*S*T*A*R*F*I*E*L*D* / Starfield

So I managed a couple of hour last night where all I really did was create my character. I'm writing a story about a space pirate so based my character on her. My ambition is to try to create a ship like the one in my head, eventually.

Played a little bit more over lunch and so far it's really enjoyable. It's fiddly, going through the menus all the time, but less so than Cyberpunk. I agree with others about the opening "mission" - the mining stuff, and how you get your ship. It's very perfunctory and doesn't give any sense of how the actual game will work, plus there's no scale or "wow" to it. I know they're very different games, but the opening scrapyard level of Jedi: Fallen Order was excellent at setting the tone, building the world, and introducing you to the concepts of the game.

Anyway, I still really like it, but I'm aware it's not even begun yet. I'm still looking for the flippin' pirate captain on the first moon. I imagine I must have missed him in the first mining outpost I visited. I am starting to think it could do with a Mass Effect-style car to tool around in, tbh.

As for the whole "seamless flight from a plant" thing, I'm okay with it essentially being a loading screen but I wish they'd hidden that loading behind animations. John Linnerman on the DF video suggested it might load when you board your ship because it's keeping all of your stuff in memory, and it might be too much to have that exist in the world when you land on a planet; but maybe some kind of airlock animation that hid the load, and then a rolling animation of you leaving the atmosphere through the cockpit... I dunno, would have been nice if it had felt seamless even if it was just discrete "worlds" that were being loaded. 

I would always be fast-travelling everywhere, mind, because I'm lazy. 

Mine decided to jump over the railings after I double-crossed him. Wondered where he had gotten to, and he was there pootling around on the ground.

He was on the roof for me, I went in through the front door and gradually worked my way up.

Also... Motherfuckers won't let me fly anywhere other than the main quest destination, I wanted to go joyriding around the galaxy.

Actually tell a lie, it let me jump to Barnard's Star.

This Grendel weapon rips through rounds, I love it.

I like that toggling your scanner works indoors as well but for all the loot/junk dotted around. Also glad that it's not like batman or hitman vision where is use it a lot but feel like I've missed out on things in the game.

My space trucker Jack Burton is getting into all kind of scrapes. Persuaded a space pirate captain and his goons to back off as my cargo had no loot. Then exploded the barrel next to them causing another drop ship of pirates to descend on me. Legged it back to the ship and got the hell out of that outpost.

Now just need a Kim Catrell look a like and small Chinese side kick.

Vortex There’s a perk that makes the rings go blue when you select a pick that fits - I found that sped it up significantly. And the lightbulb moment was realising it’s always exactly 2 picks per ring. So my approach is to see which picks fit, and count the number of slots you need to fill - eg. sometimes there will be 5 slots, two 2-slot picks and one three-slot pick that fits, so you know you HAVE to use the 3-slot, and then it’s trivial working out which of the 2-slot picks you need.

Sometimes you do still need to plan ahead if there’s more than one way of doing the outer ring though

When you’re encumbered oxygen runs out faster in general. You also can’t fast travel. It’s fine if you’re just pootling around, but can be a problem if you run into combat. Offload extra items to your companion, or if you’re close enough to an outpost or your ship, transfer it over to them.

Ive just done my first lock using a digipick and its not as fun as the twiddling minigame in fallout/Skyrim.

You can't fail it from the looks of it?

Jump left and right across the tumblers to line up all the pins and when done, slot them all in. There is no element of chance as far as I can tell.

The harder locks have multiple combinations that may or may not work, but yes, the chance element is broadly removed, so once you have the expert/master perks all it takes is time and a bit of puzzling. That being said, digipicks are scarcer than lockpicks/bobby-pins were, and locks can consume several at a time, so it’s more a rebalance in resources than anything.

Highly, highly recommend pushing the main quest along to 'Into the Unknown' and completing that quest.

Enjoyed the a Ranger quest.

The safe in that first mission seemed to be literally impossible to me (without any skill points in security to be fair).  Was I doing it wrong?

Yeah, I figured it out during that first mission, but after a few missed tries. (There were actually two or three safes in that mission, only one of them was featured as part of the quest).

Basically (if you’re on controller) use the right stick to flick between the various rings. Try to align them so that not only does it feel the holes in the ring, but before you press A, make sure that you have the right keyrings to unlock the inner rings.

err my wording is terrible. basically, work in reverse. save the rings that will unlock the inner rings. If you just align the outer ones with no care for the inner layers, you reach a point where you can’t unlock the inner ones.

Good thing I don’t write instruction manuals or tutorials.