Starfield New Gameplay Trailer & Deep Dive Videos

I posted here earlier this year about the first Starfield gameplay trailer from Elder Scrolls series and Fallout series creators Bethesda and now as their huge new space exploration game with over 1000 worlds nears release we’ve been given some much bigger gameplay trailers and big reveals to drool and obsess over!

As expected the gameplay trailer footage is very impressive and they’ve also done a big deep dive tour and presentation video showing even more gameplay footage. You can tell they’ve learned a lot of things to do and not to do from similar games like Star Citizen (who are still nowhere near release lol), No Mans Sky and Elite Dangerous over the last decade.

The space combat reminds me of Freelancer, while the solar system and orbital planet mineral scanning stuff totally reminds me of the good old Starflight series (which Tod Howard revealed was an influence in an interview), the character skills/perks/attributes of course have the usual Elder Scrolls and Fallout style systems, and there’s a truck load of Fallout 4 style weapon crafting and base building too. As usual there’s a pretty epic physical collectors edition with a custom NasaPunk Starfield xbox controller & headset, a storage case and wrist watch from your in-game spaceship, and that physical watch will naturally connect to the game too (similar to the real world PipBoy they did for Fallout 4). All very impressive! God knows when I’ll get to playing all this stuff though haha!

Skyblivion and Skywind updates

Apologies for the lack of updates over the last few weeks. I went on a much needed first holiday away in 5 years to Tasmania for a mates wedding. Truly amazing place with endless mountains, forests, lakes and rivers to explore. Like a mini New Zealand!

Speaking of beautiful places with endless mountains, forests, lakes and rivers I figured it was time to check in of the awesome Skyblivion and Skywind projects for Skyrim. Fans of the Elder Scrolls series know that the next game TES6 is not all that far away now so these incredibly long lasting mod projects are probably starting to feel that pressure of Skyrim no longer being the latest TES game anymore (much like the Morrowblivion guys felt when Skyrim came out) so the Skyblivion guys have made a bold announcement trailer saying that they will finish and release in 2 years time in 2025! The Skywind guys have not made any similar statements but their work continues and they recently put out a gorgeous super nostalgic memories of Morrowind video showing each region and how its been remade. Check them out below!

Starfield Gameplay Video

I’m a little late to the party on this one (what else is new lol) but being a big fan of Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series and their Fallout series which I hope to do big website tributes to in the future (like I did with my Morrowind 5 year journey page) I’ve been eagerly watching all the hype around their next big game Starfield (nicknamed ‘Skyrim in space’), and very much enjoyed watching their big gameplay reveal video below recently.

Especially as the space travel and combat side of things actually feels very Freelancer like, and ironically even more so than the seemly never to be finished game Star Citizen, Chris Roberts’s spiritual sequel to his Freelancer & Wing Commander Privateer games. In fact they appear to be doing a lot of similar things to Star Citizen and will probably beat them to release! God knows when I’ll get to playing it lol but the Elder Scrolls & Freelancer fan in me is very much enjoying these videos!

UPDATE 19/06/2023: New gameplay videos posted HERE!

Open Morrowind superseded original game for players and modders in 2021/2022

Being a big Elder Scrolls Series and old Morrowind fan I’ve probably posted about the excellent OpenMorrowind fan rebuild project previously, and when I decided to check on it this year I was surprised to see many forum posts and videos by ultra Morrowind fans and modders now saying OpenMW is the better choice for playing and modding! This is due to OpenMW successfully replicating all gameplay and story features of the original (yes it’s fully playable and finishable and has been for a while now), but on top of that it is now more stable than the original (which some fans now refer to as “Oldwind” lol) and supports a huge amount of the fan mods made for ‘Oldwind’ too including the massive and popular Morrowind Tamriel Rebuilt mod. Eg you put a whole bunch of mods on the original Oldwind and it will probably crash constantly however OpenMW almost never will. Plus due to supporting modern Operating systems and 64bit architecture OpenMW is actually quite a bit faster than the original Morrowind too! Really the only drawbacks OpenMW still has are that it’s harder to apply Morrowind mods to it and it doesn’t support the famous (or infamous lol) Morrowind Script Extender and Lua coding which modders use for some of those crazy graphical effect mods. However one of these videos below will show you how to use classic Morrowind mods with OpenMW and hopefully ways will be found to make modding OpenMW even easier in the future, and apparently the OpenMW team are working on Lua support for MSE stuff eventually too! And if all that isn’t enough, it appears early support for Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout NV, and Skyrim BSA files has arrived in the latest version too! Go check it all out!

https://openmw.org/

https://teksyndicate.com/morrowind-in-2022-why-you-should-play-how-to-use-openmw-install-mods/

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/topic/4715-openmw-046-brings-experimental-support-for-oblivion-fallout-3-new-vegas-and-skyrim/

Latest project release video shows just how far OpenMW has come now:

Fans calling it on making the switch:

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Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout in Unreal Engine 5 Nanite

Hey guys, came across this fellows amazing work today! Basically he’s recreating classic beautiful open world game locations in Unreal Engine 5 using it’s Nanite algorithms. The results are stunning and quite realistic! The ones that really blew me away were of course his recreations of classic Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim locations! He’s also done some cool Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4 locations too. Hope he does Morrowind one day too! Check out his amazing videos below!

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Bitmap Books To Print C-RPG Book

This is great news! Bitmap Books those awesome guys behind the amazing video game art books for Nintendo, SEGA, C64 & Amiga etc have teamed up with the guys behind the excellent CRPG Book – A Guide to Computer Role Playing Games that I posted about earlier this year.

I’ve actually already printed out my own copy and have been slowly reading it over the last month (it’s huge!) and it has introduced me to so many great classic RPGs I didn’t know about. You’ll find all the favourites in there such as Elder Scrolls, Might & Magic, Final Fantasy, Quest for Glory and Starflight just to name a mere few. I absolutely love how it covers what the best version is to get (eg between PC, C64, Amiga, Sega & Nintendo etc) and what the best fan mods are for many of the games.

I also recently ordered Bitmap’s other products such as the NES, SNES, Master System and Art of Point & Click Adventure books. What’s arrived so far has blown me away. I love the 3D lenticular slipcase covers! (eg turn the book and Mario will jump & coins will spin). So I think I’m going to have to get this new book too haha. Fingers crossed they do a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) book soon too as thats my real retro console love!

https://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/blogs/news/the-crpg-book-a-guide-to-computer-role-playing-games

Massive Free Book About History Of PC RPGs Is Out!

This is so cool guys. If you grew up playing RPGs on pc and even on consoles then you’ll love this book!

I love how they even have breakdowns of the graphical differences between different computer/console releases of some of the classic (eg Defender of the Crown and Might & Magic 2) as I’ve done that research myself plenty of times trying to find the best version made of a favourite classic.

Nearly all the favourites I grew up playing like Quest For Glory, Might & Magic, Final Fantasy, and Starflight are here. Also some great modern tributes to the indie scene as they even included the QFG fan game Heroine’s Quest!

You can download the book pdf for free from Kotaku here:
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2018/02/massive-book-about-history-of-pc-rpgs-is-out-now-for-free/

********UPDATE 11/11/2018********

The CRGP guys have made a deal with Bitmap Books to make beautiful printed copies!
https://blakessanctum.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/bitmap-books-to-print-crpg-book/