Starfield - Todd Howard's latest masterpiece

[Wretch]

Another $100 bill laying on the ground is the first big budget game that releases the engine code as GPL with the game itself. Doom/Idtech source releases ensured the games remained timeless, including games merely based on the same or similar codebase.
It amazes me that no developer does this, you get free labor! There are thousands of people out there willing to fix your bugs for you as long as you make a good game!

Game devs are pushing games as not even being owned anymore. You really think anyone will do this?

I don’t see how video games have a future. The few good games are all at least decades old or games imitating decade old titles. Not only are games full of more and more vile things but are often just a mirage to hide some gambling mechanic. Combine that with devs who can’t even make games that match the quality of their previous titles and it’s a sunk ship.

[wndrbr]

The engine does play a big role, though. I recently saw a video of an ex-Fallout 76 dev working on his own indie game, and he touched on just how much easier Unreal Engine 5 is to work with compared to the Creation Engine. Because you have to keep in mind that the Creation Engine is just a mess of Frankenstein'd spaghetti code, made by dozens of different people that no longer work at Bethesda. Any tricks implemented by one programmer may not be understood or utilised by a new hire working there in 2024. I'd imagine any veterans at the company must be stressed to hell and back, because they're probably being leaned on by the diversity pajeets on the hour every hour. Management (i.e Todd) are set in their ways though, and they probably deluded themselves into thinking it's easier just to carry on, like a twisted form of the sunk cost fallacy. They don't want to start fresh, because they're afraid they might mess up, or are unable to rely on their low skilled employees and the third parties in India. Bethesda has never been a particularly good developer, it's a miracle how they've lasted this long without closing. And of course everything you mentioned is true too.

Creation engine is a toolset designed specifically for one type of game. It has its own quirks and issues, but for the most part it's still a purpose-built open world RPG tech that does its job. Unreal is a hodgepodge of stuff designed to be used by literally anyone, with a purpose of building any type of game. Naturally it's 'easier' to use - there's already a ton of documentation, a ton of tutorials, a knowledge base, a pool of already experienced devs, asset stores, etc etc.

Both engines likely look like a frankenstein's spaghetti code under the hood - but Bethesda's legacy code problem can be solved with a proper refactoring and rewriting, while Unreal will continue being a mess because it's messy by design.

[rusty_shackleford]

Unreal engine hasn't been properly dogfooded in a long time, not since the last Unreal game that never got finished. The advantage it once had, being created by the same studio that was also making cutting edge AAA games, no longer exists.
At best you get well-tested features that happen to be used by Fortnite e.g., optimized real time navmesh generation, but that's the extent of it. The engine itself is suffering the same fate as Unity now.

[maidenhaver]

There's a hundred dollar bill sitting on the floor for the first developer that successfully reproduces the skyrim formula.
Even developers who merely get close get showered with money e.g., KCD

Same with the Bioware formula too, as Larian proved last year. Publishers & developers have no real knowledge of what's actually popular with gamers anymore. Frank Zappa's talk about the music business in the 1960s is perfectly on point here:


Everything in it matches up 1:1 with video games. Worth pointing out that the massive majority(>90%) of KCD's funding was from some private billionaire that they convinced after the successful kickstarter.

Our investor is strong and capable of funding the complete development of our project. But he does not follow the game industry very closely, and needs proof that publishers and marketers are wrong about our game - that you are indeed interested in a mature, medieval RPG that emphasizes freedom and authenticity. And so we stand, as a studio, at a crossroads. Either those naysayers are right, and there truly is no desire for the game we are making, or we are right. Either way, we think Kickstarter is a great way to find out.

And I have no doubt that one of those hippies is Todd Howard. Take his actual words at developer talks, the trash he makes, how instead of iterating they dumb-down, and I can tell he hates games and doesn't understand his own successes at all. He was that coffee bitch who got busy when the company was sinking.

[Shillitron]

Unreal engine hasn't been properly dogfooded in a long time, not since the last Unreal game that never got finished.

A lot of the Engine's direction is dictated by working hand in glove with game studios.
CDPR likely has an Unreal team at their beck & call for Witcher 4.

Also Unreal gives source code access unlike Unity. So if there's some piece of the dog food they don't like they can rejig it.

[Shillitron]

I don't wanna edit my post but a quick follow up.

Unity is actually far more notorious for not eating their own Dog Food.. their own developers when doing post mortems on the free demo projects they create - will often trash the engine politely on what a pain in the ass X Y and Z are.

I don't wanna shit on Unity too much though because as per my <Lilura-SEO-Hyperlink>Unity Redemption Arc Thread</Lilura-SEO-Hyperlink> --- I think Unity is on the right path forward.

[Lhynn]

Say whatever praise you want about gamebryo, but it was not the engine to make a space open world game. You absolutely need new technology for a game of that scope.

It is fair to say that unreal would have been a better engine for that, meaning starfailed may have succeeded in different hands, but not on Todds.

[rusty_shackleford]

Also Unreal gives source code access unlike Unity. So if there's some piece of the dog food they don't like they can rejig it.

Unity provides source code access to any serious licensee.

A lot of the Engine's direction is dictated by working hand in glove with game studios.

Doubt. Every major dev using UE5 is using their own fork of the engine at this point, none of that shit gets upstreamed because it's not an open source project.

[Shillitron]

Say whatever praise you want about gamebryo, but it was not the engine to make a space open world game. You absolutely need new technology for a game of that scope.

It is fair to say that unreal would have been a better engine for that, meaning starfailed may have succeeded in different hands, but not on Todds.

My latest head larp is that they repurposed their underwater swimming system to do space travel, the ability to freely move in any direction in 3D dimensional space, they just tacked on guns and booster jets and called it a day.. and that's why you can't swim underwater in this game.

My evidence for this is about as rigorous as most of Rusty's posts AKA I pulled it out of my ass and have zero evidence.

[Rand]

Game devs are pushing games as not even being owned anymore.

Corporations, and some scummy devs that have embedded themselves in them for profit.

[KnightoftheWind]

People made up conspiracy theories about Soyfield being a much more ambitious game during development, but if that were true it would have been in the pre-production stage. They would have considered the state of the Creation Engine and had come to the conclusion that a grand Sci-Fi epic on a grand scale would not be possible, from the beginning.

I think what we've seen is exactly what it was going to be very early on. Just a grand reskin of Skyrim/Fallout 4, billed as a new IP and a new hit franchise. They got the "new" part half right, and that's about it.

[Shillitron]

People made up conspiracy theories about Soyfield being a much more ambitious game during development, but if that were true it would have been in the pre-production stage. They would have considered the state of the Creation Engine and had come to the conclusion that a grand Sci-Fi epic on a grand scale would not be possible, from the beginning.

I think what we've seen is exactly what it was going to be very early on. Just a grand reskin of Skyrim/Fallout 4, billed as a new IP and a new hit franchise. They got the "new" part half right, and that's about it.

There actually has been some datamined shit that paints a pretty grim picture of where their ambitions were. AKA this game had way more depth and it was all cut.

It's really feeling like diversity hires or work from home .. or both. I can't get over the development time. They released with a vertical slice at best.

[KnightoftheWind]

People made up conspiracy theories about Soyfield being a much more ambitious game during development, but if that were true it would have been in the pre-production stage. They would have considered the state of the Creation Engine and had come to the conclusion that a grand Sci-Fi epic on a grand scale would not be possible, from the beginning.

I think what we've seen is exactly what it was going to be very early on. Just a grand reskin of Skyrim/Fallout 4, billed as a new IP and a new hit franchise. They got the "new" part half right, and that's about it.

There actually has been some datamined shit that paints a pretty grim picture of where their ambitions were. AKA this game had way more depth and it was all cut.

It's really feeling like diversity hires or work from home .. or both. I can't get over the development time. They released with a vertical slice at best.

I think that's just a cope, even if any of the cut mechanics were included it'd still be a dumpster fire. For one thing, you'd still have the nauseating art style and characters to contend with. But even with a full 8 years of development time and tons of reused code, they couldn't pull it off. It's just pathetic.

[KnightoftheWind]

Apparently, Soyfield and other Microshaft titles are going to release on the PS5. Gotta make their money back somehow.

[Wretch]

Sony is gonna change their lawsuit to keep starfield off the ps5.

[aweigh]

[rusty_shackleford]

He's right. These devs aren't putting giga communist pozz in their games because some small writing consultation firm tells them to, they do it because they are 100% on board with the propaganda.

[Emphyrio]

Was it Todd who did the "punch nazis" meme?

[maidenhaver]

I thought the thread bump was for a creation kit release.

[Roguey]

Was it Todd who did the "punch nazis" meme?

Bethesda the publisher played both sides, marketing Wolfenstein to antifa and Zoom Eternal to chuds.

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm fairly certain that Todd is a chud, I just don't think he has the control people think he has.
My reason for believing this is he's stated he isn't allowed to have a social media account because his humor is too offensive.

[ArcaneLurker]

[maidenhaver]

I'm fairly certain that Todd is a chud, I just don't think he has the control people think he has.
My reason for believing this is he's stated he isn't allowed to have a social media account because his humor is too offensive.

Todd Howard is more powerful than you realize.

[maidenhaver]

Anyway, this game could be saved with mods, if the tools are ever released. The tools are usually out before or shortly after release.

[gerey]

Anyway, this game could be saved with mods, if the tools are ever released.

I am very doubtful mods will be able to fix the game, since the issues with it go far deeper than with any previous Bethesda game. Modders can't overhaul the boring and rancid narrative, or improve all the various quests, or make exploration interesting, or fix the fact the game is one gigantic conga line of loading screens. All these issues are baked into the very core of the game.

Also, from comments modders have shared over the past few months, the vast majority of them have either given up on the game because it's shit, or because they've come to realize Starfied is far less moddable than even Fallout 4.

[Boontaker]

Imagine spending 400 hours modding Snoozefield. Only for games journalists 5 years from now to claim the game was always goof (with mods). And you get zero recognition. Nobody will mod this game because the only way to fix it would be to triple the NPC count and if you made all niggers people would get mad at you for making evil npcs brown, if you didn't make them all niggers people would get mad at you for being racist. It's a lose lose

[maidenhaver]

I think there's enough interest in a game like Starfield, that as long as modders have somewhere free of censorship to post their work, a community of sorts will build up around this dud. As far as narrative, writers now have 11labs and the like, to change whole quests. Overhauling mechanics is going to rough for sure.

[aweigh]

Nexus also won't allow any mods that de-woke Starfield so that means most modders won't even bother doing that to begin with.

[maidenhaver]

Good thing we aren't nexus.

[rusty_shackleford]

problem with starfield is you need an entirely new game
80% way through development someone played an indie roguelike and decided "wow… what if we made our mega budget AAA title an indie roguelike…"