Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@Magician If you ever feel the need to leverage manufacturing for easy xp, I recommend Nikola I in the Nikola system. Find a plot of land that has iron and aluminum available for extraction. Four drills on both will give you 500 of each resource after a couple hours of sleep. Travel to The Den in the Wolf system to offload whatever you need to sell.

Credits will flow like water.

Xbox mid-gen refresh looking to push the platform to all-digital...all the time.

I don't collect disc-based media, so I'm fine with this.

@Magician
I recall rumours the PS5 refresh may also go disc-less, but might provide an option to use an official external Blu-Ray drive accessory.

My understanding is that the existing PS5 digital-only model is the considerably less popular option despite being $100 cheaper. I think both Sony and Microsoft would have a hard time pushing a 100% digital system, it already didn't take very well when Sony tried it with the PSP Go (and they already had to contend with how easy piracy was on previous models).

Level 72 in Starfield.

About ten minutes a level at the moment. Probably fifteen minutes per level once I'm into the high-80s or low-90s? Might reach level 100 after another five or six hours. Give or take.

I think I will play my XBOX 360 again once I get Kinect Disney Rush.

Cyberpunk 2077 base game is currently 40% off.

Since Starfield is almost over, I think I'll spring for this now and decide later on Phantom Liberty.

Open world, co-op multiplayer, survival Pokemon-clone...Palworld.

I would believe this. But look at Steam back 10-15 years ago. You had physical media but I remember back in those days, pc gamers started to want everything on Steam.

You’ll have those gamers who want physical media. But unfortunately, I think most Sony and Microsoft gamers prefer the convenience (I hate this word) of digital.

Level 90 in Starfield. So close to the end now. At this moment it takes 13 minutes to grind one level. Probably will edge towards 15 minutes per level for the last half dozen or so levels. Pop that last trophy, then I'll be inclined to fire up Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time.

I know I'll go back to Starfield at some point. Two...maybe three years from now.

UGH the quest bugs in starfield are killing me. Stuck in the Rangers faction quest now. This is why I don't play Bethesda games on console. I'd switch to PC gamepass and play there but I think it will melt my GPU. Gotta hold out until TES6.

Haha! Just found out Hadrian can be a travel buddy! Yes!

1000/1000 in Starfield over the weekend. Happy to move on from the game. I might consider coming back to the game when the DLC drops next year? We'll see.

Started Cyberpunk 2077, about ten hours into now. And I must admit that I'm having a bit of whiplash. Coming off of Starfield where it's load screen, on top of load screen, on top of load screen. Messing around in 2077's seamless open world has me asking, "where are the load screens, lol."

The only load screens are into the game proper or if I fast travel. But you'd miss the random encounters with gang members for easy xp and credits it you fast travel. So it's better to walk or drive.

I am now 90-ish hours into Cyberpunk 2077. I have played through the Phantom Liberty DLC. Unlike the base game, throughout the PL DLC I have had to reload old save files multiple times in order to rectify several minor bugs.

Once was an audio glitch where the sound effect for accessing my holo phone would loop endlessly, like background static. Another was during the Black Spire infiltration; while accessing the closed circuit television in order to help Idris Elba enter the building, suddenly my screen went near-completely dark, as though I smeared Nutella all over my screen or something, and that persisted outside of the cctv.

Beyond that I had to reload saves around half a dozen times because access to either my holo phone, calling my vehicle, and/or access to my character menu was inaccessible. "You cannot do that at this time." Even though I wasn't in dialogue or in combat.

Lastly, I save scummed four endings. Only to discover later that The Tower is a fifth ending. Unfortunately, I deleted my save from the inflection point in the story. So now if I want to pop that lone achievement for the fifth ending I'll have to go through all of the DLC...again.

Woof

Well I had a lengthy post and it got deleted 😒. Long story short, huge xbox sale going on. Thinking about the quarry, re4r, and diablo 4. Alan wake 2 is on the horizon as well and I may grab it pending reviews. Being a huge F13th fan as well teen slasher movies, how does the quarry hold up? Anyone here play it?

Was on the verge of closing out Cyberpunk 2077 until I ran into the Path of Glory ending bug.

According to the comments section, waiting to board the AV, opening the map screen clears the bug.

We'll see after work today.

Finally, a good review of Starfield! If that does not make you want to buy the game, I do not know what will

I'm onto alan wake 2 now. Only played 30 or so minutes last night. It's getting rave reviews.

@NintendoByNature Looking forward to Alan Wake 2, but not enough to be there on day one.

@Magician I never played the first myself, but with all the praise this last week and reviewing the way it did, I had to try it. Plus I finished mario wonder a couple days ago so perfect timing with Halloween.

@gcunit Answering your question to me about starfield.

So first off it is a Bethesda Game. Which means a large, livable playable area that you can do whatever you want. That being said as Bethesda is trying to go for psuedo accuracy with planetary atmosphere and the only spacefaring life is human (I can argue intelligence for one particularly dangerous species) that if you are expecting No Man's Sky, you will be disappointed. Humans have not been spacefaring for long (only a few centuries and a very large fraction of the population died before leaving Earth...the game tells you why later...) and due to war and treaties, they have not built huge cities on each world. So if you want Skyrim in space that isn't what you are going to get. Instead, they pull more of the bootstrap survival from fallout (but without the same tone), which if you like to forge your own path then the game is for you.

Outposts is a huge system (and requires you to link a number of planets together) so if you like to build, resource manage, there is plenty of that. Combat works (I actually don't like shooters, so fallout and technically starfield are my least favorite Bethesda combat styles, but I really, really like the leveling up system (infinite by the way...it has a hard cap but good luck getting to it) as it feels like your character is "learning". It feels like they brought back inspiration from oblivion's system but you aren't jumping in place for 20 hours lol). I think the radiant points of interest are sufficient (I have not encountered them all) but I like to wander around and find loot (you aren't going to stumble on a lot of hand crafted content for cities...that is done on purpose and fits the lore...but some folks didn't enjoy that). Ship building is also big for some people (I am fine with just upgrading ships I get normally or buy).

Companions feel better than ever but if you play evil supposedly you won't have a good time. I play as morally good as I can within reason and there isn't an "evil faction" like the Dark Brotherhood...Ryujin is the closest but it is more thieves guild meets corporate espionage. I loved the Vanguard quest but do feel that the Vanguard and the Freestar are at their core similar (and aholes about it) and somebody described them as Space 'merica 1 and Space 'merica (I can't entirely disagree but do feel it is unfair to assess as such as it is a generic Earth culture and not really America specific beyond the the Freestar's pseudo cowboy theme (which beyond the hats and weapons isn't really much)).

There is a supernatural twist to the plot that makes for a new narrative for bethesda games (New Game plus is incorporated into this) but the repetition if you want to be a space deity is a lot (I left after my 6th playthrough...just waiting on DLC and I need another 8 playthroughs to get everything since I missed a few things during a playthrough or two). The companions have gotten more dialogue so if you like them you will like hanging out with them, but I suppose to accommodate that (and the twist) they shrunk the game to 4 main companions and a robot, but you have several lower tier (less dialogue and can die I think) companions in game.

I will say I liked some of the branches with faction quests and they felt a little longer than previous games but it is familiar if you have played Bethesda games. So imo if you like semi realistic space (within a Bethesda framework), and like the Bethesda game model, I highly recommend. Game is buggy but no where near the levels of prior Bethesda games (given the size of the games and variables I don't get as mad about this as some folks do) but if you are looking for a space opera (NMS, Mass Effect, Kotor) this will not satisfy you. If you have gamepass, give it a go...technically the start is "slow" (I don't think so but I have seen that complaint) so give it at least 10 hours before you try to settle on an opinion. It is a very good game...but not quite a great game. Like any Bethesda game though it can be lived in so the narrative is partly up to you.

@Ryu_Niiyama There's just something to be said when the tech in games like No Man's Sky and Starlink is so much more impressive than in Starfield, which was billed as a "true next-gen" experience but feels like it's stuck in the PS3 / Xbox 360 generation of platforms.

Bethesda's Creation Engine needs to go.

Matter of fact, it should've went...years ago.