Starfield - Delayed to 2023

Well, Bethesda was never much of a pioneer when it comes to graphics. The only game they did that was cutting edge in terms of visuals at the time was Morrowind. Imo, their other titles have been pretty average in that department.

As for what they do during that first four years, that's a good question…

I would argue that for when oblivion and skyrim came out they both looked good for their time.
 
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I would argue that for when oblivion and skyrim came out they both looked good for their time.

"Good for their time" is obviously not the same as being a pioneer. I agree with JDR13 that that's never been their thing. They tend to ease right into the middle ground of what developers are doing at any given time they release a game. Morrowind was cutting edge not for how it looked, but for how good it looked given the scale and scope of the game. That's the closest they've gotten to being pioneers in graphics.
 
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Kotaku released a new article over the delay and the lack of winter 2022 games.

So Much For Video Game Release Dates

Link - https://kotaku.com/starfield-botw-2-god-war-ragnarok-delay-fall-2022-relea-1848916878
“We’ve made the decision to delay the launches of Redfall and Starfield to the first half of 2023,” Bethesda announced Thursday.

Sound familiar? Many large game companies have been making the same difficult decision lately.

“We’ve made the difficult decision to delay Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League to spring 2023,” creative director Sefton Clark tweeted in March.

A week later the same thing happened to Breath of the Wild 2.

“We have decided to extend our development time a bit and change the release to spring 2023,” series producer Eiji Aonuma said in a YouTube apology a week later.

All of these games were supposed to be part of a big fall game rush following several quieter years. Here’s where the holiday 2022 calendar for main releases currently stands:
Guess it's another year of smaller budget games once again.
 
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I hope that even if it launches in a rough state, and it's likely that this will happen given their track record, the game is at least as ambitious as possible. They're gonna reuse elements from TES, but not doing enough to differentiate it from TES would be a real shame. They need more diversity in their portfolio. This way, if it fails, it fails by flying too close to the sun, than just being a rehash. And then maybe they could improve on whatever it does fail on, in the sequel. I hope they're thinking long term, and won't just return to TES if it doesn't do as good as the money people expect.
 
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I hope that even if it launches in a rough state, and it's likely that this will happen given their track record, the game is at least as ambitious as possible. They're gonna reuse elements from TES, but not doing enough to differentiate it from TES would be a real shame. They need more diversity in their portfolio. This way, if it fails, it fails by flying too close to the sun, than just being a rehash. And then maybe they could improve on whatever it does fail on, in the sequel. I hope they're thinking long term, and won't just return to TES if it doesn't do as good as the money people expect.

Everything I have seen so far just seems recycled slightly altered assets from TES and Fallout. Not a fan of their games.
 
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This is the thing I don't get about the ever extending time between game releases in the current gaming culture.

The whole point of these AAA games is that they pioneer the latest graphics. It's the primary factor which separates them from the hoards of other games.

But when you have 7 years between games, well, that's almost 2 whole graphical ages in the world of competitive game production. Or generations, if you prefer.

So they still can't be spending all that time on making the game, because every couple of years they'd need to do a graphical overhaul.

No matter the length of production they'd still mostly be tied to a two year production cycle, to be somewhere close to the current graphical expectation.

So what do they do during the first four years of production? And why does it take so long!

Obviously just lay person's point of view, but I think that because of the size of the teams involved, there is a lot of time "wasted" on agreeing what to do.

For small teams, you go into the first year as pre-development and just have a meeting to agree on actions, everyone does their thing and come back with their weekly or fortnightly updates. Done.

But for triple-A you need to have everyone aligned to the same vision, same look, same story. You can't have someone making the aesthetic look super bright and cheerful and another person making it grimy and old as a very bad example.

This translates to the details of the stories told, the characters, the look of the game, the overall lore, the graphics, the music,....

So overall, everything takes much longer. I.e. it's not because you have 5 people to do something that it will be done 5 times faster.


To your point about graphics being the main differentiator, I think that's not entirely accurate either. I think the scale of AAA games are also (in general) much larger.
 
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In my opinion, Oblivion was far ahead of any open world RPG when it came out in terms of visuals and technical sophistication.

Especially when it comes to things like Speedtree implementation, distant terrain without fog - and their implementation of physics is still pretty good today - where many open world RPGs don't even have their items represented in the world as physical objects. The dungeon interiors were also pretty amazing - and especially those elven ruins were quite beautiful.

I know people love to joke about Radiant AI (which is, indeed, quite amusing in its flaws) - but I thought it was very impressive and way, way ahead of its time when it comes to the AAA market segment. I'm not sure there's ever been a non-scripted alternative since then in any open world RPG.

I'd say it's probably the most impressive RPG on a technical level that I'd seen when it came out - though it's obviously much less so now.

That said, I agree that most of their games aren't about pushing visuals - but more about pushing freedom and immersion. They've been open about sticking to the engine they know - so they can focus on content creation rather than catching up to the latest technology.

I certainly prefer their approach to content over Ubisoft/CDPR/most others "hunt the map markers cut-and-paste" open world stuff.

Now, if only Beth would hire some decent writers. Well, or at least give the few good ones more to do (like the one that did Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion).

I do think Starfield will be a pretty good looking game, though - but that's not at all what I'm excited about it for.

Anyway, when it comes to delays - I hate these early release dates as much as anyone, but they're obviously not going away.

It's a marketing scheme and it's probably a suit-decision in 99% of the cases. They have everything planned in their spreadsheets - and they need to build interest and push the pre-order schtick all the way to the moon.

That said, this was actually a pretty late release date announcement - which is why I believed it would stick.

Oh well…..
 
Welcome back @DArtagnan; :)

I think it can be a mixture of suits and mixture of devs though regarding release dates.
Devs don't want to develop one game forever either and need to set themselves "real" deadlines otherwise you end up like Grimoire with 25 years in development.

That actually in itself is a good (or bad depending on your PoV) case in point. Cleve did not have any suits badgering him yet he re-announced his game a billion times.

In more modern indie world, the Colony Ship RPG is advancing relatively well, but their roadmap is not going fully as planned. They had hit their first 4/5 milestones pretty well, but the latest one is 2 months off because it just takes time. I don't think Vince from ITS is trying to gain more sales by being a "suit".

I am sure this kind of thing happens, but I think it's more nuanced than what you say.
 
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The Radiant AI was convincing, but what they advertised for Oblivion never saw the day (I think it later become the auto-generated quest system), which is a shame as it would have been great.

The NPCs mainly followed a pre-determined schedule with a place to be at some time of the day and some actions, if I remember well. But that on top of that they had a set of common behaviours which made it realistic enough. Except the lack of diversity in their chit-chat when they met one another but it's understandable. ;) They often had a home and a separate place of work, which made it believable and lively, we don't see that enough. So I think it was cleverly implemented rather than an actual AI, but that's good enough, we often forget that more may require a lot of CPU power with so many NPCs.

I was more impressed with STALKER, for example, it was more organic and it didn't look just scripted. And I'm wondering if the AI in Kingdom Come: Deliverance isn't similar to Oblivion's or better, but I haven't played it.

We'll see what path they took in Starfield, I don't expect a big difference since the formula worked well in their other games.
 
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Well, Bethesda was never much of a pioneer when it comes to graphics. The only game they did that was cutting edge in terms of visuals at the time was Morrowind. Imo, their other titles have been pretty average in that department.

As for what they do during that first four years, that's a good question…

I think that Oblivion was highly expected to set new graphic detail bar for RPG genre. And I think it partially succeeded. Landscape details, including grass and tree canopy was astonishing at that time, imo. Also physics engine did quite a good job. I still remember shooting arrows into bucket at the well :)
 
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Welcome back@DArtagnan; :)

Looks like you spoke too soon...

Devs don't want to develop one game forever either and need to set themselves "real" deadlines otherwise you end up like Grimoire with 25 years in development.

That actually in itself is a good (or bad depending on your PoV) case in point. Cleve did not have any suits badgering him yet he re-announced his game a billion times.

True, but I think we can all agree that Cleve Blakemore is not a normal developer (or a normal person for that matter). :)
 
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They could rename it to: "Starfield Forever", would fit to the competing "Baldur's Gate Forever".
They can agree on a common release date: June 14 2031, twenty years after DNF.
 
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Looks like you spoke too soon…
That was a very short visit…

That was fast.

True, but I think we can all agree that Cleve Blakemore is not a normal developer (or a normal person for that matter). :)

Yes, I was giving a bit of an extreme example, but many smaller devs get delays. Looks at all the KS games that (did eventually) get released. It's not like it's a position solely for suits was my point.
 
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This should be good news for those with backlogs.

I got plenty to keep me busy - condo projects, play time with the dogs, books to read (now books ... that is where I always get a backlog), existing games to replay, new games already out or coming soon I want to play.

Looking forward to Starfield even if I tend to prefer fantasy. I have liked most of the Beth games and will be curious how this one comes out. I am overly pessimistic about the state of the world these days so more concerned whether gaming will even be an option in the coming years :p
 
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I'm not overly-excited about Starfield, to be honest. But sadly, I presume that any delay to it, will also delay the next Elder Scrolls. I was hoping to play the next Elder Scrolls title before senility sets in....:(
 
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Only read if you don't mind a negative and hype-less negative view of Starfield:

I really don't care much about Starfield but am interested in the Elder Scrolls next game. I mean, sure I will check out the Starfield game but I already am getting the feeling it will be and is overhyped. We aren't yet there with good enough tech to depict an interesting and rich, multi-dimensional Star trek-like Universe.

The tech isn't there yet. It will probably be pretty shallow unless there are just a few worlds. But really, even making and depicting one world is too much of a challenge, IMHO. Unless that world is one note and shallow, like a dead mining world or something. Meh.

That said, maybe the next Elder Scrolls game will be good. Whenever that might come out.

Update: in related news, so now there is apparently talk of a Starfinder game coming out, related to pathfinder. (See Mortismal's latest video)
Oh no, not a trend of a bunch of rpgs in space. (I prefer fantasy, not boring space setting)
 
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I was keen to check Starfield since it would (seemingly) be in day-1 MS PC Game Pass :(
 
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