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Whatever you do, don\u2019t call it Starfield 2.0: At a recent preview event for the big updates and content drops coming to Starfield, Bethesda seemed eager to downplay any comparison to the kinds of extensive overhauls enjoyed by the likes of Cyberpunk 2077, No Man\u2019s Sky, or indeed, Fallout 76.<\/p>\n
Personally, I think they\u2019re selling themselves short: while the Free Lanes update isn\u2019t a big ground-up remake of Starfield that magically transforms it into a different game, none of the other things we might be tempted to compare it to are that either. No Man\u2019s Sky <\/em>and Cyberpunk 2077<\/em> are still, away from all the hype, largely the same minute-to-minute experiences that they were at launch. Whatever they clamp onto it, Starfield is and will remain Starfield \u2013 a space life sim and questing RPG that offers a scifi twist on the basic core gameplay that Bethesda have been peddling since Morrowind<\/em>. The same framework, the same idiosyncrasies, and more or less the same engine. The latter being the big, underlying Starfield problem you cannot fix by throwing more stuff into it.<\/p>\nOverhaul or not, what\u2019s coming on April 7th is a suite of crowd-pleasers: a bunch of free DLC, a not-free expansion, the much rumoured PS5 version, and an extension to the ever popular best-in-class ship builder. The Free Lanes update is the key thing: it vastly expands the space sim part of Starfield\u2019s burgeoning package to include Cruise Mode, which essentially adds a new layer of game sandwiched between the on-planet and in-orbit stuff that\u2019s already there.\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nFree Lanes adds tonnes of new content, including this horrid pet that looks like a giant woodlouse and I hate it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
Cruise Mode allows for manual travel between planets, something which was always technically possible<\/u>, but pointless, arduous, and infamously broken. Now it\u2019s a cool, fast way of getting around star systems that comes with its own unique challenges and radiant events. Free Lanes also adds a new major space port, Anchorpoint, sure to be a wretched hive of scum and low-tier freelance opportunities, like the average Games Journo discord.<\/p>\n
Fans of Fallout\u2019s vault boy bobbleheads (that\u2019s all of us, right?) will enjoy the new Colony Wars action figures and associated playsets: a set of interactive toys that give stat boosts. This adorable addition feels like a concession to the idea that Starfield always felt a bit more po-faced than the other Bethesda games. It\u2019s certainly the least intentionally goofy, and not in a good way.<\/p>\n
Bringing back this beloved Fallout feature in this enhanced in-universe toy form brings a sense of sorely missed daftness, but also meaningfully connects Starfield to its much more beloved stablemates: a reminder of why Skyrim in Space was such a compelling pitch in the first place. For better or worse, Starfield is every bit a Bethesda game, and we used to love those warts n\u2019 all.\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nComing soon to Starfield: a bit of whimsy, thank Todd.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
So, while Free Lanes isn\u2019t a ground-up redesign, it\u2019s a pretty generous update for an almost 3-year old single player game that is considered something of a critical flop, a game that feels destined to fade in memory as Bethesda turns its limited attention back to its flagship series (although it must be said that Starfield was not, as is commonly believed, a commercial failure<\/u>). But chucking more Stuff into Starfield emphatically fails to address the game\u2019s most critical underlying issue: not a lack of stuff, but how it is organised across vast tracks of nothing.<\/p>\n
Long-serving Bethesda producer Tim Lamb started the recent presser with an awkward, half-joking acknowledgement of the fact that Starfield is seen as, in his words, \u201cirresponsibly big\u201d. A game with a Skyrim\u2019s amount of stuff spread thinly across hundreds of planets. Whereas most Bethesda adventures are stuffed precariously into a tiny continent like a suitcase full of octopuses, Starfield ekes its hand-crafted quests out like a disorganised dad scratching molecule-thin layers of the last of the margarine over some toast with a toothpick.<\/p>\n
One might argue, as I have<\/u>, that Starfield could have done with being a lot smaller. But you can\u2019t make it smaller in updates: it\u2019s already here, in all of its empty vastness. And so the only way forward is to put more stuff in, while neatly addressing the other big criticism of Starfield: that it\u2019s a space sim which doesn\u2019t bother to simulate space. Free Lanes certainly goes some way to addressing that, and I can\u2019t wait to start a fresh game on PS5 Pro when the new version drops next month. But expectations must rightly be tempered, because this is a game operating right on the outer limits of what is possible with Bethesda\u2019s tech.\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe Creation Engine gets a lot of flak for always being a generation behind. You hear it constantly: \u201cwhy don\u2019t Bethesda change to a new engine?\u201d<\/em>, \u201cwhy are they still using Gamebryo?\u201d<\/em>, \u201cthey own id Tech 8, why can\u2019t they use that?\u201d<\/em>. Well, there\u2019s a reason why Bethesda\u2019s games are so distinctive: their tech is a cell based system that treats every space as a separate room, compartmentalising the entire game world into a hierarchy similar to a directory tree. You\u2019ve got a vast overworld which is like your root directory, from there you can enter cities, then individual buildings. Every time you transition into a new room or cell, the game flushes your current environment out of memory and loads in a new one.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s why Bethesda\u2019s games are characterised by the dreaded loading screens: it\u2019s not an engine designed for the kind of seamless world streaming that allows for something like Crimson Desert, or Red Dead 2, where assets are loaded in and flushed out dynamically depending on where you are and where you\u2019re looking. It\u2019s why NPCs in Bethesda games fade to nothing when they go outside, instead of opening the front door and stepping through. <\/p>\n
The advantage for Bethesda to stick with their tech when there are seemingly better alternatives is that it allows them to build huge worlds and fill them with intricately scripted quests, fully simulated towns and cities, and barrel-loads of interactive parsnips, very quickly and easily. And over the years they\u2019ve gotten very good at streamlining the process: lots of incidental details and world interactions are automated. If an NPC\u2019s patrol route takes them near a source of heat, they\u2019ll stop and warm their hands. That\u2019s a baked-in behaviour that\u2019s triggered by context, which the quest designer doesn\u2019t have to worry about. There\u2019s also the advantage of being able to track thousands, even millions of fully simulated physics objects across the entire game which is much more difficult to do in streaming based engines, which is why in The Elder Scrolls you can leave a pie on the floor somewhere and it\u2019ll very likely stay there until the end of time while GTA has cars and pedestrians that disappear forever if you happen to look away.<\/p>\n
There are things intrinsic to a Bethesda game that you just can\u2019t remove.
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\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\nTo be clear, this is a layman\u2019s understanding: I\u2019m not a game dev. And I\u2019m certainly not saying there\u2019s a right way or wrong way to make an open world game. Every different way of achieving something has pros and cons. Creation 3 would suck for building GTA and Rockstar\u2019s RAGE engine would be horrendous for building an Elder Scrolls game.<\/p>\n
There is an argument that perhaps Bethesda should ditch all the granular physics stuff that allows them to build all those lived in spaces full of interactive world clutter, and maybe reduce the scope of their games a bit so they could put out more games in a newer engine. Luckily, we have a case study for that: Obsidian\u2019s Avowed is the closest thing we have to an Elder Scrolls game built in a modern engine, in this case Unreal 5. And everyone thought it sucked, in part because it wasn\u2019t as interactive as Oblivion was twenty years earlier. There are things intrinsic to a Bethesda game that you just can\u2019t remove.<\/p>\n
But there are obviously hard limits to what you can do with a system designed to organise a vast world into tiny, distinct chunks, and it\u2019s clear that Starfield is a massive square peg of an idea trying to fit into the round hole of Bethesda\u2019s technical capabilities. You can practically see the bones of Morrowind creaking to accommodate its ambition, where entire planetary surfaces are separated into a vast grid of square cells. This is obviously a massive oversimplification, but essentially, a planet in Starfield is like an Oblivion mansion with millions of doors.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nBethesda’s tech was built for Elder Scrolls games, and those foundations are hard to shake.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
Cruise Mode looks like it\u2019s more or less a giant \u201croom\u201d where you fly around a diorama of the solar system. Interdictions that take you back into Normal Space do so with a very obvious bokeh-dissolve that really doesn\u2019t hide the join all that well. Making a space game with Bethesda\u2019s tech is like building anything more substantial than a personal blog in WordPress: possible, with caveats. Cramming a space sim into a framework designed very specifically to make Elder Scrolls games was always going to be something of a bodge job. They\u2019re doing the game design equivalent of building a car with nothing but garden tools, the fact that it gets anywhere at all is quite remarkable.<\/p>\n
Though it\u2019s Bethesda\u2019s most forward thinking game in spirit, in practice it\u2019s a massive regression, a throwback to the procedurally generated vastness of Daggerfall<\/em>, a game so big it felt tiny: boasting a land mass twice the size of actual Great Britain but with nowhere near enough intrigue to fill a shed in Swindon, it could also have been described as irresponsibly big.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nMorrowind wasn’t anywhere near the same size of Daggerfall, and it was much better for it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
Its sequel, Morrowind<\/em>, the game that put Bethesda on the map and provides the basic template for their games to this day, made a point of being entirely hand-crafted. Not even a single percentage point of the size of Daggerfall, it nonetheless felt enormous, because its map could barely contain all of the intricate adventures within. Back then, Bethesda learnt the lesson that less is more, but it seems to be a lesson it is eager to forget.<\/p>\nStarfield isn\u2019t anyone\u2019s favourite Bethesda game. It certainly isn\u2019t mine (Morrowind, need you ask). But I admire it for how close it gets to an ideal that should be entirely out of the question. If nothing else, it\u2019s a masterclass in making do. Free Lanes isn\u2019t a do-over, or an overhaul, or even something that makes Starfield palatable for those who bounced off it before. But it does add a rich new set of features and intrigue to a game that many of us desperately want to love, because for all of its shortcomings, it is Skyrim in Space, and even after we\u2019ve been presented with a gigantic neon sign that says \u201cSkyrim in Space Doesn\u2019t Work\u201d, it remains a most enticing prospect.<\/p>\n
Jim Trinca is a Video Producer at IGN, and when he isn’t fawning over Assassin’s Creed, he can be found watching Star Trek and eating stuff. Follow him on <\/em>@jimtrinca.bsky.social\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\nRead Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whatever you do, don\u2019t call it Starfield 2.0: At a recent preview event for the big updates and content drops coming to Starfield, Bethesda seemed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[19697,19698,18339],"class_list":["post-41756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-cyberpunkstyle","tag-renaissance","tag-starfield","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}