Media thread - 9 September 2023, 22:02

A selfie, I guess, of my character in Starfield. She has dark brown skin and brown eyes and has faint crows feet around the eyes. She has multiple piercings in ears, and her hair is completely shaved up the sides but the top is a big mop of black hair. She looks pretty much exactly like Naomi Nagata from the TV show "The Expanse".

And speaking of Starfield, dear LORD can you spend a lot of time in the character creator! As always I made a Black woman, you can't tell from this shot but I went with the heavy/muscular side of things for the body type, but as soon as I came across that haircut I was like "Oh, I've just made Naomi Nagata." 😅

Posted on 9 September 2023, 22:02

A screenshot from Starfield of the sunrise over, uh, one of the districts (I forget which one it was) on Jemison in the Alpha Centauri system. It's taken looking over an open public plaza with trees and people walking around, and there's tall, sleek, futuristic buildings as well.

Another screenshot, this one is also Jemison but it's inside The Well which is an underground almost slum. Everything made of metal and it's all brown and industrial-looking, with lots of exposed pipes, girders, and mesh everywhere.

Another screenshot, this one is inside the main control room of the space station "The Eye" that's orbiting Jemison. The room is round and stark white, with rows of "NASA punk"-looking consoles with displays and buttons on them. The roof is clear glass looking out into space where you can see the stars.

Man, I'm enjoying Starfield so much. Tonight was spent mostly wandering around The Well on Alpha Centauri helping figure out what was causing brownouts, and chatting to Denis and Dr. Charlie in Cydonia on Mars (wonderful lines and voice acting for both of them), I didn't even do much of main quest things but I thoroughly enjoyed myself nonetheless. The amount of detail Bethesda put into this game is wonderful, as an example there's a café/not-quite food bank place in The Well, and if you go through the back there's the kitchen with all the things you'd expect to see in there, then upstairs is the living quarters where there's all sorts of stuff scattered around like someone actually LIVES there, there's even a bathroom and everything. The whole thing just feels _lived in_ and it's so good.

screenshot gaming xbox starfield

Posted on 11 September 2023, 23:29

A screenshot taken from person-level at the entrance of Akila City, during the night. It's got a very wild west sort of feel to it, the ground is dirt and the buildings are cobbled together out of a combination of wood and futuristic-looking metal. It's not very well lit and the lights are quite yellow-coloured. In the centre of the frame is an imposing-looking multi-storey mostly built out of stone, with more yellow lights lighting it up from below.

A wide-angle screenshot taken from above the other end of Akila City at sunrise right before the sun is visible above the horizon. There's a solid wall running around a set of closely-packed metal buildings that look a bit more futuristic than in the previous screenshot, but they're still decidedly not pristine and clean. There's some wispy clouds in the sky and mountains in the distance, and a very yellow glow from where the sun is about to rise.

Another wide-angle screenshot of the main bar in Akila City. It's all rough wooden tables and stone walls, with a set of wooden stairs at the right going up to a second level. A handful of patrons are sitting around, the bartender is behind the bar, and suspending from the ceiling is the skeleton of an ashta, a huge predator native to the planet.

Almost 24 hours into Starfield so far and I'm still enjoying the hell out of it. I know I keep harping on about it, but the amount of detail and care in the environments is so good, it feels like a fully-realised world that you want to spend a bunch of time in. Most of my recent time has been spent in Akila City doing various side-quests and helping out the Freestar Rangers.

screenshot gaming xbox starfield

Posted on 30 September 2023, 18:49