Phil Rice 01:00
welcome to And now for something completely machinima podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. My name is Phil rice, and I'm here with my co hosts, Damien. Valentine, hello. Tracy Harwood, hello and Ricky Grove, yes, sir. So this week, we are looking at a pick from Damien, and it's from a game that we've kind of been wishing that there would be more machinima from, and thinking that it's fertile ground for it. And maybe Damien has found something interesting for us in that. So Damien tell us about

Damien Valentine 01:36
it, right? So this is actually the third video like this I found where it's kind of a trailer for a mod. Now, the first one I did, it was a fake trailer, because the mod didn't actually exist, but it was designed to be, if they were going to make a mod, this is what they wanted the trailer to be like, and it was very impressive, but it's also very static, like the cameras move around, but there's nothing actually happening too much in it. And then a few two months ago, I picked another Starfield trailer for a real mod this time, and it was about the location they'd built in the game that you could go and explore. And they kind of wanted to show off the environment and kind of introduce potential players to this new location you could go and explore in the game and more happened in it, the people talking, and then kind of rating the history of this location and building up the law to make people interested in downloading the mod and playing it. So then about two or three weeks ago, I came across this one called farcia, which is more or less the same thing. It's a real mod. You can it's available now, so you can go and download it if you've got the game. But this trailer feels like there's actually more happening in it, like there's a lot of action in it, and they've got things moving. It's not the game's paused, and they're just moving in the camera through the world. And they're actually making an effort to show off what this mod is about. And it's some kind of science laboratory that they've disappeared in some weird anomaly. And I think the idea of this mod is you can go and explore it and try and solve this mystery that these mod creators have built into the game. The trailer kind of shows off that, but it also shows off that there's conflict between different factions who obviously want to control the anomaly and they want to learn. They want the secrets for themselves. And the way Starfield works is you can probably choose one of those to side with, or maybe just do your own thing, and you kind of forge your own path through the story. So I'd be very interesting to actually play this mod and see how it goes. But I just really like this video. I thought that there isn't been a lot of star field machinima, and maybe these trailers for mods are what we're going to see, until someone says, you know, instead of making a trailer, let's make an actual film of some kind in Starfield. And we've still got this mystery update that's coming at some point this year. I talked about that last time. There's been no news about that. So it's hard to know what that's going to be, other than some kind of overhaul of the game. But beyond that, I have no idea. Maybe we'll find out soon, and hopefully that will encourage people to come back to the game and start playing a bit more and being more creative and maybe we'll see some more machinima anyway. Come back to this. I was really impressed by the way it kind of drags you in and makes you feel like you're very part of this story. I do need to play this mod because I'm really intrigued by this mystery of this anomaly that's been found. So I thought, you know, I'm going to share this with the three of you, and. See what you have to say.

Phil Rice 05:01
So I since we last met and recorded and discussed the previous Starfield pick, I've played Starfield. Oh, I didn't expect to like it all that much, but I wanted to see what it was about. Yeah, I've got about 60 hours in now. My life is in ruins.

Ricky Grove 05:35
The children are all hungry.

Phil Rice 05:39
Yeah, we're putting the house up for sale. It's, I don't know I love Bethesda games. I want to not love them so much, but I do. It's very enjoyable game. So the mod looks interesting. And I think one of the things that's interesting about star field, from a modern perspective, is the fact that it is a galaxy right with with planetary systems, with star systems, with different planets and moons and all that. It just seems like it's built ready for latching on new things in an unobtrusive way. You know, if you think about like Fallout, another Bethesda Game, Fallout four, for example, if you wanted to mod a new area of that game, you have to watch out, and you have to make it like somehow on the outskirts of the existing geography that's in the game. And you can't have it overlap. And you know, you have to weave in the existing factions, which this, this mod, seems to do as well. But, you know, placing it, you know, Fallout four takes place in a pretty specific geographical region. It's like in the former Boston area, basically, of the United States. Fallout New Vegas, obviously, you know, takes place around Vegas. So if you want to add something to that, you've got to work out all this, these transport mechanics of how do we get them there? Because it's so far away, and then what would be the reason for going there, and with a galaxy with planets, and every time you visit a planet, there's something on there that's a little bit different, something unexpected. It just see, it's just, it's easier to incorporate this stuff. You know that who says you can't just discover a new planet around such and such star, or just add another star system, and all you have to do is place it in the star map,

Ricky Grove 07:35
or some anomalous some anomalous creature, or effect or physical, physical thing like in Star Trek, you know they're running. That's all sort of the root of this, all of these kind of games.

Phil Rice 07:54
Yeah, absolutely. So the game is ready made for, frankly, an infinite number of these add ons, as many as people can come up with, and they and there's really no way for them to conflict with one another. You know, somebody can't say, Well, I placed mine to the northwest of town. So now you can't place your mod there, or we can't run up at the same time. A galaxy is so big, so that's, that's, that's got to be exciting and inviting to modders. Yeah, it's, it's, it's an interesting phenomenon. So it's something that I'll be keeping an eye on, for sure. The film itself, visually, it is. There is a lot more action going on. All of this is gameplay footage. I can verify there's, there's no compositing tricks or anything going on here. This is all stuff in the game. And a good bit of what they're showing here is not stuff that's actually in the game, in the game, off the shelf. You know, they're, they've added new things to look at and interact with, let's say, but they've been able to lean on, you know, the factions that that are being referred to, those are existing and very well established with their own storylines in there. So it's kind of like the perfect, perfect storm for true old school machinima that is gonna latch on to an existing world and and have some of this stuff, you know, function for you automatically, you know, these rival factions and things like that. The action is filmed very nicely. They're using a nice combination of first and third person views. I didn't I guess there is some free camera stuff in this but we've talked before that the the the cinematic camera, like third party cinematic camera for star field, isn't really quite as fully developed as I think it will become, and that's going to open up some better choice. A better possibilities for shot selection, you know, so like dialog shots in the game are all just your center and straight up, you know, close up on the person. You can't set up like an over the shoulder, right? You know, back and forth, things like that. But some basic cinematic language type stuff isn't yet possible in the game, and once that's added, then we're going to see it, going to see improved shot selection in the films. I'm sure of it. I think the area that I feel like it's a little bit weak, and I'm hoping that this doesn't translate into the mod itself, but that is the actual what's coming through about the storytelling, or at least, maybe not even the storytelling, the writing, the the narration and dialog that's used to deliver the information about this story. And I checked the other productions by this creator, almighty sed, which is the modern they're doing these videos as well, and that's consistent across all their videos, is that I think this is probably the best one visually and pacing wise, of all of them. But they're all good. They're all like above average, and certainly well above the average of stuff that's coming out of Starfield so far. They're, they're kind of on the leaderboard in that regard. But the writing is kind of, I don't know. It's just missing a little special sauce, and I don't know if I can identify what it is, but it just didn't, didn't really grip me. It kind of, it kind of just felt like it wasn't. There wasn't much dramatic pull. Let's look at just this film specifically, like it's telling us about this thing that was found, and it's mysterious. We got to figure out what it is, but there's no sense of why should we care? Well, who cares? I mean, okay, if I'm like, just a particularly curious cat person, then I'm going to go, Okay, let's seek this out. Or if I'm thinking of it, you know, if I'm suspending disbelief or not suspending disbelief, or just going, Okay, it's a new part of the game to go have fun in. Well, then that's different. But if you want me to really engage with the story, give me a little some what's the stakes, you know, what's the consequence if we don't do something about this, what's you know? Why should we be worried? Star Trek's a great example of that, that when Star Trek encounters something strange in space, a strange entity, a strange phenomenon or whatever, there's always a sense of, we can't ignore this. We can't or there will be dire consequences, you know, right?

Ricky Grove 12:56
So I think the problem is, is that the story element, the sketchy story, if there is one, is really dressing for the visuals. They put that in there because they felt that they should, but they really weren't that interested in it.

Phil Rice 13:15
And that's what makes me concerned about is, is that an indication of what what we should expect with the mod, you know, like, if it didn't emerge from the mod itself and it was just tacked on, then, yeah, then that's, that's going to mean, okay, so it's just a new place to shoot people, which, don't get me wrong, that can be fun, but, and in fairness, the same, I feel like I could level the same criticism about Starfield generally, if I could that there's there's not really a sense of

Tracy Harwood 13:55
it, and that's your

Phil Rice 13:58
Well, yeah, because it's because the gameplay is fun, but I'm not playing it because I'm invested in the narrative. I just really enjoy the gameplay. Fallout four was different. Fallout four, let's talk about stakes. Fallout four, you start. You have gone into this vault to survive the nuclear war. While you're in there, what? And you're kind of paralyzed as you partially wake up from suspended animation, you witness your wife being murdered by strange people and your baby being kidnapped and taken out of there. Now, you want to talk about what's my motivation

Ricky Grove 14:33
right at the very beginning? Yeah, now, whether you

Phil Rice 14:35
choose to Now, the funny thing is, you can play the game and just say, ask through that, and just go around shooting people and not worry about it, but at least it's there, you know, and the storyline for that of this, it's a father or mother, depending on what gender you picked, looking for their child. I mean, that's just, it's, it's a trope, but it's, it's relatable. It's got pull everyone can relate to that story. In some way. If they've never been separated from a child or parent, they can at least imagine what it might be like for that to happen, right? And so you're in, there's a reason to invest and Starfield doesn't really have that. Starfield is you're a miner, and you find this strange artifact in the stone, and then you meet this larger group called constellation, who are tracking down these artifacts in universe. So it's a bunch of, oh, there's a thing here, go find this. And when you go there, oh, well, this guy has it. Go there. And then it's a lot of that. It's, it's, there's a term for that in movies, and I can't think of it right now, but it's kind of a MacGuffin, continual MacGuffin thing of just the devices there, just for the sake of moving things forward, but it doesn't really have anything compelling about it, right? I'm probably misusing that term.

Ricky Grove 15:53
I've always been attracted to games that have an overarching world, like you said, In Fallout, that invests you in something in that world. Some, some need, some, some something to solve a problem or to save someone or to connect with someone. Half Life does that really well? Half Life two does it even better?

Phil Rice 16:19
I'm sure elder ring has elements of that.

Ricky Grove 16:21
Oh, absolutely. But you and within that, you can make it all about fighting. As you pointed out, you can fight, fight, fight, and give a shit about the story, but if you invest in the story, it adds to your experience so much more.

Phil Rice 16:38
Yeah, and that's, that's, that's the thing about star field that has struck me is, I feel like a lot of work went into the detail of the building of the world, of creating this canvas for a great story. They just forgot to put in the great story. It's like it's there, like there's so much that could be done in this and yet, at the same time, the gameplay is not one. That is what I would call open world, in the sense that, okay, we're gonna we're gonna create this world and let people create their own story. No, it's still a bunch of linear threads that you can follow or whatever, but just running around exploring, you're going to have some adventure. You're going to have some challenging enemies or interesting species, like No Man's Sky, that type of you're just setting down on a planet just to marvel at the wonder of this whole new ecosystem. There's elements of that in this for sure, there's wow moments like that, but that's not a story. That's not a reason to keep going, you know? And I can't help but wonder if that's why, if it's part of why Starfield just didn't quite catch on with the fan base in the same way that Fallout did. Fallout has always been story first. The original Fallout game was very primitive. It's kind of hard to unless you're into retro style games. It's kind of hard to get into nowadays, but the story is there all along, and it's Fallout is fascinating in that regard, because there's this, this kind of overarching meta story that that goes through all of the games and even into the TV series. But then within that, each game has its own, your story, you know that you're put into with the character you're playing. And the TV shows the same, same way as well. And, yeah, Starfield, they, they put lot. I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful game, and the gameplay mechanics are very enjoyable. Like, if you like playing Fallout, you'll be right at home in this it's, it's, it's really fun, but you kind of feel like you're not doing anything that's really important. I and I can't wonder if, okay, so if that's your baseline, there's an awful lot of pressure put on a mod creator. You know what? David, the previous video that you shared with was that the one that was about this, like city, that location that you could go visit and and all that I had the same feeling about that of a sense of, it's a it's a template. But is there an actual story there? Like the template of that one reminded me a lot of, remember the snow piercer? Oh yeah, that Snowpiercer, yeah, train, and all of society has basically been condensed onto this train, and it's moving somewhere, but then there's people from the low class trying to get control. Oh, it's just wonderful, wonderful. It reminded me of that kind of template of all these classes and sections and things have been created for. But there's no they haven't decided to put you as someone in the back of the train this time. It's just, yeah, here it is. You can go around. There's lots of stuff to see and do. Now, that may not be what that mod is about, but that's the impression that the trailer gave, is it's not really going to commit to any one story, and so there's no sense of urgency or importance, and I kind of get that off of this as well. So it's not really criticism of the film. It's just more of just observing that there's something I feel is lacking in this, but I think it's also lacking in the world that they're building in. So that's a lot to overcome. So I don't know. I'm curious to hear what you guys have to say?

Ricky Grove 20:41
Well, I don't have a lot to say because Phil is just so damn loquacious today. So there, I mean, there's not it. Once he gets going, he pretty much says it for

Phil Rice 20:53
all of us, right? I need to go last

Ricky Grove 20:57
quick, quickly. I just wanted to say that I like Starfield a machinima. I don't know why you're right. It isn't, doesn't have some of the qualities that other good machinima does, but there's just something in the way about the way it looks. But I'm confused. Damien, is it a trailer, or is it an actual film, or is it both?

Damien Valentine 21:18
I think it's a trailer for the mod, but they've kind of presented it in a way that's more than just a trailer, but not really a full film either. It's kind of, it's almost like, if the moderates have us an introduction to this scenario, this is what the introduction is that what they're adding to the game, but then it doesn't tell you what's going to happen

Phil Rice 21:42
after that. They are modders with filmmaking tendencies.

Ricky Grove 21:46
Yeah, that makes sense, because suddenly you're watching this thing and you're trying to get into this anomaly that they discovered, and then suddenly, bam, people are shooting each other, and then someone else is shooting, and then there are these bloody jibs that are going all over the place, and then it goes back to the and there's no context for any of it. I mean, there's narration in it, but they didn't include any narration about the fighting. So I was very confused. When I think of it as a trailer, I think, oh, okay, you can do those quick non sequitur cuts, because you're going to have fighting in a trailer, but if it's a film, there's no connection between them. So it made me I was frustrated more than I enjoyed the piece, basically, you know, but, but I didn't not like it because I like Starfield stuff in general. I think it's a really interesting platform to do it. That's my comment. I'll leave all the rest of Phil and Tracy.

Phil Rice 22:56
Well, let me add one more thing before you, before you go on, Tracy, I feel that thing that you talked about, Ricky, about jumping right into the combat. The reason that that bugs me is, is because I feel like it was so it was so easily fixable, like thinking just about what's done in trailers, typically, when it's going to jump to action, you proceed it with one line of dialog, yeah? Someone telling you, and now you know, and now the race is on to see who is going to control this or something. They allude to that. They allude to the fact that the factions are wrestling for control over it. But it didn't set it up so that your mind could immediately go, Okay, so that's why, that's why they're fighting. Yeah, it's, it's minor adjustments. They got close to doing that they did. There was a context, at least alluded to, that the factions are going to be wrestling for control over this. But I don't think it was strong enough. It could have, it could have been more direct. And, yeah, this is, this is, yeah. So Tracy, go ahead, yeah.

Tracy Harwood 24:05
Well, I said it all really, from my point of view, it's definitely a short of two halves in many, in many respects. But like you said, I saw it as some something that blended an attempt to introduce a mod with an attempt to sort of produce a machinima film as well. So I, I saw it as a kind of a mishmash of those, of those kind of two things really. And, yeah, again. So, so I'll come to my comments and you you see if you, if you can, kind of, because I don't quite, didn't quite read it in quite the same way as as you guys have to be interesting to hear what you sort of think about what I've what I saw in it. I mean, I think it's a really interesting example, and I think it's an interesting example of what I. Might call more modern machinima, because I think at the beginning part of it, it's certainly attempting to be an example of independent sci fi, and it's kind of got that esthetic of being a sort of modern sort of sci fi. It almost comes over, in fact, in the beginning part of it as being an unreal style, real time, cinematic, sort of vintage NASA documentary image and almost what I call cosmic horror atmosphere, kind of had me on edge a little bit that, you know, that sort of washed out color grading, the sort of slow camera movements, I think they kind of helped shift it away from looking like gameplay to looking more like a science fiction film. And it, it therefore, for me, when it, when it opened up, it kind of had that, that kind of classic premise about it. You know, the sort of classic science fiction tropes of scientists discovering an asteroid that turns out not to be a rock. It's something strange. It's possibly artificial. It's definitely not understood. And you know, humans do what humans always do in these stories, which is, build a research station to study it, and then it all goes, tits up. So, you know, right away, it kind of taps into this sort of very familiar sci fi narrative structure. It's kind of the lost Research Station mystery. We've seen variations of that, I think, in films like alien or event horizon, and maybe a game like dead space, something like that. You know, where something unknown is being discovered and scientists are trying to study it, and then it goes very wrong. And you know what you're what you're then seeing is this story. Is a story about the atmosphere, rather than a character drama. There's no characters in it. It's it's a story about the environment, the atmosphere. And I think that's really quite smart, actually, for for a machinima where you know, who are these characters, what's, what are the quality of the what qualities of these characters got. Can you, you know? Can you animate their faces? Can you do subtle acting with these characters? I don't know. Can you know? How can you control them and and, you know, interact with them and what have you. And I'm not sure from what you're seeing here, whether there's an awful lot of tools that you can do much with in the in terms of what, what you might get those characters to do, as as, as a machinima creator, so to speak. So I think what it's doing is leaning really heavily into the environmental storytelling part of it. And you know, that's why you've got these amazing shots of space stations and ships and this kind of asteroid itself. And, you know, all the these kind of slow camera moves and and what have you, you know, you kind of, you're not kind of rushing from scene to scene, you just sort of drifting and what have you. And it brought to mind sort of films like Solaris a little bit, and arrival in that sort of, you know, side of things where, you know, it's about mood and mystery and unknown and and what have you. But the second half just goes crazy with this battle, and I didn't get a connection at all between the first part and the second part, not put together very easily. I'm not too sure exactly what that fight was about. I because of the way I'd interpreted the first part of it, the mystery, the maybe, you know, something terrifying might be sitting in there. You just don't know what it is. I was kind of expecting it to be a horrible and, you know, frightening monsters to emerge in some kind of way. And then, and I'm not entirely sure I know then, what I actually saw in this battle, because there clearly wasn't any monsters, and in fact, you're not even at the front of the battle yourself. You're in this kind of what appears to be, you know, you're, you're the first person perspective in it, you're at the back of the battle. You're maybe even just an observer, and you can't even see exactly what's what's sort of going on, so I wasn't too sure what what was happening, and whether that was an attempt to, sort of, you know, lead you into something that was gonna become quite shocking and scary. I never really, I never really. Discovered that because it never revealed it, which I thought was quite interesting, because if it is a mod and that it does lead you to that, that kind of direction, then I thought, yeah, okay, I can get the, you know, the suspense of that being the case, but I'm not really sure. Now, from what you you've said that that's actually what it was about. On the whole I thought the editing, I mean, I like the editing generally, but I did think it was, it got more erratic and more inconsistent. You know, the scenes got shorter and more mixed up and, you know, the pace kind of increased them. I thought the music generally good, but ultimately it came really samey in places, generic. Yeah, quite generic. I guess it can be super hard to sort of, you know, do do much more for a film like this when it is just showcasing a mod without there being much of a story, which is, I guess, you know that, I guess that's why I wasn't getting to the, you know, the sort of, you know, the tension in the narrative art, because they're probably, it's probably just not there in what we're looking at, and that you yourself have to build that. And maybe it wasn't there. And what I what I saw, and because I'd seen it build to such a level, I was kind of expecting more of it than it actually ultimately became, because it just never revealed these terrors that I was expecting it just, you know, that kind of initial orange fog just just didn't go anywhere it, you know, just just didn't do what I wanted it to do, basically, which was frightened the Jesus out of me, really. But what is interesting, I think, is how the environment itself becomes the main character. Because there just isn't one that you can latch on to that I think is very interesting.

Ricky Grove 31:59
I think another is interesting, but they just forgot it.

Tracy Harwood 32:02
Yeah, exactly. It could have. They could have done a lot more with it. I definitely agree, but, but, but there are, there are the bases here of some really nice, nice ideas. I think, yeah, what else did I want to say? Um, yeah, I think, I mean, on reflection, I guess you can say that a lot of machinima Does, does do this kind of thing. It's sort of, because it's, it's usually sort of taking, you know, a riff from a game. So it does spend a lot of time looking at the environment, and then gets to to the story. I mean, there is a lot of machinima that does something very similar. The better machinima, of course, tells good quality stories and builds a narrative, whether it's rooted in the game or not really. So I think, you know, they'd probably do well by having a look at what good Machinima is capable of doing in sort of presenting stories, but which isn't to say that this doesn't have great potential. Because, you know, I think what you can see here, as we've commented on so many times, is that this, this whole game, this whole environment, looks so cinematic. It looks so beautiful. And I still am really looking forward to seeing machinima come from it. I think you know this one's attempting to do a bit more with it than we've seen some others do, but it's, it just needs a little bit more to it. It just needs more, more kind of story. But, I mean, you know, the color of it and the way that it's presented, generally is, is, well, I think it's fascinating, actually,

Ricky Grove 33:55
but it, Phil, had a question for you, since you were working on you're playing the game so much you obviously were studying the Machinima tools. What are the possibilities and in the game?

Phil Rice 34:10
Yeah, there's a very strong character creation tool. And I want to say, about a year ago, the ability to to do lip sync within the game was, was made available. I think that it's used in the in the couple character scenes that are in this, yeah. So I Yeah. I mean, is it full featured yet? You know, there's, there's not really great camera controls, because a lot of the tools are focused primarily for modders. But the thing is, is in a game like this, you know, when you go on a mission in Starfield, it almost always starts with a. Conversation with the character. That's where your exposition comes from. It's where you know what you're supposed to do and what's at stake, right? So even though we can say, well, it's just for modding, but you know, there's a lot of overlap, or there should be, between the modding tools and the Machinima tools, because a good mod is, if it's going to resemble one of the garden variety missions from the game, it's going to have some machinima to it. There's going to be some interaction with with NPCs. So yeah, the I have not dabbled with them yet. I do intend to. But yeah, the tools are in formation there. I think the one area that seems to be a real challenge is camera, and there's not any scripting ability, at least not that would be accessible to to normal folks. You know, someone who's a really good programmer can probably figure something out there, but in terms of, like, scripted behaviors, or, you know, it's, it's the NPCs have an AI, and you can coach the AI, but really it's going to kind of follow that built in scripting In the game,

Ricky Grove 36:17
pretty heavy restriction, because the essential tool in any film is the camera. It's being able to use the camera,

Phil Rice 36:29
and I think probably amongst modding tools, that's just considered the least important, because when you're playing the game, the only time the camera matters is for the dialog scene. I get it, I get it and and there is a default dialog mode camera centered on the person speaking. Get it that it uses, kind of like Mass Effect. Did you know Mass Effect was a little bit more clever with the way that it would frame those shots? Sometimes, when the character was speaking, it would be at an angle. There would be some over the shoulder. We know the people who were involved in the cinematic team there, so we know why that's the case, right? But Starfield, there's just a yeah, there's just, there's basically just a straight, yeah, one shot here, and it's the same one that's used in this, this video here. So yeah, I think, I think when, if camera controls become a thing, either from Bethesda themselves or from third party mod that's going to change the game a bit. But the director, if we will, or modder, or whoever that comes to, it still has to, is still going to need to supply the story and the writing to fuel that, or no amount of tools is gonna, is gonna get them there. So the, and I don't mean that to be as harsh as it sounds, it's, it's no, no. I think that this is first and foremost, a mod that's intended to be played in the game, yes. And it's not a movie, you know, and I watched it, and like Tracy with that initial show of this, yeah, this galactic horror type of thing, the red mist and all the red was wonderful choice of color there, right? You don't see something that looks like that in the game like I've never seen anything like that in the game shape and that red mist, so that was well chosen, but, you know, give me a reason to be concerned about that, not just going, Oh, that's that's interesting looking, you know?

Damien Valentine 38:34
So there aren't really any cut scenes in the game. So I suspect one of the reasons that there isn't a lot of camera control is because Bethesda didn't need it. So they didn't.

Phil Rice 38:44
That's right, that's right. There are no cut scenes. Yeah, everything

Damien Valentine 38:47
is told from your first person perspective. That said there is a camera tool, because I remember, not long after the game was released, I did choose a video that was, I think I described it as not a cinematic masterpiece, but this guy who just wanted to show off the potential.

Phil Rice 39:06
I remember, I remember the video, yeah, I

Damien Valentine 39:08
can't remember what it's called, but

Phil Rice 39:09
yeah, it was very at least the way they used the camera in that video was very limited, but it wasn't locked to first person view anymore. Yeah, that's right, yeah.

Damien Valentine 39:19
I think he must have made himself invincible and hidden away somewhere, and he had this fight going on so he wouldn't get kills, but he had, like, a external camera control, which I can't remember how he accessed it, but he just wanted to film this battle to say this is what you can do, even if what He was making itself wasn't that great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Phil, like you, I spent a considerable number of hours with the game, and I've spent very little of those actually, with the story itself. I found that the side missions and things are a lot more engaging, and if you get the right ones, you can tie them together and make your own. One story. When you create your character, you can choose, like, the background of their history. So I chose one where I forget what it's called, but you've got bounty on your head. So every so often, you get bounty hunters chasing you, yeah, and they'll show up and attack you, and another bounty hunters will come in and they say, we're going to take out this first batch of band challenges, because we want your bounty to get higher before we come and kill you and stuff like that. So I've been kind of dabbling in the more of the underworld parts of the game.

Ricky Grove 40:32
Oh, Damian,

Damien Valentine 40:35
well, at one point I got arrested for doing something, but it's just being game over. You get taken aboard this navy cruise and say you've got choice of jail, or you can work undercover and infiltrate this pirate gang for us and take them down. So that's where I am, and I thought that ties in nicely with the bounty hunter background, and so, you know, having a great time with that storyline and completely ignoring the thing about the artifacts that doesn't really interest me that

Ricky Grove 41:09
much, either very, very nice, interesting revelation about your subconscious there. Damien, I totally

Phil Rice 41:17
agree, by the way. I think that that there are some side story elements in the game that are way more interesting than the main plot line that I'll give you an example of one I basically I'm trying to help out a miner on Mars with some kind of a requisition that he needs for Some new equipment or new supplies, and ultimately, it leads me to, I'm supposed to ask the mayor for help. He's the one who will approve it so, or the governor. So you go to the governor of this Mars colony, and he says, I'll do that for you. If you do this for me, I have a ship, and it's it's been taken over by pirates. I don't want the ship back, but it's got something on there that we can't have fall into the wrong hands. So I need you to just go and just destroy the ship. And you do that for me and save us from that, that problem. Then I'll, I'll help your minor guy. So you go to the ship, and I decided to board the ship instead of just blow it out of the sky. And it ends up that the ship has indeed been taken over by pirates. But the reason the pirates were sent by the governor because the person who had absconded with the ship was the Governor's side piece girlfriend, and she was threatening to she was threatening to reveal that and create a scandal. And so he had hired pirates to go take over the ship and retrieve the ship and bring it back. Well, they decided to just kill her and then take the ship for themselves, but it had too much, too little fuel, or something like that. They couldn't, they couldn't get away. So they were on there arguing about what to do about this now. So it was like a Fargo situation, right? Where this this. And so what the mayor, what the governor, hoped that I would do is just show up, see the ship, and just blow it up and eliminate all traces of the evidence of this girlfriend. And so that to me, I mean, it's, it's seedy, and it's kind of gross the story, you know, but, but it's like, that's a story, man, you know, that's fun thing. Yeah, and then, and then, then once I get on the ship and I find what has happened, now I get to choose, what am I going to do with that information? You know? Do I blackmail him? Do I, you know, turn it into the authorities, do I, you know? So it's wonderful. I like that, you know, fascinating. Yeah, that's a real story from the game, and it's not the main plot line at all. You can play the whole game and never encounter that, but it's,

Damien Valentine 44:16
I have not encountered that like that.

Phil Rice 44:19
Yeah, oh, you could play through the I'm sure I've missed tons of things, and I'm trying not to. But, yeah, it's filled with the side story stuff is wonderful. The main story is kind of low stakes, you know? Or if there are stakes, they haven't communicated them like we're collecting pieces of an artifact. Maybe it's gonna blow up the universe if we don't, but they haven't said. So it's just like, we're just, you know, we're just collecting them so amazing. I don't know. Anyway anybody else have anything

Tracy Harwood 44:53
to say on this? No, I was just gonna say, actually, it's a really good pick, because it enables us to discuss lots and lots of different. And aspects and considerations of how Machinima is going to evolve with this game, right, right? Yeah, I think it's got lots and lots of potential. Yeah, it does. It's fascinating to see how

Ricky Grove 45:10
good point.

Phil Rice 45:12
Yeah, I think honestly, with just a little bit of additional tool development, this sci fi game has the most potential for really interesting story, narrative driven machinima, more so than any of its competing games. There's a lot of games in this space right now, but I think this one in particular, it just has, it has some of the elements of No Man's Sky. It has some elements of elite, dangerous, and it really does bring together a lot of great things, and it's a beautifully rendered game with really nice visual effects. So yeah, I'm hopeful that it will lead to something audience, what do you think? Have you played Starfield? Have you let it destroy your life, like I have let us know in the comments or drop us an email at talk at completely machinima.com so my name is Phil rice, on behalf of my co hosts, Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove and Damien Valentine. We'll see you next time bye, bye, bye.