Starfield NON-Spoilercast

I don't have any booze, but I did have a guinness earlier with my barbecue that I cooked. My my fucking meat had smoked on the grill, A favorite. You had a meat tower in the group chat. General was showing big meat in the chat. I don't know. Chat I got. I got really jealous. I had had some wings. I had some wings from a chain. It's a chain restaurant called East Coast Wings here. It was delicious. I haven't eaten anything all day and the first thing that hit my stomach or some extra crispy wings. Yeah, you know, make me. I make mean wing on Girl two. I tell you that I love that shit. Hey, it's episode forty six. Welcome, sh oh shit. What did you not know? You were recording podcast night forty six? I had forty five. It's forty six, and welcome to another episode of the Other Trolls Gaming podcast. If you're new, we are three brothers. We talk about gaming and we talked tech TV other things too. Tonight we have Nick from Friday Night Gamecast with us again recurring guest multiple times. How you doing, how you doing? Good to have you. I'm glad to be back here. Thank you for thank you having me again, guys. I'm also excited to be here this really really incredible episode to be a part of. Yeah, you've been dying to talk about this, You've been dying to talk about this, It says here, it says, yeah, I'm reading it on my screen. I think that Nate might have included that. But yeah, I really have been dying to talk about it. I've been done and talked about is somebody because a certain other somebody that we all all four of us men overuses to play this game. He doesn't want to play this game. He had teams done. Is it until he's done with Tears of the Kingdom or that he's just until he spent more hours and he wants his story there. Yeah, he's just he's probably gonna hit it next year. He's he's got he's in big like early young child dad phase. And I already tried to task him with Tears of the Kingdom and he's he's whittling away at that. So he's he's working on it as much as he can. So he's trying. He's trying. I think he just can't sleep, that's all. What's more important? Will is it sleep or video? Games like these are the big questions. It goes, it goes, it goes family. You shouldn't be used to sacrificing sleep if you're a gamer anyway, if he's a real seriously seriously o'clock last night, I was putting in work until three o'clock last night. You know, Will, Where are you at? What are you doing? He actually, I'll spoil this for him. I'll spoil this for him because he's not on the show today. But he just beat Resident Evil four remakes, so he did his run through. So he's been distracted by Capcom. He doesn't want to play any Bethesdi games. Can you believe it? I was gonna say he was he was Evil? Yeah. Yeah, he's a huge RESI fan. He's a big what was that new Capcom game they just put out again that we played Exo Pro with him? He's gonna try to play with him, and I actually liked it. I actually had a good like I had some fun. I had some fun playing, that's for sure. Yeah. But yes, today we're going to be talking about Starfield. The last episode we talked a little about the hype, a little about the PS fan boys kind of squantching on the on the hype, and we didn't know, you know, if it was justified or not. But now we've we've all we put some hours on, we put some miles in Pony's saying. What were the pony saying about Starfield? What do they say? I didn't hear. I didn't any of this, just the just the squad they were trying to hype, like they're making fun of the log and screen or like the star that one. That just kind of shit, just stupid shit. It's just like what, Just go back into your hole and like what are you doing, Like go play PlayStation game? Like why do you care? I don't know if somebody shared it between the four of us at all, but I did see on Twitter somebody was kind of they were cracking on Bethez a little bit because there are a lot of loading screens in this game, but they're cracking and they were like if CD project or like or if the Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven was made by Bethez to an issue car loading screen in the apartments, like when you get in, when you go into like a building, it loads, But that's like that's gonna be creation, right, But it isn't. Yes, well, we'll get to it later, you know. But first, Nate, I heard you were getting pretty upset on the bench last night. Oh I don't think I've been that upset playing hockey in a while. Holy fuck, I don't know. Because we have like Ben, our buddy Ben. He puts together a Friday night hockey every week and he uses like he puts stats on people, I guess, and he'll throw it into the AI and it'll sort into like teams that are supposed to be like even based on his ratings of how people. So he'll rate people one to ten and their skill of hockey right, and then the AI, the AI will spit them onto teams. But last night, I don't know what fucking points he was putting on those people. But like I don't want to know. I don't listen to this anyway. But like a few of our teams, like players on our team, like I just couldn't. I couldn't even with them, just like a bunch of old Like I think my team's average age was like fifty something, Like there was four or five old bastards on our team, and they fucking wouldn't do anything. They wouldn't skate, they wouldn't do anything. And there was one of those was ripping fucking pucks by everyone's ears, and like I thought for sure I was going to get hitting the teeth with a puck like that guy was dripping from the pot. May what is this guy fucking doing? Does he know he's hurt me? He may have hurt me, because like when he was doing that, that's when he like started to like try or he actually started like being in the game, you know what I mean. Yeah, Well, while it was just firing pucks and people's heads, he like started to juice hit in the head with the fuck like some guy fucking fired it, and it was like he like pull like glanced on his helmet. And then those the other guys who was in front of your net, like on my team, in front of your net. He was there for like ten fucking seconds standing there and he just he didn't he didn't know what to do with the puck, and no one was getting because he's old and he's like kind of shitty, so no one was really like attacking him or anything. I was like I was like a yell from the bench, like fire the fucking what are you doing? Screaming, I'm just standing there for ten seconds not doing anything, fuck man. And then what did he do? He doesn't fire it at the net, like he went to go pass it back to the D or something, and it goes all the way back on our end. Like I was just like, what the fuck are you doing? Oh my gosh. I was so angry, and I turned to Ben. I was like you. I was like, the AI made these teams. He's like yeah. I was like you need to update that AI. Maybe? Who who is this mastermind Osiman diets who's giving you all Madden stats in hockey and then like making them like auto assign you? Who is? Who is he? Is? He? Actually good? That was that was Ben? Yeah, y Ben, Yeah, he knows, he knows where we all stand. Chat GPT couldn't do some basic math for our freak that's true. Fantasy is true, that's true. So why are you depending on it to freaking put some you know, to make some team lineups? I don't I don't get. Maybe it maybe it was it's math shit last night and it was like it just like whoops. Maybe it was just an off night for some people, you know, Maybe the numbers just sometimes the numbers they just don't maybe don't add up. But yeah, and it didn't help that every fucking pass that came to me, my stick was just rubber banding out of my hands. Like it was like like what I got so fucking aggor. I was smashing my stick like Joe. That's what it felt like. It felt like it was made of rubber. Like I couldn't I couldn't cushion the pass. It was just like point. It was very funny from our bench. I was supposed to tell a story though this morning, I don't. I don't have any story this morning. I don't even know if I have the energy. But like, is this this might be am I an asshole? Am I the asshole story? Yeah? Well, a little like a little background information. Like my dad is very like always working, never stops. Hernia is popping out of his body, like never stops working like this guy doesn't. He's always moving constantly. Always he stops, he'll die. Yeah, And ever since we've been growing ever since we've been growing up, he's always like stopped us from playing video games or whatever to get outside and help him to do something right. And we're always huffing and puffing about it ever since we were kids. So then yeah, So anyway, I was just I was in the middle of something in the studio and he dad comes in and he's like, I need your help for a second. I was like, and I hate being interrupted, Like when I'm in a studio, when I'm in the middle of something, I hate it so much. Just to help him with some freaking rich guy's car that he's working on in the car in the garage, I don't care about it. And anyway, so we go in there and he asks me to grab the hood because he's taking the hoods off the hinges. Hinges, I should say, And so I've got to grab the end of the hood between the fender at the at the near the windshield and make sure it doesn't shoulder wrench the paint on the fender. So I've got to put my fingers between it, and I've got to support it while we take the nuts out of the hinges. And he's like, okay, grab it here, support with your shoulder. I was like, okay. So I go to move holding with my right hand. I go to move my left shoulder under the hood. I was just like this right, like this I'm just like holding it, like sending himself into a pretzel. No, I was just like left shoulder under the hood and holding. I know that he had to demonstrate it after, but anyway, I figured he was removing the nuts, So what the hell do I got to see any for anything? For? So I he's like, he's like the other shoulder. I was like what, And again, I'm tired, I'm not visualizing this right. So he's like the other shoulder. I was like, what do you mean the other shoulder? How am I gonna? And he has to walk all the way over and demonstrate yeah, And I was just like, okay. So he's like, any of the ratchet to loosen the hinge or loose in the nut? Oh my god. He's like, okay, have you ever used the power? I used the impact gun all the time. But he hands me the ratchet and I slip the socket, just put it down and walk anyway. I'm like, I this get this, okay. I put the ratchet. I fit the ratchet on the socket, and I pushed the frigging trigger. I don't know, and I'm I'm securing it so that you know, nothing moves when I'm doing it. And I start pushing the trigger and all that happens is air comes out of the hose. I'm like, what the fuck? Like the ratchet isn't turning, and I was like, well, what's going on? And he's like, what are you doing? What do you mean? What am I doing? I'm trying to get the nut off like you told me to do. So I'm pushing the trigger and nothing's happening, and he's just like, uh, Like mom and dad are like watching me fumble because Mom has to come out and hold the hood too, so they're just watching me awkwardly. Ratchet. Nothing's happening when I'm pushing the trigger. I think you weren't pushing it hard enough. No, that is not it, Okay, I it's pretty straightforward. You put the freaking thing on the net. Could be like a two stage. It's like a if it goes down, barn up, then it engages. There's like a little a metal thing. Is it the big one? The three quarters? Now? It was like it was kind of it was just kind of the lights, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's a two stage. Anybody do you think he told me that? No? Do you think I know how that works. No, I'm like He's like, I'm like, what I'm doing what you told me to do? And then he's like, it's like this, I got this hood leaning on room on my shoulder and he's like, ratchet toward me. I'm like what ratchet toward me? And I'm like, what does that mean? Ratchett towards you? I was like, what what do you think I'm doing? Like I'm torking it toward you and I'm pushing the trigger. How much harder is this have to be? So nothing's happening. I'm getting so frustrated. And then like it's not working, and he goes, oh, come on, Daniel. I was just over there and I just I was like, I'm just listened this not and I was like, I don't know what you want me to do. So he had to like tighten up his nut, come over, do some experienced sleight of hand thing that I don't know how to do. And then not a grease monkey? You know what? Wow, you can't say that about us. Wow. You know what, it's actually Dad's fault for never making you lift a tool in your goddamn life. We'll blame that. I don't blame you, Daniel, I blame dad for making us do all the work and make you go play your piano. Yeah, the most we're like, we're all different. We're come on your side, Daniel. I don't know how to do ship with a car ratchet toward me, Nick ratchet towards me? Remember that, what do you mean right or left? What do you mean? Man? All I can all I can tell you is I felt horrible for getting angry at both of them, like are in front of both of them, Like I felt horrible. But I think he just forgets how something so effortless for him doesn't come so effortlessly like effortlessly to others, because you know, doesn't lead to very thorough explanations when you just assume that somebody knows what the fuck you're talking about. Yeah, it's just like me explaining how to do things in video games to Pam. It's easy, Pam, you just do this this this Pam. She she's a pro gamer. She's she's playing Diablo four man. She's she's a sweat. She's one of these gamer sweats, right, she was. She was. No one's playing that anymore. Come on, come on, and if he just hate it, but he just they just patched it twice to increase XP they put the too late. Sorry. Yeah, it's been out for how many months? Like they've like rolled it back pretty much to where it was before. M Anyway, all right, well let's go into game time then let's do it. Okay, Well, what have we been playing? A gentleman? A gent gentleman. Well, obviously obvious fields. Although since we last recorded, I haven't said this on this podcast. We were on your show and I said, Friday Night game cast, Friday Night game cast, I beat Balder's Gate three and it was very very good, very very good. So if you're listening to this, or if you're on this podcast and stopped playing Balder's Gate three to play star Field, you may want to revisit. Yeah, just I'll be jumping back. I say it was for me. I think I think it's my game of the year, Like it was phenomenal, phenomenally just because the story and like the stuff that's happening in the game very very gripping is gripping. It's gripped me, you know, Jonathan. I'm so curious about this though, when it comes to story, like in narratives, in plots, do you err on something being like more of a grounded, realistic experience or something that's more interconnective, uh, like like a just the the the amount of compelling is compelling this a word? Is that a word? You get a check on this? Just how compelling? Because the story is compelling? Yeah, just because like in the amount of decisions that I had to make where I was like fuck, yeah, actually I think in really hard places. Yeah, and I'm like, shit, I have to fucking choose this, and I would like sit there for like and it's deliberating and then you don't know what you see what happens, and then I was like, oh my god, that was crazy, like and until you don't look up guides to see the result the result tree of tree and based on that never know for Okay, people do that. Definitely people do that. I think my buddy just said that he does that with I think he did that with cyberpunk because he just he's kind of like, well, I didn't even know that was a thing. I didn't even know you could just like look up a tree like a is there a like yeah, yeah, and some people do it. Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna look up the Boulder's Gate Tree, it's gonna be a spider web of branching theories. Yeah, the cyberpunk outcomes are a lot more digestible. Like if you look, I have my guide behind me and there are those options, and you can see that there's like three or four outcomes, so like you know, it's pretty easy to read each one and be like, Okay, that happens if you choose this, and that happens. So that was really cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but like I'm sorry, but nothing, nothing is touched the way boulders Gate spiders, you know what I mean, Like all those choices, like it's fucking insane but so crazy, like and then it all the manifests at the end. So depending on what, dude, like you're you're going to see a little cut scene for every one of the characters that like, we're kind of affected by you and whatever you decided to do. So that was super cool. It was just very very cool. Yeah, and yeah, so was it my turn? Was I talking? Were yes? Well you I interrupted you? But yeah, you were talking? But did that Yeah? I just don't know. This is also just rolled credits this afternoon on Starfield as well. How do you like that. How do you like that? Let's go, Let's go, let's go. So yeah, dude, Big games pleaded. Wow, guys, that's a big deal. I'm ready for I guess I will probably go back in Phantom Liberty. Holy shit, yeah, Phantom Liberty. I'm ready. There's too many games, there's too many. I could see myself beating Starfield Main story before Phantom Liberty comes out. I feel like I could do that. Well, you got what two weeks? Two weeks, There's no way I would probably you know, get as far as anything else, but we could definitely do the mains or do you think you're going to go back to Balder's Gate? Uh, Daniel, after after you do your Phantom Liberty run, you think I would like to? I know that that's probably so definitely the lower one on the list, just because like I'm kind of new to the world and I don't have the same center. They don't have the same attachment to it as I do. Yeah, obviously of course I knew, but that's the game and uh and Cyberpunk, So I would like to for sure, for sure it would be and I am very curious, like will to pu it on on PlayStation five two, though, I am curious to see what that looks like. Do I want to spend the money to try it? No, you already spent the money. Yeah, I know, I know, but I like my console gaming. I don't know. I heard it doesn't run real great. Yeah, we'll have to see. We'll see it. There's no any decisions. But I think, well, yeah, the original star yeah no, no, no came out I know, but it came out the same day Starfield came out. No, on p five I think so. Yeah, so it is out, yes, yes, all right, it is. Who's next? Hey, who's next? Hey, go for it. I'll jump in there, I'll jump in there. I haven't been playing anything but Starfield. That's all I've been doing. Yeah. Yeah, I want to say that I've been playing other indies in other games and stuff, but work has been pretty busy, and I've kind of narrowed my focus down because I was playing a million and one games, but I've narrowed my focus down to kind of Starfield exclusively, and I've just kind of gotten lost in that world, completing all kinds of faction quests went through. You know, we can get into this later because we're going to talk about the game, but yeah, just having a blast with it, and you know, I am so happy that this is released this year. Obviously Xbox has something that they can show up to the Game Awards with and I think that this is going to be one of the games for them where something has to be nominated because of just the inherent quality that's in the game so far, and I think that it's there. You know, to see Phil Spencer walk on stage would be validation to kind of like all of the weird like console fanboys and just to be like, hey, like you know, they're showing up for they're showing up to have a conversation with PlayStation at the same time, and it's like, you can't you still can't forget about Xbox and it's too early to write them out of the whole situation. So I yeah, I'm really excited to see where they go from here. I'm even more interested based on what we've already played. I don't think that they will, but but thus doesn't really shy away from y'll see, so I'd be even more kind of interested to see what kind of DEALC cames up. But even on top of that, I'm even more interested to see what the modding community is going to come out with, because if you look at Skyrin today, they haven't entire they have entire storylines. You guys have seen the clips that we've all shared amongst each other about that one like Skyrim update that looks like a literal Dark Souls battle between a you know, a high elf vampire and like, you know, some some character. It just looks absolutely insane. So I'm only gonna imagine what Starfield is going to be like, you know, ten years, ten years. Yet it didn't somebody make a Lord of the Rings mod for Skyrin Daniel. It's still first. Oh it's supposed to be for Oblivian first. And the screenshots were like out of this world, like it was back in like twenty twelve, I think when I lived with you guys, and yeah, imagine more screen shots and I was like, oh my god, this is so cool that it like took you through the shire and like what the shire was going to look like, all in oblivion graphics. It was called Middle Earth Role Playing MERP m e RP and and they got a cease and desist letter from Warner Bros. To stop. Just just just cut it out, drop it right, Like he's not making money. They're not making money off of it. I like, unless unless Brothers is attributing every new sale of Skyrim towards infringing on their copyright. So it's like, if it's available on consoles like stuff, they're probably going to take the at large to the public argument and be like, hey, if people can use rods across all platforms, that's our copyright and you didn't pay us for it. So yeah, yeah, but they were going to port it to Skyrim. They had plans too, and then I think that's when I got shut down and it was never to be, and I was very sad. Boo. Yeah, it looked crazy. It was like a full like quest, like a whole quest line, and like, yeah, it was basically think they said. I think they said. It would have taken place at a long parallel to the events of the books of the Lord of the Rings, and cool would have been like assisting Frodo kind of in whatever way. You would just be another character that you create that has something part to play the story. So funk, it would have been awesome. Get the Forbidden Forest. Yeah, you know why why do we need Why do we need a Lord of the Rings mod in Skyrim when we have Gallum? Guys, we get well, you know what I mean, and you will play it. Daniel will play it. If you keep a ship. I will spend the money and play it. Just to talk about it, we should all just pitch in and five bucks and buy how much is it forty bucks? I don't know if the I'm not spending forty bucks on that thing, I don't know. Give Daniel ten bucks and he'll go play it so we don't have to. I really tried. He'll have to fucking play it if I buy it for what's sitting It's sitting on Steam right now for fifty dollars, which is it is? Studio even closed doesn't exists anymore. I don't even understand how they're selling the game, but I guess it's because the game was so bad they closed. Yeah, yeah, basically, yeah, that was the that was the story that came out. Essentially, they released it, and there was so much backlag or excuse me, backlash about Gollum that the studio executives were just like, we have to shut shut all down. And they had made like so many other games before this, and it was like it was a German studio and maybe they were on their last leg financially, so it just, yeah, I felt sound bad when I heard that, though I was like, I felt bad when I heard that right now, I just felt, yeah, yeah, it's imagine. Watched a lot of reviews for it, and everyone kept saying, like the common consensus was it felt like the game was made with another main character in mind, and then they're like, oh, Gollum will sell title, or Gollum will sell a game. So they just like plugged Gollum into the main like character slot and altered a few things and then shipped it. Like that's what it felt like from all the reviews that I've watched, and I was like, yeah, man, yeah, to see it. I just like them to go back and return to the Shadow of War formula. But oh, man, so that studio done too, isn't that? I don't know Wholith look right now, Monolith, I don't know why that? What else did they make? We had this conversation not too long ago. I thought the Monoliths, Monolith Productions, and Behavior Interactive, who made that play this Shadow of War? I played Shadow of mortar and I beat it and I just didn't pick up a story. It's so good in the story is really good in those two just if you the Lord of the Rings, like it's like a continuation kind of and like more information on the background of everything because you get like, yeah, possessed by the spirit of Calibrimball, who is the smith? The smith who saw her on manipulated it to the Rings of Power. Okay, well, speaking of Rings of Power, did you guys watch that show? Did you? Did you enjoy that? Analyze better than for sure? And I was like, okay, I will continue watching this. That was it was just really nice to look at. It was so nice. Yeah. Yeah, and they did a lot of things that were kind of that we're in line with everything, it's just kind of the other stuff that they kind of added a little weird, you know, kind of weird things in there that you know that they had to add for yeah, for whatever, to make it more you know, romances and all that shit. Right, But it was good. I enjoyed make I enjoyed every episode. Yeah, just the a wardrobe that makes the production makeup was incredible. Well, was the most expensive show ever made. It was even more expensive than Game of Thrones. Okay, well it shows it was very polished. Yeah, and it looked great, So I mean I enjoyed it the other than that as well. But I will keep watching it for sure. I won't keep watching The Wheel of Time probably. Oh my god. I was just off of that. I just yeah, it's like the story is so good too, and like you watch the show, you're like, it's so yes, it was just very okay, And the the ending of the first season was just kind of like nothing really happened. I was like, that's it. It's like, there's no more episodes, like this is it? Nothing even happened, like it just watched the second season, nobody, Well, who's Rosemond Pike. Oh she's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's like the only Actually she was actually Pierce Brosnan's Bond, the one with Barry Yeah Another Day. She's in Die Another Day, and she was in Johnny English Reborn of course, Johnny English and Do twenty five with the Rock and oh my gosh, Urban That. Let's we talk about movies. We talked about video game movie adaptations. That original DO movie actually kind of did it for me. I was looking for something to watch and I was like, I saw it, I skipped over it. Then I went back to it. I was like, h nah, that was like when the rock was getting like really popular after like The Mummies, The Scorpion King or whatever series. I think he's still having his black hair. Is kind of one of the movies that like pushed him into the mainstream. I feel like maybe or at least for Hollywood. And one of my opinions, yeah, that was liking it. It was Carl Urban was in it too. Yeah, he was the best part of that film. He was the Carl Urban was the best part of that film. But yeah, and they had the BFG and everything. Gosh, that was what a movie. I just went back and started watching Blood Rain. Have you guys ever seen a those old movies fucking off? Don't watch them? Blood Rain? Yeah, it was. It was basically Okay, it's made by us five Yui. Bull went through a series where he made a ton of like video game movie adaptations where he was basically just like, I'm gonna pick whatever video games seemed to be catching all the kids these days. He basically just made it into his own image. It was just this like kind of like trashy bullshit where he sexualizes all the female protagonists, and I mean, hey, you get you get some you get some racy scenes in there. But I actually like it was domb It was like it was it was really bad. But it doesn't sound familiar. Nick, what's the name of that? What's the name of the far Cry game where it's like a eighties synth wave kind of throwback. Did you hear about this one? Nave and Phil we're talking about that blood Rage or Dragon. It is blood Dragon or something far cright something. They were just talking about this on one of their other episodes. I thought, it's like ridiculous far Cry blood Dragon. Oh yeah, you're right, blood Dragon. There it is. And the guy who does your character's voice is freaking Kyle Reese, the guy who does Kyle Reese in way that's awesome. That's remember his name. But this is like my friend Thrillhouse played it and he's just like, it's the best far Cry ever. Yeah, it looks like a far Cry three DLC is what this looks like. Phil and Nave were talking about it on Gaming Together. Yeah, yeah, I thought I heard them talking about that, because I remember that's where I heard it recently in conversation, and I thought maybe it had something to do with this blood Rain thing, and maybe there was I don't know tie in, but blood Rain was actually an early PS one title. It was kind of like jumping that. It was jumping on that wave where it's like you're this girl and there's like vampires and stuff and you're kind of basically just like a vampire slayer. But it was like very allah like tomb Writer of that era, and so they were kind of like jumping on the idea of like strong female protagonists. But it was like its own identity in the in the early two thousands for like tenth PS one and then they came out with it, and then they made like fucking like four Blood Rain movies and each was like at like even worse after the last, like, but the the original one had some actually blood Rain cast. The original ones actually had a surprising cast. Ben Kingsley, Michael Madslow was in it, Matthew Davis was also, and they had like some actual yeah, dude, they had some real fucking actors that were in this first movie. And it was garbage. It was terrible. It was like obviously like one of the reasons why nobody ever caught onto it ever again because it probably pissed them off. Yeah. Udo Kier who's like a famous, like spooky character actor. He shows up in a lot of different movies, but he was in that too. The Wow, it was so bad. It was so bad but nice. Yeah, all right, let's get into it. Then we're gonna talk about Starfield. Okay, let's do it. Transition do do do? Do Wayne's World do do? Okay? Starfield. Now, earlier I was going to talk about, like I said, Ball's Gate was my game of the Year, But now with Starfield, you said, Xbox has something to bring to the table. Do you think the jankiness and the bugs would affect that at all? Or is it just like it's I care, I love it so much, but it's not gonna win Game of the Year because it's not. But but it's it's not because of the bugs though, No, it's not because well it's I mean partially, I mean that's not out of the picture for me, Like it's it's definitely if you're looking at it from a list perspective, Yeah, for sure, there's enough Jenkin there for it to be an issue. And I think people understand that like Creation Engine isn't going to be something that like the game industry critics as a whole are really gonna love. I feel like as an industry, we have grown beyond like what the Creation Engine, even the two point zero version with it's FSR two bullshit like has to offer us. But you know, it's like every time I go into a dialogue, the guys facing the other way are it's two inches from my fucking face, like whoa, or they just won't initiate dialogue, and so you have to press a like a million times to get them to actuate. I actually had to reboot the game. I had to reboot the game because they just won't start talking. It just shows them. Are we talking about performance? Now? We can form a bug parameter kind that would be performance? Yeah. I was kind of trying to like, can put the under performance? Yeah. I just think that like buy can parison because everything is going to be judged against each other, right, and all of the games that come out this year have been so like from a performance in quality standpoints on such a high level. Tears of the Kingdom, even though it's running on that tired old Nintendo switch, still ran beautifully. And then you have games like Final Fantasy sixteen, which actually went out of their way to like focus on visuals and performance to such a like a deep degree from the ground up. And then you have obviously Bather's Gate three rearing its ugly head. And I mean I haven't heard anybody say about anything about Jank in that game. No, it's like so even one, one or two things that I fell through the floor a couple of times, yeah, two times in like seventy hours. So yeah, I think that like in even then you think about games like Spider Man two coming out and Insomniac, they never really fail when it comes to because because they only have PS five to worry about in that in that first case, that makes their job easier from from the jump even though. But that's all only had to worry about Xbox and then Windows but a series x An series as Yeah, so it's like, yeah, three platforms still, but still I want to talk about performance. This is gonna all be under performance obviously, but it didn't perform as much as high as I would have liked given my hardware, you know what I mean, Like I have a high end computer. I would say it's less than three years old, and you played on the Steam version, Oh star Steam, Yeah, I played Steam. My you know what, I like, I have a thousand dollars graphics card three years ago. It is a thousand dollars and I can't get sixty frames per second in this game, Like come on you, yeah, okay, it's get forty to fifty fps. But I mean they said that. They said at the jump that it was going to target six, like they already set up front even during the promotional period that they said if you get sixty you'd be lucky. Yeah. Well they said they're gonna lock it at thirty on console right for X and S. Yeah, And I will say that like the because even though I still think that the application, I don't know what the tech is behind, Like running it natively on Steam versus a launching it through the game prap game Pass like launcher itself. I feel like there's a little bit of like cloud stuff that's worked into that. But even playing it on the game pass launcher themselves. I said it on a different show too, but like it's remarkably better when you play it on like the game pass PC version versus when I got to sit there. Yeah, I'm loading it on my Series X and it's taking me like five minutes to actually like go in there and load into the game. So it's just it's so it's strange because I don't know, I don't know why. It's like it takes that long to kind of do the back end processing. And even then, like the difference between playing it on the PC and like going in between, Like we said, the million loading screens that you hit if you go into the ship or if you go into a bar or something like that, you open a door to another area, like the loading is much shorter than what you'll get on the on the console, I think, oh yeah, but we had the hardware. It's just batter Yeah, it's just better than console, you know. But but yeah, I had to like really dial in the settings. It's like, okay, am I getting this, you know, getting this many frames? And I guess that's good enough. But I don't want to drop my resolution. I don't want to use upscaling. I refuse. I refuse to use upscaling. Refuse. Yeah, so how do you turn it off? How do you turn it off? Is my question? Settings in the game and turn off there's an up there's an actual upscaling. I think, sweet. I don't know if you can do that in console. Daniel kenyel, I don't think so. Oh not on condo, No no, no, this is on on PC. You can turn it off or you can use refuse to use. I refuse to use the upscaling. And like I said, on high, mostly high settings, I get between like I've seen it dip down to thirty eight frames for a second. I hover in between forty and forty five even on PC frames. I think, so, I think why. I think the biggest thing my issue was. The biggest thing was the the the gauge of how many frames, like the fluctuation in frames, like the range. I just got my new seventy one hundred XTX okay, and now my CPUs bottleneckings. I'll have to take care of that a little bit later. But the thing is is someplace with this fifteen hundred dollars card, I'm getting in some places forty five fps, you know, in some places, and then in other places I'm getting one hundred and ten. Like you say that, you say, yeah, well, it's like it'll go to a loading screen and it'll hun jump up to like one hundred and twenty five frames. No, No, I mean like in like a like a cave, you know what I mean. Like if it's if it's a smaller scoped area, the frames will shoot up right really. But then I go to like main city. Uh oh, the worst I think is the Cowboys City as the worst frames. I don't know why it's even worse frames than Yeah, I don't know, but that one gets down to like forty five fifty and I can feel it's like mud. Yeah, and going through it, I'm like, fuck this. And then when I get into space and I go to another town or another spot like on a planet, and I'm like exploring, I'm at like eighty ninety you know, right, Like it's just that fluctuation that pisses me off. That's that's the thing that pisses me off. We have a comment on one of our shorts, Okay, I have a short on YouTube about them talking about optimization on PC, and someone comments, it's twenty twenty three. Most Triple A games that are being brought out recently can't be played on max settings with current hardware. Many people have thirty fps. He says he thinks is the standard for new games, not sixty fps, especially full feature RPG games like Starfield, Eldenry, et cetera. If you want sixty fps minimum, you either have to meet or you have to wait until your your tech gets better down the road, or you're just gonna have to dump a bunch of money into your PC to play it. He says, I had a thirty nine No way, no way I had. He says, I had a thirty ninety when Cyberpunk was released, and it wasn't sixty fps then either, And that was three years ago, Okay, but I was saying, and Punk is different. Cyberpunk is the fucking benchmark, and it has rate tracing. This doesn't even have ray tracing. Yeah, also true, it doesn't even have a slider in the settings. Yeah, have HDR. So like, I do think, I do think they will be because even on some Reddit posts, some some game like hobbyists developers have found certain things in the drivers that they're like, why did they do it this way? Or they have it really they've seen they've seen some of the code in the game and they're like this is reading row, like why would they have done it this way? And they've actually tested it on like Linux drivers, and they've actually boosted performance just by changing this, like a couple of lines of code how the game reads off the GPU in a certain way. I'm like super dumbing it down. I didn't really understand how I worked. But they have found people have found that some code doesn't make sense, and you can find it on Reddit. I'll maybe put it in the comments. Seven. Yeah, right, So I don't believe they optimize it. It was a perfect It was a straight up port right from console to PC, and they fucking left it. You can tell in the graphics settings there's nothing there. You're telling you mean to tell me, Nate that you don't believe Todd Howard he said you need to upgrade your your PC. You're you're telling me. I love that, man. Guys they're calling him he's now God Howard. Okay, Wow, okay, jeez, are you right now? Man? But I think we did optimize. You just have to upgrade your PC. Fucking okay, your mouth like. But that's the thing is that that what bothers me about it is that in my mind, the way that I was thinking about it, I thought that there was an entire battalion of Xbox Drones that were out there that we're working over code and working this game over and over again just to see what will be good or not. Like just just the mods that have come out in the last two weeks. There's performance mods, there's things that like alter the shadows, performance modes. No mods mods, yeahs, I've heard of, but like if they can do it, obviously they didn't do it, you know what I mean. Yeah, so we'll see. But I believe it, believe because no way I'm getting forty fps, Like are you fucking kidding me? And even like thirty fps on console. I find that like hard to believe in like what resolution there they're rendering it at like thirty fps in this game if it's on high settings, like you're still gonna need quite a fucking yeah, what is there? Ever? Did they ever announce saying that, yo, you know, we're going to delay it as long as we need to blah blah blah, Like did they say that, Well, yeah it was it was what feels that, Oh okay, I like feel kind of framember, like it's not ready. We needed more time to work on it because it was supposed to come out last year. If I'm not mistaken, but it was really not ready and then they got an extra year of dead time that I think people just didn't want to do it again, you know, they didn't want to delay it again, so they're like, Okay, well let's just lock it at thirty on consoles and you know, to be really good. Yeah, well it's interesting. Sorry, sorry to cut you off. Na, I know you're going to say something. But we recently had a conversation with our most recent show that came out with The Day from Tales from the Backlock. He jumped on and we were talking about from Soft and Soul is Born, and one of the conversations, you know, part of the conversation that we were having is that there's a mentality now that is clearly present in from Soft in their game development company, because they release games now knowing that obviously, they lean into what their strengths are, and their strengths are gameplay, level design, combat difficulty, you know, art design, all of that, they lean into it. But they release these games with the understanding. And I was kind of approaching it with a question of well, like, you know, you have to do a lot of work to understand those worlds. Right, And he made a very salient point to say that, like Frumpsoft knows when they release games that there are people in the community that are going to do the work for them when it comes to like people like Vati video, who you're going to sit there and piece together the different you know, stories and kind of like explain to you in depth and serve it to you the way that a normal game would and other and other situations. And what I think is interesting about that is I feel like Bethesda's doing the same thing, but just for the performance of their game, not the story. So it's just it's really interesting because they know that moding and the moding community is so kind of like it's it's flourishing in Bethesda Games, and they just love to mod their games because of the you know, good ideas that they put into it. And so it almost makes me wonder did they like forsake all of that just to say, oh, moders, you get to you get something else that you get to do. You can you can release it in the state and it's fine, we don't have to worry about it because the matters will pick it up, you know. Yeah, yeah, sure, So that's not like the mods we're getting aren't even like through the game's code. Okay, So next year they're they're released in the actual official modding support, like monding support for the game. Right now, it's just like I and I files, you're tweaking, you're injecting a few files here and there by like next year they're going to be sending out the actual mod pack for official mod support. So like next year, you think the mods are good now, like by this time next year, holy shit, it's gonna be insane. You're gonna need it even crazier computer to play them. Or they might fix everything, right, they might actually be able to get to the code of the game and like actually put in correct code, you know. Yeah. But all in all, though, it's it runs good, Like it runs good, it's steady, Like I'm just I'm just kind of pissed that, you know, I was expecting a little bit more with my hardware that I'm running. But yeah, like I still though, yeah, jankie as fuck. But like class, I'm average sixty fps at a four K like a scaled resolution. It's not true four K, it's like scaled like resolution scaled. What was happening is on two K resolution. My GPU wasn't hitting one hundred percent utilization. It was at like eighty percent. So like my GPU still wanted to give some juice, but my CPU wouldn't let it in other words, because my CPS bottled decking. So I'm like, okay, well, the only real thing you can do in this situation is cranked the resolution. But I can't do that because I only have a two K resolution screen. You know what, it sounds like, Nate, that you need you need to get on New Egg and you need to add get a red ripper to your cart. Okay, that's what you need to do if you want to fucking enjoy starfield Man three D with a new motherboard. Yeah, that's a new News like motherboard, but it has like six pc I slots in it. Yeah, it's like nine hundred dollars, like what That's what I was telling him about the other day. I'm like, you know, there's like a nine hundred dollars motherboards Like what in the fuck? I don't know what, but it's those are for like insane overclock. So after I made that tweak, I'm getting one utilization on the GPU, which is nice, and I've got like a few extra frames. Yeah, but it doesn't give me more fps. It just looks. It looks, it looks better. It keeps it at the same fps. But my GPU is now getting like worked, you know, So it's pretty good, pretty good. Okay, Wow, I can tell you that console performance is adequate. Yes, more than adequate. It's thirty fps obviously. But I have had no real bugs, no weird ass jank, no ja, I don't, I don't have. There was that one time when you guys were over that weekend and you were watching me play and one of the UC security guards didn't turn to face me right away. That was probably the first time you saw that, and they slowly turn around. That's like the biggest things I had. That's the biggest thing I've had. I've had no real frame rate issues. The occasional thing where if you just like once you load into I don't know if it's New Atlantis or something, and you you it's just like a bit of a stutter and then that's it. It'll happen in the town here and there. But the frame rate is so consistent I'm finding I've had just it's not nothing what's the word jarring enough for me to notice. It's it's it's pretty consistent all the way through and I don't have any that many bugs that it's a good thirty. It's not as good as Cyberpunk's thirty because I did I did an ab and back and forth and I was like, wow, okay, this is still like night and day. But it just you don't notice anything, like what does that mean? Because they're fucking masters over there. How different just the way they handle the motions. It's the way, it's just the way it's uh, I don't know it. It's fields Amdy actually has a tech on their driver that if you switch it on, it will lower resolution while you're turning. While while you're turning the camera, it'll lower the resolution to make it smooth, and then it'll pop back to native resolution once your camera's like steady it still in any game. You can turn it on on the PC driver. Really, Yeah, it's very cool, very cool. So like yeah, so for like first person shooters like online, you turn that on and like it's just the frame rate while you're turning in like action packed scenes, it's just keeping it steady for you. Really, that's really interesting. Yeah, speaking of paying for overprice equipment and not getting results you want. I had struggled for a while to get Starfield to run on the rack ally. Oh yeah, let's fine. Finally Rob from the game Duopod, who's a great guy, great friend of Griff, friend of the show, he helped me out and he was like, look, man, you gotta make your mind because I had. This is something I've been avoiding for a while because I just want I just don't want yet another company to have my email and my personal information and so but like the Ally wanted you to set up the my rog ally profile on their thing and give all your stuff. It turns out you can just log in on your Google profile, which is easy, and so you just do that, being boom you're in. And once I did that, I was missing like a ton of updates and there was a graphics driver update that I needed and a bunch of different things. So I updated that, I updated the Microsoft Store stuff, and then on top of that, the actual like Windows eleven tenant on the rock ally itself needed another update. So I did all of that, I went to the Holy Roll, and then finally I was able to run Starfield at max low settings. Baby, let's go it's great. It's great every but it should look pretty good. No, it did actually look really good. I would say that like the visuals on the Ally, because they're smaller, it's going to be similar to a Switch experience, right, So it's like not going to be the most like very high performing game, but it looks similar to like what it looks like in the series X on my oh lad, And it's not as pretty like the colors when there are like very vibrant colors in the game, don't pop as much as they would on the TV. But still like it's still it looks amazing and it feels good. It runs smoothly. I would say when I get into combat scenarios especially I think like firing the guns and that sort of thing, and just like the model renders and everything, it looks perfectly fine on the ALLY, So I would say that would be a strong recommender for folks who are still in that you know, Steam Deck ally phase right now. Yeah, that's what I heard about that the ALLY. It was kind of like it's kind of finnicky to get it going Windows PC, like very small, right, very small haul in your hands, so it's not like you can't be very dextrous, you know, it's really Yeah, it's big though. It's big though, and I have big hands even then, Like it's like I I mean, like your side Windows without a mouse. Yeah, it's all screen, it's all touch track pad. Windows isn't really made for touch screen, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's not. It's Windows eight. Was it was? I remember that. Yeah, what a piece of shit. All right, let's talk about the controls then. I I was playing on controller because at first I was playing on a mouse and keyboard. But I was like noticing that, I was noticing that I would rather just kind of sit back and play this game, you know, yes, kind of just sit back like this. Yeah, like the not like the mouse and keyboard sweatiness of three am alright. Yes, I didn't like the controller layout on balder Skate three. I didn't really I would. I much preferred the keyboard of mouse. But this the controller is fine. And I noticed that you don't notice the frame rate dropping as much when you're on control. Yes, yep, I completely agree. If you're playing mouse and keyboard, you're you feel it, you feel the lag, you feel you feel it with your whole arm because your whole arm is moved already, you know what I mean. And if it doesn't, if it's not right with it, then you can tell. It's not like it's not sixty You just can tell. But with a controller on your thumb, you don't really notice it as much. Yeah, so yeah, I'm just Oh my god, if I had like fifty fps on console, i'd been fucking heaven. It'd be sweet. But sometimes sixties weird. Though sixties weird. Sometimes it's like too clean for me. I like a little bit of a cinematic stutter, you know what I mean that kind of Anyway, I tried both. I say, I'm in the same boat as Jonathan. I felt more comfortable with the controller, like just hold it, leaning back, relaxing. The keyboard and mouse, I found like the layout of the buttons and what I had to press to get things done was kind of annoying. The what about the dead zone? It's awful. It's it's the worst. Like HI could download a mad to even the change the dead zone of the joystick because it's at like thirty percent or something great horrible, like you have to move the stick like a third of the freaking way before it does have that. I have that written here. I wish there were more advanced stick parameters. Example, horrible dead zone, the dead zone. Like every game where you are aiming anything, literally anything, you should have a fucking dead zone option, a dead zone setting. Why don't they do that? Yeah? Interesting? Well, for for example, we changed the I and I file and I went down to like two percent three percent. I tried four percent. I was like no, and it's still kept. Man, I know, but like and it was that still kept ready, mine doesn't move, Mine doesn't move at ten percent. Oh the stick drift, yeah, oh well, that's another reason why they don't do it. Obviously, it's because not every controller has the same center, like, so they just they just put it out here, so all controllers live in here. They just zone no one will have stick drift because we'll put this dead zone at to fifty percent exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's so interesting. I really didn't notice that in my play through it all. I felt everything was kind of snappy and responsive. Oh yeah, I'm noticing it when I'm are you plucked in us B No, just just p through series. Sometimes if I just let go my controller, he's like moving backwards. Interesting. Yeah, that's off sometimes yeah, yeah, so because you have stick drifts, because exit bucks Elite is a piece of ship controller. No, it's not even the Elade. It's my oh man, you don't like control is Jonathan, you don't like him. They're they're garbage. I love this thing if you love it so good. In my hand, I just created a new I created a new profiles on the Xbox Accessories app, and then I like changed my like in my fire. Yeah, this is the core. Yeah, the software is really good on that on the x on the app for the Elite, it's really good. It has all of those things that you want in game but you never get. But it doesn't matter if your game is filtering out the dead zone at thirty percent anyway. Like you can set your dead zone on the in the Xbox app right, and you can set your your response curve. But if the game is already it's pointless unless it's taking the input, like passing through the put from the OS or what however that works. I don't even know how it works. So I don't really know what the point of that Xbox app software is when the game is the one dictating everything anyway, you know what I mean, like, there's no better game than Apex Legends. I'm just telling you right now, go into the controller settings on Apex Legends and have a look around. They do have a very nice control You literally can change everything only if only you play Jedi Survivor and it evangelizes as much as Apex Legends. Jonathan, you know, he said, absolutely not. It's not the most controls I've seen for controller were Cyberpunk. I didn't know what the fuck I was looking at. Oh there's a lot there, There is a lot, but not is not even as much as Apex. Like it's the best controller game, the best feeling game on controller, hands down, hands down. Itays it on controller that that's why nobody is playing the keyboard anymore. Yeah, like, but we digress. Yeah, yeah, well about the controllers. Yeah, you're all controller right, Because I'm bouncing in between all of my platforms, whether it's like I'm coming from the PC to the Xbox. It's just for me like mentally and also just like muscle memory wise, I just I keep my controller and I care with me from place to place. I even have like a mount for my rag ally that I'll pair my Xbox controller to the ally itself and then just like have it kind of like as a display and then just use that that way. And I find it to be really fun. I think the haptics are actually quite nice, whether it's getting in and undocking and undocking from you know, space station. I don't get that online because I mean, yeah, this it has like really good haptics for it and the like even in oh what is that? What is that? Bit do ultimate Bluetooth controller? Check out our YouTube for a review that I did. It's a hall sensing joystick means perfect dead zone, no stick drift. Stick can set it to zero and there would be no stick drift and there would never be any stick drift because of the way the the sensors work. And this is how everyone should make their controllers. But nobody does. They need to be paying John, They need to be paying you man. Actually, there's controller that came out for Xbox. Just came up for Xbox. Yes, that has Hall sensing joysticks, and it's the game sir G seven. It's wired though, so if you need a wireless controller then they don't have those. But it is the first and only Hall sensing joystick on Xbox. The G seven by game sir, and it's supposed to be pretty good, and its supposed to be one of the fastest responding UH controllers as well. I use I use their controller for my phone, a mobile controller X two. Put that cool. I I will say though, in terms of when we talk about like critiquing the bindings or the way that they set it up, I really am a little bit disappointed in how like the gameplay when you're doing ship to ship combat feels, or if you're flying around in Starfield, I'm a little bit disappointed at kind of like how one note it is kind of just increasing or decreasing the acceleration I miss. I'm a huge like flight and I'm not a flight simulator guy, but I love like Arcade flight sims like ACE combat, and I really wish that they had just used the template that ACE Combats set out with, like the thrusters being like uh, you know, L two and then firing like the gun with R two and then using whatever face buttons that you want to to fire like secondary i'll turnate weapons, yeah, sort of thing. I feel like that would have been so much cooler. I often started shooting at ships when I meant to yeah, Accelerat did yeah, right, So I'm like that's yeah, and then called the Free Star Yeah, yeah exactly. And I just played Ace Combat like two months ago, so I was I'm reused to yes, like I'm used to that, and I was like fuck, and I'm like shooting missiles at like some ship like sorry, I meant to break. I was trying to hear, and then they get pissed off at you, and thens get pissed off at you. Why would you blow up a Free Star collective ship? Like come on, man, Jesus Christ, let's get into the gameplay. Then let's get it. Okay, let's do it. So the gameplay loop is very similar. We're looking at Skyrim in space right. It's obviously the talking the NPCs. It zooms in and it just shows them classic yeah, classic staring there for conversations though. I mean they didn't do the whole switching screen from one character to another went in multi person conversation though, and like skyrom and stuff, it was always but it was jimmiki yeah wow. I just mean I was tell a little addition like switches over to your like companion and they say something and then the it goes back to the NPC and they like basically completely ignore them and just keep talking. I love that. And then the funny thing is like sometimes my companion isn't next to me, and then it's like they chime in like something like something the NPC says like sets the companion off, and then they're like, well, if you really think about it, with the best ones for the job and they're standing at the bottom of the bar down two flights of stairs, just goes. I love it. Yeah, just completely ignores them. It's very funny. But I mean that's the charm that is. Yeah, that is that is these games. The creation's endearing. Yeah, I have the Loop. I have this for the Loop. Run around town, buy provisions, launch into space, possible ship battle encounter, fast travel to destination, possible ship battle encounter, possible friendly ship encounter, land spaceship on, planetary body scan, planetary body explore, dig sites, caves, space stations, loot, loot, loot, loot, loot, get too objective fat, Yeah, feel some pirates in there and through all events or space or just the amount of like stopping and loading screens, you know, like we were talking about earlier, Like it's like the Okay, I gotta the load screen to space. I got a load screen to doc, I got a load screen to land, I got a lowly. Really it increases the playtime, right, Like, I feel like if you were as many load screens, we would have gotten through this game much quicker. It's not just ten hours of loading screens. Yeah, running around like running around, yeah, running around town to the vendors that you have to go to one on this side. They put them exactly on opposite ends of the town for ye on purpose to keep you in there. The armor and the yeah, the Blacksmiths. You can quick travel everywhere. I mean, I like that. I mean it kind of unless your pockets are full. Well some people do, yes, which they were a ship. Yeah, me too. The first thing. Yeah, that was yeah, rightly. Yeah. Like the talk about the tree. Let's talk about that. The skill tree. It's so huge and there's so many things. Like I am like level fifty or something, and I only have a few things. Yeah, Like you can't do everything. You have to literally have to really pick. Yeah, you pick because you don't get them back. You can't reset. Yeah, I'm kind of scared about that. You can't reset. You don't want to waste your talents. You gotta pick to what you want and you got to put them all in combat the entire tree. Can I do that? I'm going, I'm going to space Tech. You could? You could do that. I feel like I don't use my ship enough to put any more into into the ship. Yeah, into the ship the same, don't. I also whip time, and it's it's especially important when you are doing certain side quests that we can get out to later. I'll see what you may. I want to see one more time in my ship. I want to spend more time in the ship. That would be cool. So I was curious, what is everybody's backing into then? If you want to keep it brought just brought? Yeah, yeah, pistols. I did pistols sells. Really love the pistols. I love them so much. Side Star the like the modified side Star with like the extendo and on the in the reflex side. Oh, I've got that, I've got the human No, I've got the the Old Earth pistol. In nineteen eleven, I think, did you did you choose to have the parents in the game when your character creator like the trade? Oh? Yeah, the character creation my dad were down. We are stepped out down for I don't have any notes, so you're gonna have to help me out here. The I choose to have the well, sorry, I know we've been jumping around, but no, no, it's good. I chose to have the house. Have to essentially deluded the game to have the house. Oh yeah, because I didn't get to experience that in Tears of the Kingdom, so I wanted to do that in this game. And then I uh, and then I wanted to have the parents, and then I chose some like missling. It's like very Yeah, you can choose to have parents and they will show up to you at New Gemsen and they will be like, son, it's been years, and like you get like an activity quest and you go up. They have an apartment in the residential district and so you go up to like one of the towers in the residential district and the like, and the mom's been like, oh, well, we kept your room in the same way that it was since last time. It's a it's a little bit of a mess and there's like one backpack on the floor and yeah, it's it's pretty cool, but your dad and your mom and dad both show up at the lodge and talk to the constellations, which is actually kind of I thought that, Yeah, it's like I'm on an important mission here, guys. Okay, because my guy is like an old ass man. I made my really old man like you. That would be amazing. That would be amazing. I wonder if they like accounted for that at all, But yeah, there was one little mission. Your parents pay you like allowance or something, or you have to pay You paid them, you paid them, You give them two percent of whatever is in your credit pool every every like week. It's like every like week cycle and in game or something like that, I can't for your house and you have to pay for your house flying out of your Yeah. No, I definitely like was on a credit grind because as soon as I loaded in the games, I gotta pay for this house. I gotta find a way to pay for this super fucking expensive house. Training. But the cool thing was is that you show up to the apartment and you find out that your dad is actually retiring from MAST, and he has an old buddy who was a part of the like weapon testing installation area that's inside of MAST, and he was like, hey, I know you're about to go there, you're about to deal with some unsavory characters and want you to be reprotected. And he hands you an old Earth pistol that has super super high stats. He was like, we calibrated ourselves. You spent the day of the rain God. And it says Sir Livingston's pistol, and it's like an ancient item. I thought it was the coolest thing that your dadd you want to Sir Livington's ye, Sir Livingston's pistol, and h yeah, it's it's that's just a cool little piece of like flavor. That's part of the overall charm of this game, where where I think the THEESDA and the narrative and the writing team really like hit their mark with it was small stuff like that for sure, And that's like that's a perk that you wouldn't get if you didn't choose that background right or trade exactly where it was. So it's like, exactly got a freaking trait or I haven't got any perks from getting any damn soldier A thankless job, a thankless job. Absolutely Neon street Kid. I think Neon Street Kid and wanted I put wanted, so I get, oh, yeah, I have any has any bounty shoulders or any boundary shoulders? Are you? Are you okay? The they show up all the fucking time every time. And it's only in space though, so they try to shoot me down in space. They don't come to your outposts. Nope, Oh man, I get fucking although I don't. I don't really ever hang out at my outposts. You know, I go there, I pick up some materials and then I leave. So and I have a bunch of turrets everywhere, so they probably gab. So you spent some time doing outpost building that's really neat? Yes I did? Did Did you enjoy that? Did you have a good time in that little like building? It's it's just a grindy shit. It's just it's just forgetting. But the thing is, if you want to do that, you gottack speck into it and like, I'm not specking into another thing out post grinding like, but it's it's easily done. But when you spec into it, you can have bigger containers, bigger store to store more resources, you know what, you can go in between. I don't know if you have to spec into my later system intersystem cargo links. Yeah, my links into like whenever they drop off the stuff and it comes out of my outbound into these containers. If it's gas, it goes over here. If it's solid, it goes over here. If it's man, it's a big spider web of links on. Whenever I look at my outposts, I'm like, fuck, that's crazy. Yeah, it's cool, So I can see it being cool. It is. You can make like a habitat, like you can make a building in like a nice place. I didn't. I had everything on the ground of the planet. Like, yeah, I had a bed for like sleeping to wait for resources to come in. I just a bed there, your space suit on the bed kept sleeping in my space suit. I had like workbenches out there in the in the elements, you know, and in the hazardous environdiculous, ridiculous. Put a little science hab in there, John, oh, you know breaking cargo ships coming in, delivering my car to what point to what? To what end? Though? Like ye is it just to think I think there's like that's what I was thinking. It's like you're industrious, Okay, yeah, there's quick. There's certain quests that you that they send out and like, oh, I need nine thousand iron or something, huh. And then to get nine thousand iron, you're gonna need an outpost that's farming iron, right, and then you just wait and then you go deliver it for fifteen thousand credits or something like. Yeah. So that's yeah, that's a big it's a pretty big portion of the game, like surveying and doing all that, but like you have to spec into it, like I said, and that's that's not what I did. I did. I did ballistic combat, ballistic combat. He too. I did everything I needed to in the ships and the piloting to get the to be able to do Class C build Class C ships. Yeah, that's right. So you basically have to spec in to get those extra parts. So I did that that a little. I did the health thing, like I got a little bit everywhere, you know what I mean. But it's not like like I said, it's there's so much that even at level fifty fifty points is kind of like where did I put this? You know, it's not to go to where did it's so interesting? Yeah? Where did it go? Yeah? I decided to go to the route where it's like I wanted to spread myself thin. And that's a problem because I used like cheap mods and Skyrim, and I was like one hundred percent everything. I could do whatever I want, and then it's so much fun you can do that. But then I was like, oh, I realized halfway through. I was like I need to stop spreading myself out and say that. I think I'm going to do that now that I beat it. You should you shouldn't. Just see how it like changes your perspective of like living in that world. But like I expect into pistols just like Nate did. And then I went commerce persuasion, okay, fitness piloting, and then I a security I wait, I went, I maxed out my security spec because of the reugient industry side quest. Yeah, I didn't do anything. Well, it's all like it's all like cyber terror, like cyber espionage kind of Yeah. I'm like halfway through the line. I think the US life for them. Okay, yeah, I've only done it so much fun. Okay, so I like that. Next, so you chose, you chose very specific badges and areas that you wanted to be strong, and that's kind of cool. I didn't really I didn't really think about doing it that way. I for some reason, I always think it's just I'm just going to max out a tree, because like it, each tree is its own area, and I want to be as like as I can in that one. But because I don't know every point has four points, I think that to a certain degree, it's hard to do that in this game because with combat, like there's only so much combat, and the guns are already powerful by themselves, and I mean, and of course, like you know, getting the better stats obviously will increase your ability to get I felt they were not very good at the beginning. I was like, these guns kind of suck. They don't do a lot of damage. But like I spect into ballistics. I spect into like the reloading times, and the reloading time is must the laser the extra laser damage, extra ballistic damage, Yeah heavy, all that up right. Yeah, it's really good to do that because like going through the end the final kind of fight, I blew those guys away. It wasn't even close. But this didn't take me any time, So I was like, okay, good, we're done. As for Nick's point, You're right in that you do have to solve some situations with persuasion, and yes, but here's the thing. I love being horrible at persuasion because it's yeah, and second of all, that's how would go, right if my character was this big, gruff like soldier and she's just used to fucking killing people and mowing people down, that's how she thinks, that's how she wants to solve the situation. But she can't and she tries this other thing that she's horrible at it, and it leads down a certain tree. Right, So in a sense, I would love to be good at everything. But I was like, I'm okay with the whole combat thing because I have tried persuasion and I'm like, well that didn't go over well. And then whenever you get like a five bar thing, you're like on the last dry It's so cool. I love selecting. Yeah, I love selecting options in my mind in a situation, like I'll specifically select a red option that I think is absolutely like gonna piss the person off or be out of the question because I know I have like another chance, and then it works and you're like that, it's like okay, It's like okay, well I got your critical success once when I was on my last one, and there was no way I could have made it, Like I wasn't like the option that's I had. Weren't enough bars to get to the end to persuade the guy, right, And I just clicked on it anyway and it said critical success and it went through, and I was like what, And I wonder if any of it, Yeah, I wonder if they massage the statistics in certain conversation scenes just to have like more just roll right, it's just a role. It was probably a one hundred. Right, It's just a random it could be role. It could be sometimes a probability you know, falls in our favor for sure. Yeah, but yeah, the persuasion is funny. I could see persue like specking into that being being being cool because there were a lot of times where I'm like, fuck, I would I wish that would have worked, because then I had to, like, you know, I had like ten ships. I had to I had to whip his ass. I had to whip I just ran into that in the side quest that I just did that was like a security side quest where I was investigating some smugglers and New Atlantis, and it came to the point where I was like, I looked in the captain's hold and it was like conscious it said contraband and I took and she was like, oh, well, it looks like it caught me. Huh. And then I like selected the persuade option to see, like there's any way that we can get out of this, and we started it in the first one that I wrote, like selected was a critical failure, and she was like, I guess I gotta kill you now, and so I like like, like just shot all three of them in a head in a line. That's one of the things I love about the pistles is they're just they're so snappy, just like, yeah, the pistols are so mission impossible. It's it's amazing. So I was just like, damn, I didn't mean I didn't want to kill you. Look at what you made me do. I didn't have to do this. This is your fault. This happens later on during the the infiltration quest line. Oh my god, it was so good. That's one of the lines. I haven't started that one yet, but well, yeah, I want I don't want to talk about it fully, but I was gonna say, what's your favorite quests? But we'll talk about that in the story in the story section. Okay, okay, what else can we mention here? For gameplay? What do we not talk about character creation? We didn't talk about that whole begetting you touched on ship building, but then we side ship building. Yes, ship building. Oh man, I'm not gonna bother. I had decided, should we not bother with a character creation? I think we can skip that. Okay, we'll skip that. We'll talk about ship building though. I want to talk about ship building. It's fun. I love it, liked it. I really it's the moving the cursor around is a fucking pain in the ass. I hate it's a bit clunky, but I like the the the you know, the building ships. Yeah, yeah, the little part like it is weird and clunky. A mouse keyboard's worst than controller. Yeah it is. Oh my god, it is. I was like, I was like, yeah, I'm trying to do it on the keyboard and mouse. I was like, what the fuck it should be? Does like clicking drag I got clicking drag ship like. It's bad. It's really bad on but it is. It is funny. There's some fucking hilarious ships online already. H magic school Bus, Penis ship. There's a Pence ship. Yeah, it's the invincible ship that can't be shot. You see that one, Oh, the one that's like a cube. It looks like yeah, yeah, it's an empty key. It's like it's just like the target of center mass. Yeah, and there's no center mass of the ship, so they just shoot the middle. I was sweet. So he just basically doesn't get hit and you can fly around. Yeah. But but yeah, my ship ended up being fucking cool, dude towards the end, and I had like the Dimos it's one of the one of the manufacturers. You go to their ship from. Yeah, the freaking giant bridge like cockpit. That's so cool. It feels like you're walking on to the Enterprise. It's still. Yeah, it's fucking sweet. So I have that on there. It's this big ship. I got like turrets set up. I got giant emp pulse weapons, lots of cargo, three thousand cargo on this bad boy. I think it's like eighty mobility, eighty six mobility or something like that. And you made yeah, twenty seven light year travel. Oh wow, I'm at twenty one. That's crazy. I went all out. This thing's probably worth like three fifty probably That's what I was kidding, said, did you buy did you buy one of the ships from the vendors and then just modify it, or you just built this from scratch? I built. I built mine off the frontier. It's awesome. Mine built the frontier. Cor Oh really, I deleted all that. I made a snake one that looks like snake. Pretty cool. It's like kind of jag Kid. So it almost has an empty center and I was thinking about that. I was like, maybe they'll shoot there and they'll miss, but but it does kind of like zig zag and the cargo bay I put at the front like a mouth, and I put the compit on top. It looked sweet and it was very mobile. It was it was sweet ship. But I like, I like cruising on that big fucking yeah. I love my Toad. I love my toad ship. It's so sweet and got the different things you can put on for like yip to make it look cool, like wings and stuff that are just kind of like aesthetic that I'm waiting. I'm waiting to unlock some stuff so I can make an X wing fighter, you know, like something small, single single person just fly around super fast and shoot shit down. I almost feel like they don't want you to fly one of those things, you know what I mean. Like I saw the cool thing on Twitter today. Yeah, I saw the thing today where it was like a Nabo Starfighter, but it's the entire like, yeah you need a have you need a Yeah, you need a habitation bay or like whatever the the actual docking bay is and stuff. Yeah, you need all these components right in order for it to pass the flight check. Yeah. I thought it was. It was really fun. I love the ideas, like the just juxtaposition of being in that ship builder mode kind of like the same thing is when you're doing outpost building, is like you're selecting these tiny little assets and moving them around on a map and they're or just like cobbling to them together in the builder mode, and then you like get into like the game in real life and it's this gigantic, massive construction with like you know, mortar and missile rounds that are sizes of like a building. US like, Okay, this is this is sweet, this is yeah yeah yeah, but I wish in the building mode that you can go inside, like you can design the interior. Yes, but yeah, there's not you cannot do that. I think you can somehow. There's some commands, there's some command there's some command prompts that you can do that'll allow you to like put stuff that you would put inside of a building in your ship, like, oh, I think things modules that come with those things though, you know, you have to buy the medic bay module. You have to buy it, or the storage room or the yeah, the armory. Yeah, I haven't unlocked a lot of those things yet. There's I've unlocked that because there's an even entire ship builder perk like selection, right, yeah. Yeah. You guys all building your own custom ships, all three of you. Nick, I've never built one from scratch. What I always do, like I did this to the same the frontier that they gave you at the very beginning, is I literally ripped it apart and built it entirely in it like in a new image, and I use some of the old parts and then a ton of new parts, Like I put a stroud Eckland cabin on the frontier itself, and then like put some gigantic like nova star thrusters on the side of it and made it just like super juice stuff in the back end. Yeah, it's really fun. Yeah, I enjoyed. I started off trying to make the Millennium Falcon, but there's no you can't you can't make like a ship like circular yet, I guess like a plate. But mine's pretty close. I think mine's very close to getting like flat, like like single layered and single layered, yeah, like millennium, fucking like the toad. Toad's pretty single layered. It's got a big head on it, and the cockpits like very large, and I don't have any landing base until kind of like the back, so it looks like the toad's legs like the feet. Oh, I love I love my ship. It's fucking sweet. Yeah. I don't know that I'm gonna like bother building one from scratch, but I did load up earlier. I was up. I wasn't spending too much money on it, just a few thousand credits, but I was upgrading the systems on the frontier for now. It's like just in case, you know, maybe I want a little bit more firepower to you know, damage to haul, damage to shield, and maybe I want a little bit more shield up, you know, maybe I want a little bit more lasers, and I think that's what I upgraded, but for now I think it's something like four thousand credits total between a few parts it gets. We're still better than what I had before. But I was like, I'll save my money and I think I'm just gonna buy the ship that I want, that that has all the parameters, and then maybe update or upgrade that or something right because I don't know. I was honestly, I think I hate the controls in the ship Builder, Like I have very little patience. They're horrible in it. They're horrible. It's bad. You have very little pass for that. They're left like it doesn't make any sense, like the joystick in the camera. I was like, what it's like. I'm like, I'm not in a cockpit right now. I don't need it to be inverted. Just feel like ups up and down is down. I feel like this is like the first pass. Like they wanted to focus on other things to get this game right, and they were like they looked at Shipbuilder and they were like, if they're gonna do it, they're gonna like have to fucking deal exact the way it is until we can go back and then do a patch update to it. So right right, Yeah, that was It's it's very fun to do that. I actually I would just put on some you know, you can listen to stuff in the background and just do your ship, because I would do it for like a half an hour, but not man team that you shared in the group chat. Yeah, I just shared in the heap chat. Oh my god. Yeah, I see you got the Stroud Echland. Uh like a the top to it. That's the top. Yeah, the top round ones are I think Stroud, but everything else is dimos. Oh really okay, Yeah, it's fucking sweet. Got some like braces on their little spines. We haven't talked too much about like the the act, the combat. We haven't talked too much. I'm curious to what you guys think about the combat and like the performance while you're there's some combat. I talked about how did the guns feel as you're doing the like the gun play itself, but what do you feel about the moment to moment gameplay in the A I wish I realized, I really wish they would have gave me like a like a thrust side to side. That would have been cool, like like a like a dodge. Yeah fuck yeah, yeah, all the time, I fucking jump and I'm straightening in the air while I'm loading, Like that's it. You have to do that. Yeah, well, if you're on a lower gravity planet, you can manipulate yourself in the air pretty well. Yeah. It's like you jump up and you just straighten the air really and then you jump back down. Okay cool. Yeah, So I definitely do enjoy fighting and shooting things. It's it's sweet, especially when you find a weapon that is really don't you find it's very soaky, like the bad guys are just taking clips and upon clips, even in a legendary gun. Oh yeah, like it's like early on. Yeah, once I like uploaded updated my combat, my ballistics and my like, yeah, I don't find that, and that could be because I'm specking. I spect in the weapon moding, got some nice weapon mods on there, and I had some nice weapons, and I'm blowing these guys away, like absolutely a one shot guys with this fucking shotgun. I got it in some question shotgun just like the pump. No, it was like some ants like futuristic shotgun that I got in a quest somewhere and I don't even was it like a little pistol looking shotgun. No, it's like a big thing, the one that you get the Mantis. Yeah. Oh, he's just the one where it's like it's basically a grenade launcher. It looks like a huge Yeah, it's massive. I think I have the I have the one main quest that you get it. Maybe, yeah, it's for killing the little scorpion dudes in one of the quests in one of the main quests later on. Okay, maybe it's shotgun here, you'll need something to deal with those blah blah. But this thing is fucking sweet and it's just blow blow blows every heavy. No, I don't think it's a shotgun. I think it's like a it's almost like a like a it's a really an incendiary launcher. It's called like that's what That's what I'm thinking that it is too, because I have a shotlun I have a gold one. I thought I thought it was cast classifying shotguns. But yeah, it just it behaves like the round that comes out from it behaves like a like a mortar launcher. It's it's so off right. No, but I think it's a heavy weapon because everything Okay, I just got I'm telling you that it uses shotgun Ammo fifteen by twenty five or whatever the hell it is. Shock Yeah, emmos, I remember, I remembers really fast. And robots are pain in the ask to kill. Yeah, I will see it throws them away. Yeah, robots are a little bit of a pain. I actually I've taken like shooting the robots with my side star because it just fires. It has such a high DPS like fire rates, like like just to being able to throw around to what's up? Are there are? Well? Are there certain weapon types that do well against robots? Like do you have to use electromagnics to spec into doing well against robots? You have to speck into it? Yeah, robotics, robotics like perk, Yeah that you can can actually choose, okay, and I think you can hack them and you do more damage to them or something like that. Well, then my question then is what is the point of all the different weapon types if if I can't use an electromagnetic rifle against the robot, Like, what's the point of having different types of damage if if there's no real it's just based image, that's just a specific You also get other things, I think with that robotics thing though, you get the ability to like interact differently with them and stuff like that. I forget. Also it's variable too, because some some enemy types have armor or shielding and like taking witches, they're shielding first with the enemy energy weapons, and then you switch over to the ballistics to like take the health out. Kind of classic. I think that's that's where that balancing occurs. That makes sense because in ship combat, actually, Nick, yes, do you use lasers. I I here to to further or to faster, decrease their their shields, and then you can use ballistics against the hull or missiles or whatever. So that makes me perfect sense. I've got to That means I gotta do some switching up in my my hot key, my favorites, because I really only have ballistics. Yeah, you're you're You can calculate because on the on the ship builder, it'll tell you your fire rate, your damage to yield, you're damage to hull. You only have to do is multiply that by the fire right, and that's how many damage per second you're doing, right right? Yeah, Like if you do two point five, it says fire right two point five. That means two point five per minute or per second and you're shooting two point five times twenty damage, then you know how much damage you're doing per second. So then you can kind of compare it to another weapon and say, okay, what does more damage per second? And that's what I was doing, and I was like, okay, these are the best ones. Damage per second to shield, damage per second to hull, and damage per second to both, because there's some that do equal damage to both. So my ship does a fucking ton of damage. Well, coming back to like the just like shooting the robots, Like I've got the one laser gun. I got it like really early on in the game. It's it's at the long range of still. Yeah, it's take as I guess, it's like a kind of a snaper, but it's not like a rifle. Yeah yeah, yeah, like the laser rifle on the robots. That thing like knocks them down, stuns them, and then you can go up to shock the rectangular shape. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Equinox Is that a laser It is a It is a laser gun. Yeah, rightful, you can use long range. It takes laser cartridges, so it's laser it is, okay, yeah, but there are overall picks. Under combat, there's perks for doing extra damage with laser weapons, extra damage with heavy weapons, extra damage with ballistic with pistols, you know what I mean. So it's like, right, if you want to do one, you you should really only be using one. But that's not really practical. You need you should be using other types, right, like the lasers versus the ballistics, So you do have to speck into like all of them if you want to be really strong. But again, if you're doing a full combat tree, that's totally doable. Yeah, you know, but then you're not putting anything anywhere else. That's like, yeah's and you're not getting those cool things. You're not getting you know, Yeah, I was. I was kind of getting stuck on the research where I couldn't re search things because they didn't have other things. I'm like, now I got to go speck into that so I can research this and so I can do this, and I'm not going to unlock because I am speaking into combat, but I want that also involves modifying my weapons. But in order to modify your weapons, you have to fucking spec into technology. And it's like you got to be a weapons scientist in space. What is this non science officer, science soldier. Why can't I bring it to somebody and just pay the damn money? Right, I'm saying, did you guys, how did you guys feel about the commerce system? Did you Are you struggling for credits? Are you rolling in the credits? I feel like they've been pretty generous for the most part in my place time building ships. Not when you're building ships. Yeah, when you're building. When you're building ships, you run through money like water. Yeah. Yeah, there's one quest that I'll get you a ship ton and then it's gone whenever you build a fucking ships. Yeah, that's what I built my ship from. It was like that question, what guys do to make your credits in this game? What do you do? What's your money? I do the outpost thing I want to I want to figure out how to do that. I create post. I have a bunch of or I need iron copper, iron copper, beryllium, and aluminum, so you just remains farm and then you sell all that and then I create these fucking Tao grade whatever that. I don't think that's what you're supposed to be doing. You're supposed to there's because there's questions a deep shipyard. There's questions each shipyard, and she'll be like, oh, I need nine thousand aluminum, and then you go fucking pump nine thousand. But she gives you all that shit. I think you have to do earlier stuff that has like surveying of stuff. There's survey missions haven't yet. Oh my god, survey missions takes so long. That's the biggest like bummers is that I wish that it was just a little snap here. I'm stuck on one planet. It's like eighty eight percent. I'm like, I don't know what else to do here. Yeah, that's yeah. You kind of just get find itself from doing that too. You do you do? He gives you like thirteen thirteen thousand or something like they give you things in your inventory survey data. You find them in your inventory, you can sell them for like something each the I didn't know that. Sometimes I'll get caught and I'll see like, you know, six out of eight, and then I'll go to the planet map and I'll scan. I'll turn on the resource color map and then I'll look around the plant. Okay, here's beryllium, here's aluminum, whatever, and you'll see all the colors, right, but then some of them like don't show up and and I guess they just were because it's color coded, right obviously, like irons like red, so you see all the red well, but then some of them, but you're not you're not spected into it, so you're not going to see it perfectly from that view too much. Some some materials don't show up if you're not spect in. That's what you're saying. It's just a very general map, but if you spec into it, it gets more detailed and you can see where everything and then more more resources. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, what I was doing was just farming those four elements iron, aluminum, copper, billion, and I was creating adaptive No, I was creating adaptive frames. You go to a workbench and you just mass create them, okay, and you get a ton of XP and levels from doing that, really, and then I am from from crafting. Shit, man, you're not crafting enough, dude. I like, I showed you a screenshot of thousand mass out of my two hundred and twenty five my like my cucumberance or whatever I had like sixteen thousand or something like that. I think it was my highest and then you put on your ship. You ship on the down. Yes, sometimes there's just too much to take on. Yeah, I'm just like, shut up. We're grinding outposts, don't you understand that, because you don't need to pass travel anywhere? Right, You just run around your outposts and you don't die from that. You will only take a certain amount of damage and you won't die, so you can just keep doing it. And I'm building all this ship, and I I wait till I have about eight thousand of each of these adaptive frames and the towel grade retro stat or whatever it is. And I go back to Neon. I get on my ship, which is right there. Because I have a landing bay in my outposts. I just get on my ship. Sometimes I row to land on my bay and I'm not, and I'm out on the fucking mountain, and I'm like, what the fuck? And then I've got all the shit in my pocket because I can't run, I can't fast travel there because I've got shit in my pockets. So I'm always fucked every time. Is your landing bay too small? You're running bay too small? You need the big one. Yeah, she shows up, one shows up to your guys characters, and she's like Sam Wise, Gamgy share the low. Okay, let me let me share my thoughts about the music. Okay, because this is something that I noticed stylas as I was playing at thought was really cool. Nick, I wonder what you think. So okay, the first point I have, the first bullet I have, is their use of for the palette neo classicism, so like influences of what we call the Romantic period of the nineteenth century, things like you know, you're freaking broms year rockmaninof kind of ship, for sure, and twentieth century symphonic music. So obviously everything post nineteen hundreds, which gets very contemporary quote unquote and experimental. But holsts like the Planets come to mind, and you guys would know this music when you hear it. It's like that doctor Evil theme, Babappanet type thing. Yeah, that's actually from Holsts, the Planets and so much. Yeah, there's I think it's actually Mars or something I don't remember, but there's so much good music in that whole thing, and it's very much what they were going for. It's very sort of it's like every piece in that movement or whatever you want to call it. I don't know if it's a symphony, but it kind of paints a picture of music leave each planet. But this tends to be the pallet I noticed for their surface, their surface exploration, their service exploration, you're sorry, surface, the surface ex and when you're in space, like in your ship, that's what I noticed. They use a lot of the orchestral textures during that. Yeah, there's a little bit of electronics for surface exploration, but I think a lot of it is is this symphonic, But then there's also some really cool electric stuff or electronic stuff that tends to be the pallet for combat on the other hand, So oh, yeah, I've noticed music. Actually, yeah, it's not symphonic, which is which is cool because I mean, you can still do symphonic combat music. I mean, think about Jeremy Sewell for with the freaking Skyroman Oblivion, for instance. But yeah, exactly exactly, but I think that that obviously, it still blows. As a producer and a composer myself, it blows my mind that they that any medium like a game or film can can blend the two styles seamlessly without their listeners kind of even noticing the shift between the two totally different, you know what I mean? You just, oh, I just heard a dark and intense like electronic music in combat, But that's over now. Now I'm listening to an eerie and really tense orchestra while I'm like exploring this abandoned research center. So there's that there. If you're paying attention, you notice the shift between the two worlds, which is really cool because you almost can't have a game like this, and it's given its style and it's it's aesthetic and it's and it's scale. It's both style and aesthetic and scale. So it's space, a massive space epic. So it should have an orchestra because like John Williams restarted that whole thing in Hollywood with Star Wars. But you've got to also have electronic because it's got that kind of cool uh you know, well the sci fi like think of Mass Effect in the clubs, just like the what's the club called on Neon? You know what I mean? They don't remember the Astral Lounge, which is like Cora's Den in Mass Effect, right, So there's that electronic element, so it's really cool to blend the two. And I but I also hear hints of soundscapes like Han Zimmer's Interstellar. I noticed that too. It would be like these lonely synth phrases that are like cold breaths in that the vast emptiness, right. You just kind of hear them chime in a bit and you're like, oh, that was cool. It's just like a sinth line, so you were I'm loving the freaking music. I think it's perfect for the game. Cool, cool, cool. He uses a lot of Dorian scale, don't you. It's like it's like one of the go twos for composers is good jumping to the Dorian scale, from what I understand, to try and get into those harmonics, to get that that futuristic but also washed out space melodies. I feel like that they try to lean on and I know that that enon Zur is famous for that, and he's he also did all of the Fallout games, if I'm not mistaken. So it's like they have their like one A and one B. They have their one composer who was His name is Jeremy Cobba. I think what was the same, So Jeremy Sewell, who does who does the Skyrim and Elder Skulls Elder Scrolls games, and then Nanzer is the one who takes his like, you know, either the futuristic or you know, post apocalyptic, which I think is really good. Yeah, I just it's so hard for me because I like this. I like the music, and it works, and I think it's serviceable. I just think that the themes kind of repeat themselves often, and I just don't I wish that I kind of was wanting a little bit more of a like because I feel like you you compared it to Mass Effect earlier. In every world, in every major city in Mass Effect had its own very distinct feel, whether you were in the Citadel or if you were at a Omega, like, each one had its own like kind of like lightly flavored textures in the music. And it's also I'm playing this game fresh off the heels of Star Wars Jet Arrest Fiber, which was composed by Stephen Barton and Gordy Hobb, and they did incredible work with just like that bombastic. It's very like their paying a lot of homage to John Williams and what he did with the original trilogy, but they're also doing their own thing, and it's like very influenced by like what Ludwig did with the Mandalorian. Like I listened to the Mandalorian ost in the Jedi Survivors team and it's like, yeah, that song, I love that. Yeah. So it's like saying, you listen and then you don't see as much variation as you like in between the themes like on planets and different cities and things like that. That's what you're saying, Like you'd rather a little bit more personality, unique personality. I wish he got weird with it. He doesn't get weird with at any point throughout this game, and I wanted to get a little bit freaky, you know what I'm saying, like getting weird. I guess. I just I feel like they're it is good and it's it's very, very excellent, and I admit that serves its purpose. I just I wanted maybe I'm looking for something extra just because of what I've been influenced. But I mean it would be cool, of course, it would be cool. Yeah, all right, yeah, yeah, I I agree with all. I kind of agree with both of you. Like when I was playing, I never really stopped and listened, you know, I just kept going either and it just kept kind of like playing in the background and it like and that's the beautiful part is it does fade into the background mostly, I think it's supposed to. And that's why horns. Yeah, there's always horns singing in the horns. And I never like stopped on the planets looked at some planets in the in the milky Way, and like, let the music like take me for a little bit of a ride. That never really happened, like, but I noticed the music behind me pushing me forward and it felt good. It's it sounded great. But I never stopped to really like think, wow, this is fantastic. I definitely did, Like I didn't stop to marvel over it, but I stopped to listen to it. Oh that's just something that I actively do. But yeah, I did love Speaking of horns, Jonathan, there's like a lot of woodwinds actually, like bassoons and claire our nets, which are actually a super lonely texture to use, which is perfect for space. Right, It's not like strings. You don't get the same thing from strings. Strings have a have a vibe. Maybe it was it wasn't horns, and maybe it was. Maybe it was just like a deep like an no bow or something almost well, it could have been, could have been a space almost like an organ, but it's not. It's really weird. Yeah, it could have been as interesting. Yeah, I've noticed it could have been as it's definitely the baffoons I will see. While we're talking about music, I can only imagine that Nanzer was also. He had his hands in the sound design as well. I'm pretty sure they probably had a separate sound engineer that's like apart from the composer. But I feel like they have to work hand in hand because they're working on the music files and they have to be seamless good. We talk about sound design though, like this game really really stands out each individual like reload sound effective, the half of every gun. Every gun is different, which is cool. And and then it's just like the idea like every like ship Thruster has its own signature sound profile as well. Yeah, and the computers when you walk up to a computer, the animation sound to click to oh my god, I just go back and forth to each computer because like, yes, so good, it's so good. The doors when the doors open, it was beautiful, and I sound sound whenever you like, there's almost like a little. Uh, I don't know. When you pick when you do certain things, there's like a little there's almost like a sound effect they put it. It's like a and there's like these like little clicky very gear. I don't know the way they it's almost like these tech gear type sound effects they put in. It's beautiful collecting things and for certain things you pick up and whatever, like yeah, it's great. Yes, every lock it and when you're a lot of different patterns, it's very crisp. It's very crisp. Yeah, they're recording. Whatever they did was a very nice detail, very tail. Yeah. I kept looting just to hear shit, Like I would just loot just to pick stuff up because I love the sound of it all, just like click. Yeah. Yeah, man, I'm a fan. Right, So was there anything else not for me you want to talk to or talk about? Well, we didn't talk about visuals or story. Yeah, Well that's it from I think we can move on from music is what He's story is gonna be hard to talk about because I'm only so far. Yeah, you guys have gotten very far. But generally speaking, it's as someone who hasn't uncovered all the mysteries yet. It's very interesting. I'm really wondering where it's going, and I have some questions. I mean, like you for anything, really, but I'm digging how kind of vast that the main story does feel in terms of where it takes you. That's kind of something unique to this game though, because the world is just massive. So right, But I do like, I do like the kind of these big missions they send you on, Oh, you have to go to this person, to this far off world and find this thing. And I really like it, and I'm wondering, you know, how is this all kind of what? You know? How am I connected? And what is this? What are these artifacts building? I mean I have an idea, but why you know, why is it at the lodge? And why this one? So you guys probably know by now, but that's like the questions that I'm thinking of as I'm playing this story. So wait, I'm a question about the lodge. Sorry, Well, just like you know, why this why the why are the artifacts building this thing here in the middle of the law the lodge and what happens when it's done and whatever? So I'll find that's where well you're you're collecting them and bringing them to the law ye, yes, yeah, yeah, so well I'm waiting to disover what the hell the premises then? Like the premises you you are a minor and you did some job when delivered it to the these guys at Constellation, which is like you find a mysterious foundation of explorers privately funded by this guy, what's his name? Barrett? Barrett? No, Barrett is the pirate. He Stroud, Yeah, funded the Constellation operation. But Barrett was the one that set up the set up the story, or he set up the thing for Lynn to go mind, he set you up, yes, to join them. Here gives you this ship. He opened the job. I was talking about Constellation like Consolations privately funded by the by Walter Stroud, who builds the the spaceships. And they're trying to find these artifacts, which is the thing you find at the very beginning, and it takes you on some wild vision hallucination stuff. Yeah, like you fly across the universe and then you're like whoa, what was that? And they're like whoa? And then you want to find all these artifacts and find out what they do and what are they four who made them? And then he says, wake up, Samurai, Yeah, wake up and then that's the journey City to burn. Yeah, it's gonna be I'm looking forward to finding out where where it is. There's a big I've got and like reveal that I got today and I was like, whoa, I got my I got the goose bumps. Well, what was the last main story mission that you've done, Dan, Oh? I just did the one today actually with Walter Stroud where You've got to go meet that the seller, the club that Dion. Okay, that was cool. It was fun and I love Walter Stroud. I'm a huge Walter. He's a good character. He's a good character. He's a good guy. He's he's good. Yeah, we had we had time together. It was the Corpo scum Bag. I just did that today. I was playing for like four hours, and I was wondering, like story stuff, what was driving him? You know, I was kind of like wondering what was driving him? He's big money, he's yeah, he wants to explore. Man, he's a he's a curious mind and he's got money. So yeah, that's what Constellation is all about. It is about exploring. Yeah, you know, you know one of the things that I thought when we talk about the story we talk about the Attached cast, who are the core members of Constellation. I really like Barrett. I really like him in his story and how he kind of just like he weasels his way out of everything. He gets himself into such a hot shit and then he just gets out of it. But he just because he's like fucking charismatic dude. And I love Crimson Fleet. Episode gave me see that. I was like, okay, okay, I exactly and then and then it was the it's Sam Co. I love Sam Co and then like I just I kind of went Sam, you know, it's it's exact character from True Blood. Sam from True Blood. Really watch I've watched few seasons watched. He's like the guy who's like, you know, he's like the cowboy he and his name is fucking Sam and he lives on a ranch. You know. But it's that sort of reminds me of that's just like, of course his name is Sam. Yeah, he's a perl guy, cowboy. Sam. Yeah, he's he's definitely cool guy cowboy. And he made me go down the Free Star Collective side mission tree down a few of them, and those those are really fun. I really enjoyed it. I love the fact that something that's not super spoilery for all of our listeners is that when you get into those situations, every side quest gives you new like armor or apparel that they'll give you that a kind of representative to those factions that you're joining, So like region industries. At some point along those question you get this cool looking suit. And then and then obviously Free Star Collective they give you a deputy. They give you a deputy uniform. You can put that on. Put I put a cowboy hat on. I was rocking that cowboy hat everywhere. Do you get a duster coat? I feel you get the duster coat? Where do you? When do you get that? Is that later on that I just take off your space shot space suit when you're running around the planet or whatever. I'm always full space suit. Just you can't see my favor sir. You can take that off, Normies, my old ass man on Acula City, you can take all that off, sir. You're like, I can't, sir, I can't hear it. Goddamn where you're saying. But yeah, story we can't really get into. But there are some good ones. One of my favorite ones so far was the infiltration of the Pirate Gang, the space Pirate Gang. Yes, sleep, I non ripped through that quest like I started it and I couldn't stop, like it was just so. Here's my question is what a you do to get kidnapped by the UC Vigilance. I don't even remember. I accidentally stole a medals from the flight simulator you see Vanguard. They just to me inhaled me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought I thought it was a mission through someone else. I got introduced there saying go to go to the cisteph they wanted. Maybe it's through the Vanguard. I think if you sign up for UC Vanguard, you get a little offshoot that that gives you, that sends you to go talk to the Conde guy that ye commander code. Yeah. I just remember flying into space and then they hailed me and they're like you have to come with me right now? What Okay? I don't then just ember that happening to me. So because I committed I committed grand theft larceny. Actually I looked because I really wanted the mission. I wanted to do the Crimson Fleet mission, and I looked up how to do it, and they were like, you just have to commit. And so I went to New Jensen and I went to the I went to like the I see, this is why some of the bugs are so funny, because I went to the Terror Brew. I think that's the name of the coffee shops of Starfield. You go to the Terror Brew, and I like went behind the bar and I just started taking coffee cups that were like just sitting behind the bar and just putting them in my inventory in the owner was like, Uh, you can't do that. And then then the security guard came and started firing. He didn't even talk to me, he just started firing. So I was like, could that happened to me? I couldn't land on the planet. I don't know what I did though. I couldn't land on any you see, controlled planet or they would immediately start shooting me. And I don't know what I did at all. I had to use a code to remove my bounty because I didn't you were you were a naughty boy because I was shot something down. I think I stole like something on a fucking planet in the middle of nowhere out there and territory we don't but nobody told me anything, and they weren't like, hey, you're breaking the law. Like nobody said anything, so I didn't know. And then I go back to fucking Alpa Centauri and and then the security. The security is like, I want every single gun you have pointed at that man. And I couldn't do it because it was very early in the game and I couldn't do anything about it. So I had to use a console command to shut it off. Yeah, so stupid. I just remember accidentally stealing the medpack. I was like, oh fuck. And then nobody was doing anything, and nobody was coming after me, and I started looking around and I gave the couple couple of seconds, but the flight simulator like officer was just booking it toward me. It stops in front of me, it says something yeah, And then all of a sudden, I'm like, well, okay, so, who what's this guy really gonna do. He's unarmed, he's just some fucking, you know, flight sim officer. And then I turned around and that's when they you see secure the guard is right in my face. I was like god. And so they told me to come with them, and I was like, okay, pay my bounty and I'll surround with bed pack and I'll be on my way. Yeah. Then it started this whole new quest line with whoever they were there, the intermediary with mister Akandi and is going on right now And I'm on this whole of the ship and and I'm in space somewhere. Just for stealing a med pack, I'm like, whoa man, I think we all need to just relax. The pack back, Like, just let me go, what coff I just I just need a little NIX cut his pockets full of coffee cups. My pants are soaked in coffee water. Yeah. During my perk select, I selected an adoring fan, but he only showed up once. Really, did you not invite him on the ship so you can annoy the ship out of you? I can't remember, but that might have been what you were supposed to do, or at least inviting part of your career. Damn it, damn wasted. Move ONDI visuals here game beautiful, very cool. The aesthetic, the kind of retro space thing that the Nova, the Nova what is their names? Nova the company, the ship company, the Sun, the Nova Industries or nover Frontiers. It's like the first after NASA. It was like the first kind of original o G Space Manufacturing Company. I just love going into my ship and like looking at all the little pieces of metal and seats and cushions that's everywhere, like the side panels, like it's like, oh yeah, and then just the landscapes and obviously the when you're flying in space it's not HDR, but on the olet it still looks nice because it still looks cool because you have the perfect blacks A space game is as I had to actually use a mod to take off this weird it's a weird haze in the game, Like it's almost like hazy and they'll put they put it on there so it doesn't have to do any type of like processing in the in the draw distance in the background, so it kind of like lightens the load for those Series X owners. Oh really yeah, I uh well, I removed it with a mod and now it's just like I get it's beau what Actually it's just there and it looks like it should the lights are off and it's dark and when it should be and it's not gray. And like there's a lot of mods that people make, like like these LUTs, the reshades, the reshades that people do where they'll tweak all the contrast and all this stuff sharpness, they'll do the bloom lighting, all this stuff, and they'll put it in a little pack for you download it, you apply it to your your reshade app, which is tied to the exc of Starfield, and then you can and then you load it up in game with a little shortcut key and you say, and you can turn it on off and on so you can see the difference. And man, it makes a huge differences difference. I'm starting a question whether or not I should have just gotten the Steam version so I could do all these mods because I started to get a little pomo boys. I think you can. I think with the game passers, I think there is a way. So it's just because it's it's weirdly nested, so it might be a few extra steps. That's the Xbox or the Windows Games app. It's but it's definitely worth it, definitely worth looking into it because it has transformed the game for me. Like I got this one guy's reshade pack and man, like it looks so good. It looks good, so good it might Yeah, sometimes it'll hit your FPFS by like a couple a couple of frames here, and there a couple of frames here there like I don't have frames to spare. I do not have frames despar I have none negative thank you. And I also downloaded up Mond where the guy upscaled textures to four K okay, and you can download those packs and overwrite the texture packs that are in the game. Oh my god, it's so good, like in the ship, like when you go on the ship with these like the four K texture packs. Oh my god, it looks so good. Looks so good. Yeah. Game, it's like the art direction is particularly compelling, and I love how well thought out each of the different environments that are like the main curated areas are the obviously it's the it's the disparity too of each of the world's because you have Neon and it's like kind of that like kind of glowing kind of you know, night city vibe on the main areas, and then you notice it's like it's like propped up out of the water Neon. Yeah, It's like it looks like a boil rig. It's just like an over populated oil rig is what it's like, which is really cool. And uh, and then and then obviously New Atlantis and you're like whoa, yeah, And that was the craziest thing is that realizing that you can go to the Spaceport and there's this entire like underbelly of New Atlantis which is basically just like irl New York City, and it's just like this grungy, you know area where people really I haven't been there yet. Yeah, it's this place called the Well, and there's a bunch of like I spent a chunk of time and New Atlantis just doing a bunch of side missions and like there's an entire mission where you're chasing down like people who are like stealing energy from New Atlantis down in the core and stuff. It's so cool. They're like rerouting power and stuff down there so they can like pump their you know, forty nineties at at max capacity so they have gold rated you know, power supply units. But yeah, it's uh, it's really cool. And it's like each of the areas have this like weird disparity. It's like even on Aquila, there's like the nice shopping area or like the different gun stores, and then there is that stretch where you're not really supposed to go, but you go down there anyway, and yeah, it's uh, it's so cool and and all of those different kind of like well curated environments I haven't done a lot of, or I mean I have gone to like random moons to hump down like Ecliptic mercenaries, and I do find when in some of those there are like same like I've been into like multiple caves that they are exact same cave. I've been into multiple you know kind of like habitats that are in those like abandoned Crimson Fleet or abandoned Ecliptic like uh stations where you're wrong socitions, and and it's just it's like, you know, everything's kind of positioned the same way each time with minor differences. So there's some of that procedural saminess, but overall, just the art direction and the feel of being inside spaceship or walking down a city and seeing like those kind of that that futuristic architecture is just always I'd nerve out about that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's definitely sweet. Like I think my favorite is just always I never go straight to cockpit never, never, yeah, never, really, I always I walk around my ship, my ship. I made my ship a bit weird, so it's not very easy to get to the car, so I always go to cockpit. Yeah, I'm like I want to go. Okay, I have to go. I have to go up. I gotta go one over down to the right down and then okay, I gotta remember to do that. But like because the way you put your modules and ship. But then I learned to learn your ship and like where the cockpit it is or whatever. You know, you can stack so that all of your ladders are kind of like in the same spot. There's a weight that you can do that depending on what piece you use. And you know that your cargo bay is going to come up here because that's where your cargo bay comes up. So you get a module that has a ladder in the middle of it and you can use that as your kind of main column for your elevation, right, and that's your like district Fusian, So you know you need to go there. But I didn't have that. I was all over the place. There was ladders, there was fucking it was a nightmare. Yeah. Yeah. What do you guys think about the gun models? Oh? I loved, Like, there's so love how they change when you add mods to them, Like they depending on which modey do. And I'm curious because I know that you said you specked into it a little bit more Jonah, but like the different mods, like do they give you like some of the experimental ones where the weapons start looking crazy? Because I'm excited that there's skins that you can change in the mod thing. I haven't ever seen one though, I don't know where you get them, but again into it to mod those guns. Maybe yeah, maybe it unlocks it with with the spec I don't know. I'm gonna have to unlock everything. I'm gonna literally cheat and yeah, I think that's the only way you're really going to do it because we can't undo everything right now. World, I'm already level on my forty forty I think, And I'm like, well, like how many levels? I think you can lock a lot if you've got to like a hundred, if you get a hundred, I don't know how many. Oh, there's no level cap we don't know that. Yeah, that's what I've heard is that there is no level cap. It. We'll just keep on going, so you can just keep you can keep unlocking until Yeah, because of the nature of the story, you can just kind of continue. Yeah, a new game Plus. This is what I understand. This is not really a spoiler, but new game plus. Uh, nothing carries over except your skill tree and your experience in your level. Everything else is Yeah, that's what I did. They give you a choice. They give you a choice to do one of two things, and one of them is no. One of them is the game mode plus where you start over. And I didn't even know that though, so they don't tell you. So I would have liked to actually know that. So I'm actually doing you favor one. One decision that you do will start you over with nothing, just and you'll probably know that I'm reality now that I tell you this. Did you have to say, no, I loaded a save? Okay I didn't. I didn't know, but I could, I mean, but yeah, just so the same thing with that's what they did the same end. No, I didn't get a new game plus c No, No, they don't. Didn't need to be gameing plus. But you load just to a previous say before a point of no returns. Oh yeah, yeah, this isn't like that though. You can just there. It's like part of the story kind of, you know what I mean, Without saying too much more. But yeah, I chose out and I was like, okay, that sounds cool, right. It was actually just starting over. I'm like, fuck, oh, my shit's gone. My fucking sweet ship, my all my money and my gone. Daniel, you're at the point in the game where I thought it was very memorable. Have you run into an interesting NPC character that's got this cool gray armor called the Hunter? Yeah? I have not. No, not Is that like main mission? Is that the main I remember when I was Yeah, it's he's just he just populates in the areas that you are in. And I remember when I was at your level at your point in the Gamp campaign progress and he showed up at it was in the viewport and New Atlantis, and he just was chilling. He was just sitting there. He was this really an interesting looking in PC because I love going there and looking at all the goofy as MPCs be like, you can't come on my ship. I'm not breaking you on. And then I see this dude standing off in the distance and he's just like leaning against all his arms crossed him. He's just chilling there. He's just chilling there. And I went up and talked to him, and he was like he was like, oh wow, a lot of people don't typically talk to me, and I was like, yeah, I totally forgot about that, man. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty So yeah, talked to him because he's got an interesting little flavor. Yeah. Wow, I don't even remember that that part, holy that, but I did do that. Wow. All right, guys, So we're gonna we're gonna wrap it up with like a recommend and review score. Okay far Daniel probably won't be able to do that yet, but well, I mean what I've played a value for what I have played. Yeah, okay, so just do a little blurb to summarize what you think of the game, and then end it with a little score. Okay, So, Nick, you want to go or do you want to let me go? Let me go a little bit later on, I want to I want to lean on you guys first, so curious I'll kick it off. It's a definite recommend, especially the players who love, like obviously love be as the games like follow Oblivion, Skyrim. This itched that need for a new behees the game like I couldn't. I couldn't, I couldn't get anywhere else, right, Like you you kind of like want a Diablo game, but nothing's gonna quench that Diablo thirst until Diablo four came out. You know what I mean. You can try these airpgs or whatever and you can't really get it. This was the same thing. It's like ten years or one, yeah, one with Skyrom ten years I think, yeah when it released or was it was it following four after? Anyway, it was very lar Skyrom was twenty eleven because I didn't play following four. So my last big bethez the game was was Skyrim and Elder Scrolls Online, but it doesn't really count. But yeah, like I love this game. If the mod, the official mod support coming out next year, I can't wait for that for Todd Howard to unlock those those doors. The game did lull a few times for me, and getting the powers. I don't know if Daniel's there yet. The powers, Yeah, getting the powers not a single one and Fetch Fetch questy and it was the same thing. They didn't give you like a dungeon to do before, or like even a different puzzle like puzzle, but just a change of task a little bit, a little tiny bit. You mean you guys didn't find the palp seen lightning. I just made that. That's not a real thing. I'm like, why would I use these? I don't need to use any of these. Yeah, and I don't. I don't like they forgot they exist. I don't like the button combo. That is because if you're pressing l RB, if you hit L one just a slight second, can you can you let me talk? Hold on? You're making me lose my fucking track here. So whenever you're pressing the shoulder buttons, if you choose, if you click one button just before the other one, you go into your scanner and you're like a you get a scanner. Fuck. I mean times I've that drive you crazy. That really bothered me. But like, yeah, there's some walls up and downs, but overall, I loved my experience in this game. Like I love the ship building, I love the flying up shooting, even just shooting the asteroids to get some freaking materials, you know, just that. Can you get a lot from that? I don't. Yeah, I just I just do it because I like shooting my guns. I don't know, and it appens up I think, Yeah, I love it. I love the game. I love I was expecting this. This is what I expected, I think to the like where I put my expectations. This hit my expectations where I was leveling it. You know, I wasn't going too far, expecting too much, and it hit that, uh, that expectations. So the romancing was kind of lame. Oh yeah, I didn't even get I didn't even do it anything. It's not didn't really. I think you have to speck into it. A mance tree. I know, you have to spec into the socialist. Yes, there's a social tree and your companion rapport or whatever it's called. What is it called, what they call it, I don't know. It's like leader tree is like yeah, yeah, affinity. So I think you have to spec into it to get it up to the level enough so we couldn't like I have one I saw one option to flirt. That's all I saw in the Inn game. Banging MPCs left and right in Baald's Gate. Isn't that like the thing? And it's like even in cyberpunk, Like cyberpunk brings it to a whole other level, like this game very non sexual. It was very Yeah, it has no sex appeal, has no exactly where where where are the balls? The little of sex appeal. The NPCs aren't very attractive. Yeah, they're not really, It's like that. The character buddles are not very good. It's just there's no sex. She's wifey, but yeah she's very nice. But like, dude, overall lack. I did, I'm done. I rolled the credits, I'm I was, I'm satisfied. I'll continue to play. I'm going to continue playing this for a very long time, I think. But overall, I give the game an eight point five out of ten. A, Okay, it's pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah, I'm I'd probably give it like an eight. Okay, I liked it, like it's good to it's a it's a good experience to get lost in. But it's not like the main story wasn't particularly gripping. Yeah yeah, like kind of like hog like Balther's Gate like Hogwarts. Hogwarts. There was a lot of different quests, so the Hogwart had like a branch that was really good. Like the Sebastian quest line was fucking what I mean, but it's main but the main question, the main quest was better. It was better than this. Though the main quest is better than this, but like there's a point at in the main quest where it gets much better and you're like, oh wow, that's fucked up, Like that's really cool. But like, overall it didn't really grip me. But the side I love the side quests, like the Faction quest line, those are really cool. So good. Yeah, but yeah, and the jankiness. It's just like it was good game. But like I'll give it eight to ten. It's nothing fucking mind blowing here, you know what I mean. I'd say, if you enjoy Mass Effect, you probably like this. If you enjoyed yes, like Fallout, like it's that kind of yeah game definitely, Yeah, yeah, I'll go ahead and go here. I think that I only agree with everything that you guys have said so far, Like I don't disagree at all. I think for me, it's I see what you're saying about the It's interesting at what you say there, Jonathan, about the main question about it not necessarily gripping you. Both of you have said that so far, where it's like it it loses itself kind of in its esotericism. I feel like a little bit it's not relatable, it's not as grounded as maybe some that and and I think they that's with intention here and I feel like Betheza wrote that in a very purposeful way where it's like, we want to tell you a larger than life story because you're you're in a galaxy, you're exploring a galaxy, and they so they wanted to try and do that. I just feel like, for me, and this is my personal preference, is that I genuinely do look for something that tells a little bit more human truth in the narrative. And that's something that even though they did a great job on multiple fronts of kind of like you know, fleshing out characters and you know, explaining relationships and doing a great job at world building in this game, I wanted a little bit more stronger character identities in some of the core cats. And I feel like if they had worked on that some more, it would have been And that's literally what Mass Effect gave us, right, And we can't we can't always expect that out of every single title, and that's what makes Mass Effects so special and Starfield is special in its own special. But there's the way. But yeah, I think because it's not they weren't really you didn't really care about any of the characters, you know what I mean? Right, Like I didn't care about Sarah Morgan. I don't care. I wanted to shoot her in the face. Yeah, you had to have her in your party for that stretch of quest. Like the very beginning, she was insufferable. She was like, I don't think that's necessarily good thing that you should be doing that. When I'm louding a body, I'm like, lady, calm down there. You know they're not gonna use it. Right, it's gone. But in like in Balder's Gate as an example, the characters are so good and you end up loving the characters. Here's they're so human, they're like, so h. I don't know how you could answer this, But if you didn't play Balder's Gate, mhm, okay, would Starfield be better for you? Did Balder's Gate like ruined Starfield for us? A little bit? Yeah? Because I was kind of like, okay, what decisions? What what choices are they going to give me? You know, That's what I was thinking. In Starfield it was just and I was just not I was like, oh, yeah, this isn't Balder's Gate, right, I had to remember that, And then I was like so yeah, I kind of did. But like then I would be like oh, persuade. Yeah, I'm gonna persuade, like in like in Balder's Gate when I do that, and then I just dog shit at it and it fails. So I'm like, I guess it's not Balder's Gate. Yeah, I mean, and then the relationships and the and the talking to the characters, it's not as deep, it's not as good. So it's like, yeah, so I could I could, Yeah, you could say that. Yeah. I feel like they surprise you at times. They It's like it's one of those things where the writing is consistent until it's not, and then and then they will like we'll pop back up a certain moments of side quest where you're like, oh shit, you guys are really you're really doing it here. So I feel like inconsistency is a part of the identity of Starfield and and for that reason, I'll probably I'm gonna error on the side of sticking with with you as well, Jonathan. I feel like this is a good eight out of ten game, but when we compare it to like the legacy of what Bethesda has done for me, it's ten out of ten. If you if you enjoy Bethesda games, if you enjoy that Bethes The Deep ONPG. So it's your favorite games? Yeah, so it's your favorite bethes the game. Yeah, yeah, I would say that easily because I'm such a sci fi guy and in the sandbox they have given me in Starfield is more than I could ever ask for, and it's going to be better than any day. I'm not playing fucking evonline, I'm not playing No Man Sky. I want to play a game like Stockfield into that, and that's where I feel like the selling point for this game lies. And you know, is it going to review critically as well as some of these other games like Spider Man two or Balder's Gate three? Who knows, probably not. It probably won't end up that same way, whether if that's it's at dice or the game awards itself. But I feel like that there are enough positive notes here that they're going to walk away with maybe you know, a sound Design Trophy or a Narrative Design Trophy something like that, because there are some moments of brilliance in this game that can't go unnoticed. Yeah, for sure, completely agree. I will absolutely agree in that the like in terms of their ambition, Like it's ten out of ten for Bethesda. I don't know if I could say, I mean, I gonna haven't finished the story, so I don't really have any right to say that it's like my favorite Bethesda game. I haven't played as far ours you guys have, and if I compare it to what you know, memories Oblivion gave me, you know, Oblivion still in the running for that, but but Starfield has a definitely has the edge up over uh, Skyrim for that. So the more I play Strim Starfield, it could definitely become my favorite Bethesda game over Oblivion, just because I it gave me something fresh with the sci fi as opposed to the fantasy genre, which is getting a bit tired. Maybe that's why Balder's Gate wasn't the first thing I wanted, because the fantasy thing, I'm just not I'm not gravitating toward right now, and I haven't in a while because I just got a bit tired of it, and I love the sci fi element, and so I think that it could definitely become my favorite Bethesda game. But it's definitely something you have to play if you're a Todd Howard head, you know, if you're a freaking Skyrim headed God Howard followers I'm sure God you are though, if you're a God Howard following already playing the game, if you if you pray at the altar of Todd. Yeah, I mean I will say this to agree with you wholeheartedly. Daniel. I feel like the ponies can eat their heart outs with this one because they're missing out out of everything else come out this year. Starfield is not a game that you want to miss just because you're beholden to one video game camp in the silly yeah ideology, ideological walls that we build for ourselves. So yeah, sure there are some things knocking down points, but not much so I would have to air more. On Nathaniel's end, I think of a little bit more than eight I think is fair for me. So so so far, I'm going to give it an eight, an eight and a half. Two. I can't say nine, can't say nine. It's pretty quick and say nine. Yeah, I can't say nine. Cool, all right, let's fucking end. Then let's do it. It's a recommend from everybody, I think. Obviously we talked a lot about it, so I mean, I think we're just gonna stop it. There. That's it, No more, sure, let's do it. No more Starfield. We're done with coverage, all right. Thanks for tuning in, Thanks for listening. Nick, refresh our listeners where they can find you. Absolutely, if you haven't caught me before, if you haven't listened to my show before, I am one half of the Friday Night Game Cast. You can find us on all podcasting platforms the Friday Night Game Cast and we are there. You can also reach out to us on Twitter at FNNGC pod and you can find us on there and reach out to either myself or Will directly and communicate with us. There. We have our our link tree, and I'm sure the boys will include that in the show notes, and so just check that out and check us out on your favorite gaming platforms. There you go. We're over audios, Peace based see yeah po