I remember a huge deal being made of how SSDs would practically trivialise seamless asset streaming in open world games on next gen consoles. Evidently it’s not that straightforward after all. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed that our first major current-gen-only open world RPG is having to implement loading screens for moving between locations. ‘It’s not that important’ is really dismissive of how immersive it is to have full control over taking off and landing in spacecraft traversal in particular.
Lots of people are making the painfully predictable comparison to No Man’s Sky, but I’d point instead to something like Outer Wilds (not Worlds) which did it on a much smaller scale yet to truly magnificent effect. Imagine Outer Wilds where you get in your ship, press a button, and merely watch your ship fly off into the distance, only to regain control a few seconds and a loading screen later - it’s a compromise that would hamper so much of that heady sense of free space exploration.
I’d argue that seamlessness of transition from place to place and full control over traversal are far more integral to immersion than having loads and loads of places to go, and I wish they’d prioritised that, even at the inevitable expense of other features.
The thing is, the hit reactions are inconsistent right now. I don’t think there’s much with the shooting itself. Timestamped for ya.
@ 4:32
We see the bullets hitting the enemies and they are just sponges, zero reaction from them, looks off.
@ 4:42 The enemy DOES react to being hit. The way he dies looks pretty cool too. The physics.
@ 4:47 The enemy reacts here as well.
And once he goes outside it seems a bit hit or miss again. But they DO seem to react more than in Fallout 4. Can use work for sure though. Seen here - - >
It doesn’t appear it’s gonna be a “loading screen”, it’s a sequence that hides the loading. Essentially it’s a fast travel sequence, I don’t think there’s ever gonna be a game with seamless fast travel that’s not gonna be a sequence, yeah it’s maybe not as immersive as full control in landing and taking of but it’s a choice and we’ll see how it plays out.
I mean I don’t disagree, Outer Wilds was such an amazing game in that regard but as you said, very different scale and scope.
It’s a compromise for sure to not have it be fully controlled, but we’ll have to see how it plays out eventually. Much of might be to avoid bringing space dogfights into the surface and it interfering there, maybe.
Oh, I think I’ve misunderstood, in that case. From what I read, I was picturing something more like Mass Effect or Obsidian’s Outer Worlds, but this sounds more like the hyperspace jump loading cutscenes from Elite: Dangerous, which is much more tolerable. The lack of flight control during the transitions isn’t ideal, but I can live with that a lot more than Mass Effect style cutting from one scene to the next.
Agreed. Some look good. I’m not a fan of there being no blood at all. Or at least not from what I saw. Also, there’s a part where the guy is wearing that oxygen tank and flies into the air, explodes but no gore or blood whatsoever. They’re probably going for a TEEN rating but I would like to see some blood and gore when someone is exploding into a thousand pieces.
I would like to think it just hasn’t been implemented yet or a bug, I’d be surprised if they suddenly want to go TEEN because they never have and all their games are bloody and M rated.
Yeah no blood is Strange when you’re shooting the shit out of these fools. I hope for blood when I attack creatures too. I mean, come on. But I expect the hit reactions to become consistent or for some unknown reason some baddies don’t react. Like their armor is so thick they don’t react or something, lol, but still die…yeah.
Yeah as long as it’s seamless (no loading screen, random cuts, or repetitive ship flying cutscene) and fast it shouldn’t affect immersion but I can’t argue that if it were fully controlled it would definitely be more immersive.
For some reason I could think of why they choose not, either the engine is just doing too much in terms of data management already, or maybe having it fully controlled the plaents wouldn’t look very good as you approach them and see them from above, with pop-in and stuff as you get closer, or if you bring pirate ships behind you it might interfere with the surface stuff, and that stuff would break immersion more than a non-controlled but seamless sequence
Tbh I’ll probably just skip Starfield threads any place but here from now on. I know I like the Bethesda RPG formula, the bad faith takes and trolling around the game is already absurd I just don’t need to read it.
I wouldn’t expect anything less from the internet, especially with all the concern trolling probably coming from people who own that other console that cannot play Starfield.
To be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets review bombed on release on metacritic with comments like “fuck you traitors and fuck you micro$oft, stealing games away from PlayStation gamers” and the like.
At the end of the day, all the dra online means people are talking about the game, and seeing the reactions imo means the game is good and it pisses people off that they’ll need to be in the MS ecosystem to play it.
Funny all that concern trolling wasn’t present when Bethesda was multiplatform huh? I mean, I don’t want to be that guy and point it out, but that is basically what it is.
Man the other day on Twitter one guy talked shit like that Starfield looked like nothing special, not current gen. Had nothing on TLOU2 and Horizon, gee I wonder what console he’s solely fan of, lol.
I told him that it’s funny how mofos last year swore that the trailer was CGI, now they prove it’s all ingame and all of a sudden it’s nothing special and not current gen worthy. You do wisely to just ignore all other places. Don’t even want to imagine RE. Yet had Sony managed to get timed exclusivity on it, it would have been praised to the high heavens, lmao.
I hope so because it definitely looks weird not seeing any blood or gore.
Just watched this and you’re right, his body goes flying up into the air but this makes me think, yeah Teen rated. Because if the enemy explodes, how is his body still intact?
Agreed. We’ll see if that changes by the time the game releases. Hopefully it does.
It’s become hard to distinguish between legit points of criticism and “concern” vs just bad faith trolling online and basically wishful thinking that the game fails. It’s certainly gonna become a toxic discourse, but if the game releases and is good on its promie it’s not gonna matter, it’s gonna be one of the biggest games of the generation.
