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What if Starfield is a code name?

CerebralHawk

Active Member
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172
We know Starfield is the next game from Bethesda Game Studios, the flagship studio under Zenimax helmed by Todd Howard, but, what do we really know about it? We've seen a logo. I think Howard has said that it will be set in space, though that may just be implicit based on the name and logo.

Bethesda Game Studios' first new IP since they 'hit it big' with Morrowind was Fallout 3 in 2008, and that came with a legion of existing fans to support it, and a ton of existing lore to draw upon. However, they abandoned much of the game's lore, which was established on the west coast of the United States, and made their own story in their stomping grounds just outside of Washington DC, on the east coast. Longtime fans recognized several in-universe brands and factions such as Vault-Tec, Nuka Cola, and the Brotherhood of Steel, but being that cross-country communication did not really exist, Bethesda was clear to write their own interpretations, for example the Brotherhood of Steel being much more benign than in previous iterations (though this was explained, and a rebel offshoot, the Outcasts, were maintaining the tenets established in the older games).

That's all not to say that Bethesda won't create an all-new IP with Starfield, but creating a new IP in space means inventing entire worlds, each with their own cities, races and species, flora and fauna, rules and law, etc. What if they could conveniently skip all that and just focus on making a great game? Thus, I present the theory that Starfield may just be a code name... for a Star Trek or Star Wars game. Consider that making a game set in either of these franchises¹ would not only give Bethesda a plethora of content to draw from, but also a ready batch of fans who have been begging for Bethesda to make a game set in their Star universe of choice. Also note, I began playing with this theory last week, before the Indiana Jones announcement, wherein a Zenimax subsidiary would make an Indiana Jones video game with Todd Howard executive producing. (Todd Howard is a huge Indiana Jones fan.) Also consider that during Skyrim's development, HBO offered Bethesda the chance to make a Game of Thrones game. It would have been easy, at that point, to drop what they were doing with Skyrim into Westeros, but they had already built up the lore, and didn't want to do both, so they forged ahead with Skyrim.

The bar for Star Wars games is very low. Only a few good games have been set in the galaxy far, far away, and only one can really be claimed to be great, and that's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which was set thousands of years before the birth of Anakin Skywalker (later known as Darth Vader), so it was a wholly separate experience from the films. The merely good games include Dark Forces, Force Unleashed and Jedi: Fallen Order. With Star Trek, it's much lower. The original 1966 series, the much-loved The Next Generation, and the fan favorite Deep Space Nine all failed to produce memorable games, the most notable by far being the bridge simulator, a QuickTime-based interactive movie where you can walk around the Enterprise-D from The Next Generation. It wasn't even a game. It was a virtual tour of the sets. The first really good Star Trek game came from Voyager, which was hated by fans for a myriad of reasons, including the captain's refusal to solve the show's primary problem (they were stuck so far from home it would take 75 years at maximum warp to return, and she frequently passed up chances to speed up the journey or to outright jump home) and the deflector dish (a technology to push asteroids and space debris out of the ship's path) as a catch-all deus ex machina. Elite Force used the Quake III engine to make a surprisingly good first-person shooter in the Star Trek universe. Even some of the biggest Voyager haters enjoyed it, because regardless of what that series did wrong, the game was well-made and fun. Sadly, there hasn't been any great Star Trek games, only one that was pretty good, and it was mostly good for the same reason Star Wars: Dark Forces was good: it was based upon an existing popular game (Dark Forces was based on DOOM), so that game had already had most of the bugs ironed out, it was just a matter of re-skinning it to the fictional universe and adding sound effects.

So it wouldn't be hard for Bethesda to make a great Star Wars game, or even a decent Star Trek game, and one would be widely welcomed by their respective communities, and even the other (as there is great crossover between the fandoms, not the rivalry one might expect). Bethesda would have dozens of ready-made worlds and races, and centuries (in Star Trek's case) or millennia (in Star Wars' case) of lore to build upon. As was evident in series such as The Mandalorian (Star Wars series about a member of the bounty hunter race/faction finding a child of a nearly extinct race and protecting it) or Star Trek Discovery, series not centered around the established backbone of the franchises (the Skywalker saga in Star Wars and the voyages of the USS Enterprise family of starships in Star Trek) have a high or in some cases higher chance of success than their mainline counterparts — just look at the cancelled Star Trek: Enterprise or the ill-received Star Wars sequel trilogy. A Bethesda game set in Star Wars centuries after the death of Luke Skywalker, in which the Skywalker saga is all but legend, or a Bethesda game set during any time in the Star Trek universe where a previously unknown ship becomes important somehow (kind of the setup of Star Trek: Discovery, actually).

Imagine — and this isn't even limited to Starfield being a code name — a Bethesda character creator where you create not one character, but a crew of characters, and even choose the design (from a few presets) and name of your ship. Cyberpunk 2077's 5–6 hour prologue will be nothing compared to how long Elder Scrolls and Fallout veterans spend customizing their crew! And honestly, given that possibility, I'd rather choose from races I know, whether it's Klingons and Vulcans, or droids and Wookiees, than having to re-learn a whole new universe of races and their strengths and weaknesses.


¹ Correction; thanks msalaba. I erroneously put factions when I meant franchises. I blame a lack of coffee!
 
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I do not want starfield to be a Star Trek or Star Wars game absolutely I will not buy it if it’s either of them. Now for the record I’m a big fan of both franchises and what they have done in the past , but what I want is a 100% Bethesda (aka Todd Howard ) new game. The reason for this is that both of those series come with tons of back lore and fans who will cry complain and threaten others if it’s not 100% what they want or expect from the game.

what I want is a game that’s has no preconceptions besides the fact that it takes place in space and is made by Bethesda ( not Zeni max not Bethesda Austin not another dev in their line up ) I know being a Bethesda game people will say it’s fallout in space or Skyrim on the moon , but I don’t care I want a game that will entertain me by allowing me to do what I want not what is pre determined by franchise lore or what fans what.

I would not doubt it could be as you say they tend to use code names for games and after the Indiana Jones announcement blew me away same with EA loosing exclusivity on Star Wars I mean EA is the freaking worst with their monetizing everything under the sun and bad customer relations. And I will buy Indiana Jones for sure I’m a fan and hope it’s machine games best game ever I mean if it’s fighting cotton-headed ninny-muggins they are the people for that game.

either way I just hope they are getting their house in order with all the rumors of new animation designed by new people and having their engine reworked by in-house and external teams to get it ready for the future it seems they are making the right moves now we just hope it pays off.
 
I do like the theory speculation though as with Bethesda not showing their hands till close to release or at least not like cyberpunk 2077 with 7 year advanced notice theory is sometimes all we have with them.
 
No way in hell. There's many reasons and I don't care about going through all of them and when I do people think I'm an asshole so I'll keep it short. Your idea that not creating their own planets and rules and stories would be something Bethesda sees as a positive is ridiculous. That's the entire point of making Elder Scrolls and not buy a D&D liscence. These guys are basically all trying to be the Dungeon Masters of their RPG and are transfering that attitude to their game making. You know all of those times where people lose their minds because they are "breaking cannon" because they contradict something the original falout said? From the point of view of Bethesda, it's the story they wanted to tell. You know why they bought the Fallout franchise and then moved as far away from where previous games were? It's because they didn't want to talk about what happened to Vault 13 or the Hub 20 years later, they want to tell their own stories. If they didn't want to create new worlds, all of the elder scrolls would have been in the same location. For people like us, creating IS the point. Having the Star trek or Star Wars brand name attached is not a positive, it's a shackle and a restriction.

Also it would mean them not owning the IP they work on, I don't think they were much interested in that approach with the money they make by being sole owner of their big franchises.
 
Grammar police! I think you meant franchises [instead of factions]...
Thanks! Fixed.

[I want it to be an original IP because] both [Star Trek and Star Wars] come with tons of back lore and fans who will cry complain and threaten others if it’s not 100% what they want or expect from the game.
Too true...

From the point of view of Bethesda, it's the story they wanted to tell. You know why they bought the Fallout franchise and then moved as far away from where previous games were? It's because they didn't want to talk about what happened to Vault 13 or the Hub 20 years later, they want to tell their own stories. If they didn't want to create new worlds, all of the elder scrolls would have been in the same location. For people like us, creating IS the point. Having the Star trek or Star Wars brand name attached is not a positive, it's a shackle and a restriction.
Well, you've pretty much convinced me here. I still think it could be a code name, but you've given me a solid reason to believe it will be its own thing.
 
it is another fallout, it is the enclave deep space mission.
 
Half of me want to start screaming at you and call you a stupid idiot... but the other 50% is so freaking scared your are right :shok1
 
Half of me want to start screaming at you and call you a stupid idiot... but the other 50% is so freaking scared your are right :shok1
I will be proven right or wrong one day till then I stand by my take on it.
 
I’m fine with what ever it is as long as it’s not fallout 4 in space, a multiplayer game, or Star Trek or Star Wars, that’s about my only concerns about it. If it’s secretly fallout 5 enclave deep space something I’m cool with that to as long as I can play it how I want, and be a chaotic neutral person who may kill an npc for talking to them or may blow up an entire place cause I’m bored Or save the universe cause it seems fun.

i recently drugged mama murphy cause she annoyed me till she died then put her in a cage 10 feet above sanctuary and then punched jun long cause he kept standing under her crying like a baby. Nothing like being a physopath who does stuff to entertain them selfs.
 
Basicaly they pitched a proposal for a game that was accepted in 2006.

since then the only thing they have said about it boiled down to them talking about how limiting it was dealing with a company that was protective of its IP, then later returned its license at some point because according to both Todd and Pete what Starfield is is a original iP They developed. There was a later comment that Microsoft was very thorough about verifying and clarifying what rights they ( ZeniMax ) had, what IP s they had licensed, what rights had lapsed which included, what rights had lapsed, expired or been revoked, and that they wanted any and third party IPs to be returned because of potential issues (so no squatting on rights) while any new property’s have to be vetted by Microsoft. Also any behind a part of Microsoft, they now have to Fully and publicly disclose any and all relevant information. And Starfield beimg a new ip or a license owned and controlled by a third party is relevant information.

Starfield is still referred to as a new original ip owned by Bethesda. We’re past the point where despite Microsoft not yet actually owning Bethesda, that anyone can pull a head fake on the subject Without serious repercusions from stock owners, includuing a vocal and active subset of Microsoft stockholders who want Microsoft out of what they see as illegal gambling in greral, and videogaming specifically.
 
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Basicaly they pitched a proposal for a game that was accepted in 2006.

since then the only thing they have said about it boiled down to them talking about how limiting it was dealing with a company that was protective of its IP, then later returned its license at some point because according to both Todd and Pete what Starfield is is a original iP They developed. There was a later comment that Microsoft was very thorough about verifying and clarifying what rights they ( ZeniMax ) had, what IP s they had licensed, what rights had lapsed which included, what rights had lapsed, expired or been revoked, and that they wanted any and third party IPs to be returned because of potential issues (so no squatting on rights) while any new property’s have to be vetted by Microsoft. Also any behind a part of Microsoft, they now have to Fully and publicly disclose any and all relevant information. And Starfield beimg a new ip or a license owned and controlled by a third party is relevant information.

Starfield is still referred to as a new original ip owned by Bethesda. We’re past the point where despite Microsoft not yet actually owning Bethesda, that anyone can pull a head fake on the subject Without serious repercusions from stock owners, includuing a vocal and active subset of Microsoft stockholders who want Microsoft out of what they see as illegal gambling in greral, and videogaming specifically.
Who is they do you mean Lucas games aka Disney ? Or do you mean Bethesda pitched a game to a 3rd party for a space game and then the said 3rd party got feed up with Bethesda and pulled their rights regarding that IP ?

either way I could see Zenimax as being a pain in the ass to deal with cause of their slow development and their greed that was going around the last ten years and Robert A. Altman their ceo pushing that greed to all times high.
 
I will never understand people like you.

Zenimax? Greedy? Are you high? [...]

The made the first Elder Scrolls, Arena, in 1994. We're waiting for Elder scrolls 6. Greedy? Get real.
Okay, hold up. You make some solid points I cut out, not because they weren't great points — they are — but to address this point here.

Skyrim came out in 2011, almost ten years ago. Since then, the community has fixed thousands of mistakes with it, very few if any of which have been accepted by Bethesda and put into the main game via its numerous patches, many of which only exist to make way for Creation Club content, but are bona fide updates completely capable of carrying bug fixes. (Note that I can't name any of these bug fixes. I fully admit, in the name of honesty and good-faith arguing, that I'm taking the Unofficial Skyrim Patch team at their words that they fixed a bunch of stuff.) And five or six years after Skyrim came out, they ported it to ARM and released it on the Nintendo Switch, with few if any of those fixes, and the inability to use mods.

But wait, it gets better. Since the Switch is just a retooled 2014 Nvidia Shield tablet with custom controllers and a dock, Skyrim could, in theory, run on your phone, especially if it's an iPhone, but also most flagship Android phones as well. Instead of releasing the years-old game on phones at a fair price, they only released the ARM port on the Switch, for $60. Mobile users instead got the pay-to-win clustertruck known as The Elder Scrolls: Blades.

Do we even have to get into Fallout 76? Without even attacking the content of the game, we can point to how Bethesda revoked paying customers' access to the game because they were found to be in possession of hacked items. That might sound like a fair play, but since the community would set up trading posts outside Vault 76 where more experienced players could dump excess caps and ammo, and higher level gear, Bethesda wasn't only banning hackers, they were banning honest players who didn't know hacked gear from vanilla legendary items. The only way to get back into the game was to buy a whole new copy of it, and of course then you had to start over. Then there's the quality of the bag they advertised as canvas but offered as nylon instead, or the low quality of the "Nuka Dark" rum.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, despite having already mentioned it in passing: the whole Creation Club and paid mods, and the paid mods initiative that preceded it. Creation Club is a good idea in theory, getting mods onto PS4 and in some cases Xbox (as in, free mods wouldn't have gotten in), despite Sony's limitations on mods, and getting modders paid. But a lot of Creation Club content is just copies of stuff on Nexus. Honestly a lot of that stuff should have just been free with in-game unlocks. Especially the copied stuff. I'm pretty sure the backpacks Creation was a free mod first. And a lot of the "stuff from previous Elder Scrolls games" was previously free mods, if not all of it.

I don't know what you don't understand about the person you quoted, or what separates them from me, but let me explain where I'm coming from. I just remember when buying a game meant you got the whole game. I'm not saying you're a kid or trying to be condescending about age. You could be my age or older. It's just that I value that aspect of classic gaming more than, say, those who see Bethesda's direction as a natural evolution of a good gaming company. And you're right that Bethesda is not as bad as Ubisoft. They aren't as bad as some, but they're also worse than others. None I care to name and hold up on a higher mantle than Bethesda specifically, but rather, I think Bethesda could do better. I understand people who say they have gotten greedy. They don't need to do everything imaginably bad to do one or two things bad.

What would I fix and how? Instead of the Creation Club, I'd find a way to roll the costs of the mods into the cost of the game. Those who bought digital copies of the game (which cannot be sold or transferred; this includes all PC gamers) would get all the content for free, provided they owned the base game and all the DLC. Those who had physical copies would be allowed to purchase a digital license that would include all past and future Creations. And no part of it would ever be downloaded without the user's permission (I believe this was more of a console thing). For the ARM port of Skyrim, they should have just sold that on iOS and Android for $10 or $15. Sure, it's cheaper than the Switch version (itself overpriced), but generally, phones are one-user devices. A game only I can play should be cheaper than one I can share with friends and resell at GameStop. Also, mods should be possible, even on iOS. The bag/rum issues should never have happened; they could have simply offered the product they were advertising. And banning a player from a game should include a refund. If you don't want them off the game enough to give them their money back, you don't want them off the game bad enough. Or hey, when they log on, show them that one of their items is hacked and tell them it's being taken away and why. Then it's not an issue and the player is educated rather than just wronged. I'm not going to say The Elder Scrolls: Blades shouldn't exist, but if it released alongside Skyrim for phones, it would be a heck of a lot less disingenuous.

I like Bethesda, and Todd Howard, as much as the next guy, but I won't turn a blind eye to their mistakes and shortcomings. How can they possibly hope to improve if their fans won't call them out when they screw up? It's on them to look past those who see no wrong and instead look to those who hold them to a higher standard, if they're to get better. In a real world scenario, they will look to both, it's just a matter of how much constructive criticism they take to heart. The decline from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim and from Fallout 3 to Fallout 4 leads me to lose hope in The Elder Scrolls VI, but I hope that Starfield, being something new, won't be demonstrably worse than what came before it. That enough will be new that we can all focus on that.
 
Well putting it bluntly compared to a lot of other online games that realise you have to pay for things that are basic, like ACTUAL QUALITY CONTOL unlike tods group who seem to consider QA to be little more than a place to park payed interns that they can poach for other departments while they look for amusing bugs that they can make videoes of [rant isbased on the one segment in that fallout 76 documentary.]

Who is they do you mean Lucas games aka Disney ? Or do you mean Bethesda pitched a game to a 3rd party for a space game and then the said 3rd party got feed up with Bethesda and pulled their rights regarding that IP ?

either way I could see Zenimax as being a pain in the ass to deal with cause of their slow development and their greed that was going around the last ten years and Robert A. Altman their ceo pushing that greed to all times high.
Paramount. They were probably granted because given the timing it was probly them pissing back at activision.
 
And based on public reporting by Paramount the rights to that and a long list of other IPs expired at an unspecified date prior to that press release that had a February 17 2010 release date. Don’t realy have much other info beyond being surprised at how many tv shows and movies they had game rights rented out prior to that point
 
Wow dude. You got pretty mad there. That wasn't my intention at all. So, apologies if you misinterpreted my intent. I know my opinion, vs. people who make the decisions at the top, isn't worth anything. And I posted knowing that full well. You don't need a degree to post on the Internet. In fact, a fancy degree doesn't really get you much more respect, especially if you use it to look down on people you see as beneath you, or not as smart as you are. So, in the interests of keeping the peace, I'll concede on any personal attack, since I'm nothing more than a username here, and I'll stick to the topic.

A video game company that budgets time for bug fixes post release but that time isn't infinite? Color me shocked? Pretty sure that's standard practice. And as far as using other people's code for bug fixes pretty sure that's not legal. Which means they would have to try and find those people and offer them compensation and who knows how many people worked on those mods and... yeah that's a can of worm I would not want to go shake as a company.
I'm sure they can use mods for the same reason modders can't sell them. Anything made with the Creation Kit, Bethesda has rights to. That said, I'm not sure all the fixes were made with the CK, so, you might be onto something here. I admit I have no idea if Bethesda reached out to the patch team and tried to get the patches in the Switch port.

They made a phone game on a cell phone. They released Skyrim the way they could on the hardware at hand. The day Nintendo is tired of getting inferior versions they can stop making their consoles as inconvinient for 3rd party devs as possible.
I think you're underestimating the power of "cell phones." Modern phones outclass the game consoles Skyrim was released on. The Xbox 360, for instance, was a tri-core 3GHz PowerPC (basically, a Mac, or at least it used the same chip Macs were using back then) with no traditional RAM, but 512MB of GDDR3 (graphics RAM). And something like 32MB of storage for the OS (not related to the 4GB for user data in the Arcade version, or the hard drive mounted on top).

Pretty much any iPhone from the 7 onward (I'd say any model with 3GB of RAM... I'm not confident in saying an iPhone with 2GB RAM could run it, but the A9 SoC in the 6s would be more than capable otherwise) should be able to run the ARM build of Skyrim. As for Android phones, it's harder to say. They tend to have more RAM, and until iOS 13, iPhones couldn't use game controllers, but Android phones can. Now that difference is gone. But a vast majority of Android phones basically suck... the ones made for third-world countries are largely responsible for Google's 85%+ market share. The top of the line Android phones though? Pretty much should be up to the task from the same generation as iPhone, or the next one (Qualcomm's best processors are about as good as the Apple one a generation or two before). That is, if you have a Samsung Galaxy, Pixel, or LG G/V with a Snapdragon 835/845 or newer in the SD800 series, had Bethesda ported Skyrim to mobile, you'd be able to run it.

The question is, would you want to? Blades was optimized for touch, and Skyrim isn't. No big deal if you have a controller, but without a controller, you wouldn't be able to play the game, and again, would you want to on such a small screen? Maybe you have an iPhone Pro Max or Samsung Galaxy Note/Ultra that is almost the size of a Switch, but I have an iPhone with a 720p, 4.7" screen. I'm not looking to play Skyrim on that. And I'm not mad that I can't. I'm disappointed that Bethesda didn't give us a choice, because on one of those huge phones, it would have been okay.

[Bethesda is] one of the very few companies that I ALWAYS feel like I'm getting my money's worth. I pay for a game, I will get enough hours to have it be a good investment. How mamy games have I paid full for a 15-20 hours experience and wasn't even too mad about it? Bethesda? Oh I know I'm fine! It's a safe bet Starfield will give me 100+ hours of game. And for me on a Bethesda game, that would be an incredibly low number compared to Fallout 3 or 4 or Skyrim. I played very little Oblivion but I'm pretty sure even that one got 150+hours over the years I owed it.
Now this, I can agree with. I don't understand how people have clocked over 2,000 hours into Fallout 4, but that might be a rare feat. I recently crossed 800 hours, and I bought it day one. I even bought the Power Armor edition, but even considering that, and the fact that I bought the Season Pass, and then bought the game and season pass on Xbox, I still have a great deal on the game, considering all the hours I got out of it. I've spent way more, per hour, on a lot of other stuff, including good stuff I don't regret spending money on.

That doesn't mean they're not greedy, though I think you and I have different ideas of what greedy means, and the vitriol you expressed in later points shows it. I'm 100% with you on EA, though I'm not interested in sports games. 'Greedy' isn't a vile enough term for EA. They're just disgusting. And you haven't even gotten into their gambling stuff. I've only heard things, as I'm not into those games, but it all sounds crummy. I am absolutely not saying Bethesda is on their level.

As far as base price though, you're onto something there. Games actually used to be $50 in 1995, not $60. The jump to $60 came with, I think the PS3 generation. And now it's going up to $70, and people are mad, but if you look at what a $50 game in today's money is, it's a lot higher than $70. So, in that sense, games have actually gotten cheaper by not rising with the market. However, they have to compete with music and movies (which is wrong), so any price increase seems unfair. However, a music album holds about an hour of music, a movie is about 2 hours, and even basic platformers have 8-10 hours of gameplay, a lot of games have more, and there are a bunch of indie games that sell for less. And games take up more time and thought to play. So it's easy to underestimate the value of a game, especially an RPG which can deliver dozens or even hundreds of hours of gameplay.
 
Well to be honest if you played 76 it’s easy to feel like they were trying too hard to scam the shit out of you.

ridiculously broken game even by fallout standards.
lack of actual content For players to interact with.
rediculosly overpriced microtransactions that were literaly items they took from Fallout 4 and slapped a price tag on them. Oh and in a couple of cases literaly Used a lower res version of what was in fallout 4.
They are selling the color blue.
constant outright Ignoring the fallout community to the point where other Software companies now use them as a prime example of how to NOT treat your customers.
ongoing bungeeing of basic customer service.

When you realise that it took something like Anthem to knock the perpetual train wreck that is Fallout 76 off the front page, then the bungling at CD project red to burry a story that indicates that despite paying 7.5 million, the only reason Bethesda was being bought out was because it’s investors were wanting to pull there investment out, and the initial buyout elsewhere was scuttled by somewhat dismal earnings even prior to COVID.

Let’s face it. They needed to show they can rake in money. Instead they showed that they realy could not do that. There projects to rake in piles of quick and cheep money blew up in there face, and they ended up selling to Microsoft that needed exclusive consol titles when it looked like Sony was on a buying and flinging money around spree.
 
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