Starfield Planets Could Be Divided Into Regions With Invisible Boundaries, Suggests Leak

A leaked image suggests that Starfield planets may feature the dreaded region boundaries to prevent players from exploring whole planets.

[Lightning77]

According to Jez Cordon that's not totally accurate he called it a "half truth whatever that means. He wouldn't go into full detail he said wait for the embargo to lift when reviews release.

Gotta keep it forward. Few days ago Pete Hines said you can explore the entire planet. If that ends up not being the case then They're a bunch of liars as they usually are.

Tick...Tock.

[mkis007]

it means loading zones I'm guessing as Bethesda can't seem to make a seamless world...but thankfully all will be done via mods...

[jeromeface]

mods won't fix engine limitations... this is prob only a console concern anyway

[KyRo]

And this is the issue with all Bethesda games. Mods shouldn't be the answer to Bethesdas incapability.

"...The game may have bugs, glitches, broken quests, poor animations and terrible voice acting like every Bethesda gamee before it, but it's okay, with mods, all can be forgotten.
- 10/10"

I hate the media bias towards Bethesda when they scrutinise any other games with the same issues.

That said, I do hope Starfield is their turning point. The bits I have watched does look a lot less janky than TES and Fallout so hopefully this is their much needed change.

[InUrFoxHole]

Yeah, I would assume loading zones... honestly as long as it's not too frequent I'm ok with it

[Rocketisleague]

This is not a space exploration game, its not even an exploration game, its a bethesda action 'rpg' and what they typically give out. Just because you have a ship and its in space doesn't make it a space exploration game. Think Mass effect, Kotor or any game set in multiple planets before 2011.

If you want a hi sci fi try the outer wilds, no mans sky, or star citizen if you really want a mechanically impressive space demo.

This game is hyped up to be what star citizen is 'trying' to be. And of course it'll never reach that, maybe nothing ever will. But that doesn't stop bethesda from lying as if it is doing what star citizen is doing.

[wiz7191]

@Kyro it’s not the answer but they aren’t stupid either .. they support mods heavily and know modders will make extensive mods , so why not just give them a canvas to flex their creativity? I agree on companies shouldn’t release incomplete games and wait on mods to fix it. It’s a different story when they give modders a platform to work ..

[mkis007]

Jerome

Pc games work on a variety of hardware configs...the guaranteed nvme in series x is actually a boon over what the minimum pc spec is...only an ssd.

[DigitallyAfflicted]

Over-promises ruined so many great games, we Ga, ears understand what is loading for… even on consoles. Developers need to have some faith in us

[EvertonFC]

16X the detail 😂🤣
I can see this getting mixed reviews all over the place tbh.
It'll get its automatic 10/10 from the usual crowd but mixed freviews from thebotioer outlets like sacred symbols, jaffe etc.
Kinda funny will wa*k all over it as usual (bless)

[DarXyde]

I still think a minimum meta of 88 is going to be the outcome. I also think it will get a GOTY nomination —I can't say it'll win because it has stiff competition, but I think it'll be a nominee at least.

Issues with Bethesda games really take a back seat to the general experience. They're never really polished, but the issues will be second to the experience. Yes, the lack of polish is, in fact, part of the experience, but I think you know what I mean here.

These games are not my cup of tea, but as an "outsider" looking at what the game is, the scale, etc. I have a difficult time believing this game will not get some serious accolades.

Let's put a pin in this one, mate.

[Mr Pumblechook]

Is this leak actually correct? The 2016 indie game No Man’s Sky allows you to get in your spacecraft and circle a planet and land wherever you want. I’m sure in the multimillion dollar Starfield you can do this, if I recall, the gameplay trailer showed a spacecraft landing on a planet.

[jwillj2k4]

A good story with branching that keeps you engaged makes it extremely easy to over look glitchy behavior. Loading zones were normal up until not too long ago. I don’t have an Xbox but a lot of what I’m hearing is only happening BECAUSE this game is an exclusive.

[lucian229]

Mr pumble, yes it is true, interviews even say you can't fly the ship on planet, can't enter atmosphere, can drive vehicles either. Game is trash, not to mention using an ancient engine.

[MrNinosan]

Kind of Funny will give it 5/5 due to Mike having so much influence on the others nowadays.
Even if those games are not Gregs cupmof tea, he will end up with a 4 or 5. Mark my words 😏

[-Foxtrot]

The worst part about all this is because it’s now an Xbox exclusive it’s going to be

Any criticism / opinions = automatic Playstation fanboy

[TheKingKratos]

" Few days ago Pete Hines said you can explore the entire planet. If that ends up not being the case then They're a bunch of liars as they usually are.

Tick...Tock."

Won't be the first time they lied.

[Lightning77]

There's a guy on Tick tock explaining it. Basically you can explore entire planets and it takes 45 minutes from one end to the planet to other end. Which is still 4x the size of common wealth in Fall Out 4. In real life yeah it would take you I dunno maybe a year? Anyway I don't think this will hurt the game not a single bit. Especially when there's just too much going on I keep my eye on these things and it's just overblown rage.

Sure I guess if you want to skip everything and take 45 minuted alone running around not doing anything on 1000 planets skipping missions and dynamic quest and all the Bethesda stuff then ppl can knock themselves out.

[Bobertt]

According the the article to reach the boundary you have to walk for 40 minutes in real time which is long just for exploration in a game so even if they don't have the entire physical planet to look around it's still larger than other games. Having a large area filled with stuff to do is better than an unlimited area with emptiness in my opinion.

But that aside it could still actually be fully explorable like Pete Hines said if it's divided into landing regions like the article speculates. Maybe there is an issue with the engine and loading all the assets in an area at once so to not have performance issues the area is divided into regions and when you hit the border then you take the ship to a new spot while it loads in the assets past the previous border. That way the entire planet would still be explorable like he said.

[Rocketisleague]

From the leaks i've found online

You can't swim underwater.
NPC AI seems worse that older games.
The zones are literally randomly generated content outside of the handcrafted ones.
Zones don't connect seemlessly with one another at all - > if you get to the edge of a zone and go to the next zone, that new zone is created on the fly and loads you in, if you look behind you...the zone you just came from does not exist.

Seriously, wtf are bethesda thinking. Their failings of the last 2 gens are shining through. They got away with an aquisition from MS just like Activision are trying to.

[EvertonFC]

That's shite if true

[VenomUK]

I don't think this planet-subsection system will detract from the overall quality of Starfield and I am still very much looking forward to it!

However, when the story is about landing on different planets and flying off to new ones then it makes sense for the gameplay to allow you to do this too. In No Man's Sky you can get in your ship and fly AROUND a planet, or fly off out of its atmosphere which all aids in that sense of freedom.

The Elder Scrolls's freedom of movement was marketed as 'see that mountain over there, you can climb it'. If you can't do that on a planet with a ship in Starfield then I SUSPECT it's because the game engine was made for the purely North to South, East to West exploration of TES and the Fallout games, which doesn't allow you to loop around one side to another of a planet..

When Cyberpunk 2077 was released it had spawning police which was due to the fact that the programmers couldn't work out how to include a better system - this was a game with multi million pound development costs!

https://www.gamesradar.com/...

I'm expecting Starfield will turn out to be a fine game, but IF this is the issues then Microsoft/Bethesda should've found a solution to make it happen.

[FlavorLav01]

Paywalls in space.Hilarious if true! Maybe that’s what they should’ve called it.

[aaronaton]

Ooooppppssiieee!

[Hofstaderman]

Oof. But then again it’s a Bethesda game, what did you guys expect?

[Othegamer5]

a great game like 80% of the games they release

[poppatron]

If there aren’t any vehicles on the planets than I certainly don’t want to spend five days traipsing across the surface of some barren dust bowl of a planet.

[jwillj2k4]

Yes this is brutal. There are no vehicles in this game. Honestly it should be delayed because of this fact. I can’t imagine walking a barren planet. You’re basically going to have to pickup/put down your ship everywhere but that doesn’t fix the situation, just adds more loading screens.

[lucian229]

Well good thing I guess it isn't a whole planet lmaooo

[Jakens]

You might want to move your ship over two miles to prevent a long walk-but I have not seen any text saying it's easy to have more than one landing spot per planet, meaning same landing site over and over,

[Soileh]

Maybe Bethesda shouldn't have marketed it as an open world game if they weren't making it open world.

[InUrFoxHole]

If the article is true and the gamer walked 40min in a straight line before hitting the wall.... yeah I'm good. 40 min is a long time imo, not a big deal

[StarkR3ality]

I'm guessing it will have zones e.g dragon age, Baldurs gate recently.

Like, does anyone actually want the ability to walk for hours across a planet? Multiple zones on a 1000 planets still sounds pretty vast to me.

Smaller tighter experiences v boring endless wandering everyday of the week.

[rippermcrip]

Okay, but why lie about it?

[StarkR3ality]

Todd said you can lift off and land in different locations and zones on planets,but then there have been interviews since that suggest full planet exploration. I don't know mate, maybe both are true depending on the size of the planets? we willl have to see this week won't we.

[Rocketisleague]

Thats Todds job

[Rocketisleague]

You have to walk because you can't fly/drive around it like other space games.

That is one of the most immersive and best things about space games.

For bethesda just think of it as a trade off, this is NOT the space exploration game at all, its a bethesda RPG that is a sci-fi, but comes with all the quirks bethesda games have had since oblivion release(Did you know, morrowind did not have loading in between cities, houses and anything? Thus changing the entire gameplay - spells let you jump 100s of meters for example).

You can just think of this game as Fallout 5 but instead of a wasteland its in space.

[anast]

Morrowind was such a great game. They could have used that as a template to improve on and Bethesda would have been the king of RPGS.

[jznrpg]

@Anast Morrowind was awesome and I had such high hopes for what Bethesda could make after Morrowind but instead they started dumbing down their games instead of building on what was great. They took out several stats a lot of spells and added a stupid sprint button. What could have been one of the best RPGs series ever went casual instead.

[EvertonFC]

When i landed on a Aires rock style rock in NMS I got out my ship and fell to the floor, my jet pack didn't have enough juice to get backnup to my ship, I had to walk 4 hours to a teleport pad which was awesome trying to find a cave before a storm came in, collecting resources to survive keeping my oxygen levels up etc.
The relief when I found a teleport to bring my ship back was one of the best gaming experiences I ever had as it made me feel alone, vulnerable and using every ounce of my survivor skills.
I have to admit the starfild wall if you like is massively disappointing imo. No sense of getting lost, no sense of danger keeping vitals topped up etc.
It's also pants you can't take off and fly around imo.
Still looking FWD to it as I'm a space nut but I'm not gonna lie NMS does loads better in certain areas.

[StarkR3ality]

It's a give and take pal, for me No man's sky was Minecraft in space and I don't like those kinds of games, take away seemless landing and full planet exploration for proper quests and RPG mechanics and that's worth it to me!

[shinoff2183]

My guess is if you travel far from your ship and don't feel like walking back you can call for a pick up. I know it's not gonna break the game for me. 4 days yall

[Workshyskiver]

Planet zones akin to Mass effect are far more appealing to me that a smaller fake sized planet that I can nonsensically run around in a few minutes. As long as the area is big, interesting and varied who cares the exact particulars of a planet.

[anast]

In Mass effect we can drive.

[StarkR3ality]

God you didn't want to though, mako was awful even in the LE 😂

[anast]

@Stark

You have a point. The thing bounced around like a beachball. xD

[EvertonFC]

Who cares?
Space enthusiast, I'm disappointed not gonna lie.

[anast]

This is 10 GOTY quality here...

[EvertonFC]

You forgot the /S

[ZeekQuattro]

It's implied given all he does is shit on every Starfield article.

[crazyCoconuts]

It's obviously not going to match No Man's Sky in terms of exploration, crafting, etc.

[ocelot07]

I haven't been keeping up with anything of starfield tbh. Was it confirmed to be open exploration?

If so and it's zones that's just more lies. Don't get me wrong if planets don't have any sort of vehicles then zones are for the better. As walking around a planet for hours on end is no fun. Trust me I did it with no man's sky many years ago.

[anast]

From what I know there will be no flying/driving on the planets and no seamless space exploration. Think of it more like Skyrim without a horse in space. Howard said there will be no vehicles at launch, so most likely you will have to buy them via microtransactions or DLC.

[EvertonFC]

I had loads of fun in NMS walking for hours

[ocelot07]

I liked exploring but not on fut. Use to fly my ship really slow trying to find different outposts.

[Rocketisleague]

NMS has vehicles now, the ship is completely free too, you can get as close to land as you want, it wasn't like that at launch you could fly very low but it stopped you at a certain height.

[Outlawzz]

It's a non issue. You can't craft a dense story and high quality areas and have an endless amount of areas to explore. They would have to do some procedurally generated things if that was the case. This is what no man's sky does, but the story suffers as a result. It's just not possible within the budget and time they were probably alloted.

[Rocketisleague]

Well in fairness, 4 people crated no mans sky. How many hundreds do Bethesda have? Why not do bits of both? At the very least let people.land on planets and have hand crafted points of interest. I honestly didn't expect Bethesda to.miss the marl this much. Like almost entirely. It's literally just fallout in space now

[-Gespenst-]

None of this would have been an issue had Bethesda just been transparent about it. This just isn't the same as being able to explore an entire planet, this is just pretending that you're exploring an entire planet - which is absolutely fine by the way, because making a 1:1 planet would probably be technologically impossible to do well, especially with their engine. Having zones and implying travel across the land between them via loading screens is arguably more immersive than it being possible to circumnavigate planet Earth on foot in 1 hour. I get that they're trying to compete with other, similar space sims, but they should've just been transparent. Every fan of theirs and more still would've bought the game. Their previous games were all very popular despite not having colossal, seamless worlds, and even a space sim doesn't NEED to have that to be fun (or immersive - see point above).

[Destiny1080]

obviously you cant explore the planet the S wouldn't be able to handle that

[Rocketisleague]

Its bethesda not the console. NMS is vastly more technically impressive that bethesdas crappy 1997 engine.

[z2g]

Let’s gooooooooooo!

[chronoforce]

This would not be such a big issue if games like No Mans Sky, Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous did not exist but they do. If Bethesda wanted to go the Mass Effect route they could have but they did not and have haphazardly created a game where you can explore a planet but in most clunky manner possible.

[supersexyjohnny]

How incredibly uninteresting Starfield has become and at the same time how incredibly interesting No man's sky has become

[Hereandthere]

More lies of P Spencer!

[maelstromb]

If anyone actually believed we'd have completely open, seamless environments in the Creation engine, you're smoking the good stuff. This game is built on the same unstable, steaming pile of code all other Bethesda games have been propped up on, only with a little added sheen to sell the hype. Everything shown thus far is the hype machine working overtime. I'm not trying to say that I think the game will be terrible. I'm just saying, maybe tamp down your expectations day one. This thing may look like a shiny, new state-of-the-art rocket ready to take you places you've never seen, but deep down, given Bethesda's penchant for jank, I think we all know it will be years of heart and soul modding to turn this thing into the experience we're all hoping it is at this very moment.

Also, I hope I'm wrong but be wary of getting sucked into the marketing and hype. Remember, a review embargo is put in place to protect the publisher, not the customers and fans who are voting with their wallets.

[NoFanBoy]

Fallout in space + NMS type planets. I'll be playing day one on gamepass but my expectations are low for bugthesda.