Starfield is a Bethesda game, and despite what the reviews claim, it is NOT polished. While we make fun of how buggy it is, we also discuss encumbrance as a game mechanic… because it’s terrible.
#Starfield #Bethesda #Games #Glitches #Gaming #JimSterling #jimquisition #StephanieSterling #JamesStephanieSterling #Trans #PC #Xbox #Broken
It’s not fair to judge this game while it is still in early access. Wait for the full retail version that will release in 2042 and will have all the same bugs still present, but at least by then there will be a fan patch out.
As someone who got into RPGs with a game without any inventory limits and got very used to that, I played Skyrim and Fallout 4 almost exclusively with mods (or cheats) that remove encumberance (in fact, even though much more managable, I did the same in BG3). This always felt like it very much throws any semblence of economic balance out of the window. Because with encumberance, I definitely don’t run back into a dugneon 10x to loot it clean – I go through once and only take the most valuable stuff (by value/weight). Without it, I just loot everything and sort through stuff at the vendor where I usually end up being limited by their available money rather than what I want to sell. This is something I decided to live with because for me not dealing with encumberance is more important than the economic balance. Sometimes I restrain myself in looting (only loot what I know I want to keep) and/or selling but sometimes I embrace it, I don’t have any scruples about “cheating” in singleplayer games. This is just my experience based on how I play games, if you actually defy encumberance and still pick places clean in multiple trips, this will obviously shape a very different perspective.
I remember the good old days of Shadow of Chernobyl where encumbrance was an actual integrated part of the survival gameplay, because it forced you to choose how much ammo to bring on a trip, choose whether it was worth bringing so much extra medical kits and also whether you wanted to risk not being able to run from cloaking stalking monsters just because you wanted to take home all the new guns you found. Being considerate about your choices was a matter of survival in the game because it worked into its theme as an action-survival-horror-shooter; it also didn’t feature tons of guff to feed a bloated crafting system. Also, good shit was rare to come by so finding someting useful was a treat. Oh well, at least we can still have the terrible game-breaking bugs – and from an actual AAA studio no less.
I think the source of such mechanics is a world full of trash items. I remember playing Skyrim for the first time and picking up everything I could for about two hours, until I realised that doing that was pointless and annoying. After that I started trying to calculate value-per-weight and only pick up things that were worth enough. Eventually I realised that the gold I was getting from selling even the more valuable trash wasn’t actually worth much anyway.
The thing is, if the game can’t trust you to be able to decide whether it’s worth carrying that pickaxe halfway across the map so you can sell it for two gold pieces it only really has two choices. First they can remove all the trash from the game – no plates on tables, no skulls in caves, no movable, physical objects other than the one copy of each weapon that you can actually pick up. Second, they can make it so people can go ahead and pick up every single piece of trash they ever see, like some kind of human roomba. Neither seems to me like a good choice.
I feel like there are probably a lot of games that have limited inventory space, or weight limits, where you don’t even notice it being a problem, because it’s more obvious what you do and don’t want to be carrying. Also, you’re still wrong about Zelda. 🙂
Great video but watching you inhale that much helium made me anxious. People don’t generally know how dangerous inhaling helium is but i encourage anyone reading this to look it up!
Encumbrance is rarely used in any interesting way especially in games like this. If there isn’t already a mod to remove it or increase carrying weight I’m sure there will be soon. The only part of this video I disagree with is saying limited inventory in survival horror is the same/as bad as encumbrance in a Bethesda game or any other RPG. They’re sorta similar ideas I guess but they exist in completely different contexts and I feel like its not really even fair to compare them or at least the way it was sort of just brushed over in the video.
While I’m not particularly bothered by encumbrance systems, possibly because I haven’t played a Bethesda game in ages, I do find it worth pointing out that Pokémon let you send your critter overflow to Bill’s PC from anywhere in the world in 1996.
Encumbrance is a very Marmite thing in games.
I like it because it makes me think and strategize about what to take and what to stash and where to set up emergency caches and the like. If you’re playing a Bethesda game like a looter shooter where you kill, grab and pillage then it starts to suck real quick because of encumbrance.
(I also find that encumbrance makes you slow down and take the world in, especially when you’re starting out without all the carrying buffs you can acquire later on, provided you don’t allocate separate time and gear loadouts to scaving and plot progression. Like I said, Marmite.)
JSS seems to be reaching for things to bitch about. Honestly, this is such a weird take. “Game mechanic I don’t like is ruining my experience”. Cool…
Have you seriously become so jaded that *this* pisses you off so hard that you had to make a video about it? Seriously, your content is taking a nose dive. Just seems like you want to whine about anything you can think of in a bid for viewer engagement.
Immersion is a completely valid argument. “Nuh uh becuz other game no have immersion” is an idiotic comparison. Who cares what some other game did. Clearly that game has different designers and different game mechanics.
You need a vacation from the internet for a while if *this* stupid shit has got your panties in a twist.
Morrowind was a little tougher with encumbrance, I mean if you were encumbered by even a pound you couldn’t move
Man in about 50 years we’re just going to be doing the same thing with worse graphics aren’t we?
I quit skyrim, f4, and fnv because of encumberance. Thank you for pointing this out so I don’t need to bother.
Somehow it gives a sense of order and stability of the universe that Bethesda is still Bethetic.
The game also gives awful exp for doing missions and the best way to get exp right now is to go genocide aliens on high level planets once you get a good gun with the exterminator trait. There’s so many skills I’d like but I can’t justify putting points into them with how slow levelling is and I have so many other skills I need first.
sheesh, the multiple voices made me think I had multiple videos playing by accident.
I can tell you why, encumberance slows down early game progression. Some people like to feel the hero “struggle” during the first part of the game.
Omg that thumbnail got me lol 😂
I’ll take Zelda weapon durability (and the other things mentioned) over Bethesda weight limit any day
whats the first thing I do whenever I get into a bethesda game? open the console and set the carry weight to 18 billion or something. because Steph is right encumberance is pointless in practically any game it is put in.
There are only type of game where encumbrance makes sense
1 certain survival horror games to limit character options
2 if it the core mechanic (very rare) like in Death’s Stranding
3 as a technical limitation from much older games, hasn’t been relevant since the 90’s
Starfield is none of these, they want me to build stupid stuff with the materials they give me, LET ME DO THAT