Phil Rice 01:01
Hello and welcome to And now for something completely machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. My name is Phil rice, and I'm here with my co hosts, Damian Valentine and Tracy Harwood, hello. Ricky is off doing something just up to no good for sure, and but he'll be back with us in a couple of episodes. So today, we're going to be talking about an engine that I'm actually really happy to see us looking at, something made with this game, because it's a game that when it came out, we talked about it on this show, and Damien and I both have been kind of watching it anxiously for somebody to do something with this highly cinematic game. We haven't seen a whole lot from it, but this is from the game star field, and that's Damien's pick for this week. So Damian, why don't you tell us

Damien Valentine 01:57
about it? So a while back I posted, I shared a similar video to this, which is a trailer for a mod, but it turned out that mod didn't actually exist. It was like a someone just playing around with if they made a mod, this is what the trailer would be for it, and they kind of did a story with it. So that's a very similar concept to this, except this time the mod is real. It is a very real mod. And so the idea is they built this new settlement that you can visit in the game, and the new new characters to interact with the shops and quests and all kinds of stuff, and not just that, but they've built a whole story around the settlement and the people live there. You know why it was there. So this trailer showed that off, and it's got the camera kind of shows different locations around this new town that they've played. And there's a really good voice actor who's he's kind of rating it, explaining that he's talking like he's one of the people that lives there, and he's kind of explaining the culture of this people in this settlement. And you know how a welcome thing of what you're going to see when you come here, and when you're watching the video, you can see a huge amount of work has gone into creating this environment is and he's explaining why that some of the rooms are going to be similar because they just kept using the prefab structures to make the settlement. That's the in law in world. Explanation is they just kept using the Prefabs things to build and build and build to become this really massive thing. But it doesn't look like one of those games where they've done that and they're just reusing the same environment, and it gets very repetitive that you can see that the rooms are the same shape, but each one is decorated uniquely. One's got different stuff in it, so another one and one's in bad shape and things like that. So even though it looks it makes sense, and it doesn't feel like it's just a cut and paste thing. And I thought, you know, this is really interesting, and not just creating a new thing to play around with, but writing a story around it that people can experience when they download the mod. So when this trailer was released, the mod had not been and so this trailer goes back to October last year, but in the meantime, the the mod has been released. So you can, if you like the look of it, and you've got Starfield, you can go and download this. I have to say, I've not had a chance to play it yet, but I'm kind of eager to download it and give it a try. Because I think one of the problems with Starfield is not a huge amount of content, but even though it's a huge game, once you've seen some of it, you feel like you've seen all of it, which I think might be one of the reasons why it hasn't been picked up as a platform is it hasn't really inspired people to be as creative as we were hoping. But there's another rumor going around that digressing a little bit here, that Starfield is going to have a huge update sometime this year with new. DLC, and they're reworking a lot of how the gameplay works. And they had, like, a behind that closed doors thing where some streamers got to see and there's been some leaks, not footage, but just kind of rumors, so it's hard to know what's real or not. So that's something keeping an eye on, because hopefully that will revive interest in this game and give people something to play around with, and maybe we'll see some more Starfield machine with but I really like this, the trailer. I like done with it, and I'm intrigued by the mod. I think, as a as a trailer for a mod, it's a very effective thing, because it kind of draws you into this thing that they spend a lot of work on, that time developing. So that's my pick for the month.

Tracy Harwood 05:46
What did you think let me go next? Phil, if that's okay, because I've got some points I think might make for reasonable discussion. Things really, I mean, because they're digging around that, that I did on it, it's obviously what would appear to be a very ambitious expansion pack, scale mod story that, as you said, it's been created for this game, which centers on this mining town called arinya, and there's all this law that they've kind of created, And they're building out a wiki for at the moment. So this one was supposedly founded by somebody called Ivan yelsin, who, it would seem as kind of like a was a mayor, like character in his vision for creating a kind of a peaceful and prosperous environment for the virtual citizens of the town. And according to the model or trailer, you'll be able to decide the fate of the, I'm assuming, the employees of Yeltsin corps, as well as residents and visitors of this so called Yeltsin controlled space. And you'll be able to, then, according to what it says, influence the corporation itself, dealing with threats, seemingly, of social unrest. The mod, I think, was announced first of all, last December. Sorry, December 2024 and as you said, it was just before Christmas, verified on the Bethesda's Starfield creator platform with version 1.0 I think still in beta, because there are people commenting on, oh, there's glitches with it and what have you. And the Creator seems to be currently working his way through all of the the updates that he needs to do in order to get it run smoothly. He's also devour developing a team at the moment, so he's recruiting actors and this this team for the mod, and he's also exploring, apparently, the opportunity for it to become a paid for mod, bearing in mind that many, many of these mods are actually free on the Creator platform. This would appear to be aiming to be probably one of the most ambitious mods for Starfield that we've ever seen. I think few attempt to do this kind of scale of project, probably for various reasons. And I'm kind of interested to hear what you had to say about that Damian, because I suspect that may be a partial explanation why there's perhaps No, not quite so much of the development going on as the you might expect, in terms of seeing all the different levels that have been created for it, as, from what I can tell, other mods seem to introduce additional questions, or kind of minor areas that overhaul packs and graphics and what have you. But this stands apart because it's offering narrative choices fully new areas and factions with questions and aims to be more of a game like experience, so a game within a game, and much more like an official expansion, rather than simply a community mod, which it obviously is. Now it's if it's been obviously accepted, but if it's released as paid content, it would be one of the first third party expansions in starfields Creations ecosystems, I understand it, which some have said would really kind of bridge the gap between unofficial mods and officially supported, paid creations. And as I understand it, that would be a very big deal in the Bethesda modding world, not something we see very often at all. Now, obviously, I'm not sure exactly what stage this project is at, and judging from some of the comments, who's really you know, the creator, whose real name hasn't been declared, as far as I can tell, is still an ongoing project which which will, evidently involve a team. Also really hasn't been fully declared at the moment, and there are bugs with it which might limit its its reach until such time as those things are worked through. So that's that's kind of one, one thing. But I think another thing to note is that, interestingly, none of the dialog is actually voiced by AI, and there's a lot of credits. When you look at the there's a couple of trailers for this up. And you look at the trailers, it's a lot of actors identified in those trailers and a really great credit list, which seemingly does involve a lot of fan community, which I think is is really good to see. I liked the description of the main social environment being kind of lawless, implying there's an ongoing battle between the resistance force, which, which is called Serious liberation brigade, I think, SLB, 2673 26 is it? Which is the year it was created, I think. And this, this resistance intending to topple the Allison Corporation and the employees themselves. Currently with the action focused on one of the shafts where everybody lives, called called B 20, b2 I think there's a wiki that, as I said, it mentions two other settlements and mine shafts, and there's a fair bit of backstory to each of those provided for the mod on that wiki, and I've no doubt there's, the intention is to build out the law as it as it begins to evolve. But it all looks a little bit in development, in development, so it's interesting that they've released something that's massively in development. I think at the moment, it's not really clear, though, from the law trailer what exactly the nature of the quests are, because I've did, you know, determined that really just from the beef brief bit of a description, but there isn't really an awful lot of detail beyond that, that kind of social engagement. There isn't really a great sense of who the main characters are, even though you've got some really good voice acting for a few ones whom you assume to be the central characters, which I think is quite interesting. The pre release launch trailer has got, as I said, a whole bunch of names attached with it. But beyond the snippets that they give, which are very interesting, in the in the, even in the, you know, in the few words that some of them say, it kind of, there's a real, kind of, you know, there's a real sort of interest in what might sit behind each of them. It kind of, it made me think a little bit of cyberpunk in the way that, you know, some of those characters have tiny little back stories that enable you to sort of build out other narratives from so it's quite interesting to see what they do with all these kind of characters. I think overall, it's got the esthetic and production quality of an official launch, which is interesting. Some of the characters do seem to have some experience of of the game industry, if not, you know, great set of credits to the to their name. It's, you know, the Machinima that you're seeing from it is clearly of gameplay rather than of created cinematic content, if you like, which I think is also a very interesting way of of presenting it. It's clearly sort of engine capture with a few sort of overlays and mod team audio wherever it's kind of needed. I think what it's doing is aiming to communicate the mods promise with with sort of clean footage, center centric approach, rather than a performed animation, which you might see from some of the top games, which we see quite a lot from game trailers these days, where it's, you know, very slick and very rich looking in what it's doing. So I really like that kind of slice of life approach to the trailer. I think that the voice acting is powerful and interesting. I think the the editing is crisp and well done. I'm guessing the sound design is from the gameplay, but I'm not massively sure there is actually a music creator credited in the pre release trailer as well, which I think is is interesting, although I couldn't find out much about whether or not that person has done a great deal,

Tracy Harwood 14:47
but interesting that they've got all these original folks as part of the team. Like I said, this felt rather cyber punky in its approach, and if you recall, we've done quite a few of. Um, reviewed quite a few machinimas in the past, where you've got these observational machinimas which have focused on aspects of the world that these kind of characters inhabit and the and that's that, you know, that's mainly the the NPCs. And I get the impression that's the kind of approach that's been taken here, and the characteristics that I think are particularly interesting. I mean, that they don't look massively visually interesting, but they're certainly hourly very interesting. They've got great accents, and they're really sort of pulling, you know, pushing into that sort of character vibe, which I, which I, you know, I thought it was really well done in that respect. I think therefore, it sort of shows an awful lot of promise. I hope the creators managed to pull it off with, you know, with it being so ambitious, I'm not wholly convinced. I have to say, I'm not sure what the trajectory might be for development of this nature, given that we've not seen all that many of this particular approach being taken, I don't know what you know. I don't know what the hurdles might be that they're going to have to to, you know, get through in order to sort of turn it into a game, in effect, a sort of a third party game on a on an established platform. And ultimately, I don't know what that would mean for the team that creates it, either. And it kind of left me wondering who the folks are themselves, because although I did a bit of digging around, couldn't really find out exactly who the original, you know, the main creator is, or why, indeed, they would want to focus on a mod in Starfield, specifically beyond, of course, being fans of it. So far as I could see there, there's no plan for a reveal of the Creator. So I kind of concluded from that, that the aim is to do the reveal once and only if the mod is successful. I did hear in one of the comments the Creator say, Oh, I've not done that much on it, because I've got to concentrate on schoolwork at the moment. So I'm assuming this is somebody possibly in higher education, possibly doing a game death degree of some sort. And the pattern of working on it kind of fits in with, you know, got to focus on the on the degree versus I can do I can afford the time to do it at another point. I guess, therefore, it leads me to think there's a little bit of a risky strategy to this, in attempting to build a business around becoming a third party provider for someone else's IP, particularly if, as you say, Damon the game, is looking to do something else. I can see why it would be attractive, though, for reasons of audience reach and an established, you know, reliable game platform that's looking for content in order to retain players. But ultimately, I think my advice would always be to try and develop your own IP. I think this is really ambitious, therefore, but it made me wonder if their real aim is actually to just become part of a triple A games dev team, you know, join Bethesda, maybe become part of that creator team, and whether a project like this might work out well for them, because that's what they're basically aiming to do, and demonstrating that they've got the chops by doing it. That's been a strategy that, of course, has worked very well in the past. I'm thinking of the, you know, all the Machinima creators that you know, were lost to the community around the you know, 2007 to nine Mark, where many of those guys went into games, as you know, they weren't. They weren't just content creators. They were, you know, they became part of the development team by by working on similar sorts of projects to this. Many of those folks, I think, are reaching, it's kind of interesting, probably reaching the ends of their careers at this point in time. And it kind of made me think maybe that kind of, you know, maybe, you know, 25 years on, so to speak, maybe we're now ready for another big exodus from the creator community into these new games ecosystems, which now, of course, don't just include games, but they, you know, they include also different methods of storytelling, like theater, like film, like, you know, theme park kind of thing, as well as kind of animation. So maybe they've got more opportunity by doing something like this, if indeed, that's. A route they go with it. I've no doubt we'll kind of see in due course. But yeah, it sort of led me in a number of different directions with thinking about where they go from this in terms of the content, I really enjoyed it. I think it's got lots and lots of potential, but it's a really interesting, very ambitious project, from some insofar as I can see. So I wish them all the best with it.

Phil Rice 20:26
Really, be really similar. Yeah, what

Tracy Harwood 20:29
did you think? Yeah, I

Phil Rice 20:31
had some, some similar thoughts of wondering about the the why behind this, because it is a massive endeavor in and one thing that's interesting, that's maybe a contrast to the Machinima Exodus people, is a lot of them were generally kind of, they were kind of more on their own in terms of, you know, I think of Zacharias Scott, he was part of a team of very talented people, but he also worked a lot on some solo created stuff, and ultimately it was it served as a resume for him to launch a career. And you know, same thing with Paul Marino, who was part of the ill clan, but by the time Paul got the attention of the gaming people, the ill clan really wasn't nearly as active as they had been a decade earlier, right? So whereas with an endeavor like this, this isn't, I don't think. I don't get the impression this is just one person's vision, that this is one person's resume, and he's just happened to get a bunch of people to help him. I kind of, part of me wonders, is this more of there's probably a core team. There may be tons of people involved, but a core team of people who want to work together toward that goal, and if so, then that echoes something that we maybe saw more of before the Machinima Exodus, and it had nothing to do with machinima. It's these groups of would be or aspiring developers who began by working on a mod to a major game, and I'm going back all the way to like Doom. Some of the expansions for Doom were created by independent teams as a way to kind of sharpen iron against iron, and then they went on to found their own gaming company. And that was, that was a, I mean, I don't want to call it common, but it certainly was more common then than it is now, I think. And I, I, I get a little bit of insight into that world through interaction with my son and his friends. And he, there's a lot of communities that he's a part of that teams with that very ambition of this is, let's learn how to do these things and then. But ultimately, we've got a vision of we're going to eventually make our own, yeah, from the ground up, but it's a daunting task to just start from zero and build an entire game in Unreal Engine or unity or whatever the platform Godot is another popular one. So it could be they're taking an approach that we often encourage machinima people to do, which is, you start with something where you don't have to do every single thing, but you strengthen up certain aspects of your craft while leaning on something else. And really all Machinima is that absolutely, yeah, you know, when compared to just 3d animation creation from scratch, boy, leaning on machinima, where, okay, some of the work is there, and maybe some of the story world is there, and you can kind of lean on that meanwhile you're getting really good at these things. And I think the same very much applies to game development. So that could be what's going on here, and that could be why there's no emphasis on one particular creator, because this is a group of, I'm going to assume younger creators who have, they've very much got a mindset that is, that has a lot of popularity right now, which is, I don't want to put it In a political thing, but it's like it's left leaning. This idea of this isn't about me as an individual. It's about the group we're going to work. I don't like the word collective, but that's kind of the word, right? It's, it's a definite, a genuine team spirit that's there that I think maybe. It's a little bit different than the spirit that was more dominant during the Machinima Exodus. And I'm not saying that all the Machinima Exodus people were like, just only focused on themselves, but that was just the way. That was just the door that was open. You know, these these game companies were looking to hire individuals. I don't think there's any scenario where one of the game companies during the machindma Exodus, hired a whole team of people that had previously worked together. That wasn't how it played out well. It did how it well. But how it did play out was when one of the people got hired, they ended up inevitably being asked, Well, who else you know, yeah, would be useful in this regard. And by referrals, it brought in all, yeah, a number of other people, but they weren't hired and mass as a team, right? Yeah? Wasn't approached that way.

Tracy Harwood 25:52
Views were, you know, all of those guys, Zach, Scott and Robert, yeah.

Phil Rice 26:01
He was a, he was an experienced camera operator, like, Hollywood level stuff. Like, he really knew what he was doing with that. Yeah? Games or not, did

Tracy Harwood 26:11
he, yeah? He they all went to EA games, yeah. They went for Bioware, that's right, yeah, yeah,

Damien Valentine 26:19
in the first Dragon Age. And then some of them went off to welcome aspect two and three. Yeah, yes.

Phil Rice 26:25
There was a lot of one person entered the door first, and then others kind of followed. I have to think that there was referrals going on from the early from the early people. Paul was a big one. Yeah? Ken, Ken Thane, definitely, he was one of the earliest. So, yeah, so it could be either way, what's going on here? But you're right, the fact that nobody's name is being put forward, it could be explained a number of ways. One is the one that you thought, and the other is this is genuinely a core group of people, and they don't want any one person's name emphasized because they're not looking their primary objective may not be to get hired. It may be to to found a team, and this is, this would be a great way to to to learn that you know, without having to do it all from scratch, all by yourself, being an indie developer, even as a team. I mean, it's highly risky, you know, there's, there's tons of them out there, but not a lot of them make money to pay the bills. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a tough road. It's, it's competitive, you know? So, so

Damien Valentine 27:38
go ahead, a little bit of trivia along these lines. CG Project Red started off exactly

Phil Rice 27:44
like, there you go, one of the ones I was thinking of, and I couldn't, I couldn't remember who it was. That's exactly right.

Damien Valentine 27:49
The very first Witcher game was originally going to be a mod for Neverwinter Nights. I don't know if they got to a point where I said, Let's just abandon never went to nights and make our own engine or use a different one, but I know that's how it started. I've never played the Witcher one, so I don't know if it is actually based on that engine or not, but they were going to make a paid mod for never went to nights based on the Witcher books. And I'm a reading writer. Oh, that's very ambitious. And then it kind of got it disappeared for a while because they were quietly get going on with it, and then it came out. And it was released around the same time as Dragon Age. And of course, the people we were just talking about worked on Dragon Age. I chose Dragon Age and put all my attention that. So I kind of, I didn't touch the Witcher. So I don't know too much about that. Obviously, it's a success, because there's three butcher games, and they went on to make cyberpunk as well. So, but none of that would have existed if that team had decided, you know, really like Neverwinter Nights and we really like the Witcher books, let's make it mod.

Phil Rice 28:52
Vintage story, the game that I used for that being Moses film that I made very Minecraft looking. That's not a coincidence. Vintage story started as a minecraft mod and eventually got its own legs, and they wanted to be able to do some things that take things in a direction that Minecraft wasn't going. Minecraft was going another way, and so they broke off, and it's now its own standalone game, its own graphics engine. But that's not how it started at all. And there's other stories like that, yeah, where and it that's vintage story is a team, a team of people that decided to do that. So, yeah, I think, I think there could be a story like that going on here. And if so, yeah, I'm rooting for him, for sure, because I think it's a very interesting and viable path. And now let's talk about the the actual machinima. Yeah, so yeah, I was a little not perplexed, but just I found myself wanting more narrative in. Trailer, because it was clear that the world that it's describing is ripe with possibilities for narrative, but the trailer itself doesn't it only alludes to it, yeah, but you're right. There's nothing character driven about it. And the thing that jumped out to me about that was that the title of this film as listed on YouTube is they call it the lore trailer. Now, why would you use an adjective in front of trailer, unless perhaps I mean, and this is taking a note from how Hollywood does things too. You know, they have teasers, and then they might have a concept trailer, and then they have the real trailer, and then they have an even later trailer. And it seems like that the closer you get to the further along you get in the trailer evolution process, the more specific specificity you get with narrative, right? Yes, so this could be the baseline of, this is the world. It's a showing you the world. It's hinting to the narrative. But there may be some other point where they really kind of seek to get people invested in the specific, in a specific storyline going on there. I don't know. I'm just guessing, but the fact that they called it a lore trailer, I think is is intriguing, because it implies that this isn't just a trailer. It's got a very specific, kind of narrowed focus on these elements, yeah, the other thing I wondered about, yeah, go ahead and

Damien Valentine 31:26
they released a launch trailer since I chose this. So there's another trailer that probably does have a lot more cinematic. Maybe it does. Yeah, I just seen I existed, so I don't know what's in it.

Phil Rice 31:37
Okay. So the other thing that I noticed in this was, and again, this could be, it could be read as a strength of the video, and it could be some kind of a limitation, I guess. But the camera move, it's all just sweeping. What are they dolly moves? Is that what those are called everything, is that to the point where it's like, you kind of with you kind of want more than that. Sometimes you know that they're beautiful shots, and I think they're framed nicely, but I guess without narrative content, without character centric content. What was he going to do with the camera, other than just have it sit still, right? So? But I found myself wondering, as a machinima maker, is okay? Are they doing that as a choice, or are they doing that because the tools this, the cinematic tools available within Starfield. You can't get good looking shots otherwise, and I haven't seen enough Starfield machinima to know whether that's the case, but I'm very It makes me curious a lot about what is the actual tool set that's out there, not only the official one, which, with Bethesda, has has done quite a bit to to encourage that type of work, I think. But also, users tend to, you know, augment that with additional functionality. But the camera movements very simple, and I haven't been able to ascertain if that was, if that was a choice for the for the style of the trailer, or if it was just that, this is the tool that works well right now for camera, and maybe something more will come. Because I think for if they were to have tried to make a narrative trailer, you kind of need, you need a variety of shots. You know that there's going to be some close ups, there's probably going to be some depth of field that you'll want, and is the engine or is the are the tools exposed by the engine? Are they capable of that yet? And I don't know the answer to that. I bought star field like a year ago, and I've played maybe the first 15 minutes. It's not for lack of interest. It was more of a sense of, okay, so this is another Fallout, and I fall out is a very long game. It's quite sweeping, and it's in its arc, and it's like, Man, I just don't have time for this right now. And also, I was planning it on at the time, I had a computer at work, which is kind of the one with some actual muscle, and the actual NVIDIA card, NVIDIA card, and then I have my home computer, which was, you know, and I only had time to play it at home, so I installed it on my home computer, and it's pretty stuttery and it's pretty demanding game, right? So, so that was part of the reason why I didn't play any further as well, but mainly it's a man. I just don't have time to dive into this right now, but I want to, because, like Fallout, I think that it has some potential for it to just be a very interesting world. And Fallout was very inspiring. Inspirational to me for additional stories, none of which I've gotten to capitalize on yet, but one of them I did turn into, like, a full length screenplay. I don't know if I'll ever get to do anything with that, but I like a full feature length story came out of it after playing Fallout for, like, I don't know, a few 100 hours Fallout, four in particular.

Damien Valentine 35:25
Yeah, it's very easy to do that with Starfield as well. I never even played much of the story in Starfield. I made, I kind of like I just played it and made my own story as I was going along, about being a smuggler and that there's a character trait where you've got a bounty on your head, so you got bounty, I just chasing you. And then where I was playing, I'd actually got arrested, and instead of just being game over, you get recruited to go undercover by the military and infiltrate this pirate gang. So that's where I was doing it. So I was having just fun with that. We'll come with just doing stuff like that. I went through the world and I was playing the main story, so I don't know,

Phil Rice 36:05
yeah, I'm so I'm so lame. I didn't even get past the point in the game where the narrative does become, where you are freed up. I'm still in this area where they're kind of leading me along. And it's part of the training for the game, right? It's, yeah, it's very cleverly done. And Bethesda is great at this, that it's gameplay, but you're being introduced to new bits of functionality, of how to play as you play. So it's not like a separate tutorial. Remember the old game, like thief, or some of the tradition used to be that there was a tutorial level. Portal is a great example from Valve. The first level is they're walking you through how to do this, that and the other but with these types of games, you're learning that as you go, and there's actual narrative moving forward, but you're also learning how to do this and that, and, yeah, I didn't even get out of that point. So probably, if I'd just gone just a bit further, I would actually be able to, you know, see outer space and, you know, that kind of thing. So anyway, yeah, it the whole thing is, is intriguing as as an idea for how to proceed with something having not played Starfield much, if they were relying on my love of Starfield to hook me with this. It didn't because I don't have that background. If they were relying on the trailer itself to do that, it didn't because there's no narrative there, or no nothing beyond a general intrigue that's there. That's not a criticism. It's just I wasn't in the ideal audience for this yet, because I haven't, I haven't played much, but I continue to be intrigued by Starfield. I think, you know, Bethesda has a mixed reputation out there as some of the, some of the things that you mentioned about that that this mod is getting criticism for Tracy, that, you know, that it's buggy. And I just thought, Well, that makes sense for a Bethesda Game, right? Because that tends to be how they roll, too, right? So they've got a mixed reputation. And, you know, any of the really big companies, they always get a lot more scrutiny. You know, Blizzard is that way as well. That just, man, they can't misstep at all. Or, yeah, you know, the internet goes wild on them. But I still love, generally, love Bethesda titles. I like their approach. It's my kind of games. So, yeah, I'm and this trailer doesn't really show off the most beautiful side of Starfield, which I think is when you're walking the surface on some of these planets and stuff. Just that. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous engine. And even the scenes up in space and stuff, it's just really nicely done. So the fact that this is a lot of interiors, or pretty, pretty focused shots on some, you know, establishing shots of just this specific thing, even then, it's beautiful. But the potential in this game, for machinima, generally, is is still just tremendous. So, and a lot of that's going to come down to to having the right tools available to do it, you know. And I point back to to Grand Theft Auto four, and then when they really stepped it up with Grand Theft Auto Five, that's why that is a great machinima engine, and why Red Dead Redemption two is not even though Red Dead Redemption two is arguably a more beautiful game, but it's so much harder to tell your stories with a camera in that game than it is when there's some tools there, either from the developer or from the users.

Tracy Harwood 39:55
Yeah, the mod community, yeah, yeah. And

Phil Rice 39:57
if the mod community, if the. Not a demand for it, then the mod community doesn't have any motivation to do it, right? So it's tricky business to you almost need somebody who really wants to make a film, and so they and then they happen to also be able to do developer stuff to make it happen. You know, I think of CJ Ambrosia, who made peds, he made this. He made machinima tools for, like, just mind blowing machinima tools for The Sims two, because he wanted to do some stuff with that. And then he did for GTA as well, these things, like, like a trainer that basically would let you play as any of the character models in the entire game and switch up this and that and but all with a very specific machinima focus. Well, he would have never been inspired to make that tool, except that he was a filmmaker, and so he knew what was needed and what he wanted, and he was going to use it himself for the stuff he wanted to work on. So and those people are rare, you know, people like that. He had the ability to do that. I don't know, I don't know how much of it he coded himself. I think probably he's just got that skill set, but it but if not, he knew how to find somebody who did and get them excited about the project too, and make it so Starfield needs that needs someone like that that really, really wants to make a machinima tool set for it, and either knows how to or has a friend who knows how to, right? So, because there's no money to be made in that for sure this mod, it might be a question of whether or not they can successfully launch into paid mod, but nobody's gonna pay for a mission of my mod, so it's tricky. So anyway, I I like the film I'm and the mod is intriguing, but probably not as much as it would be for someone who's played more of this.

Tracy Harwood 41:58
So what do you think the impact of the game developing a new expansion pack of its own might be on a community led mod like this?

Phil Rice 42:12
Yeah, it depends. It depends on if it's how much of it is is content, and how much of it is functionality. You know, if it's and that's, that's tricky for this mod either way, because if, if there's a lot of change to the gameplay and functionality, is that going to break parts of their mod? That's, that's the eternal battle of being a modder. The internal frustration of being a modder is, at any point the developer could upload their update their game, or if you're a Minecraft modder, every time they update the game, your mod breaks right every single time. So but that depends on if you've tinkered with the functionality of the game, versus if it's just what's called a content pack, if it's just retexturing or new models or whatever, you can generally get away with that. And the game that the game updating won't break your mod, but if you're changing elements of gameplay, then, man, it's tough road, so, but yeah, it's possible that they could get overshadowed if that, if that new expansion pack really like, takes off and reignites interest in the game. But also, if they position themselves right, they could, they could benefit ride some of that wave themselves. And because I think it's inevitable. The thing that, the thing that Damian pointed out, was this sense of, once you've seen X amount of it, you've seen it all, that feeling that's true in Fallout as well, maybe to a lesser degree, slightly, because I think that, well, Fallout four had three prior games. They've been developing the concepts of that world for decades. More than a decade right Starfield was kind of brand new, so it's leaning on some of the conventions of the other Bethesda titles, but it's new world, and that's that's tough to even you look at games that would be competitors to this, like Star Wars outlaws, for example. Well, that's got the whole, you know, generation of Star Wars lore to build on that's going to attract people and whatnot. And this was pretty ambitious to just say. Now this isn't based on anything. It's just it's rooted in the Sci Fi traditions that you would know from those other IPs, but it's its own thing that's tough, that's hard to come up with large swathes of engaging content that doesn't ultimately feel repetitive so and I think no matter how good this expansion pack is, it's really. Only just extending that window a bit, right? Eventually, people will feel that way about the expansion that they do about the original game, which is okay, so I've seen it, you know. So it could be a good opportunity for them to position themselves as, hey, we can help satisfy that, that itch because of elements, A, B and C, about our game, are about our mod, give this more replay value or more interest. You know, I don't know. The way I think it could be positive. It could be negative.

Damien Valentine 45:37
Go ahead. The way I think this works is this mod is a location in Starfield, you can go and visit on a planet. It's not really reworking the gameplay or anything. So when this update comes along, whatever they're going to do with it, I would hope that the impact has on damage to this mod is minimal. Yes, it's obviously the location. So the physical assets, like the buildings and the rooms and stuff that should all be fine. It will be how the cat, if they do anything, the way characters interact, in the way the stories, you know, the missions, play out, that's probably where it'd be. The leaks kind of suggest that the update is going to be more about improving the space side of the game. So up in space, when you're flying around and how the spaceships work, or anything, whereas this mod seems to be one location on a planet where you don't fly into obviously, you have to fly to space to get there, but once you're there, you're kind of on foot and you're walking around interacting with people. So I think that won't, hopefully won't impact it too much, but Phil, I think you're right when, if the official update gets released, and it revives interest in the game, and whatever story comes along with that, people are going to play through it, and then I would hope that it's a successful update, and it gets people excited for again, and brings back the mod makers. But I think these guys will say, Well, yeah, it's a location you can visit for more story once you've finished this. I think that's that'd be a very sensible thing to do, yeah, people may find it anyway, just by saying, Well, I finished, so I'm gonna look on the mod sites to see what else is out there. And the game itself has a its own mod library, which you can check from the main menu in the game, you can browse the mods, and you just click the one you want. It'll download it for you. So I believe, if this is going to be released to the official channels, that will appear in the game,

Phil Rice 47:40
which is a wonderful innovation, by the way. I don't know who did that first, but it's brilliant. I mean, steam is now doing that kind of broadly, letting games kind of latch into a system like that, where it's just so much easier to get at the mods and you don't need very much, or if any, technical expertise to install them. Man, that is so huge. That was not the way you used to be with mods, my goodness.

Damien Valentine 48:04
But most mod makers, they they've got the option of using the in game one, but you can release your mods separately and download it the old fashioned way and install it manually if you want to as well. And it depends on the mods. And if you want Star Wars mods, you're not going to find that on the official page for obvious copyright. If you also run around the lightsaber, you won't find that, but someone will have made it. You can download it. And I think Bethesda were clever with that as an option as well, because they know that people are going to want to have lightsabers, sure. Very smart example.

Phil Rice 48:36
But it lets them, let the users, make that available and but it doesn't expose them to, I wouldn't think expose them to liability of hosting it themselves, makes total sense. Yeah. So I guess as long as Bethesda doesn't decide to to Alderaan, the specific planet they built their mod on, these guys should be okay, right?

Damien Valentine 48:58
Well, I guess they'll have to move it to another one if they do

Phil Rice 49:02
look that'll change the that'll change the narrative just a little bit, won't it? Yeah. Okay, so audience, what did you think of this trailer and and maybe your thoughts on the mod? Have you played Starfield? Let us know what you think you can do so in a comment wherever you've watched or seen this, or drop us an email at talk at completely machinima.com so my name is Phil rice, on my behalf of my co hosts, Tracy Harwood and Damien Valentine, have a great day, and we'll see you next time. Bye.