Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Starfield: We Saw the BIG Updates, Greg Went to Bethesda! - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

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Your candy stash just got an upgrade with fruity rainbow five-hour energy shots. Grab the shot, dive into that sweet boost for your sweet tooth. Order now at 5-hourenergy.com or Amazon. What's up everybody? Welcome to the kind of funny games cast for Tuesday, March 17th, 2026. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside IGN.com's Michael. Hi. Hi. Hello.

How are you, sir? I feel like, I feel terrible. Cole's been that fool's barking at me. Yeah, but now he's over here sleeping. He's a very nice thing. He seems fine. He's just, he's very protective of the office.

He was scared of the office for a long time. Now Cole the weaner dog is very protective of the office. He's like he barked at bear when he got surprised. Oh. You just spooked him big because he's not used to you. You only come over once a year. Yeah. You come to the annual Christmas Eve dinner.

You know what I do. I sure do. A lot of people there are a lot going on for him. He's a precious little boy. He is. He is. How are you doing on this glorious Starfield Day? Well,

I'd be, Well, I don't know if you all got a sponsorship with Monster Bus, so I'm going to turn the can this way. But it's a blue monster kind of day, which means I am very tired. But that is a consequence of a very crazy week that we had last week. Yeah, GDC. And then you and I going out to Maryland to check out all the stuff at Starfield, visit Bethesda, and then come back and then get back into the groove with all the GDC stuff. Yeah.

Had a crazy weekend. Oakland Roots had opening night on Saturday. So, you know, Oakland sports is still out here. So it's been nonstop. But now that I kind of put my work. work out there. The embargo landed. I put everything out there. Now it's time to take a breather and catch up on everything else. Good. Well, I'm ready to dive into all this Starfield news with you because, of course,

this is the Kind of Funny Gamescast. Each and every weekday, we run you through the biggest topics in video games, whether they be reviews, previews, or topics we need to talk about. We cover it Monday through Friday right here on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games, Twitch.tv.tv slash Kind of Funny Games and podcast services around the globe. Remember, of course, if you're watching live and you want to talk about Starfield with us, YouTube, super chat, YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games with your thoughts, questions, opinions. Pick our brains for everything we saw when we were there at Bethesda.

When I got to talk to Todd, when you got to talk to Todd, when I talked to Tim Lamb, you're going to get a 20-minute interview with Tim Lamb, of course, who's a creative director, I believe, on Starfield at the end of this very show. But of course, we couldn't do this show without our Patreon supporters slash producers. Thank you, Carl Jacobs, Megabuster, and Delaney Vassam-Twine. For all your support on patreon.com slash Kind of Funny. for now. Let's begin with what is it forever will be. Topic of a show. Tots, Tots, Tots, Tots, Tots. You eating those tots?

Hell yeah, man. I like that. I like that. I had tots in a minute, but I'm about to have some right now. Hi, him? Yes. It's out in the world, but as you said, last week, we got to fly to Bethesda, Maryland. Talk to Bethesda about all this Starfield News. Ladies, gentlemen, NBs, if you're watching or listening and don't know what's going on, let me give you top level, okay? Of course, Bethesda has announced that Starfield is coming to PlayStation 5 on April 7th.

Finally making the jump, meaning that Kevin, can you please get all this ugly green? Thank you off the screen. Let's switch from the PlayStation Blue. Oh, man, it's St. Paddy's Day and y'all getting rid of the green. Kevin, go back and forth at your leisure. Don't worry about me. On top of that, Terran Armada and Free Lanes, two big old D.L.C. packs will release on April 7th on all platforms.

Free Lanes is free for all players. All existing premium owners on Xbox and Steam will receive the Teran Armada DLC at no additional cost. If you're a normal, normie, which of course now costs $50. They lowered the price of Starfield to $50. You can then go buy the Terran Armada DLC for $10, they said,

right? And of course, they brag about all their community creations which we will talk about at length. Terran Armada is the big DLC and introduces new quest lines across the settled systems with new characters, locations, enemies, quests, systems, and rewards.

Players get the chance to shape the future of humanity in space as they combat the incursions of the Terran Armada's robotic forces in this brand new story DLC. Meanwhile, Free Lanes is a free update that adds significant new features and systems designed to deepen the core Starfield experience for both new and returning players most significantly opening up interplanetary travel within systems. With this update, players can use cruise mode to travel from planet to planet within a star system where they'll experience frequent encounters and activities and spend some quality time

with their ship and the crew. There's a bunch of new features that are there. New locations, X-Tech, enemy modifiers, moon jumper, outpost improvements, new crew, Starborn Improvement. We will talk about all that in length. But then the final big topic, bullet point is that the trackers alliance.

One of the creations Bethesda made and had on the creation store for a while is getting an update today. It's five new bounties to go after. One of them, one of them about the fucking guy faking being the mantis. That's the first one I'm chasing. I'm the mantis.

I took the mantis. I'm not letting this guy get in there. Of course, that is already out today. You could go play it right now. And if you already bought Tracker's Alliance, it's included at no additional cost. If you're jumping in, you can get the complete Tracker's Alliance bounty system for 700 creation credits. That's a lot, baby. That's a lot to shove in there.

But before we jump in, I think everybody knows, at least if you're kind of funny fan, that I'm a Starfield sicko. When you ask me, yo, you go to Bethesne next week? I'm like, damn, I am, you're coming? What is your history with Starfield for people who don't know? I reviewed Starfield on hit video game website, GameSpot.com back in 2023. And I have to be honest, I mean,

if y'all can pull up the review that is published on that site, kind of disappointed. Sure. In that, in that launch version of that game. And I think that, you know, there's a lot that goes into it because a Bethesda RPG,

many, many years of hyping this up. Yeah. And it's sort of, I don't want to say that expectations got in the way because there's so much more beyond expectations that it did not meet. And, you know, you come to this, you expect a certain level of, like, something new,

but it felt like we just put the, we put us a space veneer over what we've done in the past, and some of it, some of which was felt underbaked. There's a, there are things that I really, really enjoyed about Starfield. I think a lot of side quests were great, the Crimson Fleet quest line was probably one my favorite side quests in Bethesda history alongside like the Dark Brotherhood from the Elder Scroll series. And I really like the combat. I said to you,

like, you know, one of my favorite things about Starfield is actually the gunplay. So hearing that the Terram, Tarran Armada D.L. So,

combat focused, I'm like, hell yeah, that's actually playing into one of the things that I really liked about Starfield. But there's a lot of things that chipped away at my enthusiasm.

I think a lot of the character interactions, especially with your crewmates, felt very shallow. Uh-huh. And the story, the main story itself also felt shallow. And, like,

I'm not expecting, you know, a Bethesda RPG to be, be thought-provoking in the same way that I expect something like I don't know like a Octopat Traveler Zero because that's all I'm always thinking about Octop Travelers, you know what I'm saying? See, we can agree

we can agree on something. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't get a twist. I agree with you on the, I agree on your characterization of Starfield so far. If you're new around here, like the character of Greg being the Starfield sicko when you, when you do that starts going and I think people fill in the gaps that I think it's a 10 out of 10. I do not. The whole reason I like this game is because I had a very specific glitch that really set me off

on a platform. Yeah, I remember it. And, uh, but yeah, so going on to what you, like, the things that you liked about it, um, we're really interesting because I think that those are the, those are the parts in which I think everyone's going to have a different perception or they're going to have a different experience with it or they're going to feel differently about it. Like, especially because you did a lot of the new game plus stuff.

Yes. And that is, I will give Starfield this is that that is a very unique approach to new game plus. Once I started poking through it, like I get the kind of mechanisms behind how that, how that all that stuff works. And it could have been fascinating, but for me, I was like, oh, it's nice to see the variations in which

some of the very wild variations that you can get as you jump through the unity multiple times. And I was like, oh, that's really fascinating. But it doesn't fundamentally change how I feel about what this game is saying about humanity's place and space. And I say in my review back in the day that, like, you know, I'm not going into this

expecting it to be the next mass effect or to be as thought-provoking as like the Carl Sagan books that I read as a kid or anything like that. But I did want it to at least have its own identity. And so I think it's struggled to establish like this is our version of space. These are the factors that go into, aside from like criminal factions and intergalactic governments and all that. Like that stuff, of course, is there. But I just didn't get a sense of like a real sense of place and personality from the game. Granted, you know, some of the, some of the core Bethesda thing.

that make these RPG so fun to like poke and prod at are definitely there. You know, finding a derelict ship in the middle of like a planet's orbit and then digging through there, finding quest logs and getting new, getting new items and that stuff is interesting in parts. And again, like some of the side quests were the more interesting parts of it. So very mixed feelings about Starfield upon launch. Now, another thing too is like Bethesda games evolve over time. Sure do. You know, and I think we're in a, we're in an era where that's kind of the expectation now is that you're going to get continual updates, DLC, and like foundational changes.

Because if you think back to even Fallout 4, we were still in an era where traditional expansion packs were kind of the norm. We're phasing out of that. But that was kind of the, how those games came out. Yeah. And when you look back at Skyrim also, it's like traditional, like the game's out, a year or two later we're going to get an expansion pack. another year or two later, we're going to get another expansion pack and, you know, mods are going to come out. And that's how you, that's the life cycle of those games. Yeah, that's how you support. But Starfield has entered, had entered in a new era in which

developers a lot more hands on with how they handle like the intermittent updates. And so I think Starfield has benefited greatly from that. And, you know, it's visiting Bethesda and talking to them and kind of like recounting the path that Starfield had from launch to today. I'm like, oh yeah, they really stuck with this. And they really stuck with this. And they really, really thought hard about foundationally, what are the things that they should change to both satisfy the audience and just make it a better experience from the ground level. So, yeah, that's kind of how I feel about Starfield from launch and, you know, seeing some of the new stuff today. Did you come back for Shattered Space? Have you come back for the creations? I didn't.

So, I mean, I've heard accounts of Shattered Space and from people I trust, you know, I always encourage people to experience things for themselves before they form an opinion. But I think after hearing friends talk about Shattered Space, it was like, oh, okay, like, it doesn't seem like this is the kind of thing that I want to come back for. Sure. Maybe if you have multiple pieces of DLC and then I can kind of have a much more chunkier bite of the game again, then I'll come back. And that's what I feel like Taryn Armada is going to be for me. Yeah. It's like, this is enough, like, combined with the fact that I have not played Shattered Space.

Sure. And with the Taryn Armada stuff, which I'm actually, like, really excited for. I think putting those things, two things together is going to, like, I will sit down for a week and play Starfield, reload my old save, and play through a lot of new content that I just, you know, did not experience. Let alone all the creation stuff. Yeah. So, yeah, the creation stuff is crazy, man. Like, oh, man, like, that's a whole other topic, too. We had, like, when we visited them, like, dedicated a whole presentation and segment to creations.

And I think we can touch on this later, but I'm, when creations, came out of the gate, which is like their kind of paid mod system or system of like how to house mods, like a Nexus mods. Exactly. A built-in Nexus. You just click on it. Kevin's brought up the website you could go to, login and do it. You can do it from your console or your PC as well, obviously, go in there and get stuff. It's both free and there are paid stuff. Yeah. And like I just kind of initially when we, when it came out, it was like, oh, we're charging for mods now. And like as a old school PC gamer from like the early 2000s till now, it's like, no, mods were. always like a community ran thing.

Why are you taking mods away from us? Or like it felt like mods were being like colonized by Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, there's money in these hills? We can get it. Yeah, yeah. And like, you know, Bethesda games are historically ripe for mods and, but what I've seen so far

is that if they are going to move to this paid system, you know, these creators of the creations are sensibly getting money for their work. Yeah. And perhaps like That is the, not silver lining, but that is, it took time to get there. And perhaps that is a better way of housing these things and maybe putting a little bit of quality control on it.

Yeah. And making that stuff easier because not everyone's going to like spend a day, a whole day trying to learn how to install mods. You know, you have different installers. You have different packs that don't are, that are incompatible with each other. There's all like a lot of nonsense that I liked digging through because I was a sicko back in the day. But also bringing that stuff to consoles, like really cool too. Yeah, you know, I am. obviously well known for being a console plebe,

and I've been better about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm playing on PC. I'm gonna play Starfield again on PC today. But what spoke to me about the creations was the ease of access for it. And then back to your point of like, yeah, like being able to work with these people

and get these creators money and do stuff, like you're talking about it, which I thought was so interesting, powerful. Yeah. We went to Bethesan. A lot of times, like, you go on a trip like this, you go to his studio and there is wasted time. Right, I really, really didn't.

Like, not only could most things be a Zoom call, That's a throw-washing. But, like, we're here a whole day and we're really not. When they sent us the schedule and it was like nine to eight with the dinner included,

I was like, there's no way you're going to make this all worthwhile. But to your point, they had King Gath, Josh King. King Gath is this creator

who's been creating stuff since Quake. And he was there and gave an entire presentation with one of the members of his team. And it was this really, I thought,

heartwarming conversation about, hey, we did all this and we've been, you know, moding this and we were making stuff

for fallout before. Like, we were all about these fallout ones before. I'm trying to find it. It was the Sim City. Oh, Sim settlements and Fallout Four. Yeah. And it was a community project that took years and they went on and on and on. And by the end of it, they finished like, what do we want to do

next? Could we do something next? He shrunk the, he was like, you were the most reliable people. I'm working with you. And Bethesda turned to them was like, hey, do you want to make stuff for us, with us, alongside of this? And now they are an 11 person small business making mods for Starfield and Fallout

and Elder Scrolls. And it's like, holy shit, that's awesome. And to the point, like, I do tune in to the mods and keep my eyes there. And I, you know, I did shattered space. Yes, but when the quality of life 60 frames has dropped in the car dropped, I pop back in for all that. I pop in for all these different things. And when Wash Tower dropped last year, I did pop in and download it and start it. And I did a Greg way about it of like, yo, this is what I want out of creations.

This is, this is, if not on the same level, it's rivaling some of the stuff they've done in terms of the Bethesda Quest lines they've dropped. And putting in new mechanics is crazy, too, with what, especially with Watchtower. And so you drop right now and you look, I'm on. the creation page and looking, right? And when we talk about the plays that this has, on PC, Watchtower has more than 4 million plays, and on Xbox it has more than 4 million plays. Wow. Wow.

So you're talking about like, I threw out my interviews and when I got, I had a round table I sat down with the Gath creations in Bethesda. It was like, so like, is there still an audience for this? Like, you know, the same thing so many people make fun of me for a one store fuel fan. It's like,

no, there is. There's a lot of people there's still a lot of people playing it and then making this content. and I think everything we saw goes back to what Todd said in the games cast, right? Of like, yo, if you like Starfield, you're going to like what we're working on. And if you didn't like Starfield, you're probably not. This isn't 2.0, as he said. So my question for you then is, was this enough from what you saw in these presentations for you to be excited for April 7th to come back to Starfield?

I would say that Starfield had kind of been out of mind for a while, like past the conversations of review. And I think what's going to 2024 was like, Well, I'm ready to move on and I'm, there's, I wasn't, I didn't think of Starfield as a memorable experience. Yeah. But I think it's, it's, it's one of those things where when you hear like the, like the progression of a game and how much it has evolved, you want to dip back just out of like sheer curiosity because I, no, I remember what my experience was like. And I want to compare that to what it's going to be like with the Freelanes update. Like, how fundamentally is this game changed?

And, you know, it's maybe similar to, you know, it's maybe similar to. coming back to an MMO where there's a new expansion. Sure. Like not to bring up Final Fantasy 14 everywhere I go. Oh yeah. My goat. But it's, you know, sometimes you come back to a game, you relearn it, and then you dig into new stuff. You're like, wait a second.

This is a, this is, I'm actually interested in sticking with this. And, you know, combined with the creation stuff, when you, when you mention, like, yeah, there's a lot of people playing this. I think there's also maybe for us, we're so locked in on. the yearly cadence of games that we kind of have to move on. Oh, of course. This job requires you to go away from things. And I almost lost sight of the fact that to this day, there are people who still play

Skyrim daily. And I think King Gath was talking about that too, about how like, yeah, there's, there are people who buy these games, put hundreds of hours in these games. And that's what video games are to them. Yeah. They're not looking at the release calendar. They're not, you know, buying annual. call duties and they're not buying

like sick sick oh RPGs like I am and like they buy this game they play the Bethesda game they stick with it they they poke at it for many many years depending on which game you go to and like I think that presentation really put into perspective

just how deep these games can go and I think that's a credit to mods creations and the fact that Bethesda has and Todd Howard had said this many many times too is that they stick with games post launch. Like they don't just release a game like, oh, it was below expectations.

Well, I guess we're going to move on. It's like, no, a lot of people buy these games, whether they get critical reception or not. And that's an audience to serve. And, you know, through creations, I think, like, you sell someone a game. They buy it once. Maybe they'll buy the DLC. There's no subscription to this. So it's like, okay, well, you know, you sort hit a certain ceiling or starts to taper off in terms of sales.

And you have something like creations where it's like, the creators get real, royalties and Bethesda also gets a little off the top as well. And I think this amount of support is kind of all in this ecosystem of keeping a game alive. For sure. While making it sustainable as they go into like full development for Elder Scroll 6, they still have this game that can, you know, support the studio and make, make money without having to like dedicate full resources to it. So I don't know where it's going with that.

But it's just I think. Visiting there really put into perspective like, oh, that's how all this shit works. Yeah. And like we've, we've been covering games for a long time. And I think every time we actually talk to a studio, visit them and see what their workflows are like,

I feel like we learn something new because everyone kind of does it differently. Yeah. Game development is, you know, there are certain phases in which everyone goes through to launch a game. But once you get to the nitty degree, you're like, oh, right,

that's how this works. This is how it is sustainable. This is how they make their money and then continue with new projects. And, you know, the leapfrogging of like, okay, supporting this game, but we're doing the next one

and then we're thinking about, and we're in pre-production for this one, so it's fascinating. It's always been something, you know, over the 19 years I've been doing this professionally, right? The idea of how invaluable those visits and interviews are, just conversations. Because I think it's so easy

for us as gamers and pundits and whatever to sit there and be like, oh my God, why would you make this decision? Oh my God, it's just money grubbing, and sometimes it is. You know what I mean? But there's, you get there and you meet these people and they are like cool. We were getting the tour and it was the all right here's like the engineers and here's the and it's like

small pods. It wasn't thousands of people right. Like damn like this is really the people who are trying to make multiple games at one time and do this and do the best they can and for them to go into these presentations and show how excited they are for the content and how they are actually trying to answer people's desires for what this game is. You know I think you know free lanes is an interesting place to jump into right. This is the free update they're talking about that they're going. And I think the biggest thing, and I read through it, but maybe it didn't make sense to you,

when Starfield came out, right, one of the big discussions was it's just fast travel simulator. Yeah. Yeah, I get into the thing. I warp around. I'm in a ship, but I'm not in a ship. Alana, of course, friend of the show, had a great video where she, like, for nine hours flew towards a thing while she slept. And just clipped right through. And never did anything, right?

Like, Freelanes is answering that. Free Lanes is, all right, cool. Once you hop to a system and there's multiple planets around you, you can fly. to lie organically to those things. And you can put it on cruise, but now you're going to be pulled out by incursions, and there's going to be more POIs that are happening. There's going to be more encounters that are going on.

It's going to shake it up that if you want that experience, go for it, let alone you're going to be getting X tech off of it, a new resource used to upgrade ships, weapons, and modules, which for me taps into a part of Starfield, and I've never left. But of course, our jobs keep us away. I'm always proud of myself when I put ours, I feel on the board that are above what a normal, my normal route.

I love Ghost of Yote and after whatever it was for review. Put it down and I haven't come back. And so my hours are stalled at 40, whatever it is. You know what I mean? And like I booted up Starfield this week to start getting ready. And I looked at it. It's like time played on my save. Six days and 15 hours.

I like how they still use days. I need to calculate. You know what I mean? I feel like accomplished something when you roll a day, right? And so like this ex tech that they're talking about, right? is also in boss chest legendary and off legendary enemies right and you can take it to the workbench to make

skins upgrade modules you're gonna go in and then like you can start taking your weapons as they talked about in the big developer conversation that went up today from legendary to rank four to the new quality tiers to then you're rolling all the and I'm like damn like I just like my shotgun I've never sat at this table and been like

I need to roll explosive rounds and I need to roll all these crazy things for it but it's like they're serving that audience that is still there and playing this game like you're talking about every day being insane about it. Because we saw a hands-off demo, so it was a live playthrough of a lot of this new content. And I was thinking to myself that it feels like we, maybe they were very precious about how the game played upon launch.

They wanted to create a deliberate experience for you. Yeah. Sort of semi-believable space exploration maybe. But I think like something like this is like, oh, yeah, we're an RPG and you can create some bullshit. Yeah, yeah, for sure. They had a Grendel, which is an SMG that exploded upon impact on mechanical enemies that also had a 25% chance of when you reload. It'll have like five times the amount of rounds into that clip, like out of nowhere.

And like, what the fuck is this? And it reminds me like, yeah, RPGs can be really stupid, but that's also kind of what makes them really fun, figuring out how to break the game. And now that we're like kind of past the point of like having the being precious about how the game is supposed to be played, it's like, yeah, fuck. We're an RPG. If you could figure it out, by all means. And here's like, the X-Tex stuff also, you have to find it yourself. They had like 500 of them things in their inventory. So they're just like showing us how it all works.

But that is a, and it when I mentioned that combat and gunplay was one of my favorite parts, I'm like, oh, cool, this is something that might be worth digging into when I do return to it. And, yeah, that's because that's the sick RPG stuff I'm into. I'm like, I want to create like stupid builds and see how that works when I play through the rest of the game. You know, to piggyback off that, where you're talking about, like, let's be less concerned with what is this game and let people have fun with it, right? I remember at review arguing with Gary, maybe not arguing, but him being like, I'm so turned off by being overencumbered that I won't even play it. I won't, and he's like, I won't do it until they patch that out. And I'm like, that is classic Bethesda, they will never patch it out.

And then that first big quality of life, they're like, we're taking it out. You don't have to be that way. You can be close to your ship, you can be far away. But then when they did it of like, you know, make it harder on yourself, but you get extra XP and stuff like I was like, damn, that's a really nice payoff back and forth that I loved about it. And it's the same thing here, right?

And I did a Greg way, like I said today, that's 20 minutes of me talking about what I'm going to do with my character and the new update. So you can go get detailed thoughts there. We don't want to spoil the game, but so much of this kind of is, but I'm going to throw around terminology that if you don't,

you haven't beaten the game, it won't make much sense to maybe. Sure, yeah. But you talk about going through the unity. One of the things they talked about of like going through the unity is supposed to be a sacrifice. You're supposed to feel like,

oh, do I leave. leave behind hundreds of hours that I've done here to go do this thing? Or do I stay here and live in this world? And so I really appreciate them dropping in this quantum entanglement device. This is another new one, right? You can park it in your, you know, park it in your room at the lodge. You have a limited amount of storage in it and you can put stuff in it so that if you go through the unity, when you come out on the other side, that stuff will be there.

And I was like, damn, that's a nice way. And they were like, we want you to feel that sacrifice, but clearly it's stopped enough people from going through and experiencing the gameplay loop they want. Because even if you don't now, you can take quantum essence that you're fighting and upgrade the starboard abilities you have. Rather than have to what you would have done, do the 10 Unities all the way through, go to every temple, which can be a little bit grindy. Yeah, that's a, yeah, it's things like that, quality of life stuff that. Part of me, I talk to Todd about this too is I do like friction in my RPGs, though. I like it when the game pushes back on you, not just challenging you or and definitely not like creating a,

obtuse systems for the sake of being obtuse and pissing you off and shit like that. But actually challenging you and thinking about choice and consequence, not just in like your dialogue decisions and, oh, no, how is this faction going to feel about me after I make this particular decision in a quest line? But what do you bring with you? How do you handle over encumbrance? When you go exploring for loot, are you going to have enough space for, like, all these little things like that that challenge me to think about what it is that I'm doing.

how I'm engaging with the game. And so I'm not sure how I feel about that overall, but I think that, you know, you work hard for a lot of these items too. Especially with the ex-tech stuff, you're going to be investing, essentially, you're going to be investing more time and effort

into building these very specific pieces of gear. And I think the, I feel like the sacrifice is a little bit higher now. If you work towards those things, they're like, oh, fuck, well, you know, I put all this effort. And, you know, the rolling for attachments that you want is like, you know, there's an element of R&G,

to it. And like once you have that perfect weapon, it's like, well, I'm not going to go through the union. What are you kidding me? Yeah. I have this really cool gun. And so at least you're able to, to do that. Like, I think hearing about it is like Starfield has, Bethes has been able to find a good middle ground between staying true to what the systems are, but also alleviating of things that are just annoying. You know, it's, it's because it's hard to determine, like, what's just annoying and what is actual good friction in an RPG? And I think what's interesting about it and can obviously work for, against it, but it's giving the player the choice.

Like when I go into my settings, right, I have difficulty of combat cranked up, but I'll, X, Y, and Z turned down. And even right now, the Greg way today is a conversation of like, I want to go through the unity for this. Do I do it before this? Like, you know what I mean? Do I wait and go through?

Or should I go through and use the thing? Because I do like the guns I have, but the guns I have, I'm not that guy, aren't special. I already feel like a God in the game. So I might as well go through and have that sacrifice and have to build it back up. But kicking it around and figuring out

what you want to do with it. I think it's an impressive way to tackle this. So finally being like, what do you want to do? Do you want it over-incumbrance it's there if you want that benefit or that, that limitation, right? Because I feel like I'm with you. So many times the limitations of it are what then makes me go, okay, I want to play the game a certain way. Yeah. Which during

their presentation was something I thought interesting. In Starfield, I have never built an outpost. Like, the game does not make it enticing. I don't understand why I would do it. Inventory, it was a pain in the ass. So I'm like, I'm not going to ever do that, right? But what it means is that my

Starborn ship, Guardian 5 or 6 or whatever the fuck it is, right? Is so packed to the gills with crap. Like I look like a hoarder. I've got chests everywhere, shit all over the place. You know, the vault is way too stocked. And so watching this presentation and then being like, all right, well, first off,

you know, there's these new things for outposts that are like shared between all your outposts. So you can have one box that's united across the entire galaxy. I was like, that's interesting. And then it was the, you can throw down pre-fab outpost now that are already great. I'm like, that's also very interesting as somebody who doesn't want to fucking do that. I was like, shit, watching the presentation, I was like, this is going to

change how I play. I have been this starborn stuck on this ship. I don't have a home. I'd rather build the home, take all that crap shove it in there. This becomes my car and then do it, let alone this fucking mansion in an asteroid. That was like, oh, fuck yeah, that seems awesome as hell. Yeah, yeah. That's, uh, as I say, like, it's all these small updates that have, that kind of feed into the same idea of, making it easier for you to engage with the things that the game is actually doing well. And the outpost stuff is really interesting because I had, I tinkered a lot with the outpost stuff because upon review,

I'm like, I should probably see what this is about at least. And it's, you know, the fallout four settlement stuff, the fall of 76 building stuff. Yeah. But I felt like those games were like tighter in scope.

And like 76 is built around that idea anyway. So like that's just how you engage with the game, whereas Starfield's a lot more optional. And so I didn't, I came away from not really compelled and it just took the reward and the amount of work it took to get there just kind of didn't. The ad equation didn't really

work for me. But when he saw like, hey, you can start your starter kit, you got a really nice apartment, what you do from there, you can kind of go crazy with whatever you want to build and however you want to arrange this stuff. So it's like, hey, we're going to give you a sort of boost to start with. So then you might be interested now to engage with the system because you don't have to worry

about building a foundation like a house. Yeah. So so that's a really cool idea and the fact that all of your inventory for outposts are all in one like you don't have to go fucking finding your materials and shit that you left in other star systems

I think that's a really smart move and I'm surprised it took a while I'm surprised like that kind of thing isn't there to begin with I think people also you know when you talk about Popopia and I was going to say I'm complaining about it's so funny because I was thinking about that when they were like yeah and now your storage boxes all your stuff is is going to be

in whatever box, it's, you know, it's a lot easier and universal storage is like, oh, I just,

I was playing a game that struggled with this a little bit, the game that I absolutely love. Of course. I'm like, oh man, I feel like this should just be

there from the jump. And then tying it back around to other pieces of content, the moon jumper, which is that new vehicle they have. It's like a makeo from Mass Effect, but better, as I describe it,

it's, that also feeds into the idea of like, oh, if you're on a planet and you want to get on a vehicle, this thing could just, just like hover everywhere. You can get on top of buildings.

You can get on top of mountains. We don't give a shit no more, man. Like just have fun, tear it up. And I know they, they've added vehicles beforehand, but this is like the most... This one has even more jumps.

This is the easy, like, I just want to get on top of the building. Boom, boom, boom, jump, jump. I'm on top of there. So it's just like, it feels a little bit more.

Arcady is maybe not the right word, but it's just, it's like they, I say in my preview, like it feels like they just took the ankle weights off. And there's like, fuck it, man.

You can do all. you could do all this shit and yeah whatever the people who have played it the intentional way upon launch have already played it so um have fun and i think that it can only bring in more people who weren't interested before but i don't think that that is what this update as far as you said like this isn't a 2.0 this isn't going to convince people otherwise who have already made up their mind about starfield but it is creating a new way for existing players to engage with it and maybe poke at systems that they wouldn't have engaged with otherwise. And that's already happening, right? At least

from what I'm seeing. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to be all about that. Even Ship Builder, they've changed a bunch of stuff, which I know Andy loved, but again, I was never that. You can get schematics off of ship battles and then you have a shipped optimization terminal right, where you can go through and make it, do it for you. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, I want shield strength. I want regent. I want this.

In a way of, like, the missions where I had to attach stuff to my ship, I can't, how do I even make this fucking work? I hate it. Like, when I was, when I was playing this game from you, my ships looked fucking nasty. Yeah. Because it was just like, I just want to have this shield generator. I want to have this gut.

I want to have it somewhere. I don't really give a damn where it's. It just needs to be attached to the ship. So you have like these really weird gummy ships from like Kingdom Hearts that look, that look total realistic, but also just look like these weird amalgamations. Like, who the fuck was the architect of the ship? Yeah. Because it looks nuts. So that stuff is also more elegant.

Yeah. And yeah, I think that's to its benefit. Well, we have more to talk about. And of course, my Tim Lamb interview. But before then, I want to remind you, we couldn't do this without your support. Pick up the Kind of Funny membership, Patreon.com.com slash Kind of Funny Games. Apple, Spotify, get all of our shows ad-free. You get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller, which of course is 20 minutes all about my plans for my Starfield character.

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I'm sorry, I have a job, everybody. I'm sorry I have to play other games. God damn it. We have a Superchat. Onomis Prime said, I think if this game was like five to ten explorable planets and it had a sci-fi aesthetic like Mass Effect. Instead of NASA Punk, multiple humanoid races, elder scrolls in space, people would have loved it. And I think at that point, yeah, you've made a completely different game. You know what I mean? And that's like always a fun slash hard thing about armchair quarterbacking everything.

Clearly Starfield does work for certain people. But yeah, it could have been a lot more. And again, something you said at the top, it was those expectations. Because I remember leading into it, laughing in his face, when Mike was like, for Xbox, this needs to be a game of the generation. And it was like, there's no shot.

There's no shot. I don't even know Bethesda can make a game of the generation because Bethesda is still so beholden to what Bethesda's been before that you need those ideas. And again, remember timeline-wise, this dropped like, what, three weeks, a month after Balders Gate.

And that was always the back. I remember walking the constellation the first time and I was like shot everybody in the face and like, oh, don't do that. Please stop. I was like, all right. Well, like this ain't. This is going to give me the same vibe is Baldur's Gate where I can just kill people and everything. The story moves on. So funny, man. Yeah. And like, and like, and a couple months after that, we had Phantom Liberty. And I know. So it's funny because like, I feel like we're, we're, like, we swap sides when it comes to both Phantom Liberty and Starfield. And those things came out in succession. I reviewed them back to back. And is one of two 10 out of tens I've ever given in my writing career in. games. And so I think after Fancy Liberty kind of like put into perspective, what do I want out of this style of RPG? Where the first person, kind of shooter, sci-fi, where you make decisions, you have consequences and all that other stuff. So yeah, it just, I was like, oh, I guess like, I don't know, Starfield wasn't, this is, I just, maybe I wasn't in the mood for it, but I don't think, I just think my gaming tastes have also moved on in, in combination with the things that I was like, I don't think this game is. What I find when I'll, when I get, go on my Starfield

binges is that inevitably I hit that thing of like, why am I doing this again? Like, especially vanilla as it was, right? Of like, I'm going in into this. From the outside, I'm like, oh, I already know the layout of this building. And they talk about like, they're switching up POIs or putting in more. You won't get as many as the same way. But it was a problem before.

Like, oh, it's this one again. I'm running around, shoot people in the head and use my, I'm like, I'm just, I enjoy this. And it's good. It feels good. But it's not good for me. Yeah. At this point, it's like empty calories.

It's junk food. Exactly. Talk to me. Mr. Heim. While we were there, of course, I interviewed Tim Lamb. You'll see that in just a little bit. You interviewed Todd Howard. How did that go? What did he say? Todd is, he's fun to talk to because that's someone who's obviously been making these kinds of games for a very, very long time. So whenever I talk to somebody who can share that experience and provide perspective, it's always fascinating. It feels like, you know, our entire visit at Bethesitt, it felt like going to college lectures.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do. Like I was locked in because I miss, I miss school. I, that sounds, that sounds crazy. But like, I just felt like I was learning something and I'm getting insight that I wouldn't been able to if I, if I hadn't been there. So my conversation with Todd was really interesting because I knew that I'm not going to get necessarily any headline breaking information about Elder Scroll 6. And so I think, but what I wanted to get out of him is like all the things around that.

Like I'm not going to say, oh, what's the story of Elder Scrolls? What's the location going to be? He's not going to tell me. But I can ask him about what is it about Creation Engine 3 that's going to be different? And why is that beneficial to Elder School 6?

Sure. You know, we had oblivion in Unreal. A lot of people are moving to Unreal, but they're sticking with their guns there. So like, why is that? What is it about it that we're going to see reflected in the game? And also things like,

how do you perceive choice and consequence in RPGs? Well, how do you think of friction? That's a great question. Yeah, and I, because I, when I previewed the Outer Worlds, too, I pose that question. to Leonard Boyarski, and I love asking them that

because everyone has a different answer. All these people who have worked on renowned RPGs of years past and to this day have all different perspectives on what an RPG means to them. And so I really think it's fascinating. And I pose a question to him too.

He talked a lot about, he sees a lot of that quote-unquote friction. He didn't like that word. Because I think that also, we're working out what the definition of that actually means because it can carry a negative connotation. Of course.

But to me, that's more like when the game pushes back on you and say, hey, you can't do that. Makes you try. Figure out how to circumvent this problem here. To me, that's how I see friction. But he was like, a lot of that to him relies in character creation. How do you spec into things and how do you, like, we're going to give you these options, but what do you do with it? Like, I think he emphasized that.

So I'm like, oh, okay, maybe there's going to be some interesting things with character creation in Elwood Scrolls to you. Of course, he's not saying that out loud. But I think you got to be strategic about how you talk about these things, right? It's like, yeah, I'm not going to get a release date out of you. But I want to see what the team's mindset is as you are now in full development of this game. And so a lot of my interview is about that. And it's fascinating because you get an idea of how Bethesda works, how they're thinking about this game.

And you can apply that. You can kind of apply that to Elder School 6th. Now it's not saying that that's exactly how the game's going to be. but, and we're not going to see this game for a very long time, but at least these are the things that they are thinking about. So that was really interesting and talk about, you know, business side of things like, you know, two and a half years, PS5 port. Like, what took so long? Yeah. I don't want to say what took so long, but you know.

You can, though. You can. Yeah. It's like, why now? And it coinciding with the, with this big update and how they deal with community feedback. And that's something else. I like asking people who run live service games,

Starfield's not a live service game, but a game that is so tied to its community. You have a million people asking you a million different things. You have a lot of competing interest and you have a limited scope in terms of what you can do

with all of this information. Like how do you implement that feedback? What direction do you go with it? What things do you actually consider? And a lot of that was, you know, we're not plucking specific things people are asking for, but we're trying to get an idea

of like what's the core problem here and what can we make that kind of addresses all of this in some sort of way and I was like yeah okay that's that's one way of problem solving but yeah damn this we talked a lot of about

a lot of it's up on igan.com right every can go watch it you could watch the interview on IGN's YouTube page you can if you prefer reading there's also a text version of it all on there but yeah it's um it's always fun to talk to people who work on these games at such a high level.

For sure. You do get a lot of insight, even if they're not going to be saying anything that's going to run a headline. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's a technical side of things. It's really interesting. When you're talking about Creation Engine 3,

he was talking a lot about, you know, it's not just how a game looks. He said that a lot of people attribute an engine to its sort of visual style. That's a big part of it, too. You know, every engine has its sort of artistic style. I think, like, with R.E. engine, you could tell that someone looks like a Capcom character. Yeah.

As you probably talked about on Games Daily. Not much longer if DLSS-S-5 gets its way. Listen, man, like I could spot an R-E engine character from a mile away, but I like that about Capcom games. It's identifiable and that art style works. But there's so much more that goes into an engine than just what is on, that what you see in front of you. He emphasized, like, the reason why we have proprietary engine, we stick with creation

is much of like, you know, sometimes it has a as a reputation of being janky. And that's kind of, in a way, just core to Bethes experience. Yeah, not to give them a pass on that because some of that shit really fucking sucks when your game doesn't work or, like, you got physics breaking things.

Like, that stuff can be really annoying. And a lot of the crashes with older games upon launch, that was really annoying too. But he talked about having your own tech also allows you to determine how things in the back end work. And he was talking a lot about how the Engine manages data when you load in and out of spaces.

How does it compile it? How does it manage all those things? And when you are building such a big world, you want to be in control of the tools that you're making. If you're into like the techy, nerdy stuff about that, I think he provides a lot of insight there. It's not going to be the sexiest thing.

If you're itching for more information on Elder Scrolls. But you get an idea of what they're currently doing with the game. It's like they're doing a lot of back-end stuff. They're like designing. armor sets. They're play testing certain versions of the game. And like I think as he said when he was on here, he was like, yeah, we have playable builds of the game.

Yeah. And he said the same thing where it's like, they're at a point where a lot of the test builds that they're putting out are like, they're working and they're poking and prodding a lot of different things. And every day, they're putting out a new build of the game for them to play test that is like, oh, wow, this is like coming along really well. So it sounds like, you know,

they're not running into many problems. with that guard. Of course, like that's what, that's what Todd Howard. Put on a certain helmet, you walk on this one beach, we'll see what happens.

Yeah, but that's, again, with the caveat that, like, these are the things that Todd Howard is willing to say about you. And he's in the studio head.

So, you know, he's going to be protective about the things that, that are shared. But at least you have an idea of where they're at and where they're going.

Hell yeah, Michael. Yeah. Of course, I don't even rats ass about other scrolls. That's why I sat down with Tim Lamb, the lead creative producer for Starfield. Sorry,

Tim, I can never remember your actual thing. For a 20-minute interview, where, of course, I ask, what's going on with Switch 2 version of Starfield? Come on, if we're this far gone. And then is this the last stop for Starfield? Of course, I've been predicting for a while.

As a Starfield fan, that you'd get to PS5 version, put that out game of the year, whatever you want to call it. Complete edition, be done. There's still more. Sorry to spoil your interview, but there's still more Starfield, whether you like it or not. Still watch the interviewer video. I like it a lot. I'll be streaming Starfield this afternoon after the Kind of Funny Podcast. Check it out on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games.

If you're listening or watching later. And of course, no. This is Michael Hine from IGN.com. Go watch his interview with Todd Howard. I'm going to listen on the way home. Oh, nice. What else should you be promoting? What else do you want to say?

Oh, podcast unlocked. The hottest Xbox podcast in the game because Xcast, Tim killed it. Yeah. As he often does. Yeah. So, uh, podcast unlocked every week with, uh, the boy Ryan McCaffrey and the homegirl Miranda Sanchez.

Um, everyone, every put that every Thursday. And of course, all the coverage from the Bethesda trip. and I got a lot of stuff cooking. Yeah. Can't talk about quite yet, but that's always the business, baby. That is the business. Everybody, like I said, you're about to get the interview with Tim Lamb. That will close out this episode of the games cast. But in case you don't need it all the same of thanks for watching.

We're here every weekday. There's going to be a kind of funny podcast in a second. Me streaming Starfield later. And remember, pick up that membership. YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Apple, Spotify, and patreon.com. slash kind of funny. For now, it's time for an interview.

but until next time, it's been my pleasure to serve you. Peace. Hello, Tim. How are you? I'm doing all right. How are you doing, Greg? I'm all right. But I hope you're ready to answer the hard-hitting questions from your Starfield, sicko. How do you feel about that? Are you ready?

I can't wait. I cannot wait. Here's where I want to start. And this is a loaded question. What do you think of the general internet doesn't get about Starfield? Because it's somebody who loves Starfield so much. We're so excited to be here. See all the presentation.

that you've now seen, of course, that we've talked about on the Games Gats before this. I still, when I bring up Starfield, there's always some chucklehead in the chat that wants to laugh at me about it, make fun of all the hours I put into it. What are they missing?

They're missing that energy. Yeah. Do you know what I mean, look, the internet's going to do what the internet does. It's just going to do what it do. It's a big tapestry for you to tell you. tell your own stories.

You can do whatever you want. Yeah. With very broad guidelines. But it's about that, like getting into that world, experiencing that. Do you want to build ships? Do you want to go kill bad guys? Do you want to craft? Do you want to, you know, what do you want to do?

And like, oh, I want to set up an outpost and I'm going to build my ships there and I'm going to set up supply lines. And I'm going to live in this world where it's not necessarily like, you know, full on, full tilt action all of the time. Like, you know what? I just want to go out and I want to have my house by the beach and I'm going to sit here. And like, it has, it has the ability for that,

for that downtime, that cozy game. And I think it's probably, are you not serving like intensity more frequently? So it's like, but as a player directed thing, I think, you know, some players like it for, love it for what it is. in that way. That's me.

You know, I think we launched the game we wanted to launch. Yeah. And I think, but we've made so many updates since then. Some big things coming. Yeah. And I think when you look at all of that together, you know, I don't think we're, we're not trying to change the narrative, but we're just trying to make a better version of Starfield.

We're like, I probably said it before, but it's like, I'm a little envious of players that are just seeing it for the first. time yeah um to see it through that lens with what it's become uh yeah just it's a better version of starfield and that's one of the things i wanted to talk about right when todd was on uh games cast he was could say even less than we could now because of course now we're talking about it we've previewed all the stuff but he mentioned the fact that you know what's coming to starfield is not starfield 2.0 and he said what i found super refreshing of course as a fan was that if you like Starfield before this is more Starfield. This is what you want. My question for you is something

that, you know, Todd's talked about in games cast a couple different times with us is the idea that, you know, 76 Starfield, not necessarily what tried and true Bethesda fans would have wanted or expected. You know, you've won people over, you've lost people, blah, blah, lots. Was there ever a moment after the launch of Starfield where you sat there and were like, let's seriously consider 2.0, whatever that would look like, blowing something up, doing the cyberpunk or No Man Sky or whatever you want to call it up at all. There was never a moment where I thought that.

I mean, because I look at like what it would take, what the lift would be. Yeah. There's a lot of, it was like one of our biggest launches. It was one of our cleanest launches. It was like there's so many good things about it. Yeah. That it's like we have a dedicated player base.

I think we're still in the, top 10 on games past hours played. Like, there's people who love it. Oh, yeah. But it's like, you know, so by the way, thank you. The problem. Well, thank you. I mean, all the jokes aside, no, thank you for the story.

I mean, I think there's things that resonate and you want to continue to, you want to listen and you want to push those things that resonate sort of both ways. Like, hey, you know, I think it would be great if Starfield did this. And I was like, can we do that? Can we do that? Yeah. You know, and it's like, oh, yeah, we totally do that. Oh, I did it yesterday.

Oh, let's, you know, no, like, yeah, I mean, there's the whole, the whole gamut of those things. Some things, you know, as it comes to something like free lanes and cruising to the, to the space. Yeah. Between the planet's, like, much bigger than some of the smaller things we did. Probably things I haven't even mentioned yet. Like, there was a request for, like, I always want to see a camera play when I land on a planet. Yeah. Haven't showed that, but there's now a switch in the gameplay options where you can switch that.

and so every time you land. But like, it's like, to me, like, why would you want that? It was like, it doesn't matter. We can do it. Go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, you know, you want to say yes where you have the bandwidth to say yes, as much as you possibly can.

Well, I think that's one of the refreshing things I've always talked about with the game is how what I love about Starfield isn't going to be what somebody else loved about Starfield, isn't going to be the experience they had. You know, Andy O'Fron and my team always talks about getting so lost in shipbuilding, which I just never did because I just don't have that mindset, right? I found the mantis ship and I'm like, I am the mantis. And that's what I'll do until I got my starboard ship. And then I was like, this is who I am.

And that is all part of my narrative for my character, which is what the game is to me. But again, for something like, Andy, like, you blew my mind in there of like, I think my biggest complaint with Starfield ever is just not having enough storage capacity on my ship. But then when you were talking about outposts and now the fact, all right, cool, there's now basically a fully outfitted outposts, you just put down. And you have it and you have it. And then you showed the storage boxes being linked. And then you're showing the database of how easy those. I'm like,

is it time for my ship? Like literally I'm like, does Becky Lynch, my character finally need to lay down roots? Does she need to have a home base somewhere, which this asteroid, this asteroid will look pretty promisingly. But do I make that and then use the ship just to be a ship,

which I have not done? I've always felt like such a nomad in this game roaming the galaxy with Andrage and my wife by my side. You know what I mean? Believe it or not, I do know what you mean. I know you know what I mean because I know you were putting Andrage over in your presentation too, which I really appreciated.

But that's like so both, I think, inspiring, interesting, entertaining when you talk about all the different directions somebody can go with your game. But that I think for so many people, that was what was off putting them in Starfield, is that it was such a blank piece of paper and it was shipbuilding, it was base building,

it was this, and it was that. when you looked at player feedback and what you wanted to make and what you wanted to improve going forward with it, was it numbers based of what you saw people doing with all those game pass hours and what you saw them talking about on Reddits? Or was it like you knew these are the pillars we need to strengthen what we want to get into? I mean, I think we have like multiple vectors for sort of like the intake of that information, whether it's Reddit or Discord or whatever. So it's like you hear that. And like internally, like if you can imagine like anything that you, you know, you heard almost anything that you heard on the internet there was probably someone in the studio

was like hey uh by the way you know i want to do this thing or i think this is the this is the place where there's something i want to do uh and like i always think of us as our harshest critics uh you know and that makes us great at what we do we're like we want to improve this we want to refine this we want to do this with it yeah um it's interesting to hear you uh talk about the ship builder because i feel like i was the the same way yeah and that similar story similar arc oh i got the i got the razor leaf great or no rachel i got the mantiship yeah yeah razor crest razor crest no i think that's mandoloreen is oh that it's a mantiship i'm with you it was my batmobile uh so you know i had that but then it was like well i want something else yeah

whatever it is that I want, I want to do this thing. But, like, you know, that's the thing that's great about our games is you have that, like, if, and this is where it comes back, I think, to your question, where it's, like, about the sort of the balance. And the tricky part is always tell me where to go, tell me what to do. Yeah. But, like, how much of that is, like, oh, I'm going to the dot over there. And when I get to the dot. It's brain dead. I go to the flashing thing.

I do the flashing thing. Give them the Mcuff and kill the person and then out of the flash thing. Click, click, click, click. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and it's like, there's always a balance. there. Like you want it to be interesting. In a lot of ways, you want to, you want to slow it down or spread it out or have interesting pivots going throughout that. Yeah. And I think

players and different players have different internal clocks for that. Like, nope, that was the right amount for me. Yeah. This is the speed I want to go. And like, that doesn't resonate with everyone, but it was very much in the, in the spirit of the game we wanted to make. Hell yeah. You talking about different players and different things. Of course, one of the big things here jumping to PlayStation 5. Brand new audience. And like you said, they're lucky if they get to jump in now have all these bells, whistles, all the learnings and updates and passages there. Question that was asked in our Q&A, but I wanted to bring to the table, especially for the audience, is, is this you being done? Do you feel like you're closing? Here it is. It's PlayStation 5.

It's free lanes. It's everything that's come before it. It's the Terran Armada. We are putting it out. And that's the game of the year edition. It's over thing. I don't think we're done. Okay. We're not going to talk about. Fair. No, no, I told me. I'm not trying to get you.

But we're not. Awesome. Look, there's a, we talked about the tapestry. There's still lots of things that the team would be interesting in pursuing and lore. So it's like, oh, what do we want to do? What's interesting about Starfield? What haven't we explored? What excites us?

Sure. So there's, I think there's still things we want to move towards. Okay. But no, not done. I am excited for the PlayStation launch. I'm excited for players. to get that first of the new,

the best new version of it. Yeah. Like I can't wait to see what the feedback is now. Yeah. I'm excited for that. I'm excited for the influx of players. I'm excited for it to,

yeah, hopefully give you guys a whole bunch of new ideas. But then also, you know, such a, the presentation we got today was so creations based. And, you know, to really see what so many people are doing,

so many of those experiences I've had out there downloading something from the creation space and having it, you know, be a better starboard suit, you know what I mean, to be able to run up there to run these quests to have that stuff. Like, have you been, I don't know, surprised this is the right word, but I guess, yeah, what's still surprised with the feedback and support you've gotten for Starfield creations?

Because I mean, like, I know Bethesda is so linked to the creation suite, but the way, see, I'm spoiled or maybe ignorant where being a console pleaded for so long, this is my first real go with Bethesda creations. I had heard about them, but by the time they came to Fallout 4 on PlayStation, I was like, okay, I've moved on to other games, I'm not doing it. So to be wrapped up in it

and always have something new, always have new things. It's a magical new world, right? No, like, I think there's, from all manner, great to small, like there's something in there. Yeah. You know, like, oh, there's a funny helmet. I love funny helmets.

Do you know what I mean? Like, totally. There's a big new thing with a faction and it does this and like there's new ship parts and there's new weapons. And like, there's, in the way that, like, there's a lot to explore in the game. There's a lot, like, we can, there's no end to the desire for something new. Yeah.

And I think, you know, I love the creators in that, like, they're breathing life. They have a passion. They're picking up part of the passion that we have internally for it. And they're carrying them. They're still saying, like, look, there's something exciting here. Or, hey, here's a little thing I made, might, you might think. it's fun yeah go have a ball yeah you know what i mean like and like that that whole the whole gamut of those things like i'm not i'm not surprised like excited yeah but like every time you know like good on them

yeah you know like if you made something uh and it and it was like your passion and we had this platform that that allowed you to to springboard into that and like come on you know it's awesome Do you ever see them beat you to the punch what you wanted to do, what you were trying to do? There are times where it's like I've seen creations and it's like, oh, you know what I mean? Right. Well, because it is one of those things where it's like you don't want to be like, oh, they're just doing that thing. Yeah, yeah. Do you know what I mean?

So it's like, but you want to everything has to have its space to breathe and you want to give it as much space as possible. You know, there are places, you know, for every one of them that would. be that might fall into that bucket there's probably dozens that are like these things support each other or they synergize in a way where it's like oh we did this thing they did that thing and like now they're they're systemically like intertwined in a way that's positive versus like oh well we didn't do that because this person did it or vice version okay uh i know that you just announced the PlayStation 5 version so now i will kick off the next uh as long as it takes what about a Switch 2 version. All right. I got Todd Howard showing up during this partner direct coming out

with all these Bethesda games coming to the Switch 2. No Starfield, but then you go, okay, they got to be play. They do PlayStation. How we feel about Switch 2? We always want to have as many players as we can, but we're not really talking about plans for the Switch 2. Keep it in the visor. Think about it, all right? Because people would like that, you know, all they go, ready to go. Of course, with my R.O. OG ally Xbox. I have it all the time as well. With Xbox play anywhere, of course,

that's where my saves are tied up. I digress. I'm so excited you guys are doing this. Again, like we joked about it a little bit earlier, but thank you for continuing to support this game, because I love it so much. Thank you. No, no, and I say it in that way,

because I think sometimes when I think about Starfield, it's like I'm seeing through the Matrix. Yeah. Right? And it's like, I understand a lot. I've played a lot of Stargirl. I mean, a lot.

So talk to me about that, though. Because you mentioned in there, of course, another, I think, benefit of some of the updates you're bringing here, right? All right, cool, we have all these powers. But if you really wanted to maximize it, you had to go unity, unity, unity. Now you guys are bringing me where I can go and use my Stardust to go in there, get them that way, up level that. Well, for you in Starfield, and I know you're creating it, but you're also playing it,

how do you view your character? Do you have the one character? and is that the narrative and is the narrative you're just running the unity? Or have you made connections and you're like, I care about Barrett, so I don't want to leave him behind and so on so forth. I think I always saw it as an opportunity to explore something different every time. So like there was a point where I really like the hunter, something about his voice, like that guy's a badass.

Yeah, right? And then like I was really like, I was like, you know, like probably like the first couple times through. I was like, oh, the emissary, he's the guy. good guy. I want to be the good guy. But then at some point, like, I'm just going to, what's different? I want to try something different. Yeah. And you can, you know, so you do that. And it was like, it was always the freshness. Like, oh, I have a weapon skill. I want to level up. Where are I going to go? I'm going to go to go to the lock because there's like a hundred creatures in there to shoot. Yeah. So you start going, there's this sort of like metagame of like, what is the best way of all of the

knowledge that I have, like, down to, like, microscopic levels of, like, oh, I'm going to do here because I know that'll be fast. Yeah. Or I'm going to do that because that's the thing I'm trying to achieve. And, like, you end up getting this, like, you know, like, seeing through the matrix of, like, how am I going to, how am I going to get this done or how am I going to do this? See, I love that that this game allows that. Because you and I are so similar, but so different where it's like, it's a motion that

pulls me through the unity, right? Like, it was that I couldn't save Andrea just, so I'm going to go back and save her. And then I told her that I was Starboarded. She had a bad reaction to it. I'm like, this will not stand. I'm going to go. And I'm like, I was doing this super villain thing on these playthrus of going and going. And I finally get her and we're falling in love.

And we would eventually be married in this playthrough. But at some point, the Starborn show up and they put it together. They go, wait, are you reliving your old life? Why? And I'm like, it's crazy. The game just realized that. And now I'm having this conversation with her about it. I don't want to spoil too much even about like base level.

But there are, there's the first. time you experience, I'll say, and it sounds like you know, some of the special things that happen there where you're like, this is crazy. Yeah, yeah. This is just really crazy. But then it's that thing where it's like now that I'm happy and now that I'm content, I still have that like itch at the back of like, but what if I read it again? What is this really the life I want Becky to lead?

She's so beaten by this adventure and unknown that she wants to keep rolling. It's like when you were like, oh, I'm going to have this house and like very great aspirational item. And it was like, everybody wants it. Everybody wants it. But like, you don't have to stop with one, right? That's the other thing, too. Like, look, one of the other things that I didn't mention is like photo mode.

Yeah. Where, and this is a carryover from 76 where it's like the photos you take in photo mode become load screens. Yeah. So to me, they're like postcards to myself in a way when they show up on a load screen and I smile. So we added, we did add a few more poses for vehicles. for the Rev 8. So you can do like wacky poses with your Rev 8 in photo mode. And it's like I chuckle. You know, because it's like that postcard from, you know, Tim, how many. A different thing. Yeah. Yeah. When you were so like, oh, yeah. Oh, that's right. I used to hang out with Andréasian did that.

And now it's like, I'm, you know, I'm isolationist. I'm a loner. And I can't think about that too. I'm like, what if I did that? What if it was just a Voscar? What if I brought there? That was one of those times where I think Todd came down and he looked at and he was like, why do you take that? And I was like, because it's awesome. do you know what I mean? I was like, you've never done that? I was like, I mean, even melee where it was like, I think as my

my starborn powers rose. Yeah. I was like, how do I want to play? I was like, I'm not solely melee. Yeah. But you mentioned going invisible slow-mo, katana. I was like, hey, that sounds cool.

I will definitely go in, phase time, drop into a middle of a group of spacers. Yeah. And then like, you know, pistol, pistol, pistol, stab, stab.

Yeah, and just, like, wipe them out and just feel like, I mean, I'm a starborn powerhouse, you know,

and there's something about that that it's like, that it, you know, and how it scales. And like, you know, if I,

if I really want to challenge, I will push the difficulty sliders up. So it's like, and then sometimes, depending on what I'm trying to do, I'll push them down. Yep. And that's really,

I want to go sell stuff, especially the legal stuff. Like, give them all the credit. Give them all the credit. XP con here. I mean, I'll admit it,

but I have done the, like, oh, I don't feel like running back to my ship and I'll go in and just like, give me, give me it. No, we're uncovered.

Let's go, everything in. But it was one of those things where it was like, do I, do I want to experience the story? And I'm just, I'm just trying to see that.

I just want to see it right now. I want to see every version of that. And so, like, I go fast that way, where it's like, I really want to push it the other way because, like, I think I think I'm a badass.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let's see. find out. So you push it up there. And it's usually what I find is like when you switch between those two things, like you forget that you've done it. Yeah. And you run in and you drop down into that group of spacers.

And you're like, you're like, pistol, pistol, pistol, stab, dead. And you're like, ooh, I should have been paying more attention to my health. But I got sort of used to playing this other way. I think as it comes back to your question about the, I've started multiple characters. Yeah. You know, sort of trying to find, like, I was like Tim's optimal strategy. Yeah. And I think there's like different versions of that.

But my main character was always, he was always the hunter. He was always like, it's about power and the meta figuring out how to get more power as fast as possible. And I don't know, you know, like, is it okay to be the villain? I don't know. It feels good. It feels good in that case. Like, that's my guy. Tim?

Love it. You've made a hell of a game. Thank you so much for Starfield. Thank you for playing. Of course, everybody, April 7th, comes as a PlayStation, but so does all the other bells and whistles. Of course, the Tracker's Alliance is already out right now.

As you see this, you can go play the extra missions there. And I'm sure I've already talked about that on the Gamescast with Michael Hyam. And we're going to go back to that right now.