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What Could The New Starborn Trademark Mean?
1.3k Plays2 months ago
Michael and Duane talk about rare POIs, some favorite mods, and this mysterious tradmark Zenimax has filed for Starborn, and whether it is a hint at a future DLC!
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Transcript
Introduction to Starfield Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
The following announcement was made live from an airport runway by Zegra Rocks. and there starars this is degra rock you're listening to another baller episode of scarfield with normal people adventure away
00:00:17
Speaker
are
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of Starfield with normal people. My name is Michael, and I'm here with Dwayne. Dwayne, how's it going? Hey, Michael, I am doing fantastic. And wow, what a shout out from our Patreon legendary member, ZegorRocks. Yeah. Thank you so much. He sent me that audio clip. Yeah. And I'm like, dude, were you like skydiving in in this clip? What's going on here?
00:00:56
Speaker
because that would not be out of character for Zegoroks. I mean, he's he's posted quite a few cool, adventurous pics in the Discord, just awesome stuff that he's been doing. Turns out his job is to actually do something right literally like on the runway. I actually don't know precisely what he does, but he sent me a photo and he's like on an airport runway doing his thing, so. Yeah, yeah. There we go.
Michael's Vacation Adventures
00:01:21
Speaker
But yeah, I just got back from a week-long vacation. And let me tell you, my liver is on full recovery because I was hanging out with some some old friends. One of my friends had a milestone birthday. And you may well know that when when something like that happens,
00:01:40
Speaker
tends to make people, ah shall we say indulge, indulge in imbibe. Is that the word I'm looking for? Yeah, I believe imbibe is the word. You and I, like were we're sort of like occasional drinkers um you know when when it's a party. When in Rome, both of ah my close friends, they all happen to be former bartenders. Oh, OK.
00:02:06
Speaker
Yeah. You would think that they kind of went through that phase in life and then we're done with it. No, no, they still have a great love for tequila. And so yeah, yeah I do see that people that come from that background, um, they have a real strong, uh, ability to put them away. They do indeed. And you have to keep up with the Jones's. So yeah, in fact, when I got back, I had to have like a, uh,
00:02:33
Speaker
a come down ah beer, you know, because my liver was expecting, yeah, it was like a detox beer. My liver was expecting to just, you can't you can't just go cold turkey after a trip like that. You got to have one that, you know, like kind of eases you back into normal life. So yeah. Man. Well, that that sounds like a lot of fun and and also ah maybe not, maybe not the day after. Yeah.
Forbes and Content Diversification
00:02:58
Speaker
No, it was great. But it's it's great to be back because we've heard some interesting talk about a potential second DLC, right? Yeah. You know, it's it's just like we're getting little whispers. So ever since the beginning of the game, ever since we've heard about the game, you know, we knew about Shattered Space. We only had the title. Now we know so much more. Yeah. And now We've got this trademark registration. You sort of brought this to my attention. What did you see? That's right. I was reading Forbes, which I kind of hate myself for saying that because you and I were talking before the podcast about like Forbes was such like a a business focused magazine. Back in the day, you would walk into your grocery store and you would see like
00:03:46
Speaker
Fortune 500 or top 500 companies in the US, that was like Forbes shtick. That was like all you would ever see is just business related stuff. So to see that they have fully diversified into clickbait ah now in this day and age. And you know if you ask like a ah Gen Alpha, like what is Forbes?
00:04:08
Speaker
you know, what would they say? They would basically say it's like. Yeah, what would they say? I don't know. It's just a website? Do you remember how cracked it came like? Oh yeah. You know, when I was growing up, cracked was like a poor man's mad magazine. It was a physical magazine. It was like mad magazine, yeah. It was like mad magazine. And then,
00:04:29
Speaker
What, in the in their early aughts, it became like click bait central. Yeah, they had these these articles that were. Yeah, it was like AI articles before AI was a thing. Like they were like the the least amount of effort in the most click bait-y title that you could possibly create. Yeah, but weirdly, they they got me. They got me so many times. Oh, yeah. Because it would just be like the 12 worst heroes of of popular movies. It was a lot of lists. And stuff that you really, very easy to jump into and and read. Right. And you were saying it was like the Walmartification of the world. Yeah. So this is a thing that bugs me. it's it's So Forbes, like you said, it was all business. And then they're they were in some meeting at some point, and they were like, ah what about those nerds? What's all that video game stuff? And they're like, let's have a video game division.
00:05:22
Speaker
And I don't know, they probably have like a cooking division. I have no idea.
ZeniMax and Starfield Speculations
00:05:26
Speaker
But it's like every company now, they don't want to specialize. They all want to catch everyone. They want to catch as much as possible. Reminds me of like TLC.
00:05:37
Speaker
Used to be the learning channel and and now yes Don't go chasing waterfalls. You're right Look, there's so few people that are focused on one thing that it's trying to be the end all be all to everything Yeah, and it's not great now and it's it's a lot of articles with ad breaks in the middle and you're like, is this the end of the article? No, I'm going to scroll down. Oh, there is more to this article. Okay. Is this the end? Okay. There's one more paragraph that was on the other side of an ad and you're like, uh, poke my eyes out with a hot poker.
00:06:12
Speaker
And then there's like, there's no signature. ah You know, it's not like written by Joe Johnson. It's just, it just ends because it was was written by an written by AI or something. But Michael, this article is actually attributed to Paul Tassie over at Forbes magazine. And he wrote, quote, Bethesda likely does have, in fact, more expansions planned with their long-term support of Starfield.
00:06:41
Speaker
which they've previously mentioned. Some are saying a second one just leaked and it may be called Starborn. Zidimax, which by the way, Zidimax sounds like a product that you would pick up in CVS.
00:06:53
Speaker
I don't know what that product is exactly, but I don't think it's a great company name. It feels more like a product that you might buy, but yeah, ZeniMax has now filed a trademark for Starborn for computer software. And boy, that's a term I... Computer software. Yeah, I haven't heard that term in, oh, since I fell off my dinosaur.
00:07:13
Speaker
Y'all heard about this computer software? Yeah. Very exciting stuff. Oh, I've got some new computer software from Babbages. It's ah King's Quest 4 to Air is Human. So yeah, it's it's the latest computer software. Yeah, it ships on on nine diskettes.
00:07:32
Speaker
Floppies, yeah, nice floppies. what ah Dude, i remember I remember getting Street Fighter II for my dad's computer. And it was, I wanna say it was four floppy disks. Something like that, yeah. My Tandy 1000HX.
00:07:53
Speaker
Did not have a hard drive. It had dual, uh, three and a quarter floppy disc drives, and then had memory. It had Ram, but it had no hard drive. So what that meant was you had to ah boot up. You had to turn the computer on, then you had to load an operating system like off, off a disc.
00:08:16
Speaker
And then oh wow you had and then you if you wanted to play Space Quest, you would put the floppy disk in.
Gaming Nostalgia and Comparisons
00:08:23
Speaker
And you would start to run the game directly from the floppy disk. And that was crawling. yeah you know We didn't know enough about computers to know that you really needed a hard drive back in the day. I can't believe you could even buy a computer without a hard drive. but When you said that, I was like having trouble imagining how a computer works without a hard drive. But I guess it did.
00:08:44
Speaker
yeah Those are the early days. But yeah, so Starborn, a lot of potential. It doesn't necessarily mean that that is and it's not confirmed by Bethesda. Yeah, none of this is confirmed. But it makes total sense that this could be an expansion. Yeah, I want to get it out of the way. First off, that one possibility and this is the least exciting one is that they're just trademarking the name because it's in the game and And that's that that they just want to have it trademarked and that is one possibility Although we've seen the word starborn used before there's an like an old
00:09:27
Speaker
sci-fi book that was called The Starborn and even just within this last year, No Man's Sky had a limited time mission you know expedition that had a ship that you could earn called The Starborn. So it's out there.
00:09:42
Speaker
Right, and there was that Bradley Cooper movie called Starborn. Oh no, that was a Starsborn. And it was a remake anyway. So forget that. Forget I said that. Essentially, yes, it could be nothing. It could just be their their trademarking. However, since this word already was out there and already expanded, I'm i'm not a lawyer, but there is a difference between copyright and trademark.
00:10:07
Speaker
right So they're not copywriting the word. I don't think they can because it already exists. But I don't know. To me, a trademark might mean that it's a title, something that's coming.
00:10:24
Speaker
Well, you could do what Sean Murray does, which is to take to take three random words, throw them into a blender and then come up with your game title that way because there's no you know worry about that stuff being trademarked or copyright because it's nonsensical words just kind of crammed together.
00:10:41
Speaker
Isn't it funny like we get used to we get used to the title no man's guy But I've played I've played all the way through no man's guy and um I never got an explanation for that title and Their upcoming game light no fire. Yeah, it really is like you said you go to Chad GPT Give me three words that have never been put together before Mm-hmm. Oh, that's perfect light no fire. Perfect. What's the expansion call that they just teased? That's a single word, right? Oh world's world world yeah well No, no, no, well it's world's part one
00:11:16
Speaker
It's world part one. It is three. So we did get that three word. But at least it makes sense. It's not nonsensical. Yeah. So yeah there you go. You know, this reminds me of Skyrim where you played the game and you were your character is the Dragonborn.
Starfield Gaming Community Insights
00:11:32
Speaker
Right. And then later there was a DLC called the Dragonborn. So honestly, it feels very much like that.
00:11:42
Speaker
Now, we do want to get into a little bit more of what our ideas for the Starborn DLC, if it exists, if it's a real thing, could be. We've got some good ideas. But before we do that, we should get into a couple news items. Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to start it off with a Starfield player named Expensive Spread 1986.
00:12:05
Speaker
shared a pic of a unique ocean on an airless moon they had discovered after playing the game for over 300 hours. 300 hours doesn't, I mean, it sounds like a lot at first, until you think about all the people that play Starfield and play it a ton, 300 hours is just scratching the surface of Starfield.
00:12:26
Speaker
So I feel like what what used to sound like a lot, no longer sound like 300 hours. ah This guy really hasn't played Starfield all that much. But I have to say, yeah, I have to say 300 hours is a lot for some games. Certain games, if you play 300 hours, you have explored everything that game has to offer. Right. ah Yeah. 300 hours is pretty easy to do in ah in a game like this. So I'll say it's 300 is a lot for the normies.
00:12:56
Speaker
but Right. like i've i Not the obsessive. I have easily passed this um a while ago in yeah Starfield. Yeah, so Expensive Spread, 1986, found this unique ocean on an airless moon, and apparently it's the moon of Krag, which orbits the planet Fen in the Cheyenne star system. So if you want to try to get that to spawn... Okay, so so very close to Aquila. It is, yeah. If you want to get it to spawn, maybe go land on Krag.
00:13:32
Speaker
down at Craggle Rock and see if you can spot the ocean. Craggle Rock. Which is kind of cool because you think about like all the bodies of water we've seen in game are typically on ah like full on planets and planets with some kind of atmosphere. So have and yeah to have an airless moon, I guess it's it would be like a ah a liquid ocean like on Titan or something to that effect, right? right so i mean Like a nitrogen ocean. It is something that that exists in the rural, yeah, the galaxy.
00:14:06
Speaker
It's a good place to go if you're trying to avoid T2. Just hang out on the planet with the ocean of nitrogen. And you can never get attacked by that robot. It'll just remain frozen.
00:14:18
Speaker
This is definitely something I think I'm going to check out. I want to go see if I can find this myself. Once they updated the game and added the ability to look at surface maps. So basically you can look at the galaxy map and early on they had the very basic map that was just icons.
00:14:38
Speaker
It was like a blue printer printout, like a dot matrix printer. Yeah. It was what it looked like. Yeah. The information you could get from that was like.
00:14:50
Speaker
close to zilch was not a lot of nothing yeah useful information on the the blue screen of death map that they used to have we've talked about like gaming nostalgia like you remember the early days of a game and so uh the early days of this game was just last year but The funny thing about that dot matrix map that they started with was you could actually find where the ocean was by looking like the like because the dots sort of formed um sort almost like a topographical map, but but like really hard to see anything. But you could see where it got like flat.
00:15:35
Speaker
And so if the dots had become flat, you would go in that direction to find the coast. I wish I would have known that six months ago. You could have saved a lot of time. helpful But yeah, like now they have this map which um allows you to find things that that were very difficult to find before. As an example, and and this might be how you find this special ocean on an airless moon,
00:16:03
Speaker
I was playing Starfield and we were doing Starfield Adventure Club, so for anyone new to the podcast, in our Discord, every week we do ah Starfield Adventure Club, where one of our mods, CherrybombRN, picks a location, usually community-driven. We all go to the same location, we explore and share screenshots and stories.
00:16:27
Speaker
yeah so I was doing this, and just like two weeks ago, we were on a planet that actually had dune-like desert, you know, like sand dunes. And when you look through your scanner, you have POIs that pop up the on with icons. right For anyone newer to the game, you might not know, there are POIs, like natural landmarks, that do not have icons. So these are called unmarked POIs. And I used the map and I found this oasis in the desert landscape.
00:17:04
Speaker
Nice. Was there a Wonderwall around it?
00:17:08
Speaker
wonder Wonder... Oasis was a very good band. Yeah. So anyway, i I think that this could be how you find that ah unique ocean on the airless moon. I'm definitely going to try. If you're not used to popping up the the map of the surface, you know, check it out because you might find some interesting stuff that is not otherwise marked.
00:17:34
Speaker
This is actually a really good tip and my problem is I get into the game and I forget all these tips that can help gameplay and I get sidetracked by something. I need to have like an old fashioned pen and paper here by my PC that I can, oh yeah, like check out the map features. Maybe you'll find some kind of unmarked POI.
00:17:54
Speaker
ah That's it see it's so easy to get sidetracked obviously in Bethesda games. We all know in even the even the TV show fallout um made a joke about getting sidetracked and But that's that's not a bad idea or like on your memo App on your phone you just like throughout the week like if you're not playing the game. You're like. Oh, yeah ah to-do list in Starfield. One of the other things that might be on your to-do list, Michael, is to find additional mods. if you're If you're really far into the game, if you have hundreds and hundreds of hours and you're looking to freshen it up a little bit, maybe check out two of these that I recently found. I was looking on Nexus mods.
00:18:40
Speaker
And the first one that caught my attention was the Star Wars spacer overhaul, which turned spacers into assorted Star Wars characters. I thought that was really cool. I mean oh yeah i had ah kind of said that I didn't want to mix my sci-fi in a previous episode. like I didn't want my Star Wars characters in my Starfield game. I'm starting to come around a little bit because I thought this looked really cool because spacers can get a little um repetitive in terms of how they look. right
00:19:12
Speaker
And this particular modder did a really nice job of putting Star Wars-esque, not necessarily named in PCs, per se, but like kind of generic Star Wars outfits of different um races and oh you know planets. Oh,
Modding in Starfield
00:19:28
Speaker
right. This is just how it they would look, yeah.
00:19:30
Speaker
And it's very cool. And I think I like how they did the boost pack. They kind of did like traditional Mandalorian style boosters out to the side that you would see on some of the Mandalorian jet packs. So that's cool. Oh, that's cool. And as soon as like the modding scene blew up, I've definitely seen this sort of battle online between people that want to mod Star Star Wars stuff into Starfield and the people being like really Violently against it and it's it's funny. It's like but Some people are sick of seeing it, but it's like it's fine. Like don't yeah, we're just having fun again. It's a single-player game What's the big deal don't don't do it if you don't want it? Yeah Yeah, it's interesting because Star Wars outlaws is coming out soon and I've already seen a few reviews Saying it feels dated. Maybe that's just one specific review.
00:20:26
Speaker
oh interesting I yeah I hadn't I hadn't seen that I'd seen some praise for it ah you know with with but Star Wars outlaws like it looks it looks like they really nailed the atmosphere so I'm excited to I don't know. I'm excited to play it, but probably not at launch. i don't think like because i It does look like it has some of the classic Ubisoft stuff. I love Ubisoft games. like I've played so many of them, but I'm getting to a point where They're all kind of, they have the same formula. It's a good formula, but it also means that I don't really need to play it right when it comes out. I would probably wait for a sale. It's not a revolutionary looking game. It's more like, hey, let's slap the Star Wars title on another thing and make some money. doesn't It's not immediately striking me as, hey, I have to have this. Yeah, yeah.
00:21:26
Speaker
Yeah, might as well mod ah some Star Wars characters into my star field. That's right. And you can do that for free. There's ah another mod that I saw, which is called Batten's Shipwrecks, and it's in alpha currently, but this mod includes new crashed ship points of interest. And they range from crashed escape pods, old debris fields, or recently crashed ships. And each location has roughly a 0.5% chance to spawn in their appropriate areas.
00:21:59
Speaker
and you need to land for them to appear and they're not selectable from orbit yet. But I thought this was really cool because when I thought of modding star field, not personally, but when I think of mods for star field,
00:22:15
Speaker
one of the first things that comes to mind is new points of interest, even though I actually haven't seen all the POIs, and especially not the unmarked ones. But, right hey, why not have more? And especially such a low chance to spawn. yeah That's really cool, because you could land on a planet, and then you're just kind of you're walking, and suddenly you see a shipwreck. That's really cool.
00:22:39
Speaker
i think that's I think this is such a great idea. I imagine a future, right, where you've got all these different POI mods in the game that just add, add, add, and then to the point where... And someone's going to combine or it'll be like 10 different mods I'll put together and it's all POIs.
00:22:59
Speaker
It's going to be like the ultimate POI overhaul or whatever. This kind of thing where you can make it so that as you're exploring, you absolutely have no idea what you're going to see next. that I mean, it's just so cool and it's just going to keep expanding. We talked about this in our our Fallout versus Starfield podcast where like One of the key differences, you're walking through fallout, every yard you come across something interesting. Right, like this, yeah. And Starfield with its ah procedurally generated doesn't, can't really do that because it's a million times bigger, not a million, but a thousand times bigger, yeah roughly. I think what's going to help is when they when the land vehicles finally arrive because Fallout has to ah has to be interesting every few yards you know few hundred yards because it's it's so compact.
00:23:57
Speaker
Right? And it's finite. And because Starfield is so big, which I appreciate, I really appreciate how they've designed the game. Because it feels vast. Yeah, we really... ah Look, I would have been okay with the game. I already loved the game if we never got the land vehicle. But that land vehicle, when it finally hits, is going to... It's going to be great. It's in it's going to really allow you to close that distance between here and the next POI. Yeah, definitely. And then the mods to modify that vehicle will be endless. I mean, of course, we'll see a speeder bike and probably other Star Wars. Yes, we will. ah We'll get to see the mopeds from from the Mandalorian or from a Book of Boba Fett. Oh, man, those friggin slow mopeds. The five mile per hour. when
00:24:53
Speaker
You and I work in in film and video, and I'm an editor, and watching that scene, I was in so much pain, because i I knew of like three different editing tricks you could have used to make that scene feel like a little bit faster. Oh, absolutely. You were like, just give me the footage next time. I will turn this into a white knuckle hair-raising chase.
00:25:20
Speaker
Man yeah, i't that was funny Yeah, someone should definitely mod that into starfield that would be fun. Mm-hmm. I think I go back and forth on this because I Have now Two characters. So what I do is I have one character that's all vanilla and that is my original character I've perfected like the way the character looks, and they are level 118 in the game, and that's vanilla. And then I have another character, which is just, I'm having fun with just all the mods.
00:26:00
Speaker
um So some of my favorites are like new clothing mods. I've actually, there's a mod now. I apologize for not knowing the name of this mod off hand, but basically it's an appearance gun. ah So you can go to any NPC, even like main characters that you interact with, and you can hit them with this weapon that opens that character in the creator, the character creator screen. Oh, wow.
00:26:31
Speaker
So it's really, really cool because you can then um like, I'm not doing anything too crazy. I'm not like altering anyone's appearance to a massive degree. I don't like your face. Hit you with my appearance gun. Yeah. You know, okay. Sarah Morgan, but slightly longer hair.
00:26:49
Speaker
You know what I mean? Because they, oh, that's the other thing is like they've got these new hairstyles that modders have added to the game. So combining all these mods, like you can really tweak things out. So yeah, like I said, I'm not, I'm not making anyone look drastically different, but it just kind of keeps the game fresh. And, you know, in real life, people's hair, their hair grows and they change their hairstyles. So it's kind of fun to to do that.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think that'd be a super fun mod just because I do get mildly and I stress mildly annoyed by the appearance of certain NPCs. So it'd be fun just to pull out my appearance gun and blast them and give them a Mohawk or something to that effect, right?
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah, there was an NPC that I, I don't, I don't remember who, but I interact with them quite a bit and I just thought their hairstyle looked kind of dumb. I was like, bam, you look better now. So what you need to do is install clown clothing mod and then find whenever Starborn land, you can blast them with the gun first and turn them all into clowns. Oh man, see I have, it oh, okay. I have not,
00:28:00
Speaker
Tried this gun on a Starborn you have now Hmm I've expanded your horizons. I I'm gonna take this as a challenge. Yeah, I'm gonna take this as a challenge because now I'm wondering You know, they've they've already seen, people have noticed, like, if you mess around with mods, certain characters, like at the Trackers Alliance, that ah you they always have a helmet on, so they're mysterious. Now I'm like, okay, i like can we actually see what that starborn looks like? Let's see what's under the mask. Yeah. I have taken my mask off, Batman. Let's see your face. Show me yours, I'll show you mine.
00:28:43
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'll tell you this. i will I will try this out, and then I will report in our Discord. Let us know.
Starborn DLC Speculations
00:28:53
Speaker
Well, speaking of Starborn, why don't we get into our main topic of conversation, which is what we could potentially see with a Starborn DLC. And secondly, my idea for a game-altering mechanic that I'm going to pitch to you. Yeah.
00:29:13
Speaker
Yeah. Should we lead off with that? You had teased this out. So I really want to hear this. Yeah. Like what what your idea would be. Here goes. Okay. So imagine Max Payne with no bullet time until okay you hit new gain plus. And then they say, guess what?
00:29:36
Speaker
Here's bullet time now. Now go play the game with this this effect. Now, I know what you're saying. You're saying Max Payne is not the same game without bullet time. It revolves around that game mechanic. The the last one, Max Payne 3, had such an excellent story. I would actually argue that the game is playable, but albeit it's not quite as fun without bullet time, but you could still play it. And the amount of time that you're, because bullet time is not infinite, it's actually very,
00:30:05
Speaker
You know, it's limited. I think you you can expand it a little bit and make it longer. Somehow. It's been a while since I played it, but it is limited. So you're doing a lot of fighting without it. Yeah. Point is, what if in the Starborn DLC. You have a game mechanic.
00:30:25
Speaker
that allows you to rewind like 15 seconds or maybe 20 seconds because there are so many moments in the game and I'll give you an example like when you go to the razor leaf POI and there's that section where you have to get through and step on the floor in a certain sequence. Oh, you step on the floor. Yeah, the squares. The squares. Which I've done several times, and I still keep doing it wrong. Exactly. I always forget. So how cool would it be to, once you're starborn, to use your starborn power to... And that's my awesome rewind sound effect.
00:31:02
Speaker
but rewind. Oh yeah, no. You like that? re i think I think that sound effect was so clear. here Everyone knows exactly what you're talking about. We're going to isolate that and put it in the discord so you can just randomly play it. But I think it'd be really cool if you if you were, or it doesn't have to be that, that's just my idea. But what if there were some huge, because I was thinking about, you asked me before the pod, you're like, so have you finally had the credits roll yet, Dwayne? And I'm like, yeah.
00:31:30
Speaker
Uh, no, because there I was thinking about it. There hasn't really been a major incentive for me to aside from like the story elements, which I've. Right. You know, Starfield's been out for a year, so I've I've heard some spoilers. You know, I pretty much know what's going on, even though I haven't actually gone to the end.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah, and to to clarify for anyone listening, you have reached essentially the end of the game. You have done the major final- Plop points up until the- Plop points up until- I'm in the third act. hill I just haven't hit the closing credits, yep. You just haven't yeah done the you know what takes you to New Game Plus. But I see what you're saying, because there's not It's lacking. Yeah. there's There's a story. Yeah. The incentive. There hasn't been like this. What if there was bullet time unlocked or something, you know, something that was like, I need to get to NG plus so that I can play this awesome game mechanic. I wanted just to touch on like some of the points you made. ah Number one, for someone might be saying, ah you do get bullet of time. I don't know at what point in the story you get it. You might have already gotten it. No, I've seen it in game. I don't have it personally. But what I'm talking about is is what bullet time did for Max Payne. I want a mechanic unlocked in NG plus that does that to Starfield.
00:32:58
Speaker
Not bullet time, specifically, just something that is so game-changingly fun that I need to get through in G Plus to unlock it because it's so cool and it's so fun, right? And and also, I see what you're saying because like in the example of Max Payne, yes.
00:33:18
Speaker
Bullet Time is like the game, but I agree that the the rest of the game and the story and the shooting, like all the gameplay, is so good that you could strip it of Bullet Time and it would still be a good game, which I think is the point. And then to add that. At least part three, parts one and two, maybe not, but may let me ask you this. Is there a game that you can think of That it wasn't necessarily new game plus, but it was like maybe an older game that had something that you unlocked in the end game that completely changed. Just changed the first part of the game. Like I could think of like world of Warcraft. You've got, um, let's just talk vanilla. Wow. Back in the day, one through 60, one through 59. And then you enter the second phase of the game in game, which is where you start to accumulate.
00:34:16
Speaker
the real powerful armor and um you have kind of really worked out your the spec that you like and all that stuff. So it really feels like a different game. That's such a good question. i would actually um I know that I've played games in the past. like I'm not recalling them right now, but I know I've played games in the past where the game was just the game, the way it was for most of it. And then near the end or like New Game Plus, yes.
00:34:47
Speaker
I know that there's been times where you unlock something, where you just go, whoa, like now the game is a playground. Yeah. Yeah. Just came to mind. And we talked this game to death, Shadow of Mordor. You unlock this ability to put your hand on the face of your enemies and convert them. Yes. It's not the end, but it's kind of, you know. And then actually, I think one of the expansions really, you could you could get like,
00:35:18
Speaker
Dozens. You would have like an army. Tons of recruiting. And and you couldn't beat certain parts of the game without doing that. no yeah No, totally. That's a good example. Yeah, because you just start out um for anyone that hasn't played it. You're just fighting orcs. And you're unlocking these abilities to fight orcs. And then, yeah, you get the ability to basically like turn turn them against their own people, turn them into spies, make them soldiers for you. Yeah, yeah. um that That's a great example.
00:35:49
Speaker
um and And I would even for anyone listening, you know comment to us like is there a game that you can think of where you just unlock an ability that just Changes the game entirely right and it has to be I would say more toward The end portion of the game like toward the end. Yeah. Yeah, you have an idea for this What what would be your idea for let's say you?
00:36:15
Speaker
Your incentive, you go through New Game Plus on Starfield and and now... Well, I think it is what I said before, which is basically a 20 second rewind. It's not a current power. I think it's possible from a tech standpoint. I don't know. I'm not a coder for Bethesda, but feels like it could be something that they could do in the engine.
00:36:36
Speaker
Which is say you're going through that section in the, in the razor leaf POI where you're like, man, I really play that crappy. Instead of doing a save and maybe there's some other kind of game mechanic built into it that makes it different from just loading a quick save. Aside from the effect, aside from just seeing the effect unwind like rewinding or something. I don't know.
00:37:01
Speaker
It doesn't have to be that. It could be anything that Bethesda comes up with, like a new power that is super fun and super game changing that is only available after NG+.
00:37:17
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the, the rewind thing is cool because number one, we've had games like Braid and Prince of Persia that have this ability to rewind time. Prince of Persia had it really great because you would actually, you would do a jump wrong, fall in a pit, die. And then you would just, instead of it being game over, you would just hit rewind and go back a bit and and do it over.
00:37:44
Speaker
Sands of Time, hu right? Was that that one? Yep, Sands of Time. Eat your heart out, Sean Murray. There's a real triple word title that actually makes sense. Sands of Time. But then, like, I could see, like, this this aspect because, for instance, okay, the New Game Plus, this would not be the first time for anyone saying just quicksave, you know, just quicksave, and then you redo it.
00:38:10
Speaker
Well, Bethesda knows how we play these games. And and we all you know a lot of us who are big fans of Skyrim, we've replayed the game several times. And I always thought of it as, oh, I'm just playing the game again. But then Starfield comes along and they say, hey, we know that our our fans play the game multiple times, what if we worked that into the story? So now, I think of, I even think of Skyrim differently because, you know, when you play a game over again, you're just like, oh, I already know what he's gonna say. I already know what they're gonna say. but Blah, blah, blah, blah, click, click, click, and you just get through it. And they work that into the story now. Like, so now when you do New Game Plus, you're not a game player
00:39:00
Speaker
hearing this person talk again, you're that character who has lived that life hearing that person talk again. So I could see them saying to to this rewind point,
00:39:15
Speaker
Oh, we know people quick save and then do something and then reload that save. So the the like giving it an effect and working it into the story is definitely something I could see them doing.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah, that actually made me think of Golden Axe. Do you remember Golden Axe, the arcade game? Yeah.
Game-Altering Powers in Starfield
00:39:38
Speaker
In Golden Axe, you acquire potions. And the more potions you have, the more explosive your special power. So like the the warrior girl has dragon that comes out if she collects all the potions. And it's super powerful.
00:39:54
Speaker
That made me think like, yeah what if after you do NG plus one, you somehow stack like the potions in Golden Axe, a new power that is insane, like really cool, like I'm imagining.
00:40:11
Speaker
you are just like it clears the room yeah it explodes enemies from the inside out and you can't use it that often or something like that and it's just like electrical storm that just explodes their bodies into star stardust or you know something cool like yeah okay here okay there's i can already see how this could work and so after you start collecting powers early even early on in the game the first time you collect a power When you kill a Starborn, you collect something, right? You collect... so Is it star essence? I think it's essence, yeah. It's like essence, yeah. Something like that.
00:40:47
Speaker
So there you go. Right now, the only use for star essence is that you can use your powers more quickly, like it recharges more quickly for a period of time. I don't know about you, but a lot of players, including myself, as you play, you sort of just collect stars. You have stacks of them. I'm not using that. Right.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, so that would be amazing if you have to collect 10 or 20 to use one of these ridiculously huge powers that you're talking about. That that would be a really good use of that that essence. Yeah, I'm imagining using the essence, say you needed like an absurd amount and yeah like 50 or something like that. 50. And it is just like a nuclear bomb of energy that like whites out the whole screen and like just does some really cool, like last um podcast we talked about the special animations in Call of Duty. Was it Call of Duty? where Yeah, Call of Duty, they have like the executions and stuff. Yeah, the chance of getting them is super rare, right? Oh, you're talking about, oh, the battlefield the battlefield and reload animations.
00:42:05
Speaker
It's super rare so make this the same thing where you have to save up essence and it's so satisfying to just wipe out all enemies that are visible basically in one really cool animation.
00:42:20
Speaker
This would be great because as you play the game, yeah, there's a lot of enemies that are very easy to kill. you know I'll turn the difficulty up so that they do a lot of damage. Even then, like as you progress through the game, there's still going to be those boss fights where they're very tanky. right And maybe you you just don't have the patience to you know, did sit through this long, you know, tanky boss fight. So what's kind of cool is, yeah, like you could be rewarded for saving up that much essence. So yeah, I agree, like 50. It's like, it's doable, but it takes you. That's that's a lot of Starborn to kill. Maybe it's like 25, but still.
00:43:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So you can balance it. But but the the idea of like being rewarded for stockpiling this and then you get to this part of the story where you're like, ah I don't there's 50 enemies in this room. I don't want to deal with it. And then, yeah, let me spend those. Let me spend that essence and just destroy everyone. Imagine you're if you're starboard and you can do extra cool things. Why not be able to call down a meteor shower?
00:43:38
Speaker
and just a limit you like do some cool animation yeah that just like the so the skies open up and like a ah comet like lands on your enemy. Something crazy, something epic. That would be so great. That would be so great to get to a POI and you're just like, you're just kind of over it and then you just yeah call down a power like that. there's some really cool space stuff that you could exploit like anything to do with space and astronomy and turn that into a special power like gravity stuff and we say of course they've done with powers but what about like yeah like ah I agree there's more you could do like solar flares right like blinds or enemies for 30 seconds or
00:44:24
Speaker
Yeah, like you could do something like that. Even Skyrim had Ariel's bow, which um I believe that's the bow that you get during the vampire storyline, where you can actually shoot the sun.
00:44:41
Speaker
And it it like makes the sky go dark for the rest of the day, or maybe for a certain amount of time. So it's like, you could really get into some of that stuff. you know And when I think about Fallout, I think about how you can collect mini nukes.
00:44:58
Speaker
And, yeah you know, you could just... it That's a conversation stopper, right? Like, it's just like, I don't want to deal with this right now. Think about all the cool stuff that nukes have provided, both from like a YouTube perspective and TikTok just like being able to see what people do. Like the the latest one I saw was um who's like the the big robot that that helps you. Oh yeah. So he the player was fighting the that that giant robot and the robot caught his nuke and threw it back at him. So you want he launched a nuke at it, it grabs it and it tosses it right back.
00:45:44
Speaker
but oh my god think about like all the... I didn't know that could be a thing. Yeah, all the really neat space stuff you could exploit for special, yeah extra special, not just the powers that you have, but like these essence powers, we'll call them.
00:46:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, yeah it's it's true. we haven't there's There's a lot of things about space that have been explored, and there's still a lot. Like like you said, the meteors, you know the meteor shower, like we don't have anything like that in the game. Asteroids. Well, if you go NG1 and then say, we use the potion analogy, NG10, so,
Environmental Storytelling in Starfield
00:46:28
Speaker
that's like having full potions and you can like do a supernova that just like eradicates that entire POI, even enemies you can't see, just everybody dies that's within the ah grid, you know?
00:46:42
Speaker
Oh man, see, now I'm thinking about, okay, I'm thinking about like Megaton right in Fallout 3 and what you can do. You can basically reduce it to rubble. Yeah, dude, POIs are are so expendable. like So yeah, why can't you just have one get completely obliterated? And all that is left is debris and maybe like some some loot. You know, you're just like looting boxes.
00:47:11
Speaker
No, what if they're still alive? I was just thinking like, what if you did like the solar flare essence power and everyone gets really fried and you walk into the POI and they're like, they're still alive, but they're like just very badly burnt. ah They're just walking around like zombies. You can finish them off or you can just leave them to to suffer.
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, man. You know, you you mentioned zombies. Like we haven't seen anything like that. Not that not that everything needs zombies, but you can have sort of like a unique zombie equivalent, which I'm be sure we're going to get. Yeah. I mean, I I recently played um like here's my starfield anecdote for the week. I got to this ship And it was just floating in space. i I docked with it. And it was just this like tragic story where pirates had... like There's all these dead bodies. Pirates had come and they had taken all their food and supplies
00:48:17
Speaker
and then left. They left them alive, but their ship was so damaged that, like, um one one guy went out to fix. Someone had to go outside the ship and, so like, spacewalk, basically, to fix the ship. And then while he was out, like, inside, people, oh, people had died and they had no food. They had to, like, resort to cannibalism.
00:48:43
Speaker
Classic. it's Yeah, it's this whole um really like you read the logs and stuff. It's this really depressing story where like you find out this person was in love with that person. And then the captain was like, I am not going to partake in cannibalism. So he went to his room and he was like, if you're going to do it, you do it. it's It's so fascinating. I just love how Bethesda will like tell these stories in this way where do you have to uncover it.
00:49:13
Speaker
I just watched Snowpiercer again, and they have that whole cannibalism theme. People are cutting off limbs in order to feed people. Dude. But ah in yeah, they do a good job. Like in that example, they did a good job of giving a little text adventure that you could read the logs. But why not yeah show me? I think it'd be cool again to go back to the extra special powers. What if You could get out of your seat during a space battle and engage a power that basically just like crushed an enemy ship into a ball or, you know, yeah spawned an asteroid to like hit that ship or what if once you got on board, you could pull all the players toward you.
00:49:59
Speaker
I think that's ah that's a ah very good point because there are no Starborn powers that you use during ship combat. And so I could see an overhaul coming. It may be in this DLC if it's if it is, in fact, coming. right I could see like new Starborn powers. ah Like boy if what you're saying, now I'm imagining you're in combat and you have the ability to warp people out of their ship.
00:50:28
Speaker
And then they just die in space. Right. You just pull them right outside the safety of their own ship and they're floating around out there. Yeah, there's so your your missiles many possibilities. It's great.
00:50:43
Speaker
yeah What if they lock on and they they send a missile at you and then, you know, like your example with the the giant robot, what if you can Starborn power, boom, send the missiles right back at them. Right. Or just do like what Darth Vader does in some of the video games is just try to hold the ship with the force. Right. Yeah. What if you could like push the ship into the planet or like send it into a it it could just be an animation like you engage the power and then it it and animates the rest like a warp of wormhole opening up. yeah This ship gets sucked into it and you just see like debris shooting out of it or something. I mean, the the classic one of the classic powers that's in like Skyrim and then of course, I believe, yeah, you have this in Starfield where you can, if you're on foot,
00:51:34
Speaker
you can turn an enemy against his teammates. oh right So why not turn that pilot, you know I would love to mind meld or whatever that pilot and then all of a sudden he starts going after the other ships. It'd be fun too if you heard people on his ship start freaking out, like what are you doing? And you hear gunshots and stuff on the intercom. You're shooting the wrong guy. Spock, mind meld. I don't know. Did I use that? Are you a Trekkie? Did I did I use mind meld correctly? I don't I've heard the term. I wouldn't classify myself as a Trekkie necessarily. I appreciate Star Trek and I'm a fan of pretty much all of it. Haven't seen a whole lot of the new stuff, but I mean, it's good sci-fi. So yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. The original series, the animated, it's bizarre, but it's so good. The lower decks.
00:52:30
Speaker
No, I'm talking about the original series. So they, they did the original series three seasons, but then they didn't get renewed, but all the voice actors came back and agreed to do the animated version of it.
00:52:45
Speaker
Oh, wow. And so there's, I don't know, I think there's two or three seasons of, um, the original series, but it's animated and it's this really cool Hannah Barbera style sixties animation with all the original voice actors. And that's incredible. This is the first I've heard of this. Yeah. The, the episodes are kind of dark and like very.
00:53:08
Speaker
I don't know. It's like, I started watching it with my kid years ago and he was like too young for it. So, cause it was like too scared. Wow. Hmm. Yeah, that's interesting. Check it out. You'll probably like it. Yeah, I probably would like that. The Star Trek animated. That sounds interesting.
00:53:25
Speaker
Well, we've only scratched the surface of what a Starborn DLC could look like. Yeah.
Community Engagement and Feedback
00:53:31
Speaker
What are your thoughts out there in Internet La La Land? Let us know in the comments on our YouTube channel or come to our Discord, as we' we've said many times. We are genuinely interested in in new ideas and what you have to say, so... Come on in. Yeah, I feel like I would love to just I feel like people are going to have amazing ideas for what a possible Starborn DLC could be. So definitely let us know in the comments.
00:53:59
Speaker
Yeah. And I've successfully predicted the future in the past ah in terms of starfield stuff. Yeah. They kind of got implemented. So that's true. Again, we have we'll see if, if anything comes to fruition with my, with my ideas and expect a ah check yeah from ZeniMax, which is available as CVS and packs of 10 and 12.
00:54:25
Speaker
Yeah. Well, Michael, we got a lot of awesome comments on our last podcast, which is called starfield's mod scene has officially exploded. Check it out on YouTube. If you haven't already, or on any of your favorite, uh, podcast streaming services, um, Dante Fettman three five four says Dr. Dakota lets you keep the ah monster costume permanently. If.
00:54:53
Speaker
you complete the tourist go home quest a couple of times. I see. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. You didn't know if you could keep that costume or not, but apparently yeah you can't. Yeah. So that's good to know. That does clear that up. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Yeah. It's it's fun. It's fun to go through the game with that that outfit on. Holy smokes. Lunar contact says, Skyrim is my favorite 10,000 hours.
00:55:18
Speaker
holy moly wow you think they're exaggerating or i don't i don't think they are that's why i'm saying this like i don't i think that's legit so because it's it's been out so long i've played a lot of hours of starfield um It has become what what I've described as a comfort game. I've talked with some other friends of mine who we have very differing gaming habits. So I have friends that will play, play, play, get all the achievements, and then they're they're done.
00:55:52
Speaker
And that's totally fine. For me, I like to be in worlds that I live in. So Skyrim has been big for me. Yeah, I could see the 10,000 because Starfield, if you like a world that you just like to be in, you can easily hit a thousand hours within a year. Right. So absolutely. Like if that's your thing, if you're like, I had a long day at work,
00:56:20
Speaker
Gonna get something to eat, and I'm gonna settle in to this game that I like to just explore and whatever. Definitely. Absolutely easy to hit a thousand. So 10,000 hours, the game's been out a long time. So I totally see it. Well, I did the math. It's 10,000 hours is 1.14 years solid.
00:56:45
Speaker
but you divide that over over a decade. And like I said, I i have a friend that has yeah could easily have put that many hours in over a decade. So I could see it. Yeah, I could see it. yeah Well, I really appreciated this comment from KeenanMiller8132, who said, wish I knew about you guys sooner. Glad to see other people enjoying this game. um Absolutely love love ah love connecting with um other people who are fans of Starfield. KeenanMiller left that comment on YouTube. I don't know if you're aware of the Discord. If you haven't joined, definitely jump in there because
00:57:23
Speaker
amazing group of people there. Yeah. JC Buck to us says, is this a podcast? So much talking. I left the vid one minute in. And ah you know you you did respond and said, correct, it is a podcast. so I said correct. and Maybe yes we should say that at the beginning. I feel like, well, I feel like it's kind of a known thing, but Who knows? Here's what's interesting. And this is just sort of like a peek behind the curtain. You know, we are a podcast, but then you want to build your audience on YouTube. So then you have to put a title that is um we never we do not deal in the clickbait, but you do have to be attention grabbing.
00:58:04
Speaker
Essentially, maybe what I'll do is start putting in parentheses podcast right in the title. but That seems like extra work. I i laugh at the the... I left one minute in because I just go, ah number one, that's classic YouTube audience stuff. like Yeah, because so did 90% of everyone else. But at the same time, like and not to be a jerk, but If I see someone that's like I left one minute in I go. Oh, okay This isn't the content for you then like mm-hmm Like we have our audience is so maybe they weren't in the right frame of mind to ah Absorb a ah podcast at that moment also, you know to give us the benefit to be fair to to to be fair but but also like our audience is so like
00:58:54
Speaker
like level-headed and cool and like chill. um Yeah. It's almost like they're normal people. It's almost like they're normal people. i We're just not going after the people that need to be yeah bam, bam, bam, bam in the first 10 seconds. And also we're fine we're our demographic is people that have shopped at babbages. So usually they're a little more patient.
00:59:22
Speaker
Okay, I love this comment from ah Joseph Cook pointing out that he said, but I thought people online said there would never be any real mod support because one modder said he didn't like the game lol.
00:59:37
Speaker
Yeah, I just think it's, you know, game journalism is is such
The Role of Patreon in Content Creation
00:59:42
Speaker
a ah joke sometimes to the point where, yeah, you'll have one major sort of known modder that says, I'm not modding for this game. And then the news stories are,
00:59:55
Speaker
Is this game dead? Yeah, it was a slow news day. And boy, that was that modder's five minutes of fame right there because yeah now he just walks around and says, hey, you know do you know Starfield? You know the modder that didn't want to make the big mod? That's me. You're like, wow. That's my claim to fame. That's a party opener right there. That's cool that you couldn't hack it and gave up very quickly.
01:00:23
Speaker
He has on his wall, he has like like all the gaming journalism of that same story of like modern doesn't want to make starfield mods. You know, it's all internet, but he got it somehow printed on newspaper paper. Yeah. Something that looks like in the clipping. It's like man lands on moon. It's like the big newspaper article. Modern quits. Modern doesn't like game. Wow. You know, who does like our game, our game of entertaining you?
01:00:57
Speaker
is our Patreons. i mean yeah We have some legendary Patreon folk to thank. Yeah. Yeah, I want to thank them. you know First off, just saying that Patreon is a great way, if if you like our channel, if you like our podcast, Patreon is a great way to just help support the show and it means that we can make more content and more stuff. and It's just a nice way to say thanks. I was thinking about Patreon the other day and I was like,
01:01:26
Speaker
I understand from a creator standpoint, wanting to support other creators because I know how much work. Like to give you an example, I usually edit each one of these podcasts. It takes me about three hours to to edit it. And then yeah I hand it off to you and you probably dump another two to three hours doing all the other things. And not to mention the hour to two hours, sometimes three that we spend to record the episode. To record, yep. So we've got 10 to 15 hours in each episode. It sounds absurd, but that's just um kind of where we're at right now in our process. Maybe it'll take less time in the future, but it's a fair amount of work. Yeah. I just want to say thank you to all the people from all the way down to the $1 a month people up to our legendary and our rare and and everyone else in between, my heartfelt thanks, because it does incentivize us to
01:02:26
Speaker
keep going on those long editing days. your Your support just means so much, especially since, like like you said, it it takes time. It takes time to put this stuff together, and then every once in a while, yeah, we have other videos that we make, but yeah, your your your support like makes it possible.
01:02:42
Speaker
I want to call out by name our legendaries, and that is Bergenstock, Brian Russo, Space Cadet, Kitah Lahara, Rampage American X, Cherry Bomb RN, Griffin, and Zebra Rocks. Not only do we appreciate it, but we are always and actively looking for more ways that we can reward the people that are here in the Patreon. Yeah. More ways that we can make it fun. Actually, we got a notification saying one of our shirts is out of stock on something. I got to check on that and see which one. Oh, that's fine. Yeah, we've got a little shop, a fourth wall shop. Actually, and all that is, is a color that is out of stock. Oh, good. Okay. Yeah.
01:03:29
Speaker
Cool, yeah, check out our fourth wall. That link is in our description as well. Yep, right on our YouTube page. Yeah, we've got some stuff there. Thanks to everyone that listens on Spotify, Apple, and thanks to those of you watching on YouTube, all links are provided in the show notes below, unless we don't put them there, then they're not there.
01:03:48
Speaker
Unless I forgot. Unless Michael forgot. He's the one who does that part of it. Yes, and an extra special thanks for the comments and feedback. Like we said, we do read them. And so if you have a comment, suggestion, or an in-game story to share, you can leave it right there on our YouTube page or pop into the Discord and talk to us directly.
01:04:08
Speaker
Yep, if you like the show, consider dropping a five-star review or give us ah a like and a notification bell thing and all subscribe and all that stuff because that would help us out. Absolutely it would. Thanks for traversing the starfield with us. Make sure you subscribe, like Dwayne said, because we will be back for more. See ya.