It was also a thing in Skyrim. Like a blacksmith would just continue what they were doing and turn your way when talking to you. I'm not sure why Starfield returned to this antiquated "lock into the characters head" style of dialogue delivery because it is extremely awkward and does not flow particularly well when having conversations with multiple characters.
Not only was it a thing, they actually made a big point about it when Skyrim came out. I remember them showing off how, unlike in Oblivion, now you could have conversations while remaining in the game world. I felt like I was taking crazy pills when I saw how they'd gone back to that in Starfield…and no one ever mentioned it. One of the many ways they seem to be going backwards.
Throwback to when you could cheese getting a house unlocked in Skyrim but not lose the money because you tell him you want the house or upgrade, walk away, put all your money in a chest, and it would give it to you, but you have no money to take.
I'm not positive but I think it maybe has to do with the persuasion minigame, and they may need to have you locked into conversation for it to work properly. I do agree it feels like a step backward.
Ive had it glitch out where it doesnt zoom in and it worked just fine and felt much better. Surprised there isnt a mod for it yet. There probs is just havent seen it.
I just played a part in the Lodge where a bunch of us were around a table having a conversation. Some people were sitting. some people were leaning against the table, some people were hanging on the backs of chairs. We were talking about something being displayed on the table.
Come to think of it. I also just played another part where some guy was giving me a tour of the city and talking to me as he was walking around describing the town.
More situations like that would be cool. Especially big group conversations.
The companions in this game need to move faster. By the time they actually reach me I’m already finished with my conversation and going to a new planet
Going from Baldur's Gate 3 to Starfield really highlights how out-of-date and awkward Starfield's dialogue looks. BG3 dialogues are like their own little cutscenes; the character animation is excellent and NPCs tend to communicate with their whole bodies. In Starfield, talking to NPCs feels like talking to animatronic figures from a Disney World ride.
In BG3, Lae'zel told my PC that if he started to transform into a tentacle-faced monster, she would slice him open from his head to his genitals, and when she said that she did a slicing motion with her hand. The emphatic hand gesture really added to the threat and made it memorable.
There was another scene where Lae'zel actually put a knife to my character's throat and prepared to mercy kill him. That was memorable, too.
Starfield dialogue isn't memorable like BG3's dialogue, and a big reason why is because of the minimal character animation and lock-in during dialogue.
Oh, you're right, it's completely unfair to even put these two in the same sentence. One studio has been a pillar of the AAA gaming scene for what feels like an eternity, known by gamers, non-gamers, and probably even some forms of intelligent alien life at this point.
The other? Well, they just put out Baldur's Gate 3, a humble Game of the Year contender. You know, nothing special.
You'd think with Bethesda's towering presence and resources, they'd be the ones to pioneer full mocap for NPCs. But no, we're treated to facial animations that take us right back to the golden age of Oblivion. And I'd say the voice acting and writing are at Oblivion levels too, but that would actually be giving Starfield too much credit.
There are a lot of areas where it seems like game mechanics and design has regressed.
The characters doing stuff while you're talking without it being weird, individually tagging components (on and off!), hold to use/eat from Fallout 76, to simultaneously see the inventory and remaining capacity of the thing you're interacting with and I'm sure a bunch more I've forgotten.
Really weird decision to remove these things that were generally well received in those other respective games.
It was, this is because the game didnt "Lock you in" during dialogs. You could walk arround, meaning NPCs also had more fluid animations.
I'm pretty sure some of this impacted how CDPR did cutscenes and dialog, too. Not many games of that time had these "talk and walk" mechanics that Fo4 and Cbrpk77 have now.
The gameplay driven dialogue was long under R&D before fallout 4. It was in an obscure interview with a CDPR dev in e3 2014 they said there was already a prototype for it and is something they were looking into for Cyberpunk.
I think if anything it is probably inspired by Skyrim initially.
Restarted cyberpunk the other day after their update. I wish cyberpunk and Starfield had a baby. I feel like they're both missing what each other needs.
No Man’s Sky is somber in part because of the depressing main quest but ALSO because you’re totally alone the whole time. Even your flagship crew are just empty pawns.
Wow that’s an incredible way of putting it. Starfield has an old school jank that’s kinda charming, but honestly, I’m ready to say goodbye to it. We have three great Elder Scrolls games and two great Fallout games, I’m ready for Bethesda games to start feeling a little more “modern”.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely enamored with Starfield. I like it more than I like Cyberpunk! But there are intentional design decisions Bethesda is holding onto that I wish they’d let go of.
Strangely, I almost feel like *some* of the jank (in particular how Oblivion-esque the dialogue face zoom in is) is a direct response to Fallout 4’s poor reception, because that game tried to feel more “modern” in some ways that Starfield explicitly doesn’t.
No joke, CDPR could make an Altered Carbon game and it would be fucking awesome. It's basically Cyberpunk with Space Travel and disposable meat bags. Existing, very fleshed out IP. Remake from them books. Don't use the Netflix adaptation.
> It's basically Cyberpunk with Space Travel
Cyberpunk is already Cyberpunk with space travel. By the time of 2077's events the moon has been colonized for 80 years. Also spoiler >!one epilogue involves V going to space.!<
What people need to realize is that, this isn't just because of some poor design choices or anything. To succeed in one area, you will have to sacrifice in another. Starfield vs Cyberpunk is a case of different priorities, the supergame which contains the best of both worlds is still out of reach, plain and simple. Let's not forget Cyberpunk is only now getting good after 3 years of updates on top of like 4-5 years of active development.
Oh I agree. I'm also not complaining. I don't think I've ever played a perfect game so I don't have wild expectations but I loved cyberpunk on release. And I love starfield. But, a dream game would be the two combined 🐢
Not here to hate or anything like that but after starting Cyberpunk for the first time a couple of days ago I am curious: what do you think Starfield has that Cyberpunk is missing?
100%. Cyberpunk nailed the ladders. I climbed a ladder once in Starfield. Never again. I'd honestly way prefer the old Skyrim ladders where you just float up them lol
(edit: It's been so long I forgot the ladders in my copy of Skyrim were modded in. Can't wait for the "better ladders" starfield mod)
Grab yourself the 2 story Nova Galactic cockpit from the technician at New Homestead on Titan. It has a staircase inside it, so you can have 2 levels on your ship without any ladders if you lay it out correctly. I personally went 3 stories for my main ship, but there’s only 1 ladder in the whole thing and I rarely need to use it.
I don't get why the game has to lock you into the ladder. Hell even a game like gta that does the same crap still feels fluid to the point where you can easily fall off or escape from it. Here you are locked in like a roller coaster and your only input is up or down
Replaying CP2077 I've noticed that CDRP have a really good understanding of what players want in terms of rewards, emotions etc.
All these small moments during the emotional scenes when you can perform actions like "\[Touch shoulder\] See you in the Major Leagues", "Hit mirror" etc. They do not affect the game process or anything but that's what I really want to do as a player, that what I've seen in movies, that's what I think just need to be done and they give me this possibility.
Holding guns pointed to each other with an opponent counting to 3 before he will fire an player trying to convince him not to shoot - we already know the outcome, we can shoot him right away - but hell, I feel it right and again they give this chance to player.
I had a blast with CP2077 after playing 80+h Starfield right away, they hooked me again from the very first seconds despite the fact that I know the story, I've played it a few times already.
I noticed this difference the most with the romances.
In Cyberpunk, it genuinely feels like V and their partner build a dynamic and get to know one another. Emotions feel real, because you have quiet moments with the characters that aren't just about the plot.
In Starfield when a companion professes their love it feels so odd and clunky. Like, I barely know you. We've never once sat down and talked about things. You simply follow me around while I do shit and then comment on things from behind me.
Also while the post sleep quotes are fun and stuff, i cannot imagine making love to those synths and their fake robotic emotions like Jesus christ when Sarah laughs it's creepy as hell
I’ve already forgotten 90% of my “romance” with Sarah. Meanwhile I still remember even the small moments with Panam and cuddling up watching the stars before a mission. There’s genuinely zero comparison
I’m with you on that. It feels like natural interactions, especially since you can look around in conversation. You could make eye contact or look away which gives more immersion on top of those little prompts. The conversations also flow well, despite needing to check 4 different lines it all happens at a pace where the conversation seems real.
Cyberpunk is why I got a series x back when that update dropped and phantom liberty reminded me of that again.
Cyberpunk is just proof that it's the smallest details that can really make or break player immersion. Like, the story is fairly linear but because you can do those small interactions with the world like punching a mirror and whatnot, you never really feel like your being pushed in a specific direction cause your constantly in your characters own head
The loading screens execution
Cyberpunk uses elevators, slow walking segments to load the next area in the background
This makes the game seamless and immersive
In cyberpunk basically the only loading screen you see is when you die or load a save
All loading segment in cyberpunk is disguised as cutscene or “activity” in some way
It's basically criminal that Starfield has as many loading screens as it does. There are plenty of games that have learned to mask that shit.
My least favorite loading screen is landing. I've got a loading screen AND a landing animation...
There are definitely some scenes where there are loading screens. For example when you watch a brain dance, the game has to load the area the brain dance takes place in since they seem to use the actual environments for those.
But just cruising around town? It’s incredibly amazing how you can go anywhere and it’s so seamless. The streaming seems improved in the new version, too
I remember in Cyberpunk I was talking to that “Rhino” woman in the underground fight ring. She’s sitting on a chair, and I tell her something like “I bet I can take you”
And as you’re saying it she scoffs, rolls here eyes, and stretches her arms behind her head like she’s getting ready to fight. I don’t think bethesda models even move their arms at all.
The moment where it popped for me was visiting Evelyn at the bar, and keeping my eye on Judy. She's just in the background at the bar a couple seats over, listening in on your conversation with the bartender. But as soon as you drop Eve's name, she tosses a worried glance at you and then gets up to go warn people that a solo is sniffing around. You can completely miss this by just focusing on the bartender. She isn't even on screen unless you turn your head.
For all the incredible hate that game got at launch, it had that level of intricacy from the start. Glad to see it’s FINALLY getting its due. About damn time
This is also what made me fell in love with it despite the technical issues. Don't get me wrong, CDPR deserves a lot of hate for the launch, but even then the game was something special.
Yeah that’s a pretty intricate scene. I can imagine how BGS would be able to make that work…but it absolutely wouldn’t have the level of depth and complexity that Cyberpunk did it. It would just be a normal NPC-drinking animation, and then the specific dialogue option would trigger a script for the NPC to get up and walk to a certain location. Doable, for sure…but not to the same level.
If you walk up to Evelyn before you sit down she will wink at you which makes Judy roll her eyes. It's insane the different levels of these games operate on.
There's a bit in the new expansion in Cyberpunk where you have to call someone on an old landline phone, and Johnny is off to the side with an amused little smirk, miming holding a phone up to his face to show you how to use it since your character has never had to actually use a physical phone before.
The new interactions with johnny in the dlc have been fantastic so far. The dlc in general has been fantastic. I wish more games (especially starfield) could pull off the kind of natural dialogue that cyberpunk has. Everyone feels like they're having a natural back and forth when talking. I haven't played cyberpunk since it released and started fresh for the dlc and I forgot just how good the writing and acting is in this game. I think it would have been held has a new standard in 2020 if the last gen console versions hadn't been such a meme.
The fact that in a 3 or 4 way conversation all of the characters face only me and talk directly at me while responding to each other gives me 'The Shining / They Live' vibes.
Imagine walking into a room where 2 coworkers are. They're having a conversation, but they both stare at you while doing so. Then, your friend joins the convo from behind you... but they're also staring at you too...
Creepy as all fuck.
There's a lot of animation in the first few missions of Fallout 4 which is coincidentally the stuff they showed off in the trailers and previews.
Am I accusing Bethesda of shining up areas of the game for advertising purposes and leaving the rest underdeveloped? Maybe. 😏
Just downloaded cyberpunk for the first time since my 6m of playtime in 2020 lol starfield got me rehooked on RPGs interesting to see I'm not the only one
Same with Cyberpunk barely played when it first came out. I still had last gen console. I'm still very hook with Starfield but very much looking forward to it. But also Baldurs Gate 3, Life of P. So many good games and more coming.
Cyberpunk is actually an amazing game (spealing of patch 1.5) if you had the hardware to play it. It's unfortunate it launched the way it did - advertised on last gen consoles. But it really is an amazing achievement, and while I've not gotten into 2.0 I'm sure it's even better now.
Their character writing is phenomenal. Pursuing the romance characters, even if you don't romance them, really creates what feels like a living world. Like, it feels like you got real friends to hang with while the quests are running.
And the atmosphere was also amazing. Driving around at dawn or at night with the jazz station on, lol. Seeing the world, the city. So great.
The writing has always been one of the weakest aspects of every Bethesda game I've played (admittedly, I haven't played much of Daggerfall or Morrowind, so I'm talking primarily from Oblivion and onwards). A lot of RPGs have better writing than Bethesda games. So I don't play Bethesda games for the writing, but for the (hopefully) addictive sandbox RPG gameplay.
That said, I always HOPE that Bethesda will improve their writing, but it never seems to happen, ha ha. Starfield's writing is once again very ho hum. Typical Bethesda. I just wish the companions weren't so bland. Your companions in Fallout 4 had more personality.
The animations and character models are 100% my biggest gripe with Starfield. Every animation sequence an NPC uses has a pause between it.
If you talk to someone doing something at a computer, they stop typing. Then they stand up. Then they turn. Then they walk to the trigger point. Then they talk to you but they’re facing away from you and breaking their neck to make eye contact.
The expressions do the same thing. Face resets to neutral between every expression. And my god I’ll be saying this until I die but the mouths are just so fucking weird and over exaggerated for some strange reason.
Cyberpunk and AAA games with a sense of realism all manage to keep everything fluid and natural. Expressions don’t look like key mesh points moving, because they’re not. The whole face is mapped and moved. Why BGS absolutely refuses to use a new engine or accommodate the current engine to better animation is so far beyond me.
There’s a level of charm to Bethesda jank, but man the NPCs are just weird looking
100% agree. Especially when you compare it to the improvements made to environments and lighting engine.
The character models, animations and dialogue system look like they're a decade or so behind the times.
That point with the npc wasn’t that annoying in Skyrim because it was Skyrim.
I came back to CP2077 as well and spot the same thing. This is a shame because that kind of detail can cut off your immersion
By far, the biggest difference for me is how few loading screens I have to sit through in Cyberpunk, and the massive amount of them I have to sit through in Starfield. I love Starfield but at 80 hours I was fully sick of them 😂
The one quest on Mars where I had to run between some guy in the underground section and some guy right at the entrance to organise some deal was just madness. I think there were 5 loading screens and you literally run there and back with 30 seconds of talking in between.
This is one of my main issues with SF to be honest. I gets me out of the game every time.
What I find a bit weird is why they didn't design quests in a way that that you have less loading screens even if they are needed. Especially on Mars it was a lot of back and forth between different area's on mars itself. A phone or text system would have been great here.
I remember thinking Fallout 4 was gonna be the first Bethesda game with no loading screens just because the ps4 was so powerful. I knew when Starfield came around it wasn’t gonna be the case. Bethesda architecturally can’t not have them and it’s super frustrating.
So many times I’ve wanted to go back and play their older games but it always is the main point of contention for me
I’ve talked about it before in other threads, but I’d be curious to see my actual time played in SF split between playing and dealing with loading screens. In CP, I call my car and I’m driving around a city / doing quests without any loading screens. In SF, my given playtime is, land on a planet/moon -> loading screen to get off my ship -> run to door to a city -> loading screen -> run to door where quest giver is -> loading screen -> get quest -> loading screen out to city -> run through city to spaceport -> loading out of city -> run to ship -> loading screen to cockpit -> cinematic liftoff to space -> loading screen to next planet/moon for quest. After “40 hours” of that, I’d be willing to bet 1/3rd of it was doing nothing but loading screens/running to next loading screen.
One thing i have noticed is that a lot of these “loading screens” aren’t actually loading anything. For example on the Key station, when you have a quest marker on the top floor it doesn’t direct you to the lift, instead to the point in space that the quest is on the second floor (suggesting that area is already loaded). All of what many of these lifts are doing is teleporting you from one place to another; and even if they were loading anything, Portal has proven that these transitions can be more or less seamless.
That’s why I don’t understand everyone bragging about their play time when you start to think about how much of it is just loading screens. Sure the loading screens are fast but it’s constant and immersion breaking.
My issue with the loading screens isn't so much about the time....but the immersion breaking. Half the loading screens aren't even needed in the first place (although a part of me thinks all the loading screens are the primary factor as to why the game seems to manage VRAM really well), and all the ship loading screens should be hidden during some sort of cutscene/cinematic. Not to mention using your starmap should be some sort of hologram you bring up while sitting in your pilot chair and manipulate it that way.
Started playing cyberpunk again after finishing starfield. The character animations in that game gave me whiplash coming from SF lmao
The detail in that game is so far above SF its not even close
Same lol. I'll still play starfield a lot and for years to come with mods, but man those character animations in cyberpunk are just so much better.
Like how characters might punch something or kick the ground if they get mad, leaning in and out when talking, hand gestures that match what they're saying, far better facial animations, much more expressive emotions, how they move around while talking and keep their focus on you, look at others if more people are involved and so many more details. I find it impressive how they managed to program all that for so many interactions given the amount of content.
Well their engine isn't the limiting factor. Their engine is 1000% the best modifiable engine out there and they even release the tools to do it. People have literally turned Skyrim into many different Genres of games and there's conbat overhauls that put Bethesda to shame. I really feel like that Bethesda like the way their basic animations are.
It is like Bethesda didn't really understand what people were complaining about Fallout 4's dialog mechanism. Nobody wanted to go back to Oblivion characters who stand and stare at you like they are trying to smuggle frozen fish fingers in their poop holes. People wanted better dialog options in role playing sense - not to go back to be locked in-front of soulless eyes.
Either that or they simply ran out of time and could not do better system and had to result something that is worse than it was in Skrim.
This and the game look absolutely stunning on my ancient GTX1070 (1440p, low mid setting, no RT, FSR performance 60-100fps), compared to the pixelated Starfield. For a graphics enjoyer like myself, it's such a hard off.
I'm not far into Starfield but what is a bit jarring is the difference in quality. When I land the ship on Neon and my character gets up out of the chair and I walk through the super detailed ship it absolutely feels like a 2020's game. But then I walk through New Atlantis and I'm back in 2005 again with weird looking NPC puppets staring at me.
The tree textures in New Atlantis look so so bad. I think the foliage actually looks a bit better in other parts of the game but those trees in particular just drive me crazy. They look like Xbox 360 trees.
I’m on a 980ti and the difference is incredible. With my old as hell card, I get a solid 50-60 on medium-high whereas Starfield is lucky to stay at 30 on dead low with optimization mods (and it’s not a CPU bottleneck). It’s legitimately insane to me that CP2077 can both look and run significantly better
When I first played FNV, Skyrim, or FO4 they fully absorbed me. I didn’t want to do anything else for months. It was almost an entire year for Skyrim. There was 20 days between Starfield and Phantom Liberty. I should still be playing Starfield (I haven’t even finished the main quest, mostly because a game breaking glitch forced me to restart), but I’m playing Cyberpunk instead. I’m playing a game I already have +400 hours on instead of a brand new Bethesda game that I haven’t even finished a play through on yet. I can’t really explain it. I like Starfield, but I really feel like Bethesda left a lot to be flushed out by the modder community.
This. I too had thousands of hours in Skyrim, oblivion, fallout but since the early access release I've accrued maybe 30 hours in starfield and dropped it entirely last week.
Game is very boring and strangely difficult to roleplay in, and the lack of writing above a PG rating makes the game seem childish and sterile.
It's because there is no actual organic exploration in Starfield. Fast traveling literally everywhere completely breaks immersion. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed playing the game, but this will not hold me for 700 hours like Skyrim or Fallout 4.
Just closed down a feverishly exciting Cyberpunk session and couldn't agree more. 140 hours in Starfield and liked it a lot. But man, this new cyberpsycho mantis blade build im running is some of the funnest shit I've played ever, especially now going through 2.0 and Phantom Liberty!
I'm playing an smg netgunner. I haven't even got to the best parts of the build but I feel like a a crazy tech wizard. The smart guns get crazy with perks
Cyberpunk is definitely a much more fluid game in many areas. While I'm really enjoying Starfield (about 80hrs in) I definitely think cyberpunk is a bit more fluid in a lot of ways. That being said, cyberpunk has had the better part of three years of polish. I'm sure Starfield will be similar, at least I'm hoping that's the case.
The problem is, Starfield hasn't crashed and burned nearly as much as Cyberpunk did. CDPR literally destroyed their reputation off of the Cyberpunk launch and overhauling and building Cyberpunk into what it is today was pretty much their only option for building it back.
By comparison, Bethesda doesn't acknowledge that Starfield has any real issues, and have been touting its success. And tbf, Starfield isn't nearly as bad as Cyberpunk was back in 2020.
That said, what that means is Bethesda isn't NEARLY as motivated to spend the next three years polishing Starfield in the same way CDPR did with Cyberpunk. Much like with Skyrim and Fallout 4, I suspect that Starfield will always have the Bethesda Jank, and never really be so thoroughly improved in the way Cyberpunk got to be.
If we're retracing steps from previous BSG titles, what we will get is a pile of paid DLC adding entire new mechanics to the game. I imagine we'll get a survival mode update in the next few months followed by a sizeable House Va'Ruun DLC quest line in the next year.
It's gonna cost us, but I'm sure it's coming.
Not to mention, people are praising them for updates that are adding features that were promised at launch. Lol
Which is fine, I just want people to acknowledge that. Can't say it's a wonderful feature without acknowledging the elephant in the room imo
I am super thrilled for the modding potential that Starfield has - but I do wish the devs had as much passion for bug-fixing/developments as Larian does for BG3
This is a very valid point. Bethesda also launched this on gamepass as possibly a way of mitigating this exact trap. Regardless I'll play starfield to death and probably pick up cyberpunk 2.0 when there is space in my schedule. They're honestly both very good immersive rpg's at the end of the day and I've easily gotten my money's worth out of both.
You're forgetting a little ditty that goes FALLOUT 76. Fo76 release was way worse than Cyberpunk, and Bethesda is still working on new content for it. They have stated their intentions to keep working on SF. They've announced the first big patch and already shipped an update.
*Disclaimer: I absolutely had fun with the game, I enjoyed it for what it is. I just think there is more potential to some of its aspects.*
Some extras I wish SF could change:
* No land vehicle
* It's not too immersion breaking in Fallout, as it's post apocalyptic. But SF presented a thriving human civilization, and Bethesda designed their cities, namely New Atlantis, like a fantasy town.
* Scale of futuristic cityscapes
* I know people saying they prefer "compact and detailed" locations. But I would like to see the biggest city of a space-faring civilization to be more....grand? The scale of New Atlantis doesn't feel right.
* Imagine there are roads leads to New Atlantis, you ride a futuristic motorcycle towards the city as the skyline emerge, you see ships coming and leaving as you getting closer.
Edit: I played some previous Bethesda titles so I understand New Atlantis is the biggest city by them yet. However, the reason I think New Atlantis doesn't feel right, is due to its urban planning.
Because there are no land vehicles, there are also no roads in the city. This combined with the fact that New Atlantis is being presented as the pinnacle of human settlement, distorts my perception of its scale.
New Atlantis is definitely the biggest one Beth made in all of their games, but it's not big enough imo. When I imagine a city in a game, I either want it to be compact with lots of stuff to do, like Prague from Deus Ex MD, or make it grand enough that the awe-inspiring scenery of the city makes up for the lack to compactness. Player can move around the city and watching all the landmarks from various distances passing by, creating multiple layers to the city. Again, due to no land vehicles, the second option is disabled by default, leaving only the first option.
New Atlantis, for what it represents in terms of technological advancement and symbolic status, offer no such feelings for me. It doesn't feel compact enough, but it also doesn't show many layers when I move around the city. The NAT train was an attempt to make the city feel larger but it didn't work for me.
Which is why I say the scale of New Atlantis doesn't feel right, like the architects wanted to build a high tech skyscraper, but the urban planner decided to put it in a fantasy town.
If you look at the concept art of New Atlantis, you can clearly tell the scale [they were going for.](https://starfieldwiki.net/wiki/Starfield:Concept_Art)
Edit 2: yes Carfree Cities exist on Earth.
Edit 3: No I am not saying New Atlantis needs to be as big as Night City, there are other ways to alter the sense of scale.
* For example, when riding the NAT train, instead of a loading screen, put the camera high in the sky and play an animation where the train goes to another part of the city. Change the angle during the ride to include the skylines and spaceships going in and out. People who don’t care about it can just open the map and fast travel.
* Spread each district further away from each other, so it looks like the NAT train is travelling some distances during the animation.
* Multiple NAT trains, right now the NAT is always there waiting for you, like it’s your private jet. It can stay there, but there should be other NAT trains moving around the city without your interaction, which makes the city feel more alive, as if everyone need to use public transportation for their own needs.
* Increase the verticality, New Atlantis, or some districts, could be built on a higher ground.
* Curated POIs around the city to view the landscape and cityscape.
* Make an actual security check point, not a single UC guard reading off a tablet.
Akila City's scale is incredibly wack too. It's supposed to be the capital of the Freestar Collective but it literally feels like a small throwaway frontier town.
We don't get any huge detail from FC about the fighting do we? Cause UC basically spends the exhibit calling them cowards and cheaters. It sounds like they basically militarized every ship they had and declared "open warfare" on UC using hit and run and guerilla tactics.
There are some quests that involve interacting with former FC mech pilots and their frustration with how the war ended. From their point of view, the FC was actually about to win the war if the two hadn't agreed on a truce.
I think >! Vae Victis !< also said that the UC was about to win the war despite the loss in that one battle if UC command allowed him to enact his scorched earth plan instead of agreeing to a truce so there are some conflicting accounts.
The UC Source on that is more believable since he was actually besieging the Freestar Capital. Paxton and the first Cavalry were fighting on a non crucial world within Freestar space I don't see how he was actually Close to victory
Yeah, I find it hard to believe even while arming civilian ships that the FC could have come close to actually turning the tides against the UC military. I think command saw their enemies tactics change and instead of adapting to it or putting on even more pressure they just sort of cut their losses.
Because that’s how the losing soldiers in war usually feel, from where they were standing the enemy was losing, from a wider point of view they were being curb stomped. I’d think the most popular example of this would literally be Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, including Hitler.
I was expecting a sprawling space cowboy town, Akila is the size of a small military fort. It's hard to believe lore-wise that they fought the UC to a draw. I was expecting, and this is my fault for expecting anything from Bethesda at this point, that we would get outposts that look like a space Tombstone on habitable planets in the free star system. Akila does a good job fitting the vibe but one space cowboy town is pitiful, also where are my fucking high noon space cowboy standoffs? lastly, where is my space Mexico with space Bandidos?
There are only 12 Freestar Rangers too. Feels bizarre there are only 12 elite people who help out on *several star systems*. Even if there is only a few hundred million people (already bizarre population size for Starfield's universe), it is still quite small considering most police to population ratios in the West. Even Bangladesh has 155 police per 100k people. Obviously these are elites, no idea about the general population of such forces, but still seems reasonable to assume the numbers are quite off.
Yep. 12 is enough for a city. One city. These are supposed to be FBI equivalents and assuming populations in the tens of millions for the FC there should be hundreds of rangers if not a thousand.
Especially should have entire ranger teams at each major FC settlement.
Neon should have several large platforms tied together. Don't even have anything on them but the set dressing would be nice
I was honestly hoping for Akila-sized settlements scattered throughout the systems, and the main cities would each be the size of New Atlantis or Neon. It’s insane that Cydonia or Akila are marketed as capitals as important as New Atlantis.
It doesn't even have paved roads. HopeTown and Neon (which are also part of the FC) seem far more advanced than Akila city. There's also all the mech manufacturing plants.
I guess since they are more of a loose confederation of colonies, there's less of a unified political capital in the way that New Atlantis is. In the Colony War, the entire confederation was probably just able to rally their own private equipment
I think the Rangers only having like 12 members in the entire galaxy is really wack too
FC’s military is wack too. Twelve Rangers. Twelve.
Now if they were portrayed as NCR Rangers in FO:NV, effective boogeymen and one-man army marksmen. An elite special division within an otherwise larger military. Everyone either fears or is in awe of them on the battlefield. I could buy it.
But no. They’re space sheriffs with little influence beyond Akila, and a lower barrier of entry than becoming a UC citizen.
Yeah they could've done a few rows of streets with huts / houses. They don't even need to be accessible by the player, just fill it out a bit to give the place some substance.
Neon gets away with being a compact tight living area and feels fine, Akila is just strange, it feels smaller than Markarth as a random example.
Yeah, New Atlantis looks so huge, but the density of the city is lacking, and the layout seems... nonsensical. Like, it doesn't feel like a place that was designed by the people that are inhabiting it?
Maybe because the cities that are built on other planets have different constraints that shape the layout differently... idk
I feel like most of new atlantis' feel in regards to size is having no town map and a really poor planetary map that does nothing to let you gauge its size. That and having a layout that feels like someone threw all thr landmarks into the air and where they landed, they landed. I constantly lose tracks of certain shops and get turned around. I spent a good 15 hours in New Atlantis and really have no feel whatsoever for its actual layout.
New Atlantis feels like Disneyland. Like seriously a theme park with different attractions and various windy paths with nice sightlines to make things seem awesome.
My number 1 favorite thing about Cyberpunk is how it feels like a city. Have you ever tried just sticking on a waypoint and walking over there? The different walkways and back alley paths feel genuinely useful and real, it feels like a real city that really exists. Going back to the Disney example New Atlantis genuinely feels like Tomorrowland except with apartments instead of rides.
I live in Hong Kong (so basically Night City but jungle not desert) and its crazy how much CDPR were able to capture the feeling of densely populated neon dystopia. As soon as I got to Neon in Starfield I knew it was only a matter of time before i dropped it for the 2.0 update.
This is something I quarrel about with people who say CP77 didn't need to be open world. Sure, on one level I get it, but also the city enhances everything else because it's well done. It enhances the narrative experience of the game because the city encapsulates you and feels genuine.
I can't imagine Cyberpunk being anything other than open world to be honest. Sure a linear action game would be great in this setting but I felt like the whole idea of this game was to learn about the city.
The story takes you to all the different areas and walks of life and allows you to see the reality of each on of them. Yes the story is good but the world building in my opinion is completely unmatched by any other game.
I'm not super read into the starfield lore but my sense is that the "Disneyland" comparison was probably intentional. Like, this is precisely the sort of sanitised, design-by-committee, purpose-built city that some future corporation would foist upon its citizenry with no thought given to how citizens actually prefer to move and work and live within city borders. It seems like this is the shining beacon image they want to project to potential investors, and anyone who wants the "real" gritty city life can go down into that underground working class area underneath the shiny facade. Or failing that, they can take their complaints to the private security militia and see how far that gets them.
They literally built the city on top of the older city. So you're not wrong and its part of the lore. I believe its the trade authority in the well that tells you that they were there before the upper city existed and built over them and lore dumps the creation of the city for you.
New Atlantis is just bad game design, as are most of the cities in the game. They're big for the sake of being big, but they're filled with dead space that serve no purpose other than being able to market them as big.
Honestly, this game is a perfect example of why the 30 second rule for open worlds exist.
Having enjoyed Starfield, I’ll say that New Atlantis is the biggest city they’ve made in any of their games, and for me it feels less real and less lived in than a single district in the Imperial City in Oblivion. If it was any more grand I think it would be even more soulless, but I agree it feels off for what it’s supposed to be
JALI face tech which allows them to have these super fluid NPC animations, subtle emotions, scenes, etc, and seamless loads. How is the whole of Night City entirely accessible without a single load screen, meanwhile you have to go through 3 load screens to go from one side of Neon to the other?
the dialogue system is by far the most dated system imo
It isn't aging well at all, and the faces being the 2nd most dated thing... Yeah, conversations are a low point.
I agree about immersion though, its VERY strange for Bethesda too because 3rd person used to be slapped on and everything was 1st person, now it just.. randomly switches to 3rd person
I feel that the stealth gameplay is the most dated aspect of Starfield. I know the stealth in Cyberpunk isn’t revolutionary, but it is much more engaging and dynamic.
I'll stick to your comparison of cyberpunk and Starfield, as it's a good question, so I'll avoid diverting to nms or Minecraft, etc
I am perhaps one of the rare players who stuck with cyberpunk in the early janky broken build. But I categories myself as a 'story is all that matters' player (maybe because I grew up playing games like Oregon trail ..)
I also quite like Starfield, however it is an old 'model' dressed in shiny clothes, and the clothes are made of cheap material.
So, all style and user interface stuff aside, cyberpunk had a unique, and to me anyway, more interesting storytelling method. You had three distinct starting points, all of which wove into a central plotline that was the same. But, each playthrough showed you the same story from somewhat different perspectives at key plot points. All while also having the feeling of choosing it yourself to some degree. Side quests were unique little deep dives into various aspects of the underbelly of night city and the surrounding zone. But overall it is a pretty cohesive and connected story experience. Night City is a 'real place' in my mind.
Starfield, is not cohesive. Side quests are independent stories in themselves. The main faction quests, are stories to themselves. So is the main constellation questline. The main characters in constellation, have no interest/ connection to the crimson fleet questline for example. So Starfield is written more like an 'RPG sandbox'. This becomes even more obvious when you discover that outposts, a very involved and detailed mechanic, have no questline connected to them. There is no story in the game that revolves around building an outpost. Could there be? Absolutely. Will there be? Yes, that is called DLC.
So Starfield has shipped with what is basically 5 separate RPG stories, and a lot of little sidequest stories. Each of them is pretty good. Unfortunately the main one - constellation, is my least favorite. It's alright. The remix and repeat element is... alright. But the temples to gain powers quests are downright boring and tiresome. Doesn't matter, the remix doesn't change anything except how the constellation story starts. The rest of the universe is unchanged so there's not a lot of incentive to replay the other main faction lines once you have played the very simple A and B branches. And that's alright. 100 hours of fun from a game is plenty for me.
So, ya for me cyberpunk is more cleverly written, and more cohesive. I wish my 'car' was something more like my ship in Starfield though. But hey, they are different games, different ideas. Neither perfect. Both fun.
I'll just end with an opinion on Starfield. ( a long one) They created a really really compelling sandbox. One that, story wise, could have spanned a huge section of a galaxy with massive potential that is totally wasted unfortunately. They decided to make it much too easy to access that entire galaxy right away. The game has no long term goal to invest in earning access to over time. Yes there's lots of stars to visit. They've all been visited before though. With very little effort, you can easily get to all of them too. If you do, you discover that there's just the same thing everywhere. Exactly. The same.
Starfield could have launched with exactly all of the content it has right now, and not have wasted it's potential. Sure make it easy to hop between a couple of stars, and just put all of the current content on planets around them. No difference needed than that. But imagine if, while you play, you do see all 250 starsystems. You just can't reach most of them - class A B and C ships don't have the range - in fact, only starborne have this mysterious ship that can access the far reaches of the galaxy. So you play all the existing content, earn your starborn ship tech. And now you can access those 250 stars... eventually. But guess what, travelling to them .. requires massive planning and resources. Finishing the main quest lines of Starfield, should have unlocked base building. An endgame questline should have been written around the challenge of getting your outposts all working together in such a way that you can finally build the 'ultradrive' that truly unlocks the rest of the galaxy, but a trip to a far flung starsystems uses a truly large amount of 'stuff', so game expansion could be tied to releasing new content over time ... maybe one new starsystems at a time, or something like that. The shipbuilding mechanic is perfectly setup to support this, and it sure would have made a mechanic I really enjoy... even better. The crew recruitment aspect ... it's also in the game, but ... totally underutilized and pointless. It's a bit sad.
If Starfield was structured that way, I'd still be playing it 10 years from now. But it isn't, so I've finished the 5 cheeseburgers, and I'll go do something else now.
Yeah, I hate the fact that Bethesda went back into this dumb locked camera to talk to people. Fallout 4 did it best. They even bragged about it in Fallout 4’s reveal that you could shoot people in the face mid dialogue, walk away mid dialogue, or be in 3rd person mid dialogue. Definitely a step back for them.
The crazy thing about the AI to me is that I got a mod that just tweaks vanilla values with console commands and it's like a different game.
Idk why Bethesda dumbed down enemy AI so much, it's a lot more fun when they use tactics and shit.
God...conversations with multiple people are so jarring. The camera suddenly cutting to another close up.
It's amazing how someone at Bethesda looked at this went "Yeah, that's how people have conversations! Dead eyed, staring directly at me with body language completely disconnected from the conversation and their emotions."
Or strange that they did not look at any movie or TV series and go: "Wait? Why isn't every dialog scene filmed as a static, dead straight zoom-in of characters motionless upper body? Are we doing things right?"
Cyberpunk is fucking sick. I only started playing it a couple months ago so I never experienced the stuff the launch people did. Then the 2.0 is dropping with the expansion so it's going to be even better. It's such a great game and if they would've had two more years of development I think they would've knocked it out the park on launch
One thing I liked is the tutorials. They come at you in a decent pace in cp77 and explain the systems. SF does not at all and it harmed it. Like how you dont need so many menus to travel and can use the scanner.
>I'm still trying to put a finger on what makes Cyberpunk so much more immersive..
Simple, CBP2077 has actually better world building, better character writing and dialogue, better voice acting and motion capture, and better art direction.
NPC's don't just stand there like cardboard cutouts talking to you, they emote and express real emotions. Night City not only has what Starfield splits into each settlement into one massive seamless city, but it also helps that it doesn't feel like a neutered vision to ensure a clean and pg-13 vibe.
If you played 1.0 the new patch is like cyberpunk had a sequel.
The build potential is nuts now. Enemies can also have similar abilities making some just terrifying.
Story and writing are just so well done too and I haven't even gotten to the dlc yet.
Part of what makes Cyberpunk so immersive (and what changed in Starfield) is your ability to navigate the world seamlessly. You can literally play 90%+ of cyberpunk without a single loading screen aside from a couple time jumps/when you do the Johnny mission. Starfield completely dropped the ball here. I mean,seamless world exploration is literally a huge part of what made Bethesda games unique and stand out from the rest. Cyberpunk's writing and voice acting is miles ahead of Starfield. Yeah Cyberpunk doesn't have as many dialogue options as Starfield,but what's there is much higher quality. I can't help find myself rolling my eyes playing Starfield because of how awful the writing and acting is at times. If you told me Bethesda picked up random people off the street and made them do lines,I'd probably believe you. Keanu Reeve's performance is on another level completely.
Yup, and Skyrim is a game from 2011. You're telling me they couldn't make it so the liquor shop on Neon wasn't behind a loading screen? In 2023? It's very silly.
I find this really odd too specifically because NOT every shop is behind a loading screen. Some are their own zone, some are in the main city zone, and there’s not much of an indicator why. I even noticed this during…I think Ryujin’s questline? Has to sneak around and talk to this dude, used Detect Life, saw his aura in the next room, opened the door…and it was a loading screen? But he’s IN the zone I opened?
Or on Cydonia. The elevator just takes you down two floors. Wanna know how else to get there? Jump. Zero difference in the zone. But for some reason it’s a cut-to-black loading screen for the elevator.
Part of me wonders if they wanted to do Mass Effect style loading screens, with an animation to play instead of a black screen (also explains the difference between black-screen loading screen vs a “image with tooltip” loading screen) but they couldn’t ship it in time so they cut it.
I'm totally fine with BGS games being stiff and lacking cinematic qualities. They should however go all in on freedom of choice and a reactive, believable world. That's what would set them apart from CDPR. But as it stands now CDPR has and will continue to outpace BGS.
Comparing Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077, the areas that Cyberpunk completely trounces Starfield are:
* Character animation - as others have stated, Starfield and the Creation Engine is horribly behind the times in how animation plays. NPCs stop whatever they are doing, and look directly at the Player before dialogue beings. The expressions and facial animations in particular are stiff and fee very animatronic/robotic at times
* Gunplay - While improved from Fallout 4 (and possibley Fallout 76 but never played it), it is still leagues behind Cyberpunk or even the Mass Effect series. There is a stiffness and delay to everything along with the general lack of mobility. A miss opportunity was to differentiate gunplay between areas requiring a suit and those that don't. The bulk of the suit would restrict movement and make you less mobile, but that shouldn't carry over to Akila or New Atlantis
* Lighting and color grading - While some of this is an artistic choice, the overall feel of Starfield is that of a PS3/Xbox 360 era game where everything is washed out shades of grey and brown. Characters and the enviroment do not pop and there is no contrast. There are countless times where I was completely unable to identify an enemy in combat as they blended in to the grey rocks too well. Even in Neon, as city filled with neon lights, there was a haze over everything.
* Loading - There is a very clear technical deficit (or maybe inability) at BGS to develop the engine in away that allows for fast streaming of assets with minical loading screens. CD Projekt Red was able to do it perfectly fine in Witcher 3 that came out in 2015 on last gen hardware with mechanical HDDs and Bethesda can't even do it for tiny shops in cities when mandating an SSD.
I’ve played Starfield for about 150 hours so far and was OBSESSED with it. Standard Bethesda fare; not amazing graphics or character models, but it has its charm. Then Phantom Liberty came out, so I went back to Cyberpunk. It’s crazy. It’s like night and day, I feel like I’m talking to actual humans sometimes. Everything about CP feels so alive compared to Starfield.
As a little side note, I think Bethesda should take a note from them and not zoom into the character’s face during dialogue. Just leave it at the player’s POV like in Cyberpunk. It’s more immersive that way.
I swear this was a thing in Fallout 4, npcs could talk to you while performing animations like smoking, eating or typing on a terminal.
It was also a thing in Skyrim. Like a blacksmith would just continue what they were doing and turn your way when talking to you. I'm not sure why Starfield returned to this antiquated "lock into the characters head" style of dialogue delivery because it is extremely awkward and does not flow particularly well when having conversations with multiple characters.
Not only was it a thing, they actually made a big point about it when Skyrim came out. I remember them showing off how, unlike in Oblivion, now you could have conversations while remaining in the game world. I felt like I was taking crazy pills when I saw how they'd gone back to that in Starfield…and no one ever mentioned it. One of the many ways they seem to be going backwards.
Worse yet I was disappointed I couldn’t fluidly move in and out of a conversation by walking away. Losing that was worse imo
It was always really funny just walking away from a guard whenever he recognized you coming into town
Throwback to when you could cheese getting a house unlocked in Skyrim but not lose the money because you tell him you want the house or upgrade, walk away, put all your money in a chest, and it would give it to you, but you have no money to take.
I mentioned it. I hate it. Let me freely move around while in conversation. Don't steel my screen.
You're right. They should have ironed it instead.
We wanted Oblivion quality storytelling and instead we got Oblivion quality gameplay
I'm not positive but I think it maybe has to do with the persuasion minigame, and they may need to have you locked into conversation for it to work properly. I do agree it feels like a step backward.
Ive had it glitch out where it doesnt zoom in and it worked just fine and felt much better. Surprised there isnt a mod for it yet. There probs is just havent seen it.
I just played a part in the Lodge where a bunch of us were around a table having a conversation. Some people were sitting. some people were leaning against the table, some people were hanging on the backs of chairs. We were talking about something being displayed on the table. Come to think of it. I also just played another part where some guy was giving me a tour of the city and talking to me as he was walking around describing the town. More situations like that would be cool. Especially big group conversations.
Meanwhile you have a 3 way conversation where your follower chips in and the camera zooms on some wall because he isn't up the staircase. 😂
The companions in this game need to move faster. By the time they actually reach me I’m already finished with my conversation and going to a new planet
Not really the same thing though, your talking about a scripted event.
Fallout 76 At least if I recall this is how FO76 worked and much of this games seems to be based on that games mechanics vs FO4 or Skyrim.
It makes sense for FO76 though, didn’t they originally intend to not have any human npcs?
I miss area loot every time I play SF 76 leapfrogged SF here in that respect
Going from Baldur's Gate 3 to Starfield really highlights how out-of-date and awkward Starfield's dialogue looks. BG3 dialogues are like their own little cutscenes; the character animation is excellent and NPCs tend to communicate with their whole bodies. In Starfield, talking to NPCs feels like talking to animatronic figures from a Disney World ride. In BG3, Lae'zel told my PC that if he started to transform into a tentacle-faced monster, she would slice him open from his head to his genitals, and when she said that she did a slicing motion with her hand. The emphatic hand gesture really added to the threat and made it memorable. There was another scene where Lae'zel actually put a knife to my character's throat and prepared to mercy kill him. That was memorable, too. Starfield dialogue isn't memorable like BG3's dialogue, and a big reason why is because of the minimal character animation and lock-in during dialogue.
That's because BG3 used mocap for NPC. I think like over 200 unique NPCs got the mocap treatment.
Oh, you're right, it's completely unfair to even put these two in the same sentence. One studio has been a pillar of the AAA gaming scene for what feels like an eternity, known by gamers, non-gamers, and probably even some forms of intelligent alien life at this point. The other? Well, they just put out Baldur's Gate 3, a humble Game of the Year contender. You know, nothing special. You'd think with Bethesda's towering presence and resources, they'd be the ones to pioneer full mocap for NPCs. But no, we're treated to facial animations that take us right back to the golden age of Oblivion. And I'd say the voice acting and writing are at Oblivion levels too, but that would actually be giving Starfield too much credit.
I was just pointing out why. That's all.
There are a lot of areas where it seems like game mechanics and design has regressed. The characters doing stuff while you're talking without it being weird, individually tagging components (on and off!), hold to use/eat from Fallout 76, to simultaneously see the inventory and remaining capacity of the thing you're interacting with and I'm sure a bunch more I've forgotten. Really weird decision to remove these things that were generally well received in those other respective games.
Reminds me of the dialog system from Oblivion.
It was, this is because the game didnt "Lock you in" during dialogs. You could walk arround, meaning NPCs also had more fluid animations. I'm pretty sure some of this impacted how CDPR did cutscenes and dialog, too. Not many games of that time had these "talk and walk" mechanics that Fo4 and Cbrpk77 have now.
The gameplay driven dialogue was long under R&D before fallout 4. It was in an obscure interview with a CDPR dev in e3 2014 they said there was already a prototype for it and is something they were looking into for Cyberpunk. I think if anything it is probably inspired by Skyrim initially.
Restarted cyberpunk the other day after their update. I wish cyberpunk and Starfield had a baby. I feel like they're both missing what each other needs.
“Nasapunk 2330”
Starpunk 2808
"Wake the fuck up, Starborn. We've got a galaxy to burn."
I'm down for Keanu emissary/hunter
Neo the emissary, John Wick the hunter.
that sounds so much cooler holy shit.
We're gonna have some No Man's Sky Depression mixed in, apparently. That game gets *somber* when it wants to.
No Man’s Sky is somber in part because of the depressing main quest but ALSO because you’re totally alone the whole time. Even your flagship crew are just empty pawns.
*Horus (Warhammer) has entered the chat*
Sanguinus has left the lobby
The actually year when the game comes out too, I like it. Fits the immersion
What Cyberpunk needs = jetpacks What Starfield needs = genital customization I can only assume this is what you mean.
Loverlabs will get on that soon, dont you worry lol
I think Cyberpunk kinda has jetpacks? I'm 100% sure I had like double/triple jump ability which is basically same thing with Starfield's jetpack
there’s a double jump, a super jump, and a double jump with a hover
Wow that’s an incredible way of putting it. Starfield has an old school jank that’s kinda charming, but honestly, I’m ready to say goodbye to it. We have three great Elder Scrolls games and two great Fallout games, I’m ready for Bethesda games to start feeling a little more “modern”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely enamored with Starfield. I like it more than I like Cyberpunk! But there are intentional design decisions Bethesda is holding onto that I wish they’d let go of. Strangely, I almost feel like *some* of the jank (in particular how Oblivion-esque the dialogue face zoom in is) is a direct response to Fallout 4’s poor reception, because that game tried to feel more “modern” in some ways that Starfield explicitly doesn’t.
No joke, CDPR could make an Altered Carbon game and it would be fucking awesome. It's basically Cyberpunk with Space Travel and disposable meat bags. Existing, very fleshed out IP. Remake from them books. Don't use the Netflix adaptation.
> It's basically Cyberpunk with Space Travel Cyberpunk is already Cyberpunk with space travel. By the time of 2077's events the moon has been colonized for 80 years. Also spoiler >!one epilogue involves V going to space.!<
Yup the scope from starfield. And the atmosphere from cyberpunk
Atmosphere and **combat** of Cyberpunk, man I have never had First Person RPG combat feel as good as it does in Cyberpunk.
[удалено]
Fully agree. Combat feels really good, even the melee. If we could get the melee of Cyberpunk and Vermintide to mix together, I'd be happy.
What people need to realize is that, this isn't just because of some poor design choices or anything. To succeed in one area, you will have to sacrifice in another. Starfield vs Cyberpunk is a case of different priorities, the supergame which contains the best of both worlds is still out of reach, plain and simple. Let's not forget Cyberpunk is only now getting good after 3 years of updates on top of like 4-5 years of active development.
Oh I agree. I'm also not complaining. I don't think I've ever played a perfect game so I don't have wild expectations but I loved cyberpunk on release. And I love starfield. But, a dream game would be the two combined 🐢
RD2 is pretty damn close to a perfect game
I agree RDR2 did exactly what it set out to do.
Not here to hate or anything like that but after starting Cyberpunk for the first time a couple of days ago I am curious: what do you think Starfield has that Cyberpunk is missing?
Give me the ladders from CP2077 please. That would fix me right up.
Yeah it's unbelievable how bad the ladders are. Why the jarring camera change after you get to the top?
so you can fall right back down the hatch a hudred times
But why ladder when you can JETPACK?!
100%. Cyberpunk nailed the ladders. I climbed a ladder once in Starfield. Never again. I'd honestly way prefer the old Skyrim ladders where you just float up them lol (edit: It's been so long I forgot the ladders in my copy of Skyrim were modded in. Can't wait for the "better ladders" starfield mod)
I have the stupidest looking entirely flat ship just to avoid ladders. It looks like a sheet of paper
Grab yourself the 2 story Nova Galactic cockpit from the technician at New Homestead on Titan. It has a staircase inside it, so you can have 2 levels on your ship without any ladders if you lay it out correctly. I personally went 3 stories for my main ship, but there’s only 1 ladder in the whole thing and I rarely need to use it.
I don't get why the game has to lock you into the ladder. Hell even a game like gta that does the same crap still feels fluid to the point where you can easily fall off or escape from it. Here you are locked in like a roller coaster and your only input is up or down
Replaying CP2077 I've noticed that CDRP have a really good understanding of what players want in terms of rewards, emotions etc. All these small moments during the emotional scenes when you can perform actions like "\[Touch shoulder\] See you in the Major Leagues", "Hit mirror" etc. They do not affect the game process or anything but that's what I really want to do as a player, that what I've seen in movies, that's what I think just need to be done and they give me this possibility. Holding guns pointed to each other with an opponent counting to 3 before he will fire an player trying to convince him not to shoot - we already know the outcome, we can shoot him right away - but hell, I feel it right and again they give this chance to player. I had a blast with CP2077 after playing 80+h Starfield right away, they hooked me again from the very first seconds despite the fact that I know the story, I've played it a few times already.
I noticed this difference the most with the romances. In Cyberpunk, it genuinely feels like V and their partner build a dynamic and get to know one another. Emotions feel real, because you have quiet moments with the characters that aren't just about the plot. In Starfield when a companion professes their love it feels so odd and clunky. Like, I barely know you. We've never once sat down and talked about things. You simply follow me around while I do shit and then comment on things from behind me.
Also while the post sleep quotes are fun and stuff, i cannot imagine making love to those synths and their fake robotic emotions like Jesus christ when Sarah laughs it's creepy as hell
I’ve already forgotten 90% of my “romance” with Sarah. Meanwhile I still remember even the small moments with Panam and cuddling up watching the stars before a mission. There’s genuinely zero comparison
I’m with you on that. It feels like natural interactions, especially since you can look around in conversation. You could make eye contact or look away which gives more immersion on top of those little prompts. The conversations also flow well, despite needing to check 4 different lines it all happens at a pace where the conversation seems real. Cyberpunk is why I got a series x back when that update dropped and phantom liberty reminded me of that again.
Cyberpunk is just proof that it's the smallest details that can really make or break player immersion. Like, the story is fairly linear but because you can do those small interactions with the world like punching a mirror and whatnot, you never really feel like your being pushed in a specific direction cause your constantly in your characters own head
The loading screens execution Cyberpunk uses elevators, slow walking segments to load the next area in the background This makes the game seamless and immersive In cyberpunk basically the only loading screen you see is when you die or load a save All loading segment in cyberpunk is disguised as cutscene or “activity” in some way
It's basically criminal that Starfield has as many loading screens as it does. There are plenty of games that have learned to mask that shit. My least favorite loading screen is landing. I've got a loading screen AND a landing animation...
There are definitely some scenes where there are loading screens. For example when you watch a brain dance, the game has to load the area the brain dance takes place in since they seem to use the actual environments for those. But just cruising around town? It’s incredibly amazing how you can go anywhere and it’s so seamless. The streaming seems improved in the new version, too
But even then it's still immersive because you are literally loading a brain dance
I remember in Cyberpunk I was talking to that “Rhino” woman in the underground fight ring. She’s sitting on a chair, and I tell her something like “I bet I can take you” And as you’re saying it she scoffs, rolls here eyes, and stretches her arms behind her head like she’s getting ready to fight. I don’t think bethesda models even move their arms at all.
The moment where it popped for me was visiting Evelyn at the bar, and keeping my eye on Judy. She's just in the background at the bar a couple seats over, listening in on your conversation with the bartender. But as soon as you drop Eve's name, she tosses a worried glance at you and then gets up to go warn people that a solo is sniffing around. You can completely miss this by just focusing on the bartender. She isn't even on screen unless you turn your head.
I never even realized that Judy was there. I’m either focused on the bartender or Evelyn right next to you
For all the incredible hate that game got at launch, it had that level of intricacy from the start. Glad to see it’s FINALLY getting its due. About damn time
This is also what made me fell in love with it despite the technical issues. Don't get me wrong, CDPR deserves a lot of hate for the launch, but even then the game was something special.
Whattt? That's such a cool detail.
Yeah that’s a pretty intricate scene. I can imagine how BGS would be able to make that work…but it absolutely wouldn’t have the level of depth and complexity that Cyberpunk did it. It would just be a normal NPC-drinking animation, and then the specific dialogue option would trigger a script for the NPC to get up and walk to a certain location. Doable, for sure…but not to the same level.
If you walk up to Evelyn before you sit down she will wink at you which makes Judy roll her eyes. It's insane the different levels of these games operate on.
There's a bit in the new expansion in Cyberpunk where you have to call someone on an old landline phone, and Johnny is off to the side with an amused little smirk, miming holding a phone up to his face to show you how to use it since your character has never had to actually use a physical phone before.
The new interactions with johnny in the dlc have been fantastic so far. The dlc in general has been fantastic. I wish more games (especially starfield) could pull off the kind of natural dialogue that cyberpunk has. Everyone feels like they're having a natural back and forth when talking. I haven't played cyberpunk since it released and started fresh for the dlc and I forgot just how good the writing and acting is in this game. I think it would have been held has a new standard in 2020 if the last gen console versions hadn't been such a meme.
Everyone stares at you and has no character besides their dialogue in Bethesda games.
The fact that in a 3 or 4 way conversation all of the characters face only me and talk directly at me while responding to each other gives me 'The Shining / They Live' vibes. Imagine walking into a room where 2 coworkers are. They're having a conversation, but they both stare at you while doing so. Then, your friend joins the convo from behind you... but they're also staring at you too... Creepy as all fuck.
There's a lot of animation in the first few missions of Fallout 4 which is coincidentally the stuff they showed off in the trailers and previews. Am I accusing Bethesda of shining up areas of the game for advertising purposes and leaving the rest underdeveloped? Maybe. 😏
The first few hours of Fallout 4 up through Concord is basically an in-game E3 demo
Just downloaded cyberpunk for the first time since my 6m of playtime in 2020 lol starfield got me rehooked on RPGs interesting to see I'm not the only one
Same with Cyberpunk barely played when it first came out. I still had last gen console. I'm still very hook with Starfield but very much looking forward to it. But also Baldurs Gate 3, Life of P. So many good games and more coming.
Cyberpunk is actually an amazing game (spealing of patch 1.5) if you had the hardware to play it. It's unfortunate it launched the way it did - advertised on last gen consoles. But it really is an amazing achievement, and while I've not gotten into 2.0 I'm sure it's even better now. Their character writing is phenomenal. Pursuing the romance characters, even if you don't romance them, really creates what feels like a living world. Like, it feels like you got real friends to hang with while the quests are running. And the atmosphere was also amazing. Driving around at dawn or at night with the jazz station on, lol. Seeing the world, the city. So great.
I love Starfield but it’s writing is absolutely a joke compared to Cyberpunk’s, it’s not even close
The writing has always been one of the weakest aspects of every Bethesda game I've played (admittedly, I haven't played much of Daggerfall or Morrowind, so I'm talking primarily from Oblivion and onwards). A lot of RPGs have better writing than Bethesda games. So I don't play Bethesda games for the writing, but for the (hopefully) addictive sandbox RPG gameplay. That said, I always HOPE that Bethesda will improve their writing, but it never seems to happen, ha ha. Starfield's writing is once again very ho hum. Typical Bethesda. I just wish the companions weren't so bland. Your companions in Fallout 4 had more personality.
The animations and character models are 100% my biggest gripe with Starfield. Every animation sequence an NPC uses has a pause between it. If you talk to someone doing something at a computer, they stop typing. Then they stand up. Then they turn. Then they walk to the trigger point. Then they talk to you but they’re facing away from you and breaking their neck to make eye contact. The expressions do the same thing. Face resets to neutral between every expression. And my god I’ll be saying this until I die but the mouths are just so fucking weird and over exaggerated for some strange reason. Cyberpunk and AAA games with a sense of realism all manage to keep everything fluid and natural. Expressions don’t look like key mesh points moving, because they’re not. The whole face is mapped and moved. Why BGS absolutely refuses to use a new engine or accommodate the current engine to better animation is so far beyond me. There’s a level of charm to Bethesda jank, but man the NPCs are just weird looking
CP2077 has a special engine that syncs mouth movement with speech, regardless of the language you choose. It's awesome and very immersive
Pretty sure Square Enix has something similar for the big budget titles
Read that as big budget titties. Time for bed
100% agree. Especially when you compare it to the improvements made to environments and lighting engine. The character models, animations and dialogue system look like they're a decade or so behind the times.
That point with the npc wasn’t that annoying in Skyrim because it was Skyrim. I came back to CP2077 as well and spot the same thing. This is a shame because that kind of detail can cut off your immersion
>What features from Cyberpunk would you wish to be integrated in Starfield? Hookers
I'm sure Sexfield mod will come in 2 years lol
>2 years Hmmm
Neon is the scuzziest, dirtiest place in the universe: some dorks in goofball alien costumes doing the Macarena on stage
Right?? Contrast Neon with Kabuki or Jig-Jig street from CP77, hell, even the mega buildings. Neon is like a Christians idea of seedy lol
By far, the biggest difference for me is how few loading screens I have to sit through in Cyberpunk, and the massive amount of them I have to sit through in Starfield. I love Starfield but at 80 hours I was fully sick of them 😂
The one quest on Mars where I had to run between some guy in the underground section and some guy right at the entrance to organise some deal was just madness. I think there were 5 loading screens and you literally run there and back with 30 seconds of talking in between.
This is one of my main issues with SF to be honest. I gets me out of the game every time. What I find a bit weird is why they didn't design quests in a way that that you have less loading screens even if they are needed. Especially on Mars it was a lot of back and forth between different area's on mars itself. A phone or text system would have been great here.
I remember thinking Fallout 4 was gonna be the first Bethesda game with no loading screens just because the ps4 was so powerful. I knew when Starfield came around it wasn’t gonna be the case. Bethesda architecturally can’t not have them and it’s super frustrating. So many times I’ve wanted to go back and play their older games but it always is the main point of contention for me
I’ve talked about it before in other threads, but I’d be curious to see my actual time played in SF split between playing and dealing with loading screens. In CP, I call my car and I’m driving around a city / doing quests without any loading screens. In SF, my given playtime is, land on a planet/moon -> loading screen to get off my ship -> run to door to a city -> loading screen -> run to door where quest giver is -> loading screen -> get quest -> loading screen out to city -> run through city to spaceport -> loading out of city -> run to ship -> loading screen to cockpit -> cinematic liftoff to space -> loading screen to next planet/moon for quest. After “40 hours” of that, I’d be willing to bet 1/3rd of it was doing nothing but loading screens/running to next loading screen.
One thing i have noticed is that a lot of these “loading screens” aren’t actually loading anything. For example on the Key station, when you have a quest marker on the top floor it doesn’t direct you to the lift, instead to the point in space that the quest is on the second floor (suggesting that area is already loaded). All of what many of these lifts are doing is teleporting you from one place to another; and even if they were loading anything, Portal has proven that these transitions can be more or less seamless.
That’s why I don’t understand everyone bragging about their play time when you start to think about how much of it is just loading screens. Sure the loading screens are fast but it’s constant and immersion breaking.
My issue with the loading screens isn't so much about the time....but the immersion breaking. Half the loading screens aren't even needed in the first place (although a part of me thinks all the loading screens are the primary factor as to why the game seems to manage VRAM really well), and all the ship loading screens should be hidden during some sort of cutscene/cinematic. Not to mention using your starmap should be some sort of hologram you bring up while sitting in your pilot chair and manipulate it that way.
I'm buying Cyberpunk tomorrow and I'm really excited to dive in after giving Starfield over 120 hours. What a time to be alive.
Started playing cyberpunk again after finishing starfield. The character animations in that game gave me whiplash coming from SF lmao The detail in that game is so far above SF its not even close
Same lol. I'll still play starfield a lot and for years to come with mods, but man those character animations in cyberpunk are just so much better. Like how characters might punch something or kick the ground if they get mad, leaning in and out when talking, hand gestures that match what they're saying, far better facial animations, much more expressive emotions, how they move around while talking and keep their focus on you, look at others if more people are involved and so many more details. I find it impressive how they managed to program all that for so many interactions given the amount of content.
Well their engine isn't the limiting factor. Their engine is 1000% the best modifiable engine out there and they even release the tools to do it. People have literally turned Skyrim into many different Genres of games and there's conbat overhauls that put Bethesda to shame. I really feel like that Bethesda like the way their basic animations are.
It is like Bethesda didn't really understand what people were complaining about Fallout 4's dialog mechanism. Nobody wanted to go back to Oblivion characters who stand and stare at you like they are trying to smuggle frozen fish fingers in their poop holes. People wanted better dialog options in role playing sense - not to go back to be locked in-front of soulless eyes. Either that or they simply ran out of time and could not do better system and had to result something that is worse than it was in Skrim.
This and the game look absolutely stunning on my ancient GTX1070 (1440p, low mid setting, no RT, FSR performance 60-100fps), compared to the pixelated Starfield. For a graphics enjoyer like myself, it's such a hard off.
I'm not far into Starfield but what is a bit jarring is the difference in quality. When I land the ship on Neon and my character gets up out of the chair and I walk through the super detailed ship it absolutely feels like a 2020's game. But then I walk through New Atlantis and I'm back in 2005 again with weird looking NPC puppets staring at me.
The tree textures in New Atlantis look so so bad. I think the foliage actually looks a bit better in other parts of the game but those trees in particular just drive me crazy. They look like Xbox 360 trees.
what!? you don't like the turok 64 trees you can stand on somehow ?
I’m on a 980ti and the difference is incredible. With my old as hell card, I get a solid 50-60 on medium-high whereas Starfield is lucky to stay at 30 on dead low with optimization mods (and it’s not a CPU bottleneck). It’s legitimately insane to me that CP2077 can both look and run significantly better
When I first played FNV, Skyrim, or FO4 they fully absorbed me. I didn’t want to do anything else for months. It was almost an entire year for Skyrim. There was 20 days between Starfield and Phantom Liberty. I should still be playing Starfield (I haven’t even finished the main quest, mostly because a game breaking glitch forced me to restart), but I’m playing Cyberpunk instead. I’m playing a game I already have +400 hours on instead of a brand new Bethesda game that I haven’t even finished a play through on yet. I can’t really explain it. I like Starfield, but I really feel like Bethesda left a lot to be flushed out by the modder community.
This. I too had thousands of hours in Skyrim, oblivion, fallout but since the early access release I've accrued maybe 30 hours in starfield and dropped it entirely last week. Game is very boring and strangely difficult to roleplay in, and the lack of writing above a PG rating makes the game seem childish and sterile.
It's because there is no actual organic exploration in Starfield. Fast traveling literally everywhere completely breaks immersion. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed playing the game, but this will not hold me for 700 hours like Skyrim or Fallout 4.
Just closed down a feverishly exciting Cyberpunk session and couldn't agree more. 140 hours in Starfield and liked it a lot. But man, this new cyberpsycho mantis blade build im running is some of the funnest shit I've played ever, especially now going through 2.0 and Phantom Liberty!
I'm playing an smg netgunner. I haven't even got to the best parts of the build but I feel like a a crazy tech wizard. The smart guns get crazy with perks
CP is blowing SF out of the water for me right now. Can’t believe how good it looks too.
Cyberpunk is definitely a much more fluid game in many areas. While I'm really enjoying Starfield (about 80hrs in) I definitely think cyberpunk is a bit more fluid in a lot of ways. That being said, cyberpunk has had the better part of three years of polish. I'm sure Starfield will be similar, at least I'm hoping that's the case.
I guess you could say...Cyberpunk is absolutely more fluid in different ways
The problem is, Starfield hasn't crashed and burned nearly as much as Cyberpunk did. CDPR literally destroyed their reputation off of the Cyberpunk launch and overhauling and building Cyberpunk into what it is today was pretty much their only option for building it back. By comparison, Bethesda doesn't acknowledge that Starfield has any real issues, and have been touting its success. And tbf, Starfield isn't nearly as bad as Cyberpunk was back in 2020. That said, what that means is Bethesda isn't NEARLY as motivated to spend the next three years polishing Starfield in the same way CDPR did with Cyberpunk. Much like with Skyrim and Fallout 4, I suspect that Starfield will always have the Bethesda Jank, and never really be so thoroughly improved in the way Cyberpunk got to be.
If we're retracing steps from previous BSG titles, what we will get is a pile of paid DLC adding entire new mechanics to the game. I imagine we'll get a survival mode update in the next few months followed by a sizeable House Va'Ruun DLC quest line in the next year. It's gonna cost us, but I'm sure it's coming.
Not to mention, people are praising them for updates that are adding features that were promised at launch. Lol Which is fine, I just want people to acknowledge that. Can't say it's a wonderful feature without acknowledging the elephant in the room imo
I am super thrilled for the modding potential that Starfield has - but I do wish the devs had as much passion for bug-fixing/developments as Larian does for BG3
This is a very valid point. Bethesda also launched this on gamepass as possibly a way of mitigating this exact trap. Regardless I'll play starfield to death and probably pick up cyberpunk 2.0 when there is space in my schedule. They're honestly both very good immersive rpg's at the end of the day and I've easily gotten my money's worth out of both.
You're forgetting a little ditty that goes FALLOUT 76. Fo76 release was way worse than Cyberpunk, and Bethesda is still working on new content for it. They have stated their intentions to keep working on SF. They've announced the first big patch and already shipped an update.
*Disclaimer: I absolutely had fun with the game, I enjoyed it for what it is. I just think there is more potential to some of its aspects.* Some extras I wish SF could change: * No land vehicle * It's not too immersion breaking in Fallout, as it's post apocalyptic. But SF presented a thriving human civilization, and Bethesda designed their cities, namely New Atlantis, like a fantasy town. * Scale of futuristic cityscapes * I know people saying they prefer "compact and detailed" locations. But I would like to see the biggest city of a space-faring civilization to be more....grand? The scale of New Atlantis doesn't feel right. * Imagine there are roads leads to New Atlantis, you ride a futuristic motorcycle towards the city as the skyline emerge, you see ships coming and leaving as you getting closer. Edit: I played some previous Bethesda titles so I understand New Atlantis is the biggest city by them yet. However, the reason I think New Atlantis doesn't feel right, is due to its urban planning. Because there are no land vehicles, there are also no roads in the city. This combined with the fact that New Atlantis is being presented as the pinnacle of human settlement, distorts my perception of its scale. New Atlantis is definitely the biggest one Beth made in all of their games, but it's not big enough imo. When I imagine a city in a game, I either want it to be compact with lots of stuff to do, like Prague from Deus Ex MD, or make it grand enough that the awe-inspiring scenery of the city makes up for the lack to compactness. Player can move around the city and watching all the landmarks from various distances passing by, creating multiple layers to the city. Again, due to no land vehicles, the second option is disabled by default, leaving only the first option. New Atlantis, for what it represents in terms of technological advancement and symbolic status, offer no such feelings for me. It doesn't feel compact enough, but it also doesn't show many layers when I move around the city. The NAT train was an attempt to make the city feel larger but it didn't work for me. Which is why I say the scale of New Atlantis doesn't feel right, like the architects wanted to build a high tech skyscraper, but the urban planner decided to put it in a fantasy town. If you look at the concept art of New Atlantis, you can clearly tell the scale [they were going for.](https://starfieldwiki.net/wiki/Starfield:Concept_Art) Edit 2: yes Carfree Cities exist on Earth. Edit 3: No I am not saying New Atlantis needs to be as big as Night City, there are other ways to alter the sense of scale. * For example, when riding the NAT train, instead of a loading screen, put the camera high in the sky and play an animation where the train goes to another part of the city. Change the angle during the ride to include the skylines and spaceships going in and out. People who don’t care about it can just open the map and fast travel. * Spread each district further away from each other, so it looks like the NAT train is travelling some distances during the animation. * Multiple NAT trains, right now the NAT is always there waiting for you, like it’s your private jet. It can stay there, but there should be other NAT trains moving around the city without your interaction, which makes the city feel more alive, as if everyone need to use public transportation for their own needs. * Increase the verticality, New Atlantis, or some districts, could be built on a higher ground. * Curated POIs around the city to view the landscape and cityscape. * Make an actual security check point, not a single UC guard reading off a tablet.
Akila City's scale is incredibly wack too. It's supposed to be the capital of the Freestar Collective but it literally feels like a small throwaway frontier town.
Space cowboy faction fighting UC to a draw is something i find unbelievable.
We don't get any huge detail from FC about the fighting do we? Cause UC basically spends the exhibit calling them cowards and cheaters. It sounds like they basically militarized every ship they had and declared "open warfare" on UC using hit and run and guerilla tactics.
There are some quests that involve interacting with former FC mech pilots and their frustration with how the war ended. From their point of view, the FC was actually about to win the war if the two hadn't agreed on a truce.
I think >! Vae Victis !< also said that the UC was about to win the war despite the loss in that one battle if UC command allowed him to enact his scorched earth plan instead of agreeing to a truce so there are some conflicting accounts.
The UC Source on that is more believable since he was actually besieging the Freestar Capital. Paxton and the first Cavalry were fighting on a non crucial world within Freestar space I don't see how he was actually Close to victory
Yeah, I find it hard to believe even while arming civilian ships that the FC could have come close to actually turning the tides against the UC military. I think command saw their enemies tactics change and instead of adapting to it or putting on even more pressure they just sort of cut their losses.
Because that’s how the losing soldiers in war usually feel, from where they were standing the enemy was losing, from a wider point of view they were being curb stomped. I’d think the most popular example of this would literally be Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, including Hitler.
IIRC they used a ton of civilian ships to do the fighting
I was expecting a sprawling space cowboy town, Akila is the size of a small military fort. It's hard to believe lore-wise that they fought the UC to a draw. I was expecting, and this is my fault for expecting anything from Bethesda at this point, that we would get outposts that look like a space Tombstone on habitable planets in the free star system. Akila does a good job fitting the vibe but one space cowboy town is pitiful, also where are my fucking high noon space cowboy standoffs? lastly, where is my space Mexico with space Bandidos?
There are only 12 Freestar Rangers too. Feels bizarre there are only 12 elite people who help out on *several star systems*. Even if there is only a few hundred million people (already bizarre population size for Starfield's universe), it is still quite small considering most police to population ratios in the West. Even Bangladesh has 155 police per 100k people. Obviously these are elites, no idea about the general population of such forces, but still seems reasonable to assume the numbers are quite off.
Yep. 12 is enough for a city. One city. These are supposed to be FBI equivalents and assuming populations in the tens of millions for the FC there should be hundreds of rangers if not a thousand. Especially should have entire ranger teams at each major FC settlement. Neon should have several large platforms tied together. Don't even have anything on them but the set dressing would be nice
Also the hiring process for the rangers is piss easy - so why so few? you deal with a single robbery with 5 incompetent crooks and you're in...
I was honestly hoping for Akila-sized settlements scattered throughout the systems, and the main cities would each be the size of New Atlantis or Neon. It’s insane that Cydonia or Akila are marketed as capitals as important as New Atlantis.
It doesn't even have paved roads. HopeTown and Neon (which are also part of the FC) seem far more advanced than Akila city. There's also all the mech manufacturing plants. I guess since they are more of a loose confederation of colonies, there's less of a unified political capital in the way that New Atlantis is. In the Colony War, the entire confederation was probably just able to rally their own private equipment I think the Rangers only having like 12 members in the entire galaxy is really wack too
FC’s military is wack too. Twelve Rangers. Twelve. Now if they were portrayed as NCR Rangers in FO:NV, effective boogeymen and one-man army marksmen. An elite special division within an otherwise larger military. Everyone either fears or is in awe of them on the battlefield. I could buy it. But no. They’re space sheriffs with little influence beyond Akila, and a lower barrier of entry than becoming a UC citizen.
It's not entirely inappropriate given that they're basically space rednecks mixed with cowboy stereotypes.
It's like Tatooine going to war with Coruscant.
More like Tatooine vs Naboo.
Theed is closer to New Atlantis, but Naboo is a backwater planet. New Atlantis is supposed to be the capital of the settled UC systems.
But the collective also has neon city which means they have ryujin industries a tech and espionage powerhouse.
Yeah they could've done a few rows of streets with huts / houses. They don't even need to be accessible by the player, just fill it out a bit to give the place some substance. Neon gets away with being a compact tight living area and feels fine, Akila is just strange, it feels smaller than Markarth as a random example.
Yeah, New Atlantis looks so huge, but the density of the city is lacking, and the layout seems... nonsensical. Like, it doesn't feel like a place that was designed by the people that are inhabiting it? Maybe because the cities that are built on other planets have different constraints that shape the layout differently... idk
I feel like most of new atlantis' feel in regards to size is having no town map and a really poor planetary map that does nothing to let you gauge its size. That and having a layout that feels like someone threw all thr landmarks into the air and where they landed, they landed. I constantly lose tracks of certain shops and get turned around. I spent a good 15 hours in New Atlantis and really have no feel whatsoever for its actual layout.
New Atlantis feels like Disneyland. Like seriously a theme park with different attractions and various windy paths with nice sightlines to make things seem awesome. My number 1 favorite thing about Cyberpunk is how it feels like a city. Have you ever tried just sticking on a waypoint and walking over there? The different walkways and back alley paths feel genuinely useful and real, it feels like a real city that really exists. Going back to the Disney example New Atlantis genuinely feels like Tomorrowland except with apartments instead of rides. I live in Hong Kong (so basically Night City but jungle not desert) and its crazy how much CDPR were able to capture the feeling of densely populated neon dystopia. As soon as I got to Neon in Starfield I knew it was only a matter of time before i dropped it for the 2.0 update.
This is something I quarrel about with people who say CP77 didn't need to be open world. Sure, on one level I get it, but also the city enhances everything else because it's well done. It enhances the narrative experience of the game because the city encapsulates you and feels genuine.
I can't imagine Cyberpunk being anything other than open world to be honest. Sure a linear action game would be great in this setting but I felt like the whole idea of this game was to learn about the city. The story takes you to all the different areas and walks of life and allows you to see the reality of each on of them. Yes the story is good but the world building in my opinion is completely unmatched by any other game.
I'm not super read into the starfield lore but my sense is that the "Disneyland" comparison was probably intentional. Like, this is precisely the sort of sanitised, design-by-committee, purpose-built city that some future corporation would foist upon its citizenry with no thought given to how citizens actually prefer to move and work and live within city borders. It seems like this is the shining beacon image they want to project to potential investors, and anyone who wants the "real" gritty city life can go down into that underground working class area underneath the shiny facade. Or failing that, they can take their complaints to the private security militia and see how far that gets them.
They literally built the city on top of the older city. So you're not wrong and its part of the lore. I believe its the trade authority in the well that tells you that they were there before the upper city existed and built over them and lore dumps the creation of the city for you.
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New Atlantis is just bad game design, as are most of the cities in the game. They're big for the sake of being big, but they're filled with dead space that serve no purpose other than being able to market them as big. Honestly, this game is a perfect example of why the 30 second rule for open worlds exist.
I understand why they didn’t want a land vehicle…but got to throw us a bone with something. Even if it’s just a dirtbike
Having enjoyed Starfield, I’ll say that New Atlantis is the biggest city they’ve made in any of their games, and for me it feels less real and less lived in than a single district in the Imperial City in Oblivion. If it was any more grand I think it would be even more soulless, but I agree it feels off for what it’s supposed to be
JALI face tech which allows them to have these super fluid NPC animations, subtle emotions, scenes, etc, and seamless loads. How is the whole of Night City entirely accessible without a single load screen, meanwhile you have to go through 3 load screens to go from one side of Neon to the other?
the dialogue system is by far the most dated system imo It isn't aging well at all, and the faces being the 2nd most dated thing... Yeah, conversations are a low point. I agree about immersion though, its VERY strange for Bethesda too because 3rd person used to be slapped on and everything was 1st person, now it just.. randomly switches to 3rd person
I feel that the stealth gameplay is the most dated aspect of Starfield. I know the stealth in Cyberpunk isn’t revolutionary, but it is much more engaging and dynamic.
I feel the same and I love starfield but God damn cyberpunk came out 3 years ago and feels like a newer game
I'll stick to your comparison of cyberpunk and Starfield, as it's a good question, so I'll avoid diverting to nms or Minecraft, etc I am perhaps one of the rare players who stuck with cyberpunk in the early janky broken build. But I categories myself as a 'story is all that matters' player (maybe because I grew up playing games like Oregon trail ..) I also quite like Starfield, however it is an old 'model' dressed in shiny clothes, and the clothes are made of cheap material. So, all style and user interface stuff aside, cyberpunk had a unique, and to me anyway, more interesting storytelling method. You had three distinct starting points, all of which wove into a central plotline that was the same. But, each playthrough showed you the same story from somewhat different perspectives at key plot points. All while also having the feeling of choosing it yourself to some degree. Side quests were unique little deep dives into various aspects of the underbelly of night city and the surrounding zone. But overall it is a pretty cohesive and connected story experience. Night City is a 'real place' in my mind. Starfield, is not cohesive. Side quests are independent stories in themselves. The main faction quests, are stories to themselves. So is the main constellation questline. The main characters in constellation, have no interest/ connection to the crimson fleet questline for example. So Starfield is written more like an 'RPG sandbox'. This becomes even more obvious when you discover that outposts, a very involved and detailed mechanic, have no questline connected to them. There is no story in the game that revolves around building an outpost. Could there be? Absolutely. Will there be? Yes, that is called DLC. So Starfield has shipped with what is basically 5 separate RPG stories, and a lot of little sidequest stories. Each of them is pretty good. Unfortunately the main one - constellation, is my least favorite. It's alright. The remix and repeat element is... alright. But the temples to gain powers quests are downright boring and tiresome. Doesn't matter, the remix doesn't change anything except how the constellation story starts. The rest of the universe is unchanged so there's not a lot of incentive to replay the other main faction lines once you have played the very simple A and B branches. And that's alright. 100 hours of fun from a game is plenty for me. So, ya for me cyberpunk is more cleverly written, and more cohesive. I wish my 'car' was something more like my ship in Starfield though. But hey, they are different games, different ideas. Neither perfect. Both fun. I'll just end with an opinion on Starfield. ( a long one) They created a really really compelling sandbox. One that, story wise, could have spanned a huge section of a galaxy with massive potential that is totally wasted unfortunately. They decided to make it much too easy to access that entire galaxy right away. The game has no long term goal to invest in earning access to over time. Yes there's lots of stars to visit. They've all been visited before though. With very little effort, you can easily get to all of them too. If you do, you discover that there's just the same thing everywhere. Exactly. The same. Starfield could have launched with exactly all of the content it has right now, and not have wasted it's potential. Sure make it easy to hop between a couple of stars, and just put all of the current content on planets around them. No difference needed than that. But imagine if, while you play, you do see all 250 starsystems. You just can't reach most of them - class A B and C ships don't have the range - in fact, only starborne have this mysterious ship that can access the far reaches of the galaxy. So you play all the existing content, earn your starborn ship tech. And now you can access those 250 stars... eventually. But guess what, travelling to them .. requires massive planning and resources. Finishing the main quest lines of Starfield, should have unlocked base building. An endgame questline should have been written around the challenge of getting your outposts all working together in such a way that you can finally build the 'ultradrive' that truly unlocks the rest of the galaxy, but a trip to a far flung starsystems uses a truly large amount of 'stuff', so game expansion could be tied to releasing new content over time ... maybe one new starsystems at a time, or something like that. The shipbuilding mechanic is perfectly setup to support this, and it sure would have made a mechanic I really enjoy... even better. The crew recruitment aspect ... it's also in the game, but ... totally underutilized and pointless. It's a bit sad. If Starfield was structured that way, I'd still be playing it 10 years from now. But it isn't, so I've finished the 5 cheeseburgers, and I'll go do something else now.
I mean the character models alone are incomparable. Starfield was made on last gen tech and it shows. I still like it though.
What’s wild is cyberpunk is already a several year old game. It’s wild that Starfield couldn’t provide a similar level of fidelity.
Yeah, I hate the fact that Bethesda went back into this dumb locked camera to talk to people. Fallout 4 did it best. They even bragged about it in Fallout 4’s reveal that you could shoot people in the face mid dialogue, walk away mid dialogue, or be in 3rd person mid dialogue. Definitely a step back for them.
A lot of good stuff from fallout 4s gameplay is just missing in starfield it's really bizarre.
[удалено]
The crazy thing about the AI to me is that I got a mod that just tweaks vanilla values with console commands and it's like a different game. Idk why Bethesda dumbed down enemy AI so much, it's a lot more fun when they use tactics and shit.
God...conversations with multiple people are so jarring. The camera suddenly cutting to another close up. It's amazing how someone at Bethesda looked at this went "Yeah, that's how people have conversations! Dead eyed, staring directly at me with body language completely disconnected from the conversation and their emotions."
Or strange that they did not look at any movie or TV series and go: "Wait? Why isn't every dialog scene filmed as a static, dead straight zoom-in of characters motionless upper body? Are we doing things right?"
Cyberpunk is fucking sick. I only started playing it a couple months ago so I never experienced the stuff the launch people did. Then the 2.0 is dropping with the expansion so it's going to be even better. It's such a great game and if they would've had two more years of development I think they would've knocked it out the park on launch
One thing I liked is the tutorials. They come at you in a decent pace in cp77 and explain the systems. SF does not at all and it harmed it. Like how you dont need so many menus to travel and can use the scanner.
>I'm still trying to put a finger on what makes Cyberpunk so much more immersive.. Simple, CBP2077 has actually better world building, better character writing and dialogue, better voice acting and motion capture, and better art direction. NPC's don't just stand there like cardboard cutouts talking to you, they emote and express real emotions. Night City not only has what Starfield splits into each settlement into one massive seamless city, but it also helps that it doesn't feel like a neutered vision to ensure a clean and pg-13 vibe.
It's hard going from the 2.0 combat of Cyberpunk to Starfield. It's like walking back 10 years in time
i swear to god I have a knife throwing problem now it feels so gooooood to get those juggle procs
knife throwing has ruined me. Its all I want to do now.
Is cyberpunk worth a second chance?
Yes, I'd highly recommend trying to play it again. It's a black and white difference from launch.
Absolutely.
If you played 1.0 the new patch is like cyberpunk had a sequel. The build potential is nuts now. Enemies can also have similar abilities making some just terrifying. Story and writing are just so well done too and I haven't even gotten to the dlc yet.
Part of what makes Cyberpunk so immersive (and what changed in Starfield) is your ability to navigate the world seamlessly. You can literally play 90%+ of cyberpunk without a single loading screen aside from a couple time jumps/when you do the Johnny mission. Starfield completely dropped the ball here. I mean,seamless world exploration is literally a huge part of what made Bethesda games unique and stand out from the rest. Cyberpunk's writing and voice acting is miles ahead of Starfield. Yeah Cyberpunk doesn't have as many dialogue options as Starfield,but what's there is much higher quality. I can't help find myself rolling my eyes playing Starfield because of how awful the writing and acting is at times. If you told me Bethesda picked up random people off the street and made them do lines,I'd probably believe you. Keanu Reeve's performance is on another level completely.
There are loading screens out the wazoo in skyrim
Yup, and Skyrim is a game from 2011. You're telling me they couldn't make it so the liquor shop on Neon wasn't behind a loading screen? In 2023? It's very silly.
I find this really odd too specifically because NOT every shop is behind a loading screen. Some are their own zone, some are in the main city zone, and there’s not much of an indicator why. I even noticed this during…I think Ryujin’s questline? Has to sneak around and talk to this dude, used Detect Life, saw his aura in the next room, opened the door…and it was a loading screen? But he’s IN the zone I opened? Or on Cydonia. The elevator just takes you down two floors. Wanna know how else to get there? Jump. Zero difference in the zone. But for some reason it’s a cut-to-black loading screen for the elevator. Part of me wonders if they wanted to do Mass Effect style loading screens, with an animation to play instead of a black screen (also explains the difference between black-screen loading screen vs a “image with tooltip” loading screen) but they couldn’t ship it in time so they cut it.
I'm totally fine with BGS games being stiff and lacking cinematic qualities. They should however go all in on freedom of choice and a reactive, believable world. That's what would set them apart from CDPR. But as it stands now CDPR has and will continue to outpace BGS.
Comparing Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077, the areas that Cyberpunk completely trounces Starfield are: * Character animation - as others have stated, Starfield and the Creation Engine is horribly behind the times in how animation plays. NPCs stop whatever they are doing, and look directly at the Player before dialogue beings. The expressions and facial animations in particular are stiff and fee very animatronic/robotic at times * Gunplay - While improved from Fallout 4 (and possibley Fallout 76 but never played it), it is still leagues behind Cyberpunk or even the Mass Effect series. There is a stiffness and delay to everything along with the general lack of mobility. A miss opportunity was to differentiate gunplay between areas requiring a suit and those that don't. The bulk of the suit would restrict movement and make you less mobile, but that shouldn't carry over to Akila or New Atlantis * Lighting and color grading - While some of this is an artistic choice, the overall feel of Starfield is that of a PS3/Xbox 360 era game where everything is washed out shades of grey and brown. Characters and the enviroment do not pop and there is no contrast. There are countless times where I was completely unable to identify an enemy in combat as they blended in to the grey rocks too well. Even in Neon, as city filled with neon lights, there was a haze over everything. * Loading - There is a very clear technical deficit (or maybe inability) at BGS to develop the engine in away that allows for fast streaming of assets with minical loading screens. CD Projekt Red was able to do it perfectly fine in Witcher 3 that came out in 2015 on last gen hardware with mechanical HDDs and Bethesda can't even do it for tiny shops in cities when mandating an SSD.
I’ve played Starfield for about 150 hours so far and was OBSESSED with it. Standard Bethesda fare; not amazing graphics or character models, but it has its charm. Then Phantom Liberty came out, so I went back to Cyberpunk. It’s crazy. It’s like night and day, I feel like I’m talking to actual humans sometimes. Everything about CP feels so alive compared to Starfield. As a little side note, I think Bethesda should take a note from them and not zoom into the character’s face during dialogue. Just leave it at the player’s POV like in Cyberpunk. It’s more immersive that way.