This **MIGHT** Be The Game We've Been Looking For

[ottarrus]

Like many of you, perhaps most of you, I'm a computer game geek. Been playing for quite a few years and one thing I've literally always wanted in a computer RPG is a 'Traveller-style' game with all the elements... discovery, trade and commerce, combat, ship upgrades, a strong plotline, all the bells and whistles.
A whole bunch of games over the years have come close. They're good at one thing and not another. I think the Mass Effect franchise has come closest, but there have been other good and worthy attempts.

But at this point, I'm thinking BethSoft's 'Starfield' may actually hit the dinger.

Assuming that the game actually plays anywhere near as good as it looks in the hype vids, we might just have the game we've all been looking for. Obviously, there is a metric eff-ton of caveats to that. Caveats like:
- Turd Howard isn't lying to us... again.
- It doesn't take a Fugaku to run [Fugaku is the world's most powerful supercomputer, three times faster than the US Summit machine]
- It doesn't hit the street with a thousand and one bugs
- It isn't microtransaction hell
- It doesn't require multiplayer
- und so weiter

Now, I'm like a lot of you. I'm fully aware that the triple-A game company market has spent 10 years feeding us all a dung-covered Wet Willie and have only lately come to realize just how pissed off we are all getting. On general principles, I don't trust a corporation as far as I can throw one and video game companies even less. At this stage of the game, I'm at the trust but verify level. But IF [and that's a mighty big 'if'] Starfield works out, it could be a real game changer in the SciFi game genre.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I'm looking forward to giving it a go,

 

[Reynard]

I always treated Fallout as if it were Traveller.

 

[Lurking Grue]

I'm looking forward to Starfield as well. However, I have very little confidence in Bethesda, so I am only cautiously optimistic about it and will have to see it in action before buying it. Todd "Would I Lie to You" Howard even name dropped Traveller in a recent Starfield preview/interview, saying he had played Traveller back in the day and had wanted to make a Traveller-like game ever since. To be honest, for some reason, I believe him. At least I don't think this was a blatant lie, as (unfortunately) I don't think Traveller has that much pull in video game crowds to make it worth just name dropping it to grab Joe Average's attention. So, there is a sliver of hope that Starfield *might* actually be good and *might* even have Traveller-like elements in it. We'll have to wait and see. (Hope for the best, fear for the worst...)

As to the few items otarrus mentioned above, I'm afraid it is going to have loads of bugs at launch (it is a Bethesda game after all - "the modders will fix it"TM), but it shouldn't have any microtransaction garbage nor require multiplayer (they've said it is a single-player game). It might well require a powerful PC to run with all the bells and whistles on, but I'm betting even a (near) potato PC can run it on minimum settings (they will want to maximize the customer base).