/c/BethesdaSoftworks Monthly Recap | June 2023

pssst. did you know /r/BethesdaSoftwork is on Lemmy now? Go join!

So it's been an interesting month, hasn't it? We had the first big updates for Redfall release, Elder Scrolls Online released it's newest Chapter, Fallout 76 announced it's expanding it's reach into a whole new city, a small unknown indie game called Starfield had a little-watched event that contained just a few details about the game, and on the community side we had a small little shutdown. All this and more in this newly revamped /r/BethesdaSoftorks recap!

Bethesda News (Or, content, content, and more content)

All Bethesda Games are on sale!

• Only on the Steam Summer Sale, which lasts until July 13th

Starfield

• We're starting off with the big one, folks. Starfield Direct happened on June 11th of this month and contained a whole host of information about the upcoming sci-fi epic from BGS. Just as a reminder, the game releases on September 6th of this year!

• You can see the original megathread here for an exhaustive list of everything that was revealed during the event

• Here's some of the highlights

• Combat - Zero gravity and low gravity combat are fully implemented, contains your typical classes like melee, stealth, heavy weapons, etc. with a new emphasis on movement based combat with the introduction of a jet pack. Also, some sort of magic was teased in the presentation, sort of looked like Mass Effects biotics. Ship combat has been confirmed with both ship-to-ship combat, as well as the ability to board any ship you come across and take it over to add to your own fleet. You can also just, you know, trade with the passing ships instead of destroying them. But where's the fun in that because ships are fully destructible?
• Customization - Every part of your ship is fully customizable, for real you can make pretty much any ship you want. Additionally, you can make and fully customize your own outpost on any planet in the game, getting as big as the layout of the outpost, to as small as where you want to store your horde of stolen sandwiches. Weapon customization makes a return from Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 as well with you being able to modify every weapon in the game with attachments and mods. You can craft some of these mods after using the new research function.
• NPC's - It seems like there's three types of NPC's. The regular kind you might meet on the road in New Atlantis/Quest and story NPC's, NPC's that you can recruit to work for you (which can be assigned to your ship or outpost), and NPC companions that we're used to in any Bethesda game. Work NPC's can be assigned to complete tasks such as research or salvaging similar to how you could assign settlers to work in Fallout 4, but with more personality and story behind them. Companion NPC's can also do this work, be assigned to your ship and your outpost, but can also join you on your journey through the stars. Sex is confirmed for Starfield too with companion NPC's being romancable. Companions and workers can be found in main city locations, or through random encounters in space or on one of the 1000 planets explorable in Starfield.
• RPG elements - One of the coolest new features announced during the Direct was the ability to customize your PC's backstory, and that backstory will actually carry over to have effects on the gameplay and story similar to Mass Effect or Dragon Age: Origins, or similar to what Cyberpunk promised but didn't deliver. In Starfield, once you level up you can choose perks, and to level up those individual perks you have to complete challenges that will bring you new benefits and abilities based on your playstyle.
• Misc - Speed round! Shattered Space is the confirmed first DLC for Starfield. Buying the premium or Constellation editions will grant you an early access of five days to play Starfield early. Premium comes with some extra skins and items, Constellation comes with a collectors watch (must be bought physically through a retailer). While there is a big focus on science-based lore, gameplay is designed with fun in mind. About 10% of the planets in Starfield will have life on them, the rest will be barren.

• That's the big stuff, but watch the Direct for yourself to catch everything! Looks like GOTY to me, folks.

Elder Scrolls

• The biggest news for Elder Scrolls this month was the released of Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom. The newest chapter.

The Daedric Prince of Knowledge, Hermaeus Mora, harbors and protects many secrets best kept from mortals and Daedra alike. Now, the One Who Knows’ most closely guarded mysteries are threatened by forces unknown and reality itself is at risk!

• It is a continuation of the Scribes of Fate dungeon DLC pack released in March
• The story is still to be continued in a yet-to-be-announced DLC pack
• Check out the release trailer here.

Fallout

• The biggest Fallout news of this month is the announcement of the new Fallout 76 Expedition to Atlantic City
• It's releasing... uh, soon... TM
• Fallout 76 also released it's Once in a Blue Moon update! View the patchnotes here

Redfall

• Ah, Redfall. This poor poor baby get it's V1.1 release recently! Check out the release notes here
• Also released was it's V1.11 Hotfix. It might be a little more playable now! Emphasis on might.

Hi-fi Rush

• Some DLC might be getting teased for the near future...

That's all for game news for now. It was a big month, with (hopefully) many more big months to come! What are you most excited for? Excited or hesitant for Starfield? Get that discussion started in the comments!

Community updates (copy+paste from Reddit post)

So it's been kind of a busy month for Reddit huh? Let's recap.

• On June 6th, my mod team and I announced we'd be joining in the Subreddit Blackout starting on the 12th. This was originally going to last for two days, but after getting community feedback we extended that blackout indefinitely.

• We stayed blacked out until June 21st when we reopened in restricted mode with a post.We decided to reopen after getting a threat from the Reddit Admins that basically said "reopen or we'll remove you as moderators because you're not doing what the community wants. In that same post we asked what you, the community, wanted us to do next. Reopen regularly, reopen for meme protest posts, or stay closed and be removed as mods. You guys voted for meme protest, but in actual implementation it proved to be wildly unpopular, and us mods made the decision to reopen.

• We understand some of you would have wanted us to continue with the protest, but now that third party Reddit apps have officially shut down, we've decided to transition to other forms of protest. Mainly, we've opened up a community on Lemmy!. My own personal participation on Reddit from now on will be confined to running this Subreddit. For all my other aggregation needs, I'm transitioning to Lemmy and Tildes, and I encourage you to do so too. Let us opening up this community be the push you need to make the jump and drop Reddit altogether.

• However, the community, you guys, also told us that you like this place. You like how it's just focused on solely Bethesda and the community around it, and I agree. I like it here, it's cozy, and I think we have good discussions just about gaming. There's not a lot of places left that keep focus and health like that, so I want to keep it that way. How can you continue to support the protest while still using Reddit? Well... you can't really. No matter what we do we'll still be feeding into the Reddit content machine. However, we still want to show support. Especially to the disabled community who might be most effected by the API changes. Which leads me too...

• Our very own /u/CatPotatey created /r/BethesdaDisabled some months ago as a place for disabled members of our community to share tips and resources to continue to play the Bethesda games we all love. The page is there, now all it needs is the people. So go to /r/BethesdaDisabled and get to posting!

I understand some people still may be upset with our decision to fully reopen, and that's something that I have to accept. We didn't make everyone happy, and the protest didn't work. If you have questions, concerns, or general disappointment you'd like to voice, please leave a comment. I'll be responding to everything that I can, because at the end of the day we're just Bethesda gamers who want a place to talk Bethesda, we're apart of the same community as you, and all the actions we take are for the benefit of the community at large.

That about wraps up the June 2023 ReCap post! We'll be doing these monthly from here on out, but maybe they won't be as lengthy as this one! In place of the community updates section next month, we'll be doing Posts of the month where we recognize users who post the crème of the crop from art posts, to discussion posts, and beyond. So if you'd like to be featured, get to posting!

See you next month, Space Cowboys!