Please Make Video Games Movies Stop
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Up to level three now. Even though I'm familiar with Bethesda games, it's still quite a learning curve. Slowly starting to figure things out.

I miss the days of strategy guides.
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I've never been a strategy guide person. Rarely ever even read the manuals that used to come with games. I'm more of a just pick it up and play and figure it out as you go gamer player.
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I haven't played the game yet, but IGN has pretty good guides most of the time. Link to guide.

I do miss buying a strategy guide and sharing the book with all my friends.
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can't wait to play this after football season

the “Hours Without Incident” sign on a Cydonia will reset if you cause a… “incident”

love the details in this game #Starfield pic.twitter.com/lEiHSbjoja

— Cade Onder (@Cade_Onder) September 2, 2023

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I think I'm up to Level 7 now, and am finally starting to figure shit out to the point where I almost know what I'm doing. While I don't think this will reach the levels of Skyrim or Witcher, it's definitely got its hooks in me now. I wouldn't call it "Skyrim in Space"; it's more like somebody threw Fallout and Mass Effect in a blender with a dash of Freelancer. But that's cool, because I really enjoyed all those games and I'm digging this one. Haven't encountered any glitches yet, either.

That said, this game has one really annoying flaw - the map. It does not display specific locations, so if you are unfamiliar with a settlement, good luck finding the merchants you'll need to unload accumulated items, or even exits to get to quest markers beyond town limits. Took me about ten minutes to find the fucking gate to leave the settlement during the last quest I completed. It is annoying as hell, especially if you're carrying too much stuff; not only can you not fast travel, but moving normally will actually damage your health. It seems like upgrading the ship is a priority, so I'm usually hauling around too stuff that I need to sell. Having followers negates this somewhat, but of course they are no help in finding locations, and mindlessly follow you around while you look for shit in locations they obviously should be familiar with. But the gameplay and story are good enough make up for it.

Getting better with the space travel/combat, but it is still way too clunky. The interface in Freelancer was so much better, and I was playing that 20 years ago.

But despite the warts, overall I'm really enjoying it.
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Thank God today is the day. Fuck them very much for charging $35 for people with FOMO to play 5 days early, but my patience has paid off.
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You mean you don't see the value in downloading the soundtrack? :-)

Good on you. I am impatient by nature, and since I'd already dropped two grand on a new rig to be able to play the goddamn thing, I figured what was another $35?

As for the game itself, I think I'm up to Level 17 now. Several aspects are still pretty much incomprehensible to me (like shipbuilding, which I have dabbled in, and creating outposts, which I haven't even attempted yet), but right now I'm focused on getting my piloting skills up to the highest level so I can get a Level 3 ship, and earning the credits necessary to buy said Level 3 ship. I finally got a decent low level ship for combat, but it has shit for storage, seems incapable of accepting any storage upgrades, and that is a huge pain in the ass. One thing that is now better is that I realized that I could use the arrow keys to more quickly and efficiently allocate ship power, which is a major improvement over using the assigned keys.

It's a slog, but it's a fun slog. Mostly. Oh, another thing about this game that sucks - the lockpicking. Far more annoying than Skyrim or Fallout, or Mass Effect for that matter. That will probably be the next thing I try to level up, which detracts from what I really want to level up, which is being able to upgrade stuff. Definitely a long haul game.
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Thanks for your impressions. I'm jonesing.
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I would definitely recommend starting with a character class that gives you an immediate boost to piloting. That's a big deal. I added some combat skills early on that don't seem to be all that necessary or useful, since you start to pick up fairly powerful weapons from fallen foes early on. Kind of wish I'd spent those points elsewhere now.
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Free on XBox Gamepass. May give it a whirl.
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Would be nice if these companies would stop obsessing over making the world's as 'big' as possible when they subsequently can't fill it with anything interesting. Once read the criticism 'the vastness of the ocean with the shallowness of a puddle' and it's perfectly applicable to all these overly ambitious shitfests. Cyberpunk. No Mans Sky. Apparently this game. There's nothing wrong with being compact.
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I think RDR2 managed to pull off the vastness while making the world rich with content and character.

GTA V pulled it off. But their sandbox seemed big in 2013 and feels quite small in 2023.

But yeah....not everyone is Rockstar.
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Witcher 3 did it as well. But agree that not many pull it off anymore. Bethesda has been going downhill for a long time and it’s sad.
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I'll go back and reiterate, Bethesda games have always been about the modding community adding in 99.9% of the content. This seems far less buggy than their previous titles. This and all the other Bethesda specific games have been about building a sandbox with assetts and letting the community add that in. The last game I played like this with great content was Mass Effect 3, this isn't that at all.
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