Author: The_Mariner

We’ve all seen what’s been coming out of the Triple-A game studios (Quadruple-A, if you’re Ubisoft) of late: lack of graphics, lack of optimization, lack of imagination. What’s the reason? Simple: they’re lazy. They want a quick cash grab without doing actual work.

Like our friend Bob Iger put it, the “IP mining” of our favorite franchises comes at a cost…a cost most often pulled from the pockets of us plebeians they expect to buy their product. Yes, they expect these sales; after all, they’re entitled to our money. Why? “Don’t ask questions,” they say, “buy our product. CONSUME!”

Those two lines of thought meet with a loud thud with Star Wars: Outlaws. This is a game no one asked for, using a trope no one understands (apparently), and graphics quality from 20 years ago. And they demand our money because, “Star Wars.”

There’s just one problem…NO ONE IS ENTITLED TO OUR MONEY! They have to earn it–and Outlaws does the exact opposite. It’s laughable, it’s stupid, it’s repellent–and that’s without talking about the PC specs needed to play, which is what we’re focusing on here (soap box not withstanding).

This “game” is published by Ubisoft, the afore mentioned Quadruple-A game “studio” (I’m in a particularly snarky mood, if you can’t tell). They’ve published the PC specs for this game, and it’s made me question the previously-thought levels of their insanity. Do they really think anyone’s going go for this?

Check this out:

If you don’t already own this equipment, you’re not playing this game unless your making the kind of money that Ubisoft execs think you are. They’re wrong, but they still think it.

To be fair, you can probably enjoy this game at 1080p/60fps with the Recommended specs. But let’s break that down a little. The CPU they have for that in an Intel 10th Gen i5 or equivalent AMD, but let’s be real–if your gonna buy a new system to play this game, at least get a 12th Gen or equivalent AMD. Who’s going to buy a 4 year old CPU to play one game when you can buy a 2 year old CPU to play several. Anyway, as of this writing, that alone is going to cost $200. The matching 16GB DDR4 will be at $50 to $60 depending on brand. A motherboard to mount those on will be a minimum of $100, but for stability you’ll want something in the $150 range. The NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti GPU, however, is almost $400. Adding case, drives, power supply (oh, a Solid State Drive is required, by the way), we’re up to a total of around $1,300.

BTW, I’m focusing on Intel and NVIDIA because they are superior, in my opinion. AMD users, I imagine, will see costs around the same.

For a generally bare-minimum gaming PC, that’s not bad; but again, bare minimum.

Ubisoft wants you to enjoy this game, though; and to really enjoy this game, according to the “Enthusiast” standard, you need more power. Hiro and I suspect (conspiracy theory time) that the hardware manufacturers are in bed with the game developers to make sure they can profit off new games, as well. To that end the claim is that you’re going to need an Intel 11th Gen Intel i5 CPU (handled) and NVIDIA RTX 4070 with 12GB NVRAM. At the time of this writing, that’s a $550 card, depending on brand.

All told, that’s not that big of a boost, if your wallet can take it. If not, well, you must not make as much as Ubisoft execs think you make. Or…you’re not the customer they’re looking for. But, that’s a different discussion.

Finally, for those who want to play their games on Ultra (despite the complete lack of necessity with this game), let’s look at the CPU and GPU price bumps. Going from Intel i5 to i7 isn’t going to be that much. When I looked up the prices for writing this, the Intel i7 12700K was the same price as the Intel i5 12500. Someone’s overcharging. No memory upgrade? That’s interesting. GPU? Oh, boy. $960? $1,080? $1,200! We have a winner!

There you go! We just went from a modest (heh) $1,500 computer to a $2,200 computer. You might as well buy a console at this rate. Not a bad idea really, except I think this game will melt your PS5 with how badly it’s been optimized. And that brings me to my next point.

The reasons for these expensive specifications? It’s what I said at the beginning of this article: these game devs are lazy. Star Wars: Outlaws looks like a half-hearted attempt to make a game, from the design to the execution. Early game-play previews we saw also don’t justify the specs we’re seeing here. Many reviewers point to the fact that the graphical quality calls back to the PS2 era. If that’s true, why the high-end specs even at the Recommended level? The answer is very little, if any, optimization. If the devs had made and honest attempt to optimize this game–at the graphics quality we’re seeing, it should be easy–the computer specs needed to play would be far less and much cheaper. If they’d made an honest attempt to put some care into the quality of the visuals, then it might be justified.

Now, for the sake of argument, let’s acknowledge the possibility that all the graphics we’ve seen were recorded on the minimum or recommended specs level equipment. It could be that on a PC with the Enthusiast or Ultra specs, this game looks AMAZING! X to doubt–but we’re pretending for a moment so bare with me. Would this game be worth it?

Absolutely not. Game-play footage still shows that this game is borked to high heaven. It needed to cook for at least another 2 years, with chefs that knew what they were doing, and cared for their art.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes definitely ranks as the worst in the Apes franchise. It looks good, but it lacks what made the franchise successful over the decades. While I would argue that another Apes film could do well, even leading to the point where we could have a full remake of the original Charlton Heston film, Kingdom goes the wrong direction. 

The problem, as I mentioned in my previous review, is that the story is completely human-centric. All the secondary characters seem to be more interested in what humanity was than their own lives. The only ones who seem to care about apes are Noa and his tribe, who you see for less than 15 minutes of this 2 hour 25 minute film.

All other issues aside, the writers’ lack of interest in developing ape civilization is what makes it a missed opportunity. To understand what I mean, we need to go back to the book and the movie adaptations of the sixties and seventies.

The original book by the French author Pierre Boulle told a tale of a planet ruled by apes, where humans were speechless and animalistic. We see the ape civilization of the book as commentary on humanity. Humans once ruled the planet but became complacent, which allowed the apes to take over. In the end, civilization belonged to the apes.

In the first Planet of the Apes film, Charlton Heston’s character, George Taylor, was that same aberration. The apes weren’t exactly at the peak of civilization, but they were the dominant species. Its not-so-veiled commentary on humanity was still in full force, and we got to see what that civilization looked like, through Taylor’s eyes.

In Beneath the Planet of the Apes, there was a twisted and mutated form of human civilization, but they eventually fell to the apes. Yes, Taylor blew up the planet, but only because the apes had won the day. (Watch the Behind the Planet of the Apes documentary to understand why that dark turn was taken, it’s fascinating…but I digress.)

All the movies since have had one theme. They all end with a feeling that a planet of the apes is inevitable. 

Escape from the Planet of the Apes ended with a speaking ape. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes ended with apes rising up against their human masters. Battle for the Planet of the Apes had one final battle between apes and humans, with the humans losing. 

The trilogy of the last decade: Rise, Dawn, and War followed that same pattern and ended with the same feeling. Apes ascending to dominance seems inescapable, the fall of humanity equally so. Even Tim Burton’s film, which ended most like Pierre Boulle’s novel, gives this impression…in a way.

With this feeling in mind, this surety that a planet of the apes is the future and humanity is in the past, you can imagine that I was disappointed by the fact that this movie wasn’t about a planet of apes. Without being present, humans became the center of the story. Questions about who they were, stories about what they could do, the power their ancient toys could provide, all prevailed over what could have been a story of ape development and culture.

Having a single intelligent human in the film, someone with whom we could learn about the new ape kingdom, would have really lent the film credence. It was even set up in the Caesar trilogy, with news stories in the background regarding a lost space mission. If the writers had followed up, that would have been compelling. As is obvious by now, that’s not what we got… more’s the pity.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

This movie ended with a final rub that is most unforgivable, considering the setting. Intelligent human life ended three hundred years before the event of this film. There should be no humans left who can speak, yet we have one: the girl called Mae.

Where did she come from, how can she speak? We’re left with this question for the entire movie. Turns out, Mae comes from a bunker of other intelligent humans, using technology that shouldn’t be functioning 300 years after the plague that destroyed humanity. 

The movie ends with them connecting to a satellite that is somehow still in orbit and then making contact with another human outpost that somehow still exists. We’re shown this like we’re shown the scene from the original Charlton Heston film of the Statue of Liberty on the beach.

The reaction to that was, “OMG!” The reaction to this is, “WTF!”

The fact that there are still bastions of humans who have working technology, still struggling against the inevitable, completely goes against the feeling at the core of Planet of the Apes. Why humanity failed is the point of the movies. Having them still around completely undoes the work of the previous films. And what? Are we looking at a new rise of humans? I certainly hope not.

Hey Disney, let this one go…it’s over, you’ve killed it, move on. 

This weekend our patience was rewarded by Amazon Prime finally dropping a teaser for their new show…one we’ve all been (some with trepidation) looking forward to… FALLOUT. Some are excited, some are skeptical. I, myself, am undecided, and there are reasons for this that I will get into. 

At a length of 2 minutes 33 seconds, this feels more like a full trailer than a teaser. We do not, however, get any story, so it counts as a teaser in my mind.

What we saw…

The teaser opens with a look at a Vault hallway that looks like it’s straight out of Fallout 4 with the Vault number in the distance.. 33. So already, we know this is not a retelling of an existing Fallout story we’ve seen in the games. We also get to see the show’s Vault suits, Vault 33 entrance, and door. All are iconic pieces of the Fallout games, all instantly recognizable; and I must say, so far, so good.

Next we see a woman leaving Vault 33 and her reactions to the world outside the Vault. Her fearful reaction to the tumbleweed made me smile. We also get to see a radroach! And is that Dogmeat? All this is seen while we hear a Wastelander warning the Vaultdweller to either go home or, if she wants to survive, adapt.

Now smash cut to an outpost in the desert and our first glimpse of the Brotherhood of Steel. The vertibirds and spot on! And as is typical with all Fallout trailers, our introduction is punctuated by pre-War era music. In this case, “I Don’t Want to See Tomorrow” by Nat King Cole.

We see a veribird taking off while inside is an unsuited soldier of unknown rank looking at another…in Power Armor! It looks fantastic! It even has the Brotherhood emblem painted on the front! For those who are Fallout nerds, you’ll notice that this is “a full suit of cherry [T-60] Power Armor.” 

But here’s where we have our first problem… where our “immersion,” as it were, into a live action Fallout TV show gets a little broken. All the sets of Power Armor we see look too clean. The textures we’re used to, in Fallout 4, at least, show a high level of rust, wear, and tear, giving them a well-used look. It’s a small problem, I’ll grant you, and one I’m willing to let go, considering the fact that the Power Armor otherwise looks like a faithful replica. For comparison, here’s an image from the Fallout fandom page of the original:

And here’s one from Vanity Fair:

Nat King Cole continues to sing as we smash cut through some fast images of violence inside a Vault, the reveal of a Wasteland City that looks an awful lot like Megaton from Fallout 3, an unknown ghoul in a cowboy hat and bandolier, some unknown house and occupant out in the desert, and more violence in the aforementioned Wasteland City. Seems the ghoul is some kind of gun toting bandito or law man; there’s no context for why he’s in the middle of town throwing lead up into the surrounding multi-tiered structures.

The music pauses as we smash cut back to a man in a vault suit doing a spit take. Immersion breaking number two, inbound! Our supposed vault-dwelling heroine appears to be in an overseer’s office, who appears to be a cyclops?!

Without any time to register this, the music continues and we jump cut to the wasteland as a Mark 1 Turret is firing on someone. If it’s the same scene, Dogmeat is very brave and has fully 10 stars in his luck trait as every bullet from the turret is missing him and the person he’s guiding.

We get to see a Mr. Handy pushing an unconscious vault dweller across the screen in front of an old-world billboard. As the music intensifies we see more battle. We see what I’m guessing is supposed to be a Yao-guai trying to bite into a suit of Power Armor. An unknown creature (someone help me with this one) with a big mouth full of, um…we’ll call them fingers. More fighting inside a vault, focussed on a vault dweller with a fork in her eye as she’s angrily spraying machine gun fire. Finally, we get a glimpse of the Prydwen–oh, wait, that’s not the Prydwen, but another air-ship (we’ll call that immersion break number three).

The music slows at this point as we get a shot of the same person in a cowboy hat we saw previously, but this time as a human as he’s mounting a horse while buildings collapse in the background. We get a long pan of an old-world city getting pummeled by nuclear bombs while some is on horseback in the foreground. Do we mayhaps have a background story here? Could be…

The trailer ends with the Fallout logo in all its fiery glory as the music ends.

Audience Impressions

From my small sample size of the Laggin’ Out community, I can report that there is excitement for this show. There is also skepticism and X’s to Doubt. The look of the show is definitely going in the right direction. There’s nothing spitting in your eye to make you think the recreation of sets and costumes isn’t faithful. Todd Howard is involved after all. 

The only real offense, visually, seems to come from the ghoul. He’s not nearly nasty looking enough. To argue this, though, I and others point out that from Fallout 3 to Fallout 4 the ghouls did get milder. One reason for the ghoul in the show looking as mild as he does is so that the make-up doesn’t hide the actor’s features. I can see this; I know the more prosthetics there are, the harder it is for an actor to emote. Look at any Sci-Fi show where you have an alien and most of their face is covered in prosthetics.

The skepticism comes into play, with reason, because of Hollywood’s history of taking well-known book, movie, comic, and video game franchises…things we nerds love… and making them their own thing. Amazon by itself is known for doing this with The Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time. So… that begs the question:

Is it canon?

That’s a loaded question. Todd Howard has come out and said, “We view what’s happening in the show as canon.” Vanity Fair reports that, “Bethesda was careful to make sure the scripts could coexist with previous storylines from the gaming titles.” Well, Bethesda- and Amazon- I look forward to your explanation for a couple of things. 

One, you appear to have lifted the town of Megaton (Fallout 3) from the Washington, D.C. area of the east coast and dropped it into the deserts of the west. Renaming it “Philly” is not going to disguise the source material. We know this show takes place in the west because that Vanity Fair article mentions that “Philly” is “in the remnants of greater Los Angeles.”

Two, how is the Prydwen…no, sorry…the Caswennan in the west. This is another design lifted from Fallout (Fallout 4, this time). On this subject, I defer to one with superior knowledge, the Youtube King of Fallout Lore himself (my title for him, Hi Oxhorn!). I recommend seeing his video breakdown of the Vanity Fair article here.

My Indecision…

I’m undecided on the show at this point. I declared, upon hearing this show was in production, that I was going to sit back, wait and see, and (if it did get released) give it a wary eye. I’m still waiting.

I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen, visually, in this teaser. As I don’t know what the story is supposed to be–nothing in this trailer is giving me any inkling of an overall Fallout story–I’m waiting for more information. The fact that Todd Howard is involved is both encouraging and discouraging. He’s done good with Fallout so far (Fallout 76 notwithstanding), so if he’s guiding the ship of the show, we’re not bound to run aground. The disappointment of Starfield makes me think he’s sort of lost his way a bit, though.

I mentioned above that Amazon has not attributed itself well when adapting known-and-beloved books with plenty of lore (also known as ‘source material’) into television. The common argument being, “We wanted to tell our own stories.” To this I, and others, reply, “Then make your own thing! Don’t take our thing and proceed to [explicative] all over it!” And Fallout is definitely ours. As Nerdrotic is fond of saying, “We’re the paying customers.” We’re the fans, we paid for it, it’s ours.

Now, has Amazon taken Fallout merely as a platform to tell its own stories? Well, we’ll have to see.

Read the full Vanity Fair article I referenced here.

* The following is after a month of play where the focus has been on playing through the story. Certain game mechanics, such as Outposts, have only briefly been explored.

Overall Assessment

It’s like Fallout: New Vegas in space, with elements of Fallout 4. There are guns, quests, and stories – big and small.  You have Companions, locations full of things to find, and large landscapes to impress and appreciate. You even get a game opening that people are already working on mods to let you skip.

The story is about par with other Bethesda games. The number of side quests, radiant quests, and factions are about the same. The radiant quests are better than in Fallout 4, more fun and less likely to get old as quick.

But what’s the same about this game is easily trumped by what’s new:

What’s Good?

• Characters, animations, and environments are all improved from Fallout 4
• Factions are interesting and have good stories
• You can fight the pirates or become one.
• The best addition is the ships
  • You can buy ships or steel ships.
  • You can modify or tear them down and start from scratch.
  • You get space combat and can take the enemy ship as your prize.
  • You can even hire crew that are separate from Companions
• New Game Plus style
  • You finished the story? Great! Now start over with the same character, no need for a new game.
  • Infinite replayability with the same character: play the story over, or play like you’ve done it once and know everything.

It’s definitely a Bethesda game, complete with bugs, compelling conundrums, and moral choices to keep you up at night.

Where did Bethesda Fail?

• It’s the same engine, so susceptible to the same bugs.
• Outposts
  • Same as in Fallout 4 with the Settlements system, the Starfield developers didn’t complete what they started.
  • Definitely unbalanced versus normal gameplay
    • Power leveling via Outpost building is a thing
  • The storage system is not great
    • No infinite storage.  There are separate containers for mineral, liquid, or gas; but they only provide limited storage.
    • Crafted items can be kept in a warehouse, apparently? But it’s behind and research wall.
• Starfield is not a flight simulator. 
  • They had to add space dust, or debris, or an asteroid field in order for you to feel like you’re traveling in space.
    • Planets and moons don’t grow or shrink, they are locked bodies.
    • You can’t actually fly from one to the next without using the nav screen. 
  • Space combat is pretty much point and shoot.
    • A lot of jousting, like in Star Wars Squadron
  • Flying from point A to point B is: point, click, animated loading screen.
    • No fun atmospheric entry
    • If you’ve landed once at a settlement, you never get that landing animation again.
    • Fast travel is possible from planet to planet, which is not immersive.

Conclusion

Overall, I’ve enjoyed my time with this game, and I’m going to continue playing.

Maybe I was merely hoping for a space flight simulator, and was disappointed when I didn’t get it.  It could use some improvement, but we’ll have to wait and see what the modders do.

After I get a chance to play with the Outpost system–and experience more of the game after Bethesda puts out a few more updates–I’ll be able to give a better assessment of the overall game.  I’m also looking forward to when Bethesda released mod support, as there are are some already, but nothing too complicated has been tried yet.

Overall, as if this writing, my rating for this game is 7.5 out of 10.  

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To see the Live review and reactions, check out the following link.  The Mariner’s Review begins around the 1 hour 34 minute mark.