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Have you watched the latest Starfield game trailer? After nearly a decade in development, Starfield, dubbed as a completely new, next-generation experience, will try to lead the way for Bethesda Softworks later this year.
Since the name was registered as a trademark in 2013, the new IP has gone through several different phases, which has caused some worrying amounts of skepticism from devoted fans. But regrettably, Bethesda approved it a few months ago and scheduled its release for 2022.
It appears like Starfield is designed to function something like “Skyrim in space.” That’s according to game director Todd Howard, a well-known professional who has devoted his entire being to making the space-based project into a dynamic work of art.
In addition, the mere fact that it is close by is reason enough for us to go on the hype train. Based on this breathtaking video, Starfield might be Bethesda’s most ambitious game yet.
What is the Starfield game trailer about?
The game’s plot was introduced in the lengthy video, which was presented among other Xbox Game Studios creations and coordinated with the Summer Games Fest. The players of Starfield team up with Constellation, dubbed “the last group of space explorers,” who are attempting to locate misplaced relics of extraterrestrial origin in the year 2330.
The ensemble is made up of a diverse, multigenerational group, and the plot may also consider or make an effort to establish the reality of true divinity.
Whatever the case, there will be spacecraft, sunsets, and obedient robot friends, as well as what seems to be another outstanding music from Inon Zur. Starfield will feature fully configurable character creation, crafted weaponry, and weapon upgrades, as well as player bases, following the example of earlier Bethesda RPGs.
However, the ship customization system, which offers possibilities for several components from numerous manufacturers, was the main focus of Sunday’s presentation. In their ships, players will even be able to fly and engage in combat from either the first or third person.
Starfield, which was introduced in 2018 along with The Elder Scrolls 6, was scheduled to debut on November 11, 2022. That timeframe was postponed last month until the beginning of 2023. Xbox CEO Phil Spencer issued an apology as a result of the delay.
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Fascinating new tech of the Starfield game trailer
Rendering resolution
The Starfield game trailer is displayed in native 4K, however, the quality of the shots varies. Let’s start with rendering resolution. It’s interesting to note that gaming sections appear to be devoid of any anti-aliasing, leaving you with consistently sharp edges and aliasing.
In contrast, the more cinematic shots employ TAA similarly to Fallout 4, which should be closer to what we’ll see in the finished release.
Large-scale shadows, which were low-res and grainy outside, change inside and become sharply defined. In this part, direct lighting pierces the night as specular highlights bounce off the surfaces to create a vibe reminiscent of Doom 3.
The improvement in realism is noticeable when compared to Fallout 4, which has basic interior illumination and a notable loss of texture and object detail.
One intriguing omission is brought up by this, namely the absence of reflections. Although there were almost RT-like reflections in the initial teaser trailer, there is never any indication of screen-space reflections in gaming scenes, much less RT reflections. We at most perceive simple cube maps.
This seems a little odd in a situation flush with metallic surfaces, and screen-space reflections would greatly enhance overall image cohesiveness.
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Design
Looking at how Starfield handles open expanses on-planet, interior spaces, character representation, and lastly outer space, we may get a sense of the dev team’s design aspirations beyond plain resolution.
For instance, we can observe that the game uses long-distance shadowing in an outdoor scenario, which is essential for keeping distant detail. It’s encouraging to see that Starfield has found a solution to one of the main issues we had with Halo Infinite.
The terrain system ties everything together, thus it’s likely that planet surfaces and structures are created using a combination of procedural generation and manually placed components, which is a popular technique in today’s game development.
While pop-in is kept to a minimum and detail is visible far into the distance, the terrain rendering itself is reminiscent of earlier Bethesda titles. Given the size of the game and the length of the development process, it is natural that the graphics elements, while nice, do not push any technological boundaries.
There are also a number of good things about this. For instance, weapons have amazing appearances. The model and animation work in Fallout 4 never won me over, and Starfield delivers weapons that seem both fashionable and potent. Additionally, enemy animation is often considerably better.
Although the reflexes are significantly improved, there is still a sense that you are depleting a life bar rather than doing actual harm. The absence of per-object motion blur on adversaries and weapons is the only thing.
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Character rendering
Since Fallout 4, character depiction has been much improved, especially when you focus on the in-game appearance rather than only the character creation windows.
Subsurface scattering, which is absent in every scene, may make things even better by depicting light’s interactions with the skin’s surface more precisely. In the video we saw, it is visible on the ears, but it does not apply to the rest of the skin, which overemphasizes the normal maps.
Additionally, the geometry of the tear ducts is a bit too shiny, absorbing light to the point where it almost appears to shine. However, there is a significant improvement in animation quality beyond these minor issues. Compared to Starfield, conversations in Fallout 4 had rigid, sometimes unattractive animations.
While we only get a brief glimpse at Starfield’s final major setting – space – the effects work, like laser blasts and explosions, are promising – certainly, an improvement over the low-res haze when landing on a planet. My main concern with space travel isn’t so much about the images as it is about the potential; I’d want to see ship management factor into the trip.
Consider leaving the captain’s chair to tour the ship while overseeing both systems and resources. This, in my opinion, might make the interplanetary travel experience more interesting and difficult. However, it’s unclear whether this is a choice or if the player just “becomes” the ship while flying.
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Indirect lighting
A few other technical issues, such as the game’s indirect lighting, are also important to note. Simulating the phenomena of photons bouncing off a surface and indirectly illuminating another area is a vital component of realistic rendering, and it has gained significant attention in recent years.
The problem right now is that Starfield’s non-directly lighted parts have a consistent, almost grayish tint that doesn’t match the expected lighting effects. Ray-traced global illumination would be effective in this situation but comes at a high-performance penalty.
With so many planets, an offline baked approach utilizing probes would also be effective, but the GI data would probably be far too enormous. When creating a game of this size, it is challenging to find a solution to this issue.
Performance
The 30fps container in which the Starfield game trailer clip we have was encoded restricts the amount of analysis we can perform. There still seem to be problems, though, as evidenced by the fact that all gameplay footage suffers from noticeable performance hitches and frequently drops below 30 frames per second.
This is normal for a game in this stage of development, but Bethesda’s history of console launches with wildly inconsistent performance makes me wary. It’s the presentation’s most obvious flaw, and I’m hoping that things will work out better before launch, but we’ll have to wait and see.
In previous Bethesda releases, larger cities were frequently broken up by loading screens while smaller villages were seamless. This is the second component about which I’m curious. So, is it possible to arrive on a planet and travel without seeing any loading screens to a big city? I’m hoping we’ll learn soon.
Conclusion
Above is my review of the Starfield game trailer. Even with my criticisms, Starfield is still shaping out to be the most aesthetically pleasing Bethesda game to date. Most of the less appealing aspects of Fallouts 4 and 76 have been removed, leaving us with some stunning settings to explore.
In addition, Starfield features architecture and size unheard of before. At first, the concept of the “1000 planets” feature sounded absurd, but you may assume that the most important planets have been meticulously constructed, allowing the remainder to be handled more procedurally.
It would be interesting if the gameplay structure supports this adequately. Even though I’m mainly over open-world games, Starfield has me really intrigued.
All of this makes Starfield a challenging game to analyze when it launches the following year, but I’m up for the challenge. Starfield will be available on Xbox Game Pass at launch for Windows PC and Xbox Series X.
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