xbox game studios – Trekking with Dennis

Don’t Reply To Negative Reviews, Bethesda…

Just when I thought I’d said everything I was ever going to say about Starfield…

Bethesda’s customer support/public relations team has had to handle some absolute nightmares over the past few years. The line “we aren’t planning on doing anything about it” in response to a complaint about the Fallout 76 “canvas bag” fiasco will be forever etched in my mind – and that’s just the start! I used to work in the games industry, specifically in marketing, so this kind of story is right up my alley… so to speak.

If you haven’t already heard, Bethesda’s PR team has begun posting replies to negative reviews on Steam… and it’s going about as well as you might expect.

An example of a response to a negative review of *Starfield* from Bethesda.
(I have redacted the developer’s username for the sake of privacy.)

Here’s a great rule of thumb for any developer, publisher, or creative of any kind: don’t reply or respond to reviews. Ever. Period. End of story. Just don’t do it – it never goes well, and ends up coming across as whiny, arrogant, or both.

There are legitimate points of criticism in practically any work of media, and there are always going to be differences of opinion even among professional critics and journalists. A developer might think that they’ve made the “perfect” video game – but it’s a universal truth that even the absolute best of the best receive the odd negative review. Going after critics and players who have something negative to say is just a bad look – and it shouldn’t happen.

If Starfield was some obscure indie title made by a couple of amateur developers, I’d still encourage them never to reply to negative reviews – but I could at least understand, on a purely human level, where such responses were coming from. If a project that I’m passionate about and poured a lot of work into suddenly seems to be coming under attack, it’s natural to want to react to that, either to try to convince reviewers to change their minds or to “fight back.” It’s still a bad idea, but at least it’s understandable in that case.

But Bethesda is a big company, and it’s backed up by Microsoft – one of the largest and most valuable corporations on the planet. For these companies to literally pay some of their employees to use official Bethesda developer accounts to reply to negative reviews is just… well, it’s pretty shocking, to tell the truth.

Another response to a negative Steam review.
(Developer username redacted.)

Whether you think Starfield is the “game of the year” or a dumpster fire, you have to accept that other people have different points of view. And Steam reviews are one way in which players can express their opinions about the game. A company the size of Bethesda has to accept that not every review can be positive – and they kind of have to take that on the chin when it happens. It’s a reality of the games industry.

The internet has democratised media criticism – and that’s a fantastic thing. No longer are reviews the sole domain of professional journalists with university degrees; anyone can now offer up their half-baked thoughts and opinions on films, games, and TV shows. And I think that’s absolutely wonderful. One of the best things that Steam does – and other platforms like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes do, too – is aggregating reviews, presenting audiences with an overall picture of how players feel about the titles on offer. No one individual review is, therefore, a deal-maker or deal-breaker; players are now able to consider a much broader range of opinions.

The internet has opened up media criticism to anyone with a keyboard – and there are going to be a whole range of opinions on practically every video game, film, and TV show.

But the fact that any old idiot can set up a website – or post a review on a platform like Steam – means that not all reviews are going to be fair, accurate, or even relevant. Some reviews of Starfield criticised the game for absolutely silly reasons, and again on a human level, I can understand wanting to react to that and scream “it’s not fair!” But as a corporation, Microsoft has to be better than that. Bethesda and Xbox have to be professional.

Telling a player that they’re “wrong” to feel the way that they do about Starfield is bizarre – and it doesn’t do anything to endear Bethesda to its fans. Many reviews of Starfield echo my own thoughts on the game: people genuinely wanted to enjoy it, but found it to be visually last-gen, narratively weak, repetitive, and so on. Those criticisms may feel harsh to the talented developers who put a lot of time and effort into creating Starfield… but telling players that they shouldn’t feel that way or they just “don’t get” what Starfield was meant to be is an incredibly silly way to react.

There are two good ways to respond to criticism. Firstly, Bethesda and Xbox can prioritise fixing commonly-noted issues with the game. Rolling out updates and patches that, for example, improve the quality of the in-game map or reduce the frequency of copy-and-paste levels and environments would be a good place to start. Saying to players “we hear your concerns and we’re acting on them” is the appropriate reaction.

Look at what Hello Games did when No Man’s Sky came in for some absolutely ruthless criticism upon launch. Instead of lashing out at players, telling them to appreciate what the game had to offer, they knuckled down and got back to work. That game has received more free updates and patches than I can count – and it’s now in a far better and more enjoyable state than it was when it launched. Hello Games prioritised adding features that players wanted and fixing issues that players criticised – and the result is that, several years later, the game can claim to have made a comeback.

Bethesda could learn more than one lesson from Hello Games…

The second way to react to criticism is to make sure that the things players don’t like won’t be present in the next game a studio creates. While I personally wasn’t offended by Starfield’s abundance of loading screens, it’s one of the most common complaints about the game that I’ve read over the past couple of months. I don’t believe it’s possible to remove the loading screens in Starfield – thanks to the game’s reliance on the outdated Creation Engine that Bethesda has been using, in some form, for close to a quarter of a century – but it *is* possible for Bethesda to acknowledge the way players feel about loading screens and ensure that they won’t be present to the same extent in The Elder Scrolls VI.

Although the first Mass Effect game was well-received, it picked up criticism in 2007 for its inventory management and weapon overheating. By the time Mass Effect 2 rolled around a few years later, those problems had been fixed. Inventories were streamlined, weapon overheating was gone, and players had a much better time with the game. BioWare took those criticisms on board and worked to ensure that the things players didn’t like were gone from the next game in the series.

Inventory management was criticised in *Mass Effect 1* – so BioWare streamlined it in *Mass Effect 2*.

When Bethesda responds to criticisms of Starfield being “boring” – in the subjective opinion of one player – by saying things like “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren’t bored.” it feels incredibly arrogant and smug. Trying to shut down “wrong” opinions about the game by attacking players – some of whom spent dozens or hundreds of hours playing before leaving their reviews – is genuinely shocking coming from a major studio. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, in fact – not on this scale, at any rate.

So Bethesda, here’s some free advice from someone who used to work in video games marketing: just stop. Stop what you’re doing – and if possible, apologise to the players you attacked. Refrain from ever responding to reviews again, and take the criticism as it comes. Even if you’d made an impossibly perfect game, there’d still be some people who didn’t like it or felt it wasn’t for them. That’s the way it goes, and you can’t afford to be so thin-skinned in this marketplace! You are doing actual damage to your reputation by retaliating in this way – so stop it.

A custom spaceship landing on a planet in *Starfield*.

What a mess, eh?

I really felt that I was done talking about Starfield until this came along. I was quite content to put the game back on the shelf, perhaps returning to it in a year or two to see if expansion packs and updates had improved it. But never in a million years did I expect to see Bethesda lashing out in this way. It’s unprofessional, petty, thin-skinned, and just plain wrong. It has done nothing to address legitimate points of criticism of the game, nor has it helped the reputations of either Starfield or Bethesda itself. I’m genuinely shocked to see this.

Somewhat ironically, given Starfield’s copy-and-paste buildings and “points of interest,” at least some of these reviews seem to have themselves been copied-and-pasted… or perhaps written by an AI bot. I hope Bethesda learns another lesson from this mess and doesn’t keep up this attack on critics of Starfield. No matter how great you might think the game is, and how much fun you had with it, you have to concede that not everyone feels the same way, and that there are genuine reasons to be dissatisfied, underwhelmed, or even downright pissed off at Starfield.

Do better, Bethesda.

Starfield is out now for PC and Xbox Series S/X, and is also available via Game Pass. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Xbox Game Studios, and Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

So you’re burned out on Starfield… what next?

Tue 28.11.23Tue 28.11.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for some of the entries on this list.

Although I was generous to Starfield when it launched back in September, I quickly ran out of patience with the game. In summary… Starfield just wasn’t what I’d been expecting, and I couldn’t find a way to lose myself in either its world or its narrative. I like to think I gave it a fair shake after thirty-plus hours of playtime, but I just wasn’t enjoying myself. While the game is ambitious in scope and a technological achievement in some respects, it’s also limited in its designs, held back by an outdated engine and mid-tier graphics, and just… boring. Starfield never quite “clicked” for me… and I’m okay with that!

But it does leave me with a dilemma. I’d hoped Starfield would be my “game of the autumn,” giving me hours of fun as the nights are drawing in and Christmas time is approaching! Having stepped away from the game, I found myself unsure of what to do next. What game should I play to fill the void left by Starfield?

What should we play instead of *Starfield*?

This could also be a good list if you’ve played Starfield to death and you’ve done everything you can with the game. If you (somehow) managed to dedicate several hundred hours to it, and you’ve beaten all of the faction questlines, the side-missions, and gone through a dozen New Game Plus playthroughs… maybe you’re also looking to play something else for a while! Even the best games can wear out their welcomes after a while.

So that’s what I thought we could consider today: a few different games (and a TV show, too) that might replace Starfield for those of us who didn’t stick with it… or for folks who just need a break from it.

Boxman, my favourite *Starfield* character…

As I always say: everything on this list is entirely subjective! If you hate all of my picks or I miss something that seems obvious, that’s totally okay! We’re all entitled to our opinions, and there should be more than enough room in the gaming community for discussions and disagreements.

I’ve picked a few different categories of games based on some of my expectations for Starfield, and I’ve tried to include a few different and perhaps unexpected titles, too.

So let’s jump into the list!

Bethesda Game:
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Starfield is a Bethesda game… which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your point of view! I could certainly entertain the notion that Bethesda could do with modernising the way it creates its missions in particular, but that may be beside the point. If you’re craving this specific kind of game, there really is no substitute for what Bethesda brings to the table.

With that in mind, I’d like to suggest Morrowind as the first candidate for a game to play instead of Starfield. A lot of folks have played Skyrim to death already – with that game having been released and re-released more times than I can count over the past few years – but Morrowind may have slipped through the cracks for some players. If you missed Morrowind when it was new, now could be a great time to revisit it.

Morrowind may have been released in 2002, but it doesn’t have to look like a two-decade-old game if visuals are a concern. There are some fantastic graphics and visual mods out there that can genuinely transform the way Morrowind looks. It might be a stretch to say that it can look “brand-new,” but it can certainly give other Bethesda games a run for their money!

Morrowind was my first Bethesda game, and I played it to death in the early and mid-2000s. But even with the countless hours I spent playing the game, there are quests I haven’t completed and achievements I haven’t gotten. It’s overstuffed with content, having more NPCs, weapon types, and factions than Skyrim. If you haven’t tried it yet – or if it’s been twenty years since you last picked it up – it could be a great replacement for Starfield.

Spaceship Builder:
Star Trek: Starship Creator – Warp 2

I don’t know what element or component of Starfield may have appealed to you the most – but for me, building and piloting my very own spaceship was at the top of the list! Relatively few games had offered anything quite like Starfield’s shipbuilder, but this offering from the Star Trek franchise just after the turn of the millennium was one of them.

This game was a niche product even in the year 2000, and I fully appreciate that! Trekkies will get a lot more out of Starship Creator than a general audience, and there are arguably other games that we could’ve picked for the spaceship builder category. If you’re looking for a more modern title, the likes of Space Engineers or Kerbal Space Program are definitely interesting options!

But for folks who enjoy the Star Trek franchise, Starship Creator is a unique experience that few other video games from the franchise have really offered. In 2000, it was a blast to import your own photo (or a photo of a friend or even a celebrity) to add to your virtual crew, and while the ship-building options are limited by the technology of the time, it’s still a ton of fun to remake classic Federation starships in new ways.

When I looked ahead to Starfield, the shipbuilder reminded me of Starship Creator. I said in the run-up to Starfield’s launch that one of the things I really wanted from the game was the ability to build and customise my own ship and take it on adventures! Unfortunately, Starfield’s lack of real spaceflight and overreliance on fast-travel meant that the custom ship I worked so hard on never really got much of an outing.

First-Person Role-Playing/Shooter:
Cyberpunk 2077 + Phantom Liberty DLC

At time of writing, some digital shops on PC still have their Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals available, and I’ve seen the base version of Cyberpunk 2077 at a fair discount on both Steam and Epic Games. If you missed the deals this time, I expect we’ll have winter/holiday sales to enjoy within a month or so, so you might not have to wait too long!

If you’d told me a year or so ago that I’d be recommending Cyberpunk 2077 to anyone I’d have been sceptical! I didn’t hate the game, but I felt it was overhyped, surprisingly linear, and with gameplay elements that I’d seen before in other (better) titles. For what it was, though, Cyberpunk 2077 was decent enough, and I had some fun with its corporate dystopia, fully-realised cityscape, and Keanu Reeves’ character of Johnny Silverhand!

After waiting to ensure that Phantom Liberty was well-received and not bedevilled by the bugs and glitches that will forever define Cyberpunk 2077, I recently picked it up. A review will come when I’ve fully played through the new content, but suffice to say that the overhaul to Cyberpunk 2077 has been impressive, with changes made to the game’s levelling up system, skill tree, and one that was desperately needed: armour! The version of Cyberpunk 2077 that you’ll play in 2023 is significantly better than it was even just last year, and when the game has an entertaining story, I think it’s well worth playing for any fan of first-person role-playing shooters.

Starfield has also put Cyberpunk 2077′s gameplay and world-building into perspective for me. The open world of Night City in particular is miles ahead of anything in Starfield, feeling like a genuinely lived-in city populated by real people. The main story is much stronger than Starfield’s, too, and I think there are other favourable comparisons.

Spaceflight:
Star Wars Squadrons

As indicated above, one of the disappointing things about Starfield for me was the lack of functional spaceflight. After working hard on my custom spaceship, I genuinely expected that I’d be able to launch it into space and actually pilot it to my destination. Instead, travelling from planet to planet is all done by fast-travel menus, which really rips me out of the immersion. Relatively early in the game, I picked a mission from the “mission board” in New Atlantis, only for the so-called mission to basically play itself with practically no interaction required.

But we’re off-topic already! Star Wars Squadrons is the starfighter game of your dreams; the game that we all thought we were playing in the ’90s when we booted up the likes of Tie Fighter or Rogue Squadron. The visuals are absolutely gorgeous, and sitting at my desk I genuinely got the sense that I was in the pilot’s seat of an X-Wing.

Sitting in the pilot’s seat of an X-Wing has never felt more real!

I’m not sure if Squadrons still has an active multiplayer scene, but there’s a fun campaign to play through and it’s also possible to take on the AI, so there should still be plenty to get stuck into. I think the game is an absolute blast, and it’s one I really should get back into! In terms of spaceflight, which is the category I’ve assigned to it, I definitely felt there was a lot more to get stuck into here than there was in Starfield.

Because Squadrons puts you in the seat of a starfighter, you aren’t going to be hauling cargo across vast expanses of space. There are other games that offer that kind of experience, though, if you really want it. But if you’re looking to pilot small ships, get into fun dogfights, and try out some of the iconic vehicles from the Star Wars franchise, there’s really nothing quite like it!

Role-Playing Game:
Baldur’s Gate 3

A combat encounter in *Baldur’s Gate 3*.

With only a month of 2023 left to go, I can’t see another game coming along to dethrone Baldur’s Gate 3. It will almost certainly be crowned “game of the year” at my annual end-of-year awards! It’s one of the best games I’ve played in years, offering branching storylines, a massive variety of play styles, character classes, and so much more.

I’d missed out on the first Baldur’s Gate in the late 1990s, and this game ended up being my first foray into the world of Faerûn. It was overwhelming at first, because the game hits you with a ton of options right off the bat – but I ended up having a whale of a time. I chose to play as a drow (or dark elf) druid, but there are a huge variety of character options and play styles, with different weapon types, magical spells, and more. I’m going to start a second run through the game sometime soon so I can try something different and have a completely different experience!

Starfield offers players different backgrounds and skills to level up, but in the time I spent with the game I didn’t really find much by way of unique content to match either the character I’d made or the way I hoped to play the game. Baldur’s Gate 3 does a much better job in this regard, with character classes that have a massive impact on the way the game plays.

There are some absolutely incredible characters to meet in Baldur’s Gate 3, all of whom are voiced beautifully and feel like real, well-rounded people with their own motivations. Keeping them all happy and working together is part of the experience, too. Just thinking about the game again has got me salivating; I can’t wait to jump back in for that second playthrough!

Sci-Fi Adventure:
The Mass Effect Trilogy

Commander Shepard’s crew in *Mass Effect 2*.

You can pick up the complete Mass Effect trilogy in one bundle called the Legendary Edition, which includes all three games plus their DLC. This could be another title to look for when it’s on sale, as I’ve seen Legendary Edition at a fairly steep discount in some recent Steam sales. If you’re new to the trilogy, or returning to it for the first time in a long time, it’s the easiest way to get the complete experience.

When I think about a sci-fi adventure set in a unique world, Mass Effect and its two sequels leap to mind. The trilogy isn’t an open-world experience; it’s much more linear than a game like Starfield in that respect. The games build up a main story focusing on a galaxy-ending threat, but also smaller character-focused stories featuring a diverse (and occasionally wacky) cast. Again, the voice acting to bring these characters to life is incredible, and all of the folks who join the crew of the Normandy are fun, fascinating, and frightening to various degrees!

The Mass Effect trilogy was criticised for its ending back in 2012, and I think it’s worth stating that some of that criticism was absolutely fair. There should have been a way for the third entry in the series to pay off more decisions and choices that had been made. But even with that weakness, I still feel that the trilogy is worth playing for any fan of sci-fi. The characters and world-building in particular are incredible.

And in terms of gameplay, there’s a lot to love with Mass Effect. A third-person cover-based shooter is already a blast, but Mass Effect adds both tech and magical powers into the mix, shaking things up. Different character builds play quite differently from one another, making it worth going back to replay all three games to get a new experience.

Open World Game:
Red Dead Redemption II

Red Dead Redemption II is a masterpiece; one of the finest video games ever made. And director Todd Howard had the audacity to suggest, in a pre-launch interview, that Starfield was drawing inspiration from the way in which its open world was designed and built. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that, because the comparison it invited is… well, let’s just say it’s an unfavourable one for Starfield and leave it at that.

I’ve had a fascination with the American “Wild West” since my schoolfriends and I used to play “Cowboys and Indians” on the playground. Red Dead Redemption II transported me to that time and place in a way I truly did not believe was possible, and I found myself having dreams about the game during my playthrough. I absolutely adored the time I got to spend in that world – over 100 hours on a single playthrough.

Promo image of protagonist Arthur Morgan.

The story of Red Dead Redemption II is dense, adult, and deeply emotional, packing a real punch as it reaches its crescendo. When people say that “video games can be artistic” or “video games can be just as good as films and TV shows,” it’s stories like Red Dead Redemption II that we can point to.

But more than that, the world in which the game was set was beautiful and jam-packed with things to do. It’s possible to wander on foot or on horseback through the wilderness, into the mountains, across the grassy plains, and beyond… just taking it all in. I’d heard great things about Red Dead Redemption II and knew I was in for something special, but even with the hype and high expectations, the game absolutely blew me away. It’s one of the best games I’ve ever played in my life.

Narrative Experience:
Shenmue I & II

I never miss an opportunity to talk about Shenmue! This was one of the first games I played that felt truly “cinematic;” as if its story would be right at home on the big screen. I absolutely adored that experience, and while some aspects of the first Shenmue in particular can feel dated by today’s standards… at the time it was genuinely groundbreaking.

Unfortunately, Shenmue I & II has to come with the caveat that its story is incomplete. Beautifully written, gripping, and populated with a fantastic cast of characters… but nevertheless without an ending. I was deeply disappointed in 2019 when I learned that Shenmue III – a game that fans donated their own money to help create – would not be finishing the story, as I felt that was its only objective.

Protagonist Ryo Hazuki meets Santa Claus.

But we’re drifting off-topic once more! The first two Shenmue games – which can be picked up in one package, at least on PC – were fantastic during the Dreamcast era. They’re well worth playing in their own right to follow a genuinely enjoyable story, but twenty-plus years later, I also feel that Shenmue is a piece of gaming history. This was one of the first titles to come close to offering an open world, one of the first games to pioneer systems like dynamic weather and NPCs with routines, and one of the first to allow players to step away from the main quest to pursue mini-games and other activities. Shenmue pioneered ideas that many modern games now take for granted.

It also created the quick-time event… which may be a mark against it, depending on your point of view! For me, Shenmue feels like a game that was ahead of its time, pushing the boundaries and taking gaming in a new direction. Maybe some folks weren’t ready for that in 1999/2000. But Shenmue I & II are well worth revisiting, if for no other reason than to take part in an engaging and somewhat mysterious story.

Base-Building:
Banished

A town in *Banished* with a forest, houses, a chapel, and pastures.

Another game I never miss a chance to discuss is Banished! Maybe it’s stretching the name to call this a “base-builder,” as it’s more of a town-building game akin to a stripped-down Sim City, but for players who were interested in building settlements and bases in Starfield, I think there are enough similarities to warrant its inclusion on a list like this one!

Banished is fantastic. Its charm lies in its relative simplicity, as there aren’t so many buildings and jobs for citizens to be overwhelming. But that simplicity blankets a surprisingly challenging game, and getting the right balance of resources to keep the town going is far trickier than it seems! Banished is a balancing act, requiring farms, orchards, blacksmiths, and other buildings and professions to keep the citizens of a small town fed, healthy, and happy.

A hospital and a field of wheat in *Banished*.

I’ve sunk countless hours into Banished, and every few months or so I find myself drifting back to the game, ready to start a new save file. It always boggles my mind that the entire game was created by a single developer – I’d still have found it to be a fun and impressive game if it had been worked on by an entire studio!

If part of the appeal of Starfield was striking out for a new land, creating a settlement, and harvesting resources, maybe a game like Banished will scratch that itch. Even if not, it’s well worth playing in its own right, because building, maintaining, and managing a town successfully is a fun challenge. I have a longer piece about Banished, and if you’d like to read it you can find it by clicking or tapping here.

TV Series:
The Expanse

The Expanse is one of the best sci-fi shows of the past few years without a doubt. In a similar way to Starfield, it shows a near-future level of technology and a solar system populated entirely by humans – without any aliens to be seen. Humanity has splintered into different factions, each of which has its own agenda, but at its core, The Expanse follows a few compelling characters rather than taking a birds-eye view of the political landscape of the solar system.

It’s hard to say too much about The Expanse without spoiling it, but aesthetically there are some similarities to Starfield. The way spaceships are designed in The Expanse feels similar, at least in some respects, to the way they’re presented in Starfield – so if that kind of NASA-inspired look is part of what drew you to Starfield, you’ll see at least some of that in The Expanse.

The spacecraft Rocinante in *The Expanse*.

Obviously a TV series is completely different from a video game, and I don’t think The Expanse can ever be a like-for-like replacement. But if you haven’t seen it and you’re not sure what to do with yourself after burning out on Starfield, I’d absolutely encourage you to check it out. It’s well worth a watch, and it has at least some points of comparison with Starfield.

I had a great time with the show, and I was pleased to see Amazon pick it up after it was dropped by its original network. The Expanse has now completed its six-season run, and you can binge-watch the entire thing on Amazon Prime Video at time of writing.

So that’s it!

We’ve found a few things to play instead of Starfield. If, like me, you didn’t get on with Starfield, or if you’ve just spent so much time with it that you need a break, I hope this list has given you some inspiration! Some of the titles discussed above can be found at a discount when sales roll around, so it might be worth adding some or all of them to your wishlist ahead of the holiday season.

I really wanted Starfield to be my “game of the season,” carrying me through to Christmas and into the new year. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to the hype or the expectations I had for it, and after about thirty hours of trying to push through and waiting for it to “get good,” I gave up. Starfield is still installed on my PC at time of writing, but I have no plans to return to the game any time soon.

I hope this has been a bit of fun, and if I gave you an idea or two then I’ve done my job!

All titles discussed above are the copyright of their respective developer, publisher, and/or studio. Some screenshots and promotional artwork used above courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Video Game Spotlight: Ryse: Son of Rome

Wed 22.11.23Dennis

On the 22nd of November 2013 – a decade ago today – Ryse: Son of Rome was released. And on that very day, I bought a copy! Ryse: Son of Rome was one of the launch titles for the Xbox One, a console I also picked up on release day. With it being the game’s tenth anniversary, I thought it could be a bit of fun to shine a spotlight on this underappreciated title.

Ryse: Son of Rome was a good game to get started with as a new console generation was landing. For all of its flaws (especially with the original version of the machine), the Xbox One was a beefy system by 2013 standards; a powerhouse built for high-definition screens and great-looking games. Ryse: Son of Rome took full advantage of the Xbox One’s hardware to create characters and environments that still hold up ten years later.

I still remember the excitement I felt as I headed into the city on the day the Xbox One launched. I didn’t know what game or games I might be able to afford, but the launch of a new console generation felt like a really exciting moment. At that time I was still working in the games industry so I’d been following the new consoles as their launches approached. The Xbox One had already stumbled, with controversies surrounding its always-online nature, sharing games between accounts, and the mandatory Kinect accessory that bumped the price up to $100 more than a PlayStation 4. But I’d been an Xbox player for more than a decade at that point and had played on both earlier consoles – and I’d even tried out the original Kinect – so I thought I’d stick with what I knew!

The only Xbox One bundles that were available to me included FIFA 14, so I ended up with that game and enough spare cash for one other. After checking out little more than the box art, I settled on Ryse: Son of Rome. It was one of only a handful of Xbox One-exclusive titles in November 2013, along with the likes of Forza Motorsport 5 and a rail-shooter called Crimson Dragon. There were a few other multiplatform titles, but one of the drawbacks to the Xbox One across really its entire lifespan was a lack of solid exclusive titles. Looking back, Ryse: Son of Rome was one of the better offerings.

*Ryse: Son of Rome* was an Xbox One launch title.

I’m a history buff, having studied the subject at university, and I have a soft spot for historical settings as a result. Even now, a full decade on from Ryse: Son of Rome’s release, there aren’t that many games that visit Ancient Rome. In fact, aside from strategy titles like Civilization VI or Age of Empires, I can’t think of many other games that even mention the Romans – let alone action/adventure titles that take place in that time period. In that sense, Ryse: Son of Rome still represents something a little bit different.

What I remember most about Ryse: Son of Rome was how darn good it looked! There was so much more detail in the faces of characters, in the weapons they wielded, and in the environments they battled through when compared to games I’d been playing on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and it felt like a new chapter for gaming as a hobby. Though titles like Mass Effect 2 or Grand Theft Auto V had looked decent on those machines, I could definitely feel the Xbox One and Ryse: Son of Rome kicking things into a higher gear.

*Ryse: Son of Rome* is a good-looking game!

The story of Ryse: Son of Rome was fairly formulaic and nothing exceptional, but it was still entertaining and well worth following to its conclusion. It’s a swashbuckling tale of revenge told through a frame narrative – with echoes of the likes of Gladiator, perhaps. I won’t say too much lest I spoil it for you, but while I’d never rank Ryse: Son of Rome as one of the all-time great gaming narratives, it was solid and enjoyable for what it was.

I was surprised, when I revisited the game earlier this month, at just how well it performs and how new it still manages to feel. If I picked up Ryse: Son of Rome today, on its tenth anniversary, I think I could be led to believe that it was a brand-new game. That says a lot about its art style and graphical fidelity – but also, perhaps, a little about how technology hasn’t advanced as much in the past decade as it had in the previous ten years.

I was a little surprised to see that Ryse: Son of Rome isn’t available on PC Game Pass – though it seems to be available on the console version of Microsoft’s subscription service. If you have an Xbox One or Xbox Series S/X and a Game Pass subscription, it’s an incredibly easy title to recommend to any fan of action/adventure games and single-player narrative experiences. Without the subscription, Ryse: Son of Rome is often on sale, and I think it was one of the titles in a recent Steam sale on PC that was less than £5. For that money, it’s once again an incredibly easy recommendation!

For full-price on launch day in 2013, I was satisfied – and if Trekking with Dennis had existed back then, you’d have seen a positive review. I would’ve mentioned the game’s relatively short length as a caveat (Ryse: Son of Rome clocks in around the six-hour mark), but with relatively few other exclusive titles, it was worth it at the time.

*Ryse: Son of Rome* was my gateway into the Xbox One generation!

So that was my experience with Ryse: Son of Rome! I think it’s an underappreciated title from the early days of the Xbox One; a hidden gem that a lot of folks aren’t aware of. With holiday sales coming up next month, it’s worth putting it on your wishlist or keeping an eye on it, because it really is a fun, somewhat different, and visually impressive adventure.

I promised I’d do more of these “spotlight” pieces, taking a retrospective look at some older titles that I enjoyed. So far, the only other game to have gotten the spotlight treatment is Banished, a PC town-building game that, again, I thoroughly recommend! You can check out my thoughts on that title by clicking or tapping here, and I hope you’ll stay tuned for more spotlights like this one in the future.

All that remains is to say this: happy tenth anniversary, Ryse: Son of Rome!

Ryse: Son of Rome is out now for Xbox One and PC and is also playable on Xbox Series S/X. Ryse: Son of Rome is the copyright of Crytek and/or Xbox Game Studios. Some screenshots and promotional artwork used above courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Forza Motorsport’s Biggest Problem…

Sun 29.10.23Sun 29.10.23Dennis

This piece was going to be my first impressions of Forza Motorsport – the latest big racing simulation game developed by Turn 10 Studios for Xbox. But the longer I’ve sat with Forza Motorsport, the more the game feels overshadowed by one single problem, and this is getting in the way of what should be an exciting racing experience.

Forza Motorsport is a good game with a single glaring flaw. It has a great selection of cars, it’s visually stunning, it runs well on my PC, and it landed on Game Pass on launch day. Even though I’m not any kind of motoring enthusiast and I don’t know the first thing about how or what to tune to get two extra brake horsepower or more torque (what even is torque, by the way?) Forza’s cars feel like a ton of fun to drive. I’ll leave most of the tinkering to folks who know what they’re doing – but the fact that there’s such a huge array of tuning options is fantastic.

But Forza Motorsport is lacking in one key department – and it’s one that feels like it should be an incredibly obvious thing for any racing game to get right. Forza Motorsport just doesn’t have enough racetracks.

At time of writing in October 2023, shortly after the game’s launch, there are a mere twenty racetracks. That’s compared with 32 racetracks in its (confusingly-named) predecessor, Forza Motorsport 7 from 2017. I can’t think of another recent racing game that launched with so few racetracks – not a serious racer, at any rate. Gran Turismo 7, which is Xbox and Forza’s big PlayStation 5 competitor, launched with almost twice as many tracks for players to race on.

There are plenty of cars, but not enough tracks to race them around.

When I owned a SNES console in the early 1990s, I had a game called Nigel Mansell’s World Championship. That game, which is now more than thirty years old, had sixteen racetracks – only four fewer than Forza Motorsport. Is that okay? Are players in 2023 willing to accept that the latest edition of one of the racing genre’s big beasts has only four more racetracks than a thirty-one-year-old SNES/Amiga game that hardly anyone remembers?

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Turn 10 and Xbox Game Studios clearly plan to add more racetracks as paid-for DLC. The fact that the game launched on day one with purchasable car packs as add-ons says a lot about the state of monetisation in Forza Motorsport. But at least the base game came with a solid lineup of cars to choose from. The amount of racetracks, in comparison, feels incredibly lacklustre and downright stingy.

*Nigel Mansell’s World Championship* offered players a choice of sixteen racetracks in 1992.

For me, this lack of diversity in racing environments has crippled Forza Motorsport, cutting the game off at the knees and utterly annihilating any potential longevity it might’ve had. And I’m sure I won’t be the only one in that position. The game, in its current form, feels almost akin to a demo or beta version; an incomplete experience with promises of additional development to come at some nebulous future date. In a game that’s priced at £65/$70 – for the base version – I don’t consider that to be acceptable.

If Turn 10 wanted to add more racetracks but didn’t have time, why not delay the launch of Forza Motorsport? From Xbox’s point of view, the game isn’t essential at the present moment – sure, it’s great to get it out in time for Christmas, but with titles like Starfield doing big numbers and a relatively successful 2023 already under its belt, it’s not like the success or failure of Game Pass or the Series X was somehow riding on an early launch of Forza Motorsport. There was time to push things back if some racetracks weren’t ready.

Couldn’t *Forza Motorsport* have been delayed?

But I really don’t believe that’s the issue. It seems obvious to me that Turn 10 and Xbox are planning to release racetracks either as standalone pieces or in bundles – and charge players extra for them. That’s a pretty big disappointment considering how few tracks there are in the “standard edition” of the game. There are promises of free updates… but watch this space. I’d bet on at least some of these racetracks only being available to people willing to fork over some extra cash.

More and more games are going down this “live-service” route, and it’s disappointing. While Forza Motorsport runs well and seems to be free of major bugs and performance issues, it still feels like a game that doesn’t have enough content to justify its price tag… or, frankly, its early release. There’s a lot here that could be great… but when there aren’t many racetracks to sink your teeth into, the game feels like it gets old pretty fast.

A lack of racetracks is disappointing in a racing game!

I’d rather have seen 300 cars and 30 tracks instead of 500 cars and 20 tracks. Maybe that’s just me, but that would’ve been my preference if there were limited development resources. Or, alternatively, I’d have delayed Forza Motorsport until more racetracks were fully-developed and ready to be included as part of the base game.

I will caveat all of this by saying that I’m not a “car guy” or really any kind of racing sim expert. And if the general consensus from players is that they’d rather have more cars to toy with and that the number of racetracks and the diversity of racing environments don’t matter so much… then fair enough! This is all just one player’s subjective take, after all.

But I confess that I feel disappointed in Forza Motorsport as things stand. The game just doesn’t have as much to offer as I feel it should – and that seriously cuts into the enjoyment for me. I’ve put down the control pad for now… and I’m honestly not sure if I’ll bother to pick it back up.

Forza Motorsport is out now for PC and Xbox Series S/X. The game is also available as part of a Game Pass subscription. Forza Motorsport is the copyright of Turn 10 Studios, Xbox Game Studios, and Microsoft. Some promotional images courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Starfield: Further Thoughts

Tue 10.10.23Tue 10.10.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Starfield’s main quest, including its ending.

I have to confess that I haven’t played a lot more of Starfield since I last shared my thoughts on the game, its flaws, and how Bethesda might want to respond to some of the biggest points of criticism. But as I’ve sat with the game in the month since it released, I’ve found a few more things to say that I didn’t get to mention in either of my two big post-launch pieces about Starfield. It’s these points that we’re going to talk about today – and if you ignored the spoiler warning above, please know that we’re going to discuss the ending of the main quest and Starfield’s New Game Plus mode.

I feel that Skyrim’s unprecedented success changed something at Bethesda. The company ceased viewing its games as individual stories to be created, completed, and published, and instead began seeing all of its projects as ongoing, long-running experiences. Because Skyrim remained popular for years after its release, Bethesda seems to have internalised that and expected it to become the “new normal,” deliberately taking steps to build all future games with that goal in mind. We saw that most obviously with Fallout 76, but I’d argue very strongly that it happened with Starfield as well.

In a recent interview with Insomniac Games (creators of Marvel’s Spider-Man, among other successful projects), Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard said that Starfield was “a good base of a game to build upon,” referencing the company’s plans for future DLC and additional development for years to come. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of talk of years-long plans for Starfield. In fact, it seems that building a kind of single-player live-service title was one of Bethesda’s main objectives when developing the game.

My question is this: was Starfield screwed over by this idea?

Find me a recent game that billed itself as having a “ten-year plan” or a “five-year roadmap” that actually went the distance. Whether we’re talking about the likes of Anthem, Marvel’s Avengers, or Halo Infinite, many titles have come along promising something like this – only to fail to deliver. Games that genuinely last a decade or more are seldom planned that way; titles like Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto V, or Skyrim are lightning in a bottle. These one-off games succeed for almost unquantifiable reasons – and a massive amount of luck. Corporate planning to replicate that kind of once-in-a-generation level of success has almost never worked. Massive developers like Rockstar have faltered, and even some of the biggest brands and properties on the planet, like Marvel, have been unable to make a “five-year experience” work.

*Anthem’*s “roadmap” of content that was supposed to be added to the game.

And I can’t help but feel echoes of the likes of Anthem in Starfield. Parts of the game feel barebones and incomplete, as if waiting for future “content drops” and updates to round things out. There are plenty of missions and quests to get stuck into in Starfield, for example, but where are the cosmetics and skins? Why are there so few weapon styles, outfits, skins, and the like? I said when I wrote up my first impressions of Starfield that I was pleased to see the game wasn’t being excessively monetised… but looking at the lack of cosmetic variety and skins, it seems pretty clear that Bethesda plans to add these as paid-for DLC.

The corporation is no stranger to this. In fact, I’d argue that Bethesda is actually one of the guiltiest parties in the entire games industry when it comes to microtransactions – especially in the single-player space. Oblivion’s infamous horse armour DLC in 2006 was one of the most notorious examples of bad value cosmetic DLC in a single-player game, and one of the first to attract mainstream attention. Other companies saw Bethesda essentially getting away with it, and a truly unfortunate trend accelerated.

*Oblivion’*s horse armour DLC was released in 2006.

At time of writing in October 2023, the only skins available in the game come from expensive pre-order or premium editions of Starfield. That’s already a red flag, in my opinion, and it seems all but certain that future skins will also only be available as paid add-ons.

Starfield could look very different in six months or a year from now, with in-game purchases that could easily push the cost of the complete game closer to £200. Remember that in order to get the currently available skins, and pre-order Shattered Space, players are already having to fork over £100 to Bethesda for Starfield’s premium edition, so £200 when additional skins and cosmetics have been released doesn’t even seem like a stretch. By the time Bethesda finally stops working on Starfield altogether in the years ahead, the full price of the game plus all of its DLC and additional content could run to far more than that.

Skins are currently available as pre-order and special edition bonuses only.

So I’m rescinding my “doesn’t feel excessively monetised” statement from my earlier piece. Starfield feels like a game that’s being primed for additional monetisation – and rumours of paid mods have not escaped my notice, either. Paid mods will have to be the subject of a longer piece one day – but suffice to say for now that I’m not a supporter of them in any way, shape, or form.

Bethesda took a risk by turning Starfield into a single-player live-service title, and while I will say that the “base” version of the game still has a lot on offer – for people who are still interested in Bethesda games and the way they design their quests – I’m not sure it was the right decision. Building a good game with fun gameplay and an engaging story should have been priority number one – but it feels like both of these things took a back seat. Planning for a decade’s worth of add-ons and extra content became Bethesda’s main ambition. I’m not convinced all of these planned pieces of DLC will see the light of day.

This is where skins will appear – when Bethesda is ready to begin selling them.

When I really dig down, Starfield’s biggest issue for me personally isn’t actually that its gameplay feels outdated and uninspired. It’s that the game’s story just didn’t grab me and the worldbuilding was so bland and uninteresting that I didn’t care to spend any more time in it. The world of Starfield feels small, flat, and boring – and when the gameplay backing it up was lacklustre too, I couldn’t find a way to make progress. I’m someone who’ll happily play through some absolutely bog-standard gameplay if I’m enjoying a story or getting lost in a fictional world, but with Starfield offering neither an entertaining story nor an engaging world… sticking with the game lost its appeal.

I looked up spoilers online to see what happens further along Starfield’s main quest. I was bored to tears playing it, but if it picked up later on I thought I might be able to push through to get to the promised moment where the game would finally “get good.” But what I read actually surprised me – and I ended up feeling glad that I didn’t waste any more hours of my life playing through the story.

One of the artefacts at the heart of the game’s story.

What is one of the most basic pillars of storytelling? Any narrative needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. If a story revolves around a big mystery, solving that mystery is absolutely key to making it feel complete. Starfield’s writers chose to ignore this absolutely fundamental rule of narrative construction, and the result is that the game’s main story seems like it comes to a deeply unsatisfying “end.”

Starfield began by setting up a mystery: what is this artefact? What does it do? And who made it? Then the game introduces us to a team of people dedicated to figuring it all out. There are major structural weaknesses on this side of the story – like what anyone involved in Constellation actually does or has been doing for the past thirty years prior to the player character showing up – but that’s somewhat beside the point. After a series of glorified fetch quests that see us chasing different artefacts across the galaxy, Starfield introduces two antagonists and magical powers that we can learn… but then the story ends without explaining anything about what the artefacts were or who created them.

*Starfield’*s main story has a deeply unsatisfying ending – and the journey to get there isn’t much fun either.

Failing to solve the key mystery at the heart of the narrative, and refusing to even answer the most basic of questions about that mystery, ignores one of the fundamental tenets of storytelling. It makes the whole story – which then begins again in a weird kind of cyclical manner – feel incomplete and frustrating.

It seems to me that this aspect of the game – starting over by “travelling to an alternate reality” – is nothing more than a narrative gimmick to allow Bethesda to put a New Game Plus mode into Starfield.

And why would Bethesda want to add such a feature? None of the company’s previous titles included New Game Plus, after all. Oh, that’s right: because Starfield was built to be a “ten-year experience” rather than a complete game, and New Game Plus feels like an easy way to keep players engaged for longer.

I couldn’t even get through the game *once*…

So we come full-circle, and I think we can reasonably make the case that Starfield has been harmed in more ways than one by Bethesda’s insistence on planning for the long-term at the expense of the short-term. Maybe Shattered Space, or some additional piece of DLC in the future, will resolve Starfield’s big mystery. And maybe, if that happens, the main story of the game will feel complete and worth experiencing. But if the best possible spin I can put on Starfield is that it’s an incomplete experience that needs additional content to actually feel like its story has a proper ending… that’s not great. It makes it feel no different from dozens of other incomplete live-service games.

I usually avoid live-service titles, and I do so for one basic reason: I don’t like to play an incomplete game. If a film or season of TV ends on a cliffhanger, with promises of a resolution to come next time, that’s one thing. But Starfield isn’t a film or a TV show, it’s a single-player game that shouldn’t depend on future DLC or updates to actually complete its main story.

The longer I’ve sat with Starfield, the further the game has slipped down in my estimation. There are unfavourable comparisons with other recent releases that can’t be avoided, but at its core we’re stuck with a game that feels fundamentally incomplete. As Todd Howard himself admitted, Bethesda made a “base experience” that they intend to build on over the next few years – and that they also expect modders to help with. That might’ve been okay were it not for the outdated and buggy gameplay combined with an uninteresting and bland setting.

So like with other live-service titles, maybe Starfield will be worth revisiting after those promised updates, content drops, and DLC packs have been created. Maybe the “ultra deluxe anniversary edition” will be worth playing in 2030 – so if I live that long, maybe I’ll check it out. But I’ve been wasting my time on a game that, for all of its lofty promises, just isn’t what I’d been expecting. As I said last time: part of that is on me for internalising too much of the hype and excitement that built up in the months before Starfield’s launch. But a lot of the blame lies with Bethesda for creating an uninspiring setting, a bland, incomplete story, and for building a game that feels a decade out of date.

Forget about Starfield becoming a “ten-year experience.” Bethesda needed to catch up on at least ten years worth of improvements and changes in game design and development. Those are the ten years that Bethesda should have been focused on. The company should have been looking at what comparable games in the open-world, action-adventure, and role-playing spaces have been doing since Skyrim launched and worked to incorporate some of those elements into Starfield. Instead, Bethesda took the Skyrim formula, cut out content to introduce later by way of paid DLC and add-ons, and planned for a decade’s worth of content for a game that already feels at least ten years out of date.

I wanted to love Starfield. The game’s overall aesthetic and many of its creative choices looked to create exactly the kind of sci-fi setting that appeals most to me. Blending real-world design elements with some of the sci-fi properties that I remember fondly from years past should have been exactly what I was looking for. I was worried that I was too harsh on Starfield and that I’d been treating the game unfairly or unkindly… but the longer I’ve sat with it the more I’ve seen its “ten-year plan” laid bare. I don’t care for live-services, for incomplete experiences, or for badly-written stories with cheap endings. I think I’m done with Starfield for now – though I will give the caveat that the game could be worth picking up again once its planned add-ons have been released.

Starfield is out now for PC and Xbox Series S & X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Starfield: A Question of Scale

Fri 18.08.23Fri 18.08.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers may be present for Starfield.

Today we’re continuing our look ahead to Starfield! Bethesda’s upcoming open-galaxy sci-fi role-playing game is my most-anticipated game right now… but that doesn’t mean I don’t have questions and concerns. We’ve taken a look at several already, but today I want to zero in on one very specific question that I have about Starfield: will the game truly be able to create the sense of scale that it’s clearly aiming for?

We can break down this question into a couple of big pieces. Firstly, we have the size of the game’s open galaxy – or rather, the amount of actual content relative to the size of the map. Will there be enough characters to interact with, enough settlements to visit, and enough of a world to get stuck into in a map that contains 1,000 explorable planets?

Is there a danger that *Starfield* might feel too… empty?

Secondly, we have the open nature of the game world itself. Although not strictly a true “open world” in the sense that Starfield’s “open galaxy” will be split up into star systems and planets, a hallmark of Bethesda titles going all the way back to the 1990s is that every square inch of the map is accessible and can be explored. In a game that takes place in a single province of a larger world, there’s still a sense of scale – that the world of Morrowind, Skyrim or Fallout exists beyond the confines of the game map. Starfield won’t have that – it can’t have it by design. That could be an issue, and it’s where my concern begins.

Take, for example, a game like Mass Effect 2 or Jedi: Fallen Order. Or in the open-world sphere, take a game like Red Dead Redemption II or The Witcher 3. All of these games manage to convey a sense of scale – of deep, persistent worlds that continue to exist beyond the confines of their playable maps, populated by, in some cases, literally trillions of individual people. One of the reasons that these games feel so much fun to play, and their stories so engaging, is precisely because as players, we know we’re only scratching the surface.

The story of *Red Dead Redemption II* feels like it takes place in one small corner of a vast world.

Even older Bethesda games managed to nail this feeling. Playing Morrowind, we knew that there was a whole continent beyond the confines of Vvardenfell, and in Fallout 4 it was clear that the Commonwealth was only one small patch of a much larger wasteland. These areas still felt lived-in, but part of the reason for that is because we knew that there were people and settlements beyond our reach, making the game world feel real.

By design, Starfield can’t have that. Opening up the entirety of the Settled Systems to players, including the capital cities of both major colonial factions, means that the idea of an expansive, populated world beyond the borders of the game’s map can’t exist. And that absolutely could be okay, but if Starfield’s open galaxy has a population comparable to that of a small town… I fear that an important part of the immersion will be lost before the game can even get going.

New Atlantis – the capital city of the United Colonies.

Every game has a limited number of non-player characters – it’s unavoidable. Even massive online games or expansive open-world titles have, at the very most, a few hundred or perhaps a thousand NPCs to engage with. But in most cases – and especially in games that succeed at creating that sense of expansiveness and immersion – there’s always the sensation that, despite the limited number of people available in the game, there are untold numbers of others just beyond the invisible wall dividing the game’s map from the rest of its world.

In Mass Effect 3, for example, it’s possible to walk across parts of the Citadel and really feel the scale of the massive space station. Sure, there are only a few dozen people to engage with, some of whom only have a single line of dialogue, but a combination of the game’s lore, art design, sound effects, narrative, and more all come together to make you feel that there’s so much more just out of sight.

The Silversun Strip on the Citadel in *Mass Effect 3*.

For me, the experience of playing a game that takes place in a small part of a much larger world is something I hadn’t really considered before Starfield. It was only when I began to truly consider the implications of an open-galaxy map with 1,000 planets to explore that I really zeroed in on one of the absolutely essential ways that so many games create that sense of immersion and scale.

And it’s not something exclusive to gaming by any means. Watch an episode or two of Star Trek, and you’ll soon get the sense that there’s far, far more going on in the galaxy beyond the adventures of a few officers aboard a single starship! Star Wars, too, has a densely-populated galaxy filled with alien races, criminal gangs, and so much more. As I’ve argued more than once, it seems positively criminal that Disney and Lucasfilm have insisted on revisiting the same handful of characters time and again when the setting is so vast and potentially interesting!

As Starfield opens up its entire map to players, will there be enough content – and especially enough content relative to the size of the map – to really nail that sense of scale? If we can interact with everyone in the entirety of the Settled Systems… how long will it take before we realise that there isn’t anything more to this world? Enough to sustain a playthrough of the game, I hope… but is that enough?

Bethesda has recorded more dialogue for Starfield than it did for Skyrim and Fallout 4 combined. There could easily be well over 2,000 NPCs in the game, some of whom will have in-depth conversations with the player character. On the one hand, that’s a lot of chatter! But on the other, in a fully open map that supposedly depicts humanity’s expansion to colonies beyond the stars… 2,000 people seems like a minuscule number. It’s barely the population of a small town. When you add into the mix that these characters are going to be spread across four major settlements, space stations, spaceships, and perhaps small settlements and other locations too… I’m just worried that the sense of scale that a game like Starfield relies on will be lost.

Despite its difficult launch and gameplay issues, Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that manages to really succeed at conveying a sense of scale. From almost the first moment, players are aware that they’re only one person in a vast world; a dense cityscape populated by thousands of people. Although it isn’t possible to travel far beyond the confines of the city, there’s still that sense that the world beyond Night City is vast – and that within the city itself, there are people going about their lives blissfully unaware of the protagonist’s story.

Sometimes, being “the chosen one” can also get in the way of this sense of scale. If the fate of the entire galaxy hinges on the player character and the actions they take, it’s much harder in a role-playing game to see oneself as just one character among many in a vast world. Bethesda does love its “chosen one” archetypes, though, so I wouldn’t be shocked to see it appear in Starfield in some form. If so, I hope it’s handled carefully – and perhaps buried deeply in the main quest, so players who don’t want to go down that road will have the opportunity to avoid it altogether!

Making the player character “the chosen one” (as in games like *Morrowind*) could add to the sense of *Starfield* being small in scale.

What makes a fictional world feel lived-in and real? I would argue very strongly that one very important factor is the notion that there’s more to that world than I as a player (or a reader, viewer, etc.) can see. No matter how large Starfield may be, no matter how expansive its map is, no matter how much of it I could take in in a single playthrough, and no matter whether the game has 2,000 or 10,000 NPCs to interact with, there’s a very real danger that it will feel limited, and dare I say even small. The idea that the story we’re taking part in is only one small part of the world of Starfield won’t exist, it can’t exist by design. The notion that there’s more, that Starfield is bigger than the available map and characters, cannot exist.

I hope that there will be so much to get stuck into that that sense won’t be overwhelming, and that Bethesda’s world-building will be better than ever to such an extent that I don’t notice. But part of the appeal of a game like Starfield is that I as a player am going to be whisked away to another world, a world in which I can get lost in the role-playing experience. Part of that, though I could never put it into words nor even really conceptualise it before thinking about Starfield, is because the worlds I’ve sought out feel bigger than the stories told in them. I’m not sure how Starfield can recreate that feeling based on what we know of the game – and there’s a genuine danger, I fear, that trying to pretend half the known galaxy is populated by a few thousand people is going to feel catastrophically unbalanced.

We’re pondering a big question about *Starfield*…

I said a couple of weeks ago that, if the “United Colonies” turns out to be a mere two cities, and if the Freestar Collective is likewise a “collective” consisting of just a couple of settlements, something will feel amiss. And this is what I meant by that. The concept of an expansive world that exists beyond the confines of a single story or the playable area of a game’s map is something that, based on everything we know at this stage, Bethesda has deliberately chosen not to create. It almost feels like we’re heading into uncharted territory – the game will be large, sure, but can it possibly be large enough to overcome that deficit? Will the number of settlements, the number of characters, the number of factions, and the overall amount of content relative to the size of the game world feel so unbalanced and out of whack that it will detract from the experience? If so… will those things prove fatal to the Starfield experience?

Thus far, my biggest concerns about Starfield have been on the practical side. Will the game be released in a polished state? Will it be overburdened with microtransactions? Will Xbox and Bethesda consider a last-second delay if further bug fixes and tweaks are needed? But this question of scale… it’s probably my single biggest gameplay concern right now. And this isn’t just a fear of a repeat of Fallout 76′s “big empty world,” a game map that had no NPCs to interact with and precious little to do. It’s deeper than that – it cuts to the very sense of immersion and believability that should be present in Starfield’s galaxy.

Games like Red Dead Redemption II, Cyberpunk 2077, or the Mass Effect trilogy succeed, in part, because they get me to believe that a bigger world exists beyond the confines of the game map. And in a more general sense, whether we’re talking about novels, films, television shows, or video games, getting an audience not only to believe that a world exists but to care about it and feel a sense of investment in it is a key part of the pathway to suspension of disbelief and to enjoyment. Starfield may well succeed at creating an interesting, engaging world that I care about and want to see more of – but if that world feels like it’s limited to only the characters and locales present in the game, part of the immersion could be lost.

Conversely, this is set to be the biggest world that Bethesda has ever created, populated by more NPCs than in any single-player game that the studio has ever built. So perhaps the idea here is that players will be so overwhelmed with content – be that quests, factions, points of interest, or characters to chat with – that the game world will feel full to the point of being overstuffed. That could go some way to negating the fact that, well, we’ll be able to explore the entirety of the settled systems, visit every colony, land on every settled planet, and meet every single human who exists at that moment in Starfield’s future.

I really hope it won’t be an issue. I hope I’ll look back on this article in a month’s time and think how silly it was to be worried! But as the buildup to Starfield’s launch continues, it’s definitely something that’s weighing on my mind.

Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Baldur’s Gate 3 has set a high bar… Starfield, take note!

Thu 17.08.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers may be present for Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield.

I’ll get into this in more detail in my review of Baldur’s Gate 3 – which is currently a work in progress – but I came to Larian’s Dungeons and Dragons CRPG with basically no expectations at all. The game wasn’t one that had been on my radar, I don’t know the first thing about Dungeons and Dragons, and the primary reason I picked it up is because it happened to be well-timed, releasing just as the hype train for Starfield has been building. I was looking for a new game to play, and Baldur’s Gate 3 reared its head, backed up by plenty of positive reviews. It felt like the right game at the right time – but little more than a way to kill some time while waiting for the real prize: Starfield.

Suffice to say, I undervalued Baldur’s Gate 3 in a pretty big way! The game is fantastic, as you’ve no doubt heard from other reviewers, and although I can’t call it “perfect,” it’s certainly the best game I’ve played in 2023 so far. It will absolutely rival Starfield for the coveted “Trekking with Dennis Award” come December, and if Starfield should falter… well, maybe it’ll even pip it to the post and scoop the prize. I wouldn’t have expected that even just a couple of weeks ago.

A promo screenshot of *Baldur’s Gate 3*.

There are two things that Baldur’s Gate 3 has done well that Bethesda needs to consider when it comes to Starfield. The first is microtransactions. There aren’t any in Baldur’s Gate 3, and that’s in spite of comparable titles like Diablo IV positively drowning in them. As I’ve noted more than once, we haven’t yet had confirmation from Bethesda that Starfield will be free from microtransactions, season passes, lootboxes, premium currencies, and other shit-smeared trappings of the modern video games industry.

Secondly, while I have encountered a few glitches and bugs in my thirty-plus hours with Baldur’s Gate 3, the game is complete and pretty polished. The main quest is complete, side missions and character quests are all unique and interesting, and the state of the game overall is pretty darn good. The main mechanics and systems it employs, from magic and spellcasting to combat and exploration, all work well, and there are plenty of choices that genuinely have an impact on the game world.

A relatively minor visual bug that I encountered in *Baldur’s Gate 3*.

Bethesda has acquired a reputation over the years, and it’s well-deserved. Major Bethesda releases, from Oblivion to Fallout 76, have all arrived with bugs and glitches to varying degrees. Bethesda’s publishing arm is also responsible for the likes of Redfall, a title ridiculed for its broken state earlier this year. While Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t entirely bug-free, it’s on a completely different scale from any of Bethesda’s launches.

The microtransaction issue is already one that I’ve been sceptical about when it comes to Starfield. Well before the game has even launched, Bethesda has already been touting the first piece of story DLC, an expensive £25 add-on. Expansion packs are no bad thing, don’t get me wrong, but it’s disappointing to see Bethesda leaning into add-ons and DLC so early in Starfield’s life. In contrast, Baldur’s Gate 3 may not have any DLC at all, with Larian potentially moving on to their next project instead, regarding the game and its story as complete.

*Diablo IV* has an awful and aggressive in-game monetisation scheme. Let’s hope *Starfield* follows the *Baldur’s Gate 3* model…

The games are very different from one another. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a CRPG – a throwback, in many ways, to a style of game that has fallen out of fashion over the past twenty years or so. It employs turn-based combat, a third-person or isometric camera, and a game world broken up into several large regions (or levels) to accompany its three-act narrative.

Starfield, in contrast, is very much an action-RPG or even an RPG/shooter, with real-time combat inspired by the likes of id Software’s recent Doom and Doom Eternal titles. Although a third-person view is available, Bethesda has stated that the game is intended to primarily be played from a first-person perspective, and the game’s “open galaxy” map, while broken up into star systems and planets, isn’t split into sections or levels in the way that the map is in Baldur’s Gate 3. Starfield is also a sci-fi title to Baldur’s Gate 3′s fantasy setting.

*Starfield* will be a different kind of game – but with comparable features.

But there are plenty of similarities, too. Both games are role-playing experiences, both have skills to unlock, character progression, and both aim to tell expansive single-player stories complete with engaging characters, main and secondary quests to follow, and more. Though the comparison is not a direct one between two games with identical styles… it’s close enough that many Baldur’s Gate 3 players may be intending to play Starfield. In fact, Larian Studios deliberately moved up the release date of Baldur’s Gate 3 by more than a month to avoid a clash with Starfield.

So when I say that Baldur’s Gate 3 has set a high bar, I mean it. Coming just a few weeks apart, comparisons between the two games will be inevitable – and if Starfield should suffer a bumpy launch for any reason, those comparisons may not be favourable. Baldur’s Gate 3 will also be launching on PlayStation 5 the same week as Starfield arrives on PC and Xbox, so there’ll be a flood of new players joining the party. PlayStation fans may feel less bad at missing out on Starfield if Baldur’s Gate 3 is being heralded as the “better” title.

*Baldur’s Gate 3* promo screenshot featuring a dragonborn warrior.

But we mustn’t get too far ahead of ourselves! It’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that players can enjoy one or both games on their own merit, without needing to “pick a side” or say which one is somehow “objectively better.” I want Starfield to be a fun experience – at least as much fun as Baldur’s Gate 3 has been for me over the past couple of weeks. But I recognise that, with the games releasing so close to one another, my impressions of Starfield – particularly insofar as how complete and polished it feels – will be coloured by my experience of Baldur’s Gate 3.

So… here’s the difficult part. In 2022, I praised Xbox and Bethesda for delaying Starfield. If the game needed more attention, more work, and more time to squash bugs and polish the experience, then a delay was unquestionably the right call. With a scant two weeks to go before Starfield’s pre-order exclusive early release, and with reviewers and publications eagerly awaiting their review copies… well, this is basically the last possible opportunity to delay the game. If Starfield should release with a level of bugs and glitches comparable in any way to the likes of Redfall or Fallout 76, not only will we lament this missed opportunity, but we’ll have those comparisons with Baldur’s Gate 3 to chew on.

*Starfield* was originally targeting a November 2022 release.

Whether you’ve played and enjoyed Baldur’s Gate 3 or not, and regardless of whether it’s “your thing” or not, it’s undeniable that the game has raised the stakes for Starfield, and has set a high bar indeed for other single-player role-playing games to strive for. I hope Starfield can hit it. Heck, I hope Starfield smashes through it and sets a new, even higher bar! It’s rare to get a title as fun and as consumer-friendly as Baldur’s Gate 3, so to get two in a row would be beyond fantastic. You know what they say: you wait ages for something and then two come along at once!

Where I see the biggest potential comparison is with one of my biggest concerns about Starfield: monetisation. We’re so close to Starfield’s launch, and yet Bethesda and Xbox have still failed to clarify what kind of monetisation we can expect to see in the game. Unless the answer is “none at all,” as Larian repeatedly assured players in the run-up to the launch of Baldur’s Gate 3, that will already be a disappointment. Should that monetisation extend beyond large-scale expansion packs to include things like premium currencies or lootboxes… that could spell disaster.

Bethesda and Xbox have yet to comment on microtransactions in *Starfield*.

What Larian has done with Baldur’s Gate 3 is something that other AAA studios should strive for. Of course it’s true that not every game can be as expansive and feature-rich as Baldur’s Gate 3… but every game should be able to take inspiration from it in different areas. Single-player games shouldn’t need in-game monetisation to turn a profit. AAA studios should be launching complete games, not broken, “release now, fix later” messes, nor games with incomplete stories and promises of “roadmaps” to more content. Larian has also shown a willingness to listen to feedback from players through an extensive early access period, and while I’m generally sceptical about big studios using early access, and of long early access periods in general, in this case it seems to have worked as intended for once.

The fact is that Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t anything new, nor even particularly innovative. In many ways it’s actually a throwback to an older style of game that was prominent in the 1990s and early 2000s. As that kind of gameplay has fallen by the wayside in the push to open worlds, always-online experiences, and microtransactions… it feels different in 2023.

But that’s just a really sad commentary on the sorry state of the video games industry. A consumer-friendly game, one that doesn’t chase every trend going nor try to extort its players for extra cash, finds itself becoming headline news.

When I looked ahead to the games I was most interested to play in 2023, titles like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Lord of the Rings: Gollum, Redfall, Forspoken, and of course Starfield were all contenders. After several of those proved to be disappointing or underwhelming, it’s been a genuinely cathartic experience to pick up a new game and just… really enjoy playing it. That Baldur’s Gate 3 wasn’t on my radar and was thus an unexpected surprise just adds to that.

There has been chatter online and on social media about Baldur’s Gate 3 being a unique project that shouldn’t become the “industry standard” that players expect to see going forward. And there’s an element of truth to that: most games won’t be old-school CRPGs with hundreds of hours of content. But in terms of adopting consumer-friendly practices, abandoning trends when they don’t fit with the story a game is telling, and focusing on delivering a quality product… those are things that players can and should expect. Some of us never stopped asking the video games industry and its biggest corporations to deliver those things. Maybe the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 – coupled with some spectacular failures over the past few years – will finally be the catalyst that makes these corporations sit up and listen.

And as for Starfield… the bar has been well and truly raised. I can only hope that Xbox and Bethesda have done enough to reach it.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is out now for PC, will be released on PlayStation 5 on the 6th of September, and will be released on Xbox Series consoles in 2024. Starfield will be released on PC and Xbox Series consoles on the 6th of September. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the copyright of Larian Studios, and is based on Dungeons and Dragons which is owned by Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Ten more Starfield questions

Fri 07.07.23Fri 07.07.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are no major story spoilers for Starfield, but there may be spoilers for the game and its features and systems. This article also uses screenshots and promotional images.

Well it turns out that my last post about Starfield wasn’t enough, and that there are still more questions about the game! Starfield is my most-anticipated game right now, and along with my excitement for Bethesda’s upcoming open-galaxy sci-fi role-playing shooter, I have some concerns and some general questions about the game and how it will work. A few days ago I posed ten questions about Starfield – so click or tap here to check out those questions if you haven’t already – but I’ve already come up with ten more!

What I’m trying to do with these questions is not say “here’s a feature that I think must be part of the game,” because I don’t want to make the mistake of getting over-hyped nor building up an inaccurate picture of Starfield. Instead, what I want to do is fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of the game, because there are things that Bethesda hasn’t clarified. There are features that seemed to be hinted at by the Starfield showcase that haven’t been confirmed, there are questions raised by statements Bethesda and Xbox made, and then there are systems and mechanics that have been included in past Bethesda or Xbox titles that may make their way to Starfield – we just don’t know yet! That’s my mindset when I pose these questions, anyway. As I said when I wrote up my Starfield “wishlist,” I have high hopes that the game will be fun regardless of whether or not it does everything that I think I want from it at this early stage!

I have a couple of caveats that I always give when I put together a list like this one. The first is that I have no “insider information,” nor any connection with Bethesda, Xbox, or Microsoft. I’m not claiming that anything we’re going to talk about will, won’t, or must be part of Starfield – this is a list put together by someone who’s interested in the game, based on the showcase, interviews, and other marketing material. Secondly, all of this is the subjective opinion of one person – so if you hate all of my questions and ideas, that’s totally okay!

Finally, as I said last time, I haven’t seen every single interview that Starfield’s developers and producers have given. Nor have I read every single press release, comment, or social media post – so it’s possible that I’ve missed something, or that one of the questions on this list will have already been answered. My ageing brain may not have retained everything, too!

With all of that out of the way, then, let’s jump into my list of questions!

Question #1:
Is the main quest fully complete?
Or: will DLC be required to complete the main story?

*Starfield’*s premium edition includes access to the first piece of planned DLC.

As you can see from the image above, pre-ordering the “premium edition” of Starfield grants players access to the first piece of planned DLC. I’ve already expressed my scepticism about this; it seems far too early to be considering DLC when the game isn’t even out. But the subtitle of this piece of DLC is what I’m curious about today, because Shattered Space is described as the “first story expansion” for Starfield.

This raises the unpleasant spectre of an incomplete game; a “release now, fix later” title with promises of a “roadmap” to more content. This is the model often adopted by “live service” games, and it seldom works as intended. I’m all for an expansion pack, don’t get me wrong, but the way this one has been advertised has me at least a little worried.

How’s that roadmap working out for you, *Anthem*?

Bethesda has two points in its favour here, as I see it. The first is that, despite a very poor launch, the company has continued to support Fallout 76 with updates and expansions. Even if Starfield is released to poor critical reception, that gives me hope that support for the game will continue, and that at the very least that first planned expansion will still arrive. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Bethesda’s single-player titles have been well-supported by expansion packs. Morrowind got massive expansions in Tribunal and Bloodmoon, and as much as we like to mock Oblivion’s horse armour DLC, that game also received the major Shivering Isles expansion pack. So the company has a solid track record here.

That being said, I’m still a little concerned about Starfield’s story potentially not being complete at launch. Given that the base game is already priced at £60 or $70, it would be nigh-on exploitative to force players to pay an additional fee of at least £25 or $30 to buy the next chapter of the story. Even more so considering that Shattered Space has been in development alongside the base game.

Question #2:
Is Starfield capped at 30fps on PC?
Or: is it possible to push Starfield to 60fps and beyond on higher-end PCs?

A fancy-pants gaming PC.
(No, it’s not mine!)

Although it wasn’t discussed at the showcase, Starfield’s director Todd Howard subsequently confirmed in an interview that the game will be capped at 30 frames-per-second on Xbox Series S and X consoles, with the less-powerful machine also running the game at 1440p resolution. In the same interview, Howard seemed to indicate that the game can run at 60fps on PC, at least in Bethesda’s internal tests.

But what hasn’t been made clear is whether that will be an option for players on PC. Many modern PC games have frame-rate options as standard, and offer features like Vsync, where the game will match a monitor’s refresh rate. I recently upgraded to an RTX 3070 Ti – a fairly powerful GPU. I’d expect to hit at least 60fps in most titles – or at least in games that are well-optimised and have proper PC ports!

Thats being said, I’m not a stickler for frame-rate in the way some folks are. I’m not even sure I could tell much of a difference between frame-rates in a lot of cases. But 60fps isn’t even the gold standard, it’s a fairly low bar that most PC games in 2023 should be able to clear. If Starfield is so massive and so detailed that its console version needs to be frame-capped, then I guess that makes sense. But many folks have PCs with specs that far exceed the Xbox Series X.

If this isn’t an official feature, don’t despair. I wouldn’t be shocked at all to see a mod pop up in the days after Starfield’s launch that uncaps the game’s frame rate!

Question #3:
What impact (if any) do different levels of gravity have on exploration and combat?

At the showcase we saw a zero-G section of gameplay featured prominently. Whether this is a recurring feature, or whether zero-G sections are part of scripted missions only wasn’t clear – but it was still something cool to see. We also saw that planets could have different levels of gravity, which makes sense!

But what wasn’t entirely clear from the gameplay that was shown off is what impact – if any – this will have. If I land on a high-gravity planet, for instance, does that mean I move slower, or can carry fewer items? On a low-gravity world can I jump tens of metres into the air without a jetpack? And what about firing a weapon – do projectiles have less range in high gravity than in low?

Will exploring in low gravity differ from exploring in high gravity?

I’m not banking on any of those things being true, because it seems like it would be complicated and time-consuming to create features like that. But at the same time, it would be neat if gravity was a consideration. There are so many different ways in which this could manifest, potentially impacting everything from combat to resource-gathering.

Although I’m not necessarily expecting a massive and deep gravity levels system, what I will say is this: if a planet designated as a high-gravity world and a planet designated as a low-gravity world are functionally the same, with gravity not seeming to have much of an impact on exploration or gameplay, it will raise the question of why it was even mentioned or included!

Question #4:
Will DLC eventually come to Game Pass?

Game Pass is building up quite the library of titles!

As noted above, there’s already DLC planned for Starfield. But it doesn’t seem like that DLC will come to Game Pass – at least, not at first. The base game is available on Game Pass, but it’s also possible to pre-order the premium edition of Starfield, complete with the DLC. This kind of feels like a rough deal for Game Pass players – especially if the first piece of DLC won’t be ready for months or even years.

To be fair to Starfield, other games work a similar way. DLC for the likes of Age of Empires II is also something that has to be bought separately – but that doesn’t really excuse it. This is something Microsoft will have to figure out as Game Pass continues to grow, and while some optional content and DLC might still be okay to sell separately, things like Shattered Space might not be – especially if it’s vital to complete the main quest.

Game Pass players get access to one of the pre-order bonuses.

With Skyrim, the current Game Pass version includes the game’s major expansion packs. So I wonder if, at some point in the future, Starfield will be updated in a similar way. Microsoft is raking in the money from Game Pass every single month, and I’m sure that Starfield’s launch will bring an influx of new subscribers to the platform. But when Shattered Space is ready, some of those folks will be disappointed to learn that they have to pay an additional charge on top of their Game Pass subscription.

The subscription model is still new in the gaming realm, and there are questions like this that need to be sorted out! But if Game Pass is to achieve Microsoft’s aim of being “the Netflix of video games,” then it can’t get away with continuing to charge for add-ons and expansion packs, surely. Netflix doesn’t do that; you don’t get access to the first season of The Witcher then have to pay an additional fee to watch Season 2. So I’d love to see Shattered Space and any further DLC expansion packs come to Game Pass on day one.

Question #5:
How important is crafting?
And: can weapons and items break?

I’m biased here: I detest weapon and item durability in practically every game. Very few titles manage to get this feature right, and more often than not it just turns into a frustrating experience. Weapons breaking partway through combat and items needing to be replaced every ten minutes may seem “realistic” in some ways… but it’s not exactly fun.

There are better ways to deal with weapons and items, such as cosmetic wear and tear, upgrades, or simply offering an abundance of choice. Rather than forcing players to a workbench or crafting station to keep re-creating or repairing tools, it’s far better – in my opinion, of course – to figure out other ways to make gameplay interesting.

This may be an in-game crafting station.

This also speaks to a potentially much larger point: what kind of role will there be for crafting in Starfield? We know that there can be a crafting station aboard a player’s spaceship, but how often will we be required to use it? What kind of items will we need to craft or upgrade? And crucially: how necessary will crafting be?

Bethesda role-playing games have always offered customisation options, even for things like weapons. Swords could be enchanted in Morrowind, for instance, and guns could be upgraded in Fallout 4. The latter also introduced settlement building, with resources needing to be collected. I feel there’s scope for a detailed and in-depth crafting system in Starfield, but I also think it’s something that may be optional for players who want a more action-forward experience.

Question #6:
Can we give names to outposts and planets?

“Jemison Outpost 1” doesn’t feel like the most inspired name…

I’m fairly sure that re-naming spaceships is possible in Starfield; it certainly seems that way based on footage from the showcase. And of course the player character’s name can be freely chosen. But what about outposts and planets? We saw at the showcase several locations that were simply called “civilian outpost” or “industrial outpost,” so I’m not sure whether or not this will be possible.

It would be nice to be able to give a name to an outpost, though! Instead of making my home at the rather clinical and official-sounding “mining outpost,” it would be neat if I could give it a more personal name that reflects my character, their style, or even simply geographic features present at the base.

While I have some hope for outpost names being possible, I’m far less convinced that re-naming planets will be part of Starfield. But again, I’d quite like this to be included in the game. Obviously we won’t be re-naming Mars or Jemison, nor any of the other named worlds that already have settlements. But if I stumble upon an uninhabited rock called something like Kepler-295 B, and decide to build the first-ever human outpost on its surface, I’d like to be able to give that world a more personal name!

Maybe this seems like something minor, and it is in a way. But these kinds of personal touches can go a long way to making the role-playing experience feel immersive; coming home to Fort Dennis on the planet Dentopia would be a lot more fun than returning to Outpost #7 on Kepler-259 B.

Question #7:
How do factions work?
Or: does joining one faction permanently cut off another?

The Freestar Collective is one of the main factions in *Starfield*.

In past Bethesda games, choosing to associate with one faction over another could permanently cut off that second faction, making it impossible to complete every available quest in a single playthrough. The example that leaps to mind are Morrowind’s Great Houses: joining one would mean the other two would be permanently unavailable.

This adds a lot of replay value to a game, especially if those factions have well-developed characters and long, detailed questlines of their own. Indeed, one of the appeals of a Bethesda role-playing game is that some of these factions and their missions can be at least as in-depth as the main quest and just as worthwhile to play.

Joining one Great House in *Morrowind* would permanently close off the other two in that playthrough.

We’ve seen at least a hint at something similar in Starfield via the traits menu in the character creator. Choosing to have a United Colonies background means that players can’t also choose to have a Freestar Collective background, and there are three religious affiliations which are also mutually exclusive. Whether and to what extent those traits will impact gameplay is still not known, but it’s interesting, at any rate.

Starfield will contain joinable factions in addition to the Constellation organisation, and it seems logical to assume that being a member of the Freestar Rangers might permanently cut off membership in the United Colonies’ space force. That’s just one example. If these factions are as deep and well-developed as we’d hope they would be in a Bethesda game, this feature would add a ton of replayability to Starfield.

Question #8:
Are there invisible walls?
Or: are landing zones limited in size?

Will we see a message like this in *Starfield*?

This kind of ties into a point that I raised last time: how much of the surface of an individual planet can be explored? There was mention at the showcase and in subsequent interviews about selecting a “landing zone” on a planet’s surface – with players seemingly given a completely free choice of where to land. But do those zones have limits, or is it truly going to be possible to circumnavigate a planet on foot?

If there are limits to landing zones, I hope that invisible walls won’t be the way it’s handled. Something like that would absolutely break the immersion, even if landing zones are massive in size. A game that encourages exploration will surely push players to roam far away from their spaceships.

I’m not really sure how Starfield should deal with this. The best-case scenario is that exploration is completely unlimited, and players who want to will be able to go on long-distance expeditions far away from where they landed. Look at games like Minecraft, for example, and how some players will go on huge treks across vast swathes of the procedurally-generated map.

That being said, there are ways in sci-fi to generate a technobabble explanation or reason for just about anything! If it were explained at an early stage that, for example, communicators had a limited range, then maybe that could be an excuse for why roaming too far beyond where a spaceship landed isn’t possible. I think running into a random invisible wall with no explanation won’t cut it, but some kind of “turn back” message, perhaps with multiple warnings preceding it, could work.

Question #9:
Are gas giants among the promised 1,000 explorable planets?
Or: what role will gas giants play in Starfield?

This appears to be a moon orbiting a gas giant.

Plenty of images and clips of Starfield prominently feature gas giants – massive planets like Saturn and Jupiter that are mostly comprised of hydrogen, helium, and other gaseous material. Because of the nature of gas giants, there isn’t a “surface” to speak of that can be visited; gas giants are comprised of various layers of gases and liquids, with the “boundaries” between different densities often being very gradual.

So it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll be able to land on gas giants – but can we fly near them? Can we fly into their cloudy atmospheres at all? What about gathering resources? In real life, gas giants are known to harbour vast quantities of helium – and helium-3 is confirmed to be the material used for spaceship fuel in Starfield. So gas giants could conceivably have resources to collect… somehow.

Jupiter and its moon Io, as photographed by NASA’s Cassini probe.

But how would this work? You can’t build an outpost on a gas giant like you would on the surface of a planet, and unless spaceships can be outfitted with equipment to harvest resources – something we also haven’t seen – then I’m just not sure how we’d go about extracting anything from a gas giant in the game.

Finally, Starfield’s marketing has promised 1,000 planets to explore. In real life, the majority of planets that have been discovered so far are gas giants or ice giants; will that be true of the majority of Starfield’s 1,000 planets, too? If so, it could cut down the number of planets we can actually land on by a considerable margin.

Question #10:
Are there procedurally-generated quests and missions?

Will some NPCs be randomly generated or dish out random quests?

We know that Starfield will use procedural generation for some of its planets and environments. There’s still a degree of confusion over how exactly this will function, but today I’m asking a different question! Are all of Starfield’s missions and quests hand-crafted? Or will there be procedurally-generated quests and missions?

Some games have random encounters and/or missions with set parameters but where the specific details are procedurally-generated. This could include, for example, a quest involving killing a monster – but where the quest-giver is a procedurally-generated NPC, the monster type is chosen at random, and so on.

Discovering a hand-crafted location in a random place!

Another example would be the patented “nemesis” system used in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel. Random NPCs in the enemy army would be promoted, depending on the actions of the player, and defeating these levelled-up enemies was an integral part of both titles. I’m not expecting anything like this in Starfield, it’s just an example of how this kind of randomness can work!

So will Starfield have anything comparable? Or have all of the game’s missions and quests been constructed by human developers from the ground up? The way Bethesda has talked about the game seems to suggest that at least some quests may take place in randomly-assigned locations.

So that’s it!

I managed to find another ten questions that I’d love Bethesda and Xbox to answer before Starfield’s release.

As I’ve said before, the point here is not to pre-emptively criticise the game, nor to deliberately seek out things to pick on. Instead, I’m concerned that Bethesda and Microsoft ought to do more to rein in speculation when it gets out-of-hand. If a feature isn’t going to be included in the game, or won’t behave in the way players are expecting, it’s infinitely better to say so now, months before release. The alternative is that the hype train ends up going down the wrong track – before ultimately derailing when players finally get their hands on Starfield.

A good marketing team knows how to say “no” in a way that isn’t offputting, and how to redirect the conversation in a positive direction. If the interiors of spaceships can’t be customised, for example, then tell us and be up-front about that – but also shine a light on outpost building or the variety of costumes and cosmetic options elsewhere in the game. That’s just one example. But covering things up or saying “pass” when asked a basic question about an in-game system or feature that would in no way be a spoiler… well, it isn’t always a good look.

There are reasons why Starfield should sit in the “wait for the reviews” category. But at the same time, it’s absolutely my most-anticipated game and I can feel the hype train leaving the station. I really can’t wait to get my hands on Starfield, and even if the game doesn’t do absolutely everything that I think I want it to right now, I still think we’re in for a fun time.

There are quests in practically all of Bethesda’s older games that I still haven’t played – or even started! These games tend to be overstuffed with things to do, such that even years later I still haven’t seen or done it all. But I greatly enjoyed all of them in different ways, and the chance to take to the stars in a sci-fi role-playing game like this… it has the potential to be incredible. I haven’t felt this much excitement for a new game since Bethesda’s own Morrowind more than two decades ago!

Starfield: Ten Questions

Sun 02.07.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Although there are no major story spoilers, minor spoilers may be present for Starfield and its in-game systems. This article also uses screenshots and images from the showcase and trailers.

The Starfield showcase has told us a lot about the upcoming sci-fi role-playing game and what we can expect from it. Bethesda has followed this up by putting out game director Todd Howard to participate in a number of interviews, including one in which he was strangely asked about fishing. But there are still some question-marks hanging over Starfield, at least from my perspective.

I’m not in a position to interview anyone or put these questions to Bethesda and Xbox directly. So instead I thought it could be fun to write them out here – as well as share my thoughts on what the answer may be, and what I’d want the answer to be! As I said when I wrote my Starfield wishlist, I have high hopes that the game will be enjoyable to play regardless of whether or not it does everything that I think I want right now. It’s also possible that updates and DLC will add certain features and mechanics in the months and years after the game launches – so if something seems to be “missing” that a lot of players would like to see, don’t bet against Bethesda adding it somewhere down the line.

As always, I have a couple of caveats! Firstly, I have no “insider information,” and I’m not trying to claim that anything we’re going to talk about today definitely will or won’t be part of Starfield. These are questions I have about the game based on pre-release footage, the showcase, and interviews I’ve seen with Bethesda and Xbox folks. Secondly, all of this is the subjective opinion of one person; if you hate all of my questions or if I don’t ask something that seems blindingly obvious to you, that’s okay! There should be enough room in the gaming community and the Starfield fandom for different perspectives and points of view.

Finally, I haven’t seen every interview, nor read every single comment by Bethesda and Microsoft. It’s possible that I’ve missed something, or that something I’m uncertain about has been clarified already. My ageing brain may not have retained everything, too!

With all of that out of the way, let’s jump into my list of questions!

Question #1:
Do planets rotate?
Or: do planets have a day-night cycle?

We’ve seen some clips that seem to take place in the full light of day, and others that take place in darkness. So it’s obvious that night and day plays a role in Starfield, at least to an extent. But what I haven’t been able to gauge so far is whether there are day-night cycles on every planet – and if there are, would every planet behave the same way?

Past Bethesda games have had day-night cycles, with different monsters appearing at night, for example. In some games, sleeping is only permitted between certain hours, and some quests might even be time-specific in some cases. But if we’re heading out into space, planetary rotation can mean a lot more than just whether the sun is in the sky or not!

Some planets that lack atmospheres have extremes of temperature depending on whether they’re facing their star or not. Mercury, for instance, varies wildly between -170°C at “night” to over 400°C during its “daytime.” If we’re exploring planets comparable to Mercury in Starfield, when and where we land could determine what kind of environmental protection we’d need, for example.

The Starfield showcase seemed to suggest that planetary temperature was one factor that could affect the player character, with the HUD keeping track of temperature. But whether that changes, or whether each planet or landing site has a fixed, unchanging temperature is unclear. I’d love to know whether planets rotate, whether there are varying day-night cycles for the main cities and locations, and whether or to what extent these things could impact exploration.

Question #2:
Is the entire surface of a planet explorable?

If I disembark from my spaceship and head in one direction in a straight line, will I be able to keep walking, walking, and walking all the way around the circumference of a procedurally-generated planet? If I stay in that straight line without deviating, will I eventually walk all the way back to my spaceship?

There was a lot of talk at the showcase about “if you can see it, you can go there,” with a moon in the sky of a planet being pointed out. But there was also talk of players choosing a “landing zone” on each planet or moon that we’ll visit – and the implication of that could be that each “zone” has limits.

I’m not sure how many people would want to walk all the way around a planet. Exploring the entire surface of even the smallest planet or moon in the solar system would be an arduous task… but gamers love to take on challenges! Walking hundreds or thousands of miles to fully circumnavigate a planet might be something that some folks will want to do.

Regardless, if there are limits to how far players can explore, or how much of the surface of a planetary body is explorable at one time, those limits will have to be handled carefully. Invisible walls might not cut it here… and could certainly impact the sense of immersion. But at the same time, it’s hard to see how this could be avoided, even given the game’s size and ambitious scope.

Question #3:
Will there be microtransactions, an in-game shop, purchasable currencies, and the like?

The game is launching with pre-order bonus items.

If the answer to this question is anything but a solid, definitive “no” then I will be deeply concerned and very disappointed. Already we’ve seen that not all Starfields are created equal: there are pre-order bonus outfits and deluxe edition-exclusive outfits already. Pre-order bonuses are nothing new, of course, but I’d still rather that every Starfield player could have access to all in-game cosmetic items.

But the existence of these in-game skins has me worried. Are Bethesda and Microsoft planning an in-game microtransaction marketplace? If so, will there be some kind of “premium currency” to go along with it? Some titles can feel downright exploitative with their in-app purchases, with cosmetic items in Diablo IV retailing for £20/$25 in some cases.

In some ways, we can blame Bethesda for being one of the pioneers of monetisation in single-player games. Oblivion’s horse armour DLC became infamous in 2006 as an exemplar of this kind of cheap cash-grab – and Bethesda has even tried to monetise mods with its “Creation Club” in Skyrim and Fallout 4.

In free-to-play games, in-game purchases can be fine – though they must still be reasonably priced and not unfair. But in a single-player, fully-priced title like Starfield, in-game purchases will be hard to justify – if not outright impossible. Bethesda needs to be honest about this, too – and not send out one version of the game to reviewers, then sneakily add in an in-app storefront after launch. We’ve seen similar things happen with other games. It’s a concern at this point that no one at Microsoft or Bethesda has ruled out in-game monetisation.

Question #4:
Will custom backgrounds be available?
(A background with a customisable name and a free choice of skills.)

The Starfield showcase showed off about sixteen different potential character backgrounds, with a handful of sci-fi staples like “bounty hunter” being joined by less common ones such as “chef!” These look like fun – but their inclusion raises a question: can we make our own custom background?

In Morrowind and Oblivion, it was possible to create a custom class. If players didn’t want to pick one of the pre-made options it was possible to become… well, anything. These custom classes also came with a free choice of starting skills. The pre-made backgrounds in Starfield each seem to come with three starter skills, so that raises the question of whether custom backgrounds exist, and if they do, whether it would be possible to have a free choice of skills to include.

At the showcase, it was clear that the choice of background could lead to some unique dialogue options and possibly even unique quests within Starfield. If that’s the case, Bethesda may not want players creating their own custom backgrounds. But it was a lot of fun in Morrowind and Oblivion to become a “dark knight” or “chocolatier,” and to choose which skills to give a boost to at the beginning of the game. This might not be something everyone wants to try – and I think in my first playthrough I’ll probably pick one of the pre-made options to see how much unique content is on offer. But it could be a ton of fun!

This is something that feels like it could be relatively easy to mod, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see a “custom background” mod created fairly soon after the game’s launch if it isn’t an official feature.

Question #5:
How abundant will resources be?

This cargo ship looks like it could carry a lot of resources.

We know that there will be resources to collect in Starfield, with some of these being able to be sold for cash and others perhaps being used to craft items or even in the construction of outposts and bases. But how abundant will these resources be? If you think about it, every single item ever used in the entire history of humankind has come from a single planet. All the lead, all the iron, all the uranium we’ve ever used across all of human history came from Earth. With that in mind, it might feel strange to visit a planet and find, say, 40kg of iron, half a brick of lead… and nothing else.

One of my concerns with Starfield is that a deliberate policy of forced scarcity might be used to push players to keep exploring and to keep visiting new planets and locations – or even to pay real-world money to “skip the grind.” Depending on what resources are needed for crafting, and how necessary in-game crafting will be to Starfield, this could become frustrating.

Not all planets and moons will have every available resource – nor should they. But there has to be a balance found that makes collecting resources feel fun and not like a chore. I would also hope that resources will be purchasable, at least in limited quantities. If I need, for example, 100kg of iron to craft something and I only have 98kg, there are going to be times where I’d rather spend a few credits than have to hop in my spaceship and seek out a planet to collect a paltry amount of a single resource!

So again, this is about balance. Exploring has to feel natural, resource collecting and crafting have to feel fun. If I want to become a miner or if I want to use resources to generate the majority of my income, that’s a different story. But for basic gameplay, it’s imperative that Starfield strikes the right balance between scarcity and abundance.

Question #6:
Can spaceship interiors be customised?

Exterior spaceship customisation is part of the game.

At the showcase, a Bethesda developer was prominently shown dropping a pilfered sandwich onto a pile aboard her ship. So we can infer from that that it’s possible to place individual items aboard a spaceship and have them remain there. But is that as far as we can go when it comes to personalising the inside of our flying homes?

I’d like to think it would be possible to do things like change colours, for instance. Changing the colours of the floors, walls, consoles, or furniture would be a step in the right direction, and would go some way to making a spaceship feel personal. There’s a danger, I fear, that no matter how great a ship might look on the outside, the inside might end up feeling like little more than a collection of snapped-together pieces.

Is this a bridge or a large cockpit module?

I’d love to think that we’d have choices over things like furniture. Do we want to pick this style of chair or that one? Do we want to put extra seats in the living area? How about a bigger kitchen? These are the kinds of decisions that I’d love to be making about my spaceship!

Bethesda has suggested that outposts may have a degree of customisation, with furniture and the like able to be positioned. Again, we don’t know how much customisation is available, how many items are available, and to what extent it will be possible to rearrange a room – but that sounds positive, at least. Even though I’d have expected to have heard something about this by now if it was possible for spaceships, I’m still crossing my fingers.

Question #7:
Do tiles and points of interest repeat?

At the showcase, Bethesda developers talked about how procedurally-generated planets will work. Todd Howard confirmed that there are hand-crafted “points of interest” to visit, and these will be randomly allocated to planets through this procedural generation system. While we don’t know how many of these pre-made locations there might be, if you think about how many individual tombs, ruins, and settlements there were in a game like Morrowind, it seems fair to think that there could be at least 100 – and possibly a lot more than that.

But here’s an interesting question: if Starfield’s procedural generation allocates these at random, does that mean we could encounter the same location twice? Will two “abandoned mine” locations be identical on different planets – or different parts of the same planet, come to that? And what about the tiles that make up a planet’s surface? Will they repeat, too?

How much of a planet’s surface will be made up of repeated tiles?

If a player visits a dozen or more planets in the same category – say frozen, icy worlds like Pluto – will we eventually see the same hills, the same mountains, the same lakes, and so on? After all, there can only be a fixed number of pre-made “puzzle pieces” for each type of planet or each biome, surely. There could be hundreds and hundreds of each – but in a game that encourages long-term play, it doesn’t seem impossible that we’d eventually run out of these tiles. What happens then?

If there are hundreds, thousands, or even more of these tiles and locales, the chances of encountering two identical ones in quick succession are going to be slim. But it could be immersion-breaking to land on a planet and encounter the exact same mountain or ruin as we’d already seen and explored somewhere else.

Question #8:
Are there civilian outposts, colonies, and small settlements beyond the main cities?

A spaceship at a spaceport in the Freestar Collective.

One thing that makes Bethesda’s worlds feel lived-in are the smaller towns and off-the-beaten-track settlements. Look at places like Hla Oad in Morrowind or Breakheart Banks in Fallout 4. These are small settlements with no connection to the main quests of their respective games. The player has no reason to visit them except for exploration and “to see what’s there.”

Starfield needs places like this, in my opinion. It’s great that New Atlantis will be Bethesda’s biggest-ever city, or that Neon will feel like a cyberpunk dystopia – but if there aren’t smaller places to randomly encounter in between those few big locations, Starfield’s galaxy will feel small. The population relative to the size of the map will feel unbalanced.

New Atlantis, capital of the United Colonies.

In other Bethesda games – and other open-world games by other developers, too – smaller settlements can have quests of their own. They often have unique NPCs, shops, taverns, and more. Some may be connected to a faction questline, too. So there should still be things to do in at least some of these smaller settlements!

It will feel strange, I fear, if the so-called “United Colonies” only has two cities under its banner, or if the Freestar Collective is a “collective” of no more than two settlements on two planets. Partly this is for that sense of immersion, to ensure that Starfield’s galaxy truly feels like a living, breathing, perpetual world that will exist whether or not the player character is part of it. But also it’s a question of balancing the game, and ensuring that its open world doesn’t feel too empty outside of a handful of cities.

Question #9:
Is it possible to build more than one outpost on a single planet?
And: is it possible to build an outpost on Earth?

Todd Howard has suggested that it may not be possible to build an outpost on every single one of Starfield’s planets – and that makes sense. Building an outpost right next to a major city might not be a good idea, for instance. Or planets owned by certain factions could be off-limits. But with Earth confirmed to be present in the game – and perhaps in a devastated or otherwise uninhabited state – I can’t be the only one who’s considering building an outpost there… can I?

If it’s truly possible to pick any location on a planet to land and construct an outpost, maybe some folks will want to find their home town and build an Earth outpost! I think that could be fun – even though it seems silly, in a way, to build on Earth in a game all about exploring space!

Is this structure the St. Louis Gateway Arch on Earth, as some have suggested?
*Insert: The St. Louis Gateway Arch as it appears today.*

Then there’s the idea of building multiple outposts on a single planet. If I come across a great planet with abundant resources, I might want to set up a mining camp there to generate resources and/or income. But would I want to build my dream home on top of a busy mine? Probably not!

So it would be neat if it would be possible to build different outposts on a single planet, perhaps with different functions for each one. An automated mining outpost could be chugging away in the background while my house is hundreds of miles away. That’s just one example – but there could be other reasons for wanting to do this, such as different resources being present in different locations.

Question #10:
Has Bethesda over-promised?
Or: is Starfield being over-hyped?

Todd Howard, Bethesda Game Studios executive producer and *Starfield’*s director.

Too much hype can be toxic to any game, especially if players are allowed to build up an inaccurate picture of what the game could be before it’s launched. This happened in different ways to games like No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk 2077, as players came to believe that they were going to get a once-in-a-lifetime, genre-busting experience. Sound familiar?

A good marketing campaign knows how to set appropriate limits and how to say “no” in a way that isn’t offputting. So far, I don’t think we’ve seen enough of this from Bethesda and Xbox, and there’s a danger that some players are getting the wrong idea about the scope of Starfield or about what may be possible in the game. This is something that has to be addressed as quickly as possible!

Phil Spencer and Matt Booty of Xbox Game Studios.

It’s totally understandable that Microsoft and Bethesda want to paint Starfield in the best possible light, showing the game at its best and making the most of key features. But that kind of positive approach has to be both truthful and balanced; it mustn’t oversell in-game systems nor promise features that won’t be present. It’s also important to quash speculation if it gets out-of-hand.

There are going to be limits to Starfield. There will be places that we can’t go, things we can’t do when building spaceships and outposts, and limits to both exploration and customisation. It’s also distinctly possible that the game will launch with some bugs and glitches, or even missing features that may be promised to be coming as part of an update. At the end of the day, Starfield is still a video game – one that is naturally limited by the technology available to its developers.

So that’s it.

Those are ten questions that I have about Starfield.

As I’ve said on other occasions, I’m trying to rein in the excitement and hype that I have for this game! There are solid reasons to put Starfield in the “wait for the reviews” category – such as Bethesda’s reputation, the shocking state of many recent PC releases, the Fallout 76 mess, and more. And I will be checking out reviews before I commit to Starfield in September – especially if the game appears to be poorly-optimised or not running well on PC. I don’t need another Jedi: Survivor debacle!

I’d love to see Bethesda address all of these questions head-on, and to provide answers before Starfield is released. I’ve done my part on my small corner of the internet – but it will be up to bigger publications who have the access and the opportunity to hold Bethesda and Xbox leaders to account.

Some of the questions that have been asked of Bethesda and Microsoft have been missed opportunities, in my opinion. The question about fishing leaps to mind as the stupidest example of a nonsense question, but there have been plenty of others. If I were able, these ten questions would be the ones I’d pose to the senior folks at Bethesda and Xbox.

So that’s all for today! I know we’ve talked about Starfield a lot on the website over the past couple of weeks – but that’s because it’s my most-anticipated game at the moment. And every time I think I’ve said enough, something else comes to mind, or I read another article or watch another interview! There may be even more to say in the days and weeks ahead… so stay tuned! When Starfield is released I’ll also do my best to share my first impressions of the game, as well as talk about some of its systems and features.

Until next time!

Starfield: the things I’m most excited about

Wed 21.06.23Wed 21.06.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Although there are no major story spoilers for Starfield, minor spoilers may be present. This article also uses screenshots and promotional artwork of the game.

A few days ago I shared my thoughts on the recent Starfield showcase, which was a standalone presentation that followed Xbox’s summer event. I’m beyond excited for the game’s release, as this kind of open-galaxy, retro-sci-fi adventure almost feels like it was tailor-made for me! Today, as a follow-up to that article, I want to go into a bit more detail about a few of the things that I’m most excited about in Starfield.

This article also serves as the counterpoint to a piece that I wrote a couple of days ago in which I went into detail about some of my worries and concerns about Starfield. These points of concern haven’t wiped away the excitement – but the excitement and hype that I feel for this game is, to an extent anyway, balanced out by some fears that I have. If you want to read about my points of concern, you can find that article by clicking or tapping here.

The player character looks on as a ship blasts off.

First of all, let’s talk about Starfield’s aesthetic, its visual style, and some of the design choices that we’ve seen so far. This retro-futuristic style has been described by Bethesda as “NASA-punk;” a blend of classic NASA-inspired designs with elements of the dystopian cyberpunk genre. I absolutely adore this choice, and some of the NASA-inspired spacesuits, spaceship interiors, and other pieces of technology look fantastic. Visual styles are very much subject to personal taste – but for someone who was inspired by NASA’s space shuttle missions as a young kid in the ’80s, and who read as many books about spaceships and astronauts as I could find, these designs couldn’t be more perfect.

The “NASA-punk” designs feel like a natural evolution of some of NASA’s recent and contemporary designs. The robotic companion Vasco, for example, is clearly inspired by the likes of the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers. The interior of the Frontier spaceship, particularly its cockpit and airlock, feels very close in design to the space shuttle, the International Space Station, and contemporary rockets like SpaceX’s Dragon II.

A first-person view of a spaceship’s cockpit.

Starfield’s designs also incorporate elements from other sci-fi settings. There are elements of “NASA-punk” that remind me of the likes of Firefly, Farscape, and even the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises. There’s also a Disney feel to some of these designs – and if you’ve been to Disney World and ridden rides like Spaceship Earth or Space Mountain, perhaps you’ll pick up on some of that, as I did. Although Starfield is brand-new, some of these visual and aesthetic choices feel quite nostalgic in that sense!

Starfield is standing on its own two feet with this “NASA-punk” style, though. There are influences and inspirations from both the real world and other sci-fi properties, but Bethesda has blended them together and put its own distinctive stamp on them.

Walking on the surface of a planet or moon.

But there’s more to Starfield than one visual style. Beyond the Constellation organisation and the United Colonies we saw the Freestar Collective and the city of Neon, both of which appear to have their own distinct styles of dress and architecture. For me, this harkens back to the likes of Morrowind, where different parts of the game’s world were populated by a diverse array of factions and races, each of which had their own styles. This was still present to a degree in Oblivion, but was much less obvious in the likes of Skyrim and Bethesda’s Fallout duology.

The Freestar Collective looks to have a distinct western inspiration, with cowboy hats and even an old-fashioned pistol duel being shown during the Starfield showcase. This could lead to some incredibly fun moments on the “frontier” of space, and I’m just in love with the “rough and ready cowboy” look of some of these characters and locales. Again, this is something that reminds me of my childhood, of playing “cowboys” with a toy six-shooter and dressing up in Davy Crockett’s coonskin cap! Yes, I really did own a replica coonskin cap as a kid.

The Freestar Collective is giving me wild west vibes!

The city of Neon feels like a ton of fun, too. A kind of “space Vegas,” where anything goes and all forms of pleasure are available – for a price, of course! Neon reminded me of places like Mass Effect’s Omega, Star Trek: Picard’s Freecloud, and other such “outside the rule of law” settlements that are a common enough trope in sci-fi stories. Its unique origin as a former fishing platform-turned-drug haven helps it to stand out, though.

Beyond the major settlements that we’ve seen there are bound to be smaller places to visit, either colonies on planets or spaceships and stations out in space. We caught a brief glimpse of a couple of these in the showcase, and I’m absolutely eager to see more! Bethesda’s past games have often had multiple settlements to visit, so I’m sure there will be several hitherto-unseen places to go.

One feature I cannot wait to get stuck into is spaceship customisation. The idea of being able to create and customise my very own spaceship already sounded like something special – but knowing that I can also recruit a crew and then head out into a Bethesda-created open galaxy… it’s beyond exciting, and again this feels like a feature that was created from the ground up with me and my tastes in mind!

There are multiple methods for… shall we say, “acquiring” a spaceship, too. It sounds like the player character will get access to their own spaceship fairly early on in the game – and this ship can then be modified at will. But there are other options: purchasing a spaceship is possible, but so is stealing one! I don’t know whether it will be possible to land on a random planet or go to a spaceport and simply fly away in someone else’s ship – but after defeating an opponent in ship-to-ship combat, it’s possible to board their vessel, kill the crew, and claim it.

I’m absolutely in love with the idea of becoming a space pirate! And even if piracy isn’t going to be the focus of a playthrough, I can definitely see how hijacking and then selling a spaceship (or at least parts of a spaceship) could be an incredibly lucrative way of making a ton of money in-game. High-risk, sure… but with a potentially massive payday at the end!

In the showcase, Bethesda employees had designed some wonderfully creative spaceships of their own. And this was an easily-missed feature that Bethesda didn’t draw attention to, but it seems almost certain that it’s possible to re-name spaceships, too. I’m already thinking of names for my own vessel! I wonder if “Enterprise-D” is taken…

A customised ship that looks like it could carry a lot of cargo!

Within days of Starfield’s release we’re sure to see the community’s most creative players sharing their designs. Some will opt to recreate the likes of Firefly’s Serenity, the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, or any of the hero ships from the Star Trek franchise. There are bound to be some incredibly wacky designs in the mix, too. I love the way that Bethesda described this; spaceship design will err on the side of fun, not of realism. What that means in practise should be that players can get really creative without having to worry about the likes of aerodynamics or mass.

There will be limitations to this spaceship creator, and I’m trying not to go overboard with my hype! We haven’t seen, for example, the extent to which interiors of ships can be customised, and whether things like colours can be changed, furniture can be repositioned, and so on. I hope there will be at least some of that, so that we can truly make our spaceships feel like ours instead of like a collection of pre-made pieces.

But what I love about the spaceship creator is that the interior is fully-explorable. If you place a cargo hold next to a crew cabin, you can visit them – and the design of the ship will be reflected in-game. If you chose to make a really large ship, for example, with a long corridor connecting different rooms, you can actually walk down that corridor and see each of those rooms in the places you put them. In first-person or third-person!

When I was playing Star Trek: Starship Creator in the late 1990s, I’d have loved nothing more than to explore my weird Federation ship in first-person! This spaceship customisation feature is absolutely something that could be a fun game all by itself – and if it lives up to the hype and meets the expectations that Bethesda has set, I can see myself spending hours and hours customising every last detail of my spaceship before I actually get any questing done!

You can give your ship a paint job, too.

But maybe we should say “spaceships,” plural! Because in the showcase, Bethesda confirmed that it’s possible for players to have their very own fleet. We saw that at least nine ships can be owned at any one time, and all of them can be fully-customised. Only one ship can be the “home” ship, but I imagine which ship is the primary one is something that can be changed at will.

The showcase appeared to show a range of different spaceship parts, with different manufacturers having different styles and designs to choose from. We didn’t get a particularly long or in-depth look at all of these options, but we saw enough to at least know that there’s a decent range of potential pieces. The number of possible combinations of parts must be positively astronomical! It will almost certainly be possible to create spaceships with a huge range of believable and fantastical designs, and to fit very different aesthetic styles.

And we haven’t even talked about functionality yet! Some spaceships that were shown off at the showcase were small, designed perhaps for combat. Others were far larger, with massive cargo holds that can presumably carry a lot of resources – or smuggled goods. It’s possible to add or upgrade every component – such as engines, shields, and weapons. And these things are sure to have a noticeable impact on gameplay, with larger, heavier ships controlling differently from smaller, lighter craft.

I will be tinkering with all of these – adding different kinds of weapons in different combinations is something I’m particularly keen to experiment with. There were three types of spaceship weapon highlighted during the showcase: ballistic, laser, and missile. Again, what the limitations may be on how many weapons a single spaceship can have weren’t mentioned, but it looks like there will be appropriate options for different sizes of vessels.

Sticking with weapons, one area of gameplay that looked great in the Starfield showcase was first-person shooting. Past Bethesda titles – the Fallout games most notably – haven’t always excelled in this area. In Fallout, the VATS system (which paused gameplay to allow for targeting) covered up at least some of those games’ sub-par gunplay, but that won’t be the case in Starfield. Some rumours and reports had suggested that Doom developer (and fellow ZeniMax studio) id Software had been brought on board to help out.

Todd Howard, in a post-showcase interview, confirmed that Bethesda had worked with id Software, but seemed to suggest that they’d been helping more on the technical side with things like lighting and graphical fidelity. Either way, the influence of recent titles like Doom and Doom Eternal looked to be present in Starfield – at least looking in from the outside. It isn’t always possible to get a fair impression of something like gunplay from compressed video footage on YouTube, but from what we could see, gunplay in Starfield looks to be a vast improvement over past Bethesda titles.

That’s good news, because shooting and blasting your way across space is going to be a big part of the game! Whether you’re wrangling with pirates, getting into a shootout with western-inspired outlaws, or being pursued by aggressive fauna on an unexplored planet, guns are sure to come in handy! What we’ve seen of Starfield’s gunplay looked good – solid, I’d say. It’s probably never going to rise to the level of something you’d see in the likes of a Halo or Call of Duty game, because it’s only one part of a much broader experience. But solid, enjoyable gunplay is a must – and the signs are positive in that regard.

I was also pleased to see that Bethesda hasn’t abandoned the idea of melee weapons in Starfield. Bethesda’s melee combat has usually been pretty solid, at least by role-playing game standards, and it’s a hallmark of their games going all the way back to the first Elder Scrolls titles in the 1990s. Even though melee combat is sure to play a smaller role in Starfield – as the game promises lasers, electro-magnetic weapons, and a range of different guns – it’s not something I’d want to miss out on as it feels like it’s a core part of the Bethesda role-playing experience.

One criticism that I made of 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077 was that the player character’s backstory ultimately mattered very little in-game. Developer CD Projekt Red made a big deal in pre-release marketing material of the three different “life paths” available to players, but these amounted to little more than a short prologue and a single event midway through the game that we might generously call a “mission.” That was a disappointment and hampered Cyberpunk’s replayability.

In Starfield, there appear to be multiple character backgrounds, from action game staples like “bounty hunter” to less common ones like “chef!” The extent to which these will have an impact on gameplay, and the amount of content that may have been created for each possible background isn’t clear, but even if there are just a couple of missions and a few places where different dialogue options are available, it’ll still be fun – and better than Cyberpunk 2077.

One of the character traits will make you an introvert… just like me!

Then there are “traits” – of which players can choose up to three. These are additional pieces of character creation that can be mixed and matched, with each giving an advantage and prospective disadvantage, too. Some look certain to unlock dialogue options and will have an impact on the way the player will engage with different factions and groups, and some even unlock entire characters. Again, this feels like something that has a tangible impact on gameplay, and could be a lot of fun to experiment with.

Past Bethesda titles offered players the opportunity to create a custom character class – rather than just being able to pick from staples like mage or warrior. Starfield’s complex system of backgrounds, traits, and skills looks like it could be something very similar, allowing players to either customise their character in detail or to go with a standard build suited to the likes of combat or stealth. I’m very much someone who likes to tinker and customise, and in my first playthrough in particular I expect I’ll spend ages agonising over which background to pick, then which traits to select, and so on!

There are a lot of things to tinker with!

Starfield also looks like it will offer a fair amount of diversity in its character creator. There were different skin tones, naturally, but also different hair types and hair styles, as well as tattoos, and Bethesda noted in the Starfield showcase that they worked with people from a range of different ethnic groups to ensure that there are a range of characters both as NPCs and as options for the character creator. That’s fantastic! Being able to represent oneself in a game like this is important – and I know a lot of folks like to spend a long time in the character creator recreating their own appearance.

There were also options for body type – including larger bodies that can sometimes be excluded in games like this. That’s also great! Most of the options in the character creator looked like they could be applied to any character – a male-bodied character could use a feminine walk style, for example. I didn’t see makeup options, but there were things like piercings, jewellery, scars, and the like. The player character isn’t fully-voiced, as far as I’m aware, so again I think there are options here for making a male, a female, a trans character, or even someone non-binary. I’m non-binary myself, so I appreciate feeling included!

Body type and walk style options in the character creator.

Starfield has officially been delayed twice: from an initial November 2022 release to a nebulous “the first half of 2023,” and then again to September. Given Bethesda’s reputation for buggy games, and the difficult launch of Fallout 76 in particular, I absolutely see that as a positive thing. There’s a lot riding on Starfield for both Bethesda and Xbox, with the game being Bethesda’s first exclusive title since the Microsoft takeover. Getting it right – and ensuring the game is truly ready for launch – is incredibly important, and in an industry that seems all too happy to adopt a “release now, fix later” approach, I think it’s worth complimenting the approach that Microsoft and Bethesda claim to be taking.

In a recent interview, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty suggested that the reports he’d been receiving about Starfield were looking great – even making the audacious claim that the game would “already have the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game ever shipped” if it was released today. All of this is marketing speak, of course, but given the serious risk to the reputation of both Xbox and Bethesda if it turns out to be untrue… I think it’s positive, at least. Microsoft clearly recognises the issues that have been present, and on the surface at least it seems that they’ve given Bethesda more time to get Starfield ready. We’ll have to judge that for ourselves when the game arrives – and Starfield is, for me anyway, still in the “wait for the reviews” column – but these are positive noises nevertheless.

Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty (centre) was interviewed about *Starfield* shortly after the showcase.

Characters are the heart of any good story, and Bethesda has created some fantastic and memorable characters for their games over the years. Off the top of my head I could pick out Fallout 3′s Three Dog, Yagrum Bagarn from Morrowind, and Alduin the dragon from Skyrim – and there are many, many more. After the disappointment of Fallout 76 with its empty world devoid of characters, it was wonderful to see so many different NPCs in the Starfield showcase.

The three major cities that we know of in Starfield look set to be large, dense, and full of people to engage with. And the diverse environments and factions should make many of these people feel unique. We’ve barely scratched the surface here, and there are bound to be hundreds or perhaps even thousands of individual characters to meet in Starfield.

Who’s this fella, and what might his story be?

One thing we know for certain is that Starfield is Bethesda’s biggest-ever game. And that includes recorded lines of dialogue: Starfield will have more than double the amount of dialogue that was recorded for Fallout 4. That game had approximately 700 NPCs, but also had a fully-voiced protagonist, something Starfield appears not to have. With so much dialogue having been recorded for the game, there’s bound to be a huge number of people to meet and engage with.

Some of these people can be recruited, joining the crew of your spaceship, being assigned to another spaceship, or being assigned to an outpost. Bethesda didn’t confirm how many recruitable NPCs there are in Starfield, but one thing I absolutely love is the idea of encountering some of these people at spaceports or just out in the wild. Bringing them on board, figuring out what skills and talents they have… it all adds to the immersion and the sense of truly being the captain of a spaceship in this open galaxy.

A potential companion and the skills they offer.

More than two decades ago, Morrowind was the game that I was looking forward to. I was incredibly hyped up for what was my first real open-world role-playing game. I’ve said a couple of times already that I don’t think any game since then has grabbed my attention in quite the same way, nor generated such a high level of interest and excitement – not until Starfield, that is. Ever since I first played Morrowind, I’ve ranked that game as one of my absolute favourite titles of all-time, and if Starfield is as good as Bethesda and Microsoft are promising, I can see it potentially joining Morrowind on that list.

Are there worries and points of concern? Absolutely. As I said, I wrote up all of my biggest fears for Starfield in an article here on the website just the other day. But at the same time, I still feel that sense of hope. This game, if it lives up to the hype, has the potential to be incredible. A friend of mine recently suggested to me that Starfield might end up being “the best video game that either of us will ever play,” and that assessment is hard to challenge. This game feels tailor-made for me.

So we’ve talked about some of the things I’m most excited about when it comes to Starfield! Stay tuned, because if we get any big updates about the game – or if I find that I have more to say – I’ll be sure to write about it here on the website. And when the game launches in September, I’ll do my best to share my first impressions and more!

Starfield will be released on the 6th of September 2023 for PC and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Some promo images and screenshots used above courtesy of Bethesda and IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Why “announce” Fallout 5?

Fri 17.06.22Sat 18.06.22Dennis

Xbox recently hosted its Games Showcase event – an addendum to Summer Games Fest, which has effectively replaced this year’s E3 industry event. The Showcase was generally pretty decent, with a focus being on games that will be released over the next twelve months. Some big games like Valheim and Redfall took centre stage, and there was news or updates about the likes of Grounded, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and even Fall Guys – the latter of which is belatedly launching on Xbox (and Nintendo Switch) in just a few days’ time.

Having recently been gobbled up by Microsoft’s expanding gaming division, Bethesda had a lot to say about Starfield. Though the game has recently been delayed until the first half of 2023, the Xbox Games Showcase event provided a massive update on the game and showed players a first look at gameplay. That’s what we should be talking about; that should be the headline for Bethesda coming out of their big summer presentation. But it isn’t, at least not in a lot of publications.

Bethesda chief Todd Howard chose to drop the “announcement” – if we can even call it that – that Fallout 5 will be the studio’s next-but-one big project, and that news has grabbed headlines and stolen attention away from Starfield right at the moment when you’d think its marketing campaign should be beginning in earnest. I just don’t really understand why it was necessary to make this so-called “announcement” and confirm what most players and fans had already been assuming.

Firstly, if Starfield brings in rave reviews, massive player numbers, and goes on to be the success that Bethesda and Microsoft must be hoping for, then surely a sequel should enter the conversation. By stating now, before Starfield has even launched, that Fallout 5 will follow The Elder Scrolls VI as Bethesda’s next-but-one project, that seems to push any kind of Starfield sequel even further away. If decisions need to be made in future to change that around for whatever reason, some people are going to be left upset. There’s literally no upside to talking about Fallout 5 at this juncture.

The same could have been said, arguably, about The Elder Scrolls VI when that was similarly “announced” at E3 in 2018. With the game so far off, talking about it so soon seemed premature at best. In that case, though, there was a case to be made that the constant stream of re-releases for Skyrim, the fact that there had never been such a long gap in between Elder Scrolls games, the releases of not one but two Fallout titles, and Starfield being in active development all combined to make it worthwhile to make a commitment to Elder Scrolls fans that their series hadn’t been forgotten.

With Fallout, there just isn’t any need. Fallout 4 was released in November 2015, and that was followed up by the (disastrous and unplayable) Fallout 76 just three years later. Fallout 76 continues to receive attention and updates, some of which have been pretty substantial, so there isn’t that same feeling of abandonment that some Elder Scrolls fans had been feeling in the wake of a lack of follow-up to Skyrim. Though I’d still suggest that announcing The Elder Scrolls VI in 2018 was premature, at least there was a kind of logic to it – a logic that this “announcement” of Fallout 5 lacks.

The Elder Scrolls VI was also announced with a slick teaser – obviously no gameplay, but at least a look at a pretty landscape and a logo. Fallout 5 got no such fanfare, with the news of its planned existence seemingly being an off-the-cuff remark dropped haphazardly in an interview with IGN. Perhaps someone at Microsoft or Bethesda needs to help Todd Howard with his interviews so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again!

Starfield has been Bethesda’s biggest and longest project to date, having been worked on for at least a decade. Production officially began following the release of Fallout 4 in 2015 and ramped up in the wake of Fallout 76′s launch in 2018, so this has been a massive undertaking. The Elder Scrolls VI will be comparable in scale, and if it follows a similar timeline to Starfield it may not be ready until 2027 or 2028. If Fallout 5 likewise takes five-plus years in active development, we’re potentially talking about a release window sometime in the early/mid-2030s. So why on earth should we be talking about this game now?!

One of the reasons why video game corporations like sequels is that there’s a built-in fanbase. Fans of Fallout 3 turned up for Fallout 4; fans of Oblivion turned up for Skyrim… and so on. Starfield represents much more of a risk compared with the likes of a new Elder Scrolls or Fallout title, and as a result it needs to be handled carefully, marketed cleverly, and not overshadowed by the bigger and more illustrious franchises that its parent company owns.

The mere act of mentioning Fallout 5 – which had not been discussed by anyone senior at Bethesda or Microsoft prior to this – has completely stolen Starfield’s thunder coming out of the Xbox Games Showcase, and that shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. Bethesda’s mistakes and stumbles – some of which go back several years – have already meant that there’s a bit of a caveat in the minds of some players when they think about Starfield, so the game needs every boost it can possibly get. Being overshadowed by a new title, especially one that’s probably ten years away from being released, doesn’t help and has actually hurt Starfield at the moment players should be beginning to pay attention and, from Bethesda’s point of view at least, get excited for its launch next year.

Maybe this was just a mistake; a throwaway remark that Todd Howard didn’t really intend to make. If so, I guess it’s fair to say that we all make mistakes, these things happen, and to try to move on from it and refocus on Starfield. But it won’t be easy to do. There are already a ton of articles about Fallout 5 being “announced,” and that will lead to questions from fans and the gaming press drawing attention away from Starfield at what was supposed to be its first moment in the spotlight.

We could have spent today talking about the gameplay that was shown off, how things like jumping and jetpacking look like fun, and how incredibly excited I am to design and build my own spaceship! But instead we’re talking about a marketing screw-up and a game that, to be blunt, I’m not sure I’m going to live long enough to see! It was a mistake to even mention Fallout 5 this early, and if Starfield exceeds expectations and becomes Bethesda and Microsoft’s “next big thing,” I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a sequel planned sooner than expected. That could push back work on Fallout 5, upsetting fans. There was literally no upside to this at all, and the resultant reaction to Todd Howard’s statement has drawn attention away from Starfield at the precise moment when fans should have been excitedly talking about its gameplay reveal, new features, and the scale of the galaxy that Bethesda has created. What a mess!

Starfield will be released in the first half of 2023 for Xbox Series S/X and PC and will also be available via Xbox Game Pass. Fallout 5 has no release date scheduled. Starfield, the Fallout franchise, the Elder Scrolls franchise, and other titles and properties mentioned above are the copyright of Microsoft and Bethesda Softworks. Some promotional images courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Forza Horizon 5 – video game review

Tue 11.01.22Dennis

Forza Horizon 5 was released in November for Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and PC. It took a little while, but after spending quite a bit of time with the game over the past few weeks I’m finally ready to put pen to paper and share my thoughts!

Forza Horizon 5 is a big game. There are different kinds of races and events to participate in, ranging from multi-race championships all the way to smaller challenges and mini-events. The game’s open world is huge and offers varied terrains and scenery. And perhaps most importantly for a racing game, Forza Horizon 5 offers a veritable smorgasbord of cars to choose from.

What Forza Horizon 5 is not, though, is massively different from its predecessor. If you’ve played Forza Horizon 4 at all, you know the formula. This time around there’s more: the game world is bigger, there are more roads to drive on, more races and events to take part in, and so on. But it isn’t a fundamentally different experience – aside from the scenery changing from the quaint English countryside to the deserts, jungles, and beaches of Mexico, it’s basically an iterative instalment of the series. I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem for Forza Horizon 5; it’s a riff on the same concept, expanding it in some significant areas but without really breaking new ground. However, when the formula works, why shake it up too much? As the saying goes: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

The Horizon spin-off series has always taken a more casual approach than mainline games in the Forza Motorsport series, and that trend continues here. There’s a party atmosphere that runs through the entire game, with a handful of named characters who all take a very laid-back approach to running the titular Horizon festival. That feeling extends to gameplay, too. Races are organised seemingly haphazardly, and there’s a lot of fun to be had simply by exploring the open world, making your own fun, and driving some fancy cars at high speed!

Forza Horizon 5 is perhaps the most accessible racing game I’ve played – except, maybe, for Mario Kart 8. The game is geared up for fans of arcade racing, with a “pick-up-and-play” attitude that feels perfectly aligned with the aforementioned casual, laid-back approach taken by characters within the game itself. That isn’t to say that Forza Horizon 5 presents no challenge – not at all. But this is a game that allows players to tailor the kind of challenge or fun that they want to the way that they like to play. There are options to tweak practically every aspect of single-player gameplay, meaning Forza Horizon 5 would be a great introduction to racing games for a complete newbie – but a game that experienced racing fans can enjoy as well.

As a gamer with disabilities, I always appreciate games that go out of their way to be accommodating. In Forza Horizon 5, it’s possible to slow down single-player gameplay to give players more time to react or make moves. It’s possible to see a guide line on the ground or along racetracks pointing players in the right direction. And there are different levels of assistance; cars can be set up to brake automatically, for example, as well as change gears. Forza Horizon 5 also recommends specific cars for specific races, ensuring that players who aren’t familiar with cars or racing games won’t find themselves in an unwinnable situation.

None of these things have to be used, and they can all be turned off for players who want a more realistic or challenging racing experience. The game has pre-set difficulty options, but within those pre-sets it’s possible to tweak many different individual characteristics so players can get the kind of experience that they want. This really does open up the game to many different skill levels, and Forza Horizon 5 would be a great game for someone brand-new, a kid seeking a more realistic racer than the likes of Mario Kart, and everyone else all the way up to racing simulation fanatics.

Forza Horizon 5 also brings a lot of customisation options to the table. Every car (at least, every car that I’ve unlocked so far) can be customised. Cars can be repainted in every colour of the rainbow, and can have custom liveries applied – including advertising logos for famous brands. There’s already a bustling customisation scene, with players from all over the world sharing their custom creations for others to download and use in-game. I love a game with strong customisation elements, and Forza Horizon 5 absolutely delivers in that regard!

As I was getting started with Forza Horizon 5, I actually found myself getting a little emotional. As you may know, I’m non-binary – meaning that my gender identity falls in between male and female, and I prefer to use they/them pronouns. When setting up my Forza Horizon 5 character, the option to use they/them was present alongside male and female pronouns – something that was amazing for me, and for other non-binary players as well I hope. It’s still quite rare to see games offer this option, so it was an incredibly welcome surprise.

I’m not the world’s biggest car enthusiast. My knowledge of cars mostly comes courtesy of Jeremy Clarkson and the rest of the crew of Top Gear! But for people who know more about cars than I do, I reckon Forza Horizon 5 has a lot to offer. Although the game goes out of its way to be accessible and to have cars ready-to-race from the moment of being unlocked or purchased, there are still plenty of tuning options to fiddle about with. At the game’s uppermost echelons, where elite players are duking it out and races are won or lost by the millisecond, perhaps some of these things will make a difference. I’m not at that level – but some folks are, and there are tuning and customisation guides already for many of the game’s vehicles.

Although Forza Horizon 5 includes a lot of ultra-expensive supercars from manufacturers like Bugatti, Koenigsegg, and Lamborghini, I think it’s great that the game offers classic cars, “normal” street cars, and even some novelty vehicles or cult favourites as well. For example, the game includes a classic Land Rover (a personal favourite of mine), as well as every nerd’s favourite car: the DeLorean! There’s a VW Camper available, a classic Mini, a Morris Minor, as well as a Hummer, and even a car taken straight from Hot Wheels! In short, there’s fun to be had with some of these vehicles, and while some may not be suitable for winning every race or clocking the fastest time, for having fun driving around the game’s open world I think some of these additions are absolutely fantastic!

Some racing games offer light-hearted fun, and for me, Forza Horizon 5 is absolutely that kind of game. I can pick it up for even just a few minutes at a time, hop into a race or two, and then put it down knowing I can do the same thing again later on. It absolutely can be more than that; players with the inclination can take it more seriously, spend more time on their vehicles, and really push hard to get the best lap times and reach the top of the various leaderboards. That’s not the way I personally play – but the fact that Forza Horizon 5 has plenty to offer to all kinds of players is a huge mark in its favour in my book!

I’m a subscriber to the PC version of Xbox Game Pass, so for me Forza Horizon 5 was available on release day to download and play at no extra cost. On that basis, I’m thrilled with the game. That being said, for folks who don’t like the idea of a subscription or who like owning games outright, I can absolutely recommend Forza Horizon 5 as a purchase. Game Pass is a great service, but I recognise that it isn’t for everyone. When I looked at Halo Infinite a few weeks ago I said that paying £55 for just the campaign felt a bit much, so getting the game on Game Pass made a lot of sense. But there’s a heck of a lot of value in Forza Horizon 5 for players of varying skill levels and with varying levels of interest in cars – so it feels like a solid buy.

I think that’s all I have to say about this one! I’m thoroughly enjoying my time with Forza Horizon 5 and I’m looking forward to jumping back in and getting into my next race. See you on the track!

Forza Horizon 5 is out now for Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and PC. Forza Horizon 5 is the copyright of Playground Games, Turn 10 Studios, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. Promotional images and artwork courtesy of Xbox and Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Halo Infinite: first impressions

Thu 16.12.21Thu 16.12.21Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for Halo Infinite, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and other iterations of the Halo franchise.

After the longest gap in between games since the franchise began, Halo Infinite was finally released last week. I haven’t yet completed the campaign, but I’ve spent a couple of hours with the game so far – enough time to give you my first impressions and initial thoughts about Halo Infinite.

First up, make sure you choose the right version when you go to download it! I have Game Pass for PC, and on the homepage of the Xbox app there was a big Halo Infinite icon, so I clicked it and it began to download – taking hours on my painfully slow internet connection. When it was done I booted up the game… only to find I couldn’t play the campaign, just the multiplayer! The campaign is a separate download, so I had to wait another few hours for that. Not the best start – and this should really be made clearer on the Xbox app.

When I was able to load the campaign, I immediately encountered an issue with the audio. I usually play games with headphones on, but although my headphones were plugged in there was no audio. After some investigating, the only way I could find to fix it came from someone else who’d had a similar problem and shared their solution on a forum – I had to go into my PC’s sound settings and change my headphone settings. Something uncomplicated but stupidly obscure; how this person figured it out I’ve no idea! It worked fine after that – but again, Halo Infinite made a poor first impression as a result.

The game opens with a cut-scene showing the Master Chief being thrown into space by an alien monster – the leader of a villainous faction called the Banished. This villain, and a couple of other Banished leaders who we’re also introduced to in cut-scenes across the game’s opening act, all feel quite generic. The vocal performances were hammy and over-the-top, and I don’t really get the impression that the leaders of the Banished are anything other than “evil for the sake of it” kind of villains. By default this makes the game less compelling and less interesting!

The game opens with Master Chief getting beaten up by this guy.

I haven’t played Halo 5; it wasn’t included as part of The Master Chief Collection when that was released on PC a couple of years ago, and it hasn’t been released as a standalone title. But the pre-release marketing and chatter about Halo Infinite seemed to indicate that the game was some kind of soft renewal of the franchise and would be a good jumping-on point for players unfamiliar with the world and lore of the Halo series – a series which, lest we forget, has recently passed its twentieth anniversary. Based on my first couple of hours with the game, I have to disagree with that.

Halo Infinite feels like an unapologetic sequel. We don’t find out why the Master Chief happened to be aboard that starship, and pretty quickly as he retrieves not-Cortana from a nearby Halo ring the game seems to reference events that took place in Halo 5 – something about Cortana going rogue and needing to be deleted. At this point I feel pretty lost with the story, with Master Chief blindly shooting his way through waves of enemies without any readily apparent goal or purpose.

I didn’t play *Halo 5* so I feel a bit lost with the story.

I took a decade off from the Halo games after Reach, and it was only when I got The Master Chief Collection on PC that I played the fourth game in the series and the ODST spin-off. So I’m not the world’s biggest Halo fan by any stretch, and maybe big fans of the franchise are having a whale of a time – if so, that’s fantastic. I don’t want to detract from anyone’s enjoyment by being an old sourpuss! But Halo Infinite’s story appears to rely heavily on what came before, so for new fans or for folks who’ve been out of the loop, maybe The Master Chief Collection would be a better way to get started.

I found a couple of very odd graphical bugs during my relatively short time with the game, too. During the second mission, when Master Chief has arrived at the Halo installation, doorways appeared to glitch out: they’d appear to be solid even after “opening” and it was possible to just clip through what looked like a solid, graphically buggy door. Then shortly after, every alien of a particular kind (I think the Elites) were also completely bugged, and they ended up looking all stretched out and just broken. It’s hard to put into words, so see the screenshots below (click or tap the images for a larger version):

All of this kind of added up to mean that the game left a weaker-than-expected first impression. I’d been excited for Halo Infinite; the prospect of a franchise I remember with fondness from the days of the original Xbox getting a soft renewal and a new coat of paint was something I found genuinely appealing. I want to like Halo Infinite – but the somewhat dense backstory, a villain who feels silly at best, and a handful of bugs and glitches that should really have been fixed before launch have definitely got in the way of that.

So that’s the bad stuff out of the way. But my experience with Halo Infinite so far hasn’t been entirely negative by any stretch. There is definitely a good game at its core, one with some truly exciting and fun sci-fi shooting. The guns that I’ve used so far have been varied, ranging from standard rifles and pistols to Halo staples like the Needler. Halo Infinite’s gunplay is fluid, the environments so far have been well-designed, and were it not for those few bugs and issues that I’ve encountered I’d be giving it a ten out of ten for its gameplay.

As a multiplayer player-versus-player online shooter, which is what many folks come to Halo for, I think that bodes well. I can absolutely see it being a game that keeps players hooked well into 2022 and perhaps even beyond that, as there seem to be teases of a lot more multiplayer content to come. And that’s great… for people who like that kind of game. As someone who came to Halo Infinite for its campaign, I feel underwhelmed more than anything else. Halo Infinite’s campaign isn’t exactly bad, it just isn’t as good or well-written as I’d hoped it would be.

So far, in addition to the Master Chief I’ve met two major characters: a pilot and not-Cortana – an AI named “the Weapon.” Both characters seem interesting, and I’m definitely curious to see how their stories progress as the game goes on. The voice and motion-capture performances for both characters have been great so far, with some of the Weapon’s facial expressions in particular being extraordinarily well-animated. The Halo games have come a long way from their 2001 origins in that respect. Were it not for those graphical bugs I encountered, I’d say Halo Infinite makes the franchise look better than ever.

So I guess I need to read a synopsis of Halo 5 or something… get myself caught up with all of the story that I missed (and all the other story that I’ve forgotten about!) Maybe then I’ll have a better time as I progress through the campaign. Halo Infinite has potential, but I guess what I’d say is that I’m glad I picked it up as part of Game Pass; I’d feel far less charitable about its flaws and shortcomings had I paid £55 for it.

If you’re only interested in multiplayer, I think Halo Infinite will be a fine shooter going through 2022. Of this year’s big first-person shooter releases, there’s surely no question that Halo Infinite is the best choice by far. Battlefield 2042 and Call of Duty: Vanguard can’t compete, not by a long-shot. If you’re interested in the campaign, though, I think Halo Infinite isn’t as much of a soft reboot or fresh start as I was expecting – so make sure you’re caught up on what happened in previous games before you jump in.

The bugs are disappointing, but so far they haven’t been so overwhelming that I felt the need to quit the game. Hopefully these issues can be patched out in the days ahead. There don’t seem to be as many reports of similar issues affecting the Xbox One or Xbox Series S/X version of the game, which is positive news for those of you using those platforms.

So that’s it, I guess. An unspectacular start, but not a terrible one. Halo Infinite could certainly do a lot worse, and in a first-person shooter market that increasingly only caters to the multiplayer crowd, it’s nice to see that Microsoft and Xbox are sticking with single-player campaigns. It’s also great that Halo Infinite got a simultaneous release on PC, and a day-one launch on Game Pass. Microsoft has become quite a player-friendly company in that regard, and I have to respect that.

If you already have Game Pass, it’s hard not to recommend Halo Infinite – you might as well give it a shot, at least. And its multiplayer mode is currently free-to-play for everyone, Game Pass subscriber or not. For £55/$60 though, the campaign alone might not be worth it. You’re probably better off signing up for Game Pass just for a month, beating the campaign, and then cancelling your subscription!

Halo Infinite is out now for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X. Halo Infinite is also available via Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass for PC. The Halo series – including Halo Infinite – is the copyright of 343 Industries, Xbox Game Studios, and Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Forza Motorsport 7 – the first big mistake for Game Pass?

Sat 04.09.21Fri 15.04.22Dennis

The Forza Motorsport series – and its Forza Horizon companion – is Microsoft and Xbox’s answer to PlayStation’s long-running Gran Turismo, and also competes well against other racing sims like Project CARS, Assetto Corsa, and many more. The games are Xbox and PC exclusives, which makes perfect sense because their developers, Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios, are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Microsoft, and the games are published under the Xbox Game Studios brand. So why, then, is Forza Motorsport 7 about to be removed from Xbox Game Pass and pulled from sale altogether?

Forza Motorsport 7 is less than four years old, having been released in October 2017. Yet for some reason the game will soon be unavailable to purchase or to play via Game Pass, effectively killing the game and reducing it to a single-player experience for those who purchased it ahead of its imminent withdrawal date. I only spotted this a couple of days ago on the Xbox Game Pass for PC app, but I felt compelled to comment.

How has Microsoft managed to lose *Forza Motorsport 7* (far right) from Game Pass?

To say that all of this struck me as odd would be an understatement. Xbox Game Pass does periodically lose games, and to be fair to Microsoft and Xbox these are always announced ahead of time as has been the case with Forza Motorsport 7. But the games that tend to disappear from the service have thus far been third-party titles, and usually unimportant, smaller, older, or indie games rather than major titles. This is the first time I’ve seen a major Microsoft-published title by a Microsoft-owned studio disappear, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who wanted to figure out why this has happened.

The reason, according to Turn 10 Studios, has to do with licensing. Specifically the licenses they hold for certain vehicles and racetracks are set to expire, and when they do the game will no longer be able to be sold. Rather than pay more money to update or extend their license agreements, evidently the decision has been taken to shut down the game, remove it from Game Pass, and pull it from sale altogether.

*Forza Motorsport 7* features a number of different real-world cars and racetracks – the licenses for which are apparently due to expire.

This technical, legalistic reason makes perfect sense – but it shows how ill-prepared Turn 10 Studios and Xbox Game Studios have been. This should never have happened; they should never have been caught out with such short-term licenses in the first place. There have been other occasions where games have had licensing issues – the remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, for example. But in every other case that I can recall, the licenses involved were musical tracks and songs featured on the game’s soundtrack, not something as integral to the game as the vehicles and racetracks themselves.

Many other racing games remain available despite being far older than Forza Motorsport 7. The aforementioned Project CARS (2015) and Assetto Corsa (2014), along with titles like F1 2014 (2014), Dirt Rally (2015), NASCAR Heat Evolution (2015), and even titles like Euro Truck Simulator 2 (2012) all use real-world vehicles and racetracks, and are still on sale at time of writing despite being older than Forza Motorsport 7. Is Microsoft skimping out on paying for longer licenses for cars and racetracks compared with other companies? That seems to be the obvious conclusion.

Older racing titles, like *F1 2014*, are still on sale.

In some ways, this is a reflection of gaming as a whole moving away from the “buy it and own it” model to a subscription-based model. Just like Netflix periodically loses films or television series from its service, so too will Game Pass. That’s kind of priced into the scheme when we sign up; we know that any title could be removed at any time pending license agreements on the service’s side, and that’s generally okay. Most folks are still happy with the content Netflix or Game Pass can provide, so the price is worth it.

But Game Pass losing Forza Motorsport 7 – one of Microsoft’s own titles developed and published by its own subsidiaries – is akin to Netflix losing The Witcher or Paramount+ losing ten of the eleven Star Trek films that it had… oh wait, that one already happened because ViacomCBS is pathetic at managing its own brands. But you see my point, right? The one sure thing that subscribers have when they pay for a subscription is that a company’s own titles will be available, and Microsoft has violated what feels like the only “golden rule” of these kinds of subscription services.

I hope you’ve played *Forza Motorsport 7* if you wanted to, because it’ll be gone in a matter of days…

Are there mitigating circumstances? Sure. Does that excuse the loss of Forza Motorsport 7 from Game Pass? Absolutely not. If vehicle and/or racetrack licensing agreements are the issue, Microsoft should’ve done better at negotiating those licenses in the first place, or at the very least made sure that they had licensing agreements in place for longer than three-and-a-bit years. There are newer racing sims to play, for sure, but Forza Motorsport 7 simply isn’t that old. To see it removed from sale altogether after having had such a short shelf life just feels wrong.

Though Forza Horizon 5 is coming up before the end of the year, the Horizon series is a fundamentally different one; arcade-style racing to Motorsport’s simulation-oriented approach. Without Forza Motorsport 7 Game Pass won’t have a racing sim at all. It’s got F1 2019 and MotoGP 2020, but those are both much more specialised titles with limited appeal. With no new Motorsport game coming imminently, fans of this kind of racing sim will be missing out if they play on Xbox or PC, and the Game Pass service will be noticeably worse for its absence.

Xbox Game Pass will be worse for this decision.

The pace of game development has definitely slowed over the last decade, with big AAA games taking longer to make than ever before. That’s certainly a factor here; a decade ago or more we’d almost certainly have expected to see a new racing sim ready to take Forza Motorsport 7′s place. But as we enter an era of subscription services, companies need to be on the ball when it comes to these things, and ensure that they have longer licenses to make certain their games last as long as possible.

Game Pass is still good value, in my opinion, considering the sheer number of titles available. For players on a limited budget it still feels like a service that has a lot to offer. But slip-ups like this will end up costing Microsoft in the long run if they aren’t careful. Losing a third-party title might be forgiven, even if a game was popular. But losing one of their own games for a totally avoidable reason and with no like-for-like replacement is poor, and it diminishes Game Pass and the service’s reputation. Hopefully Microsoft will learn the lesson here and ensure that Forza Motorsport 8 doesn’t suffer the same ignominious fate a few years down the line.

The Forza series – including Forza Motorsport 7 and all titles mentioned above – is the copyright of Turn 10 Studios, Playground Games, and Xbox Game Studios. Other titles copyright of their respective developers, owners, and/or publishers. Some promotional screenshots used above courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Bethesda teases more information about Starfield

Mon 30.08.21Sun 13.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Starfield.

The in-engine teaser trailer for upcoming space-themed role-playing game Starfield was a bit of a let-down at E3 back in June. There’d been a lot of hype and rumours before the event that something big was coming from Bethesda and that we’d get our first major look at the game, so to only see a highly stylised teaser that might as well have been totally “fake” wasn’t the best. But the company has recently put out three new mini-trailers showing off three of the locations in Starfield, as well as dropping some more tidbits of information about the game, so I thought we could take a look at what’s been revealed and start to get excited!

Remember, though, that too much hype can be a bad thing! Just look at the disastrous Cyberpunk 2077 as a case in point. As fun as some of these bits of Starfield news may seem, it’s worth keeping in mind that we haven’t yet had a real look at the game itself. And as much as I hate to be too negative, Bethesda doesn’t exactly have a good track record in recent years when it comes to big releases. Their overreliance on a massively out-of-date game engine is also a concern. But Starfield is still over a year away, so hopefully there’s enough time to iron out all of the issues!

With that caveat out of the way, let’s take a look at what we’ve learned about Starfield since E3 – with a healthy pinch of speculation and guesswork thrown in for good measure!

The United Colonies is described as “the most powerful established military and political faction in the game.” Their capital city – or capital planet, not sure how best to describe it! – looks like a futuristic Dubai or New York City; a wealthy, clean megacity. This is the city of New Atlantis, and it’s described as being a “melting pot” of different peoples.

The “melting pot” reference is clearly meant to give the city and the faction an American vibe; the United States often likes to see itself as a mixture of cultures. But it could also mean that the United Colonies is akin to something like Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets – semi-independent cultures and worlds co-existing, perhaps under some looser federal form of government.

Concept art of New Atlantis (with a starship in the foreground).

I could be way off base with this, but it seems like the United Colonies isn’t going to be an evil or villainous faction. I didn’t get the sense that this was something like Star Wars’ Empire or First Order, but the fact that it’s described as being powerful – and with a strong military to boot – could mean that the player character is operating outside of the law, or that large parts of the game take place in areas beyond the United Colonies’ jurisdiction.

There were trees on New Atlantis, so the United Colonies clearly have some respect for greenery and the environment – even if just for aesthetic reasons. This is also something I think we can assume to be positive, as at least New Atlantis doesn’t have that overly industrialised, dystopian feel of some sci-fi megacities.

Concept art of New Atlantis showing a couple of trees!

If I were to hazard a guess I’d say that only parts of New Atlantis will be able to be explored and visited. The teaser image depicted a huge building complex with more buildings and lights in the distance, but it seems like making all of that part of the map might be too difficult to pull off; the last thing any of us want is a bland, mostly empty map that’s superficially large but has nothing going on or no one to interact with (looking at you, Fallout 76). New Atlantis was specifically mentioned in the context of a spaceport, so perhaps the spaceport and surrounding area will be able to be visited.

Going all the way back to 1994’s Arena, Bethesda has created contiguous open worlds – that is, game worlds that are one large, single space. There have been examples where smaller areas branched off from the larger game world – such as Morrowind’s expansion pack Tribunal, for example. But by and large we’re talking about single open worlds. Starfield, with different planets to visit and a spaceship being used to travel between them, seems like it will be a game where the game world is broken into smaller chunks. Some of these planets may be quite large, but the concept represents a change from the way Bethesda has worked in the past.

Large open worlds have been a Bethesda hallmark since 1994’s *Arena*.

Moving away from the United Colonies brings us to Neon, a watery planet with a facility run by the Xenofresh Corporation. This floating city resembles a large oil rig, and although the upper levels look well-lit and probably quite wealthy, I wonder if the lower levels of the platform might be home to the kind of sci-fi dystopia that didn’t seem to be present on New Atlantis!

The backstory of Neon was interesting – and perhaps the closest we’ve got so far to any “lore” of Starfield. The Xenofresh Corporation established Neon as a fishing platform, but soon stumbled upon a drug called “aurora” that they used to turn Neon into a pleasure city. Neon clearly operates outside of the jurisdiction of the United Colonies, and is the only place where this drug is legal.

Concept art of the floating city of Neon.

Previous Bethesda games allowed players to take drugs and drink alcohol, complete with screen-wobbling consequences! I can’t imagine that the developers would mention this aurora drug at this stage if players weren’t going to be able to try it for themselves in-game, so I think we can be pretty confident that aurora will play some role in the game’s story. Perhaps smuggling it from Neon to planets where it’s illegal will be an option for players to make some extra cash! Neon also gave me vibes of Star Trek: Picard’s Freecloud – a similarly independent, pleasure-centric world.

The final location shown off was Akila. The Freestar Collective, of which Akila is the capital, is described as “a loose confederation of three distinct star systems.” Perhaps I’m reading too much into this, but singling out the word “confederation” could indicate that this faction is villainous or adversarial. The Confederacy or Confederate States was the official name for the pro-slavery southern states that seceded in 1860-61, instigating the American Civil War. We’ve also seen the name “Confederacy” used in Star Wars, where the Confederacy of Independent Systems was the antagonist faction in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

Concept art of Akila, a city in the mountains.

Perhaps I have recent news reports on the brain, but something about the concept art for Akila reminded me of Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. The mountainous terrain, smaller buildings, and hooded or cloaked figures all gave me the impression of that kind of settlement. Perhaps a better analogy, though, would be a Wild West frontier town, and this is reinforced by the narrator saying that all of the people in the Freestar Collective place a strong emphasis on personal freedom and liberty. The whole faction seems very libertarian, then!

Akila was definitely the most Star Wars-seeming settlement, and there are several locales from the Star Wars franchise that Bethesda may have used for inspiration here. It was on this planet that we learned about the first confirmed alien enemy – the ashta, described as being a mix between “a wolf and a velociraptor.” Yikes! As above, there’s no way this critter would be mentioned at this stage if it wasn’t going to be something players could interact with, and like other iconic Bethesda open-world monsters like Fallout’s deathclaw or The Elder Scrolls’ slaughterfish, I think this is something we’re going to do battle with!

A closer look at some of the people and buildings in Akila.

So we know of three locations, each of which is controlled by a different faction. Presumably the Freestar Collective has at least two other planets under its control, as the narration specifically mentioned that the faction controls three star systems. Whether all three will be able to be visited or not is not clear, so I guess watch this space!

The Xenofresh Corporation could easily be in control of more worlds or settlements; I got the impression that it was the kind of mega-corporation that we often see in sci-fi, and thus it seems plausible that it controls holdings on other planets as well as its settlement of Neon.

The United Colonies would seem to be the most widespread and populous faction, but if players are potentially operating outside of its jurisdiction we may not get to visit all of the worlds that make up the United Colonies.

Is the United Colonies going to be similar to Star Trek’s Federation?

Then there’s the player’s faction or group – the organisation called Constellation, described as “the last group of space explorers.” The ship shown in the E3 teaser appears to belong to this group, so it’s assumed that the player will have some kind of relationship with them as well. If this faction is interested in exploration, they may not have a large settlement or permanent colony – but that’s pure speculation!

So that’s it for now. Starfield is still on course for a November ’22 release, but it goes without saying that that’s subject to change at any point between now and then. I’m tentatively looking forward to it, and nothing we’ve seen or heard so far has been offputting. If anything, these little teases are intriguing and make me want to learn more about the game, its backstory, and its factions and locales. I’m a little surprised that Bethesda didn’t include some of these details at E3; it would’ve been more impressive to give players a bit more information about the game rather than just sharing that stylised teaser trailer, and none of what’s recently been revealed seems like it couldn’t have been included a couple of months ago. This is all just backstory and concept art – things Bethesda certainly had at the time. But regardless, we’ve got another little tease of Starfield to pore over!

Starfield will be released on the 11th of November 2022 for PC and Xbox Series S/X. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios and Microsoft. Concept art featured above courtesy of Bethesda Game Studios and Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

E3 Roundup

Wed 16.06.21Mon 06.02.23Dennis

Spoiler Alert: There are minor spoilers ahead for several of the games shown off at this year’s E3.

E3 2021 is over, and it was an interesting long weekend of games and gaming! I’m sure some people will come away disappointed – a lot of the games that were shown off aren’t being released imminently, with many of the bigger, most-anticipated titles not being launched until 2022. But overall, I had a good time. Because E3 was all-digital this year, the presentations were slicker and smoother, and while there were a couple of cringeworthy moments as presenters and CEOs were clearly talking to an empty room instead of a crowded auditorium, on the whole I think E3 benefits when the public stays away!

I mentioned this last year when Electronic Arts had their big annual presentation, but digital events really feel like the future. Live events have the potential to go wrong – very wrong, in some cases – and also drag on a lot longer. E3 this year was more concise, and several of the big presentations packed a lot of games into their hour or two. Though this is still a pandemic-riddled world, and that’s why E3 has gone digital this time around, I won’t be shocked to learn that future years will keep this kind of format.

With Sony skipping E3, Microsoft dominated proceedings. A number of big Xbox exclusives were shown off, and with the eyes of the world on the games industry in a way that seldom happens, I wonder if Sony will come to see the decision to stand alone as a mistake. There will be a Sony event later in the year – perhaps even this summer – but having missed the party at E3, Microsoft will come away dominating the gaming headlines in the days and weeks ahead.

Pandemic-related delays continue to afflict the industry, and some of the bigger titles shown off won’t hit shelves until next year at the earliest. Despite that, however, there are still big games coming out in the next few months – hopefully enough to tide us over until 2022! Though I didn’t subject myself to every minute of the presentations and chatter, I had fun with this year’s E3. It was generally well done, with plenty of exciting upcoming games to talk about – which is the point, after all.

Let’s take a look at my E3 roundup. I’ve picked out twenty games that I considered to be the most interesting (or the biggest) from this year’s E3. Here they are – in no particular order!

Number 1: Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 4 was the game that tempted me to sign up for Xbox Game Pass last year, so I’m definitely going to take a look at the next game in this fun racing series when it’s ready. Forza Horizon 5 will see the action jump to Mexico, using a similar semi-open world to the previous game, with different types of races, a multitude of cars to choose from, and a focus on a more arcade style of racing over the simulation of the mainline Forza Motorsport titles.

Forza has grown from humble beginnings to become Microsoft’s answer to Gran Turismo, and a fine addition to the Xbox and PC lineup. Mexico is an interesting idea for a setting, and it seems like there will be plenty of dusty deserts and paradise-like tropical beaches to race around. Racing games always manage to look fantastic, and Forza Horizon 5 was definitely one of the prettiest games on show at this year’s E3.

Number 2: Avatar – Frontiers of Pandora

This one was a surprise; I don’t think anyone had it on their radar! Avatar – Frontiers of Pandora was shown off during Ubisoft’s presentation, and was really the highlight of what was otherwise a dull hour populated by updates, expansions, and sequels. The game is due for release next year, which is also when the first of four sequels to 2009’s Avatar is scheduled to hit cinemas. It doesn’t seem like the first-person action game will be a direct adaptation of the film – at least, that’s the impression I got – but the timing can’t be coincidental!

Despite Avatar becoming the highest-grossing film of all time when it was released, more than a decade later it’s not unfair to say that it hasn’t made a huge impact in the cultural landscape, even within the sci-fi genre. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say Avatar has been largely eclipsed by titles released in the decade since, and is almost forgotten at this point. Commissioning what looks to be a big-budget video game of this kind is a bit of a risk under those circumstances, but it seems like it has potential – and the Avatar sequels may succeed at establishing the basis for an ongoing franchise of which this game could be a big part. We’ll have to wait and see! So we can add this one to the pile of games I’m tentatively excited about.

Number 3: Starfield

I was rather surprised to see so little of Starfield – even though its “in engine” trailer was well put-together, and it was certainly our biggest look so far at a game Bethesda chief executive Todd Howard described as both “a new universe” and something set in the future, I had expected to see more actual gameplay. Considering Starfield is still a year and a half away, perhaps the game just wasn’t ready for a more in-depth look.

What we saw was interesting, though. Starfield seems to be doing something superficially similar to television series like The Expanse in the way it handles its spacecraft – a combination of modern military, industrial, and astronaut aesthetics seemed present in the design and layout of the ship we saw in the trailer. I quite like that style, it arguably gives stories a semi-realistic feel when compared to the likes of Star Trek or Star Wars, which both rely on technobabble and fictional technologies. Spaceships in Starfield are said to be fuelled by helium-3 – a real-world substance that can be used for spacecraft fuel.

But, of course, this is the studio that brought us The Elder Scrolls and the modern Fallout games, so it won’t just be a realistic spaceflight simulator! It seems as though there will be exploration involved, as well as encountering alien races!

As I predicted, Starfield will be exclusive to Xbox and PC following Bethesda’s acquisition by Microsoft. This seemed patently obvious to me, but doubtless some PlayStation fans will still be disappointed.

Number 4: Elden Ring

Upcoming hack-and-slash title Elden Ring was one of the first games shown off this year, debuting on Thursday as part of the “Summer Games Fest” presentation. I stated in my preview of E3 that Elden Ring might not be the kind of game I’m interested in, personally speaking… and having seen more of it I can now say that with certainty!

If you’re looking forward to Elden Ring, that’s fantastic. I have no doubt that for fans of certain genres it will be a fun time – but as someone who doesn’t much care for the “extreme difficulty” hack-and-slash gameplay of other FromSoftware titles, this is one I’m going to skip. Nothing in the trailer – from its dark, bland colour palette to its monsters that looked like they’ve been copied and pasted straight from one of the Dark Souls games – appealed to me, and you could’ve told me this was Dark Souls 4 and I’d have believed it.

The involvement of author George R. R. Martin did admittedly pique my curiosity when the game was first announced, and I have no doubt his input will help craft a fantasy setting that is, at the very least, interesting. But that’s about the nicest thing I can say about Elden Ring. It might have an interesting setting with enjoyable lore. Everything else about it makes it look like a game I’ll happily skip.

Number 5: Sea of Thieves crossover with Pirates of the Caribbean

What?! What on Earth did I just see? This crossover between Rare’s multiplayer pirate game Sea of Thieves and Captain Jack Sparrow from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean looks utterly bonkers, and was a total surprise. Multiplayer generally isn’t my thing, as you may know, so I haven’t played much of Sea of Thieves. But this crossover looks like a blast, and I’m sure fans of the game will have a lot of fun.

Sea of Thieves underwhelmed when it launched in 2018, with criticism for feeling rather barebones. But in the three years since launch, developers Rare have added a lot of new content, and the general consensus seems to be that the game is in a good place in 2021. This crossover with Pirates of the Caribbean will surely bring in a lot of new players, and it looks set to give Sea of Thieves a significant boost.

Number 6: The Outer Worlds 2

The Outer Worlds 2 wins the award for “funniest trailer!” Other than a very early tease at the fact that the game exists, we don’t know much at all about the sequel to Oblivion’s 2019 role-playing game. The Outer Worlds drew positive comparisons to the Fallout franchise; Oblivion having made Fallout: New Vegas a few years earlier. With Fallout 76 floundering, The Outer Worlds was talked up as a kind of spiritual successor. I think that description sells it short – The Outer Worlds is its own thing. And now a sequel is on the way which will hopefully be just as much fun and expand the world that the first game created.

As with a number of big, hyped-up titles this year, The Outer Worlds 2 isn’t coming any time soon. However, knowledge of its existence might be enough to tide fans over until its eventual release.

Number 7: Battlefield 2042

So many games nowadays are ditching their single-player campaigns to focus entirely on multiplayer, and Battlefield 2042 is the latest to do so. Sometimes it feels as though games companies are deliberately making shorter and less interesting campaigns, so that when fewer people play them they can say “see, no one wants a single-player mode! That’s why we didn’t make one!”

Battlefield 2042 was shown off with a very slick cinematic trailer, before showing off proper gameplay during Microsoft’s presentation a couple of days later. The gameplay looks… fine. If you like the Battlefield series, I daresay you’ll find this game familiar and enjoyable when it releases later in the year. Following on from 2006’s Battlefield 2142, as well as the likes of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and even Arma III, Battlefield 2042 is taking a near-future setting that will likely allow for a degree of creativity on the part of developers Dice.

In that regard I have to say I like the diversity of settings on offer from modern shooters. Long gone are the days when everything was either sci-fi or World War II, and after the most recent entries in the series looked at World War I and World War II it makes sense to change things up and give fans a different experience. This won’t be one I dive into, but it looks like a solid shooter for folks into that kind of thing.

Number 8: Age of Empires IV

We’ve known for a while that Age of Empires IV has been in the works, but E3 finally gave us a release date: the 28th of October. I’ve had a great time with the remastered Age of Empires games over the last few years, but the initial teaser for Age of Empires IV a few months ago left me distinctly underwhelmed. The game just looked incredibly outdated, and I was genuinely worried for its prospects.

The E3 trailer, however, looked a heck of a lot better. Though Age of Empires IV will be taking a different approach to past games, and will feature fewer factions at launch, it has potential, and I shall certainly give it a try when it arrives on Game Pass this autumn. The original Age of Empires and its Rise of Rome expansion were two of my most-played games of the late 1990s/early 2000s and cemented my love of the real-time strategy genre. After successful remakes of those classic games, it’ll be great to welcome the Age of Empires series to the modern day!

Number 9: Mario Party Superstars

The Nintendo Direct broadcast began with a far-too-long look at a single new Super Smash Bros. Ultimate character that really dragged. After that weak start, however, there were a couple of interesting announcements. Mario Party Superstars is probably the one that seemed most exciting to me, as it will be bringing back boards and mini-games from the Mario Party games of the Nintendo 64 era. I have fond memories of playing the original Mario Party with friends on the N64, so this new game seems like it has the potential to be a wonderful blast of nostalgia.

There is already a Mario Party game on the Nintendo Switch, of course, and at first it seemed as though Superstars was simply going to be an expansion for that title. However, it’s a standalone game instead, and is going to be retailing for full price (£50 in the UK). That seems a bit steep to me, and it might end up putting people off. But the idea is interesting, and I’ll be curious to see how Mario Party Superstars does.

Number 10: Chivalry II

Chivalry II is already out – it launched last week. But E3 provided developers Torn Banner Studios another opportunity to plug the game, and they seized it! The game is a medieval combat multiplayer title, with players jumping into large-scale battles with dozens of others. There are a variety of different game modes, including sieges, pitched battles, and others, and despite the fact that I’m not much of a multiplayer gamer, I have to say that the fast-paced hacking and slashing looks like fun!

In a multiplayer scene dominated by first-person shooters, Chivalry II is something different. Stepping back in time to the medieval era, and arming players with swords, shields, bows, and battle-axes instead of guns and rocket launchers really does feel like a breath of fresh air. It’s likely going to remain a fairly niche game by multiplayer standards, but that’s okay. It looks like fun, and maybe I’ll be convinced to check it out some time soon.

Number 11: Shredders

I like winter time and winter-themed titles – especially when it’s summer and there’s a heatwave going on! Shredders will be an Xbox/PC exclusive snowboarding game, and it’s due for release in time for Christmas. The game looked stunning, with great visuals and a snow effect that looked incredibly realistic. The trailer was very cinematic, though, so I’ll wait to see how good the finished product looks in comparison!

There have been some great snowboarding and winter sports games over the years, and I remember games like 1080° Snowboarding on the Nintendo 64 and SSX Tricky in the Xbox days with fondness. Shredders looks to be cut from the same cloth as those older titles, so perhaps it’ll be just as much fun when it’s released this winter.

Number 12: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild II

Regular readers may recall that I haven’t played Breath of the Wild – nor indeed any Zelda game. But fans have been clamouring for a sequel to the 2017 Switch launch title ever since it was released, and Nintendo has been hard at work on Breath of the Wild II (real title unknown!) for some time now. We finally got a look at the game at E3.

It looks like… Breath of the Wild. If you liked the first game, what we saw at E3 should be encouraging because it looks very much like more of the same. Link may have new abilities or new weapons, and of course there’ll be new monsters to fight and a new story. But in terms of visuals and the way the game seems to be played, there’s nothing earth-shattering or radically different from the last game.

Number 13: Redfall

I like Redfall’s visual style. The cartoon-inspired art style takes what could’ve been a horror title, featuring a vampire apocalypse, and turns it into something more fun and casual. Billing itself as a team or co-op shooter, Redfall stars a unique cast of characters tasked with fighting off vampires. It’s a game made by Arkane, the studio best-known for the Dishonored duology, as well as a personal favourite of mine from the Xbox era, Arx Fatalis.

Redfall looks to build on the studio’s work with the Dishonored games, but at the same time will take a different approach. It’s definitely one to watch, and I like the idea of using vampires in this way. Vampires in entertainment often follow the Dracula model: one or two very powerful enemies to outsmart and defeat. Television series The Strain stepped away from that and gave us a vampire apocalypse – and it looks like Redfall will try to do something similar in its own unique way.

Number 14: Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania

Super Monkey Ball has always been a niche product, even by Nintendo’s cartoony standards! But there’s no denying that the original game was a lot of fun, and with the series hitting its 20th anniversary this year, Nintendo evidently felt that the time was right for a remaster. That’s what Banana Mania is, in case the trailer wasn’t clear – a remaster of the first three Super Monkey Ball games.

I don’t really have a lot more to say about this one. If you like Monkey Ball games, you’ll probably like Banana Mania when it launches on Switch.

Number 15: Bear & Breakfast

One of the few indie games to really shine at E3 this year was Bear & Breakfast. In short, you run a bed and breakfast (i.e. a small-scale hotel) in a forest. But you’re a bear. That’s the gimmick. The art style looks cute, the premise sounds like fun, and I liked the trailer that new developer Gummy Cat put together. I got kind of a Stardew Valley vibe from Bear & Breakfast, which is certainly no bad thing.

All I can really say is that I like this kind of management/tycoon game, and the uniqueness of the premise, combined with the neat visual style, makes Bear & Breakfast appealing to me. There’s currently no release date, but the developer hopes to have the game ready before the end of this year.

Number 16: Grounded

Grounded is currently out in early access (or a “game preview” as Microsoft calls it). For that reason I haven’t checked it out; early access games are hit-and-miss, with far more misses than hits in my experience. But developers Obsidian have been working hard on this Honey, I Shrunk The Kids-inspired title, and a new update to the game looks to add a lot more content.

Though I’m probably still going to wait until Grounded is ready for prime-time, I love the premise of being shrunk down and playing in the grass. There used to be a Disney World attraction based on the 1989 film in which you could walk through an area of the park where grass and everyday items were scaled-up to huge sizes. Grounded reminds me of that!

Number 17: Halo Infinite

We already knew Halo Infinite was in development, but after a disappointing trailer left fans upset last year, the game didn’t launch alongside the Xbox Series X in November. We got to see a little more of the game at E3, and Microsoft dropped the big news that the game’s multiplayer mode will be free-to-play. This is definitely an interesting development, but the only thing I could think was that most Xbox Series X players will already be interested in the Halo series… so I’m not sure that making the multiplayer free will see Halo Infinite pick up a lot more players! But free things are always nice.

The game has definitely been polished since last year’s controversy, and the graphics look decent. The Master Chief’s return after a long absence will definitely be attractive to fans of the series, and with a Halo television show also in production, it seems like the Halo brand is about to undergo a renaissance after a decade in which it arguably underperformed.

Though the Halo series has been a flagship for Xbox, the sheer number of other games on offer as Microsoft snaps up studios and pushes Game Pass hard makes it feel a little less relevant in 2021. Halo Infinite is shaping up to be a good game – but Xbox’s success is no longer as closely-tied to the series as it once was.

Number 18: Dying Light 2: Stay Human

Zombies have been overdone in the last few years, with so many open-world zombie horror games that the industry is more or less burned out on the concept. Dying Light 2, which fans of the original game have been anticipating since 2015, has a mountain to climb, then – but there are positive signs.

There will be no guns in Dying Light 2, with players having to make use of crafted melee weapons in the post-apocalyptic city they find themselves in. There will likewise be no vehicles – the in-universe explanation being that there is no fuel any more, since the zombie virus devastated the world. Both of those semi-realistic concepts feel like they add value to a genre that’s otherwise played out, and Dying Light 2, with its interesting parkour-based movement system carried over from the first game, may have found a niche that will bring players back.

Number 19: Rainbow Six Extraction

I enjoyed Rainbow Six in the early 2000s, and I had the first couple of games in the series on Dreamcast. Rainbow Six Siege was never my thing; a multiplayer live service just held no appeal. And though Extraction brings back characters from Siege, it does so in a very different way. With a focus on cooperative play as opposed to competitive, and with an interesting-sounding premise involving an alien parasite, Extraction has all the elements in place for a fun experience.

Some have criticised the decision to take the previously straight-laced action series in a different direction, but I think there’s a lot of potential in a series like Rainbow Six trying something new. Siege was something new itself when it launched in 2015; the series had previously been a story-centric game with a main campaign, not a multiplayer one. So let’s see what Extraction brings to the table when it launches in September.

Number 20: Slime Rancher 2

One of the most colourful and vibrant games shown off at E3, Slime Rancher 2 is the sequel to 2016’s Slime Rancher, a first-person farming/life simulator. Though we didn’t see much in the way of gameplay – nor even get any significant details – I assume at this stage that the game will take the same premise as the original title and build on it.

Expect to see more of the same, but with new varieties of slimes and perhaps some new crafting or character abilities as well. It looks like fun, and will be released in 2022.

Notable absences:

Before we wrap things up I wanted to mention a few games that were notable by their absence at E3. Though there were plenty of titles we did get to see – the list above is nowhere near comprehensive – there were some titles I was hoping or expecting to hear news of that didn’t appear for one reason or another.

Anything from the Star Wars franchise:

There had been rumours earlier in the year of a Knights of the Old Republic sequel. There’s also Jedi: Fallen Order II (though that’s an EA game, and EA didn’t have a presentation at E3 this year) and Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which has been delayed multiple times. With so much new content to come from Star Wars, and with the brand ditching its exclusive arrangement with EA, I’m sure there must be more video games in the works. I genuinely expected to hear something about at least one of them!

Grand Theft Auto 6:

Still radio-silence on this from Rockstar, despite Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive having a slot at this year’s E3. We don’t even know for certain that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be Rockstar’s next big game, and with the recent announcement of a port of Grand Theft Auto V to new consoles, it seems like they’re planning to continue to milk that 2013 title for as long as possible. Disappointing.

Mario Kart 9:

As soon as Nintendo said, in the first minute of their broadcast, that they would be focusing on games releasing this year I was sure we wouldn’t see Mario Kart 9! The series’ 30th anniversary is next year, and in my opinion 2022 remains the most likely release date for the next entry in the Mario Kart series. Despite that, however, before E3 I felt there was the potential for the game to be announced in order to begin to get fans hyped up.

So that’s it.

With Sony and PlayStation being absent, Microsoft and Xbox dominated proceedings. Nintendo showed off a collection of smaller games that will be of note to their existing fans, but their biggest releases – like Breath of the Wild II and the next Metroid Prime title – are still a long way off. There were plenty of interesting games, though – far more than I’ll ever be able to play!

E3 worked well in this stripped-down, audience-free format. I hope they decide to stick with it going forward, even when the pandemic settles and in-person events are okay again. I just found the whole thing much simpler and more enjoyable, with less of a focus on presenters and staging and more of a focus on the thing we all care about: games.

The games I found most interesting are listed above, but there were many more shown off as well. Practically all of the trailers are now online on YouTube and similar websites, so take a look. I’m sure there’s something for everyone!

All titles listed above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. Some screenshots and promotional art courtesy of Xbox, IGDB and/or E3. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Why is everybody so surprised that future Bethesda titles will be Xbox/PC exclusive?

Sat 13.03.21Sun 13.11.22Dennis

A few months ago I briefly touched on the Microsoft buyout of ZeniMax – parent company to Skyrim developer Bethesda. The deal, which was announced back in September last year, has finally gone through after months of behind-the-scenes legal wrangling, meaning that Microsoft now officially owns Bethesda Softworks, its subsidiaries, and all of the games they’ve developed and produced. This is a significant acquisition for Microsoft, and looks sure to shake up the games market – at least the single-player games market! It will also certainly provide a big boost for Xbox Game Pass, which has already been touting the arrival of Bethesda’s back catalogue to the service.

Almost all Bethesda titles for at least a decade have been multiplatform, with releases on Sony’s PlayStation consoles and some select releases on Nintendo hardware too, and those games aren’t going to be taken away. Microsoft has also pledged to honour existing contracts for upcoming titles, meaning that both Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo will still have timed exclusivity on PlayStation 5. After that, however, we can expect to see future titles arrive exclusively on Xbox Series S/X and PC.

*Ghostwire: Tokyo* will still be a timed PlayStation 5 exclusive.

Some games industry commentators seem taken aback at this notion, asking with mouths agape if Microsoft will seriously make upcoming Bethesda projects like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI Xbox/PC exclusive. To those folks I ask a simple question: really? This seems like a surprise to you?

Microsoft paid $7.5 billion for Bethesda, and for that huge investment they’re going to want a lot more than a few new titles in the Game Pass library. Exclusive games sell systems, and in 2021 exclusive games drive subscriptions too. Microsoft fell way behind in the last generation as the Xbox One was massively outsold by the PlayStation 4, and a lack of decent exclusive games was a huge factor in explaining why that was the case. Microsoft has tried to rectify the situation by acquiring Obsidian Entertainment, Compulsion Games, Playground Games, Ninja Theory, and other studios, and guess what? Those studios now make games for PC and Xbox only. Some of these investments will take time to pay off, but as the new console generation rolls into its second and third years, I think we’ll see a big push from Microsoft with some of these new exclusive games.

Expect to see future Bethesda titles be Xbox/PC exclusive.

Titles from Microsoft-owned franchises like Halo, Gears of War, State of Decay, and standalone games like Sea of Thieves aren’t going to be released on PlayStation (or Nintendo) so I’m afraid that people are getting their hopes up if they expect to see future Bethesda titles on any other platform. Microsoft wouldn’t have spent such a huge sum of money not to capitalise on their acquisition, and while in the immediate term nothing is going to change, give it a couple of years when Starfield is ready, The Elder Scrolls VI is preparing for launch, and Bethesda are working on new entries in the Fallout or Doom series and you can guarantee they will be Xbox/PC exclusive.

Sometimes I sit down to read through opinion and commentary by other games industry writers – including some pretty big names – and I’m surprised how they can get it so wrong. It seems naïve in the extreme to be banking on any future Bethesda title – including huge ones like The Elder Scrolls VI and a potential future Fallout title – to be anything other than exclusive to Microsoft’s platforms. That’s how these things work, and it’s why Microsoft was willing to get out their wallet in the first place.

I wouldn’t bet on being able to play *Starfield* on your PlayStation 5.

Though it may seem “unfair” to lock games to a single platform (or pair of platforms, in this case) it’s how the industry has operated since day one. Nobody got upset about Marvel’s Spider-Man being a PlayStation 4 exclusive, even though that game wasn’t made by Sony, but rather one of their subsidiaries. It was just expected – Insomniac Games make PlayStation titles, just like 343 Industries make Xbox titles. Bethesda’s acquisition means they join Team Xbox. It may not be great fun for PlayStation gamers who had been looking forward to a future Bethesda title, but that’s the reality of the industry.

Be very careful if you hear an analyst or commentator saying that they believe Bethesda titles will still come to PlayStation. Rather than getting your hopes up or setting up false expectations, it may be better to plan ahead. If Starfield or The Elder Scrolls VI are games you’re dead set on playing, consider investing in Xbox. The Xbox Series S is a relatively affordable machine at £249/$299, and if you only need it for a couple of exclusives that you can’t get elsewhere it could be a solid investment – certainly a lot cheaper than a gaming PC.

The Xbox Series S might be worth picking up.

Despite all of this, I still feel Sony has the upper hand in the exclusives department, at least for now. It will be a couple of years or more before Microsoft can fully take advantage of their new acquisition, and other titles from developers like Obsidian – who are working on a game that looks superficially similar to The Elder Scrolls series – are also several years away. Sony, on the other hand, has games out now like Spider-Man: Miles Morales and the Demon’s Souls remake, as well as upcoming titles like God of War: Ragnarok and Returnal to draw players in. Microsoft is still pursuing a frankly bizarre policy of making all Xbox Series S/X games available on Xbox One for the next year or so, so for exclusive next-gen gaming in the short term, Sony is still the way to go.

I remember when Microsoft entered the home console market for the first time in 2001. A lot of commentators at the time were suggesting that Microsoft were buying their way in, that they would throw their wallet around and other companies would find it hard to compete. It never really happened, though, at least not to the extent some folks feared. The acquisition of Bethesda is a big deal, but Bethesda and all its subsidiaries have published only around 20 games in the whole of the last decade, so in terms of the wider gaming market, and considering how many games there will be on PC, Xbox Series S/X, and PlayStation 5 in the next few years, it’s a drop in the ocean.

That doesn’t mean it won’t sting for PlayStation fans who want to play Starfield or The Elder Scrolls VI, though. Better start saving up for an Xbox!

All titles listed above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition – First Impressions

Tue 20.10.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Earlier in the year I wrote an article looking at Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition and my experience getting back into it after it was remastered. I had a lot of fun with that game, and I’ve even gone back and played a few matches here and there over the summer. I played the first two Age of Empires titles to death in the late 1990s/early 2000s, but when Age of Empires III was released in 2005 I was less than impressed. While the core gameplay was similar, the addition of features like “home cities” and “cards” complicated things and, in my opinion at the time, detracted from the real-time strategy experience that I hoped to have. This also coincided with a period where I was particularly busy with my professional and personal life, and as such there were a number of factors involved in me putting down the game and not picking it up again.

Until now, that is! Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition was released a few days ago and follows on from last year’s Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition and 2018’s Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, completing the trilogy. The remastering process has brought all three titles in line with one another, at least from a visual standpoint, and were it not for differences in building and unit styles, it would be hard to tell them apart. Age of Empires III, being a more recent title, was visually better than the first two titles to begin with, and in that sense perhaps the upgrade doesn’t feel quite so dramatic. However, the game looks great and a lot of work has been put into that side of things.

A promotional screenshot depicting a naval battle.

I wouldn’t have necessarily rushed out to buy Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, especially not this close to its release. But as you may recall, I recently became a subscriber to Microsoft’s Game Pass for PC service, and in line with the company’s policy of bringing every new first-party release straight to Game Pass, it was available to me. So I downloaded it! Game Pass for PC is still not a seamless experience, and frustratingly logs me out every time I so much as minimise the Xbox app. Also, for some reason the download progress bar wasn’t working right; although the title did download, it told me it was stuck at having downloaded 14 megabytes the whole time. These are pretty basic things that Microsoft will need to work on if they want Game Pass for PC to be taken seriously, and now that the service is about to exit its “beta” phase, I hope to see such problems fixed. However, this isn’t meant to be another review of Game Pass!

The first thing players see upon booting up Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition is a note from the developers explaining that some changes have been made to the game compared to its 2005 iteration. While there are gameplay changes (quite a lot of them, though many are minor) this message focuses on the way Age of Empires III treated indigenous peoples. The names of the game’s two Native American tribes have been changed – in the 2005 version of the game they were called the Sioux and the Iroquois; in 2020 they use the more accurate native names of Lakota and Haudenosaunee respectively. There have also been some changes to the way Native Americans are portrayed within the game, and Microsoft worked with Native American advisors in order to help shape the remaster.

This speaks to a much broader point, one which a single article can’t sufficiently cover. How can developers make history-based games that accurately depict the vast range of cultures and civilisations that existed? And how can a game like Age of Empires III possibly be made “fair” to all players when there are major differences between cultures and their levels of technology? This is an issue present in a lot of strategy games in particular, and the way developers have tended to handle it has been to “westernise” non-western civilisations, giving them technologies and resources they didn’t historically have in order to keep them competitive from a gameplay perspective. Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition does this too, and we see it prominently in other games, such as Civilization VI.

I don’t have a good answer when it comes to depicting history in media. On the one hand there will be people who say “it’s just a game,” as if to shut down the argument and just focus on whether or not the gameplay itself is good. And there will be others who practically want a boycott of titles that even try to deal with colonialism and the like. In a title like Age of Empires III, the entire aim of the game is to build and maintain a colony. Colonialism is the absolute core of the game, and that can’t be removed without fundamentally changing it into an altogether different experience. However, I like to think that we’re getting better with the way we treat history and different cultures in 2020, and the way that Native Americans are depicted in the game is not particularly historically accurate, despite attempts to make it better.

History, and the legacy of colonialism, can be a complicated subject for entertainment media of all types.

Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition brings in several changes to the original experience in order to make the game more accessible to new players. One change that I particularly appreciated was to the user interface; there are now options to either retain the original 2005 UI, to use a new UI developed for the remaster, or to use a UI that’s almost identical to the one seen in the first two games. This definitely helps move much more smoothly from one game to the next, and when remastering a title there’s no excuse for things like radically different UI or controls. One thing that I found extremely annoying in the 2018 re-release of Shenmue I & II was that on PC, the main action button (used to interact with the environment) changed from one game to the next. That’s the kind of annoyance that should be fixed in any remaster, and Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition has certainly made changes with players in mind.

As someone who isn’t all that familiar with the original version of Age of Empires III I’m not well-qualified to speak on gameplay changes between the two editions. That said, there are some that seem quite major, such as a big expansion of the “revolution” system, the changing of resource gathering rates, changes to resources on certain map types, and many more besides. For players used to the original version of the game who may have well-established ways to play, it’s worth reading through the entire list of changes on the Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition website. Even having done so, however, it will no doubt take time to get used to the new way everything works!

The beginning of a deathmatch game, showing the revamped user interface.

There are two new civilisations in the game – the Inca and Sweden – bringing the total number of civilisations to 16. Compared to the 35 playable civilisations in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition this may seem paltry, but unlike in the other two games, each civilisation has more unique features. For example, in Age of Empires II each civilisation would use one of a handful of architectural styles, meaning no civilisation looked unique. In Age of Empires III, each civilisation has its own distinct look.

The addition of home cities (which also look unique for each civilisation) which I disliked back in 2005 also adds further distinctiveness to each civilisation, as do the cards which are used to set up each game. In a way I stand by what I would have said about the game fifteen years ago – these factors complicate gameplay. But at the same time that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, and after getting used to the way the game works and figuring out each of the systems, their value to gameplay cannot be understated.

Promotional screenshot showing the Swedish civilisation.

Overall, Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition lives up to its name, at least based on the short amount of time I’ve spent with it so far. It is undeniably the definitive version of the game, having not only been given a visual overhaul, but with the development team having worked hard to rebalance the game to address player feedback. After fifteen years of a dedicated playerbase enjoying the original version, the developers had plenty of information to go on! It has been pointed out by those who know more about the game than I do that many of the changes made for Definitive Edition reflect changes and rebalances in some of the original version’s most popular fan-made mods. That says a lot – the developers have listened and tried to make the game as fair and fun as possible while still retaining some of its original quirks.

For me, as a Game Pass subscriber, getting Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition was a no-brainer. On Steam it sells for £15/$20, and for that price I think you’re getting a good strategy game with visuals comparable to any of today’s better games, and gameplay that has been improved based on fifteen years’ worth of player data and feedback. That seems like a pretty good deal, and for that matter all three of the remastered Age of Empires titles have been good value. Though I have heard from others that there are bugs and even crashes, I didn’t experience any of that during my time with the game. I would also add that if there are issues of that nature, they will almost certainly be patched out soon as the team behind Age of Empires are continuously working on updates. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition has received regular updates since it was released last year, and I see no reason why the same won’t happen here. That said, I found nothing game-breaking in my time playing.

Some of the changes made will be controversial with fans of the original version of the game, but that’s to be expected with any major overhaul. In the case of the first two titles in the Age of Empires series, the remastered versions are widely acclaimed and even considered superior in many ways to the original versions by fans. Whether that will be the case here is uncertain, and some of the more contentious issues – like those surrounding the nature of colonialism itself – will take time to settle down. However, for my two cents I think Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition is fun, and gives me a second chance with a game I mostly overlooked first time around.

Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition is out now for PC. The game is the copyright of Microsoft, Xbox Game Studios, Tantalus Media, and Forgotten Empires. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Let’s Play Disneyland Adventures – Part 1

Sat 01.08.20Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Disneyland Adventures.

I miss Disneyland. It’s actually been well over a decade since I was last able to take a trip to any of Disney’s theme parks, and I miss the rides, the food… even the queues! If you’re like me and you’re missing spending time at Disney – especially with the current pandemic messing up holiday plans – I’ve got just the game for you: Disneyland Adventures!

This is actually the second time I’ve bought a copy of this game. I first played it in 2011 or 2012 when it was on the Xbox 360 as Kinect Disneyland Adventures. The Kinect was Microsoft’s foray into the motion-control space, and it was a peripheral for the Xbox 360 (a second version was later bundled with the Xbox One). The Kinect device consisted of a camera and a sensor, and the idea was that it would allow for controller-less play; players would use their arms, legs, and whole bodies to control games.

We could spend hours delving into the history of Kinect and its hits and misses; suffice to say the concept was good, but the execution – especially in this first version on the Xbox 360 – wasn’t perfect. Though the Kinect peripheral and its bundled game (simply titled Kinect Adventures) actually ended up being the Xbox 360’s best-selling title, it’s fair to say that it wasn’t the success Microsoft hoped for. The Kinect concept has since been discontinued for gaming, though it is still used in some specialist applications.

Disneyland Adventures is the 2017 re-release of the original 2011 title, and came out for Xbox One and PC. Most importantly it doesn’t require Kinect, nor any other motion controls, and can be played with a normal gamepad. This is the version we’ll be looking at today – and in future updates to this series of posts. If you followed my last “Let’s Play” – where I played through 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order – the format will be similar.

So what is Disneyland Adventures? It’s a game for kids that features a digital recreation of Disneyland (the original in California) to explore. Fan-favourite characters can be found who’ll give the player little tasks and quests, and some of the park’s most famous rides are reimagined and stylised to form mini-games and levels away from the open space of the theme park.

Today we’ll take a look at the game’s introduction and check out one of those rides.

After a very brief opening cinematic, I had the opportunity to “customise” my character. I’m putting that in inverted commas because the customisation options for Disneyland Adventures are limited, even for a game from 2011. There is a choice of gender, and several of the characters I interacted with had gendered dialogue which I’m assuming does change depending on whether you choose to play as a boy or a girl. And yes, that’s what the game calls its gender choices – the player character is a kid, after all! Other than the gender option there were a handful of different preset faces and a few outfits, and that was all.

My newly-created character by Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.

I’d wager that if you’re even vaguely familiar with Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom, you’ll find that the digital recreation of the park in Disneyland Adventures will feel familiar; I certainly felt that way! The game opened with my (unnamed) character being given a task by Mickey Mouse – take an autograph book to Donald Duck and get his signature. However, after being set this task I was free to explore the park, though there was a quest marker constantly showing my route to Donald’s location.

The Disneyland Monorail makes a loop of the park.

After taking my time to make it to Donald, he signed the autograph book and sent me back to Mickey Mouse. The character voices are all exactly what you’d expect from classic Disney characters, and though the 3D anthropomorphic style used for the characters might take a little getting used to, especially if, like me, you’ve only seen these characters in older 2D animated features, they have a truly classic Disney feel. En route back to Mickey I ran into Captain Hook, and while I couldn’t get his autograph I could interact with him which was fun. Collecting autographs and high-fiving the various characters is going to be a big part of the game.

Mickey Mouse was still standing near the castle and I returned the autograph book to him. The next quest was to take the book to Goofy in another area of the park, but I took the opportunity to get Mickey’s autograph first. The autographs are one of the games collectables, and they’re divided up into groups of characters.

My next task, courtesy of the main mouse himself, was to head over to Goofy and deliver the book. But on the way I decided to have a little bit of a wander through the park – that’s really the main appeal of the game for me! In Tomorrowland, the sci-fi/futuristic area of the park, I met the aliens from Toy Story.

After that encounter, I tried out one of the attractions – the classic Tomorrowland ride Space Mountain. I’m not wild about ultra-fast rollercoasters usually, but the ones at Disney are done very well and I’ve always enjoyed Space Mountain in particular. In fact, Tomorrowland as a whole is kind of a sci-fi geek’s paradise! The versions of the ride differ at the different theme parks, and I’m sure people who’ve visited all of them will have an opinion on which one is best! In Disneyland Adventures, the attraction stays true to the original theme of the ride – outer space – but kicks it up a gear or two!

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the ride; it’s been a while since I played this game, and because even in those days my health wasn’t great, I struggled with the motion controls and didn’t play Disneyland Adventures – or any other Kinect title – very much. But I was pleasantly surprised to find a delightfully old-school on-rails spaceflight game.

An asteroid to avoid in the centre-right, and coins to collect on the right.

In the style of classic arcade games, the player’s vehicle – styled after the ride cars used on the real Space Mountain – moves forward on its own; control is limited to moving side-to-side to avoid obstacles, collect power-ups, and some sections involved shooting a laser-gun.

Targeting reticle to the upper-left and a “hyperspace gate”.

I wasn’t great at the Space Mountain game, I have to be honest. I kept flying into the asteroids and I missed a bunch of power-ups and coins! Luckily the game is very forgiving and every time I crashed I respawned in the same place, not losing any progress. There are more levels within Space Mountain – at least two more – but I didn’t carry on after completing the first stage. There was a “story” of sorts within the mini-game, following my character through several different space environments, including a battle!

Flying past other spaceships in a battlefield.

After exiting Space Mountain I decided to call it a day. I’ll pick up Disneyland Adventures again soon – unlike my last playthrough I’m in no rush to race through everything that the game has to offer. There may be another few parts in this series to come over the next few weeks though, so stay tuned!

I hope you had fun, and if you’re missing Disneyland or find yourself unable to go because of the pandemic, for £15 on Steam this could be a fun distraction. If you aren’t interested in mini-games and collectables perhaps you won’t enjoy it, but for a relatively low price it’s worth a punt in my opinion. If not, keep checking back and follow my playthrough!

Disneyland Adventures is available for PC and Xbox One. Disneyland Adventures is the copyright of the Walt Disney Company and Xbox Game Studios. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.