Train Travel immersion mod

[zanity]

I've never witnessed an open-world Beth game that seemed so lazy in its use of its ancient engine. The companion follower code, that should be a cut-n-paste from earlier games, has been re-written and thus has bugs earlier scripts did not have. Companions frequently facing the wrong way, or companions staying in place rather that triggering the follow code, that 'appear' next to the player the first time the player goes thru a 'loading' door.

 

But the train/metro that one must used to move around the first major city is just tragic in coding, scripting and design. As you know, its use triggers a short 'cut-scene', with juddering frame rate, of the doors closing. And if you have a follower, you get to witness the follower literally missing the train. WTF. How the heck did this awful transition get beyond any form of quality control.

 

The train needs to be a much better design. Have transparent windows so one can see passengers inside. I know it is impossible with this terrible engine to have NPCs decently animate entering or leaving, but I'm not suggesting that. Ideally the cut scene should be an interior shot of our character, and followers, now standing in the train as the door closes. You know, an absolute MINIMUM of roleplay immersion.

 

There is a great Indy game called 'The Ascent' that has the exact same travel mechanism, with the same need to disguise loading in the sequence. Since the game was only coded by a few people, it was only able to have the travel cutscene consist of a fully animated interior shot, different each time, with your player and a selection of colourful characters. I appreciate Beth's dev team of well over 500, working five plus years, with a budget in the many hundreds of millions, couldn't be expected to do something this good, even though their engine would allow it. But modders could.

 

Fast travel vs immersion is the big disappointment with Starfield. Beth's playtesters clearly shouted one thing- "walking in real time bores us". Many of us hate fast-travel, but given what this engine cannot do, and the space setting, fast travel was always going to be a thing. It just needs to be visibly more acceptable. More like a montage that a movie uses to depict time passing while still keeping us close to character existence.

 

PS shouldn't we have hover bikes for planet exploration to allow rapid return to the ship, so that fast travel can be avoided. Beth's engine cannot do ground vehicles- the data set for traversal is missing. But a object that always floats a bit above the ground is engine compatible, and reasonable in this genre.

 

What this game needs is polish- the low hanging fruit addressed so a slickness and immersion factor is significantly improved. The characters and voice acting is vastly better than FO4, thank the lord. And the game is in excellent shape to have a ton of story/location mods added in the future. But today it just needs to be a whole lot less painful to experience.

[mauvecloud]

I have to agree with you here - given what they did for the monorail in the Nuka-World expansion for Fallout 4 and the boat ride in the Far Harbor expansion, the engine (even before the upgrade) is clearly capable of something a little nicer for the trains in New Atlantis.

 

As far as "Beth's engine cannot do ground vehicles", are you sure about that? Skyrim had horses, and it seems to me a hover bike could be handled internally as a horse, just with a different mesh and invisible legs.

[DanielV3000]

I kind of want to not have a cutscene for the train ride, if possible. I want to go in, and be able to see the area outside as it travels, of course, maybe it could be an option? Like if you press F outside the train you fast travel with a cutscene, but if you want in the train without pressing anything, you just ride it?