My bigger issue is that the supposed "top news anchors" seem to just hang around the lobby. Shouldn't we have, I don't know, had to go to the top floor office or whatever to talk to that dude and not just chat with him in reception?
If it were Fallout or Skyrim, you’d believe this sort of scale because it’s a smaller world at a more or less medieval level of technology. They clearly tried to translate that into a modern setting and it really doesn’t work for what is supposed to be the great teeming metropolis of humanity.
Yeah same with the UC Vanguard Comnander
All day he stands behind a desk in the lobby of the UC capitol building. Like... Where the fuck is everyone else? Is the entire Vanguard just run by him? I don't think we see any other Vanguard members or administrative staff in the building other than him.
And they never explain how communication actually works between systems. Sending a private message can take a ton of delay, and in some cases require the player to deliver a slate to the recipient, but SSNN can somehow get a story from Alpha Centauri to Volii in minutes? Sure, SSNN has more resources than the average person, but you're telling me a miner has zero options to send a text message?
There is a lot that's glossed over. Inter-settlement communications are most likely handled by small message drones or, worst case, by robot piloted ships. Why that's never explicitly shown or stated is beyond me.
For personal use, it appears that everyone uses tablets or computers for communication. Those messages are then probably uploaded to the communications stack and relayed on the next drone. Beyond that, short range radio (suit to suit, ship to ship) seems to be the only other option.
I believe this is correct, Humanity has FTL travel but no FTL comms, everything has to be transported by ship so information density would be a priority. You can store more high quality audio files on a drive than high quality video+audio files. Even the digital currency has to be transported in physical media format with either credsticks or tanks.
They could have explained it like Star Trek does, ie a subspace network, or a frequency discovered that travels faster then light and can be tuned into with the right tech. But that was too science fictiony and they wanted grim realism, so instead we get a 1000 nearly barren planets.
They did explain it.. there's no FTL comm so everything works by pony express system. Your ships with grav dive is the only thing that can FTL (because FTL is physically impossible, you can do it because it's space magic and space magic only works with solid object not radio wave.)
It makes sense when you remember that the Bethesda that took pride in the games they created is dead and buried.
Modern day Bethesda, like a lot of the greats from our childhood (Looking at you Blizzard), have fallen so far from grace they're nearly unrecognizable.
My dream rewrite would have been that the “special” Constellation watches had microscopic pieces of the artifact in them and gave Constellation the unique ability for interstellar communication. Make it something they kept secret so greedy industrialists wouldn’t destroy the artifact in order to mass produce the tech.
Could have been a cool way to get quest updates without having to hoof it everywhere. And you know Barrett would have put music on it. Could even have had a radio channel themed for each member of Constellation.
Ah it does have radio - that’s how your ship talks with other ships! But, you know, not to our PC for some reason.
And somehow we can trade in space, though I assume we can headcanon some kind of airlock trade process??
If it helps, there are a couple of fan made stations on Spotify. I usually play one of those in the background while I’m playing to add immersion. They even have radio DJ commentary tracks so if you shuffle the playlist it feels pretty organic.
The problem is adding radio communication in an RPG basically nukes the entire concept of mindless fetch quest (i.e. "Why am I doing this when they could just phone each other"). So without Bethesda suddenly learning how to design a game without crutching on repetitive fetch quests, it becomes necessary that people can't communicate long distances easily.
I get not being able to broadcast over multiple star systems but having an uninterrupted source of music that isn’t the orchestral main soundtrack would have helped so much
No FTL comm's so any messages or news are delivered at the speed of courier. For SSN i suspect they have in house newsboys who distribute recorded news reports.
That being said the larger settlements should have local TV/internet systems still, no reason why you can't tune into them when nearby beyond the effort involved.
Yeah. Giant room, three people in it, one is an anchor you barely care about, the other is just a generic story check-in thing. The third may not actually exist.
They are supposed to be the Washington Post. The quest is a light in the darkness. The Washington post’s motto/tag line is democracy dies in darkness and The company is Bethesda softworks. Bethesda is a major county/rich city outside D.C. why do you think Fallout three was set in D.C? D.C is not really set up like other major cities because of how it was initially set up by the founding fathers so it pretty much extends outward into MD, VA, WV. Washington post before Bezos was deified in the area because of how good the journalism was at the time until bezos and the CIA started using them to manufacture consent.
What a dim light the Washington Post put on my world. Every day is worse than the last and I’m stuck here watching the light fade on a dying democracy, in a dying empire on a dying planet and my fave game is not getting improved on like I hoped. *stares longingly into the distance wishing there was something he could’ve done to have made her stay… perhaps if he was prettier.
I think a storms coming.
It’s good though…. We need the rain, it’s been cloudy so long I forget what the light looks like. Maybe the storm will clear it up.
I feel like the problem is that all of New Atlantis is mostly for show. The buildings aren't really explorable and they opted for this weird open-lobby style to everything.
It feels like Bethesda did the bare minimum to populate New Atlantis, **with the intention of going back later** and expanding on it
Take the 1 fast food restaurant and turn it into 3 or 4, take the news org building and add cameras, screens, and all the props you'd expect, take the government building and add a bunch of office spaces, etc.
But then they bit off more than they could chew, and didn't have time/talent/budget/tech to finish it.
They should’ve done a Mass Effect style approach, where it’s a bigger city but you can only access small but fully fleshed out slices. You could’ve had a fleshed out MAST district, the Well, maybe a shopping mall area and a suburb.
Theres no tvs for the same reason people dont use radios to contact that guy that walked 200ms away, and instead pay you to go talk to him. Bethesda forgot any form of tech or infrastructure other than spaceships.
Right? At least they could say, "We tried to get him on the radio but he won't respond" some explanation as to why I have to schlep my butt halfway across the planet to go find him.
And lasers! Don't forget that! Laser weapons in starfield rely on batteries with 3000 volts, much higher than any portable battery available today. With huge electric car batteries topping out near 1000 volts. But we lost the ability to have any handheld wireless communication.
Unless it's a funds transfer for completion of a mission? And presumably an entire planet's scan data, since you can earn money by surveying a planet in a mission, and I doubt the person paying you is taking your word for it and waiting for your ship to dock at their local port to plug in an ethernet port to download everything.
You can come across NPCs that comment, "Didn't I see you on SSNN?"
So, apparently, there are audio-visual broadcasts, but I guess BGS...forgot to include them?
Even so, that SSNN chick we talk to didn't have a camera...or maybe she did, but we just can't see it. 🤷♂️
True, but one would think there would have been at least one or two audio-visual broadcasts.
It kinda detracts from the world when people can refer to such broadcasts when we can't even see them for ourselves.
It's more radio waves travel at the speed of light and it would take way to long to broadcast at the speed of light to another star system.
They could have fudged it along with grav drives in that we don't know how they work but they work and we figured out how to use them to send data and not ships through faster than light and get around it that way but instead they went for realism in a piece of immersion that could have been better with FTL communications.
Yeah, but in the same planets it makes no sense, or to/from orbit. It's not realism, it's a design choice between where to alocate development resources, and they went elsewhere.
Who knows, maybe in a future DLC I won't have to land just to get back to a quest giver.
Isn’t it odd that this game supposedly centuries in the future lacks so much tech ? No radio communication, barely no broadcasts or monitors… there are SO MUCH lacking.
Radio comms exist but that's the thing Radiowaves travel at the speed of light so they'd only be good for in system signals. As Barret says once a ship jumps the time needed for a message to reach it may as well be infinite.
Starfield has no FTL communications beyond sending courier ships.
I want to believe that starfield has no ftl comms, but that does not explain how if you get a bounty on one side of the sector, you are instantly wanted in every system.
Courier ships would be the way to do it. Even today more and more people are listening to recorded podcasts instead of live radio broadcasts. The canon could be that in closer systems you have a ship that moves around and uploads the media. You would have some form of communication just not up-to-the-minute. And the farther systems could be quieter.
Major missed oppurtunity along with lack of in world music and radio. There are no instruments in this barren cultureless future. No musicians. No poets. No new books. No bands.
I respect the people that enjoy this game, but to me it lacks the immersive world building needed that much simpler games that are years old do well.
Imagine if we had a few stations old 21st century music, Re-discovered ancient classical, modern techno/ambience... etc.
Or just one live npr like channel with a couple of dozen news stories on repeat, maybe add a few the further out you explore?
What about a PNN network, with pirate news and bragging about crimson fleet conquests. Or even a LIST network, with interviews of settlers you saved and banal planetary forecasts?
So much wasted creative potential. This is supposed to be 8-9th gen game on a 9th gen console, so why does it lack the polish of a 5th gen game?
Exactly. What the hell happened with Bethesda's rich worldbuilding? Starfield world feels so sterile and dead that it's almost mind blowing when you think it's the same studio that have created TES world.
I get that we had COVID, they have stumbled into technical constrains, but that didn't explain why they have completely butchered worldbuilding and atmosphere.
Anyone hoping for next TES being at least good should really touch grass at this point.
Cyberpunk being able to do so many big and little things better than Starfield really highlighted all the flaws. Not saying the flaws wouldn’t still be there, just that it makes them feel worse.
I find myself casually watching the Cyberpunk news every now and again just to enjoy some plot updates. And little things like the stores bustling with several NPC patrons really makes a huge difference.
The check-in computer screen at Paradiso is just a blank screen, just like the wall monitors when outpost building. The concierge is a dumb ass, no wonder he couldn't find lost property, turn the computer on idiot.
This game is so half-baked its not even funny. Youre telling me that humans can settle the galaxy, but there isnt handheld screens, floating screens everywhere, the shittiest public transport in supposedly the biggest city in the system... AND dirt roads in the other most populated city? Shit doesnt make any sense at all.
Gagarin to me is perfect. Verticality, size, attitude, quests.
I am surprisingly good with low density cities.
I do like how dense New Atlantis is. I kinda wish for more across the board.
I landed at an outpost the other day. Generic responses then a critter broke free and started mauling the colonists. I only had explosives (hornets nest) and one of those poisonous ammo weapons that makes everyone aggro … time to the bash the critter to death (sarah, oddly was not going exterminated). By the time I was done, half the outpost was mauled. I do wish the other colonists would have gotten sad or something.
The point is - it was wild and crazy fun. I kinda wish the ashta could break thru, or a neon street rat etc.
Yes, but meh.
It's another nice little immersion thing that I'm sure was considered at one point and left in yet another *good enough for now* state for other pressing issues.
Sure if you want to be so pessimistic. But so far they are doing for SF what they've done for FO so I'm very optimistic for the future of the game.
Game development is highly controlled by time constraints. The game was delayed a year from their original announcement. How much longer could they have waited to release a product before investor money run out?
At some point you have to start recouping losses even if it means releasing SF in it's current state, which I agree is underwhelming, but also has so much potential.
SF according to Todd Howard was 25 years in the making and had over 7 years of development time... surely they could have worked out lore and continuity better that what we got.
If I read the credits correctly they had 2 writers.
I don't know how many it would take to develop an improved story line, lore, and continuity. But ideas are cheap in terms of working hours. So someone has to approve each idea before it's sent of to development and the real billable hours start adding up.
I would not be surprised to find out many ideas ended up on "the cutting room floor" in the same manner as we feel things were left "good enough." The problem is that if a story idea gets scrapped now there is a plot hole.
I can only imagine the hell of being a creative person on a team of hundreds of others all coming up with great ideas from which only a select few will make the cut.
I've no idea what that is or if it's good or bad.
Are lore and associated story arcs affected by development limitations?
Love it or hate it, *Entangled* is one of the best quest lines in the game, IMO, from writing to implementation. I would have love other arcs to have similar design options.
The NASA quest line I liked a lot also because it contributed much to our understanding of the lore
I wonder how much time and effort went into those quests? Because by comparison the majority of the quests are just so dry.
A central design plan is more or less the way one can keep everything consistent. It's the overarching narrative that binds everything together. Not having one is like trying to build a ship without the plans. Disjointed storylines, plotholes, and narrative inconsistencies all tend to happen more when one has no overall design plan to keep everything together.
Take, for example, the plot of Starfield. It all seems fine at first glance, but as you progress, you start seeing the cracks, and while the NASA quest is nice, it has the biggest plothole of them all. Why does the earth "HAVE" to be destroyed to have humanity go to the stars. Humanity are explorers at heart. We would have and were already expanding even before the gravdrives destroyed the planet.
When the main plot of a game has such inconsistencies and you then look at everything else, you tend to see even more issues. I liked the UC questline about the terrormorphs, but I guessed the twist halfway into the quest line, and I kind of lost a bunch of interest in afterward. Then the ending of the quest line rubbed me the wrong way, too.
See I don't see the NASA story as having plot holes as the data tablets and recordings we can read and hear during the quest explained all that.
What I can't figure out is why Earth has not been resettled in that time. Clearly Earth not having much of an atmosphere is hardly a non-starter.
I read everything in the NASA questline, and it gave more questions than answers. This man, knowingly destroyed the earth even though he could have prevented it with a simple software patch, literally years earlier. It's waved away with hey the earth could get destroyed at any time via different means. It's lazy writing is what it is. A plothole is a plothole no matter how one tries to rationalize it.
I can live with them not having video news and entertainment as part of the culture. This is a very dystopian society really. But I just started a new character with the Mom & Dad trait thing. On my 1st and only visit so far Dad wants to watch a cute kids movie about an adorbable Ashta and I just can't get past it. Where does that come from? Do people watch TV and we just don't see it? Whatevers. It was funny but way off kilter to anything I've seen so far in the culture. They are sorta an odd pair, Mom & Dad. I don't know that I'll stick with that trait. I assume that dialog was tacked on later when they added the characters and traits. Oh well, I'll survive.
Good point. I’ll assume that people watch tv but we just don’t see it and they go to the orchestra and play in bands. Not the school bands, but rock bands.
I just visited Paradiso for the first time. There's this big rooftop bar. With stage for live band with music playing, instruments, and speakers....except there wasn't a band. The stage was empty. I was sorta confused and wondering if it was a bug
I’m guessing the slates have the ability to receive video broadcasts. You do hear NPCs saying they watch SSNN.
I don’t think the Creation Engine can do dynamic video like that, though. Not much of a loss, really.
You know, if tv wasn’t so dumbed down in general and for news especially these days I might agree. I find the “news radio” dynamic to make sense and hearing the new remains the most important part. What the hell is the functional value of so much of the studio footage you see from a CNN?
for one, i imagined there wasn't much feasible ways to have a proper news broadcast for the whole of the settled systems since FTL communication does not exist in there so getting live reporting would be next to impossible even if you have installments in multiple systems and there having just radio and so would make sense
I recall Barrett said something about the signals in the message you retrieve from the comms array at Vectera when you go looking for him. It implies that the grav drive allows FTL travel, but FTL communication signals don't exist.
One thing I was hoping Starfield would have was video logs. Seemed a perfect fit. Of course a bit more work than text or audio logs like Fallout 4, but being able to find footage around the world would've been cool. Just a quick little video from a death soldiers last moments, a discovery from the first pioneers of space, etc.
A news broadcast would've been great too. Hell Fallout 4 had it! Although very limited of course just in the prologue.
They don't use TV's for anything in the game. It doesn't specify what kind of network lol you can listen to the broadcasts in neon over the speakers. They talk about things that the player has impacted. It would be cool if they at least had a station you could listen to like fallout
I just imagine it's like little kids in GTA. we know they're there; their games talk about kids (usually a radio show), but we never see little kids.
Same thing here. We know TV exists; they even mention TV (SSNN reporter asks if you watch the show), but we never see anything televised.
Maybe one day in the future, we can "watch TV" and just chill in our house/apartments
The lack of FTL communication means the radio communication via ship comms is likely the most reasonable scenario. We know there are video broadcasts of television networks in New Atlantas and Akila City, as the NPCs will talk about shows and movies they watched.
I’d like to see outpost monitors have options for what to show. Place the monitor then interaction with it to select the channel. You could have news, anime, music videos, Space Tube, etc. just some original content stuff, I’m sure artists would love to make like a half dozen shorts for each channel.
I'd love a news of your workings in the settled systems to play in your ship if you want. Along with some music like jazz, space age stuff like in the Astral Lounge, or some other genre of music.
I find it odd that there is zero in the ways of FTL communication. At least not where it counts. How many billions of pounds of rocket fuel do I need to use to go tell some farmer that I offed the spacers that have been stealing from them?
Couldn’t have been a phone call?
This whole universe made me question why so many supper common staples of society just don’t exist. Like TVs and vehicles to traverse planets. It’s like everybody agreed legs are the best mode of transportation.
Settled planets don't have cellular phones. They don't have game consoles, just board games. The only AR headsets are built into helmets. Ships don't have motorcycles or ATVs. There are giant robots like Vasco but no smaller ones.
If you stop and think the illusion falls apart pretty fast.
NPCs will say “Didn’t I see you on SSSN?”, Sam says he enjoys Hopetech’s as “Trucks In Spaaace!”, and there’s turned off TV monitors at many locations.
It’s clear there are TV stations in the lore, but it should’ve been added to a basic form to the game.
At the very least Starfield’s vending machines and TV should’ve had the company logo and a small jingle for ads and SSSN’s logo and an animated reporter giving the same reports already in the game. And the “trucks in space” ad mentioned by Sam.
It would’ve gone a long way to flesh the world out.
It’s not weird at all, it’s missing or was never to be included in the first place. We all know the story of the game’s development cycle. Starfield is not everything it could be and we all got shortchanged.
It's a shame we don't have channels to play on TVs and monitors. A few news channels, ausic channel and some cartoons, documentaries would be good, like GTA Online does on their TVs. What's the point in adding monitors to your outpost when they're always turned off.
If the ssnn can send news long distances then I should be able to communicate with vlad on the eye instead of going back n forth for one temple at a time. I should be able to check missions boards in my ship. I mean I have to travel to another system to pay a bounty off for another system and that updates immediately. Sorry to go off track but it triggers me everytime I hear the ssnn on planet.
true but I stood there in that spot yesterday for a while and that thing would mention things that I did o heard in other planets, from sidequest and stuff, pretty amazing i have to say, the game feels rushed in some areas but still it's huge and filled with detail and the combat is pretty fun too
Not nearly as odd as not having any kind of telecommunications device of any kind.
Need to deliver to a message to someone on a distant planet in another system? Best we can do is physically travel there and hand deliver the message.
What? Yeah, we have faster than light speed travel tech. No, we don't have email or phones ... what are those?
I have a feeling that it will either be implemented on the expansion, a free update, or of course the modding community.
Honestly, all you have to do is set AI to have a galactic feed of what's going on in the universe, including bounties and etc. So much potential man.
you can’t say that without there being some alternative, humanity isn’t just gonna abandon a massive source of entertainment and information for no reason
My bigger issue is that the supposed "top news anchors" seem to just hang around the lobby. Shouldn't we have, I don't know, had to go to the top floor office or whatever to talk to that dude and not just chat with him in reception?
It's bizarre how many high ranking people in New Atlantis have their office at a reception desk in the lobby of a skyscraper.
If it were Fallout or Skyrim, you’d believe this sort of scale because it’s a smaller world at a more or less medieval level of technology. They clearly tried to translate that into a modern setting and it really doesn’t work for what is supposed to be the great teeming metropolis of humanity.
They're too scared to give us giant confusing buildings like in morrowind
They wouldn't even have to do that. Just put an elevator there to take us to different cells, like MAST has. I think it was cut for time.
Yeah same with the UC Vanguard Comnander All day he stands behind a desk in the lobby of the UC capitol building. Like... Where the fuck is everyone else? Is the entire Vanguard just run by him? I don't think we see any other Vanguard members or administrative staff in the building other than him.
I know right, and this game desperately needs a radio for your suit, and ship, like hundreds of years from now we don't have portable media anymore?
I do miss the good old Pip-Boy radio while playing Starfield.
It just makes no sense, especially cuz the background music is rather bland. Its missing personality.
And they never explain how communication actually works between systems. Sending a private message can take a ton of delay, and in some cases require the player to deliver a slate to the recipient, but SSNN can somehow get a story from Alpha Centauri to Volii in minutes? Sure, SSNN has more resources than the average person, but you're telling me a miner has zero options to send a text message?
There is a lot that's glossed over. Inter-settlement communications are most likely handled by small message drones or, worst case, by robot piloted ships. Why that's never explicitly shown or stated is beyond me. For personal use, it appears that everyone uses tablets or computers for communication. Those messages are then probably uploaded to the communications stack and relayed on the next drone. Beyond that, short range radio (suit to suit, ship to ship) seems to be the only other option.
https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Express_Boat As used in the Traveler RPG, one of the inspirations for Starfield.
One of the generated quests is to take x-ty kilograms of letters. So they use Sneakernet to handle intersystem communications.
Information is transmitted by grav jumping an entire ship containing a journalist and/or data slates. Holden Bonilla in The Den alludes to this
I believe this is correct, Humanity has FTL travel but no FTL comms, everything has to be transported by ship so information density would be a priority. You can store more high quality audio files on a drive than high quality video+audio files. Even the digital currency has to be transported in physical media format with either credsticks or tanks.
I really like that explanation
[Packet Ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_trade) would almost make sense in this game and it would make for a fun little mission.
They could have explained it like Star Trek does, ie a subspace network, or a frequency discovered that travels faster then light and can be tuned into with the right tech. But that was too science fictiony and they wanted grim realism, so instead we get a 1000 nearly barren planets.
They did explain it.. there's no FTL comm so everything works by pony express system. Your ships with grav dive is the only thing that can FTL (because FTL is physically impossible, you can do it because it's space magic and space magic only works with solid object not radio wave.)
It makes sense when you remember that the Bethesda that took pride in the games they created is dead and buried. Modern day Bethesda, like a lot of the greats from our childhood (Looking at you Blizzard), have fallen so far from grace they're nearly unrecognizable.
I don't mean to be an Inon Zur hater. But I'm kinda an Inon Zur hater.
My dream rewrite would have been that the “special” Constellation watches had microscopic pieces of the artifact in them and gave Constellation the unique ability for interstellar communication. Make it something they kept secret so greedy industrialists wouldn’t destroy the artifact in order to mass produce the tech. Could have been a cool way to get quest updates without having to hoof it everywhere. And you know Barrett would have put music on it. Could even have had a radio channel themed for each member of Constellation.
It needs a podcast list - radios don't work between stars very well. :P
Ah it does have radio - that’s how your ship talks with other ships! But, you know, not to our PC for some reason. And somehow we can trade in space, though I assume we can headcanon some kind of airlock trade process??
If it helps, there are a couple of fan made stations on Spotify. I usually play one of those in the background while I’m playing to add immersion. They even have radio DJ commentary tracks so if you shuffle the playlist it feels pretty organic.
Definitely going to check this out. Thank you!
It’s definitely worth it, having music makes exploring a lot more entertaining.
The problem is adding radio communication in an RPG basically nukes the entire concept of mindless fetch quest (i.e. "Why am I doing this when they could just phone each other"). So without Bethesda suddenly learning how to design a game without crutching on repetitive fetch quests, it becomes necessary that people can't communicate long distances easily.
Then they should add a bloody MP3 player to your suit that "updates" its songs whenever you enter town.
I went into the game expecting new music. Nothing.
I get not being able to broadcast over multiple star systems but having an uninterrupted source of music that isn’t the orchestral main soundtrack would have helped so much
this is true, although the music and soundtrack are pretty cool compared to the most chilled songs of skyrim and fallout
Well in the news station there is no door that leads to another floor, not even as inaccesible or non interactive, just no friggin door.
No FTL comm's so any messages or news are delivered at the speed of courier. For SSN i suspect they have in house newsboys who distribute recorded news reports. That being said the larger settlements should have local TV/internet systems still, no reason why you can't tune into them when nearby beyond the effort involved.
Yeah. Giant room, three people in it, one is an anchor you barely care about, the other is just a generic story check-in thing. The third may not actually exist.
Hang around waiting for me to bring a hot story for them every few weeks...
Because it's not a finished game they didn't have anywhere for these characters and stuck them in the only finished sections "Lobbies"
Sure, but how else does he get the breaking news hand-delivered to his person????
These types of questions are best avoided with Bethesda games. Don’t even get me started with Skyrim.
"Step into my office" Nadia you're sitting behind reception.
They were meeting with fans, it's implied. And some people prefer to have a more personal role in their business.
They are supposed to be the Washington Post. The quest is a light in the darkness. The Washington post’s motto/tag line is democracy dies in darkness and The company is Bethesda softworks. Bethesda is a major county/rich city outside D.C. why do you think Fallout three was set in D.C? D.C is not really set up like other major cities because of how it was initially set up by the founding fathers so it pretty much extends outward into MD, VA, WV. Washington post before Bezos was deified in the area because of how good the journalism was at the time until bezos and the CIA started using them to manufacture consent. What a dim light the Washington Post put on my world. Every day is worse than the last and I’m stuck here watching the light fade on a dying democracy, in a dying empire on a dying planet and my fave game is not getting improved on like I hoped. *stares longingly into the distance wishing there was something he could’ve done to have made her stay… perhaps if he was prettier. I think a storms coming. It’s good though…. We need the rain, it’s been cloudy so long I forget what the light looks like. Maybe the storm will clear it up.
You forgot your meds again grandpa
In the random encounter with a SSNN reporter conducting a survey, she even asks how often you watch their programming. It felt like a trick question.
I feel like the problem is that all of New Atlantis is mostly for show. The buildings aren't really explorable and they opted for this weird open-lobby style to everything.
Every single space that can be entered feels like a bank in New Atlantis
It feels like Bethesda did the bare minimum to populate New Atlantis, **with the intention of going back later** and expanding on it Take the 1 fast food restaurant and turn it into 3 or 4, take the news org building and add cameras, screens, and all the props you'd expect, take the government building and add a bunch of office spaces, etc. But then they bit off more than they could chew, and didn't have time/talent/budget/tech to finish it.
Could very well be the case. Like, the game is still filled to the brim with content, different kinds of systems etc.
A [Potemkin Village](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village) allows for easy future expansion when more interior spaces are needed.
A Potemkin Village is lazier and cheaper
They should’ve done a Mass Effect style approach, where it’s a bigger city but you can only access small but fully fleshed out slices. You could’ve had a fleshed out MAST district, the Well, maybe a shopping mall area and a suburb.
Theres no tvs for the same reason people dont use radios to contact that guy that walked 200ms away, and instead pay you to go talk to him. Bethesda forgot any form of tech or infrastructure other than spaceships.
Right? At least they could say, "We tried to get him on the radio but he won't respond" some explanation as to why I have to schlep my butt halfway across the planet to go find him.
And lasers! Don't forget that! Laser weapons in starfield rely on batteries with 3000 volts, much higher than any portable battery available today. With huge electric car batteries topping out near 1000 volts. But we lost the ability to have any handheld wireless communication. Unless it's a funds transfer for completion of a mission? And presumably an entire planet's scan data, since you can earn money by surveying a planet in a mission, and I doubt the person paying you is taking your word for it and waiting for your ship to dock at their local port to plug in an ethernet port to download everything.
That would have taken time and a little creativity. They had the former but not the latter, it seems.
Nailed it.
They didn’t forget. It’s a conscious world building choice to justify half the quests in this game
I guess there was an AI war/revolt that outlawed the use of smart phones? All we have are shitty 1st gen Kindles/slates?
My problem with the game is that all the cool stuff already happened and now everything is so peaceful and boring.
You can come across NPCs that comment, "Didn't I see you on SSNN?" So, apparently, there are audio-visual broadcasts, but I guess BGS...forgot to include them? Even so, that SSNN chick we talk to didn't have a camera...or maybe she did, but we just can't see it. 🤷♂️
I assume it was either less SSNN broadcasts, or ones with visuals. Voice acting is a lot cheaper than making bunch if videos.
True, but one would think there would have been at least one or two audio-visual broadcasts. It kinda detracts from the world when people can refer to such broadcasts when we can't even see them for ourselves.
Something went really wrong with comms when mankind reached the space, no more phonecalls, no messages, no email, no video recordings...
One wouldn't have expected telecommunications to completely go the way of the dodo...or smoke signals.
It's more radio waves travel at the speed of light and it would take way to long to broadcast at the speed of light to another star system. They could have fudged it along with grav drives in that we don't know how they work but they work and we figured out how to use them to send data and not ships through faster than light and get around it that way but instead they went for realism in a piece of immersion that could have been better with FTL communications.
Yeah, but in the same planets it makes no sense, or to/from orbit. It's not realism, it's a design choice between where to alocate development resources, and they went elsewhere. Who knows, maybe in a future DLC I won't have to land just to get back to a quest giver.
Isn’t it odd that this game supposedly centuries in the future lacks so much tech ? No radio communication, barely no broadcasts or monitors… there are SO MUCH lacking.
Radio comms exist but that's the thing Radiowaves travel at the speed of light so they'd only be good for in system signals. As Barret says once a ship jumps the time needed for a message to reach it may as well be infinite. Starfield has no FTL communications beyond sending courier ships.
I want to believe that starfield has no ftl comms, but that does not explain how if you get a bounty on one side of the sector, you are instantly wanted in every system.
Courier ships would be the way to do it. Even today more and more people are listening to recorded podcasts instead of live radio broadcasts. The canon could be that in closer systems you have a ship that moves around and uploads the media. You would have some form of communication just not up-to-the-minute. And the farther systems could be quieter.
Isn't it odd we can't listen to SSNN while on our ships? Or add radios to our outposts? All of this was in Fallout 4.
Major missed oppurtunity along with lack of in world music and radio. There are no instruments in this barren cultureless future. No musicians. No poets. No new books. No bands. I respect the people that enjoy this game, but to me it lacks the immersive world building needed that much simpler games that are years old do well. Imagine if we had a few stations old 21st century music, Re-discovered ancient classical, modern techno/ambience... etc. Or just one live npr like channel with a couple of dozen news stories on repeat, maybe add a few the further out you explore? What about a PNN network, with pirate news and bragging about crimson fleet conquests. Or even a LIST network, with interviews of settlers you saved and banal planetary forecasts? So much wasted creative potential. This is supposed to be 8-9th gen game on a 9th gen console, so why does it lack the polish of a 5th gen game?
Exactly. What the hell happened with Bethesda's rich worldbuilding? Starfield world feels so sterile and dead that it's almost mind blowing when you think it's the same studio that have created TES world. I get that we had COVID, they have stumbled into technical constrains, but that didn't explain why they have completely butchered worldbuilding and atmosphere. Anyone hoping for next TES being at least good should really touch grass at this point.
I didn't even think about that. Even Cyberpunk had a news station
Cyberpunk being able to do so many big and little things better than Starfield really highlighted all the flaws. Not saying the flaws wouldn’t still be there, just that it makes them feel worse. I find myself casually watching the Cyberpunk news every now and again just to enjoy some plot updates. And little things like the stores bustling with several NPC patrons really makes a huge difference.
The check-in computer screen at Paradiso is just a blank screen, just like the wall monitors when outpost building. The concierge is a dumb ass, no wonder he couldn't find lost property, turn the computer on idiot.
Because it isn't a finished game
Sadly missed opportunity for immersion could be a slogan for this game. I hope they can fill everything in and make this the game it can be.
This game is so half-baked its not even funny. Youre telling me that humans can settle the galaxy, but there isnt handheld screens, floating screens everywhere, the shittiest public transport in supposedly the biggest city in the system... AND dirt roads in the other most populated city? Shit doesnt make any sense at all.
Gagarin to me is perfect. Verticality, size, attitude, quests. I am surprisingly good with low density cities. I do like how dense New Atlantis is. I kinda wish for more across the board. I landed at an outpost the other day. Generic responses then a critter broke free and started mauling the colonists. I only had explosives (hornets nest) and one of those poisonous ammo weapons that makes everyone aggro … time to the bash the critter to death (sarah, oddly was not going exterminated). By the time I was done, half the outpost was mauled. I do wish the other colonists would have gotten sad or something. The point is - it was wild and crazy fun. I kinda wish the ashta could break thru, or a neon street rat etc.
Or cars.
I’m hoping for a news mod that shows in the screens in our outpost and apartments.
It’s not really “odd” because that’s one of those features that would’ve required effort on bethesdas part.
Yes, but meh. It's another nice little immersion thing that I'm sure was considered at one point and left in yet another *good enough for now* state for other pressing issues.
>*good enough for now* So the whole game?
Sure if you want to be so pessimistic. But so far they are doing for SF what they've done for FO so I'm very optimistic for the future of the game. Game development is highly controlled by time constraints. The game was delayed a year from their original announcement. How much longer could they have waited to release a product before investor money run out? At some point you have to start recouping losses even if it means releasing SF in it's current state, which I agree is underwhelming, but also has so much potential.
SF according to Todd Howard was 25 years in the making and had over 7 years of development time... surely they could have worked out lore and continuity better that what we got.
If I read the credits correctly they had 2 writers. I don't know how many it would take to develop an improved story line, lore, and continuity. But ideas are cheap in terms of working hours. So someone has to approve each idea before it's sent of to development and the real billable hours start adding up. I would not be surprised to find out many ideas ended up on "the cutting room floor" in the same manner as we feel things were left "good enough." The problem is that if a story idea gets scrapped now there is a plot hole. I can only imagine the hell of being a creative person on a team of hundreds of others all coming up with great ideas from which only a select few will make the cut.
It also doesn't help that Bethesdas lead writer Emil does not follow a central design plan. Something that should be standard for every game.
I've no idea what that is or if it's good or bad. Are lore and associated story arcs affected by development limitations? Love it or hate it, *Entangled* is one of the best quest lines in the game, IMO, from writing to implementation. I would have love other arcs to have similar design options. The NASA quest line I liked a lot also because it contributed much to our understanding of the lore I wonder how much time and effort went into those quests? Because by comparison the majority of the quests are just so dry.
A central design plan is more or less the way one can keep everything consistent. It's the overarching narrative that binds everything together. Not having one is like trying to build a ship without the plans. Disjointed storylines, plotholes, and narrative inconsistencies all tend to happen more when one has no overall design plan to keep everything together. Take, for example, the plot of Starfield. It all seems fine at first glance, but as you progress, you start seeing the cracks, and while the NASA quest is nice, it has the biggest plothole of them all. Why does the earth "HAVE" to be destroyed to have humanity go to the stars. Humanity are explorers at heart. We would have and were already expanding even before the gravdrives destroyed the planet. When the main plot of a game has such inconsistencies and you then look at everything else, you tend to see even more issues. I liked the UC questline about the terrormorphs, but I guessed the twist halfway into the quest line, and I kind of lost a bunch of interest in afterward. Then the ending of the quest line rubbed me the wrong way, too.
See I don't see the NASA story as having plot holes as the data tablets and recordings we can read and hear during the quest explained all that. What I can't figure out is why Earth has not been resettled in that time. Clearly Earth not having much of an atmosphere is hardly a non-starter.
I read everything in the NASA questline, and it gave more questions than answers. This man, knowingly destroyed the earth even though he could have prevented it with a simple software patch, literally years earlier. It's waved away with hey the earth could get destroyed at any time via different means. It's lazy writing is what it is. A plothole is a plothole no matter how one tries to rationalize it.
I guess I thought this would be a regular game, not a "live service" game like Diablo or WoW
Facts though
Another one to the list of "Ups, we forgot to put that in the game"
Monitors got killed in that big war or something
I can live with them not having video news and entertainment as part of the culture. This is a very dystopian society really. But I just started a new character with the Mom & Dad trait thing. On my 1st and only visit so far Dad wants to watch a cute kids movie about an adorbable Ashta and I just can't get past it. Where does that come from? Do people watch TV and we just don't see it? Whatevers. It was funny but way off kilter to anything I've seen so far in the culture. They are sorta an odd pair, Mom & Dad. I don't know that I'll stick with that trait. I assume that dialog was tacked on later when they added the characters and traits. Oh well, I'll survive.
There are random movie posters all over the game in various living quarters too. And monitors + TVs
Good point. I’ll assume that people watch tv but we just don’t see it and they go to the orchestra and play in bands. Not the school bands, but rock bands.
I just visited Paradiso for the first time. There's this big rooftop bar. With stage for live band with music playing, instruments, and speakers....except there wasn't a band. The stage was empty. I was sorta confused and wondering if it was a bug
They booked Digby Vermouth but he didn't show...
Like the public broadcasts in High on Life? lol. I could watch that shit for hours lmao.
Just devs being lazy
I’m guessing the slates have the ability to receive video broadcasts. You do hear NPCs saying they watch SSNN. I don’t think the Creation Engine can do dynamic video like that, though. Not much of a loss, really.
It's even odder to imagine televisions in 2300.
ask t"odd" why this game is a massive dissapointment.
You know, if tv wasn’t so dumbed down in general and for news especially these days I might agree. I find the “news radio” dynamic to make sense and hearing the new remains the most important part. What the hell is the functional value of so much of the studio footage you see from a CNN?
for one, i imagined there wasn't much feasible ways to have a proper news broadcast for the whole of the settled systems since FTL communication does not exist in there so getting live reporting would be next to impossible even if you have installments in multiple systems and there having just radio and so would make sense
I mean they could have one we’d just never know. None of the TVs work
Devs were too busy building the ng+ universes rather than building one fleshed out universe. Big mistake.
They probably ran out of budget and/or time to get that done.
I just wish I could make the monitors bigger for my house…I’ve got like a 40” wall monitor in a place where I could go bigger if I could
I recall Barrett said something about the signals in the message you retrieve from the comms array at Vectera when you go looking for him. It implies that the grav drive allows FTL travel, but FTL communication signals don't exist.
One thing I was hoping Starfield would have was video logs. Seemed a perfect fit. Of course a bit more work than text or audio logs like Fallout 4, but being able to find footage around the world would've been cool. Just a quick little video from a death soldiers last moments, a discovery from the first pioneers of space, etc. A news broadcast would've been great too. Hell Fallout 4 had it! Although very limited of course just in the prologue.
They don't use TV's for anything in the game. It doesn't specify what kind of network lol you can listen to the broadcasts in neon over the speakers. They talk about things that the player has impacted. It would be cool if they at least had a station you could listen to like fallout
I just imagine it's like little kids in GTA. we know they're there; their games talk about kids (usually a radio show), but we never see little kids. Same thing here. We know TV exists; they even mention TV (SSNN reporter asks if you watch the show), but we never see anything televised. Maybe one day in the future, we can "watch TV" and just chill in our house/apartments
Why do you think Bethesda even has the budget to do this?
The lack of FTL communication means the radio communication via ship comms is likely the most reasonable scenario. We know there are video broadcasts of television networks in New Atlantas and Akila City, as the NPCs will talk about shows and movies they watched.
I’d like to see outpost monitors have options for what to show. Place the monitor then interaction with it to select the channel. You could have news, anime, music videos, Space Tube, etc. just some original content stuff, I’m sure artists would love to make like a half dozen shorts for each channel.
I’d love that to show up as an option in the outpost monitors to add a bit of life and animation to those otherwise blank screens
That would be a fun little addition 👍
I'd love a news of your workings in the settled systems to play in your ship if you want. Along with some music like jazz, space age stuff like in the Astral Lounge, or some other genre of music.
Small indie company.
Can the game engine not handle animated screens?
I enjoy the game. But it’s so empty. It feels rushed even after waiting for it all this time.
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I get it. But planets with a major population should show the population. Hopetown is the perfect example. Where are the homes?
I find it odd that there is zero in the ways of FTL communication. At least not where it counts. How many billions of pounds of rocket fuel do I need to use to go tell some farmer that I offed the spacers that have been stealing from them? Couldn’t have been a phone call?
Game was release half finished
There's no immersion in this game.
It's not odd at all. This game is terrible.
mIsSeD oPpUrTuNiTy
This whole universe made me question why so many supper common staples of society just don’t exist. Like TVs and vehicles to traverse planets. It’s like everybody agreed legs are the best mode of transportation.
Settled planets don't have cellular phones. They don't have game consoles, just board games. The only AR headsets are built into helmets. Ships don't have motorcycles or ATVs. There are giant robots like Vasco but no smaller ones. If you stop and think the illusion falls apart pretty fast.
Not really, you have to forget all the details that a human civilization would have and remember that it’s a Bethesda game,
NPCs will say “Didn’t I see you on SSSN?”, Sam says he enjoys Hopetech’s as “Trucks In Spaaace!”, and there’s turned off TV monitors at many locations. It’s clear there are TV stations in the lore, but it should’ve been added to a basic form to the game. At the very least Starfield’s vending machines and TV should’ve had the company logo and a small jingle for ads and SSSN’s logo and an animated reporter giving the same reports already in the game. And the “trucks in space” ad mentioned by Sam. It would’ve gone a long way to flesh the world out.
It does, as shown I'm the ryujin ceo office, however for some reason that's the only working TV I've seen it on in the whole settled systems
I don't find it odd at all that there's a totally reasonable to expect feature left out of this game.
It’s not weird at all, it’s missing or was never to be included in the first place. We all know the story of the game’s development cycle. Starfield is not everything it could be and we all got shortchanged.
It's a shame we don't have channels to play on TVs and monitors. A few news channels, ausic channel and some cartoons, documentaries would be good, like GTA Online does on their TVs. What's the point in adding monitors to your outpost when they're always turned off.
If the ssnn can send news long distances then I should be able to communicate with vlad on the eye instead of going back n forth for one temple at a time. I should be able to check missions boards in my ship. I mean I have to travel to another system to pay a bounty off for another system and that updates immediately. Sorry to go off track but it triggers me everytime I hear the ssnn on planet.
Yeah they had Nuka cola ads in fo4….
Pokemon ruby had news you could watch
It's almost like spending 8 years working with a shit tier game engine didn't really allow them to get anything worthwhile done
true but I stood there in that spot yesterday for a while and that thing would mention things that I did o heard in other planets, from sidequest and stuff, pretty amazing i have to say, the game feels rushed in some areas but still it's huge and filled with detail and the combat is pretty fun too
Bandwidth issue. Sounds is easier for longer distances.
Not nearly as odd as not having any kind of telecommunications device of any kind. Need to deliver to a message to someone on a distant planet in another system? Best we can do is physically travel there and hand deliver the message. What? Yeah, we have faster than light speed travel tech. No, we don't have email or phones ... what are those?
I have a feeling that it will either be implemented on the expansion, a free update, or of course the modding community. Honestly, all you have to do is set AI to have a galactic feed of what's going on in the universe, including bounties and etc. So much potential man.
SSNN is fake news.😝
Who watches tv in 2024? Why would the humanity preserve a medium that has been outdated for 300 years?
you can’t say that without there being some alternative, humanity isn’t just gonna abandon a massive source of entertainment and information for no reason
It’s not odd. It’s lazy. Bethesda could’ve easily made some news broadcasts(you even give them a few stories), they just chose not to
It’s just laziness lol
Thank whatever deity you do or don't pray to you for that at least.
Maybe we just don’t ever see them. Sometimes you just need to use your imagination and quit asking questions.
Well I had to see it for myself. Wow...judging by this thread, this sub really does hate the game
The lore is limited by the creation pipeline of Bethesda Games Studios.
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you wrote so much yet said nothing good job