
When was the last time you tried no man's sky? It has come a long way.

About a year ago. It was fun for awhile, but then I got the same feeling I get from grinding crafting resources or killing the same mobs over and over in mmorpgs.

Edit: Just to be clear: I'm not trying to bad mouth the game and understand why a lot of people like it. But I've tried it enough to understand I personally don't enjoy the game loop.

My problem with procedurally-generated content is not about whether or not it looks the same from one player to another, it's that this tends to lead to very uninteresting content which typically does not have any interesting story aspect to it. I need interesting story to be interested in a game, or any not-small part of a game.

Originally Posted by NFLed
My problem with procedurally-generated content is not about whether or not it looks the same from one player to another, it's that this tends to lead to very uninteresting content which typically does not have any interesting story aspect to it. I need interesting story to be interested in a game, or any not-small part of a game.

I think in some ways you are right, but if you use procedural generation to make a large area then add hand crafted stuff to it then it can be very useful. I know some games do this to generate land scape etc which is realistic ie trees, rivers etc…

What I enjoyed the most with NMS was tracking the various words from the different races and finding the ancient ruins. The normal terraforming stuff gets boring very fast though. I also found the plot of the moon base to be laughable.

Starfield.

Will it come out in 2021? I guess not.

2022? Likely.

What will it be?

Who the fuck knows.

My expectation is that it will be what I think Mass Effect should be. A game where mystery and exploration are both at the center of the experience.

I expect the procedural generation to be limited to the non-relevant content, as in the planetary surfaces and, potentially, random quests.

But for the "heart" of the content - I expect Fallout 3+4/Skyrim level of bespoke locations.

Oh, and probably with a healthy dose of space flight and combat.

Hopefully, they'll incorporate a dynamic economy and make trading goods/mining a viable way of keeping up the fun.