Starbound Winter Update Review

So last night I managed to finally play a few hours of the new Starbound Winter Update (as referenced in this blog post), and I thought I could share my first impressions on the update. (Sorry about spellings errors and grammar that is poor, but I'm particularly tired this morning.) Without further ado, let's get into the thick of it.

I Love Starbound

I want to make this point before I say anything else: I absolutely love Starbound. From the moment I saw their first trailer (that I know of), I felt a deep attachment to what I believed would be a soulful game, and I wasn't disappointed.

Starbound carries with it a simplicity rarely seen today in games. You play the role of a... person? Yeah, a person of your chosen race, exiled from their homeworld for some reason or another, with only a space ship and the clothes on your back. From that point on it is up to you to explore the universe and survive. Elite: Dangerous is the game when I want to feel immersed; Starbound is the game I play when I want to have simple, relaxing fun.

I could spend the rest of this review praising it as much as I want, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. When Starbound was released, it was clearly unfinished, and the first major update in a long time was released this week. This review will concentrate on the changes this update has brought to the game.

And it's not all positive.

So before I go about sounding like someone pissed in my morning coffee, I want to restate the following: I love Starbound, and I love it even more since the update.

Pacing, Pacing, Pacing...

I need to adress this point first because-

"Adress"? Is it "adress" or "address"? It's "adresse" in French, so it must be "address" in English, yeah, I remember something about them being different. And the auto-correct seems to agree.

As you can see, changing the pace of a blog article - or a game - can completely jerk you "out of it", and that's my first major gripe with the update. For someone who played the game after the update, this may not be an issue, but if you played before you will find yourself halted, or at least slowed down after the update.

The first major change in pacing is how you now interact with containers, specifically when closing them. Previously, you opened a container by pressing 'E' and closed it again by pressing 'E'. This created a somewhat easy, intuitive and rapid way of going through your containers; you could open one, rapidly glance at it, and then just leave if it contained nothing interesting.

Now, pressing 'E' seems to open another window for the same container, forcing you to press either 'I', 'Esc' or use the mouse to close the container. For someone who got used to just pressing 'E', this halts the gameplay in a very noticeable manner. It feels like when you're riding a bike and someone suddenly punches you in the kidney, know what I'm saying? No? Moving on...

(I hate complaining without giving suggestions on how to improve things, so here I go. My guess is this was implemented to allow opening of multiple containers at once and transferring items without passing through the inventory (I'm just guessing here, I haven't tried yet), so maybe assign a another key for this kind of operation? Maybe one which would simultaneously open all nearby containers? Food for thought...)

Let Me Tell You about the Time I Almost Died

Another major change is the new Ship-based Artificial Intelligence Lattice, or SAIL for short, which gives a little more structure to the player in terms of progression. SAIL offers various quests and upgrades to your Matter Manipulator (another major change).

Among other things, your SAIL gives you some quests to complete before you can unlock more parts of your ship or before exploring the universe further, giving some form of progression. One of these quests has you travel to the centre of your starting planet in order to gather Core Fragments. This forced me to do something I never did before; dig to the centre of the planet... and that made me feel weird.

Not the digging part, I was fine with that, but it felt strange to be forced to do a very specific action in a game which was previously so open and free. Previously, I could always just stumble on everything I would need, but now I was somewhat forced to follow the path laid before my by the game. This is not necessarily bad, and it allowed me to experience something I missed before the update, but I definitely noticed the hand-holding this time around.

Combat has also been changed in the new update, and I must say that I love what they did. It used to feel a little boring - repetitive, if you will - but now everything, from blocking to aiming to enemy behaviour, feels good, responsive, and fresh. You now have 360-degree aiming when using melee weapons, and ranged weapons have been revamped to now be a viable and fun alternative, even from the start of a new character.

Starbound Was Unfinished, but Now It Feels Unfinished

From the get-go, the development team made it very clear that the game they released was unfinished; when you start up the Starbound launcher, a nice warning reminds you that this is an early beta, and to expect bugs and crashes. Strangely enough, the original game, although obviously unfinished, didn't feel like it. It had that Minecraft quality where there wasn't much to the game, but you could still do pretty much anything you set your mind to.

People had complained previously about the lack of content in Starbound. Now, with the Winter Update, the game is filled to the brim with new content, and that is awesome! I think I need to say it again: I love Starbound, and I love it even more since the update. But now that it's has much more content and context, the unfinished things stand out that much more.

Something strange happened yesterday when I played the update. I sat down, was blown away by all the new content, griped at the whole container closing thing (seriously I'm wondering if it might be a bug at this point), and got my derriere handed to me by the lunar base mission (which is awesome by the way). Then, I stopped thinking, and though "that was awesome, but there's still lots of things left to do". The bizarre part was that I hadn't thought that before.

I was left torn; on one side, I felt like the game still needed some time before being released as Version One-Point-Oh, and on the other side it left me wondering whether it ever will. The game is still marked as beta, leaving the door open for more improvements, updates, and fixes before an official release.

I think that's a bad thing, and will work against both Starbound the game and Chucklefish the developer/publisher. I mean, I get it, I really do; being a developer myself, I understand the need to break free of release dates, to not be restricted by deadlines and commitments, and keeping a game or project in an eternal beta status would achieve that level of freedom.

But then again, what is there to keep this project going, other than sheer force of will? If you're passionate enough, you'll keep the car running for a long time, but what happens once the fuel runs out? I've asked around (I wish I had links to put here to show other peoples' opinions), and I don't think anyone is expecting Starbound to receive an official release anymore, instead receiving gradually-diminishing updates as time goes on.

Chucklefish is a company I love dearly, and I would kill for the opportunity to work for them (I wouldn't actually do that... I mean, I know you wouldn't want me to... right?), but I am nonetheless worried that people will simply lose interest. I won't pretend to know better, but I'm worried, and that's the point. If I, an adorer of the game and its developer/publisher, am worried, what does that mean to the world at large?

En Conclusion

In case this isn't obvious after the above diss-fest, I love Starbound, and I love it even more since the update. I want this game to succeed, I really do, and I am writing this hoping the Starbound team will read it, and hopefully respond to it. The new update gave us many wonderful new things to play with and explore for many more hours, even if it broke the pacing, but now more than ever does the game truly feel like a beta, something which I never really noticed (or didn't pay attention to) before.

But then again, what do I know? Someone pissed in my coffee this morning.

Stay safe, I love you all, hugs and kisses,
Jo

On the Road to Riften (Skyrim Episode 2)

On the Road to Riften

Day 2

When the morning came, Liddie went off to the blacksmith to forge herself a new suit of leather armour from the pelts she, um, borrowed late last night. The road to Riften is fraught with danger, and a little protection can go a long way.

It was early in the morning when Liddie left Riverwood behind, heading North and passing the corpse of the snow fox she had hunted earlier along the way.

On the way there, Liddie stopped a moment to enjoy the view of the valley below.

As she made her way up the mountain, she reached the ruins of Helgen, lying on the road to Riften. Seeing the destroyed town, Liddie felt a pang of sorrow; she had seen death before, but never at this level.

Just past Helgen was a pass through the mountain, one I (the author) unofficially named Haemar's Pass after a vampire-filled cavern that can be found about midway through the mountains.

The pass is usually devoid of any kind of life, save for the occasional goat, but today Liddie met a nice hunter. The hunter felt the need to verbally defend his actions, claiming that his poaching didn't hurt anyone, and that the jarl could hardly eat all the deer. Our thief protagonist wondered what he was going on about, since she herself wasn't much of a law-abiding citizen.

Walking past the hunter, Liddie found what she assumed to be the hunter's horse.

Now, what kind of a thief would she be if she passed on this opportunity and kept on walking? Not a good one. With a horse now sworn to carry her burdens, Liddie made her way out of the pass in no time.

As she trotted along the road to Riften, she came across a rundown shack along the side of the road, filled with alchemical ingredients. She was going to be relying on her bow and daggers, and crafting poisons would certainly help with what I am assuming will be a fairly low damage output (compared to larger, more intimidating weapons).

The shack contained a small journal and some ingredients useful for poisons.

Heading out, I noticed something was off, missing. Indeed, the horse that Liddie stole seemed to have run off! (or got killed by wolves)

We were back to walking.

At about lunch time, the map indicated that we were about half-way there.

Figuring it would be about lunch time, Liddie set off to find some berries or a small animal to devour. She came across a small rabbit, which she caught and beat to death - why waste an arrow on something so small - before eating raw. After all, salmonella doesn't exist in Skyrim.

She stayed on the road as much as possible, and still encountered some hostile wildlife...

 ...which she discouraged from further attacking her.

A few hours later she came across two Alik'r warriors harassing a lone redguard woman. Since she had decided that their scimtars were pretty and worthy of being in her possession, she shot an arrow at the first man before quickly slashing down the other.

Of course, murder is kind of illegal in Skyrim, and the previously-harassed woman didn't seem to appreciate Liddie's... altruism. Sadly, she was cut down before she managed to reach a guard. With the last witness dead, the world moved on as though the crime never happened.

Finally, in the mid-afternoon hours, Liddie finally made it to Riften's backdoor... only to be denied access by a guard.

She attempted to intimidate the guard, but with no success.

With no other choice, Liddie circled around the town, wasting about a half-hour. Once she reached the North Gate, she entered the city... haha yeah no. Another guard harrassed her, demanding that she pay a visitor's tax.

Liddie, however, is no fool, and saw straight through the man's pathetic shakedown attempt.

After confronting the man, who is now drenched in sweat from all her death threats, she strolled into the city like she owns the damn place. And hey, who knows, maybe one day she will...

Liddie the Thief (Skyrim Episode 1)

Skyrim is the kind of game that gives a lot of freedom in how to play; almost any character archetype is viable. Last night, I started Skyrim up again, intending to continue exploring the world with my main character (since I haven't quite done everything yet), but thought of something else: what if I roleplayed a thief? I've played warriors, wizards, and warriwizards before, but I never explored the sneaky assassin character type.

In this Let's Play, I will be playing as the dark elf Liddie (based on an old character I used to write about), a thief-slash-assassin who came to Skyrim seeking to profit from the civil war.

Now, before we get started, I want to outline a few arbitrary rules I made for myself in order to either increase the challenge or enhance the roleplay. Or because I'm a masochist, I'll let you decide:

• Liddie can only wear light armours; can't have a thief sneaking around in chainmail.
• Liddie can only wield daggers and bows; no hammers, maces, swords, or even shields. (I break this rule in the beginning, but that's because I came up with this rule later in the playthrough.)
• Liddie must stop and eat at least one portion of food per day and must drink at least one non-potion liquid per day, preferably at least two. This can be broken a few times, as long as I realistically make up for it; she can't fast for a month and then binge on thirteen cheese wheels.
• I must never break character with Liddie, and she must act like the master thief that she aspires to be. That means taking the evil option whenever I think a narcissistic, greedy thief would take it.
• Liddie cannot fast travel, or use carriages. After all, there wouldn't really be anything to tell if she just zapped around from one place to the next.

Finally, the playthrough will end when one of the following occurs:

• I break any of the above rules (except for the weapon one in the first episode, as explained above).
• This series becomes stagnant, uninteresting, or downright boring. This is to keep me from hating this playthrough.
• Liddie has amassed 100'000 gold pieces, AND has a fully decked-out house.
• Liddie dies.

That last one might make this seem like this is another permadeath run, but in this case I allow myself to reload if Liddie dies due to incompetence (accidentally attacking a guard, falling off a cliff, etc.). However, if she dies in combat, that's it. Dead.

Without further ado, let's get to it!

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Skyrim: Liddie the Thief

Day 1

Luck had recently run out for Liddie the Thief, or so she thought. She had been caught crossing the Skyrim border illegally - lacking the required passports I assume - and was about to be executed along with a few Stormcloaks. Luckily for her, a dragon attack allowed her to escape custody. She was helped briefly by some imperial, but as soon as she was free she ditched him.

Having borrowed some weather-appropriate outfit from a friendly local (don't mind the arrow jutting from his mouth there), she made her way to lovely Riverwood.

Liddie realized that fur armour, while thematically appropriate, would not confer the protection she would require to reach Riften, the rumoured location of the local Thieves' Guild chapter. After crafting a pair of leather boots from the three wolves that attacked her earlier, she set out to find more pelts.

Walking along the rocky road North of Riverwood, she finds a snow fox simply minding its business. A single arrow was required to dispatch it.

It was getting dark, but Liddie was not done yet. As she walked further up the path, she found a small camp hidden along the cliff side. A man was waiting there, weapons drawn. "Probably a local," thought Liddie as she carefully approached.

The man, as it turns out, was a bandit, and had a friend along with him.

It didn't take much effort to dispatch the men.

Making her way back to Riverwood, Liddie realized that the snow wolf pelt she had skinned earlier would be far from enough to craft a whole set of leather armour. She would have to gather the rest of the materials the way she prefers: by taking it from others.

When walking into town, she noticed a wood elf by the name of Faendal. He was carrying a bow and some arrows; perhaps he was a hunter? If so, his house is bound to be filled with the much-needed pelts.

Liddie waited until deep into the night to infiltrate the wood elf's house. Once she picked the lock and walked in, she noticed the elf sleeping on a nearby bed.

The place was filled with useless junk, but her eye caught the real prize; two sets of saber cat pelts were sitting on a nearby shelf. Naturally, she snatched her loot and snuck out of there.

As it was getting late, she walked in the local tavern, the Sleeping Giant Inn. There, she rented a bed and bought some food both for the night and for the trip tomorrow. That evening she enjoyed a meal of cooked beef, and washed it down with a bottle of ale.

After eating, Liddie then retired for the night.

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Well, that's it for Episode 1. I wanted to make it longer, but it's already stretching out a little, so I'll stop here. As usual, please leave your comments in the comments section; let me know what you think, and criticism is appreciated. Thanks for reading!

Elite: Dangerous Feels like Coming Home

Happy New Year, dear readers! I wish you all health, joy, and everything nice.

Fasten Your Seat Belt, Pilot

Let's kick off the new year (I'm a few weeks late, I know, just bear with me) with a recent discovery of mine: Elite: Dangerous (or ED for short). ED is a space simulation video game... thingy, and probably the best of its genre I've played so far.

I used to play Freelancer way back when, a game that I still consider as one of my favourites (top 3 no doubt), and I've been looking for a game that would inspire that same sense of awe and adventure ever since the Freelancer servers closed up. I looked around and tried a few, including the popular X series, but none managed to satisfy me; they were either too restrictive, or so complex as to be inaccessible to new players. I feared that I would never again experience a game like Freelancer, and I started to wonder if I was maybe remembering my own undertaking through rose-tinted glasses. Then I learned about ED (I swear I ain't talking about the other ED).

The Sidewinder Mk. I is a good ship to start, but you'll want to replace it as soon as you can afford something more specialized for your needs.

In ED, you take on the role of YourFirstnameHere YourLastnameHere, commander and pilot of a brand-new Sidewinder Mk. I, a small multi-purpose ship capable of trading, exploration, combat, and even mining... if you outfit it properly. You're thrown into space and from there, the galaxy is the limit. No, seriously. ED takes place in our own Milky Way, and contains approximately 400 billion procedurally-generated star systems along with many (can't find a number on that) real systems, such as our own Sol.

Let that sink in for a moment. The game contains approximately 400'000'000'000 systems to explore.

Get Ready to Crash... A Lot

ED is a hard game, and the initial learning curve is probably the biggest obstacle any new player will have to face. I would compare the type of difficulty to that of Dark Souls, although not nearly as intense. New players find themselves at the mercy of an unforgiving universe, and the game will hand your ass to you on a platter if you don't respect its difficulty.

The first time I got destroyed was while undocking my ship from the starting station.

Pictured: a successful undocking procedure. NOT what I'm about to talk about.

The game leans heavily on the "realism" side of the "realism vs fantastic scale", and some rigorous protocols need to be followed sometimes. As I learned later, the reason I was destroyed was because I was loitering around the landing pad after I had been cleared for launch. This is illegal, as it keeps other ships from docking, potentially keeping a distressed pilot from getting some much-needed aid. To be fair, the game gives you 5 minutes to clear up the pad, but I was still figuring out the controls at that point (since I stupidly chose to skip the "pre-flight check" tutorial).

The second time I got destroyed was coming out of a space station. At that point, I had a few hours of flight behind my belt and I felt confident in my skills (once you understand pitch, yaw and roll controls, flying becomes somewhat easy) and accelerated quickly to leave. However, another quite large ship was coming into the station, straight in my path. I panicked, veered out of the way and straight into the station itself, destroying my ship.

And don't get me started on docking.

It can take some time to get used to the faster-than-light travel; more often than not, you'll end up going too fast and overshoot the target. A tip for beginners: try to keep the "estimated time remaining" value between 0:07 and 0:08, decelerating if you get below that value and accelerating while above.

When you'll die - and you will - you get sent to a screen with the option to either restore your ship (at the cost of 5% its value - your ship is insured so you won't have to pay the whole thing) or start over with a free Sidewinder Mk. I. This may seem steep, but if you plan your things properly there is no reason why this would be a threat to you; even by playing stupidly I never lost a ship because it got destroyed. Despite this, when you're speeding away from a large ship you "accidentally" pissed off and your cockpit is bathed in blinking red lights, you'll always worry about whether you have enough to pay your insurance premium and will end up losing your ship.

From Trader to Miner to Bounty Hunter in under 10 Minutes

In ED, you don't have to commit to a job like in most other MMOs - oh, did I forget to mention this was an MMO? I'll get back to that in a bit.

Like I was saying, you don't have to commit to playing a certain way. You want to be a miner? Outfit your ship with a mining laser and a refinery. Mining too zen for you and want to move on to trading? Replace your mining laser by a basic weapon and your refinery by some cargo space. Since you're already passing through unexplored systems, why not add a discovery scanner to your ship and become an explorer? Want to become a pirate? Just attack passing traders... but not with your trading-slash-exploring ship, that would be suicide.

Planetary rings are a great place to mine minerals, hunt pirates, or be a pirate.

While some actions, such as accruing a bounty, will limit your options in some systems, it is always possible to change how you play the game with relative ease. There is a lot to do in ED, and not much keeping you from doing it.

The Galaxy Is a Shared Playground... Or Not

As I hinted at earlier, ED is, at heart, an MMO.

WAIT COME BACK

Those familiar with the space exploration genre might feel turned off by that fact, as multiplayer has never been a big selling point for most flight simulator-esque games. ED, however, was designed with multiplayer in mind, and the whole thing feels pretty seamless, at least for me. I'm the kind of player who enjoys losing myself in my games, and so far I have yet to find another player who broke that immersion for me. Most of the time I don't know if I'm dealing with another player or an NPC, regardless of the situation (if it wasn't for the "this is a player" indicator I would never even know).

Sights like this are not uncommon as you roam the galaxy.

If you still feel intimidated about exploring a galaxy in what amounts to a steel coffin while being surrounded by people who want to kill you, and no amount of convincing on my part will change your mind, then fear not! The game includes a solo (not offline) mode, which - as the name implies - allows players to roam without other player intervention. The twist is that the universe is still the same whether you play solo or online; any effects online players have on the economy, for example, will be reflected in your solo session (and vice-versa) so you're never truly alone.

Take Me down to the Paradise City

In short, Elite: Dangerous is a good game. In fact, it's probably the best game of its genre I've played so far (as for Star Citizen, Chris Roberts' narcissism project, I may or may not share my thoughts at a later time), surpassing freelancer in scope and things to do. The game is hard, but not inaccessible, the galaxy is big, and the only limits present are those you impose on yourself. For someone who has been looking for a game just like this for years, ED feels like coming home.

On my way to do some miner protection (bounty hunting on pirates) aboard my Eagle Mk. II.

As for myself, I may end up writing more about my adventures in this universe; if there ever was a game which would allow for a fanfic-like "captain's journal", this would be it. Hell, I think I'll write about my epic journey trying to reach our own Sol.

Pictured: not Sol.

That's it for now. As usual, let me know what you think in the comment section. Take care, fly safe, and I'll see you later!