The Besties - Starfield Didn't Exactly Send Us to the Moon

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Todd and the gang have cooked up another big ol' game for us: The outer space frontier explorin', space ship buildin', dude blastin' open world RPG known as Starfield. How well does Bethesda's formula apply to the infinite cosmos? We have some thoughts. Also discussed: No Man's Sky, New World, Finity Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

What happened to Star Trek? Well, the kids these days talking a lot about Starfield. Yeah. In my day, we had one. It was called Star Trek and Uhura and Sulu and the whole gang

and that was enough for us. Was that the only star thing you had? That was the first star thing. Yes. In TV terms. Jules Verne wrote a book about space. That's the first space book. Yeah.

The only space TV show we needed was Star Trek. Star Trek with Scotty and the gang. Scotty and the gang and Kirk and all his adventures. What about Sin of Star? And then after that, it was John Carpenter's Star Man. Yes. In terms of importance, probably like cultural magnitude. To the Star Trek.

And then A Star is Born. Yes, so funny do you guys remember that uh film when bradley cooper pisses his pants and like it's so it's sad though that's meant to be sad griffin it's meant to be sad but they can't tell me when not to laugh at bradley cooper pissing his pants like that's objectively like a pretty funny like did you see hangover he does it in that one too we only stand the baptist version here on the besties i'm sorry we don't acknowledge the existence of the other ones who's that starry that's a funny one actually because starry is it's sierra mist they changed it to starry changed the form it's like all different oh it tastes

different it's completely it's a different beverage it, it tastes different? It's a different beverage. It's not a rebrand. It's a different beverage. They said, everyone hates this one of... I like Sierra Mist. Everyone of import hates Sierra Mist. We're just going to pretend we never did it, erase all of it, throw all the trash, and we're going to do a new 7-Up. It's called Starry.

It's called Starry Field, and they're doing doing great brand connection. I feel like we've run out of movies with Star in the title. Stardust. Star. Ship Troopers. Let's start this shit.

Star Wars! Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah. Luke, the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Frushton, and I know the best game of the week. Real funeral vibes. Hello, and welcome to welcome to the best energy is so weird when we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive

entertainment it's a video game club and just by listening my friends you are a member uh the uh i would say one of our most anticipated games of the year if if not our uh one of it was my if not one of them. Yeah, Starfield. Justin, this game has been in development basically as long as Best Use has existed. Not quite as long. We are older, but slightly. Not quite, but very close.

Slightly, yeah. We've been looking forward to this one for a long time, and the time is finally upon us to talk about it. And Chris, what's Starfield? Starfield is the latest game from Bethesda, specifically the team that made Skyrim, a game that has meant a lot to, I think everybody on this call,

maybe except for me, but especially for Justin, except for now they're going to the final frontier. That's right, space. Space. And we're going to join them there in the final frontier. That's right. Space. Space. And we're going to join them there in the final frontier right after this. Okay. This is a big one.

So, and I think it's easy to get lost in the, in the hugeness that is Starfield. So I thought we'd started a, a baseline point just to familiarize everyone with where we are at with regards to past Bethesda games Chris Plant called out Skyrim which is probably their biggest one they've made all the Elder Scrolls games they made Fallout 3 as well as Fallout 4 and to a lesser extent Fallout 76 uh but I think people are most know as, hey, this studio makes giant open world games.

How does everyone feel about their games at large? I love them, man. Yeah, I'm kind of a diehard. I count Oblivion as one of my favorite games ever. Love Oblivion. Probably my favorite game ever. More than Skyrim? Yeah, it was a real, this is too personal,

but it released right around the time that mom passed so we were all living in one house playing oblivion at the same time like we were just trading off characters and it's got a real fond spot in my heart skyrim is absolutely brilliant i adore skyrim i love fallout 3 very very much fallout 4 lesser extent i think not not wild about fallout 4 and fallout 76 i don't count i want to call out oblivion for one one of the reasons i love it is oblivion they made a game where it was so easy to break the game using the in-game tools where you can make a potion that could like cause you to jump 300 feet in the air but it wouldn't address for the fall damage fucking awesome good time i love that game plant you haven't played a ton of I played some Fallout 5.

Oh, boy. Fallout 5. Oh, shit. I'm a time shifter, baby. Whoa, Pipeline Chris Platt. Getting deep in the works. I played some Fallout 4. I got some negative feedback for my opinions on the game,

and I promptly said negative feedback for my opinions on that game, and I promptly said, not for me. I've tried to download Skyrim. Well, I've downloaded it. I've succeeded. I never make it more than a couple hours. If you hold your watch in the air, it will download Skyrim.

It's that doom. No, I... But, the flip side of that is is i was really excited for this one i thought this was going to be the one for me uh frustic yeah i've played basically all of them uh and i've enjoyed basically all of them even fallout and not 76 i didn't get into 76 but even fallout 4 which i think is probably the most maligned of the bethesda game studios games i enjoyed mostly because i just like walking around and like discovering cool shit like it's not so much like oh i think whatever the quests are that engaging

or whatever i just like just exploring these worlds and i think all of them do a good job of making you feel like invested in the world that you are currently in i also forgot that this is the games fallout is the game series that taught me how to do my job because frost fresh and i were working at a different publication a long time ago when that game came out and fallout 3 arrived and r Russ went up into a little cave in the ceiling of the office, started playing, told no one, and then I was left to figure out

how to publish onto a website with no guidance. He did a great job. And I've never been more jealous. But, you know, ultimately, it was one of those, you know, he did me a solid. He said, go out and learn. Good for you, Russ. Go fly.

I gotta say. Yeah, it said go out good for you russ go fly um i gotta say yeah it worked out okay yeah i like i like all these games too we should we need to start there's probably people absolutely losing their minds that we are not talking about starfield in this episode about starfield and i think let's be transparent about the fact that it's because we have not had the best time with it and i think we are operate let's let's put all our cars on the table i think we're operating from like a weird energy right now because it's before embargo it's before like we know how the sort of general consensus is going to be and if this audio file got out early oh no oh no no it's like a weird it is a weird energy to not know uh sort of how your shit's gonna align with the the norm we gotta own ourselves though we gotta own our own taste

and what works for us and what doesn't work for us and i i think we are all coming at this from a place of like it is a it is a confusing mix of stuff happening in this game that we are not really vibing with. I mean, you start out in a mine. Yeah. And then you're walking around the mine, and it's kind of run down, and you get some boring gigs where they're like,

Zap this rock. Zap a rock. Drill out the rock. Thank you. You do slowly follow someone around. Oh, boy, do you ever. And I hope you like that because you follow them around. And then after you dig up some space rocks, you go outside.

You know that incredible Bethesda Game Studio moment where this small area opens up into a big area it's as close as they have to a hallmark well this time it just opens up onto some sort of dust planet and the likes of which you'll get intimately acquainted with throughout your time here this 10 minute window is when you will know something has gone very wrong that was the exact moment

yeah this is the exact moment you step outside and you're like yeah this is the exact moment you step outside you're like well this is kind of boring out here it's been pretty boring to this point but it's still pretty boring oh and it gets it gets worse because so for me the 10 minute clock uh you start the timer happens with that we're swelling music and you're like here we go we're getting into the fun part of the game door opens there's nothing to see then you get in a ship and you discover that unlike no man's sky where you fly from planet to planet and it's smooth that you have a load screen to take get into the ship a loads then you walk over you get into your chair a load screen there's a little cinematic there's a little cinematic yes and they

do have a lot of these cinematics of you getting into chairs and flying away there's a lot of different cinematics of it so you're at least not going to keep getting the same ones then you pick so you're now in space and orbit but then you have to go to another planet and then you're in space and orbit and then you have to pick a landing spot each of these is a load screen and it's also a menu it's important to say. Yes, so many menus. It's absolutely bizarre. I want to drill this home because it is so important. Yes. Because I've played No Man's Sky a lot,

and I think that there have been a lot of comparisons between that game and Starfield. And after spending a lot of time with both, I think a not apt comparison at all because of this reason. There is the space flying layer of Starfield and then there is the walking around on a planet or inside of a space station layer of Starfield. And the two layers could not be more removed

from one another. It reminds me more closely to Destiny in the way that you have to go to a load screen to get to the ground in Destiny. Now, granted, in Starfield, you can actually fly a ship around when you're in space, but the second you're doing anything on foot, anytime you are leaving your ship,

you will be seeing a load screen or you will be seeing an animation to hide a load screen. I wanna ask you guys, because I could not make sense of this. Sometimes you could fast travel through like the mission log. Usually this is how it would go for me. If I needed to go somewhere to follow a mission,

I open my mission log, I hit R on the keyboard to set your path to the planet and then it'll bring up the map of the planet sometimes it'll just let me land right on it and so then it's like i skipped the space step entirely i think that's if you've already scanned the planet you can do that yeah i think but then also but then it's also if you have contraband on your ship yeah i think it's a contraband thing i think if it's a planet that has an interstellar agency that would scan you for illegal. I think we're getting in the weeds. And we're getting in the weeds,

but just like it's not. The big thing to remember is what was, what I think a lot of people were expecting was a more fluid, intimate experience where you're going from planet to space, space to planet, et cetera. It ends up feeling very disjointed

and very herky-jerky because you're constantly diving into these menus or seeing these load screens and it really fucks with the flow like big time and there's i would say i think it's a consequence quite honestly of and we're gonna i think hear this a lot as the game comes out it's a consequence of the fact that they are now using this engine that effectively has been built on top of for 20 years at this point and it's very clear that the engine is like holding on for dear life trying to run to the point where there was no chance in hell it would ever be able to do a transition from a

planet to space space to planet it's just sort of a consequence of that. I think the biggest problem with this is that it makes exploration not something you do. Yeah. In the game. You can, once you're on the ground, just like run around. You can park your ship, I guess, wherever, and then run around, and there will be sort of,

as far as I can tell, randomly generated little sort of spots. So like a cave that you go in and there's some rocks in there that you can mine. Or here's another, here's an outpost with some, you know, bad dudes in it that you can go and shoot them. Yeah. And get their stuff. But it like that issue of, you know, a mile wide, an inch deep that Bethesda has sort of had in the past is I think at its at its worst here because there is no incentive to explore. And this system is just not really set up in a way that encourages exploration.

So I mentioned early on that the thing that I love about their games is just getting lost in these worlds and finding cool shit like i'm walking down the road in fall out 3 or whatever and i find the nuka cola factory wow i had no idea that was there i'm gonna go inside and check it out oh shit there's a bunch of robots in here but i found a unique gun whatever it was there will will never there will never be a meaningful exploration moment in Starfield because the only way you can find things is by being given a waypoint directing you to it. To go to it.

You can't stumble on stuff because the only thing you'll ever stumble on are these randomly generated, a cave with some loot in it or a base with some enemies in it, but it won't be a curated experience. The curated experiences are only discovered from quests or like you talk to someone or you overhear someone

and they're like, hey, you should go over here and you'll get a quest. That's the only way. So it really rips the heart out of the thing that I love about these games is the I feel like I discovered something, not I feel like the game is guiding me by the nose to something. They also do make no, uh, uh, there is no way to,

once you are planet side somewhere to move faster than running, you have a jet pack, but it's really more of like a, a boosted jump that you can use a few times in succession. That's a little bit faster than running, but it's mainly a way to get some of your O2, which is like stamina, back. I mean, because you're not using stamina while you're jetpacking. But it's very limited.

You're not like flying around. And when you're planetside, especially in these worlds that you're going to to do some sort of one-off mission walking around them is utter drudgery i mean it is you don't have some sort of like cool hover bike you know there's not like some horse stand-in you're just running around like a doofus and they're very empty like you just won't it's just like empty ground which i guess is

scientifically accurate there probably would be so it captures the drudgery of real real space i guess i mean i mean the exploration is is no fun like not fun yeah sometimes when you get into a town if you want to poke around and explore the town you you could definitely do that yeah I think where I got into trouble was, uh, the things that I was doing in like the main line, non exploration parts, like just like following my missions were so boring that I, it didn't like entice me to want to extend the experience. Like I was no, there was no part of me that thought that something more engaging was going to happen down some random path because they couldn't make the main things they forced you to do, uh, engaging. And by that, I mean, like

there is so much following of people, like a lot of like like follow me to this other location there's a lot of take a seat at this yeah this table with us so we can talk to you wait for me to there's so much waiting on like ai people too can i just to put a plant a flag in this y'all remember in skyrim because everybody's played skyrim a million times except chris plant when you get to fucking y'all ball gruff in uh white run and before you can talk to him or do any shit he has to talk to his dudes he has to talk to his advisors for like a minute and a half and then he has to walk very slowly to the wizard room and then talk to the wizard for a while you can't have fun playing skyrim so that happens so much in this game it's fucking mind-boggling i i think there is a contingency of our listenership

that will like this game to be clear and then there's no judgment on them and i think no i agree with you it's important that like you know if you're listening to this and you're getting angry or whatever if you if this game will bring you joy i am actually genuinely happy no i want to hear plants point but like we don't make this allowance for every, like, why do we need to make an allowance for it being bad? I agree. It's not that I'm even saying it's bad. I think I look at the Horizon Zero Dawn Tears of the Kingdom comparison, right? When both those came out.

And that feels to me like baldur's gate 3 and this they're very they're different in their own way but baldur's gate 3 is very creative and it's like adventurous and doing new things stop it because you're saying no no let me horizon is not creative let me finish just let me finish sorry the i think the the comparison for Horizon in this is that this game is very linear. And if you are the type of person who wants to have a Wii game where you're going to get stoned, assuming you're of a legal age and in a state where you can do that, and you're just going to zone out and you want a thing that's just going to tell you what to do over and over and over, there's nothing wrong with that. I think this game will serve that that that said let me be clear i think horizon as much as i don't really enjoy those games significantly better than this and let me also say if you're looking for a weed game

specifically a weed game in this style they're not space games but i would recommend every other bethesda game studios game over this game. Yeah. It's, it's, it's tough. I, to keep it positive for a second. I sometimes enjoy the combat encounters.

I think the best part of the game, we should talk about the combat. That's a good, I think some of the combat encounters while not like necessarily reinventing the wheel, you are finding a lot of weapons that are cool from a random perspective like you'll just end up with one that's like way too powerful and you'll run around like wow this is the best gun ever i'm just gonna shoot everybody with this dumb pistol i got off some

random guy um and and the way that like you can use your weapons in concert and, um, the way combat like evolves a little bit later on and the way that you are, uh, can, can, uh, sweep through a place. And, you know,

sometimes the, the combat encounters I found enjoyable. I found them like, did you do any zero, any zero G ones? No. One of the first places I went was, uh,

like an abandoned space casino uh and it was all the gravity was broken and so i it was like early hours of the game and i was fucking zooming around in zero g like blasting dudes and having a great time having a great old time um but then but then the story started again we haven't even gotten into that real quick on the combat so for people that have played either fallout game uh three or four i know they didn't make new vegas um the combat feels like those games but there's no vats which was the like turn-based aiming system that was in the fallout games so it's all real-time combat i am of the opinion that those games do not have great combat it

doesn't feel very good like the gunplay doesn't feel very good i would agree that it is slightly snappier here but without vats to like make you feel like you're playing tactically every gunfight that i've ever been in has been like the dumbest most mindless charge around a corner gunfight i've like but they're paced appropriately for that like gunfights in fallout would often like you'd be dead almost instantly if you weren't using vats right like the the like things could go bad so quick this is balanced a bit more evenly. I think it feels a bit more like- Yeah, it is balanced for that.

That's first, it's balanced for it. It's just, it does, it can be a little bit flat after a while. If you put it up against- Yeah. I was going to say, if you put it up against like an action game, like a Doom or something like that, it has a really tough time. Even a Call of Duty or something it has a really tough time even a call of duty or something like

a really tough time but for a bethesda like even compared to skyrim which i adore like the combat in skyrim is brain dead it's not good uh but i i found myself i find the combat at least a little more meaningful in skyrim because i have more options for interaction with the world. Sure. Yeah. I mean, you don't hear you have guns and some melee weapons. You don't have some, some spoiler stuff that there's some later stuff that help diversify a little bit,

but broadly speaking, like your interactions when you're in combat are pretty limited. And for me, what spiced it up is I actually think, uh, the itemization in this game is great. Like I, me what spiced it up is i actually think uh the itemization in this game is great like i i could not stop poking around in in chess and stuff because i found that the like random perks that

rolled on weapons were like pretty fun like there's one that uh like makes it so that when you kill an enemy they have a good chance of dropping a med pack which is huge very sustainable then there's like you know all the different modifications and stuff that uh they have teased out a lot like you know silencers and other sort of attachments for the for the weapons i guess my fear is that whenever i hear anyone and i've spoken to a few people that have played the game and whenever they talk about like oh yeah but i found this gun with a really good perk on it it's like the same four perks yeah there is not a deep well of awesome perks in this game and i wish there were because you're right like if i was getting wacky like

the fall games have some fucking wacky ass guns where you're shooting bowling balls and shit and here it's like oh my armor can carry 40 more pounds of stuff can we talk about the progression stuff because i'm a little bit i am i am of Because I'm a little bit torn about that because I actually found the perk system, which is, I think, especially lifted from Fallout. Like without the sort of special stat requirement behind them, there are basically five pages of different perks that you can unlock.

So there's like a social page with, you know, bargaining and scavenging and persuasion, et cetera. And then there's like a physical page that's all about like increasing your athletics and whatever. That system is weird because there's like multiple levels of each perk. And in order to upgrade each perk,

you have to do little mini challenges that just feel like filler. They just feel across the board. Some of them feel genuinely terrible. There's one where you have to use up all of your oxygen 10 times before you can level up your oxygen meter. Which takes a minute. To do that, you sprint up your oxygen meter and which takes a minute like it takes zero time sprint until your oxygen is completely gone but wait it hasn't counted yet because you have to keep sprinting until your co2 meter rises and eventually through that that

counts and so you have to do that 10 times before you can increase one level now if you're going for level four oxygen maybe have to do that 40 times yeah and that's it's really it's just not thought out like it's not it's not thought out well but but i found the chase for new perks to be like anytime i leveled up i got pretty excited because i think that the there's a lot of perks in there that are just kind of fodder like oh a 10 increase in rifle sure damage who gives a shit um but the ones that are like you have unlocked new toys to play with in the shipbuilder which is for me the absolute like unequivocal highlight of starfield is the the i i think the shipbuilder in this game kicks ass and i could play with that thing i do agree that shipbuilders

i want to talk about that next but before we move on from this the skill point thing here's what i think drives me most nuts about the skill point thing because you're right i did get excited when i would get a skill point that i wanted to spend the way it is nested such that you need to complete a challenge before you can level up this thing is you get this feeling of i I just unlocked a skill point. I need to spend it because, let's say, for example, I'm leveling up my lockpicks, my lockpicking skill.

And right now I can only do novice lockpicking, but I want to do advanced lockpicking. If I don't spend that skill point early in the game and I run upon another advanced lockpick thing or another novice, it won't count to my next level of unlocking that skill so you get this feeling of like oh shit i'm wasting all these times that i lockpicked just so i can't like level up this it's just like choices like that could have been made differently and honestly have been made differently in their other games like bethesda

in skyrim does not lock out your ability to get better at archery that early in the game you also are are not able to respec in any meaningful way that i have found because of these challenges right because you have to do the challenges to keep progressing so it wouldn't make sense for you just to respect so you if you realize like late in the game later on in the game like you're making some of these decisions pretty early if you realize like i don't actually care about that or more often starfield doesn't really care about that yeah like this isn't really something that starfield cares about then you're um there there's also uh like there's rows of them

so you unlock the first tier of like science right and that's like med pack create a usage and something and a few other things you have to spend x number of points in that tier in in science or whatever to unlock the next tier but a lot of the upgrades were so like boring or not what i like to play or whatever that i wouldn't even be incentivized to like spend more points in science to get to the stuff i actually cared about we're very much in the weeds but it's bad no it is important because there is a cohesion to the like decisions that were made whether they were technical limitations or whether they were just design decisions that i think hinder the overall experience in just like very bizarre ways um

i you want to talk about ship creation which i do yeah yeah i mean we i don't think it takes very long but there is a imagine the gummy ship builder from kingdom hearts except with like really lovingly detailed uh like i i think sort of real life inspired ship parts. You can customize ship, man, engines, weapons. You can custom, there's a lot of just sort of aesthetic customization stuff. If you just want your ship to look cool, you can change the different sort of like bays

that are in it. So you can add an engineering one if you want to have like, you know, weapon customization tables in your ship. You can add a captain's quarters. Like there's so many different ways. So much effort and attention went into the shipbuilder. And it's great. And I definitely got into some starship fights

that I felt very grateful that I had spent as much time in the shipbuilder as I had, or, you know, been like, well, okay, I clearly am deficient in some categories here. fights that I felt very grateful that I had spent as much time in the shipbuilder as I had or you know been like well okay I clearly am deficient in some categories here the ship combat is serviceable it's like it's it it feels like you don't think so it's fine it's fine it's fine yeah yeah it's not bad it's fine it's you don't have a real great sense uh you can target specific points that kind of has a VATS influence right like you can target specific points that kind of has a VATS influence right like you can target

specific points in a ship and time does seem to slow a bit once you have an enemy targeted and you can target specific systems I had a hard time sometimes figuring out why things were hitting and things weren't hitting you kind of

makes you think that you always need to start with like the shield target it like you always need to target the shields first because otherwise you can't hit the rest of the ship um and sometimes that would work pretty good and sometimes it it wouldn't um it does do a smart thing where it shows you a place on the controls of the ship on your like space speedometer where like the sweet spot is for turning radius. So if you keep it in that area, your turning radius is going to be at maximum. I thought that was pretty, pretty neat.

And I do like that. You can, with a lot of ships, if you're able to shoot out the engines, you can actually like roll up on them and board them. That is cool. You can also do piracy. Like that's another cool thing you can do is sometimes you can just roll up on a ship,

hail them. You can hail any ship that you see and say like, you can do is sometimes you can just roll up on a ship, hail them. You can hail any ship that you see and say like, hey, I'm going to blow you out of the sky if you don't let me on board and take all your stuff. And then you have to threaten them with the game's not very good persuasion sort of mechanics. I don't even want to go into it. Yeah, no, it's so in the weeds. It's so in the weeds, but yeah, it's rough. It's very bad. But then being able to go on their ship while they scowl at you, while you just go through all their stuff,

like, hmm, this seems nice. I don't want to talk about the persuasion thing in particular, but I do want to talk about the idea of the overall writing and narrative and what it means to make a meaningful choice. Yeah, that's a big thing we haven't talked about yet, is the story of the game. And this is an accusation that I would sort of lay at the feet of most of their games, which is basically that if you start fucking with the idea that you could theoretically shoot and or kill a lot of people that may or may not be important to the quest, the illusion kind of falls apart. And I'll give you an example.

Early on in the game, you're questing with one of your companions, who's this like rootin' tootin' cowboy guy. And you go to his hometown, which is like a Western-themed space town. And in his hometown is his dad, who's like kind of a crotchety, like oil baron type. And you need something from his dad. It's like maps or some shit. And I persuaded the dad to give up the maps and everything's fine. And then I saved the game

and I turned heel and shot the dad in the face. Absolutely did the exact same thing. And the companion is standing right next to me and he says, I don't agree with what you did, but the mission is the companion is standing right next to me and he says i don't agree with what you did but the mission is more important now i don't agree with you killed my dad it's really important you don't you don't kill his dad you just do the thing in bethesda games that happens which is you just make him get tired and he lies down on all four he goes into sort of

downward dog for a minute now it's worth it's also worth noting the mission at this point is find some cool rocks that was the mission i was on that's what i was trying to do so i shot him in the face but if we find some cool rocks it's all worth it there are three tiers of mortality in this game. There are, oh, that guy's not important. You can kill that guy. There's that one. There's that person is important.

You can kill them, but they will get back up. And then there's a third tier of that is a child. Your bullets have no effect on them. Let's talk story i think everything's i have had i've had some some good times with this game and none of those times have been related to the main plot of the game at all i have enjoyed there are sort of quest lines that are similar to a guild sort of quest line in a in a skyrim uh There's, I think Russ mentioned, there's a like Corpo storyline that you can follow that was pretty neat

and unlocks some genuinely pretty cool stuff. The story of that is neat. I've done a few sort of side quests that had an interesting sort of, you know, narrative hook. I don't know if you guys ever found the sort of abandoned AI that is just floating around in space. I just found that. And it had like a,

had a neat little combo with him. That was cool. I chose a perk at the beginning of the game that made it. So I had a mom and dad. I don't know if any of you guys picked that one, but that's, I will recommend that to anyone. Cause you just have this nerd ass mom and dad who you can go home and visit

from time to time. And then sometimes you'll just see them pop up in places where you don't expect to have uncomfortable moments with your mom and dad who you can go home and visit from time to time and then sometimes you'll just see them pop up in places where you don't expect them to have uncomfortable moments with your mom and dad it's hysterically funny along those lines man the adoring fan is a perk that you can very good and he does nothing but he's in your ship and if you like land on a planet he's like yes you've done it again and he's the dude from oblivion like it's it there is a lot of charm to the you know galaxy of stuff surrounding the no that's not fair there's there's occasional charm there's a kate okay yes there's a all of that is to say is that i have found there to be no charm or memorable stuff at all about the core plot of the game, which feels pretty rushed.

It feels pretty, it feels, I mean, completely just MacGuffin-y. None of the characters that are like your core companions have really sort of hit home with me. And again, this is another thing that is, it is unfortunate, I think, for this game

that it came out as close to Baldur's Gate as it did because the that is a game with characters and companions that I care about very deeply who have stories that are fleshed out and every sort of interaction with them feels meaningful as compared to I had a moment in Starfield earlier today where a companion I've rocked with for a while was like hey um we've been through some hard times, some good times, and I just want you to know I'm really grateful for your captainship. And I saw this while I was strolling around

and I thought of you and it just, I got you this. And I really think that it just spoke to me that it's for you. And then it was like $300. It was 368 credits. Exactly. And I was like, damn,

dude, thank you. Thank you. So I, I guess I'll use this in the grand scheme of things. Not that much money. This is like half of a, a coffee, but damn,

thank you so much for thinking of me. You can have romances with people. Technically speaking from an absolute technical perspective. Some of the um answers in when you're talking your companions are labeled flirt that's very helpful thank you guys uh and then if you do hit the flirt button enough and you choose romance rather than friendship then it's just like it'll just work right like eventually they'll just be like, all right. I got someone to that romance stage by finishing their little quest thing. And then five seconds after this like quote unquote relationship started, like they finally were like, all right, fine.

You win. You've hit the flirt button enough times. That's all. I love you now. I love you now. The first dialogue, you'd be like, can we talk about our relationship? And they're like, yeah, what's up? And here are the options you now. I love you now. The first dialogue, he'd be like, can we talk about our relationship? And they're like, yeah, what's up? And here are the options you have.

Being in love with you is like a dream come true. You are the most important person in my life now and always. In all my life, I never believed I'd find the love we share. Since the moment we met, I've been lost in those beautiful eyes. I could never imagine loving someone the way I love you. Which doesn't make sense, that last one even even but that's like the level of it's like if chat qpt wrote vows basically yes it is it is i mean and that's a lot of the script like a lot a lot of the dialogue is not just like poorly crafted but the choices they want you to make.

There's a sort of like deputy sheriff kind of like outfit where you can do some quests for them. It's like tracking down bounties and setting things right in the universe. And every conversation that you have with them, like with the lead people, they'll ask you these conversations like, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? And you know what they want you to say, right? you these conversations like what do you think about this what do you think about this and you know what they want you to say right like you know and there's no and the person you're with if they're of a similar mindset there's no reason why you would like say something different like you would like argue with these people there's no sense to it it's just like choosing what it

wants you to choose and none of the conversations i mean none are in any way interesting that I have seen so far. Like, none. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Griffin's point earlier about where you'll go on mission, like faction missions, stuff like that. And we'll talk about it. Like, you can have an engaging time that way. But I think those work on a premise standpoint.

Like, the premise of a mission that you're going on is actually pretty engaging. Maybe you're like robbing corporate secrets from a blah, blah, blah, or something like that. But the actual minute to minute of what you're doing is so much run, run, run, run, run, load screen, run, run, run, run, run, talk to this person, run back, load screen, run back, load screen, and the mission. Or sometimes you get that exciting, follow this person as they walk slower than anyone's ever walked or run ahead to the place you know you're going and watch the person saunter this this collection of ones and zeros

takes its sweet time with your human minutes of life and just sort of generally saunters over in your direction after a few minutes. It just feels like dinosaur land when it comes to like, like games have evolved so far beyond the game design at work here. And I'm not talking about the like world create, whatever the fact that they can have a thousand planets like word.

I'm talking about like the minute to minute, beat to beat of what you're doing in this game feels like it is 10 to 15 years old and it's pretty inexcusable like i just so unfortunate i mentioned having some good times with this game i do want to catch up by saying that i have not there has not been anything i have done that comes close to a you know a dark brotherhood quest line or a gray ghost gray ghost quest line the archmage sort of quest line from from sky like you fought fucking dragons in skyrim you fought right and shot dragons in the face with flames all of those felt very um intricately crafted and like throwing you into like unique situations and tasking you to use like some very specific tools to deal with them and that like none of those things have

been especially true for for this one yeah I like I don't want I don't want people to misinterpret it like I came into this as I think we all did not only with eyes open i came into this like i was honestly like pretty psyched because i've liked all of their games so this is not me being like oh fuck bethesda game studios i wanted really a lot to like this game because i love the premise of exploring the galaxy and it just never came together for me i have i have tried to find something that like delights me about this game and there is practically nothing and i've been so bummed out about it i i there is no part of me that wants to to dislike this that wanted this to be anything less than excellent i bought a freaking Starfield controller I played this

with a Starfield controller which I felt more and more embarrassed by as the hours drug on it's a great looking controller it does look sick the game looks pretty good at times the soundtrack is so fucking good

really really good sometimes it tricks you. Like, oh, I think I am having fun. It's like, oh, no, wait a minute. The music's just playing. It's really good. There's a recurring theme throughout the game that like, I heard it. I heard it once.

And I was like, okay. And then I remembered it. It is magic. It's very, very good. Yeah. I've played about as much as Justin. I put some other better games on hold because I was like, all right, it's time.

It's time to see what Todd's cooked up for us in the kitchen this time. And I think I'm done. Like, I don't think I really, I'm gonna go back to those other games now. Maybe I'll come back to Starfield, but I do not think it's gonna to be high on my priority list. So, yeah.

I got good news, though. Know what? What could cheer me up now, Plan? Right after this break, we're going to talk about ways to make the most of Starfield and hoops just for you. I have been sitting on a great game for like at least three days that I know you're gonna love and we're gonna

talk about it right after the break so this is gonna be on game pass which I know oh yeah that's true you folks have and that that is kind of what inspired me to, to say this, like something that is anticipated. It doesn't actually matter that much what we have to say, because especially with it being on game pass, you're probably going to want to try to check it out for yourself anyway, which I understand I would do the exact same thing. A hundred percent. No question.

I'm pissed about it. Trust. Why don't you trust me? Uh-huh. Uh, so we decided that we would like give you some, some like things that we wish we had known going in um that might uh make your experience a little uh a little smoother

maybe than ours was uh griffin has a good one so i'll let him do that one in a bit but mine would be do yourself a favor and pick a group or a faction to do quests for and see that entire quest line through and ideally if it's almost all on the same planet that's even better so there's i'll give you an example there's a planet called neon and it is like cyberpunky and like you know literally neon signs and stuff like that uh and when you first arrive there there's a terminal right there that is how you start the uh corpo like quest that griffin was alluding to earlier um and you can that's like five hours of questing right there that you could just just do those back to back to back and when you're doing that you can kind of get into a flow

i still don't necessarily think the minute to minute is that engaging but at least like narratively you can kind of sink your teeth into it um so it also unlocks a neat mechanic yeah i recommend a mechanic that unlocks from that as well yeah um yeah i man i i put on here, like, as for my tips, like there is, as you go playing through the main story of the game, unlocks some stuff that helps to mix things up a little bit. Yeah. But it's not a joke, like my least favorite part of the game, but you can get through it pretty fast if you really put your mind to it.

but you can get through it pretty fast if you really put your mind to it. And then, honestly, I think the thing that got me, my favorite times with the game are the times that I spent sort of like messing around in the ship builder. I only got the Corpo job because I needed money to build ships. You haven't said your excuse.

That was my excuse. I made a fucking lot of money. I was a dirty Corpo shill, but I got all the money I needed for my dark habit, which is making ships that I would fly for a minute or two. And, and so I, yeah,

I think, I think the, the, the story is going to leave you probably pretty cold. But there is stuff that you can get from that, that kind of changes, changes up the formula a touch. But then I,

I agree with Russ, just find a quest line that sounds cool to you. There's a lot on Neon, frankly, and you will get there with a pretty early story quest. So it might be worth doing that. I would recommend not grabbing stuff with the sole intent to sell it. Like if you think that you're going to pick up an item

or something and you can't use it, but you think you're going to like lug it back somewhere and sell it. I don't think the game is necessarily wanting you to do that. It gives you a lot of credits, like especially as the missions get deeper in, you start getting like big piles of money. And other than the ship builder, I didn't really need money all that often because you find the good stuff just kind of lying around. And I got in a big bad habit of like every item that I saw I would grab with the intent of like, well, I'll just go back to some, you know, to some shop and sell all this stuff off. see something that's like purple or or whatever uh which is sort of the the next to highest tier of stuff um that that might be worth holding on to until you can offload it but as a matter of

course i wouldn't um that being said if there's stuff like resources which you use to for crafting those can get pretty heavy feel free to you can offload them onto your companion and make them carry that stuff around for you, um, which can help keep your load down. Your, your ship also has a big cargo hold and you could even add more cargo hold space. And it doesn't, you don't need to hold onto it for other characters. They won't use guns that you give them. Like as far as I could tell, um, it doesn't really matter. Oh, they do actually.

Yeah. If it's the only gun they're carrying, they will fire that gun. Oh, so you have to take, well, yeah. Yeah, you have to take the other gun away, but just give them one gun and they'll use it. I haven't noticed much of an impact from the NPCs and their help in the combat situations, I will say.

Yeah, they are not that helpful. They tend to get just shot a lot. So I would, you know, don't feel, use them as a mule don't sit on your stat points but be smart about it because you do not get as many of them as i kind of you mean perk like perk points yes yeah like the up well i mean i think it was like i guess they're anyway you get a point when you level up um don't sit on those because like Russ is saying, you need to spend them to be able to keep leveling them up for those things to count, like pistol kills, for example. But be smart about how you use them

because I kind of thought they'd be dumping them on you to get you to experiment with other stuff, and that has not been my experience. After my 20 hours of play, I maybe have like, there's four tiers in each of the like different categories. And I have like a couple of second tier abilities in a couple of the trees.

There's so much of these trees that I have not touched yet. It seemed, it's yet another thing that just seems like really really off uh to me but be smart about it um and those are my that's my the best i got what about you plant you don't have to play a game if you're not enjoying it it's like i mean we do we do no we do but everybody else sometimes the game is so big you feel a little bit of pressure. Maybe your friends are all playing it on the group chat,

and you're like, I've got to keep playing this game. And you don't, especially if you've got this off Game Pass, take a break. Because knowing Bethesda, they will continue to work on it, and it will probably be considerably better in two years. Do I think it will be fully i want to say fixed but whatever i had hoped the game would be i don't know about that but i know that fallout 76 is better than it was at launch and i know that older scrolls online is much better than it was at launch and maybe this is just the beginning of starfield i think modders

are going to make this game considerably better um because they've done that a lot in the past yeah i will say credit where credit's due i've hit um a good number of distracting bugs but uh for a bethesda game at launch i would say not bad like really like very reasonable the ones that are there are still like hugely distracting. There's still a lot of like, you'll be having a heartfelt conversation with your partner and somebody else is just like sprinting into them at full speed throughout the entire conversation.

One time it was, I was having a conversation with the Rootin' Tootin' Cowboy about his daughter and how hard it is to be a dad. And the entire time the daughter was just like clip sprinting right into his body. Like, I guess that does look tough, Sam. I gotta admit. That's kids, man.

That's being a dad. Kids, their pathing gets all fucked. The most consistent one I got was, and I think this might have been addressed for the day one patch, every single NPC was bald in the entire world. Like, everyone. And yeah, it was distracting. Every single NPC was bald in the entire world. Like everyone.

And yeah, it's distracting. It required like a full reboot of the game to address. I think they fixed that with the patch. So I think, yeah, everybody will be spared. It was funny, though. That's a funny one, though. That's good stuff. All right, let's not talk about Starfield anymore. Well, we do have some reader mail that is about Starfield.

But we'll be quick about it. Some reader mail. This one comes from Fezzer Cool. Fezzer Cool, I get it. Was thinking on Starfield, what do you think is left for Bethesda? Todd Howard will probably still be around for another decade or so.

Wow, that's grim. But with development times. 10 years left on what are you talking about i think working wise he's probably gonna work and not not alive but with development times taking so long for them after elder scrolls 6 will he do another can the company produce the same product after the company is diversified enough doom etc all great games it'll be around but uh that core rpg we've known them for since morrowind oblivion is this one of the last i will say in my

opinion um and this is gonna seem like a non-answer but i think that it really depends on how the popular reaction to starfield goes this feels like enough of a passion project that i mean that's a lot of years of your life right yeah if the response to this is as this game is as negative as you seem to see on this show and we don't actually know if it will be no i know fucking clue i've talked to literally no other human beings that are playing this game other than these cats here so maybe this is just like not our thing all right great uh if it but if it is like sort of roundly criticized um i i don't know i mean i maybe i don't want to go out on that note you know like i don't know i think um but maybe you know the the i don't know that this i would want this to be the swan song if i was todd howard i think him at least hanging in through

elder scrolls 6 makes the most sense but the i mean i i don't know how to say this more plainly but this calls into question a lot like it's not that sense of like well once todd is gone how will they make things like starfield like it doesn't it it's it's bad like it's bad yeah and and i don't think you're gonna see that same sort of like also after fallout 76 right yeah this is two in a row at this point um and fallout 4 at launch. And Elder Scrolls Online at launch. Fallout 4 had some late game problems. And I will say, for whatever this is worth, and we have no insight into this from a development perspective,

like literally none, but there are a lot of components of this game that feel so stridently dull that a lot of it feels like a failure of project management and scoping of like there's more in this game than you had the time to make good um and a lot of it just feels like i don't know close it off find some way to cauterize it because we've got to get this thing um out the. There is a kind of okay version of this game that is one single spacey planet.

When I spent time on Neon, that was the most like a decent Bethesda game that this game felt like. So maybe there's like an expansion DLC situation where it's just one giant area and like the throwback style of their older games and maybe that has like more of a flow to it and more of an experience that we all love but yeah where it's at right now quite honestly the biggest ask that i have for elder scroll six

please guys the engine's not working anymore i know you've invested all this money into it i know all these people are trained up in it you gotta pay epic a bunch of money and just use unreal or something else because this engine is so on its last legs and i'm sorry but like no man's sky is running circles around y'all and they had 15 people in england and it's very rainy there tony stark built this in a cave the problem would be if it if it looked great then maybe some of the like issues with loading and not being able to fly into the planet whatever would be different but it looks like a mod for fallout yeah there's no like part of it where i'm like well that's why it's so good everything else just simply wouldn't be possible yeah even the not flying around in your ship

through space might be a little bit more palatable if like do you all understand what we're saying here is that if you see a planet and you're you can point your ship at it and full boost and you're not going to get to it's like this is what we're talking about if there was some way once you're on the planet to zoom around in a fun way, right? Like I know my ship can fly. I still am of the opinion that that's gotta, that has to be eventually you'll, you'll get a horse. I still have to believe eventually you'll get a Mako tank.

Unless it's a technical issue, which we do not know, but I don't know, you know, well, you did ride dragons in Skyrim eventually. So maybe they'll add it. Who knows?

Uh, I'm, this is a question from zachary i'm struggling to get hyped on star for starfield do you find yourself episode out of help if you find yourself do you find yourselves getting tired of waiting for these forever in development games how do you deal with that development fatigue can i say no because there's so much good shit yeah that's the thing we have the luxury of like constantly bouncing from game to game the fact that silk song which is a game i'm desperately desperately excited to play keeps getting delayed does not bother me because we are drowning in amazing games so it's fine doesn't bother me i have pretty wide ranging tastes like i'll play a lot of stuff yeah so i don't i don't i don't i don't think about uh good question from olive

farden is there any specific game- Sorry, like Olive Garden, but with fart? Yeah. That's good. Olive Farden. That's so good. Is there any specific game that comes to mind as having exceptionally written companion characters?

I feel like Bethesda has always more or less fallen short in this area, and I wonder if Starfield can break out of this rut. Probably not. No. I mean, Baldur's Gate literally sets the noob. There's nothing that comes close. It's so unfortunate that we have actively had to try to not talk about Baldur's Gate

because it is such a clear horse and buggy automobile level of difference. It's so rough and embarrassing. i i wish i could have been there with phil spencer when he was just like staring at balder's gate and just every once in a while he'd just yell motherfucker god son of a bitch yeah uh okay thank you for those god balder's gate three is really good really good all right it's really good um we have some honorable mentions really quick um plant you had your game you wanted to talk about yes yes help me so have you heard about finity on apple arcade no oh my gosh okay so it's a puzzle game on Apple Arcade, and it is the closest vibe I've had to something like Drop 7 since Drop 7. Oh, Jesus Christ.

Yeah, I just set off a five-alarm fire. The way it works is, fresh, you're going to hate this. It's a four-by-four grid, and it's a slide puzzle, and there are colors. And you have to match three, or wait, sorry. Yeah, you have to match three of the colors, and if you colors. And you have to match three. Wait, sorry. Yeah, you have to match three of the colors. If you match four, it gives you a reward. It gets really complicated really quickly because when you slide something left or right, you basically lower the value of the other tiles on that horizontal plane.

And once it gets to zero, that plane will lock. So you can't move that plane anymore. So eventually you are losing the ability to move left and right on the top, bottom, all four rows. And then you're losing the ability to move up and down on the four columns. So gradually these cells are locking, and you're having to match three by there's like man i'm trying to explain this and it's breaking my brain it's hard it's hard to follow it let's leave it at this i just downloaded it from apple arcade and i played

10 seconds and uh i'll be in my bunk thank you it's it's great everybody just go play it and if you don't have apple arcade which i know is some of you, I'm very sorry. If you do have a Mac laptop, it should work on your laptop. Apple Arcade, not just limited to your phone, does work on laptops and Apple TVs. I want to shout out No Man's Sky. Russ and I played a bit of this together. There's that new echoes update that is very cool i finished the story of that game for the first time it's very cool and it's

that game is continues to be just a really a really neat game and honestly kind of a a south uh i i will say after the i've been in sort of the same doldrums. Yeah. Plant and I are going to do a deep dive into the new update as well as no man's sky overall on resties on Tuesday. So keep an ear out for that. So if you're interested and, or maybe bummed about Starfield reaction, but you want a space exploration game, we will be talking a lot about it.

I also, I also want to say I finished new world the show i shouted out last week and i just please watch that show please watch that television show i really need there to be another season of it i don't think it made a huge splash when it first released in uh in in south korea so you know maybe an unlikely bump from your friends at the besties we get it over the edge got it i need a second season of that show please please watch new world on netflix's so good. We have international cachet.

We can make things happen. Justin's been watching it, but I think we lost him to Finity. No, I'm here. I was just being a polite listener. New World's really good. I picked it up last week. Okay, we're going to thank the following people

for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. Thanks to Kid Blur, T.S. Schooney, and Charg Rock. Thank you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts thanks to kid blur t.s schooney and charg rock thank you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts and thank you to everyone else for writing reviews and talking about the show and saying it's great and listening to the and reading the newsletter which is also great at besties.fan the rest is coming in the muppet show sorry go ahead is that what kermit is from i've heard of this dude i just didn't know what his whole vibe was. That's going to do it for us this week on The Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for The Besties,

because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!