If you haven't heard about it yet, Starfield is going to be the debut entry in an entirely new franchise and marks the first single-player RPG released by BGS since Fallout 4 all the way back in 2015. The details of the new game world and story have not been fully revealed yet and we've been eagerly following the "Into The Starfield" video series as it teases more and more information about the upcoming title.
What we do know is Starfield will be using an updated version of the Creation Engine which has been used to power Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 (which is in itself an evolution of the Gamebyro Engine used by older titles). Todd Howard has also confirmed in an AMA on Reddit that Starfield will have full mod support, which is great news for our community!
So what are we doing to prepare for Starfield? Glad you asked! We're slowly ramping up our efforts to create a community space for Starfield. This is comprised of a few parts:
- Starfield Modding Discord - We could have simply added Starfield channels to our main server, but this time around we felt it would be far better to separate the Starfield discussion into its own server. There are already some interesting conversations happening there, including early planning of a Community Patch for the game. If you're interested in modding Starfield, please do check it out.
- Starfield Modding Forums - We've created a new forum category where you can talk about the game, modding or even share your ideas for mods.
- Starfield Modding Wiki - While it's pretty barebones right now, we plan to use the Modding.wiki site for Starfield to serve as a hub for important information about modding which would otherwise be lost to obscurity in forum posts, Discord servers or Reddit threads.
- Starfield Game Section - Coming November 2022. We'll be opening the doors on the site section to share your mods, images, videos and collections for Starfield.
That's not all, we're also actively engaging with our friends at Bethesda to learn more about the game and get more modding-specific information that we can share with mods authors, tool developers and the community to allow us to work together to create a modding community that could rival the ones for their previous games.
Are you as excited as we are for Starfield? What kinds of mods would you like to see? Join the discussion on the forums.
Don't forget to wishlist Starfield on Steam or join Constellation on Bethesda's website to stay updated.
317 comments
Preparing for Starfield?, ahhh not just space bugs you'll be battling when it comes out. Personally, I will wait for the USP team to step up, before I suit up to go into battle. You know the USP team right?, the highly skilled, yet totally unpaid bug zappers, no not space bugs - the Unoffical Starfield Patch team, the team that we will need before we can actually play, said Starfield (as it's meant to be played), because of the CK bugs that have existed since Morrowind. Just think FO4 in space, Starfield loading in 3, 2, 1........................., but we did have cool elevator rides and music as a loading screen.
Things like Unity and Unreal can be modable, but are rarely ever so, and starting a whole new engine with nothing from previous engines would be a very big undertaking, I trust that Creation 2 will be better, but I don't have any allusions as to what those improvements will be.
are you sure ? in my opinion the exact opposite is the case. most game engines are modular building cases. there is no reason at all to waste time with a completely new engine and the related hassle if you can use the proven good parts and exchange the outdated or erratic ones like outdated interfaces.
the modding capability is one of the key features of the creation engine and the reason why people are still playing even 11 year old bethesda games (or even older ones). i don't know if it would be a good idea to drop this one and all the positive experiences with this approach.
much more important is the future support of dx12 and /or vulkan interface and to optimize especially this engine module and features like dlss and fsr 2.x
Right, because literally no other engine in existence supports mods.
It's more work to design it in such a way that people can freely, retroactively alter parts of the game in a tidy, simple way.
Epic Games focuses on the Unreal Engine, but Bethesda focuses on large, open-world Games that take longer to complete, so I can see why they may have side-lined some persistent Engine issues and instead focused on what gameplay features and graphical enhancements they wanted for their next project.
Which modern engine would you like? Because there isn't really that many beyond maybe Unity and Godot. I know you're going to say UE5 or the like but somehow miss the fact that it's just an updated 90s engine just like Creation or most of the other big names engines are and the few that aren't from the 90s usually aren't any better than those engines anyway. Changing engines means changing the way everything is handled: Every existing external tool, the script extenders, etc would need to be restarted from scratch with a new engine and there's very few benefits that any existing engine can provide. (eg. UE5 won't even look any better. UE hasn't been able to do anything but blurtastic FXAA/TAA since UE3 and has lighting that makes most things look like they're made from plastic ala early 90s CGI, some games get past that true but it takes a huge amount of effort - effort that Bethesda doesn't really put into their engine.)
What you people actually want is for Bethesda to put a larger amount of effort in their engine: Fix the easy to fix problems (eg. Setting fMaxTime to allow for >60fps works even in Oblivion, as do nonstandard screen ratios. In other words the Engine supports both techs, but Bethesda's configuration doesn't.) and try to actually switch over to modern APIs like Vulkan.
it's a product by artists and techs with a desire to build and craft something they're passionate about.
if you cant show them respect, guess what, don't buy it.
In any event
Anti-pre-order sentiment has been obsolete for years now due to the ability to refund on several platforms. There's essentially no reason not to pre-order.
1. This is a common misconception. People's ideas of what a game engine is and how it functions is generally somewhat limited. What if I told you that technically, RDR2 was made using the same engine as RDR1, almost a decade later? This is in fact the case, and yet RDR2 is an absolute technical and graphical marvel. That's because it was still there own in house engine, but huge swaths of the code were re-written, to fit their needs for the new game. The same is true of the Gamebryo engine. They use it because it fits their specific needs, and caters to the particular style of games that they make. But it can absolutely be modernized, by re-writing the parts of it that no longer hold up. And this is what they've done, they've made clear that they've re-written huge sections of it, so they can bring major improvements to thing like NPC AI, animations and procedural generation.
Points 2 through 4 are broadly about the more "scummy practices" that Bethesda has engaged in over the past couple of years. And hey, I don't disagree that it's been rather discouraging to watch. That being said, most of these things have little to do with the studio itself, and more the higher-ups. And of course, Bethesda was bought out recently by Microsoft. Personally, I've actually been rather impressed with Microsoft lately when it comes to the gaming side, and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.
All that to say that I don't these past behaviors as actually particularly pertinent to the studio itself, who frankly, have only produced one really bad game (Fallout 76). And even that was an amalgamated monstrosity, put together by about 4 different studios. It's not even clear how much the main Maryland team was involved in that project.
So I would say that there's still reason to believe that the main Maryland team, which is still essentially the same team that's been around since Morrowind, is still perfectly capable of building a great game, and given how invigorating working on a completely new IP must have been, I'm relatively optimistic.
The ONLY scummy thing they could do would be payed mods and after the fiasco when they tried that with Skyrim they'll never do that again.
You need to investigate publishers like Ubisoft and EA... they too, allegedly make single player games, yet their stuff is filled with crappy microtransactions. I like some of their stuff, AC Odyssey and Valhalla were gifts, but I definitely ignore all the MTX. We can hope they'll keep Starfield totally offline... but, I'm not going to 100% assume that, either.
but as far as the engine it has been reworked from the ground up and has had an outside company who is known for helping develop game engines go through it and bug fix and add new tech to it. So I’m expecting at least current gen graphics this time.
The physics for example, is one of the best physics engines available, havoc(used in most games, including Battlefield games, pretty much throw a dart at AAA games and ods are they'll be using havoc), but Bethesda implemented it so poorly in Oblivion it has so many issues... Issues, that became even more aparent in Skyrim, where physics is used a lot more.
CC isn't paid mods. CC content is officially supported by Bethesda, so to call it a mod anymore wouldn't make sense. It's more like third party micro DLCs.
It became pretty apparent that for some reason they suddenly behaved like EA lite, as soon as that happened.
Now the venture capitalists are out. That does not mean that they will abstain from more scummy stuff, but it is a reason for hope.
DLC, expansions, microtransactions, mods... they are all pretty much the exact same thing, just a difference in where you get them or who makes them. So it's up to you whether you want to differentiate between the nuances or not. As for myself, I don't consider CC mods, I think the nuance is important here.
The way I saw paid mods was where someone who is a mod author could make content and then just sell it through BGS, but it still wouldn't be officially supported, and it wouldn't be heavily curated... anyone could submit a mod. Basically it would be like now, except paid for. Where as CC is supported by BGS, it's curated by them, and only those who are accepted by BGS can make them. When you actually think about it, it's way more similar to an official DLC (micro DLC) than it is a mod given the nuances I just brought up. The only difference is they are made by a third party.
But as I said, technically all these things are incredibly similar, so call them whatever you like, and I will do the same.
Let me ask you to list the differences between DLC and mods. Spoiler alert, they are created by BGS and officially supported. That's it. There isn't much of a difference, but the nuance is important enough to give them different labels.
The only reason you want to consider CC "paid mods" is because it gives you something to complain and argue about. And gives you a method to make CC sound as bad as you can. It's a buzzword essentially. Also, just because the majority would agree with you doesn't make you right. That is called a fallacy.
Ya, and what is the difference between a modder and a developer? Because the way I see it, is there is no difference outside of whether or not it's official or not. The only reason you still call them a modder is because it fits your narrative of wanting to call them paid mods. But they got paid for the work they did in an official sense like a developer would, they were essentially hired. At that point, I call that a developer, not a modder.
If your argument is they were once modders, the same is true of many developers working for many gaming companies. Just because some of their work was mods doesn't mean all of their work is a mod. The context matters, and what you are doing is ignoring that context for the sake of your biased argument.
Yep, I am aware. And some of the content on CC is made by BGS. Call those paid mods too? What was the difference between these things again?
And a mod isn't content that was made with the supervision of Bethesda, and isn't considered official content. Right?
See, here is the thing. I don't like CC either. But I am not going to allow my dislike for them cloud my judgement on what they are. Calling them paid mods is just you wanting to use a buzzword to make it sound even worse. To me, I think a third party microtransaction or third party micro DLC fits better than "paid mods". If you disagree with me, go through my points and make an argument for why I am wrong.
I quote,
"Creation Club content is fully curated and compatible with the main game and official add-ons".
Like I said, CC is paid mods - not official DLC - whether you realize it or not MarchinBunny. It even states said fact on the page I just linked to here.
That's not how that works. You can't just say someone's points are moot or invalid unless you can explain why. Which you have not done yet.
Just because you keep saying the same thing doesn't mean you are right. You have to prove you are right, which again, you have not done yet.
What does this even mean? This sounds to me like you are just trying to say you are right because people agree with you. Again, that is a fallacy. It's called an argumentum ad populum fallacy. Look it up.
You mean people agree with you. I don't care, that doesn't prove you are right. If you are so sure of yourself, it shouldn't be that hard to prove. yet you are the only one here not making a single point. You also have not answered any questions I have asked you. Like, what is the difference between mods and DLC? Because a lot of your argument relies on that CC isn't that different from mods, and I am pointing out, the same is true of DLC. The only thing that makes these things different is who makes it and whether or not they are officially supported. So where does CC fit into that? If it's official content curated by Bethesda, how can you still consider it a mod? Explain. Stop just saying I am wrong, and actually support your argument.
It's not. Because what you are showing me here is no different than what I would see in a microtransaction store, or alternatively a micro DLC. Seriously, go looks up any microtransaction store. Or how about this, go look up some Borderlands 2 skins pack DLC and tell me how it's different.
The only thing that quote proves it that they are not specifically considered official addons, which I never suggested they were to begin with. It's official content supported by Bethesda, but not an official addon. Also, are you seriously using BGS as proof? How come you ignore this part?
"Is Creation Club paid mods?
No. Mods will remain a free and open system where anyone can create and share what they’d like. Also, we won’t allow any existing mods to be retrofitted into Creation Club, it must all be original content. Most of the Creation Club content is created internally, some with external partners who have worked on our games, and some by external Creators. "
If you are going to use their own site to try and prove me wrong, guess I can do the same. Check mate.
sorry to burst your bubble.
all games have paid mods and expansion packs tooo
cough cough no it's DLC get over yourself
expansion packs and DLC is official content there are some in house tools they have that we don't.
why do you think it tack so long to Develop Mods cause we don't have the full tool set
I assume the CC authors are given some form of brief as well as being supervised.
So they are commissioning those professional level modders to make microtransactions & 'micro-DLC',
It's just that their pricing was shocking, much like what you can see in that awful "Blades" mobile game, and the implementation was poorly executed too.
Aside from that, people generally do not want to see microtransactions or 'micro-DLC' in their singleplayer games, especially in this instance, where there is a risk of them cutting modding out altogether in order to promote the sales of their overpriced 'micro-DLC.' Props to them for not doing that.
IMO, a better idea is to regularly host some form of modding competition, and also occasionally select the best of modders to be commissioned & eventually hired, without having the CC. This can be used to incentivise creative mods, whilst promoting it as their strength.