Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Starfield Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Parris Lilly joins us to review Starfield, the latest from Bethesda and Xbox. Follow Parris here: https://twitter.com/vicious696 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Throughout August, we've been sharing free episodes from our Patreon exclusive shows to give you a glimpse of what we offer on Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny during our August Patreon Pledge Drive. To sweeten the deal, we've just released the first episode to everybody of 20 minutes of tiers. An eight episode Let's Play series with Greg Miller and Brian Altano diving into tiers of the kingdom. If you enjoy it, all eight episodes are out right now on Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny for all members at the $10 tier or above. Thank you for supporting the wild adventure that is kind of funny. If you haven't joined in yet, kindly consider doing so before the month concludes. Thank you all so much. What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast.

This episode, we are reviewing Starfield, one of the biggest Xbox and Bethesda releases of all time. Of course, I am your host, Tim Getty's, and joining me today is the new face of video games. Blessing Eddie Oye, Jr. To infinity and beyond, Tim. infinity and beyond. Of course, joining us as well is the Big Daddy himself, Greg Miller. Murph! Running out the side of the desk over there, we have the nitro rifle, Andy Cortez.

Don't leave me, Murph. And our lead reviewer on Starfield today, welcome to the spare bedroom, Paris Lilly. Thank you so much for having me. Finally, I'm in studio on Gamescast and the Star League needs my help to save the universe. I love it, man. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm so happy that you are, in fact, our lead reviewer on Starfield.

We're going to be talking all about the game, what we like about it, what we don't like about it, every single thing in between because this, of course, is the Kind of Funny Games cast. We each and every week, we get together to talk about video games

and all the things that we love about them. You can watch it on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games or Roosterteeth.com. But if you want to listen to it as a podcast, search your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Gamescast, and we will be right there for you. But if you want to go, above and beyond patreon.com slash kind of funny is where you want to be.

You can get the show ad free. You can watch episodes live as they're recorded. A whole bunch of bonus content as well. And you can be a Patreon producer like Jedi Master Deadpool, Delaney Twining, and Logan Delaney have done. Today we're brought to you by Rocket Money and Netflix's One Piece, but we'll tell you all about that later. You've waited long enough. You need to know how good is Starfield. So I want to start with you, Paris Lily.

how good is Starfields? So I've been playing this game for two weeks. This is a game that you will absolutely buy an Xbox 4. But on the kind of funny scale, I gave it a 4 out of 5. And the reason being, that means it's great. Starfield is great. But one thing that I want to emphasize here at the top, I'm judging the game for what it is today,

not for what I can see the potential of what it will be tomorrow. And I say that because there are some issues with the game. But there's a lot of good. There's a lot of good. There's some epic moments in this game. But to be fair, there's things about it that exist today that I think as this game goes out to the general public, as Bethesda starts to get some feedback on it, they're going to see and they're going to adjust accordingly.

And I think it potentially could bring it up to that five out of five scale. But today it's four out of five. Like I said, go get an Xbox. You want to play Starfield. But we got to dive into the weeds of what's good, what's bad, and everything in between. So I don't know how we exactly want to kick this off. I don't know where we want to do the discussion. I want to start with your overall thoughts.

Yeah. So it's interesting. Like I said, been playing it for about two weeks. So hour-wise. Yeah, hour-wise. I put 88 hours into this game. I actually rolled credits at 70. two hours.

Okay. I easily could have rolled credits probably in the hour 30 or something like that if I wanted to. But the whole beauty of this game is the fact that I can go do what I want. The main story, like I almost view the main story as just there to kind of guide you. That's not the quote unquote main event. The main event of this is all the side stories, the planets that you're going to go to, the discoveries that you'll just make randomly on your own that have no ties to an MPC or any, side story or quest that you're doing.

Now, some of the side stories that are in this game are freaking amazing. But at the same time, that main story is the glue that brings everything together. I thought the story overall was decent. I thought it was good. I thought I was engaged in it. There are a few twists in there that will surprise you along the way.

There is a new game plus. We're not going to talk about that today because there is some spoilery stuff that's tied to the new game plus. But Pete Hinesson, said it best. That's when the game really starts is when you finish the main story and you continue your journey because that's when you can literally just go do whatever you want. I was able to live out my pirate fantasy in this game. I was stealing ships. I was doing bounties. I was smuggling stuff. I had literally had the entire galaxy after me at one point. Things like that. They were very exciting and I just loved because they felt genuine to me. They felt fun. I felt engaged.

you know, it was funny during the whole embargo period. The first day I got the game, I tweeted, hey, I have Starfield. I went MIA for like 24 hours. And people were like, he hasn't tweeted anything. What's going on? So then I just put out a funny tweet like, oh, I just woke up because I literally stayed up all night playing the game. That's how much fun I was having playing the game.

But with all that said, and I want to say this for anybody that's watching or listening to this right now, the way I played Starfield over the first two weeks is not how anyone should play this game because the beauty of it is you'll be playing this now you'll be playing this two months from now you'll be playing this six months from now you'll be playing this a year from now because there are so many things to do in this game and and that's kind of the beauty of what todd Howard and this team at beththesa has created it's this space sandbox that they've given you that if i just want to be a space explorer and discover planets and do resources and surveys i can go do that if i just want to focus on I'm building outpost and I'm just setting up my whole resource network, I can do that.

If I want to be an asshole and be a pirate and steal ships all the time, I can do that, right? If I want to be one of the freestyle rangers and basically be the sheriffs of the galaxy, I can go do that. If I want to be in the vanguard, I can go do it, or I can do all of it, or I can be a pirate and join the Crimson Fleet, you can do all these things in the game, or you could just do one. and you're going to spend so many hours doing just that versus trying to do everything at once, whereas I played it, I tried to do everything. I don't think that's the way you should play Starfield at all.

I think you should play it the way you think you should be in the galaxy versus trying to be a jack of all trades, right? I did play this on the Xbox Series X. I did play it on PC, but more importantly, I played it on the Xbox Series S. No, quick screen co-op, I heard. But most importantly, because this is probably the number one thing I saw over the first two weeks was performance. It was great.

This is arguably the most, if I'm saying this correctly, the most bug-free Bethesda game. This is the most polished, polished Bethesda game that I've ever played. There's still some bugs. But nothing truly game-breaking, and we'll get into some of that, I'm sure. But it was very polished. You could tell the delay helped this game a lot. that anyone that's going to jump in and play it on day one, you're going to have a pretty smooth experience no matter of the platform.

Now, cloud streaming was not available during our time, and they suggested that we do not play on portables, on the rogue ally or the Steam Deck. So I did not do that because I didn't want to, they're telling me, hey, it's not optimized for that yet, so I didn't want to experience it that way. So we'll do that in a few weeks, you know, when they get it more optimized. Look great on my backbone via remote play.

But overall, I mean, like I said, I think it's a great game that has the potential to be an epic game. But there's some things that they're going to need to tighten up over the next few weeks and months. And I think they will get that through community feedback. And then sky's the limit on what this game could be. So the official reviewer kind of funny is a four out of five from Paris. Great. Great. Now, before I go on to one of you, I want to know who has beat the game yet.

Bless. I'd be in there. Yes. And Greg. So Andy, Andy has not. So then let's start with Bless. Oh. So I think it's really fun talking or listening to Paris talk about what his thoughts are

because I think the way in which my opinion is going to come in is going to paint probably how the industry is going to talk about this game. Because you're coming at it from a four out of five. I'm going to come at it with a three out of five. Interesting. I think this game, this game has very high highs. And for me, it also has astronomically low lows. And the high highs come in the fact that it is a Bethesda game.

If you're like me and you like playing Bethesda games, you're going to get that out of Starfield. It carries the same kind of gameplay loop as a Bethesda game. It carries the same kind of fun, the same kind of riding, the same kind of quality as a Bethesda game. And the parts of it that shine as a Bethesda game are the things that I'm taking away from and being like, okay, that was a good time. There are story moments in the main quests and a lot of the side quests that have stuck with me and have made this game memorable. but at the same time, the things that come in and really define the astronomically low lows

that I'm talking about are also the things that make this a Bethesda game, right? Starfield is a Bethesda game. It is also a Bethesda game from 2015 in a lot of ways where it carries a lot of archaic systems. It carries a lot of lack of quality of life features that you've seen games over the years come in. And this isn't me just talking about Ballard's Gate 3

because I think that's going to be a big comparison because the game is coming directly out after Ballard's Gate 3 and Balders Gate 3 made such a big splash, not only just a month ago. But this is me bringing in experiences with Baldur's Gate, experiences with Disco Elysium, experiences with Outer Worlds, experiences with Zelda, so many different RPGs and open world games that have come through and really redefined and modernized the way in which we talk about open world games.

So for me, I think there are three big failings that I have found in Starfield, and those are quality of life, but that's a jank. and the content being lacklustered in a lot of the places, starting off with quality of life, there is a list of things where I go through and I start off Starfield, and I'm like, wait, really? Like, this is what we're working with here, right?

Like, the game loves you being in loading screens and menus, more so than any game I've played this year. This game wants you to be in menus. To travel from planet to planet, you got to go into that, go into your start menu, go into either the mission log or the star map menu. If you happen to be in the wrong star map,

menu where it's like the galaxy as opposed to the planets, then you got to click in, then you got to like click the planet you want to go to, unless it's in a different solar system, then you got to like grab, jump to that system, and then you got to land on the planet. There are so many steps to do the exact things you want to do and get to the exact places you want to be, and for me, that's a big hindrance. The control scheme on controller is very janky. Like, it is not good.

I do not, I did not like playing this game on Xbox. I found a way better experience when I switched over to PC, and I ended up playing most of the game on PC, both for the performance of it, but also because I think the mouse and keyboard experience with this game is just much better. The map, I would describe as horrendous. I do not like the map in this game. There are, depending on, I guess, how you're playing where you are in the game, there are multiple different kind of maps that you have. Again, you have the galaxy map, you have the space map, and then you have the surface map, the surface map being the maps for the planets that you're on, right? And on those, you have such little detail for where the points of interest are,

where if you're looking for something like a store or where I can fix my ship or where I can go to buy guns or whatever, that stuff is just absent from the service map in a way that I think is unforgivable for the way that this map is designed, right? There are simple things that I wanted to do in my playthrough of, oh yeah, let me just go to the store and buy some med packs so I can have heels for this next mission. And I had to text the slack and be like, yo, where do you guys get this stuff? Like, where can I go to actually get these things? And I think on one hand, the game kind of rewards you for the familiarity of, okay, I found a spot. Like, I'm always going to Akila City in this specific place. If I can buy my med packs or I can buy my ammo.

And then if I need to get ship stuff done, I'm going to this specific place. I forget the, what's the main planet called? I would forget what's new Atlanta. New Atlanta. See, I'm going to New Atlantis to get ship stuff done. And like, technically it's a city called New Atlantis. Yes. Gemson.

Come on, guys. But yeah, I had to like. Act like you played 80 hours of the game. Wow. I had to find specific things. Well, you know about the spot in the, well. I don't know.

I don't know well. I want to catch people up, right? I played 40 hours. I've beaten the game. But yeah, stuff like that. The map, I think, is really, really bad. Even something as simple as a conversation log is absent from the game where you're going through, you're talking to NBC's.

And, you know, I kind of like, I really like reading back through conversations to catch up on like, okay, did I miss something? Okay, what did they say earlier? And I can't even do that, right? Even things like mission descriptions for when you go through the quest and when I pick quests, they have that. but it's so like, it's only like a couple sentences. It's a bridge to quite the degree.

Very abridged to the point where I'm like, where there are certain missions where I'm like, okay, let me catch up. What am I doing here? And I read the mission description. I'm like, really, that's all? Like, that's all you're going to give me? Like, I really want the breakdown of what's going on here

so I can make the right decision. Yeah, going from step to step to step four, like step three tells you, well, this and this happen now. Step four tells you an updated version. I agree with that. But that's a lot of quality of life stuff that I find issue with. When it comes to Bethesda Jank,

I think Paris is right in terms of this being probably the least, buggy, but that's the game. It's still quite buggy. And also, I think more so, it's just janky, right? There are moments where I think Roger might have caught this in the, when we recorded our first hour of gameplay where I turn around and my gun is just like inside of a door, just jiggling around and doing all this stuff. There was a time where I walked out of a structure. I walked outside and they see a ship. And like some of these ships are on, are on loop where they'll land on a planet and then take off. I walk outside. One of those ships landed and took off within the span of like five seconds like five times where like flew off came back

flew off came back and like was just doing like a sped up loop for whatever reason and it took me out and then like an enemy i needed to fight spawned out of nowhere i'm like what the fuck is going on here like this game is wigging out um there are times where my game crashed just for me trying to travel to a specific planet and i tried it multiple times in the same planet my game would just crash so i had to go over to xbox and do that on there so i can actually get that done uh more jank stuff following NPCs sucks, right? You have like the missions where you have to like follow somebody and they move at such an awkward speed, right?

Where it's like, it's like too fast for walking speed, but fast enough to where you have to like try to keep up. Yeah, you can't run. And so like you run two steps, stop. You run two steps, stop to like try and keep on pace with them. That kind of stuff are things that feel like, make it feel like an old game, right? These are games, these are systems mechanics, things that have been fixed in other games

that I am surprised to not see fixed here. And then my last thing here is lacklesser content. where, you know, like I mentioned, there are shining moments in this game. There are missions that I'm going to remember for, oh, man, yeah, but that's it did their thing here, right? Both moments in the main mission, but then also moments in side missions where, yeah, Paris is saying, join the Crimson Fleet, do this thing. And, like, some of those missions are really dope. But then at the same time, there is so much side content that feels so spread thin.

Like, it feels spread throughout a universe where I, one of the things that I really wanted to do was join a corporation, a mega corporation. in neon and I was walking it was my first time getting into neon I was walking the streets and I passed by a sign that's like you know apply today to work at mega corporation and I'm like oh that sounds really cool and so I did it and I go in for a job interview and it was like really cool at first and I was like dude this is really awesome I do the job interview I get the role and I start I start doing missions that are just me working for basically the Amazon of this universe this is so funny and I start doing like literally everything I'm saying is accurate and it's really cool when you start it Guy walked in the door.

Blessing, you're off lunch in 20 minutes. Right. No, the first thing I walk in and the guy's like, oh, are you here for an interview? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was like, cool, yeah, good luck. You know, I'll be here on your way out. I'm like, all right, cool.

Sweet. All right. I'll see you, man. Now did you take, did you ask him to escort you to the office? No. Because he gives a ridiculous instructions. He's like, I can take me. I'm not going to be able to remember.

No, he was like, take it left here. Take her. I go up and seriously this. And I was like, no, I'll find it. And then I got lost. And then I had to go back and be like, can you tell me where it's that again? But then once I started going down that mission chain, the riding for the missions just felt so bland and uninteresting and felt very basic of, hey, I need you to go here and steal this thing.

And I go and I do it. And I'm like, wait, really? Is that all what these missions are? It's that back to back to back? And I'm like, really? Like this riding doesn't feel like peak Bethesda riding. It feels like they are filling in the world with content. as opposed to like having worthwhile content.

But then I get to another mission, I'm like, oh, no, this is really good. You're like, God damn, yeah. Yeah. So I think there's an uneven split there in terms of the missions that feel so basic and so nothing. But then other parts where it's like, okay, y'all are doing the damn thing here. But with that, there is a string of main quest where it is very copy and paste. And like these were back to back to back to back of like the same kind of main quest where like the best analogy you can probably give would be like Assassin's Creed towers of,

hey yeah just go and like do this thing and then you come back and you do it again and like they're they're a type of main quest that you have to do I was very shocked when I did them and they were all just straight up the same thing um and that being part of the main quest was super disappointing to me because like like that is main content right and like I would have expected way more out of that um but yeah there's way more I can get into I don't I don't want to burn it all here but for me I am a strong three out of five there are shining moments there are moments that really brought me back there was one day where I was ready to come in here and be like this is a two out of but you know there are really good moments in this game that brought me back and I think

there is that fact of if you love Bethesda games if you're somebody who loves fallout if you love Skyrim there's a lot that you can get it get out of Starfield for me Starfield is just not one of the best RPGs of the year Greg Miller yeah I don't want to take too much time but because I do want to elaborate on everything that you just said that that is my exact point that I see the potential of where Starfield can go when it gets rid of some of the jank when it kind of fixes some of those quality of life issues because the number one for me was the inventory system horrible i mean just flat out it is not good it needs a complete overhaul and i think as people get their hands on it they're going to see that and they're going

to get a lot of feedback on that so i think some of these things they're going to be able to resolve you know in the short term some are going to take away longer to do but i do think for everything that you just said as far as what's not working with starfield is pretty spot on So Greg, you beat it. How many hours you put in? And where are you putting it on the kind of funny scale? I am 40 hours plus in. I've rolled credits.

I am deep into new game plus. Again, yeah, we don't talk about that, though. And, you know, next year in March 1st, it'll be 17 years of reviewing video games professionally. And I don't think I've ever seen a better example of your mileage will vary. What I mean by that is that This is such an interesting game In terms of what you put in, you get out of it

And how much you're willing to put up with Everything both blessing and Paris have said I agree with Right, it's that kind of game I see all these things in there To not be around the bush What am I giving on the scale? I'm not prepared to review it yet I've rolled credits, I'm deep in a new game plus

And honestly post credits Like not to quote Pete Heinz From a PR stunt or whatever right? Like, I do feel that like post credits changed kind of the way it framed the entire game. And so now it is like, oh, man, I want to keep playing this. What I'm prepared to say is that I've had a four out of five great time with it so far. I have had five out of five moments. I think the game is a three out of five when it comes to looks.

I've had five out of five performances in it. Literally, that made me tear up, like, on the verge, if not fully crying. I have had two out of five performances where I'm like, is this someone who dropped coffee off at Bethesda? That they're like, get the booth and say something. You know what I mean? Like, it is that entire thing. Get me in there, you know what I'm saying? I'm saying.

Andy, 1,000% I know what you're saying. And I'm right there. So where that all nets out overall, I think, gets into a more spoilery discussion. I think there's a lot to go on in terms of it. But I think the main argument to be had here is what your expectations for Starfield are and what you're willing to put up with. And what I mean from that top of that is that way back in the day, when we were preparing for Fallout 4's review, you asked me, me, hey, what would make it a disappointment? And I was like, it was just fallout three, but in HD, it was just a modern fallout three.

And it was a modern Fallout three. And then Fall 76 has come and da-da-da. And I've noodled this idea for a while of Bethesda RPGs. What'd you been noodling on, Gray? Fallout three. We all lost our minds for, because it's an amazing game. Skyrim, so many people lost their minds for it because it's amazing game. But both of those games, I feel we looked at and might have said, oh, well, they didn't know

what quality of life was. They didn't know that this thing would be advancement. That, da, da, da, that. It was what they were being held back was what gaming was at that time. But we've seen at Bats now where I think we have to have this conversation of like, listen, Bethesda is great at making Bethesda games. I will be shocked. Shocked if in a year they've changed the inventory.

Because I think this is just how they do inventory. This is just what it is. And I think it is ridiculous when it's coming to be, not even overencumbered. The way they use the cargo hold, the way they do anything else. It's chaos. It's in like, then you can switch ships with we've known, right? So like, I get a better ship, but I put all my stuff in there. But then this mission required me using an older ship.

So I did it, which overloaded my old cargo hold. But then I needed to put in the stuff to repair the ship. But I couldn't put it in because the cargo hold was overloaded. That's not so stressing, man. And like, I'm, I'm 35, 30 hours into the game. And I'm like, you know what? Jettison, jettison, jet, and I'm just shooting resources into space that I never used. Greg, I'm, there's a crewmate of mine.

M.A. Don't know where she is. Don't know. I hope she's okay. Okay, wherever she is. Lynn? You put everything in her pocket? Just like somebody I found and recruited.

Okay, okay. And like I loved her being in the crew because of what she's specialized in. Don't know where she's at. I hope she's somewhere safe. I hope she's like living in a good life right now. Is she carrying a bunch of your stuff? No, no. She was just on my ship and then stuff happened and now I don't know where she's at now.

But can I say this? Can I say this about the inventory system? Yeah. Because it is my number one gripe with this game. For a game that is incur, it literally is encouraging you to, to go out, discover these planets, find these resources, get like the creation engine, the way of the attention, the detail

that they have on these levels, it is literally encouraging you. Pick up everything that you freaking see. And you're constantly, like, I maxed out my weightlifting immediately. That's one of the skill person we'll talk about. I immediately, it's one of the first things I maxed out, still wasn't good enough.

Every companion I had is a freaking mule. Load them up. The ship, load it up. It is still not enough. where I got to fight it. What's really funny is that I had to boot up Fall Out 4 just as a reminder of like, all right, playing Starfield,

this is what it is. I remember loving Fall Hot 4. So like I booted up just to get a taste of what it was. And what I immediately remembered because I loaded it into Diamond City and I was like, oh, wait a second. And then I went to the weapon workbench

in Diamond City. And that weapon work bench is where I stored every single item. Like that's why I played that game too where I'm like, I need some place to put all the stuff that I'm just not carrying. And it turned out to be the weapon workbench. I think they tried to solve it

with the ship cargo. system. But it wasn't enough. Yeah. So simply not enough. I would not be surprised if, you know, day, whatever patch happens, hey, we've updated a cargo. I don't think it will, man. I think this is who they are. Because that's just number pushing, though. I know. I think when it comes to layout and everything else, that takes a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Layout. I'm not even talking about it. But I think if I think tune the numbers up at a couple digits at the end of it. But just to back on. Yeah. So my top level,

which I know is just us talking, which is great. Thoughts of it, right? What I'm struggling with right now is, I think it's a four out of five great time for me. And again, this is going to be a very personal game for everybody of what you put up with and what you do, right? 100%. I think it's a four out of five great time. I wonder if it's a three out of five game, if that's what it is. And where does

that shake down and all these different things? For me, what this game has done is something I've wanted out of every RPG, I think we've reviewed at kind of funny, where I talk about all the time of like, man, this might be the one I actually role playing. But I make a character and I go through the thing and da-da-da-da-da-da. And it didn't happen with

cyberpunk. It didn't happen with Fallout 4. You know, you've heard the stories or you see me make a Taylor Swift or somebody who looks like Kevin or whatever. And like, it just becomes me effing around in the city or whatever. What Starfield did is, I think, have a very abrupt intro. Me and Bless, both looked at each other after day one. I'm like, I don't know about this, man, right? Suddenly like you're thrust into this thing and you've got a ship in the galaxy, but okay, like, what am I doing? Why am I doing? Okay. And I didn't like my character creator that I created that is up now, I guess, on the video we made. I tried to make myself didn't like how I looked, didn't really connect with it. Didn't do the thing. So I'm just stealing,

but then I'm trying to be good, but I'm doing the thing or whatever. I think night two, I finally ran into like the plastic surgery place. I was like, oh, okay, remade my character to look like like Becky Lynch from WWE. I'm like, all right, this is more inclined. I ended up becoming a space cop on a city, an old West cop. I was like, this is all right, enough. Da-da-da-da. And then through the magic of what Starfield can do. I had already found this pickpocket at a guy, got a thing in there, but like, oh, there's some loot over here.

I'm like, all right, whatever. And finally it was like, I'm not, I'm sick of the main quest being, just go do this, just go do that. I'm going to start doing some of my side quest stuff. Pulled that one, went and did it, ended it. And I literally was like,

that was the coolest side quest I've ever done in an RPG. And not only is that true, it is now framed who I am in this game and what I will do going forward. The one we talked about. Yes. Yes. And that gave me, okay, I am off to the racist now.

And then it became, okay, I'm pretty sure it's probably the same person you're talking to, ran into a companion and I'm like, you're the first companion that I click with, that I like, that I'm doing what I want to do in these games. That isn't, I'm not, I was never a space prior, it was never that bad, right? But it was, I would do something.

And they'd be like, I don't know about that. And the same gets all metty or whatever. I would be like, okay, cool. And now we're together and we do a thing. And I would have to imagine, that if you are Bethesda and you are years ago planning what a perfect play-through would look like for somebody, it's what I got.

Where all of a sudden my character who was just whatever, a minor who had a background in sculpting. That's what I picked in my backstory, right? A former sculptor who's now a minor. I'm like, all right, whatever. But I did this thing. I found purpose in the world. I found a character to connect with.

Shit goes south. This happens. Crazy things happen, blah, blah, blah. You know, there's attacks, whatever, blah, blah. the loss of somebody motivates me and like do the thing and then to like I'm talking about get to the end of the game have new game plus as an option to be like

this is just recontextualized everything and going forward does all this stuff that's where I'm out of like I we will sit here and get into the list of gripes I have the fucking local navigation is abysmal it is insulting and not to mention to drop you into the first world of being the first city of being New Atlantis

and be like you know there are three different districts. There's the commercial one and the embassy one, and they all look exactly the fucking same. So you're wandering like, am I, which one am I in?

I'm trying to get back to that shop and I can't do it, right? Like, all of that is here, all of that is there. I don't agree with blessed on the controller stuff. I thought controls felt great. I really had a lot of fun playing it.

I think everything I'm saying and how I'm still in the torn up and da-da-da-da. This will, and this is a crazy statement. This will, I think, be the Bethesda game RPG that I look back on most fondly.

Skyrim I enjoyed, I was never a fantasy guy, whatever. Fallout 3 was... You're a little space guy either. I'm not, exactly, which is crazy that I like this, of course. But then I'm sure a lot of people are going to hate it because of the lack of free space you really feel like you have in this game, where so much of it for me was, go here, do this. Like, fast travel, fast travel, fast travel. I'm not really flying.

I'm not really dogfighting. But again, this is where I'm getting into, and I'm sorry to go so long on this, right? One of the things you said when you were talking about was genuine and how genuine the game is, and you call it out for being an RPG. this is a nerdy ass RPG And so I really feel it benefits you to what you were saying, right? If don't do everything, pick something. Yes.

Once I picked who I was and what I was doing and I stuck to that, I had so much fun in it. But it does mean that I never built an outpost, right? I never ever did that. I never assigned anybody, anybody, the fucking research stations and all that jazz. I'm like, oh, this is a great idea. Then you get going and it's like,

oh, well, anything past level one, you need to put your skill points into on a different tree. I'm like, I'm not even using that stuff. And you level up so slowly in this play-through. it's like, what the hell? Like, no, I'm not going to do that, which again, though, then makes me re-contextualized thing

when you roll credits. So it's a whole thing. I want to get Andy Cortez's thoughts before we get even deeper into this, Andy. How far into the game are you? And where are you leaning currently in your play-through on the kind of funny scale?

I am around 25 hours in. If you're wondering, man, Andy looks like he stayed up until 4 in the morning playing this. I did. I thought you were born for, though. You're like the Hulk and end game. Because I did. High right.

I would put this. No, Andy, wake up. This is really, really tough for me. I don't, I don't want to put a number on it. You have Tim? Cool. Because I got pulled away so quickly from what this game is in terms of story-wise. It took a long time for me to get pulled.

It was a lot of trouble pulling me away from Ballard Gate 3. It was tough pulling me away from Armored Core 6. and it's going to be really, really tough to pull me away from Starfield. I am just already addicted to this game. I started off kind of, you know, I, Starfield was given to us when I was back home in Texas. I did not get to log on early. I did not really get to, I downloaded it on my little laptop back home.

I was like, this is not the right time to do this. I have a big old beefy PC at home. Let me wait until I get back home. so by the time I get back I'm already kind of hearing opinions around the office and I'm like oh this doesn't sound great and I don't disagree with a lot of those opinions

in terms of what the game can do quality of life wise UI wise blah blah blah I'm kind of like man this main story isn't really hooking me a whole lot and then something happened to me and now I'm I've been on a side quest chain that has lasted no joke like seven hours

and then I got really, really into building my ship. And now I'm building my ship and looking for crew. I'm fucking loving this experience right now. Like I cannot wait to get back home and get back to it. I am enjoying these side quests that may or may not be super worth it all the time because I want credds. And I want those credits to then get that next part for the ship that I really want. Exactly.

And then I have crew quarters down below now. that my, well, God rest her soul, wherever she's at, I hope she's okay. She went out for a pack of cigarettes. I hope she's fine, but, like, I am just loving the loop of where I'm at right now. And, like, dude, no joke, this side quest has just totally derailed the whole experience for me in the best way possible. All of my missions are still there, but it is, in the moment when this thing happens, I'm like, oh, this is kind of neat.

We'll see how far this goes. And it hasn't ended in, like, the last seven or eight hours. It is a fucking awesome experience and I hope people can get into that moment. But I think that's the whole thing is finding your moment. Oh, for sure. Sure, yeah.

And obviously, your miles may vary is like totally applicable because you may not be on the same planet and run into that same MPC or get that same side mission. And I knew that was going to be a problem with the game this large. I knew that you were going to get really, really varied opinions.

And if you just mainline the story and you're like, ah, story was kind of decent, blah blah blah and the gameplay you know whatever UI not awesome totally understand all of those issues I'm playing on PC I'm playing on PC

I Greg I know you know we have a little thing with the PC and the consoles It's a big joke yeah Like this game is stunning on PC I have been taking so many just little video captures I don't even know what I'm using for I probably won't use it for anything

but there's just so many good moments like the interior lighting and the volumetric lighting and the volumetric fog and all that stuff, it is gorgeous. Whenever I'm in interiors and my little homie robots running around and like everything looks so incredibly good.

I'm really impressed by the automated motion capture, not motion capture, but the automated sort of animations. I know that some of them can be very, very jank, but I think when he talked to some NPCs and when the lighting is hitting

them just right, I'm like, God damn, this is like really close to cyberpunk, which I think is like the pinnacle of the pinnacle, right? I'm enjoying my time with it. I think the game is gorgeous and I am really, really digging what I'm doing right now, which is like, this is the game I wanted No Man Sky to be at launch. Go ahead. No, no, I want you to finish, please.

Yeah, when No Man Sky launched and it was Minecraft in space and you're taking minerals and, you know, trying to build things and maybe not get a whole lot of customization. Obviously, No Man's guy has had a bajillion expansion since then, but I'm talking about at launch, I was hoping for an experience like exactly

what I'm playing right now. I am role playing this shit out of this. I am wanting to be the star lord. I am wanting to be my Han Solo. I am the space scoundrel that is trying to do good, but every once in a while does some shitty things if he needs to, right? I might

you know, absolutely just screw that lady over and she's, you know, she's not going to get the credits that she was supposed to get. And, you know, tough shit sometimes that happens. But, like, it shouldn't trust me. I was a stranger who walked up. I know, yeah. You should have told me your life story as I walked by you.

I'm having an absolute blast with it. Like, this is, this is, for me, when I think about, when we talk about expectations of what we get with the kind of final product. And this far surpasses what my experience was with, like, cyberpunk when cyberpunk arrived, right? Like, I thought I was going to be having this sort of role-playing experience in cyberpunk. And with cyberpunk, I just did a lot of cool side missions, but I

wasn't really living in that world. Here I am like living in this universe and I'm looking for all of these little home shops to find where, oh, that's an actual outpost. Are they're going to, oh, there's a lot of NPCs there. There's a lot of people at a bar. Let me go walk at the bar. And I walk at the bar and when you hover over people, it'll say citizen or minor or

whatever the hell. But this dude says, ballistics engineer specialist. Let me go talk to that, dude. I need a ballistics dude on my ship. Like, it's so badass, man. I'm loving it, loving it. So I want to get to Paris. I want it to Greg.

And then I want to open this up a bit more as a conversation. Yeah. But first, I want to take a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. Every single person I know that has tried Rocket Money has been shocked at how many subscriptions they have that they forgot about. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending and it helps you lower your bills all in one place.

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This might just lead into the open conversation because I do want to touch on something Andy brought up, and then I also want to bring up the three moments that I realized I love this game. Can I jump off of Andy too? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I mean. I didn't want to keep going if we want to do that.

I knew this could be a banger of an episode. Yeah, yeah. Because you mentioned the NPCs, and you talked about the visuals. So I specifically wanted to bring up, I believe it's Creation Engine 2.0 or whatever they're calling it, right? It's funny because I think it symbolizes this game as a whole, where some of the visuals are some of the best

I think I've ever seen from a lighting standpoint. I've stood on certain planets and looked out at moons and gas giants and I'm like, holy shit, and I'm taking photo modes and being a tourist and just the whole thing. Again, the level of detail that you'll see with this engine is phenomenal. But then you'll see stuff with some of the non,

I'll call them the non-curated NPCs, just some of the standard random NPCs where it just doesn't look good. It looks like it's from the, It looks like it from the 360 PS3. Oh, yeah. Eyeball just, yeah, they walk around. Yeah, you get that crazy eyeball look, the whole thing.

But then you get the ones that clearly they took time within that creation, you know, the character creation and they look amazing. Yeah. You know what I mean? And those are many of the ones I'm talking about. Right, right. Looks phenomenal. So it's just interesting the ups and downs that you see just with that. But I would say overall, it's a gorgeous game, especially on PC, obviously, but even on the Xbox series X.

Looks great. Yeah, I wanted to jump in with environment design specifically because I do think, I'll call it set design, right? The set design of when you walk into some of these settlements, when you walk into like a space station and there's like people living there and you walk in and it feels and looks like a lived in place. Yes. Those are the parts of the game where I'm like, this looks incredible.

Like it brings me back to, you know, I think I said the same thing about cyberpunk, right? In terms of the style and like how much it oozes like genuine, oh, we're curating a space here. We're making this place look like, oh, what if a group of pirates actually stayed here and lived here and went to the bar here? And like, what does that entail in terms of what you need in terms of, oh, yeah, this person is like, you know, doing sales for this part of the station. And like, they really do such a good job in creating an environment. But then, yeah, in terms of the character design, that's where I kind of disagree as far as like, I think a lot of those characters look really ugly. And it gets really awkward when you talk to them. And you're talking them from like a bit off center where they then have to like learn.

Oh, this whole thing? Oh, that's the bug. What do you want to do? Why the fuck are you better? I had to talk to someone through someone else's butt at some point. And I finished talking to them and then they like do this. Yes. Why are you walking backward?

Who did this? That's why I disagree in terms of the Cyropoc comparison and the character designs and the animations. I think, yeah, the curated characters, the main characters that you're meeting have that level of, okay, you look great. But I feel like any of the side characters look really bad. Greg, I want to jump to you real quick, like to address the adage statement that. Sure. Yeah, I had a bunch of things I jotted down from Andy, right?

I think one of the things, you know, again, where I'm like, is it a three out of five game that I'm having four out of five fun with kind of thing or whatever? And why I think I'm more towards a four out of five, right? Is that 40 hours in credits rule new game plus going, right? I also can't wait to get back to it. You know, when we were building up to credits last night, I was like, all right, this has been good. But I think I'm going to roll credits. And then, yeah, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z indie that I have in my box right now. Get ready for Baldur's Get on PlayStation, et cetera, et cetera.

And then once I rolled credits, I was like, no, I'm, I need to get back and I need to do this and I need to see this. And I think one of the things you called out was, you know, you're making memories here, right? You're making your own thing. That's the biggest back to the RPG thing is, as the character making a history there, that I really am connected with, with these characters and what I did and the choice I made here or whatever and blah, blah, blah. But then also you talked about being derailed, right? And what we all find out of the game. I saw the ballistics dude. I hired no one for my ship, right?

There was, I let two people on my companion and then another person that I were not going to name names that I just liked from earlier in the game. I was like, fine, you roll with me because I like you and I want to get you out of this. Not Barrett, though.

I hate it, Barrett. Oh, no. I eventually, I didn't like it. Just like real life. Just like real life. Come on.

But, you know, on top of like, I didn't do this and I didn't do that. But blah, like the lock picking. Mike has been asking for a new lock picking mechanic or whatever. I have a story.

Well, here's mine. This is a book I have that had all my notes from Ben birth classes, and now it's just little lockpick diagrams. Because you want to talk about getting derailed for hours, I would just sit there and be like, uh-huh, well,

it's going to be easier for me. I needed to visualize. I couldn't keep it all in my head anymore, so I just have these diary of a madman notes, and then also my shopping lists for ammo. And then when I was like, I'll try making shit. Now,

is this a good or bad thing. This is amazing. It's amazing. But again, because again, like, you don't have to do this. No,

you don't. Like, you definitely have to do it like this. But I mean, if you were like, a lock picking is not my thing, fine, fuck off. You don't get the stuff in those rooms in your phone? No, but question, did you upgrade to master law? Oh, my God.

Literally, I got the fucking slide rule out. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it was insane. Yeah. And again, that's the thing where, again, I think, like, on that first play-through, when I was like, God damn, I am leveling so slowly. And I should point this at, too, like,

the way leveling works, you see the perks we're talking about and leveling it up to this. Like, when you go in and you get the first thing, like, you know, as you do fill in the top row of tree you then put it enough that you start unlocking the ones below it or whatever, right? It all sounds great and easy, but the idea, one of the parts there is like, you know, you put it into health so you're getting 10% more off of health packs. Great.

Before you can unlock number two of that, it's like, you know, use how health pack five times. Use it. Right. And that's 10 times a while. That sounds easy, but then it's sometimes they are like, yeah, use as many bullets, take this much damage, run this much encumbered. So it actually becomes like, it's not super quick to do it. Then also Bethesda bugs, I had a whole bunch of stuff like I was using MedPax

and they weren't registering there. I should point out that after day one patch, it did seem like that. All of a sudden they started popping. I was like, okay, maybe we're back on track. But the majority of my playthrues still was like, oh man,

what the fuck's going on with that? So anyways, it was the whole thing of like, I love lock picking. I'm pouring it into lock picking. I am doing lock picking. I am like, even if I was like,

I saw a key on somebody's body, I wouldn't pick it up because I would go lockpick the damn thing so I would get credit for picking the lock so I could get the next level of lock. We've already brought this up in terms of It's going to be really, really tough to not compare it to Baldur's Gate 3, especially with what that game has done to just show us like,

oh my God, this is when you are max level power. This is what an RPG looks like. And there are certainly a lot of disappointing situations when you're talking with NPCs. And in Balders Gate 3, it feels like anything you tell somebody, the next time you talk to them, they're going to remember the last thing you said or how you made them feel.

And that's how they're going to kind of, they're going to react kind of realistically. And there have been many moments here where I'll steal something and then they get mad at me. And then I walk up to them. And then they're like, so here's at our shop. And it's like,

oh, man, I wish you were reacting in this moment. This doesn't feel as realistic as, as I'm wanting it to feel. Can I jump in on that? Oh, go ahead, go ahead. That's one of the things I talked about blessing on day one or zero or whatever we want to call,

where it was like, I feel, especially coming off of Balders Gate 3, which is such an amazing RPG, jumping in here, the seams showed so quickly, where it was that, oh, man, this still is just a Bethesda game,

which again is a great game, don't get me wrong, I'm not taking away from it, but it was that like, you jump in, you know, all right, cool, you're this person, you join Constellation,

we explore the stars, okay, cool, I lead it, I'm gonna come with you on your first mission. Okay, I do that, I get that, oh, Sarah didn't like that, Sarah didn't like that.

I go back and we drop off the thing, and we're in the main, like, meeting space, and I, she's like, all right, well, I should say congratulations and welcome to Constell. I'm like, all right, cool. And then I, that was like the can thing that I talked to her through.

And then I hit her again in her face literally, like turned in on itself frowning, like, I can't believe what you just. And I'm like, oh, man, like this feels like Hall of President's shit where you had the program, welcome to Constellation, everything's here. And then, oh, couldn't we have done another take of that line if you were already mad at me? But like, that's not how this system works. That's what a Bethesda game is. I want to contribute to the Baldes Gave 3 comparison, but more so to, in a part of

positive light for Starfield, right? Because I do think that comparison is the thing that took me out early on in the game where in the dialogue and talking to these characters, immediately I kept thinking about Baldur's Gate 3 and how natural those conversations felt, right? And when you get into something like romance in Baldur's Gate 3, it feels so natural,

it feel, you have characters that you want to step for, right? I guess in terms of like how much I like the characters in Baldur's Gay 3. Like I look at Carlock or I look at Shadow Heart or I look at Lazo or any of those characters and I'm like, I can see why I'd go for you. I can see why there's people line that are simming after what's the vampire dude's name?

My guy. My guy, vampire guy. My guy, vampire man. I can see why people are stepping after this guy. Whereas there is a romance aspect to Starfield where just randomly you can flirt with your companions. And these characters have zero ris. Like it's that thing where I'm like, I do.

None of these characters are hot. Like they barely look like real people. Like I don't know how I feel about this aspect. But the more and more I play Starfield, the more and more I, I'm, you know, I identify the type of RPG it wants to be versus the type of RPG that Balders Gate 3 is where you know I think this game has opened my eyes to like oh man this is almost like more of a sim excuse me RPG where you can like do what you guys are talking about right I can go and I can join the Crimson Fleet and I can do this whole quest line that's really cool and really dope and

kind of and I can make my own outpost and do whatever the fuck I want in the way that I want it's not necessarily about the these like deep storylines these intertwining things that characters remember it's all about the sandbox and that is the RPG that starfield wants to be and that might take away from if you're somebody looking for the ballers gate three level of you know riding and creation and all this stuff right that takes away from that but i 1,000 percent see what y'all are talking about in terms of living in this world and wanting to be in this world and how enticing this world is especially when you pick a direction go in it and like just get to experience it as it is exactly and see and that's like

what i was saying at the top and then you know i was saying it after you gave your impressions as well this isn't the way we played this game is not the way to play this game during during review it just simply isn't the fact that both of you didn't want to put a score on it i i kind of didn't want to either for that very same fact that there's still like i said i'm almost 90 hours into it and i feel like now i really feel like i know exactly what i want to do and what i want to focus on in this game one other thing well let me jump in there because everybody here knows that i'm not the replay game guy like i just don't do it and that's why like i I'm so fascinated to not only want to replay it again, but replay it again. And I do wonder how many times I'm going to replay this to see the different thing and do this different things. And the game feels like it's rewarding me for that. And not even just with decisions,

but with the way my character is changing whatever, you want to call it. But one thing I wanted to bring up before I forget is at the beginning, it took me probably about a good four hours to really get into the game because they throw so many, There's so many different systems and things that you need to learn and understand early on that it wasn't that I wasn't having fun. I just almost felt overwhelmed in a way. And then once it kind of got you out of that, I don't know if you won't even call it a tutorial mode, but once you got out of that early mode and the game opens up and you can kind of have the freedom to do what you want, that's when it really started clicking for me.

Yeah. And that's when I felt like I can now play this the way I want to play it versus the way the game is telling me I have to play it. Sure, and I think that's probably one of the reasons I'm excited to replay is the fact of like, okay, I get it now. It's a buffet, and in my opinion for playing it, I shouldn't be tasting everything, right? I should say that, all right, well, this trip to the buffet is for the sushi and this trip is for the pasta, and this trip is for the, you know what I mean? Roleplay it that way. Do you think it says something about the game, though, that it felt like it took you that long to really understand, like, where to navigate yourself throughout it, Greg, like, specifically, and just like understanding what the game is and how you. you want to live in it? No, I think that's a more and more common occurrence with video games, right?

I was, you know, when we reviewed, this is a very different comparison, but it'll get there in a second. Oxen Free 2. Like, Oxen Free 2 was another one that when I beat it, I immediately was like, well, I want to restart it because that's how these games go. In doing that and then having the context of what happened and who the characters were that seemed like when they dropped me, when first blush dropped them on me and I was like, who are you? And you're only here for two seconds. And I don't see you again for two hours in this game. I don't know what the hell it was and Oxfrey is a much shorter game to get there and then be like, oh, I actually liked you.

I didn't realize I like you. Now it means more to rego through that way. This one I think it is, you know, there's something to be said where I think the pace at which it moves in the front where you literally go from a dude and a mine or a gal in a mine to suddenly like, oh, I have a spaceship. Like that's like a 30 minute journey of like, oh, I own a spaceship now. Okay, cool. And now I've got to go talk to these strangers who accept me.

And that's weird. But then again, as you then, it's to get you out into the universe to get you. doing what you want because they're damned if they do, damned if they don't. If they eased you into it, so many people drop off because it's boring or they have the promise of space travel or whatever. Like, again, it's an ingenious way, I think, in the full circle thing to get back to it, of like, oh, okay, you did this and you learned what's happening in the universe you're in. Yet another, mark down the towel, yet another comparison here from Ballard's Gate 3.

The persuasion system, I think, is really crappy. I was about to get into it. I don't like it. I think it's so immediately satisfying in Ballard's Gate. to roll a fake digital dice and see like, am I going to succeed this check or am I not? It wants me to roll a 15 or above. This is a tough one. I have only 5 out of a 20 chance to do this.

It's like immediately recognizable. And in Starfield, you level up your persuasion, just like you level everything up. You add a skill point, right? And then in order to be able to add another skill point to go to level two persuasion, you have to successfully persuade five people in conversations. And then you open up level two. Then you can put another point there. If you want to get to level three,

you have to successfully do that 10 times or whatever and so on and so forth. And the way that these conversations go down, I think is super erratic and unnatural. And if I'm talking to somebody and trying to tell him, hey, you should listen to your son. He knows what he's talking about. And the person goes, well, I think you're wrong. Up come up all the options, right?

And there are six little slots that I need to fill up in order to succeed this whole persuasion. I could go for the one. I have three tries, by the way. Yeah, you'll see the six blank slots at the bottom, the number three for tries, and then your choices that have. Your choices would be plus one, which is like the easiest one possible. It's only going to fill in one of those six slots, but you do the one and you're kind of like almost guaranteed to nail that one. And then if you want to go for the six-pointer and just do it in one try, that's going to be really, really rare. But you don't know percentages.

You don't really know exactly what you're working with. You just know that, oh, that one's red, so that one's tougher. And I wish it was, it's really just as simple as putting a percentage on it. What are the odds that I'll get this red roll and just do it in one try, right? Sometimes you go for the red, boom, you failed it. So you have no slots filled in. You have two more tries to do it. you could go for that again or you could go for the three point answer which might be medium

difficulty but I still don't know what my odds are and then plus going through those conversations the person's like well I think you're wrong and then you tell them maybe we can compromise and you go huh maybe you are right about compromising I guess we could talk and you fuck up another skill check and they're like well turns out you were wrong and it just feels really back and forth and it ebbin flows in a very unnatural way I wish it float as well as you're talking about because for me like It is legitimately a random of, you want to do this thing, right? Oh, yeah, I never thought about it that way.

Yeah, really, you do want to do this thing. Yeah, I do. I guess we'll do this. And it feels so unnatural to the point of taking me we out the game. Fuck up, get out of my house. There was one mission where, like, I am trying to convince this lady who, this lady's,

this lady's whole job is to protect this thing. Like, she's protect, it's a trophy. She's protecting this trophy. It's a very viable trophy. her whole thing is she put this thing in lockup so that nobody else can get it and I'm there to steal the trophy and so I get there and it's like

you know I try to do it I try to get in there I couldn't do it and I come back and I talk to her and it thinks that's persuades so I go into the persuasion check and like I'm like hey I need the key for the trophy and then it starts right and she's like well why would I give you the key for the trophy and it's like an option is like

oh you really want to give me the key and she's like I guess yeah keep talking keep talking it's so stupid it's so stupid It's so... These aren't the droids you're looking for. It legitimately...

No, that's 1,000% when it feels like. It feels like Jedi Mind Tricks. And for me, it took me out even the ending of the game because my game ended on maybe the worst persuasion check I've ever experienced in my life

where like... Did you succeed? I succeeded it. Yeah, me too. And it's like, really? Like, that's where we're doing. That's where we're ending this game on. And I've never had a game ending

take me out so bad from a persuasion check like that before to pay a compliment to the game because I feel like I'm being negative. I do love the shooting. I know this is something that's probably going to be case by case.

What did you mean? What was your weapon of choice? It's class, I mean. Well, I did like a lot of pistols. Yeah. Pistols feel so fucking good. Pistols feel fantastic. I'm a space scoundrel,

and so that's kind of what my character is. There's an exotic pistol. I won't say the name because it's tied to a game spoiler. But I think freaking wrecks. Yeah. Like I was just by the end game, I'm just one shooting. Yeah.

There was like this laser shotgun thing that I got. That's fucking fire that I love using. I think it's the best shooting. Bethesda game and that's not a high bar to get but I do think it feels it feels really I enjoyed every combat encounter in terms of shooting like I was like yes let's go and when they would add more people in there I would be all right yes I'm excited to run shoot and kill would love to look at those guns and learn how to modify them don't fucking know how to do that I don't know like every time I go to the little gun modification thing there's just a lot of shit that it shows me I'm just like I oh but you

I have this and go fine I guess I have everything I need for that why can I Oh, you have it, but you haven't gotten the scale out of the skill tree to do the thing to have the fun. I think tutorializing is like a big issue in this game as well. Like I wish the, I'm so happy that I wanted to look into the ship modification on my own because I think I took one look at I was like, fuck no. I will take them what do they call them like a PC off the rack. I'm like, I'm fine. I will say the ship modification super satisfying, very, very cool. And that levels up as well.

There are parts you can't always get from. And different vendors have different ship. parts, but I will say keyboard and mouse has definitely made that experience a lot easier. You're talking about specifically going in and moving the engines of a ship like a model. Yeah, picking that- Because you can upgrade weapons, which I found easy enough. Yeah, picking that engine, hitting duplicate, hit the Z button, and it flips it horizontally, put it on the other side.

Like, I felt like I was working in 3DS Max or Photoshop, like very, very cool. But that's why they call that in it, that's considered an in-game activity. And it goes again to the point. There are people that are literally going to spend hundreds of hours just building ships. That's all they're going to do. And that's kind of where I'm at right now is like wanting to do missions to keep on doing the shipbuilding. But yeah, shooting. I think this game is like so much fun to play on keyboard mouse.

Like the shooting feels great. The jetpack boosting. I have this really cool magnum that just like it's almost like Cassidy in Overwatch, like his big magnum shot. It's really, really dope. There are a lot of neat little additions to all these weapons to make them acidic or to make make them fire or whatever that like all of, there's a lot of cool modifications there and a lot of different weapons. And I think it's super realistic and it makes sense for there to be a bajillion weapons and a bajillion types of ammo. I just hate that there is a bifilion types of ammo.

You got to write it down. See, write it down what you're looking for every time of the show. I'm looking for 0.27 cal. It makes sense to me, right? This universe is big. There's a lot of different planets. There's a lot of different gun manufacturers on each of these planets. It wouldn't make sense to find that random gun in this other planet. Like, I get where they're going, they're coming from it from a logic standpoint. There's a lot of shit that doesn't make sense in this game logic-wise, so I don't know why they're so true to their word here. But like, I feel like I'm constantly out of ammo. It's really tough for me to like go find the ammo and find somebody that sells the ammo that I want. Andy? It's a pain. Thousands. I had thousands of bullets. I was so happy.

Andy, I know a guy. I know a guy. He knows a guy. I know a guy. He knows a guy. He's got to go to a killer, but this actually just brings up the whole point here. Again, just talking about the combat real quick.

I thought the gunplay felt good, but the enemy AI, and I played on normal, by the way, and I didn't mess with the harder difficulties. I just stayed on normal. I'm going to scale it up now. But I felt the enemy AI. It never asks us, right?

No, I never asked. Okay. Which is going to bring me to them to, another point, but I felt the enemy AI was kind of all over the place. Sometimes I felt it was really good and sometimes I felt you're just standing in a way for me to shoot you kind of kind of thing. So again, these are things that. I feel that. The overall theme of what we've been talking about when we talk, you know, the negative things where they can improve because part of the big problem that I have with the game in that sense is like I think the outpost, the outpost is

actually a great example of what I want to talk about. So the very first outpost, I built, I built it in an extreme environment, extreme conditions. And I go, what the, and like, I took my, I took my time and I'm like, man, this outpost is dope. I did all this great stuff. Why is no one coming to my outpost? Why can't I get this going? What is going on? Turns out, you needed to unlock that outpost skill.

Yep. And then you can put outposts in extreme conditions. I was never told this. Actually, we were told this in review God. I never read it. But. review guys for that reason. But a player picks up the game.

They don't know. Anybody that's watching this or listening to this does not have a review guide. They're just going to go play the game. The game does not do a good enough job explaining basic systems to you and how they work. Research, crafting, things like that. I figured it out. But there's nothing telling me how to do it. There wasn't a mission specific.

Like there's an activity telling you to do it, but it doesn't tell you how to do it. Sorry, my question about that, right? Because I want to stay in this. This is, again, where I struggle with. they have a vision for this game clearly, right? And it's not like, oh, maybe we are, you know, we should have a map off. Fuck, why don't we think of that?

Why don't we have a local map, right? Like, they want it to be that you know a guy. Or did you go down in this corner and do this? And they want thing to be. So for me, loving lock picks, right? For me, having an ammo guy and having, doing it and building and playing a very specific way, I wonder so much about the way Andy's all in on building and modding the ship, right? If the people who are going to be, like, I looked in and I was like, oh, man,

I had this great suit of armor or space suit, I guess. And I was like, oh, I went and looked and I'm like, oh, yeah, this could give me, you know, more ballistics or, you know, block this and yet. And I went and clicked. I'm like, why now? I'm like, oh, I'm short one thing. I went off and found that thing and I came back hours later. I was like, let's do it.

It's like, why not? Oh, I need to level up. Ah, fuck it. You know what I mean? But I feel like there's people who are going to see that and that will be their lock picking of like, oh, the game stops right now until I get this leveled up and I get that thing. And it's like, that definitely isn't my cup. It definitely isn't what I wish they were doing,

but I also don't feel, I never felt in this game, and again, the cards, mileage will vary, all the stuff, it's a random deck deal. Playing on normal, like, I thought, it very much felt like a story game

because it was, I wasn't being challenged. I was at times level 13 and I would run into level 30, four dudes and I'd kill him, no problem. I was like, I don't get where the leveling's happening.

So, like, it was this thing of, I don't, I didn't feel the need to go and have the best suit of armor or whatever. I also found a bunch of cool armors and whatever. Just wanted to look cool. Yeah, exactly. So it was like, I don't, there's, I think there's going to be a gamer that wants that, who wants to have the best thing and have all the perks and all the thing, and that's,

that we'll do it. And that'll be their thing, but they won't outpost maybe, or maybe they will or what, I don't, there's so much going on here to choose your own adventure again, the buffet analogy that it's like, so many choices. I'm like, is it, is it bad or is it specific? And it's just not what I would have done. It's a tough thing where I've had, I've had the same experiences of wanting to try an outpost or wanting to look into the work benches. and not having the resources available. And I, like,

immediately turn off. It's an immediate turnoff in the thing I think about directly. And I, like, again, I don't know if this is a takeaway from Starfield or this is more so this is what Starfield wants to be, is I think about Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. And I think it might have been Imran or somebody who's tweeting about how good the harmony is in the game between you exploring caves on the surface and finding bright bloom seeds that are going to help you in the underground.

And when you're exploring the underground, you might find some zonite that's going to help you level up your battery. And like when you're flying in the air, you might find a thing as going to help you on your ground. Like, whenever you're doing one thing, you're helping out another system in the game. And as I'm playing Starfield, Starfield doesn't really have that between its disparate systems. And so systems feel so disparate. And I think they kind of want it to be so that people can really pick a lane. But if you're somebody who's coming in, you're like, I just want to play Starfield for the story and just experience the game the same way I experienced Skyrim or fallout.

I think you're not going to have as great of a time. No, you're not. I'm like, you look at one thing. you're like, well, I don't have any of this shit to help out building a base or doing this or doing this. Because I wasn't playing no man sky. Like I wasn't going to random planets and, oh, this planet has beryllium. Let me, let me go find. Like, that's a completely different place. When I tried to cook and it said, do you have any calcium? Like, why the fuck would have to have that? I'm a space pirate. So I want to jump in on that. You bring it up to Here's the Kingdom. The conversation you all are having

about the lack of tutorialization in this game, the amount of things you can do that seems to need a lot of different resources and all of this. All of you have played this game in a reviewer sense, like, back to back, just hours, binging all that stuff. Do you think that by design, this has been kind of made to be a tier of the kingdom-esque community experience of people being like, how do you lock pick? Oh, I know a guy in real life. You know what I mean?

Like that type of thing. And like, if so or if not, like, is that the right decision for this? But see, what you bring up is actually a great point that I did not think of until you just said it. Maybe. Maybe so. maybe that is the point. Maybe it is to get us to kind of collaborate together,

but not everyone's going to do that. It makes me wish still is like an Eldering like message system because Elmering kind of does the same thing, right? Where it's like you, these games kind of expect you to talk to other people and have that social experience, but because of that, they have systems built in that help you talk to people. And so here's, I agree with everything.

This is such a fascinating take. I would say, again, and this will sound preposterous, because this is an Xbox published game. I would say this is a game by Bethesda for Bethesda fans. And I do think Bethesda fans are the type to go on the message board, do the thing. You know what I mean? Like when they put out that direct and all the devs were up there just talking about the nerdyest shit possible that they were all excited for. We all got excited about different things there.

And I do think that again like fallout and Skyrim have found such enormous success that you do forget that they are clunky nerdy ass RPGs. And this is a clunky, nerdy-ass RPG that I can't wait to get back to. Even in a, and learn, I know I am eventually going to build an outpost in a play-through. I'm going to be like, I know, whatever. I can already picture, here are the five best places to find calcium on the planet. All right. I'm trying to eat. Pay blessing, we listen to review.

And here are the five things you need to go get them. But here's the problem about what Greg just said. I don't disagree. The most hardcore Bethesda fans are going to just devour this. going to love it. But let's just talk in the real world here. This has been marketed and pitched as basically the big game for Xbox. This is the generational game for Xbox that we're getting right now, right?

This is going to sit alongside Halo and gears as examples, right? But what you just described is not going to be for the general audience. And I'm not saying that Bethesda needed to dumb down the game and simplified. I love this. I just think there needs to be more early on explanations of how certain things work to get more people willing to try it. Examples that Andy's talked about and that blessings talked about, there are things there that if it doesn't seem easy enough to get started on,

I'm just going to give up and not do it. I think that could be the experience on certain things for a lot of people. I think the stuff with the shipbuilding, again, it's considered an end-game activity, but people are going to try it early on. Oh, this seems to intimidate. I'm not doing that shit. I'm not building any ships. I'm not doing the outpost.

What do you mean I got to collect all these resources? Like there's a mission just, and it's not a spoiler. There's a mission that is basically the plot of Wally. Wow. And you got to get a lot of resources to be able to complete this. I ain't going to lie. The first time I saw,

I was like, man, F this. I don't want to do that. Peace out, Wally. But I came back to it and did it. But there's going to be some people. Wally, floating out there in space on my crew made. Stick with me on this, right? Stick with me on this is that, you know, you said,

I'm not saying they need to dumb down and simplify this. Yeah. My argument would be that they did and this is it. And what I mean is that I think this is a mass market appeal, Bethesda RPG that you could drop in and you could just chase the main mission. And you would be, I think you would be disappointed, but here's my,

here's my point. Here's my point is that I honestly feel like it's kind of the frog in the water on the stove. Where I think as you were doing that, you would inevitably like, well, what's that? Wait, this, and you'd get pulled into some kind of nerdyer system that would then make you go,

okay. Because like when I jumped in with my first ship and went into ship building, moving stuff around, I was like, no, I'm never going to do this. And I left. But later on it was when I was like, man, I am not killing things fast enough when I need to. Went back and like, oh, well, here's where I can just upgrade. This is simple, right? Like, okay, the research, the first time I jumped in and it's just UI everywhere and

like there's levels and shit. I'm like, I'm good. But then I eventually came back and did the one thing I want. Like there's those things that are breadcrumbs. I think that'll get people off that main trail to get in there and do it. Now, will they become Bethesda fans? Will they be,

you know, oh my God, this is the best RPG ever played kind of thing. Milege will vary. Exactly. But I think this is the, if this is their best chance to have a Bethesda thing be, yo,

this is a mainstream as welcoming as we can be. We get you in the fucking ship as fast as possible, go into space. But this is where also will say where you didn't think they would do something with the inventory system as, example. Yeah. And Bless saying this is a three out of five after basically a 30 plus hour experience, basically mainlining the game. I think for people that just go in, I'm just going, I'm just going to mainline the story in, you know, 25, 30 hours I'm done. Yeah. This is a three out of

five game. Sure. I did play 40 hours. No, no, no, I agree, but it just as an example. I think to truly, plus like, I don't need all the Xbox fans as right. Yeah. I didn't just mainline it. Typical PlayStation guy. I just mainline it. I played with that game before. But, but my point that is if you're not willing to invest the time into a lot of the other activities outside of the main story, it's not, I don't think this game feels satisfying to you. I don't. I think like I said, when I'm getting into hour 40, hour 50 and I'm doing like the Crimson Fleet stuff and all that, I'm like, you know, holy, yeah, I love this. I love what I'm doing. I, every time I would go to a planet. And actually, let me just bring this up because I did want to talk about at least one point of what really made me fall in. love with the game. I just went to a random planet. Random plant. I see a ship off in the distance. Okay. I'm going to go over to the ship. I go there. There's a few other astronauts going around.

They're not enemies, so they're just NPCs doing their thing. I go up to their ship and the doors locked, expert lock. I got the perk. I'm going to unlock this thing. You got, you know, pulled out my slide rule, figured it out. Got in. I got to the cockpit. Holy shit. I can sit down in the cockpit and take it. I took their ship, stranded them on that freaking planet, and dipped. I go, I freaking love this. I love that.

I love that. I invested the time in the lock picking to be able to have the experience where I just stole this ship from these guys for like no reason. I'm just being an A-hole. The amount of turrets and robots I've turned on their owners. You know what I mean? You get around, you get to this thing, you hack the system, boom. Yeah.

Coming into this from what you're talking about, Paris, and what Greg's talking about, I kind of view it as the opposite of what you're talking about, Greg, where I think this might be the nerdiest Bethesda game. I think when you're talking about mass appeal and you're talking about something that's made for a wide audience to get into, I look at something like Skyrim and Elder Scrolls.

I mean, we know how much Skyrim sold, right? But that's also a more traditional open-world RPG where you look at a direction and you see a mountain and you go, can I go there and then you go to that mountain, right? That's very literally what Skyrim is. Less about sandbox as well. Yeah, it's less about sandbox. Where a Starfield, I think one of the reasons why I'm turned off from it, right?

It's like not the main reason. I think there's a lot of other stuff too, but like, yeah, it is a, but that's the game that is probably the dream, but that's the game, right? It's probably the dream Todd Howard game. Let's make a game that lets you define your own adventure. And we've seen so many different takes on that, but this is what this is. And I think that is going to make people choose how they want to play this game.

And that's the thing that's not as mainstream of a choice. That's the thing that's not as natural of a choice for people playing games. I think once we get into the next, for Starfield, I think that's going to make the reception very interesting in terms of the amount of people that pick it up, fall in love with it, and then the opposite amount of people that pick it up and fucking hate it. Once we get to the next Elder Scrolls, I think we're back to business in terms of, all right, here's your mass market,

easy for anybody to get into a game. I think this is nerdy, but as I look at it. I mean, let me tell you the most nerdy, nerdiest I felt in a while, right? And that's saying something. That is saying something. You've seen his anime pop collection? Last night, I'm in my ship and I'm kind of getting, you know, again, I just finished customizing.

I'm like super stoked with how this shit looks, and I'm playing on keyboard mouse. And the way flying in this game works, it's not just Rogue Squadron or Star Fox. It is more akin to the way Star Trek, the Starfleet command, the VR game that we played, or a lot of other Star Trek games in the past where you have a certain amount of cells of power

and you have to divert them to missiles, the ballistics, to shields, to engine, and you're constantly switching back and forth in this battle. Oh, maybe my shields are down. I need to pull some away from. And the way to do it, right? We're using the Wazdas, right? The Wazdi or the Azwat, what Kevin Kuala calls it.

And I could hold. If I wanted to switch between my missiles and go to my ballistics or go to my lasers, I could hold the alt button and you left and right, but I could use my right hand to hit the arrow key. and I feel like a fucking starch. I feel like Spike Spiegel. I feel like Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly because I'm in there and I'm like

keyboard mouse taking out these dudes taking out their shields and I'm like, oh my missiles are down. Bebo, beep, beep, bo. And I feel that though. I have exactly. It feels fucking cool, dude. Very cool, even on controlling.

The space fights are the only times I press like this button on my mouse. I didn't know this button existed. Dude, I'm telling you, it's like the, I'm sure a lot of people in the comments who'd be like, oh, Andy, you got to play

Steel Battalion. I'm thinking of all these other, Armored, of Cres Citizen or the other sort of like space flight simulators. Star Wars squadrons. This one for me is like the one that has nailed it for me, the one that I has nailed spaceflight, and the one that I am not dreading spaceflight, like I'll never forget when we first thought

we were going to be able to fly ships in destiny, like way back in the day. I remember. And how much I was looking forward to that. And then it came out and it didn't happen. I was like, oh, dang it. And then I ended up playing some spaceflight game later. I was like, I don't think I like space flying.

Like in Rogue Squadron, it was cool shit because I was a kid and I didn't, you know, that's all we had, right? But I eventually lost my love for wanting that as a genre. And this is like just brought back all those feelings and like, and again, I need somebody to control my lasers and I go find some dude in a bar who is a laser specialist. And he's just this dude who looks like he's been divorced four times. And it's like, get on my ship, bro. let's fucking fly. I'm like, it is so cool, dude. It is like that role play

that I've been looking for. So I know this is the review of Starfield. Obviously, we're going to talk about this game a lot in the coming months. There's going to be many discussions that need to be had that we've started already about a year ago. Speaking of, don't forget the Xcast, the FAQ that they're doing.

You're watching right now, hopefully, when this posted on Thursday, we're recording that this afternoon. So as you read reviews, as you watch this review, as you have questions, write them into kindofuny.com slash Xcast so they can answer. And in addition to this review on Gamescast, the Xcast, your questions answered.

We're also starting Snowbike Mike's first ever play-through of Starfield on Twitch.com. TV slash Kind of Funny Games Thursday, August 31st, September 1st. How many days? 31st. August 31st. I always forget. 9 a.m. So when this review went up, if you're watching on Thursday, right now on Twitch.

com TV slash Kind of Funny Games, Mike should be streaming. And he's streaming as long as you want it. And what's really special about this is, you know, Mike is our Xbox. guy, host of Xcast. He is a big Bethesda guy. He's a big streamer combining all those things into his very, very, very first experience. The reason he wasn't on this review even hosting is he

didn't want to be biased at all from all of it. So he just wants to go in with you, the chat. So I think it's going to be really fun. But we're going to have conversations about is this what it needed to be for Xbox? Like, blah, blah, blah, all of that stuff. Another conversation we're going to have is Game of the Year. And is this, Andy?

A contender. Will this be on your top 10 at the end of the year. I want to go around, but I want to start with Paris. Is this your game of the year so far? And if not, is it in your top 10? Is it in my top 10? I am not ready to say it's my game of the year. Greg. I, I'm still so, I would imagine it has, it will be in my top 10, I would imagine, yes. I do not think it'll be my game of the year, but I'm still very much like so fresh.

off of it, but still so in it. Like, I'm still so in it. Like, as we talk about it, all I want to do is go play more. You know what I mean? That's what? I've had Raj bring this in. Andy, you go. No, no, before you go, Andy,

because I feel like yours is the one I'm most interested. Because, bless, I feel like it's easy to say. This will not be in your top 10. Well, I think it's actually deeper than that. It's definitely not going to be my number one. It's not going to be close to my number one. But there is, what, a year ago, I reviewed Sonic Frontiers.

And in my review for that, I let off saying that this is a three out of five games. that I love like a five out of five game. For me, Starfield is a three out of five game that sometimes I don't like like a two out of five games, but then sometimes I do like a four out of five game, right? Like it ebbs and flows, and to some extent I'm with Greg of,

if I keep coming back to it, I'm still, deep down I'm still a Bethesda person. Like I really like that type of game. I think there are so many aspects to Bethesda games that are really fun and really cool. And there's a scope here that reminds me of the scope of fallout that reminds me the scope of Skyrim, but even beyond that.

So I could see it being maybe sneaking in in my number nine or number 10, bot, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it, but like, I think it's, I think there's a possibility there. So the reason I'm most excited to hear what you have to say that is you seem really high on this. You seem like you want to get right back to it. There's also been a very big year for all of us in video games. Video games has just been great, but I feel like you in particular, there's been a couple like major standouts, new genres, new, like concepts even of like, oh man, there's been a lot of games that I feel like right now your top 10's already filled out

potentially. So it's really, it's really interesting because I've never been a big Bethesda fan. I put about 20 or 30 hours in a sky room and I like I had fun but it was nothing like ground breaking for me. Fallout was always too ugly. Like I just like I hate this color palette. I hate this lighting. Like this is one of the ugliest games I've ever seen, right? Um, and but I was also the bioware RPG player. Like that's where I sunk my dozens and dozens and hundreds of hours into. And when early words started spreading about everybody's feelings in this about Starfield and how like, yeah, it may just be an okay game. I was like, okay, I can skip this, dude.

Because I generally haven't really been into Bethes a games in the past. And why would I, you know, get into this one when there's a lot of other things to play, especially like right now where I still want to get back to Ballsgate 3 and Armored Core 6. And I, about five hours in, I'm like, yeah, maybe it is just an okay game. And maybe I will end up skipping it. and eventually passing on this. And also I felt very, very glad that I was gone when it did come out, so I wasn't giving the responsibility to like,

Andy, we need you to beat this, you know? Like, I'm glad that I was on vacation while this happened because I feel like I've been able to experience it at my own pace and kind of, you know, get the hang of it. And all that is a very, very long way to say that this was a very, very unexpected game for me. Like on the previews, I thought it looked amazing, but after what everybody was saying, I was like,

oh, maybe I'm not into it. I think there's a good chance that this does sneak in to the top 10, possibly even top five, if I continue to go down the route that I'm going and kind of finding the love

and finding my own fun in it, you know? I love it. So this has been the kind of fun of... Hold on. I ran off to get this. Oh, yes. I'm,

you asked, like, I hit up up spec gaming and ask them to send me the X screen, which is the one you attach to the XboxS so that I can more comfortably play it both on the couch with Jen and then I can also take it to Canada when we go on our

trip because that's like how much I want to keep playing Starfield. There we go. So I want to end this review like I said, we're going to be talking about Starfield for a very long time here. It's going to be a ton of content. Also, Raj and Bless and everybody here has been working really hard on TikToks and stuff as well. So make sure you follow us on a kind of funny games on TikTok. There's going to be a whole bunch of Starfield content coming out that's really, really cool. Some of it really funny. Some of it's informative. It's a little bit everything here. Yeah. hour a member is up. We have a first hour

where we all recorded it. We made our characters and then recorded our first hour. Raj cut that up into one big video that's going up. I forgot. This may be game of the year because they have mustaches and beard disconnected. Huge. Finally. Finally. Like, this is all recorded

where I'm like, I'm going through the I'm like, all right, here it is. This is like the moment of truth for everybody. And I'm starting to lose faith in it as the beard started getting. I was like, oh man, they're just going to get bushy and bushyer. Boom, it pops up. I fucking lost my shit, dude I love that for you so much

A ton of great content The thing Greg's time on it I think is really really cool Roger works so hard on this Of editing together Who's is it? It's Greg Blessing Barrett

And just those three Their first hour All edited into one hour video So it's like you get a whole bunch Of different takes on like what If you made this choice And it's really really cool stuff So YouTube.com

I kill a lot of people It's gonna be great But I want to end this episode with you paris any final thoughts on starfield you know it's it's been quite the journey over the past couple years with starfield just the anticipation obviously the delays everything the direct we had a few months ago we got todd howard to come on xcast and talk about the game and to have spent the past couple weeks extensively with the game um i just feel as well worth my time and i would say to anyone out there watching or listening you'll go buy an xbox to play this game there you go let us know in the

comments below how excited you are for Starfield. A lot of y'all are going to be able to play it probably by the time you're watching this, right? Like the early access? Is it September 1st, right? But I think internationally starts rolling out weird. Crazy times for everybody. But until next time, I love you all. Goodbye.